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(03/10/21 1:16am)
I almost rear ended the car in front of me last week when I saw it on the back window — a “Middlebury Crew” bumper sticker.
You don’t see Middlebury memorabilia much here. I live in Kenai, Alaska, a small town three hours south of Anchorage on the world-famous Kenai River. It’s known for its salmon fishing, but there’s a lot more than fish here — the landscape is also dotted with active volcanoes, scalable mountains and offshore oil rigs. Kenai and its sister city Soldotna are on the road system, which makes them significantly more accessible than other Alaska towns and cities you can only get to on a plane or ferry.
It’s an incredible place for a journalist. Alaska is the size of almost 70 Vermonts but has just 100,000 more people than the Green Mountain state. There are debates over natural resources that play out in real time, both on the Kenai Peninsula, where I live, and in the state at large. Many of the people who homesteaded on the peninsula in the 1950s and 60s, back before it was a state, still live here. Their family names are on street signs.
Just a few months in, I’m subsumed by this place. That’s partly because I’m a reporter, so I have professional permission to meet as many people as I can and ask them nosy questions.
But I imagine anyone who’s moved far away from home knows what it feels like to shift the center of their universe — for me, from New York to Vermont to Alaska.
That’s not to say my life here is dissociated from my past lives. I’m starting to realize it really isn’t. Home is part and parcel of everything I do.
I started my job search in Alaska because a Middlebury friend, Hunter Graham ’20, clued me in to a journalism job opening in Skagway, where her grandmother lives. One of my closest friends on the peninsula is a mutual friend of Professor Sue Halpern — she introduced us virtually when I got up here.
Last week, I had dinner with a Middlebury alumnus who’s been here for almost 30 years. He lives in rural Alaska and races sled dogs but he also knows what the inside of Mead Chapel looks like. The world is so delightfully small sometimes.
There’s also, of course, that bumper sticker. I’m still trying to trace it back to its owner.
Perhaps the biggest througline between then and now is the pandemic. I’ll never forget those early days of covering the virus as it barreled toward Vermont. My clearest memory from March 11, strangely, isn’t getting official word from the school but getting a call from editor Ben Glass ’20.5, who was at BevCo — seniors were scrambling to buy all the Keystone they could carry, he said, before they were kicked off campus indefinitely. It was a lesson in how college students react when they hear the apocalypse is coming for them.
I’m still covering that pandemic. The tenor of coverage has changed, but I still think about the conversations we had as a Campus team when I’m writing stories of my own here, over 4,500 miles away.
The newness of life here is bespeckled with fragments of familiarity. And time has seldom seemed linear these last 12 months. Not to mention we’re not fully graduated yet — an in-person commencement is still a promise for the nebulous post-Covid future. I think a few more classes will be joining in our post-hoc commencement than we anticipated last March (sorry, ’20.5 and ’21).
Maybe we’ll even finally get our Gamaliel Painter Canes. I’m not confident mine will fit in an overhead bin. But it might make for good closure.
Editor’s Note: Sabine Poux is a member of the class of 2020 and was the 2019-2020 Editor in Chief of The Campus.
(05/14/20 10:42am)
Subtlety has never been my strong suit. I think all my people on The Campus know exactly how I feel about them because I tell them, often, in a way that sometimes makes me feel like an overbearing grandma who can’t stop pinching her grandchildren’s cheeks. But they are always loving and supportive right back, so that the mutual respect and friendship circulating our poorly-circulated Hepburn Office (or Zoom meeting) is palpable.
Rarely, however, do we get a moment to thank everyone for what they put into the paper. And lately, writers and editors have been putting in more than I could have ever imagined. In March, Bochu, James and I were prepping for a melting-away once we all left campus, for some editors and writers to step back because they were overwhelmed or because they no longer felt connected to The Campus. We were prepared to rethink our organizational structures and produce less content each week so that those involved would not feel too much of a burden.
That could not be further from what happened. When we left campus, our board stepped up, hard. Members worked to produce a special issue, a crowdsourced storytelling project and podcast, and in-depth news and feature stories week after week that brought a geographically isolated campus together. We endorsed a candidate for SGA president, weighed in on the grading debate and cranked out the results of our student-wide survey. All this while navigating our new world and managing academics from home.
Last year’s Editor in Chief, Will DiGravio ’19, recently told me that although The Campus covers its fair share of crises every year, the rough parts of editors’ jobs are often somewhat softened by the structures of school and the supportive, in-person social networks of close friends. You all have had none of that since we’ve left Midd. There were no parties to release all that steam after tough weeks of editing, and no Campus gatherings (we were less than a month shy of our first formal of the year when we were all sent home). At the end of a long Tuesday night, you could not go home and snuggle with your friends or finish homework in the cozy confines of Davis Library.
Yet, you all wrote and edited your hearts out and, when you weren’t feeling up to it during a given week, you communicated openly about wanting to take a temporary step back. The smoothness of such an adjustment was anything but inevitable, and you all made it happen.
I don’t know if I’ve ever met a group of more motivated, nerdy, hard-working people. You built a loving and powerful virtual community this spring.
If you can do that, you really can do anything. I’m sending you the biggest virtual hugs I can muster.
Sabine Poux '20 was this year's editor in chief of The Campus.
(05/14/20 10:00am)
As college employees geared up last summer for another presumably normal academic year, some facilities staff members, frustrated with a lack of communication from upper management and the aftershocks of workforce planning, contemplated forming a union.
Now, only nine months later, nothing is the same.
Efforts to unionize with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) — the trade union that originally approached staff about organizing — are all but dead in the water, many staff say. And the college, which is the largest employer in Addison County, has scrambled to keep its approximately 1,500 employees with full pay during the pandemic until at least June 30.
Yet, as unemployment surges past 20 percent statewide and Middlebury deliberates how college will look come fall, employees are divided. Some workers feel that the crisis has led to a return of the “family feel” that had, according to many, dissipated as the college expanded. The acquisition of the Middlebury Institute for International Studies (MIIS) in Monterey and the growth of the Language Schools necessitated an operations model that became more business-oriented.
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But during the pandemic, administrators have ramped up college-wide communications, reiterating that they are committed to paying staff for as long as possible, whether or not they are able to report to work.
Other staff members — many of them working in facilities jobs in the college’s lowest pay bands — are less congratulatory. Several feel that the health crisis has only exacerbated an already strained relationship between administrators and staff, one that plummeted with workforce planning and years of insufficient pay. Some said they would still really like to see a union happen.
Most of the dozen workers The Campus spoke with for this story said the uncertainty about their employment status and pay after June 30 brought a great deal of stress.
The Covid-19 Pay Bank
Eight days after administrators announced that the college would transition to remote learning, staff received an email outlining the college’s plan to ensure continued pay. Through a new program, the Covid-19 Pay Bank, staff would be provided an additional 21 days of paid time off.
Three weeks later, staff received yet another email that guaranteed pay until June 30, regardless of whether or not workers had already burned through their Pay Bank days. If they had, but still had hours left in their combined time off (CTO), they would dip into those hours.
Rick Iffland, an Atwater dining hall staffer who has worked at the college for 14 years, has used some of his accrued CTO.
“The Covid Pay Bank was very gracious,” he said. “But I’ve had to use my own days now. That’s just the way it is.”
Full-time staff receive eight hours biweekly of CTO, with more hours allotted with years of experience. Staff can have over 288 hours saved up at any given time
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Several staff said they were frustrated about having to dip into their CTO hours.
“Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to be getting a paycheck,” said one custodial worker, who asked to be kept anonymous for fear of retribution from upper management, “but I am being forced to use all my banked CTO time now that the Covid Bank is used up.”
Vice President for Human Resources and Chief Risk Officer Karen Miller said she understands that staff might wish to hold onto their CTO. “But we’re operating in extraordinary times and the plan we developed was a way to ensure our commitment to wage continuity,” she said.
Communicating change
Many staff previously told The Campus that low morale mushroomed during last year’s cost-reducing workforce planning efforts.
Grace O’Dell, a career and academic advisor at MIIS and a representative on the Staff Council, said that staff were sometimes frustrated about how messages were communicated during that process.
“These crisis communications, however, have been really excellent,” she said. In particular, O’Dell said she has been reading the Covid-19 page on the college’s website for updates about the college’s budget, among other news.
Patti McCaffrey, who works in Atwater dining hall and has been with the college for 23 years, says she thinks morale might vary by department, depending on how communicative and understanding supervisors are.
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“Some of it has to do with the people who are managing you,” she said. “Whether you feel like they could be more empathetic to whatever issues you might have is crucial.”
Landscaping worker Todd Weedman agreed that communication depends on management. “I’m going to say the upper administration has been as good as they can be,” he said. “I do feel sometimes communication among supervisors and management could be better, but it could be worse.”
Some staff say that the family feel the college had allegedly lost in recent years has returned. “What more could they have done for us?” said McCaffrey. “Family is a ‘looking out for your own’ sort of thing. And I really feel like they’ve done that the best they can.”
[pullquote speaker="Patti McCaffrey" photo="" align="right" background="off" border="left" shadow="off"]Family is a ‘looking out for your own’ sort of thing. And I really feel like they’ve done that the best they can.[/pullquote]
At the beginning of the remote work period, the college sent out a voluntary online survey to all staff, including those in Monterey and abroad. The survey in part gauged how the 695 staff who responded (45% of the college’s workforce) felt about college communications from the administration.
One comment alluded to a string of stresses staff faced this year. “Please keep in mind that this is a population already fatigued and low morale after workforce Planning, the headaches of a challenging Oracle migration, and now COVID-19,” it read. “We are ready to be inspired. The decisions the college makes in the next two weeks — and how they communicate to and involve staff — will ripple through the Middlebury community for years to come.”
Separately, several staff also told The Campus they are also still frustrated by the pay compression caused by this year’s wage raises.
The college has plans to potentially address the compression, pending the results of a compensation review it spearheaded this year, but that timeline has been affected by dismal budget projections for the upcoming fiscal year. Miller said the review is slated to be finished this summer, and that the college “will consider its findings in context with other decisions we must make in response to Covid-19.”
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The months ahead
Dining hall staff are hoping to return to work once Governor Phil Scott lifts the stay-at-home order for the state, most likely moving to facilities or other departments on campus.
For employees deemed “essential,” like Public Safety officers, work has settled into a new normal. Public Safety Officer Rodney Grant says staff in the department are equipped with personal protection equipment and new protocols: all officers have personally fitted N95 masks; there is only one officer per car; and Parton Health Center, rather than Public Safety, is now transporting students to Porter Hospital.
Staff are now waiting to hear about what will happen after June 30, a decision that will ultimately depend both on whether the college will have students back on campus this fall — which the college will announce by June 22 — as well as a host of financial factors. Miller insisted that wage continuity will remain a priority as the college deliberates on a course of action come fall, but emphasized that the situation at hand is quite severe.
“My biggest concern is that at the end of June they will furlough me,” the anonymous custodial worker said. “Also, if they don’t furlough me, where will they put me? Will I still be able to be where I was, do what I was doing, have the same shift?”
(04/30/20 10:00am)
(04/30/20 9:58am)
Before coronavirus hit, a lot of people thought 2020 was going to be their year. It was certainly going to be college treasurer David Provost’s. Following years of scrupulous financial planning and cost reducing, he had walked back the college’s once-astronomical deficit to a sustainable level. At the end of Fiscal Year 20, which stretches from July 1, 2019 to July 1, 2020, the college would only be $4 million away from its goal. By FY21, it would hit its target.
But the seismic shift of Covid-19 set those projections back. Middlebury’s budget deficit is now back to where it was in 2017, with a $13 million loss projected for this year. In the next fiscal year, which starts this summer, that figure could hit $30 million, provided classes stay online. To avoid drawing on the endowment, the college will cut as many costs as it can while also accruing as much revenue as possible.
Provost, however, remains optimistic that the college can lower its deficit by FY22. And he says that projections would have been much worse had the college still been operating under its earlier numbers.
“I think our ability to weather through 2020 is fully reflective of the work that the entire institution did the last four years,” Provost told The Campus.
The last five years
Middlebury has been trimming the fat on its operating costs for years. In 2015, the school faced a $16.7 million deficit, which Provost said totaled $33 million when accounting for overdraws on the endowment (a practice the college is now trying to avoid for the sake of the endowment’s health). Campus reporting chronicled rising financial aid costs and flawed tuition policies as some of the many reasons for the hefty deficit.
That year, it laid out a “Road to a Sustainable Future,” which included a plan to break even on the budget — and generate a small surplus — by 2021. Last year’s workforce planning process was one of its more conspicuous cost reduction efforts, cutting staff and faculty costs through an at-times controversial voluntary buyout program for staff and incentive plans for faculty.
Overall, the cost reduction efforts were successful, prompting the college in 2018 to accelerate projections for breaking even to this year. But this spring, the college announced that unexpected healthcare costs in 2019 created an approximately $4 million gap that still needed to be closed. Provost previously told The Campus that those healthcare costs could in part be due to the timing of workforce planning — people might have taken advantage of the college’s insurance plan to get medical procedures they have been putting off, for example, before taking the buyouts and separation plans.
Additionally, Provost said the deficit was partly due to the staggered nature of the workforce planning process, as some employees — including all the faculty at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS) who took the incentive plans — still had to finish up the year before taking the buyouts.
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Today
Those existing losses, in conjunction with the $9 million in losses for FY20 as a result of the coronavirus, contribute to an estimated $17.3 million in losses for this fiscal year. However, offset by cost-saving components like reduction in travel and food expenses, this deficit actually totals about $13.0 million for the year.
Those Covid-19-related losses come from four main areas: the $7.9 million in room and board refunds for the spring semester; the $900,000 in refunds for study abroad students; the $1 million in lost auxiliary operations from the bookstore, The Grille and other retail operations, the golf course, and the lost last month of the Snow Bowl’s season; and the $7.5 million predicted fundraising shortfall.
The Office of Advancement usually raises between $7–9 million in the last three months of the fiscal year. Now, with reunion canceled, it’s going to be difficult to do that. But the college gave families the option to donate their unused room and board credits as gifts; 19 families have taken them up on this thus far, for a total $83,000 in donations.
The college has also been preparing to embark on a capital campaign. The Office and Advancement and the Board of Trustees will reevaluate the timing of that campaign.
“Our donors and the largest donors in the world have lost a significant part of their wealth,” Provost said. “So that will play into thinking about that.”
The last capital campaign was also launched before a financial crisis, in 2007. It stretched from a five to an eight-year campaign, but ultimately surpassed the college’s target of $500 million.
There is also an estimated $800,000 in Covid-19-related expenses that the college will incur this year, which includes the over $110,000 it put toward helping students get home in March, which included travel expenses and gift cards for food costs.
Despite the recent buzz about the financial footprint of MIIS, Provost said he does not think Middlebury’s financial challenges stem from the institute. “They have been at times, but Monterey has done more to control costs and has been more successful at it,” Provost said. “They don’t have room and board so their FY20 numbers are looking pretty good. They might have a surplus.”
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Looking ahead to FY21
In a recent memo to faculty and staff, Provost estimated the college deficit could swell to $30 million next year. That is assuming the college continues remote learning in the fall and then moves to in-person operations in the spring, and that there is full wage continuity throughout the year.
“If we are able to bring most students back, the lost revenue will be much smaller, and manageable,” he said, noting that they’re prioritizing trying to get as many students back to campus as possible.
So how is the college prepping for next year when everything is up in the air? Contingency budget plans. A lot of them. Provost is working on seven or eight possible plans, which he will present to the Board of Trustees for feedback next week at their May meetings. The college won’t make a decision on what it will do this fall — or which budget plan it will follow — until late June.
Each potential scenario will contemplate its individual impact on tuition, room and board. Provost said that under no circumstance will the college cease operations completely this fall. Doing so could bring the deficit to a whopping $90 million.
Losses from summer programming also factor into the FY21 budget. With some programs not happening at all and others set to be held remotely, Provost said he expects to see $4–5 million in revenue from summer programs, versus the usual $17.9 million the college usually receives from these programs.
Ameliorating losses
The college is now pinpointing how it might mitigate the FY20 and FY21 losses. Some reductions happen naturally: the lack of travel expenses, paired with the reduction in food expenses and other operating costs, will save the college $7.5 million or more. Investure — the firm that manages the college’s investments — has deferred its payments for their fees until June, which also helps.
Other efforts will require more active planning, which is where the Budget Advisory Committee comes in. That committee will make recommendations to the Board of Trustees about where to cut in the FY21 budget.
Each area of the college is currently reevaluating its spending. All departments may only use “essential” or “contractually obligated” expenses for the duration of the fiscal year. The SGA already pledged to redirect hundreds of thousands of its unused funds to staff wage continuity and student emergency support.
The college has also already instituted a hiring freeze, which will apply to all open faculty and staff positions for the foreseeable future. Likewise, the college will not allow departments to fill positions that open up in the coming months, with limited exceptions granted on a case-by-case basis by the Ways and Means Committee.
Typically, employees receive small percentage salary increases each year. The college does not anticipate it will offer those raises in the coming year. It is, however, still contemplating addressing the results of its compensation review — the study it conducted with an external consulting group to gather market data this year. The college is undertaking that review partly to address the increased turnover it has seen over the last two years in positions within the lowest pay bands. In January, it raised wages for staff in its lowest-paid positions as an effort to make itself a more competitive employer amid staff shortages and grievances about low staff pay.
“We may not be able to address the [compensation review] results in the first half of the year, but it remains a priority,” Provost said. Members of the Budget Advisory Committee say they have not gotten an update on the review and that it has not been part of their recent discussions.
If the college continues remotely in the fall, it will have to address a litany of other concerns. Provost has consistently said that wage continuity is a priority for the college, but to continue to pay everyone, it might have to consider reducing all employees’ pay. Already, President Laurie Patton and some members of the Senior Leadership Group have taken pay cuts, per the most recent memo. Provost said employees with lowest wages would be the least impacted by the pay cuts, if they were to happen.
The college will also receive about $1.8 million from the federal government, The Campus reported this week, as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
Ultimately, Provost thinks the college can balance the budget by FY22. The effort to balance the budget from a similar deficit took years the last time around, but that was because the college was spending past its means and not taking in enough revenue. This time, revenue, not expenses, is the problem.
Assuming the college can maintain its desired levels of enrollment, Provost said things should even out within the next 12–18 months.
“So when we return to normal, the revenue should go back, too,” he said.
The endowment
Throughout all of this, Provost says he does not plan on drawing more from Middlebury’s endowment than he would have pre-Covid-19. In recent years, the college has been pulling roughly 5.1–5.2% from the endowment — the industry standard for non-profits — and FY20 will be no exception. That amounts to about $57,590,000 this year, taken out in four installments throughout the year.
Provost estimates those numbers will be about the same for FY21. The dollar value of that 5% will be determined by a period of time before December 2019, pre-coronavirus. Any decline related to Covid-19 in the markets, then, would not take effect until FY22.
As for the current state of the endowment, Provost said the numbers are not in the red zone. He said the college has stress-tested the endowment and estimated that if assets were down 30%, it would be in trouble. Currently, those assets are down about 10%.
The college is awaiting the first quarter results of the endowment for the three months ending on March 31. Those results will be presented to the Board of Trustees next week.
Editors Bochu Ding and Benjy Renton contributed reporting.
(04/30/20 9:54am)
A committee that the college convened this winter to democratize financial decision-making is now helping it work through coronavirus-related budgetary woes.
The Budget Advisory Committee was created in December and serves the college in an advisory capacity. Budget decisions ultimately fall on the Board of Trustees, which approves the budget in May.
Originally, the committee was to come up with recommendations to reduce the college’s $4 million deficit. Now, it is looking into the budget cuts the college can make to mitigate the more severe Covid-19-related losses in Fiscal Year 2021.
The committee includes members of the Faculty Resources Committee and Educational Affairs Committee; members of the budget office; two members from the Middlebury institute of International Studies at Monterey; four members of Staff Council; Treasurer and Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Treasurer Provost; and Kenshin Cho ’20, chair of the Student Government Association Finance Committee. Cho is the only student on the committee.
One of the original goals of the committee was to democratize the budgetary process. Before on-campus operations were suspended this March, The Campus spoke with a handful of members of the committee who said that, as representatives of their respective constituencies, they wanted to represent the attitudes of their peers on the committee as accurately as possible.
But it was unclear upon the committee’s creation how that could happen when so many of the college’s budget documents and statements remain available only to those on the committee. PowerPoints and notes from each committee meeting are marked “confidential.” The college’s annual financial results webpage has not been updated since November 2018. And committee members seemed unsure about how they might gauge others' opinions without any formal feedback mechanisms.
“To me personally, it’s difficult sometimes to know what it is that the faculty thinks,” said Enrique García, a professor of Luso-Hispanic Studies and a member of the committee. “So even though I’m the elected member, sometimes I feel uncomfortable with making certain statements about decisions that are being made because I don't have a venue to discuss and get direct feedback from the faculty body while engaging with the administration.”
Since going remote, however, the college has released two public general memos on the state of the budget. It is planning on releasing a survey in the coming week soliciting input from faculty and staff on where to make cuts in next year’s budget.
The committee has additionally begun convening without the administrators who sit in on meetings. Members receive the PowerPoint presentations in advance of their general meetings and get to talk about priorities more freely, said Katie Gillespie, an associate director for research compliance who sits on the committee as a representative from Staff Council.
“As a staff member, I feel great about that,” she said. “Faculty members have tenure and have been asking really great questions, ones that have been on my mind, but I feel less comfortable asking.”
Committee member Rick Bunt, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, said part of the committee’s work is determining where the college’s priorities should lie and, therefore, where it needs to make cuts.
“The budget is not just about how the people in the finance department think,” he said. “We really wanted it to be an expression of our values.”
The committee is meeting today, without administrators, before the larger committee meeting on May 4. Gillespie said they’re planning to talk about priorities at that meeting.
“Can we all get on the same page, I’m not sure,” she said. “But it feels like by doing that extra bit outside the committee, it’s become a better process.”
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that the faculty and staff survey will be sent out in the coming weeks.
(04/09/20 9:59am)
Six days after most Middlebury students vacated campus to continue classes from home, the college admitted its biggest class of prospective students ever.
The acceptance letters received by 1,836 high school seniors this March, plus the 392 early decision acceptances doled out in December and February, were the first in a string of correspondences the college will send accepted students as it tries to virtually woo young adults who are making college decisions in one of the most unusual times in recent history. With campus completely closed to visitors, the Office of Admissions will now depend on webinars, social media posts, and its own students and alumni to replicate that feel-it-in-your-bones sense many students look for when they attend Preview Days in the spring.
Even with heightened virtual efforts, however, colleges around the world are facing Covid-19-related challenges that could lead students to either enroll in the fall as planned, or defer their admissions — a process experts refer to as “melt.” As a buffer, Middlebury admitted more students than usual to ensure it would reach its desired yield of 725–740 enrollees. The result is a pool of admittees that is nearly 700 students larger than last year’s and an acceptance rate that surpasses 20% for the first time in more than a decade.
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Differing solutions to a potential yield problem across higher education suggest that navigating challenges posed by Covid-19 isn’t as black-and-white as just admitting more or fewer students on the front end. As Middlebury ramped up its acceptance rates, peer schools such as Colby and Bowdoin hit record-low rates. College admissions consultant Matthew Greene said that he anticipates many schools will take this latter approach, and will rely on their waitlists to address potential melt. Middlebury has not released its waitlist information for the class of 2024.
Greene said he thinks Middlebury’s method of accepting more students is “not a bad idea in the sense that students will be much more excited about a college if they’re admitted.” On the flipside, Greene said, the risk could be over enrolling the freshman class.
College Treasurer David Provost said the college is not necessarily trying to enroll more students, but is rather bracing itself for more pressure on financial aid and an uptick in deferrals, among other projections. Data is already beginning to support that more students are planning on taking time off before starting school next fall. Edmit, a Boston-based company that advises students on paying for college, conducted a survey of 100 college-bound students and found that one-third of respondents were considering taking a gap year. Another quarter of students said they were considering going to school closer to home, or in an area that is less affected by the virus.
“This wasn't a large sample size, but is consistent with dozens of conversations I've had with high school counselors, college-bound families and college admissions offices,” said Edmit co-founder and CEO Nick Ducoff.
Additionally, 10.5% of Middlebury’s admitted class is made up of international students, raising questions about access come fall. “Will travel rebound?” said Dean of Admissions Nicole Curvin. “Will they be able to get visas? Will countries open up so we’re able to get students to campus and to get them to orientation? We’re in really uncharted territory.”
There’s no historical precedent for the current crisis, but Greene pointed to the September 11 attacks and the 2008 financial crisis as other phenomena that affected students’ decisions about college on a macro level. In 2002, the college raised its acceptance rate from 26% to 31%, before dropping again the following year to 28%. In 2009, the college also saw a higher acceptance rate, but that was partly due to a decrease in applications by nearly 1,000 that year.
The applicant pool also decreased this year, which contributed to the higher acceptance rate for the class of 2024. The decline of about 585 applications from last year’s record-breaking numbers is unrelated to the coronavirus — regular decision applications were due on January 1, before China had even reported its first coronavirus-related deaths — but rather an ongoing demographic shift, according to Curvin, as fewer high school graduates come out of New England and more come out of the South and West.
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“That was something we anticipated,” Curvin said. “We had a record high last year, and expected there would be a softening this year.”
Greene said he does not think Middlebury’s uncharacteristically high acceptance rate this year will hurt the college going forward.
“I think it’s going to be a blip, a small blip,” he said. “And I think that admissions rate is a small factor in the rankings game.”
Putting its best foot forward
Meanwhile, the college is inviting all hands on deck to show prospective students — including the 70% of admits who have never visited campus — why they should pick Middlebury. Instead of holding a virtual version of Preview Days, which was originally scheduled for early next week, Curvin said the office will try to maintain as much regular contact with students as possible, with daily emails and the help of Midd Kids from all over the world. Already, 450 current students have signed up to text admitted students about the college. Alumni who conduct admissions interviews will also reach out, and there will be scores of virtual panels and webinars on Zoom for those who want to know what it’s like to be a Feb or how the Center for Careers and Internships works.
In the absence of overnight stays and in-person tours, this sort of peer-to-peer outreach is key. Mariclare O’Neal, a high school guidance counselor in Chelmsford, Mass., said she thinks the biggest loss for students will be not getting a sense of the social environment on campus.
“I love accepted students days,” she said. “I think they tell you about the school. You get a vibe.”
The Office of Admissions was already beginning to build the groundwork for some of these online events and outreach initiatives. The Student Ambassador program for example, led by some members of the class of 2022 last fall, connected high schoolers from areas that fall outside the college’s usual purview with current Middlebury students who also live in those areas. And generally, as the number of applicants from New England has declined, the college has been boosting efforts to market itself online to those who might be more than a drive up Interstate-89 away.
Still, there was a mad dash in the days before decisions came out to create a revamped website for admitted students that includes a live chat feature, several FAQs videos on life at Middlebury that current students recorded from home and a schedule of webinars.
Andrew Cassel, the college’s new director of social media and content producing, said the Office of Admissions and Office of Communications created the website “over an intense four-and-a-half days.” He has been sharing informational posts about the college on its Instagram each day at noon and has turned to platforms like Facebook and TikTok to reach prospective students.
“Being able to engage with [newly admitted students] on TikTok helps differentiate Middlebury from other schools that may not have a TikTok presence,” Cassel said. He said there have been increases in the college’s Instagram and TikTok followings since the decisions were released.
https://www.tiktok.com/@middleburycollege/video/6805623602482892038
Senior Admissions Fellow Julia Sinton ’20.5 said she thinks one of Middlebury’s big selling points is its attractive campus. She noted that about half of the college’s visitors come in the summer. “So I think we're hoping to be open again in the summer and have a lot of visitors then,” she said.
Sinton and the other senior admissions fellows are still giving six information sessions a week via Zoom. Her info session yesterday saw an audience of 82 families, who asked about 50 questions using Zoom’s chat function, she said.
Fellow Sandhya Sewnauth ’20 agreed that Middlebury’s rural charm is an important facet of its appeal.
“I do think that for students who are unfamiliar with rural environments and small towns, there is certainly an aura that you get once you are on campus that can only be felt in-person — I can recall this feeling when I visited Midd as a high school senior from New York City,” she said. “It was different from looking at pretty pictures in brochures, or YouTube videos of campus tours.”
Greene thinks Middlebury’s cloistered location will be a selling point this year, as coronavirus overwhelms crowded cities. But he also noted that it can be difficult to get there, sometimes requiring connecting flights through multiple airports.
“Clearly, safety and security are going to be top of mind for families,” he said.
Colleges all over the country are extending their deposit deadlines to June 1, but Middlebury is sticking to its May 1 date. Students who plan on deferring, meanwhile, must let the college know no later than June 1, according to the college’s website.
As one commenter wondered aloud on a College Confidential thread about the college’s uptick in admissions, it will be difficult to know until then how many students will actually matriculate in September. “It actually makes little sense, considering that they have had over-enrollment in the past and it didn't go well,” they said about the higher acceptance rate. “Alternatively, perhaps they know something that the other NESCACs don't.”
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Editor's note: This story previously featured a photo from a webinar for incoming Febs. That picture has since been removed because one of the webinar's participants did not want her photo available on the internet.
(04/02/20 9:59am)
Political Science Professor Allison Stanger has extended her sabbatical another year after winning awards that will take her to Stanford, Calif. and Washington, D.C. next fall and spring.
Stanger, who spent this past year as a fellow and visiting professor at Harvard University, will be the Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress for 2020–2021. On a separate appointment, she will also be a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) during that time.
She will spend the year working on her new book, tentatively titled “Consumers vs. Citizens: Social Inequality and Democracy’s Public Sphere in a Big Data World,” she said in an email to The Campus. She noted that the locations of her upcoming posts will position her ideally for this kind of work, since she will be close both to the offices of the government and Silicon Valley.
Stanger said she plans on returning to Middlebury for the 2021–22 academic year.
“I’m very grateful to both my colleagues in the Political Science Department and to the administration for their exceptional support, and I am looking forward to returning to Middlebury when my fellowships end,” she wrote. “The experiences I have had these past few years should make me a better teacher and resource for Middlebury students.”
Stanger was injured by protesters during Charles Murray’s visit to Middlebury in 2017. In the fracas that followed the disrupted talk, Stanger, who mediated the talk and escorted Murray out of the venue, suffered whiplash and a concussion.
The following fall, Stanger began what was slated to be a two-year leave. But at the end of the second year, Stanger announced to the Middlebury Political Science faculty and staff her plans to remain off-campus for the 2019–2020 academic year.
Stanger is currently a technology and human values senior fellow at Harvard’s Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics, and is teaching a course at the university (now remotely, from Vermont) called “The Politics of Virtual Realities.” In her email, Stanger added that she was recently appointed to the Science Board of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico.
The handbook states that the college does not guarantee to faculty “extraordinary leaves” — leaves that last more than one year — but that the college may grant such a leave when a professor is offered “an unusual professional opportunity.”
Dean of Faculty Sujata Moorti said that the college prioritizes “departmental and college planning in approving leaves.” The Political Science department in particular typically has between two and four professors on leave in any given year, according to Political Science Department Chair Erik Bleich. Next year, only one other professor — Professor Nadia Horning, who teaches in a different subfield — will be on leave.
According to information available on the college’s website, Stanger’s current leave of absence is unpaid by the college. When asked if next year’s leave would also be unpaid, Moorti said Stanger “will be paid by the institutions hosting her.”
The CASBS offers stipends to first-time fellows, and an endowment at the Library of Congress funds the chair position, which pays a stipend of $13,500 per month. Nominees for that position are sourced from a number of individuals and are recommended to the Librarian of Congress by a selection committee.
Bill Ryan, the director of communications at the Library of Congress, characterized the position as one that “supports exploration of the history of America with special attention to the ethical dimensions of domestic economic, political and social policies.” He said the start and end dates of the chairmanship have not yet been finalized. The CASBS position runs September 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021.
Before the coronavirus led to the cancellation and postponement of all on-campus events, Stanger was scheduled to visit Middlebury April 7 to talk about her most recently published book, “Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington to Trump,” alongside the New York Times’s David Sanger. The book was fortuitously released this September, the same day House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. The inquiry was spurred by a whistleblower complaint against the President.
In the months that followed the book’s release, Stanger made a number of high-profile radio and TV appearances, and penned pieces for the New York Times and The Atlantic. In February, Stanger was one of about 50 authors to win a Prose Award from the American Association of Publishers for the book, in the category of Government, Policy and Politics.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the location of Stanford University. It is located in Stanford, California.
(03/19/20 10:09am)
We had three Covid-19-related stories on the docket a week and a half ago. Now, it’s hard to think about — and report on — almost anything else.
A lot has changed since then. We’ve since shared goodbyes, packed up our commons-office-provided boxes and dispersed around the world. Some watched their friends leave, unable to return to their own homes themselves. Some of us worried about work-study; others grappled with food insecurity.
As the dust settles, so many questions linger: What will online classes look like? What are the implications of the suspension for the town of Middlebury? Will the college provide its staff with financial security as operations come to a grinding halt?
The Campus is committed to continuing our investigation into these questions — and the coverage of the diverse narratives of our greater Middlebury community. Amid the ambiguity and uncertainty of current events, we want to provide a sense of clarity. And during a time when we are the furthest apart physically, we want to be a platform that helps Middlebury stay connected.
What can you expect from us?
The show must go on. The Campus will continue its coverage remotely, online. We will publish stories as they are ready this and next week, and will re-assume regular Thursday coverage on April 2, the first Thursday after spring break.
Our weekly newsletter will also highlight the key stories from the week, so don’t forget to sign up for it here. That newsletter will start back up on April 2 as well.
We see ourselves as a forum to amplify voices that can no longer chat around dining hall tables, greet each other between classes and convene at local coffee shops and teahouses in town. As we scatter geographically, we want to explore what remoteness means for the different members of our community.
This is work we cannot do alone. Here are some ways to get involved:
Help us with coverage: Let us know if you’re interested in joining our team of writers — no prior experience necessary and the commitment is flexible.
Express your opinion: Tell us what you’re thinking by submitting an opinion piece or a letter to the editor.
Keep us in the loop: Know something that’s going on or want us to explore a certain topic? Drop us a tip.
Tell your story: We want to fill our (virtual) pages with stories from every corner of the now-dispersed Middlebury. Send us a short story about your experience, or email us if you’re interested in contributing regularly with tales from your living room couch, quarantined city or quiet dorm room. We will have prompts regularly for potential letters to the editor (200 words) and op-eds (800 words). This week’s prompt is about all the feels that came with last week’s announcement.
Our mission is to serve our readers and to reflect the goings-on and spirit of the college in this extraordinary time, so please stay in touch. We are looking forward to seeing you engage with — and participate in — our coverage this semester.
(03/19/20 5:02am)
We want to hear about the litany of feelings that characterized many students’ last few days on campus. Op-eds, letters to the editor, poems, photos, illustrations about those final moments at Midd — we want it all.
Send your contributions to campus@middlebury.edu by Saturday, March 28 and we’ll publish them on our site on Thursday, April 2. As always, feel free to reach out with any questions.
(03/12/20 4:10pm)
(03/05/20 4:35pm)
(02/13/20 10:56am)
My valentine this year is transparency.
I’m not the only one. In our editorial this week, you’ll see our board’s collective call for openness and clarity regarding Charles Murray’s upcoming visit. In that spirit, it feels only fair that we should pull back the curtain on our own editorial decisions — specifically, those regarding our coverage of Murray’s talk and any related stories.
The Campus’ goal, first and foremost, is to keep our community informed. Middlebury is small; word travels fast. We are acutely aware of the real consequences misinformation, disinformation and insufficient information can have on the college as a whole. We also realize that, in choosing what to publish, we have a hand in the conversations that take place on campus. It is a duty we take very seriously.
The importance of that role intensifies during campus controversies that lead to national media attention. When stories are picked up by outside media, getting the details right has even higher stakes.
This burden requires us to be especially thorough — but there is a difference between thoroughness and excessiveness. We are very aware of what Murray and other controversial speakers might have to gain from a flurry of media coverage. Like last time, Murray’s name will again be splattered across the web this spring. Readers will order copies of his book to see what the buzz is about, both in odious rage and genuine curiosity. From Murray’s point of view, the phrase “no press is bad press” definitely applies.
With all this in mind, here’s what you should expect from us.
Over the next few months, we will grapple with finding equilibrium between covering Murray’s visit sufficiently and covering it to a point of oversaturation. There are many important questions our reporters and editors plan on asking. We want to know more about the legacies of hurt and healing that have characterized the campus since 2017; how the college plans on deploying its security resources on the day of the talk; how students, faculty and staff are responding to the College Republicans’ invitation, as many already have in the opinion pages of this newspaper.
And of course, we will be at Murray’s talk — and any concurrent counter-event or protest — with our video cameras and notebooks. Those reporting the story in 2017 made a conscious decision not to publish coverage until they were certain they had all the details right. We will operate with the same sense of care while also treating matters with the urgency they deserve.
You should not expect, on the other hand, that The Campus will become a Murray publicity machine. Murray’s visit is big, no doubt, but there is more to Middlebury than that visit. We will continue as usual with the full gamut of news and feature reporting that characterizes The Campus week after week, from symposia to sports games to your op-eds.
In other words: if you’re looking for clickbait, look elsewhere.
Sabine Poux '20 is The Campus' editor in chief. If you have any questions or concerns about The Campus’ reporting, on the subject of Charles Murray’s visit or otherwise, please email us at campus@middlebury.edu.
(01/23/20 11:06am)
One hundred thirty-one Middlebury students could benefit from a settlement reached last month between the state of Vermont and a South Carolina insurance company, after the latter sold incomplete health insurance plans to Vermont college students between 2014 and 2016.
The beneficiaries, many of whom have since graduated, had purchased health insurance from the school during those years and had their insurance claims at least partially or completely uncovered by Companion Life Insurance. Instead, these students paid out of pockets for mental and physical health services that should have been covered — among them substance abuse treatments, procedures for athletic injuries and screenings for sexually transmitted infections.
Middlebury students made up more than half of the Vermont students affected by the blunder, probably because the college has a relatively large international student population, according to Financial Regulation Commissioner Mike Pieciak. Often, international students will purchase health insurance from their college because their parents’ plans might not have an equivalent in the states, he said.
Piecak said Companion, not Middlebury, is to blame for the situation.
“Middlebury and the other nine higher ed institutes were reliant on insurance professionals,” he said. “Rightly so.”
Companion, a South Carolina-based subsidiary of Blue Cross Blue Shield, was the only health insurance provider selling plans to Vermont college students at that time. Pieciak said the mishandled claims slipped under the Financial Regulation Commission’s radar because Companion did not file its forms with the department during those years.
When the department found out about the incomplete plans in 2016, it mandated Companion retroactively cover the procedures it had not covered until that point. Companion complied with state regulations in the 2016–2017 academic year, the last year in which it was still the college’s sole student health insurance provider. Today, students who choose to purchase the provided insurance plan are covered under the National Guardian Life Insurance Company.
About $274,000 of the $1.8 million settlement will be distributed to Middlebury students who come forward about their uncovered claims. The college has contacted those who were enrolled in the Companion plan about seeking restitution for mishandled claims. Other funds will go toward an educational campaign that the state will undertake to educate students about their health insurance options.
(01/12/20 3:16am)
A month after students protested for higher staff pay, the administration has raised its minimum entry-level wages for some staff positions in the lowest pay bands.
Effective December 30, 2019, the increases affect workers in about 80 existing benefits-eligible positions — jobs in which employees work at least half of a full-time work schedule — and raise the starting rates for numerous open positions, most of which fall in Facilities Services and Dining Services. Previously, staff in entry-level Operations Level 1 (OP1), 2 (OP2) and 3 (OP3) positions made $11, $12.07 and $15.22 an hour, respectively. The new minimums fall at $14, $15 and $16 an hour.
The Campus reported in a series of stories last October that insufficient wages were causing widespread discontent among staff in some of the lowest pay bands, spurring some facilities staff to consider unionizing and creating staff shortages in other areas.
Last month, hundreds of students protested in support of paying staff higher wages. In response, the administration reiterated that it would address such concerns with a compensation review meant to gather market data and make the college a more competitive employer.
That compensation review is slated to finish in late spring. But Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration David Provost said it was already apparent that the review would indicate an issue with entry-level positions. While Provost did not share how many OP1, OP2 and OP3 positions are currently vacant, The Campus previously reported that a large number of openings in certain departments have put significant strain on college staff.
Provost also said the administration thought raising wages now would send a strong message about the college’s priorities, one he feels has been reiterated by various groups across campus, from the student-led protest to conversations at faculty meetings.
“The messaging I was hearing from faculty, staff and students was that this is our top priority,” Provost said. While the college has known it would need to address low pay for a long time, the extensive support for higher wages allowed it to circumvent “a lengthy conversation about prioritization” and to commit those dollars now.
When asked where the college found the money for the wage increases, Provost chuckled. “I haven’t yet,” he said. But since the budget for fiscal year 2021 goes into effect this July, the college will only need to find extra funds to tide itself over for half the year. Any changes made following the spring compensation review will be factored into the new budget.
Provost explained that the college determined the amounts for the wage increases based on market data from comparable positions in the area. The college had originally only committed to reexamining OP1 and OP2 jobs, but included OP3 wages in its adjustment as pay increases excluding OP3 would have placed OP2 wages only 22 cents below OP3 rates.
Pay compression
Every staff member The Campus interviewed for this story said they were glad to see the college raise at least some wages earlier than expected, but many are concerned that those changes only impact employees in entry-level positions. The raises create an issue known as pay compression, in which more senior employees who have received incremental annual raises for years will not receive raises because their wages exceed the new minimums — sometimes only slightly.
Waste management/custodial employee Brenda Hansen has been working at the college since 2001. Over the last 19 years, her pay has increased to $15.78 an hour.
Hansen’s job is classified in the OP2 band, in which the new entry-level minimum rate is $15. She said she feels she has “fallen between the cracks,” and thinks the college should have refrained from increasing entry-level wages until it could increase wages for all employees in the affected pay bands.
“People are going to be starting in here making 78 cents less than what I have been making,” she said. “I’m dedicated employee. I’ve worked hard.”
When she inquired about pay compression in an email to the Office of Human Resources, Hansen was told the college is aware of the issue and will make decisions on the matter following the compensation review, in “several more months.” The email emphasized that the college had to focus its efforts on starting salaries first to “attract and retain” employees.
Provost told The Campus he thinks addressing compression pay will be an important next step for the college.
“The next couple months for the people in that compression area are going to be difficult,” Provost said. “I’m going to ask for their patience. And I hope that our ability to do this now shows that this is what we want to do.”
Atwater Dining cook Patti McCaffrey said the administration told staff at a meeting last fall that it would probably have to look at compression issues soon. She said Executive Director of Food Services Dan Detora also acknowledged pay compression would be a problem when he visited the dining halls the morning before the announcement about the wage increases was made.
Landscape worker Todd Weedman is somewhat optimistic that the college will address compression come spring.
“I think a lot of people are upset about compression, and I understand that and I get it,” Weedman said. “But I know they’re working on it. I’m willing to take them at their word for it and I think we will see something as we move forward.”
Others, frustrated by what they identify as repeated patterns of bad communication, are not confident the administration will raise their wages. One facilities employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, is concerned that the administration’s decision was just for show. He did not receive a wage increase because he was earning slightly above the increased minimum in his pay band.
“That email is all smoke and mirrors,” he said. “It’s a decoy. Because now students think the college followed through and everyone’s happy.”
Staff largely credit students for putting pressure on the administration to address wages. In multiple interviews, they repeatedly brought up how grateful they were for students’ displays of concern. One of the co-organizers of the December student-led protest, Celia Gottlieb ’21.5, said she does not feel the change adequately addresses underlying institutional issues.
“It is a shame that this issue has only seen progress after student involvement,” she said in an email to The Campus. “This is an issue staff members have raised for the past three years without making much headway.” Gottlieb and others said this is a start on a longer road toward better staff treatment.
Many workers, like Facilities Service Floater Isaac Larocque, say the change indicates more broadly how the college treats its long-term employees.
“Seniority doesn’t really mean anything,” he said. “How can somebody who’s been here 20 years, or 10 years, just be left in the dust?”
The Campus will continue following the story as the college moves forward with its compensation review.
Managing Editor James Finn '20.5 contributed reporting.
Editor’s note: The Campus has granted anonymity to a number of sources in a series of stories about staff pay and treatment. Granting anonymity is not a practice we take lightly, but we feel the sensitive nature of the subject matter and some employees’ fears for retaliation warrant anonymity in these cases.
(11/20/19 10:50am)
Editor,
The excellent article by Hannah Bensen on Middlebury College activism detailed how college activists have made an enormous impact on progressive issues such as fossil fuel divestment and sexual assault. I heartily applaud these efforts for both their societal and educational value. It’s important to know how much student involvement in the issues of the day is part of the Middlebury experience.
Recognizing that no one article can cover the entire life of the college, I would add that there is a longer history of Middlebury activism. For example, I arrived as a student on campus in the fall of 1970 after the recent Kent State shootings and found a small but very dedicated group of students working to help end the Vietnam War. Other students built organizations to focus on concerns such as the environment, sex education, and access to contraceptives. For all of us involved, the impact of those experiences remains with us today.
In the ensuing decades, various student groups have strived to end South African apartheid, protect immigrant rights and bring greater racial and gender diversity/equality to campus, among a host of other causes.
Some of this work is nicely summarized in “A People’s History of Middlebury College,” created several years ago by a group of Middlebury activists. It can be accessed at go/peopleshistory.
— Greg Dennis
Cornwall, VT
Middlebury Class of 1974
(10/31/19 10:05am)
After wrapping up the college's year-long workforce planning initiative this May, a process that saw 37 staff members take voluntary buyouts and caused a redistribution of workload among remaining staff, administrators announced via email to all college employees that the process had been a success — Middlebury could reduce its deficit without resorting to layoffs.
But an external email sent to facilities staff on Aug. 8 suggests the starkly different story, that some workers didn’t think workforce planning had been so “voluntary” after all.
“Middlebury Needs a UNION! -read on your break” the subject line of the email said.
It spelled out some of the pitfalls of the workforce planning process: Staff felt voiceless, overworked with insufficient pay, and as though the ground had been pulled from beneath them when they were offered buyouts and switched into new roles. Facilities staff specifically — those who work in maintenance and operations jobs, like custodial and groundskeeping services, as well as jobs in planning, design and construction — have reported to The Campus feeling exhausted and frustrated by failures in communication, too-long hours and last minute call-ins.
“I don’t know a bunch about unions — still don’t,” one facilities staff member said. “But I know the way that people get treated here. I’ve seen it. I just feel like we’ve got to do something.”
Throughout the summer, the email’s sender, David Van Deusen of the Rutland-based branch of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), met with facilities staff who sought to discuss how organizing a union would mitigate the heightened voicelessness brought on by the workforce planning process.
Not enough facilities staff have signed union authorization cards to trigger a vote to organize. Many said they see this as a sign that union efforts have failed. But Van Deusen remains adamant that efforts are ongoing. And facilities staff are insistent that something has to give.
Most of the 12 facilities workers The Campus spoke with for the story spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of retribution from peers and upper management.
Workforce planning raises “unanswered questions”
Most Middlebury students don’t know what workforce planning really means. But for staff, the process — which the college announced in June 2018 as a way to cut personnel costs and distribute work more efficiently — was ever-present for the better part of a year.
Department managers were tasked last fall with leading discussions within their divisions about how they could reorganize work more efficiently and cost-effectively, with the aim of shrinking staff compensation costs by 10% amidst an exigent budget deficit. That winter, senior leadership, in collaboration with human resources, finalized a list of positions that they would cut based on those findings.
The college identified 150 staff positions to be eliminated, though 100 of that number were “were already vacant through attrition and restrictions on re-hiring over the last few years,” The Campus reported in May. In February of 2019, the college handed out applications for buyouts — formally called Incentivized Separation Plans (ISP) — to 79 staff members, in hopes of cutting 45 of the remaining positions. Twenty-eight of those applications were offered to facilities and dining staff specifically.
The college sent more applications for the buyouts than were necessary, in the hopes that enough staff would elect to take them and the college would not have to resort to involuntary layoffs. If more staff than necessary applied, the most senior staff were offered buyouts first.
The college also created “close to 40” new staff positions based on needs identified during work reevaluations, according to Vice President of Human Resources Karen Miller. Applications for those positions were first made available to the staff who were offered buyouts, giving them the option to apply to stay at the college, rather than taking ISPs. To protect the privacy of the individuals who opted to take buyouts, the college has not made public the list of eliminated and added positions.
Ultimately, 37 staff took the buyouts, nine of whom were employees within facilities and dining. The college had hoped more staff would apply, but the number proved sufficient — the college did not have to resort to layoffs.
“This process has been both lengthy and challenging, and caused many in our community significant uncertainty and discomfort,” said President Laurie Patton in a May email to staff. “Thanks to your participation, the process was successful.”
Last year, The Campus reported growing anxieties among staff as they waited to hear from the administration about the futures of their jobs. For staff in some departments — like dining, in which a natural reduction of positions left few to be forcibly cut — these uncertainties have since mostly subsided. But in facilities, anxieties have subsisted. In some cases, they have worsened.
“There were a lot of unanswered questions. There still are a lot of unanswered questions,” said one Middlebury facilities staff member, a supporter of the union.
A 2017 survey, administered by the consulting firm ModernThink, shows that staff discontent surged even before workforce planning began. That survey showed frustration with communication from the Senior Leadership Group — Patton’s 17-member advisory council — a lack of transparency with decision-making and dissatisfaction with compensation, among other areas.
Still, workforce planning seems to have exacerbated many staff concerns. Some, for example, are frustrated with how work has been redistributed since some positions were cut, which has caused employees to feel overworked and underpaid.
“The work amped up with fewer people to do it,” said the aforementioned facilities staff member. “A lot of the extra stuff is taking away from the stuff that we need to do daily.”
The worker said he was frustrated with what he felt was a murky process. Decisions about the “voluntary” process were often made behind closed doors, he said, and the redistribution of work showed a lack of understanding about the work being done. “There was nothing voluntary about it,” he said.
Norm Cushman, vice president for operations, said communication can be a challenge in a department with so many workers. “It would have been very difficult to have solicited everyone’s input,” he said.
Cushman said the process of work redistribution will play out piecemeal, as employees who took buyouts gradually leave the college and their departments develop strategies for how to “do less with less.”
Low pay forces employees who work two jobs into a “balancing act”
The Campus has previously reported low wages as a source of dissatisfaction among employees. Separately, pro-union staff who spoke to The Campus said low wages were a major reason they sought to organize.
Many employees have to hold multiple jobs to survive. That balancing act, another facilities employee said, can become incredibly burdensome when workloads at the college are also increased in light of workforce planning. When many facilities staff did not show up to work after an unexpectedly severe snowstorm last year, for example, administrators questioned staff priorities.
“We had a meeting with a manager who was extremely unhappy because a lot of people weren’t here helping,” the employee said. “He told us that if we had second jobs, we needed to not go in and instead had to come in and shovel.”
The college has consistently framed workforce planning as a way to make staff feel more invested in the future of the institution. But according to staff, it doesn’t always feel like that.
“Yeah, you could say workforce planning is for us, because now [the college is] financially sustainable,” said Staff Council President Tim Parsons. “But if you’re only making $12.07 an hour and your shift in the custodial wing starts at 4 a.m., workforce planning doesn’t really feel like it’s for you.”
These low wages have led to shortages in some areas, like custodial and recycling services. To address these shortages, the college is currently spearheading a compensation review with an external consulting group. The aim of the study is to gather “market data” — information that will indicate what the college needs to pay going forward to make itself a competitive employer.
David Provost, executive vice president for finance and administration, said the college is undertaking the review now because it has been nearly a decade since the last one of its kind. He also said that the college has seen increased turnover in the last two years in positions within the lowest two pay bands, in which many facilities positions fall. Wages for OP1 positions — for example, some dining hall servery positions — begin at $11 an hour, while OP2 positions — including some groundsworking and custodial jobs — begin at $12.07 an hour.
Meanwhile, staff spoke about how comparable positions in town had wages that started three or four dollars higher, although without comparable benefits. Separately, custodians told The Campus that hiring shortages in custodial services might be due to the high costs of living in Addison County, costs which workers on an OP2-level budget are often not able to shoulder.
“We know over the last 18 to 24 months it has been more difficult to attract and retain OP1 and OP2 level positions,” Provost said. “If the review suggests we need to increase these salaries, then we will.” He added that the decision would have to be contingent on timing and availability of financial resources.
The college had to tackle workforce planning before the compensation review, Provost said, because addressing its financial management had to be a fiscal priority, given the severity of the deficit.
Provost said he is expecting the study’s data to show that the college should pay its OP1- and OP2-level employees higher wages. The study is set to be done by the spring. At that time, the administration will begin to work its findings into the budget for the 2021 fiscal year.
“A slap in the face”
The college did not officially lay off any employees. Some felt the offers they received backed them into corners anyway.
One employee, a servery worker who has been at the college for 31 years, said her situation felt like “a slap in the face.” She was previously employed in a facilities office job before her position was cut.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]At the college, seniority has never meant anything. I’ve been here 31 years — I’m a loyal worker, have always been on time, never been sick. Didn’t matter at all.[/pullquote]
Even though she shared a similar workload with the two other employees in her previous office, she had a different job title from her co-workers and hers was the only position that was cut. In other offices, where multiple workers held the same positions, the process was more “voluntary,” since one worker’s choice to take a buyout or job transfer meant others could refuse.
The servery worker was, as multiple staff members put it, “workforce planned.”
“At the college, seniority has never meant anything,” the employee said. “I’ve been here 31 years — I’m a loyal worker, have always been on time, never been sick. Didn’t matter at all.”
The staff member was informed by supervisors that her position would be cut toward the end of that phase in the process. But she couldn’t afford to take the buyout package the college was offering. The staff member instead applied for several of the then-newly-created positions posted on a private portal. Many of the available job postings required degrees, she said. “I don’t have a college degree,” she said. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t have the qualifications — I didn’t have the degree.”
All jobs for which she was eligible required higher levels of physical activity than she was used to. After working at a desk for so many years, the transition to a job that requires her to carry heavy loads and stand for hours at a time has taken a toll. Last week, she suffered a workplace injury.
Contacted by AFSCME while she was still in a facilities position, the staff member attended initial meetings and supported the effort to unionize. She said she would support unionization among facilities staff, even in her new role, “Because you’d have someone else looking out for you besides the people who are higher up here,” she said. “They expect the lowest paid people here to work the hardest.”
Despite low wages, staff like the servery worker identified the benefits the college offers to its faculty and staff as exceptional in comparison with other positions in the area. Among them are good healthcare, extensive retirement plans and paid time off, as well as discounts at some stores, free gym passes and roadside assistance.
“If it was not for the benefits, 90% of these facilities people would not be here,” the first facilities employee said.
“Benefits here are a lot better than what you would find anywhere else around here,” said the other. “But I can’t go down to Hannaford and buy groceries with my benefits.”
“Middlebury Needs a UNION!”
Van Deusen, the union rep and the president of the Vermont American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), said he was contacted by facilities employees over the summer about starting a union.
While some staff concerns, like low pay and abrupt, last-minute shift scheduling, have been prevalent for a long time, Van Deusen believes this round of workforce planning catalyzed the staff’s outreach.
After their first meetings in Ilsley Public Library in July, Van Deusen said he was in contact with “dozens of facilities staff.” At subsequent off-campus gatherings, he spoke with interested parties about what the union could offer them. Many were intrigued.
One of the facilities workers told The Campus he “absolutely” supports the formation of a union, “Mainly for pay. And also, to have a voice.” He cited the workforce planning process as a period during which he felt particularly left in the dark by his superiors.
The servery worker said she would be in favor of a facilities union, “because of the seniority part of it. And to negotiate a better raise,” she said.
Some workers were also inspired by the successful union effort at St. Michael’s College. In 2012, custodians there unionized with AFSCME. They later negotiated $15-per-hour pay in their second contract.
Despite this recent win for Vermont labor advocates, Sociology Professor Jamie McCallum, who specializes in labor studies, said union decline in the U.S. has been happening since the 1950s and picked up speed in the late 1970s.
Once word of mouth began to spread about the Middlebury union effort, Van Deusen handed out authorization cards for interested employees to sign. What followed was a flood of information and rumors circulating between staff and the administration. On Aug. 19, one month after union authorization cards were first distributed, Miller, the vice president of human resources, replied to the initial drive in a letter that administrators hand-delivered to all facilities employees.
“Middlebury supports your right to choose whether to unionize,” the letter said.
“We know that many of you have raised legitimate and important concerns about your jobs,” it later added. “We also believe that joining an outside labor union to address those concerns is not the answer.”
The letter highlighted some commonly cited “disadvantages” of forming a union, such as the potentially high cost of monthly dues.
A few days later, Van Deusen sent an email to facilities employees responding to the administration’s outreach.
“AFSCME, the labor union many of you are seeking to affiliate with, is aware that Management has been spreading false and misleading information in an effort to get you to NOT form a Union,” it said, before addressing what it called “actual FACTS” about forming a union.
In the days following, some staff opposed to the union left flyers in certain shops and break rooms on campus, countering Van Deusen’s points. Shortly after, the administration sent a list of FAQs to staff, based on questions it had received from facilities when administrators traveled shop-to-shop with Miller’s first letter.
The union effort has not yet reached the strong majority within facilities that it needs to move forward. There is no specific benchmark for that number, Van Deusen said, but it would have to be a number with which the group would feel comfortable. Some staff said they see the slowing momentum as a sign the effort is doomed. But Van Deusen said authorization cards have not been circulating for long enough to determine whether the effort will succeed or not. He plans to continue to collect and tally cards.
If he could gather enough, staff would then need to file paperwork with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an independent federal agency that protects the rights of private sector employees to better their working conditions and wages. The NLRB would then conduct a secret ballot election among facilities staff to decide whether a union would be formed.
If a majority opted for the formation of a union, the new effort would hold internal union elections for a bargaining team. From there, it would bargain a binding contract with the administration.
“This time next year, we would like to announce that a new union, with a contract, will be formed at Middlebury,” Van Deusen said. He hopes that contract would address staff concerns by forming a labor management committee, creating a binding grievance procedure and paying better for longevity and overtime, among other measures.
Not every staff member is in favor of a union coming to campus. One custodial worker said she would not support the formation of a union because she is worried about losing her benefits in the negotiations, although she is unhappy with her current wages. She was offered a buyout last winter, but did not have to take it because another worker on her team did.
“I enjoy my vacation time,” she said. “The health insurance isn’t what it used to be, but that’s changing in November, too. I enjoy my benefits.”
According to Miller, the college will put in place a new healthcare system this November, to go into effect in January, that will introduce more choice into the current plan.
Although some employees worry their benefits will be at risk if they unionize, McCallum said he finds it hard to believe that the college would target workers’ healthcare and benefits in negotiations.
“If Middlebury were to threaten the good benefits that workers now receive if they decided to go union, it would be joining a long list of union-busting corporations,” he said.
Besides, he said that employees would have to agree on any union contract with the college.
“Workers vote on any contract a union signs, and they would only vote ‘yes’ on a contract when their benefits improved or stayed the same,” he said.
McCallum said he sees collective bargaining as an “essential ingredient of a democratic workplace.”
“We need a living wage here, where everyone can live and work with dignity, and that will mean paying workers what they deserve, not just what the market dictates,” he added.
Middlebury’s “Black Tuesday”: A union effort three decades ago
The servery employee, who has worked at the college for 31 years and supports a union, was freshly employed at Middlebury when a series of job cuts in May 1991 destroyed a long-held perception of the institution as a reliable place to work. She remembers the day those positions were terminated, which has since come to be known by some as “Black Tuesday,” as a day filled with tears and disbelief.
The college administration has taken measures to avoid an event like Black Tuesday from recurring. Patton told two Campus reporters in an article published by VTDigger this fall that memories of 1991 have influenced how the college currently handles staff reductions, emphasizing its focus on giving people more of a choice and inviting them to think about the long-term trajectory of the institution.
Miller emphasized a similar sentiment in her conversation with The Campus.
“I can say that we were intentional to make this as humane as we could, to make sure that this was not a surprise to people and that they were engaged in conversations,” she said about this year’s workforce planning. “We really worked hard to do that. Were we 100% successful? I hope so, but maybe not.”
As in 1991, this recent round of workforce planning eliminated specific job “titles” rather than “people,” and both years saw efforts to organize. In September of 1991, The Campus reported that staff across campus were “exploring ways to increase their input in administrative decisions.” This included attempts by some to form a union, organizing for which would last four years before ultimately breaking down in 1995 after failing to garner enough support.
Those attempts were aimed at creating a wall-to-wall bargaining unit — a unit that would include all staff, unlike this year’s single-department effort in facilities. Bill Jaeger, director of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), an AFSCME affiliate, helped spearhead that effort. His team was contacted by Middlebury employees in 1991, two years after HUCTW negotiated their own first contract.
Jaeger said attempts to unionize arose because of anger about the layoffs, but that at its core were more permanent longings for democratic change at the college.
“People were feeling like their eyes had been opened to how consequential and important it can be to have some breadth and some inclusion in important policy matters and in decision making,” he said.
HUCTW members visited staff in Middlebury to talk about the union, at times once per week. Most interest came from those in administrative and technical jobs, although there was some level of support and involvement in all staff departments, Jaeger remembered. In response, the administration called all-staff meetings to address the efforts.
That union was not able to pique sufficient interest, but Jaeger said staff who were involved were united around a shared sense of excitement for what they were building. “Most people are driven in the most steadfast way if they’re really building toward something that’s going to make a positive difference in the long term,” he said.
By 1995, when the effort fell, the college seemed to be undertaking corrective policies that gave employees some reason for hope.
College looks forward, staff still waiting for change
The college has reiterated time and time again that workforce planning is not a one-time process. This means that administrators are still assessing its successes, as well as where it’s fallen short.
Administrators are hopeful that the workforce planning process will allow the institution to run more efficiently and proactively in the future. Some of the new jobs, for example — including some of the positions offered to staff whose positions were cut, requiring college degrees — are more specialized, and were intended to take into account potential demographic shifts in Vermont so that the college can be an “employer of choice for the next generation,” Miller said.
“The whole purpose of the workforce planning is we’ve got to be prepared for our future,” she said. “I know it was a difficult process for many, but for some, I think it really helped us to transform and leap into that future state,” she added, citing the How Will We Live Together review as a concurrent, future-oriented process.
Miller said that the administration is committed to revisiting any “pain points” among staff and addressing them accordingly. At an Oct. 24 staff meeting, Patton announced that Special Assistant to the President Sue Ritter will do a listening tour throughout staff departments to hear employees’ concerns. The administration laid out its plan for the compensation review at that meeting, as well as several other measures, like a restatement that Senior Leadership Group would attend the holiday party this December, that suggest an effort to reinforce commitment to community-building.
The custodial worker and nearly every staff member interviewed for this article spoke about an intangible change that has made the working environment feel more corporate, and less warm and community-centered.
“When I first came here, it was different,” the custodial worker said. “It was more family-oriented, and everybody looked out for each other. It’s not like that anymore. It’s more sterile.”
Parsons, the staff council president, said Middlebury used to be a small institution with a real family feel. “As we have grown and expanded both our physical footprint here and our global footprint, we have somewhat lost touch with that,” he said.
“It would be a real challenge to bring that back,” he added.
Staff also overwhelmingly expressed large amounts of pride in Middlebury as an institution, a collective sentiment that is backed up by data in the 2017 ModernThink survey.
“It’s a great place,” the first facilities worker said. “And the benefits are great. We’re just underpaid for what we’re doing.”
This pride seems to leave many staff members feeling hopeful. But they’re also worried that the college will continue to disappoint them. Some left initial workforce planning meetings a year ago with the impression that “everything was going to be open and that communication was going to flow.”
“But it never did,” one staff member said.
“With workforce planning, there were so many unanswered questions,” he added. “The administration wouldn’t have been able to do that without talking to the union first.”
As the dust settles on the consequences of workforce planning, staff are still waiting to see tangible changes.
(10/03/19 10:21am)
Political Science Professor Keegan Callanan became a fully-tenured Political Science professor last May, but that wasn’t the only highlight of his summer.
Fifteen months after he was nominated by President Donald Trump, Callanan has joined the National Council of the Humanities (NCH), a board of 26 private citizens that advises the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in its allocation of funding for a gamut of humanities programs.
Callanan was sworn in by the council’s chairman at a small ceremony in Washington D.C. four days before classes began at Middlebury. He will serve until 2024, convening with the council three times annually to discuss and vote on grant applications.
The NEH functions without input from the President, but nominations originate in the Oval Office. Callanan was among the 15 freshmen council members nominated by Trump in 2018 and confirmed by the Senate in August.
There’s no way to know for certain how his name ended up on the President’s desk, but Callanan said the White House usually casts a wide net when scouting individuals to fill these positions.
“I was recommended to Presidential Personnel by several people close to the administration,” he wrote in an email to The Campus. When asked if he knew who had recommended him, he said, “A variety of friends and acquaintances in Washington helped in the nomination and confirmation processes.”
The White House Presidential Personnel Office reached out to Callanan in early 2018 to ask for an interview, and then he was vetted — a lengthy process that included a full FBI background check and a 35-page questionnaire for the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
Callanan’s name was then sent to the full Senate. On Aug. 2 of this year, he was confirmed.
Other new appointees include David Armand DeKeyser, a previous U.S. Senate chief of staff for Jeff Sessions and Bob Corker; Noël Valis, a Spanish professor at Yale; Kim R. Holmes, the executive vice president of the Heritage Foundation and a former assistant secretary of state; and Bowdoin Professor of Social Sciences Jean Yarbrough, who taught Callanan when he was an undergraduate at Bowdoin and also spoke at Middlebury last spring.
Members are supposed to serve six-year terms, but D.C. gridlock can prolong transitions between council members. Christopher Merrill ’79, for example, served an expired term three years past his due. Merrill, who majored in English at Middlebury and worked at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, is the director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He was appointed to the council in 2012 by then-president Barack Obama.
Merrill attributed the delays to backlogs in the Senate confirmation process.
“In my time, the council members who were appointed under the Bush administration and then the Obama administration went through very extensive background checks, then the nominations just sat on the Senate side for a very long time,” he said. “Most of the people I was serving with were serving on expired terms, waiting for the Senate to act.”
Merrill said that in his experience, members appointed during Democratic and Republican administrations “have gotten along quite well.” Callanan said the NEH has not had a reputation for partisanship under any administration.
“This is probably because the grant-making process relies heavily, although not exclusively, on peer review,” he said. Peer reviewers read all applications before they head to the council, although council members are not required to follow reviewers’ recommendations.
According to the NEH site, the agency has issued more than $5.6 billion in funding since its inception over 50 years ago. The NEH is one of Middlebury’s major federal funding sources.
Various college faculty have benefited from the endowment’s summer stipend program, for example, which awards up to $6,000 for individual scholars to pursue summer research projects. Religion Professor Jennifer Ortegren is a recent beneficiary. She is slated to begin research on her project, entitled “New Neighbors, New Muslims: Gender, Class, and Community in Contemporary India,” next summer.
The NEH also funds institutional grants for projects involving more than one faculty member. In 2015, 2017 and 2018, Jason Mittell and Christian Keathley of the Film and Media Culture department ran summer workshops with NEH grants. Research for the sophomore seminar on “the good life” was also funded by the NEH.
To avoid conflicts of interest, Callanan has recused himself from all grants connected to Middlebury and Princeton University, where he completed a fellowship in 2017–2018.
The NCH also selects winners for the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities and manages the nomination process for winners of the National Humanities Medal. Trump, however, has not yet awarded any National Humanities Medals during his presidency. By contrast, the medal has been awarded every year since its inception until 2016.
“It’s always been a wonderful thing, Trump’s just done away with it,” Merrill said. “It’s clear his interest in the arts and the humanities is nil.”
In March, Trump proposed severe cuts to the NEH’s budget for the third year in a row. Congress has previously rejected Trump’s suggested cuts, and is yet to approve next year’s proposed budget.
NCH meetings take place in December, March and July, with occasional teleconferences occurring throughout the year. The majority of these meetings fall during breaks in the college’s academic calendar.
(09/12/19 10:03am)
[gallery ids="45827,45826,45825,45824,45823,45822,45819,45818,45817"]
Seventy-five Shannon St. is a lot like an Ikea dresser. If you unpacked and assembled a piece of the Swedish brand’s furniture in your dorm last week, you’re already partly privy to what the building’s construction looked like for Project Manager Tom McGinn.
“The pre-engineered building manufacturer designed it, engineered it, manufactured the parts and sent it to us,” he said. “And we took it off the truck, stood it up and bolted it together.”
Unlike a “Kallax” shelf or a “Poäng” armchair, the new steel-framed building – which the college is calling “75 Shannon Street” or the “interim academic space,” but which some faculty refer to as the “Middlebury Ikea” – measures in at 22,000 square feet. The first floor is dedicated almost entirely to offices for Sociology, Anthropology, Religion, and Political Science professors displaced from the construction on Munroe Hall, although “offices” may be too strong a word. They’re more open-air cubicles, equipped with shelves and desks.
Seven “meeting rooms” stemming off from the main work space offer a more private alternative for office hours and small conferences. Those are fitted with small circle tables, television monitors, and white noise machines, to keep chatter from seeping through.
Upstairs, things are a bit roomier. Fourteen computer science faculty and staff have moved into full-sized offices from their previous quarters in Bicentennial Hall, to accommodate the department’s growing need for more space. There are also four research labs, much like those in BiHall, and four classrooms.
Each floor has its own kitchenette and common study space, and on the first day of classes, students are already plugging away at homework there between classes. Natural light pours in through large mountain-facing windows, some of the space’s most distinctly modern features.
Commenters on last year’s newsroom article about the building voiced fears that its modern style would clash with the college’s quintessential grey-stone architecture. But McGinn said that the building’s physical location on campus permitted more creative freedom.
“Because we’re on the edge of campus, we thought that we could do something a little different,” he said. “And we could do it for a lower cost than what you would spend for a central campus building,” he added.
The building’s modernity extends past the aesthetic realm. While Munroe was an energy “sieve,” the new space is well-insulated and lit with LED lighting, and there’s a bike rack out front for sustainable commuters. The bathrooms are gender neutral, an intentional upgrade to Munroe’s single-gender toilets.
By June 1, 2020, the Munroe staff will move back into their new(ish) digs. At the same time, the college will empty out Warner Hall and repeat the process with that building’s staff. Then the same with Johnson Memorial Building and the Adirondack House, with other renovations to be determined.
There’s no definitive cap date for the CS department’s occupation of the space, and McGinn is unsure whether the college will even need to build another space.
“We haven’t reached the point where we think a new academic building is needed to accommodate the college,” he said. “We have other projects that are taking priority over a new academic building. Those are what we’re working on now.”
The college lists its future projects on page nine of the 2008 Master Plan. The construction of Munroe marks the first phase of that plan.
(09/12/19 9:58am)
If you thought you and your friends kept up a lively group chat this summer, you should have seen ours.
The flurries of texts we exchanged from the desks of our respective Vermont internships were filled with high-intensity punctuation (!), lots of CAPS and the occasional weird YouTube video. Out of those electronic brainstorms came some of the ideas we so enthusiastically curated for this first issue, from Emma Brown’s map project on the front cover to our new classifieds page. (There were also plenty of ideas we scrapped before getting to campus, too, but we don’t have to talk about those.)
All three of us came to the Campus at a time when the paper was coming into its own. Cumulatively, we’ve worked for a total of five sections, under three editors in chief and four managing editors. We’ve hashed out our collective mission numerous times, and spent what can only be described as an ungodly amount of hours in our little basement office. This paper matters a lot to us.
As does the practice of ethical journalism, to which we have dedicated our time off campus as well. We’ve spent summers reporting in newsrooms across the state, all the while taking lessons from Vermont’s professional journalists and exposing ourselves to pockets of the local community that we could hardly probe as students. Many others on our board have done the same.
Past Campus leadership teams have set us up for success in important ways — establishing greater community trust, taking on projects that matter and focusing on quality of content. For those efforts, we’re grateful.
Now, we hope to bring new direction and creative energy to the work we do here, which is why we’re thinking of new ways to engage our readership across our digital and print platforms. The editors of this newspaper have built close, human relationships with faculty, administrators and other students. We value those relationships immensely hope to leave our successors with these same levels of trust, long after we’ve had our last bite of layout-night Green Peppers pizza.
In brief, we want you to want to pick up this paper. We think it’s pretty cool and we hope you do, too.