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(12/05/19 11:02am)
This fall, Special Collections curated an exhibit commemorating the 1969 Stonewall riots. The exhibit, on display in the Library Atrium, is titled “Before and After Stonewall: Queer Stories Throughout American History” and was curated by Suria Vanrajah ’22. The exhibit is partnered with a display on the Library Lower Level titled “Middlebury College Coming Out: A Foundation for Queer Activism,” which was curated by Halle Shephard ’22, Reid Macfarlane ’21 and Joseph Watson, Preservation Manager for Special Collections.
The exhibits were the ideas of Watson and Rebekah Irwin, Special Collections’ director and curator. Watson and Irwin had long wanted to do something to mark the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, Watson said, so he proposed the downstairs archives exhibit, while Irwin had the idea for the atrium literature exhibit.
With the help of the MuseumWorks internship, a program that connects current students with the college’s collections and museum, the Special Collections team hired Macfarlane, Shephard and Vanrajah to curate the exhibits.
“I’ve always been very interested in history — I went to an American history high school — and am from New York City, so I recognized how important the Stonewall Riots were to my city, the LGBTQ community and our country,” Vanrajah said. “I wanted to be a part of the exhibit, and I was lucky enough that Joseph and Rebekah took a chance on me.”
Vanrajah said that she hopes her exhibit points out ripples made by events like Stonewall. As curator, she said she wanted viewers to draw their own conclusions about the impact of the riots on queer literature and history. “I felt that my role as a curator was not to try to create a narrative about the Stonewall Riots but rather to create a context through which anyone who sees the exhibit can reflect on the impact [of Stonewall] and understand it in their own way,” she said.
Beyond Stonewall, however, Vanrajah says her display is a nod to the activist aspects of the authors she has chosen to focus on. “I would consider each of these authors activists in their own right, whether or not they saw themselves that way, because their work helped make queer stories public and brought them to the attention of the American public,” she said. “By normalizing LGBTQ stories, these authors helped to normalize LGBTQ individuals and their experiences.”
While the atrium exhibit focuses on literature written by authors who identify as members of the LGBTQ community, the exhibit on the lower level is centered around past Campus articles detailing events occurring within Middlebury’s own LGBTQ sphere. “[Halle] and I spent about two days going through bound versions of The Campus, looking for things that might pop out — [words like] gay, queer — and compiling them and noting them,” Macfarlane said.
Watson, who had the idea for the exhibit, said that he had hoped to survey the five decades since Stonewall, but said that he, Macfarlane and Shephard decided instead to focus on the first three decades of the time period. One reason behind this decision was space.“Once 2000 came around, there was much more student activity and the student groups were much more high profile,” Watson said. “It would have been really difficult to fit those next 20 years in because there would have been so much.”
Waton also said that he hoped students would use the exhibit to learn more about the efforts that laid the groundwork for LGBTQ visibility on campus. “Pre-1970, there’s no open history of queer people at Middlebury,” he said. “I think that’s an interesting thing for people to realize, especially current students, who can say, ‘oh, these people are my parents’ age, and there were no [visibly] queer people before them.’”
This observation was something Macfarlane and Shephard became aware of as they worked on the exhibit.“At first it was really hard to find [Campus] articles,” Shephard said. “The gay student groups were really kept under wraps.”
The underwhelming presence of LGBTQ visibility was something Macfarlane also noticed. “I think that for a long time, queer people on this campus didn’t feel comfortable in their own visibility,” he said. “I think in the ’70s and ’80s there wasn’t a lot of queer visibility on campus. There weren’t a lot of people in organizations or starting initiatives to engage a discourse about the queer population on campus. You saw people attempt to do that, and then people wouldn’t show up to meetings.”
Shephard, too, noticed attempts made by students to establish an LGBTQ community on campus.“One of the first [student LGBTQ] groups was Gay Students at Middlebury,” she said. “Eventually the membership dwindled off, and then people just didn’t know where to go. It was sad to see it disappear.”
Watson also acknowledged this historical absence and lack of visibility.“When you’re doing research into underrepresented groups, they’re called that because they’re underrepresented,” he said. “In the archives, we have very little related to LGBTQ people.”
This underrepresentation was something Vanrajah was thinking about in terms of a broader literary tradition. “Queer stories are rarely told and many people never learned about Stonewall in their history classes, or never read seminal queer works because of the stigma surrounding many of them,” she said, adding that she hopes to address this gap in narrative with her exhibit. “While this exhibit is by no means a comprehensive analysis or display of queer history and literature, I see it as a way to introduce a general audience to these topics,” she said. “If everyone who looked at the exhibit walked away with an appreciation for the activists at Stonewall and the writers that came before and after them, I would be really proud.”
(10/24/19 6:07pm)
Huge thank you to everyone who came out last night! Even if things didn’t quite go as planned... we heard your #EQUALPAY chants from all over the field ??? Also- it’s not too late to get a jersey!! Link in bio #worthit #seniors
(10/10/19 10:15am)
Double trouble: Midd beats Amherst in double overtime thriller
By LAUREN BOYD
The Middlebury football team won a close battle against the Amherst Mammoths in overtime, on Saturday, Sept. 5, maintaining its undefeated season. Prior to the game, both teams were undefeated, making this win a decisive factor in NESCAC standings. The Panthers now co-lead the conference alongside Wesleyan, who is still undefeated on the season.
The game’s excitement started with a Middlebury interception on the Mammoth’s first offensive drive. Kevin Hartley ’20 got the Middlebury fans onto their feet with the first defensive turnover on the game. This thrilling atmosphere would keep the Panthers’s momentum going throughout the subsequent three quarters, through a rollercoaster of emotions.
Middlebury started off going 21–0 against the Mammoths, thanks to a rushing touchdown from Alex Maldjian ’23 and passing touchdowns by Will Jernigan ’21 to Maxim Bochman ’20 and Frank Cosolito ’20. After one Amherst touchdown, but two key Middlebury defensive stops right before the half, the momentum was still in the Panthers’ favor. The fans, excited and on their feet, could feel a win within reach.
A complete momentum shift at the second half enabled Amherst to tie the game, 28–28. Motivated to extend their win streak, and overcome a consistently tough NESCAC competitor, the Panther offense trudged down the field with one minute left on the clock. Less than 10 yards from the goal line, and seconds left on the clock, a shocking Mammoth interception led the game into overtime.
During overtime, both teams failed to convert a field goal or touchdown in their first attempts. Tensions were high as the teams switched sides, both looking to maintain their undefeated seasons.
After the Amherst squad could not score during its second OT attempt, the Panthers had a shot to claim the game. On third down, Jernigan escaped a Mammoth defensemen, rolled to the right side, and connected with Maxwell Rye ’20 for a nine-yard touchdown. The fans both near and afar erupted into cheers as the team piled in the endzone, keeping the winning streak alive and exciting.
“It was one of the best games I’ve been a part of,” offensive lineman Colin Paskewitz ’21 said when asked about the atmosphere of the game, “Throughout the second half when they began to come back, our fans and our bench stayed loud and hopeful. By the second overtime, I was as tired as I’ve ever been during a game. On the last play, [Jernigan] tossed the ball up to [Rye] and it felt like the ball had been in the air for an eternity before [Rye] came down with it. Immediately our bench rushed the field.”
The electric atmosphere of such a close battle was felt both at the Amherst stadium, and with the fans back at home.
“Words cannot describe the sense of pride and joy I felt after such a resilient win,” Paskewitz said.
Jack Pistorius ’21 was awarded NESCAC defensive player of the week, accumulating 13 tackles. Kevin Hartley ’20, Michael Carr ’20, Zander Bailey ’21 and Finn Muldoon ’23 each recorded an interception in the game, respectively.
Next week, on Saturday, Oct. 12, the Panthers will be back at home against Colby College (0-4) for an exciting homecoming weekend. Although the Panthers were elated with the results of the game, they know there is more to be done.
“It’s been an electric atmosphere,” Linebacker Pete Huggins ’21 said about the feeling of winning such an intense game. “Winning a game like that after working the entire offseason is such a rewarding feeling. At the same time, we know we’ve got more wood to chop. Our goal going into the season wasn’t to beat Amherst. Our goal is to win a championship.”
Women’s golf places third at conference qualifier
By MICHAEL SEGEL
This past weekend, the Middlebury women’s golf team was one of six teams competing in the NESCAC Qualifier/Williams Fall Invitational at the Taconic Golf Club in Williamstown, Mass. After day one of the action, the host Williams led with 312 strokes, Amherst followed with 318, and Middlebury ranked third with 326. On Saturday, Katie Murphy ’23 led the squad by shooting a 77 which ranked her tied for second overall. Blake Yaccino ’20 shot second best on the team with an 80 which ranked her as tied for seventh overall. Chloe Levins ’20, after taking medalist honors last weekend, finished in 12th with an 81.
On Sunday, the girls were unable to reverse their luck as they remained in third place and finishing at 309 strokes for the day. These results put them at 635 overall behind Williams (619) and Amherst (624), but in front of Hamilton (679), Bowdoin (694) and Trinity (898). Murphy led the squad again, finishing with 75 strokes to put her at a 152 and third overall. Levins finished next on the squad with 159 (seventh overall), then Yaccino with 160 (ninth), rounded out by Kayla Li ’23 (164, T12) and Lizzie Kenter ’23 (178, 22nd).
It was a tough end to a very successful fall season in which the Panthers never finished below third place in any of their five tournaments and which featured memorable moments such as the squad’s first place finish at the Phinney Golf Classic last weekend where Levins finished first overall.
Cross country teams divide and conquer
By JORDAN HOWELL
Saturday, Oct. 5 featured two races for the Panthers: the Keene State Invitational and the Paul Short Invitational.
In the Keene State Invitational, the men came in fifth place. Their top runner was Max Cluss ’23 who got eighth place with a time of 26:32.5. In the Paul Short Invitational, the men got 37th place. The top finisher was Henry Fleming ’20 with a time of 24:50.9, leading him to place 142nd.
In the Keene State Invitational, the women captured sixth place. A crucial finisher was Leah Metzger ’20 who place 34th with a time of `19:36.2. In the Paul Short Invitational, the women netted seventh place. Cassie Kearney ’22 was the top runner for the Panthers as a time of 21:30.8 got her 14th place.
The Panthers’ next challenge will be the Connecticut College Invitational on Saturday, Oct. 19. The team will have some extra time to prepare for the Invitational. Afterward, the teams will focus on championships.
Women's soccer blanks Bates
By MIGUEL ESPINOSA
Second-ranked women’s soccer defeated Bates College by a score of 5–0 on the road on Saturday, Oct. 5th. Midfielder Gretchen McGrath ’21 began the offensive beatdown when she scored during the ninth minute. Forward Simone Ameer ’21 made two consecutive goals at the 32nd and 44th minutes, while Quinn Rogers ’23 and Ellie Greenberg ’20 tallied goals at the 60th and 75th minutes, respectively.
As always, the Panthers’ defense denied any opportunities to catch up. Bates attempted only three shots on goal, whereas Middlebury had 21. Ursula Alwang ’20 and Eva Shaw ’21 shared goaltender responsibilities and each recorded one save.
The Panthers, however, committed eight fouls penalties compared to Bates’ four.
The squad will get back in action against Colby in a homecoming contest this weekend at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 12th. The Mules sit at 1–4–2 in the conference compared to the Panthers’ 4–0–1.
Men’s soccer suffers first loss, splits weekend
By ERIK ARVIDSSON
The men’s soccer team completed a Maine double-header on the weekend of Oct. 5-6. In their first game, the fifteenth-ranked Panthers suffered a close, 1-0 loss against Bates. This heartbreaking loss was their first of the season. Luckily, they had the opportunity to bounce back the next day.
On Sunday, Oct. 6, the team headed to Maine Maritime. After a 1-1 start, Middlebury dominated the match for the remaining 40 minutes of the game. Ben Powers ’23, Brendan Barry ’22, Drew Goulart ’20, and Jacob Charles ’23 added goals to give the team a convincing 5-1 win.
Jack Spiridellis ’21 was impressed with the teams resiliency this weekend.
“It was awesome to get the win on Sunday after a tough loss on Saturday. There’s a lot of fight and hunger this year,” said Spiridellis. “Guys aren’t satisfied with mediocre performances.”
Next, the Panthers will face Colby at home for Homecoming. Get out to the turf and cheer them on!
(10/10/19 10:03am)
“I have a confession: I am a true romantic. I fervently believe in happily ever after and true love always,” Professor Laurie Essig of the Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (GSFS) Department read to supporters of her newest book, “Love, Inc.”
“I am also a cynic,” Essig said. “I have a sinking feeling that romance blinds us with fairy dust.”
The audience of college students and Vermonters gathered at Stonecutter Spirits on Friday, Oct. 4, for “Love Stinks: 80s Rock Ballads + Laurie Essig’s Love Inc.,” an evening in which Essig deconstructed the “romantic industrial complex.” It seemed fitting that the event was held at a local, female-owned business that also temporarily houses a female-owned vintage pop-up shop called Reel Vintage. Co-hosted by Womensafe and Planned Parenthood NNE, the event sought to envision the feminist future Essig advocates for in “Love, Inc.”
Situated between barrels of gin and whiskey and racks of vintage clothing, Essig imparted her argument to the Blundstone-donned audience: the further capitalism drives the world towards environmental, economic and political chaos, the more society is driven towards the romance industry as a coping mechanism.
She began her argument with a tale of matrimony rendered sensational due to the then-modern technology of the mid-19th century. Queen Victoria’s white wedding was the first of its kind to become popularized by telegraph, a technology that allowed for the beginning of a cultural obsession with white virginal dresses, wedding rings and the tale of happily-ever-afters. Essig fast-forwarded to the 20th century era of Reaganomics (where all roads seem to lead), which was born amidst the global fascination (read: distraction) with Princess Diana and Prince Charles’s elaborate white wedding in 1981.
Instead of critiquing trickle-down economics and consequently engaging in productive civil discourse, as Essig might have preferred, the American public was being sold an idea of romantic bliss only made possible with the purchase of a wedding priced at — on average — $32,641 as of 2016. She notes that we continue to drug ourselves with romantic falsehoods to this day. Deconstructing the “dream[s] about a land of (white) plenty” in bestselling romance novels like “Twilight” and “Fifty Shades of Grey,” Essig argued that these books teach readers to value the attainment of unrealistically wealthy, white, heterosexual lifestyles.
Essig did not eschew “romantic” connection itself but rather urged the emotional and spiritual connection with another human being to be the foundation for positive change. She encouraged people to focus on this concept of love as opposed to false, purchased marital harmony that distracts us and drains our wallets. When asked by an audience member how to combat capitalism through our romantic lives, Essig jokingly responded,“Canvassing together works really well.”
On a more serious note, however, Essig urged her audience to not mistake her for propagating singleness and apathy as cures to this phenomenon, nor does she believe that wallowing in scientific projections of the climate crisis is a productive use of our time and mental capacity. “A future is possible — that’s the most romantic thing you can think.” Essig encouraged the audience to realize that the romantic future we all desire cannot be achieved just by spending an average of $2,379 on fresh flowers for their wedding celebration.
“I don’t see love or intimacy as a withdrawal from the world, but rather as a way to find someone to confront the hardships of the world with,” audience member Christian Kummer ’22 said.” Kummer pointed out that love — not necessarily even romance — can distract from civic engagement. He referenced obstacles of domestic life like laundry and errands — as reasons people often withdraw from the public sphere and advocated for healthy relationships that foster political action.
Of course, arriving at a place where one can think critically about public narratives and begin to dispel the tales of happily-ever-afters that drench our society is not simple.
One audience member who identified herself as the mother of a preteen attended Essig’s event as an avid opposer to the romance ideology, and said she actively works to counteract the powerful effects of “the Machine” that has made so much of our society numb and oblivious. In her household, her daughter doesn’t have a phone and is not allowed access to television. As a mother, the audience member tries to instill positive body image messages like encouraging her daughter to ask herself “What does [my] body need?” instead of succumbing to the pressures of mass media that sell fairy tales of what bodies look like to impressionable youth and adults alike.
While navigating romantic relationships is ultimately personal and these decisions are different for everyone, Essig stressed that this personal experience is fundamentally political and collective as well. She writes, “in that happy ending we ride off into the future not with our prince or princess to a castle on the hill, but with each other, all of us — married, single, straight, gay, old, young, white and black and Latino/a and more — fighting harder than we have ever fought before for a collective future.”
(10/03/19 10:56am)
Men’s soccer
BY ERIK ARVIDSSON
This past weekend the Panthers faced a daunting test, a home and away double header. The Panthers managed to take down Conn College 2–1 on Saturday in Middlebury, and finished up a solid weekend with a 1–1 draw against Amherst College on Sunday in Amherst, Massachusetts.
On Saturday, the game resulted in a 1–1 tie after regulation. In overtime, Max Drazen ’22 was taken down in the box; Liam Sloan ’22 managed to convert the penalty kick to give the Panther’s an exciting walk-off finish.
On Sunday, in a physical and hard fought battle, Henry Wilhelm ’20 put Midd on the board in the 30th minute. Amherst managed to tie the game in the 81st minute and the scoreline would not change.
Ben Potter ’20 commented on the team’s effort this week.
“I think we showed how deep of a team we are,” Potter said. “All 31 of our guys played a role in taking four points this weekend.”
The Panthers will face Bates and Maine Maritime in an away double header this upcoming weekend.
Women’s tennis
BY MIGUEL ESPINOSA
Middlebury hosted the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Women’s Tennis New England Regional Championship on the weekend of Sept. 28–29. The Championship included a singles and doubles bracket and players from NESCAC and non-NESCAC schools. The winners of each bracket would receive invitations to the ITA Cup in Georgia happening on Oct. 17–20. Both brackets involved 32 players or pairs.
Unfortunately, no Panthers — only Cardinals — will be attending the ITA Cup. Wesleyan University’s Yu and Henderson took the doubles tournament, while Jin took singles.
In doubles, Heather Boehm ’20 and Maddi Stow ’20 ventured as far into the semifinals before falling to Yu and Henderson. The pair of Skylar Schossberger ’20 and Katherine Hughes ’20 played into the quarterfinals.
For singles, Boehm, Schossberger and Hughes played into the second rounds of their brackets.
The Panthers will return to the court on Friday, Oct. 11 when they compete in the NEWITT Tournament at Smith College and Mount Holyoke College.
Women's golf
BY MICHAEL SEGEL
It was a big weekend for the women’s golf team as the Panthers came out on top in the George Phinney Classic at their home turf, Ralph Myhre Golf Course. They finished six strokes ahead of Amherst with a total of 634 over the two days.
After the first round, Middlebury was on top with 312 shots, five strokes ahead of NESCAC rivals Amherst and Williams. Chloe Levins ’20 led the team, finishing one stroke out of first with 74 and Katie Murphy ’23 followed up last weekend’s strong showing with a slight 75 stroke performance on Saturday.
On the second round, Middlebury shot for a 322 in total, again led by Levins who would take home medalist honors for the third time in her collegiate career.She had to do so in a playoff with Amherst’s Morgan Yurosek, with the two girls having tied at 153 shots apiece. Both parred the first hole, but on the second hole Levins parred again while Yurosek bogeyed, giving Levins the title.
In other notable performances, Katie Murphy came in third overall with a score of 155 (75–80), Blake Yaccino ’20 in a tie for 13th with a 161 (78–83). Kayla Li ’23 ranked next with a 166 (86–80), while Anna Zumwinkle ’20 finished with a 170 (85–85). Middlebury will compete in the NESCAC Qualifier/Williams Fall Invitational next weekend.
Men's tennis
BY JACK KAGAN
The Men’s Tennis Team is returning from Waterville, Maine this week after an individual’s tournament at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Regional Championships. Colby College hosted the event featuring teams throughout New England.
Of the draw of 64 players, Middlebury sent six of its own, testing out some new doubles pairs and showcasing younger singles play. Panthers Stan Morris ’22 and Robby Ward ’23 were seeded in the 9–16 group.
The tournament proved to be full of upsets, as only two of the top eight seeds remained by the quarterfinal round. One such upset belonged to Morris who took out the No. 3 seed, Brandeis’ David Aizenberg in straight sets. Ward had a strong showing of his own, making it to the quarterfinals before falling to Wesleyan’s Noah Lilienthal in a tight three sets.
Despite falling to Tufts’ star Boris Sorkin, Morris earned a spot at the ITA Cup on Oct. 17–18 at Berry College in Rome, Georgia.
Field Hockey
BY MIGUEL ESPINOSA
Top-ranked Field Hockey continued to assert their dominance by toppling Skidmore College, Connecticut College, and Amherst College. Holding on tight to the only overall undefeated record in the NESCAC, field hockey now stands at 9–0. The Panthers are also 5–0 in conference play, but aren’t the only ones undefeated in that category; No. 5 Tufts University’s conference record lies at 3–0.
The Panthers showcased their defense with a 3–0 victory against Skidmore on Tuesday, Sept. 24. Skidmore did not produce a single shot on goal compared to Middlebury’s impressive 16.
On Saturday, Sept. 28, an offensive onslaught ensued against Connecticut College when the Panthers breezed by 6–1 and attempted 23 shots on goal. Despite allowing one goal, the defense performed solidly having limited Connecticut College to three shots on goal.
On the following day, Sunday, Sept. 29, the Panthers secured a 2–1 win against Amherst. The Panthers maintained a 2–0 lead until halfway into the third quarter when an Amherst shot deflected off a Middlebury defender and entered the goal.
Football
BY LAUREN BOYD
In a widely anticipated contest, the Middlebury Panthers defeated the Trinity Bantams this past Saturday on their home turf. Improving their record to 3–0, the Panthers took home a clutch win against a NESCAC football powerhouse, tallying the most points out of any other conference team against Trinity, since 2011.
The Panthers appeased their fans from the very first whistle, scoring 12 points right off the bat. Trinity didn’t fall far behind, taking the lead with minutes left of the first half, after scoring two touchdowns back to back. By halftime, the Bantams took the 14–12 lead over the Panthers.
A series of interceptions, fourth-down stops, and penalties culminated in the second half for the Panthers’ benefit. Characterized by back-and-forth play, the second half became a race to the finish. In the end, Middlebury came out on top, 32–27.
Will Jernigan ’21 and Alex Maldjian ’23 controlled the offensive game, Jernigan passing for 127 yards and Maldjian posting 90 yards rushing. Four Panthers recorded interceptions on the game: Zander Bailey ’21, Michael Carr ’20, Kevin Hartley ’20 and Finn Muldoon ’23.
Carter Massengill ’20 was named NESCAC special teams player of the week, picking up 12 out of the Panthers’ 32 points. Alex Norton ’20 also received NESCAC player of the week honors for his work on the defensive line, tacking two sacks for 16 yards loss.
Next week, the Panthers will take on the Amherst Mammoths for their second away game of the season.
Cross Country
BY JORDAN HOWELL
The Panthers competed in the Purple Valley Classic on Saturday, Sept. 29. The women were able to achieve fifth place while the men captured fourth.
Notable finishers for the women include Cassie Kearney ’22 who finished in eighth place and Talia Ruxin ’20 who finished in tenth place. Kearney’s time was 23:39.0 and Ruxin’s time was 23:41.2. Notable finishers for the men include Theo Henderson ’20 and Zander Kessler ’22. Henderson finished in 14th place with a time of 27:10.0, while Kessler was able to come in 21st place with a time of 27:15.6.
Next up on the Panthers’ schedule is the Paul Short Invitational and the Keene State Invitational. Both races will occur on Saturday, Oct. 5.
“Starting this week we will be doing threshold and tempo workouts to get some speed in as we progress with our season,” Sophie Nardelli ’23 said.
Men's golf
BY JACK KAGAN
The Men’s Golf team made their way down to Sandy Burr Country Club in Wayland, Massachusetts this past weekend to compete in the NESCAC Fall Qualifier. The top four teams would receive a bid to the conference championship tournament — and the Panthers came up just short with a fifth place finish behind Williams, Tufts, Hamilton and Trinity.
The Panthers finished day one just one stroke behind then-third-place Hamilton, but they slipped on day two as other teams upped their game. Middlebury rounded out the tournament seven strokes behind Trinity, ending their conference title hopes.
Leading the pack for the Panthers squad were Jordan Bessalel ’21 and Phinneas Choukas ’22, tied for eighth shooting five above par.
Co-captain Jeffrey Giguere ’20 was missed atop the rankings. After finishing day one in third place, he fell to 12th at six above par.
The Panthers will have to motivate the squad after being shut out from NESCACS and look to garner some positive results for the Saratoga Invitational on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 12–13.
Volleyball
BY HEATHER BOEHM
Middlebury Volleyball suffered a tough conference loss to Amherst on the road on Friday, Sept. 27. The women fell in a three-set battle with tight scores throughout the first and last sets. Amherst is 10-1 overall with an undefeated NESCAC record.
The Panthers came out swinging, leading the first set 16–12. But Amherst refused to stay silent and retaliated with eight out of the next nine points. The Mammoths capitalized on their momentum and used their home court advantage to seal the win with solid offensive plays.
The Panther defense is looking better than ever, with Gigi Alper ’20 leading the NESCAC in both digs per set and overall digs with a dominating 6.53 and 235 respectively. The next highest in each category was a mere 5.36 from Wesleyan and 202 from Bowdoin.
Maggie Wise ’22 represents the offense with 3.32 kills per set, the third highest tally in the conference. Chellsa Ferdinand ’20 also made some waves this weekend with 14 assists, carving out a space for her in MWV history pushing her total number of assists to 1,619, the sixth most in program history.
Middlebury will look to find some redemption this weekend when they travel to Trinity on Friday, Oct. 4 and Endicott on Saturday, Oct. 5.
(10/03/19 10:05am)
Vendors from all over Addison County congregate in Middlebury every Saturday for the Middlebury Farmers Market (MFM), with vendors selling an assortment of products including poultry, dairy, seasonal produce and crafts, accompanied by live music. The MFM is open outdoors every Wednesday and Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. from May through October at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post on Exchange Street. It moves indoors during the offseason.
The MFM works in collaboration with the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA), an association committed to certifying local farms and processors to the USDA National Organic Program Standards. According to their website, NOFA “promotes organic practices to build an economically viable, ecologically sound and socially just Vermont agricultural system that benefits all living things.”
NOFA’s goals are carried out through various means. Paige Wener, a farmer from Green and Gold CSA (community supported agriculture), described the work she does and her interaction with NOFA. “Green and Gold is a farm and coop that primarily grows fresh produce and raises chickens,” she said. Some of the fresh produce on hand at the farmers market this weekend included various leafy greens, broccoli rabe and seasonal root crops.
Green and Gold CSA also has honeybees on its property and holds spiritual retreats and special events, including harvest dinners during the fall and taco and tubing nights during the summer. Green and Gold is also a certified organic CSA that abides by “no till” and “low till” farming practices, where the disturbance of soil is kept to a minimum. Green and Gold pursues many of NOFA’s goals by participating in subsidized programs for low-income families. The Vermont Farm to Family Program is one such program, which offers coupons to needy families valued at $6 for produce; in return, Green and Gold receives reimbursement from the state. Crop Cash, a similar program used by other vendors, provides families with an EBT card with extra money to be spent on fresh produce.
Two other vendors at the Middlebury Farmers Market, Foggy Meadow Produce and Windfall Orchard, have both employed students from the college in years past. Foggy Meadow Produce, located in Benson, Vermont, is a small farm with just two full-time employees, and a few part-time, seasonal employees. They are open to the public and offer tours showcasing their equipment, heat tunnels and natural farming practices. Foggy Meadow only grows fresh produce, but they are able to stay open all year by using indoor heat tunnels. “Now that our fall crops are coming in, it’s time to harvest our roots and put them in our coolers and cellars in which we have space for 30,000 pounds of produce,” Foggy Meadow employee Janice Burton said.
Windfall Orchard, a three-acre orchard located in Cornwall, Vermont, boasted several of its 80 varieties of apples this weekend at the MFM, including MacIntosh, Spartan and Twenty Ounce Pippin. “This week we have Bartlett pears and some new apples, like Hitchcock, a heritage variety with a pinkish interior. The Blue Pearmains and Honeycrisp are also new,” said James Kipp ’19.5, an employee at the orchard.
Windfall Orchard also features an on-site tasting room with farmhouse and iced cider, as well as hard cider, open every Sunday afternoon from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.. They are open every weekday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for picking and hold markets in Middlebury and Burlington every Saturday.
(09/19/19 10:07am)
Did you know that Dennis Feinstein from “Parks and Recreation” went to Middlebury? This summer, Greg Swartz ’18 interviewed Jason Mantzoukas ’95, the comedic actor who played Feinstein, about his years at the college and his experience acting in some of the funniest shows on Netflix right now.
The interview has been lightly edited for brevity.
In 2018, I graduated from the college with a theatre degree, and have since moved to LA to pursue TV and film. After many college nights spent binging “The League” when I should have been writing papers, I recently had the pleasure of interviewing fellow Middlebury alum Jason Mantzoukas. To this day, he’s still making me laugh with scene-stealing roles in shows like “The Good Place” and “Big Mouth.” I reached out to him to discuss his time at the college, his career and his thoughts on navigating the industry.
On the Otters
MIDDLEBURY CAMPUS: What was your performance history like before coming to Middlebury?
JASON MANTZOUKAS: Once I got to high school, I started playing in bands, and I would say all of my first performance opportunities were exclusively as part of bands. I probably didn’t do anything on stage as an actor or any kind of comedy until maybe junior year of high school. There was a class variety show, and I wrote sketches with a couple of other comedy-minded people. So that was my first exposure to doing comedy. I didn’t do plays or anything like that. And then when I got to Middlebury, Otter Nonsense Players had just started and that was a huge, meaningful period in my life of learning improv and doing sketches.
MC: Did the Otters do sketches while you were at Midd? Or was it primarily improv?
JM: I would say we did like 98% improv, but every once in a while there would be some sort of pre-written opening number or sketch. But it was very much an improv group. I feel like when I was there, there wasn’t a sketch group or anything like that. I played in a bunch of bands; I was in a jazz band for a while. When I was at Middlebury, it was at the height of jam bands, you know? Like Phish was still a Burlington staple. Phish played Middlebury so much when I was a student because they were a local band. But as a musician, that wasn’t really my forte, so I ended up playing in a lot of jazz ensembles, and I spent a lot of time working at WRMC.
MC: Do you think your background with jazz and music has had an impact on your comedy career? Do you view those as related at all?
JM: I do, in as much as they are the experiences of my life. I wouldn’t say they’re a map, like here are things to do to be a successful comedian. In how my life has unfolded, all of these components — for better or worse — are the raw materials that inform how I’ve developed my comedic point of view, my work ethic and so on. What made me a bad student then or what made me procrastinate in writing my honor’s thesis is the same thing that makes me procrastinate writing a script I owe somebody. So for better or worse, all these things are inextricably linked to who I am as a person.
MC: Right, and I guess you just become better equipped at playing into your strengths and learning how to deal with your weaknesses.
JM: Yeah, exactly. And as someone who is primarily an improviser, that idea of “Yes, and.” That idea of not just agreeing to things, but also in order to move something forward, you have to kind of give more. You can’t just say yes to everything, you have to add something to it. That “and” gives momentum, it’s an engine that keeps driving you forward.
MC: When did you realize comedy was the thing? That this was what you wanted to do?
JM: I don’t think I really had a moment of epiphany or some kind of “aha moment.” I guess once I started doing Otters, I thought this would fit well with how my brain works, and it did. If I had any kind of “aha” moment, it was just once I started improvising. It felt very natural. Even though I wasn’t very good at it, it felt like this was what I wanted to figure out.
MC: Did you learn a lot about yourself as a comedian during those years with the Otters?
JM: I don’t think so, but hm … That’s a good question. I mean sure, probably, but I think for the first few years of improvising, really you’re just getting your arms around improvising itself. I think you really are just trying to get an understanding of what it’s like to walk onstage with nothing — no props, no characters, no lines, no understanding of what the scene we’re about to do is — and getting to a level of comfort that I still trust what we’re going to do will be satisfying, interesting, and funny, hopefully. So while I certainly was developing my comedic point of view or persona, that was happening in the background, and I wasn’t really aware of it. It’s not really until I’m in New York at Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre that I feel like I really start making active choices about my comedic point of view on a larger scale.
MC: It makes sense that you have to learn the form and feel comfortable with it before you can find your place within it.
JM: Yes, and I think it takes a long time. In jazz as well as comedy, it takes a long time to find your voice and hone in on it. I think a lot of the time in the beginning, we sound like other people. We sound like people we like or want to emulate. And I think in the beginning people are faking it until they make it.
MC: Did you do any plays or any theatre in the Hepburn Zoo while you were at Middlebury?
JM: Yeah, I did one play because one of the other Otters wrote it. It was Dan O’Brien, who is Jessica St. Clair’s husband, and he is an incredibly talented playwright, and he’s published a number of amazing poetry books. So we did a play called “The Last Supper Restoration” that was then performed at the Kennedy Center. It was a very lauded play he wrote, which was very exciting. But that was the only play I did, and it was really only because we had developed a good rapport and relationship spending years doing Otters shows.
MC: So how did you end up getting an agent or a manager, whichever you got first?
JM: It was all based on a sketch show that Jessica St. Claire and I wrote called, “I Will Not Apologize.” She was also in Otters with me, and when she graduated, she came to New York and started doing UCB with me. We were on the same Harold team for a while. We started writing sketches together, and then we wrote a sketch show, which was our big, transformative break. At the time, there was a comedy festival that HBO ran in Aspen, Colo. That was the festival you were chasing for sketch comedy because it would put you in front of development people, agents and managers. It was where you went to get signed.
MC: But they don’t do that anymore?
JM: They don’t. Partially one of the things that replaced it, I think, was the Internet. I remember, years later, probably right at the beginning of YouTube, I remember the guys from Derrick …
MC: Oh yeah, Derrick Comedy.
JM: Right — Donald Glover, DC Pierson, Dominic [Dierkes] and those guys all did sketches. They were all in a group at UCB, they were all in an NYU improv team. Then they kind of split off and started doing sketches, but they were doing them for YouTube. And I remember somebody saying, “Oh did you see that Derrick sketch? It’s been viewed like a million times.” And I remember thinking, “This is a shift. This is a moment.” You know, I had been doing this for 10 years, and these guys put up one video that had been seen by vastly more people in a couple of months than had seen every single performance of mine put together. If you put together 10 years of sold-out shows across multiple venues, we couldn’t even touch a million views. So that, I feel like, suddenly made it possible for casting directors, managers, agents, to literally just watch a video online as a way to access and discover young talent. And I think that has proven to be the case.
MC: In that moment when you had that realization, did you find that exciting or infuriating?
JM: Oh no, I thought it was exciting. I mean I was already too old for it as a platform.
MC: I don’t think so.
JM: But I remember being like “Ooh, I wish I had this.” I wish we had been able to make short films and sketches that could have lived somewhere and found an audience. I would have loved that. But I’m very glad I did it the way I did it because I’m really grateful for the years that I was just doing shows. For me, live performance is the backbone of my whole career, and I’m grateful for that. I think that history of having all those hours onstage makes me a good performer on set, it makes it very easy for me to walk into a guest-star role on a show, it makes me very comfortable on a performance level. But that being said, boy do I wish I could have put up sketches on YouTube, that would have been amazing.
On otherness
MC: I want to ask you about casting because I thought you might have a unique perspective on it. It’s a divisive topic right now in the industry, and I feel like your point of view is interesting because you’re Greek, but you present as pretty ethnically ambiguous. What are your thoughts on the nuances of modern casting and who can portray who?
JM: I don’t really have, like, a very nuanced breakdown of it. You know in the period that my career has unfolded, it’s changed. Early on, I would only get auditions that were for some version of “other.” A lot of the roles that I auditioned for early on were accented roles. I auditioned for a lot of Middle Eastern parts, a lot of Indian parts, a lot of parts that had real heavy accents to them. You know, I play a Middle Eastern character in “The Dictator,” I play a Latino character in “The League.” Now, to be honest, I don’t think any of that would happen.
MC: Just within the past few years casting culture has changed so much. Do you think that’s been something you’ve needed to overcome? Or do you think that’s been an asset to you? Have you given it much thought?
[pullquote speaker="Jason Mantzoukas '95" photo="" align="left" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]A casting director pulled me aside once and said, “Look, I don’t want you to get discouraged, but it’s going to take you a long time to work because you don’t look like anything people are looking for.[/pullquote]
JM: I mean, I think about it in about as much as I think a lot of casting specifically is about how you look. And so I think that if you’re an actor, you have to be aware of how you look and how that is perceived. It took me a long time to have a successful acting career, really it took me over 12 years to get real work consistently. But in that time, I had a successful writing career, and some of the most interesting and important realizations I had from a casting perspective for myself as an actor were when I was working with casting directors to cast shows that I’d written. Things that I wasn’t an actor on. And that’s when I realized casting can be very reductive, especially for unknowns, which I was at the time. People are really only considering “What does this person look like? Did I picture that when I was writing this?” or the casting director’s thinking, “when I read it, did the description describe this guy?”
And for me, for all intents and purposes, the answer was no: They weren’t picturing me, they weren’t looking for me, they didn’t want me. I couldn’t get hired that way. A casting director pulled me aside once and said, “Look, I don’t want you to get discouraged, but it’s going to take you a long time to work because you don’t look like anything people are looking for. You are not handsome enough to be the lead of the show, but you’re too handsome to be his schlubby fat friend. And you are too ethnic to be the lead of the show but not ethnic enough to be his minority friend. So I can’t hire you either way; you’re falling through the cracks. But somebody’s going to hire you at some point, and then everybody’s gonna get it, and then you’ll work forever.” And that’s kind of what happened with “The League.” Once I got that, people kind of “got it.” And I think that role was incredibly helpful in terms of demonstrating my skill set.
MC: Right, and you were finally able to be seen for what you bring to the table comedically.
JM: Yeah. And that’s a show that’s completely improvised, so it’s really the purest version of the tool that is the sharpest in my shed, which is improvising. That show happened to display the thing that I am the best at compared to, you know, I’m not the best dramatic actor, I’m not super facile with accents and all that stuff. But people’s first exposure to me happened to be a show that allowed me to improvise and have the point of view of this wild, chaotic character that I’d been playing on stage for 12 years by that point. But again, it took 12 years to get there. So by the time I get on the show, I’m 36 years old, you know?
MC: When considering a role, do you read the script and say “Oh this is funny, I’m going to do this” or do you think about the direction you want to take your career as a whole?
JM: I’m always thinking about my career. I’m always making choices to do things that are meaningful to me in some way, shape or form. I only want to do things I think are very funny, very well-written. But I also might choose something because it offers me an opportunity to flex a muscle I don’t normally get to flex or be seen how I’m not normally seen. For example, even though it’s basically the same type of character I’ve played a million times, I did “Dirty Grandpa” because most of my scenes were with Robert De Niro. I mean yeah, I would like to do that.
MC: Hard to say no to that.
JM: Yeah, I would just like to do that. I’m always making decisions from the point of view of cumulatively building an entire career. I want to be able to look back on it and for each choice to have hopefully lead to more choices.
One more story
JM: There is no way to do [life]. There just isn’t. Like, there isn’t a way, you know what I mean? I talk about this movie “Touching The Void” a lot in relation to this business and success in this career. I don’t know if you’ve seen it?
MC: I haven’t, no.
JM: OK, it’s a documentary about these guys who are climbing a mountain. And they’re young guys, they’re cocky, and they’re like “we’re gonna f*cking be the first guys that have climbed this route to the top of this mountain.” It’s very technical ice climbing, very difficult. It’s the ’80s.
While they’re doing the climb, one of the men breaks his leg, which is essentially a death sentence for them. So they immediately stop and begin this very complicated process where the healthy man will lower the broken-legged man on the length of rope that they have. Then the broken-leg man anchors himself to the mountain, and the healthy man climbs down to meet him. They do this for days. They’re running out of food, they’re in white-out snow conditions — they can’t see each other. Then without knowing it, the healthy man accidentally lowers the broken-legged man over the edge of the mountain so that he is now hanging in space. But they can’t see each other, they have no way to communicate, they have no technology, they don’t have anything. So the healthy man, after sitting for hours, has no option but to cut the rope. And for the rest of the movie — because the two men are still on camera, you know they’re both alive — is about how they survive. The broken-legged man falls down to the ground into a crevasse, and continues to have a catastrophically-broken leg. And he says in the documentary, “If I had thought to myself, ‘I have to get to basecamp, or I’m gonna die,’ I would’ve just curled up in a ball and died right there because I didn’t know where I was on the mountain, I was inside of a crevasse, my leg is broken, I have no help and nobody knows we’re here.” That was the other thing, nobody knew they were doing it. But he says, “Instead, what I decided was I set myself accomplishable goals. In the next hour, I’m gonna get to that rock. And if I can get to that rock in the next hour, I will survive.”
The reason I talk about this a lot in terms of this business is because you have to make the hundreds and hundreds of smaller accomplishable choices that ultimately will get you in striking distance of Saturday Night Live or a writer’s room or whatever. The thing that for a lot of people is a hard pill to swallow which is that you have to really get comfortable with not knowing. Not knowing if it’s gonna happen for you, not knowing when it’s gonna happen if it does and you have to be okay with the fact that if your goal right now is “we’re gonna put on a sketch show,” make that the best fucking sketch show you can. Like really get everything out of it you can. And when that sketch show is done, figure out what worked, what didn’t, how can we change it for the next one, how can we re-calibrate, what are the successes and failures of this? And make the next one better, and make the next one after that better still, each thing getting better, each thing honing what it is that you do. Because you’re not just going to get air-lifted from inside the crevasse to basecamp, nobody’s going to come save you. You are the only person. It’s only you.
The author, Swartz, co-founded Middlebury Discount Comedy and the college's monthly stand-up open mic. He currently makes sketches with Real Adult Humans on YouTube.
(09/19/19 10:03am)
Cross country
By JORDAN HOWELL
The Middlebury cross country team competed in the Bates Invitational on Saturday, Sept. 14. The women finished in third place, while the men captured fourth place.
“The men's and women's cross country teams are excited now that the season is underway!” Talia Ruxin ’20 said. “It was awesome to lace up with the first-years this weekend, and we are feeling lots of positive energy.”
On the women’s side, Ruxin was able to capture seventh place with a time of 18:44.5, while Cassie Kearney ’22 came in 10th place with a time of 19:07.8. For the men, Quinlan McGaugh ’22 came in 10th place with a time of 26:34.4, while a time of 26:44.0 propelled Jack Litowitz ’20 to a 13th place finish.
“The Bates Invitational was a fun race and a great opportunity to run against some strong NESCAC competition early in the season,” McCaugh said.
Regarding the upcoming Aldrich Invitational on Saturday, Sept. 21, Litowitz was optimistic.
“A combination of the experience fresh off of a meet this past weekend, spiking up and running on our home course should allow the team to improve this week over last, and carry the positive momentum forward onto the bigger meets where it counts," he said.
Football
By LAUREN BOYD
The Panther football team kicked off their season with a 17–13 win against the Williams Ephs on Saturday, Sept. 14, scoring the game-winning touchdown with less than a minute on the clock.
The start of the second quarter opened up the scoring game. Carter Massengill ’20 put the first points of the game on the board, scoring a field goal from 25 yards out.
Later in the second quarter, the Panthers scored an 18–yard touchdown, gaining a 10–0 lead. The rest of the second quarter, however, was commanded by the Williams offense. Between the second and third quarters, the Ephs scored 13 unanswered points.
With just one minute and 30 seconds left in the game, the Panthers marched down the field behind Jernigan. A series of short passes and 10-yard gains led the Panthers to the 2-yard line, where Jernigan punched in the game-winning touchdown. Massengill tapped in the extra point, making the final score 17–13.
Men’s golf
By JACK KAGAN
The men’s golf team finished at the podium for this past weekend’s Duke Nelson Invitational. The Invitational took place at Middlebury’s Ralph Myhre Golf Course and featured 23 teams from around the region. After a strong start atop the standings at the end of day one, the Panthers finished the tournament in third place, just one stroke behind Williams.
Jordan Bessalel ’21 and co-captain Jeffrey Giguere ’20 shined on day one, coming in at sixth and third place respectively. Giguere finished out day two in first place by one stroke ahead of Williams’ Will Kannegieser. Giguere earned a combined score of 142. Neither Bessalel nor Giguere’s heroics were quite enough to lift the Panthers into second place as a team. New York University finished first.
After a strong showing, the Panthers will have little time to rest before heading down to their rivals’ turf in Williamstown for the Williams Fall Invitational.
Women’s golf
By MICHAEL SEGEL
The Panthers outdid last year’s performance at the St. Lawrence Invitational, this year coming in second place out of nine teams. On Sept. 7–8, five players from the women’s golf team came together to accomplish this feat. Their impressive performance can largely be attributed to the work of Blake Yaccino ’20, who finished third overall out of 47 participants. Classmate Chloe Levins ’20 wasn’t far behind, finishing in a tie for seventh overall.
Coming off the strong showing at the St. Lawrence Invitational, the women then competed in the Ann S. Batchelder Invitational on Sept. 14–15. They came in third overall behind Williams College and Wellesley College. Katie Murphy ’23 finished tied for second overall out of 42 golfers, shooting a two-over par 146 (74–72). Yaccino finished tied for fifth at 154 (76–78), while Levins finished tied for 18th with a 164 (84–80). Elizabeth Kenter ’23 finished tied for 27th, shooting a 169 (85–84), and Kayla Li ’23 finished in 29th with a 170 (85–85). The Panthers will be swinging back in action next week at the Mount Holyoke Invitational.
Men’s tennis
By JACK KAGAN
The men’s tennis team fell just short of divisional titles in four of four singles brackets this past weekend at the Middlebury Invitational on the Proctor Tennis Courts.
Though the squad is currently beginning a rebuilding process after losing its top two players to graduation, a bright future might not be so far away. The top singles flight saw unseeded Stan Morris ’22 blaze through to the finals, taking out the No. 3 and No. 2 seeds in the process.
Robby Ward ’23 also made a run to the finals in the B singles draw, knocking off No. 1 seed Brandeis sophomore Jeff Chen. David Vilys ’22 and Zach Hilty ’22 also made it to the finals in their respective C and D singles draws, and will look to use the momentum to propel themselves into a consistent starting role come spring time.
Surprisingly, the two doubles draws were devoid of Middlebury teams past the quarterfinals, likely owing to sets of entirely new doubles pairings.
The tournament featured teams such as Tufts University and Brandeis College, with whom the Panthers will have to contend if they want to stay at the top of DIII tennis.
Men’s soccer
By ERIK ARVIDSSON
After starting the NESCAC season with a scoreless double overtime tie, the Panthers traveled last weekend to Brunswick, Maine to take on the Bowdoin Polar Bears. For the second week in a row, the Panthers struggled connecting with the back of the net. The team finished with six shots on goal compared to Bowdoin’s 15 and neither were able to score. The game ended at 0–0.
The man of the match was goalkeeper Ryan Grady ’23. Grady made six saves to complete his second shutout of the year. The Panthers remain positive despite not scoring in two consecutive games.
“We have been doing all the right things,” Jack Spiridellis ’21 said. “We just need to put the ball into the back of the net, then we will win games.”
Up next, the Panthers played their home opener against Mt. St. Mary of New York on Sept. 17 (which occured after this issue was sent to print). The Panthers will round out the week with a home double-header this weekend against Hamilton on Saturday and Castleton on Sunday, Sept. 22.
Women’s tennis
By DAN MIGUEL ESPINOSA
The Middlebury women’s tennis team journeyed down Route 7 this past weekend for the Lindsay Morehouse Invitational at Williams College. The invitational followed a round-robin format in which the Panthers competed against three other teams in a full weekend of doubles and singles. No individual team was awarded champion.
On Friday, Sept. 13, three of four doubles pairs picked up victories against Skidmore. The following day, Middlebury swept RPI in three doubles matches, but only took two of three doubles matches against Williams. For singles, Middlebury swept RPI in all five contests.
Middlebury faced Skidmore again on Sunday for singles and won four of six matches. Against Williams, the Panthers won all three singles matches and won their only doubles contest.
The women will use this weekend to prepare for the ITA Regional Championships that kick off at home on Sept. 27.
Women’s soccer
By JENNY LANGERMAN
Women’s soccer had another successful week, winning both of this week’s games to put them at five total wins and zero losses.
The Panthers first faced SUNY Plattsburgh on the road. Despite solid play from their opponents, Middlebury was ultimately able to shut them out two-zip with goals from captain Jinx Charman ’20 and Leah Salzman ’21, and the help of strong defensive play.
Middlebury then hit the road once again to play the Bowdoin Polar Bears, having to put up a tougher fight in their second game of the week. The Bears got an early lead, scoring within the first eight minutes of play. The Panthers matched them with a goal from Salzman, but were unable to pull ahead until the very end. With just a minute and a half of game time left, captain Ellie Greenberg ’20 was able to hook one into the side of the net, securing the win.
The Panthers now have a week to regroup and prepare before their next match against conference-opponent, Hamilton College, on their home turf this Saturday, Sept. 21.
Volleyball
By HEATHER BOEHM
Middlebury Women’s Volleyball fell to an undefeated Clarkson on an unlucky Friday, Sept. 13, and split their weekend contests with a win over Potsdam and a loss to St. Lawrence on Saturday, Sept. 14.
In their first battle of the weekend against Clarkson, the Panthers came out expecting a war. Although they put some numbers on the board, they ultimately fell in straight sets to the 23rd-ranked team in the country. Gigi Alper ’20 led the Panther defense, picking up 13 digs for the night. Jane Nelson ’22 built on her teammates’ efforts and led the offense with six kills.
After a hard loss, Middlebury got back to work. The women triumphed over Potsdam with a decisive 3–0 victory. This time around it was Maggie Wise ’22, who took control of the Panther offense tallying 11 kills.
Although the Panthers were hungry for more, the women fell just short of a victory over St. Lawrence. Middlebury rolled through the first two sets before St. Lawrence stole the next two right back. Middlebury was then defeated by the Saints in the fifth set 15–12.
The Panthers will journey to Maine over the weekend, where they will compete against Colby on Friday, Sept. 20 and Bates on Saturday, Sept. 21.
Field hockey
By DAN MIGUEL ESPINOSA
Field hockey fared successfully on their Sept. 14–15 road trip, defeating ninth-ranked Bowdoin College and 18th-ranked Babson College, 1–0 and 2–0, respectively. The Panthers had difficulty stirring up scoring opportunities during the first half against the Bowdoin Polar Bears. But they gained momentum in the third quarter, outshooting the Polar Bears 3–0. Finally, the Panthers scored 30 seconds into the fourth quarter. The 1–0 score remained until the end of the game.
Against Babson, Middlebury struck early twice in the first quarter. The Panthers struggled scoring for the remainder of the game, but still made some spectacular stops.
Correction: A previous version of the cross country recap included outdated information and dates.
(09/19/19 10:02am)
After six years of grocery delivery service, Middlebury Foods ran its final routes last weekend. Unable to financially support its business model, it will no longer continue as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Since the fall of 2013, Middlebury Foods has operated monthly deliveries of fresh and local foods to six locations around Addison County. Customers would place orders ahead of time, then student volunteers would pack and deliver groceries to the six sites.
Close to the beginning of every month, Middlebury Foods would conduct a ‘delivery weekend.’
“We would take all of the delivery food to our storage place in Shoreham, which had a big refrigeration house,” Middlebury Foods General Manager Kate Peters ’20 said.
Peters told The Campus that Middlebury Foods’ model worked due to volunteer work put in by students. The organization was entirely student-run, and was able to sell high-quality food at cheap prices because of its low fixed costs: a U-Haul rental, paying for refrigeration space, and buying the food itself.
Even with such low operating costs, the organization began to struggle to meet the needs of customers. This was not always the case. In March 2016, Middlebury Foods was featured in a Vermont Public Radio story that created a boom in orders from Middlebury residents.
Charlie Mitchell ’18, a current Middlebury Foods board member, was working with the organization at the time of the VPR piece. Following the 2016 VPR story, Mitchell said, the number of families buying Midd Foods orders ballooned to almost 300, from the 80 families who were placing orders when Mitchell started volunteering.
“We expanded our offerings beyond vegetables and meat to more of a full grocery service,” he said. “We started selling bread and pasta and cheese, a lot of it from local suppliers.”
While this growth in interest helped promote Middlebury Foods’ goal of providing locally sourced foods at a lower cost, Mitchell said that orders began to decrease slowly following their 2016 spike. Bea Lee ’20.5, a finance manager and one of Middlebury Foods’ 2019 summer managers, said that as orders fell, it became harder to sustain their delivery model, which relies on wholesale purchasing.
“The idea is to buy wholesale food or local products that we are able to resell close to the wholesale price,” she said. “That system works well as long as you know you can order in these wholesale block quantities.”
Lee explained that as fewer people placed orders, it became harder to meet the exact needs of customer orders while purchasing units of wholesale products. As orders dwindled, bulk ordering made less financial sense.
Lee said that ultimately, it didn’t make sense to continue the delivery service.
“The fewer orders we had per month, the less sense it made for us to continue purchasing in this manner of wholesale,” she said. “That made us think and pause and reevaluate the model that we were using.”
Lee, Mitchell and Matthew Sjogren ’20, an operations manager who worked alongside Lee this past summer as the other summer manager, all realized that the effort going into deliveries could be put elsewhere. Beyond being a retail operation for food delivery, Sjorgren said, Middlebury Foods presents an “alternative vision” for what a food system can look like.
“That vision, I think, is to connect people who are doing awesome agricultural work and to find a way to make that work more accessible to people who might not otherwise be a part of that system,” Sjorgren said.
Sjogren credited much of the success of Middlebury Foods to Mitchell, and said that the organization has lost the intensity introduced by the former general manager and board member.
For Mitchell, the decision to stop deliveries had to do more with the goals of the organization. He saw Middlebury Foods as an “anti-hunger organization” dedicated to alleviating food insecurity in Addison County, with Middlebury Foods’ wholesale buying, limited markups and volunteer work as the model for achieving that goal.
“It just turned out that the benefit was relatively marginal,” Mitchell said.
In addition, Mitchell said that the deliveries did not necessarily serve those experiencing food insecurity, as would be the aim of a traditional food bank.
“When we could take SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps), the use of SNAP among our customers was about proportional to the enrollment in our community,” he said.
Mitchell added that SNAP is not a reliable benchmark of food insecurity because many households that could benefit from the program might not be enrolled. He cited personal financial considerations and timing as reasons why some might not use Middlebury Foods.
Mitchell said that Middlebury Foods’ goals extended beyond addressing food insecurity. Rather, he saw it as an organization focused on creating a community around a better food system and provide food at low cost in the process.
Coupled with the high turnover rate of college students, the nonprofit, wholesale model under which Middlebury Foods operated became hard to sustain.
“It became more to juggle than we could handle,” Mitchell said. Many college organizations - including Middlebury Foods - struggle with leadership turnover and management changes, he said.
Peters estimated that between 50 and 60 customers placed orders for the final delivery. Though the organization won’t continue as a 501(c)(3), Peters hopes that Middlebury Foods buyers and student volunteers alike will seek to involve themselves in conversations about food systems and access in different, more effective ways.
“I think most of the people who bought from us [did so] because of the interaction with the students and interaction with the community,” she said. “I hope that we continue that in some other form, but it just doesn't really make sense to operate as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.”
Sjogren agreed that Middlebury Foods, though finished with deliveries, will continue to exist as an organization interacting with the local food system. After having conducted its final deliveries, the organization will donate its remaining financial assets to HOPE and John Graham Shelter.
“The physical retail operation is gone,” Sjogren said,“but I think that a broader vision very much remains and that the ethos of finding innovative ways to change the food system for the better is still there.”
Delivery teams and produce hauls: through the years
For six years, Middlebury Foods provided Addison County towns with a localand affordable food option. Let’s take a look.
[gallery ids="46029,46030,46031,46032,46033"]
(09/12/19 10:05am)
Drive down scenic Route 125 and you’ll find, situated across from the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail, Middlebury College’s Breadloaf Campus in Ripton, Vt.: home to the Breadloaf School of English graduate programs during the summer as well as various MiddView groups during first-year orientation week. What’s lesser known, however, is that for 44 consecutive years, Breadloaf has welcomed back hundreds of alumni, their friends and spouses, and parents of students for an annual four-day program called Alumni College.
From Aug. 29 to Sept. 1 this year, 139 alumni came to Breadloaf to reconnect with friends, soak in the Vermont scenery and explore one of the weekend’s five course offerings. Most hailed from the New England area, but many others traveled from California, Texas and the UK to participate in the program.
According to Associate Director of Alumni and Parent Programws Lori Mackey, classes filled within the first few weeks that registration was open.
Professor of Psychology Matthew Kimble taught a course on happiness at Alumni College in 2001, and has since 2013 overseen the program’s course programming as its faculty director.
Courses for Alumni College are typically decided upon in February. Generally, Kimble looks for a program of five courses that span the humanities, social sciences and physical sciences. One Alumni College tradition is that there is almost always a field class offered, so that students have the opportunity to take full advantage of Alumni College’s pastoral setting in Ripton.
Kimble said that one of the major attractions of Alumni College is its location at the Breadloaf campus. “I don’t know what percentage of people we would lose if we were like, ‘Oh, we’re going to have classes in BiHall this year,’ but I’m feeling it would be a lot,” Kimble said. “I think people would be very disappointed. There’s something special about being up [at Breadloaf] at that time of year; it’s so beautiful.”
Despite being relatively unknown among current students, news of Alumni College travels fast through word of mouth among alumni friend groups, and the program welcomed its largest group in its 44-year history this year.
Often, classes and friends will come back regularly, using Alumni College as a reunion. “Some of [the participants] are real regulars,” Kimble said. Participants this year ranged from individuals in the class of 1951 to those in the class of 2007. Of the participants, the Class of ’55 has been known for attending Alumni College together as annual mini-reunions. They will be celebrating their 65th reunion in June of 2020.
[pullquote speaker="Bruce Byers '55" photo="" align="left" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Breakfast, lunch and dinner. You can’t overestimate how important it is for our group to be sitting together, three times a day.[/pullquote]
Sue Byers ’55 and Bruce Byers ’55 have been attending Alumni College for 18 years. “We became kind of famous, the class of ‘55, because we had so many of our class come. And then their spouses would come, and they just loved it, as we did,” Bruce Byers said.
This year, 14 members of the Class of ’55 cohort attended Alumni College. “These people came with us in 1951, and we’ve been pretty close with all of this group for all that time. We’ve lost a few last couple of years, but that’s one reason why we come,” Bruce Byers said.
“The setting is number two,” Sue Byers continued, echoing Kimble’s sentiments about the beauty of late summer in Vermont. “You can hike after your class, or you can play tennis after your class, or you can sit in the wonderful Adirondack chairs anywhere around and catch up on your reading for the nexwt day,” she said.
And sometimes, the pure pleasure of seeing old friends and familiar faces is enough to keep people coming back. “Breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Bruce said. “You can’t overestimate how important it is for our group to be sitting together, three times a day.”
This year, Bruce took a course with Associate Professor of Geology Will Amidon on Geologic Controls on Human History in the Champlain Valley, which took the class on field trips to the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail and to Port Henry. He noted the difference in age between students at Alumni College and undergraduates at Middlebury College. “From the professors’ point of view,” he said, “they’re talking to people in their 60s and 70s and 80s instead of teenagers.”
Sue, however, pointed out that “because of their age, [Alumni College participants] can draw on experiences that are pertinent to what the course is about.” She said that in her course with Associate Professor of Philosophy Martha Woodruff on Socratic Legacies Today, there were about four teachers or school counselors in the class, who were able to provide input about their experiences with the Socratic method in K–12 education.
“The one thing that’s different about Alumni College is that students bring so much experience to the table,” Kimble said. He said that most attendees of Alumni College have “fairly recently retired” and estimates the average age of a student at Alumni College to be around 70, which made for interesting discussions in courses like his on Happiness, which had “individuals with a lifetime of experience” and “will comment on ways that are really different than what you’ll see in undergraduates.” The insights that can be gained from the wealth of experiences of students at Alumni College can often be rewarding for faculty as well. According to Kimble, most faculty who have taught at Alumni College describe it as one of their most rewarding teaching experiences.
“Most alums don’t know about [Alumni College] until they’re older,” said Alumni College participant Bobo Sideli ’77, P’08, P’13. Sideli had been curious about the demographics of the program’s participants, and did a little analysis of his own. “You can get the attendee list online,” he said, “and I sorted it, and 99 out of 140 people are alumni; the rest are spouses or parents. And then I looked at it in excel, and the peak is in the class of ’67. Thirty-five percent of the attendees are from the classes of ’63 to ’68, so they’re in their seventies. It’s a bell curve.”
Sideli is trying to convince friends from his class to come to Alumni College. “They still haven’t gotten around to it. In their mind it’s an old people’s thing,” Sideli said. “They’re still – you know – the go-go. I’m the early group.”
Despite a generally positive experience at Alumni College, however, Sideli also noted a lack of racial diversity in the program’s attendants. “One thing that bothers me is the total lack of diversity — it’s so obvious.” Sideli said. “You look at the Middlebury student population and you come here, and it’s like — what the hell is going on? But you also have to remember, you’re thinking about mostly people who came to Middlebury in the mid-60s. When I came to Middlebury in ’72 I think we had a dozen or 20 African Americans. I always joked that because I’m an Italian from South Shore, Long Island, that I was diversity.”
Sideli took a course titled James Brown, Bob Marley, and Beyoncé: Protest Music as Political Mobilization Across Countries taught by Associate Professor of Political Science Kemi Fuentes-George. The course was based on a J-term course Fuentes-George had taught in the past, and included numbers from a variety of genres and origins and ranged from songs that celebrated subaltern identities, to those that were more provocative and explicit. Fela Kuti’s “Lady”, Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright”, and NWA’s “F**k the Police” were among the songs on the syllabus. “We didn’t just do hip hop music, we did music from Jamaica, we did music from Nigeria, we did Pussy Riots from Russia, and we did music from Egypt and Tunisia as well,” Fuentes-George said.
Fuentes-George went into the weekend with some reservations of his own: “I’ll be honest,” he said, “I was a little bit — I don’t know if nervousness is the word -- but I was a little bit concerned: how are these retirees, older white people, going to deal with Tupac and Kendrick Lamar? But if this is material that’s new to them and subject matter that’s new to them, I think that’s probably even better than just — ‘Oh, here’s more of just stuff that you’ve already read.’”
To prepare his students for the program, Fuentes-George sent them a video in June about the technical construction of rap music, background on the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the involvement of certain music in that movement, “stuff coming out from Beyonce and Kendrick and so on.” It was Fuentes-George’s attempt to “situate this so that people who might not have a familiarity with hip hop and rap music see that, not whatever their stereotype of it was.”
“It was an opportunity for me to get people to think about things that they ordinarily wouldn’t have thought about,” he said. “The way to do that is to have people do readings and make them engage with material that they ordinarily wouldn’t have engaged with. I didn’t want it to be just a dog and pony show.”
“I think they engaged with it,” Fuentes-George said when asked about how his students had responded to the course material. “I know that there were some who came away from it with a not just a better familiarity, but a better appreciation for some of the artists that they didn’t necessarily know.”
“I know protest music from the civil rights movement, but I didn’t know any other protest music, and I had no knowledge of rap,” Sideli said. “And hip-hop — I mean, that was foreign to me. So I thought it would be good exposure, and it is.”
A recent retiree, Sideli had worked in healthcare for most of his adult life. Now he “does” music, he said. He plays, reads about and studies music, and sees Fuentes-George’s course as a further exploration into the “larger macro level of music.”
Though Sideli doesn’t typically write protest songs, “’cause I have nothing to protest about,” he made an exception for the last night of Alumni College: putting his own spin on James Brown’s iconic 1969 song “I’m Black and I’m Proud,” Sideli and his classmates serenaded the Alumni College with “I’m Old and I’m Proud.”
“We’re so sick of our culture that’s so youth-oriented — and so this is our protest song,” he said.
Sideli is one of many participants for whom Alumni College was an opportunity to rekindle interests and passions they had temporarily set aside in life post-Middlebury.
“For anyone who’s gone to college, there’s just always part of you that misses that environment and longs to go back, and so many do,” Kimble said. “To some extent, my worst fear is that people will learn what an amazing thing Alumni College is and we won’t be able to accommodate everybody. I do feel like it’s a bit of a secret.”
Correction: A previous version of the article suggested that Professor Matthew Kimble assumed the role of faculty director of Alumni College immediately after teaching a class at Alumni College in 2001. Kimble assumed the role in 2013, taking over from Jim Ralph, Dean of Faculty Development & Research and Rehnquist Professor of American History and Culture, who was faculty director from 2008 to 2013. James Jermain Professor Emeritus of Political Economy and International Law Russell Leng was faculty director of Alumni College from 1993 to 2008.
(05/25/19 5:57pm)
Under a sunny sky and 80-degree temperatures in Ashland, Virginia, the third-ranked Middlebury women’s lacrosse team defeated the eighth-ranked Wesleyan Cardinals 16-8 in the NCAA Division III semifinals. The win extended the Panthers’ winning streak to 21, the longest in the nation, and earns them a spot in tomorrow’s championship game against Salisbury. In the day's second semifinal, Salisbury defeated Tufts 14-11.
The team traveled to the semifinals for the third time in the last four years and the 25th time since 1994. This was Wesleyan’s first appearance in the Final Four, having knocked out previous national champion Gettysburg 10-7. Middlebury entered the semifinal with 300 goals and having previously defeated Wesleyan 8-7 in the regular season.
With 90 seconds into the game, the Cardinals’ Johanna Copeland scored a goal off an assist from Abigail Horst, her 28th for the season. The Panthers did not let this 1-0 lead sit for long, with Jane Earley ’22 and Erin Nicholas ’21 scoring three goals together in the span of 90 seconds. Earley was the only first-year on any all-NESCAC team selection, having scored a spot on the second all-NESCAC team and having been named NESCAC Player of the Week twice in the regular season. While Wesleyan scored another two goals in the first half, the Panthers extended their lead to 8-3 by halftime, with Jenna McNicholas ’19, Emma McDonagh ’19 and Kirsten Murphy ’21 contributing to the team’s success in the first half.
The second half included goals by McDonagh, Casey O’Neill ’19, Gracie Getman ’21, McNicholas, Henley Hall ’19 and Kate Zecca ’20 as the Panthers freely substituted players on and off the field. Zecca, a non-starter, had scored nine goals and two assists so far in the NCAA tournament. While Wesleyan answered Middlebury’s dominant plays with five more goals of their own, including one in the last minute, the Cardinals’ record-breaking run in the NCAA tournament was ended with Middlebury’s 16-8 victory.
Julia Keith ’20 spent all 60 minutes in goal with 5 saves. Keith is the fourth-best in the country in terms of her goals-against average, standing at 6.28.
Middlebury's 316 goals this season constitutes a new program record, exceeding the previous mark of 312 set in both 2016 and 2018. Over this year's spring break, Middlebury defeated Salisbury 11-6.
Earley was among the game’s highest scorers, with two goals and one assist. “Jane Earley is someone you want on your team when the game is on the line,” head coach Kate Livesay said earlier in the championship weekend. For senior captain McDonagh, having scored five goals in the semifinal, she and her fellow seniors are striving for a repeat of 2016’s NCAA Division III championship victory. “I think ever since our seniors missed graduation because they were in the national championship we’ve had it in our minds that that’s what we want to do too,” she said to the media following their win against Franklin and Marshall in last weekend’s regional final. “We’re on a roll and I think that our senior class is going to put everything out that we can but this whole team is so dedicated.”
The championship game will be streamed on NCAA.com here, starting on Sunday at 2 p.m.
(05/09/19 10:00am)
This week, Middlebury is entering the final stages of its yearlong workforce planning process. On Tuesday, the college finalized employees’ acceptances of voluntary buyouts, which the college terms Incentivized Separation Plans (ISP), marking the end of a process that has been ongoing since early February.
Although an overview of which positions were eliminated and how each department is being affected has not yet been made available, the college has indicated that it is on track to meet its goal of reducing employee expenses by 10%, or about $8 million. The college plans to make an announcement about workforce planning after the Board of Trustees meeting in May, according to college spokesperson Sarah Ray.
President Laurie L. Patton notified faculty and staff on Feb. 4 that the college had identified 150 staff positions to be eliminated, while an additional 30 new positions would be created and filled as a result of the workforce planning process. Of the 150 positions identified for reduction, though, about 100 were already vacant through attrition and restrictions on re-hiring over the last few years. Around 50 occupied full- and part-time staff positions, including roughly 42 full-time positions, were set to be eliminated over the next few years, according to an email sent the following day to faculty and staff.
Because many staff share job titles, the college sent buyout applications to 80 employees on Feb. 8, although only 42 of their positions needed to be eliminated. Those employees had until March 11 to submit if they wished to receive a buyout. Staff members in affected positions were notified by their supervisors before receiving a buyout application from the college.
All employees eligible for buyouts were also granted access to a private job portal where they could apply to thirty new positions, which had been created as part of the workforce planning process, before they were made broadly available. This was part of the college’s effort to reduce the workforce and eliminate staff positions, while ensuring that the separation process was voluntary.
The second week of March, a few days after applications for buyout packages were due, official offers were sent out. In accordance with state law, employees had 45 days, or until April 29, to accept the buyouts. The exact contents of the package varied depending on salary and duration of employment at Middlebury. Following the April 29 deadline, staff were entitled to a seven-day period during which they could rescind their acceptance.
Although administrators will not know definitively until after accepted separation offers are finalized on May 7, college communications so far suggest that there will be no need for involuntary layoffs, which had been mentioned as a possible last resort if not enough employees took buyouts. Most recently, a March 15 email to faculty and staff said that the 47 buyout applications “put us on track to achieve our goal” of reducing employee compensation by 10%.
For some staff members, especially those already planning to retire, the buyout was a welcome opportunity. For others, the process has been draining, especially when paired with the implementation of Oracle, a new online financial platform that some staff complain is difficult to navigate.
“I’ve worked here for 18 years, and right now stress levels are the highest I’ve ever seen them,” said Missey Thompson, a staff council representative and box office coordinator at the Mahaney Center for the Arts.
Some staff who received separation offers but did not want to leave the college were able to find new positions, either within their old department or in a new one. Others have had more trouble.
One employee, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, currently holds a position slated to end in June. “I have been here over 31 years, and I cannot afford to take the buyout,” she told The Campus. The staff member, who applied to three newly created positions through the private portal, has been rejected from one and never heard back from the other two. Despite repeated assurances from the college that “individuals who are offered the incentive and do not take it will remain employed at Middlebury,” some staff are faced with terminated positions and limited options in the coming year.
Still, many staff appreciate the intentionality that has gone into this process, especially compared to staff cuts the college undertook in past years, which left crucial positions unoccupied or left longtime employees abruptly out of work. Nonetheless, the communication (or lack thereof) from leadership throughout the months-long process added an additional layer to an already nerve-wracking process.
On more than one occasion, staff learned details about the progress of workforce planning from media reports before receiving any communication from the administration. The all-staff email announcing that letters would arrive within the week notifying staff their position had been terminated, along with a buyout offer, was not sent until Feb. 4, five days after a Jan. 31 Addison Independent article containing the same news. And many staff had been unaware that up to 40 new positions would be created through workforce planning until The Campus reported that fact in February. That figure was eventually lowered to 30.
Staff also report experiencing limited communication across departments. Since each department had its own restructuring plan to eliminate 10% of personnel expenses, much communication about buyouts was left to individual department leaders — a decentralized approach that led to miscommunications and confusion as staff heard about reductions and changes in other departments through word of mouth.
Tim Parsons, the president of staff council, says this has contributed to a lingering anxiety among staff. “With differing levels of communications by department, the process did not go as smoothly as we had hoped across the institution,” Parsons told The Campus. “We’re still waiting to hear what the future state will be.”
The “future state” Parsons referred to is how work will be redistributed following the departure of those who accepted buyout offers. But without knowing exactly how responsibilities will be allocated, many departments are concerned that they will be expected to do the same amount of work with less staff. While the administration has repeatedly assured staff that this will not be the case, the lack of clarity on a future state has left some department heads and managers on edge. Staff hope the finalization of buyout offers this week will finally provide a clear picture of the composition of workforce planning going forward.
(05/02/19 10:00am)
Zeitgeist results show that roughly 80 percent of students would enroll at Middlebury again if given the choice. On average, students of color are 15 percent less likely to express that sentiment than their peers.
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The “Campus Climate Assessment” released last week by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion showed that more than one-third of students disagreed with the statement that the college creates a positive atmosphere that promotes diversity among staff and students.
“There is such an emphasis on quantity, how many people come and get in from this background or the other, without actually looking at quality in terms of financial aid that is provided to students,” said an student anonymously in the report. “There needs to be more serious thought in how to measure the quality of their diversity instead of just the quantity as quantity are just numbers on a website.”
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Another potential source of student dissatisfaction is the lack of suicide prevention services and other mental health services provided to students by Parton Center for Health and Wellness. Earlier this year, The Campus received an anonymous message that shed light on the lack of counselors at Parton and the difficulty that exists with getting an appointment. Parton will be addressing this shortage in the coming Fall with the JED program that will restructure the counseling center’s hours to increase student access.
The Commons system proved to be another area of student discontent, with only roughly half of students in the Zeitgeist survey expressing satisfaction. The college’s recent How We Will Live Together project, which aims to reimagine the system, found that this discontent stems from the lack of interclass interaction that creates an isolating environment, especially for Febs, who are often placed into upperclassman housing.
Zeitgeist data also revealed that students lack confidence in the decisions made by college administrators. Along a similar vein, less than half of Middlebury students expressed satisfaction with President Laurie L. Patton. Controversy surrounding guest speakers including Charles Murray and Ryszard Legutko has characterized Patton’s career at Middlebury College, although sentiments from the recent controversy are not factored into the survey results.
Of all categories asked, students appeared to feel the most indifferent towards the SGA. Roughly 35% of students reported neither feeling satisfied nor dissatisfied — the highest proportion of neutral views in the series.
STUDENTS SATISFIED WITH DIVESTMENT, CCI, DINING HALLS
By contrast, students expressed strong levels of satisfaction for the February vote by the board of trustees to divest from fossil fuels and enact the Energy2028 plan — the culmination of years of student advocacy.
This divestment decision was triggered by a student-wide referendum sponsored by the SGA last April, in which 79% of students expressed support for divestment. A faculty resolution in November passed with over 90% support.
More than half of Middlebury students are pleased with the Center for Careers and Internships, which provides resources from resume building to LinkedIn professional headshot events to break trips to Silicon Valley and Wall Street.
Over two-thirds of students expressed satisfaction with dining services, undoubtedly a major factor in student happiness at Middlebury. Dining halls sported the second highest level of satisfaction in the series, trailing closely behind Divestment efforts.
*Editor’s Note: These approval ratings were submitted before the Legutko controversy and reflect students’ opinions before those events.
(04/25/19 9:55am)
The Middlebury track and field team competed in the Williams Invitational on Saturday, April 20. Although the meet was non-scoring, the team competed hard as this was the last meet before the NESCAC Championships.
Max Memeger ’21 said, “[…]both the men’s and women’s teams were able to put up great marks across the board in the final week before championship season. Every event group stepped it up this week and there were many huge PR’s, season bests and several school records. These performances give both teams great confidence as we look to carry this momentum into next weekends NESCAC championships.”
There were several notable performers for the women. Gretchen McGrath ’19 was able to capture first place in the 200-meter dash with a time of 25.38. In the 800-meter run, Lucy Lang ’19 and Nicole Johnson ’22 grabbed first and second place respectively. Lang had a time of 2:19.66 and Johnson had a time of 2:21.58. Rory Kelly ’19 came in first and Meg Wilson ’20 came in second in the 1500-meter run. Kelly had a time of 4:38.98 and Wilson had a time of 4:45.72. In the 100-meter hurdles, Catherine Walker ’20 was able to get first place with a time of 15.39.
The Panthers did well in the 400-meter hurdles as they obtained the first three spots. Julia Munz ’22 came in first with a time of 1:05.54, Emily Bulczynski ’22 came in second with a time of 1:06.77, and Anna Willig ’20 came in third with a time of 1:08.97. Alex Cook ’20 placed first place in the long jump event with a jump of 5.55 meters and Simone Ameer ’21 got first in the triple jump event with a jump of 10.82 meters. It is also important to mention that the 4X100 team that came in second place was composed of Lizzie Walkes ’20, Kate Holly ’21, McGrath, and Cook.
Notable performers for the men include Jimmy Martinez ’19 and Nick Hendrix ’20 who obtained first and second place respectively in the 200-meter dash. Martinez had a time of 21.90 and Hendrix had a time of 21.92. In the 800-meter run, Jon Perlman ’19 came in second with a time of 1:54.49, while Will Meyer ’20 came in third with a time of 1:55.80. Memeger had a time of 15.63 to win the 110-meter hurdles. In the 400 meter hurdles, Jonathan Fisher ’20 got first with a time of 55.97. The Panthers had a time of 42.42 in the 4X100 meter relay. This team was composed of Noah Wagner-Carlberg ’19, Hendrix, Arden Coleman ’20, and Conor Banky ’19.
The jumpers and throwers also achieved remarkable feats. John Natalone ’19 came in first place in the pole vault event, Dylan Mortimer ’19 was first in the triple jump event, Nathaniel Klein ’21 obtained first in the shot put event, Zack Sieb ’21 got first in the discus throw, and Minhaj Rahman ’19 came in first in the hammer throw.
Next week is the start of championship season as the Panthers take part in the NESCAC championships on Saturday, April 27. The team is on track to perform well if they continue to show the strength and resiliency that they have shown all season.
On the NESCAC Championships, Walker said, “The team is super excited going into NESCACs this week; I’ve really never seen the group so united and determined so it’s going to be a great weekend. Having it on our home track I think also brings another element of energy, so hopefully we get a ton of fans out there to support.”
“To prepare for the championships this weekend, the team will be dialing back the training volume significantly and focusing on small technique changes to get the body ready for the big day of competition this Saturday,” Memeger said.
“We will also mentally lock ourselves in to get as amped as possible to pop off when the time comes. Finally we will of course continue our team tradition of lots and lots of Kombucha, doing a team flavor sampling event to build hype before NESCACS.”
(04/18/19 10:36am)
Vermont is the nation’s leading maple syrup producer, generating almost 2 million gallons annually — nearly half the country’s total crop. An essential feature of the state’s economy and national identity, this staple product may now be in danger as persistent low temperatures and snowfall shorten the sugaring season.
While late February and early March typically mark the start of the season, a pattern of prolonged winters and heavy March snow has delayed initial sap runs, setting many sugar makers back. For some, such as Abby and Trent Roleau of Gateway Farm in Bristol, production could not begin until mid-March — over a two week delay for a season that only lasts 4 to 6 weeks.
These delays can have serious implications for production, as noted by Don Gale, the owner and operator of Twin Maple Sugarworks in Lincoln. With the late start, low temps and continuing snowfall, Gale is producing, each day, less than a third of the maple syrup he produced last season. “It’s just been too cold with too much snow,” he said.
The Addison County Sugar Makers Association (ACSMA), which helps producers with financing, wholesaling and retailing syrup, has yet to reach a definite conclusion on the issue.
“Because the season started later and was shorter than in recent years, the production is a bit off,” explained Barbara Rainville, the Secretary and Treasurer for the ACSMA. With production disrupted, Rainville noted that there may be a subsequent rise in retail prices. However, syrup remains “a global market” and pricing will continue to be influenced by other competitors, such as Maine and Canada.
Although disruptive, these ecological shifts may actually represent a return to the norm for more seasoned sugar makers. Dave Folino of Hillsboro Sugarworks described the clinging winter as feeling “more like the 1970s or some previous era.”
Rainville, whose family has been sugaring in Lincoln, Vermont for over 80 years, reiterated this feeling, sharing that, “in our family, Grandpa always said sugaring started at town meeting and ended at grandma’s birthday, which is April 10. So this year is more the norm, and the last few years historically have been outliers.”
Even if these extended winters are in fact a return to a previous norm, they still bring trouble. There may be statewide repercussions if these shifts persist, as maple is a key enterprise for Vermont. According to a 2015 study by the Center for Rural Studies at UVM, the Vermont maple industry contributes between $317 and $330 million to the state in annual sales, and adds $140 to $144 million in value to the economy each year. Additionally, the maple industry contributes heavily to Vermont’s tourist appeal as millions of Americans come to visit each year. From both an economic and cultural perspective, maple syrup is absolutely vital.
Luckily, recent technological advancements in equipment may be able to offset the effects of a shorter season. Ken Hastings of Bread Loaf View Farms was actually able to exceed his goals for this years production despite a slight delay, and he attributes part of this success to advances in equipment.
“I suspect if we had the same practices as when we started, we would definitely see an impact,” he said. He also notes that the sugar content was “very high this year, resulting in a good crop of high quality sugar.”
Hastings, who began sugaring in 1985, produces roughly 1000 to 1500 gallons of syrup each year and finished his season on April 7. Located only three miles from Middlebury College, Bread Loaf View Farm is owned and operated by two alumni and often hosts pancake breakfasts, open houses and tours for students.
(04/18/19 10:00am)
Picture this: It’s Sunday morning. You snooze your alarm three times at 11:00 before you get the courage to brave the -2-degree winds and make the journey through the snow to find the nearest open dining hall. You take your time, kicking your legs up and preparing for some “Sunday Scaries.” This may be the life of an average Middkid. But for a volunteer ski patroller? Quite the opposite.
Ski patrol: the heroes that we didn’t know we needed until we had them. They are not only students, but also masters of the mountain. Not simply athletes, but qualified medics. Not just “sendy” (as senior President Kaitlyn Francis coins them), but professional.
The day on the job for a patroller starts with a harsh 7 a.m. breakfast. In the spirit of camaraderie, the goal is to get there as timely as possible in order to make sure that no last-minute stragglers slept through their alarms. The squad then makes their way to the Middlebury Snow Bowl with a prompt 8 a.m. arrival. After slapping on some boots and other gear to protect them from the freezing temperatures, they find out their two to three responsibilities for the next eight hours in the office. Some of these include the coveted top hut duty (sitting pretty at the top of the mountain waiting to jump on any type of accident) and Sheehan duty (skiing to the left side of the mountain by Sheehan lift). Emily Kohutnicki ’20 claims that her duty of choice is the “top hut duty” (hot tub top hut). She loves this role because it’s where she can “really spend some time with fellow patrollers and get to know both new and old friends.”
The process of joining the squad is no easy task; it requires strong mental and physical capabilities. A prospective patroller has to be both a skilled and experienced skier, as well as pass written and oral exams that earn you a role just below that of an EMT, a certification known as Outdoor Emergency Care (OEC). Current members of patrol teach the class every Sunday for three hours during the fall semester, so if you’re not 100% committed, your spot on the Bowl looks pretty bleak. It is as if you are taking a fifth class, which is a huge sacrifice for a goal that is by no means promised, even if you pass the challenging standardized tests. The course even entails a midterm involving practicals, which are scenarios of injuries that are set up by the patrollers which students then must respond to flawlessly. If you thought a midterm was a lot for an extracurricular, then you will be shocked to hear that they even have a final exam given by the National Ski Patrol (NSP), where they must earn at least an 80%.
The journey does not stop here. Next, your ski abilities are put to the test, and the Vermont conditions are anything but a walk in the park. Only students with the highest scores are admitted to the mountain, and from here on physical aptitude is carefully examined — may the best skier win. With the patrollers only having a few slots open, there is no margin for error and your skills must be executed without any blemishes.
So, after reading about the arduous process, why join patrol? Veteran skier Kohutnicki commented that she joined because of the social aspect and the people she found. “Being an intimidated freshman living in Coffrin with only a handful of others, I wanted to find a way to meet new people and find friends with a common interest – skiing, duh,” said Kohutnicki. “Some people are pre-med students who ski [who] wanted to combine academics with pleasure, but I just thought the idea of responding to injured skiers on the mountain could be fun and fulfilling.”
Although this process seems as if it would produce a cutthroat and hypercompetitive atmosphere, most who experienced this overwhelming process emerged with a different perspective. Kohutnicki commented that she did not find the environment to be too competitive. Even though they were competing against each other for six or seven spots, students would study with one another and veteran patrollers jumped at the chance to help with lingering questions. One would think that the ski test would be even more intimidating, being a more athletic contest, but it was more of the same positive and encouraging energy.
Old-timer Francis said that her favorite aspects of ski patrol are the people and the culture. “We all love spending time together on and off the hill, and there is a strong culture of “sendiness” and a “love of skiing,” Francis said. “Ski patrollers have become some of my best friends at Middlebury which makes volunteering as a ski patroller not feel like a job but rather just a blocked-out time chunk to spend with people I love being around.”
But it is definitely not all fun and games and the squad knows how to balance fun and professionalism. Francis commented on one of the more dangerous aspects of the job where quick action is key. “It’s definitely intense when we get a call about anything head or C-spin related where we would need to backboard, since these types of injuries can be really serious and especially with spinal injuries there isn’t room for error on our end,” Francis said. “But we do so much training throughout the fall when we teach or take the OEC class and on-hill in the winter that responding becomes almost automated. Having drilled in practice, responding to accidents doesn’t feel scary since I definitely have always felt super prepared by all the training we do.”
One of the most exciting days for patrollers is their claim to fame on Winter Carnival, when Middlebury hosts multiple schools to race down the Bowl. For some, this is a weekend in which many students use to enjoy the finer things at Midd, but this is the day in which patrollers must be most active. With rowdy students crawling their way to the top of the Bowl in Converse, the patrollers are only drunk with excitement. Despite being on duty, Francis claims that Winter Carnival is one of her favorite days of the year. “It is so much fun to be on skis and feel part of the skier hype as well as the energy that the silly people bring up from campus,” she said. “I really love getting to see everyone who comes up to the Bowl and being able to get right into the roost mosh pit, but then ski down and watch my friends racing from the bottom. It’s actually a pretty great day to be in the office, bopping around on skis.”
Graduating this spring, Francis has been able to develop her leadership and organization skills while in charge of the ski patrol squad, since all of the group’s educational, fundraising, scheduling and social operations are run by the students. “I really appreciated the opportunity to take charge of these different elements and am so grateful to the group for being so willing to volunteer for various jobs,” she said. “We were a small group this year which means that the class and fundraising efforts needed all hands on deck, which was stressful at times but in the end I think improved all of our leadership and communication skills.”
Community building has been at the heart of Francis’ time on ski patrol and one of the highlights of her Middlebury career. “It is pretty rare to be able to post in a GroupMe about a sunrise skin and have more than a dozen people immediately be up for the challenge and early morning,” she said.
We saw winter come and go. New waves of fresh-faced patrollers entered the scene as “washed up” seniors take their last runs down the mountain, dressed to the nines in their unmistakable bright blue jackets with their radios weighing them down. These are truly the unsung heroes of the Bowl, protecting the community one run at a time. Now, all we can do is wait for another Vermont winter of “sendiness.”
(04/11/19 9:59am)
The way we deal with the death of a loved one makes for an incredibly personal narrative. After the passing of her beloved brother Carl, playwright Paula Vogel found her own unique way to let the world know how dear he was to her, by writing a loving tribute and political statement through a play titled “The Baltimore Waltz.”
This past weekend, Seeler Studio Theatre was transformed into the thrilling set of “The Baltimore Waltz” for the first of two Spring term faculty-directed shows. Directed by Associate Professor of Theater Cláudio Medeiros ’90, the 90-minute production ran evening performances on April 4 through 6 and one matinee on April 5.
Originally written as Vogel’s response to the 1988 death of her brother Carl, who died from complications due to AIDS, the play takes place in Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, where Carl (Alexis de la Rosa ’19) has a terminal illness, and Anna (Madeleine Russell ’19) imagines a trip the two never took. This fantasy of Anna’s takes the audience with her and Carl on a quest for a cure — but instead of her brother being the one ill, it is Anna. In her fantasy, she suffers from the fictional and terminal ATD (Acquired Toilet Disease), which she is said to have contracted by using the bathrooms at the elementary school she teaches at.
On this quest, Anna is driven by the hedonistic pleasures of museums, luxurious brunches and casual sex with as many men as possible. Assisting the pair on their journey is the mysterious Third Man (Kevin Collins ’20 and Ryan Kirby ’22) who takes up many roles in the play, from a lust-driven waiter in Paris, to a mad Viennese doctor who swears to cure ATD by having his patients drink urine.
The play explores how the pair’s European idyll is broken by Carl’s death and the tragic revelation that the entire play was simply Anna’s valiant fantasy to keep alive her brother’s spirit, when she could not save his life. Their final dance, the Baltimore waltz, was danced under a disco ball, a true symbol of the times.
The production’s choice of music sets the play in a particular space in time. From ABBA to Dutch and German tunes, the songs evoke the experience of the siblings’ lives in the ’80s and their romp through Europe.
Forty years later, the themes in the play remain relevant. “I was surprised to learn about how little people on the campus knew about the AIDS crisis and the scale of the Act Up movement,” Masha Makutonina ’21, who stage managed the play, said. “This play sheds light on how important it is to not only realize the tragedies of the past, but also give a voice to communities that are deeply hurt and are continued to be targeted even today.”
“The tragedy of losing someone close to you is a theme that is very universal,” Makutonina added.
Although there were only four actors on stage, this production had a large team behind it. In addition to Russell, de la Rosa, Collins and Kirby, the production team was comprised of director Medeiros, lighting designer Stephen Chen ’19.5, stage manager Masha Makutonina ’21 and assistant stage manager James Peacock ’21 and dramaturg Travis Sanderson ’19.
Because the production was faculty directed, it was able to realize the “wildest of ideas,” said Makutonina. Sanderson presented the cast and crew with research background on the AIDS epidemic through findings and the Act Up documentary, and the production team chose their props, costumes and lighting design based on references of the book from the film noir, “Third Man.”
“Even the smallest details, such as the hats worn by the Third Man, and the pillows on set, had to be exactly right,” Makutonina said.
Recalling the moments spent in the rehearsal room with his crew, Director Medeiros said that the play has given him two very special gifts: “a destination for my affections and the realization that I must be an alchemist of my own losses.”
(04/11/19 9:51am)
Although it feels like the indoor track season ended only recently, the team is already several meets into the outdoor season. On Saturday, April 6, the team participated in the Amherst Spring Fling with impressive results.
On the team’s performance at this meet, Noah Wagner-Carlberg ’19 said, “Overall this weekend was a very exciting one for Midd Track and Field. The Amherst Spring Fling saw a lot of remarkable performances from our athletes, indicative of our growth over the course of the season and of the work we put in over spring break in San Diego. Most notably we saw terrific marks from both male and female athletes in nearly every field event, including season’s bests and personal bests.”
The women were able to capture second place in a total field of seven teams by obtaining 90 points. There were many crucial contributors to these points. Lucy Lang ’19 came in first in the 800-meter run with a time of 2:19.86. Emily Bulczynski ’22 achieved second place in the 400-meter hurdles with a time of 1:08.28. In the pole vault event, Kreager Taber ’19, Molly Colwell ’20, and Leah Granger ’22 were able to get first, second, and fourth respectively. Taber vaulted 3.40 meters, Colwell 3.19 meters, and Granger 2.80 meters. In the long jump event, Alex Cook ’20 jumped 5.51 meters, Simone Ameer ’21 jumped 5.31 meters, and Jackie Topping ’22 jumped 5.26 meters. They captured the first three places in the event. It is also important to note that Helene Rowland ’20 placed first in shot put, Emily Ray ’20 came in first in the discus throw, and Rebecca Gorman ’20 ranked first in the javelin throw.
The men were able to get second place in a total field of six teams with 100.50 points. Key contributors included Nick Hendrix ’20 in 200 meter dash where a time of 22.01 pushed him to first place. Jonathan Fisher ’20 got a time of 56.87 to get first in the 400-meter hurdle. The “A” team, composed of Wagner-Carlberg, Hendrix, Matthew Durst ’21, Conor Banky ’19 and Henry Tatum ’21, captured second in the 4x100 relay. In high jump, Fisher and Francis Price ’22 were able to capture third place and a tie for fourth in this event respectively. Nathaniel Klein ’21, Zack Sieb ’21 and James Caprio ’21 obtained the first three places in shot put. Klein threw 14.65 meters, Sieb threw 13.25 meters, and Caprio threw 12.63 meters. Sieb and Caprio also happened to get the first two places respectively in the discus throw. Minhaj Rahman ’19 participated in the hammer throw and placed first with a throw of 55.75 meters.
Fisher mentioned, “I was happy to get a few good jumps in, and I’m proud of my teammate Tim DeLorenzo for clearing 6’0.75” in his first collegiate outdoor meet. The 400 hurdles are always a difficult event, and I’ve had some trouble getting my feet under me after coming back from abroad. I feel like this race was definitely a step in the right direction and gives me momentum going into next week’s meet.”
During this early part of the season, the Panthers have to make sure to work hard to prepare for the later championship meets.
“As with any year of Midd Track and Field, NESCACs is by far the most anticipated competition of the season, and there is already a lot of hype surrounding the event this year,” Wagner-Carlberg mentioned.
Ray adds, “We always want to win NESCACs, but this year the men are looking to keep their title, while the women’s team wants to come out stronger than ever and beat Tufts and Williams at NESCACs. We’re hosting NESCACs this year at Middlebury, so we’re even more determined to have fun and push ourselves to compete at the highest level.”
With the team continuing to strive towards their goals, they will next compete at the Silfen Invitational on both Friday, April 12 and Saturday April 13.
“A lot of the team did not compete in Amherst, so we’re excited to prepare for the Silfen Invitational at Connecticut College,” said Ray. “It’s looking like a big meet with a lot of good competitors, which will be good preparation in the month before NESCACs.”
Fisher adds, “The Silfen Invitational at Conn College is shaping up to be an intense meet. It will feature many of the top NESCAC teams, who will be looking to get some good times and distances for the bigger meets coming up in 3-4 weeks. It should be a good preview for the NESCAC championship meet at Middlebury on April 27. Hopefully we’ll be able to continue our hot streak and put together more impressive performances.”
(03/14/19 10:34am)
MIDDLEBURY – “The idea is this: get the building. Gut the thing. Because it’s hot garbage inside,” said Scott Gemignani, owner of Tinker and Smithy Game Store. Gemignani explained his plan to bring new life to downtown Middlebury as he set up shop for the day, pausing to gesticulate excitedly. His plan includes the construction of a classic, all-ages source of fun – a bowling alley – in the previous home of the Ben Franklin store.
Front Porch Forum (FPF), a free online platform aimed at building community within Vermont neighborhoods, has become home to the town’s growing bowling alley brainstorm. “Wondering if anyone is interested in opening a bowling alley in Middlebury?!” wrote Lerin Peters, one FPF “neighbor” in late February, sparking a flood of excited posts echoing this sentiment.
“I’d welcome this or any space that, as my neighbor pointed out “appeals to all ages, professions, genders & skill sets/talents” - year round to boot,” said Erin Davis, producer and Middlebury College instructor, in a post on FPF on Feb. 24.
Scott Gemignani has an action plan. He wants to be the one to bring a bowling alley to Middlebury – but not just any bowling alley. The owner of Tinker and Smithy Game store has much more ambitious goals to create a space where community members and families can gather recreationally, high schoolers can have their first jobs and where even college students can find some fun off the hill after 5 p.m.
In a post on FPF responding to the community discussion, Gemignani wrote: “I’ve heard a number of times that folks would like to have a bowling alley, some night-life, something TO DO in Middlebury after the shops close. Well, I have a plan to accomplish all these wishes.”
In keeping with the experiential and diversified business model he operates at Tinker and Smithy, Gemignani’s plan would include a retro arcade, a space for community classes and after-school programming – including an offer to partner with the local teen center, a few food options done right, and of course a one- or two-lane bowling alley. Not to be forgotten, if he is able to purchase the building, he hopes to move his current toy and game store operation to the other side of the street as well.
Gemignani grew up in Bristol, Vermont, and returned to the state when he had finished “running around,” as well as receiving his college degree. During the 80s and 90s, he explained, Middlebury was the economic hub for his town and other surrounding communities. That was before the Internet. When Gemignani came home, he noticed things were beginning to change.
“As I got involved in my kids and their community, their parents and their friends, and the schools, I noticed that we were having kind of this crisis of programming for kids,” he explained. “Being a daycare provider, I noticed that there were no options for people to bring their children in the local area.”
According to Gemignani, services for families are “next to nothing.” Corey Hendrickson, photographer, videographer and longtime resident of Middlebury concurred.
“When you have kids you kind of get silo-ed,” Hendrickson explained. “To have a place where kids can be loud and physical would be great. There’s crossover appeal too because it’s not just fun for that age group but I think I could see students there.”
“I’m also a dad,” Hendrickson elaborated. “I’ve got two small kids. The Town Hall Theater is amazing, the Marquis is amazing, however there’s still a pretty big need for family friendly activities during, like, the 11 months of winter every year.”
Hendrickson, like many other parents in town, is eager to see spaces where intergenerational gatherings can take place, where kids can let loose and people can be social after the sun goes down. “I’m an enthusiastic advocate,” he said, and is more than willing to do what he can to propel a project to create a bowling alley along. As of now, he explained, there is a void that needs to be filled – one that can’t be sustained in the long term by what he terms “guerilla parenting spots” for congregating.
“If everyone kind of contributes a little bit of time and their own skill set, I feel optimistic that we could figure something out,” Hendrickson continued, encouraged by the momentum he sees building on FPF.
Admittedly, the renovations and construction at Ben Franklin would take a serious financial contribution. According to Gemignani, the building hasn’t been updated in years; to gut and remodel the basement and first floor represents a considerable undertaking.
“I would eventually hope that the community would help to support the building because the amount of money that the building requires is substantial,” he said. But for Gemignani and many residents, the stakes are high enough to make this endeavor an exciting prospect.
“[In] this town, like a lot of America right now, there’s wealth disparity,” said Gemignani, bringing up the importance of an affordable and public gathering place in rural communities. “There are kids at the grade school where their parents are not actually washing their clothes because the water bill is too high. You have single parents, single mothers, single fathers or even couples that are making tough decisions– like do we eat tonight or do we pay heat.”
So, the official mission, Gemignani said, is “to build community and celebrate diversity and ensure that everyone can come in here and that this is a community space.”
Gemignani is looking for investors, donors and community support to secure the funding for what he believes to be a “site with guaranteed income built-in.” For more information or to contact Gemignani, email scottgemignani@gmail.com or make a visit to the local game store.
(03/07/19 11:34am)
For the first time in recent history, the Middlebury College Cycling Team is set to host the Weybridge Road Race next month as part of the six-week Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (ECCC) season. The race will take place on April 7, and is a major milestone for the student cycling community on campus, especially for the Class of 2019.
According to club president Katie Aman ’19, who has taken the lead to organize the event, this race has been a long time coming.
“I don’t even know the last time Middlebury hosted a road race; an alum told me about a race in the 80s, but I know it hasn’t been for a long, long time,” she said.
Aman has been working on bringing a race to Middlebury for many years, and the opportunity came to fruition after the club’s proposal was accepted by the ECCC last October. In her last year at Middlebury, Aman wanted to bring ECCC competitors to Middlebury to show off the cycling community of Vermont.
“We love Vermont; the riding is spectacular and the people are even better,” said Aman. “The roads are fairly untraveled, and all of these factors make it a great spot for a race.”
The cycling club is a close-knit group of dedicated cyclists who have fallen in love with the Vermont’s cycling environment. Aman said she is proud that the club “has almost equal gender representation — for both racing and training — which is quite uncommon in cycling.”
Student cyclists like Beckett Nasvik-Dykhouse ’21.5 feels that being on a road bike is the best way to explore the state: “You can cover a fair amount of distance in a different way than a car,” he said. “You feel way more grounded and you pay attention more to what’s around you.”
Aman, who is from Hanover herself, views Vermont as a haven for cyclists and a place where many New Englanders love to visit for long weekend rides. Aman, Nasvik-Dykhouse and other student cyclists often train on the six gap roads in the area, including Middlebury Gap, a climb with 2000 feet of vertical elevation change. According to Aman, “there’s an iconic four gap ride called LAMB (Lincoln, Appalachian, Middlebury, and Brandon Gap) that is 10,000+ vertical feet of elevation. People from all over the country come to do that four gap ride.”
In April, these cyclists look forward to sharing the sport with Middlebury students. Nasvik-Dykhouse is excited about the event in part because of the exposure it will provide for the organization and sport, and hopes “students come out and support their fellow student cyclists.”
In advance of the race, Ben Glass ’20.5 noted that “a lot of the team is working to chip away at the small tasks getting the race set up and organized, but we’re all so excited that the road race is in our backyard.”
Glass added that the team is looking forward to having another month to “recon the course and train harder especially in these base mile training days.” The club cannot wait to bring the ECCC, a conference with 70 schools across the northeast from Delaware all the way to McGill in Canada, to the carefully planned race course.
Aman’s excitement is palpable: “I’ve had really positive interactions with all five towns where our race goes through, and I think everyone sees this event as a great way to bring people to our state. We want more people to know about Vermont and see it as a destination for cycling. We’re so thrilled to be putting this race on in just over a month.”
