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(12/02/21 10:58am)
Karen Duguay, executive director of Experience Middlebury, was honored with the Buster Brush Citizen of the Year Award at the annual Addison County Chamber of Commerce awards ceremony on Oct. 28 for her essential contributions to Neighbors, Together (NT), a community action group that supported local Middlebury businesses while the key stages of the Bridge & Rail Project inhibited the flow of traffic through downtown last year. Duguay was also recognized for her work as an administrator through the Better Middlebury Partnership (BMP).
(12/02/21 10:59am)
Sophomores Youness Cheboubi ’24 and Malick Thiam ’24 organized and ran in a marathon on Sunday, Nov. 21 that raised over $2,600 for Hunger Free Vermont, a local organization that fights food injustice and malnutrition. Dozens of students came out to help run sections of the marathon and kept morale high throughout the event.
(11/18/21 10:59am)
All Middlebury faculty and staff will receive two extra vacation days and a $1,500 bonus this December, according to an email from the Vice President for Human Resources to all staff and faculty.
(11/18/21 10:56am)
Leave the elaborate set and extensive casts to faculty shows. Theses, in contrast, are the simpler, single-celled protozoa at the root of the theatrical tree of life. “No One is Forgotten,” Gabrielle Martin's ’21.5 acting thesis and Madison Middleton’s ’22.5 500-level work in directing, written by Winter Miller, revels in the power of this streamlined medium. The play opens with two assumed journalist captives in a concrete cell. Contrary to journalism’s concise exposition, details in this play are provided only as frequently as the prisoners’ oatmeal.
(11/11/21 10:58am)
Last Thursday, Nov. 4, the Vermont Agency of Transportation, in collaboration with the Regional Planning Commission, held a public meeting to discuss truck traffic in the town of Vergennes and the surrounding area. All participants in the meeting received a handout detailing the Planning and Environment Linkages (PEL) Study that aims to address the truck traffic problem and explore alternative transportation and planning options.
(11/04/21 9:57am)
Club sports at Middlebury have rapidly increased in popularity among students in recent years, but many of their leaders say that the administration and the Student Government Association (SGA) have not given them the budget necessary to maintain safe and competitive teams.
(10/28/21 9:56am)
From May through August of 2021, recent Middlebury graduates Cole Merrell ’21 and Jacob Morton ’21 spent their days driving around Vermont, writing, filming, directing and editing a web series titled “The Deli People.” Through the passionate efforts of about 15 Middlebury students and faculty, as well as one yet-to-be-revealed local celebrity, “The Deli People” is set to release on YouTube on November 14 as an eight-episode event, totaling 90 minutes of comedy and drama about a fictional cult — a “cult comedy,” as the creators, jokingly, put it.
(10/14/21 9:59am)
One year after Middlebury received a $500,000 donation to support anti-racism programming, seven projects have received funding and six have begun in departments across the college. President Laurie Patton currently oversees about half of the donation, which has yet to be allocated, while Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández oversees the remaining $250,000. Of these funds, $200,000 will be spent on the Vermont campus and $50,000 is for the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey (MIIS).
The Faculty Committee for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (CDEI) received $105,000, used to provide grants to departments or programs working on long-term projects to combat institutional racism. Professor of Film and Media Culture David Miranda Hardy is the chair of the CDEI and oversees the grant process.
“The idea of the grants are to find a very specific point of intervention in academic units,” Hardy said. “We felt an infusion of funding could incentivize faculty that are already interested to work in that direction.”
Of the projects, six are already in progress, and applications are accepted on a rolling basis. The grants are capped at $8,000 each.
One of the seven grants is going to the economics department to support students of color.
“The departmental climate for minority students was substantially different than for white students, so they decided to create a system of mentorship that will also improve access to professional opportunities,” Hardy said.
The theater department is using its grant for curricular revision with the help of experts in decolonizing curricula. The Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies department is using grant money to develop a medical humanities certificate.
“This will incorporate a feminist and anti-racist lens to the pre-health track, which was based on experiences of recent alums going into the health profession,” Hardy said.
The Luso-Hispanic Studies department is modifying its curriculum to allow for better learning experiences for heritage speakers that have learned Spanish in non-academic settings. Another grant is going to Beyond The Page, a group that combines theater performances with other academic disciplines.
The final in-progress project is a student-driven initiative in the education department to develop a sophomore seminar on anti-racism. Additionally, the Writing and Rhetoric Program will soon start a project to enhance anti-racist pedagogies in college writing classes.
The Office of Admissions received another $10,000 of the donation to participate in the Ron Brown Scholars Program, a college scholarship and leadership program for Black students, for two years.
The Twilight Project received $15,000, allowing Rebekah Irwin, director and curator of Special Collections and Archives, to hire a part-time archivist, Kaitlin Buerge ’13. Buerge, who recently finished her time as an archivist at the completion of the project, was responsible for outreach to underrepresented student groups and for curating and archiving content like social media and student publications and projects.
“The Twilight Archivist dedicated technical expertise and time to anti-oppressive cataloging standards, addressing racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other systems of exclusion in our catalog and archival descriptions,” Irwin said in an email to The Campus. Some examples of Buerge’s work include the Reparative Cataloging Project and Community Responses to Anti-Black Racism and Police Violence.
A project organized by Professor of Education Studies Tara Affolter received $6,000 in order to fund a series of short films and a live performance exploring what anti-racism would look like within each academic discipline.
Affolter has hired six students to interview peers across departments, and also works with Beyond The Page to turn the interviews into a script for a live theater performance.
“We want to use the arts to see what we could be, staying in a space of hope and possibility,” Affolter said.
The live performance will take place on December 11, with a filmed version to be released in spring 2022. The filmed version will be used to help with faculty professional development spaces such as workshops and faculty meetings.
The final $5,000 was set aside to join the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, an organization dedicated to training faculty and students in the professional environment. The balance of $59,000 for ongoing anti-racist projects proposed by the Antiracism Task Force is overseen by Associate Professor of Dance Christal Brown.
The Middlebury Institute of International Studies also received funding to hire two graduate assistants to work on anti-racism initiatives and support other anti-racism work at the institute.
(10/07/21 9:56am)
The Student Activities Office emailed student organization leaders last week with updated information about college-sanctioned travel guidelines, including new restrictions on lodging intended to mitigate Covid-19 risks.
These standards have the greatest impact on club sports, which resumed competition and travel for the fall season but are not supervised as closely as varsity sports. Other student organizations that travel for competitions or overnight trips are subject to the same guidelines.
The new guidelines require student organization leaders to submit a travel request for each overnight trip. These requests, which are processed by the student organization liaison, can take up to three days. Overnight accommodations must be official lodging establishments such as hotels, and there is a strict capacity limit of two students per room.
While varsity athletes are tested every Monday, there is no required testing for traveling club sports teams. There are a limited number of testing slots available through the college’s weekly asymptomatic testing program in Virtue Field House.
Lily Shannon ’23, president of the women’s club rugby team, expressed their personal anxiety about traveling for competition and the college’s insufficient plan to address that risk.
The rugby team’s season has returned to its normal schedule of tournaments, which includes traveling for half of their games. Masks are required during gameplay, but Shannon still feels uneasy about the risks involved in competing.
“We are playing a contact sport; we are outside, but it is hard to stay distanced. Since we aren't getting regularly tested, none of us really know what's going on. I fully trust my teammates, but it would be nice if we could have more peace of mind,” Shannon said.
As the president of the team, Shannon has encouraged their teammates to sign up for asymptomatic testing, especially after longer travel weekends.
“If it were up to me, we would all be tested weekly regardless of athlete status or not, but the fact that we are still traveling out of state and not offered tests is a little concerning,” Shannon said.
Marco Fengler ’23, president of the co-ed club soccer team, believes the current guidelines are appropriate for traveling sports teams. Although the team remains cautious about Covid-19, Fengler believes the health risks and exposure are low because the majority of the campus population has been vaccinated.
“The college recently reported a significantly low Covid incidence rate, which gives us comfort in holding normal practices,” he said.
Fengler said that the wellness of his teammates is always a priority and that the team emphasizes safe playing conditions and injury prevention at each practice.
The club soccer team has 180 members, although most players do not attend all practices and only a small group of players travel to tournaments. Last week, the team traveled to Boston, a trip that complied with the current Covid-19 guidelines because the city falls within a 500-mile radius from campus.
The men’s and women’s Pranksters frisbee team competed in a tournament at Williams College this past weekend. The game was played on an outside field and every player was required to provide proof of vaccination. With such mitigation guidelines in place, Rae Zeller ’22, captain of the women’s team, told The Campus that health risks were not a major concern at the tournament.
However, Zeller felt it was disappointing that the college did not have other safety precautions in place for when club players return to campus, instead relying on team captains to take the initiative to encourage testing.
“We did recommend everyone get a test this week and directed them to the free Vermont Health Department asymptomatic testing in town,” said Zeller. “It was also disappointing that this was something we did on our own, and it wasn’t recommended in any communication to club sports that we’ve been getting from the school.”
(09/30/21 9:58am)
At the end of morning classes at 12:15 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday, students begin flooding into Proctor Dining Hall. The food line stretches beyond the doors and out to the Middlebury Chapel. In Ross, the line runs from the serving stations to the Ross Fireplace Lounge and wraps back on itself, leading out into the hall. As Middlebury faces the dual challenges of over-enrollment and understaffing, aspects of student life from dining hall lines to parking tickets have demonstrated the ways the college’s resources are stretched thin.
Dining halls have struggled in the first weeks of the semester, with more students than ever to feed and about half of the staff that they had before the start of the pandemic, according to Michael Gose, who has worked as a dining hall staff member at Middlebury for six years. The crowds that file into the dining hall during rush hour overwhelm the staff, who are working triple their normal workload. As students leave, dishes pile up, and it takes longer to clean them with fewer staff.
In 2019 — when the school was fully enrolled at approximately 2,500 students — the dining hall had one staff member at each station. Now, one person works about three stations at a time, taking on additional responsibilities with more than 300 extra students to serve and clean up after. In addition, all dining hall staff are pulling more overtime hours and have to close stations earlier so they can leave closer to a normal time.
“Dealing with pandemic things [in the dining hall] changed a lot, and now we have to get back to normal, which is a challenge. With Covid, a lot of our staff have left and we have not been able to bring back the amount of workers we need to support us,” Gose said.
The number of dining hall staff members has declined over the past year, as employees have left for other jobs or quit out of concern about contracting Covid-19 from students in the dining halls, according to Gose.
“I don’t remember a time I’ve ever seen the Proc line actually go outside. Ross sometimes got pretty crowded, but I’ve still never seen the lines get this long,” Kristina Pompilio ’23 said.
In an email sent from Dean of Students Derek Doucet on Sept. 23, students were encouraged to eat outside of the lunch rush — if possible.
“We all know that lunchtime on Tuesdays and Thursdays can be hectic,” the email reads, “but there are some ways you can help to spread out traffic, help our friends in dining services, and enhance the dining experience for all. If you don’t have a class that ends at 12:15 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays (there are approximately 1,300 of you who don’t), consider taking lunch early on those days. Or opt for Atwater, which is less heavily used than Proctor and Ross.”
Along with long wait times in dining halls, students have struggled to find spaces in the college’s parking lots — and have received tickets for parking on grass or in faculty lots as a last resort.
“I have not even used my car yet because I’m afraid I’ll get a ticket if there isn’t parking when I return. Middlebury needs to be more flexible or come up with a solution,” Thea Joseph ’22 said.
Public Safety has ticketed cars parked outside of their permitted lot, or on the grass, where many students have been parking when there are no available spots in the lots close to them.
First year students are required to park their cars in the Q Lot, beside the Mahaney Arts Center on the edge of campus, while sophomores, juniors, and seniors are allocated space in both the Q Lot and in other student lots around campus. The Q Lot — a fifteen minute walk from many upperclassman residences — often has spaces when the far closer R Lot and E Lots are full, but students returning to campus late at night when lots are full are reluctant to walk nearly a mile to their dorms.
“Parking is available on a first-come first-serve basis,” PubSafe said in an email to The Campus. “There is adequate student parking on campus. It just is not always in the lot preferred by the vehicle operator.”
Jonah Joseph ’24 said it still felt like too many passes were distributed to students.
“It’s very clear Middlebury needs more parking,” Jonah said. “And if they don’t provide it, they need to be more flexible.”
Tickets range anywhere from $10 to $50 for parking in the wrong place. Students are also allowed to use most faculty and staff lots during the weekend, but must move their cars back to a student lot before Sunday at midnight.
(09/23/21 9:56am)
(09/16/21 9:59am)
For the first time in history, Middlebury will house undergraduates at the Bread Loaf campus to accommodate some of the more than 300 extra students enrolled at the college this fall. The college also purchased the Inn on the Green in August and arranged several rooms at the Marriott Hotel on Court Street to house students during the semester.
Disruptions from the Covid-19 pandemic led to a drastic increase in the college’s student population. This fall, several hundred students returned after taking time off during the 2020-21 academic year, approximately 150 more students remained on campus who would typically have been abroad, and high enrollment in the first-year class brought the student body to more than 2,800.
After exhausting campus dorm spaces and allowing all upperclassmen who applied to live off-campus, additional rooms were still needed to house students. Residential Life assigned 63 students to Bread Loaf and an additional 20 to the Inn on the Green, which the college intends to use for student housing over the next three years. Another 15 students will reside in the Marriott Hotel, according to AJ Place, associate dean of students. The decision to reserve 33 Adirondack View and 220 College Street as quarantine and emergency use spaces further limited on-campus housing options.
The college announced the new Bread Loaf housing option via email July 15, presenting it as a “unique opportunity for juniors and seniors” and an “intentional community.”
Middlebury initially tried to incentivize students to volunteer to live at Bread Loaf by offering a $1,500 room and dining credit to Bread Loaf residents. However, the incentives were later expanded to 50% off room and board costs, an advanced housing selection draw for fall 2022, free ski equipment rentals and passes to the Snow Bowl and Rikert Nordic Center, complimentary laundry service and a faculty/staff parking pass to allow parking anywhere on campus aside from ADA-only spaces.
“After further consideration and conferring with some student groups, we decided to offer a more significant incentive to draw more applicants,” Place said. He also said the costs of housing students at Bread Loaf would exceed any revenue from extra tuition but could not offer more specific estimates.
Only 22 students elected to live at Bread Loaf, while another 41 had no other choice due to a late housing draw time slot. The Marriott residents will receive the same discounted room and board as the Bread Loaf students, but those at Inn on the Green will not.
“We got to Middlebury expecting to have a Middlebury experience, paying to have a Middlebury experience, and not being a part of campus life and having a room on campus is in no way that experience,” Sam Lipin ’23.5 said. Lipin was assigned involuntarily to live at Bread Loaf.
For Lipin, the college’s incentives are insufficient compensation for the social and academic costs of living at Bread Loaf. Further increasing Lipin’s frustration is that he has only had about five weeks of normal campus life. He and other members of the class of 2023.5 living at Bread Loaf came to Midlebury in the spring of 2020 and have not yet experienced a full, normal semester on campus.
“The incentives to me are basically nothing. Honestly, it should probably be all of room and board off, and maybe even some of tuition,” Lipin said.
Residential Life has worked to create the advertised “intentional community” at Bread Loaf by planning social and outdoor activities at the satellite campus, but isolation from the main campus and other obstacles have hampered efforts.
“Since the group of students living at Bread Loaf will be fairly small, we’re expecting to help build a strong community for these students,” Place said. “This will include programming that utilizes outdoor spaces and the resources that are abundant at Bread Loaf.”
Bread Loaf students were promised an on-campus student lounge, but as of Sept. 14, the college is still working to identify and designate an on-campus space to serve as a lounge.
Another concern for Bread Loaf students is transportation between the campuses. Shuttles depart from Bread Loaf beginning at 6 a.m., and run every hour with a mid-morning and mid-afternoon break in service. The shuttle also stops at the Marriott before reaching Adirondack Circle (ADK), an estimated half hour after leaving Bread Loaf. On weeknights (Sunday through Wednesday), the final shuttle departs ADK for the Marriott and Bread Loaf at 11:30 p.m., and on weekends (Thursday through Saturday), the last time slot is extended to 1:30 a.m.
Bread Loaf students will have full access to dining halls on the main campus, as well as a continental breakfast from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., dinner from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. and grab-and-go options offered in the Bread Loaf dining hall. Four positions were added to the dining department to staff the new dining hall; two new hires and two previous employees from the main campus will work at Bread Loaf, according to Executive Director of Food Service Operations Dan Detora. The dining department currently has 12 vacant positions.
Despite the obstacles, Place and Dean of Students Derek Doucet remain optimistic about the success of Bread Loaf.
“We know that there are some inconveniences to the location,” Place and Doucet said in an email to The Campus. “But we are confident this group will find the experience of living at the Bread Loaf campus rewarding.”
Note: Sam Lipin ’23.5 is a Sports Editor for The Campus
(06/24/21 4:03pm)
Faculty and staff will receive a 2% raise on July 1, and the college will address wage compression, according to a June 18 email from Provost Jeff Cason and Treasurer David Provost. A second email sent 10 minutes later from Provost and Cason — received only by facilities and dining staff members — contained details of department-specific bonus incentive programs which aim to alleviate the “significant staffing shortage brought on by the low unemployment rate and the pandemic.”
In the first email, administrators announced that “all eligible faculty and staff hired before April 1 will receive a 2 percent increase for the 2021-2022 fiscal year beginning July 1, with the exception of those receiving increases due to promotions.” These raises come after vocal concerns about wages voiced by staff members after a year of increased workloads, reshuffling and scheduling changes.
The first email also announced that after a year and a half of student and staff advocacy, the college would address widespread pay compression among its staff members. Pay compression occurs when the wage for entry-level employees is raised, but the wage for more experienced employees remains the same, ‘compressing’ the pay gap between the two. In the email, administrators promised to “apply adjustments to ensure that length of service is considered consistently when setting individual pay rates.”
In an email to The Campus, Provost clarified that the administration was aware of the resulting pay compression from the January 2020 pay raises, and is now taking steps to address it.
“The rates of pay of all benefits-eligible staff in these ranges were analyzed to ensure a minimum difference in pay for each year of service,” he said. “This step will redistribute employees’ pay above the new minimums, effectively reestablishing a difference in pay between individuals throughout the range, based on length of service, alleviating compression.”
One longtime dining staff member, who spoke to The Campus on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retribution from management, attested to the impact of wage compression on staff.
“[Pay compression] is probably the biggest reason why employees at our level are leaving. It has created a significant amount of disgruntlement,” the dining staff member said. “They should have addressed that immediately when they instituted the fair wage entry level raises. People don't buy into the reasoning that the budget wasn't there during the pandemic to take care of compression.”
The dining staff member also expressed discontentment with the July 1 raise.
“Two percent is not enough, especially for going on two years sacrificing without a raise and being here throughout the pandemic, putting family in jeopardy. Thank goodness they did just about everything they could to make it as safe as possible for us,” they said.
The first email also announced significantly increased shift differentials for shifts in the evenings and nights. Staff who work evenings will now make an extra $1.50 per hour from their base wage, up from an extra $0.60, and staff who work nights will make an extra $3.00 an hour, an increase from $1.50.
In a May statement to The Campus, Assistant Vice President of Human Resources Laura Carotenuto cited what she described as “recent unemployment incentives” as affecting the college’s ability to fill open positions in dining and facilities. The first email announces that the college “will be implementing a number of programs focused on recruitment and retention of staff” in the dining and facilities departments in response to “a significant staffing shortage brought on by the low unemployment rate and the pandemic.”
The second email, sent only to dining and facilities, details the college’s three new programs to fill these open positions.
First, all facilities and dining staff members employed on July 1 will receive a $1,000 retention bonus at the end of the Fall 2021 semester, provided that the employee remains at the college until then.
The email also announced two new programs aimed at incentivizing applications for open staff positions at the college. New hires in dining and facilities will now receive a $750 bonus after 180 days of working at the college. Furthermore, current college employees who refer a new hire that goes on to work at the college for at least 90 days will receive a $500 bonus.
“We are certainly very happy that the senior administration has been giving this its full attention, and we are hopeful this will help us recruit and retain staff,” Dan Detora, executive director of food service operations, said. “Employees I have talked with are very excited and grateful for the $1,000 retention bonus and the fact that their salaries are being reviewed.”
Detora noted that if dining is unable to fill the 12 full-time positions that are currently open, they may not be able to open some of their retail operations such as the Grille or Midd Xpress. Such concerns were echoed by the dining staffer.
“Staffing issues are a big problem at our levels,” they said. “Lose any more and something drastic will have to happen as to how we serve and prepare food.”
The staff member also said that the efficacy of these new incentives is hard to assess at the moment.
“The hiring bonuses and incentives are a starting point, but … it will be hard to judge whether it will be enough,” they said. “The college has fallen behind in its wage and benefit competitiveness. They needed to start catching up earlier.”
(05/20/21 2:58pm)
The Center for Disease Control’s announcement that masks and social distancing aren’t required anymore in most instances for fully vaccinated Americans has led me, strangely enough, to revisit a hidden gem of literary fiction: Anthony Powell’s 12-volume tragicomedy masterpiece, “A Dance to the Music of Time.” Powell’s 20th century novel explores the marvels of coincidence and the joys of conversation. Heading into this summer, the series is a good frame of reference for readers who want to reflect on why people in our newly-active social lives are so fascinatingly complex.
“A Dance to the Music of Time” chronicles a British circle of upper-middle-class bohemians and their non-artist friends from the 1920s to the early ’70s through a series of chance encounters at parties, receptions and dinners. Powell follows this group through the eyes of Nick Jenkins, a young publisher who later becomes a novelist. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway, Powell’s Nick Jenkins is a cypher, but this also makes him a perfect window through which to examine the people who surround him. His circle is an assortment of painters, poets, composers, financiers and aristocrats who all seem a little like P.G. Wodehouse’s aloof characters, albeit if they were dropped into our own deeply flawed world.
Powell revels in the limits of Nick’s first-person narration: the series’ protagonist can only conjecture about the inner-lives of his friends. Although we don’t know if Nick’s guesses about his peers’ love lives and personal traits are entirely accurate (though you get the feeling that they mostly are), his conclusions tend to apply perfectly to people in general. For example, consider when Dicky Umfraville claps eyes on Buster Fox, a man who seduced one of Dicky’s several ex-wives years before. Instead of getting right to the confrontation, Powell takes his sweet time.
“When people really hate one another,” Powell writes, “the tension within them can sometimes make itself felt throughout a room, like atmospheric waves, first hot, then cold, wafted backwards and forwards as if in an invisible process of air conditioning, creating a pervasive physical disturbance.”
Another highlight of the series is the character Kenneth Widmerpool, an antagonist who, like Milton’s Satan, gets all the best lines. Widmerpool, Nick’s old schoolmate, has a “piscine” (fish-like) appearance that masks an unquenchable lust for power. The character’s scheming leads him to financial success, military advancement during the Second World War and a seat in the House of Commons. His inglorious decline ends, somehow perfectly, with the occult.
Some critics find Powell’s style a tad extravagant. This is a misreading, but an understandable one. If the prose of the “Dance” is purple, it is a light violet, quietly controlled by the author in ways that you notice when you throw yourself into the text.
In the first pages of the series, the narrator’s thoughts turn to the Baroque-era painting “A Dance to the Music of Time” by Nicolas Poussin, causing the Proustian flashback that begins the story: “The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure, stepping slowly, methodically sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.”
This quote has no business working as well as it does. Powell’s style might not be your cup of tea, but it is charming in a warmly rambling, elegantly impromptu sort of way.
A more reasonable objection to the series is Jenkin’s memories of World War II, which are largely based on Powell’s own experience in the war. Reading this slower section of the series, you sometimes wish that Powell did more exciting things than writing up memos in Northern Ireland during the war. But these middle books still have their merits: the war trilogy constructs a comedy of manners about the bureaucratic slog of army life which Nick mostly abhors and Widmerpool, hilariously, finds his natural environment in.
“Poetry makes nothing happen,” wrote W.H. Auden. Although on the surface nothing really happens in “A Dance to the Music of Time,” there is ample poetry in this low-key saga that so deftly explores the unknowability of human relationships and the enchanting weirdness of the way life unfolds. Will the academy or critics ever take Powell as seriously as they do other British stylists of the twentieth century such as Woolf or E.M. Forster? Probably not, although Powell may be superior to both of these writers. Despite its loftiness, “A Dance to the Music of Time” has it all: sheer entertainment value, narrative tenderness, an incredible cast of characters and — most surprisingly for a 2,500-page epic — lightness of touch.
(05/13/21 10:00am)
Since the NESCAC lifted its ban on NCAA play before the 1993–94 season, Middlebury has won 38 National Championships in Division-III. In fact, between 1994 and 2019, there have only been six years where the Panthers haven’t won a national championship in at least one sport.
Over the years, Middlebury has cultivated a tradition of athletic dominance across all 31 varsity teams. From men’s hockey to women’s soccer to men’s alpine skiing, Middlebury squads consistently rank in the upper echelon of Division-III athletics. Since 1994, eight different teams have won an NCAA National Championship, while most others have at least clinched NESCAC titles.
But how is Middlebury’s athletic excellence celebrated? Are fan sections particularly big? Are they loud and rowdy? And what traditions do fans have, if any?
The answers to those questions aren’t simple. In short, there are stark differences in fan support across sports.
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/dhFEV/5/
It’s hard to characterize these numbers as “good” or “bad,” but they begin to tell the story of fan support at Middlebury. Not only are some sports dramatically more popular than others, but there is a sizable gap between genders. The average fan attendance for men’s sports was 310 people in 2019 — excluding football — and 136 people for women’s teams.
One way to measure the strength of these numbers is to compare our home attendance to that of other Division-III schools. By comparing home and away attendance records in 2019 – 20, it is clear that most Middlebury teams play in front of smaller crowds when at home than other schools do. In fact, only three Middlebury teams average more fans at home than away: men’s basketball, men’s hockey, and football.
Keep in mind that Middlebury is one of the largest NESCAC schools, with over 2,500 students, and most non-conference games are played against other small, rural colleges. Therefore, there isn’t much of an excuse: our home fan attendance, for most sports, is well below average.
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/c8fvN/3/
“I think so much of athletic pride right now is friends of the players — and I think it's a great place to start but it can go further than that,” said Ellie Barney ’21.5, a four-year member of women’s hockey. “Let’s figure out how to boost that overall. Most people who go to Middlebury are athletic, outdoorsy and high-energy people, and there's no reason why that shouldn’t transfer into going to games. I think we can definitely improve on fan attendance.”
“The challenge is getting more support from people who are not necessarily athletes,” women’s lacrosse head coach Kate Livesay ’03 emphasized. “It’s drawing more folks who don't have an immediate connection to the game.”
As Athletic Director Erin Quinn ’86 notes, Middlebury students are “all busy” and “engaged in a lot of different activities.” Middlebury is also a Division-III school, so sports don’t attract the same crowds that nationally followed institutions like Clemson University, University of Alabama or Ohio State University might.
But there’s room to improve regardless, and this sentiment is especially felt by student-athletes who attended high schools with large fan sections.
Walker Coleman ’23, for example, is a member of men’s football who went to high school in South Carolina. There, attendance numbers are steep and fan support is a large component of school spirit.
“It's definitely a change of scene for sure,” Coleman said. “At Midd, everyone’s a bit more tame. There are always a couple rowdy fans but it's definitely a big difference from high school. There’s not as much passion in the fan section as there was in high school.”
Through the years, there have been efforts to improve fan attendance at Middlebury, though many of the proposed solutions have either fizzled out or completely failed.
A few years ago, the Middlebury Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) designed an app to promote fan support by giving fans points for every game they attended. Fans could exchange points for prizes, such as Middlebury apparel. While the SAAC was confident in the structure of the app, plans eventually caved since the day-to-day management was too demanding. However, the idea is still cited by many athletes today, and many want to see more time invested into the app or a slight rebuild take shape.
Other ideas to increase support include inter-team partnerships, where squads from different seasons will pair up and support one another throughout the year. The Athletics Department has pushed this initiative, and while it has been successful in some cases, Quinn notes that the best solutions will come from the students.
“If student-athletes are really interested in trying to promote more fans, they have the best access to them — it's their peers they are trying to appeal to,” Quinn said. “Top-down administration efforts sometimes miss the mark, so [the effort] has to be organically student-driven.”
Tailgating is one potential solution that students frequently suggest, though there’s more to that puzzle than most students understand. In fact, Middlebury has a troubled history with tailgates, causing Quinn and the administration to ban alcoholic beverages — and thus the typical concept of “tailgating” — in 2014. Quinn said there were repeated issues over a years-long span.
“Tailgates really became an opportunity for large groups of students to probably have a place where they felt like they could have a large party without registering for it,” Quinn said. “That might be fine, but it got to the point where there was lots of damage, incredibly disrespectful behavior and it was over a period of years. We would have to assign several public safety members just to be in that area, and we didn’t have a professional event management crew.”
Unlike other schools, Middlebury doesn’t have many, if any, traditions for fans, which also weighs down attendance numbers. One way to change this, according to Coleman, is by creating themes before big rivalry matches, such as wearing navy and white before a match against Williams or Amherst.
Perhaps the most promising channel to grow support, though, is social media. Between Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and the many other platforms Middlebury students use, social media has emerged as the easiest way for students to communicate virtually.
“I know Middlebury Athletics has a lot of followers on Instagram, and I would love to see Instagram stories promoting games,” women’s tennis co-captain Emily Bian ’21 said. “I honestly think that would work pretty well.”
“There are so many Instagram accounts at Middlebury, so if we get a pretty wide fan base onto one Insagram account, I think that could be pretty serious, and we could really get people’s attention,” Coleman added.
It’s important to note that while many athletes believe fan support can improve, many still harbor a strong sense of appreciation and fondness for the support they do receive.
“At a school like Middlebury, it's so great because you know such a majority of people, even if it's not your closest friends,” Bian said. “It's like, ‘Oh, I recognize her from some Art History class. That’s cool that she’s sitting here and supporting my team.’ When I see people at tennis matches, it encourages me to attend other things as well — it's a domino effect.”
“You play better when there are people in the stands,” Barney said. “That noise component is fun.”
Some sports do attract larger crowds than others — like the football, men’s basketball and men’s hockey teams — where crowd sizes can reach into the thousands. For student-athletes competing in these sports, the appreciation for fans is particularly steep.
“I'm super proud of the school spirit at Middlebury,” Tommy Eastman, a co-captain of men's basketball, said. “It makes it so much more fun. You feel like an important part of the community.”
“Fan support and seeing your fellow classmates on the sidelines gives you a sense of legitimacy — like people are noticing your hard work,” Livesay added. “It gives friends a window into the hard work and sacrifice that goes into playing at a really high level. It's just fun to share this passion we have for lacrosse with other people.”
With plans to return to a “new normal” next fall, fans will likely be permitted at all sporting events, affording students a chance to revive their Panther spirit. Livesay hopes this news will generate increased fan support at Middlebury – since students have been deprived of attending live events for so long — hopefully setting a precedent.
“I feel like it's an exciting time because people haven’t been able to watch live sports in a long time,” Livesay said. “My hope, and almost expectation, is that we’ll see a lot more people in the fall because it's not something they’ve been able to do in a while. Let's hope there's a dramatic change there and that it's sustained in the future.”
(05/06/21 9:59am)
The Middlebury women’s soccer team participated in a virtual walk and fundraiser for the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) last Sunday, raising $1,500 for the organization. While the walk is typically hosted in Burlington, Vermont, women’s soccer relocated its participation to the Trail Around Middlebury (TAM) due to gathering size limits. The walk spanned two miles, starting near the Ralph Myhre Golf Course.
Each member of the team carried a poster on the walk, listing the name of someone in their life who has struggled with an eating disorder. It could be a friend, family member or teammate, intending to show how personal an issue eating disorders are for many people.
“The walk is a way for us to give open ears to athletes suffering from eating disorders who do not feel like they have anyone to understand or help them,” Elizabeth Peebles ’23, a member of the women’s soccer team, told The Campus.
NEDA walks are intended to be inclusive, community-wide events that remove the sense of alienation eating disorders can create. While four out of ten individuals have either had or know someone who has had an eating disorder, these mental illnesses still remain misunderstood and underfunded. This makes battling an eating disorder an overwhelming and frightening experience. The event also aims to decrease the stigmatization surrounding eating disorders, aiming to foster dialogue and transparency. Guest speakers are invited to the events and anyone is welcome to attend, with the intention of creating a supportive environment to productively spread awareness of eating disorders. The money raised from the walks goes toward spreading awareness of eating disorders and funding research initiatives.
“It is important to make sure people feel comfortable receiving help and to spread awareness of eating disorders without stigmatizing them,” Peebles said. “This walk is a way for us to show support for NEDA who is engaging in larger actions to fight eating disorders.”
The money the team raised on their walk will go toward efforts to fund research and group-based interventions to combat the prevalence of eating disorders.
(05/06/21 9:56am)
Daniel Celik’s official title is custodial supervisor, but he recently took on the temporary position as the operations coordinator for the Covid Operations Team — joining a cohort of staff and student-workers taking on new responsibilities amid the pandemic. A typical week for Celik includes working at the testing center Mondays and Thursdays, communicating with students who need to move into isolation or quarantine (ISO/Q) housing on Tuesdays and Fridays and working on logistics each Wednesday.
“The pandemic really is in control of the position as it is constantly adapting to the changes with current virus spread, state and federal mandates and how we as a campus act,” Celik said in an email to The Campus.
Celik is typically the second person students speak to after the health center contacts them about moving into quarantine. He helps them work out the logistics of their move into isolation or quarantine housing, including setting up transportation, providing information about the move and what resources are available in their building, checking in with students via email and helping students figure out the logistics of their departure.
“This may sound cliché, but I think of [students] as my own to look after, help and guide through this process,” Celik said.
Affectionately, he’s also known as “the Covid supply guy,” because part of his job is procuring cleaning supplies for the whole campus. He took on this responsibility in June 2020 and kept the job as part of his new position. Celik is responsible for providing the hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes, cleaning kit supplies and PPE seen all around campus.
Megyn Pitner, a catering manager, also saw a change in her work amid the pandemic, now working as part of the Covid Response Team, which provides meals and other services for students in quarantine and isolation housing.
Pitner said that she was glad to accept a larger role in Covid-19 safety this semester — and that a key part of the group’s success is the makeup of the team, which includes representatives from many of the departments that provide ground-level services.
“In these times we do what needs to be done,” Pitner said in an email to The Campus. “We’ve worked hard to identify needs, and then the most appropriate people to take care of the task step up and make it happen.”
Her work has taken her all over campus and included tasks such as dealing with scheduling emergencies, onboarding dining support and working in the dishroom.
Pitner tracks the number of students in isolation and quarantine each day and coordinates delivery of meals with other members of the Covid Response Team. She also has coordinated the preparation and delivery of meals during the fall and spring arrival quarantines.
“It really feels good to be part of the team that is so critical to the success of the college being a safe place for students and staff to be this semester,” Pitner said. “The great teamwork that has been required to make all of this happen has been inspiring and encouraging and helps me feel really good about working as hard as we all do.”
Custodial Services have also played an integral role in the college’s Covid-19 response. Kerry McGown, a custodial supervisor, said staff members are now providing service 24/7 to reduce close contacts with other staff and students. Custodial staff on the Covid Response Team clean, disinfect and maintain spaces for quarantined and isolated students.
“Things have changed a whole lot, but our ability to work as a team has remained the same,” McGown said. “I hope the students know how much we appreciate them being here — it was awfully quiet without them.”
Liv Mulloy ’23 is a line monitor working primarily in Atwater, where she manages lines during meals for a couple hours every shift. Mulloy’s job includes directing students in line, limiting the number of people in the general service area and sanitizing tables to keep them clean.
The three goals of the position are to instruct students to sanitize their hands before entering the dining hall, to stay six feet apart and to keep their masks on, according to Ariel Silver ’22, a line monitor working mostly in Proctor. He and Mulloy spoke about the challenges of following the rules — especially as the semester progresses and the prevalence of Covid-19 on campus appears low — but stressed how important it is to stay careful and safe.
“One of the things I regret about the job is that it seems like a policing job, like you’re trying to be a disciplinarian, which is not something that I at all enjoy,” Silver said. “It doesn’t have to be that way. We were told in the training that it’s mostly about friendly reminders in case something risky is going on in terms of Covid protocol.”
Mulloy and Silver both said the social aspect of the job and interacting with dining hall staff were highlights of their work. As a line monitor, Mulloy socializes with approximately 500 students who she sees each shift. Mulloy said she appreciates when students tell her about their days after she greets them.
“If you socialize with students, then they’re more inclined to listen if you have to ask them to stay six feet apart,” Mulloy said. “It's easy to be vocal if you’re already super chatty with them.”
“One of the best parts of the job is getting to know the people who work there and feed you,” Silver said. “I feel like so many of us take it for granted that there are people who work for very low pay who are feeding us."
(04/29/21 4:07am)
(03/25/21 9:58am)
Sabrina Templeton
We hear time and time again that Middlebury is a “bubble.” It’s a liberal bubble, a student bubble, a cultural bubble. All of this talk pushes us into believing that we really are protected; that we live in a campus that can hold us in and push danger out.
A bubble implies that the global pandemic that has taken 500,000 lives in the U.S. — and counting — could not possibly affect a Middlebury student, or that the coinciding mental health epidemic could not have driven any of our loved ones to take their own lives, or that loss by any other means could never touch a person who appears so wrapped up in this perfect, tight, safe bubble.
This is not true. Obviously. But if you look through any of our welcome-back emails it sure seems like it.
Before diving into my frustrations it is important to note that the administration and staff deserve a ton of credit for their handling of campus life during the pandemic. Our testing process is seamless, the incredible staff members have made the dining halls accessible and welcoming and our maintenance and facilities staff have made sure that this campus feels safe and clean.
However, even with all of these efforts, the existence of grieving students on this campus feels almost entirely washed over. When we returned I expected, at the very least, a school wide email acknowledging the certainly higher than usual amount of grief on this campus. That didn’t happen. I believed we would receive some information on who to reach out to if we’re experiencing grief. That didn’t happen. I thought that the school, with all of its mental health expansion efforts, would make a more visible effort to hire grief-specific counselors. To my knowledge, this hasn’t happened either.
There has been positive growth in discussing mental health crises on this campus in the past four years, and that has not gone unnoticed. However, grief is a different beast altogether, and to try to lump it in with other types of suffering is short-sighted and misinformed.
Not only is grief emotionally debilitating — contrary to outdated beliefs, you can’t just skip through some stages until you reach blissful acceptance — but it is also cognitively altering.
A study out of the NIH found that individuals suffering from “complicated grief” — which can be caused by having little time to process or no social support following the loss, essentially the experience of every loss during this pandemic — have lower memory and attention capabilities, perform worse on tests and display mild defects in global cognitive functioning.
If the school is not ready to send out mental health kits that consist of more than just a fidget spinner, I would at least expect Middlebury — as an academic institution — to understand that grieving students do not currently possess the same neurological capacities that they did prior to their loss.
This is to say: Middlebury, many of your students are not only grieving; our brains’ capacities have changed.
And yet, when it comes to grief on campus, we’ve heard nothing from our college.
After four years at Middlebury, I am lucky in that I feel comfortable enough telling many of my professors what I am going through right now. I also have the love and support of the Hillel community and the wonderful Rabbi Danielle. But, even as a second semester senior I did not know that I should have told my dean about my struggles until another staff member suggested it to me.
If I had no clue I should reach out to him, how on earth could younger students be expected to know, especially, again, after receiving no guidance whatsoever from the school? I am also very fortunate that I have a good relationship with my commons dean. I can’t say the same for other students, especially students who’ve never met their dean in person due to the pandemic.
I empathize deeply with students who feel utterly lost in the dark, not knowing who to reach out to, or how to navigate grief. I also feel for the friends of grieving students who have no idea how to be a supportive friend during this traumatic and delicate time.
This is because, despite a global pandemic raging outside, the college has proliferated little to no grief resources on campus, has not given any public recognition of grieving students, has not given any guidance on who to reach out to if grieving students are struggling with workloads, and has not made a noticeable effort to hire grief-specific counselors on campus or on Midd Telehealth. And, before you suggest we organize these things ourselves, please refer to the above paragraph about our brains not working.
This lack of recognition from our institution is not only frustrating but is actively compounding the pain. Grief is an agonizing ordeal, with one of its worst qualities being loneliness. And, although the college has been trying much harder this year to ensure access to mental health professionals, its failure to address the campus-wide issue of grieving head-on makes those of us suffering feel like an afterthought; like we have to cope with it alone.
Of course, there have always been grieving students on this campus, but for the college to act publicly as if nobody here has lost someone during a pandemic is a whole new level of ignorance — an ignorance that comes with more than a tinge of classism and racism, as we all know Covid has disproportionately affected lower income and BIPOC communities.
So, what can be done?
Professors can send out anonymous surveys asking whether their students are experiencing loss and how they can reconfigure their schedule to allow for students to get the most out of the class without feeling overwhelmed.
Midd Telehealth can hire specific grief counselors trained to aid students in working through loss and trauma. It can also expand its free sessions from 12 per year to 20, allowing for students who cannot afford counseling to have access to as many sessions as possible.
The administration can send resources to grieving students as well as to their friends on how best to be a support system at this time.
And, since I only just found out about this, grieving students reading this article — do not be afraid to reach out to your student life deans. They are here to help you and can be wonderful resources and advocates for you during this time.
Middlebury has done a remarkable job this year given the circumstances, but seemingly ignoring the existence and struggles of grieving students is an enormous blindspot that will only continue to grow if it is not recognized. For the school to be able to truly celebrate its accomplishments during the pandemic with any integrity, they have to make sure that the college remains a place where its students can genuinely learn, engage and grow. Too many students can’t do that right now.
We may be back on campus, but we are not back in the “bubble.” The outside world caught up to us, and we need you to meet us where we are.
Author’s note: These opinions stem from my personal experience as well as from anecdotal conversations with peers. I don’t pretend to know the experience of every grieving student on campus.
Sophie Clark is a member of the class of 2021.
(03/18/21 9:58am)
Eight Language Schools will return to in-person instruction in Vermont this summer while four will remain online, according to a Feb. 25 announcement from Dean of Language Schools Stephen Snyder.
The Abenaki, Arabic, French, German, Hebrew, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish schools will take place in person, following Covid-19 health protocols similar to Middlebury’s guidelines for the fall and spring academic semesters. The Chinese, Italian, Japanese and Russian Language Schools will all take place virtually, and the School of Hebrew will also offer online options. All Language Schools were online in summer 2020.
In-person students will follow similar protocols as students arriving in the spring, including a pre-arrival quarantine, getting tested upon arrival and quarantining in their rooms until they receive negative test results. Courses will be online for the first week. All students will have single rooms, and the Language Schools will create socially distant co-curricular activities that will primarily take place outside. According to Snyder, some in-person schools will still have online components, but having several programs fully online will help keep campus less crowded.
Snyder worked with the directors of each school to make decisions about modality on a case-by-case basis, considering travel and safety on campus.
According to Cecilia Chang, the director of the Chinese School at Middlebury, finding enough faculty to keep class sizes small — to allow for proper social distancing — would have been challenging, as many potential faculty members were only available to teach over Zoom and could not come to Vermont for the summer.
Last year, concern about Zoom fatigue led the Chinese School to make larger classes asynchronous, allowing students to review class videos on their own time. The program length was also shortened from eight to seven weeks. Small classes averaged only three people, and each student spent 30 minutes in one-on-one discussion with an instructor every afternoon.
This year, the Chinese School will keep the same academic structure and increase the individual discussion time to 40 minutes each day. Chang is hoping to set up a virtual host family with graduate students in China who will host extracurricular events for the students. Students will also be able to apply to be matched with an alum of the program in different career paths.
Last year, more than 1,100 students enrolled in the 2020 Language Schools programs, despite the change in format to fully virtual classes. Approximately 1,500 students enroll in a typical year.
“The language schools in their traditional model are really based on… experiential learning and it takes a great deal of faculty-student interaction and immersion experience,” Snyder said. “Everyone eats together and does activities all day, and that’s really where the proficiency gains come from, so we were struggling last year to recreate that in a virtual space and did the best we could.”
Despite successes last summer with online Language Schools, Snyder and Chang still believe that in-person instruction is the best mode for learning a language.
“Everyone wants to go back. The so-called Middlebury experience… is magical,” Chang said. “As a director and longtime teacher there, I want my students — I want many students — to experience that. It’s a wonderful place to be.”
Applications are still open for the summer 2021 Language Schools and are accepted on a rolling basis.
