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(11/19/15 3:47am)
Recently, the State of Vermont has come under fire for a new plan to address pollution concerns in Lake Champlain and other bodies of water. Many sources of water in Vermont suffer from nutrient pollution, such as high levels of phosphorus that can result in excessive plant and algae growth.
(11/13/15 4:50am)
As a Burlington high school student ascended her front on Oct. 29, she noticed a inconspicuous white poster taped to her front door. That evening, the African-American student had been at a meeting for a non-profit advocacy group called Rights and Democracy, which works towards building a more robust democracy in Vermont. “Join the Klan and Save Our Land!” the flier read.
The sign also included a drawing of a Ku Klux Klan horseman, classically outfitted in a white sheet against a backdrop of both the confederate flag and the colonial American flag. The student looked at her neighbors’ homes. No white supremacist posters decorated their doors.
Terrified, the student called her father, who contacted local police. They politely informed him that such a poster was merely an example of “hate speech,” for which police response was not possible. It wasn’t until James Haslam, the Executive Director of Rights and Democracy, personally reached out to the state Attorney General that the Burlington police began to “take the incident seriously” and opened a criminal investigation.
For their part, Rights and Democracy organized a community meeting, rallying together criminal justice advocates as well as other area non-profits such as Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform, Justice for All, Peace and Justice Center and Vermont Interface Action. It was at this point that a second African-American woman came forward, announcing that she had also received a similar poster on her door. She would go on to speak at the meeting, which included a press release and was attended by over 100 people.
According to Haslam, there has been a “strong response” from the Burlington community to the incident. He cites a “broad range of groups,” including the United Electrical Workers Union, that have embraced the victims and are working to ensure this type of incident “won’t happen again.” A petition entitled “An Open Letter Against Hate,” popped up online in the days after the incident, and has since received almost 800 signatures. A rally on Thursday, Nov. 5 attracted over 400 attendees.
“We can tolerate a lot of things but hate is not one of them,” Haslam says. “The [Burlington] community is sending a loud message that such things are not welcome here.”
Similar episodes have occurred in the past several months. Recently, an area resident assaulted his black neighbor while yelling racial slurs. Police did not fully investigate.
According to Rights and Democracy, black citizens in Vermont are ten times more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts. They are six times more likely to get pulled over. Considering Vermont’s reputation for being very progressive, Haslam says the state has yet to “walk the walk.”
In light of Vermont’s troubled racial history, the slow response to the KKK flier is particularly alarming. If it weren’t for the advocacy of Rights and Democracy, Burlington police would not have been compelled to open an investigation.
Jas Wheeler, a black and Mexican resident of Burlington who moved here from Cleveland, Ohio, echoes this sentiment. In her opinion, the supportive reaction of Burlington residents is not indicative of Vermont’s overall attitude when it comes to race.
“The violent and aggressive racism that I have faced here is the worst I have ever encountered,” she says. In a state that is “95 percent white,” black and brown people are carrying the weight of the “progressive, neoliberal image” that Vermont touts.
Haslam acknowledges that similar instances have blown over in the past. Meetings are held and plans of action are recommended, only for everything to be forgotten after a few weeks or months.
Yet he and others seem remarkably committed. Beyond simply responding to individual expressions of hate, Haslam is advocating for a new agenda for Vermont, one that addresses the biases inherent in law enforcement and local government when it comes to issues of race. His plan includes innovations in training and reform of police procedures, as well as alternatives to the police force in the event that their response to a racial incident is inadequate.
“Undoing racism is going to take a lot,” he admits, pointing out that “far too many people” experience “severe amounts of racism” on a day-to-day basis. “This was not an isolated incident, and we need our institutions to be accountable to our community,” Haslam said.
On Nov. 19, Haslam and other advocates will be visiting Middlebury in order to bring this discussion to new areas of Vermont. Furthermore, on Dec. 5 there will be a Rights and Democracy summit in Burlington, where candidates for governor and progressive legislators will participate in a conference to address the issue of institutionalized racism in the state.
(09/30/15 8:57pm)
Barak adé Soleil crosses to the middle of the stage. The Chicago-based artist smiles infectiously at the audience. “I’m going to ask you to come closer,” he announces. His deep baritone instantly comforts you and makes you trust him. “There is plenty of space up here with me.” A moment of silence ensues, then the sound of one hundred people standing up, grabbing their bags and relocating to the front of the hall. Students hop onto the stage, curling up two or three feet from a still-beaming Soleil.
Suddenly, this is not a lecture. It is a conversation, reminiscent of those summer camp gatherings where you sing songs and roast marshmallows around the fire. Soleil could almost be a student, at least based on the “non-hierarchical space” he has created. Almost. Except then you remember that his legs are thin compared to the rest of his body. That not even the smallest of scuffs tarnishes the pristine surface of his powder blue suede shoes. That he sits there with the rest of us, not on the ground, but in a wheelchair. For all of the College’s attempts to diversify the student body, the physically disabled are extremely under-represented here.
Soleil’s “keynote performance” kick-started the 2015 Clifford Symposium, named in honor of Nicholas Clifford, longstanding professor in the History Department at the College. This year’s theme was “The Good Body,” challenging attendees to consider the process behind how society defines bodies as good or bad. Like many other attendees, Xuan He ’19 was somewhat surprised by the breadth of the discussion.
“I went into the symposium expecting to be lectured on body image issues,” she explained.
In the end, presenters throughout the three-day-long symposium challenged students to think beyond that, covering material related to race, sexual identity, class distinctions, history, education and many more concepts.
The mediums used for the expression of these ideas were also diverse. Some sessions featured lecturers, others consisted of film screenings. Dance Professor Andrea Olsen held a workshop that combined writing and dance, while choreographer Maree ReMalia provided a class on the Gaga “movement vocabulary.”
After inviting audience members to text him with their thoughts or comments, Soleil began his presentation by asking questions:
“What is a good body?” he wondered. “Is it thin? Is it a race? Is religion attached to it?” He paused, then delved deeper. “Do I have to be pretty to be a good body? Do I need to stand to be a good body, or can I lie on the floor?” At that point, he glanced at his phone. “I’m going to read this text out loud,” he announced. “Is a good body about me, or you?” Soleil considered a moment, then sighed. “Or is it about us?”
He then proceeded to tell a story on the “unfinished legacy” of the racialized, disabled body. He spoke of slaves, confined to a three foot by three foot space for months on end as they made the journey across the Atlantic to the New World.
“Can you imagine how good their bodies must have been to survive that?” he asked. “Good for work. For beating. For sexing. For selling.”
He brought up the history of exhibiting blacks in freak shows and circuses, telling the stories of both Joyce Heth, the supposed 161-year-old nurse of George Washington, and Saartje Baartman, also known as the “Hottentot Venus.”
He spoke of a “mixed” woman who underwent a stringent examination of not only her physical features, but also her sexual purity, her way of speaking and her ability to dance, all in order to pass as a white woman.
“Why do we keep trying to beat the body ‘good’?” Soleil lamented. “We keep trying to make it work, to make it good, to make it docile and tame.”
These sentiments were echoed in the symposium’s other presentations. Eli Clare, a self-proclaimed genderqueer with cerebral palsy, pointed out that the continuous scientific focus on “the cure” implies that certain bodies are “just fine,” while certain others need to be “fixed.”
Using Caitlyn Jenner as an example, Anson Koch-Rein, Visiting Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, spelled out how only bodies that sustain one’s gender are deemed legitimate by society. Jenner took the extreme route in order to “fix” her body, to make her body “work,” undergoing surgery to legitimize its relationship to her gender.
Overall, the symposium stressed the relationship between social inclusion and the “good” body.
“We define good bodies by thinking about bad bodies,” Clare stated, explaining that interpretations of good and bad bodies are “grounded in systems of privilege and power.” By defining certain bodies as good and others as bad, by trying to “fix” bad bodies, we inevitably deem some people as belonging, and some others as not belonging.
Clare called on the specific example of higher education in order to relate this issue to the students in the audience.
“Whose body-minds are worthy of sitting in the classroom? Whose body-minds build the buildings? Mow the grass? Clean the bathrooms? Whose body-minds make that classroom possible?”
Much of the student body seemed to accept the idea that society arbitrarily created answers to these questions. In a view representative of many attendees, Gram Bonilla ’17 declared that Soleil “put it best,” when he stated confidently, “When I look at the disabled body, all I see is goodness, truth, people living their lives … The disabled body is good. I am simply in a social construct that is disabling.”
(01/22/15 1:18am)
Early on Tuesday night, when the sun had completely set and the temperature dropping by the minute, the room slowly fills with chattering students. Some sink into beanbags. Others stretch out on one of the many couches in the cozy, lamp-lit space. At first glance, this could just be a get-together of friends about to watch a movie on the pro- jector or the weekly meeting of one of the College numerous clubs. Then Becca Hicks ’15 stands up, smiles and introduces this ses- sion’s topic of conversation.
“We are focusing on female pleasure to- night,” she said.
Clearly this is not just any old gathering.
At 6 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, between twenty and thirty people gather in the Gamut Room to partake in the student-run J-term workshop Cliteracy. Founded by Priscilla Odinmah ’15, Hicks,
Cupcakes decorated with clitoris frosting served at the student-led sex positive workshop.
Stebbins ’14.5’s bread-making process involves more than just dough: it is a craft, a science experiment, a recollection of childhood memories and a basis for friendship.
Cliterary Devices, Rhetorical Phallacy
Jeanette Cortez ’15 and Eriche Sarvay ’15, the program aims to provide a safe space to talk about something considered largely taboo in most cultures today: female sexuality.
“I felt like the conversation was miss- ing at Middlebury,” said Odinmah, explain- ing why she wanted to start Cliteracy, which was inspired by a 12-week long workshop called FemSex at the University of California, Berkeley.
“Occasionally there are cool talks on the subject and they are usually really well- attended, but there’s nothing consistent.” Hicks agrees. “At Middlebury, we’re so good at feeding the mind,” she adds. “But we need to know how to feed the body as well.”
The organizers also cite female empow- erment and discriminatory societal norms as a motive for starting the discussion group.
“Female sexuality is an area in which there is more shame, more taboos and more
compromise than male sexuality or sexuality in general,” says Odinmah.
She further explains that so much of what is talked about in modern culture is about women trying to please their partners, and that girls are taught that sex is something that should be done to them, rather than by them.
The overall goal of the workshop is to cre- ate a safe space for women to discuss subjects that people find uncomfortable or unladylike. In order to do this, the informal sessions con- sist of watching videos, playing ice-breaking games, sharing stories, asking questions and the occasional guest speaker. Each hour-and- a-half meeting focuses dialogue on a different topic. So far the workshop has covered sex myths, anatomy and pleasure and will turn next to periods, followed by language and body language.
Designed as only a J-term workshop, the leaders and participants will use the last meeting to look to the future.
“One of my goals personally is planting a seed,” Odinmah said. “Just hearing the word ‘cliteracy’ roll off the tongue is a big thing for me.” All four of the workshop’s organizers are seniors, but they hope the issue won’t die when they graduate in May.
“The more people know, the more that conversation can be spread,” Hicks said. Hav- ing received strong initial turnout and over- all positive feedback from the mostly-female group of attendees, the leaders want the pro- gram to be expanded in the future.
“My dream is for Cliteracy to exist on the same level as FemSex with a 12-week long syllabus, facilitators and guest speakers,” Odinmah said.
They also express the hope that males on campus would continue to attend.
“The way we envisioned it, it is mainly a female space. But that’s only half the popula- tion,” Hicks said. “Guys refer to a vagina as a sort of fearful black hole, but chances are, you came out of one. Just because you don’t have a clitoris, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know what it is.”