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(05/09/19 9:53am)
As this semester comes to an end, the college bookstore has taken over MiddBooks, a book-trading website set up by students Pete Palumbo ’20 and Marty Williams ’20 at the beginning of this academic year to facilitate peer-to-peer exchange after the bookstore stopped carrying books.
The MiddBooks website, accessible at go/middbooks, is entirely free for both buyers and sellers. It functions as a platform for individual classified ads, similar to the Free & For Sale Facebook page that many students have used to buy and sell books in the past. The key difference is that MiddBooks is organized by academic subject. To make a post, students can click on the appropriate subject and leave a comment with the information for the book they want to sell. MiddBooks does not facilitate online payments, so students will be expected to decide on fair prices and exchange money among themselves.
Bookstore Manager Erin Jones-Poppe initially reached out to MiddBooks earlier this year to ask about the future of the site. She had been recommending MiddBooks to students trying to sell books that were not being accepted by the official buyback program, but she wanted to talk more about how the bookstore could promote and support MiddBooks as a resource for students looking to buy books.
In fact, Palumbo had been considering letting MiddBooks die after its slow start last fall, when the books posted on the site vastly outweighed the number of sales.
When Jones-Poppe met with Palumbo and John Schurer ’21, who joined MiddBooks to help with marketing this J-term, they decided that the best option for MiddBooks would be absorption by the bookstore, since the bookstore can offer increased publicity and a free website on which MiddBooks can operate. Palumbo self-financed the previous MiddBooks website, middbooks.com, so the bookstore reimbursed him for the payments he had made for the domain.
“By being assumed by the bookstore, we’re able to email the whole school at once, link through the school’s website, maintain our free status indefinitely and also have a clear path after I graduate as far as who takes over the mantle,” said Palumbo, who has managed the MiddBooks site largely on his own since his co-founder went abroad this Winter Term.
To help students see which of their books are in demand, MiddBooks will be posting the bookstore’s official spreadsheet that lists required texts for the coming semester. But not every required book will make it onto the spreadsheet.
“Not every professor submits the page back in time in order for the bookstore to know what textbooks they’re using, so even if you don’t see your textbook on there, it’s still probably worth your time to post it anyway,” Palumbo said.
The bookstore also hosts a book buyback program operated by MBS Direct, their online bookselling partner, but MBS Direct does not accept all books for buyback. And MiddBooks may prove to be a better option for student sellers if buyers on campus are willing to pay more for quick, in-person book exchange than MBS Direct can offer for buybacks.
Palumbo points out that MiddBooks is also the more environmentally friendly and carbon neutral option, since no shipping has to be involved when a book is going “from Battell to Pearsons.”
(10/11/18 9:59am)
Mail center employees processed almost 4,000 more packages this September than they processed in September 2017.
The number of packages that the mail center receives has grown steadily over the past decade. Yearly totals were in the fifty-thousands from 2009 to 2012, and then increased in 2013 to approximately 70,000 packages — a 24 percent jump. Between 2014 and 2017, totals climbed from about 80,000 to roughly 89,000. If this September is any indication, the 2018 annual total will easily surpass 90,000 packages.
Many Middlebury students, including some student mail center employees, attribute this semester’s surge in packages to the bookstore’s decision to contract with online bookseller MBS Direct instead of selling books in the physical store.
Jacki Galenkamp, the mail center supervisor, agreed that the influx of packages this September was partially due to an increased number of online book orders.
[poll id="1" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]
“We were getting quite a few books that were meant for the bookstore,” she said. All United States Postal Service (USPS) shipments arrive at the mail center, Galenkamp explained, and since most books ordered after the start of the school year were sent through USPS, the mail center bore the brunt of the work.
“We processed them for about two weeks maximum and then I ended up calling the post office and having them sort out what was addressed to 58 Hepburn, the bookstore’s address,” Galenkamp said.
But Galenkamp does not believe the bookstore is solely responsible.
“I can’t say with any kind of certainty say how much the bookstore affected us,” she said. “It definitely did affect the number, but I don’t know how much.”
All MBS Direct packages were delivered by USPS, and USPS packages accounted for only about 40 percent of this September’s 4,000-package increase. Because the bookstore no longer sells physical books on campus, students have started buying nearly all of their books online, whether from MBS Direct, Amazon or other sites.
“People order from ThriftBooks, Book Depository, Amazon rentals. There are so many companies,” said Nicole Duquette, one of the mail center’s two full-time mail clerks.
[pullquote speaker="Rachael Salerno '18.5" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]The transition from a physical bookstore to the online bookstore just means that everyone and their mother’s uncle is trying to get their books from the mail center.[/pullquote]
“The transition from a physical bookstore to the online bookstore just means that everyone and their mother’s uncle is trying to get their books from the mail center,” joked Rachael Salerno ’18.5, a mail center employee.
The surge of packages made the last month a challenging time for mail center employees.
“During September we were working seven days a week, we were staying late, we never closed the window until the last person was helped,” Galenkamp said. “And then after we closed we would stay for an hour, two hours, as late as our personal lives would allow.”
According to Galenkamp, employees were so swamped on some nights that they were unable to process everything despite staying late after work.
“It was really hard for us to walk out the doors without having finished everything, and we would come in early the next day. That was a little bit of a struggle.”
The number of packages also made it harder for employees to find specific items during peak pickup times between regular morning classes.
“We don’t want it to be a long and arduous process for students, but with the number of packages that are there all the time, it’s been increasingly difficult to find the number of packages right away,” said Mattea Preece ’19, another student employee.
“It’s really hard because you’re trying to keep the students as happy as possible. Obviously you want to find each package, but sometimes you have to disappoint one student,” Preece said.
For the most part, students were patient during the September package rush.
“Students went out of their way to thank us and we really appreciate that,” Galenkamp said. “We worked non-stop, leaving at the end of the day and working weekends, and students were really understanding.”
“The good times definitely outweigh those bad and awkward encounters that you have,” Preece said. “I just think a lot of students aren’t used to having to wait for their packages. I have had a few students be rude to me, and I’ve heard stories from other employees as well, but I understand why people are frustrated.”
Students can help the mail center function quickly and efficiently by respecting the center’s policies.
“One of the biggest things that students can do is not come down until they get an email from the mail center saying that their package has arrived,” Galenkamp said. “It wastes their time because they’re waiting in line, it wastes our time because we have to stop processing in order to tell them that their package hasn’t been processed yet.”
Galenkamp said it could be helpful for professors to consider switching to e-books, and employees have ideas for ways to redesign the mail center to maximize efficiency.
“It would probably speed up the lines so much more if we had an extra window or if they just expanded the counter space. Then we could all be working together to make sure that we got the lines cut down,” Preece said.
Galenkamp’s ideal mail center would be bigger and able to accommodate oversized items with a larger window. However, she is unsure if it would be cost-effective to renovate the center only to cope with the three busiest weeks each year.
“If you could convince the town to put in a Target, that would help us a lot,” Galenkamp laughed.
(09/27/18 10:00am)
MiddBooks, a new website that allows Middlebury students to buy and sell textbooks from and to their peers on campus, launched earlier this semester. Pete Palumbo ’20 and Marty Williams ’20 founded the site to help students find books at affordable prices.
Since the physical college bookstore stopped selling books, the college switched to MBS Direct, a virtual bookseller. Palumbo got the idea for MiddBooks after a frustrating online search for his course texts.
“Buying books for this semester, I looked online and the shipping costs kind of bummed me out,” Palumbo said.
MBS Direct charges shipping on all orders under $59, and their prices are not generally lower than those offered on Amazon.
MiddBooks aims to reduce what students pay for their course materials while simultaneously giving a financial boost to students with books to sell, especially graduating seniors who have accumulated a large collection of books.
“We looked at the online book buyback program, and it didn’t really give much money back relative to the initial cost of the books,” Palumbo said.
In the past, some students have used Facebook groups or traded books with friends to bypass the official buyback program. Palumbo pointed out that a larger-scale platform is needed to accommodate a huge supply of books and an unmet demand.
“There’s like 55 course subjects,” Palumbo said, “Even if you figure one book for each major, that’s 55 books. MiddBooks is a better, centralized option.”
MiddBooks had a modest beginning this fall. 45 books were posted, but only four were successfully purchased. The website did not go live until Sept. 2, when many students had already ordered their books.
Another issue may have been the site’s auction format. Auctions can be advantageous to sellers, but students are not likely to wait for auctions to finish—or to risk not getting their books at all—when they are already being assigned readings. MiddBooks plans to use only immediate transactions in the future.
The spring semester will likely bring more business, since many of the books already posted on the site are for classes only offered in the second half of the school year.
Palumbo and Williams financed the website with money left over from a MiddChallenge grant awarded by the Center for Creativity, Innovation, and Social Entrepreneurship. They won the grant with a proposal for a barber booking platform called ManeStyle, but they folded that venture over the summer. Because they were able to direct their remaining funds towards MiddBooks, they do not need the new business to turn a profit—yet.
Students can currently sell books on MiddBooks at no cost, and there is no fee added to purchases.
In the future, MiddBooks will have to be financially sustainable in order to continue operating. Palumbo and Williams hope to expand a broader version of the platform, which they will call Book Cadet, to other colleges and universities. On Book Cadet, students would have to pay a small fee to post books for sale. They hope to launch the service at the University of Vermont this spring.
(09/13/18 9:57am)
Students from the College Republicans, the College Democrats and the Middlebury chapter of Young Americans for Freedom installed a memorial of approximately 3,000 flags on Monday night to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 in front of Davis Family Library.
Each flag planted represents each victim of the 9/11 attacks.
Carter Massengill ’20, co-founder and co-chairman of Middlebury’s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), initiated the project. Newly founded last fall, YAF is under the umbrella of the Young America’s Foundation, an organization for conservative youth.
Massengill wanted Middlebury to participate in the Never Forget Project initiative of Young America’s Foundation.
“Unfortunately, a lot of students now, we’re at the age where we didn’t have a direct experience with what happened, it was mainly our parents,” Massengill said. “So I think it’s important to remember that day.”
“I think the most beautiful part about that day, obviously it was a tragedy, but we had people from such diverse backgrounds jumping in and helping,” he added.
“After those attacks, the message was ‘united we stand.’ I think that’s a very important message for us today, both in our country and on a campus like Middlebury’s.”
When the College Republicans and Democrats set up a similar memorial in 2013, a Native American woman visiting Middlebury and several Middlebury students pulled up the flags that had been stuck in the ground outside Mead Chapel, claiming the flags were on sacred Abenaki burial ground. The Nulhegan Abenaki tribe chief Don Stevens later expressed his disapproval of the protest and said that the protesters had not acted with the tribe’s knowledge or approval.
The tradition was not resumed until Young Americans for Freedom became an official student organization.
“Our main goal on campus is to de-stigmatize conservatism, to promote free speech at the same time and to come together as a group of people who share similar opinions and then discuss those opinions in an educated and civil way, with opposing opinions as well,” Massengill said.
The memorial’s organizers coordinated with Derek Doucet of the Student Activities Office and Middlebury Facilities to agree on a location for the installation. They also reached out to both the College Democrats and the College Republicans for support.
Lachlan Pinney ’21.5, a member of the College Democrats, was out in the rain to help set up the memorial, but clarified that he is not a member of Young Americans for Freedom. He hesitated when he first got the email from them, citing the conservative status of YAF as the reason. He decided to attend anyway.
“I just felt like this necessarily needs to transcend that partisanship,” Pinney said, “Ultimately, as I said, it’s just the right thing to do, so I came out to do it.”
(11/09/17 12:52am)
Last week, the Middlebury board of trustees approved a $4.5 million budget for the construction of a temporary building on the south side of the parking lot behind Johnson Memorial Building.
For twelve years, the building will house the computer science department. It will also provide office space to faculty and staff while the college updates Munroe and Warner Halls to improve accessibility and safety and resolve mechanical and environmental issues.
McLeod Kredell Architects, a firm on Frog Hollow Alley in Middlebury, will design the building. The firm is run by John McLeod, assistant professor of architecture, and Stephen Kredell, who teaches at Norwich University.
If the board of trustees approves the firm’s design in January, construction will begin in June 2018. Construction is expected to last approximately a year, so the building will open in the fall of 2019.
“The initial plan is that the computer science department will move in and occupy one floor, and the other floor will be open office space that will be used by a couple of departments,” McLeod said.
One reason for the construction of the new building is an increased demand for space for the college’s science programs.
“If the size of required courses continues to increase and the department keeps expanding, then I think [space] could become an issue. It’s my understanding that part of the reason for the new computer science building is because other science departments need more lab space that is currently being used as a computer science lab room,” said Tricia Nelsen ’19, a computer science major.
The new building’s design will fulfill all the computer science department’s operational requirements.
“We’ve already worked closely with the folks in the computer science department to get a sense of what their needs are and we’re working to accommodate all their requests,” McLeod said.
“All of the computer science department’s spaces will be in there, including classrooms, teaching labs, research labs, faculty offices and administrative offices, meeting spaces, open study spaces, a space that’s going to double as a seminar room and a student lounge, and a common area,” McLeod added.
As the architects design this temporary building, they are aiming to be as energy efficient as possible. They will have to meet the Vermont energy code, but they hope to surpass it.
“If you look at the size and shape of the building before you look at technological systems, if you know where the sun is and where trees are, you can minimize the work that the building’s systems have to do for heating and cooling. If you’re thoughtful about size and shape, you can get a lot of value right there,” McLeod said.
The building’s frame will be made by a company that manufactures steel to architects’ specifications so they can erect their buildings quickly.
“The nice thing about steel is that it has a very high recycled content, so in many ways steel is an environmentally conscious building material. And then of course steel can be recycled as well,” McLeod said.
The new building will be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). McLeod Kredell Architects has worked with the college in the past to bring other buildings up to ADA standards. “I think, without exception, all the renovations we’ve done have been to bring buildings up to compliance. It’s definitely a priority of the college and it’s also just the right thing to do,” McLeod said.
The final step in the building’s planning process will be approval by the town of Middlebury’s design advisory committee and its design review board.
“A couple of sites were ruled out by the board because they thought they were too close to town neighborhoods. They’re just trying to be thoughtful about [where they put the building],” McLeod said. “It’s part of being a good neighbor and being considerate and respectful of the community.”
(09/21/17 12:11am)
The students behind GrilleMe, Middlebury’s late-night Grille delivery service, are reducing delivery wait time, establishing consistent year-long hours of operation and expanding their business to four new colleges.
“There’s a huge dormant demand for Grille delivery, so we’re trying to make it a little more consistent,” said Cameron Dewey ’18, who co-founded GrilleMe last year.
Dewey, alongside co-founders Andrew Cadienhead ’18 and Andrew Jung ’17, will try to capitalize on the desire for late night food by maintaining their delivery service throughout the year. “There’s a huge dormant demand for Grille delivery, so we’re trying to make it a little more consistent,” Dewey said.
Their main goal for this school year is to expedite deliveries and to decrease customers’ waiting time by hiring employees who can deliver food by car instead of on foot.
In addition to making their service faster, Dewey and Cadienhead have revamped their mobile website, grilleme.com, for an easier user experience. “It’s completely new,” Dewey said. “We spent a lot of time getting that up to speed.”
GrilleMe’s efforts to expedite service and improve customers’ online experiences were in response to complaints the founders received last year.
“I think the first year was pretty choppy just because there are so many things you can’t predict when you first start up,” Cadienhead said.
As the organization launches their improved service, they hope to continue to improve their business.
“We are very open to people telling us their complaints about the service,” Dewey said.
While Cadienhead directs GrilleMe’s operations at Middlebury, Dewey will manage the intercollegiate expansion of UniDel, the official company that he, Cadienhead and Jung have founded. This year, UniDel will begin facilitating food delivery services at Colby, Amherst, Wesleyan, and Washington and Lee.
“It’s basically the same exact company at each different school,” Dewey said. “We’re giving them the web platform, we’re giving them our marketing materials, and we’re giving them guidance because in some of the schools you need to fill out an application to run a student business.”
GrilleMe has worked at Middlebury, but it is unclear whether UniDel’s four new delivery services will be profitable.
“The risk is on us,” said Cadienhead. “We pay [employees] a minimum salary no matter what just to incentivize work, even when they’re not seeing results right away.”
Still, if the fledgling businesses at the other colleges are able to cooperate effectively with food services, they should make enough money to be self-sustaining and boost business for the restaurants whose food they deliver.
“Before [GrilleMe] came along, the Grille was doing fine, but we’ve increased their revenue a lot. We account for between a third and half of their business now,” Dewey said. “At the end of the day, we help them as much as they help us, so we want to optimize that as much as we can.”
GrilleMe operates from 8:00 p.m. to 12:00 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday, from 8:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. on Thursday, and from 10:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m.
(05/04/17 1:29am)
Last Wednesday, Russian television journalist Tikhon Dzyadko warned the Middlebury community about the similarities between Donald Trump’s behavior toward the American media and Vladimir Putin’s restriction of the press in Russia in his lecture, “The State of Press Freedom in Russia: What Trump Could (and Should Not) Learn from Vladimir Putin.” He drew attention to the parallels between the Kremlin’s restriction of the press and Trump’s actions in his first hundred days as president.
Dzyadko argued that the Kremlin uses economic means to control the few independent news organizations that still exist in Russia. The government defames news outlets so that they lose their audiences and can no longer support themselves.
“There’s no need to harass or kill journalists when you can put pressure on the media in economic ways,” Dzyadko said.
Dzyadko himself used to work for Russia’s only independent news station, Dozhd. Between April 2010 and January 2015, Dozhd would broadcast programming including live interviews with government officials and coverage of protests to large online and television audiences.
“At some point, it became too much for [the] Kremlin,” Dzyadko said.
After the invasion of the Ukraine (Dzyadko mentioned that the Russian media are not allowed to use the term “annexation,” and must refer to Crimea “becoming part of the country”), the Russian government decided to shut Dozhd down.
When Dozhd aired a poll questioning the Soviet Union’s decision to defend Leningrad during World War II instead of surrendering the city to the invading Nazis to save hundreds of thousands of lives, the Russian government accused Dozed of being unpatriotic.
Dzyadko recalled “there was a poll for the audience which they used to say that journalists of Dozhd did not respect what our grandmothers and grandfathers did during the war. They started a campaign saying that people from Dozhd are neo-Nazis.”
The government’s defamation all but bankrupted Dozhd.
Dzadko said, “At the end, our partners from cable and satellite companies got calls from the Kremlin and they told us that they were offended so much by our poll that they had to cut their contracts with us, and that’s how Dozhd lost its audience, and that’s how Dozhd lost the main part of its advertisers. Some of them left because our audience had collapsed, and some left because they were worried about doing business with us.”
Dozhd still creates content, but according to Dzyadko, no one is seeing it. There are only several independent news organizations left in Russia, and the majority of journalists are employed by the state. Dzyadko argued that journalists are willing to give up writing about sensitive topics, telling the truth of what is happening and investigating the government because they are afraid for their financial security.
“These people, especially young journalists, they are afraid of making people from the government mad,” Dzyadko said. “And they have their apartments to rent, they have their kids to feed, they have their plans to go on vacations. So they just compromise. They compromise once, and then again, and again and again, and after they compromise on a little, the next time they are ready to compromise on a thing which is bigger.”
Now that Donald Trump is the president, Dzyadko wants American journalists to be wary of tactics that could lead them to make the same mistakes that Russian journalists made in the first term of Putin’s presidency.
“During the first months of his presidency, we saw several attempts coming from Donald Trump and coming from his administration to somehow use Putin’s manners and his politics in the US,” Dzyadko said.
Dzyadko noted two examples of American journalists’ responses to Trump. He criticized television executives and anchors for attending an off-the-record meeting at Trump Tower where Trump reportedly scolded and insulted them, and he praised New York Times journalists for declining to attend a similar meeting. Trump eventually agreed to meet with staff of the New York Times on the record, and nothing bad happened.
“Journalists of New York Times showed that if they don’t compromise in order to get in the future some information from the sources and in order to not get bad relations with the White House, the world will not collapse, and the government will find a way,” Dzyadko said.
“Journalists must work for their audience and not for the government,” Dzyadko continued.
Dzyadko also observed that the way Trump is fighting with CNN and other television stations looks exactly like the way Putin fought with a television station which he eventually took under state control in 2001.
Dzyadko added that the Russian government has enacted ridiculously specific anti-terrorism laws that it uses to penalize news organizations, and that Russian courts almost always rule in favor of government officials over journalists.
“If you are reporting on the Islamic State, you have to mention that this organization is forbidden in Russia. If you forget these four words, you can be shut down because of anti-terrorism policy,” Dzyadko said.
Finally, Dzyadko cautioned Americans against the type of passivity he sees among the majority of Russians. He believes they are content getting their information from the state media because they like what they are being told. “If you hear every day that everything’s fine, you’re fine,” he reasoned.
Instead of becoming complacent, Dzyadko insisted that the people of the United States must reject so-called alternative facts. “Your hair is black,” he said to a student attending the lecture. “If I say it’s blonde, that wouldn’t be an alternative fact, that would be a lie.”
(02/24/16 4:57pm)
Karen L. Miller will join the College in April 2016 as the new Vice President for Human Resources and Risk. In her new position, Miller will act as a strategic leader for the Office of Human Resources and the Office of Risk and Compliance, both of which serve all of Middlebury’s schools and programs.
Miller will be the first person to hold both the vice presidency of the Office of Human Resources and the vice presidency of the Office of Risk and Compliance. As Vice President for Human Resources, Miller will strategize about staff structure, hiring and compensation policies for Middlebury faculty, staff and student employees. In her role as chief risk officer, Miller will succeed Dr. Michael Geisler, who will leave Middlebury to become the new president of Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York.
According to Geisler, the main function of the Office of Risk and Compliance is “to enable and support the hundreds of initiatives and individual activities and programs that Middlebury faculty and students embark upon each year.” The office identifies and tries to contain the risks associated with those programs “without stifling the academic creativity and entrepreneurial spirit that so distinguish the Middlebury community,” Geisler said.
Miller will join the College’s senior administration, working closely with President Laurie L. Patton and other administrators.
“Managing a large and increasingly complex institution effectively and efficiently means bringing best practices to the table, and Karen’s broad experience will be invaluable to us,” President Patton said.
Currently, Miller is a special advisor to the president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where she has previously served as vice president and general counsel, vice president of administrative services, senior vice president of administration, chief of staff and chief operating officer. Before beginning her time at Morehouse College, Miller worked in several other higher education administration positions, including academic dean of John Marshall Law School.
Miller holds a BA from Emory University and a JD from Harvard University. She is also a candidate at the University of Georgia’s Institute of Higher Education, researching the process of improving organizational capacity and leadership capacity at higher education institutions.
“At a time when many institutions talk about being global or entrepreneurial or sustainable, Middlebury actually lives up to those aspirations and many more. That’s a credit to the faculty, staff and students at Middlebury, and I look forward to working with all of them,” Miller said.