1000 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(12/05/19 11:01am)
If you’re interested in Fidel Castro’s Cuba of the 1960s, this graphic memoir is the work for you. It covers an era and a culture in which some communist believers willfully exiled themselves to the Caribbean isle to pursue this political ideology. The author is Anna Vetfort and her parents were two of these people who became expatriates there.
Anna’s fair complexion causes her to stand out among the Cubans and she is subject to sexual harassment. These verbal assaults are injurious and disorienting as she maps out her own queer identity in a place and during a time where being a “tortillera” (a word for “lesbian”) was treated punitively. Veltfort participates in government-sponsored labor camps and pursues studies at the University of Havana where she encounters other students from the LGBT community who must live their lives clandestinely. With photographs and other documents from the era accompanying the narrative, readers get a real sense of the times, the political tensions and the socioeconomic scarcity created by rations and quotas. The text can be a bit heavy for a graphic work, but the educational opportunity is nonetheless rich.
For more about the figures that shaped Cuba, see Walter Salles’ film “The Motorcycle Diaries” that covers Che Guevara’s life. For another graphic memoir on navigating queer identity, see “My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness” by Kabi Nagata.
(12/05/19 11:00am)
Perhaps you follow @MiddleburyCollege on Instagram where you’re sure to find photos and videos of our picturesque campus in the fall, winter, spring and summer as well as photos of teams and the trophies they win and appreciation for community members who have passed. Or maybe you follow @MiddAthletics which reposts pictures of Middlebury athletes who have received honors such as NESCAC Player of the Week and NCAA All American titles. At the same time, student organizations such as MiddSafe and the SGA maintain accounts that spread the word about their work.
Alongside these more official accounts is its own niche of student-run microblogs. Whether it be in the dining hall or on the way to class, students are working to document the daily joys and personal stories of their peers through each their own styles of images and captions.
Take @MeetMidd, for example.
Before I had even applied to Middlebury, I stumbled on a friend’s MeetMidd feature, which she had reposted on Instagram. I started to scroll through the account’s posts, of which there are currently 772. The stories caught my attention as they ranged in vulnerability, humor, style and topic, but all were told thoughtfully and helped me get a much better sense of what my classmates would be like if I were to go to Middlebury.
John Schurer ’21 started the account shortly after arriving at Middlebury in the fall of 2017. In reflection on his original intentions for the account, Schurer explains that the account came out of an “an effort to expand our circles and unite our community” and that he “wanted to create a way for us to forge authentic, meaningful relationships with others.”
“I thought that if each of us shared a piece of who we are, it could be the catalyst that would lead to these kinds of relationships,” Schurer said. He says that Middlebury students often fall into natural circles based on academic interests, extracurricular activities, jobs and many other factors that to some extent keep us from getting to know many of our classmates.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1jTQbxB6Q9/
While other Midd Instagram accounts have very different goals, they nonetheless share aspects of life as a Middlebury student that may not make their way into more formal Instagram accounts or get mentioned during admissions tours.
One such account is @RealHumansofProc, started by Ella Nassi ’22.5 and Cecilia Needham ’22.5, two devout Proctor Dining Hall fans who noticed that meal after meal, their fellow Proc-goers were sitting down to eat creative meals they started calling “conProctions” and “ProcCreations”.
What’s so special about making a meal out of food from the salad bar, hot meal section and alternate protein section? Needham explained that this individualized approach helps students feel more connected to the food they eat, and thus less likely to toss it after a bite or two. Nassi echoed this sentiment. “We love that by featuring students who make out of the ordinary, and often quite quirky ‘creations’ in Proc, we are giving other students ideas for how to make the food they want to eat, thus decreasing food waste,” she said.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B4iW3DLgI80/
“This account has brought me so much joy,” Nassi said. “It opens people up to the possibility of getting excited about the mundane because it sparks enthusiasm for meals, which are so much more than just a time to refuel, but an opportunity to get to know your peers, to eat food that is both healthy and delicious and take a break from our busy lives here at school.”
Looking for another account that celebrates daily joys? Look no further than @MiddFits, an account founded by Laz Galvez ’23 as a way to recognize and document fashion on campus. Galvez, a New York native, grew up surrounded by street style and has always had a keen awareness of the many rules which governed getting dressed growing up. Galvez explained that running the account has helped him connect with other students and he hopes it helps inspire students to “pop off” when it comes to their outfits. “Here, I feel like I can take more risks,” Galvez said, before adding that he hopes the account will help others find the same confidence through fashion as he does.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B2M7-DKj12X/
There you have it — a non-exhaustive lowdown on Middlebury-based Instagram accounts. If you’re ever looking to procrastinate on that final paper and find yourself short on content to browse, you know where to go.
(12/05/19 11:00am)
A couple weeks ago, an email popped up in your Middlebury inbox from the Office of the President. In it, President Patton introduced the student handbook’s new Policy on Open Expression (section A.5) and revised Demonstration Regulations (section C.4). As Patton outlined in her email, these new documents replace the old Demonstrations and Protests policy and represent the culmination not only of a host of open meetings, but two policy drafts (one released November 18, 2018 and a second on May 19, 2019).
You might not have read the new policies. We don’t blame you (after clicking on the link, our own impulse was to retreat fairly quickly, cowed by multiple pages of sub-clauses and hyperlinks). Still, we think what’s there — FAQ, resource page and all — is worth your time.
For one thing, we applaud the administration’s willingness to engage with criticism of previous drafts. A lot of students’ and faculty members’ feedback was acknowledged and included in the alterations. For instance, the new policy loosens restrictions prohibiting college staff from participating in protests, acknowledging that staff, too, have the right to open expression.
On that note, we deeply appreciate the new policy’s acknowledgement of the value of protest and expression. Where the old C.4 policy briefly affirmed that members of the Middlebury community “should always be free to support causes by orderly means,” and then turned immediately to the more legal and punitive stipulations of the protest policy, the new Policy on Open Expression devotes multiple paragraphs to the importance and legitimacy of peaceful protest and demonstration. It even recognizes that learning “occurs inside and outside the classroom, often involving public speech and action through which people affirm and enact their values” — allowing, in other words, that student activism and protest are not only important, but vital, educating tools for bringing about change on campus.
Finally, we applaud the new policy for its thoroughness. Sure, there are too many documents and pages for most students to parse through en route to class, or in between lengthy political science readings. Still, we appreciate the edifying impulse behind the FAQ’s lengthy itemization of “non-substantially disruptive acts,” and the list of links on the “Resources on Speech and Inclusion” page. We also appreciate the policy’s clear detailing of consequences for violating policy; now, students can go online and determine the fairly specific repercussions of certain actions. A student who is “warned, asked to leave, refuses and/or must be escorted or arrested by law enforcement officers,” for instance, will “ordinarily” face “probationary status to letter of official college discipline, depending on the severity of the disruption.”
To clarify: We don’t think the new policies are perfect. In fact, as student journalists, we’re sort of dying to give them an edit. Not only is the language difficult to decipher, but at times the policies read almost as though they were intentionally written to be vague or convoluted. We understand that college documents often adopt an elevated tone. But as policies primarily geared at student activists (not to mention, published as part of the student handbook), shouldn’t they be written with a student audience in mind? Unnecessarily elevated or vague language only reinforces the confusion and disconnect between students and the administration which often surrounds Middlebury protests in the first place. To that end, we’d also scrap some of the more jargon-y additions — phrases like “robust public sphere” more closely resemble the stuff of admissions pamphlets than they do concise, clear protest policy. Most student readers are less interested in sweeping statements of purpose and more interested in concrete details about how to stand up for what they believe in without incurring major consequences.
And then there’s the question of the policy itself. Taken together, the revised C.4 and new A.5 bring with them a couple of significant changes for Middlebury students activists. Now, student protesters are required not only to submit an “Event Scheduling Request,” but to sit down with the event management office and Public Safety to review any relevant policies or issues. While clauses like these don’t differ too much from the stuff of other colleges’ policies (Amherst, for instance, likewise makes students register with either college police, student activities or events), only time will tell how the new rules will play out in Middlebury’s own activist culture. In the event that these policies aren’t effective on Middlebury’s campus, we hope the administration remains responsive to feedback going forward.
To that end, we encourage students not only to continue to voice their opinions on the policies in question, but to hold the college accountable to the promises and values included in them. The FAQ states, for instance, that Middlebury is committed to an “everyday ethic of inclusion” and seeks to “make Middlebury a place where everyone’s voice can be heard.” That’s great, but begs the question — how? Statements like those would benefit from the same kind of specificity that was used to distinguish “substantive” from “non-substantive” disruption, or that which was used to outline potential consequences. Just as a multitude of conversations went into the creation of the new policies, so too should many more conversations arise from them.
In the wake of these new policies, Director of Public Safety Lisa Burchard is offering an inaugural J-Term workshop about “Activism on Campus.” Like the new policies, we think this workshop constitutes a step in the right direction. Again, we appreciate Public Safety’s willingness to engage with the subject. That said, the course description reads as slightly prescriptive; we’re not so sure Public Safety knows what constitutes “effective” protesting any better than we do. We hope the workshop looks more like a two-sided, mutually-instructive conversation, rather than a top-down lecture or course. We also hope that, if enough students show interest, Public Safety expands the course (or makes the information available elsewhere).
At the end of the day, students and administrators’ definitions of what constitutes “effective”— even acceptable — protesting will likely always differ. In the wake of the Murray and Legutko incidents, however, it’s especially important that the administration make their guidelines and policies as clear and accessible as possible. It’s equally important that students do their homework to understand the risks they’re taking and the consequences they’re incurring.
It’s also worth noting that not all effective student protesting takes place within guidelines. The recent Harvard-Yale football game protest reaffirmed that there are causes, like climate change, whose importance outstrips any kind of administration-imposed consequence. Often, breaking rules or coming up with creative methods of protest represent powerful statements in themselves. Still, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with the rules (not to mention, ensuring that those rules seem fair). That way, you can stand confidently behind whatever statement you’re making, and how.
(12/05/19 10:55am)
Dear Tré,
As someone who has experienced trauma, I find that I put myself in unhealthy situations and relationships with people more often than I should. I have desires and like everyone else, a need for connection, but I am always putting myself in situations. How do I make sure I am putting myself first and how do I make sure that I am not hurting my mental health by doing something I believe I want, or fostering relationships I think I need?
Sincerely, Anonymous
Dear Reader,
This is a question that doesn’t really have a simple answer. Here is what I will do: I will share a story with you and hopefully it helps you come up with a solution for your problem.
As a gay black man, it was and still is very hard to figure out if I was ever going to find good love in my life. In a world where every part of my being is wrong, how could I ever be good enough for someone? When I first started dating, I found it to be extremely hard, especially in the gay community. It is a community where we are all supposed to be proud of who we are, yet we reduce each other to labels like “twink,” “otter” or “bear.” Don’t ask me what they mean, because I don’t even know.
Anyways, while I was starting to date, I did meet a guy. This guy was nice to me and made me feel good about myself. After a while, I eventually decided to become his boyfriend. Now, things were good in the beginning, but after a while I started losing parts of myself to him and this relationship. I found myself doing things for him that I would never do today, calling it a compromise because I was afraid that he would leave me. I wish I knew that he would have still left me, even if I didn’t do those things. When he left me, I was broken inside, wondering to myself how I let this happen. How did I lose him and what could I have done better? The reality is that I did all that I could and he still left me. Not because I was a bad boyfriend, or because our relationship was trash, but because he got bored with me. It took a really good friend of mine to help me see that I have to value myself before someone else can value me. I had to be ok with all the parts of myself and know that I bring value to any relationships I’ve had and will continue to have.
In terms of trauma, it is no secret that I am a sexual assault survivor. After being assaulted, I didn’t know what to do or how to feel anymore. I wasn’t sure if I was capable of being loved and that really put me in a dark place. I made some dangerous decisions and put myself in terrible situations. I didn’t want to be safe anymore and I was willing to take risks just to be able to feel something for myself and others. I wish I would have known that it takes time for traumatic wounds to heal, whether it be mental or physical. I wish I knew that I needed to work through my pain. Over time, it became clear that what I needed was to get to the root of the problem. I asked myself a very important question. Why am I sacrificing myself? More specifically, why can’t I be happy with the thought of being alone? The answer was hard for me to hear. It’s because I didn’t love who I was or who I became. I didn’t think I was worthy of the love and affection from another person and when I did get that I made choices that I never wanted to make again.
In loving myself and finding new ways to love myself, I have opened my world to new possibilities. While I am still trying to find a way where I can now love myself and let another person into my life, I also understand that sometimes those moments will have to wait. Loving yourself doesn’t mean just thinking positive thoughts. It’s about taking the time to make decisions for the betterment of your well-being. For lack of better words, it’s taking the time to get your sh*t together. It’s mustering up the courage to tell someone that you don’t have the time to spend with them. It’s doing whatever you have to do to make yourself feel whole and content without harming yourself in the process. I had to be strong for myself — and that is what I would tell you to do.
My advice to you, in terms of any kind of relationship, is to figure out what is it that you want for yourself. I get that you have needs and desires, but you have to ask yourself why you want those things so badly. What is the cost for you right now? Do you need this commitment right now? These are questions you should ask yourself. Take some time to do things for yourself and by yourself. Become OK with the idea of being alone. Learn what makes you special and what brings you joy. Find ways to make yourself happy before you can expect someone else to bring you happiness. Before we can make relationships with other people, we have to have healthy relationships with ourselves, or else we will fall back into that trap of losing ourselves to other people. Don’t be afraid to be a little greedy with your time. You have one life to live, and any decent person or someone who cares about you would let you take the time you need to get things together. If they can’t see things that way,those kinds of people are toxic and you can’t be around them. Be greedy, love yourself and be patient. It will all get better.
Love, Tre Stephens
Well that’s a wrap, folks! Ask Tre has been such a great way for me to connect with many people around the middlebury community. Thank you all for your support and reading my column. What started out as an idea between friends has grown and become something great. I hope Ask Tre can return next semester. Bye, for now— and good luck on everyones’ finals.
Tre Stephens is a member of the class of 2021
(12/05/19 10:53am)
The Pregnancy Resource Center of Addison County (PRCAC) has been portrayed unfairly on the campus of Middlebury. Three years ago, I took on the position of director of the Pregnancy Resource Center of Addison County and have since seen multiple attempts to present this community resource negatively, without adequate knowledge of facts to verify raised concerns.
At each of the last two Student Activity Fairs, where the PRCAC had tables, a handful of students intercepted attendees with a sheet that contained warnings about our center and crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) in general. The information included quotes from other CPCs and a link to a John Oliver show about CPCs. None of the accusations were factual about the center in Middlebury. Furthermore, in December 2018, there was a display in the Davis Library lobby about CPCs. That same year, The Campus wrote an article about the PRCAC. A petition was initiated by some students to ban the center from any presence on the campus. Posters were put up on campus warning students to beware of deceptive CPCs. I am afraid that students who may want to access the type of support we offer are being misled.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I am afraid that students who may want to access the type of support we offer are being misled.[/pullquote]
I have always had a passion for helping families in crisis. Before beginning at the PRCAC, I spent 11 years as a caseworker for foster children and families and then 10 years as an adoption worker. What became clear to me from those years of experience (as well as from becoming a mother of four biological children and one adopted child) is the fierce love a parent has for their child. Pregnancy decisions, relationships and parenting all pose challenges and obstacles that can be overwhelming, yet most every parent — or parent-to-be — desires to protect their child. The PRCAC can offer respect and support to those facing relationship, pregnancy and parenting struggles, as we are an organization that values all human life. The PRCAC wants to provide a supportive setting where someone will listen to whatever challenges are faced. Our mission is to offer compassion, hope and the practical help of education, material resources and referrals to community services. There have been numerous allegations, however, that our center offers something very different — that we are deceptive, that we have a political agenda, and that we manipulate women. I believe these are fundamentally wrong.
Recently, a Middlebury College student writing for VTDigger published an article that once again bolstered perspectives that pregnancy centers deceive and try to coerce women out of having abortions. Again, that article settled for non-specific and unfounded accusations against CPCs. A Middlebury professor was consulted for this article, who stated that she is convinced that the pregnancy center would use “deception to further a political position.” This claim is unsubstantiated in every respect, and no evidence was provided as support. The PRCAC’s efforts to offer information and support for alternatives to abortion, parenting education, material resources and healthy relationship classes are neither deceptive nor political. Whatever happened to abortion being “safe, legal and rare”? Abortion is legal, and we at the CPC do not prevent anyone from making the decision to have one. We believe every woman deserves to make a well-informed decision that she can look back on and say, “I had all the information to make the most responsible decision and one that I can live with.” We offer support to help face the challenges of carrying a pregnancy to term and the results of that — whether parenting or placing for adoption. We do not coerce, but aim instead to empower, through making available accurate information about all options. Clients of the center in Middlebury have attested to the nature of our services. Exit survey comments include: “Everyone is really friendly and never makes you feel out of place. I felt respected and understood.” “They don’t judge, and everyone is so outgoing.” “I would recommend this center to a friend.” A Google review from a client attests that “the PRC is seriously a life saver. Everyone who works there is so welcoming and judgment free. This resource is amazing. I recommend it to any woman in need…pregnant or not!” I am not aware of any clients of the PRCAC who have been interviewed who can verify the accusations being made against us.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]We do not coerce, but aim instead to empower, through making available accurate information about all options.[/pullquote]
The Middlebury professor stated in the VTDigger article that “Even if they’re not using false statements or statistics, the implication they make is that abortion is harmful and if they are saying that abortion is harmful to women that is untrue.” I can’t speak to what occurs at Planned Parenthood or clinics that perform or refer for abortion. But I do not forget the stories of those who have shared their own abortion experiences with me. One story heard recently was from a woman who told me about her abortion during college, where she met the doctor for the first time when she saw him through the stirrups. As he began the procedure, his first words to her were to tell her that are she was further along than he had thought, He then proceeded with the abortion while she hyperventilated on the table. A nurse stood by her side and just told her that she would be okay. Another young woman contacted our center recently to seek help after her abortion only a month prior. She stated that she was having nightmares and couldn’t sleep because of flashbacks to her abortion procedure. Besides the testimonies I have heard from women who have struggled long and hard with abortion decisions, I can provide research that show negative emotional and psychological effects of abortion. I can only conclude that for some, fierce love for a child begins already in the womb.
Several years ago, I was a presenter for a federal grant program called the “Infant Adoption Awareness Initiative.” This was geared to Title X organizations, including Planned Parenthood. In the presentation on understanding infant adoption, a Planned Parenthood employee told me that she would never bring up adoption because she didn’t want a woman to think she was trying to talk her out of an abortion. This is not consistent with a commitment to informed choices. At the center we are clear that not all women struggle with an abortion, but some do.
The issue of abortion currently has created deep divides, and at times contempt between those who disagree idealogically on the morality of abortion. There seems to be no room, for some, to respect the efforts of those with whom they disagree, who provide helpful support and services.
Finally, I would ask that the faculty and students of Middlebury College recognize and acknowledge that those with ideological differences can find things in common and allow each other to provide services that do in fact support those who seek help. A recent New York Times article on CPCs demonstrated that a religious organization offering support to women facing pregnancy challenges was serving a real need. We will never produce a collaborative effort to meet the needs of the vulnerable if we hold contempt for one another. Antagonistic articles and efforts to smear the work of the Pregnancy Center will only shortchange a resource that some may find helpful and supportive.
Joanie Praamsma is the director of the Pregnancy Resource Center of Addison County.
(11/21/19 11:02am)
To top off an incredible carnival filled with food and games from across the globe, the International Students’ Organization (ISO) organized a showcase packed with performances highlighting the vibrancy of cultural diversity.
The week’s festivities were all part of the ISO Carnival, a celebration of student diversity and the melting pot of culture on campus. The carnival was sponsored by a host of cultural student organizations, including Project Pengyou, South Asian Student Association (SASA) and Korean American Student Association (KASA). Throughout the week, students partook in activities ranging from experimenting with Chinese calligraphy to visiting the KASA x ISO market, which served Korean delicacies. Culminating in the showcase on Saturday, Nov. 16, students joined together to cultivate a wonderfully diverse range of culturally invigorating performances.
The show opened with a quirky narrative voiced by Warrd Nour ’23, Arthur Araripe ’22.5 and Nhi Do ’22, who zipped through a time machine, traversing the globe in confusion as they were faced with performance after performance from different destinations. The narration — or, “flimsy plot,” as Arthur quipped, to the audience’s enjoyment — playfully investigated the diversity of culture as we seek to fit ourselves in a puzzle of interwoven identities.
In the wide variety of performances, each drew the audience in further. Beginning the showcase with an interpretation by Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) of traditional Vietnamese dance, students circled the stage as they gracefully waved fluttery, bright fans, coming together in a gentle take on youth. The theme of community came together especially well throughout the showcase — most performances were group dances that celebrated and amplified the ambience of any given identity onstage.
Large dance numbers definitely amped up the mood. UMOJA, Middlebury’s African Student Organization, livened up the stage wonderfully as bright, bouncy music worked in sync with students who came together in an energetically choreographed group dance. The energy paralleled that of the Pakistan dance, Midd Masti’s Bollywood and Kollywood dance, or the Hopak, where cultural vitality was truly amplified in the music, colors and large community spirit. South East Asian Society’s (SEAS) TraditionalxHipHop dance was similar in some respects as well, where the group melded together traditional dances with more modern sequences, much like Soran Bushi did. The similarities and discernible differences between all performances joined the audience and dancers together cohesively, unifying all.
The show fluctuated between lively dances, beautiful solos and slow pieces. Transporting students to Europe and Asia, the audience heard a passionate interpretation of Chopin’s Nocturne No. 1 by Scott Li ’23 before cheering on the KASA in “KASA GoGo!” where a take on BTS’ song worked to hype up the crowd. Hopping from one nation to another, following the performance was Kexin Tang ’22 performing on the Guzheng, a traditional Chinese folk instrument. With a piece highlighting the technical complexity and beauty of its music, Tang brought forth an immersive experience as audiences were plunged into her impressive rendition.
Among the countless expressive pieces throughout the program, the crowd was especially moved by Muévete Jevi as their program brought to us the Bachata and Reggae dances, sensual and energetic pieces that made sure to shift the atmosphere with cool lighting effects and passionate music. “BSU Steps Up” provided a similar energy in atmospheric group dance, where students created impressive rhythm themselves, clapping and stomping as the mood amplified, all the while interspersing their sequences with comedic narration through a drill sergeant.
This weekend, ISO truly worked to unify all students across different backgrounds and the efforts definitely paid off — not only was the show stunning, but all performances and collaborations also provided everyone with a holistic perspective of culture around the world. Be it alone or together, through dance or through song, we’re here to discover more of this unraveling global story. As per the words of Nour in the final moments to close the show, “Whoosh!” And we’re off again.
(11/21/19 11:01am)
Students in Dance Professor Laurel Jenkins’ class “The Place of Dance” and artist-in-residence Tori Lawrence will perform original works at the annual Fall Dance Concert. The concert, which will take place at 7:30 p.m. this Friday and Saturday, Nov. 22–23 features six pieces by the class’ five students and Lawrence. According to Asha Williams ’22.5, a choreographer who will be performing her piece in the concert this weekend, the concert serves as a finale for the course.
Williams, who began dancing when she was five years old, says that she still has much to learn when it comes to dance.“My journey always continues, and I never know what my relationship is going to be with dance,” she said. Her piece reflects this idea of journey, and contains three parts: Naked, In Flux, and Unwritten. “I made [my piece] about a journey because I’m going through a journey right now,” Williams said. “This semester has been a very tumultuous time, emotionally. I’ve been going through moments of understanding that I’m going through a journey for the first time in a long time.”
Unlike Williams’ heavily choreographed piece, John Cambefort ’21 built his primarily improvised work by beginning with a single word. “I started making [my piece] with no theme in mind,” he said. “I started with the word ‘play.’” Cambefort used early rehearsals to experiment with different “scores” – tasks and loose direction used to aid improvisation – and began to build a piece that varied considerably between performances.
“[Choreographing] has been kind of hard,” he said. “When we started, the first showing was extremely improvised, and people loved it. But that’s the thing with improvisation: some days it’s good and some days it’s just not.” To help solidify the piece – a trio featuring Cambefort, Kole Lekhutle ’20 and Martin Troška ’21 – Cambefort added an audio track of a subway train. “I settled with the metro idea because we had these individual sections,” he said, “but people were like, ‘Where’s the thread?’” Now that he has settled on a score, Cambefort says he has been focusing on preserving the energy improvisation brings to a piece.“I need to think about how I can I keep the fun-ness and the originality of improvisation,” he said.
Marquise Adeleye ’20, another student in the class, is working on lighting design for his piece as well as the pieces choreographed by Cambefort and Williams. In addition, Adeleye has designed the costumes for his piece and edited the music that accompanies his work.
Adeleye, who is not dancing in the concert, says that his choreography reflets themes of relationships and emotions that are at the center of those relationships. “[Relationships] develop us into the person we are at the end of the day: whether they’re familial, whether they’re romantic, whether they’re friendships, they’re all relationships that have some type of emotion individually attached to each person,” he said. “Those relationships are what create us, and that’s what [my piece] is about.”
His approach to dance as it concerns human interaction is something Sam Kann ’20.5 is also interested in. “I decided that I really wanted to make a piece about belonging and what it means to belong and where we belong and how we don’t belong,” she said. “It started out as thinking of how people can be really similar but not belong together – like all these students at Middlebury are the same age and are interested in a lot of the same stuff but are super lonely and isolated, or like people in New York City who are all wearing suits and are probably working at the same type of company but never talk.”
Kann has fused this idea with Jenkins’ class to experiment with the intersection of music, words and dance. This experimentation, Kann says, originated over J-Term when she and collaborators created a 45-minute-long work. The work, titled “Intimacy and Future S*it,” explored the simultaneous creation of music and dance. This is a concept Kann has elaborated on in her new work with the addition of words and stories spoken by her dancers.
“I really like words in dance because I think it really helps dance feel more accessible,” she said. “It’s radical and boundary pushing. I think words make people more comfortable and allow people to think about themes more easily than in abstract dance.”
Though Kann’s piece is the only work in the concert featuring vocal storytelling, student Lucy Grinnan ’19.5 is using their thesis to explore story in dance. “I’m interested in how texts work within pieces and the potential of visual metaphor to build narrative,” they said.
To build such a narrative, Grinnan turned to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. “I was thinking this summer about the vulnerability of changing in front of people – not physically changing but the feeling of being watched while you are evolving as a person,” they said. “I wanted to make a piece about that.” They found themselves focusing on the story of Arachne and Athena to explore this concept of change. “One of my dancers said, ‘I feel like I used to be a really angry person and I’m trying to be a less angry person,’” Grinnan said. “I started thinking about the story of Arachne and Athena and the ways that story represents anger. That became [central] in terms of the ways that people can hide vulnerability and also the ways that communities show, but also help, with vulnerability.”
Along with the five student works, Artist-in-Residence Tori Lawrence has also been building a piece for the Fall Dance Concert. Her piece – the only faculty piece in the show – is the annual Newcomer’s Piece. A pillar of the Fall Dance Concert, the Newcomer’s Piece is open to any dancer who has not yet performed with Middlebury’s dance department. Lawrence, a dancer and filmmaker, used 16mm film to produce a silent, “handmade” motion picture.
“It’s been fun to teach [the newcomers] as if they were collaborators of mine,” Lawrence said. “Everyone has a say in what we’re doing, and if there’s interest in the camera, I’ll take time to be like, ‘Oh, this is what this is, this is how you load the film, this is how I used the light mater.’ It’s been fun to teach people in the field.”
The film will be put to music composed by guest musicians Seth Wenger and Cole Highnam from New Haven and New York City, and will also be accompanied by a foley (which Lawrence explained as “recreating diegetic sounds of the wind, grass, movement sounds, etc.”), as well as by a melody composed by Wenger and performer by Peter Sergay ’22.
(11/21/19 10:59am)
Veganism — perhaps the biggest thing in 2019 after the movement to storm Area 51 and the Keanu Reeves Renaissance. Fast food chains are producing vegan burgers with meat-free patties, and a recent Economist article showed that sales of vegan food “rose ten times faster than food sales as a whole.” Today, about 3% of the U.S. population identify as vegan, and this number is growing, especially among Millennials and Gen Z’s, according to a Gallup poll in 2018. Does this mean that all of us should go vegan? We can turn to economics for an answer.
In deciding whether to eat vegan, we should first consider whether it is what we want. As consumers, we make decisions to buy based on our individual preferences. Choosing to switch our diets depends on our preferences defined by a number of factors: our taste for vegan food, the extent of our value for our health and the environment, etc. The utility — or pleasure — we get from leading a vegan life will determine whether we ultimately decide to lead this lifestyle.
Of course, this assumes that we are perfectly aware of our preferences, which is not always the case. Martin Abel,Professor of Economics said: “People may not have tried vegan food, or have misconceptions. [This is] the ‘status quo bias’ - a tendency to stick with the familiar.” Preferences can also fluctuate depending on tastes and opinions, and perhaps more subtly, exogenous factors, such as advertising, the media, norms and exposure.
We know our preferences; still, whatever our preferences are, we are limited by scarcity. Thus, our decision to become vegan also depends on whether it is possible for us. Typically, economists identify cost as a constraint. According to a study by Diana Cassady, Professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of California, Davis, low-income Americans would have to spend 43% to 70% of their food budget on fruits and vegetables. A large part of this is because the locations where many low-income Americans shop are convenience stores rather than supermarkets and grocery stores. Not only do convenience stores tend not to provide fresh produce, constraining access, but those that do tend to charge more.
[pullquote speaker="Jackson Evans '22" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I didn’t like the taste of meat and that killing animals wasn’t really something I wanted to support[/pullquote]
At the same time, a large reason why stores can afford to overcharge or simply not supply vegan options is due to the lack of demand for these products. Economic theory suggests, however, that if more people begin demanding vegan food, the price of these products will increase. However, producers — farmers, restaurants and stores — will see this as an opportunity to profit and enter the market. As a result, the supply of vegan food would increase, offsetting the price and making vegan options more affordable. This also addresses the unemployment argument, where veganism will lead to a huge surge of unemployment in the meat industry; while this is true, it is also important to understand the jobs that may open up in place.
Then, the question becomes whether we should go vegan. Jackson Evans ’22 states that animal treatment was a large motivator his decision to go vegan four years ago. “I didn’t like the taste of meat and that killing animals wasn’t really something I wanted to support,” Evans said. In economics, these moral and environmental costs are referred to as externalities.
Recent research from the University of Oxford has shown that veganism is “the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth.” Using a “vegan calculator” to figure out the marginal effect of going vegan, one year of veganism could save 7,436 pounds of CO2 from being released, and 401,766 gallons of water. There is also the humanitarian factor, which Evans cited earlier to be industrial farming. Industrial farming reflects the inhumane conditions of the farms, including overcrowding, abuse of antibiotics for stress and illness and breeding for fast growth or high yield of meat. Technology has made farming all-too-efficient, which can be illustrated through a U.S. Department of Agriculture report, citing total commercial red meat production in September 2019 alone at 4.44 billion pounds. While animal welfare is not included in the traditional economic welfare framework, there should be lots of thought given to how living beings are treated, and how this could reflect our own wellbeing and welfare.
So should we go vegan? It really depends on our preferences, constraints and how we will affect those around us if we don’t. Then, how about Midd’s dining halls? We’ve already seen Meatless Mondays take over Proctor and Ross, and word is going around that Atwater will be increasing vegan food production in J-Term (see News, Page 2).
First, let’s start thinking about the preferences of the dining halls. Dining Services’ preferences are likely most focused on foot traffic. Granted, a dining hall that is all vegan would likely lose a significant number of student diners; however, if the kitchen were able to build a menu that appeals to students regardless of being vegan, this could alleviate the loss of non-vegans. Next, we turn to constraint. Finally, we can look at how becoming vegan will affect others. Environmentally, it will have a significant impact, saving hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and pounds of CO2 gas. By going vegan, the dining halls could change the dining habits of Middlebury students. Remember the status quo bias from before? Abel suggests that this change could transform students’ preferences: “[People can] discover their preferences… by being forced to experiment and try and develop new habits.” As a result, more students could decide to go vegan. Evans described this to be the case when he first got to Middlebury: “[H]ere when all the options are there, it’s simple and is congruous with my thoughts on not hurting animals, and attempting to mitigate our climate disaster.
(11/14/19 11:03am)
This November marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Wall, which separated East Germany and West Germany, stood for 28 years and served as a divider between the two countries both ideologically and physically, separating families and friends who once called the same country home. On Nov. 9, 1989, citizens took it upon themselves, hammers in hand, to demolish the barrier that had separated them from their family and friends on the other side.
The German Department, with the assistance from the German House as well as many other Language Departments, commemorated the momentous event in history this past week. Outside of Atwater Dining Hall, students of the German Department, residents of the German House and a handful of faculty members worked to construct a replica of the wall which stood for the entirety of last week. Ten years ago, a similar replica of the wall stood outside of Proctor Dining Hall.
Liz Sheedy ’22 and Ryan Kirby ’22 participated in the building of the wall. While the group was working to build something that would be torn down after just a week, the process was nonetheless a team building experience. The replica was constructed primarily of wood and drywall and was thus a challenge to carry from the German House, which is located next to Shafer’s Deli, to Atwater Dining Hall.
“Building the wall was such an intimate time together even though we were building something that is otherwise, especially historically, so much of a barrier,” Sheedy said.
Throughout the course of the week, students heeded the instructions posted on the wall by painting graffiti on it — the first of which to appear were the words “free palestine” — just as West Germans did along the wall throughout its existence.
The wall was not as covered in graffiti this year as it had been 10 years ago, perhaps due to the fact that the previous replica had been directly blocking entry into Proctor, thus forcing students to engage with it more. However, students still got involved with the project, through graffitti, as well as through daily speeches which were given in front of the installation, both by individuals, and representatives of both the College Democrats and College Republicans Clubs. These speeches worked to contextualize the project, as well as to reflect more deeply on the significance of the fall of the Wall and its enduring impact worldwide.
The idea for the project originated from the German Embassy eleven years ago to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Mauerfall. In order to commemorate this anniversary, it was important for the organizers to host a party during which students and faculty could tear down the wall in similarly joyous ways in which they did 30 years ago.
“The building of the Wall and the tearing down of it, they go together,” said Bettina Matthias, Maurice C. Greenberg Professor of Language & Linguistics, who grew up outside of Berlin in then West Germany.
On Saturday night, those involved with the project invited the college community to this celebration, which was complete with food, a photobooth, drinks and music. Like West Germans in 1989, they took hammers and chisels to the Wall, slowly whittling the wall down until just beams stood along the border.
Matthias recalls a particularly vivid memory of this process, “for months, you could hear, day and night, the sound of metal on concrete as people chiseled away at the Wall, keeping pieces of it for themselves,” she said.
Matthias holds the fall of the Berlin Wall as one of the most memorable events in her life. Just as many Americans can tell you exactly where they were when they heard the news of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, most Germans can tell you exactly where they were when the border between the two countries was opened and the chipping away at the Wall began.
For her parents, who had lived through Hitler’s rise to power, had fled Germany during World War II, and who then saw the building of the Wall, its collapse was “one of the most surreal and joyful things in their entire lives,” Matthias said. While the end of the war restored some semblance of peace to Germany, the period following it was one of great change, of intense rebuilding as a country and in many ways the birth of a whole new world.
“Today, Berlin is such an epicenter in terms of democratization and industrialization and a lot of people think that it’s a great representation of what we are trying to be,” Kirby said. “It’s insane to think that just 30 years ago, just 10 years before a lot of us were born, the city was walled.”
On the same subject, Sheedy added, “Walls, like the Berlin Wall, not only block the movement of people but also the ability to learn or to understand, open our minds to things we refuse to think about or to broach.”
The “free palestine” motif was spray painted on the installation within hours of it being put up, challenging viewers to ponder the ways in which we can prevent history from repeating itself.
“There are still plenty of ‘Berlin Walls’ that still exist,” Sheedy said.
(11/14/19 11:03am)
“No one can disguise the fact that the history of fraternity life has been inseparable from the spirit of the exclusion.”
These were the words of seven faculty members who, in 1990, expressed their concerns about Greek life culture in a letter to the Board of Trustees in hopes of addressing the exclusive ethos that dictated Middlebury’s social scene.
The first social houses emerged from the dissolution of the fraternity system in 1991. Twenty-eight years later, the College boasts five co-ed social houses: Chromatic, The Mill, Tavern, Xenia, and the newest addition, PALANA.
While each of the houses has a physical space, students do not need to live there to be members. Instead, houses often serve as communal gathering places; each hosts a number of events throughout the year, both for members and the wider campus community. Unlike the Greek life system, social houses are open to anyone and students can be members of more than one.
Since their formation, each house has been grounded in a unique theme. Yet, some students and staff question the extent to which they have served their intended purpose.
“I think the social houses have always searched for an identity,” said Karl Lindholm ‘67, a former dean of students. “I do believe that on their worst day, though, the houses are better than the fraternities that separated the campus into those that deserved to be ‘somebody’ and those who did not.”
Lindholm also served as the chair of the Committee to Restructure the House System, comprised of both students and faculty, which originally proposed the creation of co-ed social houses to the Residential Life Committee in 1991 as the ideal solution in fostering a more inclusive and less misogynistic partying environment. The committee, however, could not reach a consensus on whether the houses would produce this effect, deferring further action to the Community Council.
Community Council was initially opposed to the implementation of social houses out of fear that they would recreate the Greek life atmosphere the college wanted to put an end to. After much deliberation about concerns regarding exclusivity, Community Council conceded, voting to allow for the creation of social houses in the most neutral language possible. They voted 9–6, “in a spirit neither for or against, on the creation of a limited number of co-ed social houses,” the 1991 Community Council Resolution on Coeducational Houses read.
The neutral stance taken by much of the college regarding the creation of social houses is reflected today in the infrastructure of the social house system. While the Community Council developed baseline anti-hazing and gender-balance requirements for each house, the houses are completely self-governed by an Inter-House Council consisting of each house president and vice president. These positions are elected by all members of the house.
All in all, this lack of explicit institutional backing has left a lot of leeway for members to define their houses’ desired purposes.
“They aren’t well defined, but I think that’s exactly what they’re supposed to be,” Lindholm said.
According to the college website, these social houses “fulfill their mission through a diverse array of social events, parties, community service, and other events.”
Tavern, for example, prides itself on building a community predicated on its mission statement values of trust, unity and respect. Community service has historically been its guiding theme, although some students seem to hold an alternate perception of the house.
“All of my friends like to joke that I’m the president of the drinking club,” said house president Avery Lopez ’20.
Lopez said that the house has done away with a lot of traditions that were “more reminiscent of the fraternity days,” and is looking to sponsor more house-wide community service events to preserve the spirit on which it was founded.
Historically, each member has been required to log a certain number of community service hours, but Lopez said this has proven virtually impossible to gauge accurately, and many students have taken advantage of this lack of accountability. This year, she hopes to shift the individual focus of the house’s community service component to a more collective effort.
Some of the events planned for later in the year include writing birthday cards for children in hospitals through the Confetti Foundation, and sponsoring fundraising events in conjunction with non-profits around Addison County. As of now, Lopez said she does not have specific information about the organizations the house plans to work with.
Another one of Tavern’s service initiatives this year aims to capitalize on the house’s reputation for heavy recreational drinking. Throughout the semester, the house has been collecting tabs of beer cans to eventually donate to David’s House, an organization which takes the money generated from those beer tabs to provide housing for families whose members are getting treatment at Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital.
According to Lopez, this effort represents a step toward the house’s intended mission.
“One thing I’ve really appreciated is that our executive staff is consistently conversing with the former executives about how we can change and evolve as a House,” Lopez said.
Lopez said it is common for many Tavern members to also be affiliated with the other social houses such as Chromatic, the Mill and PALANA — excluding Xenia, the substance-free house. A student can join as many social houses as they wish without fear of being denied membership. In order to become a house member, interested students must attend a certain amount of rush events, which can range from a movie night to indoor field hockey. Once students become a part of the pledge class, they go through unique initiation rituals.
Some social houses are more explicitly committed to certain initiatives than others. PALANA, (Pan-African, Latino, Asian and Native American), for example, is Middlebury’s newest social house and a former academic interest house that has long fostered a close-knit community among students from marginalized groups at Middlebury. Previously located at 97 Adirondack View, PALANA found its new home as an official social house in Palmer this year.
PALANA is predominantly a space for students of color, that “seeks to create a space or community which has diversity and highlights all backgrounds by acknowledging and celebrating people of all identity groups,” President Tre Stephens ’21 said.
In the last two months, the house has hosted a series of events, including house Sunday brunches, an open-house disco night and multiple movie nights. PALANA also plans to do a community dinner over Thanksgiving, a poetry slam event and an alumni mixer later in the year.
Chromatic and The Mill are the two social houses known to fill the art and music niche on campus, but Mill President Brenna Wilson ’20 is working to dilute the exclusionary allure that The Mill in particular can create. Wilson said that the house can sometimes appear intimidating for prospective members, although its technical mission is to “maintain a diverse membership irrespective of race, gender, sexual orientation or creed,” according to the 2013 Social House Biennial Review.
“I used to think that you had to dress a certain way and you had to smoke American Spirits and you had to listen to the right artists,” she said. The Mill frequently has concerts in the house basement, and appoints a member to plan concerts throughout the year.
Both Chromatic and The Mill are trying to host events that breach into different categories. Chromatic Co-President Scott Powell ’20 said that the house is working on trying to incorporate an observed interest in culinary arts into events with studio and performing arts. Chromatic hopes to have an official art showcase open to the rest of the campus by the end of this year.
“The other thing I know all social houses are looking at is outreach,” Powell said, as not much is known about houses such as Xenia, which aims to foster a communal environment where members can socialize in a substance free space, according to the 2013 review. The co-presidents of Xenia, Dean Arredondo ’20 and Jillian Ohikuare ’20, could not be reached for comment.
“My rough estimate is that only about a quarter of students are active members of social houses, and I think we should advertise a little more about what we are and why social houses are a valuable part of Middlebury’s community,” Powell said.
(11/14/19 11:00am)
You’ve probably seen the posts: you’re scrolling through Facebook or Twitter, and a status or tweet pops up letting you know that so-and-so is “canceled.” More often than not, the statement is all you get; there isn’t any explanation as to why that person is canceled or what that might entail. Still, cancelations travel fast. In the wake of the #MeToo Movement, actors seen as problematic disappeared from Netflix shows. Comedians’ tours were postponed or scrapped altogether. In response to the R. Kelly scandal, Spotify even created a feature which allows listeners to “mute” specific artists (ensuring that they no longer appear in playlists, libraries or recommended mixes).
In short, cancel culture seems to have hit an all-time high.
On a basic level, canceling someone means refusing to engage with them. It means announcing, effectively, that someone’s beliefs and actions are beyond repair — and, as a consequence, you’re calling for their removal. This was the broader culture that came under fire recently from former President Obama, who, in an interview about youth activism, urged our generation to rethink how harshly we judge others. To clarify: in his interview, Obama criticized “call-outs” rather than “cancels,” which are a little different. “Calling out” connotes drawing attention to problematic beliefs or statements without providing a course of action for moving forward. Often, calling out is a step on the way to canceling (which, as it effectively removes any hope of moving forward, is decidedly more extreme). According to our former President, “calling out” isn’t activism.
We disagree. At least, partly. We endorse a more nuanced understanding of “calling out” and “canceling.”
Calling out and canceling aren’t inherently bad. They also aren’t all that new — in many ways, the impulse underlying call-outs or cancels is the same one behind boycotts, strikes or walkouts. By not showing up, literally or figuratively, to make space or provide a platform for certain issues and figures, you send a message. In this way, canceling can be incredibly activating; it allows you to punch up, to reclaim lost agency in the face of enormous, dehumanizing corporations and celebrities worth billions of dollars. And, more often than not, the harshness or extremity behind those cancelation statements is what lends those upward punches their very power.
Still, it’s worth interrogating the different, subtle ways that social media transforms the cancelation impulse. Online, canceling becomes all too easy: You can cancel someone or something in the time it takes to rattle off a couple of words and click “post.” The result is that, for many, canceling has become reflexive. And that reflex has extended beyond the internet and into the way that we interact with others in our day to day lives. Even in person, we’re quick to call people out. In a matter of seconds, we shut them down.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Canceling has become reflexive. And that reflex has extended beyond the internet and into the way that we interact with others in our day to day lives.[/pullquote]
Those shut-downs become a lot more complicated at a place like Middlebury. Here, we aren’t canceling far-removed, top-tier celebrities (who, as far as most of us are concerned, only exist in the form of tweets or television guest spots). If and when we cancel at Middlebury, we’re canceling our classmates, the people we belong to clubs with or pass on College Street.
That kind of cancelation calls for a little more thought.
The last few years have seen a rise in cancelation efforts at Middlebury. We regularly call out or cancel students, professors and staff members for comments made in class or actions taken around campus. Over the past couple of years, a number of controversial speakers have been — pardon the pun — quite literally canceled. And, in December 2018, a list of “Men to Avoid” was released on Facebook (a divisive, broad-reaching cancelation effort now simply referred to as “the list”).
We’re not saying you should or shouldn’t cancel at Middlebury. That’s your call. As we’ve said, sometimes canceling can be OK, even constructive. Canceling can constitute an important form of self-defense or an attempt to send a message when other institutions fail (the “list,” for instance, was largely released in response to the administration’s inadequate efforts to address sexual assault on campus). Other times, students’, professors’ and staff members’ repeated, obvious unwillingness to uphold values of tolerance and inclusivity leave us little choice but to cancel. At a place like Middlebury, where harassment, discrimination and abuse can go woefully unaddressed by the college, voicing cancelations often forms a vital, tangible tool for change.
Still, we’d caution you to think twice before transplanting virtual cancelation impulses into your immediate, everyday lives. At Middlebury, online or in-persons cancels can have immediate, even irrevocable impacts on the way that students inhabit the college’s very small, very real space. Sometimes, those cancelations seem unavoidable. Other times, they inhibit the kinds of growth we came to Middlebury to undergo in the first place.
Unfortunately, the nature and size of Middlebury’s social scene often encourages premature canceling. Rumors spread quickly, so that their subjects are sometimes canceled before they have a chance to defend themselves. Sometimes, entire groups of people (say, sports teams or Febs) are canceled by other groups on the basis of assumptions or predictions. Situations like those don’t demand cancels. Instead, they provide vital opportunities for others to learn, to ask questions and improve their own understandings of difficult and controversial topics. There are other times, however, when the burden of education cannot and should not fall on you. Then, canceling might be the best way to send a message. It might even be the only course of activism left.
It’s worth interrogating, too, the ways in which cancels are unevenly distributed among the student body. Just as white, male celebrities bounce back faster from social media cancels (see: Louis C.K.), so too are more privileged members of the Middlebury community often given the benefit of the doubt. We need to be careful that, in wielding our own cancelation tools, we don’t simply exacerbate the already profound power disparities which exist on campus.
At the end of the day, it comes down to determining the most effective way to send a message. Ideally, that message can be sent through conversation. This is what we think Obama was getting at: Rather than simply judging, we should strive for constructive, progress-producing conversations. Ideally, those conversations precede cancelation, hopefully rendering it unnecessary.
(11/07/19 11:03am)
We’ve all been there — sitting hunched over your desk at an ungodly hour in the night, cramming for the second of three midterms that week, probably thinking: “I quit college.”
Today, some of the richest and most famous people in the world do not hold college degrees: Michael Dell, Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey. These are three compelling arguments for why it might be better to skip college, eschew $140K in tuition and spend your time building the next Facebook. For those of us who have regretted our decision to go to college or thought about dropping out, know that Assistant Professor of Economics Erin Wolcott has done research on this very idea. While her research doesn’t “direct people to college or not to college,” it does say something about the current population that does not go to college and what they’re doing (or not doing) afterwards.
According to the most recent American Community Survey in 2016, more than one out of every five men who do not attend college — about 7.1 million individuals — do not have jobs. In other words, only 78% of this population is employed, compared to 90% in the 1950s. Why is there such a high rate of nonemployment — which includes both unemployed people who are actively seeking jobs and those who are not — for men without a college education? To answer this question, Wolcott looked at different causes of unemployment in America.
Supply and demand is the first concept we learn in economics; it illustrates the relationship between how much producers sell and how much consumers buy. Everything can be linked back to supply and demand. In the labor market, demand side factors affect how much businesses and employers are hiring (their demand for labor), as these factors transform what jobs are available and who is doing them. Wolcott’s 2018 paper highlights the most common economic explanation regarding demand: “automation and trade reduce[s] the demand for low-skilled workers.”
Consider the General Motors (GM) and United Automobile Workers (UAW) strike, which lasted six weeks as company and workers negotiated wages and job security. GM workers feared for their jobs as the company made plans to close another factory and outsource to Mexico, where workers would provide the same labor for mere dollars. UAW workers are also fighting for security; since 1975, the number of UAW employees has dropped from 1.5 million to 400,000, as tech decreased the need for assembly line workers.
Supply side factors, on the other hand, affect who enters the job market (the supply of workers). Wolcott writes: “Economists have traditionally pointed the finger at [demand-side factors]. More recently, economists have been blaming the supply side, such as growing welfare payments and better video games that glue more men to their couches.” True, video games are vastly improving – take Fortnite as an example, which amassed over 4.3 million concurrent viewers on YouTube during its explosive Season 10 finale. Does this mean that unskilled men prefer to sit at home and play Fortnite all day than to get a job? Or examining the other supply-side culprit, unemployment benefits — maybe it is more profitable to get welfare and disability insurance.
The last factor causing nonemployment are search frictions, which make it difficult to match the workforce with available jobs. An example of a search friction? Online job postings. As college students, LinkedIn, Handshake and Indeed.com can make it easier to find jobs. Many older or uneducated adults, however, may not know how to use these sites, making it harder for them to find jobs.
So, we have three possibilities for why one of five uneducated men aren’t getting hired: (1) society isn’t demanding these populations (demand), (2) they don’t want to work (supply) and (3) new tech and resources are making it difficult to find work.
In her research, Wolcott built an economic model using employment, wage and other relevant data to encompass the three explanations for nonemployment to explore the extent of this causal relationship. She points to demand side factors — mainly tech and globalization — as the most significant reason for why so many unskilled men in America aren’t working: “It’s not because they’re choosing to play video games on average over a great job opportunity but because there aren’t job opportunities.”
“This is the first step to understand what’s going on,” Wolcott said.
Inequality is on the rise in America, breeding resentment and political polarity, and it is important to understand why. The next step is to start thinking about policies. While we aren’t about to become Luddites or stop global trade, economists have identified ways to bring people back into the job market, starting with education. Whether this will be making education cheaper, promoting vocational schools and apprenticeships or offering direct subsidies for specific institutions or courses, there are a myriad of potential solutions that will help make the labor market more inclusive and equal and bring millions back into the workforce.
(11/07/19 11:02am)
Arizona PBS news anchor Vanessa Ruiz, who made national headlines in 2015 for her accented pronunciation of words in Spanish while serving as broadcast anchor, visited Middlebury this week to share her unique experience as a reporter. Ruiz gave a lecture, “Speak American: How A News Anchor Became the News,” on Monday, Nov. 4. She also visited with students interested in media and communications careers at the Center for Careers and Internships, and ate with a cohort of students and faculty members from the Luso-Hispanic Studies Department.
In her lecture, held in the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, Ruiz recounted her ascent to a nightly co-anchor position in the major television market of Phoenix. It was there that Ruiz faced racially-charged attacks for her on-air pronunciation of Spanish words, including the names of nearby towns, like “Mesa” and “Casa Grande.” The packed audience on a Monday afternoon included Spanish majors, professors and students interested in journalism.
Ruiz was born in Miami and raised in Colombia until the age of five. She entered the field of journalism in college in 2001, taking an internship with Telemundo, a global Spanish-language television network based in Miami. From there, Ruiz worked as a foreign correspondent in Nicaragua and Venezuela, where she covered Hugo Chavez’s last presidential election. She returned to the United States as a reporter for the local NBC news station in Los Angeles.
Ruiz noted that in each site with a large Hispanic population, she was able to speak in her native accent without question.
“Growing up and living in cities like Los Angeles and Miami, you really are in a bubble – a multicultural bubble,” she said.
It was only once Ruiz arrived at KPNX or 12 News, the local NBC affiliate in Phoenix, that she faced criticism for her pronunciation of certain words. After just one month on the job, local viewers hurled insults at Ruiz on Twitter. One user wrote, “I turn in to watch a newscaster, not a mariachi.” Another viewer suggested in the tweet that Ruiz be deported, adding, “She isn’t American she has no right to be here no matter how much some corporation paid for her.”
Ruiz was offered the chance, by her bosses and co-anchor, to respond on-air to the acerbic commentary about her. On live television, Ruiz offered a rebuke of her critics.
“Some of you have noticed that I pronounce a couple of things maybe a little differently than you’re used to,” Ruiz said. “I do like to pronounce certain things the way they are meant to be pronounced.”
Following her response, Ruiz received support from local and national political figures, including Phoenix-area State Senator Martin Quezada. Quezada tweeted that “our news is now more mature, culturally accepting and accurate. How is that a bad thing?” The New York Times and BuzzFeed picked up the story and ran articles on Ruiz’s response to the contention she received.
The Phoenix community was also grateful that Ruiz decided not just to respond to backlash, but to stay at the news station too: they thanked her for not leaving.
“What does that say about a community, when they have to tell you ‘thanks’ for not leaving?” She answered her own rhetorical question at the talk: “They had been feeling repressed, antagonized, attacked for so long.”
During her lecture, Ruiz attributed her desire to respond and her upstanding demeanor to the pride she has for her identity. Acknowledging the privilege she experiences as a “fair-skinned” Latina, Ruiz told students that she felt the need to stand up for Hispanics in the Phoenix area, a city whose population is roughly three-quarters white, according to Census data.
Ruiz now reports for the PBS NewsHour West, based out of Phoenix, as well as Arizona’s PBS station, which is owned by ASU. She is also a professor at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she directs their Borderlands program.
Ruiz says she tries to do news “the good way,” by aiming to diversify the newsroom and encourage more bilingual students in the classroom to follow their professional goals.
“I look at bilingualism as an asset, nothing less,” Ruiz said.
Attendee Lila Sternberg-Schur ’21.5 read about Ruiz in professor Brandon Baird’s Hispanic Linguistics class last year. “Having the opportunity to hear Vanessa talk about what she’d experienced in person really brought the story to life and made it more tangible,” she said.
In a hearty question-and-answer session at the end of Monday’s lecture, Ruiz answered questions about her identity and her experience in journalism.
At one point in the Q&A, Ruiz spoke about the role journalists play in 2019, and how to write with one’s identity in mind.
“I still believe that I’m not the news – I shouldn’t be the news. At the end of the day, facts are facts,” she said.
However, she said that having diverse journalists engaged in the newsroom is essential.
“It’s up to us to bridge those gaps, and bring people together who may come from different backgrounds, different perspectives, and different experiences,” she said. “It’s not an easy muscle to flex, because it takes courage to be that person always raising your hand. But if we don’t do it, who will?”
(11/07/19 11:01am)
Students, professors, and local residents gathered in Bundle — a pop-up event space in downtown Middlebury — to kick off a new storytelling series hosted by Middlebury Underground last Friday, Nov. 1. This storytelling series, aptly titled “Memorable Dishes,” offered hours of stories and free “local bites” sourced from nearby farms and organizations. “[Midd Underground] has long wanted to host a moth-style storytelling event of this kind,” said Lisa Mitchell, fine dining chef, culinary event producer and one of the program’s organizers. She had been envisioning the appeal of a storytelling evening about the various lives of people in Middlebury.
The goal of these events, according to Mitchell, is bringing the community together around storytelling, which is “an intimate kind of connection.”
A brainstorming group, consisting of Bundle manager and creator Kelly Hickey, community member Matt Laux, and Mitchell herself, chose food as the topic of the stories. The challenge? Participants were tasked with sharing their “best five-minute tale” about food. In a note to the storytellers, Midd Underground described food as “fuel, culture, religion and customs.” Food was chosen as the topic because it can forge connections among people, the ultimate purpose of the storytelling series.
“[Food] connects us all and evokes so many sense memories, traditions, and stories of origin,” Mitchell said.
Becky Strum and her husband, parents of a Middlebury graduate, heard about the event both in a local newspaper and through word of mouth in the nearby community. According to Strum, the idea of food and stories seemed “extremely appealing” to both of them. This sentiment was shared by over 100 other guests, whose energetic conversations filled the room as they swarmed the table filled with organic vegetables, cheese and even a selection of homemade breads and sauces.
Nearby residents weren’t the only attendees. Natalie Figueroa ’18 currently works in Middlebury’s admissions office and enjoys interacting with this close-knit community in which she lives. She arrived at the event in order to hear her co-worker speak, but stayed for the food and conversation. Students of the college, families, and even professors attended this storytelling series emphasizing the importance of community at Middlebury and how the connections that exist between these people can be strengthened by food —both of the physical and the written variety.
The stories shared were “evocative and powerful,” Mitchell said. Themes of forging connections with others through cooking, embarking on culinary adventures and embracing the comfort of a familiar dish emerged throughout the night.
Storyteller Laura Thomas spoke of the day she worked with an elderly alzheimer’s patient to make pickles — and how, although the finished product was nearly inedible, the experience cheered and motivated the patient. Annette Franklin revealed that she learned to cook Ethiopian cuisine to welcome an adopted member of her family who hailed from the country. Doug Engell recalled a “lobster feast to remember,” the final, beautiful meal he shared with his family following his wife’s diagnosis with liver cancer.
Other speakers shared tales of adventure and risk. Gretchen Ayer talked about a coworker’s comical battle with a seemingly-unswallowable piece of octopus sashimi. Becky Kincaid spoke of a delicious meal she shared with members of a friendly Kurdish village, which incidentally landed her, gravely ill, in a Turkish hospital. Andy Mitchell gave detailed accounts of the outlandish foods he has consumed from chipmunks to insects. He also described a particularly memorable banquet of excess research specimens in Greenland that included priceless caviar and narwhal steaks.
Some storytellers spoke fondly of a favorite food. Jesse Gilette praised the special “doner kebab” that can only be found in Berlin and whose flavors are unreplicatable in any other location — even the esteemed Great Bazaar. Anna Sun spoke of her love-hate relationship with her father’s special salt-duck recipe that required the dead animal to dry, hanging, for three months alongside the family’s laundry. And Jess Danyow gushed about popcorn, the perfect bitesize snack that she enjoys as she reads novels and escapes from reality.
Mitchell’s story was a particularly special one. As a young woman living in Boston, she decided to seize an opportunity to pursue her dreams of becoming a professional chef. Soon, the excruciating training and “hazing” from other chefs began to take their toll, but she refused to give up. With the unexpected help of a seasoned, tough-as-nails ex-con, she improved her knife skills and cooking techniques. She even threw “dinner parties” with her new friend. Mitchell noted that this man used cooking as an escape from his difficult past. Although she doesn’t keep in contact with him today, she wishes him well and will always be grateful for his aid and support. Mitchell’s story was the perfect culmination to the night, including elements of connection, risk-taking and true love for food.
Midd Underground is looking forward to offering this series on a quarterly basis. They have many ideas “in the works,” according to Mitchell. News regarding the theme of the winter installment is expected soon.
(11/07/19 10:56am)
I often wind up at the mouth of the Mediterranean on Sunday nights. The 30 minute walk from my apartment to Mar Bella beach was the first route I memorized. As someone who scoffs at google maps but has possibly the worst sense of direction ever, this was a symbolic feat. Despite leaving a permanent trail of sand through my cramped apartment, my weekly chats with the sea have become grounding rituals and have marked my time in Barcelona.
My first Rosh Hashanah away from Vermont, I ate apples and honey at the beach. When a friend visited last month, I insisted we plunge into the ocean before catching the last train home. And, it has become my preferred place to call my mom, meet new friends, or star gaze.
I spent my first night at the beach during La Mercè, a week long festival that celebrates Catalan culture and traditional art. As one of three international students at Eolia Conservatory of Dramatic Art, La Mercè was the perfect introduction to Barcelona. Celebrating with my Catalan classmates gave me a deep appreciation for my temporary home, a city that is bursting with culture and beauty.
After watching a dance show outside the Arc de Triomf and scarfing down a plate of patatas bravas — crispy potatoes and aioli (in other words, my current replacement for Grille fries), my class headed to Mar Bella. We put down our blankets and began an obligatory “get to know you” round of Spanglish “never have I ever.” But after several calimochos (a surprisingly tolerable combination of cheap red wine and Coca Cola), the conversation turned more serious. My classmates’ love for Catalonia is contagious, but they also fear for its future and the state of democracy in Spain.
Catalonia has a complicated political history, fraught with oppression and cultural silencing. As Spain’s financial crisis has pushed Catalonia into debt, the desire to secede has become urgent. Catalonia generates tremendous revenue for Spain (at least relative to its size) and many feel that the partnership between the region and the country is unequal. In 2017, Catalan Seperatist leaders held an independence referendum, and 90% voted to cut ties with Spain. However, the referendum saw low voter turnout, and was deemed illegal by the central Spanish government. Madrid imposed direct rule over Catalonia, and protest erupted in response. In 2017, nine Catalan leaders (charged for rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds) were detained for pre-trial. My classmates explained that this was a breach of laws protecting free speech. Thus ensued a fight to defend democracy in Spain, rather than simply an argument over Separatism.
Several weeks ago, the nine Catalan leaders were sentenced to 100 cumulative years in prison. The news broke during my Monday morning Shakespeare seminar. Mentally, I had left class 15 minutes prior and was silently rehearsing a scene for my next class. I snapped to attention when news alert pings dominoed through the classroom. Democracy had been challenged and Barcelona’s political climate would change indefinitely. Protests began immediately, rendering my internal scene study trivial. Classes halted the 72 hours preceding a general strike. Students led the movement, staging demonstrations on an unprecedented scale. That week trash cans burned around my block, as marching continued through the night and helicopters flew overhead.
With classes canceled, I had time to fill. I protested with my classmates, at their request. But I also drank coffee with international friends, among whom the political crisis became background noise. Inhabiting these two seemingly different worlds has been confusing, and raised questions about my role as a foreigner. Though a fight for democracy is at the heart of the movement, it feels complex to march along seas of Catalan flags, far from the security of home. Still, disengaging from the conflict is impossible when smoke spirals toward my window and sirens scream through the night.
The beach became eerily quiet the week of heavy protesting. I wish I could say the silence has given way to profound personal discovery, or that a higher calling has led me to fight for democracy and change. I haven’t settled on anything that concrete yet. But, I have come to realize that outside isolated communities (like Middlebury) there is no place for apathy.
To enjoy Catalonia’s beaches, I must also try to understand the needs of its people.
My class celebrated our friend’s birthday at Mar Bella last weekend. The scene echoed the night of La Mercè, and it momentarily felt like life had returned to normal since the sentencing. But in the midst of political revolution, there is no “normal.” The protests have altered the quality of life in Barcelona. Though the political current of the city has become less predictable, I still feel constantly grateful to be here. Catalonia’s beauty warrants a fight. Although I still don’t have answers about my personal role in the struggle right now, I do know my heart is with the Catalan youth who are brave, ready for change and willing to fight for it.
Becca Berlind is a member of the class of 2021. She is studying in Barçelona, Spain for the fall of 2019.
(10/31/19 10:05am)
After wrapping up the college's year-long workforce planning initiative this May, a process that saw 37 staff members take voluntary buyouts and caused a redistribution of workload among remaining staff, administrators announced via email to all college employees that the process had been a success — Middlebury could reduce its deficit without resorting to layoffs.
But an external email sent to facilities staff on Aug. 8 suggests the starkly different story, that some workers didn’t think workforce planning had been so “voluntary” after all.
“Middlebury Needs a UNION! -read on your break” the subject line of the email said.
It spelled out some of the pitfalls of the workforce planning process: Staff felt voiceless, overworked with insufficient pay, and as though the ground had been pulled from beneath them when they were offered buyouts and switched into new roles. Facilities staff specifically — those who work in maintenance and operations jobs, like custodial and groundskeeping services, as well as jobs in planning, design and construction — have reported to The Campus feeling exhausted and frustrated by failures in communication, too-long hours and last minute call-ins.
“I don’t know a bunch about unions — still don’t,” one facilities staff member said. “But I know the way that people get treated here. I’ve seen it. I just feel like we’ve got to do something.”
Throughout the summer, the email’s sender, David Van Deusen of the Rutland-based branch of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), met with facilities staff who sought to discuss how organizing a union would mitigate the heightened voicelessness brought on by the workforce planning process.
Not enough facilities staff have signed union authorization cards to trigger a vote to organize. Many said they see this as a sign that union efforts have failed. But Van Deusen remains adamant that efforts are ongoing. And facilities staff are insistent that something has to give.
Most of the 12 facilities workers The Campus spoke with for the story spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of retribution from peers and upper management.
Workforce planning raises “unanswered questions”
Most Middlebury students don’t know what workforce planning really means. But for staff, the process — which the college announced in June 2018 as a way to cut personnel costs and distribute work more efficiently — was ever-present for the better part of a year.
Department managers were tasked last fall with leading discussions within their divisions about how they could reorganize work more efficiently and cost-effectively, with the aim of shrinking staff compensation costs by 10% amidst an exigent budget deficit. That winter, senior leadership, in collaboration with human resources, finalized a list of positions that they would cut based on those findings.
The college identified 150 staff positions to be eliminated, though 100 of that number were “were already vacant through attrition and restrictions on re-hiring over the last few years,” The Campus reported in May. In February of 2019, the college handed out applications for buyouts — formally called Incentivized Separation Plans (ISP) — to 79 staff members, in hopes of cutting 45 of the remaining positions. Twenty-eight of those applications were offered to facilities and dining staff specifically.
The college sent more applications for the buyouts than were necessary, in the hopes that enough staff would elect to take them and the college would not have to resort to involuntary layoffs. If more staff than necessary applied, the most senior staff were offered buyouts first.
The college also created “close to 40” new staff positions based on needs identified during work reevaluations, according to Vice President of Human Resources Karen Miller. Applications for those positions were first made available to the staff who were offered buyouts, giving them the option to apply to stay at the college, rather than taking ISPs. To protect the privacy of the individuals who opted to take buyouts, the college has not made public the list of eliminated and added positions.
Ultimately, 37 staff took the buyouts, nine of whom were employees within facilities and dining. The college had hoped more staff would apply, but the number proved sufficient — the college did not have to resort to layoffs.
“This process has been both lengthy and challenging, and caused many in our community significant uncertainty and discomfort,” said President Laurie Patton in a May email to staff. “Thanks to your participation, the process was successful.”
Last year, The Campus reported growing anxieties among staff as they waited to hear from the administration about the futures of their jobs. For staff in some departments — like dining, in which a natural reduction of positions left few to be forcibly cut — these uncertainties have since mostly subsided. But in facilities, anxieties have subsisted. In some cases, they have worsened.
“There were a lot of unanswered questions. There still are a lot of unanswered questions,” said one Middlebury facilities staff member, a supporter of the union.
A 2017 survey, administered by the consulting firm ModernThink, shows that staff discontent surged even before workforce planning began. That survey showed frustration with communication from the Senior Leadership Group — Patton’s 17-member advisory council — a lack of transparency with decision-making and dissatisfaction with compensation, among other areas.
Still, workforce planning seems to have exacerbated many staff concerns. Some, for example, are frustrated with how work has been redistributed since some positions were cut, which has caused employees to feel overworked and underpaid.
“The work amped up with fewer people to do it,” said the aforementioned facilities staff member. “A lot of the extra stuff is taking away from the stuff that we need to do daily.”
The worker said he was frustrated with what he felt was a murky process. Decisions about the “voluntary” process were often made behind closed doors, he said, and the redistribution of work showed a lack of understanding about the work being done. “There was nothing voluntary about it,” he said.
Norm Cushman, vice president for operations, said communication can be a challenge in a department with so many workers. “It would have been very difficult to have solicited everyone’s input,” he said.
Cushman said the process of work redistribution will play out piecemeal, as employees who took buyouts gradually leave the college and their departments develop strategies for how to “do less with less.”
Low pay forces employees who work two jobs into a “balancing act”
The Campus has previously reported low wages as a source of dissatisfaction among employees. Separately, pro-union staff who spoke to The Campus said low wages were a major reason they sought to organize.
Many employees have to hold multiple jobs to survive. That balancing act, another facilities employee said, can become incredibly burdensome when workloads at the college are also increased in light of workforce planning. When many facilities staff did not show up to work after an unexpectedly severe snowstorm last year, for example, administrators questioned staff priorities.
“We had a meeting with a manager who was extremely unhappy because a lot of people weren’t here helping,” the employee said. “He told us that if we had second jobs, we needed to not go in and instead had to come in and shovel.”
The college has consistently framed workforce planning as a way to make staff feel more invested in the future of the institution. But according to staff, it doesn’t always feel like that.
“Yeah, you could say workforce planning is for us, because now [the college is] financially sustainable,” said Staff Council President Tim Parsons. “But if you’re only making $12.07 an hour and your shift in the custodial wing starts at 4 a.m., workforce planning doesn’t really feel like it’s for you.”
These low wages have led to shortages in some areas, like custodial and recycling services. To address these shortages, the college is currently spearheading a compensation review with an external consulting group. The aim of the study is to gather “market data” — information that will indicate what the college needs to pay going forward to make itself a competitive employer.
David Provost, executive vice president for finance and administration, said the college is undertaking the review now because it has been nearly a decade since the last one of its kind. He also said that the college has seen increased turnover in the last two years in positions within the lowest two pay bands, in which many facilities positions fall. Wages for OP1 positions — for example, some dining hall servery positions — begin at $11 an hour, while OP2 positions — including some groundsworking and custodial jobs — begin at $12.07 an hour.
Meanwhile, staff spoke about how comparable positions in town had wages that started three or four dollars higher, although without comparable benefits. Separately, custodians told The Campus that hiring shortages in custodial services might be due to the high costs of living in Addison County, costs which workers on an OP2-level budget are often not able to shoulder.
“We know over the last 18 to 24 months it has been more difficult to attract and retain OP1 and OP2 level positions,” Provost said. “If the review suggests we need to increase these salaries, then we will.” He added that the decision would have to be contingent on timing and availability of financial resources.
The college had to tackle workforce planning before the compensation review, Provost said, because addressing its financial management had to be a fiscal priority, given the severity of the deficit.
Provost said he is expecting the study’s data to show that the college should pay its OP1- and OP2-level employees higher wages. The study is set to be done by the spring. At that time, the administration will begin to work its findings into the budget for the 2021 fiscal year.
“A slap in the face”
The college did not officially lay off any employees. Some felt the offers they received backed them into corners anyway.
One employee, a servery worker who has been at the college for 31 years, said her situation felt like “a slap in the face.” She was previously employed in a facilities office job before her position was cut.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]At the college, seniority has never meant anything. I’ve been here 31 years — I’m a loyal worker, have always been on time, never been sick. Didn’t matter at all.[/pullquote]
Even though she shared a similar workload with the two other employees in her previous office, she had a different job title from her co-workers and hers was the only position that was cut. In other offices, where multiple workers held the same positions, the process was more “voluntary,” since one worker’s choice to take a buyout or job transfer meant others could refuse.
The servery worker was, as multiple staff members put it, “workforce planned.”
“At the college, seniority has never meant anything,” the employee said. “I’ve been here 31 years — I’m a loyal worker, have always been on time, never been sick. Didn’t matter at all.”
The staff member was informed by supervisors that her position would be cut toward the end of that phase in the process. But she couldn’t afford to take the buyout package the college was offering. The staff member instead applied for several of the then-newly-created positions posted on a private portal. Many of the available job postings required degrees, she said. “I don’t have a college degree,” she said. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t have the qualifications — I didn’t have the degree.”
All jobs for which she was eligible required higher levels of physical activity than she was used to. After working at a desk for so many years, the transition to a job that requires her to carry heavy loads and stand for hours at a time has taken a toll. Last week, she suffered a workplace injury.
Contacted by AFSCME while she was still in a facilities position, the staff member attended initial meetings and supported the effort to unionize. She said she would support unionization among facilities staff, even in her new role, “Because you’d have someone else looking out for you besides the people who are higher up here,” she said. “They expect the lowest paid people here to work the hardest.”
Despite low wages, staff like the servery worker identified the benefits the college offers to its faculty and staff as exceptional in comparison with other positions in the area. Among them are good healthcare, extensive retirement plans and paid time off, as well as discounts at some stores, free gym passes and roadside assistance.
“If it was not for the benefits, 90% of these facilities people would not be here,” the first facilities employee said.
“Benefits here are a lot better than what you would find anywhere else around here,” said the other. “But I can’t go down to Hannaford and buy groceries with my benefits.”
“Middlebury Needs a UNION!”
Van Deusen, the union rep and the president of the Vermont American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), said he was contacted by facilities employees over the summer about starting a union.
While some staff concerns, like low pay and abrupt, last-minute shift scheduling, have been prevalent for a long time, Van Deusen believes this round of workforce planning catalyzed the staff’s outreach.
After their first meetings in Ilsley Public Library in July, Van Deusen said he was in contact with “dozens of facilities staff.” At subsequent off-campus gatherings, he spoke with interested parties about what the union could offer them. Many were intrigued.
One of the facilities workers told The Campus he “absolutely” supports the formation of a union, “Mainly for pay. And also, to have a voice.” He cited the workforce planning process as a period during which he felt particularly left in the dark by his superiors.
The servery worker said she would be in favor of a facilities union, “because of the seniority part of it. And to negotiate a better raise,” she said.
Some workers were also inspired by the successful union effort at St. Michael’s College. In 2012, custodians there unionized with AFSCME. They later negotiated $15-per-hour pay in their second contract.
Despite this recent win for Vermont labor advocates, Sociology Professor Jamie McCallum, who specializes in labor studies, said union decline in the U.S. has been happening since the 1950s and picked up speed in the late 1970s.
Once word of mouth began to spread about the Middlebury union effort, Van Deusen handed out authorization cards for interested employees to sign. What followed was a flood of information and rumors circulating between staff and the administration. On Aug. 19, one month after union authorization cards were first distributed, Miller, the vice president of human resources, replied to the initial drive in a letter that administrators hand-delivered to all facilities employees.
“Middlebury supports your right to choose whether to unionize,” the letter said.
“We know that many of you have raised legitimate and important concerns about your jobs,” it later added. “We also believe that joining an outside labor union to address those concerns is not the answer.”
The letter highlighted some commonly cited “disadvantages” of forming a union, such as the potentially high cost of monthly dues.
A few days later, Van Deusen sent an email to facilities employees responding to the administration’s outreach.
“AFSCME, the labor union many of you are seeking to affiliate with, is aware that Management has been spreading false and misleading information in an effort to get you to NOT form a Union,” it said, before addressing what it called “actual FACTS” about forming a union.
In the days following, some staff opposed to the union left flyers in certain shops and break rooms on campus, countering Van Deusen’s points. Shortly after, the administration sent a list of FAQs to staff, based on questions it had received from facilities when administrators traveled shop-to-shop with Miller’s first letter.
The union effort has not yet reached the strong majority within facilities that it needs to move forward. There is no specific benchmark for that number, Van Deusen said, but it would have to be a number with which the group would feel comfortable. Some staff said they see the slowing momentum as a sign the effort is doomed. But Van Deusen said authorization cards have not been circulating for long enough to determine whether the effort will succeed or not. He plans to continue to collect and tally cards.
If he could gather enough, staff would then need to file paperwork with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an independent federal agency that protects the rights of private sector employees to better their working conditions and wages. The NLRB would then conduct a secret ballot election among facilities staff to decide whether a union would be formed.
If a majority opted for the formation of a union, the new effort would hold internal union elections for a bargaining team. From there, it would bargain a binding contract with the administration.
“This time next year, we would like to announce that a new union, with a contract, will be formed at Middlebury,” Van Deusen said. He hopes that contract would address staff concerns by forming a labor management committee, creating a binding grievance procedure and paying better for longevity and overtime, among other measures.
Not every staff member is in favor of a union coming to campus. One custodial worker said she would not support the formation of a union because she is worried about losing her benefits in the negotiations, although she is unhappy with her current wages. She was offered a buyout last winter, but did not have to take it because another worker on her team did.
“I enjoy my vacation time,” she said. “The health insurance isn’t what it used to be, but that’s changing in November, too. I enjoy my benefits.”
According to Miller, the college will put in place a new healthcare system this November, to go into effect in January, that will introduce more choice into the current plan.
Although some employees worry their benefits will be at risk if they unionize, McCallum said he finds it hard to believe that the college would target workers’ healthcare and benefits in negotiations.
“If Middlebury were to threaten the good benefits that workers now receive if they decided to go union, it would be joining a long list of union-busting corporations,” he said.
Besides, he said that employees would have to agree on any union contract with the college.
“Workers vote on any contract a union signs, and they would only vote ‘yes’ on a contract when their benefits improved or stayed the same,” he said.
McCallum said he sees collective bargaining as an “essential ingredient of a democratic workplace.”
“We need a living wage here, where everyone can live and work with dignity, and that will mean paying workers what they deserve, not just what the market dictates,” he added.
Middlebury’s “Black Tuesday”: A union effort three decades ago
The servery employee, who has worked at the college for 31 years and supports a union, was freshly employed at Middlebury when a series of job cuts in May 1991 destroyed a long-held perception of the institution as a reliable place to work. She remembers the day those positions were terminated, which has since come to be known by some as “Black Tuesday,” as a day filled with tears and disbelief.
The college administration has taken measures to avoid an event like Black Tuesday from recurring. Patton told two Campus reporters in an article published by VTDigger this fall that memories of 1991 have influenced how the college currently handles staff reductions, emphasizing its focus on giving people more of a choice and inviting them to think about the long-term trajectory of the institution.
Miller emphasized a similar sentiment in her conversation with The Campus.
“I can say that we were intentional to make this as humane as we could, to make sure that this was not a surprise to people and that they were engaged in conversations,” she said about this year’s workforce planning. “We really worked hard to do that. Were we 100% successful? I hope so, but maybe not.”
As in 1991, this recent round of workforce planning eliminated specific job “titles” rather than “people,” and both years saw efforts to organize. In September of 1991, The Campus reported that staff across campus were “exploring ways to increase their input in administrative decisions.” This included attempts by some to form a union, organizing for which would last four years before ultimately breaking down in 1995 after failing to garner enough support.
Those attempts were aimed at creating a wall-to-wall bargaining unit — a unit that would include all staff, unlike this year’s single-department effort in facilities. Bill Jaeger, director of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), an AFSCME affiliate, helped spearhead that effort. His team was contacted by Middlebury employees in 1991, two years after HUCTW negotiated their own first contract.
Jaeger said attempts to unionize arose because of anger about the layoffs, but that at its core were more permanent longings for democratic change at the college.
“People were feeling like their eyes had been opened to how consequential and important it can be to have some breadth and some inclusion in important policy matters and in decision making,” he said.
HUCTW members visited staff in Middlebury to talk about the union, at times once per week. Most interest came from those in administrative and technical jobs, although there was some level of support and involvement in all staff departments, Jaeger remembered. In response, the administration called all-staff meetings to address the efforts.
That union was not able to pique sufficient interest, but Jaeger said staff who were involved were united around a shared sense of excitement for what they were building. “Most people are driven in the most steadfast way if they’re really building toward something that’s going to make a positive difference in the long term,” he said.
By 1995, when the effort fell, the college seemed to be undertaking corrective policies that gave employees some reason for hope.
College looks forward, staff still waiting for change
The college has reiterated time and time again that workforce planning is not a one-time process. This means that administrators are still assessing its successes, as well as where it’s fallen short.
Administrators are hopeful that the workforce planning process will allow the institution to run more efficiently and proactively in the future. Some of the new jobs, for example — including some of the positions offered to staff whose positions were cut, requiring college degrees — are more specialized, and were intended to take into account potential demographic shifts in Vermont so that the college can be an “employer of choice for the next generation,” Miller said.
“The whole purpose of the workforce planning is we’ve got to be prepared for our future,” she said. “I know it was a difficult process for many, but for some, I think it really helped us to transform and leap into that future state,” she added, citing the How Will We Live Together review as a concurrent, future-oriented process.
Miller said that the administration is committed to revisiting any “pain points” among staff and addressing them accordingly. At an Oct. 24 staff meeting, Patton announced that Special Assistant to the President Sue Ritter will do a listening tour throughout staff departments to hear employees’ concerns. The administration laid out its plan for the compensation review at that meeting, as well as several other measures, like a restatement that Senior Leadership Group would attend the holiday party this December, that suggest an effort to reinforce commitment to community-building.
The custodial worker and nearly every staff member interviewed for this article spoke about an intangible change that has made the working environment feel more corporate, and less warm and community-centered.
“When I first came here, it was different,” the custodial worker said. “It was more family-oriented, and everybody looked out for each other. It’s not like that anymore. It’s more sterile.”
Parsons, the staff council president, said Middlebury used to be a small institution with a real family feel. “As we have grown and expanded both our physical footprint here and our global footprint, we have somewhat lost touch with that,” he said.
“It would be a real challenge to bring that back,” he added.
Staff also overwhelmingly expressed large amounts of pride in Middlebury as an institution, a collective sentiment that is backed up by data in the 2017 ModernThink survey.
“It’s a great place,” the first facilities worker said. “And the benefits are great. We’re just underpaid for what we’re doing.”
This pride seems to leave many staff members feeling hopeful. But they’re also worried that the college will continue to disappoint them. Some left initial workforce planning meetings a year ago with the impression that “everything was going to be open and that communication was going to flow.”
“But it never did,” one staff member said.
“With workforce planning, there were so many unanswered questions,” he added. “The administration wouldn’t have been able to do that without talking to the union first.”
As the dust settles on the consequences of workforce planning, staff are still waiting to see tangible changes.
(10/31/19 10:04am)
The commons system will no longer exist come next fall, the college administration announced in an email to the Middlebury community on Oct. 24.
The email detailed a host of changes to the current residential life system following a multi-year review of the system, including the creation of a new Office of Residential Life, a push to work towards building a new student center, and the consolidation of deans’ offices into two first-year “clusters.” All together, the administration is calling the changes “BLUEprint.”
The review process, which started to take shape in spring 2018, originated in Community Council in 2017, after a New York Times article about income inequality inspired the council to conduct a student survey . The survey ultimately pointed to discrepancies in residential life experiences among students. The following year, an external committee convened to build the report that would eventually become “How Will We Live Together.” The report’s recommendations informed the upcoming overhaul.
Currently, first-year students live in one of five first-year halls, depending on their assigned commons. Per the new system, first-years will instead either live in Allen and Battell halls on the north side of campus, or Stewart and Hepburn halls south of College Street, depending on which “cluster” they are in. These changes will turn Hepburn from a sophomore dorm to a first year dorm, while removing first years from Hadley, a first-year dormitory located in the Ross complex.
Administrators chose to move first-years nearer to each other in response to the external committee’s report, which said that relocating first year students to live in closer proximity to one another “should increase students’ sense of belonging at Middlebury, and reduce some of the tensions related to diversity and inclusion that we heard about during our visit to campus.”
These changes effectively put an end to the commons system, which was first established after the removal of Greek life from campus in 1989 and modeled off of the house system at universities like Harvard and Yale. The commons were put into place in 1991 and have faced major adjustments twice since then.
The upcoming changes to residential life attempt to combat the “inefficiency” produced by the commons model, while also working to better serve and support students, administrators told The Campus.
“I was shocked at how complicated the system was... and the faculty were not being used as effectively as they could be,” said Rob Moeller, a psychology professor who specializes in the mental health of college students.
Moeller has been an integral member of the How Will We Live Together Steering Committee. The committee formed in the spring of 2018 to develop and write the final recommendations.
“[We realized] that the experiment of randomizing students into communities didn’t work,” Moeller said. “You can tell someone that their new mascot is a squirrel or frog or a rhino, but it didn’t resonate with students. Students weren’t walking around saying, ‘Go squirrels.’”
The plan also suggests planning will soon be underway for the renovation or replacement of Battell Hall, the biggest first year dorm on campus, as well as for a new student center. Administrators said that the college cannot operate without the beds provided by Battell Hall, meaning that the building will likely continue to operate while a new facility is built.
A re-centralized residential life office
The shift away from the commons system will fundamentally change how the college approaches student residential life staff. It will also add two new positions to the residential life team, including an associate dean for residential life and an assistant director of student success. These positions will be filled by AJ Place,who served as theDean of Brainerd commons until spring 2019, and Michelle Audette, who now works as Middlebury’s ADA Coordinator, respectively.
The positions will both fall within a consolidated Office of Residential Life. This office, in addition to directing students towards resources, will work to remove some of the workload from deans, the number of which will be downsized from five to four.
The college will use new software to help deans manage student needs, and deans will be relieved of some of their residential life responsibilities. This shift is intended to help ease deans’ workloads as they become responsible for larger numbers of students.
The creation of these positions is already underway, according to AJ Place.
“I’ll be supervising the folks that we know now as the CRDs, which is what I’m already doing this year,” Place said.
Place will also be supervising Assistant Director for New Student Experience and Residential Education Kristy Carpenter and Assistant Director for Housing Operations Kady Shea.
These positions are one such way the college hopes to reach students “proactively” and move away from what Place termed a “purely reactive” approach. Place hopes this re-centralization will provide students with heightened access to resources, including programming that will help educate students on a range of topics.
“In Brainerd last year, we piloted a program in the fall [where] we did a number of series of events for first-year students, specifically,” Place said. “We had our first program with the CTLR on time management, which doesn’t sound like a fun topic, but we had well over 60 people at [the event] just here in Stewart. That tells me that students value having that [kind of resource] right here and that we’ve missed the mark on not doing that.”
With this shift, the administration hopes to have deans work in concert — rather than individually — to promote student wellness.
“When we think about what mental health is, when you think about health in general, it’s not just responding to problems, it’s about prevention,” Moeller said. “We’ve got all these great people on campus. We don’t need to just be in crisis response mode. Let’s start to use these skills in meaningful ways to really help all students.”
History of the commons
While the commons shape current students’ perceptions of how Middlebury organizes housing and residential life, this was not always the case. American Studies Professor Tim Spears was a member of the 1998 Residential Life Committee that fleshed out the College’s original idea for the commons system.
Spears said the original plan stipulated that each commons would have housing for all four classes, a dining hall, a dean’s office, and housing for the faculty head. If fully realized, these commons would have resembled Ross and Atwater facilities.
While this original plan was passed with hopes of creating five “microcosms” that would function together as the Middlebury experience, the plan was drastically altered in 2007, when it became clear that the college did not possess the financial means to build the infrastructure required by the 1998 plan. The last commons construction project was Atwater, which occurred at the same time the Davis Family Library was being built in 2004.
Due to the financial constraints, the college turned to a 4/2 plan, which features “a 4-year commons affiliation and a 2-year residency,” as described by a blog post written by Spears and dated September, 2007. This is the plan students at Middlebury have come to know — a plan under which students maintain their relationship with their commons Deans for the duration of their college experience, while only living within their commons for half of that time.
The 4/2 plan looked to keep the elements of the commons that had already been implemented, while letting go of the price tags required by the original framework. Though the move saved the college millions of dollars, it left the original commons vision largely unrealized.
Karl Lindholm, a retired American Studies professor who has worked in all five commons, including as faculty head of Atwater and the dean of Cook, explained that the idea behind the plan was to “decentralize” administrative offices.
“The word that was on everybody’s lips was decentralization,” he said. “In other words, we decentralized the Dean of Students office.”
Spears, who was the dean of the college when the 4/2 plan went into effect, said the goal of this decentralization was to create well-resourced communities to enhance the student experience. He wrote on his blog that he was saddened by the move away from the original vision of the commons, but that the shift was made with the belief that inter-commons relationships would be enough to sustain the reduced system.
“You build connections with students or faculty and commons staff during your first year or two, and then you move off and do other things, but those connections bring you back to the commons,” he said.
Those benefits were reflected in the 2018 survey — over 65% of students reported that the commons helped them to get to know other students, while 58% reported that the commons system helped them meet other people.
While the commons spurred inter-student connections, the data did not support the idea that the commons was central to community building, which was the intention behind its implementation.
“The impact [of the commons system] is only being seen mostly in the first two years and in a very small number of students, and it’s a very expensive program,” said Baishakhi Taylor, the Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students.
John Gosselin, a senior who has served both on Community Council and on the How Will We Live Together Steering Committee, said that the faculty head model in particular does not make financial sense.
“The role of the commons heads originally worked a lot better than they do now,” he said. “The way it works now is we have very small dinners that cost $150,000 to cater for the five houses. That money could be spent better elsewhere.”
Gosselin said three people could be hired to work directly with students for the same amount of money.
Though the college has not confirmed whether the commons heads positions will be eliminated in the new model, there is no evidence suggesting that positions will carry over. The recommendations submitted by the Steering Committee describe the faculty head model as “real,” but says that “the preponderance of evidence suggests that [the reach of the faculty head position] is limited to a relatively small number of students, and relatively limited in scope, manifesting mainly as hosting dinner events.”
Both the Steering Committee and the administration used information gathered in the 2018 Student Residential Life Survey to support the idea that the common head positions are largely ineffective: data show that only 32% of students report having gotten to know their commons head.
Spears said that it is a “fair question” to assess how impactful the faculty head position is, especially because faculty are moving beyond the classroom, in some capacity, to serve in that role. He also noted figures such as those provided by the survey are hard to interpret.
“Just putting a number on it doesn’t really explain whether or how faculty are enhancing residential life and benefitting particular students,” he said.
Even if over 50% of students surveyed reported not having gotten to know their faculty head, it remains difficult to imagine eliminating the position, which is founded on support and care, Spears said.
“I’m sensitive to the fact that, in doing these interviews and meeting with people, there isn’t one single person connected to the current system who didn’t put their heart and soul into it,” Moeller said. “Each person really cares about students. Sometimes it’s difficult being told that you’re a part of something that’s not working as well as it should — it’s hard to hear that you’ve been pouring your soul into something and the outcomes clearly are not where they should be.”
Commons senators and student res life staff opine
Many students involved in the commons feel they were not properly consulted regarding the upcoming changes. Myles Maxie ’22, Middlebury’s Wonnacott Senator, is worried about how students will represent themselves given that the recommendations do not specify how the Student Government Association will change with the elimination of the commons. The current structure has five Senate positions affiliated with the commons — one seat to each commons — and the possible elimination of those positions would decrease senate seats by one third.
“I don’t appreciate the fact that this [new] system doesn’t have full thought behind it,” Maxie said. “They’re unsure on the status of commons councils, given the fact that they’ve removed the commons.”
Teddy Best ’22, who serves as Ross commons Senator, expressed a similar worry.
“I am concerned that the administration did not notify commons senators or commons councils of where they were headed with this process,” he said. “There’s no doubt there are problems with the commons system — that isn’t the question. The question is, what should we do about it? If it’s the case that the commons system is going to be abolished, that seems like a drastic response.”
Maxie also identified poor communication during the plan’s creation as a source of concern. Commons senators were officially notified of the final changes at the same time as the rest of the student body, leaving many to feel that they were not adequately involved in the review process.
“I don’t appreciate the lack of transparency that exists throughout this process,” he said. “This report is titled How Will We Live Together, and how can you live together with people when you can’t trust them to actually tell you the details on how they’re completing this process?”
Maxie and Best are not alone — residential life staff, including Ross Community Assistant Steph Miller ’20, expressed concern with the move away from the commons structure.
“I think a lot was overlooked in the ways these reviews were done,” Miller said. “I think some of the reviews were done hastily. The external reviewers were on campus for less than two or three days,” said Miller, who also expressed concern with the methods used to conduct the review.
“They didn’t talk to that many people and they didn’t talk to the [commons] teams as a collective,” she said. “I think if they had done that, they would’ve seen what is so magical about the commons.”
The Steering Committee, however, viewed the process differently.
“I don’t think there’s anything we could do that would have made this more transparent,” Moeller said. “Everything, the notes, the meetings, the reports on the go site. We would actually send out email invites to groups, blasting out [messages and] saying, ‘who’s willing to come for 40 minutes, an hour?’”
The past week has seen little public backlash to the elimination of the commons system, but it is a dimension of this announcement that is undeniably present. Though the greater student body has, for the most part, shown indifference towards the changes, many people affiliated with the commons and their offices were not available for comment or unwilling to speak on the record for this story, and several alluded to feelings of uncertainty and sadness at the prospect of moving away from the commons system.
Correction: A previous version of the article misstated that commons senators were informed of accepted changes prior to the rest of the student body. The article has since been updated.
(10/31/19 10:03am)
One of the only places on campus I’ve felt my gender is in the weightroom.
It’s not just that I’m overwhelmed by the omnipresent groups of five or six male athletes from any given sports team who always seem to be lifting at the exact same time as me, that I don’t feel confident in my lifting form. Nor is it that I am often one of the only women in the gym. It’s the fact that all of this reminds me that I don’t have a support system in the form of teammates or coaching staff, anybody to spot my form and remind me that the weights I am lifting are often half the size of those others are using.
Gyms should be where you go to feel stronger and more confident. Instead, when I am in the gym on my own, I end up feeling weaker and more insecure.
Salma Nakhlawi ’19 is working to help women feel confident, strong and empowered both in and out of the weightroom as a coach and personal trainer.
Nakhlawi fills every role at StrongHER Girls™, from founder and business manager to coach and head of social media. Her days are full, but the majority of her work days are spent coaching. StrongHER Girls describes itself as a “movement dedicated to teaching girls, womxn, and folx of marginalized identities how to empower themselves to be strong, from the inside-out.” Most of the training Nakhlawi does is remote, which means that she spends a significant amount of time on daily FaceTime calls or texts with her clients to whom she provides 24/7 support. While a majority of her clients identify as women, she also works with a handful of male or gender non-conforming clients.
[pullquote speaker="Salma Nakhlawi" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Training should be fun, and it's my goal to help women and gender non-conforming people enjoy their time in the gym.[/pullquote]
When discussing her own start to powerlifting, Nakhlawi is quite open, sharing that powerlifting was introduced to her during a time when her life was very dark and unhealthy. A stressed out student during her first year of college, she found herself losing the structure she had previously found in physical activity throughout her childhood and had settled into a routine that relied on food to relieve stress instead of providing nourishment and enjoyment.
“Training should be fun,” Nakhlawi said, “and it’s my goal to help women and gender non-conforming people enjoy their time in the gym and help them achieve their goals. My goal is to help clients work towards a life that is happy, healthy and injury free through weight training.”
Unlike the cardio section of the gym which she found boring and tedious, Nakhlawi began to enjoy her time in the weight room where it wasn’t about how much an individual weighed, but about how well and how much they could lift.
Nakhlawi continued to work on her powerlifting skills as she made the transition from the first college she attended to Middlebury for her second year.
During her time at Middlebury, Nakhlawi continued to expand her knowledge of powerlifting and the importance of wellness. As a member of the women’s rugby team, she found herself leading team lifts and teaching a lot of the women on the team about the basics of lifting. While a rugby-related injury sidelined her for months, she was cleared to return to the weight room at the end of her healing process.
No longer able to play rugby, Nakhlawi looked for a similarly supportive community of women to lift with, but couldn’t find any. She returned to the weightroom and began to make conversation with other women who were lifting at similar times as she was. She wound up asking fellow female-lifters if they could spot her on a lift, then returned the favor when they needed a spotter.
Encouraged by relationships she built with other women she met in the weightroom, Nakhlawi started to teach lifting classes at the college, encouraging women to give lifting a shot with a group that created an environment less intimidating than the everyday weight room.
Nakhlawi also took many courses within the Middlebury Dance Department, which introduced her to mindful meditation, something she practices daily and recommends to her clients to include in their routines.
“Life is always going to be stressful. Things are always going to come up,” Nakhlawi explains, but mindful meditation, she has noticed, can play a huge role in helping clients get the most out of their hard work in the gym both physically and emotionally. Visualizing a lift before walking into the gym, for example, helps boost confidence and therefore move through a room where they may be the only woman with intention and determination.
Nakhlawi’s goal is to support her clients on their journeys as they “take a couple hours a week for yourself to feed your body in a way that’s going to help develop your training.”
While planning her next steps post-graduation, Nakhlawi realized that her previous interest in consulting would not provide her with the balanced lifestyle she had worked so hard to build or the fulfillment she felt after sharing her passion for lifting with other women.
As a neuroscience major, Nakhlawi had learned about anatomy, kinesthesiology, nutrition and the systems of the human body in many of her courses at the college. At MiddCORE, she learned about the big picture concepts of entrepreneurship, and at the Tuck Bridge Program at Dartmouth College, she learned about the nitty gritty details of running a business. To take on clients, however, she still needed to add to her coaching knowledge.
Nakhlawi got in touch with successful powerlifting coaches and asked them to share their knowledge and expertise with her by mentoring her. She read books, attended conferences and took in all the information she could.
“It wasn’t easy to make the choice to go into an untraditional business, but I took the leap of faith,” Nakhlawi said. “I am very fortunate to have an amazing support system behind me who have encouraged me every step of the way.”
While Nakhlawi may not be working in BiHall labs any more, she still faces many of her challenges as a coach with a scientific and data-driven approach.
“When it comes to powerlifting and the progress clients are making week by week and session by session, there’s a huge amount of data that can be collected and then analyzed,” she said. Instead of falling victim to the temptation to give up when progress plateaus, Nakhlawi sees this as an opportunity to reevaluate training plans, often transitioning clients from beginner programs to intermediate ones. This process, she explains, isn’t unlike reevaluating a hypothesis after the first couple of rounds of experimentation.
This isn’t the only part of StrongHER that is informed by scientific reasoning.
“Weight training helps fight osteoporosis by building stronger bones, it releases endorphins or ‘happy hormones’ and it boosts self confidence and positive body image,” Nakhlawi said. “Oh, and the next time you’re on a plane, you probably won’t need to ask someone to help you put your suitcase in the overhead bin.”
Check out StrongHER Girls™ for some great workout inspiration, empowering words and a pretty enthusiastic and supportive comment section.
(10/31/19 10:01am)
For the bookish among us, Halloween is a perfect time to revisit some of the spookiest tomes ever written. Brace yourselves for my top three fear-inducing books of all time. Don’t read this article alone.
I’m giving third place to Ford Maddox Ford’s “The Good Soldier” (1915). The novel tells the story of four early 20th-century couples: two hopelessly naive Americans, and two world-weary Brits. John Dowell, the American narrator, tries to make sense of his shattered world after discovering that his wife had a long-term affair with Captain Edward Ashburnham, Dowell’s only friend. Meanwhile, Briton Lenora Ashburnham schemes against her philandering husband.
In a sinister plot twist, Ford even adds one or two possible murders. I write “possible” since Ford’s protagonist is a confused, laughably unreliable narrator. Consider this rambling passage: “I don’t attach any particular importance to these generalizations of mine. They may be right; they may be wrong; I am only an ageing American with very little knowledge of life.” Beneath Dowell’s bumbling language lies unnavigable darkness.
Psychological horror does not often feature in romantic novels. The most heart-stopping scene in “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), for instance, is when Jane Bennet gets a bad cold. But “The Good Soldier,” despite its lusty beginnings, slowly becomes an utter nightmare. “I know nothing — nothing in the world — of the hearts of men,” relates Dowell. “I only know that I am alone — horribly alone. No hearthstone will ever again witness, for me, friendly intercourse.” Note the use of the word “intercourse.” Ford writes about sex in the same way that horror writer H.P Lovecraft characterizes the cosmic entity Cthulhu in the eponymous short story: as an ominous, primordial reckoning.
“The Good Soldier” ends with Nancy Rufford, the Ashburnham’s ward, descending into madness. After Nancy falls for Captain Ashburnham, the four main characters unite in banishing her to India. She spends the rest of her days in a madhouse, murmuring “Credo in unum Deum omnipotentem” [I believe in one all-powerful God] over and over again. Like Nancy’s recitation of the Nicene Creed, “The Good Soldier” will haunt you long after you have reached the story’s end.
My runner-up is “The Woman In White” (1859) by Wilkie Collins. T.S. Eliot wrote, in the introduction to a 1928 edition of the book, that Collins’s other great novel, “The Moonstone,” is “the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels in a genre invented by Collins and not by [Edgar Allen] Poe.” “The Woman In White” has even more sleuthing than “The Moonstone” (1868). But while the latter book has a comic tone, “The Woman In White” invokes pure dread.
The novel’s opening scene is simple, but spooky. Walter Hartright, an impoverished drawing teacher, walks through the streets of London late at night. From out of the fog appears a young woman clad in pale tatters. She asks for some directions, but then suddenly flees. We learn that her name is Anne Catherick, and that Anne has recently escaped from a ward for the criminally insane.
Some months after this strange encounter, Walter falls in love with Laura Fairlie, a wealthy art student. All is well for a bit, but developments arise. For one, Anne Catherick is stalking Walter. For another, Laura gets engaged to Sir Percival Glyde, an old rake who values his fiancée’s dowry a bit too much.
I shall divulge no more of the novel’s plot; “The Woman In White” is too good a book to be spoiled. Let us suffice to say that identity theft, mail fraud, false imprisonment and a nationalist Italian spy ring all feature in Collins’s blood-curdling narrative.
What makes Collins’s novel truly terrifying, though, is its main villain, the plumply evil, wickedly charming Count Fosco. The Count likes to sing church hymnals, drug unsuspecting heiresses and murder for money. In a weirdly funny scene, he even talks to his pet mouse. “...And then, Mouse, I shall doubt if your own eyes and ears are really of any use to you. Ah! I am a bad man... I say what other people only think, and when all the rest of the world is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the bare bones beneath.” Cynical and sadistic, Count Fosco raises the novel’s stakes to a fever pitch. Move over, “Rebecca” (1938) — “The Woman In White” easily dwarfs all other English country-house thrillers.
I’m giving some honourable mentions before I unveil my top winner. “The Raven” (1845) by Edgar Allen Poe has not lost its neurotic punch over the years. Try reading the poem aloud for optimal spookiness — Poe’s jumpy style suits the spoken word perfectly. Another great scary read is Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” (1992), a bleak character study about six students at a liberal arts college in Vermont. (If you are a fan of Vermont horror stories, I also recommend our article on the vandalism at Atwater A and B).
But Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None” gets my Spooky Story Gold Medal. Unlike my third and second place winners, Christie’s sparse novel can be read in one sitting. It tells the story of ten perfect strangers who are stuck on an island vacation resort. One of the guests, we discover, is a psychopathic murderer. Who could the bad guy be? Phillip Lombard, a dapper gun-for-hire? Thomas Rogers, the creepy butler? Just when you think you know who the murderer is, Christie kills off your prime suspect.
Christie gives a ghostly aura to “And Then There Were None.” In particular, the novel’s dream sequences are unsettling: they contain flashbacks that foreshadow the grisly fates of Christie’s characters. In an eerie scene, an old woman speculates that the murders are a divine judgement. She is right, in a sense: all the people trapped on the island have their own demons to confront. Even before the novel’s climax, it becomes clear that Christie’s characters are all going on a one-way ticket to Hell; the murderer merely expedites their journey. Read “And Then There Were None” once for the scary bits, and then read it again just to marvel at Christie’s athletic prose.
So that’s my list. And, yes: I am aware that I have neglected some of the horror genre’s usual suspects. Stephen King, Mary Shelley and dozens of other fine writers did not make my final cut. I suppose that is because I don’t find fantasy a particularly exciting genre. “It” (1986) and “Dracula” (1897) have fangs galore, but the mundane wickedness of “The Good Soldier” is to me much more terrifying. The books that get under my skin understand the demons of the human condition; true scariness confronts the monsters of everyday life. The horror, dear Brutus, is not in our Count Draculas, but ourselves.
(10/31/19 9:59am)
President Donald Trump’s election in 2016 disrupted the country’s understanding of politics, conservatism and national identity. As a conservative op-ed columnist at The New York Times, Ross Douthat grapples with this disruption every day.
On Thursday, Oct. 17, Douthat joined moderator and former Vermont Governor Jim Douglas on campus in a discussion titled “Conservatism After Trump: Reaganism Restored or Populism Forever?” as part of the Alexander Hamilton Forum.
Douthat began his talk by describing the modern conservative movement, which he said is rooted in an understanding of American exceptionalism. Douthat defined American exceptionalism as a set of qualities and ideologies that sets this country apart from other nations. He included on this list competing religiosity, commercial culture, suspicion for a centralized government, communitarianism and a mission of liberty. In Douthat’s opinion, these are the elements that modern conservatism should seek to preserve.
“Those exceptional qualities have sustained our society and enabled our republic to flourish, and therefore, while allowing reforming change, they’re qualities worth defending and trying to preserve in changing times,” Douthat said at the talk.
In the last 20 years, however, Douthat said that American life has continued to defeat conservative belief by becoming less “exceptional.” In his mind, this stems from an increasing secularization of American life, a diminishing dependence on communalism, a recession from peak capitalism and a skepticism toward foreign missionaries. More importantly, according to Douthat, a decline in anti-government sentiments has led to a rise of socialism and populism.
According to Douthat, it was Trump’s understanding of this shift away from American exceptionalism that has allowed him to move the Republican Party away from both its politicians and intellectuals. Trump saw that everyday Republicans no longer cared about defending these exceptionalism, but simply finding a voice in a liberal trending community.
“If you look at the other Republican politicians running for president, there is always a sense that what worked for Ronald Reagan in 1980 will work again in 21st century America,” Douthat said. “Trump is none of that. There is the spectacle of him on the debate stage saying things that are not conservative. He didn’t care. Enough Republican voters didn’t care about these orthodoxies either.”
Douthat offered a distinction between conservatism and reactionism, two fields of thought on the right that he believes are often conflated. He defined conservative policy as one that is confident in its ability to endure despite dramatic changes, and a reactionary policy as one in defensive after defeat has already occurred. Douthat believes that globally, the conservative right has abandoned a conservative era for a reactionary one.
According to Douthat, Trump brought a different perspective to the party that spoke to the reactionary era.
However, Douthat believes that Trump’s style of populism has been politically unsuccessful in furthering traditionally populist goals. In other words, Trump’s spontaneous approach to politics does not allow him to fulfill his lofty promises, resulting in the Republican administration’s repeat of a typical conservative agenda.
“He has failed to build the larger support you need for populism, failed to transform the upper echelon of the Republican party that brings it in line with what a populist agenda would be,” Douthat said. “He’s likely to lose re-election, because there is no sustained agenda building of any sort.”
Looking into the future, Douthat hypothesized that some Republicans are expecting to return to a traditional Reagan-era conservative agenda post-Trump. However, in Douthat’s opinion, American conservatism can no longer re-live Reaganism, because the American exceptionalism that existed when Douthat came of age as a conservative no longer exist today.
Donovan Compton ’23, who attended the talk, thought it was interesting to hear from a conservative who does not support Trump. While Compton said his political beliefs do not align with Douthat’s, he felt he was able to learn about the future of conservatism from a different perspective.
“I have friends who didn’t go to the event simply because of the topic,” Compton said. “Politics is not about only hearing one side of the story, but finding a happy medium to have a policy we all agree on. It is important for everyone to be educated on both sides.”
Political Science Professor Keegan Callanan organized the event. Callanan said he was impressed by Douthat’s extensive reading of Alexis de Tocqueville in shaping his view of the current political atmosphere.
“Mr. Douthat writes a twice-weekly column for the New York Times. He often uses these columns to explain the conservative movement to readers and, of course, to criticize elements of the movement,” Callanan said. “He possesses a historical sense that is fairly uncommon in newspaper columnists.”
