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(11/16/12 3:44pm)
Squash
After posting a successful 16-9 season last winter, the Middlebury men’s squash team looks to come back firing on all cylinders under the leadership of senior captains Spencer Hurst ’13 and Jay Dolan ’13. With the loss of number one player Valentin Quan ’12 and number seven Addi DiSesa ’12, the Panthers will rely on a large class of returning, seasoned players, along with the help of some younger players who will need to step up to fill the rest of the team’s spots.
The men will be led by the captains Hurst and Dolan as well as Parker Hurst ’14, who received second team All-NESCAC honors last year.
“The team is looking pretty good and ready for this upcoming season,” said co-captain Hurst. “We are well rounded, and only lost two players from last year.”
Coming off a 16-8 season, the Middlebury Women’s squash team looks to rely on a number of returning, seasoned players, and a number of new highly skilled freshman in order to fill the spots missing from last year’s graduating seniors, including number 1 player Eleina Laird ’12.
Abigail Jenkins ’14, who is currently abroad, will be returning this season, and will most likely be playing in the number one spot next year. Charlotte Dewey ’15 received second team All-NESCAC honors after finishing the season 16-3 in the #3 spot.
Under the leadership of captains Lindsay Becker ’13, and Molly Hubbard ’13, the Panthers will look towards other sophomore standouts such as Katie Dewey ’15 and Carter Makin ’15, along with several promising first-years.
Swimming and Diving
The women’s and men’s swimming and diving teams will look to improve on last year’s solid finishes as they hit the pool for the 2012-2013 season.
On the women’s side, the Panthers return seven NCAA qualifiers from last year’s fourth-place NESCAC squad. The NCAA-finalist 200-meter medley relay team of Andie Tibbets ’14, Jamie Hillas ’15, Maddy Berkman ’15 and Ann Carpenter ’15 is back from last year. Hillas was a national finalist in the 100-meter breaststroke a year ago. Middlebury also returns three legs of an honorable mention All-American 800-meter freestyle relay of Nora Daly ’13, Jen Friedlander ’13 and Courtney Haron ’15.
“On the women’s side, we definitely had a solid season last year,” said head coach Bob Rueppel. “We have very high goals for the women’s team. That’s a big reason I came here. I think the sky’s the limit.”
The men’s team will need to replace their top scorer from last year as they hope to improve on a seventh-place NESCAC finish. Diver Skylar Dallmeyer-Drennen ’14 is the team’s top returning scorer as the Panthers also return a pair of freestyle relay squads that scored in the conference a year ago. The men will also benefit from the return of Ian Mackay ’14, who won a pair of events at NESCACs in 2011 before sitting out last year with an injury.
“For the men we have very high goals,” said Rueppel. “I think we’re going to surprise some people this year.”
Middlebury’s swimmers open their season at Tufts and Connecticut College on Saturday, Nov. 17. The long season runs through NCAAs in late March.
“The first meet is to see where we are,” said Rueppel. “We started ten days ago in great shape, so I’m ecstatic over that starting point. It creates a great competitive atmosphere. We’ve bumped it up a little bit this year, and they’ve been great.”
Track and Field
The Middlebury men’s and women’s track and field teams open the winter season Jan. 13 in Hanover, N.H. at the Dartmouth Invitational.
The teams will participate in a series of meets around New England culminating in the the ECAC Championship beginning March 1 at New York Armory. A handful of Panthers should qualify for the National Championship at North Central College in Naperville, Ill. the following weekend in March.
A number of National Championship competitors return to the team this year, including high-jump All-American Grace Doering ’13, Lauren Pincus ’14 in the javelin and cross country star Addie Tousely ’13 in the 5,000.
On the men’s side Jack Davies ’13, last year’s top seed in the steeplechase, and Patrick Hebble ’13 in the 1,500, both come off a strong cross country season to run for the Panthers this winter.
Last year’s indoor track team set high expectations for the 2013 squad, breaking program and national records in a number of different areas including the men’s and women’s Distance Medlay Relay, the 400-meter dash and the 200-meter dash.
While many talented runners return to the team, the Panthers will have to replace Margo Kramer ’12 and Michael Schmidt ’13 two of the most successful runners in program history.
Skiing
The Alpine and Nordic Ski Teams are expected to bring a lot of excitement to campus this winter, not only because they will be hosting the NCAA Championships from March 3-9 at the Snow Bowl, but also because they are coming into this season with a champion mindset.
The men’s Alpine Ski Team is spearheaded by all three members from last year’s Slalom National Champion Team, namely Hig Roberts ’14, Andrew McNealus ’13, and captain Bryan Shpall ’13. The team also will feature Dave Donaldson ’14, who could not compete last year as a transfer due to NCAA rules.
“Those four, and juniors Nick Bailey ’14 and Liam Mulhern ’14, will be contributors to the Middlebury team at Carnivals,” said assistant coach Abby Copland.
On the women’s side, the young, but experienced, Panthers are expected to make a splash in the league that features the best skiers in the country. Copland is confident that the roster, composed of largely underclassmen and led by sole senior and captain Christine Schozer ’13, will be able to bring their hard-earned experience from last season to the table. The Panthers will head west to the slopes over Thanksgiving to test out their crucial pre-snow conditioning work.
The Nordic skiers are eager to make this year the best they have had under seven-year head coach Andrew Gardner.
“The team is looking really strong,” said captain Hilary Rich ’13. “We have a lot of strong returning skiers (including 2 NCAA participants), as well as three new first-year men and five first-year women who are looking promising for this coming season.”
After extensive dry-land training this fall, both alpine teams will set out to West Yellowstone in Montana for Thanksgiving Break for some time on the snow and a chance to compete in their debut skate-sprint individual race.
Both the Alpine and Nordic Ski Teams will begin action during J-term, with the Alpine leading the way in the Vermont Carnival, January 11th and 12th.
Women's Basketball
Middlebury will look to improve on a 2011-12 season that saw them unable to secure a win in NESCAC play, and finish with a record of 7-17 overall. After leading her team to 11 NESCAC or ECAC tournaments in her first 14 seasons, head coach Noreen Pecsok looks to return to her winning tradition. One of the key aspects Middlebury will look to improve from last year is its defense. Last season the Panthers were outscored by their opponents by 192 total points, which averaged to 63.5 points per game for opponents to Middlebury’s 55.5.
“We are looking to improve our consistency this year and our overall team play,” Pecsok said. “I think there will be a measurable improvement in our defensive intensity.”
Despite losing three players from last season including key rebounders, the Panthers return with a strong starting lineup including last year’s leading scorer, tri-captin Tracy Borsinger ’13, who finished with a field goal average of .398, accounting for 238 of the team’s overall tally of 1331 points.
In addition to challenging her players everyday in practice to keep improving, Pecsok is also looking for her team to build a good reputation on and off the court.
“Our goal this year is to be competitive every time we step on the floor,” she said. “To be team oriented in everything that we do and to represent Middlebury, the athletic department and ourselves in the best way possible.”
The Panthers start their season this Saturday Nov. 17 against the University of Massachusetts-Boston in the Tip-Off Classic at Simmons College.
Men's Basketball
The fourth-ranked Middlebury men’s basketball team tips off its season this weekend at Lebanon Valley College. The Panthers, who finished the 2011-12 season 26-4, return 14 members of last year’s team including four of five starters. The team’s biggest challenge, however, will be replacing 2012 Regional Player of the Year, Ryan Sharry ’12, who led the team in points, rebounds and blocks last season.
“It will take a full team effort to fill [Sharry’s] role,” co-captain Peter Lynch ’13 said. “Some people are going to have to take more shots and hopefully convert at the rate he was able to, some people are going to have to get a rebound or two more a game and some people are going to have to bring the same passion to the game.”
The Panthers will rely on the combined play of Lynch and juniors James Jensen ’14 and Jack Roberts ’14 to fill out a deep, but largely unproven front court. Chris Churchill ’15 and first-year big man Matt Daley ’16 will provide the team with size and depth off the bench as well.
While the Panthers’ front court will look very different from seasons past, the Middlebury backcourt — the deepest and most talented group in the NESCAC — returns all three starters from last year, including two-year captain Nolan Thompson ’13 and gives the team an opportunity to play a faster brand of basketball this season.
“The biggest difference from last year is we are really focusing on getting out and pushing the ball and putting pressure on our opponents,” said Lynch. “If we can run and score a couple more layups each game it will give us a whole different dynamic for defenses to focus on.”
Friday, Nov. 16 and Saturday Nov. 17 the Panthers will face their first test in the four-team tournament that features the College of Staten Island, a Sweet 16 team a year ago.
“This weekend will be a tremendous opportunity for our program to begin our 2012-13 campaign,” said assistant coach Alex Popp. “All four [teams] in the tournament are capable of playing in March this season.”
Women's Hockey
The women’s ice hockey team opens the season on Friday, Nov. 16 and Saturday, Nov. 17 with a two-game series against Colby. The following weekend the Panthers host Amherst, Elmira and Plattsburgh in the Panther/Cardinal Classic.
The team returns a number of talented players from the 2011-12 team that won the NESCAC championship before falling in the NCAA quarterfinals to finish with a 21-4-3 record.
“We have worked hard this fall and are really looking forward to starting games this weekend,” said tri-captain Heather Marrison ’13. “Not only do we have a lot of impact returners, we also have a strong freshman class that will help us out greatly this season.”
Lauren Greer ’13, a second-team All-American last year, led the team in scoring with 29 points, and in penalty minutes with 21. Her 71 career points lead a crowded field of returning scorers., which includes sophomore standout Hannah Bielawski ’15 who finished second on the team in points last season and Sarah Ugalde ’14, the Panthers’ top goal-scorer with 14 goals during the 2011-12 campaign. While Greer, Bielawski and Ugalde headline the Panthers’ attack, virtually all of the Panthers offense from last season – the top eight scorers, and 14 of the top 16 – return to the ice this year.
Middlebury also returns its top netminder, Annabelle Jones ’15, who handled the bulk of the time between the posts last season, finishing with a .930 save percentage and a 1.44 goals-against average in 22 games.
Men's Hockey
While it finished with a record of 14-10-3, last year’s Middlebury men’s hockey team proved to be anything but predictable. In the throes of a woeful stretch in January that saw them allow 24 goals in six games (including one 7-0 and a pair of 5-0 losses,) the Panthers then rebounded to win seven of their final nine games and came within one goal of the NESCAC championship.
Head coach Bill Beaney commented on his team’s resiliency.
“I thought that we were in stormy waters at the beginning of last year,” said Beaney. “We were playing the best hockey of any team in the NESCAC down the stretch. We outplayed Amherst in the title game and I thought we deserved to win.”
From a personnel standpoint, the Panthers will need to fill the offensive void left by the graduation of the top-three scorers from a year ago: Charlie Strauss ’12 (24 points), Charles Nerbak ’12 (20 points) and Martin Drolet ’12 (19 points.)
However, captain Chris Steele ’13 is confident in his team’s ability to compete.
“Although we lost some firepower up front, we are confident that we will get a lot more contribution from the returnees,” said Steele. “There is also a great opportunity for some of the first-years to contribute offensively to make up for loss of a some key seniors from last years team.”
Beaney also suggested that several first-years could see significant ice time as the Panthers travel to Colby and Bowdoin this weekend, Nov. 16 and 17.
“I am thrilled with the first-year’s contribution,” said Beaney. “The upperclassmen also have reached out and let the younger guys get acclimated to Middlebury and to college hockey.” The coach, set to begin his 26th year behind the bench, also pointed to Tom Freyre ’14 and captain Trevor Pollock ’13 as important pieces going forward.
Steele and fellow captain Mathieu Castonguay ’13 will anchor a back line in front of goaltenders Dan Fullam ’15, Nick BonDurant ’14 and Liam Moorfield-Yee ’16.
DAMON HATHEWAY, LOK SZE LEUNG, ALEX MORRIS, FRITZ PARKER, OWEN TEACH, and GABE WEISSMANN contributed to this report.
(11/14/12 11:05pm)
We’re a small school. And inherent in that are various characteristics and ways it affects our daily lives. You’re forced to talk in classes capped at 15. Our size affects our academic lives, our athletic lives, our social lives, our extra-curricular lives. And, notably, our dating lives.
So what does this mean for a panther-on-the-prowl? Well if Johnny Lee was “looking for love in all the wrong places,” I guess you could say that we’re “looking for love in all the same places.”
Because how easy is it to fall into a pretty steady routine here? Running from this class to that practice to that club, our days easily become regimented. And, I’ve noticed that weekends don’t offer much variation either.
When it comes to finding a potential hook-up partner, your choices are limited. As a first-year, it might not seem so right away, because you’re constantly meeting new people and everyone is full of possibility. But by the time you get to be a junior, it feels like you’ve gone to the Nordstrom’s End of Season Sale a day too late, and all that’s left are dresses in outlandish patterns, shoes that would be too small to fit an elf and hats that no one could wear outside of a Gatsby themed party. And in most cases, it’s not even that luckier and earlier customers have weeded through your potential partners first, but that you have weeded through them. Maybe he hooked up with your best friend or worse you hooked up with his best friend, and you’d hate for your kissing style to be conversation over a casual game of Super Smash Bros.
But here’s the biggest characteristic of hooking-up at a small school: You can run, but you can’t hide.
If you made-out with someone on a sweaty Atwater dance floor and would rather not see him the next morning as you’re battling the hangover from hell, you can’t be positive you won’t. You could run into them at the waffle machine in Ross, searching for an empty carrel in the library, picking up a package at the mail center. There’s no sea of faces for you to get lost in. Just like you can’t hide in the back of a classroom if you didn’t do your reading, you can’t hide from a one night stand if you snuck out of his room at 6 a.m.
But that’s cynical me. Romantic me, however, can’t help but ponder: Maybe the qualities that make hooking-up at a small school difficult are the same ones that make it wonderful?
So there are fewer options: well, think of it as boutique shopping. You could go to Nordstrom and have to search through racks and racks of clothes to find something you like, or you could go to a boutique where all of the products are high quality and after one rack the dress of your dreams jumps right out at you. Midd kids, I like to think, are the highest quality. And so, instead of weeding through thousands of dudes, meaning thousands of disappointments for you, you have a much smaller number of boys (or girls) to skim away until you find The One.
And maybe you can’t hide, but if you don’t want to hide you can’t get lost either. If you walk home from a party absolutely ga-ga over the guy you were just kissing, you can know with certainty you’ll see him sometime over the next week. And it’s totally organic. You don’t have to stalk that guy you danced with and didn’t know his name because, 1) you probably knew his name, and 2) you’ll run into each other naturally, eventually.
Even though it can be hard to not get frustrated with what seems like a lack of option or an inability to disconnect your hook-ups with your day-to-day life, I would argue that it’s a little price to pay for what a hook-up can become. Midd kids have a pretty high chance of marrying other Midd kids. Maybe that’s because our admissions does such a good job of picking those 2,500 students, that they’re all the most eligible bachelors and bachelorettes of the collegiate world. Maybe Johnny Lee should be looking for love at Middlebury. Because God knows once he finds her he’s sure to see her again, and again and again. And again.
(11/14/12 10:18pm)
It Happens Here (IHH), a student-organized sexual assault awareness and prevention group at the College, has launched its Map Project, an initiative which seeks to compile on-campus locations where students have experienced some form of sexual assault.
The student organization, co-founded last year by Margot Cramer ’12 and Luke Carroll Brown ’13.5, aims to promote open campus-wide discussions about sexual violence at the College through the sharing of personal stories from sexual assault survivors within the student body, in an effort to diminish the stigma and invisibility surrounding the issue. IHH began their campaign last year with a spring event held in the McCullough Student Center, during which more than 20 students presented anonymous student monologues of sexual assault experiences in front of roughly 500 audience members.
“Our group believes there is power in sharing personal stories from members of our own community,” Brown wrote in email. “Additionally, monologues allow emotions to come alive — we all know rape is a tragic problem … but hearing someone recount their experience makes the problem all the more real.”
Upon its founding, the group members voted against becoming a college-recognized official student organization and in doing so opted out of receiving funding from the school.
“With that funding comes a certain loss of agency,” explained Caitlin Waters ’13, an active IHH member who is co-leading the group this semester. “That is a loss we are not willing to risk.”
The Map Project, which kicks off IHH’s second year, was introduced in anticipation of their Spring 2013 event, which will be similar to last year’s inaugural event. Students who have been sexually assaulted on campus are encouraged to anonymously submit specific building names or other locations where they were violated through IHH’s online website. Submissions will be accepted through the fall and part of the spring semester, at which time the campus locations will be marked on an enlarged campus map and displayed publicly in the days leading up to the group’s spring event.
IHH members have expressed hope that the Map Project will personalize the widespread problem of sexual violence.
“[Pinpointing sexual assault occurrences] to a location will make it really relevant to people,” Emily Pedowitz ’13, co-leader of IHH, explained. “It’s making sexual assault visual, and I think by making it visual, it will lead to more conversation. And hopefully that conversation will lead to more ideas and I think lead to a better culture … a more aware culture.”
Group leaders are aware that potential opposition and discomfort may arise from the display of the maps, and some students have already voiced concerns over the public presentation of locations of sexual assault.
“[The map] could give negative reputations to certain social houses or residence halls … and it could effect everyone who lives in such a place,” says Katherine Kucharczyk ’16.
Thilan Tudor ’16 adds: “I think the Map Project stigmatizes certain areas and locations on campus and it just puts a disproportionate burden on certain areas just because an isolated event may … have occurred there.”
IHH is not associated with the school’s Sexual Assault Oversight Committee (SAOC); however, both organizations represent the growing community effort to provide education and prevention of sexual assault on campus.
“The first step towards creating a sexual-assault-free campus is acknowledging that it exists at Middlebury, and working as a community to understand and address the many complex factors that contribute to its occurrence,” wrote Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs and Student Life Karen Guttentag in an email.
In addition to the Map Project and the spring events, IHH is working to expand their initiative to other colleges and communities. Brown and the IHH group encourage students interested in joining, adding a location, or submitting a story, to visit go/ithappenshere.
(11/07/12 11:24pm)
In the past few days, I have read headline after headline detailing the damaging effects of Hurricane Sandy on the New York metropolitan area. Millions are still without power and dozens have been killed; countless homes and businesses have been destroyed. In scanning through the headlines, however, I can’t help but be concerned about the distorted priorities of coverage. The devastation to New York’s wealthy elite, in the form of closed high-end restaurants or flooded Chelsea art galleries, seems to be the focus of the media. The conversation about who has been disproportionately hurt by Sandy and about the roles that race and class play when hurricanes hit, is altogether absent from the discourse. Once again, the legacy of ignoring marginalized communities in times of national emergency has been affirmed, and what walks and talks like a natural disaster is more likely a man made one.
While wealthy folks from the village were stressing about how they were going to get uptown to charge their phones, as one New York Times article covers, thousands of people were lining up for emergency food and water downtown. The neighborhoods most severely affected by Sandy are, expectedly, the same ones most severely affected by systemic class and racial inequality. While its true that hurricanes don’t discriminate, people and societies certainly do, and this is no exception.
Take the Red Hook Houses in northern Brooklyn, for example, where over 6,500 residents have gone without heat, elevators, food and water for over a week after Sandy. Elderly and disabled residents are being forced to walk up 12 flights of stairs without elevator access, mothers are desperately washing their young children with bottled water and thousands are going to sleep each night without heat, in temperatures dropping into the 20’s. Red Hook has received virtually no aid from FEMA or the city, and its residents are literally surviving because of the generosity of neighbors’ donations. Lower Manhattan, on the other hand, has had almost all of its power restored. Trees in my parents’ upper-class towns in the suburbs are already being replanted. Random? You decide.
Red Hook, similar to many other forgotten communities, like the Jacob Riis Houses in Lower Manhattan, has a long history of marginalization. These are predominately communities of color whose residents live below or near the poverty line, who could not simply leave town when Sandy struck, as many New York City residents did. As one Reuters article states, “Those with a car could flee. Those with wealth could move into a hotel. Those with steady jobs could decline to come into work.” Without public evacuations, people must rely on individual resources, which, in New York City, are distributed far from equally. According to census data, last year the wealthiest 20 percent of Manhattan residents made close to $400,000 on average, while the poorest 20 percent made around $10,000. As Reuters points out, only a handful of developing nations, like Sierra Leone and Namibia, have income inequality rates that rival those of New York.
So, although the media is overlooking the disproportionate attention given to certain neighborhoods, really it should come as no surprise that the hardest hit are overwhelmingly home to the working poor. The housing projects are, in fact, just the tip of the iceberg as one New York journalist notes: “Waterfront communities like Far Rockaway and Coney Island are utterly devastated, parts of Queens have suffered horrific damage from fires, and […] we’ve heard nothing about what city officials are doing to assist residents of Staten Island who are virtually stranded.” Unfortunately, all of this is really nothing new.
It only takes one look out my window to be reminded of what happens when communities are forgotten by the nation in times of disaster. I am in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, and the street I am living on is lined with houses that have been boarded up and empty since Katrina hit, over seven years ago. If I were to show you a picture of the house across the street, with its roof collapsed in, you might think it was from 2006, right after the hurricane. On the other hand, if I were to take a drive uptown to the wealthy, predominately white neighborhoods back in 2006, they would be almost completely restored. But hurricanes don’t discriminate, right?
The class and racial dynamics of Hurricane Katrina’s effects are far too complex to go into detail here (although I encourage you to read about them elsewhere), but the obvious comparisons to Sandy must be made. The Lower Ninth Ward is a predominately black and working-class neighborhood, which was hit the hardest by Katrina and the hardest by national indifference. Just like the residents of Red Hook, the Lower Ninth was disproportionately neglected immediately after the storm, and has continued to be neglected seven years later. There are no services or jobs in the neighborhood, the unemployment rate is something like 75 percent, the incarceration rate is the highest in the country and thousands of residents are still unable to return home. To top it all off, the levees that famously broke are being rebuilt just down the street, and are allegedly weaker than the old ones.
Despite the media’s negligence of covering systemic racism and classism in relief efforts, they are realities that must be brought into the discourse if the full story is to be told. As climate change continues to make natural disasters the norm, it is pretty clear that Sandy is not going to be the last hurricane of the decade. However, if there is a positive (if not bleak) side to storms like Sandy and Katrina, it is that they expose pre-existing inequalities and push us to address them; to make our communities more resilient; and to work towards a more just and equitable future.
Written by JENNY MARKS '14.5 of Bedford, N.Y.
(11/07/12 10:15pm)
On Nov. 29 Professor of Economics and Director of the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship Jon Isham will teach an hour-and-a-half long online course for alumni called “What is Social Entrepreneurship?”
Isham was approached by the Alumni Office in September to lead a course on social entrepreneurship. He quickly modified the subject matter to address social entrepreneurship in the liberal arts, specifically, as the topic has been a focus of his recent research.
“It’s a topic that people are talking about and thinking about and are curious about,” Isham said of the course’s material. “Alums […] will be curious based on their own experience […] how social entrepreneurship fits in at Middlebury.”
“That means asking 'What are the goals of the liberal arts?’ and ‘How can social entrepreneurship enhance and complement those goals?’” wrote Isham in an email.
According to Isham, social entrepreneurship is the use of business practices to enact social change, an approach different than traditional charitable or philanthropic tactics.
“It takes the civic engagement model and brings in approaches that have been developed, say, in the business sector,” said Isham.
Ian McCray, director of the alumni and parent program, said that this topic is on the minds of many students and recent alumni.
“The idea of social entrepreneurship is one that we get a lot of questions about from alums who come back,” said McCray, who works to organize programs for alumni across the country.
Thanks to help from several professors, the College is able to keep alumni actively involved and intellectually connected to happenings on campus. This engagement has recently become even more readily available to alumni around the world through the employment of online courses.
“We’ve dabbled [with online courses],” said McCray. “It’s something that we’re exploring more and more, as a lot of our peers are.”
Amherst College offers an online book club for alumni and Williams College has established an Alumni Online Community group.
“The ability to do this and to do it in interesting ways online is really the new [issue] here,” said McCray. “And it’s a way for us to expand our outreach to alums.”
The Alumni Office has offered online courses in the past, but they are not a commonplace occurrence.
Last year, John Elder, professor emeritus of English and American studies offered an online course on the poems of Robert Frost for 15 alums. Through Adobe Connect software, the class offered video and audio connections and allowed students to type in comments or personal notes to Elder.
“It didn’t work so well,” said McCray. “[The course] was relying on a lot of back and forth because it was a discussion class, and there was some delay in the software.”
The participants ended up continuing the discussion over a conference call with Elder, which proved a better method.
Isham’s course has a higher capacity, fully registered at 90 people, and will therefore use the Adobe Connect software. Isham will be broadcasted through video to all of the participants, who can type in questions during the lecture. Though he does run the risk of being delayed, this way Isham can communicate more directly to a larger audience.
“People will be able to see me talk, and at the same time, we’ll be able to show PowerPoint’s or links online,” said Isham. “It’s a very flexible approach.”
Alison Byerly, former provost and executive vice president who is currently on academic leave at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, feels that online courses open the doors to continue education with members of the college community.
“An online course for alumni would in most cases not be replacing an in-person seminar,” she wrote in an email. “It would be making participation possible for people who would otherwise not be able to take part.”
She added that communication through technology can extend the possibilities of engaging alums from locations around the world, no matter how far they might be from Vermont.
The Alumni Office does not have concrete plans to increase the number of online courses offered, but hopes to keep experimenting with new ways to reach alumni through technology.
McCray said he could see the College holding online courses two or three times a year, but added, “I don’t see this as something that we plan on scaling up to the volume that some of our peers do.”
“We’re treading cautiously,” he said of future pursuits into online courses. “I think it’s something that for us is going to contribute around the margins, but we’re not going to become the University of Phoenix. But we’re trying to take advantage of the technology that is available to be able to reach more people.”
The College does not allow professors to take time away to pursue other for-profit teaching, but alumni courses do not fall under this category.
One other educational venue in which participants are charged is when members of the faculty give lectures in locations they travel to personally. Every year, about 20 to 25 professors will participate in such lectures. The College charges a registration fee for most of these to cover costs such as venue, refreshments, travel, and a small honorarium for the professor.
Elder’s course cost $25 per person; Isham’s will charge $15.
“It’s our policy to compensate our professors for their time,” said McCray.
According to McCray, the “crown jewel” of the Alumni Office’s work is the Alumni College, a program open to all alumni that is held annually at the end of August.
The typical turnout is about 100 alums, who spend four days at the Bread Loaf Campus taking a course from one of the College’s professors. The program costs about $400 or $500, which, according to McCray, “barely breaks even.”
“They’re not money-makers,” said McCray of alumni courses in general. “It’s really just another way to help alumni engage with the College and engage with the professors.”
(10/31/12 8:44pm)
With its fair share of both high points and low points, this season’s edition of Middlebury men’s soccer certainly left something to be desired. The Panthers quietly bowed out in the first round of the NESCAC tournament via a lopsided 4-0 defeat at Amherst, and with it began a long offseason of work to return the program to its championship-caliber stature.
Its 6-7-1 final record marks the first time that the team finished under .500 in Dave Saward’s 28 years as head coach, and prompts the question of how a program typically amongst the best in the region struggled so mightily this year.
The Panthers were hit hard by injuries, with crucial players Jon Portman ’13, Tyler Smith ’14 and Sam Redmond ’15 sidelined for significant portions of the year. Goalie Eric Wilson ’13 also never saw the field. Saward commented on the slew of injuries this year.
“I think that at the end of the day, the number of players that we lost for almost the entire season had a massive impact,” said Saward. “It went on and seemed never-ending, with at one point almost nine players out. I point specifically to Portman, a player that we had counted on to play in influential areas in the midfield. I don’t believe in making excuses, but it certainly had both an emotional and technical impact.”
Sam Peisch ’13.5 refuses to use injuries as an excuse.
“It’s always tempting to say ‘What if ...’ but the reality of the season is that we didn’t get it done when we had to,” said Peisch. “The guys that played in the games didn’t do enough to win. We only have ourselves to blame for that.”
To seal its fate as the NESCAC tournament’s seventh seed, the Panthers traveled to Williams last Wednesday, Oct. 24. Despite being tied 1-1 in the second half, the Ephs quickly countered Harper Williams’s ’15 61st minute goal with one of their own in the 63rd. They then tallied again in the 80th to win 3-1.
In the tournament quarterfinal last Saturday, Oct. 27, Amherst controlled the run of play from the first whistle. The Lord Jeffs converted in the 32nd minute and carried a lead into halftime. Amherst then buried the Panthers in the second half, scoring three goals to seal the final score of 4-0. Saward was impressed with the opponent’s performance.
“In my 28 years of doing this I have watched a lot of good teams, and Amherst is one of the best teams that I have seen at this level,” said Saward. “I was proud how my team represented Middlebury, but the better team won and talent took over. I think that Amherst could go on a run to win the national championship.”
Despite the loss, Peisch’s comments showed that his team never stopped believing.
“To be honest, we all believed we had a shot against Amherst. Our regular season loss against them at home was by no means a blowout, and we had chances to get back into the game,” said Peisch. “In the quarterfinal game we were simply overwhelmed by their combination of size, skill and work ethic.”
Middlebury is now left to turn the page on this season and look towards 2013, a year that contains an equal measure of promise and uncertainty. Sophomores Williams and Dan Skayne ’15 provided flashes of brilliance, while Saward is also excited about the development of Deklan Robinson ’16, a player who played both central midfield and defense this year.
However, without an entrenched starting goalkeeper and question marks on offense, the Panthers line-up next year is far from set.
Regardless of personnel, Peisch is clear on the team’s goal.
“Our task next season is to restore the men’s soccer program as a perennial NESCAC and national championship contender,” said Peisch. “We are excited both about the potential of our incoming [first-years] and a number of underclassmen who started or played in a majority of our games this season. With a small, core group of four-year varsity players as seniors, we are going to dedicate the offseason and summer to achieving this goal.”
Saward has a similar mentality.
“I think the talk might be negative right now, but when the dust settles the team can look at the experience and grow to become better players,” said Saward. “With the addition of a few recruits, we have the pieces. We need to stay healthy, and this is something you can never predict.”
(10/31/12 8:41pm)
The women’s volleyball team finished its regular season with two wins this weekend after a long week of practice leading up to two games against NESCAC rivals Bowdoin and Tufts. Middlebury wrapped up the regular season with a 19-6 record, securing the second seed in the NESCAC tournament with the win over Bowdoin.
“We knew going in to this weekend that NESCAC seedings were dependent on how we played,” said s Olivia Kolodka ’15. “We tried to focus on our own team goals instead of the circumstances surrounding the match.”
The game against Bowdoin on Friday, Oct. 26 began with a powerful national anthem performance by middle hitter Piper Underbrink 15’s mother, country singer Melanie Rosales. The performance added to the immense energy roaring in the Pepin Gymnasium crowd.
“You could tell the number of fans and the live national anthem pumped the team up and got them excited for the tough game,” said Ellie O’Brien ’14 who attended the game.
The home squad started out the first set on fire maintaining a consistent lead throughout, attesting to O’Brien’s comment.
The first set ended quickly with a decisive 25-13 win for the Panthers. The second set proved to be more of a challenge, however, and Bowdoin eventually won the set 19-25. Middlebury won the last two sets (25-21, 26-24) winning the match 3-1.
Megan Jarchow’s ‘14 spikes dominated the game with a match-high 13 kills, while Caitlin Barrett ’13’s 17 digs saved the team from multiple powerful shots from Bowdoin’s talented front hitters. Barrett’s passion for the team was infectious and apparent in her play as she threw her body left and right to save shot after shot.
The Panthers second win of the weekend occurred Saturday, Oct. 27 at home against Tufts. The squad shut down the Jumbos 3-0, clinching the NESCAC’s second seed. Tufts gave Middlebury a challenging first set that the Panthers eventually won 25-21. After a comfortable second set, which Middlebury won 25-13, the Panthers completed the sweep with a narrower 25-20 victory in the third and final set. Amy Hart ’14 and Julia Gibbs ’13 had outstanding games with nine and eight kills, respectively. Gibbs also impressed the crowd with 12 assists.
The Panthers will now prepare for the NESCAC tournament and the beginning of postseason play. They will take on Trinity in the quarterfinals on Friday, Nov. 2 at Connecticut College.
The Panthers defeated the Bantams in straight sets on Oct. 13, a match in which Hart and Jarchow lead a stellar offensive attack. Hart recorded 16 kills, while Jarchow chipped in with 13 of her own.
Trinity has played at an even .500 (3-3) since its encounter with the Panthers. Middlebury, on the other hand, has found its stride, going 5-1 over the past three weeks leading up to postseason play.
Kolodka and the rest of the team bring a focused mentality into this weekend’s NESCAC contest.
“As a team we try and approach every match as an opportunity to play the best we can regardless of who is on the other side of the net,” said Kolodka. “Teams can play up or play down on any given day, and expecting a team to roll over can lead to a lack of mental discipline and a lot of unforced errors. We will get ready for our game against Trinity the same way we do for every game — by working as hard as we can and looking to play our best.”
Connecticut College, Bowdoin and Amherst round out the rest of the formidable top-four seeds in a tournament that will be hard to predict. All eight teams involved finished the regular season at .500 or above. A champion will be crowned on Sunday.
(10/25/12 12:55am)
The Middlebury women’s volleyball team has made some serious headway since students were let out for fall break. While out-of-season athletes were enjoying their time off, the Panthers were working hard in practice in preparation for four games in a four-day period. The Panthers came out strong with three wins against Plymouth State, Wellesley College and Brandeis University before finishing with a tight loss against Springfield. The team now stands 11 games over .500 with a 17-6 record going into its last two regular season games.
Wednesday, Oct. 17, the Panthers outworked Plymouth State, who fell 11-15 in the loss, in all three sets to close with a 3-0 shutout, winning the three sets 25-9, 25-15 25-19, respectively. Tri-captain Megan Jarchow ’14 stood out in that game with 10 kills, tallying a .421 hitting percentage. Piper Underbrink ’15 and Amy Hart ’14 also contributed 5 kills each.
Friday, Oct. 19 and Saturday, Oct. 20, Smith College and Mount Holyoke hosted the Hall of Fame Invitational. The Panthers matched up against Wellesley to start the tournament, sweeping the Blue 3-0. Wellesley entered the tournament as the favorites, boasting a 23-4 record. Jarchow had another note-worthy game in the Middlebury win, however, improving her total number of kills from the previous game to 11 with no errors to average a hitting percentage of .733. First-year Kathryn Haderlein ’16 was particularly effective as well, finishing the match with 33 assists and three service aces during the game.
Middlebury started the second day of the tournament with a 3-0 shutout against Brandeis, the team’s third in three days and fourth in a row, dating back to an Oct. 13 match at Trinity. The sets were all close, but the Panthers snuck out a victory in all three, 25-19, 25-23 and 25-16, respectively. Right hitter Amy Hart ’14, Julia Gibbs ’13 and tri-captain Madeline Firestone ’13 led the team in kills while Haderlein finished with 26 assists.
The second match on Saturday proved to be a much greater challenge than what the team had faced earlier in the week. Springfield took down Middlebury 3-2 in five sets. After winning the first set 21-25, Middlebury dropped the next two 25-22 and 25-18 before scrambling to win the fourth set 22-25 to force a fifth and deciding set, which they ultimately lost 15-12. Gibbs filled the stat sheet, totaling 10 kills, seven service aces and 15 digs while Haderlein dished out an extraordinary 45 assists. Jarchow was dominant in the loss with 19 kills and was named to the all-tournament team. Jarchow was also awarded NESCAC Player of the Week.
“We were tested this weekend by some really strong out-of-conference teams,” said outside hitter Sarah Studwell ’13. “Coming out 2-1 feels great, and I think we’re all pretty happy with how we performed.”
After the long week of games, the volleyball team looks ahead to its last two games of the season against Tufts and Bowdoin on Oct. 26 and 27 at home.
“Bowdoin and Tufts are two of the strongest teams in the NESCAC, and our results this [past] weekend will determine our standings,” said Meg Anderson ’14. “We are confident going into [next] weekend that we will be able to compete with and beat these two teams. If all goes as planned, we will finish strong as the second ranked team in NESCAC.”
(10/13/12 11:35pm)
Many students are familiar with Middkid.com as the go-to site for course evaluations, but what they may not know is the 13-year-old site underwent a redesign in late September.
Middkid.com, founded by Ted Adler ’99.5, is a student-maintained site that provides course and professor evaluations and connects students with local Middlebury businesses.
Thomas Bryenton ’13 is the Middkid.com campus representative for the site this year.
“It’s a for-students-by-students thing, so it was started by a Midd kid in 1999 and it’s been going ever since,” said Bryenton. “We just celebrated our 13th birthday, which is cool — celebrating working with businesses in the area for a baker’s dozen years.”
Businesses can sign on to become a sponsor of Middkid.com.
“It’s grown to over 20 businesses … and we’re happy having those businesses supported that way,” said Bryenton.
The supporting business’s information is posted on Middkid.com, which ties into the Middkid card, a free card that lists supporting businesses and gives the holder discounts and deals. Bryenton said the traffic the site gets is high.
“We typically have about 500,000 page views per year, which is outrageous if you think about that. So we are able to give our businesses a lot of site traffic,” said Bryenton.
Bryenton spoke positively of the changes to the site.
“We basically wanted the site to look more modern and clean among other things. Visually, it’s a significant improvement, I think most would agree,” said Bryenton.
Middkid.com also has several new sections following the update.
“We wanted to add a lot of things that were missing before. We didn’t actually have an ‘About Us’ section, so we added that,” said Bryenton. “We added a ‘For Parents’ section — there is a letter to Middlebury parents now because we find that parents actually inquire with us about how we can help their kids. Is their kid going to be able to get a haircut in rural Vermont? Answer: yes. So since we have that demographic going as well, we wanted to cater to them a bit.”
The course evaluations will still function the same and the entire database of course evaluations has been moved over to the new site.
Bryenton explained that students use the site for multiple purposes.
“Students are generally drawn by the reviews and wander to the coupons, to the [business] profiles, to look up phone numbers, addresses, deals,” said Bryenton.
Bryenton said the response to the changes has been good so far.
“Everything we’ve heard has been overwhelmingly positive,” he said.
Bryenton said facilitating connections between students and local businesses is what the site is all about.
“My most memorable moments at Middlebury have been those dinners in town with my friends and I think Middkid is what guides people to those things. Having someone vouch for a place is what really gets people to go,” he said. “We provide those recommendations people can trust and businesses love it. We’re able to do that in a way that’s beneficial for everybody. We mean so much to this community in terms of business and otherwise.”
Josh Berlowitz ’16 first heard of Middkid.com when someone mentioned it on a prospective students’ day. He examined the redesigned website and gave feedback.
“It definitely looks better,” he said. The organization is nice. It’s definitely better-organized and easier to find things.”
Berlowitz said he has used the course reviews since arriving on campus.
“I was deciding between two classes to take and I went with the one that has better reviews.”
He also was impressed by several of the deals listed on the site.
Hasher Nisar ’16 also heard about it before this fall and has signed up for the Middkid card.
“I first heard about it on the Facebook group that we have for our class,” said Nisar. “Someone posted saying if we need to look up certain courses, what they’re like, what people have to say about different professors and different courses, you can search on Middkid.”
Nisar, a first-year senator in the Student Government Association (SGA), thinks many other students use the site.
“I feel like it’s a good tool for people to use to look up certain courses, how much time they have to put in per week or what to expect,” he said. “I think a lot of students in our class and a lot of people at Middlebury use Middkid.com as a resource. There’s no doubt about that.”
(10/10/12 10:54pm)
Republican politicians and talking heads including W. Mitt Romney have made a big deal lately of the Obama Administration’s supposed “war on coal.” It’s a phrase that no doubt tests well with blue-collar focus groups in the states needed to win the election, and the evidence seems to match the attack line: across the United States, the fires of coal plants have begun to flicker out. Coal prices have increased substantially over the last several years. The construction of new coal-fired power plants has all but ceased. Part of this is due to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has put into place a series of regulations that limit the emissions of mercury, acids and small particles that come from coal plants and cause hundreds of thousands of cases of asthma in the United States every year. But that’s not the whole story. The true culprit of the war on coal is natural gas. Natural gas extraction through high-volume, horizontal hydraulic fracturing — fracking — has revolutionized the American energy industry, lowering both prices and carbon emissions. With the proper safeguards, natural gas extraction can help revitalize stagnant rural communities throughout the nation.
In 2008, Penn State geologist Terry Engelder fired the starting pistol for the natural gas rush when he announced that the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation that stretches from Tennessee to within spitting distance of my house in Western New York, contained as much as 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas — more than is contained anywhere else, with the exception of the giant gas field below the waters between Iran and Qatar. At the time, the most recent public estimate was two trillion feet. Engelder said that the discovery was a Christmas present for America; it turns out that it was much, much more. In the first quarter of 2012, carbon emissions in the United States fell to their lowest level since 1983. As natural gas power plants replace those burning coal, these emissions could continue to fall. Natural gas releases half as much carbon into the atmosphere as coal — not to mention fewer carcinogens — and 30 percent less than oil.
Fracking, obviously, has its flaws. In Pennsylvania, the stories of manipulative leases, overbearing corporations and water contamination have come from a failure of government to step up and play referee. These problems can be addressed by strict testing requirements, proper waste disposal, public disclosure of lease terms and land use restrictions. Sadly, heavy lobbying efforts including more than $300,000 in campaign contributions to Republican Governor of Pennsylvania Tom Corbett have delayed the implementation of a severance tax on natural gas extraction that would help ensure that all Pennsylvanians benefit from the windfall beneath their feet and that the state has the money to adequately police the industry. It’s naïve to assume that, in this or any industry, the companies will behave without oversight.
No energy source exists in a vacuum, and none is free of tradeoffs. Coal extraction often requires the removal of entire mountaintops. Nuclear waste remains radioactive for tens of thousands of years. Hydroelectric blocks the course of rivers — and there aren’t many viable sites left. Solar panels need toxic chemicals like gallium arsenide; batteries use even harsher chemicals. While solar panels and wind power hold significant promise for the future, the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. These technologies need to advance more before they’re cost competitive and capable of meeting the energy needs of the United States. In the meantime, we have more than a century’s supply of extremely cheap, relatively clean natural gas.
Natural gas has a huge advantage besides cost competitiveness and abundance. When we buy fossil fuels, or any product, it represents a transfer of wealth from customer to producer. Europe has no choice but to throw euros at Russia to keep the gas flowing. Japan sends yen to Qatar just to keep the lights on. But in the United States today, urban New Yorkers are transferring wealth to rural Pennsylvanians. San Diegans are sending money to North Dakota. The lights stay on cheaply in our cities, and communities are climbing up from their knees in the countryside. Natural gas doesn’t just reduce our impact on the climate, it strengthens our economy, lowers our electric bills and keeps the flow of money within our own borders. In the years since the recession, the economy has grown by 2.7 million jobs. One million of those were in the energy industry. Fracking has its flaws, but barring a miraculous abandonment of fossil fuels, natural gas is a step in the right direction.
(10/10/12 10:47pm)
Every U.S. President since Richard Nixon has promised “energy independence,” and both President Obama and Governor Romney are doing their part to continue this political tradition. But while the two candidates agree that energy independence is essential to political and economic stability, they differ on how best to reach this historically unattainable goal. Perhaps not as much as you may think: both have continually voiced their support for an “all of the above” energy strategy, encouraging hydraulic oil fracking, natural gas drilling, the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal and green energy development. Moreover, while Obama has presented himself as the “green” candidate, vowing to “use energy sources of the future like wind and solar and biofuels,” his promise for “five million green jobs” has led to a mere 211,000, where the largest solar companies in America struggle to stay afloat and the wind industry shed 10,000 jobs in 2011. Obama’s green energy experiment proves that these technologies are not competitive enough to provide desperately needed jobs. But while some politicians have poised the energy debate as a choice between the energy independence, job creation and low costs provided by fossil fuels and the long-term sustainability provided by green energies, Romney and Obama are correct in advocating both. However, both candidates’ plans for energy development have fundamental flaws.
We’ve all heard the story: Obama granted a $535 million federal loan to solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, and the company quickly declared bankruptcy and defaulted. Several other failed investments by the Obama administration have led Romney to proclaim, and rightly so, that “the government shouldn’t be in the business of picking winners and losers.” Romney’s opinion is that “markets, rather than governments,” must determine which energy sources prosper, with rising gas and energy costs facilitating a natural shift towards green energy dominance. Yet while Romney has voiced his intention to let wind and solar subsidies expire if elected, he simultaneously defends fossil fuel subsidies and tax breaks preventing market control. Energy subsidies give certain energy sources advantages over others regardless of supply and demand, often with disastrous results. Free markets have long been a conservative ideal, so why does Obama’s criticism that “the oil industry gets $4 billion a year in corporate welfare,” put Romney on defense?
Romney’s pledge to subsidize and support coal mining would both harm energy markets and fail to sustain the dying industry. While coal made America strong, the industry is no longer profitable or competitive due to low natural gas prices. Romney’s subsidies and tax deductions for coal mining, coupled with his vow to roll back environmental regulations, will merely waste taxpayer dollars on funding ecological destruction. “Clean coal” is a political invention. American coal mining is no longer economical and our president needs to focus on creating new jobs for the 200,000 American coal miners, rather than paying them to work in an outdated industry. Last Wednesday, Romney signaled that his support of fossil fuel tax breaks and subsidies could be traded for a lower corporate tax rate, a sensible exchange that most Republicans support. Let’s hope he follows through.
Both Obama and Romney will almost definitely approve the costly Keystone XL Pipeline project with the contention that it will create jobs, lower gas prices and bring us closer to energy independence. However, according to the only independent report conducted on the pipeline, the multibillion-dollar project will only generate 2,500 to 5,000 temporary construction jobs, a comically small impact. Moreover, the majority of the oil will be exported overseas by TransCanada, rather than sold in the United States, so gasoline prices and overall supply will remain unchanged. Finally, more oil flowing into (or more accurately, through) America, more drills pumping in Texas and the Arctic and more fracking in the Rockies will not reliably lower gas prices in the increasingly globalized market, so neither candidate can honestly pledge to ensure low costs at the pump. The Keystone XL Pipeline would probably not be an environmental disaster, but it provides us with no real benefits and it’s unfortunate that neither candidate is denouncing the project.
The future of energy in this country depends on Obama’s and Romney’s willingness to let supply and demand, rather than government influence, direct support of new technologies and the abandonment of old ones. Multibillion-dollar projects, huge subsidies and firm regulations will not help us become more energy independent and could provoke a choice between environmental and economic security. Obama’s strict energy regulations create more problems than they prevent, as they hinder economic growth and have provoked some oil, gas and coal facilities to move abroad. Energy development, economic growth and environmental protection are not impossible goals, however, and Romney’s proposal for “a government that facilitates private-sector-led development of new energy technologies by focusing on funding research and removing barriers,” sounds promising.
(10/10/12 9:19pm)
Project Green Challenge, a month-long competition run by the environmental group Teens Turning Green, is beginning its second year, and for the first time the College will join a group of over 500 other colleges participating in the project.
The challenge was created and put together by mother and daughter Judi Shils and Erin Schrode in order to raise awareness about sustainable living and educate students on how they can achieve a sustainable lifestyle in a campus environment.
The competition takes place throughout the month of October. Each day, participants receive an email with the day’s challenge and theme. The theme changes daily, ranging from your dorm room to labeling to your body.
Once the participant has completed the challenge, he or she uploads proof to the website and is entered to win a prize. There is a prize for each day, as well as overall prizes at the end of the month, including an invitation to a three-day eco-summit.
“It is really easy, and the challenges teach you about the problems with the way most of us live today and how to fix them so that you are living in a way that will help improve the state of the environment as well as your own life,” said Piper Rosales Underbrink ’15, the campus representative for the project.
There are three levels to each challenge: green, greener and greenest. This system helps make the project open and welcoming to students who have no experience with sustainable living, as well as those who are already aware and want to learn more.
Sustainability Communication and Outreach Coordinator Avery McNiff brought Project Green Challenge to Middlebury through the recommendation of Tiffany Chang, a future member of the Middlebury class of 2017, who is spending her gap year working with Teens Turning Green.
“We thought it would be a good way for the Campus Sustainability Coordinators to learn more about sustainable living and interesting ways to promote it,” said McNiff.
Rosales Underbrink took control of the project because she saw the value it could have for the college community as a whole.
“Middlebury is participating in the challenge because we are a school that has made a decision to try to live as ‘green’ as possible and to promote sustainability,” said Rosales Underbrink. “This is a great way to get people excited and involved.”
Thirty-one students are participating in Project Green Challenge, beating the original goal of 20 students. Participants like Sarah Studwell ’13 are just as excited about the project as the coordinators.
“Project Green Challenge seems like a really tangible way to put into practice a lot of the ideals that we hold here at Middlebury,” said Studwell. “It has the potential to get a lot of people doing the little things that really add up.”
Students interested in joining the challenge for the remained of October can sign up at Project Green Challenge.
(10/03/12 8:47pm)
The Middlebury College Women’s Rugby Club (MCWRC) shut out visiting Amherst 36-0 on Saturday, Sept. 29. The home match, played on a soggy field under windy skies, was the MCWRC’s first win in three tries this fall.
The side held Amherst scoreless, and improved its record to 1-2.
“Our effectiveness on defense led to many successful counterattacking plays where the organization of the forwards allowed quick and controlled passes out to the backs,” Emily Duh ’14 said.
Duh completed a hat trick with a try in the final seconds of play after captain Jess Berry ’13 intercepted the ball which, in the ensuing confusion, found its way into Duh’s hands. Duh then ran it under the uprights for her third try of the afternoon. Berry converted the kick to cement the score at 36-0.
“Duh’s performance was essential to our win,” said Berry. “Her try in the final seconds of the game demonstrates the intensity the entire team played with throughout all 80 minutes of play, up until the final whistle blew, which is something we’ve strived for all season.”
The potency of the offense was the result of a concerted effort to force the opponent back at heel, and to free runners like Duh on the outside.
“Offensively, we have been working on changing our angles of attack and taking the ball at pace,” said Coach K.O. Onufry.
A shifty runner, the outside center Duh cut through the Amherst pack at will. Her three tries provided MCWRC with 15 points, while six points came off the foot of the scrum half Berry. Inside center Laura Hoffman ’15 broke a series of tackles for her first career try to round out the scoring.
“Our captain led the team in focus and intensity right from the kick-off through to the final whistle,” Onufry said.
MCWRC fell in a season opening scrimmage against St. Michael’s Sept. 15, and then again to Colby, 26-5, in Waterville, Maine on Sept. 22. Despite the loss, the team carried home the momentum from last week’s strong second half against Colby. It was enough to blow away Amherst on home turf.
“In our past two games, we struggled with slow starts, which allowed the opposition to gain large enough leads so that we were left playing catch-up,” said Duh.
After dominating Amherst, MCWRC hopes to secure their position as a force in the NESCAC women’s rugby league in the coming weeks. The women play Tufts this weekend at home, followed by a home match against Bowdoin Oct. 13.
“This win was an important one for us not only in that it was our first of the season,” said Duh, “but also in that each player on the field gave it their all from the get-go.”
The coming matches at home will test MCWRC against the two strongest teams in the NESCAC.
“We are going to have two tough games at home,” said Berry.
The challenge of the next fortnight also poses a great opportunity for MCWRC, as two victories will lift them over the .500 mark on the season, and gives them a chance to compete for the conference title. The top four teams in the NESCAC qualify for the postseason.
The MCWRC side have qualified for the playoffs in each of the last three seasons.
(09/27/12 12:02am)
The Middlebury men’s soccer team suffered two defeats at home over the weekend, both to NESCAC rivals.
Coming off a three-game win streak that featured both offensive and defensive might, the men’s soccer team anticipated cementing its status as a NESCAC contender. After the team dropped games to Bowdoin (1-0) and Amherst (2-0), however, the Panthers now sit at 1-3 in conference and 3-3 overall, and must head back to the drawing board after being held off the score sheet in consecutive contests.
While the shots statistic may not always be the best indicator of a team’s performance, Middlebury did not offer much challenge to opposing keepers this past weekend. After firing 45 combined shots during its winning run against Norwich, Colby and Plymouth State, the Panthers offense came to a halt at home, managing just five attempts in the two conference games.
Coach Dave Saward spoke about his team’s offensive lapse.
“I believe that shooting is a mental aspect as much as a technical one,” said Saward. “We looked for the perfect shot when we shouldn’t have been. We also need to be more creative in our shot selection and shape shots around defenders.”
Midfielder Sam Peisch ’13.5 echoed his coach’s reaction.
“Being dangerous in the final third is definitely something we need to improve upon,” said Peisch. “This weekend was tough because Bowdoin and Amherst play a style that is not conducive to creating chances, but we definitely need to adjust and attempt to impose our style of play on our opponents.”
In the same respect, Saward also talked about the need for his players to take more risks on the ball.
“The players in forward positions need to have the willingness to fail,” said Saward. “When you look at great strikers of the world, they miss a lot but are also rewarded for keeping at it. The mentality of a finisher has to be selfish. My players are not selfish, but they also need that mentality.”
Another reason for the team’s offensive woes over the weekend was that the two opposing teams held leading-scorer Alvand Hajizadeh ’13 in check. After scoring the winning goal in the last three consecutive contests, Hajizadeh did not record a shot on target, though he did nearly net an equalizer in the second half against Amherst when he fired a shot just wide of the post.
“I wouldn’t say Alvand’s performance has dropped off, just that the quality of the defending was excellent on both teams,” said Saward. “Against strong opponents, it’s that much harder for any striker to find the gaps to get their shots off.”
While both opposing sides from this past weekend are enjoying success this year, Amherst in particular is shaping up to be a national championship threat. The defending NESCAC champion now sits at 5-0.
“They are relentless. They have three or four guys who can hurt you, and in soccer that is a rarity,” said Saward. “That being said, I thought we competed yesterday better than we did against Bowdoin. We had to match their physicality and I was proud of the way the team competed. If we can use that momentum, not the result, we are on the right track.”
Peisch also took some confidence from the Amherst loss.
“I think we showed a lot of heart in the game against Amherst. Even though we lost, we’re confident that we can make a strong run through the NESCAC if we continue to play like we did,” said Peisch.
The team, still awaiting the return of pivotal players Jon Portman ’13, Tyler Smith ’14 and Eric Wilson ’13, and likely to miss Sammie Redmond ’15 for the rest of the year, prepares to head on the road to face Wesleyan this Saturday, Sept. 29.
(09/18/12 2:04am)
During the health and wellness presentation of my freshmen orientation three years ago, 500 other first-year students and I were given two memorable pieces of advice to get us through our first few weeks at Middlebury. First, we were encouraged to aim for a seven on a ten-point scale of appetite. That way, we wouldn't leave the dining hall uncomfortably full or peckish and cranky. Second, we were encouraged to play hard-to-get when looking for love. I left the presentation dismayed and confused about how my appetite and flirting had anything to do with my wellness.
Not surprisingly, the presentation's takeaway messages didn't stick either. When Thanksgiving dinner was served in Proctor, I ate my way to a happy 9.5. When the stars aligned to play hard-to-get, I chose the route of honest and open communication instead. The truth of the matter is that the presentation neither spoke to my particular concerns as a bright-eyed first-year nor caused me to reconsider the way that I approached my own health and well-being.
It's easy to forget that issues of health and wellness exist on this campus. On the whole, we're a good-looking bunch of students. We're intelligent and relatively hard working. We are taught to have a critical eye for the world's most pressing issues. From an outsider's perspective, it seems like we have it figured out. Unfortunately, a stroll around Middlebury's campus on an average weekend night may give a different perspective. Alcohol-related dorm damage peaked two years ago. Last year's "It Happens Here" event attested to the existence of sexual assault on campus. Most of us have traded a cup of coffee for a few hours of sleep, and the number of students that have been tested for sexually transmitted infections doesn't even scratch the surface of the number of students engaged in sex. Why are we so good at so many things and so bad at taking care of ourselves?
After three years of being frustrated with the student body's disregard for their own well-being, I decided that I wanted to do something else – something more concrete – to change the way we talk about health. Plenty of lunchtime conversations about the prohibitive cost of STI testing, late nights spent studying and the Sunday morning post-party debrief led me to become a Student Wellness Leader. Student Wellness Leaders, liaisons to the Office of Health and Wellness, hope to address a few of these concerns. While we're by no means the only group on campus interested in issues of health and wellness, our sole purpose is to organize campus-wide events, host speakers and form dialogue regarding the health of Middlebury students.
Last week, three other Student Wellness Leaders (SWLs) and I hosted a presentation on balanced living for First-Year Orientation. Instead of focusing our efforts on tips and tricks to staying healthy and sane during the transition to college life, we chose to share our own successes and failures in being healthy. We hoped to avoid the pitfalls of a high school health teacher preaching from the pulpit. We decidedly strayed away from discussing the USDA food pyramid and discussions of cardio versus weight training – though we couldn't resist passing out condoms. Hopefully, the presentation didn't go in one ear and out the other, as it had during my orientation, but rather encouraged new students to reflect on their own health and wellness.
This column is an effort to diversify the way we think about and talk about our well-being on campus. Throughout the coming year, SWLs will have the chance to write candidly about the issues they find interesting. Some of us want to talk about sexual health. Some of us want to talk about body image, alcohol, stress or sleep. All of us want to talk about what matters here at Middlebury. This is as much about your questions as it is our contributions – so get to know us because we want to get to know you.
(05/05/11 4:07am)
Roughly 800 runners gathered at the Middlebury Volunteer Ambulance Association on Sunday, May 1 in preparation for the 13.1-mile challenge before them — the 2011 Middlebury Maple Run. The event, which is now in its third year, drew a crowd from across New England. About 40 percent of the participants live outside the state of Vermont, and some even traveled from California and the state of Washington.
Sue Hoxie, co-director of the marathon, also called “The Sweetest Half,” was immensely pleased with the day. A resident of Brandon, Vt., Hoxie works for the Addison County Chamber of Commerce, and she has been involved in the half-marathon since the get-go.
“No one is hurt, there is good weather and everybody seems to be happy,” she said. “It is a great community event.”
All funds generated from registration fees are donated to charity organizations: 75 percent of the proceeds are given to local groups, including the Girls on the Run programs in Middlebury, Vt. and Brandon, Vt., HOPE and the Open Door Clinic. The other 25 percent is donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, as the disease has affected residents of Middlebury. While the specific amount to be donated is still uncertain, the bills from the event had not come in at oress time, a set donation of $1,000 will be contributed to cystic fibrosis.
Andrea Solomon, donor relations event manager at the College and the other co-director of the Maple Run, and said the inclusion of a national organization was done in an effort to attract people from different regions of the country.
“The half-marathon was phenomenal,” she said. “People were psyched to run and the route is really, really beautiful. The fact that it raises money for charities and everyone here is a volunteer is really unique.”
Solomon stressed the importance of the preparation needed to ensure the event ran smoothly. She said the planning process takes an entire year and each month there is a comprehensive list of things to accomplish. A planning committee of eight members, each specializing in a different aspect of race organization, helped Hoxie and Solomon run the event with ease.
“I just feel so lucky to be able to show people the beautiful place we live and raise money at the same time, which is great,” said Solomon.
Several students from the College volunteered at the Maple Run. The track and cross-country teams were especially influential in the successful execution of the day. Terry Aldrich, former track and cross-country coach, is in charge of recruiting volunteers, who worked at the finish line and at the water stations along the course.
“The best part of volunteering is getting to see all the other runners in the area kicking it,” said Cailey Condit ’11, who runs track and cross-country at the College, in an email.
Teammate Sarah O’Brien ’13 agreed.
“It’s fun for us to get to support and cheer on the efforts of other runners,” she said in an email. “The atmosphere of road races is always so positive and it was equally nice to get a lot of thanks from the participants for volunteering.”
Participation has increased each year, and the Maple Run’s popularity continues to grow. In 2009, the event’s first year, there were 250 runners; last year, 500 individuals participated; this year, 800 runners registered. Solomon believes there were an additional 2,000 people watching the race as well.
Angelo Lynn, editor of the Addison Independent and a resident of Middlebury, Vt., is on the organizing committee for the half-marathon and also ran the course, which twists and turns through the town and College campus and past UVM’s Morgan Horse Farm. He believes the team is getting better at planning the event each year and is pleased with the improvements implemented for this year’s race. For the first time, several roads were shut down to vehicular traffic, ensuring a more pleasant running environment. Lynn acknowledged and appreciated greatly the cooperation from the town.
“In my opinion, this is a must do running event,” said Gale Parmelee, who works at WVTK radio, on the Maple Run’s website. “The energy and spirit of the organizers and participants is very positive. As you run through the majestic Middlebury and Weybridge scenery you can’t help but smile and feel great.”
“It’s a great sense of community that showcases very well what life in rural New England, especially Addison County, is all about,” Parmelee said.
It brings people from all corners of New England together. It’s good for the whole town.
-Kim Cook, Weybridge, Vt.
I ran the last mile in conversation with a coffee roaster from across the Green Mountains.
-Misha Gerschel ’13
I’m wiped out, I didn’t train enough.
-John Lyons, West Rutland, Vt.
I know many runners weren’t from Middlebury, but I felt a nice sense of community at the event.
-Grady Trela ’13
Our trainer talked us into it; that’s a nice way of putting it.
-Deb Rathburn, Plainfield, Vt.
I also really appreciated all of the town and College supporters that were cheering us on - they definitely made me smile and reminded me why I was running.
-Lauren Sanchez ’11
I remember looking at this sea of people in front of me and this sea of people behind me as we all moved in a big pack through the heart of Middlebury.
-Emily Mathews, athletic trainer
I just totally love Middlebury and I feel really strongly about HOPE and giving back to the
community.
-Andrea Solomon, donor relations event manager
We liked it so much we came back.
-Dot Martin, Montpelier, Vt.
(05/05/11 3:59am)
Around 200 students packed into the McCullough Social Space on Tuesday night, May 3 for the open student forum “Alcohol: Use, Abuse, and Disrespect for Community.”
The all-student email announcement for the forum provoked strong student reactions and helped boost turnout with the tagline “Is a Dry Campus the Only Answer?”
President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz opened the forum by assuaging student fears.
“The email was not sent to scare people and there is no intention of a dry campus here, at least not on my watch,” said Liebowitz. “The issue was how to get students to come to the forum and actually share their opinions.”
Thirty-six students took the microphone to voice their opinions during the nearly two-hour open discussion, which Liebowitz and Dean of the College and Chief Diversity Officer Shirley Collado moderated.
Before opening the floor to discussion, Executive Director of Health and Counseling Services Gus Jordan and Assistant Director of Custodial Services Linda Ross gave PowerPoint presentations outlining alcohol use trends and dorm damage at the College. Jordan’s presentation used data from the College Alcohol Study distributed in November 2010, the AlcoholEdu survey taken by incoming Middlebury students every year since 2007 and national responses to the AlcoholEdu survey.
Jordan emphasized the increase in alcohol consumption by first-years visible in the data during his presentation. Thirty-two percent of students in the class of 2014 were considered high-risk drinkers — having five or more drinks in one sitting — when they arrived at the College. But six to eight weeks later, 55 percent of students in the class of 2014 were high-risk drinkers. In comparison, the national average of high-risk drinkers entering college this fall was 24 percent, and 31 percent were high-risk drinkers six to eight weeks later.
Between September 2010 and January 2011, of the 25 visits to the emergency room for alcohol, 16 were first-years, data that the administration thought lent credence to their concerns about underage drinking — especially heavy drinking among first-years.
Some students suggested that alcohol abuse is related to the stress of academics at the College. Although Collado agreed that the heavy workload creates stress that may lead to drinking, stress cannot be used as the sole explanation.
“There shouldn’t be an excess [of work], but there also can’t be a disconnect between work and behavior,” she said. “If you want to be treated like an adult, you need to be able to balance your work and be accountable for your drinking."
Lucas Alvarez ’11 agreed with Collado. He attributes alcohol abuse and dorm damage to a certain level of immaturity among some students.
“The workload problem is a problem in and of itself, but I don’t think it’s a reason for our decisions in drinking, for the alcohol problem on campus or for destroying something,” Alvarez said. “Saying that’s the problem is a cop-out because we are responsible for our own actions, and we are responsible for how much we drink or if we take a chair and break it.”
Hudson Cavanagh ’14 believes that increasing alcohol education for incoming students during orientation will lower alcohol abuse rates.
“Sacrificing academic work time for a long-term education regarding drinking is not only a good investment of time and money, but it sends a great message from the administration’s perspective,” Cavanagh said.
The cost of dorm damage has also steadily increased in recent years. Through April of this academic year, the College has incurred $104,500 of dorm damage, a record amount. The damage has been highest in sophomore and senior housing and relatively low in social houses, which Matthew Hedgpeth ’12, president of Omega Alpha (Tavern), relates to a lack of concern for temporary housing. The social houses might avoid the excessive damage that occurs in places like the Atwater suites because students build a home and a history with their social house.
In the dorms, students are “only living there for a semester or for a year and then they’re gone,” Hedgpeth said.
Ashley Litzenberger ’12, a member of Omega Alpha, agreed.
“Respect [for] the space you live in is something unique to social houses because you’re there from the day you pledge,” said Litzenberger. “You know you’re going to come back there, so it’s really a place you become invested in.”
Hedgpeth and Litzenberger both suggested fostering the kind of community and accountability present in the social houses as one potential approach to the issue of dorm damage. Scott Klenet ’12, treasurer of Omega Alpha, also emphasized the role social houses play in providing social spaces for students, especially safe, regulated places for students to drink. The suggestion that students should undergo the same crowd control and alcohol safety training that social house members do in order to host suite or house parties came up more than once.
Liebowitz said that of all the reforms proposed by students, generally improving the protocols for registering official parties with the school would be the most likely to be implemented at this point.
“The bureaucratic red tape is problematic and prevents or inhibits students from having official events,” Liebowitz said.
As with all aspects of the College’s alcohol policy, however, Liebowitz stressed that Middlebury must comply with Vermont State alcohol laws, which are some of the strictest in the country. Peter Weinberg ’11 challenged the administration to institute a “progressive” alcohol policy in defiance of “ineffective” state laws, similar to other colleges and universities around the country, but Liebowitz quickly dispatched the argument.
“Students have to understand that they may come from Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts or California, but this is Vermont and the world we live in,” Liebowitz said after the forum.
Students repeatedly criticized Public Safety during the forum for excessively issuing citations for minor offenses such as having an unopened beer in their room, but Associate Dean of the College and Director of Public Safety Lisa Boudah also pointed out that her hands are tied.
“If I see a beer next to you and you’re under 21, [I can’t] just go walk away,” Boudah said. “The College can be held civilly liable for not intervening to stop drinking.”
Collado emphasized that student involvement will be important going forward, and she circulated a sign-up sheet throughout the crowd during the forum. Twenty-eight students had signed up at press time.
Liebowitz also asked students to stay involved by getting in touch with him.
“We [the administration] don’t want to act until we talk to students,” he said. “I’m willing to hear students out and consider changes to everything we do as long as it’s inside the confines of the law.”
Despite the disagreements among students and administrators alike, Jordan hailed the forum as a great success. According to Jordan, a similar alcohol forum two years ago without any accompanying survey data drew only 20 students.
“It’s great to get a dynamic conversation like this going when students are talking to students and the administration is talking to students, and we’re all listening to each other,” he said. “That’s where we have to be.”
Some students complained that the administration was ‘babying’ them and accused Old Chapel of trying to step into the ‘parent’ role by regulating the College’s social life.
But Liebowitz said he and the administration are looking out for the welfare of students.
“You can ask my wife — every single night I worry about my students,” he said. “If that means being accused of parenting, then so be it."
(04/28/11 4:07am)
Middlebury has some of the best facilities and resources of any small liberal arts college in America, but not by chance. As our academic standing improved in the last decade, we invested heavily in our infrastructure. Our once modest campus was transformed through the large-scale building projects including Atwater suites, Atwater dining hall, the Davis Family Library, Bi Hall and the Axinn Center; not to mention the extensive renovations of the athletic complex, McCullough and Proctor to name just a few. But unlike many colleges, we did not mandate complete financing prior to starting a building project and therefore we took on hundreds of millions in debt to finance this construction.
Middlebury currently holds approximately $290 million in long-term debt (almost $400 million of total liabilities) and an endowment of only $840 million. Our fiscal year 2011 operating budget (the amount of money we plan to spend this year) is $230 million, which is financed through a number of means — 55 percent is generated by undergraduate admission fees, 11 percent from Bread Loaf /Language school/ Middlebury Schools Abroad and a whopping 21 percent is financed from our endowment. This is substantially greater than other comparable colleges such as Williams or Amherst that only finance approximately 5 percent of their operating budget through their endowment.
Middlebury has developed an irresponsible and unsustainable habit of dipping into the endowment to fund current operations, effectively subsidizing the total cost of a Middlebury College education. With so much debt on our balance sheet, we spend seven percent ($16 million) of our annual operating budget servicing our debt. Coincidently, we finance seven percent of our operating budget through “gifts and campaigning” meaning our “gift” donors are essentially paying the interest costs of our lavish spending during the early and mid 2000s.
Despite the historic global recession, Middlebury has increased its operating budget every year on record with a total increase of 29 percent since 2005. You may question this considering the aggressive budget cuts, such as the reduction in financial aid, closing of Atwater dining hall or even the temporarily unkempt lawn surrounding the Bi Hall quad. But think about the new fleet of public safety vehicles (The ’04 Ford Escape just didn’t cut it) or Middlebury’s taste for expensive art. Since 1994 Middlebury has followed a ‘one percent policy’ that “sets aside one percent of the cost of any renovation or new construction at the college for the purchase, installation, maintenance and interpretation of works of art publicly displayed on campus” — Axinn alone would mandate $500,000 to be spent on public art. The arts are an integral aspect of a liberal arts education; however, we are spending money we do not have to follow an outdated policy in the midst of a historic economic downturn.
Middlebury has found itself in an unfortunate situation. We are attempting to preserve the quality of a top liberal arts education while maintaining the resources of a university without economies of scale; hence our pricy tuition that is, as incredible as it seems, heavily subsidized through the endowment draw down. This pattern of spending is of concern and is simply unsustainable without generous and continuous alumni support. There is no doubt that Middlebury is financially dependent on donations and yet, they have frankly failed to make me want to donate.
I have grown increasingly frustrated with Middlebury’s arbitrary institutional policies, underfunded Career Services Office, power hunger, rude public safety officers and a set of parking rules that just don’t make sense. With an operational model clearly dependent upon donations to fund current/future operations, it is unclear why the administration has not made a better effort to promote an amicable relationship with the student body.
The quality of the student body, professors and the overall experience at Middlebury is unparalleled but the petty administrative policies are bound to frustrate any well-educated young adult. Given their donation dependent financial model, they need to reform their approach to administrative policies because they risk alienating the potential donors upon whom they depend.
(04/21/11 4:06am)
Housing registration for juniors and seniors at Middlebury sucks the big one. It’s overly convoluted, illogical, stressful and frustrating. Even when everything goes smoothly, as it did this year, and we avoid debacles like last year’s, the system seems to cultivate stress and anxiety when there really doesn’t need to be any. It’s too late for me; as a rising senior, I’ll be worrying about leases and rent next spring, rather than random lottery numbers. But for the sake of all future Midd Kids, it should be at the top of the College’s priority list to fix the housing registration system. Here are some ideas:
Give every block size a separate registration window. Making blocks of five, four and three apply in one fell swoop makes no sense at all. As it stands, a group of five friends applying for all three block sizes must choose two friends who will be severely shafted if the five-or four-block doesn’t come through. If they were separate registration windows, it would give the fourth and fifth wheels the chance to attach themselves to another block for a new application, instead of waiting for singles draw to salvage what they can with their number.
Don’t be so mysterious with the numbers. After every round of registration, it would be very helpful if they released which numbers were used in that round. That way, we would know what our numbers actually mean (i.e., #55 is actually #41 after six-block draw), and allow us to more accurately gauge our chances of getting the housing we want. This is a change that might not produce any tangible difference for the ultimate housing assignments, but it would reduce stress and generally increase the transparency of the process. Best of all, it would be so easy to do.
Don’t limit the number of available blocks. Living in a suite or house with friends should be a luxury reserved for people who get stellar numbers. But living near friends in general should not be a luxury; in fact, it should be guaranteed at a College charging over $50,000 in tuition. A group of four friends with lousy numbers should still have a chance to live near each other, even if they have to settle for a mediocre dorm. The reform here is simple: don’t block rooms together until all applications have been received. Students will apply to individual hallways (i.e., Starr 5, Painter 2, Forest West 3, etc.), ranking them in the order of their preference (much like they do now, with pre-defined blocks). Then, when you know how many groups of six (or five, or four, etc.) want to live together, assign them all blocks in the order of their dorm preference. After doing blocks of six, move to five, then four, then three, and so on. It’s like that activity in science class where you have to fit small rocks and big rocks into a cup. If you do the small rocks first, the big rocks just sit on top and won’t fit. But if you put the big rocks in first, the small ones fill in the cracks and they all fit. Much of the anxiety of housing registration comes from people wanting the best housing possible, but a much more significant portion comes from people being scared that they will get stuck in Hepburn while the rest of their friends live in Chateau. Eliminating a pre-defined set of blocks would prevent groups of friends from being needlessly split up, and would reduce the stress and tensions of registration.
Put on-campus housing registration BEFORE off-campus housing applications are due. At the very least, make off-campus applications due after the random numbers are released. That way, if you get screwed by on-campus housing, you can avoid Summer Draw by banding together with other on-campus housing rejects and getting a house off-campus. Students shouldn’t have to be forced to choose to live off-campus before they know what their on-campus housing prospects look like.
These are just a few changes that could very easily be made to our housing registration system over the course of the next 10 months. People will always complain if they get a bad number, but there are more universally regrettable features of the housing system that are bound to irk everyone from one to 1,500. Personally, I feel the live draw is a better and overall more fair system (picture sophomore year room draw on a larger scale), but the application system we have can work if those in charge are willing to take feedback and suggestions from the student body. We are, after all, the ones who have to live with your decisions.
(04/14/11 4:04am)
A native of Sydney, Australia, former resident of New York City, and current reverend at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Middlebury, Terence Gleeson is gearing up for his next big move: future Rector of All Saints in Palo Alto, Calif.
“Palo Alto is one of the most exciting and creative zip codes in the US and really in the world,” said Gleeson, who noted its connection to the high-tech industry of Silicon Valley, and to Stanford University, located within the parish.
Still, Gleeson finds it hard to leave Middlebury, as he has lived here since 2005 when he was elected rector of St. Stephen’s. For six years, he has worked hard to uphold the church’s outreach programs, “a very, very strong tradition here.” At the international level, the church works with an orphanage in Mexico, and with a group of parishioners also traveled on a mission trip three years ago to an orphanage in Honduras. Gleeson has kept in close contact with the organization and hopes the group will return next year to continue its charitable work. Last year, the church also donated clothing and diapers for 32 AIDS orphans in Zambia.
He also deeply values the St. Stephen’s local outreach programs. In 2010, the church provided nearly 3,400 pounds of food to local food shelves, prepared and served over 1,500 community lunches and volunteered at the Charter House shelter and HOPE food shelf, among numerous other endeavors. Every year, the church holds the Peasant Market, which takes place in July and is usually followed by the town’s Festival on the Green. It brings together parishioners and other community members who sell anything from clothing to books to household items in order to raise funds for charities in the state and abroad. Last year, the church raised $25,000.
Gleeson, who was ordained 30 years ago, can appreciate life in a small rural town particularly well, as he compares it to his experiences in New York City. Working as a priest in the city, Gleeson became involved with the not-for-profit agency PSCH (Professional Service Centers for the Handicapped), and he worked with developmentally disabled and mentally ill people. After being promoted numerous times, Gleeson found himself director of the agency, the fourth largest agency in the city. Throughout his years in various parishes in NY, Gleeson remained dedicated to charitable programs.
“The parish I was in had a major feeding program,” said Gleeson. “We do the same thing at St. Stephen’s, but obviously on a smaller scale.”
Gleeson said that another difference between working in New York City and in Middlebury was the relationship to the community.
“In a small town you are much more connected not only to your whole parish, but to your whole community,” he said. “There are just as many people from the community of Middlebury that are contacting us and wishing us well as [people from] our own parish.”
Still, Gleeson said that, “some things are always the same: you’re always preaching, you’re always celebrating sacraments, always visiting the sick.”
Another thing that has remained constant in Gleeson’s life has been his desire to become a priest.
“There was never really anything else I wanted to do,” he said. “It was easy. I did not have a huge drama, no great decision making.”
Gleeson spent a third of his priesthood in Australia, before he came to the U.S. about 20 years ago. He worked in parishes and served as University Chaplain for students at what is now called University of Wollongong. In addition to “celebrating liturgy on campus, leading bible study [and] being available for students for counseling,” Gleeson also received his graduate degree in education, “just for fun, to keep me busy.”
Having grown up in a Roman Catholic household, Gleeson was ordained a Catholic priest in Australia. He said that the switch to the Episcopal Church was relatively easy.
“They have almost identical liturgy and ceremonial aspects,” said Gleeson. “The faith is the same, but the role and use of authority is different.”
While undoubtedly excited for his new position in California, Gleeson and his partner, who got married in Vermont and adopted a daughter together, are finding it difficult to leave the Middlebury community.
“I will miss that human contact to people that I have grown to know and love, people that have been very encouraging and supportive and delightful,” he said.
The church’s connection to the College is clearly strong, as many parishioners are members of the faculty and staff, and John McCardell, president emeritus of the College, was a senior warden at St. Stephen’s before he became president of Sewanee, an Episcopal college in Tennessee. Similarly, Gleeson has fostered many valued relationships within the College community.
“For a small town it [Middlebury] has such a concentration of talent and creativity and intelligence. That is pretty amazing,” he said. “I had dinner with two New York Times best-selling authors last night, which is more unusual in N.Y.”
Not having grown up near mountains, Gleeson is also constantly amazed at “the sheer beauty of this state,” which he will miss dearly.
Still, Palo Alto offers an appealing next location.
“It has high energy, imagination and creativity,” said Gleeson. “And it doesn’t snow. For a boy from Sydney it does not get much better.”
