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(05/01/13 2:46pm)
On Sunday, April 28, the discussion of the divestment of the College’s endowment from fossil fuel industries continued with a student-only panel, featuring three students in favor of the movement with four students whose opinions ranged from strong opposition to measured skepticism.
The panel took place in Dana Auditorium, which was about half-full of community members, a stark contrast with the almost 300 attendees who filled the McCullough Social Space for the College’s first panel on divestment. The first panel on January 22 featured professionals in investment, finances and the divestment movement with opinions ranging from support to opposition of divesting the current 3.6 percent of the College’s $950 million endowment invested in fossil fuel companies.
The student panel on Sunday featured former Governor of Vermont Jim Douglas ’72 as the moderator and students Jeannie Bartlett ’15, Ben Wiggins ’14, Janet Bering ’13, Ryan Kim ’14, Zach Drennen ’13.5, Michael Patterson ’13 and Teddy Smyth ’15 as the panel participants. The panel lasted for over two hours.
Vice President for Finance and Treasurer's Office Patrick Norton began the evening with opening remarks noting that the “management of the endowment has grown increasingly complex” and stating that his hope for the panel was to have a “meaningful discussion” that would “give us an opportunity to hear diverse perspectives and a broad range of opinions.”
Bartlett, co-president of the Socially Responsible Investment Club (SRI) and a member of the Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investment, began the panel arguing for divestment, focusing mainly on the negative effects of climate change on the environment and how she believes divestment will help push a movement toward a healthier planet. She emphasized that as a college that preaches a green agenda, divestment falls in line with the College’s proposed eco-friendly practices.
“I think divesting from fossil fuels will align the school’s investments and practices with [its] mission,” said Bartlett.
“It’s imperative for our health and prosperity both now and in the future,” she concluded.
Smyth agreed with Bartlett’s arguments, saying that it is “morally wrong for us to profit from the destruction of our planet.”
Smyth cited strong student support for divestment, mentioning the results of this year’s Student Government Association (SGA) survey, which found that over 60 percent of the student body supports divestment and 24 percent are opposed to it.
“At this point, the question isn’t whether or not we’re going to divest, but when.” he said.
Bering, a self-described “environmental studies major who is skeptical of divestment as a tool for change” conceded that divestment “is the morally right thing to do,” but she questioned if divestment is addressing climate change in an effective way.
“It does not get people talking about and aware of the real issue,” she said. “They’re mostly talking about financial risk, not climate change. Divestment is a distraction.”
Bering, a Texas native, also argued that divestment is not a “national movement,” pointing out that one-third of the over-300 colleges that are currently a part of the movement are in California, New York or New England, and two-thirds would consider themselves on the west or east coast.
“We need a better movement,” added Bering, “and I think Middlebury is the perfect place to start doing that.”
Wiggins and Patterson also argued against divestment, but focused on the idea that the risk to the College’s endowment is too great to justify divesting from fossil fuels.
Wiggins expressed his belief that, while he agrees that “we need to pursue alternative forms of energy,” the endowment is too essential to the College’s running effectively to endanger its investment returns through divestment.
“I think the goals of the endowment are more important than divesting from fossil fuel,” Wiggins added, “and I think we need to wait until we can be assured that divesting will not have a significant impact on the size of the endowment.”
Echoing an earlier reference from Wiggins, Patterson also highlighted the importance of the endowment for funding financial aid, as he noted that for the 2012 - 2013 academic year, 42 percent of students are on financial aid with an average Middlebury grant of $36,277 per student.
In addition, Wiggins cited the complications that would come with having to divest. He stated that as the College is a part of a consortium under Investure — the firm that manages the College’s endowment — divesting from fossil fuels would require that the College either part ways with Investure or convince all of the other colleges and foundations in the consortium that they must divest as well.
Kim, a member of the Student Investment Committee, a student organization that invests about $355,000 of the endowment in stocks, also used economic reasoning based on his involvement and knowledge of the endowment’s investments to argue against divestment, which he feels is not currently a viable option.
“The energy sector has been doing exceedingly well,” said Kim, stating that his greatest concern for divestment is “risk and return.”
However, he did say that under certain circumstances, he would support divestment.
“If we can find mathematical proof that we wouldn’t incur undue costs in leaving Investure, then yes, I’m totally for [divestment].”
Drennen took a different angle in his support of divestment. While he said divestment was important for “the purpose of symbolism and the purpose of good investment practices,” he called for divestment from coal industries as an attainable first step.
“Not all fuels are created equal,” he said. “Coal has twice as much carbon per unit of energy as natural gas. I think it’s important to restrict the scope to something that I think can feasibly happen.”
After students on the panel gave their opening statements, they were allowed the opportunity to respond to and question each other. Then the audience was invited to ask questions of the panelists.
A number of audience members took this time to verbalize their own opinions on the divestment movement. In the majority of cases, these comments only weakly sought feedback from the panelists. All of the audience members who spoke seemed to be in support of divestment.
After the panel, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz expressed his approval of the proceedings of the panel.
“It was very good. I thought that it did provide a good representation of points of view and that was helpful.”
The panel was videotaped, a copy of which will be sent to members of the Board of Trustees, giving them the opportunity to watch the panel before their meetings from May 9 - 11, during which they will discuss divestment.
Liebowitz did not outline any specific outcome he thought would emerge from the meetings.
“We’ll see what happens,” he said. “It all hinges on the Investment Committee’s presentation first and then our discussion [of divestment] on Saturday [May 11].”
(03/20/13 4:49pm)
On Friday, March 15, Barbara Ofosu-Somuah ’13 found out that she was selected as a Watson fellow for the 2013 - 2014 academic year for her project titled “The Choreography of Black Hair: A Framework for Cultural Inquiry.”
The Watson Fellowship grants graduating seniors a $25,000 stipend for a full year’s worth of travel outside of the United States in order to pursue research on a topic of personal interest. The selected fellows must remain out of the U.S. for the full 365 days in order to receive funding.
This year there were over 700 candidates for the fellowship. Participating schools then selected 148 finalists to compete on the national level, from which 40 fellows were selected. Middlebury itself had 27 applicants this year, up from last year’s 23, and submitted four finalists — Jordie Ricigliano ’13, Davis Anderson ’13, Anoushka Sinha ’13 and Ofosu-Somuah. Sinha was selected as an alternate for the fellowship and will find out on March 29 if she will be named a fellow.
This year’s fellows hail from eight different countries and 14 different states.
Director of Internships Peggy Burns said there was fierce competition to become a finalist for Middlebury.
“It is always such a tough decision to narrow it down to four [students],” Burns wrote in an email. “It was an honor and privilege to work with these four Watson nominees.”
Ofosu-Somuah’s research will take her to five different countries: Suriname, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and South Africa. Her project aims to look at the cultural effects and implications of different hairstyles for black women in these countries.
“I guess my founding question is how you conceptualize beauty within yourself and within the black culture,” explained Ofosu-Somuah.
She explained that her research will focus on the different responses to and effects of two different types of hair for black women — the “eurocentric” style, described by Ofosu-Somuah as chemically-straightened or braided hair, or “afrocentric” style, which she said includes afros, curly hair or leaving hair in its “natural state.” She also expressed her belief in the importance of this research in greater cultural contexts.
“I think in the end I’m trying to say that for black women, our hair is just as important to us and to our lives as our race, our gender and our sexuality,” she said.
Ofosu-Somuah will be working at a natural hair festival in Suriname for one month. She will then spend two months in Brazil — one working at a natural hair salon and the second at a women’s empowerment organization. From there, she will move to the Dominican Republic, where she will work at a beauty school. She’ll spend three months in Jamaica working at Curly-Centric, a self-described support group for Jamaican women with natural hair, and finally will end her travels in South Africa, working at a micro-financing group called Jabu Stone that “aims to promote natural hair care and pride.”
She cited her interest in the cultural implications of black women’s hair as beginning with her time at Middlebury. Ofosu-Somuah started as a first-year with braids and noticed that her hair became a topic of conversation. Students would often ask if they could touch her hair, but would then touch her without waiting for her verbal permission.
“And so for the first time at Middlebury, it oftentimes felt like my body was not my own,” she said. “It was kind of an object of fascination that people wanted to explore, without waiting for my permission to do so.”
Ofosu-Somuah then cut her hair, going “natural” during the summer after her first year at Middlebury. When she cut her hair, she received extremely negative reactions from her family and community at home, and then continued to be an “object of fascination” at the College.
It was at this time that Ofosu-Somuah became interested in the implications of her natural hair, and through research she learned that there was a worldwide “natural hair movement.”
“Without me knowing it, I had joined this movement,” she said. “And I hadn’t expected to, but now I was a part of it, and I wanted to know more.
“So that’s where my project stems from — hair for black women around the world and how people respond to it and how black women maneuver and negotiate different spaces based on their hair.”
Associate Professor of American Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity Susan Burch, who wrote Ofosu-Somuah’s recommendation for the fellowship, believed the connection between Ofosu-Somuah’s personal life and her research proposal was essential to the future success of the work.
“[Ofosu-Somuah’s] project to consider identity and culture in indigenous communities of color through the framework of hair provides an ideal opportunity for her to integrate her cumulative academic and personal experiences,” wrote Burch in an email. “Working with and learning from other communities will undoubtedly open her to new understandings of herself, her own life story and the broader world.”
Roger Sandwick, the mentor for Ofosu-Somuah’s Posse group, expressed his pride in her selection as a fellow.
“The whole [Posse] group is proud of her achievement,” wrote Sandwick in an email. “In Barbara, [the Watson Fellowship] has certainly found and acknowledged a future leader of our society. I don’t doubt she will change the world.”
There will be an information session in late April for students interested in applying for the Watson Fellowship in the future.
(03/06/13 5:30pm)
On Wednesday, Feb. 27, Dean of the College and Chief Diversity Officer Shirley Collado sent an all-student email announcing the College’s participation in the Diverse Learning Environments (DLE) survey, conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Collado sent a link to the survey itself to students on March 1.
In the first email, Collado wrote that the survey is “part of the College’s ongoing efforts to review and assess our campus climate as it relates to issues of diversity and inclusion” and that the goals of the survey are to “better understand how students are engaging across differences and finding community, understand students’ experiences in selecting majors and improve classroom dynamics and campus life.”
The “ongoing efforts” of the College to review diversity come after a recommendation from the 2006 Human Relations Committee (HRC), which was charged by President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz with the job of evaluating diversity at the College. Special Assistant to the Dean of the College and Senior Advisor for Diversity Jennifer Herrera explained that based on the committee’s evaluation, the College has agreed to review diversity on campus every five years.
Herrera also said that in her 10 years working at the College, “a more comprehensive survey [ ... that] focused on the climate of diversity and inclusion on campus” has not been administered. Collado agreed, saying this was the first campus climate survey administered at the College of which she was aware.
Collado said that the College felt “it was time” for a survey addressing campus life. She also stressed the hope that there will be a high student response rate for the survey.
“Every student has something very valuable to say on the survey,” said Collado. “This is not a survey for a specific subset of students or students with particular interests.”
Some of the questions on the survey address students’ interactions with faculty and staff, their experiences in the classroom and in residence halls and whether or not they have experienced any sort of discrimination or harassment based on their race, gender, sexuality, disability or spiritual affiliation.
Emma Ashby ’13, a co-chair of Middlebury Open Queer Alliance (MOQA), discussed the gap between the College’s aim to address queer diversity through the survey and its practices on campus. She discussed in particular the idea of using affirmative action in admissions not just for race, but also for queer students.
“If [being queer is] going to be part of your identity,” said Ashby, “and you’re going to have surveys about it and talk about how you can foster it and support it, you should probably also talk about how you can attract it and attract people who are going to be a part of that vibrant community.
“If the College recognizes that you can be discriminated against for [being queer], why are we not in recruitment trying to reach out to people?”
Tim Garcia ’14, a hispanic student and co-president of Distinguished Men of Color (DMC), felt that the questions on the survey addressed issues of diversity on campus, but that the survey also should have asked if the respondent was affiliated with Posse, as he believes it is important to acknowledge that many students of color on campus are Posse Scholars.
Garcia expressed deep concerns with diversity on campus. He cited the dilemma of why students of color take longer to finish their undergraduate degree relative to their peers as one issue the College needs to address.
“The Middlebury campus is diverse when it comes to student experiences (i.e. educational background, geographic diversity, academic or extracurricular activities),” wrote Garcia in an email, “but when it comes to race, I have observed a dangerous commodification of individuals of color.”
Garcia explained that his experience of diversity at the College is significantly different than that of high school or outside of campus.
“Contrary to my experience in high school, diversity at Middlebury for a person of color has come to mean a sense of obligation to represent the entirety of the race.
“The fear of being criminalized and exoticized, which I must cope with as a man of color on a normal basis in the real world, is exacerbated because I am in the microcosm that is Middlebury College,” wrote Garcia.
The welcome screen to the survey boasts HERI’s dedication to conducting over 40 years of research on the college student experience. Vice President for Planning and Assessment and Professor of Psychology Susan Baldridge explained the benefits of using a national survey as opposed to a Middlebury-generated one.
“We benefit from the survey construction and validation expertise that HERI has,” wrote Baldridge in an email. “We also get access not only to reports of the responses of our own students, but to comparison data from students at other institutions who take the same survey. [...] This helps us understand our own findings in a broader context.”
HERI also sponsors the first-year student survey that the College administers to incoming students each fall.
The survey will be open for students to complete until the beginning of April.
(02/27/13 11:14pm)
On Thursday, Feb. 28 and Friday, March 1, the Center for Comparative Studies of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) will host its annual symposium. The theme for this year’s event is “No Place Like Home? Imagining Race, Ethnicity and Migration.”
The symposium will kick off at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday with a roundtable panel discussing North to South migration. Presenters will include Sharlene Mollett, an assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth College, Robert Prasch, a professor of economics at Middlebury and Nina Berman, a professor of comparative studies at Ohio State University.
The panel will be followed by a screening of the film Paraiso for Sale by Anayansi Prado at 6:30 p.m. The film also discusses North to South migration, focusing on reverse migration between Latin America and the U.S.
Associate Professor of American Studies and Director of the CCSRE Susan Burch explained that North to South migration “often receives less attention [than South to North migration],” so the organizing committee opted to explore an unfamiliar topic.
Friday will start with a workshop titled “Refugee Migration and its Reception,” led by Director for the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program Judy Scott.
Following the workshop, beginning at 2 p.m., will be another roundtable panel featuring Scott, Assistant Professor of South Asian Studies at Hampshire College Uditi Sen and the Mary Huggins Gamble Professor of Government at Smith College Gregory White. This second panel will discuss the differences between migrants seeking the benefits of education or economic opportunity with refugees, who are forced to move from their homes.
The day and symposium will finish with the keynote address at 4 p.m., presented by award-winning author and Lannan Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University Dinaw Mengestu. Mengetsu has written two novels and has had work published in Rolling Stone, Jane Magazine, Harper’s and The Wall Street Journal. His talk, titled “The Making of an Immigrant,” will discuss how the vocabulary of migration affects the reading and construction of immigrant narratives.
Burch said that she is excited about the diversity of the participants in the symposium.
“The presenters reflect our interest in global as well as local contexts,” she wrote in an email. “The diversity of the disciplines and ideas showcased in this program reflect the many people who helped dream this event into action.”
Members of the faculty began discussing plans for the 2013 CCSRE symposium back in the spring of 2012. The organizing committee, consisting of Prasch, Assistant Professor of German Natalie Eppelsheimer, Assistant Professor of Portuguese Fernando Rocha and Events Coordinator of the economics department Vijaya Wunnava, finalized the plans for the symposium this past fall.
The first annual CCSRE symposium was held back in the 2009-2010 academic year and focused on the theme of citizenship, race and ethnicity.
Burch feels that the annual symposia serve to strengthen the mission of the CCSRE.
“Symposia provide a rich space for exchanging ideas [and] stretching the ways we learn and share information,” she wrote in an email. “Members of the College appreciate the opportunity to meet leading figures in our areas of interest, and to foster collaborations that often extend far beyond the symposia. Having signature annual events, like symposia or distinguished speaker series, enables us to sustain and deeper our engagement with issues of race and ethnicity.”
Overall, Burch is excited about every aspect of the upcoming symposium.
“It’s going to be an amazing two days,” she said.
Check out middleburycampus.com for up-to-date coverage of the symposium events.
(01/24/13 12:37am)
The first thing I did when I got a text message asking if I had seen what was going on in Newtown was check online news sources. After reading a few headlines and skimming a few articles, sparse in detail and high in speculation, I went downstairs to my family room. I sat down next to my mother, who had been staring at the television for about 30 minutes already, and started to watch the news. I didn’t move from the couch for the next six hours.
To comprehend a national tragedy is difficult enough. To grapple with the fact that it happened in a town you’ve known familiarly since you were a child, a town a mere 10 miles away from your own suburban home, is another challenge altogether. But nothing could have prepared me for the moment when I heard her name, thrown in with the other tidbits of information slowly being leaked as time dragged slowly on:
“It is thought that among the dead is Sandy Hook’s principal, Dawn Hochsprung.”
Dawn Hochsprung, or Dawn Lafferty as I knew her, had been my vice principal in middle school. More importantly, she eventually became the wife of one of my most beloved teachers, George Hochsprung, a colleague of hers at Rogers Park Middle School. I was George’s student when he and Dawn were planning for their wedding. As I heard the news of her death confirmed, all I could think of were the happy days I spent in his classroom, and her smiling face when she would check in on him and his students.
And then I sat in front of the news for hours. For hours that day and for hours for the next three days. I couldn’t pull myself away. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t leave the couch. I think now that I was waiting — waiting for some reporter to tell me something that would help make sense of it all, some small piece of information that would allow me to comprehend the meaning behind a tragedy like the Sandy Hook shooting.
It never came. Of course it never came.
A few days later, I attended Dawn’s wake with my family. Both of my brothers and I had been through school with George and Dawn, and over the years, my parents had become very fond of both of them. It seemed appropriate to see George and do what we could to share his burden.
On arrival, we saw the reporters. A group of them, standing the legally designated distance away from the wake, with their cameras and microphones. I was furious, and as someone who plans to pursue a career in journalism, deeply disconcerted. When did it become acceptable to intrude on the grieving process of a family in turmoil? And at what point does the news turn from being helpful and informative to hurtful and invasive?
I thought of my countless hours sitting in front of the television, hoping for some answers. Hoping that someone with a little more authority than me would shine light on the situation. But as I stood at the wake of Dawn Hochsprung, looking at the cold, huddled reporters at the end of the street, I realized they were no closer to understanding the tragedy than I was. Maybe they had access to people for interviews and passes for press conferences, but in the end, they were looking for answers too.
As a reporter, it’s your job to provide answers, even when they cannot be found. You are expected to produce something. Anything. As someone who, like many others in the Connecticut community, had personal ties to the shooting at Sandy Hook, I realized at Dawn’s wake that there would never be any answers. The parents of those children, and my dear teacher and mentor George Hochsprung, will never find an answer to the question that haunts all of our minds: Why?
Since that morning in December, I have quietly and solitarily mourned for those who were lost, and for those who lost loved ones. On returning to Middlebury, I immersed myself in Shakespeare for my thesis work. It was only then that I remembered the fateful moment at the end of Othello, when Othello asks Iago the question that readers have tried to figure out for centuries: Why? Why have you tormented me and caused me to kill my wife? What did I ever do to you?
In one of Shakespeare’s darkest moments, the most evil of all of his villains replies, “Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak a word.”
There is no repentance. There is no explanation. What you know, you know. Six remarkable adults and 20 beautiful children were killed in Newtown, Conn. on that horrific day in December. That is what we know. We will never know the motive; we will never be able to understand why. And I believe that even if we did know the reason behind Adam Lanza’s killing spree, it wouldn’t help.
What I know is that the moment I hugged George Hochsprung, it no longer mattered why I was there. What was important was that I was there. In times of struggle and great heartache, reporters and their facts become irrelevant. Relief will not present itself in a news report. What you know, you know.
(01/17/13 1:11am)
Research conducted by Associate Professor of Psychology Matthew Kimble found that female undergraduates who study abroad are significantly more likely to experience rape and other types of sexual assault than women who remain on campus. Specifically, Kimble’s study found that women abroad are over four times more likely to experience nonconsensual sexual contact, such as groping, over three times more likely to experience attempted sexual assault and are five times more likely to experience completed sexual assault, or rape.
The study, conducted in 2009, consisted of a survey filled out by 218 junior and senior females at the College who had studied abroad within the previous two academic years. Of the 218 women, 83 reported having some sort of an unwanted sexual experience while abroad, 60 reported at least one incident of unwanted touching, 13 reported an attempted sexual assault — either oral, anal or vaginal — and 10 women reported completed sexual assault.
Additionally, Kimble’s study found that the majority of any type of sexual assault was done not by students, but by non-student local residents, who accounted for 86.8 percent of nonconsensual sexual contact. The remainder was done by either fellow students from the study abroad program or local resident students. Similar percentages were found for attempted sexual assault (77.8 percent) and completed sexual assault (67.7 percent).
The initial research only surveyed female students, as women are statistically more likely to experience sexual assault than men, but Kimble said the samples at Middlebury and Bucknell now include men and have been expanded to include other types of trauma, such as accidents or natural disasters.
Kimble’s research, first published in Oct. 2012 in the journal Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy, began in 2009 when Professor of Psychology at Bucknell University William Flack approached him about collaborating on research analyzing sexual assault on students while they studied abroad. Flack conducted a tandem study at Bucknell, which found results comparable to Kimble’s.
Kimble and Flack’s study was printed at a critical moment; sexual assault has become increasingly relevant as a topic of discussion on campuses across America, particularly in the aftermath of a controversial publication this past fall in which an Amherst student recounted her experience with sexual assault on campus and the way in which the situation was handled by her college’s administration.
Kimble said that he believes this research is part of a much larger discussion addressing the issue of sexual assault on college campuses and abroad.
“This work falls within the broader context of the body of work over the years that has emphasized the prevalence of sexual assault on women and the extent to which the rates are typically higher than what people would guess, largely because it is crime that tends to go unreported,” wrote Kimble in an email.
Vice President of Language Schools, Schools Abroad and Graduate Programs and Professor of German Michael Geisler is currently grappling with this exact issue of unreported incidents. While Kimble’s study found that 10 women reported cases of rape, Geisler cited that only one official report of sexual assault has been made to the College in the last three or four years, perhaps even longer.
“This study has actually been very helpful in telling us that there is this gap between what students have reported and what they have experienced,” said Geisler.
Currently, the College’s study abroad office dedicates a section of its handbook — available online and distributed in hard copy to all students going abroad — to sexual assault and harassment. Directors on campus also speak with students about sexual assault during a pre-orientation meeting, and directors of the programs abroad speak with students about sexual assault again during an orientation once students arrive in their respective countries.
According to Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs and Student Life Karen Guttentag, Kimble first shared his preliminary research with her and the study abroad staff last summer. Since then, Geisler said the College has been working on various ways to address the issue of sexual assault abroad and minimize the discrepancy between reported cases and students’ actual experiences.
Some options that Geisler said the study abroad office has been considering and will most likely implement in the near future aim to put tighter regulations on attending the pre-orientation meeting. While the meeting is currently mandatory, Geisler said many students still do not attend it due to other commitments. In the future, students may not be allowed to go abroad until they attend the pre-orientation meeting. Another plan is to bring in local students to in-country orientations to give abroad students a more authentic sense of how to conduct themselves in certain scenarios that could get them into trouble. Lastly, Geisler said that the study abroad office is thinking of revamping their general warning on sexual harassment and sexual assault in their handbook to become a country-specific warning, in order to address varying cultural cues and customs that students should be aware of more clearly.
Guttentag, who is also the head of the Sexual Assault Oversight Committee (SAOC) at the College, deals with similar difficulties in getting students to report cases of sexual harassment or sexual assault. She said that while there are many reasons that students may pause before reporting cases while on campus, these are probably compounded by other factors when students experience sexual assault abroad.
“There are certainly many factors that play into a student’s decision to report sexual assault in general, including fear of backlash, stigma, self-blame, an attempt to cope by minimizing the significance of the assault and an inability at the time of the incident to recognize it as an assault,” wrote Guttentag in an email. “When we consider an assault that occurs during a study abroad program, I can imagine that several additional factors might come into play.”
While the study abroad office is trying to work to encourage students to feel comfortable reporting cases of sexual assault despite these factors, Kimble and Flack are now working to identify the elements that may lend themselves to the increase in cases of sexual assault while abroad.
Kimble said that at the start of their research, he and Flack “hypothesized that the risk might be higher while abroad because of factors such as the lack of familiarity with the culture, limited fluency in the language and legal access to alcohol for the first time.”
Kimble admitted that the goal of the initial study was not to identify the risk factors, but he said that there were some noticeable trends in the information he received. The first was that fluency did not seem to have an effect on whether or not students did or did not experience sexual assault. Kimble used a self-rated measure of fluency on his survey and found that it did not differ among students that experienced any type of sexual assault. Kimble wrote in his study that he would need a larger sample size in order to confidently state that fluency plays no role in the risk of sexual assault.
One factor that does appear to play a large role in the risk of sexual assault is based on the region students visited. Kimble’s study was too small to assess country-specific risk, but he did find that all regions except for English-speaking Europe and Australia posed additional risk for sexual assault. In addition, the Americas and Africa had the most significant increases in the more severe forms of sexual assault. Risk for completed sexual assault was higher in the Americas than any other region.
Finally, Kimble stated that factors that often play into higher risk for new college first-years while on campus may also result in higher risk while abroad: “lack of familiarity with local culture, legal access to alcohol and being targeted by perpetrators who see new students as vulnerable.”
Kimble said that he and Flack “hope the work leads to better prevention strategies, in part by increasing awareness of the possibility of these types of experiences while studying abroad.”
Geisler has been using the research for just that purpose, and his goal now is to get more students to report incidents of sexual assault.
“The more we know about the kinds of situations where this happens, the more we can anticipate and warn other students about it,” said Geisler. “That’s why we need that data, and so if students could help us by reporting this in whatever way they see fit, that would be really wonderful. The directors are trained in dealing with these kinds of situations, the counseling center is standing by to help out, but we need to know what’s going on.”
(11/14/12 10:22pm)
On Monday, Nov. 12, the College hosted its monthly faculty meeting in McCullough Social Space. Prior to the meeting concerns were high regarding attendance after last month’s quorum of over 50 percent of faculty was challenged. The quorum was met, however, and the meeting proceeded as scheduled, with the first item on the agenda being to redefine the quorum.
During last month’s meeting on Oct. 1, Associate Professor of Mathematics John Schmitt objected to the quorum that was declared as present. It is guessed that the number of attendees at the meeting was about 70. The quorum required that the majority of faculty be present, or at least 169 people.
Schmitt has been at the College for seven and a half years, and he said that the reason he had waited until October to contest the quorum was due to job stability. It was only on July 1 of this year that Schmitt was officially granted tenure.
“Now that I have tenure … I can stick my neck out and say some things that may not be popular without fear of losing my position at the College,” said Schmitt.
The McCullough Social Space filled every seat at Monday’s meeting, and once the quorum was called, the Faculty Council immediately set as its first point of agenda to redefine what constitutes a quorum at faculty meetings.
In order to redefine the quorum, the faculty first needed to have a two-thirds majority vote in order to suspend the rules. This was met without opposition.
The faculty council then presented its motion to change the quorum to read: “A quorum in faculty meetings will consist of 100 voting members of the faculty for the 2012-13 academic year. The secretary will inform the moderator of the presence of a quorum.”
Motions were then put in place to change the wording of the proposal. Faculty voted to remove the year limitation, so that the motion would not need to be discussed again at the end of the academic year, and also to change the number 100 to one-third of faculty, except those on leave.
Each of these two motions needed a majority two-thirds vote to be passed. Both were met with only a few objections.
When it came time to discuss passing the revised motion of the new quorum, a discussion broke out between multiple members of the faculty in favor of the change and Schmitt, who was the only faculty member to speak to the room in favor of keeping the old quorum.
Schmitt spoke to his belief that all faculty members should be required to attend faculty meetings.
“I think the faculty need to know each other,” said Schmitt. “I think that they need to be aware of the issues regarding the curriculum, regarding the direction of the College and I think that they need to participate in the discussion and the decisions.”
While Schmitt argued that faculty members should all be capable to devote time to these meetings once a month, other professors, such as Gamaliel Painter Bicentennial Professor of Physics Frank Winkler, spoke of the other obligations of faculty on this campus.
“I think it’s good to have as many people as possible at meetings of the faculty,” said Winkler at the meeting on Monday. “On the other hand, it’s not the only responsibility that we have here at this institution. I would venture to say that many of the people who cannot attend faculty meetings are doing other good and worthwhile things.”
Winkler cited coaches who hold practices, professors who have labs that run late and others that do independent work with students as examples.
“I would say that all of these are valuable activities that advance the mission of Middlebury College, and that we should respect all of them,” said Winkler. “And therefore I support this motion [to revise the quorum downward].”
After about 30 minutes of debate over the language of the motion and its implications, the faculty members in attendance voted and passed the new definition of the quorum with a vast majority. Only a few attendees opposed the motion, Schmitt among them.
Once the motion to change the definition of the quorum was passed, a number of faculty members got up and left the meeting.
Schmitt later spoke of his disappointment in the Faculty Council for lowering their expectations for faculty members.
“I was disappointed that the motion was brought to the floor of the faculty meeting in the first place,” said Schmitt.
He also hopes that his message from the meeting was taken as encouragement for faculty to come to meetings in the future and that the new standard will be strictly enforced.
“My hope is that the culture of the faculty meetings is a more positive one going forward,” said Schmitt.
President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz expressed agreement with the points of both Schmitt and Winkler, and said he believes there is a medium between the two.
“I’m happy we came to a resolution and we’ll be able to conduct business,” said Liebowitz.
Member of the Faculty Council and Associate Professor of Political Science Bert Johnson said he was extremely pleased to see many of his colleagues at the faculty meeting.
“It was one of those things that warmed my heart,” said Johnson. “It was great to see people come out when they needed to, and hopefully we will have higher attendance going forward.”
Johnson explained that he understands Schmitt’s point of view, but sees the new quorum as less of a downgrade and more of a compromise.
“I certainly understand where [Schmitt is] coming from, and I too wish that people would more regularly appear at faculty meetings,” said Johnson. “However, considering the practicalities of the matter, I think it’s just not feasible to get that many people there regularly. So I think one-third is a reasonable compromise and it still requires more of the faculty than has typically attended. We’re not letting ourselves totally off the hook.”
Professor of Political Science Matthew Dickinson, who does not regularly attend faculty meetings and did not attend the meeting on Monday, cited the work he does as a professor, researcher, political scientist and departmental chair as his reasons for not being able to attend the faculty meetings.
“My primary role, the mission that drives this college, is educating undergraduates,” said Dickinson. “That’s what drives everything I do, and everything flows from that.
“I have to make choices about how to spend my time,” Dickinson continued. “Some people prioritize by working through faculty administrative bodies to contribute to the College. Somebody should do that. I cannot do that and fulfill my other obligations. […] I am deeply appreciative of what [Schmitt] is saying and the passion he brings to college governance, and I’m glad he’s out there, but I can’t be.”
(11/07/12 10:18pm)
On Monday, Oct. 1, Associate Professor of Mathematics John Schmitt objected to the quorum that was called during the monthly faculty meetings. When the moderator deemed the quorum was in fact not met, the meeting was adjourned until the following month.
The quorum for the monthly faculty meetings requires that a majority of faculty members be in attendance in order for any business to be taken care of. This number includes all professors that are on academic leave.
Associate Professor of Political Science and member of the Faculty Council Bert Johnson said that the quorum has not been met in the past, but no problems have arisen up until now.
“In the past, there has rarely, if ever, been an actual quorum at faculty meetings, so the chair of the meeting […] would declare a quorum present, no one would object and we would move on,” wrote Johnson in an email.
The Faculty Council has calculated that a majority of the faculty would amount to 169 faculty members.
Johnson said that he guesses about 80 members of the faculty attend the meetings now.
Schmitt, the faculty member who contested the declaration of the quorum, had a familial obligation and was not available for comment.
The faculty’s agenda for the year has now been pushed back one month, and the cancellation of these meetings could have an effect on students.
Johnson explained that the faculty uses these meetings to vote on the administration committee’s grade changes, as well as the approval of fall and spring graduates.
“If we don’t solve this problem somehow, it will affect everybody, not just the faculty,” he said.
Professor of Mathematics and Faculty Meeting Parliamentarian Mike Olinick said that only in emergencies could the faculty vote without a quorum, such as the approval of students for graduation.
Members of the Faculty Council are now working to get faculty members to commit to the November faculty meeting this Monday, Nov. 12. Multiple emails have been sent out in the past week reminding faculty of the upcoming meeting.
While in the past, a quorum was technically necessary but not strictly enforced, Johnson believes that the attendance of the meetings will now be more regulated.
“Now that the cat is out of the bag, I anticipate an objection if there is not a quorum [this Monday],” said Johnson. “Now we’ve moved into a different situation where we really do need a quorum, or we need to redefine what a quorum is.”
In order to redefine the quorum for the meetings, there will need to be a majority of faculty at the meeting on Monday. They will then need a two-thirds majority vote to suspend the present rules — thus suspending the current quorum rule — and then a two-thirds majority vote in order to approve the new quorum rule.
The Faculty Council is in charge of proposing the amendment. Johnson said they will attempt to lower the number of faculty members required at the meetings, and they are leaning towards specifying a specific number of people rather than a percentage.
Olinick believes that an amendment to the definition of a quorum will be beneficial, particularly considering the circumstances under which the quorum was originally defined.
“The current rule that half the entire faculty must be present for a quorum has been in place for more than 40 years,” wrote Olinick in an email. “It dates from an era when the faculty was much smaller in number than it is now, and so a higher percentage of those in attendance had an opportunity to speak.
“Also, only six or seven professors were on leave during an academic year then,” Olinick continued. “Now close to 20 percent of the faculty may be away from campus on academic leave during the year. Our quorum rule now includes those people in the count even though it's impossible for them to attend.”
Johnson explained that in addition to professors on academic leave, other professors have obligations to their families or have classes that interfere with getting to the meetings.
Professor of Religion Burke Rochford is one of those professors who cannot attend due to familial obligations. He believes that redefining the quorum makes sense in light of who attends the meetings.
“I assume the people who don’t go to faculty meetings choose not to participate in faculty governance, so who needs a vote from those people?” said Rochford. “The people who are involved, who know the issues, they’re the ones who should be voting anyway. I think making something out of this quorum is basically a false issue.”
Even though Rochford does not attend the meetings due to other obligations, he also does not believe that he has a duty as a faculty member to attend.
“My expectations about being a faculty member are that I teach and I teach well, I contribute to my department and I contribute in every way I can and that I do the research that I do,” said Rochford. “Whether I go to the faculty meeting doesn’t mean that much to me.”
Johnson, however, does not know what to make of the lack of attendance at the meetings.
“We have a system in which the faculty is supposed to run most of what happens here at the College,” said Johnson. “It is concerning when not as many people as perhaps should want to take part in that governance. I don’t know if that’s a signal whether things are all okay or whether things are bad.”
Professor of Physics and Faculty Moderator Susan Watson, who’s in charge of leading the faculty meetings, declined to comment.
This is Watson’s first year as moderator. In the past, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz, and the presidents before him, always ran the faculty meetings.
Last May, the faculty voted to suspend the rules regarding the Faculty Moderator and chose to instead use an elected faculty member.
Olinick explained that a faculty member moderator was tried around 1990, but then the president resumed the position after one semester. He said they are attempting to use a faculty moderator again for two reasons.
“One [reason is] that [the meetings] will be perceived more as a faculty run meeting rather than an administrative run meeting, and faculty members might feel freer to engage in the debate,” said Olinick. “It was also felt that [Liebowitz], given the nature of the position that he has, would have a strong opinion about a lot of the issues that come before the faculty for decision. When you’re moderating a meeting you’re not really free to express your own opinion on these issues.”
Liebowitz continues to attend the faculty meetings as a participant.
The meeting on Nov. 12 will take place in McCullough Social Space, a change from Kirk Alumni Center, where the meetings are usually held. This is to account for the higher number of faculty members that the Faculty Council hopes will attend the meeting.
(10/31/12 4:55pm)
On Oct. 29, Vice President for Academic Affairs Timothy Spears sent out an email to the entire college community to announce that the College would close from 3 p.m. that day until 6 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 30, due to predicted inclement weather caused by Hurricane Sandy.
All classes, lectures, events, meetings and athletic practices were cancelled from 2:45 p.m. onward. Dining halls remained open, and would have run on generators if necessary, despite the conditions.
“Sustained winds of 30 to 36 mph, with gusts as high as 60 mph, will create unsafe conditions for all forms of outdoor activity,” wrote Spears in the email. “Students are urged to exercise extreme caution, and venture outdoors only when absolutely necessary.”
Earlier in the afternoon, Public Safety sent out an all-campus email to remind the college community of the proper procedure if the campus were to sustain a power outage of longer than 30 minutes. At that point, all card access controlled buildings lock, except for residence halls card readers, which continue to run on battery back-up.
On Tuesday at 6 a.m., normal college operations resumed.
The College was fortunate in that no damage was sustained during the storm. Barring a brief period of heavy rain and some wind, the storm barely hit the campus. On Tuesday, the day after the College’s warning, skies were blue. Some gusting winds were the only reminders of Hurricane Sandy’s passing.
Other states were not as fortunate. CNN reported that damage was sustained across the Northeast. At least 11 are dead, with two of those people being children. One was only eight years old.
Large sections of the Atlantic City boardwalk in New Jersey were destroyed, and images of a flooded downtown Manhattan are posted on all major online news sources.
The Red Cross told CNN that almost 11,000 people spent Monday night in 258 Red Cross-operated shelters across 16 states.
(10/24/12 5:51pm)
On Thursday, Oct. 18, the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs celebrated its ten year anniversary. In time with this celebration, the international studies major was changed to the international and global studies major (IGS).
Students and professors commemorated the anniversary with two panels, one led by professors and one by students, to discuss the role of America as a global power in today’s changing world. The first was held in Rohatyn and the second in Atwater Dining Hall.
Professor of Geography Tamar Mayer, who was appointed to the directorship of both the Rohatyn Center and the department of international and global studies this past summer, gave opening remarks at the panels, which applauded the work of the Rohatyn Center since its establishment in 2002.
“Over the last decade, the Rohatyn Center has established itself as the place to go at Middlebury for an in-depth international or global perspective on social, political, cultural and economic issues,” said Mayer in her remarks on Thursday.
In the past 10 years, the Rohatyn Center has hosted over 1,000 speakers, administered over a quarter of a million dollars in Mellon grants in support of undergraduate student international research and has employed over 100 student interns.
Mayer expressed enthusiasm for her new position as the director of the Rohatyn Center and says it fits nicely with her position as the head of the international and global studies department.
“[Director of the Rohatyn Center] is a great job and it’s great center,” said Mayer. “There’s a lot of great energy here, and I think that the mission of the center works really beautifully with what we do in the major and fits perfectly with its newly designed name, IGS.”
Mayer explained that when she stepped into her position as the director of international studies, she brought up the suggestion of changing the name to include global studies. According to Mayer, this is something she has been thinking about for a long time.
The new name, she argued, better reflects what faculty members in the program really do and how the academic program needs to educate and orient students.
“IGS faculty ask questions in the courses that are region specific, but they also ask questions that are transnational, that are global, in nature” said Mayer. “It really was time that the name of the major reflected exactly what we do in the program.”
Of the 11 New England Small College Athletic Conference [NESCAC] schools, only six offer a major that falls into the realm of international or global studies. The five that do not offer any international studies major are Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Hamilton and Williams. No school offers an “international and global studies” major.
Mayer said that she has received only positive feedback on the name change.
While Mayer feels that the new name was necessary, some students are apathetic to the change.
“I have to say I’m pretty indifferent over the addition of ‘global’,” wrote Hudson Cavanagh ’14 in an email. “Although for what is already the wordiest major in existence, it makes writing my actual major on an application essentially impossible.”
(10/03/12 4:48pm)
This fall, the College implemented changes to the disciplinary actions outlined in the student handbook, including a new process for disciplinary action taken against students that adds a sanction which puts students on probation without having this status added to their personal record.
The new sanction, called “probationary status,” replaces the old sanction of disciplinary probation. In the past, when students were put on disciplinary probation, it was indicated on their permanent record.
With probationary status, students are warned that if their behavior does not change, they risk getting something on their permanent record or risk being suspended. The new sanction allows students the opportunity to reform their behavior before further disciplinary action takes place.
Disciplinary probation is now split into probationary status and official college discipline, at which point a student will have something written on their permanent record.
The new process for disciplinary sanctions runs as follows: first, a warning, which is unofficial college discipline and usually involves a letter to the student; second, a reprimand, where a letter is sent, in addition to the student, to the student’s parents; third, probationary status; fourth, official college discipline, which merits the student receiving something on their permanent record; and finally suspension and potentially expulsion.
Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs and Student Life Karen Guttentag explained that the changes were made in order to address a large disciplinary gap that continuously came to surface with the past sanctions.
“The category of disciplinary probation was encompassing a very broad range of circumstances,” said Guttentag. “It wasn’t allowing us to be precise in how we were responding to particular cases.”
Guttentag explained the difference between students who repeatedly offended college policy with low-level incidents, and used to end up on disciplinary probation, versus students who committed serious offenses and ended up with the same sanction.
“What we found is that we would have people who got on disciplinary probation under those [repeatedly low-level] circumstances, and we were really questioning whether or not we were going to suspend them for something so minor,” said Guttentag.
“We were undermining the purpose of that status, as well as the message. Because at the same time it was also encompassing people who really were at the edge of being suspended, and where we really did need to send a message about being in jeopardy of being able to stay here anymore.”
Dean of the College Shirley Collado said that she hopes students will take advantage of the new opportunity to fix past mistakes.
“[The new sanction] is not totally black and white, but I hope that it gives further clarification to students about fairness and about opportunity,” said Collado. “I hope it also gives a built-in system in our handbook that says that part of being here is figuring it out, and that when you make a mistake in this community, there’s opportunity for restorative justice, and your life goes on.”
Michael Hilgendorf ’13, a member of the Community Judicial Board, described the changes as “overwhelmingly positive.”
“In the past, there was a large gap between a reprimand, which one can receive from multiple citations, and the more serious ‘disciplinary probation’ that would go on a student’s record,” wrote Hilgendorf in an email. “The inclusion of ‘probationary status’ as an option rectifies this problem and will provide students a firmer warning while still keeping the infraction off of their permanent record.”
Both Collado and Guttentag also hope that the new process will give students the opportunity to use the College’s resources in order to address their behavioral issues.
“We’ve got an incredible [residential life] staff, we have commons deans who have very close connections with students and have the ability to be able to look at a lot of their choices in the context of their particular trajectory and the context of the impact on the community,” said Guttentag. “We want to be able to [respond] to particular incidents with as much precision as we can, without completely sacrificing the concept of consistency.”
In addition to the sanction changes, the Student Life staff, which includes the Parton Health Center staff, Public Safety, the commons deans, the Career Services Office staff, the athletics staff and the chaplains, made changes to the College’s Community Standards.
The Community Standards were introduced to the College in the fall of 2011. Initially the work of the College deans, the Community Standards outlined standards and living principles to guide the actions of students, staff and faculty to create the College’s ideal community.
Collado said that idea for a set of Community Standards came from conversations initiated by various groups surrounding a social honor code.
“Although we never went through with adopting a clear social honor code, what was clear was that there were some community standards and guidelines that everyone was repeatedly citing.”
Guttentag said that one of the overall goals of the standards was to give a deeper meaning and reasoning for the College’s disciplinary policies.
“For many years, student life had been having conversations around the need to pull together some common language between our mission statement and our handbook policies,” said Guttentag.
Collado agreed with this statement.
“I really wanted to have a guide post for what was driving the rules,” she said.
In the past year, the deans saw how the Community Standards fit into the aspirations for the type of community they wanted to foster at the College. Over the summer, the deans presented the standards to the rest of the Student Life staff, who were then given the opportunity to make some changes.
In the end, very few changes were made. The overall structure and ideas of the Community Standards remained the same. Guttentag said some of the language was edited to remove redundancies and make the standards more precise.
This was the second year that the College gave first-years resource guides upon their arrival on campus. The resource guides contain the Community Standards, which Collado believes is essential knowledge that all students should have.
In order to bridge the gap between the first-years and sophomores who received these standards upon arrival and upperclassmen who may have never seen them before, the College also made sure that all varsity athletes, new and old, received guides with the Community Standards.
“One of the major recommendations of the Alcohol Task Force was that they really thought that the Community Standards were something that needed to be more widely shared,” said Collado. “I feel that it’s been a really important shift for us.”
(09/26/12 9:04pm)
On Sept. 3, The Chronicle of Higher Education posted an article written by Former Provost and Executive Vice President Alison Byerly discussing the issue of massive open online courses, or MOOCs. While the College rejected using MOOCs as part of its curriculum, many institutions across America have adopted the new model, both for its profitability and as a way to attract new students.
In the article, titled “Before You Jump on the Bandwagon...” Byerly, who is on academic leave this year as a visiting scholar in literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, presents the questions that she believes all colleges should consider before adding MOOCs to their offered courses. A MOOC is a course offered online that is open to anyone – inside the institution or outside of it – who is willing to pay.
“Colleges that are contemplating a new venture, such as a MOOC or other online-learning offerings, need to ask themselves the fundamental question: Is this consistent with the unique mission of our institution?” wrote Byerly in the article.
The article also asks colleges to consider whether MOOCs fit their institution’s financial model and if their motives for adding MOOCs to their curriculum are appropriate. Byerly urges institutions to consider if they are adding MOOCs for the good of the institution or for the prestige?
Byerly said that she has long been interested in issues related to media and education, and felt that she could combine her knowledge of technology with her administrative experience to offer advice on MOOCs from a strategic standpoint.
“Many schools are moving very quickly to become involved in offering MOOCs,” wrote Byerly in an email. “Yet it seemed to me that there was very little meaningful discussion of the question of what specific goals were being served by MOOCs at the institutions offering them.”
While Byerly believes that technology offers completely different opportunities and benefits than face-to-face classes, she says that MOOCs would probably not serve well at a small liberal arts college.
“I think that there is little reason for students who are at Middlebury to prefer an online version of a course they can experience firsthand,” wrote Byerly.
President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said that Byerly was correct in her suggestion that MOOCs are not the proper model for online education for the College.
“I think there’s a lot of unknowns about MOOCs,” said Liebowitz. “When I started pressing to ask what type of model this was going to be — ‘is it eventually going to be for credit, is there going to be proctoring?’ — it was still very fuzzy. I think Allison’s right. She was saying, ‘before you all rush to this thing, you better think twice about what it is.’”
Byerly and Liebowitz agree, however, that technology certainly has a place at the College and will need to be seriously considered in the coming years.
Liebowitz offered that the College may consider providing online language courses for students returning from abroad. With the limited amount of language professors on campus, Liebowitz said, it may be beneficial to have high-level language students skype into a course taught abroad, such as students joining in on an economics course taught in China.
In this way, explained Liebowitz, students can continue to expand their education in ways that may not be possible with the resources available at the College.
“There are ways to expand the curriculum without increasing the cost or increasing the staffing,” said Liebowitz. “I want the faculty to start thinking about that and to think about ways we can do things a bit more creatively to utilize our resources.”
College Professor Emeritus John Elder, who retired two years ago, has since become involved in the digital revolution. In addition to participating in an online discussion on Robert Frost’s poetry, giving him personal experience with an online education forum, Elder has spent much time considering the effects of online education.
Similar to Byerly and Liebowitz, Elder sees potential in online education, but also recognizes that with a small liberal arts college, there is a line that needs to be drawn between online and conventional classes.
“It seems worthwhile to stake our college's claim in this national conversation, and to investigate how far we can go in pursuing our own seminar-based curriculum online,” wrote Elder in an email. “Not that I think the internet could or should ever replace discussion around a table, but it could perhaps be one way to build upon or extend such face-to-face experience.”
Elder believes that online seminars for students abroad could be beneficial. The professor emeritus also suggested that online courses might be beneficial for students participating in internships, or for graduates of the College who want to continue participating in the educational community.
“I believe that colleges like Middlebury will need to look carefully at the opportunities technology offers,” wrote Byerly. “But also work hard at communicating to external audiences the unique benefits that the residential liberal arts college offers: the mentorship of dedicated faculty, the opportunity to connect classroom learning with experiences outside the classroom and lifelong membership in a close-knit intellectual and social community. That is the real ‘value proposition’ of the liberal arts college.”