With the imminent completion of the eagerly awaited freshman housing dorm at Middlebury College, comes a threat that many believe will exacerbate the existing wealth gap on campus. While there has long been support for a new dormitory due to the concerning trend of over-enrollment in recent years, controversy has sparked after Laurie Patton, President of Middlebury College, officially announced that the new residential hall under construction on Battel Beach will be reserved for "Full-Payers" only. The architectural blueprints of the new building boast 87,000 square feet of marble floor space, containing a built-in movie theater, barre studio, EREWHON pop-up, 24/7 graduate-school counselor, and equestrian stables. The new dorm will hold 298 California King beds for the incoming class, and not a single one of them will be going to a "Poor".
The residential hall is slated to join the Academic and Social Interest Houses at Middlebury and will be aptly named "Affluencia." "We realized that Middlebury has affinity spaces for all the other socioeconomic classes, and so we asked ourselves: Why would we leave out our future benefactors?" Scoffed Jenny Trification, Vice President for Finance and Fat Stacks, "When this building is completed, we expect that nearly 50% of the Class of 2028 will call it home, and 100% of them will be from the 1%."
The Middlebury's Mens Lacrosse team has also become active in the discourse, holding public demonstrations around campus and using their large financial backing to promote the solution. One of Middlebury's star players, Rich Erthanu '24, stated that "it really does make the most sense - I mean Middlebury never used to let these needies in, so if we're gonna let the rabble in, I at least want a space where everyone looks like me, dresses like me, vacations like me, and went to the same preparatory academy as me!"
Furthermore, under the new policy, students on financial aid or Federal Work Study programs will also be losing access to Atwater Dining Hall, with the administration hoping that the large windows will make the urchins gaze wistfully at a taste of the good life and hopefully motivate them to work a little harder and pull themselves up by their own boot straps. In the meantime, the less-fortunate will only be allowed to eat at Ross dining hall during continental breakfast hours.
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