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(01/23/20 10:56am)
One of the first things that a new student notices upon joining the Middlebury community is the common fidelity to social justice. Students and staff alike are characterized by their attentiveness to imbalances and iniquities, and by their audacious plans to fix them. Such altruistic concerns for the fundamental improvement of society are seldom constrained by borders – Middlebury students tend to think big, paying attention to the issues facing communities far outside of our own and deploying the greatest degree of empathy to innovate effective solutions. Yet, as individuals so engaged with the pursuit of a better future, it is easy to get wrapped up in the bigger issues and miss the problems – and solutions – that are right in front of us.
Say it’s a Thursday night. Hungry, you and your roommates bundle into someone’s Subaru and drive to Hannaford’s. You buy cookie dough, some chocolate milk, and a bag of shredded cheese to devour in your room at 3 a.m. after a disappointing night at Atwater. It may seem outlandish to say that by doing this, you’ve unknowingly endorsed the continuing violation of undocumented worker’s rights. Unfortunately, this isn’t far from the truth.
Dairy products account for almost 65% of Vermont’s agricultural sales, and the most recent statistics show that Addison County alone spent $505,426,000 on dairy products in 2017. Yet, despite the significance of dairy farming not only to Vermont’s economy, but also to the state’s identity, many of those employed to undertake this vital labor are not being treated with the respect or dignity they deserve. Facing inadequate wages, unscrupulous hours, a lack of access to bathrooms and sufficient accommodation, as well as a shortage of first aid kits despite many instances of injury and illness — many migrant farm workers have seen their undocumented status exploited. Hannaford’s - the supermarket chain with over 200 stores in the northeastern United States, including one in Middlebury — continues to supply products from these dairy farms. By turning a blind eye to the hardship and inhumanity faced by undocumented dairy farmers in Vermont, Hannaford’s continues to implicate its customers in the exploitation of the hard-working people on whom we rely for our everyday produce. Needless to say, this is unacceptable.
In 2014, Burlington-based group Migrant Justice launched a campaign to secure Vermont’s undocumented dairy farmers the humanity to which they are entitled as contributors to our economy, as members of our communities, and — above all — as human beings. Milk With Dignity (MWD) has been immensely successful: world-famous ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s committed to adhere to the movement’s Code of Conduct by the end of 2017, bestowing workers at over 70 farms with the rights and protections that they had previously been denied. In 2019, Migrant Justice launched the campaign to urge Hannaford’s parent company, Ahold Delhaize, to join the MWD program, striving to continue the extension of these positive impacts to migrant farm workers throughout the northeast. The company has not yet agreed to join the program.
In awe of the work Migrant Justice have done, we want to help further the Milk With Dignity movement. Our campaign — HannaforDignity — believes the best way of doing this is by mobilizing the support of the Middlebury College community. Many students come from outside of Vermont, or even from outside of the United States, and for all Middlebury has become a home. We owe a debt of gratitude to this state – and to those who work tirelessly to uphold its unique identity. This issue sits right on our doorstep, and we have the ability to help change it. We believe that by mobilizing the vivacious passion for social justice ascribable to the Middlebury College community, culminating in an official endorsement from the college, we can significantly increase public awareness and support for the MWD movement. Ultimately, we hope that this surge in support will help secure Hannaford’s commitment to adhere to the Code of Conduct in order to both protect its reputation and serve its community.
We owe it to Vermont’s undocumented dairy farmers to defend their rights with the same zeal with which many of them sought to find a better life in the United States. Rights for our workers, humanity for our farmers - HannaforDignity.
Please join the movement at go/hannafordignity. It is also Solidarity Week, to find out more go to go/solidarity.
Dan Golstein '20, Emma McKee '23, Chloe McNamara '23 and Ife Onuorah '23 are members of Middlebury HannaforDignity.
(10/17/19 9:59am)
Leaving behind your friends and family for a year is an immense decision, and when I touched down in Burlington after 30 hours of traveling, I couldn’t help but feel that I had chosen wrong. I was jet-lagged and overwhelmed, and to worsen matters, the only vending machine in the airport had run out of blue Gatorade. This seemed like foreshadowing. Had I made the wrong choice? Was yellow Gatorade better? More importantly, was postponing my life to spend a year abroad in a place where there are four cows to every one person the wrong decision? The answer was irrelevant, because there I was on a dark and empty bus, en route to a school I knew nothing about – my only friends the distant smell of manure seeping in through the open windows, and the same four Bryan Adams songs being blasted on repeat by the driver.
But I wasn’t alone for long. From the second I arrived at Middlebury, the International Student and Scholar Services made a fantastic effort to link all the international students together. Friendships are easier to build when people understand one another, be that in terms of common languages, shared values or mutual interests. It quickly became obvious that Middlebury is home to a sprawling global community. The student body is a melting pot of different cultures and creeds, and this made the transition for exchange students like me ineffably easier.
This was a little over a month and a half ago, however, and although efforts to ease the initial transition for exchange students were successful, we were scarcely prepared for the academic intensity that would follow. Adjusting to Middlebury’s working environment and its tight knit community is not easy. For many international students, the transition continues to be particularly tumultuous. As the work piles up and the homesickness builds, a dire institutional inadequacy becomes increasingly evident: Currently, exchange students lack any form of particularized representation or support within the SGA. This can and must be amended.
Middlebury, with all its quirks, is an overwhelming environment at the best of times. For everything from understanding the culture to just having someone to ask questions that seem far too simple to ask, exchange students are in need of someone to whom they can reach out. That someone should have both the knowledge to help, and the empathy to understand the difficulties of being an exchange student. The ultimate goal of all exchange students is to become bona fide members of this community of intelligent and eccentric individuals – and this immersion could be much easier if these students had consistent and accessible guidance.
Such representation wouldn’t just benefit exchange students. The inherent value of exchanges lies in our unique perspectives on global education. We come from Nottingham to East Anglia, SciencesPo to La Sorbonne, Potsdam to Freie Universität Berlin; our origins may be different, but our passion for learning – and our fidelity to the institutions that allow us to harness this passion – is certainly shared. Middlebury is our home for the year, and we want to be able to contribute to the chorus of student voices which seek nothing more than to ensure this college is serving its students to the best of its ability.
Attending this school is an honor, but many exchange students feel this lack of representation emphasizes the ephemerality of our time here. It’s true; this cohort of exchange students is temporary, as the next will be, and as the last was – but there will always be exchange students. If we work now to establish a means of providing them with the support and guidance they’ll need, we can be sure that future cohorts of exchanges will be better equipped to thrive at Middlebury.
This support doesn’t necessarily translate to the inauguration of an exchange student senator. On the contrary, exchange students are a collective – united by our disparate cultural identities and our concern for each other’s well-being and academic success. As such, we seek not to elect one individual, but to create an organization – one which harnesses all available resources to build a strong support structure that endures long beyond our time here. Inspired by a commitment to our future exchange brothers and sisters, a request to establish such an organization was submitted to the SAO on Oct. 14, 2019. While it is easy to admire Middlebury’s global community, one is also obligated to recognize the difficulties associated with the borderless pursuit of human excellence. It is therefore our unequivocal responsibility to ensure that future generations of exchange students remain unabated in this virtuous pursuit.