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WE WANTED THE TRUTH, BUT CAN WE HANDLE IT?

by Matt McGinniss
The Anvil, Middlesex School, Concord, Mass.
Volume 92, Number 2 (October 27, 1995) p.1.

There have been many people here complaining about the "East Fields expansion"; Common Sense passed around a petition a few weeks ago to get an assembly where Mr. Saltonstall would explain this issue to the whole school, since a lot of people didn't even know about it. That assembly finally happened, and not too many new people were very interested. The whole assembly seemed boring and pointless, which was probably not a complete accident. Mr. Saltonstall spoke about the environmentalists who don't like the school's plans to build soccer fields and tennis courts up in the woods. To make their concern about endangered species seem pretty ridiculous, he played the tongue-twister game of how many times can you say "Elderberry Borer Beetle" to make everyone laugh. He sounded a little skeptical, especially when he got to the part about how they only found one beetle (after spending thousands to look), but he also sounded like he was going to bury his cynicism and humor the people who are so concerned about that little bug (good man).

Thanks to his determination to be thorough and get all the facts out, he spent about 20 minutes talking about Kravis House. And thanks to a strange coincidence, that was the day when a senior meeting which had been delayed again and again finally happened, which cut the assembly short. Thanks to the combination of the senior meeting and all the extras in his speech, Mr. Saltonstall finished up just when there was no time left for questions. Of course, he had promised to have question time, when the students could talk to the school about their own points of view a little, but it just didn't turn out to be possible. So instead, after assembly on Groton Day, the people who wanted to ask questions were allowed to stay after and ask. Of course, that conveniently left out all the people who didn't care and wouldn't have listened even if they'd had to sit through the que stion-and- answer session, so a lot of the school "community" stayed in the dark while the questions about drainage from the fields, the pond, and other things were being discussed. In case anyone is reading this newspaper, here's a little info about what is going on:

Earlier this month, the Natural Resources Commission voted against permitting Middlesex School to build a road over the wetlands behind the theatre and a concrete footpath behind the physical plant. The road would replace the cross-country running trail and lead up to the two new soccer fields the Trustees want to make up in the woods. The big reason why the school wouldn't be allowed to build that road is because of the Wetlands Protection Act, which limits crossings that would affect 5000 square feet or more of wetlands. The road would have taken up less space than that; in fact, the original plan was to have two one-way streets, one to the new fields and one back, so if there was an emergency and one got blocked off, the people trapped up there would still be able to escape. The Trustees must now decide whether or not to make their appeal to the State Department of Natural Resources. They might feel like they have a good enough chance at the state level so that they don't have to watch their step so much as they tried to with the town of Concord. Another question is whether, if they built just one road now, they'd want to build more roads if they developed more in the woods sometime in the future. Would this one permanently be enough to get to the "East Campus" they might want to build in a few decades?

The point for the trustees isn't so much that the school is desperate to get two new fields right now. They want to set a precedent for developing in the woods so that their options will be open later on. Laws for protecting the environment could get a lot stricter soon; they have been getting stricter. If the theatre and the library didn't exist right now, it would probably be impossible to build them. This situation has the trustees concerned about whether or not Middlesex will be able to expand when it needs to, not so much about whether we need two new fields right now to stop something terrible from happening. They do have their reasons why it's important to get new fields. The way it is now, girls' teams have to share one field between varsity and JV, which means neither team can go full-field in practice. That's very frustrating for players and the coaches. Some girls have also said it's sexist, since the guys' teams get top priority for field space.

The reason the plan is for two new soccer fields is because that's the biggest kind of field that we would probably ever need, and they could be adapted for other sports. But these new fields would only be used for practice, never for games. That means traffic on that little wetland road wouldn't be so bad, and it also means the only thing that road would be for would be to connect people with their practice field. It also means the lucky JV teams wouldn't be practicing on the same field they're going to be playing on.

Another big issue is day student parking. Some people don't want to go to the trouble of parking behind the rink, and, says Mr. Salty, we can't expect people to follow the rules if it's not convenient for them, can we? That's human nature and all that, right? And so finally, there's nowhere else to develop except the Estabrook Woods because anyplace else, according to the alumni letter we all got, would involve "an unsafe crossing of Lowell Road". The school is totally right to be super-worried about liabilities, you've got to admit, and making kids have to cross the street (a "commuter thoroughfare") would be really dangerous and irresponsible, wouldn't it? It would also mean cutting down an apple orchard. And anyplace that wouldn't be across the road, according to the letter, would screw up "Frederick Law Olmstead's design for this magnificent campus". Frederick Law Olmstead designed the campus way back when the school first started. So why exactly should his plans have to be top priority now?

Are they a bigger priority than avoiding a big fight with die-hard Concord citizens who will do everything they ever can to keep the School from using its own land if that means cutting into Estabrook Woods? It's clear that what the trustees really want is for the school to be able to use as much of its own property as it wants to, now or any time. They want to do what's best for the school's future by opening up the area east of campus to be developed whenever.

Most of the Estabrook Woods is owned by Harvard University. They're willing to keep it under conservation permanently, but only if the owners of the rest of the woods will help out. They do environmental research in their portion, which is less than 700 acres. It's used for ecology courses, anthropology, and the school of design. There's great diversity of the wildlife, and being able to study it in its natural environment is a fantastic opportunity. The problem is that it has to stay a "natural environment". That means it can't be affected by development to the point where it's not authentic anymore. It has to be pure to be useful, just the way it would be if there were no human beings around at all. To have a full, undisturbed ecosystem like this there has to be enough space, enough land, for the woods to be independent and mostly separate from any kind of development. If the amount of woodlands falls below critical mass, the pure environment is gone and it's just a bunch of trees full of animals that are trying to hide from the human monster tree-eaters. Traffic in the woods would have a major effect on the environment, changing it permanently. It's a really delicate balance that can't be toyed with.

Harvard would feel like their research equipment wasn't safe anymore, too. There are already three housing developments in Estabrook Woods, and Harvard has had offers for the rest of their land. Part of that land is under conservation restrictions now, but those are going to expire in 1997. Those restrictions were set up by Harvard in conjunction with Middlesex and other landowners. Middlesex has chosen the perfect time to start in on the wood-feast, since Harvard's about to have the opportunity to follow suit. In the brochure about "Enhancing Campus Life at Middlesex School", the school admits that the ecosystem of the woods is "fragile". It also uses the fact of how Headmaster Monk Terry led the school in setting up those conservation restrictions which are about to end to prove that the administration was very environment-conscious and give the suggestion of "If anyone was worried about the woods, it would be Middlesex". The Concord Journal had an article about how it is "ironic" that the school would turn around and start eating up the forest it helped to preserve this long. The argument that some of the Middlesex land used to be farmland doesn't really hold water, since the woods area has grown to include all that and if it was cut down now it would have serious repercussions on the rest. Harvard understands that, and would like to make sure that the effects won't reach over to their land. Harvard has agreed to put their land under conservation if they can be promised 400 acres that surround it will be conserved too. Middlesex talks about how they've promised to contribute 55 acres, but I've never heard anyone mention exactly where those 55 acres are. Mr. Saltonstall's maps that he showed at assembly didn't point that out, I don't think? The 55 acres are actually to the south of our campus now. They're not even on the western border of Harvard's lands. Middlesex has offered a 50-foot buffer zone between the Harvard land and any Middlesex land that might ever possibly be developed, but that ain't much.

The Thoreau Country Conservation Alliance proposed another campus set-up for Middlesex that would include the new fields, but apparently that's not acceptable. The trustees just want all of the woods to be available to use. All of Middlesex's eastern land has to be potentially part of the campus, to suit the trustees. A very basic problem with this idea is the wetlands crossing, which can never be more than 5000 square feet and will have to connect the current campus with anything they build to the east, no matter how far they go there. This is an awkward position, but good enough for the trustees, who just want to make sure that if our competitors expand, we'll be able to keep up. This school has to be able to get bigger, or it's going to get squeezed out when the rest of the "small schools" put small in more and more perspective. The possibilities for eastern developments are vital for Middlesex to stay competitive in the long term. And the long term is what the trustees have got to keep in mind if they want to do their job responsibly. That makes it only logical to take a bite out of the woods now, even if there might be some other place to put two fields. This is a crucial time for the school to assert its right to use its own land and make it clear to the woods fanatics that they can't control what other people do with their own property just because it doesn't suit their taste.

There might be somebody who does have some control, though. The Sierra Club has condemned any plans Middlesex might ever have of expanding through the wetlands into the woods, and suggested it should be declared an Area of Critical Environmental Concern. In any case, Middlesex has to appeal the Natural Resources Commission's decision by going to the state level. If Middlesex wins there, the Concord environmentalists could appeal that decision to the Land Court. If Middlesex loses its appeal, it will probably appeal to the Land Court. Either way, it'll still be a while before this question is finally decided in court. In the meantime, we'll just have to live with boarding life here being so terrible that it's one of the school's top concerns.

Two of the goals the school has stated for the expansion are to increase the dorm-parent-to-boarding- student ratio to 1 to 10 and to get "a greater adult presence ... on campus" as Tucker Nielsen '94 put it in an "Anvil" editorial. 1 faculty for every 10 students in a dorm. Now, think about what that means. The school doesn't think there's enough supervision in the dorms. In other words, people are getting away with too much. It's hard to believe that they really want to make life easier for boarders by making the faculty more accessible, because they are never hard enough to get access to for that to be a big problem. They want a set-up where it would be easier for the dorm parents to check on everyone they're supposed to be responsible for. We all know that this year the Deans have started doing surprise room inspections during the day, making it obvious that they really want to keep a closer eye on how people are living. This makes boarding students' rooms less private for them, besides making the whole atmosphere of the dorm less secure. In BP, the faculty study has been moved from the main entrance to the 3rd floor, where the faculty member is wedged right in the middle of things. The new dorms would doubtlessly be set up so that the faculty are very integrated with the student I rooms, leading to a more divided dorm, and would have a real easy time keeping a strict eye on everyone who is under their supervision. A "greater adult presence" means a stricter, much less relaxed environment for the students.

Bottom line: if the Middlesex land might eventually be developed all the way east to the Harvard boundary, Harvard could sell. If Harvard sells, everyone else will sell; there are a lot of people who could make serious dough from their pieces of the Estabrook Woods.

[Anvil editor note: Keep an eye out for the next issue of the when Dana Smith will provide an opposing position on the Estabrook Woods issue. How will it benefit Middlesex to have more fields and faculty housing? How do the faculty feel on the issue? How long will the debate go on?]