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(03/17/16 3:10am)
On the eve of Commencement 1985, a student crept into the meadow where McCardell Bicentennial Hall stands today, took a blowtorch to a tall, boxy sculpture and burned it.
The sculpture, a four-sided closet-sized metal building with panels of six playing cards on one side and an entrance door painted with flags of six countries on the other, was never meant to be so provocative. Vito Acconci, who was the Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Visiting Professor of Studio Art at the time, built the structure — titled Way Station I (Study Chamber) — with the help of students in his Winter Term class in 1983. It was intended to “offer a quiet space for refuge and contemplation,” according to the Committee for Art in Public Places.
Despite this placid intention, the structure sparked fierce objections from the student body in 1983 and 1984.
Angry students complained of both the structure’s aesthetic and its location. One student called it “a tool shed intended to withstand the apocalypse.” Another told The Campus that he was starting a petition to advocate for the removal of the sculpture because he found it “to be very poorly built and I see no aesthetic value in it whatsoever.” Four times the sculpture had to be repainted because of graffiti.
And then, there was the burning.
For Director of the Art Museum and current Chair of the Committee for Art in Public Places Richard Saunders, the destruction of Way Station I (Study Chamber), one of the College’s only pieces of public art at the time, was alarming.
“I thought it was shocking, personally, that at a liberal arts college that has one its underpinnings as a belief in free speech that a group of people could destroy something that had been commissioned by the College,” said Saunders.
Saunders was charged by President of the College Olin Clyde Robison to clean up the controversy surrounding Way Station I (Study Chamber). Saunders’ subsequent work to bring the artist back to the College for discussions and restore the structure produced the idea behind the Committee for Art in Public Places (CAPP): Saunders, along with Middlebury sculptor Eric Nelson, decided that the best way to reintroduce Way Station I (Study Chamber) to the College was in the context of more public art.
In 1994, after many years of informal efforts by Saunders and others to bring more public art to the College, the Committee for Art in Public Places was formally established and the College adopted a “One Percent for Art” policy. This policy set aside one percent of the cost of any renovation or new construction project at the College with a budget of one million dollars or more for the purchasing and maintenance of public art installations.
As a result, Middlebury College is one of the few small colleges in the U.S. with such an extensive campus-wide sculpture collection and a formal commitment to the promotion of public art.
Today, CAPP has brought over twenty new pieces of public art to the College. The committee also refurbished Way Station I (Study Chamber) in 2013, relocating it to a more secluded spot east of the Mahaney Center for the Arts.
CAPP is composed of a board of faculty, students, administrators and trustees of the College who evaluate proposed donated art works and purchases and prioritize prospective sites for future projects. Over time, CAPP hopes to make its collection more inclusive and diverse in terms of artists’ gender, ethnicity and nationality.
Just this fall, CAPP unveiled its newest addition to the collection, Chaos Xaxis, which was donated to the College by an anonymous donor. Chaos Xaxis stands 14 feet tall and is located between the Axinn Center for Starr Library and Route 7.
Despite these goals and developments, however, CAPP finds itself in a curious state of limbo. In 2009, the “One Percent for Art” policy was suspended by former president Ron Liebowitz due to financial struggles following the 2008 market recession. The Board of Trustees ordered CAPP to stop purchasing new works and to use their endowment only for the maintenance of current art or the installation of donated art.
Saunders is hopeful that with a new president may come the return of the “One Percent for Art” policy.
President Laurie L. Patton commended the unveiling of the Chaos Xaxis sculpture in September 2015.
“We are thrilled to have this prominent sculpture find a permanent home on the Middlebury campus,” she said. As of now, Patton has made no formal statements about her thoughts on reinstating the “One Percent for Art” policy.
Saunders hopes the College’s commitment to public art continues because public art promotes thoughtful conversation on a college campus.
“What we need to do is to have this campus art collection be an opportunity for a dialogue and an exchange of ideas and just becoming aware,” said Saunders. “We need to be at least working in the direction of visual literacy.”
Shannon Hutteman ’16, an art history and economics double major who is one of the student members of CAPP, also believes that public art is part of the College’s educational experience.
“The public art displayed in our buildings brings a depth to our everyday learning environment, whether it be for learning or simply the pleasure of viewing,” said Hutteman. “Art can command our attention in ways that allow us to pause and reflect on what we see, and perhaps on a deeper level, learn what our perceptions of said works tell us about ourselves.”
(03/13/16 9:01pm)
During Winter Term, the dining halls welcomed a new brew at the beverage station: coffee by local roaster Vermont Coffee Company. Based in Middlebury Vermont, coffee from the Vermont Coffee Company is fair-trade and certified organic. The move to serve it in the dining halls has allowed the College to meet its promise to serve 30 percent Real Food in the dining halls by 2016.
The switch from New England Coffee, served in dining halls previously, to Vermont Coffee Company, is receiving hearty approval from the student body.
In an online survey conducted by The Campus, 81 percent of the 105 students surveyed said they noticed a change in the dining hall coffee. Seventy percent of students said they “like” or “love” the new coffee, whereas only four percent of students reported liking the New England Coffee and 64 percent said they “disliked” or “detested” it. None of the students surveyed said they “loved” the old coffee.
The majority of students said that they like the new coffee because they think it has a better taste than a cup of the New England Coffee.
The Decision to Switch
Executive Director of Food Service Operations Dan Detora was the driving force behind the move to Vermont Coffee Company. Detora explained to The Campus that refreshing the College’s coffee inventory has been on his radar since at least fall 2014 after Dining Services received multiple complaints.
“I don’t think it was anything specific, just the fact that we received a lot of [comments like], ‘The coffee is terrible,’” Detora said. “It just wasn’t a high-quality coffee.”
Detora considered a switch to Vermont Coffee Company’s locally-roasted, fair-trade organic coffee after the business moved to its new headquarters on Exchange Street. Last summer, VCC helped the College to secure specially sourced brews for the Language Schools’ 100 Year Celebration.
“We were trying to do desserts and coffees from different countries, and they helped us with that,” Detora explained.
Since then, Detora said the College has a “great relationship” with the Vermont Coffee Company. When Dining Services, in partnership with the SGA, decided to upgrade coffee in the dining halls, they chose Vermont Coffee Company to increase the College’s use of Real Food. Real Food is food that meets certain criteria such as ‘local- and community-based,’ ‘fair,’ ‘ecologically sound’ and ‘humane.’
“When President Leibowitz committed to 30 percent Real Food, we were at roughly 23-27 percent when he signed that agreement last year,” Detora said. “[Vermont Coffee Company] came in, and we did some tasting, but the big thing was that they met our Real Food criteria. That was about $125,000 [of the dining budget] switched over to Real Food, which got us over that 30 percent to meet our goal. So we got a better product and better Real Food, and it was basically awash in terms of funding.”
The increased expense, however, encouraged Dining Services to economize. SGA President Ilana Gratch ’16 was collaborating with Detora to establish 10 O’clock Ross when Dining Services considered the coffee change. They decided to open Ross Dining Hall later on weekends, from 7:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. This minimized food waste and reduced labor costs, and helped shrink the expense of high-quality coffee.
Eat Real Weighs In
Eat Real, the student group which encouraged the College to sign the Real Food agreement in 2014, published an op-ed entitled “Wake Up and Smell the (Fair-Trade, Organic) Coffee!” in The Campus in January, applauding the switch to the Vermont Coffee Company.
“We are excited by Dining Service’s commitment to supporting real food and the values real food represents,” said Eat Real Co-Presidents Sarah Koenigsberg ’17 and Elaine Forbush ’17 in their op-ed.
Eat Real has been collaborating with the College for the past three years by helping them identify foods served in the dining hall that could be switched to Real Foods without too much extra cost. In the past, Eat Real assisted Dining Services in their switch to local beef for hamburgers and local, organic tofu.
While Eat Real celebrates the improvements that the dining halls have embraced thus far, the group is far from satisfied. Eat Real research interns are currently examining other food options that could be switched to Real Foods like buying whole chickens as opposed to chicken breasts. Moreover, the interns are also working on collecting data to help encourage the College to bump up their Real Food agreement to 50 percent Real Food.
Eat Real urges the College and students to become cognizant of the changes they can provoke with their food choices.
“We encourage the Middlebury community to recognize the purchasing power we have as a residential college that feeds thousands of people multiple meals a day,” Koenigsberg and Forbush wrote. “It’s easy to forget the flaws inherent in our modern food system when we only see the food that magically appears in our buffets every day.”
Coffee Sales Around Campus
According to our survey, 39 percent of students report that they buy less coffee now than they did when New England Coffee was served in the dining halls.
How is this change affecting coffee sales at vendors around campus?
Detora said it’s too early to know. Vermont Coffee Company was available at Crossroads and Wilson Cafés before the upgrade inside the dining halls.
Birgitta Cheng ’17, one of four student managers of Crossroads Café, reports that coffee sales at Crossroads have remained consistent despite the new coffee in the dining halls.
“We cater to students on specialty drinks more [than drip coffee],” said Cheng. “Our drip coffee sales usually come from faculty and staff who come to get a drink between work shifts so they are not going to the dining hall anyways.”
Cheng estimates that Crossroads sells approximately 200 cups of coffee per day.
Still, even if sales at some College vendors do decline slightly, buying more coffee from the same vendor will lower costs for the College. Previously, College vendors bought coffee from 14 different coffee companies; Crossroads alone served three different companies’ coffee.
Now Vermont Coffee Company is the only coffee served anywhere at the College.
“Because we went to Vermont [Coffee Company], we increased our purchasing power with them,” Detora said. “They decreased the price of the product pretty considerably so we feel that any sales loss would be picked up by the price savings we have overall.”
(03/03/16 2:47am)
For local Vermont farmers Marjorie Susman and Marian Pollack, cheesemaking has been a way of life since 1982. The proud owners and primary operators of Orb Weaver Farm in New Haven, Vt., Susman and Pollack produce two artisan cheeses sold exclusively in Vermont, including at local businesses 51 Main, the Champagne & Sparkling Wine Bar, Otter Creek Bakery and the Middlebury Co-op.
On their sprawling 100-acre farm located just west of Camel’s Hump Mountain, Susman and Pollack dedicate their winters to making artisan cheese from November to May. Following the European tradition, these women stir, form, wax and date-stamp each wheel of cheese they produce by hand, without the mechanical stirrers or hydraulic presses which have become increasingly ubiquitous in the commercial cheese industry.
Using these methods, Orb Weaver produces their Farmhouse and Cave-Aged cheeses. These two unique cheeses — Susman describes the Farmhouse as “a good all around cheese” whereas the Cave-Aged is denser and more complex — share the same recipe but differ in taste because of their individual aging processes.
The Farmhouse Cheese is waxed and aged in a walk-in refrigerator for eight months. In contrast, the Cave-Aged is not wax and is placed in their cheese cave — a stone cave resembling the Hobbit’s house built into a hillside near their barn — for three years of aging.
With little to no cheesemaking experience, Susman and Pollack developed their cheese recipe by experimenting in their kitchen in the early 1980s.
“Because nobody was making cheese at that point, there was no one to ask questions of: there was no cheese council,” said Susman. “We just sort of put our heads down and went for it.”
Since their inauspicious beginnings, Orb Weaver Farm cheese has gained national acclaim, including several recognitions from the American Cheese Society in various categories.
“We have kind of a national reputation, although we never tried to get it,” explained Pollack.
Although there is demand for their cheese in New York City and Boston, Susman and Pollack have decided to only sell to local Vermont businesses.
“It is really important to us to keep the cheese local,” Susman said.
Because they’ve been in the business for so long, Orb Weaver Cheese has become a staple of this region.
“We’ve met grown-ups now who were raised on our cheese,” Susman said. The Penny Cluse Café in Burlington, Vt., even serves an Orb Weaver sandwich.
In addition, Orb Weaver Farm is unique because it is one of the few farms in Vermont that is owned and operated exclusively by women.
The number of female farmers is on the rise nationally and in Vermont. In 2012, the year of the last agricultural census, female farmers controlled seven percent of all farmland and accounted for three percent of sales.
USDA data on farming shows that Vermont has one of the highest percentages of women farmers in the country. Thirty-nine percent of Vermont farmers are women, totaling nearly 5,000 female farmers in the state.
More than 22 percent of Vermont’s female famers are the principal operators of their farm, meaning that they are the person in charge of the farm’s day-to-day operations.
While these figures suggest that women are making significant strides into the previously male-dominated industry of farming, numbers take a sharp turn south when considering ownership.
Thus, while Susman and Pollack are part of this growing trend of female farmers, they are also unusual in two ways. First, their entrance into farming in 1981 placed them at the forefront of this wave of female farmers.
“When we moved here, our neighbors thought we were just two rich kids with a trust fund,” Pollack remembered. “But we proved ourselves hard workers.”
“Now our neighbors say, ‘we don’t know anybody who works like you girls,’” Susman added.
Second, Susman and Pollack distinguish themselves from the vast majority of female farmers because most female farmers are often only farm operators, not owners.
Susman and Pollack believe their gender contributes to some of the success of their farm.
“Men bring a different energy to an operation,” Pollack said. “They are restless.”
Susman suggested that women are more likely to be content with a smaller-scale business, like Orb Weaver’s, than male farmers.
Still, cautioned Pollack, women are not inherently better farmers.
“I think it’s a level-playing field,” Pollack said. “It depends on your skill as a farmer.”
(01/28/16 1:10am)
On Dec. 21, 2015, Associate Chaplain Naila Blaloch at the College’s Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life was awarded the Vermont Women in Higher Education Carol A. Moore Scholarship. The scholarship celebrates women who are working in higher education, show dedication to women’s leadership and intend to pursue further degrees. The scholarship consists of $1,000 towards furthering the recipient’s career.
“We want our students to thrive and grow, and Naila helps us create the kind of community where that can happen. She keeps up with world affairs so that she can relate to the concerns that students experience while they are studying, sometimes far from home,” said Chaplain of the College Laurel Jordan in support of Blaloch’s application for the scholarship.
Baloch plans to apply her scholarship towards her education in Mental Health Counseling through an M.S. degree from the University of Massachusetts in Boston. She already holds a B.A. in Astrophysics and Comparative Religion from Williams College and a Masters in Theological Studies specialising in Islamic Ministry from Harvard University.
“I am honored and delighted to be offered the Carol A. Moore scholarship, and through it to be connected to a community of Vermont women who come together to support each other and dream up possibilities for a brighter, more beautiful world, where each of us has an opportunity to be our best self and offer our gifts in service to others,” Blaloch said.
(12/03/15 1:17am)
In a meeting on December 1, the fate of a 145-year-old historical document was decided: the College’s yearbook.
The first edition of the Kaleidoscope was produced in 1873. Since that time, the yearbook has undergone a variety of changes as print and digital technology have evolved and student interest in the publication has waned and waxed.
This year, prompted by discussions on how little students know about the yearbook and how few students want to participate in making in, the SGA sent out a survey to evaluate current student opinion towards the Kaleidoscope. For years, the Kaleidoscope has been one of the top recipients of SGA funding – yet there has been little conversation about whether the yearbook merits the thousands of dollars it is allocated annually.
After gathering their results, SGA representatives met this week with staff who help create the yearbook and administrators to address their survey findings, as well as budget and production concerns. At the forefront of everyone’s minds: do students continue to value the yearbook in today’s age of social media?
History
According to alumnus and historian David Stameshkin, “Before the first Kaleidoscope was printed, students paid for a special edition of the annual catalogue, which had extra pages listing student groups and their members; but the yearbook has been published nearly every year since its first issue in 1865.”
The first Kaleidoscopes little resembled today’s typical yearbooks: they were small pamphlets with pages for student groups and societies, listing the leadership and members of those groups. The name and year of each student at the College appeared in the Kaleidoscope, but fewer than 100 students attended the College each year in the 19th century. There were no photographs — cameras were not widely accessible at this time.
The first thirty years of the Kaleidoscope’s production were rocky. The Kaleidoscope was produced each year as a pamphlet from 1873 to 1881, but then production stopped. The publication returned, now in bound book form, in 1894.
In 1900, the yearbook briefly assumed a new name, The Laurea, evidently in an attempt to transform itself into a publication with staying power. The yearbook continued as The Laurea in 1901 but after that year, yearbook production again halted.
In 1909, yearbook production resumed again under the old name of the Kaleidoscope. Since 1909, the Kaleidoscope has been created and printed every year, excepting only one: in 1920, World War One prohibited yearbook production and, in general, interrupted campus life as male students left the College to go to war.
In the early years of the Kaleidoscope, the book was created by a group of about three students each year. All the pages were handwritten and then mailed to a printing press in Rutland, Vermont. Later, the book was typed and then sent away for printing. The speed of the typewriter allowed the yearbook to grow and with it the yearbook staff: in the 1920s, a group of around 16 students were responsible for production. Into the late 20th century, creating the yearbook was a student activity, operating like other student organizations today.
The Yearbook Today
In recent years, the Kaleidoscope has been created by a group of two to three unpaid students in collaboration with the Office of Communications. While certain elements of the yearbook are staples from year to year—such as senior portraits and photos and records from athletic teams and student organizations—these students have significant editorial power in deciding what goes into the book.
Editor-in-chief of Middlebury Magazine Matt Jennings serves as faculty advisor for the Kaleidoscope. He teaches yearbook student editors “best practices” and helps them make important editorial decisions.
Unlike at schools such as Dartmouth College where the yearbook staff is mostly composed of photographers, the Kaleidoscope staff largely obtains content from other sources such as Athletic Communications, the Study Abroad Office and Jostens, who takes senior portraits. From September through the winter, the yearbook editors devote themselves to gathering photos and other materials to fill the book.
In the spring, after collecting 90 percent of their content, lay out begins and editors collaborate with the staff of Jostens, a company that sells class rings, class tags and graduation apparel in addition to producing yearbooks. In mid to late summer, the Kaleidoscope is in production with Jostens and editors review proofs of the book. Once approved, it is printed in early fall and mailed free of charge to that year’s graduates. About 800 copies are printed each year.
As the Kaleidoscope contains no commercial advertising, funding for the yearbook comes almost exclusively from the SGA budget. The cost of production, printing and shipping the yearbook totals about $42,500 each year, or four percent of the entire SGA budget. This entire sum is paid to Jostens each year.
Uses of the Yearbook
The Kaleidoscope has many other uses outside of being a nostalgic token for graduates. For alumni planning their reunions, the Kaleidoscope is instrumental. The book helps them and the Alumni Office develop programming and, in particular, create the class books distributed at the 25th and 50th reunions. In addition, Middlebury Magazine regularly uses the Kaleidoscope for its Then & Now section.
One of the most important uses of the Kaleidoscope is as a historical document recording the people, events and ideas of a year. For the archivists in Special Collections, the yearbook is an invaluable way to learn about the College’s past.
“We refer to them all the time,” Director of Special Collections Rebekah Irwin said. “It’s often a second point of research to understand what [was] happening at the College.”
Irwin says the yearbook is priceless for learning about student life at the College, the College’s important figures such as Common’s heads and the history of students of color. Classes, in particular history courses, often visit Special Collections to examine the Kaleidoscope as well as other historical documents.
The SGA Survey
In a survey emailed out on October 28, the SGA attempted to gauge student opinion on the Kaleidoscope. The survey had 682 respondents who were relatively well distributed across the class years.
The survey found that 86.2 percent of respondents did not know that all graduating seniors are mailed a copy of the Kaleidoscope for free.
Student responses were mixed as to whether the yearbook was a good use of the student activities fee. Only one third of students believed it was; the majority of surveyed students thought otherwise. Twenty-nine percent of students said that the money should be allocated to student organizations and on campus activities, instead. Another 20 percent of students said a cheaper alternative should be found. Eighteen percent of students had no preference.
Despite the generally lukewarm support for the Kaleidoscope, 19 percent of respondents indicated that they would be interested in a paid position to help produce the yearbooks.
Chair of the Finance Committee Aaron de Toledo ’16, who has been involved in discussions about the yearbook since last summer, explained the value of the survey results to the SGA.
“At the end of the day, the SGA and specifically the Finance Committee, we are an allocation body that is allocating money based on student activities and student interest,” said de Toledo. “This is a big allocation of money that we want to know how students feel about it. [The survey] provided some valuable insight there.”
Changes This Year
Difficulties producing last year’s Kaleidoscope have resulted in changes in the production of the yearbook and even discussions in its general value.
During the 2014-15 academic year, the student editor of the Kaleidoscope abandoned the job before the finishing the yearbook. Completion of the yearbook fell to Jennings, along with the staff at Jostens. The 2015 yearbook, typically distributed in early fall, has yet to mailed to graduated seniors.
This episode revealed the folly of the Kaleidoscope relying on unpaid students to produce the yearbook. In order to ensure the commitment of this year’s student editors, Vice President of Marketing and Communications Bill Burger approved a new budget so student editors of the Kaleidoscope will be paid by the College as student employees.
“By making it a paid position, the hope was that someone would really commit to it and that ultimately you might get a better product,” said Burger.
Funding for these paid positions, which are B and C level positions on the student employment wage scale, is coming partially from the Office of Communications and partially from the SGA operating budget. Students are currently being interviewed for the position of this year’s editor-in-chief of the Kaleidoscope.
The SGA hopes these paid positions will allow student involvement in the yearbook to grow so that the Kaleidoscope is no longer being made by one person but by a passionate staff.
More changes to the Kaleidoscope may be in store as a result of the Dec. 1 meeting. President of the SGA Ilana Gratch ’16 said one of the biggest takeaways of the meeting for her was learning that the cost of producing the yearbook, previously perceived to be “fixed”, is actually flexible. Switching from hardcover to soft-cover, scaling down the yearbook and using paper of less quality are all possibilities that could help reduce the price of the Kaleidoscope.
De Toledo added that changes made this year are not necessarily permanent but are aimed at building a better future product.
“We’re not looking for a year long solution; we’re looking for a solution that will build quality and if we have a smaller scaled down product this year, it might be easier to build a quality product,” de Toledo said. “Then the next year, scale up a little bit and continue scaling up until the yearbook is where it has been in the past.”
The Future of the Yearbook
Some administrators attribute students’ lack of interest in the Kaleidoscope is the fact that a yearbook gains its value over time.
“Understandably, students today or very recent graduates don’t see a very great value in it and I understand why that’s the case,” Burger said. “It’s not nostalgia for them; it’s today.”
Still, the rise of social media and specifically Facebook makes some wonder if the need for a yearbook is obsolete. Others counter with worries about the feasibility of saving social media in the same way that the yearbook can be preserved.
“We’ve been a little frustrated in our efforts to preserve social media,” Irwin said, “because we can only essentially preserve a tiny slice of it. I am worried.”
Mikaela Taylor ’15, a post-graduate fellow in Special Collections, who along with the rest of the Class of 2015 has yet to receive her yearbook, said, “A book is something you will always be able interact with no matter what software you are using.”
Perhaps, instead of simply eliminating the Kaleidoscope, the publication should be updated to reflect today’s changing world. Many schools, according to Burger, are struggling with the same questions as the College: how can the yearbook be made relevant to the present generation?
“In the age of social media, there is a great need for innovation and for [the Kaleidoscope] to be really, really good,” Burger said. “Because the competition is so much greater, in effect, if it doesn’t keep evolving and it doesn’t keep getting better, I think it’s going to look more and more stale.”
“I’d love to see the student body come up with some creative solutions to this problem before the SGA completely eliminates the yearbook,” said Associate Dean of Students J.J. Boggs, who oversees the yearbook as one of many student organizations.
Jennings thinks the Kaleidoscope still has immense potential.
“I feel like we’ve never really gotten off the ground with what the yearbook could be,” Jennings said.
He envisions the Kaleidoscope as a memento that editorializes on the past year and provides an additional outlet for the College’s talented, burgeoning photographers.
It is this act of ‘editorializing’ that Irwin believes is most important about the yearbook.
“Its an important task to reflect on your experience and choose the pictures and the text that capture your years as a student. And most of us never do that,” Irwin said. “And in some ways, the yearbook asks a group of students to edit and reflect on their time at Middlebury … without asking a group of students to do that, then it [their four years] just passes by as a moment not reflected on.”
Some wonder what it says about the College’s community that the Kaleidoscope is less valued today than by previous generations.
“I think the fact that our community has not produced this document says a little more than just, ‘There aren’t three students doing it,’” Taylor said. “We aren’t really a cohesive community any more and we don’t really have a strong voice, a centralized voice on campus that says, ‘This is who we are.’ (…) I think it’s a lot more complex than: ‘Do you want a yearbook for your shelf?’”
(11/13/15 7:29pm)
According to the 2015 Annual Security & Fire Safety Report due to release this week, nine rapes were reported last year, one incident of forced fondling and three incidents of dating violence occurred on the College’s campus in 2014.
These statistics are hard to understand without some context. How does the College’s sexual assault rate compare to that of other colleges and universities?
A massive survey of over 150,000 college students is making answering that question more clear.
On September 21, 2015, the Association of American Universities, an elite higher education trade group, released the findings of a 27-school sexual assault climate survey, one of the largest surveys about sexual violence among college students in the United States to date.The survey found that about one in ten female college students say they have experienced sexual assault involving penetration, by force or incapacitation.
Specifically, 11.4 percent of undergraduate women and 14.8 percent of LGBTQ students experience sexual assault involving penetration or oral sex. One in five students experience unwanted sexual contact, such as forced kissing or groping, and half to three quarters of students said they had experienced sexual harassment.
The survey also found that risk for sexual assault for females was highest during their freshman year and steadily declined thereafter. Among freshman, 16.9 percent of women reported nonconsensual sexual contact — including penetrative rape, oral sex, kissing or groping — by physical force or incapacitation. That percentage declined to a low of 11.1 percent among senior females.
Finally, the survey revealed that only 28 percent or less of even the most serious sexual assault cases were reported to university officials or law enforcement. Nearly three quarters of assaults went unreported because the victim did not consider the incident “serious enough,” they were embarrassed or they did not think the university or police would do anything about it.
150,072 students responded to the survey, which had an overall response rate of 19.3 percent.
These new statistics highlight sexual assault as a significant issue across American college campuses.
Making a specific comparison between the College and this national average is difficult. Concrete figures on the number of unreported sexual assaults at the College are unavailable. Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs and Student Life Karen Guttentag estimates, however, that sexual assault rates at the College are on par with national averages.
Data from annual campus security reports dating back to 2002 reveal that an average of five sexual assaults are reported each year.
Alarmingly, higher rates of sexual assault were reported in 2013 and 2014 — the most recent years for which we have data — than any other years in the past decade. Notably, in 2013, 17 sexual assaults were reported to Public Safety, more than three times the number reported the year before. Two instances of dating violence were also reported.
So far in 2015, only one instance of sexual assault taking place on the College’s campus has been reported to Public Safety. At least one other alleged sexual assault was reported to the College but it took place while a student of the College was abroad, namely the John Doe case.
Vice President of Communications and Marketing Bill Burger asserts that the College is not satisfied even with a low sexual assault rate.
“We will never be satisfied until there are no reports of sexual assault of any kind on our campuses,” said Burger. “While we hope the drop in reported cases is a reflection of the education, awareness and prevention programs we have put in place in recent years and of the increased public attention being given to sexual assault on college campuses, we take no comfort in these numbers and we will continue to act aggressively to address the issue.”
Associate Professor of Psychology Matthew Kimble has been researching sexual assault and sexual trauma on several northeastern college campuses.
“One thing is clear … sexual assault occurs on all types of campuses and no campus is immune,” said Kimble. “Even if the rates at a given campus were relatively low, there would still be good reason for the community to be ready to respond well when an assault occurs as well as have programs in place to prevent assaults in the future.”
(11/13/15 7:23pm)
The advent of 10 o’clock Ross raises more questions than just cake or cereal.
The Student Government Association initiative, which began last week, is a new addition to the already tight SGA budget. The SGA will now pay a student monitor $50 a week to ensure students are generally peaceable and neat during the hour that Ross is open. This number may not seem much initially but it totals $1,400 a year—all just to pay a student to watch other students eat food.
This startling fact left us to wonder, how much money does the SGA have to spend? And how does it decide to allocate its funds? The Campus takes a look.
The Budget
The SGA has a budget of about 1.1 million dollars every year.
The budget comes from the Student Activities Fee, a part of all students’ tuition. This year each student at the College paid $410, the highest ever student activities fee. In recent years, the student activities fee has increased due to inflation and the increasing number of student organizations.
The specific amount of the fee used to be determined by the SGA Senate based on recommendations from the Finance Committee. That changed in 2013, when the SGA decided the fee would only increase by inflation plus one percent, similar to the College’s CP+1 policy dictating tuition increases.
The SGA also has a reserve fund of $75,000 of budget money left over from previous years that it can use for funding emergencies.
Awarding the Funds to Student Groups
This budget, presided over by the twelve-student Finance Committee, a sub-committee of the SGA, is responsible for allocating funding to over 140 student groups.
In general, in order to receive funding, a student group must be an SGA-approved student organization, with a Constitution and other specifications, in order to receive funding. These student organizations, from Riddim to the crew team to the debate team to the Campus, are sorted into one nineteen group clusters. Organizations then submit funding requests to the Finance Committee and their cluster managers for approval.
New student organizations are capped at $1,000 of funding in their first year. As student organizations age, the Finance Committee then considers how many students they are influencing with their group, how deeply students participate in the group and the organizations’ past budget requests.
The Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB) receives the greatest portion—30 percent or approximately $330,000—of the SGA Budget.
The SGA, another student group that the Finance Committee funds, is allocated approximately $44,000 of this budget each year. This money constitutes their operating budget, which pays for a variety of student services including break buses, newspapers, the Middcourses website, SGA publicity and helps subsidize the ACTR. It is this operating budget that is funding the 10 o’clock Ross student monitor.
Every once in a while, special initiatives proposed by individual students, not student groups, are funded. These initiatives must have the capacity to impact large numbers of students in a meaningful way. One recent example of a student initiative funded by the SGA is the Burgin Cabin, a four-sided backcountry shelter on the Rikert trail system that is intended be a warming hut for Rikert skiers and an overnight destination for students. This year, the SGA awarded approximately four percent of its total budget—the same as the SGA Operating Budget—to the Burgin Cabin initiative.
Funding Difficulties
The median funding allocation to student organizations is $2,130.
“Across the board, few student organizations get as much money as they ask for,” explained SGA President Ilana Gratch ’16, who served on the Finance Committee for three years. Each year, the Finance Committee receives about $200,000 in requests than it can afford to fund. This means that the Finance Committee must deny the full funding for about 18 percent of the requests it receives.
For some student groups, not receiving enough SGA funding is a huge challenge. Club sports, like crew in particular, often have huge equipment costs that can be difficult to cover if not met by the SGA budget. The SGA and the Finance Committee are looking into ways to share the cost of club sports with the Athletic Department.
It is important to note, though, that the Finance Committee has never awarded a student organization no money.
“We want to make as many things on campus happen as possible,” Chair of the Finance Committee Aaron de Toledo ’16 said. “But given that we want to make as many things on campus happen as possible, sometimes when an organization comes in and they have their best case scenario request and then their [limited budget], we may have to fund them on the more limited basis.”
(10/14/15 6:39pm)
Bernie Sanders, well known for his “democratic socialist” platform and veteran affairs activism, has found another way to distinguish himself from the other presidential candidates. He’s the leader of an all-star Kazoo band.
“It sounds like a swarm of patriotic bumblebees,” describes Josh Swartz ’14 in Bandwagon.
Bandwagon is a new podcast about “being a part of something bigger than yourself.” Each season explores a fan block of passionate everyday people, featuring music groupies, sports team fanatics and political advocates. The first season is devoted to Bernie Sanders supporters.
Swartz, a former Film and Media Studies and Sociology double major currently working in public radio, is the founder of Bandwagon. After the announcement of Bernie’s presidential bid in May, Swartz decided that following Bernie’s campaign would be the perfect entrance into the podcasting world when he noticed the parallel between the nature of the Bernie’s campaign and the goals of podcasting.
“Bernie’s whole message is starting a political revolution in the form of a grassroots movement where people in communities across the country kind of band together and basically fight the establishment,” said Swartz.
In the same way, podcasting is about reaching out to the general public and telling these significant everyday stories, explained Swartz. Both are focused on bringing the average American to the forefront of mainstream consciousness.
“What I’m really trying to do is personal storytelling and telling people’s stories that normally wouldn’t be told … to frame them against the backdrop of this really exciting political campaign,” said Swartz.
As Bandwagon’s only reporter, researcher, scriptwriter and mixer, Swartz has spent most of the past few months knee deep in the Bernie campaign.
Outside of work, Swartz spends hours reading every article he can find about the campaign. When he comes across an interesting quote from a Bernie fan, he contacts them for their “Bernie story.”
Increasingly, Swartz has been able to travel to Bernie rallies and fundraising events thanks to a Kickstarter month-long campaign that raised a total of $8,637.
For his first episode, Swartz traveled to Bristol, VT for a July 4th parade featuring Bernie’s All-Star Kazoo Band.
Contrary to the impressive image that the name evokes, Bernie’s All-Star Kazoo Band had never practiced before their march on Independence Day. Composed mostly of Vermont politicians and local Bernie fans, many participants had never picked up a kazoo before.
Motivated by their belief in the longest-serving Independent in US congressional history, the band members proudly tooted their kazoos, pulling behind them a six-foot high rolling Bernie 2016 sign.
“This land is Bernie’s land!” they chanted in their meeting before the march. “Can we get big money out of politics? Yes! How? Bernie Sanders!”
While the Bernie Sanders campaign is noteworthy for engaging the young voters — much like the Obama campaign in 2008 — it is criticized for attracting almost exclusively white liberals, mostly from the Northeast.
For future episodes, Swartz is working on collecting stories of Bernie supporters who break this stereotype. His next episode, coming out this weekend, will focus on an Illinois ex-Marine who changed his party allegiance from Republican to Independent as a result of Sanders’s Veteran Affairs work.
Swartz estimates that Bandwagon, which is available on iTunes, has a few thousand listeners so far. The podcast was selected by iTunes as “New & Noteworthy” a few weeks after launching and was featured on the iTunes homepage.
Scholar in Residence Sue Halpern, who worked with Swartz during his Narrative Journalism Fellowship at the College, has served as a sounding board for Bandwagon throughout its development.
“Despite the fact that there are something like 300,000 podcasts, there are no podcasts that cover the same territory as Bandwagon,” said Halpern. “It introduces us to people who are deeply passionate about something, whether it’s a political candidate or a place or a soccer team and so on, and brings us into their world, which will undoubtedly reveal [their world] to be more complex and nuanced than we might have imagined.”
(09/17/15 10:54pm)
Less than five miles from the College, one company is working to transport the benefits of Vermont agriculture to urban millennials across the United States.
A few years ago, Cam MacKugler ’09 was housesitting at a dairy farm in Middlebury when he had an epiphany. As he pulled weeds from the fertile soil, the former architecture major asked himself how he could simplify gardening for people who have no money, no time and no space. A few minutes later, he had sketched his first Seedsheet.
Today, MacKugler is the Founder and CEO of Cloudfarm, a company focused on designing products that allow anyone to experience the boon of a homegrown harvest. Cloudfarm’s first product is the Seedsheet, a woven polypropylene cloth interspersed with seedpods, perfectly spaced to ensure that a healthy garden will grow. The cloth separating the seedpods means that no weeding is necessary; the cloth only needs to be placed on top of soil and watered occasionally.
Seedsheet’s website describes the product as an “agricultural paint by numbers.”
“We are basically 3-D printing a garden and shipping it to you,” said MacKugler.
Handmade in Vermont and containing non-GMO Vermont seeds and soil, Seedsheets wear the tagline ‘Made in Vermont, proudly.'
So far, Cloudfarm and its unique Seedsheet have had impressive success. The company was launched on Kickstarter in November 2014 and in one month, Cloudfarm raised $30,664 from donations, a remarkable number considering that most Kickstarter cam- paigns raise less than $10,000. Investors, many of them local Vermonters in the agricultural sector, contacted MacKugler before the donation period had even closed.
Since producing their first Seedsheet on May 21, 2015, sales have been steadily increasing despite the fact that the true growing season, spring, is still months away. “It’s not a tough sell,” MacKugler explained. A 2014 report by the National Garden Association found that millennials (age 18 to 34) were the fastest growing population segment of food gardeners. Millennials spent an all-time high of $1.2 billion on food gardening in 2013.
Today, Cloudfarm sells 16 different types of Seedsheets — from flower Seedsheets to tea Seedsheets to “green smoothie” Seedsheets containing a variety of leafy greens — in five sizes ranging from a flower box to a large garden.
Recently, the innovative Seedsheet has been grabbing attention from media outlets and retailers alike. The Seedsheet was featured by USA Today, Fast Company, and Vice. In addition, the Home Depot agreed to sell Seedsheets online, and on September 24, Zulily will begin online sales, as well.
In the future, Cloudfarm hopes to expand to sell customizable Seedsheets, allowing consumers to mix-and-match any number of plants to grow, and to sell commercial Seedsheets large enough for a farmer to roll out over his fields.
Regardless of the company’s rapid growth and popularity, Cloudfarm is still committed to keeping its “Plant 1 Pledge 1” program that began during its Kickstarter campaign. “Plant 1 Pledge 1” gives investors an option to donate one Seedsheet to a school. True to its mission of making gardening simple for everyone, Cloudfarm is continuing this program and will feature a donation option on its website in the future.
MacKugler advised students of the College looking to replicate his entrepreneurial success to “use whatever means to prove early stage validation.” He suggested that entrepreneurs show their product to friends and investors for feedback that could be valuable.
“I definitely would be the biggest advocate for the liberal arts degree in the entrepreneurial world because every day you’re transitioning from building sales Excel files to coming up with a logo design,” he said.
MacKugler spoke to a Middview trip last weekend at the Cloudfarm offices, giving them similar advice. This summer, he hosted nine summer interns, including five Middlebury students: Caroline Guiot ’16, Katherine Chamberlain ’16, Rob Cone ’17, Mary Sackbauer ’15 and Dylan McGarthwaite ’15.
Guiot and Chamberlain agreed that interning at Cloudfarm taught them many lessons about entrepreneurship and founding a start-up.
“Sometimes you just need to start,” said Guiot of what she learned from interning at Cloudfarm. “Your idea or vision might not be perfected but you can be stuck in the design stage forever and you can learn a lot about just by starting.”
“I think the biggest take away was that start-ups are a ton of work!” Chamberlain said. “I also learned how rewarding it is to see an idea turn into a legitimate business.”
MacKugler says he is going to continue to provide opportunities for stu- dents of the College to experience en- trepreneurship at Cloudfarm all year round.
(04/29/15 6:05pm)
Highly-educated. Self-motivated. Hard-working. Unpaid.
These adjectives describe a growing proportion of the current national work force: the undergraduate intern.
The US Department of Labor defines an internship as “a formal program providing practical learning experience for beginners in an occupation or profession that lasts a limited amount of time.”
According to Neil Howe, author of several books of American generational trends including Millennials Rising, prior to the 1990s formal internships were rare. Yet, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) reports that from 1980s to mid-2000s, the percent of college graduates participating in at least one internship rose from 10 percent to 80 percent.
In 2013, NACE reported that only 63 percent of graduating students who had held paid internships received a job offer by graduation. As for unpaid internships, students who have them are today hardly more likely to get a job offer (37 percent) than those who have no internship at all (35 percent).
Director of the Center for Careers and Internships Peggy Burns cautions that NACE statistics rarely reflect smaller, less formal internships that students at the College are more likely to participate in. The percentage of students participating in internships, therefore, is likely to be even higher.
So what has precipitated this increased participation in internships, especially considering scanty statistical evidence that they lead to jobs? The limited journalism on this subject identifies several factors, including market forces and, as Howe describes them, the “relentlessly optimistic” millennials themselves.
As internship season comes to a close at the College, the Campus investigates how the rising trend of internships has affected students here.
Trends at the College
In 2014, the CCI estimated that 600 students, or 24 percent of the student body, interned that year. Burns estimated that about 70 percent of students had least one internship before graduation while 40 to 50 percent had two or more. This places students at the College above the NACE average in terms of rate of participation in internships.
According to applications for CCI summer internship funding, the number of students participating in unpaid internships has remained relatively constant in the last five years, averaging at around 265 students or around 11 percent of the student body.
Burns says that students at the College have traditionally interned in the finance, government, public policy and publishing industries. Now, however, she says students are increasingly expanding into more industries, including non-profit work, technology and the environment. Applications for summer internship funding in 2015 indicate that students are participating in unpaid internships most commonly in the fields of science, healthcare and the arts.
“Where I particularly see the trend increasing is in those industries that are not the usual suspects,” Burns said. “The number of opportunities available and certainly the types of internships that students are interested in pursuing are really varied now.”
Applications for summer funding and Burns confirm that the most popular locations for internships are New York City, Boston and Washington, DC.
A New Market Trend
Assistant Professor of Sociology Jamie McCallum, who studies labor and work ethic in 20th century America, identifies internships as a new market trend responding to the economy’s need for cheap domestic labor.
“Businesses seem unable to pay decent wages, or any wages, for all of the workers they allegedly need,” McCallum said. “The intern economy provides a ‘solution’ to this problem.”
According to Business Insider, unpaid internships save corporations over two billion dollars a year. But most of these unpaid internships are illegal. The Department of Labor specifies that an internship can only be unpaid if it is with a non-profit or if the student is receiving school credit.
Attorney Maurice Pianko at Intern Justice told the New School Free Press: “99 percent of all unpaid internships in the for-profit market are illegal.”
Today, the Internet means hiring managers may receive many more applications for positions than they otherwise would, increasing competition among applicants.
“Twenty five years ago, [the job application process] was more a response to a classified ad,” Burns said. “It would just happen to be if you read the New York Times that Sunday and looked at the Classified department. Now, everything is online, and it is so easy for an employer to get thousands and thousands of applications.”
Furthermore, as children of Baby Boomers, the largest generation to date, Millennials face increased competition due to sheer population size.
“With Millennials, too, there are so many of you. So the competition is stiffer,” Burns said.
Additionally, Associate Professor of Sociology Linus Owens sees a changing definition of what is a ‘good job’ contributing to competition.
“What’s changed is the narrowing of fields that one can even speak of something that could be called a ‘career,’” Owens said. “With fewer viable options for ‘good jobs or careers,’ competition for those few spots intensifies.”
Burns also recognizes the 2008 market recession as an event that looms large in the memories of students anwd their families, causing them more job-anxiety.
The free labor intern economy, as McCallum describes it, is a self-perpetuating cycle. Students describe that previous experience is now often a prerequisite for the internships that they seek.
Nitya Mankad ’16, who interned with Goldman Sachs last summer, highlighted this caveat as the reason she began to apply for internships sophomore year.
“There tends to be a catch-22 with internships in that one needs experience to get experience,” Mankad said. “Since I didn’t have a lot of experience at the time, I didn’t think I would be able to find anything. But I knew I wanted to get a leg up and start preparing as early as possible, so I figured starting sophomore year couldn’t hurt.”
The Pressure to Intern
In interviews, most students agreed that it was personal pressure, not parental pressure or pressure from the College, that made them seek out internships.
“Most of the pressure I feel is self-imposed. Nobody is telling me I have to be a doctor,” Chris Diak ’18.5, who has completed many internships doing medical research, said. “The reality I see, however, is that if I don’t seek out experiences that will help me become a good applicant to medical schools, somebody else will. There’s a strange balance I have to strike between wanting these experiences and knowing I should have them on my resume.”
Some students do think, though, that the student culture at the College contributes to the pressure to get an internship.
“I feel like the stress is created by something similar to the ‘everyone’s having sex’ phenomenon,” Erin Giles ’17 said. “The idea that everyone is doing a summer internship when in reality, that’s not true. I honestly feel like a lot of sophomores end up not having an internship.”
“The high achieving culture at Middlebury is very motivating,” added Elizabeth Zhou ’18, who is interning with Bosnia Initiatives for Local Development this summer.
Open to Everyone?
Though valuable experience, unpaid internships can often prove prohibitively expensive for students.
“The internship economy does, in fact, perpetuate economic inequality,” McCallum said. “It affords certain people that are in a certain class to get a foot in the door in a way that other people simply can’t afford to do, no matter what is on your C.V. or resume.”
The CCI has been working to address this problem through the establishment of its Summer Internship Grants four years ago and its First Year Explorer Grants, new this year.
Additionally, the CCI is working to increase the number of paid internship opportunities available on MOJO. This year approximately 60 percent of internships on MOJO were paid positions, up from about 50 percent last year.
Still, for many students, it is personal connections, not MOJO, that make all the difference in finding an internship.
“Both internships I had this year were through family connections, and for New York, it was really helpful that I have my parents and through my high school friends who live in New York City,” Nan Philip ’16.5 said. “One of my friends doesn’t have connections in the city, and it’s been difficult for her to find an internship there this summer.”
International students also face unique challenges in getting internships, outside of the cost of shouldering an unpaid internship.
“I’ve heard of international students facing various challenges [like] employers discriminating against them based on their accent,” Martin Naunov ’17, a native of Macedonia who has completed two internships in Macedonia and this summer will intern with the United Nations in New York City, said.
Additionally, visa requirements also make it difficult for international students to intern in the US. International students are only allowed to participate in a paid internship in the US by opting into an Optional Practical Training (OPT) program. This program specifies that international students can only complete a paid internship during a 12 month period of time. Furthermore, students must apply in advance for approval and pay a $380 application fee to opt in.
Many universities give credit for internships, to help international students skirt these constraints, allowing them to legally participate in many unpaid internships. However, by a decision of the faculty last year, the College does not give credit for summer internships.
While Naunov applauds certain offices at the College, especially International Student and Scholar Services, for their efforts to help international students negotiate tricky visa situations, Naunov believes that the College’s administration could be doing more.
“If we claim to be one of the most diverse institutions in the US in terms of international students, then we better be able to give the international students the same opportunities as other students,” Naunov said.
Effect on the Undergraduate Experience
Pressure to find an internship, whether self-inflicted or otherwise, has influenced the undergraduate experience in marked ways, affecting what students participate in at the College and causing some students to describe the internship search as “like a fifth class.”
“I think the pressure definitely pushed me to take more classes pertinent to what I wanted to do this summer, which probably detracted from my ‘liberal arts’ educational experience,” Mankad said. “The desire for good internships also dictates many people’s extracurricular activities. For example, people interested in finance feel pushed towards being involved in the SIC [Student Investment Club], as most alumni will ask if students are involved.”
Incorporating the search for internships into the undergraduate experience is part of the CCI mission.
“[We want to emphasize] that thinking about life after Middlebury is part of that undergraduate adventure, as [much as] your course work, your sport, a club or an organization that you belong to,” Burns said.
McCallum argues, however, that this attitude towards internships has serious consequences for a liberal arts education.
“If education is about figuring out how to get a job, then the liberal arts might be in trouble,” McCallum said. “What [job anxiety] drives people to do, i.e. to certain courses of study here, is a real problem. What you study is less important than how you study it. And I’m not sure that people realize that.”
“Now, everyone has to learn ‘practical’ skills — STEM, they tell us, and Econ, they also tell us, which is another way that undergraduate students and institutions subsidize companies who don’t want to take responsibility for training workers,” Owens said.
McCallum also sees this career-focus as influencing work ethic in problematic ways.
“I see Middlebury students as dedicated to their work in a way that past generations have not been. That’s not to say that they’re passionate about it, necessarily, but that the obsession with being busy and what seems like a compulsive necessity to fill your time with work or busy-work or preparing work is a real issue in your lives.”
Largely, McCallum observes in his studies this career-focus diminishing how much people value leisure.
“We’ve figured out how to celebrate work,” McCallum said. “But I think that a commitment to leisure as a fundamental part of a healthy life is important. How to go about doing that is a more difficult question.”
Will this Change?
Owens is not optimistic that the current intern economy, in which highly educated undergraduates are trading free labor for unquantifiable ‘experience,’ can be easily altered.
“As long as there is widespread economic inequality, in which labor of all sorts is under attack, where even ‘good jobs or careers’ for an educated elite are no longer safe, then this trend is sure to continue,” Owens said. “It will take a lot of political work to enact any kind of significant change.”
McCallum agreed that any kind of change will be long-term. For now it seems, the millennial and the internship will have to learn to be friendly co-workers.
(03/18/15 5:39pm)
On Feb. 19, a group of 10 disgruntled students shook up a Community Council-sponsored “Community Conversation” event with loud allegations directed towards the College’s Residential Life team. These ten students, all former or current varsity athletes, complained that they had been unfairly treated in the off-campus housing lottery on the basis of their identities as athletes.
The off-campus housing lottery is a random process through which rising seniors can apply to live in houses not owned by the College. Interested students can submit applications for groups of up to three people. These applications are then put into a pot and selected at a drawing event that is open to all students who applied. The applications are then drawn from the pot by a random student who applied for off-campus housing. According to the College’s website, the only criterion that may bar applicants from being accepted to live off campus is official College discipline.
As the Campus reported on Feb. 25, 58 rising seniors were approved to live off campus in this year’s lottery, which took place on Feb. 17. Of these rising seniors, approved only eight varsity athletes were chosen from the lottery, of the 37 varsity athletes who applied. Three others athletes were accepted just after the lottery because Residential Systems Coordinator Karin Hall-Kolts, who organizes and conducts the lottery, forgot to add their names to the pot.
It was the shockingly low acceptance rate among varsity athletes that caused the Community Conversation outcry. How could the lottery be random if so few athletes were accepted, they challenged.
“It just doesn’t seem random based on who got it,” said Riley Dickie ’16, a former men’s hockey player who was rejected from the lottery and spoke at the Community Conversation event. “It just seems so fishy.”
“I would like to think that it is random because it is such an important thing for so many students,” added Maggie Caputi ’16, a women’s lacrosse team member who was accepted in the lottery but also spoke out at the Community Conversation. “At the same time, I think it’s really suspect that such a big group of specific people weren’t approved to live off campus. I think that’s really weird.”
“I don’t think that the people in the hat were chosen to be in the hat,” said Mary Claire Ecclesine ’16, a former field hockey team member. “I just think that maybe some people were taken out. And there’s no way that anyone could know that.”
Claiming that the administration may have rigged the lottery against varsity athletes that they believed were more likely to throw parties, specifically football and lacrosse players, these ten students claimed there was foul play.
The Campus Investigates
In the light of these claims, the Campus decided to investigate just how random the off-campus housing lottery was on Feb. 19.
Based on calculations performed by Paige-Wright Professor of Economics Paul Sommers and this reporter using hypergeometric probability distribution, the probability that only these 11 athletes, who applied in 6 application groups, would be accepted in a random lottery—and so many others would be rejected—is 35/10,000 chances. If we excluded two application groups, whose names were not or were likely not in the lottery pot at the time of the drawing (the three athletes who were accepted just after the lottery and five athletes who submitted an invalid application of five people), the probability rises slightly to a still miniscule 44/10,000 chances.
These figures indicate the low likelihood that so few athletes would be accepted in a random lottery process. However, it is crucial to note that the only thing these figures prove for certain is that there is a chance, though slight, that this outcome would occur. It is not impossible for this result to occur in a random lottery process.
Sommers interpreted these low probabilities to indicate that, possibly, there may be something impeding the randomness of the lottery system.
“Somewhere there is an element of non-randomness,” Sommers said. “And it may be as simple as someone who conducts the lottery not thoroughly mixing the slips.”
Administrative Response
In an interview with the Campus last week, Associate Dean of Students for Residential and Student Life Doug Adams maintained that the lottery was 100 percent random.
“The reason we do the draw is to address the concern that there is something other than random chance [happening],” Adams said. “It is completely random chance.”
Adams pointed out that only seven of the 111 total students who applied to live off-campus attended the lottery drawing. Those that attended did not see a problem with the drawing.
Moreover, Adams added, this lottery process has been occurring for years without complaints. This is the first year that complaints of discrimination against a group of students who applied have been raised.
He maintains that the off-campus housing lottery is one of the most transparent processes of any at the College.
“The [process] is about as open as you can get, currently,” Adams said.
Hall-Kolts was away on a personal leave and unavailable for comment about these claims.
The Waitlist
In addition to the lottery itself, athletes rejected from living off campus found issue with the waitlist process that follows it.
After the initial lottery, students who applied to live off campus are emailed to inform them whether they were accepted or not, and those students not accepted must respond to the email to obtain a spot on the waitlist. It is imperative that students respond to the email quickly as the order in which students respond determines their place on the waitlist. A higher spot on the waitlist is ideal because if students who were accepted to live off campus cannot find housing or decide to live on campus, students on the waitlist can then have a chance to move off campus.
Complaints about this waitlist process are two-fold.
First, Hall-Kolts sent the emails informing students about the results of the lottery during practice time for varsity athletes—between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. This meant that students who applied in all-athlete groups were not able to respond to her email and secure a place on the waitlist until over an hour after the email was sent, disadvantaging them against non-athletes who might be able to respond right away and get a higher spot on the waitlist.
Adams responded that this was not an issue he was aware of, but that the timing of the email was not intentional.
“[The email was sent] at the time that she [Karin] was done processing the information,” Adams explained. “We certainly can adjust our times if it’s felt that that is a sensitivity.”
Secondly, several athletes reported that they were not informed of their position on the waitlist. This lead them to suspect that students were not getting off the waitlist as a result of their position on it but due to other factors, such as pressure from parents, especially those who are significant donors to the College.
“The perception of a lot of kids is that money talks,” Dickie said. “When in doubt, get your parents involved.”
Adams countered that these allegations are “completely not true.”
He said the reason that students’ positions on the waitlist are not shared with them is because the waitlist is fluid, with positions changing often when students are accepted from it to live off-campus or decide to drop off the waitlist and live on campus instead.
“We don’t take anything into consideration except available slots. If I don’t have anything available, I don’t move people around [on the waitlist].”
On Campus Housing Policies
These complaints about off-campus housing policies and suspected discrimination against athletes arrive in the context of other claims that athletes are being treated unfairly in on-campus housing processes.
In this year’s superblock and social house application process, two groups of varsity athletes applying for superblocks felt that their applications were denied because of their identities as athletes.
In an interview with the Campus on March 4, Alli Sciaretta ’16, a women’s lacrosse team member, explained that she and 14 other current or former varsity athletes applied for Homestead House with one non-athlete. The group felt optimistic about their chances of getting the house. They were the only group that applied to live in Homestead.
After their presentation, however, the house was given to a group of rising juniors who did not apply to live in Homestead but applied to live in Meeker. Sciaretta feels that the group may have faced some discrimination because of the athlete compisition of their group.
These fifteen athletes also applied to live off campus and all were rejected in the initial lottery.
Stewart Denious ’15, football player and organizer of the proposed Palmer social house “The Hall,” felt his social house application was denied for the same reason: 24 out of 30 students living in Palmer in the fall would be athletes and 26 out of 30 in the spring.
In an email to Adams sent after the group’s rejection, which Denious shared with the Campus, Stewart explained, “We (…) feel we were biased against as an athlete heavy house, one of the students at the meeting was very obvious about seeing us as an athlete house asking us how many non-athletes we have on the roster.”
Finally, a student who wished to remain anonymous told the Campus that during his application process for a mod he was directly told by Hall-Kolts that the administration tries to avoid giving superblock housing to all-male groups of athletes. This student’s all-male athlete group was eventually awarded a mod for next year, however.
Adams denies that applications for social houses or superblocks are ever denied on the basis of the number of athletes who will live in them.
According to Adams, this year an especially high number of athletes applied to live in superblocks. Additionally, over 50 percent of the students who were accepted to live in superblocks and social houses next year are athletes.
“We always look at athletic status after we make the acceptances for the main reason that we want to make sure that we are not discriminating against a group,” Adams said. “We look for the strongest program, not [at] the group of students that are backing it.”
Thus, according to Adams, the applications that were approved were those that the committee felt were the strongest; they were not chosen based on the number of athletes on their roster or the gender of those athletes.
Implications
The Campus is unable to prove or disprove the randomness of this year’s off- campus housing lottery based on the available information. Nor can the Campus say for certain whether athletic identity may play a role in whether some superblock and social house applications are chosen over others, consciously or unconsciously. The evidence presented in this article suggests, however, that while the Residential Life team may believe that the off campus lottery is as open as it can be, some students believe there is still room to improve it.
Students, such as Sciaretta, have suggested that students should be able to put their own names in the lottery pot so that they know that the pot was not pre-selected. Additionally, doubts about the integrity of the waitlist have caused many students to express desire to see the waitlist and know their position on it, despite its fluid, changing nature.
While the lottery was moved early this year, to the month of February, to try to redress the discrepancy between when homeowners want to sign leases (fall) and when the students are approved to life off campus (spring), students expressed desires for improvement on this front. In an interview with the Campus, Adams explained that the College plans on hosting a series of meeting with local property owners to try to address this issue.
Finally, and most radically, some students have doubted whether a lottery is the best system for choosing which students can live off campus.
“I feel like if seniors find a place to lease off campus, they should be able to live there and be approved to live off campus,” said Kelsey Phinney ’16, a Nordic ski team member who was approved to live off campus in the lottery. “A large group of my friends spent a lot of time and energy finding a great place to live off campus and then none of them were approved, which does not feel that fair.”
Lastly, in the largest sense, the student complaints highlight a growing belief, on behalf of athletes, that the administration inaccurately and unjustly perceives athletes at the College.
As Denious suggested in his email to Adams, some students believe that administrators draw broad conclusions about athletes based on this one aspect of their identity.
“This [Denious’s Palmer social house group] was a group with incredible diversity in majors, being from different places in the country, social interests, and some of us happen to play sports,” Denious said. “To label it as an ‘athlete house’ is to make sweeping generalizations, and completely diminishes the individual character of each person in the house and completely goes against what Middlebury stands for.”
“People say a lot of things about the athletic community here without really knowing enough individuals or without really understanding the culture of each team,” Caputi confirmed.
“But athletes are very aware of all the things that are being said. I think that regardless of whether or not the lottery was random, it is important to know that athletes who were rejected do have a right to speak up about it,” she concluded.
(02/11/15 9:38pm)
Imagine going online and with just clicks having access to the status of all the laundry machines at the College. No dragging your gargantuan laundry bag down snowy paths only to discover the machine you wanted is full. No waiting hours for a machine to open up. No forgoing laundry for weeks because every machine you try seems to be broken.
This is the Middlebury that Sophomore Senator Karina Toy ’17 envisions. Toy has been working since January 2015 to create legislature implementing LaundryView, a new technology that would allow students to check the status of the College’s laundry machines remotely. With a site similar to Papercut, Toy describes, students could log on and instantly view whether laundry machines in any building are “Available,” “In Use,” “Idle” (stopped but have not been emptied) or “Unavailable.”
In the SGA’s 2015 Middlebury Student Life Survey, 71.77 percent of students who participated in the survey voted “Yes” in approval of the LaundryView system whereas only 33.8 percent of students said they were satisfied with laundry services as they currently are.
Toy explains the appeal of LaundryView: “I am a person who plans my day down to the T. So being able to plan when is best to do my laundry, showing up and having a machine available, or to know that there is a machine available before I even leave is a great thing.”
Toy says the system would also allow the school to monitor laundry machine use, collecting data that would allow them to decide where best to put future machines. This data could help the College please the 39.01 percent of respondents who complain that there are not enough machines near where they live, according to the SGA’s survey.
Additionally, through the system, Facilities Services would be able to be notified when machine are broken or malfunctioning, permitting them to address problems more quickly; currently, Facilities relies on students or custodians reporting broken machines to get their information. 32.55 percent of students who responded to the SGA survey said there were not enough functioning machines at the College.
LaundryView is already in use at many of the College’s peer institutions including Williams, Bowdoin, Trinity, Tufts and Wesleyan. Its use was suggested in SGA meetings in 2012 by former SGA President Charlie Arnowitz ’13 but was shifted to the backburner at the time because of other more pressing budget issues.
Of the fifteen buildings on campus with laundry facilities for students, Toy proposes LaundryView be implemented in ten: Atwater, Coffrin, Forest, Gifford, Hadley, Hepburn, Kelly, LaForce, Painter and Stewart. The proposal excludes facilities in social houses for the time being because, according to Toy, they are less in demand and easier for students to check the availability in the traditional way than the other, larger student residences.
The hurdle standing between Toy and the approval of LaundryView is funding. LaundryView is a system produced by Mac-Gray, the College’s current laundry machine provider, but would require the addition of Ethernet in the laundry rooms. Assistant Treasurer Tom Corbin, who has been working in conjunction with Toy on this project, estimates that the installation cost of LaundryView would be 6,000 to 7,000 dollars in addition to the cost of putting Ethernet capacities in every laundry room. Furthermore, according to Toy, the annual costs of LaundryView would be $2.75 per machine per month. This means that funding LaundryView could cost upwards of $11,000 in the first year alone.
The SGA believes these costs should be paid for by the administration not by the Student Activities Fee, the money the SGA has available to spend, because, in the words of SGA Chief of Staff Danny Zhang ’15, LaundryView is an “infrastructure-related cost.”
Corbin, however, takes the opposite opinion, affirming that funding should come from the SGA because “LaundryView is a convenience item for students.” To address student dissatisfaction with laundry services, Corbin’s office and the College’s Residential Life team has already added several additional laundry around campus in the past five years to address student complaints that laundry facilities were too far from their living spaces.
This question over the funding of LaundryView situates itself in the larger context of the debate about where the administration’s funding should begin and where should the SGA be responsible, a debate that Zhang says is constant. Still, Zhang is hopeful that the shared desire for efficiency on behalf of students and the College will push LaundryView and other similar technological improvements into approval.
“We’re always looking to do things more efficiently on this campus and members of the SGA [are] not the only people who are looking for that. […] [LaundryView] is part of a larger trend. We want to make use of technology if it is beneficial to students and the survey shows that LaundryView would be beneficial to students.”
If approved this spring, LaundryView could be available to students as early as Fall 2015.
(05/07/14 7:53pm)
Nail biting. Isolation. Tiredness. Irritability. Anxiety. These are all ways to tell when you’ve reached the boiling point. As most students have probably experienced, stress manifests in a variety of forms, intensities and lengths. According to the American Psychological Association, “stress can be a reaction to a short-lived situation, such as being stuck in traffic. Or it can last a long time if you’re dealing with relationship problems, a spouse’s death or other serious situations.” In Middlebury terms, this means that stress can be a finals week fling or a four-year romance.
This week The Campus explored how students at the College define their relationship with stress. We surveyed 112 students about where their stressors come from, how their stress levels at the College compare to past stresses and how they deal with their stress.
According to our survey, 30 percent of students reported high stress — identified their stress as 7, 8, 9 or 10 on a one to ten scale — from daily academics at the College. This number spiked to 70 percent during midterms and a whopping 80 percent during finals. The leading causes of stress outside of academics were extracurricular activities and athletics.
These findings paralleled the observations of Counseling Director of Parton Health Center Ximena Mejia.
“The leading causes of stress at Middlebury are anxiety regarding high academic expectations, over commitment of extracurricular activities, and unrealistic social life expectations,” said Mejia. “Students at Middlebury have high expectations of themselves, which isn’t all bad, but can become problematic when concentrated on multiple demands at the end of a semester.”
Counseling Intern Mark Nash, who led an eight-week workshop this year on “Mindfulness, Stress Relief and the Art of Being Enough,” adds that student stress often stems from expectations that they set for themselves in high school.
“Students worked very hard to get here, and now that they’ve arrived, they feel like the bar is set even higher, and they stress about never really being able to reach that bar,” said Nash. “I’m not sure there’s anything about the atmosphere here, as much as the school’s reputation. When you’re attending what is often referred to as one of the best schools in the country, you can feel a lot of pressure to live up to that standard.”
Often students deal with their high stress levels in unhealthy ways including sleep deprivation, missing meals, increased caffeine intake and increased substance intake, including alcohol, prescription medications and illegal drugs. Our survey confirmed that drinking alcohol was the eighth most popular way to deal with stress and drug use was the twelfth most popular.
The most popular stress busters at the College proved to be much healthier options. The top three ways for students to deal with stress were exercising, sleeping, and socializing. These methods of stress busting were recommended by Mejia in addition to stress management techniques such as mindfulness, meditation and yoga.
Many students also combat their stress by talking about it with their friends and family. Talking to family was the fifth most popular way to deal with stress at the College and sixty-one percent of students reported that they choose to express their stress rather than hide it. Despite this apparent openness about stress, 62 percent of students believe they are less stressed than their peers when there are relatively uniform levels of high stress among students at the College.
Put these numbers in context and we see stress at the College as part of a larger trend. According to a 2011 University of California Los Angeles survey, more than 200,000 first-year students across 300 four-year colleges say their overall emotional health is “below average.” At the same time, 52 percent of students say their emotional health was above average. In 1985, that number was 64 percent. As emotional health among college students decline nationally, Middlebury is not immune to the trend.
“Middlebury student stress is similar to stress at other student stress at other similar institutions,” Mejia said. However, 95 percent of surveyed students say they are more stressed out compared to students at other institutions.
While stress is part and parcel of a rigorous academic experience, it’s never really clear when we’ve pushed past a breaking point. Students for looking resources to deal with their stress should check out Parton Health Center’s weekly yoga for stress classes, guided meditation during finals week and online mindfulness resources. Nash also recommends that stressed students speak with a counselor because they will not have to worry about burdening them with their problems unlike family or friends.
“Another great way to deal with stress is to talk about it with someone who is there for the sole purpose of listening,” said Nash. “When you talk to a counselor, you don’t need to worry about taking care of them. And while a counselor rarely gives advice or offers solutions, they can offer new perspectives that can help you find your own answers and strategies.”
For more information about resources to deal with your stress, visit go/parton.
(04/30/14 4:59pm)
The Middlebury Campus brought big money out of the shadows this week. We distributed surveys polling our personal spending habits, where our spending money comes from and where we think the money comes from when we see others charge everything to their cards. The results of 109 surveys distributed across Proctor dining hall and classes revealed a set of new statistics. (Disclaimer: the data were gathered from informal polls and are not representative of the entire student body).
Most surprising of the polled results: while 31 percent of students get their spending money from family, 58 percent of students believe that the spending money among their peers is funded by their parents. In fact, most students — 38 percent — are spending money saved from previous jobs. Since money is a sorepoint, money doesn’t talk on this campus. But in this week’s spread, we ask: what would it say if it could?
(04/30/14 4:41pm)
Since its launch on April 9, 2014, beyond the green, a publication that seeks to provide an outlet for marginalized voices at the College, has rocketed to the forefront of campus consciousness. The publication, which “seeks to use writing as a way to support and ultimately achieve structural and institutional change” according to its mission statement, exercises its “alternative voice” on its blog beyond the green: collective of middlebury voices, where it accepts submissions of writing in any form as well as videos, photography and art from its regular contributors and the student body at large. beyond the green also runs a weekly column in the Campus’s opinion section.
“btg aims to provide space for voices that are not being heard on our campus, not just voices of the progressive, but also the voices of the tired, frustrated, angry, happy, joyful, critical and loving,” explained Lily Andrews ’14 and Veronica Coates ’14, two of the many cofounders of beyond the green. “It brings voices in the margins to the center because we’re already constantly bombarded by the normative Middlebury story.”
The effort to highlight new voices is one of the aspects of beyond the green most applauded by its new readers.
“Often times, Middbeat or the Campus editors offer students of color the opportunity to share their opinions about specific issues on campus,” Amari Simpson ’16 said. “Because of this limited range of opportunities, students of color are looked at as only valuable when the conversation is about race or identity on campus. btg not only allows students to discuss these issues, but students have the opportunity to contribute and share stories about any topic or idea that comes up in their lives.”
beyond the green reader Garrett Griffin ’16 elaborated that beyond the green allows students to write without the expectations of a more formal publication. The Campus’ ideal of welcoming all opinions “naturally engenders some discourse being elevated above others,” Griffin said. “This is beyond the green letting these writers have a space to express their opinions on their own terms and not on the terms of the Campus.”
Writing on her own terms was one of the primary reasons contributor to beyond the green Maya Doig-Acuna ’16 decided to submit to the publication.
“I wrote the first blog post [“late nights at middlebury”] out of a need ... to express myself at that point,” she said. “That was very much for me and it felt like beyond the green provides this pretty comfortable space for writing. Part of that was just the fact that it’s a blog so it feels less formal, and I feel less pressure to write in a certain way.”
This comfortable space is not available to all students, however.
“Knowing that no publication is neutral, we do not accept publications that are not in line with our mission statement,” Andrews and Coates said. In an effort to correct for the inequality that they see in publications that are open to all politics, submissions to beyond the green must match its “radical, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, and anti-ableist” and rejecting “neo-liberal paradigm” agenda advertised on the header of the blog.
For some students, this exclusiveness motivates them to engage with the publication.
“It doesn’t try to be objective,” Doig-Acuna said. “Having that space is also attractive to me because I want to write articles that fit that mission. Also, in part, [I was] just trying to, through writing, have the backs of other peers and people who have similar experiences as I do.”
Others, like Max Kagan ’14, find beyond the green’s censorship to be fostering the same suppressive atmosphere it rejects in other publications.
Kagan’s Spring Symposium presentation, “Cruelties Well Used?”, was described as “offensive” and “advocat[ing] and defend[ing] mass violence and repression” by Andrew’s “spring symposium highlights” on the beyond the green blog. Kagan was upset by these comments because they were based solely on the title of his presentation, whereas the abstract of his presentation made it clear that his presentation “was pretty much the opposite of that.” Kagan “wanted to have some sort of rebuttal” but discovered that beyond the green does not allow any reader comments on its site.
“Really I just wanted to say what my side was and they didn’t have a platform to do that,” Kagan said. “I think it’s pretty ironic that they want to represent these marginalized voices and provide a space for dialogue that doesn’t currently exist on campus and yet, they don’t allow any sort of feedback or commentary.”
Kagan did share his thoughts on beyond the green’s Facebook page but his wall post was never responded to by the group.
In addition to protecting the safety of its writers, beyond the green has a no comments policy because “We hope that people will take these conversations into the real world, since they reflect real world issues,” Andrews, Coates and cofounder Ally Yanson ’14 explained.
In this regard, beyond the green has undoubtedly succeeded. This writer’s research found that the name beyond the green generated a varied opinion from almost every person to whom the topic was broached. beyond the green is provoking questions about the roles and practices of more formal publications at the College. In assessing whether this discourse will eventually subvert the “feeling of alienation within the campus dialogue,” highlighted in its mission statement, only time will tell.
(04/16/14 5:06pm)
Bill McKibben
Schumann Distinguished Scholar
It's never been a huge problem for me. I grew up writing for newspapers, and that tends to cure you of perfectionism: you know that half the job is to get it done on time. I think sometimes you have to say: I'm going to write as well as I can right now, and when I wake up I'm going to go over it again to make sure it's good. Making sure the first time through can be a little daunting.
Marion Wells
Associate Professor of English and American Literatures
When I hit a roadblock in writing I have a few techniques:
1. Make a cup of tea. This can take a while, done properly and gives the mind a chance to mull things over.
2. Just start writing – even if the structure and organization of the piece as a whole are still elusive, writing a "core" piece of it can be very helpful
3. Leave the writing alone and think about teaching instead! Using a different part of the brain can help unlock the issues causing the block.
Christopher Klyza
Stafford Professor of Public Policy, Political Science and Environmental Studies
My writing in the years since I've been at Middlebury (I arrived in 1990) has primarily been aimed at an academic audience. I've written and edited several books as well as articles, book reviews and book chapters. In general, I don't get writer's block. But I do sometimes have a hard time getting started on a new project. When that is the case I make myself start writing — it could be something from the middle of the paper (such as a case study) or a description of the theoretical framework I will use rather than the introduction. I also don't worry so much about the quality of the writing, knowing that I will go back and revise it. At the end of the day, having 4-5 pages of text often primes the writing pump for future productivity. I also tend to think about the overall project better when I have done some writing.
Kathryn Kramer
Visiting Assistant Professor of English and American Literatures
Have a baby. There’s nothing like knowing you have only two hours of child care to focus the attention. (A descriptive, not a prescriptive, remedy.)
There are many devices and prompts, like imagining that the world is coming to an end in twenty minutes and what you write will be the sole remaining record, or writing without ever using the letter e, for example. But as it’s generally construed, writer’s block (which Gilbert Sorrentino calls inspiration’s “idiot brother”) has probably most to do with not wanting to write what you think you want to write, like a term paper or a letter of recommendation. There’s some dishonesty, either of intent or execution. So it’s interesting to figure out what that’s about.
Michael Sheridan
Associate Professor of Anthropology at Middlebury College
I think that the key to overcoming writer's block is to start writing and let yourself write junk. Now that you've gotten started, you can keep going and later go back and either fix or delete the junk. The other trick I often use is that I make myself explain whatever it is that I'm supposed to be writing about in ordinary non-specialist language, as if I was giving an overview of what I'm trying to write about to a patient, sympathetic and wholly ignorant friend. That sketch becomes the first paragraph (which may be junk, and that's OK). The second strategy for curing writer's block is to make your writing something that you need to do for other people, not just for yourself or the text itself. For example, I often propose a paper for an academic conference on a topic that I haven't written about yet, and then the conference becomes both a deadline and group of people depending on me to deliver. Finally, chocolate never fails to motivate me. One page done means I can have one piece, no exceptions.
Julia Alvarez
Writer-in-Residence
When the writer William Stafford was asked the same question, he replied that he never suffered from writer's block, all he had to do was lower his standards. I don't think he really meant that he would settle for schlock, just that part of the block is that the writer is getting in the way of the writing by worrying too much about performance, and measuring up. At that point, just forget about achievement and write to limber up, write as finger exercises, write in a journal, write a letter. (Whoever does that anymore? I do!) The point is to keep up the agility, the flexibility, the practice of the craft. Writing, all creativity, I think, should have an element of play, self-forgetfulness, fun.
On the other hand, times when I'm forcing it, I realize that the balance is off. I need to get out, get involved in the things I care deeply about, issues in my community and beyond. We are writers in a context, storytellers in a tribe. To quote another great, Charlie Parker, the jazz musician, said, "If you don't live it, it ain't going to come out of your horn."
So there are a few prescriptions for writer's block, courtesy of Dr. Alvarez, via Drs Stafford and Parker: Keep Doing the Writing but forget about the performance/measurement, and when all else fails: go out there and get involved in life itself – fall in love, plant a garden, save a forest, work in a soup kitchen, teach kids to make balloon animals and then take them over to the local assisted living facility.
Christopher Shaw
Visiting Lecturer, English and American Literatures; Associate Director, Program in Environmental Journalism
“Work every day without fear or expectation.” (Somebody said that.) Always show up at the desk or notebook, or, god help us, computer screen. In fact, if you are stuck I suggest returning to the basic and essential physical act of making words on paper with a pen – or maybe a piece of burned charcoal from a fire. Don't judge, at least for a while. Keep going. Put it aside. Then go back and see what you have, if a structure or a point seem to be emerging that you can begin building on. Some days it works and some days it doesn't. Don't judge. Go back and work again.
It's different for school work and creative work, of course. Deadlines are useful even without an assignment. Desperation often breaks the log jam.
Stop fighting, stop judging, stop comparing yourself to the great. The writing NEVER turns out the way it gleams and beckons in your mind. In the draft stage you need to accept being terrible. As an editor, I have worked with some of the best full-time deadline writers and I can tell you their first stabs are gobbledygook. But you need to start. Don't wait.
Timothy Billings
Professor of English and American Literatures
I asked that question of William Stafford once when he came to give a reading at Pomona College many years ago when I was an undergraduate there, and his immediate answer was: ‘Lower your standards and keep writing.’ What I love about that advice is that it recognizes that “writer’s block” is nothing but your internal editor harrying you, saying that what you are about to write is not good enough – and that what you most need to do is to trust yourself. The downside is that Stafford’s many wonderful books contain not a few mediocre poems written no doubt when he would otherwise have had writer’s block. And yet without those poems – which many people have enjoyed, I’m sure, even if they didn’t do much for me – he might never have written the truly extraordinary poems that knock my socks off. Stafford certainly wrote more books than I ever will. For a certain kind of person, I think that’s still probably the best advice there is, but I’m just not that kind of person. What works best for me is to stand up and start talking. Whenever I find myself paralyzed because my sentences are becoming tangled and intractable, I stand up and start talking to myself. I pace back and forth and gesture with my hands (probably looking a bit loony, to be honest) exactly as though I were explaining the issues to an interested group of fellow scholars or students. Somehow the language comes to me that way because if I imagine an audience sitting in front of me I can’t just stand there – I’ve got to say something – and the exercise gives me focus. I then lean over my desk and type in what I have just said, sentence by sentence, and keep pacing. (It helps to be a good talker, but one becomes that by writing.) So my alternative advice is: when the words on the page feel intractable, return to your voice; when the ideas in your head feel tangled, remember your audience.
Vendela Vida
Keynote Speaker (April) and Class of '93
If a scene’s not working or giving you trouble, it can help to think about how you’d approach it if you were telling the story in a different medium. That is, if you can’t figure out how a scene works in prose from, how would you write the scene if it was a film, or a play? I find this technique can help me a lot when I’m stuck.
Another remedy: try writing first thing when you get up in the morning. Before e-mail, before anything. If you write right away, before your doubts or second thoughts awaken, you can keep them at bay.
(04/09/14 4:43pm)
On a beautiful Thursday last week, I accompanied the student initiative NOM (Nutrition Outreach Mentoring) to the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Vergennes. Inside a gray building on a side street in downtown Vergennes, about 15 local teenagers chatted and played cards and video games. However, the six students who arrived from the College had a new idea for what these teens could be doing.
As part of their goal of “creating community and connecting people through food and food education,” as mentioned in their mission statement, NOM volunteers at local schools and afterschool programs to teach healthy eating and cooking habits to children and young adults.
“Children are a great focus for our group because there are a lot of fun ways to teach nutrition,” said NOM President Rachel Kinney ’16.5, who since her take over of the group last semester, has worked with Treasurer Cassidy Mueller ’16.5 and other students to revitalize the group and expand its volunteering reach. “It has a big impact when people learn about healthy eating from a young age — and an impact that can trickle up to the child’s family and larger community.”
At the Boys and Girls Club, NOM’s learning kitchen programming proved itself to be tasty and informative: NOM volunteers partnered with Boys and Girls Club teens to make fruit and vegetable smoothies. NOM volunteers opened the activity with a discussion about the vitamins and nutrients in the fruits and vegetables on the gray table we circled. Then, volunteers and teens were set loose on the ingredients, free to sample the fruits and veggies and experiment with different smoothies combinations as they chose.
My partner Ethan, 15, and I concocted three delicious smoothies. After mixing a yummy strawberry banana smoothie, Ethan was willing to try a smoothie with spinach in addition to fruit in it, although his initial reaction to the vegetable was a series of loud exclamations of “That tastes bad!” After a few gingerly sips, Ethan was willing to admit that the smoothie did a pretty good job of masking the taste of the vegetable, just as NOMs volunteers had suggested at the beginning of the activity.
As the smoothie making continued, calls of “Can I try that?” echoed around the room. Teen enthusiasm for smoothie making varied from Natalie, 14, who was willing to sample a spinach only smoothie to Kairek, 13, who would make smoothies but never drink them. I knew NOM was making a difference when Ethan told me, “This is a lot of fun! This is the most fun I’ve had at the club in a long time.”
NOM also boasts other volunteering initiatives than the Boys and Girls Club. The group runs Farm to Table programming for students at Mary Hogan Elementary School in Middlebury, VT in which students get to taste-test and learn about different recipes for local produce.
“The curriculum we use teaches not just nutrition but how it applies to everyday life— something especially important in an area full of farms,” Kinney explained. “And these kids will then talk to their families about what they’ve learned, teach them how to make hummus from just a can of chickpeas, and the influence just grows from there.”
Additionally, the group participates in one-time volunteering events such as food packing and soup making for the volunteer organization Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects (HOPE).
A large portion of NOM meetings are spent educating group members about food issues and hunger. During meetings, the group often reads and discusses articles or listens to TedX Talks to inform themselves.
“That’s part of effort to educate ourselves to be better volunteers,” Mueller said. “Although we care about this issue, we aren’t nutritionists.”
Education of NOM volunteers is especially important as NOM seeks to address the true needs of the community, not simply plant their own programming on organizations that have no need of it.
“We have to be understanding of the people that we are working with and what it is they are looking for out of the program,” Chelsea Colby ’17.5, the NOM liaison to the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Vergennes, said. “But I think it was cool how excited some of those kids got about spinach in their smoothies. It’s just not something they’ve been exposed to.”
Youth Programs and Outreach Assistant Daniel Murphy, who brings “institutional savvy” to student groups involving mentorship has high hopes for the role NOM can fill for the community.
“They have a lot of students who both through academic and personal passion are really interested in getting out there and learning more,” Murphy said. “I would love to see them become an authority on campus for what’s already in place in the community, for what kids are getting and what the gaps are. I would love to see them become an authority about getting people who are interested in these things aware and plugged in.”
The group has set its own goals for the future: NOM hopes to increase awareness about nutrition issues on campus through workshops and speakers, continuing its existing volunteer program but also expand to include mentoring at the Addison Central Teen Center located in Middlebury, VT.
Mueller noted the benefits that participation in NOM can have for students: “I think something that is really helpful is learning how to connect with the Middlebury community which is sometimes something that is not really emphasized by the College. (…) Instead of giving money to people really far away, it is important to understand our local problems.”
Students interested in joining NOM should attend meetings on Tuesdays at 6 p.m. in Laforce Seminar Room.
(03/19/14 5:41pm)
As students, we live our lives in proximity to our peers, and thus have the opportunity to see them not only in an intellectual environment, but also in the social sphere. We see our friends on dining hall dates, at Atwater parties, on long walks to the organic farm, and “studying” in the library — our curiosity is satiated by observation and gossip. But faculty and staff remain an enigma: though we may get to know our faculty and staff we hardly ever see their personal lives. The Campus sat down with many of these couples individually this week to find out if they know each other as well as they know their subject matter.
Director of Sciences Support Services Tim Wickland and Director of Student Fellowships & Health Arlinda Wickland by Emilie Munson
Middlebury Campus (MC): How did you meet?
Tim Wickland (TW): We went to high school together in Chicago, but moved in different circles. Arlinda was a socialite and I was a nerd. (Our high school actually had more students than Middlebury College does.)
MC: What was your first date?
TW: Arlinda sought me out when she was part of a group planning our 10th year high school reunion. We went out to a little creperie in Hyde Park, near the University of Chicago, and after that, we pretty much never looked back.
MC: How long have you been married?
Arlinda Wickland (AC): A lot of good years -- who’s counting!
MC: What is one of your spouses quirks?
AW: Tim likes sugar: brown sugar on Greek yogurt; chocolate Quick (powder) on vanilla ice cream; a packet of raw sugar in a pinch.
TW: After so many years, quirks become such a part of the normal fabric of things that you hardly notice them anymore. I guess one thing would be that she can’t tolerate any red decor in the house after the end of February.
MC: What is your favorite quality of your spouse?
AW: Tim is incredibly intelligent and well-read, but at the same time is handy around the house; for example, he services all our cars, built personalized bookcases for each of our sons, and rewired the electrical system in our house by reading a manual.
TW: Arlinda has just about the perfect blend of caring and feistiness. That, and she is an absolutely fabulous culinary artist.
MC: What is their most annoying habit?
TW: Cutting the time too close for my comfort when we have a performance to go to. That being said, we’ve never missed an opening curtain that I can recall (though I don’t always get a chance to read the program before the lights go down).
AW: He often is doing something else (crosswords, sudoku, reading magazines) when I am talking to him! Then when I ask him what I just said, he tries to fake his way through, but it’s clear he wasn’t listening.
MC: What is your spouse’s favorite book?
AW: The Taylor Branch Series on Civil Rights is probably his all time favorite, but he just read Don Mitchell’s new book and had great things to say about it. I just re-read a trilogy that was incredible, but I would never admit what it is.
TW: I think her favorite author has been Rosamunde Pilcher, particularly The Shell Seekers. I think probably the most memorable and compelling at this point in my life would be Taylor Branch’s great trilogy on Dr. King and the civil rights movement.
Professor of Mathematics Steve Abbott and Dean of Students/Professor of The History of Art & Architecture Katy Smith Abbott by Isabelle Stillman
MC: How did you meet?
Steve Abbott (SA): We met at New Faculty Orientation at St. Olaf College. I think we were the only two single people in the room, so it felt like a trick.
Katy Abbott (KA): Steve was wearing rag wool socks and Tevas, so that was the sign that he hadn’t needed to care what he looked like in a while.
MC: What was your first date?
SA: Some early weekend that fall, we ended up downtown. They had a town celebration to honor the defeat of Jesse James at a bank in town. They have a midway carnival.
KA: With fried food on a stick.
SA: Very Midwestern carnival, and we were there with a bunch of faculty.
KA: We rode the tilt-a-whirl together, and Steve almost threw up. [laughs]
SA: And we got to the end of the evening, and Katie’s house was on one side of town, and everybody else lived somewhere else, and she was going to walk home. So I offered to give her a ride on my bike.
KA: Your Harley.
SA: My bicycle. And she accepted. And she got on the back of my mountain bike.
KA: I sat down on the seat, and he stood up on the pedals.
SA: I was stuck, because I didn’t take any art history in college, so I didn’t have any tools. But that summer I was working in D.C., and [in the National Gallery] there was a specific exhibit about one painting. And I said I saw this exhibit this summer with this painting. And Katie said, “I saw that exhibit too, I love that painting.”
MC: How long have you been married?
KA: Eighteen?
SA: Nineteen?
KA: Nineteen, yeah.
MC: What is one of your spouse’s quirks?
KA: There are so many! So much material to work with…Hmm…Steve has never worn a watch and never kept a calendar.
SA: She has probably fifteen different mechanisms for making coffee. And they’re all perfect for about four days. And then it’s not quite right. The French press, the drip thing, the foamer that doesn’t foam, it just spins it really fast. We haven’t done the thousand dollar espresso machine.
KA: That’s the destiny.
MC: One thing you love about your spouse.
SA: Just one, sweetie, you can only do one.
KA: Steve is an incredible parent. He’s always one hundred percent all in, so it’s always been fifty-fifty.
SA: If somebody comes up with an idea, you need Katie around to make it happen. She’s an instigator. The wall between concept and implementation is very thin. Like, “we should get a dog”—she was afraid of dogs when we first met. I went away for a week, and I came back, and we had a dog. We didn’t even have plans to get a dog.
MC: What is it like working at the same college?
SA: Well. When we were Commons Heads, for six years—that was the first time we collaborated. Saying yes to the job was partly inspired by the desire to do something together.
KA: Spending six years together thinking about connecting intellectual life outside the classroom, that was such a rich time for both of us. But in general, I can’t think of any downsides we’ve ever felt.
SA: It’s always funny when students figure it out.
KA: One of the things that’s great about it, is we definitely have a lot of interest in the institution as an institution, and what we’re doing for students here.
John G. McCullough Professor of Chemistry Sunhee Choi and William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Chemistry Jim Larrabee by Emilie Munson
MC: How did you meet?
Sunhee Choi (SC): In the chemistry research lab at Princeton Grad School.
MC: What was your first date?
Jim Larrabee (JL): Sunhee cooked a Korean dinner for me and we watched the Academy Awards ceremony on TV (it was early 1978).
MC: How long have you been married?
SC: 33 years.
MC: What is one of your spouses quirks?
JL: She is very demanding and does not tolerate any effort other than your best effort.
SC: Be[ing] ready for everything 1000 hours ahead.
MC: What is your favorite quality of your spouse?
JL: She is very demanding and does not tolerate any effort other than your best effort.
SC: Devotion.
MC: What is their most annoying habit?
JL: She is very demanding and does not tolerate any effort other than your best effort.
SC: Seeing and questioning unnecessary details to my amazing ideas.
MC: How do you take your coffee?
SC: [I take mine] Black and strong. [He takes his] Black and stronger.
JL: [We] Both take it black, no sugar.
Fulton Professor of Humanities Stephen Donadio and Associate Director and Chief Curator of the Museum of Art Emmie Donadio by Emilie Munson
MC: How did you meet?
Stephen Donadio (SD): Emmie and I met at a party in New York (Upper West Side).
MC: What was your first date?
Emmie Donadio (ED): After the party we went to the West End Cafe, near Columbia University, and talked about everything.
MC: How long have you been married?
ED: Since before our children were born.
SD: We have been married since before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
MC: What is one of your spouse’s quirks?
SD: Unusual enthusiasm for foreign travel (i.e., to places beyond Middlebury town limits).
ED: Just one?
MC: What is your favorite quality of your spouse?
ED: Sense of humor!
SD: Capacity for lasting friendship with others, near and far.
MC: What is their most annoying habit?
ED: Resistance to time away from work.
SD: See above.
MC: What is your favorite movie?
ED: [I] couldn’t say [mine]. [His is] Citizen Kane, without a doubt.
SD: My favorite movie: Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise), an old French film. Her favorite: Dirty Harry (starring Clint Eastwood).
Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies Deb Evans and Professor of American Studies and English & American Literature Will Nash by Emilie Munson
MC: How did you meet?
Will Nash (WN): We met in an Emerson seminar in graduate school.
Deb Evans (DE): But we really met in the mailroom of our grad school program; I was working in the office and we started up a conversation. He had recently shaved a full Grizzly Adams-esque beard, so I had no idea it was the same guy from class I was talking to. It kept rolling after that.
MC: What was your first date?
DE: For our first date, he came to my house for dinner. One of the most memorable parts of the evening was that after we brought dinner out to the porch, I sat down and the wicker chair collapsed – completely! – underneath me. I cracked up; so did he. I think that was when we knew we had a future.
MC: How long have we been married?
WN: It will be 21 years in August.
MC: What is your favorite quality of your spouse?
DE: Will is a very genuine person. When he cares about something – an issue, a person – it is for keeps. And it may be a cliche, but he is a tremendous father, and I love to see him with our three kids.
WN: She is very compassionate and very thoughtful. And she is smart and funny.
MC: What is their favorite color?
DE: His: Red, maybe blue. Mine: green, maybe turquoise.
WN: Her favorite color is blue. That’s my favorite color.
Associate Chaplain Rabbi Ira Schiffer and Commons Coordinator Linda Schiffer by Jiya Pandya
Middlebury Campus (MC): How did you meet?
Ira Schiffer (IS): Our common friends Hank and Roxanne lived in Wilmington, Delaware, and we met at their housewarming party. As we sat talking at the party, I asked her how she knew them. I found out that she had worked on a political campaign with them, and we hit it off ever since. Our friends still claim that they are responsible for introducing us.
Linda Schiffer (LS): Oh that’s a fun story! We met at a party in Wilmington, Delaware, that friends of ours were throwing as a sort of housewarming occasion. I asked him how he knew them. “I married them,” he said. I was taken aback for a moment, and then I realized he was a Rabbi, but I didn’t want to ask outright. We spoke for a bit, and then I broke my cardinal rule of meeting men, letting him have a cup of coffee and driving me home the first time we met each other. I didn’t hear from him for over a month after that, but then he called, a month later, and we started dating!
MC: What was your first date?
IS: It was Christmas Eve, and we went to the restaurant open on Christmas Eve: a Chinese place, with our friends ‘who introduced us’, Hank and Roxanne. After that, we went to Midnight Mass together at the Episcopal Cathedral of Wilmington. We both found it fascinating.
MC: How long have you been married?
LS: We got married in November 1981. He proposed 3 months after we started dating, but we decided to keep the whole thing quiet until he finished his degree. We announced our marriage at his ordination.
MC: What’s one of your spouse’s quirks?
IS: She always makes sure I wipe up all the water around the sink in the bathroom, keep it clean and dry. She’s very particular about things like that.
LS: He’ll do things like feed the cat, which is lovely, but then he’ll leave the empty can of food on the counter. He’ll start something, finish it, but then leave things behind.
MC: What you love about him/her?
IS: Her energy. She just embraces life. She has a motorcycle, she built a sports car when our daughter was a baby, almost 25 years ago, and she still uses it. She ski races on Fridays (we spend a lot of time outdoors), and she ice fishes, one of the activities I don’t join her for.
LS: We lived in Israel for 5 years. We loved everything about our life there. But I had an Uncle in Philadelphia who I was very close with. He was ailing, and I wanted to be with him. I decided to shift back for a little while, to be closer to him, and told Ira I would travel back and forth. Even though he really loved Israel and we were very happy, he decided to move back to the US with me. He said, “No, we’re family and that’s not the way to do it. If one of us goes, we all go.” That’s what I love about him. He understands the importance of family.
MC: What annoys you about him/her?
IS: I don’t hate anything about her. We’ve made life a fun adventure together.
LS: Sometimes he nags. It drives me crazy. I’m like, I get it Ira. But after 33 years of being together, you get used to it.
Associate Professor of English and American Literatures Antonia Losano and Associate Professor of English and American Literatures Daniel Brayton by Julia John
MC: How did you meet?
Daniel Brayton (DB): We met in my first class at graduate school, in her second year.
Antonio Losano (AL): Dan and I met in a grad school class – Victorian Non-Fiction Literature – in August 1992 at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill where we were getting our M.A.s. We moved from Chapel Hill two years later to Ithaca, NY to get our Ph.D.s at Cornell University.
MC: When was and where did you go on your first date?
DB: We went to a Halloween party together. She was Nefertiti and I was a mendicant friar.
AL: We were friends for a while before we started dating, so I can’t really remember a “first” date.
MC: How long have you been married?
DB: We’ve been married since May of 2001.
AL: We got married in 2001, at Mead Chapel on campus.
MC: What is one of your spouse’s quirks?
DB: Antonia is a great disco dancer, but she likes to lead.
AL: Dan has no quirks. He’s perfect!
MC: What do you love about him/her?
DB: I love absolutely everything about her, including all her foibles, neuroses, quirks, and bad habits.
AL: See above.
Chair of the Math Department Frank Swenton and Assistant Professor of German Florence Feireisen by Emma MacDonald
MC: How did you meet?
Frank Swenton (FS): We met when Florence moved into the apartment beneath mine when she started at Middlebury—I think our first actual meeting was when she came up to ask about paying something since she was using my wireless (I told her not to worry about it).
Florence Feireisen (FF): We met “through the internet”, but not online. When I moved from Western Mass to Vermont, I moved into the apartment underneath Frank’s and used his wireless connection for a few days until I decided to go upstairs, introduce myself and offer to chip in for the wireless connection.
MC: What was your first date?
FS: It’s hard to identify a first date as such. She invited me to watch the whole series Six Feet Under through Netflix (actual DVD’s, not online)...I think that initially she was looking for a group, but it ended up being just the two of us watching the series from start to finish over the course of some number of months.
FF: Never really had a first date. We were friends and all of a sudden realized that we had been living in both apartments together for a while. I’d say it’s pretty typical for Germans to be friends and then have that develop into something more.
MC: How long have you been married?
FS: It’ll be five years in August.
FF: 4.5 years.
MC: What is one of your spouse’s quirks?
FS: Well, being German, the strangest thing about her is that she really doesn’t have a German accent (most people ask her if she’s Canadian or something, just because she tends to over-enunciate relative to an American).
FF: Frank has a schizophrenic palate: he loves kids’ things like orange Kraft’s mac and cheese and fruit snacks, but he also appreciates elaborate fancy dinners with grown up ingredients. When we eat out, he often takes risks by trying something completely new. But then he also eats pop tarts.
MC: What is one thing you love about your spouse?
FS: That she’s smart and nice are a little trite, so I’ll say I’m impressed with her hockey skills.
FF: Obviously many things, but you asked about one thing? Ok. I love that this semester Frank is taking an unpaid leave from teaching to be [our son] Max’s primary care giver (Max is 5 months old). He still has chair duties and some advising to do, so he just scoops up Max and takes him to Warner Hall. Max has been called the co-chair of math! He has his own travel bed in Frank’s office. Anyways, I love this about Frank: he did not have to do this, Max could have easily gone to daycare once my maternity leave was over, but it was really important to him to be with both of his boys when they were little.
MC: What is one thing you don’t particularly like about your spouse?
FS: Related to the above, she sort of plays down when she plays hockey, rather than pushing herself and playing with groups that are nearer her potential skill level...she’s just not that competitive in hockey, which is sort of a shame!
FF: Not a big fan of Frank competing in programming contests when we are on vacation.
Associate Professor of Spanish Juana Gamero de Coca and Visiting Lecturer in Spanish Ricardo Chavez-Castenada by Emilie Munson
MC: How did you meet?
Juana Gamero de Coca (JG): In New Mexico State University.
MC: What was your first date?
Ricardo Chavez-Castenada (RC): We never really had a first date.
JG: Many years after we first met, in Mexico City.
MC: What is one of your spouses quirks?
JG: He lives out of this world. Always inside the worlds in his novels.
RC: Her extreme empathy with everything around her.
MC: What is your favorite quality of your spouse?
RC: The world that comes out of her eyes, her mouth, her heart. It is really the world in which I live.
JG: He is a very good person.
MC: What is their most annoying habit?
JG: He does not know how to stop working.
RC: She takes too, too long cleaning her teeth before going to bed.
MC: What is your spouse’s favorite food?
JG: He loves rice and beans. I love shrimps and all kinds of seafood.
RC: Her favorite food is seafood. For me [it] is earth food.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater Andrew Smith and Visiting Lecturer in Theater Lisa Velten-Smith by Emilie Munson.
MC: How did you meet?
Andrew Smith (AS): We first met as we entered an MFA Acting Program at the University of California, San Diego in 2002. It was my first night in San Diego, having arrived with my Uhaul that day with my girlfriend at the time. Lisa knocked on my door because she was meeting my roommate to go see a show at the La Jolla Playhouse. We all met and introduced ourselves as members of the same acting class. I remember thinking: “Cool! She seems great.” But my girlfriend at the time, once Lisa left the room, immediately turned to me and said: “Wow. Good luck with that one.”
MC: What was your first date?
Lisa Velten-Smith (LV): Thinking. Thinking. Yep, no idea.
AS: As members of the same acting class of nine in a very intensive program, neither Lisa nor I came to graduate school to date our classmates. We came there for the work and to learn. So, we denied for a bit the mutual attraction that was developing, even though the directors in the program saw the chemistry, and immediately began casting us together in classwork and productions. We have played opposite each other on stage many, many times. Eventually it became more of a distraction to deny what was so evident to all around us, so we started dating. We didn’t have the normal “let’s go on a date” kind of start.
MC: How long have you been married?
AS: We got married on July 3, 2006.
MC: What is one of your spouse's quirks?
LV: He is really obsessed with making sure the keys are put back on the key holder.
AS: When Lisa gets really excited about something, especially an intellectual idea, her diction becomes pronounced.
MC: What is your favorite quality of your spouse?
AS: She is relentless in pursuit of truth. It is inspiring.
LV: His humility and generosity. Sorry that’s two but he has a lot of favorable qualities. S’why I married the guy.
MC: What is their most annoying habit?
AS: I get annoyed at myself when I get annoyed at her. She is free to have her habits without me judging her.
LV: Leaving the wet bath towel on the bed. Though, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen it happen so perhaps we are experiencing a breakthrough.
MC: What is your spouse’s favorite local restaurant?
AS: My favorite local restaurant: the grill on my front porch. If not that, then maybe Fire and Ice? She likes Fire and Ice too. Any place that has a boat for a salad bar deserves our business.
LV: I don’t necessarily favor one restaurant over another, but I will say the salmon from Costello’s or the chicken from Misty Knoll’s on the grill is outstanding. He might say Fire and Ice because we always seem to have a good time there, but when he sees my answer, he’ll go “oh, yeah, no —what Lisa said.”
(02/26/14 5:36pm)
As a kid, Erika Sloan ’16 always wanted to be on Jeopardy!. Nearly every night after dinner, her family would watch the trivia show together with Sloan pretending to be a contestant and playing along with the show. Today, the classics major from Simsbury, CT no longer needs to pretend.
This February, Sloan fulfilled her childhood dreams when she watched herself appear on national television, competing on Jeopardy!’s annual College Championships for a grand prize of $100,000. After submitting an online test last March, Sloan was invited to come to the Jeopardy! studios in New York City to complete another online test, participate in a mock show and do an interview. In November, she found out that she was selected as one of fifteen bright college students to be on the show, making her the College’s second ever Jeopardy! contestant — after Keith Williams ’07.
“It was a little bit of disbelief,” recalls Sloan of how she felt to be chosen for the show. “At first I got [a] voicemail that said ‘Hi, this is Glen from Jeopardy! give me a call back,’ and I was like they wouldn’t be calling me to tell me I didn’t get on the show… So I was hopeful but I didn’t want to expect too much. And then I called and he went through some legal stuff and then he was like, ‘Well, congratulations! You’re on the show.’”
Unlike many of her Jeopardy! competitors, Sloan never was on a quiz team or trivia bowl and has never even been to Trivia Night at the College. Her trivia prowess comes from a general love of learning.
“When I learn something that I find interesting, I absorb it and I guess I have the ability to remember it or at least have it on the tip of my tongue to be able to pull it out.”
To prepare for the taping of the show last month, though, Sloan did not simply lean on her prior knowledge. Sloan reviewed topics that frequently come up in trivia, for example Shakespeare plays and world trivia, and read about the strategies of former players.
Additionally, Sloan spoke to Williams, the college’s only other Jeopardy! participant, who runs a game theory and Jeopardy! wagering blog and helped Sloan learn the intricacies of betting to win. Like back in her childhood, sometimes she would practice by watching the show and pretending to buzz in.
Between the taping of the show in January and airing in February, Sloan was challenged with the task of keeping the results of the show a secret. Overall she says her friends were very impressed with how well she hid the results from them, even though occasionally she slipped up and mentioned a detail about a question that she shouldn’t have revealed.
Sloan’s two episodes, the College Championship’s Quarter and Semi-Finals, aired on Feb. 14 and 19 respectively. In the Quarterfinals, Sloan competed against a contestant from Ball State University and Ohio State University in categories such as U.S. cities, the stage and college football. Sloan trailed in the first round, ending the round in third place over 3,000 points behind the leader. She credits her slow start not to nerves but to trouble with the buzzer.
“The reason I was having so much trouble at the beginning was I just could not beat the other two on the buzzer at all. So every time I knew a question I was getting so frustrated because I just wouldn’t be able to get in.”
Despite these issues in the first round, Sloan proved her trivia talent in the next round by cruising up to a close second place.
In final Jeopardy!, in which contestants may wager a portion of their points, gaining more points if they get the question right but losing points if they get it wrong, Sloan surprised viewers by stealing first place with a correct answer and a confident wager of 3,000 points.
In the Semi-finals — which aired on Feb. 19 — Sloan was challenged by contestants from University of California Berkeley and Harvard University. She remained a stiff contender throughout the entire game, holding onto second place throughout the first and second rounds.
“There was a lot less pressure going into the second [episode, the Semi-finals,]” Sloan said. “I had already won a game and hadn’t made a total fool of myself. I had represented my family and friends and Middlebury well, so…going into the second one, it was like I have already proved myself.”
Unfortunately, Sloan’s strong performance was not enough to secure her a victory and advance to the Finals. In final Jeopardy!, Sloan, thanks to her Shakespeare studying, confidently generated the correct answer of “What is Falstaff?” to the question. “He has the most speeches of any character with 471 in three plays, of which 2 are histories and one is a comedy.” Her wager of 9,700 points was not enough, however, to surpass the leader, Kevin, of University of California Berkley.
Though Sloan may have lost in her episode, in other ways she gained a lot. During both episodes, Sloan experienced an outpouring of support from fans and peers via social media and in person. Sloan watched both episodes air in Crossroads Café with many of her enthusiastic student supporters who cheered for her correct answers and congratulated her efforts.
Furthermore, Sloan benefitted from the camaraderie of the other Jeopardy! College Championship contestant. During the taping of the show, contestants would sit in the audience and cheer for their former competitors.
Also, during the two weeks in which the series’ episodes aired, Sloan kept in close contact with the other contestants by corresponding on Facebook, Twitter and Google chat.
“Even though [all the contestants] were so different, we were bonded by this experience and it was just so nice to have people who understood to talk it all over with,” says Sloan. “Definitely more friendship came out of [Jeopardy!] than competition.”
Additionally, Sloan received the “added bonus” of 10,000 dollars for her advancement to the Semi-finals on Jeopardy!, money which she plans on using to pay for medical school and to buy herself a single scull to row in.
For Sloan, after wanting to be on Jeopardy! for so long, the hardest part of the end of her Jeopardy! run is not being able to participate in Jeopardy! again (the show has a rule that contestants may only participate once).
“Now that it is over, it’s like ‘I don’t get to be on Jeopardy! anymore.’ There is nothing to strive for,” she explains.
Sloan and her fellow contestants hope that in the future the show make an exception and allow a reunion tournament of their College Championships group. For now, Sloan may just have to satisfy herself with cleaning house at Trivia Night.
(01/22/14 4:28pm)
On Tuesday evening, former National Football League (NFL) cornerback Wade Davis received snaps and laughs from a packed Mead Chapel audience as he honestly — and often humorously — spoke about his difficult journey from closeted gay man to LBGTQ activist.
Davis, who invited students to view his lecture as a “conversation” and to participate or interrupt at any time, described himself as a “weird kid who was tough on the outside and a big time Momma’s boy on the inside” growing up. He bravely and honestly recounted his own homophobic actions as he worked to accept his homosexuality as a middle schooler, college student and professional football player.
“I spent so much time trying to prove to everyone who I was,” Davis remembered of his efforts to convince his friends and teammates that he was straight, before he came out of the closet.
In 2012, Davis publicly announced his homosexuality, becoming the first athlete in the NFL to do so. He spoke about his experiences of being a closeted gay man in the NFL. Today, Davis is the executive director for the You Can Play Project, an advocacy organization that seeks to eliminate homophobia in professional sports and encourage LBGTQ youths to participate in sports.
Athletic teams, who made up a large portion of the audience, were encouraged to attend by varsity coaches and Athletic Director Erin Quinn. They received specific advice from Davis to help gay athletes feel welcome: have coaches promote the rhetoric of respect for all people and have teammates consistently combat derogatory language about homosexuals.
Interested in the intersection of racism, sexism and homophobia, Davis more broadly suggested, “We all need to buy in to ending all kinds of oppression. (…) What I advocate for is to see everyone’s humanity.”
He urged students to “act like an ally” for people in need in the state of Vermont by providing support, listening and setting aside preconceived assumptions.
“Give that smarts out; offer it to another person in your life,” he exhorted students. “Why are you going to school if not to change the world?”