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(11/02/20 10:10pm)
Federal
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Statewide
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County
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Washington County
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Voter Turnout
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(10/01/20 3:15am)
A class-action lawsuit filed in Vermont's U.S. District Court late last week accuses Middlebury College of not adequately reimbursing students for tuition and fees paid for an in-person spring semester that became largely remote due to Covid-19.
Plaintiff Henry Mooers ’21, a senior from Norwell, Massachusetts, filed the suit on September 24. Although the college refunded students a prorated portion of fees for spring room and board, the plaintiff seeks an additional refund for the “failure to provide services” that are ordinarily covered by tuition and mandatory fees. Mooers declined to comment on the case at this time.
The college transitioned to remote learning on March 13 due to the health crisis posed by Covid-19. In the process, the administration also extended spring break, eliminating a week of classes from the ordinarily 13-week long academic session. A few of the facilities and services cited in the lawsuit that students were deprived of last semester include the library, sports facilities, in-person labs and health services.
As part of the intended class-action lawsuit, the plaintiff seeks a prorated return on tuition for himself and all other Middlebury students, proportionate to the time that the spring semester was remote. With a tuition of $28,940 per semester and nearly 2,800 undergraduate and graduate students, the maximum sum of this pay-out could amount to tens of millions of dollars. Tristan Larson, a Vermont attorney representing the plaintiff, did not provide comment on the case. Jeff Brown, the lead attorney, also did not reply to inquiries.
The college responded to the lawsuit in a statement that reiterated its commitment to providing “high-quality academic programs and services” to students throughout the pandemic. But the statement also mentions the balancing act of simultaneously “supporting the well-being of our students, faculty, and staff.” Last spring, the college continued to pay staff salaries despite the majority of students being remote.
The lawsuit cites an online petition as reason to believe that Mooers’s peers might support the class-action suit. The petition, penned by Spanish Master’s student Tamar Freeland, emphasizes the college’s financial options for repaying students, including its $1.15 billion endowment. The change.org petition has around 135 signatures but has gained only a few dozen more since it was originally posted in early May.
If a federal judge certifies the suit's class-action status, the case will be tried by jury. The case was originally assigned to Judge William K. Sessions III ’69 on Monday, but he recused himself from the case. Although not confirmed by his office, Judge Sessions attended Middlebury College, and may have recused himself based on a conflict of interest. The case has since been reassigned to Judge Christina Reiss.
There are currently no other known class-action lawsuits in U.S. District Courts against fellow NESCAC colleges or peer institutions, but they may be in the works. According to its website, one New York law firm is currently investigating complaints against Vassar, Hamilton, Skidmore and Colgate for not fulfilling expected in-person services during the spring semester.
[pdf-embedder url="https://middleburycampus.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Class-Action-Lawsuit-Covid.pdf" title="Class-Action Lawsuit Covid"]
(09/22/20 10:00pm)
UPDATE: Sept. 22 at 7 pm
Students who are removed from campus for Covid-19 violations will not be refunded for room and board, "absent exceptional circumstances of economic hardship," according to Sarah Ray, director of media relations.
——
With Middlebury’s carefully considered reopening plan, students have eagerly awaited every new phase. Last Thursday, students were jubilant to enter Phase Two, allowing them to venture into downtown Middlebury and Addison County. The college even celebrated by hosting food trucks on campus Friday that proffered free pulled pork sandwiches and fresh doughnuts.
But for two groups of students, specifically residents of the notoriously party-centric Atwater residence halls, festivities came to a grinding halt when Public Safety officers knocked on their doors Thursday night. In both cases, officers discovered gatherings over the maximum occupancy limit of six for the spaces, and over the indoor gathering limit of ten people. There were two gatherings of 14 and 15 students in different Atwater suites, according to students present. In the second case, several students managed to leave without incident, dodging the Public Safety officers and escaping from one of the suite’s two exits before the officers demanded student IDs.
The 22 students written up by Public Safety met individually with Brian Lind, the associate dean of conduct, on Friday morning over Zoom, according to two upperclassmen involved in the episode. He notified them that those living on campus would need to leave for violating college policy, and students living in off-campus residences would lose access to the campus and its facilities, including in-person classes. The college has been tight-lipped about the incidents and Lind did not respond to multiple emails for comment.
According to a college media statement sent to The Campus Monday, “students removed from campus because of Covid-19 violations are ordinarily eligible to return in the following semester.” The statement also indicated that the reprimanded students will not be allowed to “visit, study, or take courses on campus” for the remainder of the semester.
The students were given 24 hours to appeal the decision before college officials issued their final verdict on Sunday. Anonymous sources involved in the incidents say that all of the students who appealed received the same letter Sunday night: they were not allowed to remain on campus and needed to move out within 24 hours, by Monday night at 7 p.m. The letters were so identical that two students mistakenly received letters addressed to friends who were also at the gatherings.
From day one, the administration has established a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to Covid-19 policy violations. There are no strikes or warnings: one violation, and you could be out. Despite the glimmer of hope that the appeals process provides, none of the students who appealed were able to remain on campus. The college has already sent home five students for breaching Covid-19 policy, bringing the grand total to 27 students who are now not allowed on campus.
To some, the college’s stringent policy does not recognize students’ varying socioeconomic situations. “I wish there was more of a warning system because the consequence of getting sent home does not have the same effect for all students,” said Tre Stephens ’21, a student who was not involved in the incidents that occurred last Thursday. “But granted, students shouldn’t be breaking the rules.”
Middlebury’s success so far has relied on peer-to-peer accountability, or what some might see as peer pressure. In both instances last Thursday, students at the gatherings suspected that they were “snitched” on by a student who called Public Safety to report loud noise coming from the suites. The link “go/snitch” has become a source of banter on campus as students jokingly — and not so jokingly — threaten to report one another through the college’s reporting page.
The college has so far successfully thwarted a Covid-19 outbreak on campus, with only two students testing positive for the virus who have since recovered. Middlebury currently has 0 active cases on campus, with 6,3969 tests already administered according to the college's Covid-19 reporting dashboard.
The punished students who were registered for in-person courses faced the difficult task on Monday of notifying professors that they were no longer allowed to attend class. Sources close to a few of these students said that while some professors were willing to make concessions, at least one professor notified a student that they would need to drop the class. At this point, it is unclear whether students would receive a refund for room and board.
Since the events Thursday night, the mood in the Atwater complex has been somber. “When I went out Saturday, it was dead quiet,” said Atwater resident Andrew Ng ’22. “The administration definitely sent a strong message.”
(05/14/20 10:00am)
As college employees geared up last summer for another presumably normal academic year, some facilities staff members, frustrated with a lack of communication from upper management and the aftershocks of workforce planning, contemplated forming a union.
Now, only nine months later, nothing is the same.
Efforts to unionize with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) — the trade union that originally approached staff about organizing — are all but dead in the water, many staff say. And the college, which is the largest employer in Addison County, has scrambled to keep its approximately 1,500 employees with full pay during the pandemic until at least June 30.
Yet, as unemployment surges past 20 percent statewide and Middlebury deliberates how college will look come fall, employees are divided. Some workers feel that the crisis has led to a return of the “family feel” that had, according to many, dissipated as the college expanded. The acquisition of the Middlebury Institute for International Studies (MIIS) in Monterey and the growth of the Language Schools necessitated an operations model that became more business-oriented.
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But during the pandemic, administrators have ramped up college-wide communications, reiterating that they are committed to paying staff for as long as possible, whether or not they are able to report to work.
Other staff members — many of them working in facilities jobs in the college’s lowest pay bands — are less congratulatory. Several feel that the health crisis has only exacerbated an already strained relationship between administrators and staff, one that plummeted with workforce planning and years of insufficient pay. Some said they would still really like to see a union happen.
Most of the dozen workers The Campus spoke with for this story said the uncertainty about their employment status and pay after June 30 brought a great deal of stress.
The Covid-19 Pay Bank
Eight days after administrators announced that the college would transition to remote learning, staff received an email outlining the college’s plan to ensure continued pay. Through a new program, the Covid-19 Pay Bank, staff would be provided an additional 21 days of paid time off.
Three weeks later, staff received yet another email that guaranteed pay until June 30, regardless of whether or not workers had already burned through their Pay Bank days. If they had, but still had hours left in their combined time off (CTO), they would dip into those hours.
Rick Iffland, an Atwater dining hall staffer who has worked at the college for 14 years, has used some of his accrued CTO.
“The Covid Pay Bank was very gracious,” he said. “But I’ve had to use my own days now. That’s just the way it is.”
Full-time staff receive eight hours biweekly of CTO, with more hours allotted with years of experience. Staff can have over 288 hours saved up at any given time
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Several staff said they were frustrated about having to dip into their CTO hours.
“Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to be getting a paycheck,” said one custodial worker, who asked to be kept anonymous for fear of retribution from upper management, “but I am being forced to use all my banked CTO time now that the Covid Bank is used up.”
Vice President for Human Resources and Chief Risk Officer Karen Miller said she understands that staff might wish to hold onto their CTO. “But we’re operating in extraordinary times and the plan we developed was a way to ensure our commitment to wage continuity,” she said.
Communicating change
Many staff previously told The Campus that low morale mushroomed during last year’s cost-reducing workforce planning efforts.
Grace O’Dell, a career and academic advisor at MIIS and a representative on the Staff Council, said that staff were sometimes frustrated about how messages were communicated during that process.
“These crisis communications, however, have been really excellent,” she said. In particular, O’Dell said she has been reading the Covid-19 page on the college’s website for updates about the college’s budget, among other news.
Patti McCaffrey, who works in Atwater dining hall and has been with the college for 23 years, says she thinks morale might vary by department, depending on how communicative and understanding supervisors are.
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“Some of it has to do with the people who are managing you,” she said. “Whether you feel like they could be more empathetic to whatever issues you might have is crucial.”
Landscaping worker Todd Weedman agreed that communication depends on management. “I’m going to say the upper administration has been as good as they can be,” he said. “I do feel sometimes communication among supervisors and management could be better, but it could be worse.”
Some staff say that the family feel the college had allegedly lost in recent years has returned. “What more could they have done for us?” said McCaffrey. “Family is a ‘looking out for your own’ sort of thing. And I really feel like they’ve done that the best they can.”
[pullquote speaker="Patti McCaffrey" photo="" align="right" background="off" border="left" shadow="off"]Family is a ‘looking out for your own’ sort of thing. And I really feel like they’ve done that the best they can.[/pullquote]
At the beginning of the remote work period, the college sent out a voluntary online survey to all staff, including those in Monterey and abroad. The survey in part gauged how the 695 staff who responded (45% of the college’s workforce) felt about college communications from the administration.
One comment alluded to a string of stresses staff faced this year. “Please keep in mind that this is a population already fatigued and low morale after workforce Planning, the headaches of a challenging Oracle migration, and now COVID-19,” it read. “We are ready to be inspired. The decisions the college makes in the next two weeks — and how they communicate to and involve staff — will ripple through the Middlebury community for years to come.”
Separately, several staff also told The Campus they are also still frustrated by the pay compression caused by this year’s wage raises.
The college has plans to potentially address the compression, pending the results of a compensation review it spearheaded this year, but that timeline has been affected by dismal budget projections for the upcoming fiscal year. Miller said the review is slated to be finished this summer, and that the college “will consider its findings in context with other decisions we must make in response to Covid-19.”
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The months ahead
Dining hall staff are hoping to return to work once Governor Phil Scott lifts the stay-at-home order for the state, most likely moving to facilities or other departments on campus.
For employees deemed “essential,” like Public Safety officers, work has settled into a new normal. Public Safety Officer Rodney Grant says staff in the department are equipped with personal protection equipment and new protocols: all officers have personally fitted N95 masks; there is only one officer per car; and Parton Health Center, rather than Public Safety, is now transporting students to Porter Hospital.
Staff are now waiting to hear about what will happen after June 30, a decision that will ultimately depend both on whether the college will have students back on campus this fall — which the college will announce by June 22 — as well as a host of financial factors. Miller insisted that wage continuity will remain a priority as the college deliberates on a course of action come fall, but emphasized that the situation at hand is quite severe.
“My biggest concern is that at the end of June they will furlough me,” the anonymous custodial worker said. “Also, if they don’t furlough me, where will they put me? Will I still be able to be where I was, do what I was doing, have the same shift?”
(05/08/20 9:00pm)
On March 10, Middlebury students received a life-altering e-mail: "Following spring break, students who can will be expected to remain at home and not return to campus until further notice." Many had not anticipated such extreme measures in response to the viral outbreak so soon. But within days of the college's announcement, as the virus began to sweep across the country, it became clear that we were entering a once-in-a-century period of upheaval and isolation.
Through this project, we're hoping to give voice to the despair and hope precipitated by the interruption of campus life, even while we're all quarantining in different corners of the globe.
As a college newspaper, we feel an obligation to go on. We are determined to continue telling your stories, no matter how many thousands of miles away we are from one another. We will try to retain as much of a sense of the Middlebury community as we can.
The Middlebury Off-Campus Project is a compilation of these stories — from students, employees, alumni and residents of Addison County — chronicling this surreal time.
We will publish the submissions we've received in phases. The first round was gathered from members of the class of 2020 and 2020.5, graduating seniors whose final semesters were truncated by the viral outbreak; it was published on April 13. The second round was published on April 20 and the third was published on April 28. These two phases feature various individuals from the Middlebury community. On May 8, we featured the stories of nine international students in partnership with the International Students Organization (ISO). And this most recent round was published on May 22, after classes have ended and this unusual spring semester has ground to a halt. Stay tuned for more stories as we publish submissions weekly.
We also teamed up with the folks working on Middlebury's Engaged Listening Project for the first-ever Off-Campus Podcast. Give it a listen on Stitcher or Spotify.
Do you want to take part in this historic project? We will accept stories all semester. Submit your story here.
Introduction by Amelia Pollard '20 and graphics by Emma Brown '21.
(04/23/20 1:42am)
Welcome to a special edition: The Love Issue! Click here for a suite of stories on love and all its forms.
(04/23/20 1:00am)
This is a special issue, in the time of coronavirus, entirely dedicated to love in all its many forms.
(04/20/20 9:33pm)
Sarah King
Ripton-based musician and part-time staff in the Middlebury College Bookstore
Location: Middlebury, Vermont
Submitted March 31, 2020
[video credit="" align="center"][/video]
I'm a musician, part-time Midd employee and Ripton resident, and I've been working from home for the past few weeks since students were sent home. It's been a weird time for sure, especially as a working musician, because all of my gigs are canceled, most of my students have chosen to pause lessons for the time being (versus online lessons, mainly due to the overwhelming amount of screen time everyone is getting now), and many of us are struggling not only to figure out how to manage right now, but also how things will look when this is over.
My biggest fear is that the economic and social fallout will be long and drawn out, and will trickle down slowly. As people lose jobs, they lose income. Without customers who can spend money, businesses — including establishments that support indie musicians — will be forced to close. Without venues that support indie musicians, we'll have nowhere to play unless we're already selling out stadiums. Then we'll be out of work longer, and the cycle will continue ...
On the plus side, being home with a heavily-reduced schedule has given me a lot of time to work out, do live-stream concerts (which are actually AWESOME) and practice music. I've also made some live music videos, like this parody to Dolly Parton's Jolene as a Covid-19 PSA to get people to stay home. It was filmed on an iPhone in my driveway. Enjoy! (And hopefully I can actually play live shows again someday.)
King is conducting live streams on Thursdays at 7 p.m. EDT for the remainder of April (and potentially beyond). She’ll be rotating platforms “because rural Ripton internet can’t handle all three at once” — her next will be on YouTube. See the schedule of live streams here.
(04/08/20 4:25pm)
All right so! As we were unceremoniously kicked off campus, I was put in an interesting circumstance as I, like many others whose work was campus-specific, had to think about how I could finish my thesis while away. My project is a stop-motion film and requires a fair amount of college equipment, as well as a dark space big enough to house my set and film. Originally, I was planning on staying at Middlebury for an extra week to finish everything up, but was not approved to do so. So THEN, I was planning on staying off-campus and sneaking into the building where I was working for that week and just hoping no one would catch me. My department head strongly advised against this and, after much inner debate, I eventually relented. My final option was to check out roughly a car's load of equipment and move my set to a friend's house in Stowe, which is where I am now.
For the past week, I have been filming in an upstairs bathroom with all its windows and light sources blocked by layers of black trash bags. I must say it has been a much more pleasant experience than sneaking into a building day after day. However, as I am currently in Vermont and my home is in Miami, I'm struggling with how I will be able to get home after I finish filming and before school starts back up again.
What has been your greatest worry or day-to-day concern as coronavirus has spread?
I'm not sure how or when I am going to be able to go home, and how I can do so without endangering my family.
What has made you happy over the past few weeks?
I've found that filming my thesis has been a great way to pass the time, and I have amassed a growing list of mostly Dungeons & Dragons-related podcasts to listen to while I work. It’s also very convenient to have your set in the bathroom, cause that means you never have to leave to pee! Also, cooking is fun. The friend in question just pulled out the absolute dankest of banana breads.
Submitted March 25, 2020.
(04/02/20 10:10am)
Whether called “shelter-in-place” or “stay-at-home,” local and state-wide orders across the country all have the same blaring message: leave your home as little as possible.
Early last week, Governor Phil Scott followed suit with a “Stay Home, Stay Safe” executive order that went into effect on Tuesday, March 24. The directive is one of 37 state orders to limit citizens’ movement in an effort to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Scott’s order came after many college employees had already transitioned to remote working. Faculty and administrators were settled into work via Zoom and some professors had reportedly already experimented with creative backgrounds for their first classes (think a photo of the second floor of Davis Library for “continuity’s sake” or an iconic Zoom meme).
With many employees working from their living rooms, staff have taken the greatest hit from Scott’s order.
Karen Miller, the vice president for human resources, and David Provost, the college’s executive vice president for finance, reached out to staff with the college’s game plan shortly after Scott’s announcement. They had anticipated stricter measures restricting resident mobility.
“They’re now implementing the plan they told us was going to happen if things got worse,” said Patti McCaffrey, an Atwater cook whose work has been modified since the executive mandate.
The college identified “essential workers” that must continue reporting to work — on a limited basis — in order to provide for the 120-odd students that remain on campus. Essential workers who must resume their work on campus include health care staff, public safety, facilities services, dining services, and information technology support, according to the staff-wide email sent out last week.
From plumbers to student mail staffers, there are a number of workers that are integral to the functioning of the college, said Mike Moser, director of facilities services — making them “essential workers” by definition. The college’s hope is to have these staff members work on a rotational basis to limit the number of them on campus at any one time.
“In short, we have approximately 125 students on campus that need our service support,” Moser said in an email to The Campus. “We’re aligned to provide that support and continue to adjust our plans daily as this situation evolves.”
He said that facilities wouldn’t have the capacity to adapt to such a dynamic situation save for the college’s new Covid-19 compensation plan. The plan includes a 21-day Covid-19 Pay Bank that increases employees’ allotted sick days.
Before the governor’s executive order, dining services had a different plan of action. With only one dining hall remaining open, around 70 dining employees were set to lend a hand with facilities, deep-cleaning and doing odd-jobs — like painting — as needed.
In light of the new mandate, this plan is no longer in motion. But barring the previous roadmap to move a number of workers to facilities, the backbone of dining services’ coronavirus-strategy remains intact, according to Dan Detora, executive director of food services. Employees will work in rotational teams of eight to limit their contact with other workers and only one dining hall will remain open.
In the new system, staff will end up working fewer hours. The days they will be forced to take off because of the stay-at-home mandate will come out of their Covid-19 Pay Banks.
After being assigned to teams of eight during their final meeting, dining staff accepted a somber reality: Aside from the seven other workers on their teams, employees did not know when they would see their colleagues and friends again.
“Usually right before Christmas break, when you know you’re not going to see each other for two weeks, we give each other hugs,” said McCaffrey of the Atwater dining staff. “This time, we couldn’t hug each other goodbye.”
(03/22/20 1:00pm)
Editor's Note: On April 7, the college committed to continuing staff wages through June 30, 2020, regardless of an employees' accrued time off, through the Covid Pay Bank, or sick leave.
As storefronts and institutions shutter their doors to ward off the spread of Covid-19, thousands of employees are being laid off across the country. At Middlebury — the largest employer in Addison County — the college’s crisis management team has developed a roadmap for maintaining staff wages after most students departed during the unfolding pandemic.
The plan, shared with the community in an email Wednesday, outlines the college’s goal of continuing both staff work and compensation in the coming months, laying out nine “tenets” in support of this objective. This commitment to pay staff in full will “continue to be evaluated on a month-to-month” basis, according to the email.
For many Middlebury employees, from groundskeepers to cooks, employment revolves around the 2,500 students who typically reside on campus. With fewer than 140 students now remaining in the dormitories, much of that work is dissipating. Moreover, the college expects to refund students for these unused services, which creates a gap in financing.
“We are committed to wage continuity as our first priority for as long as possible,” said Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration David Provost in an email to The Campus. “We are doing this knowing that we will be making a significant refund for unused dining and room charges, an obligation that reflects our commitment to our students.”
The commitment to continue paying staff applies to all benefits-eligible employees, meaning both full-time workers and workers who work at least 50%, plus one hour, of a full-time schedule.
Examples of part-time workers excluded under the plan are high school students who work a limited number of hours in the dining halls, according to Provost.
The college’s response to the dwindled demand for certain services is to move some employees into different jobs. As of now, there are around 70 dining employees who will soon be temporarily transferred to facilities. These employees’ work will focus on deep-cleaning college buildings and landscaping, according to Sarah Ray, the director of media relations for the college.
Patti McCaffrey, a cook in Atwater dining hall, is one of these employees who will be moving to work with the custodial team. She said that in the past week, the dining staff cleaned Atwater as she had never seen it cleaned before. Usually, they clean tabletops and floors. This time, they were also disinfecting chair legs and walls. “Usually we mop the floor, but we don’t usually do walls,” she said. “This time we did.”
Some employees expressed worry about continuing with business as usual during a health crisis. One staff member, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from management, cited having a child at home with respiratory problems as a reason for their concern. They fear that continuing to work on campus will put their family at risk.
“All the people who can’t work from home, they are expected to be here, working every day,” they said. “That’s not really safe for us. I have family members who are extremely vulnerable to this virus. I’d much rather be at home with them.”
The staff member said the college has yet to provide protective gear for employees who are still reporting to work on campus. McCaffrey says employees are wearing gloves as usual, but that she suspects masks will be provided if the situation at the college becomes severe.
“We have to feed these remaining students somehow,” she said. “Even if it gets so bad that we’re pre-boxing food and leaving it at their doors. That’s when they’ll probably have us wearing masks.”
The college’s plan also provides a so-called Covid-19 Pay Bank. This bank gives staff an additional 21 sick days to stay home if they or a family member becomes ill with the virus. Staff can use the four weeks without dipping into their regular banks of sick days.
Middlebury’s staff plan for the viral crisis is comparable to other colleges’ plans--and in many cases, it is more generous. Tufts University has committed to pay employees if they need to quarantine, but did not specify how many days they will grant full compensation. Bowdoin College will assess compensation on a case-by-case basis, and advised staff to contact their supervisors for additional information if they become sick.
But staff are now facing another dilemma: childcare, which has long been in high demand in Addison County, even in the best of times. “While I appreciate that [the Pay Bank] is 21 days, the only issue I have is now I have to make the decision to use it in order to take care of my kids or save it in case I get sick,” said Erin Jones-Poppe, the college bookstore manager.
In accordance with Vermont’s mandate to close all “non-essential” childcare facilities, many daycare centers in the Middlebury area have stopped operating.
Otter Creek Child Center in Middlebury closed on Tuesday, March 17. The daycare only had 11 kids on the final day of operation, according to its executive director, Linda January. The center usually has 45.
“I haven’t received any pushback from family members,” January said. “Most families opted to keep their children home before we even closed. They get it.”
The college’s outreach to the wider community also holds uncertainty for staff. In an open letter to the community co-written with other community leaders, President Patton offered some of the college’s infrastructure — such as buildings — as local officials prepare for the worst.
President Patton said the college had already drained the ice hockey rink so that the arena could be used as a “portable hospital, if necessary” during an interview with the Addison Independent. As coordination between the hospital and the college is still in the planning stage, it is at this point unclear how the relationship might impact Middlebury staff’s responsibilities.
Although administrators are already in communication with local health officials, Provost clarified that no staff member would be required to work if there is future collaboration with Porter Hospital. He insisted that the college would only ask staff members to help if needed.
“From my perspective, I think the college is really going to bat for staff and trying to do what they can," McCaffrey said. "When I look at neighbors having to file for unemployment, I feel pretty good about what the college is doing.”
(03/19/20 4:30am)
Last Tuesday, a leaked email announcing Middlebury’s move to remote learning spread like wildfire across campus. Before most students could process the possibility of campus shutting down, a few seniors had already begun to organize an impromptu “senior week” of festivities to recognize this year’s graduating class — one that would take place in mid-March, instead of May.
Within an hour, an event titled “SENIOR WEEK” had appeared on Facebook.
“As responsible seniors, we have decided to take things into our own hands this week to ensure that we fulfill our seniorly duties before departing from Middlebury,” read the Facebook event’s description, penned by Tatum Braun ’20.
Close to 500 Middlebury students — with nearly 600 seniors in the Class of 2020 — eventually joined the private event on Facebook. She had no idea it would get so big.
“At that point, I just knew I wanted to make the last few days on campus count,” Braun said, “especially since most of my friends are not returning to Middlebury in the fall.”
Within the first six hours after the event’s creation, 20 students had posted suggestions of events and places for the senior class to get together. One of the first posts pointed out that Two Brothers, a local tavern and bar, opened at 3 p.m., suggesting seniors meet there. By 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, the now-ubiquitous “2019.75” graduation year was used as a hashtag on the event page for the first time.
Senior events initially proved difficult to organize. Emotions and logistics collided with anxiety over the abrupt end of the semester. Yet by Wednesday, there were final a cappella concerts and seniors posting “crush lists” on the bulletin board outside Proctor dining hall. Traditions coalesced in their time-honored Senior Week form.
The day of the announcement, Evolution Dance Crew was slated to have a tech rehearsal for its upcoming show. Instead, members gathered to talk through the emotional tumult that accompanied the decision. Someone at the meeting suggested finding an alternative way to showcase all the work the group had been putting in since the first week of J-Term.
The result? A Thursday flash mob on Proctor Terrace.
“We didn’t really do much advertising — it was mostly word of mouth between friends — and we chose a time where Proctor is usually full so people walking by would see it,” said Evolution Co-President Abla Laallam ’20. Laallam is one of the eight seniors in Evolution.
“The word of the week was ‘processing,’” said Jack Litowitz ’20, a senior and the treasurer of the Senior Committee. “It’s hard to even feel sad or happy when you’re in shock. But despite that, we filled the week.”
On Saturday morning, many seniors trekked to the football field to watch the sunrise — a time-honored Senior Week tradition. They held a flag that bore “2019.75” for photos.
In hindsight, some seniors fear that the turbulent week — filled with “high highs and low lows,” according to Litowitz — may have flouted the CDC’s recommendations of avoiding large gatherings.
"I am a bit regretful looking back for starting a group that seemed to encourage drinking during days when Covid-19 was already significant,” Braun said. “But I had no idea the group would become so big, and I just wanted to make the final days at Midd as positive as possible.”
Student festivities may have been partially responsible for vandalism that occurred on and off campus toward the end of last week. Some of the destruction occurred at Two Brothers Thursday “College Night,” which is typically made up of majority seniors.
Although the college has promised to re-evaluate the public health crisis in early April, many seniors fear they will not return this spring.
Yet members of the Senior Committee — the eight seniors and two administrators responsible for events during students’ final year at Middlebury — remain optimistic.
“Seeing so many schools out-right cancel graduation is making me grateful for Middlebury,” Julia Sinton ’20.5, one of the Committee members, said. “We’re not a 30,000-person state school. That makes it possible to be a little more flexible in last-minute planning.”
As of now, all of the college’s reservations, catering bookings, and plans for Senior Week remain intact. It is also possible that the originally planned week, slated for May 19–24, could be postponed. But members of the committee are also aware of how the situation is “in flux.”
Until the Senior Committee receives the official word from President Laurie Patton that commencement cannot take place due to Covid-19, its members will continue to plan. “For now, it’s business as usual,” Litowitz said.
It’s difficult to imagine a postponed celebration topping the collective spirit and ingenuity that characterized this month’s improvised iteration. Seniors seized the fleeting week to celebrate the end of their truncated college career — all 3.75 years of it.
“The whole week was marked by an unbelievable coming together of students,” Litowitz said. “Not once was there an event this week where there was a guest list.”
(03/12/20 10:11am)
In September, the Middlebury College Republicans set in motion plans to invite Charles Murray back to campus for a third visit, requiring hours of meetings with administrators and lengthy discussions about logistics. This week, those plans have ground to a halt.
All spring semester courses will be moved online beginning March 30 in light of the spreading global Covid-19 outbreak, the college announced Tuesday. Murray’s talk, which was scheduled for March 31, will likely be cancelled as a result of the new steps, according to College Republicans Co-President Brendan Philbin ’21.
Philbin says he has not yet conferred with members of the College Republicans as to whether they’ll reschedule.
“From what we’ve seen, it doesn’t seem like we’ll even be back at school for March 31,” he said. “If we do end up deciding we want to reschedule, it would be for the fall.”
Murray, a controversial conservative writer who garnered national attention from works such as “The Bell Curve,” visited the college in 2007 and 2017. The protests of his 2017 visit led to the injury of political science professor Allison Stanger, and catalyzed conversations about free speech on college campuses. Since the College Republicans announced Murray’s planned return in a January op-ed, many of those conversations have been reignited. Before this week, students and faculty were planning to strike and hold teach-ins on the day of his talk.
Philbin said that Murray was notified promptly of the college’s decision to move courses online and that the talk would likely be cancelled. He said that Murray wasn’t surprised. In an interview with The Campus earlier this week, Murray expressed the expectation that the talk might be pushed, as colleges around the country took steps to protect students from the spreading virus.
“The Middlebury thing is way up in the air given the coronavirus situation,” he said. “Given the number of things that are being cancelled—and we’re only talking three weeks away? I’d say, that’s pretty iffy right there.”
The planning
With the College Republicans’ meager budget of $415, financing Murray’s talk proved a preliminary obstacle.
According to Murray, his speaker fee is usually $10,000 for colleges like Middlebury. Yet when College Republican co-presidents Philbin and Dominic Aiello ’22.5 and former Vermont governor and College Republicans adviser Jim Douglas reached out to him to gauge his interest in coming back, he immediately waived the fee.
“I’m not charging the college because I thought it was important — still think it’s important — for me to come back to Middlebury,” Murray said in an interview with The Campus.
Next came the meetings. Philbin estimates that he, Aiello and Douglas met with the administration at least seven times since the initial proposal in mid-November.
Philbin said that originally the administration proposed that the talk take place mid-day, at 1 p.m. Philbin insisted on a typical talk time of 4:30 p.m., so that students weren’t confronted with the choice between attending classes and the talk.
“They also proposed another event time that was the Friday of spring break,” Philbin said. “So, spring break starts at 4:15 and the event would have been at 4:30. We eventually ended up getting March 31 — but that took several meetings.”
Throughout this entire process, Murray has not had contact with the administration. “I haven’t talked to anybody from Middlebury’s administration about anything,” he said.
The visit would have been Murray’s first visit to a college campus in the wake of the release of his new book, “Human Diversity: The Biology of Race, Gender, and Class.”
Day-of protocol
Organizing day-of logistics for Murray’s visit resembled something between an obstacle course and a jigsaw puzzle. Like last time, the talk was slated to take place in Wilson Hall. There were 140 seats designated for the event.
According to Philbin, a private security consulting group, Blue Moon Consulting, was involved in the planning process. The firm’s website says it deals in “proactive reputational risk and crisis management.”
Philbin, Aiello and Douglas planned on divvying up tickets with a lottery system. The College Republicans reserved 60 of the tickets for their own club members, various faculty and members of Open Campus Initiative — the co-sponsor of the event. Philbin said the College Republicans do not have an official roster, but that 8 to 20 members are usually in attendance at each meeting.
Of the original 140 tickets, 80 remain for Middlebury College ID-holders.
McCullough Student Center — the building in which Wilson Hall is situated — was to be closed for the entirety of the day. “We’ve been told from the administration that they’ll have McCullough closed down and cleared in the morning,” Philbin said.
After the college announced plans to upgrade its security plans last fall, McCullough has been one of the first sites to receive ramped-up security measures in recent months. The plan has cost the college around $200,000, according to Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration David Provost. Components of the plan include the implementation of security cameras and additional key-card access.
Provost said the costs for additional security for the Murray event, through Green Mountain Security, would have totaled between $5,000 and $10,000. They were to be funded by the college. There were no planned costs for the local and state police services that the college had requested be in attendance.
“Some will say that we will have spent up to $200,000 this year and we will use some of those improvements on the Murray event,” Provost told The Campus. “What would we have spent this year on those investments if Murray wasn’t coming? Close to $200,000. What are we spending now that Murray is coming? $200,000. Was it accelerated? Some could say yes.”
Looking ahead
There is currently no official confirmation from the administration that Murray’s talk will be cancelled. In a phone interview late Tuesday, Philbin said that “the current status is that the event doesn’t seem like it’s happening.”
After the many meetings and preparations, Philbin sees the cancellation as an upset. “It’s disappointing,” he said. “We put in six months of work. I committed social suicide for this event and now it seems like it’s not going to happen. Things are totally up in the air right now.”
Correction March 12, 2020: A previous version of this article stated that Philbin was present at meetings with Blue Moon Consulting Group. Although they were involved in the process, they were never at a meeting where he was present.
(10/31/19 10:03am)
After a decade-long crusade of student activism, Middlebury has begun its long march toward divestment. In a unanimous decision last January, the Board of Trustees approved Energy 2028—an ambitious and sweeping plan that promises certain reductions of the college’s environmental footprint in response to the mounting climate crisis. With the vote, the board set a timeline for meeting a series of environmentally-minded goals and initiatives.
(10/07/19 3:32pm)
(10/07/19 3:31pm)
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(10/07/19 3:24pm)
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Volume 118, Number 17 — March 12, 2020
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Volume 118, Number 16 — March 5, 2020
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Volume 118, Number 15 — February 27, 2020
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Volume 118, Number 14 — February 20, 2020
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Volume 118, Number 13 — February 13, 2020
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Volume 118, Number 12 — January 23, 2020
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Volume 118, Number 11 — December 5, 2019
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Volume 118, Number 10 — November 21, 2019
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Volume 118, Number 9 — November 14, 2019
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Volume 118, Number 8 — November 7, 2019
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Volume 118, Number 7 — October 31, 2019
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Volume 118, Number 6 — October 17, 2019
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Volume 118, Number 5 — October 10, 2019
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Volume 118, Number 4 — October 3, 2019
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Volume 118, Number 3 — September 26, 2019
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Volume 118, Number 2 — September 19, 2019
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Volume 118, Number 1 — September 12, 2019
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(09/12/19 10:03am)
Katrina Spencer is a Literatures & Culture Librarian in the Davis Family Library.
In summary: A great listen for anyone interested in examining and undoing the impacts of toxic black masculinity.
This album is the most striking I’ve encountered from recent memory and I mean that in reference to its content and to its dissemination. First of all, Jay-Z is one of the most powerful celebrities in Hollywood and the history of rap music moguldom. Knowing the reach of his influence, he chose to publicly expose the ideologies that threatened his intimate relationships on the world stage. Moreover, he did so on his terms: dissatisfied with musical artists not receiving enough of the financial benefit from their productions, he created his own platform, Tidal, and releases music on it selectively, providing users access for a subscription fee. Now I can’t call Tidal a “success,” per se, but what I can call it is a bold, confident and defiant move. If hip-hop is anything, isn’t it bold, confident and defiant? Its swagger and braggadocio known in every corner of the world?
And let us not forget the music video “The Story of O.J” that accompanied the release of 4:44! It’s an animated music video of a black male protagonist caricature attempting to navigate the world of the rich while ignoring his oppressed racial identity. (The “O.J.” in the title of the song refers to Orenthal James “O.J.” Simpson, a famous football figure who was tried for the murder of his wife, Nicole Simpson, in 1994 and was later incarcerated on unrelated armed robbery and kidnapping charges in 2007.) Jay-Z, along with his wife, Beyoncé Knowles, who needn’t even be named, shake the musical world every time they release music. And I don’t mean just tremors and aftershocks: I mean earthquakes.
They both seem to be expressing a desire to be as transparent with their fans as possible without betraying their privacy. So, they tell us about the drama of their marriage, their hidden demons and their efforts to stabilize their union after the hard work of repair has been done. What has touched my heart about this album is that Jay-Z critically examines toxic black masculinity in a very open, honest and public way. He acknowledges that the ruthless attitudes he had when he was a youth who dealt drugs no longer serve the loving relationships of his middle age in which he finds himself a father and a husband. He intimates that his ego nearly caused him to lose his wife. And he underscores the importance of creating a legacy that will serve his offspring. This vernacular is not one we hear often in the hip-hop world. More often we hear of women being seen as disposable, written off as disloyal “bitches” and “hoes.” We hear of the use and abuse of recreational drugs. We hear of crazy nights in the club. But how often do you hear a hard-edged rapper state that he almost lost all that he valued and decided to change before it was too late? The mere novelty of this message had me playing this disc on repeat (though I know you all stream). Its content is a message to everyone who admires the power that accompanies celebrity: a cautionary tale that incites others to recalibrate their values and to align them in ways that help them to sustain relationships that are of worth.
I recommend this album to any young men who has been inundated with misogynistic messages and has struggled to understand how our society reconciles its relentless appetites for women as irresistible “ride or dies” and simultaneously refers to us as “bitches,” “hoes,” “thots” and “milfs.”
(09/11/19 3:45am)