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(05/08/14 12:20am)
The current Student Government Association (SGA) administration has been faced with a great deal of scrutiny this year, due in part to the especially high voter turnout last year, which elected Rachel Liddell ’15 as SGA President with over 52 percent of the votes. Amid frustration with the apparent lack of tangible change enacted by the SGA, however, the Senate has been especially active in passing legislation in recent weeks.
Much of the SGA’s business during the fall semester was centered on crisis management following the 9/11 Memorial vandalism and the Chance the Rapper controversy.
Liddell said that she was overeager at the start of the year and sought to effect broad, sweeping changes. She soon realized that such a plan proved to be more talk than action and that as President for just one year, she didn’t “have the longevity to pursue those things to their finality.”
After Liddell realized the type of change and legislation she would be capable of enacting, she says that she was “able to focus [her] efforts in a more concentrated way.”
“You can see that in the arc of what I was able to do this year. The first semester I spent a lot of time talking to the [Educational Affairs Committee] about internships for credit … and that was good, not an unproductive conversation, but I realized that it wasn’t under my direct control,” Liddell said.
“I did a lot of work towards it, and I’m glad that I did, but at a certain point I realized that I had done what I could do and the faculty needed to make a decision for themselves. I then started looking into things like having a café in BiHall and ramping MiddCourses up and talking about how we as SGA members can actually be engaged in issues on campus.”
Such issues included Honor Code reform, AAL reform and, at the start of the year, Real Food. With regard to the latter, the SGA conducted an all-student survey in the fall that sought to gauge student interest in the Real Food movement. The survey, however, included a question that angered a number of students. Liddell noted that students were right to be angry and that she made a mistake. The survey led Liddell to “burn a lot of political capital” that she was unable to bounce back from. The SGA’s inquiries into Real Food further faded as Liddell and her cabinet recognized that “pursuing initiatives took a disproportionate amount of time in relation to the students it represented.”
While the SGA did not pass any legislature pertaining to Real Food, Liddell did help EatReal to pass a bill related to Real Food through the SGA senate last month.
“We have had a lot of independent student groups come to the SGA this year and ask to write legislation,” Liddell said, adding that the SGA has the ability and connections to put students in contact with the appropriate administrators to work to create change.
In spite of the recent one-sided election, the SGA has, in fact, been particularly active in passing legislation.
“AAL reform has been in and out of legislation for four years,” said SGA Senator Michael Brady ’17.5. “So the fact that we can pass this bill means that we’ve made progress. I think there is some significant legislation that has been passed and I find it kind of ironic that during this election, people were saying that SGA doesn’t do anything.”
The SGA believes that much of the discontent they are faced with is rooted in a misunderstanding on behalf of the student body.
“I don’t even necessarily think that it’s a lack of our ability to do something as it is, it’s a perception thing. Students don’t understand what we do or how we do it and don’t care to learn more, and they feel like it’s the SGA’s responsibility to help them [understand it in a more] digestible manner,” said SGA Chief of Staff Jake Nonweiler ’14.
On the most basic level, Liddell believes that the SGA can help students connect with administrators.
“Administrators are very helpful,” she said. “They are kind, and they care about what students think, and they want to help us. The administration, as a whole, is difficult to navigate… it took me about a year to learn how to do it, and now I’m going to finish.”
“I think that also pertains to the issue of ‘what does the SGA do for students?’ The SGA knows how to navigate the administration, and many students have the agency to walk up to Old Chapel and make change ... but SGA can be a great conduit for that kind of change as well because we have a lot of practice… We can be an amplifier. But if people don’t know that, or people don’t want that, it doesn’t work.”
(05/07/14 4:01pm)
I will graduate from Middlebury College in two and a half weeks. It’s a painfully surreal concept that makes me wax nostalgic for the debauchery and laughter and stress and quarter-life crises I experienced over the past four years. I’ve spent a good amount of time thinking about the past and the ways that it will prepare me for the future, or at least shape my future, because feign it as we may, I don’t think that anyone is really prepared for “the real world.” To be honest, I have enough trouble thinking of myself as a “real adult,” let alone someone who will (someday) have a job.
I’ve seen Middlebury change a lot in the past four years, for better and for worse. Some of it may come from the dissolution of naïveté and a heightened awareness of the goings-on at the College as I grew more comfortable here, but much of it is real change. The College will continue its natural evolution and changes will continue to occur, especially with the resignation of President Liebowitz and the restructuring of the Board of Trustees. As a person who has been a part of the Middlebury College community for the past four years, and as a person who has noticed change, here is an easy change that I would like to see before my five-year reunion:
Change the post-Commencement move-out policy. The College mandates that all students are moved out of their dorm rooms by 11:00 p.m. on the night of graduation. The reason for which is that the rooms need to be prepped for Reunion Weekend. This policy is not only unnecessary, but also dangerous. Middlebury has a tradition in which graduating seniors stay up all night before graduation as a final hurrah and a last-ditch effort to make our last night as students last as long as it possibly can. Then comes Commencement, where emotional instability and denial set in. To ask sleep-deprived, emotionally distraught graduates to move out of their rooms and drive home in such a volatile state puts students’ lives in danger. I’ve heard horror stories of friends pulling over at truck stops in the middle of the night after graduation to sleep for an hour or two before continuing the long drive home. It’s a dangerous policy and it needs to change before a fatal accident forces the College to change it. Asking students to move out by 9 a.m. the day after Commencement will provide ample time for rooms to be prepared for Reunion Weekend. Let’s face it, custodial isn’t going to start cleaning dorm rooms at 11 p.m. on a Sunday night. Will starting to clean at noon on Monday make that much of a difference? Providing students with the option to stay overnight after Commencement will ensure that newly-minted college grads are better rested, less emotional and more alert when driving home.
There are other changes I’d like to see made, of course — more transparent communication between students and administrators, faculty and staff; less predictable meal rotations in the dining halls; internships for credit; AAL reform; a stronger alumni network; less student apathy; a stronger and more active Commons System; better support and communication between the College and its schools abroad while students are studying abroad.
But those are broader changes that will take more time and require jumping through hoops and meetings, debates and open forums. They’re changes that will improve the “Middlebury Experience” and make our already-pretty-incredible college even better. The post-graduation move-out date, however, should be a no-brainer. It’s an extension of less than 24 hours, and a change that shouldn’t have to wind its way through a bureaucratic maze.
In two and a half weeks I will be an alumna of Middlebury College. In the last four years, I’ve showed that I care about Middlebury by participating in the community and taking advantage of opportunities presented to me. Middlebury, too, has displayed a level of care for its student body by feeding us each day, ensuring our safety and providing us with courses to challenge and stimulate us intellectually. That level of care does not need to end 12 hours after graduation, at the moment we become alumni.
So, Middlebury, before you send your new graduates their first postcards asking for a donation to the College, do what you can to ensure that they arrive home safely. We cannot and should not wait to change this policy until a life filled with infinite potential gets cut short. Reunion Weekend preparation can wait.
(04/17/14 12:03am)
The Educational Affairs Committee (EAC) has been presented with a series of recommendations compiled by an ad hoc committee to reform the First Year Seminar (FYS) program. The committee’s report is the first in-depth report on the FYS program since the 1997-1998 academic year.
It is unlikely that a vote will occur during the current academic year, however. In order for a vote to occur, the ad hoc committee, led by Associate Professor of History Amy Morsman, had to compile a report and present it to the EAC for review before it could be discussed during a faculty meeting. The report was presented to the EAC just two weeks ago and only one faculty meeting remains.
As it exists now, there are 42 first-year seminar courses offered in the fall and eight in the spring. A system of rotations based on the number of faculty within each department was developed to select the 50 professors leading seminars each year.
“We ask more from the English department and the History department, than we do from Classics, because there are more faculty in there to rotate around,” said Associate Professor of English and Assistant Dean for Instruction Kathy Skubikowski, who has overseen FYS advising since 1995.
On average, faculty return to the role of FYS advisor once every three and a half years. However, some rotate through more frequently simply because they enjoy advising students during their formative first months at the College.
Morsman did not reveal information held within the ad hoc committee’s recommendations, writing in an email that “they [the EAC] will take the time they need over the next several weeks to go through it ... before making any firm decisions about next steps.”
She did note, however, that she and other committee members sought feedback from students about their FYS experiences.
“But at least from my perspective, the initial impetus to rethink the FYS program came from faculty who have taught in the program and wanted to make some changes and from administrators who were happy to have faculty consider possible tweaks to the system,” she wrote in an email.
Skubikowski and Dean of Curriculum and Director of the Sciences Bob Cluss hinted at potential changes based on the recent evolution of FYS advising, however.
When the FYS program was last reviewed in Spring 1998, it led to the integration between FYS courses and the Commons system. The Commons system was developed during the presidency of John M. McCardell and expanded as new dormitories were constructed to allow for commons-specific housing. Cluss noted that the timing of the review and the expansion of the commons system allowed for the coupling of first-year housing assignments with FYS courses.
“One of the changes we’re thinking of is having a larger Commons role in the advising of first-year seminars,” Skubikowski said, noting Commons-organized dinners linked with particular academic departments to guide first-semester sophomores in declaring a major.
Vice President for Academic Affairs Tim Spears elaborated on the evolving role of advisors.
“What we’re trying to do on the administrative side is to take advantage of the resources we have to establish a framework for advising that extends from first year through to sophomore year,” he said. “We understand that from a student perspective academic advising can, and sometimes should, lead to more general discussions about what students might want to do with what they’re majoring in.”
Cluss made note of the potential for a group of super-advisors who would serve as expert advisors with regard to major advising and AP or IB credit distribution.
Adapting the FYS program to remain current with regard to student needs and College policy is also a concern.
“One thing that’s changed in 26 years is the students who are coming in. There’s just a whole different preparation,” Skubikowski said. “The idea of the first year seminar is that it helps ... students make the transition between being excellent high school students to being excellent college students … but we need to identify in some ways what those transitions are.”
Spears echoed Skubikowski with regard to the changing needs of students.
“Is it appropriate that the FYS program should only focus on writing skills? Some have suggested we consider other skills, like public speaking or information literacy.”
(04/09/14 11:22pm)
The College has announced that Diana Nyad will deliver the 2014 commencement address on Sunday, May 25. At the age of 64, Nyad made history last year when she became the first person to swim the 110-mile stretch between Havana, Cuba and Key West, FL without the protection of a shark cage.
Nyad will also receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the College.
“Diana Nyad is a bold and fearless athlete whose determination is truly inspiring,” President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said in a press release. “Her mental strength and her belief in never giving up on her goals make her a role model for others who wish to pursue their dreams, no matter how daunting.”
Nyad is a prolific long-distance swimmer, having swam around the island of Manhattan in under eight hours at age 26. She also set the world record for both men’s and women’s distance swimming by traversing the 102 miles between North Bimini Island, Bahamas and Juno Beach, Florida in just 27.5 hours.
In the 1980s, Nyad took a hiatus from swimming and worked in broadcast journalism, serving as senior correspondent for Fox Sports News and hosting her own show on CNBC. She has published two books about her long-distance swimming career, has written for the New York Times, Newsweek magazine and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” More recently, Nyad was named to National Geographic magazine’s 2014 “Adventurers of the Year” list and competed on Dancing with the Stars.
The College will also be honoring five other men and women with honorary degrees: former Board of Trustees Vice Chair and former executive of State Street Corporation William H. Kieffer III ’64, Grammy-award winning singer and social justice advocate Angelique Kidjo, acclaimed underwater explorer Carl Douglas ’88, former President Emeritus of Yale University Richard Levin and retired chairman and CEO of Colgate-Palmolive Reuben Mark ’60.
Keiffer has served as emeritus trustee since 2008, and has held various volunteer leadership positions at the College over the past 50 years. He has served as vice chair of the Board of Trustees and led the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) Board of Governors for nine years. Kieffer is currently co-chair of the 2015 Middlebury Language Schools Centennial Celebration. He will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
Kidjo’s blend of Afropop, Congolese rumba, jazz, rhythm and blues, gospel and Latin music earned her the Grammy award for Best Contemporary World Music in 2007. She is a native of Benin and has worked as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2002. Kidjo also performed at the College in the fall. She will be receiving an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.
Douglas, a recipient of a Doctor of Letters, founded Deep Sea Productions, a publishing and documentary film company that has chronicled the discovery of over 100 underwater ruins. Douglas also serves as chairman of Sweden’s largest private marine survey company.
Levin will also receive a Doctor of Letters. During his time as President Emeritus at Yale from 1993-2013, he launched the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and collaborated with the National University of Singapore to found the first liberal arts college in Asia.
Mark, who will be receiving a Doctor of Laws, was the longest-serving leader in Colgate-Palmolive’s history as a public company. He served on the College’s Board of Trustees from 1985 to 1994 and has been an avid proponent of faculty scholarship, teaching and development.
The 2014 Middlebury College commencement ceremony will be held on the lawn behind Voter beginning at 10 a.m. on Sunday, May 25.
(04/09/14 11:18pm)
On Monday, April 7, the College hosted its third panel on the subject of Socially Responsible Investing and the College’s endowment in the past 15 months.
Six investment experts were invited to speak on how fossil fuel investments are evaluated and how institutions such as the College can best incorporate Environmental-Social-Governance (ESG) consciousness into their investment process.
Vice President of Advisor Markets at Pax World Tom Gainey, Managing Director and Director of ESG Research and Shareholder Engagement at Boston Common Asset Management Steven Heim, Real Assets Director at Investure Jon Hill, Partner and Portfolio Manager at Trillium Asset Management Stephanie Leighton, Senior Vice President of Essex Investment Management William Page and Proprietary Trading and Risk Management Team member at Mariner Investment Group Akila Prabhakar served on the panel. The panelists hail from different genres of work, ranging from advising to investing at both large and small firms or hedge funds.
The panel came on the heels of the College’s announcement that, as of February 28, a $25 million portion of the endowment will go toward investments that generate social, environmental and economic value and are in keeping with good ESG practices. The $25 million represents approximately three percent of the College’s total endowment.
Additionally, the College has placed $150,000 of its endowment under the management of the Research and Investment and Social Equity (RISE) group, a division of the Socially Responsible Investment Club (SRI). RISE will be using the funds to invest in companies that meet particular ESG standards. The group will present a report on the status of the fund to the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees each year. On April 7, RISE announced its first trades using the endowment funds.
The panelists began by introducing themselves and explaining their work in socially responsible investing, and transitioned into a discussion amongst themselves about working directly with companies to improve ESG-related practices and about the complexity of clean energy investments.
The panelists agreed that, particularly as climate change has moved to the forefront of political dialogue in recent years, companies have become more eager to address workplace sustainability practices and engagement between investors and companies has become much easier.
Heim noted that sustainability reports have proven to be advantageous not only with regard to the relationship between companies and managers or investors, but also between companies and employees, for employees are often more willing to work for a company that promotes transparency and boasts strong ESG practices.
The panelists noted that even clean energy investments, however, are not perfect. The mining of rare earth minerals, which are found in many phone and computer batteries, as well as solar panels and wind turbines, is an expensive and environmentally invasive process.
Throughout the evening, Hill emphasized Investure’s long-term outlook on investments. He argued that many of the company’s clients have been around for centuries and will be around for centuries more, and so slower, steadier and more promising investments are what they look for.
Adrian Leong ’16 found Investure’s stance to be problematic, however.
“It was surprising for me to hear … that they [Investure] think they’re currently investing with a view of the long term,” Leong wrote in an email. “As long as they are investing in the fossil fuel industry, they are not doing that.”
He alluded to United Nations Rapporteur Olivier De Schutter’s warning of a broken food system, prolonged poverty and increased risk of violent conflicts if current emission trends continue.
“Maybe we are still making money now, but sooner than we think, the consequences of our short-sighted vision and reluctance to lead will imperil the fundamental conditions that make life in a organized society possible,” he said.
The panelists emphasized that there is no right way to go about divesting, or any right alternative to fossil fuel investments. Leighton suggested that those involved in the divestment movement at the College speak to students at other colleges—particularly those that are managed by Investure—to find allies and press money managers to make changes.
“I was pleased that all of the panelists addressed fossil fuel divestment,” Greta Neubauer ’14.5 wrote in an email. “The panelists made clear [during the panel and in conversations afterward] that Middlebury could divest if the College considered it to be a priority,” noting that she felt a “sense of inevitability” rooted in the increasing number of socially responsible options for investment due to the worsening climate crisis.
Jeannie Bartlett ’15, too, remains optimistic about the feasibility of divestment in the College’s future.
“In talking with a couple of the panelists afterward, they said they think Investure could create a separately managed fund that was fossil fuel free but otherwise diversified,” Bartlett wrote in an email. “We would just have to ask them for it, which so far Patrick Norton and the trustees have been unwilling to do.” She added that in giving a portion of the endowment to RISE, “we have already seen that they can create a separate fund.”
(03/19/14 11:42pm)
A late winter blizzard on Thursday, March 13 blanketed the campus with over a foot of snow. Despite treacherous roads, high winds and inaccessible sidewalks, the College conducted daily operations as usual, albeit with a limited staff.
Many of the College’s staff members were unable to come to work due to impassable roads or had to stay home with their children because schools were closed for the day.
Before sunrise on Thursday, facilities services began clearing emergency access areas from buildings on campus. According to Assistant Director of Maintenance and Operations Luther Tenny, there are typically 14 equipment operators and 30 hand shovelers clearing snow across campus. Depending on the day, custodial teams in certain buildings may also offer assistance in removing snow.
“Thursday was not a typical storm,” Tenny wrote in an email. “Many staff were unable to make it in because of the drifting snow but thankfully most of our plow operators were here. We also utilized two additional pieces of heavy equipment (a backhoe and a front-end loader) through a local contractor for help.”
“For shovel crews we had about 25 working most of the day moving snow from the entries,” Tenny added. Non-essential tasks, such as plowing less-trafficked sidewalks, were left for either late Thursday afternoon or Friday.
While Facilities Services staff was busy ensuring that the College’s roads were clear, surrounding routes were not so accessible.
“One of my employees was heading out on Wednesday afternoon and almost went off the road at ‘The Ledges’ on Route 125 just a few miles west of here,” wrote Director of Dining Services Matthew Biette in an email. “Others reported not being able to see the road and when they did, they were in the wrong lane. Bottom line, it was white out conditions and very dangerous to drive or walk.”
Biette began preparing for Thursday’s storm over two days before it hit, contacting suppliers and making purchases days in advance with the concern that the storm was going to hinder travel.
“The bakery had already delivered breakfast and lunch products for Thursday on Wednesday, the Proctor salad preparation was stocked up and the refrigerators and stock rooms were full with a double order to be sure our students would be taken care of,” said Biette.
“Our staffing on a regular day is enough to produce the various foods and extras offered each day — everyone’s day is full,” Biette wrote, alluding to the Panini presses in Proctor being shut off and the Proctor Fireplace Lounge remaining locked on Thursday to allow staff to focus on more important tasks at hand.
When Biette left for work on Thursday morning, the sidewalks in town were inaccessible. By 6 a.m., Facilities Services had already begun digging pathways on campus.
“Arriving at the dining rooms and kitchens, I was surprised and happy to see very few people out and/or late,” Biette wrote. “In some areas, schedules were changed so those who lived closer [to the College] were [given] opening [shifts], thus giving those who lived farther away more time to make it to work safely.”
Custodial Services was not as fortunate as Dining Services — out of 80 custodial staff, 43 were unable to come to work because of the weather and another 10 had scheduled the day off in advance.
When attendance is low, “staff are reassigned to buildings other than those they normally work in if another team is very short [on people],” Assistant Director of Custodial Services Sylvia Manning wrote in an email.
Dining and residence halls were prioritized over most academic buildings on Thursday, and priority tasks included checking for hazards such as broken items, checking trash bins and restocking paper products in restrooms.
Due to impassible road conditions, Parton Center for Health and Wellness was unable to open at its usual 8 a.m. hour for the first time ever. In past years, and only on very rare occasions, Parton has closed early or announced limited hours because of the weather.
The first staff member arrived at 9:30 a.m., and more people arrived as they were able to, said Administrative Director of the Parton Center for Health and Wellness Terry Jenny. By 10:30 a.m., there was sufficient staff for Parton to open its doors.
“Everyone does their best to get in on time and as soon as they can,” Jenny said, noting that safety is a priority and that staff members across campus put in maximum effort to ensure that operations run smoothly.
While Parton was delayed in opening, its back-up network of health and counseling services was activated and advertised.
“When the need is urgent and Parton Counseling is closed, students can get the help they need by reaching out to Public Safety … or to the Addison County emergency team or Porter Hospital,” Director of Counseling Services Ximena Mejia wrote in an email. “We always have a counselor on call … and during unexpected closures, we check our phone messages and emails several times each hour.”
While the snow prevented some from arriving at work, many braved treacherous roads and white-out conditions to arrive at the College.
“Bottom line is there is a tremendously dedicated staff who brave the elements to get here when it is necessary,” wrote Biette. “Thankfully, everyone arrived safely.”
(03/06/14 2:18am)
At 9 p.m. local time on March 1 in Kunming, China, a group of men dressed in black began stabbing people with long knives at random, aiming for the head, neck and shoulders, according to witnesses. The attack left 33 people dead, including four of the assailants, and another 130 were wounded. Four more terrorists were apprehended soon after the attack.
A group of Xinjiang separatists have been linked to the terror attack that took place at a train station in Kunming. All 25 students participating in the C.V. Starr-Middlebury School Abroad in Kunming are safe and have been accounted for.
“We have been in touch with our director there [in Kunming] and we are relieved to report that all students at the Kunming program are accounted for and our safe,” wrote President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz in an email to students, faculty and staff. “Our thoughts are with all the citizens of Kunming who are such welcome hosts to our students.”
The school in Kunming is one of three that the College operates in China, and the only one located in the western part of the country. Kunming is a notoriously multiethnic city and tends to attract students interested in anthropology and environmental sciences.
In the hours following the attack, students on the Middlebury program were instructed to remain in their dorms. A number of students were traveling outside of the city for the weekend and were instructed to “be in touch with … staff about the best way to return to Kunming,” according to Dean of International Programs and Edward C. Knox Professor of International Studies Jeff Cason. An all-student meeting was convened with the program’s staff in Kunming the day after the attack to discuss the incident and security measures students should take.
During the meeting, students were reported to be relatively calm and in good spirits, according to Cason. Students were advised not to leave their dormitories at night, to travel in small groups at all times and to avoid public transportation, at least for the next several days. Organized program outings were cancelled until further notice.
“These are all precautionary measures, to be sure; reports from staff indicate that life in Kunming is relatively normal, with local residents out and about as usual,” wrote Cason.
Karen Liu ’15 is currently studying in Kunming and was traveling outside of the city with two other students when the attack occurred. They learned of the incident when a parent of one of the students called to find out if they were safe.
“What I can say is that we are very lucky,” Liu wrote in an email. “Two other [students] and I had travel plans and were at the train station just three hours before. We will be arriving back to Kunming via train [on Saturday night] and have been directed by [Assistant Director of the C. V. Starr-Middlebury School Abroad in Kunming] Peter Robbins to stick with our original travel plans because security will have increased by then.”
That advice changed, however, as staff members ultimately chartered a bus to retrieve the students from outside of the city and bring them back to Kunming on Sunday evening, simply because of the increased risk.
“So far the attack has been isolated to just the train station, and staff members have not yet advised against [visiting] certain areas of Kunming,” Liu continued.
While tensions between the Muslim Uighur ethnic group in the west and China have been rising over the years, according to The Guardian, this is the “first time people from the north-western region have been accused of such a major and organized attack outside its borders.”
(02/13/14 12:25am)
In an effort to cut costs and reduce waste, the College will be reorganizing top-level management positions and introducing a one-card swipe system within Dining Services. The restructuring comes after discussions with consulting firm Sodexo in the fall.
According to Vice President for Finance and Treasurer Patrick Norton, Sodexo was brought in because he and others “identified that there were issues around systems and general management that needed to be corrected.” Sodexo is a major player in the food service field that also offers management services. The firm is present among many local institutions, including University of Vermont, Chaplain College and Saint Michael’s College.
Though at the conclusion of Sodexo’s stay, the College decided not to employ the firm’s outside management, the company’s findings still proved to be valuable.
“[The Sodexo report] validated our thoughts,” Norton said. “You have a hypothesis and you test it. And the hypothesis was that we had issues around some systems and some general management and that’s what came back to us.”
Implementing A Swipe System
As one of the only colleges in the nation without a swipe-based meal plan, the College does not have a concrete method of determining the number of students who eat in the dining halls. Norton said that down the road, the College will likely implement a one-card system.
Discussions regarding the one-card system are still in preliminary stages. Norton clarified that introducing a one-card swipe system does not necessarily mean that the College is moving to a meal plan system, and there will be no limit to a student’s number of daily swipes.
“What the swipe card does is that it eliminates folks who aren’t students from going into our dining halls and eating,” Norton said. “That’s an issue. It’s hard to determine how pervasive the issue is, but it’s an issue. We’ve heard anecdotally that there are folks from outside who go into our dining halls and eat, and when you have an open system, that’s what happens.”
Initially, the swipe system will allow Dining Services to ensure that those eating in the dining halls are members of the College community and that guests pay the rarely-enforced five dollar breakfast, seven dollar lunch and nine dollar dinner fees.
While dining hall swipes are likely to be unlimited when the one-card system is introduced, students can have the option of putting points on their card and using it for purchases at the bookstore or at on-campus retail operations such as the Grille or Crossroads. Such a system is widely employed at schools across the nation and was once used at the College too.
A decade ago, the College employed a home-grown credit system, much like a credit card, that was used in the dining halls and food retail operations. Students were able to purchase items at The Grille and the cost was added to the end-of-semester bill. Additionally, the College issued faculty and staff members credit cards, the charges of which were deducted from their paychecks.
According to Norton, the College eliminated the system in 2004 because “it was more credit, public credit, and why are we a credit card company?”
“For employees, it was easy to just take it out of the paycheck,” Norton said. “But for students, you have to bill them and you have to collect, and so the overhead and the time and effort just didn’t make a lot of sense.”
After a decade of virtually free-for-all dining, the College will be shifting to a more controlled, but not restrictive, system. The one-card system will be developed slowly, with careful evaluation of data and much student input.
“We do not have to go down the road of a meal plan,” Norton said. “If one of the big issues we have is around systems and practices, we get that fixed with an executive director, and if one of our other issues is that we want to restrict our dining halls to people who are actually part of the community, then that could be solved by hiring an executive director and adding a one-card. You don’t need a meal plan for that. So that’s the other issue — do we really need one?”
The College’s retail operations are largely underused. Putting points on a one-card system could allow students to eat at 51 Main or The Grille without having cash on-hand, making it easier to dine outside of the dining halls and increase retail operation traffic.
Norton does not see any downside to the one-card system because, he argues, it will not prove to be restricting and it has the potential to increase variety both in terms of where students choose to eat and what Dining Services is capable of purchasing.
“When the business is aware of how many are coming in, they know the income from those guests, it is much easier to define your purchasing needs,” wrote Director of Dining Services Matthew Biette in an email.
Just as the Weigh The Waste campaign in the fall sought to reduce food waste and refine Dining Services spending, tracking the number of students in the dining halls will allow for more accurate budgeting. This could potentially open doors for more local food in the dining halls, increased variety and further accommodations for those with dietary restrictions.
Seeking Out New Management
Dining Services at the College is unique as Middlebury operates as a 12-month campus, rather than the nine-months for which most other schools operate. During the normal academic year, Dining Services operates three dining halls on campus, catering services and transaction-based retail operations such as The Grille, Crossroads and 51 Main. During the summer, Dining Services provides food for language schools and the Bread Loaf School of English over 10 miles away in Ripton.
The frequently changing number of students who use the dining halls, evolving dietary needs and the complexity of operations has led the College to seek restructuring within Dining Services and hire an Executive Director of Dining in the near future.
“Our systems are behind the times a bit and we need to improve them, certainly for an institution of Middlebury’s caliber … and complexity of operations,” Norton said. “We have to up our game on how we’re managing the overall operations.”
In recent years, budget cuts have led the College to reduce catering operations, eliminate juice at lunch and dinner and only offer breakfast meats on weekends.
According to Norton, the Executive Director of Dining will be responsible for the College’s three pillars of dining: retail, which encompasses The Grille, Crossroads, Wilson Café and 51 Main; catering functions; and board, or Proctor, Ross and Atwater dining halls.
“[In lieu of an outsourced general management model] we need an executive director to come in who … can actually bring in the systems and the practice that we need to get from, say, a Sodexo,” Norton said.
“But the idea is to do it ourselves, to remain self-operating, and there are a number of reasons for that. One is cost. We would contain our costs by selecting an internal hire. Number two is that we want connections to new food, curriculums being developed, we want more of a connection to local markets and we think it would be best served if we had that talent in-house to do it.”
(02/13/14 12:23am)
On Jan. 24, students and faculty gathered in Crossroads to celebrate the launch of MiddSafe, the College’s first 24/7 sexual assault hotline.
MiddSafe has been in the works for several years and marks a critical development in the College’s programming to prevent sexual assault on campus. The long-awaited activation of the hotline was made possible by both the help of a grant from the Department of Justice and the hiring of a Health and Wellness Education Director, Barbara McCall, at the start of the academic year.
The Task Force on the Status of Women Report from 2008 recommended the introduction of a sexual assault advocacy program. In the wake of the report, the Sexual Assault Oversight Committee (SAOC) was founded and has been planning the sexual assault hotline ever since.
The hotline takes the form of a cell phone passed between advocates and is confidential, except in situations where the caller poses a risk to him or herself or others.
Last spring, the SAOC issued a call for student advocates to staff the hotline. Applications were reviewed by Director of Chellis House Karin Hanta and Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs and Student Life Karen Guttentag, who then selected 15 students to undergo advocate training. The advocates underwent 20 hours of training that included webinars from the Department of Justice, conversations with staff members at Parton Health Center, Counseling Services and the Chaplain’s office.
McCall’s presence on campus acted as a catalyst for the development of the hotline, as the role of Director and Health and Wellness had remained unfilled for two years.
“When I arrived this summer, students had already been selected [as advocates], they had gone through an interview process with members of the SAOC, and I really had this summer to get to know them, get to know the history of the program, plan the training and then get everybody trained when folks returned in the fall,” McCall said.
“We spent a lot of the fall semester working out the kinks and details and the kinds of things that, when you’re writing a program plan, you might not actually think of until you’re in the thick of actually trying to get things to happen.”
McCall noted that planning for the hotline involved looking at peer institutions conducting similar work, noting Harvard, Amherst and Castleton State as local or peer schools with particularly robust hotline programs.
“Really, it was about figuring out what makes sense for our community, what makes sense for Middlebury,” McCall said. “Sometimes that was really close to what someone else was doing, and then there were other times that we had to make it fit us from scratch. So there’s been a bit of borrowing from past ideas and past knowledge, and also using what we know about Middlebury.”
The student advocates applied for the program because they believed it filled a void in the College’s current system dealing with sexual assault, and because it has the potential to change on-campus attitudes toward sexual assault.
“I had been frustrated by the sexual assault awareness program during orientation and talked to Karin Hanta and Karen Guttentag about it and they both let me know when this program came up,” said MiddSafe advocate Rebecca Coates-Fincke ’16.5. “I thought it was a really good way to launch myself into this part of campus that’s working toward prevention and support, and I think it’s really helpful for people to know that they have peers available to help.”
Fellow advocate Sophie Kligler ’15 noted that the SAOC has developed a number of programs to raise awareness of and prevent sexual assault, but none that are based on peer support. The peer support component and the potential to create meaningful change led her to apply to be an advocate.
The goal of MiddSafe is not to tell callers what they should do next. Rather, the advocates seek to affirm students and allow them to make their own decisions.
“We’re not in the business of making any decisions for anybody,” Alex Strott ’15 said. “We’re just there to let people know what all of their options are, so we might ask them what they need from us, what kind of information they’re looking for, give them options and let them make their own decisions and point them toward the appropriate resources.
Coates-Fincke added that, above all, the MiddSafe advocates are here to listen.
“We’re available just to take down people’s stories… to hear people. If someone needs to call and just tell a voice that this happened to them, we’re available to take down that story, which I think is important to bear witness,” she said.
MiddSafe’s reach is expected to extend beyond the hotline, as private consultations with peer advocates are available and students can approach advocates in person or set up informal meetings.
Advocates and advisors expect MiddSafe to evolve to meet the needs of the community.
“I think the programmatic piece is something that we’re going to figure out as we move through,” McCall said. “We also want to put some information out to campus — what do folks need to know about sexual assault in our community, how can they be thinking about best ways to care for themselves and care for friends? I think there are going to be a lot of ways for MiddSafe to insert itself as a proactive, positive force into a lot of the conversations that are already happening on campus.”
The program is expected to expand both its reach and its number of advocates. McCall said that MiddSafe did receive several applications from men, and that the potential male advocates simply decided not to continue with joining the program.
“Our goal for next year is definitely to reach out to the male community on campus because this isn’t just a female issue,” Kligler said.
Programming throughout the year - especially during first-year orientations - will be integral in spreading awareness of MiddSafe’s presence on campus.
“We’ll certainly be talking about what kind of role MiddSafe could play in orientation, and especially during those first six weeks [on campus],” McCall said. “For example, how advocates can remain most visible to students as we introduce [new students] to our community and talk about ways to stay safe and ways to get support when they need it.”
To reach MiddSafe, call 802-377-0239
(01/23/14 1:51am)
The College is expanding its network of schools abroad with the newly re-named Middlebury College - CMRS Oxford Humanities Program, in which the College will take on operations conducted by Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS) at Oxford.
This is the College’s first C.V. Starr School Abroad in the United Kingdom and is affiliated with Keble College, the largest of the more than three-dozen small, independent, self-governing communities at Oxford.
Prior to the venture, students at the College wishing to study abroad in Oxford were limited to a highly competitive, yearlong stay with Lincoln College at Oxford University, or through CMRS, which is specifically for students who have not matriculated with Oxford.
While CMRS specializes in Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, students also have the option to pursue a general course of study in the Liberal Arts. The program will be open to students of all academic disciplines and will provide the option of a semester- or year-long study abroad experience. In keeping with College policy, students studying with CMRS will receive academic credit for their coursework while abroad.
CMRS follows Oxford’s one-on-one tutorial teaching, in which students register for two private tutorial courses with experts in the material they wish to study. Formal essays are due each week based on primary and secondary source readings. The individual attention by tutors allows for more flexible teaching methods and courses of study.
In addition to Oxford-style tutorials, students register for one seminar course and one Integral Course. The seminar course expands upon work completed in tutorials and allows students to learn from each other. The Integral Course is a larger lecture-based class that provides a broader overview of history, literature and scholarship of the Medieval period and the Early Modern period. Students present extensive formal research papers at the end of the semester, serving as the culmination of a semester’s worth of tutorial and seminar work, as well as independent research.
According to a College press release, A. Barton Hepburn Professor of History Paul Monod, who has been on academic leave this year, will become the program’s director.
“Middlebury-CMRS is an excellent program for students with an interest in the humanities who want to spend a semester or year in Oxford and experience an intellectually challenging environment,” Monod said in the press release. “At the same time, students have a wonderful chance to learn about British culture firsthand.”
Students who studied at CMRS in the past noted the benefits of the tutorial system, in particular, but also acknowledged educational inconsistencies that Middlebury can improve upon.
James McMillan ’14 called his oratory tutorial at CMRS “one of the most productive, formative learning experiences of [his] entire college career.”
“Even with discussion-based classes, … Middlebury doesn’t quite facilitate or foster the development of oral skills. Much of our future professional lives will, at least to some extend, require public speaking,” he noted.
While McMillan himself was paired with tutors who also taught at one of Oxford’s many colleges, his fellow students were not so fortunate.
“Their tutorial experiences were not nearly as strong,” McMillan said. “With Middlebury now overseeing the program, it will be interesting to see if the strength of the faculty becomes more consistent.”
(01/16/14 1:36am)
On Saturday, Jan. 11, 120 first-year students and over 40 upperclassmen met for the second annual JusTalks event. Atwater Dining Hall turned was transformed into a safe haven not only from the freezing rain outside, but also for difficult conversations on the subject of identity.
The concept of JusTalks was conceived during the 2011-2012 academic year as a program for first-year students during their first J-term on campus with the goal of fostering discussions about identity and inequality within the College community and on a more personal level, encouraging participants to challenge themselves and feel uncomfortable at least once during the conversations.
“I really liked [JusTalks] because it started by identifying a need in the community and going from there, developing a program to fit that need,” JusTalks organizer Josh Swartz ’14.5 said. “And so over the past two years, since I’ve been involved, it’s changed to better fit that need and hasn’t necessarily adhered to one specific program.”
The first JusTalks event, held last year, was open to students of all years as a means of spreading the word, testing the structure of the event and laying the groundwork for future events. This year’s event was limited to first-year participants, which Swartz said was a way of slowly working toward JusTalks’ initial goal of creating a program for all first-year students.
In a year where debates over productive critical dialogue have been pushed to the forefront, JusTalks and its goals have become especially relevant.
Fellow JusTalks coordinator Afi Yellow-Duke ’15 noted the importance of keeping the structure and conversations behind JusTalks fluid to best-fit community needs.
“One of the things we’ve been really thoughtful about and continue to be very considerate of is making sure that the program can evolve with what happens on campus and the feedback we get,” Yellow-Duke said. “A lot of feedback we got from last year went into building this year’s curriculum and we were really trying to make sure that we’re always improving and making JusTalks relevant.”
In the wake of last year’s JusTalks event, as well as a number of open forums held during the fall after controversial events such as the Chance the Rapper concert, students and administrators raised concerns about the self-selecting nature of such discussions. Students in attendance were more apt to have already participated in meaningful conversations about such issues and thus felt as if they were preaching to the choir and not making a real impact.
Being that JusTalks has now been limited to first-year students but is still voluntary, the audience is slowly being expanded beyond the small group of self-selecting students who are actively interested in engaging in challenging discussions.
“This year there were a lot of freshmen who were there because they … were organically interested in what JusTalks had to offer,” Swartz said. “I think they came because they were excited about those conversations and then left having met other people who were also thirsty to have conversations about identity and inequality.”
Swartz added that such was another goal of JusTalks: “to bring new people into those conversations, because oftentimes it’s the same 20 people over and over again.”
The structure of the JusTalks event eased participants into increasingly personal and challenging conversations by breaking down into small “Family Groups” and participating in icebreaker activities.
The participants then reunited for an anonymous clicker activity, in which a live-poll was conducted on topics ranging from privilege and sexuality to respect of College property and hook-up culture.
One of the final activities of the day was a stand-up activity, in which a range of qualities and characteristics were read aloud and students were asked to stand if they identified with a certain statement.
“Generally the thinking behind the structure of events is that in order to have productive conversations that get beneath the surface, you have to create a safe space to have those conversations,” Swartz said. “So the morning is dedicated to talking about safe space, talking about social identity, sharing some personal experiences in a smaller family group. And then as people start to get more comfortable, you come back into a bigger group and get more personal, but still anonymous, with a clicker poll activity … Later in the day there’s the Stand activity, where you’re standing and you’re claiming identity, so it gets more and more personal throughout the day as people get more comfortable.”
First-years responded positively to the discussions encouraged by the event and the structure of the event itself.
“I think at a campus, although as liberal as Middlebury, there is always a distance, especially with all the diversity that we have,” Divesh Rizal ’17 said. “We all come from such different places and with all of our academics and extracurricular [activities], we happen to be surrounded by this small circle that we don’t often try to come out of. I think programs like JusTalks … let people come out and show other people who they are, or even make them explore who they are themselves.”
He added that he signed up for JusTalks with the goal of exploring himself and seeing a side of others that rarely manifests itself in the classroom or during extracurricular activities.
In many ways, JusTalks resembles the Midd Uncensored activity that takes place during first-year orientation, in which students are pushed out of their comfort zone and reveal different facets of their identity and personal history. JusTalks, however, has the advantage of students being more in-tune with campus culture after one semester and can therefore delve deeper.
Gabrielle Owens ’17 signed up for JusTalks at the suggestion of her roommate and saw the event as a furthering of her orientation experience.
“It’s nice to be able to do this now, after I’m a bit more comfortable in this environment and it’s not quite so uncertain and overwhelming,” she said.
Laura Xiao ’17 echoed Owens’ statement, calling JusTalks an expanded version of Midd Uncensored and noting the importance of its status as a student-run program.
“I’m really impressed that it’s all student-run and I’m glad that this is something that students came up with and students are organizing because it shows that this is the direction that the student body wants to go in, rather than the administration, top-down, saying ‘we want you guys to do these kinds of things and think like this,’” Xiao said.
JusTalks Faculty Advisor and Dean of Students Karen Guttentag believes that the student-led nature of the event “provides a much more multifaceted educational experience to all those who are involved.”
“The leaders are learning about the logistical and philosophical aspects of organizing an ambitious large-scale program; the leaders and facilitators are learning about pedagogical and instructional techniques; and the first-year participants are able to see in the leadership of their peers and their own potential for future activism and leadership,” Guttentag wrote in an email.
Current organizers and Guttentag anticipate that JusTalks will occur again next year, though its precise structure remains uncertain.
Swartz and Yellow-Duke mentioned ongoing discussions about the possibility of eventually turning JusTalks into a mandatory off-campus retreat. Guttentag reiterated such a possibility, but noted that the goal and purpose of JusTalks must somehow be enhanced.
“A stand-alone event, such as this year’s program, is an important anchor, but cannot serve as the only mechanism for students to develop the skills and insights we hope they will gain,” she wrote in an email. “Our conversations have therefore included the possibility of working with the National Intergroup Dialogue Institute to implement this program, or similar programs, on campus to ensure continuation of this work throughout the academic year.”
JusTalks does not seek to resolve big issues of identity on campus, but rather seeks to, quite simply, spark conversation.
“I don’t think anyone thinks that JusTalks is the be-all, end-all to solving the ways that we talk about these issues, or solving these issues in general, but … we do think it’s a helpful tool in engaging with issues about identity,” Yellow-Duke said.
Swartz noted the importance of challenging dialogue in creating an inclusive community at the College.
“It’s deceptively simple how having a conversation with someone does that and I think seeing it last year and seeing it again this year, it’s a really powerful thing,” Yellow-Duke added.
(12/05/13 2:57am)
During the week of Nov. 18, prior to Thanksgiving break, the Faculty Council, in consultation with members of the administration, sent a survey to all faculty with the goal of learning about pre-vacation attendance policies across the College.
Classes are typically held on the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving, with vacation officially beginning at 4:15 p.m. on Tuesday. A large number of students do not attend classes on Tuesday, and sometimes Monday, due to travel plans. Airline tickets are less expensive and highway traffic is less severe earlier in the week than it is one or two days before Thanksgiving. Thus, students often choose to miss class in favor of more convenient travel options.
Professors choose for themselves whether to cancel class in the days before break. Due to varied policies and frequent early departures by students, the Faculty Council sent a survey asking about “their practices regarding the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the reasons they have adopted such practices and the extent to which they find the current Thanksgiving schedule agreeable,” according to Associate Professor of Philosophy and Faculty Council member Kareem Khalifa.
Dean of the Faculty and Philip Battell Sarah Steward Professor of Biology Andi Lloyd consulted with Faculty Council members on the survey.
“Discussions of our calendar at Thanksgiving have been going on, at least informally, for years,” Lloyd wrote in an email. “Faculty tend to point out that many students leave early, resulting in low attendance. Students will likewise point out that they leave early because flights are cheaper or because faculty cancel classes. [You can see] the feedback loop that could result … We decided to get a quick estimate of what’s happening this year in order to inform [future] decisions.”
Peer schools Amherst, Bates and Hamilton hold a week-long Thanksgiving break, but most — Williams, Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Connecticut College, Trinity, Tufts and Colby, Swarthmore, Wellesley, Smith and Vassar, among others — all begin vacation at the end of the day on Tuesday.
Professors at the College who choose to cancel class before Thanksgiving do so of their own accord and choose to schedule an alternate class time if they deem it necessary.
Dean of International Programs and Edward C. Knox Professor of International Studies Jeff Cason co-teaches a class with Professor of Economics William Pyle called Democracy, Development and Globalization on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Cason and Pyle cancelled the class in anticipation of poor attendance.
“We decided to reschedule that Tuesday afternoon class to Wednesday evening of the final week of class, figuring that we would get a better attendance during the final week,” Cason wrote in an email. “We did not reduce the overall number of class sessions; we simply readjusted our class meeting times to avoid the Thanksgiving week.”
Cason believes that a weeklong Thanksgiving break makes sense and that it would be easy enough to extend the fall semester by a few more class days.
“We have shortened the exam time in recent years, so we could certainly manage a few more class days at the end, to give students a longer Thanksgiving break,” Cason said.
(12/05/13 2:53am)
In collaboration with the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS), the College has opened an office in Washington, D.C. According to a College press release, the office will provide students, faculty and staff from the College and MIIS with “increased access to the many academic, government, international, research and philanthropic organizations in the Washington, D.C. area.”
The 6,500-square foot space, located at 1400 K Street, has two conference rooms, a large videoconferencing room and several personal offices. The office also houses the East Coast branch of the MIIS Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
“What makes this new office so exciting is how many different aspects of the institution can take advantage of it and consequently all that Washington has to offer,” President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said in the press release. “It will allow our institution to bring together students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends from all of our degree programs to enrich a particular course, a continuing education program and much more.”
The videoconferencing facility will prove to be the center’s most vibrant element — allowing students at the College, MIIS or C. V. Starr Schools Abroad to connect with government and policy experts without the time or cost spent on travel.
Fariha Haque, a former analyst in the District of Columbia Public Schools’ Office of Early Childhood Education, has been named the director of Middlebury in DC. Haque noted that the facility could also be used by career and internship offices at the College and MIIS for networking or recruiting purposes, either in person or by videoconference.
The office hosted its first lecture on Nov. 20, in which Associate Professor of American Studies Susan Burch presented her research on Junius Wilson, a man who spent 76 years in a North Carolina mental hospital during the Jim Crow era, yet had never been declared insane by a medical professional.
(11/20/13 10:34pm)
Students gathered outside Mead Chapel for a candlelight vigil on Thursday, Nov. 14 to mourn the devastation and damage caused by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and Southeast Asia and to call attention to climate change. Mourning at the vigil, which was hosted by Divest Midd, was furthered by a number of students electing to fast in solidarity with Filipino climate delegate to the U.N., Naderev “Yeb” Sano.
At the start of the U.N.’s two-week-long climate talks, Sano announced his fast.
“In solidarity with my countrymen who are struggling to find food back home … I will now commence a voluntary fasting for the climate. This means I will voluntarily refrain from eating food during this [conference] until a meaningful outcome is in sight,” he said.
Gabbie Santos ’17 is from Cavite, an hour north of Manila in the Philippines and spoke at the vigil with sadness in regard to the current situation and cautious optimism for the future.
“In the face of adversity, one after another, let it be known to the world that, as we Filipinos like to say … ‘the Filipino spirit is waterproof,’ the Filipino people are a resilient people. But this does not mean that we are willing to place more and more lives on the line in the face of future, potentially more devastating disasters and calamities,” she said.
Santos also spoke at the vigil on behalf of Oliver Wijayapala ’17, who is from the affected area of Leyte in the Philippines. Leyte was among the areas hit hardest by Typhoon Haiyan, which left nearly 3,000 dead and approximately 920,000 displaced.
Reading Wijayapala’s words, Santos said, “My family’s hometown in southern Leyte was in the direct path of the typhoon. It’s difficult to get in contact with my family members there, but I believe and hope they are all okay. There is a lot of damage and debris, though … Please keep in your thoughts and prayers my family and all those affected by this disaster.”
Members of Divest Midd recited Sano’s speech from the Climate Summit at Thursday’s vigil as both a call to action and a means of mourning the destruction. In further solidarity, Adrian Leong ’16, Ellie Ng ’14, Greta Neubauer ’14.5, Ashley Babcock ’17 and Virginia Wiltshire-Gordon ’16 fasted on Thursday. A number of other students participated in fasts over the weekend and into this week.
“I am choosing to refrain from eating on Thursday because I treat his [Sano’s] countrymen as my countrymen, his brother as my brother and I want to reflect deeply on the dire state of our climate, as well as [the] social justice system and bring them to more people’s attention,” Leong wrote in a post on Facebook.
Leong created a Facebook event for his fast, encouraging others to join him. Over 40 friends listed themselves as “going,” thereby implying participation. Leong said that word of his fast spread rapidly to friends at other schools.
“Many who fasted alongside with me told me that my action inspired them to reflect on their responsibilities to the world in this time of great change,” Leong wrote in an email, calling the response to his actions “overwhelmingly positive.”
The purpose of Sano’s and students’ fast is twofold — to mourn the loss of life and destruction and to recognize the gravity of the ongoing climate crisis.
“Whether we accept it or not, Climate Change does not lie in the distant future,” Leong wrote in his Facebook event. “It is now, and it is right here. I have a few friends from the Philippines who also have family members there, as I know that many [others] do, too. Even if this is not the case, you may well know other friends that do. Thus, it is utterly impossible to deny how closely our lives are linked to the lost lives and survivors of the strongest typhoon to have ever hit land.”
(10/31/13 12:18am)
An unusually high number of students at the College have decided to take a voluntary leave of absence this semester, leaving administrators with more questions than answers about the significant change.
59 sophomores, juniors and seniors are currently taking a voluntary leave of absence. The number does not include students who declared a leave of absence after the start of the fall semester for medical, family-related or other personal reasons. The data, compiled by the five Commons Deans, notes the reason for a student’s leave of absence, but does not display any noticeable trend in terms of reasons or motivations for taking time off.
“There is no pattern, and that’s what’s so interesting,” said Dean of Students Katy Smith Abbott, who has been working with Commons Deans and fellow administrators to analyze the data. “We thought we might see a lot of students citing academic stress, needing time away, or financial pressures, or needing to work. I don’t know what we thought we’d see exactly, but we thought we’d seem more of a trend and it’s really all over the place.”
While the specific information about voluntary leaves of absence is confidential under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Smith Abbott cited training with an Olympic team, extending a study abroad program, international students spending time with family in a home country, medical withdrawal for surgery and working on a farm in an unusual location as among the reasons why students have chosen to take time off.
The administration believes that further investigation into the spike is necessary for a better understanding of the change. The majority of instances of students taking time off, however, can be divided into two groups: a need for personal recuperation due to academic pressures, and a desire to pursue opportunities related to post-graduate plans.
Both President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz and Dean of the College Shirley Collado cited burnout as possibly influencing the spike.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if, in some ways, what we’re seeing is a reaction to how difficult it is to get here,” Liebowitz said. “Another thing is that we’d like to look into what the reasons are. Is the workload excessive? Is the atmosphere in some way not what students thought? We want to be open-minded about what the causes are.”
After taking a leave of absence last spring to work in Burlington, Lucy Whipps, admitted to the class of 2014, decided to extend her leave of absence into the fall semester.
“I needed a break to get my bearings about what I’m doing in college in the first place, and I was feeling less and less like Middlebury is a place where I want to be in general,” Whipps said, noting that she is unsure whether she will re-enroll in February.
While Smith Abbott acknowledged that academic pressure can contribute to a student’s decision to take time off, she cited the College’s recent emphasis on experiential learning and entrepreneurship through programs such as MiddCORE and the Center for Social Entrepreneurship as additional influencing factors.
“As our language as an institution becomes more about student innovation, students charting their own course and developing ways of mapping their education [in a way] that really resonates with them and supports who they want to become … is there something about that ethos that we’re creating at Middlebury that means we’re going to see more of this?” Smith Abbott mused, citing the unlikelihood of a school adhering to a more traditional definition of the liberal arts as experiencing a similar spike.
Collado echoed Smith Abbott’s feelings, citing students’ diverse ideas and desires as pushing them to explore relevant work and life experiences before returning to the College.
“The thing about college is that you’re kind of just going along this course and trying to figure things out, and sometimes students need space to figure things out,” Collado said. “I see that as a life skill.”
Unresolved medical issues led Madie Hubbell ’14.5 to take a leave of absence in the middle of her Junior fall semester, and while she wasn’t initially planning to take time off, she has returned to campus with a different outlook on her college experience.
“Coming here, I actually think I have learned more about myself ... than I have academically. The environment at Middlebury is like nothing else I have ever experienced. It’s intense academically, socially and athletically, and it’s filled with really intense people,” Hubbell wrote in an email, adding that time off allowed her to realize that “there is life outside of college, and while school is important, so is your health and your well-being.”
Smith Abbott went so far as to call the sudden spike a “new version of the gap year,” allowing students to take the time to enrich their college experience, take ownership of their education and chart new territory with once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
“I think Middlebury is a place that encourages students to think creatively and expansively about how they’re putting their education together, and I think we’re just starting to get better at that,” Smith Abbott said, citing the College as being especially encouraging and accommodating in such situations.
Lander Karath ’14.5 took a leave of absence during the fall semester of his Junior year to work on the Obama presidential campaign, but his decision was not without hesitation and a fear of missing out on life at the College.
“I had felt extremely bogged down with academia in my first two years here and I was craving hands-on, practical experience,” Karath said. “The campaign work provided that for me and more. Even though I had moved from one high-stress environment to another, I felt like I was doing something that enriched my life, which was a feeling I never had at Middlebury,” adding that the campaign led him to realize the career path he wants to pursue.
The College’s openness with regard to individualized experience is reflected in the Feb program and rising number of admitted first-years taking gap years.
“We have an entire Feb class, we have the term super senior, which students use affectionately and with pride,” Collado said. “It’s something you don’t usually see at top liberal arts colleges. Usually there’s a pathology associated with taking extra time, taking a semester off or starting college late. But for us, it’s something that we generally celebrate. I’m proud of the fact that we have the room, and even a language and a culture, around people coming in later.”
A student’s decision to take a leave of absence is collaborative and requires meetings with the student’s Commons Dean and academic advisor, along with family members. However, there exist possible negative implications of taking a voluntary leave of absence, particularly regarding financial aid.
If a student who has been granted aid takes a voluntary leave of absence, he or she remains entitled to eight semesters of aid. Problems arise, however, if a student takes more than eight semesters to graduate or if the decision to withdraw is made after the official start of the semester. In such situations, students must petition the College for a ninth semester of financial aid approval, as outlined in the Student Handbook. Financial aid is very rarely granted to a student for more than nine semesters.
With regard to a student’s ninth semester, however, Director of Financial Aid Operations Michael McLaughlin said that, upon being approved, the College will meet 100 percent of a students’ demonstrated need.
Smith Abbott, who views the voluntary leave of absence spike in a mostly favorable light, noted that if this semester’s spike continues and becomes a noticeable trend, the College will need to change planning for housing, enrollment and other facets of student and academic life.
“I think we can manage it and I think understanding it is important, but that’s going to be a matter of looking at the numbers over a number of years,” she said.
(10/17/13 12:54am)
InSite, the College’s entry in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon, finished eighth overall in the 2013 competition. Nineteen collegiate teams were selected to compete in the challenge, which required two years of planning, designing and building, culminating in Irvine, Calif. on Oct. 12.
InSite finished with a score of 920.262 out of a possible 1,000. Judging was divided into 10 categories with a total of 100 possible points per section. InSite earned a perfect score in the Energy Balance and Hot Water contests, ranked third in Communications, Affordability and Home Entertainment and finished in the top 10 in all rounds of judging.
In comparison, the College’s entry into the 2011 Solar Decathlon, Self Reliance, earned 914.809 points but finished in fourth place overall.
InSite began its journey to California in September, when it was broken down into 50 panels and hundreds of smaller parts and shipped to Los Angeles by train, and then transported by truck to Irvine.
Solar Decathlon faculty adviser Andrea Kerz-Murray said that reconstructing the house in fewer than nine days was a challenge, as the College’s construction teams had to ensure that all electrical and structural connections were fully-functioning and secure.
With regards to scoring, Kerz-Murray wrote in an email that “overall goals for sustainability were less important” in the case of InSite, which incorporated a number of energy factors that did not directly fit into a particular judging category.
“Our team proposed a project that promotes urban density and local sourcing of food and goods,” she said. “This kind of thing does not get judged.Another example is affordability. While we did quite well in this contest [earning third place], we made material decisions based on embodied energy, local sourcing, durability and longevity as well as up-front cost. The contest only looks at cost, not lifecycle.”
This big-picture approach to the Solar Decathlon, looking and thinking beyond contest categories, is a reflection of the College’s interdisciplinary approach to design and construction.
“Coming from our Liberal Arts background we are proud to be able to compete with the rest of the teams which are coming from architecture and engineering graduate programs,” InSite Team Manager Gwen Cook ’13 told Middlebury Magazine.
When the InSite house returns to the College it will be rebuilt and used as student housing, placed next to the duplex located at 107 Shannon Street, across from Saint Mary’s School.
The next Solar Decathlon competition will be held in 2015, and while it is too early to know whether the College will apply for entry into the competition, Kerz-Murray predicts that future Decathlons will become increasingly competitive.
“I believe that the design excellence and innovation in the homes represented continues to get better and much more interesting and innovative. The competition is getting harder,” she said, noting that many teams scored within fractions of a point of each other, in both individual contests and overall.
(10/10/13 12:34am)
Over the last three years, enrollment in Computer Science courses at the College has tripled. The growth is the largest in any department in recent history, and is in keeping with nationwide enrollment trends, spurred by job opportunities and the glamorization of start-ups, entrepreneurship and new technologies.
Enrollment in Computer Science courses was tallied at 451 for the 2012-2013 academic year, up from 164 in 2008-2009. The number of students majoring in Computer Science has increased significantly as well, with 10 declared majors in the class of 2014 and 20 in the class of 2015 — the most that the Computer Science department has ever experienced.
This growth is in keeping with national trends, as a report by the Computing Research Association published in March 2013 revealed that the number of undergraduate students studying computer science had risen by double digits for the third consecutive year. Earlier this fall, Harvard University announced that enrollment in its introductory computer science course had grown 590 percent in a decade, from 112 in 2004 to 771 in 2013.
Founded in the mid-1980s, the Computer Science major was originally housed within the department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Computer Science courses were taught initially led by mathematics professors and Library Information Services (LIS) faculty members. However the College gradually expanded the department and hired more full-time faculty including Computer Science Department Chair Matthew Dickerson, hired in 1989 as the College’s first professor with a doctorate in Computer Science.
Dickerson noted the early challenges for liberal arts colleges seeking to establish Computer Science departments in he 1980s, as larger universities offered greater research opportunities and more competitive salaries. By the time Computer Science became a freestanding department in the early 2000s, the discipline had seen substantial growth and development.
“By that time, we had our own critical mass,” Dickerson said. “We had five computer science professors, we had our entirely own curriculum, we had our entirely own major.”
Student interest in Computer Science has grown steadily since then, with more students enrolling in 100-level courses than ever before.
“Next year, for the first time ever, there will be [all five Computer Science professors] on campus teaching all at once. In the past, someone has always been on leave,” Dickerson said. “That will enable us to offer a lot of 100-level sections so that everyone who wants to get into a 100-level class will be able to. And we’re also doubling the number of sections of our 200-level classes.”
Dickerson said that the increased enrollment became especially noticeable three years ago, and subsequent growth has been accommodated with and aided by the addition of two new 100-level courses, as opposed to a single one-size-fits-all introductory course.
“I think that helped students to see how interesting the discipline was and how it related to other disciplines,” Dickerson said, noting that the new courses cater to the multiple problem solving strategies taught in Computer Science, with emphasis on experimentation, deductive reasoning and engineering.
Such is the reason that Bryan Holtzman ’14 decided to enroll in CSCI 150: Computing for the Sciences.
“It’s a growing field with many applications to areas beyond computer science. As such, I decided to enroll to see what all the fuss was about, and I hope to learn the ways in which computer scientists think,” he said.
Increased demand for computer programmers, website and app developers and a general knowledge of coding languages in the post-graduate realm has also contributed to increased enrollment.
While no other department at the College has experienced a change as extreme as Computer Science, enrollment statistics over the past five years have displayed growth in Biology, Economics, Education Studies, Mathematics and Women’s and Gender Studies. By contrast, enrollment in English and American Literatures and Religion courses has decreased slightly.
“Over a five-year period, you get a lot of up and down and it’s hard to see what’s just fluctuating and what’s really changing,” said Dean of Faculty and Philip Battell/Sarah Stewart Professor of Biology Andrea Lloyd. “It’s striking to see how much enrollment can change from year to year because of what people happen to be interested in.”
Lloyd noted that the College’s enrollment shifts are mostly consistent with nationwide trends.
“The thing we’re seeing in the longer-term data is an increase in the sciences and interdisciplinary programs, and declining enrollment in some, but not all, of the humanities,” she said.
“The Computer Science [enrollment trend] is an unbelievably striking pattern,” Lloyd said. “Though I’m actually less surprised that the numbers are high now than I am that they were low back then,” citing the growing emphasis on new technologies as a major influencing factor.
(10/03/13 12:48am)
Every other Tuesday evening during the the fall semester, students will find themselves handing their dinner plates to peers and watching as any unconsumed food is scraped from the plate and into a plastic bucket. Generally relegated to the room hidden behind the dish deposit conveyor belts, the new, more visible waste separation effort is part of a data collection and waste reduction project by student-led organization, “Weigh the Waste.”
Cailey Cron ’13.5 and Molly Shane ’13.5 started Weigh the Waste as an offshoot of their MiddChallenge project, “Share the Surplus,” which aimed to lessen food insecurity in Addison County by recovering excess unserved food from the College dining halls and diverting it to community organizations such as the weekly Community Supper.
In considering pre-consumer food waste, however, Cron and Shane realized that focusing on post-consumer waste is an equally important element of food waste.
“We started thinking, how do we make waste visible and once waste is visible, does that encourage people to reduce the amount of waste they’re producing?” Shane said. “And so our focus shifted from this pre-consumer food that would have been coming out of the kitchen, to the post-consumer level of this food chain, looking at the food that’s left on students’ plates.”
The College has reported that 300 tons of food waste is produced annually, but the specific contents of the waste are unknown.
“Our goal is to find out more specifically how much edible waste students are responsible for,” Cron said. “Because that’s the number that, with enough awareness and enough visibility, we feel like we can change.”
Biweekly food waste collections will allow for the compilation of data on both edible and non-edible food waste from Proctor and Ross dining halls to figure out how accurate the 300 tons of food waste is and to gather more specific statistics on food waste trends.
“That’s our first goal — to get a better sense of what this 300 tons actually is,” Shane said. “And then our second goal is visibility. We think that when you have these kids scraping plates, people are going to see it, people are going to start thinking about it, people are going to be talking about it. And I think that through that, behavior may already begin to change.”
The first Weigh the Waste collection was held on Sept. 18, and produced 139.75 pounds of edible food waste in Proctor and 160.25 pounds of edible waste in Ross. The project will continue on a biweekly basis throughout the semester.
While the College currently composts food waste and food prep scraps, and many students understand composting edible food waste to be environmentally-friendly practice, Director of Dining Services Matthew Biette said that too much compost can still be a bad thing.
While Weigh the Waste provides a means of gathering data and exposing waste collection to students, Biette called for an effort to reduce waste that begins at the serving station.
“We would like for people to be as engaged in the eating process as they are in the classrooms,” he said.
Currently, Weigh the Waste remains a means of collecting data and increasing visibility, but Biette added that it also has the potential to highlight issues of community responsibility on campus.
“[What if you] could you control your cost, and every other person could control their costs so that they’re doing the quote-unquote, right thing, … [so] that it actually reduces the cost of what it takes to go here?” Biette said. “And that’s not just food. That’s whether someone is vandalizing trees, that’s whether someone is keeping their window open in the winter, that’s whether is taking plates … Whatever that is, we as a community can help to control that. It’s not about finger-pointing. It’s just understanding that we, as a group, have power.”
Cron and Shane see similar potential benefits of waste reduction, noting collaboration with members of other on-campus food organizations, such as “Eat Real,” as a means of achieving shared goals.
Shane listed potential environmental, economic and community benefits which could be achieved through the reduction of edible food waste.
“There’s so much potential for increased freedom within the dining budget if we’re not spending our money on food that we’re not eating,” Shane said.
Natalie Valentin ’15, a member of the Commons Sustainability Coordinator’s (CSCs) food focus group and local food marketing assistant to Biette, has been functioning as a go-between for Weigh the Waste and student-led food organizations on campus that may be working to achieve similar goals.
“As [Biette] and I were discussing efforts to increase local foods on campus, and to foster a more conscious food culture on campus more generally, we repeatedly discussed the issue of food waste,” Valentin said. “An essential part of a conscious campus food culture is how we as students approach the food that we eat. Tackling food waste will not only save money, but will help develop a … respect for the food systems that feed us.”
While the Weigh the Waste project is still in its earliest stages, students and staff members alike have lauded its efforts.
The Sept. 18 food waste collection was conducted by members of the men’s hockey team, coordinated by the team sustainability representatives and Director of Athletics Erin Quinn.
George Ordway ’15 said that Biette approached the hockey team about participating in the weighing of food waste.
“He had mentioned that it was an idea [dining services] had been discussing for a while, but they weren’t sure how to go about it,” Ordway said, noting that he thought food waste collection by students was far more effective than if it had been done by dining staff members.
Biette echoed Ordway. “When students do this for students, it’s peer to peer, and that’s far more powerful,” he said.
Respecting the regular operations of Dining Services, as well as those of the College, has been integral to the development and planning of Weigh the Waste efforts.
“Something that Molly and I worked on a lot over the summer is not assuming that we know what the problem is, but rather getting guidance from people who know a lot more than us,” Cron said. “We’ve talked to Dining [Services] about things that students can do to make their jobs easier or something that they see happening that we can change.”
Dining Services staff members, too, noted the impact of Weigh the Waste collections, expressing their gratitude to Cron and Shane for revealing to students what it is that they do behind the walls of the dish room and allowing them to be acknowledged for their hard work.
“We have no grand notions of how a food waste project will make all Middlebury students respect all Middlebury staff members,” Cron said. “But I think it’s an opportunity for people to build relationships and develop and appreciate those working behind the scenes.”
(09/19/13 12:48am)
In the five hours between the defacement of the College’s Sept. 11 memorial outside of Mead Chapel and its reconstruction, both The Campus and middbeat posted brief online articles on the incident, accompanied by the same photograph. In it, a young woman with a red bandana in her hair places a handful of small flags, symbols of a joint effort between the College Republicans and College Democrats to commemorate the 2,977 lives lost in the terror attacks, in a large, nearly full black trash bag.
It was only a matter of minutes before commenters on middbeat, and later The Campus, recognized the face of one of the College’s most passionate student activists, Anna Shireman-Grabowski ’14.5 as the woman with the red bandana, irrevocably linking her to the incident.
Word of Shireman-Grabowski’s involvement spread rapidly across campus, primarily by means of Facebook posts, and shortly before midnight on Sept. 11, she issued a statement to middbeat taking credit for the incident and explaining her actions.
“Today I chose to act in solidarity with my friend, an Indigenous woman and a citizen of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy who was appalled to see the burial grounds of another Indigenous nation desecrated by piercing the ground that their remains lay beneath,” wrote Shireman-Grabowski.
“I understand that this action is confusing and painful for many in my community. I don’t pretend to know if every action I take is right or justified — this process is multi-layered and nuanced. I do know that colonialism has been — and continues to be — a real and destructive force in the world that we live in. And for me, to honor life is to support those who struggle against it.”
Shireman-Grabowski explicitly stated that members of the “local Abenaki community should in no way be implicated in [the] events,” an assertion she reinforced in a follow-up statement published to middbeat, submitted on the evening of Sept. 13.
“I want to take a chance to further clarify that this action did not happen on behalf of, in consultation with, or in connection to, local Abenaki communities,” she wrote. “That was a mistake. I take responsibility for the hurt I caused by implicating Abenaki communities in my actions. I want to apologize for the negative and unfair consequences these events might have on communities of which I am not a member.”
The actions of Shireman-Grabowski and three others were inspired by fellow protester Amanda Lickers, who herself is not Abenaki, a group related to the Algonquians, but rather a member of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, also known as the Iroquois Confederacy.
Lickers was brought to campus by Shireman-Grabowski to participate in a workshop titled “Settler Responsibility and Decolonization,” held at noon on Wednesday, Sept. 11. As described in an article published by the Addison Independent, it was at the workshop that Lickers was informed that the College was the site of an Abenaki burial ground. After discovering the presence of the flags on campus grounds, Lickers made a spontaneous decision to remove them out of respect for the Abenaki.
The College, however, has no proof of sharing land with the Abenaki.
“It has never been suggested that this is a Native American burial ground,” Director of Public Affairs Sarah Ray told mainstream media outlets.
“Native Americans have lived in the Champlain Valley for over 12,000 years.” wrote Associate Professor of History William B. Hart in a formal statement to The Campus. Hart added that while former seasonal Abenaki encampments near Brandon and Vergennes hold fragmentary mortuary remains of apparent families, “to this date, there are no known Indian graves on or near Middlebury’s campus.”
“This does not mean that there are no native mortuary remains to be found on or near the campus. Rather, it means that none have been excavated or found,” Hart clarified, ultimately calling the possibility that the College sits atop a sacred Abenaki burial ground “unlikely, although not impossible,” and only verifiable after an unlikely and “undesirable” archeological dig.
In spite of this, Shireman-Grabowski has long believed otherwise.
On January 13, 2013, Shireman-Grabowski and Student Co-chair of Community Council Barrett Smith ’13 presented the Student Government Association (SGA) Senate with the “Decolonizing Middlebury College Bill.” Claiming that the College had been built on land stolen from the Abenaki tribe, the bill recommended that the College return the land to its rightful owners, which bill supporter Sam Koplinka-Lehr ’13 specified as “all of it [the Middlebury College campus].”
Chief Donald Stevens of the Nulhegan Band of the Abenaki Nation doubted the veracity of the students’ claims.
“I would have to question the motivation of these individuals and also their knowledge of Abenaki burial grounds,” said Stevens. “We do not make known our burial grounds to the public, unless they are already public knowledge, for the protection of those sites.”
Stevens noted that even if the site of the memorial had been a burial site, the placement of the American flags “would not be offensive to us. We honor our warriors and the fallen with objects to display respect and to honor their bravery,” he wrote in an email.
The College Responds
As news of Shireman-Grabowski’s involvement in the incident spread beyond the confines of the Middlebury College campus, commenters on student-run publications, as well as Facebook and local and national news organizations, wondered how the College would approach its investigation into the incident and subsequent disciplinary action.
Such queries were soon answered, at least partially, by an all-campus email sent by President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz on the morning of Sept. 12.
“Like many of you, I was deeply disturbed by the insensitivity of this act. Destruction of property and interfering with the rights of others to express themselves violates the standards of our community. The College has begun a disciplinary investigation of this incident,” Liebowitz wrote.
“There is always something to learn from differences of opinion. In this case the disrespectful methods of the protesters o
vershadowed anything that might have been learned from the convictions they claimed to promote. We will not tolerate this kind of behavior.”
Public Safety was involved with the initial investigation of the incident “and may participate in the disciplinary proceedings if requested,” wrote Director of Public Safety Lisa Burchard in an email.
When asked to detail the possible disciplinary proceedings or judicial hearings which Shireman-Grabowski might be subject to, Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs and Student Life Karen Guttentag declined to comment “out of a commitment to the fundamental fairness of our [judicial] process.”
Shireman-Grabowski’s actions infringed upon multiple College community standards, as outlined in the “Student Life Policies” section of the Middlebury College Student Handbook, including “cultivating respect and responsibility for self, others and our shared environment” and “fostering a diverse and inclusive community committed to civility, open-mindedness and finding common ground.” As the flags planted on the lawn were purchased with funds belonging to the College Republicans and College Democrats, the destruction of the memorial could also fall under the category of theft or damage to College property and the property of others.
The “Demonstrations and Protests” section of the Handbook states that while “students, student organizations, faculty and staff at Middlebury College are free to examine and discuss all questions of interest,” it should be done in an orderly fashion so as not to disrupt the regular operation of the College or community. Additionally, students wishing to stage a demonstration or protest are encouraged to contact Public Safety “to discuss College policy, demonstration-specific regulations and safety issues” as a means of ensuring the safety of all participants. Burchard said that she was not contacted by anyone in advance of the uprooting of the 9/11 memorial protest.
It is possible that Shireman-Grabowski’s participation in earlier, appropriately-conducted protests, such as those against the Keystone XL pipeline and the Addison County Natural Gas Project, will be taken into consideration during the disciplinary process, as the “Scope of Oversight” section of the College handbook states that “students will be held accountable for policy violations that take place between the time they first arrive on campus … and their graduation, or the College’s confirmation of their resignation or expulsion. Conduct that takes place on or near Middlebury premises or property; occurs at or in connection with a Middlebury-related event … may be subject to the College disciplinary process.”
While the College continues to investigate the act of vandalism, efforts are already being made to learn from the incident and move forward as a community.
An all-student email sent on Friday, Sept. 13 announced a series of “Protest and Civility” discussions with the goal of considering “the responsibilities we have as an academic community to treat one another with respect and tolerance, even as we pursue political and social agendas that sometimes divide us.”
Seven professors, each with a different specialization and educational focus, will be moderating the discussions, scheduled throughout the week of September 16.
Professor of Religion James Calvin Davis cited his background in religion and ethics, as well as his published work’s emphasis on public moral discourse, as helping him to drive powerful and productive dialogue in his discussion on Tuesday.
“My hope is that those in the discussion will take the time to explore what it is we think we mean by civility, and what we do when the expectations of civility seem to stand in the way of our pursuit of justice or what we perceive to be the truth,” Davis wrote in an email. “These aren’t easy questions at all, but they’re essential — for a pluralistic democracy and for an intellectual community.”
The Campus will publish coverage of the discussions in its Sept. 26 issue.
Additional reporting by ZACH DRENNEN.
(09/12/13 12:47am)
Tree vandalism has been on the rise since 2008, with the majority of incidents confined to the north side of campus near Battell Hall and the Atwater residential and dining halls. The greatest destruction was recorded during the 2012-2013 academic year, with dozens of branches ripped down and trees uprooted and eight trees had to be replaced altogether after suffering severe damage.
“[This damage] is going to hurt or kill these trees for the rest of their lives,” said College Landscape Horticulturist Tim Parsons, “Students are ripping bark down and that’s causing a big wound that then slows the tree down. I guess you could think of it as a small, continuously malnourished child.”
Any young tree that is pulled from the ground costs $500 to replace. Broken branches hurt trees as well, but there is no accurate way to determine the cost of such damage. Parsons called the tree vandalism “an aggressive form of entitlement,” but unlike dorm damage, there is no way to hold an individual accountable for an incident, other than catching them in the act.
As a result, administrators, staff and students alike are considering a number of methods to prevent and monitor tree damage, such as educating students and installing security cameras in regions with the greatest damage.
Last spring, Parsons produced a map illustrating annual patterns in incidents of tree vandalism, dating back to 2008. Parsons presented the map and discussed the growing issue of tree vandalism with Community Council, leading a group of student council members to post large-scale copies of Parsons’ map in buildings across campus.
“One of our aims is to make people feel more compelled to speak up concerning who might be doing this damage, so we can put an end to it,” wrote Kate Logan ’13, a student representative of Community Council, in an email. “Also, by forcing the topic and using indirect peer pressure to make people realize how destructive their actions are, we’re hoping that we can prevent something that shouldn’t even be happening in the first place.”
With no fail-safe method of guarding trees, particularly the new landscaping near the Atwater residence halls, Community Council, of which Parsons is a member, is working to hold students responsible for reporting and preventing the damage by offering rewards and propagating various methods of education of trees and tree vandalism.
Parsons has been tracking incidents of tree vandalism and posting pictures of the damage on his blog, MiddLand, to document and spread the news of such violence. On April 5 of this year, after three trees near Atwater were destroyed in two nights, Parsons decided to offer the reward of a pizza from Ramunto’s to anyone who helps him find the vandals.
His hope is that by educating students on the prevalence of tree damage and the monetary and environmental value of trees on campus, a consciousness and appreciation will develop that will ultimately eradicate all tree vandalism. His Arbor Day celebration on May 14 aimed to do just that, funded by an environmental grant and comprised of a 5k run around the most noteworthy trees on campus, planting new trees on the lawn between Allen Hall and Wright Theater and a cook-out outside of Atwater Dining Hall.
Additionally, large price tags were tied to a number of trees on campus that reported the benefits provided by each tree with statistics from TreeBenefits.com.
“Trees do a lot for us,” Parsons said. “Yeah, they’re nice to look at and they’re part of the landscape, but let’s take that Elm next to Old Chapel, for example. That tree will intercept 3,600 gallons of storm water [annually] that won’t go down into storm trains. It’s going to save 179 kilowatt/hours of electricity each year by shading and by blocking wind.”
Education and awareness are not guaranteed to eradicate tree damage, and thus preventing vandalism to trees, buildings and artworks on campus has become one of several reasons for the College to consider installing security cameras on campus. The issue was tabled last spring and could come before Community Council this year.
The cameras, according to Dean of the College Shirley Collado, are “a tool or approach that many other colleges have taken on to promote more health and safety, and more accuracy when investigating major thefts or damages to public places.”
The College is not staffed for live surveillance, so security cameras would be used retroactively as a means of investigating a specific incident, rather than monitoring student actions or movements.
Collado noted that the administration and Community Council were in the preliminary stages of discussing and exploring security cameras on campus late last spring, with no set time frame for an official decision.
“I think it’s reasonable — I’m not saying it’s the right decision — but I think it’s well within our rights to ask whether we as an institution have the opportunity to seek out solutions to where problematic behavior is happening,” said Collado.