An Open Letter to the Connecticut College Administration

Photo courtesy of Unsplash.

To the Connecticut College Administration: 

It is safe to say that a large majority of students at Conn have become extremely frustrated with the current state of life on campus. As the pandemic slows down, we are facing a growing number of obstacles. As the college moves forward, we are demanding greater say and transparency in the everyday operations of the college. 

At a time when the College is undergoing tremendous shifts, not all changes have been welcome. When the pandemic started, the College quickly adapted to a remote learning environment, consistent with colleges across the country. Last fall, the College attempted on-campus learning, and succeeded at keeping overall Covid-19 rates low on an unvaccinated campus. This past spring was even better. As vaccines rolled out, it was assumed that much of our lives would slowly but surely return to normal. Then the Delta variant hit. 

The school’s response to the rising demand in mental and physical health services has been horrendous. Sending out a newsletter twice per semester saying that there are mental health services available on campus and that we should ‘walk around the Arboretum’ when students were isolated from their peers and forced to communicate through screens was virtually a band-aid solution. It is those same students who are earning grant funding through Davis Projects for Peace, winning Watson Fellowships, getting drafted to the MLS, and receiving Fulbright scholarships.

If the administration is trying to craft the elite school it so desperately wants to be, then it must recognize when it is succeeding. The College is seeing amazing milestones under unprecedented political and economic situations despite tight financial constraints. But it is holding itself back. By limiting students’ social interactions, stifling students’ academic performance, and neglecting many of both our and the faculty’s basic needs to function properly, the College is holding itself back on its quest to build on strength and defy boundaries. 

In addition to our mental health, our physical health remains a major issue in our residential spaces. It is inconceivable to tell students they cannot gather with large groups of friends out of fear of a virus, yet maintain student residences in the River Ridge apartments. Not a single student was hospitalized in the COVID outbreak of Sept. 6-12. Yet, after a student is hospitalized from exposure to black mold, it took several weeks for mitigation efforts to be taken. This isn’t the only time an issue like this has happened. In 2018, Johnson students were forced to leave their dorm after dozens of rooms were discovered to have mold growing inside. Johnson flooded again this semester in early October, as did the Ridges this September. In Olin Laboratory, there seems to be a bucket that picks up water leaking that lives there permanently.

These facts expose two truths. First, despite requiring all students, faculty and staff to be vaccinated with arguably the most advanced vaccines created in human history, social gathering rules remain far too strict for this point in the pandemic for a relatively isolated campus of young adults. Second, it exposes the desperate need for new residential buildings on this campus. It is unethical for the school to continue the prioritization of any new construction project at Connecticut College until the very homes we live in are adequate for all students. It is no longer acceptable for the school to think that installing dehumidifiers in its residence halls is an adequate solution to the high humidity that is consistently present in our homes. If this isn’t a sign of significant water damage, I’m not sure what is.

The college seems to be in the red, meanwhile, President Katherine Bergeron’s salary was increased by 66.43% ($418,304 to $629,728) from 2019-2020 following a large donation last year. Campus Safety has a new fleet of Ford Explorers, which seem to only be used to give out a quick $75 ticket for students parking in the wrong section, but dropped the cable bill out of the budget in the name of speeding up the wifi. 

The big reason that I, along with many others, chose Conn was because of the premise that we would feel like more than just a number, unlike at larger universities; and from that sense, we weren’t wrong. The number we are to the school is far more degrading. Rather than being 1 in 30000+, it is safe to say that we are all looked at as one number to the administration: $77,575.

Although I might just be one angry camel in a large herd, I know that there is a wide and deep sea of students who feel the same apathy and indignation that I do in our four-year trek across the desert. I, along with others, are asking for the student body as a whole to be able to find easily accessible ways to voice our opinions and concerns about what the school can be doing better and what we would like to see the school do in the future. Although I’m not quite sure what a good final solution might look like, I’m sure that we as the camel community can come together to come up with one that can help students, faculty, and the Conn as a whole become the elite institution we have the potential of being.