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(04/08/15 10:06pm)
“Fart” in Swedish means speed. Just thought I’d give you all the heads up on that because I’m six and because Broke College Students in Cars Getting McDonalds would like to welcome another Swedish vehicle to its illustrious list of tested cars. So, without further ado, let’s go full fart ahead into this latest review. (Ok, I swear I’m done; might as well just get it out of the way now. I restate: I’m six.)
The Car: Black, Manual Transmission, 1st Generation 2001 Saab 9-3 Hatchback
Car Name: Tha Carter VI
The Owner: Jeremy Carter
Styling: Are you an architecture major? Because if your answer is yes then you should totally drive one of these things. This is not because the 9-3 was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright or someone like that, nor because it looks like it features dynamic living spaces (is that an architecture term? Because that should totally be an architecture term.) No, it’s just because architects seem to just really dig driving Saabs. The styling itself is honestly a bit of a weird confluence of different shapes thrown together and then rounded because apparently straight lines are just not allowed. It works for the most part – especially if you’re an architecture major.
Liebowitz-o-Meter: 3.5/5 Rons
Interior: The oval is a shape. The oval is a shape that Saab designers apparently had a cult-like obsession with when they designed the interior of the 9-3. Every designer who even tried to include a squared-off part was immediately fired. Also, do you want to roll down the windows? The usual answer to this question is to just push the window switch on the door panel. The Saab designers decided that this location was just too logical, so the switches are in the middle of the center console. Why? I have no idea. The seats are great, though, and comforted me as I spiraled into the mental instability brought on by Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage” playing for the majority of the drive. There’s not a ton of rear legroom but there’s enough space to hold you, a friend, and a medium sized deer. Pro tip: you won’t be able to get the keys out of the ignition unless you shut the car off in reverse. Again, I have no idea why this is a thing. Swedes are weird, man.
Liebowitz-o-Meter: 3.5/5 Rons
Handling and Performance: This Swedish rounded wedge of weirdness drives pretty well. It has good, nicely weighted steering and acceleration quicker than your power walk when you try to beat the 12:15 p.m. rush on burger day. A rare beast in this great nation of laziness, this particular 9-3 comes equipped with a manual transmission. (OMG what’s that other pedal do?!) The manual is easy and the shifter has nice, medium length throws. The clutch is a little bit vague with longer than usual travel, but it’s easy to get used to and it gets the job done.
Liebowitz-o-Meter: 4.5/5 Rons
Drive-through-ability: “A manual transmission does not a great drive-through vehicle make.” – Ronald McDonald. If you’re looking for minimal effort in the drive through, pay attention to Mr. McDonald’s wise words. When there’s a long line, you’re going to have to work that clutch. On a positive note, you’ll get a killer left calf workout. While the switches are strangely placed, the windows are powered, a necessity. A big deal breaker for the 9-3 is its lack of cup holders. Seriously, when are those Europeans going to realize that there needs to be at least 2 cup holders to every passenger?
Liebowitz-o-Meter: 3/5 Rons
Final Verdict: The Saab 9-3 is the perfect vehicle for the budding architect in you. While not the ideal McDonalds chariot thanks to certain design choices, it’s fun to drive and pretty practical (see, you’re getting solid consumer advice in this column!). As long as you’re down to deal with an interior designed by an oval-obsessed madman, you could do a lot worse.
Liebowitz-o-Meter: 3.62/5 Rons
Essential Stats: Carrying capacity of 4 adults or 5 college students. Approximate 24 mpg average. Trunk space for approximately 28 30-racks of Natty Ice.
McDonalds order: Bacon Clubhouse sandwich, medium fry, medium Coke.
(04/08/15 8:20pm)
The College suspended the social house Kappa Delta Rho (KDR) on March 24 after it concluded KDR members had violated the College’s hazing policy. KDR residential members were required to move out of the house by April 6. The house will remain unoccupied for the remainder of the semester.
A statement from the College provided to the Campus said, “From its investigation, the College determined that current KDR members had violated the College’s hazing policy in a number of areas, including verbal abuse, blindfolding, and encouraging the use of alcohol.”
Administrators in the Dean of Students office as well as the KDR leadership declined to comment on the details of the hazing allegations, citing privacy concerns and the need to keep the specifics of the investigation confidential.
The events that took place to initiate the investigation occurred during the fall semester. On Nov. 24, the College received word of a possible hazing policy violation by KDR. On Dec. 10, then-Dean of the College Shirley Collado informed KDR that the organization was officially on probation and could not hold any activities until the investigation was completed.
According to the Dean of Students office, a student brought forward the hazing allegations against KDR.
The concerns were over house activities that were a part of new member education: the activities to acquaint new members with the house that are akin to the initiation activities that take place in Greek life at other colleges and universities.
Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of the College Katy Smith Abbott made the determination that the hazing policy was violated after an investigation by the Department of Public Safety. The sanction, as communicated to KDR, was suspension of the student organization. KDR members are eligible for other college housing during the housing draw for next semester. KDR also cannot recruit new members and cannot hold activities until the suspension period is complete.
The College handbook states, “For purposes of this policy, hazing is defined as any act committed by a person, whether individually or in concert with others, against a student in connection with pledging, being initiated into, affiliating with, holding office in, participating in, or maintaining membership in any organization or team affiliated with Middlebury College; and which is intended to have the effect of, or should reasonably be expected to have the effect of, humiliating, intimidating or demeaning the student or endangering the mental or physical health of the student.”
KDR will have the opportunity to reapply to the Student Government Association to return as a student organization in December 2015. If criteria are met, they can petition Community Council in spring 2016 to return as a residential social house and participate in Inter-House Council (IHC) functions. If approved by Community Council, KDR can apply to occupy a social house in the fall of 2016. If KDR does not take these steps, they will remain suspended organizationally.
The KDR executive board spoke with the Campus on Monday night and provided some statements on behalf of the house as to the investigation, ruling, and plans going forward.
“We understand the administration’s ruling and though we are saddened to not live in our house anymore, this has given us a great opportunity to reevaluate what our community means to us and how we can make it an even better place in the future,” said one KDR board member.
Other board members emphasized learning from the experience of the investigation and decision and their desire to work with College President-elect Laurie Patton, Community Council, and Public Safety to improve the new member education process.
“I think it’s important to keep in mind that for every education process we go through, safety and comfort are our top priorities and we have protocols in place to ensure that new members are feeling comfortable with our process,” said a board member. “Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, there was a miscommunication that led to the investigation.”
Additionally, the KDR leadership said that other student organizations should look at their own processes in the coming months, too.
“We will be taking this time to reevaluate our education process, and we would also like to invite other organizations on campus to take a critical look at themselves and the way they recruit members,” said another board member.
The KDR suspension has parallels with previous College actions on social house misconduct. In November 2011, the College suspended all activities at KDR and Tavern, another social house, after allegations of hazing emerged after the first day of the organizations’ new member education week. Insufficient evidence was found in both KDR and Tavern’s cases. A similar pause of KDR activity took place in December 2013 to allow for an investigation into misconduct involving hazing during KDR’s new member initiation week. Like the 2011 case, it was found there was insufficient evidence to support the hazing allegation.
In a different case, where a social house was not just suspended but disbanded, on March 18, 2013, Community Council accepted the Social House Review Committee’s recommendation to disband Delta, also known as ADP, a social house occupying Prescott House. The Delta decision was largely based on dorm damage, cleanup and how the house conducted parties.
KDR is the only social house at the College that is a part of a national organization. Middlebury’s KDR chapter is credited as the first, or the Alpha chapter, of the national fraternity Kappa Delta Rho. The College chapter began in 1905 and became coeducational in 1989, unlike the rest of the nationwide chapters.
Rod Abhari ’15, vice president of the Mill and the president of the IHC, said the IHC felt they were left in the dark regarding on the specific hazing allegations and the ensuing investigation. As a result, the IHC is working to propose that they are allowed more oversight of new member education practices as well as investigations.
“For us, the main takeaway is that it seems to rob the IHC of any legitimate power if in something as integral to our governing administration as investigating hazing practices we have as little knowledge as the rest of the community,” he said.
Abhari also said that despite this being the third investigation in four years into KDR’s practices, students should not draw conclusions or presume a pattern of misconduct.
“The pattern I see is more people being comfortable going to the administration when they feel concerned and the administration taking a proactive role,” Abhari said. “The pattern is not that there is more hazing from KDR because the investigations were inconclusive prior to this one.”
Because the hazing details remain confidential, most students felt it is difficult to comment on what transpired.
“As to the allegations, we can’t speak to that because the whole process has been fairly closed-door,” said Eli Jones ’16, the president of Tavern. “We don’t really know what happened and we don’t know what they did but I think that they made a mistake and we hope they learn from it.”
Jones also said that Tavern hopes to see KDR return as a student organization because of the impact on social life in its absence.
“In a similar way to [ADP’s disbandment], KDR might not be your place to go, but it is an important part of social life for a portion of the population,” Jones said. “We’re a little bit concerned because with ADP gone and with KDR suspended, the social house system seems to be crumbling, to an extent.”
Rebecca Watson ’15, a former president of Xenia, the substance-free house on campus, echoed Abhari’s comments on IHC governance.
“It’s a bit of a blow to the IHC credibility. The school gives us the opportunity to self-govern, which I felt we as social house heads were doing well. But to have KDR suspended makes houses feel like they don’t have control,” Watson said.
According to the College’s statement, the hazing investigation has not been closed and took several months because of its complexity. “Middlebury College will advise if additional facts are forthcoming that might impact the sanctions in any way,” said the statement.
(04/08/15 8:18pm)
On Thursday, April 2, Nathan Alexander ’17 was found in his room in Milliken Hall after taking his own life.
President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz announced Nathan’s passing in an email addressed to students, staff, and faculty.
“We know this comes as a great shock to his many friends, classmates, and faculty members. Public Safety discovered Nathan after receiving a request from a fellow student who was concerned about his whereabouts,” he wrote.
The request was submitted by Maggie Nazer ’17, a close friend of Nathan who last saw him three days before he was discovered.
“His girlfriend messaged me worried because she had been messaging Nathan for hours and had not heard back from him. I kept texting him and went to his room to check if he was there,” Nazer said in an email. “All along, I believed he was either too stressed with work to answer or simply needed space from us.”
Nazer reached out to Nathan’s sister and discovered he had not been replying to her messages.
“This is when I thought there must be something wrong and called Public Safety,” she said.
A Public Safety officer discovered Nathan in his room, where emergency medical services pronounced him dead. The cause of death was asphyxiation. In the late afternoon, upon receiving confirmation that the family had been notified, Liebowitz sent an email informing the College community.
“At a difficult time such as this, I encourage everyone on campus to look out for one another,” he wrote.
That evening, students, staff, and faculty were invited to gather in Coltrane Lounge, where staff members from the Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life, Parton Center for Health and Wellness, and members of the Commons team offered support.
Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of the College Katy Smith Abbott announced a schedule of opportunities for students, staff, and faculty members to gather in remembrance and support.
A candlelight vigil was held in Nathan’s honor on April 6 in Mead Chapel. From April 7 to April 9, community members were invited to the Fireplace Lounge in Ross Commons Dining for conversation and reflection.
“I encourage you to find ways to address your own feelings, questions, and concerns—whether in one of the scheduled gatherings, with your dean, with one of the counselors at Parton Center for Health and Counseling, with a chaplain at the Scott Center, or with friends,” Smith Abbott said in her email.
She continued, “If you, or someone you know, might need help over the next days and weeks, please reach out to one of us.”
Nathan’s girlfriend, Marium Sultan ’16, was studying abroad in Sri Lanka when she learned of Nathan’s death.
“Take advantage of the moments to be as kind as you can to others because you never know when you will have another chance to,” she said. “The last thing Nathan told me was that he loved me. He told me he was lucky to have met me, and I told him the same.”
Nathan was a graduate of The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, where he developed interests in public policy and a passion for sailing. At the College, he had not yet declared a major but took courses in economics and political science.
His loss is deeply felt by those who knew him.
“I think that this tragic incident has the potential to inspire a collective transformation of the social environment and our relationships on campus,” said Nazer.
She continued, “Many of us suffer quietly as we greet each other and take part in social gatherings that often make us feel more isolated. Reaching out and showing support should not only be an intention that remains in the form of texts or words but also an action. Having someone go out of their way to come knock at your door is better than just sending you a text. But before everything else we must find the strength and courage to open up to each other, be real, be vulnerable, and take it from there.”
If someone you know exhibits warning signs of suicide:
• Do not leave the person alone
• Remove any firearms, alcohol, drugs or sharp objects that could be used in a suicide attempt
• Call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255)
• Take the person to an emergency room or seek help from a medical or mental health professional
(04/08/15 3:49pm)
What happens when fur coats, dangerously high heels and babushka headscarves clash with the otherworldly elements of ancient fairytales? This past weekend, the Seeler Studio Theatre of the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts was transformed into a fantastical fusion between modern Russian reality and folklore. In the highly-anticipated faculty show The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, which ran from April 2-4, audiences were ushered into a world of evil witches, flying potatoes and hungry bears that magically, horrifyingly coincide with the lives of three girls navigating their way through post-Soviet Moscow.
A finalist for the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn playwriting prize of 2012, the play was directed by Assistant Professor of Theatre Alex Draper ’88 and featured an all-female cast of seven students.
The play begins with a candidly bizarre monologue by 19-year-old Russian Masha, played by Lana Meyer ’17. Donning seductive, knee-high red boots with killer heels, Masha offers a tantalizing glimpse into her fantasy-ridden life in Moscow.
“Zhili byli,” she announces dramatically in her opening line, “in Russian means: they lived, they were. Once upon a time.”
This beautifully compact phrase – zhili byli – will echo throughout the rest of the play as the characters encounter various mystical obstacles in the most unexpected of places.
“I was, of course, always dreaming about running away into the forest,” Masha recounts in the story of how she ended up living with a bear. “’Cause that’s where everything good – meaning everything bad – happened.”
Masha’s monologue, delivered in a simultaneously riveting and offhand manner by Meyer, sets the casually outlandish tone that defines much of the play. And so the story – an intersection between peculiar fantasy and starkly honest narrative – is launched.
Set in 2005, The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls depicts life in Russia after the breakdown of the strict communist regime. As eager investors flocked to the country in the ’90s, the market went insane. The year 2005 saw the cusp of the economic decline that inevitably followed the huge boom, when there still existed a sort of wonder surrounding the idea of quick riches in Russia. Stories circulated in which dirty vegetable sellers became supermodels overnight. People were enamored by the possibility of jumping from a difficult life into what was essentially a fairytale. Such is the premise of all the fantastical happenings of the play.
19-year-old Annie, the protagonist of the play, grew up in America under the care of her Russian immigrant mother, Olga, played by Kathleen Gudas ’16.5. Portrayed by Katie Weatherseed ’16.5, Annie is wide-eyed, innocent and lovable, voicing aloud all the important, disbelieving questions that allow the audience to keep up with the fast-paced – and at times convoluted – plotline.
Meanwhile, the heavily spray-tanned, tracksuit-clad Olga, whose Russian accent holds strong even after twenty years in the states, expresses disillusion toward her rote and monotonous lifestyle as a hairdresser. Like so many others, she is enchanted by the prospect of rebuilding one’s life in the booming economic hub of Russia, in the magical sense of a modern-day fairytale. And so, because she cannot leave herself, she sends Annie off to her Auntie Yaroslava’s house for the summer, with the hopes that her daughter will reap the fairytale rewards that Olga could have had if she had stayed.
In this way, The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls challenges – and perhaps outright rejects – the validity of the traditionally revered American dream. No longer is the story centered on finding prosperity within the United States. Instead, it focuses on returning to the motherland in the aftermath of its revolutionary transformation.
Not everything on the other side of the ocean is rainbows and ponies, however.
“Sleep wis one eye open, baby,” are Olga’s parting words to Annie, as she pins an evil eye on her thick fur coat to ward off dangers that everyone reads about in skazki, old Russian fairytales. Her next comment drew huge laughs from the crowd: “It was dark ages when I receive zis. Literally. In Soviet Union, KGB turns on sun only one hour each day. Zey had switch.”
With these words haunting her mind, Annie sets off to meet her Auntie Yaroslava, played by Gabrielle Owens ’17. Little does Annie know, this kindly old woman is actually the evil witch Baba Yaga in disguise. Wrapped in tattered rags and usually shriveled over in her giant armchair, Baba Yaga is cursed to age one year whenever she is asked a question. As such, she winces painfully nearly every time the curious Annie speaks.
Owens enjoyed the unique challenges that her role presented, as she worked to “find the age of the character without losing any of the physicality or the emotions.”
“It’s sort of like playing the evil stepmother from Cinderella. It’s a very iconic character in Russian folklore who has many different incarnations,” she said. “The fun and challenging part was finding switches between when she is the evil witch and when she is masquerading, or is genuinely, a kind old lady. There are some moments when she really does care for this child. She also wants to eat her, of course, but there is a real person underneath.”
Outside of Auntie Yaroslava’s increasingly creepy apartment, the intersection of fantasy and real world continues, further bending the realm of possibility. Annie befriends three Russian girls with fascinating, albeit slightly concerning, tales of their own: Masha, who complains often of Misha, her (literal) bear of a boyfriend; Katya, the mistress of “the tsar,” as performed coyly by Leah Sarbib ’15.5; and other Katya, the tsar’s beautiful daughter, played by Caitlyn Meagher ’17. She also crosses paths with Nastya, the aloof prostitute, also played by Meagher.
Annie’s bright-eyed naiveté is shattered to some degree as she hesitantly, and comically, smokes her first cigarette, glimpses into a world of whoring and cheating and, in the culminating scenes of the play, grapples with such dangerous weapons as a pestle, ax and giant brick oven. Through it all, Weatherseed does not lose touch of the syrupy-sweetness that drew the audience to her from the beginning. Annie’s optimism may have dimmed, but Weatherseed shines on nevertheless.
Ultimately, it is the dynamism of the cast that makes this production of The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls such a riveting one.
“It needs big, bold, visceral, engaged acting,” Draper said.
While some details of the storyline may be lost in the rapid, overwhelming flurry of dialogue, perhaps the play’s greatest strength lies in its humor, which stems from the contrast between the sheer outlandishness of the fantasy and the characters’ reaction to it. For instance, there is no denying that the presence of a bear in place of a human boyfriend is ridiculous. The script capitalizes on that, with Masha making such nonchalant references to “Misha the bear” – Russia’s take on the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood – that Annie initially assumes she is speaking metaphorically.
Brilliantly executed scene transitions brought the audience from one reality to another, traveling from Auntie Yaroslava’s living room to pulsing nightclubs to the streets of Moscow. Through masterful lighting by Resident Scenic and Lighting Designer Hallie Zieselman and the fluid rearrangement of a pair of intricately painted red doors, the stage was transformed time and time again.
According to Draper, the set needed to be “fluid enough to change very quickly and yet contain elements that let the modern, traditional and much older than traditional live in the same kind of space.”
In the bloody mess of relationships that culminates by the end of the play, the mantra is uttered, “This shit happens.” Yet the characters stand strong in the aftermath; some might even describe them as unfazed.
“Nothing was left behind. Just a brick oven full of ashes and the world’s largest vegetarian stew gone cold,” Katya proclaims in the final lines. “There was no sign that Anya Rabinovich had ever stepped foot in apartment 57.”
The haunting end of The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls can be encapsulated by a variety of emotions: disillusion, shock, horror, confusion and even amusement. In the post-show discussion on Friday night, some speculated that the Annie’s abrupt departure following the gruesomely violent conclusion could be considered a “Russian happy ending.” After all, no longer will she be implicated in the fantastical dangers lurking around Auntie Yaroslava’s potato piles. Finally, she can feel safe.
The (debatably) dark ending aside, there lies a beauty in the underlying message of the play: that we have the power to shape our own destiny.
“Women who are living in a very sexist society are taking action and carving out their own skazki, making their own stories,” Owens said.
“Recognize when you start being the star of your own story,” Draper added.
The messages behind The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls may sound trite, but its bizarrely outlandish delivery is certainly difficult to forget. People have the tendency to make sense of their lives and justify, excuse and empower themselves with fairytales. This play, in its strange blend of mysticism and realism, is no exception.
(03/19/15 3:05am)
Reactions to and repercussions for the racist chanting by members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at Oklahoma University have been swift. Two former members of the OU SAE chapter have been expelled, the fraternity has been removed from campus, President David Boren has been quoted as saying that the “fraternity won’t be back - at least not as long as I’m President of the university,” and the national fraternity has opened investigations into racist allegations at other chapters around the south.
The video of the chanting is repulsive. The words and the message spoken by the OU SAE members are despicable and irreversible.
The easy thing to do is to crucify these privileged, racist white jerks and to demand the expulsion of all those involved, the dismantling of all fraternities across the country and a cultural reconstruction for the “South” as a whole.
Before we slam all fraternities and persecute the OU SAE members, a lot of thinking needs to be done about the environment in which this kind of behavior is enabled. When I start having these thoughts, I come to a worrisome conclusion; we are not that different from the members of the OU SAE chapter.
If one starts to turn the mirror inwards on our campus, racism, which exists but, admittedly, in a less overt form than it does in other places, becomes a subcategory of an even broader issue. Middlebury is marketed as an extremely liberal, vibrantly welcoming, ultimately friendly place, and when I first got here I drank the proverbial Kool-Aid. By the time that my first year was over I found that the facade was two-dimensional.
Judgment is a mainstay of daily life here, even towards myself, a relatively affluent, male student-athlete, who am given a fast track to success by society if I chose to take it. I am expected to fit a certain stereotype - the cool guy, careless in class, walking around in sweatpants and a backwards snapback. Much more hurtful stereotypes exist on our campus as well.
The enablers of such stereotypes are not bad people. Humans are not born evil. The members of OU SAE are not evil, either. Unfair judgment, tasteless jokes and hurtful ridicule occur when people are trying to fit in with a larger group. The members of OU SAE wanted to feel included by their brothers. Is that a feeling that you have ever experienced? I would venture to guess that yes, it is.
It is too easy for the white, wealthy, silver-spoon-in-mouth students to congregate together and look down on anyone who does not fit the mold. At the same time, it is too easy for minorities to join together and incriminate the majority demographics on campus. I do not believe that the cure for our judgmental atmosphere is for everyone has to be friends with everyone else — this is not a fairytale. What needs to happen is for a group of varsity athlete, prep school alums (I intentionally choose this subcategory of which I am a part as an example) not to unfairly categorize those who look or act differently. What needs to happen is an end to hate speech and unfair discrimination — against blacks, Asians, LGBTQ students, theater or art majors, ultimate frisbee players, women, younger students, older students, townies, and more. These are the groups that I hear being marginalized on a nearly daily basis.
And like the members of the OU SAE fraternity who were caught on video, too many students passively allow these wrongs to happen. Human beings are naturally drawn to community — we want company, and so when we start to feel like we have achieved entrance into an exclusive club, we turn a blind eye to the questionable behaviors of that club: strength in numbers. I challenge everyone on this campus, myself included, to do the difficult thing: to fight apathy and to refuse to allow this cycle of marginalization to perpetuate. If we do not do this, do not be surprised if a version of the OU SAE catastrophe manifests itself on Middlebury’s campus in the future.
-Joe MacDonald ’16 is a sports editor from Pepperell, MA.
(03/18/15 11:51pm)
Does anyone know how to disable the news column on your Facebook newsfeed? You know the little column that gives you 30-word blurbs about various nonsense happening in the world today? You know what I am talking about? It usually keeps me up to date on important things that qualify as “news” like, what Kanye West is up to, what no-name reporter is apologizing for a remark that most people did not even know about, or, my personal favorite, what Sarah Palin’s daughter is doing (This thing does not pull up results based on your interests, right?). I am glad I have this little column of “trending” news to keep me up to date. How else would I be able to stay knowledgeable on all these important current events?
Okay, I exaggerate and I realize many of you do not pay much attention to the various bits of attention-seeking sound bites that breed in social media. The wider world clearly does pay attention though. While the current antics of musicians or politically irrelevant daughters aren’t particularly damaging bits of information, they don’t exactly provide the much-needed context to the busy world of current events. We could hardly say they even qualify as news. The real problem is that whatever happens to be “trending,” (I guess that is to say “popular?”) is not necessarily what is important. Also when did hashtags become acceptable titles for news articles? Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon.
Let’s be serious here: most reasonable people can agree that any endemic problem in our society is remarkably complex, be it racism, a Social Security system that will go broke in the foreseeable future, or the political complexities of the Middle East, pick nearly anything in the world and it cannot be summed up in a hashtag or a blurb. Yet, our news not only has become “Look what this outrageous thing this absurd person said,” but in many ways it has simply become irrelevant. The things that need reporting seem oddly absent. We are remarkably concerned with the political correctness of attention seeking people and have comparatively less patience for, oh I don’t know, the number of people who die in car accidents every year, which is somewhere north of 30,000.
So why, oh why, do we put up with this crap? Do we just not have the patience for the news anymore? Something could definitely be said for the shortening of our national attention span. We seem to have tragically begun confusing our entertainment for the news. That is not to say people in other political camps have somehow avoided this problem either. The rise of the Internet and its children — the tweet and the status — have infected our perception of “staying up to date.” Not too long ago the only mediums for being attuned to the comings and goings of the world were the newspaper and television. But who has the time to read the paper anymore? And who wants to watch a news program where you actually have to listen along? With the rampancy of social media we have deputized any incompetent’s Buzzfeed article so that is carries the weight of a journalist’s work. How many of you remember the #CancelColbert wildfire that effectively started with a young woman misunderstanding a joke and the resulting witch-hunt to end the Colbert Report? And that’s only one example, go take a look at your newsfeed, or YikYak or Twitter and see all the inane, nonsensical things that for some reason, we take seriously.
The “millennial” generation, which I guess we have been dubbed, has been quick to adopt and vigorously protect social media and Internet freedoms. It has become something that has defined our generation. Yet we have been incredibly hesitant to see any flaws in this new, lightning quick, information typhoon. “Information” on its own we intrinsically see as good, but that does not mean we have to value it all equally. Nor does it mean more is always better. Something like ISIS takes more than a few articles to understand, something like American politics demands vigorous, in-depth, debate to function. Whether it is a global phenomenon or our own institutions, we lose something valuable when arguments or “the news” can be summed up in a tweet. We should never silence voices, but we can discern which ones truly deserve our attention. Do I really care that Reddit thinks the ravings of a delusional state senator are important? We can change the debate by simply not giving credence to the nonsense. The most constructive thing we can do is talk about the issues we know to be real and let the attention-seeking, the nonsensical and the foolish be shouted unnoticed.
(03/18/15 5:44pm)
For 95 years, the Middlebury Performing Arts Series has brought world-class performers inside the “Middlebury bubble.” The series has showcased Yo-Yo Ma, Louis Armstrong, the Von Trapp family, Pablo Casals, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo (just to name a few). As the director of the Performing Arts Series, Allison Coyne Carroll is now largely responsible for the logistics behind bringing these talented performers to this remote pocket of Vermont.
There’s a lot that goes into the preparation of each performance, as well as the execution of the performance itself. Carroll described to me the preliminary arrangements that she had to make for the arrival of the Elias String Quartet, who performed here last Saturday.
“We first chose the performers and their program. I, then, issued their contract. Because they’re foreign performers, we also had to be concerned with their visas. There are also taxation concerns with foreign artists, so I’m involved with that as well. Once the contracts have all been signed, we then get out the word about the artist. We make sure that they’re in our arts calendar. [As we get] closer to the performance, there are posters around campus and things of that nature.”
Carroll is also responsible for ensuring that the artists feel comfortable and can adequately prepare for their performance.
“We make sure they have hotel rooms and taxis from the airport, and then here in the Center for the Arts, we make sure they have rehearsal spaces. The performers send me the bare bones of their program, but we also try to flesh it out with some program notes and biographical information.”
The performance itself, though, is produced by the efforts of the many staff members who make all events at the Center for the Arts possible.
Carroll said, “We have a great staff here at the center for the arts — our box office and the rest of the administrative staff, the technical director for the concert hall – we all work in concert [pun intended] to make sure the event goes smoothly when the patrons are here.”
The process of selecting the performers involves a lot of communication and planning. Ideas for new performers can come from the artists themselves, from their agents, or from the music department’s faculty members who attend conferences and concerts.
“When these artists are in town, we’ll often take them out after the concert. They can be a great source of inspiration; oftentimes they’re coaching up-and-coming artists or they’ve had the opportunity to work with another artist that they think would be a good fit for us. I’ve also been meeting with the music faculty and planning for next year to make sure that we’re bringing musicians that are going to help compliment the curriculum.”
One performance that stood out to Carroll in her time at Middlebury (and one that still brings a smile to her face) was that of Dubravka Tomsic, who is performing again at the College in April of this year.
“Her last recital here, she’d had extensive travel and she was tired, but she gave this tremendous recital and got such a response from the audience. The mood when she came off-stage, you could see it, she had completely shifted and was just elated from the response she got from our audience.”
There are some upcoming performers this spring that music-lovers (and everyone else) won’t want to miss. An example of coordination between Carroll and curricula of academic departments, the Nile River Project concert will kick off a week of discussing the cultural, socioeconomic, and environmental issues surrounding the Nile river basin. Later on this semester, pianist Paulis, “one of most lauded pianists in the world” according to Carroll, will perform to close this year’s series.
Carroll suggested that the positive response to music she is able to experience on a regular basis is something inherent in the Vermont lifestyle.
“For being such a small, rural, intimate atmosphere, Vermont has a pretty lively arts scene. The arts have a very important place in the daily lives of Vermonters and in the cultural life of Vermont, and I think that’s part of the quality of life that draws people to live here. It’s part of why I came back here and remain here with my family.”
(03/18/15 5:43pm)
Earlier last week, a series of anonymous graffiti paintings appeared across campus, sparking debate and concern. The graffiti pieces were found at BiHall, Forest Lounge, the Center for the Arts, Virtue Field House, Warner, Hillcrest, Ross and Munroe, according to Facilities Services and student sources.
At BiHall, one stencil spray-painting depicted a riot police officer holding a baton, with the words “TOO MANY COPS, TOO LITTLE JUSTICE.” The stencil appeared next to a large sprayed security camera and the words “NO CAMERAS.” At the entrance of Ross dining hall, a graffiti work read “BLACK POWER MATTERS”.
A stenciled rat in a suit appeared in multiple locations: Warner, the Field House and a trashcan at the entrance of CFA.
Another, on the exterior wall of the CFA entrance, read “THIEF,” which is stylistically different from the others. “It does not make any sense, unlike the stencil ones, which are better done. I think they are trying to say something but just not in the right way,” said Elyse Barnard ’15, who saw the isolated one at the CFA and a few at Ross.
The appearance of the graffiti coincides with a wave of campus events focusing on street art. Most notably, the exhibition held at the College Museum of Art, “Outside In: Art of the Street,” which launched on Feb. 13. Other events included the completion of a new Museum façade and a museum piece commenting on Andy Warhol both painted by British street artist Ben Eine over Winter Break and a documentary screening of “Style Wars” by the co-producer and photographer Henry Chalfant.
The College exhibition contrasts with the black and white graffiti that appeared outside the CFA and on College buildings. The juxtaposition reveals not only the different level of artistic expression, but also the divergent destinies of the works by famous graffiti artists and the ones that appeared on campus.
Many current social issues are at play in the messages inherent to the graffiti. Joanne Wu ’15 commented on the display outside of Ross Dining Hall, which read “BLACK POWER MATTERS.”
She said, “I think damaging public property in any form is irresponsible, in part because we are in this living space together. There are many non-destructive ways to get out your message that are equally, if not less, impactful. I do not agree with it. But I do agree that it has a high impact factor because it gets people’s notice.”
On the effectiveness of the message, Wu mentioned the installation in the Davis Family Library focusing on the issues of Mexican immigration and mistreatment of Mexican labor.
She points out the deficiency of context of the campus graffiti and compares it to the more academic way of putting an installation in the library, which goes through the bureaucracy. “I think they have a very provocative display in the library. That also attracts attention,” she said.
However, not everyone knew as much about the graffiti pieces that appeared. Professor of American Studies Timothy Spears saw the graffiti at the Athletic Complex and heard about others, but could not speculate about their purpose or origin. Many people, like Nika Fehmiu ’17, did not hear about it at all partly because the Facilities Services were called in promptly to remove the graffiti works.
Director of Facilities Services Michael Moser explained the cleaning process in an email response to the Campus. He said, “A solvent is used to remove graffiti on painted surfaces, then these surfaces will be repainted when weather allows. For stone surfaces we use a special paste to extract the graffiti. Both of these methods are effective, and are labor intensive.”
Moser and Spears confirmed that this is not the first time graffiti has appeared on campus. According to the College archives, numerous incidents of graffiti have occurred at the College, from basic desk inscriptions in 1966 to political messages on the cement canisters outside Weybridge in 1979. From 2006-2008, Lower Forest almost became a studio and gallery for student graffiti, murals and stenciling until the room was painted over in 2012. At the same time, homophobic graffiti appeared in Ross and prompted the then Ross Commons Heads Steve and Katy Smith Abbott and the administration to resolutely step in. These incidents and the most recent all point to a long history of active and passionate students with a desire to be heard.
(03/18/15 5:34pm)
To be very straightforward, we decided to do capoeira this week because we wanted to learn how to beat people up. As trendy girls living in a downtown world, it seemed like a necessary life skill — or at least Maddie’s worrisome mom made it seem that way. **insert sweet, southern, high-pitched voice** “You two darlin’s need to learn to defend yourselves!”
In order to set the scene for our capoeira outing, it is important to provide background on the 24 hours leading up to practice. Although Izzy fasted all week in calculation for approximately 57 servings of chili at Chili Fest, she had not planned for the surprise appearance of a hot dog stand. Along with the obvious pit-stops at Otter Creek Bakery and Sama’s on the way back to campus, let’s just say she felt sick Sunday morning. She now understands why athletes monitor their food and drink intake leading up to an important game. It must be hard to be you guys.
When Izzy went to meet Maddie at ADK before capoeira practice, Maddie was no where to be found. After a few minutes, Maddie pulled up in an RV. Maddie’s long lost friend from Nebraska had come to visit, and they drove around drinking Kool-aid. Nothing says a Midwestern reunion like a house on wheels and powdered soft drinks. In other words, driving sideways on a bouncing couch made Maddie dizzy even before the impending cartwheel drills.
As soon as we walked into the studio, we realized that this was not a typical kickboxing class. If we had managed to do our research, we would have known capoeira is a Brazilian martial arts game that incorporates dance, acrobatics, music, and singing. More specifically, four skills neither of us possess. Even more specifically, four skills no one in the world possesses together other than MAYBE Oprah. Maddie refused to let this news shake her. She stood up a little straighter and told Izzy, “Shawn Johnson is an Olympic gymnast from the state next to mine, I’m pretty sure I can do this.” Yeah.
The class included one thing that we actively avoid when choosing our NARP activity: conditioning. Two minutes into the class, Izzy whispered “I should’ve worn a sports bra!” Three minutes into the class, we were asking for the nearest water fountain. Four minutes into the class, we were standing by the propped door trying to eliminate our sweat stains. Five minutes into class, the warm-up was over.
It is very difficult for us to even begin to describe what capoeira is. In terms of its relationship to martial arts we came up with a questionably accurate SAT-style analogy — capoeira is to martial arts as tantric sex is to regular sex. Our instructor, Brennan Delattre ’16 practiced traditional capoeira when she studied abroad in Brazil. She described capoeira as a physical conversation between bodies. It is not about hurting one another (sorry Mom!), instead it is acting and reacting to your partner’s movements. After various kicking, ducking, crawling, pivoting, and squatting combinations, we were asked if we knew how to cartwheel. Apparently, living in a state next to Shawn Johnson does NOT mean acrobatic skills will rub off on you.
Halfway through the class, we stopped learning new moves, and Brennan taught all of us Brazilian songs that are sung during traditional capoeira sessions. In addition to the singing, our classmates played several Brazilian instruments in order to keep the rhythm alive. We formed a circle and two people would “play” with each other and have a conversation using the moves we had just learned. At one point, we both got into the circle with a more experienced player, and although it was far from graceful, it was incredibly therapeutic. Discovering the limits of our bodies with the meditative music completely surrounding us was honestly one of the coolest things either of us have ever done.
Although we wrote this column from our respective beds due to muscle soreness, we urge all of you to try out capoeira. If you are curious to see what experienced capoeira players can do, they will have a performance that is open to the Middlebury community on April 19th!
(03/18/15 1:41pm)
It opens with a view of sand. Dark tan and flashing in the sun’s rays — this is clearly the desert. The camera pulls up and shows heatwaves emanating from the sparkling sand, and behind a hill the large sun beats down on the land. The yellow sky is striped with clouds. The camera then pans over the landscape and comes to rest on a small figure in a brown robe, face hidden in shadow. This mysterious creature stands up from his rest in the sand, and you take control, moving him over the sand that crunches and slips under his feet. You climb a hill and on top of that hill is a view of a massive expanse of scorched land. Rising in the distance, breaking through the layer of clouds, a mountain stands imposing with a light shining out of the top. No words are said, no text or instructions are given. This is Journey. Your only goal is to reach the mountaintop.
When I first bought this game in early 2013, it was already a year old. It had received critical acclaim and had won several Game of the Year awards from different websites. But I never thought to give this small game a chance. It doesn’t have intense gameplay or a huge, breathtaking story. It doesn’t have explosions or guns. It doesn’t even have a score, or anything that could be called a “traditional” gameplay loop. It has puzzles, but even calling it a puzzle game is a little too restrictive for what Journey is. It relies on being open-ended, presenting a world to the player without context or barriers. It wants you to explore the desert, to find the hidden secrets throughout it and to forge your own path toward the mountain.
But I didn’t think I wanted that. My exposure to gaming had been almost exclusively made up of well-defined games with traditional gameplay loops. The idea of an “art game” sounded foreign and unenjoyable to me. But I gave Journey a try anyway.
And what I found was not so much a game as a canvas. Journey’s world is unbelievably beautiful, especially for a game now three years old. It is, in a lot of ways, the PlayStation 3’s crowning jewel in art. Its desert feels alive in a way that I never expected, with the wind periodically whipping up sand and the desert ruins feeling appropriately weathered and ancient. Each area you go to has a different puzzle, and as you progress, you acquire runes that grow your scarf, permitting you to jump higher and reach even more interesting places.
But there is no backstory here. You never do learn who this little creature is, or why he wishes to travel to the mountain so badly. Everything is learned from small hints in the world. Perhaps you find a painting on a wall in a ruin, and you decide that the figure is a citizen of a past civilization, left behind after a calamitous event. Or perhaps you see the flying creatures and believe that your creature and these flying animals are partners in a nomadic lifestyle, searching the desert for sustenance and purpose.
The point is that there is no limit to the number of stories Journey can tell. Its storytelling is so effective because there is no one correct plot. This game succeeds because it gives the player the tool to make the world his own, to fill it with his imagination.
Of course, the game wouldn’t have a fraction of its impact without having at least competent gameplay, and Journey goes above and beyond here as well. Its puzzles are simple but striking, and its set piece moments create awe or even fear as you guide the creature through dangerous confrontations and environments. And after you complete each puzzle, you know you are moving ever closer to your goal. The mountain, invariably visible in the distance, stands as a constant reminder of your journey.
Sometimes, when you are in the midst of a puzzle, you will hear the telltale sound of one of the creatures jumping or activating a switch. It took me completely by surprise when it happened the first time, because there is no other indication that Journey is a multiplayer game. But indeed, when I looked around the world, I found another little figure bounding along and trying to solve the same puzzle I was working on. There is no way to communicate with another player except by emitting one single sound, and you never see the other player’s name. But this player and I decided to solve this puzzle together, and soon we became makeshift friends. It was a relationship that took us all the way to the end of the game, where it enhanced one of the most moving moments I have ever experienced in video games. In a game that empowers you to fashion your own story and fill out the world with your own thoughts, this sort of relationship becomes entirely your own, and not a tool of the game. It is unique in that way, something that few other games had attempted at that time. It makes you care about your partner in a way that games rarely do. That friend isn’t just a colleague of the creature in game — he is my friend, as well.
This is a game about life and death. It’s a game about finding your own path and about defining your own way through life even when the destination seems clear. This game is about the little moments in life when you discover something incredibly special just a few steps off the beaten path. It’s a story about rebirth and coming to terms with the fact that sometimes, in spite of all your efforts, you will fail. But Journey shows you that even in failure there is success. When you walk through the deserts of Journey, looking upon the ruins and the golden hills, you realize that the mountain really doesn’t matter all that much, after all.
(03/12/15 2:44am)
It was a harsh Vermont winter in December 1963 and, in the midst of the subzero temperatures, a landmark student life initiative had also frozen over. “The ‘question of honor’ at Middlebury College seems to have plenty of support as an ideal and not so much as a working system,” read a December 5 front-page Campus article. The article, which included student concerns about a code’s implications, foreshadowed the proposed Honor Code’s defeat in a student vote for the second time that May.
Over the past year, the Campus has investigated the untold story of the creation of the Honor Code. Although the story of the origins of the Honor Code at Middlebury is often that of a system fashioned by students and for students, the historical picture is much murkier.
A lengthy search in the College Archives and interviews with those who witnessed the process firsthand reveal that the Honor Code had a slightly turbulent history from the start.
It was a story that dominated the early 1960s at the College: a group of students and administrators who saw the Honor Code as an important opportunity for students to take ownership over their education. And yet, they received surprisingly strong pushback from students on the language and specifics of the proposed code.
The code’s proponents even dropped a compulsory peer-reporting clause, a hallmark of honor systems at Princeton University and elsewhere, from the Middlebury Honor Code in order to ensure its passage via a student vote. Moreover, after two failed student referenda on the Honor Code, evidence found in the Archives shows that at least one administrator recommended enacting the Honor Code without a student vote of support. However, in March 1965 the Code received sufficient support in a student vote to pass. Faculty opted for a streamlined approval process to avoid sending the Honor Code back with revisions to be subject to another student referendum, which they thought could be tantamount to its defeat.
The question of student votes on the Honor Code has renewed relevance of late. On Sunday, the Student Government Association (SGA) Senate voted in favor of amending the Honor System’s Constitution to put the code to a biennial student referendum with the options to maintain, revise, or eliminate the Honor Code. The amendment now must receive 2/3 of the vote in a referendum in which 2/3 the student body votes and must also be ratified by the faculty.
Change in the Air
Middlebury’s academic Honor Code, far from a lone initiative, was the product of social changes on campus that created profound shifts in student life during the 1960s. The College of the 1930s-50s was on its way out in several ways that precipitated the creation of an Honor Code.
Historians of the College have written much about the changes that took place in the 1960s. Among these reforms were major social changes to the institutional rules surrounding student freedoms. The influential Dean of Women Elizabeth ‘Ma’ Kelly oversaw a period in the ’60s when the ground shifted under students’ feet regarding their freedoms and rights as young men and women.
In the ’60s, parietal hours — the now seemingly antediluvian rules that governed when men and women could visit opposite-sex dorms —were gradually phased out. The College began to offer help to students with questions about birth control and sexually transmitted diseases. Finally, the fraternities and sororities, long the bastions of the social life of yesteryear, became less and less of a mainstay of the campus party scene.
Historian of the College David Stameshkin said the ’60s were a period of remarkable change, bar none.
“Students wanted to be treated as adults. The administration wanted to treat the students as adults in certain ways but not others,” Stameshkin said in an interview. “It was incredible how things changed in the time [James] Armstrong was President.”
These changes, taken together, amounted to a climate of dramatically increased student responsibility in social life. Naturally, this trend simultaneously made its way into the academic realm.
As discussions were underway about a potential code, the Campus polled 254 students in October 1962 and found 80 percent approved of a code in theory. The newspaper also polled students and found that 35 percent of those surveyed had experience with an honor system at their high school. However, “a majority indicated they would not speak directly to a student if they found him cheating.”
The first instance of bringing the Honor Code to a vote occurred on November 19, 1962, when it failed. Harold Freeman ’62, the Student Association (SA) President, informed the Campus that the vote to inaugurate an Honor Code was defeated, 623-512, a combination of students voting “no” as well as “No-with-Qualification.” 235 voted no, 388 voted no with qualification and 512 voted yes. The students in favor did not reach the 85 percent threshold of “Yes” to send the measure to the faculty for a vote.
However, Freeman gave hints that the fight for a code was not over. “Freeman observed that by adding together the Yes and No-with-Qualification votes, almost four-fifths of the students were in favor of at least some form of Honor Code,” reported the Campus. Nonetheless, it would not be easy to convince the students who voted No-with-Qualification.
The SA, in a postmortem, theorized that a main cause for the defeat was the clause requiring students to report observed violations. This clause was considered a hallmark of longstanding honor codes at universities, including Stanford and Princeton.
Peer-Reporting Controversy
These qualms about the code reared their head repeatedly in the next two years. Surveys revealed approximately 80 percent of students supported an honor system as an ideal, but blanched at the proposal under consideration. “The main objection was to the obligation to report an offense committed by another person,” reported this newspaper.
Helen Gordon, president of the Panhellenic Council, “agreed that an honor code would be a benefit to Middlebury, but thought reworking of the ‘obligation’ clause necessary,” according to the Campus.
Gordon said, “It’s unrealistic to assume that human nature will [report others] but I don’t think they ought to leave out entirely this kind of an idea because it denies the opportunity to a person who’s really honest.”
The peer-reporting requirement would remain an issue through the end of the 1960s and beyond. As the clause became a sticking point in the debate, those in support of the Honor Code pushed back on the idea that peer-reporting meant “tattling” or being a “rat.”
In a December 1963 issue, Campus Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey J. Joseph opined that “whenever one brings up the subject of an Honor Code, the listener politely nods, makes a disparaging grimace, and quickly manages to say something like: ‘You going to the hockey game tomorrow night?’”
For all of the social life changes happening contemporaneously with the Honor Code debate, a large number of students felt comfortable enough with the status quo to stymie any efforts at instituting an honor system. Joseph explained that many students thought of the proposed Honor Code as either a way to end fraternities or to increase social code regulations and theorized that these factors led to its defeat.
“Let’s face it,” he wrote, “if someone wants to cheat, he cheats. If someone wants to ‘tell’ on him, he should be allowed to ‘tell.’ It is important to realize that a provision for ‘telling’ on someone is not included for the main purpose of making enemies out of friends. It is there to protect every honest student by presenting to the cheater a possibility that he will be caught. If you have any qualms about ‘telling’ on your buddy, keep your head down in your paper where it belongs.”
Despite the support of students like Joseph, the SA leadership began to contemplate foregoing the peer-reporting requirement. The Vice President of the SA was reportedly “willing to drop the stipulation that students report others, adding that ‘the maturity of Middlebury students ought to be able to make an honor code successful.’”
In December 1963, the chair of the student Honor Code Committee, Michael McCann ’65, cautioned against pushing the code too vigorously without almost unanimous student support. Two months later, the SA polled students on a potential honor code in what would be the run-up to a second push to pass it via a student body vote. A point of particular emphasis in the questionnaire was intended to gauge how students would feel about peer-reporting. The article stated that “McCann stresses the importance of questions dealing with student and faculty reports of offenders.”
The survey occurred concurrently with the 1964 election of a SA President, in which candidates weighed in on an honor code. Both John Walker ’65 and Peter Delfausse ’65 made an honor code a part of their platform.
Delfausse, who would win the election, said to a Campus reporter, “We on this campus are treated as adults in everything but the integrity of our academic work. Shouldn’t this be the first area in which we should be trusted? Nothing can force the student body into accepting something which isn’t wanted, but if an honor system is desired, we will find the right words with which to express it.”
Nevertheless, concurrent discussion about combating student apathy regarding the SA gives the impression that the Honor Code was an issue important to the members of its committee, but perhaps was less relevant to the wider student body. Richard Hawley ’67 was the Editor-in-Chief of the Campus, and said other issues captured the student body’s attention more than the Honor Code, particularly parietal hours — although he nonetheless appreciated the code when it was instated.
“I remember feeling a kind of relief,” Hawley said in an interview. “What a relief it was to take your exam to the library and do it there. I remember thinking, ‘This is wonderful.’ But I don’t remember student passion about it.”
Princeton on the Otter
Within the next few months, a figure who would be pivotal to Middlebury’s history weighed in on the code. College President James Armstrong, who had stepped into the position in 1963, approved of the proposed Honor Code in a meeting with McCann.
Armstrong said in a comment to the newspaper in April 1964, “Herding of students into the fieldhouse like animals, with proctors standing over them like jailkeeps, is not in keeping with the ideals of a liberal arts education.”
The influence of the college president and other key members of his administration may have been crucial to the Honor Code’s passage. Before arriving at Middlebury, Armstrong had spent his entire academic career at Princeton, an Ivy League school with one of the nation’s oldest academic honor codes — passed in 1893, with an obligatory peer-reporting clause. Armstrong earned his B.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton and then served as a faculty member and dean until he was appointed Middlebury’s 12th President.
“When Armstrong came as president from Princeton, he started bringing people from Princeton,” Stameshkin said in an interview. “In fact, the joke on campus was it was ‘Princeton on the Otter.’ That’s what they used to call Middlebury during the ’60s because Armstrong kept bringing people there.”
Another Princeton man, Dennis O’Brien was previously an assistant dean there before arriving at Middlebury in September 1965 to serve as the Dean of Men. His experience with the honor system at Princeton impacted his view of a potential Honor Code at Middlebury.
“Because myself and Jim came from Princeton, we had lived with it and we found it comfortable,” O’Brien told the Campus in a recent interview. “It seemed to establish a different relationship between faculty and students. Faculty were not always snooping over students’ shoulders to make sure they weren’t cheating; we were more like mentors. To suddenly switch over from being the person who is teaching someone to someone who is monitoring your honest behavior seemed not to be the image the faculty wanted to have.”
On top of a Princetonian as president, Middlebury’s stature as an institution was on the rise during the ’60s. O’Brien believes the Honor Code was part of the improvements.
“I think there was clearly a kind of an upgrade in terms of the quality of the students and the quality of the faculty that we were able to attract at that time,” he said, “and so it seemed like a much more senior, adult institution than one having proctored exams.”
The desire for an upgrade to Middlebury came from both above, with the administration, and also below, from students of the ’60s, particularly those who were tired of the fraternities’ hold on campus life.
“There was a genuine feeling that there should be more seriousness at the College intellectually,” Stameshkin said. “And the same thing was happening at Williams and other schools. This idea that there should be more intellectualism and more feeling of scholarship was also happening in the early to mid-60s.”
Nonetheless, the vocal support of Armstrong and O’Brien did not help the Honor Code at the ballot box at first. The proposed code failed in May 1964 to clear the 85 percent hurdle of students voting in favor, and the referendum did not receive even half of the student body’s participation. The result was devastating for those students who had worked tirelessly on behalf of a code.
“After two full years of preparation, an academic honor code was put before the student body Monday via a yes-or-no ballot – and failed to gain the needed support,” said a front-page article in the Campus. The measure received 69 percent “yes” votes from the 45 percent of the student body that voted. The rejected code included “that the test-taker pledge that he had neither given nor received aid” and that students report those they suspected of cheating within 48 hours.
The aforementioned Honor Code Committee displayed dogged, even stubborn, persistence to pass the measure. McCann told this newspaper, “This year’s balloting was far more encouraging than last year’s and there will be another honor committee next year trying to get this thing through.”
Victory, at a Cost
Despite McCann’s optimism, the outlook was grim: two votes and two defeats for an Honor Code within three years. But finally, in March 1965, the Honor Code was approved in a landslide. With 1,000 “yes” votes to 313 “no” votes, it was a marked improvement from the previous two tries in the fall of 1962 and the spring of 1964.
However, the code approved by students contained no compulsory peer-reporting clause such as that of Princeton, due to the fact that the committee viewed the clause as the reason for previous defeats. The Middlebury code stated that students with knowledge of an infraction should confront the student and if he or she does not report themselves to the honor board within 24 hours, the observer should. In O’Brien’s words, it was a passive reporting clause, with no teeth to punish a student who observes cheating and does not report it. The code that passed, unlike the previous versions, said students “should” report those they observed cheating, not “must” or “shall” of previous drafts.
The compulsory reporting clause had also been under fire in the opinions pages of this newspaper. In a Letter to the Editor on Feb. 25, 1965, William Michaels ’66 wrote: “Under the present system of exam proctoring, the College denies us the privilege of attempting to live up to the ideals of moral responsibility … this would also be the case if an honor code were passed which possessed a mandatory student reporting clause, since the student is not thus delegated the responsibility of looking after his own morality: it is merely shifted from the proctors to the other students.”
It was also a significant change that the threshold for victory was lowered to 75 percent from a lofty 85 percent, what it had been in 1962 and 1964. Some students grumbled about the idea of voting for an Honor Code for a third time, suggesting that other factors may have been at play in its success. A joke printed in the Campus poked fun at the code’s long-awaited victory. “Did you favor the Honor System at the recent election?” a student asks. His friend replies, “I sure did. I voted for it five times.”
President Armstrong was understandably pleased following the successful vote, as it was an initiative he had supported since the past spring, and he immediately set to work assigning administrators to it. In an October 1965 letter to the four members of the new subcommittee of the Faculty Administration Committee on the Honor Code, including Dean of Men O’Brien, Armstrong said, “Although I do not think you will be called upon for heavy duty quantitatively, I know you understand how important I believe the Honor Code is for the College and that a guiding hand from the faculty will be important and possibly crucial.”
Armstrong also probably worried that a lack of faculty support might end the last chance for the Honor Code to become a reality. He was present in a meeting of the Faculty Educational Policy Committee (EPC) in March 1965, after the code had been approved by the referendum.
“The honor code statement worked out by the students and brought to us with a large supporting student vote … was discussed,” states the meeting’s minutes. “It was felt best not to subject the statement to the scrupulous kind of inspection the EPC would normally employ in surveying a faculty document, but vote on it yea or nay as it stood; some felt that return of the document for a second student consideration and vote would defeat the proposal. Vote was a unanimous pro.”
It appears the EPC’s worries about the Honor Code failing in the student body led them to streamline its approval process, despite reservations that undoubtedly existed among the faculty.
The faculty also approved a key word choice in the code in April 1965. During the faculty meeting in which they approved the code, according to the article in the Campus, the faculty “did not demand a change to ‘must’” in the reporting clause.
Students Not Sold
There is a small piece of evidence that the College may have enacted an honor code regardless of the student vote. Dean of the College Thomas H. Reynolds wrote in his annual report dated July 1, 1964:
“There is an excellent chance that an almost unanimous student vote will be achieved next year. In the event that this kind of a program does not succeed next year, I recommend the College take some action towards bringing an academic honor system into effect.”
While Reynolds never ended up having to make that recommendation, O’Brien disagreed with his premise.
“I don’t think you should impose it without a successful student vote. I think that would have been a mistake to try to do that,” O’Brien told this reporter. “I think the whole idea of an honor code, to a certain extent, is to get away from the high school syndrome of, ‘You have to be proctored and not entirely trusted.’”
The following year, as new Dean of Men, Dennis O’Brien’s first annual report was pessimistic, illuminating the reasons why Reynolds or others might have pursued an Honor Code if the student body would not.
“By the time the student reaches the last half of his college career we have pretty much either got him involved intellectually or we have lost him for good … they may be active in fraternity life, extracurricular life, athletics, they may be valuable citizens in other ways, but academically they run along on minimal requirements seeking the gut courses and paying only lip service, if that, to the intellectual community,” wrote O’Brien in his annual report in June 1965.
He went on in that report to comment on the lackluster implementation of the Honor Code.
“The Honor Code was approved by students in early March,” O’Brien wrote. “I may have missed something, but I think no further initiative toward its implementation came from students until practically exam time, if then.”
O’Brien also observed how the administration was involved from the very beginning and that students were not yet invested in the code:
“Many students are far from ‘sold’ on the Honor Code. They feel that the Administration has been determined to have an Honor Code here no matter what and that the students finally let the Administration have its way. These students have a sort of uninvolved, ‘play it cool’ attitude. They intend to wait and see how ‘they’ will work it out. If students who felt that way could see the minutes of the Ad Hoc Committee on Honor Code for May 27, 1965 they would feel that their perception was largely confirmed. These minutes make it clear that the Honor Code Committee, chaired by the Dean of the College, consists of several professors and administrators and that to the meeting of this committee were ‘invited’ several specified undergraduates.”
O’Brien also cited a study from Columbia University that said for honor codes to be effective, the motivation should come from students and should appear to be coming from students. The difference between the honor codes at Princeton and Middlebury, he told this newspaper in October 1965, was not Princeton’s “obligatory clause for reporting, but a strong and firm belief in the system by faculty and students.”
Of the code, “it was held with a great deal of pride,” O’Brien said. “Most complaints of the new Middlebury system that I have heard have not been substantive, but procedural. And I think there are some false expectations about the system by a few students.”
A Reversal in Student Perception
Two years later in another report, O’Brien suggested that the honor code might have already backfired soon after its implementation.
“The Honor Code seems to be functioning well although there is still a certain amount of feeling against signing the pledge,” he wrote. “I personally feel that the distaste for the pledge grows out of a hypersensitivity on the part of students today that they are not trusted. As they are not trusted to close their dorm doors during parietal hours, so they feel they are not trusted in the matter of honor in examinations.”
This reversal in opinion was extraordinary. The push for the Honor Code, at least from students, was based on the idea that it would give the students more responsibility and was in the same spirit as a move away from parietal hours. Based on O’Brien’s report, the code had the opposite effect, making students feel like the administration trusted them less than before.
Whether the code was truly being followed is difficult to assess based on available records, but O’Brien writes that “a student was convicted of a violation of the Honor Code this year and suspended for a semester,” a low number of convictions by any standard.
Although during the 1960s the social rules at colleges and universities like Middlebury were being chipped away from all sides, it still took a great deal of effort on the part of members of the SA to pass an honor code via a student vote. Additionally, the faculty minutes and annual reports of the College show that at least one top member of the administration was ready to intervene to institute an honor code and held back probably because of concerns of its effectiveness if instated and operated by Old Chapel.
O’Brien’s 1967 assessment is revealing. There had been two unsuccessful votes from students amid vocal support from the administration and faculty; as a result, many students identified the Honor Code as an administrative device. A corollary explanation is that the social changes in the 1960s cut both ways on an honor system: while these sweeping changes helped make the code a possibility, they also changed the way a code was viewed in the years afterward. Increased freedom for students allowed them to pass the code; however, the perception of the code after 1965 was that it was an administrative measure — not a student-owned freedom.
“It’s very important that the students read the honor code as an administrative imposition as opposed to something that boiled up from the students,” Stameshkin said. “The students felt often as if the administration was kind of the enemy. They wanted to be adults and they felt the administration was treating them like children—you have to be in at this hour and all that — it wasn’t paranoia, but the students felt that way about a lot of things.”
The Campus reported in March 1968, three years after the code passed, that the student Honor Board was worried about the new system’s efficacy. The board had only heard six cases since 1965, and three of those were in the 1967-68 year. Two cases resulted in convictions, and only one of the six cases was because of a report submitted by another student. “This the board felt suggests either that only two students have cheated in the last three years, or that students have not accepted the responsibilities implicit in the system,” reported this newspaper.
The Honor Board, as a result, began to consider changing the constitution of the new Honor Code from passive acceptance of the code to hold responsible a student who did not report a violation.
A decade later, in January 1976, the student body approved by a landslide the revisions proposed by a committee on the honor system. There were dual changes: students now had a moral obligation to report cheating, moving away from the ambiguous language of the original code, and also proctors would be allowed in some cases with the specific authorization of the Judicial Review Board. Even under the best of circumstances, O’Brien said in a recent interview, getting students to report their peers may be asking too much.
“My guess is that [peer-reporting] never works terribly well, unless you’re in a highly codified organization like the military academy,” O’Brien said. “I’m not even so sure how well it worked at Princeton … it’s a nice thing to have: there’s a certain moral responsibility, and I love the idea of going up to somebody else and saying, ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ But I suspect it doesn’t happen very often.”
It is difficult to assess whether the code cut down on cheating, as suggested by research that shows colleges with an honor code have less self-reported cheating by students. On that front, Emeritus Dean of Advising and Assistant Professor of American Studies Karl Lindholm ’67 said the Honor Code did not hurt and probably helped.
“I remember thinking it was a great idea. I don’t think there was any greater level of cheating than when the exams were tightly proctored,” Lindholm said. “It was almost a challenge to see if you could beat the system then,” with stories of notes written on hands and crib sheets hidden during an exam. “With unproctored exams, I don’t recall any greater level of cheating,” he said.
Approaching Another Vote
In a January survey by the SGA, 33 percent of the student body said they support the Honor Code in principle but that there need to be changes. 59 percent of the 1438 survey respondents said they support it in its current form and about 7 percent said they don’t support it.
Additionally, the Campus published (“Cheating: Hardly a Secret,” Oct. 30, 2013) the results of a survey by Craig Thompson ’14 for the course Economics of Sin where 35 percent of 377 students surveyed admitted to violating the Honor Code at least once in the 2012-13 academic year. 97 percent were not punished.
On Sunday, the discussion came to a head when the SGA Senate approved, in a nearly unanimous vote, the decision to move ahead with a bill that would subject the Honor Code to a biennial student referendum. Per the Honor System's Constitution, 2/3 of the student body must vote, and 2/3 vote in favor, for the change to take effect. The amendment would then need to be ratified by the faculty at large. If the amendment passes, a spring 2016 referendum would give students three options: to vote to maintain the honor code as it stands, to eliminate it or to revise it. A majority in favor of revision would cause the Honor Code committee to survey opinions during a two-week revision process. Students would then vote on the revised Honor Code to either approve it, to maintain the original code, or to eliminate the code.
Student Co-Chair of Community Council Ben Bogin ’15 was an impetus behind the SGA proposal and said fighting atrophy was a goal. “The idea behind our method is to encourage people to continue talking about the Honor Code after they sign it as a first-year,” Bogin wrote in an email. “The Honor Code only works if it’s a living, breathing document that people cherish and take seriously. We’re trying to breathe a little more life into it.”
SGA Director of Academic Affairs Cate Costley ’15 added that the idea is to reclaim the Honor Code as a document students care about and take ownership of.
“Through conversations and debates, we settled on a schoolwide vote to try to solicit the voices of our peers and to see what they think,” Costley said. “And having an edge to it with the possibility of eliminating the Honor Code is to say to people, ‘Let’s not take this document for granted.’”
Vice President for Student Affairs, Dean of the College and Assistant Professor of the History of Art and Architecture Katy Smith Abbott said she believes discussion has also been sparked by the decision in the Economics Department to proctor exams in introductory classes starting last spring.
“It’s not that proctoring hasn’t been an option for faculty — it has been — but it’s required a certain kind of approval process that most people thought was not necessary or wasn’t in the spirit of the Honor Code,” Smith Abbott said. “And I think when that decision was made (thoughtfully, and at great length) by the Economics Department, it meant that a larger number of students were being exposed to the question of whether the Honor Code is working.”
Smith Abbott also said that the code could possibly fail in a referendum, based on what she has heard from students.
“I think some of my lack of a firm sense of how it would go is based on the variety of opinions out there right now about whether or not the Honor Code is working,” she said. “I think if we have entered into a period where more students, through their own experience or inherited wisdom, think the Honor Code isn’t working, we could see it fail.”
Several on Community Council, according to Smith Abbott, have raised doubts about the wisdom of a biennial survey in which the Honor Code could be eliminated.
“I think a lot of folks on Community Council — and I have mixed feelings about this — felt that those are insurmountable odds that, if two years later, you have two classes of students who have never lived with an Honor Code,” Smith Abbott said. “What’s their investment in bringing it back? Why are we putting that on them by saying, ‘[An honor code] worked for some people and didn’t work for others, but it’s on you to decide to overwhelmingly vote it back into existence?’”
Bogin, however, said that that he is not worried about failure and that the discussion of the code’s relevance is worth having through a referendum.
“I think that it’s incredibly unlikely that the Honor Code would fail in a vote. According to our most recent student survey, in which about 60 percent of the student body voted, 92 percent supported the continued existence of the Honor Code,” Bogin wrote. “I also think that it’s important to say that if something isn’t working, and everybody agrees, we should be able to get rid of it. It’s hard to say that the Honor Code is student owned if students don’t have the power to get rid of it.”
Hawley, who was at Middlebury during the Honor Code debate, said renewed attention to the code is not a bad thing.
“I think the cycle of concern is probably the best thing, whatever the outcome, because it’s heightening student awareness of how it’s my responsibility to do my own work. I don’t think there’s anything that would prove that a certain kind of honor code produces more honor,” Hawley said. “It’s sort of what Jefferson said about the American Constitution: it should be revisited; there should be at least a thread of revolution every 20 years to keep attention fresh on what the values are. I think raising the climate of concern about it is probably the most important thing with respect to honor, not necessarily what code you have written down.”
(03/11/15 2:38pm)
A few days before Sola was to be performed at the Middlebury College Dance Theatre this past weekend, I received an email from the box office stating that the Friday night show would be an abbreviated version of the full concert. I wondered what their apology was really for — and considered that if I had not been notified I might not have known that the concert was any different from what the dancers had intended it to be. I hadn’t yet formed an expectation of what I would be getting from the show, and so hearing that it would be different from the dancers’ intended performance was odd — because how was I to know what the intended performance was supposed to be, since it hadn’t happened yet?
When I attended on Friday night I was part of a small audience, and quite a few people had expressed to me their desire to see the full concert instead of an abbreviated version. While I understand that in creating a performance, there is an element of wholeness created through the rehearsal and choreographic process, Sola was an evening of solo works choreographed for and by women, and on Friday, two of the six dancers, Andee Scott and Bliss Kohlmyer, were unable to be in the show. I wondered if there was a sensation of disappointment rooted in not-getting-what-you-paid-for. And yet this is art — what does anyone intend to “get” out of it? My mind roamed from ideas of acquisition and consumerism to a simple feeling of fear of missing out on the fullest performance experience. Does this feeling come from a kind of personal efficiency — that we can’t possibly “waste” a moment on something incomplete or imperfect?
In exploring my perspective of dance since arriving at the College and studying the art form more seriously, I have come to the conclusion that for me, appreciating art is not about getting something out of it or understanding it. Rather, it is about the experience — how a performance or a work makes you feel, the thoughts or images that it inspires and the awareness that both the artist and the viewer are intimately involved in that interaction. But this kind of experience necessitates openness on the part of the viewer and a willingness to let oneself be taken in to access the raw interplay of perception and expression.
This interplay was particularly strong and verging on the uncomfortable with Amy Chavasse’s 2014 work from the University of Michigan, “Conspiracy Going,” as the flow of often nonsensical spoken text challenged one’s sense of what words signify, and how disorienting it can be when words do not go together in their expected patterns of usage. The text was adapted from an anonymous blog post commenting on a 2008 performance by Chavasse.
An intensely effective moment of this piece was when Chavasse repeated a single phrase with one movement corresponding to each word, beginning by stating each word slowly with the motion, and gradually speeding up to form one cohesive phrase of word and motion that took on meaning gradually as one came to see how they went together. It provoked the question of how we perceive language and meaning, asking whether words make any sense in distinctive units or if they only gain meaning in relation to other words and underlying contextualization.
Assistant Professor of Dance Tzveta Kassabova presented her 2009 work “Letter (to Ed),” a deeply emotive piece in which her virtuosic choreographic and performance ability left some audience members in tears. Her performance was punctuated with several moments in which her body was still, but her gaze to a space beyond the audience conjured the sensation of great distance, contrasting with powerful and reaching movements in the piece that felt as if they traversed such a distance. One of those moments was when Kassabova leapt up with her arms extended outwards and executed a mid-air contraction and outward kick that felt like a burst of energy from her center.
Pamela Pietro of the New York University Tisch School of the Arts performed her 2014 piece “You are That” and also utilized intentional gaze to seize the audience’s attention, which would not have been difficult in the first place because her stage presence demanded it. In one particularly striking moment, Pietro directly faced the audience, intently but expressionlessly staring out and repeatedly circling her hips. The audience experienced that repetitive sensation of when a motion or a word’s constructed significance or connotation begins to wear off — and we begin to question anew what it might mean.
“In Her Solitude: Lest We Forget” is a 2009 piece choreographed by Ursula Payne and performed by Mary Williford Shade of Texas Woman’s University, in which Shade interacted with a white rocking chair. For me this work gained a very strong symbolic arc when, after Shade’s movement conversation with the rocking chair as an object and a partner, she actually sat down on the chair for just a moment, only to rise again rapidly, provoking me to think that perhaps she realized that she could not occupy the same chair as whoever came before, and that she had to create and continue her own dance.
In the abstract art form of modern dance the viewer has the opportunity and the challenge to experience or interpret meaning to the movement as they will, if only they trust and take the risk of opening him or herself to that interaction with the performers.
(03/11/15 2:28pm)
This Saturday, two French/Catalan sisters, a Swede and a Scot cross the puddle to give the College one of the most vibrant and impassioned quartet performances of the millennia. The Elias String Quarter has risen like a meteor through the chamber music universe and into our own Performing Arts Series.
Too often students report the cost of arts events as barriers to their attendance. To that end, this concert will be completely free and open to the public. Be sure to come to the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts (MCA) Concert Hall slightly before 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 14, for great seating.
The Elias quartet is a relatively young ensemble, having debuted in 2012, but have been playing together for the past 17 years. This weekend they have chosen to perform Beethoven’s late quartets, three complex and incredible pieces.
The first piece that the Elias quartet will play tonight is the 11th quartet in F-minor. Beethoven started to write this piece in 1810, a particularly tumultuous time in Vienna, where he lived for most of his life. 1810 was the height of the Napoleonic campaigns across Europe, and Vienna, the capital of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, was under constant bombardment.
All of Beethoven’s composer-friends left the besieged city but him, although he complained endlessly about the constant noise of the bombardment. An eyewitness account from the time tells that the composer hid in his brother’s basement and covered his ears with pillows to protect the little hearing he had left at the time. Out of this chaos came the short but incredibly powerful 11th quartet, labeled Serioso by the publisher.
Beethoven never intended for this quartet to be played to the public, but rather planned for it to circulate in small settings amongst his composer and royal friends. When you hear Elias play it, you may understand why. The war brought out the character changes that transformed Beethoven’s heroic middle period into the genius late period.
This quartet, among other late pieces, does things that musicians at that time would not have dreamed of in their wildest dreams. Rapid outbursts, rapidly evolving motifs and an unprecedented use of silences characterize this wartime quartet. It is a piece that demands not only technical mastery, but also vibrancy and intensity. This piece matches the Elias quartet’s best traits.
Following the 11th, the Elias quartet will play the 16th quartet in F-major. This is the last significant work that Beethoven finished; he died in March of 1827, about five months after he completed the 16th quartet in October 1826. The most striking movement of this quartet is undoubtedly the finale, named by Beethoven Der schwer gefaßte Entschluß — “the difficult decision.” It starts with slow, dark chordal progression labeled muss es sein — “must it be?” and resolves into a nimble answer, labeled es muss sein! — “it must be!”
The 16th is a very flexible piece throughout. It moves from misty, bemused chordal cadences into complex, rapid counterpoint without fluttering an eyelid. It is another genius piece from Beethoven’s late period.
We step back a very small step in Beethoven’s biography to play the 14th quartet in C-sharp minor, completed in early 1826. Although any musicians reading this probably detest C-sharp minor (four sharps!), this is Beethoven’s favorite key. It is stoic, dramatic, complex and elusive, like the composer himself.
This quartet is almost twice as long as the 11th that Elias will begin the concert with, and many times it is more sophisticated. It captures leftover energy from Missa Solemnis, the grand choral mass written a few years earlier, that lends it a spiritual, puzzling tone. There is powerful melancholy present behind every note, written with a mastery that puzzled great composers for generations to come. After Franz Schubert heard this quartet, he said: “after this, what is left for us to write?” Robert Schumann remarked: grandeur [...] which no words can express. They seem to me to stand ... on the extreme boundary of all that has hitherto been attained by human art and imagination.”
Come to the MCA Concert Hall at 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 14, for this entirely free performance by one of the best quartets in the nation. Associate Professor of Music Larry Hamberlin will offer a pre-concert lecture at 7:00 p.m. in Room 221 for all interested.
(03/11/15 2:17pm)
Child of Light is a platformer role-playing game that takes place in the fantastical world of Lemuria. You play as the young girl Aurora, an Austrian princess who wakes up to find herself in a strange world with even stranger creatures. Over the course of the game, you meet the different characters of Lemuria, from the mouse-like Populi to the circus-performing Aerostati, and befriend all of them. You learn that things are not quite right in this country and that the malevolent Queen of Night is keeping the people captive through the use of dark magic and evil minions. Aurora must fight her way through this strange world to save Lemuria and return to her ailing father. Along the way, Aurora learns that to be a good ruler, she must often put the needs of others above her own desires.
Ubisoft Montreal, a big name company in the gaming industry known mostly for the Assassin’s Creed series, released Child of Light in April 2014. However, Child of Light is a step in quite a different direction for the developer. The game showcases an absolutely stunning animated backdrop. All of the different environments were carefully hand drawn and scanned into the game. The player feels as though they are walking through a painting as they traverse the beautiful landscapes of Lemuria. The artists did a fantastic job making the game feel just like a child’s dream.
Over the course of the game Aurora must face many dark creatures and servants of the Queen of Night. Combat in Child of Light is time-based. At the bottom of the screen during an encounter there is a time bar which all of the characters move along depending on their speed statistic and the action they are about to take. This is not a common style among these types of games – most similar games use a simple turn-based mode. Compared to the combat style, the time-based system kept me more involved with each encounter. While I was waiting for Aurora and her party to move along the bar, I was busy trying to slow my opponents down and timing my hits to interrupt their attacks.
Another thing the developers did well with the combat was making characters compatible with each other. You are allowed to have two party members on the field at any given time during a fight. Over time, I found that certain characters worked especially well together. For example, my favorite team consisted of Aurora and her sister. Aurora’s sister Norah has abilities that slow down her enemies while speeding up her teammates. This allowed me to minimize the attacks of the enemy while allowing Aurora to bombard them with her spells and sword.
The best thing the game has going for it is the storyline and the way it is presented. The entire game is presented as a poem. All narration and dialogue within the game follows a rhyming scheme. This aspect of the game was not only beautiful, but also very entertaining at times. One of the characters has an inability to rhyme and is often corrected by the others with a word that fits the rhyming scheme. The main reason I enjoyed the poetic narrative is for its originality. I have never played another game that has used this style of storytelling and I they did an excellent job with it.
I only had two complaints with Child of Light. The first was that the levels could become a bit grindy. I found myself running from one battle to the next with the same enemies which could get a bit tiring at times. My second complaint was that the puzzles they presented you with were the same every time. You needed to open a door to the next area, used Igniculus the firefly to illuminate a few panels on the door and voilà – it opened. However, given that the game is only about 13 hours long, these were minor annoyances which didn’t add up to much in the end.
Overall, I give Child of Light a 9.5 out of 10. I immensely enjoyed this game for its engaging story, original narrative and engaging combat system. While the game could be a little bit of a grind at times, the feeling never lasted too long and new developments in the story followed soon after. If you are looking for a good, story-centric game to play in between exam weeks or to play through over the upcoming break, I highly recommend Child of Light and hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
(03/05/15 3:32am)
How many times in a single day do you hear or say the following phrases? “I need to go do work.” “I have so much work to do.” It seems that this is the Middlebury College anthem. But it should not be. It is like a broken record or a cacophony on repeat. I myself am guilty of contributing to this chorus, but I am trying to switch over to phrases like: “I am going to do some reading tonight,” or “I am planning on writing a paper.”
This may seem trivial. Why does word choice matter? It matters because the words we use for the things we do affect the things themselves, as well as our relationship to them. We spend much of our time at Middlebury studying. When we call this activity work, we generate deep dissatisfaction and existential confusion within ourselves.
The highest form of leisure was once thought to consist in contemplation of universal things. This activity was engaged in for its own sake. Living a life of leisure – of schole – was supposed to be the best life, the happiest life. If contemplation is the highest form of leisure, the idea of schoolwork creates a vicious opposition. What is our leisure supposed to consist of if school is work?
Leisure as it was originally conceived lies at the heart of liberal education. We came to Middlebury to study, to contemplate, to wonder, to imagine, to hypothesize.
Think about the nature of the things we study. They are liberal. This means that they are engaged in for their own sake. They are beautiful and they speak to our souls. Haven’t you ever read a sentence in a novel and felt awe at the author’s eloquence? Haven’t you ever looked under a microscope and been blown away at the sheer intricacy of the cell?
When we treat these things as work, we dislocate them. We force them into the everyday. Yet, the objects of our study are fundamentally different from the everyday. The activities we engage in during leisure, in our studies, are meant to transcend the workplace – it is against their nature to be thought of as a part of it. The act of referring to our study as work both corrupts the nature of the things we study and generates a looming anxiety as to what we may engage in for its own sake.
Going to a party is a brief respite from (what we call) work – a breath of bodily enjoyment in a cycle of mental labor. Hanging out with friends is enjoyable, but is often limited by time constraints due to impending deadlines.
We may listen to music for its own sake, or attend religious services, or look at the stars. But these things are all close in spirit to the study of the liberal arts. If we can find beauty and leisure in them, surely we may re-examine the time we spend studying and consider at least some of it as time spent in leisure.
This idea of school as work is especially important to consider in the midst of impending education reform. Universities around the world are becoming increasingly focused on specialization and vocational training. Whether we as Middlebury students like it or not, we currently attend a liberal arts college. It is our responsibility to maintain the freedom of the things we study, or in other words, to ensure that we study them for their own sake.
We have a responsibility to the thinkers, teachers and students of the past, who built up and preserved the intellectual tradition that we are now a part of. We also have responsibilities to those students in the future, who will be able to grasp for wisdom, contemplate beautiful things and realize their potential because of our devotion to the essence of our college.
Finally, we are responsible to ourselves and our souls. You came to Middlebury for a reason. There was something inside of you that gravitated toward the idea of the College as an interval in one’s life, apart from the outside world. You have a desire to search for wisdom, to find the answers, to define your truth or seek out a Truth, if there is one. This is precisely what you do when you study. Take pleasure in this and know that you are engaging in this journey for its own sake. Know that any activity of this nature cannot and should not be thought of as work.
Middlebury is meant to be a place of leisure. If we want to preserve the essence of this institution and understand it as it must be understood, we must first change the way we speak and think about our primary activity.
Jenna Lifhits ’15 is from Unionville, Conn.
(03/05/15 3:29am)
Around a month ago, I was scrolling through BuzzFeed (my procrastination website of choice) and noticed the headline ‘Here’s How to See What College Admissions Officers Wrote About You.’ The article went on to describe that Stanford University students had uncovered a little-known clause in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) that allows students to view, as the headline indicates, the comments on their admissions file at the school to which they matriculate. I had always been curious about how applicants at Middlebury are evaluated, and I also kind of wanted to know what my file said about me, so I emailed the Admissions Office to request access to my files.
Last Wednesday, I was the first student this year to view my admissions file. Dean of Admissions Greg Buckles was very patient with me and answered all my questions related to the terminology. I was able to see my readers’ quantitative evaluations of my academic ability, extracurriculars and personal qualities. I also read the comments my readers made on my overall file, as well as what my interviewer said about our interview.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I had a twofold motivation for going in to see my file. First and foremost, I was curious to know what the admissions officers thought about my application, especially about my common app essay, of which I was most proud. I applied early decision because Middlebury was my dream school and far and away my first choice, but going in, my college counselor had warned me that many ED applicants have some kind of hook — be it the support of a coach or geographic diversity or legacy status among myriad other factors. The other reason I went in to see my file was to see what about my application allowed me to overcome my lack of hook, so to speak, and gain early admission.
My main takeaway and word to you, readers, is that your file likely does not contain much you don’t know already. The reader comments mostly enumerated my grades and scores and spoke about my extracurriculars, and my interview comments basically detailed our conversation and my answers to his questions. I did not really figure out why I had gotten in or how I had overcome my total lack of diversity. (The only reasons I can think of are that I had expressed my passion for Middlebury and that my readers felt magnanimous that day.) I also learned my readers’ reservations about me and what they perceived to be my weaknesses.
I caution anyone going into the admissions office to steel yourself, because there aren’t many positive things they can say that you don’t already know. (You know if your standardized testing was good, and you probably have a decent sense of how your interview went.) Admissions officers are so good at their job that they will likely be able to foresee struggles you will have in college based on your high school experience, and they may describe those in your file. I, of course, don’t know you and have no idea what your file says. I assume that you are a strong student and excel in many areas (or else you wouldn’t be here), but that doesn’t mean that your file is all rainbows and sunshine. And I can tell you from my experience that I didn’t learn anything about myself (and a tiny part of me was hoping for an insight that would shape my entire future so I could stop worrying about it).
So while you are absolutely entitled to view your file under FERPA, maybe think twice about whether it is worth your time and the Admissions office’s time as well, because our admissions counselors are absolutely swamped with requests right now, on top of having to read thousands of applications for the class of 2019.
Sarah Sicular ’15.5 is a copy editor from New York, N.Y.
(03/04/15 7:04pm)
In light of the recent release of 50 Shades of Grey and the upcoming Porn Party at the Queer Studies House, we thought a good topic for this week would be a list of porn and kink-related vocabulary and their misconceptions. Some of the terms you will find are very commonplace while others are not.
The reason we think this list is valuable is because what people find attractive and sexually enjoyable varies in many ways, aside from just sexual orientation. Sex positivity is all about remembering to respect everyone’s desires and sexual interests instead of shaming them. Context is a huge part of something being sexy or unsexy, and there are no rules to what should or should not enjoy. As long as everything is safe, consensual, informed and controlled, there is not a reason people should feel shame for how they manage their sex lives, from abstinence to pony play.
Kink and Fetish
The difference between a kink and a fetish is often unknown. A kink is more activity and behavior-oriented while a fetish is more focused on an object or part of the body. For example, a foot fetish is sexual enjoyment focused around a person’s feet and watersports refers to the fetish of sexual enjoyment focused on urine. Role play (where partners adopt personas that differ from their own) and enjoying spanking during sex are kinks, or can be described as kinky. While the two terms often appear in similar places they are not the same thing.
BDSM (Short for BD/DS/SM)
BDSM is usually regarded in society as a taboo practice because of its reputation for being dangerous and the result of trauma. However, liking BDSM is not the result of a trauma and, much like any other sexual practice, there are safer and less safe ways to do it. Many people engage in some form of BDSM, whether it is blindfolding or flogging. BDSM is all about deriving pleasure from pain and suspense. Consent is crucial to BDSM. That means having a safe word (a word likely not to come up in conversation during sexual activity, which alerts that a person is nearing or has reached their maximum comfort zone). Safe words are also great for communication in any sexual activity, not just BDSM.
Pony Play
A style of role-play in which the roles are divided into masters/riders and ponies. There are no actual animals involved; rather, the two roles reflect the power dynamic between horse riders and their horses. Many pony play activities also mimic those of actual horse riders and horses, such as washing or sex positions that resemble riding.
Strapadictomy
The act of strapping on a dildo in preparation for vaginal or anal penetration. Many people find using strap-ons to be an activity reserved for lesbian couples. However, many men (including heterosexuals) enjoy having their partners penetrate them anally, and may very well use a strap-on. Strap-ons and dildos are also a common tool used by transgender people.
Erotic asphyxiation
Arousal resulting from intentional restriction of oxygen to brain. Sometimes referred to as breathe control play, many people find erotic asphyxiation to be an exhilarating activity. As long as things are monitored appropriately, everything is consensual and there is not an excessive aggression with the restraints or forces used, there should be no sign for alarm. Caution is always advised, most especially with autoerotic asphyxiation in where the person restricts their own breathing and may be alone.
Masturbation
The act of giving oneself sexual pleasure. Many forget that masturbation, while commonplace in today’s American culture, masturbation was once seen as a sinful sexual deviancy and still is in many places in the world. Much like we have learned that masturbation does not prevent someone from being a happy and healthy individual we hope it carries to other practices society views as wrong and we can have open conversations about sex.
(03/04/15 6:58pm)
Before we jump into this week’s NARP activity, we just wanted to use this column as a platform to get a date. We still have not seen 50 Shades of Grey, and after the teen who buttered our popcorn for the Spongebob movie thought we were dating, we decided we should branch out and bring new people (boys). Plus, are we the only ones wondering how the burritos they serve compare to the almighty king, Chipotle?
Anyway, enough about our romantic life. This week, our NARP activity came to us by pure fate. We all know the feeling of entering the grand (ridiculously heavy?) doors of Proctor at peak dinner hours and having the slight smell of B.O., the aroma of pickled veggies, and the gazes of six people who you have been actively avoiding hitting you as soon as you walk in. Naturally, a panic attack ensues. Especially when your best friend (Maddie) is always late, even though she claimed to be “crossing College Street” 8 minutes ago. Proctor anxiety made Izzy run for the hills, aka our designated “safe room:” Proctor basement. On one fateful Monday evening, Izzy ran (speed walked) for cover and found that the dance room was in use by beautiful women dancing to exotic beats! With Maddie’s stalker skills, we soon discovered that it was the school’s South Asian dance troupe — Midd Masti!
We felt that Midd Masti might be easier to follow than the quickly-paced Riddim hip-hop class that we tried out earlier this year. Midd Masti’s slogan is “Bringing Bollywood to Middlebury,” so watching Slumdog Millionaire was obviously way more important than starting that 10-page research paper on our to-do lists. We thought attempting to master the final dance at the end of the movie would leave us well-prepared for the dance class, but then we got sidetracked by the Pussycat Dolls’ vocals and found ourselves singing karaoke to “Don’t Cha.” Then, we decided to watch the music video to Selena Gomez’s “Come and Get It” to stay away from culturally-insensitive music videos.
When Monday rolled around, Maddie and Izzy were both very excited to see what Bollywood had in store for them. At 5 p.m., we strolled in ready to shimmy and shake in Pussycat Doll-inspired outfits, and we discovered that we would be practicing the art of bharatnatyam, a classical South Asian dance taught by the College’s own Akhila Khanna ’17. According to Akhila, this style is significantly more nuanced and traditional than Bollywood dancing. For sixty minutes, we struggled to achieve each move with the same precision as our classmates. There were a lot of delicate finger and hand formations that left us feeling like we were coming down with carpal tunnel. Unable to obtain a close view of our instructor’s finger positioning, we decided to make that weird hand gesture everyone was obsessed with in 5th grade that spells out the word “blood” and hoped for the best. Nobody questioned us so we kept rollin’ with it.
By the end of the hour, we surprisingly kind of got the hang of our newly learned choreography. As a matter of fact, Akhila told us that she was “really impressed” withhow quickly we picked up the dance moves. Perhaps our Slumdog Millionaire binge-watching paid off after all! Now, if only Dev Patel and Freida Pinto were still dating…
Although our experience with bharatnatyam was slightly clumsy and graceless, we have to emphasize how beautiful and delicate the actual execution was by the women in the class. They hit their turns and completed their wrist flicks with such deliberation and finesse that, combined with the music, it was mesmerizing to watch. Fortunately for us (and the rest of campus), their Spring Showcase is coming up! On April 18, Midd Masti will perform more than ten different types of South Asian dance. We promise it will be the best two hours you ever spent. However, we cannot promise we won’t turn into Regina’s mom from Mean Girls and act out the choreography in the aisles. Tune in next week for when we learn to kick some serious a** at capoeira!
(03/04/15 6:53pm)
It was a Sunday afternoon like any other, and I found myself sitting in a Proctor booth chatting with some good friends about sex in college. During my time at Middlebury, I’ve really enjoyed the authenticity of such conversations:
“Neither of us came, but it is still a
great memory.”
“It took me 21 years to have an orgasm with a partner.”
“Threesomes.”
“I was just too tired...”
“That’s weird, right?”
“I’m not playing that game.”
“It was casual, but consent was still
really important.”
“OMG THE NOISES.”
I think that the reason my friends and I are able to discuss sex so bluntly has to do with the fact that we deeply trust one another. We have created a space for ourselves where we can openly admit that sometimes our
(s)expectations do not align with our lived realities. From my point of view, there is a huge void on this campus when it comes to sex positivity, and I would like to change that.
This column is my attempt to foster conversations about consensual sexuality among a wider Middlebury audience. My goal is simple: to create a space where Middlebury students can learn through the anonymous (s)experiences of their peers. So I have set up an email account (greatsexpectations@aol.com) where students can submit stories about sex in college. Each week, I will select one or two stories, which will be anonymously published in that week’s edition of the Campus.
This column is YOUR column; I’m merely the moderator. This column will be an inclusive, supportive space that welcomes a variety of identifications and experiences. And if you identify as asexual or abstinent, I would love to (anonymously) share your
perspectives, too.
If you want to anonymously add your voice to this conversation, please submit a 300-word story to greatsexpectations@aol.com. When you are sharing, please make note of how consent functioned in your story, even if that is just in a sentence or two (because it is so important!). I look forward to reading and publishing your submissions each week, and to kick off this adventure, here’s an anonymous story from a current Middlebury student (who is also the most honest sexual storyteller I have ever met):
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Two summers ago, I was working on the Appalachian Trail, giving out trail information and telling people to stop waiting around at moose crossing signs. Most of the people I hung out with were young twenty-somethings who lived in the woods, or else thru-hikers that had been hiking for months. In other words, the place was a sexual
tension minefield.
One evening, my friend and I hiked to a nearby campsite where we were soon joined by two thru-hikers, Veggie Tales and Brightside. Before long we were playing cards and listening to their stories about the trail.
At some point, I became aware of Brightside’s knee against mine. Before I knew it, our friends had gone to bed and we were left alone. After half a second of small talk, I leaned over to kiss him, but as I did so I was a hit by a smell so acrid and pungent I could not bridge the gap. He noticed my hesitation and explained that in his excitement at the prospect of hanging out with (cleanish) girls he had bathed himself with bottle of full strength bug spray, hoping to mask his body odor. I was touched by the gesture, or maybe a little high from the DEET, and decided to check “hook up with a thru-hiker” off my bucket list.
We made out for a while, and then Brightside made it clear he wanted to do more. Making out was fun, but I started to imagine lichen growing on this guy’s pubes and decided to call it quits. Despite being desperately horny, Brightside did not push it. He kissed my cheek and went to bed. Now on hikes that seem impossibly long or heinously buggy, I remember our encounter and laugh, and remind myself to always look on the bright side.
(03/04/15 4:37pm)
On Tuesday, Feb. 24, Middlebury students brought the stage to life with performances of literary works from the New England Review (NER). This was a night to unify the author with the actor, to revitalize prose through the age-old tradition of spoken word. The event was titled “NER Out Loud,” and involved actors and orators from the sophomore to senior classes reading aloud pieces published in the most recent NER, followed by a reception featuring student works from the literary magazines Sweatervest, Blackbird and Room 404.
Kevin Benscheidt ’17 kicked off the show with a comical yet contemplative discussion of physics and the human condition. Caitlin Duffy ’15.5 filled the space with poetic, dramatic ponderings concerning responsibility, exploration and bravery, and Brenna Christensen ’17 defined and expressed depression with brevity, eloquence and clarity. Jabari Matthew ’17 then brought the audience to consider the complexities of race and the process of challenging authority in the traditional academic system through the piece he read aloud. Melissa MacDonald ’15 successfully conveyed the experience of a deaf person with reality, honesty and sincerity, and Sally Seitz ’17 wrapped up the show by fluently expressing to the audience the pain of a failed marriage.
During the reception, student authors read works ranging from a valiant criticism of public art at Middlebury to a detailed account of personal romance. The audience was well fed with s’mores and, most importantly, well filled with contemplation of beauty, prose, emotion and heart.
This event has been almost a year in the planning and was designed to combine Middlebury publications and raise familiarity with NER, a nationally acclaimed literary magazine published in Middlebury (check out go/ner for more information and some cool sound bites of authors reading their work). Students were selected because of their skills in acting and oratory, and were coached by Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre Dana Yeaton in the performance of their pieces.
After the performance, Duffy reflected on the short story that she read.
“[The story] is a tricky, complicated piece,” Duffy said. “There were lots of different voices in the text – the author wrote in italics and caps – and it was definitely a struggle and a major concern to convey these in a way that the audience would understand.”
“The process was really fun, and it was nice to get to know NER better,” she added.
Matthew spoke similarly about his experience.
“I had to do a lot of personal work to put myself in the shoes of the author,” Matthew said. “After a while it was easy to relate and I felt like I could bring [my character’s] experiences to life and make them relatable. I want to inspire people to speak, and to get involved in oratory – it is an extremely powerful art form. It’s also a way to break the Middlebury bubble. It’s amazing how stories can break through the isolation here.”
Yeaton explained after the event that he loved working with the performers.
“[The performers] absolutely transcended. They had their best game. It was as if they understood the works better than ever. I couldn’t be happier with what they did. It was incredible, and we must get more people here. This must happen again.”
C3 Post-Doctoral Fellow in Theatre Nathaniel G. Nesmith, an audience member, reflected on his reactions to the performances after the event.
“I found the performances thrilling, intellectually engaging, with lots of emotional substance, and the selection was well thought out,” Nesmith said. “I’ve seen many shows like this, especially with Isaac Shafer in the 70’s space, so I’m accustomed to this kind of thing and I was very impressed.”
Liza Sacheli, Director of the Kevin P. Mahaney Center for the Arts (MCA) spoke about the event with passion and intention.
“We at the MCA want to strengthen the literary presence in the theater, especially with so many amazing writers on campus and Vermont being such fertile ground for writer expression,” Sacheli said. “We can intersect literary arts with performing arts and help the literature to shine.”
The Oratory Society is perfect for this,” she added. “It really hits the sweet spot between writers and actors, so we couldn’t resist bringing in NER. People seemed energized by the process, when you’re reading something aloud you hear all sorts of new things, and this speaks to thousands of years in oral tradition. The live performance creates intimacy; it’s so influenced by the energy and participation of the audience, not at all like Netflix or something where it will be the same again and again.”
This was a night of poetry, beautifully presented on the MCA Concert Hall stage with excitement, joy, vulnerability and just the right amount of performance. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I came away not only feeling thought-provoked but also energized and soothed by the understanding that art really does flourish on this campus. Look out for this event again next year: you can be sure it will be filled with bravery, excitement, innovation and intention.
