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(06/17/20 1:59am)
This letter has been previously published online and The Middlebury Branch of the AAUP’s website. Parts of this letter have been lightly edited to comply with The Campus’ style guidelines.
As alumni, we are deeply concerned about the state of Middlebury College. In particular, we worry that possible cuts to salaries, research funds, wages and healthcare will further deepen the crisis that Middlebury is facing. Though this crisis was spawned by the pandemic, it was clearly exacerbated by pre-existing financial woes. We support the Middlebury AAUP Chapter, and their call for a fair and equitable budget.
We believe faculty and staff deserve a transparent and democratic decision-making process on Middlebury’s campus. The College must honor the urgency of this unprecedented crisis with an innovative response — by engaging in a collective dialogue with the Middlebury AAUP Chapter. We believe the College risks worsening this crisis for our community by attempting to recapture lost revenues through cutting the compensation of Middlebury employees. We echo the Middlebury AAUP in our suggestion that the College rely on its substantial endowment instead.
The existing faculty representation in budgetary decision-making is limited to advisory committees, without the power for robust governance. This current infrastructure is deeply ineffective. We urge the College to bargain in good faith with its employees and especially to safeguard the livelihoods of the most precariously employed faculty and staff. This is not just for the good of the College, but also for the local Addison County economy that the College supports (see these testimonials to learn more).
Any budgetary response that results in increased financial insecurity on the part of faculty and staff ultimately jeopardizes Middlebury’s academic mission. When employees are forced to generate new modes of income out of necessity — through part-time jobs, freelance work, etc. — both workers and students suffer, and Middlebury fails in its responsibility as an employer. Middlebury should use its bountiful resources to protect all employees during this time, particularly its most vulnerable ones.
We believe that staff and faculty at Middlebury need increased worker representation in the budgetary process, and support recent demands that all staff are paid a living wage. We wholeheartedly support the faculty and staff now, as in the past. As students, we benefited greatly from our supportive relationships with Middlebury employees — in the classroom, in extracurricular activities, and as employees of the College ourselves. What makes the Middlebury experience impactful is the education, and the people who make that education possible — those who clean the buildings, prepare meals, teach classes, et cetera.
We certainly didn’t come to Middlebury for the size of the endowment. For many of us, our relationships with faculty and staff remain our strongest continued connections to the College. We trust the College will honor its commitments to Middlebury’s mission, and to the staff and faculty who uphold it.
This letter was written by Middlebury College graduates Sarah Koch ’18.5, Meg Daly ’18, Travis Sanderson ’19, Nia Robinson ’19, Nell Sather ’19, Emma Lodge ’19.5, C Green ’19.5 and Cara Levine ’20. As of June 9, it has over 775 signatories spanning from the class of 1971 through 2020. Learn more about the Middlebury Branch of the AAUP here.
(04/18/19 9:59am)
On Sunday, the Student Government Association (SGA) Senate sent an email calling for mandatory bias training for all “hired professionals and all student organization leaders, including members of the SGA and school publications.” The SGA indicated full support for training that may change the culture that led to heavily-publicized jokes about the chemistry questions that asked students to calculate the lethal dose of hydrogen cyanide and mentioned the KKK.
The need for mandatory bias training has been ignored for years. In 2017, Community Council conducted a survey that indicated widespread insensitivity among faculty to working class students’ backgrounds and concerns. On May 9, 2017, faculty members J. Finley, Mez Baker-Medard and William Poulin-Deltour’s recommendation for socioeconomic bias training passed with unanimous support from Community Council. The initiative was specifically targeted at socioeconomic bias training; however, the recommendation was passed only by noting that bias training addressing all kinds of identities was needed. One faculty member is recorded in the public minutes as even suggesting a “JusTalks for faculty.” It was recognized that Faculty Council was the institution that could make mandatory bias training happen. To my understanding, the recommendation was not picked up by Faculty Council. The need for bias training stagnated until now, when a series of incidents proved the continued truth that many faculty are alarmingly unaware of the impact of their pedagogy on their students.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Many faculty are alarmingly unaware of the impact of their pedagogy on their students.[/pullquote]
While mandatory bias training is necessary, I am not convinced of its sufficiency in changing the culture at the heart of the problem. The invitation of Ryszard Legutko really drove home that point. Legutko is a virulent homophobe, a sexist and a member of a populist radical right (PRR) party responsible for rolling back democracy in Poland. His views are reminiscent of white nationalist Richard Spencer’s, who also sees multiculturalism as a degradation of a pristine “Christian and Classical” civilization. It is easy to draw a parallel between Charles Murray and Ryszard Legutko, but there are a few key differences.
When Charles Murray was invited, many senior figures were unaware of the already-simmering tension that was ignited by Murray. There is no feasible way that officials were ignorant of potential backlash this time. Secondly, the chair of the Political Science department acknowledged that the “short amount of time between when the event became public and when it occurred gave all of us scant opportunity to listen to and understand alternative points of view.” The speakers policy was then modified to ensure that the community had ample time to discuss and debate speakers.
I am suspicious of the Hamilton Forum’s intentions. While the Forum did register Ryszard Legutko as a speaker, posters included no information on his controversial nature. They mentioned only his membership in the European Parliament and participation in the Polish anti-communist movement. Any hint at his illiberal nature and dangerous false equivalencies, like describing queer activists’ tactics as “Bolshevik” and gay folks as the “sacred cows” of society, were omitted. Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs (RCGA) advisory board members received invitations to the RCGA’s “Populism, Homophobia, and Illiberal Democracy” panel to engage the community in dialogue only a day in advance of the panel. At best, the effort seemed belated and haphazard. If the Hamilton Forum was interested in engaging the community in productive discourse, they would have been forthright with the nature of Legutko’s views from the start. Organizing Ryszard Legutko’s talk in such a hidden and dishonest way seems, to me, to be an illustration that the Hamilton Forum was determined to invite this specific speaker without giving the entire community a chance to challenge his authoritarian ideas.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I am suspicious of the Hamilton Forum’s intentions.[/pullquote]
The apparent intention behind the Hamilton Forum’s invitation makes me doubtful that mandatory bias training will sufficiently address the problem of bigotry in the community. The Hamilton Forum, in inviting an illiberal politician without engaging the community in any real dialogue, ignored the hard-won lessons of the Murray fiasco. Despite the community’s likely resistance, they invited him. Despite consensus two years ago that the community should have a chance to discuss and develop strategies to deal with controversial speakers, they invited him—quietly. No amount of mandatory bias training is likely to change the behavior of people who invite a hate-filled speaker knowing full well the potential consequences.
One can look at the repeated instances of bias and bigotry as one problem—ignorance. I am increasingly convinced that there are two separate problems. The first is ignorance, which can be corrected through bias training. The second is something different. It is generational, a worldview that diverges wildly from that of many progressive students on campus. If we assume that the Hamilton Forum is not illiberal itself, then we can assume that the Forum’s members view Legutko’s talk as a potential opportunity to resoundingly prove the superiority of liberal values. That assumption is logically consistent with the values that underpin the Hamilton Forum’s mission statement. In this worldview, liberal values are viewed as the logical and inevitable victors in a fair marketplace of ideas. Ryszard Legutko’s regressive rhetoric can be resoundingly defeated, as all authoritarian ideologies can and will. His talk on campus is not a threat to the people he singles out and oppresses back home, notably gay activists and feminists, if there is no real threat to the liberal values that protect marginalized people.
Progressive students have a strikingly different worldview, less idealistic than realistic. We see the rolling back of democratic values around the world as proof of the danger of legitimating authoritarian views. We see Legutko in the context of a global far right movement. Far from failing in the marketplace of ideas, illiberal ideas have emerged as the ruling consensus in countries distant and disparate, from Poland to the United States. There is no guarantee that liberal values win in the marketplace of ideas. We see a connection between the homophobia of government that caused the deaths of queer people, notably during the first decades of the AIDS epidemic, and contemporary homophobic politicians like Ryszard Legutko. We recognize the world as digital; people do not need to engage with homophobic and illiberal politicians directly to possess an educated understanding that homophobia and authoritarianism are profound threats to liberty and equality. The deep gap in worldviews between the Hamilton Forum and progressive students, between idealists and realists, is embedded in the current conflict.
In the end, mandatory bias training is necessary but insufficient. Overall, we need to find some sort of bridge across different worldviews if we hope to address the problem of hatred and bias on campus.
(01/24/19 10:57am)
If you have listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast, you may have heard the true story of a boy named Carlos. Carlos was a kid from a poor neighborhood in Los Angeles who found his way into opportunities usually available only to the upper class. The transition wasn’t easy. He faced social instability, violence, and a string of foster homes, but he managed to keep his grades up enough to make it into an elite school. Carlos became one of a small minority of students in an elite environment who were not born into that space. But Gladwell does not comment on the question of how Carlos fared in that environment. What happens to Carlos once he arrives in the elite school? How does he remain hinged to his background, as a first-generation college student, as a child of the working class?
Carlos arrives in the elite private school in a long convoy of Sedans and Vans. It’s Move-in Day. The lawn is swarmed with anxious parents and harassed first-years, one part eager, another part nervous to meet their roommates. Maybe that day he doesn’t notice. He doesn’t notice the differences between his classmates and himself until he’s sitting in a seminar room with about four dozen fewer students than any of his classrooms back home. And the professor’s asking them a question. Carlos’s friend — you know, the type of friend that you latch onto during orientation before realizing you have nothing in common, but are doomed to endlessly greet with a fake smile and pleasantries — is sitting across the room. He’s engaging the professor in light-hearted banter. Carlos didn’t even know you could do that. Carlos had a select few teachers that served as mentors back home but they never talked about favorite skiing slopes. What even was the difference between cross-country and “Alpine” skiing?
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]How do first-generation students remain hinged to their backgrounds?[/pullquote]
Carlos is already behind. Not in coursework, but in something more important : networks. He thought of college as the next step in an academic journey — letter grades, deadlines. He bought into the brochures the college sent along with his admissions letter. His friend was almost ready to convert a conversation about ski techniques for a letter of recommendation while Carlos sat on the sidelines with nothing but a few A-’s on essays the professor didn’t even return in time.
Carlos feels out of place. The people that live on his hall are no different than his friend in class: passionate, nice enough, but just not people that were easy to talk to. Holding a conversation in and of itself was an obstacle. Instead of competing in ski tournaments, or traveling in Nepal, Carlos took care of his little sister back home. He worked for a family restaurant late into the night. Not exactly an ice breaker. Most of his dorm-mates just say, “Oh, that must have been nice.” They can’t relate. That’s not their fault.
When we talk about hinges, we must understood that some students are hinged to their background more than others. The past informs our future, but for Carlos, his past and future are at odds. Carlos stands at a three-forked road. All three roads are pretty barren, deserted, only a few footprints here and there. Maybe Carlos calls down one of the trails and asks one of the few other Carlos’s on campus what to do. Maybe he gets advice. But ultimately, Carlos still finds himself alone at that fork. He has to decide himself.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]There’s an infinity of possibilities within the same three-forked road.[/pullquote]
The first road leads to integration. Carlos adopts the mannerisms and speech patterns, maybe even the fashion tastes, of his classmates. He learns how to hold a conversation about skiing and growing his hair long in Nepal. He becomes the affable and well-adjusted student that downplays his background in order to engage his professor in a discussion about Sartre that will eventually land him a stellar recommendation to his dream job at a corporate law firm that affords him a condo in a gentrified area of town. Carlos becomes his classmates.
The second road leads to family responsibility. Carlos realizes that his duty to his family is most important. That’s why he’s getting good grades in the first place, right? His little sister needs him. Performing well in these elite spaces can lead to a job where he makes enough money to get his sister to college, too. Carlos studies his classmates’ social cues enough to land a job at a corporate firm. At the firm, he can earn enough money to lift his entire family out of the working class. Carlos becomes the family breadwinner.
The third road leads back the way he came. Carlos acquires a sense of alienation that propels him to consider the structural factors that make him so different and clueless in the elite private school. Convinced that following his own passion is selfish, Carlos makes the connections necessary to find a job that helps dismantle the system. His job at a nonprofit does not earn him enough money to radically change his family’s conditions, but he hopes to make a bigger difference in society. Carlos becomes the activist.
These roads are not mutually exclusive. In his journey, Carlos might take one path, only to end up on another. Maybe Carlos the classmate donates regularly to organizations that help students like him apply to better schools. Maybe Carlos the family breadwinner hates the system, like the activist, and chooses to go to law school to eventually work in family law, earning both money and opportunities to help others in his same situation. There’s an infinity of possibilities within the same three-forked road.
What remains static, however, is the fact that Carlos is hinged to his background in a way that his classmates are not. His past makes the future more difficult, starting with the three-forked road. And there is no guarantee that Carlos has the liberty to choose on the three-forked road at all. He will graduate college, tears streaming down his face, in the same gown as everyone else. He will hug his classmates. Then, he will start the job hunt. According to research by Hiring Learning Systems, 85 percent of jobs are never advertised. The vast majority of folks score jobs through tapping into their networks. These networks are not only the product of handshakes and Handshake, but also family connections. If the backdoor is the front-door, what about people like Carlos? What about folks whose network is a community of waiters and clerks back home? Does he even have the capacity to choose between the three roads when scoring any white-collar job at all is significantly more difficult for him than his classmates?
America was built on narratives of advancement and meritocracy. The college in and of itself is often sold as the vehicle of social mobility. We champion liberal arts slogans, but deep in our core, we are taught to believe that making it in college is making it in life. But for us working class kids, for those of us like Carlos, the callouses on our parents’ hands and the lines on their temples are built deep into our identities. There are hinges that keep us tied to our past, to our rank, to our social class.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]We are those around you with an unabiding social class anxiety, an impostor syndrome infecting our nerves.[/pullquote]
But let’s assume Carlos has the choice. He is isolated and alone at the three-forked road. The three-forked road represents the obstacle that Carlos confronts by virtue of his background, one his classmates do not share. There’s rarely a separate road for family responsibility or activism for his classmates. The three forks are integrated seamlessly into a highway to success for many folks on campus. Prep school, college, entry-level job, promising career: these are all expected signs that the children of the elite pass as they drive down the highway. The off-ramps to family responsibility and activism are easy to navigate. While Carlos is cutting his way through a jungle that not a single family member of his has ever traversed before with every financial aid paper that he desperately tries to understand, his classmates can drive on a freeway to their dreams.
Carlos represents many of us who find ourselves here in Middlebury who were not raised with silver spoons in our mouths. We are those around you with an unabiding social class anxiety, an impostor syndrome infecting our nerves. We walk across campus simultaneously blending in and standing out, but we are here. We are those who have a chance to become unhinged from our past, if we so choose.
When I was eleven, two of classmates discovered dismembered body parts in the desert lot next to our school. Those classmates came to class the next day, to write on textbooks thirty years old, in our classroom of fifty students. I’m sure the dismembered hand and torso beneath the tumbleweed still wakes them up at night, if they survived this long. Some classmates dropped out long before high school graduation; some fled to bootcamp; some sank into drug addiction to numb the suicidal impulses that shot through spines every time their mothers screamed at them from sofas. People “get by.” This is by no means a summary of every first-generation experience; it is merely one story, one of many, a Carlos in the small minority on campus whose narratives are rarely heard.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Those of us who are Carlos have already overcome so much.[/pullquote]
For me, neither a high school diploma or a college degree were signs passed on the highway to success. Not me, someone who shares blood with generations of folks who never made it past eighth grade, people whose college experience may just include non-credit courses and night classes. Not me, whose friend back home still works two unstable jobs just to keep her family afloat. Not us named Carlos, whose parents torture themselves every year awaiting the fateful decision of Student Financial Services in calculating our financial aid. We earned our way onto this campus, but we emotionally prepare every semester to leave.
Those of us who are Carlos have already overcome so much. By the time we reach the three-forked road, we have already left many people on the road behind us. Friends of mine earned better grades than me, scored higher test scores than I did, and dreamed bigger and farther than me. But they had to stay behind to help their family’s business survive. Their selfless choice cost them their best shot at social mobility, at the American Dream itself.
We are few in number, here, at Middlebury. Sixty percent of the student body belongs to the top one percent of income in the United States. But we are here, next to you, among you. We are Carlos. We face an obstacle that most of our classmates do not. We don’t know whether we should become more like you or prioritize our family or turn back the way we came and change the system for the better. We don’t know how to negotiate these hinges that keep us from fully integrating with the main student body on campus. We desperately wish to have the liberty to make that choice at all, but we will soon discover the job market may not be so forthcoming. But we will find a way. Whatever road we take, we will have made it farther than those who came before us. We will overcome on this long road. We will find a way to be content, to find meaning, to be happy.
In this world, to be happy in and of itself is a revolutionary act.
(03/03/17 2:39am)
The American Enterprise Institute has been joined by the Political Science department in co-sponsoring Charles Murray. Murray is most well-known for arguing that societal hierarchy is based on intelligence. The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled him a “white nationalist” who misuses statistics to support scientific racism. He belongs to a long American tradition of justifying white supremacy through pseudoscience, a tradition which also includes those who justified the slave trade on the basis of mental illness and those who claimed slavery benefited people of color.
Yet as a department, you chose to sponsor him.
At the time of this writing, the sponsorship had not been rescinded. Even if it has been by the time of publication, your argument remains stated and your existing policy in effect. Your argument in support of such sponsorships seems credible, at first glance. Our campus is an open forum for debate, and should be exposed to different views. You’re not a “partisan” department. You can bring other speakers to campus to refute him, and challenge him through “civic discourse.” You say that bringing controversial and non-credible speakers to campus is a long tradition in Political Science.
Your argument is flawed at every point.
Firstly, while Charles Murray may wield significant influence, he does not deserve to be granted yet another platform to speak from. Scientific racism is not a partisan position, nor a credible minority opinion. It has been the status quo through most of this nation’s history. Voices like Murray’s enabled the oppression and massacre of people of color in plantation fields and working class factories. Those voices not only have been heard in the ivy towers of prestigious institutions like Middlebury but also originate in the intellectual communities of our privileged institutions. Only through active writings and marches that forced the privileged to deny scientific racism the claim of legitimacy was such intellectual bigotry ever defeated. By sponsoring Charles Murray, the political science department has decided to use its privilege to enable scientific racism. More people will hear his voice, and more people will be convinced by his illusion of factual opinion.
Secondly, your concept for “civic discourse” is exceptionally limited. Civic discourse relies on the free exchange of ideas, but ideas cannot be freely exchanged if one side is bound and gagged with the chains and bloody cloths of history. Opinions are not all made equal. Some must shout twice as loud to get the same volume. By providing an equal platform for Murray, you do not take into account the profound inequities that already plague civic discourse. Civic discourse must not only promote a truly free exchange of ideas, by elevating the opinions of those unheard, but also embrace fact. Murray’s opinions have been discredited and thrown into the trash can of alternative facts. The claim that Murray is credible just because he went to Harvard is frankly laughable. An Ivy degree does not make you a credible voice. Donald Trump, for example, is not the image of credible “civic discourse.”
Thirdly, your affirmation of the department’s history in “objectively” sponsoring talks is no excuse. Your claim is indeed correct, however. As Professor Allison Stanger pointed out in one class, the Political Science department did invite Charles Murray after the publication of his book, The Bell Curve, to campus to speak. But tradition is not sacred. By arguing that tradition justifies the talk, the Political Science department has chosen to embrace the same logic that conservatism has employed to prevent the end of slavery, the passage of civil rights and the liberation of women. If anything, tradition illustrates the need for a much wider condemnation of departmental policy. Even if the department rescinds the sponsorship of Charles Murray, that is only one instance of what is apparently many.
So that is exactly what we will move toward. The Political Science department’s history of enabling scientific racism and alternative facts requires a broad-based community movement that forces the department to change its policy in sponsoring talks. As a body, Community Council approved an official recommendation that the Political Science department rescind the co-sponsorship of Charles Murray during our Tuesday meeting. However, we will also move to drafting more long-term recommendations to ensure nothing like this happens again. In my capacity as a member of our community, I also encourage students to take a stand to force the department towards a new policy. If the Political Science department does not apologize publicly and announce a revised policy wherein no widely-discredited supremacist speakers will be sponsored, members of our community who feel strongly about inclusivity will move to occupy the Political Science department in a sit-in. All students, staff and faculty that stand in solidarity with an effort for real inclusion on campus are invited.
Travis Sanderson ‘19 writes in about Charles Murray’s 3/2 talk.
(03/10/16 4:26am)
“Now don’t go getting sentimental!”
I continued chopping — onion, after onion, after onion. It was the first day of MAlt DC, a trip to “explore the ethics of inequality in the capital of one of the wealthiest nations in world history,” as our tag-line (primarily used to fundraise from doting family members and professors) went. The ovens hissed; the voice of a berating chef shrilled from a nearby room. We were in a kitchen beneath a monstrously large homeless shelter just out of view of the grand, lavish halls of Congress. As government white collars chopped bills that primarily benefited the white collar majority, we chopped onions for people that society drove to the margins.
After several hours, we ended our shifts at the same time as the workers. But the next day, we didn’t return immediately to work.
“So y’all go to Midd?” the white CEO asked us. He smiled. “I went to Williams!”
We laughed and listened as he gave us a full description of the kitchen. He took our questions and mulled over them for more than an hour while the workers were on the shift we were also scheduled to be working. The CEO had intervened, so we couldn’t join them until the conversation concluded. The only people in the room — a very public cafeteria — were products of the “Liberal Arts.” We were very aware of that, especially when the CEO stopped speaking when an outsider entered. As soon as they were gone, he smiled amiably. And then he continued as if he never stopped.
That wasn’t the only instance of our privilege leading to exceptional treatment. A few days later, the fact that we were college students earned us a trip — in the middle of our shift—to a “gourmet coffee and bagel shop.” We were a potential source of expansion for the kitchen, since they had a program designed specifically for college campuses. Drinking coffee with yet another white face, every minute felt like its own forever. I thought about the workers, no doubt cutting onions, back at the kitchen.
We started to realize the kitchen hierarchy possessed a racial element. First, the workers were overwhelmingly black — former inmates and patients. They were victims of mass incarceration, the “negative externalities” of policies made just around the corner at the Capitol. They had no choice but to work if they wanted to get back on their feet. Second, the leaders of the business itself were all white. (The only exception was someone who had been promoted from the worker class). There didn’t seem to be any animosity, fortunately, and everyone was directed at the same positive goal. But that didn’t mean the racial element did not exist.
Another dimension of the hierarchy became clear over the next few days. The workers were black, and management was white, but what about the in-between? The middle — which included us — seemed to be split evenly between “required community service” and “volunteer” classes. The former’s presence was mandated, so members were less privileged than us, although they also were white. One was a student at Virginia Tech whose education had been interrupted for a “private reason.” He would be “back on his feet” after another few months. (“Just pretend to work,” he whispered when we finished our task). The volunteers, like us, were much more temporary, but also mostly white. Beyond just us ambassadors of the state of Vermont, there were well-positioned capitalists doing their service, and a Class of 2015 college graduate who was flitting from non-profit to non-profit to “find her passion.”
I thought about that for a while. How can someone who works seven days a week to even have a chance at a job and someone who can live in her parents’ house as a restless volunteer be in such close proximity? How can both the victims and victors of society be so close together — not only in the kitchen, but in the city — where the wealth of Congress lies directly next to the poverty of the kitchen? How can we ignore race when it continues to be a very apparent division? How can the myth of post-racialism continue to persist when reality exists?
Just as we were leaving to return to campus, one of the workers — who we had gotten to know well — smiled at us. She gave one of us her phone number, and asked a few questions.
“You’re in college? Ah, you’ll be fine!”
And then she turned away, vanishing back into the kitchen.
(02/24/16 9:08pm)
To the generally privileged, poverty is incomprehensible. People of privilege, with pale skin and/or free vacations and/or “intellectual conversation” — which is almost always defined by conformity to the standard of the privileged class — cannot understand how central poverty, or social disadvantage, can be to a person’s life. Disadvantage shapes every opportunity, thought and desire. While privileged students can afford SAT prep books, poorer ones may not even know what those three letters stand for. While privileged students can debate what college to go to, poorer ones are oftentimes unsure about going to college — or simply unable to do so.
I am acquainted with certain types of disadvantages. My middle school was a tiny spot in the middle of the Mojave wasteland, a place where — two years after my family moved out — a war between Bloods and Crips erupted. Thinking about “college,” a term so distant and irrelevant that it bore absolutely no meaning, was unheard of. All conversations were combative, a show of masculinity or cruelty, often interlaced with homophobic and racist slurs. Most of my friends were trapped, unable to imagine a reality outside of this de facto oppression that perpetuated itself with each successive generation. My friends’ parents couldn’t speak English — or at least the version of English that is deemed “correct” — and their livelihoods depended on the whims of the government’s “immigration policy.” Others were the products of the United States’ history of black oppression, of redlining and segregation never corrected. In the words of Ta-Nehisi Coates, they were “responsible for the worst actions of other black bodies, which, somehow, will always be assigned to [them].” Their livelihoods also depended on the whims of government and the ruling class — namely, the government’s constant debate on whether to be “tough on crime,” oppressing the oppressed, or not.
I escaped merely because my family had the privilege of mobility, and of conforming to the ruling class’s standards. We were white, natively spoke English and could devote our time and resources to moving instead of surviving. We moved to Las Vegas, where I attended a public high school in a neighborhood known as one of the most dangerous spots in the county (a privilege compared to the many who remain trapped in the Mojave). There are more than three thousand students at that high school. Every class crams fifty students, and there are never enough seats. I happened to be accepted on luck — literally, via a lottery — to a selected community within that public high school with more courses and increased availability. Although almost all of those students came from disadvantaged families, pretty much all of them wanted to succeed academically. The privilege of that community allowed my escape. I learned that people were nice, what SATs were, that “college” actually existed. I am at Middlebury today because of the opportunities made available to me through that program.
These experiences inform my reaction to Rachel Frank’s “Conversation in Confines,” which was published last week. It’s frankly ridiculous that people of such disadvantage are oftentimes compared equally to students who face no obstacles but themselves, who have studied for the SATs since middle school, who come from backgrounds where college was “real.” I suffered disadvantage, but not nearly as much as many others face. Affirmative action is a means of making up for all of those obstacles; it is a basic step to actual equality of opportunity. To drop affirmative action is to confirm the immoral notion that the privileged have more of a right to attend colleges — to attend programs like my high school’s, which was the only reason I escaped — than those who face obstacles incomprehensible to the privileged.
Affirmative action is a moral requirement for more reasons than just the facilitation of “institutional diversity.”
(01/27/16 9:46pm)
“Middlebury is not a charity.”
Critics of Go/Refuge, the movement for the College to take an active role in the world refugee crisis, have presented this argument. The criticism, though not yet fully elaborated, seems to base itself on the idea that an institution of higher education’s only obligation is to itself, and that helping the 110,000 displaced refugee students is extraneous. That resources are better distributed to other goals than the worst refugee crisis since Hitler’s time; that the greatest humanitarian disaster since the Cold War is not deserving of higher education’s funds; that aid is “not Middlebury’s job.”
I happen to agree: Middlebury is not a charity. Since our Vermont home is a refuge to a Center for Social Entrepreneurship, we can appreciate notable social entrepreneur Muhammad Yunus’ words on “charity:”
“Charity becomes a way to shrug off our responsibility… Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about the lives of the poor. Charity appeases our consciences.”
The crux of Yunus’ argument is that charity risks helping the donor more than the recipient. Charity can be a one-time toss after which the donor can technically cease to care but convince themselves they do. Donors can happily forget all about cancer research, or African children, or poverty or refugees, when they’re done. They can pat themselves on the back. Most philanthropists do not, fortunately, because they are motivated out of more than their self-interest. Charity, although beneficial, is only one step toward comprehensive solutions that philanthropists and communities seek.
Middlebury is not a charity. It’s an institution of higher education armed with a purpose to “cultivate … the qualities essential to leadership in a rapidly changing global community,” pursuing the implementation of what President Patton coined, “diversity as an everyday ethic.” The fusion of these two moral missions is embedded in Middlebury’s self-concept, repeated or implied in every official action, every administrative speech. Since both missions are long-term and aimed at empowerment, both qualify as extensions beyond charity. Empowerment is the opposite of “taking the initiative away from the poor.” As a result, charity falls short of Middlebury’s purposes.
Middlebury is not a charity. For that reason, I am certain that our administration will take part in the growing comprehensive solution to the world refugee crisis, as Go/Refuge urges. Helping displaced refugees is the most critical and logical step Middlebury can undertake to live its purposes. If it does not, then it “cultivates … the qualities essential to leadership in a rapidly changing global community” without acknowledging the global community’s greatest challenge. If it does not, then it pursues “diversity as an everyday ethic” without behaving ethically on a world stage while many of its peers do.
If it does not, then Middlebury College risks hypocrisy.
(12/10/15 4:10am)
Three weeks ago, I called for Middlebury to take action in combating the Syrian refugee crisis. While President Patton’s administration has not yet acknowledged this, both our community and the wider higher education community have. Last week, Jeff Holland ’19 wrote an op-ed publicly supporting this moral mission. He agreed with both facets of the twofold proposal – the idea of subsidizing Syrian refugee students in already-partnered universities and full scholarship and transportation grants for selected refugee students to Middlebury itself. He also pointed out the wider value of doing our part in this world crisis. He wrote, “When we [take action], hopefully other colleges and universities will follow suit,” an impact which cannot be understated. A mass movement of American higher education would dramatically improve the global situation. We are an example-setter; nothing we do exists in vacuum. By outrightly not taking humanitarian initiative, or even delaying it, we signal to other colleges and universities that remaining passive is acceptable. We signal that squatting on privilege – on our hill – disengaged from the less fortunate is okay.
Other institutions of higher education have taken action already. As noted three weeks ago, twenty different colleges and universities in the United States are already part of the moral initiative, including Bryn Mawr, Emory, Eastern Michigan, Miami and Brown. Since then, in only three weeks the movement has accelerated. More colleges and universities have actively joined the movement, while Middlebury has not. Trent University, to our north, has announced that it will welcome its first Syrian refugee student next year. The University of New Brunswick also stated that if they receive a formal request for refugees to be housed on its campus, it will do its best to fulfill that demand. While both are Canadian, and thus subject to less stringent barriers at a federal level, the movement has also expanded in the United States. Reverend John I. Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame, publicly welcomed Syrian refugees to the country on Thanksgiving. His words do not extend to actual movement in Notre Dame’s institution to help refugees, but such a declaration by a high-profile member of the community of higher education illustrates action regardless.
While Middlebury has not yet moved on this issue, we as a community can change this. We will not send the message that we are content to remain in our bubble. There is both awareness and support of refugee issues on campus, even beyond Holland. Amnesty International has been the prominent leader of the conversation. Their project as an organization this year is centered on the Syrian refugee crisis. The fruits of their labor have been evident periodically, like when the library front transformed with signs and posters displaying facts about the humanitarian nightmare of Syrian migration a month or two ago.
Other refugee-focused organizations also are taking action. Last week, an organization on campus concerned with North Korean human rights sent out its first e-mail to people who signed up for the e-mail list at the beginning of the year about a preliminary meeting. The club, along with the Chinese Club and Asian Students in Action, all advertised an event where Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) shared its work rescuing refugees.Non-student organizations like the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs have also expressed deep concern, evident in the hosting of an international panel on the issue a month ago. We can safely say that there is support for moral action to help refugees in both official college departments (i.e. RAJ) and across at least four different student organizations.
I welcome all students, faculty, organizations and departments to engage in this conversation. Talk, argue, discuss. Both in publications, like Middbeat, beyond the green and our very own Campus, and among each other. For this purpose, posters have sprouted up advertising “go/refuge.” Go/refuge leads to a document showcasing our moral duty. It includes a petition. This is the platform for those who support this initiative but do not have the time to write an article to have their voices heard. If you support the idea of the College helping the Syrian refugees, sign it. It is time for us to act.
(11/19/15 4:40am)
12,000,000 Syrians have fled their homes. A third have become refugees. Photographs of children’s corpses in Greece have surfaced, as have images of the terrible conditions of camps in the Middle East and Europe. The latter has scrambled to cope with the influx. Hungary and Slovakia have shut their borders, while other countries like Slovenia have begun to regulate them. Since the Paris attack, the Syrian refugees have dominated discourse in America, too. Many hold the refugees accountable for the actions of the very terrorists they are running from.
(11/12/15 12:01am)
Last Thursday, film enthusiasts and our friends across the pond celebrated Guy Fawkes. He wasn’t the greatest guy to grace the planet, nor was he particularly successful in his endeavor to blow up government. But he became iconic. He’s a symbol for resisting government oppression; thus, he’s especially popular among anarchists and libertarians. Or at least his mask is. It’s safe to say that most of the people from sea to shining sea who noticed the holiday were fans of V for Vendetta. It’s equally sure that they inundated their friends with the order to, “remember, remember the Fifth of November."
(11/05/15 4:16am)
“What would America be like if we loved black people as much as we love black culture?”
Amandla Stenberg, teen actress and pop prophet, asked exactly that in a videopublished on Tumblr nine months ago. She wasn’t the first, but she fanned the question’s popularity. Since then it has blazed through corn rows of online activism, adding to the fire of voices chanting “hands up” and “black lives matter.” Her argument is simple: it’s “in” to adopt black culture. Hairstyles, ebonics, twerking and white rappers who aren’t from families of gravestones and bullets are all living proof of the “phenomenon.” In her words, “when a style leads to racist generalizations or stereotypes where it originates, but is deemed high fashion or funny when the privileged take it for themselves,” it qualifies as “appropriation.” She does a great job of indicting current pop culture in that crime.
But what Stenberg doesn’t include is context.
In the first article of this column, I defined “poverty” as “socially and culturally imposed disadvantage.” You can be privileged in some ways and impoverished in others. Under this definition, black people are racially impoverished in our society, which is why the appropriation discussed by Stenberg qualifies as the theft of impoverished culture by privileged culture. It’s one incarnation of it, another brick in that wall.
Black culture appropriation is a form of poor culture appropriation.
If we think of it like that, the issue looms throughout our history. Poor culture has always been appreciated, while poor people have not. Country music has diffused from the rural poor to honky-tonk teenage romantic melodrama, appropriated by Nashville for mass consumption while the people who invented it — the rural poor — are ridiculed as “rednecks.” So too is the case with punk. It’s a style of music that permeates through all of alternative, but its latter-day saints rarely reference the dark British underground of the Sex Pistols and the Clash while they’re sipping mojitos in mansions. Other instances of black culture appropriation have also happened, in very different times and circumstances, akin to what Stenberg rails against. Jazz and blues sweated from the pores of mid-century urban lounges and rock n’ roll beat out of basements and garages. They were voices from the cavern of poverty. Yet both were gentrified, distributed and tied to suburban radio and fancy stages while the original artists were left to wallow in sharecropper fields and bars.
All of these are classic examples of the appropriation of poor culture beyond just today, but the history includes more than just music. In the twenties, Bakerfix hair paste and African-inspired fashion were the rage, as recounted by Petrine Archer Straw, illustrating the gentrification of stuff that accompanied jazz and blues. Their appropriation lies in the same vein as pop culture today’s passion for formerly black hairstyles and ebonics. Even twerking has a historical parallel: the charleston. It started on black Broadway, but definitely didn’t stay there. Appropriation of non-music is also reflected in country and punk’s histories. How else to explain the popularity of overalls in honky-tonk teenage romantic melodrama, or Ramones shirts worn by people who don’t have any clue who the Ramones even are?
Black culture appropriation is an avatar of historical context. Rich people like to steal from poor people. Hairstyles, ebonics, twerkings and white rappers are just the latest manifestations. For that reason, maybe we should amend Amandla Stenberg’s question. Maybe we should ask something more broad and less isolated to the present. A question that’s more historically legitimate; a question that’s more inclusively fair:
What would America be like if we loved poor people as much as we love poor culture?
(10/21/15 8:43pm)
Every culture, no matter what country or government, develops traits that distinguish the socially privileged from the impoverished. Usually, they’re ridiculous societal quirks. Cars in Manhattan are a fantastic example. You neither need nor benefit from one, which means you’re driving to show something. Implicitly, you’re screaming to the world that you 1) have time to wait on infested streets honking your horn incessantly and 2) have enough money to invest in a useless chunk of steel that has no utility where you live. Another good example are fur coats in Moscow, where noses mysteriously upturn at anyone who isn’t wearing a dead animal around their neck.
In Las Vegas, I encountered this in stark clarity. The status symbol of the Nevadan bourgeoisie isn’t an expensive car, nor is it a luxurious fur coat. It’s membership in the Literary Society, an aggrandized book club. They meet in whatever ritzy venue they desire and discuss their chosen prose, inviting the author to share a gourmet “brunch.” They also invite (for philanthropic reasons, I assume) local English teachers and their students. I was one of those students last January. I remember wealth, lots of it, worn on the necks of lawyers and casinocrats. Many appeared bloated with botox and hairspray. None of them really struck me as especially intriguing, except one – the invited author. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with extroverted confidence, an easy grin and a book called “Deep Dark Down: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle that set Them Free.” His name was Hector Tobar.
It’s safe to imagine that the 33 Chilean miners don’t possess the status symbols of their society. I doubt they had excessive cars or extravagant fur coats in their ten-week vacation in Hades, either. Their narrative is one the world has forgotten. In 2010, a few months after an earth-shattering quake, the San Jose copper-gold mine in the Atacama Desert collapsed on them. Their supervisor – who probably does have an excessive car and extravagant fur coat or two – happened to be absent. They were trapped in the abyss for sixty-nine days. Everything was darkness, literally and metaphorically. The only light was the fire of fear that seared their brains with every grumble of the cavern.
In the words of Jose Ojeda: “we were a pack of sheep, and the mountain was about to eat us.” And that trauma understandably bled into the sunlight and the “good” years that have passed since. One, for example, washed up drunk and suicidal enough to confine him to a Santiago psychiatric ward.
For a group as celebritized as the miners, you would think they would have been offered the best psychological assistance available on Earth.
They sure were buried in mountains of other stuff. They were offered planned trips – although most ended up not happening – to Britain, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Israel, Spain and Greece and a new motorcycle from Kawasaki Chile. As noted in El Segundo, each miner was promised approximately 19 million pesos ($38,000) in “vacations, clothing, and donations.” Not only did they not receive major psychological help, they also were skimped that compensation.
A CNN article published in August pointed out that “today, many of the miners have trouble making ends meet, some living off of government pension, which pays about $500 a month. That’s roughly half of what they made working at the San Jose mine.”
Others have returned to mining. Hector Tobar’s transcription of one victim’s story, Luis Urzua, is heart-wrenching: “to have one mine fall on top of you, and then to find yourself obliged to work underground in a second mine, with the same boss who once left you behind” is the “life of a miner.” A few years ago, we were the ones who lauded them with gifts and celebrity that most of them publicly stated they didn’t want.
We treated them like the Kardashians. Then we threw them out, back into normalcy, back into the mines.
But there’s still hope. If you go into town, to the Marquis Theater, the first poster you’ll see advertises “The 33” for November 13th.
It’s a movie adaptation of the Chilean miners’ story, starring Antonio Banderas. At the Literary Society meeting, Tobar specifically pointed out that ticket sales transitively fund the miners. The movie is a charity. And that’s great. . . until you think about it more deeply. While the miners themselves cycle through traumatic depression and impoverished wages, we in the First World can garble popcorn and watch portrayals of their suffering on gigantic silver screens. It’s exploitative, but it’s their last hope.
It’s their last possible way of reaping compensation for the tragedy that they experienced.
For this reason, I urge readers to book a ticket for November 13th.
Don’t come away from this article thinking the exploitation entitles you to skip it. You have the privilege to skip the portrayal of the miners’ suffering, but they don’t. They’re living it; they’re experiencing it right now.
Let’s make “The 33” sell out.
(10/07/15 4:42pm)
“Poverty” is as much of a buzzword as “privilege.” In the decades when truly progressive Democrats ruled the stars and stripes, poverty commanded political importance arguably above that of the White House. It soon lost its status, only to experience a resurgence recently pronounced in a Brooklyn accent and accompanied by its loyal opposition, “the billionaire class.” Poverty is chronically misunderstood. To most people, it's a statistic. Maybe not a specific series of digits (except if you can ask the US Census Bureau), but an approximate quantity.
But poverty is more than that. As the opposite of privilege, it describes more than just financial hardship. Anything lacking privilege is impoverished. This includes income, but also sexuality, gender and race. Poverty is socially and culturally imposed disadvantage. It differs from society to society, culture to culture. The uniform existence of the schism between poverty and privilege breeds differences, which is why impoverished society differs from privileged society, and impoverished culture stands in stark contrast to privileged culture. In America, the society of privilege is generally characterized by whiteness, straightness, cis-ness, richness and correctness. You can harbor some of those but still not fit that mold perfectly. You can be born gay to a rich white family in a liberal San Francisco neighborhood. Alternatively, you can be born white and straight in a poor rural farm in North Dakota. And some societies within the greater American one hold bifurcations that differ from each other, where traits that are privileged elsewhere are more of a disadvantage than anything else there. It wouldn't be ideal to be born white in Compton, USA. You can be privileged in some ways and impoverished in others.
Obviously, the term is much more complex than our buzzword understanding. That doesn't disqualify the significance of its popular definition. Financial poverty is a real problem, arguably the worst because it affects every single part of identity and ability. By broadening the definition, we don't delegitimize that. We address it more effectively. Most of us are impoverished in some way, somewhere if not here. Because of that, by broadening the definition, we include ourselves in it. We are much more likely to be sensitive to an issue if it includes ourselves.Yet, because of the fundamental lack of full understanding of the term, both sides are polarized. To the generally impoverished, privilege is despised. To the generally privileged, poverty is kept at a “socially-aware” distance, fended off by disclaimers.
And that's the problem. By not admitting the shared traits that we share, we segregate. Poverty is always something “over there,” experienced by “those people.” This is definitely a problem at Middlebury. We as a community are hyper-sensitive about our privilege, being all “socially-aware.” In my Visual Sociology class last week, a student asked in reference to a picture, “how would a typical Middlebury College student see these? Poverty-stricken,” in a tone communicating its “other”-ness. But there is poverty on this hill, too. There are the financially insecure, who can only attend because financial aid is generous. There are first-generation students, who got here only through incredible personal motivation. There's a LGBT community and there's a black community. If poverty is on campus, then it's segregating to consider it “over there.” It's here, walking with us, laughing with us, sleeping in the same dorm rooms, crossing to BiHall in the same comically frenzied pace. Sure, we're all privileged because we're at a “prestigious liberal arts college,” but that doesn't mean many of us aren't impoverished, too.
And that's why the term's true meaning is important.