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(12/02/15 10:35pm)
A liberal arts student trying to “leverage their privilege” by spending the summer working at a homeless shelter – a classic move for a self-proclaimed social justice warrior. But, when I accepted a position as a Shepherd Poverty Intern at John Graham Housing & Services I wasn’t thinking about the juxtaposition of working at a homeless shelter while attending a college with a $1.1 billion endowment. I was thinking about working in solidarity with low-income and homeless individuals because I believe that every person deserves to live a dignified life and that giving someone a safe place to lay their head at night is not only the first step toward a dignified life but also a human right.
Now, I’m not a “typical” student at Middlebury; My family isn’t wealthy. I’m the first in my immediate family to attend a private college. I went to a public school where poverty was rampant. Despite my working class background, I’ve never had to worry about my basic needs being met; I never fret about when I would eat next or if I’d have a home in which I could sleep unlike many of my peers in high school.
Having grown up in an economically-depressed area, I have been hypersensitive to issues surrounding class and inequality for many years and this consequently piqued my interest during my junior year of high school in an internship working in local government, particularly in the area of social services. I ended up enjoying my job, and worked there on and off until I left my hometown to attend college.
Although I spent most of my time crunching numbers, I also spent a considerable amount of time listening to conversations regarding the delivery of services to low-income individuals. While many people engaged in conversations were dedicated to helping people live dignified lives, the majority of those in these discussions instead viewed poverty as a product of laziness and entitlement.
These sentiments were not just confined to a conference room, though. Like most right-leaning areas, in my hometown, it is a common thought that a large portion of those who receive any type of government assistance are “leeches on the system” who should just “go get a job”. Even though I cringed to hear these words knowing that some of my friends were dependent on government assistance, at the time, I was just a reserved adolescent who hadn’t really been immersed in another narrative. Thus, I thought that my feelings about everyone’s right to live a dignified life were isolated ones.
I couldn’t have been more incorrect.
Fast forward more than a year to the summer after my first year of college. Surrounded by the positive energy of a Vermont summer, I began working at John Graham. During my first day on the job, the assistant director oriented me with the shelter’s philosophy. Its philosophy was one that was vastly different from which I was accustomed. The Shelter believed that everyone —regardless of their background — deserved housing as a human right. Without meeting this basic need, it’s nearly impossible to overcome addiction, seek employment or even be remotely healthy. Their food shelf did not have limits; when those we served needed food, we gave them what they needed, whenever they needed it.
We advocated for clients. We were not trying to give them a rigmarole about accessing services; we instead provided them with a service-rich environment in which they could thrive and become self-sustaining.
Most importantly, however, individuals were treated like humans. Ensuring that each one of our clients knew that they were worth something made a noticeable difference in how successful they were. It seems like a simple concept that when individuals are humanized and treated with compassion they are able to more easily and quickly reach a point of self-sufficiency. But, in so many narratives today — particularly conservative ones — social programs are seen as unnecessary and wasteful. According to this school of thought, the only way to fight poverty and end a “system of dependence” is with austerity — the rapid defunding and degradation of vital social programs. This type of talk not only is regressive but it affirms that dehumanizing poor and low-income people is morally just. Cutting food stamps doesn’t force people to “work harder,” it causes recipients to starve. Slashing Section 8 vouchers doesn’t make people “get off the system,” it forces recipients onto the streets. And limiting Medicaid coverage doesn’t “improve work ethics,” it causes people to die from treatable illnesses.
When I stepped off as an intern at the Shelter right before the academic year, I witnessed how successful people are when they’re treated with dignity and their basic needs are met. John Graham Housing & Services has it right. This is what they do every day, and they are constantly flooded with former residents who are dying to tell their success stories.
As a Middlebury community, we constantly acknowledge the fact that we are such a privileged institution. Because we are in such a privileged position, the least we can do is to help to support our most vulnerable community members. This Saturday is the perfect opportunity to continue the success stories coming out of John Graham Housing & Service. On Dec. 5, the Shelter will hold its second annual Sleep-out to End Homelessness. At 4 p.m., community members will gather for a candlelight vigil on the Middlebury Town Green followed by a light supper. Afterwards, community members will build an encampment by Otter Creek Falls to spend just one night in the cold that our homeless neighbors have to deal with daily. Perhaps one of the most important aspects of this event is the fundraising part. Please visit go/sleepout to make a donation or visit the Shelter’s Facebook. Last year the sleep-out fundraised enough to purchase a transitional housing unit in Middlebury that has since housed multiple working families, veterans and chronically homeless individuals.
Please join me and other community members this Saturday for any parts of the event or consider making a gift to the Shelter so that it may continue the great work that it does to make our community the best that it can be. I hope to see you there!
(12/02/15 9:21pm)
In an effort to alleviate student stress and promote mental health at the College, several administrators are working to develop a multi-faceted plan to build community and resilience, promote mind-body well-being, increase diversity and foster inclusivity. Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of the College Katy Smith Abbott, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty Andrea Lloyd and Professor of Spanish and Interim Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández are in the process of building upon their initial platform, which has become known as “The Grid” through a series of discussions with various audiences within the community.
“The Grid” is comprised of three separate umbrella objectives: Building Community and Resilience, Promoting Mind-Body Well-being and Increasing Diversity and Inclusivity. Each objective has its own chart and associated timeline of current, near-term and far-term concrete agenda items.
This project partly grew out of a series of meetings held by the College Board of Overseers, a sub-group of the Board of Trustees responsible for the undergraduate institution, in which its anchor administrator, Lloyd, had been helping to guide a conversation over concerns and challenges surrounding inclusivity, diversity and community on campus.
Following these conversations and a presentation by Smith Abbott, Lloyd and Fernández, these three were asked to put together a list of initiatives, programs and opportunities that the College could work to expand upon in the next few years. This “wish list,” as Smith Abbott termed it, was slated to include price tags for what it would take to get the College to a better place in terms of inclusivity and diversity on campus.
Separately, at the May meeting of the full Board of Trustees, Smith Abbott presented a long reflection on what had transpired throughout the year, particularly framed around student stress.
“We discussed what it feels like to not be able to get out from underneath the stressors of day-to-day life as students at Middlebury and what that brought to the floor in terms of what types of support were missing, and what students thought we lacked on campus,” Smith-Abbott said.
These talks on diversity and inclusivity paired with what was surfacing about student stress led to a sense of urgency on the part of the Board of Trustees that the administration needed to discuss these issues and work to develop an action plan.
“We were asked by the Board of Trustees to identify the areas in which we could have the greatest impact and to identify three ‘experiments’ that we could have on the ground in September that would address some of the causes of student stress,” Smith Abbott said.
Smith Abbott emphasized that they weren’t trying to collapse the diversity and inclusivity piece into the rest of the student stress like a problem to be solved, but rather saw a great deal of overlap between the stressors that students brought with them when they came to the College or experienced as a result of being a student in a community that traversed between the realms of academic stress and issues of identity, community, student support and bias.
In what started as a brainstorming session with a white board and a great deal of buzz-words surrounding stressors across campus, Smith Abbott, Lloyd and Fernández began to separate these words into three categories which naturally morphed into the three experiments requested by Whittington.
“We started by seeing how those qualities or stressors settled into three big categories, and then within each category we started to brainstorm both what was already happening, as well as what we could imagine happening this year and beyond,” Smith Abbott said. “We picked one thing from each of those big umbrella categories that we thought we could actually try to make happen this year.”
Due to fiscal year constraints, the items slated for this fall couldn’t be the more substantial ticket items because they were out of sync, and thus not yet included in the budget cycle which starts every January. They furthermore planned to follow through with only the smaller agenda items because the whole community had yet to be involved in the conversation.
“It wasn’t meant to be, ‘here’s what is good for everybody, as we recognized the need for a much broader community conversation, which we have moved forward this fall,” Smith Abbott said. “We were trying to be really thoughtful about which of the agenda items we felt were good, solid ideas to at least try, and which we would have to hold on until more people weighed in on them.”
Thus far this fall, “The Grid” has been presented to the Board of Trustees, the President Senior Leadership Group, the Middlebury Leadership Group, the Community Council and the entire Student Life Division. Students were shown the plan on Dec. 2 and faculty will be shown on Dec. 17.
These discussions have involved a powerpoint on the components of “The Grid” followed by brainstorm sessions in which small groups address what might already be happening on the small scale in order to gauge what efforts are already afoot, perhaps departmentally or in a student organization. After recognizing what was already in place, these small groups have then fed additional ideas into “The Grid.”
“One of the ironies of this is that as this grid grows, there is a danger of the thing itself becoming an overwhelming document, which we are trying to avoid,” Smith Abbott said. “Let’s not stress people out with a thing that is supposed to be helping with stress!”
One of the experiments slated to begin this Winter Term is a storytelling series called “It’s Not What You Think,” a space for staff and alumni to reflect and converse with students on past failures and the twists and turns of life. This is built upon a program Smith Abbott had learned about at a conference and is targeted to be a natural complement to existing storytelling series such as “What Matters to Me and Why” put on by the Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Smith Abbott stressed the need to identify and build upon such synergies within the community.
President of the College Laurie L. Patton reached out to the community earlier this week outlining a list of activities working to create a more inclusive community, including several objectives outlined by “The Grid.” One such measure they have taken is inviting the Posse Foundation to host three on-campus workshops — one for admissions and financial aid staff, one for faulty and administrators and one for student leaders.
According to her email, “These half-day workshops will leverage Posse’s experience designing and facilitating interactive experiences that explore and confront challenging sociopolitical issues facing higher education today.”
In addition to these workshops, the College has contracted Romney Associates to hold four faculty-recruitment workshops designed to boost their goal of further diversifying the faculty.
Among many potential longer term goals is a pre-enrollment program for first generation students or students coming from high school backgrounds where having some kind of summer preparation program could be helpful. Another expensive potential long-term objective is the addition of new CRAs to each commons.
Moving forward Smith Abbott stressed the need to figure out how the conversation will continue.
“One of the important things we’ll need to clarify moving forward is how this conversation will continue,” Smith Abbott said. “What is a mechanism that allows the campus to own this conversation and for it to continue in a robust fashion so that people really think their good ideas are being recorded and acted upon?”
One such mechanism is slated to be a website welcoming community input to further the conversation surrounding these objectives. Such a platform would provide a space where new ideas can begin to take shape and form.
“We are beginning work on a website that will act as a hub for discussion and ideas around issues of stress, inclusivity, resilience, mind-body well-being and more,” said Vice President for Communications and Marketing Bill Burger. “Given the number of initiatives that are being considered and that are in place already across the institution, we felt it would be helpful to the community if we created a modest site to describe these efforts and invite suggestions and comments. I think we all see this as a first step and we’ll continue to evolve the site and our approach to it over time.”
While this project could potentially continue under a working group as a part of Community Council or some kind of hybrid SGA and faculty-staff council, Smith Abbott spoke to its ever-changing nature.
She said, “We’ll need to see which things are really going to stay and what is the space for experimentation. The idea here is to keep things dynamic and open. We want people to have real influence by participating in a process to figure out what really works for Middlebury.”
(11/19/15 4:37am)
The topic of this column — the death of the divestment movement — may appear strange, given that it is coming on the heels of The Campus’ editorial endorsement of fossil fuel divestment a few weeks ago, and moreover, because I am, as avid readers of my column know, an active leader in the Middlebury divestment campaign.
(11/19/15 4:34am)
I was accepted into Middlebury as a Top 100 Applicant (a now discontinued program) with a 32 on the ACT and a 3.91 GPA. I served for three years on Community Council, one year on the Academic Appeals Board, two years as a Residential Advisor of an academic interest house; I committed time to various organizations on campus and I also helped to research and write confidential briefings for President Liebowitz. However, it’s likely that I would choose not to casually share this information with anyone. My justification is not for a lack of pride in my previous commitments, or because I consider them relatively insignificant historical details — which I do — but rather because they are from a different lived reality. I am a student who lives with schizophrenia and depression.
(11/19/15 3:38am)
I was sitting in Bristol Bakery the other day, when the man next to me offered to clear my plate.
“I’ve got nothing better to do,” he said as he took the cups and bowls of a few neighboring tables into his hands. I hadn’t planned on interviewing that day and was without my camera, but something struck me by his offer: he wanted to engage. Maybe, I thought, he also wanted to be heard.
(11/18/15 9:20pm)
At their plenary session on Nov. 6, faculty introduced a motion to reinstate the Pass/D/Fail option for Middlebury undergraduates. The Pass/D/Fail (P/D/F) option, which was approved by the faculty in May 2012 under a six-semester trial period, will expire on Dec. 31, 2015. Faculty members will meet in small groups on Dec. 14 to discuss the measure, and then will formally vote on the motion at their next plenary session on Jan. 15. If the motion passes, the option will go into effect immediately, so that students can invoke it as soon as the spring 2016 term.
Faculty rules state that a proposal to change major educational policy cannot be voted on at the same faculty meeting in which it is presented. According to Suzanne Gurland, Dean of Curriculum, the motion is considered to be major educational policy.
“The idea behind that is to ensure the faculty have time to fully discuss and consider thoughtfully what the proposal is rather than voting in the moment without proper consideration,” she said.
For the current semester, students taking a course under the P/D/F option who receive a grade of C- or higher will have a pass (P) grade recorded on their transcripts. Students who receive a grade of D or F will have that respective grade recorded on their transcripts. A grade of D or F will count in the GPA. A grade of P will not.
The student handbook currently limits students to taking one P/D/F course per semester and they must be enrolled in at least three other courses with standard grading to take an additional course P/D/F. Students may only take a maximum of two courses under P/D/F in their undergraduate career. Classes taken with the option may not be used to satisfy distribution, college writing or cultures and civilization requirements and do not count towards a major or minor.
BannerWeb allows professors to see which of their students have invoked the option, but not by default. Some may choose to view this, but others may not. Faculty will be required to enter a letter grade for all students, but behind the scenes letter grades of C- through A will be converted to a grade of “P” (Pass), while a grade of D or F will remain.
The largest point of contention at the Nov. 6 plenary session was the deadline for invoking the P/D/F option. Currently that deadline is the end of the second week of classes. Students may elect the P/D/F option for a course in which they are already registered during the add period (i.e., within the first two weeks of the semester). The deadline for changing a course from P/D/F to standard grading is the drop deadline, or the end of the fifth week of the semester.
Some faculty spoke about shifting the deadline back in the semester so that it coincides with the drop deadline, which is the end of the fifth week of classes. They indicated that extending the timeline would reduce the stress scheduling among students. Many courses are structured so that graded work is not returned until well into the semester, some faculty said, so that it may be difficult for students to gauge their standing in a course by the second week of classes. Moving the P/D/F deadline to the fifth week might allow for more informed decisions by students as to whether they feel they should invoke the option.
At the most recent meeting of the Commons deans, Natasha Chang, Dean of Brainerd Commons, proposed pushing all deadlines related to P/D/F, as well as the Add/Drop deadline, back to the end of the eighth week of classes. Tiffany Chang ’17, student co-chair of Community Council, has been in communication with Chang and initiated a response in the SGA senate. She and Senator Reshma Gogineni ’16 drafted two bills regarding the Add/Drop deadline and along with Senator Madeleine Raber ’17 are hoping to get those bills merged with amendments to the faculty proposal in time for January’s formal vote.
According to Gurland, the faculty Educational Affairs Committee (EAC) has introduced the motion with the same wording as the current P/D/F option. The only difference, she said, is that the proposed motion has no expiration date, or sunset clause. When approved in May 2012, the original language specified a six-semester trial run after which the option would expire.
“I think in general there was some sense that we should be cautious about this; it was a brand new thing that Middlebury had never done before,” said Gurland. “Since all handbook language can be changed over time, the act of putting a sunset clause in the language was a way of explicitly identifying it as a trial run. Some faculty felt like we should try it out for a period of time and then evaluate how it is working—whether it would be doing what it was intended to do.”
Jason Arndt, professor of psychology and a member of the Educational Affairs Committee who presented the motion, said that this proposal to shift the deadline for invoking the option might be considered an amendment to the motion. He also said the EAC’s opinion on the matter is very much in flux.
“Since this is a major academic policy, we are operating according to standard procedures, which is to allow faculty to discuss the motion, provide feedback, and then use the data and suggestions to help us refine the proposal, if necessary,” Arndt said. “However, the ultimate decision on Pass/D/Fail rests with the faculty in the January faculty meeting—the EAC’s role is to propose educational policy for the faculty to vote on. We will have a better sense for how the faculty feel about the fifth-week proposal after we hold small group meetings, and when it comes up for debate and discussion in the January faculty meeting.”
In preparation for introducing the original motion at the Nov. 6 faculty plenary session, EAC requested data about students’ use of P/D/F from the Office of the Registrar. Of the 514 individual grades given under P/D/F between spring 2013 and spring 2015, there were no grades of D, one grade of F, and one grade marked incomplete. The most commonly awarded grade was B. In every semester since spring 2013, more than half of the students who invoked the option were seniors.
At the plenary session on Nov. 6, several faculty members presented mixed interpretations about the data, which were sent to all faculty in a document prior to the meeting. Some questioned whether the data gathered by the registrar accurately portrayed students’ tendencies in invoking the P/D/F option. According to Gurland, the data was not conclusive on the efficacy of the option in encouraging students to go outside their academic comfort zones.
“The hope in passing the option in 2012 with a sunset clause was that by the time six semesters had passed we would know if it’s working,” she said. “Ideally, by now we would be able to see concrete results showing whether the option was achieving what it set out to do—which is to encourage students to explore the curriculum beyond their comfort zone. Yet the results are not concrete either way, so we can’t draw definite conclusions.”
The current system of distribution requirements for the baccalaureate degree gives students the option of taking courses in seven of the possible eight academic categories. A student can neglect to take a course in one of the eight academic categories and still graduate. The two most common categories for students to skip are foreign language (LNG) and physical and natural sciences (SCI).
“One way to think about P/D/F is to say, if it’s succeeding in encouraging students to branch out where they otherwise wouldn’t, then probably we should see many students using P/D/F in courses that have a LNG or SCI tag,” Gurland said. The data do not show any significant increase in students who invoked P/D/F for these courses, she said.
The discussion about distribution requirements at the faculty meeting prompted some faculty to speak about P/D/F’s implications on grade inflation at the College. An alternative interpretation to the proposal came at the faculty session, when Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science Murray Dry expressed his worries about high-achieving students gaming the system. He spoke about two students who took his course PSCI 0102 American Political Regime under P/D/F. Both students got an A-, which converted to a grade of P, and both graduated Phi Beta Kappa. He suggested that the students might have taken his course P/D/F because an A- might have prevented them from being elected to PBK.
Election to Middlebury’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter is determined on a percentile basis, rather than by a raw GPA cutoff, as is the case for academic honors. There is no absolute GPA cutoff for eligibility, and since the basis for election is no more than 10% of the graduating class, the College cannot stipulate in advance what the minimum GPA needed for election to Phi Beta Kappa will be in any given year.
Dry said that relegating PBK qualification to GPA in the context of the class prevents any consideration of the rigor and comprehensiveness of the transcript. “This is just inference,” he added. “The point of this option was to encourage students to take courses outside their comfort zones. But as perhaps an unintended consequence, I report that some students might be gaming the system. They’re good students—but I’m suggesting they might see the difference between an A- and an A in their GPA as the primary factor in deciding to take a class Pass/D/Fail.”
During the trial period, about one percent of all individual grades assigned to Middlebury undergraduates were under P/D/F, while about six percent of all grades were eligible to be taken under the option. Students invoked the option for about 17 percent of eligible courses. “Since only a tiny proportion of all grades at the College are given under Pass/D/Fail it would be hard to argue that some massive harm is being done to the integrity of the curriculum,” said Kathryn Morse, Professor of History and John C. Elder Professor in Environmental Studies.
She suggested that both faculty and students gather more data in order to see exactly how students perceive and use the option. “I remain curious,” she said. “The data are as yet inconclusive, but we should keep the experiments going further and see what the data show us.”
Morse expressed excitement for the discussions leading up to the January vote, informally polling students in many of her classes about their feelings on P/D/F.
“It seems to me to be used more often as a tool for workload management than as a vehicle for intellectual curiosity. But I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.”
(11/13/15 4:56am)
Last weekend at Champlain Orchards, Humans of Vermont met Rustin Swenson, a Norwegian turned Vermonter, and the self-proclaimed reason Bernie Sanders is running for Presidential office. We sought out Swenson for his refined taste in fashion, as he was adorned in a fine grey suit with a brightly colored vest, shirt and tie all of varying patterns. His hat read: “Swenson for Governor,” and his wide rimmed glasses seemed subtle compared to his wild white hair. He set the tone immediately as we approached him, reaching into his vest pocket and asking, “What do you want? To see my green card?” He laughed and began chatting away in a thick accent; words rolled off his tongue with quick wit as he first told us about his wife, his “favorite person in Vermont.”
“When I met my wife, wow,” he said. “She was driving an old Saab. My kind of car, right? She’s really fantastic.” When Swenson’s wife later came up to him during our interview, he introduced us.
“This is my lovely wife,” he said.
“Maisie, they’re interviewing weirdos.” She tried to urge him along, saying it was time to leave, but instead he held his ground and wrapped his arm around her. “This is my claim to fame. I’m her husband, you know?”
The conversation turned towards his passion for historic Vermont, as he opened up about working to restore old local buildings.
“Vermont’s future lies in the restoration of its past history,” he said. “It’s our past tradition that made us what we are.” He continued to explain his investment in the state, listing the numerous articles he has written in support of protecting various sites. But we soon discovered that where Swenson truly shines is in his unique governmental perspective.
“Every year I go to the Montpelier Capital 4th of July Parade,” he began, his hands in motion. “In fact, last year, at the end of the parade, there was Bernie Sanders just standing around, and I said ‘Bernie, I’ve been waiting ten years for you! When are you going to run for office? I can’t wait around forever! I’m not getting any younger, you know?’ and he said ‘Well, I’m not either.’” Rustin placed his hands on his hips, acting out the conversation for his audience.
“Maybe I’m the reason why he’s running right now. You give me credit for that, okay?” He paused briefly before continuing, “I did run for governor last year. I got 35 votes. I didn’t run to win I just ran to make my point. I ran on the Coffee Party. Forget this Tea Party, I ran on the Coffee Party. Everybody gets a free cup of coffee. You like that, yeah?”
Yeah, we like it. Coffee Party 2016; vote Rustin Swensen.
(11/13/15 4:21am)
On Oct. 26, Community Council welcomed Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty Andi Lloyd and Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández, who, along with Dean of the College Katy Smith Abbott, presented a wide-ranging plan for improving the quality of life of students.
Originally tasked by the College’s Board of Overseers with addressing issues of diversity and inclusivity as well as campus-wide stress, Lloyd and Smith Abbott soon determined that these subjects should be dealt with holistically by merging those separate issues.
Over the past summer, the group generated a long list of difficulties frequently cited by the student body; among those problems were the fear of missing out, time management, microagressions, sexual violence, suicidal ideation, financial hardships and job market fears. These issues were then grouped into three main categories: promoting mind-body well-being, increasing diversity and fostering inclusivity and building community and resilience.
These three categories, said Lloyd, Fernández and Smith Abbott, will guide the implementation of numerous programs over the next few years intended to combat those difficulties. For diversity and inclusivity, the group mentioned the usage of transgender-friendly language in admissions materials and the potential modification of the Cultures and Civilizations requirement.
For mind-body wellness, potential measures discussed included creating a counseling fellow program to expand the number of counselors on campus, drop- in group exercises on mindfulness, and expanding Question Persuade Refer (QPR) training, which is designed to prevent suicides.
Finally, for building community and resilience, the group cited an upcoming storytelling program centered on discussions of failure and resilience and a strengthening of the faculty advising system.
Some initiatives, such as expanded counseling and QPR training, are already being implemented. Lloyd, Smith Abbott and Fernández also emphasized that the project is ongoing and intended to be open to contributions from all members of the community.
On Nov. 2, the Council continued its wide-ranging discussion on stress, focusing this week on the disproportionate levels of stress faced by students of color. The Council welcomed Charles Rainey ’19, who shared that during his short time at Middlebury, he has already experienced multiple instances of racial prejudice.
In one case, while struggling to complete a difficult calculus problem, a classmate asked Rainey if he had attended a primarily black high school. In another instance, during a particularly heated political debate, an acquaintance of Rainey’s used a racial slur.
The most troubling aspect of these incidents, according to Rainey, was not simply the fact that they occurred; rather, it was the lackluster response to the incidents by both fellow students and Residential Life staff. After the first incident, Rainey spoke to his First Year Counselors, who he said told him that “these things happen” and that he had no choice but to “hold [his] head up and keep going.”
After the second incident, Rainey said there was a distinct lack of remorse on the part of the other student. “There was no apology,” Rainey said. “It was almost as if he felt entitled to use that word.”
Several on the Council emphasized that these experiences were common among students of color at Middlebury, and that the College must take a stronger stance against hurtful speech. “This is not just ignorance,” said Metadel Lee ’18.5, “it is willful disregard for our humanity, and I no longer accept it.”
Finally, the Council welcomed Gus Jordan, Executive Director of Health and Counseling Services, who, among several issues, discussed the possibility of closing the Parton Center during low-traffic hours, and increasing student knowledge of counseling services.
(11/13/15 3:58am)
At the monthly plenary faculty meeting on Friday, Nov. 6, the faculty discussed proposed changes to the Cultures and Civilizations requirement and student participation in the Pass/D/Fail system, but when the conversation shifted to student stress, the faculty voted 45-33 to move into an executive session.
Faculty Moderator and Professor of Mathematics David Dorman did not have an exact figure on the number of times the faculty has moved into an executive session historically, but indicated it has happened a few times in the past two decades.
The decision to move to an executive session was prompted when Assistant Professor of Psychology Robert Moeller expressed his concerns about having students in the room as the faculty discussed sensitive, sometimes privileged information. As mandated by the College’s handbook, the SGA, the Campus and Community Council have a standing invitation to plenary faculty meetings.
Once Moeller’s concern was articulated, a motion was made and seconded to shift to executive session. The vote forced all non- voting members of the audience, including several student leaders, to leave.
“While it was of course disappointing that students were not able to be present for the faculty discussion surrounding stress,” said SGA President Ilana Gratch ’16, “I believe this event has the ability to spark a greater conversation about the dynamics between students, faculty and the administration.”
“I was disappointed by the manner in which we were dismissed from the Faculty Council session, but I feel that this incident can be constructive instead of contentious,” said Community Council member Emma Bliska ‘18. “I think it’s im- portant for students and faculty to interact more in official spaces on campus, and to engage in dialogue about our roles in college decision-making.”
Despite the narrow margin between those in favor of an executive session and those not, there was no discussion against the motion in the open meeting. However, the session sparked conversation, both for and against the motion, amongst the faculty afterwards.
“When the faculty is discussing matters with a direct impact on students’ lives, these conversations should be open and transparent whenever possible,” said Associate Professor of Economics Caitlin Myers. “While there will sometimes exist a compelling need for privacy, we should thoughtfully choose when and how to in- voke executive session. I thought that the way the students were asked to leave conveyed distrust and paternalism, and I was troubled by how it went down.”
Moeller, who first shared his concerns about having students in his room, ex- plained his stance, bringing up two separate issues: how having students – especially the press – in the room changes the conversation and how to respect students privacy, specifically in deference to the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
First, the College is made up of a shared governance system: the Board of Trustees, the administration and faculty, all with different responsibilities. He points out that the Campus does not have a standing in- vitation to senior administrative meetings nor Board of Trustee meetings, so why is the faculty exposed to what he calls “great- er levels of scrutiny” than the other parts of the system?
“What does that do to the power dynamic in a shared governance system?” asks Moeller. “Of the three parts of the system, all parts effect students lives and there shouldn’t be more reporting on the faculty than the trustees and the administration.”
Moeller also expressed his concern about upholding the privacies protected in FERPA. Within a small community, when faculty members are sharing stories about students, especially around grades and issues of mental health, it is easy to figure out who they are talking about. This brings up confidentially concerns that could become FERPA violations.
Lastly, he shared concerns from faculty, especially junior faculty, many of whom are already are hesitant to participate in conversation, that students in the room will have a silencing effect. Moeller shared that several faculty members have expressed unease about the fact that their words could be quoted without consent.
“After last spring we needed to have an important conversation about student stress, and a candid one,” Moeller said. “While students should most definitely be included in those conversations, faculty also need a venue to speak amongst themselves.”
“There needs to be some system to convey the issues we are discussing to students, but a system that takes into account issues of confidentiality, FERPA and the silencing effect that students in the room could have on the faculty,” he added.
Many students in the room have expressed that they want to play a more active role in these discussions and that their presence is not intended to scrutinize, but to engage.
“I believe any discussions about issues facing students should be as transparent as possible, not so students can supervise or criticize faculty members, but so these groups can collaborate more effectively and meaningfully on issues facing the college community,” added Bliska.
President of the College Laurie L. Pat- ton echoed the sentiment for the need for openness and student presence, as well as executive sessions.
“Faculty need to come to their own decisions about governance, and I have every confidence that they will,” said Patton. “I recommended at the meeting that we need to do two things as a matter of course: 1) we need to have regular open faculty meetings, where students and staff can attend, and 2) we need to reserve a space for executive session at the end of those meetings. Many institutions of higher learning use this system of faculty governance, and I can easily see us moving in that direction. When executive sessions are simply part of every agenda, faculty can use them if they want to, but they don’t have to if there’s no business that requires “faculty-only” conversation. The key to this system is that meetings are then always open to the community and executive sessions no longer become a big deal.”
(11/12/15 12:20am)
Someone needs to invite the producers of “Hoarders” to this campus. The hoarders? Us. What we hoard? Dining hall dishes. Good luck in pinpointing which student has the most extensive collection, some of which are impressive, to say the least. Many students own a complete set of dishes from every dining hall, including the more obscure items like serving platters and soup ladles. Some true Middlebury hoarders also have sets of both Proctor’s old (think abnormally round bowls and exceptionally oval plates with China-like designs) and new dishes.
Yes, it is time to address this campus’s deep and never-ending love for industrial grade melamine dishware. How are we still not bringing dishes back? How are personal dining hall dish collections still a thing?
(Side note: I feel like I’ve basically become the official campus complainer and nitpicker. I swear I actually love it here. So much that I’m honestly running out of things to complain about.)
But anyway, back to complaining. While the purchase of new Proctor dishes did much to alleviate the great Proctor bowl shortage of 2015 (and 2014, and 2013 … ), the days of dish shortages are not over.
Seriously, how many times have you gone to get your third bowl of ice cream salad (apparently salads are healthy, so I’ve started to add the word ‘salad’ to everything I eat) of the day only to find out that Proc is out of bowls? Talk about a buzzkill. One moment you’re psyching yourself up for your upcoming recreation of Holes featuring an ice cream scoop and the half-empty bin of coffee heath bar crunch, and the next moment you’re disillusioned with the world and seriously considering transferring to some horrible place like Williams because you hear they have bowls.
But here’s the thing: the dish shortage is our fault. Using extensive research and my trusty abacus, I have calculated that the average Middlebury student has 1 mug, 1 glass, 2 bowls, 1 plate, 1 spoon, 3 forks and 1 knife in their room at a time.
I’m as big a fan of the Ross “Pizza-To-Go” strategy as anyone and fully get why you’d take dishes from the dining hall. Like any aspiring competitive eater, I realize that the secret to success is perseverance; the need to eat a disgusting amount of food can strike at any time, especially at the inconvenient 8:01 P.M. Taking a dish or two back to your room from dinner and then bringing them back in the next day is totally fine.
The problem arises when those plates start adding up in your room to the point where you have enough mediocre college-grade dishware to create a crusty shrine to your mediocre college GPA. Why do you have a set of dishes for a family of four in your single when the dining halls for the masses have nowhere near enough? I know you’ve started to form a real attachment to that one yellow bowl in particular, but even in high school I learned that “Nothing gold can stay.” We’re all clearly amazing at taking dishes to our room, but why can’t we be good at returning them? How hard can it be?
Seriously, how is dish hoarding still a thing? Let’s start taking things back so that we’re never forced to use a spoon as a fork again.
(11/12/15 12:08am)
Recently posters advertising an improv show, an athletic event and more have been circulating around campus with jokes evoking marginalized identities — specifically race, class and ability — and their corresponding stereotypes. These posters have been met with opposition from marginalized people, as they have revealed these organizations’ lack of attention to the minority experience at Middlebury. It is these incidents that have caused us to question humor at Middlebury — specifically, racist humor at Middlebury. It is through the examination of racist humor that we are able to start exploring classist, ableist and other marginalized humor.
(11/12/15 12:03am)
I read with interest the opinion piece by Ethan Brady, “The State of the Endowment,” and I feel it’s important to address some of what Ethan discussed in his piece and to provide some important context and facts that readers of the Campus can use to make up their own minds.
(11/12/15 12:01am)
Last Thursday, film enthusiasts and our friends across the pond celebrated Guy Fawkes. He wasn’t the greatest guy to grace the planet, nor was he particularly successful in his endeavor to blow up government. But he became iconic. He’s a symbol for resisting government oppression; thus, he’s especially popular among anarchists and libertarians. Or at least his mask is. It’s safe to say that most of the people from sea to shining sea who noticed the holiday were fans of V for Vendetta. It’s equally sure that they inundated their friends with the order to, “remember, remember the Fifth of November."
(11/05/15 4:20am)
As the faculty prepare to discuss and possibly even vote on distribution requirement changes this Friday, as a community, I encourage us to reflect on what we mean by “liberal arts” education. What is it that we, the Middlebury community, seek to achieve here?
Though 2015 Vermont is not Ancient Greece, when considering a term’s modern usage it is sometimes helpful to consider original usage. The liberal arts once described the necessary skills for active participation in Classical Greek and Hellenistic civic society. While participation in our modern society may require different specific skills, the ideals that these arts represent remain essential for contemporary, cosmopolitan, civic engagement.
The three original humanities (rhetoric, grammar and logic) cultivated critical thinking and precise communication, while the sciences (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy) promoted beauty, ultimate knowledge and contemplation of man’s place in a broader universe. Middlebury doesn’t stray too far from these ideals.
According to our student handbook, Middlebury, as a liberal arts institution, “challenge[s] students to participate fully in a vibrant and diverse academic community” and “connect[s] our community to other places, countries and cultures.” We “cultivate the intellectual, creative, physical, ethical and social qualities essential for leadership in a rapidly changing global community.”
But Middlebury rejects the original liberal arts, instead requiring students to learn an arbitrary set of distribution requirements that fail to meet the lofty goals Middlebury sets. The current system of distribution requirements (both the academic categories and Cultures & Civilization requirements) are impractical and improperly designed.
Beginning with the Cultures & Civilizations requirements, since they often receive the blunt of criticism on this campus, I agree that AAL has got to go. I disagree with the Middlebury students who wish to divide it up into LAT, ASI, MED, OCE, PPQ, and whatever other acronyms have been suggested for artificially designated regions of the world. Cultures & Civilizations are not too narrowly defined; they’re much too broad.
The proposal to divide AAL up, and any decision on which regions of the world are necessary to learn, is inherently problematic. No division of the world is perfect. Should we require Oceania, even though we offer almost no courses on that region? If AAL lumps too many cultures together, does an Asia requirement really solve that problem? In other words, do Japan, Siberia, Turkmenistan and India share the same culture? Is Mexico part of Latin America or North America (one of these being a cultural distinction and the other a geographic one)? Where does a course on Turkey or the Caucasus fall?
Geographic divisions of the world will always be controversial and never achieve global literacy. Take Europe, for example. Does a course on Ancient Greece tell me anything about today’s Scandinavia or Moorish Spain? No. It doesn’t. Teaching complete global literacy is impossible, and no set of geographic or cultural distribution requirements will ever achieve this goal. Requiring students to take one course each on any number of haphazardly determined regions is silly, and achieves little actual knowledge in exchange for great breadth of surface-level engagement.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Our distribution requirements could encourage us to seek depth in our education instead of breadth. Rather than forcing students to know a little about a lot of regions, we could require them to know a lot about just one region. Students should have the opportunity to define a culture of study that is not their major and prove that they’ve taken enough courses relating to that culture to acquire some level of cultural literacy.
For example, a student might combine the study of Russian language, literature and Soviet-era politics to prove that she has learned something about 20th century Russia. Letting students focus intensely on one region will lead to students who are actually able to engage critically with another culture. In our current system, students are lucky if they graduate with loosely defined opinions about randomly chosen and unrelated places.
In a similar manner, our academic categories of distribution requirements are also undesirable. The bar for entry in many disciplines is simply too high to gain much from a single course. Taking one introductory science course, for example, doesn’t achieve the intended goal of the SCI requirement: teaching students “the methods used to gather, interpret and evaluate data critically, and the placement of this information into a larger context.” Students simply do not gain enough information or skills in a single course to critically evaluate anything in any context, large or small.
In a similar manner, a single LIT course is unlikely to produce much progress towards gaining “insight into the minds and lives of other human beings, both [our] own cultural predecessors and people of different traditions, and into the process whereby human experience is imaginatively transformed into art.” That requires context and comparison, something gained from a study of literature that does more than scratch the surface. No one can seriously maintain that a single course, amidst a completely unrelated course of study, will achieve this effect.
Instead, I propose a depth model similar to that which I proposed for replacing the Cultures & Civilizations requirements. Break the curriculum into three or four greater areas, say, the humanities, the sciences and the social sciences (and maybe languages as a separate area of study). Encourage students to take three courses in each, preferably in the same discipline within that area.
Imagine if Classics majors, after taking three Chemistry courses, decided to minor in Chemistry because they actually reached interesting and engaging material. Physics majors might study three literature courses and discover a passion for Shakespearean England, leading to cross-disciplinary study on Renaissance Europe. Of course such courses of study might occur from time to time under our current system. But the requirements to take a single course across eight categories implies that (1) one course is sufficient to understand a broad field of study, and (2) breadth of education is better than depth.
The liberal arts have always prepared students for civic engagement by providing them with actual skills in critical thinking and communication and teaching cultural fluency. Today’s society encompasses greater territorial expanse and cultural differences than the society of Ancient Greece. This doesn’t mean we should overextend ourselves. It is just as important as ever that our liberal arts educations prepare us to engage with both our own and other cultures. It’s time for our distribution requirements to reflect that goal.
(11/05/15 4:16am)
“What would America be like if we loved black people as much as we love black culture?”
Amandla Stenberg, teen actress and pop prophet, asked exactly that in a videopublished on Tumblr nine months ago. She wasn’t the first, but she fanned the question’s popularity. Since then it has blazed through corn rows of online activism, adding to the fire of voices chanting “hands up” and “black lives matter.” Her argument is simple: it’s “in” to adopt black culture. Hairstyles, ebonics, twerking and white rappers who aren’t from families of gravestones and bullets are all living proof of the “phenomenon.” In her words, “when a style leads to racist generalizations or stereotypes where it originates, but is deemed high fashion or funny when the privileged take it for themselves,” it qualifies as “appropriation.” She does a great job of indicting current pop culture in that crime.
But what Stenberg doesn’t include is context.
In the first article of this column, I defined “poverty” as “socially and culturally imposed disadvantage.” You can be privileged in some ways and impoverished in others. Under this definition, black people are racially impoverished in our society, which is why the appropriation discussed by Stenberg qualifies as the theft of impoverished culture by privileged culture. It’s one incarnation of it, another brick in that wall.
Black culture appropriation is a form of poor culture appropriation.
If we think of it like that, the issue looms throughout our history. Poor culture has always been appreciated, while poor people have not. Country music has diffused from the rural poor to honky-tonk teenage romantic melodrama, appropriated by Nashville for mass consumption while the people who invented it — the rural poor — are ridiculed as “rednecks.” So too is the case with punk. It’s a style of music that permeates through all of alternative, but its latter-day saints rarely reference the dark British underground of the Sex Pistols and the Clash while they’re sipping mojitos in mansions. Other instances of black culture appropriation have also happened, in very different times and circumstances, akin to what Stenberg rails against. Jazz and blues sweated from the pores of mid-century urban lounges and rock n’ roll beat out of basements and garages. They were voices from the cavern of poverty. Yet both were gentrified, distributed and tied to suburban radio and fancy stages while the original artists were left to wallow in sharecropper fields and bars.
All of these are classic examples of the appropriation of poor culture beyond just today, but the history includes more than just music. In the twenties, Bakerfix hair paste and African-inspired fashion were the rage, as recounted by Petrine Archer Straw, illustrating the gentrification of stuff that accompanied jazz and blues. Their appropriation lies in the same vein as pop culture today’s passion for formerly black hairstyles and ebonics. Even twerking has a historical parallel: the charleston. It started on black Broadway, but definitely didn’t stay there. Appropriation of non-music is also reflected in country and punk’s histories. How else to explain the popularity of overalls in honky-tonk teenage romantic melodrama, or Ramones shirts worn by people who don’t have any clue who the Ramones even are?
Black culture appropriation is an avatar of historical context. Rich people like to steal from poor people. Hairstyles, ebonics, twerkings and white rappers are just the latest manifestations. For that reason, maybe we should amend Amandla Stenberg’s question. Maybe we should ask something more broad and less isolated to the present. A question that’s more historically legitimate; a question that’s more inclusively fair:
What would America be like if we loved poor people as much as we love poor culture?
(11/05/15 4:05am)
Hannah Hurlburt, owner of The Good Witch, a costume shop on Main Street, sees more business than usual this time of year.
The Good Witch business started in the back room of Mendy’s, another business on Main Street, but it eventually expanded into its own store last April.
Hurlburt’s passion and story make her truly unique.
Her sewing journey began far before the opening of her store last April.
Hurlburt recalled, “My mom taught me to sew because she knew I was going to be really short, and I would need to do alterations.”
This necessity quickly turned into a talent and a passion. Hurlburt began sewing professionally at the age of 17 with a focus on recycled clothing.
Later on in life, she took this skill to the next level when she studied fiber arts at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. With education and skill under her belt, Hurlburt created further direction for her work by incorporating her love of Halloween.
“My birthday is the 27th of October, so my life literally revolves around Halloween,” Hulburt said.
This love for Halloween created a direction for Hurlburt’s work, and she let the passion lead her.
Hurlburt has proven that The Good Witch is much more than a business venture. Rather, she indicates that it has helped to define her as a person and it allows her to impact her community simultaneously.
Indeed, Hurlburt noted, “the most important thing about having a store for me is remembering that it is a classroom.”
Hurlburt acknowledges that there are daily life lessons to learn from her customers and her work.
In return, she also seeks to spread love and inspiration.
“I know that I can help people be happy and people who come in help me to be happy, so it’s a mutual relationship,” she remarked.
Hurlburt surely serves as a sunny presence in this small town, where her optimism and passion are contagious. She has established the fact that she is not searching for money, but rather a life filled with happiness, meaning and passion.
Hurlburt’s beautiful costumes embody her unique personality. She explains that there is a spark before she makes all of her costumes, and then there is an itch to her fingers that forces her to create them.
This sewing-enthusiast notes that the itch will never disappear, so costumes will always be a part of her life. The costumes that Hurlburt designs for herself are especially close to her heart.
In her words, “As soon as I know what I want to be I have to be it … wit comes from within and the costumes end up being a metaphor for what I’ve been going through.”
Hurlburt’s Halloween costume this year is a perfect example of this metaphor. She explains that she decided to create a phoenix costume for herself as an outward representation of the spiritual transformation that she has undergone over the past year.
This ability to create outward displays of inner personality is not limited to only herself. Hulbert also claims to be quite successful in developing visions of costumes that represent her customers.
As a result of having this truly extraordinary skill, Hurlburt’s store is exploding with unique personality and celebration of life.
In the words of The Good Witch herself, “Inspiration takes you where you need to go.”
(11/05/15 3:58am)
Below is a letter drafted by Lauren Kelly ’13, Dan Egol ’13, and Barbara Ofosu-Somuah ‘13. It aims to communicate interest and concern regarding accessibility in the four new residential buildings currently under construction at Ridgeline. It is currently a Google document that is being signed in support by members of the college community - alumni, parents, current students, etc. Please take a moment to read this letter. If you would like add your voice to the conversation, add your name to the bottom of the Google document. Lastly, please pass the link on to others to sign. Feel free to reach out to Barbara Ofosu-Somuah with any questions or comments - bofosusomuah@gmail.com.
The Google doc petition is available here.
Dear Middlebury College Leadership and Board of Trustees,
We, Middlebury alumni, current students and friends are committed to the College’s success and integrity. We want to share our concerns about a pressing issue at our beloved alma mater: the four new residential buildings currently under construction. As two recent Campus newspaper articles make clear, our college community now faces a critical moment: we can choose to demonstrate in word and in deed our values of diversity and inclusion.
It is exciting to witness Middlebury’s new leadership and an expanded vision of inclusion and diversity efforts. We hope to see these values applied to the new living spaces, enabling all of our members to access them. While we appreciate the College’s efforts to expand residential options, it is important to consider how the design of these new spaces implicitly and explicitly reflects the college’s values. As of right now, only 25 percent of the townhouse units (four of sixteen units) and three of the 16 suites in the residence hall will be wheelchair accessible, for example. In its current iteration, the design plan for the townhouses does not include elevators. This means only the first floor in each building will be wheelchair accessible and students with mobility impairments will not have full access to the whole building. We realize that the current designs, which are already on the way and were agreed to last year, satisfy building code requirements. However, providing only the minimum number of accessible spaces required by law is simply not adequate for our college community. We have earned an impressive reputation for innovation, global engagement and sustained interactive learning. Our new buildings should model innovative, inclusive designs that enable all our members to be in them.
Why should this issue matter to the broad Middlebury community? Inaccessible residential spaces will not only affect students, but also all of the individuals within students’ social networks. This includes relatives and classmates (of all age groups) who might visit throughout students’ careers at Middlebury. Among those signing this letter are people — disabled and nondisabled — for whom this has immediate impact. Maintaining spaces that are not fully accessible have both financial and human costs. Exclusion from social activities and the high price of retrofitting buildings are just two of the many examples of these costs. It is our deepest hope that the College will not continue to overlook such an important aspect of creating inclusive living spaces for all members of the community.
Middlebury College proudly claims its history of leadership. We ask our current administrators and Trustees to model inclusive, innovative leadership on this issue. And we call on the broad community to support our college leaders in this effort. Creating spaces that are fully accessible demonstrably signals the College’s core dedication to innovation, diversity and inclusion.
Admittedly, this situation holds many complications. With respect and hope, we ask the administration and the Board of Trustees to modify the blueprints for these buildings. Please consider taking the needed time to fully and transparently pause and reassess with us what it means to create spaces that are habitable and accessible by all people in our community. We believe this is a discussion worth having now.
The College is moving into a new era, with a new president at the helm. We have an opportunity right now to create buildings that can represent who we say we are and who we hope we continue to be — a community that is innovative, compassionate, diverse and inclusive. We hope that the current challenges can be resolved in the present moment, establishing a clear expression that our actions mirror our intentions. Ultimately, we see many choices before us in this matter, and these choices are important. Buildings are meant to last, and so the decisions about accessibility — and inaccessibility — will last as well.
Sincerely,
Dan Egol ’13, Lauren Kelley ’13 and Barbara Ofosu-Somuah ’13
Undersigned by 467 Middlebury alumni, current students and friends
(11/05/15 12:38am)
A petition has circulated among students, parents and alumni urging the Board of Trustees to pause construction on the new residence halls west of Adirondack View. The petition, which had 458 signatories as of Nov. 1, asserts that the current designs of the residences are not universally accessible.
As approved by the Middlebury Select Board, the construction plans for the townhouses do not include elevators, so that only the first floor in each building will be wheelchair accessible. In a letter to the editor, Director of Residential Life Douglas Adams said that four of the sixteen townhouse units and three of the sixteen suites in the residence hall will be wheelchair accessible. In each accessible unit or suite, he said, at least one bedroom will be fully accessible. All other suites are designed to be “visitable,” as defined by the State of Vermont’s Act 88, a fire code for residential housing.
The petition states that providing only the minimum number of accessible spaces required by law is inadequate. “Middlebury’s new buildings should model innovative, inclusive designs that enable all our members to be in them,” it reads. “We can choose to demonstrate in word and in deed our values of diversity and inclusion.”
The petition originated when Barbara Ofosu-Somuah ’13, who now works in Washington, D.C., became concerned with the project.
“When I was at Middlebury, I worked at the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity in Carr Hall for four years.” Ofusu-Somuah said. “I was active in finding ways to create spaces of inclusion for all students. Reading this was disappointing: Middlebury, you say so much and you want to be inclusive, but that’s not what this is.”
Ofosu-Somuah, with the help of Lauren Kelly ’13 and Dan Egol ’13, wrote a formal petition. They used Google Drive so that people could suggest changes to the wording.
“We didn’t want it to be an indictment or aggressive campaign, but rather a way to spark a conversation,” Ofosu-Somuah said.
She was struck by how quickly the petition spread: it garnered 100 signatures on the first day. “It was just amazing,” she said. “People began reaching out, asking how to become more involved. It was never my intention to be the figurehead on this, just the person who began the conversation,” she said. “It was a question of how do I, as a person who loves her alma mater, help it to be the best version of itself?”
Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of the College Katy Smith Abbott and Professor of Spanish & Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández said that members of the core leadership team have discussed the issues raised in the petition, most recently at a meeting on Friday, Oct. 13.
“A number of students, faculty, staff and alumni have raised important questions about what accessibility policies we should have in place for new construction or major renovations of existing buildings,” said Bill Burger, Vice President for Communications and Marketing.
“They have challenged us to raise the bar and to operate to a higher standard of accessibility,” he said. “We welcome that discussion. It’s an important one for our community and it’s overdue. We long have operated under a policy of being in compliance with national and state standards.”
“What we’ve learned in the last several weeks is that our community wants more than compliance,” he said. “As Patton said, ‘diversity is an everyday ethic to be cultivated.’ That principle applies in this case as it does in so many areas of our shared experience at Middlebury.”
Burger noted that the College held two open meetings and heard no objections to the designs as presented. In a 2014 email, Adams invited all students to a presentation the developer to discuss the preliminary design and layout of the new residences. The event took place on Tuesday, Feb. 10, and representatives from Residential Life and Facilities Services were present.
Students were also invited to an informal conversation with the design group and staff on Wednesday, Feb. 11, in the Ross Fireplace Lounge. In its May 2015 meeting, the Board of Trustees approved the design for the Ridgeline complex, and Burger said the plan met the College’s current accessibility standards.
Burger noted that stopping the project would have tremendous costs. “Site work is complete and most of the foundations are in place,” he said. We also have signed agreements with contractors and with our partner on the project who, in turn, has agreements with its lenders. But we are investigating what changes are possible with the current building footprint.”
Project Manager for the Residences Tom McGinn declined to state how much KCP is spending on their construction. He said that the College’s share is about $1.5 million, which is to bring utilities such as water and sewage to the site. The completion date of the project, which broke ground on Sept. 23, is still set for Sept. 2016. McGinn estimated that it is probably 15 or 20 percent complete. Concrete foundations are in, floor slabs are being poured, framing has started, and utility infrastructure is up. Their plan is to complete the concrete by the end of November and get the buildings enclosed so the interiors can be worked on during the winter.
When asked the cost of installing elevators into the buildings at this stage in construction, McGinn estimated in the millions. “In the several millions, at a minimum, and probably at least a year of redesigning and reworking and redoing,” he said. “To do so, we would have to either extensively remake the work that’s in place, or just tear it out completely. The footprint gets bigger, the framing plans change, the wood trusses and the roof trusses that are ordered and already stacked up on the site, they all wouldn’t work anymore. The buildings might not even fit on the footprint—so then we would have to re-permit and redesign. And stop, essentially. Just stop. And what you have would go away.”
Representatives from the College have estimated that it will cost five million to make the three townhouses visitable on all floors and up to an additional three million in fees for breaking the contract. Patton has indicated that this expense is too great.
“With great regret, given all the other educational obligations we have and our limited resources, I cannot see how we can justify such a large expense,” she said.
(10/21/15 11:50pm)
A debut album is an unpredictable beast. With a multitude of talented musical acts vying for the limited attention span of the public audience, it becomes an undertaking to make an original musical statement that can project itself above the cacophony of the airwaves. A Wolf in the Doorway marks a standout debut that does just this. The Ballroom Thieves are a three-piece band out of Boston, made up of Martin Earley (acoustic guitar and vocals), Devin Mauch (percussion and vocals) and Calin Peters (cello and vocals). The three have been making music together for the past few years. I have had the pleasure of seeing them live twice and was excited to see if their remarkable energy and distinct blend of instrumentation translated fully onto their first full length album. Spoiler - it does.
The album begins with one of the stand out tracks on the album, and one of my personal favorites of theirs, titled “Archers.” Starting off with a sparse heartbeat of a drum line and Earley’s vocals over top, he is joined by his bandmates in a striking harmony, and they join together in a crescendo that reaches its first climax on a chorus of “Well, you can let your arrows sing! / I’ve never met a man of iron skin, / but you know, archers never made good kings, / fly headfirst into everything.”
The song is an exceptional example of the groups musical synergy, and an introduction to the abundance of inventive and insightful lyrics in their repertoire. It is refreshing to hear a group that blends strong writing in both facets of song craftsmanship so effortlessly.
The next track, “Lantern”, leaves no doubt that replacing a bassist with a cellist was a stroke of genius. For the first few bars, there is nothing but the repeated notes of Peter’s cello that creates a driving character that can be lacking in your average bass line. The lyric features a lovely extended metaphor in which a lantern represents an object of desire, stating “You’re shining still / You’re a lantern on a hill /And I would burn into the ground / To take you home.” The group shows many of the musical tendencies that made so many fall in love with Mumford & Sons, possessing arguably stronger lyrics than the popular band.
From there we are treated to a trio of tunes that showcase the tonal diversity of the album: “Bullet” features two minutes of hauntingly rich music that takes us through the trials of a failed relationship before breaking into a foot-tapping jam of a final minute, “Saint Monica” floats along with the sparsest backing on the album so far and gives one of my favorite lines on the album, “Maybe if I begged some old saint for her patience / And then sold it to pay for her time” and “Wild Woman” returns to the groove of the first track and turns in a beautifully poetic take on a woman that will not be tamed by love.
In another stark change of pace, “Oars to the Sea” stands as a raging piece of blues work, introducing the first electric orchestration on the album. The group tears joyfully into it with a chest-thumping underline provided by Mauch and Peters while Earley rips into his electric guitar. The breadth of the group’s musical sensibilities is stunning, and putting a surprise like this halfway through the album was a stroke of genius. It also makes the next track, “Bury Me Smiling,” even more captivating in its tenderness. Peters lends her voice to lead vocals for the first time on the album, and the results are wondrous. The song’s lyrics talk of death, but in no way as a sad or morbid subject. She sings “A heart like a wild sea / No man could own me / Won’t be the words, upon my stone.” I challenge you not to fall in love with this woman’s voice and hope there are more features of it in the future.
The contemplative mood is expanded with the succeeding track, “The Loneliness Waltz.” It approaches loss as its preceding track does, but with less smiling. Here the three instruments and voices intertwine in a song that plays with the tone of an aged soul reflecting on all that they have seen dance away from them. The ache is reflected in the strikingly poignant line “All the parents and the poets can cry in their graves / From the lack of the love you gave.” It is a gorgeous meditation on the power of loneliness.
After the first half of the album that generally sides with upbeat and energetic songs, the second half of the album settles into a much more mood oriented and slower mode. The wonderful fact, however, is that this change of pace loses none of the inventiveness. The vocal harmonies of “Here I Stand” are some of the most beautiful on the album, while “Anchors” has an almost cinematic quality of orchestration, and the last two minutes of “Oak” feature an instrumental string section that ties in “Bury Me Smiling” for a stunning piece of music.
The album finishes with “Wolf,” which switches back into a rock mood, and brings back the electric guitar with the addition of a trumpet, a piano and a banjo. Earley sings “You are a queen honey / I am a wolf” and the band delivers a memorable end to an immensely memorable album. Their work embodies such a breadth of musicality and talent that I eagerly wait for their next offering quite impatiently. I hope their debut continues to reach prospective fans because they are more than worth paying attention to.
(10/21/15 11:44pm)
On Thursday, Oct. 15, the Town Hall Theater was one of 1,500 venues around the world that participated in the National Theatre Live broadcast of the Barbican of London’s much-anticipated production of Hamlet starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
For four hundred years, new generations have plumbed not only the intricacies of Shakespeare’s text, but also the depths of the spaces between the words for contemporary interpretations that speak to modern audiences. In trying to appeal to a younger generation, this production needed to craft a show tailored to shorter attention spans, greater aesthetic expectations and more cultural awareness than ever before. In all three of these areas, the show succeeded with stunning clarity.
Cumberbatch is an unlikely superstar whose pale complexion, narrow eyes and self-conscious propensity for clever babble did not gain international recognition until his appearance as the title character in the BBC’s 2010 television production of Sherlock, a role which came 15 years into his career. The Barbican production came under significant scrutiny for casting the current “hot star” as a ploy to sell tickets to female and younger viewers.
Regardless of if it was a ploy or not, the three-month live run at the Barbican Theatre was quickly labeled “the most in-demand theatre show of all time,” nearly breaking online ticket vendors with queues of over 30,000 interested fans after the sale opened.
Over 225,000 international viewers watched the live broadcast or encore presentation on Oct. 15, more than the show’s live audience, and more than have ever seen a single National Theatre Live broadcast in the program’s history.
It’s difficult to remain cynical about the casting of Cumberbatch if his immense talents introduce thousands of viewers to a Hamlet who glitters in his whimsical grace, charismatically bounding across the stage in fluid fits of carefully coordinated choreography as he descends into a madness marked by the tragic loss of youthful hope and wonder.
This is a translation of Hamlet for today, led by Cumberbatch’s invigorating stage presence and a spectacular supporting cast, including acting legend Ciaran Hinds as Claudius and a moving Sian Brooke as Ophelia.
Students in many Department of Theatre classes attended the screening, opening the opportunity for a shared, external theatrical experience.
“Seeing outside work is great because it gives us all a common reference point, so we’re talking about the same production instead of relying on the abstract or trying to tell people about things we’ve seen that we think are important or impactful,” Associate Professor of Theatre Alex Draper said.
The production announces its modernity immediately, opening not with the traditional interaction with the ghost of King Hamlet, but instead with a solitary Hamlet as if he is a beat poet, Cumberbatch relaxing on the ground in an autumn sweater as Nat King Cole’s ‘Nature Boy’ spins on a record player.
Cumberbatch’s Hamlet is constantly in identity crisis, exhibiting layers of adolescent playfulness, sharp intelligence and overwhelming narcissism as his fairytale castle falls to pieces. This, of course, is what makes Hamlet so real, especially for a generation paralyzed by an array of unparalleled opportunities, responsibilities and commitments (or lack thereof). There is no longer a monarchy or a pervading propensity for sword fights, but there is something about Hamlet’s flailing attempts to discover his moral center which resonates today.
Students in the Literary Studies Department also attended the screening, allowing the three-dimensionality of the written word to supplement their usual academic pursuits.
“Seeing a performance makes you have a different perception of the work and inherently changes how you will approach it in the future,” Abla Lamrani-Karim ‘16 said. “By making this show modern, you forget that you’re listening to a very hard language that you’re not used to, and that makes you realize just how much Shakespeare is still today’s topic. That’s the beauty that this production was able to portray.”
The Barbican’s Hamlet is easily swallowed, with careful reductions and alterations of the original text – near the play’s middle, Hamlet’s inner conflict is mirrored by his amalgam of clothing, complete with a David Bowie graphic t-shirt, military pants, Converse sneakers and a tailcoat crudely painted with the word ‘King’ on its back - that pare Shakespeare’s longest play from four to three hours long.
Certainly, removing segments of Shakespeare’s original – coupled with the appearance of a tattooed Horatio in double-cuffed pants - has irked purists to no end. Regardless of its finer details, the production captures the core beauty of Hamlet in a manner which is engaging and provocative whilst maintaining the integrity of the text.
“This production managed to make Hamlet relevant and exciting and palatable for our generation,” Acting II student Nolan Ellsworth ‘17 said. “There was kind of a rock star vibe to the show at times which worked well with Cumberbatch’s personality and the tone of his performance.”
In a humor-infused take on a monologue exploring Hamlet’s possible decline into madness, Cumberbatch marches onto a table in his uncle’s study dressed as a toy soldier with a snare drum strapped to his chest, the rhythm of his movements fluidly matching his nonsensical language. The scene is delightfully playful, but undermines a suggestion of the turmoil in Hamlet’s head. At the same time, it’s plausible that emphasizing Hamlet’s joyful behavioral overcompensations capture an increasingly popular culture of pretending to be okay.
As is true with any theatre that explores rather than explains, either interpretation could be true.
Forgetting outside criticisms of performance or textual interpretation, the play offered a production backdrop so bold, so visually and atmospherically stunning in the unabashed, epic grandeur of its ambition, that it was nearly impossible to tear one’s eyes away from the constant crystallization of light enveloping its sumptuous visual articulation of innovative design.
Part of what makes live theatre unique is that each viewer is able to direct their own experience, freely changing focus from individual performances to the broader scene. In their revolutionary endeavor, National Theatre Live makes executive decisions for the audience, choosing when to establish a wide shot, zoom to an actor’s face or pan to follow a character’s movement from one side of the stage to the next.
This leads to the notion that certain nuances outside a chosen camera frame are lost to the film audience, but in the hands of the National Theatre Live crew, viewers from afar are gifted a version of the production seen from the balcony and the front row all at once.
“I was very suspicious of the live taping at first, but when it’s done well – and I think this was done incredibly well – it’s incredibly effective,” Draper said. “I don’t think it should happen all the time, but this was a really great example of why to do it because the size of the production, the technical feats of the set and his [Cumberbatch’s] sheer talent are the kind of forces that gather together so rarely on this scale.”
The Barbican production’s accessibility – both thematically and technologically – firmly foreshadows a new era of high-quality theatre that allows a much broader audience entrance into its formerly exclusive sphere. Through the unique initiative of National Theatre Live alone, more than 3.5 million people have viewed over 20 productions in 1,500 venues around the world, numbers far exceeding the reach of the theaters themselves.
In 2016, the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. is marking the 400th anniversary of the playwright’s death by sending one of 233 known copies of his 1623 First Folio to every state. The College has been chosen as the Vermont host site, and there will be festivals, lectures and performances throughout February 2016 to celebrate the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays.
The next Town Hall Theater broadcast of National Theatre Live will be an international encore presentation of David Hare’s Skylight with Bill Nighy and Carey Mulligan on Wednesday, Nov. 11 at 7 p.m.
