(04/25/19 9:52am)
Seniors at Middlebury will remember President Laurie Patton’s inaugural campaign to promote “rhetorical resilience,” whereby she urged students to engage with viewpoints they might find foreign, discomforting, or even outright repulsive. Joining the College in 2015, a year rife with controversy around “safe spaces,” Patton was quick to lay down her vision of free speech on campus, arguing, as she said in her inaugural address, that we should “have more and better arguments, with greater respect, stronger resilience, and deeper wisdom.”
The Charles Murray incident in March, 2017 offered President Patton a chance to solidify her stance on campus speech. In an op-ed submitted to the Wall Street Journal, Patton urged schools like Middlebury to “embrace freedom of expression and inquiry as an educational value for everyone, regardless of their background or political views.” In an even more poignant note, she urged students to “move beyond the false dichotomy between free speech and inclusiveness.”
Since then, President Patton has been largely silent on the issue. Perhaps she was discouraged when she saw that students had adopted her term—resilience—and turned it on its head. Soon after her campaign, campus leaflets urged students to be “resilient” in their politics; in other words, to concretize their dogmatic political beliefs in defiance of the administration’s rhetoric around openness. Students didn’t need to be resilient to ideas; they only had to be resilient to the “oppressions” of the administration.
Patton might have hoped that students would be more accommodating to diverse viewpoints after a steady diet of pro-discourse ideas. Last Thursday, MCAB hosted Rukmini Callimachi, a New York Times journalist with a unique interest in engaging with current and former members of the so-called Islamic State. In her speech, Callimachi’s words are striking for their radical embrace of discourse: “I firmly believe in speaking to the enemy, in listening to them, which is different than believing them, in trying to understand them, which is different than giving them a platform… In short, I do this in the interest of truth.” Students of all political beliefs rightly applauded Callimachi for her work.
In light of Callimachi’s message, the student-run protest of Polish academic and diplomat Ryszard Legutko is nothing but ironic. Students applauded a journalist’s effort to publish the personal accounts of some of the most evil people on the planet. Yet when given the option to discourse with (or, if they wished, to ignore) a controversial and highly influential member of the European Parliament, they extended no such courtesy. While students did not seek to disrupt the event, their act of protesting his presence sent a clear message: that they have no desire to listen to the enemy.
For an academic as serious and dedicated to truth as President Patton, it must be excruciating to witness such hypocrisy on her campus. Unfortunately, it appears that Patton feels she cannot change student opinion and deed. Patton seems resigned to let civil protest, rather than civil discourse, be the primary means of dissent at this institution.
I urge President Patton to reconsider such an attitude of resignation. To avoid irreparable reputational harm, the College must quickly recommit itself to the tradition of academic seriousness that defined it for most of the 20th century. We must follow the lead of Princeton and the University of Chicago, both of which passed official statements reaffirming their commitment to free expression. To do so, Patton must make clear to all students that the college quad is different from and independent of the arena of brass-knuckle politics. The goal at college is not to defeat and shame the “wrong views,” but to learn. Middlebury students are free and powerful thinkers who have the capacity to make great change through ideas. While students have every right to protest on campus, mob gatherings should not be their first line of action against an idea they find objectionable. Patton must urge students instead to express dissent through rational argument. If students were to follow her lead, they would allow the administration to resume its role as a body promoting academics, rather than one charged with the laughable task of maintaining physical security at a Political Science lecture.
Student support of civil discourse is not as scarce as it may appear. Take, for example, a group of political science students’ defiant choice to extend an impromptu invitation to Mr. Legutko, asking him to speak in their “American Presidency” seminar. This is a powerful indicator that, should Patton make a more sustained, bold stand for open and reasoned discourse on campus, many of us are ready to follow her lead. But we do need someone to lead.
(01/24/19 10:59am)
Two days before the start of the 2004 women’s soccer training season, then-assistant coach Peter Kim learned of an abrupt coaching staff change that left the team without a head. After only a year on the Middlebury coaching staff, Kim became the prime candidate for the head position.
Just over a year before, Kim had been working at a youth nonprofit, continuing a track he had set for himself years earlier when he pursued and earned an M.A. in public administration. He wanted to provide consulting services to nonprofits, helping them to run more like highly effective businesses. But after 10 years in the nonprofit world, Kim wasn’t enthused. In addition to his day job at the nonprofit, Kim had founded and was running a youth club in central Vermont, Capital Soccer. “I felt like I was doing more for kids after work than in my day job,” he explained. He decided to leave the nonprofit and took time to regroup.
It was the summer of 2002 when Doug Holly, a friend of Kim’s and coach of the Vergennes High School soccer team, called Kim. Holly informed him that Diane Boettcher, then coach of Middlebury, was looking for an assistant coach. Kim had no desire to coach college at all, but Holly convinced him to go down to Middlebury to meet with Boettcher. Soon after arriving on campus, Kim realized he had the potential to make an impact on the team. He took the job.
Coach Kim’s eagerness to jump into leading practices paid off when Boettcher left unexpectedly in 2004. “The players didn’t even know [of the staff change] when they got here; they were expecting Boettcher,” he explained. Despite this rapid transition, Kim felt obligated to to maintain the level of success of the previous few years; Boettcher had led the Panthers to the dominant position in the NESCAC in 2000, then second and third places for 2001 and 2002, respectively.
Additionally, when Kim joined, there hadn’t been a long-standing coach in the position for most of the team’s history. Coaches were overextended because of the three-sport coach model where they would head a different team each season of the year, leaving very little room for program growth. This left them with no offseason to help train their athletes, let alone develop training and game strategies.
Kim was the first women’s soccer coach to shun this model, instead devoting a significant amount of time and energy in the offseason to better develop the team. This included making workout packets, conducting bi-weekly training sessions and developing the schedule for the next season. Given more time to settle into the job, Kim found himself loving the position and eager to channel his best coaching ability.
The most noticeable development in Division III athletics during Kim’s tenure, however, has been the explosive growth of recruitment effort made by both teams and prospective players. Approached by more than 800 athletes a year, Kim communicates with each player individually and devotes an extraordinary amount of time seeing her play, ideally multiple times, before “the moment of truth,” when she decides whether to apply to Middlebury early decision. Kim was quick to criticize this American recruiting system. “It leads kids to make their college choice for the wrong reason. They wait to get tapped on the shoulder by the coach on high who dubs them worthy of playing for them, when it should be all about the student choosing the school that’s right for her,” Kim said. Nowadays, it isn’t rare for him to receive emails from sixth- and seventh-graders proclaiming their allegiance to the Panthers. “It’s terribly unhealthy,” he frowned. “In what world would that make sense?”
Kim’s skepticism of this “elite” mentality extends into his coaching philosophy. While an undergrad at UVM, Kim sustained a devastating concussion that pulled him from the sport early in his career. From then on, he had to focus exclusively on a doubled academic course to graduate on time. This profoundly influenced his current emphasis on athletics as part of the greater picture of college life: “Injuries can happen, and if that happens and suddenly you stop loving the school, then you’re probably at the wrong place.” In this way, Kim’s philosophy is perfectly tailored to the Middlebury student. “When I was in college, academics were not prioritized. You got it done to the extent that it was important to you. Middlebury kids, to their credit, love school, and then they come down and play at a Division I level.” He cited how one of his goaltenders played a major role in a theater production last semester and smiled with pride. “That’s a testament to who you guys are as students here.”
Kim’s overarching coaching philosophy is paired with a core set of team values, all of which rolled off his tongue with sharp familiarity. First up was academics. Second, he said, “We play the game; we believe in the technical game and to keep it on the ground.” Next on the list was community service. “I am very proud that we are one of the leaders in community service on this campus. We’re spoiled rotten here, and we try to maintain a culture of gratitude because we are just so lucky.” Finally, with a twinkling smile, he mentioned the family culture of his team. “Class lines are blurred almost to the point of being erased, and students become family with players three years older and younger than them. It’s that chemistry, which is difficult to explain, that is the central aspect of the team. If we didn’t have that, we wouldn’t be successful.”
Upon being asked what success meant to him, Kim, unsurprisingly, presented a long list. “This year was a success because we made it all the way to the finals, and we won the state championship, and we played beautifully, and we won the NESCAC Championship, and we’re a family, and we’re killing it in the classroom, and we’re leading the campus in community service. I think that kind of sums up what Middlebury is about: the word and.”
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