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(03/10/17 1:15am)
We got played last week. That was a major point in Middlebury sociology professor Linus Owens’ poignant op-ed on last week’s events surrounding the Charles Murray visit. To Phi Hoxie ’17 and Alexander Khan ’17, the president and vice president of the American Enterprise Institute club: you guys won this time — progressive students’ passion and convictions, the traits that make me proud to be liberal, ended up making us look bad. It angers me, above all, that the vileness of academic racism was not the headline, and passion and conviction for equality lost.
It angers me that the isolated, but still deplorable, violence that ensued last week left Professor Stanger in a neck brace. It upsets me that we are nothing more than “liberal snowflakes” in the eyes of the media. And, it kills me that Mr. Murray likely walked away from the day egotistically thinking that the protests were all about him.
I’m not going to point out the flaws in the protest movement here — although there are many — because that is not where our energy, as opponents of academic racism and racism of all forms, needs to go right now. Instead, we need to learn from our mistakes. We need to come together in a way that engages all voices and move forward as a community to ensure that we get our message across instead of making the story about us or the Charles Murrays of the world.
Last Saturday night, I sat down with my suitemate and fellow political science major, Maddie Hack, to assess what had happened and how best to move forward. We agreed that fostering an environment on campus that tolerates different viewpoints can come into conflict with protecting of the emotional safety of all students. We recognized that, contrary to what The New York Times article on the protests stated, Middlebury’s predicament is more complex and can’t be reduced to a liberal versus conservative worldview. We talked for hours, weighing opinions of respected classmates, friends and professors on all sides of the debate.
Like many, we believed from the outset that Mr. Murray’s problematic conclusions claiming genetic origins of the IQ differential between whites and African-Americans had no place in any institution of higher learning. We felt that, as students, we could engage with Mr. Murray’s arguments without his presence on campus by reading his work or by discussing his views with professors. Framing the issue as one exclusively over the right to free speech dangerously detaches Mr. Murray’s racially prejudiced views from their historical context of the physical violence that was justified by white supremacy. This framing also ignores the current situation at Middlebury in which minority and underprivileged students do not feel adequately supported by the administration and are understandably frustrated and angered. Inviting Mr. Murray here only adds to that anger, and subjects those students to a grossly unequal debate.
Before the speech, we thought, perhaps too optimistically, that Mr. Murray’s contradictions, his unfounded, prejudiced claims and methodological flaws could come to the fore in an intellectual debate. To that end, we made pamphlets refuting Mr. Murray’s claims to inform our peers on the methodological flaws and racial prejudice that underlie much of his work, and placed a copy on every seat in Wilson Hall. In making those pamphlets, one professor told me to seriously think about referencing Murray’s work in the pamphlet “Alternative Science,” even emailing me a link to an editorial backing up Mr. Murray’s controversial conclusions. Initially, that is what bothered me most — that many students and even some professors here did not dismiss Mr. Murray’s claims.
What happened on campus last Thursday is not unlike what is happening all over the U.S. The liberals are getting taunted by the right, and reacting with the full force of our convictions and our frustration, and that’s turning people against liberals, liberals against liberals and the media against liberals. But again, here at Middlebury, the debate is too complicated to be cast in terms of “us” against “them”.
Regardless, we fed a vicious cycle last week. Let’s not do it again.
Let’s reevaluate the College’s policy for determining who gets an invitation to campus, and thus institutional legitimacy. Let’s help the Political Science Department reevaluate its criteria for co-sponsorship. Let’s ensure that the AEI’s policy for inviting speakers is democratic. Let’s ensure that students can express their opinions without silencing others.
The right is going to play to win. It happens here and it’s happening all over the country. If we don’t reorganize and meet with the people who allowed this event to happen, they’ll keep playing us, and all the good intentions of passionate Middlebury students won’t stand a chance.
(02/24/16 8:48pm)
I came very close to passing up Bernie’s big dreams for the sake of rationality last week. But in the end, I sent in my ballot for the Vermont primary with a vote for Bernie, thanks to my naive faith in America’s most unreliable electorate (I’m not kidding).
Like many millennials, I initially jumped at the opportunity to support a candidate whose vision and views on issues are almost exactly aligned with my own beliefs about what America should look like. I’ve also been a long-time supporter of Bernie and am especially inspired by his enthusiasm to reform the way our campaigns are financed. But something about seeing Hillary’s name on my absentee ballot last week made me stop and think: by passing up an opportunity to support an icon of the Democratic establishment, am I jeopardizing the Democratic Party’s chance of winning the general election?
I realize that Bernie’s campaign is, or at least was, largely symbolic and that his chances of winning the nomination are slim at best. (For more on Bernie’s slim chance, just ask any Political Science professor here). But I think we should at least consider what happens if Bernie becomes the nominee.
Voting for Bernie, the democratic socialist from Vermont, essentially means that you think the current political system (largely controlled by wealthy individuals and corporate interests) isn’t working. You reject the consumerist, me-first way of life of our parents’ generation and envision a more sustainable, more caring and more economically just America. You recognize, given the degree to which the American political spectrum has shifted rightward, that Bernie’s progressive proposals — such as free college tuition and universal health care — really aren’t that radical and should therefore be taken seriously.
Voting for Hillary, at least for me, would have meant that I was content with the pragmatic, incremental changes that she’s proposed, and that I was skeptical of Bernie’s ability to beat a Republican nominee — and maybe even his ability to run the country.
In the final moments before casting my vote, holding my pen over the bubbles on my ballot, it was Bernie’s dubious electability in a general election that almost gave Hillary my vote. Even former MIT Professor and social activist Noam Chompsky admitted in a recent interview with TruthDig that Hillary would likely have an easier time defeating a Republican nominee.
A lot of my concern stems from the fact that Bernie has yet to be tested. If Bernie’s the Democratic nominee, big money will throw an insane amount of negative advertising at uninformed Americans — advertising that will likely associate Bernie with the apocalypse, a false description of the New Deal socialism that he actually stands for, and who knows what else. That’s what we Bernie supporters could be up against in the general election.
Fortunately, millennials now make up about 36 percent of eligible voters. If we were to vote at our capacity, we’d be the country’s largest voting bloc. So, essentially, the choice is ours.
But, if like me, you do vote for Bernie, you have to own it. If Bernie wins because of idealistic people like us, then we must translate our faith into action. That means we not only have to turnout in a general election, but we must also inspire our friends to do the same.
(02/18/15 9:31pm)
At this year’s Feb Orientation, new students saw the soft-launch of Middlebury’s Green Dot strategy, a comprehensive approach to violence prevention that aims to measurably and systematically reduce violence within the Middlebury community by training students to be educated bystanders in situations where power-based personal violence may take place. The program, commonly referred to as “Green Dot,” is based on a model created by the non-profit organization “Green Dot, etcetera.”
“We are working to train sets of students, faculty and staff this Spring so that when we have a hard launch in the Fall there will be community members who understand the strategy and skills and can share what they know with colleagues and peers,” said Middlebury’s Director of Health and Wellness Education Barbara McCall in an email, explaining the rationale behind the program’s soft launch with the new Febs.
McCall, who is spearheading the program, also led the program’s training event at this year’s Feb Orientation. One-hundred and twenty five students went to the overview of the program during Feb orientation. Thirty students attended the six-hour training.
Throughout the Spring, McCall and her team of over 30 faculty and staff members will be working with communications and the Dean of the College to create a launch plan and strategy for the formal launch in the fall of 2015.
After careful review of a variety of bystander education programs, McCall and her team decided on the Green Dot model last summer.
“We ended up selecting Green Dot for its proactive, solution-based approach that empowers every member of the community to play a role in violence reduction,” McCall said.
“Green Dot seeks to reduce violence in the short term by developing community members’ skills, confidence, and connection to the issue while also addressing long-term culture change so that violence is not tolerated on our campus and everyone does their part to prevent it.”
An addition to the appeal of short and long-term goals, a second argument in favor of Green Dot is that it’s evidence-based.
“Communities that have implemented [Green Dot] show up to a 50 percent reduction in violence,” McCall said.
Third, the program is also considered a national best-practice by the Office on Violence against Women, which is the Department of Justice office sponsoring Middlebury’s campus grant.
A final argument in favor of the Green Dot model is that it’s already been implemented on a number of college campuses. Connecticut College is a NESCAC peer that has implemented Green Dot.
Starting in the Fall, new students will receive a 90-minute overview that introduces the program and allows for some time for skill-building. This overview will be a mandatory event for all new students during their orientations into the College, while the six-hour training will be voluntary.
“The goal is to get approximately 20 percent of the student body to do the six-hour training so that there are peers on campus who are comfortable with bystander language and action and can support the campus discourse,” McCall said.
More training opportunities for overviews and intensives for returning faculty, staff and students will be offered after Green Dot’s formal launch in the fall of 2015.
Currently, 27 faculty and staff members have completed the four-day training and are trained Green Dot facilitators. Forty-five faculty members have gone through the shorter program overview.
A meeting will be held at the end of this month to finalize plans for the program’s launch in the Fall. To learn more about Green Dot’s mission and strategy, visit livethegreendot.com.
(04/24/14 1:01am)
In honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM), student and administrative members of the Sexual Assault Oversight Committee (SAOC) have put together a program of activities intended to support victims of sexual violence as well as spark discussion on campus about sexual violence prevention and education.
“It says something about our community values when things like this are on the calendar,” said Director of Health and Wellness Education and SAOC Co-Chair Barbara McCall. “It sends the message that [our community] thinks that this is an important conversation to be having … and [that] we want to support those who have been affected by sexual violence as best we can.”
“The SAOC’s goal, in general, has been to create a gathering place on campus where many different offices and individuals on campus who are working toward sexual assault prevention and education can collaborate and combine manpower into action and practice,” said Jordan McKinley ’14, co-chair of the SAOC.
Funding for the events will come from a campus grant from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women. Since the release of funds in February, the grant has been used to fund a variety of activities and trainings aimed at promoting a community-based approach sexual violence on campus.
“Sexual assault education, prevention and response has been a priority for many years at Middlebury ... It’s absolutely central to our commitment to providing a safe and inclusive community,” said Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs and Student Life Karen Guttentag, the project director of the grant.
“While working on the grant… it seemed natural to say [that] ... part of these funds should be used for programming both that stems from student interest and involvement and also supports the work that many other offices are already engaging in,” said McCall.
An SAOC subcommittee broadly entitled “Education and Workshops” began talking about SAAM programming last Fall. Many of the ideas for the events this month came from these subcommittee meetings.
The “B.R.A.V.E.” workshop, one of the activities that is part of the April program, is a result of McKinley’s ideas from the subcommittee.
The workshop, led by TaeKwon Do Instructor Kellie Thomas, will focus on techniques for personal safety. “The great thing about [Thomas] is that her lens is all about empowerment and finding your voice and confidence,” McCall said.
“We wanted to ... have a class that spoke more toward empowerment through being able to physically protect yourself,” McKinley added.
As part of the program, Men’s Outreach Coordinator at UVM Keith Smith facilitated a discussion about the confining stereotypes of masculinity at last week’s SAOC meeting.
“I’m also really excited about having Keith Smith come down from UVM and talk to us,” McKinley said. “He does a lot of really good work involving men ... and talking about how traditional gender roles and the concept of masculinity play into sexual assault and how we incorporate men into sexual assault prevention.”
“If someone wanted to start a support group for white males, it would probably be laughed out of the room,” said Kyler Blodgett ’17 who took Smith’s J-term workshop, “The Man Box.” “There’s a lot of support networks for women for sexual assault and recovery, but there just aren’t the same resources for men.”
Blodgett also noted that discussion about masculinity on the College’s campus is not prominent enough.
“The first rule about masculinity is don’t talk about masculinity,” said Smith at last week’s SAOC meeting.
In light of this problem, McCall said that SAOC has taken on the task of teaching students about how to be engaged men.
“It made sense to follow [last week’s meeting] up with an educational opportunity,” said McCall in reference to Smith’s workshop, “Sex, Hooking Up, and Consent: What You Need to Know.” “There’s something really powerful about having [Smith] facilitate this important conversation through a different lens.”
While Smith’s workshop will be geared toward sexual assault prevention, MiddSafe advocates will emphasize the healing element of SAAM at the “Supporting a Friend 101” workshop, Meditation For Survivors and Yoga For Survivors.
“For trauma victims, particularly people who have experienced sexual violence or sexual assault, it can be a very disembodying experience,” said Marcella Maki ’14, who proposed the idea for the Yoga for Survivors event. “[Yoga] can be a really useful part of wellness and taking steps toward recovery and self love.”
Looking to the future, both McKinley and McCall expressed interest in making SAAM programming an annual event.
These events, “are certainly a re-establishment” of sexual assault awareness on campus, according to McCall. A complete calendar of events can be found at go/saam14.
(03/06/14 2:08am)
Students Caitlin Haedrich ’16.5 and Larson Lovdal ’16.5 are imagining a whole new kind of dining for the College. The duo has submitted a project proposal for an outdoor wood-fired pizza oven, or “cob oven,” to be built at the Organic Garden this summer.
“It’s an idea that’s been tossed around in the Organic Garden since its beginning in 2002,” Haedrich said. Colleges all over Vermont have already built outdoor wood-fired ovens, including one at UVM’s Organic Garden. “They’re kind of trending right now,” she added.
“The reason I want to build this is because [cob ovens] get really hot and make the food amazing,” Haedrich said. “Everything tastes better because it cooks so quickly so the outside gets really crispy before the inside loses moisture.”
Cooking in cob ovens is also time-efficient. “It takes a minute and a half to cook a pizza … so you could easily make thirty large pizzas in an hour,” Lovdal said. “It’s also very multi-faceted. After you’ve made pizza, you can bake bread or cook a pie in it later on as the oven cools.”
Haedrich and Lovdel came up with the idea after spending a night cooking pizza in a similar oven in Haedrich’s hometown of Norwich, VT where there is a cob oven open for public use. “Growing up, every Sunday night in the summer we would heat it up…and some nights we’d show up and there’d be over 60 people from all across the community,” Haedrich said.
“After fall break, we started looking into the process of what it takes to build one and it’s just incredibly simple,” Lovdal said. The building process of the oven itself only takes two days and can be made almost entirely from local materials.
“Part of the beauty of it being locally resourced and having so many recycled materials is that it’s a really low cost oven to build,” Lovdal stated. For example, the duo plans on using recycled wine bottles as insulation.
“We also have an agreement with the project manager at Nelson that we can use some of the concrete that was torn out from the old arena [for the base],” said Lovdal. The most challenging and costly part of construction will be the oven’s surrounding wood shelter.
Ross and Cook commons are the main sponsors of the project and have committed substantial funds.
“From their side, it’s really cool because it encourages community between the commons,” Haedrich said.
“But, the sky is the limit in terms of investing,” Haedrich added. “It’d be great to have really nice picnic tables and better equipment to use with the oven. So we’re always looking for more funding.”
The oven’s location at the organic garden will give it continuity and encourage sustainability by bringing the Middlebury community closer to locally grown food.
“This project also aligns really well with both Middlebury’s and the organic garden’s values that support local, sustainable, environmentally friendly projects,” Lovdal said.
“You could easily make an Addison County pizza,” said Organic Garden Manager Jay Leshinsky, referencing the Organic Garden’s variety of toppings, that include Scolton Farm’s cheese and Gleason Grains’ organic wheat. Leshinsky, who has worked at the Organic Garden since its founding, has supported this project since its proposal.
“It’s really been the initiative of these students, and I’d like to think it just made sense to them that the farm would be the best place for it because it’s just a really nice social setting and has such an immediate relationship to food, so it seemed to be a natural one,” Leshinsky said.
“I’ve been so impressed by the prep work that Larson and Caitlin have done and all the people they’ve been working with,” Leschinsky added. “There is a lot that is involved in siting a building … and particularly one that uses fire.”
To address the school’s safety and liability concerns, the organic garden will keep the key that locks the metal doors on the shelter to the oven. They will also be the point-people to contact for use of the oven. Students who want to use the oven will have to get a fire permit from Public Safety and watch a short, informative how-to video on using the oven.
Once the project is approved by the space committee, Larson and Caitlin will be able to take more detailed steps such as picking the oven’s site at the organic garden, hammering out details on the shelter’s construction, and finalizing the project’s budget.
Haedrich is hopeful that the space committee will approve the project in April. Construction on the oven and surrounding shelter are scheduled for right after finals week so that it can be used by the end of this summer.
(01/16/14 1:29am)
The Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship (MCSE) will host its third annual symposium, titled “Social Entrepreneurship and The Future of Education,” on Jan. 23-24 to celebrate improvements and innovations in education around the world.
Two leaders in the field of social innovation, keynote speaker New York Times “Fixes” columnist David Bornstein and Shabana Basij-Rasik ’11, will focus their remarks on the impact of improvements in education on the economy, on improving social injustices and on our lives. The symposium will shine a light on the successes educators are having around the world at making positive social change.
“It’s a time of great challenge for education, for a whole lot of reasons,” Professor of Economics and MCSE Director Jon Isham said. “But, what social entrepreneurs are showing is that with technology and with decentralized approaches built around the students’ needs, education can rise to the challenge. That’s what we want to promote.”
Basij-Rasik, president and co-founder of School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA), will kick off the symposium with a talk titled, “Dare to Educate Afghan Women” on Thursday, Jan. 22 at 7 p.m. in Mead Chapel. As a social entrepreneur, Basij-Rasik took on the mission to empower Afghan women and girls. SOLA has effectively provided exceptional Afghan women with the tools necessary to further their education, and is an institution which marks significant progress in possibly the most challenging place to promote primary education. Basij-Rasik, who was born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan, has been inspired by her own educational experience, during which she risked the deadly consequences of dressing as a boy in order to attend school as a child.
Bornstein, the leading journalist and writer in the realm of solutions-journalism, will give the symposium’s keynote speech titled “Solutions Journalism: Scholarship in Real Time,” at 7:30 p.m. on Friday Jan. 24 in McCullough. As co-author of the New York Times “Fixes” column, Bornstein explores solutions to major social problems with a “cutting edge” approach to journalism, which focuses on documenting people who are finding solutions rather than reporting on problems. Bornstein has written two books, “Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know,” and “How To Change The World”’; he is currently working on his third.
“It’s hard to conceptualize,” said Gaby Fuentes ’16, a member of this year’s MCSE fellowship cohort and of Isham’s Winter Term class, “Social Entrepreneurship in the Liberal Arts.” “It’s hard to grapple with sometimes. And I think a lot of people are confused about what exactly social entrepreneurship is.
Most of Fuentes’ role in preparing for the symposium will be providing input via in-class discussions.
“The symposium is a way to capture the energy around the idea of social entrepreneurship in the liberal arts,” Isham said, adding that over his years at the College, he has observed that “conferences designed a certain way can really jumpstart ideas on this campus.”
The week of the symposium will also feature an array of interactive activities such as workshops and Google Hangouts with leaders in the field of social innovation.
“It’s not a symposium where you’re talked at,” Isham said. “The year’s programming will allow students to contribute and participate.”
Leaders from organizations such as Ashoka, Clinton Global Initiative, and Educate! in Uganda will be leading interactive workshops that will make students more aware of current student and alumni work in educational innovations around the world.
Jihad Hajjouji ’14 will lead a workshop titled “Developing a Theory of Change: a Case from Morocco.
“The workshop will focus on thinking process of how an organization gets to create the intended impact through its activities,” Jihad said. “I will be using my own project, called the National Entrepreneurial Camp, as a case study.”
In addition to Hajjouji, Jeff Digel ’78, Elsa Palanza ’01 and Angelica Towne ’08, who made Forbes’ 2014 list of “30 under 30 Social Entrepreneurs,” will also lead workshops on campus on the January 24th. All events are open to the public.