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(10/29/20 10:00am)
Student athletes are stepping up to the plate this election season, taking the initiative to engage and educate the community about the value of voter participation. The Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) is using its platform to encourage fellow athletes to prioritize democratic engagement at Middlebury and beyond. Thanks to the efforts of student athletes and other student organizations, the college holds this year’s number one ranking in the NESCAC and number 11 slot in the country for the total number of public commitments to vote.
SAAC paired up with MiddVotes and MiDD (Middlebury Does Democracy) this September to launch a campus-wide campaign to involve all student athletes in the election process. Izzy Hartnett ’21, a senior leader of the SAAC and member of the women’s soccer team, is leading the initiative, calling on varsity sports teams to promise to vote on Nov. 3. Hartnett and her team reached out to all varsity captains to create a coalition of MiDD student-athlete liaisons who can provide resources for their teams and communicate with MiddVotes.
“[We] ask all our MiDD liaisons to reach out individually to each member of their team to ask if they are registered to vote if [they’re] eligible, what their plan for voting is and if they have any questions along the way,” Hartnett said.
Women’s tennis captain Ann-Martin Skelly ’21 said she volunteered for the MiDD liaison position because of her disappointment with the outcome of the 2016 presidential election and her understanding of the importance of voter participation. Skelly hopes to help all student athletes find their voice this election season and increase voter turnout among college students.
“I wanted to have an impact on this year’s election,” Skelly said. “Regardless of political beliefs, everyone deserves to be heard. The last election was determined by about half of the population, and I wanted to be a part of ensuring that everyone at Middlebury has the resources to participate this year.”
Part of Skelly’s job as a liaison involves recruiting her 11-person tennis team to partake in the MiDD Team Challenge, a student-led campaign designed to guide Panther teams through the election process this fall. The MiDD Team Challenge encourages students across campus to obtain voting achievements — represented by bronze, silver, gold or platinum awards — by signing pledges, spreading awareness and registering to vote. The bronze award is allotted to team members who have filled out the Midd Plan and the All In To Vote Pledge and registered to vote; each successive medal combines bronze-level achievements with additional goals, including assisting 10 other students with voter registration and attending one democratic engagement event, like MiddVotes’ Vote Early Party on McCullough lawn on Oct. 23.
“The MiDD Team Challenge sets goals for engagement and recognizes team achievements as we strive to reach every Middlebury student,” Hartnett said. “We hope more athletic teams will shoot for the silver and gold medals in the MiDD Team Challenge because it will influence more of the Middlebury community to get involved in their democratic engagement.”
So far, the SAAC has garnered full participation from 20 out of the 29 varsity teams. Hartnett and the SAAC recognize that there is still work to be done and hope to encourage the team with the lowest voter registration rate (66%) to match the percentage of other athletic teams. The challenges inhibiting 100% student athlete cooperation, Skelly suggests, might be related to Covid-19 precautions on campus that limit the number of in-person activities and education sources available.
“Honestly, it has been harder than I thought,” Skelly said. “Because of being more spread out due to Covid-19, we haven’t been as organized, and making videos [to spread information] has been challenging.”
Still, Skelly’s team has formed a collective plan for voting: applying for absentee ballots and signing the All In To Vote Pledge, an online form asking college students to make a public commitment to vote.
While Middlebury student athletes are certainly off to a strong start, their work remains unfinished. With the Nov. 3 date fast approaching, Hartnett provided guidance for how students can continue to shape the political atmosphere through voter participation and democratic engagement on campus.
“MiddVotes has created an incredible website that is extremely easy to navigate and find relevant voting information,” Hartnett said. She encouraged athletes to keep up the great work in the final days before the election.
(10/29/20 10:00am)
Right now, across the country, Americans are standing for hours in lengthy queues at their voting sites and mailing in their ballots to participate in this year’s election. More than 69.5 million voters have already cast their votes, an early voting turnout unrivaled in American electoral history. Students have made it clear that democratic participation is a priority: several student groups, including MiddVote and Middlebury Does Democracy, have led the way in motivating Middlebury students to engage in local politics and in national elections. The college, too, can play its part in removing barriers to participation by making Election Day a holiday for its students, faculty and staff.
Vermont has taken nearly every step possible to make sure voting is accessible. Residents enjoy same-day registration, lack of photo ID requirements, full suffrage for felons and, this year, automatic distribution of mail-in ballots. Now it’s time for Middlebury to show the same commitment. While many students have already mailed in their out-of-state ballots, declaring a college holiday would help ensure that every member of the community can cast a vote.
Given the short timeframe, it may be implausible to make Nov. 3 a holiday for Middlebury this year. However, faculty members who hold some power in this matter can elect to cancel class on Tuesday to encourage students to vote. Anyone with scheduling power has the responsibility to afford those beholden to them the opportunity to vote on Election Day.
Staff who have full-day shifts on Election Day are not afforded the opportunity to exercise their right to vote in person. Although unintentional, typical busy Tuesday work schedules present a barrier to democratic participation. Even if supervisors are able to rearrange the schedule for their staff — allowing some to vote on Election Day — having to request time off from work may be discouraging to some potential voters. The college should actively encourage staff to vote and intentionally introduce flexibility in work schedules on the day of the election.
In future cycles, as the challenges of the pandemic wane and many of us are required to return the polls, having the day off will be more important than ever. As voter suppression runs rampant across the United States, the college must use its influence to not only underscore the importance of voting but also to empower all members of the Middlebury community to participate in the election. Middlebury’s goal should be to increase voter turnout with every election cycle.
This year’s elections — from the top of the ballot to the bottom — feel like they matter more than those in years past. They matter to the students mailing their ballot back to their home state, to the students who cannot vote in this country and to all who will be taking time to visit their local polling place. Voting is a right, and barriers to exercising that right should be removed in any form they take.
If you have not already voted, you can vote in person on Nov. 3 at the Middlebury Recreation Center at 154 Creek Rd. Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m.
We will be taking a hiatus from publishing next week to give our members who intend to vote additional scheduling flexibility and to alleviate pressure during a particularly stressful time.
This editorial represents the opinions of the Middlebury Campus’s editorial board.
(10/29/20 9:56am)
Congressman Welch has represented Vermont in the House of Representatives as the state’s sole delegate since he was elected in 2006. After launching his career in politics during the civil rights era, Welch’s career has focused on energy efficiency, housing discrimination and bringing broadband to rural Americans. Looking toward a likely win in his re-election bid this year, The Campus sat down with the congressman to reflect on over a decade of work in the House.
Reflecting on over a decade in Congress, what do you consider to be your biggest accomplishment and why?
On climate change and economic recovery…
I think the biggest accomplishments that we had were clearly during the Obama years: it was the passage of the Affordable Care Act. I served on the Energy and Commerce Committee and I was very, very active in that effort. The biggest accomplishment in the House — but didn’t pass in the Senate — was the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, which we passed in that same session of Congress. That would have reduced emissions by 80% by 2050, and all of us are so disappointed that we lost that by one vote in the Senate. The last economic crisis, of course, was during the Obama Administration, when Wall Street collapsed and brought down Main Street. I played an active role in the American Recovery Act, which started to get us back on our feet.
I’ve been a leader on climate change issues. My role in the [Waxman-Markey bill] was to be the principal advocate for the energy efficiency aspects of that bill. Since then, I’ve been a champion in Congress on climate change, particularly the benefits of energy efficiency. I got involved in that when I was in the Vermont senate, and one of the things that I look back on with fond memories is the climate march that was organized by Bill McKibben when he was starting 350.org. He and Middlebury students led a march from Montpelier to Burlington in the election, back in 2006. I was one of the speakers at that original march.
How do you think we can build trust in politics again? Do you think politics have always been this divisive?
On Trump and social media...
[Politics] hasn’t been this divisive. Trump has embraced division as a tactic. One of his first acts as president was to ban people coming into this country on the basis of religion. That’s shocking. One of his policies was to separate children from families at the southern border — and I was one of the first members of Congress to go down there and witness that firsthand. I went to the Texas-Mexico border. And even today, we’ve learned that there are over 500 children where the government has no idea where their parents are. Trump plays racial politics to a degree that no one has ever seen. He won this election with three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, and he’s done everything that he can to intensify division rather than create unity since then.
There’s another issue here that will take significant thought and effort to overcome it, and that’s social media. What we see with the explosion of social media is an explosion of misinformation, of hate, of conspiracy theories — and it’s created a toxic, polluted atmosphere for dialogue about the problems that we collectively face. I think that’s a big challenge for our democracy. When there's no norms and no mutual respect, then it makes it much more difficult to find common ground.
That’s a big problem, and Trump is a master at understanding how this works and he exploited it and he was very successful at mowing down all of his Republican opponents in those primaries. This is a real challenge to our democracy.
On finding common ground with Republicans…
There’s two ways [to deal with partisanship] — personal and political. The personal way of dealing with it is that you show respect. You listen more than you talk. You look for where there’s common ground.
So, for example, I am a leader of the rural broadband caucus. I find ways of interacting where it’s about us trying to solve the challenges of the people who we represent. I have a colleague from West Virginia, [Rep.] David McKinley. He’s a Republican, and he is a good partner of mine when working on energy efficiency. On the other hand, he’s from coal country, and he attacks the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is causing a loss of coal jobs. I don’t agree with him on [attacking the EPA], but we agree on energy efficiency.
As a way of trying to build a relationship with him and show respect for the coal miners, I went to stay with him in his house in Harrison County, West Virginia, and we spent a day in a coal mine — we went down 900 feet and 4.5 miles in. We spent an afternoon being with coal workers who were working on a coal seam.
The point I was making was that I’m against coal [in that] I’m for clean energy, but I’m for the coal miners. Those coal miners did not create climate change. In fact, those coal miners are losing jobs, and they’re hard workers. I compared the coal miners to our dairy farmers as the hardest working people I’ve ever met. I saw how much that gave me an opportunity to be heard, by David and by many others who began to see that I’m advocating for clean energy, but it’s not because I’m against those coal miners. I’m against a lot of the coal company owners, but the miners are good people. That’s a way of showing personal respect and creating trust.
Institutionally is where Trump is pretty toxic. He is attacking institutions instead of building them up, instead of reforming them and strengthening them. When I say institutions, I mean everything from the court systems to the intelligence community to the EPA, where we have lost one-thousand scientists who have left in despair because of political manipulation. We have to build up our institutions and have trust in institutions to build trust in goals that are important to our society. So, on a personal level, it’s how you interact with people. On a political level, it’s a commitment to reforming, not destroying, institutions that we all need.
Do you have any fun stories from working in Congress for over a decade? What are some of your best days working in Congress?
On cheese (and getting the job done)...
One of my best days was when Mateo Kehler, who was the head of Jasper Hill Cheese, showed up at my office in D.C. in a t-shirt and cargo shorts. He was in a rage-slash-panic, because the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) just issued a rule that said cheesemakers could no longer store their cheese on wooden boards. Pretty crazy, because we have been storing cheese on wooden boards since the last supper. The background is that they did an inspection of a cheesemaking facility in upstate New York and found contaminated cheese, and there were woodboards there. As it turns out, the whole place was contaminated; it’s not that the boards were contaminated. [The cheesemaking facility in upstate New York] really had back practices and needed to be closed down, and they were. But the bad practices were the problem, not the use of wood.
So in any event, this would have been catastrophic for this award-winning cheese company, Jasper Hill. What do we do? So this was a while ago, when Paul Ryan was the chair of the Budget Committee. He’s Republican, and he and I don’t agree on anything. He represents Wisconsin, where they make a lot of cheese, and he and I used to kid a lot about who had better cheese. So, I went on the floor and found him, and I said ‘Paul, we got us a cheese problem.’ I explained it to him, and within a day, we called up the FDA to explain our problem. We said, ‘we’ve got a cheese problem, and you’re soon going to have a budget problem.’ And it got fixed.
It’s an only-in-Vermont story because you literally have this citizen, who is running this wonderful enterprise called Jasper Hill Cheese, show up unannounced in his t-shirt and cargo shorts to tell me what the problem was. It’s existential. And in a few days, it was solved. And it was solved in a significant part because I had a good pre-existing relationship with Paul Ryan, and I knew that, when it came to cheese and how it would affect Wisconsin cheese makers, Paul and I would be on the same page. It was an interesting combination of a Vermonter coming and dropping in and feeling completely comfortable in the office and asking for something that couldn’t be done, and we did it all in a couple of days.
On race and Representative John Lewis…
Another wonderful story: I got my start in politics in the civil rights movement. When I was in college, I dropped out of college to go to Chicago to work for a community organization that was fighting discriminatory housing. I dropped out of college for what would have been my junior year. I worked there, and then I returned to college, and then I returned to Chicago as a Robert Kennedy Fellow to resume my work when I got out [of college].
During what would’ve been my junior year in college, I went down to Atlanta to the Ebenezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King, at that time, was the pastor. And I was in the church, and he spoke. It was a powerful experience to be with him when he spoke in that church. And afterwards, I went upstairs when he had a press conference, and there were very few people there, and he was denouncing the Vietnam War. My whole beginnings in politics were inspired by the racial justice movements of the late 60s — the voting rights movement.
Fast forward, I’m in Congress and I had a colleague that I revered from afar for a long time, and that was [Rep.] John Lewis. We, in the House, were very frustrated that Speaker Paul Ryan would not take up any gun safety legislation. We protested on the floor, and I spent a good deal of time sitting on the floor next to John Lewis when we were protesting in Congress about gun violence. All of us who served with John regarded it as a special privilege to be with him and to be his colleague. That memory, of sitting on the floor of the House, next to John, is probably one of my favorite, most proud moments. His advocacy was [to] get in good trouble… cause good trouble.
Now we’re continuing with the effort to deal with the incredible racism in our county that is systemic and ingrained. With the leadership of the Black Congressional Caucus, we passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which, unfortunately, Senator [Mitch] McConnell won’t pass in the senate. That continuation of the opportunity to work on racial justice issues means a lot to me, and I really appreciate the work that the students at Middlebury are doing to bring attention to systemic racism and try to find practical ways to address it.
(10/29/20 9:54am)
“Your daughters are listening and absorbing that message right in front of your eyes,” a female narrator says over videos of President Donald Trump belittling female reporters and political opponents. The ad, titled “Girl in the Mirror,” is one of dozens aired by the Lincoln Project, a super PAC run by current and former Republicans who support Joe Biden in Tuesday’s presidential election.
The project is led by a powerhouse team of self-identified “Never Trumpers” including founders like Steve Schmidt, who managed the late Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008, and advisers like Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. To defeat Donald Trump, all hands are on deck — including a Vermont Democrat’s.
RC Di Mezzo is the Lincoln Project’s national press secretary, a Burlington resident and fresh off a job as the Communications Director for the Vermont Democratic Party (VDP).
Vermont politics
A 2018 St. Lawrence University graduate, Di Mezzo is young but has years of experience under his belt. He was working on the campaign of Letitia James in her successful bid for Attorney General of New York when he got the job offer in Vermont.
“There’s a natural relationship between that part of New York and Vermont,” said Di Mezzo, who grew up in the upstate town of Rome, N.Y.
As Communications Director, Di Mezzo led the party’s communications strategies and relationships with the media. “When you work for a state party, you work for all of the candidates and none of the candidates,” Di Mezzo said. This was especially true of Vermont, the only state besides New Hampshire to have gubernatorial elections every two rather than four years.
“There is a constant and perpetual state of election in Vermont, for better or for worse,” he said. “I’ll leave that up for others to decide whether that’s good for democracy.”
Di Mezzo’s first dip into the 2020 presidential race was as the Vermont state director for Michael Bloomberg’s short-lived presidential campaign in 2020. After Bloomberg’s exit from the race, Di Mezzo went back to work for the VDP before getting a call from the Lincoln Project.
The Lincoln Project
“When you’re running against Donald Trump, you don’t have the luxury of building out a plan and just hoping that it goes well, because he’s a nightmare,” Di Mezzo said in an interview with The Campus.
Di Mezzo was first hired to cover Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Maine. Over the last few months, Di Mezzo has shifted to a more national focus. “It’s certainly a different beast than handling the press corps in Vermont,” he said.
The Lincoln Project is taking a nearly Trumpian approach to hit the president where it hurts. From their own Twitter trolling to brutal television ads to a team of founders frequenting cable news, their goal is to be visible to the President and to persuade fellow disaffected Republicans to swing over to voting for Joe Biden.
“This isn’t about policy. This isn’t about what Joe Biden’s gonna do once he’s the president,” Di Mezzo said. “This is about making sure he becomes the president and making sure that Donald Trump’s enablers in the Senate are booted out, too.”
Working with Republicans
A Democrat going to work for a bunch of Republicans and independents may seem like an odd pairing, but this job is right up Di Mezzo’s alley. Before his journey to Democratic politics, Di Mezzo grew up as a Republican in a Republican family, so he understands how the Lincoln Project is a microcosm of this moment in politics.
“This is larger than partisanship; it is larger than one political affiliation,” he said. “Donald Trump is the single greatest threat to our country, to our democracy, perhaps ever.”
Di Mezzo acknowledges that after this election, he’ll put his “partisan cap” back on and do everything he can to elect Democrats across the country.
“But in this moment, it doesn’t matter what your political affiliation is,” he said. “If you’re against Donald Trump, you’re on my team.”
Vermont as an example of bipartisanship
Di Mezzo hopes that if the president is defeated, both parties can tone down their rhetoric and return to a sense of decency.
“Vermonters like to pride themselves on the state of their political discourse,” Di Mezzo said. “As a political communications operative, that can sometimes be frustrating.”
He says his New York style of “snark” with his criticisms of his opponents doesn’t always sit well in Vermont, as the distinctions between Democrats and Republicans are harder to identify. He points to how electing Governor Phil Scott, a moderate Republican, is only possible in a Democratic state with this type of respectful political discourse.
Di Mezzo hopes that this is the politics of the future, where “we can come together around a common goal of making Americans’ lives better, and we aren’t assuming motive, and we aren’t so quick to disagree.”
“To understand where somebody comes from and to understand what they bring to a policy debate is important, and it’s something that has been missing,” he said. “That’s the Democratic Party I hope I can have a hand in building.”
Editor’s Note: RC Di Mezzo agreed to speak with us as a private citizen of Vermont, not in his official capacity as press secretary for the Lincoln Project.
(10/22/20 10:00am)
For this week’s Throwback Thursday, we revisit two spectacular weekend performances by the women’s cross country team, led by Middlebury Hall of Fame inductee Karin Von Berg ’81. Not only did Von Berg start off with a 15th place finish in the Bonne Bell 10,000-meter mini marathon on Oct. 9, she also led the Panthers to victory at the Oct. 14 Cross Country NESCAC Championships.
Because she found Vermont to be “lacking in competition,” Von Berg traveled to Boston to compete in the Bonne Bell race against a field of 4,500 women from schools nationwide. North Carolina State’s star runner Joan Benoit ultimately took the gold, setting a road race world record with a time of 33:15. Although Von Berg ran with the top four finishers for the first two and a half miles, she eventually dropped back during the middle of the race. Most notably, she was passed by Duke University’s Ellison Groodall, who almost won the 1977 NCAA Cross Country Championships, and Marth Cooksey, who had the third-fastest marathon time of 1978. Von Berg herself crossed the finish line in an impressive 15th place with a time of 35:39.
Only one week later, at the NESCAC Championships, Von Berg took the lead from the very beginning and never looked back. She easily captured the NESCAC title with a 5K time of 20:50, setting a new course record and finishing an entire one minute and 19 seconds ahead of her teammate Alice Tower ’81, who took the silver medal. Fellow Panthers Tara McMenamy ’82 and Anne Leggett ’81 finished in 6th and 11th place, respectively.
According to the Oct. 19, 1978 edition of The Middlebury Campus, “although the NESCAC meet is not scored by teams, the Panthers showed that they were far and away the strongest squad in the conference” and captured the unofficial conference gold.
Von Berg later went on to win the 1979 Friehoffer’s National AAU 10K Championship, beating nearly 600 competitors and finishing with a personal best time of 34:26. She also won the 1,500- and 5,000-meter races at the 1979 NESCAC Track Championships, and her time of 4:28.9 in the 1,500 still stands as the current school and NESCAC meet record.
(10/22/20 9:57am)
Dean of Students Derek Doucet will be taking a leave of absence through the end of November, according to an email sent from the Office of the President on Oct. 14. AJ Place, associate dean for student life, will serve as acting Dean of Students in Doucet’s place. Place will oversee the Office of Community Standards, Student Activities and Residential Life. Kristy Carpenter, assistant director for residential life, will temporarily step into the role of associate dean for student life.
“Since I’m only stepping into this role temporarily, I’m trying to get up to speed on the work Dean Doucet was doing, which always has a bit of a learning curve,” Place said. “Overall it’s a challenging term for everyone, so continuing to help us as a community through the next few weeks is my main goal.”
Jennifer Sellers, dean of student life, will temporarily co-chair Community Council — a responsibility usually managed by the Dean of Students.
“I was more than happy to do it,” Sellers said. “I miss being in the classroom a lot this semester, so having a chance to talk more with students about issues, like on Community Council, just seemed like a wonderful thing.”
The Community Council’s first meeting was on Monday, Oct. 19. Sellers said she has no agenda of her own, but looks forward to hearing councilmembers’ concerns.
“I really do think it's a forum and a space for the people who applied to be on the council to advocate for what they thought were going to be issues of importance, and also to be able to vet those issues that are coming up organically in the moment,” Sellers said. “I imagine a lot is going to be around the issue of uniformed [Public Safety officers] on campus and how it might evolve in the future.”
The email also announced several updates to staff working on programming within the Student Life Office.
Jessica Holmes, professor of economics, will be stepping into a newly created role as student life advisor for remote students through the end of the 2020–21 academic year. Holmes said that the college recognized a need for greater support for remote learners and designated a point person so more resources would be available to those students.
“My goal is to find new ways to build community for our remote learners and help them stay connected to Middlebury,” Holmes wrote in an email to The Campus. “All of our students, no matter where they are living, are Middlebury students, and we want them to benefit from all that Middlebury has to offer.”
Holmes plans to gather student input in the coming weeks, with an upcoming survey to better understand the needs of remote learners. She also hopes to create a virtual student council to help design programming and a virtual student union page for remote learners to connect and engage with one another.
Robert Moeller, associate professor of psychology, will become the director of residential education and innovation as part of the college’s BluePrint residential experience, the group of residential changes that occurred after the commons system was put to an end last spring. Moeller previously co-led the college’s How Will We Live Together review of residential life at Middlebury with Doucet.
BluePrint is the college’s planned residential programming for building students’ communities and life skills. Moeller pointed to his research about mental health at Middlebury in past years through the “Student Stress & Social Life Study” and his work as the MiddCORE director — which features a significant life skills component — as experiences that informed his advocacy for residential programming.
“We are creating a residential community that reduces students’ experiences of stress and anxiety, celebrates our diversity and provides important life skills so that all students have equal access to the full Middlebury experience,” Moeller said in an email to The Campus.
Those life skills include relationship building, conflict resolution, time management, financial literacy, study skills, leadership development, identification, networking and careers explorations, so that students can live happier and healthier lives during and after college, according to Moeller.
He is working with the Student Government Association to develop life skills programming for students that will be available during J-Term and spring term, with a full rollout of BluePrint to follow in fall 2021. Residential programming will also be designed in collaboration with the college’s Task Force on Anti-racism to create a more equitable living and learning community.
“Every Middlebury student belongs here, and every student should have a clear set of paths available to them to experience the college’s mission — to live engaged, consequential, creative lives where they are prepared to contribute to their communities and address the world’s most challenging problems,” Moeller said.
Christal Brown, associate professor of dance, was recently appointed to head the college’s Task Force on Anti-racism and will meet with Student Life staff regularly to create anti-racist programming for all students, according to the email from the Office of the President.
(10/15/20 10:00am)
Vermont has become the first state to create a Covid-19 economic stimulus fund for residents previously unable to receive federal stimulus checks. Signed into law on Oct. 2 by Gov. Phil Scott, the program largely benefits undocumented immigrants and is projected to aid up to 5,000 Vermont residents.
The state approved $5 million to be distributed to those previously unable to receive federal aid, allocated in checks of $1,200 for adults and $500 for children.
Migrant Justice, a Burlington-based non-profit, proposed such a fund after undocumented families were excluded from early federal payments. “Today is a new day. Things are finally starting to change. Vermont is beginning to recognize us,” Migrant Justice tweeted in response to the news.
Up to 4,000 adults may benefit from the fund, as well as up to 1,000 children, as estimated by the Joint Fiscal Office of the Vermont General Assembly. Around 3,000 are thought to be undocumented immigrants, while others were unable to recieve federal benefits after filing taxes with an undocumented spouse.
The program is to be administered by the Agency of Administration, the Executive Director of Racial Equity and the Agency of Human Services.
Will Lambek, who works with Migrant Justice in Burlington, explained that the plan is largely the result of immigrant farm workers lobbying elected officials in Vermont. The workers, whom the state classified as “essential workers” during the early stages of the pandemic, were excluded from relief funds that benefited similar wage earners.
“Immigrant farm workers led a six-month campaign to push this proposal forward, ultimately convincing the Governor to include the idea in his budget proposal and the legislature to fully fund it,” Lambek said.
As the first state to enact such a program, Lambek is hopeful that Vermont will inspire other states to states to follow suit. “Vermont is sending a message that when we as a state respond to a crisis, the response must include everyone,” Lambek said.
Alondra Carmona ’21, President of the Juntos student organization on campus, stressed the unique ways the pandemic has especially affected farmworker communities. “They are exposed every day and will continue to be exposed because they do not have the means to take time off,” Carmona said.
For Carmona, the state’s fund is a critical step in the right direction. “Having this stimulus check will mean that these farmworkers will be receiving the support they should have been given since the beginning of the pandemic,” she said.
Despite the major victory, Migrant Justice continues to press forward to address more underlying issues affecting immigrant farmworkers in the state. One current project is the Milk with Dignity program to reform Vermont’s dairy industry.
“We urge Hannaford supermarkets to take responsibility for the conditions behind its store-brand milk and join the Milk with Dignity program,” Lambek said.
The bill was more than welcome news for members of Juntos and other supporters of the migrant farmworker community. Carmona explained the importance of the development and urged continued support. “We are happy to hear this news and hope that the Middlebury community can also provide social and financial support for this vulnerable population.”
(10/15/20 9:59am)
At Addison Central Teens (ACT), a local teen community center, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought about heart-wrenching moments while also revealing resilience and strength. ACT has provided support and programming for local teens since 2008. Its goal is to provide a space for teens to spend time with peers and do activities led by adults who are not there to discipline but rather to encourage, support and help them as they navigate adolescence. As with all aspects of life this year, the challenges presented by Covid-19 have had a pronounced impact on the center’s operations.
The center’s director, Cicilia Robison ’18, addressed the difficulties of operating throughout the pandemic in an interview with The Campus.
“It certainly hasn’t been the easiest thing we’ve ever done,” Robison said. “But kids are often more resilient than we think they will be.”
In a normal year, ACT has drop-in hours from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. every day after school. This year, ACT has added more drop-in times for remote learners: 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
“We provide free internet, a place [to work] not next to their parents and younger siblings who are all trying to do things remotely,” Robinson said. “[We provide] that kind of escape because families are definitely getting sick of each other.”
There have also been changes to the way ACT runs its programs. Nicholas Leslie ’19, who serves as the Youth Program and Engagement AmeriCorps Member for the center, described the new operations.
“I am now often the only person in the front,” Leslie said. “We limit the access to the games like air hockey, foosball, pool table. If they use the computer, it has to be for school work. Despite having a little bit less assistance, in some regards it’s been cool to have greater access for teens.”
Before the outbreak of Covid-19, Middlebury students often attended drop-in hours. ACT has historically had strong ties with the college, but the pandemic has impacted this relationship. Historically, around 16 students normally volunteer in-person, but none have been able to go to the center this semester due to Covid-19 safety restrictions that bar college students from interacting with the K-12 population.
“Typically, college students have volunteered during drop-in hours to make mentoring relationships, near peer relationships, and we don’t have a ton of other work outside of that. Other volunteering opportunities have been deep cleaning the center, but now we have a professional cleaner who comes in once a week, to make sure it’s extra clean for Covid-19,” Robison said.
Despite the challenges presented by the virus and the inability of Middlebury students to participate at this time, Robinson is optimistic that the pandemic has not changed Middlebury’s relationship with ACT and that all of its benefits to the kids will continue into the future.
“We’ve had volunteers and student workers since well before I got here, and I’m sure that will continue after I’m gone. It’s been really great to have those relationships with the college kids,” Robinson said.
Two Middlebury students are currently working with the center remotely. One student focuses on grant writing and the other runs a Dungeons & Dragons game. Playing games has always been one of the activities that ACT offers, and when Covid-19 forced a transition to completely remote work, the center adapted by moving as much programming online as possible. The center also updated its Linktree on Instagram to add a mix of educational and fun resources as well as tips for how to stay sane in a global pandemic.
ACT has been able to restart in-person activities recently, but they still offer many events at least partially online. With reopening, Robinson noted familiar challenges in organizing gatherings.
“It really is about making sure the kids keep their masks on, and they’ve struggled with the physical distancing aspect as well,” Robinson said, “By the time kids are done with school they've had their masks on for many many hours,” she said, explaining that in Vermont, where Covid-19 case numbers have remained low, it’s hard to convince the teens of the importance of mask wearing.
Robinson also noted the psychological challenges that social distancing poses to adolescents at the center.
“[The kids] want to give their friends hugs, and it’s hard to tell them they can’t hug their friends they haven’t seen in six months. It’s heart-wrenching to pull kids away, especially when they have less affectionate parents and their friends are the place they get affection,” Robinson said.
Still, connections are a central part of the teen center experience. The center runs LGBTQIA and other groups both online and in-person. Soon, Middlebury students will be helping the center by leading a food education workshop through Midd’s Nutrition Outreach and Mentoring (NOM) Club over Zoom. Mikayla Humiston, a resources development and volunteer coordinator through AmeriCorps at the center, hopes that this engagement will help teens learn to cook nutritious meals and lead healthier lives.
ACT will host a Haunted Trail on October 23 and 24. It is free and open to all, with a suggested donation of five dollars to support the teen center. For anyone interested in visiting the haunted trail, designed by teens, there are two sessions each night. The first is from 7 p.m. to 8:15 p.m., and the second is from 8:45 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Although Middlebury students cannot come to the center at this time, emails with ideas or questions for the center are always welcome. Their email address can be found on their website.
(10/08/20 9:58am)
I serve as co-convener of the Hamilton Forum this year, as the Forum’s director is on sabbatical. Last week, the Forum hosted an event with a leading American historian and a leading political theorist to discuss the relationship of slavery to the American founding. Although over 200 individuals attended the event on Zoom, many will have only heard of it through various social media posts and letters written before the event occurred. Therefore, some background may be helpful.
Last August, the 1619 Project was released. It is a thought-provoking, engaging collection of essays in the “New York Times Magazine” that seeks to re-center slavery in broader society’s mental map of American political development. It took a while, but I read every essay in the collection and found it a really rewarding exercise. Within the 1619 Project, I found some essays and passages more effective than others. For example, I was fascinated and persuaded by Jeneen Interlandi’s essay on health care and also thought Nikita Stewart’s piece on slavery in public education was great, but I found Matthew Desmond’s essay on capitalism to be overly reductive and unpersuasive (despite loving his book “Evicted”). It seemed to me that other people would also have parts of the collection that they liked better and parts that they were more critical of, and so it was a collection around which enlightening conversation and good-faith disagreement could be had. This was a factor that suggested to me that a public event could be held on this topic without garnering any significant protest.
Since the 1619 Project came out, it has had a wide range of defenders as well as a wide range of critics. One set of those critics is represented in the 1776 Unites Project. This project is a collection of essays by a group of scholars and public intellectuals pushing back against the 1619 Project. The group is predominantly African-American and features some very highly acclaimed academics, including Glenn Loury of Brown and John McWhorter of Columbia. Whereas the essays in the 1619 Project argued that America was built top-to-bottom on slavery, the 1776 Project essays argued that slavery was something that America did but not something that was in America’s soul. In essence, the 1776 Project argues that although slavery was a terrible crime that America committed, it was not who America was. As best I can tell, the 1776 Unites Project has not been on the receiving end of any significant protests of any kind. It is considered a serious part of a national conversation.
Historical memory is foundational to nation-building and so it goes without saying that historical memory is part of political dialogue. These two collections of essays argue over the meaning and legacy of slavery, America’s political founding and subsequent political development. Such debates can be healthy, educative and invigorating.
I’m sure there are some people who are staunchly opposed to the perspective presented by the 1776 Unites Project just as there are certainly those who are staunchly opposed to the perspective presented by the 1619 Project. I tend to think that it would be wholly inappropriate for me to tell either the Black scholars associated with the 1619 Project or the Black scholars associated with the 1776 Project that their views are beyond the pale or out of bounds. That kind of boundary policing of scholars who are in good standing within the profession is also deeply illiberal. Since neither of those sets of views are genuinely out of bounds, it is my responsibility as a teacher to present both viewpoints so that students may think through these matters themselves. This is what led to the title “1619 or 1776: Was America Founded on Slavery?” The title was, in essence, inviting us to consider this serious disagreement between the 1619 Project and the 1776 Unites Project.
In the late spring of this year, my colleague and friend Keegan Callanan asked if I’d be willing to be a co-convener of the Hamilton Forum for the academic year of 2020–21 since he would be at Princeton for the year. It seemed like fun, engaging work so I said yes. In July, Professor Callanan and I discussed potential Hamilton Forum topics for the fall semester. I suggested that a discussion around the 1619 Project, with a defender of the project and a critic of the project, would be a high-level educational event. It would be about the founding of the country, which is a major part of the Hamilton Forum’s remit. It would have viewpoint diversity, which is an important part of a liberal arts education, and it would be on a topic that was both timely and of significant interest to students. (Nikole Hannah-Jones, the producer of the 1619 Project, spoke at Middlebury to a packed audience earlier this year.)
We then set about finding the best speakers for the two slots. Leslie Harris, Professor of History and African American Studies at Northwestern, was a clear choice. A leading scholar of slavery, she was one of the fact-checkers that worked closely with the 1619 Project and has an extremely impressive academic record. In 2016, Professor Harris visited Middlebury at President Patton’s invitation to help us begin a new institutional conversation about race.
As we turned to identify a critic of the 1619 perspective, a natural choice was Lucas Morel, Professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University. A gifted teacher, he has published widely on Abraham Lincoln, Ralph Ellison, Frederick Douglass and race in America. His criticisms of the 1619 Project are grounded in his study of Lincoln and have been amongst the most thoughtful criticisms of the project.
Harris leans left politically, just like many prior Hamilton Forum guests such as Bill Galston, Randall Kennedy and Michael Kazin. Morel is a conservative, just like many prior Hamilton Forum guests such as Bill Kristol, Ross Douthat and Jean Yarbrough. Both are serious thinkers.
As it happens, my own views tend to more closely align with those of Leslie Harris. I’m a liberal, in both the classic sense of the term and in the contemporary association with the political left in America. Less than two months ago, I wrote an article for The Middlebury Campus, “In Search of Peace and Justice,” that openly and directly argued for more monuments like The National Memorial for Peace and Justice that advance a 1619-aligned political narrative. I am one of the faculty members who signed the open letter that calls for removing cops from Middlebury’s campus and for fundamentally rethinking the posture of Public Safety. I really like the 1619 Project and I think that everyone should read it. In the broad scope of American politics, I am no one’s idea of a conservative. But I am a liberal who believes in viewpoint diversity and in listening to people I do not agree with.
All that being said, I like Lucas Morel and have learned from him even if I don’t always agree with him. Dr. Harris herself volunteered during her final question that Dr. Morel had made points that she would like to think about more. If as a campus we’ve gotten to the point where we can’t listen to people like Lucas Morel, we’ve gone radical and illiberal. If Leslie Harris, one of America’s leading historians of slavery, can learn something from Morel, so can we. We have to be able to have these kinds of important but challenging conversations across political difference.
There are two groups who do not want these dialogues across disagreement, like our event this past Thursday, to happen. The first group are populist nationalists. They have a very simple relationship to this country: unblinking patriotism. To them, any meaningful discussion of America’s great sins (slavery, ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, Japanese internment) must be stamped out because it might lead people to not be unblinkingly patriotic, and to them, lack of patriotism is a kind of thought crime that has to be prevented. They thus want the 1619 Project banned from educational curricula. The second group who do not want these conversations are radical super-leftists. They too have a very simple relationship to this country: they see it as rotten to the core. To them, any defense of the U.S. founding or political traditions are tantamount to racism. To them, those defenses have to be stamped out because eradicating them is necessary to eradicate oppression. They thus see any criticism of the 1619 Project as emerging from bad faith, if not outright prejudice.
It seemed to me that this event we were putting on was pretty squarely in defiance of both of those extremes. I think most of us, here at Middlebury and in the country more broadly, are neither radical super-leftists nor MAGA nationalists. A lot of us, including myself, have a very complicated relationship with this country. We have a deep-seated urge to be proud of this country, but we’re not stupid enough or callous enough to not see the enormity of America’s sins, both past and present. It seemed to me that this event would be quite appealing to that broad middle. It seems to me, even now, that catering to either the MAGA nationalists or to the radical super-leftists compromises the core commitments of liberalism, viewpoint diversity and dialogue across difference that are at the heart of a liberal arts education. This event seemed to me to be in the best traditions of those liberal arts commitments.
At the end of the event on Thursday, I asked Professors Harris and Morel how they would respond to criticism of the event. Their answers were clear and direct regarding the need to maintain dialogue across difference. If you did not get a chance to hear their answers to that question, I invite you to watch the talk, which is now on the Alexander Hamilton Forum website.
It seems to me that some of those who voiced concerns before the event may have misunderstood what the event was about and where it was coming from intellectually. There was a big difference between what some people seemed to think we were trying to do with this event and what we were actually trying to do with this event. Such a misunderstanding is regrettable. But if some understood us perfectly well and simply feel that everyone who disagrees with any aspect of the 1619 Project — no matter how thoughtful and well-informed — is beyond the pale, then I hate to say it but we are in a disagreement that will not be easy to get around.
Finally, I want to reiterate that I am committed to liberalism and to viewpoint diversity, but I am also committed to working constructively with other members of our community, particularly students. I value you all and I want the best for you all. Even if you are angry with me and even if you yell at me, I am rooting for you to achieve your ambitions and I am rooting for you to be able to become the kind of person that you want to be.
Gary Winslett is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and a co-convener of the Alexander Hamilton Forum.
(10/08/20 9:58am)
On this day 37 years ago, a rather injury-battered Middlebury football team resiliently came away with a 16–3 victory over Amherst. The squad was without two starters: junior Rob Bredahl ’85 (just coming off winning Eastern College Athletic Conference Player of the Week) and senior Ken Rapuano ’84. To add to this loss, Amherst came into action riding an 11-game winning streak.
However, Middlebury betrayed no signs of intimidation. On the opening offensive series, Jon Peterson ’86 picked up a huge block, allowing Martin Beatty ’84 to cut behind, avoid several tacklers and ultimately complete a 70-yard run for the touchdown. Peterson secured the extra point, and — 17 seconds into action — the Panthers already led 7–0. Middlebury remained on top when a bad snap over Peterson, recovered in the end zone by Amherst, caused an off-sides penalty. Amherst didn’t score here, but they would cut the lead to 7–3 later on with a 36-yard field goal by Bob Foote. With 15 seconds remaining before halftime, Peterson would respond with a 36-yard field goal of his own, and the Panthers had their seven-point advantage back going into the break.
The second half kicked off with another penalty against Amherst. Receiver Neal Ringquist ’84 fumbled an Amherst punt in his own territory, but a clipping penalty got Middlebury off the hook once again. Middlebury proceeded with a successful drive led by quarterback Tom Mahon ’84 (6–11, 56 yards). Peterson was again in the thick of the action, going on several productive drives, and Beatty and Andy Varney ’84 were both on the tail end of important completions. Peterson’s 2-yard dive made it 16–3, and although the extra point was missed, Middlebury held a very comfortable lead that they never relinquished. The defense stifled any hopes Amherst had for a comeback bid as John Good ’84 picked up several sacks, and Midd’s defensive secondary of Ringquist, Erin Quinn ’86, Andy Lawlor ’85 and Chris Pierson ’84, overwhelmed Amherst’s offense. Even with 33 pass attempts, their offense was shut down. Pierson picked up a key interception, and Quinn broke up three long passes. Although Middlebury led an excellent offensive start, their defense led them to victory.
The 1983 Middlebury football team went on to finish the season at 6–2. Ringquist would topple the single-season interception record with seven catches, and the career interception record with 16. Mahon broke several records for Middlebury quarterbacks with his marvelous season.
(10/08/20 9:53am)
Middlebury students are navigating all-new or altered absentee voting systems ahead of the general election on Nov. 3. Although absentee voting is hardly new to college campuses, the pandemic has ignited nationwide debate about mail-in voting systems. Many states have expanded voting options for the 2020 election cycle because of safety concerns during the pandemic, but implementation varies significantly from state to state.
Lily Shannon ’23 registered in Tennessee last year, but was unable to vote in the Mar. 3 primary because of a state rule stipulating that voters who register online or by mail must vote in person their first time. The law affects mostly young voters and was temporarily halted by a federal judge in September, partly because of Covid-19 concerns. Still, absentee rules for the upcoming election are not always clear.
“There are all these rules — like it says you can email your ballot request in, but then on another website it says you can’t — so it’s really confusing. Then there’s three addresses to send your ballot to just in my county alone, so I don’t know which one I’m supposed to send it to,” Shannon said.
Many students are voting from Middlebury for the first time, trying to meet deadlines and adjust to an unfamiliar mail system. Policy changes at the U.S. Postal Service coupled with the pandemic led to nationwide mail slowdowns this summer, with Vermont experiencing some of the worst delays for long-distance mail in the nation.
“I haven’t mailed anything from here yet, so this will be my first time and that’s kind of nerve-wracking. I’m confident in my ability to do it, but it’s crazy that this is the first time,” Brianna Beach ’23 said.
Several students expressed anxiety about sending absentee ballots and not all were confident their votes will end up being counted.
“I was expecting to receive my local and state primary ballot... but that ballot got lost in the mail, and I had to go in person to re-request it. When it finally did come I had to hand it in day-of, which wasn’t going to be my intent with requesting an absentee ballot,” said Sophie Johnson ’22, who is registered to vote in New Hampshire.
Johnson was concerned that her ballot for the general election would also get lost. She visited her city hall before beginning her pre-arrival quarantine in August, trying to verify that her ballot would go to the right address in Middlebury.
“I had to call twice since coming to college — and now I think that my information is accurate and up to date — but it was a lot of phone tag,” Johnson said. “I still haven’t received my ballot, whereas one person I know from New Hampshire has received theirs and voted already, which makes me nervous that my ballot won’t get here in time.”
Beach, who votes in Georgia, also ran into issues during the primary. Georgia’s presidential primary was initially scheduled for March 24, shortly after Middlebury students were sent home because of the pandemic.
“It was a big hassle coming home. I know there was limited polling and a lot of stuff closed, and I had to figure out getting rid of my absentee ballot which I had requested in order to do it in person because I had missed the deadline,” Beach said.
Now she is voting from Middlebury for the first time.
“I’ve been really anxious about deadlines for requesting my absentee ballot, because it’s just not something I’m super familiar with,” Beach said. “I feel confident in being able to vote, but I definitely have been thinking about the way the virus is going to impact everything in Georgia.”
Even though students are eligible to vote in Vermont, Shannon chose to vote in Tennessee because the state leans Republican and she feels her vote can do more there.
“I still obviously am going to try to vote… but whether it be some miniscule fault of mine that they count as invalid, it not getting there on time, or just being lost, I definitely don’t think [my ballot] will be counted,” Shannon said.
Five states — Oregon, Washington, Utah, Hawaii and Colorado — conduct all-mail elections, in which voters automatically receive a mail-in ballot and limited in-person voting is available the day of the election.
“I had already set up receiving my ballots over email in previous semesters, so nothing changed at all. I still got an email with my ballot, I just have to print it off,” said Anika Heilweil ’21, who votes in Utah.
Nevada, California, Vermont, and New Jersey will join those states for the 2020 election and send mail-in ballots to all registered voters by default. Over a dozen states will also automatically send an application for a mail-in ballot to registered voters.
Many states have also implemented no-excuse absentee voting for the 2020 election cycle, meaning that voters do not need to have an approved excuse to vote absentee. These excuses typically include a voter being outside of the county they are registered in, working a shift during the times the polls are open, physical disabilities or being over 65 years of age. Others have maintained that voters must have an excuse to vote absentee, but have expanded the approved list of excuses to include concerns about vulnerability to Covid-19. Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Indiana will require an excuse beyond a fear of Covid-19.
College students residing outside of the state they are registered in are included in the excused reasons for voting absentee. Middlebury students are eligible to vote in Vermont and can register as late as the day of the election to vote absentee.
Despite the added challenges of voting this year, students were committed to voting in the general election.
“I’ve been getting a lot of texts for canvassing and reminders to register, and this year it feels like people are really pushing for people to vote — more than ever before,” Beach said.
States have different deadlines for registering, requesting absentee ballots, and returning absentee ballots. Some have deadlines based on when mail is postmarked while others have deadlines for when mail is received. Certain states may also require a notarized ballot. Ongoing legal battles may change deadlines for registration and absentee ballot submission in several states. Information on how to vote in your state is available on state government websites or from non-partisan organizations such as vote.org. All listed dates and hours are in local time zones.
ALABAMA
Incumbent Democrat Doug Jones is facing strong opposition from Republican challenger Tommy Tuberville, making the state one of the few with a senate seat likely to flip from a Democrat to a Republican.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 19
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 29.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked one day before Election Day and received by noon on Election Day.
ALASKA
No close statewide or federal races.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 4
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 24.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 13.
ARIZONA
Arizona has voted for a Republican every year since 1952 except for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential run, but many believe it is likely to flip in favor of Joe Biden this year. Arizona also has one of the most hotly contested senate races, between Republican Martha McSally and Democrat Mark Kelly.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 5
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by 5 p.m. on Oct. 23.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received no later than 7 p.m. on Election Day.
ARKANSAS
The Democratic candidate for Senate in Arkansas dropped out, leaving incumbent Republican Tom Cotton (who is heavily favored to win) and Libertarian candidate Ricky Dale Harrington Jr. the two major names on the ballot.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 5
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 27.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day.
CALIFORNIA
California has no elections for senate or governor this cycle, but congressional districts CA-21, held by a Democrat, and CA-25, held by a Republican, are considered toss-ups. The state is automatically sending mail-in ballots to voters.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 19
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Automatically sent to all registered voters.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 20.
COLORADO
Colorado has a close senate race between former governor and presidential candidate John Hickenlooper and incumbent Republican Cory Gardener. Colorado conducts elections by mail.
Registration deadline: Received by Oct. 26
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Automatically sent to all registered voters. The deadline to submit a mailing address change for ballots is at least eight days before Election Day.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 7:00 P.M. on Election Day.
CONNECTICUT
No close statewide or federal races.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 27
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Applications automatically sent to all registered voters. Deadline to apply is one day before Election Day, but recommended at least seven days before Election Day.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 8 p.m. on Election Day.
DELAWARE
No close statewide or federal elections.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 10
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 30.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 8 p.m. on Election Day.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Although D.C. residents cannot vote in presidential elections, there are several local elections occurring.
Registration deadline: Received by Oct. 13
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Automatically sent to all registered voters. Submit a mailing address change for ballots to be sent to at least seven days before Election Day.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election day and received by Nov. 13.
FLORIDA
Florida is likely to be one of the closest states in the presidential election, and has a close congressional race in the Democrat-held FL-26.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 5
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Postmarked by 5 p.m. on Oct. 24
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 7 p.m. on Election day
GEORGIA
Georgia has two close senate seats up for election, between Democrat Jon Ossof and incumbent Republican David Perdue, and between incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler and a broad field of special election challengers. The state is a toss-up for the presidential election.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 5
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 30.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 7 p.m. on Election Day.
HAWAII
Conducts elections by mail.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 5
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Automatically sent to all registered voters. The deadline to submit a mailing address change for ballots is at least seven days before Election Day.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 7 p.m. on Election Day
IDAHO
No close statewide or federal races.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 9
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by 5 p.m. on Oct. 23.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 8 p.m. on Election Day.
ILLINOIS
The IL-13 congressional district leans in favor of incumbent Republican Rodney Davis.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 6
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 29.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received no later than Nov. 17.
INDIANA
A congressional seat in the IN-05 is open and is a toss-up that leans slightly in favor of Republicans.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 5
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 22.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by noon on Election Day.
IOWA
Iowa has a surprisingly close senate race, in one of the reddest states with the potential to elect a Democrat this cycle. Incumbent Republican Joni Ernst faces a tough challenge from Democrat Theresa Greenfield. The IA-01, IA-02, and IA-03 are also all congressional seats held by Democrats that have the potential to flip to Republicans.
Registration deadline: Received by Oct. 24
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by 5 p.m. on Oct. 24.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Nov. 2 and received by Nov. 9.
KANSAS
Democratic challenger Barbara Bollier has an uphill battle to the senate seat against incumbent Republican Roger Marshall, but has drawn on her credentials as a doctor to make this seat competitive.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 13
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 27.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received no later than Nov. 6.
KENTUCKY
Although Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is almost certain to win his re-election bid, Amy McGrath has mounted a serious campaign against him.
Registration deadline: Received by Oct. 5
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 9.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 6.
LOUISIANA
No close statewide or federal elections.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 4
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 30.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 2.
MAINE
Democratic challenger Sara Gideon seems poised to defeat incumbent Republican Susan Collins, in a state that favors Biden but could split some electoral votes in favor of Trump.
Registration deadline: Received by Oct. 19
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 29.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by Election Day.
MARYLAND
No close statewide or federal elections.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 13
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 20.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day, received by 10 a.m. on Nov. 13.
MASSACHUSETTS
No close statewide or federal elections.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 24
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 28.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 6.
MICHIGAN
All eyes have been on Michigan this election, since the state unexpectedly went for Donald Trump in 2016 by the narrowest margin of victory in the nation. It seems likely to flip back in favor of Biden this year. The senate race leans in favor of Democratic incumbent Gary Peters over Republican John James, and is one of the only senate seats currently held by a Democrat that is competitive. Several congressional districts are competitive, including the MI-03, M-06, MI-08 and MI-11.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 19
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by 5 p.m. on Oct. 30.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received on or before Election Day, pending ongoing lawsuit.
MINNESOTA
Although Trump did not win Minnesota, this was another state where he outperformed polls and came much closer to a victory than predicted. Some say this is one of the only states that could flip in favor of the president, but polls put Biden ahead by a relatively wide margin. Tina Smith, Democratic incumbent who is likely but not guaranteed to hold her senate seat, is also up for re-election. Competitive house races are the MN-01, MN-02 and MN-07.
Registration deadline: Received by Oct. 13
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received one day before Election Day but recommended at least seven days before Election Day.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 10.
MISSISSIPPI
Democrat Mike Espy has run a tough campaign, but incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith looks likely to keep her senate seat.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 5
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: No specific deadline, recommended at least seven days before Election Day.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 10.
MISSOURI
Missouri has a somewhat competitive gubernatorial race between incumbent Republican Mike Parson and Democrat Nicole Galloway, and one competitive house race in the MO-02.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 7
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 21.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 7 p.m. on Election Day.
MONTANA
Montana is another deep red state with a competitive senate race, where current Democratic governor Steve Bullock is running against incumbent Republican Steve Daines. Montana’s open gubernatorial race between Democrat Mike Cooney and Republican Greg Gianforte is also close. Gianforte’s current position as the at-large representative for Montana leans slightly in favor of Republican candidate Matt Rosendale, but Democrat Kathleen Williams has polled ahead of him in recent weeks.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 26 and received by Oct. 29.
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by noon on Nov. 2, but recommended at least seven days before Election Day.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 8 p.m. on Election Day.
NEBRASKA
No close statewide or federal elections.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 16
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 23.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by Election Day.
NEVADA
The Democrat-held NV-03 is strongly favored to remain with Democrats, but is competitive.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 6
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Automatically sent to all registered voters.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 10.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Incumbents are favored in all the New Hampshire races except for president, with Democrat Jeanne Shaheen heavily favored to be re-elected to the senate, the Democrat Chris Pappas likely to be re-elected in the NH-01, and Republican Chris Sununu likely to be re-elected in the gubernatorial race.
Registration deadline: Varies by county, with earliest deadlines on Oct. 21
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Nov. 2.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 5 p.m. on Election Day.
NEW JERSEY
New Jersey has competitive house races in the NJ-02, NJ-03 and NJ-07.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 13
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Automatically sent to all registered voters.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received by 8 p.m. on Nov. 10.
NEW MEXICO
The Democrat-held NM-02 is a competitive toss-up that leans slightly in favor of the incumbent.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 6
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 20.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 7 p.m. on Election Day.
NEW YORK
The state has several competitive congressional districts, including the NY-01, NY-02, NY-11, NY-22 and NY-24.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 9 and received by Oct. 14.
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Postmarked by Oct. 27, but recommended at least 15 days before Election Day.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 10.
NORTH CAROLINA
North Carolina went for Trump in 2016 and is a toss-up again in this election. Incumbent Republican Thom Tillis and Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham are in a close race for the senate seat, and the state’s gubernatorial election leans slightly in favor of incumbent Democrat Roy Cooper over Republican Dan Forest. The NC-08 seat leans in favor of its Republican incumbent but is competitive.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 9
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by 5:00 P.M. on Oct. 27.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received no later than 5 p.m. on Nov. 6.
NORTH DAKOTA
No close statewide or federal elections.
Registration deadline: Does not require registration.
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Nov. 2, but recommended at least seven days before Election Day.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Nov. 2 and received by Nov. 9.
OHIO
Ohio has shifted more Republican in recent years but is a toss-up between Trump and Biden. The Republian-held OH-01 is a competitive toss-up.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 5
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by noon on Oct. 31, but Oct. 27 or earlier is recommended.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Nov. 2 and received by Nov. 13.
OKLAHOMA
The Democrat-held OK-05 is a competitive toss-up.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 9
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received seven days before Election Day.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 7 p.m. on Election Day.
OREGON
The Democrat-held OR-04 leans in favor of the incumbent but is competitive.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 13
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Automatically sent to registered voters. Submit address change at least five days before Election Day.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 8:00 P.M. on Election Day.
PENNSYLVANIA
Pennsylvania is a state Biden will almost certainly have to win for an electoral college majority, which he is slightly favored to do. The state has several competitive congressional districts, including the PA-01, PA-07, PA-08, PA-10, and PA-17.
Registration deadline: Received by Oct. 19
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 27.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received by 5 p.m. on Nov. 6.
RHODE ISLAND
No close statewide or federal elections.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 4
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by 4 p.m. on Oct. 13.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 8 p.m. on Election Day.
SOUTH CAROLINA
Incumbent Republican Lindsey Graham looks likely to hold his senate seat against the strong challenge from Democrat Jaime Harrison, but the race has been close for South Carolina. The SC-01 leans slightly in favor of its Democratic incumbent.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 5
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by 5 p.m. on Oct. 24.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 7 p.m. on Election Day.
SOUTH DAKOTA
No close statewide or federal elections.
Registration deadline: Received by Oct. 19
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Nov. 2, but recommended at least seven days before Election Day.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by Election Day.
TENNESSEE
No close statewide or federal elections.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 5
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 27.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by Election Day.
TEXAS
Although the state leans heavily Republican, recent Texas polls generally show Biden and Trump in a statistical tie. Incumbent Republican senator John Cornyn is likely to hold his seat but has seen a strong challenge from Democrat M.J. Hegar. The state has several competitive congressional districts, including TX-03, TX-07, TX-10, TX-21, TX-22, TX-23 and TX-24.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 5
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 23.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 4.
UTAH
The UT-04, held by a Democrat, is a toss-up.
Registration deadline: Received by 5 p.m. on Oct. 23
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Ballots automatically sent to all registered voters. Submit an address change at least seven days before Election Day.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked one day before Election Day. Reception deadline varies by county.
VERMONT
Vermont allows voters to register up to and through Election Day and will mail a ballot to all registered voters in 2020. Middlebury students are eligible to vote in the state of Vermont.
Registration deadline: Received by Nov. 3
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Nov. 2 but recommended at least seven days before Election Day.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 7 p.m. on Election Day.
VIRGINIA
The VA-02, VA-05 and VA-07 are competitive house races.
Registration deadline: Received by Oct. 13
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 23.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received by noon on Nov. 6.
WASHINGTON
The house race in WA-03 is likely to go in favor of incumbent Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler but is competitive.
Registration deadline: Received by Oct. 26
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Automatically sent to all registered voters. Contact the county elections department to request a ballot be forwarded to a different address.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by election day and received by Nov. 23.
WEST VIRGINIA
No close statewide or federal elections.
Registration deadline: Received by Oct. 13
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Oct. 28.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 9.
WISCONSIN
Trump won Wisconsin by less than one percent in 2016, and it is one of the competitive states Biden will likely need to win to receive a majority in the electoral college. The WI-03 is likely to re-elect Democrat Ron Kind.
Registration deadline: Postmarked by Oct. 14, though this may change due to an ongoing lawsuit.
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by 5 p.m. on Oct. 29.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 8 p.m. on Election Day, with possible extensions due to an ongoing lawsuit that is likely to be appealed.
WYOMING
No close statewide or federal elections.
Registration deadline: Received by Oct. 19
Deadline to request an absentee ballot: Received by Nov. 2 but recommended at least seven days before Election Day.
Deadline to turn in ballot: Received by 7 p.m. on Election Day.
Unless otherwise noted, registration deadlines are for registering by mail. Some states offer online registration options, but deadlines may differ from mail-in registration.
Some voter registration and absentee ballot rules may change due to ongoing legal battles in several states.
Sources for race ratings include FiveThirtyEight’s senate election forecast, 270toWin’s house ratings table and interactive map, 270toWin’s presidential election consensus electoral map, CNN’s race ratings map, the Cook Political Report’s house and senate race ratings and the Cook Political Report’s governor race ratings.
News Editor Abigail Chang ’23 contributed reporting.
(10/01/20 9:59am)
Known for their notable alumni and hand-picked selections, the annual Sundance Film Festival has long established itself as a place to discover up-and-coming filmmakers. This year, the festival’s self-assembled short film tour was virtually presented to Middlebury students by the Hirschfield International Film Series. Going into the tour, I wasn’t sure what to expect, especially with my limited knowledge of short films. Apprehension aside, I sat down, shut off the lights to simulate a theatre experience, and pressed play.
‘Benevolent Ba’
The first of six, “Benevolent Ba” opened up with Michael Jackson’s disclaimer for his “Thriller” music video: “Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult.” Including the disclaimer was fitting, too: the next shots introduce us to the deeply spiritual and haunting story set on a verdant hillside in Malaysia. The sky is overcast and a family pulls their car to a halt, arguing about sacrificing a goat. Director Diffan Norman creates a film rich with dark humor as the group descends into frenzied discussion, arguing about who will carry out the slaughter. Smooth camera pans expertly utilize the environment’s gloom. In many ways, the film pays homage to “Thriller.” With bated breath and hoarse screams, “Benevolent Ba” creates a sense of sorrow and fear. But where the film hits its stride is precisely where it lost me. In the hodgepodge of offbeat humor, horrific elements and biblical references, I became confused by its direction. While nicely shot and indeed thrilling, “Benevolent Ba” hit the right notes emotionally but left my thoughts overloaded.
‘Hot Flash’
Following the horror piece was the animated short “Hot Flash,” directed by Thea Hollatz. Gorgeously done, this short film jumps from one pastel palette to another, cleverly using minimal, cute figures. We’re following Ace, a weather reporter, who from the start is struck by a sudden and aggressive hot flash. She soon finds herself in the bathroom, airing her privates over a fan. There aren’t many films that show that type of scene, and even fewer animated shorts that do. But I felt that animation was the best medium for its witty and fun elements. For a short, quippy film like “Hot Flash,” watching Ace’s troubles with hot flashes are odd yet fun to see play out.
‘The Deepest Hole’
“The Deepest Hole” is third on the setlist, showing us the lesser-known aspect of a political race between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Can you guess what the race was about? That’s right, diggin’ the deepest hole! Hearing the voice-overs and seeing the animations of drilling, I very much felt as if the era were completely contrived. Voiced by Rosalind Fell, the film chronicles the descent into the race through flashing lights and a theory of discovering hell itself. “The Deepest Hole” is every part as wild as it sounds, so I’d suggest you come prepared.
‘Meats’
Fourth on the list is “Meats.” I’m not going to lie — I spent the first minute trying to figure out where I knew the lead actress from. It turned out to be Ashley Williams, a familiar face from the 2000s sitcom “How I Met Your Mother.” This observation made watching the film all the more interesting. With a different character in mind, I was pleasantly surprised to see Williams, who both directs and stars in the piece, in her own realm. “Meats” focuses on the tumultuous dynamic between a butcher and a pregnant vegan craving meat. The short is honest, not shying away from depicting the reality of butchering in an angry, conflicted monologue presented by Williams. I wasn’t sure if it was trying to be particularly self-aware or satirical, given the stereotypical vegan jokes sprinkled throughout. On the rollercoaster of somber to aggravated, I think the film’s ride does raise a lot of questions and moral dilemmas.
‘T’
“T,” our fifth film, follows several designers and models as they prepare for their annual T Ball in Miami, where costumes are created and worn to honor their dead. This was probably the most emotional film of the lot: topical and beautiful. We see the careful process of creating designs, with one artist recycling numerous chip bags into a beautiful outfit. The viewer is given an artistic glimpse into this world, but the film also jumps into the political rationale behind these events. In a gorgeous transition, a shot of LED lights on a helmet design fades into the glow of cop cars, linking the depth of creation. With personal anecdotes and individual features, we see dimensions of grief felt by the ball’s participants. Shot from within homes, in backyards and even in special display rooms, “T” gives us an authentic look at the experience of honoring the dead through costume.
‘So What If The Goats Die’
This festival closes with “So What If The Goats Die,” a short directed by Sofia Alaoui. This film is on the longer side for a short, but it’s worth every minute. Watching a shepherd struggling with his spirituality while trying to make sense of an extraterrestrial event, we hop into a pretty tumultuous story. The film is set on a mountainside, and the cinematography is gorgeous; we jump from rural to desolate areas that frame the characters in golden hues. Shots of the goats are my favorite — within a mottled sea of fur wades our lead, Abdellah. Light is one of the film’s greatest assets. Whether their faces are aglow in the sunset, the fireside or even by eerie green supernatural light, the images we are left with are immaculate. This film is breathtaking to the point that I’d sometimes forget about the overarching questions of religion and human relationships with which it presents us.
The way I see it, short films have the best of both worlds. They can utilize either a high or low budget, use a variety of mediums and still achieve the stories they seek to tell. Each of these films demonstrates that, in spite of shorter runtimes, short films can still have it all.
(10/01/20 9:57am)
When campus closed for students last spring, Professor of Economics Caitlin Myers and Professor of Political Science Sarah Stroup — both on sabbatical at the time — began looking for ways to keep people academically connected. From their collaboration, the Faculty at Home Series emerged.
The Faculty at Home Series, a webinar-style lecture series open to the public, premiered on April 22 and has continued into the fall. Each session features a lecture by a Middlebury faculty member, followed by a brief Q&A moderated by Stroup or Myers. Since April, the series has featured twenty lecturers presenting on topics ranging from food systems’ transformation to Frankenstein. Attendees register online and then receive a Zoom link to join the live talk.
Stroup and Myers envisioned the series as a way to create a virtual public sphere where academic conversations could resume after the closure of the campus. The program received funding from the Engaged Listening Project, a “faculty training program with a focus on techniques to better engage students with controversial topics” led by Stroup, which had independent grant money at its disposal, specifically to support work in the digital space.
In partnership with the Office of Advancement, the series emphasizes connection with the broader Middlebury community, including alumni, parents and other friends of the college. The series also acts as an adaptation of the Faculty on the Road series, wherein similar programming is offered in cities across the country, according to Associate Vice President for Alumni and Parent Programs Meg Storey Groves ’85. Myers says that the Faculty at Home series is more accessible by nature. Since its start, the series has had 2,500 unique attendees from 49 states and 43 countries.
Spring and summer lectures have included as broad-ranging topics as “The perils of being black in public: A conversation with Carolyn Finney,” “Diagnosing Dissent: Soldiers and Psychiatry in Germany from WWI to the Nazi Era” and “Assessing coral reef resilience to thermal stress in the face of climate change.”
“It was a dream come true. For us to have this way of engaging in a really robust way was incredible,” Groves said.
Groves has received a number of messages from participants expressing their gratitude for and excitement about the series. In addition to being of value to the community as a whole, she sees the series as being mutually beneficial and rewarding for attendees and lecturers alike.
Professor of Political Science Bert Johnson says that the series offers attendees a distinct scholarly perspective of phenomena that they may not get from the daily news cycle, while simultaneously providing a platform for the scholars themselves.
“It’s important for scholars to be able to communicate with the broader interested public, and to be able to explain why we think what we think, why what we are observing is sometimes different than what you might see in the media or in other popular conversations,” Johnson said. “We offer a different perspective than what you get in the day to day.”
The talks also give current students a glimpse into the Middlebury community out in the world, which can be hard to conceptualize while attending the Vermont campus, according to Johnson. The next talk will be on October 16, featuring Assistant Professor of Film & Media Culture Natasha Ngaiza. It is entitled “‘Black Lives Matter’ and Abortion at the Movies.” Recordings of all previous lectures can be found at go/facultyathome.
(10/01/20 9:56am)
Student MiddView orientation leaders, prepared to introduce first years to Middlebury and help them bond, were surprised to find that they were expected to facilitate conversations about race and prejudice this semester. After widespread criticism from BIPOC student leaders, staff organizers apologized and said that the plans were never finalized, retracting the proposed programming.
Student leaders pointed out that they had received no training on the subject except for a mandatory microaggressions workshop led by Director of Education for Equity and Inclusion Renee Wells, which some criticized as being centered around white students. Wells later apologized for the shortcomings of the presentations.
This summer, the team of three Student Activities Office (SAO) staff members who organize the MiddView orientation program each year prepared a new format in anticipation of an orientation week heavily altered by Covid-19 restrictions. Orientation leaders are typically tasked with leading three-day trips and facilitating bonding between their groups of first years; this year, they met twice-daily in groups of 10 to 12, with some interacting in person and others convening virtually.
MiddView leaders felt unsure of the specifics of orientation prior to their arrival for training on campus, according to Suria Vanrajah ’22, who led a MiddView group this fall.
“In one of the first few days we got a list of daily agendas of things to do with the first years,” she said. “Some of the days it was talking about the honor code; it was talking about drinking, drugs, and there was one day where they wanted us to talk about race, primarily in the context of Black Lives Matter.”
Brittney Azubuike ’22, a first-time MiddView leader who organized affinity group lunches during orientation, said the conversation was planned for one of the first few days of orientation. She noted that this worried some leaders who had expected their role in orientation to be more like previous years, during which they had primarily been responsible for ensuring the safety of their group on trips and encouraging first years to connect with one another.
Though the college initially included the conversation about race — with the idea that it would be facilitated by student orientation leaders — it was eventually removed from the schedule after student leaders expressed concerns about lack of training, the burden it placed on leaders of color and the discomfort BIPOC first years might feel if the conversation were facilitated by a white MiddView leader.
“Even if you are a person of color, you're still not equipped to talk about [issues of race] in an institutional context, especially to first years, and, certainly, white leaders are not equipped to do that,” Vanrajah said.
The Student Activities Office (SAO) team had drafted guidelines for holding such conversations that were criticized by some MiddView student leaders. The original document was eventually deleted from the shared Google Drive to which all leaders had access.
“It was like, ‘Talk about racism because it's a very important topic right now.’ That wording was also problematic for a lot of people because it made it seem as if we're only bringing it up because it's on trend,” Azubuike said, describing the guidelines.
Azubuike said her herd leaders, the students who had served as MiddView leaders in the past and headed groups of leaders this fall, created a copy of the document with the guidelines in which they noted the features they saw as problematic.
Amanda Reinhardt, director of the SAO and one of the three staff members who organized MiddView, said that the group was still working to finalize many of the agendas and that the version that listed the conversation about race was still a work in progress.
“This summer, with the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many others, the national climate and just the injustice of all of that, it felt pertinent to hold space for that — not only pertinent but ethical, the right thing to do,” Reinhardt said.
She acknowledged that an all-white MiddView team — which included the three SAO staff members and two MiddView student interns — organized orientation, leading to oversights. She said they are working to change this in the future. Reinhardt also explained that the team had not spent enough time reviewing the phrasing and content of the daily agendas and guidelines that were available to leaders through the shared Google Drive.
“We weren't ready, as a team, to have our leaders check all those out,” she said.
Reinhardt and the other members of the MiddView team apologized to leaders during a morning check-in meeting, sent out a written apology and organized an 8 p.m. meeting to discuss what had happened.
The three SAO staff members laid out some of their long-term goals in the written apology, including creating a MiddView Advisory Board with paid positions for students of color. The team also plans to evaluate leader recruitment, hiring and training, as well as work with the Anderson Freeman Resource Center and Miguel Fernández, chief diversity officer, to consider the orientation program’s role in dismantling racism at the college.
Even though the leader-facilitated conversations about race were removed from the orientation schedule, many still sought ways to address the topic within their groups. Rasika Iyer ’22, a herd leader, said she and her co-leader, Jessica Buxbaum ’23, compiled a list of resources for their first years, invited them to ask questions and spoke about the college’s history with Charles Murray, who was scheduled to visit campus again last spring until students were sent home due to the pandemic.
MiddView leaders received no mandatory training related to race apart from a microaggressions workshop led by Renee Wells, director of education for equity and inclusion. The workshop was divided into two parts, the first of which focused on defining microaggressions. The second explained how to acknowledge and apologize for committing a microaggression.
MiddView leaders criticized the training, saying it did not represent a broad variety of microaggressions, instead focusing solely on racial microaggressions. Some shared that they felt the second portion of the training was centered on white learning and overlooked leaders of color. A few students brought these concerns to Wells’ attention during the training, including Melynda Payne ’21.
“I think that what I had an issue with with the microaggression training — and I vocalized this during the training — was that it was very centered on the white leaders and leaders who hadn't really had any type of trainings or any type of experience with anything having to do with race,” Payne said. “I think it was more aimed at them and their perspectives.”
Wells sent out an email with the subject line “An apology to MiddView leaders of color,” in which she acknowledged the specific ways she had caused harm and offered to meet with students to discuss the workshop and other concerns.
Wells said in an interview with The Campus that she had worked with faculty and staff over the summer, running workshops on anti-racism and racial microaggressions. She explained that the student microaggression training she conducted for MiddView leaders was focused on racial microaggressions because of what she had been working on over the summer.
“I think my brain was so wrapped up in doing all the antiracism stuff this summer that I didn't really change the presentation from what I had been doing,” Wells said.
In the past, she has run workshops with examples of microaggressions rooted in racism, sexism, ableism, heteronormativity and other forms of prejudice.
“It wasn't until the students were naming the fact that ‘this is centering white student learning’ that I was like, ‘Yeah, I did not change the presentation,’” Wells said.
First years also received training on microaggressions, which took the form of a three-hour pre-recorded webinar. Wells said she changed the workshop following the MiddView leader training, so the groups that followed — including first years and residential life staff — had a slightly different workshop. Wells said she did not receive the same criticism during those later training sessions.
Reinhardt sent out an email on Sept. 7 to students who had reached out to express their concerns as well as those who planned and led affinity group lunches during orientation. The email thanked these students for their additional time and energy and offered each of them a $50 Visa gift card as compensation.
Several students expressed discomfort, feeling that their emotional labor had been quantified. Vanrajah said she plans to donate the money and has heard that several other leaders plan to do the same.
Many leaders who were critical of the way the MiddView team handled the issues that arose also acknowledged the burden that had been placed on the three SAO staff members. Student leaders noted that three staff members were responsible for designing what essentially became a completely new orientation program as the college made decisions about the format of the fall semester.
Alex Burns ’21.5, a herd leader, said she did not think any individual or group was at fault and felt that there had been a lot of oversight but that the SAO staff had been receptive to student ideas and concerns once they had initiated those conversations. Burns noted that she believed many people quickly realized the kinds of changes that needed to be made in the future.
“While this year it especially felt really necessary for us to be centering these conversations or at least acknowledging them and acknowledging how they impact our life on campus and at Middlebury, I think that that's something that needed to happen before this year,” she said.
(09/24/20 9:58am)
Many professors have chosen to teach remotely this semester, as the limited operations of local Vermont schools have increased their parenting responsibilities at home. The college offered professors full discretion in their course modality, allowing them to teach online, in-person or in some combination of the two.
“Middlebury College faculty are so fortunate to have the ability to choose their modality of teaching without proving or doing anything. That helps out a lot of folks, whether they have health problems or caregiving responsibilities,” Professor of Political Science Sarah Stroup said. “I think that’s the big daily challenge that the college has met with great flexibility, and I appreciate that.”
This freedom to choose course modality led Professor David Miranda-Hardy in the Film and Media Culture department to decide to hold all of his classes remotely for the fall semester. He is currently balancing teaching his first-year seminar, Autobiographical Filmmaking, and other courses while having his nine, six, and two-year-old daughters at home.
Miranda-Hardy partnered with two other professors to tutor their children together in a pod. Being able to teach his college courses online allowed Miranda-Hardy to cater to his children’s educational needs while following the materials that the children’s school provides.
Although this choice was ultimately what worked best for his family, Miranda-Hardy recognized the challenges of working in a living space, such as the widely experienced “Zoom fatigue.”
“One of the most disconcerting aspects of our reality is the total blurring of the barrier between work and personal time. There is a Slack commercial that shows people working from the toilet, from a swimming pool, while juggling kids, cooking or brushing their teeth,” Miranda-Hardy said. “It is supposed to be happy and ‘productive,’ I imagine. After all, they use it to sell a productivity software — but it does feel very dystopian. That trend precedes Covid-19, but it has intensified in our new realities.”
Caitlin Myers, a professor of economics and parent of four who is teaching remotely this semester, shared the sentiment that the line between work and personal life is blurred.
“Internet bandwidth and quiet moments are unfortunately scarce resources at our house these days. I feel like I’m always ‘on’ as a parent, and that can make it tough to be fully present in meetings or to focus and concentrate deeply on a complicated problem in my teaching or scholarship,” Myers said.
However, Myers also noted that remote learning has sometimes enhanced her feelings of productivity and connection with her children.
“I can pop into the kitchen and get some bread dough going and check on a kid’s math problem, and then return to work while the bread rises and the kid works,” Myers said. “Those moments are pretty nice. And I rather enjoy lunch breaks with my whole family. It’s definitely been a huge change, but it’s not all bad.”
Myers has two children currently participating in hybrid learning, one who is learning in person, and one who is at home taking a gap year before starting at Middlebury College next year. She spoke of the connections made with her students through this truly unique experience.
“My students have been wonderful. I’ve always been fairly willing to share about the complexities of work-life balance. I hope I don’t cross the line into oversharing, but in general, I think that part of my job as a professor is to model what it is to live a full, rich life of intellectual inquiry and caring for others, including kids,” Myers said.
Myers has found her students to be very understanding when, for instance, one of her children wanders into the background during a meeting. Some students have even commented that they enjoy seeing family life going on off-campus, she said.
Meanwhile, Stroup teaches a blended first-year seminar and a mix of in-person and online upper-level courses while caring for her two children, both of whom are back in school for two days a week and attending an outdoor classroom learning camp twice a week.
Last semester, Stroup was on sabbatical and planned to take a month-long research trip to Berlin and Amsterdam in May. When the pandemic hit, Stroup’s schedule was cleared, allowing her more time to support her family while her husband finished teaching his semester at Champlain College and fulfilling his responsibilities as School Board Chair at Addison Northwest. She also had more time to support her children in their transition to online learning during the uncertain weeks of March.
“We have to be grateful for our privileges and use them the best way we can,” Miranda-Hardy said. “The pride I get working at Middlebury is that we try to train our students in critical thinking and adapting to the challenges of the world, so this is a learning experience that goes beyond the content of our individual courses.”
(09/24/20 9:57am)
When I received the news that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away on that clear Friday night, I burst into my house, not knowing what to say, tears already streaming down my face. “Mom! Ruth Bader Ginsburg is gone — mom, she died!” Those were the only words to successfully escape my mouth before my brain was flooded with the realization of all we had lost.
Ginsburg was a pioneer, advocating not just for women’s rights but for equity among us all. She dedicated her life to this cause, knowing that “real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.” She used her influence to support trailblazers striving towards equity. Even as she neared her ninth decade, she became a cultural icon and a beacon of hope for a younger generation who often found themselves lost in a world unafraid to betray them.
This is a national tragedy, yet it is a tragedy for all the wrong reasons. We should cry for the powerful life that has been taken from us. We should mourn alongside her family, who has lost so much. But the pain and anguish that so many of us feel is driven less by the grief of losing a national hero and instead by the actions of the man with the orange skin who sits behind a desk he has yet to earn. Ginsburg’s legacy may be eroded by the ascension of yet another far-right judge whose actions betray the ideals of this nation. Just days before her passing, Ginsburg made it clear that her “most fervent wish is that [she] will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
“I would like to be remembered as someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability. And to help repair tears in her society, to make things a little better through the use of whatever ability she has,” Ginsburg said when Irin Carmon, author of “Notorious RBG,” asked her how she wanted to be remembered. The best thing that may come out of this tragedy is for her wish to be realized — we owe it to her, and ourselves. The best way to ensure that she is remembered and that her legacy is preserved is to use the lessons she has taught us to shape the world for the better.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]This is a warning, a call to action. The life of our nation is still within our own hands: we must remember and apply to our own lives the lessons that she taught us during hers.[/pullquote]
This summer, our nation has endured a long-overdue equal rights movement and an unprecedented pandemic, both ongoing. The murder of George Floyd underscored the systemic racial biases that have brought about surges of protests and continue to consume our everyday lives, but now consistent pressure and action must be taken for justice to be served. Something that Justice Ginsburg knew, “you can’t have it all, all at once,” is a sentiment now more poignant than ever. To achieve a world that belongs to everyone on this earth, we must fight with every year of our life, the way Notorious RBG fought with every year of hers.
We must be inspired by the woman who led us, as opposed to frightened by what the future might hold. Now, many people fear what the world has become, but we must work, step by step, to ensure the world will become the place she helped us envision. We have now reached a point where in not taking action, we allow others to make the world a bad place for us. To protect our nation, we should live out the lessons that she attempted to teach us. We have all the tools. The struggle is to wield them enduringly.
Max Padilla is a photo editor for The Campus and a member of the class of 2022.
(09/24/20 9:57am)
On Sept. 24, 1994, the Middlebury football team dominated in the season opener against Wesleyan, picking up a 20–7 victory. The team went on an offensive barrage early in the game and played solid defense the rest of the way, managing to stay in command of the lead for the majority of the game. Two passing touchdowns earned the Panthers an early lead in the first quarter, leaving the Cardinals’ defense in the dust. Junior quarterback Scott Pokrywa ’96 found running back Justin Burley ’95 on both of these scores, for 35-yard and 15-yard gains respectively.
The offense faltered considerably as the game progressed, but the defense bailed them out. Wesleyan only managed 269 yards on offense compared to Middlebury’s 373, and failed to score a single offensive touchdown. Thanks in large part to aggressive coverage by Middlebury defensive tackle Dan Richards ’95, Wesleyan’s quarterback was limited to 18 completions out of 42 attempts, with only one completion surpassing 14 yards.
Linebacker Bain Smith ’96 led the Panther defense with 13 tackles, a performance which was impressive enough to net him NESCAC Defensive Player of the Week honors. He was aided by defensive back Jeff Mebel ’95, (seven tackles), defensive end Winfield Campbell ’95 (six tackles), and linebacker Shawn Daignault ’95 (eight tackles).
On the offensive end, Burley finished the game with the most receiving yards for the Panthers. The duo of Pokrywa and running back Terrence Bradford ’96 led the running game, combining for 181 of the team’s 289 total rushing yards. Bradford rushed for 102 yards on 20 carries overall.
It was an encouraging beginning to an otherwise lackluster season that Middlebury finished with a 3–5 record.
(09/24/20 9:57am)
When the Class of 2024 arrived on campus on Aug. 26, they were not whisked away on the three-day trips that typically characterize the finale of Middlebury’s first-year orientation program, MiddView. Instead, they met with MiddView student leaders twice-daily in groups of 10 to 12, with some interacting in person and others covening virtually.
Covid-19 threw a wrench into the college’s standard orientation model. Planning for MiddView begins in January, so the Student Activities Office (SAO) had already booked campgrounds, reserved vans and started making arrangements for various trips long before it was clear how life on campus — and throughout the world — would be altered by the pandemic.
Amanda Reinhardt, director of student activities, said her office finished selecting trip leaders for fall 2020 about a week before students were sent home in March. The usual on-campus spring training for leaders, which gives prospective leaders an introduction to orientation and community building, moved online for spring 2020, with opt-in sessions for the roughly 150 selected leaders.
Even before the college published its Return to Campus Guide detailing the guidelines for the fall semester, SAO staff anticipated the need for a different approach to orientation. MiddView leaders arrived on Aug. 18 and underwent training during the week prior to the arrival of the first years. Groups of first years and leaders then had hour-and-a-half-long meetings twice a day from Aug. 28 through Sept. 8, engaging in the usual ice breaker and community-building exercises but also participating in conversations about school policies.
Rasika Iyer ’22, a leader who also led a trip in fall 2019, reflected on her two MiddView leadership experiences.
“Last year when I was leading a trip, the responsibilities of a MiddView leader were primarily ensuring the safety of everyone on your trip and then also building community,” Iyer said. “This year we had a lot more duties that in previous years were either that of ResLife — like FYCs and RAs — or responsibilities of faculty members.”
These included explaining the college honor code, conducting pre-advising for course registration and discussing the school’s alcohol and drug policies.
“In years past, [first years] would have met with 150 other students and staff in a room and learned about the Honor Code, and that was definitely not an option,” Reinhardt explained.
MiddView this year was modeled after Feb Orientation, during which new students meet daily with leaders who guide them through all aspects of the orientation process, not just trips. Given this fall’s capacity limits and gathering size restrictions, hall and large group meetings could not occur in person. First years learned about school policies through a combination of MiddView group conversations and pre-recorded videos.
Though the videos were required, first years said they did not believe anyone was keeping track. Quinn Pidgeon ’24 said first years were often assigned videos that they later discussed in their MiddView groups. One of these videos was a three-hour pre-recorded webinar on microaggressions. Pidgeon noted that he believes the topic is very important but also added that he knows many students did not watch the webinar in full and that he preferred his group’s in-person discussion to the recorded video.
“I got more out of that, just sitting, talking with people face-to-face, than staring at a screen,” he said.
Brittney Azubuike ’22, a MiddView leader and president of Black Student Union (BSU), organized two days of affinity group lunches for up to 80 students per day. Because of gathering size restrictions, first years who signed up were split up into groups of 10 over two different time slots, with each group eating under one of the tents on McCullough lawn.
MiddView leaders volunteered to organize lunches for students of color, LGBTQ+ students and disabled students. Azubuike facilitated one of the lunches for students of color and said her group has continued to meet for meals throughout the semester.
Not all MiddView groups were on campus. Miguel Sanchez-Tortoledo ’23, a MiddView leader, was unable to return to campus on Aug. 18 because of his job and was assigned to lead a virtual group. Sanchez-Tortoledo’s group increased from 12 to 15 members after a few students who had intended to study on campus faced unexpected travel complications and joined virtual programming.
According to Sanchez-Tortoledo, students’ locations ranged from China to Turkey to the U.K., and he and Rachel Lu ’23, the other co-leader of the group, settled on 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. ET meetings to better accommodate their different time zones.
Lu is studying remotely from Shanghai this year. She organized an in-person meet-up in Shanghai with several first years, including some from her group.
“The idea kind of came about because most people in my group are from Shanghai, and they already have a group on social media that they were connected through,” Lu said. “I think it was a really good opportunity for them to have some sort of in-person community while being remote.”
For their two-hour Zoom meetings, Lu and Sanchez-Tortoledo drew from a list of virtual activities compiled by the SAO, organizing rounds of two truths and a lie, explaining school policies and even asking group members what kitchen utensil they would be.
“I was definitely nervous that there were going to be awkward silences, and people wouldn't want to participate, but that was definitely not the case,” Lu said. “People were eager to get to know each other, and they came up with ways that they thought would help them connect with each other, which I was really happy to see.”
(09/24/20 9:56am)
This letter was originally sent to Laurie Patton and the Senior Leadership Group on the 3rd of July 2020. The piece has been lightly edited in accordance with The Campus’ style guidelines.
Dear President Patton,
We value the statement made in your May 31, 2020 email that “Education and action are the two forms of oxygen that can heal.” Your commitment to anti-racism and challenging white supremacy is crucial in fostering a culture of safety and acceptance on campus. We hope that this sentiment is maintained as you read through this letter. We appreciate your time in advance.
One of the most powerful and necessary actions that this administration can take in pursuit of anti-racism is to restructure the role of Public Safety on our campus by dissolving Middlebury’s collaboration with police and private security. We are not the only institution making these requests. Movements against police have proliferated on college campuses across the country. Recently, the University of Minnesota has changed its relationship with the Minneapolis police, pledging not to call them for law enforcement support or special events. UVM students demand UVM cut ties with Burlington police. And more will follow.
Over the past few years, we have repeatedly articulated to both the Office of the President and the rest of the administration that the presence of police, private security and punitive public safety systems do not make our community safer. On the contrary, these entities place the most marginalized groups among us at unnecessary risk. As an institution, policing has a long history of horrific abuses, particularly against marginalized populations. Our reliance on private security and public security systems based in this policing regime fails to protect our community's health and safety. Instead, it perpetuates an unwelcoming culture by exposing students, faculty, and staff to potential violence at the hands of current and former police. Furthermore, it deepens Middlebury’s complacency in upholding damaging, racist structures of white supremacy.
At Middlebury College, police and public safety have racially profiled and harassed Black students and faculty. These incidents include when Addis Fouche-Channer, a Black alumna of the class of 2017, was accused of having attended a protest against Charles Murray in March 2017 although WiFi logs indicated that Fouche-Channer was nowhere near the protest, as she had testified. However, Middlebury still believed the Public Safety officer, thus forcing Fouche-Channer into a lengthy and unwarranted judicial process. Later in 2017, a professor of color recounted being aggressively harassed and questioned by Public Safety while unlocking the door to the building where her office was located. Students, faculty and staff of color have experienced countless similar incidents which specifically placed them at risk, highlighting the gap between Public Safety and actual safety. This untenable system of Public Safety is thus incompatible with Middlebury’s stated goal of advancing racial justice and anti-racism.
Despite the concerns expressed by students, faculty, staff and community members, the college has repeatedly collaborated with police and employed private security companies. We hope that during this time of national civil unrest, you can understand the pain and terror experienced by the student body this past semester when we heard that police were coming to campus for a controversial and racist speaker event. We remembered the profiling of Black students that happens frequently on our campus, and we knew that similar instances of racial profiling happen in many of our home communities. We, and Middlebury students before us, repeatedly asked this institution to reconsider its decision to bring armed law enforcement into our home, and we were ignored. In response, students were forced to organize a system of cop-watchers, de-escalators, and legal observers to keep our community safe. We hope you can recognize the irony in this situation. We know that police do not protect us, and we did what was necessary to keep each other safe. We need you to do the same by eliminating police presence at Middlebury.
You acknowledged in the same email referenced earlier that “People of Color in our country walk daily with deep vulnerability to the threats of institutionalized violence. They face greater risk of death in the time of coronavirus, greater risk of death on the streets and in their homes.” The same risks of institutionalized violence are present at Middlebury. The question is: what will you do to mitigate them?
There is a simple, powerful and effective position you can take to prevent police brutality. You can cut off all future collaborations with law enforcement and private security around campus events and commit to not calling the police. You can dismantle Public Safety’s punitive role, abolish citations, and reconstruct a public safety team that is accountable to the community, with expertise in medical first aid, mental and sexual health, drug and alcohol harm reduction, de-escalation and conflict resolution.
You can collaborate with the town of Middlebury to defund the local police department and envision transformative community solutions, and you can support student-led workshops on cop-watching, legal observing and de-escalation tactics. These actions will not be enough to repair the years of trauma that have occurred at Middlebury nor the centuries of oppression and violence faced by Black people and other people of color throughout this country. But they are a necessary step towards justice.
We know we have a long way to go, but we imagine a future wherein Middlebury is a safer, more equitable place for all of us. We imagine a Middlebury where policing is obsolete, where trained community members take care of each other following principles of restorative justice, harm-reduction, consent, de-escalation and community repair; where we promote each other’s health and well-being instead of investing in racist, punitive systems of control; where our commitment to anti-racism and Black liberation extends beyond performative words and does the work of dismantling the structures of white supremacy on our campus and beyond.
You’ve encouraged us to “use [our] Middlebury education to challenge bigotry and hatred.” We utilize our education to understand the history of the United States through a decolonized and anti-racist framework. We acknowledge that the police force we have today began as the Slave Patrol in the South in 1704, and that we must remove an institution founded in such undeniable oppression and racism from our campus.
President Patton, we call our congressmen and senators. We are involved in local groups. We collaborate with members of our community to act against racism and take accountability for the work that needs to be done, “in our classrooms, in our living rooms, in our workplaces, in our communities.” We are now asking the same of you.
We ask you to transform rhetoric into action. We ask you to move beyond metaphors and do what we should have done years ago. We ask you to meet all demands of Concerned Students of Midd and the AAUP anti-racism working group, and to listen to the leadership of our BIPOC community members. We ask you to dismantle policing on campus and to help us build a community so strong that force and coercion are irrelevant. When you ask us “to circulate that air so all of us can breathe in it, and live,” we challenge you to mean it.
Thank you,
Middlebury Cops Off Campus
Read the complete letter, platform and signatory list for Middlebury Cops Off Campus here.
(09/17/20 9:57am)
In its first summer as part of Middlebury’s summer Language Schools, the School of Abenaki engaged 23 students in a two-week pilot program on Abenaki language and culture. Jesse Bowman Bruchac, a citizen of the Nulhegan Abenaki Tribe, led Middlebury’s first Native American language program. The school allowed all of its students to attend this year free of charge, something Bruchac noted as a demonstration of the college’s support of efforts to preserve indigenous culture and language in the area.
Like all of Middlebury’s Language Schools this summer, the program was conducted remotely.
“Being online helped to bring people together,” said Bruchac, who has spent his career traveling across New England and the country to teach. Bruchac has nearly 30 years of experience teaching the Abenaki language and working to preserve its culture.
Abenaki is considered an endangered language. It is still spoken throughout northern New England and in parts of Quebec, but few people are considered fluent.
School of Abenaki students ranged in age from 18 to 75, and Bruchac found it encouraging that some of the strongest speakers in the program were young people in their 20s. Twenty of the program’s 23 students are citizens of the Vermont-based Abenaki communities of Nulhegan, Elnu, Missisquoi and the Canadian reserve of Odanak in Quebec.
All students were members of the Abenaki language community, meaning that they had previous experience learning the language. The School of Abenaki enrolled both those with a relatively new interest in mastering the language and those who had been in its proximity for decades but wanted to ramp up their skills.
The program met for six hours a day, with two-hour sessions in the morning, afternoon and evening. Mornings featured formal lessons taught in a mix of English and Abenaki by Dr. Conor Quinn, a linguistics professor at the University of Southern Maine. Later in the day, Bruchac would lead participants in afternoon games, songs, crafts and other activities in Abenaki. Students spent their evening sessions doing homework together and giving small presentations in the language.
A special feature of this summer’s program was Kerry Wood’s two-day basket-weaving workshop.Students received materials in the mail and then used them to learn the craft live on Zoom with their peers. Aaron Wood, Kerry’s son, taught students about the black ash tree and how to make splints — the wooden ribbons that make up a basket — from harvested wood. Both mother and son are artists of the Vermont Abenaki Artist Association and gave their lessons in Abenaki. Other artists and performers made appearances throughout the program.
The program culminated in an hour-long presentation given entirely in Abenaki, with each student presenting for over two minutes.
Bruchac had never led a language program prior to serving as the director of the School of Abenaki at Middlebury. The Middlebury Language Pledge, a prominent element of the Language Schools, requires that students speak only in the language of their program. Bruchac said incorporating this feature into a pilot program for students who did not have much experience with prolonged immersion in the language was intimidating at first. Additionally, the remote modality meant that full immersion was not possible in the way it typically is for the on-campus language programs. But Bruchac said watching students’ online learning epiphanies was a powerful experience.
At the same time, Bruchac said he looks forward to the benefits that in-person classes will offer his students in the future. While he believes the sense of community was strengthened by online meetings, he thinks the experience would feel “more real” in person.
He is excited for future students of the program to be able to benefit from use of the language outside of the classroom, during meals and throughout other everyday activities.
Learning Zoom and Canvas technology was a beneficial skill to sharpen, according to Bruchac, as it can help bring together members of the Abenaki community to learn in new ways in the future. “We are going to keep that door open,” he said of online opportunities.
There is already interest for an in-person program next year, Bruchac said. While there are arrangements to reserve spots for Abenaki citizens first, Bruchac said there is room for anyone passionate to learn about the Abenaki language and culture, which he noted are inseparable.
“The Abenaki language needs speakers to help keep it alive,” Bruchac said, encouraging old and new learners to become part of the community.
