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(10/01/20 10:00am)
The Performing Arts Series is providing the gift of music — a means to uplift, encourage and strengthen the college community — in a time of uncertainty and pandemic-era stress.
Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the Mahaney Arts Center’s Digital Stages project is holding an online concert every Friday night at 7:30 p.m. from Sept. 25 through Nov. 13 — all of which are free and available to all through their website.
During the first concert on Friday, the Grammy-nominated group Imani Winds kicked off the season with a wind quintet performance featuring works by John Harbison, Jeff Scott Paquito and D’Rivera.
Assistant Professor of Music Matthew Evan Taylor opened the event by performing his own music — including an alto improvisation. Taylor noted that the quintet has always avoided being pigeon-holed as one type of sound despite their classical blend of instruments.
“What they’ve done is, in many ways, expanded what a chamber group in classical music can do by working on projects some chamber groups wouldn’t even consider doing, which makes them forward-thinking and inclusive,” Taylor said.
Consistent with the college's mission to diversify the Performing Arts Series through a more inclusive curriculum, Imani Winds’s music weaves together contemporary sounds with a more traditional foundation.
“For a group like this that has a Swahili name and that has been around for over 20 years, there are still not a lot of Black groups like this in classical music and even fewer back when they started,” Taylor said. “Their legacy is partially the normalcy of seeing Black faces and Black bodies performing classical music at a virtuosic level.”
In the U.S., classical music has customarily excluded people of color, erasing them from both its image and dialogue — groups like Imani Winds are helping change this tradition. Starting off the season with a BIPOC group was a way of signifying solidarity with antiracist causes and the Black Lives Matter movement, according to Taylor.
Five of the eight concerts left to come this fall originate from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and have been curated by cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han. As a grand finale to this semester, the Jupiter Quartet will return to the stage to provide an ode to classical music. Though Taylor anticipates that the new virtual format will require artists to rethink their performances, students can listen to and interact with talented artists to gain a rich and stress-alleviating musical experience while staying safe.
(10/01/20 3:15am)
A class-action lawsuit filed in Vermont's U.S. District Court late last week accuses Middlebury College of not adequately reimbursing students for tuition and fees paid for an in-person spring semester that became largely remote due to Covid-19.
Plaintiff Henry Mooers ’21, a senior from Norwell, Massachusetts, filed the suit on September 24. Although the college refunded students a prorated portion of fees for spring room and board, the plaintiff seeks an additional refund for the “failure to provide services” that are ordinarily covered by tuition and mandatory fees. Mooers declined to comment on the case at this time.
The college transitioned to remote learning on March 13 due to the health crisis posed by Covid-19. In the process, the administration also extended spring break, eliminating a week of classes from the ordinarily 13-week long academic session. A few of the facilities and services cited in the lawsuit that students were deprived of last semester include the library, sports facilities, in-person labs and health services.
As part of the intended class-action lawsuit, the plaintiff seeks a prorated return on tuition for himself and all other Middlebury students, proportionate to the time that the spring semester was remote. With a tuition of $28,940 per semester and nearly 2,800 undergraduate and graduate students, the maximum sum of this pay-out could amount to tens of millions of dollars. Tristan Larson, a Vermont attorney representing the plaintiff, did not provide comment on the case. Jeff Brown, the lead attorney, also did not reply to inquiries.
The college responded to the lawsuit in a statement that reiterated its commitment to providing “high-quality academic programs and services” to students throughout the pandemic. But the statement also mentions the balancing act of simultaneously “supporting the well-being of our students, faculty, and staff.” Last spring, the college continued to pay staff salaries despite the majority of students being remote.
The lawsuit cites an online petition as reason to believe that Mooers’s peers might support the class-action suit. The petition, penned by Spanish Master’s student Tamar Freeland, emphasizes the college’s financial options for repaying students, including its $1.15 billion endowment. The change.org petition has around 135 signatures but has gained only a few dozen more since it was originally posted in early May.
If a federal judge certifies the suit's class-action status, the case will be tried by jury. The case was originally assigned to Judge William K. Sessions III ’69 on Monday, but he recused himself from the case. Although not confirmed by his office, Judge Sessions attended Middlebury College, and may have recused himself based on a conflict of interest. The case has since been reassigned to Judge Christina Reiss.
There are currently no other known class-action lawsuits in U.S. District Courts against fellow NESCAC colleges or peer institutions, but they may be in the works. According to its website, one New York law firm is currently investigating complaints against Vassar, Hamilton, Skidmore and Colgate for not fulfilling expected in-person services during the spring semester.
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(09/24/20 9:57am)
On Sept. 24, 1994, the Middlebury football team dominated in the season opener against Wesleyan, picking up a 20–7 victory. The team went on an offensive barrage early in the game and played solid defense the rest of the way, managing to stay in command of the lead for the majority of the game. Two passing touchdowns earned the Panthers an early lead in the first quarter, leaving the Cardinals’ defense in the dust. Junior quarterback Scott Pokrywa ’96 found running back Justin Burley ’95 on both of these scores, for 35-yard and 15-yard gains respectively.
The offense faltered considerably as the game progressed, but the defense bailed them out. Wesleyan only managed 269 yards on offense compared to Middlebury’s 373, and failed to score a single offensive touchdown. Thanks in large part to aggressive coverage by Middlebury defensive tackle Dan Richards ’95, Wesleyan’s quarterback was limited to 18 completions out of 42 attempts, with only one completion surpassing 14 yards.
Linebacker Bain Smith ’96 led the Panther defense with 13 tackles, a performance which was impressive enough to net him NESCAC Defensive Player of the Week honors. He was aided by defensive back Jeff Mebel ’95, (seven tackles), defensive end Winfield Campbell ’95 (six tackles), and linebacker Shawn Daignault ’95 (eight tackles).
On the offensive end, Burley finished the game with the most receiving yards for the Panthers. The duo of Pokrywa and running back Terrence Bradford ’96 led the running game, combining for 181 of the team’s 289 total rushing yards. Bradford rushed for 102 yards on 20 carries overall.
It was an encouraging beginning to an otherwise lackluster season that Middlebury finished with a 3–5 record.
(09/17/20 10:00am)
The 10-week closures of Main Street and Merchants Row to through-traffic in downtown Middlebury will come to a long-awaited end this Friday, Sept. 18. These road closures, which coincide with the temporary shutdown of the town’s rail line and diversion of its freight traffic, are the “high-water mark” in the five-year Middlebury Bridge and Rail Project, according to the project’s community liaison, Jim Gish.
“The work in 2017, 2018, 2019 was all preparation work for this 10-week period,” Gish said. “This is the critical turning point of the project this week — kind of heading toward the finish line, which will happen next spring with the landscaping of two new parks downtown, and that will be the formal end of the project next July.”
One main purpose of the $71 million Bridge and Rail Project, which is managed by Vermont Agency of Transportation (VTrans), is the substitution of two deteriorating 1920s-era rail bridges in downtown Middlebury with a rail tunnel. The dilapidated bridges, which had sparked safety concerns, were demolished in 2017, and temporary modular steel bridges were built in their place.
Now, the temporary structures have been replaced with a passenger rail tunnel that returns the town green to its original size, which predates construction of the original rail line in the 1840s. The 3,500-foot downtown rail corridor that spans the distance between the Elm Street overpass and the trestle bridge over Otter Creek has been fully rebuilt at this point. This belowground construction of the rail line constitutes the other main purpose of the project.
The project was suspended late last March when Gov. Phil Scott decided to postpone construction statewide due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The project’s operations resumed in May, and the 10-week closure period, which was planned four years in advance to take place between May 27 and Aug. 5, was delayed by seven weeks and began on July 13.
“[The closures of Main Street and Merchants Row were] critical to be able to do all the work in this 10-week period that needed to be done,” Gish said. “The construction of the rail tunnel, the excavation of the rail corridor, repaving the roadways, new sidewalks for downtown. There’s a lot of activity that had to take place both aboveground and belowground during this 10-week period.”
Road closures during this period have complicated navigating downtown Middlebury on foot. Grassroots organization Neighbors, Together, along with VTrans project administrators and other local institutions, organizations and businesses collaborated to provide a free shuttle around the blockage, according to Mary-Claire Crogan, community relations manager at Addison Country Transit Resources (ACTR).
The ACTR-operated shuttle (dubbed Shuttlebury) runs continuously on a 15-minute loop around the town of Middlebury and stops at the municipal offices, Battell Block, Cannon Park, Congregational Church, Marble Works and Town Hall Theater. Walking maps with suggested routes are also included at each stop.
“Rides around the blockage were mutually desired by Neighbors, Together and the VTrans project managers,” Crogan told The Campus. “And actually, there is a federal requirement for the construction project to provide ADA access to downtown locations during the road closures. But the service is for everyone, regardless of physical ability.”
Shuttlebury was designed to transport the Middlebury population downtown to pre-planned events and incentivize them to visit the area at a time when local businesses might face a decline in patronage due to the road closures. However, in order to prevent the spread of Covid-19, those events were reevaluated and modified to be contactless.
Nevertheless, Shuttlebury has operated during the construction at its full schedule, with ACTR implementing new safety procedures and heightened sanitation protocols to prevent spread of the virus. Although Covid-19 concerns were likely responsible for decreased shuttle ridership this summer, Crogan wrote, “Shuttlebury attracted new riders who had never ridden the bus before. Maybe this will inspire them to ride transit more often.”
The Bridge and Rail Project funds the shuttle’s operation, so with the end of the 10-week construction period and road closures, Shuttlebury will come off the road this Friday. Crogan anticipates that the uniquely compact, ADA-accessible shuttle will be useful in the future to “access private driveways when people in wheelchairs need us to drive them to medical appointments.”
The end of this 10-week period means the advantages of finished construction for Middlebury’s local businesses are within sight.
“While there have certainly been concerns about the impact of the project on the economic vitality of downtown, in general, the community has accepted the value and benefit to the community of the project.” Gish said. “That’s probably particularly true right now as you can very visually see it taking shape . . . There’s now a level of anticipation and excitement at the revitalization taking place in our downtown.”
“[The pandemic] coincided with the hardest part and the most disruptive part of the project for downtown Middlebury,” Gish said, referencing the worries about the economic impact on closing downtown roadways to through traffic. “It’s helped us get it done at a time when it’s less disruptive to the downtown area.”
In addition to economic revitalization, benefits of the Bridge and Rail Project to the town of Middlebury include improvement in the safety of aboveground infrastructure like roadways and aging belowground infrastructure like water lines and sewer lines. Two new parks, including the expanded Triangle Park, which will have a mixture of hardscape and landscape as well as a plaza for events, will also result from the project.
Still, Gish acknowledged the challenges that this part of the construction project has caused for Middlebury residents.
“One of the things that has psychologically been a benefit to the community is the orderliness with which this project has progressed throughout this 10 weeks and really over the full life cycle of this project,” he said. “There’s been a steady and a very visible progression, which is in stark contrast to the world we’re living in today, which is full of unknowns and question marks and unknown finish lines.”
(09/17/20 9:58am)
While large universities around the country are becoming Covid-19 hotspots, the 11 schools in the NESCAC — which have far fewer students and are generally located in low-density areas — have kept their Covid-19 cases extremely low so far.
Middlebury College has only seen two total active cases, and both students have since recovered. All NESCAC schools except for Tufts University have had fewer than five positive cases. Tufts — which is over twice the size of the other NESCAC schools and is located in a major city — has had nine new positive tests in the last week, with a total of 26 Covid-19 cases.
In contrast, several large universities across the country have witnessed catastrophic Covid-19 outbreaks. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill evacuated students after testing revealed a positivity rate of 13%, while the University of Georgia and University of Wisconsin-Madison both reported over 1,000 cases in the past week.
All NESCAC schools tested students upon arrival, instated a quarantine period afterward, and are now intermittently testing students through the Broad Institute, a testing provider based in Cambridge, Mass. Bates College and Bowdoin College are testing all students twice per week, whereas Middlebury and Connecticut College are performing tests on a portion of the student body each week in addition to testing students who show symptoms.
In late August, Middlebury welcomed 2,161 students back to campus, with an additional 85 students living in off-campus housing and 329 studying fully remotely. Bowdoin College was the only NESCAC not to invite all students back, permitting just 653 students — or 40% — back to campus and prioritizing first-year and transfer students, with some other exceptions. The Bowdoin Orient reported that 75% of students were dissatisfied with this decision.
Some NESCAC schools are adjusting their academic policies to allow increased flexibility. Bates College is proceeding with two 7.5-week modules instead of a traditional semester. Williams College is allowing students to take as many classes Pass/Fail as they want, and Trinity College is allowing students to graduate with 1.5 fewer credits than are usually required. Tufts is allowing students to graduate after only six full-time semesters instead of the previous requirement of eight, offering increased flexibility for students to attend part-time. Middlebury has also modified its academic policy, allowing students to take up to one course during the fall 2020 and spring 2021 semesters on a credit/no-credit basis.
Amherst has moved many classes to outdoor spaces and installed temperature monitors at the entrance to several student buildings. To reduce the spread of germs, Hamilton College spaced out classes by 20 minutes for classroom cleaning and Williams converted most housing to single-occupancy.
NESCAC schools have already had to penalize students for breaking Covid-19 safety rules. Dean of Students Derek Doucet told The Campus that several students have already been asked to leave campus, while more are awaiting appeals for violating guidelines. Bowdoin has also asked a first-year student to leave campus for violating the seven-page community agreement that all students studying on campus had to sign. One reason for this strict enforcement is that most NESCAC schools occupy small towns with limited healthcare services.
The cost of testing and implementing Covid-19 regulations is putting new financial pressure on NESCAC schools. Middlebury has allocated $5 million to cover costs created by the pandemic and increased tuition by the standard of 3%. Bowdoin will spend $875,000 on testing this year. Williams is the only NESCAC school to reduce tuition due to the pandemic, lowering the total by 15% for all students, in addition to eliminating the student activities fee. Trinity is keeping tuition stagnant at the 2019-2020 level.
But not all small colleges have been able to maintain low Covid-19 rates. Colorado College shifted to fully remote learning after 11 of their 800 on-campus students tested positive and an entire dorm of 150 students was quarantined.
Vermont has maintained one of the lowest Covid-19 rates in the country, and only 38 out of 42,109 total tests at Vermont colleges have been positive, according to the Vermont Department of Health. The largest college in the state, the University of Vermont, has seen 15 positive cases so far.
While many large and urban universities are suffering from uncontrolled outbreaks, schools in the NESCAC and Vermont colleges are maintaining low rates by merit of advantageous size and geography, bolstered by strict rules and frequent testing.
(08/26/20 4:45am)
The following statement was previously published in the Addison County Independent on August 13, 2020 and signed by current and previous faculty and staff. More individuals have signed since its original publication. The piece has been lightly edited in accordance with The Campus’ style guidelines.
As local residents with deep concern about the health of our community, we listened carefully to the presentation by officials of Middlebury College (our employer) to the Selectboard about plans to reopen the campus. We've concluded that although these plans were the result of serious work by many individuals , they do not offer sufficient assurance that the college can safely reopen next month without risking a Covid-19 outbreak in Addison County.
Those announced plans had several troubling components, three of which were (1) failure to provide for ongoing weekly testing of everyone, (2) no indication of hazard pay for staff members whose jobs entail the greatest risk of contagion, and (3) too high a density of students as 2200 or more are packed into dormitories with many sharing double rooms.
Even more importantly, the hoped-for success of the college's plan rests on flawed assumptions about the expected behavior of 18–22 year olds. We talk candidly with students all the time, and almost all uniformly agree that masks, social distancing guidelines, and travel restrictions simply will not be sufficiently followed. If only one or two percent of the students don't follow a rigorous quarantine at home or inadvertently pick up the virus on their travel to campus or have a false negative test on arrival or visit friends in other states on the weekend or fail to stay "one cow apart" after several drinks at a party, then an epidemic can easily arise that will overcome our small hospital's facilities and spread off campus.
Middlebury College officials have indicated many times that they will change plans as the pandemic develops. While the number of Covid-19 cases may have seemed to be plateauing in late spring, we are now seeing surges of the disease in more than 30 states.
Dr. Deborah Birx, head of the federal government's task force on the pandemic, warned this week that the virus "is extraordinarily widespread. It's into the rural as well as urban areas."
So far, Vermont has been spared widespread occurrences of the disease, but that situation would rapidly deteriorate if thousands of young people spill into the state from "hot spots" all across the nation. Many educational institutions with protocols as carefully developed as Middlebury's, such as Smith, Mount Holyoke, Princeton, University of North Carolina, have already seen how quickly local epidemics can develop and have wisely switched to all online classes with a bare minimum of students in residence. We urge Middlebury College to do the same.
Michael Olinick
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(08/11/20 4:18am)
With more than 3,000 Middlebury students, faculty and staff set to return to campus in late August, the college is planning to test 750 of them — on top of those who develop viral symptoms — for Covid-19 each week over the course of the fall semester, in a “targeted” testing approach directed towards higher-contact parts of the community.
Director of Health Services Mark Peluso described the testing plan in a July 28 meeting between college administrators and the Town of Middlebury Selectboard (the plan is also described in the college’s Return to Campus Guide.) Students will receive an initial test when they arrive on campus and another test seven days later, both in Virtue Field House. Following those two tests, students will be included with faculty and staff working “high-contact” jobs in “Targeted Dynamic Testing” (TDT), which will consist of 750 tests per week.
Acquired from the Broad Institute based in Cambridge, Mass., tests will be diagnostic PCR anterior nares swabs, which are more sensitive than antigen tests, the other common type of Covid-19 test. Broad claims it can return results in 24 hours.
Any student who develops Covid-19 symptoms will also be tested, and the college has reserve tests for symptomatic students so as not to draw from the weekly 750-test allocation for TDT, Peluso said. Students will receive an email when they have been selected for TDT, and tests will likely continue to be held in Virtue Field House.
Testing 750 community members weekly means less than one-fifth of the roughly 2,300 students, 300 faculty members and 1,200 staff occupying campus this fall could receive a test from the college every seven days, not including symptomatic individuals. And although both the Return to Campus Guide and administrators in town halls have said that the plan is to randomly test everyone at the college throughout the semester, TDT will be targeted towards some parts of the community more than others.
“TDT is intentionally dynamic” and “will focus on students living in congregate housing, and the staff and faculty members who work directly with them,” Peluso wrote in an email to the Campus. “Congregate housing” actually refers to all student housing and approved off-campus housing, he said, suggesting that any student would be eligible for a test each week. Staff such as healthcare workers, custodians, public safety, facilities, dining and residential life personnel will also be “targeted” for TDT, he said, and faculty members who interact with students “may also be tested.”
Peluso did not clarify how the college plans to break down the 750 weekly tests among students, staff and faculty each week, but wrote that “the breakdown will vary depending on local community and campus prevalence of illness.” The Return to Campus Guide urges faculty and staff to “consult their healthcare providers for medical advice, including testing options.”
Mirroring approaches at other colleges, administrators see testing as one piece of a broad plan for Covid-19 containment. Experts agree that strict behavioral interventions are also an essential part of safe college reopening, and that testing must be coupled with these measures to make campuses safe. “Physical distancing, gathering size restrictions, hand hygiene and face coverings have been very successful in mitigating the spread of illness in places using those strategies,” Peluso said.
Those steps are outlined extensively in the Return to Campus Guide, along with the college’s plan to have students quarantine prior to their arrival and to “open” campus in phases.
However, the 750 tests-per-week plan places the college’s testing frequency well behind some peer schools: Every University of Vermont student will be tested each week for the first three weeks of the university’s semester, after which UVM will re-evaluate its plan. Champlain College, Wesleyan and Tufts universities also plan to test all students weekly during the fall semester. Harvard will test students every three days and, in a plan that could cost up to $10 million, Colby will test twice-weekly. In the cases of Harvard and UVM, both schools could consider a TDT-type approach later in the semester, but only if their initial bouts of heavy testing yield low infection rates.
Johns Hopkins University — which is in a much denser urban area than Middlebury — had planned on testing all students twice-weekly this fall, but cancelled in-person classes last week. One of the university’s top infectious disease specialists later called the rigorous testing strategy it had planned to use “an incomplete defense.”
The college is prepared to raise or lower its number of weekly TDT tests depending on level of infection in the community, Peluso said, and if viral prevalence remains low, it may use some of the 750 tests allocated for TDT to test symptomatic community members. Testing will be free for students on the college’s health insurance.
“We have purchased enough test capacity to perform arrival testing for all students, and 750 tests per week for 12 weeks, plus some reserve testing for surge or symptomatic students,” he said.
Students interviewed by the Campus shared mixed feelings about the testing plan, with some grateful for arrival day and day seven testing, while others said they wished the college would test more throughout the semester.
“One of the reasons that I have any confidence in Middlebury's return plan at all is that everyone, including asymptomatic folks, is getting tested upon arrival to campus. Without that, I would be extremely hesitant to return,” said Keith Chatinover ’22.5.
Others are less optimistic. “One hundred percent of people tested once over a five-week period is not going to prevent an outbreak from exploding,” said Michael Koutelos ’20.5. (With the 750 weekly TDT tests targeting certain members of the community over others, it is possible that some students could go more than five weeks without being tested.)
Colleges’ Covid-19 testing plans depend heavily on finances, and many institutions around the country will test with less frequency than Middlebury.
The college’s plan to test students on arrival and seven days later is a step many smaller institutions are not able to take for financial reasons, for example: Small schools like Cornell College in Iowa will not test students upon entry. And free testing under college insurance is also not available at every school. Students at St. Michaels University, which plans to test students randomly and won’t test any student more than four times throughout the term, will have to pay a $150 testing fee, according to the Burlington Free Press. Syracuse University will charge students $49 for “testing kits.”
Testing 750 community members weekly falls short of some expert-recommended testing levels that may be required to maintain a “controllable” level of Covid-19 infection on campuses. A widely covered study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association called on colleges to test every community member once every two days to “yield a modest number of containable infections” — but acknowledged that doing so “sets a very high bar ...logistically, financially and behaviorally.”
When asked how Middlebury settled on testing 750 community members per week, Peluso pointed to the Center of Disease Control (CDC), Vermont Department of Health and American College Health Association Guidelines. He wrote that the possibility of false positive tests arising from widespread testing of asymptomatic students was one factor that pushed the college to do fewer tests. “The increased risk of false positive results in low prevalence situations, with ensuing isolation and quarantine of individuals who do not actually have the disease, must be considered,” he wrote.
While the likelihood of a test yielding an incorrect result does increase in communities with low disease prevalence, prevalence estimates are “a snapshot in time,” according to Director of Global Health Programs Pam Berenbaum. Disease prevalence at Middlebury and in Addison County could thus be different in late August, with students returning to campus from around the country, than it is now (the county as of August 10 had just 2.5 Covid-19 cases per 100,000 residents, according to the New York Times).
Another question about testing at Middlebury lies in the ability of the Broad Institute, the Harvard and MIT-based lab that will head Middlebury’s testing, to increase its testing capacity to fill the needs of dozens of Northeast universities and colleges. The institute plans to provide tests for at least 25 colleges the Campus was able to find, including Colby, Williams, Harvard and UVM, all of which have testing-intensive plans.
Broad has ramped up its testing in the past few weeks. Since it began testing in March, it has performed an average of 3,511 tests per day, and has the capacity to ramp up to 100,000 tests per day if needed, according to the Boston Globe. But the highest number of tests the institute has conducted to date was 13,008 tests on Aug. 6.
Middlebury will pay Broad $30 per test, which brings the cost of its TDT plan to $22,500 per week, assuming the college holds 750 tests weekly (Peluso added that “there are other fixed costs such as courier fees, staff time and PPE needs that add to the total cost,” and the total cost of testing could vary depending on testing of symptomatic people).
Administrators say they’ve worked closely with Vermont state and local governments in building a reopening strategy and describe Vermont’s stellar record in keeping infection rate low as a buffer in their plan not to test all students weekly.
“We have lower disease prevalence in the region which makes it less likely that the illness would come to campus from local community spread than if Middlebury were in a higher prevalence area. That does not mean it won’t happen, it’s just far less likely to happen,” Peluso said. “Vermont, and the Middlebury area in particular, has done a great job in keeping the spread of Covid-19 low.”
But that success could mean little when students come to campus from different parts of the country. While many students have spent summer in the town of Middlebury or other places away from home, a Campus analysis found that of roughly 12,000 students enrolled at Bates, Bowdoin, Tufts, Connecticut College and Middlebury, 20% are originally from states designated as White House “red zones” as of Aug. 3, with another 78% living in the “yellow zone,” areas with moderate levels of infection.
Just 2% of students reside in the only “green zone” that presently exists in the country — the Green Mountain State itself.
Digital Director Benjy Renton contributed reporting.
(05/25/20 12:55am)
The class of 2020 commencement speaker will be Jason Collins, a retired professional basketball player and the first male active sports athlete in a major sport to come out as gay. Collins graduated from Stanford in 2001, after which he was drafted to the NBA where he played for myriad teams for 13 years. In 2013, he declared his sexuality in a landmark cover story in “Sports Illustrated.” President Laurie Patton announced Collins as the speaker of the in-person commencement during the virtual senior celebration held Sunday. Collins delivered a brief recorded address during the virtual celebration and will return to address the class of 2020 during the full graduation ceremony tentatively planned to be held sometime next year.
Collins will also be the distinguished recipient of an honorary degree along with Judge Allison Burroughs ’83, a Federal Judge appointed by Barack Obama in 2014; Marta Casals Istomin, a renowned musician and former longtime artistic director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; Ernie Parizeau, a practiced teacher of entrepreneurship and Professor of the Practice at Middlebury; and Kim Parizeau ’79, the innovative former chair of the Middlebury Board of Trustees.
“I’m disappointed that I’m not there in person as your commencement speaker to celebrate your achievements as graduates of Middlebury College,” Collins said during the livestreamed ceremony, where he encouraged the class of 2020 to reflect on the past four years and then forward to the future. “We need you. Society needs you. The world needs you. Be the future leaders that we know that you can be.”
During his time at Stanford, Collins was named an All-American and to the All Pac-10 First Team as a senior. He also received the NABC Pete Newell “Big Man of the Year” Award and was chosen in the 2001 NBA Draft as the eighteenth overall pick. He then went on to play for six teams including Atlanta, Boston, the Brooklyn Nets, New Jersey, Memphis, Minnesota and Washington during his 13-year tenure in the NBA.
In April 2013, Collins was featured on the cover of “Sports Illustrated” and in an exclusive through which he came out as gay. “I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport,” Collins wrote in Sports Illustrated. “But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation.” Following his announcement, Collins was featured in 2014 as one of “TIME” magazine’s “100 Most Influential people in the World” and was honored the following year with a Sports Legacy Award from the National Civil Rights Museum.
Following his recognitions, Collins served the Obama administration as a member of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. He now serves as an NBA Cares Ambassador, working to cultivate a positive basketball community.
Judge Allison Burroughs ’83 will join Collins in receiving an honorary degree. Judge Burroughs received her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1989 and specialized in complex litigation and white-collar criminal defense before entering private practice. After working as an Assistant United States attorney for 16 years, she was appointed to the Federal Bench by Barack Obama in 2014.
The third recipient of an honorary degree is Marta Casals Istomin, a musician and well-known cellist who dedicated her life to music education. Istomin has worked with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, serving as a delegate to the World Arts Forum. Istomin served as the Artistic Director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. for over 10 years. Then, she would lead the Manhattan School of Music for over a decade as its president. Istomin was awarded the Living Legend Award from the Library of Congress in 2015, and she currently serves as the President Emerita of the Manhattan School of Music.
The fourth recipient of an honorary degree at next year’s ceremony, Ernie Parizeau is a practiced entrepreneur and dedicated Professor of the Practice at Middlebury. Parizeau also teaches entrepreneurship in the MiddCORE Innovation program and has taught at Babson College, Olin College of Engineering and Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Parizeau served for 23 years as a partner of Northwest Venture Partners and was chair of the Cape Eleuthera Foundation. He is currently a member of the Advisory Board of the Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship at Dartmouth and is married to Kim Parizeau, the fifth and final recipient of an honorary degree.
Kim Parizeau ’79 has served as a member of the Middlebury Board of Trustees for 16 years, during which time she guided the college through significant transitions as chair of the Board. Under her leadership, the board saw the acquisition of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, now known as the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. She also saw the appointment of Dr. Laurie Patton, the college’s first female president, and the creation of Middlebury’s Energy 2028 plan. Parizeau is also a board member at Matriculate.org, a nonprofit dedicated to equitable higher education among low-income communities.
Although no concrete plans have been made for the in-person commencement ceremony, President Patton hopes to hold the event on Middlebury’s campus next year. Speaker Jason Collins has agreed to deliver a full address when the event is held, at which time each of the five honorary degrees will be awarded.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/FePgACOZqKg
(05/22/20 9:56pm)
Jennifer Bleich
Associate director of the Office of Grants & Sponsored Programs, and 20-year Middlebury resident
Location: Middlebury, Vermont
Submitted April 30, 2020
My husband, Erik, a professor of political science, my 17-year-old son Alex, my 13-year-old son Luke, and I are all working and schooling from home together. A close family member in Manhattan became very ill with Covid-19 and a college friend was hospitalized with this virus as well. Thankfully, they have both recovered. In our daily lives, we are mostly feeling tremendously fortunate to live in a place like Middlebury, where we have a comfortable home with relatively stable internet access and enough space to find solitude when we need it. We also have safe access to healthy food and a hospital that has maintained its capacity to treat patients. And yet, we are full of anxiety for the financial future of the college and the town of Middlebury, for the well-being of families locally and beyond who have lost their jobs, and for the world economy as we acknowledge that we are many months away from the creation and widespread availability of a vaccine for this terrible virus.
What has been your greatest worry or day-to-day concern as coronavirus has spread?
My greatest worry varies from day to day and hour to hour, depending on how much time I've devoted to reading the New York Times, The Atlantic, etc. I guess I worry most that people we love could die a terrible death as a result of this virus. After that, I worry about financial security now and in the future for ourselves and for so many others. I'm also concerned about the mental health effects of this virus on so many people, but particularly on my teenage sons. And then, because I'm a mom, I worry about the college application and acceptance processes for our son, whose standardized tests were canceled this spring and whose long-dreamt-of camp counselor job for the summer may be canceled as a result of Covid-19. I hope we can find a way to honor and acknowledge each others' losses, no matter how great or small they may seem. Everyone is losing something — or many things — as a result of this pandemic.
What has made you happy over the past few weeks?
It has been (mostly!) truly wonderful to have more time at home with my sons and my husband. We are normally so very busy that we don't connect with each other regularly during the work week, but this forced pause has remedied that. Even our teenage sons have acknowledged that they are surprised to feel gratitude for this time together.
I'm also grateful that this virus-induced shutdown began when the Vermont weather started to improve. I have lived in Middlebury for 20 years, but for the first time ever last week, I hiked the entire 19-mile length of the Trail Around Middlebury in a single day. So beautiful and so exhausting. We are seriously lucky to have the TAM right out our back door!
(05/14/20 10:00am)
A vast majority of Vermonters show a desire to delay the reopening of the state’s economy and continue social distancing restrictions, even as 26% surveyed have been laid off or lost a job, according to new polling data from a nationwide survey.
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Conducted as a joint project between researchers at Northeastern University, Harvard University and Rutgers University, the Covid-19 Consortium surveyed over 22,900 Americans nationwide on various topics relating to the pandemic. Questions touched on how respondents have been affected by the pandemic to their trust in leaders, organizations and sources of information. The survey polled 158 Vermonters through an online system from April 17 to 26 and the results were released to the public on April 30. 24% of Vermonters surveyed identified as Republicans, 29% as Democrats and 41% as independents.
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The pandemic has had wide-ranging effects on Vermonters, with 33% surveyed having started working remotely and 19% having taken pay cut due to reduced work hours or demand. At the forefront of Vermonters’ concerns are financial hardships and either themselves or a family member contracting the disease.
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Vermonters mostly approved of measures that have been taken in the state to mitigate the spread of the virus, with 75% saying they “strongly approve” the cancellation of K-12 schools and 85% approving mandatory business closures. The state’s response to the coronavirus has been among the quickest when compared to nearby states, with Governor Phil Scott issuing a state of emergency on March 13, closing public schools on March 15 and announcing a stay at home order on March 24.
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Throughout the “Stay Home, Stay Safe” period, Vermonters have shown high levels of adherence to social distancing restrictions, with the eighth highest reduction in movement in the nation, according to mobility data. 76% of those surveyed in Vermont indicated that they “very closely” followed health recommendations to avoid contact with other people, while 61% said that they “very closely” heeded the advice to wear a face mask outside of their home.
The vast majority of Vermonters indicated that they feel well-informed of the state of the outbreak — 90% agreed with the statement that they “feel well-informed about the steps I can take to protect myself from the virus.”
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The survey also asked where respondents have been receiving information related to the coronavirus and had a range of media choices. 51% of Vermonters indicated that they were informed by friends and family in the last 24 hours, consistent with the national average.
Vermont’s consumption of print newspapers as a source of coronavirus information was higher than the national average — 19% in the state compared to 12% nationally. Vermonters consume less Fox News for information on the pandemic — 30% in Vermont compared to 37% nationally, while tuning into CNN and MSNBC more than the national average.
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In every state nationwide, the approval rating of the state’s governor exceeds that of President Trump. Vermont has one of the highest gaps in the nation, with 75% approving of Governor Scott’s handling of the pandemic, compared to 32% for President Trump. Governor Scott has been holding press briefings three times a week, with members of his administration updating the public on the state’s latest modeling data and actions the administration has taken to begin to restart the economy. 88% of Vermonters think that the state government is “reacting about right” to the outbreak, which is one of the highest rates in the nation. 50% indicated that they think the federal government is “not taking the outbreak seriously enough.”
Approval of Governor Scott’s handling of the pandemic is in line with many state governors in New England, a mixture of Republicans and Democrats.
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Vermonters’ trust in local and state governments is consistent with their trust in medical and scientific professionals, with only 6% indicating they trust scientists and researchers “not at all” or “not much.” 27% of Vermonters trust the White House and 44% trust President Trump “not at all” to best handle the current coronavirus outbreak.
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Respondents were asked when the country should reopen the economy and resume business activity, which has become a partisan issue in recent weeks. At the time of survey collection, 35% of respondents who identified as Democrats said that the country should resume business activity “after more than eight weeks,” compared to 16% of Republicans and 26% of independents. In Vermont, respondents generally thought that the country should open between four and eight weeks from the second half of April, when the survey was conducted.
In recent weeks, Governor Scott has announced steps to reopen the state’s economy, including permitting gatherings of 10 people or fewer, allowing elective surgeries to resume and permitting the return to work for construction and manufacturing companies with 10 or fewer employees. The governor is expected to make more announcements to restart various sectors of the state’s economy in the coming weeks.
(05/14/20 9:59am)
For Edyth Moldow ’23, this is a hopeful moment. Back home in Denver, Colorado, she is staying involved with the Sunday Night Environmental Group (SNEG) and Sunrise Middlebury, both close-knit environmental organizations with a large on-campus presence.
“Despite all of the negative consequences [of Covid-19] and all of the bad things that are going on in the world right now, it's actually pushing people to take more action than we were before,” Moldow said. “So in a way, it's kind of amped up the climate activism to a really high degree.”
SNEG and Sunrise have continued their work via Zoom, Instagram and other digital platforms, but it’s been hard to stay in close communications from a distance, Moldow said. While not everyone is able to devote the same energy to organizing that they could on campus, those who can still participate have become even more dedicated, with many members channeling feelings of helplessness and isolation into environmental action.
“Right now, there is more of a need than there ever has been, to be taking action in whatever capacity we're able to,” Moldow said.
Malia Armstrong ’22.5, also a member of SNEG and Sunrise, is using this time in Southern California to check in with herself and her community. The two organizations are prioritizing community-building, she said, by touching base at every meeting and figuring out new ways to support each other — an attitude she described as, ‘Don’t worry, we have your back.’
Even during a normal semester, activism can be draining, and going remote has posed additional challenges to Middlebury’s environmental leaders.
“At school, we feel like we're getting so much accomplished,” Armstrong said. “It's easy to see what we're doing. Like, we'll have an event and we can see all the people who came, or, we plan an action and we get to see the action come to fruition. But here, like it's harder to visualize success. What we've been doing, it's not tangible anymore.”
Armstrong helps new Sunrise members find their place in activism — something she also struggled with when she arrived at Middlebury.
“As a person of color, I don’t have the luxury of being able to get arrested without fear of being targeted,” she said. She prefers working behind the scenes on community building and event and action planning, a side of activism that was new to her, but which she has come to embrace.
“Being a part of such close communities with SNEG and Sunrise, and hearing other people’s stories and their journey through activism, has helped me figure out what I really enjoy and what I care about,” Armstrong said.
Jacob Freedman ’21, a co-founder of place-based conservation effort The Wild Hometown Movement and Middlebury offshoot WildMidd, was supposed to spend the semester at the Middlebury School in Argentina. The program was canceled on March 13.
“As I was flying home, I was super flip-flopping on my emotions,” Freedman said. “I was like, ‘No, this is horrible, this is the worst thing ever,’ and then 10 minutes later, I’d be like, ‘I need to do everything that I can to help my community find solace and security and safety in this time.’”
Freedman has been working with his local land trust in Worcester, Massachusetts since high school, and he jumped back into land protection work as soon as he got home. He’s been making maps using GIS, finishing an urban trail network he has wanted to get up and running for years, and searching for rattlesnakes in a nearby forest. The rattlesnake hunt is a long-shot conservation effort: developers are interested in cutting down the forest, but if Freedman can find a rattlesnake, the land will be protected.
He and a filmmaker friend are also putting together a series of videos about Worcester’s forests and nature areas. The project aims to help build community around nature.
“I think with people looking for things to do right now, just sort of showing that the natural world is alive and nature is thriving around us, that’s a really hopeful message,” he said.
Freedman and WildMidd co-founder Oscar Psychas ’21 passed the torch to new club leadership, and are focusing on expanding the organization to other New England colleges.
“The whole goal of WildMidd is connecting with nature where we live, loving the communities that we live in and recognizing that the wild world exists all around us,” Freedman said.
“I’m super excited for this to be a moment for folks who feel really comfortable on online platforms to take the lead,” said Hannah Laga Abram ’23, who does not consider herself a particularly internet-savvy activist. She thrives on in-person organizing and is using this time to center down, take long walks in rural New Mexico and refocus on the nature she is fighting to protect.
“As much organizing as is being done online and virtually, it just isn't the same as being able to be in the same space with people and really talk to folks, and hear their stories, and really engage them,” she said.
Laga Abram continues to attend SNEG meetings, and has been co-writing op-eds highlighting the need for socially transformative solutions to Covid-19.
“I think that's a really important way to get our opinions out right now,” she said, “particularly regarding the way that COVID-19 is completely enmeshed in the climate crisis, and all of the ways that the broken systems that this is revealing are exactly, also, what have caused and continue to cause the climate crisis. And that our solutions to this used to be really focused on that.”
Haley Goodman ’21 had to leave Middlebury’s program in Madrid in March. She returned home to New York and soon started volunteering remotely with the Addison County Relocalization Network (ACORN) in Middlebury, helping to start a virtual farmers’ market that opened on April 29. Customers at the market order directly from farmers and collect their orders at one of two pick-up locations, in Bristol on Wednesday afternoons and Middlebury on Thursday mornings.
Goodman worked at ACORN in the summer and fall, and they reached out to her after she left Spain about assisting with the farmers’ market. Since then, she has helped out wherever is needed, including onboarding farmers, finding locations for dropoff sites, contacting volunteers, editing the website and building the app.
“It's been so heartening, and made me just feel filled with joy and hope, trying to reach out to get volunteers, and see who's interested in helping us out in any way, because the response that I've gotten has just been people being overjoyed to share all the resources that they can,” Goodman said.
An environmental geography major, Goodman is reformatting the market’s interactive map, which connects people in Addison County to more than 200 farmers and food producers, to be compatible with its forthcoming mobile app.
Correction May 14, 2020: An earlier version of this story stated that Goodman created the interactive map. She did not make the map, but is adapting it to the mobile app.
(05/14/20 9:56am)
PE credit adjustments
Faculty ratified a motion allowing students to earn both of their PE credits in the same sport or activity this Tuesday. According to the proposal, “students are currently required to earn their two PE credits in two different courses, but this discourages students from persisting in a sport or activity that they find interesting or valuable.” The motion passed with 169, or 93%, in favor, and 13, or 7%, against.
This is the second policy regarding PE credits that was passed this spring. Last Friday, faculty motioned to waive the PE requirement for seniors in response challenges presented by Covid-19. “We felt that the PE requirement was a lower priority, and in consultation with the Academic Administration, we waived the requirement for anyone who had not completed it yet,” Erin Quinn, director of athletics, wrote in an email to The Campus. The proposal to the faculty was simply to ratify the action that the physical education program has taken. It was passed with 159, or 99%, in favor.
Add cards no longer require faculty adviser approval
The faculty then ratified a motion to allow all non-first year students to add courses with the permission of the faculty instructor only; previously, an adviser’s signature was also required. This motion, proposed by the Educational Affairs Committee (EAC) and amended by Professor of Mathematics Michael Olinick, addresses the period of registration taken place after BannerWeb registration has ended, when students use green add cards to join a new class until the end of the second week of classes in the fall and spring, or the end of the third day of classes in the winter.
This motion passed with the amendment with 144, or 85%, in favor. Proponents of the new motion saw it as an opportunity for students to have more agency in their academic studies and reduce bureaucracy in the process.
“High-quality advising generally happens in advance of registration, and by the time the beginning of the semester actually rolls around, students are mostly making adjustments to their schedules that they’ve already decided upon with their advisors,” Dean of Curriculum Suzanne Gurland explained. She added that the process of acquiring a signature from an advisor tends to slow down the process and delay prompt updates regarding available seats on BannerWeb.
Olinick’s amendment to the motion states, “All first year students must also have the approval of their advisors.” The rationale behind the amendment is that instructors who approve students’ requests to take their course typically would not ask about the student’s schedule, workload and need to satisfy distribution requirements. Hence, a number of faculty believed that it is beneficial for first-year students to discuss the change before they proceed with it.
During the discussion of the amendment, Professor of Religion Robert Schine motioned to change the language again to be “all students in their first semester at Middlebury,” which would include transfer students. However, this motion was voted down narrowly, with 48% for and 52% against.
(05/14/20 9:56am)
Editor’s note: This article contains spoilers about “Survivor” season 40, “Winners at War.”
The popular television show “Survivor,” according to season 23 champion Sophie Clarke ’11, has always been a human experiment. Clarke won season 23 back in 2011 and recently competed on season 40, “Winners at War” — an all-champions season. The season 40 finale aired Wednesday, May 13.
“For me, when I watch ‘Survivor,’ you see both humanity’s greatest side as well as it’s underbelly,” Clarke said in an interview with The Campus. “I think it also exposes how far people are willing to go to self-preserve. To stay healthy and fed on ‘Survivor,’ but also to win the [money].”
“Survivor” contestants must live off the land and natural resources, providing their own food, shelter and fire. Competitors are taken to a remote location and are divided into two “tribes” that compete against each other in physical and tactical challenges. The winning tribe of each challenge receives prizes such as food and comfort items, as well as immunity for the entire group until the next challenge. The losing tribe, however, must go to “tribal council,” a forum which eventually culminates in voting one of the tribe members off the island.
Clarke had been an ardent “Survivor” fan since the show premiered in 2000. In the fall of her senior year at Middlebury, Clarke and a friend filmed her audition video in Bicentennial Hall, featuring a lab coat, a ski outfit and an “amp[ed] up” personality. Once Clarke learned she had made the cut, she told her friends she would be leading tours in Russia for the summer after graduation (she was a Russian and Economics double major) and would not be accessible. In reality, Clarke was off competing on — and winning — the 23rd season of “Survivor.”
During her rookie season, Clarke did not enter the game with a firm strategy. She was placed in a tribe with “a lot of egos.” On the first day of the game, she made a strong alliance with four other players. Clarke was a clear foil to the other strong contenders in her season: while the other frontrunners were generally male, outspoken and visibly making strategic moves, Clarke intentionally stayed under the radar, swaying her tribemates’ votes more subtly.
“Make everybody else think they can beat you,” Clarke said of her strategy on season 23. “Don’t be too in-your-face. And then when the time is right, pounce.”
The three final contestants in each season must persuade the jury, comprising the former contestants who were voted off the island, that they deserve to win the game based on their physical, social or strategic game — or some combination of the three. As is typical of the final episode of each “Survivor” season, Clarke learned that she had won the season and the one million dollars live on television.
Reflecting on her victory, Clarke cites her ability to cooperate with all types of people as one of the reasons for her success. Her experience with “small environment experiences” such as Middlebury and her small hometown in New York helped facilitate strong relationships and alliances in both of her seasons.
“[At Middlebury], you make friends with the people on your hall, the people in your class or the people on your sports teams that might not be like you,” Clarke said.
In emails to the Campus, Kevin Moss, professor of modern language and literature, speculated that Clarke’s tenacity assisted in her “Survivor” victory.
“She was persistent — she survived Russian, Russian School, and a semester in Russia! So why not ‘Survivor’ as well?” Moss wrote.
Almost a decade after she won season 23, Clarke has since finished medical school, decided against pursuing medicine and established a career in healthcare management consulting. After making the cut for this year’s season, Clarke speculated that the season would be a champion’s season to mark the 20th anniversary of the show. She prepared by watching old seasons of the show to investigate the competition, working out and brushing up on her survival skills.
Season 40 was different from other seasons, and not only because all the players had won the show before. Clarke said that the “Survivor” community is very connected, and many of the champions have established relationships and friendships over the years. Two contestants on Season 40 were actually married, having met on the show; others knew each other from competing on the same season before, or from “Survivor” charity events.
“It changes [the dynamic] completely,” Clarke said of the pre-existing relationships between contestants. “It was this constant battle of having to gauge what’s happening in the game versus what you know to be true outside of the game. It felt like this web of relationships that you were constantly having to sort through.”
In season 40, because all the contestants were familiar with the rules and process of the game, they relied more heavily on the strategy part of the game compared to the social or physical components, according to Clarke.
“In a returning player season, all of those things are seen as threats,” said Clarke. “The strategy is like reverse psychology 30 times over and you’re constantly having to shift [it].”
The biggest trick, Clarke said, was walking the line between appearing powerful enough to garner enough jury votes for the end of the game, and not being so showy that people vote you out of the game. With the constantly shifting web of relationships, one could only hope to avoid the “invisible target that was moving every day.”
“Survivor is a game of perception,” Clarke said. “[Season 40] was this self-perpetuating story where the more you call yourself a threat, the more you become a threat.”
In season 40, some of the physically bigger, more muscular male contestants branded themselves the “lions” and referred to other seemingly weaker players as the “hyenas,” according to Clarke. Labels such as these are indicative of a large but sometimes hidden subtext of the show: what strategies or “moves” are seen as impressive by other players as well as the audience.
“Survivor” has struggled with a gender problem in the last few years, Clarke said. In the first 25 seasons of the show, 13 men and 12 women were crowned the sole Survivor. However, in the last 14 seasons, 11 men and only three women won the show, according to a January Entertainment Weekly article.
When asked about the role gender plays in “Survivor,” Clarke said that women tend to play the game differently than men. Women may aim to subtly influence social dynamics, while men are more likely to make bigger, flashier moves. The latter makes for more entertaining TV, Clarke said.
Gender also influences the actual roles that contestants tend to have around camp. Women are more likely to prepare the rice and be physically close to camp, giving them less opportunities to privately orchestrate bigger moves. Men usually play a larger role in collecting firewood, allowing them to have a legitimate reason to be away from camp longer. This also gives them the opportunity to find hidden immunity idols, a talisman that, when brandished by a contestant during tribal council, prevents the user from being voted off the island.
However, even once a contestant has a hidden immunity idol, they must be very strategic as to when they play it. Playing the idol may diminish tribe members’ trust in the contestant who plays it and could make them the target during the next tribal council. Clarke knows the should-I-shouldn’t-I psychology of using immunity idols. In episode 11 of season 40, Clarke had an idol in her possession and chose not to play it when she was blindsided — a “Survivor” term that refers to a contestant who didn’t think they would be voted off — by the other contestants.
“The blindside was definitely out of nowhere and felt like a slap in the face,” Clarke said. “I thought I understood who was on what side, where the alliances were, who was going to vote with me, who was not. And so when that didn’t come to be ... it’s like your world is shattered …. You start to question your whole existence and your whole relationships.”
After returning home from filming both seasons of “Survivor,” Clarke said she experienced “the most culture shock I’ve ever had.” On one occasion, Clarke recalls filling up her coffee cup from a machine, and began to cry at the fact that coffee could come out of a machine and didn’t require a long process to prepare like it had on the show.
The survivor experience also had lingering effects on how Clarke perceived and interacted with people: she found that she was a little more suspicious of people’s motivations in the real world, having been used to cross-checking contestants’ stories on the show. In addition, after the relative deprivation of food on the show, Clarke said she developed a serious eating disorder after the show.
“95% of our conversations on the island are about food,” Clarke said. “When I first came home this summer, every morning I would want it planned out, like what are we having for lunch, what are we having for dinner. Are we gonna have a snack, where are we getting it?”
Though “Survivor” has complicated psychological aftereffects, the primality of the show is exactly what makes it so different from reality — and why “Survivor” has developed a cult-like fandom over its two-decade run.
“Because [“Survivor”] strips you down to your core, people are actually able to put aside a lot of things that make them different, that might make them not get along in real life,” Clarke said. “We find that there’s a lot more in common between us than you might have expected.”
(05/08/20 9:00pm)
On March 10, Middlebury students received a life-altering e-mail: "Following spring break, students who can will be expected to remain at home and not return to campus until further notice." Many had not anticipated such extreme measures in response to the viral outbreak so soon. But within days of the college's announcement, as the virus began to sweep across the country, it became clear that we were entering a once-in-a-century period of upheaval and isolation.
Through this project, we're hoping to give voice to the despair and hope precipitated by the interruption of campus life, even while we're all quarantining in different corners of the globe.
As a college newspaper, we feel an obligation to go on. We are determined to continue telling your stories, no matter how many thousands of miles away we are from one another. We will try to retain as much of a sense of the Middlebury community as we can.
The Middlebury Off-Campus Project is a compilation of these stories — from students, employees, alumni and residents of Addison County — chronicling this surreal time.
We will publish the submissions we've received in phases. The first round was gathered from members of the class of 2020 and 2020.5, graduating seniors whose final semesters were truncated by the viral outbreak; it was published on April 13. The second round was published on April 20 and the third was published on April 28. These two phases feature various individuals from the Middlebury community. On May 8, we featured the stories of nine international students in partnership with the International Students Organization (ISO). And this most recent round was published on May 22, after classes have ended and this unusual spring semester has ground to a halt. Stay tuned for more stories as we publish submissions weekly.
We also teamed up with the folks working on Middlebury's Engaged Listening Project for the first-ever Off-Campus Podcast. Give it a listen on Stitcher or Spotify.
Do you want to take part in this historic project? We will accept stories all semester. Submit your story here.
Introduction by Amelia Pollard '20 and graphics by Emma Brown '21.
(05/07/20 10:00am)
Vermont lawmakers have experienced a drastic change in their work since the Covid-19 outbreak began, and are now passing legislation remotely from their homes instead of in Montpelier. The Campus spoke with Vermont State Senator Ruth Hardy (D-Addison) about how the legislative session is continuing and what legislation has been passed in response to the pandemic.
Governor Phil Scott (R) declared a state of emergency on March 13 in response to Covid-19. “In a state of emergency, the Governor is really in charge of the response because the executive branch can act much more quickly than the legislature,” Senator Hardy said. The Vermont General Assembly is hard at work on legislation related to the pandemic, but the primary response and orders are under the discretion of the Governor and his office.
On May 1, Scott announced new steps in the process of reopening the state’s economy. These measures included the allowance of certain manufacturing, distribution and construction work in compliance with specified safety measures. One safety requirement calls for pre-screenings before each work shift to check all employees for symptoms of the virus.
While the governor deals with matters of closure and reopening of the state, the legislature has focused on working on bills that will address the needs of Vermonters under the new orders and the reality of the outbreak.
The first task of the legislature was figuring out how to conduct their work in a way that adhered to social distancing guidelines, but did not break any rules that applied to the legislative bodies and their work.
“It took us a little bit of time to work out how we were allowed to do our work,” Hardy said. “We actually had to change the rules of the legislature to enable us to meet remotely because prior to this, we couldn’t meet remotely at all.” Hardy said the Senate was able to change those rules relatively quickly because there are only 30 senators. Because the Assembly requires representatives to vote in-person on rule changes, it took the 150-member House longer to assemble and agree to go fully remote.
Now House of Representatives and Senate sessions are live-streamed for anyone to watch on YouTube. “In some ways, it has made [our work] a lot more publicly accessible,” Hardy said.
One of the first priorities for Vermont lawmakers was adjusting the healthcare system and facilities so that the health of Vermonters was the best it could be during this time. “The first pieces of legislation that we did were to make things easier for our government to operate,” Hardy said, citing actions like making telemedicine visits covered by health insurance.
“For example, when a hospital wants to expand its facilities, it has to apply to expand,” Hardy said. “[The General Assembly] wanted to make it easier for hospitals to do things like set up new facilities for Covid-19 patients, so we allowed them to do a lot of expansions and things really quickly if they were related to Covid-19.”
In addition to addressing healthcare, Vermont legislators have also worked on matters relating to local government and education, including allowing school boards and select boards to meet remotely and increasing the flexibility of elections.
“We did a bill that would allow elections to be done either by mail or by drive-up, [giving] the Secretary of State flexibility in how elections can proceed so that we prevent the spread of Covid-19,” Senator Hardy said.
Legislators have also been working on ways to lessen the financial burden of the pandemic and to recognize the bravery and sacrifice of frontline workers. On May 1, the Senate passed Bill S.346, which Hardy said would provide $1,000 per month in pay for two months for essential workers with potential exposure to Covid-19.
“The majority of [these essential workers] are types of healthcare workers in lots of different settings… but it also includes grocery store workers and first responders,” Senator Hardy explained. That bill is currently being read in the House.
The Senate has also passed a bill that expands hazard pay for workers who face a heightened risk of being exposed to Covid-19, “If somebody is working and they are exposed at work, then they can get workers compensation for it,” Senator Hardy said. This bill was also transferred to the House for their consideration this week.
Another matter of importance for lawmakers was evictions. “The House [last] Friday passed a bill that [the Senate] had earlier passed that would basically stop all evictions in the state,” Hardy said. “That was important so that people wouldn’t become homeless during the pandemic.”
Hardy explained that, since Governor Scott declared the state of emergency, the only legislation that the General Assembly has worked on has been related to Covid-19. While there are some bills that were being considered pre-Covid-19 outbreak that might still be in the works, Hardy said most other work is probably not going to be addressed this session.
The legislature will need to take up the matter of the state budget and the state’s finances next, including a budget adjustment for FY20, followed by a short term budget for the following fiscal year.
“We have to change this [fiscal year’s] budget because things have changed so much,” Hardy said. “We’ll probably come back in the Fall and pass the full budget for FY21 [since] the state revenues have plummeted significantly and we have far less money available to us than we did just a few months ago.”
For a complete list of General Assembly bills and resolutions related to Covid-19, visit www.legislature.vermont.gov
Editor’s note: Ruth Hardy is married to Middlebury College Professor of Film and Media Culture Jason Mittell, who is the Campus’s academic advisor. All questions may be directed to campus@middlebury.edu.
(05/07/20 9:55am)
In designing this year’s survey, The Campus’ Zeitgeist team reviewed questions from last year’s survey (both those that were on the survey itself and others that were submitted but did not make it into the survey) and then distributed a form to solicit questions via The Campus’ social media channels. After consolidating the questions that were submitted and in careful consultation with editors, members of the Zeitgeist team generated 65 survey questions in total, including 13 demographic editors.
The Campus distributed the survey in all-student email on the evening of November 11, 2019. Responses were open for 15 days, until midnight on November 26. The survey was also distributed on The Campus’ social media platforms, posting at frequent intervals until the deadline. Campus editors set up tabling stations, alternating between Proctor, Ross and Atwater dining halls, in an effort to increase survey participation. Upon receiving the email, respondents followed an anonymous link to the survey hosted on Qualtrics. This link ensured that no personally identifiable data as to the respondent’s computer or location could be tracked. After completing the survey, respondents had the option to enter a raffle on a Google Form, which ensured that the participants’ identifying information for the raffle and the survey data were not linked.
Following the demographic questions, this year’s survey questions were grouped into five general categories: Academics and the institution, Midd after hours, Let’s talk about sex, Health and Wellness and This I believe. Survey respondents were encouraged to answer all questions, but were able to refrain from doing so. All demographic questions offered an “I prefer not to answer” option.
The survey data was stored on the Qualtrics platform and was distributed to a small group of reporters in sections via Google Drive. Sharing permissions for the Google Drive folder were deleted after the completion of data analysis. Data remained only on the devices of reporters and never shared externally, including the administration, other clubs, or academic departments.
When analyzing the data, the team did not examine specific entries or attempt to extract the entirety of a respondent’s data, but worked with the data as a whole to survey general trends. In order to protect the confidentiality of respondents, we have chosen not to disclose or report the responses of groups with 5 or fewer members in demographic breakdowns. In total, 1245 students responded out of Middlebury’s on-campus undergraduate student population of 2555, making the response rate 48.72%.
The findings were then compiled and published in the May 7 edition of The Campus. In total, 14 students were closely involved with the making of this year’s Zeitgeist.
(05/07/20 9:49am)
The Zeitgeist survey asked respondents about different facets of social life at Middlebury, ranging from questions about substance use to TikTok. College social life invariably evolves for students as they get older, but nevertheless, we tried to depict a general snapshot from first-years to super-senior-Febs.
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A majority of respondents reported having partied where alcohol or drugs were present, or having used one of these substances themselves, before coming to Middlebury. Of these respondents, more than two-thirds, 79.8%, said that alcohol was the most commonly seen substance. Over half of all respondents, 53.1%, had smoked marijuana, and just under a third had vaped or juuled before coming to college. A mere 14.1% reported being around or doing none of the above.
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Patterns of substance use are similar across different school types. Students from public and charter or magnet schools were slightly more likely to have smoked marijuana, while private and boarding schools were more likely to have used a fake ID. Respondents who attended private day schools were the most likely to report doing at least one of the options listed.
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The data show that coming to Middlebury was generally associated with increased substance use. Around 75% of respondents said they partied in the presence of alcohol and/or drugs more at Middlebury than they had before, while 73% reported consuming more alcohol than before.
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When asked how drunk they usually tend to get at Middlebury, approximately half (48.7%) said that they “get drunk.” A tenth of all respondents reported not drinking at all, and the same number said they barely drink. A small number of students — less than 6% of respondents — reported getting “brownout” or “blackout.”
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We also asked respondents about their usage of various social media platforms. Instagram was the most popular form of social media among respondents, with almost two-thirds, 63.4%, rating it their most-used platform. Though more respondents reported using Facebook than Snapchat, the latter was used more frequently: 71.2% ranked Snapchat among their two most used platforms. Facebook reached this rank for only 41.1% of its users.
Tumblr and TikTok were both relatively unpopular among respondents, with 14.9% and 13.2% reporting using them, respectively. While only 23.9% ranked TikTok among their top three platforms in November, the app became a popular meme since stay-at-home orders were put into effect in March. (The Campus tried to get in touch with a number of habitual TikTok users for comment, but none of them wanted to go public about their use of the app.)
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81% of students said they had met friends through mutual friends, making it the most common way through which students formed friendships at Middlebury. Classes, residence halls and extracurriculars trailed not far behind, with approximately 76% of respondents choosing each. 40% of respondents reported having met friends on nights out. Under the “other” category, “Feb” was the most popular with 18 appearances. “Sports” appeared 10 times, “First@Midd” 7 times.
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When asked about friend groups, 63.4% of all respondents reported being part of multiple groups, while 9.5% felt they were part of none. The data show some variation between different ethnic groups. Black and Hispanic/Latino respondents were more likely than white and Asian respondents to consider themselves part of only one friend group. Black respondents were also the least likely to consider themselves part of no friend group.
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When asked about their Saturday nights, 75.2% of respondents selected hanging with friends as a pastime. Out of the five specific campus buildings listed on the survey, Atwater was the most popular with 39% of the vote, followed by the social houses with 35.6%. Approximately a tenth of respondents reported to be working.
Respondents were asked to mark where on campus they feel most uncomfortable. The resulting heat map shows a hotspot that spans the entirety of the Atwater suites, as well as clusters around the athletics complex and the Ross and Proctor areas. The data show overlap with reports of vandalism, as well as the 2019 It Happens Here map which documented incidents of sexual assault and harassment.
(05/07/20 9:47am)
The Middlebury academic experience is marked by a vast range of classes, a set of distribution requirements that push students to explore courses outside of their academic comfort zones, a strong honor code and small class sizes that allow students to develop relationships with their professors and peers.
But these college brochure bullet points don’t capture the full picture. This year, our Zeitgeist data answered more inconspicuous questions about those experiences, from why students skip class to what distribution requirements are hardest to fulfill, to how many students break the honor code and in what ways.
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Overall, students overwhelmingly feel intellectually stimulated at Middlebury, by their professors, their classes, their peers within their major and their friends. In fact, only 4% combined — 40 students — indicated that they either somewhat disagree or strongly disagree with the statement “I feel intellectually stimulated at Middlebury.” Sixty-five percent of students indicated that they strongly agree with the statement, while another 30% said that they somewhat agree.
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The vast majority of students indicated that they are most intellectually stimulated in the classroom, pointing to professors (39%), class material (35%) and classmates (8%). For some, the most prominent source of intellectual stimulation is outside the classroom: 10% of students indicated friends, followed by talks and student organizations, both at 3%.
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Students report consistent levels of intellectual stimulation across all majors. The concentrations with the fewest majors saying they felt intellectually stimulated were arts majors, with 57% of the 40 total arts majors choosing that option. Language majors — 32 total students — reported the highest rate of intellectual stimulation, at 72%. Arts and language majors were also less represented in the survey than most other majors.
Those 4% of students who strongly disagree about feeling intellectually stimulated are evenly distributed across major groups.
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Do students find that their peers within their major are intellectually stimulating? Almost two-thirds — 64% or 792 students — said yes. 18% said neither yes nor no, and 14% marked themselves as undeclared. Only 5%, or 63 students, indicated that they did not.
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Those who indicated that they are strongly stimulated by the other students in their major are most likely to be humanities, literature or natural sciences majors, and least likely to be arts, language or social sciences majors.
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And as for Middlebury’s Honor Code, which, “[r]equires of every student complete intellectual honesty” and which all students sign at the start of their time at the college, 46% of students wrote that they had broken the honor code, while the other 54% said that they had not. Last year, 35% wrote that they had broken the honor code, 57% said they hadn’t and another 8% chose ‘prefer not to answer’, an option which was not available on this year’s Zeitgeist.
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More than half of all honor code violations were with the use of unauthorized aid, such as translators, calculators, SparkNotes and friends’ edits. Cheating on a test comprised 29% of honor code violations while plagiarism, reusing papers and assignments and falsifying data made up the remaining 17% percent.
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Distribution requirements oblige students to take courses in seven of eight academic areas, in addition to four courses pertaining to certain civilizations areas out of six total regions. Students must also complete one comparative civilization course, and two College Writing courses. When asked which of these requirements is hardest to fill, the largest number of students, 24%, said that they did not have any trouble fulfilling any distribution requirements.
Students struggled most with the civilization requirement, with 20% indicating that this was the hardest to fulfill. Of the eight core requirements, students report having the most trouble fulfilling the physical and life sciences (SCI) requirement, at 12%. This is followed by deductive reasoning (DED) at 9% and then a foreign language (LNG) at 7%.
The social analysis (SOC) requirement is the easiest to fulfill, with less than 1% of respondents choosing this option.
There are many factors that may make some requirements easier or harder to fulfill than others. One of these is the sheer number of classes available within a given tag: SOC, for example, was a requirement met by 150 classes offered this fall, compared to only 61 for Literature (LIT) or 26 for Philosophical and Religious Studies (PHL). Additionally, some tags are more interdisciplinary than others: SCI, for example, was tagged only to classes offered in the Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Studies (although only one class), Geography, Geology, Linguistics (also only one course), Neuroscience, Physics and Psychology departments, while the SOC requirement is offered in 30 departments, including in First-Year Seminars.
Additionally, the Foreign Language (LNG) requirement sometimes requires completion of two or three semesters of a language, such as in the case of intro-level language courses, compared to the single-semester required for almost all other categories.
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Middlebury appears to have a solid attendance record: only 7% of students reported skipping class at least once a week, with 37% skipping “a couple times a semester” and 23% skipping just once per semester. Another 33% reported that they never skip class.
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Students cited mental health as the most common reason for skipping class, with mental health being the cause of 23% of missed classes, followed by feeling overwhelmed by assignments, 21% of the time.
Physical health accounts for another 18% of missed classes, while 13% is the result of oversleeping. 11% of the time, students say that they skip because their class time does not feel productive.
Respondents said they miss just 3% of classes because peers are also skipping, while only 2% of skipping happens because students feel intimidated or uncomfortable because of the class or the people in it. Of the 60 respondents who noted skipping class for other reasons, 19 mentioned travel and five cited skiing. Other responses mentioned job interviews, having friends or family visiting or studying for exams in other classes.
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More than half of students reported spending between four and six hours on academic work outside of class per day, with 28% spending less time and 19% spending more. A total of 6% reported spending 10 or more hours a day on schoolwork outside of class.
(05/07/20 9:46am)
This year, 1,245 students completed the second-annual Zeitgeist survey, an uptick of 42 respondents from last year’s inaugural questionnaire. This figure represents 48.7% of the students who were on campus this fall, according to the Fall 2019 Student Profile; however, students who were studying abroad were also invited to participate in the survey.
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Participation across class years was roughly the same. The class of 2022 had the greatest number of participants, with 270 respondents.
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Nearly 73% of respondents identified as white. Only 62% of domestic students in the Fall 2019 Student Profile identified themselves as white, which may indicate that the Zeitgeist survey results have a skew towards students who identify as white — though the student profile’s number does not take into account international students, who were reported in a separate racial or ethnic category.
The second-largest block of Zeitgeist respondents, at 10.4%, were students who identified as Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander. 5.4% of respondents identified as Hispanic or Latinx, and 2.9% of respondents identified as black or African American. 7.5% of respondents identified as biracial or multiracial.
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As might be expected of a liberal arts institution, nearly a fourth (23.3%) of survey respondents had an interdisciplinary major, which includes environmental studies, international politics and economics and international and global studies. The next most popular major category was the social sciences at 22.1%, followed by majors in the natural sciences, with 17.8%, and humanities majors at 8.7%. One in five respondents (19.8%) were undecided about their course of study. 22.4% of respondents indicated having a second major. Economics was the most popular major with 105 respondents, followed by environmental studies with 91, political science with 69, neuroscience with 66 and computer science with 66.
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Nearly 60% of respondents identified as cisgender females while only 36% of respondents identified as cisgender males. Less than 4% of students identified as a transgender male, transgender female, nonbinary, or felt that the options given did not define their gender. According to the Fall 2019 Student Profile, which used a binary classification of gender, 53% of students identified as female while 47% of students identified as male, indicating a skew in the Zeitgeist results towards cisgender female students. Over one in four students identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer or questioning.
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Forty percent of Zeitgeist survey participants are on financial aid. Ten percent of respondents are first-generation college students, which is similar to the most recent admitted class’s profile at 11%.
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Almost one in three respondents hail from New England states. One in five students is from New York, New Jersey or Pennsylvania. 13% are from the South, 12% are from Pacific states, 9% from the Midwest, and 5% are from Mountain states. Over half of respondents consider their hometowns to be suburban, 29% are from urban hometowns, and 18% from rural.
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Half of the respondents attended a public high school, 31% attended a private high school, 11% attended boarding school and 5% a charter or magnet school.
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One in ten respondents identified as religious; 28% considered themselves somewhat religious, and 60% did not consider themselves religious.
(04/30/20 9:58am)
Before coronavirus hit, a lot of people thought 2020 was going to be their year. It was certainly going to be college treasurer David Provost’s. Following years of scrupulous financial planning and cost reducing, he had walked back the college’s once-astronomical deficit to a sustainable level. At the end of Fiscal Year 20, which stretches from July 1, 2019 to July 1, 2020, the college would only be $4 million away from its goal. By FY21, it would hit its target.
But the seismic shift of Covid-19 set those projections back. Middlebury’s budget deficit is now back to where it was in 2017, with a $13 million loss projected for this year. In the next fiscal year, which starts this summer, that figure could hit $30 million, provided classes stay online. To avoid drawing on the endowment, the college will cut as many costs as it can while also accruing as much revenue as possible.
Provost, however, remains optimistic that the college can lower its deficit by FY22. And he says that projections would have been much worse had the college still been operating under its earlier numbers.
“I think our ability to weather through 2020 is fully reflective of the work that the entire institution did the last four years,” Provost told The Campus.
The last five years
Middlebury has been trimming the fat on its operating costs for years. In 2015, the school faced a $16.7 million deficit, which Provost said totaled $33 million when accounting for overdraws on the endowment (a practice the college is now trying to avoid for the sake of the endowment’s health). Campus reporting chronicled rising financial aid costs and flawed tuition policies as some of the many reasons for the hefty deficit.
That year, it laid out a “Road to a Sustainable Future,” which included a plan to break even on the budget — and generate a small surplus — by 2021. Last year’s workforce planning process was one of its more conspicuous cost reduction efforts, cutting staff and faculty costs through an at-times controversial voluntary buyout program for staff and incentive plans for faculty.
Overall, the cost reduction efforts were successful, prompting the college in 2018 to accelerate projections for breaking even to this year. But this spring, the college announced that unexpected healthcare costs in 2019 created an approximately $4 million gap that still needed to be closed. Provost previously told The Campus that those healthcare costs could in part be due to the timing of workforce planning — people might have taken advantage of the college’s insurance plan to get medical procedures they have been putting off, for example, before taking the buyouts and separation plans.
Additionally, Provost said the deficit was partly due to the staggered nature of the workforce planning process, as some employees — including all the faculty at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS) who took the incentive plans — still had to finish up the year before taking the buyouts.
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Today
Those existing losses, in conjunction with the $9 million in losses for FY20 as a result of the coronavirus, contribute to an estimated $17.3 million in losses for this fiscal year. However, offset by cost-saving components like reduction in travel and food expenses, this deficit actually totals about $13.0 million for the year.
Those Covid-19-related losses come from four main areas: the $7.9 million in room and board refunds for the spring semester; the $900,000 in refunds for study abroad students; the $1 million in lost auxiliary operations from the bookstore, The Grille and other retail operations, the golf course, and the lost last month of the Snow Bowl’s season; and the $7.5 million predicted fundraising shortfall.
The Office of Advancement usually raises between $7–9 million in the last three months of the fiscal year. Now, with reunion canceled, it’s going to be difficult to do that. But the college gave families the option to donate their unused room and board credits as gifts; 19 families have taken them up on this thus far, for a total $83,000 in donations.
The college has also been preparing to embark on a capital campaign. The Office and Advancement and the Board of Trustees will reevaluate the timing of that campaign.
“Our donors and the largest donors in the world have lost a significant part of their wealth,” Provost said. “So that will play into thinking about that.”
The last capital campaign was also launched before a financial crisis, in 2007. It stretched from a five to an eight-year campaign, but ultimately surpassed the college’s target of $500 million.
There is also an estimated $800,000 in Covid-19-related expenses that the college will incur this year, which includes the over $110,000 it put toward helping students get home in March, which included travel expenses and gift cards for food costs.
Despite the recent buzz about the financial footprint of MIIS, Provost said he does not think Middlebury’s financial challenges stem from the institute. “They have been at times, but Monterey has done more to control costs and has been more successful at it,” Provost said. “They don’t have room and board so their FY20 numbers are looking pretty good. They might have a surplus.”
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Looking ahead to FY21
In a recent memo to faculty and staff, Provost estimated the college deficit could swell to $30 million next year. That is assuming the college continues remote learning in the fall and then moves to in-person operations in the spring, and that there is full wage continuity throughout the year.
“If we are able to bring most students back, the lost revenue will be much smaller, and manageable,” he said, noting that they’re prioritizing trying to get as many students back to campus as possible.
So how is the college prepping for next year when everything is up in the air? Contingency budget plans. A lot of them. Provost is working on seven or eight possible plans, which he will present to the Board of Trustees for feedback next week at their May meetings. The college won’t make a decision on what it will do this fall — or which budget plan it will follow — until late June.
Each potential scenario will contemplate its individual impact on tuition, room and board. Provost said that under no circumstance will the college cease operations completely this fall. Doing so could bring the deficit to a whopping $90 million.
Losses from summer programming also factor into the FY21 budget. With some programs not happening at all and others set to be held remotely, Provost said he expects to see $4–5 million in revenue from summer programs, versus the usual $17.9 million the college usually receives from these programs.
Ameliorating losses
The college is now pinpointing how it might mitigate the FY20 and FY21 losses. Some reductions happen naturally: the lack of travel expenses, paired with the reduction in food expenses and other operating costs, will save the college $7.5 million or more. Investure — the firm that manages the college’s investments — has deferred its payments for their fees until June, which also helps.
Other efforts will require more active planning, which is where the Budget Advisory Committee comes in. That committee will make recommendations to the Board of Trustees about where to cut in the FY21 budget.
Each area of the college is currently reevaluating its spending. All departments may only use “essential” or “contractually obligated” expenses for the duration of the fiscal year. The SGA already pledged to redirect hundreds of thousands of its unused funds to staff wage continuity and student emergency support.
The college has also already instituted a hiring freeze, which will apply to all open faculty and staff positions for the foreseeable future. Likewise, the college will not allow departments to fill positions that open up in the coming months, with limited exceptions granted on a case-by-case basis by the Ways and Means Committee.
Typically, employees receive small percentage salary increases each year. The college does not anticipate it will offer those raises in the coming year. It is, however, still contemplating addressing the results of its compensation review — the study it conducted with an external consulting group to gather market data this year. The college is undertaking that review partly to address the increased turnover it has seen over the last two years in positions within the lowest pay bands. In January, it raised wages for staff in its lowest-paid positions as an effort to make itself a more competitive employer amid staff shortages and grievances about low staff pay.
“We may not be able to address the [compensation review] results in the first half of the year, but it remains a priority,” Provost said. Members of the Budget Advisory Committee say they have not gotten an update on the review and that it has not been part of their recent discussions.
If the college continues remotely in the fall, it will have to address a litany of other concerns. Provost has consistently said that wage continuity is a priority for the college, but to continue to pay everyone, it might have to consider reducing all employees’ pay. Already, President Laurie Patton and some members of the Senior Leadership Group have taken pay cuts, per the most recent memo. Provost said employees with lowest wages would be the least impacted by the pay cuts, if they were to happen.
The college will also receive about $1.8 million from the federal government, The Campus reported this week, as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
Ultimately, Provost thinks the college can balance the budget by FY22. The effort to balance the budget from a similar deficit took years the last time around, but that was because the college was spending past its means and not taking in enough revenue. This time, revenue, not expenses, is the problem.
Assuming the college can maintain its desired levels of enrollment, Provost said things should even out within the next 12–18 months.
“So when we return to normal, the revenue should go back, too,” he said.
The endowment
Throughout all of this, Provost says he does not plan on drawing more from Middlebury’s endowment than he would have pre-Covid-19. In recent years, the college has been pulling roughly 5.1–5.2% from the endowment — the industry standard for non-profits — and FY20 will be no exception. That amounts to about $57,590,000 this year, taken out in four installments throughout the year.
Provost estimates those numbers will be about the same for FY21. The dollar value of that 5% will be determined by a period of time before December 2019, pre-coronavirus. Any decline related to Covid-19 in the markets, then, would not take effect until FY22.
As for the current state of the endowment, Provost said the numbers are not in the red zone. He said the college has stress-tested the endowment and estimated that if assets were down 30%, it would be in trouble. Currently, those assets are down about 10%.
The college is awaiting the first quarter results of the endowment for the three months ending on March 31. Those results will be presented to the Board of Trustees next week.
Editors Bochu Ding and Benjy Renton contributed reporting.
