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(03/19/20 5:00am)
The following letter was sent via email to members of the Senior Leadership Group (SLG) on Wednesday, March 11. A list of SLG members is available here. The list was also shared with the college’s commons deans, heads and coordinators, whose names can be found here, as well as the Student Activities Office and the Office of International Student and Scholar Services.
Parts of this letter have been lightly edited to comply with The Campus’ style guidelines.
Dear President Patton, Dean Taylor, Provost Cason, members of the SLG, and commons deans,
We are afraid.
As the International Students’ Organization Executive Board, we are distressed about the impact the administration’s decision to evacuate campus will have on the international student population. Although we come from over 74 countries and territories and distinct cultural backgrounds, the recent developments have united the international student community through the fear that we will be disproportionately affected if requested to leave Middlebury.
First, we want to assure you that we take your requests to find alternatives to staying on campus seriously. We acknowledge the reasons motivating the college’s decision, and we are doing everything in our personal capacities to come up with reasonable plans.
However, the decision to evacuate Middlebury poses an inequitable and disproportionate burden on us. While the college has been supportive in offering financial assistance to traveling, there are other serious concerns about our living conditions beyond Middlebury. For many of us, Middlebury is a sanctuary and the most reliable provider of housing, dining and resources that ensures our wellbeing. In addition to our support networks being hundreds to thousands of miles away, they are not all able to accomodate us at this point. Some of us do not have homes to go back to, and many others depend on their incomes from Middlebury to support their families.
Sending us to other students’ homes instead of our own does not address the core of the problem. Instead, it transfers the college’s responsibility to look after us to third parties. It is unfair to shift your commitment to house, feed, and support us onto the families of our friends and other members of the community. It is unreasonable for the college to impose on them the financial burden of indefinitely — or even temporarily — supporting and sustaining us. If financial support is being made available for traveling, the question remains whether international students will be awarded a living allowance for the periods during which they are asked to be removed from campus. We urge you to consider how the college has brought many of us here on scholarships precisely because of our considerable needs and disadvantages. Our situation requires special consideration.
While we acknowledge that much of what is happening is beyond the college’s control, we urge you to consider how domestic students are generally not similarly affected by being sent home as we are. We feel wary of making decisions on returning home or committing to stay in the United States when little is known on how travel restrictions will evolve over the coming weeks. We look to the administration for assurances that there are plans in place to assist the relocation of international students from their domestic hosts should the school decide not to continue the semester, and to support their decision to return from abroad when invited back.
Additionally, whereas the CDC has not issued domestic travel restrictions, travelling internationally poses a higher risk to our own health and to the health of those around us. In requiring that we leave campus and financing our travels abroad, the college exposes us to contagion. Beyond our personal health, there are concerns that, due to being potentially exposed to the virus during high-risk travel, international students would not be as easily reintegrated to the college community. Again, we urge you to consider that the decision to evacuate us has severe implications that may not be present for other people requesting to stay.
We request that you situate your reviews on stay approvals around the pressing needs of international students. We are not residents of this country, we do not have far-reaching access to support networks here and we do not have assurances of being able to come back should things deteriorate.
This is an unprecedented situation and we call on you to consider our cases in a caring and understanding manner. Some of us have already been denied stay on campus and many of us are frightened by the prospect of having to scramble for alternatives as the college turns us away. We urge you to be lenient and considerate as you review our applications and work thoroughly with us before requesting our departure. We call Middlebury home, and we are confident you will not overlook our plight in these trying times.
We call on you to:
Compensate for the financial burden of leaving campus by covering not only travel expenses, but considering living allowances for the duration of leave, particularly for students who have exceptional financial needs;
Accommodate students who are not able to return to their home countries and those who would not be able to reenter the United States due to travel bans or visa status concerns;
Acknowledge the unfairness of transferring the college’s responsibility to provide housing, dining and resources to international students onto other students’ friends, families, and communities;
Seriously evaluate the health and contagion risks posed by requesting international students travel through long distances and major transportation hubs to and from home;
Recognize that a lack and distance of communication — though not the intention — breeds an environment of anxiety and fear where students are panicking because they feel unsupported and lost;
Understand that Middlebury College is a sanctuary for many international students who cannot return to unstable or hostile conditions in their home communities.
Signed,
The ISO Executive Board
Arthur Martins '22.5, Masud Tyree Lewis '22, Kelly Zhou '22, Claire Moy '22, Monique Santoso '21, Husam AlZubaidy '23 and Ariana Popa ’22
(11/21/19 10:59am)
Veganism — perhaps the biggest thing in 2019 after the movement to storm Area 51 and the Keanu Reeves Renaissance. Fast food chains are producing vegan burgers with meat-free patties, and a recent Economist article showed that sales of vegan food “rose ten times faster than food sales as a whole.” Today, about 3% of the U.S. population identify as vegan, and this number is growing, especially among Millennials and Gen Z’s, according to a Gallup poll in 2018. Does this mean that all of us should go vegan? We can turn to economics for an answer.
In deciding whether to eat vegan, we should first consider whether it is what we want. As consumers, we make decisions to buy based on our individual preferences. Choosing to switch our diets depends on our preferences defined by a number of factors: our taste for vegan food, the extent of our value for our health and the environment, etc. The utility — or pleasure — we get from leading a vegan life will determine whether we ultimately decide to lead this lifestyle.
Of course, this assumes that we are perfectly aware of our preferences, which is not always the case. Martin Abel,Professor of Economics said: “People may not have tried vegan food, or have misconceptions. [This is] the ‘status quo bias’ - a tendency to stick with the familiar.” Preferences can also fluctuate depending on tastes and opinions, and perhaps more subtly, exogenous factors, such as advertising, the media, norms and exposure.
We know our preferences; still, whatever our preferences are, we are limited by scarcity. Thus, our decision to become vegan also depends on whether it is possible for us. Typically, economists identify cost as a constraint. According to a study by Diana Cassady, Professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of California, Davis, low-income Americans would have to spend 43% to 70% of their food budget on fruits and vegetables. A large part of this is because the locations where many low-income Americans shop are convenience stores rather than supermarkets and grocery stores. Not only do convenience stores tend not to provide fresh produce, constraining access, but those that do tend to charge more.
[pullquote speaker="Jackson Evans '22" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I didn’t like the taste of meat and that killing animals wasn’t really something I wanted to support[/pullquote]
At the same time, a large reason why stores can afford to overcharge or simply not supply vegan options is due to the lack of demand for these products. Economic theory suggests, however, that if more people begin demanding vegan food, the price of these products will increase. However, producers — farmers, restaurants and stores — will see this as an opportunity to profit and enter the market. As a result, the supply of vegan food would increase, offsetting the price and making vegan options more affordable. This also addresses the unemployment argument, where veganism will lead to a huge surge of unemployment in the meat industry; while this is true, it is also important to understand the jobs that may open up in place.
Then, the question becomes whether we should go vegan. Jackson Evans ’22 states that animal treatment was a large motivator his decision to go vegan four years ago. “I didn’t like the taste of meat and that killing animals wasn’t really something I wanted to support,” Evans said. In economics, these moral and environmental costs are referred to as externalities.
Recent research from the University of Oxford has shown that veganism is “the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth.” Using a “vegan calculator” to figure out the marginal effect of going vegan, one year of veganism could save 7,436 pounds of CO2 from being released, and 401,766 gallons of water. There is also the humanitarian factor, which Evans cited earlier to be industrial farming. Industrial farming reflects the inhumane conditions of the farms, including overcrowding, abuse of antibiotics for stress and illness and breeding for fast growth or high yield of meat. Technology has made farming all-too-efficient, which can be illustrated through a U.S. Department of Agriculture report, citing total commercial red meat production in September 2019 alone at 4.44 billion pounds. While animal welfare is not included in the traditional economic welfare framework, there should be lots of thought given to how living beings are treated, and how this could reflect our own wellbeing and welfare.
So should we go vegan? It really depends on our preferences, constraints and how we will affect those around us if we don’t. Then, how about Midd’s dining halls? We’ve already seen Meatless Mondays take over Proctor and Ross, and word is going around that Atwater will be increasing vegan food production in J-Term (see News, Page 2).
First, let’s start thinking about the preferences of the dining halls. Dining Services’ preferences are likely most focused on foot traffic. Granted, a dining hall that is all vegan would likely lose a significant number of student diners; however, if the kitchen were able to build a menu that appeals to students regardless of being vegan, this could alleviate the loss of non-vegans. Next, we turn to constraint. Finally, we can look at how becoming vegan will affect others. Environmentally, it will have a significant impact, saving hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and pounds of CO2 gas. By going vegan, the dining halls could change the dining habits of Middlebury students. Remember the status quo bias from before? Abel suggests that this change could transform students’ preferences: “[People can] discover their preferences… by being forced to experiment and try and develop new habits.” As a result, more students could decide to go vegan. Evans described this to be the case when he first got to Middlebury: “[H]ere when all the options are there, it’s simple and is congruous with my thoughts on not hurting animals, and attempting to mitigate our climate disaster.
(11/07/19 11:03am)
We’ve all been there — sitting hunched over your desk at an ungodly hour in the night, cramming for the second of three midterms that week, probably thinking: “I quit college.”
Today, some of the richest and most famous people in the world do not hold college degrees: Michael Dell, Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey. These are three compelling arguments for why it might be better to skip college, eschew $140K in tuition and spend your time building the next Facebook. For those of us who have regretted our decision to go to college or thought about dropping out, know that Assistant Professor of Economics Erin Wolcott has done research on this very idea. While her research doesn’t “direct people to college or not to college,” it does say something about the current population that does not go to college and what they’re doing (or not doing) afterwards.
According to the most recent American Community Survey in 2016, more than one out of every five men who do not attend college — about 7.1 million individuals — do not have jobs. In other words, only 78% of this population is employed, compared to 90% in the 1950s. Why is there such a high rate of nonemployment — which includes both unemployed people who are actively seeking jobs and those who are not — for men without a college education? To answer this question, Wolcott looked at different causes of unemployment in America.
Supply and demand is the first concept we learn in economics; it illustrates the relationship between how much producers sell and how much consumers buy. Everything can be linked back to supply and demand. In the labor market, demand side factors affect how much businesses and employers are hiring (their demand for labor), as these factors transform what jobs are available and who is doing them. Wolcott’s 2018 paper highlights the most common economic explanation regarding demand: “automation and trade reduce[s] the demand for low-skilled workers.”
Consider the General Motors (GM) and United Automobile Workers (UAW) strike, which lasted six weeks as company and workers negotiated wages and job security. GM workers feared for their jobs as the company made plans to close another factory and outsource to Mexico, where workers would provide the same labor for mere dollars. UAW workers are also fighting for security; since 1975, the number of UAW employees has dropped from 1.5 million to 400,000, as tech decreased the need for assembly line workers.
Supply side factors, on the other hand, affect who enters the job market (the supply of workers). Wolcott writes: “Economists have traditionally pointed the finger at [demand-side factors]. More recently, economists have been blaming the supply side, such as growing welfare payments and better video games that glue more men to their couches.” True, video games are vastly improving – take Fortnite as an example, which amassed over 4.3 million concurrent viewers on YouTube during its explosive Season 10 finale. Does this mean that unskilled men prefer to sit at home and play Fortnite all day than to get a job? Or examining the other supply-side culprit, unemployment benefits — maybe it is more profitable to get welfare and disability insurance.
The last factor causing nonemployment are search frictions, which make it difficult to match the workforce with available jobs. An example of a search friction? Online job postings. As college students, LinkedIn, Handshake and Indeed.com can make it easier to find jobs. Many older or uneducated adults, however, may not know how to use these sites, making it harder for them to find jobs.
So, we have three possibilities for why one of five uneducated men aren’t getting hired: (1) society isn’t demanding these populations (demand), (2) they don’t want to work (supply) and (3) new tech and resources are making it difficult to find work.
In her research, Wolcott built an economic model using employment, wage and other relevant data to encompass the three explanations for nonemployment to explore the extent of this causal relationship. She points to demand side factors — mainly tech and globalization — as the most significant reason for why so many unskilled men in America aren’t working: “It’s not because they’re choosing to play video games on average over a great job opportunity but because there aren’t job opportunities.”
“This is the first step to understand what’s going on,” Wolcott said.
Inequality is on the rise in America, breeding resentment and political polarity, and it is important to understand why. The next step is to start thinking about policies. While we aren’t about to become Luddites or stop global trade, economists have identified ways to bring people back into the job market, starting with education. Whether this will be making education cheaper, promoting vocational schools and apprenticeships or offering direct subsidies for specific institutions or courses, there are a myriad of potential solutions that will help make the labor market more inclusive and equal and bring millions back into the workforce.
(11/15/18 10:56am)
When Middlebury students think of syntax, we often think of literary analysis, points off our last essays or units in Intro to Linguistics. We don’t often think of dance. But syntax was a main focus of Bebe Miller’s “In a Rhythm,” performed by six dancers and Miller herself over the weekend from Nov. 8 to 10. The performance featured oration, silence, YouTube interviews, a Nelly hit and a single piano note to which the dancers would move, jump and groove.
Miller began the piece with a story of listening to an audio reading of a text by David Foster Wallace and her enthrallment in the writing and the reader’s voice. Miller herself spoke warmly and captivatingly, a complement to the dancers who moved behind her, responding and interpreting her words. The choreographer and director of the company described how she was inspired by the syntax of the texts, and wanted to further explore how syntax and flow could relate to dance.
“In making this suite of dance I wanted to look at the syntax of movement — how we collide with meaning through the juxtaposed dynamics of action and context, in time and space,” Miller wrote in the program as an introduction to the piece. “Our tacit reading of the building blocks of situations is inherent in the culture it serves.”
Exploring the syntax of movement, Miller played around with the timing of the music and dance moves, breaking between or effortlessly moving through phrases. This was paralleled in the use of the roll of grey hard felt placed on stage, which was either smoothly rolled out by the dancers or scrunched up spontaneously. The dynamic use of time in the choreography was much like what one might read in piece of literature — its flow changing with its meaning.
Miller also manipulated space between her dancers as a way of exploring syntax in movement. The large gaps between the dancers, which often drew different groups to different ends of the stage, made it difficult to see everything that was going on at once. This, Miller explained in the Q&A after the performance, was her intention: much like in communication and in language, people will often miss things that are happening. It is to the audience’s discretion to take in what they can and to understand the piece as a whole.
With this, “In A Rhythm” became as much political statement as artistic exploration. From talking about her inspiration for the piece, Miller shifted to speaking about race, mentioning Emmett Till and her ability to conjure up his face in her head, and an interview between Toni Morrison and journalist Charlie Rose, in which Rose asks Morrison: “Can you imagine writing a novel not centered around race?” The interview was later played from a laptop, surrounded and watched by a few of the company members, while Trebien Pollard and Professor of Dance Christal Brown, two black dancers, danced behind them. Pollard and Brown slouched and jammed together in their chairs while Nelly’s “Country Grammar” cut in from the interview. By having these moments, Miller seemed to be inserting race into her dance, a deviation from normal dance choreography and a response to Charlie Rose’s interview question.
There were so many different levels to this piece, which was selected and brought to Middlebury as part of the Clifford Symposium, from race, to syntax and language, to the concept of art.
“Everything is here. Everything is available,” Miller said. “What’s left is choice.”