In a campus-wide email on Feb. 16, Middlebury’s Residential Life (ResLife) team announced housing updates for the 2026–27 academic year, including a reshuffling of sophomore housing and changes to Feb residential placement.
Coffrin Hall, which has traditionally housed sophomores, will transition to an upperclassmen dorm for the fall semester and J-Term before housing first-year Febs in the spring. Painter and Starr halls — the college’s two oldest residential halls and both listed on the National Register of Historic Places — will instead house sophomores.
“We continually look to balance our occupancy needs with creating an optimal experience for students. Some changes this year […] gave us an opportunity to rethink our current structure,” The ResLife team wrote in an email to The Campus.
The shift also allows for Forest Hall, which has historically housed more than half of the Feb class, to remain an upperclassmen dorm through the academic year.
The ResLife team cited student feedback as a motivating factor behind the change. Feedback is sourced through forms, including from students in the room selection process, from students who previously moved out of Forest West, and from questions in the housing application.
“Coffrin has historically been one of the last sophomore buildings selected in the room selection process, and students have consistently mentioned it feeling far from other sophomore buildings,” the ResLife team wrote. “Painter and Starr will put sophomores closer to other sophomores in Gifford.”
The move will cluster sophomore housing around McCullough Lawn and the Ross Complex right across the street. Students have noted that living near their friends significantly impacts their Middlebury experience.
“There is something special about living right beside a person and having that closeness,” Kayleigh Christley ’28, who lives in Gifford with most of her close friends, said in an interview with The Campus. “There have been several times where I was totally breaking down, and I can’t imagine having to walk across campus to have one of my friends hug me.”
Christley contrasted her current experience with last year, when her friend group was split across campus.
“Last year, half of us were on the Hep and Stew side and the other were on the Allen side and that made planning things really difficult because it turned into a fight of which building are we going to have [our event] in? Who’s going to have to walk?”
Other students are more indifferent towards the decision, citing cross-pollination between class years and the relative size of the campus.
“I’ve never really put much thought into where I live beyond whether the building has laundry,” Ashley Gonzalez Lopez ’27, a current resident of Starr who formerly lived in Coffrin, said in an interview. “It never affected me that we need class years to be closer to each other because I feel like there are a lot of interactions between years.”
ResLife also cited logistical considerations in balancing bed counts across years.
“Since housing is by class year we needed to ensure that any building change would still have the number of beds needed for each class year group,” the ResLife team wrote. “Since Painter and Starr have roughly the same number of beds as Coffrin we were able to make the swap more easily.”
This year, incoming Febs were placed in Allen Hall, rather than being traditionally split between Hepburn and Forest Halls. ResLife cited student feedback indicating that splitting the class could feel isolating.
“With all the Febs split mostly between [Hepburn] and Forest, there ends up being a strange social divide between those groups as well as a lack of cohesion because you don’t really know who is in your class until you officially meet them in some other setting,” Zoe Heinrich-McMullen ‘27.5 said on her first semester experience in Hepburn Hall.
Henry Bolch ’28, a residential assistant in Allen Hall, said the consolidated housing has strengthened class identity.
“Event programming can be more tailored to [the Feb class] since all the Febs are within the residential area,” Bolch said.
The new setup in Allen has yielded “a lot of positive feedback” from the new Feb community, according to ResLife.
“We know that coming in mid-year is a unique experience, so being able to live near other peers going through the same thing allows them to build a strong community amongst their peers,” the ResLife team wrote.
Editor's Note: Kayleigh Christley ’28 is the Digital Director for The Campus.
