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Student essential workers among first to receive Covid-19 vaccine

As the U.S. grieves 500,000 Covid-19 deaths a year into the pandemic, vaccine distribution has been a ray of hope for many. While many members of the Middlebury community are still awaiting their turn to get their shot, a small number of students have been able to receive a vaccine in the early stages of the national rollout. Although the college has not released formal vaccination plans, some students who work with high-risk individuals returned to campus immunized.  Sophie Levine ’23 spent her J-Term interning at a health clinic in San Francisco. She interacted directly with patients and worked in close quarters with other staff members. Levine received the first dose of the Moderna vaccine in January and the second in early February.  As a receptionist, Levine helped San Francisco residents check to see if they were eligible for the vaccine and make appointments to receive it. “It really demystified the whole process for me,” Levine said. “What I read in the news was daunting and made me think we would never reach an end, but seeing how many doses we had and counting the people we could vaccinate every single day gave me a little bit of hope.”  Jasper Panger ’23 worked at a facility for people with developmental disabilities in Cincinnati. He also received the Moderna vaccine. After being vaccinated, he felt more comfortable interacting with others. “I feel like I have more peace of mind,” Panger said. “Even though I’m at Middlebury and I’m taking all the precautions, I feel a little more at ease and less anxious about catching it.” While working as an emergency medical technician throughout last year, Emily Klar ’21 came into direct contact with Covid-19 patients. Klar, who is also a member of the Vermont National Guard, received the Moderna vaccine through Middlebury Regional Emergency Medical Services. Even though Levine, Panger and Klar are vaccinated, they are still required to abide by college Covid-19 protocols.  “I really try to not change my mindset since I know I should be treating the guidelines the same way,” Klar said. “I think it’s important for everyone to treat it as if you can still spread it and contract it.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new guidelines this week, loosening restrictions for vaccinated individuals. Fully vaccinated people can gather indoors without masks or social distancing, according to the new recommendations. The college has so far not changed any of its guidelines and continues to ask all students to mask up and maintain physical distance. Although the Vermont guidelines state that fully vaccinated individuals may travel without quarantining, Middlebury pre-arrival guidelines were uniform for all students regardless of vaccination status.  “Our highest priority is the health and safety of our entire community and having consistent standards and codes of conduct is an important safeguard for the spring,” Associate Vice President for Public Affairs Julia Ferrante said in an email to The Campus.  Although vaccines are being rolled out in the Middlebury community — with Middlebury Ski Patrol students among the first recipients due to their first responder status — the college has not released any information about the availability of vaccinations for all students.  “We do not have any information about vaccine distribution for students at this time but are working closely with our Vermont health department and higher education colleagues to examine these questions,” Ferrante said.  Meanwhile, vaccinated students encourage others to continue following Covid-19 safety guidelines and remain optimistic.  “I think it’s made me hopeful that the restrictions will be relaxed soon and the vaccine will help us bring about an end to the pandemic eventually,” Klar said.

Voices for Change: Checking in with the authors of three letters published in the Campus

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests that spread throughout the nation last summer, many Middlebury students and organizations called for institutional change, demanding the school take action against racial injustice and create a more equitable community. Through letters, testimonials and calls to action, student activists shed light on the ways racial inequalities and injustices run deep at Middlebury as a predominantly white institution. The college has created a multi-year action plan detailing initiatives intended to address inequality on campus and promote anti-racism. Many of the new initiatives came after students voiced their concerns and called for change. We check in with writers of three op-eds to see if the administration has met their demands and how they feel about Middlebury’s progress toward becoming an antiracist institution.    Concerned Students of Middlebury: Reevaluating Middlebury’s Record with Black Students By Concerned Students Of Middlebury Concerned Students of Middlebury (CSM), formerly Black@Midd, wrote a letter to President Laurie Patton, the members of the Senior Leadership Group (SLG) and the Middlebury College community in direct response to “the tone-deaf statement issued by the Office of the President on May 31,” which equated the Covid-19 pandemic and the effects of racism, calling them “two plagues”. The CSM letter, published in The Campus last June, discussed the offenses in President Patton’s initial letter addressing BLM, provided instances of when the college has been complicit in allowing racism on campus and offered immediate and long-term actions for administrators to take.  Myles Maxie ’22, one of the authors of the letter, saw that there was very little institutional support for ensuring certain voices are represented, specifically in decision-making bodies.  “I look back at my own history at Middlebury, researched previous history at Middlebury and saw that this [May 31 email] isn’t just a one-time failure of diction, it’s a failure of action historically,” Maxie said.   Administrators met the set of immediate actions CSM called for, which asked that three separate emails be sent from the school: one issuing an apology and the two others listing different resources for students. The two other suggestions for this school year have also been well received, according to Maxie. Beginning last semester, the SLG started meeting monthly with a group of BIPOC students representing different cultural organizations to help identify needs and implement institutional change.  CSM also asked that Middlebury designate a student or faculty member to represent communities of color within the Board of Trustees. The SGA appointed a second student constituent to the College Board of Advisors of the Board of Trustees near the end of the 2019–2020 school year. CSM and the SLG have discussed the possibility of redefining that role to accomplish CSM’s demand. Maxie hopes to have a concrete solution to this in March. Although the school responded well to the demands posed in the letter, further collaboration has often been difficult, according to Maxie.  “There's a lack of clear communication from the institution. I don’t think it’s with malintent, but I do think it makes the student body feel more uncertain about the intention of those who have more ability to get things done,” Maxie said.  Maxie believes the school could implement better timelines for institutional initiatives. He is satisfied with the college’s multi-year action plan, but thinks more guidelines and checkpoints are necessary in order to hold the administration accountable for their progress.  CSM has also drafted a series of resolutions that were released throughout J-Term.  “Our purpose is to provide an avenue for students who have been historically disenfranchised at Middlebury to have their voice heard and be able to construct meaningful ways of leading to change,” Maxie said. “We want a campus where maybe 20 years from now, 15 years from now, we don't need a CSM, because all needs of all students are being met, but as of now, that's just not the case.”   Cops don’t belong on Middlebury’s campus By Middlebury Cops Off Campus  Last July, Middlebury Cops Off Campus (MCOC) addressed a letter to President Patton, urging the administration to restructure the role of public safety on campus and dissolve Middlebury’s collaboration with police and private security. The letter claims that the presence of private security and punitive public safety systems place the most marginalized groups of the community at risk, and that these systems are “incompatible with Middlebury’s stated goal of advancing racial justice and anti-racism.” The letter concludes with various demands, including the group’s current primary goal of redirecting resources towards students’ overall wellbeing and prioritizing expertise in first aid, mental health and de-escalation.  However, MCOC has been frustrated with the administration’s response to their calls for change. Following their letter, the administration redirected MCOC to the Community Council.  Lynn Travnikova ’20.5, one of the organizers of MCOC and former co-chair of the Community Council, was disappointed by the administration’s lack of direct action. She believes some of their demands could have been implemented immediately and did not need to go through the long approval process of the Community Council.  According to Travnikova, the administration was also not responsive to the group’s emails or requests for meetings, and MCOC has not been able to talk directly with the SLG.  “They have the opportunity to hear from us, and they have the opportunity to listen to student voices, but by directing us to the Community Council, there seems to be an intentional delay in actually getting to what we have to say,” Chloe Fleischer ’21.5, another MCOC organizer, said. Due to the unusual fall semester, Community Council only held a few meetings, and MCOC did not meet with them until early December. Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration David Provost and Interim Director of Public Safety Dan Gaiotti were also present at the meeting.  “We could tell from the things that David Provost was saying that there is a massive misunderstanding about what we’re asking for,” Travnikova said. “They focused a lot more on the idea of cops and talking about Middlebury’s relationship with the police department, when most of our focus and energy has gone towards Public Safety.”  Travnikova believes this misunderstanding may come from the polarization of the issue in the national sphere and from a lack of true engagement with the issue beyond the name of the group.  According to Fleischer, Provost claims he wants to reform the Public Safety Department, but that the administration is having a lot of these conversations behind closed doors.  “As long as these conversations continue in private, it seems to me very unlikely that things are going to get that much better because there isn't really a clear understanding of what needs to happen,” Fleischer said. “They're functioning with a misunderstanding of the problem, so any solutions will be based on an incomplete picture of what we're asking for.” MCOC is still committed to transforming the way public safety looks on campus and holding Middlebury accountable to their pledges of anti-racism.  “They see us as these bright young people who want to change the world, and I just want them to empower us,” Remi Welbel ’22, an MCOC organizer, said. “They want us to translate that to changing the world. Let us translate that to changing Middlebury.”   Can you hear us now, President Patton? By Kaila Thomas and Rodney Adams Last September, Kaila Thomas ’21, planned a community protest in less than 24 hours, following the verdict that none of the Louisville police officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor would be charged for her death. Over 500 people, including students, faculty and community members, attended the protest.  On Oct. 1, Thomas and Rodney Adams ’21 published a letter addressed to President Patton, denouncing her absence from the protest. Adams also shared his story from the evening after the protest, when he was the target of a racial slur by another Middlebury student.  There were a number of demands in the letter, including asking for a Black Public Safety officer, a Black faculty and staff recruitment program and a working body composed of Black students to help create anti-racism programming on campus.  Thomas said she and President Patton met following the open letter, and Thomas expressed her frustration with the college’s minimal acknowledgement of the success of the protest. “The racial event that happened with Rodney, it overshadowed the protest, which is totally fine, but then the administration solely focused on the tragedy rather than the accomplishment,” Thomas said. “If the institution wants to be anti-racist, they can’t just focus on the tragedies that happen. They need to focus and celebrate the accomplishments that also happen towards racial equity.”  According to Thomas, all of the demands from the letter have been met or are in the process of being met, with the exception of the hiring of a Black public safety officer. Thomas is also part of JusTalks, a peer-led initiative that examines structural inequalities on campus. In advancing the college’s commitment to anti-racism, JusTalks partnered with the Feb orientation, where all incoming students were required to attend one of their conversations. “We want to start really prioritizing racial diversity, equity and inclusion type of courses with these incoming classes,” Thomas said.  Thomas is unsure, however, about the plans to make these types of courses available for everyone but hopes they can be implemented soon. “I think they should work towards immediate change, and I know that that's difficult sometimes momentarily […] but I do think that the students of color on campus mostly want immediate change,” Thomas said. Thomas is mostly satisfied with Middlebury’s response so far, but acknowledges all the work that remains. She also understands the school has a lot to handle amid the pandemic.

New places, old faces

I almost rear ended the car in front of me last week when I saw it on the back window — a “Middlebury Crew” bumper sticker. You don’t see Middlebury memorabilia much here. I live in Kenai, Alaska, a small town three hours south of Anchorage on the world-famous Kenai River. It’s known for its salmon fishing, but there’s a lot more than fish here — the landscape is also dotted with active volcanoes, scalable mountains and offshore oil rigs. Kenai and its sister city Soldotna are on the road system, which makes them significantly more accessible than other Alaska towns and cities you can only get to on a plane or ferry. It’s an incredible place for a journalist. Alaska is the size of almost 70 Vermonts but has just 100,000 more people than the Green Mountain state. There are debates over natural resources that play out in real time, both on the Kenai Peninsula, where I live, and in the state at large. Many of the people who homesteaded on the peninsula in the 1950s and 60s, back before it was a state, still live here. Their family names are on street signs. Just a few months in, I’m subsumed by this place. That’s partly because I’m a reporter, so I have professional permission to meet as many people as I can and ask them nosy questions. But I imagine anyone who’s moved far away from home knows what it feels like to shift the center of their universe — for me, from New York to Vermont to Alaska. That’s not to say my life here is dissociated from my past lives. I’m starting to realize it really isn’t. Home is part and parcel of everything I do. I started my job search in Alaska because a Middlebury friend, Hunter Graham ’20, clued me in to a journalism job opening in Skagway, where her grandmother lives. One of my closest friends on the peninsula is a mutual friend of Professor Sue Halpern — she introduced us virtually when I got up here. Last week, I had dinner with a Middlebury alumnus who’s been here for almost 30 years. He lives in rural Alaska and races sled dogs but he also knows what the inside of Mead Chapel looks like. The world is so delightfully small sometimes. There’s also, of course, that bumper sticker. I’m still trying to trace it back to its owner. Perhaps the biggest througline between then and now is the pandemic. I’ll never forget those early days of covering the virus as it barreled toward Vermont. My clearest memory from March 11, strangely, isn’t getting official word from the school but getting a call from editor Ben Glass ’20.5, who was at BevCo — seniors were scrambling to buy all the Keystone they could carry, he said, before they were kicked off campus indefinitely. It was a lesson in how college students react when they hear the apocalypse is coming for them. I’m still covering that pandemic. The tenor of coverage has changed, but I still think about the conversations we had as a Campus team when I’m writing stories of my own here, over 4,500 miles away. The newness of life here is bespeckled with fragments of familiarity. And time has seldom seemed linear these last 12 months. Not to mention we’re not fully graduated yet — an in-person commencement is still a promise for the nebulous post-Covid future. I think a few more classes will be joining in our post-hoc commencement than we anticipated last March (sorry, ’20.5 and ’21).  Maybe we’ll even finally get our Gamaliel Painter Canes. I’m not confident mine will fit in an overhead bin. But it might make for good closure. Editor’s Note: Sabine Poux is a member of the class of 2020 and was the 2019-2020 Editor in Chief of The Campus.

Supporting staff means supporting fair wages

Tayler* started working full time at Middlebury right after high school, with a starting wage of just over $8 an hour. Twenty-one years later, through Middlebury's compensation program, they are making $14 an hour. A single parent, they find themselves in line at the local food bank several times a month to make ends meet, and HOPE Middlebury helps Christmas come together for their child. Many of Tayler’s fellow service workers at Middlebury also have second jobs, an option unavailable to those without childcare or other support mechanisms. How did we get here as an institution, where over 20 years of service and dedication to Middlebury still merits only a poverty wage? Sure, endowment woes and a poor job market play a role, but one of the deeper problems is more insidious. In the last 20 years, Middlebury has prioritized faculty wage increases over those of staff. Every year, when possible, a sum of money is added to the Middlebury budget for salary increases, which is then distributed to faculty and staff as a percentage increase of their current wage. By my calculations, in most years, rather than dividing wage increases equally between faculty and staff, faculty have gotten a larger percentage increase than staff. In a particularly egregious example from 2001, faculty received an average pay increase of 7.5%, while staff saw only 4.3%. Inflation that year as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was about 3.4%, so faculty got over a 4% raise above inflation, staff less than 1%. More recently, in both 2019 and 2020, faculty saw a 4% increase, while staff saw a mere 2%. However, inflation was greater than 2%, so the value of the staff raise was ultimately canceled out, while faculty wages increased over inflation.  Small changes in the CPI have proportionally larger impacts for lower-wage workers. The cost of items that factor into the CPI can vary by year, but a seemingly minor change in some items can tear a budget apart. For example, a 50-cent increase in the price of gas may barely affect more affluent families, but these same changes can be crippling for a service worker with little discretionary income within their budget. On average, faculty have gotten a 1.4% greater yearly compensation increase compared to staff in the raise pool. Cumulatively, from 2000 until last year, faculty received a 113% increase in salary, while staff have only seen a 73% bump. Subtract inflation, and faculty net a 40% increase, staff only 13%. So, for example, a staff member making $50,000 two decades ago is now making $86,500, while a faculty member at the same starting pay would now be making $106,725.  Middlebury pays staff by length of service — the longer you work here, the greater your wage. Had staff wages not been increased to $14, staff like Tayler who had been working at Middlebury for 20 years would now be making $13.84. If they had received compensation increases at the same rate faculty did, they would instead be earning $17.04. Adjusted for inflation, $14 in 2021 is the equivalent of $9 in 2001.  So, in our pay-by-tenure system, that's only an additional five cents a year over inflation for all of their experience, commitment and dedication. But the starting wage for a new employee at Middlebury is now $14 an hour, so we aren't valuing experience and commitment at all. Imagine working your whole life at an institution and getting the same pay as someone who just walked off the street. When Middlebury raised the starting wage for lower-paid service jobs, it caused this wage compression, where a range of pay for work is now non-existent and independent of the length of service.  How can we do better? Middlebury has proven a strong commitment to staff, seen not only by wage continuity during the Covid-19 shutdowns but by the recent staff reductions during workforce planning without resorting to layoffs. We need to build upon and strengthen this commitment, by first fixing wage compression for affected staff. Long-time workers at Middlebury deserve to be paid more than new hires and should see a one-time increase in pay under our pay-by-tenure system. This needs to be the top priority for the next fiscal year when the Budget Advisory Committee prioritizes items in the budget. All employees of Middlebury need to commit to the "ongoing alignment of staffing and budgets to the strategic goals of the enterprise," but staff cannot do this without our faculty and administrative partners. Faculty and the administration need to decide, post-Covid, where their values lie, and reflect those values in the budget. The solution is not to reduce the number of staff positions, allowing the excess work to roll onto those who remain. Will we go back to pre-pandemic travel and entertainment spending, where catered lunches for departments are prepared by workers who leave work and head to food shelf lines? Or do we build on our current successes some departments have seen in workforce planning and together determine what sacrifices need to be made to return to our student-centric mission? Staff also need a voice in this process and should have representation on the appropriate faculty committees, including Faculty Resources. Staff representation on the Budget Advisory Committee has been a welcome step, but it is not enough.  After a recent Board of Trustee financial decision, the Middlebury AAUP chapter stated the decision was made "without any input from either Faculty Council or the Resources Committee so that also brings up serious concerns about 'faculty governance' if none of the relevant faculty bodies were consulted." The last 20 years of faculty wage increases show that staff need their own voice, without relying on faculty governance. Lastly, let's think of the hundreds of invisible staff cooking meals, cleaning buildings, and doing countless other tasks that keep our institution running. Someone at Middlebury considerably smarter than I once told me if we were brave as an institution, we'd make our starting pay $20/hour, rather than the $14 we pay now. As Karen Miller said, Middlebury needs to become an "employer of choice for the next generation." If faculty and the administration want to achieve this distinction, they need to ensure everyone at Middlebury is fairly compensated. *Editor’s note: “Tayler” is a pseudonym used to protect the identity of a staff member. Tim Parsons is the college’s landscape horticulturist.

Breaking: Three students test positive, 16 contacts in quarantine

UPDATE — Saturday, Feb. 27 One new positive was discovered among the latest batch of mid-week testing results, which were released on the college Covid-19 reporting dashboard at noon today. The student is now in isolation. An additional two student contacts are now in quarantine, bringing the total to 18. —— Three more students tested positive following mid-week testing, bringing the total number of active student cases to four, according to the college’s Covid-19 reporting dashboard. All three positive cases are now in isolation. A total of 16 contacts are under quarantine. The college is still waiting for the remaining mid-week testing results to trickle in. Only 889 Day Four test results have been reported on the dashboard, which will be updated again at noon tomorrow. Sunday and Monday’s arrival-day testing found only one positive student, who is currently in isolation. Two close contacts were identified and placed under quarantine as of Monday, according to the dashboard. In a Wednesday email, Chief Health Officer and College Physician Mark Peluso reminded students to remain vigilant about public health protocol and noted that new cases could be discovered during mid-week and Day Seven testing. var divElement = document.getElementById('viz1614385520927'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName('object')[0]; if ( divElement.offsetWidth > 800 ) { vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+'px';} else if ( divElement.offsetWidth > 500 ) { vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+'px';} else { vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height='1027px';} var scriptElement = document.createElement('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement);

The College and the Institute

Nonproliferation, economic diplomacy and localization management are terms seldomly heard on the college’s Vermont campus.But 2,500 miles away on the coast of California, more than 600 graduate students and hundreds of faculty and staff research these very topics at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies (MIIS), an establishment as deeply institutionally intertwined with the college as its Schools Abroad or Bread Loaf School of English.In 2005, Middlebury College’s then-President Ronald Liebowitz floated the idea of affiliating the college with the Monterey Institute, as it was known at the time. The institute was a graduate school founded in 1955 with a focus on foreign languages that evolved to include programs in areas like international policy, translation studies and terrorism studies. In 2003, it was placed on probation by its accreditation institute because of a pattern of operating deficits.A 2005 Faculty Council vote about the possible acquisition of the institute overwhelmingly opposed the idea, with nearly 80% voting against acquisition. Liebowitz and the Board of Trustees pursued an affiliation anyway, at which point the college absorbed the institute’s debts and assets. Five years later — in 2010 — the college officially acquired MIIS, and by 2015, the school was renamed The Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.Over the last 15 years, administrators have made extensive efforts to bring the two institutions closer together. They’ve created funds to encourage inter-campus interaction, promoted collaboration between faculty and created opportunities for undergraduates to study away at MIIS. However, relations between MIIS and the college remain disjointed, partially as a result of their separate histories but manifesting more recently in financial concerns.In April 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic intensified, Middlebury’s faculty gathered to vote on the Sense of the Faculty Motion submitted by college Professor of Mathematics Frank Swenton recommending detaching MIIS from the college. The motion was spurred by fears of impending financial challenges resulting from the pandemic. Swenton believed disconnecting the schools was the most effective immediate step in avoiding risk of cuts to salaries and services at the Vermont campus.The motion sparked renewed debate in both Vermont and California about the place of MIIS in the college’s mission. In this series, we explore the forces, people, events and decisions that led to the relationship between the schools, the sentiments that persist at both institutions and visions for the future of the relationship.Click through the parts below to read more.

Campus survey finds split opinions on the fall, widespread Covid-19 violations and mental health struggles

Although two-thirds of students said they did not regret their Fall 2020 enrollment decision, 76% of students said their mental health was worse during the fall semester than during a typical semester and nearly two in three students broke Covid-19 health protocols, according to a Campus survey. Other major findings include:  More than a third of students — 38% — said the semester exceeded expectations, while almost 40% said that it was worse than expected.  Almost half of students said that they disapproved of the administration’s handling of the fall semester.  A vast majority of students, 75%, said they felt stressed about their relationships this semester.  Students emphasized increasing social opportunities for students, promoting inclusivity and providing greater clarity on Covid-19 safety rules when suggesting improvements for the spring.  At the end of the survey, we also offered students the opportunity to anonymously share their ideas on how to make the spring 2021 semester better and provide any additional anecdotes from the semester. We have included some of these anonymous responses throughout this article and compiled specific student suggestions for improving the spring semester. Academics !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); The data reveal a striking lack of consensus regarding how the fall semester went: while 38% of students said the semester exceeded their expectations, nearly 40% of students said the semester was worse than they expected. About a quarter of students said the semester was about the same as they expected.  In the anecdotal responses, many students wished for more in-person classes. “Middlebury should prioritize its primary duty, which is to educate its students to the best of its abilities by making every possible effort to make classes in-person,” wrote one student.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Satisfaction with the fall semester also varied by class year. While one in three members of the classes of 2021 or 2021.5 said the semester was worse than they expected, one half of respondents from the classes of 2023 or 2023.5 said the semester fell below expectations.  The vast majority of respondents, 87.5%, said they took four courses during the fall semester. A third of students indicated that two of their courses had in-person components, while 17% of students said they had zero classes with in-person components.  The average student had in-person components in roughly half — 45% — of their courses.  Approval of college entities !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Of the six different entities we asked students to evaluate, Middlebury faculty enjoyed by far the highest approval rating. Still, in their anecdotal responses, students said they hoped that faculty would be more “lenient,” “understanding” and “flexible” during the spring semester. Some students wished faculty would go one step further and lighten students’ workloads.  “It seems like professors are concerned that reducing workloads means that we're learning less and not getting enough for our money,” one respondent wrote. “But the stress and depression of this fall made it so hard to learn that covering less material would be beneficial and we would actually learn more.”  Almost half of students, or 47%, disapproved of the administration, while a quarter approved of it. Some students said they thought Covid-19 policies were unrealistic or unclearly communicated in their anecdotal responses. “I hope that there can be more dialogue between students and administrators to understand how to better create rules that students will actually follow and feel safe,” one wrote.  Fall satisfaction and spring intentions !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Overall, two in three students said they did not regret their enrollment decision. One-tenth of respondents said they regretted their decision, and a quarter of students said they regretted the decision “somewhat.”  “I am not returning Middlebury in the Spring as they never fulfilled most of the things they told us they would throughout the semester,” one student wrote.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); If students’ intended spring plans are an indication of enrollment rates for the spring semester, Middlebury may see fewer students on campus this spring. 68% of students who said they intend to enroll as an on-campus student in the spring, compared to the 87% of respondents who identified as on-campus learners in the fall.  Compared to the 3.5% of students who took the semester off in the fall, 10% of respondents said they would not enroll or take the semester off. One senior student said they were part of a group of friends leaving campus in the spring as a result of the strict rules. “It’s not how I wanted to spend my senior spring but we can’t deal with the rules on campus and just want to be able to be together for our last few months,” the student wrote.  An additional 9% of students were unsure of their spring plans. The number of remote students and the number of students living off-campus but taking classes on-campus is projected to remain the same for the spring at about 7% and under 3% respectively. Covid-19 policies, rules, and guidelines !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Almost two in every three respondents — 64% — indicated that they broke Covid-19 safety rules this semester. A third of respondents said they exceeded room or suite capacity during the semester and a fourth of students reported having more than four close contacts. More than one in every ten — 13% — of students said they participated in a party or gathering with more than 10 people.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); One respondent said they were with as many as 30 other people in a house or suite without masks “every weekend.” The respondent added, “The rules were too strict. If I had followed them I would have become depressed.”  Some respondents believed that Covid-19 policies were enforced unevenly. “The inconsistency in punishment for breaking the Covid rules was absolutely unreal,” one respondent wrote. “Do not create a rule if it will not and cannot be enforced consistently.” !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Students greatly differed in their understanding of Middlebury’s Covid-19 policies. Nearly half of students said they felt confused by guidelines, compared to the 43% that said they were clear. “I worried pretty constantly that I would get reported for something that was me misunderstanding the rules and be kicked off campus,” one student responded.  Mental Health The survey finds a striking decline in student mental health during the fall semester.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Three-fourths of students said their mental health was worse than it has been during a typical semester. The three factors most likely to affect student mental health this semester were stress about an uncertain future amid the pandemic, stress about academic work and anxiety over friendships or “fear of missing out,” according to survey results. “The one thing that was amazing was my professors, but it is hard to motivate oneself to do work when you feel miserable all the time,” one student wrote.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Two-thirds of students reported feeling greater social isolation than in a normal semester, and almost a third of respondents experienced significant changes in their diet which led to either weight loss or gain. Nearly one in 10 students experienced intrusive thoughts of suicide which worsened during the semester.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Three-fourths of students felt stressed about their relationships. Some students expressed that the Covid-19 restrictions implemented by the college were successful in limiting cases of virus, but did so at the expense of students’ mental health. One student put it succinctly: “Mental health is just as important as physical health.” Others said they experienced mental strain due to the inability to socialize with friends or the fear of being punished for breaking Covid-19 rules.  General Demographics !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); This survey was sent to about 2,500 Middlebury students studying both remotely and on campus, and 549 — slightly less than quarter — responded. Eighty-seven percent of respondents were on-campus students this past fall, 2.3% of respondents lived off-campus but took classes on campus and 6.9% of respondents were remote students. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Respondents were fairly evenly distributed by class year, with a slight majority of respondents coming from the classes of 2022 and 2022.5 at 28.2%. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Three-quarters of respondents identified as white, 8.4% as Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander, 6% as of Latino or Hispanic Origin, 6% as biracial or multiracial, and 1.6% as Black or African American.  Thirty-one or 5.6% of respondents identified as international students. Slightly more than one-third of respondents said they receive financial aid.  Ideas from Student Responses for an improved Spring 2021 semester Social Life !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); 80% of students said that they thought spaces for hanging out or socializing were inadequate. 75% of students said they thought there was inadequate space for hosting events.  In the anecdotal responses, students repeatedly said they hoped for more in-person social opportunities in the spring, either facilitated by the college or through extracurricular activities, and improved access to spaces for socializing. One respondent wanted “more opportunities for virtual students to stay connected to campus events with students in person.”  Other student ideas included having heaters for tents, changing policies so that it is easier to register events and providing “funding for students to figure out how to make their own fun.”  Several students said they would be willing to sacrifice off-campus privileges in order to make on-campus rules less strict.  Inclusivity  Some anecdotal responses mentioned the ways in which rules and policies create different playing fields for different students.  “This semester exasperated the divide between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' because the students who had access to a car to drive places in Addison County tended to have a better experience overall than those who didn't,” wrote the student, adding that they wished the college provided a “rent-a-car” service for students.  “Promote inclusivity,” wrote another student. “White students spend time with white students and are intimidating to students of color. There is an apparent divide.”  Other students felt that they had to exclude friends from social gatherings due to capacity limits. One student felt particularly strongly about Covid-19 policies capping the number of people in a room: “Rules [related to Covid-19] essentially required us to ruin our friendships.”  One student said that they hoped students would be allowed to rank their preferred dining hall. “Some dining halls have a reputation of being predominantly white spaces, whereas other dining halls have a perception of being more inclusive to BIPOC students,” the student wrote.  Creation and Communication of Covid-19 Policies  Some students hoped for student input regarding Covid-19 policies. One respondent recommended that new rules should first be run by Residential Life.  Several students perceived the college’s Covid-19 guidelines to be vague and worried that they would accidentally break a rule. “I wish that it was more clear what people [were] disciplined for,” wrote a student. Another student hoped for “more concise guidelines from fewer sources.”  Editor’s Note: Survey questions pertaining to mental health were designed in conjunction with the Student Government Association Health and Wellness Committee.

We should test like we don’t have luck on our side

Nothing about this year has been lucky, and yet, as we recall the Covid-19 scare in the final days of the term, it seems that we got through the fall by a stroke of luck. As evidenced by the three positive Covid-19 cases on the heels of the semester, our ability to circumvent an outbreak this semester relied heavily on a low prevalence of Covid-19 in Addison County. Now, as cases are on the rise — both nationally and in-state — the upcoming spring semester necessitates a more rigorous testing program to ensure the physical and mental wellbeing of the community. We ask that the college implement weekly testing for all students, faculty and staff, no-questions-asked testing upon request and mandatory exit testing in this coming spring semester.  Unlike our NESCAC peers — almost all of whom tested their entire student body twice per week — Middlebury’s targeted-dynamic testing reached less than a third of on-campus students each week. Some went over a month without being tested, and after new cases were detected during the last days of on-campus classes, such sparse testing felt alarmingly insufficient. Because the college had not tested students regularly, those living on campus had no way of knowing when and where the virus had spread — and whether it had reached more people than the smattering of tests had picked up.  The worst case scenario played out in another small Vermont college just an hour away. St. Michael’s College employed a similar testing model that selected roughly a third of the student population each week — a strikingly similar plan to Middlebury’s. Over the course of late October to early November, dozens of students tested positive, eventually leading to a shift to remote learning on Nov. 1. Our own infrequent fall testing system could have resulted in similar consequences. In addition to more frequent surveillance testing, students should be able to get a Covid-19 test upon request, no questions asked. Increased testing availability supports not just the physical health of our community but our mental health as well. Negative Covid-19 tests provide the peace of mind that students need to feel safe after waking up with a sore throat or being a contact-of-a-contact-of-a-contact of a case — situations in which the college denied students testing this fall. Under the current plan, a student in a situation like this is left to worry and take things into their own hands. Many even enacted safety measures like a self-imposed room quarantine to feel safe and responsible while they waited for their contact’s results or to get tested again.  No-questions-asked testing would also encourage testing among students who have committed an infraction of the college Covid-19 policy but will not report themselves for fear of reprimand or dismissal. Whatever the case may be, it is ultimately to the benefit of both the individual and to everyone else in the community if each student has regular access to testing rather than waiting — possibly for weeks — until they are selected for targeted-dynamic testing. Gearing up to travel home to communities around the world, many students felt uneasy about potentially bringing Covid-19 home for the holidays — yet in the final weeks of the semester, student requests for pre-departure testing were consistently denied. Only when the virus spiked in the region during the final week did the college offer optional exit testing, which more than 1,500 students willingly participated in. Exit testing should have been on the table from the get-go, offering students, faculty and staff the peace of mind that they would not spread the virus when departing campus. Moreover, it should be a mandate in the spring, not just an option. Required exit testing is necessary for preventing further infection beyond campus, demonstrating a sense of responsibility and respect toward those living in our locality and beyond.  We recognize that Covid-19 testing requires financial resources. But rather than looking at increased testing as an increased expense, we need to see it as an insurance policy. More frequent testing will help the campus avoid early evacuation, an event that would inevitably cost the college in room and board refunds, and potentially also cost staff their jobs.  To support the possibility of a more “normal” and safe spring semester, and to fulfill our obligation to the communities we care about, we need a testing model that reflects these commitments through weekly surveillance and no-questions-asked testing, as well as mandatory departure testing. This editorial represents the opinions of the Middlebury Campus’s editorial board.

Hannah Laga Abram ’23 wins this year’s Ward Prize

Hannah Laga Abram ’23 won the Ward Prize for the 2019-2020 Academic Year. The award recognizes first-year students who demonstrate exceptional skill in writing. Laga Abram, whose work was nominated by three professors, also received a $500 cash prize. Ryo Nishikubo ’23.5 and Mia Pangasnan ’23 were runners-up for the award, and Emily Garcia ’23, Gloria Escobedo ’23 and Kate Likhite ’23 received honorable mentions. Established by his family in 1978, the prize is named for Paul Ward ’25, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and diplomatic reporter.  A committee of three faculty judges from different academic disciplines decide on one winning submission, two runners-up and three to five honorable mentions. About 50 students are nominated each year for the prize, drawing from work in both fall and spring classes. Laga Abram said she was surprised to hear she had won the award. “I’ve been in love with words for as long as I can remember, so it’s delightful to feel seen and heard in that way and be at a school that treasures the magic of language,” she said. “I’m flabbergasted, honored and grateful to all of my professors, the judges and others who make the Ward Prize possible.” Laga Abram’s winning work was titled “The Ecology of Folklore: A Relational Examination of Storytelling Traditions in Ireland and Iceland,” which she wrote for her Environmental Anthropology class.  Professor of Anthropology Michael Sheridan nominated Laga Abram’s piece for the prize in May, and asked to serve as a judge on this year’s panel in September. He said that her essay demonstrated talent and thoughtfulness beyond her years.  “She engaged the topic insightfully, and then boldly and creatively connected it to course readings and themes. She demonstrated a mastery of the topic that I would expect from a junior or senior who had been marinating in a discipline for a much longer time,” Sheridan said. “It was a beautiful text and a shining example of the craft of writing.” “Stories have so much power in reminding us that the earth — and ourselves as a part of it — are alive, wildly beautiful, and made of mystery,” Laga Abram said.  Writing and Rhetoric Professor and Writing Center Director Genie Giaimo took a lead role in coordinating this year’s process. Working in conjunction with Giaimo, Writing and Rhetoric Professor James Chase Sanchez selected the faculty for this year’s judging panel.  Given that there are only three judges for the prize, one of Sanchez’s biggest goals and challenges was getting “an array of voices and disciplines” on the panel. Even with the challenges of online learning this semester, Sanchez had no trouble finding judges to serve on the panel, which consisted of Professor of History Ian Barrow, American Studies Ellery Foutch and Sheridan. Sheridan said that he enjoyed the diversity of thought that comes from having judges in different academic departments. “By having the judges come from different parts of the college, it balances out differences like disciplinary approaches to knowledge and aesthetics,” he said.  The prize has received steady enthusiasm from faculty and students alike in recent years. To keep this momentum going, Giaimo hopes to see a greater number of nominated pieces from STEM classes.   Professor of Writing and Rhetoric as well as Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies Catharine Wright has been a recurrent nominator over the past twenty years. “[I nominate essays] that leave me excited after reading them, stimulate me with their insights and ambition, and move me,” she said. Editor’s Note: News Editor Abigail Chang ’23 and Managing Editor Riley Board ’22 contributed reporting.

How did Middlebury complete 10,000 Covid-19 tests this semester?

The college has completed over 11,200 Covid-19 tests — more than 9,500 student tests and 1,700 employee tests — over the course of the semester. The number of tests completed each week has fluctuated, sometimes exceeding and sometimes falling short of the goal of 750 weekly tests, according to Middlebury’s Covid-19 Reporting Dashboard.  The inconsistency resulted from differently-sized groups being identified for testing through the college’s Targeted Dynamic Testing program. The fluctuations also resulted from varying numbers of students reporting possible Covid-19 symptoms each week and the number of retests performed due to insufficient samples taken previously, Director of Media Relations Sarah Ray said in an email to the Campus. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); All students were tested twice during move-in and were tested again either in late September or early October. Faculty and staff working on campus were also tested throughout the fall semester. The total cost of testing this year could reach $750,000, according to Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration David Provost. Each test costs $25, bringing the total cost of 750 tests per week to $18,750, not including transportation or personnel costs, Provost said in an email to The Campus. Testing costs for the semester — a contributor to the college’s anticipated deficit — were a reason for raising tuition by 3% this year, according to an Aug. 6 email from college administrators to students.  On Nov. 5, the Vermont State Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Committee approved $3.2 million in reimbursements from the CARES Act to independent colleges for the cost of Covid-19 testing through Dec. 31, 2020. Other colleges implemented more rigorous testing schedules during the fall semester: UVM has tested all students every seven days and Colby, a smaller college in a similarly rural location, has tested all students, faculty, and staff twice every week.  According to an analysis of their respective schools’ testing plans, Middlebury is the only school in the NESCAC to use a targeted sampling program for its testing. All other NESCAC institutions, many located in similarly rural areas, have tested all students twice weekly, with the exception of Williams College (once weekly) and Amherst College (three times weekly). The Middlebury Return to Campus Guide outlines the college’s testing procedures, including reasons why an individual might be tested outside of regular testing. The college tests individuals studying or working on campus who display symptoms that could be associated with Covid-19, as well as those who are identified as close contacts of people who have tested positive for Covid-19.  All other tests are conducted as part of the college’s Targeted Dynamic Testing, with groups distinguished as “peripheral contacts” or “positional contacts.”  Peripheral contacts are those who may have come into contact with someone who tested positive for Covid-19 but who had limited exposure with the infected person and was not identified as a close contact by the Vermont Department of Health. Positional contact is how most students and employees at the college are grouped, with different levels depending on the kinds of in-person activities performed. High-risk employees are in testing category 1, most in-person students are in category 2, most faculty and staff are in category 3, and students not taking in-person classes or living on campus and faculty or staff working remotely are in category 4. During the last week of in-person classes, Middlebury offered optional departure testing as students prepared to leave campus and cases around the state of Vermont spiked. On Tuesday, the college reported that two students tested positive for Covid-19. One, one additional case was reported on Wednesday bringing the total of active cases on campus to three.

“Hostile Terrain 94”: Middlebury spotlights the death of migrants crossing the border

The journey from Central America across the southern border of the United States is a frequently traveled path, but its dangers are enormous, and migrants die every year attempting to cross the frontier. Middlebury’s “Hostile Terrain 94” project is a video compilation of members of the community paying tribute to those who have died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in southern Arizona. The video is part of the “Hostile Terrain 94” project, directed by Jason De León, a professor of anthropology at UCLA. De León serves as the director of the Undocumented Migration Project, which visually catalogues migrant deaths that occurred as a result of the the U.S.’s 1994 Prevention Through Deterrence policy. The policy took advantage of the strategically increased border patrol presence in urban areas along the southern border, redirecting migration routes through the Sonoran Desert in Arizona to let the harsh environment and hostile terrain do the work of border patrol agents in deterring and preventing migrants from crossing. The 18-minute video features members of the Middlebury community reading the name, age, reporting date and cause of death of migrants who perished while attempting to cross the border. While most people showed their face, some remained anonymous and spoke with a black screen.  The majority of the deaths are due to “exposure to the elements.” Throughout the video, text ran across the bottom of the screen reading: “As a result of the U.S. border enforcement strategy — Prevention Through Deterrence — at least 3,200 migrants have died while attempting to cross the harsh terrain of the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.” “I think a lot of Americans just aren’t aware of the involvement that the U.S. has in perpetrating violence against migrants,” Stephanie Soriano-Cruz ’21, one of the students who helped organize the video, said. “The U.S has just distanced itself or deflected blame and placed it on the migrants themselves as if they’re responsible for their own deaths.” Soriano-Cruz said that she wanted to raise awareness about the violent nature of the U.S.’s strategies in deterring migration. The idea for the video was conceived when Rachel Joo, an associate professor of American Studies, taught De León’s book “The Land of Open Graves” in her course titled Immigrant America.  “It’s really a book that breaks all sorts of boundaries in terms of disciplines and incorporation of photography and art and academic tests,” Soriano-Cruz said. “It’s an incredibly powerful book about death on the US Mexico border, death of migrants, and who is to blame and what factors contribute to deaths.” Many of her students were moved by the book and wanted to bring De León to campus to speak. Their wish came true in the fall of 2019 when he came to Middlebury, led several events and invited the school to join his project. “Jason De León was interested in making it a very visible statement that would contribute to the discourse around immigration up to the election,” Joo said. “He wanted immigration to be a bigger issue than it has been in this last year. It’s been mostly about the pandemic, and obviously that affects everyone, but a lot of the issues around immigration, like these 545 children who’ve been taken from their parents whose parents can’t be located, that was just a blip.” In October, a report revealed that the parents of more than 500 children separated from their families at the border could not be found. In a world without Covid-19, the “Hostile Terrain 94” is a traveling visual exhibit. Participants receive a name of a migrant who died, fill out a toe tag similar to those that identify the bodies found in the Sonoran Desert and pin it to the location where their body was found on a large map.  “It becomes this 3D artwork. It really gives you an understanding of the lives that are lost,” said Trinh Tran, assistant professor in anthropology and education studies. “Because it’s individuals who are getting the names of individual migrants and writing it down, I think it starts to sink in, the scale and the enormity of the loss.”  Joo assembled a group of students including Alondra Carmona ’21, Christine Nabung ’22, Ariana Rios ’21, Soriano-Cruz ’21, and Tran. Tran has taken over the project this year while Joo is on sabbatical. Around 180 institutions, including schools, museums and libraries, are participating in the project. Although some places decided to create a Covid-19-safe way to create the toe tag exhibit, Middlebury decided to delay the hands-on component and create a video in the interim.  “I think during this time of Covid, when our freedom of movement is so limited, this project is really important because maybe now more than ever we can understand why the right to movement is so important, and how some people don’t enjoy those rights that we have,” Tran said. “Not only do they not enjoy those rights, but they will pay literally the highest price, which is their lives, in order to get that right to mobility.” On Oct. 15, the Dean of Students sent an email to Middlebury students detailing the project. It informed members of the community that they could email Hostile Terrain in order to receive a name and record a clip for the larger video. Tran has access to the Undocumented Migration Project’s database of names and assigned them to individuals who reached out. On Oct. 28, the group, which is affiliated with Juntos, screened the video at Crossroads Cafe from 12-4 p.m.  “There's that Middlebury bubble we talk about a lot where it’s easy for us to just stay on campus and not really think about what’s going on in the community, but this impacts students on this campus and folks in the community directly, and we just don’t think about those things,” Rios said.  As a first-generation Mexican-American, this project is personal for Rios. Her father, who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in the 90s, was very excited about Middlebury’s involvement and submitted a video to the larger project.  “He was lucky and he was able to make it across, but there are thousands of people who don’t,” she said.  “The purpose of this project is to give names to the people who have crossed over. A lot of the time we don’t get to see and hear these names or these people who have lost their lives,” said Carmona, one of the other student organizers. The team hopes to show the video again in the future, possibly projected on Mead Chapel, and make the video accessible on the internet. 

Breaking: One student tests positive for Covid-19 on second day of exit testing

One student tested positive for Covid-19 on the second day of exit testing, according to an email from Director of Health Services Mark Peluso. The school moved eleven students into quarantine after contract tracing, bringing the total number of quarantined students to 24. The new cases were from the the batch of tests completed yesterday — the second day of exit testing — when the college conducted 1,130 tests.  The two cases reported yesterday and the new case today were the first instances of positive Covid-19 tests at the college since its entry testing in September. The total number of cases is now five.  Covid-19 cases in Vermont surged last week — and hit an all-time high of 119 on Monday. New Covid-19 cases are expected to increase by 50% in the next six weeks, according to state officials. var divElement = document.getElementById('viz1605746185938'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName('object')[0]; if ( divElement.offsetWidth > 800 ) { vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+'px';} else if ( divElement.offsetWidth > 500 ) { vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+'px';} else { vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height='1027px';} var scriptElement = document.createElement('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement);

Angela Davis talks activism and action at Middlebury

Across campus, students gathered around television and computer screens and stared down at their phones while walking between buildings to watch renowned civil rights activist and educator Angela Davis answer student questions over Zoom on Oct. 28. Nearly 500 people tuned in to watch “An Evening with Angela Davis,”an event sponsored by Middlebury College Activities Board and co-hosted by the Black Student Union and Distinguished Men of Color. Rather than a traditional talk, the event began with 30 minutes of pre-submitted student questions, followed by 45 minutes of live questions fielded by student moderators. Organizers hoped that the unusual format of the talk would tailor the experience to Middlebury students and their interests. The event covered a wide range of topics, including Davis’ childhood and the beginning of her activism, her position as a vocal advocate of prison and police abolition, her views on intersectionality and her hopes for current students and coming generations. Davis grew up in highly segregated Birmingham, Ala., in the 1940s and 1950s. A staunch believer in civil rights and equality from an early age, she joined the Black Panthers and the Communist Party. “It was not possible to live in that kind of world and retain one’s dignity without resisting, without fighting back,” Davis said. “I knew that it was my responsibility to participate in the effort to change our surroundings and change our conditions and to move toward a world in which there would be justice and equality and freedom.” For Davis, silence was never an option. As a shy young woman, she never intended to become a figurehead. Instead, she had planned to contribute to the movements she cared about as an intellectual. Although Davis empathizes with the many people whose silence comes from fear rather than ambivalence, she encouraged students not to fear the consequences of their actions as individuals, but to find courage in the collective of a movement. Davis is all too familiar with individual consequences. She rose to prominence as an activist after the University of California, Los Angeles fired her from her position as a philosophy professor due to her affiliation with the Communist Party. Then, the national spotlight turned to her after she aided in the botched escape attempt of George Jackson in 1970. Before she was caught, the FBI listed her as one of their most wanted criminals. She served 18 months in jail — often in solitary confinement — and she faced the death penalty in court. She was acquitted in 1972, but her time in prison has profoundly impacted her life and activism. “I think I’ve lived the best life I could have possibly lived,” she said. “Even the things that have been really terrible that have happened to me, I realize now I’ve learned from them. They’ve been gifts. Even the time I spent in jail and on the FBI’s most wanted list and facing the death penalty. That was a gift because I learned so much.” Davis has carried those lessons with her through a career as a leading activist. She is one of the most prominent advocates for police and prison abolition, positions that have garnered national attention in the wake of the police killings of Georgy Floyd and Breonna Taylor this year and the gathering momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement across the country. Davis believes that the police and carceral systems were founded on racism and that no reform can ever divorce them from their past. Efforts to reform these institutions over the past century have only served to strengthen and legitimize them. She views the current punitive model of the current American justice system as ineffective at actually protecting people and their rights. Davis advocates for abolishing prisons and police and creating new, better institutions in their place. When it comes to police officers killing unarmed Black civilians, Davis does not agree with calls to imprison criminal cops. Instead, she prioritizes constructing institutions that will prevent the deaths of any more Black people at the hands of the police. “A punitive, retributive approach, regardless of who it is directed at, is never going to accomplish anything,” she said. “I want to create the framework for forms of justice that will be more compelling and that will help us rid our world of racist violence.” Davis’s activism reaches far beyond civil rights and abolition movements. A vocal advocate for women’s rights, class struggle, LGBTQ+ rights and many more progressive issues, she rejects the hierarchical view that activists must prioritize one issue over the rest to be effective. Instead, she encouraged students to view all of these issues as connected to each other, nationally and internationally, and to work to solve them where they intersect. Davis told students, no matter which issues they care about, to vote in the general election and to vote for Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris. While she does not agree with many of their policies nor see them as nearly radical enough for the moment at hand, Davis emphasized that a Biden-Harris administration would create more opportunities for activism, while those opportunities would shrink under another Trump term. “I am going to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but I’m not really voting for them,” she said. “I’m voting for us. I’m voting for our own capacity to continue to the work that has begun so powerfully during this period [after] the murder of Breonna Taylor and the state lynching of George Floyd.” Davis ended the talk on a note of hope for the future directed at the students listening. “I’ll be 77 in January, and in all of these years I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such an exciting moment, and it's largely because of young people . . . leading the way,” said Davis. “I trust you. I place my hope in the work that you’re doing over this period and in the coming years and decades.”

U.S. Congressman Peter Welch talks race, climate change, and bipartisanship

Congressman Welch has represented Vermont in the House of Representatives as the state’s sole delegate since he was elected in 2006. After launching his career in politics during the civil rights era, Welch’s career has focused on energy efficiency, housing discrimination and bringing broadband to rural Americans. Looking toward a likely win in his re-election bid this year, The Campus sat down with the congressman to reflect on over a decade of work in the House. Reflecting on over a decade in Congress, what do you consider to be your biggest accomplishment and why?  On climate change and economic recovery… I think the biggest accomplishments that we had were clearly during the Obama years: it was the passage of the Affordable Care Act. I served on the Energy and Commerce Committee and I was very, very active in that effort. The biggest accomplishment in the House — but didn’t pass in the Senate — was the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, which we passed in that same session of Congress. That would have reduced emissions by 80% by 2050, and all of us are so disappointed that we lost that by one vote in the Senate. The last economic crisis, of course, was during the Obama Administration, when Wall Street collapsed and brought down Main Street. I played an active role in the American Recovery Act, which started to get us back on our feet.  I’ve been a leader on climate change issues. My role in the [Waxman-Markey bill] was to be the principal advocate for the energy efficiency aspects of that bill. Since then, I’ve been a champion in Congress on climate change, particularly the benefits of energy efficiency. I got involved in that when I was in the Vermont senate, and one of the things that I look back on with fond memories is the climate march that was organized by Bill McKibben when he was starting 350.org. He and Middlebury students led a march from Montpelier to Burlington in the election, back in 2006. I was one of the speakers at that original march.  How do you think we can build trust in politics again? Do you think politics have always been this divisive?  On Trump and social media... [Politics] hasn’t been this divisive. Trump has embraced division as a tactic. One of his first acts as president was to ban people coming into this country on the basis of religion. That’s shocking. One of his policies was to separate children from families at the southern border — and I was one of the first members of Congress to go down there and witness that firsthand. I went to the Texas-Mexico border. And even today, we’ve learned that there are over 500 children where the government has no idea where their parents are. Trump plays racial politics to a degree that no one has ever seen. He won this election with three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, and he’s done everything that he can to intensify division rather than create unity since then.   There’s another issue here that will take significant thought and effort to overcome it, and that’s social media. What we see with the explosion of social media is an explosion of misinformation, of hate, of conspiracy theories — and it’s created a toxic, polluted atmosphere for dialogue about the problems that we collectively face. I think that’s a big challenge for our democracy. When there's no norms and no mutual respect, then it makes it much more difficult to find common ground.  That’s a big problem, and Trump is a master at understanding how this works and he exploited it and he was very successful at mowing down all of his Republican opponents in those primaries. This is a real challenge to our democracy.  On finding common ground with Republicans… There’s two ways [to deal with partisanship] — personal and political. The personal way of dealing with it is that you show respect. You listen more than you talk. You look for where there’s common ground.  So, for example, I am a leader of the rural broadband caucus. I find ways of interacting where it’s about us trying to solve the challenges of the people who we represent. I have a colleague from West Virginia, [Rep.] David McKinley. He’s a Republican, and he is a good partner of mine when working on energy efficiency. On the other hand, he’s from coal country, and he attacks the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is causing a loss of coal jobs. I don’t agree with him on [attacking the EPA], but we agree on energy efficiency.  As a way of trying to build a relationship with him and show respect for the coal miners, I went to stay with him in his house in Harrison County, West Virginia, and we spent a day in a coal mine — we went down 900 feet and 4.5 miles in. We spent an afternoon being with coal workers who were working on a coal seam.  The point I was making was that I’m against coal [in that] I’m for clean energy, but I’m for the coal miners. Those coal miners did not create climate change. In fact, those coal miners are losing jobs, and they’re hard workers. I compared the coal miners to our dairy farmers as the hardest working people I’ve ever met. I saw how much that gave me an opportunity to be heard, by David and by many others who began to see that I’m advocating for clean energy, but it’s not because I’m against those coal miners. I’m against a lot of the coal company owners, but the miners are good people. That’s a way of showing personal respect and creating trust.  Institutionally is where Trump is pretty toxic. He is attacking institutions instead of building them up, instead of reforming them and strengthening them. When I say institutions, I mean everything from the court systems to the intelligence community to the EPA, where we have lost one-thousand scientists who have left in despair because of political manipulation. We have to build up our institutions and have trust in institutions to build trust in goals that are important to our society. So, on a personal level, it’s how you interact with people. On a political level, it’s a commitment to reforming, not destroying, institutions that we all need.  Do you have any fun stories from working in Congress for over a decade? What are some of your best days working in Congress?  On cheese (and getting the job done)... One of my best days was when Mateo Kehler, who was the head of Jasper Hill Cheese, showed up at my office in D.C. in a t-shirt and cargo shorts. He was in a rage-slash-panic, because the Federal Drug Administration (FDA)  just issued a rule that said cheesemakers could no longer store their cheese on wooden boards. Pretty crazy, because we have been storing cheese on wooden boards since the last supper. The background is that they did an inspection of a cheesemaking facility in upstate New York and found contaminated cheese, and there were woodboards there. As it turns out, the whole place was contaminated; it’s not that the boards were contaminated. [The cheesemaking facility in upstate New York] really had back practices and needed to be closed down, and they were. But the bad practices were the problem, not the use of wood.   So in any event, this would have been catastrophic for this award-winning cheese company, Jasper Hill. What do we do? So this was a while ago, when Paul Ryan was the chair of the Budget Committee. He’s Republican, and he and I don’t agree on anything. He represents Wisconsin, where they make a lot of cheese, and he and I used to kid a lot about who had better cheese. So, I went on the floor and found him, and I said ‘Paul, we got us a cheese problem.’ I explained it to him, and within a day, we called up the FDA to explain our problem. We said, ‘we’ve got a cheese problem, and you’re soon going to have a budget problem.’ And it got fixed.  It’s an only-in-Vermont story because you literally have this citizen, who is running this wonderful enterprise called Jasper Hill Cheese, show up unannounced in his t-shirt and cargo shorts to tell me what the problem was. It’s existential. And in a few days, it was solved. And it was solved in a significant part because I had a good pre-existing relationship with Paul Ryan, and I knew that, when it came to cheese and how it would affect Wisconsin cheese makers, Paul and I would be on the same page. It was an interesting combination of a Vermonter coming and dropping in and feeling completely comfortable in the office and asking for something that couldn’t be done, and we did it all in a couple of days.  On race and Representative John Lewis… Another wonderful story: I got my start in politics in the civil rights movement. When I was in college, I dropped out of college to go to Chicago to work for a community organization that was fighting discriminatory housing. I dropped out of college for what would have been my junior year. I worked there, and then I returned to college, and then I returned to Chicago as a Robert Kennedy Fellow to resume my work when I got out [of college].  During what would’ve been my junior year in college, I went down to Atlanta to the Ebenezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King, at that time, was the pastor. And I was in the church, and he spoke. It was a powerful experience to be with him when he spoke in that church. And afterwards, I went upstairs when he had a press conference, and there were very few people there, and he was denouncing the Vietnam War. My whole beginnings in politics were inspired by the racial justice movements of the late 60s — the voting rights movement.  Fast forward, I’m in Congress and I had a colleague that I revered from afar for a long time, and that was [Rep.] John Lewis. We, in the House, were very frustrated that Speaker Paul Ryan would not take up any gun safety legislation. We protested on the floor, and I spent a good deal of time sitting on the floor next to John Lewis when we were protesting in Congress about gun violence. All of us who served with John regarded it as a special privilege to be with him and to be his colleague. That memory, of sitting on the floor of the House, next to John, is probably one of my favorite, most proud moments. His advocacy was [to] get in good trouble… cause good trouble.  Now we’re continuing with the effort to deal with the incredible racism in our county that is systemic and ingrained. With the leadership of the Black Congressional Caucus, we passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which, unfortunately, Senator [Mitch] McConnell won’t pass in the senate. That continuation of the opportunity to work on racial justice issues means a lot to me, and I really appreciate the work that the students at Middlebury are doing to bring attention to systemic racism and try to find practical ways to address it. 

Throwback Thursday: This day in 1978, cross country dominates the course

For this week’s Throwback Thursday, we revisit two spectacular weekend performances by the women’s cross country team, led by Middlebury Hall of Fame inductee Karin Von Berg ’81. Not only did Von Berg start off with a 15th place finish in the Bonne Bell 10,000-meter mini marathon on Oct. 9, she also led the Panthers to victory at the Oct. 14 Cross Country NESCAC Championships. Because she found Vermont to be “lacking in competition,” Von Berg traveled to Boston to compete in the Bonne Bell race against a field of 4,500 women from schools nationwide. North Carolina State’s star runner Joan Benoit ultimately took the gold, setting a road race world record with a time of 33:15. Although Von Berg ran with the top four finishers for the first two and a half miles, she eventually dropped back during the middle of the race. Most notably, she was passed by Duke University’s Ellison Groodall, who almost won the 1977 NCAA Cross Country Championships, and Marth Cooksey, who had the third-fastest marathon time of 1978. Von Berg herself crossed the finish line in an impressive 15th place with a time of 35:39. Only one week later, at the NESCAC Championships, Von Berg took the lead from the very beginning and never looked back. She easily captured the NESCAC title with a 5K time of 20:50, setting a new course record and finishing an entire one minute and 19 seconds ahead of her teammate Alice Tower ’81, who took the silver medal. Fellow Panthers Tara McMenamy ’82 and Anne Leggett ’81 finished in 6th and 11th place, respectively. According to the Oct. 19, 1978 edition of The Middlebury Campus, “although the NESCAC meet is not scored by teams, the Panthers showed that they were far and away the strongest squad in the conference” and captured the unofficial conference gold. Von Berg later went on to win the 1979 Friehoffer’s National AAU 10K Championship, beating nearly 600 competitors and finishing with a personal best time of 34:26. She also won the 1,500- and 5,000-meter races at the 1979 NESCAC Track Championships, and her time of 4:28.9 in the 1,500 still stands as the current school and NESCAC meet record.

Vermont becomes first state to offer Covid-19 economic aid to undocumented immigrants

Vermont has become the first state to create a Covid-19 economic stimulus fund for residents previously unable to receive federal stimulus checks. Signed into law on Oct. 2 by Gov. Phil Scott, the program largely benefits undocumented immigrants and is projected to aid up to 5,000 Vermont residents. The state approved $5 million to be distributed to those previously unable to receive federal aid, allocated in checks of $1,200 for adults and $500 for children.   Migrant Justice, a Burlington-based non-profit, proposed such a fund after undocumented families were excluded from early federal payments. “Today is a new day. Things are finally starting to change. Vermont is beginning to recognize us,” Migrant Justice tweeted in response to the news.  Up to 4,000 adults may benefit from the fund, as well as up to 1,000 children, as estimated by the Joint Fiscal Office of the Vermont General Assembly. Around 3,000 are thought to be undocumented immigrants, while others were unable to recieve federal benefits after filing taxes with an undocumented spouse. The program is to be administered by the Agency of Administration, the Executive Director of Racial Equity and the Agency of Human Services. Will Lambek, who works with Migrant Justice in Burlington, explained that the plan is largely the result of immigrant farm workers lobbying elected officials in Vermont. The workers, whom the state classified as “essential workers” during the early stages of the pandemic, were excluded from relief funds that benefited similar wage earners. “Immigrant farm workers led a six-month campaign to push this proposal forward, ultimately convincing the Governor to include the idea in his budget proposal and the legislature to fully fund it,” Lambek said. As the first state to enact such a program, Lambek is hopeful that Vermont will inspire other states to states to follow suit. “Vermont is sending a message that when we as a state respond to a crisis, the response must include everyone,” Lambek said. Alondra Carmona ’21, President of the Juntos student organization on campus, stressed the unique ways the pandemic has especially affected farmworker communities. “They are exposed every day and will continue to be exposed because they do not have the means to take time off,” Carmona said. For Carmona, the state’s fund is a critical step in the right direction. “Having this stimulus check will mean that these farmworkers will be receiving the support they should have been given since the beginning of the pandemic,” she said. Despite the major victory, Migrant Justice continues to press forward to address more underlying issues affecting immigrant farmworkers in the state. One current project is the Milk with Dignity program to reform Vermont’s dairy industry. “We urge Hannaford supermarkets to take responsibility for the conditions behind its store-brand milk and join the Milk with Dignity program,” Lambek said. The bill was more than welcome news for members of Juntos and other supporters of the migrant farmworker community. Carmona explained the importance of the development and urged continued support. “We are happy to hear this news and hope that the Middlebury community can also provide social and financial support for this vulnerable population.”

Administrators discuss commitments to anti-racism and equity during open meeting

The use of a racial slur targeting a Middlebury student and an update on the college’s five-year action plan for anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion were the focus of an open meeting co-hosted by the Student Government Association (SGA) and college administrators on Oct. 8. Student moderators represented groups accross campus, including the SGA, International Students’ Organization, Umoja and the Muslim Students Association. Panelists included President Laurie Patton, Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández, the Director of the Task Force on Anti-racism Christal Brown and dozens of other faculty and administrators.  President Patton opened the event with a statement regarding the recent incident of race-related harassment on campus, which has since been investigated. “Racial slurs have no place on our campus, and no one should have to suffer dehumanizing treatment while pursuing a Middlebury education,” Patton said. She emphasized the work of the Senior Leadership Group (SLG) in response to this incident and listed several specific action steps. The Board of Trustees plans to form a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) committee which will communicate frequently with BIPOC students and faculty. Patton’s aim is to make DEI issues more central in the Trustees’ decision making. The SLG has been talking to the SGA and Concerned Students of Midd — a group of students who sent a statement to President Patton and the SLG criticizing a May 31 community-wide email from Patton for drawing parallels between racial injustices and the pandemic. The email has since been removed from the college’s announcements. According to Patton, the SLG plans to implement restorative practices and is hoping to conduct follow-up meetings with Concerned Students of Midd.  Patton also announced that the college will hire four new faculty members, three of whom will teach subjects related to Black Studies. One of the new faculty members will be in the Black Studies Program. There are also plans to create two more positions in the Black Studies Program in the future, thanks to a recent large donation.  Patton went on to address the $500,000 the college received this past spring for anti-racism initiatives. Of that, $250,000 will go to the Task Force on Anti-racism, which will then decide where to allocate the funds. Another $50,000 will go to the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS), and the remaining $200,000 will be allocated through the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (OIDEI).  The office and the SLG will also meet with a newly formed task force of several compensated Black students to help determine how these funds will be used. Patton also provided more details about the Twilight Project, which will include research and artistic programming aiming to “bring to light those whose stories were previously left out of the cultural record.”  Fernández followed Patton and presented the Action Plan for Anti-racism, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Fernández explained how the report was influenced by several outlets for student opinion, including the 2019 Zeitgeist and a climate assessment. After receiving input from multiple student organizations over the summer, the 35-page report was published by OIDEI in September. Fernández emphasized that the report is a “living document,” and that revisions have already been made, including the creation of the taskforce of compensated Black students that was conceived on the advice of Rodney Adams ’21 and Kaila Thomas ’21.  Christal Brown, the leader of the Task Force on Anti-racism and professor of dance, explained her new role within this network of initiatives. Brown has a two-year leadership role and said she aims to “stand in the gap as we traverse who we've been and who we are becoming.” She emphasized the need for greater communication and listening as a community.  The panelists then went on to answer previously submitted questions. When asked about plans to expand the Black Studies program, Director Daniel Silva explained that there are currently no faculty with a doctorate in Black Studies. He said that the program requires a core of faculty, commenting that a colleague described the current Black Studies programs as “like having a chemistry department without chemists.” Silva advocated for hiring four or five professors in the next few years and spoke in support of a Black Studies distribution requirement. Patton noted that hiring priorities are determined by faculty through the Education Affairs Committee, not by administrators.  Marti McCaleb, civil rights and Title IX coordinator, responded to several questions received about the outcome of the Sept. 25 racist incident. She said that investigations are confidential to protect student privacy as mandated by the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). McCaleb noted that the impact of discrimination goes beyond the individuals involved and impacts the whole community.  Patton responded to a question about a separate incident of racism that took place outside the French House, during which an older, white community member sitting at the bus stop yelled “all lives matter” at a Black student. Patton said she hopes to intitate anti-racist intiatves within the town, including a “town-gown” coalition and educational workshops.  Panelists also addressed ways in which the college can support Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students. Director of Intercultural Programs and Professor of American Studies Roberto Lint Sagarena said he is “here to serve” and asked for students to reach out individually if they need assistance. Miguel Fernández added that he has been able to give DACA students grants in place of work-study and is able to aid in paying application fees and other expenses. Fernández said he is “trying to be creative but also cautious.”  Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly reported that the event took place on Oct. 9 instead of its correct date, Oct. 8.

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“The Agitators” is a play that explores the relationship between Susan B. Anthony and Fredrick Douglass. COURTESY PHOTO.

Benjy Renton ’21 garners national recognition for contact tracing the White House

Benjy Renton ’21 has spent the better part of the past six months covering the Covid-19 pandemic with his weekly “Where We Stand with Covid-19” reports. But not even Renton could have anticipated his new beat when, in the early hours of Friday, Oct. 2, his friend and Middlebury Campus colleague James Finn ’20.5 sent Renton a tweet: President Trump had tested positive for the virus.  “We’ve begun the monumental task of contact-tracing the President of the United States,” Renton said in an interview with The Campus.  By the end of the day on Oct. 2, Renton had joined forces with Peter Walker, a data visualization specialist who spearheads the Covid-19 Tracking Project for The Atlantic, and Dr. Jesse Owens, an infectious disease fellow and internal medicine doctor at Emory University, to construct a Covid-19 dashboard that mapped the president’s contacts and infection status.  Although the dashboard is not intended to be a stand-in for the scientific contact tracing process, it is one of the most comprehensive public trackers of the president’s contacts. In two days, the dashboard garnered 370,000 views. As of press time, the dashboard has reached over 764,000 views.  “We’ve decided to do this as a public-facing dashboard,” Renton said. “The American people deserve to have all the information in one place.” One would think contact tracing the president would be a simple task given his hyper-visibility in public spaces. But prior to testing positive, Trump had been to a long list of places: the White House Rose Garden ceremony, during which Trump announced the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 26; the presidential debate on Sept. 29; and campaign rallies in Minnesota and New Jersey on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.  Renton and his colleagues have parsed through news media accounts of these events, identifying each individual present and following each thread of contacts as new individuals test positive. They also have a tip line where people can anonymously submit information or contacts to add to the dashboard. The tip line has received 512 submissions since the dashboard was created, and Renton is the one responsible for adding all of this information.  “It’s kind of like a family tree,” Renton said. “But the family tree is the three branches of the U.S. government.”  The dashboard has since been picked up by Forbes, New York Magazine and the BBC.  Walker said Renton has a “doggedness” that allows him to jump into situations that may seem messy. Renton’s work, according to Walker, is “on-par with anything [he has] seen” in the academic or scientific world.  “I think the key is that he’s able to recognize the opportunity and able to fill a knowledge gap,” Walker said in an interview with The Campus. “He has a clear sense of right and wrong, and that has pushed him to do work that he feels is of the moment and not only valuable but necessary.”  Renton’s journey in covering Covid-19 has been a personal one: he was studying abroad in Beijing, China when the pace of the pandemic began to accelerate in mid-January of this year. The study abroad program was canceled and all students were sent home in late January. Renton began his spring semester at Middlebury in February — only to be sent home from Middlebury once again after the college was evacuated in mid-March. Renton returned to his hometown in Rye, N.Y., proximal to the American epicenter of the pandemic in New York City.   “I think I have a unique vantage point of seeing the outbreak in China, seeing the outbreak in New York, and now seeing the outbreak on a college campus,” Renton said. “If you think of phases of pandemics, those are key phases that the U.S. and the world has fought.”  What began in 2014 as a blog called “Off the Silk Road,” where Renton wrote about his trips to China prior to college, soon evolved into an update for friends and family about the state of the pandemic. In mid-April, Renton ramped up his coverage with weekly reports called “Where We Stand with Covid-19,” a forum that is equal parts blog, website and newsletter, drawing from scientific research, op-eds and news media about Covid-19. Renton said he structures his weekly reports a bit like a news broadcast, with an introduction containing the week’s national news headlines which may or may not be pandemic-related.  Subsequent segments contain information on things like vaccines, the latest scientific studies, K-12 schools and study abroad information. Renton created one unique segment called the College RidicuList, which contains a bulleted list of “quirks of college reopening plans.” Another segment is called “The Good Stuff,” which is a list of Renton’s favorite feel-good headlines from the week’s news.  Renton relies on graphics and visualizations to display this information, and he makes many of these himself. Every week he updates the College Watchlist, which maps incidents of positive Covid-19 cases in higher education across the country during the last seven days. The map tracked 98,965 cases at 91 institutions, according to Renton’s Oct. 11 newsletter. Renton updates these numbers by hand every week. The process of writing these newsletters takes around 7 hours each week, Renton said.  “I think it’s important to see the general pulse of the nation,” Renton said when asked why he combines mainstream news reporting with coverage of the pandemic. “I think it’s really important to acknowledge those events because I think it’s a transformative part in history, and it’s one that needs to be discussed for a minute.”  Renton is a news junkie. At the height of his news consumption over the summer, Renton said he was reading 500 articles per week. He said he pared down that consumption a bit once school began, watching some cable news each day; reading national, local and college papers; and subscribing to a variety of scientific and health publications or newsletters.  “Benjy has a voracious appetite for the news and is really good at hopping on whatever is occurring out in the world and adding his own flair to how it’s reported, whether it’s data or adding analysis,” said Sabine Poux ’20, who served as the Editor in Chief for The Campus last year.  Despite being a full-time student, Renton’s coverage of the pandemic has not slackened. Renton is in the process of co-authoring a scientific paper that analyzes the reopening plans of 500 institutions of higher education across the United States, along with researchers from the California Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University.  Renton also has plans of researching “college” counties, a designation given to counties where college students compose at least 10% of the population.  Nobody is certain when the pandemic will end, not even Renton. For now, he plans to continue carving out his niche in higher education and Covid-19 tracing research, contributing to a historical record of life during the pandemic.  “The pandemic is all of our stories,” Renton said. Editor’s Note: Benjy Renton ’21 is The Campus’ Digital Director.