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(10/29/20 9:59am)
This election season, the stakes are higher than ever before. Four years ago, the horrors of a Trump presidency were yet to be realized. Now, we are living them. Public trust in government is rapidly eroding while peoples’ fundamental liberties are being — or have been — taken away from them. Our democracy is on the line. While the outcome of the upcoming election is uncertain, we have been inspired time and time again by this community’s political engagement, solidarity and resilience in the face of adversity. This is why we’re publishing an election issue.
The U.S. has suffered in the hands of an incompetent, intentionally negligent and often malicious administration. More than 200,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 — a disproportionate number being Black and Latinx. Poor management of the pandemic spelled economic devastation for communities across the nation, as workers are plunged into financial instability and businesses shutter their doors. An unprecedented number of environmental protection regulations have been undone and climate change science disregarded. And as protests against police brutality and racial injustice have unfolded across the country, Trump has refused to denounce white supremacist organizations. The ripples of these national tragedies are also felt in Middlebury.
Politics has permeated every part of our world — and every part of our newspaper. Our election issue spans all five of our sections, from sports coverage of athlete voter registration and the surprising relationship between college football and the election, to coverage of local Vermont races, to opinions about the role of politics in dating and making Nov. 3 a school holiday. You’ll find news about how the mail center handles absentee ballots, how some professors choose to (or choose not to) bring activism into their classrooms and how students who are not eligible to vote in U.S. elections are making a difference. We have an elections forecast, a podcast about the intersection of athletics and politics and a dozen more stories that endeavor to capture the momentous and far-reaching impact of this election on each and every student, state and community.
Unlike in past elections, the majority of you have likely already voted by absentee ballot. For those of you who didn’t or couldn’t vote elsewhere, make use of our guide for in-person voting in Middlebury, which is an option for all students who can vote in the U.S., or use MiddVote’s resources for voting in Vermont. Even if you are someone who cannot vote in this election, we encourage you to vocalize your concerns and mobilize those around you to participate.
Thank you to everyone who wrote and edited for, contributed to and was interviewed for this issue — we hope that through these stories, you see the ways that this election has touched every part of life and fundamentally reshaped our relationships to politics. Thank you for reading, and thank you for caring. So much is at stake.
Bochu Ding ’21, Hattie LeFavour ’21 and Riley Board ’22 comprise The Campus’ executive team. Nora Peachin ’21 is the Senior Local Editor. LeFavour and Peachin oversaw the creation and coverage of the issue.
(06/15/20 10:00am)
“Protests Work!” read the flyer handed out at a vigil in downtown Middlebury last Sunday night. Roughly 500 people gathered at College Park and along Cross Street to denounce police terror against Black communities and bodies.
Sunday’s event follows a vigil held on May 30 that drew roughly 375 participants. The Middlebury chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) organized a second event after the first gathering’s popularity and again asked protestors to wear masks and maintain social distancing. SURJ members also distributed flyers with actionable steps to take against racism, a list of positive advances made in the past weeks and solidarity tools for White allies.
“I have been heartened by the mobilization of people around the globe, but especially of people in my own little community of Middlebury who are demanding that the white supremacy and racial oppression that lay at the core of American society must end,” said Bill Hart, professor of history and director of Black Studies. “I showed up to show that the Black bodies of Middlebury students, faculty and staff, and of Black people in the community, matter — that my black body matters.”
The town of Middlebury is a small community, and “no one is under the illusion that standing on the Cross Street Bridge will end police terror,” said Jamie McCallum, professor of sociology. However, McCallum noted that vigils and protests show solidarity, love and respect for the larger uprisings going on around the country and the world.
“In a vastly, vastly white place like Middlebury, even something small like safely standing with Black Lives Matter flags in downtown goes a long way towards making me feel at ease here,” said Kemi Fuentes-George, professor of political science. Fuentes-George recounted previous instances of harassment and being called the n-word in downtown Middlebury.
However, attending protests and vigils is only the bare-minimum in protesting white supremacy, according to Lana Povitz, visiting assistant professor of history. Povitz expressed disappointment that the organizers of Sunday’s gathering did not take the opportunity to ask more of participants or advertise upcoming events or actions.
“This was a crowd that would probably have said ‘yes’ to any number of asks,” Povitz said. “I wonder when we might be ready for something a little less anodyne. How can we disrupt business as usual?”
For Fuentes-George, the vigil went as expected. “We’re not going to get the kinds of demonstrations that we’re going to get in New York for many reasons, including that it’s not very diverse,” he said.
“I understand that there were some people who felt disappointed with how the protest went, that it wasn’t radical enough, but the reality is that’s the town that we live in,” Fuentes-George added.
McCallum hopes the vigils will encourage people to step up their commitments for racial justice in other ways. Hart remains “cautiously optimistic” and questions what real change the growing movement will bring about.
“The image of Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck reminded my mother of what her father — my grandfather — often told his children: the White man will forever keep his boot on the Black man’s neck,” Hart said. “Floyd’s murder reminds us that little seems to have changed in White attitudes toward Black lives and bodies.”
Some have described the past decade as a turning point for racial justice, Hart said, and he “certainly hope[s] so,” but history has shown a trend of White America resisting change and reasserting White privilege. Hart cited the Civil Rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s, the Great Society, Affirmative Action and the election of President Barack Obama as only a few examples.
“Meaningful change will only come when Black Americans build alliances with Brown and other disfranchised peoples as well as with White allies, and with one powerful voice, as now, demand massive, transformational change,” Hart said, “and when White Americans re-examine everything they think they believe in, to paraphrase James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time.””
“Healing without justice is no healing at all,” Hart said.
(05/31/20 3:22am)
Members of the Vermont State Police (VSP) and Department of Public Safety Commissioner Michael Schirling publicly condemned the actions of police officers in Minneapolis that led to the death of George Floyd in a press release published Friday. Director of the Vermont State Police Col. Matthew T. Birmingham, described the police conduct he had seen on video as “beyond disturbing.”
“This kind of conduct has no place in policing,” Birmingham said. “It goes against everything we are taught from our earliest days in training academies. It goes against our mission to protect and serve the public. It goes against our oath and our badge. It goes against human decency.”
The members of the state police sent “their deepest condolences to the family, loved ones and friends of George Floyd and to people everywhere who are aggrieved by his death.”
The press release reiterated the state police’s commitment to “fair and impartial policing,” including de-escalation training, building relationships of trust with communities of color and marginalized communities, as well as diversifying the police workforce.
VSP is in the process of reviewing its policies and training procedures regarding use of force so that the agency is “in line with best practices and account[s] for the safety and well-being of the public and of the police,” the press release read.
Policy assessment has been ongoing for the past two to three years, and members of VSP are continuously examining tools officers currently use and coming up with non-lethal alternatives, said Captain Garry Scott, Director of Fair and Impartial Policing and Community Affairs.
The Fair and Impartial Policing Committee was established in 2009 to bring together community members to discuss issues such as addressing bias in policing and building trust within communities of colors — and to advise VSP.
In 2015, VSP hired Northeastern University and University of Vermont to analyze five years’ worth of traffic stop data. VSP began collecting traffic stop data in 2008 and formalized the process in 2010. Vermont was one of the first states to do so voluntarily, Scott said.
Scott said the data showed that the agency “hadn’t trained [its] members properly.” So, Scott’s position was created to improve cultural awareness, bias training, diversification efforts and relationships with communities of color. He believes VSP is the only state police agency in the country with his position.
Today, supervisors monitor uses of force, high-speed pursuits and civilian complaints in real time to ensure accountability. VSP has also embedded mental health workers at two barracks, and Scott hopes to continue this program at more locations across the state.
Other efforts include recruiting people of color by sending recruiters out of state to predominantly black universities along the East Coast and hiring employees who understand VSP’s fair and impartial policing mission. VSP also conducts annual implicit and explicit bias training for all members and offers lunchtime discussions for troopers. Peer learning has been especially effective, according to Scott.
Scott meets regularly with the Pride Center of Vermont, NAACP in Rutland and Windham County, LGBTQIA Alliance of Vermont, Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity and the Sudanese Foundation of Vermont to build trust and mutual understanding.
VSP also works closely with the Vermont Human Rights Commission and Vermont Legal Aid. Scott explained that the agency refers reports of bias to the organization that “we recognize as being racial but that don’t rise to a criminal level or require police response.”
“We made a very conscious decision at the highest level to make a full commitment to this by listening to our community,” Scott said, and added that agencies around the country have contacted VSP to model their approaches after Vermont.
More information on Vermont State Police’s policies on their website.
(04/22/20 3:16pm)
It’s exam week in the early 1950s and the endlessly ringing pay phone outside of Mary Peterson’s* room in Battell South is interrupting her studies. Determined to end the disturbance, Mary finally answers the phone.
“I’d like to speak with Mary Peterson,” says the voice on the other end.
“You’re speaking to her,” Mary says.
The voice belongs to John Clermont ’53, a member of the baseball and hockey teams. Mary is impressed by John’s varsity status, but something else entirely is the clincher for her.
“He said that he had seen me at St. Stephen’s church,” Mary ’54 recalled in an interview with The Campus. “Any guy that gets up at the crack of dawn, and goes down to the early service at the episcopal church in the freezing cold … that sealed it for me.”
In those days, Mary said, men lived on the south side of campus, while women attended the women’s college and lived on the north side of College Street. Women had to be inside their dorms by 10 p.m. on weekdays, could not wear slacks or shorts, and had to have a signed parent’s permission slip in order to get into a car with a male driver.
Female students were also outnumbered by men by a ratio of about two to one, due in part to the G.I. Bill, which covered the tuition expenses of veterans who had served in World War II. Because of the bill, Mary said, her freshman class was a mix of 18-year-olds and veterans in their mid-twenties, some of whom had fought in Normandy on D-Day.
Men and women were not allowed inside each others’ residence halls. To pick a woman up from her dorm, a man would press the buzzer of the room of whom he wanted, and the woman would come down.
“Even if your father came inside to help carry a suitcase down, you would have to yell ‘Man on the floor!’ said Mary. “And everyone would scurry because we walked around in our slips.”
Mary and John married in 1954. Mary Peterson became Mary Clermont, and they had four children together, one of whom attended Middlebury. John died in June of 2017.
The dating scene at Middlebury has changed quite a bit since Mary picked up the phone to find John on the other end. We wanted to know how. So, we interviewed Middlebury couples from the class of ’54 all the way through present day to hear their love stories, and find out what love has looked like at Midd over the past 70 years.
*Editor’s note: Mary Peterson and John Clermont are pseudonyms — Mary asked for their real names to remain private, due to the personal nature of the story. All other names in this article are real.
Peter and Julie Parker, both ’54, met driving back to the Midwest from Middlebury during Christmas break, with three other students in the carpool. Julie was drawn to Peter because he was not the “alpha male” type: he allowed another student to drive his car and “contentedly sat in the back seat with two women,” Julie recalled.
“I had fallen in love, head over heels, by the time I walked into my house in Detroit,” said Julie . “I was so wildly in love that I told my parents, ‘I met the man of my dreams.’”
The road trip back to Middlebury cemented each person’s feelings for one another, but it was a few weeks before the couple reconnected. Julie didn’t know how to read Peter, who was a little shy; Peter didn’t think Julie was interested.
Julie would often go to the student union, located in a temporary building where Proctor Dining Hall is now located, with a friend during a break in her classes. She began to notice that Peter was very dependably there when she took her break.
“I’d be watching his eyes,” Julie said, “and I thought I was getting more and more eye contact. So I asked my friend one day, dear as she was, if she would mind letting me go alone. And that was the day Peter asked me out, and everything was lovely from then on.”
The day before their graduation, Peter proposed to Julie in a garden by Hepburn Hall. They were married in 1954 and recently celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary. They have three daughters together.
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Fast-forward to parents’ weekend a few years later, where Janie ’63 and Pete Johnson ’62 were having their first date at a Delta Upsilon picnic. It did not go smoothly: Pete and Janie’s mothers began to drink martinis together, and Janie’s father was engaged in a lively discussion with a professor about sex from an anthropological perspective. “So I was really stuck with Pete at that point,” said Janie.
Luckily, Janie and Pete ended up enjoying each other’s company. The two liked to go dancing together and occasionally went to the movies.
Janie was soon pinned by Pete. “Pinning” was a symbolic tradition within the Greek life community in which a fraternity member would give his fraternity pin to his significant other, signifying that the pair are moving towards an engagement.
Despite receiving below-average marks in a sociology class they took together called “Marriage in the Family” (Pete received a D; Janie received a C-), Pete proposed to Janie outside of Battell during his senior year. Upon Pete’s graduation, Janie decided to forgo her senior year at Middlebury to follow Pete to Georgia, where he was starting his career in the military.
“At that point in time, there were [very limited] career opportunities coming out of my graduation from Middlebury,” Janie said. “It was a totally, radically, different time. I wasn’t looking to just find a husband, I just happened to think that Pete was fun and I wanted to be with him.”
“That was the thing,” Pete said. “We had so much fun together, we just said, why would we put an end to it?”
The pair were married in December of 1962. They now have three children together. They live in Danby, Vermont.
“We still have a laugh a day, even now in our old age,” Janie said.
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Nancy ’93 and Don Hunt ’92 became close friends after having three classes together during the fall of 1989. Nancy later found out that Don had intentionally switched into all three of those classes after hearing Nancy’s schedule, but played it off as a coincidence.
Nancy was drawn to her “very shy, but very sweet” classmate, who was raised by his mom and four sisters. Don was struck by the fact that Nancy — who is Italian, with dark, curly hair and a strong New York accent — hadn’t conformed to the style standards of the time for women at Middlebury.
After getting snowed in on the sixth floor of Hadley while studying for their finals in December of 1990, Don finally got up the courage to kiss Nancy. They started dating shortly after.
“I can safely say my grades dramatically improved as soon as we started dating,” Don said. “Nancy wouldn't let me skip class, and we both had an instant study group for many courses.”
Don and Nancy have four children together, one of whom attends Middlebury.
After graduating together last spring, Cece Wheeler ’19 and John Natalone ’19 took their second cross-country road trip of college. Their first week-long drive took place the summer after their sophomore year — Cece needed to drive her car back to Seattle, where she’s from, and John generously offered to join her.
“We took a week-long road trip cross country, which I think is a pretty good litmus test for any relationship. It must have gone well because we did it again with John’s car when we moved to the West Coast after graduation,” Cece recounted.
John and Cece met during their first year in Atwater Commons, and dated for three years at Middlebury. Since moving, they have been enjoying some of the many perks of post-college life together.
“Instead of sharing a bathroom with four people I now only share it with one. and Public Safety has ticketed my car zero times since moving to Seattle,” Cece said.
Taite Shomo ’20.5 and Grace Vedock ’20 hit it off immediately when they met in Proctor during Taite’s very first semester.
“I was listening to a podcast, and my friend Jack told me to stop and come meet the new Febs with him, so I did. I’m glad that I did,” Grace said.
The two only talked for 15 minutes or so, but something clicked. A few days later, Taite received a Facebook message — hey girl, want to get dinner sometime? — and the rest is history.
The foundation of their more-than-three-year relationship? Food. Their first year, the pair cooked together a number of times.
“Our sophomore and junior years, we would cook dinner together every Friday,” Taite said, and for the past school year, “we’ve both been off the meal plan, so we grocery shopped together and made dinner together every night.”
“We made tiramisu together once sophomore year, and we still talk about it regularly,” Grace added. The couple also described a favorite pasta recipe, lovingly nicknamed “our pasta”: chunky tomato sauce, kale, toasted pine nuts, red pepper flakes and a ton of parmesan.
After a month-and-a-half flirtationship, Dula Dulanto ’20 and Melanie Chow ’22 were ready to put a label on their relationship. So, Dula asked Melanie to ask him out.
“Usually the guy does that,” he explained, “so I asked her to ask me out because she’s a very fierce person, and she’s very empowered.”
She asked, and he said yes. The couple has now been dating for four months.
Dula remembered his friends’ surprise when he decided to begin a relationship during his final year at Middlebury. He described feeling pressured by popular “preconceived notions of what relationships are and how they function in college.” But, ultimately, once the two started talking, “that was it,” said Melanie.
“Sometimes [college] can feel lonely, even with a roommate, even with really good friends,” she continued, “but with Dula, I never feel lonely.”
For a Q&A with the couples in this story, click here.
(04/22/20 12:00pm)
We interviewed seven Middlebury couples for another story this week and we were so pleased with all the wonderful anecdotes they shared with us. But unfortunately, we had a word limit.
So here’s an addendum, of questions we asked in every interview and then each couple’s answers. Interviews were all conducted separately, and we condensed responses for brevity.
Check out the companion story first to learn more about the interviewees.
Middlebury Campus: How would you describe the dating scene at Middlebury during your time as a student?
Grace Vedock ’20: I think the queer dating scene is a totally different beast than the straight dating scene. It’s smaller, and it can feel competitive … It feels like there’s always people taking sides. If straight people think that [dating at Middlebury] is hard, I think they would be surprised or humbled by the queer experience at Middlebury.
Julie Parker ’54: Very controlled. There were rules, confines, parietal hours. But any couple that was passionate had plenty of occasions to “mess up,” especially with a car. Sex was feared because pregnancy was such a taboo. Still, a few couples were known to be sexually active, and there were undoubtedly a few pregnancies hastily terminated, or sudden marriages.
Dula Dulanto ’20: A lot of people don’t know how to navigate relationships. It’s easy to brush something off, to disregard others and their feelings. It’s an environment where you don’t have to engage with someone if you don’t want to. It creates this repertoire of mess up and move on to the next person.
Pete Johnson ’62: Archaic.
Janie Johnson ’63: [Laughs.] Archaic is right.
Pete Johnson ’62: I mean, it was different then. The women were very closely monitored and chaperoned. The men, not so much. We pretty much had free run of the campus at the time.
Mary Clermont ’54: The dating scene at Middlebury was very important. It was the social life, really. I always felt bad for the girls who sat alone in the dorm on a Saturday night. You wouldn’t really have big groups of [female and male students] mixed. There was nothing to do [if you weren’t dating someone].
Nancy Hunt ’93: I think there were a lot of people who dated long-term at Middlebury. That's not to say that people weren't also "hooking up" at fraternity and social house parties. That happened all of the time, too.
Don Hunt ’92: The social scene was very much focused around social houses, most of which were fraternities at the time. It was definitely a drinking and hook up scene.
MC: Do you think anything about Middlebury specifically has contributed positively to your relationship?
Pete Johnson ’62: We both moved around. My family moved all over New England. Hers moved because her dad was a professor at several different universities. And so, we never had a longstanding hometown. Middlebury has kind of become that for us, because that’s where the friends that we both know [are from], who knew us when we were in our twenties or younger. That’s sort of our hometown.
Dulanto ’20: Midd brings all these students from diverse backgrounds and equalizes all of them, so Midd provided a platform for us to interact … I immigrated to New York when I was young. My parents don’t speak English. My family has 10 to 15 different aunts and uncles. There are cultural, language and socioeconomic differences [between Melanie and me].
Julie Parker ’54: It has given us shared memories and background and friends that have known us both, cementing the bonds.
MC: Conversely, have there been challenges that you think are specific to Middlebury?
Cece Wheeler ’19: It’s sort of hard to measure a given relationship at Midd, because you’re likely not living together and your time is spread between classes, homework, sports, friends, clubs etc., so that you can “date” someone for a year and in reality not spend that much time together. That’s probably one of the bigger challenges at Midd — just making time for everyone in your life.
Nancy Hunt ’93: I think the challenge with a college like Middlebury, at least at the time we were there, was the lack of diversity. Additionally, there is a challenge that goes with any small school in a rural area and that is the lack of people.
Vedock ’20: I think visibility is a double-edged sword. We’re very visible because we’ve been together for a long time, but that’s not something everyone in a queer relationship necessarily wants or has the luxury of having. That’s something I struggled with at the very beginning, because I was not out when I came to Midd, and not out to my family when we started dating. Feeling very visible in that way was intimidating. Now I don’t feel any pressure or feel scared when I walk around on campus.
MC: What does love mean to you?
Taite Shomo ’20.5: I think love is about knowing that Grace is going to be there for me and I’m going to be there for Grace, and having that constant in my life.
Melanie Chow ’22: I think it just means feeling completely comfortable in your own skin, not having to hide anything. Knowing that no matter what you do or say, that person is still going to be there and want to be with you.
Dulanto ’20: I think of it as an active choice. You don’t make it once, you make it every single day. You’re always wanting to choose the other person for everything they are.
Wheeler ’19: It means that John still hasn’t commented on the cat I brought home six months ago but [he] wakes up at six every morning to feed her.
Parker ’54: I feel an almost mystical connection to Peter, as if cosmic forces operated to bring us together. So Middlebury was the “mise en scène” for one couple's drama.
Pete Johnson ’62: There’s sort of a comfort zone where you can say what you think and be who you are and know it’s going to be okay.
Janie Johnson ’63: Pete was in the military during the Vietnam War. And again, there was no communication, this was way before there were cellphones. He wrote me a letter every single day for 365 days.
Clermont ’54: I don't think I have ever sat around thinking about the meaning of love. It has so many facets and degrees. I remember my mother telling me not to use the word "love" unless whatever you were referring to could return love, so you couldn't love "pizza." So I guess love means, “listen to what your mother said.”
(04/22/20 10:03am)
Alec Richker ’13.5, Dylan Volk ’16, Micah Raymond ’21 and their dog Lou ("part pit bull, part dragon, part cow") tell their love story from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where they are currently quarantined together.
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(04/22/20 9:52am)
I’ve been making lots of quarantine playlists with friends recently (an incredible procrastination activity, by the way), but I wanted a collection of songs specifically for when you need a little bit of love. I think everyone could use some love right now. I hope these songs can bring some joy to your day, like they do for me. Check out the playlist below, or click here.
— Nora Peachin
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ifgIia9Oe9iVv1x8m8ZKi
(12/05/19 11:01am)
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President Laurie Patton announced the college’s new Policy on Open Expression in an all-school email on Nov. 21. The policy, she wrote, was changed in conjunction with an updated version of the policy on demonstration regulations. Together, the policies constitute the college’s rules about student protest.
The newest version of both policies, which are part of the 2019–2020 Student Handbook in sections A.5 and C.4, make clearer distinctions between “disruptive action” and “substantially disruptive action.” The Policy on Open Expression also more explicitly acknowledges the educational value of protests, and states that the college “recognizes the historical importance of nonviolent public demonstration and protest.”
These changes, among many others, were made following a two-and-a-half year process of reflection on the college’s protest policy after the protest against Charles Murray in 2017. Following that incident, the college convened a Committee on Speech and Inclusion, made up of students, faculty and staff, which made some general recommendations about hosting controversial speakers. The SGA also contributed suggestions in the form of a bill that May.
The college has since seen two drafts of a new policy — the first which was shared on Nov. 15, 2018, and the second on May 19, 2019. The 2018 draft, which was crafted using feedback from two open meetings held that fall, defined “civil disobedience” as a punishable violation of college policy, among other additions. It was widely criticized for ambiguities in its language.
The 2019 draft more closely reflected the finalized updated policy. That policy was created by a Policy Working Group of students, faculty and staff. According to Michael Sheridan, group member and professor of anthropology and African Studies, the group looked to other college’s policies for reference.
“I was deeply concerned about the [2018] policy’s retributive impulses, which is why I was one of a handful of students who voiced concern and led a teach-in to engage students in the process of proposing a more holistic protest and demonstrations policy,” said Grace Vedock ’20, a member of the Policy Working Group and student activist.
Members of that group told The Campus they are generally pleased with the new finalized policy, and feel it reflected their recommendations.
“[We] worked for two years on this issue and developed two statements that have both been adopted,” said Amy Briggs, a group member and professor of computer science, referring to both the statement on Academic Freedom, Integrity and Respect that faculty crafted in spring 2018, as well as the May 2019 policy draft. The 2018 statement “now appears as a preamble to the institution-wide policies in the Handbook,” Briggs said.
The new policy is “clearly built around the key components of the framework created by the policy committee and voted on by the faculty at the end of the spring semester,” said Renee Wells, a group member and the director of education for equity and inclusion.
“I’m very happy that the new policy clarifies how our community should interact when faced with controversy,” Sheridan said. “We will be a stronger community, and this policy will, I hope, be the foundation for building more trust on our campus.”
Sheridan highlighted what he sees as important aspects of the new policy, including the clarification that open expression affirms the aforementioned three pillars from the faculty statement, as well as the expansion to allow all members of the campus community to “engage in personal activity involving protest and demonstration to express one’s own ideas.” The 2018 draft said that members of the Senior Leadership Group could determine that some staff positions were “incompatible” with participation in certain manifestations of expression at the college; now, staff are also free to protest under policy guidelines without fear of getting fired, according to Sheridan.
“This expansion of the pillars to include staff will, I hope, enhance respectful relationships in our community,” Sheridan said.
Despite mostly positive feedback, Vedock emphasized the importance of continued actions to improve the campus environment around protest.
“Though I am optimistic about this new policy, I remain concerned about a campus environment that is, in my opinion, hostile to student protest,” Vedock said, explaining that she and fellow Policy Working Group member Taite Shomo experienced hostility last spring as they were planning a protest of the planned talk of right-wing Polish politician Ryszard Legutko who was planned to speak on campus.
“I hope that this policy is quickly followed by concrete and continued action that affirms these rights,” Vedock said.
According to Hannah Ross, the college’s general counsel and chief of staff, the administration intends the new policy to reflect the college’s “equal commitments to open expression and an inclusive community.” Ross reaffirmed the college’s “conviction that all community members can participate equally and all voices can be heard.”
In an all-school email on Nov. 1, President Patton described the college’s struggles over questions of speech and inclusivity as “a work in progress.” In addition to updating its policies, the college has also been working to strengthen relationships and planning practices with local law enforcement partners, and has developed workshops for students on college protest policy, amongst other projects.
(11/14/19 11:05am)
Middlebury is the only school in the NESCAC that does not include a non-online mandatory consent training program in its freshman orientation. Elissa Asch ’22.5, head of the SGA Sexual and Relationship Respect Committee (SRR), is changing that.
Asch began spearheading the effort to institute such a program last summer. Now, she is looking to implement the training in the upcoming February orientation.
Over the summer, she contacted and spoke with representatives from the 10 other NESCAC schools, including wellness directors, violence prevention specialists, and students in charge of organizations equivalent to both SRR and Sex Positive Education for College Students (SPECS) at Middlebury. She interviewed students and/or staff at each school about the sexual health and consent trainings at their schools, focusing specifically on what mandatory orientation trainings they had.
Schools’ programming varied from 20-minute workshops with Title IX coordinators, to speakers, to theatrical performances, to fairs during orientation with tables for all sex-related organizations on campus. The individuals Asch spoke with at each school had specific reasons why they thought programs did or didn’t work for their student body, and spoke about goals they had to continuously improving their trainings.
“It was really useful to create a network, because now I can reach out to them if I’m looking for ideas or support from people working on these issues,” Asch said.
Asch then wrote a proposal with all the information she collected from other schools, which she presented to Civil Rights and Title IX Coordinator Marti McCaleb, and Violence Prevention and Advocacy Specialist Emily Wagner, at the start of this academic year.
Middlebury currently provides mandatory training on sexual violence to all students through Show Some Respect, an interactive online training program by United Educators (UE) that students complete before arriving on campus, McCaleb explained.
“This program includes numerous modules on sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking, dating violence, consent, coercion, incapacitation and bystander intervention,” she said. “There are also regular refresher courses offered that students complete throughout their college career.”
McCaleb noted, though, that these trainings “don’t necessarily create opportunity for group dialogue or discussion about the issues. This is where we are currently trying to expand.”
The Office of Health and Wellness Education also provides a mandatory introduction to the Green Dot bystander intervention program during MiddView orientation and offers a six-hour bystander intervention training each semester that has been shown to reduce violent incidents on campus, according to McCaleb.
However, Asch and her fellow SRR members saw a need to expand this programming. According to Asch, adding in-person workshops to the the online workshop would be more effective; students would need to sit together and have real discussions about consent, hook-up culture, drinking culture, and more.
“That’s where real expectations about how we’re going to live together get set,” she said. “When I did my research, Middlebury had the least developed program out of any NESCAC.”
To get the conversation started about what SRR wanted an updated program to look like, Asch wrote a prototype for a consent training workshop.
For orientation workshops, McCaleb proposed “Roll Back the Script,” a theatrical-based programs offered by “Speak About It,” an organization many of the other NESCACs use. Asch and McCaleb hope to see a mandatory workshop implemented during the upcoming February orientation. The pair have discussed including small group discussions, as well as explanations from McCaleb of the definitions of consent and rape and the college's Title IX policy, as a part of the orientation training.
Since the interview, McCaleb has secured funding for the “Speak About It” program for this February orientation.
Asch’s proposal also includes an introduction by McCaleb, in which she would explain the definitions of consent and rape, as well as the Title IX policy at Middlebury.
“I think a lot of preventative training can be too happy-go-lucky, like ‘just say no!’ If you’re really going to take it seriously, you need to get into complexities of what realistic hook-up and drinking culture look like on college campuses,” Asch said. “‘Don’t have sex when you’re drunk’ is not realistic on a college campus. We need to address that.”
Providing effective consent education is incredibly important and incredibly difficult, according to Director of Education for Equity and Inclusion Renee Wells.
“It’s important because everyone needs to be intentional about both asking about the comfort, desires, and boundaries of partners and articulating their own comfort, desires, and boundaries,” she said. “It’s also difficult because consent education isn’t something that can be easily reduced to a slideshow presentation; it requires having nuanced conversations that don’t always have pre-packaged answers.”
Asch is not the first to express concern over Middlebury’s lack of mandatory consent training for students. Students and administrators have made past attempts at putting one in place.
“I stand on the shoulders of student activists and representatives that have come in years before me,” Asch said. “People have tried to do this work and made small changes to the culture in a way that I am now able to get through.” She sees her research into other NESCAC programs and the new administrators as important factors in her success as well.
This fall is the first time in Middlebury’s history that there is a full-time violence prevention education professional on campus (Wagner). Wells’ position is also relatively new.
“We are in a unique position with a significant number of college staff dedicated to these issues, to build greater capacity to support and engage our students in smaller, facilitated dialogues about issues like consent,” McCaleb said.
“My sense isn’t that it was an intentional decision not to offer mandatory consent training,” Wells said. “My sense is that it has been an issue of capacity and what staff have been able to provide in the past compared to what we are working to build the capacity to provide in the future.”
Asch has also reached out to sports team captains and social house presidents asking them to commit their teams or houses to sign up once workshops are available. Over 20 teams and houses have already committed. She hopes to make regular trainings available throughout the semester.
“Conversations about consent require buy-in and a commitment to dialogue. It’s not a ‘once and done’ type of topic,” said Wagner, adding that she is excited about the How Will We Live Together study and its programming recommendations because of their potential to “facilitate those conversations with smaller groups of students and in an ongoing manner.”
Now, Asch is working to find funding to train student facilitators.
“We have SRR members willing to facilitate and train, to take on those emotional and social risks for themselves. We have houses and teams who want to participate, who don’t feel taken care of on the campus. We have a workshop written, that needs to be edited and approved. What we don’t have is training for the facilitators,” Asch said.
McCaleb and Asch are discussing the possibility of hiring professional facilitators for the current consent workshops instead of training student in facilitation.
Asch’s goal is to have some hundreds of students trained in consent by the end of this school year.
Editor’s note: Elissa Asch is the sister of senior news editor Sarah Asch. Sarah was not involved in the reporting or editing of this article.
Correction: A former version of this article misstated the name of the Sexual and Relationship Respect Committee, and misrepresented various details about the timeline and process of the workshop development. That information has since been corrected.
(11/07/19 10:57am)
We, as students, stand in solidarity with you in your unionization efforts. We see great potential for a union to address many of the recent concerns you’ve voiced — low wages, unpredictable schedules, a lack of communication, voicelessness — concerns that deeply disturb us.
According to an article published in The New York Times, declining union membership in the U.S. since the 1960s has contributed to increased income inequality and lower wages. Today, union workers now earn an average of 30% more than non-union workers in similar jobs.
We understand, however, that some staff members have important reasons for not wanting to unionize; fears, for example, of losing their current benefits. With this in mind, we want to emphasize that we stand with you in whatever routes you choose to pursue — union, or not — to better your livelihoods.
We hope that other students feel similarly strongly about supporting staff efforts, in whatever forms those efforts may take, to improve your working conditions and gain a stronger voice on this campus. There are students listening for ways to support you, who want to hear your stories and your hopes for this job. We also encourage our peers to go beyond listening, to be active in finding ways to contribute, whether it be holding meetings, writing petitions or letters, organizing protests or participating in other acts of solidarity.
You should not be alone in this.
Signed,
Sarah Asch ’19.5, Senior News Editor
Hannah Bensen ’21, News Editor
Riley Board ’22, News Editor
Ellie Eberlee ’20, Senior Opinions Editor
Rain Ji ’23, Layout Editor
Jack Kagan ’20, Sports Editor
Elsa Korpi ’22, Arts & Academics Editor
Lily Laesch ’23, Layout Editor
Nora Peachin ’21, News Editor
Amelia Pollard ’20.5, Digital Director
April Qian ’20, Senior Arts & Academics Editor
Emmanuel Tamrat ’22, Online Editor
Editors’ note: Editors involved in reporting last week’s story about the unionization efforts were not involved in creating, editing or publishing this op-ed.
(10/31/19 10:03am)
A team of four independent contractors began cleaning nearly all of the small residential spaces on campus on Oct. 14. This shift came as a result of ongoing custodial staff shortages.
Associate Director of Facilities Services Missy Beckwith, who is in charge of processing resignations and new hires, said the number of vacancies has increased over the past few years.
“I’ve been here for a long time and this is the first time that I remember having as many openings as we do,” said one custodian, who The Campus will refer to as Jane. All interviewed custodians requested anonymity, for fear of retribution from the college.
Staff shortages have caused Custodial Services “to be inconsistent with the level of service we are able to provide,” according to an email Beckwith sent to employees in Facilities and Custodial Services, Public Safety and commons coordinators on Friday, Oct. 11.
“We felt the need to fix this quickly in order to provide an acceptable level of service and to manage the workload and stress level for our staff,” she continued.
The small residential spaces, mostly small houses owned by the college like Homestead and 97 Adirondack View, were selected to be cleaned by contractors to improve efficiency.
So far, independent contractors Diego Silva and Justin Smith have had generally positive experiences at the college. They described the small houses as “pretty light upkeep” and “upscale.”
A second custodian, who The Campus will refer to as Michael, felt positively about the addition of contracted workers.
“My team has been affected [by staff shortages]. For a while there, it was pretty bleak. Over time, you do notice the neglect. With the contracted workers, it’s given us more people,” he said.
However, a third custodian, who The Campus will refer to as Sarah, was disappointed by the change.
“We get close to our students in the small houses,” she said. “We miss that. We have relationships with our students in our dorms, but when you have little houses you can chat with students while you clean.”
Sarah felt her team’s workload was manageable even with the small residential spaces.
Jane appreciates the help, but believes the contractors should be assigned to academic buildings rather than residence halls.
“Custodians love to make connections with their students,” Michael said.
“When students come back to visit, you always get a hug when they see you,” Sarah said. She said that some of the female custodians on campus call themselves “surrogate moms” and “grandmas” to their students.
Having a permanent custodial staff that has relationships with commons staff members also helps create a network of people paying close attention to warning signs among students, like an abundance of alcohol in the trash or students regularly sleeping in common rooms, according to Sarah. She wondered if these aspects of the job would be lost with independent contractors, simply because they are less familiar with students and other staff members.
Unlivable wages
The college currently has 16 vacancies and 85.74 staff members, a number the office uses to indicate the presence of part-time employees. This includes those working in Custodial Services, General Services, Bread Loaf Custodial Services and Waste Management. Beckwith includes all four sectors in her staff count “since we all help cover the work of the department.” Supervisors are not included in this number.
Only half of the vacancies are being filled by contractors right now. Four contractors from Michelle Nolan’s Cleaning Service are responsible for the small houses, and four additional contractors from Full Effects assist custodial teams wherever there is the greatest need. The college has been hiring Full Effects contractors whenever the need arises for the past year.
Many believe that the staff shortages stem from the low pay custodians receive for their work. The hiring minimum for a custodian position at the college is $12.07 per hour, which falls under even the lowest estimates for a living wage in Addison County and Vermont.
“I think it’s the wage causing staff shortages,” Michael said. “People making decisions [about our pay] don’t seem to know what it takes, financially, to live here.”
A 2017 study conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found the Addison County living wage for one adult with no children to be $12.40 per hour. For a single parent of one child, it is $25.07.
A 2018 study by the Vermont Legislative Joint Fiscal Office set the Vermont living wage at $13.34 per hour. This amount is an average of the urban and rural rates for two adults with no children.
However, the National Low Income Housing Coalition set the Addison County housing wage at $19.63 per hour — more than seven dollars over Middlebury’s hiring minimum.
Previous Campus reporting shows ongoing staff discontent with low wages.
“Middlebury is expensive. People paid OP1 or OP2 salaries can’t afford to live nearby,” Michael said, in reference to the college staff pay ranges.
Custodians are categorized in the OP2 range, and custodial liaisons in the OP3 range. Approximately 15% of staff are paid at the OP1and OP2 levels, the lowest of the bands.
“Custodial work is hard work,” Sarah said, “You can start at McDonald’s for $15 an hour, so if our starting pay is lower, you can say ‘I can find easier work and better pay elsewhere.’”
The college is aware of discontent with wages and is looking into the problem, as reported in this week’s coverage of staff unionization efforts.
Reaping the benefits
One thing that sets the college apart from other local employers is the benefits package, it offers, which both Michael and Sarah said attracted them to apply for positions at the college.
“I was attracted to this job because of the benefits. There are not a lot of places around here where you’ll see the benefits that we have. They are phenomenal,” Michael said.
But both agreed good benefits do not make up for inadequate pay.
“Even though we have good benefits, people can’t pay their mortgages, rent or insurance if they can’t make enough money,” Sara said. “The cost of living keeps going up. The wages aren’t keeping up with the increasing cost of living.”
Sara has never gotten a raise greater than one dollar an hour at a time; her raises have varied between 25 and 50 cents an hour. When she began working at Middlebury, she took a paycut from her previous job and hasn’t made it up in the 18 years she has worked here.
“If you have good, loyal, trustworthy help, you treat them the way they should be treated. You pay them the way they should be paid. Those qualities are worth something,” she said. “The college needs to make us feel like what we’re giving them, we’re getting back in return.”
Long hours, hard work
A Middlebury custodian’s typical work day begins at 6 a.m. and ends at 2:30 p.m., with an unpaid half-hour break in the middle of the day. Custodians who are working overtime can come in as early as 3:30 a.m. to start cleaning, and work up to 12-hour days.
With staff shortages, some custodial teams that should have four members are down to only two or three. Fully-staffed teams have stepped in to help make up the work.
Custodial work is physically demanding, and “it’s not always pretty,” Jane said. The custodial staff’s workload is especially heavy right after graduation, when custodians have to clean all the rooms for reunion and then again for summer school. Staff members work nine hour days for several weeks, doing very physical work. Student damages to college buildings also create an additional burden for the custodial staff.
“Custodial work in higher education is different than other janitorial, housekeeping or custodial jobs,” Beckwith said. “There is so much that goes above and beyond normal custodial work that makes it, in my opinion, much more challenging than average custodial position.” She cited keeping track of furniture and constantly-changing schedules, as well as building relationships with students, as examples.
Middlebury is not alone in this problem. Bowdoin housekeeping staff described the tolls of difficult workloads, and unlivable wages, in an article published by The Bowdoin Orient last year.
Facing a statewide dilemma
With the Vermont unemployment rate at 2.2% as of Sept. 2019, employers throughout the state are struggling to find workers. The college is no exception.
“We’re competing with other entry-level jobs for the same people,” Beckwith said.“We just hired two new staff and have another that’s in the post-offer, pre-employment screening process.”
Despite new hires, Beckwith says the college may need to bring in more contractors if more vacancies pop up, although she said they “generally do get more applicants in the winter time.”
The college will continue to try and fill the positions currently filled by the independent contractors with permanent staff, according to Beckwith. She also disputed that the shortage is related to the recent workforce planning initiative.
“What we are experiencing in our department has nothing to do with workforce planning,” Beckwith said. Although Custodial Services reduced the number of positions in the department because of workforce planning, Beckwith said this was “not the cause of our current situation.”
“Our situation is due to the number of vacant positions and inability to get applicants,” she said.
However, the combination of workforce planning and the new independent contractors has fostered concern amongst staff members over job security, according to Sarah.
Although her supervisor assured her that “independent contractors are not coming in to replace permanent staff,” she and others are worried. “People want job security,” she said.
Jane also expressed concern that permanent staff members would be phased out. “It feels like everyone is just waiting for the rest of the bomb to drop,” Sarah said.
The college is working to alleviate stress for its custodial staff, with several solutions in the works in addition to the new independent contractors.
Last summer, when staff was particularly short, management eliminated some services at the language schools, such as linen exchange and weekly in-room sweeping for faculty and directors, in order to lessen the custodians’ workload.
Facilities Services has also created a student custodial helper position with flexible hours, to engage students in helping with basic tasks like removing trash and vacuuming their hallways. Two students have signed up so far, and Beckwith hopes to get more involved. She also urged all faculty, staff and students to take care of campus spaces — for example, rearranging any out-of-place furniture at the end of class and taking dishes back to dining halls.
All three custodians expressed the importance of respect and appreciation for the custodial staff.
“It would be nice to feel that upper management really did appreciate everything that everyone is doing, especially when people are down-staffed and the team is pulling together and not asking for help,” Sarah said.
“Providing for your family and self preservation should not be a privilege, but that’s what’s expected as Middlebury College employees,” Jane said.
What is most important, according to Jane, is for administrators to ask what staff members need, and to really listen.
(10/03/19 10:05am)
Political Science Professor Allison Stanger has begun her third year of academic leave from Middlebury. With minimal communication as to her whereabouts, students continue to wonder if and when she will return.
Currently a technology and human values senior fellow at Harvard University’s Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics, Stanger is “working on projects of her own,” according to Harvard Fellowships and Programs Manager Emily Bromley. Bromley was unable to provide further details of Stanger’s work at Harvard, but said “we are thrilled to have her here with us.”
Stanger is also a visiting professor with Harvard’s Department of Government, and will be teaching a course on the politics of virtual realities in the spring.
At the end of what was intended to be a two-year leave, Stanger disclosed plans to remain off campus for a third consecutive year in an email to the Middlebury Political Science faculty and staff. In the email, she announced her fellowship and visiting professorship, adding that she would also be a faculty fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance at the Kennedy School of Government.
Stanger’s official leave began in the fall of 2017, the semester after students shut down a lecture by controversial speaker Charles Murray. Stanger had been slated to mediate the Q&A with Murray, which she eventually did when the lecture moved to a livestream format following disruption from the protesters.
When the pair exited the venue, Stanger was jostled by a crowd. She suffered a concussion and neck injury.
The faculty handbook states that sabbaticals can last either six months or a full year, but does not make mention of two- or three-year leaves.
“When there are extraordinary opportunities faculty have the capacity to extend their leaves,” Dean of Faculty Sujata Moorti told The Campus.
Moorti did not say whether Stanger was on paid leave, since the matter is “relate[d] to confidential personnel information.”
One of Stanger’s former advisees, who asked to remain anonymous, has received minimal information about Stanger’s absence.
“When I asked Professor Stanger to be my adviser, she told me she was planning on taking a year’s sabbatical,” Stanger’s former advisee said. “It was only when I got back from the summer did I find out it was for two. I heard from a student and not the department.”
The advisee said the department was otherwise supportive, and they were able to find a new adviser to take Stanger’s place.
“I’ve tried to get in touch with Professor Stanger but despite sending her multiple emails, have never received a response,” the advisee said.
Political Science Department Chair Erik Bleich said the department has had to adjust to accommodate Stanger’s absence.
“She teaches a number of very popular courses in our department,” Bleich said. “We’ve been lucky to have Professor Felicia Grey join us for the three years of Professor Stanger’s time away from campus.”
Grey has been filling the department’s course offerings as a visiting professor in the international relations subfield, Stanger’s area of expertise.
Political Science Professor Kemi Fuentes-George said that the department has been able to offer more options for the International Politics course with Grey on the faculty, but that the college has not been able to offer Stanger’s American Foreign Policy course since her leave.
“My knowledge about her plans is and has been extremely minimal,” Fuentes-George added.
Grey will be teaching American Foreign Policy this spring.
Stanger has made a host of public appearances since her leave. In the immediate wake of the Charles Murray incident, Stanger wrote op-eds, spoke on panels and at conferences, and testified before a U.S. Senate committee about free speech on college campuses. Most recently, Stanger has been promoting her new book, “Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington to Trump,” which she released on Sept. 24.
The book was coincidentally released the same day that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, following a whistleblower complaint that detailed conversations between Trump and the president of Ukraine about Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
The day after the book’s release, Stanger published a piece about whistleblowers in The Atlantic and was interviewed about her book on NPR. Stanger told Vermont’s WCAX-TV in an interview posted on Sunday that she believes whistleblowing is “heroic, and a bipartisan, American duty necessary to keep our nation’s elites honest and our democracy intact.”
Stanger’s fellowship at Harvard is scheduled to end on May 31, 2020. According to Political Science Department Coordinator Linda Booska, Stanger plans to return to campus next year.
Stanger did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article referred to Stanger’s former advisee by name. The advisee has since requested their name to be redacted from the article.
A previous version of the article also did not note that Grey will teach American Foreign Policy this spring. The article has since been updated.
(09/26/19 12:04pm)
Middlebury’s student voting rate increased from 15% in the 2014 midterm elections to 51% in 2018, according to a national voting report released last week by the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education (IDHE) at Tufts University.
“This increase is incredibly important because it demonstrates how Middlebury College students are engaged in both local and national politics, and have realized the importance of their generation going to the polls and casting their vote for causes they believe in,” said Nora Bayley ’21, co-president of the non-partisan student organization MiddVote. MiddVote, which was founded in 2006 encourages and helps students participate in local, state and national elections.
Middlebury is not alone in this upwad trend. College voting across the United States has more than doubled from 2014 to 2018, with national voting rates skyrocketing among eligible college students from 19% to 40% within the four years. These statistics were published in the IDHE’s Democracy Counts 2018, which analyzed voting patterns for more than 10 million college students on more than 1,000 campuses across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The IDHE report shows that Middlebury students turned out to the polls in greater numbers than most other colleges across the United States, Bayley noted. This difference can perhaps be attributed to MiddVote’s efforts to engage students; last fall, MiddVote held at least 10 voter registration drives and absentee-ballot request drives for the midterm elections.
“We also provided free stamps for students to use when sending their ballots back to their home state, and helped students who were experiencing difficulties requesting or receiving their ballot in the mail,” Bayley said.
MiddVote also received a grant from the organization #VoteTogether, which allowed it to provide transportation to and from the Middlebury Town Offices on election day for Vermont voters, and to host a “Party at the Polls” for both college students and locals.
“Helping remove barriers to voting can encourage participation and we hope to carry on this initiative during the 2020 presidential elections,” said Ashley Laux, program director at the Center for Community Engagement. “MiddVote’s in-person outreach method of hosting many on-campus voter registration and absentee ballot drives is a useful mechanism for Middlebury College students to get their questions answered by trained peers,” she said.
IDHE intended for this study to “support political learning and civic engagement, as well as to identify and address gaps in political and civic participation,” according to a press release. It did not receive information that could individually identify students or how they voted.
The IDHE findings looked at differences across genders, race and ethnicity, year, major and various other factors when it came to determining voting habits.
Nationwide, women in college continued to vote at higher rates than men in 2018. This trend was true for Middlebury as well. The report showed that black women maintained their position as the most active voters on campus, and Hispanic women made the largest gains.
The largest voting rate increase nationally across racial or ethnic groups was among Hispanic students, from 14% in 2014 to 36.5% in 2018.
“Voting gaps between disciplines persisted in 2018,” according to the IDHE press release. Turnout among students in STEM fields and in business lag behind students studying the humanities, social sciences and education.
At Middlebury, of the majors included in the study, Visual and Performing Arts ranked the highest in 2018 voting rate, with Natural Resources and Conservation trailing closely behind.
Historically, older Americans vote at higher rates than their younger counterparts. But the turnout gap between students under 22 and students over 30 decreased 2014 and 2018, the study found.
According to the U.S. Elections Project, the voting rate increased among all Americans by 13% in 2018 as compared to 2014. In comparison, the college and university National Student Voting Rate (NSVR) rose 21%.
Increased political involvement on college campuses will likely impact the 2020 presidential elections, according to an article published in the Washington Post. NBC News analysts credited voters under 30 as a key group in bringing about the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives in 2018. Surveys indicate that young voters tend to oppose President Trump, especially on issues such as climate change, immigration, gun violence and student debt.
MiddVote will continue its efforts this semester. Most recently, the organization hosted a voter registration outside McCullough on Tuesday, Sept. 23 for National Voter Registration Day.
(09/12/19 10:03am)
Retiring Faculty
Over the next few years, Middlebury will see significant turnover in faculty and staff due to the college’s workforce planning initiative.
President Laurie L. Patton announced in June 2018 that the college would be offering its faculty elective, incentive-based retirement plans, often called “buyouts.” Currently, 24 professors have signed agreements to participate in the Faculty Retirement Incentive Program (FRIP).
FRIP is intended to save the college money because new tenure-track faculty can be paid lower salaries than professors who have held tenure for many years, as previously reported by the Campus. The FRIP package includes a year’s salary, funds for scholarship and research for up to three years after retirement, and establishment of a Health Reimbursement Account for health care.
This past May, the first round of FRIP participants were honored at a reception at the Mahaney Arts Center with other retiring faculty.
Professor of English and Liberal Arts John Bertolini decided to retire this year for health reasons and was happy to take the “generous offer” he received through FRIP. “I had been thinking I would go on associate status for a few years, but when the buy out became possible, I took the plunge,” Bertolini told the Campus last spring.
He began teaching at Middlebury in 1975 and was joined at the college by his wife, Mary Ellen Bertolini, in 1993. Bertolini expects changes in faculty to come with changes to the English and American Literature Department offerings, as the classes he taught disappear from the offered curriculum and new courses take their place.
Peter Hamlin, a professor of music, also retired last May. Hamlin said the incentive program was not a factor in his decision to retire, but that he did “get a small amount based on a formula [the college] used.”
Hamlin is looking forward to having more time in retirement to sail, swim, snowboard, cross-country ski, travel and learn Spanish with his wife.
Newly-Tenured Faculty
Keegan Callanan, assistant professor of political science, and Daniel F. Silva, assistant professor of Portuguese, were both offered tenure last May.
Silva described the experience of achieving tenure as both painful and joyful.
“I found myself mourning all who I left behind, because achieving ‘success,’ in academia or otherwise, while coming from communities like mine, often and sadly implies an involuntary divorce from home,” he said.
Silva will serve as interim director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, while teaching International Global Studies 101 this fall.
“Through both capacities, I hope to continue finding a place here and working so that others of marginalized experiences may also find a place here,” he said.
Callanan is teaching two thematic courses this fall, one on problems at the intersection of religion and politics, and the other on the relationship between power and justice in international relations.
Tenure was developed in American universities to protect professors’ freedom of inquiry and speech, Callanan wrote in an email to the Campus.
“The intuition behind the practice is that the vocation of a scholar entails the pursuit of truth, and this pursuit should be undertaken without the risk of losing one’s livelihood as a consequence of reaching unpopular conclusions. Luckily, I hold no unpopular views, so tenure is a formality in my case.”
Callanan feels having tenure will positively impact his work as a professor.
“Tenure affords the scholar time — time to develop thoughts patiently, without being bound by short-term demands for results,” he said. “This enables a certain kind of intellectual risk-taking that would be rarer without tenure.”
The Board of Trustees also promoted nine associate professors to the rank of professor. Rebecca Bennette, one of the newly promoted instructors, explained this review occurs after five to eight years of associate professorship, and can mean a salary boost as well as eligibility for various positions and committees.
SOAN Split
Sociology and Anthropology, formerly one joint department, are now two separate departments, each with its own major offerings. This decision was made at the May faculty meeting, according to Dean of Curriculum Suzanne Gurland.
“Anthropology and sociology have always been different disciplines, but communicating that difference to students was always difficult in a joint department,” said Professor James Fitzsimmons, the chair of the new Anthropology Department.
As Fitzsimmons explained, both disciplines have diversified their offerings, they’ve grown increasingly separate, to the point where splitting made the most sense.
“Instead of being buried — yes, I’m an archaeologist, so pun intended — under joint departmental requirements, our anthropology students are going to be able to pursue a subfield or even sample them all,” Fitzsimmons said. He believes the split means his department will be able to diversify its curriculum, make study abroad easier and further develop subfields.
The separate departments will allow for “more disciplinary depth,” according to Linus Owens, Sociology Department chair. Owens added that Middlebury was the only one of its peer colleges in the Nescac league with a shared department and major before the switch.
Food Studies Minor
Faculty also voted to approve a new Food Studies minor at their May meeting.
The minor will include two introductory courses, a seminar course or independent study, and two courses selected from other disciplines including social sciences, health and humanities or natural sciences and geography, said Molly Anderson, academic director of the Food Studies Program. All minors will also participate in experiential learning.
Anderson sees the minor as “a way that students who are interested in food issues can dig deeper and get recognition for their work.”
Said Anderson, “Food Studies are important because food is connected with almost every discipline in one way or another. The ways that we produce, consume and waste food can either contribute to huge environmental and social problems or be part of the solutions.”
(09/12/19 10:00am)
On July 23, the Trump administration announced a proposal to drastically alter the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. Their proposed changes would revoke benefits for 3.1 million Americans and over 13,000 Vermonters.
For 20 years, 43 states including Vermont have employed an option within SNAP called ‘broad-based categorical eligibility.’ The administration is trying to eliminate it with this proposal.
This option makes 3SquaresVT, the Vermont name for SNAP, “even more effective and responsive to the needs of food insecure Vermonters,” according to a news release by non-profit organization Hunger Free Vermont in August. It allows states to expand access to SNAP to more low-income people, by giving states more flexibility with the gross monthly income limit.
In order to be eligible for SNAP, households must fall under the federal limit, which is 130% of the poverty level. With broad-based categorical eligibility, states can raise the limit. “It allows states to really align the income limit with the need in the state,” said Drake Turner, Food Security Advocacy Manager at Hunger Free Vermont. In Vermont, it’s currently set at 185% of the federal poverty level.
“The federal government says they’re trying to close a loophole, but that’s really misrepresenting what broad based categorical eligibility is,” Turner said.
Hunger Free Vermont explains that the option is “a provision used by our state to help 3SquaresVT reach households that are working and may have slightly higher incomes but significant expenses (such as high housing, medical, and childcare costs).”
All households are still required to apply to SNAP and meet the same requirements as anyone else in order to receive benefits.
Last December, Congress passed a bipartisan Farm Bill that considered and rejected the change the Trump administration is now attempting to make. So, the administration is trying a different avenue, one which allows them to bypass Congress.
“This proposal is another in a long line of actions by this administration to demonize low-income Americans and keep them from applying for programs that help them and their families get what they need to thrive,” said Anore Horton, Executive Director of Hunger Free Vermont, in an article published by the organization.
The broad-based eligibility option “has become a key part of the SNAP program over the last two decades,” Turner said, “so states will have to spend a lot of money to change in accordance with the rule, if it goes into effect.”
Turner is also concerned about free school meals. The proposed rule would “jeopardize more than 500,000 children’s access to free school breakfast and lunch,” according to the Food Research and Action Center.
Children whose households receive SNAP benefits are automatically eligible for free school meals. If their households lose SNAP benefits, they may lose free school meals because of differing requirements, or have to apply separately for free meals.
This will also impact community eligibility, which allows high-poverty schools to offer free breakfast and lunch to all students if at least 40% of their students are certified for free meals without an application. Most students who fall under this category are certified for school meals through SNAP.
“These kids already don’t have enough to eat, and now they’ll be even hungrier. This will impact their ability to grow and learn. Is this how we want to steward the future generation?” asked Jeanne Montross, Executive Director of Middlebury-based nonprofit Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects (HOPE).
SNAP has been proven to reduce hunger, help bring people out of poverty, and lead to positive short and long-term health, education, and employment outcomes.
“If the Trump Administration was truly concerned about food insecurity, it would be working to increase wages and improve access to housing, health care, and food assistance, instead of repeatedly proposing severe cuts to programs that support low-income Americans,” reads an article on the Hunger Free Vermont website. All in all, $7.5 million in benefits coming into Vermont would be lost per year with the proposed change.
Lily Bradburn, Local Food Access Coordinator at HOPE, is concerned that something as simple as losing SNAP benefits could significantly hurt individuals struggling with poverty, potentially even pushing them towards worse situations than before.
Before the rule can be passed, the Trump administration is required to collect and review public comments about the impact of the proposed change. So, Hunger Free Vermont is fighting it with a campaign to encourage people to submit comments.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture must review every single submission before a final decision is made by the government. There have been collections of public comments that have had substantial impacts in the past, said Turner. “Also, the comments create a record of public opposition,” she added, “so it can be proven that the given decision is going against the will of the people.”
The deadline to submit comments is Sept. 23. More information about the campaign and instructions for submitting comment are available at www.hungerfreevt.org/protect3squaresvt.
(05/09/19 10:30am)
It’s finally warm out, and for Vermonters, that means it’s creemee season. To those unfamiliar with the iconic frozen treat, a creemee is just soft-serve ice cream but with a fun Vermont nickname.
Early May is opening season for many creemee stands. As an ice cream aficionado, I decided to celebrate this momentous time by attempting to visit as many stands as possible in one weekend.
On Saturday, I drove up to Vergennes in the hopes of kicking off my adventure with The Main Scoop, only to find it closed. The store’s Facebook page promises it will be open for business this Friday, May 10. Despite this early disappointment, I was determined to satisfy my creemee craving.
Following a friend’s recommendation, I continued up to North Ferrisburgh to investigate Vermont Cookie Love. The Love Shack is a small shop right off of Route 7 with a parking lot and benches right outside. Cookie Love sells not only creemees and hard ice cream but also freshly baked cookies, as its name suggests.
As I purchased the desserts, the very friendly cashier recounted that the family-owned business began 10 years ago at the Shelburne Farmers Market. Their website explains that owner Paul Seyler and his family moved to Ferrisburgh from New York City in 2007 and started selling cookies and cookie dough right away.
Cookie Love’s creemees are produced by Kingdom Creamery in the Northeast Kingdom. A friend and I shared a small maple creemee into which we dipped chunks of warm cookie. The addition of the cookie was a game changer, to say the least.
The stand and the owner’s story were compelling; the slightly awkward destination right on the side of the highway, less so. But overall, Cookie Love served up a tasty creemee.
Next, I brought it a little closer to home with Burnham Maple Farm and Market, only a few minutes’ drive from campus. A wooden, creemee-shaped sign greets you as you drive up, reading “Pure Vermont Maple Creemies.” The grass in front of the quaint red building is covered in lawn chairs of all sizes and colors.
Burnham is open year-round, selling all sorts of sweet maple treats and other local products. The store began its creemee season early, opening on April 4.
The owner explained that the business has been producing their own maple syrup and frozen maple treats for five years now. Perhaps it was the history, but the Burnham maple creemee seemed to have a deeper, more intense maple flavor than all the others I tried. There was also something so quintessentially Vermont about sitting in an Adirondack chair, licking away at a maple creemee.
Third on my list was the Village Creeme, a Bristol favorite. This establishment was perhaps the most aesthetically charming, with its white and yellow awning, big yellow sign and picnic tables.
The Village Creeme opened for the summer this Monday, May 6 and people flocked to the stand to celebrate. Families and couples waited in line to purchase not only creemees but also mac and cheese bites, burgers and more.
The portions were generous and the atmosphere welcoming at the bustling Bristol business.
For my final stop, I pulled up to Shafer’s Market in downtown Middlebury. Like the Village Creeme, there was a long line at the ice cream window. When it was finally my turn to place my order, I was told that the maple creemees were too soft to put into a cone.
Personally, I think half the fun of a creemee is eating it out of a cone, so I went with chocolate instead. Although I was disappointed by the maple issue, Shafer’s certainly offered the most bang for my buck. And, sitting on the outdoor benches, people-watching, creemee in hand, is an unbeatable, classic Middlebury experience.
I would return to all the soft-serve joints I visited, but I most enjoyed Burnham Maple Farm and Market. It was the only location that made the creemees on-site from scratch, and this was evident in the creemee’s flavor.
Ultimately, summer in Vermont is not complete without tasting at least one of these frozen dairy treats — although perhaps not four in one weekend. I’m not sure I can, in good conscience, advise that to anyone else. But there is certainly something special about sitting out in the warm sun, savoring some icy cold creemees with your friends.
(05/02/19 10:34am)
Last September, 100 people from all over Vermont gathered at the Bread Loaf campus in Ripton to discuss their visions for their state’s future. Activist Fran Putnam led the charge, with Middlebury College Economics Professor Jon Isham acting as a moderator for the event. Today, these Vermonters have formed Vision for Vermont, a grassroots group working “to try to help bridge the divisions that have come to the surface in our country and in Vermont in the last several years,” according to their website.
Although the first meeting was held in 2018, Putnam dates the organization’s origin back to the 2016 election. After Trump was elected, Putnam and several others from the Middlebury area participated in the Women’s Marches in Montpelier and Washington, D.C.
They decided they wanted to continue this work to “move forward with turning this country [into] what we want to see rather than how divisive it [was] and still is.” So, they formed “Huddlebury,” a group that has met every two to three weeks since January of 2017. The group has been “trying to find ways to move forward, both locally and regionally,” Putnam said.
Huddlebury members began by reading climate activist Naomi Klein’s book “No Is Not Enough.” In it, Klein encourages Americans to have a particular vision rather than simply saying ‘no’ to everything. “That book was very inspirational to us,” Putnam explained.
Next, the group read George Lakey’s “Viking Economics” and attended several of his lectures in March of 2018. In April, Middlebury College Food Studies Professor Molly Anderson invited Lakey to campus to speak. Lakey described Nordic countries’ visions and how they were able to transform their governments and societies.
Putnam and her cohort asked themselves, “How can we do this in Vermont?” and decided on a vision summit, inviting people from all over the state to come together last September at Bread Loaf.
Isham became involved through, as he described, a serendipitous moment: he ran into Putnam and Anderson early last summer at the Natural Foods Co-Op. When they mentioned they were looking for a facilitator for a summit in September, Isham volunteered himself.
Isham has kept up with the groups since September and has “loved following their progress.” Through the fall, he worked with Putnam on developing a project for his Environmental Studies senior seminar class.
Over the course of the spring semester, Isham’s class has been working on a podcast for the Vision for Vermont website. Students have interviewed Vision for Vermont members and other Vermonters, including teachers, farmers, indigenous people and people of color.
Isham emphasized the importance of students looking at people a generation before them who were trying to affect change. “It’s helpful to see what worked for them, what didn’t, what their frustrations were, what they wish they had done differently,” he said.
One goal of the students’ project has been bringing more diversity to Vision for Vermont. The senior seminar is “trying to reach different demographics … to learn from these folks,” Isham stated.
Putnam expressed gratitude for the students’ work. “We’re trying to reach out to people whose voices are often not heard … we want to talk to people feeling disgruntled or angry, or that no one is listening to them, or that their voice doesn’t count,” Putnam said.
In addition to his senior seminar class, various other students have worked with Putnam on the project, including those involved in the Sunday Night Environmental Group (SNEG); Bayu Zulkifli ’21 designed the website while Leif Taranta ’20.5 and Cat La Roche ’21 have also collaborated with the group.
Over the course of the summit and following meetings, the group drafted a vision statement, published on their website. The statement addresses issues ranging from healthcare and food security to affordable housing and a strong and fair economy. It imagines “a future where Vermonters care for each other, their communities, and the earth; where the issues that matter to all of us are resolved in a way that protects our environment and combats further climate change; and where access to health care, and economic, racial and gender equity are assured for everyone.”
Putnam discussed the importance of the positivity and optimism of the group and vision statement. “The news is so bad every day … if I can get a group of people together moving forward and looking ahead to something more positive, it makes me and everyone around me feel better,” she said.
“Social change is [a] hard thing to steer, to understand and to manage,” Isham said. He believes starting with conversations is essential. “Think of churches in [the] civil rights movement, or college campuses in fights for women’s liberation and gay rights.”
La Roche believes people’s ideal worlds are not so different between parties, and that the vision statement is getting at these universal core values. People want the same things, “they just disagree on the methods to get there.”
Ultimately, the group hopes to finalize their vision statement and then start sharing it with politicians, activists and others. They plan to “meet with state representatives and senators, and perhaps organize a teach-in or rally,” La Roche said. However, they are in no rush; project members are “just letting the vision statement come together,” La Roche added.
“When enough people support [the vision], you can take it to the government and show them we want big changes, not little actions,” Putnam explained. “We’re not exactly sure where it’s going to end up, we’re just going to see how far we can go with it.”
Next on the group’s agenda is a gathering with George Lakey on May 9, followed by a second summit on Sept. 14. Students are welcome to attend both, Putnam emphasized.
“It’s easy to get caught up on individual issues,” La Roche concluded, so “to have in your mind what the future you would like to live in looks like is really useful.” The vision statement transcends the challenges of the present and looks towards an idealistic future.
(03/14/19 10:30am)
Replacing the usual microgreens and honey-ginger soy elixir of Burlington restaurant Butch + Babe’s menu on Wednesday, Feb. 27, was an unlikely selection; Vermont meatloaf and veggie tots. The school lunch-inspired dinner, called the Love School Lunch dinner, was held as a fundraiser for the Burlington School Food Project, an organization working to provide healthy meals to all Burlington school district students.
The Food Project serves daily lunches, free to students at certain schools in the district, as well as free breakfast and supper for all students and free lunches during summer break.
“A lot of times, the focus of schools is test scores, classroom sizes, or curriculum development. But all of this is not really important when your students are showing up to school hungry and malnourished. Our work is ensuring students are ready to learn,” Assistant Director Heather Torrey explained.
Torrey studied community nutrition at the University of Vermont, where she realized the impact she could have on the community by working in food services. “The work we do every day impacts the students who have our meals,” Torey said. In total, the Project provides over a million meals to students in the Burlington school district per year.
Burlington School Food Project is also committed to buying local whenever possible. According to their website, 20 percent of their annual food costs goes directly to local producers and growers, and this number increases to 33 percent when fluid milk is included in the costs.
The organization receives a combination of state and federal funding for school meals, but has to self-fund other programs. The funds raised from the Love School Lunch dinner will go towards these efforts.
One inititive the Burlington School Food Project has taken on is hunger relief over school breaks. The organization began preparing food for students to take home over breaks to help meet this need. “What some folks don’t think about is that holiday breaks are often a source of stress for many of our students— they’re missing the opportunity to get the only meal they have during the day, which is school lunch,” Torrey said.
In addition, the Burlington School Food Project provides educational opportunities— school gardens, cooking classes and its summer food truck, Fork in the Road. Food Education Manager Sarah Heusner has been running the truck for six seasons. It functions as job training for students in “culinary and hospitality skills, workplace obligations, self-advocacy and confidence,” Heusner detailed.
The truck has also become a huge mentorship opportunity. Heusner finds mentorship lacking for teenagers, and so has made that a focus of her work. She also pointed out that most of her employees are ESL students, so working on the food truck also serves as an opportunity to improve their English.
Aside from raising funds, the Love School Lunch fundraiser was also intended to “highlight how essential Burlington school kitchens are to the community,” according to Torrey. Heusner hoped the dinner would “bring about community awareness of who we are.” She believes many community members do not understand the work of the Burlington School Food Project, and also do not know that 55 percent of youths in the school district are on the verge of being food insecure.
One of the owners of Butch + Babes, Jaclyn Major, used to work as a school cook for the School Food Project. For the Love School Lunch fundraiser, Major teamed up with Jordan Ware of Hen of the Wood, another Burlington hotspot, and three cooks from schools in the district.
Heusner spearheaded the event, meeting with the chefs to go over the menu, plan the flow of the evening and do the marketing. To get inspiration, “the chefs thought about what they ate in school lunch,” Heusner recounted.
Torrey hopes to expand community outreach efforts like this dinner in the future, in order to support the multitude of ongoing projects. She is currently working on overhauling the online nutrient database, “to make it more user friendly for families to get nutrition information for our food.”
Also in the works is a new building project for the Burlington High School, the organization’s largest site to date. “We’re trying to improve our on-site composting efforts and reduce our food waste,” Torrey explained. “With the size of our program, we have the potential to make a huge impact on reducing food waste.”
Heusner’s ultimate goal for her work would be to open a sliding scale restaurant, staffed by students and serving community members. She also wants to continue providing food to families over school breaks. She described how impactful it was “making hunger relief packages and delivering them to people’s houses, hearing the responses and how happy people are to be in the Burlington community. It’s lovely to see that people feel taken care of.”
Visiting Professor at Middlebury Lana Povitz, who is teaching a course on food activism this semester, spoke to The Campus about the importance of school lunches. “Our federally funded National School Lunch Program provides essential support to families throughout the United States, in urban and rural areas alike,” she said. “Advocates need to keep pushing the envelope, even during these austere times.”
Povitz cited ending the separation of children by income levels in school cafeterias as the next item on the agenda. “Universal School Meals (USM) is the surest way to remove poverty stigma sometimes associated with using the National Program and get more children eating the food they need,” Povitz said.
Although the Burlington School Food Project has managed to provide many universally free meals and has made progress on their other goals, some roadblocks stand in their way. Even though the Child Nutrition Program is permanently funded, the level of funding is debated every time the bill is reauthorized. “We will always be funded, it’s just a matter of how much,” Torrey said.
The recent government shutdown also presented an obstacle for schools and school meal providers. Confusion regarding the future of school lunch funding diminished the quality of some meals. Memos went out to schools, assuring them that they would continue to receive funding through March, even if the shutdown continued through February. “Some schools [panicked] and decided to stop serving fresh fruits and vegetables in case of the possibility that they wouldn’t get funded,” Torrey said. “We chose not to change the quality of our meals.” Still, these added stresses can complicate the work of organizations serving school meals.
Torrey and Heusner both described feeling motivated, despite the challenges of their jobs, by the people that they serve. Torrey recounted working with a focus group of middle school students, discussing improving the breakfast program offerings to meet their tastes. “One student mentioned that she was happy she was part of the group because she always participated in breakfast, because sometimes she hadn’t gotten something for dinner the night before. These moments remind me why I’m doing what I’m doing,” Torrey said. “I feel lucky that I don’t have to wonder where my next meal is coming from."
(02/21/19 11:04am)
MIDDLEBURY - Homelessness in Vermont is sometimes hidden within the state’s signature rolling green hills and idyllic pastures. Though the issue may not be as obvious or prevalent in Vermont as in urban centers across the country, it is nonetheless a serious and growing problem.
The Vermont Coalition to End Homelessness (VCEH) recently released a report showing that homelessness increased from 2016 to 2018. The winter months, in particular, can create life-threatening situations for those experiencing homelessness.
Between October and April, organizations across the state work to meet the increased demand for shelter caused by extreme cold weather. Doug Sinclair, co-director of Charter House Coalition, explained that “shelter life is not easy … so, in the warmer months, some people prefer to camp. Many official and nonofficial campgrounds have people living there who are homeless, even if it’s not apparent.”
Middlebury’s Charter House provides clients with a Winter Warming Shelter from Oct. 15 to April 15 annually. As reported by The Campus earlier this year, the shelter opened on Sept. 1. The need is especially pronounced by Dec. 1, according to Sinclair.
Peter Kellerman, co-director of the John Graham Housing & Services in Vergennes, Vt., noted a similar trend of increased need in the winter. But Kellerman continued, “we’re full year-round and maintain a waitlist. There’s a greater need during winter months, but the truth is, we’re always full.”
“Need seems to have grown every year over the last 10 years,” Sinclair observed. This may have to do with a variety of factors.
Firstly, there is a lack of employment opportunities, and the jobs that are available do not have adequate wages. The National Low Income Housing Coalition released a report last year showing that “both average renter wages and prevailing minimum wages are insufficient to afford modest rental apartments throughout the country.” According to the report, a federal minimum wage earner would have to work 122 hours per week for 52 weeks per year, in order to afford a two-bedroom apartment.
“A lot of retail minimum wage jobs are available [in Vermont], which don’t create enough of an income to sustain housing,” Kellerman explained.
“Folks who could’ve afforded to live on their wages 15 years ago, have ended up in a situation where they just don’t have enough income to afford housing,” Sinclair said, echoing Kellerman.
Dawn Butterfield, treasurer for the VCEH, elaborated on the issue. “The cost of living in Vermont is pretty high; some scales rate it number 42 in affordability. Wages have not kept pace with the cost of living, so households with moderate incomes are falling farther and farther behind,” she stated.
These problems are compounded by a severe shortage of affordable housing. “There is a less than 1 percent vacancy rate for affordable housing in Addison County,” Sinclair noted. “Someone can have a [housing] voucher to help them with rent, but can’t find an apartment because it’s not there, so they lose the voucher.” Butterfield agreed that “truly affordable housing is rarely found.”
In Addison County, a perfect storm of events contributed to this shortage leaving many experiencing homelessness in vulnerable positions. Previously, three motels accepted housing vouchers. One however — The Blue Spruce Motel – was destroyed in a fire in 2017 , and another, Greystone, now Middlebury Sweets Motel, was sold to “folks who are less inclined to receive people with vouchers,” as characterized by Kellerman.
This left just one, the Sugarhouse, that according to Kellerman, also holds some “reticence.” Those experiencing homelessness can have “complex service needs, such as mental illness or addiction, so the experience for the proprietor is not always great,” he continued.
Those who are lucky enough to find affordable housing may still face a multitude of challenges in acquiring and retaining the housing. Landlords may be reluctant to “Landlords, both public and private, are loathe to take chances on people who have a poor rental history whether because of payment issues, violence, or crime. That’s understandable, of course, but it does make it challenging to find housing for people, even when they have made changes in their lives that might make them ‘better’ tenants,” Butterfield said.
People experiencing homelessness are also more likely to suffer from severe mental illness, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. “You have to think about domestic violence victims, addiction, mental illness, and people who have experienced extreme trauma,” Kellerman said. “There are a lot of layers to homelessness and how people get affected.”
Butterfield also mentioned the impact of the opioid crisis on increased homelessness. People experiencing homelessness are disproportionately affected by substance abuse and overdose, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Additionally, the Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018 identified stable housing as a critical part of treatment and recovery. These factors left homeless populations across the nation very much at risk to be impacted by the opioid crisis
Finally, Kellerman spoke about the effect of the changing political landscape. “People have been staying with us longer and longer. There is fear [on the part of the clients], because much of the human services funding we rely on has been threatened.”
Kellerman also noted that state agencies are taking a conservative approach following the government shutdown. “They want to make sure they’ll be able to sustain what’s already active, and don’t want to hand out too much,” he said. “But I think it’s worth taking a chance… because people are suffering.”
In order to address this daunting problem, organizations in each county of Vermont work together on a process called Coordinated Entry. Developed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the process is intended to “make sure the most vulnerable among us are housed the quickest,” explained Jan Demers, Executive Director of the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity (CVOEO).
Organizations find available housing, use a vulnerability assessment to look at who is most in need of housing, and then assess what those people need to get into the housing, Demers elaborated. “Even though there may be more households in need, the process of being referred by one of multiple community partners and assessed for level and type of housing need, means we are able to more quickly get people the help they need,” Butterfield said.
Despite the efforts of organizations such as CVOEO, VCEH and shelters, more support is needed to tackle the problem of homelessness in Vermont. For example, Kellerman discussed the importance of ongoing support for formerly homeless people when they are housed.
“When they acquire housing, there’s a new set of stressors, and what had them at risk in the first place doesn’t disappear that quickly. After people are safely housed, ongoing outreach is essential,” he said.
Demers agreed, and pointed out that “funding is no longer there for agencies like CVOEO, and other social service agencies, that used to get funding for supportive services for people who are recently housed.” She agreed that being able to follow people, especially through their first year being housed, would be beneficial.
Butterfield brought up multiple other points including the creation of more “truly affordable housing for households with limited incomes and more money to subsidize rents. He went on to describe the importance of supporting case management for households with multiple barriers to obtaining and retaining housing, as well as more incentives like risk pools so landlords are more willing to take chances on challenging tenants.
Community can also be important in supporting people experiencing homelessness. “If you’re homeless, you feel disenfranchised. You don’t feel part of the community,” Sinclair said.
Some of the challenges faced by people experiencing homelessness can derive from judgment or misunderstanding of their circumstances. “People think that ‘homeless people’ are somehow to blame for their misfortune, and so they don’t ‘deserve’ to be helped,” Butterfield noted. In Kellerman’s words: “It’s not what’s wrong with them, it’s what’s happened to them.”
Demers emphasized the importance of compassion and considering people as individuals. “No matter if you are at Middlebury College, walking around the campus, there are people on your grounds who are in circumstances where there is trauma and great difficulty. Being open to knowing who those people are and what their needs are is essential,” Demers said.
To contact or donate to Charter House Coalition: www.charterhousecoalition.org
(11/29/18 10:58am)
MIDDLEBURY — While campus remained quiet with many students traveling over Thanksgiving break, downtown Middlebury welcomed the annually occurring Small Business Saturday. Local businesses greeted shoppers with hot cocoa, cider, and special deals on Saturday, Nov. 24, providing refuge from the unusually cold and snowy weather.
The event was launched by American Express in 2010, when, according to the company’s website, “small businesses [were] hurting from an economy in recession.” For the past eight years, communities across the country have continued the tradition, organizing efforts to “shop small” and support local businesses on the Saturday following Thanksgiving. In 2017, more than 7,200 neighborhoods across all 50 states participated.
According to the Addison County Economic Development Corporation, the idea behind the event is twofold. First, to encourage people to support their local economies and second, to build community, “because a visit to the family-owned shop or a stop at the neighborhood eatery not only supports local economies, but also promotes thriving communities,” the website reads.
The Middlebury Selectboard released a statement proclaiming Nov. 24, 2018 as Small Business Saturday, urging the residents of Middlebury and communities across the country “to support small businesses and merchants on Small Business Saturday and throughout the year.”
“Middlebury has been participating in Small Business Saturday for a number of years,” said Karen Duguay of the Better Middlebury Partnership. “A few years ago, the former Main Street store, Clementine, was profiled nationally as part of the campaign,” she recounted.
The feature on Emily Blistein, owner of Clementine, highlighted how Blistein engaged with customers through digital marketing. She used an email list and social media to keep them up to date on goings-on at the store. The video and article were published by Sterling Payment Technologies, a credit card processing company, in 2017.
[pullquote speaker="KAREN DUGUAY" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]These businesses are owned by community members who are contributing to our local economy ... They truly are the backbone of our community.[/pullquote]
This year, the Vermont Book Shop on Main Street hosted John Vincent, of A Revolutionary Press, who sold a selection of his prints and ran a tabletop printing press. The independent bookstore also distributed copies of a young adult novel to underserved children in the community.
IPJ Real Estate contributed to the day’s festive atmosphere, offering free gift wrapping, cocoa, cider and doughnuts to anyone purchasing gifts locally. “For this year, IPJ took on the planning for wrapping gifts and hosting their Small Business Saturday event,” said Duguay.
After describing the special events of this Saturday, Duguay discussed her organization’s plans to continue their work of supporting small businesses. “The Better Middlebury Partnership is focused on extending the initiative of local shopping promotion beyond Saturday and throughout the entire shopping season, with Very Merry Middlebury events coming up, including two extended evening shopping events in the Downtown and Marble Works,” Duguay said. “Those evenings will feature great deals, promotions, specials, free tastings and more.”
The shopping evenings, or Midd Night Strolls, will be held on Dec. 6 and Dec. 13. Pop-ups, tastings, specials and giveaways are planned for both nights, according to the Experience Middlebury website.
“These businesses are owned by community members who are contributing to our local economy, they are sponsoring events, donating to little league teams and non-profit auctions,” Duguay said, speaking to the importance of supporting locally-owned small businesses. “They truly are the backbone of our community.”
She encouraged customers to shop at these businesses not only on special days like this past Saturday, but all year-round. Shopping local, she said, is a great way to “explore what’s here and connect to something real.”