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The buzz on wasps

“How crazy would it be if a bee flew into your mouth while you were eating?” Charlie Reinkemeyer ’21.5 asked his friends over breakfast outside Proctor.  When Reinkemeyer stood up with a yelp and announced that he’d just been stung, his friends thought he was joking. But the wasp that had alighted on the piece of fruit he was eating, dodging his gnashing jaws to jab the soft flesh on the inside of his cheek, was deadly serious. Reinkemeyer is one of the latest in a long line of the wasps’ victims. Each fall, returning students are greeted by swarms of the black and yellow bugs outside of the dining halls descending on anyone who dares to eat outside. The picnic tables buzz with students complaining about the insects’ presence, debating whether they are bees or wasps and speculating as to why the college isn’t doing more to deal with them.   The Campus reached out to Middlebury’s bug experts for answers.  The bugs that swarm the dining halls are primarily yellowjacket wasps, easily identifiable by their thin waist, which allows them to swing their abdomen forward and sting in front of their bodies as well as behind, an important defensive feature, according to Assistant Professor of Biology Greg Pask, who studies insect neurobiology.  Yellowjackets can sting multiple times, unlike bees. However, each sting comes with a high energy cost, so wasps tend to reserve their venom for defensive purposes. Grabbing or swatting yellowjackets are good ways to get stung — as is being unlucky enough to trap one between your skin and clothes, or in your mouth.  Yellowjackets are especially territorial when it comes to protecting their nests. They sense approaching threats both by vibrations and by smelling exhaled carbon dioxide. A careful person can approach a wasp nest and study it at close range without getting attacked, as long as they hold their breath.   Only female wasps have stingers, which are actually primarily egg-laying tubes through which they can inject venom when needed. The venom includes a pain-inducing neurotransmitter called acetylcholine that “activates pain neurons in the skin,” Pask said in an email to The Campus. A variety of other proteins cause the severe inflammation that follows. Entomologist Justin Schmidt let himself be stung by more than 80 varieties of insects to rate them on a pain scale in his book “The Sting of the Wild.” He gave the yellowjacket sting a two out of four, the same as most bee varieties, and described it as producing an “instantaneous, hot, burning, complex pain” that “lasts unabated for about two minutes, after which it decreases gradually over the next couple of minutes, leaving us with a hot, red, enduring flare to remind us of the event in case our memory should fade.” While yellowjacket wasps may bug Middlebury students, they are popular with local farmers. They prey on bugs like biting flies, caterpillars and other pests that plague crops and gardens. Though not to the same degree as bees, they do occasionally drink nectar and pollinate plants as well.  Worker wasps bring the protein back to their nests and feed it to the larvae. The larvae consume the insects’ flesh, digest it and secrete a sugary substance that the adult wasps then eat. This time of year, when the summer is ending and the wasps’ natural food sources are diminishing, sweet treats from the dining hall are extra appealing. Yellowjacket wasps have a keen sense of smell, and their antennae are covered with powerful scent receptors similar to nostril hairs. Yellowjackets are social insects and will communicate the location of food to their nest-mates by transferring the odor cue to their antenna. Then they will search out the source of the odor together, which often brings them to the dining halls on warm days when hundreds of students bring their meals outside. Pask said the wasp swarms on campus are likely to worsen for future generations of students. With climate change extending the summer season, the wasps will hang around longer and multiply even more fruitfully. If conditions are good, a queen can lay 50 eggs a day, and a mature nest can host anywhere between 2,000 to 4,000 wasps.  Facilities staff try to remove wasps when they are a nuisance, like the yellowjackets that populate the area outside the dining halls, but there’s not much they can do if they can’t find their nests. Yellowjackets can forage as far as a mile from their nests. They are primarily ground nesters, and their colonies can often be found at the base of trees, under porches or even in cracks in the sidewalks. They also seek out spaces between walls, and college horticulturalist Tim Parsons said he removed one nest from between the two window panes of one unfortunate student’s dorm room.   Depending on the year, the landscape team might remove anywhere between 10 and 30 bee and wasp nests a week, often by suctioning them out with a shop vacuum. This year, though, they are struggling. Over-enrollment is stretching their already-limited resources even thinner.   The landscape team is severely understaffed. They’re missing one out of their standard roster of 14, and they were only able to hire one out of the normal five seasonal workers they bring on for the busy fall time. They are now examining options to contract out wasp removal to relieve the burden on the limited workers, according to Parsons. Wasp season should end in the next few weeks, before the time of the first frost. Before they die, the male wasps — “flying sperm packets” with little use beyond reproduction, according to Pask — will mate with future queens. The fertilized females will fatten up to “hibernate” over the winter before leaving the nest to form their own colonies next spring. In the meantime, Parsons said it's best to “leave them be, no pun intended,” and hope you don’t have Reinkemeyer’s extraordinary bad luck. Since his unfortunate experience, Reinkemeyer has taken to eating his meals indoors. If the weather is particularly nice, he might be tempted to brave the wasps and eat outside. But he’ll be carefully inspecting any food he puts in his mouth from now on.  Correction: A previous version of this article contained the wrong credit for the drawing of the wasps. The artist is Pia Contreras.

Review: Women's golf

On Saturday, women's golf concluded its season at the Ralph Myhre Golf Course in Middlebury. Only individual scores were recorded in the match against Hamilton, although the Panthers still managed an impressive showing. Katie Murphy ’23 led the way for the Panthers, finishing in second place with a score of 80––just one stroke behind the leader. Kayla Li ’23 followed Murphy, tying for third after shooting an 82 on the day. Jacqueline Slinkard ’24 rounded out the top three spots for the Panthers, carding an 83 and tying for fifth place.  Playing in her final collegiate match, senior captain Erika Nakagawa ’21 expressed her pleasure in finishing the season on a high note, but also the sadness of competing in her last match. “I was pretty emotional on the 18th tee box,” Nakagawa said. “I’m going to miss playing with my team so much.”

Mister Up’s celebrates 50 years of brews under the bridge

Tucked away on Bakery Lane, below the Cross Street bridge crossing Otter Creek, is a Middlebury landmark: Mister Up’s. Founded in 1970 by Middlebury native Ronald Mainelli, Mister Up’s has been a longtime gathering spot for college students and the greater Middlebury community. The restaurant celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.  According to current Mister Up’s owner and manager Rick Buck, Mainelli named the restaurant after his favorite restaurant in New York City, Mrs. Down’s. Mister Up’s has had four owners throughout its past 50 years of business, but Buck and his partner have owned the pub since 2012.  Today, the restaurant typically accommodates a mix of Middlebury locals, parents and students attending college functions, such as Fall Family Weekend, according to Buck. With a dining room capacity of about 200 people and an 80-person outdoor deck, Mister Up’s is spacious enough to host large groups for sports teams, anniversaries or other events. “Homecoming is a big event, along with annual basketball team, hockey team and swim team dinners,” Buck said. In the past, Mister Up’s was a popular weekend spot for students. Alumni who attended Middlebury in the late  ’80s shared memories of enjoying their times at the restaurant because of its welcoming atmosphere, food and drink selection and affordability.  Heather Bohr ’89 described the restaurant’s versatility as a reason Mister Up’s was a favorite of hers. “We used to go there for après-ski in the late 80s after cross country skiing at Breadloaf. It was so much fun to sit at the bar, get to know the bartenders and drink warm alcoholic coffee drinks,” she said. As the year progressed and ski season ended, Mister Up’s remained one of Bohr’s top choices for off-campus dining with friends: “It was always such a happy moment when the deck opened in the spring and we could sit by the river.”  Kristen Homer ’90 recalled Mister Up’s as a common pregame spot. “I think we mostly went for appetizers and a drink before heading out to parties on campus,” she said. In the late ’80s, students benefited from the “grandfather clause” of Vermont’s 1986 law that raised the drinking age from 18 to 21 years. The clause allowed anyone who was legally allowed to drink at the time the law passed to be exempt from the higher age requirement. In other words, any student who turned 18 before the law went into effect in 1986 retained their legal right to purchase alcohol. Tom Crowell ’90 recalled the grandfather clause as particularly exciting for Middlebury students in the late ’80s coming from areas of the country that did not offer the same exception. “For many of us, the drinking age was still 18 [in Vermont] unlike our home states, so this was a new thing adding to the college experience,” he said.  Mister Up’s was able to capitalize on the large proportion of the student body still allowed to legally drink. Crowell noted the restaurant offered “an extensive cocktail list of frozen blender drinks and mixed drinks like $2 long island ice teas and tap beer.”  In addition to being a fun drinking spot, Mister Up’s was chosen by some students as a good place to share a meal with a professor. Sarah Evans ’89 recalled a fond memory of going to Mister Up’s for dinner with a friend and one of their favorite biology professors, Steve Trombulak. “I remember thinking about seeing him in a different light — a person — not a professor. It was fun to have a chance to know him in a different setting and relate on a different level,” she said. Bohr also noted that the restaurant was ideal for a more romantic outing. “The salad and bread bar made dates easy because there was something to do. You could get up, get more bread, walk around. It was definitely the favorite spot for a date,” she said. In addition to the salad and bread bar, Bohr enjoyed the offer of a unique dessert selection: “I remember their gigantic alcoholic ice cream drinks: White Russians and Grasshoppers.” The salad and bread bar and spiked ice cream floats are no longer offered on the Mister Up’s menu, but the pub food selection remains intact. One of Buck’s favorite recent introductions is an appetizer he named “Thumbs and Toes.” These boneless chicken tenders, fried and tossed in signature sauces or rubs, are one of the restaurant’s most popular items, according to Buck. This type of pub food was especially enticing compared to the regular dining hall offerings. Evans commented,“Back when I was in school, the food on campus was unremarkable and uninspired, so dinner out was a real treat.”  Covid-19 has disrupted many of the events that alumni fondly remember and current students still hope to enjoy. Buck was disappointed that Mister Up’s could not have a large 50 year anniversary celebration as originally hoped. However, he feels fortunate that they were able to reopen indoor dining under Vermont state guidelines in June 2020, and they have been able to keep indoor dining open for the past 11 months. “Take-out [and catering] are typically a large part of Mister Up’s’ sales,” he explains, so the restaurant was well-positioned to continue generating business throughout the pandemic.  Shifts in owners, menu adjustments and cultural changes are inevitable over the years, but Mister Up’s has maintained many of the qualities that cause alumni to remember their time there so fondly to reach the milestone of 50 years of business.

Invitation of anti-transgender speaker sparks backlash, internal club conflict

At the height of midterm season, 50 people joined a Zoom webinar titled “Can We Reasonably Believe in God?” featuring Christian apologetic and Boston College professor Peter Kreeft. The event became a source of controversy after students — both inside and outside of Newman Catholic Club, which organized the event with co-sponsorships from the Department of Religion, Middlebury College Activities Board and Middlebury InterVarsity Christian Fellowship* — discovered Kreeft’s views about the transgender community. In an interview with The Catholic Sun — which he gave before speaking about “transgenderism” at a fundraiser for the John Paul II Resource Center for Theology of the Body and Culture — Kreeft compared a desire for gender reassignment surgery to a desire to torture or murder.“The mind is not mutilated by educating it to accept its body,” he said in the interview. “The attitude toward one’s own body that is behind the demand for gender reassignment surgery is exactly the same as the attitude toward someone else’s body that is behind torture or murder.”Tensions on campus also mounted when Newman Club president Pedro Guizar ’22 referred to inactive members as having “gone rogue” or “anti-Kreeft” in an email response that was accidentally sent to the entirety of the club’s membership. In the fallout, several students criticized Guizar’s email and asked to be removed from the mailing list. Organizing the talkConversations about inviting Kreeft began in February, according to Guizar, who said he suggested the possibility to the other club officers and Religious Life Cluster Liaison Ellen McKay.“Dr. Kreeft was an obvious choice as he is a world-renowned Catholic philosopher who teaches at Boston College [and] has written over 80 books...” Guizar said in an email to The Campus. “Peter Kreeft is also known to be a Catholic who is in agreement with the teachings of the Catholic Church.”When asked to clarify whether he knew about Kreeft’s stance regarding the LGBTQ community prior to inviting him, Guizar declined to provide more information and referred The Campus back to his original statement.In order to invite and secure funding for speakers, organizations must seek the permission of their faculty or staff advisor. Dean of Spiritual and Religious Life and Presbyterian minister Mark Orten said he was the club’s advisor at the time, based on a list created by McKay. Orten said that transitions taking place during the 2019–20 academic year left a gap, and he became the advisor pro tempore until the group found a better fit. “We always prefer that a group has someone from within its tradition, speaking religiously, to be the advisor, so it was never preferable for me to be the advisor,” Orten said.Newman was working with McKay to plan the event, according to both Guizar and Orten, up until the club needed to seek their advisor’s signature. Maddie Tango ’21.5, who served as president last year and treasurer this fall, said that the club often went to McKay for scheduling and administrative requests.Orten said he decided to meet with Newman leadership to have a conversation about his concerns after learning Kreeft’s views about the LGBTQ community. At this point, according to Orten, he had not made a decision about whether or not to sign the speaker contract. In the meeting, he requested that Newman leadership reconsider their invitation. In an interview with The Campus, he clarified that this was not a request to “cancel” the speaker — referring to the idea that not inviting Kreeft might be perceived as a manifestation of “cancel culture.”“I was very explicit with them that I was very seriously and intentionally asking them to consider the full weight of the implications of their invitation,” Orten said.Following the conversation and after spending 24 hours thinking about the decision, Orten said he decided not to sign the contract.“The decision that I made ultimately was out of conscientiousness about the multiple entities on campus for whom I have care and our office has care, and I came down on the side of not doing harm,” he said.Guizar requested an advisor change to Professor of Mathematics John Schmitt in an April 7 and 8 email exchange with Director of Student Activities Amanda Reinhardt. McKay — not Orten — was also copied in Reihardt’s reply.“He is a practicing Catholic, so we thought that the switch was a logical move for the Catholic club,” Guizar said.Newman successfully changed their advisor to Schmitt, who Guizar said signed off on inviting Kreeft.Schmitt declined an interview and did not respond to further inquiries.To host speakers, clubs also must gain approval from the Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB) Speakers Committee by submitting a Presence form with information about the speaker, venue, budget and funding.The Speakers Committee did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Names to call onThe day before the April 14 talk, Guizar replied to an email from professor of Political Science and Q&A moderator Gary Winslett with the subject line “Names to call on” in which Winslett had requested a list of Newman club members. Guizar’s response, which went to the entire club email list, included a list of nine “active members” and said that the inactive members had “gone rogue and are anti-Kreeft.”Guizar apologized after two students condemned his email in replies to the chain. He also clarified that his email to Winslett was not on behalf of the Newman Club board and was instead a personal mistake. But several other members of the Newman email list, including some listed in the group of active members Guizar had sent to Winslett, announced their departure from the club following the apology.Tango was the first to reply to the mistaken email and criticized Guizar’s response and Kreeft’s views, linking Kreeft’s Catholic Sun interview.Others replied to the thread to indicate that they were not in favor of inviting Kreeft. Zoe Sipe ’23.5, who was named among Guizar’s list of active members, clarified that she was not in support of the event and asked to be removed from the Newman email list.“I guess I was included on that list because I was attending Bible study and the student Masses,” Sipe said. “It was saying that the active members — it implied that we’re pro-Kreeft, which was really not OK.”According to Guizar, he and Winslett made an effort to call on every attendee who raised their hand during the Q&A session.The talkGuizar introduced Kreeft and — in a conversation before the start of the event — had told Kreeft that he had heard from Middlebury professors excited that Kreeft would speak at the college.Since the event was held as a Zoom webinar, attendees were only able to see Kreeft and could not see who else was watching. The chat function, which allows attendees to send messages to panelists and other viewers, was disabled throughout the event. The Q&A function — available for webinar-style Zoom meetings — remained open.In the talk, Kreeft drew on the 20 philosophical arguments for the existence of God that he and a co-author presented in one chapter of his book, “Handbook of Christian Apologetics.” Every once in a while, he strayed from analysis of Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways or Blaise Pascal’s Wager to relay a personal — and occasionally playful — anecdote in support of his arguments.“I know three ex-atheists converted by the music of Bach,” Kreeft said. “So, I formulate this argument very succinctly as ‘There is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Therefore, there must be a God.’”Eighteen minutes into the talk, an attendee who had changed their screen name to “Trans Rights” inquired about Kreeft’s views on women in the priesthood in the Q&A box. Winslett sent a reply asking the attendee to hold their question until the end and saying he would be happy to call on them then.“I’m finished. Your turn,” Kreeft said at the end of his prepared remarks.The Q&ADuring the Q&A, nearly all questions were related to arguments for the existence of God. No one asked about Kreeft’s stance regarding women in the priesthood. An anonaymous stduent asked the last question of the event.“I am a believer in God who also firmly believes in the rights of transgender people to self-determination,” the student said. “I’m wondering if you think that’s a contradiction to my views and whether I can still be a Christian.”Kreeft argued that science disproved the idea that gender is socially constructed, citing the human genetic structure as evidence for his claim.Later in the several-minutes-long exchange, the student began to tell Kreeft that his presence had made some students on campus feel unsafe. Kreeft interrupted the student, asking how a “controversial issue” made the student feel unsafe.“Because identity is different from an issue,” the student said. “It’s not something we can reasonably always have a divide on. This is who people are. It’s fundamental, and the problem with it isn’t that God is being used to justify these things — which sometimes is the case — the problem is rather that people associate certain religious beliefs with an epidemic of violence and persecution that takes countless trans lives every year.”In response, Kreeft asked the student to cite the number of murders occurring each year. And when the student cited a number, Kreeft questioned why the media did not report on it.“The Boston Globe is one of the most left-wing newspapers in the world, and I’ve never seen an article about the murder of a transgender person,” Kreeft said.In an interview with The Campus, the student said they asked the question not because they hoped to change Kreeft’s mind, but because they hoped to reach other students in the audience.“I wanted to give people an alternative to the speaker in my challenge,” the student said. “I guess my goal was to be sort of respectful enough in tone that I could kind of breakthrough to them a little bit.”Father Luke Austin, pastor of St. Mary’s, and Nick Maille, who is employed by the church and responsible for faith formation and campus ministry, commended the student for the exchange with Kreeft.“As we are created in the image of the triune of God, we are called to dialogue, not to cancel,” they wrote.Guizar said that he had wanted to prioritize questions from Newman members since the club had organized the event, but noted that he and Winslett still called on all those who raised their hands. “As this was an event organized by the Newman Catholic Club, we wanted to make sure that active Newman members were able to ask their questions germane to the topic at hand,” he said in an email to The Campus. Guizar said that the club was glad to have called on every student who raised their hand, especially those with strong disagreements with Kreeft. “This was certainly a highlight of the event,” he said.Club leadershipNewman has faced turnover among members of its leadership this year. Francis Shiner ’23, who was slated to serve as president of the club for the 2020-21 academic year, stepped down from the position at the beginning of the fall.Tango, the fall semester treasurer, said she had begun to notice changes in Newman’s culture and membership during her time as president the year before.“I noticed the club starting to get a bit more conservative and just like not very inclusive, and it was starting to be dominated by white male athletes,” she said.Tango said she had hoped to take the club in a different direction in the 2020–21 academic year, but when this did not happen, she served out the semester as treasurer and left Newman at the end of the fall.Instead of remaining in Newman, Tango is working with Sipe and the student who addressed Kreeft to restart and re-envision Gather. The club — a self-described “progressive community for Christians and friends” — had paused operations for the spring. But following the invitation of Kreeft, the anonymous student and Sipe saw a need for a progressive Christian space.“Many progressives and leftists see their views as incompatible with religion, and some religious people believe that, whatever their own personal beliefs may be, the conservative stances of their religious authorities are accurate and correct,” the anonynous student said. “But there’s an intersection between progressivism and religion, and I think more and more people, particularly Christians, are discovering that the Bible is a radical text that is deeply at odds with the modern construction of some churches and worldviews.”Tango said they plan to start holding meetings in the fall.* Editor’s Note: Following the publication of this article, a user emailing from the Middlebury InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) account denied that the club was an “official sponsor” of the event. However, Newman president Pedro Guizar ’22 told The Campus that IVCF did serve as a co-sponsor for the event in communication both before and after the article was published. Guizar said that IVCF was not listed on event posters because they had already been sent to print before the club became a co-sponsor. The sponsors listed on the event posters are Newman Catholic Club, the Department of Religion and MCAB. For clarity, this article has been updated to reflect the complete list of sponsors according to the posters and Guizar’s statement. Given that IVCF’s specific role is disputed, the caption has also been updated. 

In Defense of Inviting Dr. Peter Kreeft

I think that it is a sad reality that inviting a Catholic intellectual who believes all the teachings of the Church to Middlebury is scandalous, but such a state of affairs is not nearly as surprising to me as it once was. In my nearly three years on campus, I have seen multiple instances of intolerance toward traditionally religious viewpoints. As President of the Newman Catholic Club, I wanted to organize an event that would engage everyone in the Middlebury community. Dr. Peter Kreeft, a practicing Catholic, was an obvious choice. He has written over 80 books on Christian philosophy, theology and apologetics — many of them geared toward college students. He has been a professor in the philosophy department at Boston College for decades and has spoken at countless campuses. In a meeting via Zoom, the Newman Catholic Club board was pressured by a religious life administrator to “reconsider” our invitation of Dr. Kreeft. The administrator asked us to “reconsider”— to cancel — our invitation to Dr. Kreeft because of his views on gender theory — which had no bearing on the content of his talk. The Newman Catholic Club decided not to “reconsider” our invitation of Dr. Kreeft. While I cannot speak for all Newman Club officers, the first reason why I refused to “reconsider” Dr. Kreeft’s invitation is because of my view of the purpose of a liberal arts college. College provides us all with the time and leisure to pursue truth and to think seriously for ourselves. To “reconsider” Dr. Peter Kreeft’s invitation on the basis of his difference of opinion with the campus’s orthodoxy on gender theory seemed antithetical to the whole reason we study at Middlebury. Further, I am the first member of my family to attend college, and I did not accomplish this just so that I could be told by other people what ideas and views I can and cannot consider. There is some disagreement over the purpose of a liberal arts education. I once heard the analogy that Middlebury is a seminary, wherein only an orthodox perspective can be promoted. I think this view is derogatory toward seminaries: seminarians are very well-read people and they are exposed to plenty of “heretical” perspectives. Even the Vatican has its “devil’s advocate.” The analogy of Middlebury to a fundamentalist religious group is more appropriate: certain students desire for Middlebury to be rid of any speaker that is not in agreement with their doctrine. If anything were worthy of an anathema at a liberal arts college, it would be this view. The second reason why I refused to “reconsider” Dr. Peter Kreeft’s invitation is that I believe that Catholicism is one of the most charitable religions, as we believe that God is infinite in love and mercy. Dr. Kreeft’s closing words at the lecture expresses this principle: “all human beings must be accepted as creatures of God, children of God, lovable and beloved. That’s one absolute nonnegotiable.” Whereas the administrator thought that the interview wherein Dr. Kreeft shares his views on gender theory were hurtful, I read the interview to be that of a person that is genuinely sensitive, charitable and faithfully representing the Catholic Church’s teaching. It is love that informs Church teachings. Bishop Barron has said that “[s]ince God is love, the Church is endeavoring to place every aspect of human life--personal, social, political, cultural--under the aegis of love. And love is willing the good of the other as other.” The Church also believes that “speaking the truth is love.” In Matthew 19:4, Jesus refers to Genesis 5:2 when he says, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female.” The Church interprets this and other Scripture verses in such a way that it has a view of the relationship of body to soul that is incompatible with modern gender theory. The Church’s unitive vision of the person can be seen in St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” and the Congregation For Catholic Education’s document, “Male and Female He Created Them.” A third reason why I refused to “reconsider” Dr. Peter Kreeft’s invitation to Middlebury is the precedent that it would set. If we were to “reconsider” Dr. Peter Kreeft’s invitation for his Catholic views on gender theory, then Pope Francis would also be ineligible to speak at Middlebury, as he has been quite vocal against gender theory. The Newman Catholic Club would be unable to invite many Catholic intellectuals to speak at Middlebury College. The Committee on Speech and Inclusion correctly stated that “[a]ttempts to curtail speech that is considered offensive or controversial by some can lead to a chilling effect,” namely the soft ban on traditional religious believers from stepping foot on our campus. I want to express my gratitude to Middlebury for respecting free inquiry and dialogue. Furthermore, in spite of the preponderance of unproductive behavior from some protestors such as tearing down our posters, we ensured (as planned) that everyone who had a question could ask their question. In overtime, the final question came when a trans-identifying student challenged Dr. Kreeft on his view on gender theory. I commend this highly. This student’s exchange with Kreeft gave us all a sense of what honest dialogue looks like when we treat one another with respect. When I informed Dr. Kreeft about the controversy surrounding his invitation, he responded brilliantly: “Everyone has an absolute, a God: either the real one or an idol.” I think that too often, people have let their political beliefs serve as their absolute and thus political disagreements become the basis on which they seek to cancel others. I object to that view, and instead share the one promoted by St. Mary’s Fr. Luke: “As we are created in the image of the triune God, we are called to dialogue, not to cancel.” Pedro Guizar is a member of the class of 2022.

With the pandemic upending many of the typical features of social life, students have looked for new ways to connect — and struggled to adapt to altered formats. This fall, 80% of students who responded to a survey conducted by The Campus felt that on-campus spaces for socializing were inadequate. Though the college worked to provide new outdoor spaces for the spring, many students still struggled to navigate the social scene amid varying levels of concern about the risk of contracting Covid-19. In this year’s survey, we asked respondents to answer questions about everything from substance use to pressure to break Covid-19 guidelines to the most difficult aspects of acclimating to Middlebury. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Nearly 90% of respondents who were enrolled as in-person learners this spring reported feeling pressure to break Covid-19 protocols to either include someone or be included in social activities, with 41% saying that they “often” felt this pressure. Only about 11% of in-person respondents said they have never felt pressure to break Covid-19 protocols for this reason. These data align with a survey The Campus conducted in the fall, which found that nearly two thirds of respondents had broken Covid-19 guidelines that semester. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Pressure to break Covid-19 guidelines varied by class year and was especially common among first-year and first-year-Feb respondents who indicated that they were in-person learners. About 94% of these first-year Febs reported feeling this pressure to some degree. More than half of in-person first-year respondents said that they “often” felt pressure to break Covid-19 protocols for the sake of inclusion in social activities — more than any other class. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); The Campus asked students to indicate up to three things that were the most difficult elements of acclimating to Middlebury as a first year. Nearly 60% of respondents felt that making friends was one of the most difficult aspects. It was the most frequently selected aspect for students of all class years — except for those who matriculated this fall and spring. Many of those first years — who went without MiddView trips, Battell Beach square dancing and other traditional orientation activities this year — expressed concerns about isolation and meeting friends in early September. In the Zeitgeist survey, a little over 65% of respondents in the class of 2024 said that Covid-19 rules and regulations were one of the most challenging parts of acclimating, and about half of all first-year respondents selected “making friends.” The same two aspects were the most frequently selected by first-year febs.  The aspects of acclimating to Middlebury that students found most difficult also varied by race. One in four students who identify as Black or African American selected “being at a predominantly white institution” — a much larger fraction than students who indicated other racial identities, with only 1% of white students selecting this option. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Students did not feel that Zoom events were an important part of developing their social life, and nearly 82% said that such events were “not important.” However, learning modality had a significant impact on friendships and social activities this year. More than 700 respondents said that whether they were in-person or remote students played a role, and more than 40% said modality was “extremely important” in shaping their social life. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Only about 18% of respondents who indicated that they were white said that race or ethnicity played a role in shaping their social lives, whereas the majority of students who indicated any other race or ethnicity said that it was important. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Students were also surveyed about their substance use at Middlebury and asked to select all options that applied. Similar to last year, The Campus found that most respondents had consumed alcohol while at Middlebury, and a majority had partied where alcohol or drugs were present. But the percentage of students who said they had done the latter dropped from about 91% in last year’s survey to roughly 82% this year. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); About a third of students felt that their substance use had increased since the start of the pandemic. Of those who said they frequently used substances to cope with stress, 70% said their substance use had increased since the start of the pandemic.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Most students said they were part of at least one friend group. The Campus added an option for “I have a collection of different friends” this year and saw the number of students who claimed to be part of multiple friend groups shrink from about two thirds of respondents to less than one third. Despite restrictions on gathering sizes and limits on close contacts, a smaller number of students reported feeling like they were not part of any friend group in comparison to last year’s survey. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Students also shared whether they had experienced discriminatory, insensitive or hostile behavior at Middlebury. Students most frequently said that their peers exhibited such behavior — 166 students experienced this type of behavior from other students. Students more often witnessed discriminatory, insensitive or hostile behavior than they experienced it. About 43% reported seeing students engage in such behavior towards their peers. Roughly 22% said they witnessed this kind of behavior from faculty. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Nearly half of all respondents who indicated that they were Black or African American said they had faced discriminatory, insensitive or hostile behaviour from other students — a slightly higher percentage than students who indicated any other race or ethnicity. Black or African American respondents also indicated that they experienced such behavior from Public Safety and community members at much higher rates than other students.

!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); A vast majority of respondents — over 75% — responded with “yes” or “sometimes” when asked if they struggled with their relationship with food or exercise during their time at Middlebury. Nearly half of respondents responded “yes” — a sharp uptick from last years’ 35%. Almost 80% said they knew someone who had. Students have written several op-eds in the last year about this campus’s disordered eating problem and how it has been exacerbated during the pandemic. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Still, 751 respondents reported turning to exercise to relieve mental health struggles, only second to socializing as a means of coping. Additional findings show that more than one out of every 10 respondents frequently turn to alcohol to cope with stress; another 30% do so occasionally. One out of every six students sought counseling during the fall semester, and Counseling Services has seen a marked increase in students showing signs of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts on intake forms this year. Common struggles include isolation, existentialism and grief, according to Associate Director of Clinical Operations Ben Gooch. In the midst of their struggles, respondents overwhelmingly found Middlebury’s mental health resources inadequate, with 80% indicating they were unsatisfied. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Nearly 30% of students had already received the vaccine when the survey closed on April 12, and more than two-thirds of respondents planned on getting vaccinated as soon as possible. Vaccine hesitancy is much more prevalent nationally, where only 30% have the same plans. While only one Middlebury respondent said they would “definitely not” get vaccinated, 13% of the U.S. is dead set against getting vaccinated. Respondents who indicated they would get the vaccine as soon as possible counted for roughly 94% of those who had not yet received it. More than 5% of respondents have tested positive for Covid-19, slightly higher than the roughly 4% in Vermont and lower than the 10% in the U.S..   !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); One in five respondents (20%) reported having survived sexual assault, and 8% of respondents reported experiencing sexual assault on campus. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Gender and race played a large role in who experienced sexual assault. More than half of nonbinary respondents, 25% of female-identifying students and 10% of male-identifying students reported that they have been assaulted. BIPOC respondents reported experiencing sexual assault at a 22% higher rate than white students. Of the 82 respondents who said they were sexually assaulted on campus, only nine chose to report the incident to Middlebury. Several respondents chose not to report because the perpetrators were friends, teammates or intimate partners. “I was too afraid of the social backlash because he was a teammate,” one respondent wrote. “I didn’t think Middlebury would actually punish him and I thought it would be more traumatizing than helpful.” Others cited fears of social repercussions, worries about being victim-blamed and “self-gaslighting” about whether what happened to them truly counted as sexual assault as reasons why they did not report. Many anticipated little support or action from the school and thought the reporting process would exacerbate the trauma they were already dealing with. Five out of the nine students who reported their sexual assaults to the school were dissatisfied with how Middlebury handled their cases. At the beginning of this academic year, the college changed its disciplinary procedures for reported cases of sexual assault following new Title IX guidance from the Department of Education. Major changes include a more stringent definition of sexual assault, a live hearing process for those accused of perpetrating sexual violence and a new informal process for mediating cases of sexual assault when survivors don’t want to seek official discipline or cases don’t fall under the new definition.

!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); When asked what the most pressing issue of our day is, respondents overwhelmingly mentioned both the environment and racial justice before any other issues. The term “climate” was mentioned in 377 responses and 119 responses mentioned “racism.”  Also prominent were “inequality” with 72 mentions and “racial” with 64 mentions. Notably, “inequality” was included in only 43 responses last year — not even a top 10 word — while “climate” was by far the most popular word, mentioned 535 times.  The rise in mentions of racism and inequities reflects year-long national conversations about police brutality and systemic racism after the killing of George Floyd over the summer.  Many responses emphasized the institutional nature of social issues, with 41 responses mentioning “capitalism” and 25 responses mentioning “systemic.” Others highlighted how they are intersectional: One student responded, “Racial Capitalism (it is the basis of all injustice),” while another wrote, “Capitalism, misogyny, racism, global warming… they all feed off each other and to compare oppressions is to contribute to the problem.” “Covid” was the ninth most common response, appearing 37 times, with one student writing “Stop over-controlling us with Covid rules.” Many student responses reflected feelings of fatigue and hopelessness: “figuring out WTF is going on,” one student wrote. “Literally everything,” wrote another. One student chose a more perennial issue: “the amount of schoolwork.” !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Overall, the majority of students — 56% — say that the value of cancel culture depends on the situation. Others remain skeptical, with just over 10% of students responding with “unsure.” Responses also varied to a degree based on race. Notably, white students were the least likely to think that cancel culture is valuable; black students were most likely to express that cancel culture is not valuable.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); The student population remains very left-leaning, with slight variation among student populations. On a scale from 0 (far left) to 10 (far right), the student population falls at an average of 1.96. The mean for varsity athletes is significantly less liberal at 2.87, compared to the non-athlete mean of 1.80. The means of Black and white students fell near the population sample average — at 1.87 and 1.89 respectively. Asian students are most right-leaning of all racial groups, with an average of 2.53.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Middlebury students tend to care a great deal about politics, and more than 80% of students say that they “care a lot about a wide range of issues” or “care a lot about a few specific issues.” Female and non-binary students expressed greater interest in political issues: 86% of female students and 96% of non-binary students expressed “caring a lot” — whether it be a wide or narrow range of issuess — compared to 76% of male students. 

In an academic year altered by the pandemic, only 10% of respondents reported being extremely satisfied with their Middlebury experience this year — and more than one in four respondents reported being somewhat or extremely dissatisfied. A vast majority — nearly 80% — reported that Covid-19 had a negative impact on their academic learning.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); But in general, respondents who had more in-person classes were more satisfied with their experience at Middlebury. This is consistent with the anecdotal responses in the Fall 2020 survey, where many students wished for more in-person classes. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); The data also show that the class of 2024 and class of 2024.5 — the only classes with no pre-pandemic Middlebury experience — were the most satisfied with their experience at Middlebury this year. Seniors, after first-year Febs, were the most likely to say they were “extremely satisfied” with their experience. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); More than two thirds — 68% — of students reported experiencing some degree of impostor syndrome while at Middlebury, and 31% of respondents said they have experienced impostor syndrome often. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Impostor syndrome, the experience of doubting one’s abilities and feeling like a fraud, is reported with greater frequency by certain groups. Respondents who identified as racial minorities felt impostor syndrome far more than others: almost half of respondents who identified as Hispanic, Latino, Black or African American experienced impostor feelings often.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); In addition, discrepancies emerged along the lines of class and hometown. Forty percent of students receiving financial aid said they felt impostor syndrome often, compared to 25% of students not on financial aid. Students from the Southwest and Southeast reported experiencing impostor syndrome most often, at 46% and 35%, respectively.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Changes to learning have also shaped students’ academic habits and routines. Almost two-thirds of respondents said they spend seven or more hours on a screen everyday. Academics, however, remained a relative priority when students were pressed for time. Respondents indicated that they sacrificed sleep, exercise, chores and social activities (each selected by more than 60% of survey-takers). Notably, 300 students, roughly 29%, also reported that they sacrificed meals.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); This year’s data show a significant uptick in honor code violations, with 58% of respondents saying they had broken the code at some point—up from 46% in 2020 and 35% in 2019. As in 2020, the most common reason students broke the code was using unauthorized aid, which once again comprised more than half of the honor code violations.  

Review: Men's golf

The NESCAC celebrated its 50th anniversary as the Men’s Golf Championship kicked off this weekend at the Ledges Country Club in South Hadley, Massachusetts. For the eight out of 11 participating NESCAC schools, the competition offers a chance to earn the first trophy in nearly two years.  Tufts claimed a narrow lead through the opening 18 holes on Sunday, hitting a cumulative 300 strokes for a score of 12 over par. Trinity sits in second — just one stroke back of the leaders — while Middlebury is in third with 303 strokes. The Panthers have a healthy lead over the rest of the field, with fourth-place Hamilton 10 strokes back. Incumbent champions Williams are in fifth place after the opening weekend, with Wesleyan, Bates and Amherst rounding out the rear. Jordan Bessalel ’21 led the Panthers in the first day of competition, currently tied for second overall by matching par. Meanwhile, Hogan Beazley ’23 sits fifth overall through the first round.  “We put ourselves in a good position for the final round next weekend,” Bessalel said. “We are excited for the opportunity to chase down the teams ahead of us.”  Although the team was hoping to post slightly lower scores through the opening round, Bessalel praised his team for their concentration and strong mentality: “The guys did a great job of grinding out every single shot.”  Colin McCaigue ’24 continued a strong start to his Middlebury career with a 76, with John Mikus ’21 scoring an 80 and Porter Bowman ’21.5 tallying a 90. The conference championship resumes next weekend on Sunday, May 2, at the same location.  Editor’s Note: Porter Bowman ’21.5 is the senior opinion editor for The Campus. 

WRMC Radio Roundup: Midterm music check-in

Have your Spotify playlists become stale? Is your weekly mix just not cutting it? Maybe it’s time to branch out and listen to something new. The Executive Board of WRMC, Middlebury College’s radio station, has selected a wonderfully wide range of albums, spanning time and genre, for your listening pleasure. Check back each week for a new set of recommendations. *RIYL (recommended if you like)   Music Director’s Pick - Dan Frazo ’23 Album: “The Mighty Project” — Total Football Genre: Indie Pop, Surf Rock, Dream Pop RIYL: Beach Fossils, Real Estate, Woods, Vundabar Blurb: “The Mighty Project” is a six-piece band of fun-lovers from Beppu, Japan. Influenced by the sounds of American indie pop, frontman Keito Otsuka gathered up a group of his childhood friends to try his own hand at making music in 2018. Since then, the band has been busy crafting simple, atmospheric tunes that bridge dream pop and surf rock, all the while performing at local venues in Beppu.    Studio Manager’s Pick - Lucy Rinzler-Day ’21 Album: “Amiture” – The Beach Genre: Dance, Electronica, New Wave RIYL: New Order, Spelling, Drab Majesty, TR/ST, Pet Shop Boys, Bronski Beat, Choir Boy Blurb: This album instantly transported me back to last spring, briefly abroad in Prague, at a low-ceilinged, hole-in-the-wall nightclub during its ’80s night, where dark, pulsing beats reverberated through the purple smoke. If you think “Blue Monday'' by New Order goes hard, try this. Whether cleaning my room or putting on silver eyeshadow for a small get-together this past weekend, “The Beach” did the trick. (Also, one of WRMC’s official additions last week, so we encourage you to play it on your show to support emerging artists like this!) Amiture’s gorgeously smooth, tenor/contralto vocals are reminiscent of the bands who pioneered ’80s New Wave, while his instrumentals are smooth, danceable and incredibly well-produced. Viiiibes.    Music Director’s Pick – George Werner ’21 Album: “Music from the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle” –  The Olivia Tremor Control  Genre: Neo-psychedelic Rock, Experimental RIYL: The Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Thee Oh Sees Blurb: The Olivia Tremor Control — a member of the Elephant 6 Collective that produced Neutral Milk Hotel and The Apples in Stereo — were part of a resurgence of interest in the songwriting and production practices of the 1960s, those which were used to produce albums like the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds.” The album ranges from pleasing-to-the-ear retro pop like “Jumping Fences” to the bizarre — and occasionally haunting — soundscapes of the ten successive tracks titled “Green Typewriters.” A great album to listen to all the way through, it interweaves familiar notes and experimental music together seamlessly.    Creative Director’s Pick - Chad Kim ’23.5 Album: “Nico and Her Psychedelic Subconscious” – Mr. Elevator Genre: Jazz Band, Psychedelia, Rock  RIYL: Mdou Moctar, Beyond the Seasons, KGLW Blurb: As the name of the album suggests, “Nico and Her Psychedelic Subconscious” features a series of jam sessions punctuated with moments of calmness that act as a chance for the listener to catch their breath. The evolution of each track allows an exploration of a broad gamut of genres —  from experimental to more classic psych rock. If you’re the kind that enjoys having your senses knocked around in the presence of novelty, then this is the perfect album for you.   Programming Director’s Pick - Micah Raymond ’21 Album: “Stay in the Car” – Bachelor Genre: Indie Rock RIYL: Jay Som, Palehound, Hand Habits, SASAMI Blurb: Best friends Melina Duterte (of Jay Som) and Ellen Kempner (of Palehound) — two classic WRMC faves — just started a band together. They’ve released a couple singles from their upcoming album (you can preorder it on Bandcamp) and they’re everything you thought they’d be. The music is fun and playful, with the just-gritty-enough crunch that we’ve come to expect from the two. Duterte and Kempner write that while they did shed tears in the creative process — especially around themes of queerness and climate change — “they couldn’t remember a time they’d ever been so delirious with creativity, so overwhelmed with joy.” A must-hear, and a must-look-forward-to.

Addison County shelters & homes adapt to challenges of Covid-19

Since the start of the pandemic, Addison County's robust network of nonprofit organizations has been reworking its services to comply with Vermont’s social distancing protocols and continue collaborative, volunteer-based service. Covid-19-induced challenges, Vermont’s worsening opioid crisis and increased demand for real estate have critically affected the lives of people experiencing homelessness within Addison County.  More people in Addison County sought out services in 2020 than in past years, according to Helena Van Voorst, executive director of United Way of Addison County (UWAC). The John Graham shelter in Vergennes and Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects (HOPE) in Middlebury also noticed a sizable uptick in the number of individuals who utilized the food security, counseling and housing services this past year than in previous years. “We saw both more people in Addison County needing help and an influx of people from outside of the county coming to Addison County for help,” Van Voorst said. She noted that Addison County organizations provided hotel rooms for approximately 85 people.  The effects of Covid-19 on homelessness have yet to be reported by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), hindering organizational efforts. While the exact result is unknown, it is clear that the crisis has correspondingly worsened. Even before the pandemic, millions of Americans were impacted by a nationwide housing crisis. In 2020, HUD estimated that 568,000 Americans (roughly 17 in 10,000 people in the U.S.) lacked secure housing.  Vermont accounted for 1,089 of these individuals, and 81 were within Addison County. However, the real numbers may be higher: Counts are determined using a narrow definition of homelessness that may not include everyone experiencing housing insecurity, and the count is conducted with volunteers by hand.  Fortunately, the state loosened the rules of the General Assistance and Emergency Housing program, which is administered by Economic Services.  “Prior to Covid-19,  there was a very specific set of requirements that people would have to meet in order to qualify for this program,” said Kelly Conley of HOPE in an email to The Campus. Now that requirements are relaxed, organizations can more easily house their clients in hotels.  According to Jess Halper, executive director of the John Graham Shelter, her organization has placed approximately 80 households at the Marriott, Middlebury Sweets, Middlebury Inn and Sugarhouse Motel. In order to ensure social distancing, the John Graham Shelter has limited the number of households able to stay within the shelter itself. “We have one room per household; before, there were two households per room,” Halper said.  Complying with pandemic protocols, the John Graham Shelter has also adjusted its  operations. Clients do not need to receive a negative Covid-19 test before using the shelter’s services, but they must adhere to strict physical distancing procedures. The kitchen and living areas of the shelter, formerly communal and social spaces, are now used as quarantine spaces and rooms to hold bagged meals. Although some children still attend school in person, many join virtually using tablets provided by the shelter.  HOPE’s most significant adjustment has been how they communicate with their clients. “We primarily are speaking with them over the phone or, on occasion, outside,” Conley said.  Outreach and communication have been compromised in the pandemic, particularly for those who don’t consume news media, use social media or have access to the internet. UWAC has struggled to reach people to make sure their needs are being met.   “People might interact with their doctor, elderly service or some other organization, but with folks being mostly in their homes, we need to be sure that we connect with those people.”  In response to this challenge, UWAC has dispersed informative flyers, resource guides and contacts for mutual aid via all-town mailings.  “One mutual aid group gave information to first responders, so if they went to a home to perhaps help an elderly person who isn’t getting the paper or internet and who doesn’t know what help is available, the first responders are armed with a resource guide,” Van Voorst said. UWAC also launched an emergency Covid-19 relief fund called Addison County Response, which allocates philanthropic funding to people who are experiencing homelessness or about to be experiencing homelessness.  Increased isolation and hardship have exacerbated the opioid crisis, especially among homeless individuals. Employment in Vermont has decreased by 3.1%, while substance abuse has increased. Van Voorst confirmed that drug addiction serves as a barrier to accessing immediate housing relief services.  “When youth get in the habit of using at younger ages, it’s likely to be more problematic when they’re older. We hope that as time goes on, we’ll see fewer issues with substance abuse disorder in our adults,” she said. The UWAC staff is working all remote, while the John Graham Shelter moved staff members into hotels to serve the needs of homeless people.  Despite providing an essential service, nonprofits like the John Graham Shelter have had to continue working remotely partly because of their low priority status on the vaccine waitlist.  “We had to really advocate to get ourselves even in the running for vaccines. And I can’t speak to the state’s behind-the-scenes process on that, but it is haphazard and confusing. I would say the overall stress on the staff is enormous,” Halper said.  The lack of student volunteers has been another stressor for nonprofit employees.  “When we were first learning that college students were going to go home was the first snap of reality… we thought about how so many nonprofits in the county are losing manpower when they need it most,” Van Voorst said. As Covid-19 worsened, organizations realised that relying on any type of volunteers would be difficult.  More than ever, Addison County organizations are working together to step up to the novel challenges spurred by the pandemic.  “We have really close relationships with other agencies in the community. Many of the agencies in Addison County come together once a week to meet and talk. Everyone is committed to collaboration,” Van Voorst said. To donate to Addison County organizations, visit United Way Addison County, John Graham Center and HOPE.

Jack Langerman ’19.5 memorialized through creation of Sports Innovation Lab internship

After Jack Langerman’s death on Jan. 17, his former co-workers at Sports Innovation Lab gathered on Zoom to grieve and share memories: the days when the company president teased him for having a worse throwing arm than “the old man,” the time Jack ran out and bought Pop-Tarts for a distraught friend, and the fact that he was so proud of working for the company that he helped recruit another Middlebury student after he left.  Through the tears and laughter, a plan began to emerge to honor his legacy and keep his memory alive at the company and at Middlebury. The Sports Innovation Lab, in collaboration with the Center for Careers and Internships (CCI) and the Langerman family, created the Jack Langerman Internship. The internship will accept one Middlebury student each summer for a two-month paid position at the sports marketing analytics startup where Jack worked during the summers of 2018 and 2019. In the two weeks the application was open, 30 students applied for the summer 2021 position.  The partnership with the CCI only officially extends over the next three years, but Sports Innovation Lab president and co-founder Josh Walker ’96.5 hopes that the position will continue long past then. “Selfish[ly], we're trying to just keep him,” Walker said. “Now we have a tool to make sure that future Middlebury students say his name and know why they’re [at the company]. It'll make us remember Jack every year and keep him a part of our company . . .  [because] I don't want someone like Jack Langerman to be forgotten.”  Jack’s lifelong love for and dedication to sports started long before he began working at the Sports Innovation Lab.  From the moment Jack first entered Fenway Park at age three, he was hooked on baseball. It was a game for the ages: the Yankees and Red Sox were playing off for a chance at the 1999 American League Championship Series with pitching legends Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez facing off. Jack’s parents, Scott Langerman ’87 and Vicki Langerman, were determined not to miss a second of it. Evidently, young Jack agreed. His parents had set up multiple contingency plans of relatives and friends who could pick him up if the normally squirmy toddler decided to throw a fuss, but “from the first pitch to the last out,” Jack didn’t move a muscle.   Jack’s love for baseball eventually led him to walk onto Middlebury’s baseball team, where he played at first base his freshman year. However, sophomore year, Jack left competitive play and spoke to the new head coach, Mike Leonard, about creating a position for himself where he could still be part of the team and contribute, even if he wasn’t on the field.  Jack served in the newly created role of director of baseball operations for his last three years at Middlebury. Jack went to every practice and game. He helped as an assistant coach in the dugout, welcomed and mentored new players, scouted teams, analyzed players skills and weaknesses, helped develop strategy and more. But Leonard said Jack’s biggest contribution came in the team culture he helped form.  “Our program would not be what it is today without Jack’s influence on it,” Leonard was quoted as saying in a campus-wide email. “His ability to bring people together, foster team cohesion, and represent the program’s highest ideals in everything he did set him apart. He was kind, thoughtful, and a gifted communicator who welcomed new members of the team to campus and gave them an instant support system. The relationships he built strengthened connections within our group and made everyone who was a part of it feel like a family.” Jack’s time as the director of baseball operations gave him insight into what he could do within the sports industry off the field. His search for a career path led him to the Sports Innovation Lab, where he hoped to build a resume and set of skills that could serve as a launching point.  “His [dream job] would have been General Manager of the Red Sox,” Scott Langerman said. “I'm not sure if he ever would have accomplished that, but it would have been fun to watch him try.”  Scott Langerman hopes that those who receive the Jack Langerman Internship will learn to love sports and experience the industry in all of its forms, just as Jack did.   “If somebody walks away from the experience and [thinks], ‘Wow, now I understand why Jack made such an impact. I understand why he enjoyed it so much, and I understand why he loved this industry,’ that, to me, is a win,” Scott Langerman said. “And hopefully, they'll walk away from him wanting to do something similar for somebody else.”  For many at the Sports Innovation Lab, the internship is a way of thanking Jack for the multitude of ways he helped the company and its employees. Molly Tissenbaum, one of his former coworkers, recalled being visibly distraught at work one day after her visa application was rejected. Jack, who sat across from her, noticed immediately. When she began crying after telling him what was wrong, he ran off in search of a way to comfort her in the form of her favorite snack.  “The next thing that I knew, he had left the office and come back with a bag full of Pop-Tarts and just put them on a table in front of me. That week he was constantly checking in on me and making sure that I was OK and fully stocked with Pop-Tarts. And that, to me was the epitome of what Jack was all about,” Tissenbaum said. “He did whatever he could do to make somebody else smile or feel better.”  When Eliza Van Voorhis ’21.5, the Sport Innovation Lab’s current intern, reached out to Jack for advice on applying to the company, she was blown away by the outpouring of support she received in return. He immediately met with her at lunch to answer her questions, give advice and connect her with people from the company. After his passing, Van Voorhis spent an afternoon scrolling through their text exchanges and was astonished to see the volume of messages of support he sent, checking in about her application and helping her troubleshoot until she got the job.   One of Van Voorhis’ biggest regrets is not properly thanking Jack for all his help and generosity. She hopes helping to set up this internship in his honor can serve as a way to demonstrate her gratitude, even if he isn’t here to receive it.  While she recused herself from participating in the final decision-making process, Van Voorhis coordinated with the CCI to create the internship and Handshake entry and helped schedule interviews and coordinate with the 30 applicants. Tissenbaum hopes that the first recipient of the Jack Langerman Internship can help find the next recipient and so on in a chain of the kind of acts of service for which Jack was known.   “He was a huge proponent of paying it forward, and we felt that this was a really nice way to pay his legacy forward and keep people from Midd, which is something that he was so passionate about and that he clearly loved, close to us and our company,” Tissenbaum said. “This seemed like a way that we could continue to keep him top of mind, and that we could remind ourselves that he's still having an impact on not just us as individuals, but as our company as a whole.”  Jack’s family was heartwarmed, if not surprised, by the depth of the connections he formed with his former coworkers. Jack loved people and constantly sought out connection with anyone and everyone. For eight years, Jack participated in a fantasy football pool with the Langermans’ 80-year-old neighbor, trading yard chores and Red Sox T-shirts as prizes for the winner and the loser’s forfeit. Once he had befriended someone, Jack held on.   Jack was born in Atlanta and lived there until he turned three, when his family moved to Maryland. Jack kept in touch with the women who worked at the daycare he attended in Atlanta for his whole life. When he traveled with the baseball team to Emory University for a game and spring break trip, he invited them to the game and hung out with them afterwards, despite not having seen them for nearly 20 years.   “I think Jack can be described most simply as everyone’s friend. It didn’t matter who it was — the 90-year-old neighbor next door, the quiet kid in the back of the class, the friend of a friend of a friend — Jack approached each person with the same non-judgement and genuine interest,” his sister, Jenny Langerman ’22, wrote in an email to The Campus. “He had a knack for making people feel special, for making them feel welcome and wanted, for seeing in them what they have trouble seeing in themselves. He was a master of the masses and a great connector of people, and everything was a little brighter with him next to you.”  In the wake of his passing, the Langerman family has created the Jack Langerman Community Foundation. While they are still formulating plans for the foundation, they hope it can serve as another way of carrying on his legacy.  “There are so many things that Jack was so passionate about, so many things that he would have done if he was given more time,” Scott Langerman said. “We feel that the world is a far lesser place without somebody driving those things. We want to drive those and really take care of the people he would have taken care of and take care of the places that were so important to him and shaped him.” Scott Langerman is also working to establish an additional summer sports internship for Middlebury students in Jack’s honor. For more information on the Jack Langerman Community Foundation, please email jacklangermanfoundation@gmail.com.

The College and the Institute

Nonproliferation, economic diplomacy and localization management are terms seldomly heard on the college’s Vermont campus.But 2,500 miles away on the coast of California, more than 600 graduate students and hundreds of faculty and staff research these very topics at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies (MIIS), an establishment as deeply institutionally intertwined with the college as its Schools Abroad or Bread Loaf School of English.In 2005, Middlebury College’s then-President Ronald Liebowitz floated the idea of affiliating the college with the Monterey Institute, as it was known at the time. The institute was a graduate school founded in 1955 with a focus on foreign languages that evolved to include programs in areas like international policy, translation studies and terrorism studies. In 2003, it was placed on probation by its accreditation institute because of a pattern of operating deficits.A 2005 Faculty Council vote about the possible acquisition of the institute overwhelmingly opposed the idea, with nearly 80% voting against acquisition. Liebowitz and the Board of Trustees pursued an affiliation anyway, at which point the college absorbed the institute’s debts and assets. Five years later — in 2010 — the college officially acquired MIIS, and by 2015, the school was renamed The Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.Over the last 15 years, administrators have made extensive efforts to bring the two institutions closer together. They’ve created funds to encourage inter-campus interaction, promoted collaboration between faculty and created opportunities for undergraduates to study away at MIIS. However, relations between MIIS and the college remain disjointed, partially as a result of their separate histories but manifesting more recently in financial concerns.In April 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic intensified, Middlebury’s faculty gathered to vote on the Sense of the Faculty Motion submitted by college Professor of Mathematics Frank Swenton recommending detaching MIIS from the college. The motion was spurred by fears of impending financial challenges resulting from the pandemic. Swenton believed disconnecting the schools was the most effective immediate step in avoiding risk of cuts to salaries and services at the Vermont campus.The motion sparked renewed debate in both Vermont and California about the place of MIIS in the college’s mission. In this series, we explore the forces, people, events and decisions that led to the relationship between the schools, the sentiments that persist at both institutions and visions for the future of the relationship.Click through the parts below to read more.

Staff undergo temporary reshuffling while students are away

When the majority of students left Middlebury for winter break, leaving just 23 students on campus for the dining halls to feed in December, dining hall staffers were left with little work. As a solution, the college offered these staffers the option to temporarily work in other departments, which allowed them to avoid using up their Combined Time Off (CTO) during the break. Staff members accumulate CTO the longer they work at Middlebury, and it can be used for vacation time or sick leave. Those who did not opt for positions in other departments will be required to use CTO to account for the time off.  Dining staff are currently helping across a range of departments, including Grounds and Custodial as well as at the Snow Bowl and Bread Loaf. There is also a “skeletal crew” working at Ross to feed the small number of students currently living on campus.  Coordinating requested time off and scheduling new positions for 100 dining staffers was no easy feat. According to Dan Detora, director of dining services, staff were given the choice of where they would like to work, and Middlebury made efforts to put them in their preferred spot.  Patti McCaffrey, a chef in Atwater, has worked in the kitchens of Middlebury for 22 years. After similar reshufflings last year, she had worked in the athletic center during the summer and was happy to return there for winter break. The majority of the dining staff went to custodial services. The custodial team typically employs about 85 staffers, but this year it was down to about 65 during the fall semester after a hiring freeze that has been in place since last spring. The team has temporarily increased nearly twofold this winter with the addition of dining staff.  The custodial staff usually cleans small houses and suites during the semester but did not do so this year due to their reduced numbers and the health risks presented by Covid-19. Now that most students are away from campus, staff has been busy cleaning these houses and suites and moving the belongings of students assigned to new rooms for the spring. As things have slowed down, the college wants employees who accumulated more than 80 hours of CTO by November 29, 2020 to take time off. This is to reduce the likelihood of staff taking such breaks in June and July instead, when the college anticipates there will be a lot more work to be done.  Dan Celik is one of the custodial supervisors who has integrated teams of dining staff into facilities work. He also teaches an introductory course on cleaning, including safety aspects, PPE, chemicals to use and ergonomics to prevent injury. He has been busy teaching these classes to the dining staff members who recently joined the custodial team. McCaffrey noted that Middlebury has been understanding about the difficulty of these changes.  “There’s been no pressure at all. It’s been like, ‘work at your own pace, take lots of breaks,’” he said.   According to Celik, everything has run smoothly, and the dining staff has successfully integrated with the team. Still, the situation is not perfect. The dining staff were hired as cooks, and many would much rather do that.  “For people who aren’t really happy about this, it’s a long enough time to not be doing what they really want to be doing,” McCaffrey said.  The dining staffers have been able to maintain their same pay, and they will return to their regular dining positions for the spring semester. 

Campus survey finds split opinions on the fall, widespread Covid-19 violations and mental health struggles

Although two-thirds of students said they did not regret their Fall 2020 enrollment decision, 76% of students said their mental health was worse during the fall semester than during a typical semester and nearly two in three students broke Covid-19 health protocols, according to a Campus survey. Other major findings include:  More than a third of students — 38% — said the semester exceeded expectations, while almost 40% said that it was worse than expected.  Almost half of students said that they disapproved of the administration’s handling of the fall semester.  A vast majority of students, 75%, said they felt stressed about their relationships this semester.  Students emphasized increasing social opportunities for students, promoting inclusivity and providing greater clarity on Covid-19 safety rules when suggesting improvements for the spring.  At the end of the survey, we also offered students the opportunity to anonymously share their ideas on how to make the spring 2021 semester better and provide any additional anecdotes from the semester. We have included some of these anonymous responses throughout this article and compiled specific student suggestions for improving the spring semester. Academics !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); The data reveal a striking lack of consensus regarding how the fall semester went: while 38% of students said the semester exceeded their expectations, nearly 40% of students said the semester was worse than they expected. About a quarter of students said the semester was about the same as they expected.  In the anecdotal responses, many students wished for more in-person classes. “Middlebury should prioritize its primary duty, which is to educate its students to the best of its abilities by making every possible effort to make classes in-person,” wrote one student.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Satisfaction with the fall semester also varied by class year. While one in three members of the classes of 2021 or 2021.5 said the semester was worse than they expected, one half of respondents from the classes of 2023 or 2023.5 said the semester fell below expectations.  The vast majority of respondents, 87.5%, said they took four courses during the fall semester. A third of students indicated that two of their courses had in-person components, while 17% of students said they had zero classes with in-person components.  The average student had in-person components in roughly half — 45% — of their courses.  Approval of college entities !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Of the six different entities we asked students to evaluate, Middlebury faculty enjoyed by far the highest approval rating. Still, in their anecdotal responses, students said they hoped that faculty would be more “lenient,” “understanding” and “flexible” during the spring semester. Some students wished faculty would go one step further and lighten students’ workloads.  “It seems like professors are concerned that reducing workloads means that we're learning less and not getting enough for our money,” one respondent wrote. “But the stress and depression of this fall made it so hard to learn that covering less material would be beneficial and we would actually learn more.”  Almost half of students, or 47%, disapproved of the administration, while a quarter approved of it. Some students said they thought Covid-19 policies were unrealistic or unclearly communicated in their anecdotal responses. “I hope that there can be more dialogue between students and administrators to understand how to better create rules that students will actually follow and feel safe,” one wrote.  Fall satisfaction and spring intentions !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Overall, two in three students said they did not regret their enrollment decision. One-tenth of respondents said they regretted their decision, and a quarter of students said they regretted the decision “somewhat.”  “I am not returning Middlebury in the Spring as they never fulfilled most of the things they told us they would throughout the semester,” one student wrote.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); If students’ intended spring plans are an indication of enrollment rates for the spring semester, Middlebury may see fewer students on campus this spring. 68% of students who said they intend to enroll as an on-campus student in the spring, compared to the 87% of respondents who identified as on-campus learners in the fall.  Compared to the 3.5% of students who took the semester off in the fall, 10% of respondents said they would not enroll or take the semester off. One senior student said they were part of a group of friends leaving campus in the spring as a result of the strict rules. “It’s not how I wanted to spend my senior spring but we can’t deal with the rules on campus and just want to be able to be together for our last few months,” the student wrote.  An additional 9% of students were unsure of their spring plans. The number of remote students and the number of students living off-campus but taking classes on-campus is projected to remain the same for the spring at about 7% and under 3% respectively. Covid-19 policies, rules, and guidelines !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Almost two in every three respondents — 64% — indicated that they broke Covid-19 safety rules this semester. A third of respondents said they exceeded room or suite capacity during the semester and a fourth of students reported having more than four close contacts. More than one in every ten — 13% — of students said they participated in a party or gathering with more than 10 people.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); One respondent said they were with as many as 30 other people in a house or suite without masks “every weekend.” The respondent added, “The rules were too strict. If I had followed them I would have become depressed.”  Some respondents believed that Covid-19 policies were enforced unevenly. “The inconsistency in punishment for breaking the Covid rules was absolutely unreal,” one respondent wrote. “Do not create a rule if it will not and cannot be enforced consistently.” !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Students greatly differed in their understanding of Middlebury’s Covid-19 policies. Nearly half of students said they felt confused by guidelines, compared to the 43% that said they were clear. “I worried pretty constantly that I would get reported for something that was me misunderstanding the rules and be kicked off campus,” one student responded.  Mental Health The survey finds a striking decline in student mental health during the fall semester.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Three-fourths of students said their mental health was worse than it has been during a typical semester. The three factors most likely to affect student mental health this semester were stress about an uncertain future amid the pandemic, stress about academic work and anxiety over friendships or “fear of missing out,” according to survey results. “The one thing that was amazing was my professors, but it is hard to motivate oneself to do work when you feel miserable all the time,” one student wrote.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Two-thirds of students reported feeling greater social isolation than in a normal semester, and almost a third of respondents experienced significant changes in their diet which led to either weight loss or gain. Nearly one in 10 students experienced intrusive thoughts of suicide which worsened during the semester.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Three-fourths of students felt stressed about their relationships. Some students expressed that the Covid-19 restrictions implemented by the college were successful in limiting cases of virus, but did so at the expense of students’ mental health. One student put it succinctly: “Mental health is just as important as physical health.” Others said they experienced mental strain due to the inability to socialize with friends or the fear of being punished for breaking Covid-19 rules.  General Demographics !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); This survey was sent to about 2,500 Middlebury students studying both remotely and on campus, and 549 — slightly less than quarter — responded. Eighty-seven percent of respondents were on-campus students this past fall, 2.3% of respondents lived off-campus but took classes on campus and 6.9% of respondents were remote students. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Respondents were fairly evenly distributed by class year, with a slight majority of respondents coming from the classes of 2022 and 2022.5 at 28.2%. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Three-quarters of respondents identified as white, 8.4% as Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander, 6% as of Latino or Hispanic Origin, 6% as biracial or multiracial, and 1.6% as Black or African American.  Thirty-one or 5.6% of respondents identified as international students. Slightly more than one-third of respondents said they receive financial aid.  Ideas from Student Responses for an improved Spring 2021 semester Social Life !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); 80% of students said that they thought spaces for hanging out or socializing were inadequate. 75% of students said they thought there was inadequate space for hosting events.  In the anecdotal responses, students repeatedly said they hoped for more in-person social opportunities in the spring, either facilitated by the college or through extracurricular activities, and improved access to spaces for socializing. One respondent wanted “more opportunities for virtual students to stay connected to campus events with students in person.”  Other student ideas included having heaters for tents, changing policies so that it is easier to register events and providing “funding for students to figure out how to make their own fun.”  Several students said they would be willing to sacrifice off-campus privileges in order to make on-campus rules less strict.  Inclusivity  Some anecdotal responses mentioned the ways in which rules and policies create different playing fields for different students.  “This semester exasperated the divide between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' because the students who had access to a car to drive places in Addison County tended to have a better experience overall than those who didn't,” wrote the student, adding that they wished the college provided a “rent-a-car” service for students.  “Promote inclusivity,” wrote another student. “White students spend time with white students and are intimidating to students of color. There is an apparent divide.”  Other students felt that they had to exclude friends from social gatherings due to capacity limits. One student felt particularly strongly about Covid-19 policies capping the number of people in a room: “Rules [related to Covid-19] essentially required us to ruin our friendships.”  One student said that they hoped students would be allowed to rank their preferred dining hall. “Some dining halls have a reputation of being predominantly white spaces, whereas other dining halls have a perception of being more inclusive to BIPOC students,” the student wrote.  Creation and Communication of Covid-19 Policies  Some students hoped for student input regarding Covid-19 policies. One respondent recommended that new rules should first be run by Residential Life.  Several students perceived the college’s Covid-19 guidelines to be vague and worried that they would accidentally break a rule. “I wish that it was more clear what people [were] disciplined for,” wrote a student. Another student hoped for “more concise guidelines from fewer sources.”  Editor’s Note: Survey questions pertaining to mental health were designed in conjunction with the Student Government Association Health and Wellness Committee.

Incumbent Christopher Bray makes a fourth run for Addison County Senate seat

This fall marks Senator Christopher Bray’s (D-Addison) fourth re-election campaign for the Vermont Senate. Despite almost 12 years of service under his belt, including two terms in the Vermont House, Bray has found that the Covid-19 crisis has created a completely new landscape for political activity. “If you want to represent people, you have to know what is on their minds. Those informal conversations with people walking the dog or shopping at the grocery store have been disrupted,” Bray told The Campus. To supplement the loss of those casual interactions, Bray has increasingly engaged with his constituents over the phone and through email since the outbreak began. Bray’s interactions with his fellow representatives had also largely been confined to the virtual arena, with the state government covening via Zoom throughout the spring. According to Bray, the Vermont legislature is one of only nine in the country that kept running full-time throughout the pandemic. “It was another example of Vermonters getting things done,” Bray said. Unsurprisingly, Covid-19 will continue to influence Bray’s immediate priorities next term if his bid for re-election is successful. In an op-ed penned for VTDigger, Bray appealed to the nation’s founding values to advocate for wearing a mask, even when doing so feels like an imposition on individual liberty. Bray reminded readers that securing collective safety often means sacrificing a little bit of personal freedoms. Bray has been following up on this editorial regularly by posting reminders for people to socially distance and wear masks. He recognizes the inevitable fatigue that results from following these onerous requirements every day, but he emphasizes the need to remain vigilant because “the pandemic isn’t getting tired.”  Fortunately, he said, most people responded positively, making Vermont’s infection rate the lowest in the country, even without instituting fines or other consequences for not wearing masks or failing to social distance. “Vermonters are pretty independent-minded, but, on the other hand, they are also civic-minded,” Bray said.   Bray believes that the virus has highlighted and exacerbated pre-existing weaknesses in Vermont’s infrastructure, and he is prepared to tackle some of these deeper issues through his next term. Some of his priorities include childcare, food insecurity and the accessibility of healthcare. Bray is Chair of the Senate’s Natural Energy and Resources Committee, and he remains committed to tackling the towering challenges of climate change despite the obstacles of the pandemic. The state has already taken significant steps toward cleaning up its energy use, including passing the Global Warming Solutions Act, establishing Efficiency Vermont (the statewide energy efficiency utility) and achieving the title of cleanest electric grid in the country.  A believer in the power of incremental progress, Bray is pleased that the state is moving in the right direction, but he refuses to be complacent or accept “too little progress too slowly.” Now, he is looking to accelerate the clean grid project and turn to reducing heating and transportation loads, which together account for 80% of emissions in the state. He argues that there is not only a moral imperative to take action on this front, but there is also a huge economic opportunity to buy less power from out-of-state by generating more energy in-state and reducing consumption through efficiency. In a time of highly contentious national politics in which many people are left feeling hopeless, environmentalists are no exception. Both presidential candidates have rebuked the Green New Deal and lauded fracking during recent debates. Senator Bray is finding a way to stay optimistic and maintain his faith in the political process. He spoke positively about his experience in the Vermont Legislature, in which citizen politicians don’t just vote stringently along party lines and representatives are actually committed to listening to one another.   “When people come together in a respectful, constructive environment, we get things done. I have seen that over and over in Vermont – not just in the legislature but also more broadly in the work of activists, select boards and other organizations,” said Bray.   Ultimately, Bray is guided by this idea of normalizing goodness. Whether it is a small, practical change like banning single-use plastic bags, or broader-scale progress like changing the very standards of politics back to those of respect and collaboration, Bray’s overarching goal is to embrace change and “make doing the right thing the default.”

U.S. Congressman Peter Welch talks race, climate change, and bipartisanship

Congressman Welch has represented Vermont in the House of Representatives as the state’s sole delegate since he was elected in 2006. After launching his career in politics during the civil rights era, Welch’s career has focused on energy efficiency, housing discrimination and bringing broadband to rural Americans. Looking toward a likely win in his re-election bid this year, The Campus sat down with the congressman to reflect on over a decade of work in the House. Reflecting on over a decade in Congress, what do you consider to be your biggest accomplishment and why?  On climate change and economic recovery… I think the biggest accomplishments that we had were clearly during the Obama years: it was the passage of the Affordable Care Act. I served on the Energy and Commerce Committee and I was very, very active in that effort. The biggest accomplishment in the House — but didn’t pass in the Senate — was the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, which we passed in that same session of Congress. That would have reduced emissions by 80% by 2050, and all of us are so disappointed that we lost that by one vote in the Senate. The last economic crisis, of course, was during the Obama Administration, when Wall Street collapsed and brought down Main Street. I played an active role in the American Recovery Act, which started to get us back on our feet.  I’ve been a leader on climate change issues. My role in the [Waxman-Markey bill] was to be the principal advocate for the energy efficiency aspects of that bill. Since then, I’ve been a champion in Congress on climate change, particularly the benefits of energy efficiency. I got involved in that when I was in the Vermont senate, and one of the things that I look back on with fond memories is the climate march that was organized by Bill McKibben when he was starting 350.org. He and Middlebury students led a march from Montpelier to Burlington in the election, back in 2006. I was one of the speakers at that original march.  How do you think we can build trust in politics again? Do you think politics have always been this divisive?  On Trump and social media... [Politics] hasn’t been this divisive. Trump has embraced division as a tactic. One of his first acts as president was to ban people coming into this country on the basis of religion. That’s shocking. One of his policies was to separate children from families at the southern border — and I was one of the first members of Congress to go down there and witness that firsthand. I went to the Texas-Mexico border. And even today, we’ve learned that there are over 500 children where the government has no idea where their parents are. Trump plays racial politics to a degree that no one has ever seen. He won this election with three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, and he’s done everything that he can to intensify division rather than create unity since then.   There’s another issue here that will take significant thought and effort to overcome it, and that’s social media. What we see with the explosion of social media is an explosion of misinformation, of hate, of conspiracy theories — and it’s created a toxic, polluted atmosphere for dialogue about the problems that we collectively face. I think that’s a big challenge for our democracy. When there's no norms and no mutual respect, then it makes it much more difficult to find common ground.  That’s a big problem, and Trump is a master at understanding how this works and he exploited it and he was very successful at mowing down all of his Republican opponents in those primaries. This is a real challenge to our democracy.  On finding common ground with Republicans… There’s two ways [to deal with partisanship] — personal and political. The personal way of dealing with it is that you show respect. You listen more than you talk. You look for where there’s common ground.  So, for example, I am a leader of the rural broadband caucus. I find ways of interacting where it’s about us trying to solve the challenges of the people who we represent. I have a colleague from West Virginia, [Rep.] David McKinley. He’s a Republican, and he is a good partner of mine when working on energy efficiency. On the other hand, he’s from coal country, and he attacks the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is causing a loss of coal jobs. I don’t agree with him on [attacking the EPA], but we agree on energy efficiency.  As a way of trying to build a relationship with him and show respect for the coal miners, I went to stay with him in his house in Harrison County, West Virginia, and we spent a day in a coal mine — we went down 900 feet and 4.5 miles in. We spent an afternoon being with coal workers who were working on a coal seam.  The point I was making was that I’m against coal [in that] I’m for clean energy, but I’m for the coal miners. Those coal miners did not create climate change. In fact, those coal miners are losing jobs, and they’re hard workers. I compared the coal miners to our dairy farmers as the hardest working people I’ve ever met. I saw how much that gave me an opportunity to be heard, by David and by many others who began to see that I’m advocating for clean energy, but it’s not because I’m against those coal miners. I’m against a lot of the coal company owners, but the miners are good people. That’s a way of showing personal respect and creating trust.  Institutionally is where Trump is pretty toxic. He is attacking institutions instead of building them up, instead of reforming them and strengthening them. When I say institutions, I mean everything from the court systems to the intelligence community to the EPA, where we have lost one-thousand scientists who have left in despair because of political manipulation. We have to build up our institutions and have trust in institutions to build trust in goals that are important to our society. So, on a personal level, it’s how you interact with people. On a political level, it’s a commitment to reforming, not destroying, institutions that we all need.  Do you have any fun stories from working in Congress for over a decade? What are some of your best days working in Congress?  On cheese (and getting the job done)... One of my best days was when Mateo Kehler, who was the head of Jasper Hill Cheese, showed up at my office in D.C. in a t-shirt and cargo shorts. He was in a rage-slash-panic, because the Federal Drug Administration (FDA)  just issued a rule that said cheesemakers could no longer store their cheese on wooden boards. Pretty crazy, because we have been storing cheese on wooden boards since the last supper. The background is that they did an inspection of a cheesemaking facility in upstate New York and found contaminated cheese, and there were woodboards there. As it turns out, the whole place was contaminated; it’s not that the boards were contaminated. [The cheesemaking facility in upstate New York] really had back practices and needed to be closed down, and they were. But the bad practices were the problem, not the use of wood.   So in any event, this would have been catastrophic for this award-winning cheese company, Jasper Hill. What do we do? So this was a while ago, when Paul Ryan was the chair of the Budget Committee. He’s Republican, and he and I don’t agree on anything. He represents Wisconsin, where they make a lot of cheese, and he and I used to kid a lot about who had better cheese. So, I went on the floor and found him, and I said ‘Paul, we got us a cheese problem.’ I explained it to him, and within a day, we called up the FDA to explain our problem. We said, ‘we’ve got a cheese problem, and you’re soon going to have a budget problem.’ And it got fixed.  It’s an only-in-Vermont story because you literally have this citizen, who is running this wonderful enterprise called Jasper Hill Cheese, show up unannounced in his t-shirt and cargo shorts to tell me what the problem was. It’s existential. And in a few days, it was solved. And it was solved in a significant part because I had a good pre-existing relationship with Paul Ryan, and I knew that, when it came to cheese and how it would affect Wisconsin cheese makers, Paul and I would be on the same page. It was an interesting combination of a Vermonter coming and dropping in and feeling completely comfortable in the office and asking for something that couldn’t be done, and we did it all in a couple of days.  On race and Representative John Lewis… Another wonderful story: I got my start in politics in the civil rights movement. When I was in college, I dropped out of college to go to Chicago to work for a community organization that was fighting discriminatory housing. I dropped out of college for what would have been my junior year. I worked there, and then I returned to college, and then I returned to Chicago as a Robert Kennedy Fellow to resume my work when I got out [of college].  During what would’ve been my junior year in college, I went down to Atlanta to the Ebenezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King, at that time, was the pastor. And I was in the church, and he spoke. It was a powerful experience to be with him when he spoke in that church. And afterwards, I went upstairs when he had a press conference, and there were very few people there, and he was denouncing the Vietnam War. My whole beginnings in politics were inspired by the racial justice movements of the late 60s — the voting rights movement.  Fast forward, I’m in Congress and I had a colleague that I revered from afar for a long time, and that was [Rep.] John Lewis. We, in the House, were very frustrated that Speaker Paul Ryan would not take up any gun safety legislation. We protested on the floor, and I spent a good deal of time sitting on the floor next to John Lewis when we were protesting in Congress about gun violence. All of us who served with John regarded it as a special privilege to be with him and to be his colleague. That memory, of sitting on the floor of the House, next to John, is probably one of my favorite, most proud moments. His advocacy was [to] get in good trouble… cause good trouble.  Now we’re continuing with the effort to deal with the incredible racism in our county that is systemic and ingrained. With the leadership of the Black Congressional Caucus, we passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which, unfortunately, Senator [Mitch] McConnell won’t pass in the senate. That continuation of the opportunity to work on racial justice issues means a lot to me, and I really appreciate the work that the students at Middlebury are doing to bring attention to systemic racism and try to find practical ways to address it. 

Behind the Mead Chapel bells, carillonneur George Matthew Jr. plays for passion and protest

At 12:30 p.m. each day, the 48 bells suspended in Mead Chapel’s tower ring out. The sounds of Irish folk songs, Baroque fugues and ragtime jigs echo across campus. The chapel’s tower is a central landmark on campus, but its virtuoso remains an enigma to many. George Matthew Jr. has played the carillon — the set of bells suspended in the tower — for 59 years, 35 of them at Middlebury College. His love for the instrument started long before that, more than 81 years ago. In one of Matthew’s first memories, he sat on his grandfather’s shoulders, his head standing high above the crowd at the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens, New York City. He had an unimpeded view of the carillon tower rising high above him. When the bells began to play so thunderously loud that they echoed in his head, he stared, enraptured. His four-year-old heart sang, and from that moment on, he was hooked on the carillon. Matthew comes from a family of musicians who were more than supportive of his interests, but his early efforts to learn music were unsuccessful. At age five, his uncle tried to teach him how to play the violin. But as a naturally talented player, his uncle didn’t understand how to teach Matthew, who didn’t share his gift. At age six, his father, who directed the church choir and played the organ, started him on the piano with a stern German instructor, but, once again, the instrument didn’t stick. At age seven, the magic struck. His parents bought him a mellophone, an instrument similar to the french horn. He played it for hours, practicing and practicing until his lips swelled up, and he was forced to take a break. He drove the neighbors crazy, so his parents banished him to the cellar, where the walls muffled his playing, and he could happily practice for as long as he liked. Still, he dreamed of playing the big, booming organ that he watched his father play at church. His parents insisted that he learn to play the piano before advancing to the larger instrument. So he started piano lessons again at age nine, until he finally graduated to the organ at age 12. He “loved every aspect of it,” and demonstrated a natural gift. By age 13, he became the church organist, playing for his congregation every Sunday. Matthew inherited his love of music from his father, but he never wanted Matthew to follow in his footsteps. He recalls his father telling him, “You won’t make any money. You’ll be unhappy, and you’ll turn against yourself because your art won't be supporting you.” Matthew showed a natural aptitude for science, so he followed his father’s advice and enrolled at Columbia University, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. Even as he committed himself to his studies, he never forgot about music or the carillon. Whenever he had breaks from classes, labs or other responsibilities, he would go outside to hear the great Belgian carillonneur Kamiel Lefevere play the 74-bell carillon at Riverside Church just four blocks away. Matthew tried approaching LeFevre for lessons, but he was refused. Matthew held on to his dream of playing the carillon even as he went on to work in chemical research. He continued to play music on the side, working as an organist at various churches and temples. In 1963, he learned that Princeton carillonneur Arthur Lynds Bigelow was offering free lessons in New Canaan, Connecticut. He jumped at the opportunity. Once a week for a year, Matthew attended carillon lessons with a group of other students. The experience was well worth the long wait. Matthew loved playing the carillon even more than he enjoyed listening to it. For the next five years, Matthew drove all over the northeast to play whenever and wherever could until the First Presbyterian Church in Stamford, Connecticut hired him as their carillonneur in 1968. Matthew continued to work as a chemical researcher for 15 years while simultaneously playing music at a series of churches and synagogues. In 1972, he was working upwards of 80 hours a week between his multiple jobs while studying for a master’s degree in world music. He quit his job as a chemical researcher to dedicate himself to a career in music. “There was no use fighting it anymore,” he said. “Music just took over my life.” In 1985, Allan Dragone, then the chair of Middlebury College’s Board of Trustees, approached Matthew to help the college create their own carillon. Matthew helped expand the college’s set of bells to a full-scale, four octave carillon that he has played for the last 35 years as the college’s carillonneur. One condition of Matthew’s contract with Middlebury is that he teaches whoever asks him for lessons, for free. He estimates that he's taught between 80 and 90 students in the 35 years he’s played at Middlebury. One of his students, Amy Heebner ’93, began playing the carillon under his tutelage and has since gone on to a successful career as the Albany, N.Y. city hall carillonneur. When he’s not playing the carillon at Middlebury College, Matthew is playing the organ for St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in town or traveling around the country or the world to play elsewhere. He began his first carillon tour of the U.S. in 1979. Since then, he has traveled on 39 more tours in North America and 13 in Europe. When Matthew plays, he hopes that his listeners understand his “emotional language.” He recalls a woman approaching him after a carillon concert in Brussels, Belgium. When she began speaking to him in Flemish, he had to interject to tell her that he couldn’t understand. She spoke again, and a bystander translated. “You don’t speak our language, but your hands speak our language,” she said. When Middlebury evacuated students from campus last March, he played the carillon for several hours each day as students moved out. He interspersed Bach with the alma mater every 15 minutes to tell students, “We ain’t beat yet, and we want you back.” When the college permitted Matthew to play again in mid-May, he returned to an empty campus. Matthew regards himself as serving Middlebury the town as much as the college, so he played every day to try to lift the town’s spirits. As the pandemic continues, he frequently plays “Va, pensiero” from the opera Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi, one of the songs that people across Italy sang to each other from their balconies during the national lockdown. He wanted to transmit that same spirit of community and hope to Middlebury. He also uses the carillon for political messages. Matthew views the Trump administration’s family separation policy as “one of the [greatest] crimes of this century.” For the past two years, he has been playing Mexican folk songs every day as his own form of protest. He also frequently plays the spiritual “Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho,” the second line of which is “and the walls come tumbling down” in defiance of Trump’s “build a wall” rallying cry. After police killed George Floyd in May, Matthew began playing songs related to the Black Lives Matter Movement. For the past six months, he has alternated between playing “O’ Freedom,” “We Shall Overcome” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing” — otherwise known as “The Black National Anthem” — every day. “I'm hoping to just make people aware of this and pay tribute to the many millions of people who have gone through a pretty hellish experience here,” Matthew said. Though already 85, Matthew has no plans to retire or stop playing, not until he “can’t play decently anymore or Gabriel blows his horn, whichever comes first.” Corrections: An earlier version of this piece incorrectly reported that Matthew rode on his father’s shoulders at the 1939 World’s Fair; it was his grandfather’s shoulders. It also said that Matthew recalled reaching up to the piano keyboard to practice when he was six years old when he was two years old at the time. The previous version erroneously stated that George Floyd was shot and killed by police. He was choked to death as a police officer knelt on his neck.

Middlebury students take on remote abroad courses and international internships

Although traditional study abroad has come to a halt because of the pandemic, Middlebury offered remote courses and internships this semester as an alternative experience. Throughout the summer, Middlebury suspended schools individually based on the Covid-19 levels in the area and local universities’ plans. By mid-summer, however, the school decided to close all Middlebury Schools Abroad and halt all study abroad options that might be available via external programs. Middlebury students abroad often enroll directly in local universities, so Middlebury has a large contact network of faculty in each country. Dean of International Programs Carlos Vélez was able to reach out to the directors at each of the schools, who found local faculty who were willing to teach remotely to Middlebury students. He then communicated with department chairs at Middlebury — mainly those leading language departments — to finalize a list of courses. “It was a very consultative process, both with my staff in the schools abroad but also with the chairs of the departments here,” Vélez said. “We wanted to make sure that whatever we offered wouldn’t conflict with other courses that are being taught in those departments.” Originally over 50 students registered for these programs, but Vélez is unsure how many there are now. All courses but one are taught in a foreign language, and thus have the same prerequisites as they would normally. Claudio Gonzalez-Chiaramonte, director of the schools in Argentina and Uruguay and associate professor at Middlebury, said that students were initially shy and nervous in his Spanish course on U.S.-Latin America relationships. But after three or four sessions, they warmed up to the class and became more comfortable speaking. The Spanish-speaking schools also created a site with daily activities such as conferences, movies and chats that students can participate in. Peter Stavros, an instructor with Middlebury Schools Abroad in Jordan is teaching refugee and forced migration studies this semester. The class is usually taught in Arabic, which meant that it was previously more focused on language learning than content, but this year it is being taught in English. “Because we are doing it in English and most students obviously speak English very well, we’re able to kind of cover the substance more deeply,” Stavros said. Students are also finding non-academic ways to stay connected to the abroad experience despite coming home. Diana Milne ’21 was studying abroad in Madrid last spring when the pandemic began to unfold, and was forced to return home early. Now, she is completing a 10-week remote internship for Liceo y Colegio San Juan Bautista, a school in Uruguay. “I really felt like I didn’t get the full experience that I wanted studying abroad in Madrid because I’d lost so much time being there and it just wasn’t the same from the computer screen,” Milne said. “I thought it would be a great opportunity to kind of get a little bit more knowledge about their culture and work on my Spanish. And it just sounded like fun, working with kids.” Milne spends her time in the Uruguayan classroom speaking in English so that the students can interact with a native speaker. This is particularly helpful for older students who are preparing for international exams. She joins their classes — all in person — via Zoom to give presentations about herself and hear the students’ presentations about themselves, Uruguay, their culture and their school. Milne’s communications with the director, supervisor and teachers are all in Spanish. “I’ve been checking with half of the students that are taking these remote internships, and to my surprise, they are really very comfortable. I expected questions, discomfort, or some people who might feel lost,” Gonzalez-Chiaramonte said. “They felt that they were learning and they could do what they wanted to do.” These courses have presented the same obstacles as many remote courses, since professors and students have had to adapt to Zoom technology. “It’s obvious that it is less interactive, less spontaneous than a real classroom. We miss the classroom — I say ‘we’ as teachers and I suppose also as students,” said Nicolas Roussellier, a Paris-based professor who is teaching a French politics course. KK Laird ’21, who is taking Gonzalez-Chiaramonte’s course, noted that the large asynchronous component of classes presents a barrier. Similar to other online classes, it is far less personal and interactive. Still, students and professors are making the best out of the situation. “You know, as we say in French, ‘It’s better than nothing, something like this.’ So still, I would say that if we keep a good spirit, a good morale, we can really make a good job,” Roussellier said. He added that the small size of his class allows him to see all of the students on the same page, as opposed to his previous in-person lectures — with as many as 80 students — in which he was unable to have closer interactions with individual students. “There are a lot of cultural assumptions in teaching — in my teaching, in your teaching, in teaching in France and China. It will be great that Middlebury students will be exposed to those differences,” Gonzalez-Chiaramonte said. Gonzalez-Chiaramonte hopes that Middlebury will continue to offer international courses in the future. Middlebury is set to make more decisions about the spring semester on Oct. 30. “I think one of the advantages is you could take multiple classes from multiple professors in different countries. And there is kind of an exciting element to that,” Stavros said.