Two years ago, we wrote about how the losses of student life became a “routine” at Middlebury, when tragedies like losing members of our community and fellow students should be anything but routine. At that time, we urged the college to develop more comprehensive mental health support resources. The death of Lia Smith ’26, another classmate, peer and friend, marks the fourth time in six years that a student has died on our campus. The college’s response after each of these deaths has not worked the way it should have, and student death is now embedded in our school’s culture. That needs to change.
After the deaths of Ivan Valerio ’26 and Evelyn Mae Sorensen ’25 in 2023, Middlebury made an effort to allocate funding towards mental health resources, hiring more full time, graduate interns and guest and visiting counselors. However, the death of another student who belonged to a marginalized community screams that something is still missing. We call for an urgent and new approach to supporting LGBTQ+ students at the school. In a rural institution like ours, it is far too easy for students to feel lost and unseen. It is not enough to claim we are a residential campus that innately breeds community and point to the mere existence of on-campus centers such as the Prism Center as complete solutions.
The theme of college President Ian Baucom’s inauguration this weekend is “What is Middlebury for?” As the routine of student death at Middlebury continues, students cope with feelings of loss and more general feelings of sadness and our college hosts speakers that make transgender students feel unseen and invalidated, we are instead asking, “Who is Middlebury for?”
The “business as usual” approach after the previous student deaths continues to fail us. We do not want to move forward as if nothing has happened. Instead, we want to recognize each time a student dies, Middlebury changes forever, and the response to this change should be so impactful it actively prevents this from happening again — we as students and the administration need to make it absolutely clear that this is not the norm. A list of resources and events tacked onto the end of an email or on Presence is a Band-Aid, albeit necessary, part of a solution that does not reflect the profound change our community experiences every time we lose a peer to a mental health battle.
The administration might consider what would happen if they did decide to cancel classes for a day when a student dies. If athletes could not continue with their sports as usual, if our professors had to change their curriculum, and if not only those most affected by the death, but everyone, had to share a day of solidarity, we could use it as an opportunity to move forward together.
We know many students feel this impact on a deeper level, especially those who belonged to the same communities as Smith or who called her a friend. Our community means that as easy or difficult as it may be to continue on doing the things that bring you joy or thinking about a subject such as student death that is deeply painful, you must still laugh and grieve at the same time, and accept those contradictions as part of the process that will bring us all closer together.
Events that occurred this past week like the Dolci dinner, the Weybridge Community dinner and SASA’s Diwali gathering are increasingly necessary spaces for students to laugh, be joyful and grieve together. We do not want those most affected by this loss to feel isolated. We want to all be a part of this community in order to heal. Events that are student-led are time and time again those with the highest impact, and we call for more opportunities to take charge in shaping our own support systems.
President Baucom wrote in his letter to the community that Smith “was–and will always remain–a member of our Middlebury family.” We do not want the memory of Smith or any other student who has died to graduate with the class they belonged to. Smith’s memory can best be served if we make sure to honor her and those like her, firstly by making sure no other students die in similar circumstances. Moving forward from Smith’s death does not mean forgetting her or her death; it means that we grow closer as a community by speaking to each other honestly, growing more vigilant to protect one another and deepen our ties to each other in the wake of another loss.
The new approach we speak of may consist of a patchwork of solutions, like bringing back a student-run crisis hotline, or reinstating projects such as the Commons System that empower students to take charge in fostering community. We must look beyond the fractures of social cliques, teams, clubs, academic departments and organizations. Instead, we need to remember we are all living on a rural, isolated campus together, and we are inherently connected. We should start acting like it.
We hope that the upcoming inauguration this weekend will not only be a celebration, but an opportunity to tangibly recognize how we have failed and to start doing better. President Baucom is being inaugurated into the darkest reality of a Middlebury that is fractured along many lines by student death. It is time for a new routine, a new reality.
We want to thank the Middlebury students and community members who organized a search and rescue operation last week. It is a profoundly noble thing to sacrifice your time that may have been used to grieve, to look for your friend or your peer. We also want to thank Middlebury’s leaders and the law enforcement that have tried to protect our community.
Middlebury will move forward, but we will not do so without continuously honoring the memory of Smith, and ensuring that we work to change our institution until we can write student death is not the routine at Middlebury.
