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(01/21/16 4:00am)
At the Jan. 15 Plenary Meeting the faculty passed resolutions that reinstated the Pass/D/Fail option, set to expire this year, and changed the cultures and civilizations set of distribution requirements. The last iteration of Pass/D/ Fail (P/D/F) expired on Dec. 31 after a six semester trial period. In new legislation authored by the Education Affairs Committee (EAC) and amended by faculty at the meeting, students will retain two uses of the option, but will now be able to choose whether or not to invoke it in the fourth week of a semester (rather than the second week). None of restrictions on P/D/F will change, and students will draw on their five allocated “non-standard grades,” which include high school credits and for credit internships.
The resolution initially presented at the meeting gave students only one use of P/D/F. The EAC viewed this as a compromise for those faculty opposed to the P/D/F option. Professor of Psychology Jason Arndt, a member of the EAC, and Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of the College Katy Smith Abbott said that the reduction from two to one courses would be interpreted by students as discordant with the College’s focus on stress. The amendment passed overwhelmingly in support of two uses of P/D/F.
The new set of cultures and civilizations requirements expands the previous three regional categories to six. For almost 15 years the categories were comparative (CMP), North America (NOR), Europe (EUR) and Africa, Asia and Latin America (AAL) which also included together Middle East, and the Caribbean. The six new designations are South and Southeast Asia, including the Pacific (SOA); North Asia including China, Korea, Japan and the Asian steppes (NOA); Middle East and North Africa (MDE); Sub-Saharan Africa (SAF); Europe (EUR); The Americas (AMR).
Some faculty at the meeting expressed hesitation over not dividing North, Central and South America. Others felt that the previous NOR designation had problematically privileged North American culture. Others were vocal that any system with such arbitrary regions would conflate incongruous cultures (i.e. Japan and China in NOA) and that it would be the instructor’s responsibility to distinguish the studied culture within the course’s designation.
Chair of the Student Educational Affairs Committee Jiya Pandya ’17 was an original member of Midd Included, the student organization committed to reforming the cultures and civilizations requirement. In the last two years she and other students designed and advocated for new regional requirements.
“Our proposal was by no means perfect, and nor are these categories, yet to me they symbolize not only a change in our College and its growing understanding of the value and respect of all cultures but also a clear sign that student voices truly make a difference in curricular change,” Pandya wrote in a Facebook post on Jan. 15.
(12/02/15 9:25pm)
On Monday, Nov. 30, Interim Chief Diversity Officer Miguel A. Fernández and Associate Professor of American Studies Roberto Lint Sagarena, also Director for the Center for Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, hosted a town hall discussion in Dana Auditorium. The discussion was focused on cultural appropriation, the need for a respectful and mindful community and the need for students to be educated about race, culture and history.
Fernández acknowledged in his email to the College that an impetus for the discussion was an incident in which a white student wearing a sombrero in Proctor dining hall offended a Latino student.
But cultural appropriation and racial insensitivity has been at the forefront of campus conversation since Halloween — a social media campaign against culturally appropriating costumes, the performance of Felly, a white rapper, at the College on Friday, and as Fernandez noted, the anti-latino and anti-muslim rhetoric of Republican primary candidates, most notably Donald Trump.
“Some of you will be oblivious to what I am about to discuss and others of you will have read or participated in social media discussions over the weekend about sombreros and cultural appropriation,” Fernández wrote. “Much of the discussion took a very negative turn, showing intolerance, misunderstanding and discrimination.”
The meeting began with an examination of what cultural appropriation is (when a culture adopts elements of another culture) and when it becomes offensive. One student asked whether the administration had a position on the acceptability of cultural appropriation. In response, Fernández cited the College’s community standards. The handbook calls for both “cultivating respect and responsibility for self, others and our shared environment” and “fostering a diverse and inclusive community committed to civility, open-mindedness and finding common ground.”
“[There’s] the argument that just because we can burn the American flag still means that we shouldn’t. I think of that as being applicable to free speech as well. We have the right to do all sorts of things, but maybe we shouldn’t — out of self respect and respect for our community,” Sargena said.
Fernández summarized the previous town hall discussion, in which attendants discussed the cultural symbolism of the sombrero.
“I think the discussion came down to: if a group finds something offensive there is a historical reason for that, then you really ought to question why you’re doing something,” said Fernández.
Students wondered if College policy could be changed to mitigate offensive actions or statements. One member of the faculty responded that he believed including controls on speech and dress in college policy is too subjective and would privilege certain voices.
Another student pointed out that the 1st amendment rights are not guaranteed at private organizations like corporations, religious groups or colleges. The College can design community standards or put restrictions on freedom of speech if it decides that is appropriate for its mission.
The discussion then moved to the issue of the ignorance of white students towards cultural and racial sensitivities. Multiple students noted that it was not the responsibility of students of color to educate other students on their cultures. Others called on the administration to institute programming, whether it be required reading or discussions during orientation week, that would encourage students to engage in what it means to live in a diverse community. Suggestions for how to self-educate were varied — while some students pointed to the internet and Google as a powerful tool for finding information on racial and cultural sensitivities and history, many professors in attendance emphasized the superiority of academic sources and the importance of using the faculty as a resource.
Nicolas Mendia ’16 shared his experience with confronting the student wearing the sombrero, but emphasized that this was only one of many incidents that had affected him this semester. He related the student’s resistance to take off her sombrero and her conviction that she was not culturally appropriating, and that he had felt afraid upon realizing that he could have faced repercussions for approaching the student had she felt threatened.
“This was the third incident of racism I had experienced this semester,” Mendia said. “The Otter Nonsense ‘kissed her doorman’ and the soccer team’s ‘Mexican jumping bean’ posters were the two others. These incidents made me afraid. However small you see them, I spent the next few weeks scared because someone on this campus considered this behavior okay, not unlike the much worse incidents of targeted racism I faced in my community growing up.”
“So when you say, ‘You’re too sensitive’ or ‘have a thicker skin,’ I need you to understand, I have had my thicker skin. I am exhausted. I have had enough. These incidents have been eating away at me all semester, made me afraid to go to class, made me angry with myself and the strangers around me because I do not know whether you are the ones doing these transgressions. It’s incidents like these that forced me to move off campus because I do not feel safe in this community anymore. I don’t want to be here anymore.”
Once the space reached capacity, students, staff and administrators were turned away, including Russell J. Leng ‘60 Professor of International Politics and Economics Allison Stanger.
“It was a missed opportunity to build community that can easily be put right,” Stanger said. “As soon as possible, we should hold another meeting in a larger venue and encourage everyone to attend. Gathering everyone together in this way is of the utmost importance. It made me proud of who we are to see so many people show up yesterday.”
Fernández concluded the meeting by saying that he hoped that this would not be the end of the discussion and that he hoped to host another forum in the coming weeks.
(11/13/15 4:18am)
On Friday, the faculty convened for their monthly plenary session to discuss the Cultures and Civilizations Distribution Requirement, the expiration of the Pass/D/Fail option in Dec. 31, 2015 and student mental health. In attendance were roughly 80 faculty. Per committee bylaws, select students were also in attendance, including the Campus and the Student Government Association (SGA).
The Faculty Educational Affairs Committee (EAC) presented a proposal to revise the current geographic areas covered in the requirement as well as refine the comparative (CMP) requirement with the introduction of the Critical Perspectives (CRP) designation.
In an email to the Campus, Jiya Pandya ’17, Director for Academic Affairs in the SGA and chair of the Student Educational Affairs Committee said that the proposal was encouraging, and that faculty at the meeting posed thoughtful ques- tions and counter proposals.
“I think the conversation needs to continue, because while the Cultures and Civilizations amendment is pressing, it is also about bigger questions about the ‘ethic of diversity’ (as President Laurie describes) in our classrooms and curricula,” she said. “I’m excited to see that changes are happening and to see where they will go (hopefully, of course, to a vote that passes to change AAL), and also that the ad- ministration has been responsive to student feedback from the SEAC.”
Under the proposal, students would be required to take any three courses in three of the seven geographic designations: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, Middle East and Oceania. Faculty have called into the question the relevancy of the Oceania requirement, as few if any classes offered at the College receive the designation. There has also been controversy over the optionality of the NOR requirement. If accepted, the new requirements would go into effect in the Fall 2017 semester.
The EAC also presented legislation vote to reinstate the Pass/D/ Fail option, which is set to expire this year on Dec. 31 after a three year pilot program that began in Spring 2013. The stated goal of the original legislation was to encourage students to explore the curriculum outside their usual comfort zones.
In their proposal the EAC noted that the data they had collected regarding utilization of Pass/D/Fail did not conclusively point to its efficacy in encouraging students to move out of their academic comfort zone. In each of the five semesters in which the option has existed, more than half of the students invoking it have been seniors.
Both proposals will be voted on at a plenary session in January.
The session then moved into a discussion of student mental health. At this point the faculty voted 45 to 33 in favor of initiating an executive session. Only voting members of the Faculty committee may be present during executive session, and all proceedings are confidential. Non-voting members, including certain administrators and students, were asked to leave.
(09/30/15 9:03pm)
Building off of the past two decades of the Executive-in-Residence Program, this fall marked the introduction of the Professors of the Practice Program, created by President Emeritus Ronald D. Liebowitz and directed by Distinguished College Professor David Colander. This program offers an opportunity for professionals to come in and teach courses on a variety of applied liberal arts. While the Professors of the Practice program offers a wide range of interdepartmental courses, a subset are notably business oriented, including courses that teach accounting, management and in the future, finance.
According to Colander, business and accounting oriented courses having deep roots in the history of the College, roots that extend to ties with the Economics Department.
“If you go back a long history to the 40’s and 50’s, DK Smith, who is remembered by a lot of alumni, taught accounting for a long time but as economics became more of a social science and more formal, it moved away from that relationship. That occurred in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s,” said Colander.
“We tried to maintain that connection between the real world and economics and still be the best economics department we could be. But most economics professors were not trained in business so we moved essentially away from that.”
That being said, the department still maintained a number of professors designed to teach the real world applications of economics including recently retired Emeritus Faculty Fellow at the Center for Education in Action, Scott Pardee. Pardee, who had a background in finance and had been a Senior Vice President at the Federal Reserve, took over from the previous professor who had been teaching an academically focused Corporate Finance course. As traditional economics courses moved away from a financial focus, Pardee started to teach courses that were primarily designed to send people to Wall Street.
“[This trajectory] really didn’t fit what a lot of people in the economics department thought should be taught; they had no problem with students learning corporate finance as an academic subject, but they didn’t see it as a step directly to Wall Street,” Colander said. “You want students thinking about the broader issues as well as learning the specifics of finance and accounting. So as I have tried to reintroduce the courses, the goal has been to see that they have a liberal arts connection.”
Liberal Arts and the Workplace
Some of the business specific courses in The Professors of the Practice Program are being offered in response to a widespread student interest in finance, and the need to fill the void left by Pardee.
“Alumni and Trustees said we should be offering courses [in finance], so we looked for somebody who could provide the general accounting and finance backgrounds,” Colander said. Then we thought about what other possibilities there were, and we talked to and drew people from MiddCORE and connected with the center for social entrepreneurship about where we could find individuals.”
“We’re lucky that we have found some great practioners who understand the need to maintain a liberal arts perspective in the courses,” he continued.
From a business and finance perspective, three courses stick out in the course catalog including: INTD 0220 “Management, Enterprise and Business,” INTD 0221 “Enterprise, Social Entrepreneurship and the Liberal Arts,” and INTD 0316 “Accounting, Budgeting and the Liberal Arts,” and INTD 0317 “Introduction to Finance” will be offered in the spring of 2016.
Beyond the core courses, Colander spoke to a few courses to be occasionally offered under this program. One such course, INTD 0251 “Sounds of Childhood,” taught by Professor of the Practice Erin Davis, focuses on early childhood development and podcasts while Professor of the Practice Roger White is offering a course teaching the basics of putting together a literary magazine in INTD/HARC “Producing a Literary Magazine”.
Professor of the Practice Michael Schozer, who has an extensive background in financial services, teaches the accounting course offered this semester.
“The accounting and budgeting course is not narrowly teaching only accounting specifics; rather it has a focus of thinking more broadly about how accounting sets the framework through which one thinks,” said Colander.
Schozer spoke to two ways that the liberal arts perspective is incorporated into his curriculum: projects and guest speakers.
“One of the team projects students can choose is to be Medicins Sans Frontieres,” Schozer said. “A contagious disease outbreak has occurred and the team needs to forecast the outbreak, estimate response costs, develop a response budget and make a presentation to potential funders of the response.”
“In terms of guest speakers, we will be looking into financial issues in public finance, with a focus on the City of Chicago,” he continued. “What role does accounting and disclosure play in allowing municipalities to get into financial trouble, are there hidden costs and obligations that are not fully disclosed to the public, and what role do politicians play in that disclosure?”
Management and Enterprise
The management course is taught by Dr. Amitava Biswas. Colander spoke to the importance of management as what he calls one of the ultimate liberal arts.
“You think of deans here, or the President — what they’re doing is management. Most students will end up managing no matter what they majoring in. In order to manage students need communication and teamwork skills. You need a whole variety of skills which are really what we are teaching in the liberal arts,” said Colander.
This course focuses on both the history and development of management theory, and then bridges off into practical management techniques. Biswas noted that beyond Colander’s contributions in helping students see connection in management to the liberal arts, they are also hoping to discuss cross cultural management and business ethics in the class.
As in the accounting course, Biswas will bring in a bevy of guest lecturers. A recruiter from McKinsey & Co. has already spoken to the class about management consulting. Cairn Cross, founder of Fresh Tracks Capital, (the largest venture capital fund in Vermont) will lecture on entrepreneurial management style.
There is also a lab component to the class in which students engage in Harvard Business School case studies and present analyses to their peers. Biswas views this as a way to teach students the succinct style of communication valued in business while also encouraging them to think creatively about real world problems that organizations encounter.
Biswas has encountered his own learning curve as a new teacher. At first the way he ran his class resembled the way he had operated in the professional world: he communicated in a style that emphasized conciseness and clarity, but did not know how inspire discussion for its own sake.
“[Discussion is] a lot of fun. It makes the class much more lively,” said Biswas. “I think I’m going to be a lot better of a teacher this year than I was last year. I really appreciate the talent that it takes to be an effective teacher, I’ve seen how difficult it is … There are so many resources that are available at Middlebury to help somebody like me, who has a limited teaching background, be a better teacher. It’s fantastic.”
Biswas graduated from Stanford Medical School, but forewent a traditional career in medicine after he was recruited by McKinsey. In the last 15 years he worked extensively in Southeast Asia, advising corporations looking to expand in the region and assisting startups in need of professional management.
Biswas sees liberal arts graduates as being progressively more attractive hires for consulting firms. Though the soft skills learned in a non-technical course of study — writing, reading, analyzing — are not as useful in entry level positions in the business world, he argued that they become increasingly important in senior roles.
“The way I see what I’m doing in my management class is not so much that I’m trying to get across a set of information that nobody else is giving you. What I see myself doing is trying to show how the things that you’ve been doing in your liberal arts education is actually very relevant to the business world that you could be going into,” said Biswas.
More Options for the Student
Colander stresses that these are not pre-professional courses.
“Most everybody finds themselves in a situation where they have to lead people, they have to solve problems, they have to manage people and they have to fit together — well that is what these courses are — they are applied liberal arts courses, not in any sense pre-professional,” said Colander.
“I emphasize that these courses are applied liberal arts courses, the lab courses of the liberal arts. They are pre-professional or direct skill training in the same way any course is; they teach students to communicate, to work together and to write — those are the skills any job wants people to have — so in just about every liberal arts course we’re teaching skills.”
The courses are offered as interdisciplinary in order to keep them from being narrowed into specific departmental silos. In terms of the future development of the program, Colander sees the potential of a certain subset of these courses comprising some sort of minor. However, he notes that it is not for him to decide. In addition, Colander envisions a potential stipulation preventing people from minoring in this area if they were already an Economics major.
Colander said, “The goal is to give students the option of majoring in whatever area they would like to — art history, music, history, sociology. All too often students choose to major in economics not because they love economics, but because they see it as a signal to employers that they are interested, and have the skills employers are looking for.”
He emphasized that a minor in these Professor of the Practice courses would ofter students an alternative to majoring in economics in that you could take these courses and combine them with any of our majors and still signal to employers that you have an interest and some training in the skills they consider important.
“The reality is that most businesses want people who are broad, diverse and have different interests; that’s why the recruit at liberal arts schools,” said Colander. “They see too many Economics majors; a student with a different major who has also taken courses in finance, accounting, management is in many ways more interesting to them.
(09/17/15 6:01pm)
The Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey (MIIS) will offer a $10,000 Legacy Scholarship to Middlebury College alumni and their family members.
Family members include an alumnus’ parents, siblings, spouses, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews. In its initial press release the College defined alumni as anyone who has completed “any Middlebury undergraduate or graduate degree program including those offered by the Language Schools, the Bread Loaf School of English, and the Institute itself.” Any legacy student who meets MIIS admission criteria and applies for the scholarship will receive it. Students entering
MIIS in the Spring of 2016 will be the first class the scholarship is available to.
Recently-hired Executive Director of Enrollment Management Rebecca Henriksen said she was struck by the power and impor- tance of the College’s alumni network and the role alumni play in MIIS’ enrollment.
“Intellectual curiosity, cultural awareness, social and environmental consciousness, an adventurous spirit and the desire to make a positive impact seem to run in the family throughout Middlebury,” she said.
“Many of our best students over the years have been legacies, and MIIS also sees a good number of Middlebury graduates moving on to earn their master’s degree with us here in Monterey. I thought implementing the Legacy Scholarship was a way for us to show our thanks to our alumni,” she said. Henriksen estimates that of 780 MIIS graduate students, 15 are Middlebury alumni. The legacy program is not funded by a private donation but instead uses institutional funds earmarked for scholarships for incoming students. The decision to offer the scholarship was the collaborative effort of a number of MIIS administrators: Director of Alumni Relations Leah Gowron, Vice President and Dean of the Institute Jeff Dayton-Johnson, Director of Admissions Sadia Khan, Associate Vice Pres- ident for Marketing and Creative Services Robin Gronlund and Henriksen.
Henriksen will be on campus on September 24th to host an information session on the scholarship.
(04/29/15 5:39pm)
Community Council voted on Monday against a proposal to install security cameras in the hallways where bags are left outside of dining halls, with the intention of deterring and monitoring theft.Graffiti protesting the installation of cameras appeared Monday morning at a number of locations on campus. One message outside Atwater Dining Hall read: “Who watches the watchmen?” alongside the image of a rat cutting the cord to a security camera. A similar rat image surfaced earlier this semester in March on graffiti that appeared outside Warner Hall, McCardell Bicentennial Hall and the Mahaney Center for the Arts. On Thursday, April 23, Community Council hosted a forum to discuss surveillance cameras. Lisa Burchard, director of Public Safety, framed the cameras as a way to deter criminals and to aid in an investigation. “When things start to go missing, [security cameras are] one investigative tool that’s missing for us that other institutions have … If someone were to report, ‘I left it at 11, came back at noon and it was gone,’ that period of time would be looked at to see if we could see where that bag was, could we see anything of value that may help us understand how that bag ended up leaving the dining hall,” Burchard said.Solon Coburn, Telecom Manager and Tech Support Specialist for Public Safety, emphasized that there would be strict guidelines as to how and when footage could be reviewed, and that they would most likely only be used in victim crimes like property theft or assault. “We’re talking limited use in public areas with a really strict guiding document. All of our peer institutions have similar documents about when they can be reviewed, who can ask them to be reviewed, what kind of situations trigger a review, and, when they’re pulled up, who are the actual people looking at it. That’s what we’re thinking of, a very narrow scope of use,” Coburn said.The first effort to install security cameras began in the spring of 2006, when 22 people reported thefts, most of which were wallets with identification and credit cards from jackets and backpacks. That fall, Public Safety, with the police’s help, was able to arrest the person responsible. The person was not a student or staff member.Most years see five to eight property crimes occur at the dining halls. There have been 38 this year. Now, as opposed to 2006, thefts involve more objects of value, such as laptops. Burchard noted that most thefts this year have occurred in Proctor dining hall, rather than Ross, which could indicate the effectiveness of Ross’ key card entry in preventing theft. Some believed that students should be more aware of their property, leaving bags unattended in dining halls at their own risk.“For me, I think it’s more a matter of personal responsibility. Keep your stuff with you if you can’t replace it. If you can and want to take that risk, go ahead, but you’re exposing yourself to the consequences,” one student said.In an email to the Campus, Student Co-Chair of Community Council Ben Bogin ’15 emphasized the need to consider all options for preventing property loss.“I think that it’s a complicated issue. The cameras have the possibility to drastically reduce theft, but a number of people have also told me that the costs outweigh the benefits. During the conversation, a few people said that students should start bringing their belongings into the dining hall, which seems like a good start to me. I think it’s important that we look at all of our options,” Bogin wrote.Other students objected that surveillance would detract from the sense of trust and community in spaces that cameras are installed.“To me the thing that really makes Middlebury special is our rock solid sense of community … The cornerstone of that is that this is a place where people trust one another. Obviously bad things do happen … this is a place where we trust one another and that extends to the dining hall and to spaces that are not purely student-owned or that you need key card access to get into. To put even a few cameras like we’re suggesting here so very much erodes that sense of trust that it is something I’m really against,” Zak Fisher ’16 said.Fisher also voiced concern about the ease with which cameras could be installed in other spaces, like the frequently vandalized vending machine in Ross, once the precedent is set with dining halls.Durga Jayaraman ’16 suggested that installing cameras was pragmatic, as it would not only deter crime but would also make students feel secure in leaving their belongings. “If surveillance cameras deter people from stealing… and [we] regain our ability to leave out stuff without thinking about it outside, would we not want that?” Jayaraman said. “We’re saying that the feeling of distrust [caused by security cameras] is outweighing wanting accountability for people who have had their stuff stolen.”Sierra Jackson ’18 emphasized the need to be empathetic to students for whom security cameras and notions of policing cause anxiety. “[Alex] even talked about cameras in her high school… I’m from Chicago and so there are definitely communities with police cameras around… these are real issues for people. They bring up a lot of anxiety. We really need to be conscious of who we’re talking about when we’re talking about [this] Middlebury community and include those voices too,” Jackson said. The room was divided on possible alternatives to prevent or deter theft. Having a student monitor or Public Safety officer attend the bag area was deemed ineffective—it would be difficult for one person to remember what property belonged to each student with the constant flow of people in and out of the dining hall. One idea, proposed by Fisher and met with support, was a poster campaign that would inform students of the number of thefts this year and would encourage them to look out for their and their friends’ things.“Whether that’s the message we intended to send… you’re not trying to say ‘we don’t trust Middlebury students’. [But,] that’s the message you get when you see a surveillance camera,” said Fisher.
(03/11/15 6:54pm)
A discussion on the lack of enforcement of current smoking rules and the possibility of a future tobacco ban is catching the attention of the College community.
The discussion began in November when the SGA Senate passed resolution F2014-SB12, the 2nd Hand Smoke Prevention Initiative, co-sponsored by Senators Michael Brady ’17.5 and Aaron de Toledo ’16. The bill states: “Be it resolved that the Community Council should address the issue of tobacco smoking on campus and discuss possible methods of enforcement of current policy.” Because rules around smoking affect not only students, but also faculty and staff members, responsibility for such an issue lies with Community Council, not the SGA.
The College faces increased pressure to find consensus on the issue due to national trends.What is normally a ubiquitous public health issue has evolved into a question of personal freedoms and feasibility for many institutions. Today, 1,514 campuses in the United States are smoke-free, up from 586 in 2011, and 1,014 are tobacco-free, according to a January 2015 report from the Americans for Nonsmokers Rights.
“Over a thousand campuses have already done this. Are we late to the game? Is this something where we dropped the ball?” Brady said.
In finding motivation to draft the resolution, Brady pointed to complaints he had received from constituents about smoking, an observed lack of enforcement of the current rule: “Smoking shall not take place within 25 feet of areas where smoke is likely to enter buildings,” and personal experience with his recently deceased grandfather, who suffered from lung cancer.
“I actually spoke with an officer from Public Safety and questioned him on this policy on smoking and he did not know it,” Brady said.
The bill suggested some possible methods of enforcement, including the relocation of cigarette butt disposal units from entrances and extending the current $50 fine for smoking indoors to include violations of the 25 feet rule.
The bill not only calls for Community Council to take up the issue of enforcement, but also invites them to discuss the possibility of a tobacco ban. In the short term, they will focus on the former.
“Looking at our current practices, we’ve let some parts of that policy slide. Instead of designing a new policy, I think we’re going to move towards actually implementing our current one,” said Ben Bogin ’15, Student Co-Chair of Community Council, in an email to the Campus.
He added: “We’ve recommended that faculty, student and staff members form a task force next year to look at the issue [of banning smoking]. I expect it will involve talking with [President Elect Laurie L. Patton] and a wide range of community members. Personally, I’m not sure that we will end up banning smoking in the end, but I think it’s important to engage the issue.”
Brady echoed Bogin’s reservations. “I’m not sure I fully support it, but I think it’s interesting for that to be part of the conversation. Because it hurts other people, I felt that I needed to include that clause just to have it at least be a part of the conversation,” he said.
Medical Director and College Physician Dr. Mark Peluso expressed support for such a measure.
“I would be in favor of a smoking ban with certain conditions. That it was done over time, that it provided an opportunity for people who currently smoke to engage the quitting process, and that it was enforceable,” Peluso said.
Parton Center for Health and Wellness is not equipped to facilitate smoking cessation with specialized services, but the nearby Porter Hospital hosts the VT Quits program, which offers in-person counseling.
Peluso also suggested looking at smoking policy through the lens of cost-cutting. An inquiry into the cost of treating smoking-related illnesses in the employee-funded Health and Welfare Benefits Plan, where premiums paid directly subsidize medical costs, could help quantify the cost borne by faculty and staff.
“If we assume that Middlebury is following the same trends as the general adult population in New England most of our tobacco users are going to be faculty and staff,” said Barbara McCall, director of Health and Wellness Education.
The tension between the prevailing notion that smoking tobacco is rare at the College, but that secondhand smoke poses a health risk beyond that niche, would require a nuanced solution.
McCall suggested looking to other colleges, like the smoke and tobacco-free University of Maine system, as resources to guide in successful policy change.
“This isn’t a split-second decision you make and implement the next day. Most schools do a three- to five-year plan and there are phases of implementation,” McCall said, “Typically plans start with a review of the current policy and work on strengthening that as a means to start restricting smoke and tobacco on campus in various forms, ultimately with the goal of eliminating it from campus altogether.”
The downsides of a tobacco ban go beyond restricting individual liberties, as it would affect the staffing of the College’s Language Schools as well. Some language school professors, who can come from countries and cultures with different norms regarding tobacco, have threatened to not return to teach if such a policy was in place, according to Brady.
“For something that seems like an instinctual decision – ‘that’s a public health issue, we should just do that’ – it really takes a lot of time and coordination. I think we have the opportunity to do things when it’s the right time for our campus and in a way that makes everyone feel comfortable and included,” McCall said.
Ishan Guha ’17 is skeptical of stricter enforcement of the current 25 feet rule.
“I think that would be unnecessary for a few reasons. Firstly I don’t think people are smoking particularly close to entryways and two I think that it would be unnecessary policing,” Guha said.
When asked about a tobacco ban, he said: “I think smoking is a choice and you’re restricting free will. If people want to smoke they should be able to smoke, especially if you’re going to ban them from smoking outside on a campus.”
On the effects of secondhand smoke, he said: “That is a concern, but again I think we’d have to actually examine some statistics to see what the full effects would be before we make a decision.”
(02/18/15 9:25pm)
During Winter Term, the SGA conducted its biennial student life survey, with 1,438 students completing the survey of eight sections, from Academic Life to Dining. Of that number, only 40 percent of respondents were male students.
In constructing the survey, SGA Chief of Staff Danny Zhang ’15 said he and SGA President Taylor Custer ’15 solicited questions from Senate and Cabinet members. Additionally, they reached out to “stakeholders” in the College community, including Health and Wellness, CCI, Public Safety, and Student Activities in adjusting the wording of questions.
“Many of the questions were taken from the previous survey two years ago, since one of President Charlie Arnowitz’s goals of starting the survey was to have some continuity in the questions so we could track student opinion over time. There were also a lot of new questions on issues more pertinent to the campus now,” wrote Zhang in an email.
In consulting with SGA members, Zhang shared some results he had found surprising. There were a number of questions on academic life, many of which were contributed by the Student Educational Affairs Committee.
“Even though the first year seminar program is focused on writing skills, the skill that students most think should receive more attention in their first year seminar was writing and editing,” wrote Zhang.
In the social life category, Zhang pointed to results that seemed to contradict vocalized unhappiness with social life. 58 percent of students are either satisfied or strongly satisfied with their social life at Middlebury and only 3 percent more students said their social life has gotten “much worse/somewhat worse” than “somewhat better/much better.”
Zhang felt that there was a lower percentage of students than he expected who knew who was the SGA President (69 percent) and Student Co-Chair (19 percent) of Community Council, saying that the SGA had to better market itself.
“11.5 percent of students who answered the survey said they sometime take dishes from the dining hall and forget to put them back. That seems incredibly high to me and would explain why so many dishes go missing so quickly!” said Zhang.
The Student Life Survey began two years ago under Arnowitz. The survey has retained some of the same problems, most prominently the underrepresentation of male students, but the questions have been finessed, according to Zhang. He estimates that 150 more students completed the survey this year than in 2013.
According to Senator Michael Brady ’17.5, the SGA under Arnowitz initially planned to conduct the survey every other year due to a fear of “survey fatigue.”
As the SGA looks to the future, it will take into account the overwhelming (92 percent) willingness students expressed to fill out the survey annually.
“The yearly survey is definitely something that Taylor wants to move towards. I think that says something about how much students on this campus care about their community and reflects a strong desire to be heard in the college decision-making process,” Zhang said.
When asked about tackling the gender imbalance in the survey, Brady considers the selection of prizes as perhaps being slanted towards female students as a possible reason for the disparity between genders in completing the survey.
“I hope that with prizes and other incentives that this valuable data can be collected every year. It’s a valuable tool to communicate some student sentiment to the administration about what they want to see changed on campus,” said Brady.
(10/29/14 10:03pm)
On Jan. 7, 2015, the College will roll out its new identity system. In late September the Board of Trustees approved the proposal put together by the Office of Communications and Marketing working with an outside consultant. All of the schools and programs that make up the Middlebury brand will adopt a new shield, as well as a common naming structure. All of the affiliate schools will add “Middlebury” at the beginning of their name (e.g. Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English). The newly minted Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey will receive a unique icon.
The changes that will occur on Jan. 7 will be most obvious on the websites. Most publications published after that date will have the updated design elements. As well, some of the adjustments that may take longer to implement, such as the replacing of signage in Monterey.
“To the outside world, and frankly to some of those on the inside, the relationships between the brands are not clear. Our intent was to restore the college to a place of centrality and differentiate it from the language schools or Bread Loaf. We thought this was a more effective way to explain who we are and make those ties a little clearer,” said Bill Burger, the Vice President for Communications and Marketing at an open meeting on Monday.
The new shield was one of many new designs considered in an attempt to visually unify the College and its many programs. It was briefly shown to the Campus in an interview with Burger. Central to the navy shield is a stylized rendition of Old Chapel, with a subtle line of mountains behind it. The three smaller elements that surround Old Chapel are a globe, a book and 1800, the year the College was founded.
“We have a very strong sense of place here,” Burger said when discussing the choice to heavily feature Old Chapel. He cited failed redesigns by the UC system, and at the College in 2008 as two instances in which there was a failure to acknowledge the history and traditions of the institution by trying something too sleek or modern.
The Middlebury Institute of International Affairs at Monterey will be the only affiliate to use a unique logo. According to Burger, the prominence of Old Chapel and the mountains felt appropriate for the New England spirit of the College and for its other schools, but was not representative of Monterey in Northern California. Burger said the compromise that resulted was the same navy shield that instead featured the Segal building.
“It was the first building the Institute bought after it was founded. It is the former Monterey Town library, and features beautiful Spanish colonial architecture,” Burger said.
Prestige and a global approach to liberal arts were two strong themes of the Middlebury brand, as identified by Mark Neustadt in a presentation to faculty in the spring of 2012. The College hired the Baltimore-based consultant to do research on the brand’s effectiveness, after a reaccreditation committee of faculty from colleges and universities around the country suggested that the relationship between the College, and its affiliates was not clear.
In his research, Neustadt found that the College’s brand identity was not clear. Along with a website redesign, he recommended that the College should construct a clear sub brand architecture.
Burger led a team that worked with Neustadt over the last two years to design a new icon and naming convention that together would form the new identity system. After the initial research, they worked from the summer of 2013 to the spring of 2014 on a number of possibilities for the naming conventions and icon, presenting ideas and gathering feedback from students, faculty and staff.
The result of this first stage of iterating and polling was an initial shield design that featured Old Chapel. After a second series of presentations to the community and more design sessions that lasted from February to May of this year, every element on the primary shield was refined, and Monterey’s unique shield was created.
Burger presented to over 300 members of the community, and said that although few students attended the public presentations, they tended to ask some of the best questions.
“This is an important part of design, not only assessing it aesthetically but also with the community,” he said.
(09/24/14 8:33pm)
On Sept. 8, The Upshot, a New York Times blog, published a ranking entitled “The Most Economically Diverse Top Colleges,” where Middlebury College placed 51st. Five NESCAC schools, Amherst, Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Williams and Hamilton were in the top 50, while Middlebury was between peers Carleton and Bates.
The ranking compared 100 colleges with four year graduation rates above 75 percent. These colleges tend to be sound investments for the majority of low-income students attending, according to the article.
The schools’ levels of economic diversity were determined using a College Access Index, calculated using two statistics. The first was the percentage of the freshman class who come from low-income families, measured by the number receiving a Pell grant. The second was the average net price for students whose families earn between $30,000 and $48,000 a year. Of the schools assessed, the College was ranked 75th for percentage of freshman with Pell grants and 33rd for net price. Generally, households in the bottom 40 percent of income distribution qualify for Pell Grants. According to The Upshot, the College’s average percentage of grant receiving freshman from 2012- 2014 was 13 percent.
Dean of Admissions Greg Buckles said in an email, “Middlebury welcomes any national conversation that puts creating access to college at the fore- front.” However, he also sees a flaw in rankings’ methodology.
“Personally, I have mixed feelings about the emphasis on Pell grants as a way to measure access. It’s a very blunt instrument that The New York Times in particular has seized upon as a standard,” he said.
He cited international students that the college funds who would otherwise be eligible for Pell grants and undocumented students who are also not ac- counted for in this way as examples of the faults in the system.
Buckles prompted questions regarding the credibility of the process. “Are students whose families may make just a few hundred dollars above the level of Pell Grant eligibility somehow not worthy of ‘counting’ as being socio-economically diverse? Should we be selecting one candidate over another, who may come from similarly disadvantaged circumstances, because one would technically be Pell-eligible and one wouldn’t?” he said.
Middlebury is also one of the few schools that is need-blind in its admissions policies for domestic applicants that also meets 100 percent of dem- onstrated need. Middlebury also does not practice needaffirmative policies, whereby a college identifies applicants who have a high level of need, in this case, Pell-level need, during the application process before making admissions decisions, Buckles said.
The College is still recovering from the effects of the recession. There are some realities that must be observed, according to Buckles. “Middlebury needs to be cognizant of its financial responsibilities and operate in such a way that it balances both its commitment to the public good and its commitment to longterm fiscal security,” he said.
On the whole, diversity is on the rise at top colleges, according to The Upshot. One metric that the ranking provides for context is the change in percentage of students receiving Pell grants. In the last four years the College has increased the share of incoming freshman with Pell grants from 10 percent to 13 percent. This year’s first year class has the highest ever percentages of first-generation college students, students of color, students receiving financial aid and students receiving Pell grants in the College’s history.
(04/24/14 12:56am)
Teams of up to ten people can compete in a relay event to generate the most watts on a stationary bike in the Spring 2014 Watt-a-Thon on Friday April 25 in the Freeman International Center. Organizers have split the event into two sessions, one from 1-3 P.M. and the other from 3:30-5:30 P.M.
According to Teddy Kuo ’15, one of the organizers, the Campus Sustainability Coordinators were looking for a fun and meaningful event for Earth Week. He said that working with YouPower provided an opportunity to attract a broader base of students. They saw spinning as an activity with broad appeal because it tapped into the College’s passion for fitness.
Kuo said that he hopes the event will lead people to become more energy conscious and adjust their usage day to day.
S.J. Fossett ’17 echoed Kuo’s emphasis on energy consciousness.
“If there’s anything biking on the energy-generating bikes at the Youpower studio teach you, it’s that things as simple as running a 60 watt light bulb for an hour actually takes a lot of energy. We’re hoping that this event will be a great way to advertise turning off the lights when you leave the room and to attract new riders to an alternative, upbeat way to work out on campus,” said Fossett.
Director of Sustainability Integration Jack Byrne also supports the event, “The Watt-a-Thon is such a novel kind of race - not the fastest time but the most electricity generated by human sweat. It’s a great way to end a week’s worth of great events to celebrate our earth and keep the lights burning bright.”
The Watt-a-Thon was first held two years ago with the introduction of the YouPower studio through MiddSTART funding. Kuo, who participated in the event the first time it was held, recalled that in previous years the bikes were full with participants from a variety of groups. He recalled the swim team and hockey team being involved and an atmosphere of friendly competition.
Student excitement for the Watt-a-Thon is growing, “As a big fan of everything Youpower, I am so excited for the Spring Watt-a-thon. What’s not to love about a great work out, good music, and some friendly competition – all for an awesome cause?” said Fia Green ’14.5, a regular instructor at YouPower who plans to participate on Friday.
(04/09/14 11:10pm)
The sixth annual Gensler Symposium will take place from April 14 through April 18 and will include a student-led discussion, a poetry workshop, and lectures by visiting scholars. Entitled “Sexual Straightjacket & Queer Escapes,” it will highlight the relevance of queer studies and queer scholarship in a liberal arts environment.
The Gensler Family Symposium on Feminism in a Global Context was established in 2008 by alumna Drue Cortell Gensler ’57. The annual conference focuses on transnational feminist issues in the new millennium. Previous Gensler events have analyzed the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, neoliberal capitalist formations, citizenship, language and body image through a feminist lens.
“This year’s theme is meant to highlight the relationship between feminist and queer studies in part because the Queer Studies House has been at Middlebury for over five years now and we wanted to mark that rather significant achievement,” said Associate Professor of Sociology, Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Laurie Essig.
The weeklong symposium will begin with MiddQUEER, a student-led discussion about sexual/gender identity and sexuality at Middlebury.
Students will have the unique opportunity to engage in a poetry workshop with Sister Outsider, a duo of acclaimed female slam poets Denice Frohman and Dominique Christina. Their poetry is concerned with the intersections of gender, sexuality, race and culture. The workshop will be followed with a performance by Sister Outsider and student poets.
The symposium will include two outside speakers. Dr. Nikki Young of Bucknell University will give a talk titled “I am NOT that Hungry: Creative Resistance, Black Queers, and Family.” Dr. Young focuses on the role of capitalism in establishing a value system that oppresses black queers and their efforts of creative resistance.
Dr. Suzanna Walters of Northeastern University will give the symposium’s second lecture and will discuss the difference between tolerance, acceptance, and universal civil rights.
“Both of these scholars combine queer theory and feminist scholarship to provide us with deeper understandings of how our desires are molded by gender, race, class and citizenship,” said Essig.
Walters’ lecture will be followed by the opening of the Guerrilla Girls exhibition, with a performance by Guerilla Girl Frida Khalo.
This year’s Symposium was organized by Essig, Gender, Sexuality and Feminism Program Coordinator Madeleine Winterfalcon and Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Sujata Moorti. Co-sponsors for the event include the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity and The American Studies Spiegel Family Fund.
(03/06/14 2:16am)
The Middlebury College Orchestra will not perform this semester due to an extreme decline in membership. This announcement is the latest development in a trend of declining interest in the program. Membership has fallen from 45 musicians three years ago to 16 in the fall term.
In speaking with colleagues at other colleges, Orchestra Conductor Andrew Massey found that the sudden disinterest of students in orchestra was not unique to the College.
“I don’t think that there is any lack of talent or musicianship or enthusiasm, it’s just that things change,” Massey said. “With all of the worry about student debt and youth unemployment people are just maximizing their time.”
However, he said that other institutions have greater incentives for students to join the orchestra and attend rehearsals. He cited Mount Holyoke College offering course credit for students in the orchestra as one example. As the orchestra can only be taken once during a student's time at the College and does not fulfill any major course requirements, Massey said he lacks a way of requiring students to attend rehearsals.
Without predictable attendance, Massey found himself re-arranging music each week based on the number of students that came to rehearsal.
Jackie Wyard-Yates ’16.5, who joined the orchestra last semester, cited a change in the rehearsal schedule as having changed participants’ attitude toward the orchestra. In an attempt to attract more students and accommodate for the limited free time that participants might have, the rehearsal schedule became more flexible and the group’s professionalism suffered.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think people are taking it as seriously anymore” Wyard-Yates said.
Massey said that by taking the spring semester off, he will have time to reorganize the structure of the orchestra and draw students into the rehearsal process earlier than in past years.
If numbers stay low, Massey will encourage orchestra musicians to practice with the Chamber Music program, which performs with smaller ensembles. He wants to bolster advertising efforts for the next school year in order to prevent a situation similar to what he experienced last fall, when just six people signed up for auditions.
Although membership has declined, Massey noted that he has not experienced a substantial change in concert attendance. He said he was surprised at the size of the audience at the orchestra’s concert last November with only 16 players, in which they performed in tandem with the College choir.
Wyard-Yates has teamed up with Kevin Dong ’16 and other members of the orchestra to form a committee with the intention of rebuilding the program. They put up posters at the start of the spring semester with the hope of attracting new players. Unfortunately, the flyers did not have much of an impact.
Dong says that he knows there are plenty of students at the College with ample abilities to play, having met many competent student musicians in the pit orchestra for the 2014 Winter Term Musical “Les Miserables.”
In the immediate future, students like Dong and Wyard-Yates will look to revive interest in the orchestra for the next academic year. Wyard-Yates said that the orchestra recruiting committee will focus on recruiting first-years in the fall. She also noted that reinvigorating the spirit of the group would be important to attracting more students and maintaining membership. In years past, she recalled upperclassmen hosting parties after concerts — events that made the orchestra more fun to be a part of. In a similar vein, Dong said that one incentive they might advertise would be a tour to a nearby city such as Boston, Montreal or Albany to either perform or attend an orchestral performance.
For Massey, the value of the College Orchestra is the opportunity it affords the students to play a key role in performances. He said that at Williams College, the concern of the orchestra is prestige, where only a select number of students are integrated into a group comprised mostly of musicians from other orchestras in New England. At the College, community musicians are only integrated to fill instrumental gaps for performances.
“You develop your artistic ability and you find yourself in a position where it is only noticed when it’s unwelcome,” Massey said, noting that when playing in a professional orchestra, a musician is only noticed after having made a mistake. “At Middlebury we make a point that every musician has an opportunity to be an individual musician.”
(02/27/14 1:37am)
A native Vermonter, Calvin McEathron ’16 grew up on a small farm 10 minutes from Montpelier, the state capital. In an interview, McEathron said he has been passionate about politics since his freshman year of high school, when controversial legislation on the operation of Vermont Yankee, the state’s only nuclear reactor, was debated heavily in the state legislature.
This fall, McEathron will be making his dream a reality as he appears on the ballot as a candidate for one of two representatives of the town of Middlebury in the Vermont House of Representatives.
McEathron said his platform has grown from his own experience as a young adult in his home state.
“The overarching theme of the campaign is trying to get young people to come back to Vermont,” he said.
He sees the lack of students in Vermont public schools and the relocation of college-educated Vermont youth to other states as foundational problems.
“Looking ahead we need to work to build and maintain a viable student population that would assure the continued success of our reputable public education system,” said McEathron. “A continued decrease in elementary and high schools students will inevitably lead to a lack of resources, diversity of classes and opportunities for our students.”
According to McEathron, improved cellphone coverage and access to faster broadband internet are important measures that will attract a younger workforce to Vermont and keep them in the state. He said that he recognizes the appeal to many residents and visitors of “disconnecting,” but he believes that improved infrastructure will be vital to encouraging people to work in Vermont and make it a home rather than a vacation or retirement destination.
As part of an independent study last semester, McEathron researched effective campaigning techniques for state politicians, and concluded that personal engagement was more important to a campaign than a strong social media presence or excessive advertising. Over the summer he aims to knock on as many doors as possible in order to establish personal connections with his constituents and gain an understanding of their perspectives on issues affecting Vermonters.
The town of Middlebury is in the Addison-1 district and sends two elected representatives to the Vermont House of Representatives. Of the two incumbent representatives, Betty Nuovo and Paul Ralston, only Ms. Nuovo will seek re-election. She has held a seat in Addison-1 for 17 of the last 23 years and owns a lengthy record of public service in Middlebury.
McEathron and Donna Donahue — his first announced competitor — will seek to fill Ralston’s spot. Donahue is the former president of the Better Middlebury Partnership.
“There is already some competition which is great, and knowing how competitive the Vermont political process can be, I wouldn’t expect anything else,” McEathron said.
McEathron is not the first young student at the College to pursue state office. Former Governor of Vermont and Executive in Residence Jim Douglas ’72, recognized around campus for teaching the J-term class “Vermont Government and Politics,” was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives the same year he graduated from college.
“The legislature is stronger when Vermonters of different backgrounds and ages serve,” Douglas wrote in an email. “It’s young people who have the most at stake, after all, as they’ll be around longer to experience the benefits and burdens of laws that are passed. In 1973 the Vermont House had the largest number of members age 25 and under in the nation: I think my older colleagues saw the value of all that youthful energy!”
McEathron’s run will not be easy. He faces experienced candidates in Nuovo and Donahue, and will have to find a balance in the spring and fall in running his campaign while pursuing his studies.
At the moment however, he is focused on his message.
“There are a lot of issues from taxes to healthcare that are really affecting Vermonters right now,” he said. “I think with a younger voice and a different perspective we could really get some meaningful things done.”