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(10/16/13 5:47pm)
First-year running back Joey Zelkowitz ’17 scored from eight yards out with 4:03 remaining to give Middlebury a seven-point lead and the Panthers rode the play of their defense to a 21-14 victory over Williams. Zelkowitz finished with two touchdowns — one on the ground and one through the air — and 135 yards of total offense, earning him NESCAC Offensive Player of the Week honors for the first time in his career. On the defensive side of the ball, Will Bain ’14 also earned Defensive Player of Week distinctions for the first time, as the junior cornerback totaled 16 tackles, including at least one on each of the Ephs’ first eight drives.
“Our coaches game-planned well and put our defense in the best position to make plays knowing that Williams was going to look to test the perimeter of our defense,” Bain said.
“Sometimes you take it for granted when corners are making a lot of tackles, but when they’re not making those tackles they’re usually going for big plays,” said head coach Bob Ritter.
The Panthers continued their streak of strong starts, scoring points on their opening drive for the fourth time in as many games as McCallum Foote ’14 found wide receiver Trevor Wheeler ’15 down the seam for a 25-yard score on third-and-three from the Ephs’ 25-yard line. It was Wheeler’s second catch of the drive, as the oft-injured, but explosive junior converted a crucial third-and-15 from the Middlebury 26-yard line on a similar play, hauling in a Foote fastball over the middle for a 28-yard completion. Foote, who was erratic with his arm again, made two crucial plays with his legs on the opening drive, scrambling on third-and-six from the Williams 36-yard line for a pick up of five yards. Then, on fourth-and-one, Foote escaped from the pocket again, and scampered out of a tackle to the sideline for another five-yard gain and a Middlebury first down. Three plays later Foote hit Wheeler for the first touchdown reception of the junior’s career.
“Wheeler gives us a weapon that we don’t have,” Ritter said. “He’s very fast, very athletic and on the third-and-15, made a great play on the linebacker to get free and get back into the route. So he can really stretch the field for us.”
Behind junior quarterback Adam Marske, the Ephs took their first drive of the game 60 yards on 12 plays before stalling at the Middlebury 20-yard line. First-team All-NESCAC kicker Joe Mallock, who nailed a 46-yard field goal the week before, could not cash in, pushing the 37-yard attempt wide right.
Neither offense was productive for the remainder of the quarter, combining to gain just 29 yards on the subsequent four possessions, including three straight three-and-outs.
Following the touchdown drive, the highlight of the first half for Middlebury was specialist Mike Dola ’15’s booming, 76-yard punt that was nearly downed inside the 10-yard line, but rolled into the end zone for a touchback and a still-incredible 56-yard net.
Williams regained its form first, as Marske, who had been benched for the previous two games due to his poor performance, strung together the Ephs’ first scoring drive. The senior quarterback converted a crucial third-and-six with a 21-yard strike to his receiver Darrias Sime and again on fourth-and-two with a 15-yard scramble to the Middlebury 12-yard line. Four straight runs later, the Ephs reached the end zone, as second-string tailback Marco Hernandez beat one Middlebury defender off the left tackle, finding pay dirt from a yard out. Mallock, however, pushed the point after try wide right, the previous miss still lingering in his head and Middlebury maintained a 7-6 lead.
The Ephs’ scoring drive appeared to spark the Panthers as Foote completed five of six passes on the next drive, including a 20-yard completion to tight end Billy Sadik-Khan ’14, who shed his defender and picked up half the yardage after the catch. Three plays later, Foote found Zelkowitz on a swing pass, which the diminutive first-year turned up field, knifing through a pair of Williams defenders en route to a 47-yard gain down to the 10-yard line.
“I always set people up to make them miss either by using my blocks or a little shake or something,” Zelkowitz said of the highlight-reel play.
Then, on second-and-goal, Foote found his dynamic back again on a well-designed screen pass and Zelkowitz zipped his way into the end zone to give the Panthers — who bookended the half with touchdown drives — a 14-6 lead.
Williams demonstrated an impressive display of the two-minute drill, driving 57 yards on 11 plays in just 1:34, but it was ultimately for naught, as Mallock missed another field goal wide right — this time from 37-yards out — to end the first half.
The Middlebury defense forced a three-and-out to begin the second half, giving the offense a chance to take a commanding two-score lead. Despite great starting field position and a Foote-to-Wheeler 14-yard completion, Middlebury failed to come away with points as Foote threw his eighth interception of the season on a clear miscommunication with his intended receiver.
Once again, the Ephs found their footing first on offense, regaining possession at the halfway mark of the third quarter and orchestrating a 12-play 80-yard touchdown drive that ate 6:40 of clock. On the critical play, Marske found his tight end Alex Way from the three-yard line and then went back to the well on the two-point conversion, finding Way to tie the game at 14 with under a minute remaining in the third quarter.
Middlebury appeared to be on its way to retaking the lead on the opening drive of the fourth quarter, but a 21-yard Zelkowitz catch-and-run was negated by a holding penalty and the Panthers were forced to punt. The defense recovered by forcing a three-and-out. Outside linebacker Matt Crimmins ’14 provided the crucial play — as he did time and time again in the second half — blitzing off the edge and batting down Marske’s pass.
The Middlebury offense continued to struggle, earning just one first down on a 14-yard completion to running back Matt Rea ’14 before punting once again on.
Rea, however, would take matters into his own hands on the ensuing Panther drive, carrying the ball three times for 31 yards, including a frantic, 25-yard scamper up the middle on a key third-down conversion. The Panthers were not out of the woods, however. After an incompletion on third-and-three from the Ephs’ 40-yard line, Ritter elected to go for it on fourth down, and the offense responded as Foote hit a sliding Matt Minno ’14 on an inside slant for a 10-yard gain and a first down. Foote targeted Minno on the ensuing play, throwing a go-ball for his 6’3’’ receiver in single coverage. The defender in coverage grabbed Minno, drawing a flag for pass interference. The team turned back to Zelkowitz who carried the ball out of the backfield on consecutive plays for seven and eight yards, respectively, the latter of which into the end zone on a draw play behind a road-grading offensive line.
“The line opened up a huge hole which made it pretty easy for me,” he said of the run.
Williams squandered two final opportunities to tie the game, going three-and-out on the next drive before running out of clock on the game’s final possession. Crimmins featured heavily in the Ephs’ struggles, batting down another Marske throw before meeting teammate Jack Crowell ’14 at the quarterback for his second sack of the game on the final drive.
“We were trying to get Crimmins off the edge because we thought he could give them fits, and he played exceptionally,” Ritter said.
Crimmins totaled seven tackles, trailing only Bain (16) and Tim Patricia ’16 (10), as well as 1.5 sacks and two break ups. Offensively, the ground game led the way as Rea gained 74 yards on 17 carries and Zelkowitz picked up 37 yards on just seven carries and led the team with six receptions for 67 yards. Foote, meanwhile, completed 20 of 37 passes for 247 yards and two touchdowns and the lone intercetpion.
With the victory Middlebury improved to 3-1 and has won 10 of its past 12 games dating back to last season. Williams, meanwhile, dropped to 0-4 for the first time since 1947. The Panthers travel this weekend to Lewiston, Maine where they face Bates (2-2).
(10/09/13 11:06pm)
Trailing by 13 and driving into Lord Jeff territory to begin the fourth quarter at Amherst, the Middlebury football team had an opportunity to draw within striking distance and recover from their worst half of football of the 2013 season. But on a first-and-10 from the Lord Jeffs’ 22-yard line quarterback McCallum Foote ’14 was sacked by Amherst linebacker Chris Tamasi. Then, on the ensuing play, with pressure in his face from a blitzing defender, Foote overthrew his intended target, Brendan Rankowitz ’15, sailing his pass into the waiting arms of Christopher Gow. It was Foote’s fourth of five interceptions on the afternoon, in what was a turnover-laden loss for the Panthers.
Foote’s final stat line was one-part ugly, one-part historic, as the record-breaking passer set a new career high with five interceptions, but also entered the NESCAC record books with 84 attempts and 54 completions. All totaled the Newton, Mass. native threw for 459 yards and two touchdowns as the Panthers racked up 484 yards of total offense on 100 offensive plays, while possessing the ball for 36:01—12:02 more than Amherst. However, that could not atone for a litany of mistakes.
Early on it appeared Middlebury might take a commanding lead as the Panthers hummed down the field, appearing totally in sync offensively for the first time this season. On the game’s first drive, the visiting Panthers moved the ball seamlessly to the Amherst 11-yard line on 13 plays, converting three third downs along the way, before stalling, setting up a Mike Dola ’15 28-yard field goal to take a 3-0 lead.
The Lord Jeffs struggled on their first possession, digging themselves into a third-and-20 situation after a holding penalty. Amherst running back Kenny Adinkra turned a conservative draw into a solid gain, but was stripped of the football at the end of the play by Panthers’ linebacker Jake Clapp ’16. Middle linebacker Tim Patricia ’16 recovered at the Amherst 30-yard line.
Foote then found first-year running back Joey Zelkowitz ’17 on back-to-back plays out of the backfield, the second of which Zelkowitz turned into a long, twisting 17-yard gain down to the Amherst nine-yard line. Middlebury’s red zone offense was once again an issue, however, as the Lord Jeffs stymied them at the two-yard line. Normally an area of the field Middlebury would approach as four-down territory, head coach Bob Ritter elected to attempt a field goal, a decision he would soon regret.
“What was going through my mind was I didn’t have a great play,” Ritter said. “Most of the time on fourth down if you feel good about a play, you go with it, and I didn’t have a great one because we had been stalled there last time. [Amherst] had turned the ball over and I wanted to get points off of that turnover.”
A 20-yard field goal away from taking a 6-0 lead, the Panthers made their first blunder of the game, allowing an unbalanced Amherst kick blocking unit to break through the protection and deny Dola’s attempt.
“In retrospect I wish I had gone for it, and most of the time we do go for it there,” Ritter said. “If we didn’t [score a touchdown] we would have pinned them and maybe gotten good field position. The blocked field goal just makes it sting a bit more.”
Lord Jeffs quarterback Max Lippe exorcized many of the demons that plagued him in last year’s 24-3 Middlebury victory, demonstrating a mastery of the Amherst offense, completing eight of 11 passes for 80 yards and a touchdown to senior wide receiver Jake O’Malley.
The miscues continued for the Panthers as Foote threw his first interception on the subsequent offensive possession. After picking up a pair of first downs, Foote threw a fastball over the middle under pressure that glanced off the hands of Matt Minno ’16. Trailing on the play, Amherst defensive back Landrus Lewis made an acrobatic interception and proceeded to weave his way inside the Middlebury five-yard line where Foote stopped him short of the end zone.
On the first play from center, Lippe kept the football on a read option and waltzed into the end zone. The Lord Jeffs scored 13 points in 1:42 and never led by fewer than 10 points from that point.
The Panthers went into hibernation in the second quarter, gaining just five first downs while turning the ball over twice more and producing another special teams gaffe—this time, a blocked punt. The defense, however, scrapped to contain the Lord Jeffs, forcing consecutive three-and-outs to begin the second quarter.
The offense never achieved the same level of consistent execution, the Panthers were forced to punt on each of their first two possessions, followed by Foote interceptions on consecutive possessions. First Lewis victimized number 10 with a diving catch — his second interception of the game — and then free safety Max Dietz caught, for all intents and purposes, a first-down punt from Foote who vastly overthrew his intended receiver on his third interception of the game.
Sandwiched between interceptions, Amherst found the end zone for the third time in the half — eclipsing the number of touchdowns the Panthers had allowed in the previous two games — as Lippe, normally a threat with his legs rather than his arm, deftly baited the Middlebury defense underneath and lofted a perfectly thrown ball to a wide open receiver for a touchdown and a 20-3 halftime lead.
The defense continued its strong play out of the break, forcing a three-and-out on the first possession of the third quarter and limiting the Lord Jeffs to a field goal on the second.
In a 20-point hole, Foote and the offense finally found their first quarter groove, marching 64 yards in 2:47 on just seven plays as Foote found Minno in the end zone from six yards out on fourth-and-three.
Defensive coordinator Doug Mandigo’s unit stood tall again, forcing the Lord Jeffs offense into its sixth three-and-out of the game as Nate Leedy ’17 made one of his game-high three pass breakups. The first-year cornerback leads the team in both total tackles and passes defended.
“Leedy is getting better week by week,” Ritter said. “He’s dialed in as a corner, really works hard at understanding the game, practices really hard — he’s very intense.”
With a chance to pull within one score, however, Foote threw his fourth interception, effectively ending Middlebury’s fleeting comeback bid as Amherst took the ball and, in just 1:32, found paydirt to take a 30-10 lead.
While the early fourth quarter interception broke Middlebury’s will, the defeat wasn’t sealed until the subsequent Panthers possession when a Foote pass to first-year Ryan Rizzo ’17 slipped from the wide receiver’s hands and was returned 74 yards in the opposite direction by Jaymie Spears for a Lord Jeffs’ touchdown.
Foote mounted one final drive, capped by a seven-yard touchdown pass to Billy Sadik-Kahn ’14 to reach the final 21-point deficit.
Despite the turnovers and mistakes on special teams, Ritter saw some positive signs from his team.
“We moved the ball on offense and the defense did some nice things,” he said. “With a passing offense it is going to be a little hot or cold sometimes. We just didn’t finish our drives off. The interceptions were killers and they were all kind of different shapes and sizes. They weren’t all one thing; a couple of different things conspired to it.”
Middlebury hosts Williams (0-3) on Saturday, Oct. 11. The Ephs have not started a season 0-4 since 1987. Williams dropped last week’s contest to Bates 14-10.
(10/09/13 9:10pm)
A little less than two years ago, Drake’s second album Take Care – an 80 minute epic on love, failed relationships and the pressures of budding fame – was released to staggering success. Demonstrating marked growth in maturity and spawning as many singles as the standard Beyoncé album (as well as that ridiculously shallow, infuriatingly cliché cultural adage I’m sure everyone will, try as they might, never forget), the record thrust Drake into an international spotlight while silencing skeptical detractors of his earlier efforts. An extensive, acclaimed tour and Grammy win cemented his place as one of the top rappers in the game, though still with room to develop. So what, if anything, changed during the lead-up to his most recent release, Nothing Was The Same (NWTS)?
Two things are immediately obvious: the beats are better and the ego is bigger. Way bigger. Too big, in fact, to give legitimacy to his oft-inflated reputation as acutely self-aware, introspective and real. So big that it taints the moments of genuine insight and honesty that he belts with admittedly far more poise and precision than ever before. The fame, as some might say, went to his head.
Drake wastes no time letting listeners know just how good he thinks he is. “Tuscan Leather,” a six-minute banger named after overpriced cologne (if that alone doesn’t say enough about the ensuing track), kicks off NWTS. The natural braggadocio all too common in mainstream rap and hip-hop pokes through a bumping beat pretty quickly – favorable comparisons to Dwight Howard and Martin Scorcese, references of fine Italian wine and allusions to that ridiculously shallow, infuriatingly cliché cultural adage are all fine, whatever, he earned the right to some self-congratulation. That he rubs your face in the fact that he’s indulging in an intro for about 3 minutes too many isn’t even that bad, either, considering the ten seconds of qualifying criticism and Noah “40” Shebib’s sick production. But it’s woefully clear that Drake spent little time listening to his serious competitors during that hefty chunk of time between releases. That, or he’s just kidding himself with quips like “this is nothin’ for the radio, but they’ll still play it though.” His songs are downright bloated with tailor-made, single-selling hooks; does he really think that sales figures and seemingly paradoxical (but actually not at all) airplay proves his worth when, say, Kanye outright informed the world of his intention to forsake both? That the game has not evolved? That success is not about creative growth, but pure figures?
All that aside, Drake swiftly settles down to business in the following track “Furthest Thing,” in which he addresses the personal contradictions and emotional struggles felt while, as opposed to other rappers, taking his work seriously. The melody is slippery-smooth and the drum machine tightly claps at all the right moments. He briefly flirts with patronization but doesn’t affront too severely. A solid track all-around.
And then comes “Started From the Bottom,” a track so annoying and pandering that it borders on offensive. Here, he squanders chance to delve into his past — e.g. conflicts with his mother, pains of achieving independence — free of criticism before devolving into a kitschy 2 A.M. after-party-blues mantra (“F*** a fake friend, where your real friends at?”). But he practically begs listeners to point out how he really started from the middle with laughable lines assuring us that he was indeed hungry from time to time.
The positive from this is that the worst is over after the third track. He comes to shine when he raps about what he knows — disillusionment on “Wu-Tang Forever,” miscommunication on the stand-out “From Time,” youthful naiveté on “Connect” — and stumbles when he loses sight of himself (“The Language”), unknowingly touches on misogyny (“Own It”) and becomes straight-up condescending (“305 to My City”).
None of the songs are unlistenable, though; each track flows like silk and pulses brilliantly against the senses. The problem is that they blend too well together. Though ripe with more dimension, depth and darker undertones than its predecessor, Nothing Was The Same lacks the diversity and dynamism that his contemporaries explore to much greater dividends. Drake has surely perfected the artistic framework found on all of his releases thus far, but his lack of exploration accommodates a narrow range of listener emotion; and if he really wants to reach the level of Kanye and Kendrick on the main stage or Earl and Danny Brown (whose brand new release Old far exceeds the reaches of Drake’s) on the down low, he needs to dig a little deeper, reflect a little longer, tell us all something we don’t already know. The rap game is evolving; if he wants to compete, he needs to stop giving us only more of the same.
(10/09/13 4:00am)
Ruby and Roman each carried a white paper bag overflowing with freshly picked apples and a tooth-splitting smile last Saturday morning as they clambered to sit atop the stone wall in Adirondack Circle.
“I got a bunch of tiny little apple ‘thingies,’” Ruby said, drawing an apple smaller than her nine-year-old palm out of her bag.
Giving Ruby a boost with one hand, her mentor Greer Howard ’16, used the other to save an apple on verge of tumbling onto the sidewalk.
“Roman got bigger ones,” Ruby said as she reached into the batch of apples collected by her brother, who was running circles around a nearby tree trunk.
“I want to make apple pie,” Roman interjected, a honey stick between his teeth, while his mentor, Emily Funsten ’16, attempted to roll up his too-long sleeves before he ran away again.
Ruby and Roman have been coming to the College since last fall through the Community Friends program. The siblings spend two hours every week with their mentors, Howard and Funsten, swimming, making gingerbread houses, doing arts and crafts or playing games.
“They don’t really care so much what they’re doing,” said their mother, Gillian. “It’s just that they have a special someone in their life.”
Such is the aim of Community Friends, a volunteer mentorship organization that has matched over 2,000 College students with six- to 12-year-old children from Addison County since its inception in 1960. Originally run by the Counseling Service of Addison County, the program is one of the oldest service organizations involved with the College. But after budget cuts in 2002, the College took over the program, which has since been run through the Community Engagement office.
Nestor Martinez came to the College last year via an AmeriCorps VISTA grant to run Community Friends. He now works as the Program and Outreach Fellow in the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs.
Last year, Martinez visited eight of 18 elementary schools in Addison County to talk to guidance counselors about introducing children and families to the program. At one such school, Bristol Elementary, the guidance counselor brought Ruby and Roman into the program and from there the organization matched the two with Howard and Funsten.
“I don’t know why we were chosen,” Gillian said of her family’s involvement in the program.
This is nothing out of the ordinary for Community Friends. Mentees are often referred to the program by a guidance counselor, clinician or social worker without parent involvement.
“A lot of times guidance counselors sign kids up if they see problems at home or [if] the kids clearly need extra attention or a positive role model,” Samantha Wasserman ’14, lead student coordinator, said. “They might be acting out in school or they’re a little shy or they have some behavioral issues.”
Martinez added that more of than not, their families lack a role model.
“Especially for boys coming in, it’s usually a lack of a male figure, or at least a positive male figure,” Martinez said.
Parents can also apply on their child’s behalf, though these applications usually focus on activities and interests, rather than behavioral or social issues.
“Sometimes you do get kids from —and I hate to use this word — perfectly adjusted families,” Martinez said, specifying the reason parents sign their children up as a child’s interest the family does not have time to nurture.
Last year, for example, he received an application from a counselor in Bristol advocating a child who spent his weeks with his father and weekends with his mother.
“The father worked so many hours and wasn’t around a lot, and [the child] was really showing an aptitude for music,” Martinez said. “He wanted to find someone who could provide an outlet for music but also had experience working with children and when challenges arose could support him.”
A Perfect Match
No matter how the child becomes involved with Community Friends, the first step coordinators take is to match them with a mentor who has been through a similar application process. Wasserman said the mentor’s application and interview process work not as a critical assessment of the applicant, but instead aims to get to know the soon-to-be mentor find them a suitable mentee match. Rarely are students denied a mentorship position; the obstacle is generally one of logistical or scheduling difficulties.
Matching mentors and mentees depends foremost on transportation availability — coordinators need to make sure that either the mentor or the family has a way to reach the other. With this base covered, the matches are then based on common interests or activities, and the age and gender that the mentor specified in the application.
“It was pretty common practice to match males to males, females to females,” Martinez said. “Sometimes college-aged females with little boys, but never college males with little girls.”
And finally, the personal connection can be fostered. Though their first meeting is in the company of a student coordinator and the mentee’s family, the Community Friends pair is free to make their own fun and establish a unique relationship.
“It’s mostly an individual one-on-one program, which is something that makes it a really special and important relationship between the mentor and the mentee,” Wasserman said.
In addition to weekly pair get-togethers, coordinators also host several program-wide events and optional gatherings for mentors and mentees to get to know others involved in the program. Autumnal crafting parties take place in the fall, and the pairs attend a scavenger hunt-picnic event in the spring, but the paramount event has remained the J Term pool party. Though events like these do not appeal to all the mentees, the pool party usually draws the biggest number of party-goers — about half the pairs show up.
Wasserman has also been working to host more mentor-only events.
“[These events will] create a network between us college students to help each other and discuss the issues we’re facing in our matches,” Wasserman said.
Participation Fluctuation
Student coordinators have managed to bulk up the mentor-training program, which in the past has been insubstantial. The program now features a local speaker who addresses issues students might see in Addison County, a staff member from Community Engagement to discuss the guidelines of the program and small group discussions.
Wasserman said her focus is to increase the support and training for the mentors. Pushing to better educate mentors has proved a two-fold effort — the program first needs to recruit said mentors.
“Participation has waxed and waned over the years, depending on funding and on staffing,” said Tiffany Sargent, director of civic engagement, who has been involved with the program since 1985.
Lack of participation often results from the inability for students to find time in to take on a mentee; the responsibility consists of a two-hour meeting once a week and a minimum commitment of one academic year.
“More often than not, [students] continue [their relationships] beyond a year, but some do cut it off after a year,” Martinez said.
Most of the relationships end because of scheduling conflicts, though some end because the connections between mentor and mentee have not worked well.
Currently, there are about 65 active Community Friends pairs and a handful more pending. Last year’s final count was between 75 and 80 pairs, but Sargent guesses it ould reach 90 this year.
Thirty-seven children from Addison County, however, are still waiting for their mentees.
Clearly, the program is in need of volunteers and, as Wasserman, Sargent, Martinez and Howard all emphasized, the lack of male mentors in particular has posed a consistent problem.
“Females are just more willing to volunteer across the board,” Martinez said. “Perhaps females in general are more willing to be with children than males.”
Discrepancies between male and female participants have followed a common pattern throughout the years. Generally, 75 percent of the mentors are female.
This trend heavily affects the kids’ ability to be matched with a mentor; midway through last year, Martinez remembered, the waitlist was all boys.
The Power of Friendship
To Ruby and Roman, however, these logistics matter little – for them, it is just fun. Roman’s favorite part about spending time with his mentor is that he “always beat[s] Emily at tic-tac-toe. In really tricky ways.” Ruby settled on, “Mostly all of it.”
Though her fourth grade self may not realize it, Ruby’s childhood has been altered because of her involvement with Community Friends.
“Last year, Ruby had an issue, something had gone on with her family,” Howard said. “After I met with her, her mom texted me saying ‘Thank you, I don’t know what she would have done if she didn’t get to see you that day.’”
Connecting with someone of a different age, background and perspective can change the way a child matures. Many parents alluded to a noticeable growth in their children in the 2012-2013 survey, saying their self-assurance and sociability had developed and flourished.
“She was pretty shy when we first started meeting,” Wasserman said of her mentee with whom she has been paired for three years. “She’s much more confident than she used to be.”
Whether this is a direct result of a relationship with a college student, or just a product of growing up is hard to say, but there is no doubt that the relationships nurtured through Community Friends had a lasting effect.
During her time abroad last spring Wasserman exchanged emails and postcards with her mentee, and on her one-day visit to campus this summer, the pair got together.
“We’re very close at this point,” Wasserman said. “She’s something that’s really important to me here at Middlebury.”
Wasserman, Funsten and Howard all noted that they have learned and grown along with their mentees, too.
“Patience is a big part of it,” Howard said. “And being understanding.”
Mentors become indispensable role models for the children they meet, and their company carries much more weight than just catching falling apples or rolling up sleeves.
Though the program is not intended to provide a tutoring service, Martinez recognized the importance of mentors imparting the importance of schoolwork, recalling several mentee applications that requested the child be exposed to good study habits.
“I like them seeing the college environment,” Gillian said. “We live in a small town – Bristol – and a lot of people don’t go to college, so it’s good for them to be on a college campus and learn what a dorm is and all that stuff.”
But the mentor-mentee connection teaches much more than educational lessons. For mentors, the philosophy behind the program emphasizes the opportunity for mentors to burst out of the Middlebury bubble.
“It gets people away from the 18-22 age group,” Funsten said. “It gets them into a different mindset and it’s an outlet from school. It’s also nice to get involved in the community and to have a family that we know and are decently close to in Bristol.”
Understanding the surrounding community remains a goal of the Community Friends program.
“I think it’s really easy to be on campus in this very academic climate and to think of Middlebury College as Middlebury, Vt. and even Addison [County] by extension,” Martinez said. “The reality is that poverty is pretty prevalent and children in poverty are pretty prevalent, and it’s more of a challenge here because it’s rural.”
Though they might not realize it, mentors are often deeply affected by the people and places they encounter. When asked in their applications why they want to get involved in the program, most students cite their desire to work with children or recall their own experiences with mentors.
But Martinez pointed out that he would hear a lot of students say, “I didn’t think of the kind of life this kid is leading here as a normal scene.” He recalled a conversation with one mentor just after she met her mentee.
“She came to me and said ‘We visited them at home because the family didn’t have a car, and the house really smelled of smoke and [the mentee] smelled of smoke and I didn’t know what to do,’” Martinez said. “I think that was a shock for her, and that’s just part of each of their lifestyles.”
Though many applicants have experience working with children, most of these come through camp or school, which don’t involve behavioral therapy or intervention, said Martinez.
For both mentors and mentees, the program opens doors, teaches lessons and provides a meaningful connection that would not otherwise be made. While raising money or packaging food can greatly benefit people in need, mentors believe having a personal connection with someone creates an entirely new dimension.
“There’s a direct impact you have on these kids’ lives,” said Howard after Ruby had hugged her goodbye and gotten in the car with Roman and Gillian.
(10/03/13 12:32am)
Somehow, without any U.S. troops being deployed or thousands of civilians dying as collateral damage, both Iran and Syria seem to have given in to international diplomatic pressure. Iran’s new regime, after being democratically elected to succeed that of the highly questionable Ahmadinejad, has lived up to its more moderate rhetoric by entering into high-level talks over its place in the international community as well as the state of its nuclear program. Meanwhile Syria has succumbed to the Russian plan of placing its chemical weapons stockpile under international control – a far cleaner option than the vague, limited strikes suggested by the Obama administration.
What is notable about both these developments is that the U.S. has not been the key actor. The world can sort itself out without America. This is not a blemish on our only super-power; it can be a good thing for Kerry and co.: reduced dependency could bring about more reasoned and less gung-ho approaches. Instead of being the world’s policemen they can be great mediators.
The Syrian crisis has just proven to be a propaganda disaster compared to what Putin achieved. He has managed to make Russia seem like the most rational and obedient members of the international community – especially with his crude but cool piece in the New York Times only days before the new plan came about. Thus it seems as if other nations are not inherently antagonistic to Western intentions.
The danger lies in those groups that have no ties to their populous: despotic governments and nefarious terrorist groups. To focus on these new belligerents we cannot use means of traditional warfare. The war on terror should have been a war against non-state actors, but that never came about because the great and glorious President Bush decided that there was an “axis” of evil states and not a collection of malicious ideas. When these states are in danger of committing great horrors then state-on-state war may be acceptable (such as would have occurred had Assad not opened talks last week). But in order to fight other antagonistic groups different methods are needed.
Al-Shabbab, for example, the latest Al-Qaeda off-shoot to commit a major atrocity, killed dozens at the Westgate mall in Nairobi during a horrific three-day siege. Scarily, several of the militants are said to have had U.S. citizenship and one of them, known colloquially as the “white widow” (her husband blew himself up during the 7/7 attacks in London), is thought to be the orchestrator and is British. The ideas of these toxic groups are not contained by borders and nor are there actions or their goals. They are embracing the ever hyped ‘social media’ and although that could very well be a ploy to distract analysts and intelligence officers, the very sight of a tweet from Al-Shabbab with “#westgate” is chilling in a whole new way.
It reminds me especially of the Woolwich attack this summer when two men ambushed a soldier in broad daylight on a street in South London and chopped him up with a meat cleaver. One of them then walked confidently up to the then-arriving news cameras (who got there quicker than police) and proceeded to explain their rationale to the shocked public. Michael Adebolajo, who was raised in a Christian Nigerian home in England, killed a British soldier on a London street under the pretext that “Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers” and he would thusly “never stop fighting you until you leave us alone.” It is the toxic appropriation of another culture - if it deserves that name - against his own and then the harrowing defense of his actions that makes this modern version of terrorism so horrifying. This highlights another issue that is being hinted at through the Kenyan tragedy: seemingly perfectly rational human beings (Adebolajo was supposedly radicalized at a London university) are subscribing to militant Islamic rhetoric without any real ties, blood or otherwise to the original cause. It is terrifying to think that an ideology that makes murder intelligibly acceptable is being preferred over all of our ever-so-great bastions of peace, democracy and whatever. The recent use of modern technologies only further proves that these ideas are not limited to the backwards and ill connected.
On one level we must make our own culture appealing again, and fighting fire with fire as we have done in the last decade is probably not the best way to do so. Then again, the dangers of transnational, transcultural terrorism are not solely going to be eradicated by ideological warfare. Just last week 80 people died in a church in Pakistan after bombings by the Pakistani Taliban, independent of the aforementioned infractions. However, that should surely be the first step, to keep people on “our side” from slipping over to “theirs.” We inhabit a world where our enemies may not take the form of entire states, just as we do not represent in ourselves the UK or the US. Instead we are fighting against ideas and, far more dangerously, people who will die for those ideals, no matter how flawed or vicious they may be.
(09/25/13 7:35pm)
The Middlebury men’s and women’s golf teams both notched top-five finishes this weekend. The men finished fifth at the Williams Invitational at Taconic Golf Club in Williamstown, Mass. while the women placed third at the Mount Holyoke Invitational at The Orchards Golf Club in South Hadley, Mass.
The women finished with a score of 637, trailing only Williams (619) and Ithaca (631). They sat in second after day one, two strokes ahead of Ithaca, but fell back slightly on Sunday.
Michelle Peng ’15 led the Panthers with a score of 153, enough for a share of third place overall in the tournament. She was tied for first after shooting a sparkling 75 on Saturday. Monica Chow ’16 also earned a top-10 finish, placing tied for eighth with a score of 159. Jordan Glatt ’15 (162), Theodora Yoch ’17 (163) and Caroline Kenter ’14 (170) followed Peng and Chow, finishing 13th, 19th and 25th overall, respectively.
“As the fall season progresses the team continues to get stronger,” Peng said. “We need to stay mentally tough and be able to perform well both days.”
Host Williams won the men’s tournament with a score of 607, followed by RPI (611) and Trinity (612).
The Middlebury team found itself in a tie for 12th place after a disappointing 317 on Saturday. They rallied back on Sunday, however, propelling themselves into fifth with an impressive 301. It was the best team score on Sunday and was the result of a full team effort, with every golfer breaking 80.
Rob Donahoe ’14 followed up his first-place finish last weekend by capturing a share of seventh place at Williams with a score of 151. Fitz Bowen ’17 (154) finished in the top 20, matching Donahoe with a second-day 73. John Louie ’15 (155), Chris Atwood ’14 (158) and Max Alley ’14 (168) rounded out the Panthers squad.
“We have the talent to be the best in the NESCAC,” Bowen said. “We just have to keep doing what we’re doing and put it together both days of the tournament.”
The men travel to Bowdoin this weekend to participate in the important NESCAC Qualifier at Brunswick Golf Club. The top four teams will qualify to compete for the
NESCAC Championship in the spring. The Panthers finished in fourth place last year.
The women host the Middlebury Invitational at Ralph Myhre Golf Course this weekend. They finished second in the same tournament last year.
(09/19/13 12:25am)
Coverage of the Sept. 11 memorial protest set off a firestorm of responses, jettisoning The Campus’ coverage nationwide and setting records for views online.
At the time of print, The Campus had received over 80,000 views on the three stories combined, from IP addresses registered all across the country. The online fervor culminated with 48,134 views on Thursday, Sept. 12. The coverage set the record for the most views in a single day, and currently accounts for approximately 25 percent of The Campus’ total hits.
Shortly after learning of the incident, Editor-in-Chief of The Campus Kyle Finck ’14 wrote several paragraphs for posting on The Campus’ website along with a photo of the vandalism in process taken by Rachel Kogan ’14. Editors from across the paper worked to update the content and post additional photos to the paper’s website, Twitter and Facebook pages.
Throughout Thursday and Friday, the story gained national attention with various articles appearing on the Addison Eagle, Burlington Free Press, Business Insider, CBS, Daily Caller, Fox Nation, Indian Country Today Media Network, Inside Higher Ed, Times Argus, University Herald, and WCAX, in addition to a number of blogs, such as Breitbart. Many articles were filled with comments, condemning the protestors’ actions. Further, WPTZ posted a video about the incident, while both the Huffington Post and Addison County Independent reached out to the College and community for additional comments.
The national and local attention paid to the story set off a barrage of comments — more than 500 — on The Campus’ website along with numerous op-ed submissions. But the anonymous comments also provided a forum for an outpouring of hate, directed mainly at the protestors and at the College as a whole. Campus editors monitored the comments around the clock, deleting nearly 100 comments because of direct threats, curses and other breaches of The Campus’ online conduct policy.
“The comments we deleted on our site really appalled a lot of us moderating the discussion online, and we didn’t even receive the worst,” Finck said. “It was scary to see the amount of vitriolic and threatening comments left up on other news outlets’ sites.”
In particular, Finck singled out the popular humor blog Barstool Sports, which also picked up the story and ran The Campus article on Sept. 12 with commentary written by one of its editors. The posting attracted a large number of comments, many of which were profane attacks directed at the persons who removed the flags from outside of Mead Chapel.
(09/19/13 12:16am)
In concession to strong student demand, the College has agreed to continue offering a finance course this academic year in a last-minute addition to the course catalog.
When the Alan R. Holmes Professor of Monetary Economics Scott Pardee, the College’s only finance professor, announced his intention to leave the economics department at the end of the last academic year, many students were concerned that finance courses would no longer be available at the College.
The economics department received several emails, letters and course evaluations voicing this concern. In response to students’ demands, the faculty has reinstated a finance course within the Interdepartmental category. Corporate Finance and Accounting (INTD 306) was a last-minute addition to the course catalog for the fall semester, and will be co-taught by Professor David Colander and newly-named Center for Careers and Internships (CCI) Emeritus Faculty Fellow Scott Pardee.
INTD 306 will be the only finance and accounting course offered this semester, a reduction from previous semesters when Pardee taught four courses devoted to the subject.
Following the College’s announcement of the course, 48 students enrolled in the class and 80 more were added to the waitlist, in spite of its last-minute appearance in the course catalog.
The demonstrated popularity of this course, in addition to the reduction of finance courses from four to one, has edged out some students hoping to prepare themselves for a career in finance.
“The Economics program at Middlebury is outstanding and I have benefitted immensely from it,” said Jake Feury ’16. “However, I strongly believe that adding more finance courses into Middlebury’s curriculum will help us perform better in job interviews and succeed in a career in finance after college. It would certainly make me feel more comfortable applying for jobs if I had the opportunity to take more finance courses here at Middlebury.”
Even Middlebury alumni are speaking out on the subject.
“As an alum who works in finance and took all of Prof. Pardee’s classes, I can definitely say that my experience looking for a job in finance would not have been the same without the knowledge that I gained in Prof. Pardee’s classes and more importantly, his real world experience in the field,” an online commenter to The Campus’ article titled “College Drops Finance Courses,” published last spring wrote. “When a MiddKid is out there competing with a Finance major from Yale, Dartmouth, it is better for the company to hire someone who needs less training.”
Both Colander and Pardee expressed a desire to spend the fall developing a curriculum of several new finance courses to supplement the current single offering.
Pardee emphasized the importance of these finance classes in giving students a competitive edge in the job search, as well as to the College’s standing.
“If you don’t have somebody here who is teaching that stuff then we lose,” said Pardee. “These schools that we are in deadly competition with have these courses so we have to have them to even maintain the position that we have.”
The debate over whether finance courses belong at the College represents a much larger discussion happening across departments about the role of specialized courses at a liberal arts college based on the current job market.
Christian A. Johnson Professor of Economics and Head of the Economics Department Peter Matthews disagreed, responding that the “out-of-the-box” thinking that a liberal arts education generates will make any Middlebury student marketable.
“The liberal arts experience … prepares students for all pursuits, not individual jobs, [and] for a lifetime of engagement with the world, not specific job interviews,” said Matthews. “I believe that the current Economics Department, with its renewed commitment to ‘research-based learning,’ embodies this experience, and I’m confident that our students are well prepared to excel in the world. I also know, however, that there are more opportunities than ever at the College to acquire marketable skills.”
Many students question if this is enough, however.
“Middlebury needs to reconsider what it means to be a liberal arts college in the 21st century and offering finance courses is part of this,” said Max Kagan ’14. “Students need job skills in order succeed in an increasingly competitive job market. The world is changing; the oft-repeated refrains that a liberal arts degree is a degree in ‘learning how to think’ and that ‘you can do anything with a liberal arts degree’ are under threat.”
(05/02/13 12:55am)
As homeowners in the area consider their energy bills, the questions of what fuel to use, whether or not it will be renewable and how much it will cost are constantly arising. Yet while some might save by switching fuel types, the strategy of using less energy overall by improving a home’s efficiency has become increasingly popular among environmentalists and cost-savers alike.
In January, Efficiency Vermont announced the Vermont Home Energy Challenge in the hopes that it would jumpstart the state’s push towards energy efficiency. In Vermont’s 2011 Comprehensive Energy Plan, the state outlined a specific goal of improving the efficiency of 80,000 homes by 25 percent before 2020. The contest promises a $10,000 prize for an energy improvement project to any town that manages to weatherize three percent of its homes by the end of the year.
“Seventy-seven towns have signed up from all corners of the state,” said Paul Markowitz, Efficiency Vermont’s community energy program manager. “We’ve had probably 250 or 300 volunteers who were trained to organize and reach out to their community.”
Four months into the challenge, however, the statistics are showing just how challenging the three percent target is for towns. While many town organizers have made great strides in encouraging their neighbors to make energy pledges — or written commitments to any number of energy-saving home alternatives — few towns have moved beyond five or 10 percent of their actual weatherization goal.
“In terms of the level of activity, it really varies,” said Markowitz. “We have some [towns] like Middlebury and Weybridge that have been really active in terms of engaging their residents and other communities that have been slower.”
Admittedly, places like Weybridge have the advantage of having small populations where three percent translates to only a handful of homes; a city like Burlington, on the other hand, needs to weatherize over 500 homes in order to win the cash prize.
Yet for many involved, this cash prize is secondary to the overall goal of addressing climate change by reducing energy-use at the consumer level.
“Personally, my commitment is to address climate change,” said Fran Putnam, the lead volunteer in Weybridge. “I really wanted to take another step and move out into the community.”
After the construction of a zero-net-energy home with her husband and working on offering different green energy workshops in Weybridge, Putnam decided to involve herself and her community of activists in the home energy challenge as a way to reach out to a broader range of community members.
“We signed up to enter the challenge in January,” said Putnam. “We have a very active energy committee in Weybridge [that] formed in October, 2011. We had already done some projects together and we were looking for a new challenge.”
The group had been successful in persuading workshop participants to make lifestyle and housing changes to benefit the climate in previous years, but attendance was consistently low.
“We were looking for a new way to get the word out and just at that time, Efficiency Vermont started the Vermont Home Energy Challenge and we said, ‘this is perfect for us,’” said Putnam.
As a result of these volunteer efforts, 38 Weybridge residents have made pledges to reduce their energy use in some way, and one resident has completed a full efficiency upgrade.
“This town is a great town to be working in because people are so receptive,” said Putnam.
The process involves a free initial audit from local volunteers, followed by a $100 professional audit, and then the project itself, which generally cost between $5,000 and $10,000 after state and federal incentives.
The main driver for most homeowners to pursue efficiency upgrades is the predicted savings on their heating bills. Most projects save around $1,000 to $2,000 a year on energy bills, depending on the preexisting level of energy efficiency.
While the return is certainly higher than what a savings account might offer, the amount of upfront capital required to move forward with a project has been prohibitive for some.
“Right now, we’re able to offer an incentive after a job is completed of up to $2,000, said Kelly Lucci, Efficiency Vermont’s manager of public affairs and communications, “but, unfortunately, it’s not going to [help] decrease the up-front costs for folks who are on the lower-income side of the scale, [yet] still make too much money to benefit from the weatherization program, which targets very low-income folks and provides those services for free.”
In addition to those who may not be able to raise the funds necessary for a project of this scope, there are many other kinds of Vermont residents who are not being reached through this home energy challenge. For instance, seasonal homes have been excluded from the competition, while renters and mobile home owners continue to prove a challenge for efficiency-minded folks in Montpelier and across the state.
In order for Vermont to see a quarter of its year-round homes weatherized by 2020, it seems likely that they will have to further address the high upfront cost of insulating and air sealing a home, yet in the meantime, Efficiency Vermont officials are hopeful that there are enough people out there who can raise the capital to get the ball rolling.
“There are a number of people who may be in a better position to make these investments than they think,” said Lucci, “and the idea is to mobilize these town energy committees and to work through VECAN [the Vermont Energy & Climate Action Network], knocking on doors, talking to neighbors, and explaining the resources that are currently available.”
“You do have to spend some money to do this,” admitted Putnam, “but we’re trying to motivate people to use less energy by helping them see that it makes sense financially.”
In Middlebury, Vt. volunteers like Laura Asermily have also put in a great deal of work to promote the town’s energy efficiency goals. In order to succeed in the competition, the town needs to weatherize 91 homes in contrast with Weybridge’s 10 homes.
Outreach efforts have included lawn signs, tabling, neighbor-to-neighbor dialogue and even a new show on Middlebury Community Television (MCTV) that shares testimonials from residents who have completed efficiency work and seen the savings it can create.
The outreach team has also looked to some larger businesses in town to join in with the project.
“We’ve approached Middlebury College and other large employers like Porter Hospital, but these things take time.”
Because the College operates huge number of residential buildings for faculty and students in town and because of its carbon neutrality pledge, it appears as though this would be a good match. Yet thus far, Asermily and her team of volunteers have not been able to bring the College on board.
“I approached the staff council and was able to present to the staff council what the home energy challenge was,” said Asermily. “I asked for their guidance about how I could get the word out to staff. They suggested that I come in to do a learning lunch, or to canvas faculty staff at the Grille; I tried to do that but I was declined.”
In spite of this small roadblock, Asermily hopes to continue to work with the College to address this need for efficiency upgrades. The College has set up a Green Revolving Fund of one million dollars to power energy saving initiatives as a result of Efficiency Vermont’s efforts in 2011, so it may be that this fund will someday provide capital for smaller home efficiency projects of this nature. The money will revolve as these capital-intensive energy project begin to pay for themselves in energy savings, allowing the College to put those savings toward a new initiative down the line.
“Vermont’s housing stock is among the oldest in the country, so there’s certainly a lot of potential to improve the efficiency of Vermont homes, and save a lot of money on heating bills,” concluded Lucci.
(05/01/13 11:38pm)
On April 17, after America’s 113th Congress rejected a series of proposed gun-control measures, Barack Obama asked a teary-eyed, red faced crowd in the White House’s Rose Garden, “how can something have 90 percent support and yet not happen?”
Americans have debated the answer endlessly. The legislation’s advocates blame the NRA, convoluted Senate rules and political cowardice. Its opponents, like Director of Communications for Gun Owners of America Erich Pratt argued that “none of the policies [Obama] recently unveiled would have stopped Adam Lanza in Connecticut from killing his mother, stealing her weapons and carrying them onto school grounds to commit his despicable crimes.” A broken clock is right twice a day. Yet this statement’s technical validity does not make it a relevant or convincing argument against gun-control legislation.
Expanding background checks would not have prevented the Sandy Hook Massacre, but it might have saved some of 2,244 other individuals who have been killed by firearms since that day four months ago.
The Democrats have failed to articulate this point, framing these efforts as a mere gesture of condolence to Sandy Hook parents. Their failure to contextualize this dialogue into the larger picture of gun violence sealed its death wish. Representative Rand Paul’s argument that “none of the proposals would address the tragedy,” makes sense when the only tragedy discussed is Sandy Hook.
Vice President Joe Biden urged Americans to “think about how many of these children or teachers may be alive today had he had to reload three times as many times as he did.” This type of argument characterizes the failure of gun control. First off, Adam Lanza could probably replicate the killing capacity of his military-style firearm with an assortment of less deadly weapons. Second, inconveniencing mass murderers by simply forcing them to reload more frequently is far short of a victory for America. If I, a liberal who has never before fired a gun, can so easily rail against Biden’s claim, gun rights advocates must have had a field day.
Opponents of gun control would have faced a tougher challenge if forced to confront the overwhelming evidence that states with stricter gun laws experience fewer homicides. Paul and his fellow gun-rights advocates could not reasonably argue that expanded background checks would stop zero of America’s nearly 10,000 gun-related fatalities each year. Arguments by individuals like Charles E. Grassley, Republican senator from Iowa, that “criminals do not submit to background checks now ... they will not submit to expanded background checks” weaken in light of the fact that perpetrators of gun violence are not often “criminals” in the conventional sense. Sixty percent of gun-related murders are impulsive acts of rage against a friend or love, not premeditated attacks. Red-state Democrats who cowered to NRA threats might have felt a stronger moral duty to vote “yes” if they understood that this bill was not just a response to the 20 teachers and students who died on December 14, but also the lives of 34 Americans (80 if you count suicides) killed by guns daily on average.
Gun control advocates never forced their opponents to face these details, insisting that the killings at Sandy Hook take precedence in this dialogue.
Of course, there is a single obvious reason that Americans imbibed this event with such significance. The slaughter of schoolchildren invokes a lot more anger and motivation than a mere statistic or series of breaking news stories. It motivated certain gun rights advocates like Representative John Yarmouth to switch positions. Why the numerous other gun-related fatalities that occurred while he was in office did not prompt the same response is of little concern.
Symbolism is important. The Boston Marathon bombings caught the nation’s attention last week while a blast that killed 50 Iraqis the same day did not even make the front page of the New York Times. The former was perceived to symbolize a distinctly resilient Bostonian spirit and the unrelenting specter of terrorism, the latter just another grim dispatch from a war-torn country. But the power of symbolism is lost when we focus so much on the symbol itself and so little on what it is meant to symbolize. How can we understand the importance of Sandy Hook or Aurora or Virginia Tech when we forget the full story of American violence and mental illness that underlies these tragedies?
Legislators like Senators Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia and Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania seem poised to restart their efforts for expanded background checks. Yet recent polls indicate that support for gun control has waned after an initial surge post-Sandy Hook. It would be wise for gun control advocates to remind Americans what gun control is really about before it is too late.
Obama concluded his speech to the crowd of Sandy Hook and other mass shooting victims by saying “I believe we’re going to be able to get this done. Sooner or later, we are going to get this right. The memories of these children demand it.” Next time, he should mention the memories of more than just “these” children.
DAVID ULLMANN '16 is from Brookline, Mass.
(05/01/13 11:35pm)
Recently, an independent fact-finding mission of the United Nations (UN) presented a report about the Israeli settlement policy. The report confirms what was assumed for a while: the settlement project cannot be differentiated from the Apartheid system that was once applied in South Africa.
The assignment of the UN fact-finding mission was not to conclude, again, that the settlements are illegal. That much is clear. Settlements are a violation of article 49 of the Fourth Convention of Genève, punishable by article 8 of the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court and are unanimously classified as violation of international law by the International Court verdict of 2004 regarding the Wall.
Rather, the assignment of the mission was to research the consequences of the settlements, especially with regards to the civil, political, social and cultural rights of the Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Moreover, it is noteworthy that the report does not discuss Israel’s military settlement of the West Bank as such. It is bounded to the implications and consequences of the settlement policy. The conclusion that Israel applies some form of Apartheid in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is thus limited to the regime that the settlement policy has produced.
The three main characteristics of South African Apartheid were institutionalized discrimination, repression and forced migration. The fact-finding mission concludes that the settlement establishment is characterized by these three features.
On discrimination, the mission notes the following: (a) there are two judicial regimes in the occupied territories, one for the Palestinians, and the other for the colonialists; (b) colonialists have, compared to Palestinians, a preferential judicial status; (c) in the occupied territories there is a segregated judicial system, which “results in daily violations of a multitude of the human rights of the Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including, incontrovertibly, violating their rights to non-discrimination, equality before the law and equal protection of the law.”
Secondly, the mission notes that Palestinians are subject to a broad spectrum of repressive measurements by the Israeli army and settler colonialists. There are restrictions on the freedom of movement (which resembles the pass-law system under Apartheid) and the freedom of expression and assembly. The last-mentioned restrictions, according to the report, have an aim of “ensuring that the daily life of Israeli settlers continues without interruption.” Furthermore, settlers use violence against Palestinians, their houses, schools and farmlands without restraint by the Israeli army (this form of violence was not a characteristic of Apartheid in South-Africa).
The mission concludes that there is “institutionalized discrimination against Palestinians.” It asserts that the violence and intimidation against Palestinians and their property serves to drive the local population away from their land and make settlement expansion possible.
Thirdly, the report describes a system of demolishing houses and displacing people from their homes, forcing migration elsewhere (normally to densely populated and walled-in cities) in order to serve the settlers. These interventions greatly resemble Apartheid in South Africa.
The mission does not use the term Apartheid to name the system that it describes in the report. However, its argument that the system, created by the presence of 520,000 settlers in 250 settlements and resulting in the seizure of 43 percent of Palestine, represents Apartheid is evident from the following conclusion:
“The settlements are established for the exclusive benefit of Israeli Jews, and are being maintained and developed through a system of total segregation between the settlers and the rest of the population living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. This system of segregation is supported and facilitated by a strict military and law enforcement control to the detriment of the rights of the Palestinian population.”
A more accurate description of Apartheid (as applied in South Africa) does not exist. South Africans who visit the West Bank are immediately struck by the similarity between the repressive regime that discriminates in favor of the settlers and the Apartheid that existed in South Africa. It is therefore that Nelson Mandela reminds us, “Apartheid is a crime against humanity. Israel has deprived millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property.”
In this context, it becomes clear that without justice, a progress in peace is not possible. We can only call ourselves civilized when we also apply human rights and law to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Our endowment is also invested in companies that benefit from Israeli Apartheid. Isn’t it hypocritical to have a “Davis Peace Project” and invest in Apartheid?
Those who propagate human rights have a responsibility to this crisis; we should be ashamed to call ourselves followers of human rights when we allow this injustice to continue. Middlebury expects us to be “thoughtful and ethical leaders.” Let us therefore reach an ethical conclusion on this matter and divest from Israeli Apartheid today, just like we divested our endowment from South African Apartheid in the 80s. It is imperative that racist structures cease to exist. Occupation should not exist.
I hereby invite you to partake with the Justice For Palestine (JFP) meetings every Wednesday at 6 p.m. in Chellis House.
ALI NAIMI '16 is from Zoetermeer, Netherlands
(04/25/13 12:37am)
In its final tune-up before NESCAC Championships, the men’s golf team travelled to Williams last weekend, April 20 and 21, to compete in the Williams Spring Challenge at Taconic Golf Club in Williamstown, Mass. The team came away in fourth place, posting a total combined score of 649 strokes. Host Williams won the tournament by carding 633 strokes, followed by Hamilton (645) and Trinity (647).
Rob Donahoe ’14 led the way for the Panthers, shooting 78 on Saturday, followed by an 83 on Sunday. He finished eighth overall in the tournament. Following Donahoe was Eric Laorr ’15, who struggled with a first-day finish of 88. Laorr then chopped off 10 strokes on Sunday to finish with 166. William Prince ’13 also improved on the second day, ending up with a score of 168. Andrew Emerson ’13 (167), Max Alley ’14 (168) and Chris Atwood ’14 (169) rounded out the Panthers line-up.
The weather conditions and course layout both made play difficult and led to high scores throughout the field.
“Everyone was playing the same course so there is no excuse for our poor performance relative to the other NESCAC schools taking part,” said Prince.
The men will seek to defend their NESCAC title next weekend at Trinity, where they will compete against Williams, Hamilton and Trinity for the conference championship. The team returns all five golfers from last year’s top five. It will also attempt to qualify for the NCAA Division III Championship, which the Panthers did last season before missing the cut after the national tournament’s second round.
“We have a lot of work to do this week in preparation for NESCACs,” said Prince. “We are definitely going in with a bit of a chip on our shoulder after getting beat by our primary NESCAC rivals the last two weekends.”
The Middlebury women’s golf team placed third at the Jack Leaman Invitational this Saturday, April 20. Amherst hosted the tournament at the Hickory Ridge Country Club in Massachusetts.
Ithaca claimed victory shooting a two-day combined score of 642, followed by the Panther’s adversary Williams at 644. The Panthers rounded out the podium with a 656.
Jordan Glatt ’15 led the Panthers for the second weekend in a row tying for seventh overall after two consistent days. Glatt shot 80 and 81 for a combined 161. First-year Monica Chow ’16 tied for 10th, shooting 164 after taking six strokes off Saturday’s round. Caroline Kenter ’14 and Michelle Peng ’15 also shot six strokes fewer on Sunday for a combined 166 to tie for 16th. Captain Keely Levins ’13 tied for 16th with Kenter and Peng as well.
Overall, each golfer made improvements on Sunday, helping to position the team in third. The team was also very consistent as a group, with its final scores separated by only five strokes.
“We know that we can score low, but it is all about timing,” said Peng. “We struggle to put together four good scores at the same time. The first day we put ourselves into a hole that was really hard to come back from. So even though we won the Sunday, we couldn’t make up for Saturday’s performance.”
The Panther’s will try one last time this season to best Williams at the Williams Invitational this coming weekend, April 27 and 28.
“Although no one had a light’s out round, we all did our part and we were able to win the day,” said Peng. “It validated us as a team and gives us fuel for Williams next weekend."
CHRISTINE SCHOZER COVERS THE WOMEN'S GOLF TEAM AND KEVIN YOCHIM COVERS THE MEN'S TEAM
(04/17/13 11:29pm)
The women’s golf team returned to action for the first time this spring in this past weekend’s Vassar Invitational at the Dutchess Golf Club on Saturday and Sunday, April 13 and 14. The Panther women finished in second place behind their conference foe, Williams, posting a team score of 644 strokes to the Ephs’ 637.
The tournament, hosted at the par-72, 5,805-yard golf course in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., featured picturesque weather all weekend, with slight wind on Sunday.
As a group, Middlebury played consistently over the two days of the tournament, shooting identical rounds of 322 strokes over the two days for a combined score of 644.
Jordan Glatt ’15 led the Panther women after shooting an impressive 75 on Sunday, finishing with a scored of 156 strokes to place second in the field. Equally notable, Michele Peng ’15 finished tied for third with rounds of 77 and 80 strokes for a combined two score of 157. Monica Chow ’16, Keely Levins ’13, and Caroline Kenter ’14 placed 12th, 17th and 24th, respectively.
Kenter posted one of the more notable performances on the weekend, seeing an eight shot improvement between Saturday and Sunday.
“I had a rough first day, but the team held it together really well, “ explained Kenter. “Michelle played well on Saturday, and Jordan was almost lights-out on Sunday.”
The Panther women are looking forward to next weekend at the Jack Leaman Invitational at Mount Holyoke, April 20 and 21.
“Overall, we are really optimistic about next weekend,” said Kenter. “We beat Amherst this weekend and we are going for Williams next weekend.”
(04/17/13 4:25pm)
If Patrick Devereux ’15 had a soundtrack, it would be comprised of such princes of southern rap as Gucci Mane, Waka Flocka, OJ da Juiceman and Lil Wayne. For this particular day in the life, track no. 1 would be “Shawt Bus Shawty,” a Youtube sensation that parodies Devereux’s composers.
“I eat the red crayon ‘cause the red one tastes the best,” says an animated caricature of Gucci Mane. “And I cheat off Lil Darryl every time I take the test.”
“I’ve seen this video a lot,” comments Devereux as he becomes the 34,622,675th viewer of the Youtube video through a fit of laugher. “But I’ve never noticed that. He crossed out his own name and wrote Lil Darryl. Cause he cheated off him.”
It’s a scene that hits closer to home for Devereux than for most other students, particularly on the caricatured depiction of high school in the ghetto front.
A day in the life of Devereux begins with abiding to the gendered bathrooms of Hepburn hall, respectfully schlepping with his shower caddy through two sets of doors to the men’s room. Track no.2: “Girl you stank (take a bath),” Soulja Boy.
“Soulja Boy sold this song in a record,” explained Devereux. “It references Doo Doo Head, a character from another Soulja Boy song called ‘Doo Doo Head.’ How did he make money off this?”
Devereux attends Chinese class, a quiet scene quite unlike the high schools of “Shawt Bus Shawty” and Devereux’s alma mater Warwick High School, of Newport News, Va.
“Imagine if you have 30 kids in your class who are just rowdy, loud, talk back to you, don’t listen to anything you say and interrupt you and so it’s impossible for you to talk and the only thing you as a teacher can do is go get security or the principal, but they [the students] don’t care about being suspended,” said Devereux. “It’s not a punishment. What do you do as a teacher? I can see why the teachers just didn’t do anything.”
Devereux’s average day did not include homework.
“The teachers knew that if they assign homework, no one’s going to do it anyway,” he said.
Devereux claims he beat the system.
“I did zero work in high school and got all A’s and ended up at Middlebury,” he said.
But maybe Devereux was just operating on a different system. Track no. 3: “Duffle Bag Boy,” Playaz Circle featuring Lil Wayne:
“If I don’t do nutthin I’mma ball / I’m counting all day like the clock on the wall.”
While many of Devereux’s peers growing up literally lived out Playaz Circle’s narrative, Devereux took a different path.
“I did Quiz Bowl in high school,” said Devereux. He gets his sticky, spongey, hungry brain from his mom.
“Me and my mom always used to watch “Jeopardy” together everyday,” he said. “We’d answer all the questions and probably get 85 percent of the questions between us. Pop culture was always our worst. Anything academic was our best. Literature, geography, natural science. My dad killed pop culture. But that was the only thing he would ever get.”
Thursday night trivia at Crossroads serves as an extension of Quiz Bowl. His team, fielded by several other former Quiz Bowl kids, often wins.
Devereux’s other team is his the rugby team. Before that, there was also his high school swim team; a team within a league that mingled some of the nation’s top swimming recruits with your barely water-safe amateurs in swim trunks.
After rugby practice, Devereux dines at Proctor. It’s a starkly different scene from the Newport News day-in-the-life Devereux, despite the common aspect of free food.
“Some people came to school just because they got free lunch,” said Devereux of Warwick High School.
He fills up his glass from the juicer and is reminded both of his favorite Gucci Mane song, track no. 4 “Lemonade,” Gucci Mane and Community Day at his swim club back home.
“The swim club I belonged to cost $300 for yearly membership,” he said. “That’s probably not that much but my neighborhood’s really poor and most people couldn’t afford that. The city paid our pool $6,000 to have a day where, every Wednesday, anyone could come. There’d be, like, 250 people there. It’s so hot and humid. Everyone would show up. There were huge barbeques; everyone orders pizza. The local Pizza Hut and Domino’s, they would just come by with 80 pizzas already made and sell them at the door.”
Track no. 5: “Yellow Claw,” Krokobil feat. Sjaak and Mr. Polska. Devereux doesn’t believe in studying for tests. Instead, he prepares for his upcoming German test by decoding the similarly-rooted Dutch lyrics of “Yellow Claw.”
“‘Jouw bil is een krokodil,’ that’s basically saying your ass is a crocodile.”
(04/17/13 4:19pm)
The Sixth Annual Quidditch World Cup was held in Kissimmee, Fla. this past weekend, marking the first World Cup that Middlebury did not compete in. The Middlebury College Quidditch team ended its five-year winning streak after losing during the Northeast Regional Championship tournament in November, failing to qualify for the World Cup as a result.
Over 1,600 competitors took part in the weekend-long tournament, with 80 of the top Quidditch teams from across the world going head to head for the title of World Cup Champion. International teams hailed from Canada, France and Mexico.
At Sunday’s more competitive Division I championship game, number two ranked University of Texas, Austin beat third ranked UCLA with a final score of 190-80. On the Division II side, which the International Quidditch Association (IQA) classifies as more whimsical and less competitive, Sam Houston State University beat Loyola University 110-70 with a last-minute snitch-grab.
An afterparty for the World Cup was held at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park in Orlando, Fla.
Quidditch was created at the College in 2005 by roommates Alex Benepe ’09 and Xander Manshel ’09.
(04/10/13 9:34pm)
After months of training, the men’s golf team opened its spring season in impressive fashion last Friday and Saturday, April 5 and 6, by winning the Rhode Island College Spring Invitational, hosted at Triggs Memorial Golf Course in Providence, R.I. The Panthers finished with a combined score of 620 strokes, easily topping runner-ups Endicott College (653) and Husson University (658). Elms College and host RIC rounded out the top five.
Tough conditions made the already difficult course even more of a challenge, with gusting winds and cold temperatures all weekend. The greens were firm, fast and crowned. The men responded by playing somewhat conservatively, putting the ball in the right place and planning their shots well on the way to victory.
“The team is coming along real well,” said head coach Bill Beaney. “They adapted well and played very smart with good course management.”
Rob Donahoe ’14 and William Prince ’13 led the way for the Panthers, tying for the lowest score of the weekend with 151 strokes each. Donahoe was able to edge out Prince in a tiebreaker, earning match medalist honors. The two golfers were very consistent, with Donahoe shooting 76-75 and Prince 75-76.
“As is typical early in the season, there were some bright spots and some weak spots on an individual and team level,” said Prince. “Going forward we are going to work hard to improve upon these weaknesses.”
Max Alley ’14 was just behind Prince and Donahoe all weekend long, finishing with a 157 strokes – good enough for fourth place overall in the tournament. Eric Laorr ’15 shot 80-81 for a total of 161 strokes, finishing seventh overall. Chris Atwood contributed a 165 with a strong 79 on Saturday and finished 12th. Charlie Garcia ’15 rounded out the Panthers squad with 172, shooting an 86 each day. As evidenced by having five of the top 12 individual finishers, the men’s team boasts a deep starting lineup this year.
“The win this weekend was great for us in terms of getting in a winning mindset,” said Prince. “We want to win every weekend this spring, so this will help us get in the mindset of dominating and closing out a tournament.”
The Panthers head south next weekend, April 13 and 14, to play in the Manhattanville Spring Invitational at Lyman Orchards Golf Club in Wallingford, Conn. There they will face stiff competition, including divisional rivals Trinity and Williams, in what will surely be good preparation for the NESCAC Championship at the end of April.
“I hope that this weekend will give us a great idea of the small things we need to work on and tie some loose ends together,” said Beaney.
It will also be an opportunity for the team to figure out its top five.
“We have a deep team with a lot of good competition in house,” he said.
(04/10/13 1:37pm)
Amitai Ben-Abba’s op-ed of March 20 "Occupation — the Censored Word" labels Ambassador Dennis Ross’s recent lecture on the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “an astonishing feat of deception.” Not only did Ross clearly, and fairly, criticize both Israelis and Palestinians while articulating steps that both sides must take in order to achieve peace, but Ben-Abba’s response is not without its own deceptive remarks.
Contrary to what Ben-Abba claims, Jews did not simply move into Israel in 1948 and expel its native inhabitants. Over half a century prior, Jews, escaping European anti-Semitism, began purchasing land legally from absentee land owners in what would become Israel, cultivating it and developing cities. At the time of the UN Partition in 1947, Jews had a clear majority of 538,000 to 397,000 Arabs in the land given to them. In a greater context, this partition divided only 20 percent of Mandate Palestine; the other 80 percent was allocated to what would become Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Since its independence in 1948, Israel has actively pursued peace, but the Palestinians have rejected every offer Israel has ever made. While Israel’s gaining independence was certainly complicated, with injustices done to both Israelis and Palestinians alike, the history is far more nuanced than the one-sided story Ben-Abba tells.
Ben-Abba continues by quoting Martin Luther King Jr., attempting unsuccessfully to present the American civil rights hero as anti-Israel and to portray Israel as a racist state. Contrary to Ben-Abba’s claim, Dr. King stood with Israel, stating, “Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.” To align Dr. King’s supportive remarks with Ben-Abba’s misconstrued attack on Israel ‘s committing a “systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine” is inappropriate.
Moreover, Ben-Abba’s use of the “apartheid” label on Israel is both offensive and inaccurate. Although Israel faces racial struggles like any other western democracy, it often surpasses the human rights records of any other first world country. “Apartheid” has no obvious correlation whatsoever to the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians. “Apartheid” refers to a system of extreme racial segregation enforced by legislation in South Africa, in which the country’s white minority exercised complete political and social control over the black majority, stripping them of fundamental rights. Palestinian citizens of Israel face none of these injustices. Israeli-Arab men and women have a guaranteed right to vote in regular, stable, democratic elections. In Israel, an Arab man, Salim Joubran, sits on the Supreme Court. In Israel, Arabs sit in the Israeli parliament. In Israel, Arab students, including those from the West Bank, attend prestigious Israeli universities, which also employ many Arab professors. In Israel, Arabs serve as generals in the army. Finally, as Ross pointed out in his speech, Israel regularly treats both citizen and non-citizen Palestinian Arabs in its hospitals – for free.
What part of this resembles anything that comes remotely close to apartheid? Arab citizens of Israel do have to deal with racism and hate, but to call this “apartheid” is utterly inaccurate. The truth is that Arabs in Israel have more rights than Arabs in any Arab country. They can speak critically of Israel without fear of retribution and they enjoy civil liberties far greater than exist anywhere else in the Middle East. Arab women, in particular, are safer and better protected in Israel than anywhere else in the region. The term “apartheid” is merely a provocative buzz word ignoring the complexities of the situation, and is used only to incite unwarranted criticism of Israel.
As for Arab non-citizens of Israel, those living in Gaza or the West Bank, Ben-Abba is correct; these people do face oppression. It’s a sad reality, but this oppression, requires context. People living in these areas do not face oppression because of their Arab ethnicity, but rather because some groups of Palestinians represent a security threat to Israel. Since 2005, when Israel unilaterally withdrew from the territory, over 8,000 rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel. Gaza’s leadership, Hamas, which the UN considers a terrorist organization, encourages and partakes in these attacks which are nearly always first strikes on Israel. During the Second Intifada, the West Bank leadership, Fatah, sat, watched and applauded as terrorists murdered close to 1,000 Israeli civilians in cold blood. Despite this, Israel regularly brings aid to these communities including more than one million tons of humanitarian supplies in the past 18 months to Gaza. The security barrier running along the West Bank, which was built after the Second Intifada, has put a halt to terrorism arising in the West Bank, while Israel’s siege on Gaza lessens the flow of rockets into the strip. Israel has every right to protect the lives of its citizens, and the blame for lost civil liberties for Palestinians must be shared between both Israel and the Palestinian leadership – or lack thereof – which has done too little to stop acts of terror against Israel.
Israel should not be free of criticism; Israel deserves criticism just like every other country in the world. However, Ben-Abba’s article criticizes Israel entirely unfairly, and in doing so, ignores many other, far worse, atrocities in the region. Take Syria, for example.
When Ben-Abba calls for Middlebury to divest from Israel, it must be made clear that to divest from Israel is to divest from values like democracy, self determination and liberal progress. The Israeli Defense Force has the lowest civilian-combatant ratio in the history of the world. I question Ben-Abba’s motive for selectively calling out Israel, rather than China or Russia – countries with truly atrocious human rights records. As Middlebury students who care deeply about such values, we must critically assess Ben-Abba’s proposition and recognize that introducing Israel into the divestment conversation will result in the destruction of our divestment movement as a whole.
WILLIE GOODMAN '16 is from Highland Park, Ill.
(03/20/13 11:07pm)
It is not surprising that the word “occupation,” was not mentioned in Dennis Ross's lecture on Tuesday night. The word does not exist in the discourse of the Israeli government, it wasn’t mentioned during the farcical elections for the Israeli Parliament recently nor does it exist in the language of American policy makers.
As Noam Sheizaf showed with his article on 972mag.com, Ross’s agenda for the peace process accepted the Israeli leadership’s conditions “before negotiations even began.” There can be no peace process without acknowledgement of the reality of occupation and apartheid. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice.”
Ross operates under a false assumption that Israel and Palestine are equal sides of a symmetrical conflict. In the same way that there has been no symmetry between white people and African-Americans during Jim Crow, between white Afrikaners and natives during South African apartheid or between colonialists and indigenous Americans during the past 500 years of European colonialism, thus there is no symmetry between Israeli occupiers and occupied Palestinians.
The everyday reality of racism, systemic inequality and brutal apartheid is purposefully ignored, clouded by statements about policies and the region’s complexity. Perhaps after years of yielding so much power and influence, Dennis Ross is incapable of understanding life within a Palestinian refugee camp. What was particularly astonishing, however, was his misinformation about the reasons for which a refugee camp exists.
In an astonishing feat of deception, Ross blamed the Palestinians for maintaining refugee camps. He suggested that the Palestinians end the refugee situation and build houses in the “vast” spaces south of Bethlehem to house the refugees. He did not acknowledge that it is virtually impossible for a Palestinian to get a building permit from the Israeli Occupation Administration. He did not acknowledge that almost 1,100 Palestinians, most of them children, were displaced by housing demolitions in 2011 alone.
Most significantly, he ignores or is not aware of Israel’s responsibility for Palestinian refugees. In the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, over a million Palestinians were forced out of what Ross considers Israel. This continues today to be one of the most neglected acts of ethnic cleansing in the 20th century, and its aftermath of human devastation still bears effect on the lives of millions in the Middle East and across the world.
In his version of the two-state option, Ross envisions a Palestinian state that is butchered and divided by gigantic, oppressive walls, with no control over resources (the separation barrier annexes the water aquifer to Israel) and no freedom of movement, very similar to the South African Bantustans during the Apartheid regime. He ignored the fact that the occupation of Gaza has never ended, despite the disengagement in 2005, and that IDF control over sea, land and air turns Gaza into the largest open-air prison in the world, still recovering from the deaths and injuries of thousands, and without a nonviolent avenue to transgress its pain. Having Ross share his agenda on campus is like having a speaker endorse South African Apartheid during the 80’s.
But now, as Middlebury’s environmental leanings lead it in Gulliver’s steps to divestment from fossil fuels and arms manufacturing, we recall that we have divested from Apartheid, and that no pro-Apartheid speaker would receive a microphone in our halls in the same way that no white supremacist or eugenicist would. As we embrace the values of environmental justice, it is imperative we recognize that divestment from fossil fuels and arms manufacturing is the first step towards divestment from Israeli Apartheid.
The 15th article of the Principles of Environmental Justice asserts that “Environmental Justice opposes military occupation, repression and exploitation of lands, peoples and cultures, and other life forms.” By claiming the principles of Environmental Justice as we move forward on divestment, we therefore take a step towards Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on Israeli occupation. BDS is a nonviolent tactic and a global call, drawing from the struggle against South African Apartheid, to end the occupation. To engage in these efforts, join Justice for Palestine, the new student club, by sending an email to jfp@middlebury.edu. Continue the discussion at 4:30 p.m. in Dana Auditorium today with the screening of the Academy Award nominee Five Broken Cameras and the following discussion with Instructor in Arabic Ahmad Almallah.
Some define education as the ability of making connections between concepts. Middlebury students have made the connection between war on people and war on the climate. The same economic forces benefit from both. It is time to heed the call, listen to the voices of those oppressed by our endowment and by the figures of authority we somehow continue to welcome and take a step for justice. Coming back to Martin Luther King, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
AMITAI BEN-ABBA '15.5 is from Jerusalem
(03/14/13 7:44pm)
Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated and other international best-selling works of both fiction and nonfiction, will deliver the commencement address to the class of 2013 on May 26.
Safran Foer will also receive a Doctor of Letters degree at the ceremony. Other honorary degree recipients include Edward Burtynsky, artist and photographer, Megan Camp, vice president and program director at Shelburne Farms, Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of the Acumen Fund and Stuart Schwartz ’62, the George Burton Adams professor of history and professor of international and area studies at Yale.
Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated was the reading for the class of 2013 for their fall orientation in 2009. Members of the class read the novel during the summer and discussed its themes during orientation workshops.
President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said he was “very happy and pleased” to host Safran Foer, a commencement speaker nominated by several students.
“We try our best to respond to students’ desires,” said Liebowitz. “I think the orientation reading resonated with many students, so this selection is quite fitting.”
International best-seller Everything is Illuminated was published in 2002 when Safran Foer was just 25 years old. The book, which chronicles the author's discovery of his family's history, was adapted into a major motion picture in 2005 starring Elijah Wood. Safran Foer has also published Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the inspiration for an Academy Award-nominated motion picture. Eating Animals is the author’s third international best-seller and a nonfiction account of his struggle with vegetarianism. In 2010, the New Yorker named Safran Foer as one of the 20 best writers under 40 years old. He teaches graduate creative writing at New York University and is working on another novel, Escape from the Children’s Hospital.
Burtynsky, who will receive a Doctor of Arts degree, has a collection of photographs of quarries and quarry work, Nature Transformed,that is currently on display at the Middlebury Museum of Art. Burtynsky is an Ontario native whose depictions of global industrial landscape are included in the collections of more than 50 museums, including the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Canada and the Bibliotèque Nationale in Paris.
Camp will receive a Doctor of Letters degree in recognition for her 30 years of work at Shelburne Farms, a 1,400-acre working farm, nonprofit education center and National Historic Landmark located near the College. Camp’s work has helped create a process that resulted in Vermont incorporating the nation’s first education standards for sustainability. Camp is a recipient of the Outstanding Achievement Award for Environmental Education from the New England Environmental Education Association, the National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Education Achievement Award, and the United States Environmental Protection Environmental Merit Award.
In addition, a Doctor of Humane Letters degree will be awarded to Novogratz, a pioneer in the field of impact investment. Under Novogratz, the nonprofit Acumen Fund has invested more than $80 million in social enterprises, emerging leaders and breakthrough ideas to solve the problems of poverty. Novogratz delivered the keynote speech at the launch of the College’s Center for Social Entrepreneurship in January 2012.
Schwartz will receive a Doctor of Letters degree for his work as one of the world’s leading scholars of Brazilian history. Schwartz has taught at Yale since 1996 and is the George Burton Adams professor of history and a professor of international and area studies. Schwartz’s most recent work, All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World, received numerous awards, including the 2008 Cundill International Prize in History and the 2009 American Academy of Religion Book Award.
The commencement ceremony for the class of 2013 will be held on May 26 at 10 a.m. on the Central College Lawn, located in front of Munroe and Voter Halls.
(03/13/13 5:16pm)
This week, I had a hard time writing my story for the news section. On Monday evening around 6 p.m., just as we were about to begin layout for the newspaper, we received word that four students had been arrested while attending a protest at the TransCanada northeast U.S. office in Massachusetts. The students had handcuffed themselves together outside of the TransCanada offices in protest of the Keystone XL pipeline.
“Why couldn’t they have gotten arrested a few days ago?” I mused, knowing that the story would usurp the better part of the next 24-hours, as I worked to fact-check, get quotes for and copy-edit the piece.
From the Wordpress site of the protest’s organizers, I learned that 21 other students had also been arrested by police — individuals from Green Mountain College, Tufts University, Brandeis University and Brown University. The students were joined by 80-or-so others at the demonstration, and used a tactic that indicated a “sharp escalation” in the New England-based protests.
As I began to type, I turned to Kelsey Collins, a co-editor of the news section. “Other than the students themselves, who else should I get a quote from about this?” I asked. “Maybe a professor? Is it a big deal that they’re missing school to get arrested?”
Throughout the evening, I worked to piece the story together. As I wrote, I thought about a protest that I had attended over the summer, a similarly public display of displeasure for a government-led climate policy. I had been working for a local news organization in Toronto at the time, and had learned of the “national day of protest” online. Seeking to “break” the story for the publication I was working for, I pitched it to my editor. Sensing my excitement, he obliged, but warned that the story wouldn’t run if the protest didn’t turn into a national story.
When I arrived “on scene” that afternoon, 40 or 50 protestors carried a coffin — a visual representation of the symbolic “death” of our future that would result if the government’s climate policy passed. I listened, took a few photographs and did interviews before my sister came to pick me up. She had driven across the city earlier that evening to join my mother and me for dinner to celebrate my birthday.
Arriving home, I headed straight into the den and began work on the story. Heart pounding, I added details, increased the saturation of the color photographs and spiced up the story as much as I could. “Just three more minutes,” I called, as my mother brought the curry to the table. A few minutes after, my family began eating; I hit send, and passed the story along to my editor. Triumphantly, I slid into a seat at the table beside my mother, proud to have helped add the voices of Canadian protesters into the public discourse.
When I got into the office the following morning, I realized that the story never ran. National news outlets hadn’t picked it up. The number of protestors “wasn’t large enough,” my editor said.
On Monday evening, as I typed about the 100-person protest in Massachusetts, I felt a growing sense of apathy. “This is kind of cool, but won’t make any difference,” I thought, “What is a few more students’ getting arrested going to do?”
Around 11:30 p.m. on Monday night, having finished layout with the other editors, I packed up my books and prepared to leave the Campus’s office. With one strap of my backpack over my shoulder, my phone rang. It was Anna Shireman-Grabowski ’15.5, a friend, and one of the students who had been arrested. She and the three other students called from their hotel room in Massachusetts where they would stay until their hearing on Wednesday.
Grabbing my recorder, I headed for the back office and began to interview the four students over the phone. It was then, and only then — when I was three hours deep into the story — that I remembered what it had felt like to be at the protest that summer. It was only in that instant that I realized why the students’ actions were important, why the voices of all of those who protest misguided government policies matter.
“Over 40 percent of all the communities that the pipeline would go through are African-American communities and Native American communities,” said Sam Koplinka-Loehr ’13, a friend, and one of the other students who had been arrested. “The U.S. population for Native folks is less than one percent, and is approximately 13 percent for African Americans.” It’s environmental racism,” he said.
Typing this op-ed while playing the recording of last night’s interview, I’m close to tears.
Unlike the four students, the tears I shed are not for the frontline communities, for I struggle to emote with such depth for those whom I do not know. Instead, they are a reaction to the actions of four students who decided that there was something more important than class on Monday. They are tears of hope, compassion and frustration. Tears, because using their voices and their bodies, these students forced me to let myself feel their passion and to experience, with a portion of the intensity that they carry regularly, why these actions matter.
On Monday, 26 students were jailed for “trespassing” and “disorderly conduct,” for a protest on the private property of a company that seeks to lay an 875-mile pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf Coast — a company that intends to drive an oil-fuelled stake through indigenous territory, harming communities, contributing to the destruction of the planet and encouraging global climate apathy in the process.
If that isn’t representative of a backward judicial system, then I don’t know what is.
To the four students: Thank you for making me feel. To President Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper: Stop Keystone XL. And to the Middlebury College Board of Trustees: Make this College proud. Do the right thing on divestment.
