Let me start this way: I love Middlebury. My three years here have been the best of my life. I have started to createmyself here. Obviously resumés are reductive, but if you look at mine, you can start to understand a little about who I am. Socially Responsible Investing Club, The Campus, Queers & Allies, Blackbird literary magazine, occasional participant at Verbal Onslaught. I’ve worked for political startups and municipal government and done research on sketchy financial aid practices. Poet, writer, economist, queer, environmentalist, social justice activist, politically-opinionated. That’s me. These are all pieces of my identity. I’ve built this identity through my choices at Middlebury. And this year, I chose to add another identity to the list: expat.
I consider Middlebury a place that encourages this diversity of activities and individualism. But that’s why I was so disappointed by what awaited me in France. I came here to prove to myself that I could create life for myself somewhere else, but unfortunately Middlebury has stopped me from creating my own life in two essential places: extracurricular activities and housing.
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I was very clear on my application: I wanted to live in a student boarding house (foyer in French) because I am gay and I do not want anyone’s opinion on my sexuality to ever matter again. I had already come out once, I did not need another family to come out to. Middlebury then placed me into a Christian foyer.
The foyers were not only full of groups of homophobic guys that made me feel uncomfortable living there, but it was also a controlling space where the woman in charge would enter my room without my knowledge, would open the window, clear my room of snacks (apparently food was not allowed in the rooms) and grade my room on its cleanliness. The moment I walked into my room to a scorecard on the ground grading how clean my room was, I knew I had to leave. The experience was insultingly infantilizing. I was also not allowed to have any guests in my room, so I could pretty much forget any kind of sexuality whatsoever let alone having a private space to hang out with friends (this last comment may seem trivial, particularly to the older generation, but I argue that it is inherently problematic when anyone has any power over another person’s sexuality, particularly when that person is 21 and there is not a country in the world where they are still a minor).
Still not wanting to live with a family, I pressured Middlebury to let me find my own apartment, a normal practice in other Middlebury schools abroad but that was considered a large ask here in Paris. My thought process was that, if I lived with equals, then I could take back some personal power, and I stand by that. I was told multiple times that I was an exception and that this was not normally an option. Unfortunately, I chose to live with an older man and the power dynamic was anything but equal, so I had to leave. I think this would have worked better had I lived with students.
When I finally moved into my new host mother’s apartment, I asked the Middlebury representative, as casually as one can ask these things, whether she happened to know whether this woman was homophobic. She responded that she didn’t know, but that she didn’t see why I would ever have to out myself to her. I made a mental note not to talk about my boyfriend in my new living quarters. Something no one should have to do. My host mother turned out to be a very nice woman (if mildly homophobic), and though I never outed myself to her, we get along well.
Part of the experience of studying abroad here in Paris has not just been adapting to the language, the culture, and the city, but adapting to essentially being 16 in a family that has authority over you but that is not even your own family. It is not an equal living situation. You also are constantly a guest in someone else’s home, which makes it difficult to feel like you have your own home or life here, and which is thoroughly exhausting for introverts like me.
I suggest that the Middlebury School in Paris, like the schools abroad in London and Madrid, offer student housing options where students can live with each other as equals. I encourage future students in Paris to press for this option because I do not believe Middlebury has the right to tell 21-year-olds where to live. However, if, for some reason Middlebury thinks it is their right to tell me where to live, then they have to absolutely assure me that it is not an oppressive environment. They cannot require that I live in homophobic housing or in housing where I am being treated as if I cannot make my own decisions.
Then there is the benevolat, which roughly translates into community service. Middlebury requires that everyone do four hours of community service every week if they are not doing an internship. This is to integrate us into the community and to make sure we do something other than schoolwork. Sounds reasonable at first, right? Let’s just take a minute to break it down anyway.
The Middlebury School in Paris requires 14 hours of class per week minimum, which already translates into five classes, rather than four, per semester. The coursework is, of course, in French and the methodology of assignments is entirely different, so the work takes much longer to do. Then we have to dedicate four hours of time to an activity that Middlebury chooses for us. Also, I go two days a week and it is an hour from my apartment, so I lose four hours to commute time and eight hours total of my week — even if I wanted to go I’m unconvinced that it would be an efficient use of my time.
While all of us are very busy at Middlebury, most of us find ourselves involved in many activities or highly engaged in one. We choose to do this. But that’s just it, we choose it. We choose what each activity is and how much time we have to dedicate to it. We make our choices based on how much we care about that particular activity, how stressful our workload that semester is, and what interests us. We use our own judgment. This required activity is an activity where we do not choose a) to do it at all b) what it is we’re doing or c) how much time we reasonably have to devote to it. Middlebury makes all these decisions for us.
Middlebury justifies the benevolat because it “integrates us into the community.” The problem here is that they do not distinguish between communities. One of the most common complaints at the Middlebury School in Paris is that it’s very hard to meet French people our age. Already, that should be a red flag that something is functioning very wrong. If Middlebury wanted to help us settle into the “community,” it should be the student community. It should be with the people who we most want to and are most likely to connect with. The problem boils down to two principles: Middlebury does not distinguish between communities (i.e. a community that would help us to build a home here vs. a community that adds little to our lives here) and they do not distinguish between students (they make us all do the same thing rather than naturally join activities that interest us).
I suggest that Middlebury abolish the requirement to do community service and, instead, offer a range of information pamphlets and contact info for organizations that students may be interested in joining while they are here, on their own time and of their own volition. Don’t get me wrong, I want to be involved. I just want to create my own experience and my own life like I would at Middlebury.
I wish I had been able to take up the offer of my friends at Sciences Po to join them in the young socialists club and in other school organizations. I’d even have liked to be involved in the Sacré-Coeur youth group. As it was, the meetings were the same time as the Middlebury community service requirement and my time was already too limited to add more to my schedule. The individual choice and the ability to build a life and an identity like we do at Middlebury is so important and my two semesters without that have been frustrating and constricting.
I came here to create a life and a home in Paris. Unfortunately, Middlebury has hindered rather than helped this process. They have prevented me from having a physical space where I can express myself and they have prevented me from choosing the activities that I would like to get involved with. I have been treated like a kid who cannot be trusted to make his own decisions about how to best use his time. The Middlebury School in Paris needs to abandon this authoritarian approach to education and realign itself with the Middlebury values I chose when I decided to come here as a freshman.
*As a side note, I think it’s important to separate the Middlebury School in Paris faculty, who have been generally respectful and helpful in face-to-face interactions, from the authoritarian policies of the school, which have interfered with my experience here.
