The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 11/1/07 Section: Features

Media Credit: Lizzy Zevallos [Click to enlarge]

Theodore May '08 is a man with a plan. He is doing his part to correct what he sees as a drastic flaw in Middlebury's policy - namely, our escalating efforts to decrease the College's carbon footprint.

"Who wants to attend a school with such tiny feet?" May, a History major and Manhattan, N.Y. native, joked during our recent interview at The Grille. (And by "interview at The Grille," I clearly mean "Trivia Night" at Two Brothers.)

If you are interested in joining the initiative to "consume more," there are some simple steps you can take. May pointed out that one easy way to get involved is to leave that "mystery switch" in your room on at all times. Hey, you never know - you could be igniting the main energy source of a small country somewhere.

I have known the "Theologian," as he has been dubbed by his suitemate Rowan Morris '08, since our prep school days, when we used to practice our shotgunning technique on Vanilla Cokes (sad but true) while he forced me to watch hours of C-SPAN against my will. Actually, I am pretty sure I owe every bit of my limited political knowledge to him, and trust me, I know things - there is a woman running for President!

All kidding aside, when May puts his mind to something, he is pretty much impossible to deter. That dedication, coupled with his natural mischievous streak, served him well last spring when he worked as a journalist in war-ravaged Lebanon. He and his fellow reporters would rent cars in Beirut and journey to the country's rural areas, encountering bombed-out bridges, rogue cows and mounting anti-American sentiment as they traveled south.

May recounted the story of one such mission to a Shi'a village in the region. When he and a Lebanese colleague attempted to ask the employee of a local drugstore a question about condom sales, they were literally run out of the shop as the man screamed "Shoo! Shoo!" at the top of his lungs. (Shoo translates to loosely to our "what," though the English meaning seems equally appropriate in this case.) The pharmacist later explained that he had not wanted to offend the women and children in the store, and put May through an exhaustive background check, only to ultimately reiterate his original position that he knew "nothing" about the administration of contraceptives.

Continued...

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