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(11/17/16 10:43pm)
News of Donald J. Trump’s election as the nation’s 45th president sent waves of shock and uncertainty throughout campus, prompting students to stage protests against the president-elect and discussions of what the next four years will bring.
For many, election night was a surprising and ultimately devastating display of the American electoral system at work. The long election season culminated in a packed Crossroads Café Tuesday night Nov. 8. When, at 7 p.m., Vermont projected to go for Hillary Clinton, the group of mostly liberal-leaning students cheered loudly, proud of the state for being the first in the country to vote for Clinton.
Most students felt optimistic at this point, and Crossroads had a celebratory feel. People chatted with friends and shouted happily when early states were projected for Clinton. For some students, a Clinton victory was all but inevitable.
“I’m very confident in a Hillary victory; I’m just curious to see how much America will go for Trump,” James Callison ’17.5 said early in the night. “The only thing I am concerned about, however, is the Senate election. I’m worried it’s going to go 51-49 Republicans.”
Others did not share Callison’s certainty, but nonetheless felt that Clinton would most likely end up pulling through.
“[I feel] sort of cautiously optimistic, which is bad, because you want to feel hopeful that reasonably optimistic predictions from statisticians and political watchers… are solid predictions that you have faith in,” Noah Liebmiller ’17.5 said. “But at the same time, there’s a lot of self-doubt. I would hate to have my hopes crushed at the end of the day. One in four things happen all the time. Cubs came back from 3-1 the other day. Cavaliers came back from 3-1 in July. Nothing’s ever sure.”
At the same time, Liebmiller felt excited for election night and looked forward to watching the contest unfold.
“We’ve been waiting for this to happen for almost two years, and every day it got a little bit more intense, and so many crazy things have happened,” he said. “If you’re a nerd who loves politics, this is like Christmas morning, but it’s only once every four years.”
Charlotte Massey ’18, on the other hand, did not have much optimism and half-jokingly explained her contingency plan if Donald Trump were to emerge victorious.
“We’re flying to Europe tomorrow for a debate tournament, so the mindset is, if Trump wins, we’re just staying there,” she said.
In spite of the nerves, the atmosphere remained relaxed and congenial well into the night. Students enthusiastically grabbed free Grille food and watched as Matthew Dickinson and Bert Johnson, professors of political science, commented on the results as they rolled in. Until about 9 p.m., Dickinson and Johnson reiterated that Donald Trump had a very narrow path to victory.
And then it became clear that Trump was outperforming expectations. Dickinson and Johnson began to express surprise as states like Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin remained extremely close with slight Trump leads.
The hum of conversation in Crossroads softened as students realized what was happening. The cheers for the few states that were called for Clinton became even louder. Conversations turned toward expressions of anger and frustration.
“It really pisses me off that it’s even this close because if she wins it’s still really depressing about what’s happening in America,” Caley Henderson ’18 said.
“So many people seemed so confident, and I thought I was ready mentally for the idea that it was going to be close,” Liebmiller said. “And I’m still not clear whether it’s close yet, but it’s starting to feel really close, and that’s not a pleasant thing.”
By 12 a.m., many of the students at Crossroads were thinking back to that moment that Vermont was projected and wishing the rest of the night would have gone much differently. Crossroads had closed, and Pennsylvania would soon be called for Trump.
At 3 a.m. on Wed. Nov. 9, Trump had been declared victorious and gave his acceptance speech to the nation.
“I felt that the values of America had failed those that are most vulnerable in society,” Callison said later about his reaction when he realized that Trump had won.
He and several other students gathered in Crossroads again on Wednesday morning to discuss the results, express their feelings and commiserate. Political Science professors, including Johnson, Sarah Stroup, Erik Bleich and Orion Lewis, led the conversation and attempted to give students some context for the election. But even they had a challenging time making sense of the results.
“This has been one of the most extraordinary elections in memory, with a result that most political scientists would not have bet on,” Johnson said later. “Those of us who study U.S. elections will now have to examine why the polling data leading up to the election was out of step with the result.”
While the students had come together to watch Hillary Clinton’s concession speech, the gathering ended up being a catharsis of sorts. It was a moment for students and professors alike to try to make sense of the intense emotions they were feeling.
For the rest of the week, many students and staff at the College struggled to figure out how to move forward. Some professors canceled class or delayed tests; others attempted to keep conducting business as usual. But among many students, the overriding emotions were confusion and sadness. Some professors and staff who have worked at the College for many years compared it to the days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks; others were shocked at the depth of the emotional response from students.
“I have not seen our campus so paralyzed,” Stroup said. “Optimism and articulation were suspended. Our first years are navigating this historic moment in a new environment. Usually I can find some evidence and arguments from political science to these events, but we all got it wrong -- which requires some humility.”
Johnson perceived the same strong, passionate reaction from students. “The state of alarm on campus is something I have not seen before in my twelve years here,” he said. “I can understand why many are concerned with the result, and to be frank, I share many of their concerns.”
As a result of the election, the College organized several different opportunities later in the week for students and faculty to come together. During one such event, which took place on Friday, Nov. 11, members of the College community broke up into small groups to converse and reflect on the election and how to move forward.
In one group, the participants talked about the different ways that people might get active to make a change, the ability of faculty to take a stance against certain political rhetoric and how people might deal with the despair and hopelessness they feel. The participants agreed to be anonymous, but they all expressed an appreciation for the cathartic effect of the meetings.
For many, the willingness of students to engage in difficult and rewarding discussions at events like this was a particularly bright spot in an otherwise tough week.
“I have been surprised at and comforted by the range of conversations I have had,” Stroup said. “Yes, these are based on little sleep and half-formed thoughts, but people have reached out to discuss and deliberate.”
In response to the results, President of the College Republicans Club, Hayden Dublois ’17, emphasized the crucial importance of being there for those who are marginalized or scared by a Trump presidency.
“Even as a Republican, I’m disgusted by Donald Trump and disagree with his policies. But rather than rioting, I think there is a two-fold response that is more effective. First, be there for those who feel marginalized and scared by a Trump presidency,” said Dublois in an email to the Campus. “Second, oppose Donald Trump’s policies that you disagree with. Call your Congressman or Senator; donate to an interest group; join an advocacy organization — whatever you have to do to oppose the particular policies you disagree with.”
As the days passed, sadness and confusion transformed into anger and a desire to act. In conjunction with several students, Travis Wayne Sanderson ’19 helped plan and organize an election protest, which was held at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 13 outside Mead Memorial Chapel. Sanderson thought of the idea after taking note of similar events at different campuses. He saw it as a good method to transfer our community’s emotions into a constructive goal.
The Facebook event page, which garnered interested from over two hundred students, read: “Our presidential election has ended in terror for the lives and livelihoods of millions of marginalized people. We cannot sit still in a time of injustice. On Sunday, our Middlebury community will gather at the front steps of Mead Chapel to stand together against racism, fascism, hatred and all forms of oppression. We hope you can join us in standing up in this moment of history.”
Students eagerly gathered around the steps of Mead Chapel right at 4 p.m., with the crowd gradually growing as the protesters made their way down toward Davis Memorial Library. Many students held cardboard signs with slogans reading, “Not My President,” “Stronger Together” and “Love Trumps Hate.” The crowd, comprised of roughly 250 students, chanted as they then made their way across campus from Davis to McCardell Bicentennial Hall. Two of the chants that echoed across campus were “Immigration, Not Deportation” and “Build Bridges, Not Walls.”
Back on the steps of Mead, Sanderson took the stage first. Several speakers followed Sanderson, offering individual stories touching upon topics ranging from immigration reform to discrimination within on our own campus.
“Overall, I’m happy with how the protest went,” said Charles Rainey ’19, a student representative of Community Council, who spoke at the event. “The message is clear — we have a passionate subset of the population, a diverse group of kids that came out to really show that love trumps hate, that black lives matter, that the pussy grabs back and that we stand in solidarity with LGBTQ+ folks. I hope that this leads to a broader discussion for how these values we hold dear, and our feelings about the election, can be translated back on campus and make this campus a more inclusive one.”
As part of his speech, Rainey read two poems by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib. He emphasized the need to cultivate constructive conversation moving forward.
Moving beyond the protest, Sanderson envisions cultural organizations, as well as other student groups active in inclusivity, helping to continue the dialogue on a more permanent basis. However, he recognizes that this is a democratic effort.
“The conversations that have to be cultivated in the next months and years rely on people and organizations not only hosting them and making the spaces for them, but also on people in dining halls and other spaces making sure there isn’t a tolerance for intolerance in this place,” said Sanderson. “Even if you’re not directly involved, there’s space to be more inclusive and more of an exception to the dominant narrative of intolerance that has taken the nation since last week.”
(03/09/16 4:16pm)
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Club, along with the Economics and Political Science Departments hosted Scott Winship to speak this past Thursday, March 3 in McCardell Bicentennial Hall. Winship, the Walter B. Wriston Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, presented a talk titled, “Inequality, Poverty, and Policy.”
Phil Hoxie ’17.5, President of the AEI Club, asked Winship to present after hearing him speak over the summer. Hoxie said, “I chose Winship because I think he has a really nuanced and important view to hear. For so many people, when they talk about inequality and poverty, it is either plan A or plan B. And if you noticed from the talk, he’s really in between the two. It’s a false dichotomy almost.”
Winship’s research interests include standards and economic mobility, inequality and insecurity. He has previously been a fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Manager of the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trust. He has also served as a Senior Policy Advisor at Third Way.
“I thought that he would be a really good pick for Middlebury if you look at what motivates different kinds of people. Liberals are motivated a lot by empathy and conservatives are motivated a lot by a wide range of different things,” Hoxie said. “I thought that because he spent so much time at Brookings, he could talk about an issue that is very touchy in a way that really connected with people’s values, and I think he did just that.”
Winship began by reviewing several studies regarding the trajectory of inequality over the course of the last century before delving into how poverty has progressed over the same period. He ended by sharing some of his own research into the inequality of opportunity between different races and genders before addressing several policy proposals.
He argued that the apparent rises in inequality are somewhat exaggerated. After rising a great deal in the 1970s and 1980s, inequality has not risen much since. Winship said, “If you care about whether the middle class is pulling away from the poor, there is certainly a lot of inequality between those two groups, but it hasn’t gotten worse since the 1980s. What has changed a lot is the top that pulled away.”
Associate Professor of Political Science and Department Chair Bertram Johnson found this to be some of the most interesting data. “At least since the publication of Thomas Piketty’s 2014 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, academics have been aware of the dramatic contrast in wealth and income between the top one percent and everyone else,” said Johnson.
“The pattern in the data below the very top is not as dramatic. Reasonable people could react differently to this – either interpreting it as a reason to worry less about inequality, or interpreting it as a further indication of the distinctiveness of the super-wealthy. Either way, it was interesting.”
Winship cited changes in tax laws affecting when people realize assets such as capital gains as a plausible reason for an over-exaggeration of income inequality. Another part of this, he argued, is that that changing tax rates altered what people declared as individual income as opposed to corporate tax income.
“A big part of the rise in inequality was because of the changes in tax laws, some of which produced real inequality increases. So as tax rates go down, people are going to work longer, they’re going to retire later, they’re going to take more risks and try to innovate more,” Winship said. “So that’s a real increase in inequality, but some of it is just an artifact.”
In terms of poverty trends, he argued that conservatives are apt to say we have lost the war on poverty because the figures are just as high as those from the 1960s. However, Winship explained that the official measure doesn’t take into account four of the five biggest anti-poverty programs in the country. Accounting for these programs, including SNAP and Medicaid, actually show that the poverty rate has almost been cut in half, according to Winship, although evidence suggests intergenerational mobility hasn’t really improved over time.
His new research consists of studies comparing income mobility across racial and gender lines.
“It was nice to have essentially a low key, balanced presentation on a subject that is important and can give rise to confrontation,” Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science Murray Dry said. “I suppose if you combine income inequality and race, that’s when you’re likely to get confrontation.”
In terms of potential policy measures, Winship proposed the expansion of the earned income tax credit as well as a housing voucher program to support people who want to move to neighborhoods with more opportunity. He also raised the issue of expanding child tax credits for married couples. This is not to say that this should cut it for un-married couples, but it would be an incentive to reduce out-of-wedlock births. He further emphasized the need to experiment with local initiatives through funding small-scale programs to see what models have potential. Johnson said, “I found the transparent way in which he used data to be refreshing. It allowed us as an audience to ask intelligent questions, at the same time as it challenged some of our assumptions. I didn’t agree with every policy proposal that he offered, but one could tell what aspects of the analysis each was based on – an aspect of the presentation that allowed us to draw our own conclusions. Winship’s is a perspective on inequality that we do not usually see, and although it doesn’t address every angle on the subject, it was informative and interesting.”
For their next sponsored talk, Hoxie said the the AEI Club is bringing in former White House Counsel to President Ronald Reagan, Peter J. Wallison, to present on April 14.
(01/21/16 4:23am)
The College notified 338 new students of their early admission to the Class of 2020 via an online portal on Dec. 5. Mailed letters were sent in the next week. The students were chosen from an overall application pool of 636 applicants. This is an increase from the 280 students offered early admission from the preceding year’s early decision pool of 667 applicants.
320 of the newly accepted students will enroll in the fall of 2016, while 18 were offered admission under the February Admissions Program and will begin in Feb. 2017. Out of the total applicant pool, 74 students were deferred and 221 students were denied. An early decision acceptance is binding.
Representing 49% of the class of 2020, this early decision class hails from 34 states, Washington D.C. and 13 different countries. According to Greg Buckles, Dean of Admissions, 25 percent of those admitted are students of color. This is the highest percentage of students of color admitted through early decision in the College’s history.
(12/02/15 9:21pm)
In an effort to alleviate student stress and promote mental health at the College, several administrators are working to develop a multi-faceted plan to build community and resilience, promote mind-body well-being, increase diversity and foster inclusivity. Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of the College Katy Smith Abbott, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty Andrea Lloyd and Professor of Spanish and Interim Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández are in the process of building upon their initial platform, which has become known as “The Grid” through a series of discussions with various audiences within the community.
“The Grid” is comprised of three separate umbrella objectives: Building Community and Resilience, Promoting Mind-Body Well-being and Increasing Diversity and Inclusivity. Each objective has its own chart and associated timeline of current, near-term and far-term concrete agenda items.
This project partly grew out of a series of meetings held by the College Board of Overseers, a sub-group of the Board of Trustees responsible for the undergraduate institution, in which its anchor administrator, Lloyd, had been helping to guide a conversation over concerns and challenges surrounding inclusivity, diversity and community on campus.
Following these conversations and a presentation by Smith Abbott, Lloyd and Fernández, these three were asked to put together a list of initiatives, programs and opportunities that the College could work to expand upon in the next few years. This “wish list,” as Smith Abbott termed it, was slated to include price tags for what it would take to get the College to a better place in terms of inclusivity and diversity on campus.
Separately, at the May meeting of the full Board of Trustees, Smith Abbott presented a long reflection on what had transpired throughout the year, particularly framed around student stress.
“We discussed what it feels like to not be able to get out from underneath the stressors of day-to-day life as students at Middlebury and what that brought to the floor in terms of what types of support were missing, and what students thought we lacked on campus,” Smith-Abbott said.
These talks on diversity and inclusivity paired with what was surfacing about student stress led to a sense of urgency on the part of the Board of Trustees that the administration needed to discuss these issues and work to develop an action plan.
“We were asked by the Board of Trustees to identify the areas in which we could have the greatest impact and to identify three ‘experiments’ that we could have on the ground in September that would address some of the causes of student stress,” Smith Abbott said.
Smith Abbott emphasized that they weren’t trying to collapse the diversity and inclusivity piece into the rest of the student stress like a problem to be solved, but rather saw a great deal of overlap between the stressors that students brought with them when they came to the College or experienced as a result of being a student in a community that traversed between the realms of academic stress and issues of identity, community, student support and bias.
In what started as a brainstorming session with a white board and a great deal of buzz-words surrounding stressors across campus, Smith Abbott, Lloyd and Fernández began to separate these words into three categories which naturally morphed into the three experiments requested by Whittington.
“We started by seeing how those qualities or stressors settled into three big categories, and then within each category we started to brainstorm both what was already happening, as well as what we could imagine happening this year and beyond,” Smith Abbott said. “We picked one thing from each of those big umbrella categories that we thought we could actually try to make happen this year.”
Due to fiscal year constraints, the items slated for this fall couldn’t be the more substantial ticket items because they were out of sync, and thus not yet included in the budget cycle which starts every January. They furthermore planned to follow through with only the smaller agenda items because the whole community had yet to be involved in the conversation.
“It wasn’t meant to be, ‘here’s what is good for everybody, as we recognized the need for a much broader community conversation, which we have moved forward this fall,” Smith Abbott said. “We were trying to be really thoughtful about which of the agenda items we felt were good, solid ideas to at least try, and which we would have to hold on until more people weighed in on them.”
Thus far this fall, “The Grid” has been presented to the Board of Trustees, the President Senior Leadership Group, the Middlebury Leadership Group, the Community Council and the entire Student Life Division. Students were shown the plan on Dec. 2 and faculty will be shown on Dec. 17.
These discussions have involved a powerpoint on the components of “The Grid” followed by brainstorm sessions in which small groups address what might already be happening on the small scale in order to gauge what efforts are already afoot, perhaps departmentally or in a student organization. After recognizing what was already in place, these small groups have then fed additional ideas into “The Grid.”
“One of the ironies of this is that as this grid grows, there is a danger of the thing itself becoming an overwhelming document, which we are trying to avoid,” Smith Abbott said. “Let’s not stress people out with a thing that is supposed to be helping with stress!”
One of the experiments slated to begin this Winter Term is a storytelling series called “It’s Not What You Think,” a space for staff and alumni to reflect and converse with students on past failures and the twists and turns of life. This is built upon a program Smith Abbott had learned about at a conference and is targeted to be a natural complement to existing storytelling series such as “What Matters to Me and Why” put on by the Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Smith Abbott stressed the need to identify and build upon such synergies within the community.
President of the College Laurie L. Patton reached out to the community earlier this week outlining a list of activities working to create a more inclusive community, including several objectives outlined by “The Grid.” One such measure they have taken is inviting the Posse Foundation to host three on-campus workshops — one for admissions and financial aid staff, one for faulty and administrators and one for student leaders.
According to her email, “These half-day workshops will leverage Posse’s experience designing and facilitating interactive experiences that explore and confront challenging sociopolitical issues facing higher education today.”
In addition to these workshops, the College has contracted Romney Associates to hold four faculty-recruitment workshops designed to boost their goal of further diversifying the faculty.
Among many potential longer term goals is a pre-enrollment program for first generation students or students coming from high school backgrounds where having some kind of summer preparation program could be helpful. Another expensive potential long-term objective is the addition of new CRAs to each commons.
Moving forward Smith Abbott stressed the need to figure out how the conversation will continue.
“One of the important things we’ll need to clarify moving forward is how this conversation will continue,” Smith Abbott said. “What is a mechanism that allows the campus to own this conversation and for it to continue in a robust fashion so that people really think their good ideas are being recorded and acted upon?”
One such mechanism is slated to be a website welcoming community input to further the conversation surrounding these objectives. Such a platform would provide a space where new ideas can begin to take shape and form.
“We are beginning work on a website that will act as a hub for discussion and ideas around issues of stress, inclusivity, resilience, mind-body well-being and more,” said Vice President for Communications and Marketing Bill Burger. “Given the number of initiatives that are being considered and that are in place already across the institution, we felt it would be helpful to the community if we created a modest site to describe these efforts and invite suggestions and comments. I think we all see this as a first step and we’ll continue to evolve the site and our approach to it over time.”
While this project could potentially continue under a working group as a part of Community Council or some kind of hybrid SGA and faculty-staff council, Smith Abbott spoke to its ever-changing nature.
She said, “We’ll need to see which things are really going to stay and what is the space for experimentation. The idea here is to keep things dynamic and open. We want people to have real influence by participating in a process to figure out what really works for Middlebury.”
(11/18/15 9:23pm)
On Thursday, Nov. 12, in the wake of the events that took place at the University of Missouri and Yale University surrounding racial tensions, students of the College wore black clothing and stood in front of Carr Hall in solidarity with black students across the nation.
The event was organized by the Black Students Union (BSU). Afterward, participants were invited to discuss the events in the main lounge of the Anderson Freeman Resource Center (AFC), located in Carr Hall.
President of the College Laurie L. Patton and Vice President and Dean of the College Katy Smith Abbott addressed the issue in an email sent to students, staff and faculty.
“We share the BSU’s concern about racism on college campuses, and will continue the effort for inclusion and greater understanding at Middlebury,” they said.
“In order to move toward gaining this greater understanding among ourselves, it is essential for us to have conversations about the subject of racial prejudice and all of its dimensions’” they continued. “These are conversations for the sake of a better community. We stand in support of these students today and we are also committed to continuing this discussion at various events in the near future and as the academic year continues. We invite all members of the College community to join us at these future events.”
Later, Patton invited students, staff, and faculty to reflect on the issues and events at the weekly, all-community silent reflection time on Monday evening in Mead Chapel.
(09/17/15 5:59pm)
August marked the introduction of two new student life staff members to the College: Baishakhi Taylor joined the College as the new Dean of Students, taking over from Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of the College Katy Smith Abbott, while AJ Place assumed the role of an Associate Dean of Judicial Affairs and Student Life.
As Dean of Students, Taylor will oversee five main logistical areas: Judicial Affairs, Residential Life, Health and Wellness Education, Student Activities and parts of the Commons system.
Place will share responsibilities with Karen Guttentag — who is also an Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs and Student Life — including oversight of the Community and Academic Judicial Boards, cases that fall under the College’s Sexual Misconduct, Domestic Violence, Dating Violence, and Stalking (SMDVS) Policy and disposition without hearing cases. Place will also assist with the integration of new judicial software and play a role in the creation of a Bias Incident Team, which aims to work on the coordination of prevention and response efforts for bias-related incidents on campus.
Prior to his current role, Place was the Assistant Director for Residential Life at Union College, where he oversaw campus housing, acted as a Title IX deputy, handled high-level judicial cases, and instituted a number of social justice initiatives.
“I truly enjoy working at small colleges as they provide the opportunity to get to know the folks you are working with on a deep level, and most importantly, get to know students and share in their journey,” said Place.
Taylor was previously the Associate Dean of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke University, where she was in charge of overseeing the academic life of eight hundred students.
“I have been very fortunate in that all of my previous positions have looked at student life from different perspectives both inside and outside the classroom,” said Taylor.
“These last five years have been critical in realizing that student life is a continuous thing. There is more than just taking classes and having a four year residential experience. It’s a holistic process where we put students in the middle, and I think that’s the approach I bring here,” she said.
Taylor strives to focus on how members within the community can work on engaging with one another and how the community can be more circumspect in its deliberation both inside and outside the College.
Taylor said, “I’m really looking forward to starting my journey with all of you here. I deeply believe, based on my experience
in the U.S., that you always have a love affair with the place you stay and like with any relationship sometimes it works out. Sometimes you know from the get go — this is it, I can call this place home — and that is how my experience at Middlebury College has been so far.”
(03/11/15 7:06pm)
On Monday, Mar. 2, College President Ronald D. Liebowitz announced the creation of the new Fund for Innovation in a schoolwide email. The fund, established by a group of donors looking to inspire innovative programs and initiatives throughout the college, will be accepting applications from students, faculty and staff beginning
Sunday, Mar. 15.
While faculty and students have had the ability to pursue innovative ideas with the help of the presidential discretionary funds, this new Fund for Innovation will provide even more donor-endowed resources falling outside the College’s operating budget. It will be up to Liebowitz and starting on July 1, President-elect Laurie Patton, to appoint faculty, staff, students and supporters from across the institution to the new Fund Advisory Committee, or FAC. The FAC will then, in turn, be responsible for considering proposals and allocating funding.
The fund stems from more than nine years of discussion, according to Liebowitz, who saw the idea taking form in an alumni speaker tour during his first year as President. Many alumni were taken by his presentation on how this new generation of students, back in 2004-2005, was very much accomplished academically but at the same time, very risk adverse.
“There was something greater about grades, and about success and about fear of failure than what I had experienced for 20 years at Middlebury as a faculty member,” Liebowitz said.
These conversations led to alumni reaching out and proposing solutions. Liebowitz said: “So those conversations led to some alums, especially one, reaching out and saying I’m on the board of a foundation which deals with innovation and maybe the way around this is to really think through how innovation occurs on campus and how students are encouraged to be creative beyond feeling safe, because sometimes when people want to do the safe thing and get the best grades and so forth, they stay away from taking risks and being creative.”
Several programs grew out of a year-long alumnus-funded investigational period delving into what inspires students academically and what creativity and innovation look like in the College.
The Old Stone Mill was a product of this initiative to encourage students to pursue creative projects without the fear of grades. While this program offers mentoring support from alumni and parents, Liebowitz noted that there was not much financial support. In addition, while many programs have grown out of the Programs for Creative Innovation, such as the Ted X event and Projects for Peace, such projects have struggled with inconsistent funding.
The Fund for Innovation thus grew out of the need for available funding that falls outside of the College’s operating budget, as not to appear as if the money is taking away from the core mission of the academic program.
According to Jim Ralph, the Dean of Faculty Development and Research, during a department listening tour he partook in, faculty members proposed a wide array of promising proposals that could merit funding through the Fund for Innovation. Among many examples, Ralph mentioned a proposal outlining a prison education system.
“We’ve heard from a number of faculty interested in developing more of a public dimension to their academic work, so have proposed developing a prison education program,” said Ralph. “This might bring undergraduates together with those who are incarcerated in the Vermont penal system.”
After considering proposals such as this one, Ralph and the Vice President for Academic Development, Tim Spears, hope to now determine which proposals will be good candidates for the FFI or perhaps other avenues through College Advancement.
“Each one of the proposals has been fairly bounded, and I think that’s good, because it means they are of limited scope, but could very well be nice enhancements for what we do here at Middlebury College,” Ralph said.
According to Liebowitz’s email, the Fund for Innovation will cover proposals of any scale. Projects can have a maximum of four years of funding, dependant on a conditional renewal process. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis with the exception of those directly related to the academic program such as proposals for new classes for credit. Such academic program proposals can be submitted Mar. 15 and Oct. 15.
“We realized what goes on outside the classroom influences what goes on inside the classroom,” Liebowitz said. “Everyone should own innovation and the way to do that, in my view after being here for 31 years, and after seeing some of the challenges of trying to be innovative, you need to get everybody involved. And I think that this fund will allow those who truly want to try their hands in innovation to be supported and to involve more than the president in the decision making.”
(04/09/14 11:20pm)
Following the recent restructuring of the Board of Trustees, July 1 will mark a wide-sweeping change in faculty governance. These changes come at a pivotal transition point for the College, as the new President will assume his position in 2015.
President Ronald D. Liebowitz wrote in an all school email, “The transitional nature of the amended responsibilities is intended to provide continuity for the College’s new leader, and also to allow for important coordination with the Board and its new committee and governance structures.”
The Board of Trustees is now organized into three boards of overseers. There is a one board of overseers for the College as well as two different boards for its affiliate programs.
Shirley Collado, Dean of the College, will also become the Vice President for Student Affairs. Steve Trombulak, Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies, will take on the role of Director of Sciences. Stephen Snyder, Professor of Japanese studies, will become the first ever Dean of the Language Schools.
Liebowitz wrote in his email, “[Snyder’s] new position reflects the growth of our language schools, the likely increased collaborations between the Schools and other parts of Middlebury, and the current leave taken by Associate Vice President Aline Germain-Rutherford to serve as Chief Learning Officer at Middlebury Interactive Languages.”
Andi Lloyd, the current Dean of the Faculty, will assume the newly created role of Senior Administrative Officer for the College Board of Overseers. She will also take on the role of Vice President for Academic Affairs.
“I will work with the chair and vice-chair of the College Board of Overseers to set the agenda for the year and provide materials for meetings,” Lloyd said. “Probably the best way to think about it is that I am a liaison to the Trustees serving on the College Board of Overseers.”
Tim Spears, the current Vice President for Academic Affairs, will become the Vice President for Academic Development. Spears sees his new role as bringing the needs of initiatives that might be bubbling up between faculty as well as different new and already existing programs to the college advancement and grant offices.
“It makes sense, I think, from the President’s perspective to have an administrator who is familiar with the academic program to work with his office, College Advancement, the academic administration and the faculty to develop new initiatives,” Spears said.
Suzanne Gurland, currently an Associate Professor of Psychology, will succeed Bob Cluss as the Dean of the Curriculum. Gurland has an extensive background that will prepare her well for this new position.
“One of the first committees I was ever on when I came to Middlebury was the curriculum committee,” Gurland said. “And at that time Bob Cluss was the chair of the committee, so I feel that I learned from him and got a broad perspective on the College curriculum from that experience.”
Gurland has also served on the Educational Affairs Committee and the Governance Working Group.
“Serving on the educational affairs committee has given me a broad view of the college and an appreciation for the similarities and differences among departments and programs and how things work in various parts of the curriculum,” Gurland said.
All of the new roles will have a year to adjust under the leadership of Liebowitz before the new President assumes his position in 2015.
“The administrative transitions were timed so that President Liebowitz will still be in office when the changes occur,” Lloyd said. “This gives all of us a year to get up to speed on both the new positions and the new governance structure, so when the new president comes in we should all be comfortable in our new roles.”
(02/20/14 4:18am)
In order to study the influence and perceptions of the Middlebury brand, the College sought the advice of Baltimore-based consultant Mark Neustadt. After interviewing students, faculty, alumni and prospective students alike, he presented his observations and suggestions to the faculty last spring.
“The core of my project, this project I’m talking about today, is what is that elevator speech, what is that narrative that takes into account all of Middlebury’s various program centers and areas of expertise?” said Neustadt to begin his presentation.
In Neustadt’s perspective, marketing is about tailoring one’s messages and activities in the context of audience priorities. He emphasized that the goal is not to conform to the audience’s priorities, but to design marketing in regards to those priorities.
Neustadt observed that there is no basic disconnect among the many Middlebury-affiliated programs, which include the Summer Language School, the C. V. Starr Schools Abroad, the Bread Loaf School of English, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Monterey Institute of International Studies. The challenges facing Middlebury aren’t what he calls profound or philosophical issues, but rather tactical issues such as graphic standards. He mentioned the necessity of a robust logo system and the redesign of the website information architecture as two such examples of tactical issues to be addressed.
Since last year, the College has been considering ways of putting into action the suggestions made by Neustadt and is working to create a new logo that will be used as a common mark for Middlebury and all of its affiliate programs.
To involve members of the College community in the rebranding effort, six discussions — two for faculty, two for students and two for staff — have been held to unveil the new logo and gain feedback on the marketing efforts.
Vice President of Communications Bill Burger, who is part of the team working to create the new logo, led these discussions.
“I want to hear if people like the new logos we are working on or if they don’t like them, why?” he said. “If they have specific ideas we want to hear them and try to incorporate them. I want to be as inclusive as we can be in the early stages. I think if we do this well we will have a successful end result and avoid the mistakes that some others have made working on logos in the past.”
The discussions, open to anyone in the College community, revealed the different options presented during the brainstorming process for a new logo. Burger explained the design approaches taken regarding details such as structure, typeface and the most effective means of including all educational entities within the a new logo.
Jackson Adams ’17 attended one of the student discussions and said of the work being done on the logo, “I’m not a big fan of change, especially for Middlebury as a campus rooted in so much tradition and despite my distrust in ad agencies trying to embody everything, I think that this work has managed to capture the basic vibe of Middlebury accurately … it seems to give the right information and idea about Middlebury as a whole.”
Those working on the new logo will present their work and the feedback from these discussions to the Board of Trustees on Friday, Feb. 21 and Saturday, Feb. 22. The Board will then indicate whether the project of creating a new logo should continue.
“We are presenting to the [Board of Trustees] looking for their reactions and looking for similar feedback to what we have in these sessions,” Burger said. “We expect some direction from the board on how to move forward on the project,” adding that positive feedback has been received in “every instance that people have seen the work.”
Neustadt also suggested that the College redesign its website so that its different entities were more distinct and easily searchable.
“The website should have an architecture that a little more sufficiently supports the affiliated program and their goals,” he said.
In other words, a student searching for information on the German summer language school shouldn’t easily end up at the College’s German department page.
“What is needed at Middlebury now, more than I think the institution acknowledges, is segmentation between the programs, so that the programs and each talk about themselves without mushing everything together into a narrative about the bigger Middlebury,” Neustadt said.
“This issue is most critical for the College … If the College will optimally continue to advance, what the College also needs is a segmented boundary space where it can talk about its own goals because the college’s goals are not identical to the goals of this greater, you know, collection of programs.”
He emphasized that the general brand narrative should not be the first priority for the majority of the members of the college community and its distinct affiliated programs, adding that the College, in particular, needs to be much more clearly demarcated instead of presented as the base for the affiliated programs.
Neustadt concluded his presentation with a proposal of two brand-theme narrative recommendations to straddle the College and its various affiliated programs. In presenting the College and its affiliated programs, he suggested that Middlebury focus on the strong sense of community fostered by its rural Vermont campus, as well as preparation for what he calls an increasingly globally interconnected world.
Additional Reporting by ELLIE REINHARDT
(01/23/14 1:58am)
Students packed McCullough Social Space to the brim on Monday evening for the third annual It Happens Here (IHH) storytelling event, with overflow seating and a live-feed held in Crossroads. Members of IHH presented fourteen accounts of sexual violence submitted by students at the College.
Luke Carroll Brown ’14 and Katie Preston ’17 began the evening with an introduction of the IHH project as well as an overview of sexual assault resources available on campus. As a means of gauging audience reactions, Post-It notes were placed on each seat so that audience members could record their immediate reactions. The Post-Its were then compiled on a board outside of the Social Space and will serve as a means of continuing the conversation about sexual assault.
The stories presented ranged from traumatic childhood experiences to weekend encounters at the College. Some were violent, others were hazy, but according to IHH attendee Leah Sarbib ’15.5, all of the stories made you think.
“The stories were well written and effective,” Sarbib said. “I think maybe more of the stories this year happened at Middlebury which I think makes more of an impact. The problem at Middlebury seems to be one of entitlement and the sense that people can’t imagine something not going their way or they that have the right to someone else’s body. It doesn’t always have to be something violent and shocking for it to be terrible and life changing.”
Twelve of the fourteen survivor accounts were submitted anonymously and read by speakers removed from the event. Two, however, read their own personal narratives.
“Reading a survivor’s story is a bit stressful and humbling, since I want to make sure I give the narrative the weight it deserves,” said Jackie Voluz ’14, who was one of the readers. “But I choose to do it because I hope that hearing the story out loud and in an environment of respect and compassion somehow helps the person heal from their experience, and makes an impact on the listeners.”
Looking toward the future, IHH members hope that the stories from the Jan. 20 event will help to build a stronger network for the prevention of sexual assault, as well as the resources available to survivors. In addition to on-campus counseling and health center resources, MiddSafe, a confidential hotline for sexual assault survivors and manned by trained Middlebury students, will launch on Jan. 24.
“This year, we tried to make some informational resources available immediately after the event, in the hopes that some people would channel their reactions into a sense of motivation, and a drive for positive change,” Voluz said. “Another major step, which was in some ways identified by themes in the stories, is to develop a more comprehensive overview of sexual assault at freshman orientation.”
Since IHH began two years ago, attendance has steadily increased and the necessity for overflow seating has come to be expected. Brown noted that IHH plans to continue holding events with the storytelling model because there is no better way to illuminate both the prevalence and the human impact of this problem than through survivors’ own words.
IHH is currently working with St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont to organize their own IHH event, slated to occur in the next few weeks. The group is also working with multiple schools across the country to begin similar initiatives and expand the impact of IHH.
“We are indebted to those who submitted, as their commitment to helping our community grow is as strong as any,” Brown said. “It takes a lot of courage to publicly interrogate personal experiences with sexual violence — and I find tremendous hope in the fact that we have so many beautiful hearts and minds on this campus that want to leverage their tragic experiences to support others.”
(12/05/13 2:56am)
A food survey sent to the student body by the Student Government Association (SGA) on Oct. 28 has provided the SGA with concrete data based on 1,219 student responses to help focus and forward the real and sustainable food movement on campus.
“We were basically trying to assess people’s willingness to support sustainable food initiatives on campus for the dining hall,” said Director of Environmental Affairs for the SGA Jake Nonweiler ’14. “The purpose of the survey was to find some definition of sustainable food that people agreed upon or wanted to work for.”
The SGA hoped to gauge student opinion surrounding what real and sustainable food is. According to the survey, “real” food falls into one or more of the following parameters: humane, Fair Trade, ecologically sound or local.
“Unfortunately for the dining halls purposes we can’t focus on all of the categories, so we really wanted to focus in on what the students considered sustainable foods to be and what was practical,” Nonweiler said.
Nonweiler found the discrepancy between the student-estimated amount of organic food in the dining halls and the real amount to be interesting. Just less than 75 percent of the 1,219 survey respondents estimated the amount of organic food to be above the zero to five percent range, when in fact the real amount is between zero and five percent. On a scale of one through five, with five signifying ‘strongly agree,’ the average student response was a 3.33 in response to the statement ‘we need more organic food.’
According to Nonweiler, the goal of the estimation questions surrounding local and organic food were included to determine students’ perceptions of food in the dining halls and what that might mean for future initiatives.
With regard to local food, most students believe than 10 to 20 percent of food in the dining halls is categorized as local, which corresponds to the true proportion found in dining halls. Given the aforementioned one to five scale on the topic of local food, the average response was 3.49 in response to the statement ‘we need more local food.’
“I wasn’t expecting an overwhelming response of student desire for sustainable food,” SGA President Rachel Liddell ’15 said. “I think that the survey shows a pretty moderate stance on the issue, however, I am impressed by the number of people who participated. Clearly the real food movement as a significant following and a high profile on campus.”
According to Liddell, the moderate responses have not given the SGA a clear jumping off point.
“It’s nice to have some more concrete information about what people care about and what’s important to them about dining, but I don’t have a number that justifies a broad sweeping change,” Liddell said.
While the survey responses proved inconclusive for Liddell, there is one specific food-related initiative she nevertheless plans to pursue.
“I want to investigate really specific products that we can attack,” she said. “For example, although it is easy and cheap to buy coffee that was farmed in a really unsustainable, inhumane, and socially irresponsible way, it is also totally possible to purchase fair trade coffee. Doing so would show our commitment to buy real and just food, and improving our coffee purchasing practices is an attainable goal.”
While she claimed that being product-oriented is a feasible way of thinking about Dining Services modifications, she admitted that it is an imperfect science at best. It does, however, involve taking immediate action rather than debating for a long time over what action should be taken.
“On the one hand this solution is highly imperfect and doesn’t solve the larger problem. On the other, it enables us to vote with our dollar for companies that we trust, applaud and want to succeed,” Liddell said.
After the survey is officially published, Nonweiler and Liddell hope that statistics from survey results will be able to help the many student-led food organizations on campus to further their initiatives. Liddell also hopes to meet with Vice President for Finance Patrick Norton and Director of Dining Services Matthew Biette to begin discussing attainable food-related goals.
“The SGA’s purpose here is to say what students are saying about food issues,” Nonweiler said. “So rather than small organizations trying to guess, we have a better assessment of more than 1,200 students who said certain things about the food that we think is valuable.”
Campus Sustainability Coordinator on the Food Committee and Food Cluster leader Natalie Valentin ’15 stressed the importance of the survey to the Food Cluster in that the information it provided will be used for educational purposes.
“Knowing what misconceptions are out there is critical for educating people, and knowing what the general student population cares about is essential to creating a more inclusive movement,” Valentin said. “We have a wonderful collection of students on campus who are really passionate about food, but it is easy to get stuck in a bubble of our own enthusiasm and ideas. Through the food survey, we wanted to give everyone else a voice.”
Nonweiler summarized one of the primary functions of the survey as testing whether a food movement is even valuable to begin with.
Although Liddell stressed that many responses were moderate, the survey does show a trend of support for more sustainable food options. Just over 60 percent of student respondents voted ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ in response to the statement ‘Middlebury College should make a written commitment to take an active role in creating a more sustainable, healthy, and fair food system.’
“Every indication that we’ve gotten, especially with EatReal, is that this is a valuable movement and that it does have traction,” Nonweiler said. “It is becoming more active, and more students are jumping on board.”
(10/10/13 12:37am)
Eleven students, two staff members, and one faculty member are in the midst of completing their 20 hours of training to become peer advocates in a pilot program within the College’s Sexual Advocacy Oversight Committee (SAOC). The advocacy program marks a great leap forward for the SAOC, which as been working towards the formation of this group since 2008.
“The decision to form this group came from student concern, and the fact that students needs are not being met on this campus,” said Kristina Johansson ’14, a participant in the peer advocacy program.“We are really putting pressure on the administration to make more steps.”
A Sexual Assault Policy Working Group Report put forth in the 2005-2006 school year by a group headed by Dean of Academic Affairs Tim Spears, then serving as Dean of the College, was responsible for the formation of the SAOC, the umbrella organization within which the new peer advocacy group will operate.
The recommendations put forth by the ’05-’06 working group led to the formation of the 2007-2008 Task Force on the Status of Women, which released a report in March 2008 in which the members expressed the need for an advocacy program.
There was also a large student protest in 2008, in which students called upon the administration to proactively address sexual assault on campus.
President of the College Ronald D. Leibowitz officially sanctioned the SAOC in the fall of 2008, and in the winter of 2009, the SAOC launched a broad assessment of the needs and resources within the student body.
According to Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs and Student Life Karen Guttentag, the SAOC’s assessment found that students who had experienced sexually distressing events were underutilizing the confidential resources available at the College.
Title IX, the law that mandates gender non-discrimination, also mandates educational institutes to report incidences of sexual violence, except when the victim chooses to disclose the incident to medical or religious professionals.
Confidential resources available to students on campus include the counseling center, the Health center, the Chaplin’s office, and Women’s Safe. Aside from the staff members in these offices, all other faculty members are not bound by confidentiality, and are required to respond to any incidents that constitute gender-based discrimination, sexual harassment, or sexual assault.
According to Guttentag, Title IX initially carried the intent of ensuring colleges and universities responded appropriately to incidents of on-campus sexual assault and were not brushing these cases under the rug. However, the transparency mandated by Title IX has translated into a perceived lack of confidentiality surrounding the incidents. As a result, the legally mandated college policies appear to disincentivize students to divulge cases of sexual assault to College administrators.
“There is a tension there between what our obligations are to the law and the good spirit behind it, and recognizing a critical aspect of helping survivors to find their balance again — which involves honoring their wishes, letting them define what their needs are, and supporting them to make their own choices and decisions about the course of action they want to take,” Guttentag said. “That may not be charging in and launching an investigation.”
Student organizers responsible for the newly-formed peer advocacy group hope that it will serve as solution that will balance students’ needs to have access to critical information and support, while still allowing them to maintain control over the pace and direction that any outcome or any resulting actions would take.
According to Sophie Morse ’11, who was active in the SAOC up until her senior year, gathering widespread support for the formation of a peer advocacy group was not easy.
“We felt that the College needed advocates, and I wanted to create a program where we had a combination of staff, faculty and student advocates in order to provide survivors with different options,” Morse wrote in an email. “Some of the members agreed with me, and we drafted a proposal but we didn’t have the full support of the committee and the college lawyers raised the issue of granting confidentiality to a large group of people. As of when I graduated in spring of 2011, no action had been taken to hire a full-time advocate or to create an advocacy program.”
Morse’s vision has come to fruition this semester. The team has almost completed the twenty-hour minimum training required by Vermont statue 1614 to become a confidential rape crisis resource.
The College redesigned the job description for the Director of Health and Wellness Education in order to bring someone who could bring the skill set necessary to head this advocacy program. Barbara McCall was hired to the position in June, and when McCall assumed her position this school year, the advocates were ready to train.
McCall said the twenty-hour training involved talks from public safety and community groups such as Women’s Safe, among other training activities.
“Some of the [training] components include digging deeper into what is sexual violence, why does it happen, what sort of cultural components support it, and what does it specifically look like on a college campus?” McCall said.
Johansson stressed the need for the advocates to know more than just the policies.
“I hope we can delve more into the complexities of rape culture, and also the psychological responses such as PTSD and anxiety,” Johansson said. “There is a wide array of response to [sexual violence] that we should have a knowledge of before we start answering phones and giving support.”
While the training for the advocates has begun, the logistics of the programs operations are still nebulous.
“One of the big exciting questions we are getting to answer is ‘what is this going to look like? Will it be a hotline or soft line? What are the other ways folks can access the group?’” McCall said.
The advocates have talked about the possibility of holding office hours in addition to a hotline or a soft line. There is also continuing debate over the confidentiality issue as to whether the advocates will have to report if a victim appears to present danger to herself or himself.
Alexandra Strott ’15, another student advocate, believes more student participation is necessary and lamented that administrative decisions had limited the group’s size.
“I think there should be more advocates in the future,” Strott said. “It’s an investment, and there is no reason we could not have had more people in the group. A lot of people were turned down from being an advocate, and ideally no one would be turned down.”
Guttentag stressed the need to keep the program small initially, while she also stressed no one was comfortable with the idea of denying information to members of the community who wanted to use it.
“We decided in the middle of that process, we should offer additional resources so we could not only train these advocates but also meet that broader interest for community members,” Guttentag said.
Such resources include workshops available to the whole student body on how to support a friend who may have been attacked.
According to Johansson, the sexual assault advocacy program should be running by November. Johansson expressed her frustration in the timing of the launch, as the advocates were initially intended to complete their training before the semester started.
“There is a lot of urgency for anti-sexual assault work on this campus, and I don’t think the administration has been meeting students’ needs at a fast enough pace.” Johansson said. “The advocacy program has been in the works for years, and we were meant to be trained during the summer which didn’t happen.”
“It’s frustrating because most sexual assaults happen to first-years within the first six weeks of school ... I had hoped the program would be ready by orientation so we could introduce ourselves and get our faces known,” she added.
As for the future of the program, Barbara McCall is hopeful.
“We have an amazing group of people. The training has been fabulous,” said McCall. “It’s been a pleasure to work with them, and I know that I’m thrilled to be working with this program. I can’t wait to see where it takes off from this point.”
(09/26/13 1:29am)
A group of nine faculty members hosted a series of seven forum discussions last week to encourage a community conversation about protest and civility on campus in light of the vandalism of the flag memorial on Sept. 11. The forum events, which took place from Monday, Sept. 16 to Thursday, Sept. 19, attracted minimal attendance among students despite the initial outrage in response to the vandalism.
“The occasion for these meetings is the destruction of the 9/11 memorial earlier this week, but our larger purpose will be to consider together the responsibilities we have as an academic community to treat one another with respect and tolerance, even as we pursue political and social agendas that sometimes divide us,” wrote Vice President of Academic Affairs Tim Spears in an all-school email.
Professor Rebecca Kneale Gould, senior lecturer in the Department of Environmental Studies held a session on Wednesday, Sept. 17.
“I think that the whole event and response to the event stirred up a lot of emotion,” said Gould. “So those of us who offered to hold some conversational sessions did so precisely so that people could talk [in small groups and confidentially]. We also wanted to make sure that conversations didn’t happen in disrespectful ways, as can be the case when they occur online and anonymously.”
Gould saw her job mainly as to hold a space for discussion and to make sure the discussion didn’t fall into ad-homonym attacks. She emphasized her role as a moderator to make sure everyone felt safe and mutually respected.
“The mere fact that people know that this is going on is useful for the college community,” said Gould. “In response to this event, we are not professors standing up on the stage saying, ‘you should think this and I think that;’ rather, we are just facilitating a meaningful conversation.”
Professor of Religion James Calvin Davis said that his own study of political discourse prompted him to lead a discussion. He authored a book in 2010 called In Defense of Civility: How Religion Can United America on Seven Moral Issues that Divide Us, in which he argues that our political discourse lacks any semblance of civility. He argues that contrary to public opinion, religion may not actually be a genesis for incivility but rather a resource for approaching civil discourse through mutual respect.
“When my own college community got around to talking about it, I jumped at the chance to participate,” said Davis. “I think there were some people in the administration who had the concern that these discussions had the potential to be less than civil, but I had the sense that students were going to take it seriously and were going to want to talk about it.”
Peter Murray ’13.5, who attended three of the discussions, said that the conversations took a little while to get going but Gould and Davis’s discussions turned into a larger question not just about the protest but about what 9/11 means to us.
“I was sort of surprised at some people’s reactions,” said Murray. “It seemed like generally, people thought that the act of taking the flags out of the ground was a mistake and recognized that even the student who did it thought it was a mistake. At the same time, we are willing to entertain the discussion about what these flags mean — what they mean about imperialism, and the sort of nationalistic connotations of the flag.”
Beyond discussion surrounding the use of the American flag versus other types of commemorations, the discussions branched beyond the specific incident to encompass broader issues.
Perhaps the most emphasized point was the nature of the Internet and specifically the student body’s response to the incident both online and around campus. Davis focused on this in his discussion.
“We were all brought together because of a particular act of protest that was judged by many to be out of bounds, to be disrespectful, but of course the response online to that has been disturbing,” said Davis. “I think it was good for us also to talk about that, that the expectations of accountability are not only on these kinds of occasions of protest but for those of us who are reacting to them.”
Davis was referring to the many comments on social media websites that were laden with personal threats and accusations towards those who destroyed the memorial site.
Dean of the College Shirley Collado echoed this sentiment.
“It was disappointing to see the lack of student turnout for the discussions. I find that there is a shortage of that here and too much reliance on communicating in the abyss of the Internet and blogosphere. We need more face-to-face dialogue that allows students to own what they believe and learn across differences,” she wrote in an email.
One of the most important takeaways Murray saw in Davis’s conversation was the importance of being civil even in protest.
“One of the points I took away from Davis’s discussion was civility isn’t sort of this old stodgy sentiment about keeping things in line,” said Murray. “We must recognize how to be civil even when we are trying to disrupt in a more tangible or unexpected way.”
Reem Rosenhaj ’16.5, who attended the Sept. 19 discussion, said, “I noticed in the discussion that there was definitely more people there who were from a certain social circle which maybe didn’t include those people who had more aggressive reactions.”
Rosenhaj expressed a desire to continue similar open and respectful community discussion series.
“I think it would be great if we could have an all student facilitated discussion although I’m not sure if it would be realistically as productive now as having a faculty member there, which would keep it inclusive to all students,” she added.
Looking towards the future, Davis said, “I think it is a stretch to say that an hour long conversation, or even five of those is going to accomplish much of anything. What we have accomplished is the start of a habit of talking about these things. I think this will catch if [we] each say that we need to take ownership of the tenor of our conversations on campus.”
(03/13/13 4:38pm)
Throughout the spring semester, the Middlebury College Organic Farm (MCOF) will be making several changes to its current operations, including the introduction of chickens for eggs and meat, the allocation of plots of land to different student organizations and the incorporation of new seeds and farming techniques.
Perhaps the most notable addition to the farm is the chickens. Senior Co-Director of the Organic Farm Katie Michels ’15 said that this spring the farm plans to introduce 12 egg-laying birds as well as 40 chickens that will be raised for later consumption.
With the exception of honeybees in the past, MCOF does not keep any animals. The introduction of the chickens will mark the beginning of the farm’s animal product and by-product operations.
The farm received permission to bring the chickens to campus from the College’s Facilities and Services Office this spring, and three weeks ago they received an Environmental Council Grant to sponsor the project.
Michels said, “[The addition of the chickens] is mostly inspired by the idea that you can’t just produce vegetables. We need animals to eat vegetable waste and to fertilize the vegetables, so they’ll complete the cycle of the farm.”
In terms of other additions to the farm, the MCOF organizers have a project underway to introduce cultural gardens, new plots for student organizations on campus. The farm has been a frequent supplier to the College’s dining services over the years, selling bulk orders of products such as chard, basil and squash.
Michels expressed hopes that these changes will allow for the creation of a new educational space on campus for students interested in food and farm studies.
“We could just keep selling to Dining [Services],” said Michels, “But I think we have more potential as an educational space, and as a place to grow food for a school that’s really interested in food.”
In order to follow through with this mission, the farm plans to allocate plots of land — cultural gardens — to various student groups who show an interest. According to Michels, Hillel has already reserved a plot.
The farm’s staff would care for the gardens over the summer, and then in the fall, the farm will throw a cultural harvest festival where student organizations can cook from their garden “in hopes to create an outdoor community space to share food and conversation,” according to Food and Farm Educator Sophie Esser Calvi.
This project builds upon the farm’s outstanding partnership with Weybridge House, which has sourced its food from the farm since last summer. Farm organizers are also attempting to cement their relationship with Dolci, the College’s student-run restaurant.
Michels stressed the importance of the farm to Dining Service’s access to locally grown foods.
“We’re starting to grow nice lettuces, herbs and other specific things that Dolci uses frequently, so they can get it from us rather than from far away,” said Michels of the farm’s plans for the spring semester.
Not only is the farm expanding its presence on campus this spring, but the farm is also experimenting with new seed varieties and planting techniques. They have recently received a large seed donation from Renees Garden company, a seed distributor located in California.
“The farm is a place where we do what the students want to learn,” said Esser Calvi. “For instance, we will practice different growing methods. We are also growing different varieties of produce this year such as four different types of radish, beets etc. We’ll be doing trials and basically testing [the different] varieties.”
Farm volunteers will be working with many plants that are not typically grown in Vermont climates. According to Senior Co-Director Ari Lattanzi ’13, the farm organizers have hopes of finding a crop that can be grown in this climate with few losses. The directors of MCOF could then share these findings and advise other farmers in the area who do not have the ability to take risks with crop experimentation due to financial instability.
“We’re talking about trying several different techniques, maybe biodynamic farming, [which] is planting with the seasons and the cycles of the moon,” said Lattanzi of the new farming techniques. “[Another technique] is permaculture, a type of low-input farming that involves less interference in the lifecycles of the plants once they are established.”
“The farm will grow because there’s this new energy for a food and agriculture studies program, and there’s more land that we could expand into,” added Lattanzi. “We’re making sure the farm has something for everyone.”