Use the fields below to perform an advanced search of The Middlebury Campus's archives. This will return articles, images, and multimedia relevant to your query.
2 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(11/09/17 12:18am)
Middlebury College is a truly strange and absurd place when it comes to campus politics. To the outside world — including potential students abroad, first-year and transfer students — Middlebury is marketed as this progressive, liberal, environmentally-friendly, socially-aware place. And once you get here, it is very easy to continue to believe in this image — to just get wrapped up in school and the beautiful surroundings and ignore everything else that is going on around you. I had heard people say that Middlebury College is a bubble, and yes, it truly is.
Obviously, the college and its administration don’t exactly make it easy to engage with politics on campus. My first weeks here were pure, ignorant bliss; the Early Arrival Orientation and the Exchange/Transfer MiddView were completely apolitical. I had heard about the Charles Murray protests back home but I did not understand what they actually meant for the college community. I came here and no one told me much; it was just a “thing” that happened last spring, talked about like Voldemort is talked about by wizards in the Harry Potter universe.
And in the past few weeks it has become even more evident to me that students cannot rely on the college to address issues and to mobilize against racism. Cryptic emails are being sent out days after things actually happen — and can only be decoded when you read the Campus or the WRMC blog. The college is incredibly good at hiding everything under a mantle of rural-environmentally-friendly-progressive-granola-bliss and makes it very easy for students not to engage.
However, there must be something seriously wrong with a community if several blatantly racist incidents transpire on and around campus and new students still don’t know what is happening, are just going on with their lives, and are not aware or not willing to engage. I just don’t understand why more people are not angry and shocked, and why it is so easy for the white majority of this campus not to care or not to know. When you choose to study at a college like Middlebury for four years, shouldn’t you be aware that it is your responsibility to care and engage?
We were literally walking by huge posters titled WANTED: ADDIS FOR THE CRIME OF BEING BLACK AT MIDDLEBURY for several days in the dining hall. The Campus is full of articles and opinion pieces about racial profiling and other racist incidents. And yet, I don’t hear anyone talking about it in the dining halls. And when several buildings were sprayed with graffiti, my exchange student friends were still surprised that there are people here who are so unhappy, frustrated and angry that they would do something like that.
The fact, though, is that not everyone is privileged enough to not know. If you experience racism, classism and discrimination, it is impossible to continue living in happy ignorance and shy away from subjects that make you uncomfortable. It must be so frustrating to go to this college for four years, continuously surrounded by people who are just not willing to pop their own bubble of bliss.
As one of my friends said, some people will leave this institution as educated liberals without having had to engage with racism and their own privilege even once because this campus is so white and so apolitical. I chose Middlebury for my exchange because I wanted to go to a university that leads progressive political discourses and because I wanted a “Stückchen heile Welt” — a small piece of an intact world for a year. It didn’t occur to me that I couldn’t really have both at the same time. People, who have chosen to go to this college to receive a liberal education, should realize this too.
(09/27/17 11:04pm)
Looking at the European trends, the results of the German election should not have come as a shock. But for most Germans who pride themselves in the unique way in which their country has dealt with its past, Sunday marks a break in modern German history. For the first time since the end of World War II, openly racist and right-extreme politicians will be members of our parliament. Almost a hundred of them will be given time, money and a platform to speak about their nationalist vision of Germany.
Germany’s post-war history has been shaped by the mantra of nie wieder (never again). Nie wieder Nazis, nie wieder Deutschland. And while these phrases have been drummed into us Germans over and over, while we have written them down and have screamed them at protests, Germany has not actually spent much time contemplating what racism and xenophobia look like in a non-nationalsocialist context. Germans are fast to condemn anything that resembles the nationalsocialist ideology of the Third Reich but have a hard time grasping that everyday racism, both in the form of outright violence and micro aggressions, is the reality for many people in our country.
We need to ask ourselves what kind of society we are, when anger and frustration is automatically channeled into racist sentiments and actions by so many people. We need to ask ourselves, why this is a connection that, in a country with our history, still makes so much sense to people.
What we now need is a discourse about what racism actually means. We need to shift our conversation from one centered around xenophobia and hate against “the other” to a conversation which shows that the hate is being directed against the people among us, people who are part of our country. We don’t live in a homogenous post-war society anymore in which families negotiate their own guilt of participating in the Nazi regime. We live in a diverse society of people with many different backgrounds and it is time for the public to finally acknowledge this and broaden its definition of racism and bigotry.
Many politicians have now begun to their intention to close “the right gap” that they think the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has taken advantage of. This is exactly the wrong idea. The traditional parties cannot allow themselves to be pushed to the right. Rather, they must counter the far-right sentiments with an inclusive and social rhetoric without drifting into the language of the right-nationalists. They have to treat the refugee crisis as what it is: A logistical, bureaucratic challenge among many challenges in Germany, a humanitarian crisis outside of Germany.
For Chancellor Merkel and the Christian Democrats this means newly defining and articulating what their party stands for. It means to take the risk of forming a coalition with the Liberals and the Greens, two parties hugely supported by young voters, and letting these parties give new impulses for problem solutions.
For the Social Democrats and the Left Party in the opposition, this election period offers a unique opportunity. It is on them to develop strategies of a real socialism that addresses the fears and insecurities of some Germans and to open the conversation around the Germans’ problem with their identity as a nation. It will be on them to offer real social perspectives without making immigrants and refugees into scapegoats.
Meanwhile, German citizens that consider themselves to be progressive and anti-racist should consider this election as the final wake-up call, as their call to action. This means beginning to self-reflect their maybe rusty understanding of racism. It means to also look critically into the more recent past. But, most important of all, it means being willing to have difficult conversations with families, colleagues, neighbors and fellow Germans about what an inclusive, anti-racist and just future for Germany looks like.
Linh Mueller is an exchange student from Hanover, Germany.