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(05/11/17 1:32am)
The track and field teams traveled to Williams last Thursday, May 4 to Saturday, May 6, where they put together yet another strong performance at the the DIII New England Championships.
Athletes who finished in the top eight earned All-New England laurels. The women set two new school records as they garnered eight such finishes en route to a sixth place standing out of 32 teams. Meanwhile, the men snagged seven All-New England honors of their own to wind up 10th out of 32.
Maddie Pronovost ’17 added yet another first-place medal to her collection with a resounding victory in the heptathlon. She amassed 4,419 points over the seven events of the two-day event, capped off by event victories in both the 100-meter hurdles (15.13) and the long jump (18′ 2.25″). Her totals surpassed the old school record, set by Hannah Blackburn ’17 in 2015, by over 240 points—not to say that she didn’t take care of this weekend’s field almost as handily, finishing 125 points ahead of second place.
Pronovost had nothing but positives to offer after competition was over. “The meet went really well for myself and the team,” she said. “We had a lot of season–best times and a few school records broken, all well deserved.”
Helene Rowland ’20 put up the other school record set this weekend, tossing the shot put 39′2.5″ on Saturday to finish sixth overall in the event. In doing so she broke the old school record, which Whitney Creed ’06 set in 2004, by 5.5″.
Other All-New England finishes for the women on the track included Sasha Whittle ’17, who finished second in the 1,500-meter run in 4:33.34, and Abigail Nadler ’19, who finished fifth in the same event (4:356.96). Paige Fernandez ’17 crossed the line seventh in the 400-meter hurdles (1:05.16) and Meg Wilson ’20 ran to a seventh-place finish in the 800-meter race (2:13.14). Off the track, Devon Player ’18 landed a sixth-place finish in the javelin (132′1″) and Kreager Taber ’19 leapt to seventh in the pole vault (11′6.5″).
The men’s 10th place finish featured contributions from a usual crowd of strong performers. Kevin Serrao ’18 finished second in the 800-meter race (1:52.40), just ahead of teammate Nathan Hill ’20, who finished fourth (1:53.07). Jimmy Martinez ’19 raced to a fourth-place finish in the 400-meter dash (48.82) and teammate Arden Coleman ’20 finished fifth in the same event (48.93). In the 1,500-meter race, Jonathan Perlman ’19 crossed the line seventh (3:55.39). Over in the field events Minhaj Rahman ’19 threw the hammer 162′4″ to place sixth overall, and in the pole vault, John Natalone ’19 tied for eighth with a jump of 14′2″.
Since only select athletes will be competing in the final two meets of the season, last weekend’s competition marked the end of the season for most of the Panthers. But the decrease in practice numbers won’t get in the way of the remaining athletes, according to Pronovost. “Even though the majority of the team has stopped competing, those that are continuing are still driven to work hard and do well,” she said. “Athletes often get more personal attention during the championship season as there are less people competing, which can be helpful.
“While we won’t have the entire team at practice, people still find ways to see each other who aren't continuing with their season outside of the normal practice schedule."
Next weekend, the Panthers will head down to Williams once again to compete in the Open New England Championships, a meet featuring athletes from all three NCAA divisions. The following weekend, qualifying athletes will travel to the Division III National Championships hosted by the Spire Institute in Geneva, Ohio.
(05/11/17 1:12am)
The Middlebury Maple Run, an annual half marathon, took place in and around Middlebury on Sunday, May 7, beginning at 9 a.m. The race covered 13.1 miles that started on South Street, passed the University of Vermont Morgan Horse Farm, passed down Weybridge Street for a section and looped through Middlebury’s campus before ending behind Porter Hospital, according to the Maple Run website.
Co-race director Sue Hoxie said that the race organizers have tried to add new components each year. “We try to add something new or different each year to keep the event fresh,” Hoxie said. “Over the years we’ve added the 2-person relay race, the 3M Fun Run, [which is] new this year, finishers’ medals, the pancake breakfast [and] music along the course from student bands. There are other things we’ve added that are less apparent to the runners such as improved safety measures, sag wagon, signage along the course, potties along the course.”
Conditions were favorable, although runners did have to endure a brief spell of light rain early on in the race, according to runners who participated. In addition to the individuals’ half marathon, the Maple Run offered a relay covering the same distance and a 3-mile “Fun Run” that traversed a shorter portion of the course.
Middlebury students were well-represented in the field of runners in the half marathon, with multiple students completing the race among the top ten of all finishers. Ben Arquit ’20 took first out of the entire field, finishing the course in 1:21. James Lumley ’19 took third, finishing in 1:25, and Jacob Brady ’17 finished sixth with a time of 1:26, according to the race’s results page.
Runners in the half marathon showcased a range of ability and experience level. Allison Stevens ’20.5 hadn’t had much competitive running experience prior to training for the Maple Run.
“I had never run a half marathon, but it has always been on my bucket list,” Stevens said. “It gave me a goal to work towards.”
The race does have a time cut-off that, according to the website, encourages an overall competitive field. Runners had to maintain a rough 13-minute mile pace to avoid their times being discounted.
“The majority of the people were running a very decent pace,” Stevens said. “The cut-off time was two and a half hours, so no one could really walk or run much slower.”
The Maple Run’s course took runners on packed dirt roads for about half of the race and cement streets for the other half. Traffic in and around Middlebury was slowed due to road closures on South Street and South Street Extension. Runners said that conditions were decent overall, with light rain falling for some of the race.
“The weather was ideal for a race since it wasn’t too hot and slightly rainy,” said Julia Sinton ’20.5, a Middlebury native who ran the race.
The Maple Run has historically attracted hundreds of runners from around Vermont and the greater New England area. As in years past, participants from Vermont comprised a majority of runners who competed. Middlebury, Burlington, Salisbury and Montpelier were particularly well-represented in the field. The race drew about 700 runners total among the three races offered. The race was sponsored by an array of local organizations and businesses such as Cabot cheese, Two Brothers Tavern, the Addison County Chamber of Commerce and the National Bank of Middlebury, among others.
Hoxie said that the race has had a significant impact on the Middlebury community, from fundraising goals achieved to a tourism uptake.
“When it was founded in 2009 the goal was strictly fundraising and creating an event during tourism’s ‘shoulder’ season to bring people to town during a down time of year,” she said. “We’ve achieved both of those goals. The race has donated about $60K out to local non-profits [since it was founded] and typically 40 percent of the runners come from out of state."
Sinton shared that the race had a positive, supportive feel that was enhanced by bystander cheering as well as runners cheering for each other. “Running through campus around mile 7 was ideal because that’s when I needed a boost, and a lot of my friends and other community members were there yelling with signs,” Sinton said. “At one point I saw my first grade teacher cheering runners on and it made me smile.”
(05/10/17 5:38am)
The fellows of the eighth annual Middlebury Fellowship in Narrative Journalism will present their year-long radio documentary projects to the Middlebury community on Friday, May 12 in the Axinn Winter Garden from 4 to 6 p.m. The fellows — Matthew Blake ’17, Will DiGravio ’19, Izzy Fleming ’17 and Tabitha Mueller ’18 — have crafted digital portraits of 13 students after asking them the event’s titular question, “How Did You Get Here?”
Middlebury Scholar-in-residence Sue Halpern and Middlebury Magazine Editorial Director Matt Jennings founded the The Middlebury Fellowship in Narrative Journalism in 2008 and have been co-directing it since. The fellowship teaches students how to conduct narrative journalism projects using interviews and digitally-based media. The fellows work with Halpern throughout the year to learn the basics of radio production and narrative journalism.
For their projects, the fellows drew on interviewees’ personal stories to create vibrant portraits of the paths that led them to the College. When presented, these profiles will give the greater Middlebury community a look into the diversity of experiences among students at the College and will honor the myriad of backgrounds and stories that students have to share.
“The Narrative Journalism Fellowship offers a solution for the divide that exists between ourselves and others, a divide which prevents the story of us to take place,” Blake said. “It creates a space for students to engage with their peer’s stories and develop an awareness of, as well as appreciation for, the multiplicity of stories and experiences on Middlebury’s campus.”
The audio-based medium the fellows used in their documentation allowed for narration that was completely story-focused.
“Learning the unique power of audio storytelling is my biggest take-away,” Fleming said. “Unlike other forms of expression, there is no room for prejudice when listening to someone talk. You can’t evaluate their level of education, identify their race, or notice how expensive their watch is. Instead, the human voice puts everyone on an (relatively) even playing field. It is an incredibly intimate medium, and the relationship you can nurture with a human voice is far deeper than I would have ever anticipated at the beginning of the year before this fellowship began.”
The student profiles will be between five and six minutes each. This may not be enough time to tell the entirety of a person’s story, Blake said, but it is enough time to spark meaningful discussions.
“After listening to one of this year’s pieces about a Football player,” he remarked, “a student commented, ‘I had no idea that someone on the Football team would write poetry or be so open about his emotions. . . . Do you think that he’d be willing to talk with me if I asked him some questions?’”
(05/04/17 3:58am)
The Student Government Association (SGA) passed a resolution at their April 23 meeting that recommended a series of changes to the “Demonstrations and Protests” section of the College Handbook.
The bill aims to change the language of the Handbook in order to better protect the rights of student protestors. The bill was authored and sponsored by Community Council Co-Chair Travis Wayne Sanderson ’19 and Brainerd Senator and Community Council Co-Chair-Elect Kyle Wright ’19.5.
According to current Handbook language, any violation of the College’s “Demonstrations and Protests” policy “may result in College discipline.” It also states that “disruption may also result in arrest and criminal charges such as disorderly conduct or trespass.” The first recommendation made by the bill is to change the word “disruption” in the final sentence to “violent disruption.”
“Currently, as the policy stands, any form of disruption can be responded to with arrest or criminal charges. Disruption is defined in the policy as including the holding of signs, so technically speaking, if the policy says that you can respond to the holding of signs with criminal charges, there’s a problem,” Sanderson said. “We wanted to refine that so it just said violent, so that it narrowed the scope by which you could have such severe consequences.”
The second recommendation is to alter the Handbook policy that reads: “Distribution of materials such as leaflets may not be confrontational and must allow people to decline to receive the materials.” The resolution calls for the removal of the phrase “may not be confrontational.” Sanderson said that the current language is “ridiculous” and seemed “relatively easy to fix,” and that there was no conflict within the SGA itself over the recommendation.
Another recommendation is to insert language into the Handbook that explicitly prevents Public Safety officers from using violent force. The language reads: “Public Safety, as well as outside security and contractors hired by Middlebury College or its affiliates, not including state or federal law enforcement, may not use violent force against students unless they, or another individual, are first acted upon violently by those students.”
According to Sanderson, the recommendation is simply putting into words what Public Safety already practices.
“There was absolutely no clarification as to the situations in which Public Safety could use violent force as a tactic for response,” Wright said. “Though Public Safety has clarified to the Community Council that it is not their practice to use violence in responding to cases of disruption or protest, the fact that that language wasn’t clarified, I think, for us, left it far too open-ended.”
The resolution comes as the College is investigating more than 70 students it believes may be subject to disciplinary procedures for participating in the protests that prevented Dr. Charles Murray from delivering a scheduled lecture on March 2. According to the College, more than 30 students have already accepted disciplinary sanctions.
Wright and Sanderson’s resolution recommends that the College “reconsider any discipline leveled against students involved in the protests against Charles Murray and Middlebury College that were founded in the wording of the college Handbook prior to the passing of this bill.” In short, if the resolution were to be implemented by the College, then the new Handbook language would be retroactively applied to those who participated in the March 2 protests.
Sanderson justified retroactively applying the changes by citing a Nov. 13 protest against President-elect Donald Trump, after which the College did not enforce its own policies.
“According to the policy, that [protest] could have been defined as disruptive and not designated. The protest policy calls for having a designated protest area, having it approved by public safety, etc. We had none of that, there was no enforcement [of the policy],” Sanderson said.
He argued that since current policies are not consistently enforced, it is not fair for the College to discipline students.
“Given the fact that there was no enforcement of the policy until it was convenient, there’s a problem. If you are only enforcing the policy as a means to attack, which is exactly what’s happening now, what needs to happen is the commitment to enforce the policy in a more consistent and more neutral way,” he said.
“If you have one, a policy that they only enforce when [the College] wants to, and two, a policy that is not complete to begin with, then I don’t believe that policy is a valid thing by which to judge people because it’s not objective in the first place, it’s not fully thought out. If you have a policy that is not fully thought out, a policy that is not being enforced fully in the first place, then that should not be used to punish protesters, regardless of the fact that it happened before the [proposed] policy changes happened.”
Wright agreed, citing retroactive action as a norm used by legislative bodies.
“If we’re trying to make a philosophical case for why retroactive action works, there are laws passed through Congress all the time that work retroactively, because the conversation has never been about adherence to the rules, it’s been about whether or not those rules are just,” he said. “If they’re not in the best interest of the student body, I don’t know why we would have a precedent wherein everything that was done in the case of that rule remains valid. We’re hoping to have a talk not about rules and adherence to rules necessarily, but whether or not those rules exclude or include people in ways that are meaningful to people on this campus.”
The SGA Senate passed the resolution 10-3-1. First-Year Senator Jack Goldfield ’20, Cook Senator Connor McCormick ’18, and Feb Senator Rae Aaron ’19.5 voted against the resolution.
Aaron said that she supported making changes to the College Handbook’s current protest policies; however, she disagreed with retroactively applying them to the Murray-investigations.
“In order to make effective long term updates to the College’s antiquated protest policies to empower marginalized voices, the community should engage in thorough inclusive dialogue rather than make abrupt alterations to the Handbook aimed at retroactively excusing students for breaking College policies,” she said.
Vice President for Communications and Chief Marketing Officer Bill Burger said that the College has yet to conduct its regular review of the College Handbook.
“We welcome any suggestions that the community has,” he said.
(05/04/17 2:00am)
Dear Dr. Patton:
We write to protest the Middlebury administration’s punitive response to students involved in the events surrounding the Charles Murray lecture on March 2, 2017. Middlebury students have reported being placed on probation and having disciplinary letters added to their files for protesting both the lecture and also the fact that the college gave its imprimatur to the event by having faculty and administration introduce and preside over it.
Additionally, we are concerned that the administration has taken or plans to take other more serious disciplinary actions. As academics who value maintaining college campuses as spaces that encourage critical thinking and that serve as welcoming and democratic spaces for all, we write in support of these students. We exhort you to proceed with a keen sense of their well-being, and their right to participate in protests for social justice, in a long tradition that includes Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Senator Bernie Sanders.
Charles Murray is a widely discredited scholar who masks racist ideas under a veneer of respectability. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Murray as a “white nationalist” who is fond of “using racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women and the poor.” A well-known provocateur, he has a long history of coming to college campuses to create turmoil and foment hatred. Because his dangerous ideas are so well known, 450 Middlebury alumni signed an open letter, published in the student paper the day prior to his lecture, protesting the event.
Alumni described his invitation to campus not as “an educational opportunity, but a threat.” We join these alumni in their dismay. Indeed, our own is compounded by the fact that the administration disregarded alumni, some faculty members’, and students’ clear message that Murray’s appearance was not an occasion for dialogue and free speech, but for fanning the flames of racism during a tense time in the United States, when hate crimes are on the rise.
We are aware that the protesting students, many of whom are now being disciplined by the college, possibly acted in contravention of college rules. We are also aware of the different reports of what happened after the lecture as Murray and Middlebury faculty member Allison Stanger were departing the hall. Competing versions of what transpired at the protests exist--whether any violence that might have occurred was accidental or deliberate; whether it was initiated by students, security, or other parties.
This uncertainty does not negate basic facts—students have a right to reasonable protest; and protest by its very nature is a challenge to an authority that refuses to listen.
We believe the administration must take responsibility for what ensued during Murray’s visit, which was sorely mishandled. In his thoughtful public apology to colleagues and the Middlebury community, especially people of color, Prof. Bert Johnson, the Chair of the Political Science Department, recognized mistakes in his decision-making and expressed regret that his agreement to co-sponsor the Murray lecture “contributed to a feeling of voicelessness that many already experience on this campus.” We note that to date the administration has issued no such apology to those at Middlebury adversely affected by Murray’s college-sanctioned visit, even as an apology has been tendered to Charles Murray and Allison Stanger.
As Prof. Johnson’s words suggest, the responsibility for what happened at Middlebury cannot be placed exclusively or even primarily on the shoulders of students who are now being disciplined. The administration, faculty and other members of the college community who invited, enabled, and formally welcomed so dangerous a figure as Murray in full knowledge of his history bear responsibility, as does the Middlebury administration for then overriding objections leading up to his lecture, and disrespecting students’, faculty, and alumni concerns.
Dr. Patton, we ask you to consider this: when Charles Murray was in high school, indeed only a couple of years younger than the Middlebury students being disciplined, and as the Civil Rights Movement was getting underway, he burned a cross, and then claimed not to know the true meaning of his action (NYT). The scholarship he has since produced continues to breed hate and prejudice. Why would Middlebury choose to enable such a man, and the specious “scholarship” and narratives he propagates, rather than nurture the spirit of students who stand against racism?
To punish students and to defend Murray is to degrade the meaning of academic freedom and free speech. Instead, we hope that you might make of this occasion one that can foster critical thinking and reflection in an environment that is safe for all students and members of the Middlebury community, including those who are the most vulnerable. Rather than disciplining students in ways that might prove permanently damaging, we urge you to take this an opportunity for learning, not just for the students but, indeed, for the whole college community.
Respectfully,
Cynthia Franklin, University of Hawai'i
David Palumbo-Liu, Stanford U
David Lloyd, University of California, Riverside
Neferti Tadiar, Barnard College, Columbia University
Ebony Coletu, Pennsylvania State University
David Shorter, UCLA
Naoko Shibusawa, Brown University
Jean M. O'Brien, University of Minnesota
Cheryl Naruse, University of Dayton
Andrea Hairston, Smith College
Yumna Siddiqi, Middlebury College
Adam Miyashiro, Stockton University
Kevin P. Murphy, University of Minnesota
Timothy J. Reiss, Professor Emeritus, New York University
Darwin Tsen, Penn State
Ian Balfour, York University
Bill V. Mullen Purdue University
Salah D. Hassan, Michigan State University
Laura Lyons, University of Hawai'i
Dr. Aaron Hostetter, Rutgers University-Camden
Aren Aizura, University of Minnesota
Yogita Goyal, UCLA
Sony Coranez Bolton, Middlebury College
Maria Bates, Pierce College
Anthony Alessandrini, City University of New York
Jacqueline Shea Murphy, UC Riverside, Associate Professor
Jesse Knutson University of Hawaii, Mānoa
Lisa Kahaleole Hall, Wells College
Jih-Fei Cheng, Assistant Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Scripps College
Hassan Melehy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Shanté Paradigm Smalls, PhD, St. John's University
Karma R. Chavez, Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, University of Texas at Austin
Kevin Black, Boston University
Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur, Rhode Island College
Cynthia Wu, SUNY at Buffalo
Alex Lubin, University of New Mexico
Emily Raymundo '10, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Southern California
Laila Farah, DePaul University
Alvin L.J. Kim, UPenn
Naomi Schiler, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Lyndsie Schultz, Washington University in St. Louis
Mimi Thi Nguyen, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Rei Terada, Professor of Comparative Literature, UC Irvine
Rebecca E Karl, NYU, History
Jigna Desai, Univ. of Minnesota
Lara Langer Cohen, Swarthmore College
Greta LaFleur, Yale University
J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Wesleyan University
Cathy Arellano, American River College
Cristina Bacchilega, University of Hawai'i
Lucas Klein, University of Hong Kong (Middlebury graduate, class of 2000)
Lisa Moore, St. Olaf College
Craig Willse, George Mason University
Scott Anderson St. Olaf College
Monica Zikpi, University of Oregon
John David Zuern, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Tom Sarmiento, Kansas State University
Sunaina Maira, UC Davis
Mari Yoshihara, University of Hawaii
Paul Lyons, University of hawaii
Rabab Abdulhadi, San Francisco State University
Roy Perez, Willamette University
Kimberly Drake, Scripps College
Rachel Cloud
Dr. Stephanie Han Hawaii Pacific University
Hosam Aboul-Ela, University of Houston
S. Shankar, University of Hawai‘i
Dr. Rashmi Varma, University of Warwick, UK
Zach Schwartz-Weinstein, Independent Scholar.
S. Heijin Lee, New York University
Elaine Freedgood, NYU
Susana Loza, Hampshire College
Fabio Lanza, university of Arizona
Rebecca Hill, Kennesaw State University
Shamita Das Dasgupta, Rtd. NYU Law School.
Lisa Makman, University of Michigan
Naomi Paik, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Poulomi Saha, UC-Berkeley
Oscar V. Campomanes, Ateneo de Manila, Philippines
Bret Benjamin, Associate Professor, University at Albany SUNY
David Zellmer, LMSW, University of Michigan
Timothy Brennan, University of Minnesota
Moustafa Bayoumi, CUNY Brooklyn College
Dawn Kaczmar, PhD Candidate in English at University of Michigan
Andrew Urban, Rutgers University
Masumi Hayashi-Smith, Holy Names University
Kristina Johansson
Peggy Luhrs, Institute for Social Ecology
Jordan Alexander Stein, Fordham University
Anson Koch-Rein, Grinnell College
Sarah Melton, Boston College
Willa Cowan-Essig, SUNY
Barbara Ofosu-Somuah
Mazin Qumsiyeh, Professor (previously Yale, now Bethlehem)
Nalini Iyer, Seattle University
Miranda Joseph, University of Arizona
Andrew Paul Gutierrez, Emeritus Professor, UC Berkeley
Dr. Hatem Bazian, UC Berkeley
John Rieder, University of Hawaii at Manoa
100. Anu Biswas, Middlebury College class of 2016
101. Monisha Das Gupta, University of Hawaii at Manoa
102. Todd Essig, Ph.D., William Alanson White Institute
103. S. Charusheela, University of Washington, Bothell
104. Steven Salaita, American University of Beirut
105. Betty Joseph, Rice University
106. Barbara Foley, Rutgers University-Newark
107. Anushiya Ramaswamy, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
108. Piya Chatterjee, Scripps College
109. Leora Mosman, Student - Saint Mary's College of California
110. Tamara Vatnick, Middlebury College '07
111. Sonora Jha, Seattle University
112. Ketu H Katrak University of California, Irvine
113. Bonnie Zare, University of Wyoming
114. Ioana Luca, NTNU
115. Sarita See, U of California Riverside
116. Dr. Iokepa Casumbal-Salazar, UCLA
117. Richard Cullen Rath, University of Hawaiʿi at Mānoa
118. Jordy Rosenberg University of Massachusetts
119. Yi-Chun Tricia Lin, Southern Connecticut State University
120. P J Thomas , S B College , M G University, Kerala India
121. Heidi Howkins Lockwood, Yale PhD '09, SCSU faculty
122. Lisa King, University of Tennessee
123. Colin Dayan, Vanderbilt University
124. Kate Beutner, U of Hawaii
125. Hayle Meyerhoff, Haverford College
126. Julia Pike, Amherst College
127. Kelley Baumann, Amherst College
128. Bobby Shogren, Amherst College
129. Elizabeth Dunn, Middlebury College
130. Esperanza Chairez, Amherst College
131. Bryan Doniger, Amherst College
132. Phoebe Chatfield, Yale University
133. Rachel Cohen, Amherst College
134. Peggy K. Takahashi, University of San Francisco
135. Estelle Lopez, Southern Connecticut State University
136. Charlotte Rosen, Northwestern University
137. Anthony Granite, NMSU
138. Molly Stuart, San Francisco State University
139. Kevin Walters
140. Michael Hisry, Borough of Manhattan Community College
141. Martin Man, Yale University
142. Emma Broder, Wesleyan University
143. Ann Heppermann, Sarah Lawrence College
144. Andrew Drinkwater, Amherst College
145. Karla Lorena Huaman Ruiz, St. Olaf College.
146. Margot Friedman, Skidmore College
147. Sarah Kate Murphy, Appalachian State University
148. Candace Fujikane, U of Hawai‘i
149. Samuel Dewees, Wesleyan University
150. Federico Sor, NYU Shanghai
151. MJ Engel, Columbia University
152. Graham Cairns, Columbia University
153. Lisa Henderson, University of Massachusetts Amherst
154. Kevin Gannon, Grand View University
155. Monica Barron, Truman State U
156. Christine Harker, Truman State U
157. Hannah Goodwin, UC Santa Barbara
158. Alice Jardine, Harvard U
159. Kenna Neitch, Texas Tech University
160. Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Montclair State University
161. Luis A. Ledesma, Contra Costa College
162. Jackie Weinstock, University of Vermont
163. Lauren Berlant, University of Chicago
164. Suzanna Walters, Northeastern University
165. Nancy Daley-Moore, Truman State University
166. Kanika Batra, Texas Tech University
167. McKenzie Campbell, Eastern Michigan University
168. Tina Escaja, University of Vermont
169. Dan DiPiero, Ohio State University
170. Carrie Baker, Smith College
171. Jane Chin Davidson, California State U of San Bernardino
172. Israel Cantu Silva, Professor, Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, Mexico
173. Kavita Daiya, George Washington University
174. Serena Parekh, Northeastern University
175. Maree ReMalia, Middlebury College
176. Lindsay London, RN, UVM
177. Lauren Stuart Muller, City College of San Francisco (Middlebury MA 87)
Middlebury Alumni and Students, and beyond:
Julianna Tschirhart, Middlebury College '11
Nicholas Hodder-Hastorf, Middlebury College Alum
Nathaniel W. Kerr, Middlebury College 2011
Sandra Luo, Middlebury College '18
Lucy Grinnan, Middlebury Class of 2019.5
Alex Macmillan, Middlebury Class of 2015
Ujjayan Siddharth, Middlebury College
Anna Cerf, Middlebury College '18
Meridith Carroll, Middlebury College '15
David Chen, Middlebury '14
Marissa Perez, Middlebury College class of 2016
Pete Kerby-Miller, Middlebury College
Nell Sather, Middlebury College
Fiona Mohamed, Middlebury College
Karl Lin, Middlebury College
Tiffany Martinez, Middlebury college
Michelle Kim, Middlebury College
Stella Boye-Doe, Middlebury College
Weston Uram, Middlebury
Clara Sternberg, Middlebury College
Moss Turpan, Middlebury College
Jane Ames, Middlebury College
Austin Kahn, Middlebury College
Isabelle Shallcross, Middlebury College
Jackson Frons, Middlebury College '16
Maya Goldberg-Safir, Middlebury College alum '12.5
Samantha Kaufman, Middlebury College
Toren Hardee, Middlebury Class of 2011
Angeline Rodriguez, Middlebury College
Alexandria Jackman, Middlebury ' 14
Maya Doig-Acuna, Middlebury College '16.5
Aashna Aggarwal, Middlebury College '16
Nic Valenti, Middlebury College
Patrick McElravey, Middlebury College
Rebecca Coates-Finke, Middlebury College alum
Jiya Pandya, UWC and Middlebury College
Nick Delehanty, Middlebury College
Klaudia Wojciechowska, Middlebury College
E. Emmons Hahn, Middlebury College ('10) and Cornell University ('14)
Sydney Shuster, Middlebury College
Emily Rosenkrantz, Middlebury College
Barrett Smith, Middlebury College Class of 2013
Taylor Cook, Middlebury College
Juliette Gobin Middlebury College '16
Katie Corrigan, Middlebury College
Hannah Blair, Middlebury College '17
Molly McShane
Samantha Lamont, Middlebury College class of '17
Erin Reid, Middlebury College '17
James Scott, Middlebury ‘19
Toni Cross, Middlebury College
Kate McCreary, Middlebury College
Elizabeth Lee, Middlebury College '17
Taite Shomo, Middlebury College
Feliz Baca, Middlebury College '14, University of Arizona
Lucia Christensen, Middlebury 2016
Zachary Lounsbury, Middlebury College '16
Anahi Naranjo, Middlebury College
Jake Guth, Middlebury College '19
Sarah Thomas, Class of '14
Josh Brosnan
Gaby Giangola, Wesleyan University
Ameya Biradavolu, Middlebury College '16
Lily Heinemann, Temple University
Katie Preston Middlebury College
Gabriella Reynoso, Columbia University
Tessa Peierls, Amherst College
Clara Beccaro, Columbia University
Alexis De La Rosa, Middlebury College
Dale Aram Tassbihi, University of Maryland, College Park
Dylan Otterbein, Middlebury '15.5
Hannah Phelps, Middlebury College
Anna Paritsky, Middlebury College
James Webster, Stanford University '73
Cecilia NÃoñez, Universidad de Buenos Aires
Aaliyah Triumph, Columbia University
Tim Hansen, Middlebury College
Jack Tipper, Middlebury College
Julia Deng, Brown University
Pat Burke, Retired Military
Lee Schlenker (Middlebury '16)
Bri Aine, Claremont Colleges
Chris Feeney, Middlebury College
Gabe Weisbuch, Middlebury College class of 2018
Sparkle Joyner- Middlebury '12
Kate Murray, Middlebury College '15
Toni Cuevas, Middlebury College
Pedro Bitar
Hannah Muellerleile, Reed College
Adina Marx-ARpadi, Middlebury College '13.5
Jada Young, Columbia University
Milo Levine, Yale University
Kate McCreary, Middlebury College '15
Joshua Claxton, Middlebury College
Crystal Farkaschek, Middlebury College
Samuel Boudreau, Middlebury College
Sam Koplinka-Loehr, Middlebury College '13
Firas Nasr, Middlebury College, '15
Parker Ziegler, Middlebury College
100. Abigail Escobar, Middlebury College '20
101. Diana Luna, Middlebury College class of 2016
102. Andrew Bridgers, Middlebury College
103. Odessa Cross, University of California Santa Cruz
104. Addis Fouche-Channer, Middlebury College
105. Chelsea Melone, Middlebury College
106. Shahruz Ghaemi, Amherst College '19
107. Krysta Wetzel, St. Olaf College
108. Kai Wiggins, Middlebury College '16.5
109. Tia Schaffer, St. Olaf College
110. Kylee Novak, St. Olaf College
111. Rachel Hemond, student at Middlebury College
112. Margaret Lindon, Middlebury College class of 2016
113. Danielle Davis, St. Olaf College
114. Ashley Smith, St. Olaf
115. Ladji Mouflet, Middlebury College
116. Zachary Lounsbury, Middlebury College Class of 2016
117. John Percival, St. Olaf College
118. Eliza Klein, Williams College
119. James Moser, Middlebury College class of 2016.5
120. Rachel Bradshaw, Linfield College
121. Canary Ly, Middlebury College
122. Jessica Joslin, University of Michigan
123. Robin Murray, Circle in the Square Theatre School
124. Addie Mahdavi, Middlebury College Student
125. Alyssa Brown, Middlebury College
126. Israel A Mora, Middlebury College
127. Nitya Mankad, Middlebury College
128. Natalie Jamerson, Whitman College
129. Leena Chawla, Middlebury College
130. Kolbe Franklin '08, University at Albany-SUNY
131. Danielle Surrette Middlebury College
132. Sarah Goodwin, Skidmore College
133. Margaret Rose-McCandlish, Middlebury College 17.5
134. Bess Hepner, Smith College alumni
135. Ana Vega, University of Delaware
136. Rebecca Duras, Middlebury College
137. Ben Simonds-Malamud, Northeastern University
138. Tom Dobrow, Middlebury College class of 2016
139. Zoe Ravina, Emory University
140. Tiff Chang, ex-student at Middlebury College
141. Morgan Mahdavi, Kalamazoo College
142. Rui Tai Hu, Middlebury College '16
143. Ixchel LÃ3pez, Wellesley College
144. Sean Edenson, Temple University
145. Jessica Masinter, Middlebury Student
146. Natalie Brottman, St. Olaf College
147. Emily Johnston, Wellesley College
148. Jasmine Ross, Middlebury College Class of 2016
149. Dylan Walker, St. Olaf College '18
150. Monica Tamayo, California State University Los Angeles
151. Stephen Chen, Middlebury College
152. Becca Holdhusen, Middlebury College
153. Javier Miranda, Iowa State University
154. Alexis Rufi, St. Olaf College
155. Jocelyn Tenorio, Middlebury College '19
156. Ellie Simon, Middlebury College
157. John Cheesman, Middlebury '16
158. Caley Henderson, Middlebury College
159. Jonathan O'Dell, Middlebury College
160. Alaire Hughey, Linfield College
161. Lynn Travnikova, Middlebury College
162. Juan Andrade-Vera, Middlebury College '19
163. Hannah Rae Murphy, Middlebury College '14.5
164. Erin Davis, Weybridge, VT
165. Hannah Helmey, Emory University
166. Marbella Cervantes- UIC
167. Elizabeth Aguilar, University of Central Florida
168. Tara Maloney, St. Olaf College
169. Amber Scott, Claremont McKenna College
170. Alexander Bacchus, Middlebury College
171. Thea Lund, St. Olaf College
172. Phoebe Gunther-Mohr, University of Vermont
173. Emmanuel Choi, Berklee College of Music
174. Emmet Mahdavi, Bard College
175. Erika Lin, University of California Santa Cruz
176. Anwyn Darrow, University of Vermont
177. Shaheen Bharwani, Middlebury College
178. Sophie Swallow, Middlebury College
179. Giannina Gaspero-Beckstrom, UVM
180. Molly Rose-Williams, Middlebury College
181. Yael Platt, Brandeis University
182. Georgiann Steely, St. Olaf College
183. Aoife Duna, Middlebury College
184. Ruby Edlin, Middlebury College
185. Ahmara Smith, Savannah college of art and design
186. Kyle J. Wright, Middlebury College '19
187. Kaitlyn Francis, Middlebury College
188. Arleigh Truesdale, St. Olaf College
189. Charlotte Cahillane, Middlebury College
190. Vang Thao, St Olaf College
191. Lilia Escobar, St. Olaf College
192. Graham Glennon, St. Olaf College
193. Alexis Finemyn
194. Rika Kimonaka, Northeastern University
195. Shannia Fu, Middlebury College
196. Greyson Gove, Pomona College
197. Rick Hong Manayan, Wesleyan University
198. Kayla Carlson, St. Olaf College
199. Ján Tompkins, Anglo-American University, Prague
200. Catherine Stookey, St. Olaf College
201. Maya Peers Nitzberg, Middlebury College '16.5
202. Nina Sweeney, Middlebury College
203. Brenda Quintanilla, Loyola Marymount University '19
204. Katherine Novey, Middlebury College, '20
205. Magen Eissenstat (Rice University '17)
206. Alex Brockelman, Middlebury College '18
207. Luke Rein, College of Charleston
208. Emma Walker, Middlebury College '18
209. Katie Willis, Middlebury College '12
210. Rose Hoffman, Bennington College '20
211. Carley Tsiames, Amherst College
212. Hannah Habermann, Middlebury '18
213. Genevieve Darling, Hamilton College '18
214. Gillian Durkee, Middlebury College '11.5
215. Lily Oyler, Middlebury College alum ('15.5)
216. Joanna Georgakas, Middlebury College '14
217. Maddie Dai, Middlebury College '14
218. Avery Travis, Middlebury College '18
219. Dokter Snus, Middlebury College '13
220. Hana Gebremariam, Middlebury College '17
221. Sandra Markowitz, Middlebury College '15.5
222. Paige Guarino, Middlebury '18.5
223. Kim Ammons, Middlebury College '11
224. Thomas Brummett Cranbrook Acadamy of Art MFA 1983
225. Surya Tubach, Middlebury College
226. Devon Tomasi, Middlebury College '17
227. Michael Wegter, St. Olaf college '18
228. Caroline Carty, Carleton College '20
229. Audrey Tolbert, Middlebury College '13
230. Morgan Gorst, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
231. Samantha Gaines, Middlebury College
232. Prasanna Vankina, Middlebury College '18
233. Jason Milan
234. Gabriel Coleman, St. Olaf College '17
235. Zach Howe, Middlebury College '11
236. Kiana Cateriano, Middlebury College class of 2015.5
237. Amity Calvin, Middlebury College '16
238. Sofi Hecht, Middlebury College '18
239. Cora Kircher, Middlebury College class of 2020
240. Therese Ton, Swarthmore College '19
241. Curtis Mraz, University of Puget Sound '18
242. Jeremy Alben, Middlebury College '18
243. Rebecca Berry, Middlebury College, '16.5
244. James Kipp, Middlebury College
245. Sara Swett Middlebury College 2017
246. Alexandra Bertagnolli King, Middlebury College class of 2010
247. Lewis Nottonson, Middlebury College '19
248. Diana Luna, Middlebury College '16
249. Jan Shireman, parent of Alumni
250. Emily Cipriani Middlebury College '19.5
251. Bianca Howell, Yale University
252. Sasha Rivera, Middlebury '12
253. Sumner Pitt, Saint Olaf College '19
254. Shan Zeng, Middlebury College '19
255. Emily Newman, St. Olaf College '17
256. Sam Catlin, The University of Chicago, Middlebury College '14.5
257. Sabrina Munsterteiger, University of Minnesota
258. Victoria Burns, University of Iowa
259. Cara Levine, Middlebury College '20
260. Emma Webster, Bard College '17
261. Octavio Hingle-Webster, Middlebury Class of '17
262. Ann Surber, Wesleyan University
263. James Wheeler, St. Olaf College
264. Angie Bush, University of Utah '09
265. Alexandra Griffin, Williams College '19
266. Naomi Chalk, St. Olaf College '18
267. Kjersti Anderson, St. Olaf College '17
268. Adilene Alvarado Saint Mary's College of California
269. James Scott, Middlebury College '19
270. Liam Hannan, St Olaf College '18
271. James Scott, Middlebury College '19
272. Maree ReMalia, Middlebury College
273. Silvia Cantu Bautista, Middlebury College '20
274. Irene Henry, St. Olaf College
275. Lucy Jermyn, Massachusetts College of Art and Design
276. Sam Snyder, Middlebury College '17
277. Sharai Lewis-Gruss, Middlebury College '07
278. Kristina Butler, St. Olaf College '17
279. Pearl McAndrews, St. Olaf College
280. Terri Strassburger, Syracuse U
281. Jared Smith, Middlebury College '13
282. Phoebe Martel
283. Justin Martinez, St. Olaf College '20
284. Jackie Park
285. Lucy Nussbaum, Middlebury College '19
286. Fraser Query
287. Zubair Khan, UMD '19
288. Emma Urbaska, University of Vermont '21
289. Tarik Shahzad, Middlebury College Class of '20
290. Kjersa Anderson, St. Olaf College '18
291. Jenna Haywood, University of California Santa Cruz
292. Maggy Mulhern, Middlebury College '17
293. Allegra Molkenthin, Middlebury College
294. Julie White, Prescott College '16
295. Olivia Collens, Middlebury College '18
296. Nathan Rose, Middlebury College '18.5
297. Allie Aiello, Middlebury College '17
298. Lucy Nussbaum, Middlebury College '19
299. Amitai Ben-Abba, Middlebury College '15
300. Julia Beck, Middlebury College
301. Lorena Neira, Middlebury College '17
302. Sarah Willstein, St. Olaf College '19
303. Denise Hingle, parent of Middlebury Student
304. Demetrius Brown, St. Olaf
305. Camille Ross-Williams, Concordia University '20
306. Mercy Garriga, St Olaf College, '18
307. Kashka Kril-Atkins, University of Toronto
308. Kathleen Wilson, Middlebury College '18.5
309. Emily Cox, Middlebury College '17
310. Georgia Grace Edwards, Middlebury College '18
311. Grace Murtha-Paradis
312. Dillon Cathro, St. Olaf College
313. Jessica Dils, Parent, Middlebury College
314. Isabela Torres, Amherst College '19
315. Brittany Kembel, St. Olaf College, ‘16
316. Efren Ramirez Jr., VP of CUBe, St. Olaf '18
317. Josh Schneider, Co-Director, Cascadia Action Network
318. Asha Rao, Co-Director, Cascadia Action Network
319. Jennifer Crandall, Middlebury College
320. Alyne Goncalves, Middlebury College
321. Paola Reyes, Escuela Profesional de Danza de Mazatlán
322. Emily Butka, St. Olaf College
(05/04/17 1:59am)
About a month ago, on April 1, the Middlebury women’s lacrosse team trounced Amherst 13-3. This ten-goal margin, however, would not be repeated in the first round of the NESCAC tournament. The top-seeded Panthers hosted the Mammoths at Kohn Field, looking to start their postseason title defense.
Amherst got on the board first with a goal less than five minutes into the game. Amherst goalie Kyra Gardner blocked a shot by Jenna McNicholas ’19, but ten seconds later Sara DiCenso ’19 evened the score with an assist by classmate Emma McDonagh ’19. The Mammoths responded with a tally of their own, giving Amherst a short-lived lead. After an Amherst save off of a Casey O’Neill ’19 shot, Bea Eppler ’17 finished with a goal.
At the start of the next possession, Mary O’Connell ’17 (NESCAC player of the week for May 1) controlled the draw. This led to two quick shots by O’Connell and McDonagh within two seconds of each other, both of which were saved by Gardner. At 18:50, however, O’Neill beat Gardner, giving Middlebury a 3-2 lead. About two minutes later, O’Connell was once again involved, scoring a transition goal on an assist by Hollis Perticone ’18. Two Amherst goals tied the game at four apiece, and for just over 13 minutes no team scored. With 1:33 remaining in the opening period, however, Eppler gave the panthers a 5-4 lead. With no more goals, that score held until the second half.
In the second period, Perticone controlled the draw. After a wide shot by DiCenso, Perticone notched her second assist of the day, passing to Eppler who gave the Panthers a two-goal lead. Four minutes later, O’Connell converted a free position opportunity into another point; Middlebury now led 7-4. Amherst, however, would not give up; they closed the gap to two before five consecutive Mammoth shots either missed wide or were saved by Kate Furber ’19. DiCenso, assisted by Perticone, gave Middlebury a three-goal lead once again, 8-5.
The Mammoths then scored twice within two minutes, threatening to ensue a comeback and give the Panthers an undesired early exit. With 22 seconds left and Middlebury only up by one, Furber made a clutch save, basically sealing the victory for the Panthers. Furber finished with a dozen saves, while Eppler finished with three goals and Perticone an equal number of assists.
Middlebury will move on to face Colby College this upcoming Saturday at noon, looking to push their home winning streak to 15 and avenge a regular season loss to the Mules.
Alex White ’19, who picked up two ground balls and caused two turnovers on defense, said, “over the past week, we’ve had really productive practices and have made some big strides in developing our team, so it’s anyone’s game! Colby is definitely a good team, but I think that we have the skill and desire to win, and continue on to the NESCAC championship game.”
White added that, “Any and all fans would be greatly appreciated, because a hyped up crowd can really make a difference.”
For O’Connell the game on Saturday will have extra meaning, as she understands that her career as a Panther is winding down.
“It’s definitely bittersweet as a senior because I want to cherish every moment with these girls and my fellow seniors, and for now we’ll take it day to day and enjoy every moment until the last,” O’Connell said, adding that “the team remains extremely confident [in Middlebury’s] ability to go far into post season.”
Talent, strong leadership and a will to win is a dangerous combination.
The start time for the semifinal matchup with Colby is set for 12 p.m. at Kohn Field this Saturday.
(05/04/17 1:58am)
The Middlebury Track and Field teams kicked off their postseason at the 2017 NESCAC Outdoor Championship hosted by Bowdoin this past weekend. The women, paced by two event titles and a school record, finished third (97.66 points) out of the 11 teams in the conference behind Williams (239.83) and Bates (107); the men, who took home three event victories, wound up fourth (102.50), trailing Williams (175), Tufts (167) and Bowdoin (110).
The top performances for the women came from three different sections of the team: Catie Skinner ’17 represented the long-distance runners by smoking the field in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, beating the field by over eight seconds (11:09.11); Devon Player ’18 did the throwers proud with an event-winning javelin toss of 137’6”; lastly, the 4x100 quartet of Marisa Edmondson ’20, Maddie Pronovost ’17, Natalie Cheung ’18 and Elizabeth Walkes ’20 led the charge for the sprinters, crossing the line in school-record time (48.90) to finish fourth in the event.
For the men, Alex Nichols ’17 put together an impressive day in his last NESCAC meet as a Panther. He took home the crown in the 400-meter dash (48.43), his third win in four years at the conference championships; in addition, with the help of Cameron Mackintosh ’20, Arden Coleman ’20 and Jimmy Martinez ’19, he anchored the winning 4x400 relay team that set a new meet record (3:17.45). In the field events, John Natalone ’19 won the pole vault with a jump of 14’5.25” (teammate Nathaniel Albers ’20 would finish fifth in the same event with a height of 13’11.25”).
Although he was a little hard on himself, Natalone had good things to say about the team’s showing at the meet. “In terms of my performance at the meet, I’m generally happy with how I did,” he said. “I didn’t vault as high as I wanted to, but I was just happy to be able to contribute points to the team. As a squad, we performed really well, and I am exceptionally proud of everyone who went to the meet.”
“NESCACs is a really special competition; the entire team is full of energy and hype. My performance would not have been possible if it weren’t for the vibe set up by my teammates. Everyone contributes to the meet in some fashion, even if it isn’t scoring points.”
The rest of the team followed the leaders with a number of strong performances across all the event types. Pronovost, a multitalented athlete who’s a threat to score in a number of competitions, continued her strong season with a second-place finish in the 100-meter hurdles (14.83) and a fifth-place finish in the long jump (17’0.5”); she also ran the second leg for the fifth-place 4x400 relay team, which was rounded out by Lucy Lang ’19, Kate McCluskey ’18 and Paige Fernandez ’17 (3:59.07).
Other individual highlights for the women included Meg Wilson ’20 in the 800-meter (2:14.49, fourth), Abigail Nadler ’19 in the 1,500-meter (4:36.96, third) and Talia Ruxin ’20 in the 10,000-meter (38:11.38, fourth). Off the track, Kreager Taber ’19 pole-vaulted to a second-place finish (10’8”) and Jane Freda ’17 landed fourth in the triple jump (35’7.75”). In the relays, the 4x800-meter relay team of Anna Willig ’20, Erica Dean ’20, Skinner and Wilson crossed the line second overall (9:22.91).
For the men, additional strong efforts were recorded by a number of Panthers in the 800-meter run: James Mulliken ’18 came in second (1:52.88), Nathan Hill ’20 finished fourth (1:53.88) and Kevin Serrao ’18 crossed the line fifth (1:54.10). Serrao also finished third in the 1,500-meter run (3:52.89). In the sprints, Adam Markun ’17 dashed to third place in the 200-meter race (22.06) and Michael Pallozzi ’18 wound up fifth in the 110-meter hurdles (15.28). On the field side, Alfred Hurley ’19 recorded the second-longest javelin toss of the day (189’6”) and Minhaj Rahman ’19 landed third in the hammer throw (166’9”).
With the Panthers now firmly in the postseason portion of their schedule, every meet and every event means that much more. Natalone felt confident about his team’s chances. “The outlook for the rest of the postseason is great,” he said. “We have many team members who are right on the cusp of qualifying for late postseason meets such as Open New Englands and DIII Nationals, which should make for an exciting upcoming meet this weekend at DIII New Englands.”
“In terms of positives, we have a lot of athletes qualified through this weekend, which should keep the good vibe of NESCACs going strong. Also, a lot of people are hungry for a season PR — myself included.”
He warned that the team wouldn’t just be able to coast through the end of their season, though. “We have some health related things to improve upon,” he said. “I’ve been battling back issues, and many team members are nursing shin and hip issues. Staying healthy through these next couple of weeks will be important.”
Middlebury will head down to Williams this weekend to compete in the Division III New England Championships, the last chance for athletes to qualify for the Open New Englands the following week and Division III Nationals the week after.
(05/04/17 1:51am)
The Middlebury Panthers are currently on a three-game winning streak after doubleheaders versus Trinity College and Skidmore College. The Panthers sit three games above 0.500 with a season record of 16-13.
On Saturday, April 29, the Panthers split a doubleheader against the Trinity College Bantams. In the first game the frames remained empty until the top of the third inning when Trinity’s Erik Mohl loaded the bases and walked in Jason Lock ’17 to give the Panthers a 1-0 lead.
The Bantams got of the jam, however, with an inning-ending double play stranding three Middlebury baserunners. Though the Panthers held a 2-1 lead, things started to go awry for Middlebury as Trinity opened up for five runs in the bottom of the fifth inning. Leading 6-2, the hosts tacked on three more runs in the bottom of the sixth to lead 9-2.
Middlebury secured another run in the top of the seventh, but Trinity’s defense held and the Bantams escaped with a 9-3 win. Colin Waters ’19 recorded the loss allowing six runs (three earned) while striking out three.
In the nightcap, the hosts were not as successful as Middlebury’s offensive found its usual groove.
The Panthers took an early 1-0 lead when Justin Han ’20 homered to deep left in the top of the first. Middlebury scored again in the third when Han tripled into the right center gap and scored on a single by captain Lock. Trinity scored their first run of the game in the bottom of the fourth, but the Panthers were quick to retaliate and did so in impressive fashion.
The top of the sixth started when Bantam’s pitcher Matt Koperniak loaded the bases followed by Han taking pitch to the back for the first run of the inning. Lock blasted a deep fly ball to center field allowing the runner on the third to tag up and score — Sam Graf ’19 followed behind with a triple in the right-center gap scoring two more. Leading 6-1, Johhny Read ’17 came into pinch hit and blasted another triple to right center scoring Graf. Finally, with a 7-1 lead, First Year Kevin Woodring ’20 — on the first pitch of his at bat — blasted a 360 foot shot over the left field wall into the bullpen.
Trailing 9-1, Trinity managed to push one run across the plate, but the Bantams proved unable to overcome the deficit and recorded the 9-2 loss. Robert Erickson ’18 earned the win, pitching five innings and allowing one, while Dylan Takamori ’17 allowed one run in two innings of relief.
After enjoying a home-cooked meal at Alan Guild ’20’s residence, the Panthers headed up to Saratoga Springs for a doubleheader against the Skidmore Thoroughbreds.
Colby Morris ’19 started game one for Middlebury on Sunday, April 30 and could not be touched through seven innings, tossing his third complete game. The hosts scored their only run in the top of the first inning and the Panthers easily matched that in the top of the third when Read drew a walk, stole second and scored on a double by Gray Goolsby ’20.
The Panthers built on their lead in the top of the fourth scoring two more runs thanks to a sacrifice fly by Raj Palekar ’18 scoring Graf and a triple by Grant Elgarten ’20 scoring Guild.
Elgarten drove into two more runs in the top of the sixth smashing a single into left field — he would finish 2-3 with three RBI’s.
In the nightcap, the Thoroughbreds put some offensive pressure on the visitors scoring first in the second; but, the Panthers were unphased as Guild ripped a triple into left center scoring Graf and Han in the top half of the third.
Skidmore fought back pushing two more across in the bottom half of the frame and held the lead 3-2 through a scoreless fourth. In the top of the fifth, Middlebury’s offense once again came alive as Graf reached on first on a single and scored on a double by Woodring. Elgarten, with men on second and third, blasted a moonshot over the left field wall for his first of the season giving the visitors a 6-3 lead.
Spencer Shores ’20 earned the win going five innings, allowing three runs on seven hits with four strikeouts. Conor Himstead ’19 came out in the sixth and seventh, pitching two scoreless innings, and earning his NESCAC-leading sixth save of the season.
“We just took care of business,” said Lock of the doubleheader sweep. “Our goal is to be a championship team. Championship teams go on the road and beat opponents during the week and on the weekends. Like I said, it was us taking care of business.
The Panthers are on a three game win streak and return to action on Saturday, May 6, against the Bowdoin Polar Bears and Sunday, May 7, against the nationally ranked Tufts Jumbos.
(04/27/17 3:35am)
This past weekend, the Middlebury men’s lacrosse team played host to visiting Colby College. In a crucial NESCAC game for the Panthers, the Mules bested the home squad to a final score of 13-10.
Colby started the game off with an early lead, going up 2-0 within the first two minutes. Henry Riehl ’18 scored to push the score to 2-1 and was assisted by A.J. Kucinski ’20 in man-up offense to bring Midd within one just three minutes into the game. The two teams then traded off goals as Kucinski scored to make the score 3-2. After a five minute scoreless drought nearing the end of the first quarter, Colby tallied two late goals to bring their lead to 5-2.
In the second quarter, Colby continued its hot shooting with two straight goals, holding a 7-2 lead with 7:11 left in the half. Matt O’Neal ’19 put the Panthers back on the scoreboard, followed eight seconds later by another clean shot by John Jackson ’18, bringing the score to 7-4. Colby closed out the half with another goal of their own, putting the score at 8-4 in favor of the Mules.
Colby came out firing again in the third quarter, scoring three in the frame while Midd managed just one goal: Riehl, assisted by Wes Quinzani ’18, put his second shot of the day in the back of the net. Middlebury, with their postseason hopes hanging in the balance, came out firing in the fourth quarter. Riehl scored two more consecutive goals, followed by two more from teammates Frankie Cosolito ’20 and Danny Jacobs ’20. Jacobs added one more goal at the end of the game, but two goals by Colby put the score out of reach, ending the contest at 13-10.
In the game, Riehl led the way for the Panthers with four goals, while Kucinski had a team high two assists. Chase Midgley ’19 played most of the game in goal, totaling 45 minutes in the net, while captain Will Ernst ’17 finished the game off in the final 15 minutes. Jackson and Jake Madnick ’20 won 17/27 total faceoffs on the day and Jackson also added a team high seven ground ball recoveries to lead the Middlebury team.
Riehl now sits at fourth place among the NESCAC scoring leaders at 43 and Kucinski is also in fourth place in assists with 30 in his first campaign for Midd. With just one game left to play, Midd sits in eighth place in the conference and needs either a win against Williams or for Colby to have lost last night to Bates on Wednesday. If either result happens, the Panthers will make the NESCAC tournament beginning on Saturday, April 29 and will likely play either Amherst, Wesleyan or Bates, depending on the results of this week’s contests.
Chris Bradbury ’19 said, “Coming off a tough loss and going into a must-win game against a historically and currently competitive team in Williams ... we are looking to build on what we did at the end of the game against Colby by addressing certain areas of weakness during this week of practice … and to come out with a competitive mentality that will drive us into making a run at the NESCAC championship.”
(04/27/17 2:50am)
The Middlebury track and field team traveled down to the University of Albany this past weekend to compete at the 33rd Albany Spring Classic, a non-scoring meet featuring over 700 athletes from all three NCAA divisions as well as club teams. Both the women’s and men’s teams turned in a bevy of strong performances, making their presence known on the track as well as in field events.
After the competition had finished, senior jumper Jane Freda ’17 offered her thoughts on the last meet of the Panthers’ regular season. “Albany is always an interesting meet,” she said. “It’s always after the last big week of practices before we start tapering for post-season, so performances definitely vary more than other meets. There’s always some crazy wind at Albany, and the tailwind was great for short sprinters and jumpers, but pretty tough for long sprinters/distance runners. But given the weather conditions and high volume training, I felt like as a whole we did pretty well.”
And according to the timesheet, the Panthers certainly did well by themselves. For the women, the 4x100-meter relay team of Ellie Greenberg ’20, Natalie Cheung ’18, Maddie Pronovost ’17 and Elizabeth Walkes ’20 continued their remarkable string of performances, winning the event with a time of 49.17 seconds. The other Panther victory was secured by Julia Lothrop ’19 in the javelin toss (122’6”), who barely edged out teammate Devon Player ’18 (122’2”).
Other strong track efforts by the women included a second-place finish in the 5,000-meter race by Talia Ruxin ’20 (17:45.28) and two fifth-place finishes by Rose Kelly ’19 in the 1,500-meter race (4:52.51) and Claire Gomba ’19 in the 3,000-meter steeplechase (12:05.34).
On the field side, Freda leapt to fifth place in both the long jump (17’) and the triple jump (35’7.75”), finishing behind four Division I athletes in each event.
“I was surprised I jumped as well as I did,” Freda said later. “I took the last meet off to recover from a quad injury so it was a great confidence boost going into NESCACs. I jumped really close to my PR’s so hopefully I can continue these good vibes into the next couple weeks!”
But the men’s team was not without its own share of strong showings, either. For the distance runners, Henry Fleming ’20 crossed the line third in the 3,000-meter race (9:01.41) and Harrison Knowlton ’19 finished fourth in the 5,000-meter event (15:22.70). The Panthers had a pair of strong performances in the 1,500-meter race, with Nathan Hill ’20 winding up fourth (3:59.13) and Connor Evans ’19 finishing sixth (4:01.91). Lastly, Theodore Henderson ’20 snagged sixth place in the 3,000-meter steeplechase (9:59.28).
In the shorter events, the Middlebury men had a pair of sixth-place finishes: Jackson Bock ’18 in the 200-meter dash (21.47) and Paul Malloy ’18 in the 400-meter hurdles (58.66). In the 110-meter hurdle preliminaries, Mike Pallozzi ’18 posted the best DIII time of the day and third-best time overall (15.60). Lastly, Tyler Chaisson ’17 finished sixth in the shot put (44’10.25”) and Taylor Moore ’18 finished sixth in the javelin (151’).
This Saturday, Middlebury will head back to Bowdoin for the NESCAC Outdoor Track and Field Championships. Amid their preparations, Freda explained what she thought would be the keys for the Panthers at their first postseason meet.
“As cliché as it sounds,” she said, “I think grit and hard work are going to be the keys to our success. Looking at the seeds for this meet, there are so many events that are really really close. Giving that little extra effort to run a little faster, throw or jump just a little further could make a huge difference in the end. We have so much talent and we’ve been training so hard all year—this is the time to get gritty and leave it all out on the track, runway or field!”
(04/27/17 2:40am)
To Our Readers and Contributors,
We at The Campus are pleased to announce the creation and launch of a brand new website. We are thrilled to have a renewed online presence and believe that it will enhance our weekly coverage and provide our readership with a platform that is easier to read and navigate.
As you may have noticed, many of the articles that were published between March 31, 2016 and April 13, 2017 are missing from the new website. This was due to a technical error and we are currently in the process of manually uploading old articles and addressing the problem. We apologize for any inconvenience. Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns.
Thank you very much!
Sincerely,
The Middlebury Campus Editorial Board
(04/27/17 1:38am)
In the spring, summer and fall, Vermont is filled with the sounds and sights of numerous birds and their songs – but according to a new study by the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, Vermont’s total bird population has declined 14.2 percent since 1989. 13 species of Vermont birds studied significantly decreased in population since the start of the survey, said Steve Faccio, the co-author of the study and an ecologist at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies.
The exact cause of the birds’ decline in Vermont is unknown, but is theorized to include multiple factors. Among these factors is the introduction of invasive species that are not native to Vermont, the global trend of general climate change, the fragmentation of Vermont’s forest ranges by humans and damage done to forests by acid rain.
The Vermont bird study was conducted by reviewing the culmination of 25 years of bird surveys completed by volunteers between 1989 and 2013. The study began with 11 survey sites in unmanaged and rural parts of Vermont forests and progressively expanded to 31 survey sites in similarly pastoral and undeveloped parts of the Vermont countryside. The study of the birds away from roads and developments allowed the researchers to get a better look at the purely natural and undisturbed ecosystem of the birds without a direct human variable.
The most intense decline was found in the type of insect-eating birds categorized as “aerial insectivores,” in which the population decreased 45 percent. This category includes birds such as the Vermont whippoorwill, nighthawk, chimney swift and tree swallow. The single most rapid decline of bird species was the common blue jay, which saw a 25 percent decline between 1989 and 2013 in Vermont. The specific cause of the decline of these insect-eating birds is not entirely clear.
“It seems likely that changes in insect abundance or the timing of insect emergence plays a bigger role than habitat loss,” said Steve Faccio, the co-author of the study, in an email to The Campus.
According to the study, changes in insect emergence stem from global climate change. Because of climate change, insects emerge and hatch earlier than usual, before the birds are active. This eventually results in fewer insects for the birds to consume, harming the bird population. According to Faccio, it is still too early to know definitively whether the change in insect emergence is the deciding factor behind the decline of the birds.
Apart from the population decline, eight species, including the pileated woodpecker, mourning dove and the American robin, increased in population. Many of the birds that declined slightly during the first decade of the study stabilized themselves during the last fifteen years.
When asked what Middlebury students and the community could do on an individual level to help protect birds and keep them healthy, Faccio responded, “Be mindful of the things that negatively affect forest ecosystems—fragmentation, climate change, invasive species—and do what you can to avoid contributing to those impacts, as well as opposing actions/policies that contribute to them.”
(04/27/17 1:37am)
As one of the whitest states in the country, Vermont is attempting to adjust for racial bias after data has surfaced surrounding discrimination in traffic stops. The demand for legislative action has stemmed from a state-based non-profit called Justice For All.
According to a study conducted by the organization Crime Research Group, black drivers in Vermont are twice as likely to be arrested after a traffic stop than white drivers. The non-profit was selected as the vendor to collect the traffic stop and race data by the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council. These figures drove Justice For All’s Co-founder and Executive Director, Mark Hughes, to propose a bill to address racial bias in the criminal justice system.
The bill, H.308, has already passed through both the Congress and Senate, and is now awaiting approval from Governor Phil Scott. According to the proposed legislation, the bill includes a 13-person “advisory panel” to direct the state in “racial disparities in the criminal and juvenile justice system.”
With the rise in statistics, such as those from The Sentencing Project, which cited the stark racial disparity of incarceration throughout Vermont, lawmakers have become determined to address the issues of racial bias throughout the criminal justice system.
In regards to promoting and drafting legislation, “data is the linchpin of all monitoring capability,” Hughes said.
The Crime Research Group’s data has continued to play a significant role in promoting the bill. They were selected as the primary vendor for data collection of traffic stops by the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council last year. All of the data is posted publicly on their website, and provides greater transparency in the criminal justice system.
“I think law enforcement has been very open to providing the data, and I think for the most part Vermont State Police has done a pretty incredible job of training all of their officers on how data needs to be collected and published,” the Crime Research Group’s Executive Director Karen Gennette said. “I think that we’ll find many law enforcement agencies will be willing and interested in doing the same thing.”
Although the bill has garnered support by politicians through this data, some are unsatisfied with the stigma that the advisory panel is pegging to the police force. Representative Gary Viens (R) of Newport has expressed pushback on the bill, particularly with his 32 years of personal experience in law enforcement.
Regardless of debate in Congress, the bill passed unanimously in the Senate on Thursday, April 21, after a third reading. Senator Jeanette White (D) addressed the fear of stigma that Viens and others had expressed by claiming in an interview with Vermont Digger that the advisory board was meant to address the system as a whole, rather than a specific sector.
“This bill, when passed, will be a small step in the right direction towards addressing what we know now to be an issue in the state,” Hughes said. “It’s my hope that this bill will continue to raise awareness and attention.”
(04/21/17 5:55pm)
In this, the fourth week of Middlebury Track and Field’s outdoor season, the team headed over to Brunswick, Maine to compete in the Bowdoin Invitational on Saturday, April 15. Overall, both Panther teams performed rather well: the women wound up second out of four teams, their 89 total points only two behind the victorious Polar Bears’ 91, and the men wound up second out of three teams with 92 total points. In almost every single event a Middlebury athlete finished somewhere in the top three and the men and women combined for a total of seven event victories and one new school record.
Before the meet, Head Coach Martin Beatty ’84 explained how large of an impact being outdoors has on the team. “Everyone is always excited to get outside on the outdoor track,” he said. “It is a different sport. The analogy is going from bumper pool to a regular billiards table. It is also nice to be in the outdoors after feeling cooped up for the winter.”
But that’s not to say the transition doesn’t require some adjustments. “The environment is controlled indoors,” Beatty said. “Outside there are different factors to deal with such as wind, temperature, etc. These elements play a role in performance, and one’s technique needs to adjust accordingly.”
In particular, it was the field athletes who seemed to profit most from the sunshine this past Saturday, accounting for five of the Panthers’ seven event victories. For the women, Kristin Kimble ’19 won the high jump after successfully leaping over 5’0.25” and Kreager Taber ’19 cleared a height of 10’2” in the pole vault. On the men’s side, Nathaniel Albers ’20 jumped over 13’9.25” to win the pole vault, Taylor Moore ’18 finished first in the javelin with a throw of 170’7” and Jonathan Fisher ’20 racked up 5,095 points in the decathlon.
The track athletes had their share of outstanding performances, too. Katherine MacCary ’19 won the 5,000-meter race handily in 18:00.95, some 18 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher. Arden Coleman ’20 snagged first place in the 400-meter dash with a winning time of 49.87.
And last but not least, the women’s 4x100 relay team of Ellie Greenberg ’20, Natalie Cheung ’18, Maddie Pronovost ’17 and Elizabeth Walkes ’20 set a new school record of 49.09 seconds, lowering the one set two weeks prior at Point Loma Nazarene University in California.
Cheung couldn’t suppress her excitement about this year’s 4x100 team. “This is the first time the women’s team has had a really solid 4x1 in a few years,” she said, “and it’s really exciting. We’re hoping to drop our time this weekend at Albany and go into NESCACs with a fast seed. [First-year] relay member Lizzie Walkes has nicknamed the relay the ‘4xFun’ with good reason.”
Looking forward, Panther athletes will be competing in two separate meets this weekend: the Larry Ellis Invitational at Princeton on Friday and the Albany Invitational on Saturday. They following week, they will be headed back to Bowdoin for the NESCAC championship meet.
When asked how she felt about where the team stood after Saturday’s meet, Cheung had positive things to offer. “The Bowdoin Invite got us all really excited for the end of our regular season and the beginning of post season,” she said. “We’ve really been focusing on running as a team rather than as individuals, and that’s been really important.”
“The team has been having a great year, and we’re all really excited for NESCACs. All our excitement really just comes back to Coach Martin Beatty, so we hope we can earn him a NESCACs victory.”
(04/21/17 5:13pm)
We have all been part of our own Putnam County Spelling Bee, though we may not have realized it until the weekend of April 13-15. We may not have spelled the words or participated in the mass hilarity of the show itself, but we certainly connected with the awkward, uncomfortable, spastic and ultimately beautiful moments that come with growing up.
“The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” was put on by the Middlebury College Musical Players (MCMP) and was performed and directed entirely by Middlebury students. Olivia Christie ’19 directed, Ronnie Romano ’20 directed music, Sam Boudreau ’19 stage managed and Alex Williamson ’17 directed tech. It ran in the beautiful Town Hall Theatre in the heart of Middlebury. Unlike on-campus venues, Town Hall Theatre seemed to be far more accessible to members outside of the college community, and the audience was composed of a wonderful blend of people old and young.
The diversity of the crowd was also a mark of the power of the play to connect with everyone over the course of its two acts – we all grow up at some point, after all. The first act, which set the scene for the spelling bee and introduced us to the characters, unfolded like chaotic poetry with constant rhyme of humor. Each character revealed their own quirk, and in many scenes, all came together to sing beautiful songs with fluidly disjointed choreography. Much like the beginning of adolescence, the first act showed the characters to be incredibly awkward and passionate and, as many adults may forget, complex.
In fact, actress Emily Cipriani ’19.5, who played the adorable Leaf Coneybear, shrewdly noted that “the humor keeps the pace rolling and warms the audience up to the characters, making later, more serious themes more approachable.”
For example, the first act had songs like “My Friend the Dictionary,” “Pandemonium” and “I’m Not That Smart,” which, though humorous, served to highlight some of the more common trials of adulthood.
“Pandemonium,” which featured speller Chip Tolentino (Michael Koutelous ’20), focused on how life can be incredibly unfair. The cast performed the song twice, and in the reprise, Chip – a favorite to win the bee – spelled his word wrong, becoming the first contestant to get out. Though the song stimulated laughter and the choreography was endearing, for me – and I am sure for other audience members as well – the scene evoked memories of feeling that life could be unfair.
Leaf Coneybear’s “I’m Not That Smart” was easily relatable to anyone who has ever felt inadequately smart in comparison with those around them. According to Cipriani, the song was an example of how Leaf “did not believe in theirself.”
“My Friend the Dictionary,” sung by Olive Ostrovsky (Maria Bobbitt-Chertock ’20), was an ode to all the children who have ever felt alone in their lives. It was a sweet song, featuring disconnected rhymes and simple lines. Yet it held within it the power to leave smiles on our mouths and sadness in our eyes.
The show also featured various adult characters, such as Rona Lisa Peretti (Madeline Ciocci ’20), Doug Panch (David Fine ’17) and comfort counselor Mitch Mahoney (Tim Hansen ’18). Though adult, these characters were no less awkward than the spellers and had their own problems. There was also an appearance from Jesus (Amy Conaway ’20), who remarked that “gender is a social construct.”
When the curtains opened again for the second act, the lines between humor and intelligent reflection blurred to the point of invisibility. Koutelous sang about his “Unfortunate Erection” and we laughed heartily, but our hearts felt for him. What is more awkward than an erection in the very public setting of a spelling bee?
“It’s a funny show, but that doesn’t mean that these kids don’t deal with very real and very deep issues that make them so relatable,” said Jess Garner ’19.5 who played Logainne SchwarzandGrubiere. “Olive’s depression and loneliness, Marcy and Logainne’s controlling parents and extreme pressure to succeed, Logainne’s anxiety, Chip’s veneer of confidence, Leaf’s misunderstanding family and ostracization and Barfee’s frustrations with being talked down to are all aspects which really help to make a comedy a more layered and resounding show.”
When Sabine Poux ’20, who played the genius Marcy Park, sang about how she speaks six languages, we saw a smart girl reveal the layers of insecurity and doubts that any hard-working child has thought about at some point: Does everyone think I am boring? Do people think of me as anything more than a smarty-pants?
When Bobbit-Chertock, Miranda Seixas ’20, and Tim Hansen ’18 combined forces to sing “The I Love You Song,” we sat in rapture as the tangled emotions and expectations of family love were simplified into three notes harmonized perfectly into one. No family dynamic is the same, but the song found the right key to express the importance of those dynamics, touching every one of us listening.
When Logainne SchwarzandGrubiere had a meltdown because of the constant pressure put upon her by her two fathers (Christian Schmitt ’19 and Austin Kenny ’19), we remembered the pressure we endure from our parents and life. Hell, I was reminded of the pressures I was going through that day.
However, just like the first act, the emotional scenes were clothed in humor, and for this they were far more enjoyable for us than the scenes we experienced ourselves in years past.
By the end of the play, it was clear that the motley crew of lovable characters had all grown up in a way. Leaf discovered that they were pretty damn smart. William Barfee, played by the hysterical Sean Meagher ’20, discovered that he could be his weird self, spell words without his magic foot and find friendship and love with people as quirky as him. Logainne found her own confidence and blossomed outside of her fathers’ stern instruction. Marcy realized she could lose if she wanted to, even though she could have easily won. Finally, Olive finally found a friend in Barfee, as well as kindness in the form of Panch, who had been rather mean to the kids throughout the bee.
Within the chaos of “Spelling Bee,” the one constant was a smile on the faces of everyone in the audience. Though there were scenes that made us sad, the play’s consistent humor, wonderful acting and beautiful songs never once let us get down on the scenes or the lives they portrayed.
I think it was the ability to keep us all in good spirits that made this show as magical as it was. It reminded us of how hard adolescence could be, but it forced us into realizing just how damn beautiful and fun it was too.
Upon interviewing the cast, it seemed that another reason there was such joy in watching the show was that the cast and crew gelled so well.
“What was great about this show was that the cast just clicked, creatively and emotionally,” said Bobbitt-Chertock. “Everyone helped foster this welcoming, supportive environment, which is a real gem in theatre – an art form that infamously entails a lot of diva-tantrum-throwing.”
“The best thing about this play was the people involved,” Ciocci agreed.
Fine added that the dedication of the directors was crucial to the show’s success.
“Our cast and crew had no weak links at all, and Olivia and Ronnie did absolutely superb jobs as director and music director,” he said. “It was a privilege, and I am very proud of our performances.”
The glowing review from the cast illuminated the final, wonderful point to take from “Spelling Bee”: no matter who we are we all grow up with others, and it is with their unwavering support and presence that we all can find our way safely into adulthoo
(04/21/17 3:40am)
Dear Middlebury College Bookstore Staff,
In last week’s Campus, you published an advertisement for Apple products, sold by the miniature Apple Store that resides in the back of our campus bookstore, thinly veiled as an op-ed. I herein discuss my three grievances with that piece:
(1) It was factually inaccurate.
(2) It displayed casual financial classism.
(3) It endorses a product/company without explicitly disclosing the fact that the authors (you the MC bookstore staff) are agents of the product/company being endorsed.
Let’s start by making one thing clear. Apple is not some glorious, rebellious liberator, as they portray themselves in their famous 1984 advert, nor are PC users ignorant balding white men as portrayed in Apple’s early 2000’s campaign — though both caricatures shine through in your article — Macs and PCs simply represent two reasonable choices in the world of computing.
Your op-ed asserts that MacOS is clearly superior, but as the laptop review site The Wirecutter wrote in February of this year in its article “What Laptop Should I Buy,” “MacOS and Windows have never been more similar, and most popular apps have versions that work just as well on either platform.” Furthermore, “it’s easier than ever to switch between the two.” Matt Weinberger of Business Insider wrote an article a couple of months ago aptly titled, “The Whole ‘Mac vs. PC’ Thing Is So Over,” where he explains, “because so much of what we do these days is based in the browser and in the cloud, Mac versus PC is no longer a lifestyle decision like it was back when boxed software ruled all. It’s just a matter of taste.”
You also suggest that Macs are no harder to troubleshoot than PCs, yet many people fervently disagree. For example, Shan Zeng, a student worker at the Middlebury Helpdesk, says, “PCs are much easier to troubleshoot than Macs.” She went on to stress that, “The problems that show up on Macs are rather irreversible, most often sudden breakdown of hard drives. In PCs there will be warnings, and other signs that allow one to take preventive measures.” As for Macs needing tech support less frequently, Zeng again disagrees. “I see more Mac issues than PC at the helpdesk.”
Now we reach grievance number two, the subtle classism of your suggestion that everyone come in and buy a Mac. The reality is that, for many, a $1,500 matte-metallic status symbol is out of the budget and out of the question. Senior Klaudia Wojciechowska put it this way: “Writing an article about why Midd kids ‘should choose Macbooks’ without acknowledging that not everyone can afford them — so buying PC’s is not a ‘choice’ — completely ERASES the fact that poor Midd kids like myself exist on this campus (who would have thought?!).” For students and families who struggle to afford Middlebury tuition, your ad suggesting everyone go buy a Mac is pretty tone deaf. To your suggestion that financing options might be available in the future, Wojciechowska notes sardonically, “You’re willing to set up a financing plan for me? Great. Add that to the other tuition loans I have.”
You, the MC Bookstore Staff, are boldly misinformed on the topic of price. It is true that IBM found that it is cheaper for their employees to use Macs instead of PCs, but IBM is a large enterprise with massive negotiated software licensing agreements and niche needs. Their experience is nothing like that of individual students on college campuses. If we really, truly cared about software expense, we would encourage the use of Linux variants, perhaps ChromeOS.
This goes beyond a difference of opinion; your Op-Ed flouted reality. Macs are not cheaper than the equivalent PC, even when the costs are spread out over the lifetime of the product (and even accounting for resale value, about which you also proffered misinformation). Take the Dell XPS 13 versus the equivalent MacBook Pro. The former is $1125 while the latter retails for $1499. Budget can’t stretch that far? You could get an Asus ZenBook with nearly identical specs for only $699. Less than half the price! Even the cheapest MacBook rings in at $1,200 and will offer significantly worse performance. (And for those of you thinking about Apple’s student discount, know this: student discounts are available from most major computer manufacturers, not just Apple).
Need something even cheaper? Modern Chromebooks start at just $179. Any student who needs to store large files, have long battery life, strong portability and use pretty much any web application (as well as upcoming Android app porting) might want to look toward Google.
And finally, we arrive at issue 3: the fact that you all submitted your ad to the Campus as an op-ed. Shame on you, and shame on the Campus editors who agreed to run it. At best, your op-ed qualifies as sponsored content. You, the bookstore, make money off Apple sales so you were plugging your own brand. Most weeks I write a financial markets column for the Campus. You’ll notice I don’t use it to pump penny stocks or hawk personal financial services. If you want to advertise in the Campus, more power to you, but do so the right way. Don’t be disingenuous: pay up. The Campus is not free to produce, and I will not have it taken for a shill.
(04/21/17 2:40am)
The Education Studies (EDST) program has proposed a new double major, intended to compensate students’ work towards obtaining teaching licensures with academic validation. Currently, the Education Studies (EDST) program only offers a minor, which students can take in one of two directions: a focus on general education studies or the attainment of a formal teaching license.
The Education Studies Program has for years enabled Middlebury students to obtain teaching licenses in the State of Vermont. The program has won popularity for its ability to provide insight into education as a discipline and how the system functions in America.
Although students are fortunate that Middlebury offers an education minor, the current system requires those who are pursuing teaching licenses to take 13 courses in elementary education or 12 courses in secondary education. These parameters exceed what is asked of most majors at the College, leading administrators to conclude that the demands do not fit the program’s status as a minor.
Headed by Director Jonathan Miller-Lane, the EDST program has drafted a proposal that creates a double major, with Education Studies and another discipline of the student’s choice, as the most advantageous way for students to fulfill the teaching license requirements.
The proposal was brought to the attention of the entire faculty on April 7 at the Faculty Plenary meeting, when the Educational Affairs Committee, a six-member body responsible for the direction of the undergraduate curriculum, endorsed the program after months of consideration.
At the meeting, the committee provided a summary of the agenda, stating that it embraced “the idea of training students as teachers” and of “recognizing education as a discipline worthy of scholarly pursuit.”
The proposition of an EDST double-major has now finally passed the first stage in the process of garnering support. Next comes a vote by the entire faculty, expected later this year.
“The committee studied it over several months, requested additional information, met with representatives of the program, and determined that the proposal merited their support,” said Suzanne Gurland, the dean of curriculum and chair of the Educational Affairs Committee. “The full faculty will have the opportunity to discuss the proposal at an open meeting, and then to vote on it at a subsequent faculty meeting.”
The interdisciplinary double-major will first become available to first-years arriving fall 2017, assuming the proposal is passed at the next faculty meeting. The double-major is aimed only at students who are pursuing an elementary- or secondary-education teacher’s license. The minor in education will still be available for those who are interested in the field, but are not aspiring to teach. Education Studies, however, would not be available as a stand-alone major.
Students who opt to participate in the double-major must still enroll in a “professional semester” as was previously required with the minor. This involves a full-time teaching experience in a local school, which students may choose to do either during their senior year or during a ninth semester after graduation. This professional requirement enables students to gain real-life experience in teaching, under the guidance of a “master teacher” and a College advisor.
“The depth of students’ learning in the licensure curriculum is akin to that in other majors, and involves substantially more coursework than a minor,” Gurland said. “So if the proposal for a double-major passes, it will be a more accurate description of students’ learning.”
(04/20/17 5:23pm)
After a tough stretch a few weeks ago and some encouraging steps towards success two weekends ago, the Middlebury Men’s lacrosse team finally put it all together this past week. Last week featured two marquee matchups for the team as they took on an athletic Springfield team at home to kick off a three-game homestand.
Springfield was 6-2 entering the game, receiving votes in the NCAA D3 top-25 poll similar to Middlebury, and posed a great matchup and test before a crucial conference game against Trinity on Saturday. The Panthers met and triumphed in both contests, winning 13-12 over Springfield and 11-7 over Trinity.
In the Springfield game, sophomore Chase Midgley ’19 started and played all 60 minutes in goal, making 11 saves on 23 shots. Jake Madnick ’20 and John Jackson ’18 completed a great duo in face offs as Madnick won 13/17 and Jackson won 8/12. On offense, Luke Peterson ’19 and Henry Riehl ’18 led the way with three goals each, followed closely by A.J. Kucinski ’20 who added two shots to the back of the net and two assists. Madnick and Jake DeFrino ’17 tied in picking up a team high eight ground balls, four more than the next best result for either team.
After a close loss against Bates the preceding Saturday, this was a great game to win for the Panthers, showing that they could still compete at an elite level even without several key starters who are lost to the year because of injury, including Clay Hunt ’19, Jack Gould ’19, and Michael McCormick ’19.
“Even though we have had injuries other players are stepping up to fill their roles,” said Chris Bradbury ’19. “Having a win going into a Saturday game is always a big confidence boost which helped us to a win.”
Saturday’s game featured a matchup between two teams vying to make the NESCAC playoffs as Trinity entered 0-7 in conference games while Middlebury was 2-5 and currently occupies the eighth and last playoff spot. Middlebury started off strongly on Saturday, taking a quick 4-2 lead on goals from Chase Goree ’20, Jackson, Peterson and Riehl, but let their lead slip in the second quarter, falling behind 6-5 at the half. The second half was all Panthers though as they were surely inspired by the warm weather and big crowd who came out to Alumni Stadium to support them. The Panthers went on a 6-2 scoring run to close out the game, with goals from Kucinski (2), Danny Jacobs ’20, and Riehl (3). Kucinski added four assists to lead Middlebury who earned their third NESCAC victory, putting them in a good position heading into next Saturday’s game against Colby College. Midgley had a breakout game in the net too, saving 16/23 shots, cementing himself as a key piece to the Middlebury lineup.
With just two regular season games left, Midd needs to win at least one of more game to clinch a playoff berth. Riehl is having an outstanding season for the Panthers and is just three goals off of the league leading number of 42, and eight off of the league leading assists mark of 36, looking to find himself on an All-NESCAC team at the end of the season.
(03/17/17 12:18am)
As a college well-known for its international vision, Middlebury College does a fairly good job of bringing different aspects of diverse cultures to its members. But there is always more to be showcased, and the students never cease to surprise the community.
The Chinese Society, along with the Chinese Department, purchased a “guzheng” (٪j筝), also known as a Chinese zither, last May. On Monday, March 6, the first-ever guzheng recital took place. An audience filled the entire Chateau Grand Salon to listen to the repertoire of student performers and had a chance to observe the Chinese plucked string instrument which has over 2,500 years of history.
With a resonant cavity made from wood, a “guzheng” has 16 or more strings and movable bridges. To pluck the strings, players often wear fingerpicks on one or both hands. Having emerged during the Warring States period (475-211 BCE), the instrument also became the model for some other Asian zithers. The fascinating ancient instrument has obviously not become obsolete in any way – it is one of the most popular Chinese instruments today.
The first scheduled performer of the song “Liuyang River,” Emily Cipirani ’19.5, was unfortunately not able to attend the showcase. According to Jingchen Jiang ’18, one of the other players and organizers, Cipirani was the one who started the whole idea of bringing guzheng music to campus, as she owns one guzheng herself.
“Emily learned to play it from a Chinese teacher in Ohio, and is very passionate about it,” Jiang said. “We thought that many people might like it.”
Lyra Ding ’19, who started playing the “guzheng” at the age of six, carried out the following two pieces to great reception. The first one called “Han Gong Qiu Yue” is a very traditional song with an ancient melody and simplified techniques.
“I played it without the fingerpick because in that way I think it’s more similar to another instrument called guqin, which I also play,” she said.
Ding’s second piece, “Qin Sang Qu,” is a familiar one for her, and the song tells about a young girl parting from her loved ones. The nostalgia was, according to Ding, somewhat in accordance with the reality of being abroad and away from home.
The last piece, “Eternal Sorrow of Lin’an,” was performed by Jiang and Gloria Breck ’18. The unique composition is a concerto of “guzheng” and piano, and the flawless collaboration between pianist Breck and Jiang, who played the “guzheng,” made it the highlight of the showcase.
The piece was perhaps the most powerful one, telling a story about a national hero that was falsely accused by his country and executed. Lasting for more than 13 minutes, the performance shifted between absorbing solos of the guzheng and piano, and the even more captivating ensemble of the two culturally and fundamentally different musical instruments.
“The piece is probably one of the biggest guzheng performing pieces, and I wanted to challenge myself with the difficulty,” Jiang said.
This was not the first time that the two good friends collaborated on a musical piece. Jiang talked about their collaboration for the International Student Organization (ISO) show last November, for which they performed an excerpt of “Butterfly Lovers,” a very popular and more light-hearted piece.
“We felt that for a formal recital, we should have something more serious,” Jiang said. “We needed a piece that would truly convey and express the instrument, and one with more cultural foundation.”
The success of the recital has prompted Jiang to think about what types of guzheng pieces could be performed in the future, as the piece “Eternal Sorrow” was “a bit too heavy.”
“We weren’t sure about to what extent a very Chinese and folk piece like this one will be approachable for foreign audience members,” Jiang said.
The fact that many of the listeners were deeply moved by the music was encouraging.
“So we felt that maybe music really is something universal,” Jiang said. “People can all sense the emotions embedded in it.”
The team put a lot of effort into writing the recital program, hoping that the audience would gain sufficient historical and cultural context for understanding the music.
Jiang believes that these sorts of events should be promoted on campus.
“We have organizations like the Chinese society and ASIA [Asian Students in Action], but people seem to be more interested in talking about politics and social issues,” Jiang said. “I think there should be more things focused on the cultural aspects.”
Now that the college owns a “guzheng” and many people are interested in it, future activities devoted to the instrument are guaranteed.
“The Music Department professors are very excited about this,” Ding said. “They kept asking us if we could do a demo or even a class for them, so that they can understand this instrument.”
Jiang also hopes that students will join, likely through a student-hosted J-term workshop next year.
(01/20/17 1:41am)
With the start of J-term, the Middlebury College Museum of Art has brought a brand new exhibition to campus, titled “Untouched by Time: The Athenian Acropolis from Pericles to Parr.” On Jan. 13, Professor of History of Art and Architecture Pieter Broucke, who also serves as the Director of the Arts and the curator of this exhibition, gave a virtual tour of the intriguing collection at the Dance Theater.
What makes the exhibition unique, according to Broucke, is that every art work included comes from the holdings of Middlebury itself — including those from the museum, libraries and local private collections.
“It’s a very specialized topic, and yet it’s all done with material from here,” Broucke said. “And it’s not just that we have all the material, there is actually some very good-quality material.”
Besides the content itself, the time period covered by the works of art — three centuries — shows yet again the thought put into curating the exhibition. The exhibition is divided into six sections in chronological order, each focusing on a different theme. According to the exhibition note, the wide-ranging art works “bear testimony to the enduring fascination with the Athenian Acropolis that persists to this day.”
The first part, called “Early Travelers,” documents the growing recognition of Ancient Greece being the “true fountainhead” of Western civilization through publications, drawings and paintings by early antiquarians, including volumes of James Stuart and Nicholas Revett’s The Antiquities of Athens, the very first study of the Greek remains that was published in 1762.
The second section, “Classical Antiquities in Early Photography,” highlights the role of newly-invented photography in perceiving the Ancient Acropolis, featuring a number of important photographs, including the very first photo ever taken at Didyma by French photographer Joseph-Philibert de Prangey. Another notable photographer, William Stillman, took a series of unusual photos of the Acropolis.
“He [Stillman] believed that it is important that…you have to stand right in front of them, as a way of getting an objective view of the monument,” Broucke explained.
The third section, “Greetings from Athens,” focuses on the rise of tourism in Greece. The invention of the snapshot camera enabled tourists to take their own photos, one of which Broucke acquired himself from “an old store along Route 7.” He dated the photo to sometime between 1894 and 1902 because of the condition of the building, and happily pointed out that the box of the Kodak Camera is in fact right in the frame.
The fourth part, “Pure Creation of the Mind,” is in fact a survey of the Modernist architects and artists on the Acropolis and includes a stunning photograph taken by Edward Steichen of Isadora Duncan, known as the mother of modern dance, who poses in front of the Parthenon portico. Also included is artist Le Corbusier’s publication, Vers une architecture (Towards an Architecture), which unconventionally compares photos ancient Greek buildings to modern cars.
The fifth section, “The Acropolis Restoration Project,” consists mainly of Socratis Mavrommatis’ photographs that record the “heroic undertaking” of the revolutionary and huge restoration project from 1975 to 2002. The project took shape largely because of a United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report saying that the Acropolis was in bad shape as a result of pollution, a great amount of foot traffic from tourists and other factors.
Finally, “The Acropolis, Globalization, and Mass Tourism” shows how “the Acropolis continues to inspire.” It includes a copy of the front cover of The Economist of April 2010, which was ironically titled, “Acropolis Now,” speaking to the Greek financial crisis. There is also British photographer Martin Parr’s almost entertaining photo of two tour groups in front of the Acropolis in 1991.
“Here, the Parthenon is … providing the excuse or backdrop,” Broucke said. “And if you look carefully, there is no one person paying attention to that majestic building or the understanding behind it.”
He added that, while for many tourists visiting the Acropolis may be “checking off the bucket list,” seeing the remains was at least for him an incredibly moving experience.
The exhibition intends to highlight the idea that the Acropolis has moved beyond representing Ancient Athens.
“It has become the iconic monument associated with Greece as a modern nation state. On a loftier level, it marks the birthplace of Western civilization and serves as the global symbol of democracy,” reads one museum label.
Another “first” of the exhibition is that there will be an online version of the entire display, which Broucke considers to be very important for archiving. This is also only feasible because the College now owns all the works of art.
