The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 11/30/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Courtesy While only a student at Middlebury for five weeks, Norbert Vaughn '10 endeared himself to friends and faculty through letters, conversations and even freestyle rap.

Last August, just a month before Todd Swisher '10 was to begin his Middlebury career as a first-year, he received an e-mail from another soon-to-be MiddKid from Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. They were going to be roommates, the friendly e-mail said. Swisher had not found the site to check housing assignments, so he took the guy's word for it and wrote back.

That is how Swisher met Norbert Vaughn '10, his roommate for the first five weeks of the semester. And that eagerness to meet others and hear their stories is how smiley, 18-year-old Vaughn began endearing himself to the Middlebury community over the short time he was able to spend here.

"He seemed extremely friendly right off the bat, and he had a way of being sincere in all forms," said Swisher about Vaughn's letters, conversations and even his freestyle rap.

"He really liked conversation and talking to people. I remember being amazed at his ability to engage others," said Swisher. "A lot of my memories are when we both were going to sleep, but we couldn't do it because we kept talking."

Catharine Wright, lecturer and tutor in writing, said her first introduction to Vaughn was his arriving late to her first-year seminar because he had been out in the hall talking to a young woman.

"He was a funny figure," said Wright. "He was a little of this and a little of that, a little bit of the 'Got to keep your eye on him 'cause he might pull something over on you' and on the other hand, just absolutely right there in discussion, seeing into something or through something."

Academically, Vaughn's friends and educators said he was a standout student. Coming from a math and science background at Pope John Paul II High School in Hendersonville, Tenn., Vaughn took Middlebury as an opportunity for new studies. He enrolled in an Arabic course he came to love, as well as Wright's first-year seminar on stories and rituals.

"His parents said one of the reasons he went to Middlebury was that he had a goal to challenge himself and not jump straight into the science stuff that he had been doing," said Sam Shoutis '08, Vaughn's junior counselor on first floor Stewart. "He wanted to explore and broaden his horizons."

Continued...

Page 1 of 3 next >

Article Tools