809 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(03/13/13 5:02pm)
At a family party over the holiday break, I got to talking to a friend of my parents, a man in his 50s who graduated from Middlebury in the early 80s. In our conversation we covered all the basics of typical college small-talk – majors, abroad plans, clubs, you know the drill – but kept returning to a common thread: Middlebury is a tremendously different place now than it was 30 years ago.
Middlebury is a school with a short institutional memory. Consider the traditions we uphold here; there really aren’t many. We have Winter Carnival, but for most of the student body that amounts to a day off from class with a comedian and the annual decision not to go to Orange Crush. Most of us probably couldn’t tell you that our traditional athletic rival is Norwich, but that rivalry is limited to the hockey rink now anyway. The commons system – the backbone of today’s College residential life – is barely 20 years old, as is the network of social houses which dictate weekend nights on campus. I mention these not because I think that they are or should be the defining aspects of student life here, but because they are traditional ways in which colleges in this country create continuity in campus culture over time. So what in the College’s past are we trying to get away from? A large part of that answer is the fraternity culture which thrived here until it was effectively banned by the administration in 1990.
Middlebury today is inescapably different from what this place was like pre-1990: academically unremarkable, right-leaning and fairly traditional, particularly with regards to a 149-year tradition of fraternity life on campus. The changes have come slowly and with the conscientious (and I would suggest successful) effort of the administration to rebrand the College as a bastion of academia and socio-political progressiveness. These changes are nowhere more visible than in the social fabric of the school, with randomly-assigned commons and co-ed social houses created to fill the void left by the banned fraternities.
Consider this though: nearly 10 percent of Middlebury students are legacy, which means that almost one in 10 of your peers grew up listening to stories about a Middlebury which to you would be socially unrecognizable. Much of the money which pays for the everyday operations of this place comes from people who were here during that era. My point in this is that the legacy of “Old Middlebury” affects all of us, and though you might not be conscious of it, many of your peers are.
This week’s Community Council discussion has raised a number of questions about the role of these houses in the on-campus social life at Middlebury. The social houses function as stand-ins for the banned frats; some even carry the same Greek names. While the social-house model allows the College to have ultimate oversight, what the administration can’t dictate is the culture which gets played out inside these houses every weekend. Delta house is not a fraternity, but Delta on a Saturday night is the closest thing to a frat-party atmosphere that you will find here.
I think Middlebury is experiencing an identity crisis. I think there are two irreconcilably different campus cultures at play here – the quirky, crunchy one promoted by the administration and the one you see at Delta – but that this is really the same tension that the school has been dealing with since 1990, and it probably goes back farther than that.
In my mind, the fact that Delta existed in the first place is evidence of a segment of the student-body which has not been as quick to cut ties with Middlebury’s past as the administration, one that in part embraces the hard-drinking frat culture which has been the reality here for most of our 200-plus-year history. While this culture doesn’t line up with the direction in which the administration has steered the school, it represents a prominent voice in the student-body and one that is not going to change simply because Delta is gone. The legacy of “Old Middlebury” didn’t die with the frats, and it will survive this.
(03/07/13 1:43am)
On Thursday, Feb. 28, a group of 50 gathered at the American Legion in Middlebury, Vt. to connect with the Vermont Right to Know GMO coalition, a group that is campaigning to require the labeling of all food derived from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the state. Representatives from the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA), Cedar Circle Farm, Rural Vermont and the Vermont Public Interest Group (VPIRG) joined other farmers, activists and cooperatives to host five forums across Vermont over the course of the week.
The talks are a continuation of the fierce debate that has been argued in U.S. courtrooms and dining rooms alike over the last two decades about the merits and the safety of GMOs.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Geography Kacy McKinney, who conducted much of her Master’s and Doctoral research on GMOs and currently offers a class on the subject, gave a clear definition of GMOs during an interview with the Campus this past week.
“One way of defining GMOs is to distinguish between genetic engineering and classic hybrid technology … With genetic engineering, we’re now able to go across species in a way that hybridizing plants could never do,” said McKinney. “We’re changing the genetic structure, and altering it to include a gene from another species.”
Despite this alteration, the FDA ruled in 1992 that GMOs were not substantively different from other food products and thus opened the floodgates. Today in the U.S., around 75 percent of processed foods are thought to be made with GMO products, while some specific crops like corn and soybeans — essential building blocks for processed foods and many other goods — are closer to 80 or 90 percent GMO.
The reason behind these Vermont forums is the bill H.112, which would require any product derived from GMOs being sold in Vermont to sport a label. After failing to make it to the floor last year, the bill has been reintroduced and has just passed out of the House Agricultural (Ag.) committee this past Friday. As the bill moves to the judiciary committee, supporters prepare with renewed vigor for another year of campaigning.
“The House Ag. committee worked for weeks on this,” recalled Dave Rogers, a policy advisor for NOFA Vermont and a speaker at Thursday night’s forum. “They came up with all these findings that say that ‘yeah, there are significant concerns and that the federal government is not doing its job, namely the FDA.’ They came to that conclusion after hearing diverse and wide-ranging testimony last year and they’re back at it this year.”
In its current condition, the bill requires the labeling of GMO products sold in Vermont and excludes dairy, livestock, food for immediate consumption and anything sold out of state. While these protocols were all present in the 2012 bill, there is one piece that was omitted in this year’s legislation: the trigger clause.
“The question of whether or not there will be a trigger clause — that is that the bill would not go into effect until some number of other states passed similar legislation — was being talked about today,” said Rogers. “Last year there was a trigger clause.”
Last year’s clause stated that after the bill was passed, the law would only go into effect after California and two other states passed similar legislation. Given that California failed to pass its labeling referendum this past fall, however, it seems that Vermont will now have to move ahead of the pack if it wants to see labeling any time soon.
“Our position is no trigger clause,” said Rogers. “There’s a fair amount of anxiety about being first, particularly when the feelings are so high … [But] if it’s the right thing to do, it’s the right thing to do.”
This moral righteousness may carry some weight in the State House, but it has become clear that other concerns are more pressing, namely the question of constitutionality and the lawsuit that many predict would follow passing legislation of this kind.
Creators of these genetically modified products like Syngenta and Monsanto have a long history of success in the courtroom. In the 90’s, Vermont passed an ambitious law requiring that milk produced from cows that had been given Monsanto’s Bovine Growth Hormone (BST) be labeled. Monsanto, ranked among America’s Fortune 500 companies, then sued the government over the law’s relation to their product. Monsanto won, and has been diligently defending its corporate, first amendment rights ever since.
“The issue is compelled speech,” said Rogers. “You are not allowed to force someone to say something that’s not true; and in the view of Monsanto et al., a label would convey false information, or suggest that there’s some difference that does not exist.”
The Right to Know coalition has done a great deal of work with the Vermont Law School to draft legislation that will stand up in court against Monsanto’s lawyers. Given that Monsanto’s revenues last year (~$12 billion) more than double the recently approved 2013 budget for Vermont, it’s not hard to see why legislators would be hesitant to invite a lawsuit that is all but guaranteed to follow this legislation.
“I’ve been talking to staffers for Vermont legislators,” said McKinney, “about how if this bill were to pass and labeling were to be put in place the state of Vermont will be sued by Monsanto. It’s a question of what kinds of resources will Vermont lose because they’re the first state to pass a bill … I just don’t see how a tiny, wonderful state like Vermont has the potential to beat out a giant, multi-national corporation that dominates the life-sciences industry.”
While the Right to Know coalition has been looking into ways for Vermonters to contribute to some kind of labeling defense fund, it is unclear as of yet if the state is willing to take on this added financial burden, particularly in light of Hurricane Irene and the recent recession.
Katie Michaels ’14.5, the student co-director of the College’s organic garden and a member of McKinney’s class, was among the handful of students present at Thursday’s forum.
“The GMO forum was certainly an experience in grassroots organizing,” said Michaels. “The audience was very enthusiastic about labeling GM products, and all seemed to share a mistrust of GM foods and the companies that create it.”
Yet while those assembled represented a unified group, Michaels pointed out that the voices of those Vermonters currently reliant on GMO technology for their livelihood were entirely unrepresented, and perhaps not considered.
“I wish there had been a bit of discussion on any analysis Right to Know GMO’s had done on the results of GMO labeling on the folks who currently grow GMO crops,” said Michaels. “I just hope that appropriate infrastructure will accompany this effort to help those currently growing GMO crops transition towards non-GMO or perhaps even organic varieties.”
Though labeling will not affect the majority of the state’s largest GMO growers because it excludes the labeling of dairy products, it does still remain that Vermont’s conventional farmers have yet to share in this labeling enthusiasm.
The lack of organizations like the Vermont Farm Bureau or the Vermont Dairy Industry Association — two lobbying groups for larger, conventional farmers — indicates a diversity of opinion on the matter, at least among the farming community.
“Vermont Farm Bureau, recognizing the importance of biotechnology to the future economic well being of the state, encourages funding effort to develop biotech industries,” reads the farm Bureau’s 2013 policy book. “We oppose placing prohibitions or undue restrictions on the development of biotechnology products which have been deemed safe and effective by appropriate regulatory agencies.”
Though again, labeling would not technically require any shift in farmer-practices, “[many] see this as a backdoor way to ban GMOs,” said Rogers.
“One of the interesting discourses,” McKinney added, “is that farmers should have the right to choose … It’s a compelling argument. Farmers do all this work for us and they need to be able to profit, they need to be able to sustain themselves, and here’s something that some believe might be able to help them to do so. It’s hard to argue to keep it from them. I’ve written articles about the problematic nature of that argument, but I still think it’s compelling. If you’re trying to avoid pests taking over your plants, why wouldn’t you want that?”
On the other hand, labeling-supporters cite research indicating a correlation between GMO crops and the onset of pesticide-resistant bugs, land degradation and other environmental hazards.
“We don’t know if they’re good or bad,” said Michaels, “but personally I don’t think we should be screwing with organisms’ DNA and then releasing them everywhere. We’re just not that smart! We don’t know what the ripple effects are going to be.”
Part of the reason for our lack of information is related to the lifetime-ownership that companies hold over their biotechnologies.
“Recently, there have been studies finding that there’s no problem with GMOs,” said Rogers, “but the research has been conducted by the industry or by people funded by the industry.”
The conflict of interests here is clear, but it could perhaps be overlooked if there were competing studies performed by independent researchers and universities. Yet not only have companies like Monsanto been able to prevent independent research, but they have also persuaded the FDA to use their studies when evaluating GMOs for market.
“Farmers have long bought seeds,” said McKinney, “but in this case, they’re buying seeds and signing a contract that says that they will not reuse, they will not share, they will not do any of the other things that they might do with seeds. They will plant them once, sell them off, and then buy again. I think that’s the crux of what’s different, that you are not allowed to experiment.”
One food company with local ties that has decided not to bet on GMOs is Ben & Jerry’s. In a recent press release that surprised many, the company announced its intention to make its ingredients 100 percent GMO-free by the end of 2013. The surprise came because the company was recently sold to Unilever, a British multi-national food corporation that contributed over $400,000 to anti-labeling campaigns in California this past year.
Though Jerry did make an appearance at Thursday’s forum, his presentation was merely to express his support for the campaign and his delight that his old company — now completely outside of his control — is continuing its tradition of labeling and transparency. In the 90’s, Ben and Jerry’s made a point of labeling its products free of bovine growth hormones, and though Monsanto filed a lawsuit, the company has been able to keep that particular label.
“When you put all of this together,” said Rogers, “I just say, this stuff is in 75 percent of the processed foods we’re eating; people are getting it three times a day; there are legitimate concerns, unanswered questions and a lack of responsiveness; in this situation, labeling something seems perfectly reasonable.”
The question for this year will be whether or not this campaign will be able to persuade legislators to take on the risk of labeling. While over a dozen other states are considering similar bills and referendums, none have passed anything yet, and it will be up to whoever goes first to take on American agribusiness in the courtroom.
(03/06/13 5:24pm)
The Residential Life Committee, a subcommittee of Community Council, has recommended that Delta house be disbanded due to failure to comply with Inter-House Council (IHC) and college regulations.
On Tuesday, March 12, Community Council at-large will vote on the passage of the report that could pose a steep challenge to the existence of the house commonly referred to by students as “ADP.” The results of the Council’s vote will then go to the desk of President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz for a final decision on the future of the organization.
“This is the biggest place to party on campus — without question,” said President of Delta Luke Battle ’14. “Without it, I think there would be a really, really big void in the social scene that wouldn’t be filled by anywhere else.”
The primary concern of the Residential Life Committee is the amount of dorm damage — approximately $1,800 — that Delta has already accumulated this academic year. After seeing around $10,000 of dorm damage last year, the College stipulated that Delta’s damage would have to remain below $1,500 for the 2012-2013 academic year. The other social houses’ damage is capped at $2,500.
Battle called the $1,500 goal “unattainable” given the size of Delta’s parties, which often draw 200 to 400 students, according to Battle. “They’re really setting us up to fail here, as far as dorm damage goes,” he added.
Co-Chair of Community Council Barrett Smith ’13 also cited the lack of registered parties as a serious concern.
“Part of the responsibility of a social house is to throw registered parties,” said Smith. “[The houses] are given certain privileges, and in exchange, they have to comply with Vermont state law and other requests of the College.”
Battle maintains that while Delta is making a concerted effort to follow the rules, the registration process for parties is overly exhaustive.
“We understand that we have not complied completely with the College,” said Battle. “We’re trying to change so that we are complying with their wishes. We threw our first registered party of the year this past Saturday and it was a big success, but at the same time, the preparations that had to go into that and the regulations we had to follow are pretty ridiculous.”
Residential Life Committee member and former Tavern president Zach Marlette ’13 said that, even discounting errors of procedure, Delta has shown a lack of cooperation with Public Safety.
“Delta can’t have people at the house — whether they’re members or guests — that are disrespecting Public Safety,” said Marlette. “It’s all tied to the culture that they cultivate.”
Additionally, the IHC handbook requires that a minimum of 80 percent of social house members complete hazing and sexual assault training, but Delta has not met this requirement. Battle explained that many members have neglected this duty because the majority of the organization is made up of varsity athletes, who are required to complete hazing and sexual assault training with their teammates, albeit with a different module. There is no system in place in which varsity athletes can be waived from social house hazing and sexual assault training.
The Residential Life Committee reviewed all five social houses as part of a standard review process that happens every other year, alternating with a review of academic interest houses. The process begins with a questionnaire filled out by house leadership that serves to explain the house’s role in the campus community.
According to Smith, this year, the College has streamlined this questionnaire and required only initial, brief meetings. If issues arise during that meeting, then the house is called back for a more thorough review.
Marlette said that Delta did not fully complete the initial questionnaire.
“It was very bare bones,” said Marlette. “People on the committee really would have liked to see more incentive on behalf of Delta’s leadership to show that they genuinely do care about trying to do better.”
“Members of the committee seemed put off by some of [Delta’s] answers on the questionnaire and by [Battle’s] responses during the meeting, particularly surrounding the issue of party registration,” added Smith.
For next Tuesday’s meeting, Marlette advises Delta to bring “all the resources” they have.
“Delta’s really in the hole right now, and if they want to get out of this hole, then they need to show that they’re going to do better and that there actually is a huge student contingency that wants them around,” he said.
Marlette offered an alternative suggestion to Delta’s current goal of gathering a petition with 1,000 signatures.
“It’s going to make more of an impact if a bunch of students come to [Tuesday’s meeting] and show, with stories or just with their presence, that they do care about this house and that they want it to stick around, rather than just a piece of paper,” said Marlette.
“Aside from that, they just really need to address the things they messed up on,” added Marlette.
Battle hopes to gather Delta members, IHC members, other social house members and teammates at the Community Council meeting to show support for Delta.
“We’re going to try to address all their issues,” said Battle.
Smith explained that Community Council will likely utilize an executive session — during which only Council members are present — for final discussion and voting.
“The most important part of this is coming to a fair decision but also respecting the process,” said Smith. “I want to hear different voices from the community, but I also want to honor the work the Residential Life Committee has done.”
While the vote is scheduled for Tuesday, given the gravity of the outcome, there is a distinct likelihood that the Council will extend the discussion and voting into additional meetings.
(02/27/13 11:39pm)
The Middlebury men’s swim and dive team competed in the NESCAC championships at Wesleyan this past weekend, Feb. 22-24, finishing fifth in a fast field of 11 teams. Ian Mackay ’14 set the tone for the Panthers throughout the weekend, winning two individual titles with conference-record performances.
“I’m ecstatic,” said head coach Bob Rueppel. “We rang the bell. I had a good feeling going in, but to be honest with you, they just exceeded my expectations. They all bought in and every guy was just pure passion.”
Leading off the first day of competition, Mackay won both the 50-yard freestyle and the 50-yard butterfly. Mackay’s time of 21.97 seconds in the butterfly final tied the conference record, while his 20.34 in the freestyle prelims smashed the previous meet record. Mackay also earned NCAA automatic ‘A’ cuts with both swims.
“For [Mackay] to go ahead and win two events, he was just a beast,” said Rueppel. “That helped a lot. The guys knew we had arguably the fastest guy in the meet taking us in. His domination, to win the 50 free by half a second – you just don’t do that.”
The 200-yard freestyle relay of Mackay, Bryan Cheuk ’16, James Wing ’15 and Ethan Litman ’13 finished fourth in 1:23.32, good enough for an NCAA provisional “B” cut.
“What was lacking was we didn’t have a go-to guy last year,” said Rueppel. “My dream was if we can light up the 200 free relay it’s just going to carry through the meet. Our C and B relays swam great and everybody was excited, then Ian [Mackay] jumps in and swims 20.5 and it was incredible.”
Stephan Koenigsberger ’16 finished second in the 50-yard breaststroke for the Panthers before returning with Carter Pribis ’16, Mackay and Litman to finish fourth in the 400-yard medley relay in 3:25.43 and earn a “B” cut. Litman also finished seventh in the 50-yard freestyle on the first day.
Mackay swam eight times on the opening Friday of competition, playing a part in 168 of the Panthers’ 390.5 points which had them running in third after day one, trailing only Amherst and Williams.
“Friday morning we knew it was a big session for us because we had a few guys doubling in 50s so we had a few more swims,” said Rueppel. “We knew we had to be good that day.”
Returning for the second day of competition on Saturday Feb. 23, the 200-yard medley relay of Pribis, Koenigsberger, Mackay and Cheuk finished fourth and earned another NCAA “B” cut. Mackay returned to the podium with a third-place finish in the 100-yard butterfly, earning his third “A” cut of the meet in 48.80 seconds. Lucas Avidan ’15 cut over 27 seconds off his seed time in the 1000-yard freestyle to finish seventh. Koenigsberger was fifth in the 100-yard breaststroke for the Panthers.
“The depth of the [NESCAC] meet, just like the girls, was incredible,” said Rueppel. “You can only be the best if you’re around the best.”
By Saturday night, Middlebury had been passed by Connecticut College and Tufts and fallen to fifth in the team scoring.
“I knew Friday when we were third it was going to be difficult to hold onto that,” said Rueppel. “But the guys just kept battling every session. By Saturday we had already passed our point total from last year. We were within 100 points of the teams from a couple of years ago when they had [three-time NCAA champion John Dillon ’11], but we did it with 17 or 18 guys swimming at night instead of six or seven.”
The men suffered a setback on the final day of competition when the 400-yard freestyle relay was disqualified during prelims for an early leadoff. Despite this, Avidan earned a ninth-place finish in the 1,650-yard freestyle and Koenigsberger was 13th in the 200-yard breaststroke, both with season bests. Skylar Dallmeyer-Drennen ’14 was eighth in the three-meter diving event to round out the scoring for the Panthers.
“Sunday night after the disappointment in the morning of the relay disqualification, we came into finals and everybody got up and raced and were cheering, just scrapping,” said Rueppel. “There was just no quit, and it was a total team effort.”
Middlebury finished with 904.5 points, good for fifth place overall. The team finish was a huge improvement for the men from last year’s 643-point, seventh-place NESCAC final.
“They were focused and very emotionally invested, and I think that’s what the big difference was,” said Rueppel. “I can claim it was the training, and that’s part of it, they committed to the training but that last element they put together was just perfect. There was no fear. They weren’t worried about how fast Williams was or Amherst was, no intimidation, and they swam that way.”
Williams won their tenth consecutive men’s conference team title with 1936.5 points, outpacing second-place Amherst by a 112-point final margin.
In addition to the high conference finishes, the Middlebury men earned a slew of NCAA cuts – both automatic and provisional – and await the final championship invitations.
“It’s the most competitive it’s ever been,” said Rueppel. “It’s unbelievable the times it’s taking to go. In the men’s 100 butterfly there were 21 automatic cuts. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in almost 20 years.”
For the majority of the men, however, the NESCAC meet marked the end of the season. For the team’s three seniors, it also concludes an up-and-down career which has seen the team go from fourth to seventh back to fifth over the past three seasons.
“What made it so satisfying was seeing so many guys get the experience to swim, and the majority of them were underclassmen,” said Rueppel. “The experience of that is just going to help.”
According to Rueppel, the men hope to benefit from this year’s strong finish as they build their program for future success.
“This year’s team had blind faith,” he said. “Now they’re going to be able to turn around with that attitude next year, which is going to help us more and more.”
For the members of the team who have qualified for Nationals, they will continue to train until the meet which will be in Woodlands, Texas from March 20 - 23.
(02/27/13 11:32pm)
The fourth-ranked men’s basketball team fell for the third time in less than a month, exiting the NESCAC tournament with an 87-80 overtime loss to the seventh-ranked Ephs of Williams on Saturday Feb. 23. The semifinal game was a rematch of a 64-63 Ephs victory in Williamstown, Mass. a month ago.
Middlebury struggled from the floor early as Williams opened the game in man defense, a tactical change from the 2-3 zone Williams employed the last time the teams met. The switch stymied the Panthers, as the team scored on only two of its first eight offensive possessions.
“I thought they were going right to the 2-3 [zone] because it was so effective the first time [we played],” said tri-captain Peter Lynch ’13. “We prepared for that and got the looks we wanted [in practice], but they came out in man right to start and it wasn’t what we were expecting.”
Middlebury trailed early and often, leading for just 1:13 in the first half as back-to-back buckets from sophomore guard Nate Bulluck ’14 gave his team a pair of brief leads midway through the half. Perhaps sensing the danger of an impending Middlebury run, however, the Ephs outscored their Route 7 rivals 16-8 to end the first half, taking a 37-30 into the break.
Ephs forward Daniel Wohl — who was playing in his first game after an illness that sidelined him for nearly a month — scored 11 first-half points to pace Williams, knocking down three of four three-pointers. Center Michael Mayer and sharp-shooting guard James Klemm added nine and eight points, respectively, for Williams as the NESCAC’s second seed shot 52 percent from the floor and 50 percent from beyond the arc. Middlebury was fortunate to trail by just seven at the break as the team shot just 40.6 percent from the floor and made just two of 10 attempts from beyond the arc.
Tri-captain Peter Lynch ’13 led the way for the Panthers with eight points and six rebounds at the break, while Joey Kizel ’14 had five points. Hunter Merryman ’15 and James Jensen ’14 also pitched in four points apiece of the bench, as the Panther reserves accounted for 12 of the team’s 30 first-half points.
Middlebury re-emerged from the tunnel in the second half with a greater sense of desperation, the team’s mental adjustment at the half sparking an 11-5 run to begin the second period.
“The message at halftime was, ‘This is what we’ve been playing for all year, we need to give it everything we’ve got, because if we lose we’re not playing tomorrow,’” said Lynch. “Coach Brown really got us motivated to come out strong in the second half.”
After a Kizel three-pointer cut the deficit to one, treys from Klemm and point guard Nate Robertson, interrupted by a Jake Wolfin ’13 jumper, extended the Williams lead back to five with 14:30 remaining in the game.
The Panthers responded with a 12-4 burst, bookended by threes from Wolfin and Kizel, propelling them to a four-point lead, their largest of the game, with 10 minutes and change remaining.
The Middlebury lead was short-lived, however, as the Ephs went on a 7-0 blitz coming out of an expedient timeout called by head coach Mike Maker. Taylor Epley, the Ephs’ leading scorer on the season, provided the catalyst for the run with five straight points.
Trailing by three, the Panthers turned to the bruising Lynch, who scored his team’s next six points on three straight possessions, regaining the lead for Middlebury in the process. The game then witnessed six lead changes in less than three minutes as both teams vied unsuccessfully for control of the game.
“I realized that there was a lot of space to attack,” Lynch said. “After the first couple times, [I thought], ‘they have to adjust — there’s no one there.’ But they didn’t.”
With four minutes remaining in regulation, Nolan Thompson ’13 and Woflin missed open looks from beyond the arc on consecutive possessions, snapping a streak of six straight successful offensive possessions for the Panthers.
The Ephs, meanwhile, ran off four straight scores of their own to take a 76-73 lead on an Epley layup with 1:31 remaining.
Coming out of a timeout, the Panthers moved the ball well late in the shot clock, ultimately finding an open look for Wolfin who, despite shooting just 3-13 from the floor up to that point, buried the open look to tie the game at 76 with 58 seconds remaining.
Following a missed layup by the Ephs’ Daniel Wohl, Middlebury had a chance to take the lead, but Robertson picked the pocket of Kizel, as the Panthers’ guard drove to the basket.
“In regulation on that last possession, I had a good look, but I wanted a better look, so I forced it a little bit,” Kizel said. “I thought I had a pull-up long two or a pull-up three, but I saw a lane and thought, ‘maybe I can get to the basket,’ and Robertson made a great play.”
The turnover gave Williams one final chance to win the game, but Robertson momentarily lost his handle on the ball and the Ephs were unable to attempt a final shot before the buzzer, sending the game into overtime.
The overtime period began with a missed three from Wolfin, resulting in a chance to break for Williams. Hoping to start the transition opportunity, Ephs forward John Weinheimer attempted a long outlet pass down the right-hand side of the floor. Anticipating the pass, Kizel intercepted the ball and, while falling out of bands, threw the ball back over his shoulder to a teammate.
“They were pushing the ball hard and I knew he wanted to [throw the ball up court],” Kizel said. “I saw that he was locked in on one guy and I made a quick read and I saw some guys in the backcourt and just threw the ball over my head.”
“He’s just a big game player,” head coach Jeff Brown said. “He wants the ball to make the important play on the offensive end, or hit the important shot. And then defensively, he has a knack for picking his shots. He can make a great contribution, like that steal.”
Despite Kizel’s heroics, Middlebury failed to score on the ensuing offensive possession, and endured a 3:49-long scoring drought over the final minute of regulation and nearly the first three minutes of overtime. Lynch finally put the Panthers on the board in the extra period, pulling down his 11th rebound of the game and scoring his 22nd and 23rd points of the evening to tie the game 78-78 with 2:98 remaining. The two teams traded baskets on their subsequent possessions as Wohl regained the lead for the Ephs with a drive and finish before Kizel deadlocked the game at 80, draining a long jumper.
Williams quickly retook the lead, however, as Jack Roberts ’14 was called for a hold on Mayer, sending Mayer to the line to shoot two free throws, and Roberts to the bench with his fifth and final foul.
Trailing by two, Middlebury had a chance to tie the game with less than a minute to play. Lynch drove the lane, but got caught in the air underneath the basket, attempting to find an open teammate. His pass appeared to hit the padding at the bottom of the backboard after taking a deflection off an Ephs defender. The ball then ricocheted back towards Lynch as he fell out of bounds. In an attempt to ensure his team’s possession, Mayer went after the basketball and attempted to throw it off of Lynch, who was in an out-of-bounds position, before he himself made contact over the end line. The nearest official determined that it was Williams’ ball and, after conferencing as a group, upheld the original call, despite the vehement protests of the Middlebury players and its coaching staff.
The Ephs sealed the game at the free throw line, making seven of 10 free throws in the final 57 seconds to clinch the victory. Middlebury did have one final opportunity to tie the game, but Wolfin’s corner three was off the mark.
Lynch led the way for the Panthers with 23 points on 10-17 shooting and 12 rebounds in what was a career performance in the losing effort.
“Peter was incredible in the paint,” said Brown. “He’s really a handful to guard — his ball quickness, and being able to go both directions off the bounce and his physical play inside really kept us in the game. Every time we needed a bucket, either against their man-to-man or their zone [defense], he produced on the offensive end.”
With the loss Middlebury dropped to seventh in the national rankings, but was awarded a home NCAA tournament game. The Panthers will host Curry College (22-5) on Saturday, March 2. This marks the sixth straight year that coach Brown has led his team to the NCAA tournament, the second longest streak in the country.
(02/27/13 11:11pm)
Pope Benedict XVI, formerly known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, officially leaves his post as the Bishop of Rome and Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church at 2 p.m. EST today, beginning a tumultuous transition in the Vatican during a period of scandal, factionalism and religious decline in modern life.
The Pope announced his surprising resignation on Monday, Feb. 11. He is the first pope to step down from his post since 1415, when Gregory XII abdicated the papacy after the Council of Constance met to resolve the Western Schism, ending a 40-year period of two simultaneous papal claimants in Rome and Avignon.
“After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to the adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry,” read the 85-year-old pope’s statement of resignation.
He added that “both strength of mind and body” are necessary for papal leadership and that he “[has] had to recognize [his] incapacity” to fulfill his responsibilities. After today, the pope is expected to lead a more secluded life of “prayer and meditation” in a special Vatican monastery.
At his last Sunday blessing last weekend, more than 100,000 people crowded into St. Peter’s Square to catch a glimpse of the outgoing pontiff. Even though thick grey clouds and a cold drizzle hung over Rome during the morning, patches of blue sky peered through when the pope addressed the crowd. He thanked them for their warm love and support and asked for prayer for the next pope. In an effort to defend his abdication, Benedict vowed to serve the Church “in a way more suitable” to his advanced age and physical condition.
In the crowd on Sunday were flags from all over the world. Pilgrims chanted, “Long live the Pope” and brought banners that read “Thank You,” both in various languages. Benedict made his last public papal appearance yesterday in St. Peter’s Square.
In the last couple of weeks, Italian media networks have been publishing fiery reports of what they claim to be intense internal struggles prior to the upcoming conclave, touching on scandalous topics of child sex abuse within the church and the much-criticized operations of the Vatican Bank.
The reports, mostly based on unnamed sources and, in some cases, pure speculation, have been rebuked forcefully by the Vatican. They accused the news networks of targeting certain figures within the church and trying to influence the papal election, just as cardinals are beginning to gather in Rome for the much-anticipated conclave.
As is the custom with papal conclaves, any cardinal under 80 will be allowed to vote in the election. They will be sequestered in the famous Sistine Chapel until one cardinal obtains a two-thirds majority of all the secret ballots cast. After each round of voting, the ballots are burned and smoke rises out of the chapel. White smoke signals that a new pope has been selected. No official dates have been set yet for the upcoming papal conclave.
A number of cardinals are widely considered strong contenders for the pontiff’s chair, including several non-European cardinals. Among them are Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, the 64-year-old president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace who speaks six languages and is from a region of the world where the Catholic Church is still expanding; and, Cardinal Marc Ouelett of Canada, who served as the former Archbishop of Quebec and heads the powerful Vatican department in charge of bishop appointments. The Cardinal-Archbishop of Milan Angelo Scola is another strong candidate considering the undeniable strength of the Italian wing in the Vatican. Two Latin American cardinals, Oscar Maradiaga of Honduras and Leonardo Sandri, are also in the running, given the strength of the Catholic Church in that increasingly influential region of the world.
(02/21/13 5:00am)
We probably all know Gotye as the guy who sings “Somebody That I Used to Know”—the song that permeated radio, commercials and karaoke nights in 2012. The Belgian-Australian independent artist couldn’t have expected the massive international success of the single, which topped the charts in 26 countries and has sold 13 million digital copies to date. My guess is that many of those 13 million Gotye listeners have not heard any of the other tracks from the artist’s 2011 release “Making Mirrors,” but after picking up Best Alternative Music Album at the recent 2013 Grammy Awards, I have a feeling that many people will be taking a closer look.
What is remarkable about “Making Mirrors” is that it was recorded on a MacBook Pro from Gotye’s parents’ farm in Australia, far removed from the enormous production costs typical of stars as big as Gotye. Born Wouter De Backer in Belgium, Gotye had previously recorded two albums in this manner, garnering mild success and critical recognition in Australia.
Filled with ambition, “Making Mirrors,” was not made to impress anyone. The album alternates between songs that experiment with whisper singing and heavy synthesizers to pop-fueled cuts with catchy melodies and more traditional musical structures. Gotye brings in aspects of soul, rock, electronica and 80’s pop to the record with his Peter Gabriel and Sting inspired sound, while still providing enough material that appeals to radio and the masses. Audiences were captured by the contrast in “Somebody That I Used to Know,” which starts off quietly and then catches the listener off guard with its belted, funky chorus. The album works in much the same way. A quiet song focused on instrumentation makes way for a happy, full voiced single. Gotye sets himself apart by creating 12 distinct songs, not just copying one successful idea over and over again.
The themes of the album work well with the title “Making Mirrors.” “Somebody That I Used to Know” and “Eyes Wide Open” convey the shattering of a relationship, while later on the album “I Feel Better” and “Save Me” reflect the highlights. Gotye uses the album as a method of self-reflection, making the work relatable. The album hits a slump when Gotye throws out two random cuts, the highly synthesized “State of the Art,” followed by the creepily-whispered “Don’t Worry, We’ll Be Watching You.” These songs do not make sense with the rest of the album, or as singles, but they do not detract from the overall value of “Making Mirrors.”
The instrumental and vocal layering is inventive, captivating and refreshing. From a small Australian barn, Gotye accomplished what so many heavily funded pop artists do not. Utilizing a wide variety of instruments, not a sound board, there is a musicality and naiveté about the album that makes it stand out. I only hope that Gotye will not dumb himself down when he makes what will be a highly anticipated follow up. He is capable of more, and should hold himself to the higher standard.
I highly recommend listening to “Making Mirrors” in its most effective form, as an album, from start to finish. In today’s digital age of quick-download singles, it’s easy to forget about the album as an art form and “Making Mirror” is a refreshing reminder that some songs are meant to be listened to in groups.
(02/20/13 9:38pm)
Last Wednesday night, Meghan Laslocky ’89 presented her first book, The Little Book of Heartbreak: Love Gone Wrong Through the Ages at 51 Main. At the event, which The Vermont Bookshop touted as “Anti-Valentine,” Laslocky discussed her new book and read from her recent Middlebury Magazine article, “Whither Courtly Love,” in which she explores courtly love and her experience with love (or lack of love) at the College.
“I was really fascinated by why we suffer so when our hearts get broken, from a physiological and bio-evolutionary perspective,” said Laslocky in a phone interview after the event.
The Little Book of Heartbreak is a history of heartbreak in which she explores the phenomenon from 12 Century Paris, Ernest Hemingway, to modern day romances.
“I’m fascinated by breakups,” said Laslocky during her talk. “The texture and complexity of them [is interesting].”
One aspect of her book which she needed to address but which she is skeptical of is courtly love, a subject that comes up frequently in literature and has played a roll in shaping peoples’ ideas of romance. Courtly love is the idea of love based of chivalry and nobility. It is a skepticism that she has harbored ever since her days as an English major at the College.
“I loved being an English major but every time courtly love came up I was like, ‘not again,’” she said. “But, in order to be responsible and talk about heartbreak I had to look back on courtly love.”
One of the reasons for her dislike of courtly love is because she believes it is so far from the reality of life at college as she experienced it.
“No doubt part of the reason why I found courtly love so irksome lay in the fact that it was so at odds with what I was experiencing as a young woman at Middlebury in the 80s — or thought I was experiencing,” Laslocky quoted from her essay in Middlebury Magazine.
As she continued her study of courtly love after college, she discovered that she isn’t the only skeptic of courtly love and that, even though images of Mr. Darcy wooing Elizabeth Bennett are evocative, courtly love may never have been a reality outside of the pages of books like Pride and Prejudice. After this discovery, Laslocky felt vindicated that she seemed to have inherently known that courtly love was “bogus.”
But, the question of why finding love at college is so difficult for so many people — including her — kept nagging her. At the event at 51 Main, she suggested that “tribalism” and “fear of crossing social boundaries” could be one reason. Also, she put forward the idea that “‘hooking up was cool, walks of shame were cool, but unabashed love [was not cool].”
At the event, one audience member — a student at the College — commented on how, even though Laslocky’s experience at Middlebury was in the 80s, in many ways it looks very similar to the dating and “hookup” scene at the College today. The main difference, though, now is the overbearing presence of technology.
“I think that that [technology] is obviously very seductive but very tricky,” said Laslocky. “A real concern [is] communicating face-to-face, that that skill is going to be lost.”
Being able to text and be in constant communication with people as well as smart phone apps like Tinder make options for romance seem endless and can get in the way of more meaningful connections, Lasklocky suggested.
But, really, it could come down to one thing, whether in 12th century Paris or the hyper-connected world of today. When an audience member asked Laslocky if she had any regrets regarding her college experience and love, Laslocky said, “I regret not expressing myself.”
(02/20/13 6:02pm)
It’s the stuff you read about in sci fi novels and watch in thriller alien movies, but for the million residents in the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia last Friday, it was all too real. Just after sunrise on Feb. 15, the peace of the Ural Mountains was shattered by a once-in-a-century meteor explosion over the skies near Chelyabinsk.
The meteor, the diameter of which is estimated at 55 ft., left behind a trail of white smoke and blinding light in the sky and of shattered windows and damaged buildings on the ground. Nearly 1500 people were injured, most of who had been drawn to windows by the eerie flash of light which preceded the powerful sonic boom that sent shards of glass flying like shrapnel.
Aside from widespread shattered windows and doors, damage on the ground was largely minor, although car alarms wailed across the city and the shock was powerful enough to blow through a factory wall in the city. More than 3,700 buildings suffered damage, totaling just over $30 million USD.
“The main task now is to maintain heat in the apartments and offices where the glass was smashed,” said Chelyabinsk regional Governor Mikhail Yuyevich. Temperatures in the region at this time of the year range between approximately 0 Fahrenheit at night and about 20 degrees during the day.
The meteor penetrated the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 40,000 miles per hour and weighed approximately 10,000 tons. It exploded at an altitude of 10-15 miles above the Earth’s surface and released a burst of energy equivalent to 30 Hiroshima atom bombs.
University of Western Ontario scientist Peter Brown estimated that 33 seconds elapsed between the meteor’s “atmospheric entry to [its] airborne disintegration.
This meteor is the largest reported in the world since a meteor six times its size exploded over central Siberia June 30, 1908. That explosion released over 1,000 times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb. Due to the remote location of its impact, no human damage was reported, though over 80 million trees were toppled by the shock wave.
After disintegration, much of the debris from the Chelyabinsk meteor landed in and around Lake Chebarkul, located about 55 miles northwest of the city of Chelyabinsk. The Russian government sent scientists to the area immediately after the event to collect evidence of the meteor’s impact. A hole discovered on the frozen surface of the lake was initially thought to have been the result of the meteor, though divers have thus far found no debris in the lake.
On Monday, Russian scientists confirmed that they have collected at least 53 samples that came from the meteor around the hole in the lake. All of the pieces collected so far have been less than one-half inch in diameter. Early tests show that the rocks found so far contained about 10 percent iron, making this a common chondrite meteorite. Scientists still believe that the main body of the meteor is somewhere in the lake.
The Chelyabinsk meteor is the first one in recent history to have caused so many injuries on the ground. While many meteors enter the Earth’s atmosphere each year, most disintegrate due to frictional heat before impact. In 2003, a large meteor shower caused minor damage to cars and houses in the suburbs of Chicago.
Currently, NASA is constructing two observatories in Hawaii called Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), which would provide advanced warning for incoming space objects. The system is scheduled to go into operation by 2015.
(02/13/13 10:47pm)
In the days leading up to Jan. 15, the Library and Information Services (LIS) noticed an increase in the number of email phishing incidents within the college community. The compromised email accounts generated large amounts of spam. To reduce the number of compromised accounts, LIS required all students to change their email passwords on or before Jan. 30.
According to LIS webpage go/phish, “phishing is a malicious effort often email or web based, aimed at fraudulently gaining sensitive information from targeted individuals. This information is then leveraged for acts such as identity theft, system access, or other malicious activities.”
The phishing email that targeted students appeared to be an email notification, alerting students that they had received a new message, and contained hyperlinked text that read, “Click here to read.” The email sender’s display name appeared simply as “Middlebury,” though the message itself was signed “Middlebury Webmail Service.” The hyperlinked text redirected students to a copy of the Middlebury Central Authentication Service (CAS) login page. Those who entered their login information compromised their email addresses, generating spam messages as a result.
While student email accounts may have been compromised, all attempts to gain access to the College network failed.
According to Network Security Administrator Ian Burke, the College blocks approximately 80,000 fraudulent inbound emails each day using standard anti-spam controls.
“Even with these controls in place, a small number of fraudulent emails still make it through, and occasionally a fraudulent email is successful in compromising a Middlebury account,” Burke wrote in an email. “Unfortunately, one compromised email account can generate as many as 60,000 spam messages in a very short period of time.
“Middlebury has implemented additional controls to recognize and protect against outbound spam generated by compromised Middlebury email accounts,” Burke added.
An all-student email was sent by LIS Director of User Services Mary Backus on Jan. 15 to alert students of the phishing attempts and to inform users of what to do if they had clicked on a link in a fraudulent email. In order to prevent more accounts from being compromised, a mandatory password change was put in place. Existing student email passwords expired at noon on Jan. 30 and had to be reset.
As a security measure, passwords for all student network accounts must be changed at least once every six months. Users with greater network access, such as domain administrators, are required to change their passwords once every three months.
According to Burke, the password change has resulted in a dramatic reduction in the number of compromised accounts.
As stated on go/phish, successful phishing incidents can give inside network access to an outsider, potentially resulting in the theft of confidential or secure information.
“In the event that a user’s credentials are compromised, an attacker would have the same basic access that the compromised user had, until the account was disabled or the password was changed,” wrote Burke. Thus, the mandatory password change shut the attacker out from the college network and restored compromised accounts to their previous, secure state.
On Feb. 7, several days after student passwords expired, the College experienced a brief network outage. The two events were unrelated and “should not be interpreted as revealing critical flaws in Middlebury’s network security,” according to Burke.
In an era when more and more information is stored online, service provider and network security are increasingly vital. Burke noted that Outlook, the email provider which connects to the College’s Exchange mail server, is no more or less secure than other mail services such as Gmail or Yahoo. All mail clients receive phishing and spam messages.
“The problem [of phishing] is rampant, however the risk is found in whether or not people actually respond to these messages,” Burke wrote. “This is why it is so important that community members keep themselves informed about these types of information security threats and be vigilant about protecting their credentials and personal information.”
LIS has a successful information security education and awareness program for faculty and staff, which Burke cites as the reason for the small number of compromised faculty and staff email accounts in the recent phishing attacks. LIS is working to similarly educate the student body. Most recently, LIS staff distributed pamphlets on information security education and awareness to the incoming Feb class during orientation.
The phishing attacks occurred around the same time that President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz announced the creation of a working group on new technologies and online pedagogy to explore the use of online and computer-based tools in teaching, learning, connecting with alumni and education in the future.
Led by Vice President for Planning and Assessment and Professor of Psychology Susan Baldridge, the working group is comprised of faculty, staff and students from both the College and the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) and Middlebury Language Schools who hold an interest or level of expertise in educational technology.
In his email to the College community, Liebowitz wrote that one of the goals of the working group is to “examine whether and how new technologies might provide expanded and appropriate options for teaching and learning at Middlebury.” Liebowitz cited online partnerships between peer institutions, including Wellesley and Wesleyan, and edX and Coursera as potential examples for Middlebury to follow.
The working group has convened twice thus far and has just begun to organize its work, according to Baldridge.
“We will be focusing on the different audiences for any potential online efforts — undergraduate, graduate and those we are calling ‘life-long learners,’ namely alumni, parents and others who might be interested in online offerings from Middlebury,” Baldridge wrote in an email.
“We want to understand what online options might be of value for these different groups, and consider whether Middlebury should pursue some of these options,” she added.
The working group will ultimately submit a report to various governance groups on campus, such as the Educational Affairs Committee, for further discussion.
The creation of the working group is the most recent development in the College’s exploration of online education. In 2010, the College announced a partnership with K12 Inc. to create Middlebury Interactive Languages (MIL), an online foreign language education program. More recently, the College Alumni Office developed online courses for alumni.
(01/24/13 2:47am)
Over the course of two evenings, the College community saw its leaders “do the math” on divestment in two radically different ways.
On Sunday evening, Schumann Distinguished Scholar Bill McKibben and others spoke to over 150 college and local community members at Mead Chapel in the last stop on McKibben’s “Do the Math” nation-wide tour — their main objective: to illustrate the direct link between divestment and the prevention of climate change. During the event, McKibben and others called on the College to “lead the way” on divestment, encouraging the administration to evaluate its decision based on alternative metrics to those normally considered: the currencies of “movements, passion, experience and creativity.”
Two days later, at the College-sponsored panel on divestment that filled most of the 400 seats in the McCullough Social Space, the tone was decidedly different.
During the two-hour event, the heated discussion centered largely upon the price of divestment for the College — how would it affect the strength of the endowment for the future? How much would it cost to restructure the College’s current co-mingled investment structure? And what other possible options might be open to the College in seeking to curb climate change?
At Sunday’s event McKibben, leading environmental activist and co-founder of 350.org was joined onstage by strong proponents of divestment, Professor of Economics and Chair of the Environmental Science Department Jon Isham, and Professor Emeritus John Elder. The event also included pre-recorded video messages from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Canadian indigenous activist Clayton Thomas-Muller, environmental advocate Van Jones and renowned author and activist Naomi Klein.
In her remarks, Klein challenged the college community to take action: “We need you to provide a strong, coherent message,” she said, “There is no doubt in my mind that others will follow.”
Tuesday’s panel, in contrast, was composed of speakers whose professional experience lay primarily in the fields of economics and investment.
On the panel, McKibben was joined by Ralphe Earle III, a renewables-focused venture investor; Alice Handy, founder and president of Investure, LLC — the firm that manages the College’s endowment; Mark Kritzman, adjunct professor of finance at MIT; and Patrick Norton, vice president for finance and treasurer. Student Government Association (SGA) President, Charlie Arnowitz ’13 was a last-minute addition to the panel’s roster, and provided the lone student voice on the panel.
The moderator for the panel was David Salem ’78, managing partner of the investment advisory firm Windhorse Capital Management, and former founding president of The Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF).
Each of the six panelists was accorded approximately seven minutes to speak, responding to a series of questions provided by Salem.
Norton spoke first, explaining the College’s fiduciary duty to manage the endowment both for current and future students by observing the principal of “generational equity.”
Investure Founder Handy then spoke of her desire to continue to work “as a part of the Middlebury team,” citing her firm’s mission statement to “[remain] open to change, [embrace] continuous improvement and [serve] with integrity and transparency.”
Handy remarked that she would “absolutely” work with students to better understand the endowment, but explained that Investure would require a buy-in by “100 percent” of the firm’s 13 clients in order to embrace a divestment policy — a requirement necessitated by the firm’s co-mingled investment strategy.
Following Handy’s remarks, MIT professor Kritzman summarized the results of his recent study on the potential costs of divestment for the College. He explained that at best, the decision to divest from fossil fuels and arms manufacturing companies would result in a loss for the College of $17 million over five years — at worst, he explained, the study found that divestment would cost the College $420 million over 20 years.
During the question and answer segment McKibben flatly disputed this hypothesis, providing counterfactual data that suggests divestment would elicit a neutral, or slightly positive return.
The exchange between the two became heated at times, illustrating two of the central conflicting views in the room.
“I apologize for trying to interject some science and rationality into the conversation,” Kritzman quipped at one point, in response to a student question.
During his opportunity to speak, Arnowitz thanked the administration for including a student on the panel, before summarizing the preliminary results of a recent SGA survey.
According to the responses of over 1,000 students, Arnowitz explained, 63 percent believe the College should apply the principles of socially responsible investing to its endowment, 14 percent of students were opposed and 23 percent had no opinion.
“[While] for many students this issue takes a backseat,” he said, “the plurality of students support some kind of action on divestment.”
Later in the discussion, Earle, a lifelong environmental advocate and investor, spoke of his significant concerns about the effects of climate change in his opening statement, but suggested that he did not believe divestment was the correct strategy.
“I think climate change is the most critical issue we face as a society today,” Earle began. “However … I don’t think that divestiture from fossil fuel stocks will be effective in reducing climate change,” he continued.
In supporting his argument, he provided the examples of the “unsuccessful” divestment campaigns from both tobacco manufacturers in the ’80s and from companies supporting the genocide in Darfur during the last decade.
Earle suggested that in lieu of divestment, the College should retain its proxy voting privilege to affect the choices of major fossil fuel companies. He also called on students to live out their vision of a greener future by purchasing eco-friendly cars, and switching from coal to gas as an energy source.
McKibben rejected these suggestions. As at Sunday’s “Do The Math” event McKibben explained that such initiatives were not enough, recognizing that fossil fuel companies now hold reserves that if burned, will release five times the “safe” amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, if not prevented by a dramatic change.
Responding to the criticism of audience members and other panelists, McKibben suggested that the goal of divestment was not to “bankrupt Exxon” but rather to use colleges, universities, religious organizations and others to “peel away” the sense of legitimacy of the largest fossil fuel companies — something politicians have “failed to do” over the past 30 years in Washington.
McKibben cited Norton’s reference to “inter-generational equity” from the early moments of the panel, explaining his view that it is “morally wrong” to invest in companies whose missions “ensure that students will not have a planet” to inherit. He asked that the College commit to invest no new money in fossil fuel companies during the spring, and to taper their investments in fossil fuel and arms manufacturing companies to zero over the next five years.
McKibben’s remarks were met by a standing ovation from many audience members.
Following the panel, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz provided his initial reaction to the event.
“I think there was a tension in the room and on the panel that reflected how difficult an issue [divestment] is — that [the issue] still [involves] a lot more emotion than delving into facts,” he said. “But that doesn’t take away from the evening. I thought it was a very good start. I think it’s a longer process than one panel.”
One of the many students in attendance, Socially Responsible Investment club member Laura Berry ’16 explained that she was “frustrated” that the audience did not have more time to pose questions to the panelists, but explained that she felt as though individuals “learned a lot from the panelists.”
“I think we gained a great deal of knowledge about the specific details of the endowment and how it relates to other colleges in the consortium,” she said. “I expect we can move from here pretty well.”
In closing the panel, Salem directed community members toward the College’s website to continue the divestment discussion, reiterating that future panels will be held in order to further analyze critical issues.
(01/24/13 12:45am)
The College awarded tenure to seven faculty members at the end of December, a decision which provides the opportunity to examine the thorough and complex process by which a professor becomes a permanent member of the College faculty.
The Board of Trustees promoted Assistant Professor of Biology Catherine Combelles, Assistant Professor of Anthropology James Fitzsimmons, Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture Eliza Garrison, Assistant Professor of Political Science Nadia Horning, Assistant Professor of Philosophy Kareem Khalifa, Assistant Professor of Economics Caitlin Myers and Assistant Professor of Sociology Lynn Owens. These seven will be promoted to associate professors as of July 2013.
“The majority of Middlebury faculty are hired on a tenure track,” said Vice President for Academic Affairs Tim Spears. “Faculty members who are hired without any prior experience would first be reviewed in their third year and then, assuming they pass this review, they would be reviewed for tenure in their seventh year.”
Spears said that the complexity of the tenure process is due to the gravity of granting tenure, and added that tenure is “not a relationship that is entered into lightly.”
“Unless you do something egregious, you may well be employed by the College for the rest of your working life,” he said. “It’s a union between you and the institution.”
The importance of tenure was not lost on recently tenured Assistant Professor of Philosophy Kareem Khalifa.
“This promotion means that I expect to be at Middlebury for a long time,” he said in an email. “This long term commitment means that I’ll continue to look for ways to improve my working environment.”
Nationally, the institution of tenure appointment has come under fire in recent years — especially at the public high school level — from critics who argue that it is illogical and protects subpar teachers.
But Dean of the Faculty Andrea Lloyd argued that tenure is crucial to retaining elite faculty members.
“Different factors will matter more or less to different candidates, to be sure, but the simple fact of whether or not a position is tenure-track certainly ranks among the most important criteria that a given candidate will use in deciding whether to apply for — and subsequently accept — a particular faculty position,” she said in an email.
Lloyd pointed to 2004 data from the U.S. Department of Education that reported more than 80 percent of private, not-for-profit baccalaureate institutions had some system of tenure. She suspected that the percentage of tenure at peer institutions was “much higher.”
“We would thus be at a significant disadvantage in recruitment and retention, relative to our peers, if we did not have a system,” she wrote.
Spears said that tenure is especially important in areas such as Vermont because there are fewer job opportunities than teachers may have in big cities.
“Through tenure the College is able to make a long-term commitment to a faculty member to come to rural Vermont and make a life here, whereas that same faculty member might have more opportunities in an urban area,” he said.
Khalifa agreed that the College’s teaching level would suffer without tenure, but said that the teaching would also improve if faculty members had a clearer sense of how they were evaluated.
“Right now, many junior colleagues wonder if getting glowing student response forms satisfies the current criteria, while simultaneously suspecting that lowering one’s expectations of student work most easily secures glowing student response forms,” he wrote in an email.
Spears said that while teacher evaluations by students are important, review committees look for trends.
“What the course response forms can do — especially when you read large numbers of them — is show you patterns,” he said. “They can be very useful to the promotions committee when the committee visits classes to observe teaching.”
Faculty members are reviewed on teaching, scholarship and service.
“Teaching is very important part at a place like Middlebury,” said Spears. “It you’re not a good teacher, you won’t get tenure.”
But Spears emphasized that while in-class teaching is the most important aspect of the review process, outside scholarship also plays significant role.
According to the faculty handbook, scholarly achievement is evaluated primarily through the faculty member’s “published, performed or executed works.” The quality of any faculty member’s scholastic work is judged by peer review.
Spears said scholarship is “not an uncommon reason” why faculty members don’t receive tenure. He said students sometimes “don’t understand” the importance of scholarship in the review process, and in the past have erupted when popular teachers don’t receive tenure.
“The whole tradition of tenure is built on the idea that teaching informs scholarship and scholarship informs teaching. If you’re not committed to going out and doing scholarship, then somehow something is going to be missing from what you do in the classroom,” said Spears.
(01/24/13 12:40am)
We do not have a unique mental illness problem in this country; other countries also have people who suffer from mental illness. But you wouldn’t know it from listening to NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre, who supports the right to carry a gun at the cost of any other right. He seems to think that the problem of gun violence in the United States would be solved best by putting the mentally ill in institutions, a suggestion stuck in the 1950’s. Yes, we could do much more as a nation to help these people, but I seriously doubt that anyone who supports unrestricted gun ownership also supports an expansion of government spending on the type of health care programs needed to have a serious impact. At the same time, many of the people who have taken to the airwaves in the weeks after Newtown to decry gun restrictions also oppose the types of background checks that would actually help to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.
Including suicides, guns were a factor in 30,000 American deaths last year. In cities like Philadelphia, 80 percent of the victims of gun violence are young men from minority groups. Obviously, not all of these people or their murderers are mentally ill. They’re the victims of rash decisions, poverty and distrust in the police to solve crimes and accord punishment. All of these are major problems that we should attempt to deal with as a nation. But other nations have these problems, too. There is poverty in Britain. Australians don’t particularly trust the police. But in neither of these countries can citizens access deadly firearms with the unique ease of Americans.
Despite the propaganda of gun advocates, we do not have a unique culture of violence in the media in the United States. All of Western Europe plays the same “Call of Duty” games that we do. British movies and television are just as violent as America’s. The same week as the tragic shootings in Newtown, a man walked into a Chinese school and attacked 20 innocent children. None of those children were killed. Had he been carrying a firearm instead, that likely would not have been the case.
Studying abroad in Australia, large group fistfights were an inevitable part of going out, a concept for which Middlebury had left me entirely unprepared. As intoxicated young men threw themselves at one another on the floor of the club, fists swinging, I felt infinitely safer knowing that neither party would pull out a gun to escalate the fight. Not every person who fires a gun in anger is mentally ill. Obviously, they are not thinking clearly in the heat of the moment, but that hardly makes them insane. It makes them human. When they have a gun, it’s all too easy for them to act quickly in anger, without considering the consequences.
Around the globe, humans feel anger, sadness, jealousy and despair. These emotions are not limited to Americans. The reason that other countries don’t have our problem with mass murders and drive-by shootings is not that they don’t have these emotions, or that they miraculously treat all of their mentally ill. It’s not that they don’t have poverty. It’s not that they don’t like violent videos games. It’s that in other countries, these people do not have easy access to firearms. They keep them out of the hands of their mentally ill, out of inner cities and out of bars. All of these are common sense steps that we would be criminally insane to not address.
There is one more absolutely ridiculous argument that I’ve heard many times over the last few weeks that I just can’t leave alone. The government trying to reduce the number of guns in America does not portend the rise of Hitler or Stalin, or any type of dictatorship. It’s called civilization. The day that I would start to actually become concerned about the rise of a dictatorial government is when the government starts calling on citizen gun activists to enforce its rules, co-opting them and earning their loyalty. That, not reductions on fire arm sales, has been a step that has accompanied the rise of totalitarianism. The day that they deputize the militias is the day to start getting scared. Until then, it’s time to acknowledge the absurd cost of our unique level of gun access and do something to change it.
(01/17/13 6:47am)
Quentin Tarantino has proven to be one of the more divisive directors in Hollywood. Three of his films have received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture, one of his films, Pulp Fiction, won him both the Palm D’Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Despite these awards, his use of sometimes over the top violence has earned him much criticism as a less-than-serious director by some critics and some members of the public. Tarantino’s 2012 film, Django Unchained, followed Django (Jamie Foxx) a recently freed slave working with the bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) to free his wife from the famous plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).
Each of Tarantino’s films acts as an homage to a specific genre, and Django was an artfully constructed tribute to some of the old spaghetti Westerns.
The name Django is a recurring character from over 20 films throughout the history of the genre and Tarantino’s film feels like a great addition to the tradition.
The acting was solid across the board. Waltz, who was brought to the public’s attention in Tarantino’s last film, Inglorious Basterds, and DiCaprio both gave solid performances — it’s no surprise Waltz was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance.
The best performance definitely came from Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson, who is a regular in Tarantino’s films, played Candie’s head servant, Stephen. Jackson has a flair for often bombastic roles but Stephen was a refreshing and surprising change from the norm, proving his ability as a top class actor.
Tarantino, whose films often feature stellar soundtracks, made some interesting decisions with the music in Django. A mixture of both time appropriate folksy tunes and more modern feeling hip-hop tracks, the soundtrack helped develop the unique feel of the film, though it did prove distracting from the movie as a whole at points.
Unfortunately, Django is Tarantino’s first film since the untimely death of his long time editor, Sally Menke and this definitely showed, as the film lacked the seamless flow of his other films.
I think it’s only fair to mention that I went into the theater for Les Misérables having never seen the stage production and being only vaguely familiar with the story.
That being said, I had high hopes for this film and unfortunately, I was largely disappointed. There is a lot to like about the film, most noticeably the performances by Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway. Jackman, a veteran of Broadway, delivered an electrifying performance and I don’t think I could find a single flaw in his performance. Hathaway, who is newer to musicals, was fantastic and I hope this isn’t the last time we get to hear her glorious singing voice.
It’s also worth pointing out the devotion both actors obviously had for the role as both nearly starved themselves to develop their image for the role, weight that Jackman then had to regain for the second half of the film. Unfortunately, the good things I have to say about the film stop there.
Russell Crowe was greatly overshadowed by his fellow lead actors and his singing voice left a lot to be desired, which is surprising given his history performing on stage with multiple bands since the 80s.
The cinematography also felt very out of control. It is a common trope in musical films that shoot large, grandeur shots that take in the entirety of the scene and Les Mis really tried to break away from that but in the end, the execution was poor. At one point, the scene would be filled with a large cast of characters and images of the admittedly fantastically executed scenery, only to zoom in on one of the characters, tracking their movements with a shaky camera. While I have no problem with a shaky camera in general and I appreciate any attempts to work outside ones genre when shooting a film, the attempts fell flat in Les Mis, only leaving me confused as to what sort of movie they were trying to make.
The end of every year seems to have at least one “sleeper hit,” that movie that doesn’t really get talked about until it is released and then suddenly blows up on stage, taking everybody by surprise.
Think The King’s Speech in 2010, which was hardly talked about until it won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
For 2012, Silver Linings Playbook was that hit. The film follows Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) who has just finished his court-ordered treatment at a mental institution and suffers from bipolar disorder.
Dealing with psychological disorders in film is always tricky and too often the disorder becomes nothing more than a plot point, trapping the character in stereotypes and clichés.
Silver Linings was a striking exception to the rule. The film talked about Pat’s illness in such an intelligent way and became a beautiful story about the disorder and the trouble both patients and their friends and families experience.
What really pulled the movie out of disorder-film clichés was Cooper’s performance.
Cooper has never really had a role that’s truly wowed me until this film, where he was able to so perfectly capture the torment of the illness while still being able to break away from being just another “bipolar character.”
For a large portion of the movie, Cooper’s character is obsessed with winning back the approval of his ex-wife, Nikki, and though we hardly see Nikki in the film, her character is so well put together by the stories told about her that I felt like I connected with her without really meeting her.
While I think the movie could have been enhanced by a well-composed original score, the soundtrack added an eclectic spin to the film, especially during the final dance scene.
Unfortunately, the film suffers from a trailer that seems to describe an entirely different film than what Silver Linings actually ends up being.
Certainly one of my choices for best movie of the year, this movie well deserves the growing, end-of-the-year attention.
(01/16/13 8:46pm)
Being a Feb has, for better or for worse, defined much of my time at Middlebury thus far. I am now preparing to work as one of the leaders for Feb orientation after the end of winter term. I look forward to meeting the new class and re-experiencing some of the orientation activities alongside them, but I must say that I don’t envy their next few months to come.
Like much of my class, I didn’t choose to be a Feb, but rather had an offer of spring admission thrust upon me. While ambivalent at the prospect of delaying college another five months, I accepted the offer and began my “Febmester.”
Upon my long-awaited arrival at Middlebury I was thrilled to meet other Febs and hear their stories. I loved exploring the campus for the first time, and I even enjoyed my first classes.
This enthusiasm has gradually worn away only to be replaced by a nagging sense of otherness. Febs are, after all, the minority on campus. The College, understandably enough, addresses our needs after those of the rest of the class.
Last year, I was lucky to have a Feb roommate and live in a first-year dorm. I can’t say the same for many other Febs, who were relegated to seemingly random rooms that were scattered around campus. In many cases, these students were not only denied the experience of living on a first-year hall, but were effectively dissociated from their commons and any support structure that the commons staff is intended to provide.
The College requires students wishing to study abroad to submit applications by Jan. 31 of the preceding academic year. For most students, this provides ample time to explore the College’s academic offerings before finding an adviser, declaring a major and making the significant decision to travel abroad for up to a year.
Because I wanted to study in my junior year, I was denied the opportunity to explore a liberal arts curriculum to the same degree that Regs are able to do. I had only completed four classes at Middlebury before I declared my major.
The news isn’t all bad for incoming Febs. Beginning college with a smaller class makes the task of finding friends a little less daunting. The Feb class itself is perhaps the best part about spring matriculation, and it is the people I found myself surrounded by that made my introduction to the College special.
Most Febs who graduate in four years participate in the mid-year “Celebration” — an event wherein the class skis down a slope at the Snow Bowl in lieu of participating in our own graduation ceremony. This event is called a celebration rather than a graduation because no diplomas are awarded at that time. We have the option of returning the following May to participate in the graduation for the next year below us.
From the very beginning of our time at Middlebury, we are told that integrating socially with the rest of the class may take some time, but that it will occur, sooner or later. After orientation we are well acquainted with 100 or so other Febs, but have yet to even meet the other 80-plus percent of our class. We are thrown into an already well-established social scene and left to fend for ourselves. As a result, many of us feel like transfer students at our own school.
I realize that many of my complaints are the result of logistical difficulties, and that the needs of the many must come before the needs of the few. I realize that I am lucky to be here, and that the Feb program only exists so that extra students can be included in each year’s incoming class.
However, I am sure that the College could do more to make our time here better resemble what the majority experiences.
I wanted to come to a liberal arts college to experience a variety of coursework among a small and familiar student body. What I got instead was a rush to declare a major after only one semester to explore the curriculum. I feel as if I’m still working to get to know the rest of my class, a task that I fear may be futile due to its size. My living situation last year gave me a head start compared to some other Febs in my year, many of whom are living among sophomore Regs for the first time this year.
At the end of my four years I won’t walk up to a stage to “Pomp and Circumstance” to receive a diploma. I’ll likely receive my diploma in the mail instead.
I don’t feel as if my concerns are addressed by the College to any significant extent. I understand that we are a minority, and an artificial minority at that. I know I signed up for a “different” experience when I agreed to be a Feb. My experience has indeed been different. If the Feb program is to be continued, I ask that the College fulfill its commitment to providing each student with access the same educational experience.
(12/05/12 11:42pm)
Scale is one of the miracles of modern technology. The earliest computers took up entire rooms and had less computing power than the smart phones we now carry around in our pockets. But is this as good as we can get?
There are those who say no, it’s not. We can go smaller, faster, and more efficient.What if you could build a nanocircuit made out of molecular wires with only ahandful of atoms in each molecular component of the wire?
The technology is a long way off, but Phillip Battell/Sarah Stewart Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Jeff Byers and his thesis students Travis Stoll ’13 and Peter Hetzler ’14 are laying the groundwork.
Byers hasn’t always been thinking about nanowires. In fact, it’s an area he’s only recently moved into.
“A lot of the work that I did for about my first 25 years fell into the category of making small molecules — small molecules being things on the order of a dozen carbons, molecules that are used to make drugs or pesticides or for commercial purposes,” said Byers. “My work was driven more towards understanding processes rather than creating final products.”
In the early 2000’s, a chemist by the name of Robert H. Grubbs developed a specific type of catalyst that could polymerize (turn into a chain) the type of monomer (single-unit) molecule that Byers works with.
With the discovery of this catalyst, Byers began to think about potential applications for polymers made of his molecules.And he realized that the molecules that he had been working with — a class of carbon molecules containing chromium atoms – could potentially be used in nanowire construction.
“Nick Jansen ’05 was a thesis student of mine, and he was working on a project making some molecules for my old studies,” said Byers. “These molecules he was making were being used to test some of my mechanistic theories. But looking at them in a different light, I realized that molecules like that might be valuable building blocks for very different kinds of target-based synthesis, rather than process-based chemistry. What I realized is that some of the molecules that I was working with, with some slight changes and with some understanding of the mastery of this Grubbs catalyst approach to things, might be valuable as precursors for making polymeric materials because, frankly, some molecules very similar to what I was working with were precursors to polymeric materials.”
Think of the catalyst as the factory worker who assembles strands of Christmas tree lights. Byers thinks that his light bulbs, when assembled with this new catalyst, will make a nice strand of Christmas tree lights that will also have potential applications.
The Byers molecules are easily excited by visible light, which suggests they will make good conductors of electricity in polymer form.
They’re also relatively stable — some of them have been sitting around the lab for 10 years and have hardly changed. Both of these characteristics suggest that, in theory, the Byers molecules will be good candidates for molecular wires.
Hetzler and Stoll are playing around with two different versions of the Byers monomers to determine whether or not this theory will play out in reality.
“[Stoll] and I are essentially doing the same thing. I’m just working on making different light bulbs, with a different molecular formula,” said Hetzler.
“Ideally, I’d like to have a polymer made for my thesis project,” said Stoll. “If it works, someone else will have to pick up where I left off and find a way to analyze its conductivity. It’s a long-term project that will in all likelihood run through several thesis projects, but such is the nature of research.
But that doesn’t deter Byers.
“At the beginning of my career I took an area in organic synthesis, and now I’m one of the 30-40 people who took an area of modest importance and brought it to maturity — radicals in organic synthesis,” Byers said. “People know that’s what that guy at Middlebury does with a handful of undergraduates. People use some of the stuff I do. They completely ignore some of the other stuff I’ve done. But now I’ve been there and done that. I read the literature, and what I’m seeing now is that [my old work has] gotten to the stage where, largely due to the work of many of my good friends and to a minor degree me, a lot of the kinds of stuff that I wanted to prove in the 80’s and 90’s is now routine. Or as routine as its going to get. I could be routine for another 10 years. I don’t want to be. Coming into lab is still fun. I want to keep it that way.”
Listen to Professor Jeff Byers discuss his work with the Campus’ Will Henriques.
(12/05/12 6:48pm)
On Wednesday, Nov. 21 two residents of Hancock, Vt., Steven Arnold and Michael Wood, appeared in court to respond to the allegations of manufacturing and distributing methamphetamines out of their home on Route 125. This is the first major meth case to be prosecuted in Addison County.
Meegen Smith, another Hancock resident who lived down the street from Hancock and Wood, was simultaneously charged on Wednesday for teaching Arnold and Wood how to cook meth along with two other charges: violating probation and fleeing New York state after being charged with possession of meth ingredients like Sudafed, Drano and lithium ion batteries.
Arnold and Wood were each charged with two counts of distributing methamphetamine and one count of conspiracy in the sale of the drug. In sum, these charges could amount to 15 years in prison, accompanied with a fine of up to $300,000.
All three suspects pleaded innocent to their charges.
The Southern Vermont Drug Task Force was responsible for the arrests, having received a tip from an informant who was seeking to lessen his sentence in a separate case. Detective Jeffrey Stephenson, a member of the task force, led the investigation and helped organize the two meth buys made by the informant that formed the evidentiary basis for the court case.
A few days prior to the purchases, the informant tipped the police about Wood and Arnold’s operation on Route 125. The informant had heard that the lab had originally been located in the woods until it exploded and the alleged cooks moved indoors.
On Nov. 14, police outfitted the informant with a wiretap and gave him cash to make a purchase at the Route 125 home. The informant made his way to the house and successfully bought $80 worth of meth, while gathering some incriminating evidence over the wiretap.
Authorities also had received word from a second informant who claimed to have been driven to a pharmacy by Wood and asked to purchase Sudafed, lithium batteries and Drano.
On Nov. 19, police arranged for a second buy at the Route 125 home with the first informant, seeking further criminal evidence. During this purchase, Arnold spoke at length about the history of his meth manufacturing with Wood, and Smith before that.
“Arnold spoke about his first time manufacturing meth on his own and how he got a rush as the bottle began to swell up and he thought it would explode,” the affidavit stated.
Arnold also acknowledged that he was aware of the criminality of his actions, according to court records.
“[Arnold] stated that just having lithium batteries, Drano and Sudafed is enough to convict you,” he was heard saying.
Because of concern about meth manufacturing, Vermont state law prohibits the purchase of more than three packs of Sudafed by an individual in a month. As Wood is the owner of the home where meth was allegedly being produced, he chose not to buy Sudafed directly so as to avoid suspicion, according to the affidavit.
On Nov. 20, police went out with a search warrant to Wood’s home where they arrested Wood and Arnold and claim to have heard the duo confess to the manufacturing and use of meth.
In relation to the arrests, state police say that Smith will be charged with conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine in addition to her outstanding criminal actions. Smith allegedly admitted to being a meth user but stated to the authorities that she had never cooked meth in the state of Vermont.
Judge Toor presided over the case and set bail for each of the accused. Wood’s bail was set at $75,000, a significant cost that was meant to reflect his previous violation of the conditions of his release from prison. Toor set the bail for Arnold at $25,000 and ruled that Smith was to be held without bail due to her violation of her probation charge.
The three will be held in prison until the court date when a jury of their peers will hear the case. In the event that one of them makes bail, Toor stated that he or she would be required to participate in a substance abuse treatment program.
(11/28/12 7:07pm)
The Middlebury women’s basketball team started off the season with disappointment after a 66-61 overtime loss in the Tip-Off Classic against the University of Massachusetts- Boston on Saturday, Nov. 17. The Panthers, however, rebounded to win the consolation game against Colby-Sawyer 59-48. The team continued the season with a 80-47 loss against Smith on Tuesday, Nov. 20 and a 81-73 win against Plattsburgh on Sunday, Nov. 25.
“We are happy but not satisfied by our performances so far this season,” said co-captain Jesse Miller ’13. “We have faced some very good competition so far this season, which has been great to play against no matter the outcome. Every situation is a chance to improve and get one step closer to being the team that we aspire to be this season.”
In their first game of the season against UMass-Boston, the Panthers trailed at the beginning 16-9 before going on a 7-0 run to tie the game at 16-16. They extended the run to 12-1 after a basket from Katie Ritter ’15 gave the Panthers a 21-17 lead at 7:17. Unfortunately, Middlebury was unable to hold the lead after UMass-Boston finished the first half with a 30-25 lead.
After falling behind in the second half, Laura Lowry ’15 hit a three pointer to tie the game at 36-36 at the 14:16 mark. The score continued to yo-yo after Middlebury was able to erase the Beacons’ 10 point lead, when a jump-shot from Ritter tied the game at 52-52 with only 1:35 left to play. UMass-Boston managed to regain the lead with 45 seconds on the clock before a basket from Rachel Crews ’15 sent the game into overtime.
The Beacons went on an 8-0 run in the overtime period after Middlebury was unable to convert their shots and turned over the ball twice.
Three Middlebury players ended the game with double figures, led by Sarah Marcus ’14 who scored a game-high of 17 points. Ritter led the team with seven rebounds while Lowry had four assists.
After the disappointment of Saturday’s game, Middlebury came out strong against Colby-Sawyer. They took a 19-5 lead in the first 9:46 before the Chargers cut the lead to nine. However, Middlebury continued to push and went into the break with a 31-12 lead.
Colby-Sawyer was the more alert of the two teams at the beginning of the second half scoring 14 out of 19 points to cut the advantage to six at 34-28. While the Chargers came within three points on two occasions, Middlebury was able to hang on for its first win of the season.
Tracy Borsinger ’13 was the high scorer for the Panthers with 18 points and also claimed eight boards, while all-tournament team member Marcus was second with 14 points.
The Panthers went into their game against Smith looking to build on the momentum of the win against Colby-Sawyer. However, Middlebury was never really able to challenge the Pioneers.
Middlebury started off the game with a 4-0 lead, but the lead was their last of the game. The Pioneers responded with a 9-0 run after baskets from Rosa Drummond and Paulina Solis. Smith continued to increase their advantage and built their biggest lead of 41-17 after a layup from Bethany Clap, and went into the break with a 43-20 advantage.
The second half followed a similar pattern to the first after Smith opened the period with a 10-2 run. The Pioneers led by as much as 37 after another Solis layup went down.
The Panthers struggled on offense, sinking only two out of 11 long-range attempts. Ritter led the attack with nine points, while Borsinger finished with eight rebounds.
Middlebury was able to pick itself up after its loss at Smith, bouncing back with a comfortable win against Plattsburgh.
The Cardinals started off the stronger of teams, opening up the game with an 8-0 run, eventually extending their largest lead to 11-2 after a three-pointer by Brittany Marshall at 15:11.
Plattsburgh continued to dominate the rest of the half holding a 30-22 advantage with 1:07 remaining on the clock, before Marcus hit a pair of triples. Then Nora Kelly ’15 pounded through the Cardinal’s defence, downed a layup, and closed the gap to 32-30.
The Panthers continued to build on this momentum at the onset of the second half, beginning with an 8-0 run on a pair of triples from Lowry and a jumper from Borsinger. Middlebury increased the lead to as much as 10 points just five minutes into the half.
However, on the strength of an offensive surge from Marshall, who went on a 7-0 run at the 8:54 mark, the Cardinals found themselves in the lead for the first time since the halftime break. Their advantaged grew to 66-63 with 4:31 remaining.
But after the Panthers emerged from a key back-and-forth sequence with possession, Middlebury went on a 10-0 run to complete their comeback victory.
Marcus finished with 21 points while Borsinger had 20 points and seven assists.
The Panthers fell victim to a slow start against Castleton State, however, as Middlebury’s resurgence at the end of the game fell just short, as the Panthers fell 62-60 to the Spartans.
While Castleton built an early lead, the game yo-yoed back and forth as the Spartans built a seven-point lead before the Panthers cut it to two, 27-25, with 6:24 left. Castleton went into the break only a basket better than Middlebury, leading 32-30.
Castleton rallied at the start of the second half, however, extending their lead to 10 with a jumper by Alyssa Leonard. Their lead continued to fluctuate as a 4-0 Panther run brought the visitors within a basket at 57-55 with 3:35 remaining in the game. After the teams traded baskets, Scarlett Kirk ’14 again brought the Panthers within one point with just 41 seconds left. After a jumper from Castleton guard Kelly Conway, Kattie Ritter ’15 attempted a game-tying three with 12 seconds left, but the ball rimmed out.
Borsinger led the team with a game high of 25 points, while Katie Pett ’14 finished with eight rebounds, four assists and four steals.
While the Panthers have had an up-and-down start to the season, head coach Noreen Pecsok sees the opening games as a way to gauge her team’s strengths and set season-long goals.
“We have a lot of people who haven’t played a lot of minutes due to injury in the past, so right now we are figuring out who plays well together,” said Pecsok. “We believe all the things we need to get better at are within our grasp, so everyone is very positive.”
Marcus, echoing her coach’s sentiments stressed the importance of the team maintaining its defenisve intensity.
“This season, we want to be a disruptive, defensive team,” she said. “We want to make it as hard as possible for the other team to score, and if we play tough defense, it will give us energy to push the ball and get easy baskets in transition. I am extremely excited for the rest of the season, and if we continue to stay focused and play hard, good things will come.”
Middlebury returns to action on Saturday, Dec. 1 against Emmanuel.
(11/14/12 11:12pm)
The 2012 election may be over, but the College Democrats and College Republicans are already looking ahead. On Nov. 6 the two clubs hosted Election Night at the Grille to watch the results come in.
“It was packed – there were so many people, which was great. I think [Professor of Political Science and Department Chair] Matthew Dickinson and [Associate Professor of Political Science] Bert Johnson were on top of their game,” said Emily Wagman ’13, president of the College Democrats. “I think they called the election before CNN did.”
Dunja Jovicic ’13, co-president of the College Republicans also thought the event went well.
“Good outcome, good energy, so I think it went well in terms of an event put on by both groups,” she said.
Wagman said the atmosphere in the Grille was exciting.
“It was great to see so many people politically involved, right at the very end,” said Wagman. “A consistent group of people show up at meetings every week and phone bank and go canvassing but it was amazing to see the amount of people that showed up to watch the election results come in.”
When asked about the much-lauded “ground game” of the Obama campaign and their strength in getting people out to vote, Wagman said, “Looking back on this in the future, [the] ’08 and this campaign are both going to be looked at as very good get-out-the-vote strategies. The campaign really was on top of everything, especially in the swing states.”
Wagman also said the results contradicted the notion that Obama’s young supporters would not turn out to vote a second time around.
“Turnout among the youth was higher,” said Wagman, “Which, I think, shows that [an] enthusiasm gap wasn’t really there.”
Looking forward, Wagman said the Democrats are going to continue hosting events and talking policy.
“We’ll bring professors in to talk about different kinds of policy and what policy coming out of a second Obama term might look like. I think we are going to try to bring in some outside speakers as well. It’ll be mostly on campus, a little more quiet.”
Wagman said the Democrats will continue to do voter contact in the future as they did during this election cycle. After all, according to Wagman, “We have a House to take back in 2014.”
Jovicic said the Republicans will also work to promote political dialogue on campus.
“The main goal of both groups is to engage in discourse and promote that kind of discussion on campus and keep awareness up and have an outlet for students on campus who are politically active or would like to be,” said Jovicic.
The Republicans also are going to bring speakers to campus, including Middlebury alumni.
“We had both John MacGovern ‘80 and Randy Brock ’65 come in,” said Jovicic. “We’ll try to keep bringing conservative speakers to campus, so I encourage, whatever you believe in, to listen because it’s interesting to get another perspective.”
Like the College Democrats, Jovicic said the College Republican’s pace will slow drop that the election is over.
“It might slow down a little bit just because [the presidential election] was the big thing this year,” said Jovicic, “but we just keep having our weekly meetings [and] keep awareness up.”
The College Republicans also will be keeping on eye on future GOP presidential contenders.
“The GOP is already looking towards 2016, so we’ll probably be following up on what they’re doing, who could be the major players, who are we looking to to represent the Republican Party in 2016,” said Jovicic.
Overall, Jovicic said she hopes for political discourse on campus to be more open to learning both sides.
“The more you keep your eyes and ears open the more you realize that there are conservatives on campus who really do care about the subject matter.”
In regard to President Obama’s re-election, Jovicic said, “As a club and as individuals we’re obviously a little disappointed but I don’t think it’ll stifle our involvement on campus. It’s just a reason to keep looking towards who’s going to represent us in 2016. Obviously it’s not the outcome that we wanted but we’ll still be a club and still engage with the Democrats and bring speakers on both sides and keep that discourse up.”
(11/14/12 10:17pm)
Eleven contestants, four judges and approximately 80 audience members gathered in Crossroads Café on the night of Nov. 8 for auditions to be the student speaker at the College’s TEDx event in March.
TEDx is an offshoot of TED, a worldwide initiative in which speakers have 18 minutes to share “Ideas Worth Spreading.” To perpetuate this goal, TED began hosting local, independently organized events, called TEDx, that can now be found at international conferences, school district meetings, colleges and universities.
TEDx aims to “give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue.”
In 2010, alumna Cloe Shasha ’12, who now works for TED, started the TEDxMiddlebury program, which hosts a TEDx event featuring one student every spring. Since its first year, the number of tickets available for the program has tripled.
Moria Sloan ’15, a leader of the program, explained the criteria for the selected winner of the competition.
“The philosophy behind TED talks is quite simply to share ideas,” said Sloan. “Thus the judges were looking for speakers that had an idea and could share it well on stage.”
First runner-up Daniel Egol ’13 was grateful that TEDx had provided an opportunity for students to talk about their interests.
“We don’t really [otherwise] have the space to connect over things that are important to us,” said Egol.
Given no prompt but the theme “The Road Not Taken,” students were allowed four minutes to share their own ideas.
Talks covered topics far and wide, such as “Why Engineering and the Liberal Arts Need Each Other More Than Ever,” “Looking Within: A Journey of Healing and Liberation,” “What Caricature Art Tells Us About Human Interaction” and “Brain Game: Africa’s Potential Energy.”
Ryan Kim ’14 was named the winner and will speak at the TEDx event on March 9. In his talk titled “Train American” he asked, “What does it mean to be an American?” Outlining the seven weeks he spent travelling cross-country on the Amtrak network, Kim introduced vivid characters, whose stories he employed to confront the idea of the American frontier.
Egol spent his four minutes reflecting on the state of terrorism in Cuba, where he has extended family and studied abroad last semester. Living in Cuba, which is identified by the U.S. as a terrorist nation, Egol realized “how unjust this policy is.”
He relayed stories of his family members waiting in long lines for bread and health care as well as memories of “an enormous amount of trust in others” rarely seen in the U.S. Egol concluded with a call to “re-evaluate our foreign policy.”
After his speech, Egol remarked that his goal was, “to connect a political issue to a personal experience and hopefully raise awareness about that issue,” an aim several other speakers seemed to share.
Joseph Putko ’13 was named second runner-up for his talk “Cosmic Planetary Potential: How Astronomy Can Make the World a Better Place.” His argument to incorporate astronomy into every year of education focused on “the cosmic perspective.”
“The world will never agree on a religion,” Putko said. “But a taste of the cosmic perspective […] can make the world a better place.”
Pam Michaelcheck P’15, one of the four judges and a parent, said, “I can say that I was impressed by all of the speakers and that the deliberation process was hard.”
Mutual appreciation was palpable among the speakers.
Cate Costley ’15, whose talk was titled, “Food is Love” thought the auditions were a beneficial experience.
“It’s just so great that everyone is standing up here and talking about something that they’re passionate about,” said Costley.
Sloan expressed the drive to push boundaries as one of the goals of TEDxMiddlebury.
“We are constantly striving to overachieve, focusing on deadlines and guidelines,” she wrote in an email. “And yet the most important things are often those that are not bounded by any sort of lines.”
Hudson Cavanaugh ’14, another leader of the program, feels just as strongly about the importance of TEDx Middlebury, saying it “is [central] to Middlebury’s mission of providing a liberal arts education.”
Kim will give an 18-minute TED talk at the March 9 event. Eleven other speakers will also be featured at the event.
