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(10/14/21 9:55am)
The satisfaction that comes from watching a Rube Goldberg machine in motion is something that is hard to properly replicate. A window slams shut, causing a tennis ball to bounce off a table into a cup that pulls a string, lifting a seesaw just enough to knock a line of dominos over until one falls off the table, turning the page of a book for a reader. It is something that is so utterly, terribly useless, but similarly fantastical in its unnecessary complexity. Each little piece fits perfectly in its place and feeds into the next, and the next, and the next, until the grand finale, when the purpose of the machine is somehow carried out.
“Dishonored: Death of the Outsider” is a Rube Goldberg machine. Its purpose? Kill a god.
“Dishonored: Death of the Outsider” was developed by Arkane Studios and released on September 15, 2017 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Microsoft Windows. The game is an expansion of the Dishonored franchise and therefore builds on its world, story and lore. The game takes place primarily in Karnaca, a fictional city on the sea where apartments seem to emerge from the mountains surrounding the city’s port. As protagonist Billie Lurk, the player’s objective is to sneak through the streets of a city built and powered on the surplus of whale oil to find the key to killing the Outsider. The Outsider is a mysterious figure who had godly powers thrust upon him eons ago, and Lurk feels that the powers he represents and bestows onto others are too harmful to exist. So, the Outsider must go.
What makes “Dishonored: Death of the Outsider” so enjoyable, almost more so than the previous titles in the series, is how tight the playthrough experience is. About half of the player’s time in the game is spent in a downtown Karnacian neighborhood. Through the span of several levels, the player becomes very familiar with the city’s layout. The player will meet a shifty taxidermist, infiltrate the house of a snobbish singer and decide whether to kill or spare a mime just mimeing their own business. A contract system is in place through which the player can earn extra money by completing a myriad of lucrative black market quests that are full of charm in their own right. This push to complete each contract only further incentivizes the exploration of each alleyway, ramshackle home and rooftop. When the same buildings and areas are used, the player does not feel constricted; they feel like a local.
With each new task, the player gains more knowledge of the city’s goings-on. An art auction may be occurring in the local courtyard that the player had visited after spying on a politician preparing his speech. How the player approaches said auction can be determined by how they approached the politician’s speech. Will the player again use that trapdoor on the stage they found earlier?
The player becomes very confident in their spatial awareness. What was once a shadowy corner is now an opportunity. What was once another of the many apartments down the road is now the key to an optimal escape plan.
The tight level design is complemented by a small but mighty selection of gameplay mechanics. These include creating a spectre of Lurk to which a player can teleport, the ability to see through walls and mark your enemies and the ability to borrow an enemy’s face to slip past their comrades. Because there are so few powers (granted to the player by the same god whom they are trying to kill, mind you), their integration into the game is both seamless and well executed. A solitary guard is always ever-so-conveniently taking a smoke break just outside a heavily-patrolled area for the player to steal her face. A single window usually happens to overlook a courtyard where an auction is, almost tempting the player to hop down and teleport right back up, shiny object in tow. The developers know exactly what tools the player is exposed to, and as such, the levels are designed around them.
“Dishonored: Death of the Outsider” is a fantastic time. The game is such a polished package, and each piece is placed meticulously, so that it can deliver an experience that is hard to rival. The player has only a few powers to juggle in a select few areas, but they feel absolute in their confidence, like the mastermind assassin they are. The player is the one who helped kill an empress. The player is the one who will kill the god. The player is the catalyst for a Rube Goldberg machine of death and destruction.
(10/07/21 10:00am)
A unique part of the Middlebury experience is the opportunity to live in an academic or special interest house where students pursue a common interest and share it with the campus community. These include 10 language houses, the Queer Studies House, Self-Reliance and InSite, as well as special interest houses where residents try out food recipes, experience spiritual traditions or pursue mindful and healthy living.
“We watched a lot of Soviet cartoons, and we did a lot of cooking,” Julian Gonzales-Poirier ’23, a resident of the Russian House, said.
Having lived at the Russian House for his entire sophomore year, Gonzales-Poirier considers his experience as a mini-study abroad, during which he boosted his language skills and familiarized himself with Russian culture. Quinn Rifkin ’22, who has just begun his semester at the Italian House, hopes to immerse himself in the Italian language by chatting with his peers and the teaching assistant.
However, due to over-enrollment this fall, these special communities are starting to change. As the housing problem intensified, the school decided to re-appropriate some interest housing spaces for students without the shared interest.
“Our top priority has been to provide an in-person educational experience to all active students who wish to be at Middlebury this fall,” A.J. Place, associate dean of students, said. “We needed to be creative in using all available space possible, including any open space in interest houses.”
Currently, there are 301 students living in interest houses. Fifteen spaces in special housing were cycled into the August room draw, including eight from the Community Engagement House at 48 South Street. The Arabic House, where ideally five students sign the language pledge to speak only Arabic, now accommodates two Arabic speakers and three non-speakers.
Hazel Traw ’24, one of the two Arabic speakers in the house, has been studying Arabic for four years. She considers the language house an opportunity to practice using the language in casual settings. For Traw, the arrival of non-Arabic speakers came as a surprise. The Residential Life staff did not communicate in advance with her and the other Arabic speaker about the non-speakers, so they only realized what was going on at the first house meeting after moving in.
“I suppose it makes [our experience] a bit different, but I don’t think it makes the sense of community any worse,” Traw said. When she bumps into others in the morning or late at night, she is happy to chat with the non-speakers in English.
Sam Roubin ’23.5, a non-Arabic speaker, chose one of the few remaining doubles on campus with his friend in the August housing draw. As the portal displayed the house name as “Sperry,” he only realized he was in the Arabic House when he searched for it afterwards.
Currently, the Arabic House holds at least one event per week, such as cooking traditional Arabic dishes and watching Arabic movies. Students from different courses come over, and the non-speaker residents are always welcome to join. Roubin likes the homey feeling of the house compared to regular dorms, and the Arabic teaching assistant has been teaching him simple Arabic words.
Although not involved in the room draw, the Wellness House located on Weybridge Street also felt the pressure from the housing crisis. Supported by the office of Health and Wellness Education, the house is designed to encourage individual and collective well-being and substance-free or low-substance use behavior. To apply, students must submit an application and attend an interview.
Ansen Gong ’23, who was remote during spring 2021, admitted that he applied for the Wellness House to avoid off-campus housing at Bread Loaf — the only regular housing option left when he logged onto the portal at 4:00 a.m. in China for his lottery draw. He guesses that about half the residents came to Wellness for similar reasons, but he does enjoy living with everyone else in this small community with their own kitchen and laundry.
“If you want a quiet place to live, [Wellness] is pretty nice,” Gong said.
On the other hand, Sophia Wittig ’24 applied for Wellness because she could not get a space in Bread Loaf, which is only open to juniors and seniors. “I specifically asked to go to Bread Loaf for the financial discount, but [the school] wanted us to have the on-campus experience that we missed last year,” Wittig said. She knows that many sophomores have the same financial concern and would gladly live at Bread Loaf if it were allowed.
Regardless of why students chose Wellness, concerning substance use, Wittig said that she had not "seen or smelled or heard anything". During orientation, the residents made an agreement on quiet hours for weekdays and weekends. "[The house is] very quiet when I go back [at night], which is kind of nice." said Ansen.
However, apart from that, a common pursuit of wellness does not seem visible. “We have community expectations pasted on the wall,” Wittig said. “We’re supposed to have house dinners once a month, but that hasn’t happened.”
“We understand that it is not ideal to have a student(s) living in an interest house without that specific interest,” Place said. “If students are having concerns we’d encourage them to connect with their Community Assistant, the house contacts or our office directly so we can offer support.”
(10/07/21 10:00am)
The men’s and women’s varsity soccer teams are no longer the only Panthers on the soccer pitch. As of this fall, Middlebury now has a fully operational men’s club team.
Founded by Blaise Siefer ’23.5 and Marco Fengler ’23, the club took to the field for the first time this fall, after spending months in the works.
According to Fengler, the process of getting the team off the ground began two years ago, when he and Siefer first arrived on campus and the college had recently cut its junior varsity men’s soccer team. But even though the program was gone, interest in soccer remained high.
“We had a lot of guys interested in soccer, but we lacked organization and infrastructure,” Fengler said.
Seeking to create a more structured program, Fengler and Siefer reached out to the Middlebury Director of Club Sports, Doug Connolly. Although he supported the vision for the club, he explained that there were still many obstacles, some of which included medical supervision, budgetary restrictions and field time.
Just as things looked like they were finally starting to get going, the Covid-19 pandemic brought club soccer to a screeching halt.
“It was tough,” Fengler said. “We got sent home in the spring, and in the fall we realized the school had a lot going on, so it wasn’t the right time.”
Not to be deterred, the pair continued to operate behind the scenes throughout the spring semester of 2021. After long talks with the Student Activities Office, they finally got the green light in May.
“We still had a lot to do, but we knew we finally had a team,” Fengler said.
Middlebury men’s club soccer took its fully fledged form this fall, donning navy and white jerseys on the pitch. Led by Fengler and Siefer as co-presidents, the club now has a full executive board, consisting of three class captains (Otis Miliken ’24, Ben Knudsen ’23, Hugo Bocker ’22), the two aforementioned presidents and social chair Captain Rudolph ’23.5. The team consists of a 27-man travel roster that practices regularly and plays away games in addition to a practice squad that trains several times per week as well.
“There is fluidity between the two [the travel roster and the practice squad], however,” Fengler said. “If guys are working hard in practice, then they can potentially make the travel team.”
The team has been in fine form on the field with an unbeaten start to the season. Following a statement victory over UVM’s club side in their season opener, the team played to a hard-fought draw against Clarkson before earning back to back victories against University of Massachusetts Lowell and Brandeis.
The team is currently listed as a provisional outfit for this season, so they will not be allowed to compete at regionals, but they have big goals for the year nonetheless.
“We want to have an unbeaten season,” Fengler said. “We play a fast-paced yet composed game, so fans can expect a lot of goals too.”
You can stay up to date with the club’s schedule on the team’s Instagram page as well as on the club’s page on Presence. Middlebury club soccer takes on UVM B and Dartmouth B at 9:30 AM and 4:45 PM this Sunday at Middlebury.
Editor’s Note: Blaise Siefer is the Senior Sports Editor for The Campus.
(10/07/21 10:00am)
(09/30/21 10:00am)
When Piper Boss ’23 reached out to Middlebury with concerns about studying abroad in Spain — then a country classified by the State Department as “Level 4: Do Not Travel” — she was informed by her abroad coordinator and Dean of Students Derek Doucet that she had two options: go to Madrid or take a leave of absence.
Concerned about the rise of Delta variant Covid-19 cases in late summer, a number of Middlebury students questioned the safety of their plans to study abroad for the Fall 2021 semester. When they inquired about withdrawing from their international programs and re-enrolling at Middlebury, they were informed that Middlebury’s over-enrollment precluded the possibility of returning to the Vermont campus.
“My family and I were very nervous for me to be living in this large metropolitan area and interacting with local people, which is a large component of abroad programs because the goal is language immersion,” Boss said.
Boss had planned to begin her semester in Madrid in mid-August. Covid-19 cases spiked in Spain toward the end of July, prompting the U.S. State Department to announce its Level 4: Do Not Travel classification on July 26, 2021.
According to Boss, the administration at the C.V. Starr School Abroad in Madrid informed the fall enrollees that the only way the program would be cancelled was if Spain closed its borders to international travel. Covid-19 vaccination, Boss also learned, was not a requirement for host families.
The vaccination rate in Spain has since increased, with 80% of the population having received at least one dose as of Sept. 21. Boss was placed with a vaccinated host family. Thus far, her experience has been positive, but she noted that her time could easily have been much more dangerous and felt that Middlebury did not seem to care about this possibility.
“Considering that Covid is still very much a problem in most of the world, it just seemed like there was a huge lack of forethought for international programs,” Boss said.
Eliza King Freedman ’23 and Abby Schneiderhan ’23 faced similar circumstances, having planned to study abroad in Rabat, Morocco.
Like Spain, Morocco was classified as a Level 4: Do Not Travel destination on Aug. 23, 2021. As of that date, 48% of the population had received at least one vaccine dose, and as of Sept. 22, 59.2% of the population had received at least one dose. Host families were not required to be vaccinated, and the country currently enforces a 9 p.m. curfew that has been in place since Aug. 2.
Despite serious concerns for physical and mental health when traveling to a Covid-19 hotspot with strict public safety measures in place, King Freedman felt she had no choice but to go ahead with her original plans — having received no assurance from the administration that she would be permitted to return to Middlebury.
“I just feel like I couldn’t actually make an informed decision about whether or not it was safe to come [to Morocco] because Middlebury essentially took away any safety net we had throughout the process,” she said.
Schneiderhan made what she called a “now-or-never” choice to travel to Rabat. The day after she left Canada, her point of departure, the country terminated flights to Morocco.
“One of the most stressful parts of this whole experience was deciding what to do when travel was so uncertain,” Schneiderhan said. “Had I waited another day, I wouldn’t have even been able to get to Rabat, and I didn’t have the fallback option of knowing that I would be able to go back to campus.”
Ultimately, all students whose programs abroad were cancelled or who decided not to participate in those programs were able to return to campus this fall and received housing, according to Dean of Students Derek Doucet. The college’s late summer purchase of Inn on the Green allowed for more available space at the Bread Loaf campus than expected earlier in the summer.
By the time the college created a waiting list for on-campus housing, Boss already had plane tickets to Spain departing just four days later.
“I felt very ignored,” she said. “They were clearly prioritizing their struggle with housing over the safety of their students who were going abroad.”
Doucet told The Campus in an email that all college decisions to run study abroad programs were based on a review of pandemic conditions in each country.
“It sounds as though those students definitely had a difficult time working through some very difficult decisions,” Doucet said. “As we continue to manage the effects of the pandemic, we have made every effort to provide students with opportunities to study on campus and abroad when feasible.”
(09/30/21 9:58am)
There must be something special about Kohn Field, home of the Middlebury field hockey team, for it is there that the Panthers have won 40 straight games.
This miraculous home win streak dates back to Sept. 27, 2017, when the Panthers bounced back from a 2–3 loss against Hamilton (one of just two losses of the season) with a 6–2 drubbing of Skidmore. (That year, field hockey would go on to claim its third-ever NCAA championship.)
With a 4–1 win over Babson on Sept. 19, that win streak now stands at 40 games. The team has won many collective and individual accomplishments during this span, including three NESCAC Championships and three NCAA National Championships. On the individual level, Erin Nicholas ’22 has won National Field Hockey Coaches Association (NFHCA) Player of the Year the past two seasons, and Katie George ’23 was named NESCAC Rookie of the Year and All American in 2019.
While field hockey’s dearth of all-star talent has played a key role in their success, much of the credit is owed to Head Coach Katharine DeLorenzo, who has won NESCAC Coach of the Year the past three seasons (2017–19). Now in her 21st season of coaching this year, DeLorenzo has amassed a 316–62 record for a win percentage of .836, the highest in program history. Known for her excellent eye for recruits and her attacking style of play, the coach is inextricably connected to the team’s success.
Among the team’s current, super star-filled roster, Nicholas, Audrey Lazar ’23 and George stand out as the top scorers, while Charlotte Marks ’23 and Joan Vera ’22 have anchored the defense in front of Grace Harlan ’22.5 in goal. With a well-balanced and talented roster, only time will tell how far the Panthers can stretch their home win streak.
Field hockey (8–0) returns to Kohn Field on Sunday, Oct. 3, when they play host to Amherst College (7–0). Game time is scheduled for 1:00 p.m.
(09/23/21 2:11pm)
Months after sport climbing debuted at the Tokyo Olympics, the current climbing wall section at the south end of the Nelson Recreation Center is expected to be revamped. Parts of the floor will be changed from padded surface to rigid surface in order to install an additional freestanding wall unit next to the existing climbing wall. The renovation is made possible through the college’s operating budget and alumni donations.
The project is spearheaded by Middlebury Outdoor Programs, a branch of Student Activities that helps students connect with the outdoors. A shortage of contractors caused some delays, but Facilities Services has now contracted Naylor and Breen Builders Inc., according to Associate Director of Maintenance and Operations Luther Tenny. The tentative completion date for the project is the end of September.
Since the wall was installed in 2002, Outdoor Programs has purchased new holds, replaced ropes, improved padding and reset routes. During the summer, the entire wall was stripped of holds and student climbers added new routes to the wall.
When asked what prompted this initiative, Director of Outdoor Programs and Club Sports Doug Connelly pointed to the popularity of the climbing wall on campus.
“The climbing wall is an incredibly popular resource, so Outdoor Programs is committed to keeping it great,” Connelly said. “I am constantly assessing our equipment needs and infrastructure to make improvements.”
As part of the larger effort to reopen more facilities this year, there will no longer be limited slots to use the climbing wall, though students are still asked to sign up in advance and follow other protocols. According to the Middlebury Outdoor Programs website, there will only be bouldering at the wall in order to comply with Covid-19 measures. To add variety, there will also be outdoor rock climbing opportunities on Friday afternoons in September and October.
Currently, the climbing wall is open on weekdays from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. and from 4:30-6:30 p.m. on Sundays. Seven students work at the climbing wall to oversee safe climbing protocols.
Windsor Smith ’24.5 developed an interest in rock climbing when she was 11, and she climbed on an indoor wall for the first time at Middlebury. As a second-semester climbing wall monitor, she is excited to see new changes added to the space.
Climbing wall monitor Jackson Evans ’22 sees the climbing wall as a unique community-building space because it combines social interaction with creative physical activity. Last year, he worked to expand the affinity group climbing sessions to provide affinity organizations at the college a space to reinforce their intra-team connections. By extending an invitation to a larger college community, he hopes to see more diverse representation at the wall.
“While a community certainly surrounds the wall, it has always been a homogenous community of white people,” Evans said.
This year, the team is also growing more mindful about the accessibility of the wall. Evans wants to make sure that the wall becomes a comfortable place for people who have been systematically marginalized in wall climbing.
“In planning the routes we set for people to climb, it is vital to ensure a range of possible methods and design sufficient beginner climbs for anyone to access.”
(09/23/21 9:58am)
“How crazy would it be if a bee flew into your mouth while you were eating?” Charlie Reinkemeyer ’21.5 asked his friends over breakfast outside Proctor.
When Reinkemeyer stood up with a yelp and announced that he’d just been stung, his friends thought he was joking. But the wasp that had alighted on the piece of fruit he was eating, dodging his gnashing jaws to jab the soft flesh on the inside of his cheek, was deadly serious.
Reinkemeyer is one of the latest in a long line of the wasps’ victims. Each fall, returning students are greeted by swarms of the black and yellow bugs outside of the dining halls descending on anyone who dares to eat outside. The picnic tables buzz with students complaining about the insects’ presence, debating whether they are bees or wasps and speculating as to why the college isn’t doing more to deal with them.
The Campus reached out to Middlebury’s bug experts for answers.
The bugs that swarm the dining halls are primarily yellowjacket wasps, easily identifiable by their thin waist, which allows them to swing their abdomen forward and sting in front of their bodies as well as behind, an important defensive feature, according to Assistant Professor of Biology Greg Pask, who studies insect neurobiology.
Yellowjackets can sting multiple times, unlike bees. However, each sting comes with a high energy cost, so wasps tend to reserve their venom for defensive purposes. Grabbing or swatting yellowjackets are good ways to get stung — as is being unlucky enough to trap one between your skin and clothes, or in your mouth.
Yellowjackets are especially territorial when it comes to protecting their nests. They sense approaching threats both by vibrations and by smelling exhaled carbon dioxide. A careful person can approach a wasp nest and study it at close range without getting attacked, as long as they hold their breath.
Only female wasps have stingers, which are actually primarily egg-laying tubes through which they can inject venom when needed. The venom includes a pain-inducing neurotransmitter called acetylcholine that “activates pain neurons in the skin,” Pask said in an email to The Campus. A variety of other proteins cause the severe inflammation that follows.
Entomologist Justin Schmidt let himself be stung by more than 80 varieties of insects to rate them on a pain scale in his book “The Sting of the Wild.” He gave the yellowjacket sting a two out of four, the same as most bee varieties, and described it as producing an “instantaneous, hot, burning, complex pain” that “lasts unabated for about two minutes, after which it decreases gradually over the next couple of minutes, leaving us with a hot, red, enduring flare to remind us of the event in case our memory should fade.”
While yellowjacket wasps may bug Middlebury students, they are popular with local farmers. They prey on bugs like biting flies, caterpillars and other pests that plague crops and gardens. Though not to the same degree as bees, they do occasionally drink nectar and pollinate plants as well.
Worker wasps bring the protein back to their nests and feed it to the larvae. The larvae consume the insects’ flesh, digest it and secrete a sugary substance that the adult wasps then eat.
This time of year, when the summer is ending and the wasps’ natural food sources are diminishing, sweet treats from the dining hall are extra appealing. Yellowjacket wasps have a keen sense of smell, and their antennae are covered with powerful scent receptors similar to nostril hairs. Yellowjackets are social insects and will communicate the location of food to their nest-mates by transferring the odor cue to their antenna. Then they will search out the source of the odor together, which often brings them to the dining halls on warm days when hundreds of students bring their meals outside.
Pask said the wasp swarms on campus are likely to worsen for future generations of students. With climate change extending the summer season, the wasps will hang around longer and multiply even more fruitfully. If conditions are good, a queen can lay 50 eggs a day, and a mature nest can host anywhere between 2,000 to 4,000 wasps.
Facilities staff try to remove wasps when they are a nuisance, like the yellowjackets that populate the area outside the dining halls, but there’s not much they can do if they can’t find their nests. Yellowjackets can forage as far as a mile from their nests.
They are primarily ground nesters, and their colonies can often be found at the base of trees, under porches or even in cracks in the sidewalks. They also seek out spaces between walls, and college horticulturalist Tim Parsons said he removed one nest from between the two window panes of one unfortunate student’s dorm room.
Depending on the year, the landscape team might remove anywhere between 10 and 30 bee and wasp nests a week, often by suctioning them out with a shop vacuum. This year, though, they are struggling. Over-enrollment is stretching their already-limited resources even thinner.
The landscape team is severely understaffed. They’re missing one out of their standard roster of 14, and they were only able to hire one out of the normal five seasonal workers they bring on for the busy fall time. They are now examining options to contract out wasp removal to relieve the burden on the limited workers, according to Parsons.
Wasp season should end in the next few weeks, before the time of the first frost. Before they die, the male wasps — “flying sperm packets” with little use beyond reproduction, according to Pask — will mate with future queens. The fertilized females will fatten up to “hibernate” over the winter before leaving the nest to form their own colonies next spring.
In the meantime, Parsons said it's best to “leave them be, no pun intended,” and hope you don’t have Reinkemeyer’s extraordinary bad luck.
Since his unfortunate experience, Reinkemeyer has taken to eating his meals indoors. If the weather is particularly nice, he might be tempted to brave the wasps and eat outside. But he’ll be carefully inspecting any food he puts in his mouth from now on.
Correction: A previous version of this article contained the wrong credit for the drawing of the wasps. The artist is Pia Contreras.
(09/16/21 9:57am)
Looking for your Middlebury sports fix? Here’s what’s on deck for this weekend:
Saturday, 9/18
TIME TBA - Men’s Golf Fall Invitational at Williams
TIME TBA - Middlebury Men’s Tennis Invitational –– Proctor Tennis Courts
10 a.m. - Men’s Cross Country Aldrich Invitational –– Cross Country Course
11 a.m. - Women’s Cross Country Aldrich Invitational –– Cross Country Course
11 a.m. - Women’s Soccer vs. Bowdoin –– Dragone Field
12 p.m. - Men’s Soccer vs. Bowdoin –– South Street Field
12 p.m. - Field Hockey vs. Bowdoin –– Kohn Field
1 p.m. - Women’s Golf George Phinney Classic –– Ralph Myhre Golf Course
2 p.m. - Women’s Volleyball vs. Bates –– Pepin Gymnasium
2 p.m. - Football at Williams
Sunday, 9/19
TIME TBA - Men’s Golf Fall Invitational @ Williams
TIME TBA - Middlebury Men’s Tennis Invitational –– Proctor Tennis Courts
9 a.m. - Women’s Golf George Phinney Classic –– Ralph Myhre Golf Course
1 p.m. - Field Hockey vs. Babson College –– Kohn Field
What to Watch:
On Saturday, women’s (2–1–0) and men’s (3–0–0) soccer will face the Bowdoin Bears in conference matchups. Women’s soccer has proven dominant against Bowdoin in recent years, beating them in the NESCAC quarterfinals in 2016 and 2018. Forward Fanny Lodge ’24 is one to watch this weekend — the sophomore has two goals in three matches this season. On the men’s side, the Panthers finished their last season of play in 2019 as NESCAC finalists, while the Bears went 6–4–5. Though much of the 2019 squad has graduated from the Panthers, this matchup will surely excite.
Elsewhere, top-ranked Middlebury field hockey (3–0) is also slated to do well in their duel against the Bears. Middlebury is undefeated against Bowdoin in the regular season since 2016, and has shut them out of the NESCAC tournament on multiple occasions within the past half decade.
High levels of play are sure to be seen across the golf, tennis and cross country invitationals this weekend. Two-time cross country All-American Cassie Kearney ’22 is one to keep an eye on as she races this weekend, as well as Zander Kessler ’22.5 on the men’s team.
Can’t make an away game in person this weekend? Visit https://www.nsnsports.net/colleges/middlebury/ to watch live online.
(08/26/21 8:49pm)
We print on Thursdays throughout each semester and during J-Term. You can find print copies of the paper for free at 7 a.m. in stands around campus, and you can find stories on our website at 6 a.m. on Thursday mornings.
(08/26/21 8:48pm)
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(05/20/21 3:01pm)
Dread is an emotion I rarely experience when consuming a piece of media. I get teary-eyed or feel a lump in my throat when watching an emotional scene in a movie. I get goosebumps when listening to that song that got me through days that would never end. I even get anxious reading through the climax of an entire trilogy of books. But dread, the sinking feeling in your gut, the sense of hope leaving with no sign of return, is rare. I felt true fear, and true dread, for a moment in the “Outer Wilds.” And I wanted more.
The “Outer Wilds” is a video game developed by Mobius Digital in 2019. Released on Xbox One, Playstation 4, Microsoft Windows and soon, on Nintendo Switch, this game puts players in their own solar system. The journey begins by going through general astronaut training, after which you get the code to your landing pad and your own spaceship is within your grasp. As you head to your ship, a strange statue from an alien culture that has long passed turns toward you. There is a connection; it is foreign, unknown. You enter your spaceship. The solar system is now yours to explore as you leave your home planet of Timber Hearth.
My first flight ended with a crash onto Brittle Hollow, a planet being consumed from the inside by a black hole. I could hardly think about what to do next when the sky grew blue with light that was so harsh, it was almost white. I turned in time to see the sun explode into a supernova, silently engulfing me and the solar system.
Then I woke up again and it was as if my journey had not even begun. Did I have the code to the launch pad already? I think that ancient alien statue really gave me the good ol’ one-two upstairs. So, I returned to Brittle Hollow. I saw the black hole beneath me as parts of the ground began to give and fall while I explored, a constant reminder of the danger I was in.
I jumped around the planet to explore, but I was still new to this game. I was clumsy. I missed a jump. I was falling. All the while, the black hole was growing. I fell in. I appeared somewhere. I was in space, alone.
There was no sound but that of my suit beeping, indicating that my oxygen was depleting. The faint sunlight seemed impossibly far away. I was going to die, and it was my mistakes that caused this. I felt dread, absolute dread. In real life, I could not breathe for several seconds as the weight of my situation crushed down on me.
There is no fanfare in-game for your success, but you get the next clue, the next breadcrumb of the mystery that only whets your appetite even more. The player often sits alone with their thoughts as their spacecraft orbits the system and they move between mysteries. What usually seems like a terrifying ordeal of self-reflection becomes a peaceful meditation on life and what is going on in it.
Just as the game exists, it encourages the player, the explorer who dared to leave home, to exist within it. You may be a small part of this solar system, but you are an important part of it, nonetheless.
This game helps me understand and articulate what I, along with countless other Midd Kids, feel. Life can push back more often than not. There are assignments, conflicts both internally and externally, the unknowns of the future and ultimately little time to solve them all. But it is easy to forget that I am getting better. Every day, I learn something new; every day, I try to be my best. The “Outer Wilds” helps me see that so long as I am moving forward — just like that hopeful astronaut from Timber Hearth — I am doing well.
(05/20/21 2:00pm)
Vermont is looking years ahead to July 4, 2026, which marks the 250th anniversary of the ratification of the Declaration of Independence. This past December, Gov. Phil Scott signed an executive order establishing a 15-member commission to plan the semiquincentennial celebration of U.S. independence.
But the events of the semiquincentennial are not limited to a single day — in fact, they are not even limited to a single year.
“It’s a multi-year celebration,” Laura Trieschmann, chairperson of the commission and the Vermont state historic preservation officer, said in an interview with The Campus. “We’re still in the very early planning stages...but events and celebrations and lectures and exhibits will probably start showing up around 2025.”
According to Trieschmann, most of the events planned by Vermont’s commission will be planned for 2026, so that those commemorating certain battles or historical moments that took place in 1776 will occur exactly 250 years later.
Commemorations and celebrations in Vermont’s series of semiquincentennial events will continue through 2027, since 1777 featured several key events in the state’s history — including the establishment of Vermont as its own republic, the Battle of Hubbardton and the Battle of Bennington.
The commission plans to extend the focus of commemorative events beyond state history. Instead, they will strike a balance by incorporating a peek into how Vermont has changed — or not — since the Revolutionary War era.
The events will not only celebrate or critically examine the well-known figures within the state’s and country’s histories but will also illuminate the lives of the everyday person, including marginalized people and those whose stories have been neglected in the annals of American and Vermont history. The women of the time will be one subject of focus, as the commission is dedicated to organizing events that reflect the politics of domestic life, and not just the politics of battle.
All fifty states will likely organize their own series of semiquincentennial events — even those that were established long after the Revolutionary War era. According to Trieschmann, Vermont was the ninth state to formally establish a committee, and some states — such as Massachusetts and New Jersey — have had commissions planning events for years.
One of the Vermont commission’s priorities is to ensure that the events of the semiquincentennial reflect the period of the Revolutionary War as accurately as possible, and part of this is a focus on Black and Indigenous peoples who lived in that era.
“History continues to evolve, so we can only be as accurate as what we know,” Trieschmann said. “But we certainly know that history has not been very kind to itself, in that African American and slave trade histories or the actions against Native Americans have not all been respected as they should be, so we want to make sure that there is inclusion there.”
So far, the commission has only met once, and future meetings will be open to the public. The next meeting is scheduled for May 26, where the formation of committees — such as event committees and the education committee, which will petition that some of the relevant history be put into the state curriculum by 2025 — will be discussed.
(05/20/21 10:00am)
The Faculty and Staff section focuses on increasing hiring equity, training new and existing faculty and staff in DEI practices, and building community among new hires to increase retention. Many view it as an important first step in an ongoing process that requires much deeper and continual institutional change.
Of the 11 strategies included in the section, 10 have been completed or involve ongoing programs that are underway, although two programs have been temporarily put on hold because of the pandemic. Only one strategy, the term for which begins this year, is still in development.
HIRING
One of the major pillars of the section is hiring more BIPOC faculty and staff and those from other “historically underrepresented groups.”
The college has historically struggled to hire a more diverse staff because most are recruited from the overwhelmingly white communities surrounding Middlebury, according to Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández. Almost 93% of Addison County residents are white.
Resistance to diversifying the faculty body often comes from the perception of diversity and qualifications being opposing qualities, according to Associate Professor of Political Science Kemi Fuentes-George.
“You tend to see a lot of language about [how] what we need are the most qualified people, and that usually gets taken to be an argument against seeking diversity,” he said. “There's this kind of equation of, if you're orienting around a diversity hire, by definition, you're not seeking qualified people.”
Of the 329 current faculty members, 57, or 17%, identify as belonging to a minority ethnic or racial group, according to Dean of Faculty Sujata Moorti.
While there is a formal hiring freeze for faculty and staff, the college is filling limited positions that were planned before the pandemic or are needed on an urgent basis. Faculty and staff search committees now receive DEI training (Strategy #3 and #4), and job candidates are asked to include their own experience with inclusive practices in their application as a measure to assess their “multicultural competence” (Strategy #5).
New employee orientations now include workshops on diversity, equity and inclusion, though the college has not offered staff orientations — which normally happen periodically as opposed to the the once-a-year faculty orientation — during the hiring freeze (Strategy #6), according to Director of Education for Equity and Inclusion Renee Wells.
The college has also approved a staff position to help with partner inclusion, and Moorti is currently working with the Educational Affairs Committee to see if an institution-wide policy is possible (Strategy #2).
RETENTION
A second large part of the section is an attempt to improve conditions for faculty and staff from historically marginalized communities. As part of Strategy #11, the college has developed exit interview questions “related to campus climate… to identify and address barriers to retention.” Moorti hopes that, over time, these interviews can inform the administration on how to improve the climate for remaining faculty.
Faculty and staff say that some of the current barriers to retention are not feeling supported by the college and academia as a whole, the extra — often uncompensated — burden of advocating for students and not feeling a sense of belonging in the community. The plan addresses some of these areas, but critically does not include provisions for others.
Measures to support incoming faculty hires have been put on pause because of the pandemic. The OEIDI has not been able to host social networking opportunities for faculty from historically underrepresented communities (Strategy #10) or DEI workshops in departments expecting new hires (Strategy #8) but are looking forward to bringing those back next year.
The college has been able to expand mentoring opportunities for new and junior faculty from historically underrepresented groups. In addition to regular departmental mentoring, the college has purchased membership with the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (Strategy #9), which provides resources for development, training and mentorship. The college will also be expanding mentorship and development opportunities available through the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity this summer. Moorti hopes that junior faculty will be able to avail themselves of this resource for more support and networking opportunities.
Measures like these have been crucial for retaining current BIPOC faculty despite the struggles they face.
“One of the primary reasons that I stayed at Middlebury … was that I found my community,” Fuentes-George said. “I found people who were supportive and who mentored me, some of whom had tenure, some of whom didn't, some of whom were in my department, some of whom weren't, and it pretty clearly underlined to me how important those kinds of social networks can be.”
Still, these measures are designed primarily to build support for incoming faculty and staff members and do little to address the underlying conditions current faculty members face.
Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric James Chase Sanchez views academia as a whole as a white space within which people of color can struggle to feel welcomed or valued, and Middlebury is no exception. That fact became abundantly clear to Fuentes-George after hearing his colleagues defend the invitation of Charles Murray to campus in 2017. Fuentes-George recalls other faculty members insisting that Murray was not racist, despite his claims that Black people — like Fuentes-George — and Latinos are genetically less intelligent.
In the wake of Murray’s visit, Fuentes-George strongly considered leaving Middlebury.
Both Fuentes-George and Chase Sanchez credit their luck in finding their own small communities at Middlebury as one of the major reasons they have stayed here, something they say can be difficult for many faculty of color. They both discussed how easy it is to feel isolated on a predominantly white campus in a predominantly white area.
Chase Sanchez recalled visiting a restaurant in Bristol with a Black colleague. At one point, he looked up from his plate and idly scanned the room. To his surprise, he realized he was making eye contact with nearly everyone around him. They had been staring at him, and he felt suddenly acutely aware of how much he stood out as a Latino in an overwhelmingly white space.
“There’s a little bit more of that uncomfortable nature of being a minority living within the community that is very, very white,” Chase Sanchez said. “All these variables can just build up pressure.”
Admissions Counselor Maria Del Sol Nava ’18 has also struggled to feel completely welcome in the local community.
“Middlebury has become a home for me because I have now been here for seven years (four as a student and three as a staff member), [but] I am keenly aware that I am a brown woman in a very white town,” she said in an email to The Campus. “There are many times when I don’t feel safe.”
The reaction of other faculty and academia as a whole to the scholarship of BIPOC faculty also make some feel unsupported or valued at Middlebury. BIPOC faculty who do race-based research often see their work devalued in academia, where it is viewed more as activism than empirical inquiry and seen as contributing less to their fields than the development of theory, according to Chase Sanchez.
In the wake of the Jan. 6 capitol riots, Fuentes-George led a class discussion about the racial motivations behind them. He was taken aback when one of his colleagues accused him of engaging in advocacy rather than real scholarship.
He views that interaction as emblematic of “a number of practices, discourses and comments about personal relations and about how departments and institutions function that make it difficult for people of color to feel supported.”
While faculty and staff from historically marginalized communities often do not feel valued or supported by Middlebury as an institution, they contribute significantly to the college — well beyond the scope of their positions. Many shoulder the extra burden of pushing for institutional change and advocating for marginalized students who turn to them for support, labor that is often uncompensated or not rewarded in performance reviews.
“[I feel] a social responsibility for the other first-gen and underrepresented students that I meet and worked with,” Del Sol Nava said in an email to the Campus. “[I take] on additional emotional labor that my white colleagues do not take on, or do not to the same extent.”
Fuentes-George serves on the Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (CDEI) and is also a Posse mentor. He also frequently provides informal mentoring and support for BIPOC students who turn to him for advice in navigating through Middlebury and has worked to spearhead change within his department — labor that is uncompensated.
“These are things that I do feel passionate about doing,” Fuentes-George said. “But the reality is that it takes a lot of time and energy, and it's also emotionally taxing.”
Del Sol Nava hopes that the school works toward being a place where such sacrifices don’t need to be made. “I think we can imagine more for ourselves as an institution so that our BIPOC staff and faculty don’t feel burdened with being the ones who have to create change or be the only ones who support the students who want to make change,” she said.
At the same time that the extra, uncompensated advocacy work drains faculty and staff of color, it’s also a major reason why some stay despite the institutional challenges they face.
“There are a lot of students I didn’t want to leave alone,” said Fuentes-George “I didn’t want them to just be here with one less voice to advocate. There’s few enough for them already, so [I decided] to stay here and advocate for them.”
Supporting BIPOC students also animates Chase Sanchez’s work, especially in light of his own experiences trying to navigate through a predominantly white college as a Latino student.
When Chase Sanchez told his advisor — who was white — that he wanted to become a professor, Chase Sanchez recalls him replying, “Someone like you wanting to be a professor is what makes someone like me laugh.”
Chase Sanchez turned his advisor’s doubt into motivation and worked triply hard to prove that he belonged in academia despite what his advisor thought. But he knows this kind of experience can set other students back or discourage them from pursuing their original goals altogether. This year’s Zeitgeist survey found that BIPOC students reported feeling imposter syndrome — “the experience of doubting one’s abilities and feeling like a fraud” — at a significantly higher rate than their white peers.
“I remember what it feels like to have no one believe in you,” Chase Sanchez said. “I always want to help other people going through that, because it's a very tough space to navigate.”
TRAINING
While the advocacy of BIPOC faculty and staff and the promise to increase institutional diversity are crucial to students from underrepresented groups feeling supported, Del Sol Nava emphasized that the practices of the entire staff and faculty body must shift.
“I think more students at Middlebury would feel more supported if they saw more people who looked like them, but that doesn’t mean that is the only step we take,” she said in an email to The Campus. “It also means teaching our current faculty and staff to learn and unlearn how to make students feel more comfortable.”
Wells hopes that the Inclusive Practitioners Program (Strategy #7) will help usher in the culture change necessary to shift people’s practices and reform the institution in the long run. The program, launched in the fall of 2019, consists of a series of workshops within which faculty and staff “engage in critical conversations and skill building related to diversity equity and inclusion.”
“It is about creating the kind of critical awareness that builds people’s skills and capacity to actually change their practices,” Wells said. “It's about developing your ability to actually change what you're doing and how you're doing it in ways that create more access, and opportunity, and equity and inclusion.”
While many of the workshops have focused specifically on race in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, Wells has begun reincorporating other workshops in the series with topics that range from “Designing Accessible Course Syllabi” to “Knowing and Respecting Who's in the Room: A Guide to Using Gender Pronouns.”
“They were really valuable,” Food and Garden Educator Megan Brakeley, who has attended eight workshops, said. “I think that part of the power of doing this work is the power of it being done in community. There's so much that can happen when we are literally sitting in the same room.”
Partly inspired by the lessons she’s learned in those workshops as well as through the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, Brakeley has worked to make antiracism a cornerstone of her job at the Knoll, including reevaluating the organic farm’s mission statement, learning to identify and address harm as it happens and holding BIPOC affinity gardening hours.
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Mez Baker-Médard has attended 10 Inclusive Practitioners workshops and incorporated the lessons they have learned, including redesigning their course material to include more diverse voices and “bringing a lens of power onto the work” they are doing.
“I think it's opened my eyes to a variety of ways in which I can really work on this in the classroom, and there are just so many ways that I can be thoughtful and more nuanced,” they said. “Engaging in that way, it's kind of an act of appreciation and respect for my students, and myself, as well as my own ignorances.”
The workshops are optional to ensure that those who attend want to be there and are willing to put in the work. But it does mean that participants are self-selecting and the staff and faculty who might benefit the most from this education often never show up, according to Wells.
While the Inclusive Practitioner Program aims to increase awareness and proper practices in and beyond the classroom, the DEI plan does not address the curriculum or broad pedagogical reform at an institution-wide level, steps Associate Professor of Education Studies and CDEI Chair Tara Affolter views as crucial for the next action plan.
In the meantime, the initiatives in the plan are supplemented by the work of the Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (CDEI), a body for faculty governance on DEI issues formed this year. They created a grant program for academic programs and departments to “find structural ways to engage in anti-racist work” and awarded grants to three departments — Luso-Hispanic Studies, Educations Studies and Economics — this year, according to Affolter.
MOVING FORWARD
All those interviewed for this article emphasized that, while they were optimistic about the potential for the DEI strategies and other current initiatives, they are only the start in a long road towards reforming the college.
“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Baker-Médard said. “The landscape of learning and teaching needs to shift as society shifts.”
Despite the uphill and prolonged battle ahead of them, most expressed a feeling of hope for the future of Middlebury.
“I’m definitely hopeful,” Fuentes-George said. “If I thought that there was no hope I probably would have left.”
(05/20/21 9:56am)
Women’s softball (6–10) finished fourth in the NESCAC West Division this spring, marked by a season of ups and downs. After winning their first game, the Panthers went on to lose five games straight, followed by a three-game win streak. The same pattern continued, as the Panthers then lost their next five but won their final two games.
This season was like no other, as the team played all their games on the weekend, with frequent double or triple headers against one opponent. Given the dense schedule, there was little time for rest between weekend games, forcing the team to adapt.
“This season was so much fun, and I’m so grateful we got the opportunity to play,” said Tori Papaleo ’23. “We all couldn’t be more thankful that we got the chance to play, and I’m looking forward to next year.”
The team had a total batting average of .278, with Jen McGann ’22 leading the way with an average of .333, followed by Noelle Ruschil ’22 (.326) and Sophia Marlino ’22 (.315). Ruschil, Marlino, and Kaylee Gumm ’21 each had two home runs this season.
From the mound, Chloe McNamara ’23 had an ERA of 3.62 and a WHIP of 1.89 on the season, and Jewel Ashbrook ’23 had an ERA of 4.18 and a WHIP of 1.74.
The team will be graduating three seniors in Melanie Mandell ’21, Emily Moore ’21 and Gumm ’21. With a strong squad of underclassmen remaining, the Panthers should have a competitive look next season.
(05/20/21 9:56am)
Despite a rookie-heavy roster this season, women’s tennis (4–3) exceeded expectations and finished second in the NESCAC West Division. Four of seven rostered players — including All-NESCAC singles players Amy Delman ’24 and Gena Huang ’24 — were freshmen this spring, as most sophomores and juniors took a gap semester. Delman, who played in the top spot for Middlebury this season, was named to the first team, while Huang earned second team honors with a 6-1 overall record. Kavina Amin ’24 and Sami Remis ’24 also compiled impressive rookie campaigns for the Panthers, finishing with a 3–3 and 4–3 overall record, respectively.
“I am blown away by the freshmen’s performance,” senior co-captain Emily Bian ’21 told The Campus. “They really came out and exceeded my expectations by miles.”
“I thought the freshman class did absolutely amazing,” head coach Rachel Kahan added. “Everyone came up big — to be able to perform under pressure was really fantastic.”
Bian and Ann Martin Skelly ’21 were senior co-captains this season, primarily playing doubles together. Sophomore Caitlin Neal ’23 finished 3–3 on the season.
The 2021 season spanned from April 10 to May 8 and included seven matches for the Panthers. Earlier this year, the chance of having a season was in doubt, so just being able to play was a huge bonus for the team.
“Our team needed [the season],” Bian said. “There’s only so much you can practice and compete against each other. Putting our competitive energy against actual opponents was really great. I think the team will take away a lot from that.
“It’s going to be a stacked team next year — I’m super excited to see where they will go,” Bian continued. “I think they are a team that has it all. I have high expectations and I have no doubt that they will reach them.”
(05/20/21 9:56am)
Women’s track and field traveled to Williams College this weekend to compete in their last team meet of the season. This was their first non-dual meet of the season, with four other NESCAC schools competing. Middlebury captured first place in five of the twenty-one events.
Although no Panther came out on top in the straight sprints, Middlebury once again dominated the 4x100-meter relay with the squad of Liza Toll ’24, Eva Kaiden ’23, Jackie Topping ’22 and Joely Virzi ’23 finishing in 50.11 seconds.
Ciara Dale ’24 bounced her way to victory in the 400 hurdles (1:04.90), while Mary Scott Robinson ’24 once again came out on top in the shot put (12.03 meters).
“I always just try to do my best,” Robinson said. “I was hoping I could set a new personal record for shot put like I did in discus, but I’m glad I could give Middlebury some points.”
Cassie Kearney ’22 continued her dominance in the 1500 this season, crossing the finish line three seconds before the second place finisher with a time of 4:36.83. Cady Barns ’22 also had a huge day for the Panthers, breaking Middlebury records in the long jump and the triple jump.
Barns’ 5.56 meter long jump edged out the previous record holder, Alex Cook ’20, who had held the record of a 5.55 meter jump since 2019. Meanwhile, her 11.75 meter triple jump captured the record from Kelly Coughlan ’09 who had held the record of 11.71 meters since 2009.
“After freshman year, I was really frustrated with my performance so I committed myself to getting back to where I know I could be,” Barns asserted. “During Covid-19, I made it my priority to spend a lot of time in the gym; the weight room is what has changed my jumps this year.”
The Panthers’ achievements at Williams are indicative of their momentum all season, as the team saw plenty of success at home and away. Besides winning both dual meets of their season, many athletes also set personal records, Dragone Field records and school records.
Kearney was among the standout athletes this season, called a “dynamo” performer by head coach Martin Beatty ’84. She won every 800 and 1500 race in which she competed, breaking the Dragone Track record in the 1500 (4:34.09). Kearney expects to compete at the national championships next week.
“This is all really exciting,” Kearney said. “I think I’ll be able to qualify for both the 800 and the 1500, but I’m not sure whether they’ll allow me to compete in both.”
The freshmen class also impressed this campaign, with many first-year athletes providing major contributions to the team. One standout was Robinson, who set the new school record for the shot put (12.12 meters).
As the largest athletic program on campus, the track and field teams had to make many adjustments to the way they conducted practices, held meets and organized team bonding events this spring.
“I’m so amazed how they've responded to dealing with trying to do this sport during a pandemic,” Beatty marveled. “It hasn’t always been easy or convenient but they’ve been troopers. This is really the sport that they love and that’s why they do it.”
Middlebury will send 14 women to compete at Tufts Last Chance Meet on May 20, where they hope to qualify for the national championships the following week.
(05/20/21 9:56am)
Men’s baseball (2–6) finished in fifth place in the NESCAC’s West Division this spring, with both of their victories won in the final inning.
Despite the team’s slow start, the underclassmen-heavy roster — composed of four sophomores and eleven freshmen — made significant progress this season.
Although the team suffered some lopsided losses early in the campaign, men’s baseball finished the season winning two of their last three games, including a walk-off home run against Hamilton and a come-from-behind victory against the would-be NESCAC champions, Amherst.
Head coach Mike Leonard felt that these wins were representative of the progress made by each and every player this season.
“I’m so incredibly proud of this group,” Leonard said. “It's such a testament to the mindset of these players that they took these challenges of being thrown into a season they didn't expect to have and facing some tough results early into opportunities to learn and get better.”
First-year and sophomore players who were pressed into starting roles took advantage of the opportunity. Two first-year players stood out for their success in the batter’s box: first-baseman and outfielder Andrew Ashley ’24 and center fielder Sammy Smith ’24.
Smith led the Panthers in doubles (2), triples (3), walks (6), on-base percentage (.452), slugging percentage (.750) and OBP plus SLG (1.202). His slugging percentage ranked second in the NESCAC and he was tied for first in triples, as well.
“I am pretty pleased with how my at-bats went,” Smith said. “I really focused on being relaxed in the box and having an opposite field approach.”
Meanwhile, Ashley led the team in batting average (.333), hits (9), runs batted in (8) and stolen bases (4).
“If this was a normal year, I probably would have gotten only 10 at-bats,” Ashley claimed. “It meant a lot to get this opportunity to show what I’m capable of, especially after losing my senior season [in high school] to Covid.”
Leonard further highlighted the positive effect this wacky Covid-19 season had on these young players.
“All of the players really benefited from this opportunity to build confidence, gain some experience, and improve their game,” Leonard posited. “So when they are faced with the challenges of performing in-game or competing against teammates for playing time, they will feel like they are in a better position to do so.”
With the full team returning next spring, men’s baseball is expected to produce a dominant team with these hungry, young players set to compete for starting roles against the returning upperclassmen.
(05/20/21 3:16am)
The Transparency and Accountability section of the Action Plan (Section V) was designed to assess and communicate progress towards strategic goals and ensure responsible parties complete them. The section also commits to ongoing assessment and planning to ensure the mission behind DEI continues into the future.
Section V aims to create intentionality behind the work and enable the completion of tangible progress and goals rather than merely written promises, according to Director of Education for Equity and Inclusion Renee Wells. Of the 13 strategies in this section, two have been completed, seven are underway and four have not yet started due to a later timeline.
The section differs from the rest of the plan due to the greater variety amongst the strategies. Many of the strategies are based on sharing progress and data, while others introduce key initiatives and projects to the college. This has made the Transparency and Accountability section more challenging to work on, according to Miguel Fernández.
“The thing about this kind of work is that if there's no intentionality around being accountable and no process for being held accountable, it's really easy for stuff to just not get done,” Wells said. “So we're saying to ourselves that we need to be accountable for doing this work, but we're also saying to the community we need you to hold us accountable for doing this work. We're going to try to be as transparent in an ongoing way about where we're at, so that we don't just issue a plan and then assume that everything is magically happening, because that rarely is the case.”
Communication with the college community is a central theme in the Transparency and Accountability section, and the opening strategy of the section commits to developing a communication plan to “ensure the centrality of diversity, equity and inclusion to Middlebury’s mission is clear and messaged both consistently and effectively.”
“The communications plan to be developed will take into account the needs and voices of all Middlebury stakeholders and include all means of connection—letters to the community, podcasts, news and magazine stories, social media, press outreach, and more” David Gibson, vice president for communications, said.
Four of the strategies in the section propose a timeline for the 2020-2021 school year, most of which are still currently in the works.
Strategy #4 of the plan, one of the four of the 2020-2021 strategies, aims to create and maintain a dashboard that tracks progress towards institutional DEI goals and anti-racist initiatives. The Office of Institutional Diversity Equity and Inclusion (OIDEI), however, has had difficulty trying to create a proper model for the website, and a dashboard has not yet been made available to the community.
“We have found that a dashboard is very hard to create when you don’t have numbers, this work is qualitative and not quantitative ...we have work to do in that area; we’re trying to improve our communication,” Fernández said.
OIDEI has a mock-up for the dashboard and is working with Information Technology Services and the SGA Innovation and Technology committee to complete the project.
While OIDEI works towards a way to properly present this material, Fernández has started a monthly update sharing information addressing aspects of the plan. These alternative forms of communication have included newsletters via email and webinars with students, alumni, parents and faculty. Both Fernández and Wells noted the importance of the dashboard in regards to creating transparency and accountability and hope it can be up and running soon.
Two other 2020-2021 strategies include the creation of the Anti-Racist Taskforce (Strategy #7) and a DEI committee within the Board of Trustees (Strategy #8), both of which have been formed and are ongoing initiatives.
The Anti-Racist Taskforce was created last fall and meets twice per month with a consistent group of 18 members comprised of faculty, staff and students. The force is divided into three working groups: funding transformative projects, launching an Anti-Racist learning hub in the Davis Library and creating a community dialogic standard. The task-force also facilitates monthly Story Circles, which seeks to understand the school’s collective history through sharing personal stories.
“The Anti-Racist Task Force is interested in creating pathways towards anti-racism by educating and empowering individuals to evaluate their dependance on racist principles and ideologies,” Associate Professor of Dance Christal Brown, who heads the task force, said. “By creating personal accountability and relational understanding, we believe sustainable institutional change is possible; being accountable to one another is the first step.”
In addressing strategy #8, the Board of Trustees voted to create a DEI subcommittee last October which reports to the Strategy Committee within the Board. The group had their first meeting as a subcommittee last January and plan on having more meetings to best identify ways the Board can align with and support efforts outlined in the DEI action plan. The fourth and final strategy for the 2020-2021 school year involves collecting and reporting out aggregate data on the diversity of students, staff and faculty. This data, however, will not be collected until the end of the academic year, according to Fernández
A majority of the remaining plans have a later timeline, so many initiatives have not yet been implemented. This includes providing an annual State of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion address starting in the 2021-2022 school year (Strategy #5), hiring an external consulting firm to conduct campus climate studies (Strategy #9), and integrating inclusive excellence goals and benchmarks into the evaluation of senior academic and administrative leaders (Strategy #13). Other strategies, however, are in the early stages of progress and are more difficult to concretely track.
Strategy #12, for instance, aims to “support unit-level efforts to identify and implement DEI goals and strategies relevant to individual departments, units, programs or offices.” Although it is more difficult to track the progress on strategies such as these, OIDEI is giving time for different departments to lay out their DEI goals.
“I'm working with different departments and currently that's more of them reaching out proactively versus me reaching out to every department on campus. A lot of folks have been really trying to think about and identify what this support looks like in their respective units,” Wells said, in reference to Strategy #12. “Some of those are academic units, some of those are student affairs and student life units. So some of that work is already starting to happen.”
Wells and Fernández both hope these goals within the Transparency and Accountability section will help create ongoing conversation and responsibility in the school’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion that goes beyond just numbers.
“Diversity is about numbers and bringing people in, but the real work is in equity and inclusion,” Fernández said. “You can bring in all the people you want, and if they don't feel that they are a part of this community or a sense of belonging then what have you really achieved? You haven't achieved much right? And so the hard work as far as I'm concerned is that equity and inclusion.”
(05/20/21 3:16am)
This fourth section of the Plan includes eight initiatives, which are designed to address barriers to accessibility in the built environment, academic settings and technology or online systems. Though none of the strategies are slated for completion in 2021, work on many of them has already begun. And, as Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández explained, some of the strategies will never truly reach completion since they introduce what he hopes will be ongoing principles and processes regarding accessibility.
“The whole action plan is about removing barriers,” Fernández said. “A student shouldn’t have to go through a lot more steps and barriers to get the same education as someone else.”
Physical accessibility
The physical aspects of Middlebury — its sprawling 350-acre campus, rolling hills and historical buildings — can prove challenging for some students with physical disabilities to navigate.
Several initiatives in the plan are aimed at identifying and addressing accessibility issues in the physical campus environment. The principles proposed in Strategy #7 — which introduce more inclusive construction and renovation protocol — have already been implemented to some degree in many of the college’s most recent construction projects, according to Fernández.
In 2016, the college formed the Advisory Group on Disability, Access and Inclusion (AGDAI) — a committee of faculty, staff and students formed after conflict regarding the construction of the Ridgeline Suites, some of which are not accessible up to the third floor. AGDAI is one of the responsible units listed for a number of the Accessibility section initiatives, including Strategy #7.
Fernández, who sits as co-chair of the body along with Professor of American Studies Susan Burch, said part of the group’s responsibility is to assess accessibility issues in the built environment. The group has advocated for college building projects to incorporate universal design, the practice of making a space accessible to all beyond Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance. AGDAI called for universal design in the renovations of Warner Hall, which the Board of Trustees reapproved this January, and Munroe Hall, which underwent renovations last academic year.
But, despite the push for universal design, not every entrance in Munroe Hall is accessible for all — the west entrance of the building has a step up to the door. AGDAI was not involved in the early part of the planning process for the Munroe renovation, Fernández explained.
“We were able to make some tweaks but maybe didn’t get everything that we had hoped,” he said.
Going forward, however, the college does plan to fully incorporate universal design. This fall, Middlebury is planning to break ground on a new dorm on the north end of Battell Beach and has hired a consultant who specializes in universal design to advise the process, according to Fernández. Dana Auditorium, which is scheduled to be renovated beginning in August, will also incorporate universal design, according to a February recap of the January Board of Trustees meeting.
Work on the other three strategies that address issues of accessibility in the built environment — a publicly available campus map with detailed accessibility information, a timeline for tackling barriers and a platform for reporting barriers — has not begun.
Regarding the timeline for addressing barriers, Fernández said that Facilities Services asked that they reconsider the strategy given the immense amount of time and resources it would require to produce. Instead Facilities proposed a project-based model. Mike Moser, director of Facilities Services and member of AGDAI, did not respond to interview requests for this article.
Fernández said he expects the timeline for the campus map, currently 2021–22, will need to be pushed back. As for the system for reporting accessibility barriers, he said they are still ironing out the details for how reports would be addressed.
Inclusive technology and web-based electronic systems
Work has already begun on the third and fourth strategies, which address accessibility in academic technology and online systems. The pandemic sped up the college’s plans to make changes to academic and classroom technology, according to Fernández. Some software and technology for remote study such as Zoom has already been purchased and implemented to facilitate education during the pandemic. Fernández also mentioned the possibility of rewiring classrooms such that they include a microphone or speakers.
Information Technology Services is currently developing a roadmap and public education materials to explain changes to Middlebury’s web-based electronic systems, which they expect will be completed by the fall.
The college is currently engaged in a review of Information and Communication Technology through the Paciello Group, a web accessibility consulting group.
“In the short term (this fiscal year) they will be helping us understand our current position, conducting a gap analysis, and drafting a roadmap which will include policy recommendations,” Fernández said. “Part of this project will also be the creation of a public information hub for technology accessibility, training, and a communication plan.”
Exam scheduling and extra time
Work on the second initiative in the accessibility section, which is designed to address difficulties in scheduling exams with extra time or make-up exams, is scheduled to occur from 2021–22.
Students have noted that professors sometimes have the ability to deny certain accommodations. In an earlier article, Isaac Byrne ’21, who runs the Divergent Learners Collective (DLC), said that a member of the DLC was denied accommodations due to old paperwork. For some kinds of accommodations, it is up to professors to decide whether or not to comply with them.
Isabel Linhares ’22, a Social Entrepreneurship Fellow working on a project about accessibility in STEM education, said that the Disability Resource Center makes some of the accommodations included in students’ Letters of Accommodation optional, leaving them up to each professor’s discretion.
“I've had conversations with the Disability Resource Center about why they're making certain aspects in accessibility optional because then that treats it as a favor and not a human right,” Linhares said.
Linhares noted that ADA requires that reasonable accommodations be provided to disabled students, leaving the definition of “reasonable” up to individual institutions and their members.
The DRC did not respond to interview questions by publication time.
Resources and workshops
According to the plan, Director of Education for Equity and Inclusion Renee Wells will design and offer workshops around how to organize accessible events beginning next year. However, these workshops have already begun, according to Fernández, and other offices such as the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Research (CTLR) and Digital Learning & Inquiry (DLINQ) have also started work in this area.
Wells runs the Inclusive Practitioners Program, which provides workshops for faculty and staff.
“About 75% of what I do is people asking me specifically to do things with and for them,” she said. “And then the other 25% is the Inclusive Practitioners Program, which I set up and offer workshops for faculty and staff all the time.”
In April and May, the program offered workshops that addressed best practices for administering exams and the use of a variety of tools to assess student learning outcomes.
Maintaining momentum
Much of what the college’s plan addresses are concrete solutions to specific issues that students and employees face during their time at Middlebury. But what some are looking for is a broader cultural shift in the way disability is perceived and treated. Linhares said she feels that some of the people with the ability to implement change still view disability through the lens of the medical model rather than the social model — which proposes that disability occurs due to the interaction between individuals and their environment.
Linhares noted that tangible changes are still immediately necessary, but worries that there is not enough emphasis on changing the way people perceive disability, and that momentum will fizzle out without a deeper understanding of and sense of responsibility for solving systemic and structural accessibility issues.
“At some point you’re going to have to start thinking not even, ‘outside the box,’ but, ‘get rid of the box altogether,’” Linhares said. “You’re going to have to dig up the foundations and build something entirely new because the way that higher education as a whole was designed — it was not designed with disabled students in mind.”
