1000 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(01/17/18 10:30pm)
Irish playwright Martin McDonagh made his directorial debut with “In Bruges” (2008). That movie told the story of two affable hit men hiding out in Bruges after a killing gone wrong. Four years later, he followed it up with “Seven Psychopaths” (2012) about a screenwriter roped into an odyssey of malice and idiocy surrounding a stolen dog and an angry mob boss. These films are characterized by gorgeously wrought dialogue interspersed with scenes of often stunning violence filled out by leads who have none of the noble or restrained characteristics of your average protagonist. They are foul-mouthed, foul-tempered and violent, a step beyond simple anti-hero. McDonagh revels in human imperfection and does not shy from the complexity of emotion. “In Bruges” and “Seven Psychopaths” both did wonderful jobs of conveying this, but in his newest film, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (2017), he seems to perfect it.
The film tells the story of Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), who rents out the eponymous billboards to put pressure on the local police department led by town celebrity Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson). Mildred thinks they have failed to aptly investigate her daughter Angela’s (Kathryn Newton) violent rape and murder because nearly a year after the event no arrests have been made. The billboards, in bright red and black, read “Raped while dying. / And still no arrests? / How come, Chief Willoughby?” Her billboards have the desired effect, bringing Willoughby and his second-in-command Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell) to attention. The billboards divide the small town of Ebbing, Missouri, many feeling that it is unfair towards Willoughby, who is dying of cancer. Life in Ebbing seems to center around one main street, where the advertising agency that owns the billboards sits across from the police department. Apart from the gift shop where Mildred works, the billboards, and her home, we see her nowhere else. But the town intrudes to offer their opinions. Father Montgomery (Nick Searcy), the town priest, comes to Mildred, telling her: “Everyone’s on your side about Angela. No one’s on your side about these billboards.” However, he is wrong about that. The film unfolds just as Dixon characterizes it, as a “war” between Mildred, who refuses to allow her daughter’s death to fade away, and those who would rather it be stricken from the public eye.
In this sense, “Three Billboards” is at its core a brilliant character study that centers on Mildred. She is motivated by a pure fury that is equaled only by her grief, and we empathize in a profound way with this image of a mother who wants nothing more than justice for her daughter. Yet, Mildred has the general disposition of sandpaper, grating and irritating almost everyone and everything she comes into contact with, employing a rather majestic lack of restraint. She is the character we needed in 2017: a woman who refuses to take shit from anyone and who will follow her gut through any debris that may fall in her way. McDonagh writes for Mildred some of the most affecting lines he ever has, and she is brought to life by Frances McDormand.
McDormand is, in my eyes at least, the single most talented actress alive today. Looking at her filmography, from “Fargo” (1996) to “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012), she has never turned in a bad performance, whether she sits at the center of the plot or as a supporting figure. She disappears into her roles, mastering different accents and physical ticks to accentuate each character. Here, decked out in a red bandana and a blue jumpsuit for most of the film, she seems a direct dismissal of the classic ‘leading lady.’ Even at a dinner date later in the film she stays in this outfit, presenting a clear message to the town and the viewer: this woman cares little for what you may think of her, only concerned with delivering the justice her daughter deserves. When Father Montgomery delivers his criticism in her kitchen, she leans in the doorway and delivers what may be the finest speech McDonagh has ever written about the culpability of Catholic priests, and how little right he has to criticize her. It is deft, measured, and somehow, hilarious. McDormand finds the core of McDonagh’s writing, giving the performance of her career.
All of this is filmed with an elegance and beauty that gives the film the sheen I would imagine William Faulkner’s novels would look like if brought to life. The mountains that rise above the billboards convey a sense of scope and sadness with the mist rolling from their peaks, a range of crying giants with their gazes fixed on Mildred’s grief. McDonagh alternates between breathtaking long shots of the town and landscape and close ups of the people that populate them. We see them and the town as they see each other, up in their faces with little ability to stretch out and look away. This makes the interspersal of medium shots that much more of a punctuation. Mildred awaiting Willoughby’s interrogation at the police station stands out to me as one of the most beautiful shots in the film: light filters through the drawn shades while she sits behind a beige desk, arms crossed, defiance radiating from her every pore. McDonagh picks his images carefully, staging two pivotal conversations about Angela’s death with Mildred sitting beside Willoughby first, and Dixon second, on a set of swings. McDonagh focuses our attention on the innocence suggested by the swings, an instrument of childhood, and then contrasts it with the gut-wrenching description of the crimes committed and what has been done to investigate them.
‘Stagey’ or ‘theatrical’ have often been treated as dirty words when it comes to movies. No director wants their movie to seem like it’s just a play that has been photographed, but I think the blanket statement misses the intricacy of theatrics. McDonagh is primarily a playwright, and I believe it is this sensibility that makes his movies so well constructed. There is not a wasted word in his script, and within the composition of each scene his motifs and focus bring our attention right where he wants it. You have such limited visual ability on stage that you must be quite precise about what you fill the space with. It is this theatrical intuition that makes Three Billboards so effective; each image, word, and detail seems to have been considered with such attention that they fit together in nearly flawless fashion. It makes me wish that McDonagh would increase his output, giving us more than one movie every four or five years. But, then again, if each of them is as good as this, it’s well worth the wait.
(12/07/17 12:32am)
Literatures and cultures librarian Katrina Spencer is liaison to the Anderson Freeman 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.
Pages: 43
The What
“Peluda” is a book of poems written by a young woman who is of both Guatemalan and Colombian descent, according to the narrative voice of her poetry. Lozada-Oliva uses body hair as a medium to talk about a slew of fraught topics: origin, immigration, self-love/hate, harmful and exclusionary beauty paradigms, interracial romance, the discrepancies between intergenerational values, socioeconomic class and more. Hers is free verse, so if you’re looking for rhyme and meter in your poetic preferences, this will not be the place to go. But if you are looking for metaphor, subversion of popularly accepted behavior and stories that center around brown-skinned people, you have got a winner. Reading her work is like reading Sandra Cisneros’ 1984 “The House On Mango Street,” but in the 21st century and for a contemporary audience.
The Why
My Facebook feed introduced me to this poet, specifically a post via Button Poetry (as was the case with Blythe Baird’s “Give Me A God I Can Relate To”). As a hirsute woman (TMI), the title of the work, “Hairy,” called to me. I have had a mustache since before I can remember and more struggles with hair than I care to mention here. In a
world that keeps telling me that what my body does naturally and without provocation is wrong and undesirable, the idea that a writer would publicly acknowledge her “private” contentions feels awe-inspiring. These conversations are often had in dark corners and hushed tones. I am impressed by the bravery and the many ways in which such a benign and common topic can be used to meaningfully forward discussions of gender politics.
Rating: 4/5 cardigans
Lozada-Oliva’s work demonstrates multiple moments of sheer brilliance and uncanny insight. She is an author to watch; I trust her writings will continue to evolve and expand and I will not be surprised when her name appears on a best-seller’s list. However, some of the poems included in this collection are so fantastic, in the literal sense of the word, that they are inaccessible. As the author continues to publish, I trust she will be more exacting in excluding excesses that make the compilation longer but do not necessarily advance the piece’s themes, potency and goals. See her read her poetry on YouTube in “Yosra Strings Off My Mustache.”
(12/07/17 12:23am)
While some see opportunity for self-reflection amidst nature and solitude among Vermont’s idyllic landscapes , others see entirely different opportunities. This December marks the ten-year anniversary of the destruction of Robert Frost’s historic cabin in Ripton. In 2007 a group of high school students threw a party at the cabin, which is located on a plot of land that now belongs to Homer Noble Farm.
According to current Public Safety Investigator and former Police Sergeant Lee Hodsden, the idea for the party came from a seventeen-year-old employee of the college, who asked an older friend to buy five thirty-racks of beer for the occasion. Word spread, and close to fifty teenagers arrived at the cabin, colloquially called “Frost Farm,” on a cold winter evening. As the night progressed, the party grew out of control, resulting in broken furniture, urine and vomit on the carpets and an estimated $10,000 of damage.
Hodsden responded to the case after a hiker called the police about the damage when passing through the farm.
According to Hodsden, the students had shown a fair amount of determination in getting to the cabin: they had parked at the bottom of the hill by the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail and walked all the way up to the cabin through the snow. In the frigid winter weather, one vehicle had gotten stuck in a ditch near the Interpretative Trail and was left behind by its owner. Hodsden ran the license plate number and linked it to a high school student. Through that individual, Hodsden was able to identify many of the people who had attended the party and pieced together what had happened. Nearly thirty teens were charged with trespassing.
According to a Washington Post article published at the time, the prosecutor in the case had an unusual idea for a potential punishment, which the judge supported. They contacted Jay Parini, a professor of English and creative writing, and asked if he would teach the partiers a course on Frost’s poetry.
Parini, who himself had lived in the cabin when he taught at Bread Loaf in the summer, felt a personal stake in the issue and accepted the job.
“I remember being quite upset when I heard, first on the radio, that the Frost House had been overrun by high school kids who had been partying there and caused quite a bit of damage and nearly burned the place down,” he said.
Every student accepted the deal and enrolled in Parini’s special course. Parini said he met the students for several weeks in a public building and tried to get the students to reflect on how Frost’s poetry may be applicable to their own lives. For instance, one of Parini’s lessons involved an analysis of “The Road Not Taken.”
“[I] suggested to them that they stood at a crossroad in their lives, and that this is not uncommon, and that we’re always making choices that will affect us, often in ways we can’t foresee,” he said.
Not everybody in the community was on board with this non-traditional sentence. Edward Brown, an innkeeper at Bread Loaf during the School of English, had his doubts about the efficacy about the punishment. “I, for one, didn’t like the idea of having writing as a punishment because it taught them that writing is something you do when you’re bad or wrong,” he said. Brown also noted that the cabin’s destruction led to fundraising efforts by the college and Paul Muldoon to endow the property and help restore it.
Despite some pushback, however, Parini said that he thinks that this restorative justice practice was effective. He notes that before his class, some of the perpetrators did not know who Robert Frost was. He also remembers being surprised by the amount of press coverage his class received at the time. “I was a bit startled by the presence of reporters, who sat at the back of the room and spread the story. On the Associated Press wire it went around the world,” he said. “I think it was a big human interest story. Even the New York Times ran an editorial about this event.”
For Parini, though, his role in teaching these students about the importance of Frost and his poetry was personal.
“For me, the Frost House and cabin on the property are a sacred place. I wrote a biography of Frost, and continue to read and teach Frost every year,” he said. “I live in his poetry, which informs the world around me here in Vermont. So the fact that Frost lived here, and was part of Middlebury, where I’ve been teaching for nearly four decades, means a great deal to me.”
(12/07/17 12:16am)
Sitting in rows of desks in a Hillcrest classroom on Thursday Nov. 30, a group of students watched as sex educator Roan Coughtry demonstrated cutting a condom to make a DIY dental dam. On a table in the corner, stickers, coupons to sex toy stores, smart wallets, and pamphlets proudly displayed the logos of Planned Parenthood and O.School, which is an online pleasure-based sex ed company that was launched earlier this year by a group of sex ed advocates, including Middlebury alumna Kristina Dotter ’14.
Coughtry is a sex educator at O.School, a company that describes their mission as “building a shame-free space by offering pleasure education through live streaming and moderated chat.” Dotter and O.School founder Andrea Barrica visited campus last spring to explain the concept for their new company. This year, Cece Alter ’19.5, an O.School intern, thought many students at Middlebury could benefit from a basic sex-ed class that was more LGBTQ inclusive, consent-based, and pleasure-focused than what many students had received in high school.
To that end, Alter organized the event with the support of Chellis House, Queers & Allies, the SGA Sexual Relationship Respect Committee, Feminist Action at Middlebury, and the MCAB Speakers Committee. Coughtry’s two workshops were part of a college tour O.School recently debuted, where sex educators travel to colleges around the country to give sex and relationship workshops.
Coughtry’s visit to campus included a comprehensive sex education workshop on Nov. 30, followed by a more narrowly focused workshop on healing from trauma and sexual liberation on Dec. 1. The idea behind the two workshops was to provide a basis of education for students before diving into more complex topics surrounding sex and relationships.
“We asked ourselves, what is missing here? And it turns out sex ed is missing here,” Alter said. “We have very little sex education in this country, and this world that is available. Maybe some people get here having no sex ed, so you really have to start with safer sex, and the basics of sex education, before you move on to something else, especially because there is no regular sex education [at Middlebury].”
The organizers were attentive to the fact that students, whether coming from a fairly comprehensive sex education, or none at all, likely all had some gaps in their knowledge, and wanted to focus on addressing as many of those topics as possible.
“Some people don’t know what an STI is and how to prevent that,” Alter said, adding that Coughtry’s workshops covered a variety of subjects that most high school programs do not talk about, including consent, pleasure, communication, how to say no, and more queer and trans-inclusive language.
One gap that stood out in many student’s previous sex education was that lack of LGBTQ inclusivity. It was particularly important to Alter and the other event organizers as well as queer groups on campus that the workshop was inclusive of queer and trans experiences, especially considering the lack of queer representation in the speakers who usually come to campus. Part of Coughtry’s sex ed basics workshop was centered on queer-inclusive anatomical terms that avoid the gendered associations of words like “penis,” and “vagina.” Instead, Coughtry used “innie” and “outie,” because, they said, the gendered associations with biological terms make such words less inclusive.
Coughtry began the workshop by announcing that they were going to help students “unlearn all the crap we’ve been taught,” and acknowledged the difficulty of finding comprehensive, pleasure-based sex education in today’s world.
“We live in such a sex-shaming, body-shaming society,” they said. ”Even if we fit the most narrow definition of what is considered normal sexually, we are probably still shamed for something.”
Coughtry also wanted the workshop to focus on safe-sex practices, including preventing unwanted pregnancy and STIs, while avoiding rhetoric that can make STIs seem shameful. They provided as an example the common practice of saying “I’m clean” when you have no STIs, rather than saying that your tests came back negative
“The word clean implies that having STIs are dirty,” they said. “People can be in long, healthy relationships when they have STIs…it needs to be more normalized.”
The last half of the first workshop was dedicated to communication and consent. Coughtry brought up and then broke all the myths surrounding consent, including ideas such as, “consenting once means consenting every time,” or “a lack of a no can be considered a yes.” They wanted to address these myths, because many seem so ingrained in society that they are not always disproven or even talked about in regular high school sex ed classes. Coughtry also challenged prevalent myths about communication, most notably: “the biggest myth about communication is that it’s happening.”
Coughtry’s workshops were a major step towards de-stigmatizing sex ed at a college level, and Alter and other organizers hope to make sex ed more permanently prevalent on campus. The SGA Sexual Relationship and Respect Committee has been working with groups on campus to brainstorm ideas for bringing sex ed to Middlebury, perhaps as part of first year orientation, in the form of a possible new student organization, and more speakers and workshops.
“People can be very uncomfortable in sex ed classes, and talking about sex, and I think we need to normalize it more. There’s a certain group of people who goes, and only a certain number of times per semester, and we need it to become more part of the culture,” said Alter, who is also a member of the Sexual Relationship and Respect Committee.
In the meantime, students seeking more sex education can go to O.School’s website to look at thousands of videos on topics ranging from “How to get the most out of your hookup” to “Sex after giving birth.” Their website is https://www.o.school.
(12/07/17 12:14am)
Re “Response to 'Response to Setting the Record Straight’” (online, Dec. 1)
The academic department at Arizona State University that I direct — the School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership (SCETL) — received an email from Middlebury faculty member Kevin Moss, inviting our school to “correct” the putative falsehoods he describes in his Campus posting about a February event at ASU with Middlebury professor Allison Stanger and a Reed College professor, on controversies about speech and speakers on college campuses.
We are accused of “distort[ing] the record” of the Charles Murray events at Middlebury in March 2017 and “play[ing] into the dominant narrative used to defame the college.”
Professor Moss may not realize that the director of this ASU School happens to be a 1989 Middlebury College graduate; that I returned to the College as a faculty member from 1996 to 1998; that I have stayed in touch with Middlebury mentors and friends in the 20 years I have lived out west; that I am grateful to have visited my alma mater occasionally; and that my wife and I encouraged our two children to apply to Middlebury.
It is true that as a proud alum, and professor, I have followed the news and commentary about the Charles Murray episode and its aftermath with greater care than the typical American academic might have done. Nonetheless, our school’s February event with professor Stanger was not my idea, but was proposed to us by a professor from ASU’s Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications; and he did so without knowledge of my deep Middlebury connections.
The topics that professor Stanger and Reed professor Lucía Martínez Valdivia will address are of national interest. Further, this event is part of a series our school has organized — with co-sponsorship from ASU’s O’Connor College of Law and the Cronkite School — on “Freedom of Speech and Intellectual Diversity in Higher Education and American Life.”
We have assembled a range of viewpoints, from those who advocate restricting speech and speakers to those holding a more traditional First Amendment view about latitude and protection for campus discourse. Information about the series, including a two-day conference, is on our school’s website under “Events” — and a reasonable observer would conclude that we seek civil debate in an academic setting, open for anyone to attend, about these important national issues.
One more point of context: Fairness requires disclosure that I have publicly stated my views about the significance of the Charles Murray episode, and the college’s response to it, in an opinion essay I co-authored with five other Middlebury alums who became professors in various academic fields. That essay appeared in RealClearPolitics on June 1 and is readily available. At least half of the authors would consider themselves politically liberal or progressive; and it would take quite sophisticated efforts to discern therein any intent to defame or polemicize.
Finally, to the accusations: While I respect, as a Middlebury alum and friend of the college, the professor’s concern about accurate representations of the college and events there, we will have to agree to disagree about the many matters of interpretation involved. I would not retract a word of the brief description our school provided to advertise this dialogue event about the Murray episode and its aftermath.
That description obviously is not the final word on these events and their significance. That said, there is nothing false or distorting about it, even if it necessarily compresses a complicated episode.
The fundamental facts about this episode, evident in many journalistic and eyewitness reports — and in investigations by the college and the town police that followed — are that a speaker invited through normal college procedures was forcefully prevented from speaking in the originally invited venue; that similar use of force and noise continued in an effort to disrupt the backup venue provided to the speaker and professor Stanger; and finally that these preliminary episodes of force led to open violence later in the day.
It is odd to accuse our school of distorting the record when the alternative account would omit the fundamental fact about forcefully preventing a scheduled speaker event from unfolding as invited and as originally planned.
One of the prerequisite conditions for higher learning is civility in expressing disagreements about ideas, whether abstract and theoretical or practical and political. I understand that there are disagreements about the meaning and reasonable interpretations of the Middlebury events at issue. However, unreasonable accusations of the sort proffered here don’t sustain or replenish the civility needed at Middlebury and all other serious places of learning.
Paul Carrese ’89 is an author and academic.
(12/07/17 12:09am)
In the previous month, two major tax-related developments have occurred to signal and hasten our society’s already speedy descent into oligarchy.
November saw the release of the 14.3 million Paradise Papers leak, an unbelievably damning who’s-who of tax evading corporations, billionaires, celebrities, and (big surprise) universities. Since this news has already fully dissipated into the dark void of news cycles past, it is convenient that our determined Republican “representatives’” in Congress have successfully resurfaced the issue by ramming through last Sunday’s egregious tax bill.
By my calculations, this should us give us at least another week-long window to publicly acknowledge the dramatic ascendancy of corporate power, before it’s inevitably cut off by, I don’t know, news that Trump is turning the EPA headquarters into a casino. (You heard it hear first.)
Jokes/clairvoyant predictions aside, what these two events really did was confirm in ugly detail the extent to which the world’s reigning companies and elite citizens have fallen from membership in any commonwealth, besides the tax-free one stitched together by their intrepid army of morally bankrupt lawyers, toadyish politicians and unending shell companies.
If we weren’t so numb to it, and so enthralled by the charms of these companies’ products and the celebrities that advertise them, there would probably be riots. The Papers showed us who these actors are and the clever tricks they’re pulling to privately benefit, but the tax bill shows that the bolder among them have grown weary of maintaining a civic façade.
We are entering a new phase of political consolidation, wherein corporate interests are secure enough in their control of the American government that they don’t really have to concoct psejudo-economic arguments anymore. Just look at the smirk on Mitch McConnell’s face when he announces that the tax plan will benefit mainly “regular working folks” (or something along those lines) — they know that their popular opposition is currently toothless, and their base is so riled up by whatever/whoever Sean Hannity is telling them to despise that they hardly analyze the details.
(I actually checked the Fox News website while writing this and the only front-page mention of the tax plan was an op-ed by McConnell in the bottom corner entitled “How Our Tax Plan Will Help You.”)
It is not simply the sheer injustice of it that is so concerning, even though the fact that people in poverty or undocumented immigrants are paying proportionally more in taxes than multibillion-dollar companies is patently horrendous. Nor is it, according to a 2016 Oxfam report, the $111 billion dollars the U.S. government loses in tax revenue every year to tax evasion, more than enough to cover all public college tuition, or any number of welfare programs; and this is marginal in the face of the nearly $1 trillion of lost revenue estimated to ultimately occur from the tax giveaway.
No, the greatest implication is the realization that the supposedly democratic and representative governments of the world are unwilling, and now possibly incapable, of controlling global business. It is, in effect, a slowly unfolding coup, a role reversal wherein the formerly indisputable master has become willing servant.
The crucial problem with this is that corporations are fundamentally undemocratic institutions. They are basically rigidly hierarchical constitutional monarchies, and as their power and influence swell beyond antiquated national borders, their actions and decisions become increasingly unaccountable to any sort of public interest.
For as insanely vicious as states have been in the history of the world, they are distinguished from corporations by their theoretical duty to protect and enhance the wellbeing of their citizens. Whether this actually happens is obviously subject to heated debate, but it is not structurally precluded.
However, the indivisible, primary reason for corporations to exist is to make a profit. This may be quite useful to those who are privy to the dividends of that profit, but unless it is subjected to an external, normative redistributive force, will never wholly benefit the society whose taxes and toil help to create the conditions for these corporations to exist.
Furthermore, unlike government social services, there is often no actual need for much of what these massive companies are built to provide; Coca-Cola provisions the entire world with soft drinks that are terribly unhealthy and environmentally destructive to produce or distribute, yet it is a supremely powerful political player and makes billions in revenue each year.
In other words, governments are ceding control to organizations that are largely inaccessible to public oversight, and are better suited to making and distributing piles of useless objects than administering the services necessary for fulfillment of basic needs. If the phrase ‘ceding control’ seems melodramatic, then why has there been a steady revolving door for regulators between Monsanto and the Department of Agriculture, Goldman Sachs and the Treasury, and now Exxon to the State Department?
The Paradise Papers and tax scam simply make the obvious, well, even more obvious: Our governments are blatantly corrupt, tax systems are a joke, and the poor are getting screwed so that more yachts can be sold.
Any political platform that does not see this incomprehensible injustice as the principal problem in our society is either missing the point, or more likely, has been co-opted into ensuring this paradigm continues.
Yet our lives, like our countries, have become so structured around corporate agendas that it is hard to see the current situation as the consumerist neo-aristocracy that it has become. How many more Pentagon, Panama, and Paradise Papers will it take before we get organized?
(11/30/17 12:18am)
Last March, student-led protests of Charles Murray garnered nationwide media coverage, much of which fell into an ongoing debate over the state of free speech on college campuses. Of particular note was “Free Inquiry on Campus,” a statement of principles first published in The Wall Street Journal in March and signed by over 100 Middlebury faculty, which emphasized a commitment to free speech and condemned the protests as “coercive.”
In the weeks that followed, however, another faculty group emerged, which framed the debate in decidedly different terms. A caucus of several dozen faculty members, calling themselves the Middlebury Faculty for an Inclusive Community, first announced its formation in a May op-ed in The Campus, which outlined the group’s principles.
The statement includes a call for “active resistance” against discrimination, and a defense of civil disobedience as “a necessary means to reorganize and redefine the values and relationships that make up a community.” While stressing the importance of both freedom of speech and inclusivity, the caucus asserts that “such freedom comes with the obligation that it be exercised responsibly, especially when offering the platform of our campus to outside speakers who may undermine our culture of inclusivity — symbolically or otherwise.”
The group has since submitted two additional op-eds. The first, in September voiced support for Addis Fouche-Channer ’17, following a report by The Campus into her racial profiling claim against a Public Safety officer. The second condemned the racially-charged imagery found on a chalkboard in Munroe Hall earlier this month, and called upon senior administrators to apologize to Fouche-Channer and withdraw the September finding by the Title IX office that a preponderance of evidence indicated she had attended the Murray protests.
Today, the caucus exists primarily in the form of an email list, which comprises roughly 50 faculty members. Jason Mittell, a professor of film and media culture who serves as a spokesman for the group said that many members shared a belief that the dominant narrative unfairly portrayed the protests as an unqualified violation of free speech.
“People started gathering into an affinity group of faculty who were concerned about students, and were dismayed by the PR push to frame everything as a free speech issue,” Mittell said. “That began a series of emails which then turned into an email list which then turned into more of an organization.”
The Free Inquiry statement published in the Journal was a particular cause of dissatisfaction. Some faculty nicknamed the document “The Loyalty Oath,” because of what they viewed as an unfair assumption that a decision not to sign constituted an ideological statement against the principles of free expression.
“The way many in the college community understood that statement was either you sign it, or you’re actively not signing it,” Mittell said. “A number of us, myself included, were really put off by that, not necessarily because there was anything wrong with the principles in the abstract, but in the practicality it felt like that was not the right response,” Mittell said.
“The events of March 2 were multifaceted,” said Maggie Clinton, a history professor also on the caucus. “As many have noted, they were as much about race and power on and off campus as they were about free speech, but the free speech aspect has received by far the most national attention.”
In that vein, the first active step taken by the caucus was to successfully oppose a motion introduced at a faculty meeting in April to add a “Freedom of Expression Policy” to the College handbook — a step viewed by members of the caucus as premature.
“I think most of us thought this was way too soon — it was forcing things and it was really a divisive wedge,” Mittell said. “I think that’s when this group formed into something more than just a series of dispersed emails, and [instead] said collectively, ‘Can we come up with a strategy to push back against this?”
Of the 50 faculty members on the caucus’s email list, only 23 are listed on the group’s website, which can be accessed at go.middlebury.edu/inclusivecommunity. Mittell believes that some members are hesitant to state their involvement because other faculty have discouraged them from getting involved.
“There have been instances where we know of untenured faculty members who have gotten pressure from colleagues being told not to be too outspoken about political issues on campus,” he said.
While Mittell is not aware of explicit threats concerning tenure, he thinks the nature of the system forces faculty to be careful in this regard.
“Part of the whole tenure system is it’s a gauntlet that you have to run, and depending on your department and who’s on the college-wide tenure committee, there can be a sense of risk aversion,” he said.
The caucus plans to pursue a multifaceted approach by working with faculty, students and the town of Middlebury to achieve its aims.
“This isn’t just about what happens on our campus. This is about what’s happening to faculty, staff and students in town,” said Shawna Shapiro, a professor in the linguistics program who is a member of the caucus.
“We’ve been having some discussion about how to work with groups like SURJ [Showing Up for Racial Justice], which is a community-based group focused on racial justice, to think about ways for us to more directly talk with the town about issues of concern… instead of expecting the college to be our spokesperson,” she added.
The caucus is also considering offering a variety of events on campus next semester.
“There’s talk of doing a teach-in in the spring, there’s talk of sponsoring a series of lectures or more of a symposium event,” Mittell said.
“And maybe doing some more vocal protests that might involve students, or something more public to galvanize the energy and focus the discussion.” Shapiro added.
The caucus took what Mittell describes as its first “proactive” steps on Nov. 3, by presenting recommendations to the administration in a motion entitled “Moving Forward On Diversity Practices.” The motion passed with 113 faculty voting in favor, eight against, and one abstaining.
“Behind the scenes, members of our group had met with members of the administration and student groups, had done things to try to provide support and engage issues, but that was our first attempt to say these are four concrete things that we believe can be done which we think will help move us forward,” Mittell said.
“While statements of support and denunciation remain important, we have to go beyond words,” said Usama Soltan, a professor of Arabic, and another caucus member. “In the absence of clear and tangible progress on such issues, statements eventually start to ring hollow.”
As a result of the motion’s passing, the recommendations went to the administration for review and potential implementation. Given the stated support of several administrators, multiple caucus members expressed an expectation that the administration will pursue all of the components.
(11/30/17 12:07am)
After the dust settled on their national title, we chased down the star-studded senior class — Annie Leonard, Lauren Schweppe, Caroline Knapp, Carson Peacock, Audrey Quirk, and Eva Dunphy — of the field hockey team and asked them to share some thoughts on their tremendous careers and their fitting capstone season. Read on for some brief excerpts of what they had to say.
On what it’s like to be a member of the Middlebury field hockey team:
Eva Dunphy: Something that has made being a member of this team so special is that, since we joined the team, it has always felt like one big family. I’ve been on a lot of different teams, but I’ve never been on one that has been as loving, supportive and close as the the one this program has cultivated.
Caroline Knapp: When we are together we try not to separate by class, which is a huge positive of our team. We all hang out and joke around with each other, and it is unimportant what year someone is. Over the past few years, older players always emphasized that everyone must have space to have her voice heard, so that every individual feels like she has a place, no matter if she is a first-year, sophomore, junior, or senior. I feel like I’m always learning from my teammates, regardless of their year.
Lauren Schweppe: Our coaching staff, led by Coach [Katharine] DeLorenzo is the heart and soul of the team. DeLo is more than a coach to her players. Throughout my four years on the team she has always put emphasis on fulfilling our potential as people and not just as athletes.
Carson Peacock: Having the opportunity to play for Coach DeLorenzo has taught me more about how to be the kind of person that I want to be than anything else. She is unyieldingly dedicated to the game and this team and she pours herself wholeheartedly into each season. She has taught me about passion, hard work, and attention to detail; how to lead by example, how to expect results from those working with me, and what it means to work and operate within a team. She has showed me how I can create the kind of relationships that I want and has helped me to understand the kind of person that I want to be.
I know that all of the seniors are so incredibly grateful for her expertise, love and support and that it would have been a completely different team and an entirely different four years without her.
On their historic 2017 championship run:
Peacock: This season felt different than any other. Like every year, we went into the season hungry for a championship. However, I would say that it wasn’t until after about halfway through the season that we realized how good we were and how serious of a shot we had.
I distinctly remember talking to Audrey [Quirk] and commenting on the fact that we were going to win it all, that we just knew somehow, a kind of feeling that we had never had before. And I think a lot of that feeling came from how the team approached the game this season.
While many teams were eager and enthusiastic to take us down, our team was never concerned with how other teams saw us. We knew and treated every game as if it would be competitive. There was an attention to detail that was wholly embraced by the entire team, and this made us seniors, as leaders of the team, feel more confident in this team than we had ever felt before.
Annie Leonard: What’s most exciting about the postseason is that previous games, records, and statistics are irrelevant: the team that shows up to play is the one that will come out ahead. When November rolled around, we were a totally different team than we were in pre-season, and even than we were in our last regular season game.
We found our rhythm on the field and there was an energy and feeling of connectedness with our passes and set plays that is almost indescribable.
In postseason, nothing is guaranteed, but the team thrives under that constant pressure and it brings out the best in us. Knowing the end goal and how badly we all wanted it maintained our focus. We never let any circumstances affect our game; it was mental toughness that propelled us forward.
On the 2017 NCAA Championship match, a 4–0 victory over reigning national champion Messiah:
Leonard: As seniors, having the opportunity to play our last collegiate game on a beautiful field against the team that ended our season last year, and for the championship title, there wasn’t really much else we could ask for. The circumstances were beyond perfect.
There were definitely some butterflies going into the game, but more for excitement than nerves. In the end, we were looking to play the best game of field hockey we’ve ever played, and we did just that, both on an individual and team level.
Statistically speaking, the game was evenly split, but we capitalized on our opportunities, which allowed us to maintain pressure on our opponents up until the 70th minute.
Winning the game, it was a feeling of pure joy, of happiness, of accomplishment, and of pride. Especially as seniors, we knew what it felt like to win a national championship and wanted nothing more than for our underclassmen to experience that same incredible feeling. For us, to have and share that feeling one more time is particularly special.
On what they hope to have left behind, and the teammates who will carry the standard:
Knapp: The legacy that I hope we leave behind is one of passion, drive, compassion, and support, not just within the realm of athletics but also in life. Being a great field hockey player alone is not what has made this team so wonderful to be on and successful, though that is obviously a piece of it, but rather it is being around supportive teammates, who want to hear how your day was, want to know how you are doing, and want to lift you up.
That support will continue to be a part of the core of this team and benefit each member. I know that I’ve benefited greatly from this support system and can only help that I have given back to my teammates, what they have given me.
Dunphy: The program is headed in such a good direction — there is so much talent and the returning players are an amazing group of players and people. The rising seniors are already great team leaders. They’ll do a great job instilling the values important to MCFH in the incoming group of first-years and setting an example for the rest of the team.
Schweppe: As seniors, we couldn’t have asked for a better group of underclassmen. I know their energy and love for the team and for field hockey will carry over in years to come. The advice I would give to the underclassmen is to value and enjoy your time on this team, because it’s truly a special experience.
I wish I could do it all over again.
(Unfortunately, we were unable to reach Quirk, but we have it on good word that she agrees with her teammates on the above.)
(11/29/17 11:57pm)
After a tense town hall meeting in Mead Chapel on Wed., Nov. 8, students and administrators continue to work to address the issues that face the Middlebury Community. The town hall, which was co-sponsored by President Laurie Patton, the Student Government Association (SGA) and the Black Student Union (BSU), came in the wake of several racially charged incidents including violent graffiti in a classroom and a case of alleged racial profiling. SGA President Jin Sohn ’18, who helped organize the event, said she feels that the town hall was “able to serve its purpose for some people and not for others” because everybody attended the meeting with different hopes and expectations. “Some members of our community came to the meeting looking for answers Senior Leadership Group (SLG), while others came to voice their opinions and provide personal testimonies to the racial tensions on campus, and others may have come to listen and learn,” she said.
Sohn was heartened to see so many people in attendance. “The most important thing we can do as a community is to show up,” she said. “That is the only way that we’ll be able to actually learn from one another and try to understand what members of our community are experiencing.”
However, Sohn also acknowledged that not everybody could attend the meeting, both because of time constraints and because of the emotional toll that events such as the town hall can take. “I understand that some students couldn’t attend because of other priorities or simply because the nature of these conversations are very draining,” she said. “I respect both and other situations, and I still firmly believe that there are multiple ways to contribute to efforts and to engage in ways that might not be in the typical form of conversations.”
Vee Duong ’19 attended the meeting, and she agrees that events such as this one can be emotionally exhausting for students. She also pointed out that many students showed up to speak, despite the challenges. “We witnessed the brave vulnerability of students who are already facing intense emotional and mental burdens from the events of this semester and those passed,” she said. To Duong, this meeting was emblematic of the wider dynamic between students and administrators. “On one hand, we have strong and courageous students putting their emotional and mental health on the line in order to voice their opinions about the racialized systems that are repeatedly, relentlessly inflicting harm upon them,” she said. “On the other hand, we have ‘the College,’ who is beginning to hear these distressed voices, to slowly put real faces to the damage and hurt that is caused by a system that is hundreds of years old, and [who] can only approach the problem with a doubled sense of half-defensiveness, half-humility.”
Duong appreciated the thoughtful questions that students raised over the course of the town hall, and she spoke at the town hall about the burden that falls on cultural organizations to educate the student body.
“Students in these organizations have taken on the burden of peer-to-peer education in order to cultivate an understanding for the experiences of marginalized groups on this campus,” she said.
Many administrators also attended the town hall to answer questions and listen to concerns. Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández said his biggest takeaway from the meeting was that the administration has to work harder to make all students feel comfortable. “I’d say that the message heard loud and clear is that the administration is not doing enough to improve the experience of students of color on campus and that there needs to be more training for all students, staff, and faculty,” he said.
Fernández reiterated that there are trainings in the works, but he also said that the administration alone cannot fix the situation.
“I understand the finger-pointing at the administration, but no matter how many people we ‘train,’ the administration alone is not going to solve all the issues. It has to be the work of everyone,” he said. “I’m not trying to burden students of color with more. I’m talking about everyone. At the conversation at Mead, we heard stories of inappropriate images, comments, or words in classrooms where the sole student of color waited for someone to speak up and was frustrated when no one else did. No matter how many training sessions we do, the administration will not be able to force those classmates to stand up and say something.”
Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor echoed Fernández’s desire to create an environment where students of color feel comfortable and included. Taylor mentioned several student advisory groups she has been meeting with to help incorporate student feedback into these efforts.
“To continue our shared work in a collaborative and transparent manner, we recently formed a student advisory group for the Dean of Students Office,” she said. “We have been meeting every Tuesday evening to discuss issues that are on students’ minds.” Taylor also said she is working with students to gather feedback on the college’s handbook.
Moving forward, outgoing Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of the College Katy Smith Abbott mentioned administrative efforts to enact restorative justice practices. “Over 50 students, staff, and faculty are signed up to participate in a three-day training in December and my expectation is that a steering group responsible for guiding additional trainings and implementation will emerge from that first cohort of participants,” she said.
Duong feels that our community needs to address the questions that students raised, and mentioned a questions few specifically, including: How do we increase transparency? How can we get actual timelines and dates made for the implementation of desired programs and initiatives? Can we create a better communication route between the greater student body and the college? She suggested several potential solutions for communication, including using the SGA to reach administrators and reviving the “We the MiddKids,” petition site.
The SGA created a form so that students can give feedback to the administration, which they emailed to all students after the event.
“This feedback form is crucial for student engagement on voicing their opinions and concerns about the initiatives by the SLG and for the campus climate at large,” Sohn said. “Students can voice opinions on areas of accountability, markers of progress, student involvement, and transparency for the initiatives. Once feedback is collected, the SGA will move forward with presenting the information to respective members of the community and SLG, with possible legislation and recommendations stemming from the collected feedback as well.”
Sohn also noted that the several members of SGA and BSU have been working on a resolution about a set of recommendations to the administration for institutional support for minority students on campus. This resolution is on the SGA website at go/sga.
(11/16/17 1:14am)
What do state politics, design, racial identity, and linguistics have to tell us about self-discovery and loss? Six speakers posed—and answered—those questions and many more on Saturday at the eighth annual TEDxMiddlebury conference held in Mahaney Center for the Arts.
With nothing but a projector behind them and a rug under their feet, à la traditional TED, these speakers brought their unique and varied backgrounds to the stage to speak to this year’s theme, “Lost and Found.” The theme centered around the stories and memories that shape each person’s understanding of the world, and the reshaping of those narratives that can occur throughout one’s life.
“[It] is about the perpetual discovery and rediscovery that is essential to our existence as human beings,” the event organizers wrote. “It calls us to remember people, places, words, and histories we have left behind or taken for granted, but simultaneously invites us to reclaim, reshape, and reconstruct what we know.”
Since the conference was founded in 2010, it has been entirely run by a board of nine students. The students spend from March through November planning everything from recruiting speakers, to choosing a theme, to catering, to tech. According to the board, the conference’s success has only grown in the past few years.
“As a board member for the past three years, it amazes me to see how much our student org has grown and continues to grow. This was the first TEDxMiddlebury event to sell out and it was the first to have ASL interpretation and accessibility copies available to attendees,” said Natalie Figueroa ’18, a board member.
This year’s speakers were Daniel Erker, Lecia Brooks, Michael Jager, Attica Scott, Nia Robinson ’19, and Rana Abdelhamid ’15. Each speaker took the stage for exactly 18 minutes to share their experiences of the feeling of being lost and the beauty of finding purpose once again.
The first speaker of the morning, linguist Daniel Erker, spoke about the power of language as a way to help people find their way in life. Some see language as a barrier between different races and nationalities, but Erker sees language as a bridge to be crossed, and one that can facilitate human connection rather than inhibit it. Language can particularly offer solutions to the 30 million immigrants who live in the U.S., who are often seen as facing an inability to assimilate due to language difficulties, or, “The Hispanic Challenge.”
“What if someone told you that in our country there was a large group of people who lacked the desire to use language this way, or that there were millions of people who willfully ignored the urge to linguistically connect with their fellow Americans? You would likely and this surprising, if not simply difficult to believe. But this is precisely what some very influential and powerful individuals are asking to you believe when it comes to Americans who were born outside of the United States and then at some point later in life, moved to this country,” Erker said.
Erker used data that he and several other linguists collected from Spanish speakers in New York City and Boston to show how “The Hispanic Challenge” is not empirically supported, and immigrants are actually becoming increasingly proficient in English and using it even more than Spanish in some instances.
“The Hispanic Challenge is not real, nor is any other challenge claiming that a particular immigrant group is unwilling, unable, or unmotivated to linguistically connect to the people who live in the communities around them,” he said.
Erker finished by urging students to keep this newfound linguistic discovery close to their hearts: language is a bridge, not a barrier.
Nia Robinson ‘19, the only student speaker and the winner of the 2017 student speaker competition, gave the penultimate TED talk, reminding us “we are not as lost as we think we are.”
Robinson spoke about how being black in predominantly white spaces made her feel out of place growing up, and how she struggled to accept her own identity.
“I knew I wasn’t supposed to like myself, so I didn’t. I remember trying to pour bleach on myself to make me lighter. It didn’t work. I remember scrubbing as hard as I could because people told me I was covered in dirt. As a result, I have very soft skin, but it left me with deep invisible scars,” Robinson said.
Moving forward, Robinson told the audience, took a mix of emotional and generational memory. Emotional memory is a remembrance that triggers deeply felt emotions from the past.
“Each time someone called me the wrong name, sent me death threats, or told me I was pretty for a black girl, it was all familiar, but it would hurt more because I would remember each time it happened before,” Robinson said.
Generational memory, as Robinson defines it, is “how history affects generations…[where] we find solutions to problems that already exist somewhere.” She explained how past generations' wisdom could be applied to today, using education as an example. How can we fix the problems of poverty and segregation facing our education system, except by looking to where those problems originated?
Still, Robinson said, sometimes it seems like we can’t use memory to solve everything. However, she said: “When the two poles are pulling and my memories are at odds, I realize they both are part of me, so I can’t go wrong.”
These and the four other speakers taught the audience about lost and found through the diverse lenses of racism, creativity, politics, and more, helping to realize a wonderful event in the process.
The TEDxMiddlebury board hopes the community takes with them these lessons about what it means to be lost and found:
“[Lost and Found] makes space for both grief and joy, fate and intention, exile and belonging, context and abstraction. Most of all, it asks that we rethink our narratives of time and progress as we navigate our individual and collective past, present, and future.”
(11/16/17 12:44am)
In a class last week, I co-led a discussion on “Travesties,” Tom Stoppard’s play partly inspired by “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Being the studious student I am, I brought with me “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde” in case I needed to reference his work and/or pretend to be more well-read than I am.
As I pulled the book out of my backpack and threw it on the table, without thinking I said, “I brought the Bible!” One classmate half-chuckled.
Though my remark was made in jest, the more I thought about it, the more it felt like the truth. Having been raised without religion, for me, the Bible is just another book. So, my self-proclaimed joke about Wilde got me thinking, “What is my Bible?”
It could be Wilde’s collected works. His essays and novel have informed my view of art more than any other, and “The Importance of Being Earnest” is more or less the reason I study drama. But what else could it be?
Perhaps it is “United States: Essays 1952–1992,” Gore Vidal’s gargantuan collection of essays, which, to my mind, is the gold standard for U.S. political commentary. Whether you agree with Vidal’s views doesn’t matter, he is a master craftsman and the first writer I turn to for perspective on the 20th century. As much as I admire Vidal and treasure his body of work, his essays can’t be my Bible, can they?
If I were to answer the question ironically, I suppose my Bible could be “God Is Not Great” by Christopher Hitchens, the writer whose words first made me feel comfortable in my lifelong disbelief.
Maybe it’s “Harry Potter,” the series to which I have the strongest emotional connection, the books that first taught me about friendship, perseverance and loss.
Last week, as part of an internship application, I was asked to name my favorite book. I went with my gut reaction: “In Cold Blood.” It’s one I discovered after a rough first semester at Middlebury, when I ordered a stack of books from Amazon. Truman Capote’s seminal piece of new journalism was packaged on top, so I read it. I now have a personal connection to the novel because it came at a time when I needed to temporarily leave our world for a different one.
And that’s the one thing all these books, and others, and some I have yet to find, have in common: They’ve been there for me when I needed them, when I needed guidance, reaffirmation or to escape. They’re my Bibles.
(11/16/17 12:32am)
MIDDLEBURY — After reinventing the space and installing a prominent new bar, Rough Cut opened its doors last Saturday, Nov. 11, at 51 Main’s old site. The new space, adorned with brick walls, wooden trim and hanging light fixtures, provides a warm atmosphere and an amber glow.
After nine years of operation, the college sold 51 Main to Ben Wells, owner of the Marquis Theatre for the past three years. Wells noticed a lack of Southern comfort food in the area and has swept in to fix that. Wells has managed restaurants in Boston, Jackson, Wyoming, and Boulder, Colorado, and has now taken on the prominently featured space on Main Street.
Since taking on the Marquis, Wells has made a notable effort to make the theater an integral part of the community. He says that he hopes to do the same with Rough Cut.
“One of my philosophies with the restaurant is that the word ‘restaurant’ actually comes from the old French word ‘to restore,’” Wells said. “People enjoy going out and having a fun time in a positive, warm, energetic environment.”
Wells is hoping to reinvent the lower level of the restaurant, too. The College had used the downstairs for storage and office space, but Wells plans to eventually repurpose the space into a performance venue.
The team has been experimenting with different types of wood and spices for their selection of smoked barbecued meat. The restaurant also emphasizes its beers and bourbon cocktails. The bar features as many as 12 beers on tap and has created a batch of specialty cocktails.
As the restaurant establishes itself in the coming weeks, Wells intends to bring some more vitality to Main Street. “It’s really important to me — small town, small communities,” Wells said. “If we as community members and business owners aren’t involved, then who is?”
(11/16/17 12:02am)
After a thrilling season filled with ups than downs, the women’s soccer team’s 2017 campaign came to a close in the second round of the NCAA tournament this past weekend.
Playing at the field of regional host MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Panthers opened the 64-team tournament with a 1–0 victory over the Western Connecticut State Colonials on Saturday, Nov. 11.
The next day, the team squared off against the Engineers in what promised to be an exciting match as it featured two top-25 teams (No. 13 MIT and No. 17 Middlebury). There was added intrigue, as well, given that it was the Panthers who eliminated MIT from NCAAs in the first round of the 2016 tournament. This time, however, it was the Engineers who outdid the Panthers. After 90 minutes of tenacious soccer from both teams, MIT emerged with a 1–0 victory to send Middlebury home with a final record of 12–4–2.
After getting bounced from the Nescac tournament in the first round three weeks ago, the Panthers found themselves waiting at home while the conference championship concluded the next weekend. Even though they didn’t yet have the assurance that they’d even be invited to the NCAA tournament, Middlebury was hungry for revenge: they went above and beyond in their preparation to put themselves in the best possible position to succeed.
When they did get the call for the NCAA tournament, they were ready, according to Alex Barber ’19:
“MWS came into the NCAAs sharp and ready to play. Even though we didn’t get to compete in the last weekend of the Nescac tournament, we took no time off and instead played a full inter-squad match on that Saturday. We had an intense week of practice leading up to the first weekend of NCAAs, including a 6:30 a.m. practice and a training session at UVM.
“We don’t mess around when it comes to the NCAAs because we know how great of an opportunity it is and how fierce the competition is. It’s all about how bad you want it, and we consistently battle to show it.”
Their preparedness was more than evident in Saturday’s matchup against Western Connecticut St.
Although the Panthers only ended up winning by one goal, the details of the box score offer a little more insight as to how the game really went.Middlebury dominated the game in terms of possession and managed 19 shots to Western Connecticut State’s nine. Some of the negative statistics even pointed to a dominant Panther team: the fact that Middlebury was flagged for offside violations seven times to the Colonials’ one was indicative of how much more time the ball spent on their opponent’s half of the field.
Barber felt that Saturday’s matchup against the Colonials was a high point in the Panthers’ season, at least in terms of their performance.
“We played technically sharp from the beginning and kept the ball on their half for most of the game, creating continuous scoring opportunities for ourselves,” Barber said. “Defensively, we kept their best player from having any dangerous attacking opportunities. I think that game was some of the best soccer we played all season.”
Barber was involved in Middlebury’s best scoring opportunity of the first half when she directed a corner kick into the penalty box around the 27-minute mark. Alissa Huntington ’18 got her head on the cross, but the Colonials’ keeper managed to fend off the attempt with a diving save.
The Panthers, keeping the crowd on their toes, ended up waiting until the 83rd minute to convert on one of their many scoring opportunities. Clare Robinson ’19 crossed a ball to Barber in Colonial territory, who, in turn, found Virginia Charman ’20 with a beautiful one-touch pass. Charman didn’t waste the opportunity. She laced the ball into the upper-left corner of the net to give Middlebury the deciding 1–0 lead. The Colonials made one last attempt that ricocheted off the crossbar in the 86th minute, allowing the Panthers held on for the 1–0 victory to advance to the second round.
Facing an MIT team on Sunday that had just stomped Castleton 7–2 a day before, Middlebury nevertheless felt ready for what their opponent was going to bring.
“Having played MIT in the first round last year,” Barber explained, “we know what kind of team they are and how they like to play. They play technical and pretty soccer, just how we like to play. Both teams had lots of scoring opportunities and it was a very exciting game, but ultimately, we were unable to find the back of the net in time to score a goal and tie it up.
“MIT is a great team, and we finished the game with our heads held high, knowing that we are a great soccer team that had a fantastic season.”
Head coach Peter Kim didn’t feel that the team came out flat on Sunday or that they were dealing with a victory hangover, either.
“We were capable of winning both games this weekend, to be sure,” Kim said. “Unfortunately, we had difficulty finishing goals this season, and that ended up being the story of the match on Sunday. We created plenty of chances to score, and should’ve finished a few more than we did.”
Middlebury led Sunday’s match in shot attempts, 11–10, but only managed to put two of those on target to the Engineers’ five. Once MIT scored what was to be the only goal of the game in the 22nd minute, the Panthers found themselves playing a frustrating game of catch-up for the rest of the match, colored by shot attempt after shot attempt that seemed to miss by just inches.
In the first half, Eliza Robinson ’21 had a free kick sail high and a second attempt corralled by the MIT goalie in the span of a minute. Eliza Van Voorhis ’21 connected with a header from a Barber corner-kick but missed over the crossbar. In the second half, Robinson had another attempt sail just over the top of the goal. Although possession went back and forth, the Panthers were mostly held away from the Engineers’ penalty box. When the official’s whistled sounded to signal MIT’s 1–0 victory, Middlebury’s season was over.
On the whole, Kim had some very positive things to offer about the Panthers’ season.
“I’ll remember this season as one of resiliency,” Kim said. “We suffered setbacks in a few key games that we felt we should have won, but those results only strengthened our resolve.
“I’m impressed by how we battled back and earned a NCAA tournament berth, then played some excellent soccer in Cambridge. We out-possessed and outshot Western Connecticut St. by a large margin and pinned MIT in their own half for significant portions of the game.
“It was a heartbreaking way to finish the year,” Kim said, “but the final result doesn’t take away from the effort the players put in. Hopefully younger players learned how hard they have to work in order to succeed, both individually and as a team. As for the seniors, they are largely responsible for the resiliency that this team showed. While a Nescac run would have been fitting for them, they can be very proud of the team that they built. They left a lasting legacy and will be sorely missed.”
Barber looked back on the season just as fondly, if not even more so — largely thanks to the close relationships she developed with her teammates over its course.
“Since we graduated 11 seniors last year, it was important to reassess our personnel and figure out who was going to fill important roles on the team that were vacated,” Barber said. “I was consistently blown away by the amount of talent on this team, and how deep our bench is. We didn’t just play with 11 starters the whole season, we played with everyone.”
But she saved her most touching words for her teammates about to graduate: Huntington, Maddie Morgan ’18, Emma Shumway ’18 and Rebecca Palacios ’18.
“Our four seniors have given our team and the soccer program endless dedication, heart and laughs,” Barber said. “They have showed us what it means to work for something you want badly and win, and what it looks like to smile and be grateful in the face of defeat. Alissa, Maddie, Emma and Becca are such special and intelligent individuals, and we will miss them so much as they go off to do amazing things with their lives.”
(11/14/17 7:19pm)
College president Laurie Patton sent a school wide email on Wed., Nov. 8, inviting students, faculty and staff, to a town hall the following day, Nov. 9.
“It is clear to me and, I believe, to many of you, that the essential bond of trust and assumption of good intentions that should unite us is broken,” she wrote. You can access the email here.
Co-sponsored by the Black Student Union and the Student Government Association, the audience filled Wilson Hall to capacity, causing event organizers to move the event to Mead Chapel. At the event, which was monitored by SGA and BSU members, students had the opportunity to ask administrators direct questions.
Below is a full transcript of the meeting, which has been edited for clarity. Please look for further analysis of the event in our issue after Thanksgiving Break. This transcription was done by features editors Sarah Asch and James Finn. Editor-at-large Elizabeth Zhou and managing editor Will DiGravio helped edit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO6XMI8V1oI&t=1749s
Jin Sohn (’18, SGA President): "SGA would like to acknowledge the presence of everyone in this room, and to thank you for taking the time to join us, together, as a community for an imperative conversation on respect and inclusivity. Over the past week, members of the SGA student cabinet have been working to support the student body in light of the recent painful and alienating events and dialogues. Likewise, many cultural orgs including BSU and other student activists have been working overtime to support students. We want to recognize those efforts especially because they were led by students from marginalized backgrounds. Today's conversation is not a solution in itself. But it can and must lead to transformations on our campus. We are here today because, in whatever way, we care. We care about our friends, we care about our peers, we care about our community. Please let us join together in that shared core value in order to foster change on our campus. In order to make this discourse constructive, active, and supportive of everyone, we are requesting that all comments, observations, and questions be respectful. We would like to encourage individuals to acknowledge their own identities and privileges when speaking. Please acknowledge the role and position with which you inherently enter this conversation. Further, while this event is crucial in providing a voice for students who are affected by the actions of others on this campus, it is important to remember that active listening is meaningful and important to engage with others in this room. Please listen and wait until someone finishes speaking before wanting to speak so that we can be respectful of all that is being said. To encourage collaboration and abolish any hierarchies present today, we will be limiting questions and answers to two minutes each. Additionally, to be conscious of everyone's time, we will be ending this event promptly at 6 pm. Ultimately, for the SGA, the goal of this meeting today is both to facilitate learning and listening in our community and to work toward establishing active next steps that students, faculty, staff, and administrators can collaborate on and be held accountable for. This is not the first conversation. It likely will not be the last. The point is that we all, all of us, are trying, and by simply being here today are actively working to change. Thank you, and I will now hand over the mic to President Patton for her to speak on her hopes for this event and then Wengel Kifle will provide some background and context on the current campus climate. Once the floor has been opened for conversation, Ishrak Alam, the SGA chief of staff, Annie Cowan, the SGA deputy chief of staff, and Rae Aaron, the SGA speaker, will ensure that a single voice is heard at a time by distributing a microphone. Finally, we recognize that these are really difficult issues, and if anyone needs to step out of the room or take care of themselves, please do so."
Patton: "Thank you so much. I'm really, really pleased to see everyone here. Thank you for being here, thank you for hanging in and staying in the difficult conversation. I want, particularly, to thank student leadership, particularly BSU and SGA for hosting this event, and we really look forward to hearing the voices of the members of all of our communities. We are in new territory at Middlebury, where we need to begin building a new kind of community, one that includes voices that we either have not heard or only partially heard. There are so many ways that such communities need to be built and the first is to give voice to experience. We want to pay attention to structures that cannot give voice to that experience, the economic, social and status hierarchies that limit us. Because of acts of racial bias on this campus and in this town, many students, faculty and staff have called us to account and are hurting. And while we are in new territory of trying to build a new kind of community, we are also in very old, unacknowledged territory. Part of Middlebury's unspoken story includes our acting according to racial stereotypes, acting in ways that serve to alienate. We have not acknowledged that enough. I want to acknowledge that hurt. I am deeply sorry that members of our community are in pain, and that people feel they have not been heard by the administration. It is our job to make better structures and more equitable relationships where voices can be heard and where people feel that they belong. It is our job to make a more inclusive public square where not just individual acts of bias but structural racism can be addressed and challenged. Middlebury can and should be a challenging place where we experience intellectual discomfort, and part of that discomfort includes listening to unheard voices better. For students who live here at Middlebury for only four years, this can take on a particular sense of urgency. We are working on many ways to address this and look forward to sharing those with you, but most importantly, today we need your help and creativity and thoughts. We also look forward, as Jin said, to follow up conversations from this one, to continue to visit student groups in dining halls, commons houses and other meeting spaces such as AFC, and to continue to move forward with concrete actions and timelines where we can work together both what our community is and what our community means to us. Together, I do believe with all the hard work we can build a new Middlebury. Thank you for bringing your voices to help begin that task today."
Charles Rainey (’19): "Hello everyone, thank you guys so much for coming today. I really appreciate and it really warms my heart to see this many people in this building to come and talk about some of the hard issues that are affecting racial minorities, particularly black students, on our campus. My name is Charles Rainey. I serve as president of the BSU this year, and what we hope to create through this conversation is a way for black students and racial minorities and other marginalized groups to be able to voice concerns about things that have really been festering on this campus for a long time. A lot of students have been jaded and have been really, really scared, really frightened and upset and we hope that this space is allowed not only for solution oriented steps to prevent a lot of the things that have been happening on campus, but also to serve as a forum where people can express their truest and deepest feelings about a lot of those things as well. We want to center this conversation by bringing up Wengel Kifle, who has prepared some remarks to share with you guys today. Thank you.
Wengel Kifle (’20): "Thank you so much for coming. When we discuss the current state of our campus, it's important to keep in mind what happened this past spring. Many students voiced deep and urgent pleas to Middlebury concerning not only Charles Murray, but also the deeply ingrained institutional and social aspects of Middlebury that do not make it a welcoming and inclusive space for students of color. After the start of this semester, there have been more events that have made students of color feel uncomfortable and unsafe. These events include the racial profiling of Addis; violent and explicit images and messages on chalkboards in Munroe directed toward Addis, racial profiling of a black female professor, harassment of black women on campus, faculty and students alike, and daily incidents, big or small, that students have to deal with in and out of the classroom in such white spaces. Personally, this semester has taken an extreme toll on me and my mental health. I found it impossible to have the motivation to survive my schedule and everything else Middlebury threw my way. And the lack of action by the greater community and the school in general to say 'we see you and we will fight for you' was all the more crippling. And I couldn't help but ask myself: why am I expected to give my best to a school and a community that was clearly not giving me its best? I hope that after today, that people that share my narrative can go away with seeing that administration and this school is recognizing them and is finally going to address these issues. Thank you.
Ishrak Alam (’18): "Thank you, Wengel, for your comments. We are going to open it up now to everyone -- we're going to have two mics upstairs and one down here."
Sohn: "If everyone can just be respectful of the two-minute rule. And also, faculty, administrators, students, everyone in this community, please feel free to weigh in and speak. If you could raise your hand if you'd like the mic, we can come to you."
Madeleine Bazemore (’19): "Hi, my name is Madeleine Bazemore and I'm a junior at Middlebury. I was in a meeting yesterday with some students activists...members here of the SGA, President Patton and some other administrators. We talked a lot about moving forward on campus, and something really concerning happened in that meeting. Our Title IX coordinator said that she didn't believe that white supremacy existed, was in her office or in the decision that was made regarding Addis in racial profiling. And I think the refusal of this campus and this administration to admit that white supremacy is present is very concerning. And I think that -- I don't even know how to address that, to have to take the time to explain what white supremacy is to a white woman felt like such a waste of time. Like, why are we having this meeting if I have to explain something so basic? Now, I don't know how to move forward with that, with the refusal that white supremacy exists, and because of that refusal that Addis will not receive an apology for being racially profiled."
Patton: "Yeah, thank you, Maddie. I did say that white supremacy existed, so I just want to make sure that there is a correct narrative. I would say, the really important thing that is true, structural racism exists and it exists at Middlebury. White supremacy, a way of being in the world, where the heritage is that white people have built something where they are unconscious of their own perspectives and unconscious of the way that they take up space, those are absolutely present at Middlebury. So that's a really important thing that I want to make sure I say, and that I said yesterday. And the other thing, in terms of the question, if we mean conduct that is based on or motivated by someone's personal characteristic that creates a hostile work environment, Middlebury is absolutely a place where that happens. Racism exists at Middlebury. Structural racism exists at Middlebury, and we have to work together to move forward to change that. And in our system, there is that conduct...or any other violation of our non-discrimination policies, we will act upon it and we have acted upon it. And we have a well-developed system in place to deal with those situations. The hard part of this conversation is that we can't apologize based on a narrative that wasn't supported by an investigation. I myself as a president have no part of that investigation. I want to make sure that's clear to everybody. So I don't know.... I didn't know that this investigation was going on. The reason why that office is independent is because they could investigate me, and that's really important for everyone to know. I want to say very clearly here, we are moving towards restorative practices as a culture, particularly in student life. And I and other members, individual members of SLG, are willing to sit with anyone -- anyone -- in a restorative practices circle, with trained facilitators, that acknowledges harm. I will sit with anyone [for] as long as it takes, in as many restorative practice circles as it takes, to change this community. And I would welcome any request to do that."
Sohn: "This is a quick announcement. We're also aware that some people might not be comfortable speaking up on a microphone, so we're gonna pass around some index cards if you'd rather pose a question that way. And then one of the students here can help ask that question. Thanks."
Liz Dunn (’18): "Going along with the point that President Patton just made, if there is white supremacy and structural racism at Middlebury, and if that is present in the Title IX Office, and if the investigation found that there was no evidence that Addis was racially profiled, does that not draw into question the investigative practices that Middlebury uses, and the standards that are currently in place? And is there any direct way to address that and to change that?
Patton: "Is our Title IX person here? I think there are a couple of things that probably should get clarified. The first is — and thank you, Liz, for your question — the fact that we need to always think about structural racism that we have, that doesn't mean that we don't stand by the integrity of the work that we've done, and that's the hard piece of this. And I need, as a president, and I do, as a president, stand by the integrity of the work that was done... Again, standing in restorative practice circles is part of acknowledging all of the different impacts for all of us here. But it's really important that even if there is a constant need for us to look at making the systems better, we still have to abide by the integrity of the process that exists here now."
Sue Ritter, Title IX Coordinator: "So I'm in a difficult position here because I can't discuss much of what I did in terms of the investigation that we did. I also completely reject the characterization that was just given of my office, and will continue to reject that. I have spent since 2008 here working really hard to make sure that the investigations that we do are free of bias, that they're fair, that they are full and fair investigations done by trained experts. My job is to be the guardian of our anti-discrimination policy. If I thought that this operation that I'm overseeing was grounded in white supremacist principles, I wouldn't be here. So people are going to have their opinions. I understand that. And I know I'm going to get blasted for everything that I'm about to say, but I am very confident in the people that conducted this investigation and worked extremely hard to make sure that all of the evidence was being considered in a careful and thorough and fair way. I don't know what else to say about that. And to get the response that I'm getting, that I don't have an understanding of what white supremacy is, in this context, is insulting. I didn't speak in that meeting yesterday because I was too flabbergasted to speak. I understand that people are entitled to their opinions. I have offered and will continue to offer to talk to anyone about the language of our policy and the process that we follow and will always be open to suggestions about how we can make it better. I never want to exclude somebody from coming into my office and saying, 'hey, this is language I think you ought to include,' 'this is language that I think you should take out.' I welcome anyone to look at the anti-harassment policy at any time and tell me what they think and I'm probably over my time speaking. But it's hard for me to stand here and speak without looking defensive, but I'm very confident in the work that we do, the work that we've been doing for ten years and the office that we've built. And that's all I have to say."
Rainey: "Hi, I'm Charles Rainey. I have a question. Sue, thank you so much for the contribution to the conversation. I am personally curious about how many people of color were involved in the investigation process and making this determination that came out of your office. And I think that that's a very important question to get us to understand what influences and what overwhelming perspectives may be in the office that may impact what the perception of the reality of the situation is in this regard... and creating definitions of what racial profiling is when there are no people — racial minorities in the room. And that may not be the case, but I just want to know — specifically, the question is: how many people of color were involved with this determination?"
Ritter: "Charles, I just want to make sure I understand the question. Are you saying how many people of color were interviewed in connection with the investigation? Is that what you're asking?"
Rainey: "So I think my question is not necessarily interviewed -- in terms of the process, the members of the administration who made the decision on what the determination is, how many, if any, were people of color?"
Ritter: "I have two people that work for me; they're both white. Is that what you're asking me?"
Rainey: "Yes."
Ritter: "Yes, so one was the investigator and one was the adjudicator. Correct."
Rainey: "Right. And I don't want to go over my time and I don't want to take up too much space in this conversation -- but I think my point in making this is that -- you know, what effect does the overwhelming whiteness in terms of the people who were involved in the determination have on the conclusion? And do you think personally that that may have affected what is going on here in terms of what the determination is?"
Ritter: "If I personally thought that, we would be having a different conversation. So I don't think it had an effect, no."
Shatavia Knight (’20): "On the idea that there are three white people in the Title IX office, I want to talk about the idea of administration. And one thing that I learned in my high school is that you can't be what you can't see. And there are very, very few professors of color here on campus. And so as a black female here, it's very hard for me to be in an environment where everyone says 'you can go on, you can be successful, you can learn a lot from your Middlebury experience' when I don't have many examples of, you know, black professors here on campus. And I wanted to know what Middlebury is trying to do about that, because I know that if I was to go into academia, Middlebury wouldn't be one of the schools that was on my list to get hired to. And I want to know what the administration is doing about that, to get more professors of color here so that students like myself don't feel like they're learning about race from white professors, and they're not learning about problems in society that they probably haven't actually experienced themselves."
Miguel Fernández (Chief Diversity Officer): "Thank you, Shatavia. That's an excellent question. You're absolutely right. Our diversity efforts within the student body over the last 20 years have been quite successful. I was a student here in the early '80s and I look out across this room and I see lots of diversity present here, and that was definitely not the case in the '80s. Some people feel as though we have a long way to go, and I won't disagree with that, but there has been significant change in the student body. That process has not been nearly as quick in the faculty -- you're absolutely right. We have been working on that hard lately — let me explain a couple of things that we've been doing. Over the last two years, we've been working with outside consultants who have been coming in, and it's mandatory now for all the search committees that are searching to go through a series of four workshops to work on how to diversify their pool, how to learn about bias in the evaluation system, et cetera, how we are going to present ourselves in interviews, the kinds of questions we're asking and the kinds of signaling we're doing in our advertising, and working with all the departments in that way. We're producing data for the search committees and working very hard. This year was the first cohort that came from having worked with them, and it was possibly the most diverse entering class of faculty in recent memory that we've seen, and we hope that this will continue. One of the frustrations is that faculty turns over a lot slower than students and so it's a slower process, but we're really working hard there. Some of you are aware of the C3 program — that's the idea of bringing in post-docs. We're part of a consortium of liberal arts colleges. The diversity officers are working to bring post docs in, folks from underrepresented groups and first generation, and also working on different topics to bring some diversity to give them exposure to what a liberal arts college is like. We visit the research universities to talk to the the graduate students about what a career is like, because oftentimes advisors in grad school advise their advisees not to go to a liberal arts college. They have this misconception that it's only teaching, and they don't maintain their research. So we go to break those myths and try to get folks -- and we take colleagues from the faculty to go talk to them about what that experience is like, what it's like to teach at a liberal arts college to try to get them into the pipeline. So those are a couple of the efforts we're doing, a lot of efforts in that way to try to address that. But you're absolutely right."
Student, Unknown: "So I thought it was great that you talked about some of the training that certain administrators get, and I was wondering if that training — if the faculty, as well as the people in Title IX, also get that training?"
Fernández: "Yes, so that's a good question, too. So the search process — there isn't mandatory training right now, and that is something that we have been talking about that's been made very present. And I think that is something the discussions are going toward, to make it for faculty, staff, students and the administration. There is currently for staff and faculty a -- I would say a minor training... there's a bigger thing around sexual harassment and other things that also talks about bias and discrimination. And everybody has to go through that. It's not enough. And that's exactly the kinds of discussions we're in right now. What we've done is we've had a lot of opt-in types of things, and we also do sessions with the new faculty as they come in. But that is part of the ongoing conversation."
Jeff Holland (’19): "I have a question directed generally at the administration. I understand that there's a desire, even possibly a requirement, an obligation, to stand behind the integrity of the judicial process and also to maintain confidentiality about any processes that may be undergone. But also there has been a very blatant contradiction in the judicial process involving Addis that was pointed out in The Campus, which is the most widely read student-run media outlet we have. So I don't think that there's any way that it could be more widespread that there was a contradiction between the judicial officer who said there was no need to move the investigation further, and then later came the guilty verdict after that. And at the same time, that same article pointed out that there was an ample amount of evidence that Addis was not present at that event. So I'm just wondering -- I know you want to uphold the integrity of your judicial process, but at what point does that break down, when there's evidence in the most widely read student publication there is, pointing that there's been a contradiction and pointing out that there's evidence to the contrary of what the judicial officer said? Thanks."
Hannah Ross (General Counsel): "I am a lawyer and I am responsible for Middlebury's compliance with laws. We did a full, fair and thorough investigation over the summer in response to a student's complaint that an employee acted wrongly. We looked very seriously at the question of whether our employee had engaged in a violation of our anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policy. Commencing an investigation about employee misconduct does not start a student conduct case. There is no student conduct case that can be brought against a person who's not a student of Middlebury. The investigation came to a conclusion following our policy and our process. The facts, as we understand them, do not support the narrative. That's where we are. It's not a guilty verdict. There is no proceeding that remains pending, and as I said, there is no process that Middlebury engages in that relates to a student's behavior when that person is no longer enrolled at Middlebury. That doesn't happen."
Sam (’18): "My name is Sam and I'm a senior here. Uh, what if you were wrong? I didn't mean that in a rude way, but seriously, what if you were wrong? Because you're talking about this as if, since Addis doesn't go here anymore there's nothing more you can do, it's not your problem. But I don't think that's even the point of it because the public safety officer who racially profiled her is still here. That person is still here. People say that the same public safety officer racially profiled a professor on campus this fall, which is something that the administration has also not addressed in particular, except for some rhetoric. So my question is, where's the process -- is it in Title IX? Is it in the judicial office? Is it through legal counsel? -- that would actually seek to respond to the allegations made against that officer who's still employed."
Ross: "I certainly didn't mean my comments about the fact that there's no student conduct process that gets started against a person who's not enrolled as a student at Middlebury to suggest that because a student has graduated, we don't care about our alumni. That's not at all a reflection of what I said. What I was trying to say is, there is no action that Middlebury takes that can impose a guilty verdict on a person who's not a student of Middlebury. And the investigation's conclusion, as I assume a number of you have read in the statement that we posted on Monday in the newsroom, the investigation concluded based on a wide array of evidence, including 22 interviews of members of our community. That investigation concluded that our public safety officer told the truth and acted within our policies. That's where we are."
Zeke (’21): "I realize that as a white male coming from an upper-class background, I hope a different perspective in this conversation. But at the same time -- I haven't suffered any racial biases here and I don't mean to detract from the Addis conversation going on -- but in my short time here I've also noticed that there are some serious institutional barriers preventing diversity from growing on campus. I find that we've touted our Posse and First at Midd programs ant stuff like that, but those don't actually account for a great deal of diversity percentage-wise in the student body. So I have a question for the administration as a whole. How can we make this a safer and less homogenous environment for future students? Could we, say, make Middlebury test-optional in the admissions office or perhaps look at tuition prices, as we clearly need a certain percentage of the student body to pay full price to account for the financial aid that we offer to other students?"
Patton: "Thanks, Zeke. That's a great question. I should just say that I'm a white woman who comes from a privileged background. So, in terms of financial aid, financial aid is the number one priority for this administration, to create more financial aid for students of all backgrounds. And it really, really matters to me that we do that. The other part of the balance that we have to make all the time is around questions of — we are required by law to balance our budget, so we kind of have to do both things. We are now, in any given year, we are between 42 and 48 percent of students on financial aid. The average grant is about 45 or 46 thousand dollars. And so we are in the top 40 or 50 schools in terms of giving financial aid. That doesn't mean that we can't and should do better, which is why this past meeting of the trustees -- the number one thing we did on a retreat with the trustees is to say, we want in the next 10 years to get to a much, much higher percentage of students on financial aid. Just so you all are aware, it would take us raising 360 million dollars to get to 55 percentage of financial aid endowed so we could just give that to folks. We haven't set a goal yet. One of my first jobs is to push the trustees, my 36 bosses, to set a goal, and that's we are now pushing to do. The last campaign, in terms of raising money, was 500 million dollars, and it took about 10 years to raise that, and a lot of it went to different kinds of things. So there needs to be a real concerted effort. That's what it's going to take to do that, and that is my number priority. So that is where we want to go and I hope we can get there. I hope that -- one of the things that would be really great to hear from people about is thinking about this larger question of, how do we get the word out about where we are and who we are without folks feeling like all we're doing is PR or touting a rhetoric or that kind of stuff. If there's a more real way that we could communicate both where we've come but also how much farther we need to go, that would be greatly appreciated, because we need help on making sure that we communicate in a genuine way. I hope that answered your question. I would love your help in making this a reality over the next 10 years. Is Andi Lloyd here, by the way? Can you address the faculty issue that was raised?"
Andrea Lloyd (Vice President for Academic Affairs/Dean of Faculty): "About diversity?"
Patton: "No, about the faculty member."
Lloyd: "So there was an allegation of racial profiling made by a faculty member. That case was also investigated. There was a determination that there was not racial profiling in that case. Um, what else?
Sohn: So, we just want to be conscious of people who don't feel comfortable speaking up on the mic, so we have collected some notecards. If we can just read one, so that we can be fair in that way, that would be great. So, one of the questions, is: isn't it important to address specific incidents of racism on campus quickly? What do you mean by inclusivity? Oh, so those are two questions. Just a blanket statement to avoid talking specifics of people's experiences."
Karla Nuez (’19): "My question was, in the email sent out to students regarding this event, it was stated that the community was broken. My question is why is there a constant need to describe the Middlebury community as a homogenous one, when that in turn avoids that there are people on this campus that struggle. By calling it homogenous, you're completely disregarding those struggles. And I feel like that makes it seem like the administration doesn't know the students that can pay the 60k-plus to attend this college. And when I was at the board of trustees meeting dinner, I told the chair about the racial profiling cases, and she looked at me, baffled. I think that is a clear indication that the administration and the board of trustees do not know their students, do not know what is happening on campus, and if their job is to protect us I feel like they're not doing the greatest job."
Weston Uram (’18): "I grew up at Kenyon College, where my mother is a faculty member, and one of the things I admire most about Kenyon is the president. Shawn Decatur, also known as D-Cat among the students, is a fun, approachable president who loves to talk with the students about any topic they bring up. One of his best qualities is his ability to find an autonomous voice. He was never afraid to say what he thought even if it differed from the public stance of the college. I hope to ask a few questions that Laurie, as the person and not as the institution, could answer. I want to know if you think Addis was at the Charles Murray talk. I'm not asking what the college has said or what they have not said. I want to know what you believe. I want to know what you believe because I want to know why you call Addis a friend. I want to know why you and your administration would take the time to mail a framed photo of you and Addis together to her personal residence, but don't seem to take the time to acknowledge the pain and suffering you have caused her. I want to know why the administration has refused to mention Addis's name in relation to the racial profiling or in response to the violent imagery found on the chalkboards in Munroe. I want to know why a photo of Addis walking at commencement, cane in hand, is repeatedly being used as promotional material for graduation. And I want to know when the administration will stop using black bodies as simply props and advertisements, and when they will recognize them as real people who have real feelings, who have real struggles, and who deserve real apologies."
Toni Cross (’18): "I have a mic up here, but I would love to hear President Patton's response to those questions."
Patton: "So, first of all, the comment about Middlebury communities, I absolutely agree. And I think that we should be continuing to talk about different communities. And if we haven't done so enough, I apologize for that. It's really important that we think through those questions of acknowledging different communities and acknowledging specifics about pain that you all have felt. One of the things that I really, really want to hear about, and I know we want to continue to think about, is particularly in classroom environments where people of color are not feeling that they can speak up. Or that they feel if they do speak up, that they will be misunderstood. Those are an incredibly important place for us, and I hope that as faculty and staff we can work together to change those experiences. So I think that that's absolutely right and that's really important to do. I also want to say that what Dean Loyd was talking about, I actually sat with that professor and apologized for her experience. And it's a very important thing that she was in pain, and that was acknowledged. So I think it's an unfair characterization of me to say that acknowledgement doesn't happen. It was important to reach out and engage. When I -- I don't know what the images are that are being used. I think it's really important in a conversation that we're all trying to do better, that we're all doing a lot of work every day to raise inclusivity where it's really hard. If we could find a way -- I don't know, I can't supervise every single thing that goes out. If that image that goes out is there, I'm sure that that was painful for people to see. I am willing to sit with anyone in the community in a restorative practices circle, including Addis, to hear the pain that she has experienced. I will do that with anyone in this community. And I think it's really important that we continue to think about those specific experiences. And that's why restorative practices matters. Part of what is hard in presidential speech, and I wish I could answer you as a person -- I can't right now, I'm here as a president. And so, I would be happy to walk with you and talk with you, but my role at this moment is to uphold all of the hardworking people. And so -- I do spend a lot of time with students and tell them what I think all the time in the luncheon halls, I'm in classrooms, I'm walking throughout the campus every day. And so, I'm more than happy to sit and talk to you. I'm sure the president of Kenyon also wouldn't be able to speak about a case in this way, but I will say again, those images were very, very disturbing. And perhaps, yes, we should have used Addis's name. I will sit with Addis, I will sit with any of you in restorative practices and talk about harm any time. That is me both as a person and as a president. I hope that answers your question, and let's go for a walk."
Jasmine Crane (’18): "It really hurt my heart to hear Wengel's struggle, because her struggle is my struggle and as a black women in science, there's only one black female teacher in all of BiHall. And I really look up to her. She's a shinning example for me who contemplates going far and taking the extra mile, but when I'm with some of my colleagues I don't feel like I'm very far, I don't feel like I'm their colleague. I just feel like I am a black face here. And I feel like as a black, African-American woman here, I feel like community which is being thrown around so carelessly I feel it's just a word it's not a feeling. I feel like it's just a structure like a church. We come in here and do we really do anything pertinent? I don't seem to feel that. I feel that I see Latinos coming together, from different countries, I see South Asian, East Asian people coming together, and I feel like they have to do that on their own because there is no place even for them. And especially for black Americans here, I feel like that's a diaspora, there is no place for us on this campus. I feel like African's stick together, that's great to hear, but I feel like as an American black woman I have no place here. No voice. And I don't know how to change this, honestly, because it doesn't start with the people of color. We have to start all together as one body, as Middlebury. We have created this iconic self-image of being woke, of being liberal, of knowing more than ourselves. But do we even really know ourselves? And so I ask not only students to look in their heart and think about oppression. But I want the administration to look at themselves and how they conduct themselves in their everyday lives. And how they treat not only the students but each other.
Cross: "I just had a couple of questions: is there a timeline for fixing this broken Middlebury community? I know when I visited here for preview days in 2014 at least six people told me: do not come to this school, it will crush you and I don't know that I could in good conscious tell a black senior in high school to come here. It's been four years. Is there a timeline for making it better. And also I would like to ask the administration who have spoken here today how they would grade themselves in presentation and the image that they are giving to us? With the defensiveness that we constantly see, with the willingness to label actions, or to call themselves victims or point out unfairness towards themselves but not necessarily extend that same courtesy to the students. So I'm asking how would you grade yourselves? What kind of message do you think you're putting forward?
Treasure Brooks (’21): "I haven't been here very long but earlier Charles mentioned the overwhelming whiteness at this school and I just want to bring attention to the overwhelming blackness that doesn't come in the form of bodies. I live in Battel and I can't walk to the bathroom or back to my room without hearing trap music. And there is an overwhelming amount of black culture here but it's not represented in the population, in the student body. We've had CupcakKe come here last week, we're having Elle Varner come, and before that we had Noname Gypsy, she came here as well. And I think that how can we allow for the student body to be consuming black culture at such an alarming rate when we don't even value the black women that are walking around on this campus? I think that is remarkably grotesque, honestly, and if you really want to show support, if you want to show a greater cultural sensitivity towards black students then maybe we should make those events exclusive until we can show a general respect for all of the black diaspora, all of the black faculty, of the black students, and not just black culture. And additionally, to respond to something you said, President Patton, I would hope that you did not see your presidency and personhood as mutually exclusive because in the event that you do I think there needs to be a greater consideration for what leadership is."
James Sanchez (Assistant Professor of Writing): "I want to say a couple of things. I haven't heard anyone from faculty speak yet and I don't want to absolve us from any of these issues because this is just as important for students and administrators as it is for faculty. A couple of things I want to mention is one I feel like faculty needs to do a better job of modeling anti-racist behavior for our students in the classroom. I say that because when I did my interview here I spoke with a Latina student and this was before Charles Murray and she was telling me with issues that she had with white professors in the classroom and how as a Latina student she often felt that racist, bigoted viewpoints were held on equal playing field as anti-racist viewpoints and I think that's something that I challenge all faculty to really consider when having classroom discussions. I also want to say that faculty have a lot of agency in creating change on campus environments and that's something we all need to remember as faculty members when conducting our classes, creating new courses, interactions with students, we have agency in creating change. So I really want to challenge my colleagues here to on campus to really consider that in the future.
Sha (’19): "This is more a clarifying question. I understand a lot of time when it comes to the judicial process there's need for privacy but I also I feel there has been a lack of transparency with a lot of things that go on at this college. And I would like to be informed or educated in possible: is a student assumed guilty until proven otherwise? Or is a student assumed innocent until proven guilty? Why is it that when there is a sexual assault case reported, the victim is often the one asked to prove that there was actually assault, when in this case a student was accused and she was actually asked to find evidence to prove that she was not there?"
Ross: "Under all our policies individuals going through any kind of discipline are innocent until proven guilty. And the obligation is not on them to provide evidence. That's why we employ people and pay their salaries to gather evidence but people are free to offer evidence if they chose to offer evidence. If you want to learn more about how our policies work or want to learn more about our processes Dean Baishaki Taylor has solicited volunteers to serve on a policy advisory group. I'll be working with that policy advisory group to get feedback from students on policies that are of importance to you. We welcome other folks joining that committee
Júlia Athayde: (’19): "I want to raise attention to something that I found very troubling last semester and that was the fact that Bill Burger, who is the vice president of communications here, was personally involved in the Charles Murray incident and also very involved in writing all the articles and the communication that is written to alumni, articles in the New York Times, in the aftermath of the incident. First something I wanted to say, I work for the Office of Investment so after Charles Murray I actually had to talk to alumni and explain to them what was happening on campus so I'm very sympathetic to the fact that it was a very hard conversation and I know how difficult it was for administrators to deal with all of that. Since then, I've been thinking about the fact that [Burger] was personally involved and I'm not sure if he's here or not, this is not a personal attack, I just wanted to raise awareness for that. He was there, and he was also writing the communication for the college. And this latest article in the newsroom talking about racial profiling, I was wondering if that was the first time that we addressed that to the outer community and our alumni? And who wrote that article, because there was actually no author? And the last paragraph of that article actually talks about his involvement and that he was found not guilty. And I was wondering if that process involved the same kind of investigation that Addis had to go through? Why was he found not guilty, and why was that written in an article in the newsroom this week?"
Ross: "I was one of the folks who helped write that statement and the final paragraph addresses the fact that there were two separate investigations about what went on March 2. One was the Middlebury Police Department Investigation. The Middlebury Police are of course responsible for investigating criminal behavior, driving a car dangerously would be criminal behavior. The police did not find any evidence that caused them to have concern about that. They did not investigate that, they did not bring charges. The independent investigators concluded based on unanimous testimony from all the witnesses to the event that Mr. Burger drove carefully. Those are the facts in that case found by two different investigations."
Esteban Arenas-Pino (’18): “I would like the administration to expand on their stance on activism on campus. It feels like after last spring activism has become a dirty word and is often vilified. Is the administration willing and ready to accept activism as a part of the campus culture, and is the administration willing to foster this as a value? After many years witnessing activism especially by women of color on this campus I would like to see this fermented as a stronger value? We will leave Middlebury to be organizers and activists in our communities. Shouldn't Middlebury foster these skills?”
Sedge Lucas (’19): "I have a quick question for President Patton. I saw online that you and Professor Stanger are going to be having a talk this coming February titled "Campus Speech: when protest turned violent" at the Cronkite School of Journalism in Arizona. Can you explain what the goal of this talk is? What do you think other schools or academia as a whole can learn about how Middlebury handled the situation last spring?
Patton: "Thanks for the question. Lots of different thoughts there. There are so many ways in which we could have done better. We have been slow to respond to graffiti incidents. I would just ask people to understand that we are living in the world where immediate response and the fact that we have to get the facts right is we want to make sure we get the facts right before we actually make a statement and so sometimes if we can't do it in 12 hours it's because we're wanting to make sure we have all the facts right. That being said it's really important that that slowness of response is something that we can do better on. And we want to do better on. Secondly, the things that I have learned as a leader and a person here at Middlebury, number one, I was hoping that all the work that we've done in the last two years about inclusivity and scholarships raised and C3 developed and AIM, and the alliance on disability, the bias response team, the more funds raised for financial aid, the restorative practices, all of these are things that have happened since 2015, since I got here. My mistake was in thinking that all those things and inviting everyone to do more of those things and invite us into those conversations would heal the hurt and it didn't. I did not understand the degree of hurt in this community and again I want to say how deeply sorry I am for that. So in response to that, part of what I push on in everywhere that I go is that inclusivity has to be part of any conversation around freedom of expression but we have to do both in the 21st century. And that we do not become more free unless we focus on inclusivity and all the ways that we've been talking about. And we do not become more inclusive if we can't have that freedom of expression as the basis of who we are. And so that is a very powerful message that we want to send in as many different places as possible. So I hope that gives you as sense of both what I have learned personally as well as the kind of push I want to make on creating both inclusivity and freedom of expression as a balance, as well as the only way we can become more free in the 21st century is to become more inclusive. I also want to say that in our conversation yesterday, Liz [Dunn] said something really powerful. And I want to make sure that we say that and say something about that and talk more about it. And that is "What do you need and how can we help?" was a question that one of her common's deans asked her and how powerful that was. And I think that even as we have to uphold policies and procedures, I think that having student advisory groups as well as the faculty motion that was really fantastic that I publicly endorsed and was thrilled to publicly endorse last week, where we are going to be doing an external review of our diversity practices. Again the big learning that I had last semester is clearly all the stuff that we've done since 2015 is not enough, and it's not effective enough, and that's really powerful so we are developing an advisory group on diversity for faculty and for building faculty I have been really powerfully advocating and only faculty can build a black studies program but we are really excited because faculty are moving to create that and I want to say here how important it is that we create that black studies program. So, lot's more to say, and I know I need to hand over the mic.
Hannah Pustejovksy (’18): "I wanted to bring it back a little bit to the point about financial aid. So I am a white student, I'm also on almost full financial aid, and I am pretty lucky being a student who is white having had a lot family who have gone to college and have dealt with this system. But if having difficulty with the financial aid system here I cannot even imagine what other students, of color, are having on this campus because I have been here for four years and I have yet to understand what happens in the financial aid office. I was incredibly hurt by an email that came out last week or the week before encourage students to consider if they actually could take on the loans that they were being given because I have no choice. I don't know what I'm supposed to do if I can't personally take those loans on, am I just supposed to drop out? I also think that financial aid is one of the most important things to making sure that students here also feel welcome because we do have only 48 percent of students here on campus who have financial aid and if students of color are on campus and we are not making it easy for them to be here including the huge financial responsibility we are putting on them, how are we even supposed to start and feel like equals? Every day I am aware that I have so much less money than people here. And how is the financial aid office going to make that easier?"
Nia Robinson (’19): "I don't really have a question, more so a comment. Looking around this room most of the people in here are people I expected to be here. There are some surprises, like good surprises but nonetheless a surprise. And I think that it's really important when we're talking about community we claim who we are talking about. Because for example, the people who have called me the n-word are not found in this room. And I understand that people have commitments, I understand that people have other things going on, but everyone in this room ahs something else going on and so I think we need to make at who is making sacrifices for global community. A lot of people in this room are part of my community and I respect and love them a lot. But I think there are people who are not found in this room who have no stake in building a community and that's okay whereas if I take a step back then suddenly it's a problem. So that's not really question, just more so a call for everyone in here to talk to your friends, talk to your commons, talk to your professors, because if we are building a community we need to make sure we're reaching everyone and not just the people who self select to be here."
Kifle: "To touch upon the faculty member who spoke about faculty responsibility and accountability as well as Nia's comment about community, and also Treasury's comment. So we do consume a lot of black culture here and it's amazing how much we consume it and then don't acknowledge black people. I'm also in the classroom I'm so sick for having to stand up for something problematic that arises. If my professor is here, I'm sorry, I meant to have a private conversation with you, but this going to happen. So here we are talking about [solar] power in Africa and then the professor says 'There's 40 countries in Africa" and I said, 'no.' And then my art history professor was talking about Western Art and then mentioned Egyptian art and I questioned why that is because it's African art. The thing that surprised me is not the fact that it happened but in both of those classes where there's a huge amount of people in there I was the only one that had a problem with this and I was the only one that was expected to speak out, and of course I did because nobody else was doing it. But I'm so tired of taking on that mental labor. If you call yourself an ally, if you say you care about us, this movement, please speak up because I am tired. I am so tired and if you say you support this community and if you say you support these conversations and whatever Midd needs to progress on then take your part. And it's not just on the administration and it's not just on the faculty, it's on students as well. Show us that you care."
Sandra Luo (’18): "I really want to appreciate all of you for offering to have conversations with us but we're really tired of just talking. When is the administration going to show that they care beyond just sitting in a circle and talking and continuing to exploit the vulnerability and emotions of students? When are we going to see some sort of tangible, concrete action that comes from these conversations. And if you want to talk about helping us maybe address the list of demands here that we've been passing out. Apologize to Addis and provide reparations for all the trauma the school put her through, actually investigate Bill Burger and take anonymous sources seriously because that's the way of providing safety for people who are willing to come forward and share their experiences, fix the judicial system instead of just telling us that it's flawed but that's just how it's always going to be. And I want to recommend that a lot of people have been talking for years and a lot of work has been put towards inclusivity and diversity for years, long before March 2. It would be great if they could do something more than just conversations. It's one thing to acknowledge pain and flaws it's another to actually address the flaws so that current and future students won't continue to experience pain. I know a lot of people around me really want to listen to answers from the administration so I'm just going to hold on to this mic until we get an answer from the administration. I really want to hear about a concrete action plan that is something beyond a conversation."
Fernández: "Where to start. So in regards to the demands that you referenced, I think you heard in regards to the judicial piece I think Hannah made the invitation to serve on a policy committee there. That's a very direct way of impacting judicial change. The second one is about the mandatory training for everyone and I hope I addressed that earlier but that's in the process. It's not going to happen tomorrow but there are things in process and more to come, can't be more specific about that because that part to come is still being worked on and I don't have the details. I did share details for things that are ongoing. More things that are happening that are on the ground that we are doing: I did mention that we're working hard at diversifying the faculty, I think we had a good example and make some comments and probably just fill his spring courses. The bias incident thing was a new effort by the community bias response team, I will grant you it is imperfect, and if you will continue to work on it it's been an effort to try to address a lot of the issues we've been talking about. It is imperfect, it is new, we're going through that rocky start that many things do. I expect communications to improve and we will continue to work on that. Concrete things that are going on other things, more things we've been working on: we've been trying to work a lot around the support o DACA and undocumented students, putting a lot of effort on resources there, supporting them in many different ways. The first generation programs, those kinds of things. Opportunities to engage, one of the things a lot of folks have been talking about today is the administration, how it acts and why it doesn't change and one of the things we heard yesterday and I think this is valid is more student input in decision making, and that's been heard. And the SGA has had a proposal to create student advisory boards that will meet with the different VPs, so there you've got advisory boards that will meet with different folks to learn about the process how decisions get made how does the process work and to have a direct influence on that so for instance with finance, with a lot of the different areas. There's much to talk about, but there's a lot more to do, too."
Rainey: "I have a really quick question. There's been a lot of talk about this in the black community and many other communities especially in the after math of Charles Murray. We all know how many of us feel the complete community embarrassment of how interrogating and punishing students for protesting on campus. And as we more forward in terms of restorative practices from the administration, going back to what Toni and others have said providing a timeline with that but also after we put in these new restorative practices and these new restorative justice measures, are they going to be retroactively implemented and have retroactive application regarding people who have gone through unfair processes in the past and students who have gone through extremely unsettling and unfair disciplinary procedures here at Middlebury, for case by case basis? If anyone in the administration could speak to that?"
Katie Smith Abbott (Vice President of Student Affairs): "I have been charged with leading our exploration of how to bring restorative practice to Middlebury. We are partnering with a firm called the Consortium for Equity and Inclusion and the two anchors for that are a woman named Stacy Miller who is the associate provost of inclusivity at Valparaiso and Dennis DePaul who is from the Dean of Students Office at UVM which has had real success for a very long period of time with restorative practices, grounded in Residential Life at UVM. So they came to explain the basic concepts of what is referred to as RP to the SLG in June, the Senior Leadership Group which is the Presidents and all the Vice Presidents. They came back for a subsequent training because we didn't fit everything in, they came back in September, they have met for an introductory session with a broad range of faculty and staff who work in student life. And they're coming back for a three-day training December 18, 19, and 20 and if there are folks in this room who want to participate in that training I'd be happy to talk to you. The only requirements are that you're able to fully commit for the three full days. It's 8:30-5, it's three full days, and you're willing to be part of the ongoing implementation conversations. It is not a fast process to implement but we're fully committed to it. The other thing I would just note is that restorative justice and restorative practices are kind of getting used interchangeably, and I do want to be honest about the fact that I'm learning, this is not something I knew about before I started on this journey working with Stacy and Dennis, being part of a group that's being doing some deep diving into this work. But what I will offer is that they have explained to us very clearly that restorative justice is a small subsection of restorative practices, and the reason we're drawn to restorative practices is because they can be used proactively not just reactively so that a moment like this one wouldn't be appropriate for a restorative circle, like President Patton was referencing earlier, but something called a conference that's very intentionally facilitated. Although I've got to say that I think the student leaders of this session are doing a pretty amazing job. So that's the timeline, we're moving into this training in December with an eye towards hopefully grounding it in student life and residential life by next fall."
Vee Duong (’19): "I had a question: so something kind of disturbing that I have been noticing this year being involved in more cultural orgs is that a lot of students say "Oh wow I didn't know that existed, when do y'all have meetings?" And then we're like oh well we had a booth at activities and we have a mailing list that's been open, we operate out of the AFC which is always open, and to have these open discussions that we have been having about race, to have people who do not identify as that come into that space, that is acceptable and that's fine and we encourage you to do that but to have people come in and not be aware of the space they're taking up is very frustrating. So this is a point for faculty and staff and/or administrators, in that what are you all doing to provide real educational resources for students, incoming students especially, so that the burden doesn't fall on cultural orgs where we are already working really hard to provide a space to take care of our members mentally and emotionally to support each other so we don't have to take on the additional burden of educating people because all the educational resources I have seen have been put together laboriously through hours of our personal time.
Baishakhi Taylor (Dean of Students): "Vee I hear your question and I agree that we also need to do more. We have added sessions during the MiddView. President Patton has now made JusTalks mandatory for the entire class. We have also added more training in our reslife program and among colleagues who are in the reslife group and that's obviously not adequate so on top of having all these sessions that introduce with the incoming class this year we'll continue to build on that and I also acknowledge that having those sessions only during MiddView and JusTalks is not sufficient so we need to build on it throughout the year so the responsibility is not on the Anderson Freeman Center and thank you for doing the work that you're doing and raising the question."
Anonymous question (read by Rainey): "It seems like both Alison Stanger and Laurie Patton have been taking a lot of public, national opportunities to speak about the events of the spring, including at a congressional hearing on C-SPAN, the Free Speech Conference Laurie spoke at. For the purpose of transparency, are President Patton or Alison Stanger being financially compensated for these talks? Are they profiting off the terrible situation the administration has put us in?"
Patton: "I was not paid to go to the University of Chicago and I have no interest in profiting any situation that happened at Middlebury. I am very clear that any conversation that's part of the national discourse where Middlebury is mentioned we need to create balance so at the Chicago conference part of what we pushed on with many, many people there is where is our inclusivity? Where are our inclusivity efforts? We've always got to balance those two things no matter what happens. I had no intentions of profiting in any way my intent is to work on moving a national conversation where people who are constantly talking about free speech also talk about inclusivity. So both of those things are balanced and fair and appropriate, so that's the very direct answer. I had a couple more responses to questions I didn’t get a chance to answer but if there’s time later [I’ll answer].”
Victor Filpo (admissions counselor, class of '16): "I hope I really speaking for myself here rather than any hat of student, alumn, or staff member here on campus. Something that is frustrating, honestly, about this conversation is that we've really been centering around the case that happened with Addis or the case that happened with the professor. And that's completely legitimate because they are people who've been struggling a lot and they've been carrying a lot of the heaviness of what's going on. But I would like to say that the reality is that a lot of people of color deal with this. It is not surprising. We are tokenizing them right now by only brining up those instances. When I was freshman, when I was walking with my Posse member in Battell, a public safety office stopped us and told us, 'I haven't seen you on campus can you show us your IDs?' When we were first years here at Middlebury. He still works here. I have also gotten accused by other Public Safety officers for other things. It turns out completely fine because my dean loves me, obviously. And all the deans here do an amazing job at really caring for their students and really trying to look out emotionally for everyone. But this continues happening on the daily. Just this last summer I was crossing with two other students, and I'm glad this stuff happens to me when I'm with other people because I would not be able to believe that it happens to me on this level, weekly or biweekly, it's insane. Crossing the street, people start accelerating and then they stop and they yell the n-word at you. You are walking to your house or walking to your dorm and someone stops in a car and just yells at you, 'that looks stolen,' yells a rap lyric at you, choses another slur. It really does baffle me that this happens so often and I was just here as a senior two years ago and we had the same conversation about a sombrero right here. And every year we will continue to have this conversation right here. And yet I still have to walk home and have this experience all over again. And the only time I will be taken seriously isn't even when I'm with another person of color but rather when I have the kind, woke, white lady who is willing to represent me and say whoa he's going through some pain let's do something about it. I don't want someone to have a voice for me. I want to be able to talk for myself to be able to talk for myself, to be believed, for something to happen when I ask for it. When a person of color is going through a lot they don't have means to be able to express it. Do we really understand the amount of people of color who haven't said anything about their experiences. And when you sit with someone and they say, 'that baffles me,' does it really? Does it really? It shouldn't because it honestly happens on such a daily level. And you yourself you're all very smart people. We know that this happens. We ignore it. We choose to ignore it because it makes us feel comfortable. And I wonder when we're going to stop with this comfort because we just sit here every single year and have this conversation all over again in this comfort and I hope that in future instances when the next one comes up it's not Shatavia, it's not Victor, it's not the professor. It's a collective group of people who are going through a lot."
Student, unknown: "You said something about conversation and us being free and all that. There's a lot of dark forces in general on this campus and beyond this campus and a lot of what was just talked about were references to instances where students are facing racism from other white students on this campus that I'm sure a lot of people don't know about. If we look we have Donald Trump as our president and there's just crazy things going on while we're sitting here having restorative conversations, there's evil things going on and this stuff that we're talking about is just a small sample of something that's going on. It comes to a point where people have to decide whether they're going to actually be on the side of what's right or what's wrong and everyone has to make their own choice. I hope that especially the white people here will make that choice and not hide behind good sounding rhetoric or kind words, because those things are good and genuine kindness is good but a lot of people here feel like unless the school addresses the issues that are going on at the institutional level how are we going to be able to talk about what's going on in the world?"
Patton: "I wanted to mention that we're working with public safety, public safety has gone through a mandatory de-escalation training as well as diversity training this fall and will continue to do so. Concrete action. Concrete action: we created a seizing the opportunity fund for any student at Middlebury who wants to and needs to do something different, whether they need their parents to come here, or whether they need to go to MiddCore, whether they need more money for something they need more access to at Middlebury. We have raised that money so that every student has access to all educational opportunities. We started that last year, it's available, talk to Katy Smith Abbott, another concrete action. Third, one of the things we're really excited about is, I really appreciate what you said about facing racism and acknowledging and the everyday racism that happens on this campus that I acknowledged in the beginning. I think that if we could create an archive to create news stories of what is happening to people that would make it even more powerful for us so we need to get those kinds of stories on the books. We need to do a lot more mandatory training, that concrete action is happening in the next year, and in the back there are about 15 more concrete actions, none of them are enough. We need your advice on how to make it more effective and again I want to acknowledge the hurt that people are feeling and we are going to create a lot of student advisory committees to be better and more effective. And I am so proud of this community for being here tonight. Thank you very much."
Sohn: "We also know that tonight not all of your questions have been answered and we want to thank everyone for raising those question."
Anonymous notecard (read by Sohn): "Hoping on Wengel and Mia's point on allyship, please understand that these may be very sensitive times for POCs, QTPOCs on campus and on that note if you find yourself going to the AFC I hope you take the responsibility to learn about what it means to the POC/QTPOC community. You could speak to the directors and student staff in the space, and it's very central to understand what it means to take up space in times as sensitive as this one. On that note please come feel free to come learn more about the positive impact the AFC is making on this institution."
(11/09/17 1:03am)
College faculty met for over three hours in a plenary meeting on Nov. 3 in which they passed a motion declaring their commitment to promoting diversity and discussed the investigative procedures resulting from allegations of racial profiling by Public Safety.
Diversity Practices Motion
The motion, formally entitled, “Moving Forward on Diversity Practices” passed with 113 yes votes, 8 no votes and 1 abstention. Faculty voted anonymously by paper ballot.
Professors Gloria González, Darién Davis and Michael Sheridan of the spanish, history and anthropology departments, respectively, presented the motion on behalf of Middlebury Faculty for an Inclusive Community, a caucus that formed in the wake of the Charles Murray protests last spring. The motion cited the college’s inability to address issues of racism without estranging members of the community as justification for the suggestions.
The motion suggests four measures aimed at making the college more inclusive: conducting an external review on diversity policies and practices; creating a standing faculty diversity committee that would work with the administration, board of trustees and other faculty bodies; establishing a protocol for recording, reporting and responding to harassment and racism; and hiring an external facilitator to lead discussions aimed at fostering diversity within the community.
“As we continue to debate issues, create committees, and hold executive sessions, many of us are feeling more alienated and perplexed by the inappropriate actions and words of some of our colleagues, and the racist atmosphere that has affected our health and well-being,” reads the motion.
“We believe that we need a clear institutional policy for how to respond to such acts and how to change the social environment in a productive and respectful manner ... the college, on its own, is not prepared to guide us through difficult conversations without alienating many colleagues.”
The passing of a motion does not result in an immediate policy creation or change. The motion will go to the faculty council and the chief diversity officer, Miguel Fernández, for consideration and potential implementation.
“What we’re doing here is making an expression of our collective will. We leave it to the administration to decide what steps to do and what timing,” Sheridan explained.
“I think this is an urgent thing to do, especially given what we read in The Campus newspaper about issues of racial profiling,” said Patricia Saldarriaga, a Spanish professor. “In spite of everything that we’re doing that sounds very, very efficient, I think we need to make some changes. And those changes in my opinion, when there are students and faculty suffering, I think we need to do something now.”
Davis views the motion as a way to demonstrate the college’s commitment to progress and improvement.
“This could help us create new narratives of continually getting some place where we want to [be.] This sort of gives us a sense, not just for PR, but for PR, that we are, as a Middlebury community, not what is said on C-SPAN or in The New York Times. That we as a faculty agree that this is something important and that we’re moving as educators to try to become wiser,” he said.
Fernández voiced his office’s support for the motion, informing the room that he had discussed both an external review and standing faculty committee prior to the meeting. He said he supports hiring an external facilitator, and has already sought out recommendations from chief diversity officers at other schools.
College president Laurie L. Patton echoed similar sentiments of support.
“I think the time for us to do it is now,” Patton said. “We have put a lot of things in place...over the last couple of years but they’re clearly not effective enough and we need to think about how to make them all better...so I see all four of these, particularly the committee, as a way of our being able, as an administration, to check in.”
Investigative Procedures
The college’s General Counsel Hannah Ross and Title IX Coordinator Sue Ritter provided information and answered questions relating to the college’s investigative and disciplinary processes. Ross referred to Addis Fouche-Channer’s ’17 allegations of racial profiling with veiled language, emphasizing that she was prohibited from discussing most of the details of the case, due to federal and state law.
Ross emphasized that the investigation into Fouche-Channer’s involvement in the events of Mar. 2 resulted in a finding of “no determination,” rather than a finding of guilt or innocence.
Fouche-Channer did not undergo a judiciary hearing last spring following the conclusion of the investigation.
“A judicial affairs officer makes a decision at a particular moment in time about whether or not to proceed to a hearing before the community judicial board. No hearing before the judicial board occurred,” Ross said.
Ross stressed that when Fouche-Channer brought a complaint of discrimination to the college over the summer, the resulting investigation focused solely on the employee accused of discrimination and not on Fouche-Channer’s conduct.
“The student made a complaint that she had been discriminated against in violation of our anti-harassment policy. This is a claim of misconduct by an employee, which doesn’t start a conduct investigation about a student’s behavior, it starts an investigation about whether one of our employees violated our anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policy,” Ross said.
Ross added that the investigation found the student’s claim of discrimination to be unsubstantiated, which indicated that the employee did not violate the anti-discrimination policy. She cited newly acquired evidence, specifically eyewitness identifications, as the corroborating evidence for the officer’s testimony.
“Other evidence that came to light through the painstaking investigation that Sue’s office conducted corroborated that the testimony of the public safety officer was accurate and truthful. The other evidence included eyewitness identifications...There was no evidence that he had acted based on race,” Ross said.
“That’s not a violation of our anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policy, to accurately and truthfully identify someone. A belief that someone acted based on race or any other protected personal characteristic, as sincere as it may be, is not enough under this process, we need to find evidence of that,” Ross continued.
Sujata Moorti, a Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies professor, raised concerns over the use of eyewitness identifications that Ross mentioned.
“Is that the only basis on which you decided that there was no discrimination, there was no violation of the college policy? Because there’s tons of scholarly evidence saying that eyewitness accounts and eyewitness testimony is really unreliable,” Moorti said.
“I don’t feel that I can go into detail and summarize all of the evidence...Our investigators and adjudicators...are sensitive to the fact that memory is flawed and that there are eyewitness accounts that are not credible. There are eyewitness accounts that are credible, for a variety of reasons,” Ross said.
“I would just say that we need to be particularly careful when we have evidence from students where students of color are mistakenly identified on an ongoing basis,” Moorti replied.
Ross agreed. Ritter also addressed Moorti’s question, explaining the ways that investigators assess credibility.
“We evaluate factors like the clarity of their observations, their ability to recall events accurately, the consistency of the witness’ claims, the witnesses’ demeanor during the interview, the witness’s potential interest or bias in the outcome, whether the witness’ statement was consistent or inconsistent with other evidence, and the existence of corroborative evidence. we are always looking for... the reasonableness or unreasonableness of a witness’ claims,” Ritter said.
Patricia Saldarriaga asked whether a case is treated differently if an accused party has been accused of acts of discrimination in the past.
“In talking about patterns, I wonder whether you have considered in this particular case, hypothetically speaking, let’s put it that way, when somebody who is accused...of racial profiling, has other cases where he’s also been accused of racial profiling...how would that affect the reliability of that testimony from an officer?” Saldarriaga asked.
Ross replied that she wasn’t sure the question was entirely within the realm of the hypothetical, and said she could not be more precise, but that they do look for information in order to construct and consider a pattern of behavior. Ritter emphasized that this pattern has to be “substantiated.”
“There has to be evidence that other than just a report,” Ritter said.
Student Government Association (SGA) Chief of Staff Ishrak Alam ’18 asked whether Ross or Ritter could provide information pertaining to the allegations that a professor was racially profiled by a public safety officer.
“It’s been resolved,” Ross said.
Peter Johnson, a computer science professor, proceeded to question the policy of confidentiality with regard to the case of alleged racial profiling of the professor. Johnson expressed frustration with the way his colleagues have been affected by the lack of information.
“I understand that there are confidentiality issues...I think there’s a conflict though, because in some cases where the resolution is not disclosed, then other members of the community are adversely affected,” he said. “Even if it’s resolved from the administrative standpoint, other members of the community may be scared. If they don’t know that someone who may have done something is, say, still employed by the college, then these friends of ours, these colleagues, may be walking around uncertain if this is a person they may have to face in a law enforcement-ish circumstance.”
“I would guess that the reason for confidentiality after the resolution is to protect the person who may or may not have been disciplined. But on the other hand that’s affecting our friends. So basically what this boils down to is my friends are scared and I don’t like it,” Johnson added.
In response, Ross emphasized the importance of confidentiality in the investigative process.
“Middlebury didn’t dream this up on its own. Every other institution, every other employer I know of has confidentiality provisions in these exact same policies that look exactly like this, and they are there to get people to bring complaints forward, because it is very, very common that when people want to report they have concerns about confidentiality...They’re concerned about retaliation against them, they’re concerned about retaliation against the people who may be called to testify as witnesses,” Ross said.
Michael Olinick, a math professor, who wrote the aforementioned letter to the editor detailing the alleged racial profiling, further questioned the practice of investigating patterns of behavior, wondering how reports of benign interactions with Public Safety officers would be obtained, since they would presumably not be reported.
“I understand racial profiling to mean that a person treats someone of color differently than they would treat a white person. So let’s take a hypothetical case, that I am leaving my office late at night which I often do, walking towards my car and a campus security officer comes up to me and demands me to stop, raise my hands, explain what I’m doing here. And I’m a person of color and believe that that was racial profiling. And I talk to some of my colleagues who say they do this all the time, they leave their buildings at night quite late and they often see campus security people who just wave at them. In an investigation of racial profiling, would you attempt, do you normally attempt to investigate how that person who’s been charged with profiling, has behaved in similar situations with a white person?” Olinick asked.
Ross responded that yes, they look at patterns of behavior. She then went on to reflect on the use and meaning of the term “racial profiling.”
“Racial profiling is a label that is loaded and that is about a particular set of police practices in law enforcement,” Ross said. “The choice of saying this is a racial profiling case I understand is to get at the feeling that that decision should not be made based on race. And I agree with that. We shouldn’t be making decisions based on race about speaking to someone who’s leaving a building and presuming that the color of their skin means they don’t belong there. No question.”
Ross then explained that certain instances that appear to be discriminatory might not meet the legal standard required to result in a guilty finding.
“In order to comply with the law, it has to rise to the level of harassment or discrimination. And we have a challenge in our culture at this moment where we talk about things as harassing or discriminatory and we use that in a broader sense than the law does. The law has a standard of severe and pervasive and an ongoing basis, and we have to apply the legal standard,” Ross answered.
Olinick inquired again about whether investigations look into patterns of behavior.
“I’ve heard a lot about persistence of behavior where you can say well, there are a number of cases where this particular person acted in an inappropriate way toward persons of color. But this could be a single incident where there are many instances where this person has exhibited a pattern of behaving in a non-hostile, friendly way toward white people. And you’re telling me that part of the investigator’s responsibility is to seek out instances of parallel actions that involve--”
“Yeah, so in the law we talk about this as ‘are similarly situated people treated the same?’ And ‘are dissimilarly situated people treated differently?’...Our investigators ask for and get information to allow them to evaluate that,” Ross replied.
“Okay and how would they go about doing that. Is that up to the person bringing the complaint to suggest specific individuals to talk to or?” Olinick asked.
“If the individual bringing the complaint has information they can give that information to the investigator,” Ross answered.
“Yeah, but if they don’t?” Olinick asked.
“The investigator can get information from any Middlebury office that will help them resolve the investigation. So they can ask for information from relevant offices about that person’s interactions with other people. They get that information they evaluate whether it shows us patterns,” Ross explained.
“There isn’t going to be much of a record of innocent transactions between people...If a public safety officer behaves toward me in a friendly way or just ignores me, I’m not going to report that. So there isn’t going to be a record of how that person is treating people who’ve been in the majority up to this point,” Olinick said.
Ross responded by listing alternative ways that investigators can obtain information that allows them to construct an understanding of an employee’s past performance.
“There could be information from people who’ve worked with an employee for a number of years who’s witnessed a number of interactions that that employee has had on our campus. There could be information about an employee’s past performance from the way that they’ve been performance managed...we look for that information every way we can,” Ross said.
By 6:05 p.m., the three remaining participants scheduled on the meeting’s agenda had left the room. Michael Roy, dean of the library, and associate professor of Chinese Hang Du had been scheduled to provide information reports. President Laurie L. Patton had been scheduled to make closing remarks, but had left the building. As a result of their absences and consequent unavailability to speak, the meeting was adjourned.
(11/09/17 12:32am)
On Wednesday Nov. 1, Robert Siegel of National Public Radio (NPR) graced the Wilson Hall stage to reflect on his legendary career in broadcast journalism and remark on changes in the field over the last forty years. Siegel’s first foray into the world of radio was in 1968 when he provided in-depth coverage of student protests at his own Columbia University on the school’s radio station, WKCR-FM. Siegel would graduate from Columbia later that same year. Upon completing his undergraduate education, Siegel attended the Columbia School of Journalism for one year and then went on to work for New York City’s WRVR Radio until NPR hired him as a newscaster in 1976. After a whirlwind seven years in which Siegel worked as newscaster, senior editor and director of the News and Information Department, Siegel became the host of “All Things Considered” in 1983. Over the next three decades, Siegel piloted the program from nonentity to giant, fostering the growth of “All Things Considered” into the massively popular drive-time news segment that it still is today.
However, more impressive than his illustrious career and numerous professional accomplishments is Siegel’s effect on people. Over 30 years, he inspired tens of millions of listeners to become more engaged in the world, uniting people of all ages and backgrounds with his warm voice and comforting presence that found a way to transcend one-dimensional airwaves.
At the start of his much-anticipated talk, Siegel took the stage in front of a packed Wilson Hall, where baby boomers and millennials alike waited for the first words to emanate in his iconic voice. Siegel touched on a handful of personal experiences that stayed with him through the years, a particularly powerful one involving his coverage of and subsequent relationship with a youth named Jeremy Armstrong, who at the age of 15 shot and killed his father’s roommate and drug dealer. Despite his young age, Armstrong was tried and convicted as an adult in Wisconsin in 1997 and served eight years in an adult prison for reckless homicide before gaining parole. Siegel, working to illuminate the effects of harsh juvenile justice policies at the time, interviewed Armstrong multiple times and followed his efforts to regain both his freedom and a sense of normalcy. Upon his release, Armstrong penned a heartfelt letter of thanks to Siegel for sticking by him, and Siegel’s description of Armstrong’s life as an ex-convict to the rapt capacity crowd in Wilson was eloquent, emotional and touching. Now, Armstrong is a successful, state-licensed middle school teacher and basketball coach.When Siegel was awarded the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2010, Armstrong spoke on Siegel’s behalf at the award ceremony. Siegel confessed that this was a very proud moment for him, an example of how a career in journalism erases forgone conclusions and stereotypes that an individual may have when initially coming into a story.
Siegel then spoke about the effect of social media on journalism and the lack of professional etiquette from both the White House and purveyors of social media programs. Siegel criticized these social websites and applications for ignoring the intricate selection and editing process that traditional news outlets go through in order to present information accurately and in context. Applications such as Snapchat and Facebook have become common sources of news for millennials, and the information they present is vulnerable to increased subjectivity when it is presented in short, 10-second video clips instead of meticulously-researched articles. Siegel’s point becomes even more poignant in the context of the last election cycle and the proliferation of “fake news” through social media that may or may not have influenced voters in the 2016 presidential election.
Siegel ended his talk by taking a few questions from eager community members, one of whom asked for advice for an aspiring journalist.
“I wish I’d worried less,” said Siegel after a pause, then urging the crowd’s young and unemployed to pursue what they want with passion and enthusiasm.
In the words of guest Daniel Foley of the Vermont Humanities Council, Robert Siegel is “one of America’s most distinguished journalists.” In today’s politically divided society, Siegel’s lifelong, ardent devotion to the truth serves as a reassuring constant, a symbol of the importance and endurance of honest journalism. “All Things Considered” airs every weekday on your local NPR member station.
(11/09/17 12:30am)
The administration has criticized this paper’s coverage in public and private, and to our editors. They have implied that this paper contributes to negative perceptions of our school. They have shown discomfort and grown defensive when community members have shared their stories. The administration has realized we are a broken community.
They have also said it is the role of this paper to help build a new community by running positive stories. We disagree. There are no positive or negative stories, only truth.
The Campus ought to be a means of dissemination. We strive to report on the Middlebury student experience as it is, whatever it may be and in its truest form. Authenticity needs to be compulsory of the free press, coupled with thorough investigation. We aspire to these principles in order to best serve the student body.
Undoubtedly, many people in our community feel that we have not met these aspirations, some feel we have, and others probably think we have the wrong objectives entirely. We unequivocally believe that the aforementioned goals are of the highest priority, and acknowledge there is still plenty of room for The Campus to grow.
We want to be a newspaper for the community, but we must be a platform for the student experience first and foremost. This is our mission and this is where we will continue to improve. We want to prioritize true, genuine stories that reflect the milieu on campus, as well as in the surrounding town area. We believe our job is to capture the sentiments of life at Middlebury as we see it happening in real time, and inquire deeply. We acknowledge that in the past we have not always done this well.
The college press needs to mirror the student experience like a shadow at dusk. When someone walks about, the sun casts a mighty shadow of that person on the ground. No matter where that individual goes or what they confront, their shadow will be by their side depicting a larger version of themselves.
The Campus aims to function the same way. We wish to work alongside students by representing their opinions in print and bolstering those feelings, the way a shadow augments someone’s stature. When the student body faces hardship, whether it be racially charged incidents, the Trump administration’s threat to DACA or the Charles Murray fiasco, we as an editorial team strive to report on and defend the sentiments of the students.
In the Campus office we do debate such issues. We have our own opinions, but ultimately we aim to print the truth and channel how the student body feels overall. It is not our role to elevate our own voices; rather it is our duty to champion the perspectives being shared in McCullough, the AFC, in the dormitories, etc.
Moreover, we should be a microphone for students’ voices. We aim to be a means of amplifying what is already being said by folks around campus. When opinions are expressed, but neither the faculty, nor other students, nor the administration listen or respond, we will, to the best of our ability, be the loudspeaker that makes those attitudes clear and heard.
In this work of advocacy, we hope to build a more cohesive community. Collectively, Middlebury College needs to work towards greater solidarity during times of adversity. Recognizing the struggle and experiences of one another, amidst violent actions of racist assailants, is absolutely necessary. We create this cohesion through the paper by reflecting the student experience so that everyone is made aware. We also want to serve as a nexus of all student voices to propagate their views, while recognizing that some voices are historically and unfairly marginalized. We will equitably support the experiences of women, POCs, queer, disabled and poor folks in particular.
For those who feel we have the wrong objectives or are utterly failing to meet our standards, we implore you to propose how we can improve. We will seriously consider your criticism. However, we will not give praise where it is not due. We will not publish masturbatory tales about our community that belie the struggles this campus is going through. That sort of advertisement is left to the communications office.
If you do not like what we print, we invite you to write in. As long as they fit our editorial standards, we will publish your essays and letters. We ask you to exhibit “rhetorical resilience” and to not let the word of the press get you down. Instead, embrace what the words say, own your shortcomings, and work to improve and grow. It is what we plan to do.
(11/09/17 12:29am)
We, a group of more than 40 Middlebury faculty, wish to publicly express our outrage and disgust at the images of racist and violent graffiti discovered in a classroom last week, as reported in The Campus on November 1.
Moreover, as we stated in our September editorial, we stand with Addis Fouche-Channer ‘17 and believe she was smeared by the college’s judicial process, while also being denied both presumption of innocence and due process. We call upon senior administrators to issue a public apology to her, and to withdraw the presumption of guilt implied in the official report. We wish to make it explicitly clear that a process that defames and threatens a Middlebury graduate is an affront to the entire institution.
In light of this event and others, it is clear that despite strong words of support and admirably proactive stances from the Middlebury administration around national issues like DACA and the equal rights of transgender persons, more must be done to repair trust and demonstrate a commitment to racial justice. While we understand that the process of diversity and inclusion must look to the future, the administration needs to right these recent wrongs, in part as a way to acknowledge how previous policies and practices were unfair to people of color. Without recognizing and redressing the wrongs of the past, efforts to move forward will continue to be undercut by the appearance of hypocrisy and insincerity.
We are gratified that more than 90% of our faculty colleagues, including President Patton, supported our Sense of the Faculty Motion on Friday Nov. 3rd to promote steps to move forward on diversity practices. It is in the spirit of this shared commitment towards future progress on diversity practices in our community that we need to answer the lingering question as to why a student of color was treated unjustly by the college, without being given a proper apology or a clear explanation. This would indeed help us as we move forward towards our shared goal of making Middlebury a truly inclusive community.
Members of Middlebury Faculty for an Inclusive Community are listed on their website, which can be found at go.middlebury.edu/inclusivecommunity.
(11/09/17 12:22am)
The following piece is directed towards cishet (people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth and are straight) men:
I want to be intentional about not speaking for anyone who experiences sexism, whether they are women, trans women or queer men. Though I sympathize and strive to be in solidarity, I do not share their experience with misogyny or femmephobia and it is not my place to speak on their behalf. However, I do believe I can speak to the way cishet men perpetuate misogyny, especially at Middlebury.
Recently, women have been sharing innumerable accounts of gender based violence and they are alarming. If you are not aware, google “Harvey Weinstein”, a film producer who was recently accused of sexually assaulting Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, and Rose McGowan among many other Hollywood actresses. Next google “#metoo”, a social media movement to spread awareness via women posting “#metoo” if they have experienced sexual harassment or assault. Search “Miss Peru” or “Michael Oreskes” or “Ben Affleck.” I could go on. All of these searches will yield results highlighting the problem of gender based violence. All of these stories are in context of a president-elect, who boasted about forcibly grabbing women by the p**** during his campaign.
Due to social media and Donald Trump and the bravery of victims, experiences of misogyny are being shared around the world more than ever right now. If you are not viscerally disgusted by these accounts, you should be. For those who are deeply troubled by these stories, you must not be surprised--this is not new.
As men we are ignorant to the violence women experience regularly, maybe paying attention when some great scandal is revealed. Sexual assault and harassment against women is something straight men often do not understand in the right way. We often respond with astonishment, which is naive, and then proudly condemn such behavior in an effort to secure our own reputation. We self-aggrandize before prioritizing the safety of women. Meanwhile at that party last weekend, when your friend was leaving with a super drunk woman, you did not stop him. That is a problematic situation that can easily become nonconsensual and you were complicit by not speaking up. Similar situations arise constantly. When your friend cat-called those women on your way to the bar, did you call him out? Or simply, if a woman said no, did you stop immediately?
Instead of acting surprised like occurrences of sexual harassment and assault could never happen at Middlebury and then openly stating “rape is f***** up” like you’re one of the good guys, think about how your daily actions fight or tacitly condone misogyny. Call out your boys who catcall--women are not objects to holler at. Don’t let your friends refer to women as “females”, a popular colloquialism amongst black men. Essentializing women to their sexual organs, which is what “female” denotes, is degrading. Misogyny is violence against women--colloquial usage of “female” is on this spectrum of violence. Referring to people as sexual objects does damage and that is verbal violence. Moreover, do not use the words “slut” or “b****.” Do not call women these words because they are sexist insults. A man who is sexually promiscuous is a “player” but a woman who thrives in the same evolutionary behaviors is a “slut,” a word meant to invoke shame. As a man it isn’t your place to say “b****”, do not sing it in a song and do not call a woman it. It’s a charged word that is inextricable from its usage as a means of demeaning women. Find another word to express your frustration with your science professor who writes hard exams. And when you call other men “b****” (or p****), you’re degrading them by implicitly calling them a woman or a woman’s sexual organs. That is insulting. That is misogyny.
I am not saying that we are all Harvey Weinstein or worse Bill Cosby, but I am saying that we, cishet collegiate men, tacitly permit misogyny in many ways. Call out your friends for problematic behavior and be cognizant of the words you use. Doing your part in addressing sexual harassment and assault goes beyond condemning rape. Speak up and let’s work to seriously acknowledge and combat gender based violence.
(11/09/17 12:17am)
Peter Schumer, John C. Baldwin Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, joined Middlebury’s faculty in 1983. He has a deep and long-winded passion for the East Asian board game “Go,” and gave a presentation on its history and the strategy it demands on Friday Nov. 3. Go, as he described at the beginning of the presentation, is an art form as much as a game for sharpening intellect and deductive reasoning skills. He opened the discussion by telling his audience that the package Go comes in reads that the game “takes fifteen minutes to learn, and a lifetime to master.” Schumer added that “both are gross underestimations.”
Interested in the game since he was an undergrad, Schumer now teaches a freshman seminar around the game and has since the 1980s. The Japanese word for the game, Shudon, translates to “hand-talk,” and Schumer emphasized how appropriate this title is. The one-on-one game brings people together, encouraging friendly competition and an artistic, movement-driven “conversation,” talking-between-hands. Really, it’s a way to communicate with another person over the game board, and it ends with mutual agreement; no one wins at Go. Schumer continued to describe the ways in which people read each other and communicate across board, telling us that one can often tell when their opponent is greedy, or timid, or impulsive, by observing their moves.
“Mysteries of psychology often play out in the game,” said Schumer. He continued to explain, however, that the game is thought of as a struggle within yourself, not really against the other person. Players will sometimes think for hours before making a move, constantly asking themselves: “What’s the best that you can do?” It is not regionally or culturally bound, Schumer said. He described his time playing last summer in the Japanese Go Congress, as one of just a few foreigners, playing with Japanese players from all over Japan. It is the grace of movement and skill within the two-person game that Schumer seeks to celebrate in his seminar and in the talk he gave on Friday.
Schumer’s talk sought to give the audience a basic understanding of the game, centering around slides and pictures of the game board in different stages of a typical game. The game features a wooden board and “stones” as the pieces. Originally, the pieces really were stones, though they are now black and white glass and sometimes clam shells. Schumer, in his travels to Japan (he has visited the country 10 times in the last 15 years), often visits the places where they make and sell game pieces. The board and pieces are constructed beautifully and with great care, as much an art form as the game’s graceful strategy. The moves are placed on intersections of the board’s grid rather than the actual squares, and the object of the game is to surround the opponent’s pieces, marking their “territory.” Schumer shared with the audience the different types of math equations to calculate the number of possible places one could move a stone in a given game. With this, Schumer demonstrated the deductive reasoning side of the game, and why he, as a math professor, is so passionate about the specific strategies within it. The end score is based on the space on the board where a player’s stones are not.
“I think this is really interesting, and related to art; how do you use negative space?” Schumer said. He continued on to project traditional Chinese and Japanese prints depicting people playing the game: one of six men playing in a Japanese internment camp, and another of a girl playing with an older man.
“[The game] shows the good will between people,” Schumer said in describing the photographs. The next slide featured a quote from Emmanuel Lasker, a mathematician and avid Go player, that read, “If there are sentient beings on other planets, then they play Go.”
“The game definitely appeals to people who have a problem-solving, math interest,” Schumer said. “But it also appeals to people with an artistic sense. The game is quite unusual, in that intuition and artistic aspects play a very big part in the game, since you can’t really figure everything out.” The game, too, attracts people with a passion for East Asian culture. Schumer, in his presentation, spoke of his love not only for Go but for Japanese gardens, woodblock prints and Sangaku, which are Japanese geometric prints that merge mathematical ratios with graphic, colorful art.
“I think of the course as sort of a window into East Asian culture, especially Japan,” Schumer said, describing what draws students to his freshman seminar. “I have had students who have a special interest or background either in Japanese things, or in other artistic pursuits. I’ve had students go on to be music majors, dance majors, certainly Japanese majors. There aren’t as many math majors as you’d think.”
The seminar is far more intense than others, as Schumer has his students meet around six hours a week rather than the standard three. During a class, students often play a full game, sometimes in teams of two rather than one-on-one. Schumer, in one of the first classes of every semester, plays each person in the class, each of the 16 students at their own board and him walking around making moves on each board. Students then write up their thoughts and do reflective writing exercises on what moves they could’ve played differently. There is a deep level of reflection involved with the game, even at the highest level, so the structure of a writing-heavy freshman seminar is suited to the introspective, artistic game.
Last summer, Professor Schumer was in Osaka, Japan, studying at an international Go camp. There were about 25 people from 14 different countries.
“For me, that’s like, a fun way to spend three or four weeks,” Schumer said. Every day, he plays Go online against the other online players from all over the world and reads about Go from the literature he’s collected on the shelf in his office. He brought his passion for the Game of Go with him in his move to Vermont, and created the Vermont Go club. The group of eight to ten still meets every Wednesday at a cafe in Burlington. He goes to tournaments seven or eight times a year in Boston, New York, and Montreal. The Math department has game nights once a month, where sometimes Professor Schumer teaches the group to play Go. Anyone can email him, he said, or come by his office, and he would be overjoyed to teach anyone interested.
“I’m always encouraging and promoting the game,” Schumer said. Schumer’s presentation emphasized the skills both required for and gained from being a longtime Go player. He projected a long list of them on the wall: problem solving, analysis, intuition, dedication, patience, goodwill, respect. It is, he wrote on the slide, a lifelong pursuit.
