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(01/22/14 4:25pm)
The Vagina Monologues is an episodic play written by Eve Ensler ’75 in 1996. The play consists of a series of monologues about the “female experience,” such as sex, menstruation, sexual assault, orgasm, female empowerment and solidarity based on both Ensler’s personal experiences and interviews she conducted with other female-identifying persons.
Two Fridays ago, Rebecca Coates-Finke ’17 held auditions for two showings of the play, which will occur on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, a “V-Day” tradition, in the Hepburn Zoo. According to the Director of Chellis House Women’s Resource Center Karin Hanta, the last time the play was staged at Middlebury College was 2009. In the past, all performances of the popular play sold out.
The Vagina Monologues marks Coates-Finke’s directing debut at the College, although she has already stage-managed multiple productions during her two semesters here. Coates-Finke, who also works as a student monitor for the Chellis House, had never read The Vagina Monologues before she decided to try her hand at directing them.
“I like theater and I like social activism, and I wanted to see what would happen when I brought the two of them together,” she said.
In order to secure the rights to the play, Coates-Finke registered with Ensler’s organization, VDay.org, which is dedicated to ending violence against women. Each year, a new and revised version of The Vagina Monologues is released with special instructions. One of the caveats of performing The Vagina Monologues is that all proceeds from the show must benefit a local organization working to end violence against women and girls. All proceeds from the two showings on Feb. 14 will benefit WomenSafe, an Addison County based organization committed to ending domestic and sexual violence against women and children.
Coates-Finke reflected on the fact that Ensler is a Middlebury graduate but that her history here is one that often goes unmentioned.
“I find it interesting that this particular piece of Middlebury history is not really recognized,” Coates-Finke said. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t be proud that Eve Ensler went here.”
Coates-Finke further expressed that she was not sure what to expect at auditions, and therefore was pleased to see so many female-identified people of different backgrounds trying out for a role in the play. The final cast includes eleven monologue performers and three narrators. About half of them are international students, and many of them are not involved in the theater department at Middlebury.
Sandra Markowitz ’15.5 will be performing one of the original monologues, entitled “The Little Coochie Snorter That Could,” in which a woman describes a series of memories involving her vagina, culminating in the final memory of a sexual experience with an older woman where she learned that her vagina could be a place of pleasure and happiness, rather than a stigmatized object that no one talks about.
Markowitz noted, “People can talk about penises all the time. The intention [of The Vagina Monologues] is less to convince people to become feminist and more about creating less of a social stigma around vaginas.”
Markowitz further discussed the fact that several men have questioned her as to why there isn’t a “penis monologues.”
“It’s kind of like society is ‘the penis monologues.’ You don’t need stories of people saying things like ‘my cock is awesome’ because people are saying stuff like that every day,” Markowitz said.
Another performer, Jiya Pandya ’17, is writing her own original monologue for the performance. It is based on interviews she conducted with the Middlebury cast about their first period experiences and will serve as an introduction to the play. And while Pandya admitted that the play is certainly “questionable” for its failure to integrate more narratives pertaining to the “female” or “vagina” experience, she maintained that it is a fun play that definitely makes sexuality more personal.
Both Markowitz and Pandya affirmed the fact that the cast has already come to feel more like a community, even after a mere three full-cast rehearsals. At the second full-cast rehearsal, Coates-Finke turned out all the lights and asked the women to practice moaning sensually in the dark, as part of one of the monologues.
“It could be really awkward, getting a group of girls in a room and practicing moaning together,” Markowitz said. “But it’s actually really fun.”
“All of the women in the cast bring themselves to their roles in a really special way,” Coates-Finke said. “If you come and see it you are going to see something really true to this campus.”
(02/27/13 4:45pm)
In 1980, at the behest of several community members seeking to provide a resource for survivors of domestic violence in the area, the Addison County Community Action Group oversaw the establishment of the Addison County Battered Women’s Project. Two years later, the project became an independent entity. In 2001, it adopted the name WomenSafe, which more accurately reflects the wide array of services the organization provides to survivors of sexual assault/domestic violence and their children. According to their website, WomenSafe “works toward the elimination of physical, sexual and emotional violence against women and their children through direct service, education and social change.”
One of the most utilized of the services provided by WomenSafe is its 24-hour, seven-day-a-week hotline that connects callers in need of crisis intervention or emotional support with extensively and continually trained volunteers from the area. Some of these volunteers consist of Middlebury College students. Adina Marx-Arpadi ’13.5 volunteered at WomenSafe as a first year, from 2009-2010.
“I started working there because I wanted to get involved with something that dealt with the issue of gender inequality,” said Marx-Arpadi. “I had spent part of my gap year in the Middle East, where I found it incredibly challenging to be a woman, which subsequently made me realize how challenging it is to be a woman here, too.”
From 2010-2011, WomenSafe hosted 3,388 meetings and hotline calls with over 400 women and men experiencing direct abuse and assault. However, because of confidentiality, it is unclear how many of these callers and recipients of WomenSafe’s services were College students.
“In my experience working for their hotlines, I didn’t speak with any students that I knew of, although the callers often wished to remain anonymous, so it’s possible that the callers simply didn’t identify themselves as students,” said Marx-Arpadi.
In addition to the 24-hour hotline, WomenSafe provides a variety of other services to survivors of sexual assault, including advocacy programs, support groups, underserved communities outreach, and community education. WomenSafe workers and volunteers will accompany survivors to the hospital after immediate experiences of abuse or assault, and assist clients throughout judicial processes related to issues of sexual or domestic violence.
Middlebury’s Parton Center for Health and Wellness, on the other hand, provides somewhat different kinds of services for survivors of sexual assault and violence on campus. According to Gus Jordan, the executive director of health and counseling services, Parton provides two core services for survivors: immediate response and counseling.
Associate Director of Health Services Terry Jenny, the College’s Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE), is trained to collect evidence after an incident of sexual assault or rape, as well as to comfort and support the victim throughout the process. Although Jenny has not been directly contacted by victims this year or last, she is generally available at her office in Parton or by phone. If Jenny is unavailable, a victim can contact either Public Safety or WomenSafe, both of whom can accompany him or her to the emergency room at Porter Hospital.
The other form of relief that Parton provides is counseling.
“Counseling provides supportive therapy for a person who comes in for any of a range of issues, one of which might be the consequences of sexual assault,” said Jordan. “We certainly have folks who come in who report that they have been sexually assaulted at some point. It may be more recent; it may be more distant. It may be that this is the first time that they’ve talked to someone about it.”
In the academic year from 2011-2012, three students approached counseling services for issues pertaining to sexual assault, meaning that sexual assault was at least one of the reasons for their visit to Parton. In the fall of 2012, nine students – male and female – came in for sexual assault counseling. However, it is important to note that these figures are conservative estimates because many students who seek counseling for reasons such as anxiety or depression do not reveal instances of sexual assault until well into the counseling process. Parton does not currently track numbers of complaints of domestic violence specifically, though they do track accounts of physical violence, of which there have been no reports in recent semesters.
Jordan believes that increases in students seeking sexual assault counseling do not indicate higher rates of sexual assault on campus but, rather, increased utilization of such resources.
“I think the enhanced focus on sexual assault and sexual misconduct on campus has certainly heightened student awareness and perhaps willingness to seek counseling,” said Jordan. “We will have a better idea as time goes forward.”
Jordan also expressed his support of recent efforts to establish a campus-wide sexual assault advocacy group that would function, in some respects, similarly to WomenSafe.
In the spring of 2011, in response to a 2008 recommendation of the Task Force on the Status of Women at Middlebury and a 2009 survey of students, the Sexual Assault Oversight Committee (SAOC) and its subcommittee on advocacy submitted a proposal for a sexual assault advocacy program. The proposal was approved by Shirley Collado, Dean of the College. According to the proposal, the program will consist of student advocates, selected through an application process, as well as faculty and staff advocates invited to participate. The advocates, who will receive 20 hours of training from WomenSafe professionals, will provide information to students about health and safety needs in emergencies, serve as a constant and lasting resource throughout a student’s counseling process, sit as the on-call advocate for a 24-hour crisis hotline and more.
Karen Guttentag, Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs and Student Life, helped spearhead the SAOC proposal. She believes that many Middlebury students who have experienced sexual assault or violence do not want counseling or medical help right away; often, victims just want information or someone to tell them that these problems are “absolutely not okay,” said Guttentag.
One of the most crucial next steps in implementing an advocacy program that provides similar services as WomenSafe – but caters to a college atmosphere – will be the hiring of a new director of health and wellness at Parton Health Center. The administration is well into the hiring process and hopes ot see the job filled in the coming months.
(01/17/13 2:37am)
Last year, 2012, marked the 21st anniversary of the program in women and gender studies (WAGS). In 2013, the May Belle Chellis Women’s Resource Center, commonly known as the Chellis House, will celebrate its 20th anniversary.
To mark these special occasions, the WAGS program and Chellis House held a commemorative dinner on Monday, Dec. 10 in Atwater Dining Hall.
Over 60 staff, faculty, current students and alumni came together to celebrate the progress of women and gender studies at the College from its conception in the early 1980s to a full-fledged program in 1991.
Professors across several departments and programs recalled the WAGS and Chellis history, including Professor of Geography and Director of Rohatyn Center Tamar Mayer, Jean Thompson Fulton Professor of Modern Language & Literature Kevin Moss, A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Sociology Peggy Nelson and many more.
The dinner also featured a presentation compiled by WAGS students Caroline Kahlenberg ’14, Jackie Park ’15 and Allie Weinstein ’13.5. Over several months leading up to the dinner in December, Kahlenberg and Weinstein collected an oral history archive featuring past and current professors and their own accounts of sexism, the College’s ambivalence towards WAGS and the positive changes they saw on campus.
Park interviewed alumni and other supporters of the program to find out how WAGS and the Chellis House enhanced their lives at the College and beyond. She also gathered information about the history of May Belle Chellis, the first woman to graduate from the College. The stories these students captured throughout their research will be available online in the near future.
Mayer recounted some of her early experiences as an advocate for a women’s studies program when the campus culture was less than friendly towards females in general, let alone feminists.
In 1986, she, along with colleagues Nelson, Professor Emeritus Diana Henderson and several other professors, organized a women’s studies faculty seminar featuring professors from Smith College, Dartmouth College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and other colleges to talk about how to bring a women’s studies related major to the college. Later that year, women’s studies became a concentration offered by the sociology department. In 1989, the administration approved a major in women’s studies and by 1991 WAGS had graduated its first two majors.
In 1993, Chellis House opened with the support and financial backing of Drue Cortell Gensler ’57 and became the home to various organizations such as the Women’s Union, Artemis magazine, Middlebury Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Alliance, Feminist Action at Middlebury and Women of Color.
Jan Albers, the first director of the Chellis House from 1995-1997 discussed her experience working on the Task Force on the Status of Women, a 1996 report designed to assess the College’s progress in creating a hospitable environment for female students, faculty and staff. The report applauded the women’s studies program, Chellis House, the development of sexual harassment policies and the elimination of fraternities.
In 1988, fraternities were abolished after several accounts of hostility involving Greek life were reported. In May of 1988, during the annual Delta Upsilon toga party, a female mannequin splattered with red paint and the epithet “Random Hole” had been suspended from the house’s balcony, where it remained for several days until then-Dean of the Faculty Maggie O’Brien asked for it to be taken down.
“The report got a lot of discussion going on campus, and I hope that it served as a call to action,” said Albers.
The beginning of the 21st century also saw new advancements in the program in Women’s Studies. In 1999, the College instituted parental leave for faculty, allowing them to take one term off from teaching with full pay when giving birth or adopting a child. By 2000, the program’s name became women and gender studies and the introductory course on gay and lesbian studies was offered. In 2001, Amy Ellman became the first full-time hire in the program.
Three years later, female professors held three of the top nine administrative positions, thus fulfilling one of the recommendations of the 1996 Task Force report, which highlighted the lack of women in the upper echelons of the college administration. In 2005, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies Sujata Moorti was hired as the first tenured professor in the program.
In March of 2008, the task force on the status of women reassessed policies and attitudes on campus revolving around women. They largely approved of the new parental leave and child-care policies, in addition to the expansion of the WAGS program. However, the report found that sexism still persisted in student social life and that many of the challenges for female students noted in past reports remained.
In a survey, female professors expressed their frustration with having to work harder in order to be perceived as “professorial.” The report also emphasized “the burden of representation and invisibility” felt by female faculty of color and the fear of LGBT students of being perceived as “too out.” A common theme determined by the report was the pressure on some students to be representative of their gender, color, sexuality, etc.
This year, the program and major will go through another transformation with more of an emphasis on gender and sexuality studies. These shifts in the curriculum highlight changes in the field and illustrate the new concerns around gender and sexuality that have emerged over the last four decades.
Today, there are over 20 cross-listed classes in the program for the 2012-2013 school year. While it is clear that the WAGS program and Chellis House have contributed to much positive action over the last few decades, the general sentiment at the December commemorative dinner was that no one would be completely satisfied until Middlebury is an entirely safe place for everyone.
In the words of Albers, “still, there is always more to do.”
With Additional Reporting by JACKIE PARK.
(11/07/12 10:57pm)
The bells that ring from Mead Chapel characterize daily life on campus, yet what most students don’t realize is that there is a man behind the bells.
George Matthew II has been the College’s carillonneur since 1985 when he played a major role in the design and installation of Middlebury’s own first carillon – an instrument consisting of at least 23 bells, played by striking batons that correspond to notes on a piano – which resides in the tower of Mead Memorial Chapel. Matthew learned to play the carillon in the early 1960s, but his musical ambitions did not begin there.
By the time he was 13 years old, Matthew had begun playing the organ with his father’s church choir in Hartsdale, N.Y., without taking prior lessons.
“I wouldn’t say I taught myself,” said Matthew as to how he learned to play the organ at such a young age. “I’d say the music taught me.”
Since his first job as an organist in his local church, Matthew has built up an extensive resume in the arts. In 1962 Matthew decided he wanted to learn to play the carillon while he was employed as an organist in Scarsdale, N.Y. Since then, he has made 33 carillon concert tours in the U.S. and 12 in Europe, where he has played in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France and elsewhere. He became the first American to play the carillon in Russia when he performed concerts there in the summer of 2005.
Until 1995, he commuted a few times a week to play for the College while living in Connecticut, where he was carillonneur, organist or choirmaster for several churches and one temple.
But while Matthew’s passion has always been music, he wasn’t always a musician by profession. Matthew earned his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in Chemistry. After graduating, he worked for 15 years doing chemical research for the company that is now Duracell. And although he admits he still reads Scientific American “cover to cover” every month, Matthew eventually decided to go back to school to earn his masters in Music Education from the University of Bridgeport. Finally, he earned a second masters from Wesleyan University in ethnomusicology, with a focus in Indian music. Matthew was drawn to the study of Indian music because, “they do incredible things in terms of improvisation. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think the violin was an Indian instrument.”
Matthew says it has been a long-term goal of his to bring a carillon to India to see what might be done differently with the instrument in that country, a dream that almost became fulfilled in 1985 when he first started playing at the College.
“Music is more about making it than listening to it,” said Matthew, and with all the musical progress he has made over the years, he has stuck well to this belief. After his studies at Wesleyan, Matthew became inspired to learn the vina, a stringed instrument from India, which he says he would love to start playing again.
In addition to learning new instruments, Matthew has also composed or arranged about one hundred pieces on the carillon and piano.
One of his favorite genres of music to play is ragtime, which one can often hear him playing out of Mead Chapel. His European debut in Ostende, Belgium, was, in fact, composed of ragtime pieces, something he says was quite unusual for the time.
“The year after I did that, everyone was doing it in Europe,” said Matthew.
These days, Matthew plays summer concerts in the New England area and performs the carillon at the College every week.
He also teaches carillon lessons at Norwich University in Northfield, Vt., and is the organist for St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Middlebury.
According to Matthew, the carillon is an evolving instrument that first appeared in the late Middle Ages in secular settings; today, he says, it is finding its place among college campuses around the world.
Matthew advises college students to find a group on campus that plays the kind of music you like to play and to keep playing as long as you enjoy it. Although there are not many amateur groups on campus, Matthew loves having students with some degree of piano experience play with him in the Chapel, and he is very open to giving lessons to any interested students.
(10/10/12 10:25pm)
In the early 1960’s, Professor of Biology Howard E. Woodin, along with several other faculty members spanning the science departments, developed the idea for what would become the first environmental studies program in the country. By 1965, President Emeritus James Armstrong approved the proposal and the environmental studies (ES) program became the first interdisciplinary program at the College.
From 1965 until 1985, the major did not undergo many changes. Each subject encompassed by the program, including geology, geography, chemistry and biology, among others, was treated almost as its own unit.
From 1985 to 1991 the program underwent its most crucial period of growth. During these years, ES saw an increase in attention from the administration, which resulted in the hiring of new faculty and the training of current faculty with an interest in the program but who had not yet become involved.
According to Professor of Environmental and Biosphere Studies Stephen Trombulak, student interest in the program also grew tremendously during this period. Coinciding with the general rise in environmental awareness that occurred during the late 1960’s and 70’s, he explained that college students across the country began to realize the impact of their decisions on the natural world. By the 1990’s, many of these students were training the next generation of college-bound high schoolers.
By 1985, two decades after the establishment of the ES program, the world of academia was beginning to view environmental studies as less avant-garde and more as a legitimate discipline.
“We haven’t really changed the fundamental structure of the major since ’91,” said Trombulak.
Besides some tweaks to the 14 focuses and cognates, the program has remained largely unchanged since its inception. Dean of Environmental Affairs Nan Jenks-Jay, however, notes that the program is “growing in the direction of global environment with the new hires of [Visting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies] Cat Ashcraft and [Assistant Professor of Political Science] Kemi Fuentes-George.”
Ashcraft teaches courses in environmental studies that focus on tackling global challenges, and Fuentes-George teaches courses in political science, specializing in environmental policy.
Issues facing Middlebury and the larger liberal arts community — such as what it means to be a liberal arts institution in the 21st century and how to serve the needs of students in this day and age — have spurred the program to expand the range of issues addressed under the ES umbrella. Trombulak mentioned environmental justice and sustainable energy as two areas into which the program may expand.
In order to meet rising interest in the environmental field, the College is currently working on an initiative that would establish a summer program in environmental studies. A timeline for instituting such a program has yet to be set in stone, but Trombulak estimates that the launch date will be “sooner rather than later.”
“We are always looking to see what we can do better,” said Trombulak.
He explained that just as the English and American literatures department does not want to be the only unit on campus that expects students to write properly, the ES program does not want to be the sole venue for discussing and teaching environmental issues.
A biology major specializing in conservation, Jake Nonweiler ’14 said that one of his favorite parts of the ES program is the way that the core classes provide a common foundation for all ES majors, while the various focuses ensure that a wide breadth of subjects are addressed.
“It’s an all-around yet detail-oriented approach to a subject that really makes this program shine,” he said.
Thanks to environmentally-conscious groups including Environmental Council, Sunday Night Group, Solar Decathlon, Campus Sustainability Coordinators, U.S. Green Building Council Student Chapter, Socially Responsible Investment Club and more, involvement in environmental causes has increased on campus. Not all of these campus groups are supervised by ES professors, nor are all of their student leaders environmental studies majors. Many groups draw participants from a wide range of academic backgrounds.
“I actually wasn’t interested in ES until I had already gotten into Middlebury. I left New Jersey and found myself engaging in more environmentally-driven activities,” said Jordan Collins ’15.5. “The ES [program] is so exemplary of a liberal arts education. I get to focus on something like religion or philosophy and take a breadth of classes within the major.”
Trombauk explained that because of the ES program’s wide reach, environmental studies have become a cornerstone of the College’s institutional identity.
(09/26/12 11:02pm)
As a liberal arts college, Middlebury is not the first school that comes to mind when people think of entrepreneurship and young people working with small, start-up companies.
Middlebury may not be Silicon Valley, but that does not mean there are not students right here on our campus doing groundbreaking things in the business realm and making an impact in their industries.
In recent years, with the help of classes like Middlebury Entrepreneurs and MiddCORE, but primarily through their own efforts and determination, several students at the College have founded their own companies.
Corinne Prevot ’13 started her business four years ago as a high school junior at the Burke Mountain Academy, a boarding school in northeast Vermont with a focus on skiing.
Over one rainy winter break, she and her mother went out to buy materials to make hats, headbands and other accessories for ski races.
“I’ve always been very crafty,” said Prevot. “Some people like music; I dabble on the sewing machine.”
Prevot’s quality products and unique designs soon gained popularity. She began selling custom orders to friends, teammates and competitors at ski races and eventually sold some to her first retail buyer, East Burke Sports, a local ski shop. Prevot named her new company Skida, after the Swedish word meaning “to ski.”
Since then, Skida products have expanded to 80 locations across the country. In 2011, Prevot was awarded the prestigious title of an All-Star Student Entrepreneur by Forbes when her revenues hit the $100,000 mark. This spring, Vermont Life Magazine featured Skida as a “fabric of Vermont.”
As a full-time student running her own business with nothing but the help of her mother and some hired seamstresses in northeastern Vermont, Prevot still manages a regular course load along with a 20-hour work week. However, Prevot looks forward to the prospect of devoting more of her time to Skida once she graduates this spring.
She plans to increase her product line and add in some style pieces, as well as expand on Skida’s philanthropic project, Skida Plus One, where online buyers can donate a hat to one of four cancer centers in Vermont or Colorado at their time of purchase. But no matter where Prevot takes Skida next, she maintains that it is her goal to keep all production domestic.
Prevot’s advice to other entrepreneurs is simply to “be patient with it.”
“Let it grow organically,” said Prevot. She believes that entrepreneurship derived from passion is best when left to take its own path.
Rocket Listings is another small start-up company that were founded by Middlebury students.
The summer after taking MiddCORE during his first winter term, Brian Sirkia ’12.5 had the idea of helping spring semester students rent out their things to language school students.
Over the next few years, Sirkia collaborated with mentors and co-founder Nat Kelner ’12.5 to take this initiative even further by establishing Rocket Listings, a website designed to make buying and selling items online easier and faster. Rocket Listings also allows customers to cross-list postings with similar sites, like Craigslist.
“What brought me to Middlebury was the appeal of the liberal arts and their intersection with technology, and that same appeal is what brought me to Rocket Listings,” said Teddy Knox ’15, chief technology officer and co-founder of the company.
Although Sirkia and Kelner received money through the College’s Millennium Fund, they expressed that raising funds and contacting potential investors has been one of the most challenging aspects of running their small business.
Their hope is to stay based in Burlington where they currently have an office on Church Street, but they recognize that relocating is a real possibility. Still, the two feel that the move would be well worth staying with the company and pursuing their dream jobs.
“You’ve got to be willing to take risks and jump into the deep-end,” said Kelner.
He admits that Rocket Listings has not been a simple endeavor, but that college is the time to take such chances, when most of us do not have to worry about putting food on the table or taking care of a family.
“It’s all an attitude,” said Sirkia when talking about what he learned from his entrepreneurial endeavors.