(Currier & Ives print)

New England has a lot of small towns, and a lot of colleges. So maybe a Middlebury College class called "Portrait of a Vermont Town'' will be replicated elsewhere in the region.

As a story in the Dec. 4 New York Times ("Vermont Town Turns to College in Bid to Guide Change'') relates, the Town of Starksboro asked the class, led by Prof. John Elder, to interview residents about how they see the town -- what they most value about it, and what troubles them about where they see it going as it faces such issues as sprawl development.

The students have made themselves experts on the town's history, governance, social groupings and geography.

The idea is to use the information to help townspeople in that very rural and rather fragmented community maintain what most of its residents want, such as working farms, and to strengthen residents' sense of common purpose, which is a bit attenuated, in part because there is no real center with a village green and because many of the residents commute to such places as Burlington and Montpelier. American anomie in a quasi-Currier & Ives setting.

Maybe the fresh eyes of college students (many of them hailing from far away from Vermont), can discover things a professional planner wouldn't about the town, and similar rural communities. Maybe they could hire themselves out to some suburban communities, too, where the angst can be pretty bad.