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(09/20/18 9:57am)
MIDDLEBURY — Early Sunday morning, about 150 runners from Middlebury College, the town of Middlebury, and surrounding counties gathered in Wright Park for the 15th annual TAM Trek. The race was put on by the Middlebury Area Land Trust (MALT), a nonprofit dedicated to maintaining the Trail Around Middlebury (TAM), and offered three loops: a 19.2-mile run around the entire TAM, a 10K and a two-mile Family Fun Run. The staggered start times allowed participants in every event to finish together.
Both the 19 and 6-mile races were professionally timed. Theo Henderson ’20 crossed the finish line first, completing the full loop in a new course record of 2:07:24. Morgan Perlman ’19 finished closely behind in 2:08:22, also beating the previous course record. Middlebury resident Jessie Donavan, 42, was the first female finisher in 2:40:09, while Katie Beebe ’20 and Alexis Clay ’21 placed second and third, with times of 2:52:24 and 2:53:04, respectively.
All three events began in a clearing at the end of Sycamore Street Ext, where orange cones marked the starting line. An eclectic but energizing mix of 2010-era pop songs played over the speakers while MALT staff and volunteers manned the surrounding tents. Participants received their numbered bibs, entered their complementary raffle ticket toward a prize and fueled up on apple cider, chocolate milk, fresh apples, homemade baked goods, freeze-dried chicken and rice and maple syrup energy shots.
It was still cool and misty at 8 a.m. when Jamie Montague, the MALT executive director, stepped into the flag-lined finishing chute. She wore pink-and-turquoise running shoes and a red “MAKE EARTH COOL AGAIN” hat.
“Okay, TAM Trekkers,” Montague said into a microphone. “It’s time to line up.” The nearly 70 runners attempting the entire TAM laced up their running shoes, adjusted their CamelBak packs, jogged their last warm-ups and gathered at the starting line. After a quick review of course markings and logistics, Montague blew an air horn, and the first race began.
By 9 a.m., the cloud cover had parted and the day was getting warmer. Everyone else, including families with small children, middle- and high-school cross-country runners and the Middlebury College Men’s and Women’s Cross Country teams, stepped to the line for the 10K and Fun Run. Montague returned to the finishing chute, repeated her directions and blew the air horn for a second time. She also thanked the race’s sponsors, IPJ Real Estate, Brennan Punderson & Donahue PLLC, Co-Operative Insurance and WhistlePig. The sponsors are all local businesses, which matched new or increased business sponsors dollar for dollar, up to $2,000.
According to Mike Corbett, the MALT treasurer, while the Land Trust promotes the TAM Trek as a fundraiser, it generates more money through its general fundraising. The TAM Trek’s main purpose is increased exposure, both to sponsors and to the community.
“One of the things we try to get people to understand is that the MALT is also the TAM, and those two things are synonymous,” Corbett said. “I think the biggest thing is just that to understand the amount of work and time and money that goes into [MALT]. It’s a great resource that we provide, and we don’t charge for it, but it’s unique and special in that way, and it’s special to the community.”
He explained that the TAM is more expensive to maintain than many of its users may realize. For example, when the Vermont Rail System discovered a railroad crossing that did not meet its standards a few years ago, it cost MALT and the College together $30,000 to remodel it.
Corbett added that MALT is composed almost exclusively of volunteers. Its staff is passionate about preserving the TAM and its other properties as community resources, particularly in the weeks leading up to the TAM Trek each year.
As the TAM Trek went on, the day continued to heat up, with the temperature eventually surpassing 80 degrees. Benjy Renton ’21 called out the bib numbers of participants ranging in age from two to 83 as they crossed the finish line, so that their names could be announced over the speakers. Once most people had finished, MALT staff began giving out the raffle prizes and medals for the top finishers.
“It was a lot of fun,” said first place finisher Henderson, “and really, really hot.”
Other finishers echoed his comment, calling the race a “freakin’ blast,” and encouraging other students to participate.
“It was really fun, very challenging, but it went faster than I thought it would,” said Clay.
“I think it’s one of my favorite things about Middlebury,” said Alec Fleischer ’20.5, who finished the race for the second time this year.
Corbett said he would like to increase Middlebury student involvement with the TAM and TAM Trek. He invited anyone interested to contact MALT at info@maltvt.org.
(09/13/18 9:59am)
MIDDLEBURY — In response to a recent community appeal and the ever-growing need for homeless shelters throughout the country, the Charter House Coalition (CHC) in downtown Middlebury opened six weeks early this year, on Sept. 1.
The decision came following an online post on Front Porch Forum, in which a local resident noted the number of people sleeping under Middlebury’s Cross Street Bridge and asked why the police were not involving themselves in the issue. The online post resulted in a passionate community-wide discussion about homelessness in the area and caught the eyes of both the town manager Kathleen Ramsay and the police chief Tom Hanley.
While the community discussion was spurred by an apparent increase in the numbers of homeless people around Middlebury, this may not exactly be the case. According to Vermont’s annual statewide single-day count of the homeless, The Point-in-Time Count Report, the state’s homeless population has not increased significantly in the past five years. It is likely that homeless people in Middlebury and Addison County have simply become more visible to the rest of the population in recent months.
Despite whatever statistical truths may lay behind the issue, the community’s fervent online discussion gave the Charter House the push it needed to finally put in motion the longer season it had been considering for years.
“It seemed like the time had come to address the additional need for shelter that exists,” said Co-Executive Director Samantha Kachmar about the Front Porch Forum discussion.
Kachmar’s co-executive director Doug Sinclair agreed. “We hope this initiative will foster continued community discussion so that none of our neighbors will have to sleep under a bridge, on someone’s porch or under someone’s deck next summer,” Sinclair said in an interview with the Addison Independent.
And, so far, the early opening has been going “extremely well,” Kachmar said. Since they opened nearly two weeks ago, an average of ten individuals have stayed in the Charter House shelter each night, and while about four times that amount stay during the winter months, every person they can help matters to the volunteers at the Charter House.
“The dedication of staff and volunteers and the belief by all in the importance of providing shelter for those outside was illustrated by the excitement and dedication to preparing the building for our guests six weeks earlier than expected,” Kachmar said.
Each year, according to Kachmar, the Charter House is able to provide 34,000 free community meals, grow several thousand pounds of produce, and house 75 to 80 people, and all this is thanks to the 1,200 community members who volunteer throughout the season.
“This is tremendous for a volunteer organization,” Kachmar said.
One-third of the volunteers working with Charter House yearly are Middlebury College students, and Luna Shen ’19.5, the student chair of CHC, will be spearheading the College’s volunteer effort during the early opening.
“I hope that more people in the community, especially Middlebury College students, understand that home and food insecurity are relevant and urgent issues in our community,” Shen said.
As Shen noted, none of this success comes easily for a non-profit, volunteer-based organization. The Charter House is on a perpetual search for more volunteers and funding, which is why the early opening had remained only an idea for so long. In an interview with the Addison Independent before the Charter House opening on Sept. 1, Kachmar and Sinclair estimated that the extra six weeks would cost an additional $12,000.
“There will be a financial risk to opening early,” Sinclair told the Independent. “We’re jumping in and then will ask for resources from the community. The community is the reason we exist, and the community will determine if we stay open year-round.”
According to Kachmar, this approach has been relatively successful so far. Most of the Charter House’s funding comes from private donations or community foundations, and Kachmar said that “the community support generated through the Front Porch Forum conversation is bearing fruit in both volunteer interest and material donations.”
In addition to funding needed for daily housing and food costs, in order to stay open the Charter House needs money to maintain the building itself. The Charter House building in its entirety was gifted to the Coalition by the Congregation Church this past July (the organization had been renting part of the building previously), but volunteers have been working on renovations for the past three years.
“This was an amazingly generous gift that is much appreciated by CHC,” Kachmar said. “However, the building is 230 years old and there are several items that need to be addressed in order for Charter House to continue to operate a shelter.”
To name a few, the Charter House needs to bring the building up to meet updated regulation codes, replace the heating system, renovate the bathrooms and address issues regarding accessibility. One of the campaigns the Charter House is involved in, Neighbors Helping Neighbors, is specifically designed to raise money to address such issues.
“[Neighbors Helping Neighbors] is an opportunity for the community to help us make our house a home for those in our community without a home of their own,” said Kachmar.
Particularly with their early opening, but also throughout their regular season, the Charter House is always interested in working with new volunteers. Opportunities vary quite a bit: volunteers can work with the meal programs, take shifts supervising the winter shelter, work in the garden, or join the maintenance team.
Trainings are provided on site for new volunteers during the following times: Monday Oct. 1, 6:30-8:30 p.m.; Thursday Oct. 4, 6:30-8:30 p.m.; Saturday Oct. 6, 9:00-11 a.m.; Monday Oct. 8, 10 a.m.-noon; Saturday Oct. 20, 9-11 a.m. Anyone interested in donating or volunteering is encouraged to contact Samantha Kachmar at mskachmar@gmavt.net.
(09/13/18 9:50am)
SABINE POUX
Editor’s Note: This is the first installment in a weekly column, Foreign Correspondents, that will chronicle Middlebury students’ experiences studying abroad.
About seven weeks into my study abroad program, I received a WhatsApp message from my tutora, an Argentine girl from my university who had been assigned to help me and another exchange student get adjusted to life in Buenos Aires. Usually she texted in the group to invite us out to eat or to answer our questions about matters lost in translation. Today’s message was more serious.
“Well ladies,” she said. “You are witnessing the fall of Argentina.”
She was referencing the massive economic crisis that has hit Argentina, resulting from the country’s potential inability to pay its IMF debts and causing the Argentine peso to devalue at a staggering rate. Though my tutora’s tone may sound dramatic, the Argentine people are all too aware of what can happen in the face of fiscal disaster. During the 1970s and ’80s, in one of the most horrible periods of Latin American history, dictatorships in Argentina and its neighboring countries repressed, terrorized and assassinated thousands of civilians who opposed their neo-liberal economic policies. More recently, during the 2001 crisis, the entire government quit in one day, the country had five presidents in the span of one week and 36 people died.
Argentina’s history of turmoil remains fresh in the minds of most, and the mistakes and consequences of that past serve as constant warnings of what could transpire in the near future. The country regularly cycles through economic and political crisis and prosperity, and citizens fear a return to the nefarious governments of old. Some believe the current administration is headed in an authoritarian direction, and there are rumors that the president, Mauricio Macri, will resign, in which case the country would hold a special election to find a new head of state.
From a political science standpoint, this is an incredibly exciting time to be here. From any other angle, this is a quilombo of epic proportions. (I can’t tell you what quilombo means here, but a quick Urban-Dictionary search can.)
At Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, where I’m taking classes, it can be easy to forget about the crisis. Di Tella is a private institution, and though its tuition is considerably lower than tuition at any US university – roughly equivalent to about $3,000 a semester – public college here is free (and very reputable). Most students at Di Tella come from higher-than-average income brackets, and the wealth on campus is anything but subtle. Back in July, when I first entered the glossy, modern building that houses the school’s classrooms, three (!) restaurants and panoramic rooftop terrace, I was stunned by the sea of chic black turtlenecks, cool leather boots and iPhone X’s that assembled in the main lobby between classes, chatting over yerba mate and espresso from the French-themed café next door. Many of the students I have talked to live in gated communities in the provincia right outside the city and have traveled to more states than I have, an emblem of wealth considering the steep peso-dollar exchange rate.
Which is not to say that people at Di Tella are not talking about the crisis or that it is not going to affect them, because they are and it will. But everywhere else, it’s all people talk about. It’s all over the newspapers, and it’s the topic of most conversations I overhear on the subway. It’s the subject of every news program at the radio station where I’m interning, a community-based and politically-minded operation located in the back of a bar. Their slogan: “Sin aire no hay fuego.” Without air there is no fire.
My host mom, Sofi, thinks there are more homeless people on the street now than there have been in a long time. We’ve talked a lot about the crisis at home. Sofi is fortunate enough to have her own apartment and the means to get by, but the crisis sends shockwaves through her life just the same. She’s an artist, and in the last week has been working in her workshop day and night while blasting notícias (news) and Luis Miguel songs to create small hand-painted resin figurines that will be presented as awards for the winners of an upcoming film festival. Sofi signed onto the job months ago, and with the devaluation of the peso, the compensation she will receive is now worth almost nothing. It is as though she is working for free, she laments.
Sofi, like most others, is also worried about how the crisis will affect the cost of food and other necessities. She expects that the hefty inflation that menacingly lurks around the corner will cause prices to raise as salaries remain the same. A few days ago she stocked up on months’ worth of cat food, just in case. I did the same with bread and milk.
For now, prices remain relatively low, stirring up a confusing mix of emotions for us exchange students. I feel guilty for feeling any excitement about the relative ascendance of the dollar, but it’s hard not to be at least a little delighted by the new exchange rates – a month ago I converted Argentine prices to their dollar equivalents by dividing by 27, whereas now I divide by nearly 40. A $3 coffee becomes a $2 coffee. An already incredibly-cheap subway ride now costs only a quarter.
But of course, to solely rejoice in the economic turmoil of the country is myopic and apathetic toward the thousands who are suffering and mobilizing, the latter of which Argentinians do exceptionally well. As Sofi would say, there are many temas picantes – loosely translating to “hot topics” – that have the Argentines fired up. One of my first days in Buenos Aires, Sofi – a self-described “anarquista” who preferred the previous, more populist government and openly detests the conservative Macri – attended a march against the current administration’s increasingly militarized presence in the city. About three weeks later, we marched together among thousands of our fellow porteños in favor of a bill that would have legalized abortion, under certain conditions, throughout the country. We stood in front of the capital building in the pouring rain, waving the green pañuelo, symbol of the movement, and chanted with fervor about our hopes for a more feminist Latin America. Though senators voted narrowly to keep abortion illegal in the majority-Catholic country, abortion advocates speculate that the bill will pass next year.
Teachers from Argentina’s public universities are also mobilizing in protest of the low salary hikes the government has promised them in the face of severe inflation. As a result, many students are yet to begin classes at the University of Buenos Aires and other public institutions, though the semester technically began in early August. Teachers have reportedly come to an agreement on the issue, but in this political climate, nothing is certain.
The increasing number of protests and strikes are testament to the country’s great political divide. And with people from each side of the ideological spectrum espousing flagrant things about the other, it can be difficult to orient myself politically. My current strategy has been to listen to anyone who has something to say, and I’ve found no shortage of conversational partners – some of my most animated political chats have been in taxis or with cashiers at street kiosks. The people of Buenos Aires are passionate and open and kind, and they are invigorated rather than dejected by the need for change. The city buzzes with an electrifying energy. It is truly thrilling, and somewhat unnerving.
It is also a lot to digest. On one of the first days I was here, our academic programs coordinator told us that we don’t need to come to any conclusions now. Conclusions come later, he said. For now, just soak everything in.
Sabine Poux is a member of the Middlebury College class of 2020 and is studing in Buenos Aires this semester. She will be a news editor for the Campus in the spring of 2019.
(05/09/18 7:04pm)
The recent SGA referendum to divest Middlebury’s endowment from fossil fuels passed with 80 percent support. Clearly, our student body is calling for divestment. This raises the question: Why hasn’t the Board of Trustees voted to divest?
Students came out in record numbers to show their support for divestment. This election boasted a 68 percent voter turnout, representing over a 100 percent increase from last year. This is not just tacit approval — it demonstrates an active “endorsement to divest all endowment assets” by demanding that “Trustees vote in favor and begin the divestment process” during the Fall 2018 board meeting. Our student body insists that we hold our endowment accountable.
By divesting, we would join a global movement. According to data gathered by Fossil Free: Divestment, over 850 institutions around the world have divested $6.09 trillion from the fossil fuels industry. These include Colby College, the University of California system, New York City and the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1986, Middlebury divested from apartheid South Africa. Fossil fuels must come next.
Middlebury boasts carbon neutrality, has a world-renowned environmental studies program and signed the American Campuses Act on Climate pledge. Owning $60 million worth of fossil fuel investments lends Middlebury’s moral license and reputation of sustainability to a rogue industry. It is ethical hypocrisy to pay for the education of Middlebury students by investing in companies whose business plans contradict the college’s mission. Trustees have a responsibility to uphold the Middlebury’s purported commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship. Divesting is a necessary step.
The purpose of our Board of Trustees is “to preserve the institution’s educational excellence and its financial vitality.” The board’s current investments in no way preserve Middlebury’s financial vitality. MSCI, a prominent financial analysis firm, created two nearly identical investment indices with one excluding fossil fuel corporations. If $1 billion had been invested in 2010, the fossil free index would now be worth $2.24 billion, compared to the $2.13 billion worth of the index including fossil fuels.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. The Paris Climate Accords, which Middlebury signed, require we limit Earth’s warming to 2 ̊ Celsius. However, fossil fuel corporations’ current evaluation is contingent upon them burning all reserves, releasing several times more carbon than permitted under the Paris agreement. Fossil fuel investments represent a carbon bubble that will burst as global governments take the necessary action to mitigate climate change.
The trustees’ silence is a failure to practice the “agency necessary” for “ethical citizenship at home and far beyond our Vermont campus” as laid out in Envisioning Middlebury. Hesitancy in endorsing any campaign is understandable, but divestment has broad and consistent support on campus and internationally. Most importantly, divestment is a critical step towards justice. It is time for Middlebury to end its contribution to structures of systemic injustice that feed climate change and disproportionately harm marginalized populations.
Our Board of Trustees now must stand with students and end our college’s support of an ethically corrupt industry. We have a moral imperative to divest, and it’s time our board acts.
(05/03/18 11:48pm)
On April 28, two members of the men’s golf team traveled south to the Indian Hills Country Club in Connecticut for the 2018 Nescac Championship. The women’s squad headed to the Taconic Country Club in Massachusetts for the Williams Spring Invitational. The invitational was their final competition of the season.
Representing Middlebury at the men’s championship were Jeffrey Giguere ’20 and senior Bennet Doherty ’18. Both competed individually and placed sixth and 21st, respectively. Giguere shot a 73 in the first round and a 77 in the second, which combined for a two-round total of 150. Doherty carded respective rounds of 83 and 80 for a two-day total of 163.
Trinity won the tournament as whole, thanks to Bantams like Will Rosenfeld and Kole Kelly, who tied for first on the individual leaderboard. Amherst placed second, with three golfers tying for fourth individually. Williams finished third, while Tufts came in fourth.
“I hit [the] ball really, really well,” said Giguere. “It was just a continuation of last week, and fortunately there was very little wind, so I felt like I could hit the ball however I wanted.”
Giguere managed to hit 27 out of 36 greens but unfortunately wasn’t able to execute with his putting.
“The only thing I was frustrated about was my putting,” said Giguere. “I couldn’t make a birdie in the second round. My lag putting was so bad — I left myself with very long, hard putts.”
“I’m not really disappointed though with the way I’m hitting it — I thought it was a positive. But of course, I was disappointed that I didn’t get it done.”
In Williamstown, the women’s squad finished in third in an eight-team field that saw Williams win the tournament.
Chloe Levins ’20 paced the Panthers, shooting an 80 in the first round before carding a 77 on day two and a tournament total of 157, which was good for sixth place. Senior captain Katharine Fortin ’18 tied for 13th with a total of 161, while Hope Matthews ’18, also a senior captain, shot a 162. She placed 17th. Other Panthers included Helen Dailey ’19, who tied for 28th, and Erika Nakagawa ’21, who tied for 35th.
Williams won the tournament on the backs of Cordelia Chan and Elizabeth Gudas, who finished first and second with respective scores of 147 and 148. Carnegie Mellon finished second and was led by Summer Kilhara and Charlotte Simpson, who placed fourth and fifth, respectively. Middlebury was followed by Amherst, SUNY Cortland, Hamilton, Suffolk, and LIU Post.
“I was numb going into the weekend, feeling as if it were just another Williams tournament and not being quite able to comprehend that it was the last,” said Fortin about her emotions heading into the tournament. “We have the same routine every time we play in Williamstown, and it is always my favorite weekend. I hoped to have two stellar rounds, as one would in the last match of their career, but I also know that having a busy spring and coming out of a minimal-golf winter meant my expectations should be low.”
“It was definitely a lot of mixed feelings,” said Matthews, echoing Fortin’s sentiment. “I wanted to play well since I knew it was my last time ever playing golf as a Panther, so I was feeling a lot of pressure from myself.”
“I put all of my emotions into those final rounds,” said Fortin. “With the support of friends and family who came to watch, I felt extremely fortunate that I’ve been playing on this team for four years and [have] shared the ups and downs of each season with all of them. I can’t believe it’s over, but with four amazing years, a couple team titles, and three individual wins, I am feeling happy and proud.”
(05/03/18 5:27pm)
On April 28, two members of the men’s golf team traveled south to the Indian Hills Country Club in Connecticut for the 2018 Nescac Championship. The women’s squad, meanwhile, headed to the Taconic Country Club in Massachusetts for the Williams Spring Invitational. The invitational was their final competition of the season.
Representing Middlebury at the men’s championship were Jeffrey Giguere ’20 and senior Bennet Doherty ’18. Both competed individually and placed sixth and 21st, respectively. Giguere shot a 73 in the first round and a 77 in the second, which combined for a two-round total of 150. Doherty carded respective rounds of 83 and 80 for a two-day total of 163.
Trinity won the tournament as whole, thanks to Bantams like Will Rosenfeld and Kole Kelly, who tied for first on the individual leaderboard. Amherst placed second, with three golfers tying for fourth individually. Williams finished third, while Tufts came in fourth.
“I hit [the] ball really, really well,” said Giguere. “It was just a continuation of last week, and fortunately there was very little wind, so I felt like I could hit the ball however I wanted.”
Giguere managed to hit 27 out of 36 greens but unfortunately wasn’t able to execute with his putting.
“The only thing I was frustrated about was my putting,” said Giguere. “I couldn’t make a birdie in the second round. My lag putting was so bad — I left myself with very long, hard putts.”
“I’m not really disappointed though with the way I’m hitting it — I thought it was a positive. But of course, I was disappointed that I didn’t get it done.”
In Williamstown, the women’s squad finished in third in an eight-team field that saw Williams win the tournament.
Chloe Levins ’20 paced the Panthers, shooting an 80 in the first round before carding a 77 on day two and a tournament total of 157, which was good for sixth place. Senior captain Katharine Fortin ’18 tied for 13th with a total of 161, while Hope Matthews ’18, also a senior captain, shot a 162. She placed 17th. Other Panthers included Helen Dailey ’19, who tied for 28th, and Erika Nakagawa ’21, who tied for 35th.
Williams won the tournament on the backs of Cordelia Chan and Elizabeth Gudas, who finished first and second with respective scores of 147 and 148. Carnegie Mellon finished second and was led by Summer Kilhara and Charlotte Simpson, who placed fourth and fifth, respectively. Middlebury was followed by Amherst, SUNY Cortland, Hamilton, Suffolk, and LIU Post.
“I was numb going into the weekend, feeling as if it were just another Williams tournament and not being quite able to comprehend that it was the last,” said Fortin about her emotions heading into the tournament. “We have the same routine every time we play in Williamstown, and it is always my favorite weekend. I hoped to have two stellar rounds, as one would in the last match of their career, but I also know that having a busy spring and coming out of a minimal-golf winter meant my expectations should be low.”
“It was definitely a lot of mixed feelings,” said Matthews, echoing Fortin’s sentiment. “I wanted to play well since I knew it was my last time ever playing golf as a Panther, so I was feeling a lot of pressure from myself.”
“I put all of my emotions into those final rounds,” said Fortin. “With the support of friends and family who came to watch, I felt extremely fortunate that I've been playing on this team for four years and [have] shared the ups and downs of each season with all of them. I can't believe it’s over, but with four amazing years, a couple team titles, and three individual wins, I am feeling happy and proud.”
(04/25/18 11:46pm)
Last week’s student government elections saw impressive voter turnout. In total, 1,730 students voted, which is about 68 percent of the college’s student body. This is more than double last year’s turnout of around 30 percent, and is 12 percent higher than national turnout for the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Nia Robinson ’19 was elected SGA president with almost two-thirds of the votes (1,122), winning a decisive electoral victory over the other two candidates, current SGA speaker Rae Aaron ’19.5 (435) and Charles Rainey ’19 (129).
“I’d like to thank everyone who voted, whether it was for first or last election,” Robinson said. “I’m so excited to get to work, but please feel free to email with concerns or ideas for the upcoming year!”
Lynn Travnikova ’20 was elected co-chair of Community Council for next year’s fall term, winning out over current Atwater senator John Gosselin ’20 at 1,035 votes to 516. But Gosselin won an uncontested victory to be co-chair for the spring term.
“I’m looking forward to a lot of fulfilling, hard work to lay the foundations for the Community Council reach its full potential,” Travnikova said. “There’s a gap in communication and coherence on this campus, and I believe the Community Council can work to fill it. John and I are both ambitious and optimistic about the year to come, and I’m sure our teamwork will be constructive.”
In the referendum to decide whether the student body supports the divestment of Middlebury’s endowment from corporations that make use of fossil fuels, the vote was overwhelmingly yes, with almost 80 percent of students voting in favor of divestment.
Turnout for commons senator elections was extremely low, with no election having even eight percent of eligible voters from that commons. The commons elections were done separately from the general election through Google forms due to a technical issue, resulting in low turnout.
Conner Gilbert ’19 was elected Atwater senator, Rehan Zafar ’21 was elected Brainerd senator, William Kelley ’21 was elected Cook senator, Nate Blumenthal ’21.5 was elected Wonnacott senator and Samuel Lyons ’21 was elected Ross senator. All candidates ran uncontested.
In the only contested class senatorial election, current first-year senator John Schurer ’21 and Eun Ho Lee were elected as sophomore senators. Lee won over current first-year senator David Vargas by a slim margin of seven votes.
Chellsa Ferdinand and current sophomore senator Jack Goldfield were elected as junior senators for the fall term, and current sophomore senator Varsha Vijayakumar and current Wonnacott senator Anthony Salas were elected as junior senators for the spring term. Alexis Lovato and Travis Sanderson were elected as senior senators.
(04/25/18 11:43pm)
In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, dairying in New England was in crisis. Small farms were faced with a lack of demand for agricultural labor, according to Vermont Representative Peter Conlon, 53. Conlon, who was born and raised in Vermont, worked as a dairy labor specialist for ten years with Agri-Placement, a company that offers employee placement and support services for dairy farms.
“Americans have, by and large, walked away from doing this kind of job,” Conlon said. This has played out on many farms throughout New England and into the twenty-first century.
“It used to be that there was always somebody knockin’ on the door for a job — always, I mean constantly,” said Marie Audet, who owns Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport with her husband, Eugene. She manages the office side of the business — no small feat for a farm of over 700 mature dairy animals, categorized as a large farm operation in Vermont. Eugene, a “herdsman,” works daily with the cows.
Other members of her family occupy many different roles of the operation. Her nephew is a mechanic and works with tractors, her sister-in-law runs a day care for the children on the farm, and her son works with the baby cows.
“People just don’t stop in like they used to looking for work — it’s not happening,” Ms. Audet said. Her office walls are covered from floor to ceiling in framed photographs from years of cow show competitions. There are 29 employees in total at Blue Spruce Farm — nine of whom are part of the Audet family, although Marie tends to say that “it’s not a big farm; it’s a big family.”
“I think that’s important to know because you probably come here and see a large farm,” Ms. Audet said. “This [operation] was two people — and now there are 20 of us. We’re four generations. We want to continue working together but we need the business to be big enough to support all of our families.”
As domestic demand for farming jobs dwindled, small family farm owners — like the Audets — were left searching for help, says Conlon. Will Lambek, spokesperson and staff member of Migrant Justice (Justicia Migrante), a local human rights and food justice advocacy organization, contends that the dairy industry has been in severe distress for a long time now. U.S. dairy prices are tied to the global commodity market for dairy, which has meant wild fluctuations in prices that are based on world supply and demand. When milk prices drop below production costs, small businesses struggle to stay afloat and are often bought up by larger farms.
Over the past 50 years, this consolidation has caused the number of dairy farms in Vermont to decline significantly, from 11,000 in 1947 to 858 in 2015, according to an article published on Dec. 8 in Vermont’s Seven Days.
“Family farms have closed and larger, neighboring farms have had to buy them up,” Lambek said. “Because these larger farms can no longer sustain their business with just family employees. They need to look elsewhere to hire workers but they don’t have the capital to invest in dignified livable wages.”
According to Lambek, at the same time that global market forces and lack of domestic demand for agricultural labor were putting pressure on dairying in the U.S., forces of neoliberalism opened up the Mexican economy.
“Hundreds of thousands of rural Mexicans have been forced off of their land and then forced to emigrate to the U.S. to look for work,” Lambek said.
Word began to spread informally through the immigrant community, bringing a population of people, largely from Mexico, but also from other Latin American countries, to the Northeast, who were willing to supply labor. Tim Howlett, owner of Champlainside Farm in Bridport, has experienced this sort of network within the migrant community.
“These guys are really good,” Howlett said. “When they go home they usually give two months notice and they sometimes will say, ‘Hey, I know a guy looking for a job.’ If they can vouch for whoever is coming in, we say okay.”
“I’m here por la necesidad — out of necessity,” said Fide, 29, who has worked on a dairy farm in Addison County for seven years. “There are few jobs in my town and you can’t make a lot of money.” At one point, Fide returned home to Oaxaca, México, to work a job that earned him less than 25 cents an hour.
It was at this intersection of pressure and stress on dairying that the Audets began using Agri-Placement as an intermediary to find and vet workers. Supported and contracted through employment services, migrant laborers are crucial to the success of the entire dairy industry in Vermont.
“I want to say that in Vermont, the average person probably does understand how important immigrant workers are to dairy,” Howlett said. “I think that in the greater world where people can go weeks without even seeing a cow, they might not think twice about it. The milk is just in the store and that’s the way it works.”
Supply and demand for Vermont’s labor force still exists globally. The flow of migrant workers to the state does not seem to be slowing despite national xenophobia towards immigrants. But with increasing immigration enforcement at the federal level, the arrangement is being increasingly stressed.
“At the moment there is still a workforce, but that’s really being put at risk and there’s no substitute right now. There’s no clear alternative,” Lambek said.
Following the death of 18-year-old José Obeth Santiz Cruz, from Chiapas, México, on a farm in Franklin County in 2009, immigrant farmworkers organized to create Migrant Justice/Justicia Migrante.
“His death was an unnecessary death that could have been prevented by proper training and acted as a catalyst for immigrant farmworkers to come together,” Lambek said.
Surveys of more than 200 dairy workers across the state found systemic and abusive violations of human rights. Workers were almost entirely left out of the picture of Vermont’s dairy industry.
“They wouldn’t leave their farms for months at a time because housing was on site,” Lambek said. Immigrants were working seven days a week with no days off, no sufficient breaks for meals or sleep, averaging 60 to 80 hours a week, and returning to unlivable, isolated and overcrowded housing.
According to Fide, Migrant Justice has helped friends and coworkers get access to driver’s licenses, better pay, and housing despite their immigration status. “Here in this state, I know that there are organizations like Migrant Justice that can help many people,” Fide said.
He wants people to know that there are ways to get help and improved working conditions.
Although Ernesto and Jesús, two migrant farmworkers, may have the option to take occasional breaks during the workday or a full day off, they generally choose not to. And what would be the point? They are both here to earn money to support their families at home, not to build a permanent life in the U.S.
“I can speak for every immigrant here,” Jesús said. “No one is here on vacation. No one is here for any reason other than to work.”
And, Jesús reminds me, glancing down at his tall, mud-encrusted rubber boots, “Somebody has to do the dirty work so that milk cartons end up on grocery store shelves.”
Will Lambek believes that an incident in Franklin County last August between local police, ICE, and the two Mexican farmworkers was a clear instance of discrimination and in violation of the Fair and Impartial Policing (FIP) policy in place at the time. Despite this violation, the policy as a whole was very strong. According to Lambek, new changes to the FIP proposed by the Trump administration may create new loopholes that will make it easier for local law enforcement to justify collaborating with federal law enforcement.
In 2014, President Barack Obama ended the “Secure Communities” program, which upheld the random deportation of taxpaying, contributing community members who came to the U.S. illegally. Under the program, simple traffic violations were often catalysts for deportations. That same year, following the termination of “Secure Communities,” the Department of Homeland Security set guidelines intended to prioritize the deportation of people who are “threats to national security and public safety.”
In Vermont, the FIP was put into place to prevent police discrimination and profiling. Proposed changes would remove many protections for undocumented immigrants from the 2016 policy. They would allow local police to inform federal immigration authority — particularly active in Vermont because it is a border state — if they discover that victims or witnesses of a crime do not have legal documentation. Additionally, the new policy would allow police officers operating near the Canadian border to contact federal immigration authorities if they suspect someone has crossed into the U.S. illegally.
But Lambek and other activists returned from a hearing held on Jan. 24 feeling hopeful. The Committee on Governmental Operations said that it would consider legislation to push back the implementation date of the proposed changes to the FIP, saying that they would rather get it done right than get it done on time.
The isolation of undocumented workers is only furthered by fear and worry about the possibility of detention or deportation.
“I do get nervous when I go out, if I’m in a store or something and I see an ICE agent or something, I’ll try to leave pretty quickly and just come back here,” Fide said. “When I hear about people getting deported or arrested, I just hope it doesn’t happen to me. I think to myself, okay one more year and I’ll be able to finally go back home.”
For Ernesto, though, these worries have not increased noticeably under the new administration. Life in Addison County is “igúal.”
“It’s the same as it was before the new president,” he said. “I didn’t leave [the house] then and nothing has changed. Maybe it’s different for people who live in the cities. But not for me.”
“It does feel different now,” Jesús said, disagreeing with his coworker. “Maybe Americans haven’t felt much of a difference or had a change of heart, but immigrants have.”
Jesús continued: “There is more fear now. There has always been fear. We are illegals. We were illegals before and we still are. Whether we have a racist president or not, the fear was always present. But now we are more scared.”
In this state, losses of protection for undocumented immigrants, increased ICE activity, and collaboration with local law enforcement are changes that pose concrete threats to migrant workers, farm owners and Vermonters alike.
“The threat to their workforce is causing farm owners stress. When you look at organizations like the Vermont Farm Bureau and other lobbies, immigration is something that people are paying close attention to,” Lambek said.
But he qualifies that there are many different responses inside that framework. “Many farm owners voted for Trump,” he said. “They believe that undocumented immigrants should be sent out of the U.S. but they also want to protect their workforce. Political schizophrenia exists widely. People hold these contradictory opinions at the same time.”
Though some farmer owners align with Migrant Justice’s stance that a pathway to citizenship is needed, there are others who, according to Lambek, are hoping for an expansion of the H-2A visa program — a temporary form of documentation for seasonal workers. But dairying is a year-round industry.
“Temporary workers statuses tie people’s immigration status to them, which opens the door for abuse and exploitation. Migrant justice opposes any immigration bill that ties people’s specific employment to their immigration status,” Lambek said.
“One thing I want to say is there are a lot of people who come here to work,” Fide said. “There aren’t many opportunities to work where I come from and the jobs that exist don’t pay enough. We come here to work but we respect the law. This is not our country, so we know to respect the law. I think that it is really important for people to be able to get permits or visas to be able to come here and work. It is so important. Those who come here to stay are few. We come here to work and make money to support our families and then we go home.”
As turbulent as the situation for dairying and migrant workers appears to be, farmers and workers continue to wake up in the early hours of the morning to make the whole operation run.
“The day we take a break is the day the cow stops making milk,” Jesús said.
But early in the morning of Jan. 18, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement conducted a raid at a Days Inn Motel in Colchester, Vermont. This raid was the first of its kind in the state. Fourteen workers were detained and could be deported. The raid took place without any additions to immigration enforcement budgets. With an increase in funds and agents, such as what the Trump administration is proposing, ICE would have the power to undertake many more similar sweeps across the state.
(04/20/18 5:25pm)
Nia Robinson '19 was elected president of the Student Government Association for the 2018–19 academic year on Friday, April 20.
Robinson received 66 percent of the vote (1,122 votes), more than the total number of students who voted in last year's SGA election.
"I want to thank everyone who supported me and thank the other candidates who participated in a great race," Robinson told The Campus. "I am excited to get to work."
Rae Aaron '19.5, the current speaker of the SGA, came in second place, with 26% of the vote (435). Charles Rainey '19, a former first year senator and community council member, came in third (129).
Lynn Travnikova '20 was elected the co-chair of Community Council for the fall semester and John Gosselin '20 was elected co-chair for the spring semester. Gosselin currently serves as the senator for Atwater Commons.
A referendum to support a complete divestment from fossil fuels by the college passed with 80 percent of the vote (1,325 to 340).
The Campus will publish a more detailed report in the April 26 issue of the paper.
(04/18/18 9:00am)
Both the men’s and women’s golf teams opened their spring seasons last weekend, April 14 to 15.
Over the course of two days, the men’s team competed at the Westport Hampton Inn Invitational, which was hosted by UMass Dartmouth at the Allendale Country Club. The Panthers tied for fourth overall with Husson University, after scoring a two-day total of 326. The winner of the event, Trinity College, scored 606. Other Nescac schools included Tufts and Amherst. Out of a field of 16 teams, Tufts 7th and Amherst placed 12th.
Reid Buzby ’19 led the Panthers in points, shooting 81 and 73 in the first and second rounds. With 154 points combined, Buzby was tied for fourth among all golfers in the Invitational.
For golfers Jeffrey Giguere ’20, Philippe Morin ’19, and Jordan Bessalel ’21, colder temperatures and increased wind speeds made it difficult to improve their scores in the second round.
Giguere started with a score of 75 on the first day, but shot an 80 on day two. Giguere eventually tied for 12th overall.
In his first action since spending the fall abroad, Morin tallied a 78 in his first round, but then struggled to finish with an 81 on day two. Bessalel, a first-year in his first collegiate spring action, started with 76, and then 83. Both tied for 32nd place. Sophomore David Packer ’20 shot a combined 163, finishing in 47th.
“Saturday ended up just being a grind, I did not have my A game and my mistakes were multiplied given the conditions,” said Morin. “Going forward, consistency is what I need to improve on. I know all of the courses in our upcoming schedule and it is just a matter of execution. I have been hitting the shots, just not at the level of consistency towards which I am aiming.”
The women’s team, meanwhile, played at the Vassar Invitational in Poughkeepsie, N.Y, at the Casperkill Golf Club. The invitational was shortened from two rounds to one due to unfavorable weather conditions.
The Panthers finished fourth overall after shooting a combined 329. Blake Yaccino ’20 led Middlebury by shooting an 80, which tied her for ninth on the individual scoreboard. Captains Hope Matthews ’18 and Katharine Fortin ’18 shot an 82 and an 83 respectively, putting them in 15th and 19th on the individual scoreboard. Rounding out the team scorers were Helen Dailey with 84, and Chloe Levins with 89. They were tied for 23rd and 39th. First-year Erika Nakagawa ’21 shot a 90.
Preparing for the Vassar Tournament proved to be a challenge. They were unable to go on a spring break trip this year, and thanks to weather conditions, the team was unable to spend much time practicing on the Ralph.
Fortunately, these setbacks weren’t just limited to the Panthers.
“All teams were in the same place coming into Vassar,” said Fortin, adding they had “little time spent on the course due to the winter weather.
“We hit indoors and practiced our short game until we could get on the course, play the fairways, and putt/chip on very slow greens. Compared to our course, Saturday’s greens were harder and faster, so a quick adjustment was necessary. We had no expectations going into the weekend as it would be our first full 18 holes this spring and we were ready to have fun and enjoy a beautiful day.”
Despite not finishing first, the Panthers are focused on succeeding in the future.
“In the last two tournaments of this spring, we are focusing on honing our short games and staying mentally positive,” Matthews said. “A lot of team conversation before tournaments involves staying focused and confident throughout the entirety of a round, which is really important to ensure each player performs at their best.”
“Spring goes by quickly in three weekends,” Fortin added. “Amherst is looking to have nice weather — knock on wood. We will be practicing indoors until Friday, so our biggest preparation will be reviewing our Saturday rounds and changing our mental games so as to not repeat any mistakes.”
(04/11/18 8:51pm)
As the season is still in its early stages for the men’s and women’s outdoor track team, the runners are trying their best to build up momentum. Their early successes will be crucial for confidence building.
“We definitely exceeded our expectations,” Nick Hendrix ’20 said in reference to some of the Panthers’ previous meets. “To get off a flight on Friday and then win the PLNU Invitational the next day was a fantastic way to start the season. We had some excellent individual performances from some of our more experienced athletes, and the freshmen had some really encouraging performances.”
The spring trip, while challenging, has the track and field teams feeling prepared for the meets ahead.
“I think everyone was a bit tired going into the second meet after a week of hard training in the sun,” said Hendrix in reference to the California Collegiate Open, in which the Panthers partook over the spring trip. “We held our own against some high-caliber competition, including some DI schools, so I think this bodes very well for us going into the rest of the season.”
“People came in with a positive attitude, which helped us perform well,” added Katie Glew ’21.
All of this is good news for the Panthers, as the conference meet and DIII New Englands are only a few short weeks away. Due to the pace of the schedule, there is no time to waste. Improvements and getting the team to bond together will have to occur quickly.
On Saturday, April 7, the Panthers continued their success as they participated in the Amherst Spring Fling. Both the men and women came in fourth in total fields of seven teams.
The men were able to score 49 points at the meet, which WPI won.
Some important performers include Nathan Hill ’20, who was able to come in first in the 1500-meter race with a time of 4:00.40. In this race, Will Meyer ’20 came in fifth with a time of 4:04.00.
A time of 15:23.44 netted Theo Henderson ’20 a first-place finish in the 5000-meter race. Henderson was followed by Henry Fleming ’20, who had a time of 15:38.79 to get fourth place. Also, Minhaj Rahman ’19 threw a distance of 51.80 meters to capture first in the hammer-throw event.
The women’s team amassed 72 points, 17 behind the first place finishers, WPI.
There were several important performers for the women’s team. In the 400-meter dash, Gretchen McGrath ’21 and Kai Milici ’21 placed sixth and seventh, respectively. McGrath had a time of 1:03.30, and Milici had a time of 1:03.38. Abigail Nadler ’19 and Read Allen ’18 were able to capture the top two spots of the 5000-meter run with times of 17:47.34 and 18:12.81, respectively. Also, Panthers placed in each of the top three spots in the shot-put event. Helene Rowland ’20 got first-place honors by throwing 11.58 meters. Rowland was followed by Lauren Boyd ’21, whose toss went 10.46 meters, and Kiera Dowell ’20, who threw 9.88 meters.
“The team’s level of performance was good considering the elements,” said Meyer, the fifth-place finisher in the men’s 1500-meter race. “It was windy and in the high 30s for most of the day. We had a couple personal bests and performed well relative to the competition, winning several events.”
The excitement for what the outdoor season has to offer is growing, and hopefully that will lead to success.
“We have a really strong and supportive team this year,” said Glew, adding, “We’re definitely capable of accomplishing a lot this season.”
The track and field teams will host the Panther Spring Invitational tomorrow and Saturday, April 13–14. The festivities tomorrow are slated to begin at noon. Catch the Panthers as they hope to stay on track and continue to get settled into the season.
(04/04/18 11:08pm)
On Tuesday, March 20, Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, gave a talk via Skype to the Middlebury community entitled “Climate Change: Communicating Across Divides.” Environmental Studies Scholar in Residence Bill McKibben introduced Dr. Hayhoe, framing the talk around two questions: Who do you want to engage in challenging conversation of climate change? And how would you like to approach that? Hayhoe, an atmospheric and climate scientist who was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2014, spends much of her time traveling the world giving talks and thinking about these questions.
After McKibben’s introduction, Dr. Hayhoe began by discussing the idea of not believing in climate change. Today, our news headlines are telling the story of destruction by climate change, yet some people who are experiencing the effects of climate change first-hand and from afar still deny the facts.
Dr. Hayhoe showed several charts produced by studies that broke down study participants by political affiliation, which is the best predictor of how people view climate change science. One study asked if recent extreme weather events add to evidence for climate change, and while 80-90% of liberals said yes, only 30-35% of conservatives said yes.
Despite the fact that climate change is purely a matter of science, Dr. Hayhoe explained that people often make climate change an issue of faith and belief, which makes it difficult to challenge. This is due to the notion that a person’s ideas of climate change are often an integral part of their belief system. People have been told for decades that climate change is a “liberal hoax,” and ideas like that are difficult to change.
Particularly in our polarized political state, it is important to bridge the gap between parties and encourage politicians who have a plan and a credible idea of how to act on climate change.
With this introduction about belief in climate change, Dr. Hayhoe addressed McKibben’s questions of who to talk to about climate change and how to talk to them. Dr. Hayhoe categorized Americans in terms of their beliefs in climate change in six ways: alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful and dismissive. Dr. Hayhoe spends little of her time talking to dismissives, which she approximates at around 10 percent of the population, because their disbelief in climate change is likely unchangeable. Instead she spends most of her time trying to move disengaged and doubtful people into the concerned group, which will encourage long-term action instead of producing unsustainable anxiety about climate change.
This goal in mind, Dr. Hayhoe has a three-step strategy for talking to people in a positive and constructive way about the imminent importance of climate change. The first step is to bond with and connect to the people you are talking to. Dr. Hayhoe suggests finding common, often faith-based values to discuss, noting the profound impact of religious leaders in constructively talking about climate change, particularly among Catholic groups.
The second step is to explain the science and explain why we should care about climate change. Few people think that climate change will harm them but instead will just harm future generations and polar bears.Convincing people that climate change is real and will affect them is crucial. Finding specific examples of how climate change could affect people directly, like how changing weather patterns and seasons are affecting dairy production in Vermont, helps people relate to climate change.
The third step is to inspire the people you are talking to and leave them feeling empowered. When talking about actions, explaining what you can do on a personal and organizational scale makes actions feel manageable. Sharing articles on social media is also effective and can spread messages of hope.
With this action plan of how to discuss climate change with any group of people, Dr. Hayhoe closed by answering questions from the audience about specific instances of creating positive conservations and encouraged us to do research into facts on climate change in order to be able to show people the importance of acting on climate change.
(03/15/18 1:39am)
Professor Tom Root in the biology department spoke on Friday, March 2, to pods of students and professors from a plethora of scientific disciplines, including biology, neuroscience and psychology, about his lab’s prolific work on the California Two-Spot Octopus (Octopus bimaculoide), a species considered to be the white mouse of cephalopod research.
The title of the talk was “Strange Beauty,” a reference to a line in a poem by Arthur Clement Hilton. Titled “Octopus,” the poem intentionally caricatures the “eight-limbed and eight-handed” creature into a cunning marine monster, an entertaining but somewhat anthropomorphic characterization that has limited scientific accuracy.
From a neurobiological perspective, octopuses are of particular interest because the lobes and regions of their brain are remarkably similar to those in mammals, so any insights gleaned from research on octopuses could potentially allow for better understanding of the mammalian and human nervous system.
Research on cephalopod intelligence boomed after an influential 1992 study published in Science Magazine by researchers Fiorito and Scotto on observational learning in Octopus vulgaris, which focused on whether octopuses could learn by observing the actions and corresponding consequences of other octopuses.
Using positive and negative reinforcement associated with white and red balls, respectively, the researchers reported that the octopus learned from the example of an octopus on the other side of the glass to choose the correct ball, despite having been exposed to neither positive nor negative reinforcement associated with either ball.
Unfortunately, though this paper initially inspired much excitement in the field, subsequent follow-up attempts by other researchers, including that of the Root lab in 2008, to reproduce Fiorito and Scotto’s results were found unsuccessful, and the octopuses used in the original study were found to have been raised in unusually competitive and forced social environments, rendering the results unreproducible and flawed.
The Root lab then switched gears to the feeding behavior of Octopus bimaculoide, focusing on their association of preferred conditions or food with visual, auditory and chemical stimuli. The work of alumna Alexa Warburton ’10 expounded upon the ability of octopuses to learn to associate a visual sign such as “x” or “o” to preferred or non-preferred conditions in a variety of paradigms. In just one summer, the accuracy rate of octopuses finding their preferred dark chamber in a T-maze increased from 50 percent to over 80 percent.
Other paradigms such as the round maze and the Y-maze were also used to test how quickly and accurately the octopuses associated different images, sounds, motion and chemicals with their preferred conditions or source of food.
Later researchers in the Root lab tested the same visual stimuli in the tank that the octopuses inhabited to reduce the impact of other variables such as the observer effect. Throughout the past decade, the work of various students in the Root lab showed that octopuses preferred dimly lighted areas and tended to attack prey more often in the presence of red colors, contrasting colors, polarized light and a chemical called proline that is often used in the fishing industry.
Cece Wheeler ’19 started working in the octopus lab this spring.
“Twice a week I go into the lab and tie a fiddler crab to a piece of fishing wire, and then lower that into the octopus tank to see if I can get one of the octopuses to come out overtop different types of substrates that I’ve laid down,” she said. “As [the octopuses] move onto the substrate, they camouflage themselves to it, typically in a uniform, mottled or disturbance pattern in response to the different patterns of substrate.”
A future area of research for the Root lab lies in the development of camouflage in baby octopuses, which often begins immediately after birth.
“The lab has done some past work with learning, but I think the consensus now is that it’s hard to judge how an animal is making decisions without understanding the basics of how they are receiving and interpreting information from the world around them,” Wheeler said. “Right now I’m starting work with camouflage behaviors. I want to know more about what environmental cues initiate different camouflage patterns. There are a lot of different aspects to an octopus’ surroundings, and I’m curious as to which ones it is responding to when it camouflages itself.”
Instead of rationalizing octopus behavior through a human lens, such an approach attempts to understand the decision-making process of octopuses through examining their perception of the world.
“All of the our animals are juveniles right now, so they aren’t full grown, and some are slightly bigger than others,” Wheeler said. “They also like to hide in flower pots, behind bricks, or under pieces of coral, so it’s kind of tricky figuring out how to lure them out effectively. I also record everything on a video camera so I can go back and look at the footage later. Hopefully I will be able to categorize camouflage responses to different substrate patterns, and come up with an analysis of that data this spring.”
(03/15/18 12:00am)
BURLINGTON — Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream, was arrested in Burlington last Tuesday for violating the city’s noise ordinances. He and two other activists were protesting the proposal to bring F-35 fighter jets to Burlington International Airport. From speakers attached to the back of a pickup truck, they played sounds simulating the noise-level of a jet flying above.
Their objective? To demonstrate the disruption that the planes will cause in the community.
For more than five years, residents around the airport have been bracing for the arrival of 18 new F-35s. The jet is touted as one of the most technologically advanced systems ever designed, commissioned to replace the aging F-16s. But such ambitions have led to significant cost overruns, delays, safety concerns and a myriad of other issues. In Vermont, critics have zoned in on another key concern: noise. Four times louder than the old jets, the F-35s will displace a large population of South Burlington residents living near the airport.
According to federal regulations, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has the authority to initiate voluntary buyout programs in areas where the noise average exceeds 65 decibels. At this level, people are at risk of hearing loss, and children are at risk of suffering from developmental issues. The FAA has already bought and demolished over 200 homes in the vicinity of Burlington Airport. It plans to do more.
“I felt like it [our house] was being taken away from us by people that couldn’t give a shit, really. They didn’t care,” said Carmine Sargent, a local resident of 45 years, in an interview with the VTDigger.
Critics argue that politicians and businesses are using the FAA to advance their own agendas. They claim that the Burlington government, instead of supporting non-destructive efforts to mitigate noise, are demolishing low-income neighborhoods to expand the airport.
“They want a hotel on their own property. They want restaurants. There was an idea for a spa over there,” a local resident said of Burlington’s officials. “It does not meet the reality and the needs of this area. And at the same time, you’ve destroyed a great neighborhood.”
Officials resist the accusations. In a community meeting last February, Richard Doucette, the FAA’s New England Environmental Program manager, talked to residents about the viability of different noise protection efforts that don’t involve buyouts.
“Theoretically, there are measures, and if [noise barriers] were found to be more effective, we would have built more. But we haven’t built any since I’ve been with the FAA in New England,” Doucette said, stressing the limited options they have at protecting residents from noise.
Many critics have also suggested alternatives to the F-35. In a letter to voters, lawmakers from Chittenden County cited Air Force statements from 2010 assuring residents that the Vermont Air National Guard will maintain a presence regardless of the status of the F-35.
“[The National Guard] could fly another fighter aircraft, or a military transport, or drones, or perform cyber security missions,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter.
But it’s unlikely that officials will reconsider the arrival of the 18 jets. The Vermont Guard is built around its fighter squadron, making the jets a crucial part of their missions overseas. Currently, they are preparing for a major deployment in 2019. As part of the efforts, 41 airmen are training in facilities around the country to fly and maintain the F-35s.
“There is no alternative mission being planned for the Vermont Air National Guard,” said Maj. Gen. Steven Cray in a press conference last Friday.
The state’s congressional delegation is also unanimous in its support for the F-35. In fact, Senator Patrick Leahy has faced controversy over his role in bringing the jets to Vermont, pressuring the Air Force to abandon their preferred locations. In a statement to the VTDigger, he denied these allegations.
Much of the support for the F-35 jets stems from the economic benefits that the airport and its military use brings to the city. In an interview with VPR, Lt. Col. Daniel Finnegan of the F-35 integration office, said that the Guard has already spent $83 million preparing the base, and will be doing more. In addition to the one-time integration efforts, the airport receives millions in annual funding from the FAA thanks to its nature as a dual-purpose civilian and military airport. Many supplementary jobs, like the Guard’s Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting force (which spends about $2 million dollars annually), exist thanks to the jets.
Their support is shared by many in the business community. The Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation (GBIC), a non-profit promoting economic interests in the region, has advocated in favor of the jets.
“The airport is our number one, two and three economic stimulators,” said Ernie Pomerleau of the GBIC in an interview with the VTDigger. “Anything I can do to strengthen the economic viability of Burlington, Vermont, I’m in.”
In addition to the direct jobs that the Guard’s forces provide, improvements to Burlington Airport are part of a larger plan by lawmakers and business leaders to revitalize the aerospace industry in the state. There are companies across New England and Quebec that they hope to attract to Vermont. GE Aviation, which landed a $1 billion contract to manufacture F-35 engines in 2016, for example, runs a plant in Rutland.
Still, to the residents losing their houses, such arguments appear dismissive, and the officials’ response even patronizing.
“For me, this is my home,” a local resident said. “A lot of people don’t get this. Well, if you grow up in a home, and you’ve been there for 30, 40, 80 years, you get attached to your home. You have memories there.”
(03/14/18 5:40pm)
Before last season, the baseball team had only qualified for the Nescac playoffs two times in the conference’s 16-year playoff history. In that span of time, since 2001, the Panthers only finished over .500 twice. For some perspective, Middlebury went 11–23 two years ago, and they are just three years removed from a dismal 4–24 season.
Last season, Middlebury finished over .500, going 22–16, and advanced to the Nescac championship round, where the Panthers came within one game of capturing their second Nescac championship and an automatic bid into the NCAA tournament. It was a dramatic reversal for the Panthers who were previously, frankly, known as one of the worst varsity teams at Middlebury and the butt of many jokes on campus.
With momentum on their side, the Panthers opened their 2018 season last Saturday, March 10, with a loss to Stevens in Hoboken, New Jersey, where they fell 8–4. The Ducks had an advantage in that it was their seventh game of the spring, whereas it was the Panthers’ first chance to get outside.
After their first soiree outside, the Panthers went on to face Bard at Honey Field in Annandale-On-Hudson, New York, for a doubleheader last Sunday, March 11. The Panthers split with Bard, winning the first game 7–0 before falling 9–3 in the second.
Despite the weekend’s 1–2 record, the Panthers have lofty goals in mind after one of their best seasons in program history.
“The goal at the front of everybody’s mind this season is winning the Nescac championship,” said Rob Erickson ’18, one of Middlebury’s three captains. “Many of us felt like it slipped through our fingers last year, and with the combination of talent and experience we have this time around, we feel like we are in a tremendous position to get the job done .”
Head coach Mike Leonard enters his second season at the helm aware of the expectations placed on him and his team after last year’s success.
“This year’s biggest challenge will be embracing the expectations that come with having success,” said Leonard.“I think last year we could be an underdog and surprise teams with our ability, but this year we’ll have a target on our back. So far this year, I think that the team has really embraced this, and they understand that having high standards can be motivating and doesn’t have to be a negative.”
After six seasons as head coach of Bates, Leonard took over at Middlebury last season, replacing longtime coach Bob Smith, who was in charge of the program for 32 years.
Leonard is an up-and-coming coach who made the Nescac playoffs twice at Bates and came within a game of winning the conference title in just his first year with Middlebury.
Since last May’s defeat in the Nescac championship, the Panthers spent the offseason preparing to reach last season’s high points and to surpass them. The taste of victory put fire in their bellies to achieve what they came so close to last season.
“Everyone who was on the team last year has worked very hard, especially in the weight room, and as a result we have a much stronger, faster, and athletic team,” said Leonard. He and the Panthers search for ways to get over the hump, something he feels will be a key difference between the success of last year and this year. Among the list of returning contributors to watch this season are shortstop Brooks Carroll ’20, second baseman Justin Han ’20, infielder Andrew Hennings ’20, and outfielders Sam Graf ’19 and Alan Guild ’20.
A trio of sophomore infielders aim to follow up on their tremendous first season in the blue and white. Carroll played 33 games at shortstop last season. He hit .274 with three home runs in 106 at-bats and showed a patient eye with 15 walks. On top of that, Carroll showed some speed on the basepaths, stealing nine bags in 10 tries. He was also in the middle of 14 double plays.
Han often paired with Carroll in the middle of the infield at second base and blasted a team-high four home runs in his first season. He batted .319, with an on-base percentage of .418 and a slugging percentage of .504. Meanwhile, Hennings led the team with a 1.001 OPS in his 67 at-bats.
Kevin Woodring ’20 looks to be the frontrunner to pick up the slack at first base after hitting .281 and hitting two home runs last season to go along with five doubles at first base. He seeks to fill the void left by Jason Locke ’17, who graduated after last year’s conference championship run. Locke and Ryan Rizzo ’18, who hit .301 and stole 20 bases last season at the top of the lineup, are the only major contributors that the team has to replace from last season’s squad.
Sam Graf ’19 is an immensely important piece in the outfield and in the batting order. Graf hit .323 last season, with three home runs and a team-leading 12 doubles and three triples. He also did not make a single error in the field while racking up 48 putouts and five assists.
Along with producing the fourth-most runs in the conference last season, the Panthers also had the second-best batting average, on-base and slugging percentages in the conference.
On the other hand, Middlebury gave up the most runs in the Nescac last season, with the second-worst ERA and fielding percentage in the conference.
Every pitcher who started a game last season, except for Dylan Takamori ’17, returns. Colby Morris ’19, another team captain, will head the pitching staff after tossing 68.2 innings last season in 12 starts, going 6–4 with a 4.46 ERA and a conference-high four complete games.
Spencer Shores ’20, Colin Waters ’19 and Erickson pitched 45, 43.1 and 38.1 innings, respectively. Shores finished with a 4.80 ERA and struck out almost nine batters per nine innings, while Waters recorded a 4.78 ERA. Erickson finished with a 3.99 ERA. Conor Himstead returns after tallying eight saves and a team-best 1.64 ERA last season.
Taking the mound once again will be Erickson; Colby Morris ’19, another team captain; Spencer Shores ’20; and catcher Gray Goolsby ’20, all of whom held key roles and saw significant playing time during the 2017 season.
This year’s team is confident it can replace the lost production from six graduated Panthers.
Jake Dianno ’21, Henry Strmecki ’21, George Goldstein ’21, Evan Stewart ’21, Ryan Hanrahan ’21, Bobby Sullivan ’21, Michael Farinelli ’21, Will Oppenheim ’21 and Jake Miller ’21 make up the Panthers’ first-year class.
Leonard is excited about what this new group of players will bring to his team.
“The new players always bring great energy and enthusiasm to the team,” Leonard said about his first-year class. “I know that the players who are new to the program are eager to contribute, and I believe most of them will in some way.”
Faced with the challenge of adapting to college life, the first-years “are willing to absorb the information thrown at them,” team captain Sebastian Sanchez ’18 believes.
Sanchez also believes the first-years will only add to one of Middlebury’s biggest strengths: its depth.
“We have an amazing depth chart, and if any one single person is put into the game, they will perform,” Sanchez said. “Additionally, everybody on our team can hit the ball hard and far, from our lead off guy to our nine-spot. We also have depth in the bullpen, and each of our pitchers can come into a situation throwing strikes and getting outs.”
Erickson agrees with his fellow senior and captain.
“Everyone on the team, from starters all the way down, knows that he has something to contribute every day,” Erickson asserted.
Erickson observed that each season presents new challenges to a team.
“One of our challenges this year will be forming a new team identity behind new leaders,” said Erickson. One of the challenges this season will be forging a new identity after playing as underdogs last season.
The team’s chemistry both on and off the field is something the Panthers feel will be hugely advantageous this season.
“Our team dynamic embraces not only the players but also the coaching staff,” says Sanchez. “We pick each other up when we are down. We love to play loose and energetic. No matter the score, no matter if we are up or down, we are loud and cheering for our teammates.”
Erickson agrees. “This is the closest team I’ve played on in my four years at Middlebury. When I take a step back and look at my teammates, I see a pretty goofy group of guys, so it makes me very proud that such a diverse group of individuals has been able to coalesce into a very tight unit.”
This weekend, Saturday, March 17–Sunday, March 18, the Panthers have a unique opportunity, as they will get the chance to travel to Atlanta, Georgia, to play another game against Stevens and then two against Emory.
Leonard, Erickson, Sanchez, Morris and all members of the team are ready to prove last season was not a one-hit wonder. Together, they are ready to elevate the baseball program to another level in their quest for a Nescac championship.
ROAD TRIPIN’
The baseball team will spend most of the next several weeks on the road, starting this weekend with their trip to Atlanta.
Based on our rudimentary calculations done here in the back of the newspaper office where the sports section is stationed, that could mean close to 7,000 round trip miles.
Our unscientific guessing also estimates that his is the furthest the team has travelled over the course of a two-plus-week period in its history.
(03/14/18 5:31pm)
Ordinarily, mountain bikers spend most of their time flying down trails that have already been blazed, not carving the paths themselves. But the relationship that native Afghan Farid Noori ’18 has with the sport has hardly been an ordinary one. The founder of Mountain Bike Afghanistan — a non-profit whose stated goal “is to empower Afghan youth with the joy of riding and competing on mountain bikes, as well as to connect people across borders and cultures through their shared love of the outdoors and the sport of biking” — only came to the U.S. to study ßat age 16, a fact surprising to many given the unmistakable feeling of comfort and ease that he projects. He hardly even knew what a mountain bike was until the summer before he began at Middlebury, when he happened to attend a race with his host family in New Mexico.
According to Noori, the connection was immediate. Without hesitation, he asked one of the riders if he could take his bike for a spin — nothing challenging, just a quick trip up and down the mountain (spend some time with Noori, and you’ll realize that he construes the word “challenge” differently than most). “That day, I realized two things,” he later said: “that [mountain biking] is something that I wanted to do; but also, something about that word, mountain biking. We were in the U.S., but all the crazy mountains are back home. Why is there such a thing called ‘mountain biking’ here, and not at home?”
So here he stands now, almost four years removed from that seminal moment and staring down the end of his career as a Middlebury student. It would be hard to envision someone taking a more comprehensive approach to the mountain biking lifestyle: in addition to his short and long-term plans for his non-profit, Noori is also pursuing a professional mountain biking career of his own in the US. Last fall, he “sort of” (his words — a typical understatement) became the first Afghan to race in the USA Cycling Collegiate Mountain Biking National Championship in Missoula, Montana. He has performed well enough to earn a Category–1 certification, qualifying him to race as a semi-pro, and will spend the rest of this year trying to accumulate enough points at races to garner a professional certification.
But for Noori, mountain biking has never come easily. Or rather, one should say that the mountain bikes themselves have never come easily. “Mountain bikes are very expensive,” he explains. “It’s not only an obstacle to entry in Afghanistan, which is a poorer country, but in the US as well, it’s an obstacle. The cost is a huge barrier.” When he first arrived at Middlebury, he knew he wanted to pursue mountain biking, so he immediately got involved with the cycling club and started signing up for races, even before he had wheels of his own.
Noori had to settle for road biking over mountain biking for his first foray into competitive racing. He remembers his first taste fondly. “I invested in a $265 cheap road bike that I found on Google,” he remembers. “And when the bike came in, it actually wasn’t the correct size. So I went to my first race — I hadn’t ridden more than ten miles at a time, and this was a twenty-mile race. It was a s***show. It was crazy. But I had a fun time. My goal was not to come in last, and I achieved that — well, my first goal was to finish this race, to accomplish it.”
He hasn’t looked back since. That fall, he came into the mountain bike season with even more excitement; Kai Wiggins ’16.5, a fellow member of the cycling club who raced professionally, had a spare mountain bike that a sponsor had given him for cross-training. He told Noori to meet him in a parking lot one day and gave him the bike to use as his own. The rest is history. Noori recalls taking advantage of the mild winter in Vermont that year. “It was warm,” he said. “There wasn’t any snow at all. I would ride all winter long, I would do it every day. I was kind of like a dog on a bone, just doing it every day.” But all the while, the thought lingered in the back of his mind: “Okay, I love doing this — but I want to take this home.”
That summer, Noori managed to secure CCI funding to travel to Colorado and work on an entrepreneurship incubator he had started the year before in Afghanistan, continuing his mountain bike training on the side. Of course, he soon realized where his priorities lay. To make his decision easier, the 2016 Summer Olympics were taking place around the same time in Brazil. Just like that, the entrepreneurship incubator fell by the wayside. Noori had become focused on bringing something else to Afghanistan: “We need to be in the Olympics,” he repeated to himself. “Afghanistan needs to be in the Olympics.” His pride in his home country, his own mountain biking career, his desire to spark real social change — everything was coming together, all under the umbrella of what would become Mountain Bike Afghanistan.
“My main attraction was this,” Noori went on to explain: “there’s this beautiful country, with some of the most spectacular mountains in the world — and all people know it for is war. How can we change that narrative? It’s not just a story of, ‘Hey, we’re bringing mountain bikes to Afghanistan.’ It’s about changing narratives: by building trails, by building infrastructure, by growing the sport, all of the sudden you create a projection of the country that people haven’t seen.”
And being the first Afghan mountain biker to represent his country at the Olympics — a personal goal of Noori’s — wouldn’t hurt, either. “That also contributes to the changing narrative, having the Afghan people at the forefront. So that motivates me to race, myself.”
Nor is Noori forcing a match between the sport he fell in love with and the country of Afghanistan. Listen to him talk, and you’ll start to find it a little absurd that nobody else has had this idea. “So in Afghanistan,” he says, “up until recently it was very rural: 80% of Afghans were farmers. It’s a very mountainous country. So they lived in these very isolated villages. I was born in one of them — where I was born, there are only two other houses, for as long as you can see. So how do we get places? My dad walked to school every day, for an hour and a half one way, and another hour and a half on the way back… And even in Kabul, where I live, on the weekends my dad and I go hiking in the mountains, and there’s so many people — women, young people, people who come to run on the mountain, you see people everywhere. So it’s a very active people — everybody is very healthy, they’re outside all the time.”
So Noori has the breathtaking landscape of Afghanistan and a naturally active, engaged people to work with. What will be necessary, as he explains, is simply to put a framework in place. “The thing that’s unique about Afghanistan is that 70% percent of the population is under 25 years old,” Noori says. “It’s a very young population. But in a given young Afghan’s life, based on personal experience, you go to school for three hours a day, and you do homework maybe one hour a day. All of the sudden, you have so much free time — how do you fill it up? What do you fill it up with? There’s so much energy; young people have so much energy.
“And in the US, there are so many opportunities and resources for young people. I joke with my friends that Middlebury has more sports infrastructure than the whole country of Afghanistan. So now let’s take that back to Afghanistan, a country with a young population who have also been deprived of these opportunities for the past four decades. And they’re aware of the fact that they’ve been deprived of these. They can see mountain biking videos on their iPhones and they’re like, ‘We want this… I want to be out there. I’m a young Afghan. I’m strong.’ It’s a very resilient culture, the war has been going on, and people still go about their lives every day, they’re trying to change the narrative, change their lives, and basically champion against the adversities of life in Afghanistan.”
Noori tells a story about a friend to really drive his point home. “I have a friend in Kabul — and she loves running, and she uses the same running app that I use, Strava. But because she’s female and the culture is not very recipient of people running and riding outside, I can see that her runs in Afghanistan are more or less inside a closed building — she does like five miles, but repetitively in a loop, because she’s safe there.
“And it kind of breaks my heart, but it also speaks to that sort of interest [in outdoor activities]. People want to do these things. We’ve just got to open it up. So as far as the interest goes, I feel like we’re not keeping up with it — like, this project needs to be there now.”
So it’s understandable that Noori might have a difficult time limiting the size of his project at first. But despite the size of his ambitions for Mountain Bike Afghanistan (MTBA for short), he realized that if the project was ever going to get off the ground, he had to start small and gradually expand in scope. With on-the-ground help from Sajjad Husaini, a competitive Afghan skier with some mountain biking experience (for cross-training), Noori has put together a team of 10 Afghans — ranging from teens to late twenties — who are ready to commit to serious training in the sport. He has been able to secure a partnership with a third-party organization with 501c status so that MTBA can accept donations as a non-profit. They’ve already received a number of helmets donated by Outdoor Gear Exchange, but Noori and his team still have quite a ways to go before they can even consider serious competition.
“Right now,” Noori says, “we’re raising the funds for a dozen mountain bikes of decent quality, other bike equipment like jerseys, helmets and stuff, and a bike shop/workshop for people to be able to repair their bikes. Once we have that up and going, our plan is to start building trails in this place that these guys are from, which is Bamyan in Afghanistan. It’s in central Afghanistan, up in the mountains, 10,000 feet. They have access to beautiful lakes — it’s the site of Afghanistan’s first national park and national reserve area — so we’d have permission to build trails there.”
Fortunately, the Noori who once had grand plans for an entrepreneurship incubator is hardly absent from MTBA, either. His hands are all over the non-profit’s “dollar-to-trail” concept, designed to attract the attention from major biking companies, in which donations equaling a certain dollar amount are met with a pledge to construct a certain length of mountain bike trail. “We’ll have to do the math of how much money and labor a mile of trail takes,” he says, “but this is a value that a lot of companies want to see. They don’t just want to give away bikes; they want to see some value created, which will contribute to the growth of the industry overall. So all of the sudden you have this new frontier in the world where people can go and bike, and it looks good for [the companies] — they can use it as a marketing tool. If Cannondale can do that and differentiate itself from Giant, then it’s a win for Cannondale. So it’s a good marketing tool for them.”
But Noori has hopes of raising a good portion of his funds from individual donors as well. With a grin, he warns that Middlebury students should stay on the lookout for Mountain Bike Afghanistan t-shirts on campus in the near future. But those eager to make a more immediate impact and support Noori’s tremendous undertaking can learn about MTBA, as well as how to donate, online at www.mtbafghanistan.com.
Or, for those who might find themselves more interested in Noori’s personal story as an athlete, he is currently facing a critical point in his racing career. “It has been a very tough journey,” he explains. “I’m still on those borrowed bikes, from Kai [Wiggins]— a road bike and a mountain bike. And they’re getting old: normally, in the racing world you upgrade your bike every year because of wear and tear. I’ve been riding the same bike for three years, and I’m going into my most important season this year, accumulating points toward getting my pro license. So having the right equipment is super important on this journey. And now I’m faced with the same problem again.” Moreover, after he gets his professional license, Noori has designs to participate in the 2020 Summer Olympics in Japan — no small undertaking. So to help him reach his goal, Noori has set up a MiddStart page (equivalent to GoFundMe for the Middlebury network), which can be found here: http://middstart.middlebury.edu/mountain-bike-afghanistan-an-olympic-dream/.
Try, if you will, to isolate Noori’s personal dream from his dreams for the country of Afghanistan, or vice-versa. They comprise two narratives — the story of a nation, and the story of a boy from that nation — that have converged at a single, astounding, inevitable point. From where we stand, it would almost be foolish to imagine one without the other.
“The biggest thing about mountain biking for me,” Noori says, “is the idea of getting outside. Forgetting your everyday stress, getting out on the trails, this act of cycling, pedaling out in the woods all by yourself or with your friends… and then after a while, through the very act of mountain biking — it’s challenging, you’re climbing all the time — you get to a point where you’re on top of the mountain, and you have this beautiful view and vista. Regardless of who you are in the world, that’s what it does to you. It’s a very peaceful process.
“And to Afghanistan, that’s so important. There’s an active conflict going on, people are fleeing the country to Europe. How do you instill in Afghans a sense of purpose and love for the place that they’re from? Without their having that perspective to look at their surroundings with an appreciative eye? It’s not hard to see a place that has been affected by conflict for more than 4 decades, where people are losing sight of hope, where there’s a corrupt government, the economy is very bad, there are explosions all around the country, there’s a war going on. How do you take a break from that?
“So my goal with the project is to give people an opportunity. The very act of building trails, and drawing and dragging people away from their troubled neighborhoods, their troubled villages, to a point where you can just relax, and take a moment to not thing about that, is super powerful, super empowering. Because if you always think about the conflict, it’s always going to be in your head. You need a break from it in order to face your challenges, in order for you to have a clear mind — and especially for the young people, it’s super important to have that. So that’s what the project can also provide. And that’s mainly one of the reasons I’m doing it.”
We might say that Noori is living his life in the hope that the Afghan people might find a new way to ride; more than that, he rides in the hope that his people might find a new way to live.
(02/28/18 11:43pm)
The NCAA DIII men’s basketball committee chose Middlebury as one of 21 at-large teams to play in the 2018 championship this past Monday, Feb. 26.
Despite facing a whopping 10 ranked opponents this season, the Panthers finished 19–6, and went 4–6 against those ranked teams. Middlebury took care of business against the teams they needed to, going 15–0 against non-ranked teams.
Five of its six losses were on the road, with the lone home loss coming against Swarthmore on Jan. 2. And five were to NCAA tournament participants, the exception being Middlebury’s loss to Amherst, who was part of the five-way tie for first in the Nescac and won the conference by tiebreakers.
Middlebury will make its ninth appearance in the NCAA tournament in 11 years. The last two years, the Panthers earned automatic bids into the field by winning the Nescac championship, although last season they surely would have earned an at-large bid with a 24–3 record entering the tournament.
They will play Lebanon Valley in their first-round game at Eastern Connecticut State tomorrow, March 2, at 5:30 p.m. Eastern Connecticut State will host the four-team regional, and will play Johnson & Wales after Middlebury’s game on Friday. The winners of these two matchups will meet on Saturday, March, 3 to determine who advances to the final sixteen teams in NCAA Sectionals.
Lebanon Valley (18–9) made its way into the tournament by winning its first Middle Atlantic Conference Commonwealth championship since 1995. The Flying Dutchmen defeated longtime rival Albright 70–68 on a three-pointer with less than 10 seconds to play on Saturday, Feb. 24. Sam Light and Andy Orr lead Lebanon Valley on the offensive end, as they average 23.3 and 18.2 points per game, respectively.
Coincidentally, Lebanon Valley and Middlebury both lost to Hamilton, their one common opponent, 102–83.
Host Eastern Connecticut State (25–3) is the highest-seed in the regional, after winning the Little East Conference championship for the second straight season. Tarchee Brown leads the Warriors in scoring with 19.9 points per game. They fared very well against the Nescac this season, going a perfect 4–0 against Connecticut College, Colby, Amherst and Trinity.
Middlebury enters the tournament on a three-game losing streak, after losing to Hamilton and Amherst in the regular season and Wesleyan in the first round of Nescacs on Saturday, Feb. 17. The Panthers will return to the court nearly two weeks after their loss to the Cardinals in the playoffs.
In their last two losses, Middlebury recorded its lowest two scoring outputs of the season, shooting below 36 percent in each of its losses. On the season, the Panthers average 80.7 points per game. They also struggled to generate second-chance points off their misses in these losses.
“They were able to keep us off the offensive glass down the stretch,” said team captain Jack Daly ’18, after Middlebury’s loss to Wesleyan. “That’s been one of our biggest strengths this year and they did a great job of limiting our shot opportunities each possession.”
Daly and the Panthers firmly believe their losing streak is just that: neither emblematic of their whole season nor indicative of their future in the NCAA tournament.
“As Coach has been saying all year,” Daly said, “we just need to stay the course despite the bumps in the road.”
(02/22/18 2:41am)
Behind 50–44 with 9:55 remaining on their home court, No. 14 Wesleyan outscored No. 18 Middlebury 29–15 the rest of the way to defeat the Panthers 73–65 in the Nescac Quarterfinals last Saturday, Feb. 17. The fourth-seeded Cardinals (20–5) defeated the fifth-seeded Panthers (19–6) for the second time this season to move on to the Nescac semifinals, while Middlebury will wait until Monday, Feb. 26, to see if it receives an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Entering this year, Middlebury had defeated Wesleyan 15 games in a row, dating back to the 2004-05 season, but the Cardinals snapped that streak with their 80–70 win on Jan. 6.
Wesleyan’s rise in the Nescac hierarchy has corresponded with the arrival of Joe Reilly as head coach, who has brought Wesleyan from a 1–8 conference record the year before he became coach to a 7–3 record and a tie for first-place in the Nescac this year. Reilly has also guided the Cardinals to the NCAA tournament two of the last three seasons.
Middlebury jumped out to a 4–0 lead in the first half of Saturday’s game, but never led by more than six points in the first half. Wesleyan tied the score on four different occasions in a low-scoring first half. The Panthers turned Wesleyan’s 11 first half turnovers into nine points to take a 32–28 lead into halftime. The Cardinals hung around by hitting six of their 13 three-point attempts, including Antone Walker coming off the bench to drain all three of his shots from beyond the arc.
Out of the locker room, Wesleyan converted an old-fashioned three-point play and made another from beyond the arc in the first minute of action to take a two-point lead, their first of the game. Seven minutes later, behind by one point, Middlebury, driven by seven points from Griffin Kornaker ’21, went on a 9–2 run to retake the lead, 50–44.
Once more, Wesleyan responded, tying the game at 50 before going on what would prove to be the game’s decisive run. From Kornaker’s layup at the 9:55 mark to put Middlebury ahead 50–44, until another Kornaker bucket with 2:08 remaining, the Panthers made only one field goal in six attempts, from Jack Daly ’18 and turned the ball over four times. Wesleyan outscored Middlebury 20–7 in that crucial stretch of almost eight minutes.
As Daly noted, Wesleyan “was able to keep us off the offensive glass down the stretch. That’s been one of our biggest strengths this year and they did a great job of limiting our shot opportunities each possession.”
Entering the game, Middlebury averaged 15.67 offensive rebounds per game, almost two more than any other team in the conference. On Saturday, Middlebury grabbed 12, most of which were team offensive rebounds off blocked shots, and zero as Wesleyan took the lead in this eight-minute stretch. Wesleyan blocked 11 shots as a team, including eight by Jordan Sears.
Kornaker’s basket at the 2:08 mark brought Middlebury within five, 64–59, but Wesleyan made enough free throws in the last two minutes to secure a 73–65 victory and a spot in the Nescac Semifinals.
65 points is Middlebury’s lowest scoring mark this season, for a team that averaged 81 points per game entering the playoff game on Saturday.
A lot of credit goes to Wesleyan, who has had one of the stingiest defenses in the Nescac this season, ranked first in opponent field goal percentage and second in scoring defense.
“Wesleyan is one of the best defensive teams in the country, so we knew it was going to be a battle,” Daly said. “Offensively, we had great movement on the perimeter, but not much attacking and dishing the ball in the last 10 minutes.”
Daly led the Panthers in defeat with 20 points, including 14 in the second half, and six assists. Matt Folger ’20 added 17 points, six rebounds and four steals, and Kornaker scored nine off the bench.
Wesleyan will play top-seeded Amherst this Saturday, Feb. 26, in the semifinals. In the other semifinal game, second-seeded Williams matches up with third-seeded Hamilton.
The Panthers will hold their breath until Monday, Feb. 19, when the NCAA DIII Committee makes its selections for the 64-team tournament field. 43 conference champions receive automatic bids into the tournament, leaving 21 spots for at-large teams. Middlebury is no. 18 in this week’s D3hoops.com national poll. In the final poll before last season’s selections, 13 of the 21 teams to receive at-large bids were not ranked. The Panthers should be in a good position to receive a bid, but no one knows for sure until the committee releases its decisions on Monday, Feb. 26.
The Panthers were as high as No. 5 in the country before three consecutive losses that knocked them out of the first-seed in the Nescac playoffs and then the playoffs themselves. But those losses were on the road to No.13 Hamilton, Amherst, and Wesleyan, three of the teams who tied for first in the Nescac, along with Middlebury and Williams.
“Right now it’s all about keeping a positive mindset, practicing hard every day, and watching as much film as we can to learn from our mistakes,” said Daly. “It’s all about remaining focused over the next couple of weeks. As Coach has been saying all year, we just need to stay the course despite the bumps in the road.”
The Panthers had a stretch like this one earlier in the season, when they lost to three out of five games to No. 12 York, No. 11 Swarthmore and Wesleyan. That time, they responded by rattling off 12-straight victories, including a win over Nescac rival, No. 8 Wesleyan.
If Middlebury is chosen for one of the 21 at-large bids, they will play in the NCAA tournament for the ninth time in 11 seasons. However, unlike last season when the Panthers hosted all four of its tournament games, they will likely be on the road in every game they play. 16 teams host the first two rounds of the 64-team tournament, and as the 18th-ranked team eliminated from the Nescac playoffs early, Middlebury is most likely on the outside looking in at that conversation. Head Coach Jeff Brown is not unfamiliar to playing on the road in the NCAA tournament though. In Middlebury’s first and only trip to the Final Four in the 2010-2011 season, the Panthers received a bye in the first round and won its second game at home, before going on the road to win their next two games to advance to the national semifinals.
At the beginning of the season, the Panthers set their sights on returning to Salem, Maine, to play in the Final Four. Despite this recent losing streak, that goal is still within reach, provided history holds.
Seniors Daly, who has already left his mark on the Middlebury record books, Nick Tarantino ’18 and Adisa Majors ’18 certainly are not prepared to let the season and their careers end. They and the Panthers have won a lot this year, and lost some close games to tough teams. Still, it seems like the final chapter on the 2017-2018 Middlebury men’s basketball team has not been written yet.
(02/22/18 2:38am)
This interview took place on Jan. 31. The transcript was lightly edited and includes clarifications made by President Patton, which The Campus agreed to as part of the terms of the interview.
ELIZABETH ZHOU: We thought we’d dive in by asking you to revisit the moment when you became the 17th president of Middlebury College. If you could travel back to that moment, knowing what you know now, what advice would you give yourself?
LAURIE PATTON: I would say a couple things. The first is that I would make sure that when you think you know a community, you really know a community. Make sure you listen carefully to the ways in which your assumptions about a community might be different than reality. I think that’s just good advice for any college president or any new leader.
I also think being a dean of a larger institution is 80 percent the same as being the president of a smaller one. But there are ways in which being a president has a bigger scope of a job. You are accountable to more constituencies. So I have seven constituencies I’m accountable to — students, staff, faculty, alums, parents, trustees and donors. The town and the state are also key constituents.
I think being accountable and balancing to all of those constituencies given (a) how complex higher education is, and (b) how wide-ranging those investments are, is an important thing to know. When you’re a dean, you’re slightly differently configured. You don’t have all those constituencies.
Deans also don’t have what many people call the “internal-external” problem, which all presidents have. How you think about and connect with people on the inside is different than how you think about and connect with people on the outside. And, often, the needs of the inside community are very different than those of the outside community. Every president has that challenge in some way or another.
Another thing I would say, not so much in the spirit of advice as appreciation, is that the students are even more amazing than you think they are. There was a moment when I was in the receiving line [after the presidential announcement in 2015] and I met two students. One was a literature major and the other was a chemistry major. I didn’t know which was which. I said, “Oh, how do you like studying literature?” And the person — the woman — started talking about how great literature was, and I said, “Well, it sounds like you love being a literature major.” And she said, “Actually, I’m the chemistry major.” And I thought, “Wow, these are fantastic students.” Then I turned to the other student and said, “Well now can you say as much about the chemistry major, given that you’re the literature major?” And he proceeded to talk about the chemistry major. These are the kind of students that I came for.
AMELIA POLLARD: How do you see the relationship of the College to the town?
PATTON: We are deeply connected to the community in a number of different ways. I think that there is only one question the president of Middlebury has to ask the community: “What do you need and how can we help?” and, very particularly, “How can we help on projects of common educational purpose?”
The relationship has been exciting, because we are now working on five or six major projects where we share common educational purpose. For example, we’re we’ve created year-long internships at the Town Hall Theatre, the Sheldon Museum, and the community music school.
I am pleased about new things that we’re doing to support the Addison Central School District in creating the International Baccalaureate curriculum. Several students are working in the community to help train teachers on what the student experience of the International Baccalaureate will be like.
Finally, we have a project underway with Habitat for Humanity, which is a perfect Middlebury project. We are working on a plan to donate land to build Habitat houses. The Art and Architecture faculty are interested in creating courses to help design these houses in an advanced, environmentally sensitive way. These are ways in which the partnership with the community has been highly productive. And it’s energizing for all of us. It’s what a good college should be doing.
ZHOU: Knowing that you occupy a unique position with a lot of responsibilities, to whom do you look for professional guidance?
PATTON: I have network of people I speak with. There’s a group of women presidents who talk to each other, call each other when things are tense or when they need to think through problems. And there are several male college presidents whose advice I value.
I don’t know if you’ve heard about the executive coaching industry. CEOs and leaders of colleges frequently have coaches who they can talk to about different challenges and issues. This can be really helpful. For instance, I work closely with members of the Senior Leadership Group. They are great people. But with supervising a team you have to be careful. You know you’d probably be friends with them in other contexts, but no matter how easygoing and accessible you are, you’re their boss. And that’s something you have to be mindful of. That’s one reason a coach can be helpful: they have some distance from the day-to-day work and that perspective is important.
I talk to my coach frequently, and it’s a good relationship.
Family’s always great, because you know they have your best interests at heart. It’s also very important to me that I maintain my long-term friendships. Every day I get up and write to two or three friends, just as a form of gratitude. I also frequently just check in with them and see where they are. So every day I have a conversation with one or two friends that are completely unrelated to Middlebury.
ZHOU: Thinking about your role as president, and going back to the Town Hall Meeting last fall, there was a little bit of pushback or confusion around the idea that there might be some conflict between your personal opinions and your opinions as a president. Knowing that that was a really limited format for everyone to engage with the idea, is there anything you would like to clarify regarding your role?
PATTON: Yes. I wouldn’t have come to Middlebury if I didn’t believe that my values were not aligned with the institution’s values. Every day I think about Middlebury’s values, articulate Middlebury’s values, promote them and talk about them. I do so because I’m committed to them personally. So that’s the most important clarification that I would make.
ETHAN BRADY: Last January, The New York Times wrote an article that was widely distributed on social media, showing a ranking of schools that have a lot of students from the top one percent, compared to the number of students from the bottom 60 percent. This was data from the class of 2013, so it could be a bit out of date. But Middlebury ranked ninth on that list. What is the college doing to address socioeconomic disparity, in terms of both numbers and impacts on campus culture?
PATTON: I think that the larger question that this article raises has to do with economic inequality in our society, which is one of the major issues of our time. Let me offer a couple thoughts about that.
One of the most interesting moments at the PEN America convening [in January] was our answer to the question of what was the biggest issue on campus for us right now. It was interesting because the number one issue was not race, even though that’s a big issue for us right now. It was class. That’s a signal for us that we need to continue to talk about that issue.
I think there are two different ways you can address those issues. The first is increasing financial aid. As you know, financial aid remains my number one priority for fundraising over the next ten years. I think is essential that we increase the number — slowly — of people on Pell Grants, and that we increase the number of people on financial aid. That’s the kind of work that I do—and love to do—every day.
But we have to do this sustainably. As you all know, I’m committed to balancing our budget. That’s crucial. And that’s why I want to keep pushing on fundraising for financial aid. I’d like to continue to grow that percentage in a way that’s financially sustainable. I don’t want to create a deficit problem five to ten years from now. I’d rather do it in a way that is truly sustainable.
The second thing we need to do relates to campus culture. It’s essential that we start having conversations across class difference, the way that we have started to do around questions of race, LGBTQI, religious difference and so on. I think we need to embrace it fully. I would welcome student proposals on how we do that.
Third, I think there are also generational differences between professor and students, things that might have been said in class in previous eras that are received the same way now. For example, when a professor says, “Do this assignment while you’re all sitting on the beach on spring break,” and many students in the class cannot afford to go to the beach on spring break, that’s a concern. So I think those three things are far more important for us to focus on than the small percentage differences between one college and another.
Obviously, our financial model is such that right now, in order for us to provide the education that we do provide, full-paying students play a role. But the more we can create greater access through all the ways that we just talked about, in both getting into Middlebury, and then studying at Middlebury, the better off we’ll be. And we need student leadership to help with that. Because the student experience at the everyday level is where we can get better.
POLLARD: What niche do you think Middlebury occupies amongst the other NESCAC schools and in the larger scope of higher education? How are we going to continue to differentiate ourselves moving forward?
PATTON: On certain days — when I’m feeling like having a sense of humor — I think there are days when we can’t decide whether we’re Amherst or Hampshire. We’re in between those two places. But if you actually look at us, we are an elite liberal arts college with fantastic graduate programs. That is what we are.
We’ve had all these metaphors in the strategic planning process. We’ve talked about a constellation. We’ve talked about an ecosystem. And all those are great metaphors. But none of those are going to be the sort of “heart” language that people land on. And a fantastic liberal arts college with great and vibrant graduate programs is the right description, and it also is something that people recognize.
In terms of the NESCAC schools: We’re the only one in Vermont, so that’s kind of interesting. Second, I think we have a combination of intellectual intensity, first-rate athletic programs, focus on language-learning, environmental leadership, and a globally networked curriculum. Those are also the directions we’re moving, the areas where we want to keep improving, and where students, faculty, and staff are enthusiastic about moving. Those should be the kinds of things that continue to distinguish us.
But what I really would like to see in the NESCAC schools is more collaboration. What are the ways in which we could collaborate more, not just on the athletic field? For example, Colby has a first-rate museum of art, and wouldn’t it be interesting for them to collaborate with our museum, which is growing and changing and doing interesting things — and has a new pink sign, right?
Or if there is a NESCAC school which has a great physics department, and another has a great biology department, then why not have exchanges between both? And so forth. I think we could get so much more done if we collaborated and exchanged more in academic ways. But that takes a lot of coordination and effort, and everyone’s so busy running their own colleges, that that may not come to fruition so quickly.
BRADY: It seems that in the wake of Charles Murray, a lot of people now have a certain association with this school. So as an ambassador of the institution, when you’re traveling around, across the globe, how do you defend the institution, and what do you talk about in those interactions?
PATTON: These are questions that are good for everybody, because at a certain level we all are ambassadors for Middlebury.
But as the person for whom that’s a primary job, I would say several things. First—and this is from my inaugural address—I would say that we are actually good at having arguments for the sake of heaven. Sometimes it’s painful and messy and hard, and breaks us apart and breaks us open. People may not land exactly where other people want them to land. They may not land where they intended to land. There are all sorts of tough distances between intentions and effects that happen in these hard conversations. What people communicate may not have the positive effect they intend, and that is always hard.
In all of the pain that the community and students felt last year, I have two strong memories. One was right after the event, when I spent an hour in a kind of “mini-seminar” with students to talk about what had just happened. The second was the student-sponsored debate that occurred a couple weeks later. All of the same issues were there, and it was remarkable to see students, once again, leading in this difficult space, and doing so respectfully and rigorously. I found both of those occasions to be very moving events. That’s the first thing I’d say: we’re good at that.
The second thing I can say now is that we have had a record number of applicants this year, which is a wonderful fact. That includes a record number of students of color, as well as a record number of international student applicants. Who knows why that is the case. Last spring we did a study of admitted students, and one of the interesting findings was that students were still intending to enroll at Midd because it was perceived as a place where real issues are talked about in really hard ways by real people. I was impressed by that, and that’s something I speak about when I’m traveling around the globe.
The third thing I would say is that it’s a deeply difficult national moment. Our challenge at Middlebury is that we need to embrace the difficulty of that moment and live through it.
It’s a challenge, but it also is an opportunity to figure out some new ways of living together, and to figure out some new ways of speaking together, and to figure out whether, as we move forward into the future, we can find a way to live across difference and to talk across difference. I actually have appreciated the opportunity to be an ambassador and speak about Middlebury in those ways.
BRADY: In the internet age, when people are able to communicate across the globe in seconds, and publish an article or an essay and post it online, how do you think that affects this idea of speech, or the public sphere?
PATTON: I think it makes a huge difference in every minute of our days. I would say to students: you exist in a public sphere that nobody else has existed in, ever. And I can’t imagine some days what that must feel like.
At any moment, you don’t know whether you’re going to be a public person or not. Before, when you decided you were going to give a speech, you would prepare, and that was the public moment, and there was a transition into the public moment. Now, there is no transition.
I think that makes it very difficult to figure out in any given moment whether something is a public conversation or whether it’s a private conversation. And that boundary is constantly oscillating. So that’s the first thing that would be deeply challenging for students today. And I think it’s one of the reasons why the public sphere and participation in the public sphere takes more courage today. And it’s why it is essential that we continue to challenge everyone at Middlebury to have that courage today, no matter what.
The second thing is that this relationship between intentions and effects that I mentioned earlier is an interesting one. You can burn a Qur’an in Florida and there can be physical violence and protest about that action somewhere halfway across the globe. Or you could think about burning a Qur’an and write about it online, and there can be physical protest to that somewhere in Afghanistan. So whether it’s in debates about policy, whether it’s in other intellectual work, whatever it is, in online work you don’t know what the effects are going to be. And those effects are exponentially magnified. That means that being a public person is a totally different experience than it was even 30 years ago.
The third thing is, actually, a real opportunity. This is related to the question of online learning in the context of the liberal arts. Our Associate Provost for Digital Learning Amy Collier talks about creativity, connection, and community as the key components of online learning in a liberal arts context. If there ever was a community that could figure that out, it’s Middlebury. So even with all the challenges that I just noted, because we have different campuses, because we have so many well-established schools abroad, we can do online learning differently.
The way I think about Middlebury now is not so much a noun, but a verb. We are travelers. In that way, we always have to learn how to travel well. We travel across campuses, both digitally as well as actually. There are ways in which we have a real interesting opportunity to make sure that that this instantaneous quality of online life, as well as that hyper-connected quality of online life, can be in service of liberal education. I think we need to continue to reflect on that. Of course, every institution of higher education has that, but I think we have a particular opportunity to do that differently.
POLLARD: My next question is about how Monterey has been incorporated into Middlebury’s vision, and whether you see it as an outlier or a new direction moving forward. David Provost noted how Monterey was actually going to need to make seven percent budget cuts moving forward. In furthering Monterey as an institution, how are you going to try to navigate the budget?
PATTON: I’ll begin by saying I think Monterey is of real value, both to Middlebury and to the world. We need only turn to the example of how much it has helped in the last three or four months on the issue of North Korea.
So many of the scholars at Monterey, particularly in the area of nuclear nonproliferation, have helped to do what good journalists should also do, which is say, “Well, wait a second, what they’re claiming isn’t true,” or “Let’s look exactly at what those Korean capabilities might be.”
I also would point to the fact that the number of Peace Corps volunteers who go from Monterey and then back to Monterey is among the highest in the country for educational institutions. They are a leading institution in areas of public service and international development.
The third thing that comes immediately to mind in terms of the value of the Institute is the number of interpreters who graduate from Monterey who go on to work for the UN and other institution across the globe. What we increasingly see is that, even in an age of machine-learning in language, more and more language experts are needed in order to work with that artificial intelligence to make sure that the language learning tools are as accurate as possible.
In terms of the history of Monterey’s value to Middlebury, I think we’re seeing a couple of things. This semester a number of faculty are going to be traveling to Monterey from the college, including many who haven’t had a lot of connection to Monterey, and I think that’s a good development.
We also have many faculty who travel from Monterey to Middlebury, and that has had a positive effect, too. We’ve had people come help us think about changing ways of learning. For instance, given the importance we place on immersive learning in Middlebury’s new mission statement, it’s natural that we would look to the interesting things they are doing with immersive learning at Monterey. I think we can learn from those initiatives.
The president’s course that I taught last spring on water was also a good opportunity to engage across different intellectual cultures of the College and the Institute. We had some wonderful conversations about, for instance, plastics in our oceans, and how you could take a literary approach, a business approach, a policy approach, or a scientific approach to that issue. Everyone in the room was talking about these issues, and that could only have happened with faculty and students from both Monterey and the College there. I think that we are continuing to deepen the relationship in encouraging ways.
Middlebury as a whole needs to achieve financial sustainability. And I’m pleased that, as David Provost said, we’re not only meeting our goals, but are surpassing them slightly. Monterey has actually surpassed its own goals for budget sustainability at a greater percentage than the College has. I’m proud of my colleagues at Monterey for that.
Do they still have a hill to climb? Definitely. But so far, I’ve been impressed by how well they’ve done. So I expect that Monterey will continue to create a very clear path towards financial sustainability. I hope that all of the units will meet financial sustainability in the next three years.
The main thing I want to say about Monterey is that every part of Middlebury should wish for its success. Part of what it means to be a great liberal arts college with fantastic graduate programs is that every unit should wish for the success of every other unit. That’s our only way forward. If a unit does well, either intellectually or financially, that helps everybody: all boats rise with that tide. That’s the perspective I want to make sure people embrace.
BRADY: The master plan was a document produced in 2008, which is similar to Envisioning Middlebury. Does the college plan in the future to follow that document? In what ways can we balance the vision that we have with financial realities?
PATTON: There are three things I would say about that. The first is that any institution that is responsible to a master plan is going to revisit it every five years and ask, “Are we going in the right direction?” I have known institutions who ignored their master plan, and then ten years later went back and said, “Oops, that plan doesn’t look anything like what we’ve done.” Last year, we did a thoughtful update to the master plan to recognize changes in our thinking.
We have a Buildings, Grounds and Lands Subcommittee of the Board of Trustees that is vigilant about this. A perfect example of the need to update a master plan would be the temporary building that we will begin work on in the next several months. That was an important moment for Middlebury, because it’s exactly related to your question, which is how you figure out a way to respond to needs that you didn’t anticipate.
Think of Bicentennial Hall, which is a beautiful building with wonderful views and, seemingly, all this space. But in a much shorter time than anyone thought possible, it became clear we needed more space for the programs that Bicentennial Hall contained because the number of students who wanted to major in the sciences grew. And so, the question became, what do we do?
We looked at a number of different options. We looked at buildings in the community, we looked at moving and shifting departments, and so on. And the number one thing that drove this change was student interest, and being able to deliver to our students the opportunity to be science majors in fields of their choice. It was that simple.
When you think about space and the master plan, you’re always thinking about what is the best and most effective way that we can fulfill our educational mission.
That’s the second thing that I wanted to talk about: the way the College and larger Middlebury is governed. Any changes to the master plan need to be talked about with the Buildings, Grounds and Lands Subcommittee of the board. We had several meetings with that committee over the last few months. We reviewed what the building might look like and we interviewed architects. It’s actually an exciting process, especially if you know the building is truly meeting a real need and that it will further Middlebury’s educational mission.
The third thing I would say around the vision for the master plan is that we need to think carefully about how we’re using space. For example, inclusivity as an everyday ethic is something that’s important to me. I think a lot about the fact that this campus was not built for students from underrepresented backgrounds. It was built for students, usually white students, who lived in the 1800s. They were not necessarily wealthy, but they were certainly middle class, and were going to go into very traditional male vocations.
How do we think about changing that space? We can’t afford to tear down all the buildings and create new spaces, but I think there are ways that we can continually think about space utilization in different eras, and 2018 looks different than even 1998 did.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about the spaces between buildings and inside buildings, or even on buildings. What can we do with those spaces? The Committee on Art in Public Places has begun to discuss an initiative that would focus on art that would welcome, and be authored by, and contributed by, students from underrepresented backgrounds—exactly in those kinds of spaces.
Consider the wonderful murals that have been done in the Anderson Freeman Center. Why not do several murals around campus like that? Why not think about the next ten years as a place where art can occupy a new role on campus, and create a different kind of space utilization that could be more welcoming, and make our campus more welcoming?
Lastly, the new building will provide what we call swing space, which will allow for the renovation of Warner, Johnson and Munroe over the next several years. Those three buildings are not ADA compliant, and don’t meet standards for universal design. That just feels unacceptable to me. We live in a world where people with disabilities should be welcomed and able to thrive on our campus.
A number of aspects of universal design will be built into the new temporary building. That’s a big priority. It’s not sexy in any way, it’s not a huge thing, but it’s long-term. In the end the effect will be a much more welcoming campus, and that’s what matters.
POLLARD: You mentioned before that there are needs we don’t anticipate as a college campus. And as of recently, the Me Too movement was brought to the fore by what’s commonly been referred to as “The List” being released the week before we went onto winter break. To what extent do you think the college is able or responsible for addressing this issue moving forward?
PATTON: The first thing I’ll say is that our Title IX office has grown substantially over the last ten years. We’ve added HROs, we’ve added JAOs; we’ve added a director and more staff. And that has been in response to the needs on campus. And if history is any indication, I expect and have confidence that the Title IX office will continue to respond to the needs of students.
I think that the number-one priority for the Title IX office, and for Middlebury more broadly, is to make sure that we are a place where students feel that they can report crimes of bias, crimes of sexual assault, and all of the other areas that fall under Title IX. That has to be our number-one priority.
Another top priority has to be for fairness for all students. Those two things are what we’re committed to and what our Middlebury values demand. So moving forward, what I expect, and know we can and should do, is to make sure that we live up to those values even in changing situations. The Me Too movement opened up all sorts of difficult issues for everyone around questions of sexual assault, around questions of reporting, and so forth.
I put a lot of confidence in the student group that is advising the Title IX office, and helping them continue to get better. We need to make sure that we continue to respond to the changing needs, as we have done in the past.
POLLARD: Do you see any kind of educational element moving forward? Any kind of blanket, almost required-for-all-students portion? I know that the Vermont executive branch has required an in-course training for all government officials on sexual assault training.
PATTON: We do have training as part of orientation. I think it’s great that all first-year students have that training and we put that in place in the last couple of years. And I think we should continue it. That’s absolutely essential.
Let’s also continue to make sure that that training is relevant to the kinds of constantly changing situations that we’re seeing. And I think that conversation should be had on a regular basis. And if we need to expand or change what we’re doing given the situations that we find ourselves in, then I expect and have confidence that we’ll be able to do that. The educational element is key. The Title IX office is eager to embrace that, and deepen that as an opportunity, and I support it 100 percent.
BRADY: The Title IX office is sort of like a justice system. Thinking of the campus as almost a small society, what is justice on this campus? And what does that mean for the students who go here?
PATTON: The first thing your question reminds me of is that the Dean of Students’ office is going to be embarking on a series of focused conversations with students on the question, “How do we live together?” That’s a central question for all of us that’s related to that question of justice.
Second, I’ve been pleased with and want to continue the conversations between faculty, administration and students on how we continue to evolve and address questions through our judicial system.
On any college campus, judicial systems should be fair and they should be open. They also should reflect the sense that the conversation about what is justice is always evolving. I think Middlebury is committed to that.
In my training in conflict mediation, we talk about three different kinds of justice. It’s important to remember that there are three different kinds of justice that are part and parcel of our world. There are many more, but certainly three major ones.
The first is the idea of justice as a system of equality, where ideas about fairness take center stage.
The second is the question of justice as equity: how much I put in is what I would get out of any given social engagement. That’s where I would expect something equitable, but not necessarily absolutely equal. A lot of times when you discuss some of these questions, people say, “Well, I’m not necessarily going to have an absolutely equal conversation about this issue, or an absolutely equal solution to this problem, but I would hope that we could all work towards an equitable conversation and an equitable solution.”
The third kind of justice is a moral one. This has to do with righting historical wrongs and acknowledging where society does not fully recognize of some of its citizens, or does not fully represent them, or does not take care of some of its most vulnerable people.
All of those three ideas of justice should be at play in the mini-society that is Middlebury. And the number-one thing we have to do as a society of learners and teachers is to reflect on those three ideas of justice and what their relationship is with one another. Can we design a system that makes sure that those three ideas of justice are part and parcel of how we live together?
I am enthusiastic about the introduction of restorative practices. About 50 people have been trained in that area. The primary application will be in student life. Part of my answer to the question of how we live together is making sure that we not only continue to work on and evolve a fair and just student conduct process, but also, as a supplement to that, have the cultural habit of restorative practices.
We’re going to be rolling restorative practices out over the next couple of years, and students and student life will be leading that effort. I remember talking about that in December of 2015, and stating how transformative it could be for Middlebury, so it’s delightful to see that moving forward.
Amelia Pollard and Elizabeth Zhou transcribed this interview.
The following questions were answered by email on Feb. 14.
CAMPUS: Should a private college treat speech the same way the U.S. government does — under a First Amendment framework? Or, since it is a place of learning where many people develop their answers to moral questions, does it occupy a "third space" in our society?
PATTON: Whereas public universities are obligated by law host even the most controversial, divisive, and in some cases repugnant speakers; as a private institution, Middlebury does not carry this burden. I remain, and Middlebury remains, committed to the First Amendment principles of free speech and by extension, academic freedom. That’s part of who we are as an American institution.
I also believe that with that right — as with any right — we have responsibilities. At Middlebury, it is our responsibility to cultivate in our students active and critical inquiry which means exposing them to ideas that may be uncomfortable. At the same time, we also have the responsibility to reflect on and incorporate the principles and values of our community. My goal is, was, and continues to be an inclusive public sphere where a richness and diversity of voices are heard and, importantly, respected.
CAMPUS: What did you learn from Charles Murray's visit to campus? Is there anything you would have done differently?
PATTON: It was an incredibly painful and difficult situation. I have learned from and been forever changed by the degree to which people were hurt by the events that occurred — both on our campus and beyond. I think we could have turned inward sooner, to collectively ask ourselves, “What just happened?” I’m also pleased that over the past year we have done a lot of work around our speaker safety guidelines to ensure that we have the time and the input to fully prepare for speaker applications. Likewise, the work done by the Committee on Speech and Inclusion Middlebury College is a really important step as we learn how to listen differently and better. While the community is still healing, I believe that we are in a very different place than we were a year ago in how we are thinking about speakers and our priorities and values.
CAMPUS: Female leadership is consistently held to a double standard in our society. Are there moments in your Middlebury career in which your gender has felt particularly prominent?
PATTON: When I am asked this question, I respond by saying that that Middlebury has been ready for a woman leader for a while. Faculty, staff, and students all have been quite welcoming of my own particular collaborative style of leadership. And we’ve got some impressively strong women leaders in other positions at Middlebury as well. So overall, it’s been easy and productive.
I think difference of note is in people’s expectations. My staff and I note the disappointment that people — students, faculty, staff, alumni, and more — express when my schedule prevents me from responding to them immediately. There is a greater degree of expectation overall that I will always be available. Studies show that female professors who devote the same amount of time (sometimes even more time) to their students as male professors, are paradoxically thought of as less accessible than men. That is because the expectations of women’s availability is so much higher.
But these kinds of things go with the territory, and my view is that you just politely and skillfully point out to people that they need to shift their view.
CAMPUS: In light of the emphasis being given to mindfulness on campus, how do you personally de-stress?
PATTON: Three different ways: First, I practice vipassana, or insight, meditation. In December I spent time at a small retreat with my niece in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Second, I write. I find scholarly and literary pursuits a powerful way of cultivating mindfulness. There’s nothing like the focus of mind that comes from creating a persuasive paragraph in a scholarly argument, or building the best stanza for a poem. Third, I walk the dogs with family and friends. Dogs keep you completely grounded. They don’t care about their image or reputation; they care about staying connected. And that’s a great lesson for all of us.
CAMPUS: Do you find time for scholarship while doing all the functions of the presidency?
PATTON: Yes. I pursue scholarship for an hour a day, no matter what. I can’t do much more than that, but that is a non-negotiable. I have a book coming out in 2019 on controversies in the study of religion, and a third book of poems coming out this spring. Writing is a basic part of who I am and it helps me be a better intellectual and institutional leader. Middlebury has been welcoming and supportive of that commitment. I have been privileged to be a guest teacher in faculty classes several times a semester. People seek each other out to talk about their ideas, including their president. That’s Middlebury at its absolute best, and it’s a fantastic part of the job. And it helps because faculty and students and staff can connect with you as a fellow thinker.
CAMPUS: What is one item on your bucket list for your time at Middlebury?
PATTON: Institutionally, I hope we can create more art in public spaces that are inclusive of all of Middlebury’s communities. The personal item is dog-sledding. I ventured out to do that last winter, and I hope to do it regularly.
CAMPUS: What is the strength of the hills, to you?
PATTON: I’ll never forget the moment in November of 2014, when I was walking up to Mead Chapel to be introduced to the community. Someone shouted out a variation of the psalm written over its doors, “The strength of the hills is hers also!” That moment caused me to ask the very same question that you have asked. The strength of the hills to me has three different aspects. First, the mountains are all about staying power. They persist. And we should too. Gary Snyder writes about them as “streams of power.” Second, mountains remind us that we are small. Emily Dickinson ended one of her poems about mountains with the line, “I’m kneeling—still—“. She wasn’t kneeling out of false reverence, but a sense that there was always something bigger surrounding her, and that gives us a profound perspective on our daily distractions. Third, mountains can also bestow a sense of contemplative peace. The poet Li Bai puts it the following way: “You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;/I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.” I hope for those moments for all our students.
CAMPUS: Where do you see the institution in 10 years?
PATTON: Here’s where I want to go: in 2028, Middlebury should be a place where we have taken advantage of our global network of offerings to enrich our curriculum in all of our units. I hope we will have made significant progress on access and affordability. We should have named and be close to achieving a new environmental goal. I’d like Middlebury to be a place where faculty, staff and students see themselves as drivers of innovation. In particular, there should be a clear place to incubate curricular innovation, where people can make changes and keep traditions.
I hope in 2028 we have built a more inclusive community — through increasing team based approaches to the classroom, experiential learning, and restorative practices. I hope we will have an improved residential experience with more diverse staff, and an ongoing artistic initiative to make more inclusive spaces on campus. In 2028, I also hope we have a sense of empowerment and alliance between administration, staff, and faculty. Our final goal should be that, in 2028, Middlebury community members share a clearly articulated sense of values and that we remind ourselves of them often.
(02/22/18 2:23am)
MIDDLEBURY — With the opioid crisis continuing to erupt across the country, Vermont government officials seem to be breathing a collective sigh of relief for the first time in years. Identified in 2016 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a state with a significant increase in opioid overdoses, Vermont has recently responded by pouring resources into addiction recovery programs. Through the Care Alliance for Opioid Addiction, Vermonters in need of treatment can seek out medication-assisted therapy (MAT) in the comfort of a local treatment facility.
A state report published on Jan. 22 shows that opioid use in Vermont has decreased by 96 percent coupled with nearly a 100 percent decrease in overdoses. These recent improvements can predominantly be attributed to the time and money the state department has invested in opioid-addiction programs that span the state. Implemented only four years ago, the Hub and Spoke system of the Care Alliance for Opioid Addiction creates an accessible environment with individualized treatment techniques.
Through the program, patients are anchored to a local treatment facility (or hub) for the legal and guided dispensation of methadone and buprenorphine, narcotics used to treat opioid addiction. Stemming from this more generalized system of treatment are the spokes of the program—patients are assigned a specialized team of a nurse, physician, and coordinator in an attempt to pinpoint the nuances of their addiction. From this, addicts can be appropriately dealt with on an individual level as there is one three-person team for every 100 patients. Furthermore, with seven hub clinics, Vermont officials stress that opioid-addiction care is accessible in every region of the state and is simultaneously incorporated into the healthcare system.
Despite recent improvements, citizens are haunted by images of opioid abusers passed out on bus benches, loved ones waving goodbye in the morning and never returning, and local news stations devoting more and more time to heroin overdose stories. Residents of the state were sent into a quiet turmoil in 2014 when the former Governor Peter Shumlin committed his entire State of the State address to discussing Vermont’s “full-blown heroin crisis.” His call for treatment reformation sought to aid, not punish, drug abusers. His focus and empathy regarding the opioid emergency arguably has shifted the way in which public and legal discourse is now handled—rather than viewing heroin use as a reason to incarcerate people, he called for the recognition of addiction as a “chronic disease.”
The New York Times reported that under Gov. Shumlin’s guidance, opioid treatment in Vermont increased by over 770 percent between 2000 and 2014. Although this can be seen as a victory because many addicts are seeking out the necessary treatment, it did not preclude the 80 opioid-related fatalities in 2015 or the 112 in 2016, according to the Vermont Department of Health. While it is rather challenging to pinpoint the cause of the epidemic, the National Institute on Drug Abuse has turned to healthcare providers. In the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies confirmed that there was not a sizable risk for addiction to opioid medications, leading to a spike in prescriptions by physicians. Before it was apparent that opioid addiction was a national problem, it was too late. By 2015, Today, patients abuse these prescribed drugs at one-fifth to one-third of the rate of the previous two million reported in 2015 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Dr. Mark Levine, Vermont’s Health Commissioner, acknowledges these troubling statistics but sees the state’s tremendous improvements as an indication of a hopeful future. In an interview on Vermont Public Radio, he expresses the gradual process of systemic changes that have allowed for the partial alleviation of this crisis. “We’ve made great progress and we need to acknowledge that, although we can’t let up and we have to embark on numerous additional initiatives,” Levine said.
This constant understanding of progress as a first step instead of a resolution may be what keeps the state government’s continuous efforts in action. “We have capacity now with no waiting lists for anyone who is seeking treatment to have access to treatment, we have a very strong history of partnership with Medicaid,” Levine said. “In prevention we have new prescriber rules that we’re beginning to see some traction from, [and] … a Vermont prescription monitoring system which has been effective.”
These programs address healthcare roadblocks and the overzealous prescribing of opioids for pain relief. Although two Vermonters die each week week from opioids, the government has recognized the epidemic and is seeking innovative ways to address it. Some citizens have voiced their concern that more resources should be devoted to opioid education rather than focusing funds on addiction clinics.
Jolinda LaClair, director of Vermont’s drug prevention policy, sees the integration of school and community educational programs as a crucial next step in addressing the crisis. Others argue that homeopathic solutions should be explored and endorsed as a viable option instead of the current MAT offered by the state. Despite varied perspectives on how to deal with the crisis, it is clear that Vermonters share a common goal—improvement, and eventually total alleviation, of opioid abuse.
