The damaged items — such as fans, microwave ovens and soap dispensers — are unlikely to be reused or efficiently recycled.
On a positive note:
https://www.wcax.com/content/news/Middlebury-College-offers-campus-space-to-state-coronavirus-efforts-568938351.html
The other students have a pretty good idea as to which group of kids the vandals come from.
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Maybe because for something to happen like this at Bowdoin it would actually would have to be done remotely? Bowdoin was on spring break since March 7th, and the dorms were closed.
There are 2,500 undergrads there, and the largest major is economics, which has about 4 times as many students as the environmental majors. The environmental majors make up about 6.5% of all declared majors at Midd.
One would think that there was a riot going on with hundreds of drunken kids running through the colleges, breaking everything in their path. It was a late night rampage by a small group of drunk students.
Colby has had repeated issues with dorm vandalism, Boston college also had quite a bit of vandalism in response to the closure than Middlebury
https://bcheights.com/2020/03/20/bcpd-reports-incident-increase-following-closure/
UVM: https://vtcynic.com/opinion/floor-vandalism-needs-to-stop/
Vandalism by college drunk college students is more common than people are willing to admit. You can go through whatever campus police reports which are kept at any college, and broken windows and doors, smashed bathrooms and uprooted signs is a fairly common weekend occurrence. Considering how much drinking goes on in college, it would be extremely surprising if extensive vandalism wasn’t common. I’m also pretty sure that many of the people here are suffering from selective amnesia about their own college antics.
However, in most cases, neither student papers nor the rest of the journalists consider the drunken vandalism of students at “elite” colleges to be something that they should report. It’s like bullying in primary and secondary schools - most K-12 schools do not report it, even though it’s, unfortunately, widespread.
It sounds like you don’t think this was a serious situation, nor one that reflects poorly on the school. Bringing up similar situations in no way absolves Middlebury students.
The reality is that students from most schools were able to leave campus quietly and without criminal incident.
Bowdoin students were on break starting Mar 6, but hundreds of students were still on campus…winter and spring athletes and international students, for example. Every student also had to be out of dorms by May 18…all that happened without incident. Same as at most campuses across the country.
I never liked Midd, not sure why. Even as a kid. Hey, at least these vandals weren’t beating up professors to protest Charles Murray giving a speech…
The Bowdoin kids who were most likely to get drunk and smash things were the ones who took off to celebrate spring break in some place in which they could party. These kids came back, picked up their stuff, and went home. They did not stay a few days and get drunk.
I think that they should try and catch the perpetrators and punish them. I think that the entire college culture of getting drunk on weekends and breaking stuff is the problem, not the handful of colleges which actually report when it happens. Focusing on individual colleges as though they are somehow exceptions is what has allowed this to continue. So many of the people who engage in pearl clutching when reading about these things are the same ones who are fondly calling their similar behavior in college “harmless pranks”.
Getting drunk and being destructive is glorified and romanticized in the USA as “partying hard”, and focusing on Middlebury, Boston College, Colby, etc just allows everybody who did the same, or whose kids are engaging in similar actions elsewhere, to pretend that what they did or that their kids are doing is OK and not something that needs to be changed.
Senior “pranks” are a “sacred” part of American college culture. All you need are fewer than 10 seniors who think that destruction is funny when they are drunk, and the opportunity to get drunk, and that happens. It’s not anything unique to Middlebury, it is as American as apple pie.
It also happens because it attracts a LOT of attention. Hundreds of Middlebury students organized a mutual support network, which was emulated across American colleges, and aside from my mention, it was ignored. However this brought in the attention of a dozen posters who otherwise have little to do with Middlebury posting their righteous indignation. This attention is part of the reason that people do these sorts of things.
Part of being an adult is recognizing one’s own preconceived notions and biases, and trying to counteract them, rather than searching for ways in which to support and justify these biases.
They were just as likely the students who invited him… This again demonstrates a very clear bias against specific segments of the student population.
When a person who assign all sorts of evil deeds to people with whom they disagree, it says a lot more about themselves than about the people with whom they disagree.
Maybe you should post about colleges with you are more familiar, and about which you do not have an unfounded negative bias, to which you have already admitted.
Middlebury has, until now, resisted putting up cameras on campus, which was probably a mistake, in retrospect. Many other colleges, including Bowdoin, have surveillance cameras across campus.
Campuses where students were not on spring break when their announcements were made, to name a few: Amherst, Bates, Colby, Mount Holyoke, Smith. In these examples, there were no reports of vandalism to my knowledge. Any concern with Middlebury over the possibility that microwaves and fans thrown out windows could seriously injure passersby? Broken glass strewn throughout the grass? Damage to local businesses? This type of behavior is not offset by the good behavior of other Midd students — and should not be dismissed or minimized on that basis.