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(09/21/17 12:39am)
Last weekend, Sept. 16 and 17, the golf teams took the course to tune up for future tournaments with greater Nescac implications. The men’s squad was at the Ralph, placing ninth out of a 25-team field in the 34th-annual Duke Nelson Invitational. The women’s squad also took part in an annual invitational, but they had to take a familiar three-and-a-half hour trip south down I-89 to the Nehoiden Golf Club in Wellesley, Massachusetts, for the Ann S. Batchelder Invitational. The Panthers recovered from a tough first day to finish third in the six-team field.
For the second straight week, the women’s team saw a significant first-to-second round improvement. Unlike their first week of action in the St. Lawrence Invitational that was held at the unfamiliar Oliver D. Appleton Golf Course in Canton, New York, the Nehoiden course in Wellesley is relatively familiar to the Panthers.
“In golf, there’s a fine line between being focused and trying too hard,” Chloe Levins ’20 said, speaking to the team’s slow starts. “Golf likes low expectations. We let our desire to win get the best of us on day one.”
After carding an 84 on Saturday, Levins apparently took her own advice and marked down her score by eight strokes to shoot a 76 in Sunday’s round.
Levins expressed that the team played a more characteristic game on Sunday by staying “patient and present.”
“On day two, we went back to doing what we do best,” Levins said.
While it was the second competition the team has played in thus far, last weekend’s tournament was the first time the team has played since classes started.
“With classes underway, it’s always more difficult to perform at your peak level in any sport,” Levins said. “Our ability to play good golf while keeping up with school will only get better as the season goes on. We’ve started on the right foot.”
Blake Yaccino ’20 once again saw her score slightly decrease from the first to second rounds. But scores of 78 and 80 are nothing to sneeze at.
“I can’t really attest to improvement between rounds because in both tournaments I did worse the second round,” Yaccino said when asked about the relative struggles the team appears to have on the first days of tournaments. “However I believe that my team did better the second round due to confidence. Nerves have calmed by the second round and having played holes before you are aware of course management and can play the course more wisely.”
Katharine Fortin ’18 was among the Panthers to improve markedly from Saturday to Sunday, shooting an 80 then a 75. Among the top three teams in the tournament, only Levins had a better round-to-round stroke reduction (eight) than Fortin’s five stroke improvement.
In preparation for next week, Yaccino said that the team’s focus should be on the little things.
“I hope that we can prepare ourselves by working on little things that shave off strokes,” Yaccino said. “Wedges from 100 yards in and decreasing the amount of three putts by working on distance putting this week,” she said, are among the aspects of the game the team will work on.
“I hope we can go into the weekend with confidence in our preparation and be ready to compete and shoot consistently better in both rounds,” Yaccino said. “Not just the second round.”
“It goes without saying that we all want to perform our best at Nescacs,” Levins said of the tournament looming next month. “The best way to do that is by staying completely present and purposeful about our practice each and every day. There’s always something to work on, so now it’s time to get to work.”
And the Panthers are not that far off from their goal, which Yaccino addressed directly.
“We’re just around five to 10 strokes off Williams,” she said. “So it’s really exciting for the team and I think knowing that helps push us to keep grinding.”
Meanwhile, the highlights on the men’s side were Graham Kenter ’17.5’s and Joe Ko ’18’s career weekends. Kenter shot a 75 on Saturday, and Ko shot two fantastic rounds of 71 and 72, proving that it may actually be possible to master the Ralph.
Ko credited the improvements we are seeing in his game with the work he put in this offseason.
“I think the main reason why I did well was due to the amount of work I put in leading up to the tournament,” Ko said. “Like in any other sport, sometimes spending the extra 30 minutes to work on your game can definitely make a difference during the real game.”
When asked if he knew he would have a career day early on in Saturday’s round, Kenter reported that he actually had to overcome quite a bit of adversity at the start.
“Saturday started off really slowly,” Kenter said. “It was a shotgun start so I started on hole number two and was five over thru my first five holes, and six over thru seven holes.”
Kenter kept pushing though.
“I played really solid for the next 11 holes, going two under,” he said.
Despite the ninth-place finish, the weekend was productive for the Panthers.
“It was great that everyone got a chance to compete over the weekend,” Kenter said. “It is really hard to replicate tournament golf in practice so it is great that we were able to have 12 guys out there.”
With that, Ko and Kenter both alluded to a trend that coach Beaney and many of the Panthers have noticed over the last season-plus.
“The competition in the Nescac has ramped up the past two years and we still need to grind as a team,” Ko said.
This is certainly true. In fact, the competition overall has been improving, not just in the Nescac.
“Bennett, Joe and I were talking after the round about just how much better the level of play has gotten since we came into the program,” Kenter said. “Babson shooting 572 would have been unheard of a couple years ago. And I think seven teams broke 600. Even with the great scoring conditions this weekend, it really goes to show how much better the level of competition is now then it was four or five years ago.”
The Panthers have long dominated the conference and have had the likes of Williams, Trinity and Amherst striving to gain ground. Especially with the absence of Reid Buzby ’19 and Phil Morin ’19, both abroad, the Panthers need to take advantage of every opportunity that comes their way to ensure a top-four finish at the Nescac qualifier next month.
“I think we have a really deep team,” Kenter said, “even with Ben Bichet ’19, Phil and Reid abroad. I think our depth will serve us well in the next couple of weeks.”
“I think this tournament was a reminder for the entire team that we still have a lot of work to do,” Ko added. “We saw a lot of great things this week from the team, especially the first-years. However, we are definitely not content with the results. I think this weekend will be a great motivating factor for us to work harder.”
The men’s squad is heading into what will be a pivotal weekend in their last chance to tune-up for the Nescac qualifier. They will head to Williamstown, Massachusetts, for the Williams Fall Invitational at Taconic.
“I hope that this can be a tournament where we can play well, get confidence, and have it be a testament to ourselves that we, as a team, are more than capable of bringing Nescacs back to the Ralph in the spring,” Ko said.
The women’s side will also make the trip to the Bay State, as they will play at The Orchards golf course in South Hadley, Massachusetts, for the Mount Holyoke Invitational.
(09/14/17 4:01am)
Last weekend, Sept. 9–10, Middlebury golf started the fall season on the right foot. The men’s squad took to I-125 and headed northwest to play in the Middlebury Fall Classic at Lake Placid Golf Club in Lake Placid, N.Y., where the team placed second in the opener. The women’s side also finished second, as they headed about two hours further northwest on the interstate to Canton, N.Y., where they took part in the St. Lawrence Invitational held on the St. Lawrence University campus.
The highlight of the weekend for the women’s team had to be their day-one-to-day-two split. After shooting a collective 312 on Saturday, the Panthers came out strong on Sunday to shoot a 303, and their nine-stroke improvement from Saturday to Sunday was the best out of the 11-team field.
“The conditions were wet all weekend,” said Katharine Fortin ’18. “The course had been saturated in late summer and a considerable amount of rain fell on Friday, leaving us with a wet and muddy course. However, wet conditions mean shooting at the pin and going for birdies. Everyone faced the same conditions, and the driving range was closed, so no player could hit balls prior to playing (only putting and chipping). This affected our play on Saturday, but we were much looser on Sunday and were able to shoot better scores. This course demands informed shot-making, so seeing the course on Saturday definitely had a positive impact on Sunday’s scores.”
Fortin, the mainstay and consistent backbone of the roster, led the way for this improvement. Fortin has already enjoyed quite a decorated career teeing off for the Panthers, finished the first weekend of her senior fall with her lowest collegiate round by shooting a 73 on Sunday.
“I am very excited that my best collegiate round fell on a weekend that the team was also on their game,” Fortin said. “In previous tournaments, I could not get below the 76 number, and coming at the start of my senior season makes this 73 feel extra sweet. As always, there’s work to be done, but we’re celebrating this one.”
Alongside the senior was Chloe Levins ’20, who is sure to avoid a sophomore slump. She tallied the lowest round of her career on Saturday as she also shot a 73. This was quite the way for the Vermont native to begin a campaign in which she will aim to defend her crown as the individual Nescac champion on Oct. 7–8 when the best of the conference take to the course in Williamstown, Mass.
“Patience was key this weekend,” Levins said. “After a summer of good practice, it was important to go into this weekend without expectations. Even though a lot of putts didn’t fall, I played solid golf, stayed patient, and kept it all in perspective. I’m happy to have started the season on a good track.”
Familiarity with the course played a factor in the team’s round-over-round improvement.
“A lot of the team had never seen the course until Saturday morning,” Levins said. “In general, shooting 312 and 303 as a team is a really good indicator of solid work over the offseason and good things to come from Middlebury women’s golf.”
Helen Dailey ’19 joined Levins and Fortin as Panthers who enjoyed a day-to-day stroke improvement, as she followed an 80 on Saturday with a round of 77 on Sunday. Hope Matthews ’18 shot an 80 on day one and an 82 on day two, slightly off the average pace she set last season. Blake Yaccino ’20 had a solid weekend for the Panthers, shooting a 76 on Saturday and an 80 on Sunday. Yaccino figures to play a big role in whether the Panthers will have success this fall, so the team will need her to consistently play the way she did last weekend going forward.
The men’s tournament in Lake Placid was only a one day event. The Panthers’ second-place finish was spearheaded by 2016 individual Nescac champion Bennett Doherty ’18 and Jeff Giguere ’20.
Giguere picked up right where he left off last season when he wrapped up the campaign with strong showings at the Williams Spring Invitational and at Nescacs. He shot a 74, his second-best round thus far in his young Panther career.
“I do think this is a baseline for me,” Giguere said. “Over the summer, I played in a few tournaments and my performance there was consistent with the score I shot this weekend. I do think I can still shave shots from my game.”
Graham Kenter ’18.5 also had a strong showing for the Panthers, as carded 78 that ties the lowest he has tallied as a Panther.
Despite the strong performances from Doherty, Giguere and Kenter, the Panthers still finished nine strokes back of the defending Nescac champions, Williams, providing all the motivation Middlebury needs to continue working on its game.
“Looking back on this weekend, I have found some areas of my game that need improvement and I will work hard this fall to tighten them up,” Giguere said. “Overall, I am pleased with how both the team and I started off the season. We can only get better from here.”
Knowing the team has ground to gain on Williams, Doherty shared Giguere’s sentiment.
“Williams has a lot of great players,” Doherty said. “Any one of them could end up on the top of any given leaderboard. But I think everyone on our team is capable of finding themselves atop the leaderboard as well. I think to close the gap on Williams we will just have to focus on getting better each and every day. We have a pretty balanced team this year and I know that as we improve together we will be right there with them.”
With Ben Bichet ’19, Phil Morin ’19 and Reid Buzby ’19 all abroad for the fall semester, and with the Ephs remaining as the team to beat, the Panthers need someone to step up and be a dark horse to bring Nescacs back to the Ralph next May. When asked who it might be that steps up for the Panthers, Giguere and Doherty offered that everyone looks to be playing good golf and positioned well, but that David Packer ’20 is someone to keep an eye on.
“I would like to see Packer play well and I think he’s got the ability to do so,” Giguere said, complimenting his sophomore teammate.
“It was great to see David Packer win his two matches this weekend and I think he will keep getting better,” Doherty said, also starting to look ahead to the upcoming Duke Nelson Invitational. “It will be fun to see everyone play in our Duke Nelson tournament this weekend and I look forward to the addition of our first-years as well.”
The men’s team will be back in action this weekend, Sept. 16–17, as they are set to host the 34th annual Duke Nelson Invitational at the Ralph. The women’s team will hit the road once again and head to Wellesley, Mass., where they will take part in the annual Ann S. Batchelder.
(05/04/17 3:57am)
Editor’s Note: This article is the third in a series that will examine the current financial state of the College. In recent years, the College has run budget deficits and has been forced to rein in spending in order to ensure long term financial stability. These articles will aim to inform the Middlebury community about the College’s financial situation, dispel rumors, raise new questions and, hopefully, spark new debates about how the College operates and spends its money.
The administration is devising a new health care plan, slated for January 2019, to help the College cut back on spending after running a five-year deficit.
Still administered through Cigna, the new health benefits will include a menu of plans: platinum, silver, gold and possibly bronze. Albeit more expensive, the new platinum plan will be comparable to the current one offered to all employees, while the bronze plan would provide the least coverage (and highest deductibles) for lower premiums. What you pay for is what you get.
Currently, the College foots 80 percent of the bill minus the copay or deductible for most health services. Visits that fall under preventative care like immunizations, mammograms and routine dental check-ups are completely paid for. “Any which way you look at it, this is a rich [health benefits] plan,” said Cheryl Mullins, director of human resources.
But that plan is likely to change. Faced with an operating loss that’s ballooned to nearly $17 million this year, college administrators are looking for ways to spend less. Spending outpaced revenue for five consecutive years, according to treasury reports; the last time the College “broke even” was in 2012. To get a grip on its operating deficit, Middlebury is sacrificing other amenities to prioritize academic spending. For students, this translates to changes like shortened dining hall hours and rises in tuition. For college employees, it means another change to their health plan.
This fall, the College switched administrators from CBA Blue – a subsidiary of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont that insures nearly 90 percent of Vermonters -- to Cigna, a company that offers coverage in all 50 states and overseas. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners ranked Cigna as the seventh largest health provider in the U.S. by market share, and Forbes Magazine listed it as the fourth most-valued company among national competitors.
The switch, something that Bill Burger, vice president of communications and chief marketing officer, said is common and “usually no big deal” at other institutions, has generated more than a handful of complaints, about things like filing more paperwork or lobbying for claim approval from faculty and staff alike.
“I would not argue that CBA Blue took a little more liberal view of what is ‘medically necessary,’” Mullins said, citing teeth bleaching as a cosmetic procedure that might have once been approved. In 2016, the College spent about $20.5 million on healthcare. The switch to Cigna and its more stringent process for approving claims slimmed Middlebury’s annual health bill by $800,000, according to school records.
Middlebury was not the only college to switch to Cigna this fall, nearby Champlain College and St. Michael’s College did as well. The three schools make up the Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium, a partnership formed in 2013 for better bargaining power. The tagline on its website: “Efficiency and reducing costs is what Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium is all about.”
The proposed three or four-tier plan would be negotiated through the consortium. Norwich University, the nation’s oldest military college roughly 50 miles east of Middlebury, will likely hop on-board as well. The new health plan is a big draw, according to Burger.
Today, the College offers the same coverage for everyone who works full-time, regardless of age, health and job title – an engineer who runs the biomass plant and his family of four have the same plan as a tenured professor who lives alone. According to administrators, this one-size-fits-all policy isn’t just generous, it’s overkill. “Right now, we’re over-insuring,” said Vice President of Human Resources Karen Miller at an open meeting on March 21 in Wilson Hall. “Could we be lowering the cost to the College while providing health insurance?”
In 2016, college employees chipped in roughly 20 percent of the total $20 million healthcare cost through premium payments. In the private sector, those insured often pay a bigger slice – in the high 20’s or low 30’s. “We’re insulated from the market reality,” Burger said. “We need to have our employees pay more in premiums.”
At the College, biweekly premiums are determined on an income-sensitive scale; the more you make, the more you pay. A staff member making $20,000 per year pays $21 for the same coverage as a high-level administrator paying $141 from their $200,000 income.
Instead of signing everyone up for the one-size-fits-all health coverage, Miller said offering four different plans give employees the “choice” to save money, especially if they are young, healthy and single. And under the bronze plan, a health savings account would be included to help pad the risk of a major medical emergency.
Some professors oppose the change because it’ll likely mean higher premiums for the same health coverage. The new plans will likely cost the most for employees on the mid to higher-end of the payscale due to the effect of income sensitivity in calculating premiums. “And I am certain we will keep income sensitivity,” Mullins said.
There are also concerns that those who can’t afford the most expensive plan will lose out on health care – that the proposed changes will likely hurt staff members already paid the least. Will employees with big families and smaller paychecks, unable to afford higher premiums, be left out in the cold?
At the open meetings in March, professors spoke out against the new plans. “It’s insurance,” said mathematics professor Priscilla Bremser. “I can’t tell you what my medical tests next week are going to tell me. I think a healthy twenty-year-old could end up with leukemia tomorrow, and heaven forbid that twenty-year-old be on the wrong color plan.”
Bremser remained skeptical of how practical or beneficial a flex fund might be for those on cheaper plans with less coverage. “You can save ahead of time for health care, but not for something that ends up costing tens of thousands of dollars, especially if you’re on the lower end of the pay-scale at this college,” she said.
Of the roughly twenty people who showed up to Wilson Hall for a recent faculty and staff meeting about health benefits, most were professors. An employee in dining operations said many staff members either didn’t know or didn’t care enough to speak out against the changes. Wary of engaging in public debate against his employer, he refused to be identified by name. “There’s no leadership, no one on staff is willing to step up and lead it. And any talk of unionizing must be reported to higher bosses,” he said.
On the other hand, a recent college hire said the new changes were nothing to panic about. She was shocked at not being asked to choose a health plan at all in her contract. “I’ve lived this for over 20 years. I’ve seen it work for people,” she said. “You can never predict what your health is going to be, but the bottom will not fall out. We will all be insured. I think giving it a chance will be worthwhile.”
And if the platinum plan ends up costing a lot more than the current premium? “Well, I’m screwed,” the dining employee said. “I have a big family.”
(05/04/17 1:58am)
The men’s golf team saw its streak of winning the NESCAC tournament end at three last weekend, April 29-30, when they played at the Taconic Golf Club in Williamstown, Mass., for the second time in as many weeks.
Williams dominated the event, shooting a collective 18-over 586 with the tournament’s lowest four scores all coming from Ephs. First-year Will Kannegieser shot a 145 for the weekend, taking individual championship honors by one stroke over fellow first-year Sam Goldenring. Just behind the Ephs’ pair of first-years was its pair of seniors as Jacob Watt-Morse shot a 147 and Grant Raffel shot a 148. The best round of the tournament belonged to Goldenring, who followed a 76 in Saturday’s round with a one-under 70 on Sunday.
The weekend totals for Middlebury, Trinity and Amherst were no match for that of the Ephs. The Panthers and Bantams tied for second with each shooting 602’s for the tournament. Amherst, competing in the event at the Mammoths for the first time, was a distant fourth as they shot a collective 628 over the two rounds.
Leading the Panthers were the usual suspects, as Rodrigo Andrade ’17 and Phil Morin ’19 recorded the lowest score for the Middlebury squad in what proved to be Andrade’s last collegiate competition. Andrade, the defending NESCAC individual champ, shot a 76 on Saturday and a 74 on Sunday.
“I felt like my putter was a great asset this weekend,” Andrade said. “It was the reason why I was able to score the way I did.”
The weekend-total of 150 actually was one stroke better than his score at NESCACs last year, although those were at the Ralph. Despite his low scores, he was never in the running for a repeat individual championship.
“I felt like this weekend was a blast and a true wake up call to the changes in NESCAC golf over these past few years,” Andrade said about his final weekend of collegiate golf. “150 over a weekend would have won most golf tournaments my first three years here but now it seems to be just short of the level of golf we are playing.”
Andrade added that he is grateful for his time with the golf team.
“I have gotten to know great guys over the years,” Andrade said. “Both of the older kids [Matt Marra ’17 and Graham Kenter ’17] have taught me so much on and off the course. So have the younger guys, who [I have tried to show] some of the things I have learned in the past. [These] have been huge aspects of my time at Middlebury. Could not be prouder of my team, and could not be prouder of our success.”
On the other hand, Morin was positioned well when play ended Saturday afternoon, as he walked off the course and into the clubhouse with a 73 on his scorecard. The wheels fell off Sunday though, as Morin struggled to the finish line with a 77. However, both of those scores were lower than the 81 and 78 he recorded in the tune-up at Taconic a week prior at the Williams Spring Invitational.
“Game felt pretty good,” Morin said shortly after the team wrapped up play on Sunday. “Just a couple misses and some tough bounces. Tough that we couldn’t get the job done for four in a row.”
One shot behind Morin and Andrade was Reid Buzby ’19 who shot a weekend total of 151. The results had to be tough on the sophomore given that only a week before he recorded a 141, 10 shots better, on the same course at the Williams Spring Invite.
“I was extremely confident going into Saturday’s round,” Buzby said. “My game was in the best place it has been in a while going into the tournament. I think I just wanted to play well too badly and when things started to go wrong I didn’t handle it very well mentally. On Sunday I actually injured my neck while warming up and it made it difficult to swing, so I was more focused on the injury than the golf and I think it made me play better. I was more relaxed and was enjoying being out there much more than I was on Saturday.”
Jeffrey Giguere ’20 was next in line for the Panthers as he shot a 153 over the weekend with a 74 on Saturday and a 79 on Sunday. Giguere’s presence at NESCACs kept a running theme of first-year success going for the Panthers. Fitz Bowen ’17 and Bennett Dougherty ’18 each won the individual conference crown in their first seasons with the program and Buzby and Morin were key factors in the Panthers’ ability to three-peat last year.
Giguere had an uneven weekend but his 74 for Saturday’s round put him in a position to take the individual trophy and put the team in a position to make it four in a row with good rounds on Sunday. Although Giguere was five strokes off of his own play Sunday he still managed to turn in a factoring score, as Joe Ko ’18 could not repeat Saturday’s success of 76 with another good contribution in the second round where he shot an 80.
“Today I just couldn’t hit the shots,” Giguere said once he was back on campus last Sunday. “I felt like my swing was fine, but I would either get unlucky bounces or I just wasn’t thinking through the shots as well. I didn’t do as good [of] a job of visualizing what shot I needed to hit for the situations I was given.”
Reflecting the feelings of his teammates, Giguere commended Williams for playing the collective round of a lifetime.
“Williams played impossibly well,” the first-year said. “We would have had to shoot so low to catch them. They’re great opponents and I don’t think we should be too disappointed with how we played. We are a great team and I know we can’t wait to get going again next season.”
When asked if he was looking forward to developing what seems to be a budding rivalry with Williams’ top first-years, Kannegieser and Goldenring, in coming seasons, Giguere said that he is “absolutely” embracing the opportunity to play against them again.
“I actually got the chance to play with Kannegieser today and he is a very solid player,” Giguere said of the new individual NESCAC champion. “I could sense that he wanted to beat me badly and the feeling was mutual. I was just unable to get it done today. Goldenring went bogey-free last weekend [April 22-23] for the whole tournament [Williams Spring Invitational], so he’s certainly a top player around here. I definitely have to step up my game, but yes, I am looking forward to playing many more rounds with these two players.”
While their run of consecutive NESCAC titles has come to an end and although Andrade is graduating, the Panthers’ future looks bright. Buzby and Morin, the staples of the roster, have two years left with the team. They will be joined by fellow sophomore David McDaniel ’19 who has shown tremendous improvement over this past season. For now though, that puts a wrap on all things golf for the 2016-17 seasons for Middlebury.
(05/04/17 1:32am)
In China, a country with the world’s second largest economy, women create 41 percent of the GDP. In 1990, Chinese women’s annual salary was about 80 percent of their male counterparts. Six years ago, the number became 60 percent. Simple statistics like this, regardless of the complex reasons behind them, blatantly show the unfair treatment received by women in China.
“So we are in an age of conflicts and resistance,” said Lu Pin, a leading Chinese feminist activist who gave a talk titled “Feminism in China: Women’s Bodies on the Frontline” on Thursday, April 27.
The talk was delivered by Lu in mandarin Chinese and simultaneously interpreted by Jingyi Wu ’17, one of the organizers of the event. Wu started the audience off by recalling how she “stumbled upon, by some fate, the very first of young Chinese feminist conferences” as “a young and naïve high school student,” and met Lu.
Having worked for the women’s rights movement in China for more than 20 years, Lu is the founder of “Feminist Voices,” which is “the most influential feminist media in China.” Last year, she co-founded a new organization based in the U.S. to support feminist movement back home.
Social media platforms have been Lu and her colleagues’ main battlefield for years. In 2012, their project themed “Nude Photos against Domestic Violence” came out on the internet, and featured photos of women with different levels of nudity and symbols of violence or suppression on them. Through these provocative photos, they wanted to gather support for their ongoing plan to advocate for “the legislation of the very first anti-domestic violence law” in China.
In reality, although their efforts resulted in successful legislation, Lu said that the nude photos had a very limited effect. The few photos that caught attention were taken down by the original website, and most photos simply did not attract many. “So we were quite disappointed. Why aren’t people interested in nude photos?” Lu said.
“The deeper reason is that although these photos are nude, they are not sexy. The women in them are not sexy. The type of bodies that they depict are not subject to male gaze. They are not to be fantasized [about], and they are not feminine enough.” She argued that because these depictions of “stubborn, calm and angry” women “cannot really be consumed by men,” they failed to be disseminated.
From the incident, Lu learned that when women in China’s patriarchal society try to give their own definitions of their bodies, and to challenge “the sexiness as the only rule,” the society refuses to listen to them. She emphasized the necessity of body resistance, given that women in China are suffering from oppression in the form of “bodily hardships.” “The bodies are these suppressed women’s last and sometimes only resort to resistance,” she said.
China does not seem to lack grassroots feminist initiatives, and many are creative in their ways. In 2013, Lu supported a group of Chinese female university students and their play titled “Our Vaginas, Ourselves” to advocate for women’s sexual independence. Unfortunately, in mainstream online media platforms, photos of them holding signs about “What My Vagina Says” received mostly criticism.
Linking the two similar events, Lu concluded: “For the women who cannot be used, the public wants to ignore them. And for the women who refuse to be used and directly challenge men’s sexual power, the public gives them harsh criticism.”
These incidents also shed light on the social stigmatization Chinese women are facing today, which simply expects them to carry out familial duties. In fact, Lü pointed out that China’s current chairman Xi Jinping explicitly expressed that at a news conference in 2012.
Feminists in China were astounded. For Lu, this shows something more than the state’s warning of its own feminists. “It has a deeper connotation, which is that the state, through requiring women to stabilize the family, can stabilize the whole nation,” she said.
Apparently, the Chinese government’s efforts to push back feminism have only increased in recent years. In 2015, five of Lu’s colleagues were arrested and detained for a month for organizing a protest on public transportations to call attention to sexual harassment on these very areas. According to Lu, for the state they became “troublemakers,” and their actions were “threats to stabilization and the manager of this stabilization, the state.”
Actions have become harder for Lu and her fellow activists. Nevertheless, the large number of “ordinary Chinese feminists” did not give up. “We are in an unprecedented age,” Lu said. “From 2012, I’ve witnessed how fast the Chinese feminist community is growing.”
Today, many among them are women who are highly educated and live in bigger cities. Their anger has even led to the creation of the term “straight men cancer (*=(k❊ڈ),” which has its own Wikipedia page now, as a criticism of male chauvinists and sexists in China.
Still, there are existing obstacles for the many feminist activists in China. For Lu, they tend to lack knowledge about the living conditions of the lower class people, the pervasive role played by the state in gender inequality and the ability to “turn their anger into action.”
Importantly, the pressure does not only come from within. Lu argued that most people here in the U.S. are probably unaware of the impact of Trump’s election on women rights’ movements in China.
“Trump’s election is seen by a lot of chauvinist men to be signifying the defeat of women and feminism,” she said. “On the Chinese internet, the attack against feminism has upgraded to a new level after November of 2016.”
After her media platform “Feminist Voices” was censored and silenced for 30 days last year, and seeing the support from around the world she received during that time, Lu co-founded and registered a new organization called “Chinese Feminist Collectives” in New York City.
“For us, the contact with our friends back in China is essential,” she said at the post-event dinner at Chellis House. “If you are an overseas organization and lack the contact with domestic communities, the things you say lose their value.”
Women’s protests throughout China have led Lu to realize that “the rise of China is happening at the cost of extreme hardships of women.” In response to what the next step for feminists in China is, Lu said that the most important thing is to survive and “to live longer than our opponents.” She also believes that it is the time for “guerrilla wars,” and to “keep ‘sabotaging’” whenever they get the chance to intervene.
Her organization is currently planning to host feminist training sessions for high school students in Beijing. “In the face of the very harsh political environment, what we are doing is to continuously expand our community temporally and spatially,” she said.
(04/27/17 3:30am)
Last weekend, April 22-23, the golf teams headed straight south for a two-hour car ride down US Route 7 to the familiar confines of the Taconic Golf Club in Williamstown, Mass., for the Williams Spring Invitational. Both teams finished third, with the women’s squad wrapping up the 2016-17 campaign with a two-day total of 641 and the men’s squad getting one last match under their belts before NESCACs, shooting a collective 593.
On the women’s side, the always reliable Katharine Fortin ’18 was the Panthers’ low scorer. Fortin shot 154 for the weekend and tied for fifth in individual play. She shot below 80 in both of her rounds with a 76 on Saturday and a 78 on Sunday.
First-years Blake Yaccino ’20 and Chloe Levins ’20 ended their rookie seasons on high notes, as Yaccino finished just outside of the individual top 10 shooting a 161 for the weekend. She was one-under 80 on Sunday. Levins had a solid outing on Saturday as she went into the clubhouse with a 78, but fell off of her pace on Sunday as she shot an 85 to tally a 163 for the weekend.
Helen Daley ’19 shot a 168 for the weekend and Hope Matthews ’18 shaved four strokes off of her Saturday score with a strong second round on Sunday, bringing her two-day total to 170 to round things out for the Panthers.
Theo Yoch ’17, the team’s lone senior, competed in her last collegiate match and put together one of the best weekends of her time in the program, as she walked off of the course Sunday with a weekend total of 162 on her scorecard.
Meanwhile, the men’s squad got one last chance to play in a competitive setting before they head back down US Route 7 to play at Taconic again this weekend, April 29-30, in search of their fourth-straight NESCAC Championship crown. If they accomplish the feat, it would mark the eighth time in 11 years that the NESCAC Championship trophy will come back to Middlebury.
The top three team finishes on the men’s side of the tournament were Williams, Trinity and Middlebury, with the Panthers 15 strokes off the pace set by the Ephs. Trinity finished with a weekend total of 589, four strokes better than the Panthers. Nonetheless, the team is confident that it can make up those deficits this weekend.
“Winning NESCACs my four years at Middlebury would mean the world,” Rodrigo Andrade ’17 said with an eye toward the playoffs, “especially since I was a walk-on. Middlebury has never won four in a row, and I feel that if we play well, we can win.”
Phil Morin ’19 was more direct in his assessment of the situation. “We’ve got a chance to make history. Let’s do it.”
Reid Buzby ’19 led the way for the Panthers this past weekend, as he was one-under par with a 141 for the weekend to tie for third on the individual board. Next in line for the Panthers was Joe Ko ’18 who shot a 150 for the weekend to tie for eighth.
After shooting a 73 on Saturday, Andrade entered play Sunday sitting just outside of the top five but dropped out of the top 10 as he shot an uncharacteristic 79, his worst round of the season.
Jeffrey Giguere ’20 finished the weekend with a 151 for the Panthers, while David McDaniel ’19 and Morin rounded things out with respective weekend totals of 154 and 159.
This weekend, things get teed off on Saturday midday at Taconic and should wind down by mid-afternoon on Sunday. For those who will be following the team’s progress over the weekend, Buzby enters NESCACs with the hot hand and Andrade is always sure to have a strong showing at the big tournaments. Keep an eye on Giguere as well, as Panther first-years have a knack for recording strong weekends at the conference championships.
(03/10/17 1:39am)
When I engage with fellow students, I start by asking questions. This past week I often asked, or some form of, “do you think that currently, and historically, there has existed a power imbalance between whites and POC’s/poor people, leading to an overvaluation of white voices and an undervaluation of POC/poor ones?” I am pleased to report that in 100 percent of conversations I had, the answer was “yes.” Great, now here is the point: equality and equity are not the same thing — not even close.
This past week I’ve heard, “everyone has a right to their freedom of speech,” or “I don’t agree with him, but I want to hear what he has to say.” With that, I disagree. Allowing everyone to speak freely, especially on matters of race, creates that power imbalance my peers agreed existed, thus, not providing marginalized groups equal paths to success. In economics, the free market equilibrium we see on a supply and demand graph isn’t obtainable because not everyone has the income necessary to participate in said market. Same here. Equality means giving both, whites and marginalized people, the same access to the platform of speech, but equality won’t do anything to solve the ever-growing gap between the valuation of white opinions over the valuation of marginalized ones. Instead, it will continue to fully value and in this case, normalize those opinions that have aided in the creation of institutionalized racism, making it difficult for the marginalized voices to be heard. Equity, on the other hand, is providing a platform, equal or unequal, for people to begin to have access to the same opportunities. It is giving the poor more income in order to participate in a market. Fighting inequity means we need to value the freedom of speech of marginalized people more than the freedom of speech of the oppressive voices such as Charles Murray until we see significant decreases in that gap. The mindset of allowing Charles Murray to speak for the sake of civil discourse and freedom of speech is dangerous as it ignores the fact that certain groups do not have an equally valued platform. As Travis Sanderson ’19 wrote, “opinions are not all created equal”.
As it stands, Donald J. Trump is president; in the “most diverse congress in history” POC’s represent only 102 members despite non-Hispanic whites making up 60 percent of the US population. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2013, the average net worth of a black family was seven percent that of a white family. In a study sponsored by The Student Impact Project based on data from the US census and Bureau of Labor Statistics, they concluded a black college student has the same chance at employment as a white college dropout. In a study conducted by Anderson Cooper of CNN, a white male with a criminal record is just as and sometimes more likely to get a job than an equally qualified person of color with a clean record, and the chances are twice as high when the white applicant has no criminal record. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, in each year from 2009-2016, 80 percent of the stops in NY’s stop-and-frisk were done to blacks and Latinos; 10 percent to whites. The list goes on and the inequity is there and will be there until we decide that the kind of rhetoric that has aided in the creation of these inequities is not tolerated any more. I’m not saying that Charles Murray is the cause of every single problem I highlighted; I’m saying that giving him the platform to spew out the oppressive nature of his rhetoric can be used to validate someone else’s racist views, bringing us back to a pattern of oppression.
This week, my frustration was not with Charles Murray. I have heard and dismissed people like him my entire life. My frustration, sadness and disappointment was with my peers, who were so quick to fight for his right to speak, and tell me “listen to the other side” before considering the pain, hurt and self-doubt his presence was causing me. I beg all of you who are privileged enough to not be frustrated with Murray’s presence to take a piece of your own advice and listen. Listen to the other side, and to the pain and suffering and try to empathize with how Murray has made people feel, and how the protests that occurred were signs of solidarity, not signs of intellectual intolerance. Emotional distress is real; Charles Murray’s findings are not.
On Thursday, I was proud of my fellow protesters. For the first time at Middlebury I didn’t feel alone, and I hope we don’t let the violence enacted by a few non-Middlebury members mask what I believe to have been the most beautiful demonstration of rhetorical resilience. President of Middlebury Laurie L. Patton wrote, “let’s make our conversations authentic and resilient. Resilience is the ability to change and grow in response to our environment.” Well, Thursday was our response. We felt the pain and saw the danger in having Charles Murray, and we grew to make our response authentic and resilient.
(11/25/16 12:39am)
What is the link between rural spaces and urban communities, and what relevance does this hold for social justice and sustainability work today? As globalization takes hold in ever more remote corners of the world, the relationship between people and places once perceived as wholly separate entities has become increasingly interconnected and interdependent. On Friday, Nov. 18, students, faculty, staff and community members gathered for a lecture and discussion aimed at unpacking this issue. Entitled “Land Trust Innovation in Service to Changing Urban Community Needs,” the talk was a part of the Franklin Environmental Center’s year-long exploration of urban innovations and sustainable solutions.
The event began with an overview by law professor and conservation attorney Jessica Jay, who works to protect environmentally significant lands in Colorado and the Rock Mountain West. She explained that the land trust community is engaged in a new, dynamic vision: to better understand community dynamics and more effectively serve diverse populations. The goal of this evolving, innovative work is to be responsive, reactive and proactive to the unique needs of each community.
“We are taking on roles that may not have typically been viewed as our roles in the land trust administration,” Jay stated. “But it’s an opportunity to take on a challenge and social obligation.”
Land trusts can enhance public good by increasing access to clean air, shelter and green spaces for everyone. Often referred to as the “new frontier” of conservation, the vision described by Jay requires that land trust administrators look at old property through new lens and innovate in response to changing community needs, particularly in urban areas. This involves the re-development or un-development of certain parcels of land.
For instance, administrators evaluating polluted properties may identity an eco-friendly way to reuse a building, or relocate it to a place where it will be better utilized. A unique form of social entrepreneurship, this transformation within the land trust community is an obligation that state and national administrations have not yet taken on.
“The work is incumbent on cities, states, nonprofits, institutions of higher educations and individuals more than ever,” Jay explained.
Following Jay’s introduction, Gil Livingston, President of the Vermont Land Trust, grounded the issue in a local story. He began his speech with a candid observation.
“Frankly, I think it’s kind of ironic that a white guy is here to talk about an urban story in a state that is 97 percent Caucasian,” Livingston said.
Yet it is precisely the unexpected intersection of the rural and the urban that makes land trust innovation an issue relevant to all, even to residents of a small college town in Vermont.
A non-profit environmental organization with a huge stake in local affairs, the Vermont Land Trust impacts over 10 percent of the state through conservation holdings. As its mission statement articulates, “Whether these places are dairy or vegetable farms, forests or wetlands, sledding hills or swimming spots, the Vermont Land Trust is working to protect the land that gives Vermont its rural character and makes our state so special.”
As part of the broader, pioneering movement within land trust administration, the Vermont Land Trust is actively engaged in communities where they hold land, fighting for social justice at a time when residents need it most. To demonstrate this, Livingston pointed to the case of Pine Island Farm, a Vermont Land Trust holding that began as a conventional dairy and has since evolved into a goat and vegetable farm operated by and for the refugee community.
How did this transformation come about? The Burlington Refugee Settlement Program has concentrated hundreds of people into one small area of Vermont. When Pine Island Farm, a traditional dairy operation with highly productive soil and a variety of wetland features, went up for auction in 2012, the Vermont Land Trust purchased it with the intention to “serve people who are not ordinarily beneficiaries — namely, individuals who fled violence or lives of exile to seek integration within the United States.
Now, through a six-year agreement, the farm is leased at no cost to the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, and managed by a multicultural group of residents from the Burlington and Winooski area. Multigenerational families raise goats, chickens and garden crops on the land, representing countries including Bhutan, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Congo and Burma. Additionally, in a model driven by affordability rather than by commercial profits, approximately 350 goats are sold to refugee families in the area each year.
The primary focus of this land trust project is a sense of food security and permanency for new Americans, in contrast to the uncertainty and displacement that these individuals have experienced throughout their lives. Judging by the growth in production on Pine Island Farm (for instance, the number of goats has jumped from 60 to 400), the partnership between the Vermont Land Trust and the Association of Africans Living in Vermont has been successful. That is not to say that the transition from a commercial to a community-managed system has been devoid of challenges, however.
Navigating the power dynamics within a large organization, as well as the various cultural perspectives that influence business styles, has been a work in progress for all parties involved. Additionally, while the land trust administration is accustomed to overseeing up to 80 conservation projects per year, such a high-speed cycle would not support local leadership. As a result, the organization has had to adopt a slower pace of management, which better supports its mission of community-based operations.
To address the challenges that have arisen thus far, plans are in the works to hire a long-term intercultural coordinator, evaluate if the current model of access and affordability is sufficient and potentially grant direct ownership of Pine Island Farm to the refugees.
Livingston emphasized that within the continuously evolving movement of land trust innovation, mistakes are inevitable, and difficulties are to be expected. In light of the recent presidential election, however, an unwavering commitment to social justice is crucial.
In his closing lines, Livingston articulated three questions that have and will continue to inform decisions concerning the Pine Island Farm community: How is history manifested in current ownership patterns? How is structural privilege embedded in the land conservation community? And how do race, power and privilege dynamics influence the places where we work?
The challenges accompanying the transformation of Pine Island Farm show that there are no easy answers to these questions. Through small but purposeful steps, however, the work of social justice-oriented land trust organizations may begin to make sense of these complexities, creating public good and opportunities for all.
(04/21/16 2:58pm)
The College hosted the tenth annual Spring Student Symposium in McCardell Bicentennial Hall on Friday, April 15. The event, which ran throughout the day, featured an array of oral presentations, posters, artwork and other performances by current students. Topics ranged from Abraham Lincoln’s speeches to Zambian gardening programs, encompassing a wide variety of academic disciplines.
Mitchell Perry ’16 delivered an oral presentation entitled “Down with DOMA: America’s Evolution on Marriage Equality Policy.” The presentation, which Perry adapted from his Political Science senior thesis, focused on the methods by which same-sex marriage advocates reshaped public opinion on the issue. Using Vermont, California and Minnesota as case studies, Perry determined which techniques caused the greatest shifts in public support for same-sex marriage.
“As a gay male who grew up in Minnesota, I came out right as Minnesota was voting on a ban on gay marriage, and they defeated that ban,” Perry said. “And then, six months later, they passed same-sex marriage. So for me, that shift had a lot of personal reasons why I thought it was really interesting. But from a political science perspective, the rapid shift in marriage equality policy and public opinion is just fascinating.”
Perry said he relished the opportunity provided by the symposium to showcase his work on a larger scale.
“My thesis research allowed me to pursue [my interest]. But what the symposium does that’s special is give you a venue to share something that matters to you personally. You’ve spent hours and hours researching it, and your friends are genuinely excited about the academic pursuit you’re doing. We always go to plays, we always go to friends’ sports games, but how often do you get to applaud somebody or give support to your friend for an academic interest?”
Morgan Raith ’16.5 presented her senior thesis work for Architectural Studies. Her poster, titled “A New Approach to Middlebury,” contained a plan for a new public transportation center in Middlebury, featuring indoor play spaces, including a climbing gym and dance studio.
“Making the poster was the easiest part,” she said. “Putting all of the designs together and figuring out how to visually communicate my ideas — that’s always a challenge.”
She continued, “Coming to the symposium is really fun, because normally we’re just presenting our designs in Johnson and a couple people come, and it’s relatively quiet. But it’s awesome to be placed in an arena where so many other amazing research opportunities and projects are happening.”
Weston Uram ’18 based his project titled “My Emoji” on the Kimoji app recently released by Kim Kardashian.
“It made over $80 million in a week, and it’s baffling that people are actually spending money and engaging with it,” Uram said. “And what does it mean for someone to take that body representation and send it to somebody else, therefore identifying with Kim herself? So I was like, ‘well I can just do that — I can just create that application.’”
Uram’s presentation included a television screen displaying samples of his work, including a stylized depiction of his own winking face.
Lisa Gates, associate dean for fellowships and research, helped organize the event as co-chair of the Symposium’s Planning Committee, and seemed to share the excitement of the hundreds of others gathered at Bicentennial Hall.
“Someone once described this as ‘like a party about thinking,’” Gates said. “It’s really an amazing opportunity to learn about the diversity of topics and areas our students are researching and thinking about. It’s really impressive to see the kind of work that they’re doing.”
“It’s not evaluative — you’re not being graded,” Gates said. “So it’s really a chance to share, learn from and just to celebrate.”
(03/23/16 3:22pm)
A live lottery for the Ridgeline Townhouse Application Process took place in Dana Auditorium on Monday, March 21. 10 of the 12 units were offered, granting 80 senior students to live in the new Ridgeline Townhouses opening this fall. The two remaining units will be included in the regular room draw process through BannerWeb.
Located along Adirondack View Road, the complex consists of three buildings, each with four separate townhouse units. Each unit contains eight single rooms with full-size beds, a kitchen, living room and laundry appliances. Construction on the project began in the fall of 2015, marking the first major construction project the College has seen since the addition of the Atwater Residence Halls in 2004.
“As the townhouses are a new offering at Middlebury, the Residential Life Committee thought that for the opening year the housing should be offered through a live draw rather than the online Large Block draw process,” said Doug Adams, Associate Dean of Students for Residential and Student Life. “This process was recommended to the committee by several student groups when the housing was announced in the spring of 2015.”
To enter the lottery, applicants were required to assemble groups of eight students and rank their preferred townhouse units. The application opened online on March 4, and both juniors and seniors were permitted to form groups. However, the application noted that junior and senior-junior mix groups would be drawn only if less than ten senior-only applications were submitted. 33 senior groups submitted applications, and, as such, one group of juniors and two senior-junior mix groups were removed from the lottery.
In the same manner as the process for off-campus housing, the live, public lottery assigned each group a number that was entered into a bingo cage, drawn by Adams himself. The first ten numbers were granted townhouses for the upcoming semester.
Two of the units, which consist of singles and blocked doubles, were not offered in the live-draw lottery. The decision to leave two units available arose following discussions with student organizations that argued against excluding students who may not be able to assemble a group of eight students but still want to live in the complex.
Rooms in these units will be included in the online room draw, which begins on April 18.
(03/16/16 8:56pm)
This article is not meant to be comprehensive as it neither discusses the depth and complexities of policing, prosecution and incarceration nor the intersections of identities. We encourage you to explore how trans and gender non-conforming people, queer people, people with disabilities and impoverished people might acutely bear the negative impacts of mass criminalization.
Nowhere is it more apparent that we do not live in a post-racial society than in the United States criminal justice system. At an incarceration rate of over 700 per 100,000 people, the United States holds five percent of the world’s population, yet a staggering 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population (and one third of the world’s incarcerated women). This is not an easy statistic to grasp, considering that the incarceration rates of China and Russia combined are still less than that of the United States. In absolute numbers of people under correctional control, the United States again takes the gold with over 2.3 million people incarcerated and nearly five million more on probation.
Racial discrimination marks every stage of the criminal justice process, from arrest to sentencing to incarceration. While the Fourth Amendment in theory “guarantees [the] right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects” and guards “against unreasonable searches and seizures,” its protections have been largely undermined in recent decades. Beginning with the Supreme Court’s 1968 decision in Terry v. Ohio, legal restraints on police searches began to soften. As Michelle Alexander articulates in The New Jim Crow, so long as a police officer has “reasonable articulable suspicion” that a person may be involved in unlawful activity, “it is constitutionally permissible to stop, question, and frisk [them]—even in the absence of probable cause.” Take New York City’s infamous stop-and-frisk practices, for example. In 2012, 55 percent of the 500,000 people stopped and frisked were Black, despite the fact that the city’s Black population was only 25 percent of the whole population. Although the NYPD reports that rates of stop-and-frisk have dropped within the past three years, over 50 percent of stops target Black people, with a rate of innocence above 80 percent (NYCLU). In Arizona, indigenous peoples were 3.25 times more likely to be stopped and searched, despite no correlation with illegal conduct. According to a database of civil rights complaints brought against law enforcement officers, U.S. attorneys have declined to prosecute cases 96 percent of the time (Justice Department, National Caseload Data; Pittsburgh Tribune Review).
The racial component of police violence can be difficult to track given that many law enforcement agencies do not report arrest-related homicides by race. In 2011, the CDC reported that Black people were more than twice as likely as white people to be killed by law enforcement. Recent estimates from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) indicate that this racial disparity could be even greater. Notwithstanding the potential margin for error in these statistics, the numbers fail to expose the gruesome and violent actions that U.S. law enforcement inflicts on Black and Brown people. As just one example of such action, Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old holding an airsoft gun in a Cleveland park, was shot and killed by two police officers before their patrol car had even come to a stop. Rice received no first aid from the offending officers, and died the following day of gunshot wounds. The officer was not indicted. It is difficult to argue that the same fate would have befallen a white child in Rice’s shoes; in a recording released after the homicide, the 911 dispatcher asks twice whether the suspect was Black or white before sending officers. Rice’s 14-year-old sister arrived at the scene and was immobilized by the police officers, handcuffed and put in the police car, unable to bring final moments of comfort to her little brother.
Incidents of police brutality that do not result in homicide are even more difficult to track. Emergency room records reveal that from 2001 to 2012, Black people suffered five times as many nonfatal injuries from law enforcement than white people. Furthermore, a study conducted by the BJS in 2008 found that “the percentage of Black people who reported experiencing the use or threat of force during their most recent contact with police was nearly three times that of white people.” These are the very people that U.S. police forces pledge “to protect and serve.” Marissa Alexander from Jacksonville, Florida, a survivor of domestic abuse, fired a warning shot through a wall, injuring or killing no one, after her husband threatened to kill her. She feared for her life since her husband had physically abused her. She was sentenced to 20 years in jail. Activism surrounding the case helped get her released after three years of serving her sentence. Florida’s “stand your ground” law didn’t seem to apply to her in the way that it applied to George Zimmerman.
Incarceration and police practices in the U.S. reflect highly racialized criminalization patterns. The U.S. imprisons a larger percentage of its Black American population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. Latino, Indigenous and Black men are incarcerated at three, four and five times the rate of white men, respectively. This disparity extends to women as well, with Black and Indigenous women incarcerated at a rate six times that of white women and Latina women incarcerated at over two times the rate of white women (Bureau of Justice Statistics).
Like the racial overtones to police violence, racial disparities also plague sentencing practices. Though the War on Drugs may not be the primary driver of the mass incarceration boom, it is perhaps the most striking example of disproportionate treatment of Black people under the criminal justice system. Despite evidence that the rates of drug use and sale do not vary significantly among Black and white people, Black people are disproportionately arrested, charged, convicted and imprisoned for drug crimes. Three-strike policies, mandatory minimums and overall harsher drug sentencing laws mean that drug arrests that previously did not result in extensive time in prison are now four times more likely to result in prison sentences.
According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, 21.2 percent of prisoners in the U.S. (roughly 465,000 people) are un-sentenced at any given time, i.e. held in jail or prison on bail, usually awaiting trial or sentencing. If someone is unable to pay for bail, even though in the eye of the law they are “innocent until proven guilty,” they are still imprisoned, unable to go to work or take care of family members. To cite one case, 16-year-old Kalief Browder, arrested on robbery charges, spent three years in jail without a trial. Two of those years were spent in solitary confinement. Browder committed suicide two years after being released.
Incarceration’s detrimental effects are not isolated to the sentenced individual; consequences ripple within their family and community. Not only do families of incarcerated people generally lose an income, they then have to pay, on average, about $13,000 in fines and court fees for their family member, as shown in the report “Who Pays: The True Cost of Incarceration on Families.” Costs continue throughout the sentence as families pay exorbitant phone rates and travel fees for visitation. These costs impose a tremendous burden.
Once marked by the criminal justice system, a person is also subject to an onslaught of legal discrimination. A person who has been arrested or incarcerated can be barred from jobs and schooling because of requirements to “check the box” on applications. They can also be excluded from SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps), denied public housing benefits and stripped of their voting rights. Moreover, conditions of probation and parole can dictate where a person may live or be at any given time, with whom they can associate and when they must be in certain places. All of this is to say that even despite the most earnest attempts to reintegrate into communities, legal and structural impediments make this extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Hundreds of books on mass criminalization and its racialized components have been published and we urge everyone to further their research on this topic. The implications of what we have highlighted, however, are this: while the majority of Middlebury students regularly break the law without fear of consequences, when Black, Latino and Indigenous people behave identically, their hyper-policed bodies and minds are more likely to be criminalized, disrupting the lives of individuals and communities they interact with. Mass incarceration is part of a chain of institutions designed to strip the constitutional rights of people of color. In other words, law enforcement is not one bad apple within an otherwise functioning system; the entire tree is rotten from its core. These incarceration statistics are the synthesis of quota- and profit-driven policing, over-policing in communities of color and systematic racial discrimination within a judicial system designed in many ways to disenfranchise Black, Latino and Native people. As white people, it is essential to keep asking, whom does law enforcement protect? And how do we maintain these systems of policing and pre-emptive criminalization on the basis of race?
What we are reading:
“Thanks to Republicans, Nearly a Quarter of Florida’s Black Citizens Can’t Vote,” (The Intercept).
“Kalief Browder, Held at Rikers Island for 3 Years Without Trial, Commits Suicide,” (The New York Times).
“Native Americans are the Unseen Victims of a Broken US Justice System,” (Quartz).
“Obama Bans the Box,” (MSNBC).
Senghor, Shaka. (Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison).
Aliza Cohen ’17 is from Chattanooga, TN
Juliette Gobin ’16 is from Harrison, NY
Emma Ronai-Durning ’18 is from Salem, OR
Anna Iglitzin ’17.5 is from Seattle, WA
Annie Taylor ’16 is from San Carlos, CA
(03/10/16 3:58am)
The men’s basketball team’s Cinderella run came to a halt on Saturday, March 5 with a 74-72 loss to Keene St. at Stockton University in Galloway, NJ. The previous night, March 4, Middlebury held off 24th-ranked Salisbury’s comeback bid with a 75-73 upset victory, but on Saturday it was the Panthers’ comeback attempt that fell short.
After earning a bid to the NCAA Tournament with a surprising run through the NESCAC Tournament, few outside of Middlebury expected the Panthers to advance beyond the first round. Their first round opponent, the Salisbury Sea Gulls, came into the evening with the second-ranked defense in the country and a desire for revenge against the NESCAC — a year ago, Trinity knocked Salisbury out in the second round of the NCAA Tournament — but Middlebury jumped out to an early lead.
Playing in the early game of the evening, with host Stockton set to play Keene St. later that night, only a sparse crowd got to witness Middlebury’s hot start. The Panthers led 18-7 after 7:22 of play, thanks in large part to Matt Daley ’16 who had four points and a dunk in the opening moments of the game and Matt St. Amour ’17 who had six early points.
Throughout the first half, Middlebury was able to stifle the Sea Gulls’ offense. Salisbury fired up 15 three pointers in the first half alone but only connected on two of those attempts. Meanwhile, the Panthers pounded the ball inside, relying on their size advantage to shoot 14-25 (56.0 percent) from the floor and out rebound their opponent 22-12 en route to a 36-25 halftime advantage.
Salisbury came storming back out of the break, making it a 43-41 game a little over five minutes into the second half. The Panthers tried to stretch the lead, but the Sea Gulls kept fighting back, getting within one point at 62-61 with 4:54 to play.
Nursing a 73-70 lead with under 30 seconds to go, the Panthers fumbled possession and Salisbury’s Justin May came away with the steal. At the other end Middlebury denied the Sea Gulls a chance at a game-tying three pointer, but Salisbury’s All-Conference forward Gordon Jeter laid the ball in off a rebound to make it 73-72 with nine seconds to go. Salisbury then immediately fouled St. Amour on the inbounds pass, sending him to the line where he calmly sank two free throws.
Down by three, the Sea Gulls were on the hunt for a game-tying three point attempt, but St. Amour wisely fouled Salisbury’s point guard Adrien Straughn to send him to the line for two foul shots. Straughn hit the first to make it a two-point game and then intentionally missed the second, hoping to create a tip-in opportunity. The ball ricocheted around the rim and bounced out of bounds with a measly fraction of a second remaining and Salisbury in possession. The Sea Gulls attempted a last ditch effort for a tip in, but the release was too slow and the shot was waved off, giving the Panthers a thrilling 75-73.
Amidst his game-high 27 points, St. Amour became the 20th player in Middlebury men’s basketball history to hit the 1,000 point mark, finishing the game with 1,006. Daley (13 points, six rebounds) and Zach Baines ’19 (14 points) joined St. Amour in double figures, and Jack Daly ’18 grabbed a game-high 11 boards. The Panthers crushed Salisbury on the boards, snagging 37 to the Sea Gulls’ 26, and shot a terrific 21-26 (80.8 percent) from the free throw stripe.
The Panthers felt good about their Second Round match up with Keene St., whom Middlebury had beaten 83-74 earlier in the season on the road, but the Owls proved to be on top of their game this time around.
Middlebury struggled to take care of the basketball in the first half, usually a point of strength for the Panthers. Keene St. forced eight first half turnovers, which allowed the Owls to take 16 more field goals than Middlebury in the first half. The Owls were also lights out in the first period, shooting 17-38 (44.7 percent), and Middlebury failed to find any rhythm offensively. All told, Keene St. entered the break up 41-29 with Sweet 16 aspirations in their sights.
The script completely flipped in the second half, and the Owls sweet shooting was the only thing that kept them afloat. Middlebury hammered the boards, out rebounding Keene St. 30-13, and took care of the basketball, committing just four turnovers.
Middlebury chipped at the Keene St. lead over the course of the second half, playing with a single digit deficit for most of the frame. With 1:25 left, though, the Panthers’ hopes began to fade as Keene held on to a seven-point lead. Then St. Amour injected some life into his team. Despite the team’s struggles from the three point arc all night long, St. Amour confidently jacked up a three that found the twine to bring the Panthers within four, 70-66.
The Panthers entered full press mode, looking to cause turnovers. Matt Daley fouled Keene St.’s Ty Nichols on the next possession, and Nichols made both free throws, again appearing to lock up the victory. On the other end the Panthers looked for the first clean shot from deep, and it was Jake Brown ’17 who got an open look from the left corner. His attempt went far too long, but Jack Daly fought his way into possession for an offensive board. Amidst a sea of opposing Owls, Daly found Brown in the exact same spot who hoisted up another trey and this time canned it to make it a 72-69 game and Middlebury immediately called a timeout.
Almost as if it were scripted, Keene St.’s inbounder did the unthinkable on the following play and made a risky, looping pass towards center court that Jack Daly was able to tip and St. Amour corralled for the steal. Without hesitation, St. Amour took it to the rim for an easy two, making it 72-71. Daley fouled on the inbounds, sending Keene St. to the line with 40 seconds left. Keene St.’s Lucas Hammel sunk both to make it 74-71.
Back on offense, Daly erred on his three point attempt, but Matt Daley kept the play alive with an offensive board and found St. Amour who was fouled. Normally money from the charity stripe, having shot over 80 percent all season, St. Amour made his first but missed his second attempt and the Owls came down with the board.
Up 74-72 with 20 seconds to go, Keene St. had a chance to ice the game. However, the pressure must have gotten to Keene St.’s Nate Howard, because the big man missed both free throws. Jack Daly grabbed the board and pushed the ball up the court where Middlebury called a timeout with 11 seconds to go needing a bucket of any kind.
Inbounding from the left side of the court, the Panthers ran Brown off of a double screen but he was covered well. St. Amour followed Brown and received the inbounds pass. His first look at a potential game-winning three was quickly closed off by a Keene St. defender, so he found Daley near the free-throw line. Daley made a move toward the rim and tried an off balance shot that careened off the cylinder and bounced to Daly. His put back was no good, but somehow the ball once more fell into the Panthers’ hands as the final seconds ticked away. St. Amour, the team’s go-to scorer all season long, had one last chance to tie the ball game - a spinning, fadeaway jumper with three defenders bearing down on him - from the left short corner. Unfortunately his attempt hit the front of the rim with the Owls ahead, 74-72, as the final buzzer sounded.
On the night, St. Amour racked up a game-high 18 points, while Jake Brown had 17, Daley had 13 points and 13 boards and Daly had 12 points and 11 boards.
(03/10/16 3:56am)
Last weekend, March 4-6, David Cromwell ’16 and Wyatt French ’17 represented the men’s squash team at the College Squash Association individual championships at Chelsea Piers in Stamford, Conn. Cromwell and French won the consolation championships in their respective pools within the Molloy Cup draw. The CSA’s top 16 players play for the national title in the Pool Cup draw, while individuals ranked 17 to 80 play in the Hoehn Cup draws. Heading into the weekend, Cromwell and French were ranked 55th and 56th nationally.
Both Cromwell and French drew tough opponents in their first matches of the weekend. Friday morning, March 4, French opened against Trinity’s Afeeq Ismail, who holds the 41st ranking nationally and is rated a high 5.6 by U.S. Squash.
Even in the underdog role, French played with his characteristic grit and stole the first game from Ismail, winning 11-5.
“I think I did take him by surprise in the first game with good length and high pace,” French said. However, as one of the top players in the country, Ismail bounced back and defeated French in each of the next three sets.
“It was great to play Afeeq [to begin the weekend],” French said. “However, in the last three games, he wore me down and did a great job of keeping me under pressure.”
Meanwhile, Cromwell took to the court on Friday morning to face off with Princeton’s Cody Cortes to begin his tournament slate. Cortes played much of his first collegiate season in the second slot on the Tigers’ ladder. Cromwell spent the first two sets adjusting to the lefty, dropping both 11-6.
“I was a bit thrown off because he was a lefty and I haven’t played many lefties this year,” Cromwell said.
Cromwell managed to squeak out a 13-11 victory in a back-and-forth third set, but dropped the fourth set 11-7 to lose the match.
“I didn’t play particularly well and I never really settled into a rhythm and didn’t find ways to really hurt him so he took the match,” Cromwell continued. “I was frustrated because that [match] was definitely winnable, but I knew I had to move past it. It helped clarify some things I needed to do if I wanted to win the next one.”
And win the next one both Cromwell and French did. They were both up early Saturday, March 5, to prepare for 9 and 9:45 a.m. matches, respectively. In the first round of the Molloy A group consolation bracket, French went up against Dickinson freshman Brian Hamilton. Hamilton was no match for French, as the Middlebury number two took down Dickinson’s number two in straight sets.
Cromwell began his run in the Molloy B group consolation bracket by facing C.J. Smith, a senior from Colby who was named second team all-NESCAC earlier last month. After winning the first set 11-6, Cromwell had to mount a comeback against Smith. The second set slipped from Cromwell’s grasp, as he narrowly lost 12-10. It appeared as if Smith would take the match after he edged ahead two sets to one with a big 11-3 third set victory, but true to form Cromwell held out. The Panther senior battled back and controlled the rest of the match, winning the fourth set 11-8 and the decisive fifth set 11-5.
With their victories, Cromwell and French then played again that afternoon. Once again, French steamrolled an outmatched opponent, MIT’s number one Justin Restivo, in straight sets. Cromwell was tasked with facing a familiar foe, Brown’s Jack Blasberg. The Panthers have already narrowly defeated Brown twice this season, the most recent bout coming two weekends ago, Feb. 26-28, in the CSA team championships 15th-16th-place playoff. Cromwell played Blasberg on one of those two occasions, during the Middlebury round robin, Jan. 16, and won a closely contested four set victory.
This time, Cromwell had to overcome a hamstring issue aggravated over the course of the weekend. Nevertheless, an extra hurdle could not stop Cromwell. He took the first game 12-10 and then fought back after dropping the second and third sets with another 12-10 win to even the match at two sets apiece. He took the match with an 11-6 fifth set victory.
French and Cromwell entered the championship matches of their pools on Sunday, March 6, looking to end two brilliant seasons with an exclamation point.
This time it was French who took on the familiar face, Williams number three Galen Squires, who French has had a lot of success against this season.
“I definitely had a mental edge going into the match because I had already beaten him twice,” said French “He is a really solid player and it was fun to play him again. But I did play pretty well and he was also less consistent than usual.”
French made clean work of Squires, beating the Williams senior in straight sets for the third time this season.
Cromwell’s final collegiate match came against Rochester’s Lawrence Kuhn, a high quality freshman who spent much of the season hidden at fifth on the Rochester ladder despite his semi-professional experience in his home-country, South Africa, and the fact that he finished the season ranked 34th nationally. Yet, it was Cromwell who looked the part of the higher-ranked favorite on Sunday morning.
Cromwell and Kuhn swapped 11-8 victories to start off the match.
“I had a hamstring issue heading into the match, and I knew I had to capitalize on opportunities and cut the points a bit shorter than usual,” Cromwell said.
Cromwell used the attacking strategy to propel himself to victory, as he defeated Kuhn 11-6 in the third set before finishing him off in the fourth.
“Turns out,” Cromwell quipped, “that attacking style serves me well. I should play like that more often.”
Cromwell is not done, though. After an inspiring, stellar senior season in which he traversed the Panthers’ ladder and won the clinching match against Brown in the 15th-16th-place playoff in the top slot, he will look to continue playing squash on the pro tour.
“I am taking a couple days off this week,” Cromwell said of his future plans, “and then I will continue training because [next week, March 14] I head down to Virginia to compete in the U.S. closed nationals.”
Cromwell then plans to train rigorously for the rest of the spring under the watchful eye of Coach Mark Lewis, who formerly played on the tour himelf.
“[Coach Lewis] is going to guide my development,” Cromwell said, “which will help me keep a steady rate of improvement before I start playing in tournaments this summer.”
French will return to the team next year for his senior season. Having played most of the season in the third slot and with Andrew Jung ’16 and Cromwell graduating, French will likely occupy one of the top slots on Middlebury’s ladder again next season.
“It does seem like I will play high on the ladder next year,” French said. Yet, he echoed what team has said since the season ended with six recruits set to join the team next season. “Everyone is very motivated to improve.”
(03/03/16 4:26am)
On Thursday, Feb. 26, the Vermont Senate voted 17-12 to approve a bill legal- izing the recreational use of marijuana in Vermont. The bill, S.241, brings Vermont one step closer to be coming the fifth U.S. state to legalize marijuana. It will now proceed to the State House of Representatives, where the Judiciary Committee will begin to iron out details in the next several
weeks.
According to the bill, lawmakers “...recognize legitimate federal concerns about cannabis reform,” and seek to pass legislation establishing a pathway to legal access to cannabis in Vermont.
The bill lists numerous problems related to prohibition, including “distribution of cannabis to persons under 21 years of age,” revenue of sales going to “criminal enterprises” that are associated with increased lawlessness and violence, “drugged driving and the exacerbation of any other adverse public health consequences” and the possession or cultivation of cannabis on public or federal property.
If approved in its current form, S.241 would create a system for marijuana taxation and regulation, allowing Vermonters who are 21 and older to possess up to an ounce at a time. The bill would take effect beginning on Jan. 2, 2018.
Tax revenue would help fund law-enforcement and drug treatment programs, and permits would be issued for up to thirty marijuana stores throughout the state. Additionally, an amendment passed on Thursday, Feb. 25 allows for the expansion of cultivator licenses, which will enable more individual citizens to grow their own marijuana.
In the past several years, marijuana legalization has emerged as a key issue in state politics. In his final State of the State address in January, Governor Peter Shumlin called for legalization, and has endorsed the current legislation.
“The War on Drugs has failed when it comes to marijuana prohibition,” Shumlin said in the speech. “Under the status quo, marijuana use is widespread, Vermonters have little difficulty procuring it for personal use, and the shadows of prohibition make it nearly impossible to address key issues like prevention, keeping marijuana out of the hands of minors and dealing with those driving under the influence who are already on Vermont’s roads.”
“With over 80,000 Vermonters admitting to using marijuana on a monthly basis, it could not be more clear that the current system is broken,” Shumlin continued. “I am proud that the Senate took [the] lessons learned from states that have gone be- fore us, asked the right questions, and passed an incredibly thoughtful, common-sense plan that will bring out of the shadows an activity that one in seven Vermonters engage in on a regular basis.”
If the bill were eventually passed, Vermont would become the first state to legalize marijuana through legislative action. The previous four states – Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington – have done so via ballot initiative.
Mark Williams, a Professor of Political Science at the college currently teaching ‘The political economy of drug trafficking’ Political Science course, expressed that the bill would not solve all of Vermont’s problems.
“Legalizing marijuana won’t solve the broader problems of drug abuse or addiction,” Williams wrote in an email, “and it’s unlikely to decrease the number of Vermonters who use this particular drug. However, it would address some negative externalities our current drug policies generate: overcrowded jails/prisons; a rap sheet and jail time for nonviolent marijuana offenders; a thriving black market...”
Unlike some of the previously listed states, Vermont is unique in the level of popular support for marijuana legalization. The Vermont electorate overwhelmingly supports legalization of marijuana; a recent poll from Vermont Public Radio (VPR) showed 55 percent supported legalization, versus only 32 percent opposed. 13 percent of those polled said they were unsure.
Of course, support for legalization amongst government officials is far from universal. Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott, a Republican frontrunner for Governor in the coming election, says the bill raises too many unanswered questions.
“In my opinion, this bill is as much about the money as it is about ending a failed prohibition, and this major policy shift should not be about money and commercialization,” he said in a statement.
Citing unresolved issues such as highway safety and the potential need for “multimillion dollar expansions of our current smoking cessation programs,” Scott advised that Vermont wait a few years to “review the positive and negative effects” of legalization in states that have already completed the process.
Skeptics of the bill have also cited federal law, arguing that because marijuana remains a schedule I substance on the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, legalization at the state level nullifies federal law.
When asked about whether a Republican president might reverse the decision, State Senator John Rogers (D) seemed unperturbed. He cited the Cole memo, a letter written by former Attorney General James Cole, which assures that federal agents will not conduct raids in states that allow “...possession of small amounts of marijuana and provide for the regulation of marijuana production, processing, and sale.”
“I think there’s always concern, but clearly what they have been doing for the last 40 years hasn’t worked,” Rodgers said
in an interview. “I think it’s time for the states to take the lead because the federal government isn’t going to act.”
Others have expressed doubts that the bill will be able to pass the House of Representatives, where support is tepid despite a strong Democratic majority. House Speaker Shap Smith (D) said the bill will need to move through several committees, and that pushing it through the House “will take work.”
“The bill has not come over with a ton of momentum,” Smith said, referring to the Senate’s relatively narrow vote margin. “I think that if you had seen a bill that came over with 20 votes or more, that would have been a different signal.”
Smith has remained pragmatic about legalization, and insisted that if there is not adequate support for the bill, he would not be opposed to delaying marijuana legalization.
If it is clear that we don’t have the support and we can’t get it right this year,” Smith said, “then we’re not going to push something forward that’s not ready for prime time."
Governor Shumlin, however, insisted that there is no good reason for further delaying the legalization process.
“My prediction is, what happened in the Senate may well happen in the House: logic, good information will encourage House members to do what they were elected to do, which is to make their best judgments to protect the safety, health and welfare of the people who elected them."
The bill has also caught the attention of legislators and law-enforcement officials outside Vermont. One such voice was Police Chief George Bell of Cambridge, New York. In an interview with WRGB News, he explained that he would continue to treat
the possession of marijuana as a criminal offense, unless it was prescribed in New York.
In fact, both Massachusetts and Maine will likely conduct a ballot on recreational marijuana legalization this November as well.
“I don’t think anybody in law enforcement at this point knows how they are going to deal with it if it does go in Vermont
like this,” Bell explained in the interview. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D) also opposes recreational marijuana. After the legalization of marijuana in Colorado, Healey artued that an increased rate of auto accidents and fatalities is sufficient evidence to not legalize the drug. “What’s most profound to me is what this means for young people,” Healey told the South Shore paper. She went on to reference the propensity for younger users to abuse the drug in unsafe environments.
Similar legalization efforts have occurred in Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire.
In the Granite state, one bill is pending before a committee of the New Hampshire House. However, similar bills have been killed by the New Hampshire Senate.
(01/21/16 12:30am)
Middlebury swimming and diving has been busy these past few weeks, having competed in four meets and spending the final 10 days of winter break training in Key Largo, Florida.
On Saturday, Dec. 12 the Panther men defeated Springfield 197-69, while the women suffered a close 152-148 loss to the same out-of-conference competitor. Almost a month later, the Panthers traveled to Maine for their next two NESCAC meets against Colby and Bates on Saturday, Jan. 9 and Sunday, Jan. 10, respectively. The Middlebury men’s and women’s teams beat Colby with respective scores of 200-93 and 214-77, but lost to Bates 183-111 (M) and 211-99 (W) the next day. Most recently, Middlebury’s men and women bested Union 150-88 (M) and 140-99 (W) in a non-conference meet at the Natatorium on Saturday, Jan. 16.
The weekend before finals (Dec. 12), the men swam to their first victory of the season against Springfield (197-69), managing to touch the wall first in 12 of the meet’s 14 swimming events. Will Greene ’19 also won in the three and one-meter diving competitions with scores of 240.75 and 210.9, respectively.
Brendan Leech ’19, Stephan Koenigsberger ’16, Bryan Cheuk ’16 and Paul Lagasse ’16 opened the meet with a splash, swimming a 1:37.57 in the 200 medley relay to clinch first place.
The Panther men won every individual freestyle event against Springfield. Michael McGean ’17 dominated the long-distance races, clocking a 4:45.61 and 9:43.60 to win the 500 and 1000 freestyles. Later, Jack Dowling ’19 (1:49.78) barely bested Cheuk (1:49.88) for first place in the 200 freestyle, Lagasse notched a 22.15 in the 50 free to win first with Taylor Moore ’18 just .25 seconds behind him and Jack McLaughlin ’18 (48.72) eked by Lagasse (48.78) to win the 100 free.
Though Justin Cho ’17 fell to Leech (55.11) in the 100 back by less than a second, he was still able to notch a victory in the 50 back (25.66). Koenigsberger was the only Panther to win a breaststroke event with his 27.23 performance in the 50 breast.
Alex Smith ’18 and Cheuk won the 100 and 50 fly, respectively, with times of 55.13 and 23.86. Connor McCormick ’18 also had a fast swim in the 100 fly, coming just .19 seconds behind Smith for second place.
Meanwhile, Springfield squeaked past the Middlebury women to win the meet 152-148. Nevertheless, the Lady Panthers charted seven victories and several top-three finishes during the event. Like in the men’s 200 free, Middlebury’s quartet of Isabel Wyer ’18, Liza MacCowatt ’19, Megan Griffin ’16 and Morgan Burke ’17 swam to a first place finish (1:49.96).
Wyer won both the 100 and 200 free with times of 53.75 and 1:55.61, respectively, while Griffin took the 50 free in just 25.39.
Sarah Bartholomae ’18 took the lead to win both the 50 back (28.85) and the 100 back (1:02.19), and Grace Stimson ’19 placed first in the 400 IM (4:44.23) for the first time in her Middlebury career.
The Panthers’ downfall came in the final relay of the meet, when Burke, Griffin, Stephanie Andrews ’18 and Wyer lost to Springfield in the 200 free relay by just 15 hundredths of a second.
The Panthers emerged from their rigorous winter break training schedule ready to start a weekend of NESCAC competition at Colby on Saturday, Jan. 9. Middlebury’s men and women blew the Mules out of the water with scores of 200-93 and 214-77, respectively.
Greene and Elissa DeNunzio ’18 managed to sweep the diving events on both the one and three-meter platforms, with respective scores of 232.43 and 246.37 (Greene) and 216.08 and 233.95 (DeNunzio). Sophia Allen ’19 finished in second behind DeNunzio in both events as well.
Just as in the Springfield meet, at Colby “[the teams] raced in a sprint format and had a positive outcome,” Head Coach Bob Rueppel said.
Middlebury opened the meet with men’s and women’s victories in the 200 medley relay. Leech, Pla, Dowling and Lagasse swam a 1:41.33 for the men, while the women’s lineup of Bartholomae, MacCowatt, Griffin and Wyer clocked in at 1:52.38 for first place.
In a repeat of the Springfield meet, Cheuk, Cho, Koenigsberger, Leech and McLaughlin swam to first in the 50 fly, 50 back, 50 breast, 100 back and 100 free, respectively. Cheuk also claimed the 50 free title with a time of 22.57.
Like McGean on the men’s side, Alaina Pribis ’19 won both the women’s 500 free (5:22.50) and 1000 free (11:04.17). In fact, the Middlebury women bested Colby in all freestyle races: Burke won the 200 free (1:59.76), Andrews the 100 (56.18) and Griffin the 50 (25.92).
Butterfly was a similar story, as Griffin swam to another victory in the 50 fly (27.47) and Lily Sawyer ’16 won the 100 (1:00.55). Meanwhile, Wyer claimed both the 50 and 100 back (29.19 and 1:00.29) and Stimson swam a 1:03.10 to win the 100 IM.
The Colby meet finished just as it had started, with wins in the 200 free relay by Lagasse, Leech, McLaughlin and Cheuk for the men (1:30.49), and Burke, MacCowatt, Catherine Pollack ’19 and Andrews for the women (1:43.56).
The Panthers travelled south to take on Bates on Sunday, Jan. 10. The 14th-ranked Bates women beat the Panthers 201-99, while Middlebury’s men’s team lost 183-111.
“Bates [was a] challenge [because they were] waiting for us rested, while we returned from the training trip 32 hours [before heading] to Maine. I was extremely pleased with our preparation and demeanor that day,” Rueppel said.
Middlebury finished strong in the first and longest event of the day; Andrew Rosenthal ’16 swam the almost mile-long 1650 free with a time of 17:19.52 to come in second to McGean (16:28.34). For the women, Lucy Scott ’16 clocked an 18:07.14 in the 1650 to place second.
McGean also won the 500 free in 4:50.21, and Rosenthal touched the wall 9.81 seconds later for third place.
Koenigsberger claimed the only other men’s victory in the 200 breast (2:13.20), and got second in 100 breast (1:00.98).
Koenigsberger’s was just one of the many second place finishes for the men that day; others included performances by Morgan Matsuda ’19 in the 400 IM (4:23.03), Dowling in the 200 fly (2:03.93), Connor McCormick ’18 in the 200 free (1:47.84), Leech in the 100 (54.59) and 200 back (2:01.42), and Cheuk in the 50 free (22.12).
Greene continued his winning streak on the diving end of things with a score of 221.15 on the one-meter platform and 219.55 on the three. Meanwhile, DeNunzio earned points for the women with her second and third-place scores of 202.85 on the one-meter and 208.80 on the three-meter.
On the women’s swim team, Burke and Bartholomae each placed second in the 50 free (25.30) and 100 back (1:01.86), respectively.
Burke swam to first in the 100 free with a 54.92-second time, and Wyer dominated both the 200 free (1:56.23) and 200 back (2:09.21).
Burke, Wyer, Griffin and Andrews helped close out the meet on a positive note for the Panthers, besting Bates with a 1:40.66 in the 200 free relay.
Finally, the Panther men and women bested the Union Dutchmen 150-88 and 140-99, respectively, at home this past Saturday, Jan. 16.
As usual, McGean claimed the 500 and 1000 free, while Lagasse won the 100 free (49.06) and Koenigsberger sprinted a 22.34 to win the 50 free. Cheuk, McLaughlin, Leech and Lagasse went on to lead the 400 free relay as well (3:16.93).
Rosenthal’s 200 fly clocked in at 2:00.71 to win the event, and Middlebury’s 400 medley relay team of Leech, Koenigsberger, Cheuk and Lagasse beat Union by 4.84 seconds.
Representing the women, Bartholomae, Jennifer Koide ’17, Griffin and Kristin Karpowicz ’19 opened the meet by winning the 400 medley relay in 4:07.79.
Angela Riggins ’19 and Scott earned first in the long-distance 1000 and 500 free events with respective times of 11:17.00 and 5:20.30. Caitlin Carroll ’17 and Stimson were able to win the 200 fly (2:16.19, Carroll), 400 IM (4:47.58, Stimson) and 200 breast (2:31.79, Stimson).
In the deep end of the pool, DeNunzio placed second in both the one and three-meter diving events, scoring 207.83 and 239.40, respectively. In men’s diving, Greene earned third in both events with scores of 232.13 and 245.70.
After finishing first in more than half of their contested events in the last four meets, men’s and women’s swimming and diving each have a season record of 3-4.
Moving forward, “training will be very specific,” said Rueppel, who is confident that “all will come together if [the team] competes instinctively.”
The Panthers will travel to Williams this Saturday, Jan. 23 for a dual meet against the defending NESCAC champions.
(01/21/16 12:20am)
Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke, Aladdin Sane, Nikola Tesla and a Goblin King. These are a mere glimpse of the faces and bodies with which David Bowie entranced the world. From the moment he fell to earth until he rocketed beyond all of us last week, he had the courage to be anyone he imagined. We all fantasize of dressing ourselves up in the essence of our dreams, and Bowie cloaked himself in his. He was the physical embodiment of that stardust that fuels dreamers everywhere, and to this stardust he has now returned.
The man, David Robert Jones, was born on Jan. 8, 1947 in Brixton, England. He learned how to play the saxophone, and had his own band by the age of 15. As he began his ascension to fame, he found that he needed to change his name to avoid confusion with Davy Jones, the lead singer of the Monkees. He chose Tom Jones, but this turned out to be equally entangling. From this, David Bowie was born, a name inspired by Jim Bowie, the American frontiersman. It is fitting that Bowie found inspiration for his name in the history of a frontiersman, for a pioneer he became.
His eponymous debut album was released in 1967. An amalgamation of genres and themes that refused to blend in with the folk rock of the day, his debut showed all the signs of a musical innovator. However, it was not until his second album, 1969’s Space Oddity, that Bowie went interstellar. The title track was released just days before the Apollo 11 mission launched. It was no mistake that Space Oddity tapped into the upward gaze of the world, embodying what may be the defining principle of Bowie’s music: he constantly created a feeling that reflected, through his collection of kaleidoscopic key changes and harmonies, the transformative property of his time period.
A series of astonishing albums elevated Bowie’s popularity throughout the 1970’s. First came The Man Who Sold the World in 1970, and then 1971’s Hunky Dory, with which Bowie scored his mega-hit “Changes.” However, it was not until 1972 that the world truly saw what he was capable of. That year, he released The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Decked out in glitter and the occasional eye patch, topped with a shocking red mullet, the character Ziggy Stardust ushered in the glam rock image that would secure Bowie a spot as a certified superstar. Nonetheless, Bowie was not satisfied being stagnant, and with his next album, 1973’s Aladdin Sane, he discarded Ziggy for Aladdin to once again find an identity eagerly waiting for him. This practice continued through everything world was privileged enough to hear.
Alongside this musical success, Bowie began playing characters on screen in earnest, with 1976’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, followed by 1978’s Just A Gigolo. The man of so many faces was perfectly suited for movies, and so his enchanting aura enterd a new medium.
In 1986, a perfect synthesis emerged in the form of Jim Henson’s musical, Labyrinth. Bowie plays Jareth the Goblin King, who lures teenager Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) into his labyrinth by fulfilling her wish to take away her baby brother, a wish she realizes she deeply regrets. In Labyrinth, Bowie is given a world of puppets and fantasy to dance and sing in, crafting an equally seductive and disquieting performance that stands tall in his career.
After decades of such creative overflow, from the glam rock and funk of the 70’s, to his 80’s new wave and pop forays making way for electronic orchestrations in the 90’s, it is astounding to imagine that Bowie could sustain such output, but somehow he always did.
Then, he reached 2004. It seemed that maybe the man had attained a well-deserved retirement after health problems took him out of the studio. For nearly ten years, Bowie maintained relative radio silence. Without warning, he released The Next Day in 2013. The album revealed a virtuosity still capable of inspiring craftsmanship, a fact supported further by the release of his 27th studio album, Blackstar, on January 8th, the day of his 69th birthday, and two days before he succumbed to liver cancer.
Blackstar, elevated by the context of Bowie’s newly-revealed battle with cancer, displays a level of experimentation on par with his best. Bowie revisits the jazz influences that inspired him to first pick up his saxophone, and deepens it with a set of seven songs that embody a tone of contemplation. It opens with the nine-minute-long “Blackstar,” a musical saga of discovery tied together by a branching saxophone solo. This is followed by “Tis’ a Pity She’s a Whore” which feeds into many of the same jazz influences in terms of instrumentation, but the song feels like it would have been right at home alongside “Changes” on Hunky Dory.
With the news of his death, the third song on the album, “Lazarus,” becomes mesmerizing. Bowie sings of his career, his life and his musical journey. The song is moody, with soft horns and a driving drum beat, leaving plenty of space for his voice to take center stage. Equal parts pained and hopeful, the lyrics state, “Oh I’ll be free / Just like a bluebird / Oh I’ll be free” after reminding us that he has “scars that can’t be seen.”
We now know were at least a few of those scars came from, and after what must have been a painful battle, he has become as free as his bluebird. When we play his music and watch his movies, he will forever rise from the dead as Lazarus. Wherever you may be, Ziggy, give the best to Major Tom from all of us sitting down here at Ground Control.
Rest in peace, David Bowie.
(01/21/16 12:19am)
The men’s basketball team has played its best basketball of the season since the calendar turned to 2016 and, after a recent weekend sweep, are in the hunt for a home playoff game in NESCACs with a 3-1 conference record and 9-7 mark overall.
Middlebury ended its 2015 schedule with a blowout over usually tough Plattsburgh State. To begin the new year, the Panthers fell on the road against a tough Endicott team on Jan. 2, but since then have gone 4-1 and established themselves as contenders in the NESCAC. The highlights have come against last year’s NESCAC Champion Wesleyan, No. 18 Tufts and a Bates squad that the Panthers had not beaten in three years. In defeating Tufts and Bates, Matt St. Amour ’17 was named NESCAC Player of the Week by averaging 17.0 points and 5.0 rebounds per game. Middlebury also took down in-state opponent Southern Vermont on Jan. 4.
The Panthers opened NESCAC play with an 86-76 road win over Wesleyan University. The Cardinals entered last season’s NESCAC tournament as the No. 6 seed, but went on an incredible run and won the tournament. After their postseason success, Wesleyan was expected to compete once again for a NESCAC title. A year ago, Middlebury’s 97-60 beatdown of the Cardinals in Pepin Gymnasium seemed to galvanize Wesleyan on their championship run. This time around, the Panthers 86-76 victory over Wesleyan on Friday, Jan. 8 seems to have initiated the Cardinals’ recent struggles.
Wesleyan took a 14-2 lead less than five minutes into the game. At that time, Head Coach Jeff Brown brought all three of his first-years into the game and sparked a Panther comeback. Hilal Dahleh ’19, Zach Baines ’19 and Eric McCord ’19 combined for 24 points and 12 boards off of the bench.
The Panthers began the second half down 37-30 but quickly tied the game at 39 and went back and forth with the Cardinals for most of the second half. With 6:40 left in the game, Wesleyan stretched the lead to five, but that was as large as the lead would get as Middlebury began to chip away. An 11-3 Panthers run sparked by a pair of Jack Daly ’18 free throws that put the nail in the coffin of the Cardinals. A 22-25 performance from the charity stripe helped finish off Wesleyan and seal the 10-point victory, an anomalous performance for the team with the worst free throw percentage in the NESCAC.
“(Free throw shooting) was huge in our Wesleyan win, at Wesleyan,” Coach Brown said. “But it is a weakness of our team right now, just getting to the line and consistently making one-and-ones.”
After taking down the Cardinals, the Panthers were favored to best the Connecticut College Camels the following afternoon, but the upstart Camels surprised Middlebury with an 82-81 win. Despite perennially being at the bottom of the NESCAC, Conn. College has played the Panthers tough the last two seasons, losing by a combined seven points. This time around, the Camels finally got by the Panthers.
Once again, Middlebury started slow, falling behind 21-13 less than halfway through the first half. The Camels ran their lead all the way to 16 points with 4:08 to go in the half and went into the break up by eight.
St. Amour made a bevy of three-pointers early in the second in an attempt to bring the Panthers back into it and, with 59 seconds remaining, led 81-80. With 16 seconds remaining, Conn College Point Guard Tyler Rowe scored the deciding bucket on a runner, and the Panthers were unable to respond on the other end, sealing their fate.
With almost an entire week off to prepare for a home weekend, Middlebury was ready for the nationally-ranked Tufts Jumbos on Friday, Jan. 15 and just outlasted the visitors 85-82 in a thrilling overtime game. With top big man Matt Daley ’16 out with a foot injury, Middlebury had its work cut out for it. Tufts boasts arguably the best post player and second-best scorer in the league in junior center Tom Palleschi and sophomore point guard Vinny Pace. The Jumbos were bit by the injury bug, as well, as senior guard Ryan Spadaford - averaging 11.9 points per game - had to sit out with an ankle injury.
Jack Daly ’18 did a great job slowing down the lethal Pace in the first half, holding the sophomore to seven points on 2-5 shooting. Without Daley, McCord, Nick Tarantino ’18 and Adisa Majors ’18 were asked to fill the void and did so admirably. Coach Brown rotated the trio of young big men frequently to keep them fresh, and their tenacity paid off on the defensive end. Tarantino snagged nine rebounds in as many minutes, and all three did well to stymie Palleschi.
“The biggest thing (without Matt Daley),” Coach Brown said,” is that we were looking to double team Palleschi inside ... and just not allowing him to work one-on-one.”
Also on the defensive end, the long and athletic Baines introduced himself to the Middlebury faithful with a pin against the backboard on a Vinny Pace layup attempt midway through the second half.
“(Zach Baines) is an elite talent athletically, and a piece of that is his wingspan,” Coach Brown said. “He’s got the wingspan of a seven-footer.”
The game was incredibly balanced throughout as neither team lead by more than eight and both squads performed comparably in nearly every statistic. At halftime they were knotted up at 40 apiece, and a block by McCord prevented a three-point attempt from Pace at the end of regulation, sending the game into OT.
St. Amour put the team on his back in the extra period, scoring nine of the team’s 13 points. The Jumbos would not go quietly, though, and relied on their stars in the final period. Pace scored five points and Palleschi made a three-pointer, and Tufts had a chance to tie on the final possession. Pace had the ball beyond the arc but passed up a contested shot attempt to a wide open Stephen Haladyna in the left corner. Haladyna’s shot looked good but it ended up slightly right of the mark, clanged off the rim, and bounced away, clinching an 85-82 victory for the Panthers.
Riding high off of this upset, Middlebury stormed into Pepin the next day, took the lead a little over halfway through the first half, and got the best of a pesky Bates team. Bates has frustrated the Panthers recently. A year ago, a gastrointestinal infection decimated the Panthers roster on the day of the game against Bates, and still Middlebury battled to a four-point loss. Two years ago, since-graduated Graham Safford of Bates drilled a game-winning three from straightaway in Pepin to finish off the Panthers. The previous year’s game was a three-point win for Middlebury. On this Saturday, though, the Panthers got their revenge by defeating the Bobcats 73-61.
Still without Daley, Coach Brown leaned on a similar strategy as the night before, relying on a revolving door in the front court against Bates’ Delpeche twins who each stand over 6’6,” and on Daly to shut down the opponent’s top scorer, senior Mike Boornazian.
“We wanted to double team some in the post because of the Delpeche teams,” Coach Brown said, “who really have a lot of length and athleticism, but again I thought Jack (Daly) did a terrific job on Boornazian. He really made (Boornazian’s) offense really tough to come by.”
On the offensive end, St. Amour was his usual self, canning three three-pointers en route to 17 points while Daly and Jake Brown ’17 combined for 11 assists. Majors tallied 10 points off of the bench.
The Panthers remain at home this weekend and will welcome the currently 11-5 Williams College Ephs, who pummelled the Panthers last season, 87-62.
(01/20/16 7:00pm)
As the New Year arrived, the Syrian Crisis entered the fifth year of its genesis. With a UN estimate of 6.5 million dis- placed within Syria and 3 million fleeing refugees, no near end is in sight. Older teenagers and adults, however, reminisce to a time of malaise when the Jordanian capital (Amman) was a mere two hours’ drive from the Syrian borders. It was not uncommon for Jordanians, Lebanese and Arabs of other nationalities to spend their weekends in Syria exploring its farmlands, visiting its old shops or touring its archaic landmarks. My own family used to take road trips to Syria, even reaching Turkey. These trips seem incongruous now considering the infeasibility of crossing a war torn country.
Nonetheless, failing tourism is the smallest of concerns right now. I grew up in a Jordan that had a population of roughly 5.5 million people, and even then the country had little in the way of natural resources to support its growth. In point of fact, Jordan is now the world’s second water-poorest country. The scarcity of resources once obtained from Egypt and Syria falter the country’s progression and stop it from reaching its sought after goal of self-dependence. The population of Jordan could not sustain itself even before the crisis commenced. Over the last five years, 1.5 million Syrian refugees fled to Jordan causing a twenty-five percent influx in the small country’s population. In 2016, one in three inhabitants of Jordan is a refugee including Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis, Libyans and Yemenis among other nationalities. Not only are these refugees creating a heavy demographic burden, the conditions the refugees themselves live in are beyond miserable. Many of the refugees arrive with serious medical conditions, thus occupying much needed hospital beds. Moreover, most of the refugees are hauled into refugee camps where the youth and adults cannot work but have to sustain their families, thus constraining them within a legal state of limbo.
Most famed among these camps is the notorious Zaatari refugee camp located in the Mafraq Governorate of Jordan. The camp’s inhabiting populous suffers repeatedly from the lack of sufficient food supplies and better accommodation. And without an official police force of sorts, crimes of violence, drug dealing and prostitution have gradually risen. In addition, the geography of Mafraq has not helped. An open desert, Zaatari has suffered over the years from heat waves, winter snows and severe rain floods that have led to multiple evacuations. The refugee camp now houses 80,000 refugees making it the fourth largest city in the country. And although living conditions are well below acceptable, life there is beginning to stabilize. According to the Telegraph the camp has, “a pizza delivery service, a coffee shop selling shisha and a street named Champs-Elysée.” This newly found stability may seem like a ray of hope for the Syrian refugees, but personal and mutual experience proves otherwise. My own family is originally a Palestinian refugee family that fled to Jordan after the Palestinian-Israeli conflict erupted in 1948. Many family members lived in one of twelve Palestinian refugee camps that were set up by the UNRWA. These camps, like every other camp established in the Middle East, were intended to be a temporary solution until the refugees could return home or were given citizenship or residency. In reality, these camps are now bustling urban slums and ghettos that have transformed into permanent cities and districts in their own rights. The fear lies in the transformation of Zaatari into one of these camps. With no end in sight to the growth of the camp or the crisis itself, the situation may seem helpless from where we stand as college students.
But what if each one of us Middlebury students can help? There have been many college-based organizations like Amnesty International aimed at helping these refugees. But to create a bigger impact, we have launched a petition (Go/Refuge), in collaboration with Jordan University, aimed at creating a minimum quota of refugees to be admitted to Middlebury College. With every extra signature we get, we are one step closer to helping those in need even in our Vermont remoteness.
(12/10/15 2:29am)
This year, a US national security report labeled climate change as “an urgent and growing threat to our national security.” While climate change is a natural occurrence, there is much evidence to show that humans have greatly increased the rate of climate change. This increased rate is largely due to the increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases, released by human activity. Greenhouse gases essentially trap heat in the lower atmosphere, which contributes to a rise in temperatures. Climate change is a global issue, one that will affect every corner of the earth. The College has been one of many institutions of higher education to take a leading role in addressing climate change.
A Goal of Carbon Neutrality
On May 5, 2007, the Trustees adopted the Resolution on Achieving Carbon Neutrality by 2016. Carbon neutrality is defined as net zero carbon emissions, which requires that an institution “remove” as much carbon dioxide equivalent from the atmosphere as it emits.
In the resolution, the Trustees wrote that “a goal of carbon neutrality for Middlebury College by 2016, while challenging, is feasible through energy conservation and efficiency, renewable fuel sources, technology innovations, educational programming and learning, and offset purchases after all other feasible measures have been taken.” With 2016 right around the corner, it is time to consider where the College is on its quest for carbon neutrality, and what can still be done to further its environmental mission.
The Climate Action Plan (CAP), adopted in 2008, targeted heating and cooling, electricity, vehicles, college travel, and waste minimization as areas in which the College could reduce net emissions to progress towards carbon neutrality. At the time of the report, heating and cooling made the largest contribution to emissions at 89 percent, travel and vehicles came in a distant second at nine percent, and electricity and waste accounted for only one percent of emissions each. Since the CAP went into effect, the College has made strides to reach carbon neutrality and reduce emissions in each of these areas.
Waste
Emissions from decomposing waste comprised only one percent of the College’s total emissions in 2008. These emissions result from waste decomposing in landfills or being burned, both of which release greenhouse gases.
All of the College’s waste is already sorted in the recycling center, recycling as much as possible.
Recommendations to further reduce waste included integrating waste minimization and sustainable practices into the residential life system, and creating a service requirement for first-years in the dining halls or recycling center to develop an understanding of the waste generated by the College.
To address emissions from waste, the College has increased signage promoting sustainable practices on campus and conducted campaigns to raise student awareness about waste. However, the student body is still largely unaware of the College’s waste because the waste management is so far removed from students. Though educating the student body would be valuable, the low level of emissions from waste have, understandably, ensured that it is not a top priority.
Vehicle Emissions
Vehicle emissions and emissions from travel make up another nine percent of the College’s greenhouse gas emissions. Travel and vehicle usage are necessary for the function of the College, and so these emissions cannot be eliminated within the confines of modern technology. To reduce emissions from travel, the CAP advised increasing education about the impacts of travel, stressing videoconferencing as an alternative to traveling and upgrading the vehicle fleet to more energy efficient vehicles.
Since 2008, the College has seen an increase in greenhouse gas emissions from waste and air travel, but a decrease in emissions from mobile combustion (which include road vehicles and construction equipment).
In 2007, the College estimated that it generated 137 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCDE) due to solid waste. By 2014, that number had increased slightly to 153 MTCDE. Emissions from air travel increased more dramatically over this same period, from 1381 MTCDE in 2007 to 2346 MTCDE in 2014. Emissions from mobile combustion have decreased from 408 to 370 MTCDE.
In light of the increasing size of the student body, it is admirable that emissions from waste and mobile combustion have not risen significantly. Air travel is a much larger contributor to the College’s emissions, though, and yearly emissions have increased by almost 1000 MTCDE since 2007.
The College has certainly made progress since 2007, but student awareness about emissions is still lacking and emissions from air travel have increased dramatically.
Electricity
Emissions from purchased electricity accounted for only one percent of the College’s overall emissions in 2008. By 2014, this figure had risen to almost seven percent. This increase in percentage was largely due to a decrease in net emissions from heating and cooling. However, emissions from purchased electricity did rise from 676 MTCDE in 2007 to 864 tons in 2014.
Of the 22 million kilowatt hours of electricity the College uses each year, 20 percent is cogenerated on campus by turbines connected to the central heating plant. The remaining 80 percent of the College’s electricity is purchased from Green Mountain Power (GMP). This purchased electricity accounts for the greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, because the electricity the College purchases from GMP is not necessarily from carbon neutral sources.
Until 2013, 70 percent of Vermont’s power came from nuclear energy, which is carbon neutral. Much of the rest of the state’s electricity came from hydropower, another source of clean energy. The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, which supplied most of Vermont’s nuclear power, shut down in late 2014. The Entergy Corporation, which operated the power plant, cited economic reasons for closing the plant. Consequently, GMP has had to purchase electricity from other sources.
GMP predicts that only 55 percent of its fuel mix in 2015 will be renewable, coming from nuclear and hydroelectric sources. The other 45 percent will consist mainly of “system” power, which comes from various sources, including fossil fuels. In calculating carbon emissions from purchased electricity, the College must consider the ultimate source of its electricity.
Since 2007, carbon emissions due to purchased electricity at the College have risen by 188 MTCDE, nearly 30 percent. Though only a small contribution to the College’s overall carbon emissions, the College should continue to investigate ways to reduce these emissions. To help reduce net emissions from electricity, the CAP recommended conservation as well as investigating alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar power.
In 2012 the College installed a small 143kW demonstration solar system near McCardell Bicentennial Hall, which consists of 34 solar trackers. In total, the system produces about 200,000 kilowatt-hours annually: one percent of the College’s total electricity consumption. The system generates enough electricity to power Forest Hall.
Solar power is inherently renewable, and thus an excellent option to offset the College’s energy usage. However, current solar technology is not conducive to power generation at the scale necessary for the College. The College should continue to pursue conservation and other efforts to reduce overall electricity usage.
Heating and Cooling
The largest contribution to the College’s carbon emissions comes from heating and cooling. In 2008, heating and cooling constituted 89 percent of the College’s emissions. Most of the emissions came from the combustion of no. 6 fuel oil to heat and cool buildings; the College was burning about 2,000,000 gallons per year, which released 23,877 MTCDE in 2006-07. Another 2,009 MTCDE came from the combustion of no. fuel oil, and 623 from propane.
The CAP clearly stressed the need to use carbon neutral fuel sources to heat and cool the campus if the College is to reach carbon neutrality by 2016.
The College’s $12 million biomass plant, opened in 2009, was a major step toward reducing net emissions from heating and cooling the College. The biomass plant burns wood, which the College considers a carbon neutral fuel source because the same amount of carbon dioxide is absorbed by the trees as is released in combustion. The plant utilizes a process known as biomass gasification to combust woodchips, which is much more efficient than traditional methods of burning wood. The heat generated from this combustion is used to make steam, which is piped throughout the campus to meet the College’s heating and cooling needs.
While the net emissions from the biomass plant are zero, this does not mean it has no emissions. The emissions from the plant are somewhat lower than those from burning fuel oil, and emissions resulting from chipping and transporting the wood to the biomass facility are not factored into the assessment of carbon neutrality.
Unfortunately, the biomass plant is not large enough to meet all of the College’s heating and cooling needs. In addition to biomass combustion, the College still burns 640,000 gallons of no.6 fuel oil each year. To address this issue, the College is undergoing a switch to burning bio-methane instead of fuel oil.
The use of bio-methane was made possible by the approval of the VT Gas Addison Rutland Natural Gas Project (Phase 1). Bio-methane is chemically equivalent to natural gas, and is produced by the digestion of organic waste.
A spur on the new natural gas pipeline from Colchester, VT to the Addison and Rutland area will allow the College to easily transport bio-methane to campus. The bio-methane will be produced offsite, at a local dairy farm. The use of bio-methane to phase out fuel oil is very important because the College considers bio-methane a carbon neutral fuel, and thus its use will greatly reduce the College’s net emissions from heating and cooling.
The College has also made strides to reduce emissions from heating and cooling by improving building efficiency.
In 2007, a survey of buildings at the College indicated that 53 percent of the square footage on campus performed well below current energy code standards. Since then, the College has had two buildings receive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification, and is seeking LEED Gold certification for Virtue Field House.
The College’s efforts have resulted in a 66 percent reduction in net emissions from stationary combustion sources, such as boilers, heaters and ovens, since 2007. From 2013 to 2014, the College emitted a net of only 8,996 MTCDE due to stationary combustion, as compared to 26,509 MTCDE in 2006 to 2007. However, biogenic emissions — those due to combustion of biologically based materials (wood) — from 2013 to 2014 were 21,658 MTCDE. This is not counted in the College’s assessment of net emissions from stationary combustion because it is considered carbon neutral. Though the College may exclude these emissions, the carbon neutrality of biomass combustion is disputed by many.
Our Carbon Footprint
In 2014, the College reported gross emissions of 8,996 MTCDE from stationary combustion, 370 from mobile combustion, 864 from purchased electricity, 2,346 from air travel, and 153 from solid waste. This amounts to total emissions of 12,729 MTCDE. The College also included reductions of 10 MTCDE due to purchase of renewable energy credits (RECs), 550 from carbon offsets purchased, and 9,905 MTCDE from sequestration due to college-owned lands. In all, this amounted to a reported net emissions of 2,264 MTCDE.
The College’s many efforts, especially the switch to bio-methane for heating and cooling, will further decrease the net carbon emissions for 2016. If necessary, the College can purchase carbon offsets in order to meet its goal. In assessing its greenhouse gas emissions, the College employs a custom tool tailored to its needs. It is worthwhile to note that other methods of assessing emissions may yield drastically different results.
Carbon neutrality, though an important step for the College, is by no means an end goal. As 2016 draws closer, it is time to begin discussion of the next steps. The College should continue to demonstrate leadership by further reducing its environmental impact.
The College’s quest for carbon neutrality came about because of the actions of a dedicated group of students, faculty, and staff, who challenged the College to adopt an ambitious goal. Those students have long since left Middlebury and ventured into the world; now, it is our turn to take up the mantle, and push the College to new heights.
It is easy to look at the issue of climate change and give up because it is so daunting, but every great change begins with small actions. It is unrealistic to expect that everyone will consider the gravity of this issue and take action. I hope, however, that we will continue to consider the impact of our actions, from reducing the use of vehicles to turning out the lights. As you go about your daily life, take a moment to consider the following question: What can you do to live more sustainably? Every action, no matter how small, makes a difference.
(12/09/15 7:58pm)
The Middlebury men’s basketball team has begun to claw their way back towards a .500 record by stomping Johnson St. for the second time in five days on Thursday, Dec. 3 and beating Castleton St. in Middlebury’s home opener on Tuesday, Dec. 8, sandwiched around a five-point loss on the road at Skidmore on Saturday, Dec. 5, to move to 4-5 on the season.
Middlebury once again had an easy time dispatching the Badgers of Johnson St., using its considerable size advantage while out rebounding a winless Johnson team 45-12. It was all systems go out of the gate for Middlebury, as the Panthers jumped out to a 7-0 lead off of layups from Connor Huff ’16 and Matt Daley ’16 and a three-pointer from leading scorer Matt St. Amour ’17. Middlebury took a 10-point lead with 8:20 to go in the first half and led by double digits from that point on. Jack Daly ’18 capped a 12-0 run to end the half with a layup to make the score 45-21.
The Panthers scored 50 points in the second half on the way to a 95-48 win. St. Amour led all scorers with 19 points on 7-10 shooting and 5-7 from beyond the arc. Forward Eric McCord ’19 posted a career-high 10 points and added five boards to his stat line. Daley was efficient and productive with eight points on 4-6 shooting and eight boards.
Middlebury’s next contest at Skidmore, who beat NESCAC Champion Wesleyan in the first round of the 2015 NCAA Tournament and returned two All-League players including Co-Liberty League Player of the Year Aldin Medunjanin, proved to be much tougher. The Panthers caught a break with Medunjanin out for the contest, but still could not overcome the Thoroughbreds.
St. Amour had a great first half for Middlebury, scoring 14 points on 4-7 shooting, 3-4 from deep and 3-4 from the charity stripe, as the Panthers went into halftime with a 35-29 lead.
The Thoroughbreds began the second half with an 11-6 run to take the lead by one, lost it on a couple of layups from McCord and Hilal Dahleh ’19, then took a lead they would never relinquish when Nick Volpe drained a three-pointer to make it 47-45 with 12:13 to play.
Skidmore kept Middlebury at bay for the rest of the game, stretching the lead to 10 with 4:35 left, but failing to put the Panthers away.
The Thoroughbreds led by just five late in the contest when Daly fed Dahleh for a three-pointer to tighten the score at 72-70 with exactly one minute to play. At the other end, Skidmore’s Edvinas Rupkus hit a pair of free throws to go back up by four. The Panthers tried to get a quick shot up but missed. Daley was able to corral the rebound and put it back up and in, drawing the Panthers within two once again. Rupkus once again made things difficult, hitting another pair of free throws for Skidmore. Middlebury closed the gap to one with 18 seconds remaining when Daly finished a three-point play the old-fashioned way, making a lay up and calmly sinking the free throw, but Skidmore just could not miss from the line, as point guard Royce Paris made two more free throws for the Thoroughbreds. It took all of six seconds for Dahleh to make a layup to make it 78-77, but once again it was Rupkus who made two more free throws to make it 80-77. With five seconds left, the Panthers needed a three-pointer, but the last-ditch attempt missed the mark, and Skidmore sank two more free throws to close it out, 82-77.
“I was happy with the run we had down the stretch to get a chance to tie the game in the final seconds,” Head Coach Jeff Brown said. “Our group plays with grit and determination.”
The Panthers coasted to their fourth win of the season with a 96-74 victory over Castleton St. Middlebury lead for the final 38:28 of the contest. Middlebury loves to run on offense, and finally showed off their aptitude to do so with 18 fastbreak points.
“We weren’t as successful as we wanted to be in our transition game [against Skidmore],” Coach Brown said.
Jake Brown ’17 notched a game-high 16 points and added eight assists to the mix. St. Amour continued his hot shooting with four three-pointers, including a 75-footer right before halftime, and 12 points overall. Zach Baines ’19 and Adisa Majors ’18 tallied double digit points with 11 and 10, respectively.
Middlebury plays just one more game before the long Christmas break, a Saturday, Dec. 12 contest with a Plattsburgh St. squad that has proven difficult in the past.
