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(11/01/17 11:08pm)
On a sunny Saturday afternoon, a group gathered inside Mead Chapel to celebrate the life of Juana Gamero de Coca, a Spanish professor, who passed away suddenly on Oct. 6. The room was full of photographs and colorful flowers that the attendees brought with them and placed in vases. Juana’s family and friends spoke in three languages about a woman full of love, life, and passion. To celebrate Juana, The Campus has gathered excerpts of those eulogies and statements from Juana’s students, published with permission. Some of the passages have been edited for length.
I used to always complain that you weren’t a normal mom. You wore a lot of black. You never once made me chocolate chip cookies. Or meatloaf. You always kissed me a lot. And I mean a lot. On my cheeks. My arm. You really liked to kiss my knee. You had an accent that made it sound like you were saying “bitch” instead of “beach”. The first time you took me on a vacation, you chose Peru instead of the Florida Keys. You didn’t live in a big home, with a picket fence and a photogenic dog. You smoked cigarettes. You cried a lot. You laughed a lot. You yelled a lot. You weren’t the mom that hid your feelings from your kids. Or pretended that because you were a mom you had life figured out. You told Carmen and I to feel the weight of this world. To let our emotions in and let them blanket us from all sides. You never told us to pick ourselves up. We were allowed to feel the comfort of staying fallen. To take a break from the exhausting demands of being eye-level with everyone else.
Why can’t you just be normal? I used to say. Why do you always have to embarrass me? I would say. Now, what I long to say most is that I loved the way you were. I understand that this world weighed down on you. It was hard on your body. Tough on your heart. I don’t blame you for leaving so early. For wanting to escape Trump America and leave while Cataluña is still a part of Spain. The last few years, I met you in a new capacity. You opened up to me about your heartaches and troubles. You showed me what happens behind your bold red lipstick. That there are times when you feel fragile, too. Sometimes when you woke up in the morning, you would ask me if I thought you were pretty. When your relationship was stung by conflict, you lay paralyzed for days. When your sickness took you to different hospital beds, you asked to borrow my hand to be fed. And when you realized life isn’t always as happy as in the books, you asked Carmen and I to be happy for you. It was hard for my self-absorbed college student self to understand the gift of being able to take care of my mother. I’m sorry I didn’t offer more, but thank you for letting me in.
I stay up now thinking about the stories I never heard. About the memories that never had the chance to become memories. But just like you used to say to me. We are more than the same blood and bone. We are mother and daughter. Carmen and I will carry on for you. We will travel the world, go to India, have your grandchildren, and fall in love.
The last time I talked to you was the night that you passed away. I told you I was having a sad day. I had broken up with my boyfriend and I felt lonely. You called me and again, for the millionth time, told me that it was okay to feel sad. You said that hard things happen and I shouldn’t expect to get over them. Instead, sometimes you just have to leave sadness in a little pocket nearby. Life will carry on but the sadness will stay to help you remember and to help you grow. I’ve put you in a brand new pocket that I made out of silk and cashmere. You’ll stay there forever. And I’ll never mix you up because you were not a normal mom. You were special. And as my sister already said, you are the most beautiful woman we will ever meet.
by Izzy Fleming ’17, Juana’s Daughter
...
Mi mama era la mujer mas hermosa que conocí en toda mi vida. Y no lo digo por como se veía físicamente porque eso es obvio. Lo digo por su forma de pensar, su manera de bailar, su pasión para la justicia y la importancia que daba en asegurar que todos los demás estaban bien. Ella lucho mucho con ella misma durante su vida y creo que eso la hizo querer mas para los demás que para ella.
She taught Izzy and I to be aware of the world and what was happening to people everywhere. She taught us to be proud of being different. She taught us to speak our minds. And she was successful, because she taught me to really, really speak my mind, which meant that when I grew up we had similar ways of arguing and discussing issues. When we discussed issues of social justice and politics we would start calmly and then without fail begin to yell at each other for 10 minutes until we realized we were agreeing with each other and just saying the same thing in different words. We used to scare my sister Izzy and my friends because they would think we were fighting but really she just taught me to be passionate like her about what I believed.
When my mom came to the U.S. her father told her that he had lost her and she would never go back. She told him he was crazy and that she was just going to work as a nanny and take English classes and would be back soon. She met my father and everything about her life changed and her father was right, she stayed.
The other day our dad said that he was always so impressed and so proud of her for what she accomplished, coming to the US without speaking English and making it to where she did. Izzy and I are so lucky that we had our mother and father as parents, who unlike other divorced parents always truly cared so deeply for each other that we all remained a very close knit family.
Mi mama fue alguien con quien todo el mundo se enamoraba con solo conocerla. Hizo sentir a todos que eran importantes y felices. En su presencia todos se reían y bailaban y reían y bailaban. Creo que mi mama es la persona mas hermosa que todos aquí hemos conocido y somos todos mas hermosas con solo haberla conocido.
My mom was someone that everyone fell in love with after meeting her. She made everyone feel important and happy. In her company everyone laughed and danced and laughed and danced. I think my mom is the most beautiful person that everyone here has ever met and we are all more beautiful just from having met her.
by Carmen Fleming ’10, Juana’s Daughter
...
Lo que viví toda esta semana no tiene nombre ni palabras. Por eso fue tan difícil tejer el manto delgadisimo y frágil que quise venir a compartir hoy con todos porque a todos nosotros pertenece. La red de protección que es el amor de los otros por mí, por ti, por ustedes, por ellos, hasta convertírsenos en amor de nosotros por nosotros.
Gracias de todo corazón... Roto.
Finalmente para dar remate a la más tierna ceremonia que los vivos pueden hacer por los muertos - recordarlos que significa literalmente “volverlos a pasar por el corazón”- subieron Isabel y Carmen, la verdadera sangre viva de Juana, su verdadera mirada y su verdadera sonrisa hecha dos seres humanos. Subieron a decirnos con muchas historias y pocas palabras que son ella, que ellas son su madre - la más amada, la más admirada, la mejor del mundo- y que en ellas perdura nuestra Janita, aquella bendecida por todos los dones y todas las virtudes que hoy perduran porque Juana es Isabel y Juana es Carmen, e Isabel y Carmen están salvando siempre a su madre por ellas y por nosotros.
Y así llegó a su final lo que será el principio de nuestra vida. Nuestro “sin ti” , que es el larguísimo porvenir, pero “con nosotros”, que es el presente y que ya está aquí.
Qué puedo decirte, Jana mía. Voy a ser tú, voy a intentar ser tú, yo, como tus hijas, voy a emprender la increíble e imposible tarea de multiplicarte.
by Visting Lecturer Ricardo Chávez Castañeda, Juana’s Partner
...
No le puedo escribir cartas
porque en la muerte no hay dirección.
Ayer para clase (como si hoy
o mañana nos importaran las clases)
leí una flor amarilla. Los árboles
eran chispas bajo la lluvia y hoy
lloramos por ella.
Juana nunca volverá a verse
en autobús, sudando, la línea 95.
Todos somos inmortales pero
ella fue mortal. We’re never too grown
to stop growing but what if we just
stop.
No creo en el cielo y de hecho
prefiero imaginarla en la biblioteca
de Babel (Borges, sé que por el velo
me puedes escuchar). En el laberinto
en las estanterías infinitas
se sienta tranquilamente en un sillón.
Sabe que un día vendrá la locura
para comernos crudos, salados,
más lindos que lo rojo en una capilla.
Yo soy joven y torpe y no sé
que tipo de flores llevan al velorio.
Pensaba rosas pero ahora
girasoles que brillan hasta morir.
by Hayley Jones ’18.5, Juana’s Student
...
Eso que acabas de leer es una juanería.
Juanerías. Juanerías extremendas. Juana es de Extremadura. Extremeña. Y bien sabemos, es tremenda. Extremenda.
Gestos excéntricos, salados, brillantes.
Bailar vestida de rojo, con la mano en alto, curveando la muñeca, su cuerpo esbelto y grácil. Sonreír como nadie.
Llenar de flores la casa de la amiga que sufre por sus seres queridos. Repartir abanicos a las chicas guapas.
Saber la importancia del contacto. Aplicarlo sin hacer cuentas. A alumnos, a colegas, a amigos. Sea políticamente correcto o no.
Insistir en cuidarnos, y bueno, por desgracia, no siempre cuidarse muy bien.
Defender a quienes lo necesitan, arriesgue lo que se arriesgue. Hace meses en Crossroads café, rodeada de estudiantes que habían protestado racismo e injusticia. Estudiantes investigados porque le habían gritado al racista. Ante la noción de que gritar es peor que cuestionar la humanidad de alguien, qué hizo Juana? Gritar. Es una juanería.
Qué es la ética, sino abrazar al débil, ver su dolor, la injusticia, y nombrarlos en voz alta? En voz muy alta.
Cariño: Manejar horas y horas al hospital Dana Farber, tomar la mano de nuestra amiga Ana. Hacerla reír con chismes y gracias mientras le metían la quimio en el sillón de los venenos.
Subirse a un estrado como éste—es decir, a este estrado, y dirigirse a un público como éste que lloraba a nuestra Ana, la primera chica guapa que se fue. Con su vestido rojo y unos tacones tan altos que Ricardo le dio el brazo, no fuera que tropezara al bajar.
Saben que Juana era ombudsman del profesorado? Ahora no tenemos ombudsman.
Juanerías. Juana es todo eso. No es una santa. Es una persona que iba y venía por el mundo, repartiendo abrazos ante el dolor, el dolor que terco la rondaba. Repartiendo el antídoto: besos y abrazos y cariños.
Juana dio y dio y dio. Intuía que la vida no podía durar mucho viviéndola de juanería en juanería. Que la vida se va gastando al vivirla. le decíamos que no, que claro que no. que mientras más das más tienes.
Aquí estamos. ¿Y tú, extremenda?
Pues no sé a dónde huyes, ni sé a dónde voy,
¡tú que lo supiste!
by Professor of Spanish Gloria Estela González Zenteno
(11/01/17 10:55pm)
In 1968, Philip K. Dick asked us to ponder a question: do androids dream of electric sheep? His novel about what makes the human experience so human inspired director Ridley Scott to bring his vision to the big screen with “Blade Runner” (1982). It subsequently took Scott five attempts to tell Rick Deckard’s (Harrison Ford) story, culminating in “Blade Runner: Final Cut” (2007). The series is a case study in the revisionary practices of art, a constant attempt to improve. Since its release, “Blade Runner” has shifted the science fiction landscape of filmmaking, leaving filmmakers like “Ex Machina” (2015) director Alex Garland and “Arrival” (2016) director Denis Villeneuve indebted to the vision Scott brought to life. So it is without surprise that we find Villeneuve at the helm of a continuation of Scott’s world with “Blade Runner 2049” (2017), an equally challenging and intriguing puzzle-box of science fiction.
Set 30 years after the conclusion of the events of “Blade Runner”, the film begins in a car with K (Ryan Gosling). Like Deckard before him, he is tasked with hunting down replicants, the bio-engineered disposable workforce of this future, who have gone astray. K himself is of a new generation of replicants, created by Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), made without the rebellious impulses of the originals. In a desolate landscape of dust and satellites, K tracks down Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista), a rogue replicant who has settled into a life of farming. Tender is not a word that usually describes Bautista, but that is exactly what he is here. K has come to kill Sapper, a fact both men are well aware of. Yet the tension only builds as the two talk of garlic, and the protein Sapper makes before K “retires” him.
“Blade Runner” made us question the essence of humanity through the mystery of whether or not Deckard was a replicant. There is no mystery here. We know both K and Sapper are replicants, but Bautista makes Sapper effortlessly human, while Gosling keeps K the bland, company man he was trained to be. Sapper fought against this completely obedient design, and to him it must seem that K has given in too easily to the demands of his boss, Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright). By beginning the film with this pair, Villeneuve presents the questions we will be challenged to ponder through its almost three hour runtime: what, if anything, makes a replicant less than human, and more unsettling, what makes us human anyways? A discovery that K makes in Sapper’s house sends him on an odyssey that forces him to consider these very questions.
In order to convey such a heady concept, the world must be believable. We must feel every particle of radioactive dust, each snowflake as it melts on skin, and every ember as the cities smolder. Villeneuve enlists legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins to capture his expertly designed world, and Deakins, who has crafted worlds for everything from “Shawshank Redemption” (1994) to “Skyfall” (2012), excels. This may be his finest work. After K lands in bombed out Las Vegas to find Deckard, he walks through air saturated with red dust. Half-seen statues loom around him. He and another replicant do battle on what seems to be the edge of the world, and in a haunting moment, Deckard comes face to face with a ghost from his past. Deakins makes this whole world feel real.
Together, Villeneuve and Deakins have crafted a world like nothing I have ever seen. Frame by frame, they fashion a world of out of images as poetic as anything that has been put to page. They and the production team rely sparingly on CGI, opting to build massive sets instead, matching each with its own particular palette: the streets of L.A. are shown in greys and blues, Deckard’s Las Vegas is coated in reds and oranges, and the headquarters of replicant manufacturer Niander Wallace are an endlessly unsettling scheme of mustard and black. It would be challenging to find a still from this film that is not worthy of framing.
I have intentionally not lingered on the performances in this film because it strikes me that what the actors do seems rather subsidiary to how they look while doing it. Gosling is fine in the role of K. The performance is bland, seemingly intentional in its detachment. Gosling is clearly the protagonist of the film, but it is the supporting cast that stand out. Bautista is superb, and Sylvia Hoeks as Luv, Wallace’s hand-crafted second-in-command, is a scene-stealer. She manifests the internal battle between wanting to make her creator proud, and hating the control he exercises over her and the other replicants. Wright turns the possibly one-note character of a police lieutenant into a deliciously pulpy genre transplant: she seems to have walked out of a 1950’s film noir and into this new world. It is a treat to see Ford return as Deckard, and he is given more to do here than in his last turn as Han Solo in The Force Awakens (2015).
I don’t think Dick, Scott, or Villeneuve have the answer to the questions they pose, which I am grateful for. The attempt to comprehend what makes us tick has inspired gifted artists to grapple with the question on the page, on the canvas, and on the screen. “Blade Runner 2049” exposes us to the dystopian landscape so completely that we are forced to consider what it would mean to be person within it. The idea of replicants and the repercussions of such advancements were terrifying in the original “Blade Runner” and it remains so 35 years later in “Blade Runner 2049”. But that is the joy of it. Villeneuve has no intention of answering Dick’s question, or shutting the door on the world Scott introduced us to. He has instead lent his vision to the oeuvre of humanistic exploration, and we are better for it.
(11/01/17 10:52pm)
News media in the United States has changed dramatically over the past few decades, and few have a better perspective on that evolution than Walter Mears ’56. Mears served as editor-in-chief of The Campus in his senior year at Middlebury, and began reporting for the Associated Press (AP) immediately following his graduation. Mears wrote for the AP from then until 2001, during which time he covered 11 presidential elections and won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the 1976 campaign. Recently, Mears spoke by phone to Nick Garber, a news editor for The Campus, and discussed his time at Middlebury and the state of journalism in the Trump era. This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Nick Garber (NG): Some have alleged that the news media “graded Trump on a curve” in 2016, which minimized his flaws and exaggerated Hillary Clinton’s. What do you make of that allegation? Did you ever cover a candidate who was so unique that it felt difficult to cover them fairly?
Walter Mears (WM): “Unique” is a kind word to use for Trump. I guess the closest I could come would be [Alabama Governor] George Wallace in 1968 and 1972, and Ross Perot, who was the third-party candidate against Bill Clinton and [George H.W.] Bush. But I don’t think there’s been anyone quite like Trump.
One reason is the change in the coverage—the word news media means so many things now that it’s meaningless. You can call anything, from a totally fictitious website to the Associated Press, part of the news media, and it’s not. And the rise of social media, which I consider antisocial, has made it possible for people with all sorts of axes to grind to pose as though they were reporting news. And, egged on by Trump and also by the most liberal of us, objective news has become so subjective that it’s hard for people to know what they’re supposed to read, or hear, or see, or believe. I think that’s a great danger to our whole system, because without an informed electorate, you can’t have sensible elections.
As a reporter, I covered a lot of people I personally disagreed with. I spent a lot of time with Barry Goldwater in 1963 and ’64. I respected him and he was a patriot, but I didn’t think he ought to be president and disagreed with his views. But I covered him fairly and my colleagues did too. Barry thanked us after the campaign, saying, “I know most of you don’t agree with what I say, but I respect the way you covered it objectively.” I couldn’t cover Donald Trump fairly. I’m glad I don’t have to try. I couldn’t simply stand by and report objectively the irresponsible behavior of this man and the people around him.
NG: Can you boil down the issues with modern media into any one concept?
WM: I don’t know that there’s any one thing I could name. The fact that anybody with a computer is suddenly a journalist is part of the problem. Obviously, the biggest threat to the kind of news media I knew is the decline of the daily newspaper, because advertising migrated to the internet, and nobody’s figured out how to make a good business model to keep a newspaper going without advertising.
With that support structure being undermined by the availability of online advertising, you lose the resources that are essential to the kind of news coverage that is essential to a functioning democracy. If you look at the major newspapers, a few still maintain overseas news coverage, but most don’t bother since it’s very expensive. The coverage of statehouses is shrinking; in a lot of states where you used to have a press corps, it’s a handful of reporters who show up once in awhile but don’t cover state government the way it was covered in my era. That’s a function of resources, which are shrinking, and that’s a big problem.
NG: Thinking ahead to 2020, what do you make of the perceived split in the Republican Party? Do you expect Trump to draw any primary challengers?
WM: There’s a certain pattern that needs to be repeated. You’ve got to get through the primaries, you’ve got to get the nomination, and so forth. I’d be very surprised if there aren’t one or more challengers to Trump for renomination. [Tennessee Senator] Bob Corker, who’s retiring and telling the truth about Trump and his cadre, would seem to me to be a solid prospect for people looking for a challenger.
The campaign of 2016 was warped all out of shape by a number of factors. I hate to think a major reason was Russian interference—in my time, during and shortly after the Cold War, any candidate who was cozy with the Russians politically would’ve been laughed out of the race immediately.
NG: Can you describe how your time at Middlebury contributed to your career?
WM: Middlebury was crucial to launching me into my career in journalism. I always wanted to be a reporter. I chose Middlebury because it chose me. I wasn’t a very distinguished student going in—I did well in college and I graduated with honors, but my credentials as an applicant were not the greatest. Those four years were crucial to my maturing process, and The Campus was crucial to my career. My contacts opened the door that led me to work for the AP the morning after I graduated from Middlebury.
NG: The relationship between the student body and the administration is a dominant topic on campus these days. What kind of dealings did you have with the administration as a student, and as a student journalist?
WM: One of my duties as editor was to oversee the writing of the editorials and bring them to Sam Stratton, the president of the college, before they were published. Nothing was ever changed, though there was a sense that they were looking over your shoulder.
The biggest issue that arose in my time as editor was the summer before I became editor, a famous and beloved Dean of Men, Storrs Lee, was fired. They did it when the campus was deserted for the summer—I think because of the rebellion it would’ve caused, because he was a great dean and a fine gentleman. I wrote an editorial that basically said that we as a student body had every right to be outraged that a man of his caliber was dismissed, but that the board of trustees was within its right in doing what it did and that there was no way to overturn it. Basically, “I’m as mad as you are, but cool it.” It went over very well with the administration, but was also accepted and observed by the student body. It was regarded as a sensible, calming message from an unlikely place.
NG: Middlebury has received significant news coverage in recent months due to the March protests of Charles Murray. In the aftermath, it seemed that students on all sides of the issue were frustrated by the news coverage, which many felt failed to capture the nuances of the discourse on campus. During your career, how did you approach the challenge of accurately capturing the subtleties of the situations you reported on?
WM: Obviously, what got the attention was the fact that they shouted him off the stage and the professor was injured, and that it got out of hand. I wish that the people that objected to this man would’ve simply said, “The perfect answer is to let him have an empty arena. Nobody go—let the people who invited him listen to him, nobody else show up.” The one thing people like Murray can’t stand is to be ignored. Obviously, he wasn’t and Middlebury wasn’t—Middlebury got more news coverage than I’ve ever seen it get before or after, and all it did was inflate Murray.
It’s sort of like Trump—be outrageous and people will pay attention. I don’t know about the nuances on campus, but I think letting it get to that point takes away the ability to have rational discussion about it. I wasn’t there and don’t know exactly what happened, but it did get violent and that’s counterproductive.
NG: What advice would you give to young people that are seeking to enter journalism, or simply to hold power accountable in this era?
WM: I hope that people who aspire to journalism won’t give up because it’s too important to walk away from the institution that is crucial to democracy. I think that democracy is facing its greatest challenge in my lifetime, because its very essence is an informed electorate, and we’re losing that.
Trump, in suggesting that all stories with unidentified sources are simply made up by the reporters, is ignoring the fact that that’s a fireable offense—if you make up a source, you’re fired. That issue is one the Trump crowd rides hard because part of their stock and trade is sowing mistrust of the coverage people should be able to rely on. So, I hope people who aspire to journalism stick with it, and know it’s going to be more difficult now than ever, for the decline of the newspapers and for the fact that you’ll be surrounded by people howling that you’re a liar.
For the broader part of your question, it’s crucial to all of us that young people and old people pay attention to their sources of information. As a reporter, you don’t go with something if you have one source and you can’t back it up. Readers should apply a similar standard—not just grab a rumor from the internet, but look for backup, look for other sources. Do the research to find out what’s really going on. It’s difficult and most people don’t take the time to do it, but not doing it leads to a firestorm of misinformation. There’s so much floating around out there, and it’s easy to grab onto the latest rumor and treat it as truth. Checking sources is a standard for reporters, and it ought be what readers follow as well.
NG: We’ll see if my generation can figure that out.
WM: It’s going to be tough but I hope you do, because if we’re going to keep a democracy, we’re going to have to do better at informing ourselves about who and what we’re voting on. The whole process has been so distorted by so many factors that it’s hard to see why it’s worth it. But it’s worth it because it’s the system we’ve had for a couple of centuries, and it’s worth defending by paying attention to it.
(11/01/17 10:41pm)
Author Jim Grimsley returned to campus on Thursday Oct. 26, almost exactly a year after he last visited, to discuss his book “How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning Lessons From a Racist Childhood.” The book is about his experience living through school integration in Jones County, North Carolina. This year, Grimsley was joined on stage by the three black women who integrated his all white sixth grade class in 1968: Donnie Meadows, Fernanda Copeland, and Rose Bell.
“They all changed my life in different ways,” Grimsley said.
Grimsley explained that the reason that Meadows, Copeland, and Bell were the only black students in their middle school was because of a program called Freedom of Choice.
“Freedom of choice was white people’s last-ditch effort to refuse integration altogether,” he said. All three women had to elect to attend the white school, though Copeland and Meadows, who are sisters, said that their father made the decision for them. “We moved from Washington, D.C. so schools were already integrated there,” Copeland said. “I knew what it was like to go to school with people of different races. It didn’t bother me.”
Their father chose the white school because he wanted his daughters to get a better education.
“My dad said you’re going to go there, and I want you to sit there and I want you to learn. I want you to stand up for yourself, but be respectful,” Copeland said. “I was not nervous. I knew that I needed to go because we were taught that anything in life that you want you have to work for, and education was the key.”
Bell said she also chose the white school because of the better educational opportunities, but she made that decision herself.
“I told my parents that I wanted to go over to the white school. They said, ‘are you sure?’ I said, ‘yes, I’m sure.’ I wanted to know what they were learning. We had been told that they had the new books. [The black students] got the books after [the white students] did,” she said.
Meadows said that even back then she was impressed that Bell had decided to integrate.
“I would like to say that Rose was the champion because Rose decided to attend the school that was all white,” she said. “Not her father, not her mother, she did. And that age it took some guts to do that.”
Bell talked about what it was like to walk into the classroom for the first time.
“All eyes were on us,” Bell said. “We were different because of the color of our skin, which was something we could not help. So I go in there and I said it’s like this: I know who I am and I know what I stand for. I stand for right. Even though I’m out numbered I’ll stand for what’s right.”
All three women described that first year as difficult as they settled into a new learning environment. Bell said that the boys sitting behind her often called her fat, and that sometimes her classmates would push chairs into her back.
“A lot of times I didn’t say anything I just took it,” she said. “Then it got to the point, sometimes, I would have to defend myself. I would have to actually get into arguments with the boys. Our teacher at that time was an older white man and he would be in and out of the classroom a whole lot. And that caused a lot of friction in the classroom. Most of the time everything would start was when the teacher left the classroom.”
Copeland also talked about standing up for herself rather than telling the teacher, including once when several of the boys in her class exposed themselves in front of her.
“I never told the teacher because I felt like I handled that myself,” she said.
The group also addressed an incident that Grimsley writes about in his book, when he decided to call Bell a name in class.
“When Jim called Rose the name, I’ll never forget that day,” Meadows said. “He wasn’t ready for her. It came out of his mouth so quickly, and she came right back, and she came back stomping. And I couldn’t believe that she had it to go back like that.”
Grimsley credits Bell with helping him see his own racism that day, so he could eventually work to counteract it.
“As white children we were shaped to be very quiet and not to talk and not to ever make noise. Rose came into that classroom prepared to make any amount of noise she needed to to make her point,” Grimsley said. “On [that] particular day when I was 11 years old I was confronted with my racism in such terms that I could not deny that I wanted to change it.”
After their two years together in middle school, the Supreme Court ruled that Freedom of Choice was not an adequate form of integration. Going into their first year of high school, all four students were faced with a fully integrated school system. Grimsley pointed out, however, that many of his white classmates opted to go to white private schools when this happened, which meant that white students were in the minority at the newly integrated public school.
Grimsley also discussed the tracking programs at their high school to force a new kind of academic segregation.
“As soon as full integration happened, what happened all over the south was there were different tracking programs within the integrated schools that re-imposed a kind of segregation at the classroom level,” he said. “The first strategy was the notion of college preparatory courses....The school was 70 percent black, 30 percent white. But I was never in a classroom in which the balance was not reversed. Our college prep classrooms were always 70 percent white, 30 percent black.” Meadows, Copeland, and Bell were all in the college preparatory track as well, along with seven other black students.
The four speakers described a high school experience full of turmoil.
“When we walked three miles to the courthouse and to the community center, you got suspended for 15 days,” Copleand said, at which point her father drove down to the school. “He had choice words for the superintendent. He went to the superintendent’s office that next day and when he came back he told us, ‘you guys will be in school tomorrow.’ And we were there the next day. Finally, they lifted the suspensions and the other students were allowed back in.”
The women also talked about the presence of religion in their lives, and the differences between the white church and the black church when they were growing up. Meadows described Jones County as deeply Southern Baptist.
“You had two churches, the white church and the black church. And there were two different messages being taught out of those two churches,” she said. “The black church, that’s where Martin Luther King got his start. Everybody knew that the black church is where the NAACP would come and hold their meetings. And everybody was in the NAACP when we were young. And so the black church did not teach us to hate.”
The white church, on the other hand, had an active role in spreading racism, and Grimsley remembers hearing sermons about white superiority and segregation.
“What they would say was, well, you cannot love them the way you love another white person. If God had intended us to be one people, he would have made us all the same color,” he said. “Once you begin to use a holy place for that kind of purpose, it’s not altogether a holy place anymore.”
Today, Copeland and Bell still live in Jones County, and they say it hasn’t changed much.
“We learned to be cordial to one another, greet one another, we go to each others churches and we tolerate one another,” Copeland said. “But the underline is we are still not equal.” She says she still sees racism, which is part of why she has decided to run for a county commissioner position.
Bell said she also tries to get involved.
“I try to get on as many boards as I can in the country, be very instrumental, and let my light shine before people. Because that’s all I can do,” she said. “If I could help one person to change then I feel like I have accomplished something.”
(11/01/17 10:32pm)
Dear President Laurie L. Patton:
The hateful graffiti photographed by a student in Munroe Hall undoubtedly relates to the incident of racial profiling involving Addis Fouche-Channer after the Charles Murray protests.
The graffiti also implicates Bill Burger, who is known to have driven the escape vehicle escorting Allison Stanger and Charles Murray away from the college. An unidentified student/students quite elegantly used the edge of a piece of chalk to write “F—ck Addis” on one board, and after some ghastly and short-lived game of Hangman, drew her being violently run over by the escape vehicle on the opposite wall.
After an acutely painful investigative process — a process I watched disturbingly unfold alongside Addis — the college continues to assert she was at the protest. I am beyond horrified that she had to see these images. As cowardly as they are, they are nonetheless shocking, violent in nature, and blatantly racist.
I consider Addis to be my closest friend, someone I would trust my life with. We’ve battled years of depression together. We’ve comforted each other after the countless times we felt marginalized or othered on this campus — when we’ve felt completely worthless in our own skin. We’ve celebrated the triumphs and weathered the tribulations of growing up in college together. She has been one of my most valuable teachers. She is, in many ways, fearless.
I was at dinner with her at the time of the protest in Proctor dining hall, and we watched Allison Stanger and Charles Murray continue their discussion over the live feed after they had been moved to an undisclosed location. We both felt similarly: How could the college refuse to listen to the screams of marginalized students, who felt both unsafe and ignored by his invitation to speak?
Addis had a lot on her mind that week, and prioritized her mental health over attending the protest. “I’m glad we chose not to go to the protest today,” I remember her saying, sounding particularly fatigued. “As much as you wish, you don’t always have the energy to fight every battle.”
***
I know the truth. Hell, I witnessed it, I experienced it. Frantically contacting everyone she interacted with in the dining hall after she was “identified” as a violent protestor by the Middlebury police department, she asked me to verify that I was with her. Little did I know at the time the gravity of the situation. How could she have been at the protest if she was with me? I was convinced she would be proven innocent, and told her not to stress out about it — that things would work out. They didn’t.
Each step of the way, those involved in the judiciary process attempted to invalidate the trauma she endured by insisting she had to have been lying. In order to counter the accusation, she carefully collected a diverse array of evidence, including Wi-Fi logs she obtained from the IT department. After she presented the evidence, as stated in The Campus’ article, the associate dean of judicial affairs said “there does not seem to be a good reason to move forward with a hearing.” I thought then that the nightmare would end for her last spring, and that she would be able to move on and settle into a life after Middlebury.
Addis came up for homecoming this past weekend. She was excited to see many of her close friends, but was apprehensive about reading the college’s determination files, which denied that she was racially profiled and asserted she was at the protest. Reaffirming what was recently stated in an article published on WRMC: “Conveniently for the college, this eliminates their culpability in a racial profiling case.” And furthermore, this action again invalidates the experience of trauma and oppression she faced and continues to face.
I accompanied her into the building as we went to read the determination files, and to see what evidence could have been conjured to contradict Addis’ and my lived experience.
“You know you weren’t allowed to bring anyone here, right?” the judicial dean said. She retorted, “Yes, I know. He’s just here for emotional support.” We were immediately separated, and she was brought down a winding pathway of hallways into a private conference room.
I asked myself, Why is this necessary? Why is she being treated like a criminal? I began walking through the hallways, discomforted by the fact she was alone reading what I thought might be devastating news. After a few minutes of pacing back and forth, I sat myself down in the designated waiting area. She emerged a short while later, visibly angry, fighting back tears as we walked out together.
The file cited her unwillingness to cooperate throughout the investigation as a reason to discredit her reliability. This statement is highly racialized. Why should she pander to the way white administrators expect her to behave when they are the ones accusing her of something she didn’t do? The other point of evidence was that she wore a similarly colored shirt as a protester outside. Just this past weekend, a black student was mistaken for Addis.
That was about it. Pure and simple, the determination was b—llshit. Again, I know this because I witnessed the truth. I know the truth. I experienced the truth, and continue to experience it.
I am not the first person to say this, nor will I be the last; your silence is deafening. Your most recent article to The Campus, entitled “Racism and Responsibility,” failed to acknowledge specific instances of racism on campus, several of which the administration is complicit in. Why haven’t you responded to WRMC’s article urging you to address this incident of racial profiling? Why haven’t you acknowledged Michael Olinick’s letter to the editor, outlining the racial profiling of a faculty member on campus by a Public Safety officer? Why haven’t you acknowledged that the word “RACIST” was spray-painted across the pillars of Mead Chapel?
The trauma students experience cannot continue to be refuted by the administration, nor can it continue to go unacknowledged. You must swiftly and specifically condemn Tuesday’s act of hatred and racism. You must acknowledge the pain Addis experienced throughout a prejudiced and demeaning investigative process, and especially the pain she felt today. Healing can only begin with a formal apology to Addis Fouche-Channer.
Sincerely,
Matt Gillis
(11/01/17 10:11pm)
A sad day it is indeed when supposedly “liberal” publications like The New York Times and The Guardian are seen practically falling over each other singing praises of those bold Defenders of Democracy, the Senate’s newest Knights of Truth, Bob Corker and Jeff Flake. Seriously, if I sound mockingly hyperbolic (which, to be fair, I am), just read how the Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui described Flake’s recent Senate speech in her less-than-subtle front page piece entitled “Battle hymns of the Republicans: Trump civil war is just getting started:”
“It is time for our complicity and our accommodation for the unacceptable to end,” Flake said, in explosive remarks that were instantly labeled as a historic act of defiance. “There are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles. Now is such a time.”
Similarly breathless praise was shown forth upon Flake’s fellow Republican ideologue, multimillionaire Tennessean Bob Corker, whose recent criticism of Supreme Idiot Donald Trump was described by The New York Times as “an extraordinary rebuke of a president of his own party.”
Historic act of defiance! Extraordinary rebuke! What a low bar we’ve set for such things. Yet in all fairness, one could be forgiven for agreeing with these laudatory words upon first glance; after all, the sight of a senator referring to the White House of a sitting president as an “adult day care” would have once been quite the spectacle, and admittedly felt pretty satisfying to read. But this blanketing coverage is hardly more than a vapid, TMZ-style play-by-play of a Twitter feud between two celebrities. What Flake and Corker are actually frustrated about is The Donald’s near-comical unwillingness and inability to play the Reaganesque role of President, something which even previous all-time foot-in-mouth champion and expert shoe-dodger George W. Bush managed to occasionally pass for (‘Mission Accomplished’ Top-Gunnery notwithstanding).
The reason that all these establishment Republicans like Flake and Corker ever went along with Trump’s stunning idiocy at all is because his attention-consuming theatrics take all the focus off of their party’s quieter dismantling of environmental and financial regulations, industry capture of agencies and other blatant giveaways to their corporate masters. Trump’s lack of any substantive policy knowledge or interest, however distasteful to Washington intelligentsia, is fairly inconsequential for the bureaucracy assembled by his party to finish the task of converting our state to little more than an enabler and enforcer of corporate greed. If Jeff Flake were somehow President instead, I have little doubt that he would have nominated oil industry mouthpiece Scott Pruitt for EPA chief just as readily.
Obviously Trump is eroding the office of President, and our culture more broadly. But these things were in decline long before that bloated orange embodiment of toxic masculinity decided, likely out of boredom, to chain the nation to his cart on the express lane of societal malaise. Yes, Trump has brought the aesthetics of the presidency to a Kid Rock shade of terrible, but sadly this unflattering representation of American politics more accurately reflects its internal moral rot than the poised, intellectual Obama. Why didn’t Republicans like Flake decry “the constant non-truth-telling...the debasement of our nation” (his words on Trump) when Bush’s cabal blatantly lied about WMDs in Iraq? Is this Republican tendency towards honesty also annulled every time a fossil-fueled lawmaker denies climate change? Was the office of President not eroded when it started to approve summary executions via drone strikes on American citizens without due process? The hypocrisy here is so outstanding that I’m struck with the horrifying possibility that they’ve begun to believe their own nonsense.
Thus the real root of Flake and Corker’s insubordination, and their subsequent positive press, comes not from any place of real dissent, but because the carefully cultivated veneer of stately legitimacy has been crudely ripped off by a man with the tact and taste of an 11-year-old. It’s almost grotesquely beautiful, if it weren’t so painful to watch. Now the capriciousness, the astounding corruption, warmongering, jingoism and plain old irresponsibility that has unfortunately characterized the last few decades of the declining American Empire is no longer festering, disguised, in the background. Instead, it’s exuberantly celebrated in every asinine tweet, unconsidered nuclear provocation, and embarrassingly public tit-for-tat that we see faithfully reproduced on screen and page, ad nauseum.
This is too much for most of us to handle, let alone pillars of the old order like The Times or Bob Corker. So instead we pretend that it’s just this one buffoon’s crusade on decency, rather than a reflection of the society that placed him on its own throne. Even so, it’s frankly pathetic to see publications that brand themselves as principled liberal opposition siding so readily with politicians as despicable in substance as Trump is in image. Perhaps once we rid ourselves of a perverse longing for the illusion of righteous governance to return, we can actually get to the work of achieving it.
(10/19/17 12:04am)
The Middlebury community woke up to widespread vandalism last Saturday, Oct. 14, after an unknown individual(s) spray-painted condemnations of the college at eight locations on campus.
One of the more notable examples occurred at Mead Chapel, where the word “racist” was spelled out across the six pillars at the building’s entrance. Outside Old Chapel, where the offices of senior college administrators are located, the vandal(s) spray-painted the word “shame” and a sad face. The phrase “F-ck Middlebury” was found spray-painted on the lawn in front of Hepburn Hall, and “I Hate Midd [sad face]” was found outside the college bookstore.
“At this point, we haven’t identified who is responsible for the vandalism,” college spokesman Bill Burger told The Campus. “We are in touch with the Middlebury Police Department and they have agreed to help in the investigation.”
The vandalism comes during one of the more turbulent times in recent college history, and at a time when community members have expressed disappointment in the college’s handling of issues related to race and class.
“The graffiti that was left, presumably, by members of our community on various buildings and public spaces this past weekend sends a clear and important message: We, as a community, have not done a good enough job in making people who feel marginalized and excluded welcome at Middlebury,” said Kyle Wright ’19.5, who co-chairs the Community Council.
In March, protesters here prevented Charles Murray from delivering a lecture after labeling him a racist and white nationalist. Last month, The Campus reported that Addis Fouche-Channer ’17 filed an official complaint with the college alleging she was racially profiled in the wake of the protest. The college disputes her account, even though a judicial officer had cleared her of any wrongdoing last spring.
After The Campus report, Middlebury Faculty for an Inclusive Community, a coalition that formed in the wake of the Murray protest, called on the administration to do more.
“It is not just about taking responsibility in a broad and general sense, which President Patton has done repeatedly,” the faculty members wrote. “It is about demonstrating the humble learning that comes from admitting specific mistakes, and highlighting how we can and will do better for our students going forward.”
On Friday, The Campus published a letter to the editor written by math professor Michael Olinick that said a professor of color was racially profiled while attempting to enter her office earlier this year. That letter is reprinted on page three of this week’s issue of The Campus.
“It is especially distressing that although this incident was reported promptly, the professor states that the college administration has been slow to respond, and while it regards the office’s behavior as ‘unacceptable,’ it refuses to recognize it as racial profiling,” Olinick said.
According to Nia Robinson ’19, who served last year as co-president of the Black Student Union, these problems are institutional.
“From my perspective, it seems like the administration ignores those issues until they can't anymore. That’s why I think things like graffiti and protests happen. Maybe they do pay attention, but don’t think there is anything they can do,” she said.
“I think it takes looking at Midd as an institution first, realizing it was made for and by rich white people, and will continue to be that way, no matter how many students of color we pump through here.”
In an op-ed submission published in this week’s issue of The Campus, College President Laurie L. Patton acknowledged that the administration needs to do more.
“Racism is present at Middlebury, and it will not be tolerated. We must come together as a community to address it,” Patton said. “We also need a comprehensive approach to this problem, at all levels, beginning with the administration.”
Regarding the graffiti, Wright said it is important to note the burden it places on other members of the college community.
“This graffiti does not affect our college administration in the way it does members of Facilities Services, for example, who are the staff responsible for cleaning graffiti off of our buildings,” Wright said. “Indeed, it impacts those groups very inequitably, which I’m sure was not among the intentions of the community members who performed the graffiti.”
According to Burger, fourteen members of the facilities staff cleaned the graffiti from 7:30 to 10:30 a.m. on Saturday. Additional work had to be done on Monday. Four members of the facilities staff came in to work despite it being their day off.
On that same day, a memorial service for Juana Gamero de Coca, a Spanish professor, was scheduled to take place in Mead Chapel. Burger said the staff prioritized cleaning that location first.
“We’re deeply appreciative for the efforts and skill of the members of our staff who worked that morning — some on their day off — to remove the work of the vandals,” Burger said.
Going forward, Wright said the administration should use this as an opportunity to address these issues.
“A comprehensive response on behalf of the administration regarding the concerns raised by this graffiti is overdue" he said.
(10/18/17 11:42pm)
MIDDLEBURY — At a public hearing hosted by the Vermont Climate Action Commission in Brattleboro on Thursday, Oct. 5, Middlebury students joined community members to discuss solutions to reduce carbon emissions and fight climate change. Many solutions were proposed, including incentivizing renewables, divestment from fossil fuel companies and government subsidies of weatherization, with carbon pricing being the most popular.
“It really struck me to get to hear from Vermonters because you realize that all of these issues are impacting their lives and the things that they care about,” Oscar Psychas ’21 said about his experience at the hearing. “One thing I love about Vermont is that people are really civically engaged — they really care about making a positive difference in the government. I think it’s an exciting opportunity if Middlebury can be a part of that Vermont community and democratic spirit to take part in finding solutions to these important issues.”
For Vermont, a state reliant on agriculture, addressing these issues is all the more urgent. Following President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, many institutions, states and countries have agreed to continue to try to meet carbon emission reduction goals.
Vermont is a part of these ranks. Governor Phil Scott (R) signed Executive Order No. 12-17 in July 2017, creating the Vermont Climate Action Commission (VCAC) as a part of his commitment to reduce the state’s carbon emissions. The VCAC aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a way that will boost the economy and affect all Vermonters equally.
Although the carbon pricing initiative proved popular among residents, Gov. Scott has rejected the proposal. In a statement from September, Gov. Phil Scott said “I will veto a carbon tax if it comes to my desk because we cannot make Vermont more affordable by making it less affordable.” He also said that “real solutions will strengthen the economy and not add to the crisis of affordability many families and business are facing.”
Many agree with the governor that carbon pricing would negatively affect Vermont residents, citing higher gas prices as a concern.
Bennett Pienkowski ’20.5 explained another perspective: “Carbon pricing will be a net positive for the economy of Vermont because it is a potentially revenue-neutral campaign that will help us reduce emissions. The thought being that if you raise the price on carbon, we will spend less on carbon, and then less money will leave the state in the form of fossil fuel revenues. The money that doesn’t leave the state is going to be spent locally.”
Bennington College student Sabrina Melendez explained this idea further in an interview for VTDigger. “[Revenue-neutral] means taxing carbon emissions of fossil fuel companies at the extraction and distribution level and returning that money to the people of Vermont to make up for higher gas prices,” she said.
According to the Manchester Journal, although the ‘listening tour’ held by the Climate Action Commission has received praise, many are urging Gov. Scott to take the next step and uphold his commitment to the reduction of carbon emissions by supporting a carbon tax in Vermont.
At the Snow Bowl Family Bash on Saturday, Oct. 14, students hosted an educational booth in order to spread the word about the carbon pricing initiative at Middlebury. Leif Taranta ’20.5, a student who worked at the booth, shared some thoughts about the effort.
“We must live in occurrence with the values that we put forth. Middlebury is proud to have a carbon neutral campus and to model environmental sustainability, yet we still have harmful carbon emissions. There are many ways to take responsibility including divestment from fossil fuel companies and investment in renewables, but carbon pricing is one concrete, localized step we can take now, especially because we cannot count on the federal government to take action against climate change,” he said.
In addition to supporting the initiative on a state level, students at the Snow Bowl advocated for localized carbon pricing within Middlebury College.
“For the rest of the semester we’re going to be collecting signatures and getting people excited about supporting a carbon price on campus so that we’re upholding our own commitment to sustainability,” said Psychas. “That carbon price is not going to be coming out of the pockets of students, faculty or staff of the college.” President Laurie Patton has agreed to endorse the petition if enough signatures from the student body are collected, he said.
“We’re a leading education institution, maybe the leading educational institution in the state, and so I think when we take action, especially in such a small state, it sets a tone,” Pienkowski said. “And so if we institute our own carbon charge and get President Laurie Patton to support it, that says a lot.”
The Sunday Night Group, a group that focuses on environmental problems and awareness on campus, particularly climate activism, will be hosting more events in the coming weeks. On Thursday, Oct. 19, at 4:30 p.m. in front of Old Chapel, they will be teaching about divestment, another important step that Middlebury can take towards combating climate change and protecting the environment.
(10/18/17 11:36pm)
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: 55
The What
Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the 1997 publication of “Brokeback Mountain” in The New Yorker. The short story tells the intimate tale of two Wyoming-based cowboys, Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, who are isolated while working on a mountain and find a mutual love they must keep hidden. In their domestic and social lives, the lead characters are largely the epitomes of traditional masculinity: strong in body, sparse in word and dedicated to work that is physically brutal and requires the least emotional output possible. They surprise each other and themselves when intimacy develops between them, though they struggle to incorporate their love into their normal lives off the mountain. The constricting gender roles of the time and place, inherently imbued with violent homophobia, force them to maintain a clandestine relationship, despite their true desires. Set in the early 1960s, the work rings with authenticity and tragedy, leaving the reader with no doubts as to why Proulx, a University of Vermont alum who spent 30 years in Vermont, won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
The Why
The 2005 Academy Award-winning feature-length film adaptation of the story, starring the late Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, caused the work to skyrocket into a new orbit of fame, and for good reason, as the duo’s stellar performances and direction are of the highest quality. I was an undergraduate when the film came out, and it reminded me much of Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses,” another rugged cowboy story adapted for the screen.
However, it was news to me in 2017 that the “prima materia” was ever a short form, fictional and readable narrative. I was bopping around in the stacks, as I am wont to to do, and pulled the short, thin tome from the lower level’s shelves au hasard. I read it in one go. I usually read nothing in one go. It was that good.
I am happy to have encountered the work anew and consider it a veritable classic within a canon of works treating gay rights and identities. When the movie adaptation came out, it was socially acceptable and even encouraged for people, especially young men, to publicly decry the faintest acknowledgement of intimacy between two men. In other words, it was not popular to like the film. Our discourse as a nation surrounding LGBTQ+ rights was younger and coarser then.
Rating: 5/5 cardigans
The written work says nothing more than it needs to, doing a stellar job of “showing and not telling.” I think it was quite daring then and even now to refuse to commit to a neat short story length or a novel length and to choose a bit of a hybrid form. The work continues to inspire new adaptations, considering the 2014 opera adaptation by Charles Wuorinen.
(10/18/17 11:12pm)
The word “veganism” has the power to elicit eye-rolls, approving nods, or looks of utter confusion. Some view the vegan lifestyle as a pretentious fad, an overly ambitious and misguided attempt to save the world. Others admire the morality of it all, but consider the elimination of animal products from one’s diet to be an impossible undertaking, particularly in light of the college’s limited dining hall options.
Those who identify as vegan on this campus, however, show that this lifestyle endeavor is perhaps not as difficult, irrelevant or inaccessible as one might think.
People arrive at veganism from a variety of entry points. Some are motivated largely by ethical reasons, citing the mistreatment of animals and humans in the creation of non-vegan products. Others are driven primarily by environmental or personal health concerns. Most, if not all, vegans recognize the multiplicity of factors that underlie the significance of their dietary choices.
“The mistreatment of animals is not something I want to be part of at all,” said Finne Murphy ’19, who became vegan five years ago with the encouragement of her mother. “And the meat industry as a whole is really damaging in a lot of different ways. And then it’s just not very good for you health-wise.”
In the context of human and animal rights, veganism can be understood as a form of social justice.
“I kind of felt like I was a hypocrite by saying that I don’t support institutionalized racism and poor treatment of minorities if I continue to support industries that systematically do that, especially with dairy farms,” said Eva Bod ’20, who became vegan this past summer. “If I draw a line at human rights, what about animal rights? If I don’t believe one human life is worth more or less than another human life, how can I do that about species?”
Lee Garcia Jimenez ’19 echoed this sentiment.
“For me, veganism is about fighting oppression,” Garcia Jimenez said. “When people typically fight against oppression, they fight on behalf of themselves. If you’re queer, you express to people to stop homophobia, and I recognize that allies exist, but you don’t find as many straight people actively engaging in rhetoric about why ending homophobia is important, just like you don’t get as many men talking about the importance of ending the patriarchy. But with veganism, people are advocating explicitly for victims that are not them and that are not people they are talking to.”
Simon Willig ’18 sees veganism as a means of acting on his knowledge as Environmental Policy major.
“A vegan diet is a manifestation of me knowing that 99 percent, or 99.999 percent, of the animal products out there, I really don’t agree with how they’re raised and how they’re impacting the environment,” Willig said. “Your ideas and your practices should evolve over time with what you learn. I don’t know that I’m going to be vegan for the rest of my life. It’s just the best manifestation of my current ideas and how I understand these issues, so I would consider myself always trying to be open-minded about these things.”
The continuous and persistent inquiry that guides veganism lends itself to a range of interpretations of what, exactly, a vegan lifestyle looks like. Students expressed that there is not a right or wrong way to be vegan; rather, one’s ability to make this decision for themselves is contingent on their life context and the resources available to them.
For instance, Ami Furgang ’20, who became vegan two years after discovering that they were allergic to dairy, calls themselves a “free-gan.”
“My personal interpretation of what that means for me is I’ll eat anything as long as I personally judge that it’ll go to waste if I don’t eat it,” they explained, adding that, unlike some vegans, they do consume honey and gelatin.
Others also acknowledged the difficulty of abiding by a “perfect” vegan lifestyle.
“I feel like I’ve been vegan in my ethics the whole time. It’s just my efforts have gone off and on,” said Garcia Jimenez, who began practicing veganism five years ago.
“I am not a perfect vegan,” Bod added. “First of all, it takes a lot of privilege to make that decision. You have to have resources to be educated about it. You have to have the privilege to afford decent eating and a decent diet in the first place. I think implementing it is not just about a diet, it’s a lifestyle. Which sounds awful because that’s one of those cheesy one-liners, but do I think it’s ethical to buy from stores that use child labor to make clothes? Of course not, no. But also I can’t afford handmade fine Italian clothing in my entire wardrobe. So to that extent, when it comes to practicing that lifestyle it has to do with choices and lines, and it just depends on where you draw those lines.”
Willig echoed this idea, pointing out the inapplicability of veganism in certain cultural contexts.
“I think people get confused about what exactly I mean by veganism,” he said. “People think I think everyone in the world should be vegan. I obviously understand that people in developing countries who rely on animal agriculture for their livelihood need that. But I think that anybody who can should reduce their consumption of conventionally raised animal products.”
For many, the ability to practice veganism is hindered by social stigma and a lack of structural support for this lifestyle choice. Many struggle with the sparse number of vegan-friendly options at the dining halls, a problem that could be remedied by offering cheese and butter as sides to pasta and vegetable dishes, rather than making dairy products an inherent part of the meal.
“For lunch and dinner, it can really be a hit or miss. Because you can go and there can be three vegan sides and they’re tasty, or the vegetables don’t have butter, and that’s a great day,” Garcia Jimenez said. “But then you can go and there’s one vegan option and it’s something that I happen to not like, and I have to make my own food, and sometimes you just get tired of eating sandwiches.”
“I find every day I each pretty much the same thing, which is pasta and rice, apples and peanut butter, and whatever vegetables they have,” Murphy said. She expressed enthusiasm for the newly introduced lemon sorbet and coconut milk ice cream in the dining halls, adding, “For the past two years I’ve never had any dessert, but this year has been better.”
Despite systemic challenges to following a nutritious and varied vegan diet, people expressed gratitude toward the dining hall staff for their willingness and ability to accommodate for vegan dietary needs when requested. For instance, students can ask for eggplant parm (a vegan dish with a dairy-free cheese substitute) when chicken parm is offered on certain evenings.
“I never felt like I was inconveniencing the dining hall staff by asking for vegan alternatives,” Bod said. “Within the limited choices that the dining hall offers, I still feel welcomed as a vegan.”
As the ethical, environmental, and health-related implications of veganism have become more widely understood and adopted by the student body, demand for vegan options has increased. As a result, dairy-free fridges, which offer a variety of vegan-friendly milks, cheeses, yogurts, butter, ice cream, and cheesecakes, became an installment in the dining halls this year.
Dan Detora, director of food services, notes that the dining services budget, combined with the limited size and layout of the college’s dining halls, presents challenges in serving the entire student body.
“When it comes down to it, we still need to accommodate the needs of all students within our budgetary requirements,” Detora said. “Some vegan items can certainly be pricey. However, so can the grass-fed and grass-finished beef we serve. So in the end it balances out fairly well.”
If the impassioned spirit and well-informed arguments of those who identify as vegan have anything to show, it is that the choice to avoid animal products is far more than just a trend. Veganism is a lifestyle, an often challenging and misunderstood one whose relevance spans across the realms of morality, environmentalism, and personal health. To engage in this practice is to recognize the ways in which our capitalist food systems have fundamentally failed us and our planet.
“I’m by no means a perfect vegan. I think no one is, and I struggled immensely in the past with maintaining a vegan lifestyle,” Garcia Jimenez said. “But it’s because we’re all socialized into being accepting of the cruelty that we pay for. And me trying to get other people to go vegan isn’t about calling them a bad person. It’s about sharing information that, if we all were raised with, we would live our lives very differently. But because we’ve become indoctrinated to carnism, we want to maintain that. And I wish people could view vegan activism as re-socializing as opposed to name-calling.”
(10/18/17 11:05pm)
Before I came to the U.S. for the first time as an exchange student in grade 11, I had to attend a week-long seminar that was supposed to prepare us for the American culture waiting for us on the other side of the ocean.
I very vividly remember one of the volunteers telling us that the biggest problem they had with German exchange students was something they called der deutsche Diskutierer, which translates to “the German debater.” We were told not to argue so much with our host parents, to not discuss politics at the dinner table and not to constantly express our opinions about the rules that our host family set for us.
But here I am, 6 years later, again an exchange student, still always up for an argument (or “discussion,” as we like to call it), still constantly expressing my opinion when no one wants to hear it. Imagine my joy when I was offered to write a bi-weekly opinion column!
In my first few weeks here, I have already observed many things that are foreign to me. Many of them I do not know how to feel about, others make me angry or annoyed, yet others make me think about how things could be better at home. I have many opinions and questions on dorm life, sports and competitiveness, class and wealth, politeness and etiquette, academic life and of course the political situation on campus. In this column, I want to try to get these thoughts written down in a somewhat coherent way that, if I succeed, also make you think about and question some of these things.
When you are abroad and away from home, it is very easy to slip into a default mode of thinking everything is better at home. I am guilty of that. I keep talking about the parliamentary democracy, Berlin techno, flea markets, recycling, vegan food options, public transportation, tuition fees and grocery stores in Germany. The other day when it was raining, my lovely fellow German exchange student and I were walking and complaining about “why Americans cannot manage to design and put down the pavement in a way that avoids the creation of puddles.” Words more stereotypically German have never left my mouth. I always think it is interesting how much better home seems when you are far away from it. When I am in Germany, I instead keep talking about how much further evolved certain discourses are in the United States, how much better I like the high school system, and how involved students are.
What I am trying to say is, I am aware of my own biases. I am well aware of the dangers of slipping into essentialist, generalizing, universalizing rhetoric and I will try my hardest to avoid this. In the end, this column is only my subjective observations about a country that I do not know nearly everything about and about a campus that I know nearly nothing about. That is also why the full name of this column should probably be “Observations of a Not So Neutral Outsider.”
My next piece will most likely be on all my feelings about small talk or having English as your native language, unless something more interesting happens to me in the meantime (hard to imagine, I know). Thank you for reading, ciao and bis bald.
(10/11/17 11:00pm)
On Saturday, Oct. 7, the Danish String Quartet played Bela Bartok’s First String Quartet, Sz. 40 Op. 7, Beethoven’s Seventh String Quartet, Op. 59 No. 1, subtitled “Razumovsky” for their Russian patron, and a collection of folk tunes arranged by the quartet. They encored a piece by a contemporary Danish composer. The rest of the wonderful folk tunes they played are on the quartet’s new CD, titled “Last Leaf.”
The program said that this ensemble only plays music they enjoy playing, a statement I would not have believed before hearing their lively performance. The best parts of yesterday’s performance were those moments when a new theme, usually a folk theme, entered the music, and the players traded it among their instruments, clearly enjoying their performance. Despite the length of the concert, which started at 8 and ended at 10:30, I was never unhappy to be there.
The concert started with Bartok’s quartet, a continuous 30-minute mass of music which sometimes seemed to descend into Schoenberg-esque atonality only to recover into an Hungarian folk tune. Divided into three movements, lento, allegretto, and allegro vivace, the piece was a good one for the beginning of a concert. It takes a considerable amount of effort to derive meaning from listening to it, and people are usually the most alert at the beginning of concerts.
The cellist spoke briefly about the latent programmatic content in its composition: Bartok was not succeeding as a composer, had failed to attract a spouse, and had escaped to the countryside to collect folk melodies. This explanation helped to ease the toughness of the music, which oscillated wildly between Late-Romantic extended tonality and rough-hewn folk melodies.
This odd mixture of styles and influences provided many opportunities for the players to shine, and they did. Whenever a new folk melody entered the contrapuntal mass, that line stood out immediately, for whoever was playing did so with a specific zeal, the sort that only appears when one is really passionate about something. The recording of these would not do this quartet justice as viewing the players live adds an intangible quality to the performance which makes going to such concerts worth the cost in the first place.
Next, the quartet played their folk melodies. There is less to say here about the concert itself and more about what they played and how they played it. It is rare that a quartet plays something so outside the standard repertoire. Even some of the more adventurous items from last year like Berg’s Lyric Suite can be found at several concerts per year, but these folk tunes were truly unique.
Allison Carroll, director of the Performing Arts Series Society, said it took three years to book this quartet because their performance schedule is set years in advance. She said the reason she wanted this particular quartet so much was because they play these folk melodies.
Not only were the melodies excellent music on their own, the particular zeal with which the quartet played could inspire anyone to share this music with their friends whether they usually listen to classical music or not. The deeply-set rhythmic qualities of these pieces make them accessible to the uninitiated.
After the intermission was Beethoven’s quartet. This canonical classical piece uses a Russian folk theme in its fourth movement.
The first movement begins with a wonderful rousing theme played first by the cello and then by the first violin. It moves and develops well in some sort of sonata form, but this is one of those pieces where it is difficult to tell just where the development section ends. The second movement is a scherzo by most meanings of that word: it is funny, it feels like Bartok is toying with his audience, and the players smiled throughout it. If the descriptions of the first two movements seem brief, it is because the third movement seemed so long in comparison. This was another movement where it was difficult to tell the exact contours of the sections, but the overall effect was profound. The moment the music transitioned from the funeral march of the third movement to folk music in the fourth was one of the most moving of the night. This moment exemplified how enjoyable it was to see the players trade the same theme amongst each other. October continues to be a promising month for classical concerts, with soloist Soovin Kim performing Bach’s partitas this Friday, Oct. 13, and the Heath Quartet performing Friday, Oct 27. Both of these PASS events will take place in Robison Hall.
(10/11/17 10:16pm)
“Yo bro, that was an absolute savage move!”
Person sinks the final cup in a game of beer pong. Spectators comment, “Savage.”
“200 pages of reading?!? That professor is a savage.”
No one will deny that these and other similar phrases are prevalent on Middlebury’s campus. I either hear them directly or indirectly everyday, maybe multiple times a day. These colloquialisms are routine. From the varsity locker room to the pre-med class to the stage at theatre rehearsal, the word can be heard in all spheres of campus. Further, this outbreak of “savage”-based language is not unique to Middlebury. I can assure you that at most US colleges, you may be doted as a “savage” at any moment for doing something impressive. Beyond campuses, it is a hot trend everywhere. It’s a common twitter hashtag and it is pervasive in pop culture.
Demi Lovato says it in Sorry Not Sorry:
“Now payback is a bad b----
And baby, I’m the baddest
You f-----’ with a savage”
Kendrick Lamar drops it in LOYALTY:
“I’m a savage, I’m a a------,
I’m a king
Shimmy-yeah,
shimmy-yeah, shimmy-yeah,
rock (yeah)”
It seems that everyone wants to be a savage--after all it is quite the compliment. My understanding is: it means you are skilled, relentless, and powerful. You are a wild, untamed beast ready to fight with little regard for mercy. Whether your opposition is your opponent in pickup basketball, that last cup in beer pong, or your students whom you mercilessly assign 200 pages for one night, it is the highest honor to be deemed a “savage.” However, the word’s etymology reveals that it was/is not always an expression of praise.
As promised, this is the first installment of my column “For the Culture.” I hope to deliver you a “savage” analysis on the word “savage,” which has become embedded in our campus culture.
If you look up savage in Merriam Webster dictionary, among many definitions, it reads “lacking the restraints normal to civilized human beings; lacking complex or advanced culture; a person belonging to a primitive society.” It is irrefutably a pejorative word, but those definitions in isolation don’t seem so bad. Someone or a group of people who act in ways that are not typical to a set of established norms, who seem brutish and simplistic, are savages. But the word “savage” is actually rooted in very specific colonial history that we forget and erase from our daily consciousness too easily.
Historically, the normative, civilized, and complex culture that distinguished non-savages from savages was based on Western Europe. The primitive way of living was based on everyone else, specifically non-white people of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Savages. The word did not exist in isolation--it was used to divide and oppress. Africans, Asians, and the indigenous people of North and South America were labelled savages to make them distinct from European prestige. The traditions and customs of these indigenous communities were regarded as uncivilized by Britain, France, Belgium, and the like, using this cultural dichotomy to justify colonization. The colonial project was motivated by many factors such as economic gain, religious evangelism, and political expansion. To attain these ends the white westerners needed to take specious action: extract all natural resources, coerce the conquered into political colonial systems and Christianity, and enslave and massacre millions. This violence, abuse, and exploitation was reconciled with their ethics via the racist idea of the savage “other.” By labelling indigenous communities as invalid and the fundamental opposition (based on phenotypical, social, and cultural differences from white Europeans), it stripped non-whites of their humanness and homogenized them all as the primitive creatures who existed as the null to western white Europeans. They became sub-human savages in the eyes of the West and so it was okay to do heinous things to them.
The concept of “savages” was why blacks were slaves in the Americas for centuries. If people are relegated to a sub-human status then you can do whatever you want to them and feel unremorseful. “Savages” is why the United States has comfortably obliterated indigenous presence on the land that is not theirs. “Otherizing” people allows you to comfortably erase their history, and push them into marginalized communities. “Savages” is why Africa has been plagued by underdevelopment and weak nation states. Labelling the blacks as savages, allowed the West to nonchalantly deplete Africa of all its resources and construct artificial state boundaries that ignored the existing ethnic borders.
The sad reality is that for many people the “savage” relegation continues. Young blacks are systemically deemed “super predators” hence the government indiscriminately locks them up via a system of social control: mass incarceration. Tribes still live on reservations where their entire water security can be threatened by the government with no hesitation because they are seen as the “other.” The word “savage” has this baggage--it does not exist in an isolated vacuum merely for our colloquial pleasure. It has a dark, violent history, which still plays a role in systemic racism.
How does bro culture play into this? Bro-culture is the complicit element that perpetuates the use of the “savage” colloquialism. Everyone on campus says it, but it originates in bro-culture. Bro-culture in short is norms and behaviors based on financial wealth, whiteness, cis-masculinity, and demonstrations of power--it is not a coincidence that those were the same attributes behind colonization. It is the dominant culture in this community and it seeps into every realm of campus. It is often characterized by masturbatory, male majority friend groups and it is in these spaces that “savage” came to be a slang compliment used by everyone. However, it does have different implications depending on who is speaking. POCs, especially black and indigenous people can reclaim the word that was once used against them to justify stealing from, exploiting, and killing them. By the way, Demi is Latina. When a white person says it, it carries weight. It carries the historical suffering of colonization, which white privilege will never allow someone or their ancestors to endure.
People may continue to say “savage.” It is probably too culturally widespread for one op-ed to change its usage on Middlebury’s campus and beyond. Afterall, it is a trivial matter compared to the racial profiling of Addis Fouche-Channer ’17 or what is happening in Puerto Rico, Myanmar, and Las Vegas. I would be concerned if people stopped saying “savage” after this article but still hadn’t called their Congressperson about our healthcare system. My argument is part of a broader critique of how we use language. Etymology is often ignored and more commonly not known. Many colloquialisms are more than their superficial meanings--some are actually concepts that are rooted in oppressive history. Similar op-eds (perhaps with varying severity) could have been written about words like “ghetto” or “tranny” or “retarded” a couple of years ago. It is important to understand the history behind the language we use. Words were not created in a vacuum so why should we exist in one?
Anyways, those are just some thoughts for now. In two weeks, we’ll get into toxic masculinity and tacit misogyny perpetuated by bro culture.
(10/11/17 10:00pm)
Hundreds of Harry Potter fans gathered on Battell Beach last Saturday, October 7 for the Middlebury Classic Quidditch Festival.
“Middlebury College invented Muggle Quidditch in 2005, and [on Saturday] we revived a home-grown Middlebury tradition,” said Tabitha Mueller ‘18, a member of the Middlebury quidditch club who co-directed the event.
This tradition began twelve years ago, when Muggles Alex Benepe ’09, Xander Manshel ’09 hit Battell Beach, armed with brooms and towel-capes, to put J.K. Rowling’s magical sport to the test. The sport has since expanded rapidly, to thousands of athletes worldwide.
In addition to planning and providing referees for the Middlebury Classic Quidditch tournament, the quidditch club also coordinated “food trucks, potions demonstrations, band performances, and other exhibitions created a festive atmosphere that celebrated a Middlebury tradition steeped in creativity, fun, and magic,” Mueller said.
“Local nonprofits, various students organizations, the college’s Small Concert Initiative, and Middlebury faculty and staff members contributed to the success of this tournament,” she said.
“One of our overarching goals, was that it [would] not just [be] a quidditch tournament, but it [would be] a festival and …[a] day-long magical event … about the culture around, quidditch, Harry Potter, literacy, and so on,” said Andrew Plotch ’18.5, Mueller’s co-captain and co-director of the festival.
The festival directors called school districts from Colchester to Rutland to spread the word and send posters that they hoped would reach students directly, and coordinated with Addison County Readers and Page ONE Literacy to set up a book area and read aloud section at the festival.
Other Middlebury student organizations were also able to pitch in. The American Sign Language club helped teach visitors to sign, the American Chemical Society offered a public potions demonstration, and the Midd Acro club offered face painting and juggling. Unfortunately, performances by Midd Acro and the Middlebury Hooptroupe were cancelled due to rain.
Volunteers from the Otter Non-Sense Players and Middlebrow Improv Groups announced the event, and the following New England bands played live music throughout the day: Shy Shape (New Brunswick, NJ), The Giant Peach (Burlington, VT), 10” Personal Pizza (Middlebury, VT), and Aidan O’Brien (Middlebury, VT).
To feed the crowds, Middlebury Classic Quidditch Festival also teamed up with Ross Commons BBQ, Alganesh’s Ethiopian Food, the White Buffalo Food Truck, Mediterranean Mix, Lulu’s Ice Cream, and InSiteful Baking, which is run by students who live in the InSite House — one of Middlebury’s Solar Decathlon houses for sustainable living. Lulu’s Ice Cream introduced a special flavor called “Platform 9 ¾”, and InSiteful Baking paid homage to Honeydukes with their House Scones, Broomsticks and Snitches.
“The Middlebury Classic was the product of a community and team effort,” Mueller said. “Every Middlebury team member from our first years to our senior Febs and seniors worked hard to create an event that we see as a point of connection between the campus community and our greater Vermont community.”
The result? Festival directors estimate that five to six-hundred people attended the seven-hour festivities. In spite of a rainstorm that lasted longer than anticipated into the afternoon, enthusiastic spectators — some decked out in Harry Potter costumes — braved the rain with their umbrellas and raincoats to watch the action.
Middlebury’s Quidditch Culture
“It’s different from almost every other sport I’ve ever seen played,” Plotch said. “We’re running around with brooms between our legs and we look silly. Everybody acknowledges that, but we still take it seriously and have a lot of fun.”
“Quidditch is a fun, intense, all-inclusive sport unlike anything else,” added Ian Scura ’19.5, a co-captain of the Middlebury Quidditch club.
Middlebury has a co-ed team that follows a quidditch rule called Title 9 ¾. This rule bars any team from having more than four of a majority gender on the field at a given time.
“[Title 9 ¾] adds to this accessibility and [ensures] that everybody can play,” Plotch explained. “Here at Middlebury we don’t have tryouts. Anyone can join and we’re paying for anybody’s membership [in USQ] as long as they are committed to the team. Our barrier to entry is never skill or magical ability: just commitment and coming with a bunch of spirit every day.”
Four teams travelled from across New England to participate in the Middlebury Classic: the University of Vermont quidditch team, the “Great Stone Dragons” from Skidmore, the “RPI Remembralls” of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the “Rough and Tough Puffs,” which was an unofficial conglomerate team of players from Wellesley and RIT.
“Even when you’re playing against each other, it’s so friendly, and people are really just there to have a fun time,” Plotch said. “The majority of people just want to have fun and [for nobody] to get hurt.”
Commons Cup and Tournament Recap
Each residential commons was also welcomed to enter a team of first-years into the fun. In the end, Wonnacott wound up with this year’s intramural Commons Cup title after a round of tough competition against teams from Atwater and Cook.
As the Commons Cup champions, the Wonnacott team played one more game in full bracket play. The Middlebury first-years were able to catch the snitch in this game, but the Skidmore Great Stone Dragons won the match.
“No team could believe it when we told them ... that none of [Wonnacott’s players] had been playing for longer than three weeks,” Plotch said. “Skidmore is a fantastic team, and Wonacott put up a heck of a fight.”
Many of the first-years who played in the Commons Cup also had the chance to play for the Middlebury club team.
Middlebury emerged victorious from their first matchup of the day was against UVM, when Scura captured the snitch to end the game at 130–8.
“We had a great game against UVM, and [then we] lost but played really well against Skidmore — who eventually made it to the finals,” Plotch said.
Middlebury also caught the 30-point snitch to end the game against Skidmore. However, Skidmore squeaked out on top thanks to a last-second goal that made the final score 80–90. Then in bracket play, Middlebury lost their final game to the “Rough and Tough Puffs”.
“It [felt] like there [was] a tangible magic in the air,” Scura said. “It doesn’t matter what level I’m playing at, there is just something special about it.”
The RPI Remembralls, who are ranked fifth in the U.S. Quidditch national standings, beat Skidmore 110-50 in the tournament final.
According to “modern quidditch rules,” the snitch should be released 17 minutes into the game, one minute before the seekers. However, Plotch provided a bit of context for the way things went down in the final.
“Back in the day, snitches would be released at the first second of the game. They’d be on the roof of Pearsons, or eating lunch in Ross… we once had a snitch get a citation in the bell tower of Mead Chapel — and that was totally fair game! Here at Middlebury we do things the way that we want to, so we brought back old school snitching style for the final game.”
In keeping with tradition, all of the RPI and Skidmore players had to close their eyes as the Scura — dressed head-to-toe in yellow, with a tennis ball hanging in a sock on his waistband, as the neutral snitch for the game — was released in minute zero.
Right away, Scura ran into hiding behind Battell, where he’d arranged to have friends waiting for him in a getaway car. He allowed RPI and Skidmore to battle it out in a few minutes of snitch-less play, before making his triumphant if not not disorienting return to the pitch. Scura’s getaway car mysteriously appeared, and moved slowly across Battell Beach until Scura got out and bolted towards the quidditch pitch with an air horn blaring.
Looking Ahead
This launch of the Middlebury Classic Quidditch Festival is just the first step towards what Plotch calls the “[revival of] a campus culture that is here and just needs to be awakened from its slumber.”
This Middlebury is also re-joining the U.S. Quidditch association this year, which it left in 2012 as the reigning five-time Quidditch World Cup champion (2007-2011). As a result, the team has decided to up their practice schedule to four days a week.
“We are growing our team substantially and will continue to have official and non-official teams that can play games all together,” Plotch said. “We are going to play at a level that we haven’t at a long time, and get to play against teams for the sake of the game.”
The Middlebury quidditch club plans to compete in the “5th Annual Battle of Saratoga” at Skidmore on Sunday, October 15, before travelling to Boston on Saturday, October 28 and Saturday, November 4 for two separate tournaments organized by the Massachusetts Quidditch Conference.
“When we talked about this event months ago, the Quidditch Leadership team agreed we wanted to bring the magic of Quidditch home, and we do not plan to stop here,” Mueller said. “We are already looking forward to next year’s Middlebury Classic as well as this season’s upcoming tournaments and wizarding adventures!”
“I don’t think that there is a player or visitor who left without laughing, enjoying themselves, and having, dare I say it, a magical time,” she added.
(10/11/17 9:55pm)
On Sunday, Sept. 24, Pittsburgh Steelers left tackle Alejandro Villanueva came to embody, in an unexpected way, the height of the racial conflict that has embroiled the NFL for the past year. Embody, not because he is black or particularly affected by racial injustice in America — Villanueva is of Spanish descent, and has never publicly spoken of himself as a target of discrimination — but because he felt the utmost degree of pressure from both sides of the conflict.
Villanueva is a veteran of the U.S. Army who served three tours in Afghanistan before beginning his NFL career. Prior to that Sunday’s contest against the Chicago Bears, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin had given his players the freedom to decide how, or even if, they would protest during the anthem. Wanting neither to belittle the struggles of millions of people of color, nor to take an action that they worried would send the wrong message, the players ultimately decided under the leadership of captains Ben Roethlisberger and Cam Heyward that “the only course of action was to go inside and remove ourself [sic] from the situation,” in Villanueva’s words. They planned to remain in the tunnel for the duration of the anthem.
Afterwards, Villanueva expressed a sincere regret for what followed. “After the meeting,” he said, “based on my unique circumstances and based on the fact that I’ve served in the Army and pretty much that my life is lived through the military, I asked Ben [Roethlisberger] if there was a way I could watch the national anthem from the tunnel, and he agreed. He said the captains will be out there right behind me, so this plan morphed to accommodate this tough, moral dilemma that I had in my hands to where the players can be behind me in the tunnel.”
Except when it came time for the anthem to take place, Villanueva’s actions had unintended consequences. He walked out until he could see the flag from the tunnel and, as the anthem was about to begin, turned around to motion to the rest of his teammates to join him. But the hustle and bustle of stadium personnel in the tunnel came between Villanueva and the rest of his teammates: by the time the commotion had cleared, the anthem was already underway.
To say that Villanueva felt it important to honor the flag would be an understatement. For him personally, not standing for the anthem would be almost unthinkable. “At the end of the day,” he said, “it happens all the time: people die for the flag. There’s no way else to put it. When somebody’s about to go on a mission … there’s nothing else that’s going to justify other than the men to the left and right dying for that mission.
“I wish I could stay home. I wish we could all play ‘Call of Duty’ and not have to go to war. Some men, some women, sign up for this tough challenge, and they have to do it for the flag. When I see a flag of a mission on the shoulder of a soldier that reminds me that that guy’s with me. It reminds me that I have to fight and lay my life down for him. Whether it’s in my unit, whether it’s Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, it doesn’t matter. You’re going to have a flag on your shoulder, I’m going to identify that, and we’re fighting for each other. So that’s what the flag means to me, that’s what the flag means to a lot of veterans. The national anthem, it means a lot to them, it means a lot to me. I think my teammates respected this thoroughly.”
But that’s not the message that NFL fans got right away. The unintended consequence of Villanueva’s commitment consisted in the enduring image of him standing alone, hand over his heart, just on the threshold of the tunnel and completely apart from his teammates. The photo was immediately and fervently circulated throughout the media. Demand for Villanueva’s jersey skyrocketed, as it quickly became the highest selling over the next few days.
Nevertheless, Villanueva couldn’t have been more upset with the attention he received. Many Steelers, including Tomlin himself, expressed their disappointment in the way he had handled the situation. In turn, Villanueva felt he had betrayed the trust of his teammates and, by extension, misrepresented their values and common brotherhood on the national stage. “That is the very embarrassing part of my end in what transpired,” he later said, “because when everybody sees an image of me standing by myself, everybody thinks that the team, the Steelers, are not behind me, and that’s absolutely wrong.
“It’s quite the opposite. They all would have… actually the entire team would have been out there with me, even the ones who wanted to take a knee would have been with me had they known these extreme circumstances that at Soldier Field [where the Bears play], in the heat of the moment, when I’ve got soldiers, wounded veterans texting me that I have to be out there, I think everything would have been put aside, from every single one of my teammates, no doubt.
“So because of that, I’ve made Coach Tomlin look bad, and that is my fault, and that is my fault only. I made my teammates look bad, and that is my fault, and my fault only. And I made the Steelers also look bad, and that is my fault, and my fault only. So unwillingly, I made a mistake. I talked to my teammates about the situation. Hopefully they understand it. If they don’t, I still have to live with it, because the nature of this debate is causing a lot of very heated reaction from fans from players, and it’s undeserving to all of the players and coaches from this organization.”
Villanueva’s story leaves us with quite a bit to unpack. There are the obvious questions: to what extent was the onus on him to make sure the whole team knew about his plans to view the flag ahead of time? Should he have stepped back into the tunnel? If not, what should he have done differently? The speculations in his account raise the question of hearsay, too: How accurately did he portray the thoughts and feelings of his teammates in his interview, especially when he asserted that they would’ve been behind him? If he strayed from the truth, was it intentional or unintentional? And most of all, we might find ourselves asking: Amidst all the uproar surrounding the kneeling protests in the NFL, the express aim of which is to call attention to the unjust treatment of black individuals in American society, is it fair to begin our discussion with the actions of somebody who made it a point not to participate in the protest?
Of course, we’ve thrown any impartiality regarding the last question out the window by the very fact of our discussing Villanueva’s story. But properly considered, his example gives us insight into a much broader set of questions, ones that run deeper than just one man, one team, or one game. It puts the very fabric of American society under the microscope. It reminds us of our uncomfortable past, the mistreatment of black Americans that stretches back to this country’s foundation. It undermines every attempt we make to pretend that our abuses died with the 13th Amendment or the Civil Rights Act, all the more so in the context of a sport in which 70 percent of the players are black but 83 percent of the fans are white. Most of all, it calls into question our very definition of patriotism and its place in America’s future. Villanueva was awarded a Bronze Star for his military service and fits the traditional definition of “patriot” to a T: if he was wrong to stand before the anthem as he did, ostensibly earnest as he was, then what does that mean for the vast majority of us who have been doing the same?
In short, the issue lies at the intersection of America’s history of racism, obsession with sports, and particular brand of patriotism. Individually, all three are unique to our country. The conflict they have combined to form is even more intricate and delicate. We’ve hardly made any attempt to keep the three separate, and now that they’ve come to a head, we don’t have any precedent to learn from in managing them.
For instance, it’s important to understand that no other country in the world has written patriotism into the rubric of its athletic identity to the degree that America has. From high school sports onward, we play our national anthem before the vast majority of our athletic competitions; at the professional level, it is never omitted. Except when competing as a country — for instance, when the French soccer team faces off against Germany — the rest of the world rarely does the same. They tend to deem it uncouth and self-aggrandizing. Of course, Americans might ask in response: Wasn’t it the same brazen patriotism that won us our independence, and upon which we founded our country?
And somewhere along the way, our athletic patriotism came to be associated with our military, too. Perhaps it was an inevitable consequence of American patriotism on the whole that we would come to associate it with sports. After all, the fact that we’ve fought to earn our freedom is almost inextricable from the very concept itself; our presence on a global scale is largely identified with the fighting we do on behalf of other countries’ freedom, too (or at least under the pretext thereof).
Or maybe our athletic patriotism had something to do with the fact that in the early to middle 20th century, when sports were becoming more and more commercialized, the young men we were watching on the field were the same ones being shipped off to war overseas. Whatever the cause, the proof is abundant. At stadiums across the country, extra care is given to recognize and celebrate military holidays, veterans in the crowd are regularly introduced to a standing ovation, and most of all, a military color guard traditionally presents the flag before the crowd is asked: Please rise and remove your caps for the singing of our national anthem.
It was in light of the above circumstances that Colin Kaepernick, once a starter but only a backup at the time, garnered widespread attention for his decision to remain seated for the anthem before a San Francisco 49ers preseason game on August 26, 2016. When asked by NFL Media about the motivation for his actions, Kaepernick didn’t mince words.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he said. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
The United States Constitution protected Kaepernick’s right to do so, just as it protected the rights of thousands of armchair pundits to criticize his decision — some in a more measured tone, and some with exaggerated, incendiary rhetoric. Although he might not have foreseen the magnitude of the ensuing firestorm — which only increased in pitch as athletes across the NFL, and soon across the country, joined the protest — Kaepernick likely anticipated that at least some individuals would take offense at his actions.
In the year that has passed since then, and especially in recent months, Kapernick’s supporters have accused his detractors of losing sight of the real issues at stake. They say that those claiming injury have a skewed sense of perspective. A flag may be under attack on one side, but on the other, human lives and livelihoods are at stake. Dolphins running back Arian Foster, who joined the protest on Sept. 11, 2016, summarized in a tweet: “Don’t let the love for a symbol overrule the love for your fellow human.” Have fun making a case that we should do otherwise.
But it is equally important to understand that any protest is a fundamentally imperfect enterprise. It is the symptom of a sick society, one riddled with injustice and oppression. Only when words fail do we turn to protest as a means of expression. As a result, it will necessarily introduce a disparity between the actions taken and the motivations behind them, some unintended meaning that the protest takes on by the fact — as a fundamentally drastic measure, one that resorts to offense because other means of discourse have proved ineffective.
Show me a protest in which nobody’s toes are stepped on, and I’ll show you a country in which there’s no reason to protest at all.
From this perspective, Foster’s comment might also take on a wholly different meaning. As soon as Kaepernick decided to sit out the national anthem last year, he turned himself into a symbol as well — an emblem of black courage and pride, of refusal to be silenced in the face of oppression that society has relentlessly swept under the rug. His image gave a voice to countless silent oppressed. But much in the same way that Kaepernick’s supporters are right to see a repressive subtext in the symbol of the American flag, his detractors aren’t entirely wrong take offense at some of the unintended implications of his actions. Some felt that Kaepernick’s decision gave the impression of obstinacy, of an unwillingness to take part in the great American enterprise about which they had fewer doubts than he. Others saw in his actions ingratitude toward the military, among them Villanueva himself: “I don’t know if the most effective way is to sit down during the national anthem with a country that’s providing you freedom, providing you $16 million a year . . . when there are black minorities that are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan for less than $20,000 a year,” he told ESPN in 2016.
Kaepernick’s protest took courage from the start. It is an even greater testament to his character and humility that he recognized some of the imperfections of his symbolic action. Although he had stated from the beginning that he had no ill will toward the military, he realized that words were not enough to change the content of his action. He sought out and met with former Green Beret and NFL long snapper Nate Boyer for advice on how to sharpen his message. He decided to change his protest from a sitting one, which appeared passive and disinterested to some, to a kneeling one, which many felt showed much more respect for the flag and what it represents. There may always be a space between our words and our actions, but it is never out of our power to constantly reevaluate that gap and to minimize it as much as we can.
And in the same vein, we ought to praise Villanueva for showing much of the same self-awareness humility that Kaepernick did. Although he publicly criticized Kaepernick’s symbolic action in 2016, he expressed unequivocal support for the cause in the same interview.
“I will be the first one to hold hands with Colin Kaepernick, and do something about the way minorities are being treated in the United States, the injustice that is happening with police brutality, the justice system, inequalities in pay,” he said.
And with his profuse apology in the wake of his decision to step out of the tunnel, Villanueva took responsibility for the disparity between his actions and his words. He didn’t back down in his support for the flag, but he openly admitted that his manner of support lacked foresight and was ultimately counterproductive.
It is indicative of the state of affairs in America that two players might come under fire in such a short period of time for completely opposite reasons — one for sitting during the anthem, the other for standing — and that there might be some truth in the criticism of both. But it is important to remember that, especially in this case, neither side wants these protests to take place. They are a symptom of a sick state, largely thanks to a particular history into which all of us were born and which we can’t do away with by rewriting.
Instead, we have two options before us. One of them consists in allowing that sickness to fester as we respond to symbolic actions with more and more elaborate ones. This seems to be the course of action upon which much of the NFL has decided in recent weeks, as team executives have become increasingly worried about their image in light of President Trump’s recent comments. What started as a genuine expression of protest now runs the risk of being co-opted by the league in an attempt to save face.
Our other option? To see the symptoms of our American condition for what they are — symbols, the American flag and the kneeling Kaepernick alike — and to realize that they only have use insofar as they point us toward a better understanding of the American spirit and the disease afflicting it. Until we cure that disease of systemic injustice, quibbles over the expression of that spirit will drive us crazy. If finding a cure means reevaluating one symbol, or both, so be it.
(10/04/17 11:55pm)
On Sunday, Oct. 1, the Town Hall Theater hosted “I Rise,” a performance fundraising-awareness event for WomenSafe in collaboration with MiddSafe and the college Department of Theater and Dance. The goal of the event was to raise money and awareness about the struggles of domestic violence within Addison County and demonstrate the work that WomenSafe does for the community. For members of WomenSafe this event was powerful because it “gave voice to survivors” of domestic abuse.
The topic of domestic abuse hits close to home for many people. Sadly, it is a common occurrence in our society that many have direct or indirect connections with its horrors. For this reason, each performance brought the audience closer to the message, allowing them to think of their own personal experiences with domestic abuse or the experiences of those dear to them.
The program started with “Behind the Wall” a performance art and dance piece that demonstrated through jagged, physical, and suffocating movements the atrocities that happen in abusive households behind closed doors. The dancers, students from the dance department, moved with pain in a way that removed themselves from the audience and from their fellow dancers, a feeling that rings true for many people who have been abused and feel alone in the world. The music rang out in the background, a poetic voice lamenting the difficulties of understanding how to help those who are being hurt in their own homes. The narrative continued to tell how police often do not want to interfere with affairs between a man and his wife, demonstrating how in an abusive situation a woman may not be perceived as an independent person but rather the property of a man. The dancers’ hurried movements and sounds of suffocation left the audience feeling helpless to the pain that they were visualizing.
To inform the audience about broad qualifications and demographics of sexual violence, four MiddSafe volunteers came on to the stage to perform “Why,” a performance art piece that used the dancers’ bodies and relation to each other on the stage to display the statistics of who will become victims of sexual violence in their lifetime. This piece was especially harrowing because it sought to bring faces to those statistics of who will experience domestic violence.
After every statistic was read, the dancers would step out to represent within their group who would be the ones to fall victim to sexual violence. What was so moving about this piece was that after every fact was read and each girl stepped out as a representation of victims of domestic abuse, the other girls would in some way reach out to the one affected, displaying an act of female solidarity and recognition of pain.
The most personal of all the performances was “It Will Look Like a Sunset,” written by Kelly Sundberg and performed by members of the theater department. Several girls came out on stage to tell the story of one abusive relationship from beginning to end, each telling different parts that ranged from past to present, interweaving the narrative of this complicated love story. This shed light onto the multidimensional aspects of abusive relationships — it not only detailed the woman hiding under the bed in fear of her husband, but also told stories of the couple emailing each other funny videos at work and laying in bed with their son between them.
The detail of their story explained how complicated it can be to leave an abusive relationship, because often there is real love between the couple. Having several performers tell the same story allowed the audience to see that this happens to many women in the world and that no one should ever feel that they are alone in their suffering.
Following was a poem that brought the audience through the various points in a woman’s life where she feels sexualized or abused, starting from a young age when boys hit girls “because they like them.” This piece titled “Things I (Shouldn’t) Have to Tell My Daughters” written by Mary Heather Noble and read by Lindsay Pontius, details the vicious cycle of domestic abuse that stems from the relationships that men and women experience starting from youth. Each part of the poem demonstrated that violence in romantic relationships is not just a problem that occurs later in life, but one that also has its roots in childhood and teenage years.
Members of the dance department returned to the stage in “Still, I Rise,” using powerful dance motions and the words of Maya Angelou to display the strength that lies in every person who experiences sexual or domestic abuse. This ended the performance with a relatively upbeat tone and left the audience hopeful that people are strong and resilient and can overcome the atrocities of domestic abuse.
College president Laurie Patton came on to the stage to present the final poem of the event, titled “To Stop the Violence Against Woman,” written by Alice Walker. The poem served as a strong call to action for all women to end domestic violence, encouraging women to stand up against the abuse that has been so normalized in our society. Her inspiring demand for support and solidarity among women and men embodies the mission of WomenSafe.
The proceeds of the event went to support WomenSafe’s new fundraising goal of $1.2 million to help the organization continue to fight domestic abuse in Addison County and to provide support for families who have been affected by domestic violence. Through their hotline services, support groups, community outreach and education and supervised visits for children with abusive parents, WomenSafe is working to end domestic abuse in our area.
They are in the process of converting their old offices into transitional housing for people who are leaving abusive households. Hopefully with more events like “I Rise” and donations and volunteers from our local community, WomenSafe can reach their goal of raising 1.2 million dollars to better serve and protect our community.
If you wish to donate to WomenSafe, volunteer or learn more about their programs visit http://www.womensafe.net.
(10/04/17 11:41pm)
Those who have gotten to meet me probably know that I am a 21-year-old freshman, that I took part in two gap years before coming to Middlebury, and that I am running for first year senator. I noted throughout the application process that during my second gap year I enrolled in a computer science course, coded, worked, pursued my passion for bicycles, worked on college applications and spent time with family.
Yet I left behind details about my life that I did not feel comfortable sharing at the time. I left out the fact that most of that year was spent dealing with the aftermath of sexual assault, both in hospital beds and at meetings for an investigation that would culminate with the impunity of my perpetrator.
After having completed a highly rewarding gap year abroad in Leon, Nicaragua, working with renewable and energy efficiency initiatives, I returned home to partake in a summer program hosted at the university I was expecting to attend. But shortly before the program’s end, my life encountered the same predicament that too often affects young, college-bound men and women across the nation.
The story is all too familiar: a drunken night. A clouded mind. Unwanted touch. And finally, overwhelming confusion, anger, fear, sadness, powerlessness and even self-hatred and blame. I was unable to leave my dorm hall, eat in the dining halls or even sleep. I was forced to silently catch a train home and take a second gap year.
Fast-forwarding to my life here and now as a new Middlebury student I find myself running for first-year senate. I feel it is important to echo the words of Gregory Buckles, dean of admissions, during his convocation speech this past September: “We’re not looking for perfection, nor should you get wrapped up in finding perfection here at Middlebury,” he stated. “The truth is you’re not going to find it.”
While I do not expect Middlebury to be perfect, I do expect it to be better than what I encountered at the other college I was planning on attending (and thankfully never did). I expect it to be better than that place where I was told by an administrator to ‘learn my lesson,’ after painfully recounting my sexual assault. And thus far it has.
Over this past summer I contacted Sue Ritter (Title IX coordinator) asking for resources for survivors and received support. I recognize the complexity of the issues that permeate Middlebury’s campus, as well as my own personal lack of sufficient knowledge needed to form a fully educated and rational opinion. But I see that the college still has a long way to go when it comes to addressing sexual assault, health, transparency and accountability.
While I would like to refrain as much as possible from engaging in the gratuitous enumeration of the several positions that make up my platform, focusing on the source of the passion that drives this campaign instead, I feel it is important to discuss ways in which the school can more seriously tackle gender-based violence.
Health Care Access
To improve students’ access to their healthcare needs, the school should follow in the footsteps of colleges and install vending machines providing emergency contraception (Plan B), condoms, tampons, Advil and other medical products that students may need access to when Parton Health Centre is closed. This is particularly relevant for emergency contraception which research shows is most often needed during weekends.
Student Accountability
One of the main policies that I would like to pursue includes the creation of a student accountability office to facilitate avenues of cooperation between students and administrators, and provide productive criticism. This office would afford students the ability to report safely, comfortably and anonymously inappropriate behaviour by administrators and staff.
To improve students’ access to their healthcare needs, the school should follow in the footsteps of colleges and universities like Stanford, Pomona and UC Davis, among others, and install vending machines that provide Plan B, condoms, tampons, Advil and other medical products that students may need access to when Parton Health Centre is closed. This is particularly relevant for emergency contraception which research shows is most often needed during weekends.
Finally, but most importantly, a school that aims to seriously tackle gender-based violence should promote the following:
Climate Surveys
Performing a campus climate survey yearly to recognize the extent of this problem. Climate surveys allow students to anonymously and candidly describe their experiences on campus and evaluate the effectiveness and access to the resources that the college makes available to them. This tool is the first step to effectively addressing gender-based violence on campus, and is championed by national organizations like Know Your IX.
Data Transparency
The school should maintain easily accessible statistics of gender-based violence, extending beyond the limited Annual Security and Fire Safety Report mandated by the Department of Education under Title IX, which only go back three years. Furthermore, prints of such statistics and reports should be provided to incoming first-years during orientation.
Improving Bystander Training and Sexual Education
The sexual education offered to incoming freshmen is currently very cursory and brief. A more comprehensive sex-ed programme that addresses affirmative and enthusiastic consent, safe sex and healthy relationships (among other issues) more in depth is needed. The creation of said programme needs deep collaboration between students, faculty and staff but some of the points I would like to pursue include:
No first-year or incoming freshman should be allowed to receive ID or access to dorms without completing such a training course, and orientation should include more small group discussions on the issue sexual assault.
Group Therapy
Middlebury college, in partnership with the local organization WomenSafe, used to facilitate group therapy for survivors of gender-based violence. But this service was suspended due to “low-attendance.” As a SGA senator, I would like to pursue the reinstallation of this resource to better serve survivors.
Commit to Obama-era policies
Throughout this past summer, Betsy DeVoss’ Department of Education introduced significant changes to Title IX that reverse Obama era mandates — including the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter, which ordered universities to adjudicate sexual assault cases under the preponderance of the evidence standard. As a SGA senator I would urge the administration to commit to these Obama-era protections and standards, following in the footsteps of other colleges like Amherst.
Emergency Lights
Middlebury’s campus is spread out and can be quite dark at night. There should be more blue emergency phones located around campus to promote a more safe and comfortable environment.
(10/04/17 11:24pm)
In December of last year, at a town hall in Wisconsin with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Bernie Sanders was asked why Donald Trump had been so successful in the 2016 election. Sanders, regarded by many to be the savior of the Democratic Party (of which he is not formally a member), gave a surprising answer: “I think he said he will not be politically correct. I think he said some outrageous and painful things, but I think people are tired of the same old politically correct rhetoric.”
Pushed on the definition of “politically correct,” Sanders continued: “It means you have a set of talking points which have been poll-tested and focus-group-tested and that’s what you say rather than what’s really going on. And often, what you are not allowed to say are things which offend very powerful people.”
Implicit in Sanders’ answer, whether he meant it or not, is an endorsement of Trumpism. If political correctness is calculated and disingenuous, then those who condemn political correctness are saying things that, somewhere deep inside, we all believe to be true but are afraid to say.
Donald Trump isn’t afraid to call it how we all apparently see it: most Mexican immigrants are rapists and criminals. In this world, all men think about sexually assaulting women, only the courageous say it out loud. This framework renders the claims of one side to be objective realities, while the claims of the “politically correct” side, mere political calculations.
The implications and irony of Sanders’ definition of political correctness might have been lost on him, but they cannot be lost on us. If political correctness means constructing a national dialogue (or simply lying) to serve one’s political goals, then Donald Trump is the most politically correct person in America.
Further still, the party which yielded a record number of votes for him, which failed to repeal or replace the Affordable Care Act after spending seven years in belligerent protest to it (because it polled well), and which has stoked identitarian divides for decades to build a constituency around otherwise unpopular ideas, is the party of political correctness.
The term political correctness, as we use it today, is a rhetorical trick. It is a tool designed to undermine the foundation of legitimate political debate, particularly those debates which center on issues of social justice and identity. It does so by implying, through the qualification of the word correct with an adverb, that the positions of those who are “politically correct” are not just politically motivated, and thus inauthentic, but also incorrect at their core. As such, politics ceases to be a debate or dialogue at all; instead it becomes a battle between those who seek to pervert society to serve their personal designs and those who wish to defend it.
The legacy of this rhetorical trick, which first surfaced in the early 1990s and experienced a resurgence after the 2012 election, is a political dialogue that is significantly less honest, less connected and less intelligent. The specter of political correctness, often represented by “fragile” college students and cosmopolitan elites, permeates nearly every aspect of modern American politics.
When students at Middlebury protested Charles Murray, an opportunity for a profound civil debate about discourse and democracy instead became a national lecture on the dangers of political correctness in which many faculty, administrators and journalists severely misrepresented the positions of students.
“The purpose of college is not to make faculty or students comfortable in their opinions and prejudices” postulated over 100 Middlebury College professors in the Wall Street Journal, countering a straw man argument that not one of their students ever made. Frank Bruni of the New York Times worried out loud that our colleges are not “preparing [students] for constructive engagement in a society that won’t echo their convictions the way their campuses do.” Nevermind that the students had just finished planning a protest based on a complex, nuanced and controversial premise, with which he and his colleagues failed to engage in any meaningful way.
The toxic assumptions that undergird political correctness were in full effect at Middlebury after Murray’s visit, even when political correctness itself was not directly invoked. The argument that students advanced through protest was fundamentally intellectual and democratic. Why should our school academically consider whether impoverished communities (particularly those of color) are pathologically disposed to poverty?
Charles Murray’s body of work is ahistorical, poorly sourced and thoroughly discredited. Engagement with it has made the world an uglier place in concrete, measurable ways. This claim was almost systematically ignored. Instead, many of the adults in the room decided to focus on a symbolic defense of free speech, an objective and unoffensive principle which was never under attack, and uncritical stereotypes of students as fragile or in need of ideological conformity.
Perhaps their true “political” position, that such a hypothesis deserves to be considered in an academic community, would not have garnered such sweeping public support.
When the Democratic Party failed at every level in the 2016 election, a similar logic was applied to national politics. A host of noteworthy politicians (Obama, Sanders) and journalists (Lilla, Chait, Bruni) rushed to blame a reliance on “identity politics” for Trump’s rise and to declare an end to “identity liberalism.”
The underlying assumption, that the focus on the needs of historically underrepresented and oppressed groups was a strategy for winning rather than a values system rooted in equity and justice, must have thrilled the Steve Bannons of the world. It also signaled the degree to which Democrats have internalized the doctrine of political correctness, to their own disadvantage.
The idea of political correctness is as corrosive as it is inaccurate. It creates and enforces a power structure in which entire communities are silenced, their perspectives rendered inauthentic and invalid. Meanwhile, those who decry political correctness tend to be those with the loudest voices in the room, or with the least courage of their own convictions.
So, for those of you who take to the pages of this or a different paper, to blogs or journals, to private conversations or public forums, and complain about a culture of political correctness: you might not be a racist, a sexist or a bigot, but you are certainly carrying their water.
(10/04/17 11:17pm)
If you were conscious and used the internet between mid-2015 and the end of 2016, you might have noticed the presence of a particularly dank meme (well, several, let’s be real) in the form of a guy who probably hadn’t heard the term until it was applied to him.
I am, of course, referring to the unlikely political fortunes of the junior senator from Vermont, the brusquely-spoken old guy who for a brief moment somehow turned the majority of our supposedly egocentric millennial generation into enthusiastic critics of late-stage capitalism.
The near-simultaneous surges in support of leftist politicians like Jeremy Corbyn in the U.K., Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France or the Podemos party in Spain further demonstrate that socialism is no longer a dirty word in electoral politics. In fact, it may ultimately be the only long-term alternative to the current wave of authoritarian populism currently sweeping the developed world.
Socialism is, however, very much a dirty word in most media outlets, if it’s even mentioned at all. Journalism that is totally configured for ad revenue and profit generation is journalism that will censor ideas hostile to its owners/shareholders. (It’s simple business sense.)
But unlike the disappointing real world, our mainstream newspaper will apparently publish incendiary left-wing diatribes that I imagine the editors of The Wall Street Journal would only see as fit to light their $500 cigars with (or whatever cartoonishly malevolent banker types do these days — 24 karat vapes, perhaps?).
This is why I’m proud to introduce Sharp Left, a bi-weekly series of my very own refreshing and exceedingly pithy hot takes on the accumulation of crises that the tabloid-esque dishrags of our decadent political culture refuse to acknowledge.
If this thought makes you uneasy, rest assured that this column will not feature articles like: “Seven Ways Bernie Can STILL Win, So Take That Hillary,” “Lenin Was Right All Along, but Mao was Righter,” or a reprinting of my 9th grade book report on the Communist Manifesto. (I got an A-.)
Instead, I’m interested in discussing the multitude of heterodox thoughts, actions and developments that I see as broadly comprising a new leftist political program, one founded on radical democracy, nonviolence and solidarity, and opposed to the deeply interconnected damages that continued faith in modern capitalism rains down everyday on our environment and billions of marginalized people.
More provocatively, I want to critically examine Middlebury’s role as an institution deeply situated within the prevailing discourse of neoliberal capitalism. Seeing as our school now bills itself as an outspoken proponent of free speech, it hopefully won’t mind me attempting to expose contradictions between their lovely stated goals and less rosy ideological realities, right?
At this point, I’m sure I’ve whet your appetite for the undergraduate-written socialist polemics you never knew you needed — unless you’re reading The Campus for the new conservative column, in which case you probably haven’t gotten this far anyway. Regardless, please grab a copy in two weeks to see if I can live up to my own hype, unlike, well, socialism (until now!).
(09/27/17 11:55pm)
In the wake of President Trump’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the college has continued to publicly and internally support DACA-mented and undocumented students.
College president Laurie L. Patton and chief diversity officer Miguel Fernández did not mince words in their defense of DACA-mented students in a Sept. 1 email to students.
“We are writing to state clearly that no matter what the [Trump] Administration decides to do, we will stand by our students, protect their rights, and continue to provide them an outstanding education,” they said. “We are proud of the accomplishments of our DACA students and will continue to support them in every way we can.”
President Obama created DACA through an executive order in 2012. The order grants legal status and protection from deportation to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as minors. The email from Patton and Fernández came just days before President Trump announced his decision to end the program.
The protections provided by DACA will officially end on March 5, 2018. President Trump gave Congress a six month ultimatum to introduce legislation to reinstate the protections DACA provides. If Congress does not pass legislation, DACA-mented individuals may lose their legal status and face deportation.
In addition to publicly denouncing the actions of the Trump administration, the college will expand the legal resources available to DACA-mented students.
“Once we learned that the DACA program would be phased out, the college arranged for an attorney who is experienced with providing advice to DACA-eligible students to offer telephone and videoconference consultation appointments before the October 5, 2017 renewal deadline arrives,” said Kathy Foley, director of international scholar and student services.
Given the unpredictable future of many immigration policies in the Trump-era, the college plans to expand the resources available to students.
“The reason that this is a little different is that there has been a change within the government, so we feel as though some additional resources are potentially necessary to help students navigate,” said Fernández, the point person for DACA-mented and undocumented students on campus. “We hope to bring someone to campus to talk, later on, in person.”
The administration has continued to vocally pledge its commitment to DACA-mented students. A letter signed by Patton and other Vermont college presidents on Sept. 21 recognized the contributions of DACA-mented students to American society and Vermont college communities.
“We support swift action by Congress to bring forward legislation to establish DACA permanently in law,” said the letter. “We also support Vermont in joining fourteen other states in a lawsuit challenging the plan to terminate the DACA program….We stand united with DACA-mented students.”
The administration’s vocal support of DACA-mented students began last year with a series of all-student emails following the election of President Trump. In January, the college announced that DACA applicants to the class of 2022 would be considered with the same need-blind admissions policy afforded to American citizens.
“The administration has been very verbal in expressing their concern for DACA-mented students, and we are pleased with the promises they have made,” said a member of Alianza, a student group active in providing a community for DACA-mented students.
The student requested anonymity given the current political climate surrounding immigration issues.
The college is not required to share students’ immigration status with the federal government. However, the college has a established a system through which student volunteers are made available to speak with those hesitant to discuss their immigration status with administrators.
“One of the big challenges is wanting to work and help, and at the same time, not out the individuals, so how to best reach out and at the same time maintain privacy and protection. We want to maintain the safety and privacy of our students,” said Fernández.
In an email sent to all students on Tuesday, Miguel Fernández urged students to “be a visible ally.”
“I think it’s an important piece to make every attempt to make every student feel welcome and part of the community, so that takes work,” said Fernández.
Trump’s order has put the fate of over 800,000 DACA beneficiaries in the hands of Congress, but Fernández expressed optimism about the power of everyday citizens.
“I think the most important thing that we can do, as individuals and as a community, is to try to press our representatives to turn it into law. I’m confident that with enough pressure, with enough push, we can make this happen.”
The Campus will continue reporting on this topic as the situation develops.
