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(04/15/20 5:35pm)
The following letter was co-signed by 23 Middlebury students and emailed to all Middlebury faculty on April 14. It has been lightly edited in accordance with The Campus’ style guidelines.
Deans, department chairs, faculty,
We write to express our concerns with Professor Priscilla Bremser’s motion to change Middlebury's grading policy to a credit/no credit system this semester. Our aim is to offer some perspective on the importance of maintaining grades. Our reasons are as follows:
I. Any binary grading system introduces new inequities in spite of its efforts to eliminate others.
Consider the student who worked diligently the first five weeks of the semester. Mandatory credit/no credit now puts her on par with the student who slacked off. This is an inequity introduced by the proposed change.
Consider the student who had a rough first year. Like many students, she learned to manage the difficulties of college academics during her first year and that yielded undesirable grades. Now she needs as many semesters as possible to improve her GPA. Mandatory credit/no credit disadvantages her relative to students who had stellar first years, already have high GPAs, and do not need every semester thereafter to improve. This is an inequity introduced by the proposed change.
II. We view grades as a fundamental underpinning of college scholarship. The quest for a high mark inspires quality. On campus or off, Middlebury’s mission is to develop students of rigor and wisdom. Evaluations are a central part of that mission, and the distribution of grades reflects different degrees of engagement.
Furthermore, grades currently serve as one of the few sources of motivation for maintaining routine during a period of crisis. Revoking grades will reduce academic engagement among students driven by the prospect of reward. Online learning already decreases the quality of our education in spite of our professors’ best efforts. In a time where many are desperately seeking engagement, preserving the one incentive that brings out the best in students seems essential.
III. Opt-in respects choice, including the choice of students to try to overcome obstacles. The administration already has a solution that works. It gives students ample time to decide whether their condition merits pass/fail. Overcoming hardships should be a Middlebury value, not an anti-value. Why should we assume students cannot persevere? Students may reflect on this semester as a time in their lives in which they overcame difficulty. Let them write their own stories. Any additional effort to mandate pass/fail as a “one size fits all” is overreach and diminishes the value of this semester.
Professors will tailor their courses to meet the spirit of the times. A biology professor’s judgement on how to best do that may not reflect a political science professor’s. Instead of mandating compliance with a binary system, grant each professor the opportunity to meet the challenge of the day in a manner they deem sensible.
We recognize that we write this letter in good health. If any one of us were to become sick, the college already has an instrument in place (the pass/fail option) to assist us through our ailment. If one of us were to exercise that option, we would never expect the college to force our classmates to do the same.
To that end, Middlebury ponders how it can help students handle stress. In our view, it has already done its job in delivering us the option to manage our own.
IV. Since the college announced its policy, students continue to operate under the assumption that they will receive grades. A late proposal to impose a single binary on everyone, contrary to our expectations, is itself disruptive. If the faculty wanted to act, it should have acted immediately when school closed, not weeks later. Students have already made sacrifices to preserve their grades. Their interests should be considered. Come May, students currently leaning toward the pass/fail option may determine a quality grade is within reach. Allow them to decide.
Recall that the previous Student Government poll included three grading systems, including the implausible dual A/A- policy. In truth, Middlebury is considering two live options. As such, we encourage faculty to ignore polls with little insight to offer.
Middlebury students are comparing their current academic experience with hometown peers’. It is in our interest that those comparisons reflect Middlebury’s continued effort to deliver an academically fulfilling semester.
The college has an obligation to deliver an education that empowers students to engage — for many of us that includes grades. For many of us, that is what we believe we are paying for. Stripping students of grades raises serious concerns about Middlebury’s commitment to academic freedom, a principle outlined in the college’s handbook. Even off campus, we know the product we signed up for. Honor that.
We recognize that questions of how grades will affect departmental honors, Cum laude and other distinctions will inevitably arise. Let that debate be handled another day.
No grading system will satisfy everyone’s needs. What we do know, however, is that our current system encompasses the widest array of interests. While some of our peer schools have adopted binary grading systems, many fine institutions have not. We urge you to lend serious notice to our arguments and vote to reaffirm the college’s current grading policy.
Wishing you good health,
Quinn Boyle ’21.5
Jack Brown ’22
Rati Saini ’22
(02/20/20 10:57am)
As students who have been actively involved in and have benefited from Alexander Hamilton Forum lectures, debates and dialogues, we write to set the record straight and defend deliberating on the Green New Deal.
First, we believe the Hamilton Forum is the most politically and philosophically diverse program on campus, both in terms of the speakers it hosts and the students involved. Since its inception in 2018, the Hamilton Forum has hosted the world’s leading Marxist economist, Richard Wolff; the editor of the foremost magazine of the American Left, Michael Kazin; a lion of the civil libertarian left and the first female president of the ACLU, Nadine Strossen; and Harvard professor and clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall, Randall Kennedy. The Hamilton Forum has also hosted several speakers on the political right, like New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, as well as speakers from the political center, such as former Clinton domestic policy advisor William A. Galston.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Political diversity is not a bug, but rather the most impressive and beneficial feature of the Hamilton Forum.[/pullquote]
On Thursday, Feb. 20, the Hamilton Forum will host Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Oren Cass and economist Robert Pollin, the latter of whom has actually designed Green New Deals for states like New York and Washington. This political diversity is not a bug, but rather the most impressive and beneficial feature of the Hamilton Forum.
In a recent op-ed entitled “We don’t need a Koch sponsored Green New Deal,” two students wrote that debates like the one happening this Thursday challenge “progressive ideals.” “The speakers don’t have to disprove every argument as long as they can plant doubts in our heads,” the authors wrote. “By hosting the debate, the organizers of the forum choose which questions to ask, therefore reinforcing and normalizing discourses that question climate activism.”
To us, this sounds like education. We think that challenging ideals, raising doubts and normalizing questioning is what good educators do. Shouldn’t we “normalize” the questioning of all political viewpoints, including both climate activism and opposition to climate activism? In fact, this would make a good, aspirational motto for our campus. “Middlebury College: Normalizing questioning since 1800.” Put it on the stationery, sweatshirts and key chains.
It is also puzzling that someone would suggest that the Hamilton Forum cherry-picks “questions to ask.” Does anyone really believe that it is the Hamilton Forum that determined the Green New Deal should be a topic of public and academic debate in America in 2020? It is important to discuss the hotly debated issues of our day, and we certainly believe that the Green New Deal is one of them. Also, as anyone who has attended Hamilton Forum events knows, the hosts leave a long amount of time for unfiltered student questions, and those questions come from students of every persuasion. Afterwards, speakers stay behind to continue discussion over dinner, which are some of the best out-of-the-classroom intellectual experiences we have had here at Middlebury.
Some maintain that the Hamilton Forum takes direction from outside sources. This is demonstrably false. As the list above indicates, no foundation or organization could possibly see the Hamilton Forum as its mouthpiece because the diversity of speech is so vast. You would need to be a Marxist, populist, libertarian, nationalist, neo-liberal, socialist, anti-traditionalist, Catholic, anti-populist, traditionalist and centrist to see the Hamilton Forum as your mouthpiece. We have never met any such individual.
The Hamilton Forum receives grants from external foundations just like many other programs on campus, and it operates with complete academic independence, as is evident in what we have said above. Additionally, anyone who wonders whether the Hamilton Forum’s director — Political Science Professor Keegan Callanan — is susceptible to political pressure should review his record of standing on principle and speaking his mind, even as a non-tenured professor back in 2017.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Challenging ideals, raising doubts and normalizing questioning is what good educators do.[/pullquote]
Those who speak of “Koch funding” for the Hamilton Forum leave out a key factual detail. The Hamilton Forum’s grant from the Institute for Humane Studies is funded by the Clifford S. Asness Family Foundation’s Free Speech and Open Inquiry Program, with no grant funds from the Koch family. Why do the editorialists never mention this fact? Could it be that they realize it may “put doubts in our heads” about their narrative?
The broader principle regarding gifts and grants to Middlebury is that there should be no political purity test. A purity test barring donations on the basis of a donor’s political views would be out-of-step with Middlebury’s stated commitment to political diversity. It would be discriminatory. It would be a great way to alienate a substantial portion of the alumni donor base. Middlebury should no more discriminate on the basis of political viewpoint in its acceptance of grants and gifts than it discriminates in its admissions or (let’s hope) in hiring new professors.
Middlebury is not a political campaign. We are a learning community, and we are here to ask important questions together, to be challenged, and to challenge ourselves.
Akhila Roy ’20, Joey Lyons ’21, Quinn Boyle ’21.5, Max Taxman ’22, Maddy Stutt ’21.5 and Rati Saini ’22, are 2019–20 Alexander Hamilton Forum fellows.
If you would like to attend Hamilton Forum events and dinners, you can sign up at go/joinAHF.
(12/05/19 11:01am)
About a month ago, I decided to take a medical leave from Middlebury mid-semester to seek treatment for my bulimia nervosa. I was a shell of a person by the time I left campus. After a sophomore year filled with salads and excessive exercise, I spent my junior fall gorging on food and forcing myself to throw it all up. Addicted to the cycle of bingeing and purging, I spent more time in the bathroom than the classroom.
My eating disorder started in eighth grade as an attempt to find control amidst a home environment of instability and parental abuse. I gained power by showing my abuser that I could do something to my body she had no control over. In college, I saw an opportunity to escape from my past; still, I could not escape my eating disorder. Instead, Middlebury’s culture of “wellness” proved to be a further catalyst for my disordered eating habits. My disease festered in an environment that values athleticism, healthy eating and perfectionism. And my restrictive habits were reinforced by other girls crippled by the same disease.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]The counselors at Parton were unequipped to help me combat my disorder.[/pullquote]
I sought help for the first time last January. I had a few meetings with counselors at Parton Health Center. However, with no background in treating eating issues, the counselors at Parton were unequipped to help me combat my disorder. To make matters worse, resources outside the college are slim. As Middlebury’s website warns: “Students should be aware that the closest eating disorder specialists are in Rutland, VT and Burlington, VT (approximately 45 – 60 minutes away).” With few resources close by, and a lack of insurance coverage, I struggled alone for a long time. For a school that claims to be dedicated to students’ health and wellness, the lack of resources for students with eating disorders is not only careless, but negligent. Clearly, on-campus resources are not enough for students; the administration needs to improve them.
My frustration with the school’s deficiency in resources escalated this fall. My off-campus therapist tried to help me assemble a make-shift “outpatient team” to support me throughout the semester. When she contacted Parton Health Center asking that a nurse perform weekly weigh-ins (which basically entails me stepping on a scale and a nurse writing the number down), Parton said that they could not perform the task. I was too much of a liability. Again, they referred me off campus.
For my own health and safety, I could no longer remain at school. When I met with my dean about the prospect of leaving school, he notified me of a policy that requires students who take medical leave to take the entire year off. If I decided to seek treatment, I would not be eligible for re-admission in the spring term. To add to my discouragement, I discovered that a student is only guaranteed eight semesters of financial aid, with the ability to appeal for a ninth semester if needed. Withdrawing from a semester that has been started counts as a semester toward this total, even if credits are not earned. Which means, even if I could reasonably withdraw and return, I would still lose out on a semester of financial aid and would either have to overload on classes to graduate on time, or navigate the school’s appeal process to finish my degree.
I was devastated. Coming from an abusive family, living at home until fall 2020 was not a possibility for me. I contemplated staying on campus, white-knuckling it and risking the chance of getting sicker. But, persuaded by my unique circumstances, my dean spoke with a number of people and gained permission that if I were to withdraw I would be considered for readmission for the spring 2020 semester. My dean made very clear that this would be an exception. Only once this agreement was solidified did I decide to leave Middlebury and seek a residential treatment program (where another Middlebury student soon joined me), hoping all the while that I would be able to return to school after passing through treatment.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]For my own health and safety, I could no longer remain at school.[/pullquote]
After two weeks of treatment, my dean had me submit a “Medical Return Form” that my therapist filled out outlining my readiness to return in the spring. I filled out the form in November with the standard expectation that an updated version of the form would be asked for sometime in January when there was a clearer sense of how I was doing and what the treatment recommendations might be. And yet last week — after merely two and a half weeks of treatment — the Care Team convened at Middlebury and decided my case for me. I would not be eligible to return in the spring. They did not seem to care that I still had three more months before the spring semester started, more than enough time to complete residential treatment along with a few weeks in a step-down partial hospitalization program. Middlebury College did not even given me a chance.
This experience leads me to believe that the administration is too blinded by liability to evaluate what is in a student’s best interest. The message this is sending to those struggling with eating disorders is: if you are struggling, do not tell the administration.
This policy is incredibly unfair to students like me, who lack homes to which they can return. It neglects the needs of students whose mental health issues stem from their upbringing, and those who do not have the resources to live independently. It disproportionately affects low-income students who lose out on the tuition they have already invested. These students are forced to leave campus to pay for treatment programs because Middlebury and the surrounding community do not have adequate resources to support students.
The Middlebury that instituted this policy does not sound like a Middlebury “deeply committed to creating a diverse, welcoming community with full and equal participation for all individuals and groups.” If Middlebury College strives to take into account students’ best interests, the administration should overturn this blanket policy and assess medical leaves and readmission on a case-by-case basis. Moreover, the school should invest resources into supporting students with eating disorders: hiring a nutritionist, employing a specialist, starting support groups.
Those struggling with mental health issues on this campus form a community that is, sadly, expanding. Still, it is a powerful one. I encourage others to put pressure on the school to provide these essential resources. To stand by those struggling and show them they are not alone.
Quinn Boyle is a member of the class of 2021.
(03/14/18 11:58pm)
A man and a woman were found in a car. Eyes closed. Bodies slumped. Heads limp against their seat rests. Mouths wide open. The woman’s skin has a bluish hue. And in the backseat, there’s a little boy in a dinosaur shirt, fully awake, only four years old.
Photos of this family, published on the Facebook page for the city of East Liverpool, Ohio, shocked the world. Yet, they reveal a common occurrence in the story of America’s opioid crisis. In an interview for NPR’s “All Things Considered,” East Liverpool’s police chief, John Lane, explained the decision to post the controversial images: “We need help. We’re strapped with resources as far as trying to handle this kind of thing, and I don’t think the public is aware of the problem as far as how this affects not only the person that’s addicted but how it affects the family and everyone around them.”
Overdose is now the leading cause of death for people within the prime of their lives. With an understaffed police department and inadequate resources, Chief Lane looks toward education. “Resources are needed to go into the schools and teach from kindergarten up,” he said. “They should be pounding into these kids’ heads what can happen, how you can become addicted, what happens once you become addicted and how you can become one of these addicts that you see on TV or in the arrests and what you can do to keep yourself from getting there.”
Chief Lane’s NPR interview resonated with many listeners, among whom was Jeremy Holm. Holm is a House of Cards series actor living in Vergennes, Vermont. He witnessed the perils of opioids firsthand when his friend, fellow actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, died from a heroin overdose in 2014. Listening to Chief Lane’s appeal for opioid education made Holm think of his own daughters. He decided he was going to educate his kids about the dangers of drug use, and it would not stop there.
In October 2016, Holm met with Addison County’s Regional Prevention Partnership Coordinator Jesse Brooks to discuss the initial plans for what would become known as the HELP program.
HELP, which stands for Heroin Epidemic Learning Program, is an 8 to 10-week voluntary program that exposes high school students to the dangers of opioids. The first four weeks of the program are hosted by various volunteer experts including representatives from AEMT, law enforcement and addiction recovery. During the second half of the program, students are placed in groups and use what they learn to film an original, 30-second public service announcement (PSA). The PSAs are submitted to the HELP committee, where they are individually viewed and judged. The best PSA gets professionally edited to air on local and national television, and the students win a prize.
Today, few opioid- and heroin-specific programs exist in high schools across the country. As a result, HELP is a one of a kind program, and Vermont schools are readily embracing it. “When we started talking about this program, we thought of a three-to-five-year plan,” Jesse Brooks said of the initial expectations for HELP’s adoption into schools. “Really we were in schools about a month and a half after our discussion.”
HELP is currently implemented as either an elective course or part of pre-existing curriculum at Vergennes Union High School, Mt. Abraham Union High School, Randolph Union High school and Hannaford Career Center. The program continues to
expand. “Once the Vermont state police got involved they started sharing social media updates of the program, and more people became aware the program existed,” said Jesse Brooks.
Not only is HELP unique in targeting the opioid epidemic, but the program is also different from other drug programs in its lack of censorship. The program is raw. Holm and Brooks started an education plan that involves people as well as data. Hosts of the program share personal experiences, giving students the ability to interact with their narratives. “We open it up and we say that as long as you are respectful you can have any conversation you want to have with these folks,” said Brooks. “We are not censored, there are no limits.”
HELP shows students the opioid epidemic through an unvarnished lens. Brooks remarked that the content can be difficult because some students are living it.
“To those students we are saying, you are not alone. For the kids who have not been immersed in that world, we are bringing it to them and making it real,” said Brooks. “Nobody is off limits here. There is no demographic. Not if you are poor or you are rich, if you are black or you are white. They become comfortable with a very, very difficult topic.”
On Tuesday, March 6, at Hannaford Career Center, eight juniors and two seniors, who are currently taking a Medical Professions Course that has adopted the HELP program into its curriculum, worked on pitching their PSA ideas to Brooks.
When asked about the most important thing the students learned from the HELP program, Walker, a junior, responded: “You learn that there are a lot more resources than you think. Jesse gave me a card to go to United Way to pick up a bottle of Narcan because I am training to be a first responder. One of the presenters is a counselor to whom I can refer other people.”
Brooks and Holm created a system that educates, empowers and allows students to exercise their creativity. The two established a platform for conversation, as well as a foundation for furthering ties between people who struggle. Students are affected and informed. And this program goes beyond the opioid crisis.
“There is going to be a pendulum swing. Eventually, it is not going to be the opioid epidemic,” said Brooks about the future of the HELP program. “There is always a pendulum swing. With this program, you can take the basic framework of it and shift it to something else.”
(03/01/18 12:53am)
MONTPELIER – During his inaugural address, Republican Governor Phil Scott outlined his administration’s key priorities: growing the economy, making Vermont more affordable and, above all, protecting the most vulnerable in the state.
Yet, Gov. Phil Scott’s budget proposal for the 2019 fiscal year eliminates a $1.39 million fund that aids disabled Vermonters in hiring home attendants to help with daily needs such as bathing, getting dressed and preparing food.
The Attendant Services Program provides personal care services to adults with severe, permanent disabilities who wish to remain in their homes. While the Attendant Services Program is covered by Medicaid, 43 disabled Vermonters ineligible for Medicaid currently rely on state funding for coverage of the program. These are the people who will be directly affected by Gov. Scott’s budget cut.
Administration officials did not discuss the budget cut when briefing the press on spending plans, and the topic was eluded in Gov. Scott’s budget address. Although the budget cut could go into effect as soon as the new fiscal year begins in July, the Vermonters who will be impacted have not yet been notified.
Monica Hutt, the commissioner of the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living, explained the reasoning behind the proposed elimination of the program. Unlike the fund’s Medicaid counterpart, the state’s $1.39 million investment is not backed by federal funding. However, Hutt told Seven Days that the state is not abandoning these 43 Vermonters, and will find other resources to assist them. “We are not looking to hurt people here, so I think we can identify and work to do some gradual transitioning,” she said.
Hutt said the Attendant Services Program has been “frozen for several years,” and as a result the population using the program has dwindled. “We are seeing gradual attrition of that program anyway, and what our hope is… to really look at… those 43 people individually,” she said. Undoubtedly, Gov. Scott’s elimination of this program is controversial, and for those 43 disabled Vermonters the future appears blurry. The answer to the question is elusive: how can we best protect vulnerable Vermonters?