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(10/14/15 6:41pm)
If you have been out to the Organic Farm this semester, you may have noticed a fourteen-foot-wide circular tent-like structure nestled quaintly in the verdant rolling fields. Inside this wooden lattice frame draped with pale fabric, a west-facing window and cupola provides a breathtaking view of the sunset’s pinks and oranges bleeding into each other like watercolors on canvas.
This new addition to the campus is one student’s take on the highly portable yurt used as shelter by Central Asian nomads as they migrate from one grazing area to another herding sheep and horses. The yurt is the brainchild and craftsmanship of Geology major Milo Stanley ’17.5.
When asked why he built the yurt, Stanley simply chuckled and said he really wanted one.
“I’ve always been fascinated with small spaces,” he said. “I built forts when I was a kid, [and] treehouses. [Yurts] are really incredibly beautiful. It’s a really intelligent design.”
Stanley uses the yurt as his own personal space, door lock included. He tries to visit every day, preferably in the late afternoon after class for some brief moments of privacy.
“I use it for getting away from the stress of college life,” he said. “It’s nice to be able to get out there and study or relax.” he said.
Stanley also enjoys inviting friends and socializing in the yurt.
“We come out for a picnic lunch or cup of tea,” he said. “It’s a nice place to be able to spend time with friends.”
The yurt’s shape also facilitates social gathering, he explained, since no one can sit alone in a corner.
Stanley’s inspiration was Bill Coperthwaite, the American pioneer of yurt building. As a college student at Harvard, Coperthwaite constructed one on campus after seeing it in National Geographic. He designed nontraditional wooden yurts with walls and roofs made completely from wood, and traveled around the country to teach others how to build them. He lived in a concentric yurt, a multi-story structure made of yurts stacked on top of one another like the layers of a wedding cake.
When Stanley was eleven or twelve, he read Coperthwaite’s The Handmade Life, wrote him a letter, and visited Coperthwaite’s yurt complex in Maine.
“I spent a day with him and got to know him, and didn’t think much about building yurts back then,” he said. “More recently, I’ve really been into the idea, and had the opportunity this summer to work on it and complete projects. I jumped at that. Now I have a yurt. It’s fantastic.”
Stanley conceived the idea of building his own yurt last fall and realized it this summer in Maine, devoting all his free time after his full-time job and on weekends to construction. He brought it back to Middlebury this term and identified the Organic Farm as an ideal on-campus location for it because of the farm’s remoteness and beauty. Because of its extraordinary transportability, Stanley erected it in just two or three hours, and plans to pack it up and carry it with him when he leaves campus next summer.
“All the individual pieces are very small, but it’s an incredibly strong structure,” said Stanley.
The yurt consists of a framework of slender wooden lattice sticks that can be expanded to form the walls. A wire rope contains and brings the outward force from the rafters down to the ground. The outside and roof of the yurt is composed of a rubberized polyester membrane called Duro-Last, while the walls are made of vinyl and a lighter thin foil-backed foam for insulation. The interior, decorated by a few cushions and a couple of small shelves, is minimalist.
Time was both Stanley’s greatest foe and friend in completing this project.
“Many days, I just did not feel like going right back to work and cranking on it for another couple of hours, but I really had to, just to finish it in time to bring it back to college,” he said. “I’ve never been that motivated on a project before. I’m proud that I managed to pull it off.”
This was Stanley’s first, and will probably be the last yurt he builds.
“This one’s going to last me a long time and I’m very happy with it,” he said. “I’d never built something like that [the yurt] before. I really enjoyed that challenge, thinking my way through it and getting out into the shop and building it, far more than any academic challenge.”
Even so, Stanley has incorporated his yurt-building experience into an academic opportunity through a creative writing project about the process of building a yurt and its current use.
“There are a lot of stories that have come out of the whole project and it’s nice to have an academic excuse to write them down,” he said.
(09/24/15 12:42am)
Family. Environment. Change. These are the three simple yet strong words with which award-winning director Chad Stevens describes his new documentary, Overburden, which was screened on Thursday September 17 in McCardell Bicentennial Hall.
The title of the documentary refers to all the material that lies above a coal seam: the rock, soil and organic matter that must be dynamited and removed to access the resource. The documentary follows two West Virginian women with dichotomous stances on coal as they come together and find common ground to challenge the irresponsible practices of Massey Energy, the country’s fourth largest coal company.
Dedicated grandmother and community organizer Lorelei Scarboro, who lost her husband to black lung, vehemently campaigns against coal mining because of the peril it poses to her family and neighbors. She leads a grassroots movement aiming to stop Massey Energy from exploiting Coal River Mountain, the last major intact mountain in the Coal River Watershed and a promising site for significant wind energy.
“This isn’t coal mining,” she said of mountain top removal, the brutal operation that has flattened hundreds of mountains and killed mineworkers in order to access coal more easily. “This is the rape of Appalachia!”
In the documentary, Lorelei finds an unlikely ally in Betty Harrah, a staunch supporter of the economic lifeblood that is coal in Appalachia. In April 2015, when Harrah received a call informing her that her beloved brother had perished in a massive mine explosion claiming 29 men’s lives, she bitterly realized that the industry prioritizes profits over people’s welfare.
The two women join forces to establish the first wind farm in coal country on the ridges of Coal River Mountain. They hope this will provide a safer, more sustainable economic foundation in Appalachia and bridge the intense divide over coal in their community.
Director Chad Stevens was inspired to produce Overburden by his experience photographing mountaintop removal sites and meeting people affected by them.
“The families living in the valleys below these massive mining complexes, I saw how their lives were changed, sometimes destroyed, sometimes ended too early,” he told students after screening the film. “This also changed me and ultimately led me to create this film that not only tells of the environmental destruction of coal mining but also the impacts on communities and families.”
The filming process taught Stevens that some narratives require time to be told with impact.
“It’s because I had time — nearly ten years — that I was able to create an intimate story that hopefully really takes viewers into the lives, struggles and joys of these families,” he said.
After watching the film, Human Ecology major Adrian Leong ’16.5 was struck by how such long-term journalism helps the storyteller and story evolve.
“Because [Stevens] stayed with the community he was reporting on for as long as he did, he changed; and because he changed, the story changed,” he said.
The most difficult aspect of creating the film, Stevens said, was obtaining the trust of the documented community, which is wary and defensive after past abuse by the media.
“It took years for me to build their trust and gain access to the families who eventually allowed me to tell their stories,” he said.
Even so, the director attributes the film’s realization to Lorelei and Betty.
“Any success the film may have, which I would define as creating empathy in those who see the film, is only because the subjects in the film were courageous enough to share their stories,” he said. “They are courageous, inspiring women, and I am forever grateful for their openness.”
With twice as many people now working for the solar power industry as for the coal industry, Stevens points out that coal is in terminal decline.
“That is also the challenge. What will happen to those miners who still need to feed their kids, take care of their parents and pay their mortgage? This is what I hope audiences take away from the film. It’s complicated.”
Overburden delivers a message of solidarity in the face of the complexity and contention surrounding coal.
“Even though from the outside it may be easy to declare right and wrong, when you are living it, and when, as a viewer, you are there with them as they are living this life, I hope that it becomes clear that we are all one, that we all want the best for our children and that we can learn from each other along the way,” Stevens said.
(05/06/15 7:09pm)
Imagine looking out past the forest canopy onto the distant Adirondacks, the pink glow of the sunset spilling through their peaks. Imagine being suspended fifteen feet above the earth in a silent congregation of conifers with the face of a hill dropping sharply beneath your feet. Imagine feeling the peace in the air and the life in the woods on your skin and in your bones. Imagine unwinding at the Ridge Perch at the College, a 113-square-foot circular structure that a group of students plan to erect at the ridge of the Ridgeline Woods by the summer of 2016.
Julia Rossen ’16 originally conceived of the treehouse for her MiddCORE project in January 2014, after a conversation with her mother, alumnus Kate Troast ’76. Troast described to her daughter a treehouse that used to be on the College’s property during her time at the College, and Rossen was inspired to propose her own treehouse as a new community space. Her idea was also inspired by the David S. Stone ’74 Treehouse Fund, which funds community projects that do not qualify for other sources of funding.
Rossen collaborated with Brandon Gell ’16 brainstroming for this project. Because the Space Committee rejected the initial proposal, wary of the hazard of students being up in a tree, Gell and Matt Gilbert ’16.5 worked on the project during Winter term of 2015 and are responsible for modifing the treehouse plan into its current iteration: The Perch.
Architecture major Morgan Raith ’16.5 has also joined the project, working with them to bring it to fruition. Professor of History of Art and Architecture Pieter Broucke is advising the group, and Facilities Services Director of Operations Tom McGinn is eagerly on board as well.
The Perch will be accesible by a small bridge and mounted on a steel beam between two pine trees. Its main body will consist of close-fit six-foot cedar planks that organically slope down to a west-facing 42-inch glass railing. The Perch will also feature a bench lining its inner wall and a keylock entrance that limits visitors to the hours between dawn and dusk.
A 220 foot architectural path, accessible from Ridgeline Road, will loop toward it through the trees and lead to the Trail Around Middlebury (TAM). The project will be fully ADA compliant.
A place of retreat, the Perch will function as an alternative natural space of quiet, solitude, and creativity where individuals, groups, and classes that are usually cooped up inside can liberate their bodies and minds and connect with the outdoors.
“The purpose of it is an escape from college, which now more than ever seems to be something that’s important, with recent events, everyone hyper aware of stresses at school,” explained Gell. “All that we really have is The Gamut Room and the organic garden, but both of those spaces really function for specific groups on campus. The Perch, it’s not associated with anyone. It just is for the students.”
Gell also believes that The Perch will address students’ lack of ownership over campus spaces.
“That’s another really big problem with the campus in general,” he said. “The Perch could serve as a place where everyone knows that students made this and funded it. It’s like the solar decathlon houses in that everyone feels ownership over it.”
Yvette Lui ’15, who heard about the project in her architecture thesis studio, enthusiasticaly supports the idea of The Perch and approved of its design.
“I think it will provide a healthy escape for students from the school,” she said.
“I can’t imagine that anyone would not be really psyched about it,” said Gell. “It’s so within our grasp, too. It’s just, right now, a matter of money.”
The structure will cost around $21,000 to create and install. The team has already obtained $9,500. $2,000 came from the Treehouse Fund. The architecture department and individual donors contributed the rest of the money. The students are also waiting to hear back about their application to the Fund for Innovation. They hope to reach their fundraising goal by launching a MiddSTART campaign by the end of this academic year.
(04/29/15 5:49pm)
The smell of burgers sizzling on the grill permeated the cold afternoon air in front of Proctor dining hall. Students representing various campus groups stood by tables and bulletin boards with colorful posters, tubs of ice cream, and an assortment of cookies fresh from the Weybridge House oven to engage students strolling around the terrace checking out the displays.
At one station, attendees bedecked themselves with temporary tattoos depicting flowers, turtles, and other earth-themed images. Beside this, some made pledges to practice a specific eco-friendly behavior, writing it down on a whiteboard and posing for a picture with it. A crowd had gathered to enjoy the celebrations comprising the Earth Week Festival, the highlight of last week’s Earth Week events.
According to Karina Toy ’17, a member of the seven-person CSC energy subgroup that envisioned and planned the event, Earth Week’s significance lay in its goal of raising awareness about contemporary environmental issues and ways to be more sustainable.
“We thought it’d be a great way to get everyone together and talking,” she said. “We tried to definitely get a lot of different groups to tie in the Earth Week theme to their usual events to raise its relevance to other people who may not come on Friday.”
Toy’s teammate, Kathleen Wilson ’18, emphasized the importance of bringing together as many individuals and groups across campus as possible, rather than just activist organizations, under the Earth Week banner.
Sponsored by the Campus Sustainability Coordinators (CSCs), Earth Week consisted of multiple events involving around 20 student organizations. It began with an environmentally-oriented session led by the informal guided meditation group, Prajna, on Monday night.
On Wednesday evening, the Mountain Club screened “An American Ascent”. The documentary portrayed the challenges confronting the first African American expedition to the peak of Denali, North America’s highest point. The nine-person team aimed to inspire inner city kids to embrace the outdoors. That same evening, Sierra Jackson ’18 ran a photography exhibit named “eARTh Day: A Progression of Black Resistance and Its Relation to Environmental Justice,” to honor the thousands of black people who have been killed in the recent past from environmentally-related injustices.
Additionally, Faculty Member at Bennington College and Senior Associate at The Center for the Advancement of Public Action, David Bond, delivered a presentation called “Ethical Oil: The Moral Economy of Nature and Culture in the Tar Sands of Alberta” at Thursday’s Environmental Studies Woodin Colloquium. The idea for celebrating Earth Day germinated from another CSC, Esteban Arenas ’18. After scrapping their original plan of asking the College community to limit their power consumption that day, the CSCs brainstormed an intimate week-long celebration unlike any other from recent years. It required two-and-a-half months of preparation to reach out and coordinate dozens of student groups.
One student who stopped by at the beginning of the Earth Week Festival, Camille Kim ’16, reflected on the event.
“It was pretty laid back and informative,” she said. “The people whose experiences were being showcased were really enthusiastic to talk about their work. I thought it was a cool opportunity to check out what people have been doing on campus, especially since with my major and interests, I’m not usually all that involved with environmental activism here.”
The Earth Week Festival took place on a late Friday afternoon. It featured a song by the ASL Club, as well as performances by the Paradiddles, Mchaka Mchaka, 4:30 Jazz Combo, On Tap, RIDDIM and Capoeira. In addition, Prajna conducted a meditation session at the event and Middlebury horticulturalist Tim Parsons led a campus tree tour. This year’s Environmental Grant recipients gave presentations on their projects, and the Sunday Night Group (SNG) talked about the Keystone Pipeline and divestment. Weybridge, the Middlebury College Organic Farm (MCOF), and Queers and Allies (Q&A) also hosted tables on various environmental and social issues.
The ground was too wet for planting at the Spring Planting Festival organized by MCOF on Saturday evening at the farm. Still, the outdoor oven was hot, baking pizza for attendees who huddled around a bonfire long after the sunset, and listened to performances by Iron Eyes Cody and Mt. Philo.
On Sunday night, an Earth Week Picnic dinner at the Xenia house, and a special Sunday Night Group (SNG) meeting, rounded up the week.
“[Environmental problems] are shared by everybody,” event coordinator Lily Wilson ’18 said. “It really is supposed to be a group effort. We’re all affected by this and we all have the power to change something.”
(02/26/15 3:01am)
The lecture hall was already packed ten minutes before Dr. Tyrone Hayes, a squat man with a prominent kinky beard, large silver dangle earrings,and an engaging aura of sassy humor, started his story. Over 150 students squeezed into the room even after the seats had all been taken, settling in the aisles and leaning against the walls, eager to learn about his controversial findings on the health consequences of atrazine, a common herbicide applied to corn.
Hayes, a professor of integrative biology at University of California Berkeley, was chosen as this year's Scott A. Margolin '99 lecturer in Environmental Affairs. His presentation, “From Silent Spring to Silent Night: A Tale of Toads and Men", took place in Bi-Hall last Thursday evening.
Hayes’ personal narrative began describing his curiosity as a little boy. He grew up as one of several children in a household with an annual income of $9,000, studying frogs in a little patch of forest by his grandmother’s home. He went on to earn an undergraduate degree in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard, and started teaching at UC Berkeley following his doctoral and postdoctoral work on the role of hormones in amphibian responses to environmental cues.
After the Swiss agribusiness, Syngenta, approached Hayes to test their product, atrazine, in 1997, he found that the chemical acts as a strong endocrine disruptor that adversely affects reproduction and health. His laboratory work with frogs revealed that atrazine demasculinizes and feminizes a significant percentage of exposed males at concentrations as low as 0.1 ppb.
Because the herbicide interferes with the secretion of androgen, a hormone crucial for male development, and enhances the production and secretion of estrogen, a female hormone, the amphibians lose their distinguishing sexual features. Atrazine-exposed male frogs had lower semen counts and malformed testes; some even developed female ovaries and generated eggs. Individuals that were once biological males began behaving and reproducing like females. The subjects also had a higher risk of developing estrogen-induced cancers.
Given that atrazine now contaminates vast expanses of fields and waterways, Hayes’ research has immense implications for environmental and human well-being. Amphibians are in rapid decline, as the title of his talk suggests. "Silent Night" refers to the disappearance of "ribbit"-ing frogs. Atrazine could be responsible for this. By drastically changing the population's sex ratio, Hayes blamed atrazine for lowering the procreation rates of amphibians.
Human studies have also shown a correlation between exposure to atrazine and reproductive problems. Because reproductive mechanisms and results derived from amphibians are comparable across vertebrate classes, the demasculinizing, feminizing, and carcinogenic repercussions of the chemical could play a part in decreasing fertility and increasing cancer in humans.
These health impacts also intersect with issues of social injustice and structural violence. Workers who labor on farms that use atrazine belong to disadvantaged racial and socioeconomic minorities who do not have the means to minimize exposure to the chemical or deal with its effects. Additionally, poorer groups are more vulnerable to exposure through water because they cannot afford sophisticated filtration systems.
Syngenta, however, claims that atrazine is harmless. It has funded over 7,000 studies that conclude that there is insufficient evidence to identify the chemical as the cause of abnormalities relating to endocrine disruption. On the basis of his identity as an eccentric nonwhite producer of knowledge, the company has attempted to discredit Hayes and stop him from publishing his findings. It insists that his methodology is flawed, his sample sizes too small. It has even gone as far as investigating his background, plotting to ensnare him in a trap, and threatening violence against his family.
The EPA has directly stated that the social ramifications of agricultural chemicals have to be considered in the context of their economic value. Although Hayes has not backed down from speaking against the agrichemical industry and continues to irk it by propagating his research in a plethora of biological and general interest publications, he realizes that the data alone has little power. “It’s not about science,” he said. “It’s about politics and economics.”
Associate Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry & Environmental Studies Molly Costanza-Robinson, who suggested Hayes as this year’s speaker, was pleased with the lecture. “He brought the science to life. He made it personal,” she said. “It’s only a subset of scientists that are both amazing in the science, but then also really speak to the broader environmental studies. I’ve known of his work for a long, long time. He’s a hero of mine. I thought he would be perfect. We felt like he would be able to bring in a lot of folk from the environmental justice aspect, from chemistry, from biology.”
Molecular biology major Emily Hoff ’15 also enjoyed the talk. “He did a good job taking a very scientific argument and creating it into a story that had scientific fact incorporated into something that was accessible to the general population,” she said.
She pointed out that Hayes’ lecture was important because it raised awareness about the environmental hazards we are exposed to daily. “My biggest takeaway was to be conscious of what I personally expose myself to,” she said. “It’s really important to realize that although these chemicals on the surface level might impact the growth of crops in a positive way, they can have some severe ramifications on human health and the health of the environment.”
(10/30/14 2:45am)
er, peered out from behind the podium at Mead Chapel last Wednesday night, a small woman with a big afro and an even bigger passion animating her face and propelling her speech. Over 100 students, occupying the pews below, were there to discover what her intriguingly titled talk, “On Ferguson, Thug Kitchen, & Trayvon Martin: Intersections of [Post] Race Consciousness Food Justice, and Hip Hop Vegan Ethics,” would entail.
Harper shared her current book project, which applies critical race and black feminist perspectives to study black male vegans promoting veganism, gardening, societal stability, diet decolonization and race consciousness through hip hop. She explained how this social engagement breaks the stereotypes of vice that oppress black masculinity, as manifested in Thug Kitchen, a white vegan cookbook appropriating black profanity, and the murders of black teenagers, Travyon Martin and Michael Brown.
The lecture was part of the week’s events hosted by EatReal for this year’s MCAB fall symposium, “Food [In] Justice in the 21st Century.” Aiming to present as many sides of the food justice issue as they could, EatReal invited Harper because her extremely underrepresented lens, linked to multiple social justice movements, would widen the symposium’s discussion and audience.
“I believe this symposium has broadened our duties as a student activist organization to include as many voices as possible,” secretary of EatReal Andrew Pester ’17 said. “Breeze introduced us to the power of narrative, which I believe will be a big part of our future here at Middlebury.”
“I believe it was incredibly successful because I saw many new faces that I have not seen in the context of food activism,” he said.
Despite her moral opposition to causing creatures suffering, Harper’s focus on the intersection of race, gender, hip hop, social justice and ethical consumption was a refreshing, thought-provoking departure from the discussions of animal rights and environmentalism dominating veganism.
“It’s about a lot of post-racial white vegans not really understanding how thug is being used in Thug Kitchen and why that’s a problem, why there seems to be no solidarity in understanding that you can’t just be anti-speciesist and a vegan, and pretend to live in a post-racial age or pretend that things like Ferguson and Travyon Martin don’t affect black and brown communities who are trying to get food security, social justice, as well as racial justice,” Harper said. “They don’t realize [racism] has shifted to structural, systemic processes.”
“My biggest takeaway is how intrinsically linked the topic of racism and differences in socioeconomic classes are to food justice and problems with the food system,” co-president of EatReal Lucy Reading ’17 said. “We want to continue working with other student groups like Juntos to continue addressing these social issues when working on EatReal initiatives in the future.”
“Something that I found particularly interesting was the meaning of hip hop: higher inner peace, helping other people,” Priyanjali Sinha ’18 said. Sinha is a vegetarian and she attended the talk because her Food Geographies class has interested her in social issues surrounding food, and because she wanted to make sense of the colorful, multifaceted title. “It was interesting to see how a certain culture — in this case, hip hop — can be misunderstood, misrepresented and also changed with time.”
Sinha continued, “The most significant part of the talk was that there were people who were reclaiming hip hop, like DJ Cavem, where he took a popular hip hop song called “G’s Up Hoes Down” by Snoop Dogg and made his own version where a G is not a gangsta, but a grower of food; and a hoe is not a misogynistic term to refer to a woman, but an actual implement to farm with.”
Although her talk seamlessly interwove various social angles together with the thread of veganism, Harper did not address some positions that could be brought into the conversation.
“We hoped she might touch a bit more on other perspectives in the black community about perspectives on veganism from someone that isn’t a vegan or health conscious,” Reading said.
“I wouldn’t say she is a vegan activist, but rather someone who brings to light the consequences of our consumption behavior,” Pester said when asked about the significance of Harper’s exploration of vegan food justice. “As a Middlebury College student, it is incredibly important to be able to see the consequences of our consumption and try to minimize the impact, both internal and external, of the food system.”
(10/23/14 12:48am)
Spots for Middlebury Mountain Club-led trips go fast. “They fill up in half an hour or less,” last year’s Head Guide Tess Sneeringer ’14.5 said. “That’s a new phenomenon we’ve seen over the past couple years.”
Established in 1931, the Middlebury Mountain Club (MMC) is the College’s largest student organization. The MMC organizes immensely popular free hiking, boating, climbing and winter trips at all levels of difficulty in the Adirondacks, Vermont and beyond, promoting engagement with and appreciation for the outdoors among the student body.
Sneeringer, who got involved during her first semester on campus, says that although the MMC does a lot more than the trips, they have been the Club’s focus.
“The center mission is to get students out,” she said. “We do a day hike or overnight [trip] every weekend of the school year.”
The MMC has a mailing list over 1,500, and a significant portion of the student body participates in its trips.
“[We don’t get] a ton of athletes because they don’t have weekends [but we do have] a good group of international students because they don’t go home,” Sneeringer said. “A lot of people go on day hikes ... it drops off in the winter because there are fewer people. If they have an interest in the outdoors and a means to go, they’ll go, which is why a lot of people go.”
Sneeringer believes that the trips are so popular because they are very accessible.
“We’ve led open trips, no experience necessary,” she said. “We use an online sign up program,” she said. “We provide outdoor program gear from the gear room, so all you need is appropriate clothing and hiking boots. It’s all paid for.”
Another reason why the trips are enticing, Sneeringer suggests, is that they offer the chance to meet and bond with fellow students outside and away from campus.
“A group of random participants down to spend time in the woods,” she said. “That’s a huge draw. They don’t know who else is going. You get to know new people and talk to people literally in the woods. Mountain Club was the way I got out.”
Sneeringer also points out that the trips raise students’ awareness of the local and larger environment: “It’s about knowing the state, knowing Route 7 beyond Burlington and Lake Dunmore,” she said. “It’s a fuller way to embrace where you’re going to live for four years, in a place where you’re probably never going to live outside. They get to see a little bit more of Vermont out there. I’ve definitely seen places I wouldn’t have known about if I hadn’t gone on my trips or friends’ trips.”
“Being outside is awesome, so of course people would love to do that,” Current Head Guide Kent Ratliff ’16 said. “I think that the campus, surrounded by two beautiful mountain ranges and being well-known for outdoor enthusiasm, has a lot of emphasis on the outdoors. So that in and of itself encourages people who haven’t been outdoors to go out more.”
The MCC welcomes students by hosting open events at Brooker House.
“We advertise and make it easy to sign up for trips. We have a solid presence on campus with events. Pumpkin Tumble is coming soon. We do Fireside on Friday nights at least once a month. It helps quite a bit that the Mountain Club has a designated building, Brooker House. Trying to make that location as open and welcoming as possible, I hope, brings a lot of people in,” Ratliff said.
Unlike other outdoor programs on campus, the MMC is completely student-run. Each trip is planned and led by two or three guides who have trained under veteran guides and in collaboration with the College’s MiddView and February Outdoor Orientation (FOO) programs. To ensure that they are safe and sustainable, trips in the Adirondacks take about eight participants, while those in the Green Mountains take about ten. Ratliff coordinates all the trips and makes certain that the leaders are aware of all the necessary policies.
The majority of trips last one day or overnight; the longest last from four days to a week. Most trips, Sneeringer says, have gone smoothly.
“It’s been relatively incident-free,” she said. “People can get into sticky situations, but they’ve gotten themselves out. [As a guide], it’s pretty cool to influence someone’s confidence … in an activity they’ve never done. It’s really rewarding on both ends.”
Ratliff, who was encouraged to join the MMC by the MMC guides, directed his Outdoor Introduction for New Kids (OINK) orientation trip and went on to coordinate FOO as a Sophomore, shares a similar perspective on guiding trips.
“The outdoors is important for me,” he said. “I like being the one to make that available for more people, because it could also be important to them. One of my favorite things is being able to reach out to people who haven’t had any outdoor experience.”
(10/23/14 12:47am)
Remember that time that you wanted to fix your bike, but the Bike Shop was closed and you had to walk, drive, or hunt for a ride to wherever you urgently needed to be? By early November, a new addition outside the bike shop by Adirondack Circle will enhance student mobility and possibly decrease student carbon footprints, making such inconvenient situations a thing of the past. Look out for the new Dero Fixit station proposed by the Student Government Association (SGA) and funded by the Environmental Council.
This service includes everything you need to carry out basic repairs, such as changing a flat tire or adjusting brakes, while suspending your bike from the station’s hanger arms.
The idea for the installation of the Fixit began last fall from then-SGA President Rachel Liddell ’15, who presented it to her cabinet’s Director of Institutional Affairs Harry Zieve Cohen ’15.
Zieve Cohen then applied for a $2,200 grant from the Environmental Council, one of the largest sums ever granted by the group. Afterward, Cook Commons Senator Tiff Chang ’17 was brought onto the project to manage logistics such as the installation process and publicity. She researched Fixit stations, contacted and visited other schools using them to find out what would best fit our needs and the associated costs and helped pick the Bike Shop as a practical location for installation. Director of Sustainability Integration Jack Byrne made the orders.
Currently, the station is with Facilities, who plan to put it in place when they pour concrete for a new gate at ADK by the end of this month. The Environmental Affairs Director, Lindsay Warne '15, and her committee are now creating signs to inform students of how to use the facility and will soon organize an event to introduce them to it.
Chang, a fan of bikes and a member of the College’s Casual Cycling Club, believes the Fixit will be a significant student-directed initiative on campus that will promote biking by making it easier to own a bike.
“Currently, it’s really hard to have a bike on campus,” she said. “A lot of people don’t have access to bike parts … don’t have time to spend searching for tools to fix our bikes … so it is nice to be able to provide that service. People are more likely to own a bike on campus if they know that there are the resources. Cycling on campus has been growing since I’ve been here.
“I hope that we continue to build infrastructure that improves people’s quality of life. I think it’s another example of how the SGA plays a role on campus and serves students better.”
Director of Institutional Affairs Julia Shumlin ’17.5 added that the Fixit was a necessary means of catering to the College’s biking community.
“A lot of students rely on bikes to enjoy Vermont’s beautiful landscape, get around Middlebury and get to classes on time,” she said. “Our rural location makes alternative forms of transportation kind of hard, so we need to make it easy for people to get around and one of those ways is through biking. Being fairly knowledgeable about how to use your bike and how to fix it is a useful skill that can be applied later in life,” she said.
Shumlin also pointed out that by making biking more feasible, the Fixit advances sustainability and lower carbon footprints on campus and beyond.
“Promoting biking and alternative sources of transportation in general is a useful way to promote environmentalism on campus,” she said, “because students will take the skills they’ve learned and apply it to life outside Middlebury rather than use cars and other forms of transportation.”
*Please note, an earlier version of this article misstated the correct titles for Julia Shumlin, Lindsay Warne, and Tiff Chang. Shumlin '17.5 is the director of the Institutional Affairs Committee, Warne '15 is the Director of Environmental Affairs, and Chang '17 is the Cook Commons Senator.
(03/19/14 5:14pm)
A blizzard raged outside the Robert A. Jones ’59 House last Wednesday evening, but inside, the conference room was filled to its capacity of 100.
Students, faculty and community members had braved the biting wind, driving snow and deeply blanketed roads and sidewalks to attend this year’s Scott A. Margolin ’99 Lecture in Environmental Affairs: Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Biological Diversity, Kieran Suckling. The Center for Biological Diversity is a unique non-profit that works primarily through the Endangered Species Act and the judicial system to meet conservation goals. Suckling established and oversees the nation’s most extensive endangered species list.
In his talk, “Saving Life on Earth: A Moral Rejoinder to the Anthropocene,” Suckling spoke about the literally earthshattering impact humanity has had on the planet with our cities, agriculture and waste overpowering natural forces, and how this has precipitated the idea of calling our geological period the Anthropocene.
Suckling opined that the most egregious and unethical environmental consequence of human activity is the rapid mass decline of species that, before the nineteenth-century, had persisted through millions of years of great environmental flux. He drew attention to the fact that thousands of species are currently on the verge of extinction at rates up to 10,000 times the natural rate. He warned that the earth is heading toward its sixth-mass extinction, an unprecedented catastrophe because one dominant species, Homo sapiens, are its sole instigators.
The speaker argued that naming this geological age after ourselves would intensify anthropocentricism, exacerbating mankind’s sense of exclusive entitlement over the earth. Suckling pointed out that referring to this era in human terms is not an innovative answer to ecological destruction, but an excuse for reinforcing and exerting human superiority.
“Anthropocene thinking is the cause of the extinction crisis, not its solution,” he said.
Suckling stressed that enormous population growth will rapidly increase biodiversity loss in the near future as development to accommodate the increasing number of people pushes further into dwindling wild habitat. He emphasized the prime moral imperative of preserving natural spaces and the nonhumans that inhabit them. He stated that because animal agriculture is the most ecologically harmful human activity, the most effective step to counter environmental degradation as an individual is to renounce meat.
“Forget the Prius; buy a Hummer and eat a carrot. You’ll do a lot more for the planet that way,” he joked.
Before his presentation, Suckling had met with a group of environmental studies faculty and staff, and dropped in on Klyza’s American Environmental Politics class. The professor expressed his satisfaction with the speaker’s visit to campus and the turnout at the event despite the difficult weather.
“Suckling had a full and good visit to campus—even in the midst of a major snow storm! It was a great testament to our students,” Klyza said.
The biggest takeaway for conservation biology major, Jeannie Bartlett ’15, was Suckling’s perspective on reconciling conservation with the needs of marginalized human groups in the face of land scarcity created by corporations.
“He encouraged us to reframe the perceived conflict so that both conservationists and indigenous people work together against the corporate power structures that have pitted those groups against each other,” she said. “We have already begun to see that kind of collaboration in resistance of the Keystone XL Pipeline where climate activists and First Nations people in Canada and the U.S. have recognized their shared goals and formed a powerful movement.”
Bartlett was, however, hoping for more insight into how the Center for Biological Diversity operates.
“I would have liked to hear more about how his organization actually pursues its work, because from what I’ve read they are very strategic, tenacious and successful,” she said.
Suckling encouraged the audience to think about the repercussions of human dominance over homes of species we are encroaching upon. We left with a profound appreciation for the fundamental reality that our own survival hinges on theirs. He set the stage for a discussion about what we must actively do to curb this ecological disaster, beyond merely playing with new names to characterize an urgent historical problem.
(12/05/13 12:11am)
Azure heavens gently fading into blue over the spire of Mead Chapel, trees ablaze in the colors of fall below; the view going down College Street, past the utility poles, parked cars and language houses to the crimson façade of Twilight Hall; the stark white slopes of the Snow Bowl broken by the elongated charcoal of winter shadows and thrown against a sanguine sunset.
These were just a few of the glimpses at the exhibition, Environmental Observations: Land, Light, and Weather of Autumn, that ran from Thursday, Nov. 28 to Dec. 3 in the Pit Space of Johnson Memorial Building. It featured the works of Professor of Studio Art James Butler’s Painting, Drawing, Photograph, Glass class, entitled The Landscape Re-Imagined.
Spanning the walls of the exhibit, the paintings were vast, brilliant and captivating panoramas of various Middlebury locations in different natural conditions. They played with the nuances of light and shadow to capture the variegated landscape and climate at the College. A harmony of skillful strokes and vivid hues made the scenes spring to life on the canvas, immersing observers in alternate realities of familiar areas on campus.
No matter your interest or competence in art, you could not have helped being awed by the sheer magnitude and depth of these representations. You would have been compelled to admire each one for minutes on end, to run your eyes up and down and across them to absorb the painstaking detail of every line, shape and shade.
Even for someone who is not an art connoisseur, standing, for instance, in front of a depiction of ivy-adorned Battell complete with slender veins and shade variations in every emerald leaf, one could easily notice the amount of attention given to every square centimeter of canvas, and the way all the minute variations in form and color united to breathe life into a new construction of what was, in actuality, a commonplace hall.
One artist, Yvette Lui ’15, believes that the purpose of the exhibition was to offer novel ways of looking at College settings.
“The course’s title is ‘Re-imagining Landscape,’ so maybe in some way we altered the way that we perceive[d] the campus,” said Lui. “My own drawing piece was titled ‘Day for Night,’ and [was] a composition combining daytime and nighttime views of Johnson.”
Roy Wang ’15 attended the exhibition with his friends. He expressed his enthusiasm for the works on dispay.
“It was great to see the paintings and the ways they portrayed places on campus at different times of the day and in different kinds of weather,” he said. “They made me feel like I was there. The exhibit made me realize how talented people at Middlebury are.”
The Landscape Re-Imaged involves lectures on the history of landscape painting, collaborative studio workshops, personalized instruction and individual artistic development. It provides students with the opportunity to use a combination of oil paint on canvas, color drawing media, photography, and kiln-fused glass to reproduce the lands and buildings of the College in two dimensions. In the final week of this semester, the class will exploring glass and photography.
Environmental Observations was the result of eleven weeks of meticulous imagining, drawing and painting, six hours in class and eight hours outside of class per week, by each of the eleven students in the class. First, every artist picked a campus scene to depict.
“For the drawing, we just [drew] what appeal[ed] to us the most,” Lui said. “I’m very into architecture, so I chose to draw Johnson. We also [had] people drawing and painting the pure landscape.”
Before fall break, each artist drew their chosen landscape from direct observation using markers and the guidance of a plotter-printed photograph of the scene to help them nail the proportions and details. Afterward, they stayed indoors and painted with oil paints and the aid of either their first drawing or a digitally edited plotter-printed photograph.
Lui, who’s taking the course because she aspires to be an architect and wants to hone her ability to draw and paint, reflected on the experience.
“It was indeed a great experience,” she said. “It’s the first time I drew with both the marker and the oil paint. So it took me some time to figure out how they work…Some people come with a more advanced background. Still, I think everyone grows as an artist.”
(10/17/13 1:18am)
Patrick McConathy is an entrepreneur of diverse interests and accomplishments. From Colorado, he joined the Middlebury College Board of Trustees in 2005. McConathy brings to the table a Western-U.S. perspective, enthusiasm for the institution, decades of experience and networks in the energy industry and a commitment to sustainability.
“I’m a kind of redneck affirmative action … I love this school … It doesn’t matter whether they’re twenty-five or seventy-five, alumni have done so many things with their lives, with the education they’ve gotten at Middlebury,” McConathy said.
McConathy bridges the distance between Denver and Middlebury and keeps up with developments regarding the College by reading The Middlebury Campus. He takes advantage of board meetings and graduation ceremonies to improve his touch with the Middlebury community.
“I come early to get out and about … and enjoy being around students – all students within reach … The student has to feel comfortable to talk to you around,” McConathy said.
By connecting with students, McConathy has come to believe that social life is their most pressing concern on campus.
“When I was on campus the first thing they bring up is social life. It’s been a significant issue since 2000,” McConathy said.
He recognizes the complexity created by different students’ conflicting views about the prevalence and restriction of alcohol consumption at Middlebury.
“[Some] think [there is] too much drinking,” McConathy said. “Some think there’s not enough access to alcohol … the issues revolve around social seams. I’ve heard so much conversation about it and I don’t have a solution. Ron and his staff has [have] worked a lot [on it but] it’s an issue that won’t go away.
McConathy notes that the greatest problem confronting the College administration is providing quality education at a reasonable cost. He suggests that Middlebury should follow the example of other institutions that make higher education more accessible by making tuition more affordable.
When asked to identify the most exciting strides the College is making into the future, McConathy expresses his hope that the College will increase social and economic diversity on campus.
“The college is doing a good job of that, but we can always do more. Ron’s been very committed to that,” McConathy said.
An environmentalist at heart, however, McConathy singled out Middlebury’s progress toward sustainability.
“I know it’s not as good as others want it to be,” he said, “but we are cutting edge on the front.”
After graduating from Louisiana State University in 1975 with a degree in political science, instead of going to law school, McConathy entered the oil industry through the recommendation of a relative. He explains that he was motivated by an appreciation for the business and the opportunity to make a profit.
“It’s a fascinating business,” McConathy said. “If you guess right about where energy is, you can make some money. But you can also lose. It’s a rollercoaster ride.”
McConathy made both a profit and a reputation for himself in the thirty-one years he worked in oil. He started off drilling wells in Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Wyoming. In 1989, McConathy established Phoenix Oil and Gas and purchased productive oil and gas holdings in these regions. By 2005, the company and its partners had acquired and operated on a significant portion on and offshore properties in California.
In 2006, however, McConathy relinquished his investments in the oil sector and shifted his attention to natural gas, sustainable energy, and environmentally-friendly ranching. Last year, he founded Yarmony Energy, which operates natural gas, alternative energy, and mineral properties in Colorado, Louisiana and Texas. Specific projects he has supported include a year-long solar venture, a wind-powered cattle ranch, and geothermal energy for a big multinational corporation.
“My perspective on the earth has changed since the late 80s,” McConathy said.
The transformation in his entrepreneurial focus embodies personal environmental sympathies that began to develop over two decades ago, when he served on a Louisiana commission that made him aware of the environmental consequences of the energy business in the state.
McConathy cites multiple reasons for his switch to cleaner investments.
“My older son, who came out of Middlebury as a fire-breathing dragon, wanted me to divest, and I wanted to move toward natural gas,” McConathy said. “I had a lot of access to climate research; that had some impact as well. I also thought it was a good thing to do economically. I’d been thinking about it for a while and thought it was the right thing to do.”
According to McConathy, divestment at Middlebury is a far trickier objective that can only be attained over a period of time.
“The human race is destroying the planet,” McConathy said. “It’s not all about money. But it’s very complicated by the fact that the board has a lot of responsibilities in other areas. It won’t take place overnight, but the board is aware of it and it’s a possibility.”
Despite the inertia regarding divestment, McConathy points out we are head and shoulders above other people in the way we address climate change and energy.
“We should be proud of that,” he said.
McConathy has suffered some losses in his new area of investment. He notes that alternative energy will not become viable on a large scale until it produces economic returns higher than conventional sources.
“Alternative energy needs to be able to compete economically for it to get good traction,” McConathy said.
McConathy has not put as much money behind green energy as he did behind oil, but hopes to do so in the future.
“I don’t have the funds I used to five years ago,” he said. “I would if I had the money. I’m no fan of the major oil companies. I can see it happening in the next fifteen years.”
The Yarmony enterprise also includes Yarmony Creek Sport Horses, which runs local cattle ranching, horse breeding, and hay operations in Colorado. McConathy mitigates the environmental impact of his ranches by following the advice of credible ranching consultants and implementing sustainable practices such as cell grazing.
“Every rancher should be an environmentalist,” McConathy said. “It’s in his best interest to take care of the land because that’s all he’s got … it’s in the best interest of livestock, land, and everyone around you.”
McConathy even addressed the human dimensions of environmental problems as the producer of Climate Refugees, which was the only film screened at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, and was shown on campus in 2010.
“You can’t see what’s happening to people and not be concerned,” he said.
(04/17/13 4:21pm)
On the evening of Thursday, April 11, Green Mountain College Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Philip Ackerman-Leist gave the keynote address for Real Food Week, an initiative by the new student organization EatReal. Titled “Rebuilding the Foodshed: Higher Education’s Role in Creating Sustainable, Just, and Humane Food Systems,” the lecture dealt with the role of educational institutions in reforming the food industry and promoting local, socially responsible eating.
The event was co-sponsored by the Student Government Association (SGA), Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB) Speakers Committee and Ross Commons. Catering was provided by Crossroads Café and the Middlebury College Organic Farm.
“You can really impact the foodshed at an institution like Middlebury,” said Ackerman-Leist. “We need to move away from voting with the dollar and being consumers, toward being good citizens and stewards who can affect policy.”
The Ackerman-Leist emphasized the central role of food in the community and the importance of food production through the support of small, diversified agriculture. He noted that modifying the purchasing and preparation of foods could lead to potential benefits for both the farmer and the institution.
Stu Fram ’13, president of EatReal, stated that the purpose of the lecture was to give the college community an idea of the complexities of the food system.
“We were hoping that [Ackerman-Leist] would unpack the food system in all of its complexity to give attending students, faculty, staff and community members a better sense of the subject matter’s interdisciplinary and multifaceted nature. It’s important, as [Ackerman-Leist] mentioned, not just to consider geographic proximity between farm and plate when thinking about the food system, but to weigh various intricacies related to labor, waste and energy, among countless other considerations.”
Director of Middlebury College Dining Services Matthew Biette found Ackerman-Leist’s speech very informative.
“I thought Philip did a wonderful job detailing the intricacies and complexities of the entire sustainability and local movements. He mentioned many of the various ways you can come at this issue and what the hurdles are,” he said.
EatReal aims to bring locally and responsibly sourced food consistent with the College’s environmental and social values to the dining hall by increasing the annual food budget. Currently, 1.3 percent of the College’s total budget goes toward Dining Services.
Real Food Week was held from Friday, April 5 to Wednesday, April 17, kicking off the week with a local cookout. Included in the Real Food Week programming was basil planting, a locally sourced dinner in Atwater Dining Hall, trivia night and a screening of the film Ingredients.
“Because food is something that directly affects the entire student body, we think it’s really important that our programming is accessible to everyone,” Fram said. “Something Philip touched on was how, given the industrialized agricultural model, we no longer pay the true cost for food. I think that if Middlebury and other institutions of higher education, which not only have a lot of purchasing power but also intellectual credibility and a captive audience, were to take the lead in the realm of more responsible food purchasing, it could prompt a national shift in the way we think about what we eat as a society.”
Biette remarked that Real Food Week prompted a conversation about the greater factors and implications of the opinions and choices that take food from the farm to the dining hall.
“Real Food Week is helping to bring awareness about choices and what issues affect decision making in the many parts of life on a college campus and how differing opinions may have an effect on the outcome,” Biette said.
(03/20/13 4:09pm)
Today the world faces a water crisis of unprecedented gravity. According to the U.N., 85 percent of the global population lives on the driest half of the earth and water is estimated to become scarcer with the projected increase in population. Yet as population expansion and development raise the demand for water, climate change rapidly diminishes its supply by melting the glaciers and snowcaps of the planet’s greatest freshwater reservoirs at record rates.
In light of this crisis, from March 14 to 16, the College’s Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs hosted its First Annual International Conference, titled “The Politics of Freshwater: Access and Identity in a Changing Environment.” The event brought together interdisciplinary scholars from national and international institutions to speak from varying perspectives regarding the processes that affect access to freshwater, such as climate change, land use, damming, privatization, commoditization and pricing. The symposium also focused on strategies to improve human interaction with vital freshwater around the world. The talks aimed to analyze these matters historically as well as with a view toward successfully addressing them in the present.
The symposium was co-sponsored by the Christian A. Johnson Economics Fund, C.V. Starr Middlebury Schools Abroad, the program in environmental studies, Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, the departments of English and American literatures, classics, geography, political science and the Rohatyn Center.
Professor of Geography and Director of the Rohatyn Center Tamar Mayer, identified five reasons that the politics of freshwater was selected as the topic for the inaugural symposium. First, water is the source of life for all organisms on earth. Secondly, water serves as an important aspect of different cultural and national groups across the world. Third, the politics of water have sparked a great amount of conflict in recent years, and the possession of water has become an economic commodity as well. Fourth, the access to freshwater is an unmistakable source of conflict across boundaries and cultures as well as within local and regional situations. Finally, the UN has designated 2013 as the international year of water cooperation.
In her opening remarks, Professor Mayer elaborated on the purpose of these conferences.
“The idea is to have an annual conference on a global theme that can be discussed from multiple disciplinary perspectives and can both contribute to our International and Global Studies (IGS) curriculum and connect our campus to C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad,” she said. “To this end, we have invited scholars from the social sciences and the humanities as well as policy makers and engineers in the field of water management.”
The symposium welcomed scholars and academics from Dartmouth, Oberlin, Wellesley, Colgate and Universidad de La Rioja (La Rioja, Spain).
The water symposium ties into one of the IGS spring capstone seminars concerning water, as well as to a teleconference on the same subject that Arabic students on campus have had with Middlebury students studying abroad in Jordan.
“We want to bring the entire campus to the Rohatyn Center through these events,” said Mayer. “We want the arts, social sciences and humanities to come together to talk about these issues.”
In the four days preceding the three-day conference, Middlebury students and faculty participated in presentations pertaining to water, featuring representatives from non-profit organizations and Middlebury and Monterey Institute of International Studies students and faculty involved in water research. Robert Hoesterey, Director of Strategic Development of The Eden Projects, spoke on Wednesday about his work in Ethiopia and Madagascar decreasing povery through deforestation projects.
On Thursday, photographer Edward Burtynsky gave a lecture about his exhibit “Nature Transformed,” currently on display in the Middlebury College Museum.
On Friday, the Robert A. Jones House hosted three different panel discussions, titled “Water Divided,” “Changing Water and Land Use” and “Water Territories,” with a number of visiting professors.
Two more panel discussions were held on Saturday, “Sustaining Multiple Uses of Water” and “Access to Water and Resistance.” The conference came to a close on Saturday afternoon with a summary and concluding discussion.
The organizers of the symposium, Mayer and Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Catherine Ashcraft, began planning for the event last July. They envision that the College will continue holding such annual interdisciplinary international conferences, and have chosen other global themes to discuss in subsequent years.
Professor Lina Abu-Ghunmi, from the University of Jordan, who gave a talk called “Grey Water Concept Toward Mitigating Water Shortage” and specializes in wastewater treatment, noted the significance of the symposium.
“We’re focusing on different scientific fields and bringing together economists, sociologists and engineers and looking at different situations all over the world,” she said.
Monterey Professor Pushpa Iyer spoke about “The Politics of Muddled Waters in Gujarat, India: Environmental, Economic, Social, and Cultural Influences.”
Iyer, whose expertise includes identity conflict and South Asia, said of the symposium, “This is wonderful. It’s the right size for meaningful interaction to happen. It gives us the opportunity to connect with scholars and really get to know their research.” With respect to the freshwater problems confronting the planet, she stated, “Sociocultural and political challenges dominate. Water is not just a resource that needs to be managed. It involves layers of complexity that make arriving at one solution hard, but these difficulties have to be analyzed to effectively deal with the issue.”
Marjeela Basij-Rasikh ’15 attended the symposium and believed that the conference was a crucial event to take place, especially in a liberal arts environment.
“It was very inclusive, encompassing even the social and spiritual aspects of water,” she said. “We care about the environment a lot on campus, so we need such insights from people who are experienced in the field. It allowed me to understand how individual participation matters and how I could take action. I encourage more students to take advantage of future conferences.”