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(03/12/20 10:11am)
In September, the Middlebury College Republicans set in motion plans to invite Charles Murray back to campus for a third visit, requiring hours of meetings with administrators and lengthy discussions about logistics. This week, those plans have ground to a halt.
All spring semester courses will be moved online beginning March 30 in light of the spreading global Covid-19 outbreak, the college announced Tuesday. Murray’s talk, which was scheduled for March 31, will likely be cancelled as a result of the new steps, according to College Republicans Co-President Brendan Philbin ’21.
Philbin says he has not yet conferred with members of the College Republicans as to whether they’ll reschedule.
“From what we’ve seen, it doesn’t seem like we’ll even be back at school for March 31,” he said. “If we do end up deciding we want to reschedule, it would be for the fall.”
Murray, a controversial conservative writer who garnered national attention from works such as “The Bell Curve,” visited the college in 2007 and 2017. The protests of his 2017 visit led to the injury of political science professor Allison Stanger, and catalyzed conversations about free speech on college campuses. Since the College Republicans announced Murray’s planned return in a January op-ed, many of those conversations have been reignited. Before this week, students and faculty were planning to strike and hold teach-ins on the day of his talk.
Philbin said that Murray was notified promptly of the college’s decision to move courses online and that the talk would likely be cancelled. He said that Murray wasn’t surprised. In an interview with The Campus earlier this week, Murray expressed the expectation that the talk might be pushed, as colleges around the country took steps to protect students from the spreading virus.
“The Middlebury thing is way up in the air given the coronavirus situation,” he said. “Given the number of things that are being cancelled—and we’re only talking three weeks away? I’d say, that’s pretty iffy right there.”
The planning
With the College Republicans’ meager budget of $415, financing Murray’s talk proved a preliminary obstacle.
According to Murray, his speaker fee is usually $10,000 for colleges like Middlebury. Yet when College Republican co-presidents Philbin and Dominic Aiello ’22.5 and former Vermont governor and College Republicans adviser Jim Douglas reached out to him to gauge his interest in coming back, he immediately waived the fee.
“I’m not charging the college because I thought it was important — still think it’s important — for me to come back to Middlebury,” Murray said in an interview with The Campus.
Next came the meetings. Philbin estimates that he, Aiello and Douglas met with the administration at least seven times since the initial proposal in mid-November.
Philbin said that originally the administration proposed that the talk take place mid-day, at 1 p.m. Philbin insisted on a typical talk time of 4:30 p.m., so that students weren’t confronted with the choice between attending classes and the talk.
“They also proposed another event time that was the Friday of spring break,” Philbin said. “So, spring break starts at 4:15 and the event would have been at 4:30. We eventually ended up getting March 31 — but that took several meetings.”
Throughout this entire process, Murray has not had contact with the administration. “I haven’t talked to anybody from Middlebury’s administration about anything,” he said.
The visit would have been Murray’s first visit to a college campus in the wake of the release of his new book, “Human Diversity: The Biology of Race, Gender, and Class.”
Day-of protocol
Organizing day-of logistics for Murray’s visit resembled something between an obstacle course and a jigsaw puzzle. Like last time, the talk was slated to take place in Wilson Hall. There were 140 seats designated for the event.
According to Philbin, a private security consulting group, Blue Moon Consulting, was involved in the planning process. The firm’s website says it deals in “proactive reputational risk and crisis management.”
Philbin, Aiello and Douglas planned on divvying up tickets with a lottery system. The College Republicans reserved 60 of the tickets for their own club members, various faculty and members of Open Campus Initiative — the co-sponsor of the event. Philbin said the College Republicans do not have an official roster, but that 8 to 20 members are usually in attendance at each meeting.
Of the original 140 tickets, 80 remain for Middlebury College ID-holders.
McCullough Student Center — the building in which Wilson Hall is situated — was to be closed for the entirety of the day. “We’ve been told from the administration that they’ll have McCullough closed down and cleared in the morning,” Philbin said.
After the college announced plans to upgrade its security plans last fall, McCullough has been one of the first sites to receive ramped-up security measures in recent months. The plan has cost the college around $200,000, according to Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration David Provost. Components of the plan include the implementation of security cameras and additional key-card access.
Provost said the costs for additional security for the Murray event, through Green Mountain Security, would have totaled between $5,000 and $10,000. They were to be funded by the college. There were no planned costs for the local and state police services that the college had requested be in attendance.
“Some will say that we will have spent up to $200,000 this year and we will use some of those improvements on the Murray event,” Provost told The Campus. “What would we have spent this year on those investments if Murray wasn’t coming? Close to $200,000. What are we spending now that Murray is coming? $200,000. Was it accelerated? Some could say yes.”
Looking ahead
There is currently no official confirmation from the administration that Murray’s talk will be cancelled. In a phone interview late Tuesday, Philbin said that “the current status is that the event doesn’t seem like it’s happening.”
After the many meetings and preparations, Philbin sees the cancellation as an upset. “It’s disappointing,” he said. “We put in six months of work. I committed social suicide for this event and now it seems like it’s not going to happen. Things are totally up in the air right now.”
Correction March 12, 2020: A previous version of this article stated that Philbin was present at meetings with Blue Moon Consulting Group. Although they were involved in the process, they were never at a meeting where he was present.
(03/12/20 10:00am)
A 17-year-old girl, the oldest of six children, was offered the chance to go to leave her town and make money for herself and her family. She was brought by a male acquaintance to Delhi, where she proceeded to work as a maid for a family. By the time she realized she wasn’t being paid, it was too late. Her “friend” was long gone with the money, and she was left with only the hope of being rescued.
This is the labor trafficking story shared by one of the 106 girls who attended the second annual East India Hockey Project (EIHP), a weeklong field hockey camp and tournament aimed at combating trafficking by helping female athletes ages 14–17 gain self-confidence and leadership skills to bring back to their communities. The EIHP is run through a partnership between Middlebury College, the US State Department, the Indian Consulate and the anti-trafficking NGO Shakti Vahini. It was led by head coach Katherine DeLorenzo and assistant coach Rachel Palumbo, with support from five alumnae who attended the first camp in November of 2018 and seven current players: senior Kelly Coyle, junior Erin Nicholas and sophomores Grace Harlan, Riley Marchin, Grace Murphy, Hannah Sullivan and Joan Vera. The program is based in Jharkhand, one of the most remote and impoverished regions in India. Each girl who attended the camp is at a high risk for human trafficking.
“On the surface level, it seems like we’re just playing field hockey, like what is that doing?” Coyle said. “But it’s the small, intangible things about telling the girls to speak up, plus their additional workshops [that teach them] how to use their voice in all those scenarios, that make a difference. Seeing all that together, it made it seem like the impact was a lot bigger than just coming to the field and playing hockey.”
Although the camp only ran from January 27 to February 3, the field hockey girls arrived in India on the 5th, along with eight members of Middlebury’s BOLD Scholars, a women’s leadership program. The students all traveled to Delhi and Kolkata together, and while the athletes helped with the EIHP, the BOLD Scholars worked at a school peace fair. During their travels, Baishaki Taylor, vice president for student affairs, and Rebekah Irwin, the director and curator the Special Collections & Archives, taught a special winter term class for the students, focusing on gender in Indian society.
“It’s really easy to come in and do a workshop and leave,” Taylor said. “Given our commitment and our mission statement, we want Middlebury students to be able to leave this campus and be ready to address and actually make meaningful contributions to the communities that they live in, no matter where it is. [We want them to] be able to address some of the world’s most challenging problems, not just go in and do a project. The class part provided some glimpses to get a sense of the differences and similarities the world’s largest democracy has [in common] with the world’s strongest democracy.”
It is estimated that over 30,000 young women are trafficked each year from Jharkhand alone, and the EIHP aims to combat this tradition. In addition to practicing field hockey from 8 a.m to 4 p.m each day, the players attended informative workshops. The Shakti Vahini leaders taught the girls practical skills to bring home, such as learning how to spot human traffickers, how to intervene in different situations and how to record evidence on a phone to build a case against a trafficker. At night, the girls were encouraged to share their stories with each other through performative arts, and at the end of the camp, four stories were selected to be professionally reproduced.
“The girls were all inspirations to everyone who traveled from our team,” said Nicholas. “We kept saying the whole trip that we were probably getting out of it more than they were because we were learning from them the whole time. They have been through so much, and then would come to the field everyday so excited to learn. They’d be dancing in circles and laughing and having a great time and finding the joy in every little moment that they had.”
At the end of the week, the Panthers hosted a tournament for the girls, an event attended by local press and students and even Marie Royce, the assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs. On the last day, the five most outstanding campers were invited to come to Middlebury in April, where they will have the opportunity to attend the spring field hockey training camp and immerse themselves in the American culture.
“One of the girls who I coached all week had won the ‘Most Outstanding Defensive Player’ award had a smile on her face the entire week,” Coyle said. “She was always giggling, always laughing. But on the last day, she started [crying]. One of the interpreters explained that she had never experienced this kind of attention or award or recognition in her life and it was completely overwhelming for her. [She] received awards and people [were] paying attention to her and honoring her in a way she had never [had] before in [her] life.”
(03/12/20 9:58am)
On the night of November 8, 2016, I was shell-shocked by the news of Donald Trump’s victory. I spent most of the night struggling over my calculus homework, expecting a decisive victory for Hillary Clinton. After peeking my head into our common room and seeing the looks of terror on peoples’ faces, I realized the unthinkable happened. The media narrative that a moderate democrat was best suited to defeat Trump was wrong. That night taught me that beating Trump will require a bold, progressive agenda that speaks to the needs of everyday Americans, not a pursuit of incrementalism. I’m afraid that the country has forgotten this lesson. Bernie Sanders was the antidote then, and he is the antidote now; I believe only he can beat Trump.
Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election through victories in key swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. An NBC news report found Trump visited these states 46 times more than Clinton in the final 102 days before the election. Alarming? Definitely. There’s no way that another democratic nominee repeats these same mistakes, right? Unfortunately, Joe Biden is on pace to match the 2016 strategy. He skipped campaigning in most Super Tuesday states.
It’s not just his absence of campaigning in key states that should raise eyebrows. Biden’s record, current base, and policies will lose in November. Based on the evidence below, Joe Biden loses to Trump.
Biden voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, which cost the Rustbelt over 4 million jobs, per a 2019 NBC News analysis. We’re up against an incumbent president who won white working-class voters by 67% nationally, according to NYT exit polling data. Defeating Trump will require an unprecedented turnout of youth and disaffected voters who sat out the 2016 election. In a general election campaign with Biden as the Democratic nominee, Trump could hammer Biden on his anti-worker record and win among blue-collar workers again.
I believe Biden’s current platform and policies will lose to Trump. As of now, Biden’s essentially been running on a platform of “I can beat Trump.” That sounds great, but he rarely articulates how he will win. Trump’s campaign team has already fought this battle once before. Instead of bold and comprehensive plans to combat climate change, income inequality, or our dysfunctional healthcare system, Biden is advocating for a “return to normalcy” (which only plays well with his current base).
Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, will beat Trump.
Sanders’ voting record speaks to the key swing state voters we must win over in November. He voted against disastrous trade deals like NAFTA and PNTR with China. Sanders has proven to be the most pro-union member of Congress. Per the AFL-CIO, a federation of 55 unions, he has a nearly 100% lifetime pro-union voting record. Most importantly, Sanders didn’t trust Cheney and Bush when they lied about weapons of mass destruction In Iraq. Sanders led the effort against the war in Iraq. Biden supported the war.
Sanders’ base would be enough to defeat Trump. The Washington Post’s exit polling shows that Sanders’ median support in Super Tuesday states for voters under the age of 29 was 43 points above Biden’s, and his median support in these states for independents was 8 points above Biden’s. NBC News exit polls found that Sanders won 43% of first-time voters on Super Tuesday, significantly more than the other candidates. To beat an incumbent president, the younger voters, independents, and disaffected voters who overwhelmingly back Sanders must be acknowledged. Also, a study by the Democracy Fund found 92% of Biden supporters would vote for Sanders in the general election. On the flipside, 94% of Sanders supporters would vote for Biden. Both of these statistics prove a vast majority of Democrats’ main goal is defeating Trump.
Sanders’ current platform and policies would beat Trump. The Washington Post’s exit polling found that Super Tuesday voters agree with Sanders on the issues by 13 points above Biden. These issues include Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and a $15 federal minimum wage. Sanders’ vision would not only benefit the entire country by combating climate change and guaranteeing healthcare as a human right, but also inspire key voters.
It’s imperative we, as Democrats, unite against an establishment which is following the same 2016 playbook. Inspired by Sanders’ grassroots movement, I co-founded Midd Students for Bernie in October of last year. Through canvassing, phonebanking, friend-to-friend outreach, we are building a progressive movement to oust Trump. I hope supporters of Elizabeth Warren, a progressive champion for working-class families, choose to join our movement to beat Trump and transform our government and economy. Will we choose the moderate lane which ends in perpetual defeat to populists like Trump, or will we choose the progressive lane which can defeat Trump and improve the lives of millions of American families? If you haven’t voted yet, consider voting for the best candidate who can beat Trump: Bernie Sanders. Reach out to friends and family in states which have yet to vote like New York and Connecticut and remind them what we’re up against. If you’re inclined to volunteer for the campaign, visit BernieSanders.com/volunteer! While Biden has a SuperPac and Wall-Street donors behind him, Sanders’ has the support of millions of grassroots activists. Only Sanders has the agenda that can defeat Trump and bring-about much needed change. When it comes to defeating Trump, whose side are you on?
Tarik Shahzad is a member of the class of 2020 and co-founder of Midd Students for Bernie.
(03/05/20 11:21am)
The women’s lacrosse team is still hot off of its dominant season last year and continues to prove it deserves to be the number one team in the country. The squad notched a win against No. 13 Bowdoin in their season opener on Saturday, Feb. 29. Extending their win streak from last season to twenty-three games, the top-ranked Panthers stood the test of a worthy opponent.
Early in the game, the Panthers rushed out to an early lead, but the Polar Bears crawled back later in the half to ultimately settle the game at 6–6 by halftime.
After the half, the Panthers again pulled out to a cushiony lead but Bowdoin would not quit. As the game moved on, the Panthers displayed their power as they amassed a lead the Polar Bears would not be able to close. The game ended in a Panthers win by a score of 16–12.
The performance was led by dominant performances on offense by Emily Barnard ’20 and Jane Earley ’22, who each scored five goals. On the defensive end, Julia Keith ’20 had seven saves for the Panthers and Addy Mitchell ’21 forced five turnovers.
Looking at the team’s success, it’s evident that they play as a unit, dependent on both their offense and defense to be reliable and to keep their streak alive.
Next up, the women head to Connecticut College on Saturday, March 7 for their second game of a hopefully dominant season.
(03/05/20 11:20am)
The Panthers had a great outing at the Division III New England Championships on Feb. 28 and Feb. 29. The women earned sixth place, while the men took twelfth.
Gretchen McGrath ’21 led the pack with her fourth place finish in the 400-meter dash. In the 800-meter run, Cassidy Kearney ’22, Meg Wilson ’20, and Nicole Johnson ’22 chased after one another, picking up third, fourth, and fifth places respectively. It is also important to mention that the 4 x 400 meter relay “A” team came in fourth.
Max Cluss ’23 spoke to the men’s performance. “Overall we had a solid performance at Regionals, but we wish we performed better,” Cluss said. “This indoor season we’ve been plagued with injuries so we did not race our entire team.”
Impressive performances by the men include Will Meyer ’20 who came in seventh place in the 3000-meter run. The veteran squad comprised of Arden Coleman ’20, William Robertson ’21, Mathew Durst ’21, and Nathan Hill ’20 grabbed fourth in the 4X400 meter relay. It is also important to mention the performance of Nathaniel Klein ’21 who captured fifth in the shot-put event.
With the completion of this meet, the Panthers near the final stretch of the indoor season. Up next the teams will once again travel to Medford for the Tufts Last Chance Meet on Saturday, Mar. 7 for another opportunity to compete before NCAA’s.
Coleman commented on the upcoming meet. “We need to take it day by day,” said Coleman. “There’s nothing else we can do but keep grinding and position ourselves to perform the best we can at Tufts.”
(03/05/20 11:10am)
Hundreds of Middlebury residents gathered at the town meeting at Middlebury Union High School on Monday night, approving all seven proposed articles. The town meeting, a manifestation of direct democracy, involved the discussion of several proposals, followed by a voice vote. Residents also reviewed and discussed information on three more legislative articles that were decided on Tuesday via Australian ballot.
The meeting featured first-time Moderator Susan Shashok, who replaced former Vermont Governor and longtime town meeting moderator Jim Douglas ’72. Shashok has previously attended the town meeting as a member of the selectboard — the town’s governing group of seven elected members — and was endorsed by Douglas last year after he announced he would not be running again for the position of moderator.
“[Douglas’s endorsement] felt pretty good,” Shashok said in a phone interview Wednesday. “He’s been a very good mentor to me during this process. Even though it’s big shoes to fill, I told everybody I’d have different shoes. Jim’s okay with that and so I’m okay with that.”
At the meeting, Middlebury Selectboard Chair Brian Carpenter read a year-in-review report, which mainly focused on progress of the Middlebury Bridge and Rail Project.
The town budget was approved without dissent and included increased funding for the replacement of public works equipment, such as the town’s 25-year-old street sweeper. Tax surpluses will be used to fund downtown projects like the railroad platform and updates to light fixtures.
The two most contentious articles of the night were Article 4 and Article 2, both of which allocated additional extra-budget funds to first responder services. Article 4 requested a $63,721 increase in appropriations for Middlebury Regional Emergency and Medical Services (MREMS).
Some residents expected money requests for first response care to be part of the town budget, and not presented as a separate article. But the the selectboard said it had not had enough time to review the MREMS allocation request to add it to the budget beforehand.
Opponents were concerned about giving such a large sum of money to a non-profit without the selectboard spending time to review the proposal. Advocates for the article however, claimed that emergency and medical services are essential.
“I understand and appreciate the concerns expressed regarding municipal appropriations for independent, non-profit entities,” said Ben Fuller, vice-chair of MREMS, in an email to The Campus. “That said, I also believe that the critical, life-saving services we provide put us in a slightly different category than most other non-profits.”
These concerns led to a motion to postpone consideration of the item, an action that Shashok said she hadn’t anticipated.
“We had one motion to lay the item on the table, and that’s very rare,” Shashok told The Campus. “I knew what to do, but I had to stop the meeting and double-check my notes just to make sure I had it right.”
The motion to table eventually failed, and Article 4 passed with an amendment to limit the increased funding to one year.
“I think it was the best solution to support them this one time, and make sure that the selectboard had full authority to vet and include what we feel is appropriate in next year’s budget,” Carpenter told The Campus.
Article 2, which allocated $80,000 to the Middlebury Police Department (MPD) for the purchase of new police cruisers, also incited discussion at the meeting. Residents pointed out that funds for vehicle replacement are an annual expenditure, not a one-time purchase. Police Chief Tom Hanley agreed and said during the meeting that he is not sure why the police vehicle allocation has not been added to MPD’s budget.
Discussions centered around the high wear and tear on police cars, which can be used for four years before requiring heightened levels of maintenance. In focusing on environmental concerns, the police department replaced one of its cars last year with a hybrid car. Though the cruiser is not yet in service in Middlebury, the department is considering purchasing two more hybrid cruisers this year.
Other articles dealt with 2020 tax collection dates and allocation of funds from the Cross Street Reserve Fund for water system improvements. The selectboard's goal is to complete the water system improvements before the state begins a repaving project throughout town.
“Ideally, we would not replace the roads and then dig them up again,” said selectboard member Heather Seeley at the meeting.
The meeting ended with discussion of other articles that would appear on the Australian ballot the following day, including Article 9, a proposition that allocates funds to flood resilience projects in East Middlebury. Article 8 proposed allocating $5,000 to the Turning Point Center, a non-profit that provides services to those suffering from substance abuse, and Article 10 proposed using $850,000 to rehabilitate dilapidated buildings near the police station. All articles passed with healthy margins on Tuesday, according to Carpenter.
Dave Silberman, attorney and Middlebury resident, spoke multiple times during the meeting.
“Democracy only works when people participate in it,” Silberman said. “I really feel that I’m exercising my civic duty.”
For Vermonters like Silberman, who values democratic participation, and Shashok, who considers herself a “democracy geek,” town meeting presents an opportunity to take advantage of an important tradition.
“I love Vermont’s town meeting,” said Fuller, the vice-chair of MREMS. “It’s an iconic tradition that helps preserve the sense of community in our towns and allows for the most direct and transparent form of democratic government.”
(03/05/20 11:10am)
The Middlebury Student Mail Center received an award for efficiency in distribution from technology company Neopost in October after delivering over 89,000 packages in the 2018-19 school year. In comparison, Miami University, a public research university with around 24,000 students, received the same efficiency award for colleges and universities with more than 7,000 students. The university, in the 2018–19 school year, received 91,000 packages — only 2,000 more than Middlebury.
To Jacki Galenkamp, mail center supervisor, the award signals what she had already noticed in the mail room.
“We’ve been receiving over 1,000 packages a day,” she said last week, adding that the Mail Center processed 99,600 packages in the 2019 calendar year. “We receive staff and faculty packages, but the majority of packages are student [packages].” Galenkamp added that she believes the rurality of the college has everything to do with the abundance of packages.
“We don’t have a lot of shopping [in town],” she said. “The options here are more limited than even [those in] Burlington, or those of any college in New Jersey or Connecticut.”
In accordance with reporting from fall 2018, Galenkamp said she does not believe that the increased package volume is a result of the online bookstore, alone.
“I don’t really see a huge increase [in books] since the college bookstore stopped carrying books and inventory—that’s been a question that’s been posed to us quite a bit,” Galenkamp said.
The months that mark the start of each semester — February and September — are the busiest months in the mailroom, according to data from the Mail Center. Despite this observation, Galenkamp’s claim that the online bookstore is not the only factor in higher delivery rates is substantiated: the data shows a 4,000-package difference between the months of February and September, suggesting that the increase in packages may also be the result of students moving in and returning to campus.
Feb. 2019 saw the second-most packages by a narrow margin, the third-busiest month being Oct. 2019. Assuming students have ordered and received their books by the second month of the term, the idea that the online bookstore is solely responsible for the increase in packages seems unlikely.
Though the mail center staff is unsure which factors have led to this influx of packages, Galenkamp says that Neopost — the company that presented the Mail Center with the efficiency award — has been key in the expedient nature of the mailroom.
The cloud-based system enables package tracking within the College. It emails students an hour after their package is processed in a message that states the package’s type, tracking number and recipient’s name. When processed, this information is logged into the mailroom’s searchable database. This system allows packages to be tracked within the system, provided they have been processed.
Before Neopost, Galenkamp said that students received paper slips in their mailboxes upon a package’s arrival.
“[The paper slips] were really inefficient because many college students don’t ever even check their mailbox,” she said. “With the electronic system, they get an email as soon as the package is processed.”
Galenkamp told The Campus that this processing is something some students still do not understand. She said that many students arrive at the Mail Center as soon as they receive notification from the package’s sender that a package has been delivered. This, she said, causes problems — even with a system as slick as Neopost.
“Frequently, we get students coming down and saying, ‘Amazon said my package is here.’ That’s great, but so are 1100 other [packages],” she said. “If you come down looking for a package before you’ve gotten an email saying it’s been processed, it makes processing come to a screeching halt and it takes longer for you to get your package.”
In a mailroom that often processes and delivers over a thousand packages in a single day, Galenkamp said that patience is important.
“As soon as it’s processed, you’ll get an email,” she said.
Note: Ariadne Will is a mail clerk at the Middlebury College Mail Center.
(03/05/20 11:03am)
This is the second article in a series on school consolidation. Read the first article in that series here.
Over the last three years, Middlebury and the surrounding towns have shifted from conversations about district consolidation to school mergers and closures.
Act 46, the 2015 legislation that is often connected to the closure of small Vermont elementary schools, was initially focused on the former and not on school mergers.
“The goal of Act 46 is to improve education outcomes and equity by creating larger and more efficient school governance structures,” reads the State of Vermont Agency of Education’s website. By this meter, many believe that Act 46 has been successful not only in saving money but in streamlining school governance structures: it is under Act 46 that Addison Central School District (ACSD) formed in 2016, a decision that joined eight different school districts into one governing body.
“Act 46 was not about closing small schools and it’s not to blame [for school closures],” said Amy McGlashan, a member of the ACSD School Board and the director of Adirondack House at the college. “What’s to blame is declining enrollments, increasing costs and the equity gap.”
The decline in enrollment, McGlashan says, has led to strains on resources. In smaller elementary schools, a drop in enrollment cannot be met with budget cuts, as can be done at larger schools, including Mary Hogan Elementary School in Middlebury.
McGlashan explained that at larger elementary schools like Mary Hogan, an enrollment decline of 20 students — about the number of students in a class — leads to the elimination of a staff position. At smaller schools with between 50 and 100 students, such as McGlashan’s local Rutland elementary school, the loss of 10 pupils does not affect the number of staff employed at the school.
That the smaller school continues to use the same amount of fiscal resources as its enrollment declines promotes tension between district schools. It is viewed as unfair that the loss of a larger percentage of the student body at these smaller schools does not affect their resources and staff, while larger schools are forced to cut positions in response to budget cuts.
Schools and districts, which are funded in part per pupil, lose state money when enrollment dips. Asking larger schools to support smaller schools takes a toll on the larger schools, since all schools in the district are sharing an amount of money decided, in part, by the number of pupils in the entire district.
Since the creation of ACSD, state funding for the elementary schools that previously resided in eight different districts is now given to the single, overarching district. This makes funding and resources easier for smaller schools to access but forces larger schools — in this case, schools situated in the town of Middlebury — to support funding shortfalls occurring at all schools in the district.
Because even larger schools are experiencing declining enrollment, pooling funds takes money disproportionately from larger schools.
In Middlebury and surrounding towns, it is this strain that brings up the prospect of school closures. With seven out of 13 ACSD Board Members representing Middlebury, it is likely that declining enrollment at smaller schools will eventually lead the board to vote to close and merge smaller schools.
Population distribution makes this representation possible, explained Angelo Lynn, editor in chief of the Addison Independent. This proportional representation gives Middlebury more sway within ACSD — the town holds a majority of the board’s votes.
Since Middlebury is the town that would benefit most from closures and mergers of smaller schools in the district, Lynn says that the representative makeup of the board has caused some smaller towns to worry about the wellbeing of their schools and has fostered an environment that may soon vote to close smaller institutions.
“When we created the articles of agreement for [ACSD], that took the power away from towns, and when that happened, the conversation around that was, ‘We need to do this because we need to run schools in a more effective economically efficient way. And we’re not going to close your school,’” Lynn said.
Now, the prospect of keeping small community elementary schools open appears overly optimistic to many, including Lynn.
“I think there are lots of people feeling a little betrayed by where the board is at,” he said. He added, though, that there comes a point when the math does not add up: “Certainly some schools are going to be too small to continue,” he said. “I think there is a number that’s not efficient.”
(03/05/20 11:00am)
Leif Taranta ’20.5, along with other student activists in the Sunday Night Environmental Group (SNEG) and the Trans Affinity Group (TAG), has been leading and planning workshops that aim to teach the Middlebury community how to be more effective activists. While the workshops have covered a variety of topics, they center around what Taranta calls “the hard skills of organizing” and inform students about current movements.
Taranta has been doing organizing work since they were in elementary school and has worked with organizations focused on fossil fuel resistance, immigrant solidarity and community support. Taranta utilizes their own skills to educate others specifically on de-escalation and nonviolent direct action, but also brings outside trainers to campus to assist with the workshops.
Upcoming workshops on March 14 and March 18, led by outside trainers Sonia Silbert and Emma Schoenberg, will address nonviolent direct action and de-escalation. In April, regional activists will come to campus to discuss issues including native sovereignty, regenerative agriculture and regional fossil fuel resistance.
“One of the main purposes is to give people the tools to create a better world, wherever they see themselves fitting into that,” said Zoe Grodsky ’20.5, the co-manager of SNEG, who has also facilitated lectures and workshops surrounding activism. She said that whatever path students decide to take, education is absolutely essential.
Taranta emphasized that anyone, regardless of activism experience, is welcome to attend the workshops. They noted that being an activist can come in many capacities.
“People think, ‘Oh, I’m not an activist,’ because they think activists look a certain way,” Taranta said. “Someone might not be comfortable taking direct action, but that doesn’t mean they don’t do valuable work behind the scenes.”
Taranta’s main motivation for facilitating the workshops is to fill in the gaps they see in education. “There are so many people here that are interested, but I don’t think our education is set up to give us these skills,” they said. “We are taught in class to critique and take things apart, but aren’t taught how to create solutions.”
Grodsky has been involved in planning workshops for the day of strikes and teach-ins that correspond with Charles Murray’s visit to campus on March 31. While Taranta said the uptick in workshops is not a direct response to Murray, they noted that the workshops will happen in tandem with the event.
“We need people prepared to be de-escalators,” Taranta said. They hope the workshops will provide a source of community support during Murray’s visit.
Taranta has high hopes for the spring. “We can be pretty limitless in terms of what we envision, and a whole lot can change fast,” they said.
(02/27/20 11:44am)
Middlebury fell to Trinity in the NESCAC Quarterfinals on Saturday. It was a quick start for the Panthers as they started off on a 5–0 streak. However, that was about as good as it got for the boys as Trinity went on a 12–2 run, followed by an 11–3 run later in the half that gave Trinity a 32–19 edge. By the end of the first half, it was 48–34 Trinity.
Trinity did not let up in the second half, enjoying a 20+ point advantage for most of the rest of the game, and would win by a final score of 100–82.
Jack Farrell ’21 accounted for 29 points to lead the team, Tommy Eastman ’21 led in rebounds with 9, and Griffin Kornaker ’21 led in assists with 6. Middlebury will learn their seed in the NCAA Tournament on March 2nd.
(02/27/20 11:00am)
Investigations are ongoing as police look for suspects in an armed robbery in East Middlebury. The initial incident occurred on the night of Jan. 6, when a man wearing green and dark-colored clothing, carrying a handgun, entered Mac’s Convenience Store a few minutes before 9 p.m. The suspect fired a round into the floor before confronting the clerk and taking an unknown amount of cash from the register. Upon leaving the establishment, the suspect fired an additional round at the ceiling, then fled on foot.
On Thursday, Jan. 9, the police were again called to the store to investigate another burglary, in which a suspect forced open a window and a door. The police are withholding what was stolen in this second incident.
For a town that experienced only five instances of violent crime in 2018, the robbery comes as a surprise. “Nothing like that happens out here ... This is usually a pretty quiet village,” said East Middlebury resident Linda Kelton. “It felt like we’ve been invaded – and we still don’t know if it’s someone from town [who is] and living among us, which is pretty unsettling.”
According to the Middlebury Police Department, no-one has expressed to the department feeling particularly unsafe or expressed heightened concern.
Mac’s was previously robbed in 2008 by Addison County Resident Anthony Carosella. According to a Middlebury police report, Carosella, 23, entered the store on Sept. 16 and demanded cash from the clerk while displaying a firearm. He fled the scene with an undetermined amount of cash. That fall of 2008, Carosella was involved in a involved in a conspiracy to distribute heroin and crack cocaine in Vermont that was led by individuals from Bronx, N.Y. During this time, Carosella also held up several pharmacies in Addison and Chittenden counties to steal pharmaceuticals. In 2011, Carosella pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 120 months in prison. He also has to pay $98,460.62 in restitution to businesses affected by these crimes.
In light of January’s robberies, Kelton, the East Middlebury resident, said that she has stepped up security measures at home — she makes it a point to lock doors and turn on her home alarm system every night — and has been more cautious with her belongings following the robbery.
“[The fact that it was an] armed robbery shook us up a little more than if it wasn’t [an armed robbery],” she said. “It made us realize [that] some people are just so desperate that they feel the need to do these things.”
The investigations are still ongoing, and anyone with information about either incident is asked to contact the Middlebury Police Department.
(02/27/20 10:58am)
Dear Faculty,
On March 31, students, faculty and staff across campus will be striking in an effort to resist the white supremacy and pseudoscience that denies marginalized members of our community their dignity at Middlebury College. We are striking because everyone deserves to live and learn on a campus that does not invite speakers who invoke violence and hatred, or utilize “science” as a weapon of oppression in the service of racism, sexism, transphobia and classism.
We believe Charles Murray embodies larger structures of white supremacy that occupy Middlebury and all institutions of higher education. We refuse to allow Middlebury to continue to uphold these structures of oppression and we refuse to allow right-wing money and media to control discourse on our campus. Instead of attending our usual classes, we are planning an alternative schedule of teach-ins led by faculty. These teach-ins will be open to students, staff, and community members who wish to engage with anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-classist, anti-xenophobic and anti-pseudoscientific material. These teach-ins will allow the members of our community to exercise agency over their own education on a day during which a racist pseudo-scholar will monopolize a powerful speech platform at our institution.
We are asking for your support and collaboration in our resistance. We urge you to join us in striking. As faculty, you contribute immense labor power to this institution. Choosing to withdraw and redirect that power on March 31 will disrupt “business as usual” and lend weight to our resistance. For those of you who choose to strike with us, we urge you to tell your students of your intent in advance and create space in your classes for discussion of this action as a mode of resistance. You can further create that space by reaching out to student organizers and offering your classroom as a teach-in location. We are immensely grateful to the faculty members who are already collaborating with us. In particular, many faculty members have contributed to a website with a tentative and developing schedule of teach-ins, along with more general information about Murray. If you are interested in getting involved, whether it be to offer support, offer your classroom space or create your own teach-in, please fill out the form on go/facultyteachin.
If you choose not to join us, please allow your students to make their own choices about whether or not they will strike and participate in the teach-ins. Recommend a talk or teach-in that you find engaging or related to your class material. Tell your students you will not take attendance that day, or offer a make-up opportunity. We ask that you please do not give exams or quizzes in class that day.
We are committed to making March 31 a day focused on learning strategies to unlearn institutional biases. We invite you to reach out to us about leading your own teach-in. You might choose to teach about the history of white supremacy, classism, racism and pseudoscience in your discipline, or lead a workshop debunking Murray’s ideas as they relate to your areas of research. Too often, the labor of supporting student activism, recognizing current on-campus social issues and incorporating those issues in the classroom falls upon certain professors. These professors are often already engaged in social justice in their programs and departments (e.g. Environmental Studies, Black Studies, Gender Studies, Sociology, etc.). By relegating these conversations to the sphere of the social justice-oriented humanities, we fail to recognize the impact that Murray’s bigoted pseudoscholarship has on students of all disciplines and the college community as a whole.
We urge you, professors across all disciplines, to engage now, as Charles Murray’s visit will inevitably have an impact on the entire college community. We envision a day of learning that is inclusive of the diverse perspectives and fields present on campus. We hope that you will help broaden our understanding of the ways in which white supremacy and related oppressive ideologies and forces manifest.
Ultimately, we are asking you to foster communities and spaces in which all students feel dignified and supported. Please reach out to us, engage us in conversation, and share your thoughts and concerns. We ask you to take this as an opportunity to encourage participation in our collective education outside of the classroom.
Note to readers: We would like to make readers aware of a companion letter written by our peers that argues that the talk should be canceled or moved off-campus. The letter was sent to administration this week. These distinct approaches stem from similar beliefs about what values our campus should uphold.
Sincerely,
Lauren Bates ’20
Claire Contreras ’22.5
Luna Gizzi ’21
Sidra Pierson ’21
The authors of this piece are four of the over 120 student signatories who signed this letter online. For a full-list of signatories or to add your support, visit go/cmletters.
(02/27/20 10:56am)
I have a disability. I am disabled. And, I have shame.
I have never written out those words, much less read them aloud to myself, feeling the edges of their meanings, as I do right now. I have said that I have a learning disability, but these words feel different. I have said publicly that I was diagnosed with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder (ADD) as a young boy, and I have been able to say, “I have dyslexia and ADD.” Actually, I have been able to say that when needed, and only sometimes because shame attaches to part of me when I say any of these words: dyslexia; ADD. Shame especially visits me when I call it what it is: being disabled.
Such shame builds over time.
When I was an undergraduate, a professor asked me in class if I had dyslexia. My body went rigid and I got tunnel vision. He asked in care and concern. He had no way to know; I had not told anyone. I was not mad at him. In fact, I love him to this day. In graduate school, a professor who learned of my disability told me I should go back to working construction. I came to hate that professor. But, I no longer allow him to hold power over me. Later, while applying for another round of graduate school, I stated on my application that I have dyslexia. No more cat-and-mouse. Even so, a professor, ripping apart my paper, asked if there was a situation connected to my writing. With a glint in her eye, she offered help. I had had enough “help” by that point to know that, as Anne Lamont says, “Help is the sunny side of control.” I told her nothing was wrong. I did not come to hate that professor. Worse, I have no respect for her. I feared her, which was her game. I went back underground, hiding my shame and my disabilities.
These two professors were not the only ones interested in shaming the disabled. I used to be, too. As a kid in the eighties, I called others “retard.” I had an older brother whom I never knew. We were not to talk about him publicly. His name was Nick. He was profoundly mentally and physically disabled, and died young. I asked myself: Am I retarded and no one’s telling me about it? Are they calling me dyslexic and ADD so I won’t feel bad? How much of Nick is in me? Questions like these led to fear and shame — the cocktail of aggression. So I, the learning-disabled kid with the ghost of a dead handicapped brother, was happy to call others “retard.” Despite the sting it gave me, distancing myself from Nick felt good.
Shame wants to cover vulnerability. Shame moved me to hide my disability from myself and others by burying any sense of weakness in hard won success. So, I began learning Arabic as an undergrad, and not only have I learned it, I have learned to teach it. My Arabic is exceptional. My teaching is exceptional. I know that. I have spent most of my life working on these two things. Not just doing them, but working hard on them, and at different times in my career I have been advanced, if not high advanced, in three different dialects of Arabic, in addition to my skills in Standard Arabic. Take that dyslexia, and ADD, and retardation. I beat you! I deny you!
It is still there. It always will be. I am not it, and it is not me, but it is part of who I am in this world. It was put in me and I recognized it in me, and I let it in. I also let in the shame.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I have learned to embrace my shame.[/pullquote]
In kindergarten, I sat between the smart kids with tears streaming down my face as my teacher scolded me. I could not read. This was my first lesson in shame. I also learned that remembering what was said made reading less necessary. By college, I could read and write well enough and memorize the rest. I got good at memorization. It’s fun. I still remember my lines from my kindergarten play and I finished university with honors without taking notes in class. Does that make me smart? No. I do not feel smart for that. I feel shame. You see, I do not know how to take notes. People talk quickly and then some letters reverse and I forget where I was and then the sentence gets stuck on a few letters, and maybe that person can see my writing and my spelling might be wrong and what are they thinking? Do they know? Can they tell that I am —? And then my hand is shaking and the doctors said that anxiety exacerbates what I’ve got, so I’ve got to relax and try to catch that next sentence, and where were we...?
Oh, yes! Kindergarten play lines, graduating with honors, and a sharp memory. Smarts? No. Not smarts. A survival tactic. Differently-abled? No. It’s “nice,” like someone saying “AWW.” Disability means I lack or find marked difficulty in relation to a capacity that is possible for most. And, disability does not come with extra abilities, despite my lifelong infatuation with Daredevil, the blind comic book hero. No, I just memorized most everything because anyone can. Seriously, read Joshua Foer’s “Moonwalking with Einstein.” I am not special. I am handicapped. Handicapped? Yes. And despite my hesitation, why the hell not say it in this way? It is true and accurate. Retarded? No. On the spectrum? I guess I’ll take it, but I am old enough that it was not part of my medical-DSM/Dyslexia/ADD-story, my story featuring shame.
My shame, despite its efficacy in compelling action, has been a tactic without strategy, a reaction and not a response to being disabled. To feel soothed, it has demanded praise and success, and I have complied. But, it has always fallen short. No matter the accolade gained, the shame does not subside. And, I actually remain less skilled at what I am doing because I remain fearful. Fear limits. Only recently have I begun to move out of it. I have learned to embrace my shame, feel it, and grieve what I denied myself through shame and grieve what my disability has denied me. I sit alone. I cry. I listen. Then I usually laugh. I feel as if I am without shame, shameless, which presents a freedom, and freedom is a strategy, a dangerous one. Yet, it beats shame. So, what instead? I do not know, and I refuse to offer advice. I just know from my story that while shame provided quick and hot burning fuel, a simple generosity for others and the multiple selves that comprise me has provided the basic ingredients of my learning and growth, and can abide more than I thought possible.
Robert Greeley is a professor of Arabic, and is currently on sabbatical.
(02/27/20 10:53am)
The Office of Health and Wellness Education will introduce Mental Health Peer Educators (MHPE) next fall. This initiative aims to further discussion, support and guidance surrounding mental health at Middlebury. The office, which added several new positions this school year, has been working on the MHPE program since last summer.
“There has been a steep increase in requests for counseling appointments and interest across campus in discussing mental health,” Madeline Hope, assistant director of health and wellness education, said in an email to The Campus.
The new program will rely heavily on student members who will be responsible for attending weekly group meetings and conducting peer listening hours, among other activities.
Peer listening hours, which will allow students to seek support from peer educators during 30-minute sessions, are still under development, but Hope specified that they will not be the same as counseling. The office has not yet finalized the role of confidentiality, according to Hope.
“We are still working out the details of peer listening hour confidentiality, but before the group goes live in Fall 2020, these details will be shared with our community,” Hope said. “It is my hope that we can offer a safe and private space for students to be heard.”
Becca Gorman ’20, the former student government association health and wellness director, said she believes the program will be useful to students who have not yet been able to see a professional or are unsure if they should, and could serve as a resource for those who cannot access certain mental health resources for financial or insurance reasons.
Gorman is currently one of the presidents of Active Minds, a club that promotes increased discussion about mental health. Last year, Gorman participated in a focus group about mental health resources on campus. She said that some of the group’s participants proposed the idea for peer mental health advocates.
Hope believes that peer education makes information more accessible and ensures that the programs remain conscious of student needs.
Students interested in becoming mental health peer educators must fill out an online application by March 2 and will be interviewed. Selected students will then undergo training in the fall. Online information about the program estimates a four-hour time commitment per week, though Hope says she anticipates peer educators will have some lighter weeks.
Hope is looking for applicants who are passionate about tackling mental health issues and are ready to both listen and lead. She also noted the importance of representing a variety of voices in the program, encouraging queer students and students of color to apply.
The MHPE program will join existing student-led education programs including Sex Positive Education for College Students (SPECS) and MiddSafe, which are completely student-run, and Green Dot, which is run by the school with student involvenment.
Although they will have some overlap with MHPE as programs providing peer support, MiddSafe advocates and student residential life staff cannot join the initiative. Hope cited conflicting fall training times and the potential for burnout and compassion fatigue.
“I think our community is longing for more ways to speak openly about mental health and MHPEs can be a part of meeting that need,” Hope said.
(02/26/20 1:47pm)
Nikole Hannah-Jones, an award-winning investigative journalist and the founder of the New York Times’ Magazine 1619 Project, spoke to over 700 people in Mead Chapel on Tuesday night. In her talk, titled “1619 and the Legacy that Built a Nation,” she revealed the holes and hypocracies in the popular narrative of American history and the country’s indelible legacy of slavery.
The New York Times Magazine launched the 1619 project in Aug. 2019, the 400-year anniversary of the beginning of slavery in America. The project, initially developed as a magazine issue and podcast, hosted by Hannah-Jones, “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”
The event, featured as part of the Critical Conversations lecture series about race, was sponsored by the Black Studies Program, Middlebury College Activities Board, the Office of the President, and Critical Conversations.
During the talk, Hannah-Jones challenged the conventional view of the U.S. as an uniquely remarkable country founded on the principles of liberty and equality, highlighting the irony of Thomas Jefferson writing in the Declaration of Independence that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” while his enslaved brother-in-law served him and made him comfortable in his temporary Philadelphia residence. She noted that ten out of the first 12 presidents were slave owners.
Hannah-Jones explained that the U.S. was built on the “backs of Black bondage,” Proceeds from the slave trade led to the prosperity of American financial institutions like Wall Street and allowed for the creation of many academic instiutions. Slaves built much of Washington D.C. and constructed the infrastructure and provided that fueled the industrial revolution. Yet much of the basic infrastructure in modern America, such as the highway systems in many major cities, were built to contain and oppress African Americans.
Despite being the targets of oppression and hypocrisy throughout U.S. history, African Americans have constantly toiled to improve the nation. Hannah-Jones described the Black civil rights movement as a catalyst for change and equality across a variety of marginalized groups, pushing the country to live up to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
“Out of the Black resistance struggle is every other resistance struggle and freedom struggle and rights struggle in this country. They all owe their inheritance to their Black rights struggle,” Hannah-Jones said. She cited the use of the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause, which emerged from the abolition movement, in the Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage in 2015.
Critics have called Hannah-Jones unpatriotic, chiding her criticism of the legitimacy of the founding fathers’ ideals. In her talk, she responded by saying that the project is “only unpatriotic to those who believe that Black people are not Americans,” because Black people have always fought for and upheld those ideals, even as their rights were deliberately withheld by the U.S. government.
“We are never taught about the unparalleled role that Black people have played in perfecting our democracy and expanding the common good and actually believing in the ideals of the revolutionary period,” she said.
Hannah-Jones lamented the absence of these narratives in her own childhood, acknowledging the power in celebrating African Americans as “the real founders of this country”. Since the 1619 project launched, it has since expanded into an upcoming book and a history curriculum that has been widely adopted by schools across the country.
“When I think about the project, I hope that we will create a generation of Black children who are freed from that shame that so many of us were raised in and who feel they have a right to claim their own country,” she said.
Beyond empowering African Americans, Hannah-Jones hopes that the project will lead Americans of all races to reflect on the legacies of slavery in America.
“You don’t have to personally have family that owned enslaved people to have profited and benefitted from a system of slavery,” Hannah-Jones said. “[After this talk] you can no longer say that you don’t know that. From here on forward it’s a choice about whether you continue to benefit from it or if you work to deconstruct it and work to create the country of our ideals.”
(02/20/20 11:35am)
The Panthers’ dominant season was given yet another high note on Friday night as they handed Tufts only their fifth loss of the season and their first in NESCAC play. Tufts took off on a full head of steam in the opening minutes, attaining a 9–3 advantage. Middlebury was not to be stifled, quickly knotting up the score at 9–9. The teams remained neck and neck for a good while until the Panthers attacked for eight unanswered points to give themselves a 44–36 lead. Holding a six point lead at the half, the Panthers were quick to advance their lead by scoring the first five points out of halftime. Middlebury began to creep away until the lead had jumped to 78–60. The Jumbos went on a late 8–0 run, but the game belonged to Middlebury and they won by a score of 86–74.
Max Bosco ’21 had a tremendous offensive performance, leading all players with 26 points. Matt Folger ’20 put up an all-around impressive game with 18 points, 14 rebounds, and a couple of steals as well. Tommy Eastman ’21 added a double-double of his own with 14 points and 11 rebounds. Jack Farrell ’21 was a key part as well with 8 rebounds and 8 assists.
Friday’s relatively easy victory was quickly turned around by a heartbreaker on Middlebury’s senior day. Bates, thanks to a buzzer beater from Nick Gilpin, escaped with a 90–87 victory to end Middlebury’s regular season on a sour note.
Bates was out to a 10–4 lead when the Panthers turned the game on its head with a 10–0 streak. The game stayed tight throughout the first half, but Bates led 40–35 at the break.
Middlebury was able to turn the game around once again and held a five point lead with less than five minutes to play. Bates fought back and with the game knotted up at 87–87, everything came down to the final ten seconds. A Bates-missed shot made it Panther ball, but a turnover gave the ball back to Bates and allowed Gilpin to drain the 23-footer to seal a hard fought victory.
Eastman put up 28 points, a personal best, and Folger put up his second double-double of the weekend with 19 points and 11 rebounds.
It was a disappointing way to end a dominant regular season but on a happier note, Middlebury will play as the fifth seed in the NESCAC Quarterfinals against #4 Trinity at Trinity next Saturday at 3:00 pm.
(02/20/20 10:59am)
This election season, Bill McKibben is turning the spotlight to big banks. He was arrested last month during a sit-in at a Chase Bank in Washington D.C. that served as a trial run for the national mass action, “Stop the Money Pipeline,” set to take on the financial sector this April.
“I think it’s worth remembering that there are two levers of power on our planet,” said McKibben, a writer, activist and scholar-in-residence at Middlebury, in an interview with The Campus. “One of them is political and the other is financial.”
McKibben published a piece in The New Yorker last September calling climate change a timed test. He described political change as usually involving slow compromise even in a working system, something not seen in what he called a “dysfunctional gridlock” in Washington.
“Even if everything went great in the election in November, it’s still not like our government’s going to turn on a dime and do all the things we need,” McKibben told The Campus. He sees rapid political transformation as unlikely at best, especially on a global scale.
But Wall Street, McKibben said, remains the money capital of the world. With swift action needed worldwide, he said it should come from the financial sector as well as the political one.
“When Wall Street moves, it moves quickly,” McKibben said. “If Chase did make some announcement that they weren’t going to be, say, loaning for expansionary fossil fuel projects, then 45 minutes later, the stock market would have reflected that in powerful ways.”
McKibben identifies the money held by Chase and similar banks as a primary driver of the climate crisis in both The New Yorker piece and a New York Times op-ed he co-authored this January, .
“Chase is by far the biggest lender to the fossil fuel industry and they lend the most to all the most aggressive expansionary projects.” McKibben told The Campus. Chase Bank has lent more than $195 billion to oil and gas companies over the last three years — more than the market value of BP oil — to fund projects such as oil drilling in the deep ocean and the Arctic, according to McKibben’s piece in The New Yorker.
The January protest coincided with the last day of Jane Fonda’s Fire Drill Fridays, weekly climate demonstrations in D.C. during which Fonda has repeatedly been arrested. “While Jane and Joaquin Phoenix and Martin Sheen were up on Capitol Hill, about 25 of us went into the nearest Chase branch and had a nice chat with the manager, and just sat down,” McKibben said.
Fonda later led protesters down to the bank, where they rallied out front. Inside, McKibben said, the atmosphere was pleasant and low-key. “We were very, very clear to tell the people working there that we had not the slightest beef with them,” he said. The goal of the sit-in was to reach the bank’s higher-ups in New York — and to give people an idea of what the national day of action might look like in April.
“We’re hoping that there will be demonstrations at hundreds or thousands of bank branches across America,” he said. Among the top targets are Chase, BlackRock and Liberty Mutual, listed on the Stop the Money Pipeline website as three of the world’s biggest funders of fossil fuels.
Because there are no Chase branches in Vermont, McKibben expects that some Vermonters will travel out of state to protest. He said others will get together to cut up Chase credit cards, which include the Amazon credit card, the Southwest and United Airlines mileage cards, the Starbucks rewards card, and others.
Two of the most important things Middlebury students can do, McKibben said, are to let Chase know that they’re not going to ever take out a Chase credit card, and to make it clear that they’re not ever going to go to work at Chase.
McKibben cited Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America as three other major funders of the fossil fuel industry, cautioning that people shouldn’t just cut up their Chase credit card and get a Bank of America one. Better alternatives, he said, include fully-divested Amalgamated Bank on the East Coast, Beneficial State Bank on the West Coast, and Aspirations online.
“Most people don’t have a coal mine in their backyard,” McKibben said. “Most people don’t have a pipeline that runs through their neighborhood. But a lot of people, tens of millions of people, have a credit card in their pocket from Chase and a pair of scissors in the kitchen drawer.”
(02/20/20 10:57am)
Five first-year students who arrived on campus in the fall of 2018 were saddened, though not surprised, by the lack of diversity on campus. In response, Maya Gee, Roni Lezema, Dennis Miranda-Cruz, Cynthia Chen and Myles Maxie, all of the class of 2022, partnered with the admissions office to establish a Student Ambassador Program, which was put into practice last fall.
The program enables Middlebury students from rural, low-income and ethnically diverse areas to serve as admissions ambassadors to high schools in their hometowns and surrounding areas — areas that the college’s admissions counselors don’t visit often.
“We believe that, above all else, students want to go to a college where they envision themselves being happy,” the program’s founders said in an October Campus op-ed. “In our experience, the best way to help them have that vision in the first place is by watching and listening to someone from their own hometown speak about the school.”
The five students met on the SGA Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee (formerly known as the Institutional Diversity Committee) in the fall of 2018.
“The Middlebury community as we see it right now reflects a lot of what Middlebury used to be, but also the evolving efforts to include more students of marginalized backgrounds that typically weren’t represented in higher education,” said Gee, who grew up in rural Hawaii. Gee visited a number of high schools in her capacity as an ambassador when she was home this winter break.
“If we want to be fostering a diverse community on campus, we have to make sure that we are inviting those communities to campus,” she added.
Although they discussed developing this program as a student organization, the founding members agreed that they wanted it to be institutionalized under the umbrella of the admissions office. Nicole Curvin, the dean of admissions, and Santana Audet ’13, the senior assistant director of admissions and coordinator of diversity, inclusion and access initiatives, have been integral in this endeavor, according to Gee.
The founders began collaborating with the admissions office that fall and ran what they call a “pilot program” in spring 2019.
While the program is now an official part of the admissions office, it remains entirely student-run.
“Five first years came to us two years ago and I left that meeting so energized and motivated by their infectious enthusiasm and engagement,” Audet said. “I want this to always be a student-led initiative because that’s where the energy comes from. Our office’s support will maintain the longevity and historical knowledge of the program as students come and go, but this will become a student legacy.”
Now, the program is made up of three coordinators— Gee, Dennis Miranda-Cruz ’22 and Cynthia Chen ’22 — and 18 student ambassadors. They hope that the program will double in size each year, eventually employing over 100 student ambassadors.
Off the beaten path
The Office of Admissions has about a dozen admissions counselors that each travel approximately six weeks out of the year, visiting four or five schools a day. They attempt to balance visiting schools that traditionally send applications and visiting schools from which they hope to see applications.
Still, many of the schools that the student ambassadors are now hoping to reach are often left out. To maximize each counselor’s outreach, they often forgo visits to rural areas with few students.
New Student Ambassadors are trained to give information sessions about the college to prospective students, while adding personal touches to connect with high school students in their own hometowns.
“We know that nothing works better than personal contact when it comes to helping a student see themselves at Middlebury,” Audet said.
Student Ambassadors intend to do most of their outreach in the spring, which is the opposite of the fall travel schedule for the college’s admissions counselors. Each high school on the list has never been visited by the college, and is in an area considered either high poverty or extremely rural.
Ambassadors get paid $20 per two-hour visit. Although visits are typically only one hour long, the extra hour accounts for potential travel time. The admissions office recommends that students travel to high schools no more than 30 miles away from their home addresses.
Gee estimated that student ambassadors have already completed 15–20 visits in 2020.
“We are reaching out to an entirely new demographic. For me personally, there were a lot of students I visited in Hawaii who ended up applying to Middlebury from high schools who had previously never had any applications to Middlebury,” Gee said.
(02/20/20 10:56am)
Naomi Klein, acclaimed writer and climate activist, brought fire to Wilson Hall last Thursday.
Klein spoke to a packed Wilson Hall about her new book, “On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal” for this year’s Scott A. Margolin ’99 Lecture. The talk addressed justice and hope in a warming world, but fire was the key theme of the night.
Scholar-in-Residence Bill McKibben opened the talk with an abridged account of Klein’s long history in the climate movement, including her work as the first board member of 350.org, the climate action non-profit McKibben founded. Then, Klein and moderator Dan Suarez, a professor of Environmental Studies, took the stage.
Klein described in vivid detail the infernos still burning across Australia and the 2018 fire that claimed 86 lives in Paradise, California. She said that worsening wildfires and other unprecedented natural disasters are, unmistakably, results of global warming.
“I don’t think it is a coincidence that as our planet’s temperature increases, the political temperature is increasing,” Klein said. She identified growing political instability as a key reason behind the rise of far-right leaders like President Donald Trump, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“They are true planetary arsonists,” she said, “seemingly determined to torch the planet, convinced that their wealth and privilege will protect them.”
But Klein doesn’t think that wildfires and what she dubbed “the fires of hate” are the only important fires of our time. The third fire, she said, “is our fire.”
Klein has a clear message about what to do with that third fire: change everything. A radical future awaits us, she said. We must decide what kind of radical we want it to be. She envisions a future in which we rebuild zero-carbon societies founded on the ideals of equity and resilience. “Why wouldn’t we?” she said. “We’re changing anyway.”
And that change is already visible: three years ago, Klein said, climate ranked 19th on voters’ list of priorities at the Iowa and New Hampshire Democratic primaries. This year, climate came second, only after health care.
The house is on fire, she said, and to truly step into this moment in history, we must all work to clear away the debris from those flames — to move past whatever it is that’s stopping politicians from confronting climate change. For Klein, that means electing Bernie Sanders to the White House. She said she sees Sanders as the only candidate who will treat climate as the priority that it is.
During the Q&A portion of the talk, Suarez asked Klein how young people should deal with the questions of how to live, where to go, what to do, what to learn and who to be in the face of climate change.
“Whatever your expertise is, whatever your passion is, you need to figure out how the emergency is going to reflect in your work,” Klein said.
Lynn Travnikova ’20.5 brought up the question of inclusion and exclusion in the climate movement. “How do we get [people from marginalized communities] inside the conversation, and how do we make sure that regardless of race and socioeconomic status people feel like they are part of that conversation, and their voice matters?” she asked.
For a long time, the mainstream environmental movement has not represented the communities that are most impacted by environmental harms, Klein said. “Those are the communities that need to be first in line to own and control their own renewable energy projects,” she said, referencing the fights against pipelines led by indigenous people as an example of more diverse collaboration.
Suarez told The Campus that the talk, organized by the Environmental Council and other students associated with the Environmental Studies department, aimed to reach students beyond the department who were grappling with what it means to come of age in a time of climate breakdown. He said that achieving the radical transformation Klein called for will take everyone.
“It’s going to take all kinds of roles, all kinds of capacities and all kinds of contexts,” he said.
(02/13/20 9:17pm)
The Panthers hosted the Conn College on Saturday, Feb. 1. Middlebury held a 16–8 advantage over the Camels during the first ten minutes of the game, thanks to impressive play from Reagan McDonald ’23 and Maya Davis ’20. During the second quarter, however, the Camels secured 18 out of the first 24 points, which brought the game to a stalemate 34–34 at half time. The two teams had intense exchanges during the third quarter, and Davis and Michaela Sullivan ’22 collaborated to score points. During the last quarter, with less than 7 minutes remaining, Middlebury was able to catch up to the Camels after seven straight points. Unfortunately, the Panthers could not turn the tide and lost the game 87–80.
Sullivan performed outstandingly in this game, scoring a career-high 25 points. In regards to the game, she said, “Losing to Connecticut wasn’t an easy pill to swallow. Despite the loss, we outscored them in the fourth quarter, which shows how unwilling we were to give up, and I’m really proud of the way we fought until the end. At the end of the day, it’s about working hard, becoming better basketball players, enjoying each other’s company, and having fun.”
On Feb. 6, Middlebury traveled to Massachusetts to compete against Emmanuel College. The Saints opened the game with a 6-point edge over the Panthers, and in 10 minutes, they had a 25–17 lead. Middlebury fought hard to come back during the second quarter. Claire Miller ’23 and McDonald shot impressive back-to-back threes, and two teams scored evenly during the second quarter. Regrettably, the Panthers had a tough time during the third quarter, even after incredible plays from Alana Kornaker ’22. With a mere 4 minutes remaining on the clock, Middlebury continued to work to shrink the difference, but lost to Emmanuel 82–89.
The Panthers had a bumpy start in their game against Wesleyan on Feb. 9, as the Cardinals led a steady 10-point advantage during the first quarter. Middlebury was able to reduce the point difference somewhat during the second stanza, but Wesleyan persisted in their attacks. Thankfully, McDonald was able to cut the disadvantage for Middlebury as she scored back-to-back. During the last quarter, the Panthers cut the deficit to 76–66 with a minute remaining. Betsy Knox ’20 tallied up six points, while Kira Waldman ’20 scored consecutive layups. The Cardinals overpowered the Panthers 84–70.
Recounting the week McDonald said, “Although the past few games have not gone on our way, we are remaining positive and keeping our team morale high. As a team, we are focusing on working together and celebrating both individual and team success.”
The Panthers will challenge the Jumbos at Tufts on Friday, Feb. 14.
