924 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(12/05/13 2:53am)
In collaboration with the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS), the College has opened an office in Washington, D.C. According to a College press release, the office will provide students, faculty and staff from the College and MIIS with “increased access to the many academic, government, international, research and philanthropic organizations in the Washington, D.C. area.”
The 6,500-square foot space, located at 1400 K Street, has two conference rooms, a large videoconferencing room and several personal offices. The office also houses the East Coast branch of the MIIS Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
“What makes this new office so exciting is how many different aspects of the institution can take advantage of it and consequently all that Washington has to offer,” President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said in the press release. “It will allow our institution to bring together students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends from all of our degree programs to enrich a particular course, a continuing education program and much more.”
The videoconferencing facility will prove to be the center’s most vibrant element — allowing students at the College, MIIS or C. V. Starr Schools Abroad to connect with government and policy experts without the time or cost spent on travel.
Fariha Haque, a former analyst in the District of Columbia Public Schools’ Office of Early Childhood Education, has been named the director of Middlebury in DC. Haque noted that the facility could also be used by career and internship offices at the College and MIIS for networking or recruiting purposes, either in person or by videoconference.
The office hosted its first lecture on Nov. 20, in which Associate Professor of American Studies Susan Burch presented her research on Junius Wilson, a man who spent 76 years in a North Carolina mental hospital during the Jim Crow era, yet had never been declared insane by a medical professional.
(11/21/13 1:57am)
To the Editors of the Middlebury Campus,
We would like to offer some comments and clarification on the article entitled “Reading and Ranking: Shaping the Class of 2018” in the November 14, 2013 issue of the Middlebury Campus.
First, thank you for spending time with the Admissions Office to shed some light on a process that is often perceived at best as “opaque,” and at worst downright frustrating. All of us, undergrads and graduates alike, have gone through the college admissions process, and all of us at one point have wondered what goes on behind the scenes to select the next new class of Middlebury students.
With that said, we wanted to support and make some clarifying comments on your article about the Admissions process and how applicants are considered. While the article quotes Manuel Carballo, Director of Admissions, as saying, “we aren’t interviewing students or having conversations with them”, the reality is that many applicants are still being interviewed. Last year, Middlebury’s Alumni Admissions Program (AAP) interviewed over 6,000 of the more than 9,000 undergraduate applications received by the College.
The AAP is the College’s largest alumni volunteer program with almost 2,500 active participants and over 3,800 members. The program has members across the world, in nearly every country and every state. In fact, the Admissions Office estimates that at least 50 percent of the current matriculated students of the College received an interview from an alumni or alumnae.
As alumni interviewers, we realize that our conversations only represent one aspect of an applicant’s overall profile, which also include high school transcripts, test scores, recommendations and other application materials, both objective and subjective. Our efforts, however, do make a difference as our conversations with applicants provide direct insight into the most subjective and very important “personal category” of an application, as referenced by Dean of Admissions, Greg Buckles, in your article.
As leaders of AAP, we are all proud of our work. Looking at alumni admissions programs at peer institutions, Middlebury’s AAP is often recognized as a model of the college admissions process in terms of the number of interviews completed and the quality of the reports.
As we all know, the landscape of higher education is changing rapidly and in ways that many of us do not fully comprehend. The college applicant of today is smarter, global, socially-networked and more technologically advanced than we ever thought possible. In order to make sure that Middlebury continues its tradition of attracting the best and the brightest, programs like AAP are critical to the overall process, and we are proud to know that all of the work done by the alumni/ae volunteers of the College is valuable and appreciated by the Admissions Office.
Best regards,
Ed Soh – ’94, AAP National Chair and MCAA Board Member
Wendy Russell Tracy – ’95, AAP National Chair and MCAA Board Member
Skip D’Aliso – ’78, AAP National Chair and MCAA Board Member
(11/20/13 10:09pm)
The German newsmagazine Focus has reported that the art collection of Cornelius Gurlitt, an 80-year old German man whose collection of 1406 artworks was seized by German authorities in his Munich apartment in Feb. 2012, was found to include several previously unknown works by famous artists including Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Max Liebermann, Edvard Munch, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Gauguin. The collective value of the discovered works has been estimated to be at least €1 billion.
The story of Cornelius Gurlitt’s hidden collection began in pre-WWII Nazi Germany. Cornelius’ father Hildebrand Gurlitt was an art dealer and museum director on friendly terms with many modern artists of the day. After being fired from a curatorial position in Hamburg in 1933, the elder Gurlitt was one of four men asked by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to help sell the thousands of artworks the Nazis had confiscated from museums and labeled “degenerate” to overseas buyers. The Nazis organized the Degenerate Art Exhibition in 1937 to showcase the kind of art they claimed to have corrupting effects on the German people. Among the elder Gurlitt’s trading collection of nearly 1500 works are also believed to be many that the Nazis confiscated from Jewish families in the lead up to and during World War II.
Near the end of World War II, Gurlitt and his family fled to the castle of a friend. As Allied Forces marched across Germany and defeated the Third Reich, they detained and interrogated the elder Gurlitt. He told members of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives unit of the American military that most of his collection had been destroyed in the bombing of Dresden and he did not participate in the confiscation or trading of illegally stolen artworks.
The Allied troops released him, satisfied that Gurlitt’s collection was rightfully owned personal property. The elder Gurlitt died in 1956 from a car crash. Meanwhile, his son, Cornelius, lived quietly in Salzburg, Austria. After the deceased Gurlitt’s wife died in 1967, Cornelius moved into his mother’s apartment in Munich — the same one where the massive collection was uncovered early last year.
What led authorities to the Munich apartment was almost sheer serendipity. Travelling from Germany to Switzerland by train in late 2010, Cornelius Gurlitt was found carrying €9000 in cash, all in crisp new €500 bills. More than a year of investigations later, authorities raided Gurlitt’s Munich apartment and found a massive collection of artworks hidden behind curtains and canned food in the guest room. The authorities carted the works away to a storage facility in the city of Garching where they sought to trace their provenance.
In an interview with the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, Gurlitt maintained that he had not broken any laws and that the seized works are his rightful personal property. He expressed dismay at the media circus that has intruded his reclusive lifestyle after Focus broke the story back in early November.
“There is nothing more I have loved more in my life than my pictures,” Gurlitt told Der Spiegel, adding that the loss of his collection has been more devastating than the loss of his mother and his sister.
Gurlitt sold some of the works in his collection over the years to help pay for living expenses and medical treatment. In the fall of 2011, he put Max Beckmann’s “Lion Tamer” up for sale at an auction house in Cologne. It sold for €725,000. Gurlitt and the Jewish heirs with claim to the work settled for a 55-45 split on the sale.
(11/13/13 7:02pm)
As we approach a month since the troubling and startling suicide of 16-year-old Olivia Scott of Bristol, Vt., the newspapers, media and other news outlets are noticeably absent of any content related to teen suicide, bullying or harassment. This is a common pattern after tragic events such as this occur. While I am in no way critiquing the news system — I understand the news reports on current events and controversies and does not provide much opportunity for reflection on past situations — I still believe that certain subjects should not simply make headlines and then be cast aside. When one considers the prevalence of stories about teen bullying and suicide — according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, teen suicide leads to nearly 4,500 deaths per year, about half attributed to bullying — it is evident that this is an issue that can no longer remain muted. It is not enough for us to feel for the families and friends of victims of bullying.
Last spring after a screening of the documentary “Bully,” I found myself profoundly moved by the issue of bullying in elementary, middle and high schools. As someone who has worked extensively with adolescents in mentoring programs and in academic settings, I have witnessed the complexities of adolescence and have found it necessary to try to understand the reasons behind, and consequences of, teen bullying. Through research and exposure I have discovered various national movements that have formed and by which people are spreading awareness about this tragic problem. Yet despite these campaigns, most of which have been started by mourning parents, teenagers are still taking their lives to stop the endless taunting and hurt. This has forced me to wonder where we are going wrong. Why are children, adolescents and young adults still being bullied to the extent that they feel their only relief comes from death?
I believe that the finger cannot be pointed at any one cause and should not be directed solely at the perpetrators — or at least the commonly understood perpetrator. For the perpetrator is not just the person or persons conducting the bullying, it is unstructured media use, absent parents or adult figures, uninterested or unobservant teachers, peer pressure, and hormones. Most significantly, it is a lack of understanding how one’s words and actions can have a strong impact on another.
Internet websites such as ask.fm, on which Olivia Scott had been bullied and taunted, or Facebook provide forums in which adolescents can interact with one another without any boundaries or worries of adult supervision. Adolescence is a time that we all experience; as (older) young adults we remember the uncertainty of friendships, romantic relationships, sexuality, self-identity, gender expectations and physical capabilities. The Internet has allowed youth to ponder these issues and questions in an anonymous manner, or in a manner that lets them present themselves how they wish to be viewed by others. It allows them to experiment with identity expression in a different way than they may in person. This can be very beneficial for many adolescents who are struggling through or simply trying to navigate these challenging, yet exciting, years. But it can have negative repercussions when Internet use is done in a way that harms others. Such a powerful tool can provide safety and support as well as act in profoundly negative ways.
So what can be done? College-aged students are the generation most recently removed from this difficult time. We were just there. We get it. We know how it feels to have friends call you fat, to not have someone to sit with at lunch, to be ridiculed for certain clothing choices. We have felt the pain of knowing each time we speak others may laugh at our speech impediments. We have experienced these things, and they have hurt. But we have made it through, and though many of us may continue to struggle with the effects of such bullying, we have found ways to cope and have found other outlets — solutions that do not result in death.
It is our responsibility as this older generation to not overlook teen bullying. More than any other generation, we can relate to the pain of it. Furthermore, we have extensive knowledge of social media and the Internet and have (hopefully) mastered appropriate usage. Now is the time for us to model that. Now is the time for us to intervene, to offer advice, to be a listening ear, a good friend.
My heart goes out to the victims of bullying and their friends and families. It also extends to those who participate in the bullying. Many times those who bully do so out of the same confusion and discomfort as those who are bullied. With an increased reliance upon, and usage of, the Internet, social media and other communication devices, today’s adolescents are at greater risk of sustained bullying that is outside the classroom walls, and no one — the bullied or the bully — escapes the added scrutiny and opportunities for bullying that the Internet provides.
We must act as a reassurance that no matter how hard it may be in the moment, it can get better — it will get better. Adolescent involvement in indiscriminate bullying — cyber or otherwise — can lead to tragedies like the death of Olivia Scott. Deaths of this nature can be avoided, and we must act together to make this happen.
ANNA STEVENS ’13.5 is from Shoreham, Vt.
(11/13/13 6:54pm)
“I love Middlebury College because it is in Vermont: everything seems to work here, I feel like I’m far away from those sad things that we see in the news!” That was one of the first things I heard from a Middlebury student, back when I was applying to the College. Indeed, on a campus that abounds with rich food and intense academic opportunities, it is easy to generalize our reality and think our surroundings are the same way.
But I want to tell another story, one that could be compatible with “the sad things we see in the news” the student referred to — except it is happening only a few miles away from our end-of-history campus. This is the story of the Mexican migrant workers in Vermont.
Back in 1994, Mexico, Canada and the U.S. implemented a trade liberalization agreement named the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Mexico approved this treaty under the promises of expanded and globalized trade that would bring more foreign direct investment, and a greater number of high paying jobs, which would increase the standard of living in the country as a whole. After almost 20 years, we see that the reality is the opposite: while the standard of living grew within historical Mexican oligarchies, the country in total suffered from severe levels of unemployment and underemployment while millions of jobs were lost and many farmers went bankrupt as heavily subsidized American products flooded Mexican markets.
A 2008 report by Agence Global stated that every hour Mexico imported $1.5 million worth of food; in that same hour, 30 farmers migrated to the U.S. This phenomenon brought many of those farmers to the United States, some to places like Vermont.
Those who managed to get here, after a risky and dangerous border crossing, integrate into Vermont’s dairy farms’ workforce. Most of these workers are undocumented and typically work 60-80 hours per week enduring extreme isolation in Vermont’s rural areas. This situation leaves the migrant community in a vulnerable position in one of the whitest and most rural states in the U.S. Workers have reported being subject to racial profiling, highly precarious living and labor environments, and are overly dependent on employers to meet their basic needs.
Some of the Migrant Workers also report facing poor living and working conditions. They mention living in improvised, insect-infested shelters that once were barns. Others mention living in trailers overcrowded with other workers. And while most of them have developed solid working relationships with their employers, some workers report having gone months without getting paid for their labor.
Could the farmers not simply give better conditions to the workers? Ironically, some of the nasty effects of globalization have also hit Vermont’s dairy farmers.
“Globalized competition has led to unstable and oddly low prices. We have seen times when the price paid to a farmer for a gallon of the milk produced was $2 lower than the actual price of production,” said Clark Hinsdale III, President of the Vermont Farm Bureau.
Indeed, with fierce, and often times unfair, competition from businesses as far away as New Zealand, many local dairy farmers have been struggling to provide for their own families. Thus, it often becomes complicated to also provide good living conditions for their employees.
And here is where I believe the student with whom I spoke before coming to Middlebury was awfully wrong. In this globalized world, there is no way poverty, poor living conditions and other issues can be limited to the places “we see in the news.” These issues happen here, now, and they deserve our attention.
I believe this issue deserves Middlebury College students’ attention. How many times do we seek places abroad to work on high-impact community projects, while there are big issues just around the corner?
Fortunately, several people in Vermont (including Middlebury students) are starting to take notice of the 1,500 Migrant Farm Workers in the state and are getting involved in their communities. Through grassroots advocacy and the effort of many workers and volunteers, the state government just approved a law that allows the migrant population to get drivers licenses without providing full documentation that could be implemented as soon as next year. This is a big victory — one that may help remedy some of the problems these people face in accessing other regions.
However, there is a lot more that we can do. The Middlebury student-run organization JUNTOS approaches this issue on many different levels: under policy and advocacy, it seeks to influence Vermont policymaking towards harmonizing and stimulating fair relationships between the Migrant Workers community, employers and the state community as a whole.
JUNTOS also has the compañeros program, in which the students reach out to local migrant workers and start friendships with them, learning from them and helping whenever possible. This way the members involved learn how to better help the community. “Who better understands what they need than they themselves?” questions Guadalupe Daniela.
Want to get involved? Get in touch!
email: juntos@middlebury.edu
phone: (832) 889-5798
MARCOS BARROZO FILHO ’17 is from Uberlandia, Brazil
(11/07/13 10:53pm)
Snake Pit with Adeline Cleveland ’13.5 & Alan Sanders ’13.5
Middlebury Campus (MC): How did you form?
Addy: Both of us came together at the beginning of this semester. We’ve been friends for a while and we’ve each had different shows all four years. We’re in our last semester, and our former partners graduated last year, so we were just chatting one day and decided to do a story together.
MC: How did you come up with the name?
Alan: I came over to Addy’s house one day, and her friend from high school was there, and he works in a reptile house.
Addy: He makes snakes, like he alters different parts of their DNA.
Alan: It was a wild experience. And the next day we were supposed to fill out the application. So we came up with SnakePit.
MC: How would you describe the sound of your show?
Alan: We are a hip-hop show, but we also play a lot of new electronic and electronic-pop acts.
Addy: It’s not really a theme every show, but sometimes a common thread will appear as the show goes on and we kind of just go from there, depending on the flow of the show.
Alan: We try to play new music as much as possible – we play what came out each week.
MC: Three adjectives.
Alan: Slithery
Addy: Dangerous
Alan: Venomous
MC: Why should listeners tune in?
Addy: We generally play songs that flow well into each other so it’s nice to listen not only for one song, but the show is pretty coherent as a whole, and our banter is pretty on point. It’s intentional and informative. Alan is pretty knowledgeable and up-to-date on the artists and albums we’re playing, and I don’t know that stuff. So we’re not both talking at people, we’re both conversing.
Alan: It’s a good way for listeners to get to know new music and new artists. Also, our show is on a Thursday night, so people can listen when they’re in the library studying or in their dorm rooms, not studying. Eighty percent of our listeners are from town, not on campus. Our listeners vary between lots of different age groups.
MC: How do you broadcast to listeners across different age groups?
Addy: Making a conscious effort to not just have our conversation center around stuff that happens at the College. We definitely bring things that are happening on campus, but I think by keeping our conversation centered around current pop events and music, that’s easier to relate to than two students talking about Proctor dining hall.
Second Hand Groove Machine with Jebb Norton ‘13.5 and Eric Benepe ‘13.5
MC: How did you form?
Jebb: Destiny.
Erik: We went to the first meeting our second semester, and we had known each other before. We had very similar musical taste and decided to do a show together.
MC: How would you describe your musical style?
Erik: We do a different genre every week, we have different themes. Sometimes we’ll pick a genre, sometimes we’ll pick a period in musical history, sometimes we’ll play instrumental beats with different speeches we’ve gotten by famous people.
Jebb: We did a show for Shel Silverstein a month ago. We played a bunch of his poetry and songs that he wrote and stuff by his friends. We have fun with it.
Erik: Basically, we both listen to a lot of music and on our show we try to play things that we’re interested in and use it as a way to find out more about the music we like.
MC: Three adjectives.
Jebb: I’d say funky. More than most people would think of, I think funk music is about doing what you want to do, and we definitely bring the funk.
Erik: Goofy. We get kind of ridiculous sometimes. We’ve got a solid core of fans, but sometimes we get callers and we have no idea who they are.
Jebb: I like it because every week, we have a two hour period where we never do work. It’s just a period where we can listen to music and talk, or just think. It’s just a separate mind space from normal time at Middlebury.
MC: Do you think that vibe is communicated to your listeners?
Jebb: Yeah totally, I hope so. If we were doing homework, I think they would know. It would change, we wouldn’t be as engaged.
MC: Do you plan ahead?
Erik: We’ve gotten to a point where we don’t know how to plan that much. We know each other’s music style well enough and we have good chemistry. We sort of improvise what sounds good.
MC: Why should listeners tune in to your show?
Erik: Because we emphasize playing good music, and we don’t talk too much. When we do talk, we try to contribute things to teach people about the music.
Jebb: We don’t ask each other what we had for lunch, and then talk about it for fifteen minutes. People should listen to us because everyone needs an escape. And that’s what we give.
Rock in Rio with Fabiana Benediini ‘15 and Jess Parker ‘16
MC: What is Rock and Rio?
Benedini: So Rock in Rio is actually not a world show, it’s Brazilian music – Brazilian country and rock. Brazilian rock says a lot about Brazilian history so most of the bands complain about the government and how corrupt it is. There are a lot of songs about disillusionment and anger and those are really good. And Brazilian country is about Brazilian daily culture, so heartbreak, drinking a lot and women.
MC: How did the show start?
Benedini: Jess and I were having dinner at Proctor. She wants to learn Portuguese so I said okay, let’s have a show so you can practice by listening to music and you can talk in Portuguese. Her mom’s Brazilian and she wants to learn Portuguese so she knows a little bit and she’s taking Portuguese for Spanish speakers right now.
MC: Do you speak Portuguese on the air?
Benedini: We do speak in Portuguese to each other when she asks about the lyrics.
MC: Are the songs from growing up in Brazil or are they more modern?
Benedini: It’s hard to find modern songs but I can usually message my friends in Brazil and they can tell me what good music is going on right now. So I get input from Brazilians.
MC: When does the show air?
Benedini: It airs Wednesdays from 7 AM to 8 AM. It’s super early. It feels like it’s super early. It’s so fun to see Jess there and hang out with her. And it’s a good way to start our morning, especially because it’s music about heartbreak or anger – it’s hilarious.
MC: What you might hear:
Capital Inicial, “It is usually about corruption or disillusionment and it is rock.”
Ivete Sangalo, “It’s pump up music. It’s a style that is very typical of Brazil.”
MC: Any callers?
Benedini: Jess’s mom called once.
Almost Famous with Ben Goldberg ’14 and Maddie Dai ’14
MC: As the General Manger, what is your role at WRMC?
Goldberg: I kind of do a little bit of everything. I am learning as I go. The official description of my position is I’m the student president [of WRMC], I’m responsible for budget and the money side of things. We have a business director for that as well but I’m very much involved. I’m also a link between us and the administration, student activities and probably most significantly, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission). On a day-to-day basis, making sure everyone else is doing what they need to be doing. So, it’s a full time job.
MC: What would be your pitch to listen to WRMC?
Goldberg: It’s nothing like anything else you have on the air in Addison County – commercial free radio, tastefully picked music. We’re not catering to a certain audience, we’re not playing just top 40 hits.
Dai: There’s a lot of banter, there’s a joke a minute.
Goldberg: It’s nice to hear a range of student voices giving input. It’s a surprisingly personal experience to listen to someone’s show and what they’re up to and what they’re listening to.
Dai: If you’re driving a car, what else are you going to do?
Goldberg: All the shows are pretty different. We are predominately music, alternative music (whatever that means), but it’s at least diverse to some degree. We try to make it as diverse as possible but the fact that you’re listening to peers or even to someone you don’t know playing music they care about, have something to say about and want to share that with you, that’s a way to connect with other people. It’s so much more fulfilling than just putting on your iPod or putting on a CD when you have someone crafting a playlist for you.
MC: Almost Famous’ description says, “From boy bands to mental breakdowns.” What does that mean?
Dai: We go through all those iterations. One day we’ll be a boy band and the next we’ll have a mental breakdown. It’s actually our third show together and it’s been the evolution of us. We started in Oxford, we went abroad there.
Goldberg: Oxcide student radio.
Dai: There’s not many things Middlebury does better than Oxford but radio would be one of them. They have more Nobel prize winners in general but we have a good radio station. So we went there and then we had a show last semester called Zig-a-Zig-Ah which was a Nineties tribute show and now we do pop.
Goldberg: It was sort of a natural evolution. On our first show, Back to the Boombox, we would pick a different era of music but focusing on some sort of pop era, more or less.
Dai: We relive a lot of our childhood memories. But at a time when we were extremely awkward probably and it’s not necessarily overly sentimental, at an exciting time of middle school dances.
Goldberg: Maddie and I come from wildly different places but strangely enough we are able to connect through Nineties pop culture. That was the foundation of Zig-a-Zig-Ah and we didn’t want to have to be stuck playing just nineties music and the nineties music we were listening to for the most part was pop or some variation thereof. So now on Almost Famous we’ll do each week a different phenomenon in pop music.
Dai: Not to intellectualize it but it is interesting to look at pop as industrialized, very attuned to different cultural fads and movements and the movement from boy bands to girl bands.
Goldberg: We’re taking a stab at sociology.
Dai: Via Wikipedia.
Goldberg: Neither of us are trained sociologists. I still haven’t taken a sociology class but we can speak at length about Britney Spears or Justin Timberlake or Beyoncé and it’s nice because everyone who’s listening knows what we’re talking about.
MC: What are some typical songs or artists on Almost Famous?
Goldberg: Lately there’s been a lot of Lorde.
Dai: And also because I’m a New Zealander so I’m shamelessly promoting her.
Goldberg: And also her album is just objectively pretty good.
Dai: Britney is often the epicenter from which we like to compare other artists, in terms of her career that’s gone through so many evolutions, rising and falling, so there is some Britney but we talk about her more than we play her.
Goldberg: I don’t feel like there is a pattern in the artists we play but I guess as far as pop goes we play a lot of Beyoncé, Rihanna here and there, Justin Timberlake. Music we respect, whether as individuals we respect them or we respect their music.
Soul Food with Josh Swartz ’14.5 and Alia Khalil ’14.5
MC: Tell me about the formation of Soul Food.
Swartz: I spent part of the summer in New Orleans and inspired by the music culture down there and going to see live music down there and pretty much everyday thing that people do. That’s something that I loved. It’s also just the time of our show from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. when ppl are just finishing up classes, getting a burger at Proctor and getting ready for the weekend. It’s easy to listen to, puts you in a good mood, old and new. This is the first semester that SF has been in existence. Alia and I have a good rapport. We have a good time.
MC: Explain what Soul Food is.
Khalil: It’s two friends sharing their music with all their other friends. In every set, there’s definitely one song you can fit your taste to. We play a lot of different types of music, but even within the soul genre, there are older and recent songs.
Swartz: A big part of the show is us bantering about Halloween costumes and favorite animals, community events, and things that happen at Middlebury. Our last guest has a particularly good Norah Jones impression. Our conversation focuses on light-hearted fun things, like talking about Halloween or movies. The tone of our conversation is very upbeat and easy to listen to. It is something we’re conscious of: everything we do is geared toward a universal audience.
Khalil: Regardless of if you’re in Middlebury or not, you’re able to understand our conversations. A lot of radio shows have inside jokes, but that is not us.
MC: What does the music do to you?
Khalil: It energizes you. We always say it is music that feeds your soul so it’s not limited. Our generation doesn’t realize how versatile soul music can be which can include lyrical ballads or some songs with strong beats.
Swartz: One tradition is that we always end every show with the same song: “September” by Earth Wind and Fire. That song really legitimizes what our show is about. Everyone recognizes it; it’s a happy song. It used to make more sense because it used to be September. Now we just use it to feed people’s souls.
MC: What is the best show moment to go down in Soul Food history?
Swartz: We got a call from Vergennes, who I think calls in to WRMC a lot — so this might not have been that special — but he said, “Wow, I really loved the show” and was super supportive. I actually think that he is someone who calls in pretty frequently, but I like to pretend that he just called in our show.
Khalil: My favorite moment was when we introduced “September” for the first time and we were just kind of joking about autumn activities and announced that we were going to. Closes the show.
Swartz: From that moment, we could both feel it was the start of a very powerful tradition. It happened in our very first show; it happened so organically.
MC: What can you guarantee that your listener will hear when they tune into the show?
Khalil: You will hear Josh’s awesome radio voice, which a is a bit of an alter ego from his normal voice. He sounds like a radio DJ who plays soul music.
Swartz: We always talk about a concert that is happening or happened at Middlebury. We do talk about local music scenes. In our last show, we played Apenglow to promote that concert on Higher Ground on Sunday. There’s a local consciousness to our show. That’s being part of the Middlebury community and the Vermont community — that’s an important part of being a radio show.
Khalil: We both have different taste in music and we both complement each other in new bands we’ve heard of and introduce each other. Even in my own radio show, I’m always finding new songs.
The Campus Voice with Greta Neubauer ’14.5 and Ian Stewart ’14
MC: Explain to a 5th grader what the Campus Voice is.
Neubauer: The Campus Voice is a way to bring the work of the Middlebury Campus and its writers into broader dialogue with the members of the community who are commenters on the story written in the Campus. They relate to those issues and we make that vocal and in a dialogue, where people can interact beyond the pages.
MC: What is the difference between the dialogue on the Campus Voice and one with your friends?
Stewart: It seems in most conversations with your friends, you kind of try to get to an agreement on an issue. Whereas with the show, no one has to leave agreeing. Part of what we do is to try to tease out the distinct arguments that are being made at different sides of the issue. When you’re with your friends you’re less likely to push your friends that we can be with our host hats on.
Neubauer: The differences among people who go on the show are greater differences than those in our groups of friends. A lot of the friends that I have these conversations with — we all sort of have the same opinions about this issue. The Campus Voice brings the dialogue out of niches on campus.
MC: Why should someone who reads the newspaper want to tune into the show 4 days later?
Stewart: Issues are changing constantly on the campus. The dialogue is changing, new events are coming out, absurd emails are being sent out and are not being sent out and so the story, as with any story, evolves. This is a nice chance to check in a few days later. There’s not that pressure of the 500 or 600 words [in print]. Just tell the straight facts. Get your three quotes in. Tell it in this neat, closed story. Another thing is that it’s different to hear someone’s voice and to hear their pauses and their inflections and their emotions, their excitement. That’s something that no amount of adjectives and adverbs on print will be able to recreate. You’re taking out a layer and so you’re closer to the people and story than you might be with a story on the page.
Neubauer: I also think that we’re taking an issue that’s come up on campus and bringing it back to the broader conversation. Whether it’s homophobia on this campus or the topic of dialogue.
Kyle Finck: Also, moving forward the point is not only to read the news but to interact with the news, so in terms of submitting questions, getting them answered, whether it’s having Dean Collado on or a student provoked by Collado’s blog. This is about interacting with the news.
MC: What is the best moment captured on your show?
Stewart: The one I keep thinking about is when we did a show on spoken word artists and hip-hop rap artists on campus. To see their art on campus and the way they talked about it was almost seamless. I was so blown away by their articulateness in the Q&A part of the interview that I felt like it was an extension of the rhymes and language in their art.
Neubauer: That too was my favorite moment of the show. There was something really special about seeing the performance and the question. I always love when I go to an art museum and I want to hear the whole description of the painting on an audio guide or docent and so I really like to hear interpretation. That was cool to hear them in spoken terms give us that description. Similarly, talking about the interpretation of Chance’s lyrics. I come to a different place on the issue having engaged with people who talking about it a lot.
Stewart: The idea that you can change our opinion in a conversation in the same way it had naturally is unique to the radio. You’re just selecting snapshots in newspaper — that’s what is going to represent what you felt at that moment and that’s valuable, but we have the chance to change someone’s mind over the course of the show and see the evolution the same way it happens to us sitting there and listening.
MC: What’s one thing you can promise listener in every show?
Stewart: Almost everytime when someone says something, they were sincere about it. You will hear a true sincere moment that is not a sound byte. It’s something they thought about or believed.
Neubauer: You think you understand Middlebury, you talk in classes but it’s not the same as hearing people’s perspectives. It’s surprising. I have this idea that I understand Middlebury and its student body, and it’s not true.
(11/06/13 10:14pm)
Middlebury saw its season end in a frenetic final few minutes at Cole Field at Williams in the NESCAC quarterfinal, as the third-seeded Ephs bested the sixth-seeded Panthers 3-2 on Saturday, Nov. 2.
After Harper Williams ’15 blasted a penalty into the lower left-hand corner of the net in the 84th minute to bring Middlebury within one goal, both teams scrambled to gain possession with Middlebury ultimately failing to equalize.
The match pitted two veteran head coaches against one another. Middlebury’s David Saward, in his 29th year at the helm, appears a novice when compared to William’s head coach Mike Russo, who led the Ephs’ to their 31st consecutive winning season this year in his 35th year as head coach. Combined the two men have secured over 700 victories.
Saward said he admires Russo’s track record.
“There are very few coaches who compare to Mike Russo,” he said. “His consistent production of first class teams is second to none.”
No one told the Panthers that they were supposed to lie down for Russo and his higher-seeded squad, as just over two minutes into the contest Greg Conrad ’17 gave Middlebury the lead. Adam Glaser ’17 started the attack, finding Sam Peisch ’13.5 on the right side who beautifully crossed the ball to Conrad’s left boot for his fifth goal of the season.
Middlebury outplayed the Ephs for the first quarter of the game, who seemed to be disorganized early. Captain Dan Lima was playing out of position on Saturday, which may have caused some initial confusion, but would soon pay off for Williams.
Middlebury kept the pressure on and played strong defense early, forcing Williams to try some long passes and take ambitious shots. Peisch continued to wreak havoc on the offensive side of the ball, and the defense locked down on the Ephs forwards, particularly 2012 NESCAC Rookie of the Year Mohammed Rashid. Despite Rashid’s brilliant footwork and impressive speed, the defense refused to let him take over early. Tyler Smith ’14 and Deklan Robinson ’16 both used their physicality to frustrate Rashid, sending him to the turf more than once on loose balls and headers.
In the 29th minute it appeared that Middlebury might extend the lead. Glaser, Middlebury’s top scorer, did as he has done all year and created a scoring opportunity with his speed, sending a cross into the box that was deflected right of the net. As Peisch chased down the loose ball, Williams keeper Peter Morrell ambitiously pursued the Middlebury forward. Morrell’s dive prevented Peisch from getting to the ball and sent him flying to the ground, but no call was made, to Peisch’s dismay.
“I was definitely taken down in the box,” Peisch said. “The referee unfortunately didn’t make the call, but at the end of the day teams win games, not referees.”
Saward’s take was slightly more diplomatic.
“The decision did not surprise me,” Saward said. “What I thought the referee might have called is a foul just outside the penalty area, however, in his eyes I suspect he felt that Peisch went down too easily.”
Minutes later Williams nearly earned their own penalty kick as Rashid finally showed off the jets and caused problems for the Panthers. Off of a long outlet pass from Morrell along the left side, Rashid took the ball from the midfield all the way into the box where he was muscled to the ground on a clean but physical tackle that rightly was not whistled.
After Rashid’s attack, momentum seemed to swing to the Williams side. In the 26th minute Malcolm Moutenot found Rashid on a two on one off of a change of possession and Rashid easily buried the equalizer past a diving Ethan Collins ’14.
“Quality players like [Rashid] only need a half yard and they make you pay,” Saward said. “That is exactly what happened on the first goal, he got a yard start and was able to finish off a quick counter.”
The Panthers had a few chances to pull ahead again before halftime, but a long shot from Andres Rodlauer ’16 was tipped just high and a cross from Glaser who was behind the Williams back line failed to find a friendly boot.
The second half began at a frenzied pace, which favored the Ephs. In the 50th minute, Lima, usually at the back for the Ephs, curved a ball into the left side of the net well out of the reach of Collins for his first point of the season.
Less than a minute after the goal, Glaser found Peisch in the middle of the box on a low cross that Peisch sent just high of the net. Moments later Peisch redeemed himself by earning a free kick from just outside the box. The kick was knocked out of bounds for a Middlebury corner, but the effort was gobbled up by the keeper.
The Panthers’ outlook would only get bleaker in the 57th minute when Rashid again got the better of the Panthers’ usually unbreakable back line. Using his speed, Rashid surpassed the Middlebury defenders and beat Collins in the left side of the net, giving the Ephs a 3-1 lead.
The Ephs looked for the dagger as the Panthers were beaten and bruised. Conrad suffered a lower body injury and was forced to leave the game, and Graham Knisley ’14 appeared to be suffering from leg cramps. But the Panthers gamely pushed on, playing a freelance game and moving the ball upfield as quickly as possible.
As the final 15 minutes ticked on, Williams milked the clock with every possession and packed the box with defenders. Unfortunately for the Ephs, one such defender got a hand in the way of a shot from Noah Goss-Wolliner ’15 in the 84th minute. Morrell guessed correctly, diving to the right in an attempt to stop Williams’ penalty blast, but the ball found the net and reduced the deficit to one.
The last few minutes were predictably chaotic, as Williams sent long ball after long ball into Middlebury territory and the Panthers tried to put shots on net. However, Middlebury was unable to create any clear scoring opportunities, and the buzzer sounded, sending the Ephs into the semifinals to be played on Saturday, Nov. 9.
This game was the last for seven Panther seniors, who should be credited with vastly improving upon last year’s sub-.500 record, and finishing the 2013 season at 9-5-1, and whom Saward lauded for their efforts.
“This senior class has done a remarkable job,” he said. “They have left a legacy of hard work and dedication that I think will be continued by the underclassmen.”
Peisch reflected favorably on this season.
“This group is a truly a special one,” Peisch said. “I believe I speak for all the seniors in saying it has been an honor and a privilege to be a member of this team.”
(11/06/13 8:10pm)
Last week the Center for Careers and Internships joined forces with the Psychology and Theatre Departments to bring Dr. Tasha Eurich ’02, organizational psychologist, speaker and New York Times best-selling author, to campus. On Tuesday, Oct. 29, Eurich addressed students and professors alike in McCardell Bicentennial Hall in a lecture she called, “Two Roads Converged: How I Stumbled Upon My Dream Career.”
In her lecture, Eurich told the story of how she used subgoals, pragmatic planning and trial and error to land a career that innovatively joined her two interests: psychology and theater. “They sort of came together in a way that, frankly, I never expected, and it was really cool,” said Eurich. “It was almost like I knew all along.”
In addition to sharing her journey, she shed some insider advice on how to get ahead in the workplace, both in and outside of the field of psychology. After graduating as a Psychology and Theater Major from Middlebury, Eurich earned her PhD in industrial organizational psychology from Colorado State University. In 2008, she founded her own consulting company called The Eurich Group, allowing her to travel and do what she loves most: help people become better leaders. In her previous work, Eurich’s clients were primarily executives from Fortune 500 companies, but her new position helps her reach audiences outside the business realm, such as hospitals and even Middlebury College.
As recently as a few weeks ago, she published her first book, “Bankable Leadership: Happy People, Bottom Line Results, and the Power to Deliver Both,” which almost instantly soared to #8 on the New York Times Bestseller List as well as joining the top 100 books being sold across America, as reported by USA Today.
“When [the Theater Department] heard that she was coming, we asked to support her,” said Professor Cheryl Faraone, who attended the talk. “It’s always really helpful for students to understand that whatever they major in, it’s liable to have some kind of impact on their lives later on, but it doesn’t mean they have to follow it as a career path. Tasha was, for us, a lucky break.”
The lecture was a lucky break for students too, for whom career advice is never enough in abundance.
“I found Tasha’s point of choosing a graduate school in the area you intend to live in extremely applicable for any student planning to continue their education; every opportunity to make relevant connections should be taken,” said Rose Ardidi ’17, who plans on majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in Education Studies. “It was made evident that the opportunities Tasha was allowed arose from persistence to maintain established connections.”
Finding the right grad school in the right location, building and maintaining a network, developing writing skills, and always being pragmatic about the next small step in getting to a larger goal are just a few of the many suggestions given during the lecture.
Interesting also was Eurich’s encouragement of college students to contact working individuals in their field of study. “You can write up or call anyone and ask them to pick their brain. You can find someone famous in the field you might want to go into. Try it. They might say no. Then you go on to person B and the next person and the next person,” she said. And here’s the bull’s eye: “The reason it’s helpful to do this in college and not wait until you’ve graduated and you’re on the job market is it will be clear that you don’t want anything from them. As soon as you’re seeking a job and you ask someone, ‘Hey can I talk to you about what you do?’ They think, ‘This person is angling for something from me. They need a job and they’re using me to get it.’”
And of course, “Think about theater. The craft of getting up in front of a big group of people and figuring out a way to think straight, not be nervous, and talk in a way that other people can hear you, will serve you in literally any profession.”
One of the implicit suggestions of the talk was to consider entrepreneurial possibilities. For Eurich, her business sprang out of her self-diagnosed “bright shiny object syndrome.”
While she liked the work she had at the time, she considered taking a chance to do something that, while risky, would be a new and rewarding adventure.
“One of the things that was most impressive to me is the whole issue of self-starting. To think of yourself as an active person and use your own sense of agency,” said Faraone. “In any career in the arts, that’s absolutely essential. I also greatly appreciate the idea because people can be very employment-wary. Tasha’s admonition to dream big but dream realistically is I think both practical and gives you permission to pursue something that you might be fearful of pursuing, because maybe it’s not the most practical choice.”
As part of her visit to Middlebury, Dr. Eurich did some leadership consulting for the vice presidents and their direct reports, based on her recently published book. Vice President for Planning and Assessment and Professor of Psychology Susan Baldridge, who supervised Eurich when she was young psychology student writing her senior thesis, attended.
In an email, she wrote of her experience, “The workshop was engaging and had a very practical focus. A number of those who attended stopped me afterward to say how helpful it was, and how impressed they were by Tasha and her work. Her style is clear, funny, direct, and informed by the empirical research on management and leadership.
Having worked closely with Tasha as a student…I was not surprised by how positively people responded to the workshop. She has created a career that allows her to make use of her considerable talents as someone who is deeply knowledgeable about the research literature on organizational psychology and who is also an articulate and entertaining performer. It was a delight to have her back on campus.”
(10/30/13 10:54pm)
At the age of 20, most people are still thinking about what they want to do when they “grow up.” This is not the case with up-and-coming musician Chancelor Bennett, who is by no definition ‘most people.’ Better known by his stage name Chance the Rapper, the Chicago born hip-hop artist is riding his growing momentum on The Social Experiment Tour, which stops at the College on Nov. 2.
But the concert created as much controversy as excitement, centering around an initial lack of tickets and an ongoing uproar over perceived misogyny and homophobia in his lyrics. In response, the administration asked Chance not to sing the controversial lyric “slap-happy faggot slapper” of "Favorite Song" or use any homophobic terms during his entire performance. According to Dean of the College Shirley Collado, Chance agreed to these terms.
Releasing his first mixtape, 10 Day, after a ten day suspension during his senior year of high school, Chance soon garnered 80,000 downloads and the attention of Forbes magazine, which featured 10 Day in their ‘Cheap Tunes’ column. This growing recognition landed Chance a spot opening for fellow rapper Childish Gambino on tour, and spurred further collaborations with rappers Hoodie Allen and Joey Bada$$. Acid Rap, Chance’s second mixtape released in April of this year, has already achieved 250,000 downloads and catapulted the rapper into wider national recognition. Featuring other artists such as Twista, Vic Mensa and Action Bronson, Acid Rap received critical acclaim and a BET Hip Hop Award nomination for best mixtape, landing him a spot on the famous Lollapalooza festival.
Will Brennan ’16 grew up in Chicago and attended school just a few train stops away from Chance’s school, Jones College Prep, learning of the rapper’s huge ambitions through mutual musical friends.
“He and other rappers on the Save Money label like Vic Mensa were making singles and dropping mixtapes left and right,” Brennan said. “But when I left Chicago I had no idea that Chance would make it as big as he has in recent months.”
The Middlebury College Activities Board, or MCAB, chose the fall concert because of demonstrated student interest in more rap and hip-hop and Chance’s up-and-coming potential, according to MCAB President Elizabeth Fouhey. Chance’s music was relatively well known on campus before his appearance was announced, discovered through the internet or on WRMC. Will Brennan started playing Chance on his own WRMC show because of the home connection, but became a much bigger fan after the release of Acid Rap.
“His jazz harmonies and electronic beats made a really interesting combination that I had never heard before,” Brennan said. “I didn't know what to think of his squawkish noises at first, but I realized it was a part of his playful nature as a musician. I think Chance makes music that is ultimately true to himself and more importantly true to the environment in which he surrounds himself in Chicago.”
Brennan was not the only student impressed by Chance’s distinctive sound. Adam Benay ’13.5 is a huge fan of Chance, listening to Acid Rap every day this past summer.
“I was getting so into him,” Benay said. “I heard a rumor the first or second day of school that he would be coming, and I was thrilled. Kid Cudi came my first semester and this was a nice capstone.”
When MCAB announced Chance the Rapper as the fall concert, needless to say, many people on campus were extremely excited. In an all-student email on Sep. 23, MCAB revealed the Nov. 2 concert date, announcing “Tickets on sale soon,” and directing people to look to Twitter and Facebook for more information. MCAB decided to advertise the event solely through their Facebook page and on the Middlebury Box office website, leaving many students without tickets. Late in the day on Oct. 14, the campus buzzed with news that the tickets to the concert had sold out, leaving many scrambling and willing to pay well above the $12 ticket charge to obtain a highly sought after ticket.
Fouhey explained that the organization decided how to advertise the event at MCAB executive board meetings, brainstorming for electronic advertising alternatives to the all-student email, which has in recent years experienced a push for limited use.
“MCAB made an online status which was shared by dozens of students on MCAB in the hopes that it would reach all corners of campus,” Fouhey said. “We thought that with the excitement on campus and word of mouth, the ticket release information would spread throughout the student body. Our standard procedure is to release the tickets and then do an advertising push once they have been put on sale.”
Benay, who had not ‘liked’ MCAB on Facebook, was one of the students shocked to discover that he had missed his opportunity to purchase a ticket.
“There was a huge portion of people who fell through the cracks,” Benay said. “I found person after person who said ‘What are you talking about? When did the tickets go on sale?’”
Due to uncertainties regarding the Memorial Field House construction, MCAB booked the concert in the McCullough Social Space, which only allowed for 600 tickets to be sold. In addition, the event was limited to students only and each ID holder could only purchase two tickets.
Many students may not be aware of the multi-step process involved in bringing an artist to Middlebury, including the important role of a middle agent to assist in communicating with MCAB which artists fit the desired genre, dates and price range. According to Associate Dean of Students JJ Boggs, bringing a desirable artist to rural Vermont for the right price is no easy task, and the MCAB committee decides which of the suggested acts fits the College.
“[MCAB has] a challenging job, and they have been criticized in the past for hosting unpopular shows,” Boggs said. “They are simultaneously trying to meet student interest, manage their budget responsibly, offer a variety of programming, and at the same time, consider ‘what might the social ramifications be for Middlebury College?’”
The problem with MCAB’s marketing strategy, according to many students, is that not every student is on Facebook, and even those who are may not check their accounts on a regular basis. At the time of the sale, MCAB had a little over 1,100 followers in a student body of 2,500, many of which were alumni. The organization had previously used posters and emails to advertise concerts and many criticized the decision to publicize through social media accounts that students had to join and actively use to be notified.
Fouhey acknowledged that the ticket release issue is a learning experience for MCAB and that the organization never meant to cause the dissatisfaction resulting from the social media marketing idea.
“We understand the frustrations of students about ticket sales,” she said. “It was never our intention to limit or restrict who would know about the ticket release information. We fully acknowledge that we could have done a better job navigating this ticket release. We will certainly learn from this mistake, and in the future we will look to broader methods of communication.”
Boggs reacted to an impassioned letter from Benay, first published on middbeat, and other general student concerns over the way the ticket sales were handled, quickly taking action. On Friday, Oct. 25, Boggs sent out an all-student email announcing that the College was able to secure Nelson Arena, and that more tickets would be made available for purchase soon due to the larger venue. The move to Nelson was motivated by safety concerns, as administrators realized that McCullough did not have the capacity for the crowd or the extensive set and entourage that travels with Chance.
“The real hero of this story is JJ Boggs,” said Benay, pleased with this outcome. “People are reasonable here and it’s very reassuring to know that things can get done.”
Lyric Controversy
In the email, Boggs also referenced student concerns expressed over the perceived misogynistic and homophobic language in Chance the Rapper’s lyrics. But for students like Luke Carroll Brown ’14, Co-Chair of the Community Council, limiting the lyrics and song choice was not enough.
“I think we can all agree that violent homophobia and misogyny are clearly out of bounds and have no place on this campus,” Brown said. “Multiple songs on Acid Rap depict actions that are in clear violation of our community standards, a reality that should prohibit Chance's presence on campus. This performance is especially upsetting in light of the recent hate-letter that managed to combine homophobia with the threat of rape against a student at this college; at a time in which our community should be finding ways of making maligned groups feel safer, we instead chose to hire an unabashedly homophobic singer to perform a concert.”
“The Concert Committee co-chairs and I were completely unaware of the content in question when we booked Chance,” Fouhey said. “The concerns over some of the lyrics were brought to our attention last Monday, Oct. 22. I do sincerely apologize. We never intended to hurt anyone.”
Besides Brown, the controversy has sparked a debate from a variety of other opinions about discussing homophobia on campus and applying community standards to artists visiting the College.
SGA President Rachel Liddell ‘15 said that Chance’s content is disrespectful and offensive to many students on campus, but worries that talk about completely canceling the concert would have crossed a line from concern to censorship.
“I find the content offensive, yet I respect the right of others to tell me things with which I don't agree,” Liddell said. “I don’t want people to be censored. I think that saying ‘bringing Chance to campus condones homophobia’ is an overstatement.”
Liddell further explained that if the concert had been canceled, Middlebury still would have been obligated to pay Chance for a show that never happened. She also believes that the debate resulting from the controversy is a positive outcome, asserting that, “the concert will spark the conversations people wanted to have.”
Boggs added that a complicated conversation took place when considering what to do about the concert.
“Right now we don’t have criteria for evaluating these kinds of decisions. Our struggle was to figure out how to be compassionate and effective allies amid all the complexity in a short period of time. We have a lot to learn from this situation, and we need to figure this out together,” Boggs said.
Collado personally spoke with Chance’s management, requesting that the artist leave homophobic lyrics out of his performance.
“[Chance] is aware of our concerns and our plans for an engaging and honest community forum,” wrote Collado in an email. “[Chance’s manager] said he understood and respected our request and that he was looking forward to being on campus and performing for us.”
Cailey Cron ’14 appreciated the censorship of the lyric, but feels that the controversy should be channeled to discuss a larger campus issue.
“If a lyric is missing, it’s not going to matter unless we seize the opportunity to have a conversation about homophobia on this campus,” Cron said. “Chance will come on Saturday and then on Sunday he will leave. This is not about Chance the Rapper. What we need to fight is blissful ignorance. Chances to address homophobia have come up twice in the past few weeks, and as a campus we need to talk. I’d like to see the administration take a strong, public stand against homophobia. I’m at a loss as to why that’s controversial.”
Benay disagrees with the idea of canceling the concert.
“Of all rappers, Chance’s stuff is way more about drugs and how hopeful he is about his future, and he has lyrics about anti-violence.”
While Benay disagrees with Chance’s use of the word ‘faggot’, he thinks that the compromise between Chance and Collado is reasonable.
“It sort of bums me out that he uses that word, but the idea that he would not come just because of that is sad especially because MCAB hit it out of the park in terms of choosing an act this time.”
To address this issue, Boggs announced that at 7 p.m. on Monday, November 4 in Axinn 229, Student Activities and MCAB will be hosting an open forum to discuss how decisions are made about all kinds of possibly offensive art forms at the College. The forum aims to allow candid conversation about the application of community standards to artistic expression and how they should affect choices about who is invited to campus. MCAB also hopes that this conversation will help to better inform the student group’s decision making in the future.
Forum
Cron does not think that the controversy should revolve around two groups of students pulled to join one extreme opinion or the other. “We’ve created a false choice between having performers violate community standards and censoring all dissenting opinion,” Cron said. “I hope we can use the concept as an entry point to a far more important conversation that has to do with us as a community and the relationship between the student body and administration. It is a hard conversation to approach if the administration hasn’t publicly stated its commitment to protecting and welcoming the queer community and concerns.”
Boggs has high expectations regarding the potential impact of the forum.
“I hope that while we wrestle with these issues, we can commit to listening carefully, act in ways that foster inclusivity, and bridge the divide that’s happening right now,” she said. “Knowing that this is just an initial conversation, I’m hopeful we can both show support for students who feel marginalized and influence MCAB’s work in positive ways.”
[CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article, as well as that in print, stated that "the administration asked Chance not to sing Favorite Song." This was incorrect; they asked Chance not to sing the lyric “slap-happy faggot slapper” or use any homophobic terms during his entire performance. ]
(10/30/13 10:09pm)
Midway through a semester of routine cheating, an economics professor told Billy – whose name has been changed to protect his identity – and his friends to write down their names and where they sat in the examination room. The professor’s unvarnished command plunged Billy into an emotional apocalypse.
“We had been going overboard with the cheating. That whole week we were freaking out – what are we going to tell our parents? What are we going to do?”
Billy and three other friends had sat in a line together, the smarter of his friend passing solutions down the line. In a class of 25 students in Warner Science Building and no proctor, Billy would copy the answers from his friend to the left and down the line the answers went, with little effort to conceal their shifting eyes.
Even as he was in crisis, the thought of self-reporting never crossed his mind.
“We were absolutely sure it was 100 percent us,” he recalled. “There was no good reason to report it. If it was coming out we’ll hear about it within the next few days. I thought about telling my parents, just because I couldn’t keep it to myself, but I had my friends.”
But the twists just keep coming. They overheard later that week that it was, in fact, another group of guys in that same exam room that got caught cheating—not Billy and his friends. “My guess is that someone pointed them out. It shows the prevalence of cheating on campus. In a class of about 25 students, pretty much half the class cheated in that exam room.”
“It was a huge wake-up call,” Billy said, throwing his hands down in one of the few statements he made without stumbling through words like pretty much or I guess. “We were saying to each other that we will never cheat again and that we’ll just take the F.” But even after nearly getting derailed, he admits that the experience “didn’t completely reverse” his cheating habit.
What makes Billy’s story so compelling is that he is emblematic of a larger trend.
According to a survey last spring conducted by Craig Thompson ’14 for his Economics of Sin class, 35 percent of the 377 surveyed students admitted to violating the Honor Code at least once in the past academic year (2012-13), the latest volley of cheating allegations landing on Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs Karen Guttentag’s desk just last week. But 97 percent of the self-admitted Honor Code violators in his survey went uncaught.
“If I were to take those numbers at face value, I’d be very concerned about what it means for us and what it means for the student body,” said President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz, who admitted to bringing cheating charges against students as a professor. “I’ve been here for 30 years and I’ve always been concerned about the veracity of honor codes like the one we have.”
Even though the percentage of self-reported cheaters last year was only slighter higher than those in 2008, the number of convictions for cheating – excluding plagiarism, which is less cut-and-dry – is climbing. According to the Honor Code Review Committee report published last spring, the number of instances in which a student was found guilty of cheating increased four-folds over the course of just three academic years.
But it’s tricky business figuring out why cheating convictions and cases of self-reported cheating are on the rise. Dean of Judicial Affairs Karen Guttentag said there are only theories right now and no definitive answers to the why questions.
“Maybe it’s a reflection of an increase in comfort in admitting to cheating,” she said. “But sadly, my sense is the taboo on cheating seems to be weaker, so students are less inhibited about acknowledging their unethical actions. All of which is to say – bad news.”
But from talking to numerous student leaders, administrators, faculty members and national research experts, there is a clear shift in the academic culture that is threatening to hollow out the Honor Code.
A Close Call
“It seemed easier to cheat, because cheating was more acceptable than a C-,” said Billy. “I was scared, coming into freshmen year and worried about my GPA and potential for the future.”
Since his close call in the first-year microeconomics course, Billy claimed he swore off the large-scale cheating. But he hasn’t been totally clean. When asked when the last time he cheated was, Billy sighed. He had a look like he was finding his footing into more honesty and before leaving self-preservation, but decided to sidestep the question entirely: “Well, the best way I can put it is that I’ve gotten a lot more self-conscious – well, not self-conscious – but I have a lot more integrity from the work,” he said. “But I couldn’t say that I haven’t glanced over a person’s test and taken an answer.”
“I am in something that genuinely feels like a passion and not in economics trying to get into a high-paying finance job,” he said. “Personally, I would take the lessons I learned and take them with me into the real world, but I could see how someone who, after having abided by the honor code for four years and then getting into the real world where there is no honor code, could get back into cheating in many ways.”
When asked whether every cheater gets what is coming to them, he let out a smile. “I don’t think so.”
Billy’s story is something of a failed morality tale, one driven by a desire to survive, scarred by the threat of losing everything, and changed — maybe only slightly — by the College’s culture of academic integrity central to the Honor Code. But whether he was changed by it, even he didn’t seem to know.
“After that experience, it was more about the integrity of the work. It’s a good feeling to know that I don’t need anyone else’s answer and I can accept it.”
By the end of our conversation, it was clear that he was scarred, but not transformed.
“I couldn’t promise you that if a person’s answer was right in front of me, and all I needed was just one more question, I wouldn’t say there’s a 100 percent chance that I wouldn’t look at that person’s paper,” he explained. “But I haven’t done that in a while. I wouldn’t say that I would never cheat on anything in my life.”
Here and Now
Associate Professor of History Amy Morsman was struck by the cynicism in academic integrity from students in the first-year seminar she taught last fall. She passed out an article about the recent cheating scandal at Harvard University, thinking this was a chance to impart to her students what life means with an Honor Code.
“I expected them to be shocked and outraged by this breach in ethics,” she said. “I was mystified by the sort of ho-hum response my first-year students gave.”
Some of her first-years embraced an attitude of “well, in the world of today, to get ahead you might have to do this,” Morsman recounted. “Some of my students already seemed so jaded by the world.”
As it stands, the Code requires students to report witnessed cheating. But students who fail to, face a punishment that even the Chair of the Student Honor Code Committee (SHCC) Alison Maxwell ’15 couldn’t articulate.
“I don’t know what the specific punishment is [for a witness who failed to report cheating], because it’s not common for the judicial board,” she said. “We can’t actually know when someone has broken the honor code in that way.”
All the assets that an Honor Code offers — an unique trust between student and professor, the freedom to take an exam without suspicion in the room — gets no play at Middlebury, if integrity is lost on students in that same room. This failure has sent the SHCC to reevaluate the sustainability of peer-proctored exams.
But the chronicity of cheating and rising number in cases of apprehended cheaters is not a sure-fire sign that the community’s morality is hemorrhaging red. Approximately one in four allegations, usually in the context of plagiarism, are cases, in which the students are confused, “the result of insufficient instruction on the part of the College, [but more likely] a failure on the part of the student to internalize that information,” according to Guttentag.
The flurry of information sharing has also led to more confusion where the Internet has colored gray an area in plagiarism. Constant information juggling obscures our original ideas from the ideas we read and, as a result, the lines on plagiarism blur.
“Notions of originality have transformed today, because things are so easily copy-able,” Film and Media Culture Professor and Academic Judicial Board (AJB) member Jason Mittell said. “So much of what people are reading are re-blogs of other people’s works or references to other people’s creativity — with or without citation. We live in a culture of quoting and of remix and reference.
“I think traditional citation guidelines are hard to wrap your head around if you’ve been brought up in this generation of — I don’t want to say loose standards, but different types of practices where citing is not relevant. Precise referencing or asking permission to quote someone just doesn’t make as much intuitive sense to many students today. And sometimes that doesn’t make sense to me either.”
And SGA President Rachel Liddell hinges on Mittell’s point about the clash of tradition and today. For her, the Honor Code has a different meaning when its tradition, over a breadth of time, is worked into today’s context, a state of academic honesty she is “dissatisfied with at Middlebury.”
“The Honor Code has a beautiful history, where students got together and worked really hard to write it and pass it,” she said. “We don’t own it anymore. And if we don’t want to own it, then we have to figure out what else we want to own.”
Dean of the College Shirley Collado, suggest that the pressure to succeed doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
“We’re seeing a trend not just in Middlebury but at a number of selective colleges – and I’ve talked to many colleagues around the country about this – that students are really feeling the pressure: what it’s going to be like to be part of a global job market and exceling and being an excellent student at Middlebury,” she said. “So I don’t know how much of a role that plays in stress or academic dishonesty. It’s a question I raise.”
Beyond the Bubble
But cheating is not a Middlebury-centric issue. In fact, cheating happens less in schools with an Honor Code, according to the research.
The College’s cheating statistic runs consistent with similar schools with honor codes like Duke University, which identified in 2006 that 29 percent of students admitted to unauthorized collaboration. But in larger schools without an honor code, like Harvard University, more than 40 percent of freshmen admitted to cheating on homework, according to a survey conducted by the The Harvard Crimson earlier this year.
“Schools with honor codes are better off,” said Donald McCabe, professor at the Rutgers Business School and leading researcher in cheating. “Overall, honor codes work reasonably well though not perfect. The smaller the community, like at Middlebury, the easier it is to do. It creates a sense of community in which students realize that when they cheat, they’re cheating their fellow classmates. Large schools like Penn State and Rutgers are trying to increase the level of integrity among students and finding it very difficult.”
But compare Middlebury to the University of California, Berkeley, with nearly 36,000 students, where there is more anonymity and less noticeable impact.
“Cheating is no big deal, because it happens all the time,” Jasmin Soltani, a chemical-engineering student at UC Berkeley said. “It is ridiculously easy at a school this big with understaffed faculty in test-taking rooms.”
When explained the intention behind the Honor Code — that there is supposed to be ethical temptation, Soltani was skeptical. [1]
“The kind of unproctored exams at Middlebury would not work at all in Cal. 500 students taking the same exam in an unsupervised room? That sounds like a joke,” she said. “The academic environment (at Cal) is very cut throat and people would not pass up a chance to get ahead of the curve.”
Other students offer a more nuanced take on the cheating culture at UC Berkeley.
“Honestly, I saw very little cheating during my four years at Cal,” said Emma Vadapalas, a history and economics major who graduated UC Berkeley this year in May. “Most of the instances I recall involve minor infractions, such as students copying problem sets from each other or getting a friend more versed in the material to do a problem set for them. I call these minor infractions because if caught cheating, the student would get a zero on the assignment but not flunk the class.”
McCabe warns against this kind of lowered standards that qualify cheating. “The number of general cheating have gone down, but at the same time, there are a number of students who dismiss low levels of cheating and feel okay justifying it. I see it as a danger,” a slippery slope toward rationalizing severe acts of cheating.
Unlike UC Berkeley, Middlebury’s judicial process reviews cheating cases by the case.
Even if the College does have a lower prevalence of cheating than its larger counterparts, Liddell said that especially at a small community, there is a real cost to dishonesty – and we all pay it.
“The truth is, if I were to cheat, I hurt myself, but I also hurt professors and my fellow students,” Liddell said. “If I were to cheat and I get a 98, and then the professor looks at you, who got an 82, and you look worse. Cheating of all forms damages all students.
The Future of the Honor Code
That does not mean improvements are not in order. But even with great strides taken to address problems of the Honor Code in last year’s review – the HCRC redesigned go/citations and developed field-specific responses to ethical dilemmas – this semester, nine professors are currently piloting Turnitin.com, a plagiarism detection service. After this semester’s trial run, there will be talk of Turnitin’s expansion, the implications of which could severely shake the trust built into the Honor Code.
But students and professors staked out different views on the introduction of Turnitin.com.
“The point of using Turnitin.com is not to catch and haul students into the AJB room on charges of plagiarism, but to fix the problem before it becomes a habit,” said Morsman, one of the nine professors experimenting with Turnitin.com.
“We do ask professors to check for plagiarism when they read our papers and Turnitin provides a more efficient method of the same process,” Liddell said. “But though not a violation of student rights, Turnitin is not congruent with the idea of the Honor Code, because it does not rely on trust and it does not rely on mutual respect.”
The introduction of Turnitin might be a prelude to the far greater changes the Honor Code could suffer if cheating continues.
Indeed, at a time when cheating reports are climbing, strides are being made to tackle the problem from all directions: top-down — through Turnitin — as well as ground-up. A main focus of the recently formed SHCC is to fix the system of peer proctoring, which Maxwell says is a broken part of the Honor Code.
“I feel like we are forcing students to break the honor code when we ask them to proctor each other,” Maxwell said. “Everyone we’ve talked to said ‘I will never tattle on a fellow student,’ so it’s very clear it doesn’t work. We’re coming up with a solution, but I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. Only time will tell.”
But Associate Professor of Economics Jessica Holmes, who teaches Economics of Sin, too, concedes that peer-proctoring empirically does not work, but offers a quick solution.
“The fix is simple: proctoring. It is too small of a community and no one wants to be viewed as the ‘rat.’ Proctoring [would] reduce both cheating and the pressure on students to report on each other,” she said. “How can I ensure the academic integrity of the exam environment if I am not in the room?”
But even professors who have not brought students up on charges are aware of the shifts.
“I’ve been teaching here for 12 years and I’ve never brought a student up on charges,” Morsman said. “But I hear about cheating more from students and I hear it more from staff and the people bringing cases to the judicial board. I’m aware that it exists, that it’s getting worse, and the College is responding to it.”
Members of the community are slowly backing away from the original vision of the Honor Code. Doubtless, students and professors hope to see the Honor Code hold its own in an increasingly competitive society and succeed. But there are signs that things are about to be different. In the midst of the decisive failure of peer proctoring, the formation of the SHCC and the fortification of preventative measures like Turnitin, it is entirely possible that perhaps a decade from now will look entirely different — a proctor in every exam room and a website reading each paper.
[1] With regard to this article's definition of the Honor Code: "When explained the intention behind the Honor Code — that there is supposed to be ethical temptation, Soltani was skeptical" was adapted not from the Middlebury Handbook, but from a New York Times piece about the general Honor Code: "The intention of honor codes is to generate the very situation you describe as precarious: they’re supposed to create ethical temptation."
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article, as well as that in print, quoted Professor of Media Studies Jason Mittell of saying, "Precise referencing or asking permission to quote someone just doesn’t make intuitive sense to students today. And it doesn’t make sense to me either sometimes.” There was a missing qualifying statement; it should be "Precise referencing or asking permission to quote someone just doesn't make as much intuitive sense to students today."
(10/30/13 9:50pm)
Shacksbury Cider, the creation of Colin Davis ’03, David Dolginow ’09 and Michael Lee, is no Woodchuck Hard Cider, as they proudly proclaim. Rather, this new hard cider company in Shoreham, Vt. boasts something unique.
Their brewing process harks back to America’s earliest settlers, when pioneers like Johnny Appleseed planted smaller cider apples instead of the standard larger ones sold in grocery stores today.
Back when the first Europeans were settling Vermont and the greater New England area, law required that homesteaders plant 50 apple trees each.
The apples they planted — cider apples — were more bitter than desert apples and the apples we consume today. However, once fermented, the apples produced a tasty cider that helped alleviate the trouble of uneasy access to portable water.
A few historical developments prevented the beverage from entering widespread commercial use the way beer and wine did. Urbanization encroached on once rural orchards, prohibition theoretically stopped all alcohol consumption and the popularization and accessibility of German beer.
A few heirloom trees survived the changes that took place in Vermont. And now, the three cider-connoisseurs of Shacksbury Cider are determined to harvest these tree’s fruits once again.
The team searched through cow pastures, forests and down remote country roads in search of these rare trees. With the apple tree owners’ permission, they collected apples in a primitive yet surprisingly effective and ultimately efficient way. They simply using a standard pole to shake the fruit off branches and into a tarp.
Their quest extends beyond just Shacksbury Cider, though, and on a larger scale, is called “The Lost Apples Project.”
Kickstarter, the world’s largest online crowd-funding platform, helped finance the trio’s adventure.
After their fruitful search, they’ve successfully brewed cider and hope to put their first batches on the market this week.
They distinguish their product from other mass-produced hard ciders by their brewing method which they claim preserves the natural tastes of the apples.
“It is pretty much a very different product,” said Dolginow. “That juice has already been cooked up and stabilize. What you’re doing is taking a lot of the amazing characteristics that make really good cider out of the juice.”
Shacksbury Cider possesses a much more complex, more rich taste than the “sweet pixy stick flavor” of today’s hard ciders, according to the Shacksbury Cider team.
They compare their product to wine because of the sophistication of the art form inherent in its crafting and creation.
One key question remains unanswered. If these cider apples were lost and cider-making changed so drastically from the time of the first settlers to our current drink, how did these men learn a lost art? Europeans taught them. Producers in Spain, France and England educated them about traditional ciders and how to brew them.
Their process and learning lent itself to a simple philosophy that backs their entire endeavor and acts as a guiding principle for Shacksbury Cider.
“You can’t fake the fruits,” said Dolginow.
According to him, that marks another essential difference between their production and other’s.
“To start with the fruit that [other commercial cider makers] are using isn’t the right fruit,” said Dolginow. “The end products you sit down with, you wouldn’t consider the same product.”
The team wants to make Vermont the Borolo of hard ciders. The northern Italian town produces excellent wine but is less glamorous than other wine-producing regions like the Napa valley, which renders the comparison appropriate, according to Lee.
However, a few impediments stand in the way of them reaching national markets and fulfilling their goal.
First, Shacksbury Cider lacks a consistent source of apples. Until now, they’ve relied solely on apples they’ve gathered from other people’s property.
In attempts to combat this limitation, Shacksbury cider hopes to work with local growers to plant 500 cider apple trees. For the property owners, this might be a risk, as the trees take 5 years to fully mature and do not promise any successful results.
Shacksbury Cider also lacks their own press and must share one with other local apple growers. Since a tree costs only 20 dollars, the Lost Tree Project has asked for donations in a three minute film online.
To what end, Lee asks himself towards the video’s end. “To revive [a] tradition, to find the perfect apples, and make the perfect cider.”
(10/17/13 4:03am)
Dear President Liebowitz, the College administration, and the Board of Trustees,
Thank you for your transparency in your statement regarding divestment and the Board’s internal processes and preliminary proposals. We appreciate the time you have dedicated and your willingness to collaborate with us as we work to divest our endowment of fossil fuels. While an increased commitment to socially responsible investment principles is a step in the right direction, it is not the end of this debate.
Liebowitz claimed that a number of critical questions regarding the College’s decision on divestment remain unanswered and asked whether divestment would have a practical impact. Past divestment campaigns targeting the apartheid regime in South Africa and the tobacco industry helped to stigmatize powerful forces wielding undue influence against the public good. In the 21st century, divestment provides an opportunity to remove the social and political license that allows the fossil energy industry to profit by passing on the costs of its pollution to future generations.
Liebowitz also asks if divestment is the most effective way to address reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This should not impact our decision. The fight against global climate change will require massive shifts in the economy, personal habits and public policy. Divestment is one tactic among many that will hasten this shift.
What impact would divestment have on our returns? Growing evidence suggests that the impact, if any, will be positive. Impax Asset management determined that a portfolio that excluded fossil energy stocks would have outperformed the MSCI world index by an annual rate of 50 basis points over the last five to seven years. Even compared with an “active” investment strategy, a portfolio that excluded fossil fuel stocks in favor of renewable energy and energy efficiency equity would perform 41 basis points greater each year. The five largest oil companies delivered returns of 1.8 percent over the past year compared with the S&P 500’s 16 percent. Although Investure outperformed this index, it seems improbable that a significant part of that performance comes from the small portion of the endowment invested in the 200 largest fossil energy companies. The Financial Times reported last month that for the industry, “costs were up and returns were down – even with oil prices at more than $100 a barrel.” Goldman Sachs released a statement warning that the “window for profitable investment in coal mining is closing” while according to Deutsche Bank, “for big oil companies, the writing is on the wall. Shrink and liquidate over the coming five years, before it is too late.” If fossil energy stocks underperform the market at the peak of their profitability, how can we expect them to perform as the world transitions to renewable energy sources?
We recognize the complications posed by the co-mingling of our funds through Investure. But divestment is possible without severing this relationship. Active divestment campaigns exist at four of the six educational institutions managed by Investure, and five of its other clients have missions that contain explicit environmental or social justice commitments. If Investure is unwilling to serve its clients by allowing them to divest, we must ask ourselves whether we can consider an endowment over which we have so little say to be responsibly managed.
In response to Liebowitz’s final question regarding the potential for future calls for divestment from other industries, we challenge the administration to find an industry that operates in such direct contradiction to the mission and work of the College. Environmental stewardship is one of the college’s most explicitly stated and practiced tenants. The College’s mission statement includes a clear commitment to integrate “environmental stewardship into both our curriculum and our practices on campus.” The management of our endowment is integral to everything we do on campus, and its impact reaches far beyond the Green Mountains.
Middlebury has long been at the forefront of institutional sustainability, even before programs like recycling and composting were fashionable. The College has made bold commitments like carbon neutrality because it knows these kinds of steps are the only way to truly mitigate the worst effects of climate change. This innovation has attracted many students to Middlebury. We are proud to be members of a community that has been a leader in environmentalism, from the first environmental studies program in 1965 to the founding of 350.org in 2007. We cannot turn our backs on this legacy.
We ask the President, administration and Board of Trustees to continue exploring pathways to divest. We hope to keep working with the administration towards a community whose finances no longer contradict our mission of “integrating environmental stewardship into our curriculum and our practices on campus.” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that “in this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late.” As people continue to suffer from environmental injustice and the climate crisis grows more dire, we cannot afford to ignore reality. We cannot afford to be late. We must be early. We must push ourselves and our peers to take further action, even when the path presented is not the most convenient.
In short, we must lead. Middlebury has embraced this challenge in the past, and we must continue to work for a sustainable planet.
Submitted by DIVEST MIDDLEBURY
(10/17/13 4:00am)
This column is sponsored by the Service Cluster Board (SCB), a group of student leaders involved in volunteer service, activism, and advocacy work on and off campus. In close collaboration with the SGA Finance Committee, the SCB provides a flexible and responsive administrative structure to support and promote student service organizations and projects at Middlebury, including Charter House. Please contact scb@middlebury.edu for more information!
“There is nothing better for any of us than to give,” said Dottie Neuberger as she looked around at the checkered tablecloths and smiling people on a Friday evening at Community Supper in the First Congregational Church in Middlebury. As Neuberger, the coordinator of Community Supper, said, this is a place “to give and get love.” With her characteristic sincerity, she added, “It is a place to touch souls.”
It all began with a Christmas dinner. Starting in 2000, two Middlebury families, one of which was Neuberger’s, spent Christmas night at The Commons, a restricted-income housing development in Middlebury. Here, they shared a hot meal with any and all residents who wanted to join. In Neuberger’s mind, those Christmas meals were evidence of food’s power to bring people together. At the same time, they revealed that food insecurity, poverty and homelessness are prevalent issues in Addison County.
In response to these issues, the Community Supper program and its parent organization, the Charter House Coalition, were born in March 2005. The Coalition is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing basic food and housing to people in-need in and around Middlebury. Doug Sinclair, one of the Coalition’s founding members in 2005 and its current volunteer president, articulated the mission of the Coalition: “We are an organization committed to making life better for those who are food insecure or precariously housed – and doing it in a community-minded way.”
To this end, the Coalition operates five distinct programs that house 45 individuals a year, serve 21,000 meals and draw on a network of over 750 volunteers. With this manpower, the Coalition performs over 23,500 hours of service every year.
In its eight years of operation, the Coalition has grown and expanded greatly. In terms of the meals programs, on March 1, 2005, 22 people gathered at the Congregational Church in Middlebury for the first Community Supper. Eight years and over 100,000 meals later, Community Supper has grown into a weekly event on Friday evenings that provides hot, wholesome food to some 200 diners each week. In the past year, 37 different organizations volunteered their time, food and manpower. These organizations include Addison County Teens, the Weybridge and Cornwall Congregational Churches, the Swift House Inn, Havurah, the Middlebury College alpine ski team, Connor Homes and many more.
Likewise, the Coalition’s housing programs have grown in scope and impact in eight years. In response to housing insecurity, the Coalition runs an emergency winter housing facility at the Charter House on Pleasant Street in Middlebury. From November through April, the Charter House provides a home for up to five families or individuals at a time. In a note addressed to the members of the Coalition, one former resident conveyed the impact of the Charter House, “My family would like to extend our warmest and strongest thank you for providing us with a place to establish stability during a very stressful, difficult and overwhelming time of transition.”
The Charter House staff works closely with other service organizations in the county to connect with families and individuals who would be a good fit for Charter House residency. After an application process, the individuals and families move into the house. Sinclair Housing Programs Coordinator Samantha Kachmar and other Charter House volunteers seek to connect residents with caseworkers from organizations such as HOPE to assist these individuals and families move forward. Furthermore, volunteers staff the Charter House 24-hours a day. The volunteers range from retirees such as 82-year-old Paul Viko to Middlebury College students like James McMillan ’14, with a wide range of individuals in between.
With a host of different programs and a broad network of volunteers, the Charter House Coalition has identified needs in the Middlebury area and works every day to alleviate them. The sheer number of meals served and demand for space in both the Charter House and the transitional housing apartments attest to the fact that housing and food insecurity are significant issues in Addison County. But the Coalition’s programs fulfill other needs as well — needs that are perhaps less concrete and statistical, but are equally important. They are the need for connection and laughter and not feeling alone and feeling part of something bigger. A woman’s words over lunch one day say a lot: “I have never experienced such incredible love … as I have here.”
If you’re interested in learning more about the Charter House Coalition, or would like to volunteer, please e-mail James McMillan ’14 (jmcmillan@middlebury.edu).
CATE COSTLEY '15 is from Williamstown, Mass.
(10/16/13 11:25pm)
Less than a month after more than 500 Addison County residents raised concerns about Phase 1 of the proposed 43-mile pipeline from Colchester to Middlebury, Vermont Gas Systems announced its plans for the implementation of “Phase 2.”
Phase 2 would extend the pipeline from Middlebury to the International Paper Co. (IP) in Ticonderoga, N.Y., giving it an additional presence in the towns of Middlebury, Cornwall, Shoreham, Lake Champlain and Ticondergoa.
Implementing Phase 2 of the pipeline would allow natural gas to reach Rutland sooner than anticipated by utilizing revenues collected from the IP mill.
IP subsequently announced its willingness take on the cost of Phase 2 of the project, estimated at $70 million, as the operation has the potential to save IP $15 million of its fuel costs each year.
In a press release on behalf of Vermont Gas Systems, President and CEO of Vermont Gas Don Gilbert explained the merits of the expansion.
“The agreement with Ticonderoga Paper Mill makes service a reality in Rutland many years sooner than would otherwise be possible,” Gilbert said.
Currently, the Vermont Public Service Board is reviewing Phase I of the pipeline. The Board is expected to make a decision on the initial proposal before the end of the year.
Vermont Gas Systems plans to file a petition with the Vermont Public Service Board in mid-November regarding Phase 2, which was outlined in a letter to the selectboards of towns through which it would run. The state of Vermont mandates this process.
The additional phase of the pipeline has not been met with much enthusiasm. In fact, it has received primarily harsh criticism, particularly from residents of Cornwall and Shoreham.
Phase 2 has also touched upon the debate surrounding fracking, as some environmental groups have asserted that the extension of the pipeline would involve gas being reached by hydraulic fracking.
Still, as explained in Vermont Gas’s press release, Gilbert believes that the pipeline providing natural gas is the best way to proceed.
“Natural gas has played a key role in the economic opportunities and environmental improvements in Chittenden and Franklin counties, and it is expected to bring $200 million in energy savings to Addison county communities over the next twenty years, while reducing emissions by 300,000 tons,” Gilbert said in the press release. “These economic and environmental benefits will continue to grow significantly if natural gas service is extended to Rutland. That is why many Addison and Rutland county residents, employers and community organizations have expressed their support for natural gas and the economic and environmental benefits to their communities.”
Despite Gilbert’s claims, after receiving Vermont Gas Systems’ letter describing Phase 2, the Cornwall Selectboard came down hard on Governor Peter Shumlin in a letter fiercely rejecting the proposition.
All five members of the Cornwall Selectboard, including chairman Bruce Hiland as well as David Sears, Abi Sessions, Judy Watts and Ben Woods, signed the letter, which was straight to the point from its opening sentence.
“‘Phase 2’. Hmmmm, that term suggests a straightforward continuation of a Phase 1 project … but we all know that is NOT the case with gas pipelines,” the letter began. “While a plausible case is made that the ‘Phase 1’ pipeline to Middlebury will serve Vermonters’ economic public good, NO such argument can be made for the so-called ‘Phase 2’ pipeline to International Paper in Ticonderoga, N.Y.”
The letter asserts that the additional phase is merely a financing scheme that will make money for IP, which, according to the letter, had established itself as a solid company before any pipeline plans were introduced.
The Cornwall Selectboard also explained that residents of Cornwall have already demonstrated deep opposition to Phase 1 of the pipeline, and that they are equally, if not more likely to reject what is called for in Phase 2.
In an email to Vermont Public Radio, Steve Wark, spokesman for Vermont Gas, commented on what he believes to be the positive aspects of the pipeline.
“The only way to get the economic and environmental benefits of natural gas to Rutland before 2035 is to serve the Ticonderoga Paper Mill,” Wark said. “Rutland’s median income is one of the lowest in Vermont. It’s hard to understand why someone would work to block the expansion of natural gas service to more Vermonters, particularly those in Rutland. They may not understand how challenged the Rutland economy is.”
Still, despite this claim, the Cornwall Selectboard calls for something else. In its letter, the members propose that Shumlin should come up with an innovative and creative way to finance a pipeline that would run directly to Rutland and not to IP.
They suggest a number of specific means of doing this, including raising gas prices “very slightly to extend natural gas availability further into Vermont.”
According to Burlington Free Press, Sue Allen, spokeswoman Shumlin, explained in an email that the office is still looking over the letter from the Selectboard.
(10/16/13 5:56pm)
As construction continues on the new squash center and field house set to transform Peterson Athletics complex into a top-level NESCAC facility, a large amount of emphasis on the sparkling new, $46 million project has been placed on energy efficiency and sustainability.
The nine-court squash center, opening next Saturday, Oct. 26 and the 110,000 square-foot field house boasting a 200 meter six-lane track and turf practice field, set for its unveiling in October 2014, both are on target for LEED gold-level certification from the U.S. Green Building Council – making them the only other buildings on campus besides Hillcrest environmental center to attempt the rigorous classification.
While certain trade-offs were made in the planning and development stages between low impact, locally sourced materials and ones that satisfied quality requirements to host athletic events, College project manager Mark Gleason said that every product was vetted for environmental sustainability, within reason.
“We look at a couple things: environmental impact and maintenance,” said Gleason. “We want to find materials that are low impact on the environment but that also don’t require a whole lot of maintenance.”
“Both of the projects are registered with LEED, and that guides a lot of the decisions in terms of materials,” he added. “We try to stay local within reason, but in general that’s what we’re trying to do: meet the 500-mile radius. For concrete and steel that’s easy to do. For siding, sometimes not as easy to do.”
The two spaces will feature numerous energy efficiency features, including natural light (or day lighting) through a skylight and windows in the squash center, two “clear stories” and glazing on the entire western concourse of the new field house. The new buildings will provide enough light during the day making electric lighting unnecessary.
Other materials, from an eventual green roof on the squash center to insulation and high-efficiency LED lights in both buildings point to a decision-making process focused on low impact materials.
One caveat, Gleason said, was that the Athletics department demanded the use of ASB squash courts – a product only manufactured in Germany.
“The squash courts come from Germany and there’s no way around that,” he said. “Given that, we have to find other things that are sourced closer to Middlebury.”
“Your squash court options are very limited,” Quinn said. “That’s not a real challenging decision — it’s not a huge list and you feel like you’re making a huge sacrifice.”
Gleason also pointed out the largest achievement in terms of energy efficiency for the project: taking down the Bubble – an inefficient heat and resource drain, not to mention an aesthetic eyesore. The new field house set to replace it, according to Gleason, will use half the energy of the Bubble despite being twice the space.
The footprint of the new facility was also intended to save green space at the College, something Gleason said was a priority for the committee who ultimately made the site decision.
“The College’s master plan showed that anyways, but it was good practice to look at its impact in a different location, from aesthetics to an environmental standpoint,” he said. “Putting it where it is now, from an environmental standpoint, is probably best because that area was not a green area before.”
Another, perhaps unintended, consequence of the new projects will be the removal of student parking from the Kenyon area. The spaces will become Faculty/Staff or event spaces. This will divert athletes who used to park in the lot to use other means of transport or become creative with their parking decisions.
“Right now there is no assigned parking in that lot – there wont be any student assigned parking out there,” said Gleason. “A lot of athletes used to drive to practices, but I think we are trying to discourage that now as part of the ‘Greening Athletics.’ Now people park in the tailgate area behind the stadium, but I think that’s still a long walk to the building.”
“There wasn’t an intentional decision to limit parking, but I have been trying for several years now, along with others to change the culture with driving down here,” Quinn said. “It’s not congruous with what you’re coming down here to do, whether you’re a varsity athlete, faculty, staff or student. I would like most of our parking to be event and visitor parking, just culturally.”
Gleason said that he is happy with how the project turned out, but also pointed to the fact that the LEED certification is not the “be all end all” for sustainability.
“It’s hard to say when you’re talking about your buildings to other schools and athletes that have interests in green buildings,” Gleason said. “It’s hard to say that your building is ‘green.’ You can say that, but prove it. Prove the building is LEED certified – only a third-party can certify that. We will be able to say we have a LEED gold squash center for what it’s worth. Some people will completely discount it but others think it’s really important.”
The new squash facility has a soft opening early next week and a firm opening scheduled for Oct. 26. Shortly after the firm opening, the courts and an adjacent spinning room should be available for student, faculty and staff use.
Additional reporting by DAMON HATHEWAY '13.5
(10/10/13 12:26am)
Climate change scares Fran Putnam, but it hasn’t paralyzed her. Instead, she leads the Weybridge Energy Coalition and has spearheaded the town’s latest energy related success – becoming the first town in Vermont to complete the Vermont Home Energy Challenge.
The Challenge, which was prompted by a partnership between Efficiency Vermont and the Vermont Energy and Climate Action Network (VECAN), began in January and is a competition between many towns in Vermont. The goal for participating towns is to have three percent of their homes weatherized by the end of the year.
Weatherizing a home - a process which requires steps such as changing windows and sealing cracks - increases its efficiency, thus saving money and reducing green house gas emissions. At the end of the competition, the winning town will be awarded $10,000 that will go towards funding an energy initiative.
Last Sunday, Weybridge celebrated not only the completion of the challenge but also being the first town in Vermont to do so, on their statewide Button Up Day of Action, a day in which towns encourage their residents to make their homes more efficient.
The town of Weybridge hasn’t officially won the competition, but many community members believe that they have a good shot at winning the statewide competition.
“There are only 300 houses in Weybridge and only 800 people, so we only needed ten houses,” said Putnam. “We’ve actually got eleven houses [weatherized] and we’re beyond our goal.”
Weybridge’s small size helped them achieve the three percent they needed. For a comparison, Middlebury, a larger town, needs to weatherize 91 houses to complete the same goal.
When asked what propelled Weybridge to the forefront of this challenge, Gwen Nagy-Benson, whose house was the first to be weatherized, said that the volunteers in the town and Putnam’s energy were key factors.
“Weybridge is a … close-knit community – people care about and trust each other, which makes this kind of community effort easier,” Nagy-Benson said. “And, we have Fran Putnam! She has been an expert leader of this initiative – she has inexhaustible energy for the Home Energy Challenge.”
One of the hurdles to getting a house weatherized is the cost, the pressure of which is put on individual home-owners.
When asked how big of an investment it is to weatherize one’s home, Putnam said, “It depends on how much needs to be done. The average is $6,000 to do a complete weatherization.”
Although there are financial incentives of up to $2,500 if a home reaches at least a 10 percent efficiency improvement, and even though weatherization saves the homeowner money in the long run, cost is, understandably, still an issue for many people.
“We had [a home energy] audit done about two years earlier, but we were never able to go forward with the work because the financing options were complicated or not readily available,” said Nagy-Benson. “By the time the Home Energy Challenge kicked off, we were able to secure a loan from our credit union and begin work.”
Although much of what motivates Putnam is driven by a need to mitigate carbon emissions contributing to climate change, many people are motivated to weatherize their homes because, in addition to being better for the environment, it is simply a practical measure to take.
“We never had any hesitations about weatherizing our home – we endured three winters in a drafty house that guzzled heating oil, and three summers baking in the heat,” said Nagy-Benson. “We knew that insulation and air sealing would help maintain a more even and comfortable temperature.”
Eric Lamy, owner of the tenth house in Webridge to be weatherized, had similar motivations as Nagy-Benson.
“We only moved to Weybridge last winter and the heating bills were pretty substantial,” said Lamy. “We decided to go forward with the renovations so that we could rely more heavily on the fireplace [to heat the house].”
Lamy also has long term financial incentives in mind and thinks that a more efficient home will help the resale value if he and his wife ever decide to sell their home.
When Putnam works to convince people to weatherize their homes, she highlights these financial incentives.
“It is the only home improvement that pays for itself, guaranteed,” said Putnam. “Every year you see more savings.”
Putnam believes that weatherizing one’s home also opens the door for people to consistently make more environmentally friendly changes in their lives in general.
“When people do this work [to their house], they become more sensitive to how they do things,” she said. She thinks that after renovating their houses many people might consider biking rather than driving, or installing low-flow showerheads to conserve water.
Overall, the town of Weybridge seems to have embraced the efforts of the Weybridge Energy Committee, as was evident on Button Up Day. Putnam said that over 100 residents attended Button Up Day and that they served 65 pieces of pie, countless doughnuts, cider and coffee in addition to handing out 35 vouchers for free energy savings kits.
This supports Lamy’s claim that the community is accepting of the program.
“I haven’t heard too much pushback towards the initiatives and that speaks well for the community,” he said. “We’re starting to make a name for ourselves.”
(10/09/13 10:56pm)
The Middlebury women’s volleyball team’s winning streak came to an end on Friday, Oct. 4 at the hands of Wesleyan. On Saturday, Oct. 5, the Panthers bounced back against NESCAC contestant Trinity by winning 3-0, before they topped Keene State in a 3-1 win. Middlebury had begun the season with 10 straight wins, only dropping 2 sets out of their first 32 before falling to the Cardinals.
Wesleyan has had a turbulent season so far, going 6-9 overall, and 2-3 in conference play, but came into the game on Friday off of back-to-back wins. The Cardinals came out of the gate quickly and won a close first set against Middlebury 25-22. The second set shifted momentum back in the Panthers favor, as they trounced Wesleyan with a score of 25-11. However, Wesleyan wasn’t ready to throw in the towel yet, and came back to beat Middlebury 25-21. Four of the last five Wesleyan points came off of errors committed by Middlebury, including three attack errors and a service error. Middlebury cleaned up its act in the fourth set, but ultimately Wesleyan’s offense proved too much, and 15 Cardinal kills led to Middlebury’s first loss of the season.
“I think the big take-away from this weekend was that we need to be on top of our game for any and all conference opponents,” head coach Sarah Raunecker said. “They’re all good teams. I think the big difference this weekend against Wesleyan was that our serve, receive and defense were not as strong as we needed them to be.”
However, despite the disappointing loss on Friday, the women’s volleyball program came out the next day ready to prove their spirit was not beaten. Once again on the road, the Panthers went to Trinity to face their second NESCAC opponent in as many days.
They wasted little time in dispatching their first opponents of the day, sweeping the Bantams with set scores of 25-18, 25-21 and 25-21. Senior co-captain Amy Hart ’14 had a particularly impressive game on both sides of the net, earning 14 kills and 12 digs to anchor the defense, while Kathryn Haderlein ’16 and Katie Chamberlain ’16 did their part with eight and 10 digs, respectively.
The Panthers carried this momentum into the game against Keene State. The Owls, meanwhile, were riding a hot streak of four straight wins of their own.
After Keene State took the first set in a nail biter, 28-26, Middlebury settled down and won the next three sets, to improve to 2-0 on the day. Co-captain Megan Jarchow ’14 continued what was an impressive offensive weekend with 17 kills in the game, making 31 total kills for the weekend. The senior’s impressive play earned her NESCAC Player of the Week honors. Piper Underbrink ’15 also had an explosive game, striking 14 kills with a .500 hitting percentage. Hart once again turned in an exceptional defensive effort, with 18 digs.
Despite her NESCAC accolades, Jarchow remains grounded in her team’s ambitions.
“After our loss on Friday night, it was clear that we needed to really focus on our serve receive and defense,” Jarchow said. “We need to step up our defense so that we can keep rallies going and run our strong offense more often. If we can pass and dig like I know we can, we will be able to dominate our last few NESCAC match-ups.”
Following the 2-1 weekend the Panthers trail only Williams and Bowdoin in the NESCAC. Middlebury hosts Amherst on Saturday, Oct. 11 and Williams on Sunday, Oct. 12, two opponents who are also looking to gain ground in the conference race.
(10/09/13 4:05pm)
Middlebury College likes to drink. Not all of us, certainly, but it is no secret that the collective BAC of this campus rises substantially when Friday night rolls around. We are not unique in this regard – drinking is an endemic part of college culture nationwide. But in the interest of community safety, alcohol must be controlled and policies must be enforced. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that a number of students are recommended for disciplinary action every year for alcohol-related incidents as booze and trouble have always gone hand-in-hand. What is surprising, however, is the rate at which these incidents are increasing.
According to the College’s Annual Security Report and Crime Statistics, liquor law violations at this school have increased 500 percent from 30 incidents reported in 2010 to 150 reported in 2012. Whether this surge in violations indicates a change in drinking behavior, a change in enforcement strategy or both, the results are alarming and merit an immediate response.
The administration has done just this. In a recent email released by Dean of the College Shirley Collado and Dean of Students Katy Smith Abbott, the two deans describe how the College has streamlined party registration and taken a nebulously tough stance on hard alcohol in what it believes to be the right steps towards an alcohol policy that makes it safer and easier for students 21 and older to enjoy their libations.
However, the of-age students are not the ones going to the hospital. The 2012 report from the College’s Task Force on Alcohol and Social Life states that first-year students have a disproportionately high likelihood of needing professional or amateur assistance as a result of overconsumption. Of the 50 students mandated a sober friend -— a policy that mandates a public safety officer to place an intoxicated student in the care of a fellow, sober student — between September 2010 and January 2011, 39 were underclassmen. 22 of the 25 sent to the emergency room during the same time period were also underclassmen. The updated Alcohol Policy outline by Dean Collado and Dean Smith Abbott is a good start, but we need to continue bolstering support for the gravest of alcohol-related problems that the College faces: chronic alcohol abuse, particularly among underage students.
The focus of the College’s drinking policies is placed largely on acute, physical symptoms of alcohol abuse instead of treating the underlying psychological conditions that lead students to adopt these destructive drinking habits in the first place. In other words, the administration is essentially passing legislation that is concentrated on making bigger buckets instead of patching the leak.
Therefore, we suggest that the College adapt an additional strategy in its defense against alcohol abuse whereby certain underage students identified as “at-risk” are paired with an upperclassman, who will have gone through extensive prior training, to talk with them about the realities of drinking, the culture surrounding the act and the extent of his or her participation in it. Students may be considered “at-risk” if they have contributed to the statistics mentioned above — transfers to sober friend and emergency room visits — or if they have received multiple citations in which the citing officer has made a special note of the student’s level of intoxication.
The program is based on an anti-violence initiative started by American epidemiologist, Dr. Gary Slutkin, to combat gang violence in South Chicago. Though the social pressures in Chicago are much different than those at the College, we believe Dr. Slutkin’s message applies nonetheless: that alcohol abuse is a public health issue which can be thwarted through the reshaping of societal norms. We would assemble a dedicated team of highly trained upperclassmen students and pair each one with an underclassman with whom they will remain as an informal mentor. Instead of random pairings, we would assign each at-risk student to a mentor of similar background, geographic region or interests. The school should furthermore incentivize groups in which drinking is likely to occur to have a member of their organization go through this training. Sports teams, social houses and the like are a good place to start.
This addition to the College’s Alcohol Policy that we are recommending is not and should not be perceived as a substitute for the support system already in place. One meeting or a series of meetings with even the most qualified upperclassman cannot replace a session with a licensed counselor. The intended effect of this program is to attack the issue from another angle: giving help to the students who need it from a voice that they can identify with more than any dean or counselor, forging a support network from within the beating heart of our community because we believe it to be more effective than any top-down mandate. To allow alcohol abuse’s germination on our campus is a repudiation of everything it means to be a member of the College community. We must help out our own.
(10/02/13 11:39pm)
On every test and paper turned in by Middlebury College students, the honor code is scrawled across the bottom of the page. But outside of the Middlebury bubble, students may encounter a slightly different kind of honor code: ones that exist at meat and dairy farm roadside stalls in the local area.
A mile down Weybridge Road, at Scholten Family Farm, is a tiny cube-shaped structure painted red and marked by a neat white sign advertising the “Farm Stand.” It is an experiment in trust. Anyone can drop in and peruse the fridges full of whole chickens and ground beef sausage while eying a smaller selection of eggs, as well as the Scholten family’s “Weybridge” cheese.
If one finds produce to his or her liking, he or she can consult with a whiteboard hanging on the wall for the price, leave money in a jar while taking the proper change, and head home, purchases in hand.
Patti Scholten, who produces her cheese in a building not 20 feet from the stand, quotes her husband Roger on the logic of the honor system farm stand:
“Our consumers trust us to put up high-quality food, so we should trust them too,” said Scholten.
The Farm Stand isn’t a unique entity in the township of Weybridge, however. Just one mile north of Scholten Farm lies Duclos and Thompson Farm, home to what Middlebury students have nicknamed, “The Meat Shack.” The operation is comparable to the Farm Stand in the way that it is run, but Lisa Thompson, who manages the farm with her husband Tom Duclos, is hesitant to publicly label her store any which way.
“We don’t try to hide the fact that there’s a store, but there’s a reason we don’t have a sign out and that we don’t advertise,” Thompson said. “Because you know, the wrong people learn [how it works] and it gets abused and we have no business left.”
Despite Thompson’s reservations, neither farm has encountered major problems.
“I had a New York plate stop in here once and they took what was in [the cash box],” Scholten said.
Thompson too had the cash box stolen one night seven or eight years ago, but she suspects that it was high school students.
“It wasn’t what they took, it was just feeling violated. In general people are very appreciative of the way we do it and they want the meat … and they’re willing to respect that,” said Thompson
Students at the College rave about the services provided by these two farms. In fact, if you were at Weybridge House on Sept. 28 for the Weybridge Feast, you probably consumed Duclos and Thompson bacon. At 10 p.m. the previous night, Isaac Baker ’14 and a cohort of Weybridge House members ventured out to purchase the bacon. Baker and his friends gathered the meat they needed, left over fifty dollars in the cash box and went home.
If you were one of the lucky ones in attendance at Jordan Collins’s ’15.5 “Local Bacon” themed Dolci shift last spring, you enjoyed the very same bacon. Or, if you managed to make it to Brooker last spring for the Pig Roast, again you would have tasted a Duclos and Thompson raised hog.
Both Collins and Myles Kamischer-Koch, ’15, who helped to plan the Pig Roast, are frequent customers at the “Meat Shack” and can attest to the high quality of Duclos and Thompson bacon and other meats.
For Kamischer-Koch, it is the variety of the meats. He attests that it is a quality that you often can’t find at the store, which brings him back to the Meat Shack again and again.
When Baker wants chicken he skips the Meat Shack and goes to the Farm Stand, which he has also visited about fifteen times.
The Meat Shack and the Farm Stand are, on the whole, profitable enterprises for their owners. Scholten estimates the profits of the Farm Stand to account for only one to two percent of the farm’s yearly income, taking in approximately $600-900 a month. The Meat Shack brings in $4,500-5,500 in business most months, one-third of Duclos and Thompson’s annual income.
Thompson explained that for many years her farm’s focal point was the “hot-house lamb” or “roaster lamb” market, meaning that most of the lambs were sold at Easter and Greek Easter to be consumed for holiday dinners.
“The economy tanked after 9/11 and the people in the cities weren’t ready to celebrate [and as a result business] slowed down significantly. It came to a point where we had been planning on the income from those lambs going and when they didn’t go we had to do something because we had to market the animals. So we built the store,” Thompson said.
Thompson also explained that the Meat Shack is unstaffed, partly to save the cost of labor and partly because the farming schedule keeps them in the fields. And of course, there is the aspect of convenience.
“People come all times of the day and night, because it doesn’t have hours,” Thompson said.
Five years after the Meat Shack opened, the Farm Stand arrived up the road at Scholten Farm with a slightly different origin. Roger Scholten, intent upon producing organic milk and selling his family’s farmstead cheese, started visiting farms to gain a better sense of the industry. What he found was that many of the farms he visited had farm stands, derivative of their inclination towards a local customer base.
Scholten estimates that on average, the Farm Stand will attract six customers a day. An exceptional day might bring twenty.
“Even on our worst days we get someone. It’s a very diverse group,” Scholten said.
At the Meat Shack, Thompson describes a similar situation.
“There is never a day that people don’t come and sometimes there is never a week when we don’t have new customers,” she said. Citing the invoice papers left in the Meat Shack for customers to fill out as her source, Thompson estimates that the Meat Shack sees 300 customers a month.
Customer-producer relationships are a potential subject of debate with the honor system service. For the Scholtens, said relationship was the “inspiration” for the Farm Stand.
“When you’re just shipping fluid milk, milk drivers pick up and leave,” said Scholten. These days, she enjoys receiving notes from the Farm Stand’s customers, many of whom she has gotten to know over the years.
Not everyone is convinced that this kind of connection between consumer and producer exists with such shacks and sheds, however. Meat Shack customer Rebecca Roe ’15 is torn in terms of how she feels about the business model.
“I love that the Meat Shack operates [the way that it does] — but that means that I’ve never met or talked to the people who raise the animals,” Roe said. “I’ve only read profiles of the farmers online, so I’ve lost a key part of the consumer-producer relationship.”
But Nicholas Frazier, ’16.5, a Meat Shack regular disagrees.
“Half the times I’ve been there, [Tom and Lisa] walk in and say hello,” he said. “I think they do make an effort to try to meet as many of their customers as possible.”
Frazier’s testimony is consistent with Thompson’s admission that while there are times during the summer when she and Duclos are “gone on tractors all day long . . . there [are other] times we’re around here a lot, and if I come home and there’s a customer there I always go check and see if I can help.”
Thompson’s check-ins at Meat Shack have given birth to friendships, not only with Middlebury students, but with visiting families as well. Thompson recounted the story of a certain Middlebury graduate of 2012.5 whom she came to know.
Though the student was from the Keene Valley in New York, an hour and 45 minute drive from Middlebury, she had introduced her parents to the Meat Shack on a visit.
“It got to the point that her folks were here almost every week. And even though she’s graduated they’re still here on a pretty regular basis getting their meat,” Thompson said.
“Sometimes it’s the parents, the grandparents, a stray uncle,” said Thompson. “Parents weekend, homecoming, whatever, your folks are visiting, a huge number of kids bring their parents out and say ‘you’ve gotta see this,’ and then the parents say ‘you couldn’t do this where we live!’”
(09/25/13 7:22pm)
While some students claim to have filled out a work order, the work of the Facilities Services staff that keeps Middlebury running smoothly often happens under the radar. As a result, many students do not know the extent of Facilities’ operations.
“I think the magnitude and the time we spend would be the most surprising thing that I think people would find,” said Wayne Hall, Facilities Maintenance Supervisor for carpenters, painters, and locksmiths.
The trades that fall under Facilities’ purview include carpentry, plumbing, heating, landscaping, electrical, an auto shop, car rentals, night watch and waste management — not to mention snow removal. That magnitude is apparent from even a brief tour of the Facilities building.
The first point of contact students have with Facilities happens at a front office.
“All phone and computer information comes through the control desk and the intention is to have it funnel through here so we don’t miss anything,” said Hall. The control desk prints work orders based off that information.
Most of the staff carry two-way radios so they can be contacted immediately. A corridor with offices of management personnel and an IT staffer is next to the control desk. An additional room in that hallway is the plan room, with large metal filing cabinets with original floor plans of various buildings.
“All of the buildings from when they were constructed have all their plans here – electrical, everything,” said Hall. “If we have questions this is our resource for checking in history.”
One of Hall’s responsibilities is managing the locksmiths.
“We have a full lock shop here,” said Hall near the entrance to the office where locksmiths solve broken locks. “All the keys you need, all the keys we need, they do it here.”
The locksmith shop is also an example of how the work of the Facilities staffers is evolving all the time.
“Now we are going install more keypad locks,” Hall said. “Each year we are trying to do more and more so we rely less on keys and more on combo.”
A large table next to the lock room is where staff repairs windows, screens, and window shades.
While the Facilities staff does most of the work that is needed, contractors are occasionally brought in. Chimney repair, masonry and other major painting projects are handled by contractors who are contacted by a Facilities staffer specializing in outsourcing work.
Downstairs, custodial services staff can pick up their radios from a wall of equipment and keys. According to Hall, some of them report in at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. to clean buildings when no one is using them.
“Our service time used to be very shrunk but now expectations with the way the world is and schedules it has really broadened,” said Hall.
The carpentry shop, near Hall’s office, has a box with the name of each staffer with work orders in them.
The plumbing department is headquartered in a cavernous room where above a conference table are shelves of stock supplies and uniforms. The paint shop, close by, has two hockey goals on large tables that are being painted in anticipation of the hockey season.
By the end of a short walk through the building the broad range of tasks completed by Facilities is clear.
Hall began working for Facilities in 1994. “It’s been a good learning experience,” he said. “I’ve got a great group of guys with a wide range of skills and aptitudes. We’ve got a great group. We all complement each other and work as a team.”
Hall also coordinates with getting tenants off-campus since many faculty live off campus in college-owned housing that require Facilities staff to repair. He also said he has the advantage of being able to interact with students.
One of the staff members working under Hall is Ed DeMatties, a maintenance carpenter who has worked at Middlebury since 1990. DeMatties is also on the emergency response team for confined space rescue, trained to rescue people trapped in elevators, manholes or other spaces where Facilities works.
On Friday, he could be found jetting around campus in a green John Deere Gator. The first stop was an unoccupied room in Stewart Hall where DeMatties had to install a new window shade.
“This used to be a lounge here,” said DeMatties, pointing to a room adjacent to the one where he was working. “I put this wall in and installed that door. We did that just a couple weeks ago.”
DeMatties said Facilities makes a point to be both as efficient and non-disruptive as possible when working on student rooms. This time, a piece to repair the shade was missing.
“You think you have everything and you get all the way up there and you’re missing one thing,” he said. But I’ll be back and this room is empty so it’s not a real rush.”
A minute later, DeMatties’ two-way radio crackled to life with a call about 51 Main’s basement hot water heater leaking. “Plumbers get more stuff like that,” he said. “They all carry radios. I’m the only one in our shop besides Wayne who carries a radio.”
After evaluating the Stewart room and determining he needed more parts, DeMatties selected the next work order. After taking the Gator back to the Facilities building to pick up a door stop, he went back to Stewart to install it in another student room to prevent a cabinet from hitting a wall mounted sprinkler when opened.
DeMatties said they see a lot of student damage work orders come in.
“Usually after the weekend,” said DeMatties. “This year I haven’t seen much at all.” DeMatties added with a laugh that it was hopefully a part of the learning process.
Having worked at the College for over 20 years, DeMatties has seen his fair share of projects on campus, including a repair of all the sinks in the bathrooms of Hadley and Milliken Halls. “I came up with a design to replace them,” said DeMatties.
“Hopefully now they should last a long time,” he said.
Commencement used to take place behind Forest Hall, but when it was moved to Voter Hall, DeMatties helped arrange the setup for the ceremony and put the flags atop Voter.
“I went to school for architecture and so they had me come up with the plan for the seating layout and so it was kind of cool I got to do that,” said DeMatties. “Now they come to me for questions.”
Aside from his work on campus, he put his training in architecture to use when he designed and built his own house. After successfully installing a doorstop on the wall, it was over to the Mahaney Center for the Arts to pick up a framed poster of the upcoming Fine Arts events to be installed in Axinn. DeMatties deftly measured an area on the wall by the entrance to the building and screwed in the hangers for the poster.
DeMatties is also in the process of working on guardrails for beds in Voter. “When I put the first one in, somebody else said, ‘I’ll take on too,’ and so I put two in and now somebody else has seen it, and now I’m making one for all of them.”
Although Facilities sees between 1,200 to 1,500 work orders sent to them every month, that does not mean their work is highly visible.
“A lot of the stuff we do probably doesn’t get noticed, such as in student rooms,” said DeMatties. “If the person is there, we’ll tell them we fixed it. If they’re not there, we’ll leave a note tag inside the door telling them we were there and what we did.”
Hall echoed DeMatties’ sentiment. “[Facilities] is behind the scenes. Nobody realizes it until we’re called on,” he said. “Everybody plays a role whether you’re a custodian or a manger, no matter what, because the faculty and the students wouldn’t be able to do their jobs if it wasn’t clean or if the lights didn’t work. Everybody’s job, no matter what it is, is a key part of making it all work.”
