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(11/12/15 12:18am)
My roommate and I generate about two full bins of recycling and garbage per week – and that’s just in our personal living space. Imagine all the food waste, paper, bottles and packaging we as a student body of around 2,500 produce each week. Just six people are responsible for the collection, sorting, and disposal of all our refuse: the employees of the Middlebury College Recycling Center.
On Friday afternoon, I bore witness to the mountain of bagged recycling and garbage that was the result of just one day’s pickup. Before the bags arrive at the Recycling Center, they are picked up from over fifty sites by Wes Doner, main driver of the recycling truck, and Paul Gurney, main driver of the CDL (commercial driver’s license) trucks.
Doner described his typical morning.
“I come in, check my truck over, make sure the lights and everything are working and then I go around picking up all the recycling and come back to unload,” he said. “If I have any more time, then I’ll get off the truck and help these guys sort through the garbage and recycling.”
The CDL trucks run separate routes in order to fulfill their specific tasks. There is a trash route, a recycling route, a compost route and a daily bio-ash pick-up at the Service Building.
The College actually utilizes all of the compost it produces for landscaping around campus, including athletic fields and flowerbeds.
“Every three days, the compost is weighed at transfer stations and then taken to the stump dump up on South Street,” Gurney said. “Once a year, it’s screened out and made into our final product.” Once the bags of recycling and garbage arrive at the recycling center, they must be sorted. This might seem like a relatively straightforward process, as students have theoretically pre-sorted their garbage and recycling into the appropriate bins.
But Recycling Center employees Kimberly Bickham and Cleveland “Billy” Pottinger showed me this is rarely the case.
Pottinger called me over to where he was sorting and showed me the contents of one of the bags from a recycling bin. It was full of plates coated in some sort of nasty cheese sauce, plastic bags and tin foil mixed with a few actually recyclable cans and bottles.
“This one looks to me like it might be from the tailgate area,” Bickham said. “And that’s actually a lot nicer than some of the ones we’ve seen.”
The general consensus among the employees was that students could make their jobs exponentially easier by simply taking the time to sort their garbage from their recycling.
“Not dumping coffee or liquids into the recycling bins, breaking boxes down to help with space and not throwing light bulbs and batteries into the trash” were the most common offenses, according to Bickham. She also agreed that general sorting would be the biggest help.
“Everyone has a trash and a recycling bin in their room,” she said. “If they could simply sort in their rooms and then take those bins out to the appropriate large bins, that would help tremendously.” It might seem like common sense, but it’s easier said than done.
During the homecoming football game, the Middlebury Athletic department hosted the Green Panther Challenge. Green Liasons from varsity teams stood in front of recycling bins in the stadium and the tailgating area. They were supposed to monitor people sorting to improve the likelihood that trash would be put in the correct bin.
Bickham said, “The results were only a tiny bit better when sorting was monitored. Folks still aren’t sorting it out exactly the right way. I’m in hopes that with hockey and basketball being inside, the monitoring will go much better.”
After the garbage and recycling has been sorted, everything except returnable cans and bottles, enters the single-stream compacter. Once a month, paper is stacked and shipped to Rutland to be recycled.
Out of the four employees I spoke with, Pottinger has been with the Recycling Center the longest – although he said he wasn’t sure how long it had been exactly.
“I never check the time,” he said. “Time waits for no man, so I say let it run.”
The recycling center recycles more than just cans, bottles and paper – it also collects and re-sells used appliances, furniture, school supplies and clothing. These items are stored in attached trailers, which students have access to during normal recycling center hours. Usually, the reuse trailers get at least one visitor per day.
“Near Halloween, we were really busy with people coming through,” Pottinger said. “We’ll actually be closing the clothing part by the end of this month and bringing what’s left over to H.O.P.E. [a local poverty alleviation organization in Middlebury].”
On the whole, the College’s recycling practices are highly efficient. The diversion rate, or the amount of recyclables that are kept out of the landfill, is 64.5%, a rate that Pottinger described as “excellent.” But we could easily raise that rate if we can keep things like nacho cheese out of the blue bins.
Our recycling center is certainly doing its job – so maybe it’s time for us to give them a little more help. So, next time you’re in a hurry and tempted to chuck your half-chugged cup of coffee into the nearest receptacle, think about where that cup is going and whose hardworking hands it will have to pass through before it reaches its final resting place.
(10/21/15 4:07pm)
If you’ve passed through the Ridgeline area recently, you’ve noticed the rapid development occurring on the Ridgeline townhouses. Ridgeline “woods” now looks like a giant sandbox demarcated by bright orange netting. Last Thursday morning, sporting a fashionable yellow hard hat, I crossed over the orange tape into the construction site.
I met Tom McGinn, the College’s project manager for Ridgeline residence construction, and Kevin Burke, Superintendent for Naylor & Breen Builders, Inc. at the job trailer near the pottery house on Ridgeline Road.
Burke pulled out some of the architectural plans for the building so I could see how the designs would be translated into physical structures. There were at least thirty separate, incredibly intricate drawings detailing how fire trucks would be able to access the building, the different wall types to be implemented, where the shear walls for stability in a windstorm will go, and the type of flooring in every room.
“Right now, we’re doing the site’s entire infrastructure,” said Burke.
This means installing new sewer lines, water lines and electrical lines following site excavation. This also means keeping track of many pipes.
“The biggest job for me is to make sure everything is coordinated,” he said. “If I give a set of plans to the plumber, [say] he goes out there and puts in whatever he wants to put in his plumbing wall. Maybe that wall is a four inch wall and they’re putting a six inch pipe in it … It’s not big enough. So I try to make sure that everything gets put in right the first time. If every day is like ‘Well, you have to rip that out and redo it,’ then morale goes down and everybody doesn’t give a damn anymore.”
McGinn mirrored Burke’s attitude.
“Changes are the worst thing, because then you have to stop,” he said. “The most expensive part of any construction job is time. If you fall behind, you have to try to buy time and you work overtime – that gets really expensive … You just want to get going and do it in one fell swoop.”
Right now, there are about thirty workers on site. But when construction really gets underway, there will be as many as one hundred people on site.
On a typical day, Burke meets with his foremen and goes over what needs to be done each day along with any changes that need to be made to previous work.
“Each foreman for each crew has a specific task,” Burke said. “He organizes his guys and orders the material, and I basically oversee him and make sure he’s got it in the right spot and that he’s built it right.”
Although Naylor & Breen is the main contractor in charge of Ridgeline construction, they also “sub out”, or outsource tasks through a bidding process if another contractor can do the work for a lower price than Naylor & Breen can do it themselves.
“Like on this job,” said Burke. “We subbed out concrete and we’re going to sub out some of the framing. The site work we’re mainly doing ourselves.”
With the first snow of the year already underway, I was curious how the inevitable heavy snowfall and intense Vermont chill would affect the construction process.
“We just need to get going before the cold weather,” said Burke. “Once it gets cold, we have to put additives in the concrete, and then we have to heat it, and that costs a lot of extra money. So we really jumped right on it.”
Snow days are also an unlikely option for the construction workers.
“I’ve only gone home one day in my life, when it was snowing so hard we couldn’t even see. On this job, we have to be done by August 15 no matter what,” said Burke.
Then he smiled, “So we’re the guys who are rain or shine, snow or sleet – not the post office!”
Burke walked me around the site and explained the different on-going processes, including the use of explosives.
“The ledge right here, this rock – they drilled down through all that rock and then blasted it out. We dug it all out and put it in that pile right there and have to haul it off site,” he pointed. C4, a plastic explosive, was used to blast through the rock.
“It looks like a sausage tube with some wires inside, just like you seen on TV … We went around with this machine [the drilling rig], and probed down to see what the height of the ledge [rock] was,” Burke said. “We’ll then take the plastic explosive and put them [the blasting mats] over the top so the rock doesn’t go flying. When the blast happens, the mats will go up in the air and keep all that stuff from flying out.”
The presence of the ledge on the site is slightly problematic, as it is difficult to remove. “It slows things down when there’s a lot of ledge,” he said. “These guys spent two days just drilling all of this, and it’ll take another day to hammer it all out.”
Although the use of C4 explosives speeds up the process, it cannot be used to remove the ledge in the area of the site closest to Tavern due to a pre-existing water line. Burke explained that they would have to use the drilling rig and rock hammer to remove the rock formation.
To end my tour, Burke offered to let me drive the excavator. I clambered up into the vehicle, where he showed me how the two joysticks coordinated the different parts of the machine, and how they worked in tandem to scoop up dirt. There was no better way to end my construction site tour than living out my childhood dream of driving a “dump truck” in what may now look like a giant sandbox, but will soon be luxurious upperclassmen housing.
(05/06/15 7:13pm)
Middlebury’s campus is fairly outspoken about a number of issues, both on campus and in the world beyond. Recently, some of the methods used to spread social awareness have arguably had too great of an impact on our facilities staff to be, ironically, socially just.
This week, I talked to Wayne Hall, Facilities Maintenance Supervisor, and Bradley Lambert, the stonemason for Facilities Staff, about the reccurring incidents of graffiti on campus this year and the implications of these incidents for Facilities Services.
I had speculated the frequency of graffiti usage had increased this year, but I had no idea to what extent.
According to Lambert, “There’s been upwards of 12-14 incidents this year, which is 5 times more than we’d have in a regular year.”
Furthermore, the most recent incidents, including the one in front of Atwater dining hall, proved to be the most difficult to clean.
“Each of those incidents was actually a day and half’s worth of cleaning,” said Lambert, “What we used [last] Monday and Tuesday to clean up that graffiti was about the same amount of product as we used in the last two years.”
Lambert explained to me the process of removing the graffiti from both Bi-Hall and Atwater Dining Hall, the locations where the bulk of the damage was incurred. Since BiHall is a stone surface and Atwater is wood, there are a multitude of time-intensive steps associated with the cleaning of each one.
First, Lambert and whoever is helping him have to ready their equipment.
“It probably takes an hour to get everything ready — get all the hoses, the pressure washers and chemicals. You need to be wearing protective equipment; rubber gloves and a rain suit, because some chemicals require respirators.”
Depending on the extent to which the paint permeates the stone, it can be relatively simple or quite a pain to remove. “The harder the stone — like granite — is one of the hardest stones. It actually comes off easier because it doesn’t penetrate into the stone. BiHall, that’s all marble, though, so that took a while.”
After wetting the stone down, they apply a harsh stripping agent that breaks down the paint. Then, the Facilities crew must use a pressure washer to get the paint off.
“You can’t really use a regular hose or just a scrub brush. We had to do it twice with everything — I went through once, washed it, came back Tuesday morning and you could still see a faint shadow, so we had to use more of the product, let it sit longer, and pressure wash it again,” Lambert said.
Lambert showed me a bottle of the product used to clean stone surfaces. “That product is elephant snot, and it actually looks like what they call it … it’s a really goopy, kind of grey material.”
“And the elephant snot’s not cheap,” Hall added.
Removing paint from the defaced wood walls of Atwater Dining Hall is even more time-consuming, because stripping the paint from the wood also involves stripping the finish from it.
“Those two walls have to be completely stripped down to bare wood, and then you have to try to match the finish back with the building. When you get on to wood, really the only thing you can do is strip it,” Lambert explained.
Due to the increased amount of labor, as well as the cost of the products used, the Atwater incident was incredibly expensive to fix.
Hall showed me the damage report, “[The Atwater dining hall incident] was about a thousand bucks. But also, that doesn’t look at the time that we were taken away from doing something productive.”
Lambert testified to the loss of productivity.
“We have other stuff we’re trying to do right now … getting ready for commencement and language schools, and I have my own masonry repair list. So it just takes away from that,” Lambert said.
And last week’s graffiti was by no means an isolated incident.
“There have been others in other locations that have been 100 bucks, 300 bucks – it’s been adding up,” Hall said.
“We had quite an incident at the CFA – you know where the terrace is that faces the pond and the fields? Well, there’s a huge wood wall, and the whole wall was done. The guys were called in on a Saturday morning, mainly because there were a lot of athletic events going on, and to have that be viewed by the public just isn’t a good image for the College. And these guys, you know, it’s their weekend. They like to be with their families.”
The clean-up process is also hazardous due to the toxicity and strength of the chemicals needed. Facilities workers wear full respirators, a rubber suit and gloves.
Lambert showed me the warning label on the product used to clean wood: “Reports have associated repeated and prolonged occupational overexposure to solvents with permanent brain and nervous system damage.”
“So it’s not something you want people using a lot,” Lambert said. “But it’s what works. Some of the messages, because of what they’ve been saying, we’ve been having to get them off quickly.”
But it’s not the messages that Lambert and Hall find problematic, just the techniques being used to publicize them.
“Get a big piece of poster board and write what you want; put it on the building. Everyone will see your point, and we can take it off,” Lambert said.
“There’s the slate boards in BiHall; write on the slate with chalk. There’s also the whole big board downstairs in McCullough,” Hall suggested.
Hall then left me with a couple tasks that, while troublesome for Facilities to clean up, were easier to find the humor in.
“Someone used to stick a pumpkin on the lightning rod on top of McCullough, and we’d go up with a ladder and remove it. And you know the Frisbee dog outside of Munroe? Well someone would always spray paint the balls a fluorescent orange every year, and one of our painters would be over there having to clean that off. That kind of stuff, it’s inconvenient, but it’s not so time-consuming and destructive.”
Both Lambert and Hall understood that not all students are on the same page concerning graffiti’s acceptability. Hall said, “We’ve had a really nice response from all the students that have been coming and going and apologizing, so that support is nice.”
Hopefully, the minority of students responsible for the graffiti this year will realize exactly how their actions are impacting those who are not part of the student body they are targeting. Cleaning up after their propaganda for social justice is clearly not a light endeavor. For the facilities crew, it has been time-consuming, expensive, dangerous, and simply put, an unnecessary waste of resources. As I see it, valuing a socio-political agenda targeted at the privileged over the hard efforts of the Facilities staff is anything but “socially just.”
(04/16/15 1:34am)
Most of us have been on the Athletic department website at one time or another, maybe to check on your favorite team’s progress, or maybe to not-so-subtly roster stalk your Proctor crush. This website (along with many other sources of information and publicity for athletics) is led by two people, Brad Nadeau, the Director of Athletic Communications and Dain McKee, the Assistant Director.
McKee is the first full-time Assistant Director of Athletic Communications that Middlebury has ever had, though from the list of responsibilities he and Nadeau share, it’s hard to see how prior coverage was managed without his help.
On a given day, McKee updates rosters, program notes, schedules, standings, and the athletic department’s social media accounts (Twitter and Facebook)— on top of whatever other tasks pop up throughout the day.
“Every day is different, and that’s what makes it fun for me. There’s really no set schedule— we always have to cover events, always have to talk with our coaches to ask what they’re doing today [for games]. Essentially, we’re the PR people for our department.”
McKee is also on the search committee for a new squash coach following the tragic death of Coach John Illig last August.
“[Today], we actually called one of our candidates in a foreign country. This person got out of their car in the rainforest and talked with us on the phone for 45 minutes. It was really neat to talk to someone half a world away.”
In the spring, it can be difficult to plan ahead because many games and matches get rescheduled due to the fickle Vermont weather. And when students and professors don’t have class, there are always athletic events to be covered.
“We are essentially on call 24 hours a day, 365 days out of the year, except for when we’re away [on vacation] … and even when we’re away, if something happens we’re the ‘point people’ for it. We have to be there, but I love it. It’s the ever-changing environment that we’re in that I love the most,” McKee said.
It was McKee’s undergraduate experience at Ohio Northern University that prompted him to become involved in athletic communications. Unable to participate in basketball due to injury, he became the team’s student assistant coach and worked for sports information during the off-season.
“I enjoyed the camaraderie and the competition,” he recalled. “I found another way to get involved and I love it to this day. I love the personal side of it. I love meeting athletes, and I love meeting coaches— especially with our coaching staff.”
Since then, McKee has been able to experience a vast variety of athletic competitions.
“I’ve had the opportunity to work over 30 NCAA championship events at all different levels, from Division I Men’s Final Four [basketball] to Division III wrestling, to field hockey, to swimming and diving, all the way across the board. I’ve truly enjoyed when I’ve been able to be a part of it,” he said. “Going to Gettysburg last year with women’s lacrosse, going with field hockey to Virginia- I love getting to know the players and coaches on that personal level. Because when you step on that ice or floor or field, we just know you as a number.”
In addition to getting to know student-athletes, McKee also loves his job because of the spirit of community at Middlebury both within and beyond our athletic department.
“My kids actually jokingly started calling Missy [Missy Foote, women’s lacrosse coach] ‘Grandma Missy.’ My parents live in Ohio, and my wife’s parents live in Ohio, so they asked ‘Can they be our grandparents up here?’ I told Missy that, and she said ‘Bring them over anytime!’ That’s just the type of atmosphere that Middlebury is,” McKee said.
(03/18/15 5:44pm)
For 95 years, the Middlebury Performing Arts Series has brought world-class performers inside the “Middlebury bubble.” The series has showcased Yo-Yo Ma, Louis Armstrong, the Von Trapp family, Pablo Casals, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo (just to name a few). As the director of the Performing Arts Series, Allison Coyne Carroll is now largely responsible for the logistics behind bringing these talented performers to this remote pocket of Vermont.
There’s a lot that goes into the preparation of each performance, as well as the execution of the performance itself. Carroll described to me the preliminary arrangements that she had to make for the arrival of the Elias String Quartet, who performed here last Saturday.
“We first chose the performers and their program. I, then, issued their contract. Because they’re foreign performers, we also had to be concerned with their visas. There are also taxation concerns with foreign artists, so I’m involved with that as well. Once the contracts have all been signed, we then get out the word about the artist. We make sure that they’re in our arts calendar. [As we get] closer to the performance, there are posters around campus and things of that nature.”
Carroll is also responsible for ensuring that the artists feel comfortable and can adequately prepare for their performance.
“We make sure they have hotel rooms and taxis from the airport, and then here in the Center for the Arts, we make sure they have rehearsal spaces. The performers send me the bare bones of their program, but we also try to flesh it out with some program notes and biographical information.”
The performance itself, though, is produced by the efforts of the many staff members who make all events at the Center for the Arts possible.
Carroll said, “We have a great staff here at the center for the arts — our box office and the rest of the administrative staff, the technical director for the concert hall – we all work in concert [pun intended] to make sure the event goes smoothly when the patrons are here.”
The process of selecting the performers involves a lot of communication and planning. Ideas for new performers can come from the artists themselves, from their agents, or from the music department’s faculty members who attend conferences and concerts.
“When these artists are in town, we’ll often take them out after the concert. They can be a great source of inspiration; oftentimes they’re coaching up-and-coming artists or they’ve had the opportunity to work with another artist that they think would be a good fit for us. I’ve also been meeting with the music faculty and planning for next year to make sure that we’re bringing musicians that are going to help compliment the curriculum.”
One performance that stood out to Carroll in her time at Middlebury (and one that still brings a smile to her face) was that of Dubravka Tomsic, who is performing again at the College in April of this year.
“Her last recital here, she’d had extensive travel and she was tired, but she gave this tremendous recital and got such a response from the audience. The mood when she came off-stage, you could see it, she had completely shifted and was just elated from the response she got from our audience.”
There are some upcoming performers this spring that music-lovers (and everyone else) won’t want to miss. An example of coordination between Carroll and curricula of academic departments, the Nile River Project concert will kick off a week of discussing the cultural, socioeconomic, and environmental issues surrounding the Nile river basin. Later on this semester, pianist Paulis, “one of most lauded pianists in the world” according to Carroll, will perform to close this year’s series.
Carroll suggested that the positive response to music she is able to experience on a regular basis is something inherent in the Vermont lifestyle.
“For being such a small, rural, intimate atmosphere, Vermont has a pretty lively arts scene. The arts have a very important place in the daily lives of Vermonters and in the cultural life of Vermont, and I think that’s part of the quality of life that draws people to live here. It’s part of why I came back here and remain here with my family.”
(02/25/15 6:53pm)
There is a consistent stream of people exiting and entering Wilson Café, but the one constant amongst all the hubbub is Elliot Gowen’s cheerful presence. Wilson is a sort of safe haven; a place where the weary can come to wind down after a grueling day of work.
Gowen, a Middlebury native, has worked on and off for the College for 12 years. He has had numerous different jobs in the area, in- cluding managing a coffee shop in Brandon, cooking for Steve’s Park Diner, working at various orchards and bartending. But, he is especially fond of working in Wilson Café.
“It’s a nice environment to work in, and I
really like making coffee drinks,” Gowen said. “The atmosphere is a lot better because you can talk to customers as they walk in.”
Gowen usually arrives at the café at 2:30 p.m., when he and Lee, the daytime shift man- ager, have a half hour to touch base and make sure everything is stocked. Once things get going, though, Gowen said, “It’s pretty much making sure things are running smoothly, making sure things are stocked up, and that [students] are happy when [they] come in. That’s the important thing.”
After he closes Wilson, Gowen has further duties to fulfill.
“I’m usually done at around 10:45, and then I go to McCardell Bicentennial Hall and close up the kiosk for them, and then after that I drive over to the Grille,” he said. “It’s nice to be able to walk in to another situation and be helpful, and try to make everyone else’s job easier.”
Business in McCardell Bicentennial Hall was initially slow. But according to Gowen, “It’s been picking up there too, which is nice. I think people are starting to use that space more and realize that they can study there and still be able to get something to drink.”
One of his main focuses since taking on his managerial position has been finding dif- ferent ways to improve Wilson and better suit it to students’ needs.
“I’ve been working on redoing some of our recipes and making them easier for new student workers, and also working on some of the menu things,” Gowen said. “We’re trying to make it a better place every day, and I think we’re doing a pretty good job with that. We’ve added a lot of things and we’ve expanded the menu a lot.”
The café’s menu, which I had found confusing in the past, is now a very nicely organized electronic board that is updated seasonally, as well as when new specials are introduced.
“One of the things I like to do on my down time is just experiment, and just make differ- ent drinks and see what we might want to do for new drink lines or new specials,” Gowen said. “It’s a good way to be creative, and you get to sample everything too, which is always an added benefit!”
After perusing the menu, I noted that it was surprisingly extensive, and that there were a multitude of drink possibilities, made up of different combinations of flavors, that the board could never hope to encompass.
“I usually have something different every day,” he said. “Right now, my favorite one is probably mint matcha with a shot of espresso and a scoop of chocolate added to it, and it’s pretty tasty actually. I haven’t figured out what I want to name that yet, but it’ll be a drink special coming up.”
A lot of Gowen’s job, too, is involved with training and supervising student workers.
“I like the student workers, we have a good crew of people in here,” he said. “To have a relationship where you actually get to know somebody more than just working [with them] is really nice. And this is, I think, one of the better environments for that as far as working with students on campus. You’re right there and showing them hands-on things.”
Gowen is extremely committed to mak- ing students’ experiences in Wilson the best they can be, even syncing his schedule to fit the long hours of work that accompany finals week.
“During midterms and finals, we’ll try to stay open later if we can. For the fall semes- ter, we were open until midnight, and spring semester last year I came in at 6 p.m. and worked until 6 a.m., and then we worked from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. — [pulling two 12-hour shifts.] It’s nice to be able to give back like that.”
Perhaps most representative of Gowen’s passion for his work is the ways in which he interacts with his regular customers.
“It’s fun just making peoples’ days,” he said. “When I see someone walking down the hill, and I know what they’re going to get, I start making their drink. To just having them walk in and being able to hand it to them, it’s just nice. I like making people happy.”
(02/11/15 9:45pm)
When I peered into the stockroom on the first floor of Bi-Hall, Tom Sheluga and his assistant were hunched over a copy of the Middlebury magazine. He ushered me over and gestured at a picture of Roger Sandwick, a biochemistry professor. As I approached, I realized he was actually pointing at the bell on the shelf directly behind the photo. It was labeled as a superintendent’s bell once belonging to Sandwick’s grandfather.
“He says it’s a school bell,” said Sheluga. “But I’m convinced it’s a pirate’s bell, albeit a small pirate… [with] a rowboat type thing. He couldn’t afford anything better!”
You may not have met Mr. Sheluga unless you’ve broken enough glassware in Orgo lab to warrant being sent into the bowels of McCardell Bicentennial Hall in search of new beakers and test tubes. As the College’s laboratory stores manager and the safety director for the building, he is in charge of much more than showing clumsy students where to find replacement glassware. His day-to-day tasks include teaching safety classes, refilling tanks of liquid nitrogen, making deliveries when shipments arrive and greeting people who enter the stockroom in search of various items.
“Occasionally, we have a spill we have to handle. Occasionally, we have hazardous waste we have to take down,” Sheluga said. “[Otherwise] that should be the day unless something happens out of the ordinary.”
And things out of the ordinary certainly have happened while the stockroom has been under Sheluga’s jurisdiction.
He recalled one time, when they had “the explosive stuff,” chemicals disintegrated into what should have been highly explosive material. The college had to hire contractors to come (at 4 a.m.) to remove the chemicals from the stockroom.
Sheluga recalled, “I was so disappointed. The guy [who came to remove the chemicals] came in a pickup truck. We spent $5,000, and he came in a pickup truck. And then he told me I was his backup.”
But all of the concern turned out to be for naught, Sheluga explained.
“We thought we had something that was gonna go kaboomski. We had a little bit left, so we sprinkled it on the lawn and tried to ignite it. It didn’t ignite.”
There was also the mystery of the disappearing bovine kidneys.
“We put them outside, and then something took them. And it took them,” he snapped his fingers suddenly, “like that.”
“Now you know, a kidney, it’s a pretty good size, pretty firm. Something took them to eat them, we presume, although it might have played with them, I don’t know. We never saw those kidneys again. Still looking for ‘em. Now we leave them out there to see if something takes them, and they always disappear. So if you find those in the dining hall…” He winked.
Sheluga has held his position for 16 years, and was there for the science department’s big move to the then newly -constructed Bicentennial Hall.
“When we first set Bi-Hall up, we had to have a trapper in to get all the animals out. It was like an animal sanctuary. Now, of course, we’re just a regular metropolitan area here… a dramatic change from the Spartan days when we had to go to Freeman to go to the bathroom.”
Prior to coming to Middlebury, Sheluga held a position as Exxon Chemical Company’s Environmental Coordinator for the entire Northeast and oversaw the company’s activity in the United States, Latin America, South America, and Asia. But he never expected to have a career in the sciences; in fact, he claimed he “fell into it.”
“For a period, I was interested in girls,” he said frankly.
Sheluga more or less stumbled upon his current job.
“I was working as an attorney for the state of Vermont, and I kind of got disillusioned with the sense of justice. There just didn’t appear to be any. I was doing child support work, when this job came up. I didn’t hear anything [from Middlebury] for 4-5 months, and they called me in for an interview. Then, we were moving from the old science center to this building [Bi-Hall].”
Part of his job, too, is housing some of Bi-Hall’s stranger history. Sheluga directed my attention to two safes sitting on the stockroom floor, which he told me dated back to the 1860s.
“This one over here, which hasn’t been opened until recently, probably ten or fifteen years ago, supposedly has platinum in it. And it has a ball of opium, like the size of a softball.”
He once laid eyes on the opium, which had deteriorated. “I don’t know if that’s good for opium, or bad for opium, but there’s now an oozing black ball.”
Sheluga made sure I heard one last story before I rushed to class upstairs. There was a time when one of his student employees once hosted parties in Bi-Hall. In what was apparently a very lucrative setup, the student hid in the men’s room until the night watchman had left, and then brought in speakers, adult beverages, and charged five bucks a pop.
“Somehow they caught him, and he was never quite sure how they did that,” Sheluga smiled. “But I like the ingenuity.”
Although running the Bi-Hall stockroom involves an interesting and varied list of responsibilities, Sheluga described his job mostly as doing “things nobody else likes to do.”
“If you got a mouse in your room, we’ll come get it. If you’ve got a snake, we’ll come and take him away. If you spill something, we’ll clean it up. And if you’ve got too much trash, we’ll take it away. We’ll do anything you need to have done, as long as it’s not immoral, and I don’t know if anybody else does that,” he said.