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(02/17/16 4:17pm)
A new student petition, viewable at go/peeinpeace, urges the College to make all of its bathrooms in public spaces — such as libraries, dining halls and academic buildings — gender-neutral. Octavio Hingle-Webster ’17 and Matea Mills-Andruk ’18.5 are spearheading the campaign. Hingle-Webster’s involvement is inspired by personal experience.
“During the past year I have begun my transition from being a man to being someone who is neither a man nor woman,” they said. “When I go to the bathroom I often don’t know which one to go into, and I don’t necessarily feel safe going into the men’s or women’s bathroom depending on what I am wearing or how I’m feeling that day, and I know a lot of other people share these kinds of concerns.”
Hingle-Webster’s concerns have been expressed by the transgender and gender non-conforming community in the past. As a result, gender inclusive bathrooms do exist on campus, specifically on residence halls where students decide whether or not to have them at the beginning of each semester, and in the McCullough Student Center.
In 2011, after collaborating with an ad hoc group of students that published a review of the potential student life issues for the transgender community, the College announced its plan to create more gender-neutral restrooms. The specific goal was to provide support for the safety and health of Middlebury’s transgender students, faculty and staff. By the start of the 2011-2012 academic year, the signs of all non-residential single stall restrooms were changed to include both male and female symbols, as well as the universal symbol of accessibility. But because not all spaces have single-stall bathrooms, the project was limited, and has not been thoroughly addressed since.
“There was a lot of work to get gender neutral bathrooms in place in 2011, and I truly appreciate that,” Hingle-Webster said. “But it seems like the administration conveniently [forgot] that this is still an ongoing issue for a lot of students here.”
The petition questions the College’s consistent placement of “cisgender [comfort] over the very real needs of trans and gender non conforming people in public places.”
“This is a question of safety at Middlebury, and if students are being harassed in these bathrooms, or suffering severe psychological harm, then we need to change,” Hingle-Webster said.
Hingle-Webster suggested that not only would the proposed changes make bathrooms a safer space for trans and gender non-conforming students, but it might also cause all students to question their understanding of gender as a rigid binary. Physical male-female separation is observable in many spaces, but in bathrooms that distinction is clear through signage and experienced on a daily basis.
To students who might feel uncomfortable sharing a bathroom with a member of the opposite gender, Hingle-Webster suggests that gender is a construct that is based in how we see ourselves and understand ourselves to be. Despite this, rendering all bathrooms gender neutral, not just the single stall ones, would be a huge adjustment for Middlebury, and potentially sensitive for some.
Students interested in furthering the gender-neutral bathrooms mission at Middlebury should visit go/peeinpeace to read the entire petition.
(02/12/15 3:24am)
This year’s Wonnacott Commons Raise the Volume benefit concert will feature the American indie pop band, MisterWives. The date is set for April 4th at 9:30 p.m. in Wilson Hall in McCullough.
The band is certainly up and coming, most well known for their hit song “Reflections”, but the Wonnacott Commons Council team of Grace Kennedy ’17 and Nora O’Leary ’17, and Liz Stasior ’17.5 seem to have grabbed MisterWives just in time.
“It would be much more difficult to get them now. Their album is coming out this month and pretty much everyone knows their song,” Kennedy said. “If we waited any longer, their tour might have been booked for the time we wanted them.”
MisterWives has opened for Twenty One Pilots, Half Moon Run, Bleachers and American Authors. The group just announced plans for a 2015 tour titled, Our Own House. The tour is named after their new album, which is set to release Feb. 24th.
Last month, MisterWives performed just a few miles up Route 7 at the University of Vermont. Kennedy attended the event and was lucky enough to speak with all five members of the band after the concert. “They’re a lovely band,” Kennedy expressed. “They seemed really excited to come here.”
In addition to providing a fun weekend event for Middlebury students, the Wonnacott Commons Council hopes to raise awareness for the Epilepsy foundation through this benefit concert. The Epilepsy Foundation is a national organization dedicated improving the lives of all people impacted by seizures. The money raised through ticket sales will fund innovative research projects, provide programs, services and support for those with epilepsy and also help educate people on the disease.
At the first Raise the Volume concert ten years ago, ticket sales benefited the Epilepsy Foundation in memory of Jason Fleishman ’04.5. A Middlebury student who suffered from the disease, Fleishman died unexpectedly just 24 hours after skiing down the Snow Bowl for Feb graduation. In honor of the 10th anniversary of Raise the Volume and as a tribute to Jason, ticket sales this year will again benefit the Epilepsy Foundation.
The Wonnacott Commons Council is expecting a great turnout and a fun evening for all students.
“It’s exciting to have the concert and hopefully it’s a band that people will be really excited for,” said O’Leary. “It’s also fun because it adds two spring concerts and another school wide event for people to enjoy.”
Tickets for the Raise the Volume concert featuring MisterWives go on sale March 16th for $6 at go/boxoffice and $12 at the door. Be sure to grab your tickets early, as this is an event you and your friends definitely don’t want to miss.
(10/22/14 7:32pm)
The Rohatyn Center Student Advisory Board (RSAB) is currently planning its second annual Global Affairs Conference, which is set to be held from Feb. 19-20 in the spring semester. This student-run conference is intended to garner more interest for international and global events and provide students with an opportunity to shed light on an global topic of their choice. The board is now accepting student proposals for conference topics.
“This is all designed by students,” said Tom Yu ’16, a member of the Rohatyn Center Student Advisory Board. “Students are completely in charge of this event. No faculty is involved at all, which gives students much more leeway but also a lot more responsibility too.”
The application asks students to explain what the major theme of their conference will be, to give a tentative schedule of events, provide a provisional allocation of funds and describe how they envision the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs supporting the conference.
The RCGA holds its annual International and Interdisciplinary Conference, with a range of guest speakers addressing pertinent international issues.
“They wanted to get students involved in RCGA a little more, though, and they have set aside funds specifically for that goal,” said Frank Wyer ’15, a member of RSAB.
The “do-it-yourself” structure of the conference came about as a result of a desire to increase student involvement with the project. The RCGA faculty and RSAB hope that, by allowing students to come up with their own ideas for this conference, involvement and attendance for the event in February will improve.
“The proposals provide a platform for students to bring in something that they’re really interested in and they think the rest of the student body would be interested in too,” Wyer said.
The winning proposal will be chosen by members of the student board based on the proposal’s global relevance, accessibility to students, and diversity in geographic and disciplinary perspectives.
“Everyone probably has a good idea but then we need to consider the interest of the population here. Would they be interested in the topic and can they pull in more students and inform them about something they actually want to know?” Yu said.
Further, Wyer stresses the importance of making this conference both interesting and applicable to a wide range of students.
“We are trying to make sure that [the conference topic] is interdisciplinary so it’s not just relevant to IGS majors. It’s for everybody,” he said.
The selected student will receive $5,000 towards funding his or her proposed conference. Both Yu and Wyer note that the selection process might be hard.
“We can generally say that if a topic sounds very interesting and if its feasible within the given budget then that’s the one,” Yu said.
Though the deadline for conference proposals was Oct. 17, the board has extended that deadline to the end of the month, Oct. 31, to make sure that students are given ample time to voice their interests. The board has received a number of applications, but encourages students to work with either a group, student organization or even individually to propose a conference topic of their choice. To submit a proposal, students can go to go/diyconference.
Yu, Wyer and the rest of the Student Advisory Board will contact the winner shortly after all applications are submitted, so that students have ample time to plan their event.
(09/24/14 8:39pm)
At the conclusion of Summer Language Schools, Middlebury College added a new sculpture to its Northern edge. The sculpture, J Pindyck Miller’s “Youbie Obie”, resides in between Le Chateau, the Atwater Suites and Coffrin Hall. The College’s Committee on Art in Public Places, also known as CAPP, carefully picked the location of this statue.
“Students will be coming at it from all different directions,” explained Emmie Donadio, Chief Curator of the Middlebury College Museum of Art.
“The work also, because of its form, looks something like a gate. So it can also serve metaphorically as a gateway to this segment of campus,” Donadio added.
While some may view the work as a gate, it is undoubtedly open to a multitude of other interpretations, thoughts and emotions.
“You will discover how the pieces, rather the parts, of the sculpture interact with each other,” Miller said about “Youbie Obie”. “Every curve, every line, every angle, every juncture is there for a reason.”
Miller’s “looking machine”, a term he uses to describe all of his artwork, was generously donated to Middlebury College by a couple from Greenwich, Connecticut. The couple had owned Youbie Obie since the 1970s, but felt the piece deserved to be on display elsewhere, in order to elicit wonder and amazement from more people. They could not think of a more appropriate place that the artist’s own alma mater.
As students welcome this new sculpture to campus, they should be reminded of what a great metaphor not only Youbie Obie is, but also art in its entirety.
“Art is all search and invention and as with life itself, the things that are questions are always more compelling than the things that are known,” Miller said.
The College has a public art collection, which, as of now, is comprised of 19 pieces of art, mostly sculptures, that can be viewed around campus.
All pieces that are a part of the collection are mantained by the Committee on Art in Public Places. In 1994, per the Committee’s recomendation, the Board of Trustees appoved a “One Percent for Art” policy. The approval of this decision meant that funds would be secured for the purchase, installation and maintance of any scultptures or pieces of art that fall into the Public Art category.