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(05/19/14 10:40pm)
On Tuesday, May 13, the faculty voted overwhelmingly to cut ties with K12, Inc., the corporation with which the College partnered to create Middlebury Interactive Languages (MIL). The 95 to 16 vote — with three abstentions — was only symbolic, but sent a strong message to President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz and the Board of Trustees.
“The faculty has done what it can,” wrote French Professor Paula Schwartz, who introduced the motion. “The rest is up to the Board of Trustees.”
The Campus first reported on the impending vote on May 7. Despite the vote, Liebowitz found a silver lining.
“The faculty of the College have raised important questions about our corporate partners. The Board of Trustees, of which I am part, is engaging this issue on a number of levels. I was pleased that faculty colleagues made clear that its non-binding, sense-of-the-faculty vote was not a referendum on MIL itself: MIL continues to provide language education to thousands of pre-college students who otherwise would not have that opportunity, and provides us with a greater understanding of the challenges and great potential of hybrid (bricks and mortar plus online) teaching and learning, which are important goals of the venture,” he said.
“I understood the vote to be an almost unanimous affirmation of our common values as a liberal arts college and intellectual community, and an insistence that those who would partner with us, whether from the profit- or non-profit worlds, share those values,” wrote Economics Professor Peter Matthews in an email.
The renewed scrutiny on MIL will no doubt be added to the list of important issues already on the docket for next fall, including revising the AAL distribution requirements and the search for a new President of the College.
Additional reporting by CLAIRE ABBADI
(04/24/14 3:01am)
If you ventured down to Crossroads anytime in the past year, you may have noticed a small man and woman in red chef jackets, busily moving among the baristas shuttling sushi from behind the counter.
Behind the jacket is Tint Kyan and his sister Khin Swe, the brother-sister combination responsible for making fresh sushi at the College.
“I make about 170 boxes of sushi a day, but if I am busy, I can make up to 200 boxes a day,” said Kyan, who moved to Middlebury from Florida in September to make sushi.
Feeding the College’s hunger for sushi is no easy task. Kyan and Swe arrive at Crossroads at 7 a.m. every morning, and work for the rest of the day to prepare and deliver sushi to a number of locations. Along with Crossroads and Midd-Xpress, Kyan delivers sushi to Wilson Café, Bi Hall and the Rehearsal Café in the Mahaney Center for the Arts.
Kyan and Swe work for Sushi With Gusto, an outside contractor based in South Carolina that provides sushi to over 125 schools, hospitals and fresh markets.
The company pays for everything, from Kyan and Swe’s salary to the products that go into making the sushi, with the College taking 25 percent of the sales.
“It’s good for everyone: a no brainer,” said General Manager for Retail Food Operations David Cannistra. “Sushi is the biggest draw down here at Crossroads.”
While Crossroads has sold $75,000 worth of sushi, Cannistra said that across the board at all the locations, retail food operations has sold 19,461 orders of sushi for a total sales profit of about $130,000. As a result, the College has gained $30,000.
Kyan said that the move to Vermont was a challenging adjustment, especially for Swe who was not used to cold weather, let alone the arctic Middlebury conditions.
With all the delicious sushi choices, it can often be hard to pick. But when it doubt, eat what the chef eats himself. For Kyan, that is the spicy tuna roll with avocado.
(04/16/14 2:48pm)
If you wanted to get an Adderall prescription written for you while at the College, you would need to go through a person like Dr. John Young, who works at the Counseling Service of Addison County. He is the consulting psychiatrist for the College and is on the front lines of the complex issue of prescribing psychostimulants.
“It is one of the more complex assessments diagnostically,” he said. “The problem is that sometimes it is a diagnosis of desire — ‘I read a book, I tried someone’s Adderall and it worked for me, I think I have ADHD.’”
The problem with diagnosing ADHD is that there are few black and white cases and no blood test to confirm lack of focus. As a result, Dr. Young tries to get to know the patients and looks for red flags.
“You want a good reason, not just performance enhancement. When I meet with someone, I’m trying to get an idea of what they’re looking for, if they’re looking for treatment more broadly, and whether they’re willing to accept that there are a lot of different ways their problem might be addressed. The more they focus on this medicine, that’s a red flag for me.”
Young said he sees on average 10 Middlebury students a year looking for psychostimulants. Less than half he believed actually needed the medication.
“I once had a Middlebury student in my office stand up and slam the door because he didn’t get the medicine that he thought he needed,” Young said. “It’s a tricky thing because usually they’re suggesting it, and it’s very hard to talk people out of that because it is a simple answer, it’s something that works now.”
But for every student he declines to prescribe, there may be a doctor back in their hometown more than willing to prescribe them enough Adderall for them and their friends.
“There’s too much of it around, and people are being pressured by their friends to give it out. I guess it’s just part of things now, but I don’t have to like it,” Young said.
But for Oliver ’13, who graduated last spring with an economics degree, easy access psychostimulants were a common convenience during his time at the College, similar to coffee.
“I really use it for midterms and finals. There’s pretty much no work that can’t be helped by Adderall or any other stimulant.”
Oliver readily admitted that he showed none of the symptoms of ADHD and saw Adderall as a vehicle to get him where he needed to go.
“It’s just another tool that people use and will continue to use no matter how difficult you make it,” Oliver explained. “It’s the cost of doing business. You can’t breed this go-getter culture and not expect students to take advantage of their resources, whether it be coffee or Adderall. To me, they are both performance-enhancing supplements. Coffee is legal, but at the end of the day, it helps you get the paper done.”
Conventionally, Adderall and other psychostimulants are meant to level the playing field for students who are not able to focus and need the medicine. But Oliver does not buy that argument.
“I’m sure those people [with serious ADHD] exist, but I’m skeptical that the majority of people prescribed here actually qualify as people who would need the medication to level the playing field,” he said. “If we’re talking about my rationalization process, I’m thinking of me with it and me without it, and at the end of the day, I’m not going to feel bad because I know how many other kids do it. I don’t mind being on an unfair playing field and I’m not going to leave an advantage on the table.”
Oliver’s views on Adderall usage were seen as “worrisome and sad” to Dean of the College Shirley Collado. To her, psychostimulant abuse is a symptom of a larger problem.
“A major concern is the culture where students feel they need to take a drug like Adderall inappropriately,” Collado said. “It signals an inability as a person to press pause, slow down and make mistakes. I wonder what the long-term cost will be when I think about a Middlebury student if you fast-forward 25 years, what the impact of that thinking and rationalization is.”
With a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Duke University and over 12 years working as a higher education administrator, Collado has a unique understanding about psychostimulant usage and the larger trends it suggests.
“We are all contributing to creating a high-intensity situation here. But Middlebury is only one version of a high-impact environment, and my worry is that for students who are learning to cope by taking a drug, what the trend is going to be for the long term.”
While most students the Campus talked to began their psychostimulant usage at the College, Collado pointed to a new wave of applicants who are being stimulated and pushed to their maximum from young ages.
“There’s a lot of evidence of how readily these medications have become,” she said. “Parents who are fine with getting their kids on medication when they are in middle school, trying to make their kids as focused as possible so they can get into a place like Middlebury.”
“Behind the story is the context of a new pharmaceutical reality that a lot of psychologists worry about. The drugs are legitimate ways of coping for students who really need it, but I’m worried about the culture that we are currently in where there is an abundance of these drugs,” she continued.
Every expert the Campus talked to was asked to respond to Oliver’s assertion that Adderall use was the cost of doing business at a place like Middlebury. Reactions were overwhelmingly of concern and alarm, except for one.
“I think that is very insightful,” said Assistant Professor of Sociology Rebecca Tiger. “Adderall helps you be better at what we are asking you to do. We ask you to do a ton of work, have a fit body, fit mind, do all sort of extra-curricular activities, engage in community service, and have a good social life. Adderall can help you with that, so what is so wrong with it?”
Tiger, who has taught classes on the sociology of drugs and deviance and social control, refused to weigh in on whether drugs like Adderall are good or bad, but was quick to note what she sees as hypocrisy in what is considered “bad.”
“What I find really interesting is that students would never compare Adderall to crystal meth,” Tiger explained. “For the students I’ve talked to, they always say: ‘well, it’s not crystal meth.’ But actually, yes it is. This isn’t about drugs, we’re talking about people. If I am a good, high functioning person, and I occasionally take Adderall, who cares? But if I am a poor, rural person who is out of work, then we really care if I am taking amphetamines and criminalize it. You guys are rarely criminalized for your drugs use.”
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For Tyler ’14, it was a slow, seamless transition from taking Adderall as a study drug once during his first-year to regularly taking it to study and party starting junior year. At first he just got a pill here and there from a friend, but as his use increased he transitioned to buying from a campus drug dealer. If he buys smaller quick-release Adderall, it is $1 for 2mg. Extended-release XR pills are discounted, but not by much.
“Before, it was only when my friends had some, a crime of opportunity. Now, there’s a person I buy from. It’s expensive, but worth it to me.”
The numbers of students at the College using psychostimulants recreationally is unknown, and the estimates vary greatly depending on the anecdotal source. Tyler estimated that 50 percent of students who take it orally eventually try it recreationally.
“You can justify it as a study enhancer by arguing that it’s for work,” he said. “A lot of people get into the drug by justifying it that way, but the recreational use doesn’t have that safety net. Usually people don’t start snorting it until they have done it a couple times orally. It comes on slowly. You try it, you like it, then move on.”
Tyler said snorting Adderall makes him more attentive in conversations, allowing him to live up to social expectations. But despite his best efforts to keep the pills he buys for studying, Tyler said he ends up snorting more than he intends every month. The dealer he buys from usually sells out, so he has to go at the beginning of the month. In the beginning of March, he bought $60 worth — 120mg — but only used 50mg to study with.
“I’m like a goddamn child when I have it,” he said. “I can’t keep my hands off of it. Especially if it’s a night when we’re going out, I’ll just bust out the Adderall. I have to be strategic or I’ll pop them like candy.”
One of the biggest frustrations is that Tyler rarely snorts it all himself.
“It’s annoying to me when my friends just don’t want to go through the process of buying Adderall. I can’t fault them for it, because I am much better friends with the guys who sell it, so I’ll just go kick it with them and buy Adderall.”
Tyler’s monthly sojourns to his drug dealer put him in the minority of illicit users. Over 73 percent of the respondents obtained Adderall and other psychostimulants from either “Close friend/Sibling” or “Friend,” according to the 2013 report on psychostimulants by Ben Tabah ’13.
As his thesis has come to a head mid-way through the spring, Tyler continues to buy Adderall on the first and the fifteenth when needed. While he said he has come to terms with his own usage, he was unsure when asked whether he would let his kids be prescribed Adderall.
“If I had a child who showed symptoms of ADHD and was in a position to be prescribed Adderall, I would think long and hard about it. Not to say that I would or would not, but I would do a lot of research because an Adderall prescription is something that fundamentally affects your day-to-day interactions.”
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When you follow a group of students over the course of a semester, there are always nascent trends that do not have data to support and cannot be definitively proved. But among long-term prescribed students, there is a subset that has had enough, and decided that the side affects just are not worth the rewards.
Going into his senior year this fall, Ben ’14 was juggling a long-term relationship with prescription stimulants. His brother and sister were both prescribed growing up, and he began taking psychostimulants in ninth grade. He was given Focalin and Adderall and brought it with him to the College, taking it regularly.
Insomnia and loss of appetite hit Ben particularly hard. He arrived at the College 5’10 and 150 lbs. and left at the end of his first year a skeletal 135 lbs. When he finally finished all his work, the battle to find a few hours of a sleep began.
“Nyquil was the only thing that could knock me out. I would write a stream of consciousness during those sleepless nights, writing things like ‘wow this Adderall won’t go away.’ Pages and pages. You get to the point where you just ask yourself what the hell your doing,” he said.
“People would always joke, ‘you like working, Adderall makes work fun.’ Try taking it for two days, then leaving the library wanting only to sleep and not being able to because your mind is racing and won’t stop.”
Ben would take a pill, enter the library, and exit ten hours later feeling as if his head was in a cloud.
“I felt at times like I was a guinea pig, and no one could really understand where I was coming from,” he recounted. “I started thinking when I turned in papers coming off my Adderall high, ‘who was doing that work? Me or the drugs? Am I really in control?’”
The long days and longer nights brought him to a moment of crises.
“I haven’t been able to get a handle on it,” he said late in the fall. “When my parents came up this past weekend, I told them not to ship me another bottle.”
As he progressed through his senior year, Ben began to learn how to cope without the drug. It was harder to do work, but he said the benefits far outweighed the cost, from smoking less weed to a reinvigorated sex life. But it remains a constant battle.
“My brain keeps telling me to call my mom, hop in the library, and just start knocking work out,” he said. “But I don’t want to do that right now. I’m at the point of deciding what I want to do with my life and what role Adderall is going to play in that life.”
During spring break, Ben took it sparingly to try and push through his thesis. He said it helped immensely, but the side affects were especially severe because he had no tolerance. Returning after break, Ben continued to lay off psychostimulants.
Ben is not alone in taking a hard look at long-term psychostimulant usage.
“They’re not miracle drugs,” said John Young, the Middlebury-based psychiatrist. “A lot of people find that in the long run, after the initial excitement wears off, it might not be more helpful than a cup of coffee.”
After graduating, Oliver went to work at an investment bank. While he used Adderall for his junior summer internship, he too has decided against taking psychostimulants.
“You want to be seen highly at work, but you can only do so much in one day, while one test in a math or economics test could be worth 40 percent of my final grade,” he said. “There’s no six-hour period of time at work where it will be worth 40 percent of my evaluation.”
But even if there are students re-evaluating the long-term worth psychostimulants, there will always be a project or midterm beckoning on the horizon, tempting students across campus.
“I’m the Dean of the College coming in and saying, ‘take a chill pill’ (no pun intended),” Collado said. “This is the time to invest in yourself away from your parents and have it be messy some of the time. It’s normal for students to explore drugs and all kinds of things in college, but if that is the normative culture that a student is walking into, that is highly problematic. My biggest concern is that you are equipped with the right tools, confidence and reflection so that you are not creating behaviors here that will be detrimental to your future as a person.”
The problem with living in the Adderall Generation is that you cannot just divorce yourself from these drugs altogether. As Ben learned, there is no such thing as cold turkey for students taking psychostimulants at the College. But you can learn to use the drugs responsibly and come to terms with their role here. For better or worse, from 30mg extended-release Adderall pills with breakfast to Saturday nights driven by neon blue and orange lines, we are living in the Adderall Generation.
“If you walked up to any random person on campus and offered them Adderall, not many of them would say no,” said Ben. “But I’m trying to find a way to live my life in a way that nobody understands. Kids who take Adderall regularly never talk … [but] we need to start talking and reflecting.”
Listen to Kyle Finck discuss this series on Vermont Public Radio.
Additional Reporting by ALEX EDEL, Layout Assistance by HANNAH BRISTOL, Graphics by EVAN GALLAGHER, and Photos by ANTHEA VIRAGH
(04/09/14 9:59am)
Emma ’14 first snorted Adderall halfway through sophomore year.
A friend took the orange 20-milligram (mg) pill and crushed it into a light powder with the bottom of a mug, before guiding the mass into four equal lines with a credit card and instructing Emma to get a tampon. She removed the applicator and blew her first line, beginning a recreational use that continues to this day.
“It was almost euphoric, it felt like I could do anything.” she said. “But the next morning, I had the worst hangover I’ve ever had in my life.”
More than two years later, Adderall has become a constant companion to Emma’s academic and social life.
“Recreationally, I wish I never tried it in the first place. Freshman year and the beginning of sophomore year before I tried it, I really liked just being drunk, and that was fine with me. Now in my friend group, that’s never enough. We can’t just all hang out and drink and go out. Someone always wants to do Adderall to take it to the next level.”
Emma’s story is one of an increasing number that point to a new reality across colleges and universities nationwide, as a wave of high-performing and highly stimulated students strive for top grades and are willing to do whatever it takes to get there.
Over the past 13 months, the Campus has followed numerous current and former students — all of whom requested anonymity and were given pseudonyms and, for some, different genders for legal and social reasons — as they grappled balancing their relationships with the powerful psychostimulant with academic, social and societal expectations. The Campus also interviewed experts on the frontlines, from psychologists prescribing the drug to neuroscientists studying their affects on the brain.
Data on psychostimulant use at the College is hard to come by. In a student-led study last spring, 16 percent of Middlebury students who responded to the anonymous survey reported illegally using the drug, slightly above the 5 to 12 percent estimated nationally. Of that percentage, only 4 percent reported having prescriptions. While the data is scarce, the stories of use and abuse paint a complicated picture, in which the line between prescribed use and illicit self-medication is murky at best and farcical at worst.
Whether Adderall is a life-changing medicine or an unfair performance enhancer depends on whom you talk to. What is clear is that we are now living in the Adderall Generation, a reality that is rarely talked about but apparent just below the surface. You may not have a prescription or snort the drugs on weekends, but psychostimulants are here to stay, and they have the potential to affect nearly every aspect of life at the College.
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When Emma was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in grade school, her parents refused to give consent for psychostimulant medication, instead resorting to behavioral therapy and tutoring. But when she got to the College, the workload became too much. After struggling to keep up as a first-year, she was prescribed Adderall as she went into her sophomore year.
“I remember the first day that I took it,” she said. “I felt really uncomfortable in situations other than doing work and didn’t really know what to do with my hands or where to look with my eyes, but when I was doing work it felt like I was in that movie Bruce Almighty when he’s typing on the computer really fast.”
She was first prescribed two 10mg fast acting Adderall a day. When she did not feel anything, the dosage was upped to 20mg three times a day. Her doctor told her to only take two pills a day, but prescribed her three to make sure she did not run out. Because Adderall is a schedule II controlled substance, Emma cannot fill her prescription across state lines in Vermont.
While Adderall has only been around since the late 1990s, psychostimulants have been ingrained in American culture. First discovered in 1887, they had no pharmacological use until 1934 when they were sold as an inhaler for nasal decongestant. Once the addictive properties of the drug became known, psychostimulants became a schedule II controlled substance in the early 1970s.
“If you look at the history of amphetamines, it was a miracle chemical, but they didn’t know what to do with it,” said Assistant Professor of Sociology Rebecca Tiger. “It couldn’t just be thrown on the open market, so they called it a drug, but then they needed to find a disease for it to treat. Amphetamines have been racing around looking for a disease because people want to use them.”
Psychostimulants regulate impulsive behavior and improve attention span and focus by increasing levels of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter involved in natural rewards such as food, water and sex. Depending on the dosage, psychostimulants can boost dopamine levels 2 - 10 times more than a natural reward.
Put simply, dopamine is a key driver of happiness. The chemical is the key to many popular drugs — from opiates like heroin to amphetamines like MDMA. The release of dopamine in the brain after taking psychostimulants causes the euphoria users often feel. But when you constantly feed your brain dopamine, it can diminish your ability to make it independently.
While her grades shot up during her sophomore year, Emma felt the full force of the side effects. Growing up, Emma was outgoing and vivacious, but the Adderall made her reserved and quiet. As a result, she was often forced into a zero-sum game between academics and basic social happiness. Adderall often took precedence.
“I tried to avoid hanging out with people when I was on it, but that’s hard since it lasts a pretty long time, and then coming off it at night, it would make me really emotional and sad. It was really hard when I was coming down off of it to tell myself this is the Adderall and I shouldn’t actually be sad about whatever I was feeling.”
The sadness Emma felt after coming down from her Adderall is called anhedonia, or the loss of pleasure from things we naturally find rewarding.
As her relationship with the drug evolved, she learned basic parameters of what she could and could not do with Adderall. If she took it too late in the evening, she wouldn’t sleep. If she did not take any for a few days, she had to take it early in the day or risk insomnia. But when finals rolled around, all bets were off.
“Especially during finals, it got kind of aggressive. I would take it at like 10 p.m., work all night, go to bed at 4 a.m., wake up at a normal time, take another one, and continue doing work.”
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There are more than a dozen different medications currently on the market to treat ADHD. While there are slight differences between medications, Adderall and Ritalin have become the poster children for psychostimulants. Emma has tried both.
If the College has an expert on the psychostimulants, it is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Clarissa Parker. Before arriving in 2013, Parker spent 10 years studying genetic risk factors associated with drug abuse and dependence, including sensitivity to the reinforcing effects of psychostimulants such as methamphetamine in mice. Parker said one of her main concerns is younger and younger ages at which psychostimulants are prescribed.
“For me, the problem lies in the fact that so many people take it during a time when their pre-frontal cortex is still developing,” she said. “We know this part of the brain continues to develop into the mid-20s. When you combine that with the age group that is most likely to abuse drugs — high school and college — it’s dangerous.”
For big pharmaceuticals, stimulated minors means major profits. In numerous articles, the New York Times has reported on how the industry has lobbied heavily to push for medication over behavioral therapy.
“Studies have shown that there isn’t much long-term difference between Adderall usage and behavioral therapy for treating ADHD,” Parker said. “There are other ways to get the same effect, they just aren’t as immediate.”
Parker was quick to draw a line between people who take the drug responsibly under medical supervision and those who take it without a prescription, those who crush and snort their medication or those who take more than prescribed, repeatedly clarifying that the negative side effects affect those who abuse it. But Tiger thinks that line has little to do with medicine.
“The line you draw between people who need it and people who don’t is a cultural construct,” she said. “My interest is in who draws that line, and what their interest is in drawing it. People rarely use drugs the way they are supposed to, so in a way we are all abusing these drugs.”
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Besides attending the College and taking Adderall, Max ’15 and Emma have little in common. A third-year lacrosse player, Max never encountered psychostimulant use while in high school, but quickly found it at the College.
“I remember when I was a first-year, and I was in this kid’s room, and he was crushing up pills. I didn’t know what they were doing until he just told me ‘doing homework.’ They called it skizzing.”
With the stress of midterms building four months into his college career, Max took Adderall for the first time.
“I wrote a five-page paper in an hour,” Max described. “That’s when I realized, ‘this is nuts.’ There are a lot of athletes on different teams that can’t do work without snorting Adderall. Anything that requires putting your mind to: Adderall. That’s what steered me away from taking it a lot. I couldn’t get like that.”
Max does not have a prescription and estimated that he takes it five times a semester. Across athletics, he estimated that 60 percent use psychostimulants as a tool to get schoolwork done. When asked how easy it would be to obtain five pills, he took out his phone – “one text.”
In the 2013 survey, conducted by Ben Tabah ’13, over 20 percent of males reported experimenting with psychostimulants compared to only 10 percent of females. When asked about the difference, Parker noted that in animal models she had worked with, there were no sex differences in psychostimulant usage.
“You can teach a mouse to self-administer drugs, and there aren’t sex differences in the amount they administer stimulants like cocaine and dexamphetamine (an ingredient in Adderall) which suggests to me the issue is not about sex, but more about gender,” she said.
Social constructions around Adderall are apparent beyond just gender usage. Cocaine is often viewed as a whole different class of drug socially than Adderall, despite their similar chemical makeups, effects, and legal classification.
“Coke is scary to me,” Emma said. “It seems more intense to me because it is illegal and it could be cut with anything.”
“Coke is different than Adderall,” Max said. “The fact that [Adderall] can be prescribed to you means it’s not as harmful. The only downside is that you don’t sleep. That’s the only fight you face when taking it. If the amount of people taking Adderall were doing Coke, it would be considered a huge problem.”
Max is exactly the type of student Executive Director of Health and Counseling Services Gus Jordan is worried about.
“There is the notion that it is a quick fix, and that it’s safe because it comes in prescription form, but you are really playing the edge if you take these drugs without proper supervision,” he said. “We know that if you crush an Adderall pill, and snort it, it hits your brain in ways akin to cocaine, and with similar risks for dependence. This is such a powerful and potentially dangerous medication, that once it gets into a community and used in uncontrolled ways, people get hurt; you’re participating in that by selling or giving it away, and you don’t know if you will really harm someone down the road.”
In his 17 years at the College, Jordan has served in a number of student life roles and taught clinical courses in the psychology department. He said that psychostimulant use and abuse has only really come onto his radar in the past five years.
“Right now, it’s the hype about how great Adderall is that everybody seems to be listening to. But we don’t really know what happens when this drugs is used recreationally or without a prescription. I suspect that there are a lot of darker stories that aren’t being told, especially about the addictive qualities of these drugs, tragic stories that are buried out there.”
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Asking Emma whether or not she would do it all over again is an impossible question for her to answer. Her views on Adderall are as complex as her usage. On one hand, she vehemently attests that without the drug, she would not be at the College. But she is acutely aware of the power the drug has, from sleepless nights to unwrapping tampon applicators time and time again.
“I think my path was necessary, but I don’t know if it was the right one in hindsight. I wish I didn’t have to take so much, but from trying all the other doses, nothing else really worked.”
Her parents know about her use because they pay for it, but have no idea about the recreational use — “they would be shocked and really mad.”
When asked whether or not she would let her kids take Adderall, she quickly said no before retracing her steps.
“Not until it got really bad, and not before the end of high school or even college. I think it’s going to get banned, or at least prescribed a lot weaker, just because it is addictive and being prescribed so ubiquitously,” she said. “It’s just going to end badly.”
Listen to Kyle Finck discuss this series on Vermont Public Radio.
Additional Reporting by ALEX EDEL, Layout Assistance by HANNAH BRISTOL, and Photos by ANTHEA VIRAGH
(04/04/14 1:20am)
It was a one-in-a-million chance or a message from God. In Nov. 2008, Sierra Stites ’14 was standing on the sidelines watching her high school soccer team play. Then, a ball kicked from an adjacent field slammed into her head, whipping her skull forward and forever changing her life.
“My original thought was ‘what did I do wrong?’ But that got me into religion and sinning, and I never felt comfortable with that thought because once you start thinking like that it can lead you down a very dangerous path, and I was already in a precarious position,” she told me, reflecting five years after the concussion.
On that day, she was not playing specifically to avoid worsening the “standard” concussion she sustained after butting heads with an opponent for a jump ball two weeks earlier in a tournament in St. Louis, Mo. The second concussion could not have come at a worse time. In the midst of the junior year rat race to get into top colleges, her test scores plummeted from the 90th percentile to the 30th percentile. Stites was forced to complete speech cognitive therapy to help her regain understanding of what was happening in class.
“I never took that much time off of school, because I defined myself as a student-athlete, and I already had the athlete part taken away,” Stites said. “I ended up having autonomic injuries as well, which meant that any change of planes – getting up, lying down – would make me really dizzy with black spots in vision.”
Stites had battled back from two torn ACLs – rehab she now calls “easy” in comparison – but that second concussion became an immovable obstacle, strapping her with physical and emotional baggage she was forced to carry with her to Middlebury.
The step from high school to college was especially challenging because Stites lost the direct support from her family. One of the biggest challenges for victims of head injuries is that there are no physical manifestations. Without a cast or crutches, a blinding headache is easily seen as lethargy or even laziness by the outside world.
“I had a friend tell me ‘you were moping there for a while’. Are you serious? I couldn’t think. That was always disappointing to hear but it tells you who your real friends are. But comments like that are why I retreated into my family because my parents were both doctors and knew, at least medically, what I was going through. The stigma is definitely there, but I stopped caring what people thought.”
While the College’s administration and counseling services gave her constant support, Stites struggled to overcome what at times seemed an unwinnable war. During the fall of her sophomore year, Stites’ recovery hit a plateau, her symptoms neither improving or worsening and the constant headache hurting her ability to concentrate. Running out of options, Stites and her father found themselves at the Famed Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. More physical therapy and a semester later, she returned to the College.
During her junior year, the physical symptoms subsided enough that she could stay up past 10 p.m. and drink in moderation, things most students take for granted. But that was only half the battle.
“Part of post-concussion syndrome is the emotional side affects. I struggled with depression and anxiety junior year because I had a lot of trouble finding the support that I needed. I was never someone to tell everyone what I was feeling, and so I had a lot of trouble re-adjusting junior year and by the end I was almost ready to leave Middlebury.”
Even thought she has lived a quarter of her life with a concussion and cannot remember most of high school, Stites still plans on becoming a doctor after graduation and even gives her head injury credit.
“It’s made me a better person and made me more self-aware. People come to college saying they are going to find themselves, and I think I came in knowing who I was and what I’m about. It forced me to grow up quickly and take a hard look at things. I don’t think I would even be at Middlebury if I didn’t have a head injury. It’s been a part of my life for so long that I can’t imagine what it would be like without it.”
A Three Month Headache
Possibly the cruelest part of concussions for athletes is the recovery. People who shape their lives around movement in sport are forced into static solitude, something they are wholly unaccustomed to.
With five minutes left in a weekday lacrosse practice on April 17, 2013, John Montgomery ’14 scooped up a ground ball in front of the net and ran up the field. But a teammates’ stick jarred it loose, and as he jumped to retrieve it, the two players’ heads collided. He blacked-out on contact and blacked-in when he hit the ground, beginning a dizzying five-month journey of doctors, darkness, and frustration.
Montgomery had sustained a concussion playing high school football at St. Mark’s School in Dallas, Texas. While he was “so mentally out-of-it it wasn’t even funny” at the time of the hit, he went back to class within four days of being hit and simply sat out a few weeks. But this one was different.
“I heard horror stories about it, and I’d seen other people get concussions, but I had sustained one, I knew what that’s like, they must have been doing something wrong.”
The day after the initial hit on Youngman Field at Alumni Stadium, Montgomery didn’t feel any of the telltale signs of a concussion – blinding headaches or nausea – only a self-described “foggy-headedness.” After consulting with Associate Director of Sports Medicine Kelly Cray, he suited up for practice the next day. While it was supposed to be a non-contact practice, Montgomery ran into a pick from another teammate, hitting the same side of his head for a second time in as many days.
Montgomery was hindered by the fact that the second concussion was not cut and dry. In those crucial five days between the initial hit and the following Monday when he finally shut everything down – now known to be the most important in dictating recovery time – Montgomery most likely exacerbated the concussion.
“When I tell this story, I feel like an idiot because I kept going and going and going. Part of it was that I didn’t know I was hurt, and I had so much schoolwork I needed to do. I couldn’t just sit there and be like, ‘oh well, I got hit in lacrosse, so that’s why I can’t write your paper, Professor.’ Doing work was probably the thing that pushed me over the edge. You wouldn’t ask someone who just broke their leg to go run a marathon. So translating that comparison to a concussion, you wouldn’t ask that person to run a marathon mentally, doing a bunch of schoolwork and writing a bunch of papers. And that’s exactly what I did. It was stupid.”
As the warmer months crept onto the College, Montgomery was bed-ridden, spending 16 hours a day staring at the dark ceiling. All stimulation was forbidden, which in essence, is almost everything. The only contact he had with the outside world was texting friends to bring him meals. After three weeks of darkness in Starr 311 and little progress, Montgomery decided to take incompletes in all four of his classes and fly home to Dallas with the help of his mother. Once home, he went through an array of doctors from a chiropractor to a neurosurgeon, even spending hours in a hyperbaric chamber.
It took the headache and accompanying symptoms three months to fully subside, after which he finished his class work and completed a truncated internship in Houston, Texas.
The bravest, or most foolhardy, part of the story is that Montgomery plans to play lacrosse this coming year.
“It’s a large gamble. I already have a job after I graduate and I would hate to have that taken away from me because of my decision, but at the same time, when you fall off a horse, you always get back on to show yourself and the horse that you can do it, and I don’t see how this situation is any different.”
A Concussion Speaks
If you talk to enough athletes who have sustained concussions, you start to notice a common trend. While few can remember the crucial moments – many black out – every one I talked to can remember the exact date and time of day they were concussed, even years later. The odd paradox speaks to the unintended consequences and importance a concussion has.
For ex-skier Emma Kitchen ’14.5, that was just after dark on Dec. 1, 2010. On her bike, bombing down the hill on College Street below St. Mary’s Church, Kitchen collided head on with another student at the intersection with Shannon Street. The impact left her in the intensive care unit for three days with a fractured skull, hemorrhaging, and cerebral contusions that kept her bed-ridden with no screens for six months.
Kitchen’s recovery came in meager steps. At six months, she was able to get her heart rate above 150 beats per minute. At eight months, she started drinking with her friends. Finally, after nine months and 11 doctors, she made a full recovery.
The unending days of confined darkness became some of the hardest in her life.
“You’re locked in a prison, and if someone tells you otherwise, then they haven’t done it. Recognizing that it hurts to live, that’s terrible. The problem I had was that I felt like I was lying there for someone else. Everyone from a neurosurgeon to a psychotherapist told me the same thing: ‘go lie in a dark room. You’ll recover slowly, but we don’t know when.’ It was really frustrating in that regard. There was nothing else out there. It made me feel like an addict who had done something wrong.”
But necessity became the mother of invention. Frustrated with the lack of alternative therapies, Kitchen and Kait Surdoval ’12 founded Concussions Speak in Jan. 2012.
“The idea came from me not being able to talk about my concussion. It was just a matter of finding more people like myself, who had gotten their sport taken away from them,” Kitchen said.
After Director of Athletics Erin Quinn sent an email petitioning athletes to share their concussion stories, the group received ten stories.
“The similarities between the stories were uncanny. Everyone has a similar story of the denial stage, the depression stage, and then the very slow recovery stage. It is really painful and difficult. I found that I didn’t trust anyone who hadn’t been through it because it impacts every second of your life. Everyone has the same experience of not feeling 100 percent there. We realized that it was fine to tell these stories, but what we really needed was a way for people to connect, talk about it, and answer questions.”
Today, Kitchen said she speaks to a different concussion survivor about once a week. Concussions Speak has grown from a modest Facebook page to full-fledged non-profit, traveling to speaking engagements far beyond the College. Most recently, Kitchen, Stites and Surdoval spoke to a group of kindergarten through 12th grade students Hammond School in South Carolina on Nov. 22.
Reflecting back on her years at the College, Kitchen may be the only athlete who calls her concussion “the best day of my life.”
“The ski culture is very insular. You are required to spend so much time with the team because it’s such a demanding sport. They are always on the hill, or preparing to be on the hill. On a time perspective, I would not have had the opportunities to do what I’ve done since. If I had gotten through half my Middlebury career and then decided I didn’t want to ski, there would have been a lot of emotional detachment for letting the team down. I was brought here to ski, and I found them to be a family-oriented bunch, and to let them down like that would be hard on me. I didn’t have to go through any of that. The decision was made for me.”
Challenging Traditional Treatments
The high-intensity community that the College is praised for makes treating concussions often a fool’s errand. The first five days are the most critical in determining the severity and length of recovery. While the College has a four-step diagnostic process, asking students at the College to push pause on their entire lives is often a task many fine impossible to embrace.
“Another challenge is getting concussed students to slow down and allow their brain to recover. The pressure to keep up with academic work is one of the most significant and detrimental factors impairing recovery from concussion,” wrote Medical Director, College Physician and Team Physician Dr. Mark Peluso in an email. “Students that try to push through symptoms to keep up with their academic work tend to require a longer recovery times than students who rest and follow our symptom-based recovery process.
In light of the imperfect treatments and challenging atmosphere for recovery at the College, concussions are not going anywhere. Peluso said that between Parton Health Center and Sports Medicine, he treats between 15 and 30 concussions a year, which is rising nationwide because of better patient reporting.
During the five-day period after Montgomery was initially hit, he did anything but rest, attending class, practicing multiple times, and taking numerous tests. After weeks of bed rest at the College, he decided to go home early, which he called the “best decision” he made over the course of the whole ordeal.
When asked what advice they would give to students who have recently sustained concussions, both Kitchen and Montgomery were critical of the bed rest treatment program.
“Past a certain point it actually works against you. I told my parents that I didn’t think I would ever have this much time to sit and think unless I went to prison in solitary confinement. You just sit there and think, ‘do I have a headache? Do I have a headache?’ Eventually, you are going to give yourself a headache. I felt like I was starting to go crazy by the end of it,” Montgomery said.
Peluso wrote that to a certain extent, prevailing medical methods of treating concussions are starting to change.
“More recent expert opinion suggests that lying down in a dark room fir several days may not be helpful. The concept is known as sub-symptom threshold recovery, and allows concussed students to gradually increase class attendance and school work activities in small graduated intervals based on symptoms.”
Kitchen encouraged people to take recovery into their own hands.
“The part that hurts the most is when you are lying there because someone told you so, in your own prison. Don’t let someone tell you cannot go outside,” she said.
(02/12/14 4:34pm)
I recently asked a top administrator what percentage of the faculty read the Campus in some capacity every week.
“What do you think?” She asked me.
“Fifty percent.”
“Try twenty,” was the response.
Twenty percent is unacceptable. Faculty members, you are part of our community. To receive a paycheck from Middlebury College, you should be expected to do more than just teach. What makes our community special is that everyone does more. Custodians do more than just tidy rooms, doling out smiles and advice. Administrators do more than just make big scale decisions, and students are expected to do more than just go to class. Faculty should be held to the same standard. Our community thrives on the fact that nobody lives in a vacuum, and it is not acceptable for faculty members to teach four classes, advise a few students, and go home. This is not just a day job, and the best of our faculty don’t clock out at 5 p.m. You are teaching us more than your field of expertise, you are teaching us life. Faculty, it is time to reinvest in our community.
When you live in a vacuum, you make decisions in a vacuum. That has consequences. When a professor sent out a casting call to nearly a 100 women of color encouraging them to audition for the role a wet nurse role in the play “In the Next Room,” many students responded with anger. If that professor had followed coverage of Chance the Rapper’s concert and the forum which brought to light larger issue of marginalized groups, would the email have been sent? If that professor had understood the complex racial tensions and feelings of isolation that many students had eloquently expressed in the Opinions section of the Campus, would that email have been sent?
Nov. 21 showed both the decaying status quo and glimmers of light in faculty engagement at the College. That Thursday, the Faculty Educational Affairs Committee (EAC) met to discuss the fate of summer internships for credit. The same day, the Campus published an editorial under the headline “Give Credit Where Credit is Due,” recommending specific solutions that integrated student and faculty concerns. When only one of the five EAC members reads a voice of the student body on an important academic issue facing the future of the liberal arts education, we have a problem. Students are ultimately the consumer of the College, and we deserve a faculty that is invested in our community.
But later that day, Amy Wax gave a contentious lecture on diverging family structures and moral deregulation that many of the attendees crammed in Hillcrest found pedantic at best and racist at worst. While Murray Dry’s decision to sponsor Wax was controversial, he showed once again why he is the Gold Standard for community engagement. He consistently weaves Campus articles and editorials into his classes and discussions with students, even sending feedback to individual reporters. Professor Dry, your engagement does not go unnoticed, and I need your help in spreading the word to the 80 percent of your colleagues whose eyes are not on this page.
This is not an attempt to toot our own horn. But when only one in five faculty members reads a newspaper devoted to reporting on our community and tackling issues that affect everyone in our community, that screams apathy. The Campus is one of the only spaces that brings together issues concerning the faculty, staff, students and administrators every single week and allows all parties to throw in their two cents.
It is unfair to characterize a group as diverse as the Middlebury Faculty with a single adjective. I have been taught by professors like Deb Evans, who began class by asking her students about the issues affecting them, and numerous other professors who take a genuine interest in their students’ concerns. But how is a biology professor supposed to find out what issues are affecting students who never set foot in Bicentennial Hall?
This is not an assault on the faculty. It is an invitation. Open the paper, get angry, tell us we are wrong, bring an editorial into a class discussion, write an op-ed, but for the sake of our entire community, it is time to reinvest.
Artwork by NOLAN ELLSWORTH
(01/16/14 1:38am)
As students finished exams and prepared to leave campus in mid-December, Dong Yub “Don” Song ’13 pled guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct, a far cry from the felony sexual assault the State Attorney David Fenster original pursued. Song avoided jail time, paying $716 in total fines, including a $75 “victim’s restitution surcharge” among others.
After seven months and about a dozen court dates, Song was given his passport by the Middlebury Police Department and boarded a flight to his native South Korea.
“Finally done and heading home to Korea today and i am all well now. Sincerely wanted to say thank you everyone for having faith in me i couldn’t have done it without your unconditional love and support,” wrote Song in a Facebook post on Dec. 13. “May your glasses always be half full. ‘tough times don’t last but tough people do.’”
The Campus reached out to Song for additional comment, but he would not speak further on the matter. Similarly, Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs and Student Life Karen Guttentag would not comment on the matter.
The case garnered coverage after the original incident on May 13, 2013, and escalated in the fall when the District Attorney’s office aggressively pushed for a jury trial. The path of the case changed after jury draw had already began, with Judge Robert Mello accepting Song’s guilty plea to the misdemeanor on Dec. 11.
(01/15/14 4:41pm)
Features Editor Joe Flaherty ’15 became facilities services newest “dangler,” braving sub-zero morning temperatures to drop down into a manhole outside the Biomass plant on Jan. 8.
Flaherty has introduced Campus readers to the men and women “Behind the Vest” at Facilities Services who keep the College running. When Flaherty began reporting on the Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) at the College in December, Director of Facilities Services Mike Moser made him an offer he could not resist. Instead of just following the crew around, Moser offered to put Flaherty behind the vest and down a manhole.
To see what happens below the surface of the College, Flaherty had to complete Confined Space Training from Safety & Regulatory Comp. Manager Jeremiah LaCross.
“Right away during the training, you have to be trained on air monitoring. Jeremiah started reading me the possible dangers down there: carbon monoxide, all the sulfuric gases and other stuff that can kill you if you’re down there too long. That was one moment when I got a little bit worried, but obviously we weren’t going into one that was too dangerous,” Flaherty said.
Once he was certified, LaCross, Flaherty and HVAC team member Scott Barker proceeded out to a manhole a few steps outside the Biomass plant. Flaherty is one of more petite danglers the College has certified to go underground, and it took a half hour to fit him into the protective harness usually filled by Will Bickham, a hefty six-foot, 300 pound technician.
Above the manhole, Barker set up a large metal tripod, which hoisted Flaherty into the air and lowered him down the 15-foot hole. Barker was quick to remind Flaherty that this was no joke and that the harness would cut circulation to his legs in a matter of minutes if anything went south.
With a smile, a pair of oversized work gloves and a loosely-fitted metallic-yellow hardhat, Flaherty clanked down the manhole reminding us he was okay at every chance he could.
“It’s one thing to stand by and report as people fix the Biomass plant or prepare for a snowstorm, but it is another thing entirely to be the person who is going down under and experiencing what Facilities does,” Flaherty said. “It was special.”
(12/12/13 6:43pm)
President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz will step down at the conclusion of the next academic year, effective June 30, 2015. He announced the decision in an email sent to students on Dec. 12 in conjunction with major revisions to the structure and governance of the Board of Trustees.
“It has been an honor of the highest order to serve as the 16th president of this remarkable institution,” he wrote in the email. “With its dedicated and committed staff, superb faculty, and outstanding students, Middlebury has never been stronger or better positioned for the future.”
Liebowitz has been at the helm of the College since 2004. During his presidency, the College acquired the Monterey Institute of International Studies, opened 23 Schools Abroad sites and added 120 endowed student scholarships for financial aid in addition to 15 endowed faculty positions.
“Middlebury is a far more complex place than it may look. From the outside, it might look like a university, or something like a university, but not so. Undergraduate education needs to remain the focus of Middlebury, no matter what other programs it acquires or develops,” he said.
Liebowitz, a New York City native, graduated from Bucknell University in 1979 majoring in economics and geography while competing as a varsity swimmer. After receiving his doctorate from Columbia University, he joined the faculty at the College in 1984 and was promoted to full professor in 1993. In 2009, Time Magazine named him one of the 10 best college presidents in the country. The President acknowledged the difficulty of this decision, but noted that the time was right for both the institution and for him.
“This isn’t something I just thought about last night.. “The average collegiate presidency these days is now around six years. I’ve had thirty-plus years on the faculty here and 11 years as president, and I think it’s good for the institution to change leadership and I think it’s good for me as a person to take on different challenges.”
Board of Trustees Chair Marna Whittington said that the board would provide information about a presidential search committee following the February board meeting.
Liebowitz also took the chance to announce changes to the governance structure of the board. Of note, the number of standing committees will be reduced to six from the current 15, with three overseeing boards: one for the undergraduate College, one for the Monterey Institute, and one for the rest of the “Schools.”
“We are involving students, faculty, and staff on these overseer boards for the first time. That will allow the board to hear more perspectives beyond just the president and senior administration,” he said. “What we need with the many challenges facing higher education are more voices, more opinions to be heard. There will be a student sitting on the board of overseers for the College. They will be full-fledged members of that board. The only thing they will likely not partake in are personnel decisions such as tenure decisions. Student, faculty, and staff participation on the board of overseers represents a fairly big change for the College.”
Liebowitz would not discuss what he plans to do after leaving the College, saying that his focus is on continuing to work with faculty, staff, and students on the institution’s “already ambitious agenda” during the next 18 months.
(10/10/13 12:47am)
Shortly after 3 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 4 three Middlebury Police Officers exited McCullough Student Center carrying a package containing marijuana that had been shipped to a student.
While there is no official version of exactly how the events of the confiscation unfolded, multiple accounts from student employees of the mail center and witnesses who were in McCullough at the time shed light on the situation.
A senior college administrator confirmed to the Campus that the package contained a sizable amount of a substance that appeared to be marijuana and was turned over to the Middlebury Police Department. The administrator added that incidents such as this are “exceedingly rare.”
The package originally raised suspicions because of its smell, according to students present at the time. When mail center staff members called Public Safety, Sergeant Chris Thompson responded, opening the package and subsequently handing the evidence over the Middlebury Police Department.
“I was standing in front of Midd-Xpress and saw three officers walk in followed by a public safety officer,” Matt Butler ’15 said. “They were in the back room for 10 minutes, then the three came out, one holding a plastic bag with a decently sized box inside.”
Maddie Dai ’14 was working at the College Box Office in McCullough when she saw the police officers escorted by Thompson entering the mail center.
“They came back through with a USPS [United States Postal Service] box in a clear plastic bag,” Dai said. “The box was about the size of a laptop box, so fairly big. They stayed in the area, and later I saw two policemen and one public safety officer interviewing a young man by the bathrooms located near the mail center.”
The legal fate of the student the package was addressed to will hinge on a number of factors. If the District Attorney deems that the marijuana was intended for personal use, or possession in legal terms, anything less than two ounces will be considered a misdemeanor offense. If the student is charged with an intent to sell, anything between a half of an ounce and one pound can be considered a felony, which can result in up to five years in prison and $100,000 in fines.
Neither Public Safety nor the Middlebury Police Department would comment on the exact weight of the confiscated marijuana.
None of the students working in the mail center that the Campus talked to would speak on the record or agree to be quoted, citing the delicate nature of the incident and the tight-knit community within the mail center. None of the students working at the time recalled experiencing a similar incident, however, proving the rarity of a drug confiscation.
As the mail center is not staffed with x-ray scanners nor has any means of searching the contents of students’ packages, there is no easy way to uncover hard numbers on the amount or diversity of drugs or other substances that go in and out of the mail center. Federal law prohibits the opening of another’s mail without prior permission or a search warrant, contributing to the difficulty of regulating or searching package contents.
Jennifer Stocker, one of the College’s mail clerks, would not talk about the incident when contacted. But she did say that in September alone, however, that the mail center received over 6,000 USPS packages.
(10/03/13 12:50am)
In a detailed letter sent out to all students on Tuesday, Oct. 1, Dean of the College Shirley Collado and Dean of Students Katy Smith Abbott outlined changes to both the written alcohol and party policies and the College’s education, prevention and response programs.
While the changes may seem trivial, top administrators said they have game-changing possibilities, streamlining the party system while promoting safety and transparency.
“It’s my hope that students will see this and understand that this could have a great impact,” Collado said. “The changes are asking students ‘what do you want to do? how do you want to claim the kind of culture that you want on this campus?’ because the barriers have lessened significantly. I’d like to challenge students to really not sit around and be frustrated because the current system really gives students a tremendous amount of responsibility within the framework of Vermont State law that we have an obligation to follow.”
Unbeknownst to many students, Vermont has some of the strictest alcohol laws in the country, often binding the College’s hands when it comes to promoting a vibrant social scene.
The current changes were the accumulation of a multi-year, comprehensive look at the College’s policies that began in 2012 with the creation of the Task Force on Alcohol and Social Life. The Task Force, co-chaired by Abbott and Head Football Coach Bob Ritter , brought together students, faculty, public safety officials and custodians. They submitted their final recommendations to Collado on May 4, 2012, and spent the following academic year meeting in smaller “Implementation Teams.”
“We didn’t just wake up and make these changes,” Collado said. “It was strategic and thoughtful.”
Abbott wrote in the email that it is important to remember that “a huge amount of student effort” influenced the recent changes.
“That has been one of the great take-a-ways for me in this ongoing process — the extent to which many students on campus are deeply invested in trying to improve social life and to take responsibility for planning parties and other social functions that are varied, fun and yes, safe,” Abbott wrote in the email.
Abbott noted that the recommendation for creating a party monitors program and the idea of extending the end of registered parties at Ridgeline until 3 a.m. all came from students.
“When I got the email from the Dean of the College this morning, I was actually ecstatic,” Nathan LaBarba ’14 said. “Middlebury students are responsible adults, for the most part. We can be responsible and we can be held accountable for our own safety and security to an extent, and I believe that is what this program will allow us to do.”
LaBarba was one of the seven students on the original Task Force, and called the changes “a great victory.” While serving on the Task Force, he saw first hand the frustrating legal roadblocks and liquor policies that made implementation a challenge.
“Navigating all of these different channels was tough, but we came together and presented what I thought were a fairly comprehensive system of changes and reforms,” he said. “I would say that every single one of our most important proposed changes was reflected in the announcement today from the Dean of the College.”
Additional changes included an increased number of spaces for students to register parties in, more flexible guest lists, later party registration deadlines, longer maximum party hours and Grille giveaways to help offset the much-maligned food requirement.
The College’s “Good Samaritan Policy,” which grants amnesty to students who seek emergency assistance for themselves or others, had been practiced informally for years but was set in stone as part of the changes.
“We’ve been practicing the ‘Good Samaritan Policy’ for years, but we wanted to put it into writing so students knew how serious we were about the safety of students,” Collado said.
While almost all of the changes increase flexibility for students socially, the letter also outlined an increased focus on the dangers of hard alcohol. Citing language in the 2012 Task Force report that attributed the majority of hospital transports, issues of disrespect and disruptive behavior to hard alcohol, the new policy aims at “holding students accountable at the highest level for hard-alcohol-related policy violations.”
“We are looking at hard alcohol infractions in a much more serious way, especially because we know the hard facts about hard alcohol’s effect on first-years and sophomores,” Collado said. “People get transported to the hospital because of hard alcohol, and we are going to intervene faster, stronger, and earlier.”
While Collado would not say the College is on the road to a hard alcohol ban, she said the Community Council would be taking up the issue of hard alcohol on campus this coming semester.
Both Associate Dean of Students Douglas Adams and Collado stressed that the increased flexibility of the policy changes puts the ball in students’ court.
“I encourage social houses and other student organizations who want to host parties to take advantage of the new regulations,” Adams said. “I have had a very positive response from social house leaders about the new policies and hope that we will see more well-run, registered events at the houses and in residential lounges.”
Collado further emphasized that students at the College have it good.
“There are campuses around this state that are dry and where students have to deal directly with the police,” she said. “These changes are about giving students agency while still holding them responsible. Ultimately, it’s on students to decide ‘what am I going to do on Friday night?’”
(09/26/13 12:10am)
In November 2011, a student at Williams College painted the wall of a dormitory with a racist, profanity-laced death threat aimed at African-Americans. In response, the administration canceled all classes, athletics and extracurricular activities to hold a school-wide discussion and lunch as a college on the following day of classes.
There is no way to compare the actual events at Williams to the Sept. 11 flag uprooting in terms of severity. But the reactions to the flag incident posted the Campus and middbeat exposed significant hate. While most of it may have come from outside of our community, there is no denying a lot of it came from within the bubble. There is no question that the action was hurtful and wrong — it is an open and shut case — but the reactions of what last week’s editorial penned “arm chair vigilantes” exposed a dark undercurrent of discontent aimed at student activism that, until a few weeks ago, did not have a politically correct avenue to flow from.
Our generation has a problem with talking to each other about contentious issues face to face. For whatever reason, we prefer the online arena. The Vice President for Academic Affairs organized seven talks led by faculty members over the course of the week afterward. When the Campus has more reporters at an event than there are students, something is wrong.
But the paltry student attendance could have been foreseen. How to attract students to voluntary events has always been the million-dollar question, and one lone e-mail was a ten-dollar answer. In my four years reporting here, the most widely attended event was an alcohol forum in May 2011. The e-mail inviting students to the event asked: “is a dry campus the only option?” At the standing-room-only discussion, students from all backgrounds vented frustrations at each other, at Old Chapel, and at the drinking culture in general. But most importantly, we looked each other in the face, and worked it out in same room. That kind of discussion was sorely needed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 incident.
President Liebowitz’s e-mail to the College the morning after the incident set an appropriately firm tone, emphasizing that debate and dialog can only occur within a context of respect and civility. The online dialog that occurred in the days after the incident was neither respectful nor civil. Inside the Campus editorial discussion, varied and vocal opinions battled to find a consensus. While uncomfortable at times, the debate ultimately led to the common ground of condemning the act, but pleading for due process and dignity for our community. Could that same understanding and self-reflection have been achieved in classrooms across the College if Liebowitz had mandated the first fifteen minutes of every class on Friday, Sept. 13 be devoted to an open discussion of the incident and the reactions?
We missed an opportunity.
(09/22/13 8:01pm)
Econ majors on finance classes and Hudson Cavanagh on making money and then giving it away. The audio begins at 2:10.
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(09/12/13 12:59am)
The Campus has two contracts to uphold this year. A contract with you, the reader, and a contract to pursue the truth at all costs. We don’t write for Old Chapel. We don’t write for the Board of Trustees. We write for you, the Middlebury student.
This year, we have made slight changes to try and bring you more of what we think you want to read. The end result is a slimmer, sleeker paper with more graphics and less stories buried in the back of the paper just printed for the sake of printing.
As I move into the role of Editor-in-Chief this year, I plan to build on the work of past Campus leaders, but also shift the way we bring you stories. While we have expanded our coverage online, we are also trying to shift the way we write. That means less of the usual drab facts and figures, and more of the personal stories behind what is making news.
The media industry is rapidly changing, as newspaper giants like Washington Post and Boston Globe get sold for pennies of what they were once bought for. Gone are the huge investigative teams that helped exposed scandals like Watergate and in are the number-crunching interns tweeting at the speed of light. Print circulation is down in almost every market across the country as media companies switch to online. Many pundits beg the question of whether there will even be physical newspapers in a decade.
Far from accepting defeat, we are fighting this decline in newspapers by doubling down on our time and financial investment in both our print edition and across other mediums. We are continuing our Facebook page, along with bolstering our use of Instagram to provide content we can’t fit in the print edition. Finally, this year we are venturing out into the radio medium. Each week, the editorial board will collectively choose the week’s most interesting story from across different sections, and then broadcast that story over WRMC every Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. in a roundtable approach that goes beyond just the story. The radio show might interview students and administrative leaders about the use of cameras on campus one week, and then host a band that was reviewed in the paper followed by a live performance the next.
Coming from a long line of journalists, and lawyers who defend them, I am troubled think that my kids might grow up and not know what a printed copy of a New York Times looks like. But while most papers struggle to break even—let alone turn a profit—The Campus is lucky to be in a unique position. Through the generous funding of the SGA, we are able to print 1,700 free copies weekly for the Middlebury community, along with a full-color sports magazine once a year. Our hope is that we can be a dependable source for not only what’s happening, but also the personal stories you can’t find anywhere else. So pick up a copy every Thursday, and here’s to newspapers.
(09/12/13 12:39am)
On Monday, Sept. 9, lawyers for former Middlebury College student Dong Yub “Don” Song were back in Addison County Criminal Court facing allegations of Sexual Assault, stemming from an incident that occurred in the early morning hours of May 12.
The story of what happened that night was laid out in a seven-page affidavit filed last spring. While the victim’s name was redacted from the affidavit to protect her identity, Song’s name was released in the document and quickly published by the Addison Independent and middbeat in the following days. The case, and its coverage, opened a firestorm of mixed reactions from online readers.
“I’m so sorry this had to happen, but I am glad that the survivor had the courage to speak out,” commented “Anon1” on the middbeat article. “I know there are two sides to a story, but it is SO important that perpetrators learn that it doesn’t matter whether you INTEND it to be sexual assault or not.”
But other commenters defended Song, pointing to importance of presumed innocence.
“He has never given the Midd community any reason to doubt his character; by all accounts he is an upstanding individual,” commented a user under the name “Men’s Rights”. “Rape isn’t acceptable, but he is innocent until proven guilty, especially considering that Don is a decent human being, we must keep that in mind.”
Other viewers vilified middbeat for releasing Song’s name, despite the fact it was within their Constitutional rights and standard journalistic practice, bringing up questions of balancing a news sources’ rights with the need for discretion.
“What did middbeat gain from publishing his name? Subjecting a person to that kind of scrutiny and judgement on top of the case is insensitive,” wrote “Anon”.
Song’s attorney, Peter Langrock of the Middlebury firm Langrock, Sperry & Wool said his client would fight the allegations.
“We believe further investigation will show that this is all a misunderstanding between college students,” Langrock told the Independent in May on behalf of his client. Langrock did not respond to multiple requests for comment over the summer and this fall.
The College has made sexual assault a key issue in past years, promoting awareness through student-led programs like It Happens Here (IHH) and by reworking the student handbook. IHH Founder Luke Carroll Brown ’14, who spearheaded much of the movement last year, said he was not surprised when he heard about the incident.
“These sorts of incidents should sadden us, they should move us, but they should not surprise us,” he wrote in an email. “In just two years, IHH has received more than 50 student submissions that describe the personal impact of sexual violence. 50. We owe it both to our community and to ourselves to recognize the pervasiveness of this unique problem and to realize the tremendous amount of suffering that results from it.”
If convicted, Song faces a jail sentence of three years to life, plus a fine of up to $25,000. He pled innocent.
The two parties will meet again in court in October.
(09/11/13 11:10pm)
A 2,977 flag memorial was ripped out of the ground in front of Mead Memorial Chapel shortly before 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 11 by a group of five protestors claiming that the flags were on top of a sacred Abenaki burial site.
The flags — meant to commemorate each of the 2,977 lives taken in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks — have been posted in the grass between Mead Chapel and the Davis Family Library annually in a joint effort between the College Republicans and Democrats for nearly 10 years.
Ben Kinney ’15, president of the College Republicans, spent two hours putting the flags outside of Mead Chapel on Tuesday night, and happened to be walking up the hill towards the chapel when he saw four females and one male stuffing the miniature flags into black trash bags.
“I got there just as they were taking the very last of them out of the ground and putting them in piles,” he said. “At first, I the group was comprised of College Democrats helping put the flags away before the rain rolled in, but then I realized what they were doing.”
Kinney said the protestors told him they were “confiscating” the flags in protest of “America’s imperialism.”
Julia Madden ’14, was walking back from Proctor when she saw the five people uprooting the flags.
“I was just getting out of class, but when I saw what they were doing I decided to say something,” she said. “They were quickly putting them into two big plastic trash bags. I’m mad at myself for not being more aggressive. I was just dumbfounded.”
There was no discussion. No compromise. We asked if we could put them somewhere else, but they wouldn’t listen.”
Sasha Schell ’15 also walked by the protest.
“I was thinking to myself ‘why are people cleaning them up now and why are they doing it in such a hurried and haphazard manner?’ I went up and asked them what they were doing. They said ‘this is an Indian burial ground and you can’t have anything penetrating the earth.’"
“It is really disrespectful to our community. It is disrespectful to the firefighters who went into the towers to save people. Most of all, it is disrespectful to anybody who lost somebody on that day,” he said. “It was completely out of line for anybody to come remove those flags. This is a travesty.”
Kinney, who said he received permission to erect the memorial from Associate Dean of Students for Student Activities & Orientation JJ Boggs, said he had never seen protests against the yearly memorial during his time at the College.
“You can’t say that one death is more legitimate to commemorate than another,” he said.
Additional Reporting by ZACH DRENNEN
(05/21/13 10:09pm)
In a letter sent to Community Council members dated May 16, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz announced the official disbandment of Delta House, revoking its residential and organizational status and putting to rest speculation that the social house might be spared.
“After reviewing this information, I confirm that I accept the Community Council recommendation not to continue the house effective immediately,” Liebowitz wrote in the letter. “I have not come to my decision easily. However, I am persuaded that Delta House has been unable to fulfill the responsibilities that come with the privilege of overseeing an organization and occupying a social house.”
In the weeks after the Community Council’s recommendation to disband the social house, rumors swirled about whether Liebowitz would accept the recommendation. His letter left little room for interpretation.
“Current house residents will continue to live at Prescott House for the remainder of the academic year,” he wrote in the letter. “Between now and the end of the year no social functions, formal or informal, registered or unregistered, may be held at the house. Any subsequent damage to the house or violations of College policy should be addressed through the College’s disciplinary process.”
The decision evoked a variety of reactions from former Delta residents and Community Council members.
“It’s disappointing but it doesn’t surprise me,” said Bryant Adams ’13, who lived in Prescott House this year. “As long as dorm damage is what determines how social houses are punished, nothing will change.”
“My biggest problem is that even when it is done by someone who doesn’t live in the house, people witness it and they end up paying for it, it still counts against the house,” he added. “Delta had a huge role on campus. We’ll see what happens next year.”
Former resident Matt Rea ’14 wrote in an email that he was “deeply discouraged” by Liebowitz’s decision but agreed with Adams that it wasn’t a surprise.
“It is unfortunate that we were unable to save Delta, but the effort we put in, between the Community Council meeting and the petitions we gathered, was nothing short of spectacular,” wrote Rea. “We will continue to fight towards reaching some sort of compromise within the realm of having Delta be put on probation.”
Former Community Council Student co-Chair Barrett Smith ’13 said he was surprised by Liebowitz’s decision, noting that he voted against disbanding the house.
“At our last conversation he seemed to be leaning towards suspending their residential status for one or two years but allowing them to continue to exist as a student organization,” Smith said. “It’s been a long and drawn out process and it’s not the resolution that I had hoped for. I think there were better, more creative solutions.”
Smith said that Liebowitz waited to announce his decision to minimize student pushback.
“He [Liebowitz] was waiting until most students were off campus. Most of the current residents are gone and most of the residents living there next year are gone, so it was a political move to limit negative student reactions.”
But incoming Community Council Chair Luke Carroll Brown ’13.5 defended Liebowitz, calling the timing coincidental.
“The President made it clear that he wanted to speak with as many stake holders in the conversation as possible, and that takes time,” he said.
Brown commended Liebowitz’s decision, and said he was surprised Delta wasn’t disbanded sooner.
“If you look at Prescott’s history, it’s repeat violation after repeat violation,” said Brown. “Social houses play an important role on campus, but with that comes responsibility. Prescott has been consistently mismanaged.”
Furthermore, Brown believes that the decision should as be seen as a validation of other social houses on campus.
“His [Liebowitz’s] letter validates that nearly all the other social houses are doing a good job managing their positions on campus,” he said.
Students who were going to live in Prescott House in the fall participated in room draw and will be living in their assigned housing next year. Prescott House will be used in summer housing draw, managed by the Dean of Students Katy Smith Abbott.
As written in Liebowitz’s letter, “The Office of the Dean of students will solicit ideas [from students] for Prescott House programming and housing options in the future.”
When reached via email, Dean of the College Shirley Collado provided a brief statement commending the work of people involved in the decision making process.
“I fully support the decision and deeply appreciate the thoughtful work that members of Community Council and the Res Life Committee put into this important review and decision.”
(04/10/13 4:44pm)
Four years ago, 35.5 percent of students reported cheating at least once. Ninety-seven percent of students who saw infractions did not report it. With few signs of improvement since 2009, it is clear that cheating, nonexistent peer proctoring and student apathy are still sickening the honor code, putting its long term health in danger.
The Honor Code Review Committee — two faculty members, two students and one member from Dean of the College’s office — is currently gauging the health of the code as they do every four years. The final report is due for release at the end of April.
Touted by tour guides to prospective students and signed by every incoming first-year, the academic honor code is designed to be the foundation behind the integrity of student work.
The most salient feature of the code is peer tutoring, in which both students who cheat and their peers who witness it are “morally obligated” to report the infractions, according to article three of the code.
But the strong data conducted during the last honor code review point to a fundamental problem undermining the code’s strength and effectiveness at the College: students are cheating, but neither faculty nor students themselves are willing to hold them to account. Numerous conversations with students, faculty and administrators have called into question whether the honor code can survive the status quo.
A STINGING REBUKE
This year’s review follows the committee’s contentious conclusions it arrived at the last time it was convened, four years ago. The headline recommendation was to remove language restricting faculty members from being present during exams, essentially killing the most visible feature of honor code.
Dean for Judicial Affairs Karen Guttentag described the privilege of taking un-proctored exams as a three-point agreement between faculty and students.
“The faculty agree not to proctor in exchange for students not cheating and proctoring each other,” said Guttentag, who served on the 2009 council and is heading this year’s review. “If one piece of that is missing, it doesn’t work.”
“We concluded [in 2009] that to a certain extent, neither of the student responsibilities were being help up. We could not in good faith continue this process.”
The recommendation was largely driven by a study conducted in the spring of 2008 by a student in the Economics of Sin, a 400-level class taught by Associate Professor of Economics Jessica Holmes.
Of the 484 students who responded, 35.5 percent admitted giving or receiving unauthorized aid on exams, papers, labs or homework some time during their four years at the College, according to data provided by Holmes.
Among the students who reported violating the honor code, 33 percent reported breaking it more than once a semester.
Student responses to questions on peer proctoring revealed that 63 percent of students witnessed violations more than once a semester. But only three percent of those who witnessed cheating actually reported the violation.
When asked why they did not report the violations, the most common responses were “not my problem/none of my business,” “do not want to be a rat or snitch,” and “so many students do it that it is unfair to single a few out or it would be hypocritical of me.”
“Of course I was dismayed but sadly, not surprised,” wrote Holmes — who served on the 2009 committee — via email. “I am in favor of having an honor code, but I don’t think the current honor code is effective (at least not for exams).”
Holmes expressed that if she served on this year’s committee, she would re-consider making “faculty presence” the default.
“Faculty can elect not to proctor exams if they so choose, but by changing the default, you remove the transaction cost associated with getting special permission to proctor,” she wrote. “This should increase proctoring which would better ensure the academic integrity of the exam environment.”
WHY NOBODY REPORTS CHEATING
Reporting honor code infractions can be a stressful process for both students and faculty. Students who report cheating must go in front of the Academic Judicial Board and face the person they have accused, which has become a challenging deterrent in a such a small community.
“There’s no carrot besides feeling good about your personal integrity, which is important, but hard to institutionalize,” said Bree Baccaglini ’15.5.
Professor of Mathematics Steve Abbott said he understands student trepidation with reporting their peers.
“It takes an emotional toll, there’s no way around that,” he said. “But if a student were to bring a case forward, their responsibility would only be to tell what they know. They don’t have to be a trial lawyer — it really is the system’s job.”
Abbott called the low peer reporting numbers “potentially scary,” and raised the possibility of changing the language in the code to make failing to report a peer cheating an actual violation in itself — similar to criminal complicity laws — instead of a moral infraction.
“If it became a violation for you not to say what you knew, it might be easier for people to report their peers,” he said.
Abbott said that the focus on enforcing the honor code across the faculty is “uneven.”
“There are instances of faculty members handling cases on their own and their reasoning is that their perceived impressions of the judicial process are unpleasant and inefficient and that the system doesn’t work,” he said. “But people who go through the process say it is fair, reasonable and difficult, but that it fundamentally works.”
Abbott chose to go through the Judicial Affairs Committee for all of the infractions he encountered and endorsed it wholeheartedly.
“In every case, things have gone in a positive way,” he said. “It has relieved me of having to be judge and jury.”
Holmes uses her experiences going through the Academic Judicial Board as a reminder to her students of the consequences of cheating.
“I also remind my classes that I have brought several students before the Judicial Academic Judicial Board for cheating and plagiarism over the years, and while it is not a pleasant experience for me, it is something I will do to uphold my responsibility. I warn them [cheating] is just not worth it.”
MAKING UP FOR PAST SGA BLUNDERS
The recommendation to strike the no proctoring clause was never implemented because of strong opposition from the Student Government Association (SGA), who asserted it would not pass the two-thirds student vote needed to make structural changes to the code. This led SGA, Faculty Council and Community Council members to hash out the current language of the code.
“I think both the faculty and the students came away from those meetings thinking they had won, which in essence is the perfect agreement,” said Guttentag.
A major aspect of the agreement was the establishment of a new cabinet post in the SGA dedicated to chairing the Academic Honesty Committee. Aseem Mulji ’11.5 was put in charge of the committee, according to faculty meeting minutes from May 13, 2009.
“He explained their goal to make the honor code more visible, and provide broader discussion of philosophical and practice issues,” read the notes. “Mr. Mulji stressed that students still care about the honor code and are committed to making it work.”
But the Academic Honesty Committee never materialized.
“It needs to be acknowledged that last time, promises were made that did not happen, but I’m hopeful that something really positive can come out of that,” said Guttentag, who praised this year’s SGA leadership. “There is no way that this can be entirely on the faculty and administration. Students need to take on shared responsibility.”
Current SGA President Charlie Arnowitz ’13 is trying to hold up the students’ end of the bargain. While he pointed out that the yearly turnover within the SGA results in promises easily falling through the cracks from one administration to another, he made no excuses for the 2009 SGA blunders.
“We’re going to do what wasn’t done in 2009, and do it better,” he said.
The result would be the Honor Code Student Committee, which Arnowitz is helping to create before he leaves office and will transition responsibilities to his successor.
Arnowitz said the goals of the committee would be to solicit student participation, conduct research on best practices at peer institutions with honor codes and find ways to involve the code into the broader student culture at the College.
“This is totally student driven,” he said. “We need to inculcate the honor code into everyday student life. One hard question we will have to answer is whether an honor code is worth it.”
Arnowitz said he had already received “a lot” of applications for the committee. But the SGA is fighting a pitched battle against what some see as student apathy about the future of the honor code.
On March 7, the SGA sent out an all-student email inviting students to attend a “community forum” surrounding the honor code with Collado, Guttentag and members of the SGA. But when the night came, only two students showed up — the Campus had three people covering the event.
While Arnowitz blamed the low turnout mainly on the remoteness of the Atwater location, he acknowledged the low turn out was “a little troubling.”
Failings on the part of the student body to uphold its end of the honor code — abysmal peer reporting, general student apathy and past SGA blunders — have led some faculty to question whether the honor code is nothing more than a first-year signature.
“I think students themselves have to decide if they want a strong honor code on campus — if so, then they should look for ways to create a student community that is not tolerant of cheating,” wrote Holmes in her email. “Perhaps students are content with current levels of cheating and enforcement?”
“I don’t think that’s the case, but maybe things have changed,” said Arnowitz, sighing. “It’s key to make sure students know what is at stake here.”
One of the main goals of the Honor Code Student Committee will be to show faculty and administrators that things have changed since 2009, according to Arnowitz.
Jackie Yordan ’13, who is serving on the Academic Judicial Board and the Honor Code Review Committee, said the key is to get students talking more about the code. She pointed to the It Happens Here campaign to promote awareness of sexual assault as a roadmap.
“We need to make the honor code as talked about as we have made the issue of sexual assault this year,” said Yordan. “We want the changes to come from students.”
The level of value placed on the honor code runs the gamut depending on the student.
“Having students take responsibility for their work is huge, because if you don’t take responsibility now in college, then why will you take responsibility for your work at any time subsequent?” said Ian Thomas ’13.5, who is on the Academic Judicial Board. “This is your last real opportunity to learn it.”
Baccaglini said that after First-Year Orientation, there isn’t enough follow up.
“I’ll run into tour guides in McCullough saying, ‘This is one of the hallmarks of Middlebury,’ and I’ll walk away saying, ‘Maybe it is, but I don’t know,’” she said. “Theoretically, students take it as an indication of trust from professors, but I’m hesitant to say students really care about it. Who here wakes up every day saying, ‘I’m so glad I go to a school with an honor code!’ Nobody.”
But Baccaglini said that both students and the College have a long-term interest in the code.
“I think Middlebury has an investment in keeping [the honor code] and that students, at least on an abstract level, do as well,” she said. “Every time I sign a test, I’m not bathed in the light of honor, but I think that students feel it’s a valuable part of our experience.”
POISONING THE WELL OF TRUST
Guttentag said that one of her primary goals this time around is to elucidate what she called “the real tangible costs of my cheating on you.” One tangible result is the loss of some faculty members’ trust in students.
“Many students assume that because of the honor code, professors have to inherently trust them,” said Guttentag. “But that’s not the way trust works.”
Abbott, the math professor who serves on the Honor Code Review Committee, was tapped to serve on the current committee because of what he described as “my unusually high number of encounters with [Guttentag] in the last two or three years.”
He estimated that he has had to bring five accusations of cheating to the judicial board over the past two or three years. While Abbott stressed that his experiences are not the norm among his colleagues, he acknowledged that the infractions have changed the way he grades.
“I do now approach grading in a mindset that’s more suspicious than I used to be,” he said. “And it doesn’t feel good.
“I have had experiences where I will see a solution by a student that surprised me in its elegance and ingenuity and the natural reaction to that as a professor is a sense of elation at the success of the student. Now that has to be filtered through a lens of, ‘Is this a real event based on this person arriving at a point of insight or did something improper happen to produce it?’”
Abbott is also attacking the notion some people at the College hold that cheaters are “only hurting themselves.”
“The freedom to think up the best possible assignment is dependent on the honor code working in some kind of robust way,” he said. “When you get out of that mode and start second-guessing whether or not the student’s approach to an assignment is an honest one, then you’ve given up something. Everybody loses.”
While Abbott is concerned about the vitality of the code, he repeatedly stressed his optimism in a bright future.
“Have I lost the rose-colored glasses? Yeah. But I don’t think we’re in a crisis. […] I haven’t gotten the feeling that we’re on some precipice.”
CHANGING PEDAGOGY
The affect cheating has had on faculty already depends greatly on whom you talk with. But even the most ardent faculty supporters of the honor code said they’ve changed their pedagogy in response to cheating.
“I’ve been a supporter of the honor code for decades,” said Charles A. Dana Professor of Mathematics John Emerson. “I’m happy to say that it’s been a very long time since I’ve had a plagiarizing issue with my students.”
Emerson’s perspectives come from a long involvement with the code, including stints as the chair of the Judicial Review Board and as the head of the Academic Judicial Board in the past. He said the effectiveness of the code can be enhanced by drawing attention to the importance of the Middlebury Honor System.
“It can be very constructive for any faculty member to take a few minutes at the beginning of a course to explain the relevance of the honor code as it applies to a particular course,” he said.
While Emerson always advises students that he will return to the classroom halfway through exams to respond to questions or provide clarification, he does not support making proctoring exams the default.
“Proctoring would change the psychology of the classroom,” he said. “My concern is that you don’t want to create a game where students try to cheat by outsmarting the teachers.”
Despite his unwavering support for the honor code, Emerson said that over the years he has adjusted his pedagogy by limiting the use of take-home exams.
“The reason I don’t offer take-home exams is because good people who care about honesty can still cheat if they are under enough pressure,” he said. “You get sick or you have a fight with your girlfriend and you still need to take that exam tomorrow and you are distracted and you panic.”
All of the faculty members interviewed recognized the immense pressure many of their students were under to perform at high levels and the importance of limiting situations where students might be tempted to cheat.
For example, Abbott refuses to give self-scheduled exams for multi-sectional calculus because of what he called math’s “ability to produce anxiety.”
But Guttentag said that even professors accounting for these situations is a cost of cheating.
“Instead of faculty saying, ‘What is the most engaging, creative way I can teach this material?’ they have to say, ‘How can I create a cheat-proof exam?’” she said. “You’re not getting the best pedagogy from your professors.”
IS PROCTORING THE ONLY ANSWER?
The answer — almost unequivocally — is no. For now.
“I don’t want to support a shift in the climate that surrounds an honor system,” said Emerson, who proctored students during his graduate years at Cornell University. “That was definitely a more negative climate than is the case here at Middlebury in my classroom when my students are taking tests. I treat students with respect and I think they know intuitively that I don’t assume that they want to cheat.”
Abbott said that while the code isn’t functioning at the highest level, restricting it would only make things worse.
“It really boils down to a sense that the honor code gets stronger when it’s put to use,” he said. “The best way to infuse it with meaning is to continue to invoke it by not proctoring. I think we’re better putting it to use than restricting it due to abuse.”
Administrators, faculty and students all agreed that dismantling the academic honor code would have negative consequences.
“Quite a bit would be lost without an academic honor code,” said Joseph Flaherty ’15. “You would lose the contract between students and faculty that says, ‘We’re going to treat our academic work with honesty and integrity.’”
“The culture would suffer for it,” said Guttentag. “I think the majority of students are behaving honorably and that the honor code is a point of pride for them.”
She said the administration is wary of creating a police state pitting students versus the administration.
“That’s not the kind of culture we want to have here and the relationships we hope to foster,” she said.
But at the end of the day, the health and fate of the honor code will rest with the students, something Arnowitz is acutely aware of.
“If the faculty and administration see students really making an honest effort in a way that is going to concretely continue next year, we will buy ourselves a couple years,” said Arnowitz. “But that by no means ensures that when I come back for a reunion in five years, the honor code will still be here.”
(04/10/13 1:48pm)
I wrote this week’s honor code story while sitting in the lobby of a hotel on baseball’s spring training trip in Tucson, Ariz. As players made their way to and from dinner, I casually polled the 20-or-so who asked me what I was doing about their thoughts on Middlebury’s honor code.
“What honor code?” said one player. “It’s a total joke.”
The overwhelming majority concurred that the honor code was nothing more than a piece of paper they signed and then forgot about. While my straw poll — white, male athletes — is by no means representative of the student body as a whole, the responses confirmed the unspoken stench of student apathy I got while reporting on this story.
The reverence for the code by some has created a fiscal cliff of anxiety over what a Middlebury with no honor code would look like. But just as sequestration has turned out to be worse in theory than in reality, the same might be true with the code. If we woke up tomorrow without an honor code, would something be unalterably different?
From talking with Karen Guttentag, the majority of cheaters these days are not going through elaborate schemes of programming calculators or writing formulas on the inside of water bottle labels to gain an advantage. Most cheaters do not go into exams thinking they will end up cheating. It is the cumulative weight of multiple pressures that makes kids crack. As I heard over and over again, cheaters are often “good kids who make a mistake.” So in many senses, the presence of a proctor in a test may deter a lot of exam infractions.
Middlebury students in 2013 are not unscrupulous compared to their peers in the 1960s when the honor code was first instated. But the pressures students face today are undoubtedly more intense, leading many into a lose-lose situation of either cheating or falling short of expectation.
But the honor code has become so sacrosanct, that even the thought of having a professor sitting in an exam room is blaspheme. But what if the honor code isn’t fundamentally working?
Students are cheating, but nobody wants to step up to the plate. The code is only as good as the students upholding it, which begs the question: is the honor code just something proudly peddled by tour guides and nostalgically pined by alumni?
If so, then something needs to change.
The student body is very reactionary by nature. Asking students to come discuss the future of the honor code was fruitless — two students showed up, while three Campus reporters, two faculty members and two administrators attended. Shirley Collado, Karen Guttentag and the rest of the administration work hard to avoid an us-versus-them mentality between students and Old Chapel. They want to see the student body show some gumption and try to fix the code from the inside out.
But in this case, I don’t see students changing course and all of a sudden caring about the future of the code, despite Charlie Arnowitz’s best effort. If the Honor Code Student Committee can’t drum up student interest, maybe they should instate a pilot program of faculty proctoring for the 2013-2014 academic year. At the end of next year, task the student committee, community council and faculty council with deciding the fate of the honor code. Having one full year of proctoring would put a face on what an academic community without an honor code would look like. More importantly, it would garner the student respect and involvement that the conversation over the long-term health of the honor code deserves.
KYLE FINCK '14 is an investigative editor from Manhattan, N.Y.
The Campus' editorial board commented on the honor code earlier in the staff editorial of the March 13 issue.
(02/27/13 11:20pm)
Mackenzie Stewart ’13 returned from a semester abroad in Valparaiso, Chile disappointed and looking for answers. Student strikes, communication issues among staff and a lackluster program director led her to try to change the program for future students.
“The girls who went to Chile and I took a long time to layout all of our experiences and our criticism, but got no feedback,” she said. “The program was a huge mess.”
Stewart met with Vice President of Language Schools Michael Geisler and even President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz to express her concerns, but still received no response.
It took the cumulative effect of Stewart’s parents withholding donations and a similar threat from a second family before Geisler acknowledged that the concerns had been brought to the program director’s attention.
“It was six months of nothing,” she said.
Stewart’s abroad experience is certainly extreme. But through numerous interviews, common fundamental concerns surfaced about the study abroad experience of future students.
Middlebury vs. Other Programs
It is widely accepted by both students and faculty members that the 15 Middlebury Schools Abroad are far more academically rigorous than the 40 or more externally sponsored programs to which the College sends students.
“Non-Middlebury programs expect less — it’s as easy as that,” said Ted Netland ’14, who spent the fall at a Middlebury program in Bordeaux, France. “It seems from visiting friends across Europe who studied at non-Middlebury programs that they had it easier [academically].”
But Julia Deutsch ’13 — who studied in Kunming, China — pointed out that the Middlebury programs are all non-English speaking, which makes them naturally more challenging.
“It’s such a hard language [Mandarin] that if you really want to become fluent you will have to spend a certain amount of time studying — there just isn’t really a way around that,” she wrote in an email.
Acting Dean of International Programs and A. Barton Hepburn Professor of History Paul Monod said that the uneven academic playing field between abroad programs is a concern.
“It’s very difficult to level the academic playing field,” he said.
Studying abroad in Australia has become a specific hotbed of criticism from both faculty and some students. Monod said that the study abroad office used to only allow biology and other specific science majors — areas of study in which the country is very strong — to go to Australia. But after interminable student complaints, the restriction was lifted.
One of the problems is that many of the popular programs — such as Australia — offer a wide range of courses, which include many challenging courses, but more often many easy ones.
“Usually, it isn’t hard to find the easy classes,” he said. “We can limit the programs, but we can’t limit the choices.”
One way the College combats the academic disparity is by not, in most cases, extending financial aid to students studying abroad at non-Middlebury programs.
“If a student goes to Australia and decides to waste their time, they’re not wasting my money or your money, they’re wasting their own money,” Monod said.
Another way Monod and his office try to combat the differences is by constantly monitoring externally sponsored study abroad programs.
“If we get a kid who goes abroad with a C average and get’s straight A’s, that’s going to be something that makes us suspicious of a program,” he said. “We have to be very vigilant, and every year we are looking for the weak programs.”
For students who go on SIT (School for International Training) programs and complete final projects, their work is graded by both professors abroad and a College professor.
Integrating faculty into the process is crucial to ensuring high academic standards abroad, according to Monod.
“Faculty need to be more involved,” he said. “If a student comes back and tells their adviser that they didn’t do any work and got straight A’s, we need to know about that.”
But Monod said that there has been improvement in the academic disparity over his tenure at the College.
“When I first got here, it was generally understood that if you went abroad, your GPA would go up. Now it’s thought that if you go abroad, your GPA is going to go down,” he said.
Despite the widely-held belief that studying abroad at a non-Middlebury program is an easy GPA boost, students studying abroad on average got within a third of a grade of what they get at the College, according to studies done by Monod’s department.
But even with the study abroad office’s best efforts, Monod concedes that there is only so much he can do, crafting the problem as a student-choice issue.
“A student who chooses an easy program is saying, ‘I’m not good enough to go to a program that is more demanding,’” he said. “It’s fundamentally sad.”
But Vivian Cowan ’14, who spent the fall semester in Prague, Czech Republic, argued that a less academically rigorous schedule opened up different possibilities.
“The teachers didn’t expect much because a lot of the other students were taking their classes for pass/fail,” she said. “Being able to travel without the stress of worrying about doing work at a hostel or scrambling to find Wi-Fi to submit an essay allowed us to travel more.”
A unique aspect of the College’s abroad programs is that all abroad grades transfer in full. Many institutions simply put “study abroad” without grades, while others put the courses taken abroad on student transcripts but don’t factor them into cumulative GPA.
“We go the whole way here,” said Monod. “It makes us different, but it makes for a more meaningful experience.”
But Stewart said that what makes the College’s programs “different” also makes the academic disparity more important.
“It’s crazy that someone who goes to New Zealand or Prague isn’t doing any work, and you’re in a non-English speaking country doing a lot of work, but both programs grades transfer and are weighed equally,” said Stewart, whose final paper in Chile was 56 pages long. “The equity in the work of a common standard isn’t there.”
Even Liebowitz joined the discussion in a recent interview published in Middlebury Magazine, acknowledging the “mixed emotions” among students about the “potentially frustrating” experience abroad.
“It’s not what you see in the movies: junior-year abroad in Paris, enjoying the finer parts of French culture while still studying in English,” he said in the interview. “For some, the trade-off can be the enjoyment factor. We’re wrestling with this feedback we’re getting from our students.
“They typically attain a far greater degree of linguistic growth and competency than students in other programs, but a number of them, to be honest, will say that their time abroad is not as fun as others.”
Study Abroad Evaluations
When Netland arrived in Bordeaux, he found a different picture than that painted for him by the students he spoke with in a group meeting organized by the study abroad office prior to his departure.
“[The pre-departure meeting] felt censored, like it was run through the administration,” he said. “It didn’t seem that we got to hear all of the experiences, especially the ups and downs.”
An inherent problem with past students who give testimonials or meet with perspective students through the study abroad office is that their experiences are usually all positive.
“The problem is that a student who had a bad time abroad usually isn’t willing to come in and talk to a bunch of perspective students,” said Monod.
While Stewart said that kids need “a fuller picture” of studying abroad, she decided not to give her testimonial to perspective students.
“I didn’t want to go in there and complain,” she said.
Monod agreed that disseminating unbiased information from past students to current perspective students is a challenge.
“We take student evaluations seriously,” he said. “But we need to do more to get information out there to perspective students planning on going abroad.”
Each returning student is given the opportunity to fill out an abroad evaluation, but in many cases, that information never reaches students looking to follow in their footsteps.
For Middlebury programs, the evaluations are on the specific schools’ websites. But upon further investigation, in the area dedicated to “what advice would you give to future participants about the program?” only a fraction of the responses are viewable.
Stewart said that her evaluation was posted on the study abroad website, but that “a lot” of her responses were omitted.
Evaluations on non-Middlebury programs are housed on an external website called “abroad101.” The site has a swath of anonymous student reviews, but lacks any categorization by country.
Could Middkid.com be the Answer?
One possible avenue for circulating anonymous study abroad evaluations is through middkid.com, which has published anonymous course evaluations on their website for the past 13 years.
“Middkid.com is an ideal place for evaluations of schools abroad to be made public,” wrote the site’s campus manager, Thomas Bryenton ’13 in an email. “It’s a terrific idea.”
But Bryenton cautioned that it would take time to implement any new section to the website.
“We recently finished a complete overhaul of the site, so going back in to set up these changes is going to take time,” he wrote. “Realistically, a section of the site devoted to study abroad is still a couple months away.”
Monod cautioned that anonymous study abroad evaluations on middkid.com might give students a slanted picture.
“If that kid who hated their abroad evaluation gets on [middkid.com] and puts a blistering report online, it can give a very wrong impression,” he said.
Both Netland and Stewart said they would hypothetically share their experiences if middkid.com dedicated a section to study abroad evaluations.
“I love the idea of some kind of candid, anonymous review board,” he said. “I would be willing to tell kids exactly my experience, and if that is an online forum, then so be it.”
Read a response by Vice President for Language Schools, Schools Abroad and Graduate Programs MICHAEL E. GEISLER.