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(04/18/18 10:47pm)
Liber: a Latin word that may refer to “book,” or to “liberty” and “freedom.”
A liberal arts education is rooted in the idea that there is freedom in understanding. So, while many consider elite liberal arts colleges a great American success, there is a contradiction in the model; academia explains the world really well, but only to a really small group of people. In other words, scholars’ ideas are often contained in a lockbox to which only intellectuals hold the key. As such, freedom in understanding is only available to those lucky few — an exclusive club that contradicts the “life, liberty and happiness for all” that this nation claims to strive for.
Picture yourself playing Mario Kart. You’re on the Rainbow Road level; the track is colourful, sparkling, and really hard to stay on. There are ten other players, jostling for first position, dropping banana peels to distract others, and searching for speed boosters. To me, this is the world of academia.
Now, picture yourself off the track, drifting in space. You’re floating pleasantly, enjoying the stars around you and confused by the dazzling scene in front of you. The Rainbow Road looks competitive, expensive and inaccessible. This is the world outside of academia. Carts are whizzing by like ideas, accelerating and morphing so quickly that once you understand them, they’ve changed. The thought of merging onto the Rainbow is overwhelming at best, and terrifying at worst. It’s probably better just to stick with what you know: the stars.
Academia does a great job of explaining the world. But it fails to explain it to the world. Instead, academics use flowery and exotic language to make our peers think we know what we’re talking about. As a result, the actual quality of the idea becomes less important than the way it is expressed. Or, the way it is expressed takes priority over the idea itself. This practice builds a layer of insulation around our ideas that demands an extensive vocabulary to break through; it makes the ability to understand — what we call freedom — an exclusive privilege. One of my classmates provided a perfectly ironic example of this while discussing the differences between the effectiveness of visual and written representations:
“A written medium is more easily proliferated to the masses.”
Translation: more people can understand text.
I’m not sure if I agree with the statement itself, but it shows exactly what I’m talking about: her actual point is hidden behind smoke and mirrors — an illusion of knowledge. In other words, we seem to use strong words to protect weak ideas from attack. This happens in classrooms, academic journals and other publications as well. But the jargon and bullshit create a barrier around the ideas themselves. As a student at an elite liberal arts college, I can and should be able to follow a high level of formal reasoning. Yet, I find myself nodding along to arguments from the “other side” simply because they’re so easy to follow! There are no distractions — no bananas on the Rainbow Road — to throw me off. We have to ask, how can a voter — with a high school education who is primarily concerned about tax increases — understand the benefits of public healthcare, if they can’t even understand the words and sentences used to describe them? How does a rancher in Montana get on board with gun control when one ear is fed easy-to-understand talking points from the NRA, and the other hears eloquent reasoning for common-sense gun laws? All that filters through is, “they want to take away my guns!”
To be clear, I am not placing the burden on others to better understand. Rather, it is our duty as educators to better explain. Maybe the real question is, how can we appreciate ideas that are expressed simply? It is us, the academics, that need to learn. We must include and value all perspectives in every debate, regardless of their formality or eloquence.
Maybe the 2016 presidential election wouldn’t have been such a shocker if we realized that winning a vote is not dependent on how eloquently your position is articulated, but on how it is received.
(04/18/18 10:46pm)
***While these are my experiences and personal feelings, I would like to establish that these are not necessarily the feelings of the identities I represent. These are a result of the intersectionality of all of my identities, only a few of them being previously mentioned.***
Being at Middlebury has been a double-edged sword: I learn more about myself and my identity at the cost of understanding how that same identity works against me on a greater scale. I have lived my entire life in New York — a place with relatively high diversity of culture, race, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, etc. With so many people who have unique identities, I never really had to question my own identity and/or whether or not I belonged. While systematic oppression exists in New York, I never really felt as isolated or as othered in ways I have experienced at Middlebury. Thinking about my identity and who I am is an integral part of navigating the Middlebury bubble. Someone recently phrased my experience here very well by referring to it as “becoming comfortable with discomfort.” The phrase deeply resonated with me, as it is puts into words how it feels trying to navigate the place I am supposed to call home for now. Depending on the person and their unique intersectional identity, the word “Middlebury” will evoke a wide range of emotions and experiences — ranging from devastating and isolating experiences to moments of self-discovery and appreciation — but of course, I can only speak to how my own intersectional identity has shaped my time at Midd.
Throughout my two years, I was constantly reminded of who I am and how that affects my experience. My sexuality is a part of me that I have been forced to recognize, which before I had constantly tried to repress. It was on this campus that I finally realized that there are people who will accept me for being queer — and honestly, it was on this campus that I learned what queer really means. By the same token, it was also on this campus that I understood and continue to feel the social byproducts of being queer. I can more pronouncedly notice when I feel out of place due to masculine/heteronormative spaces, like parties characterized by the “bro” culture. I constantly feel the need to dial down my queerness out of the fear of making others uncomfortable or reminding them that I am, in fact, different. This, in turn, makes me feel othered, and progresses to feeling like a defining factor of my being. Whether it’s the way I dance at parties (and with whom) or the way I carry myself, I know that I do not fit the mold. I stand out.
Relative to a large majority of my peers, I also feel that my lower socioeconomic background stands out. Actually, it still is shocking today to think there are people from the top one percent attending the same school as I do. Driving in the student parking lots serves as a perfect example of the way I think about my social class. I drive a small, relatively inexpensive car which clearly differs from many in the parking lots — these include Mercedes, Range Rovers, BMWs and many newer model cars. Even most of my professors do not have these types of luxury cars. Seeing these cars reminds me of where I stand, and also makes me acknowledge that even having a car is a privilege. While some of my peers who own these cars don’t often outwardly display their wealth, it is a presence that I feel. I can’t afford to take a gap year in a different country, or travel the world, or go on an expensive (and brief) vacation or own a fancy car.
Lastly, being a person of color is another identity that plays a significant role in how I navigate campus. We are all well aware that Middlebury is a predominately white institution (PWI) where there are not only few people of color, but also various aspects of whiteness ingrained in the fabric of its existence. I personally feel so isolated at times, that it feels as if I wasn’t meant to be in this space in the first place. While my peers don’t often make blatant attempts to “other” someone, smaller aspects and experiences, such as microaggressions, make spaces inaccessible and undesirable to me. There are plenty of instances where a once smiling face, while looking at their other peers in the dining hall, will quickly become expressionless. Or even when you hold the door for someone, and neither a thank you nor an attempt to reciprocate the gesture by holding the other door is given. Maybe even an “accidental” bump from someone else while walking somewhere is a more fitting example. Lastly, who can forget the occasional controversial speaker whose area of study is to explore how people of color are somehow inferior — this one still boggles my mind. While I sometimes feel out of place, I have worked hard to learn that this space is as much mine as anyone else’s; I have earned my spot here, and I deserve to be happy and respected.
(04/18/18 4:35pm)
Hannah Ross, Middlebury’s general counsel, and Dave Donahue ’91, special assistant to the president, delivered a presentation on the college’s governance structure last Thursday evening to an audience of seven. The talk was part of the “How Midd Works” initiative led by the Student Government Association and President Laurie L. Patton’s senior leadership group (SLG).
Donahue has worked at the college since 1997, serving as associate dean for library and information services, associate vice president of operations in college advancement and dean in student affairs before becoming special assistant to the president. Ross came to Middlebury in 2003 after representing Princeton University in litigation.
The presentation covered a variety of topics including the college’s position as a non-profit, the role of the Board of Trustees, college finances and future projects. The seven students who attended the talk included Community Council co-chair candidate Lynn Travnikova ’20 and SGA Chief of Staff Ish Alam ’18.
Thursday’s event was one of several action items in the “How Midd Works” initiative within the SGA’s and SLG’s Common Agenda. The Common Agenda was developed in an effort to improve the communications and relationship between students and the administration by giving students a better sense of how the college operates and by giving the administration a better sense of student needs.
Due to the small nature of the crowd, the session was uncommonly interactive, with Ross and Donahue taking questions from the students in attendance throughout the presentation.
After a student asked whether the college was building a dam, Ross and Donahue discussed a potential hydroelectric power project. The potential hydro power generator would be at the falls on Otter Creek.
“We are not building a dam,” responded Donahue, “We are exploring with an energy development company the possibility of a hydro project. The idea of taking advantage of a natural resource to have hydro be part of our energy footprint is pretty cool.”
“And fish friendly, that’s what’s very exciting,” Ross said.
Donahue then turned to the new temporary academic building that will be constructed behind Johnson Memorial Building.
“The building probably has a 35 to 50 year useful life. In the end, what got approved by the town is a permanent building,” Donahue said.
“If it works well and we’re all happy with how it’s functioning, it could be there for that long. It could also be moved and repurposed,” he said, explaining that most buildings are built with an intended lifespan of 100 years when they are part of the master plan, which this building is not.
“This building allows us to do a bunch of those projects,” Donahue said, referring to renovations of Warner, Munroe and Johnson, with the new building serving as an “academic swing space” for people to leave those buildings while they are renovated.
Ross and Donahue also provided an overview of the college’s management structure as a non-profit.
“It doesn’t have any kind of owners, shareholders, or investors. It’s not formed for some private interest and it can’t benefit private interest,” Ross said.
The President and Fellows of Middlebury College, the official name of all the Middlebury entities, is a 501(c)3 non-profit, meaning it is a public charity. “It’s a non-profit because it delivers a public benefit or a public service” Ross said, the public benefit or service in this case being higher education.
“Non-profit organizations have a mission that goes towards public benefit or public service,” she continued, adding that “any extra money goes back into that mission.”
Donahue explained that though the college cannot substantially support political causes due to its non-profit designation, “that doesn’t mean we don’t ever take interest in legislation or stake out a position,” he said.
The presentation then shifted to the role that trustees have in managing the college. Though there can be up to 35 trustees, there are only 33 at the moment. Trustees are chosen by a committee made up of 6 trustees, and can serve up to three five year terms. Trustee emeriti are trustees that have served for 15 years and are lifetime trustees, but do not have voting powers.
Being a trustee is a volunteer position, as trustees receive no compensation. The college president is the exception to this rule, and Donahue explained that Patton, as the president, is a voting member of the board.
Ross explained that trustees hold the “ultimate legal and fiduciary responsibilities,” meaning that they are required to act in the interest of others, which in this case means in the interest of Middlebury. “They have to be acting for the benefit of the students of Middlebury.”
This question of what is benefitting students has been raised recently in discussions around divestment.
“They [the trustees] need to make good decisions so that the non-profit can last a long time,” Ross said. “We have an endowment that is intended to allow us to do that forever.”
Ross went on to discuss how tax structure affects the College. “We are tax-exempt, which is an important form of government support, and we also get grants,” Ross said.
Donahue and Ross then addressed a student question: “How is the Middlebury operating budget affected by the recent tax bill that was passed? I know there was some discussion regarding taxation of endowments.”
“We just barely squeaked under that one,” said Ross. “We are still, along with other colleges, advocating that they reconsider this.” Ross said, however, that it is likely that “they will change the wording and increase the tax, and someday it will catch us.”
Donahue and Ross went on to describe Middlebury’s operating budget, which comes from three sources: tuition and fees, donations and the endowment, and government support.
Of the $270 million annual budget, Ross estimated that $50 million came from the endowment, $40 to 45 million from donations, and most of the remainder from tuition and fees.
“We model our budget on a six percent return on the endowment and a five percent spend,” Donahue said, “with the remaining one percent being spent as part of the operating budget.”
(04/18/18 9:00am)
The women’s lacrosse team learned a valuable word this past weekend: grit. No. 8 Middlebury clawed its way back to a victory after being down by four goals to Nescac rival No. 11 Trinity twice on Saturday, April 14. The Panthers kept their home crowd on their toes in what made for an exciting, and at times too exciting, game ending with a 14–8 score in the host’s favor. And they bounced back from their first Nescac loss to Colby last weekend, when the Mules dominated the Panthers in at the beginning of both halves on their way to a 14–12 upset.
The back-and-forth affair was another storied matchup between two of the Nescac’s perennial powerhouses in women’s lacrosse, since the two programs have combined to win 13 of the 17 Nescac championships in conference history. Not coincidentally, Kate Livesay ’03 played on three of Middlebury’s eight championship teams, from 2001 to 2003, then coached Trinity to four of its five championship teams, before returning to Vermont to capture one at her alma mater in 2016 in her second year as the Panthers’ head coach.
“Trinity has been one of our rivals over the years, so this game has a special place in our hearts,” said Hayden Garrett ’20. “Kate Livesay came back to Middlebury after coaching at Trinity for a number of years, so there’s yet another thing fueling us to beat Trinity. This year’s sideline was the most enthusiastic sideline I have ever been a part of, and I know that being loud helps fuel everyone on the field. The momentum of goal after goal in the second half allowed us to keep pushing until we left the field with 10 unanswered goals.”
Trinity has had the slight edge in the previous five seasons of this matchup, taking five out of the eight games during that time, but Middlebury won the only matchup last season 10–9 in double overtime and avenged a regular season loss two years ago with wins in the Nescac and NCAA championship games.
The Panthers got off to a rocky start when the visitors quickly seized on the gaps in the Middlebury defense and put up four tallies in the first 10:01 of Saturday’s contest, claiming the foreign field as their own territory.
But there is a reason they play 60 minutes, not 10. Hollis Perticone ’18 fired up her teammates when she put her team on the board and got them back in the game mentally. Perticone had been out for three days of practice due to a virus, but a lack of stamina was nowhere to be seen on the field as she sparked the momentum shift for her teammates. Knowing that her games were numbered as a senior captain preparing to enter her final postseason, she would not let her sickness be an excuse for another Nescac defeat.
Kirsten Murphy ’21 continued her outstanding debut in the blue-and-white with her 15th goal of the season, and Trinity matched her goal to keep Middlebury at an arm’s length. Emily Barnard ’20 and Murphy ignored any obstacles Trinity placed in their way to bring Middlebury within one, which was as close as Middlebury got in the first half. Trinity scored once more in the first 30 minutes and led 6–4 at halftime. Before the game, Livesay certainly would not have been happy to trail by two at that point, but in that moment, she must have been thrilled after her team’s disastrous start.
The beginning of the second half reminded everyone at Kohn Field of the game’s first 10 minutes. Trinity scored the first two goals within the first nine minutes of action. But they began to relax too soon — far too soon.
Something switched in Middlebury’s mindset. It all started with Erin Nicholas ’21 scoring on a free-position shot almost midway through the second half. Murphy followed two minutes later to complete her hat trick, creating her own opportunity by breezing past multiple Trinity defenders. Perticone and Georgia Carroll ’18 then tied the score.
Less than four minutes earlier, Trinity led by four, but they would never lead again. Murphy notched her fourth goal of the game to take the lead three minutes later.
Then Perticone, looking more than healthy, assisted Casey O’Neill ’19 on her first goal of the game. Nicholas put home her ninth goal of the season to bring Middlebury ahead 11–8.
After a little more than six minutes without scoring, which seemed like an eternity after the Panthers’ scoring spree to take the lead, Middlebury’s second-leading scorer, Emma McDonagh ’19, scored her first of the game to extend the lead to four goals. Then Jenna McNicholas ’19 added insult to injury by scoring back-to-back goals in the last three minutes to cap off Middlebury’s remarkable turnaround. At the end of 60 minutes, the scoreboard read Middlebury 14, Trinity eight. And the Panthers’ comeback against their conference rivals was complete.
Middlebury’s win came without defender and two-time All-Nescac performer Evie Keating ’18, who sat out the game because of an injury. Emma Johns ’20 got some of the playing time in Keating’s absence and helped the Panthers clamp down on the Bantams in the second half.
“Evie is currently working through an SI joint injury that she sustained over spring break,” said Garrett. “Not having her on the field has been difficult, as we have had to readjust how we play our defense, but even though she is not presently on the field, her leadership is still so impactful on our team, and I know that she will be back on the field soon and it will be as if she were never injured.”
Julia Keith ’20 posted another strong start in the cage, making nine saves compared to Trinity’s four.
Not only did the win give Livesay and her team bragging rights over her former team, it also kept Middlebury ahead of Trinity in the Nescac standings. The Bantams fell to 5–3 and a fourth-place tie with Bowdoin in the conference, and Middlebury moved to 6–1, half a game behind Tufts and a game behind Amherst in the standings.
Middlebury will square off with No. 6 Tufts on their turf in Medford, Massachusetts, on Saturday, April 21, with an opportunity to leap the Jumbos and move into second place in the Nescac. In fact, the Panthers control their own destiny. If they win their last three games, they will win the Nescac regular-season championship because they beat first-place Amherst earlier this season. After their matchup against Tufts, Middlebury will host Hamilton on Sunday, April 22, in a rescheduled game from earlier this season, and then will travel to Williams on Wednesday, April 25 for the last game of the regular season.
(04/18/18 9:00am)
The sixth-ranked men’s tennis team stunned previously undefeated No. 2 Bowdoin on Saturday, April 14, dismantling the Polar Bears 8–1 in the Nelson Recreation Center. They showed no mercy on their opponents on Sunday, April 15 either, efficiently shutting out Colby-Sawyer and downing No. 26 Skidmore 8–1 to move to 12–3 this season.
The Bowdoin matchup presented the Panthers with an opportunity to defeat one of the nation’s best teams in Bowdoin, after falling to No. 6 Claremont-Mudd Scripps and No. 5 Williams the previous two weekends, and prove they belong in the conversation of the nation’s best teams.
To give some perspective on Bowdoin’s season, they were undefeated coming into Middlebury on Saturday. This is a team that won the Nescac and made a run to the NCAA Final Four last year.
Their record table for single-season wins is riddled with names of current players, including current junior Grant Urken, who set the Bowdoin record for wins in a single season last year with 31. They have had four players named as ITA All-Americans in the past two years. This year, they’ve beaten two top-five ranked teams, and this is reflected in their national ranking. To put it lightly, this is certainly an era of strong men’s tennis teams at Bowdoin College.
On Saturday, Middlebury dominated that same program. Middlebury’s stellar day began in doubles, when they won all three matches to set the tone in Nelson. After suffering a few setbacks against top teams despite what is usually an exceptionally strong doubles core, the Panthers doubles pairings struck back.
Of his own pairing with Peter Martin ’19, Timo van der Geest ’18 said, “After having two tough doubles matches at third doubles last weekend against Williams and Tufts, it was great to see us bounce back from that and get a very close win against Bowdoin.” Van der Geest and Martin have been each other’s main partners this spring, and they’ve been a mainstay in the lineup for the Panthers, playing all but one match together, all the while compiling a 10–6 record. They showed their chemistry well on Saturday, besting a familiar Bowdoin duo at No. 3 doubles 9–8 (7–2). “It felt really good to get the doubles win on Saturday; that’s the third time in a row that we’ve played against that same doubles team from Bowdoin, and the matches have always been pretty tight,” Martin said.
The rest of the doubles proved to be relatively routine finishes dominated by the Panthers’ singles studs. Lubomir Cuba ’19 and Kyle Schlanger ’19 combined for their 11th win of the year in first doubles, compared to just three losses, while William de Quant ’18 and Noah Farrell ’19 picked up their fourth win in five matches together in second doubles to give Middlebury momentum heading into singles.
“To be able to win all three doubles matches gave us great momentum to go into singles,” said van der Geest. After finding themselves on the other side two weekends ago when they lost all three doubles matches to rival Williams, Middlebury reversed that feeling on Saturday. Martin, who, like van der Geest, did not play in singles, remained focused on the team. “It definitely felt great to help the team get out to a big lead, which always seems to help give our guys a lot of confidence going into singles,” he said.
Confidence is a word van der Geest also used to describe the team sentiment on Saturday. “I think the Bowdoin win solidified the confidence we still had in our entire team, even after we had suffered two tough losses to CMS and Williams,” said the senior. “We knew we have the capabilities to beat any team in the country, and this reaffirmed that. However, our season so far has shown us that we have to show up every single time we go out to play.”
Playing No. 1 singles, Cuba showed up against Bowdoin’s Urken on Saturday, winning big in the third set after getting shut out in the second. Cuba has bounced back after back-to-back singles losses against his opponents from CMS and Williams, winning at Tufts last weekend and then twice this weekend.
“We definitely demonstrated that we can be a really tough team at every spot in the lineup when we are playing well,” said assistant coach Andrew Thomson ’10, convinced Middlebury’s depth is exceptional this season.
The rest of the singles players impressed, to Thomson’s point, but head coach Bob Hansen had a lot to say about his seniors in particular. “We had our senior celebration after the Bowdoin match, which was very fun and a fitting and well-deserved occasion, as the seniors went 5–0 against Bowdoin, leading the team to victory over a very strong team,” he said. He certainly had his eyes on de Quant and Schlanger, who won at No. 3 and No. 4 singles respectively, in addition to the doubles wins they and van der Geest picked up.
While the seniors shined on Saturday, Middlebury’s first-years had their moments as well. Andre Xiao ’21 made quick work at the No. 6 spot to move to 11–2 this spring, while Nate Eazor ’21 couldn’t come back after a tight 7–5 loss in the first set, suffering just his third loss of the spring. Both players have worked their way into Hansen’s regular lineup in their first seasons in the blue-and-white, as demonstrated by their presence against the nation’s No. 2 team.
The 8–1 match was not a walkover like the final score indicates, and the Panthers had to battle at every position to secure such a definitive win. Members of the squad were ready to learn from the match even in the face of what looked like a blowout on paper, very aware that any regular season win is a loss if they grow complacent afterwards. “It definitely meant a lot for us to prove we can put the pieces together against a tough and well-coached Bowdoin team and come away with a victory. Even though the final score was 8–1, the match was extremely competitive, and we will have to make sure to be prepared in the event we play them again,” said Thomson.
Hansen attributes the success to the Panthers’ preparation, and was quick to look forward to more improvements before their next match. “The weekend was a result of strong practices all week, and I look forward to another strong week of work heading into the very stiff competition next weekend. It was definitely taxing but should also really prepare us for the challenges ahead,” he added.
After giving some fresh bodies a chance against Colby-Sawyer and proceeding to down them 9–0, the Panthers put an exclamation point on the weekend with an 8–1 win against No. 26 Skidmore, during which they dropped only two sets total. The Panthers barely have a chance to relax, as next weekend presents another exciting opportunity.
Thomson was happy with the wins, but said they are not satisfied with anything just yet. “Now that we know we can play at an extremely high level on our home courts, we have a great opportunity this coming weekend to try to replicate our effort on the road versus three tough opponents, including No. 1 Emory,” he said. The team remembers the close losses to Williams and CMS well as they look forward to a shot at the top team in the country, but Hansen said he recognizes the advantages that come with the Panthers’ adversity thus far. “I like that we are building and that it has not all gone smoothly so far. Overall [I am] very proud of our strong, courageous and connected effort this weekend,” he said.
The team will need another courageous effort this weekend against the 2017 national champion, Emory (13–2), whom the Panthers will meet at Trinity (5–6, 0–5 in the Nescac) on Saturday, April 21 after a match with the Bantams that morning. However, little separates the top six teams in the country right now. Emory has had close calls with Chicago and CMS, as well as a loss against the same DII Azusa-Pacific team that Middlebury pushed in a close match. The match is up for grabs, so do not be surprised if the Panthers come out of the weekend having made a case for No. 1 in the country.
(04/11/18 8:56pm)
In a battle of Nescac heavyweights, the No. 2 Williams women’s tennis team delivered the first two punches and outlasted No. 5 Middlebury 5–4 on Saturday, April 7, in a match reminiscent of the two teams’ showdown in the semifinals of last season’s NCAA tournament, when Williams ended Middlebury’s season with a 5–4 victory.
Over the past two seasons, the rivalry between Middlebury and Williams has reached a new stratosphere, as they have faced off in the Nescac championship game each of the past two seasons, and in the NCAA tournament last year as well. During this time, the teams have met five times in all.
Even after a delayed start due to the men’s match between Williams and Middlebury, Lansing Chapman Rink was abuzz from the moment the Nescac rivals took to the court on Saturday afternoon.
Christina Puccinelli ’19 said, “the energy was palpable,” all afternoon and into the evening. “Each player on both teams came prepared for a long day,” she added. And a long day they got.
The Ephs scored first, jumping on the Panthers to take the first two doubles matches in the first and second slot. The Panthers salvaged a point at third doubles, when Christina Puccinelli ’19 and Heather Boehm ’20 climbed out of a 5–2 hole to defeat Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio and Emily Zheng 9–7.
And then Catherine Blazye ’20 tied the match at two by quickly dismissing Chloe Henderson 6–2, 6–0 in fourth singles. Just like that, it was a new match between the fierce rivals, as each needed three more wins to secure their biggest victory in the conference regular season.
Instead of folding after falling behind the second-ranked Ephs, the Panthers stayed the course and remained confident.
“Although we were down 1-2 after doubles, we did a very good job of switching our attention immediately to singles and heading into our next matches with confidence and focus,” Puccinelli said.
But Williams came right back to take the next two matches in straight sets in the second and first slots, putting themselves one win away from victory.
With her team’s back against the wall, Boehm won her second match of the day to keep Middlebury alive, even after losing her first set to Leah Bush 2–6. She took the next set 6–4, before Bush retired, ceding the match to Boehm in the third slot. The sophomore continued her strong spring, extending her unbeaten streak in singles to nine matches, as she breathed some life back into Middlebury’s sails for the second time on Saturday.
Williams would not be denied though, sealing the match in the fifth slot where Mia Gancayco defeated Skylar Schossberger ’20 6–1, 6–3 to put the Ephs ahead 5–3.
Perhaps as telling as anything on Saturday, Maddi Stow ’20 won the last match of the day by defeating Julia Cancio 7–5, 6–4 in the sixth slot after Williams had won the match. Stow’s victory had no bearing on the grander scheme of Saturday’s match, but the sophomore still managed to rally to beat her opponent in straight sets.
“We ended up losing, but we remained positive and composed until the last shot was hit,” said Puccinelli. “It also helped to end on a high note, with our sophomore Maddi Stow closing the night out with a win.”
In the end, only one match separated the Nescac rivals on Saturday, just like their final match of 2017. No one on Middlebury believes Saturday did anything to separate the two teams.
“I do not believe there was any difference in ability which affected Saturday’s matchup,” Schossberger said. “The fact is anybody can lose to anybody on any given day.”
Puccinelli echoed her teammates’ words, saying “To be perfectly honest, given the talent on both teams, I think the match could have gone either way. They happened to come out on top this time, but we came away from the match with absolute confidence that we have what it takes to win in the future.”
Of course, the Panthers would love another shot at their nemesis, after having demonstrated again they could play with the Ephs.
“The goal is to get another chance at Williams,” said Blazye. “I can’t wait to see what the rest of the season hold for our team.”
Right now, Williams is the last undefeated team in the Nescac (11–0) and seems primed to make runs at its sixth Nescac championship in eight years and ninth NCAA championship in the last 11 years.
If the Panthers (7–2) want another shot at their rivals, they will need to buckle down for the rest of their Nescac schedule, which includes bouts with No. 14 Bowdoin, No. 29 Trinity, No. 4 Wesleyan and No. 8 Amherst. They showed considerable mettle on Saturday, despite the final result. Replicating that form the rest of the way will be key to earning another match against Williams, since another meeting would likely be in a higher stakes match.
If history repeats itself, they will meet again in the Nescac or NCAA tournaments. And if history repeats itself, Middlebury may come out on top next time around. Remember, Middlebury won in the regular season last year but lost to the Ephs in Nescacs and NCAAs — The Panthers certainly recall that fact.
“We would love to get the chance to play Williams again in the post-season,” said Puccinelli. “Not only is it always fun to play our rivals, but we’ve also developed great relationships with the players on their team. Of course, we now have the added incentive of staging a comeback, so stay tuned.”
(04/04/18 11:07pm)
User Experience & Digital Scholarship Librarian Leanne Galletly is liaison to Classics, English & American Literatures, French, Italian, Studio Art, and Russian.
Umami
by Laia Jufresa, 2014,
translated by Sophie Hughes in 2016
“Nobody warns you about this, but the dead, or at least some of them, take customs, decades, whole neighborhoods with them. Things you thought you shared but which turn out to be theirs. When death does you part, it’s also the end of what’s mine is yours.”
― “Umami,” p. 34
The What
“Umami” is largely the characterization of life after loss; acknowledging that the world goes on after you lose someone, but is forever changed. Author, Laia Jufresa animates the lives of five neighbors whose homes are connected by a courtyard in Mexico City. Twelve-year-old best friends, Ana and Pina are the central characters to the story and frequently pop in and out of the other narrators accounts. Ana’s younger sister Luz unexpectedly died while on a family vacation a few years earlier, while Pina’s mother left her family without saying goodbye; the girls frequently reflect on and grapple with their missing loved ones.
The other narrators include: six-year-old Luz, Ana’s sister, who narrates her part almost up to the time of her death; the neighborhood landlord, Alfonso who is perpetually grieving the loss of his wife to cancer; then there is Marina, a 20-something who struggles with loneliness, lack of support and unstable mental health. Each character handles survival differently and every one of them is relatable, whether you have experienced the loss of a loved one or dropped your ice cream on the sidewalk. Jufresa utilizes an unusual pacing, where each chapter is associated with a year in the lives of the characters, the chapters do not align chronologically, which can be a little confusing for the reader.
“Umami” is the first novel from Laia Jufresa, who grew up in the Veracruz Cloud Forest, Paris, and now lives in Edinburgh. The book won the English Pen Award, which honors outstanding books in translation. After reading Umami, I learned that Jufresa first wrote the book in English, then upon finishing, she translated the book back into Spanish!
There is also a lot of wordplay and word creation in Umami, which reads very well in English. An impressive process coming from my monolingual brain. I thought this was particularly interesting given that the English version of the novel, which we have at Davis Family Library, was not translated by Jufresa. (I have now ordered the Spanish version!)
The Why
I found the book from the “Indie Next” reading list which I obsessively steal from every bookstore I visit. I am also very interested in visiting Mexico City, so I was excited to read some fiction that is set there. For future travelers to Mexico City, this book is not by any means a travel guide, through reading you will learn the lives of five individuals who live in the same community, as well as some insight into ancient Mexican food production through the expertise and curiosity of some of the narrators.
This book is an engaging read, but not for reasons related to the plot, which I have been struggling to remember and had a lot of trouble following due to the chronological disruptions. What I really loved about the book was Jufresa’s ability to reflect on and put words to the existence of losing a loved one.
The characterization of Ana and Pina was also expertly crafted, never feels childish, but also not too grown-up. Reading about these girls at the start adolescence while, coping with their respective loss is truly engaging. Not lost me is the intentional umami-ness of the book itself, inherently hard to describe, the rich and savory flavors of umami aptly describe this book. If you like character-driven, deep, poignant stories this book is for you; this book is not for those who need action, adventure or plot resolution.
(04/04/18 8:41pm)
In the beneficiary relationship between the college and its donors, the emotional ties that alumni maintain with the larger community cannot be overlooked, as they shape the flow of donations to the college’s office of advancement. This was particularly evident in the fallout from the protests against Charles Murray that roiled campus last year, which may have contributed to a decline in donations last year.
“Our donors pay attention to what happens here. There is no question about that. This instance on March 2 of last year was certainly no exception,” said Alanna Shanley ’99, Middlebury’s executive director of giving.
“At this point, we only have anecdotal evidence about what has happened, and I think time will tell how this plays out in the future. We did see a drop-in participation last year. Is it because of what happened on March 2, or is it because of other factors? Probably a little bit of both. But it’s hard for us to pull that apart.”
According to members of advancement’s “phonathon” team, a student-manned initiative aimed at soliciting small donations via telephone, operations were affected in the immediate aftermath of the protests. The initiative was temporarily paused and after its recommencement, conversations with prospective donors became dominated by requests for information, and sharing of opinions about, the protest.
One phonathon operator, who requested anonymity to discuss internal matters, went on to note that caller opinions were generally split between the necessity of protecting Middlebury’s identity as a “place for many minds” and the need to protect student protesters. From their perspective, people in the former camp tended to be older, but perspectives were largely diverse. In the end, the phonathon program only achieved half of its $300,000 goal.
These concerns proved to be recurrent as the advancement office continued to reach out to alums.
“We spent a lot of time answering questions about what went on. Because of the way the story was picked up in the media, the incident of students protesting within Wilson and the attack on professor Stanger were collapsed,” said Meghan Williamson ’77, vice president for development.
“And so, people thought it was this mob going out from Wilson attacking professor Stanger, and that’s not what happened. So, a lot of my conversations were just to help people understand what did happen. Because the story, as you know, just took off. And it depended on what news outlet you were reading, and some people actually just had a lot of misinformation.”
In addition to clearing away the dust that surrounded the controversy, efforts were made to pacify discontent within the alumni community, which expressed a wide gamut of opinions on the protests. Although no gifts were actually retracted, some potential donors maintained that they would have to “wait and see” about their next gift based on developments on campus.
Bill Burger, the college’s spokesman, said in an interview that the advancement team has been instrumental in maintaining links to donors with particularly serious reservations and allaying their concerns. Although alums from the last five years were generally more sympathetic when the discipline process started, he said, responses and concerns from the wide spectrum of alums were all eventually addressed. It remains to be seen what kind of long term impact may result from this period in the college’s history.
“There’s not one opinion that alumni are expressing on any of the issues that are going on campus,” Shanley said. “The kinds of commentary and feedback that we’re getting are as diverse as I expect you’re seeing among the student body. . . . So I wouldn’t want there to ever be any perception that alumni are universal in the way they’re thinking about this,” she said.
“They just are at a different place in their lives. So they’re peering in, trying to make sense of the situation and relate it to their own experiences, as anybody would,” Shanley said. “Some alumni are absolutely embracing of all change. And some alumni cling to nostalgia.”
For Middlebury, the advancement office forms one of the necessary links between the college and its vast network of alumni. For many alumni, the advancement officers are some of the most consistent links to the college, offering everything from opportunities to donate to financial aid to illuminating information to alumni who were shaken after the protests. Yet despite the advancement office’s central role in the prospects of the college, its activities are largely unknown amongst current students.
In short, the advancement team connects potential donors in the Middlebury community: friends, parents and alumni of Middlebury’s undergraduate and graduate programs. These connections are fostered through the office’s dual strategy of engagement and fundraising. The former involves the organization of major events, such as reunion, homecoming, the alumni leadership conference, faculty lectures and speaking engagements for President Laurie L. Patton. For the fundraising side, print, email and one-on-one meetings are used to raise interest and identify prospective donors, all of which is supported by an extensive network of volunteers.
The annual gifts that the college receives are either spent in the year that they are received, or in the subsequent fiscal year if the resource is not required for the current fiscal year. Gifts are either freely used for any initiative within the Middlebury community, or directed toward specific causes, such as athletics or financial aid, by request of the donor.
The impact of donations in the implementation of financial aid is particularly notable. Endowed funds cover 25 percent of the budget for financial aid for Middlebury undergraduates. Combined with additional funds garnered from expendable annual gifts, these resources make up, on average, 6 percent of the entire operating budget of the college. In other words, it is partly due to endowed and expendable gifts that approximately 44 percent of students at Middlebury are able to receive financial aid.
President Patton and the board of trustees have frequently reaffirmed their goal of not only maintaining this threshold in the face of ballooning tuition cost, but also extending financial aid to 50 percent of the college community, a goal that would require 350 million dollars or about 70 million dollars every year over a five-year period.
In order to help reach this and other financial standards, donation campaigns occur yearly. Outside of these consistent campaigns, the college occasionally undertakes major pledge campaigns whose combined donations can reach the tens of million dollars. These large campaigns begin with a planning phase, followed by a “quiet phase” of requests made to wealthier donors that normally last for two years. After that, a more public phase opens donation requests to the larger pool of potential donors for four to six years.
The most recent of these major campaigns began in 2007, with the goal of raising $500 million. Though the campaign was extended to account for the 2008 financial crisis, by the time it ended in 2015, it had surpassed its goal by $35 million.
Elizabeth Zhou contributed reporting.
(04/04/18 8:37pm)
Diane Nash, a pioneer of the civil rights movement, urged students and community members to carry the lessons from the movement and its activists into the future in an address in Mead Chapel on Monday. Nash called on the audience to take our future into our own hands.
Diane Nash played a significant role in the civil rights movement throughout the 1960s as one of the founding members of the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee and an organizer of the 1961 freedom ride from Birmingham, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi. She also worked with peace movements that promoted the end of the Vietnam War.
Nash became involved in the civil rights movement as a student at Fisk University in Nashville in 1959 and was taken aback by the overt racial segregation she observed. While segregation was present where she grew up on the South Side of Chicago, Nash said it was far more obscure than what she was exposed to in the South.
Nash described the segregation she experienced as a black woman in Nashville as “degrading and humiliating.” She began to look around her campus for organizations that were combating this discrimination but was questioned by other students, who warned her that she would fail and would get in trouble. That was until she found Reverend James Lawson, a student of Gandhi’s nonviolence who conducted weekly workshops.
Nash prefaced her talk by explaining her distaste for the terms used around the civil rights movement. The movement is often described as “nonviolent, ” and while this might be accurate to an extent, Nash does not feel like it is the appropriate word, because it only communicates a very small portion of the work they did during the civil rights movement.
Alternatively, Nash spoke to the ideas that she viewed as most influential to the movement and her own principles as an activist, many of which derived from Ghandi. He “developed a way that thousands and thousands of people . . . can focus and exert their love energy on an opponent . . . in order to bring about desired social change,” she said, rather than choosing to use violence.
From this idea of love as energy, Nash introduced the word agape, which connotes love among humankind. She then presented the term agapic energy, which she used to describe the work that was done during the civil rights movement. An agapic energy campaign or project has six steps: investigation, education, negotiation, resistance and taking steps to ensure that the problem does not reoccur.
Using agapic energy, Nash and her fellow activists successfully desegregated restaurants in Nashville. When discussing this process, she explained the importance of targeting ideas, not people. She said that if you use violence and attack people rather than political and economic systems or unjust attitudes, “you kill individuals but leave the oppressive system untouched.”
Nash also expressed her opinion that “oppression is a partnership,” stating that in all unjust relationships, the oppressed must consent to their oppression. Without such consent, “the system will fall.” Nash argued that while most people assume that activism focuses on changing other people, it really should focus on controlling oneself. If a person refuses to conform to an oppressive system, then the system will shift to accommodate that person. According to Nash, black Americans during the civil rights movement “changed [themselves] into people who could not be segregated.”
Tuesday marked the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. While Nash has enormous respect for King’s work and is one of the few people who can say she has double dated with him, she said that she believes the depiction of King as the leader of the civil rights movement is harmful. She expressed that “it was not Martin Luther King’s movement, it was the people’s movement.”
Nash said that though people look to leaders like King when they see problems today, the civil rights movement was the result of everyday citizens standing up and refusing oppression in their societies. She urged citizens not to rely on elected officials or any other individual leaders, saying, “there is no one to solve problems but you and me.”
Nash ended her talk with a call to action.
“I am frightened for our country, I think it is time to get scared,” she stated. Citizens must take the future of the country and the fate of oppressed people around the world into their own hands, just as Nash and her fellow activists did over half a century ago.
(04/04/18 8:31pm)
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Emmy Award-winning filmmakers, discussed their new PBS series “The Vietnam War” on March 21 in Wilson Hall. Mike Heaney ’64, a Vietnam War veteran featured in the film, joined Burns and Novick, and Jim Ralph, dean of faculty research, moderated the event. The jam-packed talk welcomed Middlebury College ID holders and alumni.
Burns and Novick have collaborated on several acclaimed documentaries for Florentine Films, Burns’ production company, including “Baseball”, “Jazz,” “Prohibition,” and “The War.”
Following a short introduction of the guests, the event opened with a montage of excerpts from the series. Chosen from five different episodes, the excerpts explored the gamut of perspectives regarding the war, from the scars of the war veteran to the narratives of Vietnamese civilians. The selections demonstrated the wide-ranging breadth of the series, which leads the audience from wartime tragedies to domestic protests, from fissures in public trust toward the government to fatalities on college campuses.
“Many Americans felt patriotic doing different things,” said Burns.
“It was hugely traumatic for our entire country and raised questions about what it means to be a citizen and a patriot that we are still arguing about,” Novick said, later adding, “What we tried in the film was not to make the other wrong.”
Distributed by PBS, the series has reached an audience of more than 50 million in the US. Reflecting on the impact of their work, Novick said, “Our country went through a trauma that we never dealt with.” Those who participated “have never talked about it, but now they are.”
Heaney’s own motivation for sharing his story was also to spark conversation — to “talk to Americans, especially young Americans, about the horror of war.”
Heaney, who participated in the ROTC program at Middlebury, described being wounded in combat and witnessing the deaths of his fellow soldiers. He said that lifting “the voices of all the men that did not make it back” was another reason for his participation in the series. Heaney’s words resonated with many of the alumni sitting in the room, who attended Middlebury while the events of the Vietnam War unfolded.
After the discussion between the guests concluded, Ralph opened the floor to questions from the audience. Questions came from both students and alumni, ranging from the topic of balancing scholarship with narrative within the film to Heaney’s recent work with veterans suffering from PTSD.
Burns, who worked previously on projects on the Civil War and World War II, concluded on the importance of the topic of war.
“War reflects the worst of us, but it also clearly reflects the best of us, too,” Burns said. “What happens time and time again is that we are drawn to it, obviously because of the sheer intensity of the drama, but we are also obligated to describe the quicksand that war represents.”
According to Burns, the series reminds the audience “how powerful a teacher history is.” Yet at the same time, Burns said, “Americans, it seems, are always destined to learn from those lessons and forget them again.”
(03/22/18 1:10am)
Literatures and cultures librarian Katrina Spencer is liaison to the Anderson Freeman Resource Center, the Arabic department, the French department, the Gender Sexuality & Feminist Studies (GSFS Program), the Language Schools, Linguistics and the Spanish & Portuguese departments. These affiliations are reflected in her reading choices.
“While I am a very slow reader, I’m a very critical reader,” she says.
habibi
by Craig Thompson, 2011
672 pages
Trigger Warnings: Multiple scenes of rape are visited in this work. There is also a good deal of partial female nudity.
The What
“habibi” is a graphic novel that tells a fantasy tale of love in the fictional land of Wanatolia, a landscape that is both desertous and urban, “timeless” and modern and distinctly Middle Eastern in aesthetic and tradition. Dodola, the female protagonist, is sold as a child into marriage and saves a baby, Zam, a black African, who was headed towards a similar fate of slavery, subjection and oppression. Making a daring escape from potential captors, Dodola raises Zam in isolation from society.
Her engagement with the rest of civilization (spoiler alert!) involves her exchange of sex for provisions. After years, this set-up begins to fail and leads our characters down paths of new adventures when the two become separated. These include Dodola’s navigation of a palace harem where she becomes the object of a lusty sultan’s desire and Zam’s adoption into a band of hijras who believe in castration and harass society into giving them alms for their survival.
Yes, there’s that much going on in the work! Rape, suggestions of incest and a battle for water rights are all interwoven by sacred scripture from the Qur’an, parables and tapping into a rich tradition of storytelling from Arabia.
Visually the text is intoxicatingly gorgeous even in its monochrome. The visual appeal is the least disputed of the the book’s characteristics among critics. Despite not knowing the Arabic language, Craig Thompson learned the alphabet (abjad) and its ligatures and employs them alongside Middle Eastern motifs like ornate tile design to effectively conjure the feeling of having traveled elsewhere for his Western audience. Truly, if the tale had no words, merely looking at the text would be a treat for the eyes.
The Why
The tone is visually arresting. Its design, deeply maroon and textured, makes one feel they are encountering something special and unique. On the cover, Thompson melds English and Arabic in the strokes he uses for the letters in the title. That alone had me. Unlike German or Spanish, one of the initial features that attracted me to Arabic was that I couldn’t decipher it: I couldn’t read it, pronounce it or make any sense of it given my ignorance of the alphabet. So when I saw this work, “habibi,” a popular term of endearment meaning “my beloved” or “my darling” (for males) used by Arabic speakers, it drew me in. Having become a working adult, I had to violently tear myself away from my love of language study. So now, when I can fit in a brief and fleeting moment to make love and draw near, I do. This was one of my chances to do so. [Note: Don’t ever grow up. #srsly]
I wanted to like this work. It is meritorious for its sheer beauty and naked ambition alone. It is over 600 pages worth of drawing! However, in reading this work, it is as though the author had never heard of Edward Said and “Orientalism” before.
The narrative relies on dangerous tropes that ring of colonialism, exotification and a global divide. In comparison to the values we espouse today in the 21st century, the work is strikingly anachronistic in its representations of women, Arabs and the Middle East. It’s as though Thompson mined every stereotype he could find that casts the white, Western gaze over the Middle Eastern region and said, “Yes, I want that in story! Naked, lounging women here! Shisha pipes there! And many camels in a caravan! Yes, I want it all!”
Moreover, while allusions to the Qur’an, the Bible and “1,001 Arabian Nights” appear throughout the work along with cryptic mysticism, parables and talismen, it’s unclear what the author wanted to accomplish with them. They add to a sense of otherness and geographic distance but their objective beyond these is vague and beyond my comprehension.
While I would happily consume this artist’s graphic work in another publication, I’d hope that he’d collaborate by letting someone else lead a more modest venture in text-based storytelling and he, himself, assume responsibility for drawing. He must work harder by many measures to more fairly, accurately and humanely depict people who are not white or male. In a text that approaches verisimilitude in its late chapters, it leaves much to be desired elsewhere in the narrative. For a different taste, see the author’s 2003 memoir release “Blankets” that received more critical praise.
(03/21/18 10:42pm)
As faculty members who helped to spread the word about the Mar. 14 school walkout led by students from the Middlebury Union High School, we were gratified to see such a large turnout this morning from the college community, including President Patton. It is heartening that so many Middlebury students, faculty, staff and other community members joined in solidarity with young people at the forefront of social change.
We are distressed, however, with some of the content of an “all staff” email that our staff colleagues received at 2:00 p.m. on Mar. 13, on the eve of the march.
That email stated that “[the institution’s] obligation is to conduct classes and provide services to our students. In order to provide these services we need all of our scheduled classes taught and offices opened and staffed.” If the leaders of the institution expected scheduled classes to be taught during the walkout, why wasn’t this (or a comparable) note sent to all faculty? Are the expectations about “employees’ engagement in protests and civic activity” different for faculty and staff? If so, why?
The “all staff” email went on to say that “[i]f staff choose to take time off for such activities, they should follow the college’s regular time-off policy by requesting time off in advance, and supervisors should review and approve those requests keeping in mind our need to maintain normal operations.” It is not clear to us that all staff would have had the time — from 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday to 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday — to secure such approvals from their supervisors. Moreover, we are concerned about the possibly intimidating effect of this email’s iteration of staff responsibilities, particularly since the email’s ostensible function as a “reminder” about the need to request permission for an absence from work is belied by its timing right before the protest. Furthermore, Middlebury faculty (as far as we know) were certainly not asked to secure permission from their department chairs, program heads and/or the Dean of Faculty to participate in this civic event. Is this a double standard? If so, why is this appropriate?
We do not doubt the sincerity of the email’s final sentiments: “We are supportive of your civic engagement, and encourage you to increase your awareness of the issues of our times.” Indeed, it is precisely because we are certain that the college’s leadership feels this way that we hope, upon the occasion of the next comparable community event, that staff and faculty will be treated in the same manner. Regarding robust civic engagement in the public sphere, the faculty’s status should never be privileged.
Laurie Essig, Gender, Feminist & Sexuality Studies;
Jon Isham, Economics and Environmental Studies;
Michael Sheridan, Sociology/Anthropology;
Marion Wells, English & American Literatures
(03/21/18 8:47pm)
Middlebury College Republicans will bring Richard Sander, a professor of law at UCLA, to campus on April 3 to discuss his criticisms of affirmative action. Sander’s talk, entitled “Mismatch: Does Affirmative Action Hurt More Than It Helps?” will discuss his “mismatch theory,” which contends that racial preferences such as affirmative action hurt minority students by placing them in overly competitive environments, where their skill sets are not ample.
The event will be open only to Middlebury College ID holders, and will take place at the Kirk Alumni Center, which is located next to the college’s golf course. Following the lecture, Sander will be joined by Caitlin Myers, professor of economics, who will moderate a discussion and Q&A.
Sander is best known for his critique of affirmative action policies and his work surrounding housing segregation. He devoted his early career to researching fair housing policies before serving as president of the Fair Housing Congress of Southern California and founding the Fair Housing Institute. Sander also worked to assess the outcomes of racial preferences in admissions.
In 2004, he published a study reviewing the impact of affirmative action on black students at UCLA law school. The study concluded that affirmative action policies resulted in the acceptance of students whose capabilities were inadequate for the institution’s academic rigor. Sander goes on to connect this “mismatch” of academic ability to black students’ higher attrition rates, and extrapolates that there would be 7.9 percent more black law students passing the bar test had affirmative action policies not existed.
This 2004 study, alongside several cited studies and personal anecdotes, served as the basis for Sander’s 2012 book, “Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It,” where he formally introduced “mismatch theory.”
“Sander is a proponent for racial preference programs in admissions,” said Jigar Bhakta ’18, co-president of the College Republicans, “However, his arguments point out (whether right or wrong, empirically) that there is a deep flaw in how affirmative action is being implemented, and that serious reforms are needed to actually further the goal instead of perpetuating a self-destructive cycle of pinning down those it’s intended to prop up.”
In his own words, during an interview for The Atlantic, Sander said, “Many of the people who do research on this, including me, think that racial preferences are also desirable and should be part of any system that we have—as long as we’re paying close attention to whether there are harmful side effects, boomerang effects, in the process.”
Sander’s theories on affirmative action have also received much push back, with several studies disproving his conclusions. For example, a 2015 study by Yale law professors Ian Ayres and Richard Brooks conclude that by eliminating affirmative action, the number of projected black lawyers actually decreased by 12.7 percent.
During his talk in April, Sander will seek to provide evidence for and explain his theories. In addition, Sander plans to focus on discussing the difficulties of conducting empirical research on contentious social topics, as well as the challenges of engaging other academics and the public in constructive dialogue regarding such research. “Part of the failed manifestation of affirmative action, (Sander) argues, is the taboo nature of discussing the facts of affirmative action,” explains Bhakta ’18.
Caitlin Myers, whose research similarly looks at contentious social issues, was selected by the College Republicans to serve as a moderator in the discussion and the Q&A. “My role is to attempt to engage in a substantive, rigorous, and critical dialogue following Sander’s presentation, and to help bring in more voices from the audience,” Myers said. “If there are members of our community who have questions or comments they’d like to suggest to me in advance, I welcome an email.” Questions can also be submitted via an anonymous Google form at go.middlebury.edu/sanderquestion.
The lecture will be held in the Kirk Alumni Center, located beyond the Athletics Center and above the Ralph Myhre Golf Course clubhouse. The College Republicans chose the venue after evaluating with members of the administration a variety of spaces that would both meet their goals and the College’s need for security.
Given Middlebury’s new Interim Procedures for Scheduling Events and Invited Speakers, the process for approval was thorough and comprehensive. The College Republicans formally submitted a request on Jan. 9th and the approval was finalized on March 12th. In accordance with conclusions from the Committee on Speech & Inclusion, the College Republicans will also give advance notice to the community. In addition, the College Republicans have reached out to both specific student organizations that represent underrepresented groups and department chairs notifying them of the event.
The Sander invitation marks the one year anniversary of fallout from protests around Charles Murray’s talk. However, both Bhakta ’18 and Myers remain positive about how the community will react.
“I think we as a community have had our recoil from the overly emotional and content-ignorant reactions to the Murray event,” said Bhakta ’18. “We have all had time to draw our own lines in the sand and reflect on them. I’m not a betting man, but I have faith in us in showing civic discourse and academic debate instead of our fists and pitchforks.”
“Over and over, I have heard Middlebury’s students, staff and faculty express a deep and fundamental desire to create a community that is diverse, inclusive, free and open. The Murray events were deeply painful for so many of us, and we have learned and benefited from the year of reflection that has followed,” Myers said. “I believe the Sander invitation comes from an earnest desire to engage an important question, but I also recognize that it comes as a new opportunity for Middlebury.”
(03/15/18 2:46pm)
In case you don’t know me, I’m that guy at our financial meetings — the one who’s always asking questions (but not necessarily getting answers) about Middlebury’s executive pay. The data I’m talking about, the total compensation of our top administrators as listed in Middlebury’s IRS-mandated Form 990 filings for 2014–15 and 2015–16 (the most recent available), are shown in the accompanying chart.
I suspect that many students, faculty and staff will find the sheer magnitude of these numbers infuriating, especially at a time when tuition increases are significantly exceeding and average faculty and staff salary increases are lagging behind the rate of inflation. But I would argue that it is even more important to scrutinize executive compensation for the same reason we need to pay top executives well in the first place: because incentives matter.
According to the administration, a major contribution to these total compensation numbers has been a program of “stay bonuses.” Nominally associated with the presidential transition in 2015, these payments have been justified by the administration as a necessary tool to prevent senior executives from leaving for other institutions. According to our available Form 990 filings, top administrators accrued these bonuses regularly over several years (at least six in some cases). However, because these bonuses are paid out as lump sums, we account for them as one-time expenses, meaning that they are taken directly from the endowment rather than falling within the constraints of the operating budget. In other words, they are funded by dipping into our long-term savings — an approach that is often suggested, and rightly rejected, to address budget gaps in other areas.
While the administration has pointed out that our compensation committee sets executive pay to be competitive with peer institutions, it has also acknowledged that this comparison does not take these bonuses into account. And although this bonus program originated before she arrived, President Patton reported to Faculty Council in February 2017 that she has continued it and added additional bonuses for current administrators. At that meeting she also reported that former President Liebowitz is due a bonus that has not yet been disclosed in the available filings.
Since the right incentives can easily pay for themselves through the institution’s overall success, evaluating this approach requires us to reflect on Middlebury’s financial performance over the corresponding time period. Despite a strong economy, we swung to eight-figure deficits that peaked in 2015–16 at more than $22 million, roughly triple our worst shortfall during the 2007 financial crisis. Our credit outlook was downgraded, our auditors found “material weaknesses” in our financial statements, and we recognized that our accounting had underestimated depreciation costs for our facilities compared to generally accepted accounting principles. We added a new $46 million field house featuring a $7.8 million squash facility, a new office in Washington, D.C., and new off-site summer programs at the same time as we did little to address the college’s academic space needs, so that we are now scrambling to build a temporary building to accommodate growth in science enrollments and create swing space for overdue renovations. A New York Times report on family income of domestic college students listed us as the #9 college in the country for the highest ratio of the top one percent compared to the bottom 60 percent.
These outcomes have followed alongside growth in spending. We entered into an agreement to lease a spacious new townhouse dormitory, trading upfront building costs for ongoing rent payments. We committed to pay $14 million over 20 years to the town for a new municipal building and recreation facility, enabling us to establish a park entrance to campus on the site of the former town hall. We added new layers to the administration and created many new administrative positions. We brought in gifts and grants through new initiatives, centers and facilities, but now face the costs of continuing programs past the “fiscal cliffs” when their initial funding expires, along with the ongoing expenses associated with administration and maintenance. The Monterey merger and other ventures that were justified on the grounds that they would generate positive net income, or at least break even, have instead required millions of dollars in subsidies to cover their deficits, indirect costs, opportunity costs and assumed debt.
While faculty do not have access to the detailed financial numbers behind these trends, one data point from our Form 990 filing is that we spent $69.7 million on management and fundraising in 2015–16, compared to the $89.1 million we spent on instruction. It is taking nothing away from the dedicated individuals working hard at the jobs they were hired to do to question whether this allocation of resources reflects the core values and goals of a nonprofit educational institution.
One can argue that the value of these efforts justifies their costs, and that hindsight is 20/20; we should be willing to take risks, not all of which will succeed. But the structure of our executive compensation casts significant doubt on those arguments: Highly compensated administrators with one foot out the door might naturally be expected to focus more on short-term, externally visible benefits and correspondingly less on long-term costs and planning.
In this light, it is also natural to ask how these incentives interact with our decision-making, either explicitly or implicitly. To what extent did the opportunity for administrators to increase the scope of their responsibilities, and therefore their compensation, enter into their decisions to merge with the Monterey Institute, to embark on our now-terminated Middlebury Interactive Languages joint venture, or to expand administrative programs and staff? As we used to say when I worked in the software industry, maybe it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
It is particularly dangerous, as became clear after the dot-com bubble, to judge executives by the revenue they bring in without paying corresponding attention to the associated costs. But that is essentially what happens if the administration is evaluated by its ability to hit fundraising targets. Doing so creates a powerful incentive to solicit donor support in the areas that will yield the largest gifts, rather than focusing on the most lasting and cost-effective contributions to our highest educational priorities.
None of this is to suggest that anyone actively plotted to undermine the institution’s long-term well-being. As biology teaches us, systems will evolve in response to selection pressure alone, without the need for an overarching design; if one set of practices leads to growth and rewards, it will become dominant. Unlike the natural world, however, in our ecosystem these incentives are within our control because they are created within the institution itself.
Success in higher education is, fundamentally, a long-term proposition. While it’s easier to quantify quarterly fundraising revenue, it takes time to separate true progress from window dressing. As a result, our compensation practices should establish incentives that reflect long-term educational outcomes. They should be applied proportionally across the institution rather than to a select few, and should reward effective deployment of resources over mere expansion. Creating such a system is easier said than done, but facing up to and learning from our past experience is a good place to start.
Noah Graham is a professor of physics.
(03/15/18 1:32am)
Literatures and cultures librarian Katrina Spencer is liaison to the Anderson Freeman Resource Center, the Arabic department, the French department, the Gender Sexuality & Feminist Studies (GSFS Program), the Language Schools, Linguistics and the Spanish & Portuguese departments. These affiliations are reflected in her reading choices.
“While I am a very slow reader, I’m a very critical reader,” she says.
My Lesbian
Experience with
Loneliness, by Nagata Kabi and translated by Jocelyne Allen from Japanese, 2017
143 pages
Happy Women’s History Month!
The What
This piece is a first-person, memoir manga, the first of which I’ve read. The story centers on a young woman, Kabi, who is anxiety-ridden about many aspects of her life: work, self-care, sexual expression, intimacy, fulfilling her parents’ expectations, maintaining a stable income, approaching independence and her own mental health. While Kabi is in her 20s, she remains living at home with her parents. She has dropped out of school and acutely feels pressure from her family who wants her to be a productive member of society by becoming economically self-sufficient.
Like many people, Kabi struggles to identify how to find balance and engage with an adult world while simultaneously and gainfully pursuing something she loves and is good at. (I’m sure this last concern will have resonance with many readers of this column.) To assuage her longing for closeness to another adult woman, the author seeks out an encounter with an escort so that she might sample contact, touch and sexuality with a counterpart. This unconventional approach leads Kabi down a road of unexpected self-discovery.
Spoiler Alert: While orgasms do not ensue, something perhaps just as good does.
Trigger Warning: If you have ever struggled with an eating disorder or self-harm, you will find reflections of both in this work and a tale of triumph in the pursuit of self-love.
The Why
This work is housed in the browsing collection and it was likely the pink and white cover that caught my eye, and the title (“My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness”) certainly stopped me: it was so honest about a central part of its subject matter: lesbianism, a minority and oft-stigmatized sexuality. The frank boldness of the title drew me in.
As I looked it over, I couldn’t tell where I was supposed to start reading because unlike Western books, the “front cover” rested in my right hand. And when I read the dialog boxes in the panels, left-to-right, I did that wrong, too. Given the narrative is born of a Japanese tradition, the flow of pages and the speech bubbles go from right-to-left. (I’ve seen this with Arabic but not with a translated work.) With a title such as this one and a format of graphic narratives that I already love, I was won over.
While I found “profound” and/or “compelling” moments to be rare, “vulnerable” moments were common. As of December 2017, 87 out of 87 people gave this work five stars on amazon.com. It was also there that I found out the work has a sequel, “My Solo Exchange Diary.”
I will commend the work for treating lesbianism without affect. That is, the narrative drew very little attention to the fact that a woman might and/or want to sexually engage with another. Her experimentation was not an “anomaly” or especially “remarkable.” In passing, it did address the idea that the sex the author had been most exposed to was either between a man and a woman or two men. In other words, it suggests that internationally, lesbianism has little visibility. And moreover, sex education is neither holistic (acknowledging a multiplicity of sexualities) or required worldwide. I liked that this tale was not about “coming out” and, in that respect, it made for a progressive gesture at normalizing same-sex sex.
Lastly, the drawing throughout is certainly effective but not especially impressive. I like how manga, in print and/or on-screen, has special ways of conveying urgency and extremes.
However, the strength of this work is more the story than the visuals. For another work with a similar feel, I’d recommend “Bridget Jones’ Diary” (book and DVD) as it also treats the sexcapades of a woman who often feels like a failure. And for a similar format (graphic novel) and style (memoir) that treats sexuality outside of heterosexuality, see Alison Bechdel’s “Fun Home.” Oh! And if you read Portuguese and want to read a professional sex worker’s take on the business, grab Bruna Surfstinha’s “O doce veneno do escorpião.” (You can order the translation through interlibrary loan: go.middlebury.edu/ill/.) Also, “Paying For It,” by Chester Brown, recounts a man’s tale as he attempts to attain sex from a completely transactional approach.
(03/14/18 5:31pm)
Ordinarily, mountain bikers spend most of their time flying down trails that have already been blazed, not carving the paths themselves. But the relationship that native Afghan Farid Noori ’18 has with the sport has hardly been an ordinary one. The founder of Mountain Bike Afghanistan — a non-profit whose stated goal “is to empower Afghan youth with the joy of riding and competing on mountain bikes, as well as to connect people across borders and cultures through their shared love of the outdoors and the sport of biking” — only came to the U.S. to study ßat age 16, a fact surprising to many given the unmistakable feeling of comfort and ease that he projects. He hardly even knew what a mountain bike was until the summer before he began at Middlebury, when he happened to attend a race with his host family in New Mexico.
According to Noori, the connection was immediate. Without hesitation, he asked one of the riders if he could take his bike for a spin — nothing challenging, just a quick trip up and down the mountain (spend some time with Noori, and you’ll realize that he construes the word “challenge” differently than most). “That day, I realized two things,” he later said: “that [mountain biking] is something that I wanted to do; but also, something about that word, mountain biking. We were in the U.S., but all the crazy mountains are back home. Why is there such a thing called ‘mountain biking’ here, and not at home?”
So here he stands now, almost four years removed from that seminal moment and staring down the end of his career as a Middlebury student. It would be hard to envision someone taking a more comprehensive approach to the mountain biking lifestyle: in addition to his short and long-term plans for his non-profit, Noori is also pursuing a professional mountain biking career of his own in the US. Last fall, he “sort of” (his words — a typical understatement) became the first Afghan to race in the USA Cycling Collegiate Mountain Biking National Championship in Missoula, Montana. He has performed well enough to earn a Category–1 certification, qualifying him to race as a semi-pro, and will spend the rest of this year trying to accumulate enough points at races to garner a professional certification.
But for Noori, mountain biking has never come easily. Or rather, one should say that the mountain bikes themselves have never come easily. “Mountain bikes are very expensive,” he explains. “It’s not only an obstacle to entry in Afghanistan, which is a poorer country, but in the US as well, it’s an obstacle. The cost is a huge barrier.” When he first arrived at Middlebury, he knew he wanted to pursue mountain biking, so he immediately got involved with the cycling club and started signing up for races, even before he had wheels of his own.
Noori had to settle for road biking over mountain biking for his first foray into competitive racing. He remembers his first taste fondly. “I invested in a $265 cheap road bike that I found on Google,” he remembers. “And when the bike came in, it actually wasn’t the correct size. So I went to my first race — I hadn’t ridden more than ten miles at a time, and this was a twenty-mile race. It was a s***show. It was crazy. But I had a fun time. My goal was not to come in last, and I achieved that — well, my first goal was to finish this race, to accomplish it.”
He hasn’t looked back since. That fall, he came into the mountain bike season with even more excitement; Kai Wiggins ’16.5, a fellow member of the cycling club who raced professionally, had a spare mountain bike that a sponsor had given him for cross-training. He told Noori to meet him in a parking lot one day and gave him the bike to use as his own. The rest is history. Noori recalls taking advantage of the mild winter in Vermont that year. “It was warm,” he said. “There wasn’t any snow at all. I would ride all winter long, I would do it every day. I was kind of like a dog on a bone, just doing it every day.” But all the while, the thought lingered in the back of his mind: “Okay, I love doing this — but I want to take this home.”
That summer, Noori managed to secure CCI funding to travel to Colorado and work on an entrepreneurship incubator he had started the year before in Afghanistan, continuing his mountain bike training on the side. Of course, he soon realized where his priorities lay. To make his decision easier, the 2016 Summer Olympics were taking place around the same time in Brazil. Just like that, the entrepreneurship incubator fell by the wayside. Noori had become focused on bringing something else to Afghanistan: “We need to be in the Olympics,” he repeated to himself. “Afghanistan needs to be in the Olympics.” His pride in his home country, his own mountain biking career, his desire to spark real social change — everything was coming together, all under the umbrella of what would become Mountain Bike Afghanistan.
“My main attraction was this,” Noori went on to explain: “there’s this beautiful country, with some of the most spectacular mountains in the world — and all people know it for is war. How can we change that narrative? It’s not just a story of, ‘Hey, we’re bringing mountain bikes to Afghanistan.’ It’s about changing narratives: by building trails, by building infrastructure, by growing the sport, all of the sudden you create a projection of the country that people haven’t seen.”
And being the first Afghan mountain biker to represent his country at the Olympics — a personal goal of Noori’s — wouldn’t hurt, either. “That also contributes to the changing narrative, having the Afghan people at the forefront. So that motivates me to race, myself.”
Nor is Noori forcing a match between the sport he fell in love with and the country of Afghanistan. Listen to him talk, and you’ll start to find it a little absurd that nobody else has had this idea. “So in Afghanistan,” he says, “up until recently it was very rural: 80% of Afghans were farmers. It’s a very mountainous country. So they lived in these very isolated villages. I was born in one of them — where I was born, there are only two other houses, for as long as you can see. So how do we get places? My dad walked to school every day, for an hour and a half one way, and another hour and a half on the way back… And even in Kabul, where I live, on the weekends my dad and I go hiking in the mountains, and there’s so many people — women, young people, people who come to run on the mountain, you see people everywhere. So it’s a very active people — everybody is very healthy, they’re outside all the time.”
So Noori has the breathtaking landscape of Afghanistan and a naturally active, engaged people to work with. What will be necessary, as he explains, is simply to put a framework in place. “The thing that’s unique about Afghanistan is that 70% percent of the population is under 25 years old,” Noori says. “It’s a very young population. But in a given young Afghan’s life, based on personal experience, you go to school for three hours a day, and you do homework maybe one hour a day. All of the sudden, you have so much free time — how do you fill it up? What do you fill it up with? There’s so much energy; young people have so much energy.
“And in the US, there are so many opportunities and resources for young people. I joke with my friends that Middlebury has more sports infrastructure than the whole country of Afghanistan. So now let’s take that back to Afghanistan, a country with a young population who have also been deprived of these opportunities for the past four decades. And they’re aware of the fact that they’ve been deprived of these. They can see mountain biking videos on their iPhones and they’re like, ‘We want this… I want to be out there. I’m a young Afghan. I’m strong.’ It’s a very resilient culture, the war has been going on, and people still go about their lives every day, they’re trying to change the narrative, change their lives, and basically champion against the adversities of life in Afghanistan.”
Noori tells a story about a friend to really drive his point home. “I have a friend in Kabul — and she loves running, and she uses the same running app that I use, Strava. But because she’s female and the culture is not very recipient of people running and riding outside, I can see that her runs in Afghanistan are more or less inside a closed building — she does like five miles, but repetitively in a loop, because she’s safe there.
“And it kind of breaks my heart, but it also speaks to that sort of interest [in outdoor activities]. People want to do these things. We’ve just got to open it up. So as far as the interest goes, I feel like we’re not keeping up with it — like, this project needs to be there now.”
So it’s understandable that Noori might have a difficult time limiting the size of his project at first. But despite the size of his ambitions for Mountain Bike Afghanistan (MTBA for short), he realized that if the project was ever going to get off the ground, he had to start small and gradually expand in scope. With on-the-ground help from Sajjad Husaini, a competitive Afghan skier with some mountain biking experience (for cross-training), Noori has put together a team of 10 Afghans — ranging from teens to late twenties — who are ready to commit to serious training in the sport. He has been able to secure a partnership with a third-party organization with 501c status so that MTBA can accept donations as a non-profit. They’ve already received a number of helmets donated by Outdoor Gear Exchange, but Noori and his team still have quite a ways to go before they can even consider serious competition.
“Right now,” Noori says, “we’re raising the funds for a dozen mountain bikes of decent quality, other bike equipment like jerseys, helmets and stuff, and a bike shop/workshop for people to be able to repair their bikes. Once we have that up and going, our plan is to start building trails in this place that these guys are from, which is Bamyan in Afghanistan. It’s in central Afghanistan, up in the mountains, 10,000 feet. They have access to beautiful lakes — it’s the site of Afghanistan’s first national park and national reserve area — so we’d have permission to build trails there.”
Fortunately, the Noori who once had grand plans for an entrepreneurship incubator is hardly absent from MTBA, either. His hands are all over the non-profit’s “dollar-to-trail” concept, designed to attract the attention from major biking companies, in which donations equaling a certain dollar amount are met with a pledge to construct a certain length of mountain bike trail. “We’ll have to do the math of how much money and labor a mile of trail takes,” he says, “but this is a value that a lot of companies want to see. They don’t just want to give away bikes; they want to see some value created, which will contribute to the growth of the industry overall. So all of the sudden you have this new frontier in the world where people can go and bike, and it looks good for [the companies] — they can use it as a marketing tool. If Cannondale can do that and differentiate itself from Giant, then it’s a win for Cannondale. So it’s a good marketing tool for them.”
But Noori has hopes of raising a good portion of his funds from individual donors as well. With a grin, he warns that Middlebury students should stay on the lookout for Mountain Bike Afghanistan t-shirts on campus in the near future. But those eager to make a more immediate impact and support Noori’s tremendous undertaking can learn about MTBA, as well as how to donate, online at www.mtbafghanistan.com.
Or, for those who might find themselves more interested in Noori’s personal story as an athlete, he is currently facing a critical point in his racing career. “It has been a very tough journey,” he explains. “I’m still on those borrowed bikes, from Kai [Wiggins]— a road bike and a mountain bike. And they’re getting old: normally, in the racing world you upgrade your bike every year because of wear and tear. I’ve been riding the same bike for three years, and I’m going into my most important season this year, accumulating points toward getting my pro license. So having the right equipment is super important on this journey. And now I’m faced with the same problem again.” Moreover, after he gets his professional license, Noori has designs to participate in the 2020 Summer Olympics in Japan — no small undertaking. So to help him reach his goal, Noori has set up a MiddStart page (equivalent to GoFundMe for the Middlebury network), which can be found here: http://middstart.middlebury.edu/mountain-bike-afghanistan-an-olympic-dream/.
Try, if you will, to isolate Noori’s personal dream from his dreams for the country of Afghanistan, or vice-versa. They comprise two narratives — the story of a nation, and the story of a boy from that nation — that have converged at a single, astounding, inevitable point. From where we stand, it would almost be foolish to imagine one without the other.
“The biggest thing about mountain biking for me,” Noori says, “is the idea of getting outside. Forgetting your everyday stress, getting out on the trails, this act of cycling, pedaling out in the woods all by yourself or with your friends… and then after a while, through the very act of mountain biking — it’s challenging, you’re climbing all the time — you get to a point where you’re on top of the mountain, and you have this beautiful view and vista. Regardless of who you are in the world, that’s what it does to you. It’s a very peaceful process.
“And to Afghanistan, that’s so important. There’s an active conflict going on, people are fleeing the country to Europe. How do you instill in Afghans a sense of purpose and love for the place that they’re from? Without their having that perspective to look at their surroundings with an appreciative eye? It’s not hard to see a place that has been affected by conflict for more than 4 decades, where people are losing sight of hope, where there’s a corrupt government, the economy is very bad, there are explosions all around the country, there’s a war going on. How do you take a break from that?
“So my goal with the project is to give people an opportunity. The very act of building trails, and drawing and dragging people away from their troubled neighborhoods, their troubled villages, to a point where you can just relax, and take a moment to not thing about that, is super powerful, super empowering. Because if you always think about the conflict, it’s always going to be in your head. You need a break from it in order to face your challenges, in order for you to have a clear mind — and especially for the young people, it’s super important to have that. So that’s what the project can also provide. And that’s mainly one of the reasons I’m doing it.”
We might say that Noori is living his life in the hope that the Afghan people might find a new way to ride; more than that, he rides in the hope that his people might find a new way to live.
(03/09/18 5:22pm)
(Writer’s note: I use the word “queer” to refer to anyone who is not straight and/or cis.)
To anyone who identifies as queer or questioning — if you are in the closet, out of the closet, or one foot out the door; if you feel embraced or isolated, proud or ashamed, satisfied or frustrated, in love or heartbroken — hear me out.
I’m going to start with a little bit about myself. I’ve had it pretty easy when it comes to being queer. My mom sang me songs from “Rent” as lullabies, I went to the first public high school with a gay-straight alliance, and I never worried I would lose a close friend after coming out. I’ve only been called a f****t once — look at me! But entering Middlebury as a first year, I found myself yearning for a queer community, one I felt had been lacking up to that point. I imagined having some sense of familiarity with all the queer faces across campus. I imagined a huge swarm of us gathering on a regular basis, for fun and for support. This was the type of community I honestly expected to be welcomed into.
It’s laughable now how wrong I was! We’re a mess. A scattered, bumpy, disconnected mess. I only ever hear people say “queer community” in an effort lump all queer people together, rather than referring to a cohesive community. I had hoped the whole of us would be greater than the sum of us, but at our best, we coexist on a basic level.
I spent my first year here upset about the lack of this idyllic queer community. Angry at people who didn’t attend queer events. Sad at seeing sexual tension (or lack thereof) eliminate potential friendships, particularly among men. Frustrated with people I judged to be living isolated from other queer people/spaces/culture, what I’ve gone so far as to describe as queer assimilation. How rude of me!
I’ve since had an idea that I wanted to share:
A cohesive queer community across campus is not what I need, and it’s not what we need. It’s almost as if my expectation of what we need hasn’t caught up with the reality of the 2010s. Some people are content, and I shouldn’t be bitter about it. This odd fixation of mine on having a tight-knit underground friend group is growing more outdated.
But there’s a lot missing, and I am still unsettled by this. There are those among us who are hiding, people who feel alone, and peers who feel unsafe expressing themselves authentically. A handful of the few queer spaces that exist can be exclusive to people identifying as a POC and/or trans. I do want to acknowledge the past and current generations of students and organizations which have worked to build queer communities, but there is a serious lack of support among the queer population. Is this the furthest we can go?
Queer Solidarity. That’s what we need. We don’t all have to skip in a circle holding hands, decked out in glitter and flowers (which may or may not still be a fantasy of mine) and we certainly have no obligation to be each other’s best friend. But we can do a better job of caring for each other and being aware of challenges we struggle with. I can’t tell you what that looks like exactly, but I know that we have a long way to go. I’ve yet to hear from anyone that believes Queer Solidarity already exists on campus.
There is an unbalanced perception of the extent that homophobia and transphobia exist on this campus. I could list all the examples of how friends describe their queer experiences here, but that goes against my point. How can I claim to be an ambassador to the queer community when it doesn’t exist, and when I only associate myself with a slice of the queer population?
I think a big step toward Queer Solidarity is to paint a big picture of what it’s like to be queer on campus and gather together to talk about it. That’s why, as a board member of the club Queers and Allies, I would like to promote a collaborative art project we’ve been working on. We are releasing an anonymous survey asking a few questions about what being queer on campus is like for YOU. Whatever you have to share —whether you feel embraced or isolated, safe or afraid, proud or ashamed — we want to hear it. Our plan is to take all the anonymous responses and create a visual representation of them, with an accompanying ceremony and discussion.
Please take some time and visit go/queer if you want to participate.
Will you be a part of this?
(03/08/18 2:51am)
When I arrive, it is tea time.
“It’s mango black tea,” Carolyn Kuebler ’90 says. She offers me local honey before leading me back to her office. The surprisingly sunny day lends the office a brighter mood than one might imagine of a literary magazine. Her desk is strewn with papers, notes and the most recent issue of the quarterly. The cover is a black-and-white sketch-like piece of artwork; a rhinoceros and birds, scribbles like words and a metronome.
Carolyn Kuebler has been with the New England Review (NER) since 2004. She worked as managing editor until 2014 when she became editor after Stephen Donadio returned to full-time teaching at Middlebury College. Her job includes reading submissions, handling the budget of the magazine and organizing events.
“I do a lot of reading,” Kuebler said when I ask her to describe her job. “And looking for great new content. Sometimes we pursue writers. When we want to do international sections, we’ll track down writers of different nationalities, who speak different languages. We have to find some kind of literary ambassador for those sections because we don’t tend to get a lot of submissions from people from say, China or South Africa or Germany. When we want to have more international content, we have to track that down.”
She is obliquely referring to the final issue of 2017, which featured South African writers.
In her editor’s note of the volume, Kuebler writes, “No one author--or even a dozen authors, as you’ll find here--can represent the voice of any nation. In South Africa, though, the idea of a national literature is particularly fraught, as the laws of apartheid, established to keep people ‘apart’ … created radically inequitable nations within nations.”
NER’s focus on South Africa came about by a series of happenstances, know-somebody-who-knows-somebodys and inquiries into the literature of the nation. Kuebler had hoped especially to publish translations of pieces written in languages other than English, considering South Africa is home to eleven official tongues.
That turned out, however, to be a challenge.
“So many writers in South Africa write in English even if they speak other languages,” she said. “It ended up being a real lesson for me.”
Due to a smorgasbord of political, socioeconomic, institutional and educational reasons, most of the work submitted had originally been written in English. So, unlike other issues the magazine has published, the South African issue is not translation-focused.
This lack of translation, however, does not detract from the poetry and prose of the South African writers who deal with themes of place, power and language. Even the cover art, “Magic Flute Book: Newspaper,” was done by a South African artist, William Kentridge.
While broad, the scope of the publication does not overlook its current home: Middlebury College. The college has published the magazine, and therefore been responsible for its budget and employees, for over 30 years.
“Unfortunately, I think NER goes largely unnoticed by most of the students at Middlebury,” said Robert Erickson ’18, one of two summer 2017 interns. “Most of us wouldn’t expect that we have one of the nation’s most well-respected literary magazines in our own backyard.”
Even with its seeming remoteness, however, the publication enjoys a bond between the college that publishes it as well as the town it finds itself in.
“Literary magazines add to the culture in ways that are beyond just the journal,” Kuebler said.
In recent years, NER has collaborated with the Mahaney Center for the Arts and Oratory Now to produce “NER Out Loud,” during which students read selections from the magazine. NER also hosts events that bring together local and student writers at places like Carol’s and the Marquis Theater for readings.
Hearing the poems and stories aloud, which granted the writings different, sometimes surprising reinterpretations, has inspired NER to continue the practice in the form of a podcast, which is currently in the works.
“We have some of our J-term interns and some Oratory Now students putting together readings,” she said. “Hopefully they’ll release that by the end of the semester.”
Another connection between the College and NER is their hiring of interns like Erickson during the regular fall and spring semesters as well as over the summer and J-term.
Erickson interned with Victoria Pipas ’18 this past summer, where they read submissions, worked on online content, conducted interviews and started some long-term projects for the publication.
“I think I came away with a new appreciation for just how difficult it really is to write good literature,” Erickson said. “As a literary studies and classics major at Middlebury, 99 percent of my reading consists of books that are generally acknowledged to be of high caliber and have ‘withstood the test of time,’ so to speak. But spending as much time as I did reading and discussing fiction submissions from writers with a range of talent levels helped me to develop the vocabulary necessary to explain why one piece might have succeeded where another failed, or what separated the ‘great’ stories from the simply ‘good’ ones.”
“In my view, one of the most impressive things about NER is their commitment to finding and publishing new talent,” he said. “Many literary magazines of NER’s caliber rely heavily on work acquired through a contract or an agent to fill their pages, but NER is committed to publishing fresh, new, exciting voices alongside more well-established ones. The Poetry Editor, Rick Barot, makes it a point to include one issue each year that exclusively features poets whom the magazine hasn’t published before. For NER, the work on the page is what earns a spot in the magazine; nothing else.”
This year, NER turns 40, and Kuebler said they have special events planned for the anniversary.
“We’re going to release different pieces from the archive that are not currently up on our website with introductions from the editors over the past decades,” she said. “For instance, the first managing editor has written a little piece about an essay that came out in 1980. It’s a way for people to meet all the people who have edited here in the past and to see some material New England Review published way back when.”
(03/08/18 2:49am)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro, “The Shape of Water” (2017) tells the story of Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a mute woman who works as a custodian in a government laboratory. She spends her days there with her coworker and friend Zelda (Octavia Spencer), and when she’s not at work she spends most of her time with her neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins), an older man who paints in an apartment populated mostly by canvases and cats.
Del Toro introduces us to Elisa’s world with a montage that reveals the monotony of her days, from waking up, to punching in, to going to bed. Yet this all changes when Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) shows up in the laboratory with a creature (Doug Jones), half man and half amphibian, captured in the Amazon.
On its own, this would no doubt make quite a compelling set up for a film, but del Toro has more in mind as Elisa is mute, Giles is gay and Zelda is a black woman. All three are marginalized in the world in which they live.
This aligns them in turn with the amphibian man, who has been brought in to be studied and experimented on by Dr. Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his team of scientists under Strickland’s supervision. Elisa is enamored by this amphibious creature, and as they both begin to fall for each other, Elisa and her friends decide that they must break this fish-man out of his prison.
Standing in their way is Strickland, a candy-chewing egomaniac who wants nothing more than to pick the creature apart piece by piece. He is the personification of all that is intolerant and violent, belittling Elisa for her disability and Zelda for her race. In a movie where one would expect the amphibious creature to be the monster, it is Strickland that emerges as the antagonist. Elisa and her friends must overcome his vision of a world where anything that is different must be destroyed.
Del Toro has long been known as a master stylist, bending the rules of nature to suit his vision. Whether through the creatures he brought to life in “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006) and “Hellboy” (2004), or the breathtaking and disturbing architecture of “Crimson Peak” (2015), there is a look to all of his movies that distinguishes them. In the context of “The Shape of Water” it is hard to place exactly when you are until the Cold War aspects are integrated. It is obviously a period piece, sprinkled with 1950s-style cars and store fronts, but it works to the film’s advantage that there is nothing in its visuals to completely nail down this fairy tale’s time period.
Throughout the film, each setting has unique trademarks. Elisa’s apartment has impossibly curved windows, faux-victorian furniture and limited light, giving it a warm but lonely feel. Comparatively, the lab where she works is enormous, constructed from industrial steel, concrete and nondescript tiling that give it a dull and inhuman spirit. The only spot in the building with character is the room with the pool where our amphibian friend is housed. It is dark, but similar to Elisa’s apartment, the light playing off the water creates a sense of life despite the horrors that occurs within. It seems this is no mistake. This connection between places visually foreshadows the connection that will develop between the fish-man and Elisa. This is an emotiveness of setting that plays out throughout the entirety of the film and reveals del Toro’s remarkable attention to the detail of his world.
Completing this otherworldly experience is a cast committed to bringing each facet of this story to life. It is an ensemble of remarkable performances of which I could sing the praises for days, but for the constraints of a singular review I will focus on a pair of performances. First, as Elisa, Hawkins is positively captivating. Her performance recalls the greatest silent film stars, relying on facial expression and emotive motions to convey a depth of character as great as any spoken role. From the first moment when she is alarmed by the sight of this new creature, to when she brings him hard-boiled eggs and finally to when she stands in his embrace, the curves and motions of her face demonstrate the act of falling in love just as effectively as if she told us. I am brought back again and again to Elisa’s eyes, and one shot in particular when she makes eye contact with Giles over the shoulder of the fish-man: we only see half of her face, but the love radiating from her eye is palpable.
Standing there with her is Jones in full amphibian regalia. This is no new experience for him, as he donned a similar getup in “Hellboy” to play Abe Sapien, but del Toro and the make-up team have provided a costume unlike anything I’ve seen in modern film. The sapphire and turquoise hues of his skin give him an unmistakable presence, but it is the creature’s soul that Jones conveys so hauntingly. It is, while not silent, also a performance without a single spoken word. We see his terror upon his arrival at the lab slowly soften in response to Elisa’s affections. Together, Jones and Hawkins illustrate the most unconventional of love stories with a pair of unprecedented performances, all in the pursuit of the most human and natural of all acts, falling in love. I never found myself questioning the validity of the feelings they had for each other, or pulled out of the story because of whatever inter-species connection was happening. It is a poignant and romantic love story, and Jones and Hawkins deliver career-best performances in its service.
At its core, “The Shape of Water” is a love letter to all of its misunderstood and rejected characters, whether human or otherwise, who have been disregarded because of some perceived imperfection. The creature from the Amazon is not the monster. He is, by del Toro’s and the actors’ brilliant work, the romantic interest. The heroine cannot utter a single word, but tells us more about how to love and live beyond your limits than nearly any character I can recollect. Her confidants live in a world where central aspects of their identities are looked down upon, be that their skin color or sexual orientation, but they look beyond what the world thinks of them to do something incredibly moving. The film rarely delves into direct confrontation with the social issues it suggests, the exceptions being a pair of scenes in a diner where Giles develops a crush on the waiter, only to find out that he is both a racist and a homophobe, and a spattering of “your kind” comments made to Zelda throughout the narrative. What this seems to achieve is a permeated sense that the movie is not interested in focusing on what differentiates these heroes, but rather the common sense of moral integrity and empathy which they all feel. Del Toro has crafted a deeply moving film that reminds audiences that it is the humanity in each of us that binds us together, and that it should be stronger than anything we perceive as pushing us apart.
(03/08/18 12:38am)
The women’s hockey team played for and won its third consecutive Nescac championship, edging Bowdoin 2–1 in the semifinal contest on Saturday, March 3, and shutting out Amherst 2–0 on Sunday, March 4, for its 10th championship in program history.
In Saturday’s contest, Middlebury and Bowdoin battled back and forth for advantage in the opening period. Although the Panthers took 13 shots on goal, it was one of Bowdoin’s seven that found its way into the net. Lin Han ’20 blocked the initial shot, and Jenna Marotta ’19 rejected another attempt, but a Polar Bear picked up the rebound and made sure the third time was the charm, giving the guests a 1–0 lead.
Behind by one goal, Middlebury went on the power play with 9:12 remaining in the second period. With a five-on-four advantage, Maddie Winslow ’18, from the right side of the ice, centered a pass to Jessica Young ’18, who blasted a shot that deflected off two Bowdoin players and slid across the goal line for her team-leading 16th goal of the season and a 1–1 tie.
The goal was another connection for this duo that has completed dozens of assists to one another over their careers in the blue and white.
In the final period, Bowdoin’s defensive unit was put to a test, suffering four penalties in a row. The first came on a hooking call, which led to shots by Katherine Jackson ’19, Sidney Porter ’19 and Winslow, all of which went wide. After Winslow’s shot went wide and the power play opportunity ended, the next penalty came on a tripping call, which sentenced the Polar Bears to another four-on-five disadvantage. A barrage of shots on goal followed, several by Anna Zumwinkle ’19 and Elizabeth Wulf ’18, but were blocked by Bowdoin’s goalie.
As the tripping penalty expired, the Polar Bears were called for another hooking penalty. Unable to prevent mistakes, Middlebury’s power play unit bore down on their opponents, sending shot after shot towards the goal. The last penalty came when Bowdoin had too many players on the ice and the Panthers capitalized on the opportunity.
On the fourth and final power play, Marotta and Madie Leidt ’21 worked together to set up a look for Winslow, who one-timed Leidt’s slap pass from the right point into the back of the net to put Middlebury ahead 2–1.
The Polar Bears pulled their goaltender late in the final minutes, but it was not enough to tie the game, as Winslow’s goal proved to be the decisive one.
Middlebury outshot Bowdoin 41–15, while the Polar Bears also spent 14 more minutes in the penalty box, 18–4. Even though Bowdoin was outshot by 26 and spent almost a third of the game in the penalty box, the Polar Bears matched the Panthers for 60 minutes.
“Bowdoin was very physical and tough. They really made us work,” said Wulf. “When we went down 1–0, however, we didn’t panic. We knew we could come back if we played together as a team. It took a lot of grit and mental toughness to come out with the win, and it was a total team effort. I think that game showed that we can overcome adversity when we play together. The Bowdoin game united us even more, and we used the momentum from that game to play for each other in the championship game.”
For the fourth consecutive year, the Panthers advanced to the championship game to compete against the Amherst Mammoths on Sunday, March 4.
Neither team scored in the opening period, even though the Mammoths had two opportunities to sneak the puck pass Han, who has had a spectacular season — she has recorded 335 saves.
On the hosts’ side, Marotta’s shot from the right side made it through traffic before hitting the roadblock that was the Mammoths’ goalie. Winslow aggressively dove at the rebound but was also denied, and the contest carried into the second period with goose eggs on the scoreboard.
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Middlebury pulled away, however, at the 8:56 mark with a play that started right outside of the Amherst blue line. Leidt worked to create a turnover and Young quickly took over position of the puck. Carrying it down the ice, as she has done for the past four years, she found some space and fired a laser shot past the goaltender’s shoulder to give the Panthers a 1–0 lead. Han preserved the lead with another glove-side save, and the hosts headed into the third and final period of the 2018 Nescac playoffs.
The hosts doubled their advantage in the third stanza when Hayley LaFontaine ’18 took a shot from the point, which was redirected by Wulf into the back of the net.
Amherst tried to make something happen with two minutes left, but to no avail. As the clock winded down, the crowd grew louder, yelling and screaming, and the excitement of a three-repeat reverberated through Kenyon Arena. With ten seconds left, the Panthers trapped the puck on the boards, let time expire and dog-piled in front of their net.
“It’s indescribable. I’m still speechless,” said Wulf after reflecting on her third championship in four years. “It’s so special and an incredible feeling. I can’t stop smiling!”
“To make history and do it with this class and this team is beyond amazing,” Wulf continued amid the postgame excitement. “It’s something we will remember forever. As a senior class, we were so happy to come out on top and win our last home game at Kenyon.”
Julie Neuburger ’18 chimed in to express her excitement and happiness:
“Winning is always an exciting thing, but it’s definitely more special when you can do it in your own house in front of all your fans,” she said. “We have some of the best fans this sport has to offer from both the community and college, and we definitely fed off all the energy they brought to Kenyon on Sunday afternoon. There really are no words to describe those last 10 seconds or even the last minute. You’re just counting down in your head until you can run out onto the ice and jump and celebrate and be surrounded by your whole team.”
The Panthers still have work to do, hoping to secure a national championship for the first time since 2006. They are back on the ice this weekend, gearing up to play No. 1-ranked Plattsburgh State.
“For NCAA’s the focus right now is all on Plattsburgh,” said Wulf. “We said we wanted to play them again in March after we lost to them earlier this season because we knew we had more in us and could beat them. We are a much different and better team now than when we played them last, so we are super excited about the game Saturday.
“As the reigning four-[season]-straight national champions, we know Plattsburgh is good, but we are confident that if play our best hockey, we can win.”
The women’s hockey team played for and won its third consecutive Nescac championship, edging Bowdoin 2–1 in the semifinal contest on Saturday, March 3, and shutting out Amherst 2–0 on Sunday, March 4, for its 10th championship in program history.
In Saturday’s contest, Middlebury and Bowdoin battled back and forth for advantage in the opening period. Although the Panthers took 13 shots on goal, it was one of Bowdoin’s seven that found its way into the net. Lin Han ’20 blocked the initial shot, and Jenna Marotta ’19 rejected another attempt, but a Polar Bear picked up the rebound and made sure the third time was the charm, giving the guests a 1–0 lead.
Behind by one goal, Middlebury went on the power play with 9:12 remaining in the second period. With a five-on-four advantage, Maddie Winslow ’18, from the right side of the ice, centered a pass to Jessica Young ’18, who blasted a shot that deflected off two Bowdoin players and slid across the goal line for her team-leading 16th goal of the season and a 1–1 tie.
The goal was another connection for this duo that has completed dozens of assists to one another over their careers in the blue and white.
In the final period, Bowdoin’s defensive unit was put to a test, suffering four penalties in a row. The first came on a hooking call, which led to shots by Katherine Jackson ’19, Sidney Porter ’19 and Winslow, all of which went wide. After Winslow’s shot went wide and the power play opportunity ended, the next penalty came on a tripping call, which sentenced the Polar Bears to another four-on-five disadvantage. A barrage of shots on goal followed, several by Anna Zumwinkle ’19 and Elizabeth Wulf ’18, but were blocked by Bowdoin’s goalie.
As the tripping penalty expired, the Polar Bears were called for another hooking penalty. Unable to prevent mistakes, Middlebury’s power play unit bore down on their opponents, sending shot after shot towards the goal. The last penalty came when Bowdoin had too many players on the ice and the Panthers capitalized on the opportunity.
On the fourth and final power play, Marotta and Madie Leidt ’21 worked together to set up a look for Winslow, who one-timed Leidt’s slap pass from the right point into the back of the net to put Middlebury ahead 2–1.
The Polar Bears pulled their goaltender late in the final minutes, but it was not enough to tie the game, as Winslow’s goal proved to be the decisive one.
Middlebury outshot Bowdoin 41–15, while the Polar Bears also spent 14 more minutes in the penalty box, 18–4. Even though Bowdoin was outshot by 26 and spent almost a third of the game in the penalty box, the Polar Bears matched the Panthers for 60 minutes.
“Bowdoin was very physical and tough. They really made us work,” said Wulf. “When we went down 1–0, however, we didn’t panic. We knew we could come back if we played together as a team. It took a lot of grit and mental toughness to come out with the win, and it was a total team effort. I think that game showed that we can overcome adversity when we play together. The Bowdoin game united us even more, and we used the momentum from that game to play for each other in the championship game.”
For the fourth consecutive year, the Panthers advanced to the championship game to compete against the Amherst Mammoths on Sunday, March 4.
Neither team scored in the opening period, even though the Mammoths had two opportunities to sneak the puck pass Han, who has had a spectacular season — she has recorded 335 saves.
On the hosts’ side, Marotta’s shot from the right side made it through traffic before hitting the roadblock that was the Mammoths’ goalie. Winslow aggressively dove at the rebound but was also denied, and the contest carried into the second period with goose eggs on the scoreboard.
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Middlebury pulled away, however, at the 8:56 mark with a play that started right outside of the Amherst blue line. Leidt worked to create a turnover and Young quickly took over position of the puck. Carrying it down the ice, as she has done for the past four years, she found some space and fired a laser shot past the goaltender’s shoulder to give the Panthers a 1–0 lead. Han preserved the lead with another glove-side save, and the hosts headed into the third and final period of the 2018 Nescac playoffs.
The hosts doubled their advantage in the third stanza when Hayley LaFontaine ’18 took a shot from the point, which was redirected by Wulf into the back of the net.
Amherst tried to make something happen with two minutes left, but to no avail. As the clock winded down, the crowd grew louder, yelling and screaming, and the excitement of a three-repeat reverberated through Kenyon Arena. With ten seconds left, the Panthers trapped the puck on the boards, let time expire and dog-piled in front of their net.
“It’s indescribable. I’m still speechless,” said Wulf after reflecting on her third championship in four years. “It’s so special and an incredible feeling. I can’t stop smiling!”
“To make history and do it with this class and this team is beyond amazing,” Wulf continued amid the postgame excitement. “It’s something we will remember forever. As a senior class, we were so happy to come out on top and win our last home game at Kenyon.”
Julie Neuburger ’18 chimed in to express her excitement and happiness:
“Winning is always an exciting thing, but it’s definitely more special when you can do it in your own house in front of all your fans,” she said. “We have some of the best fans this sport has to offer from both the community and college, and we definitely fed off all the energy they brought to Kenyon on Sunday afternoon. There really are no words to describe those last 10 seconds or even the last minute. You’re just counting down in your head until you can run out onto the ice and jump and celebrate and be surrounded by your whole team.”
The Panthers still have work to do, hoping to secure a national championship for the first time since 2006. They are back on the ice this weekend, gearing up to play No. 1-ranked Plattsburgh State.
“For NCAA’s the focus right now is all on Plattsburgh,” said Wulf. “We said we wanted to play them again in March after we lost to them earlier this season because we knew we had more in us and could beat them. We are a much different and better team now than when we played them last, so we are super excited about the game Saturday.
“As the reigning four-[season]-straight national champions, we know Plattsburgh is good, but we are confident that if play our best hockey, we can win.”
