809 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(04/29/15 9:07pm)
Despite the polarization of politics, Republicans and Democrats continue to unite on at least one issue: National Institute of Health, or NIH, funding. I was pleasantly surprised by Newt Gingrich’s Op-Ed, “Double the NIH Budget” in the New York Times last Wednesday, in which he argued in favor of raising the NIH budget to 60 billion dollars because investment in biomedical breakthroughs would offset future health costs.
Other Republicans have also rallied around the cause of NIH funding. Presidential candidate Jeb Bush, former House Majority leader Eric Cantor and self-identified Tea Party member Matt Salmon, U.S. Representative for the 5th district of Arizona, have all enthusiastically called for increases in the NIH budget.
There are several reasons for the recent upwelling of political support. NIH funding is politically low hanging fruit; it looks good on a candidate’s resume, and no representative wants to oppose finding cures for disease. Health resonates with everyone because it is personal. The Tea Party Representative Matt Salmon explained why he supported NIH funding, saying, “As a conservative Republican,
I believe the fiscal health of our nation is one of the most critical issues long term. But I want to fight this fight, I’ve lost too many friends to cancer, and I don’t want to see another person succumb to this.”
I’m cautiously optimistic about the future of the NIH. Although its funding has stagnated for the past 10 years, and it’s easy to pay lip-service to biomedical funding without actual action, there appears to be a genuine growing push to increase its funding.
I think increasing NIH funding is important and should be celebrated, but I’m not as confident as these politicians that it’s the panacea for all our health woes. They present a politically convenient but oversimplified vision for improving American health care, ignoring many nuances. In particular, we have to address ballooning health costs, increase funding for other scientific disciplines and fix systemic flaws within the NIH.
The United States already spends 15 percent of its GDP (roughly the GDP of France) on health care, and by 2020 healthcare expenditures are expected to increase to 4.6 trillion dollars. The main drivers behind increasing healthcare costs are an aging U.S population and increasing drug and medical device prices. I hope Newt Gingrich is right, and that new drugs will lower healthcare costs by finding cures for ailments that are currently expensive to treat. It’s also possible that biomedical research will only lead to new, expensive devices and drugs that only marginally increase life expectancy while driving up health care expenditures to the detriment of other important causes. We have to make sure that new medicine not only increases our life expectancy, but is also affordable. With an aging society, we have tough decisions ahead about how much money we are to spend on age-related illnesses and end-of-life care.
While biomedical research has undoubtedly contributed to the increase in life expectancy from 70 years to 80 years in the past half-century, advances in medicine have also come from basic research in other scientific fields. Physicists gave us medical imaging and radiology, engineers gave us prosthetics and medical devices and computer scientists have given us electronic medical records and bioinformatics, to name a few examples. But despite the importance of these other fields in regard to medicine (not to mention all their other applications), their funding has lagged in the recent decades. National Science Foundation funding has stagnated around 8 billion dollars, and since 1996, mathematics, the physical sciences, engineering and computer science have all seen a decrease in their share of academic research and development funding. Congress shouldn’t just focus on the NIH to the detriment of other basic sciences.
Systemic problems within the biomedical research community also exist, which won’t be solved by increasing funding. An environment of hypercompetition exists where scientists are having a harder time funding their research and grant success rates hover around 20 percent. Only 15 percent of postdoctoral researchers are able to find a tenure-track position within six years.
Hypercompetition has negative consequences and has harmed the research community. Less bold and creative ideas are funded because scientists and grant-review panels are more likely to stick to old, less risky ideas that have worked in the past. Scientists rush to publish in prestigious journals like Nature and Science because it means a greater likelihood of getting grant money in the future and evidence shows that in recent years this has led to greater fabrication of evidence and the cutting of corners. There were almost ten times as many retractions in 2010 as there were in 2000. In a competitive environment, scientists are also less likely to work together for fear of getting scooped, and scientific progress becomes slower.
Increasing funding wouldn’t solve the problems that lead to hypercompetition. The doubling of the NIH budget from 1998 to 2002 did little to stop the plummet in grant success rates. The best way to fix the problem is to limit the number of biomedical graduate students and postdocs in the United States. Currently, labs train more graduate students and postdocs then there are research jobs because they lead to greater publication output. But this Malthusian system leads to too many people competing for a limited number of job openings. Instead, permanent staff scientists could replace many graduate students in labs. Larger labs would be forced to shrink, and grant funding would become less competitive and be distributed to more projects.
Fixing biomedical funding doesn’t just concern the community of biomedical researchers; it is an issue we should all be concerned with because it ultimately determines the quality of biomedical research output. The United States has led the way for cures in the past, and it’s in our best interest to support a strong biomedical research community so we can continue to make headway in improving our nation’s health.
(04/29/15 6:34pm)
On a sunny, breezy day in western Massachusetts, the track teams competed in the NESCAC Championships, hosted by Williams College on April 25. As the one true team competition of the year, the winning team retains bragging rights for an entire year. When the dust settled after over 8 hours of competition, the Williams women and Tufts men emerged as victors.
The Middlebury women finished third, scoring 98 points, while the men were fourth with 73 points.
The competition started with the men’s 10,000m. Jake Fox ’15, making his debut at the distance, won a sprint to the finish to take seventh place in a time of 31:52.22 and scoring two points to start the day.
Not to be outdone, Adrian Walsh ’16 led the charge in the women’s 10,000m, immediately taking control of the race. As the race progressed, though, Amherst junior Lexi Sinclair slowly worked her way up to Walsh, eventually passing her in the waning kilometers to take the lead and ultimately the victory. Walsh finished second by running 36:27.98. Katie Carlson ’15.5 finished fifth in a time of 37:01.60, running a very smart race for the entire distance.
The men’s 4x100m finished second in 42.82 seconds. The team of Sam Rives ’15, Mike Pallozzi ’18, Fritz Parker ’15 and Will Bain ’15 was only bested by the quartet from Williams, which featured the seventh-ranked 100m runner in Division III. Parker concluded his four-year career on that relay with two NESCAC titles and two runner-up finishes.
In the women’s 1500m, Sarah Guth ’15, Alison Maxwell ’15 and Robin Vincent ’18 were able to score a combined 18 points. Guth ran 4:38.52 for second, Maxwell finished in 4:39.37 for third, and Vincent — running just her second race of the spring season — hit 4:41.33, a personal best by over six seconds.
In the morning, the men were able to qualify three athletes into the afternoon’s finals of the 110m hurdles. The final saw Taylor Shortsleeve ’15, who was the morning’s fastest qualifier, finish fourth in a personal best time of 15.10. Rookies Pallozzi and Tyler Farrell ’18 finished in sixth and eighth with times of 15.35 and 15.44, respectively.
On a tough day for 400m running due to breezes, Alex Morris ’16 was able to finish fifth in a time of 60.28. For the men, defending champion Alex Nichols ’17 also finished fifth by running 49.80 while James Mulliken ’18 took sixth from an unseeded section with a personal best time of 49.93.
In the men’s 800m, rookie Kevin Serrao ’18 finished third in a personal best time of 1:53.50. Serrao was not intimidated by national champion Mitchell Black of Tufts, handling the quick early pace.
In the 400m hurdles, Paige Fernandez ’17 ran a personal best time of 64.21 to finish third and Jackie Kearney ’16 ran 66.46 for seventh. Defending champion Wood finished sixth in the men’s race by running 55.33.
Maxwell doubled back to win the 5,000m in 17:31.82, running comfortably behind the leaders of the race until the final lap when she put 10 seconds between herself and second place finisher Alison Smith of Williams to easily win the race. Alyssa Taylor ’17 quietly put together a personal best of over 10 seconds to finish eighth in a time of 18:16.60.
“My plan was to keep my head in the game and be very aware of how each race was playing out so that I could sit back and wait until the end of the races to make my move,” Maxwell said. “That didn’t work out so well for me in the 1500, which was a lot faster than I expected, but was great for the 5k, a race that I have little experience in and needed to not be too aggressive in.”
Two relays concluded the meet: the 4x400m and 4x800m. The men’s 4x400m of Parker, Farrell, Mulliken and Nichols finished fourth in a season best 3:24.25 while their women’s counterpart of Halle Gustafson ’16, Fernandez, Kearney and Morris took third in 3:58.54, also a season best. The men’s 4x800 of Luke Carpinello ’16, Sam Klockenkemper ’17, Sam Cartwright ’16, and Serrao also finished fourth with 7:55.44 and the women’s team, comprising Lauren Bougioukas ’16, Nikki Schachman ’16, Vincent, and Guth, took second by combining for 9:19.80.
The most impressive showing for Middlebury came in the women’s javelin. Carly Andersen ’16 won the event by throwing a huge personal best of 42.15m and Devon Player ’18 finished second with a heave of 40.81m.
Taylor Moore ’18 though filled the void left by injured teammate Ian Riley ’16, finishing fourth with a throw of 50.69m, a personal best by over five meters.
The men’s pole vault also stepped up with Conor Simons ’16 vaulting 4.30m for second place and Jared Whitman ’17 clearing 4.15m for third place. One of the most unpredictable events in track and field, the two Panthers combined for more points in the event than any other set of teammates in the field.
The teams will regroup to compete in the Division III New England Championships hosted by MIT on May 1 and May 2.
(04/29/15 6:30pm)
The Panther men’s golf team won its fourth NESCAC title in the last five years last weekend, April 25-26, on their home Ralph Myhre Golf Course. The victory clinches a trip to the NCAA Division-III Championship tournament at the Grandover Resort in Greensboro, North Carolina to take place from May 12-15.
The Panthers played host to Williams, Trinity and Hamilton – the three other teams that made the cut for the NESCAC Championship tournament at the qualifier in October. The Panthers finished the weekend with a team total of 595, a 14-shot cushion over second-place Williams. Trinity and Hamilton spent the majority of the weekend out of contention, finishing with team scores of 624 and 633 respectively.
When all was said and done after play concluded on Sunday, Fitz Bowen ’17 and Bennett Doherty ’18 shared the crown of individual NESCAC champion after shooting 147s. Bowen shot a 75 on day one, good enough to go into the clubhouse tied for second with teammate John Louie ’15. Bowen had the low score, a 72, on the second day to repeat as the individual champion. Doherty’s 74 on day one locked him in a three way tie with teammate Charlie Garcia ’15 and Williams’ Jake Goldenring. Doherty improved by one shot on day two, as he fired a 73 that was one stroke behind Bowen and Trinity’s Nick Buenaventura for the low score of the day and allowed him to stake his claim to the NESCAC individual crown.
“Golf is a crazy mental game, and I think the many hours we put into mental preparation was as important as anything,” Doherty said. “Once the tournament came, we were able to play our own game, and ultimately just have fun with it.”
The Panthers shot a 298 on day one, which gave them a five-stroke cushion over Williams. On day two the Panthers shot a 297, a stroke improvement despite tough weather conditions. Williams was unable to close the gap on the Panthers, as they registered a 306, three shots worse than their first day. Trinity came in on the second day of play two shots better than day one with a 311 for a two-day total of 624, and Hamilton shaved seven strokes off its day one total and shot a 313 to finish at 633 on the weekend.
Despite the cool and damp conditions, Williams’ Grant Raffel was tied for the low round of the day on Sunday with Trinity’s Buenaventura and Bowen, as all three shot 72s. Raffel finished with a two-day total of 148, while Buenaventura used a strong day two to rebound from shooting an 80 on day one to finish with a score of 152.
Louie, Garcia and Eric Laorr ’15 each were playing in their final NESCAC Tournaments. Louie finished with the third-best score of a 150 after shooting a 75 on both days. Garcia was unable to follow up on his brilliant first round of play in the damp conditions on Sunday, as he finished shot an 83 and tied for ninth place with a 157. Laorr finished in a tie for 14th after being bitten by several unlucky shots on day one when he shot an 82. However, he rebounded on day two and shot a 77 to finish with a 159.
“This is by far the most satisfying win for us as seniors,” Garcia said. “I couldn’t ask for anything more. It was a great way to end a great career. Winning three out of four NESCACs was amazing but the group of guys we have on the team is what makes it special.”
The Panther women wrapped up their season last weekend, April 25-26 when they played in the Williams Spring Invitational in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The team finished in third place, registering a 643 for the weekend. Finishing behind two teams from Williams, the Panthers shot 324 on day one, and were neck and neck with the two Williams squads and Amherst, each of which were within eight strokes of each other. The Panthers managed to shave five strokes off of their day two score, registering a 319 that put into perspective just how well the Williams A-team played on day two. Jordan Glatt ’15 and Michelle Peng ’15 played in their final tournament for the Panthers. Glatt, who took home the individual honors in the tournament at Amherst two weeks ago, finished in 10th. She rebounded from shooting an 83 on day one with a 77 on day two, carding a 160 to wrap up her career. Peng finished her career with a second place finish as she carded a 153, following a 79 on day one with a brilliant 74 on day two, one stroke off of Williams’ Phoebe Mattana.
(04/29/15 6:05pm)
Highly-educated. Self-motivated. Hard-working. Unpaid.
These adjectives describe a growing proportion of the current national work force: the undergraduate intern.
The US Department of Labor defines an internship as “a formal program providing practical learning experience for beginners in an occupation or profession that lasts a limited amount of time.”
According to Neil Howe, author of several books of American generational trends including Millennials Rising, prior to the 1990s formal internships were rare. Yet, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) reports that from 1980s to mid-2000s, the percent of college graduates participating in at least one internship rose from 10 percent to 80 percent.
In 2013, NACE reported that only 63 percent of graduating students who had held paid internships received a job offer by graduation. As for unpaid internships, students who have them are today hardly more likely to get a job offer (37 percent) than those who have no internship at all (35 percent).
Director of the Center for Careers and Internships Peggy Burns cautions that NACE statistics rarely reflect smaller, less formal internships that students at the College are more likely to participate in. The percentage of students participating in internships, therefore, is likely to be even higher.
So what has precipitated this increased participation in internships, especially considering scanty statistical evidence that they lead to jobs? The limited journalism on this subject identifies several factors, including market forces and, as Howe describes them, the “relentlessly optimistic” millennials themselves.
As internship season comes to a close at the College, the Campus investigates how the rising trend of internships has affected students here.
Trends at the College
In 2014, the CCI estimated that 600 students, or 24 percent of the student body, interned that year. Burns estimated that about 70 percent of students had least one internship before graduation while 40 to 50 percent had two or more. This places students at the College above the NACE average in terms of rate of participation in internships.
According to applications for CCI summer internship funding, the number of students participating in unpaid internships has remained relatively constant in the last five years, averaging at around 265 students or around 11 percent of the student body.
Burns says that students at the College have traditionally interned in the finance, government, public policy and publishing industries. Now, however, she says students are increasingly expanding into more industries, including non-profit work, technology and the environment. Applications for summer internship funding in 2015 indicate that students are participating in unpaid internships most commonly in the fields of science, healthcare and the arts.
“Where I particularly see the trend increasing is in those industries that are not the usual suspects,” Burns said. “The number of opportunities available and certainly the types of internships that students are interested in pursuing are really varied now.”
Applications for summer funding and Burns confirm that the most popular locations for internships are New York City, Boston and Washington, DC.
A New Market Trend
Assistant Professor of Sociology Jamie McCallum, who studies labor and work ethic in 20th century America, identifies internships as a new market trend responding to the economy’s need for cheap domestic labor.
“Businesses seem unable to pay decent wages, or any wages, for all of the workers they allegedly need,” McCallum said. “The intern economy provides a ‘solution’ to this problem.”
According to Business Insider, unpaid internships save corporations over two billion dollars a year. But most of these unpaid internships are illegal. The Department of Labor specifies that an internship can only be unpaid if it is with a non-profit or if the student is receiving school credit.
Attorney Maurice Pianko at Intern Justice told the New School Free Press: “99 percent of all unpaid internships in the for-profit market are illegal.”
Today, the Internet means hiring managers may receive many more applications for positions than they otherwise would, increasing competition among applicants.
“Twenty five years ago, [the job application process] was more a response to a classified ad,” Burns said. “It would just happen to be if you read the New York Times that Sunday and looked at the Classified department. Now, everything is online, and it is so easy for an employer to get thousands and thousands of applications.”
Furthermore, as children of Baby Boomers, the largest generation to date, Millennials face increased competition due to sheer population size.
“With Millennials, too, there are so many of you. So the competition is stiffer,” Burns said.
Additionally, Associate Professor of Sociology Linus Owens sees a changing definition of what is a ‘good job’ contributing to competition.
“What’s changed is the narrowing of fields that one can even speak of something that could be called a ‘career,’” Owens said. “With fewer viable options for ‘good jobs or careers,’ competition for those few spots intensifies.”
Burns also recognizes the 2008 market recession as an event that looms large in the memories of students anwd their families, causing them more job-anxiety.
The free labor intern economy, as McCallum describes it, is a self-perpetuating cycle. Students describe that previous experience is now often a prerequisite for the internships that they seek.
Nitya Mankad ’16, who interned with Goldman Sachs last summer, highlighted this caveat as the reason she began to apply for internships sophomore year.
“There tends to be a catch-22 with internships in that one needs experience to get experience,” Mankad said. “Since I didn’t have a lot of experience at the time, I didn’t think I would be able to find anything. But I knew I wanted to get a leg up and start preparing as early as possible, so I figured starting sophomore year couldn’t hurt.”
The Pressure to Intern
In interviews, most students agreed that it was personal pressure, not parental pressure or pressure from the College, that made them seek out internships.
“Most of the pressure I feel is self-imposed. Nobody is telling me I have to be a doctor,” Chris Diak ’18.5, who has completed many internships doing medical research, said. “The reality I see, however, is that if I don’t seek out experiences that will help me become a good applicant to medical schools, somebody else will. There’s a strange balance I have to strike between wanting these experiences and knowing I should have them on my resume.”
Some students do think, though, that the student culture at the College contributes to the pressure to get an internship.
“I feel like the stress is created by something similar to the ‘everyone’s having sex’ phenomenon,” Erin Giles ’17 said. “The idea that everyone is doing a summer internship when in reality, that’s not true. I honestly feel like a lot of sophomores end up not having an internship.”
“The high achieving culture at Middlebury is very motivating,” added Elizabeth Zhou ’18, who is interning with Bosnia Initiatives for Local Development this summer.
Open to Everyone?
Though valuable experience, unpaid internships can often prove prohibitively expensive for students.
“The internship economy does, in fact, perpetuate economic inequality,” McCallum said. “It affords certain people that are in a certain class to get a foot in the door in a way that other people simply can’t afford to do, no matter what is on your C.V. or resume.”
The CCI has been working to address this problem through the establishment of its Summer Internship Grants four years ago and its First Year Explorer Grants, new this year.
Additionally, the CCI is working to increase the number of paid internship opportunities available on MOJO. This year approximately 60 percent of internships on MOJO were paid positions, up from about 50 percent last year.
Still, for many students, it is personal connections, not MOJO, that make all the difference in finding an internship.
“Both internships I had this year were through family connections, and for New York, it was really helpful that I have my parents and through my high school friends who live in New York City,” Nan Philip ’16.5 said. “One of my friends doesn’t have connections in the city, and it’s been difficult for her to find an internship there this summer.”
International students also face unique challenges in getting internships, outside of the cost of shouldering an unpaid internship.
“I’ve heard of international students facing various challenges [like] employers discriminating against them based on their accent,” Martin Naunov ’17, a native of Macedonia who has completed two internships in Macedonia and this summer will intern with the United Nations in New York City, said.
Additionally, visa requirements also make it difficult for international students to intern in the US. International students are only allowed to participate in a paid internship in the US by opting into an Optional Practical Training (OPT) program. This program specifies that international students can only complete a paid internship during a 12 month period of time. Furthermore, students must apply in advance for approval and pay a $380 application fee to opt in.
Many universities give credit for internships, to help international students skirt these constraints, allowing them to legally participate in many unpaid internships. However, by a decision of the faculty last year, the College does not give credit for summer internships.
While Naunov applauds certain offices at the College, especially International Student and Scholar Services, for their efforts to help international students negotiate tricky visa situations, Naunov believes that the College’s administration could be doing more.
“If we claim to be one of the most diverse institutions in the US in terms of international students, then we better be able to give the international students the same opportunities as other students,” Naunov said.
Effect on the Undergraduate Experience
Pressure to find an internship, whether self-inflicted or otherwise, has influenced the undergraduate experience in marked ways, affecting what students participate in at the College and causing some students to describe the internship search as “like a fifth class.”
“I think the pressure definitely pushed me to take more classes pertinent to what I wanted to do this summer, which probably detracted from my ‘liberal arts’ educational experience,” Mankad said. “The desire for good internships also dictates many people’s extracurricular activities. For example, people interested in finance feel pushed towards being involved in the SIC [Student Investment Club], as most alumni will ask if students are involved.”
Incorporating the search for internships into the undergraduate experience is part of the CCI mission.
“[We want to emphasize] that thinking about life after Middlebury is part of that undergraduate adventure, as [much as] your course work, your sport, a club or an organization that you belong to,” Burns said.
McCallum argues, however, that this attitude towards internships has serious consequences for a liberal arts education.
“If education is about figuring out how to get a job, then the liberal arts might be in trouble,” McCallum said. “What [job anxiety] drives people to do, i.e. to certain courses of study here, is a real problem. What you study is less important than how you study it. And I’m not sure that people realize that.”
“Now, everyone has to learn ‘practical’ skills — STEM, they tell us, and Econ, they also tell us, which is another way that undergraduate students and institutions subsidize companies who don’t want to take responsibility for training workers,” Owens said.
McCallum also sees this career-focus as influencing work ethic in problematic ways.
“I see Middlebury students as dedicated to their work in a way that past generations have not been. That’s not to say that they’re passionate about it, necessarily, but that the obsession with being busy and what seems like a compulsive necessity to fill your time with work or busy-work or preparing work is a real issue in your lives.”
Largely, McCallum observes in his studies this career-focus diminishing how much people value leisure.
“We’ve figured out how to celebrate work,” McCallum said. “But I think that a commitment to leisure as a fundamental part of a healthy life is important. How to go about doing that is a more difficult question.”
Will this Change?
Owens is not optimistic that the current intern economy, in which highly educated undergraduates are trading free labor for unquantifiable ‘experience,’ can be easily altered.
“As long as there is widespread economic inequality, in which labor of all sorts is under attack, where even ‘good jobs or careers’ for an educated elite are no longer safe, then this trend is sure to continue,” Owens said. “It will take a lot of political work to enact any kind of significant change.”
McCallum agreed that any kind of change will be long-term. For now it seems, the millennial and the internship will have to learn to be friendly co-workers.
(04/22/15 5:01pm)
As of April 17, Vermont is one step closer to implementing a new gun restriction law with bill S.141 passing in both the Vermont Senate and the Vermont House. Bill S.141 was passed in the House with a relatively close vote of 80 yeas and 62 nays. Previously in March, the bill passed in the Senate by a vote of 20-8, with two senators absent.
Bill S. 141 will restrict convicted felons of certain levels of violent crimes and the mentally ill from possessing firearms. Already a crime under federal law, this bill will create much more accountability for the state. For example, in order to classify an individual as mentally ill and a danger to themselves, or others, the state will introduce the National Instant Criminal Background Check System as a mechanism for reporting.
However, certain parts of this bill required extensive revisions. One such section was about the process by which an individual may regain rights to buy guns, once listed on, but later removed from, the federal database. Another contentious point was the length of time before someone who was once listed would have to wait before being able to to purchase a gun. Once the legislature reached a compromise on the language of this section, they took the bill to a vote.
Vermont has previously been characterized as one of the least restrictive gun control states. Vermont does not require a permit to carry an open or concealed weapon, and was for a long time the only state to allow this. In addition, as told by the Washington Post, the state of Vermont also allows minors as young as 16 to buy handguns and conceal carry without a guardian’s permission.
In light of Vermont’s history with relaxed gun control laws, there was contested debate over the proposed bill. The House explained their votes, and their statements were recorded in the House Journal.
Many representatives saw bill S.141 as a challenge to their right to bear arms, a right traditionally respected in Vermont. Rep. Ronald Hubert of Milton explained his vote against the bill as follows: “‘The people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State’ are words Vermonters have lived by since July 8, 1777. Now, nearly two and a half centuries later, this founding principle is being challenged by S.141.”
Rep. Lynn Batchelor of Derby also agreed that this bill challenged the rights of Vermonters to bear arms:
“Vermonters, first in our own state constitution, and later in the American Bill of Rights, have always understood and preserved our right to protect ourselves without infringement from Government – be it local, state or federal. I vote “NO” to stand up for nearly 250 years of tradition and to protect the right to bear arms for future generations of Vermonters.”
In contrast to such dissenting opinions, there were many voices in the House who vocalized their support for the bill.
As Rep. Steve Berry of Manchester explained, “This is a bill that focuses on the responsibility of legislators to protect and defend all Vermonters from those who would abuse our 2nd Amendment. I was not voting, nor being asked to vote, on the rights for citizens to bear arms. Mr. Speaker, everyone in this chamber has the responsibility to protect the most vulnerable Vermonters.”
Other representatives felt comfortable voting for the bill because of its limited scope, and claimed that it was not even a gun control bill. As Rep. Joseph Troiano of Stannard explained:
“It strongly represents states rights, it represents the wishes of a majority of Vermonters. This is not a gun control bill. This is not a background check bill. U.S. Attorney’s offices often do not prosecute firearm cases due to lack of resources. This bill makes sense.”
There was also some debate among members as to whether this bill followed a state agenda or a national agenda, and many felt that outside forces were pressuring Vermont to give up its gun rights. Rep. Larry Fiske of Enosburgh claimed that the vote was instigated by outside campaigns, rather than his constituents in Vermont:
“I vote ‘NO’ because this is not legislation advanced by the people of Vermont. It’s legislation pushed by special interest groups seeking to use our state as a pawn to advance their own national agenda. This legislation isn’t about a safer Vermont. It’s about limiting your rights as Vermonters and Americans, and paying political debts for campaign contributions from outside interest groups.”
Now that the bill S.141 has passed both the state House and the state Senate, it will go to Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin. If he signs the bill it will become law, and if he vetoes it then the bill will return to the House and Senate. If they vote again they can override his veto with a majority of 2/3. If Shumlin does not sign the bill and does not veto it within five days after receiving it, it also becomes a law.
At this point, Shumlin has yet to make a firm statement on whether or not he supports the bill.
As told to Burlington Free Press, Shumlin revealed, “I’ll pass judgment on it when it gets to me. All I can say is that the changes that have been made to the bill since it was introduced make it almost unrecognizable from the bill that was introduced,” he said. “And that’s the bill I objected to.”
(04/22/15 4:44pm)
This past week, Vermont selected seven communities to participate in a new initiative called Promise Communities. This initiative is part of Vermont’s Early Learning Challenge – Race to the Top Grant, a $36.9 million, four-year grant funded by the federal government to improve early childhood education and care across the country.
Though this federal program, Vermont’s Promise Communities and the change this program will effect will be unique to Vermont. It is modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City, a successful program that has provided thousands of impoverished children and their families with free parental care and educational support.
The following Vermont communities were selected for this grant: 1. Barre City, Barre Town; 2. Bellows Falls; 3. Green Street to Canal Street in Brattleboro; 4. Franklin County Early Childhood Programs Region; 5. Rutland City; 6. St Johnsbury; 7. Winooski.
These seven communities were selected by a committee based on applications they submitted. The committee based its decisions on data regarding poverty rates, access to what they deemed “high-quality” childcare and pre-kindergarten and elementary school performance. Since the program primarily aims to help children from birth to age six, the committee looked at the number of children within this age range in the area in order to maximize the program’s impact. The committee also considered the willingness to participate of community partners and families in each applying location.
For the next two years, these communities will receive Promise Community coaches. In the first year of the program, these coaches will work to understand the needs of each community and to create an “action plan” that will improve the community based on its specific needs. In the second year, communities will receive grants up to $200,000 and the coaches will remain in the community to see their plans come to fruition. After the period of two years, the community will be regularly evaluated to ascertain the long-term outcomes of these plans.
The opinions towards this program has been in general quite positive. Governor Peter Shumlin is very excited to see the implementation of these seven Promise Communities across the state.
“I hope these first seven serve as models for other communities to participate down the road,” Shumlin said.
Jenne Morton is the director of Middlebury’s own College Street Children’s Center. Th childcare center is celebrating 15 years of providing high-quality care. She expressed optimism for the program, though Middlebury was not selected for a grant.
“I think it’s a worthwhile thing. Supports are incredibly important considering that 80 percent of a child’s brain develops in the first three years of life. If we’re not providing great experiences for kids, we’re not helping them to be as successful as they could,” Morton said.
19 percent of Vermont’s children under age six live in poverty. For some families, access to quality education and childcare can be difficult, despite its necessity.
“Having security is really important,” Morton said, elaborating on a specific difficulty that many modern families face and that the Promise Communities initiative plans to address.
“There’s not always extended family these days. It used to be that if you had trouble, you could just ask Grandma. Now, families are so spread out, and first time parents especially don’t always know what to do. It’s important to be there for parents and help them figure their next steps out,” Morton said.
However, Morton expressed some concern over the general set-up of the program. “In the first year they’re not giving any funding, which is a little bit difficult because they’re expecting something immediate to happen without any funding in place.”
Indeed, because the program is only starting this fall, Vermont will have to see the direction the program takes and whether it affects Vermont families as desired. Even though the funding will not come immediately, there is hope that the flexibility of the program allows it to be tailored to the specific needs of Vermont families and, like the Harlem program before it, incite change to help break the cycle of poverty plaguing families in Vermont.
“Our goal with this initiative is to help communities overcome barriers like limited transportation, inter-generational poverty, inadequate affordable housing, and the lack of local employment opportunities that inhibit success for young children. The Promise Communities initiative will leverage state and local resources and promote community-based innovations to improve school readiness for young children in our highest need, rural communities,” Vermont Secretary of Human Services Hal Cohen said.
The success of this program will not be evident until its plans begin to take effect, but if successful, this may prove to be an effective model to promote early childhood education reforms around the state.
(04/16/15 1:24am)
Students in the Davis United World College Program, representing as many as 60 countries, will gather in Wilson Hall today to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Program. It will only be the second time this year – and also the last – that this group has come together under the banner which had brought them here in the very first place.
For some Scholars, this is their chance to express the desire to see more institutional support for the Program. In a survey sent out to the current cohort of 106 UWC Scholars, out of the 59 respondents, nearly 80% agreed that “UWCers at Middlebury should have a more institutionalized presence.” When asked to rate the following statement, “There is a supportive environment here where UWCers can continue to serve the College and the wider community according to the UWC values,” on a scale from 1 to 5, the average score came out to be 3.03, demonstrating that the Scholars neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement.
This partnership between the College and philanthropist Shelby Davis, established in 2000, has so far enabled over 350 UWC graduates from 82 countries to pass through the doors of this institution. This year, as per the norm of recent years, UWC Scholars represent over 40% of the international student population. At a school that set itself on the path to become “the first truly global liberal arts college” in 2007, it will be difficult to overstate the importance of such a program.
“It has made a huge difference,” President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said at the annual dinner gathering two springtimes ago. He stressed that the Scholars’ presence in the classrooms, cafeterias, and residence halls add global perspectives and different life experiences on world issues that contribute to “the atmosphere for education… that creates global citizens.”
The core of the worldwide UWC Movement consists of fourteen high schools in five continents. With a network of National Committees in 147 countries that is tasked with recruitment, its vision “to make education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future” that originated from the Cold War era continues on until today. The College, in fact, occupies a unique position in this education movement, as the office of Davis UWC Program is headquartered here at VT 05753. It provides logistical support to over 6000 Scholars, representing nearly 150 countries, spread out across this country in 91 colleges and universities.
If anything, the choice of putting a globe in the newest logo of this institution reaffirmed the College’s strong commitment to fostering intercultural awareness and understanding, the very same values that are the cornerstones of the UWC movement. Yet, at the same time, there is hardly any administrative support for the UWC Scholars after they are brought here.
“We don’t do anything special from an administrative point of view to treat the UWC scholars better or separately from anyone else,” admitted Mike Schoenfeld, the College’s Senior Vice President and Chief Philanthropic Advisor. According to him, after spending two years at their respective UWC, being active and willing to interact with others is “in their nature.”
Indeed, this may seem to be the case, given the strong presence of UWC Scholars in campus life. Out of all the fellows at the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship (CSE), for example, almost half of them – eight out of eighteen – are a UWC Scholar. More than half (8/14) of all the summer grants that have been awarded by the Center since three summers ago are designed or co-designed by a UWC Scholar. “They have developed an understanding of community engagement and social entrepreneurship from cross-cultural experiences in high school,” observed Heather Neuwirth ’08, Associate Director of the CSE.
But some current Scholars tell a different side of the story, “It would greatly help UWC students here to have upperclassmen/staff that we can go to for emotional support and other advice,” wrote Adara Wicaksono ’17 in the survey. Another Scholar, Lee Michael Garcia Jimenez ’18, asserted that a mentorship program or support network will greatly benefit especially first year students, citing that many of them find the transition to the College difficult. “We find ourselves trying hard to adjust to new cultures and communities,” agreed Jovita Ho ’16.5, “and carrying on the UWC mission becomes a lower priority.”
For some, even talking about UWC has become a taboo, “In general UWCers are ashamed to talk about UWC,” Jimenez continued, “I feel like my experience is invalidated and I feel silenced.” The result, he pointed out, is that only negative stereotypes are being repeated about the Scholars, “Suddenly I am a rich pretentious international when I am actually an American and I had [a] scholarship to [go to] UWC, and my friends are not pretentious,” he said.
The dual forces of isolation and a sense of loss are sometimes enough to destroy one’s newfound passion and willingness to engage fully in their community. Ashley Laux from the Community Engagement Office, who has worked with many UWC Scholars since 2011, understands this process, “I think it’s easy to lose that unique energy without spending time with a cohort that has experienced something similar,” she told me, “capturing that wonderful energy and keeping it strong could create more of a collective social impact here on campus.” She has witnessed students before who were “jazzed up about what UWC meant to them,” and then lost their motivations because there was no reunions where they could recapture the energy.
A senior Scholar, who wished to remain anonymous, disagreed. He worried that any form of institutionalization might just turn out to be redundant. “Don’t make other international students or students in general feel like they’re incapable of being humanitarian and committed to humanity,” he said, “We’re not the only ones.”
But a support system for the Scholars needs not be self-congratulatory. Instead, it can be set up with the ultimate aim of empowering each Scholar to become able and willing to be of service to the College community and beyond. Laux suggested regular service-based or reflection-based reunions where UWC Scholars can remember the core values and experience of UWC, recapture that energy, and bring it to their time at the College.
In their survey responses, many Scholars pointed to the Posse Program as a model that the UWC Program could possibly emulate. Naina Qayyum ’15 explains why logistical support from the College is paramount, “Nothing can organically sustain itself in a busy place like Middlebury where everyone has so much on their plate,” she said, “as students come and go, who will keep up with the administrative work from year to year?”
Indeed, the needs that have been met with the Posse Program sound almost identical to the needs of some current UWC Scholars, “A lot of times students have felt like they don’t fit in here,” Ross Commons Dean Ann Hanson told me. “Posse has helped students feel like this is their place and their campus.”
A significant number of those who responded to the survey also suggested a UWC+1 Retreat modeled after the Posse+1 Retreat. “I like the idea of UWC+1 retreat,” wrote a senior who chose to remain anonymous, “particularly because there is confusion about what UWC is or why we are represented in such [a] high number here.” Schoenfeld also used the Poss+1 Retreat as a model, “you get students from all different backgrounds, and talk about the background that you benefited from, some of the values you developed at the UWCs,” he told me, “Posse is trying to do the same thing… [they] bring other people in to talk about some of things they learned in Posse training.”
(04/15/15 3:49pm)
The men’s and women’s golf teams began the spring season last weekend in the greater New York metro area. The women finished fourth out of the 12 teams competing in the Vassar College Invitational and the men placed third out of the 13 teams competing in the Manhattanville/NYU Spring Invitational.
The women teed off on Saturday in Poughkeepsie at the Casperkill Golf Club in their first match since placing third at Wesleyan’s Ann S. Batchelder Invitational in October and finished the weekend in fourth with a score of 661. Ithaca College edged the Panthers for third with a score of 657, while NYU finished in second, 15 strokes behind Ithaca (632). Williams won with a score of 617.
The top finishers for the Panthers on the women’s side were Jordan Glatt ’15 and Monica Chow ’16, who both shot 161’s for the weekend. Glatt was the Panther with the best round for on day one with a 79, while Chow had the fifth-lowest score in the tournament on the second day of play, shooting a 78. The two finished the tournament tied for 12th place.
Though the Panthers finished 44 strokes off of the lead, they believe they are building momentum that will carry them into next weekend’s Jack Leaman Tounament hosted by Amherst.
The Panthers’ fourth-place finish offers a benchmark for the team to improve, and “it was great to begin competing again, as we haven’t had a tournament since the fall,” Glatt said.
“Even though we haven’t been able to utilize the golf course facilities much in the past couple weeks due to the weather, I was very proud of our team’s performance. The saturation and wind provided significant obstacles, but the team handled the conditions well. It has been a long winter, so we were excited to get outside,” Glatt said.
The men’s squad entered the Manhattanville/NYU Spring Invitational coming off of a first place finish at the Sunshine invitational in Port St. Lucie, Florida.
“The win in Florida provided our team with a great deal of confidence, but at the same time, we knew that the transition back to spring Northeast golf would pose some challenges,” Fitz Bowen ’17 said.
Eric Laorr ’15 was the top Panther last weekend, finishing second among the 74 individuals who competed. He carded a pair of 74’s to finish with a 148, only three strokes back of the top individual, Bayard Geeslin from the Hamilton squad.
Tying for 15th-place was Charlie Garcia ’15, who shot a 79 on day one and took three strokes off his day two score to finish with a 155. John Louie ’15 and Bowen shot 158’s. Louie came in with a 78 on day one and an 80 on day two.
Bowen, who had shot a 72 at the Sunshine Invitational, shot back-to-back rounds of 79. Rounding out the team’s scorers were Bennett Doherty ’18 (164), and Rodrigo Andrade ’17 who (166).
Reflecting on the team’s performance last weekend, Bowen said, “We were only able to hit outdoors on two occasions prior to NYU’s tournament; on days when the weather was not cooperative we resorted to hitting into nets in Nelson. Surely, this forced us all to feel unprepared for the tournament in some way, but we had to make the best of what we had.”
However, Bowen added that the team is “looking at last weekend as a stepping stone for the next few weeks. Each day, our goal is to get a little bit better. If we can do that, then our expectations will definitely be met.”
The Panther men will tee off again at the Ralph Myhre Golf Course next weekend for the NESCAC tournament.
(04/08/15 10:55pm)
Over spring break the Middlebury men’s lacrosse team traveled to Baltimore to play the second-ranked Rochester Institute of Technology at Homewood Field, the home of the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays. Though the trip was ultimately an unsuccessful one, resulting in a 21-11 defeat to end the Panthers’ six game winning streak, it marked only the second loss of the season. with the first coming at the hands of first-ranked Tufts.
The then 13th ranked Panthers were dominated in the game, as the Tigers won both the shot battle and the ground ball fight while successfully clearing at a phenomenal 80 percent rate. Though this marks the first win for RIT over Middlebury in three games in the all-time series between the two schools, it was no fluke, as it marked RIT’s 32nd consecutive victory.
The team, however, seemed to use the sting of defeat to forge a new level of motivation. In a quick three day turnaround the Panthers traveled to play Amherst on Saturday, March 28 where a NESCAC bout, against yet another nationally ranked top 10 team, proved to be the perfect scenario for a bounce back statement.
After sitting at a 4-4 tie with the 5th ranked team in the nation following the first quarter, the Panthers stepped on the gas pedal and never looked back. Led by Jon Broome ’16 and his astounding four goal, four assist effort, the team maintained the lead after Henry Riehl ’18 scored at the 13:34 mark of the second quarter. The Panthers would ultimately stomp their NESCAC rival by a 17-11 margin and in so doing hand Amherst its first loss of the year while taking over second place in the league.
Returning home to play Hamilton on Wednesday, April 1, the team did not resort to complacency and retained their coveted spot near the top of the NESCAC. After going down 6-2 at halftime, the Continentals, in rather typical hard-nosed NESCAC fashion, refused to go away easily and stormed back with three goals in the third quarter while shutting out the Panthers.
Hamilton continued to play very solid defense in the fourth quarter, requiring just as much grit and hustle, two aspects embodied by face-off specialist John Jackson ’18 who won 11 face-offs while scooping up five ground balls on the day. The Panthers also exhibited their skill in the offensive end, led by Riehl and Jack Cleary ’16, who had three and two goal games respectively. The Panthers ultimately came out on top by 11-8, retaining their number seven national ranking and second place in the league.
With a horde of fanatical parents packing the stands of Alumni Stadium on Saturday, April 4, seventh-seeded Middlebury took on the Colby Mules to try to improve upon its winning streak. Though Colby sits near the bottom of the NESCAC, no one considers the Mules a pushover.
Both teams got out to a hot start, pouring in five goals apiece in the opening quarter. The trend continued into the second quarter as Middlebury, led by Tim Giarrusso ’16 who earned his third point on the day after an assist to Joel Blockowicz ’15 at the 11:16 mark, dumped in three more to Colby’s lone goal to take an 8-7 lead heading into halftime. The Mules responded right away to open the second half with three straight goals, building its largest lead at 10-8 with 10:34 remaining.
The Panthers responded with three of their own: one notched by David Murray ’15 and another by Joey Zelkowitz ’17. Broome added his second of the day to round out the scoring and produce the seventh lead change of the game. Colby’s Kevin Seiler tied the contest up at 11-11 late in third, however, the Panthers took over yet again to end the quarter as Broome earned his hat trick at with under a minute remaining followed by Zelkowitz who netted his second goal of the game with a mere 18 seconds remaining. After a relatively slowly fourth quarter marked by a goal for each side, the Panthers won by a score of 14-11.
Following the victory Middlebury improved to 9-2 on the season and 6-1 in NESCAC play. The Panthers return to action at home on Wednesday, April 8th when they attempt to win their fourth in a row against the 4-6 Springfield College Pride in a non-conference matchup.
(03/18/15 5:36pm)
Images have largely replaced sound in today’s media. In fact, we are so used to pictures accompanying sound that it’s strange just to listen to a story and to let our imaginations take over in creating mental pictures. It’s even stranger when we consider this within an academic context.
Yet, that is what the Sociology Department is doing. Working with Erin Davis, a documentary filmmaker and radio producer, a group of senior sociology majors are translating their 80-page senior theses into five-minute podcasts.
Davis previously taught the J-term course “Sound and Story,” where students learned the techniques of radio production and produced their own stories through sound. The J-term course offered students an alternative to academic writing. The class generated student interest in translating senior work into more accessible forms. After conversations between interested students, Davis, and the sociology department, the project was conceived in the fall of this academic year.
It’s the marrying of two seemingly disparate concepts: mass journalism and academia, but a development that Sociology Department Chair Linus Owens sees to be important. Although a journalist and a sociologist may approach events differently, with the sociologist asking questions about the underlying socioeconomic structures at the root of events that the journalist may oversee, the relationship between the two is not too far removed.
“Both sociology and journalism are getting at a similar question, which is how to explain the world and how to put it in a meaningful context that people can understand and do something with,” Owens said. By putting sociological research into journalism, in-depth research on a social phenomenon can be conveyed to a much wider audience.
Unlike sociological research, journalism is not comprised of pages of research, analysis, and graphs. Rather, journalism appeals to the short attention span of most readers.
“When you do research, it only matters that you care,” Davis said. “When you’re working on the podcasts, you have to ask yourself why anyone else cares about it, or figure out how to make them care.”
In a departure from the academic mindset, students have to think about translating their work into a story that listeners will be able to connect with on a much more personal level.
“Because who’s going to read your 50-page essay, right?” Owens chuckled.
Because the five-minute podcasts cannot cover the entirety of the research and writing that has gone into a student’s senior work, students have to think about smaller things to extract. These things might be a point of interest that came up at some point during research but that the student didn’t have the time to pursue. Or the student might look for a smaller story that will point to the research as a larger whole.
One of the students involved in the project, Rosalie Wright-Lapin ’15, is still looking for the perfect way to translate her research into a podcast.
Wright-Lapin’s thesis is about how socioeconomic status, family background, and notions of academic achievement play into social groups and identities at Middlebury Union High School. In piecing together her senior thesis, Wright-Lapin conducted and recorded one-on-one interviews with teachers, administrators, counselors, and students. In addition, she conducted semi-structured class discussion that varied in academic level to look at student participation, which she noted with observations.
Due to the type of research Wright-Lapin conducted and the nature of her study, Davis recommended that she pursue the narrative approach.
“It would be a more vivid image rather than just analytical research,” Wright-Lapin said of focusing on one story in her podcast. “It’s an opportunity to portray my work in a different medium and a push to think of my work in a different way.”
Narrative is not the only approach to creating podcasts. According to Davis, another common, more traditional approach is having the student act as the host and presents his or her story. However, she also stressed that there were more than these two options available to students.
The students involved in this project are working closely with Davis to put their podcasts together. At this point in the semester, the projects are still in early production stages but scheduled to be completed in May.
Although the major aim of this project is to make sociological research more accessible to the larger public, the department hopes this pilot project will also open up fresh alternatives to traditional senior work. The sociology department is the first to have embarked on any such project at the College and has raised some important questions on the accessibility and applicability of academic research to the general public.
In the academic grindstone that is Middlebury, it could be worthwhile to take the time to stop and think about why others should care about our work as much as we do.
(03/12/15 2:44am)
It was a harsh Vermont winter in December 1963 and, in the midst of the subzero temperatures, a landmark student life initiative had also frozen over. “The ‘question of honor’ at Middlebury College seems to have plenty of support as an ideal and not so much as a working system,” read a December 5 front-page Campus article. The article, which included student concerns about a code’s implications, foreshadowed the proposed Honor Code’s defeat in a student vote for the second time that May.
Over the past year, the Campus has investigated the untold story of the creation of the Honor Code. Although the story of the origins of the Honor Code at Middlebury is often that of a system fashioned by students and for students, the historical picture is much murkier.
A lengthy search in the College Archives and interviews with those who witnessed the process firsthand reveal that the Honor Code had a slightly turbulent history from the start.
It was a story that dominated the early 1960s at the College: a group of students and administrators who saw the Honor Code as an important opportunity for students to take ownership over their education. And yet, they received surprisingly strong pushback from students on the language and specifics of the proposed code.
The code’s proponents even dropped a compulsory peer-reporting clause, a hallmark of honor systems at Princeton University and elsewhere, from the Middlebury Honor Code in order to ensure its passage via a student vote. Moreover, after two failed student referenda on the Honor Code, evidence found in the Archives shows that at least one administrator recommended enacting the Honor Code without a student vote of support. However, in March 1965 the Code received sufficient support in a student vote to pass. Faculty opted for a streamlined approval process to avoid sending the Honor Code back with revisions to be subject to another student referendum, which they thought could be tantamount to its defeat.
The question of student votes on the Honor Code has renewed relevance of late. On Sunday, the Student Government Association (SGA) Senate voted in favor of amending the Honor System’s Constitution to put the code to a biennial student referendum with the options to maintain, revise, or eliminate the Honor Code. The amendment now must receive 2/3 of the vote in a referendum in which 2/3 the student body votes and must also be ratified by the faculty.
Change in the Air
Middlebury’s academic Honor Code, far from a lone initiative, was the product of social changes on campus that created profound shifts in student life during the 1960s. The College of the 1930s-50s was on its way out in several ways that precipitated the creation of an Honor Code.
Historians of the College have written much about the changes that took place in the 1960s. Among these reforms were major social changes to the institutional rules surrounding student freedoms. The influential Dean of Women Elizabeth ‘Ma’ Kelly oversaw a period in the ’60s when the ground shifted under students’ feet regarding their freedoms and rights as young men and women.
In the ’60s, parietal hours — the now seemingly antediluvian rules that governed when men and women could visit opposite-sex dorms —were gradually phased out. The College began to offer help to students with questions about birth control and sexually transmitted diseases. Finally, the fraternities and sororities, long the bastions of the social life of yesteryear, became less and less of a mainstay of the campus party scene.
Historian of the College David Stameshkin said the ’60s were a period of remarkable change, bar none.
“Students wanted to be treated as adults. The administration wanted to treat the students as adults in certain ways but not others,” Stameshkin said in an interview. “It was incredible how things changed in the time [James] Armstrong was President.”
These changes, taken together, amounted to a climate of dramatically increased student responsibility in social life. Naturally, this trend simultaneously made its way into the academic realm.
As discussions were underway about a potential code, the Campus polled 254 students in October 1962 and found 80 percent approved of a code in theory. The newspaper also polled students and found that 35 percent of those surveyed had experience with an honor system at their high school. However, “a majority indicated they would not speak directly to a student if they found him cheating.”
The first instance of bringing the Honor Code to a vote occurred on November 19, 1962, when it failed. Harold Freeman ’62, the Student Association (SA) President, informed the Campus that the vote to inaugurate an Honor Code was defeated, 623-512, a combination of students voting “no” as well as “No-with-Qualification.” 235 voted no, 388 voted no with qualification and 512 voted yes. The students in favor did not reach the 85 percent threshold of “Yes” to send the measure to the faculty for a vote.
However, Freeman gave hints that the fight for a code was not over. “Freeman observed that by adding together the Yes and No-with-Qualification votes, almost four-fifths of the students were in favor of at least some form of Honor Code,” reported the Campus. Nonetheless, it would not be easy to convince the students who voted No-with-Qualification.
The SA, in a postmortem, theorized that a main cause for the defeat was the clause requiring students to report observed violations. This clause was considered a hallmark of longstanding honor codes at universities, including Stanford and Princeton.
Peer-Reporting Controversy
These qualms about the code reared their head repeatedly in the next two years. Surveys revealed approximately 80 percent of students supported an honor system as an ideal, but blanched at the proposal under consideration. “The main objection was to the obligation to report an offense committed by another person,” reported this newspaper.
Helen Gordon, president of the Panhellenic Council, “agreed that an honor code would be a benefit to Middlebury, but thought reworking of the ‘obligation’ clause necessary,” according to the Campus.
Gordon said, “It’s unrealistic to assume that human nature will [report others] but I don’t think they ought to leave out entirely this kind of an idea because it denies the opportunity to a person who’s really honest.”
The peer-reporting requirement would remain an issue through the end of the 1960s and beyond. As the clause became a sticking point in the debate, those in support of the Honor Code pushed back on the idea that peer-reporting meant “tattling” or being a “rat.”
In a December 1963 issue, Campus Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey J. Joseph opined that “whenever one brings up the subject of an Honor Code, the listener politely nods, makes a disparaging grimace, and quickly manages to say something like: ‘You going to the hockey game tomorrow night?’”
For all of the social life changes happening contemporaneously with the Honor Code debate, a large number of students felt comfortable enough with the status quo to stymie any efforts at instituting an honor system. Joseph explained that many students thought of the proposed Honor Code as either a way to end fraternities or to increase social code regulations and theorized that these factors led to its defeat.
“Let’s face it,” he wrote, “if someone wants to cheat, he cheats. If someone wants to ‘tell’ on him, he should be allowed to ‘tell.’ It is important to realize that a provision for ‘telling’ on someone is not included for the main purpose of making enemies out of friends. It is there to protect every honest student by presenting to the cheater a possibility that he will be caught. If you have any qualms about ‘telling’ on your buddy, keep your head down in your paper where it belongs.”
Despite the support of students like Joseph, the SA leadership began to contemplate foregoing the peer-reporting requirement. The Vice President of the SA was reportedly “willing to drop the stipulation that students report others, adding that ‘the maturity of Middlebury students ought to be able to make an honor code successful.’”
In December 1963, the chair of the student Honor Code Committee, Michael McCann ’65, cautioned against pushing the code too vigorously without almost unanimous student support. Two months later, the SA polled students on a potential honor code in what would be the run-up to a second push to pass it via a student body vote. A point of particular emphasis in the questionnaire was intended to gauge how students would feel about peer-reporting. The article stated that “McCann stresses the importance of questions dealing with student and faculty reports of offenders.”
The survey occurred concurrently with the 1964 election of a SA President, in which candidates weighed in on an honor code. Both John Walker ’65 and Peter Delfausse ’65 made an honor code a part of their platform.
Delfausse, who would win the election, said to a Campus reporter, “We on this campus are treated as adults in everything but the integrity of our academic work. Shouldn’t this be the first area in which we should be trusted? Nothing can force the student body into accepting something which isn’t wanted, but if an honor system is desired, we will find the right words with which to express it.”
Nevertheless, concurrent discussion about combating student apathy regarding the SA gives the impression that the Honor Code was an issue important to the members of its committee, but perhaps was less relevant to the wider student body. Richard Hawley ’67 was the Editor-in-Chief of the Campus, and said other issues captured the student body’s attention more than the Honor Code, particularly parietal hours — although he nonetheless appreciated the code when it was instated.
“I remember feeling a kind of relief,” Hawley said in an interview. “What a relief it was to take your exam to the library and do it there. I remember thinking, ‘This is wonderful.’ But I don’t remember student passion about it.”
Princeton on the Otter
Within the next few months, a figure who would be pivotal to Middlebury’s history weighed in on the code. College President James Armstrong, who had stepped into the position in 1963, approved of the proposed Honor Code in a meeting with McCann.
Armstrong said in a comment to the newspaper in April 1964, “Herding of students into the fieldhouse like animals, with proctors standing over them like jailkeeps, is not in keeping with the ideals of a liberal arts education.”
The influence of the college president and other key members of his administration may have been crucial to the Honor Code’s passage. Before arriving at Middlebury, Armstrong had spent his entire academic career at Princeton, an Ivy League school with one of the nation’s oldest academic honor codes — passed in 1893, with an obligatory peer-reporting clause. Armstrong earned his B.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton and then served as a faculty member and dean until he was appointed Middlebury’s 12th President.
“When Armstrong came as president from Princeton, he started bringing people from Princeton,” Stameshkin said in an interview. “In fact, the joke on campus was it was ‘Princeton on the Otter.’ That’s what they used to call Middlebury during the ’60s because Armstrong kept bringing people there.”
Another Princeton man, Dennis O’Brien was previously an assistant dean there before arriving at Middlebury in September 1965 to serve as the Dean of Men. His experience with the honor system at Princeton impacted his view of a potential Honor Code at Middlebury.
“Because myself and Jim came from Princeton, we had lived with it and we found it comfortable,” O’Brien told the Campus in a recent interview. “It seemed to establish a different relationship between faculty and students. Faculty were not always snooping over students’ shoulders to make sure they weren’t cheating; we were more like mentors. To suddenly switch over from being the person who is teaching someone to someone who is monitoring your honest behavior seemed not to be the image the faculty wanted to have.”
On top of a Princetonian as president, Middlebury’s stature as an institution was on the rise during the ’60s. O’Brien believes the Honor Code was part of the improvements.
“I think there was clearly a kind of an upgrade in terms of the quality of the students and the quality of the faculty that we were able to attract at that time,” he said, “and so it seemed like a much more senior, adult institution than one having proctored exams.”
The desire for an upgrade to Middlebury came from both above, with the administration, and also below, from students of the ’60s, particularly those who were tired of the fraternities’ hold on campus life.
“There was a genuine feeling that there should be more seriousness at the College intellectually,” Stameshkin said. “And the same thing was happening at Williams and other schools. This idea that there should be more intellectualism and more feeling of scholarship was also happening in the early to mid-60s.”
Nonetheless, the vocal support of Armstrong and O’Brien did not help the Honor Code at the ballot box at first. The proposed code failed in May 1964 to clear the 85 percent hurdle of students voting in favor, and the referendum did not receive even half of the student body’s participation. The result was devastating for those students who had worked tirelessly on behalf of a code.
“After two full years of preparation, an academic honor code was put before the student body Monday via a yes-or-no ballot – and failed to gain the needed support,” said a front-page article in the Campus. The measure received 69 percent “yes” votes from the 45 percent of the student body that voted. The rejected code included “that the test-taker pledge that he had neither given nor received aid” and that students report those they suspected of cheating within 48 hours.
The aforementioned Honor Code Committee displayed dogged, even stubborn, persistence to pass the measure. McCann told this newspaper, “This year’s balloting was far more encouraging than last year’s and there will be another honor committee next year trying to get this thing through.”
Victory, at a Cost
Despite McCann’s optimism, the outlook was grim: two votes and two defeats for an Honor Code within three years. But finally, in March 1965, the Honor Code was approved in a landslide. With 1,000 “yes” votes to 313 “no” votes, it was a marked improvement from the previous two tries in the fall of 1962 and the spring of 1964.
However, the code approved by students contained no compulsory peer-reporting clause such as that of Princeton, due to the fact that the committee viewed the clause as the reason for previous defeats. The Middlebury code stated that students with knowledge of an infraction should confront the student and if he or she does not report themselves to the honor board within 24 hours, the observer should. In O’Brien’s words, it was a passive reporting clause, with no teeth to punish a student who observes cheating and does not report it. The code that passed, unlike the previous versions, said students “should” report those they observed cheating, not “must” or “shall” of previous drafts.
The compulsory reporting clause had also been under fire in the opinions pages of this newspaper. In a Letter to the Editor on Feb. 25, 1965, William Michaels ’66 wrote: “Under the present system of exam proctoring, the College denies us the privilege of attempting to live up to the ideals of moral responsibility … this would also be the case if an honor code were passed which possessed a mandatory student reporting clause, since the student is not thus delegated the responsibility of looking after his own morality: it is merely shifted from the proctors to the other students.”
It was also a significant change that the threshold for victory was lowered to 75 percent from a lofty 85 percent, what it had been in 1962 and 1964. Some students grumbled about the idea of voting for an Honor Code for a third time, suggesting that other factors may have been at play in its success. A joke printed in the Campus poked fun at the code’s long-awaited victory. “Did you favor the Honor System at the recent election?” a student asks. His friend replies, “I sure did. I voted for it five times.”
President Armstrong was understandably pleased following the successful vote, as it was an initiative he had supported since the past spring, and he immediately set to work assigning administrators to it. In an October 1965 letter to the four members of the new subcommittee of the Faculty Administration Committee on the Honor Code, including Dean of Men O’Brien, Armstrong said, “Although I do not think you will be called upon for heavy duty quantitatively, I know you understand how important I believe the Honor Code is for the College and that a guiding hand from the faculty will be important and possibly crucial.”
Armstrong also probably worried that a lack of faculty support might end the last chance for the Honor Code to become a reality. He was present in a meeting of the Faculty Educational Policy Committee (EPC) in March 1965, after the code had been approved by the referendum.
“The honor code statement worked out by the students and brought to us with a large supporting student vote … was discussed,” states the meeting’s minutes. “It was felt best not to subject the statement to the scrupulous kind of inspection the EPC would normally employ in surveying a faculty document, but vote on it yea or nay as it stood; some felt that return of the document for a second student consideration and vote would defeat the proposal. Vote was a unanimous pro.”
It appears the EPC’s worries about the Honor Code failing in the student body led them to streamline its approval process, despite reservations that undoubtedly existed among the faculty.
The faculty also approved a key word choice in the code in April 1965. During the faculty meeting in which they approved the code, according to the article in the Campus, the faculty “did not demand a change to ‘must’” in the reporting clause.
Students Not Sold
There is a small piece of evidence that the College may have enacted an honor code regardless of the student vote. Dean of the College Thomas H. Reynolds wrote in his annual report dated July 1, 1964:
“There is an excellent chance that an almost unanimous student vote will be achieved next year. In the event that this kind of a program does not succeed next year, I recommend the College take some action towards bringing an academic honor system into effect.”
While Reynolds never ended up having to make that recommendation, O’Brien disagreed with his premise.
“I don’t think you should impose it without a successful student vote. I think that would have been a mistake to try to do that,” O’Brien told this reporter. “I think the whole idea of an honor code, to a certain extent, is to get away from the high school syndrome of, ‘You have to be proctored and not entirely trusted.’”
The following year, as new Dean of Men, Dennis O’Brien’s first annual report was pessimistic, illuminating the reasons why Reynolds or others might have pursued an Honor Code if the student body would not.
“By the time the student reaches the last half of his college career we have pretty much either got him involved intellectually or we have lost him for good … they may be active in fraternity life, extracurricular life, athletics, they may be valuable citizens in other ways, but academically they run along on minimal requirements seeking the gut courses and paying only lip service, if that, to the intellectual community,” wrote O’Brien in his annual report in June 1965.
He went on in that report to comment on the lackluster implementation of the Honor Code.
“The Honor Code was approved by students in early March,” O’Brien wrote. “I may have missed something, but I think no further initiative toward its implementation came from students until practically exam time, if then.”
O’Brien also observed how the administration was involved from the very beginning and that students were not yet invested in the code:
“Many students are far from ‘sold’ on the Honor Code. They feel that the Administration has been determined to have an Honor Code here no matter what and that the students finally let the Administration have its way. These students have a sort of uninvolved, ‘play it cool’ attitude. They intend to wait and see how ‘they’ will work it out. If students who felt that way could see the minutes of the Ad Hoc Committee on Honor Code for May 27, 1965 they would feel that their perception was largely confirmed. These minutes make it clear that the Honor Code Committee, chaired by the Dean of the College, consists of several professors and administrators and that to the meeting of this committee were ‘invited’ several specified undergraduates.”
O’Brien also cited a study from Columbia University that said for honor codes to be effective, the motivation should come from students and should appear to be coming from students. The difference between the honor codes at Princeton and Middlebury, he told this newspaper in October 1965, was not Princeton’s “obligatory clause for reporting, but a strong and firm belief in the system by faculty and students.”
Of the code, “it was held with a great deal of pride,” O’Brien said. “Most complaints of the new Middlebury system that I have heard have not been substantive, but procedural. And I think there are some false expectations about the system by a few students.”
A Reversal in Student Perception
Two years later in another report, O’Brien suggested that the honor code might have already backfired soon after its implementation.
“The Honor Code seems to be functioning well although there is still a certain amount of feeling against signing the pledge,” he wrote. “I personally feel that the distaste for the pledge grows out of a hypersensitivity on the part of students today that they are not trusted. As they are not trusted to close their dorm doors during parietal hours, so they feel they are not trusted in the matter of honor in examinations.”
This reversal in opinion was extraordinary. The push for the Honor Code, at least from students, was based on the idea that it would give the students more responsibility and was in the same spirit as a move away from parietal hours. Based on O’Brien’s report, the code had the opposite effect, making students feel like the administration trusted them less than before.
Whether the code was truly being followed is difficult to assess based on available records, but O’Brien writes that “a student was convicted of a violation of the Honor Code this year and suspended for a semester,” a low number of convictions by any standard.
Although during the 1960s the social rules at colleges and universities like Middlebury were being chipped away from all sides, it still took a great deal of effort on the part of members of the SA to pass an honor code via a student vote. Additionally, the faculty minutes and annual reports of the College show that at least one top member of the administration was ready to intervene to institute an honor code and held back probably because of concerns of its effectiveness if instated and operated by Old Chapel.
O’Brien’s 1967 assessment is revealing. There had been two unsuccessful votes from students amid vocal support from the administration and faculty; as a result, many students identified the Honor Code as an administrative device. A corollary explanation is that the social changes in the 1960s cut both ways on an honor system: while these sweeping changes helped make the code a possibility, they also changed the way a code was viewed in the years afterward. Increased freedom for students allowed them to pass the code; however, the perception of the code after 1965 was that it was an administrative measure — not a student-owned freedom.
“It’s very important that the students read the honor code as an administrative imposition as opposed to something that boiled up from the students,” Stameshkin said. “The students felt often as if the administration was kind of the enemy. They wanted to be adults and they felt the administration was treating them like children—you have to be in at this hour and all that — it wasn’t paranoia, but the students felt that way about a lot of things.”
The Campus reported in March 1968, three years after the code passed, that the student Honor Board was worried about the new system’s efficacy. The board had only heard six cases since 1965, and three of those were in the 1967-68 year. Two cases resulted in convictions, and only one of the six cases was because of a report submitted by another student. “This the board felt suggests either that only two students have cheated in the last three years, or that students have not accepted the responsibilities implicit in the system,” reported this newspaper.
The Honor Board, as a result, began to consider changing the constitution of the new Honor Code from passive acceptance of the code to hold responsible a student who did not report a violation.
A decade later, in January 1976, the student body approved by a landslide the revisions proposed by a committee on the honor system. There were dual changes: students now had a moral obligation to report cheating, moving away from the ambiguous language of the original code, and also proctors would be allowed in some cases with the specific authorization of the Judicial Review Board. Even under the best of circumstances, O’Brien said in a recent interview, getting students to report their peers may be asking too much.
“My guess is that [peer-reporting] never works terribly well, unless you’re in a highly codified organization like the military academy,” O’Brien said. “I’m not even so sure how well it worked at Princeton … it’s a nice thing to have: there’s a certain moral responsibility, and I love the idea of going up to somebody else and saying, ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ But I suspect it doesn’t happen very often.”
It is difficult to assess whether the code cut down on cheating, as suggested by research that shows colleges with an honor code have less self-reported cheating by students. On that front, Emeritus Dean of Advising and Assistant Professor of American Studies Karl Lindholm ’67 said the Honor Code did not hurt and probably helped.
“I remember thinking it was a great idea. I don’t think there was any greater level of cheating than when the exams were tightly proctored,” Lindholm said. “It was almost a challenge to see if you could beat the system then,” with stories of notes written on hands and crib sheets hidden during an exam. “With unproctored exams, I don’t recall any greater level of cheating,” he said.
Approaching Another Vote
In a January survey by the SGA, 33 percent of the student body said they support the Honor Code in principle but that there need to be changes. 59 percent of the 1438 survey respondents said they support it in its current form and about 7 percent said they don’t support it.
Additionally, the Campus published (“Cheating: Hardly a Secret,” Oct. 30, 2013) the results of a survey by Craig Thompson ’14 for the course Economics of Sin where 35 percent of 377 students surveyed admitted to violating the Honor Code at least once in the 2012-13 academic year. 97 percent were not punished.
On Sunday, the discussion came to a head when the SGA Senate approved, in a nearly unanimous vote, the decision to move ahead with a bill that would subject the Honor Code to a biennial student referendum. Per the Honor System's Constitution, 2/3 of the student body must vote, and 2/3 vote in favor, for the change to take effect. The amendment would then need to be ratified by the faculty at large. If the amendment passes, a spring 2016 referendum would give students three options: to vote to maintain the honor code as it stands, to eliminate it or to revise it. A majority in favor of revision would cause the Honor Code committee to survey opinions during a two-week revision process. Students would then vote on the revised Honor Code to either approve it, to maintain the original code, or to eliminate the code.
Student Co-Chair of Community Council Ben Bogin ’15 was an impetus behind the SGA proposal and said fighting atrophy was a goal. “The idea behind our method is to encourage people to continue talking about the Honor Code after they sign it as a first-year,” Bogin wrote in an email. “The Honor Code only works if it’s a living, breathing document that people cherish and take seriously. We’re trying to breathe a little more life into it.”
SGA Director of Academic Affairs Cate Costley ’15 added that the idea is to reclaim the Honor Code as a document students care about and take ownership of.
“Through conversations and debates, we settled on a schoolwide vote to try to solicit the voices of our peers and to see what they think,” Costley said. “And having an edge to it with the possibility of eliminating the Honor Code is to say to people, ‘Let’s not take this document for granted.’”
Vice President for Student Affairs, Dean of the College and Assistant Professor of the History of Art and Architecture Katy Smith Abbott said she believes discussion has also been sparked by the decision in the Economics Department to proctor exams in introductory classes starting last spring.
“It’s not that proctoring hasn’t been an option for faculty — it has been — but it’s required a certain kind of approval process that most people thought was not necessary or wasn’t in the spirit of the Honor Code,” Smith Abbott said. “And I think when that decision was made (thoughtfully, and at great length) by the Economics Department, it meant that a larger number of students were being exposed to the question of whether the Honor Code is working.”
Smith Abbott also said that the code could possibly fail in a referendum, based on what she has heard from students.
“I think some of my lack of a firm sense of how it would go is based on the variety of opinions out there right now about whether or not the Honor Code is working,” she said. “I think if we have entered into a period where more students, through their own experience or inherited wisdom, think the Honor Code isn’t working, we could see it fail.”
Several on Community Council, according to Smith Abbott, have raised doubts about the wisdom of a biennial survey in which the Honor Code could be eliminated.
“I think a lot of folks on Community Council — and I have mixed feelings about this — felt that those are insurmountable odds that, if two years later, you have two classes of students who have never lived with an Honor Code,” Smith Abbott said. “What’s their investment in bringing it back? Why are we putting that on them by saying, ‘[An honor code] worked for some people and didn’t work for others, but it’s on you to decide to overwhelmingly vote it back into existence?’”
Bogin, however, said that that he is not worried about failure and that the discussion of the code’s relevance is worth having through a referendum.
“I think that it’s incredibly unlikely that the Honor Code would fail in a vote. According to our most recent student survey, in which about 60 percent of the student body voted, 92 percent supported the continued existence of the Honor Code,” Bogin wrote. “I also think that it’s important to say that if something isn’t working, and everybody agrees, we should be able to get rid of it. It’s hard to say that the Honor Code is student owned if students don’t have the power to get rid of it.”
Hawley, who was at Middlebury during the Honor Code debate, said renewed attention to the code is not a bad thing.
“I think the cycle of concern is probably the best thing, whatever the outcome, because it’s heightening student awareness of how it’s my responsibility to do my own work. I don’t think there’s anything that would prove that a certain kind of honor code produces more honor,” Hawley said. “It’s sort of what Jefferson said about the American Constitution: it should be revisited; there should be at least a thread of revolution every 20 years to keep attention fresh on what the values are. I think raising the climate of concern about it is probably the most important thing with respect to honor, not necessarily what code you have written down.”
(03/11/15 11:14pm)
Every day we accelerate toward longer life, healthier life, fewer diseases, and better recovery from those diseases we can’t cure. Every single day our technology progresses, building on itself in all sorts of ways that we can’t imagine yet, slowly but steadily directing us toward an ultimate end point. Chances are, we will at some time in the future reach that point.
Among academics and enthusiasts studying the future, this point is referred to as a singularity. It is fully within the realm of possibility that within the not-too-distant future, we will cease to be affected by the forces of time or disease, and instead we can constantly revive our bodies indefinitely. Either by organ generation, artificial augmentation, or full mental transplantation, we might be able to transcend the natural state of human existence.
This is the goal of the transhumanism movement. And what an absolutely unbelievable achievement it would be! The goal of transhumanism plays into that most base of human instincts, the drive to survive. The conquest of death would fully absolve us of that innate, extremely powerful and primal fear of destruction. Such an achievement would grant the gift that countless religions have claimed to give, eternal life.
But we aren’t just animals. We aren’t just slaves to our innate desires. We have a huge, complicated, diverse structure of more high-level goals and dreams created by our mind. We have deep, troubling conflicts within ourselves not about the fact of survival, but rather about the spirit of living—we are the only living creatures to experience existential crises and to wonder about our place in the universe. Innumerable books have tackled how to live meaningfully and to extract every ounce of happiness and satisfaction out of the life we’ve been given. We know no other way to live, than to live respecting the inherent limits of our lives. To take down those limits would be to undermine the very fabric of our society and to throw into turmoil the decisions that we make every day. What does if mean to lead a “meaningful” life when that life is endless? How do you approach your career when you’ll be working for 400 years, instead of 40? How do you entertain yourself when you have more than enough time to do anything you’ve ever wanted, and to make the money to enable yourself to do all those things?
Transhumanism sounds ridiculous on face value, but the fact of the matter is, technology is creeping toward this point. It’s not too early to start really considering what will happen when our elders consist not of 80 and 90 year olds, but of bi- and tri-centenarians. And it’s never too early to start wondering if our currently accepted way of living needs a new coat of paint, or even an entirely new foundation.The pervading life philosophies all have something to do with striving to reach some greater goal. Whether that be happiness, joy, spiritual enlightenment, mental liberation, love, or anything else, the focus is almost always on the necessity of a journey toward some sort of awakening. We all have to strive for something. And even if the focus isn’t on the destination, import still weighs on the journey. After all, the oft-quoted statements does suggest that “it’s the journey, and not the destination, that matters.” This gets at a crucial element of truth: we must recognize the value in the present, in our current state of affairs, rather than always look down the road to our goals.
But the problem with this, and the reason why we often fear the transhumanist singularity, is that even this suggestion puts undue focus on the motion. No one ever tells us that’s okay to not even go on the journey in the first place. We rarely, if ever, get the acknowledgement that where we are, right this instant, without any regard to future goals or moving towards anything, is good and worthwhile for its own sake. We are uncomfortable with the notion of doing nothing. The idea of being, in a sense, sedentary—not physically, but rather mentally and emotionally—never receives its deserved consideration. There is something so beautiful and transcendental about the art of not moving. It represents contentment. Too often we forget to find and acknowledge when we are content. Too often we preclude ourselves from ever even feeling that emotion at all. To use an analogy: hiking is one of my favorite activities because it affords me breathtaking views and a rejuvenating exposure to nature, but I have found more joy and more peace during days when I allow myself to simply sit in a chair in nature, with no destination or even motion. I firmly believe that the ability to metaphorically sit motionless and be content is conducive to greater happiness and greater satisfaction with all of life. And life brings us countless moments for us to forget the goal and forget the motion and simply be. It takes an effort to pull the mind back down to the lowest level, to focus on the immediate and not the far-off, and to break day down into each individual moment, instead of allowing it to flow together and escape.
This is how we solve those moral quandaries of transhumanism. This is how we approach a world in which we live longer and healthier lives and where the specter of meaninglessness grows. It takes a refocusing of life onto what it means to be during each second, rather than what it means to strive toward something. But this doesn’t have to wait for scientists to develop the technology for us to live indefinitely. These existential problems are not unique to transhumanism, but are simply scaled up to fit the longer time frame. We face these issues every day. But we solve the issues of boredom and aimlessness by acknowledging the fact that we don’t have to aim anywhere. We don’t even have to move anywhere. We can just be present, comfortable in our situation, content with the world we make for ourselves.
(03/05/15 12:59am)
Emily Fluke ’15 has scored 18 goals during the 2014-2015 season, but the most recent was also the biggest: a rebound that she shot past Hamilton goalkeeper Sam Walther in the 127th minute of play in NESCAC women’s hockey quarterfinal action on Saturday, March 28. Fluke’s goal sent the Panthers on to the conference semifinals and also earned Middlebury coach Bill Mandigo the 500th win of his storied career.
For the second consecutive year, the Panthers earned the top seed in the NESCAC tournament by virtue of having the best record in conference regular season play. Last year, however, Middlebury was unable to capitalize on the opportunity, falling 2-1 to an eighth-seeded Connecticut College team in what would be their final game of the 2013-2014 season.
The memory of last year’s upset was hanging in the air as Middlebury took to the ice Saturday in Kenyon Arena against another eight seed, the Hamilton Continentals. As the conference’s top team and the third-ranked squad in the country, the Panthers could expect nothing less than their opponents’ best games for the duration of the tournament.
Middlebury played like the clearly superior team during the early minutes against Hamilton, grabbing the lead in just the 52nd second of play on a score from first-year phenom Jessica Young ’18. Young’s goal was assisted by Janka Hlinka ’18 and Fluke. After a tripping call went against the Continentals, Young buried the puck in the net for the second time – this one a power-play goal with assists from Carly Watson ’17 and Hannah Bielawski ’15 – and the Panthers found themselves with a 2-0 lead less than five minutes into the game.
After the scoreboard remained unchanged for the rest of the first period, Hamilton cut the lead to one in the third minute of the second period on a goal from Katie Parkman. While the Panthers continued to pour shots on the Continental goal – forcing Walther to stop 16 shots in the second period alone – they could not break through to add an insurance goal. A brief six-on-four opportunity in the period’s closing minute elapsed without a score, and Middlebury took their 2-1 lead into the final period of regulation.
That lead would not last. After Hlinka was flagged for tripping in the eighth minute of the final period, Hamilton’s Teal Gosselin fired the puck past Panther goalkeeper Maddie Marsh ’15 for the crucial tying goal. Twelve more Middlebury shots in the period would not find their mark, and the game moved to sudden-death overtime with the teams tied at two.
By the end of regulation, Walther had already racked up 38 saves to keep her team in the game even as they were outshot 40-19 by the Panthers.
Middlebury immediately took to the offensive zone in overtime. The Panthers kept the pressure on the Continental defense with their speed and aggressiveness, earning several scoring opportunities. No matter what they did, however, the Middlebury skaters could not solve the riddle of Walther’s goaltending, as the Hamilton senior put an end to several sequences that looked like they might result in the game-winning goal. The same held true in the second and third 20-minute overtime periods, as the Panthers fired an astonishing 28 shots on goal during those two periods but were denied time and time again by Walther.
As the length of the game began to pile up into the triple digits, the skaters had essentially played an entire second game in overtime hockey. That fact – combined with the cutting intensity that followed from over 60 minutes of tense sudden-death play – meant that fatigue increasingly became a factor in the game. As her players looked more and more sluggish, Hamilton coach Emily McNamara deviated from her tactic of playing fewer players in line rotations, emptying her bench in an effort to get fresh legs on the ice.
Four minutes into the fourth overtime period, the Panthers finally got the opportunity they had been seeking for over two hours of play: Continental Kate Parkman went to the box for body checking, giving Middlebury the power-play opportunity that resulted in Fluke’s game-winning goal.
By the final buzzer, the Panthers had poured an astounding 83 shots on the Hamilton goal, with Walther stopping all but three. The final tally of 80 saves for the Continental goalkeeper is well beyond the former NESCAC tournament record of 66. At more than 126 minutes, the game is also the longest in the history of the tournament.
Marsh, meanwhile, had a relatively easy job on the other end, recording 31 saves on 33 shots faced in the win.
The win was also the 500th in the 27-year career of Panther coach Bill Mandigo, who becomes the first women’s hockey coach in any NCAA division to reach that benchmark.
For the Panthers, the quarterfinal victory sends the team on to the NESCAC semifinals, in which they will face fifth-seed Bowdoin – overtime winners over Connecticut College – on Saturday, March 7 in Kenyon Arena. If they can get past the Camels, the Panthers will have home ice to their advantage during Sunday’s conference championship game.
To the relief of Panther hockey fans, the team has now advanced farther than last year, and will look to bury that unfortunate memory of last year even further as they forge onward in their quest to return to national contention after an uncharacteristic absence from the national tournament a year ago.
(02/26/15 1:53am)
Over the last few months, thanks to the Supreme Court declining to take up the marriage equality petitions before it in October, a tidal wave of judicial decisions in favor of marriage equality has swept across the nation’s courts, expanding the number of states where same-sex marriage is legal to 37.
More than 70 percent of Americans now live in a state where same-sex marriage is legal. Poll after poll conducted in recent months continue to show a solid majority of Americans, including an overwhelming 80 percent of those under 30, in support of marriage equality.
This torrid pace of progress, combined with a likely Supreme Court ruling establishing a national constitutional right to same-sex marriage this June, has led some people to declare victory in the civil rights movement of our generation.
It is true that the rapidly evolving attitude around marriage equality over the last two decades is without precedent in the history of American society.
Twenty years ago, just a quarter of Americans supported the legalization of same-sex marriage and a Democratic president signed into law, with wide bipartisan support from Congress, a bill that pre-emptively prohibited federal benefits from being conferred upon same-sex married couples. Today, support for marriage equality has more than doubled and that law, better known as DOMA, has been declared unconstitutional.
By every measure, the LGBT community has won the battle for marriage equality. But even as we celebrate all this progress, I am wary of what will happen after this June, after marriage equality becomes the law of the land, after the dust has settled on all the exciting legal battles and after the big name lawyers have moved on to the next big case.
Yes, it is a wonderful thing and a giant step forward that every American will be able to join in the sacred union with whomever they love and receive the benefits and bear the burdens of that contract. But just as the movement for equality between the races lags on decades after the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, the movement for LGBT equality is about so much more than winning the legal fight on same-sex marriage.
It is about protecting LGBT teens from discrimination and bullying in their schools and their homes. Today, LGBT youths are four times more likely to attempt suicide and as much as 40 percent of homeless youths identity as LGBT. Marriage means little to you if you’ve just been kicked out of your house or are harassed by your peers for being different.
It is about protecting LGBT workers from discrimination at their workplace. Today, employers can fire workers based on their sexual orientation in 29 states and based on their gender identity in 35. Marriage means little to you if you’re struggling to feed yourself because your homophobic boss just gave you a pink slip.
It is about protecting the right of a loved one to visit their same-sex partner in the hospital when he or she is sick, for same-sex couples to jointly adopt children and start a normal family together and for crimes committed against someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity to be prosecuted exactly as they are: hate crimes. It is about addressing a new HIV crisis in the LGBT community, one that has caused the infection rate among young gay and bisexual men to rise 22 percent between 2008 and 2010 and disproportionately affects African-Americans and Latinos.
Without all these civil protections from discrimination and more concentrated efforts to alleviate the real, substantive plight of LGBT life in America, life as an LGBT individual will still lack the full dignity it deserves, for the right to marry is nothing but an empty shell if that is where progress stops.
Marriage equality has galvanized the nation because it is a straightforward issue and has a clear finish line. That finish line is now in sight but let’s not delude ourselves in the excitement of the moment and declare the battle over. Breaking down all these remaining legal and social barriers will require just as much energy, patience, and willpower as has been put into the battle for marriage equality, if not more.
As the great Winston Churchill once said: “Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
(02/25/15 6:54pm)
It’s hard to shake the nagging paradox that seems to be spray-painted all over the upstairs gallery space at the Middlebury College Museum of Art’s Street Art Exhibit. Even if your experience with street art as a form of socio-political discourse is minimal, it is likely you have either heard of or come across the works of artists such as Banksy and Shepherd Faery, now more notorious for their merchandise than for their original urban artistic identities. Faery, who gained much of his fame from his iconic OBEY motif that you now see spattered across hats and t-shirts, held a retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston in 2009. Banksy, perhaps the most popular name in street art today, is an industry on his own. His net worth is in the millions, his prints sell within seconds online and he has even been nominated for an Oscar.
The basic question then begs: can street art ever really be street art if it fails to exist in the street? How can we step inside the often academic, systemic space of a museum and engage with work that is so grounded in its foundation of rebellion against the very same principles? To put art that has gained its popularity from the neighborhoods, walls, streets and masses that define it into a somewhat colorless space is to render it toothless. While Museum of Art Curator Emmie Donadio and Preparator Chris Murray provided a background of the history and techniques of street art in their opening lecture, which certainly prompts further discussion about artistic work not usually acknowledged by the establishment, what I felt was lacking was a discussion on how alienated these works seem in their decontextualized, poster-like display.
Take, for example, “The Conductor,” a collaborative piece by Retna and El Mac, which fuses calligraphy and brushwork with aerosol paint spray to create a dynamic, intricate effect of gradient and contours. The only real problem is that the original work is in fact a 40-foot mural, and not a meager framed print. This is the same difficulty that affects the work of Swoon, an artist who integrates contemporary consciousness with the visceral, physical presence of her pieces, using everything from pavements and fire escapes to rafts made out of New York City’s garbage as her medium. Even the attempt to furnish a rundown-looking wall in the corner of the gallery space with wheatpaste prints, to perhaps engender a sense of what they would really look like if you passed by them in a Brooklyn neighborhood, is an effort to provide context where it is severely lacking. The questions of the modern fetishization of art, commodity culture and gentrification that are so integral to street art culture all remain unanswered and avoided in this exhibition. The Warhol exhibit downstairs now seems to make a lot more sense.
While the reality of the urban sprawl is ultimately inseparable from the work of the art itself, the exhibition does nevertheless provide a platform for this important debate. It also perhaps opens a window into a world of some prominent names in street art for the previously unacquainted – a foothold into the overarching problem.
Judith Supine’s collages, bursting with brilliant fluorescent greens and pinks, are reminiscent of some hazy, seductive, pop-art acid trip; Muto, a stop-motion film of a graffiti project by enigmatic Italian artist Blu, is particularly remarkable in how grossly ambitious, irreverent and wildly fun it is. There is also a playful installation by French photographer JR composed of a series of enlarged black and white portrait pictures featuring Middlebury students that run along the floor and wall.
While it may be difficult to peer through the haze of commodification and the burgeoning celebrity business model that have come to define Banksy and Shepard Faery, their prints are still important for the waves they created, the impact they had on bringing street art to the masses (if it wasn’t already meant for that in the first place) and for the images they depict. Banksy’s “Girl With Balloon” is still inspiring in its simplicity of color and poignant illustration of a young girl watching her heart-shaped balloon slip away from her. Faery’s political posters, including the famous three-toned “Hope” (the face of Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign), are still important markers for the histories they were created to depict.
The street art exhibit does diversify the Museum collection, and many of the prints on display have been permanently acquired by the College thanks to the curators’ persistence with navigating the online market platform that most of these artists now work through. However, no matter how technically intriguing the art may be, it is ultimately difficult to reconcile crossing one’s arms to look at work that is native to the street while it is mounted, framed and hung up in a gallery space. Perhaps more visual and cultural information on the original presentation of the art would have been helpful in understanding the context in which it was conceived. It is intriguing to come away wondering whether an attempt to bring in the street at all is not simultaneously one that mutes it completely.
The “Outside In: Art of the Street” exhibition is open until April 19 at the Middlebury College Museum of Art. Entry is free. There is also a film screening of Style Wars, a documentary about the New York graffiti movement of the ‘70s and ‘80s, followed by a Q&A with director Henry Chalfant on March 5 in Dana Auditorium.
(02/25/15 3:05pm)
The Middlebury women’s basketball team’s season ended this weekend with a 80-52 loss to the 16th-ranked Bowdoin College Polar Bears (22-3, 9-1) in the quarterfinals of the NESCAC tournament.
After having lost to the Polar Bears just two weeks prior to this matchup at Pepin Gymnasium on Sunday, Feb. 8 (53-43), this loss came as a repeat for the Panthers. Overall, the team finished placed seventh in the NESCAC, with an 11-14 record that includes a 3-7 slate in-conference. This marks a vast improvement upon the 2013-14 season, where Middlebury finished last in the NESCAC with a 7-17 overall, and 1-9 conference record.
The Panthers relied heavily on a five-woman starting core this season, and three among that group, Sarah Kaufman ’18, Sabrina Weeks ’18 and Elizabeth Knox ’17, will return next season along with the two most experienced bench players, Siobhan O’Sullivan ’17 and Krystina Reynolds ’17. All of this bodes well for the continued improvement of the program.
Head Coach KJ Krasco praised the two departing seniors who frequented the starting lineup, Rachel Crew ’15 and Alexis Coolidge ’15, along with Holly Lanchantin ’15 and Nora Kelly ’15 who also made substantial contributions to the team.
“Our seniors did a great job this season of leading a young group,” Krasco said. “We have some very talented and hard-working underclassmen who are determined to help lead our program to
future postseason games.”
On Saturday, Feb. 21, the Polar Bears outplayed the Panthers for most of the contest and dominated the game inside the paint, where Bowdoin outscored Middlebury 34-24 and outrebounded the visitors 50-29.
“In the first half this past weekend,” Crews reflected, “we gave up way too many offensive boards and allowed them easy looks with second, third and fourth chance opportunities.”
Middlebury held leads of 2-0, 4-2 and 6-4 earlier in the game, but a subsequent 8-0 run for Bowdoin resulted in a lead that the Polar Bears refused to relinquish. The Panthers kept the deficit to single digits for the majority of the first half, but over the last 5:02 of the first half, Bowdoin outscored Middlebury 13-3, including a buzzer-beating half court heave from Bowdoin’s Sydney Hancock. Going into the break the lead was 44-27 in favor of the Polar Bears.
Knox had a strong first half for Middlebury, netting 10 points on 4-9 shooting and snagging six rebounds. Coolidge tallied six points of her own on 3-4 shooting.
Crews opened the Panthers’ scoring in the second half by responding to a Bowdoin two-point jumper with a trey ball to shrink the deficit to 16, but throughout the second half Bowdoin slowly and steadily extended that 16-point lead to as many as 30 with 2:54 left to play. A couple of free throws late from Reynolds made the score 80-52 in favor of the Polar Bears,and ended the scoring.
Kaufman led the Panthers in the second half, dropping seven points on 3-6 shooting, while Knox grabbed four more boards.
On the game, Knox recorded a double-double with 14 points and 10 boards, while Kaufman was the only other Panther to score in double digits, with 11 of her own. Weeks tallied nine points and added four boards to the effort.
Departing Captain Crews feels positive about the program’s direction going forward.
“With a new coach coming in and a very young team,” Crews said, “[this season] was basically a fresh start for the program...One thing that really stood out this season was our improvement in communication both on and off the court. … With a new foundation for the program in place, Middlebury will be a major competitor in the NESCAC in the upcoming years.”
Coach Krasco is already looking ahead to work on fulfilling Crews’ prophecy.
“This year was brand new for everyone involved,” Krasco said. “Overall I am pleased with the progress we have made as a team and look forward to taking on new challenges and taking time to reflect on how we can become a better team over the next few months.”
(02/25/15 2:59pm)
Middlebury Swimming and Diving hosted the NESCAC Men’s Championship meet last week, Friday-Sunday, Feb. 20-22 at the Middlebury College Natatorium. After a jam-packed weekend of competition, some of the fastest swimmers in the conference had broken pool records in 19 out of the meet’s 24 events (most set the last time Middlebury hosted the NESCAC championship in 2008) and shattered four NESCAC conference records.
Williams, the seventh-ranked team in the nation, clinched first place for the 13th year in a row and 14th time in NESCAC history with a score of 2,066.5 points, while Amherst (ranked 16th nationally) and Connecticut College (ranked 21st nationally) took second and third with 1,579 and 1,323 points respectively. The Panthers were able to secure a seventh-place finish with 688 points, outscoring four of the other participating teams.
To start off the meet, Paul Lagasse ’16, Stephan Koenigsberger ’16, Noel Antonisse ’17 and Bryan Cheuk ’16 took 1:24.54 to finish the 200 freestyle relay, touching the wall eighth in the final of the event.
Later that night, Koenigsberger broke his own school record in the final of the 50 breaststroke (25.80), tying for fourth place with Connecticut College’s Kirk Czelewicz. The quartet of Alex Smith ’18, Koenigsberger, co-Captain Teddy Kuo ’15 and Lagasse also finished seventh in the 400 medley relay (3:26.84).
Middlebury faced a disappointing start heading into day two when the team of Justin Cho ’17, Koenigsberger, Cheuk and Antonisse got disqualified from the 200 medley relay because of a false start.
However, Mike McGean ’17 and Koenigsberger helped redeem the Panthers by setting school records in the 1,000 freestyle and 100 breaststroke, respectively.
McGean placed fourth in the event final of 1,000 with a time of 9:32.87, breaking the previous record set in 2008 by more than two seconds.
Koenigsberger swam a NCAA ‘B’ cut time and broke his own school record in the preliminary round of the 100 breaststroke, where he went on to secure third place in the event finals.
To finish off the night, Lagasse, Smith, Connor McCormick ’18 and McGean swam to a ninth-place finish in a time of 6:59.92 in the 800 freestyle relay.
On the third and final day of the meet, Koenigsberger improved his own school record in the 200 breaststroke with a runner-up finish and NCAA ‘B’ cut time of 2:02.43, 1.66 seconds faster than the time he recorded at the NESCAC meet last year at Bowdoin.
McGean also continued to perform well, placing third in the 1650 freestyle with another NCAA ‘B’ cut time of 16:04.58.
Meanwhile, in the deep end of the pool, Dylan Peters ’16 held his own throughout the weekend with sixth-place finishes in both the one-meter and three-meter diving competitions.
Though the Panthers faced a shortage of top-three finishes, many swimmers placed within the upper half of the competition. In the 50 freestyle for instance — an event where all top-24 swimmers finished within a margin of 1.24 seconds — Lagasse earned 14th place in the B final (21.63) and Brian Cheuk ’16 won 19th in the C final (21.47).
Kuo placed 17th in the C final of the 50 fly, while his co-Captain Lucas Avidan ’15 placed 15th in the B final of the 500 freestyle (4:42.58). Ethan Sivulich ’16 touched the wall in 26.87 seconds to get 19th place in the 50 breaststroke, and Antonisse placed 14th in the 50 backstroke (24.70).
“This year the whole month of January was just incredible [because we were able] to do much more speed [and] pace work,” said Head Coach Bob Rueppel, who is proud of the men’s team’s progression this season.
“The seniors were freshmen when I came in,” Rueppel said, “so I didn’t recruit them but they were the types of kids I would’ve recruited. We connected from the beginning, and … I feel like we had four classes that completely bought into our training program.”
The end of this meet marks the official end of the 2014-2015 Swimming and Diving season. However, the Panther swimmers whose NCAA ‘B’ cut times allow them to compete in the NCAA Division III Swimming & Diving National Championships will travel to Woodlands, Texas to swim on March 18-21.
(02/18/15 9:58pm)
Last week, Vermont Gas announced that due to a nearly 80 percent price increase in the past six months, the company has terminated Phase II of their two-part pipeline extension plan, which means the plant will no longer extend from Middlebury to the International Paper plant in Ticonderoga, N.Y.
Skepticism began to rise over the summer when Vermont Gas released that the projected cost required for Phase I would surpass the predicted $86 million, and likely reach $154 million. As a result, the Public Service Board asked for a remand from the State Supreme Court in order to investigate the price jump. Although this request materialized in a 30-day examination of cost-related developments, the project was allowed to continue without much scrutiny.
When an updated cost estimate for Phase II was released, which predicted a required $105 million instead of the former $74.4 million, plans to complete Phase II, the International Paper plant, which had previously agreed to cover a portion of the cost, no longer found the project commercially worthwhile and withdrew from the deal.
In an interview with the Addison Independent last month, Chris Recchia, the Commissioner of the Department of Public Service (DPS), shared that the more recent budget increase would be examined more carefully than the one in July. Although the DPS initially supported the pipeline project, the department has grown wary of the exploding costs due to its loyalty to ratepayers and landowners along the pipeline route who bear some of the burden of greater construction costs.
Louise Porter, member of the DPS counsel, wrote in a statement that, “the department strongly urges the board to investigate whether the Phase I project remains in the public good in light of the revised cost estimate.”
Porter further notes that a “cost increase of this magnitude” is reason to revisit Vermont Gas’ Certificate of Public Good, a requirement for utilities infrastructure and services, and urges the board to look into “all relevant changes to the project to date,” not just financial ones.
In line with the department’s request, the Vermont Supreme Court has granted regulators unlimited time and scope concerning the second investigation, unlike the previously limited examination of cost-related developments. Although Vermont Gas rejects the need for increased breadth, the South Burlington-based company has stated it accepts the push for a second project inspection.
Despite the pipeline’s recent setback, the company continues to assert that the pipeline will provide cheaper, more environmentally friendly energy to customers.
Don Rendall, president and CEO of Vermont Gas, insisted in his interview with VT Digger, “this is still a good deal for the customers in Addison County and will be a good deal for the state of Vermont.”
Governor Peter Shumlin told the Burlington Free Press that he is supportive of both the pipeline extension plan and the Public Service Board’s new position as overseer.
Governor Shumlin states, “I am gratified Vermont Gas will be putting a renewed focus on offering strong public benefits and a choice for Vermonters of natural gas service through its ongoing expansion to Middlebury and continued exploration of how to drive farther south to Rutland. I know that the Public Service Board and Department will provide vigorous oversight. The state’s interest and mine has always been in getting the choice of affordable natural gas to more Vermont residents and businesses, to help expand economic opportunity.”
Unfortunately for Vermont Gas, few are as encouraging as the governor. The termination of Phase II has reinvigorated protests against the pipeline.
The opposition coalition, comprised of groups such as Just Power, Rising Tide Vermont and 350Vermont, stated to the Burlington Free Press that the Vermont Public Service Board should “revoke the Certificate of Public Good for Phase I in light of the near doubling of Phase I costs, the stark climate impacts of fracked gas, and impacts on landowners in the path of the pipeline.”
Similarly, Greg Marchildon, the Vermont State Director of AARP, commented, “the public deserves to know what the additional costs are, how they are being justified, and if the project is still viable given that the projected cost has now gone from $86 million to $154 million in just a matter of months.”
Paul Burns, Executive Director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, who also opposes the pipeline, admits that it would be “astounding” if either Vermont Gas or the PSB terminated Phase I. Burns insists however, “I think it’s a very real possibility.”
Despite the uncertain fate of Phase I, Vermont Gas plans to continue construction after winter under its currently valid Certificate of Public Good.
(02/11/15 10:28pm)
The Middlebury men’s basketball team won one of three games this week, defeating Keene State on Tuesday, Feb. 3, before falling to Colby on Friday, Feb. 6 and Bowdoin on Sunday, Feb. 8 in its two NESCAC games.
Playing host to Keene State on Tuesday, the Panthers fought off a slow start to pull away from the visiting Owls and win 96-83.
Keene State opened an early 12-6 lead only to see Hunter Merryman ’15 and Dylan Sinnickson ’15 hit threes on consecutive possessions to tie the contest. Twice more the Owls built leads of seven and six by converting five Middlebury turnovers into 10 points in an eight-minute span, but the Panthers responded with spurts of their own to knot the game at 27, and eventually took a 41-33 lead into the halfway point.
A foul on Keene State 13 seconds into the second half seemed to epitomize the tone for the rest of the game (the teams combined to commit 22 fouls and shoot 35 free throws in the second half), and neither team could make any headway for much of the period.
After Keene State’s Tom Doyle knocked down two free throws to make it a 74-68 Middlebury lead with just over six minutes left, a Merryman three once again sparked an 11-4 Middlebury run that proved to be decisive as the Owls could never again get the lead into single digits again. Behind a robust 23 points from the foul line and a 56% from the field, the Panthers gathered a 96-83 win.
“We settled in and started making better decisions,” Captain Dean Brierley ’15 said. “We’ve had some spurts of turnover prone play this year. Against Keene State, we were able to deliver the balls to open teammates. That comes from good ball movement and good decision making.”
Merryman and Sinnickson seemed to be the open teammates for most of the night as the Panthers’ leading scorers did just that against the Owls, both tallying a game-high 27 points. Jake Brown ’17 added 11 points of his own while assisting on six other baskets, and Nick Tarantino ’18 scored two points and controlled the boards, grabbing 13 rebounds in only 18 minutes.
The Panthers were on the road in the NESCAC on Friday, falling to Colby in heartbreaking fashion 84-80.
Merryman opened the scoring with a layup to give his team a 2-0 lead, but it was the team’s only lead of the game as Colby quickly tied and took the lead 17 seconds later on an old-fashioned three point play. The Panthers just couldn’t defend behind the arc in the first half, and the Mules knocked down 9-18 from three to build a 48-40 halftime lead.
Like Brierley said, “When you can’t defend, it’s difficult to win games.”
For much of the second half, Colby kept Middlebury at an arm’s length and threatened to pull away, going up by 10 more than once, but the Panthers wouldn’t cave. With 56 seconds left in the contest, Brierley capped off a 15-6 Middlebury by converting a traditional three-point play of his own to tie the game at 79. Off a Colby timeout, the Mules’ Luke Westman drew a foul and calmly knocked down two free throws to regain the lead. The Panthers’ Matt St. Amour ’17 had a chance to answer at the other foul line but missed his second attempt, and Colby sealed an 84-80 victory at the foul line to move to 13-9 overall and 4-4 in the NESCAC.
St. Amour scored 18 to lead the Panthers offensively, while Jake Brown ’17 stuffed the stat sheet, tallying 13 points, seven assists, four steals and three rebounds. After his monster game against Keene State, first-year Tarantino earned his first start in the blue and white, playing 13 minutes.
Middlebury had its second NESCAC game in Maine of the weekend on Sunday, losing to Bowdoin 88-70.
It seemed like the Panthers didn’t have anything left in the tank in its third game of the week after the tough loss as they quickly fell behind 12-3. The team showed some fight cutting the lead to two with 8:48 left in the opening period, but the Polar Bears were having none of it, building a 45-35 halftime lead.
In an effort to spark his team, Coach Brown gave Matt Daley ’17 the nod to start the second half at center, and he responded with four quick points to make it a six-point game. After keeping the game within reach over the next five minutes, the Panthers seemed to finally run out of gas, and Bowdoin pushed its lead to 21, 84-63, with just over five minutes left in the contest, before winning 88-70 and pushing its record to 15-6 overall and 5-3 in the NESCAC.
For the second straight game, St. Amour led the Panthers in scoring with 23 on 9-12 shooting. Sinnickson and Daley were the other Panthers in double figures with 13 and 10 respectively.
One win and two losses brings Middlebury to 15-6 on the season and 3-5 in the NESCAC. This week the Panthers play three home games, including non-conference foe Lyndon State on Tuesday, Jan. 10, and NESCAC rivals Trinity and Amherst on Friday, Jan. 13 and Sunday, Jan. 15 respectively.
Currently sitting eighth in the conference standings, the Panthers will have to hold their current position in order to secure the final berth in the NESCAC postseason tournament. Doing so will likely require the team to knock off either Trinity or Amherst — the first and third-seeded teams in the conference, respectively — in order to extend their season.
If they are unable to do so, it would be the first time since the 2005-2006 season that the Panthers failed to qualify for the NESCAC postseason. The team is already virtually assured of missing the NCAA tournament during back-to-back seasons for the first time since 2006-2007.
“This is a big week for us, but we’re up for the challenge,” Brierley said.
(01/24/15 8:14pm)
I am Jake Nidenberg, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y. and a junior here at Middlebury College. I am a declared Mathematics and Economics double major and a member of the Men’s Varsity Basketball team. I am writing in response to “It’s Actually Just a Game,” the Notes from the Desk by Hannah Bristol ’14.5 and Isaac Baker ’14.5 that appeared in the Campus on Jan. 22. In case you may think I fall into some sort of stereotype of yours, I would also like to inform you that I am currently taking Black & White photography for J-term, I am a class shy of a minor in Classics, and enjoy exploring the nature surrounding this wonderful town and state as much as the next Midd kid. There are few aspects of this small liberal arts college in Vermont that I have not taken full advantage of. That is who I am and that is the point of view from which this opinion is created in my first ever submission to a school newspaper.
Just as you mentioned in your Op-Ed, the divide between ‘NARPs’ and athletes is indeed apparent from day one at orientation. However, here is my first clarification: I went through orientation and I was able to fully commit to both my preseason ‘captain’s practice’ for basketball as well as all orientation events and activities. If there were instances where kids were not able to fully commit, it was specific to that individual’s own priorities and capabilities. Did having a sports team give me a leg up in finding a friend group early on? Yes. Were there times when I was nervous and unsure of solidifying not only the ‘right’ friends but friends at all outside the two kids in the class of 2016 that went to high school with me? Also, yes. Building friendships is often simply a product of bonding over similar interests; just because my interest was basketball and I was able to find others equally as interested and dedicated to the sport so early on makes me fortunate but should not be held against me. As you said, clubs of many kinds exist and serve the similar purpose of bringing together people of similar interests. Just because there might be a slight time delay in terms of access to these groups when compared with a varsity team does not make the two unequal.
I am here to cast some light on just how “privileged” we are as athletes. To compare our experiences as DIII athletes at an undersized college in New England to the NFL, or even to a large DI athletic powerhouse like Florida State, is comparing apples and oranges. Your first point about the allocation of financial resources is an area where I am poorly educated and a topic your piece may be able to reasonably draw attention to. But again, I will respond to the things you have said and also paint an accurate picture for both of you and anyone else interested in what it feels like to be treated like “superiors” and to benefit from the funding you have so much to say about.
You say we rarely prove our worth. I feel as though I have “proven my worth” in the 14 years of serious commitment to playing basketball preceding my time at Middlebury. A high school athlete must have had enough exposure and perceived talent to get recruited to come here amongst the vast sea of others so desperate to play in college. In contrast, though I am sure of some exceptions, I know of dozens Rugby and Crew members (I choose these two sports to mirror your examples) who began their career playing the sport here at Middlebury—what have they done to deserve funding? There is a reason some extracurriculars are funded as varsity programs and others are not. Middlebury has only so much money and can allocate it in only so many places if it wishes to have successful programs in nationally competitive sports. Those who had an undying passion for, like you said, Fly Fishing or Crew or any other extracurricular at which they have spent somewhere around 80% of their lives pursuing should have put more consideration into what they wanted out of their college experience and maybe picked a place better suited to their interests and desires. I made a calculated decision to come to Middlebury and the deciding factor was my decision to play basketball at a nationally competitive level. Middlebury was a place to pursue that level of competition, both on and off the court. If you disagree with Midd’s financial allocation, I think you should have spent more time interviewing someone who deals with such matters before publishing an Op-Ed with baseless facts.
Moving on to our “bloated budget:” Yes, our budget covers Pepin Gymnasium, which is completely open to the public aside from the two hours a day we are practicing. Yes, it covers our locker room; which, by the way, we share with both the soccer and baseball teams. We get let in to our locker after our season has already begun once soccer is finished and get kicked out of it early because the baseball season is starting up, right around the time we are competing in the NESCAC playoffs (and hopefully the NCAA tournament). Yes, it covers travel (sometimes in buses or vans which are comically too small to fit my 6 foot 7 inch, 240 pound frame); also, please tell me if $25 to feed myself for all but one or two provided meals for road trips spanning Friday through Sunday or if $100 to feed myself for the mandatory two weeks while I am at Middlebury during the holidays with no dining services seems “bloated” to you. If it weren’t for our parents’ dedication to (and financial subsidization of) us as passionate, young student-athletes we would not eat on road trips. By the way, the athletic “gear” you might see us wear around campus is created and purchased by yours truly with not even a discount provided for by the school. Lastly, yes, it covers coaching but not for two of the four on our staff who are simply volunteers. Head Coach Jeff Brown is one of the most respected and successful basketball coaches in the nation over the past decade. Having graduated 100% of his players in his 17 years of coaching at Middlebury, Coach Brown’s “pull” proves to be consistent with the College’s admissions standards.
Your second point left me nearly speechless. I would love to hear some elaboration on how we are “disproportionately valorized.” As active writers for the school newspaper, I would imagine you understand the implications of word choice and must have considered the weight of those two words before publishing the Op-Ed. So, please, I would love to hear some evidence in support of your claim as the rest of your piece does not seem to back it up.
The other half of your second point is about our tremendous time commitment. The only person who can say “you can reap these benefits without dedicating most of your time” is someone who has clearly never experienced something comparable. You are under an impression that games and practices are given priority over class as something beneficial for us. Quite the contrary. We have less time to put toward our studies and as a result we must work harder to achieve our academic goals. Given the time commitment you just can’t seem to wrap your head around, we have less time to study and may actually miss class which puts us at a massive disadvantage whether we have been given our professors’ blessing or not. Just because these professors are understanding doesn’t mean they are bending the rules on our behalf, but rather speaks to their compassion as humans. In other words, with or without approval, assignments are due on time and accommodations are rarely made. In my experience, the only accommodations that have been made for me as an athlete are because I am a hard-working, committed student dealing with a professor nice enough to hear me out. I believe such accommodations would have been extended to any non-athlete with a similar work ethic and conflict. There have been plenty of instances where I am dealing with teachers and people like the both of you who have no empathy for my situation, which is a type of adversity I must deal with in my pursuit of DIII athletics.
The point at which I picked up my pen and paper and began writing a response to your Op-Ed was when I read, “Some students start businesses, or volunteer or learn other valuable lessons that are honestly more applicable to the job market than the ability to chase a ball.” In your following sentences, you switch gears and begin to act like you are writing on our behalf, but that is not going to fool me. Anyone who sums up my now 16-year career playing basketball as time spent “chasing a ball” certainly doesn’t respect what we do or have any concern of our well-being as student-athletes. So, thanks for looking out for us. Thanks for begging for reform so that we can be freed from the shackles of playing the sport we love for just two hours a day...but no thanks. If your concern is discrepancies in funding, make your concern funding, but do not make efforts to ‘fix’ a situation you seem to know absolutely nothing about.
As for admissions, though this surely applies to every varsity team, I will speak about the team that I am a part of. My captain freshman year was a thousand point scorer, graduated with the most wins that a Middlebury player has ever had in the school’s history, had the highest GPA on the team and last, but certainly not least, was an un-recruited, walk-on to the team. There is a walk-on on our team currently, Liam Naughton, who happened to post a Facebook status with a link to your Op-Ed which first drew my attention. As for those recruited, they still have to exhibit academic proficiency to get into a school like Middlebury. Many of us are just as adorned—if not more—than many of our non-varsity classmates from an academic standpoint.
Our varsity sports at Middlebury are sanctioned by the NCAA. The NCAA characterizes DIII athletes as follows: “Participants are integrated on campus and treated like all other members of the student body, keeping them focused on being a student first.” If you feel as though your sport or club should be recognized by a national organization, then you should make an effort to get it recognized and accredited, and maybe that will help convince Middlebury to grant you the budgets I am sure you are in need of and deserve. Offer publicly held events that viewers can and will show up to for their own entertainment, get a team of voluntary Film and Media Culture majors to make an eight-part documentary on your program and its history, demonstrate success on a national platform six years in a row, offer community service as a group or team: I would imagine these are types of things that help draw attention to the programs and get them funding. Further, most of the funding you believe we get through Middlebury is actually provided through alumni donations, which are not a “cop-out” but rather the reality. Many of the enormous donations given to this school by alumni who played a sport during their time at Middlebury are used towards facilities completely open to the general student body.
Though the world beyond the walls of Middlebury may be different, I find that here is exactly the place where the kid who loves chemistry is certainly celebrated in the same way as the kid who loves hockey (I will disregard your use of hockey as it is Vermont’s favorite sport and attracts more local attention than all other varsity sports combined). In my opinion, you are misinformed about the “premium” we receive as athletes in both monetary aspects and elsewhere. You took a potentially interesting topic of debate—Middlebury’s allocation of financial resources or maybe a social dichotomy—as an opportunity to smear inaccurately and inconsiderately in black and white what sounds like your bitter distaste for sports. If only you had kept your concerns and comments to (what I hope was) the real focus of your Op-Ed, I would have gladly considered your position and possibly joined in support for all students’ benefit.
Jake Nidenberg '16 is from Brooklyn, N.Y
