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(02/15/18 1:56am)
A focus of the college dining staff has long been providing students with allergies and dietary restrictions with appetizing food options that fit their dietary needs. The staff works to provide entrees, salads, side dishes and desserts for students with dietary restrictions ranging from vegetarian and vegan regimens to gluten allergies. Since the fall 2017 term, students in Ross Dining Hall have enjoyed new dairy-free ice cream developed by Ross Commons Chef Chris Laframboise in the hope of providing vegan and lactose-intolerant students with new, better dessert options.
While working around students’ allergies has long been a big part of the dining staff’s work, allergies and restrictions have become more common in recent years and have commanded more of the staff’s attention, according to Laframboise. “The last couple of years, more allergens are popping up in people’s lifestyles,” he said. “We take those really seriously, and we have to provide those students with sort of the same options [we provide the rest of the student body].”
According to Laframboise, the Ross staff began working on recipes for new dairy-free ice cream in the summer of 2017 after noticing that vegan students and students with dairy allergies had begun to constitute a larger percentage of the student body than in past years. “As things moved forward there were more people with dairy allergies, and we started looking at different options,” he said. “There was a group of students that were dairy-free too, and they weren’t really getting everything that they needed.... One of the things [we wanted to focus on improving] was desserts, and we decided to look into non-dairy ice cream.”
Laframboise said that the ice-cream recipe is actually quite basic. The dessert is made with a coconut-milk base and also includes sugar and vanilla extract. The ice cream comes in 17 elaborate flavors, including cinnamon, cherry chocolate chunk, caramel apple and Snickers, and additional ingredients depend on the flavor of the individual ice cream.
The dining staff brings on student help to aid in making the ice cream. Sara Santiago ’20.5 is one of these students. Santiago makes the coconut-milk base for the ice cream, combines it with the other ingredients and mixes the ice cream in a soft-serve ice-cream machine, which allows the staff to mix the ice cream with ingredients such as fruit and chocolate that would cause damage to normal ice-cream-making equipment. “I go to Ross once a week for three to four hours to make vegan ice cream,” Santiago said. “As someone with lots of dietary restrictions, it’s always exciting to have more options in the dining hall. We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from a lot of vegan students as well.” Santiago added that it can be challenging to dissuade students who do not have dairy allergies, or aren’t vegan, from trying the ice cream.
Laframboise, who began working in Ross as a dishwasher in 1985, said that accommodating dietary restrictions has become more of a challenge than it’s been in years past. “Back in the ’80s, ’90s, there weren’t this many challenges,” he said. “[Developing a menu] was pretty straightforward: here’s a meat protein, here’s a vegetarian option, which wasn’t always a vegan option.... Now we’re just doing a lot more in trying to make sure that all the students are happy. In that, there’s a greater cost that’s associated. [In] this last year we’ve gotten a lot more non-dairy products—yogurts, cheesecakes, ice cream, cheeses, mayo, sour cream, cream cheese. There is a cost to that, and it’s quite a bit more expensive than other products.”
Across the board, students have been very happy with the dining staff’s efforts to accommodate their dietary needs. The dairy-free ice cream, particularly the cinnamon flavor, has been a hit. “Students are really grateful, I think, to have these options, especially the ones that need an option like that,” Laframboise said. “For most of us, we go through our lives and we eat whatever we want whenever we want, and we really don’t realize the impact that having a dietary restriction has. We try to understand how hard it is for them to actually go through the dining hall and find food that they can eat, especially if [they] have a peanut or soy or dairy allergy. Those are big, and if you take all of the dairy out of your life, see what’s left. There are many fewer options. So it’s important that we address these issues, and I think students are pleased to have it and they’re grateful to have it. That’s what we’re here for, and that’s what we like to see.”
(02/15/18 1:51am)
The men’s basketball team’s 10-game winning streak was snapped last Friday, Feb. 9, when the Panthers fell to Hamilton 102–83, in Clinton, New York. In a crucial game for Nescac seeding the next night at Amherst, Saturday, Feb. 10, Middlebury lost to the Mammoths 80–68. After sitting atop the conference standings entering the weekend, the Panthers fell into a five-way tie for first place and lost the tiebreaker because of their 1–3 head-to-head record with the other teams, dropping them all the way down to the fifth seed in the Nescac tournament.
In Middlebury’s loss on Saturday, Jack Daly ’18 became the 23rd Panther in program history to score 1,000 points. Daly has accumulated 1,002 career points, 611 rebounds and 579 assists, and is believed be the first player in Nescac men’s basketball history to tally 1,000 points, 600 rebounds and 500 assists.
“Jack is a unique player,” said Head Coach Jeff Brown on Tuesday. “He has the ability to impact a game in so many different ways with his scoring, passing, rebounding and defense. His mental and physical toughness is at an elite level. The fact that Jack is the first NESCAC player to reach 1000 points, 600 rebounds and 500 assists shows the impact that he has had in our success.”
A week earlier in a 75–56 victory over Colby, the Panthers’ star player became Middlebury’s all-time assists leader, surpassing Jake Wolfin ’13’s record of 553 helpers. He leads all of DIII this season with 8.7 assists per game.
Middlebury will travel to Middletown, Connecticut, for their quarterfinal matchup with Wesleyan this Saturday, Feb. 17, which will mark the first time the Panthers have had to play a conference tournament quarterfinal game away from Pepin since 2004.
Middlebury had two chances to clinch the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament, the first coming on Friday at Hamilton. Middlebury entered the matchup 7–1, while Hamilton was 6–2 in second place. The Continentals led by as many as nine points in the first half after going on an 8–0 run to go ahead 32–23. But the Panthers responded with an eight-point run of their own to pull within one. At the end of the first twenty minutes, Hamilton led 38–32.
Middlebury struggled with turnovers in the first half, giving the ball away 12 times compared to Hamilton’s six.
The Panthers kept pace with Hamilton the first nine and a half minutes of the second half, staying within six. But then the Continental offense took off, hitting four straight threes to take an 11-point lead, 73–62. Middlebury cut the lead to single digits a couple more times, but Hamilton’s attack was too much in the second half. The Continentals scored 64 points in the final 20 minutes to defeat the Panthers 102–83.
Hamilton’s Kena Gilmour scored a career-high 29 points on 10 of 15 shooting, including four of four from three. The Continentals’ shooting from beyond the three-point line carried them to victory, as they knocked down 15 of 24 threes after making only eight per game before Friday.
Eric McCord ’19 led the Panthers with 21 points coming off the bench. Matt Folger ’20 scored 17 while hitting four threes, and Daly added 15 points, nine rebounds, and six assists.
With the win, Hamilton moved into a tie for first place with Middlebury, but controlled their own destiny heading into the last game of the regular season by beating the Panthers.
Entering the last game of Nescac play on Saturday, Middlebury, Hamilton and Williams sat atop the Nescac standings, one game ahead of Amherst and Wesleyan.
Ahead 16–14 a little over seven minutes into the first half on Saturday afternoon, Amherst went on a 16–0 run to take a 32–14 lead at the 7:20 mark in the first half. The Mammoths hurt the Panthers with offensive rebounding all afternoon, and half of their 16 points in this game-defining run were second chance opportunities.
Over the final 7:20, Middlebury outscored the Mammoths by three but still trailed 43–28 at halftime.
Middlebury could never get much closer either, only trimming the lead to single digits with around a minute remaining in the game, 75–66. McCord got the Panthers within eight, but Amherst hit four free throws to secure an 80–68 win.
Middlebury shot 35.8 percent from the field and 25 percent from three on an afternoon when the Panther offense never got going, scoring its lowest total of the season. Amherst hurt the Panthers inside, where the Mammoths outscored the Panthers 42–30. The hosts also scored 17 more second chance points than the visiting Panthers, 22–5, and outrebounded the visitors 60–34.
Jack Farrell ’21 scored a career-high 22 points for Middlebury, and Nick Tarantino ’18 also finished in double digits with 11 points. Daly had a tough day from the field, making only two of 15 shots on the afternoon when he scored his 1,000th career point.
The Panthers’ hopes at hosting the Nescac semifinals were dashed with the losses to Hamilton and Amherst, and with those hopes also went any playoff game in Pepin Gym. But Middlebury still finished in a tie for first place with a 7–3 record in conference. And as Coach Brown pointed out, “I am going remind our guys that two years ago, we lost our last two regular season games on the road and won the NESCAC Tournament. We will put last week’s results in our rear-view mirror.”
Now fifth-seeded Middlebury will travel to Wesleyan on Saturday, Feb. 17, to play the fourth-seeded Cardinals at 3 p.m. Earlier this season, on Jan. 6, Wesleyan beat Middlebury 80–70 but led by only three with 47 seconds remaining. With the win, the Cardinals snapped a 15-game losing streak against the Panthers dating back to the 2004-05 season.
Wesleyan lost two of its first three Nescac games, but won six of its last seven to finish in the five-way tie for first in the standings.
The Cardinals had the third-stingiest defense in Nescac play, allowing only 65 points per contest. They’re led by junior guard Jordan Bonner, who averages 15.6 points per game, and have four other players averaging at least seven points per game. Senior forward Nathan Krill averages 11.9 points and nine rebounds per game, while shooting 38.5 percent from three-point range.
The Panthers tip off in Middletown on Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m.
(01/25/18 12:48am)
After months of tense negotiations between residential life staff and college administrators, a bill calling for increased pay, training and support was introduced to the Student Government Association (SGA) on Sunday.
The bill, entitled “Student Residential Life Revitalization and Just Compensation Act,” proposed that residential life staff be compensated at the college’s Level B wage scale, or a minimum of $5,410 for their first year on the job. It requests that each commons administration add two live-in supervisory positions to their commons team to be filled by a recent graduate or senior, and that commons administration provide a first aid certification program for residential life staff.
The bill also states that if the college does not grant residential life staff Level B compensation for the 2018–2019 school year, the SGA would endorse a student residential life strike if one were to take place.
“There was some language in the bill that was a little disturbing too, which was the idea of this body supporting a strike of residential life staff,” said Doug Adams, director of residential life. “I hope that we’d look at this and say that’s not where our staff sits.”
Adams argued that the bill’s requests were more appropriate for discussion among the Residential Life committee, rather than through an SGA bill. However, when the bill’s sponsor, Feb senator Alec Fleischer ’20.5, was asked if he would rather take the conversation to the Residential Life committee or continue the discussion in the SGA meeting next week, he responded that he wanted it on the SGA agenda for next week.
Negotiations between residential life staff and administrators began in the fall, when student staff struggled to adapt to this year’s replacement of commons residential advisors (CRAs) with commons residence directors (CRDs), and felt they lacked sufficient training to deal with alcohol-related emergencies.
“Training as a consensus, ask anybody, bombed. Bombed so hard,” said Kyle Wright ’19.5, a Wonnacott community assistant (CA). “Doug Adams was on medical leave. FYCs and RAs were not trained how to handle the most common residential situations they encounter, which is instances of alcohol poisoning and drug misuse. Can you imagine the anxiety that creates for a 19-year-old running into someone who is passed out on the floor, who has a dropping pulse, covered in their own vomit and they have been told to just call Public Safety and do nothing?”
Wright expressed additional frustration that residential life staff believed that CRDs would function in a way similar to that of the former CRAs, only to find that the position functioned far differently in practice.
“Student residential life staff show up [in August 2017] having signed a contract, a legally binding document outlining their roles and responsibilities, understanding that CRDs will be one thing," Wright said. “Once the CRDs were hired, the job description changed rapidly. We come to find out that not only are [most] CRDs not living on campus, not only are they not recent graduates, but also that there was only going to be one on call for the entire campus.”
Wright said that last year, students could always turn to CRAs for in-dorm support, even when their CRA was not on call.
“There were five [CRAs] present 24 hours a day, six days a week in the dorms,” he said. “So you could go to your CRA even if the one on call was preoccupied. There was accessibility to [the CRA] position, there was direct supervisory support on the weekends. That support no longer exists.”
Residential life staff argue that this lack of support felt from the transition to CRDs has resulted in a large increase in responsibilities for First Year Counselors (FYCs), who now feel pressure to act as first responders and provide support and programming.
“It should be noted that that level of support from CRAs was largely unsustainable with their stress levels and obligations. However, now [the CRAs’] stress and responsibility has been laid on the FYCs,” Atwater community assistant Peter Dykeman-Bermingham ’18.5 said.
As a result of widespread feeling that FYCs have had to bear an increased burden with the transition to a system with CRDs, many staff members believe that a pay increase is now more necessary than ever. FYCs will make $2,400 this year, which breaks down to an hourly wage that is less than Vermont’s minimum of $10.50 if divided by the hours Wright says FYCs work per week. RAs currently make $1,800 per year, and CAs $2,ooo.
“Residential life has always been underpaid here,” Atwater FYC Samantha Pearl ’18 said. “A breakdown of the hourly pay in comparison to any other campus job is absurd. But the expectations have increased this year. We as student workers are now firstly and directly responsible for afterhours supervision during the week and on the weekends. It’s a different job, a bigger job, and many of us have multiple jobs on campus because of the poor pay.”
In October, residential life staff drafted a petition urging administrators to consider these challenges. As a result of the petition, administrators and students participated in conversations meant to address the complaints.
“A number of us launched into a dialogue in the fall where we got together with commons teams, administrators, other res life staff. We had a series of really big meetings where we said this is not ok, we feel unsafe, we feel as if the system is broken, and you need to address salary,” Wright explained.
After these initial larger meetings, a proposal with a draft of a new pay scale and job descriptions was sent to residential life staff sometime in late November. The draft proposed that FYCs, Resident Assistants (RAs) and CAs all be granted a rebate of $3,000 for 15 hours of work.
Pearl and other residential life staff emailed with feedback, criticizing this uniform pay for all positions in particular.
“I was initially insulted and found the idea of equal stipends trivializing to the FYC position. Doing so to me seemed to continue to devalue the tolls and responsibilities of the FYC position, particularly those aspects that can’t be calculated into weekly hours or a job description,” Pearl said.
Wright echoed Pearl’s sentiments, stressing his belief that commons administrators are out of touch with the realities of the responsibilities of staff.
“The deans and CRDs are so out of touch with the residential needs of this college that they actually thought that paying these positions the same thing, valuing them at the same level was even remotely appropriate, after six months of dialogue to the contrary,” he said.
On Jan. 8, Atwater Commons Dean Scott Barnicle sent out a finalized proposal. The final proposal sets RA and FYC pay equal at $3,150 and CA pay at $2,250. This proposal also included more similar job descriptions for RAs and FYCs.
“It is clear the new RA role and the FYC role are far more mirrored than they are currently. And so we felt strongly and I think appropriately, given the feedback we’d gotten, those roles should be paid more than the CA role,” Adams said.
Many residential life staff appreciated the proposal’s adjustments in accordance with their feedback, but believe they deserve to be paid Middlebury’s Level B compensation.
“I responded to an earlier proposal and some of my suggestions appeared in the final decision, though still shy of what I considered fair pay for the work,” Dykeman-Bermingham said. “This plan represents something like a $60K increase to wage spending and I understand the difficulty of so abruptly changing the res life accounting. However, this pay increase should be accompanied by a plan to annually increase the salary of student staff until they are paid a fair wage for the very stressful work they perform.”
“I am grateful for the pay increases, but also I agree with Kyle that we should be making minimum wage, especially now that there are expected hours listed,” Pearl said.
Fleischer stressed the reasonable nature of these requests, considering the skill required for the job.
“This is a skilled job. There is 2 weeks of training in the beginning of the year, plus its a competitive application process. At a minimum it should be a level B scale, that’s $10.82 a year for the first year. We’re asking to bring it in line with every other job at Middlebury,” Fleischer said.
After discussing the outstanding demands of residential life staff with Wright, Fleischer agreed to work with him to bring a bill outlining their requests to the SGA for deliberation and a vote.
In the SGA meeting, Doug Adams and Cook commons dean Ian Sutherland stressed the importance of awarding residential life staff a rebate, as they do currently, rather than a weekly paycheck based off of an hourly wage for a set number of hours a week, in part because the hours can vary significantly each week. Furthermore, Sutherland claimed that a weekly paycheck would actually result in lower net earnings because a substantial amount would be withheld by taxes.
“The actual money that a student would see in the academic year would be much reduced,” Sutherland said.
But a calculation from SmartAsset.com suggests otherwise. At a Level B hourly rate of $10.82, a student working 15 hours per week for 28 weeks plus 80 hours of training at the beginning of the semester would make $3,350 according to Vermont income tax rates for a single person paid weekly. This number is higher than the college’s proposed $3,150.
Wright stressed that Taylor and Adams participated extensively in conversations with students, and that if he had to pinpoint where communication fell through, it would be between CRDs, commons deans and their student staff.
“Baishakhi was very proactive, but because her job is to delegate the actual work, she delegated that work to commons deans and CRDs primarily,” he said. “To my knowledge, CRDs and deans solicited feedback over email, but did not go to many lengths to create space for their staff to provide focused, critical feedback.”
When asked whether he thought commons deans and CRDs had had sufficient communication with their student staff before drafting the proposals, Adams said yes.
“They reached out through their teams, through regular one-on-ones, to ask, ‘here’s what we’re doing, do you have any feedback?’” Adams said.
“In advertising for next year, email and posters can be inadequate, so we’ve done an information session so far, we’re planning another information session closer to the [housing application] deadline next week, saying we’d really like to answer any questions people have,” Adams said, referring to the housing information session held on Jan. 16. In later email correspondence, Adams clarified that this meeting was “targeted at new applicants for next year.”
In an email from the Undergraduate Housing office, the event was described as an opportunity to “ask questions related to the Fall Term Pre-Open Draw processes,” where questions could be answered relating to "Res Life Positions, Language & Special Interest Houses, Superblocks, Off Campus Housing, and Social Houses."
Current residential life staff were either unaware of the meeting or did not think it was an opportunity to ask questions about the ongoing negotiations. When asked if Pearl attended the housing information session on Jan. 16, she replied, “I don’t think so? I didn’t go and didn’t think it had anything to do with that.”
When asked if he had met with anyone in person about the proposal sent over winter break, about the second proposal, Dykeman-Bermingham said he had only sent an email with criticism against the equal pay for all positions.
“I am assuming that Kyle Wright had one-on-one meetings. I never met one-on-one with a dean or CRD either,” he said.
When Wright was asked whether he had had any one-on-one communication with a commons dean or CRD, he replied that he had no correspondence with either commons deans or CRDs throughout the process.
The Campus reached out to all of the commons deans and CRDs for comment. Some did not respond, while others replied that Doug Adams could answer all questions.
In response to calls for increased pay, Adams stressed the significance of the accomplishment of attaining a pay increase for the 2018–2019 school year.
“The college is going through a restructuring time where we are actually reducing budgets, but in this case we were able to negotiate going into next year an increase in the rebates that we’ll offer to student staff,” Adams said.
Adams also plans to continue to seek pay increases.
“The rebate should be larger. I’d love to see that. I think finding the balance is really important. I’m going to continue to advocate for a higher rate going forward,” he said.
In response to calls for an additional position to provide in-dorm support to residential life staff, Adams said it was a possibility, but that it will require continued conversation that would include communication with students.
“The SRA can potentially exist if it solves the problem. We’re going to continue to explore that with our student staff,” he said.
Adams has already begun efforts to provide increased first aid and alcohol training to students.
“I’ve already reached out to Jen Kazmierczak, she’s our environmental health and safety educator who helps coordinate first aid trainings about setting something up so that students and res life staff who are interested in getting CPR or first aid certified can take care of that. Alcohol training is through health and wellness, so Barbara McCall, the health and wellness educator has agreed to do that program, so she’s going to come in and do a program with them next week,” Adams said.
Editor’s note: Managing editor Will DiGravio, who is currently an FYC and participated in residential life negotiations, was not involved in the writing or editing of this report.
(01/24/18 9:31pm)
Swimming and diving conquered Union in the natatorium last Saturday — the women’s side by a score of 205–74 and the men’s side 198–75. Each side’s meet had 15 events and both won 12 of the 15.
Frances VanderMeer ’20 continued her impressive win streak with another two victories in the pool. She flew past her competition in the 100 butterfly (58.83) and 50 freestyle (24.64). The fierce competitor also chipped in for the 200 free relay, along with Audrey Kelly ’21, Erin Kelly ’21 and Stephanie Andrews ’18, winning the competition with a time of 1:41.09. The relay’s nearest competitor came in 7.48 seconds behind the Panther’s top squad.
Alongside VanderMeer, Elissa DeNunzio ’18 again had success on the boards, contributing two winning efforts with victories in both the 1- (263.93) and 3-meter (274.95) events.
Other first-place finishes included Sarah McEachern ’21 in the 100 backstroke (1:02.15) and 500 freestyle (5:19.89), Erin Kelly in the 100 breaststroke (1:10.16), Kristin Karpowicz ’19 in the 200 free (1:59.93), Stephanie Andrews ’18 in the 100 free (55.50) and Jessica Lipton ’20 in the 200 fly (2:16.11).
The men’s side saw the same success against Union.
Morgan Matsuda ’19 and Stefan Pla ’18 each won two individual events. Matsuda touched the wall in the 400 individual medley in 4:21.26 as well as the 200 freestyle in 1:47.80. Pla claimed first in the 200 breaststroke (2:14.23) and 100 breaststroke (1:00.55). Pla also contributed a leg in the victorious 400 medley relay (3:36.83), consisting of Pla, Brendan Leech ’19, Keegan Pando ’21 and Nick Handali ’20.
Along with the 400 medley relay, the 200 free relay team of Cory Jalbert ’21, Leech ’19, Keegan Pando ’21 and Connor McCormick ’18, closed out the day for the Panthers on a high note, finishing first with a time of 1:29.55.
Other individual victories were attained in the lanes and on the boards. Mike Chirico ’20 won the 3-meter diving event with 358.43 points. Five other Panthers claimed gold in their respective swimming events: Kevin Santoro ’21 in the 200 backstroke (1:59.52), Leech in the 50 free (22.43), Jalbert in the 100 free (49.61), Handali in the 100 butterfly (53.78) and Andrew Buchser ’18 in the 500 free (4:58.78).
“My main goals moving forward are to stay healthy and in good condition,” Buchser said. “I started this season unable to swim with a back injury, but with help from sports medicine I’ve managed the pain. The bulk of our training is done, so now we just have to stay in shape until we start taper.”
The Panthers head to Williamstown on Saturday looking to improve their conference record, but Buchser points out Middlebury’s results so far may be misleading.
“Teams take opportunities throughout the season to rest for meets,” Buchser said. “We train through all of our meets to maximize our potential by the time Nescacs come around. It’s hard to know how I’m really doing until I’m rested in February. I’m ahead of where I’ve been at this time in past seasons, so it should all be good news moving forward.”
(01/17/18 10:07pm)
As the season begins, the men’s and women’s track and field teams have already started off strong. After participating in the unscored Dartmouth Relays, both teams captured first place finishes in last Saturday’s Middlebury Winter Classic.
A total of 148 points netted the men’s team first place. RPI came in second with 136 points and Franklin Pierce came in third with 101 points.
In the course of earning a first-place finish, the men’s side had quite a few first place finishers. Matthew Durst ’21 was first in the 400-meter dash with a time of 52.38. Jimmy Martinez ’19 was first in the 500-meter dash with a time of 1:04.87. A time of 2:38.10 got Sawyer Tadano ’21 first in the 1000-meter run. A time of 8.64 helped Mike Pallozzi ’18 to earn first in the 60-meter hurdles. John Natalone ’19 had a height of 4.35 m to get first in the pole vault event. Also, Minhaj Rahman ’19 threw a distance of 15.05 m in order to get first in 35-lb weight throw. Middlebury’s A team also got first in the 4x400 meter relay. The team was comprised of Martinez, Durst, Arden Coleman ’20 and Cam Mackintosh ’20.
The women’s team scored a hefty 157.50 points to gain first place. RPI came in second with 121.50 points and Franklin Pierce came in third with 106 points.
The women’s side had several events where several of their scorers came in the top eight. In the 200-meter dash, Kate Holly ’21 came in second, Gretchen McGrath ’21 came in fourth and Lizzie Walkes ’20 came in sixth. Respectively, their times were 27.33, 27.65 and 27.84. In the 400-meter dash, Kate McCluskey ’18 captured first and Kai Milici ’21 captured third. McCluskey had a time of 57.97 and Milici had a time of 1:02.70. Anna Willig ’20 with a time of 1:20.80 and Lucy Lang ’19 with a time of 1:21.08 came in first and second respectively in the 500-meter dash. First, second, and third in 60 meter hurdles were taken by Chima Dimgba ’21, Kisha Kalra ’18 and Catherine Walker ’20. In order, they had times of 9.45, 9.62 and 9.94. In the pole vault event, Kreager Taber ’19 got first with a height of 3.20 m and Molly Colwell ’20 got second with a height of 3.05 m. Victoria Toth ’21 was in a three way tie for third with a height of 2.90 m and Annalise Arant ’21 was in a two way tie for sixth with a height of 2.90 m.
Even with this great start, the team will look to improve as the season progresses. For now, they look forward to continuing their momentum at the Middlebury Winterfell this Saturday, Jan. 20, at Virtue Field House where the events will start at 11:30 a.m.
(01/17/18 9:59pm)
The men’s basketball season can be split into three phases. The first ended with the team’s 91–76 win over previously undefeated No. 16 Skidmore on Friday, Dec. 8. Its second phase occurred over the break, when the Panthers experienced their first road bumps of the season and lost their first three (and only) games so far. Now, the team is in its third phase as they have experienced a resurgence since the beginning of J-term, including Nescac victories over Bates 82–76 on Friday, Jan. 12, and Tufts 78–63 on Saturday, Jan. 13. After this stretch of nine games, Middlebury stands at 12–3 overall and 3–1 in the Nescac, good for a three-way tie in the conference with Tufts and Williams and a half-game behind undefeated Hamilton.
In its final game before winter break, Middlebury travelled to Skidmore and managed to recover from a 38–34 halftime deficit with a monstrous 57-point second half that propelled them to a 91–76 defeat of the Thoroughbreds.
The Panthers’ starting-five led the way offensively, scoring 82 of the team’s 91 points. Jack Farrell ’21 tallied a career-high 22 points, while Nick Tarantino ’18 added 20 and a career-high 17 rebounds. Entering the game, the Panthers ranked second nationally, behind only undefeated Whitman.
After final exams and returning home for break, Middlebury returned to campus for a couple days of practice, before heading south to play in the Washington & Lee Holiday Tournament. In their first game of the tournament, the Panthers faced their second-consecutive undefeated opponent in No. 25 York (Pa.) on Friday, Dec. 29. Down 70–60 with only 4:16 remaining in regulation, the Panthers reeled off a 14–2 run to take a two-point lead with 36 seconds left. York responded with a late layup to tie the game and force overtime.
York jumped out to an eight-point lead in overtime, but Middlebury came right back with an 8–2 spurt to get within two points with 10 seconds left. York then turned the ball over, but Middlebury gave it right back and York sank one free throw to take a three-point lead. Farrell had a look to tie, but his three bounced off the back of the rim. The Panthers lost their first game of the season in overtime to York, 90–87.
Middlebury’s starting five once again did most of the scoring, tallying 73 of the team’s 87 points. Matt Folger ’20 and Jack Daly ’18 led the pack with 22 and 20, respectively.
The Panthers rebounded from its first loss of the season in the consolation game of the Washington & Lee tournament, handling Clarks Summit 81–58. Daly was the only Middlebury scorer in double digits with 16 points on an efficient five-of-eight shooting from the field. He added eight rebounds and six assists.
The following Tuesday, Jan. 2, No. 4 Middlebury returned home to host No. 12 Swarthmore. The Garnet built a 47–32 halftime lead that the Panthers could not recover from, as the visitors came away with a 91–75 victory. Folger scored 21 points and grabbed eight rebounds, and Daly and Eric McCord ’19 both added 12 points in the Middlebury loss.
Middlebury took a 7–2 record into Nescac play when they travelled to Connecticut for games at Connecticut College on Friday, Jan. 5, and at Wesleyan on Saturday, Jan. 6. The Panthers doubled the Camels’ first half total to take a commanding 46–23 lead into the locker room, and cruised to an 82–60 win in their first conference game. Folger led the way again with 16 points, while five other Panthers scored at least eight points.
In a back-and-forth affair, No. 12 Wesleyan outlasted Middlebury the following night 80–70. Daly scored a game-high 21 points, grabbed a season-high 15 rebounds, and assisted on eight baskets. However, the Cardinals got to the line far more often and shot 28 more free throws in their 10-point victory.
Two days later, on Monday, Jan. 8, Middlebury had another non-conference game at home against Morrisville State. The Panthers won 85–64 with a balanced scoring effort, as Hilal Dahleh ’19, McCord and Adisa Majors ’18 all scored 12 points. Daly made only one shot from the field, but handed out a career-high 14 assists.
On Friday, Jan. 12, Middlebury played its first home Nescac game against Bates. The Bobcats built the largest lead of the contest in the first half when they led 43–31. However, the Panthers scored the last four points of the first half and extended their run into the second half, tying the score at 48. Middlebury went ahead by as many as seven two times, but Bates cut the lead to one, 71–70, with 2:32 left. Folger and Daly closed the game out by scoring Middlebury’s last thirteen points and leading the Panthers to a 82–76 victory.
A game after recording his career-high in assists, Daly scored a career-high 26 points, along with nine rebounds and eight assists. In coming from behind in the second half, Middlebury shot a blistering 64 percent from the field to outscore Bates 47–33.
The next night, the Panthers came from behind once more in Pepin Gym to knock off Tufts, who was previously undefeated in the Nescac, 78–63. Tufts led by as many as ten points in the first half, and took a 38–36 lead into halftime. Middlebury led 52–51 at the 13-minute mark, before going on a 14–0 run to put the game out of the Jumbos’ reach. The Panthers secured a 78–63 win by outscoring Tufts 42–25 in the second half, holding the visitors to only 24 percent shooting in the final twenty minutes.
Middlebury dominated on the boards, out-rebounding Tufts 70–41 and grabbing 33 offensive rebounds. McCord retrieved a career-high 15 rebounds and added 13 points, while Daly scored 16 and Folger tallied 15.
On Jan. 15, Small College Basketball released its Top 100 Watchlist for the 2017–18 Bevo Francis Award, given to the best player from Division II, Division III, the NAIA, USCAA, and NCAA men’s basketball. Daly was named to the watchlist, after averaging 16.4 points, 8.8 assists, and 8.6 rebounds per game in Middlebury’s first 14 contests. Daly also recorded what is believed to be the first triple-double in the program’s history. He is also leading the nation in assists per-game with 8.8.
On Tuesday, Jan. 16, the Panthers fell behind in their third straight game, this time to Albertus Magnus in Pepin Gym. At halftime, the Falcons led 36–34. Middlebury took a 57–47 lead with 8:37 left in regulation, and led 64–56 with just under five minutes. But Albertus Magnus scored 10 out of the last 12 points in regulation, including two free throws with 20 seconds left to force overtime.
Tied at 71 with a little over one minute remaining in overtime, Daly scored on a fastbreak layup to put Middlebury ahead for good. The Panthers scored the last six points of the game to outlast Albertus Magnus 77–71.
Daly scored 22 points to lead the Panthers, while Folger, Dahleh, and Joey Leighton ’20 all added nine. With nine assists, Daly brought his career assist mark to 503, becoming the third player in program history to record 500 assists.
Middlebury returns to the court on Saturday, Jan. 20, when it hosts Williams in an anticipated matchup between Nescac rivals. Last season, Williams beat Middlebury in the regular season, Middlebury got revenge in the Nescac championship game, but the Ephs got the last laugh in the NCAA Quarterfinals. Their rankings once they come out and records. On Sunday, Jan. 21, the Panthers travel to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, to face non-conference opponent Pine Manor.
(12/07/17 11:34pm)
In our last editorial for this fall semester, we think it is important to further compound our finals stress by considering some of the dangerous repercussions of the Republican tax plan, a bill passed by the House and Senate that is expected to soon become law.
The plan, touted by many Republican lawmakers as intended to benefit the working and middle classes, will in fact target some of the most vulnerable populations. According to analysis by PBS, the changes include tax hikes for those earning less than $30,000 per year, having disastrous implications for lower income families in particular.
Although the pernicious effects of this legislation are broad, affecting the tax deductibility of school supplies and student loan payments, we have chosen to focus more narrowly on the ways in which the plan targets higher education.
We recognize that much of the conversation has been too heavily slanted away from discussing the effects that the proposal would have on especially vulnerable populations, and appreciate that even having the ability to consider graduate school represents a manifestation of some relative privilege.
At the same time, we acknowledge that enrollment or completion of a graduate program does not guarantee a change in marginalization status of someone, whether that is low-income status, race or gender. Further, for some students at Middlebury, the most immediate effects do not lie in affecting their ability to go to graduate school. The tax hikes for lower income families will be more damaging than a graduate school tax.
The Republican tax plan is, simply put, an attack on systems of higher education, affecting both private and public institutions. Among its provisions, the plan would tax tuition waivers for graduate students, increasing their tax payments by thousands in most cases, by some estimations.
It would also make college and university endowments taxable. We encourage readers to visit an article by news editor Nick Garber, “College Officials Voice Opposition to GOP Tax Bills,” which discusses the proposed endowment and student loan interest tax — with its approval meaning 12 or 13 students could not receive financial aid.
We encourage Middlebury College to make an official statement opposing the bill — especially in the midst of current efforts to support marginalized students.
The immediate effects of the plan are astounding, but its long-term implications are even more bleak. The plan would make elite institutions such as ours even more inaccessible to people of lower incomes. A person of more affluent means will always be able to go to graduate school, just in the way that wealthy institutions like Harvard will always find the resources they need for their graduate schools to thrive.
The real concern here, the people and places being most profoundly hurt by this plan, are those with fewer financial resources — the students and institutions with less private funding. Although those who support this bill may take issue with how liberal many academic institutions have become, those are not the ones which will be most profoundly affected by the plan. The plan would make elitist institutions like ours even more inaccessible to those with less financial stability.
For more vulnerable students, modifications like taxing tuition waivers can be the difference between going to graduate school and pursuing employment after graduation. These are decisions that should not have to be influenced by finances. Regardless of income, all students should have the opportunity to pursue a more advanced degree, should they so choose. Limiting the access to higher education only further inhibits social mobility and suppresses the lower and middle classes in our already oppressive economic systems.
Beyond the independent implications of the plan, there are the broader concerns for our nation’s ability to compete in global economies. Disincentivizing people from pursuing higher education will set us back globally. As Inside Higher Ed reported, more than 50 percent of those studying in STEM fields in graduate schools in the United States are from other countries; at some universities, the number is around 80 percent.
Many of those students will leave our country (especially with the encouragement of our prohibitive federal immigration system), bringing their skills and knowledge elsewhere, in place of keeping that skilled labor here.
For those of us facing already daunting decisions after graduation, the Republican tax plan only adds to those worries. The general uncertainty we already manage will be compounded by the Republican tax plan’s attack on higher education.
For many, the effects of the plan will be an inconvenience. For others, it may radically shift the options available to them for their futures. In a world that should be dedicated to expanding access to education for all, this plan works against an admirable mission under the false claim of benefitting the middle class.
(12/07/17 12:14am)
Re “Response to 'Response to Setting the Record Straight’” (online, Dec. 1)
The academic department at Arizona State University that I direct — the School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership (SCETL) — received an email from Middlebury faculty member Kevin Moss, inviting our school to “correct” the putative falsehoods he describes in his Campus posting about a February event at ASU with Middlebury professor Allison Stanger and a Reed College professor, on controversies about speech and speakers on college campuses.
We are accused of “distort[ing] the record” of the Charles Murray events at Middlebury in March 2017 and “play[ing] into the dominant narrative used to defame the college.”
Professor Moss may not realize that the director of this ASU School happens to be a 1989 Middlebury College graduate; that I returned to the College as a faculty member from 1996 to 1998; that I have stayed in touch with Middlebury mentors and friends in the 20 years I have lived out west; that I am grateful to have visited my alma mater occasionally; and that my wife and I encouraged our two children to apply to Middlebury.
It is true that as a proud alum, and professor, I have followed the news and commentary about the Charles Murray episode and its aftermath with greater care than the typical American academic might have done. Nonetheless, our school’s February event with professor Stanger was not my idea, but was proposed to us by a professor from ASU’s Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications; and he did so without knowledge of my deep Middlebury connections.
The topics that professor Stanger and Reed professor Lucía Martínez Valdivia will address are of national interest. Further, this event is part of a series our school has organized — with co-sponsorship from ASU’s O’Connor College of Law and the Cronkite School — on “Freedom of Speech and Intellectual Diversity in Higher Education and American Life.”
We have assembled a range of viewpoints, from those who advocate restricting speech and speakers to those holding a more traditional First Amendment view about latitude and protection for campus discourse. Information about the series, including a two-day conference, is on our school’s website under “Events” — and a reasonable observer would conclude that we seek civil debate in an academic setting, open for anyone to attend, about these important national issues.
One more point of context: Fairness requires disclosure that I have publicly stated my views about the significance of the Charles Murray episode, and the college’s response to it, in an opinion essay I co-authored with five other Middlebury alums who became professors in various academic fields. That essay appeared in RealClearPolitics on June 1 and is readily available. At least half of the authors would consider themselves politically liberal or progressive; and it would take quite sophisticated efforts to discern therein any intent to defame or polemicize.
Finally, to the accusations: While I respect, as a Middlebury alum and friend of the college, the professor’s concern about accurate representations of the college and events there, we will have to agree to disagree about the many matters of interpretation involved. I would not retract a word of the brief description our school provided to advertise this dialogue event about the Murray episode and its aftermath.
That description obviously is not the final word on these events and their significance. That said, there is nothing false or distorting about it, even if it necessarily compresses a complicated episode.
The fundamental facts about this episode, evident in many journalistic and eyewitness reports — and in investigations by the college and the town police that followed — are that a speaker invited through normal college procedures was forcefully prevented from speaking in the originally invited venue; that similar use of force and noise continued in an effort to disrupt the backup venue provided to the speaker and professor Stanger; and finally that these preliminary episodes of force led to open violence later in the day.
It is odd to accuse our school of distorting the record when the alternative account would omit the fundamental fact about forcefully preventing a scheduled speaker event from unfolding as invited and as originally planned.
One of the prerequisite conditions for higher learning is civility in expressing disagreements about ideas, whether abstract and theoretical or practical and political. I understand that there are disagreements about the meaning and reasonable interpretations of the Middlebury events at issue. However, unreasonable accusations of the sort proffered here don’t sustain or replenish the civility needed at Middlebury and all other serious places of learning.
Paul Carrese ’89 is an author and academic.
(11/29/17 11:59pm)
The women’s basketball team hit the road for its first four games of the season and won all four, taking two wins at the Emerson Tip-Off Classic on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 18 and 19, then defeating Johnson St. 74–27 on Tuesday, Nov. 21, and Clarkson 53–49 on Sunday, Nov. 26.
Middlebury opened its season at the Emerson Tip-Off Classic against the host, Emerson.
The Panthers jumped out to 10–0 lead and led 23–14 at the end of the first quarter. Thereafter they would only add to their lead by outscoring the Lions 19–5 in the second quarter to take a 43–19 lead into halftime.
Things were relatively even in the second half, and Middlebury easily moved to 1–0 on the season with an 80–55 victory. Sarah Kaufman ’18 led the team in scoring with 12 points, while Sabrina Weeks ’18 and Lily Kuntz ’20 both added ten off the bench.
In their second game of the quasi-round robin tournament, the Panthers shut down Mount Saint Mary, winning its second game 59–34. The Knights shot only 24 percent from the field, only making 10 field goals, while turning the ball over 24 times.
Once again, the Panthers got contributions off the bench as Betsy Knox ’20 scored a game-high 12 points. Colleen Caveney ’19 added nine en route to being named the classic’s Most Outstanding Player.
Next, the Panthers travelled to play at Johnson St. on Tuesday, Nov. 21, where they dominated once more to come away with a 74–27 victory. After the first half, Middlebury led 50–9.
In another balanced effort, Caveney tallied 12 points on four of five shooting in only 11 minutes, and Weeks added 12 points off the bench as well. No Middlebury player saw more than 17 minutes of action in the contest.
The Panthers’ competition got much tougher in their final matchup of the four-game slate at Clarkson on Sunday, Nov. 26.
After one quarter, the score was tied at 15, but Middlebury surged ahead, outscoring the Golden Knights by nine points in the second quarter to take a 31–22 lead into the locker room.
Clarkson responded in the third quarter by cutting the lead to two entering the final quarter.
Middlebury went on a 5–0 run to go ahead 47–40, but Clarkson came right back with a 6–0 run of its one to make it a one-point game with 3:39 remaining. The teams traded baskets around the two minute mark, and Middlebury held off Clarkson over the last two minutes to secure a 53–49 victory.
Alex Huffman ’19 scored the Panthers’ last four points and secured the rebound on Clarkson’s three-point attempt that would have tied the game at 52 with 15 seconds left.
No Panther scored in double figures, but 10 chipped in with Maya Davis ’20 and Catherine Harrison ’19 leading the way with eight points.
Neither team shot particularly well, as the Panthers finished at 31 percent from the field and the Golden Knights at 24 percent.
Middlebury will return to action when it travels to Colby-Sawyer on Friday, Dec. 1. They return home to play Plattsburgh St. on Tuesday, Dec. 5.
(11/29/17 11:29pm)
In the era of the Trump regime, the politically inclined are eager to fight for abortion rights and affordable, government subsidized healthcare. The battle-cry is clear: “I stand with Planned Parenthood” stickers are on the back of laptops across campus and stuck on bumpers across the country. But is it enough? Is loud, unwavering support for abortion rights all that it takes to support women nationwide? And should abortion be the focus of all of our activism and attention?
In our current class, “The Politics of Reproduction,” we were introduced to crisis pregnancy centers. A crisis pregnancy center — or CPC, for short — is a deceptive “resource” for pregnant people. These centers often situate themselves near abortion providers, sometimes buying property immediately next door or across the street. Women looking for abortion providers — and often women with appointments for abortions — will mistakenly enter CPCs, whose ambiguous logos and names suggest that they offer abortion resources. Misleading advertisements online and in print also draw women into CPCs under the false promise that they offer medical counsel.
Once inside, women are inundated with false information skewed by religious biases. CPCs are designed to dissuade women from obtaining abortions, and they will do anything to reach this goal, including providing medically inaccurate information. Amy G. Bryant, a researcher from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, found that 80% of CPC websites surveyed contained false information about abortion. These falsehoods included supposed “risks” of the procedure- — increased risk of breast cancer, alcoholism and infertility, among others. The American Cancer Society disavows the link between abortion and breast cancer with the support of multiple studies. The National Health Service — the United Kingdom’s health care system — found no correlation between abortion and mental health problems or infertility. Bryant and her coauthors also found that 12 states had “Resource Directories” that they provided to women seeking abortion. Among the resources these states recommended — for abortion information and care — were CPCs.
The battle for reproductive rights must include fighting both for abortion and against CPCs. Planned Parenthood stickers are not enough. So what can a student at Middlebury College do? How can we have an impact?
In the liberal Green Mountain state, it’s easy to feel worlds away from the political agendas of political conservatives, including those who run CPCs. If you do a Google search for “pregnant in Middlebury, VT,” however, the first site to appear is the Pregnancy Resource Center of Addison County, a local CPC. Their website claims that they provide information on abortion, although the small print on the website states that “[t]his center does not offer abortions or abortion referrals.” The website does include information on what they call “post-abortion stress,” a fictional mental disorder that the DSM — a manual used by mental health providers to classify and diagnose disorders — does not acknowledge as legitimate, and that was created by anti-abortion activists. In progressive Vermont and on our own campus, women seeking accurate information may mistakenly visit this CPC and receive false information on their reproductive options and their bodies.
Students in our course decided to take on this hypocrisy. In a series of translation projects, we are using information from course texts to create impactful projects — zines, art installations and board games, among other projects — to educate and inspire the Middlebury community. Many of us felt compelled to talk about CPCs, noting that even our most politically-conscious peers outside of the course were unaware of this insidious phenomenon. Anna Novak, a junior Geography major, devised a plan to map CPCs and abortion providers in Vermont to assist women looking for health care. I contacted every hospital and abortion clinic in the state to determine who provides abortions and the type of procedures offered. This information has been translated into an interactive map, which will be available on a website created by our peers — seniors Kelsie Hoppes, Lauren Schweppe and Kisha Karla.
This website, reproductivehealthvt.wordpress.com, serves as a guide for individuals seeking reproductive health care services in Addison County, Vermont. This website educates viewers on what a CPC is and how to spot one and debunks many of their lies and biases. In addition, the website provides information on how and where to access an abortion locally, as well as information about the procedure itself.
Our collaborative projects provide a resource that women in Vermont can use to learn about providers in Vermont, including contact information and provider location. Additionally, we hope that these projects can educate our community about the threat CPC’s pose to reproductive freedom, even in liberal Vermont. The website will be operational by December 18th. For more information on the website, as well as other projects from our course, please join us at the M Gallery on Wednesday, December 6th for student presentations.
CPCs are deceptive; they have ambiguous names and websites, and their anti-abortion foundations are not immediately clear. They are designed to mislead women and dissuade them from a safe, common medical procedure. It is no longer enough to support Planned Parenthood when it is convenient. To support all women and to support reproductive autonomy, we have to emphatically oppose and demystify crisis pregnancy centers. It’s time for Middlebury students to actively oppose CPCs, and we can start in our very own town.
(11/16/17 1:20am)
Tax proposals recently released separately by Republicans in the House and Senate could reshape the financial lives of thousands of Vermonters if passed. Peter Welch, a Democrat who is Vermont’s lone representative in the House, articulated his opposition to the House plan in particular in a wide-ranging interview with The Campus.
Welch said he was especially struck by the discrepancy between the Republicans’ claims about the tax plan — namely, how it would impact the middle class — and the reality. “If the tax bill accomplished what [House Speaker] Paul Ryan says is the goal, I’d be for it,” Welch said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “The reality of the bill is 180 degrees different than what he’s talking about.”
In assessing the tax bills, Welch said he considered two main components: how the proposed tax plan would affect the budget deficit and whether the proposal would benefit the middle class. The proposed House bill is projected to add $2.3 billion to the budget deficit and strip a range of popular itemized deductions that taxpayers rely on each year.
One of the dubious justifications made by Republicans for the tax plan, Welch said, is that by lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, firms will reap new profits and eventually increase wages. “There’s literally no empirical support for that claim,” he said. “There’s no indication that this tax bill, with a corporate tax cut, would somehow result in pay raises from the workers, and that’s a big claim that Ryan and the Republicans are making.”
Welch notes that, across the board, 80 percent of the benefits from the tax plan would accrue to the wealthiest one percent of Americans. “You’re going to have 99 percent of taxpayers fighting for the crumbs,” Welch said. “They’re saying it’s going to benefit the middle class, but they can’t prove that.”
The elimination of the estate tax would play a major role in that disparity. Doing away with the estate tax would only impact two in 1,000 Americans, providing a significant tax break to estates worth more than $1 million. Welch said that although these properties are appreciating in value over time, the capital gains are never taxed as the inheritors would receive the market value for the estate at the time of death.
Itemized deductions — eligible expenses that taxpayers can claim in order to reduce their taxable income — have also been slashed under the House proposal. Medical costs, nursing home expenses, school supplies purchased by teachers out of pocket, student loan interest, state and local income tax— all of which were previously deductible on federal income taxes — have been collectively removed in the most recent House bill.
The bill also contains certain provisions that disproportionately affect certain regions of the country. In the House plan, for example, damage caused by wildfires and earthquakes would no longer be deductible from taxable income, although wreckage from most hurricanes would be.
“If you lost your home in the California fires, you can’t deduct your loss,” Welch said. “And that feels very much like an attack on a ‘blue state.’ Flood or fire, you still lost your house, so why can you deduct the loss in one case and not the other?”
Another striking aspect of the House’s tax proposal is a lack of transparency in its drafting process, Welch asserted. Although most legislation is crafted following a series of open hearings to allow for public input, this tax bill was drafted entirely in secret in the Speaker’s office. Most House members, including many Republicans and members of the Ways and Means Committee, were unaware of the plan until it was formally proposed in the House.
“The problem with a bill written in secret is that you can’t have public input into the whole process,” Welch said. “It creates a situation where you’re not focusing as much on the policy as you are on chasing votes to get to the magic number of 218 in the House.”
Using a procedure called the “closed rule,” Republican leaders have denied the opportunity for any member to oppose an amendment to the existing bill, he said. As a result, Welch, along with Vermont Senators Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy, have tried to raise public awareness to combat what they call a disastrous bill.
“Our effort is to get as much public awareness of what’s in the bill and how bad it is so that there’s a reaction of how the bill increases inequality, adds to the debt and fails to promote economic growth,” Welch said.
Welch suspects that Republicans are determined, and willing, to pass any tax bill in order to claim success following months of failed and stalled legislative efforts.
In summarizing his greatest concerns about the bill, Welch highlighted the trend between both tax bills: an attempt to compensate for losses stemming from the elimination of the estate tax by hurting the middle class.
“These eliminations are a direct take-away from the middle class and it’s hard to justify that under any circumstances,” Welch said. “And most egregiously for taking away these benefits to pay for the elimination of the estate tax for billionaires.”
Welfare programs will feel the most immediate repercussion from the cuts, Welch contended. In the long-term, however, he noted that the bills’ effect on the federal deficit could negatively impact future generations.
“We’re borrowing money to pay for the tax cuts, and the people benefiting from it won’t be paying for it,” Welch said. “By driving up the deficit, it’s going to put enormous pressure on Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security programs.”
(11/16/17 12:24am)
Many in the college community are familiar with the Charter House Coalition on North Pleasant Street, a volunteer-based community home that aims to provide food and housing free of charge to those in need. Few, however, are aware that there is a significantly larger subsidized housing facility beyond the village center on the eastern end of town.
The Vermont State Housing Authority’s Middlebury outpost is located among fields, partially obscured by trees. It generally maintains a low profile besides the small sign by the driveway reading “Middlebury Commons — VSHA.” This building is the nearest location of the Vermont State Housing Authority (VSHA), and it is currently at capacity with 126 middle-aged to elderly individuals.
One of the VSHA’s dozens of sites, Middlebury Commons is specifically tasked with providing housing for the low-income, rural elderly. Built with support from the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, the facility receives federal funding from the Section 515 Rural Rental Housing Program — a government program authorized as a part of the Housing Act of 1949. The purpose of the Section 515 program is to provide housing to a range of low-income families and elderly people with disabilities in rural regions across the U.S.
As a funded location under the Section 515 Rural Rental Housing Program, the Middlebury Commons is also an eligible location for tenants to receive subsidized rent under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Assistance Program. Individuals qualify for increasing amounts of rent subsidy depending on what percentage of the Area Median Income (AMI) their income is. Bracketed in 80-percent-of-AMI, 60-percent-of-AMI and 30-percent-of-AMI groupings, the Rural Development Assistance Program gives priority to tenants in the 30-percent-and-below tier.
The most recent Vermont Housing Authority homeless persons count recorded 92 individuals in Addison County. This population, measured in January 2017, is a point-in-time count that does not account for the hundreds of precariously housed individuals in the county. The primary purpose of the VSHA is to, using facilities like Middlebury Commons, provide aid to the homeless and precariously housed of Vermont.
The future of the Middlebury VSHA location is currently in debate. The Trump administration’s Departments of Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development plan to defund the Vermont Housing Authority as well as to eliminate completely the Section 515 Rural Rental Housing Program that allows so many Middlebury Commons tenants to pay their rent.
The revised budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development reduces overall budget by roughly $6.835 billion. This decrease of nearly 15% means that agencies like the VSHA, which received 93% of its funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, will feel the cuts directly.
Kathleen Berk, director of the VSHA Housing Program’s administration, spoke to the impact these cuts may have on the organization.
“We really are dependent on federal funding,” Berk said. “We don’t know the [federal] appropriation process that happens, so there [are] concerns, ... [and] until they pass the budget we just won’t know.”
The problem is not confined to Addison County. Addison County’s immediate neighbors Chittenden County and Rutland County have Vermont’s highest homeless persons counts, according to the VSHA’s 2017 tally. Rutland County, to Addison County’s south, recorded an estimated 183 homeless individuals. To the North, Chittenden County, with Burlington at its center, is estimated to have at least 291 homeless persons.
The VSHA estimates Vermont to have a total homeless population of roughly 1,225. In 2007, at the very outset of the Great Recession, the homeless population was double its current level, comprising an estimated 2,515 individuals. To make matters worse, Vermont had the highest homelessness rate in New England, which, at 3.4 percent of the population, was a full 30 percent higher than the next-highest rate, found in Massachusetts.
In the decade that has elapsed since 2007, homelessness in Vermont has decreased remarkably thanks to programs like the VSHA. Berk explained that these cuts will reduce the VSHA’s ability to mitigate homelessness the way it has.
“It’s money that we really need to operate our programs,” she said.
In the meantime, the VSHA will continue to work to reduce homelessness in Vermont. Where government funding may be lacking, state funding and a strong economy could potentially help to maintain aid while mitigating the issue. Nonetheless, homelessness is likely to grow as a once-under-the-radar issue that, in the near future, will increase in a palpable way.
(11/16/17 12:00am)
On Saturday, Nov. 11, the class of 2018 played their final football game as Middlebury Panthers, completing their nine-game season with a 35–24 win over the Tufts Jumbos and a 7–2 Nescac record.
The Panthers won the coin toss, opting to kick off to the Jumbos and it paid off. Ian Blow ’18 forced a fumble at the Tufts’ 18-yard line, which was recovered by Zander Bailey ’21. Just like that, Middlebury’s Jack Meservy ’19 completed a 14-yard pass to Peter Scibilia ’21 and a short four-yard touchdown pass to Frank Cosolito ’20, his first of three on the day. 40 seconds into the game, the Panthers commanded a 7–0 lead.
After a four-and-out on the next Jumbo drive, Middlebury started with the ball on their own 39-yard line. Thanks to a Tufts’ 15-yard penalty, several carries by Drew Jacobs ’18 and a 26-yard connection between Meservy and Cosolito, the Panthers found themselves at the one-yard line. After an incomplete pass attempt to Cosolito and a rush for no gain by Jacobs, Meservy found the end zone with a one yard sneak. Carter Massengill ’20 completed the extra point for his second of the game giving the guests a 14–0 lead.
The Jumbos answered on the next drive, going 80 yards on ten plays. Ryan McDonald completed several passes, including a 27-yard and 21-yard find to two different receivers. Tufts’ kicker found the middle of the goal posts to cut Middlebury’s lead in half.
Bad luck befell the Panthers at the start of the second quarter. At their own 39-yard line, Meservy looked for Conrado Banky ’19 down the seam, but the attempt was incomplete. On top of that, Banky was called for a pass interference call and the Panthers were penalized 15 yards. Unable to convert on 3rd and 24th, Maxwell Rye ’20 set to punt, but was blocked and the ball recovered by a crashing Jumbo defense. Tufts scored two plays later to tie the game at 14 a piece.
Middlebury sought to respond, but on the ensuing kickoff, Will Jernigan ’21 was stripped of the ball at the 28-yard line and it was recovered by Tufts. Three players later, McDonald gave the Jumbos the lead with a 23-yard rush, dodging and weaving through the Panthers secondary. The extra point was good and the Panthers trailed by seven.
After suffering a three-and-out, Tufts started the next drive on their 26-yard line. McDonald rushed 25 yards to Middlebury’s 49 and on the next play completed an 18-yard pass; however, it was called back due to a holding penalty. With first and 20, the Jumbos suffered another penalty, this time a personal foul, pushing the ball back to the 24-yard line. McDonald was subsequently sacked for a loss and the Jumbos took a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct pushing them all the way back to their own 7-yard line. By the end of their drive, the Tufts suffered a negative 19-yard outing and punted.
Meservy took over at the Jumbo 39-yard line and made quick work. On seven plays, he took the Panthers down the field, completing a short pass to Jimmy Martinez ’19, a 27-yard connection with Banky, and a one-yard touchdown rush for Meservy’s second of the game. Massengil’s attempt was blocked, but the Panthers were within one, trailing 20-21.
At the beginning of the second half, the Panthers started in good field position thanks to a 27-yard kick return by Jernigan. At their own 39-yard line, Scibilia rushed for 15 moving the chains to the Jumbo 46-yard line. Meservy moved the chains twice more, connecting with Maxim Bochman ’20 for 12 yards and another with Cosolito for 19 yards. Meservy found Cosolito in the end zone for his second touchdown of the game. Colin Waters ’19 tried for the two-point conversion but failed, nevertheless the guests held a 26-21 advantage and a lead for the rest of the game. Tufts converted on a field goal attempt from 41-yards out for their final score of the game.
Middlebury started their last touchdown drive at the nine-minute mark of the third quarter. Martinez gave them field position at their own 34-yard line. Jacobs rushed for four yards and on the next play, Meservy converted with Martinez on a 44-yard pass, placing the Panthers at the Jumbo 18. On first-and-ten, Meservy tried to connect with Cosolito, but failed. He tried on second-and-ten, as well as third-and-ten with Banky but also missed. On fourth-and-down, Meservy found Cosolito in the end zone from 18-yards out, completing the trifecta. Massengill’s kick attempt was good and the guests took a 33-24 lead.
After Maxwell Rye’s punt put the Jumbos on their own eight- yard line with four minutes left in the fourth quarter, the Panthers sealed the deal. Wesley Becton ’18 sacked McDonald on third-and-eight for a ten-yard loss and recovered the ball in the Jumbos’ end zone for a safety, giving the Panthers their final points and a 35–24 victory.
“Being on the field for the last time was a crazy experience,” said Becton, after his final game in the blue-and-white. “There was a lot of emotions but our team was really fired up and I couldn’t be happier with the way we went out. And to be honest, I’ll probably remember that last sack for the rest of my life.”
Middlebury’s season came to a blissful end, finishing second in the Nescac and closing out their final game with a win.
Jourdon Delerme-Brown ’20 spoke to the impact that the seniors had on the team.
“I think I speak for everyone on the team when I say sending the seniors out on a positive was of utmost importance. They’ve given so much to us younger guys and the team as a whole. They will be missed. They’ve set such a high standard in terms of team chemistry and level of play, we don’t want to let them down by falling off the mark next year.”
(11/14/17 7:19pm)
College president Laurie Patton sent a school wide email on Wed., Nov. 8, inviting students, faculty and staff, to a town hall the following day, Nov. 9.
“It is clear to me and, I believe, to many of you, that the essential bond of trust and assumption of good intentions that should unite us is broken,” she wrote. You can access the email here.
Co-sponsored by the Black Student Union and the Student Government Association, the audience filled Wilson Hall to capacity, causing event organizers to move the event to Mead Chapel. At the event, which was monitored by SGA and BSU members, students had the opportunity to ask administrators direct questions.
Below is a full transcript of the meeting, which has been edited for clarity. Please look for further analysis of the event in our issue after Thanksgiving Break. This transcription was done by features editors Sarah Asch and James Finn. Editor-at-large Elizabeth Zhou and managing editor Will DiGravio helped edit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO6XMI8V1oI&t=1749s
Jin Sohn (’18, SGA President): "SGA would like to acknowledge the presence of everyone in this room, and to thank you for taking the time to join us, together, as a community for an imperative conversation on respect and inclusivity. Over the past week, members of the SGA student cabinet have been working to support the student body in light of the recent painful and alienating events and dialogues. Likewise, many cultural orgs including BSU and other student activists have been working overtime to support students. We want to recognize those efforts especially because they were led by students from marginalized backgrounds. Today's conversation is not a solution in itself. But it can and must lead to transformations on our campus. We are here today because, in whatever way, we care. We care about our friends, we care about our peers, we care about our community. Please let us join together in that shared core value in order to foster change on our campus. In order to make this discourse constructive, active, and supportive of everyone, we are requesting that all comments, observations, and questions be respectful. We would like to encourage individuals to acknowledge their own identities and privileges when speaking. Please acknowledge the role and position with which you inherently enter this conversation. Further, while this event is crucial in providing a voice for students who are affected by the actions of others on this campus, it is important to remember that active listening is meaningful and important to engage with others in this room. Please listen and wait until someone finishes speaking before wanting to speak so that we can be respectful of all that is being said. To encourage collaboration and abolish any hierarchies present today, we will be limiting questions and answers to two minutes each. Additionally, to be conscious of everyone's time, we will be ending this event promptly at 6 pm. Ultimately, for the SGA, the goal of this meeting today is both to facilitate learning and listening in our community and to work toward establishing active next steps that students, faculty, staff, and administrators can collaborate on and be held accountable for. This is not the first conversation. It likely will not be the last. The point is that we all, all of us, are trying, and by simply being here today are actively working to change. Thank you, and I will now hand over the mic to President Patton for her to speak on her hopes for this event and then Wengel Kifle will provide some background and context on the current campus climate. Once the floor has been opened for conversation, Ishrak Alam, the SGA chief of staff, Annie Cowan, the SGA deputy chief of staff, and Rae Aaron, the SGA speaker, will ensure that a single voice is heard at a time by distributing a microphone. Finally, we recognize that these are really difficult issues, and if anyone needs to step out of the room or take care of themselves, please do so."
Patton: "Thank you so much. I'm really, really pleased to see everyone here. Thank you for being here, thank you for hanging in and staying in the difficult conversation. I want, particularly, to thank student leadership, particularly BSU and SGA for hosting this event, and we really look forward to hearing the voices of the members of all of our communities. We are in new territory at Middlebury, where we need to begin building a new kind of community, one that includes voices that we either have not heard or only partially heard. There are so many ways that such communities need to be built and the first is to give voice to experience. We want to pay attention to structures that cannot give voice to that experience, the economic, social and status hierarchies that limit us. Because of acts of racial bias on this campus and in this town, many students, faculty and staff have called us to account and are hurting. And while we are in new territory of trying to build a new kind of community, we are also in very old, unacknowledged territory. Part of Middlebury's unspoken story includes our acting according to racial stereotypes, acting in ways that serve to alienate. We have not acknowledged that enough. I want to acknowledge that hurt. I am deeply sorry that members of our community are in pain, and that people feel they have not been heard by the administration. It is our job to make better structures and more equitable relationships where voices can be heard and where people feel that they belong. It is our job to make a more inclusive public square where not just individual acts of bias but structural racism can be addressed and challenged. Middlebury can and should be a challenging place where we experience intellectual discomfort, and part of that discomfort includes listening to unheard voices better. For students who live here at Middlebury for only four years, this can take on a particular sense of urgency. We are working on many ways to address this and look forward to sharing those with you, but most importantly, today we need your help and creativity and thoughts. We also look forward, as Jin said, to follow up conversations from this one, to continue to visit student groups in dining halls, commons houses and other meeting spaces such as AFC, and to continue to move forward with concrete actions and timelines where we can work together both what our community is and what our community means to us. Together, I do believe with all the hard work we can build a new Middlebury. Thank you for bringing your voices to help begin that task today."
Charles Rainey (’19): "Hello everyone, thank you guys so much for coming today. I really appreciate and it really warms my heart to see this many people in this building to come and talk about some of the hard issues that are affecting racial minorities, particularly black students, on our campus. My name is Charles Rainey. I serve as president of the BSU this year, and what we hope to create through this conversation is a way for black students and racial minorities and other marginalized groups to be able to voice concerns about things that have really been festering on this campus for a long time. A lot of students have been jaded and have been really, really scared, really frightened and upset and we hope that this space is allowed not only for solution oriented steps to prevent a lot of the things that have been happening on campus, but also to serve as a forum where people can express their truest and deepest feelings about a lot of those things as well. We want to center this conversation by bringing up Wengel Kifle, who has prepared some remarks to share with you guys today. Thank you.
Wengel Kifle (’20): "Thank you so much for coming. When we discuss the current state of our campus, it's important to keep in mind what happened this past spring. Many students voiced deep and urgent pleas to Middlebury concerning not only Charles Murray, but also the deeply ingrained institutional and social aspects of Middlebury that do not make it a welcoming and inclusive space for students of color. After the start of this semester, there have been more events that have made students of color feel uncomfortable and unsafe. These events include the racial profiling of Addis; violent and explicit images and messages on chalkboards in Munroe directed toward Addis, racial profiling of a black female professor, harassment of black women on campus, faculty and students alike, and daily incidents, big or small, that students have to deal with in and out of the classroom in such white spaces. Personally, this semester has taken an extreme toll on me and my mental health. I found it impossible to have the motivation to survive my schedule and everything else Middlebury threw my way. And the lack of action by the greater community and the school in general to say 'we see you and we will fight for you' was all the more crippling. And I couldn't help but ask myself: why am I expected to give my best to a school and a community that was clearly not giving me its best? I hope that after today, that people that share my narrative can go away with seeing that administration and this school is recognizing them and is finally going to address these issues. Thank you.
Ishrak Alam (’18): "Thank you, Wengel, for your comments. We are going to open it up now to everyone -- we're going to have two mics upstairs and one down here."
Sohn: "If everyone can just be respectful of the two-minute rule. And also, faculty, administrators, students, everyone in this community, please feel free to weigh in and speak. If you could raise your hand if you'd like the mic, we can come to you."
Madeleine Bazemore (’19): "Hi, my name is Madeleine Bazemore and I'm a junior at Middlebury. I was in a meeting yesterday with some students activists...members here of the SGA, President Patton and some other administrators. We talked a lot about moving forward on campus, and something really concerning happened in that meeting. Our Title IX coordinator said that she didn't believe that white supremacy existed, was in her office or in the decision that was made regarding Addis in racial profiling. And I think the refusal of this campus and this administration to admit that white supremacy is present is very concerning. And I think that -- I don't even know how to address that, to have to take the time to explain what white supremacy is to a white woman felt like such a waste of time. Like, why are we having this meeting if I have to explain something so basic? Now, I don't know how to move forward with that, with the refusal that white supremacy exists, and because of that refusal that Addis will not receive an apology for being racially profiled."
Patton: "Yeah, thank you, Maddie. I did say that white supremacy existed, so I just want to make sure that there is a correct narrative. I would say, the really important thing that is true, structural racism exists and it exists at Middlebury. White supremacy, a way of being in the world, where the heritage is that white people have built something where they are unconscious of their own perspectives and unconscious of the way that they take up space, those are absolutely present at Middlebury. So that's a really important thing that I want to make sure I say, and that I said yesterday. And the other thing, in terms of the question, if we mean conduct that is based on or motivated by someone's personal characteristic that creates a hostile work environment, Middlebury is absolutely a place where that happens. Racism exists at Middlebury. Structural racism exists at Middlebury, and we have to work together to move forward to change that. And in our system, there is that conduct...or any other violation of our non-discrimination policies, we will act upon it and we have acted upon it. And we have a well-developed system in place to deal with those situations. The hard part of this conversation is that we can't apologize based on a narrative that wasn't supported by an investigation. I myself as a president have no part of that investigation. I want to make sure that's clear to everybody. So I don't know.... I didn't know that this investigation was going on. The reason why that office is independent is because they could investigate me, and that's really important for everyone to know. I want to say very clearly here, we are moving towards restorative practices as a culture, particularly in student life. And I and other members, individual members of SLG, are willing to sit with anyone -- anyone -- in a restorative practices circle, with trained facilitators, that acknowledges harm. I will sit with anyone [for] as long as it takes, in as many restorative practice circles as it takes, to change this community. And I would welcome any request to do that."
Sohn: "This is a quick announcement. We're also aware that some people might not be comfortable speaking up on a microphone, so we're gonna pass around some index cards if you'd rather pose a question that way. And then one of the students here can help ask that question. Thanks."
Liz Dunn (’18): "Going along with the point that President Patton just made, if there is white supremacy and structural racism at Middlebury, and if that is present in the Title IX Office, and if the investigation found that there was no evidence that Addis was racially profiled, does that not draw into question the investigative practices that Middlebury uses, and the standards that are currently in place? And is there any direct way to address that and to change that?
Patton: "Is our Title IX person here? I think there are a couple of things that probably should get clarified. The first is — and thank you, Liz, for your question — the fact that we need to always think about structural racism that we have, that doesn't mean that we don't stand by the integrity of the work that we've done, and that's the hard piece of this. And I need, as a president, and I do, as a president, stand by the integrity of the work that was done... Again, standing in restorative practice circles is part of acknowledging all of the different impacts for all of us here. But it's really important that even if there is a constant need for us to look at making the systems better, we still have to abide by the integrity of the process that exists here now."
Sue Ritter, Title IX Coordinator: "So I'm in a difficult position here because I can't discuss much of what I did in terms of the investigation that we did. I also completely reject the characterization that was just given of my office, and will continue to reject that. I have spent since 2008 here working really hard to make sure that the investigations that we do are free of bias, that they're fair, that they are full and fair investigations done by trained experts. My job is to be the guardian of our anti-discrimination policy. If I thought that this operation that I'm overseeing was grounded in white supremacist principles, I wouldn't be here. So people are going to have their opinions. I understand that. And I know I'm going to get blasted for everything that I'm about to say, but I am very confident in the people that conducted this investigation and worked extremely hard to make sure that all of the evidence was being considered in a careful and thorough and fair way. I don't know what else to say about that. And to get the response that I'm getting, that I don't have an understanding of what white supremacy is, in this context, is insulting. I didn't speak in that meeting yesterday because I was too flabbergasted to speak. I understand that people are entitled to their opinions. I have offered and will continue to offer to talk to anyone about the language of our policy and the process that we follow and will always be open to suggestions about how we can make it better. I never want to exclude somebody from coming into my office and saying, 'hey, this is language I think you ought to include,' 'this is language that I think you should take out.' I welcome anyone to look at the anti-harassment policy at any time and tell me what they think and I'm probably over my time speaking. But it's hard for me to stand here and speak without looking defensive, but I'm very confident in the work that we do, the work that we've been doing for ten years and the office that we've built. And that's all I have to say."
Rainey: "Hi, I'm Charles Rainey. I have a question. Sue, thank you so much for the contribution to the conversation. I am personally curious about how many people of color were involved in the investigation process and making this determination that came out of your office. And I think that that's a very important question to get us to understand what influences and what overwhelming perspectives may be in the office that may impact what the perception of the reality of the situation is in this regard... and creating definitions of what racial profiling is when there are no people — racial minorities in the room. And that may not be the case, but I just want to know — specifically, the question is: how many people of color were involved with this determination?"
Ritter: "Charles, I just want to make sure I understand the question. Are you saying how many people of color were interviewed in connection with the investigation? Is that what you're asking?"
Rainey: "So I think my question is not necessarily interviewed -- in terms of the process, the members of the administration who made the decision on what the determination is, how many, if any, were people of color?"
Ritter: "I have two people that work for me; they're both white. Is that what you're asking me?"
Rainey: "Yes."
Ritter: "Yes, so one was the investigator and one was the adjudicator. Correct."
Rainey: "Right. And I don't want to go over my time and I don't want to take up too much space in this conversation -- but I think my point in making this is that -- you know, what effect does the overwhelming whiteness in terms of the people who were involved in the determination have on the conclusion? And do you think personally that that may have affected what is going on here in terms of what the determination is?"
Ritter: "If I personally thought that, we would be having a different conversation. So I don't think it had an effect, no."
Shatavia Knight (’20): "On the idea that there are three white people in the Title IX office, I want to talk about the idea of administration. And one thing that I learned in my high school is that you can't be what you can't see. And there are very, very few professors of color here on campus. And so as a black female here, it's very hard for me to be in an environment where everyone says 'you can go on, you can be successful, you can learn a lot from your Middlebury experience' when I don't have many examples of, you know, black professors here on campus. And I wanted to know what Middlebury is trying to do about that, because I know that if I was to go into academia, Middlebury wouldn't be one of the schools that was on my list to get hired to. And I want to know what the administration is doing about that, to get more professors of color here so that students like myself don't feel like they're learning about race from white professors, and they're not learning about problems in society that they probably haven't actually experienced themselves."
Miguel Fernández (Chief Diversity Officer): "Thank you, Shatavia. That's an excellent question. You're absolutely right. Our diversity efforts within the student body over the last 20 years have been quite successful. I was a student here in the early '80s and I look out across this room and I see lots of diversity present here, and that was definitely not the case in the '80s. Some people feel as though we have a long way to go, and I won't disagree with that, but there has been significant change in the student body. That process has not been nearly as quick in the faculty -- you're absolutely right. We have been working on that hard lately — let me explain a couple of things that we've been doing. Over the last two years, we've been working with outside consultants who have been coming in, and it's mandatory now for all the search committees that are searching to go through a series of four workshops to work on how to diversify their pool, how to learn about bias in the evaluation system, et cetera, how we are going to present ourselves in interviews, the kinds of questions we're asking and the kinds of signaling we're doing in our advertising, and working with all the departments in that way. We're producing data for the search committees and working very hard. This year was the first cohort that came from having worked with them, and it was possibly the most diverse entering class of faculty in recent memory that we've seen, and we hope that this will continue. One of the frustrations is that faculty turns over a lot slower than students and so it's a slower process, but we're really working hard there. Some of you are aware of the C3 program — that's the idea of bringing in post-docs. We're part of a consortium of liberal arts colleges. The diversity officers are working to bring post docs in, folks from underrepresented groups and first generation, and also working on different topics to bring some diversity to give them exposure to what a liberal arts college is like. We visit the research universities to talk to the the graduate students about what a career is like, because oftentimes advisors in grad school advise their advisees not to go to a liberal arts college. They have this misconception that it's only teaching, and they don't maintain their research. So we go to break those myths and try to get folks -- and we take colleagues from the faculty to go talk to them about what that experience is like, what it's like to teach at a liberal arts college to try to get them into the pipeline. So those are a couple of the efforts we're doing, a lot of efforts in that way to try to address that. But you're absolutely right."
Student, Unknown: "So I thought it was great that you talked about some of the training that certain administrators get, and I was wondering if that training — if the faculty, as well as the people in Title IX, also get that training?"
Fernández: "Yes, so that's a good question, too. So the search process — there isn't mandatory training right now, and that is something that we have been talking about that's been made very present. And I think that is something the discussions are going toward, to make it for faculty, staff, students and the administration. There is currently for staff and faculty a -- I would say a minor training... there's a bigger thing around sexual harassment and other things that also talks about bias and discrimination. And everybody has to go through that. It's not enough. And that's exactly the kinds of discussions we're in right now. What we've done is we've had a lot of opt-in types of things, and we also do sessions with the new faculty as they come in. But that is part of the ongoing conversation."
Jeff Holland (’19): "I have a question directed generally at the administration. I understand that there's a desire, even possibly a requirement, an obligation, to stand behind the integrity of the judicial process and also to maintain confidentiality about any processes that may be undergone. But also there has been a very blatant contradiction in the judicial process involving Addis that was pointed out in The Campus, which is the most widely read student-run media outlet we have. So I don't think that there's any way that it could be more widespread that there was a contradiction between the judicial officer who said there was no need to move the investigation further, and then later came the guilty verdict after that. And at the same time, that same article pointed out that there was an ample amount of evidence that Addis was not present at that event. So I'm just wondering -- I know you want to uphold the integrity of your judicial process, but at what point does that break down, when there's evidence in the most widely read student publication there is, pointing that there's been a contradiction and pointing out that there's evidence to the contrary of what the judicial officer said? Thanks."
Hannah Ross (General Counsel): "I am a lawyer and I am responsible for Middlebury's compliance with laws. We did a full, fair and thorough investigation over the summer in response to a student's complaint that an employee acted wrongly. We looked very seriously at the question of whether our employee had engaged in a violation of our anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policy. Commencing an investigation about employee misconduct does not start a student conduct case. There is no student conduct case that can be brought against a person who's not a student of Middlebury. The investigation came to a conclusion following our policy and our process. The facts, as we understand them, do not support the narrative. That's where we are. It's not a guilty verdict. There is no proceeding that remains pending, and as I said, there is no process that Middlebury engages in that relates to a student's behavior when that person is no longer enrolled at Middlebury. That doesn't happen."
Sam (’18): "My name is Sam and I'm a senior here. Uh, what if you were wrong? I didn't mean that in a rude way, but seriously, what if you were wrong? Because you're talking about this as if, since Addis doesn't go here anymore there's nothing more you can do, it's not your problem. But I don't think that's even the point of it because the public safety officer who racially profiled her is still here. That person is still here. People say that the same public safety officer racially profiled a professor on campus this fall, which is something that the administration has also not addressed in particular, except for some rhetoric. So my question is, where's the process -- is it in Title IX? Is it in the judicial office? Is it through legal counsel? -- that would actually seek to respond to the allegations made against that officer who's still employed."
Ross: "I certainly didn't mean my comments about the fact that there's no student conduct process that gets started against a person who's not enrolled as a student at Middlebury to suggest that because a student has graduated, we don't care about our alumni. That's not at all a reflection of what I said. What I was trying to say is, there is no action that Middlebury takes that can impose a guilty verdict on a person who's not a student of Middlebury. And the investigation's conclusion, as I assume a number of you have read in the statement that we posted on Monday in the newsroom, the investigation concluded based on a wide array of evidence, including 22 interviews of members of our community. That investigation concluded that our public safety officer told the truth and acted within our policies. That's where we are."
Zeke (’21): "I realize that as a white male coming from an upper-class background, I hope a different perspective in this conversation. But at the same time -- I haven't suffered any racial biases here and I don't mean to detract from the Addis conversation going on -- but in my short time here I've also noticed that there are some serious institutional barriers preventing diversity from growing on campus. I find that we've touted our Posse and First at Midd programs ant stuff like that, but those don't actually account for a great deal of diversity percentage-wise in the student body. So I have a question for the administration as a whole. How can we make this a safer and less homogenous environment for future students? Could we, say, make Middlebury test-optional in the admissions office or perhaps look at tuition prices, as we clearly need a certain percentage of the student body to pay full price to account for the financial aid that we offer to other students?"
Patton: "Thanks, Zeke. That's a great question. I should just say that I'm a white woman who comes from a privileged background. So, in terms of financial aid, financial aid is the number one priority for this administration, to create more financial aid for students of all backgrounds. And it really, really matters to me that we do that. The other part of the balance that we have to make all the time is around questions of — we are required by law to balance our budget, so we kind of have to do both things. We are now, in any given year, we are between 42 and 48 percent of students on financial aid. The average grant is about 45 or 46 thousand dollars. And so we are in the top 40 or 50 schools in terms of giving financial aid. That doesn't mean that we can't and should do better, which is why this past meeting of the trustees -- the number one thing we did on a retreat with the trustees is to say, we want in the next 10 years to get to a much, much higher percentage of students on financial aid. Just so you all are aware, it would take us raising 360 million dollars to get to 55 percentage of financial aid endowed so we could just give that to folks. We haven't set a goal yet. One of my first jobs is to push the trustees, my 36 bosses, to set a goal, and that's we are now pushing to do. The last campaign, in terms of raising money, was 500 million dollars, and it took about 10 years to raise that, and a lot of it went to different kinds of things. So there needs to be a real concerted effort. That's what it's going to take to do that, and that is my number priority. So that is where we want to go and I hope we can get there. I hope that -- one of the things that would be really great to hear from people about is thinking about this larger question of, how do we get the word out about where we are and who we are without folks feeling like all we're doing is PR or touting a rhetoric or that kind of stuff. If there's a more real way that we could communicate both where we've come but also how much farther we need to go, that would be greatly appreciated, because we need help on making sure that we communicate in a genuine way. I hope that answered your question. I would love your help in making this a reality over the next 10 years. Is Andi Lloyd here, by the way? Can you address the faculty issue that was raised?"
Andrea Lloyd (Vice President for Academic Affairs/Dean of Faculty): "About diversity?"
Patton: "No, about the faculty member."
Lloyd: "So there was an allegation of racial profiling made by a faculty member. That case was also investigated. There was a determination that there was not racial profiling in that case. Um, what else?
Sohn: So, we just want to be conscious of people who don't feel comfortable speaking up on the mic, so we have collected some notecards. If we can just read one, so that we can be fair in that way, that would be great. So, one of the questions, is: isn't it important to address specific incidents of racism on campus quickly? What do you mean by inclusivity? Oh, so those are two questions. Just a blanket statement to avoid talking specifics of people's experiences."
Karla Nuez (’19): "My question was, in the email sent out to students regarding this event, it was stated that the community was broken. My question is why is there a constant need to describe the Middlebury community as a homogenous one, when that in turn avoids that there are people on this campus that struggle. By calling it homogenous, you're completely disregarding those struggles. And I feel like that makes it seem like the administration doesn't know the students that can pay the 60k-plus to attend this college. And when I was at the board of trustees meeting dinner, I told the chair about the racial profiling cases, and she looked at me, baffled. I think that is a clear indication that the administration and the board of trustees do not know their students, do not know what is happening on campus, and if their job is to protect us I feel like they're not doing the greatest job."
Weston Uram (’18): "I grew up at Kenyon College, where my mother is a faculty member, and one of the things I admire most about Kenyon is the president. Shawn Decatur, also known as D-Cat among the students, is a fun, approachable president who loves to talk with the students about any topic they bring up. One of his best qualities is his ability to find an autonomous voice. He was never afraid to say what he thought even if it differed from the public stance of the college. I hope to ask a few questions that Laurie, as the person and not as the institution, could answer. I want to know if you think Addis was at the Charles Murray talk. I'm not asking what the college has said or what they have not said. I want to know what you believe. I want to know what you believe because I want to know why you call Addis a friend. I want to know why you and your administration would take the time to mail a framed photo of you and Addis together to her personal residence, but don't seem to take the time to acknowledge the pain and suffering you have caused her. I want to know why the administration has refused to mention Addis's name in relation to the racial profiling or in response to the violent imagery found on the chalkboards in Munroe. I want to know why a photo of Addis walking at commencement, cane in hand, is repeatedly being used as promotional material for graduation. And I want to know when the administration will stop using black bodies as simply props and advertisements, and when they will recognize them as real people who have real feelings, who have real struggles, and who deserve real apologies."
Toni Cross (’18): "I have a mic up here, but I would love to hear President Patton's response to those questions."
Patton: "So, first of all, the comment about Middlebury communities, I absolutely agree. And I think that we should be continuing to talk about different communities. And if we haven't done so enough, I apologize for that. It's really important that we think through those questions of acknowledging different communities and acknowledging specifics about pain that you all have felt. One of the things that I really, really want to hear about, and I know we want to continue to think about, is particularly in classroom environments where people of color are not feeling that they can speak up. Or that they feel if they do speak up, that they will be misunderstood. Those are an incredibly important place for us, and I hope that as faculty and staff we can work together to change those experiences. So I think that that's absolutely right and that's really important to do. I also want to say that what Dean Loyd was talking about, I actually sat with that professor and apologized for her experience. And it's a very important thing that she was in pain, and that was acknowledged. So I think it's an unfair characterization of me to say that acknowledgement doesn't happen. It was important to reach out and engage. When I -- I don't know what the images are that are being used. I think it's really important in a conversation that we're all trying to do better, that we're all doing a lot of work every day to raise inclusivity where it's really hard. If we could find a way -- I don't know, I can't supervise every single thing that goes out. If that image that goes out is there, I'm sure that that was painful for people to see. I am willing to sit with anyone in the community in a restorative practices circle, including Addis, to hear the pain that she has experienced. I will do that with anyone in this community. And I think it's really important that we continue to think about those specific experiences. And that's why restorative practices matters. Part of what is hard in presidential speech, and I wish I could answer you as a person -- I can't right now, I'm here as a president. And so, I would be happy to walk with you and talk with you, but my role at this moment is to uphold all of the hardworking people. And so -- I do spend a lot of time with students and tell them what I think all the time in the luncheon halls, I'm in classrooms, I'm walking throughout the campus every day. And so, I'm more than happy to sit and talk to you. I'm sure the president of Kenyon also wouldn't be able to speak about a case in this way, but I will say again, those images were very, very disturbing. And perhaps, yes, we should have used Addis's name. I will sit with Addis, I will sit with any of you in restorative practices and talk about harm any time. That is me both as a person and as a president. I hope that answers your question, and let's go for a walk."
Jasmine Crane (’18): "It really hurt my heart to hear Wengel's struggle, because her struggle is my struggle and as a black women in science, there's only one black female teacher in all of BiHall. And I really look up to her. She's a shinning example for me who contemplates going far and taking the extra mile, but when I'm with some of my colleagues I don't feel like I'm very far, I don't feel like I'm their colleague. I just feel like I am a black face here. And I feel like as a black, African-American woman here, I feel like community which is being thrown around so carelessly I feel it's just a word it's not a feeling. I feel like it's just a structure like a church. We come in here and do we really do anything pertinent? I don't seem to feel that. I feel that I see Latinos coming together, from different countries, I see South Asian, East Asian people coming together, and I feel like they have to do that on their own because there is no place even for them. And especially for black Americans here, I feel like that's a diaspora, there is no place for us on this campus. I feel like African's stick together, that's great to hear, but I feel like as an American black woman I have no place here. No voice. And I don't know how to change this, honestly, because it doesn't start with the people of color. We have to start all together as one body, as Middlebury. We have created this iconic self-image of being woke, of being liberal, of knowing more than ourselves. But do we even really know ourselves? And so I ask not only students to look in their heart and think about oppression. But I want the administration to look at themselves and how they conduct themselves in their everyday lives. And how they treat not only the students but each other.
Cross: "I just had a couple of questions: is there a timeline for fixing this broken Middlebury community? I know when I visited here for preview days in 2014 at least six people told me: do not come to this school, it will crush you and I don't know that I could in good conscious tell a black senior in high school to come here. It's been four years. Is there a timeline for making it better. And also I would like to ask the administration who have spoken here today how they would grade themselves in presentation and the image that they are giving to us? With the defensiveness that we constantly see, with the willingness to label actions, or to call themselves victims or point out unfairness towards themselves but not necessarily extend that same courtesy to the students. So I'm asking how would you grade yourselves? What kind of message do you think you're putting forward?
Treasure Brooks (’21): "I haven't been here very long but earlier Charles mentioned the overwhelming whiteness at this school and I just want to bring attention to the overwhelming blackness that doesn't come in the form of bodies. I live in Battel and I can't walk to the bathroom or back to my room without hearing trap music. And there is an overwhelming amount of black culture here but it's not represented in the population, in the student body. We've had CupcakKe come here last week, we're having Elle Varner come, and before that we had Noname Gypsy, she came here as well. And I think that how can we allow for the student body to be consuming black culture at such an alarming rate when we don't even value the black women that are walking around on this campus? I think that is remarkably grotesque, honestly, and if you really want to show support, if you want to show a greater cultural sensitivity towards black students then maybe we should make those events exclusive until we can show a general respect for all of the black diaspora, all of the black faculty, of the black students, and not just black culture. And additionally, to respond to something you said, President Patton, I would hope that you did not see your presidency and personhood as mutually exclusive because in the event that you do I think there needs to be a greater consideration for what leadership is."
James Sanchez (Assistant Professor of Writing): "I want to say a couple of things. I haven't heard anyone from faculty speak yet and I don't want to absolve us from any of these issues because this is just as important for students and administrators as it is for faculty. A couple of things I want to mention is one I feel like faculty needs to do a better job of modeling anti-racist behavior for our students in the classroom. I say that because when I did my interview here I spoke with a Latina student and this was before Charles Murray and she was telling me with issues that she had with white professors in the classroom and how as a Latina student she often felt that racist, bigoted viewpoints were held on equal playing field as anti-racist viewpoints and I think that's something that I challenge all faculty to really consider when having classroom discussions. I also want to say that faculty have a lot of agency in creating change on campus environments and that's something we all need to remember as faculty members when conducting our classes, creating new courses, interactions with students, we have agency in creating change. So I really want to challenge my colleagues here to on campus to really consider that in the future.
Sha (’19): "This is more a clarifying question. I understand a lot of time when it comes to the judicial process there's need for privacy but I also I feel there has been a lack of transparency with a lot of things that go on at this college. And I would like to be informed or educated in possible: is a student assumed guilty until proven otherwise? Or is a student assumed innocent until proven guilty? Why is it that when there is a sexual assault case reported, the victim is often the one asked to prove that there was actually assault, when in this case a student was accused and she was actually asked to find evidence to prove that she was not there?"
Ross: "Under all our policies individuals going through any kind of discipline are innocent until proven guilty. And the obligation is not on them to provide evidence. That's why we employ people and pay their salaries to gather evidence but people are free to offer evidence if they chose to offer evidence. If you want to learn more about how our policies work or want to learn more about our processes Dean Baishaki Taylor has solicited volunteers to serve on a policy advisory group. I'll be working with that policy advisory group to get feedback from students on policies that are of importance to you. We welcome other folks joining that committee
Júlia Athayde: (’19): "I want to raise attention to something that I found very troubling last semester and that was the fact that Bill Burger, who is the vice president of communications here, was personally involved in the Charles Murray incident and also very involved in writing all the articles and the communication that is written to alumni, articles in the New York Times, in the aftermath of the incident. First something I wanted to say, I work for the Office of Investment so after Charles Murray I actually had to talk to alumni and explain to them what was happening on campus so I'm very sympathetic to the fact that it was a very hard conversation and I know how difficult it was for administrators to deal with all of that. Since then, I've been thinking about the fact that [Burger] was personally involved and I'm not sure if he's here or not, this is not a personal attack, I just wanted to raise awareness for that. He was there, and he was also writing the communication for the college. And this latest article in the newsroom talking about racial profiling, I was wondering if that was the first time that we addressed that to the outer community and our alumni? And who wrote that article, because there was actually no author? And the last paragraph of that article actually talks about his involvement and that he was found not guilty. And I was wondering if that process involved the same kind of investigation that Addis had to go through? Why was he found not guilty, and why was that written in an article in the newsroom this week?"
Ross: "I was one of the folks who helped write that statement and the final paragraph addresses the fact that there were two separate investigations about what went on March 2. One was the Middlebury Police Department Investigation. The Middlebury Police are of course responsible for investigating criminal behavior, driving a car dangerously would be criminal behavior. The police did not find any evidence that caused them to have concern about that. They did not investigate that, they did not bring charges. The independent investigators concluded based on unanimous testimony from all the witnesses to the event that Mr. Burger drove carefully. Those are the facts in that case found by two different investigations."
Esteban Arenas-Pino (’18): “I would like the administration to expand on their stance on activism on campus. It feels like after last spring activism has become a dirty word and is often vilified. Is the administration willing and ready to accept activism as a part of the campus culture, and is the administration willing to foster this as a value? After many years witnessing activism especially by women of color on this campus I would like to see this fermented as a stronger value? We will leave Middlebury to be organizers and activists in our communities. Shouldn't Middlebury foster these skills?”
Sedge Lucas (’19): "I have a quick question for President Patton. I saw online that you and Professor Stanger are going to be having a talk this coming February titled "Campus Speech: when protest turned violent" at the Cronkite School of Journalism in Arizona. Can you explain what the goal of this talk is? What do you think other schools or academia as a whole can learn about how Middlebury handled the situation last spring?
Patton: "Thanks for the question. Lots of different thoughts there. There are so many ways in which we could have done better. We have been slow to respond to graffiti incidents. I would just ask people to understand that we are living in the world where immediate response and the fact that we have to get the facts right is we want to make sure we get the facts right before we actually make a statement and so sometimes if we can't do it in 12 hours it's because we're wanting to make sure we have all the facts right. That being said it's really important that that slowness of response is something that we can do better on. And we want to do better on. Secondly, the things that I have learned as a leader and a person here at Middlebury, number one, I was hoping that all the work that we've done in the last two years about inclusivity and scholarships raised and C3 developed and AIM, and the alliance on disability, the bias response team, the more funds raised for financial aid, the restorative practices, all of these are things that have happened since 2015, since I got here. My mistake was in thinking that all those things and inviting everyone to do more of those things and invite us into those conversations would heal the hurt and it didn't. I did not understand the degree of hurt in this community and again I want to say how deeply sorry I am for that. So in response to that, part of what I push on in everywhere that I go is that inclusivity has to be part of any conversation around freedom of expression but we have to do both in the 21st century. And that we do not become more free unless we focus on inclusivity and all the ways that we've been talking about. And we do not become more inclusive if we can't have that freedom of expression as the basis of who we are. And so that is a very powerful message that we want to send in as many different places as possible. So I hope that gives you as sense of both what I have learned personally as well as the kind of push I want to make on creating both inclusivity and freedom of expression as a balance, as well as the only way we can become more free in the 21st century is to become more inclusive. I also want to say that in our conversation yesterday, Liz [Dunn] said something really powerful. And I want to make sure that we say that and say something about that and talk more about it. And that is "What do you need and how can we help?" was a question that one of her common's deans asked her and how powerful that was. And I think that even as we have to uphold policies and procedures, I think that having student advisory groups as well as the faculty motion that was really fantastic that I publicly endorsed and was thrilled to publicly endorse last week, where we are going to be doing an external review of our diversity practices. Again the big learning that I had last semester is clearly all the stuff that we've done since 2015 is not enough, and it's not effective enough, and that's really powerful so we are developing an advisory group on diversity for faculty and for building faculty I have been really powerfully advocating and only faculty can build a black studies program but we are really excited because faculty are moving to create that and I want to say here how important it is that we create that black studies program. So, lot's more to say, and I know I need to hand over the mic.
Hannah Pustejovksy (’18): "I wanted to bring it back a little bit to the point about financial aid. So I am a white student, I'm also on almost full financial aid, and I am pretty lucky being a student who is white having had a lot family who have gone to college and have dealt with this system. But if having difficulty with the financial aid system here I cannot even imagine what other students, of color, are having on this campus because I have been here for four years and I have yet to understand what happens in the financial aid office. I was incredibly hurt by an email that came out last week or the week before encourage students to consider if they actually could take on the loans that they were being given because I have no choice. I don't know what I'm supposed to do if I can't personally take those loans on, am I just supposed to drop out? I also think that financial aid is one of the most important things to making sure that students here also feel welcome because we do have only 48 percent of students here on campus who have financial aid and if students of color are on campus and we are not making it easy for them to be here including the huge financial responsibility we are putting on them, how are we even supposed to start and feel like equals? Every day I am aware that I have so much less money than people here. And how is the financial aid office going to make that easier?"
Nia Robinson (’19): "I don't really have a question, more so a comment. Looking around this room most of the people in here are people I expected to be here. There are some surprises, like good surprises but nonetheless a surprise. And I think that it's really important when we're talking about community we claim who we are talking about. Because for example, the people who have called me the n-word are not found in this room. And I understand that people have commitments, I understand that people have other things going on, but everyone in this room ahs something else going on and so I think we need to make at who is making sacrifices for global community. A lot of people in this room are part of my community and I respect and love them a lot. But I think there are people who are not found in this room who have no stake in building a community and that's okay whereas if I take a step back then suddenly it's a problem. So that's not really question, just more so a call for everyone in here to talk to your friends, talk to your commons, talk to your professors, because if we are building a community we need to make sure we're reaching everyone and not just the people who self select to be here."
Kifle: "To touch upon the faculty member who spoke about faculty responsibility and accountability as well as Nia's comment about community, and also Treasury's comment. So we do consume a lot of black culture here and it's amazing how much we consume it and then don't acknowledge black people. I'm also in the classroom I'm so sick for having to stand up for something problematic that arises. If my professor is here, I'm sorry, I meant to have a private conversation with you, but this going to happen. So here we are talking about [solar] power in Africa and then the professor says 'There's 40 countries in Africa" and I said, 'no.' And then my art history professor was talking about Western Art and then mentioned Egyptian art and I questioned why that is because it's African art. The thing that surprised me is not the fact that it happened but in both of those classes where there's a huge amount of people in there I was the only one that had a problem with this and I was the only one that was expected to speak out, and of course I did because nobody else was doing it. But I'm so tired of taking on that mental labor. If you call yourself an ally, if you say you care about us, this movement, please speak up because I am tired. I am so tired and if you say you support this community and if you say you support these conversations and whatever Midd needs to progress on then take your part. And it's not just on the administration and it's not just on the faculty, it's on students as well. Show us that you care."
Sandra Luo (’18): "I really want to appreciate all of you for offering to have conversations with us but we're really tired of just talking. When is the administration going to show that they care beyond just sitting in a circle and talking and continuing to exploit the vulnerability and emotions of students? When are we going to see some sort of tangible, concrete action that comes from these conversations. And if you want to talk about helping us maybe address the list of demands here that we've been passing out. Apologize to Addis and provide reparations for all the trauma the school put her through, actually investigate Bill Burger and take anonymous sources seriously because that's the way of providing safety for people who are willing to come forward and share their experiences, fix the judicial system instead of just telling us that it's flawed but that's just how it's always going to be. And I want to recommend that a lot of people have been talking for years and a lot of work has been put towards inclusivity and diversity for years, long before March 2. It would be great if they could do something more than just conversations. It's one thing to acknowledge pain and flaws it's another to actually address the flaws so that current and future students won't continue to experience pain. I know a lot of people around me really want to listen to answers from the administration so I'm just going to hold on to this mic until we get an answer from the administration. I really want to hear about a concrete action plan that is something beyond a conversation."
Fernández: "Where to start. So in regards to the demands that you referenced, I think you heard in regards to the judicial piece I think Hannah made the invitation to serve on a policy committee there. That's a very direct way of impacting judicial change. The second one is about the mandatory training for everyone and I hope I addressed that earlier but that's in the process. It's not going to happen tomorrow but there are things in process and more to come, can't be more specific about that because that part to come is still being worked on and I don't have the details. I did share details for things that are ongoing. More things that are happening that are on the ground that we are doing: I did mention that we're working hard at diversifying the faculty, I think we had a good example and make some comments and probably just fill his spring courses. The bias incident thing was a new effort by the community bias response team, I will grant you it is imperfect, and if you will continue to work on it it's been an effort to try to address a lot of the issues we've been talking about. It is imperfect, it is new, we're going through that rocky start that many things do. I expect communications to improve and we will continue to work on that. Concrete things that are going on other things, more things we've been working on: we've been trying to work a lot around the support o DACA and undocumented students, putting a lot of effort on resources there, supporting them in many different ways. The first generation programs, those kinds of things. Opportunities to engage, one of the things a lot of folks have been talking about today is the administration, how it acts and why it doesn't change and one of the things we heard yesterday and I think this is valid is more student input in decision making, and that's been heard. And the SGA has had a proposal to create student advisory boards that will meet with the different VPs, so there you've got advisory boards that will meet with different folks to learn about the process how decisions get made how does the process work and to have a direct influence on that so for instance with finance, with a lot of the different areas. There's much to talk about, but there's a lot more to do, too."
Rainey: "I have a really quick question. There's been a lot of talk about this in the black community and many other communities especially in the after math of Charles Murray. We all know how many of us feel the complete community embarrassment of how interrogating and punishing students for protesting on campus. And as we more forward in terms of restorative practices from the administration, going back to what Toni and others have said providing a timeline with that but also after we put in these new restorative practices and these new restorative justice measures, are they going to be retroactively implemented and have retroactive application regarding people who have gone through unfair processes in the past and students who have gone through extremely unsettling and unfair disciplinary procedures here at Middlebury, for case by case basis? If anyone in the administration could speak to that?"
Katie Smith Abbott (Vice President of Student Affairs): "I have been charged with leading our exploration of how to bring restorative practice to Middlebury. We are partnering with a firm called the Consortium for Equity and Inclusion and the two anchors for that are a woman named Stacy Miller who is the associate provost of inclusivity at Valparaiso and Dennis DePaul who is from the Dean of Students Office at UVM which has had real success for a very long period of time with restorative practices, grounded in Residential Life at UVM. So they came to explain the basic concepts of what is referred to as RP to the SLG in June, the Senior Leadership Group which is the Presidents and all the Vice Presidents. They came back for a subsequent training because we didn't fit everything in, they came back in September, they have met for an introductory session with a broad range of faculty and staff who work in student life. And they're coming back for a three-day training December 18, 19, and 20 and if there are folks in this room who want to participate in that training I'd be happy to talk to you. The only requirements are that you're able to fully commit for the three full days. It's 8:30-5, it's three full days, and you're willing to be part of the ongoing implementation conversations. It is not a fast process to implement but we're fully committed to it. The other thing I would just note is that restorative justice and restorative practices are kind of getting used interchangeably, and I do want to be honest about the fact that I'm learning, this is not something I knew about before I started on this journey working with Stacy and Dennis, being part of a group that's being doing some deep diving into this work. But what I will offer is that they have explained to us very clearly that restorative justice is a small subsection of restorative practices, and the reason we're drawn to restorative practices is because they can be used proactively not just reactively so that a moment like this one wouldn't be appropriate for a restorative circle, like President Patton was referencing earlier, but something called a conference that's very intentionally facilitated. Although I've got to say that I think the student leaders of this session are doing a pretty amazing job. So that's the timeline, we're moving into this training in December with an eye towards hopefully grounding it in student life and residential life by next fall."
Vee Duong (’19): "I had a question: so something kind of disturbing that I have been noticing this year being involved in more cultural orgs is that a lot of students say "Oh wow I didn't know that existed, when do y'all have meetings?" And then we're like oh well we had a booth at activities and we have a mailing list that's been open, we operate out of the AFC which is always open, and to have these open discussions that we have been having about race, to have people who do not identify as that come into that space, that is acceptable and that's fine and we encourage you to do that but to have people come in and not be aware of the space they're taking up is very frustrating. So this is a point for faculty and staff and/or administrators, in that what are you all doing to provide real educational resources for students, incoming students especially, so that the burden doesn't fall on cultural orgs where we are already working really hard to provide a space to take care of our members mentally and emotionally to support each other so we don't have to take on the additional burden of educating people because all the educational resources I have seen have been put together laboriously through hours of our personal time.
Baishakhi Taylor (Dean of Students): "Vee I hear your question and I agree that we also need to do more. We have added sessions during the MiddView. President Patton has now made JusTalks mandatory for the entire class. We have also added more training in our reslife program and among colleagues who are in the reslife group and that's obviously not adequate so on top of having all these sessions that introduce with the incoming class this year we'll continue to build on that and I also acknowledge that having those sessions only during MiddView and JusTalks is not sufficient so we need to build on it throughout the year so the responsibility is not on the Anderson Freeman Center and thank you for doing the work that you're doing and raising the question."
Anonymous question (read by Rainey): "It seems like both Alison Stanger and Laurie Patton have been taking a lot of public, national opportunities to speak about the events of the spring, including at a congressional hearing on C-SPAN, the Free Speech Conference Laurie spoke at. For the purpose of transparency, are President Patton or Alison Stanger being financially compensated for these talks? Are they profiting off the terrible situation the administration has put us in?"
Patton: "I was not paid to go to the University of Chicago and I have no interest in profiting any situation that happened at Middlebury. I am very clear that any conversation that's part of the national discourse where Middlebury is mentioned we need to create balance so at the Chicago conference part of what we pushed on with many, many people there is where is our inclusivity? Where are our inclusivity efforts? We've always got to balance those two things no matter what happens. I had no intentions of profiting in any way my intent is to work on moving a national conversation where people who are constantly talking about free speech also talk about inclusivity. So both of those things are balanced and fair and appropriate, so that's the very direct answer. I had a couple more responses to questions I didn’t get a chance to answer but if there’s time later [I’ll answer].”
Victor Filpo (admissions counselor, class of '16): "I hope I really speaking for myself here rather than any hat of student, alumn, or staff member here on campus. Something that is frustrating, honestly, about this conversation is that we've really been centering around the case that happened with Addis or the case that happened with the professor. And that's completely legitimate because they are people who've been struggling a lot and they've been carrying a lot of the heaviness of what's going on. But I would like to say that the reality is that a lot of people of color deal with this. It is not surprising. We are tokenizing them right now by only brining up those instances. When I was freshman, when I was walking with my Posse member in Battell, a public safety office stopped us and told us, 'I haven't seen you on campus can you show us your IDs?' When we were first years here at Middlebury. He still works here. I have also gotten accused by other Public Safety officers for other things. It turns out completely fine because my dean loves me, obviously. And all the deans here do an amazing job at really caring for their students and really trying to look out emotionally for everyone. But this continues happening on the daily. Just this last summer I was crossing with two other students, and I'm glad this stuff happens to me when I'm with other people because I would not be able to believe that it happens to me on this level, weekly or biweekly, it's insane. Crossing the street, people start accelerating and then they stop and they yell the n-word at you. You are walking to your house or walking to your dorm and someone stops in a car and just yells at you, 'that looks stolen,' yells a rap lyric at you, choses another slur. It really does baffle me that this happens so often and I was just here as a senior two years ago and we had the same conversation about a sombrero right here. And every year we will continue to have this conversation right here. And yet I still have to walk home and have this experience all over again. And the only time I will be taken seriously isn't even when I'm with another person of color but rather when I have the kind, woke, white lady who is willing to represent me and say whoa he's going through some pain let's do something about it. I don't want someone to have a voice for me. I want to be able to talk for myself to be able to talk for myself, to be believed, for something to happen when I ask for it. When a person of color is going through a lot they don't have means to be able to express it. Do we really understand the amount of people of color who haven't said anything about their experiences. And when you sit with someone and they say, 'that baffles me,' does it really? Does it really? It shouldn't because it honestly happens on such a daily level. And you yourself you're all very smart people. We know that this happens. We ignore it. We choose to ignore it because it makes us feel comfortable. And I wonder when we're going to stop with this comfort because we just sit here every single year and have this conversation all over again in this comfort and I hope that in future instances when the next one comes up it's not Shatavia, it's not Victor, it's not the professor. It's a collective group of people who are going through a lot."
Student, unknown: "You said something about conversation and us being free and all that. There's a lot of dark forces in general on this campus and beyond this campus and a lot of what was just talked about were references to instances where students are facing racism from other white students on this campus that I'm sure a lot of people don't know about. If we look we have Donald Trump as our president and there's just crazy things going on while we're sitting here having restorative conversations, there's evil things going on and this stuff that we're talking about is just a small sample of something that's going on. It comes to a point where people have to decide whether they're going to actually be on the side of what's right or what's wrong and everyone has to make their own choice. I hope that especially the white people here will make that choice and not hide behind good sounding rhetoric or kind words, because those things are good and genuine kindness is good but a lot of people here feel like unless the school addresses the issues that are going on at the institutional level how are we going to be able to talk about what's going on in the world?"
Patton: "I wanted to mention that we're working with public safety, public safety has gone through a mandatory de-escalation training as well as diversity training this fall and will continue to do so. Concrete action. Concrete action: we created a seizing the opportunity fund for any student at Middlebury who wants to and needs to do something different, whether they need their parents to come here, or whether they need to go to MiddCore, whether they need more money for something they need more access to at Middlebury. We have raised that money so that every student has access to all educational opportunities. We started that last year, it's available, talk to Katy Smith Abbott, another concrete action. Third, one of the things we're really excited about is, I really appreciate what you said about facing racism and acknowledging and the everyday racism that happens on this campus that I acknowledged in the beginning. I think that if we could create an archive to create news stories of what is happening to people that would make it even more powerful for us so we need to get those kinds of stories on the books. We need to do a lot more mandatory training, that concrete action is happening in the next year, and in the back there are about 15 more concrete actions, none of them are enough. We need your advice on how to make it more effective and again I want to acknowledge the hurt that people are feeling and we are going to create a lot of student advisory committees to be better and more effective. And I am so proud of this community for being here tonight. Thank you very much."
Sohn: "We also know that tonight not all of your questions have been answered and we want to thank everyone for raising those question."
Anonymous notecard (read by Sohn): "Hoping on Wengel and Mia's point on allyship, please understand that these may be very sensitive times for POCs, QTPOCs on campus and on that note if you find yourself going to the AFC I hope you take the responsibility to learn about what it means to the POC/QTPOC community. You could speak to the directors and student staff in the space, and it's very central to understand what it means to take up space in times as sensitive as this one. On that note please come feel free to come learn more about the positive impact the AFC is making on this institution."
(11/08/17 5:44pm)
In Middlebury, Vermont, two men, a team of horses and a carriage are reversing the trend of globalization currently overtaking the country.
The Draft Trash Company was founded in 1997 by Patrick Palmer of Bristol, Vermont. Operating like any other private trash removal company, Draft Trash is individually contracted by its customers to remove trash from the ends of their driveways. The trash is carried away in a long, low trailer pulled by a team of gray-and-white Percheron horses. In Bristol, the idea gained popularity, and nearly 20 years later, Palmer and his horses now service more than 200 customers.
“He got the idea 20 years ago from a magazine article about a guy who used horses for a trash route in Washington,” said Nick Hammond, Palmer’s partner in Draft Trash’s Middlebury operations, which began in 2015.
About three years ago, changes in Vermont recycling codes prompted Middlebury to drop its contract with Casella, a local trash hauler who had been hired to service residents of the town. “I saw this as an opportunity,” Palmer said. This was his chance to expand business into Middlebury’s larger and busier market. After going door-to-door for several Saturdays to publicize the business, Palmer felt confident that there would be sufficient demand from the Middlebury area, and he made the decision to officially begin operations. He partnered up with Hammond, a carpenter and farmer from a few miles outside of town, and together they started Draft Trash Middlebury, which now services nearly 200 customers in the Middlebury area.
The company has each customer pay $6 for a sticker sold at the Otter Creek Bakery or Martin’s Hardware & Building Supply and put the sticker on a trash bag at the end of their driveway. The horse and carriage pick up the trash on Monday or Tuesday, depending on where one lives in town.
“We divide the town in half by Route 7 ... [and] do a Monday and a Tuesday morning every other week in Middlebury. [The] first day we picked up like 20 bags of trash. Now we’re up to ... about, oh, 75 or 80 bags of trash a day. ... It works out to be about 1800 pounds of trash a day,” Hammond said.
The growth and success of Draft Trash Middlebury in the last three years is due in large part to the popularity of the animals. The substitution of a couple of Percheron horses for garbage trucks, which are often noisy, often draws appreciation from locals and visitors alike. “We always stop for all the kids to come out and pet the horses,” Palmer said. “We’ve never done [a route] without somebody taking a picture someplace.”
The business also represents an environmentally friendly approach to an often environmentally costly business. Compared to a garbage truck’s average 2.8 miles per gallon, the horse-drawn operations have considerably less impact on the environment over their 25-mile route.
Given the environmental advantages of the business, Palmer also approached the college as a potential customer.
“When I first started in Middlebury I tried to get into Middlebury College because I thought that because they’re really environmentally conscious, they’d be willing to do it, ... [but] they felt that their way was efficient, and they didn’t want to [make] any changes,” he said.
Although the economic and environmental gains of the business are valuable, Hammond explained that his enthusiasm for his job is based on his love for the animals as much as anything else.
“I think it’s great because it is an environmental thing and it kind of saves fuel and is cool, but also it allows me to use the horses because I love them. ... I try to find as many ways as possible to use them,” he said.
The consistent work and engagement is beneficial for the horses. “[The horses] weigh close to 2,000 pounds, and they’re designed to be using their muscles for a long time. … If they don’t, they start to break down,” he said. “The trash wagon, when it’s full, weighs close to 8,000 pounds, and the two horses pull like it’s nothing. We’re some of the very few who use them on a consistent basis to do what they’re designed to do.”
Palmer, now 70, plans to leave Draft Trash Middlebury’s operations fully in the hands of Hammond as soon as he can find a full-time replacement for himself. Palmer will then continue on for another five years, focusing on Bristol, before retiring from the business after 25 years.
In and around Middlebury, Hammond hopes to continue operations as long as he can. “I think it adds to the town,” he said. “It’s a good reminder to people not how things used to be, but of a different pace of life.”
(11/01/17 10:22pm)
First things first, figure out the roommate problem. Now that you’ve cleared the room, affirmed consent, and done what evolution commands, you’re just sweaty and cramped up in a twin bed. Most students on this campus sleep in a twin extra long bed 39” x 80”; barely enough room to fit you and your laptop side by side. Yet, you’ve made the decision to bring a full sized human in there with you. Constant shuffling and repositioning stifles creative and engaging sex. Cuddling, a wonderful piece of the sexual experience is reduced to a negotiation with space limits. Sleeping (everyone’s real goal) is simply out of the question. Size really does matter.
Seems impossible to rectify?
Try these simple tricks:
1) Try getting off the bed to have sex. Standing can be hot if done with intent and passion.
2) Fans. Fans. Always use a fan. It will cool you down and mask some of the noises or your rumpus lovemaking.
3) The gear room rents sleeping bags and pads. Lay them out on the floor and zip the bags together. Just make sure to have them back by the end of your rental!
4) Sometimes you don’t want to stay over. Twin beds are a great excuse to leave. Your partner(s?) might even appreciate it.
5) If you are staying over, make sure you each have a pillow. Nothing ends a relationship faster than fighting over a pillow. Trust me
6) Ask your partner how they like to sleep
If all this is too much and you just want your space, you can always masturbate.
Stay safe everyone.
XOXO (with a slight purr),
Sex Panther
(10/18/17 11:27pm)
Hosting the Williams Purple Ephs on Saturday, Oct. 14, the Middlebury Panthers dropped a nail-biting contest that came down to the final six seconds of play.
Middlebury dominated the first half of play, much as they have done in the rest of their games to this point. The Panthers burst out of the gate from the opening kickoff, as Jared Lebowitz ’18 found Maxwell Rye ’20 from 19 yards out to cap their first drive of the game with a touchdown. Rye’s touchdown was set up by several rushes by Peter Scibilia ’21 and Diego Meritus ’19, who returned after missing the first four weeks of the season with an injured quad. Carter Massengill ’20 converted the extra point and the hosts jumped out to 7–0 lead with 11 minutes left in the first.
Eight minutes later, Rye flipped the field with a brilliant punt that went 72 yards and was downed at the Williams one-yard line. The Purple Eph’s offense was unable to move the ball given the tough starting field position, amounting in a three-and-out. With no room to maneuver, Adam Regensburg’s punt attempt was blocked by John Jackson ’18 for a safety, tacking two points onto the hosts’ lead in the final scoring play of the first quarter.
In the second quarter, the sole score came from Massengill’s 25 yard-field goal attempt. His opportunity was set up by an 11-play drive by Lebowitz and his offense, giving the hosts a 12–0 lead at the break. Most notably, Lebowitz connected with Jimmy Martinez ’19 and Rye for 29 yards each. The ensuing seven minutes before the half flew by without a score.
In the third quarter, the Panthers sniffed the end zone on several occasions, finishing at the Williams nine-yard line after 13 plays, but Massengill could not complete the 25-yard field goal attempt that sailed wide left.
While Williams cut into the Panthers’ lead on their ensuing eight-play 80-yard touchdown drive that earned the Ephs their first points of the day, the Panthers answered right back. Lebowitz led the team on a 10-play, 75-yard touchdown drive that was highlighted by a 40-yard completion to Rye. The Lebowitz-to-Rye connection set-up a Lebowitz two-yard pass Scibilia for a touchdown.
Middlebury led 19–7 heading into the fourth quarter and everything was looking up for a Panthers offense that had dominated to that point. They even tacked-on an additional touchdown after Williams cut the lead to 19–14, as Lebowitz and company drove 59 yards in just over three minutes. Leading 26–14 and ten minute, the Panthers looked to hold off the Purple Eph’s down the crucial stretch.
Williams’ quarterback, however, answered efficiently and quickly. Middlebury’s defense saw the 12-point cushion erased after the Ephs marched 75 yards on 11 plays, ending in another touchdown. With four minutes left on the clock, Middlebury went to work trying to add an insurance score to preserve a victory and an undefeated record.
Starting at their own 28-yard line, Lebowitz handed the ball to Scibilia and Meritus to run the clock out. The Panthers even received some help from Williams’ defense, gaining 15 yards on a personal foul. However, the Panthers could not move the chains and were forced to punt from their own 48-yard line, giving Williams’ duel-threat quarterback the ball with 2:19 left on the clock at their own 20-yard line.
Williams found their way down the field and, with time running out, Bobby Maimaron stepped up into the pocket, firing a rocket into the open hands of Frank Stola in the end zone for the Williams victory. Alumni Stadium went silent while the Williams bench charged onto the field, celebrating their upset victory.
After the loss, Meritus talked about the importance of moving passed a loss that will be sure to linger with the Panthers.
“Instead of running away from that feeling we felt after Saturday’s loss, we need to embrace all that energy and use it to motivate us to get better.
“A loss is a loss,” Meritus said. “We can’t change what happened, but we can change what we do from here. And that means we have to win out.”
Though the Panthers took the loss, Middlebury outgained Williams 432–378, as 304 passing from Lebowitz. Rye finished the day with 133 receiving yards while Meritus and Scibilia combined for 64 yards on the ground.
With three games left in their season, the Panthers look to resume their win streak and finish with no more defeats. The biggest game left on the schedule, and a contest that both teams have certainly circled, is the Saturday, Oct. 28, date at Alumni Stadium when Middlebury will host undefeated Trinity — and on Homecoming Weekend, no less. It will be a decisive matchup with serious Nescac title implications. But for now, the Panthers head back on the road to Bates on Saturday, Oct. 21.
(10/11/17 10:00pm)
Hundreds of Harry Potter fans gathered on Battell Beach last Saturday, October 7 for the Middlebury Classic Quidditch Festival.
“Middlebury College invented Muggle Quidditch in 2005, and [on Saturday] we revived a home-grown Middlebury tradition,” said Tabitha Mueller ‘18, a member of the Middlebury quidditch club who co-directed the event.
This tradition began twelve years ago, when Muggles Alex Benepe ’09, Xander Manshel ’09 hit Battell Beach, armed with brooms and towel-capes, to put J.K. Rowling’s magical sport to the test. The sport has since expanded rapidly, to thousands of athletes worldwide.
In addition to planning and providing referees for the Middlebury Classic Quidditch tournament, the quidditch club also coordinated “food trucks, potions demonstrations, band performances, and other exhibitions created a festive atmosphere that celebrated a Middlebury tradition steeped in creativity, fun, and magic,” Mueller said.
“Local nonprofits, various students organizations, the college’s Small Concert Initiative, and Middlebury faculty and staff members contributed to the success of this tournament,” she said.
“One of our overarching goals, was that it [would] not just [be] a quidditch tournament, but it [would be] a festival and …[a] day-long magical event … about the culture around, quidditch, Harry Potter, literacy, and so on,” said Andrew Plotch ’18.5, Mueller’s co-captain and co-director of the festival.
The festival directors called school districts from Colchester to Rutland to spread the word and send posters that they hoped would reach students directly, and coordinated with Addison County Readers and Page ONE Literacy to set up a book area and read aloud section at the festival.
Other Middlebury student organizations were also able to pitch in. The American Sign Language club helped teach visitors to sign, the American Chemical Society offered a public potions demonstration, and the Midd Acro club offered face painting and juggling. Unfortunately, performances by Midd Acro and the Middlebury Hooptroupe were cancelled due to rain.
Volunteers from the Otter Non-Sense Players and Middlebrow Improv Groups announced the event, and the following New England bands played live music throughout the day: Shy Shape (New Brunswick, NJ), The Giant Peach (Burlington, VT), 10” Personal Pizza (Middlebury, VT), and Aidan O’Brien (Middlebury, VT).
To feed the crowds, Middlebury Classic Quidditch Festival also teamed up with Ross Commons BBQ, Alganesh’s Ethiopian Food, the White Buffalo Food Truck, Mediterranean Mix, Lulu’s Ice Cream, and InSiteful Baking, which is run by students who live in the InSite House — one of Middlebury’s Solar Decathlon houses for sustainable living. Lulu’s Ice Cream introduced a special flavor called “Platform 9 ¾”, and InSiteful Baking paid homage to Honeydukes with their House Scones, Broomsticks and Snitches.
“The Middlebury Classic was the product of a community and team effort,” Mueller said. “Every Middlebury team member from our first years to our senior Febs and seniors worked hard to create an event that we see as a point of connection between the campus community and our greater Vermont community.”
The result? Festival directors estimate that five to six-hundred people attended the seven-hour festivities. In spite of a rainstorm that lasted longer than anticipated into the afternoon, enthusiastic spectators — some decked out in Harry Potter costumes — braved the rain with their umbrellas and raincoats to watch the action.
Middlebury’s Quidditch Culture
“It’s different from almost every other sport I’ve ever seen played,” Plotch said. “We’re running around with brooms between our legs and we look silly. Everybody acknowledges that, but we still take it seriously and have a lot of fun.”
“Quidditch is a fun, intense, all-inclusive sport unlike anything else,” added Ian Scura ’19.5, a co-captain of the Middlebury Quidditch club.
Middlebury has a co-ed team that follows a quidditch rule called Title 9 ¾. This rule bars any team from having more than four of a majority gender on the field at a given time.
“[Title 9 ¾] adds to this accessibility and [ensures] that everybody can play,” Plotch explained. “Here at Middlebury we don’t have tryouts. Anyone can join and we’re paying for anybody’s membership [in USQ] as long as they are committed to the team. Our barrier to entry is never skill or magical ability: just commitment and coming with a bunch of spirit every day.”
Four teams travelled from across New England to participate in the Middlebury Classic: the University of Vermont quidditch team, the “Great Stone Dragons” from Skidmore, the “RPI Remembralls” of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the “Rough and Tough Puffs,” which was an unofficial conglomerate team of players from Wellesley and RIT.
“Even when you’re playing against each other, it’s so friendly, and people are really just there to have a fun time,” Plotch said. “The majority of people just want to have fun and [for nobody] to get hurt.”
Commons Cup and Tournament Recap
Each residential commons was also welcomed to enter a team of first-years into the fun. In the end, Wonnacott wound up with this year’s intramural Commons Cup title after a round of tough competition against teams from Atwater and Cook.
As the Commons Cup champions, the Wonnacott team played one more game in full bracket play. The Middlebury first-years were able to catch the snitch in this game, but the Skidmore Great Stone Dragons won the match.
“No team could believe it when we told them ... that none of [Wonnacott’s players] had been playing for longer than three weeks,” Plotch said. “Skidmore is a fantastic team, and Wonacott put up a heck of a fight.”
Many of the first-years who played in the Commons Cup also had the chance to play for the Middlebury club team.
Middlebury emerged victorious from their first matchup of the day was against UVM, when Scura captured the snitch to end the game at 130–8.
“We had a great game against UVM, and [then we] lost but played really well against Skidmore — who eventually made it to the finals,” Plotch said.
Middlebury also caught the 30-point snitch to end the game against Skidmore. However, Skidmore squeaked out on top thanks to a last-second goal that made the final score 80–90. Then in bracket play, Middlebury lost their final game to the “Rough and Tough Puffs”.
“It [felt] like there [was] a tangible magic in the air,” Scura said. “It doesn’t matter what level I’m playing at, there is just something special about it.”
The RPI Remembralls, who are ranked fifth in the U.S. Quidditch national standings, beat Skidmore 110-50 in the tournament final.
According to “modern quidditch rules,” the snitch should be released 17 minutes into the game, one minute before the seekers. However, Plotch provided a bit of context for the way things went down in the final.
“Back in the day, snitches would be released at the first second of the game. They’d be on the roof of Pearsons, or eating lunch in Ross… we once had a snitch get a citation in the bell tower of Mead Chapel — and that was totally fair game! Here at Middlebury we do things the way that we want to, so we brought back old school snitching style for the final game.”
In keeping with tradition, all of the RPI and Skidmore players had to close their eyes as the Scura — dressed head-to-toe in yellow, with a tennis ball hanging in a sock on his waistband, as the neutral snitch for the game — was released in minute zero.
Right away, Scura ran into hiding behind Battell, where he’d arranged to have friends waiting for him in a getaway car. He allowed RPI and Skidmore to battle it out in a few minutes of snitch-less play, before making his triumphant if not not disorienting return to the pitch. Scura’s getaway car mysteriously appeared, and moved slowly across Battell Beach until Scura got out and bolted towards the quidditch pitch with an air horn blaring.
Looking Ahead
This launch of the Middlebury Classic Quidditch Festival is just the first step towards what Plotch calls the “[revival of] a campus culture that is here and just needs to be awakened from its slumber.”
This Middlebury is also re-joining the U.S. Quidditch association this year, which it left in 2012 as the reigning five-time Quidditch World Cup champion (2007-2011). As a result, the team has decided to up their practice schedule to four days a week.
“We are growing our team substantially and will continue to have official and non-official teams that can play games all together,” Plotch said. “We are going to play at a level that we haven’t at a long time, and get to play against teams for the sake of the game.”
The Middlebury quidditch club plans to compete in the “5th Annual Battle of Saratoga” at Skidmore on Sunday, October 15, before travelling to Boston on Saturday, October 28 and Saturday, November 4 for two separate tournaments organized by the Massachusetts Quidditch Conference.
“When we talked about this event months ago, the Quidditch Leadership team agreed we wanted to bring the magic of Quidditch home, and we do not plan to stop here,” Mueller said. “We are already looking forward to next year’s Middlebury Classic as well as this season’s upcoming tournaments and wizarding adventures!”
“I don’t think that there is a player or visitor who left without laughing, enjoying themselves, and having, dare I say it, a magical time,” she added.
(10/11/17 9:27pm)
The women’s golf team took to Route 7 and headed south last weekend toward Williamstown, Massachusetts, to play for the Nescac championship on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 7 and 8. While the Ephs once again took to conference crown, the Panthers held their own on Williams’ home course at Taconic Golf Club.
The Panthers finished in third, only four shots behind second-place Amherst, shooting a 628 on the weekend. Williams took the trophy with a collective 612 for the weekend, with rounds of 306 on both days.
“Everyone on the team dedicated themselves to improving mentally and technically this fall,” Chloe Levins ’20 said after Sunday’s round was over. “There is nothing but motivation to take away from the season. It’s exciting to be inches from great success as a team.”
It was really a three-team race from end-to-end, as Williams, Amherst and the Panthers were within seven shots of each other after the first day of play (306, 307, 313). The next closest team at that point was Bowdoin, who was a distant 26 shots behind Middlebury.
Even more impressive about the Panthers’ weekend performance at Taconic is the fact that their weekend total of 628 was 13 shots better than their two-day score the last two times the team played at the familiar course, when they shot rounds of 641 twice last season.
After the first day, Helen Dailey ’19 and Chloe Levins ’20 found themselves in a share of the fifth spot on the individual leaderboard. Their rounds of 76 led the way for the Panthers, and it marked a career day for Dailey. Her 76 was the lowest round of her collegiate career thus far. For Levins, the 76 tied her second-lowest score for the season.
Blake Yaccino ’20 turned in an 80 on the first day, which for the third straight round, put Yaccino just on the precipice of breaking the 80 mark.
Hope Matthews ’18, one of the team’s two senior captains, was the last Panther to register in the day-one scoring, as she shot an 81.
In a stroke of bad luck, the Panthers’ other senior captain who almost always is among the team’s lowest scorers, Katharine Fortin ’18, had her highest round of the season on Saturday. She turned in an 83 on a course that has been hit or miss for her throughout her career. Fortin has shot rounds as low as 76 and as high as 87 at Williams’ home course.
However, the scoring played out differently for the Panthers last Sunday.
Fortin followed her tough Saturday with a key 79 on Sunday, which would prove to be the second-lowest score for the Panthers on day two. The lowest scorer was Yaccino, who finally overcame her tendency to add strokes to her score in the second round of tournaments and shaved five strokes off her Saturday score to register a 75. Her two-day total of 155 was the team low and was good for a fifth-place overall finish on the individual leaderboard.
Levins, the team’s no. 1 for much of the fall and the Nescac tournament individual champion at the event last year, fell off the lead on Sunday and fell short of defending her title. Her 84 pushed her from a tie for fifth to a tie for ninth. Although it rained over northwest Massachusetts on Sunday morning, Levins is not going to chalk up her higher score to anything but a tough round and a constructive experience.
“It rained heavily for the first four holes on day two,” Levins said. “This made the course trickier for everyone in the field to manage. My higher score, however, was not a byproduct of course conditions. I’m just still learning how to stay in contention on day two. One of these times, I’ll get it.”
Dailey also fell off of the pace she set for herself on Saturday, as she went from a 76 to an 81 on Sunday, putting her weekend total at 157 and her in a three-way tie for sixth in the individual competition. Matthews managed to shoot an 80 on Sunday, and her two-day total of 161 saw her claim a tie for 10th on the individual boards.
The Nescac tournament marked the end of the fall season for the women’s golf team, which has a lot to be excited about for the spring season and beyond.
“It has been really interesting to watch the team grow and develop over the past few years,” Matthews said. “I think we have gathered a lot of great talent in recent recruiting and it is definitely showing in our results. Although we have not won any tournaments yet, we are getting closer to catching our competitors each time. I’m really excited to see how we can challenge Williams, Amherst, NYU, and other opponents in the spring.”
As was the case for Matthews, the weekend also marked Fortin’s last conference tournament, and although the team did not push Williams as hard as they had hoped, Fortin was able to reflect on how far the program has come.
“This season has been a great show of our ability to compete with the other top NESCAC schools,” Fortin said. “We are driving the program in the right direction.
“When I came onto the team as a freshman, we were good, but we did not have the depth needed to compete with Williams and, eventually, Amherst and NYU,” Fortin said. However, the Panthers’ recent success with recruiting and seeing through the development of new players in the program looks to change that narrative.
“We have acquired some really strong underclassmen and have shown rising collegiate golfers that the Middlebury women’s golf team is in the thick of the competition every week,” Fortin said. “This will certainly help to further develop the program and recruit successful players in the coming years.”
More immediately, however, the short spring season will be here before fans of Middlebury golf know it. Fortin, who will have her fourth opportunity to measure up to the challenge of playing golf competitively in upper-New England Aprils, is looking to make the most of it.
“The short Spring season is definitely hard coming out of a cold winter,” Fortin said, “but we will continue to be up there with Williams and Amherst, especially if we stay on top of our games and keep up our strength through the winter months.
“Everyone is in the same position at the beginning of April, so we will be competing at the same level and will continue to give ourselves a chance to be on top of the leaderboard.”
Like the senior captain, the team’s emerging star—Levins—is looking forward to April and is boiling everything down to what really matters the most.
“It’s important to keep a singular focus on your own game from week to week,” Levins said. “However, on the weekends, we play as Middlebury Women’s Golf. The process of getting better never changes and neither does what we represent.
“The best thing for me, and everyone else, to do looking forward, is to keep it simple and get the ball in the hole for Middlebury.”
(09/28/17 3:30am)
The men’s tennis team demonstrated its dominance at the top of the lineup as well as its impressive depth by taking three of the six flights at its own invitational on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 23 and 24. In its first tournament of the fall season, Middlebury hosted Bates, Hamilton, Tufts, Brandeis, RPI and Skidmore in a tune-up for the ITA Regional Championships coming up this weekend.
“Because the Midd Invite is always our first tournament, we know it will be hard to play our best right off the bat,” said team captain Timo van der Geest ’18. “We know we always have a good shot at winning a couple of flights but it is mainly about getting in some good competition and learn more about where your game is at the moment.”
In the A-singles flight, Lubo Cuba ’19 was able to get his feet under himself rather quickly and continue his dominance from last season, defeating Ben Rosen of Bates 6–3, 4–6, 10–8 in the championship match after winning three matches to get there. Cuba extended his winning streak to nine matches, dating back to the beginning of the NCAA singles tournament last spring when he won five straight matches en route to the championship.
Along with Cuba, Will de Quant ’18 and Noah Farrell ’18 advanced to the semifinals, where de Quant fell to his teammate Cuba 6–2, 6–7 (5–7), 10–5, and Farrell fell to Rosen 6–1, 6–4.
These three, along with Kyle Schlanger ’18 who also won his first match in the A flight before falling in the next round, proved that the top of Middlebury’s singles lineup has the potential to be devastating this year.
The B-singles flight featured an all-Middlebury final between Timo van der Geest ’18 and Alex Vanezis ’20. Vanezis took it to van der Geest in the first set 6–0, but van der Geest showed some grit in the 80-degree weather by coming from behind to take the second set and the superbreaker to win the championship 0–6, 6–2, 11–9. The Panthers also had three semifinalists in this flight because Andre Xiao ’21 won the first two matches of career, before falling to van der Geest on Sunday morning 6–4, 6–2.
“Singles was fun seeing three out of the four semifinalists in my flight being Midd guys, resulting in me playing a teammate both in the semis and the final,” van der Geest said.
The Panthers’ success in the B-flight pointed to the depth they have throughout their team, considering the three Panther semifinalists were their fifth, sixth and seventh players in the lineup.
In other singles action, Weston Brach ’20 won his first match in the C-singles flight before falling in the quarterfinals, while Peter Martin ’19 won his first match in the D flight before doing the same in the quarterfinals.
Defending NCAA doubles national champions Cuba and de Quant were denied in the A-doubles flight by their fellow Panther pair of van der Geest and Kyle Schlanger ’18. Van der Geest and Schlanger knocked off their national championship teammates in the semifinals 8–6, and then captured the championship by defeating David Aizenberg and Anupreeth Coramutla 8–6 in the final. Van der Geest completed a perfect 8–0 weekend for the second straight year at the Middlebury Invitational, although this year he won the A-doubles flight and defeated the defending national champions with Schlanger.
“It was really exciting for me to win both my singles and doubles flight,” van der Geest said. “Kyle and I competed very well this weekend. In both our matches on Sunday there was a point where we weren’t playing very well but we managed to find ways to swing the matches.”
In the B-flight, the first-year pair of Xiao and Adam Guo ’21 reached the semifinals along with the Vanezis and Nate Eazor ’21 pairing, where they fell.
With one tournament under their belt in the fall season, the Panthers now turn to the ITA Regional Championships which they will host from Friday through Sunday, Sept. 29 to Oct. 1. Middlebury boasts the past two champions, Farrell who won two years ago and Cuba last year.
“I think everyone learned a lot on a personal level about where they are regarding their game at the moment,” van der Geest said, as he looks forward to this weekend. “We are hosting the biggest tournament of the fall this weekend, so we will use the information from the matches we played last weekend to try to prepare as best we can for the ITA.”
As van der Geest acknowledges, the fall season is an opportunity for the Panthers to face some good competition, grow as players and come together as a team. The team’s bigger goals lie ahead in the spring, when they will compete for the Nescac and NCAA team championships.
