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(02/24/16 4:55pm)
Campaign trips, debate watching parties and a cardboard cutout of Hillary Clinton in Atwater Dining Hall: all signs that the nation’s political energy has struck campus. In preparation for November, membership and involvement in a variety of clubs, lectures and classes has increased as students find ways to participate in the election season.
College Republicans and Democrats serve as the campus nexus of political activity and campaign coordination. In response to the elections, both clubs experienced an uptick in interest and participation.
“When you approach an election year on campus, people are much more inclined to come to meetings,” said Hazel Millard ’18, co-president of College Democrats. “It’s great to take advantage of the fact that people are paying attention to us. The general population gets more interested when things are at stake, so it’s been great to harness that interest.”
The two groups meet several times a month for discussions and volunteering events. Despite the competition in both parties for the nomination, neither group sponsors a candidate. “We support all the candidates. It’s a three way split between Bernie, Hillary and undecided which makes it interesting at our meetings,” Millard said.
The participation process differs for republicans and democrats on campus. At College Republicans, students discuss and get involved with a range of candidates. For democrats, specific organizations plan events for Senator Bernie Sanders and Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while College Democrats serves as the hub for information and discussion on both.
Republican campaigns tend to reach out to the College Republicans leadership to coordinate events. Hayden Dublois ’17, co-president of College Republicans, explained the typical process.
“What we’re seeing is that a lot of republican campaigns and PACs are reaching out to us on a frequent basis from numerous candidates,” Dublois said. “We like to invite them to come and make a presentation for our club and talk about the candidate they’re supporting and oftentimes there are internship opportunities and ways to get involved.”
Republican students have been attending talks from campaigns, phone banking and campaigning on a regular basis this year. The best event so far, according to Dublois, was the trip to Burlington for a reception with Governor John Kasich.
“The event where the Vermont Republican Party co-sponsored the dinner with John Kasich was great,” Dublois said. “Not only did John Kasich speak, but the Vermont Lieutenant Governor spoke and the Chairman of the Vermont Republican party. At the end Governor Kasich shook the hand of everyone there.”
College Democrats meetings are generally reserved for students to inform themselves on the issues and advocate for the candidate they prefer. “We want it to be a resource for people to engage with democratic politics,” Millard said. “Instead of operating as one club, those who want to discuss the politics go to College Democrats, and those looking to get involved in the campaigns join the Students for Hillary or Bernie group.”
As a college in Sanders’s home state, Middlebury is home to some of his most passionate young supporters. Elizabeth Lee ’17 and Nate Rifkin ’15 founded the national organization, Students for Bernie, which now has chapters at over 200 universities across the country.
“It started out with me having this idea for Middlebury for Bernie,” Lee said. “After talking about it with other students, we thought it would be better to start a national organization, so we contacted our friends and students at progressive universities. Eventually it got on the front page of the Daily Kos and it grew quickly from that.”
Commenting on the energy she sees on campus, Lee said Middlebury, “is the perfect place for Students for Bernie to start.”
Like College Republicans does for their members, Students for Bernie helps facilitate events to raise awareness and participation in the campaign as much as possible.
Middlebury Students For Hillary serves as Clinton’s student resource. “We started it first by looking for whatever we could do to help,” said Will Schwartz ’16, the group’s co-president.
The group has done much of the grunt work to get Clinton on the ballot in Vermont as well as several hour and a half trips to campaign in New Hampshire.
“At first we were just a small group of volunteers going over to New Hampshire to knock on some doors,” Schwartz said. “Eventually, Hillary got close to 3,000 signatures in Vermont. We as a group collected about 700 of 800 of those. We’ve been in touch with higher up people as that hard work has been recognized. That’s been very cool. We’re working hard for her.”
A range of opinions and allegiances exist within College Democrats and Republicans, but no one will dispute that the republicans are in the minority.
“It’s a challenge in that the state is liberal, the College is liberal and college students in general are more likely to be liberal,” Dublois said. “Our approach is this; we try to make our group to be as widespread and accommodating as possible. We encourage alternative and varying viewpoints under the republican label. We get people who aren’t really sure. We’ve never had any issues come up, but it definitely is a minority opinion and that’s always in the back of our minds whenever we do something. But we’ve had great success. This year our email list went from 10 to 60 which was a good improvement. We’re gaining traction, so we’ll see what happens.”
Campaigning in Vermont — where 25 percent of the population is registered as volunteers for Sanders — is a unique experience for both his supporters and opponents.
“It certainly is tough, we’re playing on his home turf and it’s very natural that he’ll have a lot of support,” Schwartz said. “What we found is that explaining to people that their signature was just to put Secretary Clinton on the ballot was helpful. It’s just saying that we want as many candidates for voters as possible. It’s a bit of an uphill challenge, but we like it. It’s tough work. We didn’t get into it to be easy. She has to compete everywhere.”
“There’s definitely an outside sense that this is Bernie country and there’s huge support for Bernie on this campus. The people who do support Hillary are very active in what they do,” Millard said.
Debate parties have also had huge turnouts, reflecting the political energy on campus.
“There is a certain type of political camaraderie to viewing debates with people who share a like mind,” Travis Wayne Sanderson ’19 said.
“The attendance at debate screenings is just extraordinary,” Lee said. “I don’t see Middlebury being a particularly politically active campus; It’s very academic, but even on school nights, during prime homework time, there are tons of people in McCullough watching the debates together.”
(01/27/16 5:04pm)
The third annual Student Global Affairs Conference, titled “Power and Protest: Global Responses to Atomic Energy,” explored the multidimensional issue of nuclear proliferation and took place over the course of two days featuring five speakers. The student-designed topic was selected from a group of four submissions.
“We chose it because the other submissions had a more narrow scope. Nuclear energy is a much broader topic,” Program and Outreach Fellow David Russel ’15 said.
The winning group behind the topic included Tim Fraser ’16, Mohamed Hussein ’17, Eunice Kim ’17 and Dan Batekyko ’16. They organized speakers for the conference and constructed the schedule of events including five lectures, a career and internship information session, a music workshop and a film screening.
“This conference is meant to educate both campus and community members about global issues from global perspectives,” said Russel. “What makes this conference special is that it was entirely student-designed. In that way, not only is it giving the organizers the experience of putting together an entire conference, it also means that these conference topics are responsive to what students want to learn about.”
2016 marks the fifth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster in Japan and the 30th anniversary of Chernobyl in the Soviet Union.
“The March 11 disaster in Japan really put nuclear energy at the front of a lot of countries’ decision-making questions,” said Keynote Speaker Dan Aldrich, a professor at Northeastern University. “What kind of decisions do we need to make and how will we move forward?”
Aldrich began the conference with a presentation of his research on factors that determine where governments place nuclear power facilities. He concluded that wealthy areas with strong community ties are able to veto the development of nuclear power plants while less permanent communities could not. Aldrich hoped to open up the audience’s mind to the complexity of nuclear power.
“What are the politics of energy?” Aldrich said. “It’s not as simple as the engineering suggests. It’s about what goes into the process. The more accidents we see, the more we are thinking about what is beyond just building the plant. What if it breaks down? What if there’s a leak? What if it explodes? I think that this is the most important question: Who are the beneficiaries and who are those that can pay the costs?”
The conference continued with presentations on proliferation in an international context. Jessica Varnum, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, spoke about the complex process of obtaining nuclear technology.
Varnum, an adjunct professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, enjoyed building the connection between Middlebury’s Monterey and Vermont campuses.
“It’s great to see some of the partnership we started in action,” she said. “I would like to see a lot more of that back and forth between our students and professors, because there’s a lot that we can offer to Middlebury and a lot that they can offer to us.”
Fraser said the conference fit in nicely with Middlebury’s interdisciplinary focus.
“We have political scientists speaking, an expert on nuclear securities and a physicist who’s going to be dealing with the economics of the issue,” he said. “I think this is a beautiful synthesis of different social science approaches to it, both at the international and national scale.”
Fraser said the stigma around talking about nuclear power posed the greatest challenge to organizing the conference.
“Nuclear power is not really a common thing to talk about,” he said. “It’s a nationalist thing. Countries invest a lot of money in this new kind of technology and we thought that five years after Chernobyl and five years after Fukushima, it’s a neat time to think about what’s happening with nuclear power now.”
Keeping the conference unbiased was another major concern.
“We had to figure out, ‘do we want to portray this as pronuclear or antinuclear?’” Fraser said. “We figured the best way was to invite academics and professionals who can really speak authoritatively on the subject and remove that question altogether — let the audience do it.”
Friday’s lecturer, Niroko Manabe, author of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, explained that she came to present her opinion.
“I think we already know what the Japanese government thinks, and I think it’s good to just present it from another perspective,” she said. “I’m not trying to give a balanced view as much as an alternative view.”
Students and faculty enjoyed the breadth of speakers.
“I got to see several sides of the nuclear power debate and learn a lot about the science and positive reasons for nuclear power. I feel like we always hear the negatives but rarely hear the positives,” Zach Berzolla ’18 said.
(10/21/15 8:16pm)
The Middlebury College Phi Beta Kappa chapter inducted ten seniors into the honors society on Saturday, Oct. 3 at a ceremony that coincided with Fall Family Weekend. A committee of faculty selects the students based on their academic transcripts in their first three years.
One of the inductees, Kate Hamilton ’15.5, a political science major, believes the most important aspect of academic life is maintaining a balance.
“I like to look at my week in advance and make sure I am leaving time for schoolwork, but also extracurriculars, running, outings with friends and long dinners. I think we all do better, more productive work when it’s not all we are doing,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton embraces the serendipitous value of a liberal arts education, as she deliberately chose to not have a minor.
“I have really enjoyed being able to dabble in a lot of other disciplines. I feel like I have spent a good deal of time in History, Economics and Psychology classes in addition to Political Science,” Hamilton said.
Tom Hyeon-Seok ’16, another inductee, stumbled upon his major while attending a Middlebury event.
“I chose my [economics] major after conversing with the department chair and Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics, Peter Matthews at a piano concert. Economics, combined with statistics, I learned, enables us to explain nearly every aspect of our lives with stories backed by numbers that are often much more objective than words,” he said.
In a few months, the inductees will embark on their postgrad plans, carrying with them the honor of membership in a national society of academics. Hamilton, a Truman Scholar, said she plans on law school.
“My ultimate goal is a law career focused on expanding democratic participation. I would love to work for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, either in the Voting Section or the Educational Opportunities Section,” she said.
Hyeon-Seok will work at a consulting firm in Denver. After a summer job at the firm, he realized it was a great way to “hone [his] quantitative skills and get exposed to the business and legal sectors.”
With such an accomplishment, the two inductees share their secrets of success. “I think it’s really important to take classes that genuinely interest you, because you are so much likely to do well when you are engaged in the material,” Hamilton said.
Hyeon-Seok, however, first clarified that membership in Phi Beta Kappa should not be seen as the ultimate measure of success. “While I consider a membership in PBK as a great honor, I do not equate that to a sign of success. After all, there are many smarter, talented, and interesting individuals on this campus,” he said.
His tip for academic success at Middlebury is to develop relationships with peers in and outside the classroom.
“I found debates and arguments I had outside of classrooms with my friends on topics from lectures immensely helpful in internalizing lessons and insights from the course,” Hyeon-Seok said.
(10/08/15 1:33am)
Dr. Julie Hotchkiss, a research economist and senior policy adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, will attempt to separate unemployment fact from fiction in this semester’s D.K. Smith ’42 Lecture on Thursday, Oct. 15th. One of many campus speakers, Hotchkiss plans to discuss the truth behind headlines regarding labor statistics.
Phanindra Wunnava, D.K. ’42 Chair in Applied Economics, organizes the biannual D.K. Smith Lecture and selected Hotchkiss, a vice president of the Southern Economic Association, and a researcher of race and wage differentials. Wunnava and Hotchkiss have known each other for over 20 years. Today, the two continue to commemorate as researchers of the U.S. labor market. Wunnava chose Hotchkiss in order to educate the community about the state of unemployment amidst the 2016 election.
“With the presidential political warfare taking over our airwaves, her talk will be a reality check about some of the outrageous economic predictions we are hearing from the candidates of both parties,” Wunnava said.
Although Hotchkiss works for the Fed, Wunnava, does not think bias will be a problem, “She is a centrist, a highly cited economist of my generation because of her objectivity,” he added.
According to Wunnava, D.K. Smith lectures typically are very popular.
“It gets filled to the brim,” he said. “Standing room only. Folks in town who are interested usually come. I make a point to make sure the word is out with the local media. At the end of the day I want to be sure we have a big crowd."
Even students who don’t usually find these talks to be captivating have demonstrated interest. Namely Economics major, Student Investment Committee Vice Chair, and Fed Challenge member Jackson Adams ’17 finds most economics speakers dull.
“I have yet to go to an economics talk that I thought was truly fascinating,” Adams said.
Although unimpressed by past speakers, Adams is optimistic about the Hotchkiss lecture.
“It’s crazy that the Fed set this unemployment target and then we surpassed it — we’re at a decade-low unemployment — and the Fed keeps looking at these other metrics to keep saying ‘the economy is not that strong.’ There is definitely some room for Hotchkiss to make the argument that the labor market is stronger than we’re led to believe,” he said.
“I’m an opponent of mandatory lectures,” Adams added. “The whole point of liberal arts is seeking out your own educational decisions, but going to these speakers is part of that.”
D.K. Smith ’42 taught for 40 years in the economics department, and Wunnava holds the professorship chair named after him. “As part of my chair professorship, I have the opportunity to invite experts in the field to share their knowledge with the college community and the public,” Wunnava said. Past D.K. Smith speakers include Richard Freeman (Harvard), Francine Blau (Cornell), and Charles Clotfeltet (Duke).