The College is growing rapidly.
The Class of 2030 was selected from an application pool of 21,065 students, nearly a threefold increase from the 7,591 applications in the 2014–2015 application cycle. Concurrently, the student population increased from 1,800 a decade ago to approximately 2,400 today. We also saw growth in the number of buildings on campus. The Bill and Joan Alfond Main Street Commons opened in 2018, Johnson Pond Houses — now respectively named after four influential alumnae — opened in 2022, and the Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts opened its doors in 2023. We also cannot forget the new dorms on Mayflower Hill Drive that just opened this year.
The growth of our College over the years is exciting. Students now have access to climate-controlled practice rooms on the second floor of the Gordon Center and can choose to live in the apartment-style dorms downtown which are equipped with their own kitchens. We are also gaining recognition across the globe, as the increasing diversity of our applications shows. At the same time, it is in the spirit of our liberal arts education to momentarily suspend this excitement and critically consider the implications of our growth and expansion.
The most obvious is our change in status from being a small liberal arts institution to a mid-sized one. Among eleven New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) schools, we rank fourth in student population, below Middlebury College and above Williams College. Other Maine-based NESCAC institutions — Bowdoin College and Bates College — have a student population below 1,900.
As now the largest liberal arts college in the state, the College will exert more influence in surrounding communities than it ever has before. The median family income of a Colby student’s household — 236,100 dollars according to The New York Times in 2017 — is more than four times the median household income of the city of Waterville, which is 53,580 dollars. The situation opens opportunities for the College to invest in the city’s economic development, as the Dare Northward campaign has demonstrated. Yet the reaction to increased student presence in the city is mixed; the frequent complaints on Facebook by Yardgoods Center about students parking in the lots assigned to businesses are one example. We must continue to ask questions about the effect of the College’s growth on the city of Waterville, its cost of living, and its changing population demographics.
The College is expanding not only in terms of the breadth of curricula offered, but also its physical size. On the Southeast end of campus, Colby constructed the Gordon Center, the parking lots behind it, and the new dorms. Eastward, the Davis Science Center was constructed. The College is also planning a new science complex from a three hundred million dollar anonymous donation. Yet, the construction of new dorms requires cutting down trees and, in some cases, encroaching on the arboretum surrounding our campus. Admittedly, the arboretum is part of Colby’s campus and some harm to nature may be justifiable for the greater good — in this case, the College’s growth. But a justification is still necessary. It is necessary from the premise that at least some living thing — a tree, groundhog, squirrel, or a cricket — died or lost its home due to the construction. In order to justify our encroachments, we must fully consider the consequences of construction on these species, and if the construction is still deemed necessary, consider how we can remedy the harm that is done.
~ Benjamin Ha `27
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