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(04/26/19 2:17pm)
On a busy Wednesday night, almost 100 people showed up to Dana Auditorium to listen to a panel of Middlebury College students talk about “Moving Forward” – how and why they each approached the visit of another controversial speaker, Ryszard Legutko, to our campus last week. With very little guidance, and with a talented student moderator, our students held a conversation that was impossible to have two years ago after Charles Murray’s visit. They disagreed pointedly at times, they tried to stick to the questions they were asked, and they created space for audience engagement.
A few people asked me after the event – what was the point? There was no consensus reached. No one on the panel changed their mind after 90 minutes. We did not design any new policies. We are still stuck in the place where we try to protect academic freedom and cultivate mutual respect.
What was the point? Just like every discussion section or seminar, the conversation was the point.
Consensus is not and should not be the goal. Among colleges and universities, Middlebury has made two choices, one older and one newer. Middlebury was founded in 1800 as a liberal arts college. A liberal arts education is based on the idea that the world can and should be understood in multiple ways. More recently, Middlebury has worked to create a more diverse and inclusive community. Education in a diverse community is based on the idea that the world is experienced in multiple ways. Consensus is anathema to a diverse, liberal arts education. We should not ask it of our students, nor of ourselves.
Is it ok if no one changed their minds? Of course it is – because education and persuasion do not happen in 90-minute increments. For some reason, we tell our students that they simply cannot learn the fundamentals of literary theory or international relations without meeting twice a week for three months, but when it comes to academic freedom or inclusion, we somehow expect to wrap it all up in a few Campus editorials or town hall meetings. We might hope to persuade our students, or each other, of the soundness of certain arguments, but persuasion does not happen at a distance – it happens in durable relationships between friends, between professors and students, among colleagues.
But we don’t have any new policies! For the past two years, we have convened committees, drafted new policies, and circulated emails. Some policy proposals can prompt useful conversations even if they do not come to fruition. Still, even the best policies are useless if not supported by the community.
We are still stuck in the place where we try to protect academic freedom and cultivate mutual respect. This is true. The recent episodes on our campus are symptoms of this, and we need to be explicit that this is the cause. Neither our Handbook nor the AAUP statement recognize an absolute right to academic freedom. On the other hand, our educational institution cannot avoid arguments we find objectionable. We are trying to figure out how to engage with a wide range of challenging ideas without hardening into hostile, competing camps.
The student-led conversation on Wednesday night was admirable in content and process. The students generally agreed that there was objectionable content in The Demon in Democracy, but disagreed over whether to attend the talk, not attend, protest, or sit with the author in class. They worked to share information, respond to myths (such as the idea that this was an “underground” talk by Legutko, or that what was planned was a “disruptive” protest), and draw lessons beyond this one event.
As an example of dialogue, the panel was public evidence that our students are both capable of and interested in respectful engagement with those with whom they disagree. They followed practices that helped facilitate understanding.
Speak from experience, not on behalf of others: two students spoke about their roots and experiences outside the US (in Croatia and in India), and how those ties shaped their very different approaches to the talk.
Listen to understand: several students asked clarifying questions rather than immediately challenging their peers.
Take turns: no one student dominated the panel. There were a wide range of views represented, and the students took more or less equal time.
Our students are not perfect. Neither are we. On Wednesday night, I saw an informed and diverse group of students talk honestly and intelligently. In emails with students after the event, this thoughtful tone continued. One described a conversation with another panelist before it started, and both commented on “how rare it is to see people engaged in person.” Others said we needed to work to create “an atmosphere that encourages an exchange of ideas” and that they hoped “to organize similarly productive debates” in the future. Joey Lyons, Grace Vedock, Rebecca Duras, Akhila Roy, Ethan Cohen, and organizer and moderator Quinn Boyle – you have my thanks for showing us how we can confront our differences while treating each other with respect.
Sarah S. Stroup is an associate professor of Political Science and the faculty director of the Engaged Listening Project.
(04/25/19 10:00am)
On the fifth floor of BiHall is a glass-paneled enclosure where many students of physics can often be found, socializing, snacking and collaborating on problem sets. A sign on the exterior of the glass wall serves as a friendly reminder to onlookers: “Please don’t knock on the glass. It scares the physics students.”
“I’m not sure [the sign] casts the students in the best light,” Professor of Physics Anne Goodsell joked as we walk towards her lab, which is further down the same hallway.
The signage here in the lab is considerably more serious. “Danger,” it warns in large text bolded for emphasis. “Visible and/or invisible laser radiation. Avoid eye or skin exposure to direct or scattered radiation.”
Professor Goodsell’s lab works in the cooling of atoms using laser light to study the interaction between highly excited atoms and electric fields. Put simply, the Goodsell lab has been assembling a laser-cooling system: that includes the lasers themselves, a source of atoms (Rubidium, in this case) and the vacuum chamber, optics and electronics for these experiments.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]According to Goodsell, these rubidium atoms are the “coolest atoms in Vermont.” [/pullquote]
Multiple lasers are shot and intersect at a point, forming a magneto-optical trap where rubidium atoms will cool to 200 microkelvins and launch upward in discrete clouds. This cooling process slows the atoms’ movement in midair. For reference, room temperature is 293 kelvins, or 293,000,000 microkelvin. According to Goodsell, these rubidium atoms are the “coolest atoms in Vermont.”
Why cool atoms in Vermont, of all places, where average temperatures go down to 10ºF in the winter? (That’s 261 kelvins, in case you were wondering). Cooling down atoms slows their movement, which allows the lab to more accurately measure the atoms’ trajectories to investigate their interactions with external electric fields and forces.
Goodsell’s study of the laser-cooling of atoms began as an undergraduate at Bryn Mawr College and continued into her graduate and post-doctoral research at Harvard.
Goodsell’s experience at a liberal arts undergraduate institution allowed her to explore her different academic interests, which was ultimately what had led her to embark on her journey of becoming a physicist.
In fact, her first research experience had been in a laser-cooling lab in between her sophomore and junior year in college.
“Being in a lab made me feel like there were things I could build and feel and see,” Goodsell said.
“It was the first time when I spent some time reading about science work that other people had done. I read a whole bunch of papers — some of it I didn’t understand.”
She showed me a box of papers that she had collected that summer. Each paper was folded neatly in half, organized chronologically and tagged by author, title and date.
“I printed out all these papers that talked about laser cooling. There weren’t PDFs yet at this point,” she said.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]For a lot of the topics in science, the work that you do is really connected to the work that other people have done.[/pullquote]
“There’s my electron,” Goodsell pointed affectionately to a small diagram in the margins of one of the papers. “It absorbs some energy and spits out some light.” She laughs. “This [box of papers] is, in some ways, just a relic. I feel like I just couldn’t discard them. This was a set of papers that was recommended by a faculty member that I worked with and there’s stuff that’s like the foundations of the field.”
“I think that [summer is] when I started to understand things,” Goodsell reflected.
“That was also the first time where I was really learning a bit more about the community of science and science people,” Goodsell said, commenting on the collaborative nature of research in the sciences.
“For a lot of the topics in science, the work that you do is really connected to the work that other people have done. It’s not just connecting with ideas in a textbook,” Goodsell said.
When new fields of research first begin to materialize, experimental procedures can often encounter various glitches and challenges so that initially only a few people are able to carry out the relevant experiments successfully.
“A lot of work in science starts that way,” Goodsell said. “A few people do something successfully, compare and confirm, argue about it, come out with either one general outcome — or sometimes two — and from there these ideas get picked up by a larger group and then at a later time there may be as many people who have done that experiment as people who have run the Boston Marathon in history or have served as a congressperson or have bought hamburgers.”
After joining the Middlebury faculty in 2010, Goodsell has taught courses from Newtonian Physics to Experimental Physics to a first year seminar called Light: Metaphors and Models.
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Goodsell has taught the Experimental Physics course at least once every year since 2015. “I still very much enjoy doing experimental physics, so getting to teach that class is — sort of — like getting to take it again.”
“For me, [teaching and doing research] was a really desirable coexistence,” Goodsell said. Teaching and doing research simultaneously at a liberal arts college, however, comes with its own set of challenges.
Though the process of research and formulating questions works really well during the summers, maintaining that mental connection to research during the school year is harder, Goodsell said. During the school year, Goodsell splits her time between her teaching and research responsibilities, but central to both is her passion for sparking in her students the same joy of experimental physics that she maintains.
“[My undergraduate physics courses] was the experience that I had that helped me decide on doing research, so it feels like one way to offer other people that same kind of opportunity,” Goodsell said. “Not like, ‘You must do physics because I loved it and you will, too,’” Goodsell said, but if you’ve never had the opportunity to explore the field, “how would you know?”
Sasha Clarick ’19, Amanda Kirkeby ’19 and David Cohen ’20 presented on their work in the Goodsell lab in the Spring Symposium two Fridays ago.
Clarick stayed at Middlebury over the summer to do research in the Goodsell lab. “I am modeling atoms as they fly upwards towards a charged wire, visualizing their behavior in different circumstances,” she said.
Visualizing such behavior allows various aspects of the atom cloud, such as its velocity and size, to be measured and characterized.
Though the research initially ran into hiccups over operation of the laser apparatus, Clarick described a “feeling of accomplishment” when they were able to successfully trap the cloud of atoms for the first time, after getting the lasers working and properly aligned — but lasers aside, the entire process was “also just really cool” Clarick said.
“That’s just kind of mind boggling, isn’t it? That you can take lasers, which you’d think would heat things up, and cool it down and physically condense it into this cloud,” Kirkeby said, sharing Clarick’s and Goodsell’s enthusiasm, “...the perplexity and the counter-intuitiveness of it.”
(04/25/19 10:00am)
Fresh off another win against the fifth-ranked team in the nation, the women’s lacrosse team has not looked back, extending their record to 13-1. Rookie Jane Earley ’22, who earned NESCAC Player of the Week, led the Panthers to a 10-9 victory over fifth-ranked Tufts with four goals. Earley clutched the victory with a game-winning goal in the last three minutes of the contest, bringing the Panther record to 13-1 with just one game left in the regular season.
Momentum shifted throughout the entire game, as both teams never fell below a two-point deficit. Just as the Panthers jumped to a 2-1 start, the Jumbos responded with three of their own. This back-and-forth would continue throughout the game, reflecting the intensity of the contest.
With 4:30 left in the game, the score was knotted 9-9. The Jumbos controlled the following draw — just as they had for the majority of the game — and raced down the field to face goalie Julia Keith ’20. Keith saved a Tufts shot and Middlebury successfully cleared the ball to Earley. Earley, with less than three minutes on the clock, took the ball around her defender and rocketed the shot to the back of the net.
The Panthers’ 10-9 victory puts them in a favorable position for the number one seed in the NESCAC tournament. In order to lock in their spot at the top, the Panthers will either have to knock off Williams or bank on Tufts falling to 14th-ranked Bowdoin.
Last week, senior Sara DiCenso said that their final two regular season games would be a challenge. Against Tufts, the Panther squad was able to overcome a difficult battle — one of the toughest they have seen this season. Williams will be the next bout before their postseason run.
This season, the Williams Ephs have a 7-7 record, including a 3-6 record in conference play. Williams and Middlebury both lost to an 8-6 Bates team, but Middlebury has the upper hand with the rest of its impressive play. Middlebury’s sole loss came from their first game, which was decided in a heartbreaking OT. This served to be the wake-up call the team needed, as they have been spotless since that minor setback.
(04/25/19 9:54am)
In a matchup against No. 4 nationally-ranked Tufts, the Middlebury men’s lacrosse team was looking to earn a huge win and gain momentum going into its final week before playoffs. Unfortunately, the Panthers could not keep up with Tufts’ fast scoring offense and lost 23-14. They fell to 7-7 on the year, but remain in sixth place in the NESCAC standings.
The game was very tightly contested throughout the first half. Tufts opened up the scoring, but Middlebury rebounded with a goal by leading scorer Tyler Forbes ’22 at the 8:59 mark. The teams kept alternating goals, but Middlebury’s only lead in the game came halfway through the first, when A.J. Kucinski ’20 rattled off two stifling goals to put the team in the lead 3-2. At the end of the first, Tufts led the Panthers 5-4.
Forbes quickly scored again in the second to tie the game. Again, it was back and forth, with both teams displaying great defense and offense. It is fair to say the game was played at a very fast pace, packed with a ton of action and great scoring plays. Middlebury scored a man-up goal towards the end of the half to put them within one of the Jumbos, after Jack Sheehan ’22 ripped a shot from about 15 yards out. At the end of the half, the Panthers were down 10-9.
In the second half, things started to go the right way for the Jumbos. Their offense really picked up and Midd had a tough time controlling the attack. Middlebury was able to hang around for most of the quarter, with Forbes and Alderik van der Heyde ’21 keeping the scoring going for the Panthers. However, Tufts scored the five goals to put them in the lead 17-13 going into the final frame.
Rain started to fall as the game progressed, but that did not stop the Jumbos. In the final quarter, Tufts outscored the Panthers 6-1 and closed the game out. On the day, Forbes had five goals to keep up with his fantastic season on offense. Kucinski also netted five of his own, with two assists. In goal, Tyler Bass ’21 played most of the minutes at 57:04. He had 13 saves on 36 shots. Although it was a tough game for the Panthers, their offense showed their ability to score and the defense showed some signs of hope.
The Panthers have one game left in conference play, as they will travel to No. 8 Williams on Wednesday. With a win, the Panthers can gain great momentum going into the playoffs. They are excited for what they have in store and know what needs to be done to compete in the incredibly tough NESCAC conference.
(04/25/19 9:48am)
STEM subjects are part of the liberal arts for the same reason as any other subjects: they provide a unique perspective on the world. By condemning the CHEM 0103 test question, we have decided that there is no place for the viewpoint of STEM to influence our understanding of history. I cannot discount the fact that this question offends some students, but we should have a conversation pertaining to the potential usefulness of questions like it.
The abstract math of STEM can have immense real-world consequences. In one of my physics classes, I was asked to calculate the critical mass for the nuclear weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was just a few letters and numbers, but it led to the death of hundreds of thousands. Science does not exist in a vacuum—applying it is just as important as the science itself. Putting myself in the very same shoes as Einstein, who developed this weapon, forced me to appreciate the gravity of the topic. Einstein understood the implications of his technology and even urged the president not to use it, but a less well-rounded person may not have.
Like humanities or the arts, topics in STEM can serve to further students’ understanding of the difficulties of marginalized groups. Unlike Professor Byer’s KKK joke which trivialized these difficulties, the Holocaust question potentially creates a deeper appreciation for these difficulties. By going through the same calculations as the Nazis, students can understand the amount of deliberation that was necessary for this atrocity. The psychologist thinks about the herd mentality that led to the Holocaust, and the sociologist may think about cultural influences. The chemist that understands the planning necessary for systematic genocide furthers the psychologist’s and sociologist’s understandings of the event. Non-STEM classes cannot teach how cold and calculated this method of murder was in the same way. The question shows how the Nazis used the same industrial approach to genocide as they did to war. This is one application of the liberal arts, which believes that humanities and science are better together.
There is a difference between questions we deem insensitive and questions we deem uncomfortable. For example, reading Anne Frank’s diary makes the reader uncomfortable, but no one would venture to call it insensitive. Thinking about these atrocities should be uncomfortable because so many people died. You can learn from this discomfort and discomfort alone is not problematic.
So, let’s talk about how to bring real world examples into STEM just like you would in an economics or political science class. This is a learning opportunity for all, but we have condemned all questions of its nature. While it is certainly true that Middlebury students shouldn’t first encounter these ideas on a chemistry test, they should certainly be prepared for such questions.
(04/24/19 12:06am)
At least nine Student Government Association senators have threatened to resign en masse if college officials do not meet a list of 13 demands, a decision that would effectively dissolve the elected body for the remainder of the academic year.
The demands were outlined in a letter emailed Tuesday morning to senior college administrators, including President Laurie L. Patton, with all students copied. Demands in the letter are wide-ranging, and include: “structural changes” to college policy aimed at increasing administrative transparency; “improvements to existing programs” like Green Dot and bringing all buildings into Americans with Disabilities Act compliance; and “new initiatives,” including the creation of an LGBTQ+ Center and a Black Studies department.
In the letter, senators also asked Patton to appear before students at a town hall on Tuesday, April 30 in Mead Chapel. Senior Senator Travis Sanderson ’19 told The Campus that the resignations would occur sometime after then, depending on how and if administrators respond to their demands.
“We just received the SGA communication and are reviewing it. Many of the concerns are already being addressed,” Patton told The Campus Tuesday afternoon. “For others, we believe we can find a way forward to work together. We welcome an opportunity for engagement with SGA and have already reached out to its leaders. We will be providing a response, which we hope we can work on collaboratively, next week.”
While not every member of the SGA Senate has promised to resign, all members approved sending the letter to administration, Sanderson said. The resignation of at least nine of the 18 senators would mean the absence of a quorum at all future meetings, and thus the effective dissolution of the elected body for the remainder of the academic year. With the threat of resignation, senators hope to send a message about inadequate student representation in administrative decision-making.
“It has become evident that the connection between the administration and students has been reduced to a one-way street,” they wrote. “The administration has failed time and again to listen to the desires of its students.”
Their demands, titled “Thirteen Proposals for Community Healing,” are aimed to improve student representation and promote community healing on campus, including several proposals that had previously been brought to the administration but were either tabled or overlooked.
“There is a long history of SGA recommendations being ignored,” Sanderson said.
As it stands now, SGA resolutions are mostly symbolic recommendations to college officials — no real student check exists on administrative authority. But in the letter, the senators claim a right to participate in administrative decisions.
“Our tuition funds the college, and the college’s purpose is our education,” senators wrote. “Middlebury College is first and foremost a school, not a corporation. Why is it that decisions are often made with little to no consent or involvement from us in our own school?”
In an op-ed published by The Campus Tuesday afternoon, SGA President Nia Robinson ’19 supported the actions of senators regardless of where they stand and promised to keep advocating for students in her role.
“For the final weeks, I will continue to support those who come to me and offer advice to any students who will listen. I will continue to advocate for them whether in trustee or SLG meetings when I am the only student in the room,” Robinson wrote. “My sole goal is, and has always been, to help leave this campus in a better state than I found it.”
Reaching a Breaking Point
The letter enumerates instances of administrative neglect of student proposals, from the failure to make Middlebury a sanctuary campus in 2016 to the recent cancellation and fallout from the the controversial scholar and Polish politician Ryszard Legutko’s scheduled lecture, which also resulted in the cancellation of a peaceful, non-disruptive student protest scheduled to take place outside. In the letter, senators condemn the administration for waiting until Friday, April 19 to unequivocally say that the student protesters were not the security concern. That delay, they write, caused misinformation about the protest to spread in the national media.
Senior Senator Alexis Levato ’19 said that the SGA saw the period following the lecture cancellation as an opportune moment to act.
“I think we cared about these issues as individuals, and cared about them as SGA, but didn’t feel there was a possibility of actually doing anything until this happened,” she said. “Which I think speaks to the way the administration is structured, that it only really allows students to be activists in moments in which it’s blowing up in their faces.”
Varsha Vijayakumar ’20, a junior senator and the SGA president-elect, also saw the moment as a culmination of SGA and student activists’ frustrations.
“I personally reached a point where I feel like the administration has been taking advantage of our empathy, and I think that’s unfair to put a disproportionate burden on students to work hard to make this place more like a home for students,” she said. “We’re at a point where it’s not just the SGA, but also a lot of student activism and mobilization that is pushing for change. And we want to support that.”
The letter alleges that it was only when administrators heard that senators were discussing dissolution that they said, in an email sent by Provost Jeff Cason and Dean of the Faculty Andi Lloyd, and forwarded to students by Dean of Student Baishakhi Taylor, that “our assessment of the potential safety risks of Wednesday’s planned lecture did not reflect concerns about threats from student protesters or students attending the event. Rather, we were concerned about the safety of those participants.”
“We are extremely disappointed that only after hearing threat of SGA’s dissolution did an administrator publicly clear organizers of blame as the unnamed security threat that led to cancellation of the Ryszard Legutko event,” the letter reads.
No member of the SGA reached by The Campus would comment on the record about the alleged interaction with an administrator.
Vetting Speakers
After The Campus posted the letter online Tuesday, debate ensued over the senators’ third proposal, which calls for the creation of a due diligence form that includes questions aimed to determine whether a speaker’s views align with Middlebury’s community standards, “removing the burden of researching speakers from the student body.”
The proposal also asked for each academic department to create a student advisory board that would have access to a list of invited speakers one month in advance in order to provide feedback when necessary.
“This is absurd. Students should relish the chance to research speakers, to interact with speakers, to debate with speakers,” Rich Cochran ’91 wrote on The Campus Facebook page. “I am shocked that the SGA would publish this list of unilateral demands.”
Sanderson clarified to The Campus that the proposal would not bar speakers from campus. Instead, the answers to the form would be made public to inform the community in advance of the speaker’s arrival.
“If anything, this ensures a greater degree of informed free speech and assembly,” he said. “Critics are arguing that we want to keep speakers from campus, which is incorrect.”
The Process
Senators first began to discuss what would eventually become the letter on Wednesday afternoon in the wake of the Legutko cancellation. Over the weekend, they began to gather feedback from student leaders, including the heads of cultural organizations and leaders of the Legutko protest. Some senators spent most of Friday drafting the letter, which they then shared with all senators.
Vijayakumar was one of the students who spent the better part of the day working on the letter. She was also notified around midday that she had won the SGA presidency.
“I celebrated for maybe 20 minutes, but that was not my focus,” she said. “It’s the last thing I’m thinking about. Even on Friday, the entire day, I was working on these demands.”
On Sunday, April 21, senators went into executive session during and following their regularly scheduled meeting to discuss the draft. The session lasted one hour.
The following night, senators hosted a student-only town hall in Mead Chapel to gather feedback on the letter and demands. Robinson opened the forum by reading the demands and introduced the senators’ proposed plan to resign. Then, attendees divided into focus groups to discuss further. Each group parsed the drafted demands and suggested modifications to senators, who led the groups. Senators then met later that evening to finalize the letter based on student feedback. According to Vijayakumar, they discussed the suggestions made on every point, and identified major trends in feedback in an attempt to incorporate as many as possible.
In an interview with The Campus, Sanderson stressed the senators’ desire to involve other members of the community in the draft. He said the SGA is only one forum in which students have tried and failed to work with administrators to address the concerns of the student body. Specifically, he cited the title of the letter, which was recommended by members of the community. They also received emails with suggestions and ideas from students who could not attend the town hall.
When asked about the college’s recent work with students to divest from fossil fuels by 2028, Sanderson said that the administration did not adequately credit student activists in their announcement.
“In the case of divestment, it was a massive student campaign for a long time, but it was co-opted by the administration in the end,” he said. The letter addresses this concern: “Students who work on these initiatives alongside faculty must receive credit for their work, and will not be excluded from these initiatives once faculty begin working on them.”
When reached for comment, Community Council Co-Chair John Gosselin ’20 said he supported some of the senators’ demands and disagreed with others.
“I disagree with the general strategy of demands and dissolution because it has forced the student government to express opinions too quickly and without any nuance, reflection, or evidence of serious discussion, despite the best efforts of the SGA meeting on Sunday and the poorly attended student town hall on Monday,” he said.
History Repeats Itself
In 1967, members of the Student Association, then equivalent to the SGA, took a similar approach to addressing feelings of powerlessness vis-à-vis the administration. Members saw the body as a mouthpiece for administrative decisions and doubted its own ability to advocate for students, and voted to hold hold a campus-wide referendum on the body’s dissolution. The proposal passed overwhelmingly among students, who voted 407-70 in favor. Two years later, the current iteration of the SGA, newly-endowed with more representative and legislative capacities, formed.
Today’s SGA is drawing inspiration from its predecessors’ decision.
“When circumstances mirror those faced by student leaders half a century ago, we must consider options similar to the ones they faced,” senators wrote. “In the words of Brian Maier, the equivalent of an SGA senator at the time, ‘we must take power rather than ask for it.’”
But senators are also wary of the unintended consequences their predecessors’ actions had on the student body. Last time, dissolution of the Student Association left student organizations without funding. This time, the resignation of senators would leave the other components of the SGA intact, including the SGA President’s Cabinet and the SGA Finance Committee, which allocates the student activities budget.
“We don’t want to hurt students and nullify all the projects they’ve spent a full semester working on. That’s definitely not our intent,” Levato said. “I think we’re learning from that decision in order to make sure that students are only positively affected by this.”
Senators still think, though, that the threat is substantial enough to warrant a serious response from the administration. Vijayakumar believes the student body is on board.
“We do feel like this is the most productive way to enact change right now on this campus,” she said. “We wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t think so.”
(04/23/19 2:50pm)
Editor's Note: The below letter was sent to all college administrators this morning with all students cc'd. It has been reprinted here with permission.
To the administrators of Middlebury College,
The Student Government Association (SGA) exists to be the democratic vehicle of the will of the student body. We believe that students and administrators are a partnership, a two-way street working toward a collectively better future for Middlebury College. Through conversations with alumni, students, staff, faculty, and various community groups, it has become evident that the connection between the administration and students has been reduced to a one-way street. The administration has failed time and again to listen to the desires of its students.
Administrators’ neglect of students’ wishes has been the consistent trend of the past few years.
On November 20, 2016, four hundred students met outside Old Chapel to rally in support of making Middlebury College a sanctuary campus. In response, the SGA passed a bill echoing the call for sanctuary campus status. The Community Council followed suit. Middlebury ultimately refused to meet the demands of protesters, the SGA, and leaders in Community Council.
On March 2, 2017, President Laurie Patton introduced Charles Murray despite a recommendation from Community Council and separate petitions from alumni, faculty, and students requesting that she not give him the service of introduction.
On April 12, 2017, the SGA passed a bill asking for specific changes to protest policies in the aftermath of the Charles Murray incident. The bill’s request languished in committee for a full academic year. In the end, the requested changes were not adopted in the protest policy draft announced in late 2018. Rather than a prohibition on violence by Public Safety officers, the final draft included a prohibition on civil disobedience itself.
On October 8, 2017, the SGA passed a bill to protect the right of students to request an open disciplinary hearing. The bill was panned by the administration.
On April 8, 2018, the SGA passed a bill requesting a second student representative, in addition to the SGA President, be added to the Board of Trustees. Despite sponsorship by the SGA President and endorsement by the Middlebury Campus Editorial Board, no second student representative was added to the body that is ultimately responsible for all decisions at Middlebury College.
Even innocuous requests, like that for more accessible exercise equipment, have not been fulfilled.
While we have cited a series of slights against student wishes, these represent only a fraction of many. The SGA and Community Council are only two avenues by which students appeal to the administration. Individual students, organizers, and organizations have all implored the administration for a variety of requests. Many requests have been ignored, most notably last week, when student desires to both listen to Legutko and protest what he stands for were overridden in administrative decision-making. The cancellation of Legutko’s talk and the protest led to yet another crisis on campus in the national media. We are extremely disappointed that only after hearing threat of SGA’s dissolution did an administrator publicly clear organizers of blame as the unnamed security threat that led to cancellation of the Ryszard Legutko event.
Repeatedly, we have been asked to abide by a “Conversations First” approach, which has been used to berate student leaders for taking swift action. Yet in crucial decisions, the administration has not used its own “Conversations First” model in engaging the student body. We find this intolerable and unsustainable. Our tuition funds the College, and the College’s purpose is our education. Middlebury College is first and foremost a school, not a corporation. Why is it that decisions are often made with little to no consent or involvement from us in our own school?
The SGA refuses to be a mouthpiece for the administration; we represent the students and students alone. We are reminded of our predecessors in the Student Association, who disbanded their organization in 1967 because it served as a “sounding board [...] with little power.” Their disbanding resulted in the creation of our SGA. When circumstances mirror those faced by student leaders half a century ago, we must consider options similar to the ones they faced. In the words of Brian Maier, the equivalent of an SGA senator at the time, “we must take power rather than ask for it.”
We desire transparency and accountability. We desire real democratic participation by students in decision-making. We desire the enactment of the following proposals for community healing:
Structural Changes:
The SGA President and the Co-Chair of Community Council will be admitted to all Senior Leadership Group meetings.
One student, staff member, and faculty member will be elected as representatives by the student body, Staff Council, and Faculty Council to the College Board of Overseers. Each of these representatives will be responsible for compiling a report for their constituencies on relevant information from each meeting.
Any organization or academic department that invites a speaker to campus will be required to fill out a due diligence form created by the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in coordination with the SGA Institutional Diversity Committee. These questions should be created to determine whether a speaker’s beliefs align with Middlebury’s community standards, removing the burden of researching speakers from the student body.
Additionally, administrators will ask Faculty Council to require all academic departments to have Student Advisory Boards which will have access to a list of speakers invited by the department at least a month in advance. The Student Advisory Boards’ purpose will be to ask the student body for potential community input when necessary.
The administration will communicate explicitly to students about ongoing projects, progress on these proposals, and the development of programming. This must be communicated on a monthly basis to the entire student body. Students who work on these initiatives alongside faculty must receive credit for their work, and will not be excluded from these initiatives once faculty begin working on them (i.e. Divest Middlebury, It Happens Here, JusTalks, etc.).
Improvements to Existing Programs:
Recurrent bias training will be provided to all hired staff, faculty, administrators, as well as all students, with implementation beginning in the 2019-2020 school year. The names of any faculty, staff, or administration members who do not participate in bias training should be publicly available to students so that they can make informed decisions on courses and interactions.
In this bias training, participants must learn about the importance of preferred gender pronouns. All faculty must ask students’ names and pronouns on the first day of each new semester, and preferred names and pronouns must be respected.
The administration will reconsider the current protest policy, in line with SGA’s previously passed bill. The improved proposal must accurately reflect the will of the student body, especially in ensuring protections for all staff members to protest as they see fit.
The Green Dot Training Program on campus will be improved. We ask that the video currently used during orientation be replaced with a serious informational session that discusses/defines the following terms/policies/procedures on campus:
The definition of consent, sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape.
The process of reporting sexual misconduct both at Middlebury and outside of Middlebury (to local officials).
The disciplinary process and repercussions of committing sexual misconduct on and off campus.
Progress in bringing all buildings up to the standards outlined in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) will be accelerated. These buildings must prioritize the implementation of gender-inclusive bathrooms in all future construction and also make restrooms in existing buildings gender-inclusive.
Student representation on the Community Bias Response Team (CBRT) will increase, as will direct communication with the student body regarding the causal reasoning for the cancellation of campus events.
New Initiatives:
A clearly outlined plan for the implementation of an LGBTQ+ Center, with faculty support and modeled on the Anderson Freeman Resource Center, will be implemented within the next two years on campus. While we recognize that the entire campus should be made inclusive of queer identities, we believe the positive example of the AFRC illustrates the power of a center through which programming can be centralized. We call for current faculty/staff or new faculty/staff to serve as advisors and programmers for this space, similar to those who work at the AFRC. This space can be taken from the new office spaces which will be created from the elimination of the Commons Heads houses, or another space.
All organizational expenditures at Middlebury will be available on the College website, including the names of both organizations and specific individual donors. We recognize that certain donors will be anonymous; we request anonymous donors be included as “Anonymous” on the publicly available information.
A strategic plan to hire more counselors who are femme, of color, and/or queer and provide a more robust health service for transitioning people will be created. New counselors will work closely with students at the new LGBTQ+ Center and the Anderson Freeman Resource Center. The strategic plan must include a better incentive package than the one currently offered. These counselors must be hired within the next two years before the creation of the LGBTQ+ Center.
The administration will support the development of a Black Studies department. We also request a specific faculty-student group dedicated to developing the Black Studies department, working alongside the Faculty Educational Affairs Committee during the academic year (2019-2020) in order to ensure its successful implementation for the following academic year (2020-2021). There must be appropriate funding allocated to the department, and sufficient tenure track positions must be made available for the immediate development of the department.
These proposals were created in consultation with the student body and we expect each to be fulfilled as stated. We would like to give the administration time to consider adequate ways to address our proposals. As such, we ask the President to address students at a town hall on Tuesday, April 30. If tangible plans to implement these proposals are not released, a majority of SGA Senators will resign such that the SGA Senate will no longer be able to make quorum, effectively dissolving the body. More importantly, students will witness again the continued inaction of the current administration.
We await the administration’s response.
SGA Senate
(04/18/19 10:34am)
Vermont has been ranked number one overall for 2019 in Bloomberg's annual report on gender equality. This is the third year in a row that Vermont has led the rankings in the yearly report. The state was also ranked number 6 for women in leadership, and received high scores in the report’s five categories -- pay ratio by gender, female labor force participation, college degree attainment, health coverage and women in poverty.
Rep. Linda Sullivan, D-Dorset, attributes this ranking to the priorities of the state legislature. “With a strong focus from the legislature on gender equality,” she said, “Vermont will be driven to be a leader in this area.”
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Vermont’s legislature is 39.4 percent female compared to 28.7 percent nationwide. Vermont boasts 71 female members to 109 male members. The legislature recently passed a bill requiring employers to pay sick leave, and is considering a bill allowing paternity leave -- two pieces of legislation that are aimed at increasing gender equality.
“The legislature is working on bills to provide higher livable wages,” said Sullivan, “as well as to work through issues of providing other benefits to families.”
Representative Mollie Burke from Brattleboro and other policymakers recently proposed a resolution which designates April 2, 2019 as Equal Pay Day, with a proclamation signed by Governor Scott that same day. Advocates for equal pay wore red during legislative sessions.
Sullivan also acknowledged that there are challenges in passing legislation to eliminate the gender-pay gap. “However, these bills need to be thoroughly vetted and weighed against the costs to provide the services,” she said, “so while there are projects in the works, the roadmap to getting there must be well thought-out so as not to create barriers for the very populations they are intended to assist.”
Closing the wage gap would have many benefits for Vermont as a whole. Equal pay reduces poverty, adds money to the overall economy and attracts families to Vermont.
According to a report issued by Change the Story (CTS), a Vermont-based organization working towards gender equality, Vermont does well in the categories considered by Bloomberg. Women have a pay ratio gap of 16 cents, compared to a 20 cent wage gap nationally. For labor force participation, 66 percent of women work in Vermont’s labor force, compared to 58 percent of women nationally.
“Education is a key area of focus,” claimed Sullivan. In terms of education, 33 percent of women earn a bachelor’s degree in Vermont, six points higher than the national average for women’s education.
One of the indicators in which Vermont does poorly is rate of women in poverty, in which Vermont is ranked 17 with a rate of 12 percent. The CTS also found that women are significantly more likely to live in poverty than men, and 3 percent of Vermont women who work full-time do not make enough to cover basic living expenses.
It’s also important to note that the Bloomberg report does not break down statistics in terms of race. For example, Vermont ranked well for the gender pay gap, yet this gap is much larger for women of color. As reported by the Vermont Commission on Women, there is a 46 percent gap for Hispanic and Latina women, a 42 percent gap for American Indian and Alaska Native women,a 40 percent gap for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islander women, a 37 percent gap for African American women, and a 15 percent gap for Asian women.
The CTS found that in Vermont, 13.4 percent of all families with minor children live in poverty, and that this number increases to 37 percent if a women is the single head of the household. CTS also found that the wage gap of women with dependant children increases to 26 percent, as compared to the 30 percent for women nationally.
“Middlebury does well in gender equality, but there are always ways to improve,” said Ellie Broeren ’22, an active member of Feminist Action Middlebury (FAM). The college currently boasts a 48.2 to 51.8 male to female ratio for students, with a staff ration of 49.5 to 50.5 (male to female). Still, such statistics fail to account for some of Middlebury’s underlying problems.
“What comes to mind for me is the lack of transparency about contraception and sexual health on campus, as this is an issue that largely affects women,” said Boeren. To combat this, FAM has created a website at go/sexysources that provides information on sexual health and are currently trying to get Plan B available at Middlebury Express.
Despite the issues in gender equality that are still prevalent in Vermont and at Middlebury College, Sullivan reminds us to also celebrate our successes. “With a strong focus from the legislature on gender equality,” she says, “Vermont [has been] driven to be a leader in this area.”
(04/18/19 9:59am)
On Sunday, the Student Government Association (SGA) Senate sent an email calling for mandatory bias training for all “hired professionals and all student organization leaders, including members of the SGA and school publications.” The SGA indicated full support for training that may change the culture that led to heavily-publicized jokes about the chemistry questions that asked students to calculate the lethal dose of hydrogen cyanide and mentioned the KKK.
The need for mandatory bias training has been ignored for years. In 2017, Community Council conducted a survey that indicated widespread insensitivity among faculty to working class students’ backgrounds and concerns. On May 9, 2017, faculty members J. Finley, Mez Baker-Medard and William Poulin-Deltour’s recommendation for socioeconomic bias training passed with unanimous support from Community Council. The initiative was specifically targeted at socioeconomic bias training; however, the recommendation was passed only by noting that bias training addressing all kinds of identities was needed. One faculty member is recorded in the public minutes as even suggesting a “JusTalks for faculty.” It was recognized that Faculty Council was the institution that could make mandatory bias training happen. To my understanding, the recommendation was not picked up by Faculty Council. The need for bias training stagnated until now, when a series of incidents proved the continued truth that many faculty are alarmingly unaware of the impact of their pedagogy on their students.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Many faculty are alarmingly unaware of the impact of their pedagogy on their students.[/pullquote]
While mandatory bias training is necessary, I am not convinced of its sufficiency in changing the culture at the heart of the problem. The invitation of Ryszard Legutko really drove home that point. Legutko is a virulent homophobe, a sexist and a member of a populist radical right (PRR) party responsible for rolling back democracy in Poland. His views are reminiscent of white nationalist Richard Spencer’s, who also sees multiculturalism as a degradation of a pristine “Christian and Classical” civilization. It is easy to draw a parallel between Charles Murray and Ryszard Legutko, but there are a few key differences.
When Charles Murray was invited, many senior figures were unaware of the already-simmering tension that was ignited by Murray. There is no feasible way that officials were ignorant of potential backlash this time. Secondly, the chair of the Political Science department acknowledged that the “short amount of time between when the event became public and when it occurred gave all of us scant opportunity to listen to and understand alternative points of view.” The speakers policy was then modified to ensure that the community had ample time to discuss and debate speakers.
I am suspicious of the Hamilton Forum’s intentions. While the Forum did register Ryszard Legutko as a speaker, posters included no information on his controversial nature. They mentioned only his membership in the European Parliament and participation in the Polish anti-communist movement. Any hint at his illiberal nature and dangerous false equivalencies, like describing queer activists’ tactics as “Bolshevik” and gay folks as the “sacred cows” of society, were omitted. Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs (RCGA) advisory board members received invitations to the RCGA’s “Populism, Homophobia, and Illiberal Democracy” panel to engage the community in dialogue only a day in advance of the panel. At best, the effort seemed belated and haphazard. If the Hamilton Forum was interested in engaging the community in productive discourse, they would have been forthright with the nature of Legutko’s views from the start. Organizing Ryszard Legutko’s talk in such a hidden and dishonest way seems, to me, to be an illustration that the Hamilton Forum was determined to invite this specific speaker without giving the entire community a chance to challenge his authoritarian ideas.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I am suspicious of the Hamilton Forum’s intentions.[/pullquote]
The apparent intention behind the Hamilton Forum’s invitation makes me doubtful that mandatory bias training will sufficiently address the problem of bigotry in the community. The Hamilton Forum, in inviting an illiberal politician without engaging the community in any real dialogue, ignored the hard-won lessons of the Murray fiasco. Despite the community’s likely resistance, they invited him. Despite consensus two years ago that the community should have a chance to discuss and develop strategies to deal with controversial speakers, they invited him—quietly. No amount of mandatory bias training is likely to change the behavior of people who invite a hate-filled speaker knowing full well the potential consequences.
One can look at the repeated instances of bias and bigotry as one problem—ignorance. I am increasingly convinced that there are two separate problems. The first is ignorance, which can be corrected through bias training. The second is something different. It is generational, a worldview that diverges wildly from that of many progressive students on campus. If we assume that the Hamilton Forum is not illiberal itself, then we can assume that the Forum’s members view Legutko’s talk as a potential opportunity to resoundingly prove the superiority of liberal values. That assumption is logically consistent with the values that underpin the Hamilton Forum’s mission statement. In this worldview, liberal values are viewed as the logical and inevitable victors in a fair marketplace of ideas. Ryszard Legutko’s regressive rhetoric can be resoundingly defeated, as all authoritarian ideologies can and will. His talk on campus is not a threat to the people he singles out and oppresses back home, notably gay activists and feminists, if there is no real threat to the liberal values that protect marginalized people.
Progressive students have a strikingly different worldview, less idealistic than realistic. We see the rolling back of democratic values around the world as proof of the danger of legitimating authoritarian views. We see Legutko in the context of a global far right movement. Far from failing in the marketplace of ideas, illiberal ideas have emerged as the ruling consensus in countries distant and disparate, from Poland to the United States. There is no guarantee that liberal values win in the marketplace of ideas. We see a connection between the homophobia of government that caused the deaths of queer people, notably during the first decades of the AIDS epidemic, and contemporary homophobic politicians like Ryszard Legutko. We recognize the world as digital; people do not need to engage with homophobic and illiberal politicians directly to possess an educated understanding that homophobia and authoritarianism are profound threats to liberty and equality. The deep gap in worldviews between the Hamilton Forum and progressive students, between idealists and realists, is embedded in the current conflict.
In the end, mandatory bias training is necessary but insufficient. Overall, we need to find some sort of bridge across different worldviews if we hope to address the problem of hatred and bias on campus.
(04/18/19 9:58am)
[gallery columns="4" size="medium" ids="44527,44524,44526,44525"]
SGA President
As the weather on campus is warming, Student Government Association (SGA) elections are heating up.
This week, the Middlebury student body will elect a new SGA president for the 2019-2020 academic year. The position involves directly overseeing the SGA Cabinet and Senate and supporting the work of 11 Cabinet committees and five Senate committees. The President is viewed as the de facto leader of the entire student body.
Three candidates are running for the position this election cycle, and The Campus spoke with each of them to get a sense of their qualifications, priorities and visions for the SGA.
John Gosselin ’20
Winchester, MA native Gosselin has served in several leadership roles on campus throughout his time at Middlebury, including SGA Atwater senator. He is currently treasurer of the Tavern social house and Community Council co-chair. His campaign website can be accessed at go/voteforjohn.
“I feel as though I’m an effective administrator who doesn’t respond with strong emotions,” Gosselin told The Campus. “This calm temperament will help with any possible hostilities that may arise next year.”
While serving with the Community Council, Gosselin was the leading student voice on the steering committee for the Residential Life Report and has been involved in the process for over two years. As SGA president, Gosselin hopes to implement the first steps of the report, and believes that having a president who understands its importance is critical as the steering committee begins to tackle long term projects like renovating Battell and building a new student center.
Gosselin also wants to improve social life and late-night non-alcoholic programming. To this end, he plans to work with different organizations on campus to provide higher quality non-alcoholic programming and work with the Vermont Department of Liquor Control and the college’s general counsel to “relax policies which currently restrict many events with alcohol.”
On Community Council, Gosselin strove to support students of color and worked to approve PALANA as a new social house. He said the group has and will continue to do “a phenomenal job at providing a diversity-oriented space on campus.”
Gosselin also wants to find more ways to support students over breaks. He feels the lack of resources provided to students, especially in the dining halls, prevent students from “having a full and equal Middlebury experience.” He says that he expects the SGA to either work with administration or prioritize the support of such efforts with SGA funds.
Varsha Vijayakumar ’20
Vijayakumar, from Harrington Park, New Jersey, is a current junior senator with the SGA. She sees SGA president as a role that supports students who are already passionate about particular causes around campus. Vijayakumar made it clear that her platform does not only belong to her, but to the numerous students from whom she’s received input and support. Her experience with the Institutional Diversity Committee and the Senate have shown her the immense power the SGA can have for students. “I want to harness the passion of students,” she said. “Their power is unstoppable.”
Vijayakumar’s leadership on campus is not limited to the SGA. She serves as the president of Midd Masti, has led a MALT trip to Miami about sex trafficking and hasserved as a JusTalks facilitator. Vijayakumar feels deeply connected with many communities and spaces around campus through her extracurricular involvement and hopes to bring these connections to her role as president. Her experience with Midd Masti, for instance, allowed her to “fall in love with her culture in a way that’s loving and affirming” and hopes that the SGAcan empower groups to provide those and other opportunities to even more students.
Her campaign website, go/varsha, represents a platform created by students and for students. She stresses that her goal is not to push a certain agenda but to support the work and goals of student-centered causes. She hopes to work with groups on campus to tackle issues within health and wellness, social spaces and social life, inclusivity, access to resources, and financial aid and employment. She has identified these areas as key prioritiesfor an SGA under her leadership and is excited by the upward trend in student involvement with the SGA in recent years. She pointed to divestment and to-go boxes as examples of encouraging signs of progress. Vijayakumar hopes to find ways to streamline the SGA to be more representative and more efficient. “Student engagementwith SGA is the equivalent to our success,” she said.
Joel Machado ’22
Machado, a Posse Scholar from New York City, is encouraged by what underclassmen can bring tothe SGA. Machado noted that first-years “are generally the most engaged and most involved on campus, and generally have the most turnout in elections.” Machado, who is involved with First@Midd and Distinguished Men of Color (DMC), pointed to his lack of experience with SGA as “not the end all be all.”
“I want to bring new energy to the SGA, whereas the other two candidates lack the lens of being on the outside looking in,” he said. He hopes that he can bring his leadership skills to the role by using first-year enthusiasm to represent the entire student body.
After identifying several institutional issues at Middlebury, such as rape culture and new Title IX policies, Machado first decided to speak out through the Spencer Prize, a first-year speaking competition. Machado then submitted his speech to The Campus as an opinion piece, noting that “it wasn’t worth it to wait” to act. “I wanted to vocalize problems I saw even in my first semester here on campus," Machado said. He tried to use these moments as a form of protest and hopes his candidacy can shed more light on the issues he hopes to focus on while in office.
Machado’s platform, which can be found on his website at go/ourSGA, attempts to answer four questions. First, who gets to be a Midd Kid? Here, Machado wants to focus on issues surrounding diversity and creating opportunities for marginalized groups on campus in and out of the classroom. Second, how can we improve life at Middlebury? He hopes to enact change in such areas as registration, opening up study abroad opportunities in winter term and funding individual students to host their own parties and events on campus. Third, how should the SGA operate? Machado feels as though the SGA has too much bureaucracy and hopes to simplify the body to make it more efficient. He feels it should have “less of an organized structure and be more informal and conversational.” Fourth, what can we do for our future? Machado looks to work on long term efforts like enforcing Energy2028, eliminating rape culture on campus and collaborating on a new commons system.
Community Council Co-Chair
The race for co-chair of Community Council, a position shared with Dean of Students Baishkahi Taylor tasked with leading discussions and action on all non-academic issues on campus, will be uncontested this year. The Campus spoke with the sole candidate.
Roni Lezama ’22
Lezama, a Posse Scholar from New York City, feels that the Community Council is a unique body that brings together students, faculty, and staff for important discussions about life at Middlebury. Lezama, who currently serves on the SGA’s Institutional Diversity Committee and recently won the Spencer Prize in Oratory, wants to embrace the power of the community and empower others to voice their opinions in an open, respectful forum of ideas.
“I want to work towards a Middlebury that’s for the community and empowers community members and especially those of marginalized identities to speak up and voice their opinions,” he said.
Lezama doesn’t want to set an agenda because Community Council is the “most important time to hear what other people have to say.” However, he wants to hear from the community on additional programs beyond Green Dot to fight back against sexual assault as well as focusing on issues like accessibility to a Community Council that should be “a place of openness.” In general, Lezama wants to focus on issues that affect all facets of the community. He gave registration as an example of an issue that gives headaches to everyone involved. He hopes that Community Council discussions and respectful debates can bring progress and meaningful solutions to problems like these in the next year.
(04/18/19 9:58am)
The Panther women’s lacrosse team moved to an 11-game win streak, picking up two conference wins this past weekend against Trinity and Hamilton, scoring double digits against two impressive teams. Moving forward, the Panthers are on a blazing trail, hoping to close out the season against Tufts and Williams.
Against Trinity, the No. 3 Panthers cruised into a 7-0 record versus nationally-ranked opponents, beating the No. 12 Bantams 14-8. While the score was tight for most of the game, a spur of Middlebury scoring brought the Panthers the victory.
Senior captain Emma McDonagh ’19 started off the scoring events with a 2-for-2 bout against Trinity’s Mary French. After the teams netted the game at 2-2, McDonagh connected with the back of the net for another goal, heating up the Panther offense. Trinity soon gained momentum back, which created a small 2-3 goal gap between the teams.
The second half, however, proved the Panthers’ resilience. Emily Barnard, Jenna McNicholas and Kirsten Murphy led the Panthers to an 11-6 score, which was then furthered by additional goals on the part of McNicholas. While the Bantams tried to push back, the stellar Middlebury defense held on for a 14-8 win.
The next day, the Panthers also beat No. 24 Hamilton, with a 13-9 final score. Middlebury created an impressive gap in the beginning of the game, setting off the score to 7-2 before the half. The Continentals never caught up to the Panther offense, always in a point deficit that could not be erased.
Jane Earley had an impressive game, putting up seven points (three goals, four assists), while McDonagh also continued her scoring streak to 40 games. Erin Nicholas won the draw eight times, setting up Panther control.
Looking forward, ending the regular season on two conference wins is key for the team’s post-season. With the potential of this year’s squad, Middlebury is looking to work towards ending the regular season well, as a testament to their hard work and strengths.
“We are looking forward to a challenge in the last two games of the regular season. One of the main things we are working on is decreasing the number of turnovers,” senior Sara DiCenso said. “One of our strengths is that we have many people who can score and contribute to our offense. On the other side of the field, our backer defense is high pressure and we have done a good job of winning the ball back.”
If the Panthers can decrease turnovers, keep up the defensive pressure and continually connect with the back of the net, their post-season will be an extension of the regular season’s success.
(04/18/19 9:57am)
Rukmini Callimachi has built a career out of talking to terrorists.
Callimachi joined the New York Times in March 2014 as a foreign correspondent covering Al-Qaeda and ISIS. WIRED magazine called her “arguably the best reporter on the most important beat in the world.” She is a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist as of Tuesday, when her written work The ISIS Files and podcast Caliphate earned her another Pulitzer nomination.
During her talk in Wilson Hall last Thursday, Callimachi talked with members of the Middlebury community about creating Caliphate, her career as a journalist and the problematic approaches of the media and the government in addressing terrorism.
Callimachi began her career in as a foreign journalist working in India. She later went on to cover a 20-country beat in Africa and became the West African Bureau Chief for the Associated Press.
In her work covering Al Qaeda and ISIS, Callimachi has become acutely aware of the wealth of misinformation that circulates about terrorist organizations. She explained that terrorism is the only beat for which journalists only talk to one side of the issue.
Callimachi is determined to change this.
“I firmly believe in speaking to the enemy, in listening to them, which is different than believing them, in trying to understand them, which is different than giving them a platform, and I do this in the interest of reporting the most accurate version of events I can,” she said during her talk.
“In short, I do this in the interest of truth.”
Callimachi was born in communist Romania. When she was five, she, her mother and her grandmother fled Romania, passed across the iron curtain and were granted political asylum in Switzerland. She still recalls her grandfather breaking down in tears as he hugged her goodbye.
“The experience of being a refugee is the experience of being an other,” she said. Callimachi and her mother immigrated to the United States when she was ten. “That stain of otherness never fully left me,” she said.
Callimachi believes that being a refugee has impelled her to focus her career on reporting stories about outsiders. She sees a piece of herself in these people and thinks this makes it easier to talk with them.
“There is no greater outsider than the people we consider terrorists,” she said.
Since she started at The Times in 2014, she has interviewed more than 50 terrorists. “To me, these people are like a window into this unseen world,” she said.
Callimachi began her talk the same way she begins her 10-episode podcast, with a description of a visit to a Canadian hotel. She was responding to a tip that a former ISIS militant, Abu Huzayfah (a pseudonym), had returned to Canada from Syria. She described this tip as “a tantalizing opportunity.” Only a few hundred North Americans had made it to Syria. Of those, many were killed; only a few are able to return home and most of those who have returned are in jail.
During his interview with Callimachi, Huzayfah admitted to murdering two people at the command of ISIS. If this man was being honest, Callimachi and her team had “met alone, late at night, in an isolated hotel with a murderer,” she explained.
Later in her talk, Callimachi played a clip from the podcast where Huzayfah describes killing a man. “I just instantly thought I’m a psycho killer now,” he said, “what the hell did I just do?”
Callimachi instructed audience members to listen not only to what he said, but how he said it: the rapidity of his breathing, his frequent swallowing. Huzayfah’s emotional distress is clear in his voice.
She cited this as one of the benefits of working with podcasts. “It allows you to live in the gray,” she said. “There’s emotional information that’s encoded in people’s voices.” Print news doesn’t allow a reporter convey emotion with the same intensity.
Through her work, Callimachi has been able to dispel misunderstandings about Al Qaeda and ISIS. For example, while the United States government and media frequently referred to the Islamic State as the “so-called” Islamic State, Callimachi learned that, while it was not internationally recognized, ISIS was a complex and developed organization whose infrastructure mirrored that of an established state.
“Our tendency with the Islamic State has been to discount them, to underestimate them and in my opinion, this doesn’t help us in the war on terror,” Callimachi said.
She has gathered numerous documents left behind by ISIS as it has fled. Supplemented by the findings of others, she now knows that the Islamic State had 14 ministries including ministries of health, education and agriculture. They issued birth certificates and medical examinations as screening measures for children before they could begin school.
“We’re trying to educate people, to tell them news,” she stated as the purpose of her work. She explained that the line between reporting the news and providing these people with a platform is a “constant tension” and something she and her co-workers discuss frequently.
Callimachi spoke of the importance of listening in her work. When giving an interview, she doesn’t talk and rather tries to listen without judgement. “If I approach them with judgement, they’re going to shut down,” she said.
Her work is mentally and emotionally intense. Over time, Callimachi has learned how to metabolize her emotions by allowing these feelings to flow freely through her in the moment.
“If I have felt emotion in an interview, I’ve let myself cry with a source,” she said.
Callimachi recognizes that her job as a journalist is to inform the public, not propose policy, noting that she does not have a solution to the War on Terror. But she does know that, while ISIS has lost its territory, it is not defeated. Instead, it has simply returned to its “insurgent roots.”
In seeking to give advice to young journalists, Callimachi looked back to her time as an undergraduate student at Dartmouth. She suggested that students take advantage of language programs at Middlebury and learn new languages, as she regrets not learning Arabic while in school. Every additional language a journalist learns opens another section of the world for them to investigate.
The MCAB Speakers Committee, led by co-executives Rebecca Simon ’19 and Jade Moses ’20, brought Callimachi to campus. Simon said she was impressed by Callimachi’s talk.
“Ms. Callimachi is a journalist who has proven to be a force of nature,” she wrote in an email to The Campus. “Her empathy, innovativeness, and sheer brilliance is a testament to what journalism is and should always be.”
(04/18/19 9:56am)
Parton Center for Health and Wellness will make changes to its mental health offerings beginning this fall, after joining a national program earlier this year which helps schools improve their suicide prevention services as well as support for substance abuse and other mental health issues.
The program will be led by the JED Foundation, a public health organization that seeks to improve access to mental health services. The program at Middlebury will take four years to fully implement and will cost $22,000. An anonymous donor is covering the cost in full.
The donor offered the funding to three schools in Vermont. “We imme-diately raised our hand,” said Director of Health and Counseling Services Gus Jordan. Other schools that have implemented the JED program in-clude Connecticut College, Hamilton and the University of Vermont.
Parton is currently in its first year of the program, which consists of “evaluation.” This phase is set to conclude by the end of May. The next two years will consist of “implementation,” and the final year will consist of another “evaluation.”
The first evaluation phase included a mental health survey sent to students this Fall.
There is more demand now than ever before for mental health services. The number of students seeking counseling has increased every year, according to Jordan. In response, in 25 years, the number of counselors has increased five-fold. There are now seven counselors on staff and three interns, as opposed to two counselors in 1995. Parton now holds over 3,600 counseling sessions per year, and over 26% of the student body has interacted directly with a counselor in the last year.
The Campus is currently investigating student claims that campus mental health services exhibit flaws in their availability and quality. An investigation evaluating student experiences with those services will be published before the end of the semester.
The changes coming to Parton next year may include staffing changes within the counseling department. “The number of students that we are able to see will definitely not go down, and it might go up,” Jordan said. Restructuring the counseling center’s hours may contribute to an increase in student access.
Other possible changes include making counseling available to students abroad, the creation of support groups for mental health issues and the creation of a counseling app.
However, the changes from the JED program will reach beyond counseling sessions.
“I would suspect in the next two years to train multiple constituencies on campus around how to spot mental issues early, how to intervene where issues are mild to moderate and how to refer to counseling issues that are serious,” Jordan said.
Although residential life staff already receives training in this area, upcoming changes could include training for coaches and incoming faculty members, who are not trained.
Increased attention toward mental health is the most recent change to Parton, which at one point was a 24-hour infirmary. “I came here in 2000,” said director of health services Mark Peluso. “Before my time Parton was over in Carr Hall, and there were lots of beds,” Peluso said. “The whole second floor was an infirmary, there was a ‘house mother,’ they called it. She was loved, she took care of students when they were sick.” Parton stopped offering overnight care in 2005, and now there is only one bed in Parton. Other recent changes have included the addition of a sexual assault examiner, HIV pre-exposurere sources and the addition of a nurse phone number.
Although the JED program may result in staffing changes, dean of students Baishakhi Taylor stated there would be no involuntary staff cuts at Parton. However, some employees in Parton are eligible for the staff incentive separation plan that was introduced as part of the college’s workforce planning initiative, which seeks to cut staff and faculty compensation costs. This incentive offers staff members a separation package based on their salary and how long they have been at the college.
The JED program will, however, reach beyond Parton. “This is a campus-wide mental health initiative,” Jordan said. “I hope everybody in one way or another will be involved.”
(04/18/19 9:55am)
After a successful mid-week game against Springfield College, where Middlebury won 15-7, the Panthers tried to ride that momentum into their NESCAC showdown against Trinity on Saturday, April 13. With their highest attendance of the season and a number of Midd alumni coming out to show their support, the Panthers proved how good they can be in a 22-6 triumph over the Bantams. They now hold an even 4-4 record in NESCAC play and remain in the middle of the pack going into the final weekend of play.
Whether it was the surprisingly beautiful weather or the excitement of alumni weekend, Middlebury came out of the gate firing on all cylinders. At the 12:48 mark of the first, Tyler Forbes, leading scorer of the team, found the back of the net on an outstanding shot that earned a loud cheer from the 367 people in attendance. From then on, the Panthers did not stop. Goals from six different Panthers, including three from Forbes, gave Midd a very comfortable 8-0 lead at the end of the first quarter. This was easily their best start to a game and largest lead of the season.
Trinity did not get their first goal up on the board until the 10:41 mark of the second, coming from a man-up situation. Although Middlebury was limited to just two goals, they still held a commanding 10-3 lead going into half. In the third, the scoring appeared to be pretty back and forth, with goals coming from four different Panther players again. The combination of stifling defense and a well-balanced offense was key to Midd’s success throughout the entirety of the game.
In the fourth quarter, even though the game was practically over already, Middlebury never let up. Again, they rallied off eight straight goals and the defense stood their ground. The final score was 22-6.
Tyler Forbes led the scoring with five goals, while juniors Chase Goree and A.J. Kucinski, had four of their own. Sophomore Ryan Feldman, played big minutes and had two assists on the day. In goal, Tyler Bass certainly had one of the best performances of the year. In 52:48 minutes, Bass had 12 saves on 18 attempts. He has moved to 2-0 on the year behind the net.
Although this win was big for the Panthers, their upcoming schedule will prove just how strong they really are. On Wednesday, April 17 Midd travels to Plattsburgh St. to play a non-conference match. This weekend, they will travel to Medford, MA to take on the No. 4 Tufts Jumbos (11-1), arguably their biggest matchup of the year.
(04/18/19 9:54am)
The baseball team (15-8, 3-3) capped the week with a 2-2 record, unable to hold off the Williams College Ephs (3-3, 16-5) in the final game of the week, dropping the rubber match of the series 5-4 in extra innings on Saturday, April 13.
Strong pitching resulted in a midweek 12-2 win for the Panthers on Forbes Field versus Northern Vermont University (10-17, 5-3) on Thursday, April 11.
Leading off the inning, sophomore first baseman Ryan Hanrahan got things rolling in the bottom of the second with a single. First-year right fielder Alec Ritch reached base on a single and first-year shortstop Andrew Gough delivered a two-run double to left center to give Middlebury the lead.
Northern Vermont responded in the top of the third, tying the game up at 2-2, but the Panthers restored a 5-2 lead in the bottom of the inning. The Hornets were unable to respond the rest of the game with the Panthers plating two more runs in the fourth inning, two in the fifth, one in the sixth, and finally two in the seventh.
Gough led the team, going three-for-five with five RBIs and junior left fielder stole two bases. First-year pitcher Jackson Atwood started on the mound for the Panthers, going four innings with four strikeouts. First-year Sam Grace received his second career win on one inning of work, facing four and striking out one.
According to first-year outfielder Jack Stolper, the team was able to adjust well.
“A lot of our success comes from our approach at the plate,” Stolper said. “When we change our approach from hitting fly balls to hitting hard ground balls and line drives, we score and drive in more runs. When we try and lift the ball too much in the air, we tend to fly out a lot more and make it much easier on the defense.”
In a three-game series versus NESCAC West opponent, the Panthers dropped down to second place in the conference after going 1-2 on the weekend. Middlebury dropped the first game 2-1 on Friday, April 12 before splitting a double-header with a 10-0 win and a 5-4 loss in 10 innings at the nightcap on Saturday, April 13.
In Game one, the Ephs jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second, after a scoreless first inning from both squads. The Panthers got on the scoreboard in the top of the fourth when sophomore center fielder Henry Strmecki lead off with a double down the left-field alley. Junior second baseman was walked to put a man on first and second and junior third baseman Hayden Smith hit a sacrifice bunt to advance runners to scoring position. Junior first baseman Kevin Woodring cut the deficit to 2-1 with an RBI single.
The Panthers struggled to match the performance of senior starting pitcher Colby Morris, who suffered his first loss of the season, after facing 29 batters and striking out a season-high eight and only surrendering one earned run. Sophomore George Goldstein added two innings of scoreless relief.
In Game two, the Ephs were unable to put up a run over nine innings. Middlebury broke out with an early 2-0 lead in the top of the third. The Panthers added five runs in the fifth, to bring the lead to 7-0. Senior designated hitter Sam Graf drove in a runner on an RBI double to left center. An Ephs error allowed a run for Middlebury, along with a two run homerun from Woodring.
First-year pitcher Alex Price threw six innings of one-hit relief to earn the win over Williams, striking out two batters.
The Panthers dropped Game three to the fourth ranked NESCAC West Ephs in walk-off fashion, 5-4, to close the series at Williams.
Middlebury trailed 3-0 after the first but took a 4-3 lead after the fourth inning. Junior catcher Gray Goolsby finished three-for-five with three stolen bases and a run scored and Han went two-for-five with a pair of doubles, two stolen bases and two RBIs.
With his 42nd career stolen base, Han became Middlebury’s all-time leader in stolen bases. Han also hit .412 last week for the Panthers and surpassed 100 career hits.
Senior pitcher Colin Waters took the mound in the first six innings, striking out seven. Sophomore Bobby Sullivan took his first loss of the season with two innings pitched and three strikeouts.
In Game three, Middlebury achieved a season-best nine stolen bases, with 90 on the season, a new school record.
Most recently, Middlebury traveled to face Division I Dartmouth College (11-19, 5-7) out of the Ivy League and won 15-7. They will follow this win with another midweek matchup versus Plattsburgh State (7-15, 3-9) on Wed., April 17 at home. Finally, the Panthers will face top-seeded NESCAC West opponent, Amherst College (14-8, 5-4) starting Friday, April 19.
“We are going into the rest of NESCAC play confident,” Stolper said. “We need to play our game and start driving the ball on the ground or on a line. We have been making it too easy on our defenders by hitting too many balls in the air. A big thing for us going into NESCAC play is to challenge defenses by putting balls hard and in play.”
(04/11/19 10:36am)
MIDDLEBURY - Bundle, a new organization recently installed at 60 Main St., hopes to bring the community together to revitalize the downtown area through pop-up stores, workshops and galleries.
Karen Duguay, Executive Director of the Better Middlebury Partnership (BMP), said that the space could bring an “infusion of energy” into Middlebury. Her hope is that the space will draw people downtown to meet their neighbors, learn new skills and check out the stores and restaurants in order to promote business in town.
The idea was the brainchild of Neighbors, Together, an action group comprised of stakeholders ranging from Middlebury College to Porter Hospital, who hope to mitigate the effects of the downtown construction. The BMP is the fiscal agent behind the new project. Kelly Hickey, a local artisan who created Edie and Glo, a handmade vintage clothing business, has been hired to manage the space.
"I prefer a more urban environment, and so I really wanted to create a feel for the two - a small community feel but with stuff going on downtown," said Hickey. She described Bundle and the space as “an intersection of experience and shopping” that merges urban and small town living.
Events in April include the ReBag workshops, in which community members have the opportunity to make reusable bags in order to cut down on the use of plastic ones. The workshop ran on April 6 and is also scheduled for April 27 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“It's crafts as a form of activism," said Nancy, a community member involved with the organization.
“I just love to sew, and so this is a great way to sew and do things for others at the same time,” added Mary Beth, another participant.
Other future events will include a secondhand clothes pop-up shop, which will coincide with the Middlebury Maple Run on May 5. The market will include vendors from Pittsfield to Burlington, and will include jewelry and health oils as well.
“Local high schoolers don’t often purchase from second hand stores because they don’t like to wear other people’s clothing,” said Hickey, who thinks that bringing in retailers from other areas will mitigate this problem.
Bundle will also be involved in “Spring into the Arts” around Memorial Day, in which Bundle will showcase art from the Patricia A. Hannaford Career Center, Middlebury Union Middle School and Middlebury Union High School. The hope is that local artists will come in and collaborate with students on their work so that each group can learn from each other.
"It's a time when the youth can learn from the community member and the community member can learn from the youth,” Hickney said.
The calendar will also feature swing dance workshops, a fiddle group, collaborations with the farmer’s market and an African basket-weaving workshop led by residents from Shelburne. Both Duguay and Hickey emphasized that the space is meant to be part of a collaboration, not a competition.
The space at 60 Main St. was formerly occupied by Clay’s, a women’s clothing store that closed in June of 2018. Bundle rents the space on the condition that no other retailer wants to rent it, meaning that if a retailer wanted to open a new store, Bundle would move out after a 90-day grace period. "If anyone wants the space permanently we will step back...we can take it to a different space," Duguay explained. Hickey added that 51 Main St. and the space once occupied by the general store Ben Franklin could be additional options for Bundle.
Bundle and the Neighbors, Together organization were created to tackle the impacts of construction work downtown. “Retail is declining nationwide,” said Duguay, claiming that Middlebury’s retail is “facing challenges never seen before.” Next summer is supposed to be the heaviest period of construction, and retailers are “nervous about future,” Duguay said.
When asked about feedback, Hickey said, “people love the space, love the idea, but hate the parking,” but also added that the lack of parking is part of the idea of Bundle. The hope is that visitors, especially from hotels and Airbnbs on the outskirts of town, will be drawn in by events at Bundle, have to park outside of town and then be forced to walk through downtown, interacting with stores, restaurants and the movie theatre.
Hickey and Duguay wish to include college students as much as possible in the process. “We want college students to feel an ownership of the downtown space,” said Duguay, “and we need to encourage people to value community over cost and convenience.”
“We just need to bundle everyone together,” finished Hickey.
If any college student is interested for working for Better Middlebury Partnership or has any other ideas about how to mitigate the effects of Downtown Construction, contact Karen Duguay at karen@bettermiddleburypartnership.org.
If any student is interested in hosting a workshop or pop-up at Bundle or wants to know more about events, contact Kelly Hickey at sydzea@yahoo.com.
(04/11/19 9:57am)
The Middlebury Cycling Club hosted its first Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (ECCC) race in recent history, with over 200 cyclists from schools around the Northeast descending upon the Champlain Valley for a day of racing along Vermont’s picturesque country roads. This race was the second in a weekend of two races called L’Enfer du Nord; the Weybridge Road Race hosted by Middlebury followed the Dartmouth Frat Row Criterium and the Bridge to Ridge ITT. The Middlebury course consisted of a 14-mile loop with 1,000 feet of climbing per lap; cyclists raced through the towns of Middlebury, Cornwall, Weybridge and New Haven. Races ranged in distance from 73 miles (Men’s A) to 31 miles (Women’s C/D).
Middlebury placed eighth in the ECC’s overall rankings, behind the University of Vermont. The team was led by Will Greene ’19 placing 30th in the Men’s A race (completing the 73 miles in 3:26:03) and Katie Aman ’19 placing second in the Women’s A, with a time of 3:24:38 over the 59-mile course. Following the club’s two leaders, Virginie Caspard placed first in the Women’s B, Warren Galloway placed 27th in the Men’s C and Camryn Kluetmeier ’21.5 placed fourth in the Women’s C. Eight other Middlebury cyclists rounded out the pack.
Ben Glass ’20.5, one of the event’s organizers and a member of the Cycling Club, described the hard work put into the race — getting town permits, soliciting the assistance of the Addison County Sheriff and Middlebury Regional EMS, gathering volunteers and setting up the course. “Because we had never done anything like this before, we were basically building everything from the ground up,” he said.
Glass was impressed with the team’s results. “In general, we’ve had a lot of good results this season, which is why we’re floating at the top of the leaderboards. And that’s with cycling giants like Queen’s and MIT, who basically have a monopoly over the league standings, just by pure numbers and talent,” he said.
Aman, the club’s president, hopes to make a Middlebury-hosted road race a tradition. “Everyone stepped up to both pitch in with volunteering efforts and stepping up in their individual races,” she said. “Both during and after the event, we received many great compliments from other teams on how fantastic our course was for the race.”
(03/21/19 10:38am)
Last Thursday, I turned 21. Being in Vermont, I decided to celebrate the occasion not by throwing a Busch-fueled dorm room pregame, but with a local, authentic drinking experience: a craft brewery tour.
When I looked for places to visit, though, I found a lack of guidance. The Vermont Brewers Association puts out a map of the state’s 60 breweries, but it was sparse in detail. Online beer reviews were too technical and somewhat snobby. Even our very own Middlebury Campus had never published a guide.
As the Local section of The Campus, we took it upon ourselves to fill this void. So here it is, a rundown of local breweries from your average Middlebury Junior.
Red Clover Ale
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My first stop of the day was Red Clover Ale located in Brandon, a half-hour drive along Route 7. It’s a recent addition to the brewery scene here in Addison County, started in November 2018 by three brothers-in-law.
At first glance, the space looks more like a trendy café than a brewery. Everything was in a single spacious room — including the brewing and fermentation tanks, cordoned off from the rest with only a small swinging door. The décor was simple, two long wooden tables flanked by beer barrels that doubled as tables. Metal stools, patterned aluminum ceiling and exposed bulbs hanging on cables completed the look. Perfect for Instagram.
And the beer? Clean, balanced and surprisingly accessible. Their hoppiest drink of the day, the Fly Agaric, a double IPA, had all the flavor and complexity you would want without an overpowering bitterness that you might expect in such a hop-forward beer.
“They’re not in your face,” explained Riker Wikoff, one of the owners of the brewery. He offered me another beer, this time a German Kolsch he called Edelweiss: with a much a lighter feel and a crisp finish, it felt almost like drinking a clean lager. “I don’t like to get slammed on super ABV beers. I like to be able to enjoy more than one,” he added.
When Riker and his other co-founders created the tasting room, they envisioned a space for people to linger and socialize, building a light-filled room with soft music playing in the background and a stack of board games on a foosball table by the corner. They also brewed beers that reflected that concept, with most drinks clocking in at less than 6 percent ABV.
It’s a recipe that seems to be working so far. As I was about to leave, a man walked up to the bar, ordered a glass, took a seat by the long tables and opened a book and began reading.
Hot Takes: A fancy café with beer, not coffee. Chill with friends, play games, even read. Just don’t forget to bring your own food.
Foley Brothers
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I headed to Foley Brothers next, a more established player in Vermont located just a few minutes away from Red Clover Ale. It was slightly off the beaten path, down a windy road with more potholes than I could count.
Alyssa Zollman, the weeknight tasting room manager greeted me as I walked into the 18th century farmhouse-turned-brewery. She led me through an Irish/pirate themed main tasting room to a smaller room in the back usually used for wine tastings (Foley Brothers also owns a vineyard) but that acts as the winter tap room. “It’s easier to heat,” she explained.
One of the first beers I tried was Pieces of Eight, a double IPA made with eight different hops. With every sip I took, I tasted a different flavor — fruitiness, earthiness, citrus — the whole spectrum. It ended with a strong but balanced bitterness, a trait many of its beers shared. I could see why the brewery had won several accolades over the years, with its flagship brew, the Prospect, ranked alongside some of the top beers in Vermont.
The secret to their success? “Pride and quality,” said Paul Babick, the brewery cellarman. “Nobody takes more pride in the beers than the brothers do,” he emphasized.
There’s something in the water in Brandon. With two phenomenal breweries with totally different personalities, you could spend the day at Foley Brothers trying their IPAs, then grab a bite to eat at one of Brandon’s many local eateries and go over to Red Clover for some afternoon drinks and a round of boardgames.
Hot Takes: If you love IPAs, go to Foley Brothers. If you’re willing to tolerate a small space and the bumpy ride, you’ll be rewarded with phenomenal beer.
Drop-In
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While Brandon is great, you don’t have to drive half an hour for a quality beer experience. Just down the road from Hannaford sits Drop-In brewery, a student favorite. It’s an eclectic place with a diverse range of beers on tap — from consistent hits like Sunshine & Hoppiness to occasional brews like Czech Your Ego.
Drop-In is also home to the American Brewers Guild, a brewing school run by Steve Parkes, owner and cofounder. “The brewery’s almost like a hobby for Steve,” explained Spencer Norland, who was working the tap that day.
The room really did feel like a hobby. A collection of what seemed like items from a British teenager’s dorm room covered the walls from floor to ceiling: soccer jerseys, band posters, even a random assortment of signs. “I’ve heard that the theme of this place is ‘get this crap out of the house,’” joked the man sitting next to me by the bar.
It’s the same creative, free-spiritedness at the source of its flavorful beers, a taste that’s worth the trip even if the brewery were a long drive away.
Pro-tip: If you don’t have a car, you can take the ACTR Route 7 bus to get there. But before you board at ADK, ask the driver to drop you off in front of Drop-In (pun not intended). While it’s not an official stop, they often accommodate deviations of less than half a mile. If not, it’s only about a five-minute walk from either the stop before at Hannaford, or the stop after at Rosie’s.
Here’s another tip: If you don’t know what to order, many of these places will let you have a taste before you commit to a pint. Take advantage of it – it’ll save us all the embarrassment of pretending to know the difference between a piney IPA and a resinous ale.
Hot Takes: For times you want proper beer without committing to a half-hour drive. Also great for first-timers: it’s close to home, and its educational roots shine through with the most detailed drink menu I’ve seen and a helpful staff.
Otter Creek
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As I pulled into the parking lot of Otter Creek, I was immediately hit with a scent of hops. They were coming from the towers jutting out of the brewery, housing the tanks that make up the industrial brewing operation. Only a few minutes from campus on Exchange Street, the craft brewery is one of the largest in the New England area, capable of producing more than 120 barrels at a time.
“We’ve got freshness and consistency,” said Robbie Leeds, the cellar supervisor, as he showed me the machinery. The high-tech operation spoke to the quality of one of the institutions that put Vermont craft beers on the map. Its flagship beer, the Free Flow IPA, with its iconic image of an orange van is distributed across the region.
The beer at the tap room was also great, from the Tiny Mountain Ale, a crisp, low-ABV drink to its chocolate stout, a heavy 11 percent dark beer with a hint of bourbon at the end.
With so many different drinks to choose from, some of them exclusive to the tap-room, it’s a worth a visit. But don’t plan on making new friends, with the music cranked up high and waiters bringing your drinks to the table, it’s lost a little bit of the personal touch of a local brewery.
Hot Takes: Friends from out of town? Picky drinker? Take them to Otter Creek. A recognizable brand, unparalleled variety of beer, and solid food options make OCB another great choice.
Hired Hand
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My last destination was Hired Hand, a tap-room in Vergennes. By the time I arrived, I was exhausted from two days of drinking and driving (Not at the same time, of course).
But the bustling energy of the taproom quickly sobered me up. The room was packed, and waitresses shuffled around delivering plates of food. I wedged myself between a couple and a group of friends sitting at the bar.
The space was rustic but stylish. Instead of levers, the taps behind the bar was made of old equipment from Ian’s family farm: wrenches, springs, handles.
But the food is what really separates Hired Hand from all the other breweries in the area. Head chef and owner Ian Huizenga runs both the brewery and the restaurant downstairs, Bar Antidote. They focus on hyper local ingredients, with much of it coming from within a few miles in Addison County. The result is an authentic farm-to-table style with a creative menu.
For Huizenga, making his own beer was a project that grew out his love for cooking with local ingredients. “We want this to be for the community,” he said as he listed the different farms from which he sourced his hops and other ingredients.
Currently, Hired Hand collaborates with Bobcat Brewery in Bristol to brew custom beers, but will start its own operations on-premise in June.
Hot Takes: Perfect for a date or a nice meal away from town. Come for the beer but stay for the food.
My review isn’t comprehensive by any means. This is just the beginning to exploring all of what Vermont has to offer.
But one thing’s for sure: Busch isn’t gonna cut it anymore. So if you’re turning 21, grab a sober friend, pack your ID and hit the road. 55 breweries to go.
Bonus: Vermont Cider Company (Woodchuck Cider)
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For all you non-beer-drinkers out there, there’s still plenty of alcohol to go around.
I decided to take a slight detour from my round up of local breweries to check out the Vermont Cider Company. Located just a mile or so past Otter Creek on Exchange Street, the maker of the familiar Woodchuck cider is another behemoth (at least for Vermont standards), producing enough cans daily to distribute to more than 40 states and a few countries abroad.
Alisa Bunin, the company’s Marketing Manager, greeted me by the door and led me towards the taproom. Woodchuck merchandise: shirts, cups, bottle openers, filled the room. At the back was a bar, with two rows of ciders on tap.
I tried the Amber first. A classic: it was the drink that converted hoards of beer drinkers to the cider world with its delicate sweetness and a slight tart finish.
Bunin offered me another glass, this time the Lil’ Dry from Woodchuck’s 802 collection. “It’s a love letter to our home state of Vermont,” she said. Sourced entirely from orchards around Vermont, the local apples laid a foundation for an elegant brew with a pale gold complexion. I cusped the glass in my hands and brought it up for a taste – warming the drink to bring out the flavors, as Bunin had explained. Dry and almost champagne-like, a sure hit.
Hot Takes: For non-beer-drinkers and beer-drinkers alike, go to see the source of cider goodness.
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(03/21/19 9:59am)
Two years ago, students protested and shut down a lecture by Charles Murray, a controversial sociologist whose attempts to link race with intelligence have led many to consider his work racist. The day after the March 2 protest, President Laurie Patton sent an all-school email expressing her disappointment.
“We will be responding in the very near future to the clear violations of Middlebury College policy that occurred inside and outside Wilson Hall,” Patton wrote. Specifically, the protesters violated section C.4 of the Student Handbook, which prohibits “disruptive behavior at community events or on campus.”
Despite this email, few of the students who protested anticipated the extent to which the college would pursue sanctions against them. The investigation and judicial process for students who were identified as having attended the event lasted until late May. The college punished 74 students with sanctions ranging from probation, which functions as a warning and a “first strike,” to official college discipline, which goes on a student’s permanent record.
During the first round of sanctions in March, 48 students were called in to meet with judicial affairs officers and put on probation for the remainder of the semester. The remaining 26 students, who were originally charged with official college discipline, did not receive notice of their punishment until early April.
Many decided to appeal the college’s decision to sanction them with official college discipline, which triggered a longer and more complicated judicial process that culminated in hearings before the college’s Community Judicial Board. Nineteen of those 26 students faced official college discipline for the same charge: remaining in Wilson Hall to protest after the event had been moved to a live stream. These students requested a group hearing to appeal the finding, and were granted permission to go through the process together. Ultimately, all 19 had their punishment reduced and were put on probation for the remainder of the spring and, for those not about to graduate, for two additional semesters.
The students involved, who are now more willing to discuss the judicial process than they were two years ago, recently agreed to speak about their experiences. They reported that going through the judicial process after the protest negatively impacted their mental health, made it more challenging to focus on their studies and permanently changed the way they view the college and administration.
The Impact
Since the students who faced more serious sanctions did not receive notice until the second round of disciplinary action began in early April, many of them spent March on edge.
“The sense of waiting for punishment was hard,” said Matea Mills-Andruk ’18.5. “I felt really overwhelmed. I had friends who didn’t go to the dining hall for a few weeks or a month after the protest and they mostly stayed in their rooms. They missed a lot of class and just became very isolated and alone.”
The waiting was made more stressful for some by the fact that the college used video footage of the protest, often submitted by students, to identify the protesters. Not everybody who protested was identified and called in. This made the process feel confusing and opaque.
Associate Sociology Professor Linus Owens, one of the faculty members chosen by students to attend the hearing, remembered that the length of the judicial process was hard for the students, some of whom came to him for support.
“I think that dragging it out, it really sort of had a terroristic effect on students,” Owens said. “Students were waiting to get called and then not everyone got called and then not everyone got punished the same way. It felt arbitrary and really problematic.”
Associate Professor of Education Studies Tara Affolter, who helped students organize the protest, agreed that the lack of transparency during the judicial process was stressful for many of her students.
“That sort of thing had a very chilling and detrimental effect on students. They weren’t present for their learning, they weren’t able to engage the ideas or grow from the experience,” she said.
Owens recalls feeling as though the college was responding to national pressures when deciding next steps, a feeling shared by many of the student protesters.
“I think the punishment was driven less by actual college rules than by the need to satisfy national audiences,” Owens said. “There was a huge concern that this was going to cost Middlebury.”
Once the extended judicial process began, many students found it incredibly stressful. One student who was part of the group hearing, who asked to be referred to as Bailey, said that their mental health suffered while the process was underway.
[pullquote speaker="Bailey" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]We were full-time students and we were full-time protesters at that point. I didn’t have any time to even cope with where my mental health was at.[/pullquote]
“I didn’t have any time, was the biggest thing. We were full-time students and we were full-time protesters at that point,” they said. “I didn’t have any time to even cope with where my mental health was at.”
Students were occupied drafting an opening statement, communicating with administrators, supporting one another and lining up character witnesses for the hearing.
The pressures of the judicial process also impacted students’ ability to go about the rest of their lives. Mills-Andruk had to quit one of her jobs during that semester. Sarah Karerat ’18 said she found it difficult to focus on her academics.
“My ability to participate in classes went down,” Karerat said. “It’s exhausting to be that anxious all the time. It definitely took a toll on my mental health, and it took a toll on my relationships.”
According to Sarah Ray, the director of media relations at the college, the judicial process took so long because of the large amount of photo and video evidence that the college needed to review.
“We understood that the student judicial process was a stressful one for many students, particularly since it came at the end of the semester,” she said. “Students were offered expedited paths through the process, which some accepted.”
But accepting an expedited path through the process would have meant not challenging the finding of official college discipline, which many students felt was not a reasonable option.
[pullquote speaker="Sarah Karerat ’18" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I was 20 years old and I didn’t know what could happen and I was scared.[/pullquote]
“Being low-income and needing to think about graduate school and scholarships and not having access to graduate school in the way that other folks do, it felt like this could really mess with my future,” Karerat said. “I was 20 years old and I didn’t know what could happen and I was scared.”
On top of stress about potential sanctions, students wrestled with a deeper sense of loss.
“The most jarring thing that happened that semester was I felt like I lost home, and that was so horrible,” Karerat said, explaining that during her time in college, Middlebury felt more like home to her than anywhere else. “I didn’t trust Middlebury anymore. I didn’t trust the space. I didn’t know if it was mine. To have that relationship change was really, really difficult.”
Bailey recalled a similar feeling of rejection by the wider college community.
“It really felt like the institution itself, that Laurie Patton, that anyone who was at all involved in the upper levels of the institution was saying, ‘These aren’t Middlebury students, these are thugs, these are radicals and they’re not part of our community,’” they said. “There were students on trial who were literally the heads of incredibly important organizations on campus, and for them to experience this disavowal from the college, and for the college to be like, ‘You’re not part of us anymore,’ it really felt like we were voted off the island. To feel like your home didn’t want you, that was one of the worst feelings.”
The Hearing
Students who went through the hearing recalled that it was also a taxing and emotional experience. Students arrived at the Service Building at 6 p.m. on May 4 along with faculty members, such as Owens, who they chose to attend the hearing for emotional support. They found the entrance lined with police barricades and security with a huge crowd of people gathered to cheer them on as they entered the building.
The hearing lasted around four hours and as part of the process, each student was allowed a character witness to speak on their behalf. Many faculty members served in this role, including Associate Professor of Anthropology Michael Sheridan. Sheridan bought chocolates for the students facing sanctions because he said he figured that they might feel “encircled by dementors.”
“After sitting down in front of the board, I made a point to remain facing directly ahead while holding out the packages of chocolate backwards for someone to take and pass on,” he said. “That was my way to both support the students and express my frustration at the very, very limited ways that our community was communicating with one another.”
According to Karerat, the part of the hearing where the character witnesses read their statements was the most emotional for her.
“There was a lot of crying. A lot of the character witnesses cried and a lot of us cried in response,” she said. “Listening to other people’s character witnesses, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is the most resilient, powerful group of people I know and I am so sad they had to go through this.’”
Mills-Andruk also remembers the emotional impact of the character witness statements.
[pullquote speaker="Sarah Karerat ’18" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Listening to other people’s character witnesses, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is the most resilient, powerful group of people I know and I am so sad they had to go through this.’[/pullquote]
“It was incredible to hear what everyone had done and everyone’s interests and lives and families and where they’re from,” she said. “It was like a song to all of us about our own humanness.”
For many, the trial cemented relationships that had been forming throughout the process.
“There was a strong community that came out of this,” Karerat said. “It was a strange but lovely silver lining. I think some of the strongest bonds come out of trauma or crisis, and we were all going through the same thing. Especially with all the ruptures over this in the wider community, it was really nice to have a group of people I didn’t have to explain myself to.”
The Aftermath
The judicial process culminated a few weeks before the end of the semester. Some of the 19 students who went through the group trial graduated, while others returned the following fall and continued serving their probation.
[pullquote speaker="Associate Professor of Education Studies Tara Affolter" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I think it’s going to continue to limit and create fear around student protests and protests in general.[/pullquote]
Even though probation does not go on a student’s record, many students reported it impacted their lives on campus. According to Bailey, their probation made any kind of activism, like walkouts and rallies, feel like too big of a risk to take.
“I know for me there were events and things going on that I didn’t feel comfortable going to because I was worried about how they could progress. I really have no trust in the administration or in the college anymore and so I didn’t want to take any risks,” they said. “It was a very effective silencing of any student that had it.”
Affolter also worries about how the college’s handling of the judicial process will impact future student organizing efforts.
“I think it’s going to continue to limit and create fear around student protests and protests in general,” she said. “I don’t think it’s pedagogically or developmentally appropriate to use fear and vague intimidation as a way to shore things up. That’s not really the best way to get the community that you want.”
Despite everything that happened afterward, Mills-Andruk said that she does not regret protesting.
“If we had not resisted, the message to the rest of the student body, the staff and faculty of the college, alumni, community members in the town of Middlebury, or anyone watching the news, would be of an apathetic campus who did not care about its community,” she said. “The protest was an act of kindness, care, defense, love, desperation and survival.”
All of the students who spoke to The Campus about the judicial process reported wrestling with a complicated or outright negative view of the college in light of their experience.
[pullquote speaker="Sarah Koch ’18.5" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]It felt so clear to me that Middlebury was concerned about their reputation above everything else, to the extent that they couldn’t take any sort of institutional action to care for students.[/pullquote]
“It felt so obvious where loyalties lay and it was not with marginalized students during that process,” said Sarah Koch ’18.5. “It felt so clear to me that Middlebury was concerned about their reputation above everything else, to the extent that they couldn’t take any sort of institutional action to care for students.”
According to Bailey, the aftermath of the protest did permanent damage to their view of the college and the administration.
“It really was like this giant black rain cloud over my time at Middlebury,” they said. “Before this event I had always been like, ‘I love Middlebury, I’m so happy I went here.’ And I still love my life, but I give absolutely no credit to the institution.”
Karerat also reported a shift in her feelings toward the college and the administration as a result of this process, although she felt that she was able to rebuild some of those relationships in her final year on campus.
She added that, despite everything, she hopes that students will continue to organize and advocate to make Middlebury a better place.
“Keep the radical organizing activist energy alive,” she said. “Organizing spaces are great spaces for community and friendship, and they are the best spaces to work to make change, and Middlebury needs to change. It is always going to have room to grow.”
(03/21/19 9:59am)
The Middlebury men’s lacrosse team traveled to Baltimore, MD this past weekend to play in the Mustang Classic. After suffering a 12-6 loss to conference foe, Wesleyan Cardinals, the Panthers rebounded and defeated nationally ranked Dickinson 16-11.
After a 9-2 deficit in the first half of the Wesleyan game, Middlebury tried to surmount a comeback in the latter half of the game. Tyler Forbes ’22 scored quickly at the 12:32 mark to gain some Middlebury momentum. However, the Cardinals’ strong offense responded with two goals in a span of four minutes. Again, the Panthers stayed strong and were able to rattle off three unanswered goals coming from Frank Cosolito ’20 and two from Chase Goree ’20. Down five scores at the start of the fourth quarter, the team was shut down by great goaltending and stifling defense from Wesleyan. Middlebury struggled to get shots the entire game, firing only 17 and scoring six. Forbes and Goree led the team in scoring with two goals a piece. Charles Midgley ’19 played all 60 minutes in goal, saving 17 of the 29 shots coming from Wesleyan.
Despite the loss to start the weekend, Middlebury came out very strong and motivated in the Saturday match-up against Dickinson. To no surprise, the Panthers came out red-hot, scoring the game’s first four goals. AJ Kucinski ’20 tallied two and the other contributions came again from Cosolito and Forbes. After Dickinson responded with three of their own, Forbes and Alderik vanderHeyde ’21 netted each of their own, putting the Panthers up 6-4 at the half.
Just like the start of the game, Middlebury came out shooting in the second half and scored three within the half’s first four minutes. Senior captain Jack Gould scored a beautiful goal at the 13:14 mark, netting one far out and with pace. The goalie had no chance. Dickinson responded with three straight goals of their own yet still remained behind in a 11-7 contest.
At the start of the fourth, Dickinson made it quite a game by closing the gap to just one goal. However, the hot offense of the Panthers picked up and they responded with three of their own, two coming from Forbes. With seven minutes to go in the game, the teams traded goals but Middlebury came out on top 16-11. They never trailed in the game.
Forbes led the team in scoring with five, culminating to a total of 16 goals on the year. Jack Hoelzer ’21 fed the ball and tallied two assists on the day. Again, Midgley played all sixty minutes in goal, this time tallying nine saves on 20 shots.
Men’s lacrosse holds a 2-3 record to begin the year. Their next contest will come against Bowdoin on Saturday, March 23. This is their first home game of the year, and they look to remain in the middle of the pact in the NESCAC conference.
