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(10/21/15 11:35pm)
Contrary to popular belief, vocal acrobatics, flawless dance contortions and state-of-the-art technology are not always necessary for an entertaining show. Sometimes, all it takes is one voice. Live storytelling is more than simply a tactic to lull young children to sleep or to pass time during long car rides; it is an art that helps to celebrate, validate and make sense of the many layers of human experience. Such was the purpose of the third annual Cocoon, a storytelling event organized by the Middlebury Moth-UP in collaboration with Director of the Mahaney Center for the Arts (MCA) Liza Sacheli on Saturday, Oct. 18. Featuring six members of the College and broader Vermont community, the night centered on the theme of “roots.” August Hutchinson ’16.5 and Celia Watson ’17, producers of the Middlebury Moth-UP, served as co-organizers and hosts of the event.
As per Moth-UP tradition, there were only three rules to the Cocoon: all stories had to be true, speakers could take no longer than ten minutes and they were not allowed to bring any notes onstage. The resulting performances were delightful in their honesty and polished in their delivery, spanning a wide spectrum of ages, backgrounds and experiences. The lineup consisted of Alexa Beyer ’15.5, Bianca Giaever ’12.5, a filmmaker featured on NPR’s This American Life and founder of The Middlebury Moth-UP; Associate Professor of History Rebecca Bennette, Burlington-based storyteller Deena Frankel, Jabari Matthew ’17 and Naomi Eisenberg ’18.
Collectively, the stories spanned a timeline from Sept. 11, 2001 to a childhood in the Bronx to this past summer. Settings ranged from the bottom of a canyon cliff in New Mexico to a youth village in Israel to a Picasso Erotique display in a Montreal art museum. Images of stolen pink bikes, falafel and embarrassing tube socks all managed to cross the audience members’ minds over the course of the two-hour show. Born from each individual’s interpretation of the theme “roots,” this sporadic hodgepodge of times, places and ideas made for a night of laughter, reflection and a few shocked silences.
Alexa Beyer kicked off the show by connecting a humorous incident of childhood naiveté to her current mantra as an environmentalist. She radiated with positivity, even when recounting her innocently unassuming response to the man who stole her bike and tried to sell it for $500, and then her subsequent struggle to keep a drive-in movie theatre alive in the wake of Walmart’s descent. Her hopeful spirit and ability to reflect compassionately on negative situations around her shined through particularly well in her closing lines.
“Our enemies aren’t these two-dimensional, evil villains,” Beyer said. “What is a big company if not a bunch of people who cry at the sad parts of movies? […] We keep trying to stab them with the law and wonder why they duck.” Ending her story with a thoughtful challenge, half directed toward the audience, half to herself, she stated, “Change their hearts as individuals by doing things that are inappropriately kind.”
Rebecca Bennette gave a similar, albeit less direct, call for more open hearts and minds. Following a chilling account of her experience in Germany as a half-Japanese woman mistaken – and subsequently discriminated against – for being Turkish, Bennette remarked, “My point is not that I can speak with authority on all forms of racism. Quite the opposite.” Delivered with calm precision, her speech struck the most serious tone of the night.
“People are discriminated against because their roots are from the ‘wrong’ places,” Bennette stated. “Yet they are brave enough to come anyway.”
Continuing the discussion of identity and belonging – concepts that can prove hazy for those who do not fit neatly into a certain category – Naomi Eisenberg offered reflection on her service trip to Israel in a performance that managed to be both humorous and harrowing. Using moments of laughter as transition points, she navigated the challenges, joys and absurdities of her summer with impressive clarity and eloquence.
“Imagine spooning vomit back into your mouth,” she described of a soup that caused the entire service group to “poop their brains out.” “Now add hummus.”
Switching expertly between points of comedy and gravity, Eisenberg’s parting words spoke poignantly to the sense of displacement that many of us undoubtedly feel about certain places in our lives.
“I thought I already knew Israel. But after I saw the country turned upside down, inside out, I realized how rootless I was,” she said. “This is not a place we’re entitled to. We have to make our own roots here.”
Meanwhile, in a critical examination of their own roots, Bianca Giaever and Jabari Matthew both offered stories of stark self-reflection, though set in drastically different contexts. Giaever’s tale began after her graduation from Middlebury; Matthew’s story dated back to his toddler and elementary school days. Giaever’s whimsical adventure – which landed her on a cross-country road trip to New Mexico, following a list of poetic clues in search of a millionaire’s hidden treasure whilst trying to get over a heartbreak – seemed almost too ridiculous to be true, whilst Matthew’s account of his early childhood dance lessons and falling out with his best friend Richard struck a nostalgic chord with the audience in its relatability.
Ultimately, both brought to light the importance of understanding – or at least trying to understand – how we arrived to where we are today and all the people and places along the way.
“I didn’t want to make my story seem as if it was a class lecture,” Matthew said. “I wanted to give off the truth, which was that although I experienced what I did in my story, I am still figuring things out. And perhaps there is a lesson to be learned in my story, but whether or not there was, that was certainly not the point.”
Giaever’s story echoed the same spirit of self-discovery. Her manner of speaking was endearingly open-hearted, as if she were reading straight from the pages of her own private journal. Meanwhile, Matthew’s voice boomed with conviction, his expert vocal portrayals of the other characters in his story often creating the surreal sense of a one-man show.
Perhaps the performance that elicited the widest range of emotion from the audience was Deena Frankel’s story on love, life and loss. Beginning with a blind date at an art display about sex and ending with a somber mountain hike on Sept. 11, 2001 with her soon-to-be husband, Frankel infused her piece with a delicate mixture of amusement, joy and sadness.
“[The art display] was all about sex, in every permutation and combination that you can think of, and some that I’m sure you cannot,” she said, drawing huge laughs from the crowd. “What do you say to a guy you just met about this? ‘Nice brush strokes?’”
Frankel’s sophisticated and confident delivery stood as a testament to her experience not only as a storyteller, but also as a member of the Vermont community with a myriad of wisdom to share.
“Love has its roots in shared comedy and tragedy,” she stated. “Our stories are the roots of love.”
In an era that has shifted largely toward film, media and television, the power of live oral storytelling is often underestimated, its relevance as an art medium questioned. But as the packed theater of the MCA proved on Saturday night, there is a strong demand for this performance platform. Events like the Cocoon remind us of the importance of human connections in the absence of screens and push us to find meaning in everyday interactions. The live energy and sense of shared experience that flourish during these events are rewarding to audience members and speakers alike.
“To be able to share your stories is one thing,” Eisenberg said. “But to know that there are people who showed up just to listen is, to me, really beautiful. As long as there are people who are willing to share their stories, there will be people who are willing to listen.”
(10/21/15 8:43pm)
Every culture, no matter what country or government, develops traits that distinguish the socially privileged from the impoverished. Usually, they’re ridiculous societal quirks. Cars in Manhattan are a fantastic example. You neither need nor benefit from one, which means you’re driving to show something. Implicitly, you’re screaming to the world that you 1) have time to wait on infested streets honking your horn incessantly and 2) have enough money to invest in a useless chunk of steel that has no utility where you live. Another good example are fur coats in Moscow, where noses mysteriously upturn at anyone who isn’t wearing a dead animal around their neck.
In Las Vegas, I encountered this in stark clarity. The status symbol of the Nevadan bourgeoisie isn’t an expensive car, nor is it a luxurious fur coat. It’s membership in the Literary Society, an aggrandized book club. They meet in whatever ritzy venue they desire and discuss their chosen prose, inviting the author to share a gourmet “brunch.” They also invite (for philanthropic reasons, I assume) local English teachers and their students. I was one of those students last January. I remember wealth, lots of it, worn on the necks of lawyers and casinocrats. Many appeared bloated with botox and hairspray. None of them really struck me as especially intriguing, except one – the invited author. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with extroverted confidence, an easy grin and a book called “Deep Dark Down: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle that set Them Free.” His name was Hector Tobar.
It’s safe to imagine that the 33 Chilean miners don’t possess the status symbols of their society. I doubt they had excessive cars or extravagant fur coats in their ten-week vacation in Hades, either. Their narrative is one the world has forgotten. In 2010, a few months after an earth-shattering quake, the San Jose copper-gold mine in the Atacama Desert collapsed on them. Their supervisor – who probably does have an excessive car and extravagant fur coat or two – happened to be absent. They were trapped in the abyss for sixty-nine days. Everything was darkness, literally and metaphorically. The only light was the fire of fear that seared their brains with every grumble of the cavern.
In the words of Jose Ojeda: “we were a pack of sheep, and the mountain was about to eat us.” And that trauma understandably bled into the sunlight and the “good” years that have passed since. One, for example, washed up drunk and suicidal enough to confine him to a Santiago psychiatric ward.
For a group as celebritized as the miners, you would think they would have been offered the best psychological assistance available on Earth.
They sure were buried in mountains of other stuff. They were offered planned trips – although most ended up not happening – to Britain, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Israel, Spain and Greece and a new motorcycle from Kawasaki Chile. As noted in El Segundo, each miner was promised approximately 19 million pesos ($38,000) in “vacations, clothing, and donations.” Not only did they not receive major psychological help, they also were skimped that compensation.
A CNN article published in August pointed out that “today, many of the miners have trouble making ends meet, some living off of government pension, which pays about $500 a month. That’s roughly half of what they made working at the San Jose mine.”
Others have returned to mining. Hector Tobar’s transcription of one victim’s story, Luis Urzua, is heart-wrenching: “to have one mine fall on top of you, and then to find yourself obliged to work underground in a second mine, with the same boss who once left you behind” is the “life of a miner.” A few years ago, we were the ones who lauded them with gifts and celebrity that most of them publicly stated they didn’t want.
We treated them like the Kardashians. Then we threw them out, back into normalcy, back into the mines.
But there’s still hope. If you go into town, to the Marquis Theater, the first poster you’ll see advertises “The 33” for November 13th.
It’s a movie adaptation of the Chilean miners’ story, starring Antonio Banderas. At the Literary Society meeting, Tobar specifically pointed out that ticket sales transitively fund the miners. The movie is a charity. And that’s great. . . until you think about it more deeply. While the miners themselves cycle through traumatic depression and impoverished wages, we in the First World can garble popcorn and watch portrayals of their suffering on gigantic silver screens. It’s exploitative, but it’s their last hope.
It’s their last possible way of reaping compensation for the tragedy that they experienced.
For this reason, I urge readers to book a ticket for November 13th.
Don’t come away from this article thinking the exploitation entitles you to skip it. You have the privilege to skip the portrayal of the miners’ suffering, but they don’t. They’re living it; they’re experiencing it right now.
Let’s make “The 33” sell out.
(10/21/15 8:29pm)
As the last trees on campus dramatically change from green to gold, it is hard for members of the Middlebury community to lose sight of their natural surroundings. In fact, such a pristine backdrop makes it clear why the College was inspired to found the nation’s first Program in Environmental Studies, a program that celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. As we attend these celebrations and take in our beautiful surroundings, we would do well to consider the ways in which Middlebury can continue to be a leader in the field of environmental stewardship.
After reflecting on Middlebury’s principles and stated aims, we as an editorial board would like to officially endorse the withdrawal of College funds from industries of environmental degradation – a process known to many as divestment. Upon reviewing the evidence, we have concluded that drawbacks are scant compared to the benefits of actualizing our values in this way. A number of our editors remember hearing divestment discussed around campus over the years, but few recall a moment when the time felt more right to finally take action.
In 2012, Divest Middlebury started a campaign calling on the administration to remove our investments from the top 200 fossil fuel companies. Groups such as the Socially Responsible Investing Club and Sunday Night Group endorsed the move, but their cause did not garner enough support for the administration to alter Middlebury’s investment strategy. Instead, the College stuck with Investure, an endowment manager, which invests 1 percent of our endowment in top 200 oil and gas companies.
This portion of our endowment sits with money from Trinity College, Barnard College, Dickinson College, Smith College and the University of Tulsa, with whom we reside in a consortium of investors. While it is unlikely that the College breaks its ties to investiture because of the returns and structure it provides, we propose that Middlebury, along with other schools within the consortium where divestment movements are equally relevant, form a group within the fund that is divested. While this poses a logistical challenge, we do not believe it is insurmountable. Our consortium makes up six of Investure’s 13 clients, a proportion that would incentivize investure to meet our demands to avoid losing half of its clients. While coordinating with so many separate institutions may prove difficult, there is the potential to harness our near-majority influence and insist that Investure divest.
Furthermore, Middlebury should lead the charge as a pioneer in the field of sustainability. We recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of our program in Environmental Studies. Middlebury’s webpage describing the event proclaims, “In five decades, Middlebury has left an indelible mark on the environment and sustainability in higher education. Today, the College is an internationally recognized leader in environmental thought, research, and action…” But we see a disparity in what the College proclaims as our environmental mission and in our actions taken.
Middlebury loves to tout its goal of carbon neutrality by 2016, yet how can we stand by this pledge when the carbon footprint from our investments renders it meaningless? The College claims to be a “leader in environmental… action,” but how can we say this if we cower behind the bureaucracy of Investure and do not attempt to leverage our case on divestment?
Perhaps it is time that we drew our attention back to the students, where the divestment movement began and where its success depends. Divest Middlebury has made limited progress in persuading the Board of Trustees thus far, but we believe that this results from the lukewarm support of the student body. While many of us have appeased our peers by signing their petitions for divestment, or perhaps we have even read an op-ed from Divest Middlebury, a lack of enthusiasm for the campaign across campus has characterized the cause.
Many of us on the editorial board – and we expect that a number of our classmates could say the same – had not given much thought to divestment, but felt instinctively doubtful of it. We feel that some of the tactics employed by Divest Middlebury in the past have trivialized the group’s message. This skepticism also reflects an assumption shared by many students that divestment would negatively affect the College’s bottom line.
Therefore, the Campus would like to set the record straight once and for all and proclaim our undeviating support for the cause. While divestment might seem too good to be true for Middlebury, it is not. According to the investment management firm Aperio Group, divesting from the entire oil, gas and consumable fuels industry has a 0.0034 percent penalty on returns and a 0.0101 percent increase in risk, quelling the fears of those worried about divestment’s financial losses.
Choosing to divest has political ramifications that will extend beyond the cause’s short-term gains. Middlebury’s decision to withdraw funds from fossil fuel industries will likely spur our peer institutions to do the same. Furthermore, it will encourage environmentally-conscious applicants – a demographic that only grows with new generations – to consider our College more seriously for its role as a bellwether of divestment.
The College’s own website celebrating “50 Years of Environmental Education & Leadership” states, “As we prepare for our 50th anniversary celebration, we ask ourselves – as we ask our students – not what is reasonable but what is possible. Not what is easy but what is right. And not what is now but what is next.” We call on the College to heed its own admirable words. To embrace the right choice, not the easy choice. Divestment may not be “what is now,” but it could — and ought — to be next. Let’s live up to our reputation.
(10/21/15 8:19pm)
Despite understanding that using a phone while driving is dangerous, many people routinely give into the temptation to send a quick text while on the road. And despite state laws banning the use of phones while driving, the practice is still dangerously common. Middlebury students Terry Goguen ’16 and AnnaClare Smith ’16 have created a new way to discourage texting and driving that rewards drivers for keeping their eyes on the road. Their mobile app, JoyRyde, incentivizes safe driving by tracking drivers’ phone-free miles and rewarding them with points that can be redeemed for discounts, coupons or charitable donations.
“In my experience, having a positive outlook on things instead of a punishment is the best way to go,” Goguen said, describing the logic behind their model of rewarding users for driving safely. JoyRyde lets users “incentivize and motivate themselves to do the right thing.”
Smith explained the unique nature of JoyRyde, in that “there are other apps that try to prevent texting and driving, but none of them have the same incentive system.”
It appears that this system may be key to creating safer roads by accomplishing what current campaigns and legislation cannot: changing drivers’ behavior. In a survey conducted by Smith and Goguen, 86% of people reported that legislation punishing those who text and drive does not affect the way they drive. As a result of this conclusion, the pair decided to go a different route, and allow users to, in Goguen’s words, “be their own agent of change.”
JoyRyde is simple and user-friendly. A driver starts a new ride and the phone begins tracking the driver’s miles. If the user leaves JoyRyde to go to a different app, JoyRyde will stop tracking and the driver will no longer receive points. When the user next opens the app, they will see an x indicating a violation. Three violations terminate the ride. Users can currently redeem points for discounts and coupons at Cumberland Farms, B. Good Restaurant, and the brands Skida and Sword and Plough, both founded by Middlebury students. Part of Goguen and Smith’s current vision involves establishing new corporate partnerships and expanding JoyRyde’s connections with charities.
JoyRyde recently partnered with non-profit Text Less Live More, an organization that increases awareness of the dangers of texting and driving. Users can use their points to purchase a donation to Text Less Live More. While this is currently the only charity partnered with JoyRyde, the app will partner with additional charities to provide users with even more opportunities to turn their phone-free miles into donations.
Goguen and Smith attribute much of JoyRyde’s success to the opportunities available to young entrepreneurs at Middlebury. When the pair first developed the idea for JoyRyde, Goguen contacted Middlebury’s Programs for Creativity and Innovation. Staff at the PCI informed him of a J-term class titled Midd Entrepreneurs, in which students work with representatives from the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies to turn their business ideas into reality. JoyRyde won a grant last spring from MiddChallenge, a PCI competition. The app also won the most recent Fresh Tracks Road Pitch Riders Choice Award, a competition administered by motorcyclists with business and financial expertise who ride to small towns to hear pitches from various entrepreneurs. The resources Smith and Goguen took advantage of at the College gave them the practical knowledge necessary to successfully present their app to these investors and pitch competitions.
Neither of the founders see JoyRyde’s success slowing anytime soon. The app currently has 150 users, and at the time of the pair’s interview with The Campus, the app had reached 1200 drives in the previous 12 days. Goguen plans to continue his work with JoyRyde after graduating, and to continue to increase the app’s corporate partnerships and improve its software.
To download the app, drivers enter their email on the JoyRyde website and then receive an email with a link to download. Goguen and Smith estimate that the app will be available on the App Store within the next couple of months. JoyRyde is free, and always will be, assures Goguen.
“We think that’s the best way to do it because the more people using it, the more lives we’re going to save,” Goguen said.
(10/21/15 8:16pm)
The Middlebury College Phi Beta Kappa chapter inducted ten seniors into the honors society on Saturday, Oct. 3 at a ceremony that coincided with Fall Family Weekend. A committee of faculty selects the students based on their academic transcripts in their first three years.
One of the inductees, Kate Hamilton ’15.5, a political science major, believes the most important aspect of academic life is maintaining a balance.
“I like to look at my week in advance and make sure I am leaving time for schoolwork, but also extracurriculars, running, outings with friends and long dinners. I think we all do better, more productive work when it’s not all we are doing,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton embraces the serendipitous value of a liberal arts education, as she deliberately chose to not have a minor.
“I have really enjoyed being able to dabble in a lot of other disciplines. I feel like I have spent a good deal of time in History, Economics and Psychology classes in addition to Political Science,” Hamilton said.
Tom Hyeon-Seok ’16, another inductee, stumbled upon his major while attending a Middlebury event.
“I chose my [economics] major after conversing with the department chair and Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics, Peter Matthews at a piano concert. Economics, combined with statistics, I learned, enables us to explain nearly every aspect of our lives with stories backed by numbers that are often much more objective than words,” he said.
In a few months, the inductees will embark on their postgrad plans, carrying with them the honor of membership in a national society of academics. Hamilton, a Truman Scholar, said she plans on law school.
“My ultimate goal is a law career focused on expanding democratic participation. I would love to work for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, either in the Voting Section or the Educational Opportunities Section,” she said.
Hyeon-Seok will work at a consulting firm in Denver. After a summer job at the firm, he realized it was a great way to “hone [his] quantitative skills and get exposed to the business and legal sectors.”
With such an accomplishment, the two inductees share their secrets of success. “I think it’s really important to take classes that genuinely interest you, because you are so much likely to do well when you are engaged in the material,” Hamilton said.
Hyeon-Seok, however, first clarified that membership in Phi Beta Kappa should not be seen as the ultimate measure of success. “While I consider a membership in PBK as a great honor, I do not equate that to a sign of success. After all, there are many smarter, talented, and interesting individuals on this campus,” he said.
His tip for academic success at Middlebury is to develop relationships with peers in and outside the classroom.
“I found debates and arguments I had outside of classrooms with my friends on topics from lectures immensely helpful in internalizing lessons and insights from the course,” Hyeon-Seok said.
(10/19/15 4:38pm)
Written in response to David Mnitsa’s “Ignorance is Bliss”
Last week’s op-ed, titled, “Ignorance is Bliss,” accepts as a premise that life is meaningless. Writer David Mnitsa then claims that the best way to get around our fundamental state of despair will be through the distractions of video games, work and family. Although Mr. Mnitsa starts his column “willing to answer [the] call” of the “big questions,” he ends bleakly, noting that the only way to get through a day so filled with despair will be by ignoring such questions entirely.
Perhaps “thinking about the meaning of life is a Sisyphian and isolating adventure” but I hope that our campus will demand more than a nine paragraph op-ed before we convert to nihilism. I am nervous about the state of any college that prefers “blissful ignorance” to thoughtful inquiry. We ought to fear what Mr. Mnitsa believes apparent – namely, that we must choose between happiness and knowing certain truths. If we take him to mean that the fundamental experience of “being human” is to be universal, comprehensible and tragic, then we should treat any evidence with the utmost caution. The consequences of such a discovery would simultaneously complete and kill the project of liberal education.
Mr. Mnitsa informs us that humans have discovered the emptiness the uni- verse and of our lives through the faculty of reason. He has another word for reason: science. However, in his invocation of Mr. Mansfield’s lecture on science and liberal education, he misses the thesis of Mr. Mansfield’s argument. Mr. Mansfield explains that science depends on “non-science” in order to be valuable. Science may provide us with facts, but non-science determines which facts are worth discovering and teaches what to do with those facts. I hope that our campus, too, might flirt with the idea that not just facts, but “non-science” and other “irrational” experiences might expose meaning in our lives. And if meaning is too much to ask for, then at least we might find some hope in our capacity to search.
(10/15/15 3:06am)
It’s the here and now that’s important; the next life will sort itself out.
This is the conclusion I’ve come to in my ponderings on mortality and the afterlife, ponderings on which I imagine nearly all people dwell throughout their lives. I also imagine that many individuals in my demographic – educated millennials – have reached a similar conclusion to mine. If you are one of those individuals, this letter is for you.
My church, St. Stephen’s on the Green, has recently initiated a series of informal conversations around the topic of millennials in the Episcopal Church – or, more specifically: why aren’t there any? Episcopal congregations, and congregations of nearly every Christian denomination, are getting older and older, and very few millennials – those reaching young adulthood in the first decades of the twenty-first century – are stepping forward to carry on the traditions and teachings. Why is this so? Research suggests that it is not for a lack of spiritual need in the younger generation; rather, millennials statistically report greater spiritual need than their baby-boomer counterparts. It seems to me that the empty pew seats are a result of increased distrust of organized religion and of the Christian Church in particular.
This is a very good thing, I think, for the Church and for the collective enlightenment of humankind. Blind trust in any doctrine leads unavoidably to perversion of that doctrine’s moral pillars, as those in power know how easy it is to manipulate the blindly trusting. What is not so good is the blind distrust that I observe in my fellow millennials toward the Church.
I was one of those blindly distrustful, contentedly ignorant, non-practicing Christian millennials until a personal crisis four years ago led me to seek refuge in a non-denominational church sanctuary in New Haven, CT. I found the Episcopal Church a year later and have since become a student of the ways and beliefs of this particular denomination. Over time I have developed in the Episcopal Church a deep trust – not blind, but based on what I have observed, and restricted by my finite understanding of the institution. I have learned along the way that many of the assumptions that the contentedly ignorant me had about the Church were quite wrong.
For example, I thought that people went to church because they thought it would help them get into heaven. This was wrong to me on so many different levels. To start, I didn’t think of heaven as something you get into. I imagine this is a source of skepticism for many educated millennials, and so I endeavor now to put this one misconception to rest.
My time in the Episcopal Church has taught me that at least some practicing Christians don’t fit the stereotype I imagined four years ago. But it wasn’t until this past Sunday, in my pastor Susan’s sermon, that I finally heard this particular stereotype, and its origin, eloquently expressed:
“We cannot do anything to earn eternal life, like a commodity - neither by what we do, or I would say neither by what we believe. And I think the Church with a big ‘C’ and many churches continuing today have really failed in this message over the ages. The Church has said, 'Join us, believe this, get baptized, and you will have eternal life.' What we should have said instead, I think, is this: When you open yourself to Christ, you will be transformed by Grace to live a life of love. And, living a life of love, you will put fear behind you, and live life with love. And that is eternal life.”
This rang true to me; tears sprang from my eyes, and those sitting around me possibly heard me whisper, “That’s it!” Eternal life, that phrase we hear thrown around in Christian dialogue so often, isn’t about “getting into heaven.” It is perhaps clearer to think of eternal life not as life that goes on forever in a temporal sense but life that goes on for- ever in a spatial sense. A heart-soul extraphysical self that transcends boundary and restriction, that transcends fear.
It’s the here and now that’s important. The next life will sort itself out.
The Episcopal Church, for me, is a place of communion. Yes, communion means eating the Body and drinking the Blood of Christ, but more importantly for me, it means community, a word more readily understood in the secular world than communion is. St. Stephen’s is a place where I can be in a living dia- logue with the spiritual ideas of the past three millennia, where I can exchange ideas with friends and spiritual think- ers whom I’ve grown to trust, where I can keep my own spirituality living and growing. And it is flourishing.
So my challenge to you, educated millennial, is this: examine your distrust, identify that which is blind and go looking. Perhaps you'll find a community that satisfies your spiritual need in abundance, as I have.
(10/15/15 2:26am)
On Thursday, Oct. 8, 12 students competed for the opportunity to be the student speaker selection for next month’s TEDxMiddlebury conference. Gathering in Dana Auditorium, students had four minutes to present a condensed version of their proposed TED talks to a panel of judges. Topics this year included domestic violence, art and spoken word poetry, all of which fell under this year’s theme, “Caught in the Act.” Casey Wanna ’17 was selected as the winner and will give her talk at the sixth annual TEDxMiddlebury Conference on Sunday, Nov. 8.
Wanna’s pitch focused on her recovery from anorexia nervosa and the larger implications of that for the College community.
“Middlebury has a very keen focus on body type, and it’s very much entrenched in this idea that this thinness and this idealized body image is something that is very much desired” said Wanna. “I feel like there’s a lot of judgments that are passed on people due to body image and that there are a lot of cultural expectations that are just unachievable.”
Wanna intends for her talk to start broader conversations not only about body image but also about mental health.
“I want to focus on this internal dialogue that we run in our own minds, and how we can shift that internal dialogue from being negative to being positive, and what efforts we can make in that regard,” she said.
“I think this has a lot to do with body image particularly. However, I think it has a lot of broader implications in terms of mental health treatment.”
This year’s theme, “Caught in the Act,” focuses on self-discovery in college.
“College is a time for identity. You are thinking about who you are, looking back on who you were, and are able to see where you come from for the first time because you are not surrounded by it anymore” said Anna Jacobsen ’16.5, who is on the board of TEDxMiddlebury. “‘Caught in the Act’ is this idea of how our actions and how our own self-exploration inform our identity.”
TED, which stands for technology, entertainment and design, started in 1984 in order to showcase, as their tagline says, “ideas worth spreading.” The nonprofit has since grown to include multiple conferences throughout the year. The TEDx program began as an offshoot of the larger TED organization to create similar conferences at the local level.
The Programs on Creativity and Innovation launched TEDxMiddlebury in 2010. The program has rapidly expanded in the last six years, moving from McCardell Bicentennial Hall to the Mahaney Center for the Arts in order to accommodate the growing number of attendees. Speakers are professionally filmed during the conference and their presentations, which typically run at 18 minutes each and are uploaded to the TEDxMiddlebury YouTube page. In 2012 TEDxMiddlebury included the student speaker component.
In addition to one selected student speaker, the program also hosts six outside speakers.
“One of the biggest ways TEDx has grown is [that] we have really strong speakers,” Jacobsen said.
“People on TEDx have really learned what makes a good speaker and recognize when people are [at] points in their careers when they could give a really influential TED talk.”
In choosing outside speakers, TEDxMiddlebury aims to address issues relevant to the Middlebury community. “I see TEDxMiddlebury as being reactionary to events and thoughts on campus,” Jacobsen said. We bring speakers who can add insight to events on campus or issues that people are talking about,” said Jacobsen.
Speakers at this year’s conference include Marco Mezzavilla, a web development and computer science expert, and Brendan O’Neill, a migrant justice activist. Notable past speakers include spoken word poet Alok Vaidmenon, who gave a talk titled “We are Nothing and that is Beautiful,” and Assistant Professor of Dance Christal Brown, whose talk titled “Moving Questions” centered on nonverbal communication.
In the month leading up to her talk, Wanna will work with oratory coaches in order to develop her proposal into an 18 minute Ted Talk.
“My topic is really relevant to me,” Wanna said. “It has a completely personal basis, and I honestly feel like it’s a message that needs to be heard.”
(10/14/15 11:49pm)
Every single seat in the lecture hall was taken. A huge cluster of students stood in the back. The lecturer even jokingly offered to let people sit on the floor next to his podium. Unlike most other popular talks on campus, this lecture was not about a pressing social or political issue, nor was the speaker famous outside his field. Instead, it was about sleep, which, judging from the chorus of yawns before the lecture, was on many students’ minds.
The talk, titled “Vitamin ‘S’ Deficiency: An Introduction to Normal Sleep and Sleep Disorders,” was given by Associate Professor of Psychiatry Wilfred Pigeon, the Director of the Sleep and Neurophysiology Research Lab at the University of Rochester Medical Center. As the talk’s title suggests, Pigeon introduced students to current research on sleep and sleep disorders while making a plea for students to lengthen and improve their sleep.
Pigeon began by explaining the biology and neuroscience of sleep. Sleep is regulated by the suprachiasmatic nucleus and the pineal gland in the brain, both of which are influenced by sunlight, but are not tied to any biological clock. Sleep is divided into four stages, which the body cycles through every 80 to 100 minutes: two stages of lighter sleep, one stage of deep sleep and one stage of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when dreams occurs. Observing someone in REM sleep for the first time was what made Pigeon interested in studying sleep.
“The first time I saw [someone enter REM sleep], that is where I got hooked on doing sleep stuff,” Pigeon said. “I thought, ‘that is so cool!’ I am watching that guy dream!”
He is more interested, however, in the dangers of sleep loss. He brought up an influential 2003 study titled “Ethanol and Sleep Loss,” which compared the effects of sleep deprivation with the effects of alcohol consumption and estimated the equivalent blood alcohol content (BAC) of getting less than eight hours of sleep. Six hours of sleep impairs reaction time and memory in a way that resembles having a .045% BAC, or two to three drinks. Four hours puts one at the equivalent of a .095% BAC, over the legal limit to drive.
He then referenced a laundry list of studies and examples showing the often severe effects of sleep deprivation. One study showed that medical students in residency programs who had normal amounts of sleep made 30 percent fewer errors than students who worked overnight shifts. Other studies found that insomnia made people more susceptible to depression and suicidal thoughts or that sleep deprivation reduced people’s response rate to the Avian Flu vaccine.
But the example that resonated the most with the audience was about the effect of sleep on students. Recognizing research showing that adolescents need more sleep than adults, the Minneapolis Public School District did a controlled study from 1997 to 2001 by starting school later for some, but not all, of its high schools. The study found that students who got got more sleep were allowed to spend more time on homework, and more sleep increased attendance for students of all grades and ethnicities.
Consistent but moderate sleep deprivation is also dangerous. Pigeon referenced a study that recorded how long subjects took to fall asleep during daytime naps after getting variable amounts of sleep the night before and pointed out its implication for drivers.
“After one week of sleep, for five hours a night, [one becomes a] danger on the road, in terms of how sleepy one is during the day,” Pigeon said.
Contrary to popular thought, he mentioned that it is possible to make up a sleep debt by sleeping in on the weekend. But he cautions that making up sleep works by “equal exchange” (a loss of one hour of sleep has to be made up for by an extra hour of sleep), so at some point it becomes impractical: getting six hours of sleep a night for a week can only be canceled out by sleeping for 20 hours on a weekend night.
He finished by dispensing advice on improving sleep. To not feel tired after napping, he recommended limiting naps to no more than 30-45 minutes to avoid going into REM sleep. He recommended waking up to sunlight if one’s circadian rhythm is off, because of jet lag or an unusual sleeping schedule, but said that that would not help with general insomnia. However, he was most outspoken on apps like Sleep Cycle and SleepTime+ that purport to keep track of one’s sleep cycle and then set an alarm that will not interrupt deep sleep or REM sleep, which he dismissed with a b-word that cannot be printed in this paper.
“Please don’t use those apps, they suck,” Pigeon said. “They have no way to really measure your sleep cycle.”
In addition to being well attended, Pigeon’s talk was well received.
“People seemed fascinated by the material of his talk,” Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Martin Seehuus, whose research specializes in sleep disruptions, said. “He was great at integrating research findings with people’s real life experiences.”
(10/14/15 11:44pm)
Alcatraz-1259 by William G. Baker is the autobiographical account of a former Alcatraz inmate. Alcatraz Island, located in the San Francisco Bay, was a federal prison for approximately thirty years in the mid-20th century until it was abandoned and eventually converted into a museum. A thriving tourist hotspot today, it held some of the most famous convicts of the day, including Al Capone and Robert “Birdman” Stroud, and was notoriously difficult to escape. Several movies have dramatized the various (failed) escape attempts, as the isolation and harshness of its conditions continue to capture the imagination of many.
Baker’s book is a straightforward, honest account of his time both on Alcatraz and in and out of some other prisons. He has spent much of his life behind bars, mostly for counterfeiting checks. What eventually landed him in Alcatraz was an escape attempt from another prison. He is frank to the point of crassness, and expresses contempt toward the prison system and most of the people who work in it – though he does have a kind word for guards he felt did their jobs honestly and fairly.
Overall, he has a great deal more interest and sympathy for his fellow inmates in all of the prisons that he describes. He speaks of the friendships that flourished between them as they worked together, taught each other card games, secretly fermented alcohol in trash cans, plotted escape attempts and simply sat and watched San Francisco from inside Alcatraz’s walls, dreaming of what they would do when they left. One particularly memorable line describes one of Baker’s fellow inmates; “he was a really nice guy; he just really liked to rob banks.” Baker sees nothing wrong with that.
The style of the book is conversational; the writing familiar at best, clunky and meandering at worst. It is littered with swear words and questionable grammar. The narrative jumps across time in a way that is more confusing than artistic, although Baker certainly uses it to provide insight into his upbringing, what set him on the path of a career criminal who was consistently in and out of prison and what kept him there. There is one stretch in the book that takes place in another prison and goes on for so long that I began to wonder why the book is named Alcatraz-1259 rather than simply The Life of William Baker. The writing is definitely not the strong suit of the book. Nor is it the history of Alcatraz that makes it worth reading, as there are far more comprehensive and focused books on the subject out there.
However, the sometimes awkward and confusing anecdotes give voice to a perspective on prison life that is not heard enough – and in the case of Alcatraz, the chance to understand these experiences is rapidly diminishing, with few former inmates still alive today. Despite his crass and clunky style, Baker still manages to get across a great deal about what it meant to be an Alcatraz inmate. The reader is exposed to glimpses of daily life: the monotony, the excitement, the cringe-worthy moments and the strange but wonderful triumphs. While looking for something to do on yard breaks, Baker decides that he will plant, water and nurture a small patch of earth. The plants are mostly weeds, but his awe when they bloom creates an unexpectedly touching moment.
This open-hearted honesty is so very human, empathetic and poignant. It is what makes Baker’s book worth the read. At times, that honesty made me feel uncomfortable or alienated as I struggled to understand how someone could fail to see that stealing money was morally wrong. Sometimes, that honesty is sexist.
Yet the writing is compelling precisely because it is so barefaced. Baker never apologizes for his actions or his viewpoints, or for those of his fellow inmates. He simply offers them up as his experience, leaving the reader to decide what they want to make of them. I may not know much about the history of Alcatraz’ most infamous residents, but I learned a lot more about what the inmates actually thought and felt than I ever could have from someone who had merely researched the place. There may be parts that I disagreed with or that felt far removed from my own personality, but by unabashedly showing the good, the bad and the ugly, Baker allows for much more truthful insight than would have been possible had he tried to make the story palatable to the widest possible audience.
(10/14/15 10:35pm)
Last spring, three Middlebury seniors started Humans of Vermont, an independent study modeled after the popular Humans of New York, created in 2010 by Brandon Stanton.
Traveling to different parts of the state, these students began to collect the stories and photos of various Vermonters and posted them on Facebook. As the desire to drive beyond Middlebury College and listen to the people of Vermont grew, the page quickly accumulated ‘likes’. This year, the project is run by Wendy Walcoff ’16.5, Olivia Wiggins ’18.5, Emily Robinson ’18.5, and Grace Levin ’18.5.
Each weekend, they make their way to a new destination; a harvest fair, an apple orchard, a small town’s main street. With questions ranging from, “What is a moment in your life you would like to return to?” to “What is something that you have learned recently?” or even “Have you ever been in love?” the conversations begin beneath the surface for both listener and speaker. As it turns out, people want to be heard.
At a recent harvest fair in Bristol, Vermont, Humans of Vermont spoke with a blacksmith, a local band, a fireman, a family of four, a jeweler and many other attendees. One woman, Ellen Spring, a print maker and mother of two teenage girls, opened up immediately upon being asked about her artwork.
“I say, somewhat facetiously, that I’m kind of doing what I’ve been doing since I was eight years old,” Ellen laughed, pointing to her colorful shirts with vegetable block-prints. Without much prompting, she began speaking of her passion, her family and the ideas that ground her.
“It hasn’t always been incredibly clear to me what my path should be,” She articulated. “It was just that choices were made easier because I felt like it was okay to choose happiness. When I first got out of art school it was kind of like..ah I guess I have to go to New York because that’s where artists go. But I didn’t really want to go to New York. And then I thought: ‘Oh, I don’t have to!’”
Ellen recalled her decisions with ease, and her words spoke directly to the eager ears of those college students persisting under the pressure of the job hunt.
“It’s okay to choose to follow your heart. I didn’t go into this thinking ‘I’m gonna be rich.’ But it’s a living, and I’ve been doing it for 30 something years now. And I still love it. That’s kind of what has always kept me going: that I feel really lucky to get up every morning and do something I love.”
As the collection of stories builds, The Campus will feature excerpts from the people and places gathered by Humans of Vermont. A reminder to share, to listen, and that sometimes all you have to do is ask.
(10/14/15 10:04pm)
On Sunday, Oct. 11, the College inaugurated Laurie L. Patton as its 17th president in a historic ceremony on McCullough Lawn to an audience of over 1,000. Patton is the first woman to hold the office of president in the College’s 215-year history and previously served at Duke University as the Dean of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and the Robert F. Durden Professor of Religion. She arrived at Middlebury on July 1, 2015, after the Board’s announcement of her selection as president on November 18, 2014.
The ceremony commenced with a formal academic procession of faculty, administrators, the Trustees and delegates from 63 colleges, universities and learned societies. Patton’s undergraduate alma mater, Harvard University, and her graduate alma mater, the University of Chicago, were both represented in the delegation.
Marna C. Whittington, Chair of the Board of Trustees, conducted the investiture by presenting Gamaliel Painter’s original cane to Patton. President Emeritus John M. McCardell, Jr., returned to Middlebury to present the traditional pewter medallion worn by Middlebury presidents at all formal occasions. Patton received a standing ovation from the crowd before she delivered a 35-minute address. She spoke of the vital role that the Green and Adirondack Mountains play in shaping the community. She also gave five thoughts about a vision for the future, with a focus on making “arguments for the sake of heaven,” a philosophical principle in Judaism.
“I hope we are all thinking about that, because I believe that Middlebury’s collective genius of warmth, optimism, rigor and compassion can make us some of the best arguers in higher education — arguers who can think together with deeper respect, stronger resilience and greater wisdom,” said Patton.
Patton noted Middlebury’s heritage of open mindedness, high aspirations and innovative leadership in higher education as qualities that make it unique among its peer schools. “We have a love and care for languages and writing and sciences and society and arts and athletics all at the same time.”
Patton received a second standing ovation at the conclusion of her address.
The ceremony was preceded on Saturday by a series of academic panels in celebration of learning called to order by the new president. The first panel, moderated by Tara Affolter, Assistant Professor of Education Studies, was titled “Race, Gender, and Inequality.” The second, moderated by Eilat Glickman, Assistant Professor of Physics, was titled “Scientific Exploration and the Boundaries of Life.” The final panel, moderated by Timothy Billings, Professor of English and American Literatures, was titled “The Ethical Dimensions of Reading Classical Literature.” This panel featured Wendy Doniger, a Sanskrit scholar and President Patton’s thesis advisor in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. After a public concert on McCullough Lawn featuring Dispatch (headed by Brad Corrigan ’96), the tradition of inauguration weekend continued with a fireworks show behind the Peterson Athletics Complex.
“It was very important to us and to President Patton that the inauguration weekend bring together Middlebury’s many and overlapping communities,” said Caitlin Myers, Associate Professor of Economics and a member of the inaugural committee. “We worked hard to plan events that students, faculty, staff, townspeople and friends of the College would be excited to attend.”
On Oct. 10, 2004, Middlebury inaugurated Ronald D. Liebowitz as its 16th president and simultaneously dedicated the new Davis Family Library. In his address, Liebowitz spoke of the beauty and remoteness of the Champlain Valley as an “ideal environment for contemplation and creativity.” He spoke of innovation in the College, which created the nation’s first undergraduate Environmental Studies program in 1965, created the Language Schools in 1915 and began the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences after Joseph Battell bequeathed 30,000 acres of his farm on Bread Loaf Mountain in Ripton to the College in 1915. “Middlebury is a college of experiments,” he said. “We must preserve these parts of the Middlebury culture that encourage creativity and innovation.” He and his wife, Jessica, started the Ron and Jessica Liebowitz Fund for Innovation to give financial support to innovative projects proposed by members of the Middlebury community.
Presidents Emeriti Armstrong, Robison and McCardell were in attendance at Liebowitz’s inaugural ceremony. At Patton’s inauguration on Sunday, McCardell attended, and the wives of Robison, who is in ill health, and Armstrong, who passed away, attended Sunday’s ceremony in place of their husbands. Liebowitz was not present at Sunday’s exercises.
Donna Donahue, a member of the Town of Middlebury Select Board, gave words of welcome and thanks. She acknowledged the many contributions the College has made to the town. She cited the completed Cross Street bridge, the current construction of a carbon-neutral town office building, planned construction of a gymnasium and recreation facility, a planned public park where the current town offices stand and development of commercial space behind Ilsley Library as examples of this constructive relationship.
Former Vermont governor Jim Douglas ’72, the Executive in Residence at Middlebury, spoke of the “demographic crisis” facing Vermont. Vermont high school graduates, he said, leave their home state for college at a higher rate than anywhere else. “Higher education allows Vermonters to expand their opportunities, increase their marketability, demand higher wages and gain personal fulfillment. I hope Middlebury will find ways to attract more Vermont students; we need to persuade them that there’s a higher education jewel right here in their own backyard.”
Richard Brodhead, president of Duke University and an honored speaker at the ceremony, praised Patton, with whom he worked at Duke. “Laurie actively listens, takes your ideas in and allows them to release thoughts of her own, in a free-form synthesis that’s always opening new vistas. Couple this with her endless energy, her endless interest in others, her passion for teaching and learning and her sheer joy in the drama of education, and Middlebury, you have met your match.”
In all, the inaugural ceremony lasted two hours. Provost Susan Baldridge gave several announcements in between welcome messages by representatives from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, the Bread Loaf Schools, the Language Schools, the Alumni Association and Staff Council. Students at the College read original passages from texts in several religious traditions: Hanna Nowicki ’16 from Zen teachings, Trisha Singh ’18 from the Bhagavad Gita, Gioia Pappalardo ’16.5 from the New Testament, Hasher Nisar ’16.5 from the Qur’an and Josh Goldenberg ’18 from the Hebrew Bible. Natasha Trethewey, the United States Poet Laureate, read pieces of poetry in English, including a poem on learning sacred language in childhood written by Patton.
“The hardest part was the detail,” said David Donahue ’91, special assistant to the president and Secretary of the Corporation. “Luckily, we have amazingly talented staff who take great pride in these kinds of events and who think of everything. Making sure everyone knows where they are going, who’s doing what, shuttles, childcare, housing. Which to me was a thoughtful, thought-provoking, warm and welcoming experience.”
The ceremony ended with the singing of the alma mater, “Walls of Ivy,” and an academic recessional to a bagpipe tune played by Timothy Cummings, an affiliate artist at the College. Following the ceremony, students, faculty, staff and the new president walked up the hill toward Mead Chapel to join in a campus-wide picnic — the breaking of bread.
(10/08/15 1:33am)
Dr. Julie Hotchkiss, a research economist and senior policy adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, will attempt to separate unemployment fact from fiction in this semester’s D.K. Smith ’42 Lecture on Thursday, Oct. 15th. One of many campus speakers, Hotchkiss plans to discuss the truth behind headlines regarding labor statistics.
Phanindra Wunnava, D.K. ’42 Chair in Applied Economics, organizes the biannual D.K. Smith Lecture and selected Hotchkiss, a vice president of the Southern Economic Association, and a researcher of race and wage differentials. Wunnava and Hotchkiss have known each other for over 20 years. Today, the two continue to commemorate as researchers of the U.S. labor market. Wunnava chose Hotchkiss in order to educate the community about the state of unemployment amidst the 2016 election.
“With the presidential political warfare taking over our airwaves, her talk will be a reality check about some of the outrageous economic predictions we are hearing from the candidates of both parties,” Wunnava said.
Although Hotchkiss works for the Fed, Wunnava, does not think bias will be a problem, “She is a centrist, a highly cited economist of my generation because of her objectivity,” he added.
According to Wunnava, D.K. Smith lectures typically are very popular.
“It gets filled to the brim,” he said. “Standing room only. Folks in town who are interested usually come. I make a point to make sure the word is out with the local media. At the end of the day I want to be sure we have a big crowd."
Even students who don’t usually find these talks to be captivating have demonstrated interest. Namely Economics major, Student Investment Committee Vice Chair, and Fed Challenge member Jackson Adams ’17 finds most economics speakers dull.
“I have yet to go to an economics talk that I thought was truly fascinating,” Adams said.
Although unimpressed by past speakers, Adams is optimistic about the Hotchkiss lecture.
“It’s crazy that the Fed set this unemployment target and then we surpassed it — we’re at a decade-low unemployment — and the Fed keeps looking at these other metrics to keep saying ‘the economy is not that strong.’ There is definitely some room for Hotchkiss to make the argument that the labor market is stronger than we’re led to believe,” he said.
“I’m an opponent of mandatory lectures,” Adams added. “The whole point of liberal arts is seeking out your own educational decisions, but going to these speakers is part of that.”
D.K. Smith ’42 taught for 40 years in the economics department, and Wunnava holds the professorship chair named after him. “As part of my chair professorship, I have the opportunity to invite experts in the field to share their knowledge with the college community and the public,” Wunnava said. Past D.K. Smith speakers include Richard Freeman (Harvard), Francine Blau (Cornell), and Charles Clotfeltet (Duke).
(10/07/15 11:43pm)
On Friday, Oct. 2, the Paul W. Ward ’25 Memorial Prize was presented at Twilight Hall auditorium, honoring 74 members of the classes of 2018 and 2018.5. Led by Writing Center director, Mary Ellen Bertolini, Friday’s hour-long ceremony highlighted the many ways in which students are taught to communicate clearly and effectively through writing in all areas of academic life at the College.
The Paul W. Ward ’25 Memorial Prize was established 37 years ago by his widow, Dorothy Cate Ward ’28, to feature writing that employs, as she put it, “precise and exact usage of words, exact meanings, phrases expressed lucidly and gracefully.” All nominees of the prize are invited by the Writing Center to train as peer writing tutors. In addition, the two runners-up and the winner receive cash prizes of $250 and $500, respectively. In an impressive display of the diversity of academic pursuits on campus, this year’s ceremony featured papers on criminal justice, street art, philosophy, linguistics, the nature sciences and much more, ranging in format from scholarly research articles to personal narratives.
Despite these far-reaching fields of study, this year’s judges – Vicki Backus of the biology department, Ellery Foutch of the American Studies department and Director of Academic Technology Bill Koulopoulos – were tasked with selecting writing pieces that communicate with precision and grace. As such, the prize continues to champion the merits of good writing across all fields of academic study.
As Bertolini expressed in her opening speech at Friday’s ceremony, “when Middlebury College committed itself to requiring writing in courses throughout the curriculum, we committed ourselves to an idea about the place of writing in a liberal arts education.”
Following the opening remarks, the honorable mention awards were presented to Naomi Eisenburg ’18, Robert Erickson ’18 and Gabe Weisbuch ’18. As the three nominating faculty members handed over the certificates, each professor spoke of a moment in which they were struck by the quality of their candidate’s writing. Whatever differences existed amongst the papers, each student was able to captivate the reader’s attention and elevate the content of the work through clear, impactful and effective communication.
This point became especially clear to the audience during the presentation of the runner-up awards, as winners were called upon to read a condensed version of their works, following a brief introduction by their respective nominating professors. Sawyer Crosby ’18 shared “The Depletion of Groundwater Reserves in the Rio Laja Watershed,” incorporating social and political elements into an otherwise strictly environmental paper. In this way, what may have been inaccessible to audiences unfamiliar with this subject area became relevant and comprehensible. As an audience member with no prior understanding of this region or its environmental features, I found the piece to be fascinating, made engaging by Crosby’s style and dedication to the principles of effective writing.
The personal narrative “I Used to Play the Harp,” written by Morgan Grady-Benson ’18, was also the recipient of the runner-up prize. Culled from recent life experiences, Grady-Benson’s paper dealt primarily with hardship and loss, making sense of a series of diverse, complex life experiences through thoughtful reflection. Her story captivated the audience in a style that rang clear and powerful throughout the auditorium.
First-place winner, Nina Colombotos ’18, offered yet another illuminating piece of writing in a unique academic arena. Her paper, entitled “Stand Your Ground: A Southern History Meets Modern Law,” brought a broad historical-social context to modern-day criminal cases related to the “Stand Your Ground” law. In connecting these significant current events to a long and complex cultural history of the south, Colombotos succeeded in unpacking a realm of criminal justice in ways both insightful and relevant.
The three writers honored by the Paul W. Ward Prize, as well as the 69 nominees and two honorable mention recipients, represent only a fraction of all Middlebury students who continually hone their writing skills in a diverse array of academic settings. The works of these particular students demonstrate the qualities of effective writing, and highlight why such writing is important. As Mary Ellen Bertolini stated in her opening remarks, “Those colleagues who are shaping the course of the future are the communicators.”
(10/07/15 11:27pm)
A Place Called Winter is a tale of heartbreaking hardship, a book that seems to combine Pride and Prejudice with E.M Forsters’ Maurice, against the backdrop of the 1908 settlement of Winter, Saskatchewan, Canada – which is, in fact, a real place.
Protagonist Harry Cane’s adventure is loosely based on the experience of author Patrick Gale’s own great-grandfather, who was mysteriously banished from England, leaving his wife and young child behind to face the wilderness of Canada alone.
Nothing could seem more unrealistic, perhaps, than a married man who would decide to leave his young child and private income in England in order to sail toward a life full of hardship and uncertainty in Canada. By the time Harry boards the immigrant ship, however, Gale has established his character with precise, economical strokes.
Harry is apt to stammer and feels constrained by everything that is expected of him. What changes his life utterly is the realization that he loves men, in an era where homosexual acts are punishable by law and met with social disgrace. Harry meets Mr. Browning, and soon after they begin a sexual relationship, a relation of love and passion through Harry’s eyes. Yet when a blackmailer exposes their relationship, Harry is told by his wife’s family to remove himself from his wife, child and country.
Gale retraced Harry’s steps while writing the novel.
“I spent three months there, and although Winter is a ghost town now, I had the coordinates for Harry’s farm, so I was able to track it down precisely. I found it terribly moving that his acres were still being ploughed,” Gale said.
The opening scene of A Place Called Winter takes place in a Canadian psychiatric hospital, where Harry’s sessions of hypnotic therapy reveal the events that led up to that moment. According to Gale, “the challenge was to inhabit homosexual life in a time when there are no words to describe any of the things the character feels or does. It is quite literally a story about the unspeakable.”
The classic story of a man finding himself through labor on his own land is derailed almost as soon as it begins to take shape. Harry is pursued by a nightmarish figure by the name of Troels Munck. This virtually fairytale villain has a knack for spotting weakness in others, a superb animal instinct and a prowling capability for destruction. Unvexed by any concept of mortality, he haunts Harry’s career as a homesteader.
And yet through Troels, Harry finds both great happiness and a neighbor whom he comes to love. Critics have highlighted compassion as one of the uniting qualities in Gale’s fiction, but I am still surprised by Harry’s willingness to see past Troels’ brutality.
“Munck is probably a psychopath,” Gale explained, “but my difficulty with writing a negative character is that, in the course of the book, I come to understand some of their behavior and at least halfway forgive them.”
A Place Called Winter neither resolves itself nor offers a closed ending, but it does offer hope that emotional truth and loyalty to that truth may be a way forward for Harry. Through his struggles, he transforms into an intensely sympathetic character. Harry’s tale reflects the experiences of many – the myriad hidden members of society, shunned by their families, their stories stained with shame. This fascinating novel is their requiem.
(10/07/15 11:20pm)
“Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light,” Michael Caine intoned, bringing the great words of the 20th-century poet Dylan Thomas into the cultural mainstream as mankind’s last hope shudders through space and time. This Wednesday, Oct. 7th, adventurers and innovators will once again invoke Thomas’s words to describe their explorations into the human experience.
The evening of Oct. 14 will feature several unique but cohesive performances. Before we mothernaked fall is choreographed by Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance, Scotty Hardwig, and explores the poetic processes and expressionist sensibilities of poet Dylan Thomas. Meanwhile, This is your Paradise, a composition by Salt Lake City-based dance artist Molly Heller, confronts struggle, resistance, hope and faith. “A Duet Called Blue” is a collaboration between Heller and Hardwig that follows the creation, disconnection and cracking undercurrent of energy that runs beneath the sea of human sensation.
Before we mothernaked fall references Thomas’s interest in the male form and its place in the world. Hardwig adapts the sentiment for modern times by sketching the homosensual body in an attempt to create a space “where the individuals identity melts into a group body,” according to dancer Doug LeCours ’15.
“It’s not about sex or identity but sensation, a shared sameness among the three bodies on stage moving through a physical experience together,” LeCours said.
LeCours will return to campus as one of the piece’s three performers. Noting that he has always had a strong advisor-advisee relationship with Hardwig, he is proud to make his professional debut at the College.
The sound score from the performance features text by poet Dylan Thomas. Unlike contemporaries such as T.S Elliot and W.H Auden, who focused on specific social and intellectual issues, Thomas is celebrated for writing that is emotionally lucid yet narratively obscure. By conveying the feeling of his subject more clearly than its definite form, his work possesses a quality that corresponds naturally with dance. Thomas’s storied life funnels into often-metaphysical idolatry, with a percussive rhythm that hammers lines in time with the reader’s heart, covering topics ranging from death to the human condition to lost childhood and the sea of coastal Wales. Hardwig played his works aloud as they worked to generate content, drawing from both his delivery and subject.
Both Hardwig and Heller have unusually organic and communicative creative processes, in which the final performance evolves organically from a continual dialogue between dancer and choreographer. Heller views the process as collaboration, both in terms of movement and the exchange of energy. A successful project invokes a strong sense of catharsis.
“Choreography helps me understand that I’m not any label; I’m no perimeter, I’m no thing. I am experience,” Heller said. “I actually believe that we are our experiences. The energy produced by a situation translates into our body and it’s felt and it’s manifested physically and we are those things, so we are our DNA and we are also our experiences. Identity is our way of negotiating those two things.”
Heller works and studies in Salt Lake City, UT, where she uses dance as a medium for healing. Her movement seeks to mend trauma through a heightened awareness of energy channeled through the physical body. Supported by Zen beliefs surrounding introspection and mindfulness, she also operates a teahouse, with the goal of supporting the individual within a greater community.
Her research into the healing powers of dance is interwoven into her pedagogical beliefs. The differences between her passions – dance and tea culture – allow her to expand the ways in which she perceives the world and to further appreciate ritual, sacred spaces and inner stillness.
This particular performance is bursting with a passion so potent it is felt tangibly amongst the audience. Explicit consciousness on behalf of onlookers or the dancers only impedes the journey to the liberation that this raw expression allows. Instead, the audience is encouraged to relax their minds and embrace the stillness of honest movement.
The first performance will begin at 7:00 p.m. on Oct. 14 in the Mahaney Center for the Arts. All performances are free and open to the public.
(10/07/15 4:43pm)
Last week, the Black Students Union (BSU) was the target of anonymous campus vandalism. Posters they had hung up raising awareness for Middlebury’s black community were defaced with comments reading “racist” and “promotes hate!” Two weeks ago, in another act of anonymity, a student established the go-link “go/doe,” which links to a wordpress account advocating for John Doe’s removal from Middlebury. Additionally, recent Campus editorial “Zero Tolerance: Here or Anywhere” was bombarded with a slew of anonymous comments, including, “You are what’s wrong with academia. You are what’s wrong with America.” We recognize that there are many troubling issues exemplified by these events, but we are choosing to address one in particular that plays into a larger narrative that we have observed on this campus: the culture of anonymity.
(10/07/15 4:42pm)
If you’re currently a senior, a super-senior or an ambitious more youthful individual, you are probably beginning to have some existential thoughts as you look towards life after Middlebury. As Middlebury students, we spend our college careers in a place that is remote in all senses of the word. It is far in mileage and vibe from the hustle and bustle of big cities where post-college jobs seem most attainable and impressive. Its beauty and scenery set it apart. And, most dauntingly, what we spend our time thinking about seems light years away from the nebulous duties or requirement documented by any “real world” job description.
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In last week’s Campus, Alex Newhouse ’17 wrote an opinion piece, “Confronting Life’s Big Questions,” in which he issued a plea for greater enthusiasm and openness, especially from friends, in discussing “vulnerabilities and those deep, philosophical fears.” In effect, he wants to talk about the meaning of life. Well, he and I aren’t quite friends, but I’m willing to answer his call. The strict limit of word count on such an ambitious undertaking unfortunately leaves little room for nuance. (Good thing then that I generally shy away from nuance anyways). First we’ll have to slog through some assumptions before we get to the irredeemable conflict between the meaninglessness of life and our desire for something more.
The goal of philosophy is to be constructed in such a way as to be free of contradictions. To go about this, we turn to reality, because it is inherently free of contradictions. If it were otherwise, it simply wouldn’t exist. And it is science that tells us what reality is. For this reason, scientific knowledge has immense implications for philosophy. Physics tells us that everything is “atoms and void” and nothing more; biology describes life.
What is man? We are endurance running primates evolved for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Two conflicting traits distinguish us: our capacity for reasoning and our social nature. In a talk last spring, Harvey Mansfield explored this dichotomy. Our reason, aided by a very useful invention—math—discovers scientific knowledge. Then there are the humanities, or “non-science”; it is these emotions, our irrationality, that constitute the basis of our social nature. Together, these two developments have enabled Homo sapiens to conquer the planet.
Science, our reason, informs us of the emptiness of the universe. Evolution is just the competition among replicating genes, to which we are nothing more than temporary, programmed vehicles. We inhabit a pale-blue dot, a mere “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam”, in a galaxy among billions. Our lives, absent any privileged role in the cosmos, are meaningless.
But our emotions reject and rebel against this truth. Our social nature evolved because it resolves the classic economic problem, the prisoners’ dilemma. In a group, if everyone cooperates, everyone is better off. But from the individual’s perspective, it’s more profitable to be a free-rider, to take without giving. When everyone behaves rationally as such, everyone suffers. We can solve this with the introduction of a mediating third-party, a government that monopolizes force and uses it to arbitrate conflict. But that is an artificial solution. Instead, nature made us imperfectly rational. We have faith, an affirmative belief despite contrary evidence, in other humans. We do the right thing even when no one is watching. We would feel bad otherwise and expect others to do the same. And so, we can cooperate spontaneously and socialize. These social bonds are sustained through emotions. We behave irrationally and yet we all benefit. To behave irrationally is now rational. To be selfless is to be selfish.
This evolutionary altruism allows for cooperation among genetic relatives, but humans take things a step further. We extend our cooperation to greater numbers of individuals, including strangers, through the use of ideas. The best means of making cooperation propitious among individuals is to coax them into believing that their actions carry moral significance in some grand scheme. We all lie to ourselves. We construct grand, compelling myths. These include religion and human rights, all conceptions of morality. But, because we all believe the lie, it, in a sense, becomes true. Human history is the chronicle of massive self-delusions. We seek to invent our own truth.
How do we reconcile empty truth with yearning feeling? How can we have a meaningful life in the face of nothingness? In other words, why do we not kill ourselves? Camus rightly declared that “there is but one truly serious philosophical question and that is suicide.” He considers three responses. First is physical suicide; end man, and end the longing. Second is philosophical suicide; take a leap of faith that there is meaning. But these are, respectively, a rejection of inherent freedom and of truth. He proposes a third response: choose to live in the face of this absurd reality; indeed, embrace it. Live this paradox of life. Live as if there is meaning but never reject its meaninglessness. I can propose a similar recommendation.
O wearisome condition of humanity!
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity;
Created sick, commanded to be sound.
What meaneth nature by these diverse laws?
Passion and reason, self-division cause.
Mustapha (1609)—Fulke Greville
We know that there is no meaning, but we feel that there is more. Our constructed realities aim to fill the God-shaped vacuum within us all. However, objective reality creeps in on our fantasies and threatens to vitiate the whole project. So, how can we live? Well, simply put, we live by seeking distractions. That is, we live by occupying our lives with fictions that can distract us from truth. We can watch American Ninja Warrior, or go to Syria and fight for ISIS or work as a custodian in a hospital. These distractions are most potent when imbued with some sense of a greater meaning. And so, more than anything, we seek to hang out with friends and family, for they are the best distraction. Because the intensity of socialization is commensurate with the intensity of fulfillment, the ultimate distracting emotion—the apotheosis of our sociality—is love. (Please pardon the perilous proximity to bathos). So I guess it’s true that we live to love.
And so, when we feel a lack of love—that is, when we feel lonely, the antithesis of our sociality; loneliness is the most contradictory feeling vis-à-vis our social nature and so creates the most profound inner tension—our distractions feel insufficient. Combined with adversity that actively reminds us of meaninglessness, the incessant knocking of truth cannot be ignored, and we opt for suicide. This doesn’t happen in a moment of overheated passion, but after a long struggle; when things don’t, as people promise, get better, we pine away into despondency, having acknowledged that it’s not a winnable fight. Above all, suicide is a “crime of loneliness.”
How do we go about finding distractions? Well, do what Viktor Frankl said: dereflect; stop ceaselessly dwelling on the grand questions, and just occupy your life. “It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.” I’m not really saying much. Because my ideas are so general, so all-encompassing—all of life can be subsumed under the notion of distraction—they are, in a sense, empty and inconsequential. But this perspective affirms the futility of confronting life’s big questions. Thinking about the meaning of life is a Sisyphean and isolating endeavor. Don’t try to be brilliant; “brilliance is almost always profoundly isolating.” Don’t live for the sake of realizing some ultimate goal, but just to get through each day. We need to acknowledge the emptiness; okay, that’s just how life is, so distract yourself from that. This process will repeat itself throughout life, as the truth approaches and recedes into and out of our thoughts, but distract yourself until death, at which time the program will terminate and the neurons will stop firing.
The second season of Gotham started three weeks ago. At the end of the first episode, we see a letter written by Thomas Wayne for his son. He tells him: “You can’t have both happiness and the truth. You have to choose.” Truth lies in the realm of reason, the absence of feeling. There can be no reconciling the fundamental incompatibility of truth with feeling, for “we are all prisoners of our own flawed brains.”
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The week of Sep. 29 officially launched Green Dot, the College’s new program to prevent violence and promote student safety on campus. Director of Physical Education Noreen Pecsok, who helped implement the program, said the response from students has been overwhelmingly positive.
“It’s very empowering to watch [the students] put it into action and think ‘Yeah, I could do this on a Friday night,’” Pecsok said. “People love to come up and tell us that they’ve done a Green Dot or that they’ve seen a Green Dot. It’s spreading fast.”
Barbara McCall, Director of Health and Wellness Education, said she and other wellness staff have been working to establish Green Dot since summer 2014. According to McCall, Green Dot makes the College safer for all students.
“Last December we brought trainers to Middlebury and a team of 27 faculty and staff went through the four-day trainer certification. We spent probably a year and a half planning for the launch of Green Dot. Green Dot Week is signifying the campus wide launch,” McCall said. “The goal of Green Dot nationally and the goal of Green Dot on the Middlebury campus is to see the numbers of people affected by violence go down.”
Orientations Coordinator Amanda Reinhardt said the program is a new approach to violence prevention at the College.
“Green Dot is important for the wider Middlebury campus because Green Dot widens the focus of sexual violence from being on the victim and the perpetrator to focusing on all of
us bystanders,” Reinhardt said. According to the program website, Green Dot aims to “mobilize a force of engaged and proactive bystanders.” Pecsok said that Green Dot teaches students to use their words, choices or behaviors to stop a potential harmful situation and turn it into a healthy one. Example Green Dots listed on the website include spilling a drink on a friend if she is being pressured to drink too much, then taking her home to change or interrupting an arguing couple by pretending you lost your ID card, and asking one of them to let you in.
Katie Mayopoulos '18 completed the Green Dot training last winter and now works with the program as an intern. She said Green Dot’s approach makes bystander intervention accessible to all students.
“It was a nice training because they weren’t trying to change you. They were like, ‘You’re fine just the way you are. We can work with you,’” she said. “Green Dot tells me that wearing my Green Dot shirt makes all the difference. It’s the very tiny things that make it happen and Middlebury is a tiny place, so it all adds up.”
Terry Goguen, ’16, said the Green Dot training gave him a new perspective of campus violence. One of three captains of the Men’s Ice Hockey team, Goguen said most people in his training two weeks ago were athletes.
“I definitely get the stereotype a lot of, ‘Oh, it’s just a dumb jock’ or, ‘Obviously [the party] is at Atwater because all the athletes live there.’ But it is interesting, because if you looked around the room at the Green Dot training, I’d say 80 percent of those people play a sport,” he said. “As athletes, we have a vehicle to reach a lot of people. Now I get to go to my team and they’re all like, ‘What’s Green Dot? What was the training like?’”
A bigger picture
Green Dot teaches students how to prevent violence, but students and staff said the work hard, play hard culture at the College contributes to “Red Dots.”
“Green Dot sort of takes the approach of, ‘You’re not going to stop people from drinking and partying,’ but it allows everyone at that party to be able to stop that potential Red Dot,” said Goguen. “I think it comes down to people learning what is acceptable and what isn’t and taking responsibility for their actions. You can’t just wake up and say, ‘Oh, I was drunk.’”
Mayopoulos, who also works as a First-Year Counselor, said she has felt the harmful effects of the College’s drinking culture.
“I can say for myself, there are certain places on this campus where I know I need to have an extra awareness of my surroundings for who’s pouring my drinks or where I’m getting my alcohol,” she said. “As an FYC I’ve had freshman come up to me already with accounts of, ‘This was super creepy that someone did this to me.’”
Ellen McKay, Administrative Program Coordinator for the Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life, participated in the staff training last December. She said there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the problems of student stress and sexual assault.
“We sort of leap to an easy conclusion when we’re trying to get at why something bad happens, and there’s not an easy conclusion to most of these things,” McKay said. “Green Dot is just addressing one symptom of a much larger problem.”
But McKay added many students come to the College already struggling with a variety of outside issues.
“Is there too much stress on campus? Yes, I believe there is. There is absolutely no one silver bullet that is going to take away stress from this campus,” she said. “A lot of stuff is coming to campus. The campus certainly isn’t causing all these problems.”
Towards the future
No matter the cause of violence on campus, staff and students are confident Green Dot will make the College safer for all. McCall said while culture is important, Green Dot’s first focus is stopping the violence that could happen today.
“The short-term goal is to give people actionable tools and confidence, said McCall. “[The] long-term goal: create a campus community that’s inhospitable to violence.” Reinhardt said one part of the long-term solution is introducing Green Dot to students when they first arrive on campus.
“We started implementing Green Dot into Orientation last February with the class of 2018.5. As part of welcoming the class of 2019, Green Dot developed an introduction video, created by Zac Lounsbury ’15.5, to share with incoming students what Green Dot is and how they can be a part of it,” Reinhardt said. “For me, sharing Green Dot with the newest members of our community is a way that they can feel empowered to help us create a safer community.”
Mayopoulos has also helped introduce the Green Dot Program to First-Years.
“The freshman don’t have any perception of what happens on our campus, they haven’t lived here,” said Mayopoulos. “So if we right up front say, ‘We don’t tolerate Power-Based Personal Violence. You will not commit domestic violence, you will not stalk, you will not rape or sexual assault,’ I do think it kind of jolts a few people.”
She added, "I think a mindset happens, a kind of entitlement that I can do this to somebody. And I think that by us very forwardly saying, ‘We don’t tolerate this,’ it makes it a lot easier as a community to put pressure on those people who might feel entitled previously.”
McCall and Pecsok said the conversation about college culture is evolving, but for now, Green Dot relies on individual members of the campus deciding together to stop Red Dots before they occur.
“This is not the college fixing anything,” Pecsok said. “This is the community getting together and saying, ‘This is what we want’.”
“That’s at the core of this,” added McCall. “If we aren’t connecting as a community, we can’t work to make it safer.”
More information can be found online at go/greendot
