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(01/22/15 1:16am)
The purpose a building serves is generally quite clear from the moment one enters it. The vacuum-sealed doors and laboratories of Bi-Hall denote science education, the gyms and courts in the Athletic center indicate the activities housed therein and so forth. However, the layout and contents of a building often communicate subtle aspects of the institutions they represent, values, objectives or ideologies that rest just beneath the surface.
When one enters Middlebury College’s Davis Family Library desks, library stacks, the circulation desk and other familiar paraphernalia confirm the purpose and identity of the building. To the right, next to a descending set of stairs stands a row of glass display cases exhibiting articles from the Library’s Special Collections. Currently, a collection of Tibetan and Nepalese Buddhist texts are on view, with one or two manuscripts occupying each of the display’s seven cases. An interesting display, certainly worth checking out. But what can something seemingly benign such as this reveal about underlying institutional ideologies?
The Special Collections exhibition space immediately suggests to the library-goer a specific type of academic work: close consideration of primary materials, likely performed with white gloves and a face-mask, work that is site-specific to the building housing those materials. Anybody familiar with Middlebury students’ study habits in general, and particularly in the Library, would quickly tell you that most student work looks nothing like that. Rather, the majority of assignments revolve around the use of a computer, either to type up a semester’s worth of journal entries or to find a summary of the reading, most of which simply require wifi.
In his brief essay, “The Function of the Museum,” Daniel Burin explains how museums, through various mechanisms, present themselves as guardians of certain aspects of culture. Through their collections and exhibitions of art they simultaneously create and embody “the concept of the cultural location.” The presentation of articles from the Library’s Special Collections communicates the Library’s cultural significance to the visitor, as well as the building’s scholarly purposes. Indeed, the very name “Special Collections,” which is displayed repeatedly above and around the displays, suggests advanced levels of study and “guarantees historical and psychological weight” (Burin again) of the items collected therein. By placing artifacts from this vaunted subsection of the library’s contents so prominently, the institution suggests the great heights of scholarship that might one day be accessible to the hard-working Middlebury student.
These general implications of the Special Collections display are reinforced by the current exhibition of Buddhist texts. They are beautiful documents, weathered by age and use, but the colors and writing are still clear. However, a discerning eye will find a few oddities in their presentation. Most glaringly, the placards above each case state the dates of the exhibition as “October 15 - December 19, 2014.” As of this issue, Jan. 22, 2015, the texts were still on display. Furthermore, only two of the seven placards divulge the dates of their respective cases’ contents, and those two provide the years in which the authors’ lived, not the year when the text itself was created.
These presentational ambiguities expose aspects of the institution’s relationship with, and expectations of, its audience. The extension of the show’s run is not announced anywhere in sight, and there is the strong impression that the organizers of Special Collections simply have not gotten around to changing the displays. This lack of urgency speaks to a crucial, distinctive feature of this particular exhibit and the space in general: these items are not for sale, and the space is not commercial. As a result, the space is not subject to the market pressures that influence the presentation of salable work. To pursue this line of thinking further, the non-commercial attitude here described reinforces the idea of the library as a vanguard of strict scholarship, independent of crass ideologies like “the market” or “scheduling.” In this light, the casualty of punctuality takes on an almost endearing whimsy appropriate to the study of musty old documents.
The lack of specific dating communicates another aspect of the assumed relationship between exhibition and viewer: that the audience will be comprised of novices, opposed to seasoned Buddhism scholars. One placard says of its contents, “This manuscript is displayed horizontally to fit this case, but is read vertically.” In other words, “Nobody’s actually going to read this.” Aesthetic convenience plainly takes precedent over functionality.
This is not to say the exhibit is expressed in terms entirely devoid of intellectual or academic pursuit. Although the presentation is geared toward the individual uneducated in the subject matter, the audience’s general level of information is taken for granted. For instance, there is no map showing the locations of Tibet and Nepal, nor is there an explanation of Buddhism. It is assumed, therefore, that the audience has a background of information regarding these places and topics. This assumption and the provision of new and exciting, but not overly challenging, supplementary information reflects the library’s aims as an institution. It stands as a vanguard of knowledge accessible to those with the education and other means necessary to engage this section of high culture.
The Special Collections exhibition at the Davis Library functions as a kind of testament not only to the wealth of scholarship housed within the building, but also to the enormous gains that may be made by the individual willing to invest themselves in the library, and in the institution of Middlebury College. It is an advertisement for membership in the intellectual elite and the spoils to once you’re in the club. Ancient Buddhist texts aren’t your thing? Don’t worry, the Bloomberg Portal is just a few steps further. With things like the rebranding of Middlebury’s crest and the renaming of the Monterey Institute (which, if you’re judging by email volumes, seems to “matter”) happening around/to us, it is important to be cognizant of the myriad ideologies packed into every inch of our College’s self-presentation.
(01/21/15 11:23pm)
In a society dominated by technology, it is oftentimes difficult to distinguish between what is possible and what is necessary. Critically-acclaimed monologist Mike Daisey brought this complicated question to the forefront of the audience’s minds in Faster Better Social, a 75-minute performance on Friday and Saturday, Jan. 16 and 17 at the Wright Memorial Theater. Working around the theme of technology, Daisey engaged the audience in a delightful, provocative and improvised speech on the evolution of the iPhone, the human species’ transformation into cyborgs, his self-proclaimed addiction to his phone and everything in between.
Seated behind a desk onstage and swathed in a bright yellow spotlight, Daisey opened with a poignant remark: “We’ve reached a tipping point … when we have to beg you to turn off phones before the show.” He proceeded to announce, “This is kind of an intervention. We’re addicted together.”
This tone of keen self-awareness and unapologetic honesty carried on through the rest of the performance, with Daisey conceding, “I’m a man of the times. Like you, I’d rather be on my phone.” His admission drew laughs of understanding from the audience, but quickly segued into more uncomfortable truths about the relationship between humans and screens.
Despite the world of infinite possibilities available at our fingertips, Daisey expressed concern over the amount of control that technology can hold over us. From the feeling of anxiety that overcomes us when we are away from our phones for too long, to the overbearing ways of Facebook Messenger, which demands to have sound notifications turned on in order to function properly, he pointed out that the tool often seems to use us rather than the other way around.
During the post-performance talk with the artist on Saturday night, Daisey explained that his entire monologue arose from less than ten words’ worth of notes that he had brought onstage. All of his speeches are improvised as such, leading to performances that feel like casual conversations with the audience. As Daisey put it, each monologue stems from “my conscious mind working in conjunction with my subconscious.” Perhaps as a result of this, his storytelling followed no clear, linear path, but rather gave way to a series of entertaining tangents before coming full circle.
One such tangent centered on Daisey’s attempt to raise a Tamagotchi pet – a “cursed creature,” as he put it. His lengthy retelling of his disastrous experience left the audience in hysterics. “I tried to raise it with a lover,” he said. “Much like a flip phone, it did one thing very well – create virtual shit.”
Since Daisey’s shows function more as spur-of-the-moment intellectual musings instead of pre-rehearsed speeches, his Faster Better Social monologues were radically different each night, with only a couple minutes’ worth of overlapping material. Friday night’s performance touched on social networking, oversharing, and loneliness, while Saturday’s monologue focused on the phone’s role as a portal to another reality.
“The smartphone collapses the universe into a field the size of a deck of playing cards, with an infinite number of cards,” Daisey said.
Following this, his hilarious frustrations with the Apple brand quickly came to light, as he described the first iPhone as “a fluid, beautiful interface” that ultimately proved to be “fundamentally horrible.” Later on, he remarked of the iPhone 5, “The vibrations are only loud enough so that everyone can hear them.”
Furthermore, the master storyteller reflected on the changing nature of human connections in the age of the smartphone. The audience laughed along as he remarked on the absurdity of some newfound social norms – such as texting to ask for permission before calling someone, the struggle to sound engaged during phone calls and the use of “multiplatform harassment” to contact people when they prove unresponsive on one social networking medium. Beyond the funny reenactments and sarcasm-laced comments, however, Daisey provided a thought-provoking critique of humans’ fumbling interactions via smartphones. As he noted, “Technology eliminates the fictional politeness that allows the real world to function.”
Though Daisey called out some audience members for using their phones during the show (“I can see the glow on your faces,” he pointed out amusedly), he displayed a stark relatability by making explicit his own obsession with technology. “If I give up my phone, I live a new, empowered life … completely and utterly alone,” he said seriously, acknowledging a fear undoubtedly felt by many young people today.
In the end, it is this relatability that caused Daisey’s performance to resonate so deeply with the audience. By sharing his own struggles with his smartphone, he became a friend and trusted confidant for every single member of the audience. With each new confession, it grew abundantly clear that he was not there to judge, berate or guilt us for our obsessive, and arguably pathetic, habit of checking our texts every five minutes. (Indeed, he even commented near the end that he, too, was anxiously awaiting to reunite with his phone backstage.) Rather, his monologue served to inform, to reflect and above all, to question.
Despite the fact that his performance focused largely on the drawbacks of living with smartphones, never once did Daisey try to label technology as clearly good or bad. In fact, he ended with a positive insight, noting humans’ potential to harness the tool for their own benefit, rather than fall prey to the endless bane of pinging notifications and useless posts.
“Our attention spans haven’t changed,” he said. “We choose how many interruptions we will have.”
Throughout the impressively eloquent, improvised monologue, Daisey demonstrated a sharp wit and a profound societal awareness unparalleled by that of most other members of his generation. As our phones become bombarded by push notifications, text messages and ungodly loud vibrating sounds, may Daisey’s words serve as a reminder to us all that the interplay between our virtual and real-world lives is largely within our control.
(01/21/15 11:14pm)
There are few better or more interesting ways of dealing with Harold Pinter’s work than handing it over to a group of improv comedians. The complexity and confusion of language, the situational farce, the importance of timing and the general feeling of burgeoning absurdity that come inevitably attached to Pinter’s plays could create an exciting space for this weekend’s staging of The Dumb Waiter at the Hepburn Zoo. Three members of the College’s own improv comedy group Middlebrow are taking on an adaptation of one of the more popular early works of the acclaimed British playwright and Nobel Prize winner.
First staged in 1960, The Dumb Waiter is a one-act two-man play that follows two hitmen, Ben and Gus, as they wait — like most popular absurdist characters tend to do — in a sparse windowless basement for their next assignment. In a room filled with empty space, vague objects and a mysterious, lurking dumbwaiter (a small elevator used for transporting food and dishes between levels of a building), the action or lack thereof unfolds through Pinter’s masterful breakdown of language and logic. The longer the hitmen await their instructions, the more they tend to dwell on the seemingly mundane, discussing newspaper articles, complaining about dysfunctional flush tanks and arguing over the semantics of the correct verb form of “putting on the kettle.”
Pinter creates a wormhole in which reason and linear narrative are meshed into a shapeless form, punctuated with repetitive symbols like the constant movement of the dumbwaiter, seemingly unable to communicate with Ben and Gus as much as they are unable to communicate with each other. Despite its complexities, The Dumb Waiter is not short of any of twists, turns and entertainment; it comes with an air of lingering suspense, uncontrollably hilarious moments and a shocking revelation at the end.
Director Melissa MacDonald ’15 says she chose the play last summer, specifically for its strange sense of humour and structural idiosyncrasies.
“I really enjoy working within the format and structure of the comedy in this play. Obviously we do a lot of comedy work in Middlebrow, but it’s often two to three minute sketches where we create our own rhythms and patterns,” she said.
“I wanted to direct a play like The Dumb Waiter that is contingent on its own specific patterns because it’s something that I’ve never really done before.”
Actor Luke Smith-Stevens ’14.5 noted the importance of avoiding the over-intellectualization of such a studied play.
“Our process has been about the balance between close reading, keeping it natural and continuing to play with the text,” he said.
MacDonald did a lot of background work to help contextualize and understand Pinter’s unique writing style against works like Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett.
“The role of silence for me is a definitive aspect of this play” she said. “We actually spent one rehearsal in complete silence for over thirty-five minutes in preparation.”
It’s no surprise then that both Smith-Stevens and Alexander Khan ’17, playing Ben and Gus respectively, are able to rehearse and react at a level of total ease with each other. Their work with Middlebrow strongly influenced their creative process for this production.
“We are very comfortable with each other because we know our individual comedic styles and how we play off each other, so we can morph to new choices on the spot,” Khan said. “Our experience working together gives us the freedom to make big — and subtle — choices.”
Even in an accelerated rehearsal schedule like this, we’re constantly trying new things knowing that the other will throw the ball back to you,” Smith-Stevens added.
Although they have been conceptualizing the play since the fall, the actual rehearsal process began only at the start of J-term, and the cast, while well aware of the challenges of such a time frame, is excited to finally open this weekend.
“The biggest challenge besides time has been navigating Pinter’s physical cues and construction of space,” MacDonald said. “He’ll often write in stage directions in some places and then nothing for the rest of the play; the stage and design elements have also been difficult to set up in such a short amount of time.”
“Just the basic fact that this is a two man show has been pretty challenging,” Smith-Stevens added. “It’s not like other plays where you can work different scenes and come back to problematic ones late. This one is all about pushing through and understanding the stitches and seams as much as the fabric of the play itself.”
The glittering sense of excitement amongst the company is palpable, and everyone is eager to put up a show of this nature as part of the independent theatre scene on campus, which Smith-Stevens — graduating at the end of the month — has seen grow in both scale and quality in his time at the College.
“The most memorable experiences I’ve had in theatre have been in student productions; I think it speaks to the willingness to take advantage of the resources here and the eagerness to work hard on putting up small projects and hopefully feel how rewarding the experience is,” he said.
Over the last few years, the Zoo has been a bastion for hosting diverse, independent student run productions, and The Dumb Waiter most definitely has the potential to be an entertaining and evocative highlight. It promises to be a show packed with questions both surreal and utterly human, and with humour that is explosively funny as well as tragic.
If not for any cultural inclination, go watch the show to hear Smith-Stevens and Khan tackle British accents, which they joke somewhat reassuringly, is in keeping with the absurdity of the play.
The Dumb Waiter runs this weekend at the Hepburn Zoo on Jan. 23 and 24, with shows at 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Friday and at 8 p.m. on Saturday. The show stars Smith-Stevens and Khan, and is directed by MacDonald, stage managed by Ella Rohm-Ensing ’18 and designed by Tosca Giustini ’15.5, Kate Eiseman ’15, Bjorn Peterson ’15.5, and Ben Rose ’17.5.
(01/15/15 3:36am)
Here I stand with a lit candle at this vigil along with 30 other Middlebury students, staff and faculty to remember and pray for the 132 innocent children and the eight teachers who lost their lives and 122 who received bullet injuries in a school attack by the Taliban in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan. Twelve thousand miles away, here at Middlebury College, we all come together to mourn and try to comprehend the carnage in Peshawar. We never met the dead children or their families; but we feel connected. We feel sorrow for those who lost their innocent lives, anger for the heartless savages for setting the worst example of brutality, confusion for what humanity has come to and worry for the coming generations who are witnessing the worst forms of terror in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, United States, France, Somalia and the list goes on.
The day of Dec. 16, 2014 was unlike any other normal school day for the children of the Army Public School in Peshawar, Pakistan. Dressed in their green and white uniforms, with their books and friends, these children were going about their daily routine of attending classes. But these children were unaware of their fatal fate and that this may be the last day, or the last moments that they will share with their friends, teachers and parents.
In the morning at 10 a.m., seven terrorists disguised in the Pakistani paramilitary uniform entered the school building, headed to the big auditorium where lots of children were gathered to attend a school function and opened fire at them indiscriminately. The children tried to run out of the auditorium, but there were more than enough bullets fired to kill the majority of them. As if spilling the blood of these children was not enough, the terrorists then went to classrooms, dragged scared children from under the tables and did not hesitate before putting a bullet through their tiny bodies. Most children were shot in the head. The teachers, who were trying to evacuate the children out of the classrooms, were tied to chairs and burnt alive in front of their students. How can one eulogize for these teachers and sympathize with the parents who lost the children — the noor (light) of their eyes? Thinking of words, I have none.
The death of one person can impact a whole family and their memories remain forever in the minds of those who love them. Zeest Hassan ’17 shared, “My cousin’s 18 year old son, who was the only child, was shot thrice before he died. The mother was told to look through 50 dead bodies of children lying on the floor with cloth hiding their faces. She removed the cloth one by one from 49 children’s faces and the 50th one was her son. Life is not the same for the mother anymore and receiving justice won’t bring her son back.”
The Taliban said that they want Pakistan to feel pain as they felt pain due to the Pakistan Army’s operations against the terrorists in the tribal areas of the country that killed the families and children of Taliban fighters. Yes, Pakistan did feel the pain — it is a sorrow too large to bear. But the pain made Pakistan stronger; it made humanity more united against the barbarians.
Mariam Khan ’16 whose parents are from Peshawar shared her thoughts about the event.
“My memories of Peshawar are beautiful; it is a region that is simple and seemingly from a different era. The unfortunate reality is that it is also an area that is plagued by violence and conflict because of drones, drugs and warfare.” Khan further said, “I was completely shocked and heartbroken when I heard of the events that happened on December 16th. I feel so blessed to have such an intimate perception of the events and to have the support from members of the campus community and the Scott Center for Spiritual and religious life upon my arrival to campus.”
This flickering light of this candle at this vigil is not just the remembrance of the bloodshed, but it is a symbol of unity and support that the College shares with Pakistan, with all the parents in the world who lost their children and their loved ones due to terrorism. Children are children — whether they are civilians, children of the military, or the children of Taliban fighters — they deserve love and care, not bullets and life long trauma of witnessing inhumane violence. Rahman Baba, a famous poet from Peshawar said, “We are all one body. Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.”
Artwork by RUBI SAAVEDRA
NAINA QAYYUM '15 is from Chitral, Pakistan
(01/15/15 3:29am)
I first got into sneakers towards the end of middle school, when my friend Lucas and I would spend hours looking through Eastbay magazine (a kind of SkyMall for high school athletes) comparing the different shoes, picking out our favorites on each page. As I got older and able to do things like decide what clothes I wore, my interest in sneakers increased: I followed, and still do, the industry on the internet and Instagram, I pay attention to the relationships between athletes and the brands they endorse and generally try to rationalize the money and time I devote to footwear. I know when shoes release, where they will be available, and what clothes I would wear with them, should I be fortunate enough to snag a pair. I’m what’s generally called a Sneakerhead. It’s a labor of love.
Middlebury, it must be said, is not exactly an epicenter of this particular niche of popular culture. As a lifelong New Yorker, I’m used to not only having access to whatever the hell I want, but also a community of people who also want that thing and understand its place within a larger cultural context. In the remove of Middlebury, it can be hard to sustain an interest that falls outside the general flow of college life, be it political, culinary, or sartorial in nature. Below is a four-pack of reasons it sucks being a sneakerhead at Middlebury.
1. I’ll give you a hint: look outside. We have what, 10 weeks a year of nice weather, sprinkled amidst dreary fall rain, never-ending snow and gushing spring mud. Freakin mud has its own season up here. All things considered, Vermont is not particularly friendly to what’s on your feet. I’m not the kind of sneaker enthusiast who treats his collection like a curator at the Met treats old coins — I buy shoes to wear them. But I don’t want them to look like Sam Gamgee’s feet after one trip to the dining hall.
2. Nowhere to cop new shoes. Sneakers are distributed, much like everything else, according to demand. That means a store like Olympia Sports (located right by Hannaford’s), is going to stock only the most standard shoes, editions that Nike or Adidas can crank out a billion pairs of, ship to the Middleburys of the world, and know that they won’t have to restock the retailer for a nice long time. That’s not to say that the shoes sneakerheads covet are necessarily limited, but rather that the tastes of these enthusiasts trend towards models and editions other than the cheaper-by-the-dozen basics. As a result, one is forced to buy online. That means missing out on kicks that would be easy to get in-store (due to the massive internet reliance of sneakerheads living in places like Middlebury) or the deepest circle of sneaker hell: waiting for shipping to break in that fresh pair.
3. I’m broke. Ok that’s not specific to Middlebury, more of a general symptom of being a college student. Redeeming my High Life cans once a month gets me close to buying . . . a rack of High Life, but definitely not a new pair of Roshe Runs. With all the “Last bar night of the semester!”s, which are always followed quickly by “First bar night of the semester!”s, college “sponsored” events which one has to pay for, and all my massages courtesy of Benjamin Miller ’14.5, it’s always a matter of scraping things together. You say trivial, money-sucking addiction, I say participation in a vibrant, growing sub-culture. Whatever. But hey, if you’re feeling charitable, my graduation IS coming up, and my wishlist ain’t short. Let’s just move on.
4. People here don’t care about sneakers at all. Like any cultural phenomenon, the vitality of sneaker culture is ultimately grounded in the individuals that make up its community. It may seem weird to a lot of people, which is fine (trust me, I think a lot of stuff y’all are into is pretty weird), but amongst interested parties, shoes can be a pretty cool source of unity, debate, passion and even history. Walking into a sneaker store in SoHo or the Upper West Side is like walking into a miniature convention and promises to bring you into contact with a group of people who share this interest with you and have a vocabulary to discuss it. Middlebury has no end of intelligent, engaging people, but in a place its size, there isn’t likely to be a large constituency representing every last nook and cranny of popular culture. I’m sure other people have found the same to be true.
5. Finally, the disdain I receive from other students here regarding my footwear. Although most people can’t tell an Air Max 90 from a 95, which is cool, they do notice that I’ve got a pretty various rotation of sneakers. I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me, “Do you wear a different pair of shoes everyday?” or “What’s the point of having the same shoe in two different colors?” Obviously I don’t have a different pair of shoes for every day of the semester. It’s not so much the comments that bother me, but the condescension in peoples’ tones.
Of course, these experiences are truly inconsequential when compared to the homophobic, racist, and otherwise discriminatory aggressions many students at Middlebury face on a daily basis. This is a totally different kind of discussion. I simply mean to say that people here have a funny way of negating or belittling forms of cultural expression that are foreign to them. I certainly understand why some people would consider it shallow or materialistic to invest (in many senses of the word) so much in sneakers. Perhaps that understanding makes me self-conscious and prone to imagining derision from my peers. But ultimately, any aesthetic interest, be it shoes, photography or $100 Lulu Lemon yoga pants, is necessarily tied to a material object. In that sense, materialism is a disease all of us here at Middlebury share. If we can acknowledge that, while also working to increase our mindfulness and responsibility as consumers, we will find ourselves more capable of appreciating the myriad interests represented at this school.
(01/15/15 3:16am)
Je suis Charlie. These words echoed across France in cities across the country, and around the world, on Sunday Jan. 11, as people proudly protested Wednesday’s shocking terrorist attack on the headquarters of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
“Still no terrorist attacks in France? Wait — we’ve got until the end of January to present our best wishes,” says a gun-toting Islamic terrorist in a cartoon in Charlie Hebdo’s latest weekly issue. Tragically, this cartoon would predict the death of its artist, Stéphane Charbonnier, the editor of Charlie Hebdo, and nine of his staff when gunmen stormed the magazine’s weekly meeting shooting everyone inside. Among those killed included four veteran cartoonists regarded as “pillars of political satire in France,” according to The Guardian. Several people in the office were severely injured.
But the carnage wouldn’t stop there. Two police officers were killed as the gunmen exited the magazine offices, one shot at point-blank range. The next day, another police officer was killed in a Paris suburb and four hostages were killed in a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris on Friday. These deaths are also considered part of the attack.
The day of the initial attack, President François Hollande of France declared these shootings a certain act of terrorism, confirming the language of the Hebdo cartoon. And since that day, the French have shown the power of their own language: affirmations of “Je suis Charlie” pervading social media, storefronts and news outlets alike.
And on Sunday, “Je suis Charlie” was chanted the loudest when as many as 1.6 million people protested in cities across France, the largest demonstration in French modern history according to the Interior Ministry. Among the participants were President François Hollande of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain. These leaders joined hands in the march in Paris, demonstrating that solidarity against such acts of terrorism traverses international borders.
And in Bordeaux, the city where I have studied for the past six months, more than 100,000 people attended the protest, flooding the enormous plaza, Quinconces, and blocking up the surrounding city streets. There bearing signs and singing the Marseillaise were people from all walks of life and all ages: my host father even brought his five year old daughter to the event. My French friends all texted me to ask, “Are you going? Are you there?”
It was these signs, this mass exhibition of solidarity, that demonstrated to me that a momentous event was occurring. “Je suis Charlie” is more than a social media fad, more even than an outcry against terrorism. It is a defense of freedom of speech and a defense that, to me, seems to be producing incredible national unity in France across cultural borders.
Some American news outlets have critiqued that not everyone knows the type of satire — often provocative articles and cartoons targeting Islam — that Charlie Hebdo produced and if they did, there would be fewer declaring “Je suis Charlie.” I cannot speak to whether every French protester is well informed about Hebdo brand satire. But nevertheless, I believe their declaration deserves respect. No satire or political expression merits the response of terrorist attack. “Je suis Charlie” boldly argues that freedom of speech cannot and will not be silenced by such acts.
Watching the news in silence with my host family on Sunday evening, as images from the day’s protests blanketed every channel, I was further moved by this outpouring. I said nothing, but I looked at my host family with a new respect. They were a part of this people that was showing not fear but amazing strength in the face of terrorism. They had seized this moment of tragedy to defend one of their national values, the freedom of expression. As an editor of the Campus and a hopeful future journalist, this resonated with me.
One day later, I revisited Quinconces, the site of Bordeaux’s protest. On the central monument, a visual celebration of the Republic of France, remained several remnants of the previous day’s solidarity. One sign, a small black and white paper saying “Je suis Charlie,” held my eye. It was duct-taped high on the monument to a statue of a chicken spreading his wings. A call for freedom of speech taped to a symbol of the strength of France: I wished the sign would stay there for a long time to come.
Artwork by SARAH LAKE
EMILIE MUNSON '16 is from Cohasset, Mass.
(12/03/14 11:19pm)
I know that there are plenty of issues floating around just in time for holiday conversations with your politically extreme family members. So in anticipation of this inevitable reality, I have chosen to revive an old topic that has recently lost some of its steam: the minimum wage.
For those of you who don’t remember, there were two serious proposals put forth by the Democrats with regards to the minimum wage. The first idea was to raise the wage to $10.10 an hour, or by about 40 percent. The second was to more than double the wage to $15 dollars an hour. The idea behind this was to help minimum wage workers make it through a rough economy by increasing their take home pay. Well, that all sounds great. However, raising the minimum wage is harmful to both workers and, more often than not, to the small businesses and franchises that employ them. Economically speaking, there are a few similar yet slightly different ways of viewing this issue from both the business’s and the worker’s point of view.
Let’s start with the business’s point of view. There is one assumption I am going to make here that shouldn’t really surprise anybody: businesses want to maximize their profits. So, the minimum wage is raised. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) cheers as business owners and CFOs scramble to figure out what they are going to do. The basic concept that needs to be grasped is that the value of the marginal product of a worker’s labor (VMPL) will equal the wage rate at the point of optimal employment (when profit is maximized). Also, due to the concept of diminishing marginal returns, VMPL is decreasing as more workers are hired. Therefore, if the wage increases, the new level of optimal employment will reflect a decrease in workers. To put it more simply, workers will get fired. That’s a very microeconomic way of thinking about the minimum wage.
The more macroeconomic description utilizes the tried and true concepts of supply and demand. The minimum wage is what economists call a “price floor.” In other words, it is a legally set lower limit on wages. This lower limit is put in place to stop markets from adjusting to the true equilibrium price, which is almost always below the price-floor. This causes there to be more labor supplied than labor demanded, and therefore there is a surplus of labor.
Yet a third way that businesses could view a raise in the wage is simply as an additional cost of production, which will most likely be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. So businesses face a choice: whether to fire workers, increase prices, or take lower profits. Duke University wondered how the business community would react, and in 2014 conducted a poll of CFOs, asking them how they would react to a higher minimum wage. Over 80 percent said they would lay off workers. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that a raise in the minimum wage would cost 500,000 jobs. So instead of “giving America a raise,” #raisethewage would give many Americans an effective income of $0. Pair that with our abysmal job market, with labor force participation at a 35-year low and the increased costs to business due to the new healthcare law, and the outlook isn’t stellar.
The drawbacks don’t stop there. A higher minimum wage would disproportionately harm young workers (16-25), especially young minority workers. This is because by raising the minimum wage, the risk towards the business of hiring a younger worker has increased. After the last minimum wage hike in 2007, the Cato Institute found that unemployment in young workers jumped from 15 percent to 25 percent. So for those of you hoping to find a summer job flipping burgers, a wage hike could set those plans on the back burner.
A minimum wage hike would have very different effects in different parts of the country. This is due to differences between regional costs of living. A $10.10 minimum wage would disproportionally hurt workers in areas with lower costs of living, because the VMPL there is less than in areas like New York City. Moreover, if one area — let’s say Seattle — decides to raise their minimum wage to not $10.10 but instead $15 (and the areas around the city don’t), then Seattle is going to see increased unemployment. This is increasingly unfortunate because the workers who got laid off probably can’t afford to commute to the suburbs each day for work. So, how are they better off? They are not. With the macroeconomic climate as uncertain as it is, “giving America a raise” could be detrimental for many businesses that already operate on thin profit margins.
Finally, I know everybody reading this has been thinking, “Well, what about big business?” It’s important to note that according to the Small Business Administration over 99.7 percent of employers are small businesses, and over 64 percent of private-sector job growth comes from small businesses. Even so, the remaining 0.3 percent of employers who allegedly are exploiting their workers need to be addressed. The American Enterprise Institute has done some work on this very subject of CEO-employee pay gap. They decided to use the parent company of Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut as an example, and found that even if all executives took a 100% pay cut, wages for their 400,000+ workers would only increase by five cents an hour. So would it be better for the board of directors to give all workers a nominal pay raise, or secure the best possible executives to run the company? I’ll let you ponder that one.
(12/03/14 10:35pm)
On Nov. 20 to 22, the Theatre Department presented its second faculty production of the semester, Englishman Snoo Wilson’s 1973 play, Vampire, in the Seeler Studio Theater.
Vampire is a play about ... well, no one really knows. And indeed, after an hour and a half of brash sexual exploration, one very unexpected satanic baby birthed by Mary (yes, that Mary), a terribly profane talking ox, fights between Karl Jung and Sigmund Freud, a maniacally laughing Charles Dickens and two biker boys in underwear, the majority of the audience walked away from the play with at least one brow raised – or, more likely, furrowed. Forget linear plotting and traditional character development – Vampire spans three time periods and locations, moving from 19th century Wales to World War I era England to a rebellious biker group in 1960’s London.
Over his prolific forty-year career, Wilson wrote plays, screenplays and novels of political farce, the arcane, the occult and the irrational. Vampire is certainly a Gothic example of the last three.
Professor of Theatre Cheryl Faraone has enjoyed a more than 30-year friendship and professional partnership with Wilson, undertaking 10 productions of his plays in that time, many in collaboration with Professor of Theatre Richard Romagnoli.
“The world according to Snoo Wilson is wild, bawdy, fantastical, smart and utterly resilient – this writer does not trade in despair or cynicism,” Faraone said in her Director’s Note. “We need him now.”
It is important to understand that though the term “vampire” may today immediately conjure images of glittering Robert Pattinsons, hunks with fangs or even more traditional visions of Dracula, “vampire” takes on a much deeper and more widely applicable meaning in the context of the play.
“Vampire ... peers at the ways in which various social constructs (religion, psychology, propaganda, fanatic subcultures) indoctrinate, oppress, and turn us into the living dead: ‘vampirization,’” Evann Normandin ’14.5 wrote in her Dramaturge’s Note.
Normandin, who acted in the play as a part of her senior theatre work, also took on the role of a dramaturge, a professional who deals with the research and development of a play for a company.
“I started out in the first weeks doing a lot of research for each period,” she said, “As we went on, I explored a lot of the really smart references that Snoo included in the play. I think we’ve come to as full an understanding as we could have hoped at this point, and if we had kept working on it, we would probably keep finding things out and the exploration could go on forever, which is what’s so cool about it.”
Chelsea Melone ’15 also acted in Vampire as her senior work. In addition to exploring her three main characters, Melone worked with Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre and Guest Artist Bill Army ’07 to develop the four accents needed for her roles, learning the international phonetic alphabet and participating in private sessions with the theatre alumnus as well as larger sessions designed to help the entire cast develop their many accents.
Melone’s characters, all part of a strong female lineage separated by time and place, offered cohesion to the otherwise erratic development of the play’s three acts.
The first character came in the form of Joy, the sexually curious daughter of a staunch evangelical preacher who was played with wit, humor and gravity by Nicholas Hemerling ’14.5. Joy’s desire for independence and her promiscuous behavior lead her to a séance parlor and brothel, where she is a highly sexualized spiritual medium who ultimately services – horror of horrors – her father, who is shot to death in the very coffin in which he is having sex with his daughter.
In the most impressively staged scene of the production, Fight Director Adam Milano ’15 organizes a suspenseful gun battle in which every eclectic character in the brothel scene – the proprietress of the séance room, the Chinese photographer, the innocent soldier - meets their maker, except for Joy, who brushes off the disturbing encounter with her father with little more than a sigh. In the end, she wields the offending pistol in self-defense and casually struts out of the darkened room in the soldier’s uniform and a pair of sunglasses. The scene is carefully staged to maximize tension and visual drama, which heightens as Joy’s father is killed mid-thrust and does not disappear until Joy is the only person still living in the scene.
Though Joy’s granddaughter, Sarah, is alive half a century after her oppressed ancestor, she too faces the restrictions of proper World War I era British society, forced to watch a cricket match in the confines of a tight corset while participating in the proper speech expected of a lady in upper-crust British life. Disturbed by her status as an object better seen then heard, Sarah, too, searches for freedom from her role as a woman through the Suffragette movement.
Faraone asked Resident Scenic and Lighting Designer Hallie Zieselman to include photographs pertaining to each scene flashed on the wall to add extra context to the play. The images provided reference points and additional information about each period, especially to aid comprehension of some of the longer, more complex speeches within the piece. This effect was especially helpful when British propagandist posters appeared above each side of the audience, with phrases like “Your Chums are Fighting - Why Aren’t You?” and “Women of Britain Say Go,” offering a real-world visual reference during Normandin’s impassioned speech as Anthea, a young Englishwoman calling for young men to enlist.
In the final act, Melone portrays the most contemporary descendent of Joy and Sarah, Dwight, who thrives in the anti-establishment of the punk subculture filled with gender subversion, punk-rock music and an emotional and theatrical brand of religion. Dwight’s fearless speech includes snappy one-liners like “Heaven is where the homosexual fascists go for a bit on the side.”
“In theory that should have been the freest period of all, but in fact it’s just as trapping, and in a sense, the entrapment is the supposed freedom,” Faraone said. “We expect the oppression in the beginning, but we don’t necessarily expect it now.”
Melone’s acting soared in this production as she tackled the challenge of portraying three distinct characters in one show. Each was distinctive, engaging and original.
“I think Joy, the first character I play, is the most free,” Melone said. “Dwight definitely uses sex as power, especially with the bikers, but I find that I think she’s more plagued by sex and religion than the other two. It’s more of a burden to her then anything else, so it’s not as freeing as it is with Joy.”
Also tying together the acts of the play were coffins, crafted of different sizes and colors for each scene to further evoke the themes of death and vampirization, especially when famed psychologist Sigmund Freud, played by Hemerling, climbed into his own coffin, closed the lid while still talking, and was only silenced by the stake driven into his death box.
“The fact that Freud’s teachings and words literally get in the coffin and die, sort of leaving Jung to be the new Freud, suggest that this process will happen again,” Thomas Scott ’14.5 said. “It’s a cycle of structures and philosophies rising and then dying. There will always be vampires to take those things away but something else will always replace them, which is the way of life. I think for me that sums up the theme of the show.”
Hemerling deftly tackled his roles, which ranged from a passionate religious man who has sex with his daughter in a brothel to a slightly deranged Sigmund Freud, proving himself as a standout in every scene.
Odd scenes appeared intermittently throughout the play, including a Nativity scene of such vivid imagery that it will be difficult to view the Biblical tale in quite the same way ever again. Switching the donkey with a profane ox, the three Kings with Sigmund Freud and Karl Jung squabbling over psychology and the baby Jesus with a bright red Satan baby, delivered by Jung, I am afraid I cannot try to offer an explanation for this interlude in the middle of the play. Entertaining, yes. Explicable, no. But to try to explain a play like Vampire does not do it justice, because it is not about extracting a plot or “meaning.”
“I don’t think that religion is the butt of any joke, but perhaps ascribing too much meaning to anything is,” Leah Sarbib ’15.5 said. “In the Nativity scene with Freud and Jung you have religion, you have high intellectualism and then you have the ox, who basically thinks that everyone else is super dumb for trying to say that anything really means anything more profound than it is. I don’t think that Snoo would say that religion is meaningless, but that everything is kind of meaningless if you try to ascribe too much meaning to anything. That’s dangerous, and that might be the biggest vampire of all.”
Faraone agreed that Vampire is critical of institutional and societal restraints that stifle originality, expression and personal fulfillment.
“Making anything your God is dangerous,” she said. “Defining yourself by the tenants of any ideology and using that as a straightjacket rather than finding your way through something without losing yourself in the process is sometimes the easier choice. Wilson slashes away the things that we have made vampirize us, because things only have power if you allow them to have power over you.”
As is perhaps now apparent, Vampire is not an easy play to produce. Under the capable direction of Faraone, the phenomenal acting, enticing costumes and thrilling visual drama stood as a testament to the hard work of every member of the cast and crew. Though I may not fully understand the play, I can certainly say that I am still thinking about it days later.
“It’s evocative theatre, it’s not necessarily the kind of theatre where you walk out with answers,” Scott said. “About halfway through I started to embrace that, and even though I didn’t know what it was about, that’s exactly the point.”
(12/03/14 10:30pm)
The terms “suicide” and “comedy” generally do not go well together, but Protocol, an entirely student-produced play that ran in the Hepburn Zoo from Nov. 20-22, managed to merge these two themes beautifully. As the audience followed the complicated lives of a group of twenty-something-year-old friends, it became clear that even in the darkest of times, it is perfectly okay to laugh.
The play, written by Erica Furgiuele ’15 and directed by Hannah Johnston ’15.5, begins on a rather heavy note as the troubled and sarcastic main character Harry, played by Boone McCoy-Crisp ’16, attempts suicide. Yet even as he pops pill after pill into his mouth, gazing intently into the audience with sorrowful eyes, his monologue gives way to bits of light comedy.
Life, Harry proclaims, is “one beautiful but deadly mathematical curve towards oblivion.” He then remarks, “Man, I should have been a poet. But I gave it up for my real love … auditing. I just do limericks on the side sometimes.”
This type of humor becomes Harry’s trademark throughout the play, which follows him and his friends dealing with the aftermath of his suicide attempt. As playwright Furgiuele explained, “The comedic mask that he puts on is how he hides his pain from other people.” Through moments of insecurity, tenderness and frustration, McCoy-Crisp’s poignant portrayal of Harry’s struggle to shed his mental-case identity and navigate his personal life showcased the incredible range of his acting skill.
Following the dark exposition, the rest of the play takes on a lighter note as Harry and his ex-girlfriend Meg, played by Joelle Mendoza-Etchart ’15, rekindle their complicated romance and their friends, Elle, played by Furgiuele, and Arthur, played by Michael McCann ’15, prepare for their wedding. Along the way, Meg seeks life advice from her witty, energetic and elderly chess partner Pierre, played by Jack DesBois ’15, fends off Elle’s incessant meddling in her love life and butts heads with Harry’s passive-aggressive brother Cole, played by Jabari Matthew ’17, who does not approve of her re-entrance into Harry’s life.
The flurry of intersecting events and relationships made for tightly packed scenes, which jumped from hospital rooms to coffee shops to a disastrous Christmas party involving burnt quiche. Through it all, Protocol provided a delightful and, at times, painfully accurate depiction of reality. As each character’s quirks, flaws and inner conflicts were exposed, emotionally charged confrontations and temporary falling-outs inevitably followed.
Furgiuele crafted the play with the multifaceted nature of humanity in mind.
“The most beautiful and the ugliest parts of us are inextricably linked,” she said. “When you know someone, you need to embrace all parts of them, no matter how hard it is. All of these characters are deeply flawed, but also very beautiful and very wonderful to behold.”
The actors, whom director Johnston described as “naturally funny,” delivered their performances with both honesty and likeability, fully enveloping themselves in the struggles and mindsets of their respective characters. Mendoza-Etchart’s earnest portrayal of Meg, who wanders through life with a fair amount of uncertainty, struck an affectionate chord with the audience, particularly as she anxiously voiced her inner monologue in preparation for her first post-breakup date with Harry. Meanwhile, the relaxed chemistry between actors McCann and Matthew set the foundation for scenes of comedic gold, namely whilst husband-to-be Arthur and his best man, Cole, frantically cobble together their wedding speeches.
The audience enthusiastically received DesBois’s performance as Pierre – Meg’s nursing home friend, chess partner and unofficial life adviser.
With his thick French accent, energetic stage presence and lush white hair, which let out puffs of baby power each time he kissed Meg animatedly on the cheek, Pierre provided a charming and hilarious distraction from the strife of the young adults. His role ultimately proved to be crucial to the plot, after his sage advice convinces Meg to reconsider her actions toward Harry.
From the director’s chair, Johnston struggled to set the right tone for the production.
“How do I make this a play that people know that they can laugh at, and at the same time not make light of the serious stuff going on?” she recalled asking herself.
In one of the most serious moments of the play, Harry confronts Meg about the empty medicine cabinet and questions her trust in him in the wake of his suicide attempt. McCoy-Crisp and Mendoza-Etchart executed the shifting dynamics within this scene brilliantly, creating a dramatic turning point within the story.
Furgiuele found this emotional interaction the most difficult to write.
“It’s easy to be funny and make jokes, but it’s hard to say what you mean because words are these flimsy things,” she said.
Despite the dark premise of the play – suicide, heartbreak and the severance of ties – a sense of hope and possibility pervades at the end, with everyone putting their disputes aside to celebrate Elle and Arthur’s wedding. In following Meg and Harry’s fumbled attempts to redefine their relationship through shared blueberry muffins, spilled coffees and difficult conversations, the audience gains a newfound appreciation for love and companionship.
“I hope audience members take away the idea that even though love is really difficult and most of the time doesn’t work out, it’s still worth trying for,” Johnston said.
The ultimate goal, she added, was “to make people laugh and think and go home a little happier than before.”
By striking the right balance between tears and smiles, melancholy and lightheartedness, this beautifully crafted suicide comedy managed to do just that.
(12/03/14 6:11pm)
Students, faculty and staff walked out of classrooms and offices on Monday, Dec. 1 to stand in solidarity with Ferguson, Mo. in light of the recent grand jury decision not to indict former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. The crowd of approximately 100 people gathered in front of Mead Chapel to listen as Rubby Valentin Paulino ’18 read the names of victims of police brutality, including Brown, Tamir Rice and others.
Paulino said, “1,100 miles. 1,100 miles away a black boy was murdered. 1,100 miles from Ferguson, here we stand. 1,100 miles away from Ferguson, here I stand. Just as brown, just as young, just as dangerous to America.” After a moment of silence, the crowd raised their hands in the now-famous “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” gesture.
The walkout took place at 1:01 p.m. and occurred in conjunction with other walkouts happening on college and university campuses across the country at 12:01 p.m. Central Time, the time Brown was shot. A week before the walkout, on Nov. 24, a Missouri grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Brown. The jury’s decision was the impetus for the demonstrations across the country on Monday.
The mood was somber throughout the event; however, smiles broke out at one point, when Paulino told the attendees to hug the person standing next to them.
“Take the time to look at those around you. Come on, give someone a hug! These are your friends and allies,” Paulino said. “Look to each other for places of comfort and unity. Look to each other for change. We can rewrite our own history and you being here today gives me no doubt about it.”
The walkout on the College campus comes amidst several other events designed to facilitate discussion and raise awareness of the issues in play with the Ferguson decision. On Oct. 22, over 50 students and several faculty members walked across campus in a silent march against police brutality to mark the National Day to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation, which held particular significance given August’s events in Ferguson. On Nov. 25, Assistant Professor of Sociology Jamie McCallum and Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology Rebecca Tiger held a discussion on the grand jury decision in the Brown case.
“The discussion on the 25th was to allow people space and time to allow people to share their visceral feelings about the non-indictment verdict. There was no agenda planned,” McCallum said. “Many more people came than we anticipated and we had a good discussion. At the end of it there was some productive planning that happened, but ultimately it was a meeting to come and share thoughts and sentiments.”
Although the walkouts on Monday were the initiative of the national Ferguson Action Network, the event held at the College was not a part of any student organization. Paulino said the event emerged organically. Thanksgiving break did not leave much time for reflection on the grand jury decision, according to Paulino, and he wanted students to have a chance to mark the occasion upon their return to campus from break.
“I wanted to do more for my community,” he said.
Word quickly spread through social media over the weekend. “I invited 10 people and by the end of Sunday night there were 800 invites and 150 people who RSVP’d, so that was powerful,” Paulino said. “The most powerful part for me was watching people put their hands up. I directed everyone to use the time to reflect, look around and be in that space.” He said asking attendees to hug was intentional to emphasize the human interaction and collaboration needed for any movement or activism.
Paulino said the members of the College community who attended were not just students, which came as a surprise but a happy one nonetheless. “I walked up to the scene and basically thought, ‘Oh my God, there are adults here,’” he said.
A challenging and sobering part for Paulino prior to the event was sorting through the list of black victims of police brutality to create a list to read in front of Mead Chapel.
“There were a lot, and how do you pick which names to use?” Paulino said. “There is a sea of people. There is a website that lists black murders by police and specifies that they were unarmed cases — they update it every time somebody dies.”
Rod Abhari ’15 said he would not typically attend a walkout or protest, but that the events surrounding the Michael Brown decision made Monday’s event different.
“I realized that joining people here in solidarity is important for my own spiritual sake, realizing that we as a part of something larger can take action into our hands,” Abhari said.
He approached his professor to inform her of the walkout beforehand and was surprised by the response.
“When I talked to my professor about it, she actually proposed it to the class and our entire class walked out, a seminar class of 10 people,” he said.
Another walkout attendee, Aashna Aggarwal ’16, said that as an international student, the events surrounding the death of Michael Brown showed a different side of the U.S.
“When I first heard about the decision, I was really shocked — I’m from India and every time we talk about or hear about the U.S., it is the country where you want to be or the country that’s got it right,” she said. “I went to the meeting on Tuesday, and then I went to Burlington for the protest. I feel this is something we can change and have an effect on. I’m happy to show my support in whatever way I can.”
David Fuchs ’16 attended the walkout and said that he wanted to be there because he fit the typical demographic of the College’s student population.
“I’m a white kid from the suburbs from an upper-middle class family, and I feel that everything about my identity and my life experiences is built on a historical system of privilege and oppression that has created the spaces that I’ve lived in and created the reality that I was told to see. I feel that that reality is just as implicated as any other in this struggle,” he said. “So it’s important for someone like me to be here because it shows to other people who might identify with me and my demographic that they are just as implicated in this, too.”
When asked if the death of Michael Brown had opened eyes to police brutality for college students, McCallum said, “I think a lot of people grow up believing that we live in a place in which police aren’t allowed to kill people and get off without a trial, and that’s not true. I think students experience a moment of cognitive dissonance when they grow up thinking we live in a democracy, and this seems like an instance of failed democracy — what does it mean for them as students, American citizens, and young people interested in social justice?”
McCallum was not teaching a course at the time of the walkout, but said he talked to several faculty members who, like Abhari’s professor, gave permission for their students to attend the walkout.
A walkout’s significance, according to McCallum, comes from the disruption to the normal routine, whether one is an employee or a student. “The way people have power is to withhold their contribution to society, whatever that is. If you’re a worker, it means withholding your labor. If you’re a student, it means withholding your obedience or the ordinary course of your day to promote business as usual,” he said. “A walkout is a disruption of the ordinary life that is otherwise apathetic. And as a disruption, therefore, it has some power.”
The discussions will continue with a Ferguson deliberation event on Thursday, Dec. 4 at 4:30 p.m in the Warner Hemicycle to plan future action on campus.
“We began this semester with the tragedy of the shooting. We end the semester with the tragedy of the non-indictment and the ongoing police violence in Ferguson,” McCallum said. “So I think and hope this forum on Thursday will be to help people process the last three months of the issue.”
(11/20/14 12:43am)
The student production A Small, Good Thing, which ran from Nov. 13-15 in the Hepburn Zoo, grappled with topics of death, sorrow and despair as based on Raymond Carver’s 1989 short story of the same name. A piece of devised theater, the play was built from the evolving visions of the four-person cast, director Tosca Giustini ’15.5 and other contributing members of the theatre community.
During the intimate, hour-long performance, the audience of around 20 people sat in a rectangular arrangement that closely resembled a waiting room, complete with a table of books and magazines and a fake door in the corner. The play begins unconventionally, as Kathleen Gudas ’16.5 – presumably a woman trying to pass time before an appointment – picks up a book from her seat in the audience and starts to read aloud.
Scenes of a mother ordering a cake for her son’s birthday, a car hitting the boy on his way to school and his mother rushing him to the hospital quickly unfold through Gudas’ expressive narration. Meanwhile, the mother, played by Melissa MacDonald ’15, and father, acted by Eduardo Danino-Beck ’15, appear, bringing the story to life through emotionally charged dialogue and interpretive physical interactions. The chameleon of the cast, Kevin Benscheidt ’17, continuously crosses paths with them – first as a baker, and then as various doctors and nurses.
As the parents deal with heartbreaking hospital reports and mysterious, harassing phone calls that repeatedly reference their comatose son Scotty, the narrator’s words provide an engaging backdrop that seamlessly connect one difficult scene after another. In certain moments, Gudas chose to implicate herself within the story through reactionary facial expressions and physical proximity to characters. In others, she served as a more passive backdrop, watching the action unfold from a distance.
The waiting room-style setup created an interactive audience experience as actors ran between chairs during action-packed scenes, placing themselves within reach of audience members as they gathered props from under seats. Furthermore, the closeness served to envelop audience members within the emotional intensity of the story. With each facial expression, gesture and uttered word on full display, it was easy to sense the mother’s anguish, the father’s despair and the narrator’s increasing emotional investment in their heart-wrenching story.
A minimal use of props helped to further showcase the cast’s stellar acting skills. The child, Scotty, is represented by a white wooden box. MacDonald and Danino-Beck interact with it heavily throughout the play, caressing it, picking it up and gazing at it lovingly. During a hospital check-up scene, MacDonald, Danino-Beck and Benscheidt merge their bodies to mimic the sound and motion of a steady heartbeat in an evocative human representation of a stethoscope. In addition, during the many phone exchanges, the actors used no props, but rather conversed with each other from opposite ends of the stage. It is only during the last scene that one of the few real props appears: a plate of baked goods.
“I wanted the food to be literal rather than representative as an indication that the fantasy of the story is dying down,” Giustini said.
In these final moments, as the parents mourn Scotty’s recent passing, the meaning of the play’s title becomes clear as the baker wisely notes, “Eating is a small, good thing in a time like this.” The parents, who have barely eaten since Scotty was rushed to the hospital, scarf down the treats.
Despite the sad storyline, the cast tried to avoid “deadly” melodrama by injecting bits of light humor into the play. One hospital check-up features Benscheidt as a bumbling doctor with a ridiculously oversized mustache, which provoked laughter from the audience. Later, the wife walks into a bakery and makes the laughably obvious remark, “It smells like a bakery in here. Doesn’t it smell like a bakery in here, Howard?”
Improvisation of movement and dialogue played a key role in shaping the play. In addition, the cast worked with different divisions of the original text, switched around roles and experimented with various props and settings until up to two weeks before the first performance.
Giustini enjoyed the visual opportunities her directorial role provided.
“Directing is kind of like painting,” she said. “Your actors are your colors. Being a performer, it’s picking the different colors of different moments. But when you’re the director, the painter, you’re putting the colors together and making them dance together.”
The dark material of A Small, Good Thing proved to be the most challenging aspect.
“How do we as twenty- or twenty-one-year-olds present that we know what it’s like to lose a child?” Giustini asked. “You can’t do that. It’s impossible, and it’s kind of awkward sometimes.”
As the impactful performances, powerfully arranged scenes and poignant narration demonstrated, meaningful storytelling surrounding difficult topics is achievable. Giustini hopes that the story will at least lead audience members to a simple but significant realization.
“Even in the worst possible situation, you still have to eat,” she said.
Within this starkly moving piece of devised theater, then, the value lies not in some profound, overarching life lesson, but rather in its stunningly honest depiction of human sorrow and misfortune.
(11/19/14 11:55pm)
Two Saturdays ago I saw Joey Bada$$, a 19 year-old rapper from East Flatbush, Brooklyn, perform in New York City at Irving Plaza. The concert was the first of two New York shows marking the conclusion of Joey’s U.S. tour, a crazy run of 36 shows in 46 days, and it was absolutely bonkers.
The night began with solid performances by Kirk Knight, CJ Fly and other members of the Pro Era collective, which Joey Bada$$ heads, before the headliner took the stage to an enormous roar from the crowd. There’s a thing that happens at hip-hop shows, which is unique to them in my experience, when the opening acts are over and the audience senses that the performer they’re really there to see is about to take the mic: the mass of people, mostly male, already packed into an insanely tight throng somehow manages to condense itself even further in a frenetic push to be closer to the action. As Joey’s voice flowed through the speakers from off stage, a broiling whisper of the opening lines of “Summer Knights,” the intro to his enormously acclaimed debut mixtape 1999, the crowd at Irving Plaza slammed forward, nearly wiping me off my feet.
Hip-hop, more than any other life musical performance, feeds off of the connection between artist and audience. There’s usually one dude, maybe two, on the stage, with a mic and a DJ in the background, and that’s it. Rappers use a host of tricks and devices to maintain the audience’s energy, and Joey’s mastery of those tools was on full display that night. He controlled the room for close to two hours by hyping up the crowd between songs, leading a round of the always popular game “f--- that side” (go ahead and Youtube “f--- that side hip hop show”), and breaking off his own flow to let us scream the words to lyrics that have become as meaningful to us as they undoubtedly are to him.
Early in his performance he told us (paraphrasing here) that he had been looking forward to this show for weeks, and since it was his return home, he wanted to make sure that this New York show was the dopest of the whole tour. If you want to get a crowd of New York hip-hop fans amped up, a good way to do so is to challenge them to prove that they’re liver, more energetic, and can smoke more weed than the rest of the country.
After his last song, Joey addressed the crowd a final time, and told us something totally unlike anything I’ve ever heard at a rap concert. Joey’s first studio album, titled B4.DA.$$, also the name of the tour, is due out very soon (although it doesn’t have an official release date yet), and through radio appearances, magazine articles, and features on other rappers songs, it is clear that his backers are doing their best to push Young Badass into the mainstream. Joey spoke to that at the close of his set, telling us that this tour was special to him because it gave him one last chance to play small venues where he could connect with the fans that had been following him from the beginning. He told us that starting pretty soon there wouldn’t be many shows like this one. He told us that although we’d be able to see him, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to see us as well. It was almost like he was telling us goodbye.
It was actually a really moving moment. We think of entertainers as being on a non-stop, furious fight to the top, seeking maximum exposure by growing their fan base to its largest possible extent. In an era when fame is commonly, and accurately, calculated by number of Twitter followers, growing the brand has become the artist’s endgame. Joey Bada$$ is no different. He’s got real talent as a lyricist and as a performer, and he has the kind of ASAP Rocky/Danny Brown charisma that catches the attention of casual fans and record executives alike. He’s going to be a star. His acknowledgment of that fact at the end of his set was not boastful nor was it an apology, but almost like a gentle warning.
On some level he was also talking to his homies on stage, the motley members of the Pro Era. The group is essentially a bunch of friends who grew up together and grew up rapping together. Imagine knowing that this passion that you developed throughout your life was going to bring you to fortune and fame that you couldn’t possibly share with the people with whom you shared that passion. Imagine watching one of your best friends stand on the edge of stardom and know that he’s going to a place where you won’t ever really be able to join him. That’s not to say that the other member of Pro Era aren’t talented, some of them really are. But there’s a difference between being the Man and being part of the team.
It’s a tired point that in our culture, we crave total access to celebrities. Hip-hop culture is no different. It’s not enough to see the music videos anymore; we want to see the behind the scenes footage while looking at Instagram photos from the set. Anybody with enough time on their hands can troll a rapper on Twitter until they get some kind of response. With that kind of access comes a higher degree of polishing, a constant image creation and maintenance that can never let down its guard. There’s money to be made every time an artist presses send. Jay Z told us he wasn’t a business man, he was a business, man, back in 2005, and it’s far truer today than it was then. I really appreciated Joey Bada$$ taking a moment to connect face to face with his hometown supporters, the listeners who have given him the credibility and the capital to become something larger than he ever could have dreamed. We’ve been with him since before the money (B4.DA.$$). The first stop of his European tour was Tuesday in Scotland. Joey Bada$$ is about to become a business, man.
(11/19/14 11:53pm)
We are in a different place than we were last time. During the last public divestment from fossil fuels campaign, that is. Personally, as a first-year last year, the word “divestment” seemed taboo on this campus and I could not fully wrap my head around it. On the one hand, it was sullied because of its connection to previous activist events and a strong, but divisive, campaign that rocked the campus the year before.
However, whenever I spoke with students about the idea of divestment or related issues, we could almost always agree it was an important step to take. In fact, in a student survey administered by the Student Government Association last year 70 percent of student respondents agreed that Middlebury should not be invested in the fossil fuel industry.
Throughout the year I participated in the Socially Responsible Investment Club (SRI), which successfully held a weeklong event with speakers from the business and financial sectors. Additionally, we worked behind the scenes speaking with administrators, Investure (Middlebury’s money manager) and the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees to figure out how we can better invest our endowment in a way that retains comparable returns while considering environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors.
The necessity of divestment from fossil fuels, however, continued to haunt me and many others in SRI as we realized a saddening truth: we were letting our perception of the last divestment campaign cloud our understanding of, and commitment to, the plain and simple goal itself: divestment from fossil fuels.
The Sunday Night Group (SNG), an environmental group here on campus, has also been working to reboot the divestment campaign. One of several active first-years in SNG Hazel Millard ’18 explains why she was drawn to join the efforts:
“As a senior in high school, I applied to Middlebury College because I wanted to be a member of an institution that was thinking about the immediate and global environment. As a freshman in college, I joined SNG because I wanted to be part of a community on this campus that wanted to impact change.”
Divesting Middlebury’s endowment clearly is the next step. On the brochures I read last year, the claims of “carbon neutrality by 2016” and “one of the most sustainable campuses in the United States” encouraged me to learn more. A logical addition would be “divested from the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies.”
We, SRI and SNG, have joined forces in pursuit of divestment and ask that the students, faculty, staff, alumni and administration shed any preconceived notions about what divestment means and see it for what it is. It is too important not to.
Divestment means taking ownership over our collective future and not abiding by the status quo of the fossil-fuel economy. It means acknowledging that our reliance on and consumption of fossil fuels is causing damage to the climate and marginalized populations around the world. It means having the audacity to envision a sustainable future and harness our power as students to the fullest extent possible to send a message to politicians, markets and the broader community that we must divest from fossil fuels and invest in the foundations of a healthy economy.
Much has changed in the last two years. We as student activists are collectively stronger and bound by a set of principles for this new movement. Additionally, the national movement has progressed tremendously. Cities, foundations and other colleges and universities, such as Pitzer and Stanford, have already committed to divestment. Investment literature has continued to prove that socially responsible investments that screen out fossil fuel companies have higher risk-adjusted returns.
So we ask that you sign the petition to divest Middlebury’s endowment from the top 200 publicly-traded fossil fuel companies (go/divestmidd) and put an orange square on your backpack in solidarity with Divest Midd. Become an active ally in this movement and help us encourage President Liebowitz to not pass up this opportunity to establish his legacy as an important leader in this movement.
We can do better. We can claim our future together and work to make sure that it is marked not by the consequences of our passivity, but by our adherence to a more just, environmentally sound and ultimately prosperous economy and society. For this, we must see clearly: go fossil free, divest.
(11/19/14 11:47pm)
After months of speculation, the College announced our 17th president on Tuesday — Dr. Laurie Patton, the current dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Duke University. In last week’s editorial, we laid out the qualities we wished to see in our next president, and in all of these areas, Patton delivers.
In terms of academics, Patton’s extensive background with the liberal arts is her highest qualification. We called for a president who knows the importance of teaching and has experience with campus affairs at a residential college. Patton has both in spades. We also called for a president with fundraising experience. Patton has raised over $300 million for financial aid, student initiatives and professorships in her time at Duke. With this experience, she also demonstrated her commitment to socio-economic diversity. As our first female president in 214 years, she is a visible embodiment of diversity at the administrative level. Moreover, her responses to questions on diversity indicate that she is committed to tackling challenges around diversity at all levels on campus.
With the Middlebury brand in mind, Patton is also an excellent choice for her global orientation. As the College continues to expand its offerings abroad and refine its pitch on international studies and intercultural experiences, Patton will need to oversee the expanding programs and to emphasize our brand as it evolves. She brings impressive cultural competency to the table, and her knowledge of seven languages, background in translation, extensive travels and studies abroad make her ideally suited to the task at hand. Moreover, Patton will take the helm as the College continues to think through its structure in terms of our schools abroad and Monterey, and she seems to have the excitement and the savvy to do so.
The fact that Patton will be the College’s first female president cannot be understated. Patton is a visible example of Middlebury walking the walk — showing that our values around diversity and equality are more than just words. We commend the search committee not only for selecting such a highly qualified candidate, but also for moving the College forward in its commitment to diversity at the administrative level. Patton’s personal commitment to access and diversity of all types, and desire to move past empty gestures of inclusion, stand out, particularly in conjunction with her fundraising priorities and emphasis on need-blind admission.
In her introductory video, “On Working with Students,” Patton mentioned her desire to get to know students, be available on campus and hold regular, open forums. She also discussed student advisees she had at Duke who helped her keep the pulse on the student voice. We would love to see this practice continue at Middlebury next year. We at the Campus want to be the first to welcome Patton and are excited to start a student-president relationship based on communication and transparency.
We challenge Patton to take charge on a number of issues that will be pressing upon her arrival. The first area is the College’s town-gown relationship. Under President Liebowitz, the College made a number of strong commitments to the town — namely underwriting the construction of the Cross Street bridge, supporting local economic development and funding new municipal buildings. Recent off-campus parties have threatened this relationship, however, and it is clear that Patton will have a lot on her plate as the College considers how best to engage the broader Middlebury community.
On campus, the president needs to be an effective advocate for issues that the student body cares about deeply and push the faculty to be open to new ideas when defining a liberal arts education. Using the failed internships for credit bill as an example, we need a president who will mirror student interest in experiential learning opportunities and will bridge the gap between faculty and the administration.
Finally, in her opening speech, Patton referenced the College’s commitment to environmental stewardship. Given that Patton has less experience in this realm, we hope that Patton will get up to speed quickly and throw her support behind the College’s forthcoming sustainability initiatives. Environmental leadership, in addition to our global focus, is an essential part of what makes Middlebury unique.
There is much to be done in the coming years to help Middlebury evolve, and we look forward to working with Patton through this period of growth and transition. As the voice of the student body, we are excited to start the dialogue. We would like to extend a warm welcome to President-elect Patton and hope that she enjoys the Vermont winter as much as we do.
Artwork by EUNICE KIM
(11/19/14 9:31pm)
Dr. Laurie L. Patton was named Middlebury College’s 17th president, and the College’s first female president in its 214-year history, at an announcement ceremony in Mead Chapel on Nov. 18. Patton, who is currently dean of the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke University and the Robert F. Durden Professor of Religion, addressed the Middlebury community for the first time at the meeting after opening remarks from President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz, Chair of the Board of Trustees Marna Whittington and Chair of the Presidential Search Committee Allan Dragone Jr. ’78.
Faculty, alumni, Trustees and students packed Mead Chapel to witness the announcement of the new president and to hear her first remarks to the Middlebury community. After brief introductions to the proceedings by Liebowitz and Whittington, Dragone discussed the selection process at length, emphasizing the importance of the many different constituencies within the broader Middlebury community in the selection process.
According to Dragone, the committee, which was comprised of “members of the faculty of both Monterey and Middlebury, staff from both Monterey and Middlebury, alumni, Trustees and students,” made it a priority to represent stakeholders without direct representation in the process such as residents of the town of Middlebury, parents and students.
The lengthy selection process was designed to ensure that the president-elect would be a perfect fit for the College. The selection committee and the Board of Trustees played an active role in ensuring the strength of the applicant pool.
“We talked to leaders in higher education across the country who were the rising stars,” Whittington said. “And we went out and recruited some of them to our pool, so we had a terrific pool.”
“The caliber of candidates was deeper and more accomplished than I could have possibly have hoped for,” Dragone echoed. Of the more than 260 initial candidates, the committee chose 100 with competitive backgrounds and curricula vitae and then pared this group down to 50 after group deliberation. By means of another round of phone conferences and small group meetings, the committee winnowed this list down to 12 finalists who sat for comprehensive interviews with the entire committee. The committee then selected five finalists for multiple rounds of interviews and an exhaustive background and reference check.
“On our shortlist of five final candidates, any one of them would have been a good president of Middlebury College, but Laurie is the best fit for Middlebury at this time in its history,” Whittington said.
Patton, who was elected in a unanimous vote by the Trustees, emerged as the natural choice of this group of finalists for a number of reasons. Her vision for a liberal arts education in the 21st century, which she outlined in a lecture she gave at Middlebury last February entitled “Liberal Learning: The Recovery of Dialogue in a Global Context,” aligned neatly with the core competencies that the selection committee identified. These competencies were “scholarly values, leadership capabilities, management expertise, commitment to diversity and finally cultural fluency for a really global perspective,” according to Dragone.
After an introduction by Dragone and a rousing round of welcoming applause, Patton took to the podium and proceeded to outline her definition of a liberal arts education and detailed three key words as the guiding principles behind a successful 21st century liberal arts education: innovation, adaptation and integration.
“Every educational institution must exemplify these educational goals of innovation, adaptation and integration in its own unique way,” she said.
Paying homage to her background as a scholar of religion, Patton next applied her vision of a 21st-century liberal arts education by offering a list of institutional attributes she called “The Seven Great Educational Virtues of Middlebury” before concluding her speech to raucous applause.
Student reaction immediately following the announcement was overwhelmingly supportive of President-elect Patton, but student comments also carried the weight of the community’s high expectations for its new leader.
“I think the student body is passionate about a lot of different things,” Maeve Grady ’16.5 “And I’d really like Laurie to be someone who is willing to listen to a lot of different voices and take them into account.”
The Campus and other local media organizations later attended a press conference with Patton in the Davis Family Library. She was asked what, if anything, being the first female president of the College means to her. “On the one hand, it’s a wonderfully happy accident that I’m a woman, and the best thing that I can do is to be the best president I know how to be and serve this community as energetically, intelligently, patiently (and as impatiently) as I possibly can,” she said.
Patton added that she has written extensively about women in South Asia and has participated in micro-philanthropy and educational initiatives for women and girls in the Western Indian state of Maharashtra. “Women’s education is of huge importance to me. I think it is one of the major issues facing us globally,” she said. “One of the great joys that I have as an educator is when I’m able to mentor young women who have not had the privilege or the chance to build the confidence to come into their own voice. That’s true of all people but I think, in particular, it’s a great privilege to be able to be a role model for young women in that realm.”
The announcement of the next College president comes during a slightly rough patch in the otherwise positive town-gown relations of the past decade. When asked what the College’s role should be vis-à-vis the town, Patton praised President Liebowitz and outlined some future steps, based in part on her experience with the Duke-Durham partnership.
“I’ll put it very straightforwardly and simply: I think that if colleges and universities are not outward-facing toward the community, then they will not thrive in the 21st century,” she said.
In response to a question on how she plans to increase diversity in the College’s student body and engage with students from various backgrounds, she explained that diversity issues are viewed in a broader lens by students today than by her generation.
“Diversity earlier was about a binary,” she said. “I think now students are in a very multiform environment. It is something much bigger, where the multiple forms of diversity create new kinds of intersectionality, and I think students, as I listen to them, are very concerned about their multiple identities and how they intersect. I also think sexual and gender identity and transgender identity is a very big issue for students today in ways that we need to pay attention to on college campuses.”
Patton also said that the College is uniquely positioned to both communicate the importance of diversity and also to be a place where students of different backgrounds can thrive.
“I think a lot of our admissions processes and welcome to students have to do with making sure that students of diverse populations know that they will thrive in a Middlebury context. We have to make sure we follow students from the admissions contact through to their life on campus,” she said. “I know Middlebury has participated in the Posse program which has been very successful — how do we push that even further and create even more diverse, welcoming environments to help students through their Middlebury career into their post-graduate career?”
Patton’s current position at Duke includes an active fundraising role, experience that she hopes to capitalize on at Middlebury to the benefit of financial aid.
“The crucial thing for us is building not only our endowment but also building even more endowment for financial aid. I think it’s going to be an absolutely essential mission,” she said. “Middlebury’s financial aid package is very generous, I’m really proud of that already even though I’m not here yet. But I think we need to do more and better.”
She mentioned named scholarships as one avenue that studies have shown can create a diverse campus.
“I look forward to being very creative with our financial aid packages and building them even more vigorously so we can make sure that that diversity — intellectual, economic, racial, et cetera — is protected,” she said.
Students were enthusiastic about the announcement throughout the day. “I’m really excited to see who they picked and why they picked this new person,” Vassily Zavoico ’17.5 said before the announcement. “It’d be cool to see in what direction Middlebury might be going in the next ten years.”
Members of the College community lined up in Wilson Hall in the late afternoon for a chance to chat with the College’s president-elect. “I’m really excited for Laurie and I am really excited for Middlebury College, and I think that the first few words out of her mouth — innovation, integration and adaptation — are incredibly important for this school,” Moria Sloan ’15 said. “She hit a lot of hot-button issues and hopefully she will deal with them tactfully.”
Patton professed excitement to begin working with the Middlebury community. “I can’t wait to get here,” she said. “I can’t wait to listen and to learn more, to dive into our deepest challenges and have our best arguments.”
According to Dragone and Whittington, she will return to her post as dean at Duke for the next two months or so while Liebowitz focuses on his agenda. The College will begin to “really get focused on transition activities about Feb. 1, so you’ll hear more as we get closer to that,” Whittington said.
Additional Reporting by Hannah Bristol and Claire Abbadi
(11/13/14 2:57am)
Many people might blame unhappiness or stress on technology, but could technology help combat those things as well? Many new smartphone apps target wellness — from apps like MyFitnessPal that deal with exercise and nutrition to ones like “The Worry Box,” an app that works to reduce anxiety in a password-protected journal-like format. I’ve used some of these new apps and reviewed them below.
HAPPIFY
New website and smartphone app “Happify” claims to use research from studies done at Harvard, UPenn and Stanford to help you get happier without looking up from your phone. Research has shown that happiness involves five essential skills: savoring, thanking, aspiring, giving and empathizing. Happify makes games and activities that target and develop each of these skills. It might ask you your goals for the day or week, or a time that you helped someone else.
One of my favorite activities on Happify is “Uplift” where you get points for pressing hot air balloons with positive words on them. After playing on Happify for one week, I found that the app helped me to slow down and focus on gratitude, the things I like to do, my friends and family and my goals. I do not condone spending more time on one’s phone than most already do, but this app does provide a simple way to make use of the five minutes before class starts that you may normally spend on Facebook. Happify is free but prompts in-app purchases if you want full access; I found the free version was plenty to occupy me during the week.
SMILING MIND
Smiling Mind is a meditation app that is designed to help add tranquility and balance to the lives of the tech-savvy. When signing up, you choose your age and it tailors the app to your choice. It focuses particularly on meditation for young people and incorporates a body-scan guided mediation technique to begin. The non-profit that offers the app (free of charge!) is running a pilot program in Australia involving meditation in schools to help children cope with the stresses of school and social life.
Smiling Mind takes research showing meditation’s positive effects on anxiety, depression and stress and transforms it into a simple and useful app. It’s incredibly easy to use Smiling Mind and it is available on the web for those who don’t have smartphones. Like Happify, it provides a constructive and relaxing way to spend a few minutes that you might otherwise waste.
Smiling Mind guides those unfamiliar with meditation through basic exercises and gets more sophisticated the longer you use it. It sends you daily reminders (if you want) that gently coax you into a daily meditation routine. Smiling Mind also gives you the opportunity to rate how you feel before and after the meditation – an interesting way to reflect on whether you found that particular exercise helpful. As a free and simple app targeted toward young people, I would recommend Smiling Mind to any stressed or unhappy college student.
T2 MOOD TRACKER
This app allows people to monitor moods on six scales: anxiety, stress, depression, brain injury, post-traumatic stress and general well-being. Every time you use the app, you rate and record your mood.
The app plots all your ratings on a graph so that you can track your mood over time. Notes recorded simultaneously with ratings can help determine what can be causing mood changes in your life, whether it be academic stress, new medication or hormones. This app is very useful but could use a few minor tweaks; sometimes the graphs are hard to read and the reminder system only works sporadically. However, as an alternative to hand-notation of moods and well-being, this app provides a much more convenient and useful way to look at mood, especially over time.
(11/13/14 2:48am)
Something didn't sit right with me as I left the Big Freedia concert. I don’t know whether it was the inherent guilt that comes with twerking for two hours in a wife beater and tight overalls or something deeper.
In attempts to counter cultural appropriation and allow black bodies to claim back their own culture through twerking and bounce music, Middlebury happened to sneak in a more sophisticated identity — a black, super-femme gay man.
People around me expressed their excitement to see a “trans woman” twerk on stage and “feel their oats” to the beat of “Na Who Mad” and “Mo Azz.” I, too, cannot deny that I was hoping for Big Freedia to liberate all parts of me.
But in the midst of all the booty shaking, 808 beats and sweaty bodies that surrounded me, I noticed that Big Freedia Queen Diva was reflecting and possibly even owning the sexualization of black, femme and queer bodies. To me it felt so right to see the back-up dancers and Freedia twerk up a storm on stage, but it felt so wrong because it contributed to the systematic ways in which we see black women and black queer bodies in society.
Middlebury is already an environment where diversity is celebrated and tokenized as a product, rather than an experience. Big Freedia’s performance was an extension of that philosophy that allowed others (the cis white hetero majority of Middlebury) to see black queer bodies as entertainment or tools of sexual desire — even as disposable.
Another thing that didn’t sit right with me was the way in which Big Freedia marketed his identity or rather chose not to identify so overtly.
It is fair to say that he was here for his music and persona and not his identity, but one cannot deny the visible politics that come with being a tall black man with hair extensions. The ways in which queer black bodies identify and go about their days do not go unnoticed.
Seeing the Big Freedia flyer around campus filled with glitter and crowns led me to believe that a trans rapper would finally grace the Middlebury stage and slay all of our souls.
But when faced with the reality that Big Freedia is not a trans woman, but a femme gay man, does his identity erase the need for genuine trans visibility in our society? Or in other words, does the mindless transcription in seeing Big Freedia as a trans woman contribute to the systematic marginalization of trans bodies?
It seemed to me that the ambiguity of his identity was at the expense of trans bodies since the audience was just able to categorize him as the most “other” — as a trans person. This idea could also be a critique of the audience as well.
There was a Pre-Grooveyard open discussion on the “mindful consumption of music and art” in attempts to accurately frame the Big Freedia performance and I appreciate their behind the scenes work to address these issues.
Interestingly enough, I met with Goddess, Queen, Sister, Lourdes Ashley Hunter the next day. Like Big Freedia, she too slayed the campus. She remarked on being a trans woman of color at the “Living in the Question: The Ongoing Process of Curiosity” event held by TedxMiddlebury. Her focus on “deconstructing feminist analysis and acknowledging all the ways in which structural oppression manifests in the lives of Black Queer Academics in white cis dominated spaces” was something that ironically resonated with our sexual response of commodification to Big Freedia just the night before.
Students around campus flocked to the front line of the stage to witness Big Freedia Queen Diva twerk his art into existence but these same students didn’t seem to generate enough buzz about the presence of a politically active black trans woman speaking at a podium.
Of course, there are many underlying factors that have to do with the marketing of each event and the way college students want to spend their weekends but it would be ludicrous to dismiss these issues at hand. How can the administration, along with the help of the student body, work to deconstruct the “tokenizing” and “eroticizing” ways in which “marginalized identities” are being presented to the privileged on campus? Similar questions were asked at the forum held by the College President earlier this month.
Was Big Freedia’s job as an entertainer to only liberate our asses? Or was his presence on stage shading the true liberation of queer and black folk?
(11/13/14 2:46am)
For this week’s escapade, we were on the hunt to try something particularly adventurous — something truly unknown to the Middlebury community.
On Sunday afternoon, we made our way over to the natatorium (you can’t use the word pool for a cement hole in the ground filled with chlorinated water that cost over 10 million dollars). Maddie exclaimed upon passing the Center for the Arts and seeing the Athletic Center (“Woah! What happened to the front entrance?!”). Although our brightly patterned Victoria Secret bikinis felt like the right decision in our rooms, that feeling quickly changed once we entered the pool. Who knew the status quo attire at a college natatorium was different than our spring break experiences in Mexico? Although our insubstantial pieces of string and cloth were waterproof, spandex and sports bras are strongly encouraged for drumroll … logrolling! After we apologized for our idiocy, Hilary Woodworth ’14.5 — a member of the club — assured us that, other than some potential ‘slippage,’ our attire would be fine.
We both took turns walking out onto the log and following instructions on what to do. Surprisingly, it wasn’t impossible. Ten nip slips and a more revealing exhibition than Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl halftime show later, Izzy was successfully rolling on a log in the water. We have decided to define the word ‘successfully’ in NARP terms to mean at least two seconds of flailing arms and incomprehensible yelps while at least one of our feet maintained contact with the log. Although this may not seem like an accomplishment to most, we have decided 98.5 percent of our readers have never gone logrolling and, therefore, have no say in the matter. Sorry we’re not sorry.
Maddie was also getting the hang of it shortly thereafter and, unlike Izzy, managed to keep her swimsuit on. The day got even better when Danielle, the logrolling coach, told Maddie she had a “beautiful, elongated thigh.” A beautiful thigh! Unfortunately, it was working to her disadvantage because that meant her butt sat further back, which ruined her balance. Maddie understood that it wasn’t her beautiful thigh causing the balance issues, but her fat a$$.
There came a point when Maddie was asked if she knew what a squat was, and she had glaring flashbacks to the gym session with personal trainer Goran last year. The memory was so traumatic that she fell off the log and hit her back on the way down. This may seem minor, but the log has carpet around it for gripping purposes and she got a big rug burn. In other words, it was minor for everyone except her.
We discovered that the hardest feat of logrolling is to maintain composure. It is truly an art to resemble Jesus walking on water; keeping your upper body still as your feet move daintily on the log to keep yourself upright.
Watching Hilary and Danielle get on the log together and compete was inspiring enough to convince us both to sign up for their J-term workshop this winter and get a P.E. credit. All in all, we had a blast and the rug burns between our thighs only lasted a few hours, causing Maddie to say “I feel like I rode a carpeted mechanical bull” twice.
(11/12/14 9:53pm)
Sunday, Nov. 9 marked the fifth annual TEDx event at Middlebury College. TED is a non-profit organization that seeks to spark dialogue and spread ideas through talks, touching on anything from science to society to art. Since its inception in 1984, the organization has garnered massive global attention and now hosts an average of nine conferences per day around the world. Time and time again, TED talks have thrilled, captivated and startled audiences by uprooting pre-conceived notions and exposing innovative ideas and creations. With eight dynamic live speakers, two video presentations and an eclectic range of topics, the Middlebury conference proved to be no exception.
Each speaker took a different approach to the theme “Living in the Question: The Ongoing Process of Curiosity.” Will Nash, a Middlebury professor of American Studies, unraveled the importance of curiosity. As he explained, the greatest value lies not in an answer but rather in the continual exploration of a question – “the path around the circuit.”
“Access the path as many ways as possible,” Nash said. “You’ll be richer for it.”
Middlebury alumni Shane Scranton ’12.5 and Nate Beatty ’13.5 demonstrated the power of curiosity through technological experimentation. They showed the audience a prototype of the oculus rift, a lens that allows wearers to access a virtual reality – an image projected onto the lens to encompass the user’s entire field of vision. This type of technology was originally used to create immersive gaming experiences. Scranton and Beatty took it to the next level by developing technology that could transfer 3-D models of real buildings and landscapes to the oculus rift.
“Virtual reality takes away the need for architectural metaphors,” Scranton explained.
Renderings, 2-D images that Scranton referred to as “extrapolations of space,” require the brain to fill in the surroundings, whereas virtual reality allows architects to inhabit their own designs.
While Scranton and Beatty’s presentation dealt with innovative ways of using space, a talk delivered by Mordecai-Mark Mac Low, a curator of astrophysics at the American Museum of National History in New York, addressed physical reality on a much grander scale: the expanding universe. In his fascinating narrative, he explained that visible light has been traveling and stretching through the universe since the Big Bang. Scientists attribute the accelerating rate of expansion to a mysterious, hypothetical force known as dark energy, perfectly exemplifying that even within the realm of physics, uncertainty can still reign supreme.
Other talks from the conference challenged societal norms by addressing issues of sexuality and gender. Lourdes Ashley Hunter captivated the audience with her riveting stage presence and powerful rhetoric on the transgender community, particularly transgender women of color. A healer, orator and academic, she expressed the hope for a reconstruction of the gender binary that would eradicate oppression against transgender individuals.
“From birth, kids are indoctrinated to prescribed gender norms,” Hunter said. “[But] gender is an explosion of expression,” existing on a spectrum rather than in black-and-white terms.
Her riveting oratory resonated strongly with the audience, and provided an empowering voice to the trans-color movement.
Similarly, Rachel Liddell ’15 received an enthusiastic reception from her peers during her talk on sex, politics and power. Beginning with the story of a “dickish doodler” who vandalized one of her campaign posters, Liddell went on to challenge society’s tendency to sexualize women in power. From naked depictions of Cleopatra’s death to the media’s fixation on Hillary Clinton’s appearance, Liddell pointed out that we subject women to treatment that undermines female authority and disregards their pluri-potentiality as individuals.
Liddell’s grace, humor and charisma shined through in her speech, particularly during her analysis of the public’s obsession with Clinton’s pantsuits. Furthermore, her words provoked deep introspection within the room, as she challenged her peers to not fall into the same patterns of judgment that have long disadvantaged women and hindered societal progress.
Meanwhile, author Jack Hitt offered an insightful commentary on the changing societal attitudes toward legalizing marijuana in the United States. Engaging the audience with his easygoing but magnetic speaking style, he noted a dichotomy between “information you say you believe” and “information you’ll act on.” The latter, which leads to more widespread acceptance, is gained through everyday conversations.
“Revolutions don’t happen on election day,” Hitt said. “[Instead,] local cohorts show us the reality of lived life.”
In other words, interactions with normal people who happen to smoke pot subvert the negative stereotype of “loser stoners,” thus increasing societal acceptance of pot legalization.
By far the most visually enthralling presentation was choreographer and Assistant Professor of Dance Christal Brown’s beautifully improvised dance, which exhibited movement as a powerful medium of expression. For the first part, a screen behind Brown channeled her inner monologue. “Dance is my truest form of communication,” the opening line read. “Which is ironic because you have no idea what I’m trying to say, lol.” However, the audience soon came to understand her fluid movements as physical manifestations of her subconscious impulses.
“I speak volumes without saying anything,” Brown said after she had finished dancing.
Brown encouraged the audience to engage in new forms of expression, leaving them with the advice, “Before you think, respond with anything you have at your disposal.”
The TEDx Middlebury conference showcased a fascinating range of ideas that stretched the audience’s minds from the Big Bang to the Roman Empire, from virgin lovers to dark energy and from inside the clunky lens of an oculus rift to the far-reaching ends of the galaxy. Each talk was delivered in a uniquely resounding manner, creating a diverse panel of voices from which to draw inspiration and insight. Above all, however, the TEDx talks served to unite the Middlebury community through a tremendously significant idea – that it is not about having the right answer, but rather about asking the right questions.
(11/12/14 9:38pm)
A space for art of all kinds, from spoken word to sculpture to radio pieces to dance, Flicker is the student-created-and- produced showcase for artistic expression, established and directed by Aoife Duna ’16.5. The first showcase of the year took place on Friday, Nov. 7 in the Middlebury College Dance Theatre, with ten works presented in addition to a pre-show tabling of literary publications from around campus.
This iteration of Flicker, the second after the premier J-term 2014 event, welcomed works-in-progress alongside finished pieces, allowing artists to share their creative processes with the campus community. This unique opportunity to create and share one’s personal artistic endeavors, class-related or not, aims to encourage exploration, experimentation and collaboration between people inclined to express themselves through a wide array of mediums.
In the College environment, we may not always find it possible to devote the time to creating polished, finalized works between other demands. This is part of the reason Duna encourages people to present ongoing pieces and to collaborate in the creative process.
Willingness to show a work in the midst of its creation holds an element of vulnerability and openness on the part of the artist which establishes the potential for engaging dialogue between peers and appreciators, friends and spectators. Hopefully, this will generate a greater enthusiasm for engaging with art in all its forms at the College and beyond.
The creative experience of this iteration of Flicker began before audience members even entered the theater, with tables set up for literary publications Room 404, Beyond the Green and Storytold to share their work. Inside the theater, audience members encountered a sculpture by Annie Bartholomew ’17 that engaged the eye with color and non-linear shape. Then the performances began, ranging from poetry to a radio piece to a myriad of dance performances.
Since I was part of a dance piece choreographed by Duna, I would like to take the opportunity to share a bit of the choreographic and rehearsal process behind her work, “Banana Split (with a side of brewing storm).” Many people have expressed to me that they “don’t understand dance,” so perhaps a glimpse into the way it takes form will open up some avenues of appreciation.
It is important, for me at least, to note that art-making does not always have a specific purpose or message that the viewer or audience member is supposed to “get.” Rather, it is about tapping into the deeper aspects of our human experience and learning to express those insights.
For her piece, Duna began with an intention to explore an energy and physicality other than the oft-assumed ideal of grace and effortless perfection of movement that stems from modern dance’s roots in ballet. To explore a kind of movement that is more raw, even animalistic, in its physicality, we began our first rehearsals listening to the kind of energetic music that just demands movement, letting the energy come out in whatever physical form felt right rather than jumping into refined, memorized choreography right away.
Exploring the interplay of sound, movement and energies formed a foundation of inquiry and ideas upon which the piece developed over several weeks of rehearsal. The work took form in sections or phrases that captured some ideas important to Duna as part of the vision of the whole piece, and the phrases gradually came together, shifting and settling into an overall structure as we learned the choreography.
Each choreographer, of course, has his or her personal way of developing a piece, but for me as a dancer it was rewarding to share in so much of Duna’s imagination of what the piece meant to her, and to help it take shape. Duna spoke in rehearsals about creating a space where we could feel free to express ourselves fully and physically in a way that we rarely are able to experience in our daily lives due to societal or personal expectations of how we should act or move. Whether that meant leaping around the room and yelling, flailing and laughing, rolling around on the floor or being still, it was about being fully embodied in how we felt and not holding anything in. This sense of freedom in our creative expression was channeled into Duna’s choreography. Even as we embodied movements that she had come up with, the movements were also our own, sustained and given life and meaning through our individual energy.
In the dynamic, creative interplay of Duna’s vision as a choreographer and the individual personalities and physical presences of every dancer, a space of collaboration and mutual exploration gave rise to a piece and a performance experience which hopefully shared some of that creative exploration of rich physical expression with the audience who attended Flicker on Friday night.
Flicker will have its next iteration in J-term of 2015. Interested students may become involved in making art of any and all kinds by visiting go/flicker and contacting Aoife Duna (aduna@middlebury.edu) for more information. The showcase welcomes any artists curious about making and exploring, no experience required. As Duna put it, “Keep making, doing, questioning, yearning! Lets kick Midd’s art scene into high gear!”
