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(04/29/10 4:00am)
In honor of this being National Cognitive Dissonance week, I happily bring you a flurry of poorly researched information about topics you don’t want to think about. You can thank me later.
If you’re like me, you have a tough time wrapping your head around the questions of sustainability and overpopulation for three reasons:
1. Over 36 million people die of starvation each year
2. The Earth is still rapidly approaching overpopulation.
3. You’re not doing enough/anything about it.
Even to my untrained eye, all of these things seem bad, and approaching one of these problems immediately calls for addressing the others, at least as a matter of ideology. The cognitive dissonance here occurs in many forms, but the most important simultaneously contradictory beliefs to focus on are:
1. We would like to save people’s lives
2. The amount of lives being lived is currently approaching unsustainability (Note: Word tells me that unsustainability is not an actual word, but you know what I mean.)
“If we don’t halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature, brutally and without pity — and will leave a ravaged world” said Dr. Henry W. Kendall, whose accolades include winning a Nobel prize in physics and being the most quoted guy on all of Overpopulation.org, which is of course where I started my research on this subject.
Okay, so we’ve got to stop sexing each other. Sexing in China seems especially problematic. But what about hungry people? Did you know that every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger?
Did you also know that, in a related story, KFC just came out with a new sandwich that uses pieces of fried chicken as a bun?
Okay, so now that I’ve brightened your day, let’s think about a solution to world hunger in the amount of time it takes to hum that deliberative tune they use during Final Jeopardy! Please hum the song to yourself if you know it.
Time’s up. My answer: What is “Let’s just lobby the government to pay out like $20 billion dollars and we can save everyone, no?”
Unfortunately, this is where the overpopulation problem comes in. I’ll explain it in the sort of way that I like to think about all complex problems, which is using the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie level of discourse. IYGMC logic would say we can save hungry and thirsty people, but when these formerly hungry and thirsty people inevitably procreate, the Earth is going to be pissed and lash out at our stupid human asses for making so many of ourselves. In order to avoid this and still feed all of the hungry people, we would have to enact all kinds of unpalatable and as-of-right-now-unimaginable government programs, like the “Feed (and Spay and Neuter) the Hungry” program.
So are we screwed? Well, the alarm has been sounded before, and we still haven’t seen the fire. British scholar Thomas Malthus infamously predicted in the early 19th century that overpopulation would cause our civilizations to return to a subsistence level of existence by the mid-19th century.
Obviously, he was a bit off, and, more egregiously, he broke the cardinal rule of prediction, which is that you should only make specific predictions about stuff that will happen way, way in the future. Still, Malthus is a fun historical personage if you have time to look him up. Ebeneezer Scrooge is allegedly modeled after him, since he rained —no, poured — on the Enlightenment Parade of Pansies (e.g. Godwin, Condorcet, Rousseau) who insisted that, if you just looked real closely, anyone could plainly see that society was improving just a little bit each day, to the point where it would one day reach perfection, and if maybe you just smiled and planted one flower each and every day … etc. The Parade of Pansies sucked, but they were right in one regard: we’re not dead yet.
In a bizarre moment of hope most likely caused by my IYGMC-related memories, I’m predicting — you heard it here first! — that if we’re able to successfully defeat the Mayans in 2012, it’s nothin’ but smooth sailin’ to immortality from there! Now, of course, John Beddington, the UK’s chief government scientist, disagrees with me — possibly because he’s a fun ruiner who ruins fun — but also because he’s supported by egghead math type stuff. Beddington insists that at the current rate of population growth and energy consumption, low energy resources and food shortages will lead to the Earth getting mad and maybe even to a famine of Malthusian proportions.
(Note: Malthusian is an actual word) Beddington has predicted, or at least endorses, the predictions of the interns he makes do all his work — that the world will require 50 percent more energy, 50 percent more food, and 30 percent more fresh water by 2050.
He added that the world will have to produce 70 percent more food by 2050 to feed a projected extra 2.3 billion people. He also reportedly added that he will do nothing to help. He is quoted as saying, “Good luck suckers. I’m off to the Moon!”
I don’t know how to reconcile all of this. The more I think about, the more I believe even declarative sentences are questions. As I’m writing, I’ve received an e-mail that the OxFam Hunger Banquet is Friday. Chances are I will not be there — though, maybe. I’ll be more likely to be catching up on homework or allowing Lil’ Jon’s blissful ignorance to lead me into a drunken stupor.
I leave you with the actual advertisement for the “Double Down Sandwich” from KFC’s website. Happy Cognitive Dissonance Week!
“The new KFC Double Down sandwich is real! This one-of-a-kind sandwich features two thick and juicy boneless white meat chicken filets (Original Recipe® or Grilled), two pieces of bacon, two melted slices of Monterey Jack and pepper jack cheese and Colonel’s Sauce. This product is so meaty, there’s no room for a bun!”
(04/29/10 4:00am)
Nestled in beautiful Vermont, in one of the most liberal states in the nation, Middlebury College is an open and accepting community, where everyone can be whatever they want. That’s what we tell ourselves. Well, we tell ourselves a lie.
The acts of homophobic graffiti over the last two weeks tell me as much. Without question, openly gay and lesbian students have a difficult time here, facing repeated acts of intolerance. These actions deserve our attention and a zero tolerance policy towards offenders, but we should not assume they are the only members of the community whose lives are continually judged.
We judge people everyday. We group students into categories and then dismiss them as potential friends.
The international students only want to eat by themselves and are anti-social. The richest students are snobs and wouldn’t want to associate with others.
Athletes don’t care about academics and cannot possibly add anything positive to classes. WRMC kids are weird and probably just use a lot of drugs. Weybridge kids only eat weird grains and ride bikes around. Xenia kids are nerds who don’t drink.
Of course, I’m grossly overgeneralizing when I fault the community for overgeneralizing. There are plenty of people in this community who make a concerted effort to meet and greet all sorts of people, integrating them into their friend groups.
However, in a general sense, we, and I include myself here, allow these different groups of students to remain separate.
This is a pity. Above all else, our perceived differences are much smaller than we might initially believe. My freshman fall, I made a great friend in a really unlikely place. One day, I started chatting with a football player at the end of my hall. We discovered that we shared a love of chess and began playing nightly. People often chuckled at us — an unlikely pair of friends to be sure — but our nightly games and the conversations that went with them were some of my favorite memories from freshman year.
I look with amazement at my group of close friends. Geographically, I live with people from South Dakota, Washington, California, Tennessee and Pennsylvania. Our geographic diversity has led to many conversations and jokes but has also brought me vast amounts of new knowledge about the United States.
I’m friends with an aspiring rapper from New Hampshire, a relative of Sir Isaac Newton from Connecticut, an amazingly creative and unendingly energetic person from Tennessee, an intern from Vice-President Biden’s office from Delaware, a native of the Cheddar cheese capital from Vermont and a fellow lover of “Monk” from Washington state.
Even within people from the same city, the amount of diversity is enormous. From “right outside of Boston” comes one of the best creative writers I’ve ever read, an awesome a capella singer and someone who’s discovering how cell phones have changed the Chinese language. The Campus has around 7 editors from the Washington D.C. area (!), but we work in different sections and have radically different personalities. Two of my friends went to the same high school in Washington State. One is one of the best flutists I’ve ever heard and the other works on behalf of undocumented workers.
Within my group of friends, I have international students, athletes, straight people, homosexual people, women, men, students on financial aid, students with trust funds, people who love the environment, students of color, people who love music, chronic monogamists, chronic non-monogamists and so much more.
My point is simple. We’re all different. Very different. Grouping people by athletic ability, race, sex, financial status, country of origin, sexual preference or whatever else, does not fairly represent the diversity in all of us and ultimately cheapens the community.
I’m not saying you have to love everyone. Far from it. There are lots of people who don’t add much to the community. However, whether they play sports or what their sexual orientation is does not determine that. We should judge people on an individual basis, and not based on artificial (and convenient) categories.
Middlebury wouldn’t have been the same without my friends. I say thank you to every one of them. At the same time, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened had I been more open-minded.
Next time you see that kid on your hall who always wears the San Francisco Giants cap, strike up a conversation.
Get to know the kid from Venezuela in your philosophy class. Ask the kid from Xenia what he’s listening to on his iPod. Invite someone sitting alone to join you at dinner.
It is stepping outside of your comfort zone, but we’re too small of a school not to. You’ll be glad you did.
(04/22/10 4:00am)
y attention and shocked my sensibilities. In the past twenty-four hours, I have witnessed no less than four members of the opposite sex adjusting certain regions of their anatomy in full range of spectators. Could this be a radical new form of performance art? Well, although such bodily fixation may seem worthy of an NEA grant, I must take a nod from that deliciously dour arbiter of bourgeois taste, Queen Victoria, and declare: “we are not amused.” Whether you are discreetly fondling the mid-region of your gym shorts or cheekily hiking up your jeans as you wink at that cute blond, I object. Men of Middlebury, j’accuse!
Oh, yes. I can hear it in your head: who is this haughty little librarian-in-training, who probably spends her Friday nights caressing the leather jackets ... of her “Encyclopedia Britannica”? For all readers who picture me as some frustrated, repressed spinster, the perfect opposite to a certain fantastically libidinous writer of The Campus, I must disappoint you. I do not fault these young men from a moralist standpoint, but rather an aesthetic one. But I am prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you have a reason for such juggling. Here are those that come to my mind:
Reason A: Because you are uncomfortable — Not valid, I’m afraid. You don’t have to wear wool pants, long underwear or sit in a saddle all day. Nope. I’m afraid that the jury of Historic Manhood upholds my vote. Last time I checked, Napoleon Bonaparte kept his hands off the light artillery in view of his soldiers. John Wayne may have walked funnily but he didn’t even rustle cattle.
And if you dare make a pun about Cary Grant, well, wash your mouth out with soap.
Reason B: Because you are checking to make sure that they are still there — Don’t worry, they are. Unless you wake me up at 2 a.m. with the chorus of “No Woman No Cry” through the ceiling of my dorm. Then I look for my pruning shears. In all sincerity, despite the proliferation of metaphors to the contrary (“Crown Jewels” comes to mind ...), you needn’t concern yourself that theft is an imminent threat.
Reason C: Because you wish to draw our attention to the location — If anything, it seems rather a sign of overcompensation.
Reason D: Because it gives you pleasure to do so — too grotesque to contemplate.
Having attempted to advocate in your defense, I am afraid that the balance has fallen against you, men. The only thing (perhaps an inadvisable choice of words ...) that can explain the need to regularly imitate the most famous gesture of Michael Jackson resides in the need to assert your virility. In the ardent hopes of never seeing a man adjust that region again in my three-score-and-ten, here are some alternative gestures to announce your manliness and win the general admiration of whomever you seek to woo:
Beat your chest — what it lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in universality. You Tarzan!
Smoke a pipe — Never too early to start. Why do you think Sherlock Holmes continues to be a heartthrob?
Wear a silk paisley robe — Alright, this one is a trifle dangerous: how to avoid Hugh Hefner territory while simultaneously not appearing a Noël Coward copycat. I suggest 1930s movies for research and a touch of personal creativity. Insinuate yourself as a lounge lizard.
Drive a stick shift — Challenging, but more elegant than scratching yourself.
Order your steak raw — A bit dependent on context, but particularly effective. Bonus points if you bring your own steak knife.
Grow a Clark Gable mustache — It worked for Rhett. If you balk at the idea, well, frankly, I don’t give a damn.
Keep a toothpick in the corner of your mouth — This trick, though made famous in Sergio Leone westerns, was, in fact, imported from Japan via Toshiro Mifune. Although, if you can do a Clint Eastwood squint with your toothpick, all the better.
Quote Kipling or Hemingway — Stereotypical, yes, but unbeatable for the intellectual he-man in training. P.S. Pith helmets are the quintessential complement to pithiness.
Pay for dinner! Bear the wallet! — Nowadays, the evolutionary edge lies in your superior earning power. Flaunt it. (P.S. To all rabid feminists who will want to present my head on a platter to Gloria Steinem, do note the otherwise heavily sarcastic tone of this column.) (P.P.S. To all gentlemen who do eschew Dutch Treat, without preconditions, where do you live?)
Stand erect — Enough said.
(04/22/10 3:59am)
Alcohol and sex. They’re probably the two biggest conversation topics at Sunday brunch in Proctor, and the most interesting stories involve both of them. The Health Center, and the administration in general, are obligated to stress that sex and alcohol don’t mix — for good reason, considering sexual assault statistics on college campuses — but despite the warnings and Jyoti Daniere’s attempts to start a student dating movement, the sexually active Middlebury student’s night life seems to involve drunk sex with mere acquaintances.
I don’t have any research or data to back up the claim I just made, and I am quite aware that plenty of Midd-kids get it on sober or with long-term partners, but the stories I hear in the dining hall and from friends paint a picture of lots of drunken doing-the-deed between people who hardly know each other.
Personally, I have never had drunk sex with someone I’ve just met — I’ve definitely had awkward sexual encounters with friends while drunk and interesting drunken interludes with romantic partners, but the idea of going to a party or a bar, drinking and then picking up a stranger just never really sat well with me.
After making my life sufficiently uncomfortable because of sober sexcapades, I think I also realized that loosing my drunk self on a room full of similarly sloshed and attractive people would end very…embarrassingly. I don’t want to be that girl getting her face sucked off with her hands down someone else’s pants in the middle of the dance floor, and that idea would seem way too okay if I were drunk.
The other thing about hooking up with a stranger while drunk is you’re not on your A-game, and I’m rather proud of the skills I’ve developed over the years — I don’t want anyone’s first (and probably last) impression of sex with me to be characterized by sloppy making out or me vomiting on their junk. After a certain level of intoxication, drunken sex is just not good sex in general — it’s like eating junk food. It satisfies an immediate and superficial hunger, but it leaves many other needs unmet, and if you have too much of it, it’s detrimental to your health (holistically and physically, if you consider the heightened risk for STIs).
I turned 21 last week, and my first bar-hopping experience this past weekend has changed my opinion on sex and alcohol. I didn’t go out and pick up a stranger at a bar (my boyfriend might have had something to say about that), but I got my first taste of intoxication in public surrounded by attractive 20-somethings, and it wasn’t the debacle I’ve imagined. Granted, I wasn’t on the prowl, and I didn’t drink to excess, but I was sufficiently silly and uninhibited, and I was amazed at the potentiala I felt the whole night.
Strangers chatted me up and I felt confident, even hot — I chatted them up right back like a pro. Or at least my tipsy conception of how a pro makes fine new friends.
Locking eyes with someone from across the room and absconding to the bathroom for a quickie felt possible — not necessarily like a good idea, but it felt possible — and I guess I finally understood the appeal of Middlebury’s sex scene. It’s easy if you know how to play the game. Not so easy that you don’t have to show up to the table with some natural (not just liquid) confidence and charm at the ready, but a lot easier than approaching someone after class and asking them on a date.
Alcohol, used moderately, is an effective way to keep silly things like inhibitions from cockblocking us (so to speak). Problems arise when alcohol isn’t used in moderation, and I still think a diet of drunk sex isn’t enough to fulfill a person, but what’s a little (consenting) tipsy tryst every once in a while?
(04/15/10 3:59am)
Web site makes it easier to pinpoint party schools
Five students from U. Florida have created the Web site partyschooltexts.com in order identify the number one party school in the United States.
Text message conversations are listed on the Web site, grouped by college, and students can vote for their favorites.
“It’s ridiculous how the same company who produces SAT reviews also does party school rankings,” said Nick Gilboy, one of the creators. “College students know much more about partying than the ‘Princeton Review’ does.”
The creators did not approve of textsfromlastnight.com and its use of area codes to identify text messages.
“College students rarely have phone numbers with the same area codes as their college town,” said Alex Baden, another student behind the Web site. “Their school doesn’t get credit for all the crazy things that happen.”
“We are trying to add a level of accountability to schools who claim they party hard,” said Kevin Ruiz, another creator.
— The Independent Florida Alligator
Rutgers professor studies the biology of adultery
Helen Fisher, a visiting professor at Rutgers University, is researching the biological and psychological drives behind adultery.
“The brain is actually set up to make adultery somewhat easy,” Fisher said. “We have two brain systems: One of them is linked to attachment and romantic love, and then there is the other brain system, which is purely sex drive.”
When these brain systems are not well connected, people can become adulterers who satisfy their sex drive without regard for romance.
There is even a cheating gene, vasopressin, discovered by researchers in Sweden.
“In the past, it seemed that women would cheat because they were truly in love with the other person or to seek revenge,” said Deborah Carr, an associate professor of Sociology. “But in modern times, women are gaining more independence, and their reasons for cheating begin to closely resemble men’s reasons for cheating.”
— The Daily Targum
First-year multitasker gains press
Lauren Moore, a first-year at the University of Texas at Austin, has garnered acclaim for her ability to solve a Rubik’s Cube and recite the first 100 digits of pi while balancing 15 books on her head.
“It’s really not that interesting of a story,” Moore said. “In high school, in one of my math classes, there was a poster on one of the walls with pi around the edges. I’d be doing my homework and said, ‘I could actually memorize pi,’ so that’s how I got to 100 digits.”
She also acquired her speedy Rubik’s Cube skills in high school. As for the book balancing, she has church school to thank.
“I was with my church youth group a lot, and I was always balancing Bibles on my head,” she said. “So, it just kind of happened.”
— The Daily Texan
(04/15/10 3:59am)
Just say no. That’s what I was told from the very beginning about drugs. I progressed through school and was forced to attend various anti-drug programs, from which I remember absolutely nothing. Except don’t do drugs. That was the message conveyed to me, and I wasn’t really the rebellious or experimental type, so it took me a while before I started to wonder, “Wait. Why?”
First, a brief diatribe on what I think constitutes good teaching: the best teachers and professors I’ve ever had are the ones who convey their material in a way that makes it evident and applicable to my life. They give me the tools and skills to make connections across their course material and often across other subjects, too.
Their classroom manner says, “It is out of respect for you and your intelligence that I make you struggle with this material, that I refuse to give you any answers,” and the result is empowering for both teachers and students.
That is not what my health teachers were like. From what I remember, grade school drug education was designed to instruct students to say no, but not to actually teach us.
It was the equivalent of abstinence-only sex-ed: many people will experiment regardless of what they are told. But because our teachers only focused on warning us to say no, we were not informed how to be safe if we or someone we knew said yes.
Really, we were not even educated. How many of us know how long THC stays in the body after smoking a joint? How many of us know how much pot it takes to overdose? Or how a birth control pill affects the body’s ability to process alcohol? What alcohol does in the male reproductive organs? How heroin affects the respiratory system?
In honor of Bicycle Day (yes, I know about Bicycle Day), I want to call out the entire Middlebury College community on our lack of knowledge about drugs, and about how nobody seems to be doing much about it. I’ve read countless op-eds on changing the legal drinking age, on the infuriating new alcohol policy, on how to have good sex and even on abortion.
Why is no one angry about our abysmal drug education? We have courses here on drug law, we have courses on “The Wire,” we have that Alcohol Edu course we had to take before arriving for first-year orientation (and I don’t remember much from that either), but the only classes on the effects of drugs on the body that I can think of are restricted to neuroscience majors, and are not accessible to students who are simply curious.
If you are curious, here’s some information I didn’t learn in class: Bicycle Day occurred on April 19, 1943, when the inventor of LSD took twelve times the threshold dose and had, shall we say, a very colorful ride home from work. THC affects mental functioning for up to three days after smoking.
Current research suggests that it is not possible to overdose on marijuana, and that the liver eliminates alcohol more slowly from women who take birth control than from women who don’t.
Chronic alcohol use can lower sperm counts, and chronic heroin use is associated with permanently low levels of oxygen in the blood.
It’s a start, but I should probably know more than I do.
I want to know what to do when my roommate is writhing on the floor in a seizure from a bad inhalants trip. I want to hear an intelligent argument for or against legalizing marijuana that is grounded in scientific research. I want to know how Percocet (oxycodone) affects my entire body when my surgeon prescribes it to me after he yanks out my wisdom teeth. I want to know how to discern physical signs of cocaine abuse, how a doctor becomes willing to prescribe morphine as a painkiller when she is trained to understand its addictive properties or how a coach works with an athlete who can’t get to his desired body mass and learns that GHB releases growth hormone.
I was taught none of this in any health class I’ve ever taken. I was only told to say no.
(04/15/10 3:54am)
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and to ask him about the campaign to replace retiring Governor Jim Douglas in 2010. Dean had the surprising thought that Susan Bartlett — the longtime chair of the state senate appropriations committee — might make the best governor, even though she appears to lack the campaign skills of her rivals. Dean conceded that all five Democratic candidates would do a great job as governor and lamented that none would likely win a clear majority in the hotly contested primary race.
The five Democratic contenders, who spoke at a forum this Sunday at Middlebury, had few differences between their stances on the major issues; all agreed on the need for more jobs, affordable healthcare and clean energy. As every candidate alluded to in the debate, the most important quality in the Democratic nominee is the ability to defeat Republican candidate Brian Dubie.
In a field teeming with technically qualified candidates, one stands out for his ability to connect with voters and for the clarity of his proposals: former state Senator Matt Dunne — who currently manages Google’s community affairs program — possesses the energy and the knowledge necessary to be both a great candidate and a great governor for this state.
Several weeks ago, Dunne spoke in depth with a group of the Middlebury College Democrats. We sat down with him for over an hour and received long, practical answers to questions about everything from education to agriculture policy. He spoke with intelligence and excitement about his plan to replace the crumbling Vermont Yankee nuclear plant with two carbon-neutral biomass plants and laid out a path to provide health care access to all Vermonters.
In a race dominated by candidates who have eagerly awaited Douglas’s retirement, Dunne stands out as a rising star — someone with vision, not just the next politician in line.
Vermont cannot afford to elect another Republican. In a state with an overwhelming Democratic majority, with the Senate’s only socialist member and where two-thirds of votes cast went to Barack Obama, it’s silly to even imagine a Republican contending in the gubernatorial race. And yet Governor Douglas’ retirement marks the end of four terms in office where he presented a firm roadblock to Vermont’s ability to move forward on many issues.
In 2006, Douglas vetoed an act preventing gender identity discrimination, only to be overruled the next year. In 2009, the governor vetoed a law allowing same-sex marriage and was courageously overridden by the legislature. He has vetoed campaign finance reform several times, a resolution to replace the un-democratic electoral college with a popular vote and a renewable energy bill because of a tax increase aiming to balance the budget.
Douglas leaves his office with a $150 million budget deficit and no coherent plan to replace the Vermont Yankee plant. A Republican governor in Vermont after Douglas’ retirement would continue to serve only as a foil to the public interest and a burden on the public checkbook.
As students in such a small, politically progressive state, we have the opportunity to make a difference, and we need to take advantage of that chance to produce a government that represents our values. Brian Dubie’s administration would not represent those values, or the values of the state of Vermont.
There are still many months until the Democratic primary, and even longer until the general election in November. Now is your chance to make a difference. Join me, Bill McKibben and the thousands of Vermonters who support Matt Dunne for Governor. In such a small state, your vote — and, more importantly, your voice — truly matters.
(04/08/10 3:59am)
Conversations about women’s and gender issues are alive and well at Middlebury. Throughout the school year, the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and Chellis House, the Women’s Resource Center, organize roughly 60 events. Each February, we look at the intersections of race and gender, as exemplified in the WAGS and Chellis-supported “What is Color” series, organized by the student group Women of Color. March is dedicated to women’s history. During Gaypril, we look at issues of gender and sexuality. While the different “theme months” provide us with a red thread, we by no means restrict ourselves to covering merely one theme during a particular time period. If a speaker happens to be in the area or is only available on a certain date, we still make events happen.
This brings me to my next point: the work involved in organizing events. Any student who has ever tried to bring an event to campus can attest to the fact that it takes hours upon hours to have a successful outcome. In your article Feb. 25 “Women’s History Month celebrates 127 years of coeducation,” your writers criticize Chellis House, stating that the events for women’s history were badly advertised. They probably overlooked the fact that the programming for the women’s history month event series was emailed to the whole campus on Feb. 9 as well as subsequent reminders for single events. In addition, the College’s Web calendar lists events on a daily basis. For our big-name speaker Helen Benedict, we sent out an all-campus e-mail and hung up 70 posters all around campus.
I have often heard that students don’t read e-mails, yet, if you send them too many, they get upset. At an environmentally conscious campus as ours, paper posters are also frowned upon. I would therefore like to invite suggestions on how to best advertise events. It seems to me that organizers are caught between a rock and a hard place.
Helen Benedict’s lecture was organized in cooperation with St. Michael’s College, one of our “neighboring counterparts,” as your writers call them in their article. To my knowledge, Ms. Benedict’s lecture was the ONLY event at St. Michael’s for women’s history month. The women’s center at UVM organized six special events on their campus of 15,000. By comparison, the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and Chellis House organized eight events for a student population of 2,500. When your writers claim that Women’s History Month is celebrated “with less vigor” at Middlebury than at “neighboring counterparts,” they do not seem to be basing this claim on any research.
Your interviewee Lark Nierenberg wondered “how much conversation [and inspiration] comes from [celebrating women’s history month].” Judging from animated discussions at Chellis House and at other events, I cannot help but think that participants are stimulated intellectually and spiritually. Ms. Nierenberg herself is scheduled to give a talk for Gaypril at Chellis House on April 1. Your interviewee Ariel Smith remarked that nobody gave a “s**t about Black History Month [or Women’s History Month].” Many of our events, like Julia Alvarez’s lecture on March 10 (article “Alvarez ‘colors’ gender discussion”) are filled to the last seat. Some people do seem to care, after all.
And since this paper also serves as a promotional forum, I would like to invite the campus to our annual Gensler Endowment/CCSRE Symposium “Interrogating Citizenship: Sex, Class, Race, and Regimes of Power” on April 2 and 3. This symposium looks at how sexuality, class and race have affected the concept of citizenship in projects of nation building, war, empire and labor mobilization. The conversation continues ...
(04/08/10 3:59am)
Although many view Amsterdam as a mecca for queer relationships and untraditional lifestyles, it has become increasingly hard for same-sex partners to start a family since Dutch sperm banks no longer accept anonymous donations and it is no longer legal to have commercial surrogacy. This has led to the formation of three-parent families.
The first Women’s and Gender Studies-Chellis House Event of Gaypril 2010 was a talk by Lark Endean Nierenberg ’11 on “The State of Queer Families in the Netherlands: Discrepancies Between Intentional and Legal Three-Parent Families.”
Lark Endean Nierenberg ’11, who is joint-majoring in sociology-psychology and minoring in women and gender studies, studied abroad in Amsterdam this fall and completed her gender research project at SIT (School for International Training) and the University of Amsterdam.
The three-parent families Nierenberg interviewed consisted of “two female partners in a relationship and a male who was brought into the relationship for reproductive purposes.”
Before birth, she explained, all three adults decided to co-parent and have a lasting relationship as three parents for the child.”
However, difficulties arise when trying to define the legal authorities and rights of the three parents. Only the gestational mother and recognized father are awarded legal parental rights, even if the gestational mother carried the other mother’s egg so that both partners are biological mothers. If the father is unknown, the non-gestational mother is still only awarded “parental authority,” which Nierenberg defined as a “tricky Dutch concept in which the parent gets all the responsibilities but none of the rights of a legal parent.”
The two mothers in a three-parent family will only have full legal standing if they go through formal court adoption and the father relinquishes his rights. So, what if all three parents want to be intentional parents, but only two people can be legal parents?
The basis of Nierenberg’s project came from research by Raewyn Connell, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault and their theories on marriage, kinship, family and the state’s involvement in those institutions. She spoke about the prevailing heteronormativity that functions as a practice of nomination and legitimation of “the family” as it simultaneously limits and represses individuals and organizations of individuals that fall outside of the hegemonic norms. The results of Nierenberg’s research and interviews showed that the main problems faced by three-parent families mostly fell into four categories: definitions of family members, finances, international travel and legal adoption.
Nierenberg, who was excited about connecting her semester abroad to the Middlebury community by sharing her research in this student talk, also shed some light on her personal connections to this project.
“My research seems to stem from a life-long fascination with the ideologies and realities of the family,” said Nierenberg.
“I came up with the idea for my project when the first woman to marry a same-sex partner in the Netherlands gave a lecture to my class. Such a theme of difficulty navigating familial legal rights is quite familiar to me.”
Nierenberg’s family started out as a two- parent family with a mom and a dad, but since she was eight, she has had three parents: her mom, her mom’s partner Colleen, and her dad. While Colleen’s social and familial involvement in her life is simple — “we love each other, she’s my parent” — negotiating her legal involvement has been more difficult.
“Think financial and school forms, for example. It’s gotten in the way of things and has felt disadvantaged at times.”
Nierenberg feels this is an important subject to share with the Middlebury community for several reasons.
“It’s a privilege not to think of court dates after birth dates. These Dutch individuals form a family; they function as such, they love as such, but they are not legally protected as such,” she said.
‘The family’ isn’t as stable as we assume it to be. It’s not this one configuration of individuals, or even a few variations on that. Its structure and significance is continuously developing and changing within societies, as well as simply within individual families, as my own family highlights.”
She also spoke about her beliefs that legal protection and privilege should accurately reflect this reality.
“The first steps to that are critically thinking about and questioning the social institutions and privildges we take for granted,” she said.
(04/08/10 3:59am)
Dear readers, I asked you to write in, and you wrote! Not surprisingly, you asked about long term, long distance relationships (LTLDR): how to keep them fresh, how to keep them going and how to keep them sexy without releasing naked photos of yourself to the Internet.
Before I delve into how to maintain a LTLDR, let me present the idea that all people in LTLDRs know but hate to hear: they are hard. Of course, I want to say that love is always worth the effort — and if your long distance partner is truly the one for you, that love is certainly worth the effort — but we all want to be where our hearts are, and if your heart is halfway around the world with your long distance partner, then you can’t be fully present here and you might miss opportunities to make new connections.
If you’re really committed to your LTLDR, good for you and please pardon my questions as to its worth. I only ask because I’ve attempted a LTLDR before (freshman year, when everyone tries them) and it ended up just being my attempt to hold onto my high school self. They can be great buffers against frightening or uncomfortable change and growth. If you’re trying to keep a LTLDR going for the long haul, personal growth might be the biggest obstacle: if you don’t grow together, you will grow apart, and growing together is difficult for any couple, let alone those who grow at two separate schools.
Other couples have the opportunity to do things together frequently, or just to be in the same room experiencing the same random Wednesday afternoon, but long distance partners have to go into detailed accounts of their separate lives to create shared experience — communication is obviously key.
A lot of long distance couples think that every exchange then has to be meaningful to make up for all of the time they haven’t spent together, but just as important as the heart-to-hearts are the silly conversations about literally nothing — the sweet nothings, if you will.
The random text (or 100 random texts a day if your plan allows it) is a beautiful thing, almost as good as running into your significant other after class for two seconds. The random invitation to hang out is also great.
If your partner were here, you could just drop by his or her room and fool around on YouTube or do your homework together. Thanks to the magic of Skype and webcams, you can also go back to your room and just hang out with your partner. Low-key, unplanned hang-out time will add up and help the relationship feel less effortful and more like you’re physically with each other.
That’s the other challenge of LTLDRs: how to maintain a sex life while apart and act like normal adults (instead of horny teens) for the short periods of time you’re together. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with acting like a horny teen — it’s a lot of fun and you really do have to make up for lost time in that department.
But if you prefer more civilized interactions, try to focus on just being together naked for a while (if you can stand it), sharing intimate space. Sex is often used to feel close to each other, but once you’ve gotten the initial build-up out of the way, just being intimate might feel just as good. In terms of having a sex life while you’re apart, I am a fan of the naughty Skype chat (a little striptease is always fun even if you’re just putting on your pajamas), but I realize that’s not for everyone. My recommendation is letters.
If the goal is just to feel close, nothing is closer over long distance (in my opinion) than a handwritten, thoughtful and loving letter that you know your partner put time into. It doesn’t even have to be naughty.
(03/18/10 5:00am)
As one Campus editor pointed out, I have often gleefully mocked The Middlebury Campus, but have contributed nothing to its betterment. I am offering this column now in accord with his sentiment, which went something like, It is easy to tear something down, but better to build something up. Criticizing is the art of skillfully misunderstanding. And as we will all one day discover, as if awakening from a nap in the steel blue library armchair of life, in a lightning flash of divine revelation through the turbulent, clouded atmosphere of thought, cynicism is ugly and disdain is tiresome.
Thus, I ask you all to admire this newspaper and the wonderful gray paper and black ink under your fingers. Look what an opportunity it is. two thousand-odd young, energetic readers, all living together in the same place. You could spend a lifetime trying to develop a publication with as much potential power.
The purpose of this column: To reintroduce us to The Campus by revealing its history. In order to appreciate the ideas in its pages, we must consider the paper a friend. Someone we are, at times, willing to take advice from. And, therefore, we must learn its biography, so that we may sympathize with its flaws and oddities and embrace its traditions and strengths.
I therefore bring you, from page nine of the Sept. 24, 1992 issue of The Campus, a funny article about condoms by Trisha Lucey. The health center springs for Trojan-Enz over the apparently suspicious and “cheesy” Lifestyle brand. More optimistic economic times for Middlebury, clearly (McCardell had just become president). We have since reverted to Lifestyle and thrown some Durex into the mix. The article claims that these and Trojans are equally reliable — I can confirm only that Durex make serviceable, if somewhat fragile, water balloons. They have never inspired me with confidence as a brand — for a condom that does inspire, check out Inspiral condoms! With unique twisting shape and lubricated spring action! I wonder if Jyoti Daniere, who is getting so much press of late (see the last three issues of The Campus, and now, this one) will be awarded a special “celebrity budget” by the College and choose to bring in some free, high-tech, big-name condoms. The company that makes Inspiral also has one shaped like a dolphin, although I can hardly believe the pictures on the company’s Web site, and am eager to see for myself when my sampler pack arrives.
The Campus’ treatment of sex in general tends to have a distinctly utilitarian bent. I usually feel a little queasy when the sex articles mention nerve endings, or touch on orgasms and STIs in the same sentence. But I’m sensitive, and maybe the matter-of-fact approach, sprinkled with the occasional irony-tinged allusion to the romance behind the mechanics (a habit this article avoids), is the best way young Americans have figured out to talk about this.
The last paragraph in the article points to an interesting trend in the treatment of students as economic entities. The health center’s approach to condom distribution anticipates what Internet-pirated music suppliers would (and continue to) meekly suggest is the model for illegal student downloading. It’s that endearing disciplinary attitude characteristic of tired parents — the excuses don’t have to be believable, they have to have that comforting ring. There’s plenty more to say, but this is just a warm up. Stick with us.
(03/18/10 5:00am)
“If you stop doing prayers you are not Muslim anymore,” explained Asma Naser ’10 of the absolute importance of this religious tradition to Muslims. Prayers allow the Muslim people to connect with Allah and express their gratitude and worship. Yet, observing these daily prayers, as well as the other pillars of Islam, can be difficult for College students, Naser shared.
Though not a major demographic at Middlebury College, Muslims comprise over 1.5 billion people in the world. A monotheistic religion with many similar origins as Christianity and Judaism, Islam instructs its followers to lead their lives through the example of the Prophet Muhammad and through the Qur’an, a holy scripture that is said to be the word of Allah (God). Islam literally means “submission to God” and the adherents of Islam are required by God to follow specific duties that are the foundation of Muslim life. They are called “the five pillars of Islam.”
The first is shahadah, which is a profession of monotheism, stating that there is no other god but Allah, and that Muhammad the prophet is his messenger.
The second is salat or prayers, requiring all Muslims to pray five times at specific periods each day.
The third is zakat or alms tax, which is the practice of giving charity based on personal wealth and is an obligation for those who are financially able.
The fourth is sawm, or fasting, and it occurs during the entirety of the Islamic month of Ramadan. From dawn until dusk Muslims must abstain from eating, drinking and having sex.
The fifth pillar is hajj, a pilgrimage that occurs during the Islamic month of Dhu al-Hijjah. “It is a three-day event,” said Naser. “You have to be really pious for those three days. You cannot lie to people, you cannot say harsh words to anyone.”
The pilgrimage takes the Muslims to Mecca, where they “do their rounds,” walking seven times around the Kaaba (a site incredibly sacred to Islam) in addition to Medina where they visit the prophet Muhammad’s mosque. “After pilgrimage you slaughter an animal. That’s the end of it,” said Naser.
The pilgrimage must be made once during the life of every Muslim. Those who have completed the haji are honored in their community.
“[The pilgrimage] is compulsory but I don’t want to do it in compulsion,” said Ansri of his future plans regarding this sacred event. “I want to enjoy the experience ... And wait for the right time when I’m much more mentally mature.”
Due to the strictness of these religious practices, Muslim students at Middlebury are faced with many challenges as they try to both be college students and maintain the essential religious practices that make up their faith.
“I have other commitments; I have my own life,” said Naser. “I don’t think that if I don’t pray five times a day, I’m not a good Muslim. I think I’m trying my best.”
“You have to make sure that you’re doing what you used to do when you were back home,” explained Talhi Asri ’12.“You compare your present activities with what you used to do before and kind of find the right path.”
In the case of Ramadan, breaking fast before dawn and after dusk becomes much more difficult when the dining halls are only open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. However, the Spiritual and Religious Life Administration has been incredibly helpful in overcoming this particular obstacle for Muslim students.
“Back home, we really celebrate Ramadan. We make really good food, and here, it is hard,” said Naser. “But the good thing about Middlebury College is they give us coupons for Grille that are worth almost eight dollars, and we go to the Grille and get good food and drink.”
The Middlebury Islamic Society has also played a big part in uniting the Muslim community at Middlebury by holding weekly prayer sessions and organizing religious and cultural activities.
“When I came here, I think it is much easier [to practice my religion] especially because we have our Islamic society room and we come here and we have practicing Muslims who come here,” said Naser.“It just gives us more want to be here and be with other Muslim students and pray with them.”
“I asked the advisor to create a mandate Islamic Society meeting after Friday prayer and a lot of people turn up,” said Asri. “It’s there for you to know there are other people around you.”
It is hard to imagine a bigger culture shock than moving from a traditional community in Afghanistan to Middlebury College. Naser’s transition from her home to the United States, was an opportunity to become exposed to different faiths and ideas. As a first-year in 2006, Naser was largely unaware of different religions.
“When we are back home, we are only exposed to one kind of view,” Naser said. “We are all with people who think like us, who are really religious. We know only one thing, which is to be really religious. But when we come here, it’s totally different because then we encounter different faiths. We talk to different people. I didn’t even know about Judaism or Christianity before coming here.”
Naser believes that sharing and understanding different religions is an important way to learn about each other, and that Middlebury has facilitated a great opportunity for her to experience that because of the religious diversity on campus. In her eyes, the other religious groups here share many of the same goals and ideas as Muslims, which creates a greater sense of community that is not only about religious practices, but an overall way to live life. All of the religious groups share a common bond of striving to do good works and be better people through practicing their faith.
“It had a really great impact on me,” said Naser, “because even though they are different people who are practicing different religions. There aren’t a lot of big differences between us.”
Naser has felt no discrimination being a Muslim at Middlebury. In fact, she has assimilated into American culture to a certain extent. As a result, Naser has had to make some changes in her lifestyle.
“My first year I wore hijab for a week, and then everyone would be looking at me and I didn’t want the attention, so I took it off.”
For Naser, these changes came because she realized there are many other important parts of life that are not about religion. She knows that her effort to continue to live under the ideas and teachings of Islam is still an instrumental part of her life, yet through her experience at Middlebury, she has come to accept to other ideas and teachings. For that she is very grateful.
“If I go back,”said Naser, “I’m sure I could explain things to people I could tell them that, ‘No, there aren’t a lot of differences.’ They think that Christians are totally different from us, but I think that if there is someone that could explain to them, ‘no, they are ordinary people like us,’ I’m sure they’d understand.”
(03/18/10 4:59am)
I’ve set a goal: In the next couple weeks I will generate a mind-blowingly awesome, socially-conscious-yet-irreverent opinion about some tragically overlooked aspect of the world. In the absence of that opinion this week, here are some topics which are rising in popularity this week, according to www.middlebury.edu and www.IMDb.com:
Adrian Moore: Public Safety sent us a highly entertaining CRIME ALERT e-mail about this young, potential suspect, accused of slashing a Hepburn window screen and attempting to make off with a student’s computer.
This e-mail came complete with pictures, seemingly selected on the basis of making him look as badass as possible. Two pictures of him with a flat brimmed hat cocked to the side, sticker still on the underside of the brim and another picture of him in his adorable Halloween costume, dressed up as a Stoner Cowboy.
Unfortunately, if there is ever a time in this young man’s life when he isn’t acting badass, he may be difficult to recognize.
Bucky Mitchell: I don’t have anything positive to say about him, but he also takes badass pictures and hangs out with Adrian.
midd_secure: The most secure thing on the campus and perhaps in all of Vermont. More secure than Hilary Clinton’s abstinence and *NSYNC’s place on the Mt. Rushmore of great boy bands. Computers are being stolen all over campus, window screens are being slashed, Adrian Moore is running amok, but fear not — no one will ever be able to successfully log onto to midd_secure.
Pornography:
According to an NPR report I heard this week and my subsequent research, pornography has had a significant role in pushing technology forward, pioneering such innovations as secure online payment systems, streaming JPEG video and online video chat. It’s also responsible for 90 percent of my sexual misunderstandings with women. Who knew that not all women wanted sexual experiences to be pseudo-violent, humiliating and video recorded? All of this might have been avoided if not for my childhood love of everything nautical and my tragically misguided visit to seamen.com.
Sometimes I imagine how my life may have unfolded differently if not for pornography’s love of puns.
Paris Hilton’s ‘1 Night in Paris’ sex tape: Up 33 percent in popularity this week on IMDb. See why on IMDbPro.
NeilMed SinusRinse: You know that plastic squeezy bottle they promote at the Health Center, no matter what your ailment is? “I have a broken leg.”
“Oh. Have you heard about the sinus rinse?” Turns out that thing works wonders.
Fill it with salt, douche your nose and get ready for an unprecedented streak of good health. I still have that same broken leg but, on the bright side, I haven’t caught a cold in a full year.
Listen.grooveshark.com: Best site on the Internet. It’s my duty to inform the reader about this Web site.
Every song you could ever want by any artist — and full albums free without having dozens of YouTube tabs.
Monogamy: An evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science has come out with a study supporting his theory that the more intelligent people are, “the more likely it is for them to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values in response to the challenges of the times.”
According to this study, these evolutionary novel preferences include liberalism, atheism and monogamy. The difference in IQ being a mere six points in most of the cases in this study — and since I have no idea what IQ points mean, or even if they have any significance at all — I don’t have much of an opinion on this. It does, however, seem like unfair ammo for women in their attempt to get men to bow to their evil monogamy schema.
On the bright side, it may keep intellectual wannabes from watching FoxNews, thereby creating a more intelligent society of liberals willing to push technology forward via the pornography addiction, created by their dogged commitment to monogamy.
(03/11/10 5:00am)
As somewhat of an addendum to my previous column about the Community Council’s so-called review of keg policy, I thought I might lend my voice to the debate about alcohol that has been raging — probably unnoticed — in these pages for weeks. As The Campus’ alcohol columnist, it is my duty to reiterate points already made, further polarize arguments and alter the level of discourse to my own designs. But I digress.
Most of the current uproar stems from an article published in The Campus’ Feb. 11 issue, titled “Scholars debate U.S. drinking age.” The article reported on the lecture, “From Global to Local: Understanding the Success of the 21-Year-Old Minimum Legal Drinking Age,” a statistics-laden address delivered by two experts on the issue, who, based on the title, helped everyone understand (what they perceived to be) the success of the 21-year-old minimum legal drinking age.
In addition to sparing my readers any rehashing of the details (because the only thing less interesting to most students than this week’s Campus news is last week’s Campus news), I’ll spare everyone my critical response to the lecture, as Nick Alexander ’10 has already ably refuted many of the arguments in his Feb. 18 op-ed.
Instead, I’d like to stab at the heart of the issue, the woman who brought the lecture to campus –— and who seems to be waging a not-so-clandestine war on drinking at Middlebury — Jyoti Daniere. Many of you may know Jyoti as the woman behind “Let’s Talk About Sex” Month and all other activities intended to jump-start our libidos, as well as the woman responsible for clogging up our inboxes with the latest dispatch from the Office for Health and Wellness Education (sorry, Midd-kids, but with the combination of sex and spam, it looks like it is in fact Jyoti Daniere who “gets in box like Gmail” ...). However, few of you may realize that in contrast to her pro-sex message, Daniere is notoriously conservative in regards to collegiate drinking culture.
To me, these disparate views on two related issues seem the mark of a hypocrite. For only a hypocrite could be quoted in the same paper (Feb. 11) as advocating for more balance and less stress for students, saying, “Priorities should be established, thereby balancing the pressure to achieve and excel with the necessity of joy in one’s life,” while then (in another article) stating, “there is ample research showing that the more a student drinks, the lower his or her GPA ... a fact that may be of interest to all our hardworking students,” thereby bringing the discussion back from joy to GPA. Further, her “Campus Character” profile in the aforementioned issue makes for wonderfully entertaining reading, with additional quotes that make Daniere appear as out of touch with the general student zeitgeist as does her choice of e-mail fonts.
Daniere has made her name (and what a difficult one it is) as an advocate for increased dating and healthier sex lives on campus, a goal with which I take no issue. However, what I do have trouble understanding is her vendetta against collegiate drinking in all its forms; one would assume that a person so progressive in her attitudes toward sex might be similarly inclined to reconsider our notions about alcohol. Instead, Daniere seems to see drinking as at the very bottom of what ails our dating culture (or supposed lack thereof). And while it may play a part, I think that encouraging more freedom on the one hand while restricting the other seems a woefully unbalanced policy. Much of the real reason for our campus’ primitive attitudes toward sexuality and dating stems from our society’s puritanical and undeveloped attitudes towards sex; might our problems with drinking stem from a similar attitude? I’m for increased freedom in both venues, be it the bedroom or the bar-room. Instead of demanding “balance” only to stipulate which kinds of balance are acceptable, perhaps we should all relax, unwind and just do what feels good.
Of course, we can file this all away with the other “Great Ideas Mike Has For Making His Middlebury Life Better,” along with no non-athletes in the dining hall after 6:30, rebreading the chicken parm in Proctor and eliminating the Office for Health and Wellness Education.
(03/11/10 4:56am)
Writing a sex column for a small college’s newspaper has not garnered me any sort of national (or even local) renown as a sexpert as far as I can tell, and I never expected it to. But I have been hoping that somebody besides my friends (who already asked for advice before I started this column) would ask for some help.
I could go on and on with my thoughts about every aspect of sex from fetishes to marriage, but I would much rather write what you, my small readership, want to read. I am thus extending a formal invitation to drop anonymous notes in my campus mailbox (2215) if you like the way I think about sex and you want me to apply my extensive base of sex articles and experiences (both mine and ones I’ve heard about) to your life. Send ’em on!
That being said, I can start by responding to one of the few questions I actually do get pretty frequently, besides how to obtain a partner: “Okay, so partner — check. Sex — check. Woohoo. But now we’re getting bored with it — what do we do?” If you either don’t have a lot of sex or you jump into bed with a new person every weekend, the idea of sex getting boring might sound a little preposterous. But truth is, if you’re sexing on the regular without working for it, with the same partner and the same script every time, it gets to be like watching reruns of your favorite TV show.
It’s still fun and way better than doing your homework, but you already know what’s going to happen and it lacks a certain thrill. So what do you do?
No one can tell you specifically what to do — Cosmopolitan and a host of other magazines will try, but burn them, please — because it all depends on what you and your partner like. Not sure what you like? Congratulations! You have reached the threshold of sexperimentation, and things are about to get really, really fun. And possibly kinky. All of those things you never, ever thought you would try — you know what I’m talking about, the ads blinking across the bottom of the vanilla porn you watched that one time (or yesterday), the multitude of products in Good Stuff on Church Street in Burlington — are now an unlimited set of options.
I’m not saying we’re all secretly kinks just waiting to be unleashed, though more people than you might think have a briefcase full of blindfolds, feathers and handcuffs in their closet, but I do think if you get to a point in your sex life where you and your partner are both left wanting by what you’ve always done, then logically it is time to try something new. New doesn’t have to mean ball gags or group sex or trying to install a sex swing in your dorm room (though it can), but it does mean a certain level of open-mindedness.
Before you embark on your sexperimentation, as always you need safety and consent, but beyond that I’ll borrow a term from one of my favorite sex bloggers: GGG, or good, giving and game. It’s a maxim I strive for in any sexual encounter, but it’s especially important in a long-term relationship when the sex needs a little spice.
When you and your partner start experimenting, it should be good — whatever you try should feel good and be a product of good communication. No dripping hot wax on your partner’s junk without talking about it first, etc. You and your partner should both be giving — everything you try doesn’t have to turn both of you on, but if does it for one person and the other doesn’t mind, add it to your repertoire as a couple. And certainly you and your partner should be game — leave your preconceptions behind and show up willing to have a good time with each other’s reasonable requests.
(03/04/10 5:00am)
The calendar turned itself to March this week, taking with it the Olympics, Winter Carnival and, of course, “Let’s Talk About Sex” Month. The annual series of events, sponsored by the Office of Health and Wellness Education, included a dating game, discussion about sexual conversation and a sex toy party, and was a popular event across college demographics. Central to the annual event’s success is the director of the Office of Health and Wellness Education, Jyoti Daniere, whose tireless efforts kept the student body interested and excited in the month’s activities.
Seemingly lost in the commotion of “Let’s Talk About Sex” Month, however, was the fact that February is also Black History Month — a time intended to recognize and celebrate the historical contributions of the black community. Many competing New England institutions devoted significant time and resources to commemorating the month with speakers, panel discussions, artistic productions and other community-oriented events. By contrast, Middlebury’s recognition of Black History Month was limited to a display sponsored by the College Republicans, a spoken word open mic session and the annual “Let Freedom Ring!” celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr., on Jan. 18. Promotion for these events — and for the month’s significance in general — was so rare that we very nearly forgot about Black History Month altogether.
The stunning effectiveness of Health and Wellness’s campaign to get students talking about sex leaves us wishing Black History Month had its own Jyoti Daniere — a champion of the cause unafraid to bombard us with friendly and light-hearted e-mail, posters and fliers. Somebody who can encourage turnout by making history as fun as sex.
It is with high hopes, then, that we anticipate Shirley Ramirez’s return to Middlebury as Dean of the College and Chief Diversity Officer.
(03/04/10 4:59am)
President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz revealed that an Academy-Award winning filmmaker, a decorated Army Colonel and the President of the Juilliard School are among the seven Honorary Degree Recipients for the 2010 graduation ceremony, exclusively to The Campus.
Members of the Honorary Degree Committee, which is comprised of members of the Board of Trustees, students and faculty members, selected the names from a pool of nominees recommended by the College community. They will receive their degrees at commencement on May 23 at 10 a.m. outside of Voter Hall. More than 5,000 family and friends are expected to attend the ceremony.
Commencement speakers Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn will also receive honorary degrees.
“This is an extraordinarily accomplished group of recipients who are remarkable not only for the broad impact they have had on their communities and the world, but also for the breadth of their collective accomplishments,” Susan Campbell, dean of Planning and Assessment, wrote in an e-mail. I also expect that Middlebury students will find them inspiring for the ways in which they have turned their respective passions and vision into compelling realities.”
The seven degree recipients come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. Among the group is Academy-Award winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, who will receive a Doctor of Fine Arts degree.
His 2003 documentary, “The Fog of War,” which profiled former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, won Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards.
Morris’ other works include “Standard Operating Procedure,” “The Thin Blue Line,” “Gates of Heaven” and “Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control.” His films have won numerous other awards, including the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
Morris has made many television commercials, including advertisements for Apple, Citibank, Intel, American Express and Nike. In 2007, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences inducted Morris into its ranks.
President of the Juilliard School Joseph W. Polisi will receive a Doctor of Arts degree. Before he became president of Juilliard in 1984, Polisi served as dean of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, executive officer of the Yale University School of Music and dean of faculty at the Manhattan School of Music.
His musical career includes both solo and chamber performances of bassoon music across the country. Polisi has recorded several sound recordings of contemporary American music and speaks frequently on arts issues. His scholarly work has appeared in professional journals.
Receiving a Doctor of Laws degree is Army Col. Mark Odom ’87, who serves as commander of the second Ranger Battalion and has fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
While on his second tour of duty in Iraq in 2007, Odom and his unit sought to stabilize the country through the formation of ties with Sunni tribes. He received the Purple Heart after a roadside bomb wounded him. Odom’s father was the controversial three-star general William Odom, who argued for the United States’ immediate withdrawal from Iraq in 2005.
Influential lawyer Beth Robinson will also receive a Doctor of Laws degree at the ceremony. Robinson served as co-council to the plaintiffs in Baker v. State of Vermont, which involved the rights of same-sex couples.
She co-founded the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force and her leadership culminated with passage of a bill allowing same-sex couples to marry. The Burlington Free Press named her Vermonter of the Year in 2009. She practices at Langrock Sperry and Wool.
Physician Jill Seaman ’74, who works to provide medical treatment for infectious diseases to Sudan, will receive a Doctor of Science degree. Seaman splits her time between Sudan and remote Alaska, where she provides medical care to the Yup’ik Eskimo communities.
In recent years, she has focused her efforts on fighting the spread of tuberculosis, malaria and hepatitis B by treating illiterate patients in areas with little or no infrastructure. In recognition of her efforts, she was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2009.
(02/25/10 5:24am)
The posters and e-mails advertised “an informal, safe, inclusive and fun conversation about the importance of pleasure in the context of sexual intimacy,” and naturally, I thought, “I am all about some sex conversatin’ — let’s do it!” The workshop on “Mastering the Art of Sexual Conversation” on Feb. 19 was not, however, what it was advertised to be. I think Jyoti wanted it to be the feel-good, open conversation about healthy intimacy she described in her fliers, but Oliver Barkley, one of the hosts and a self-described professional sex educator, wanted to talk about sexual assault. RIP, my conversation boner.
Don’t think that I take sexual assault lightly — it’s an important topic, especially on a college campus. Just like the continued presence of STDs and accidental pregnancies on our campus suggests we still need reminders to have safer sex, so does the occurrence of sexual assault on our campus suggest that all of us aren’t up to speed on when it’s okay to get physical with somebody. I’ve seen three of the sexual assault posters in the bathrooms changed from “Sexual assault is never the survivor’s fault” to “Sexual assault is sometimes the survivor’s fault,” which says to me we either have a few individuals with a sick sense of humor running around, or that some of us are still grossly unclear on the meaning of the word “assault.” We undoubtedly need to continue stressing communication and compassion as much as condoms in the bedroom, but devoting Friday night’s discussion to that was a lost opportunity to do something different. When do we as students ever get to discuss positive sexual encounters?
Whenever an older adult talks to me about sex in any sort of formal capacity, I leave feeling like a chastised child: “If you insist on getting hot and heavy with your peers, at the very least use a condom, and for goodness’ sake don’t let me catch you having drunken sex of questionable consent with a stranger. You should know better than that.” The message coming at our age group (18-20-somethings, sorry older readers) from all sides is that it’s quite unfortunate we’re allowed to copulate because we’re really not ready to. I won’t say we are or we aren’t — I think it varies on an individual basis — but the fact is that we’re all attractive, talented and full of raging hormones. There’s going to be some serious sexing going on, and while I appreciate the efforts of our elders to protect us from the potentially dire consequences of our awkward fumblings in the dark, I would also appreciate it if the criticism we have to listen to were a little more constructive. More talks à la “I ♥ Female Orgasm” and fewer like “STDs: A Discourse on Discharge.” Sex education is invaluable — I just wish it didn’t sound like thinly veiled attempts to get us to stop doing it.
I think asking older adults to stop treating us like children with explosives between our legs is only half the issue. To a certain extent, we have to stop acting like children first. It still boggles my mind that as confident, mature individuals who can give a solid thesis defense or organize Haiti relief efforts or jumpstart sustainability at our college, some of us still can’t make eye contact with past hook-ups in the dining hall, or can’t stop measuring sexual prowess by the number of partners we’ve had. I think if we were expected to make a little more meaning out of our sex lives, to be more responsible with our sensitive psyches, we’d rise to the occasion, but I also think the ball is in our court on this one — we need to make the first move. Having a consensual pants party is a right, just like drinking is a right if you’re over 21, but they should both have the same motto: party responsibly.
(02/25/10 5:00am)
Olympic boxing in Ancient Greece was performed by naked men wearing leather gloves weighted with metal. No rules existed for punching a man on the ground, although killing one’s opponent was counterproductive — if you died, you won. As athletes evolved, the competitive environment adjusted accordingly. By 1956, Soviet and Hungarian athletes were boxing in the pool for the water polo championship and by 1976, East German distance swimmers had switched to a diet of pure anabolic steroids. When the women were questioned on their suspiciously deep voices, one coach snapped: “We came here to swim, not sing.”
The Allen Jokers, on the other hand, came here to sing. I knew it the day I moved to Le Chateau and heard Andrew Plumley rehearsing that sweet modulating croon, but I didn’t realize their ambition was to immortalize an entire generation of Middlebury students in song and verse. In a way, they did — try, I mean, for results vary. Where the Jokers succeed, they suss out behavioral patterns we’re not always aware are common, like haunting the print release station until a desirable biddy enters our seduction radius; and when they fail, they do so because they forget to strip ordinary lyrical filler and crude college stereotypes down to the particulars that make us unique.
The “Midd Kid” rap’s fundamental weakness is organizational: everyone who contributed to the song is part of the same clique. While our college’s tiny size allows us to relate more easily to the Jokers’ commentary, the fact that they huddle together socially gives some of the product an uninformed feel, too distant and superficial to fully entertain. Take, for a perfect example, this couplet, “It’s The Mill, yo, and that’s what I told ya/’Cause here we all G’s throwin’ free granola.” Not only is it an awful rhyme, there are also agricultural products more readily associated with The Mill than granola. But then the follow-up is gold: “I’m checkin’ out the honeys and I spy me a winner/ she got Carhart overalls, stained with dinner.” Obviously, the Jokers spend more time ogling Mill-women at the dining hall than they do at their social house, which directly affects the quality of their lyrics. Likewise, their powers of observation are at fault in this fashion statement: “When I work I wear my Sunday best/ tight ripped jeans and corduroy vest.” Overdressing is not a typical Middlebury phenomenon, unless by overdressing they mean luxury fleece.
The same problems recur on a greater scale in Midd Kid’s reprise, LaxBro. When you read the typed-up lyrics on MiddBlog, it says “-Key change- (Lax Bro chorus)” but really it sounds like the same song picks up after the intermission. It also sounds like an unsuccessful attempt to distinguish one group of bros from another. Light beer in Solo cups, Polo shirts, Beirut and indiscriminate sex are attributes of anything worth Public Safety’s attention, so why should we give the lacrosse team credit for our drinking culture? And even if we do, the verse loses on being a virtual pastiche: while there isn’t a single specific detail pertaining to our obscure but legendarily wealthy student-athletes, the Smirnoff Tea Partay is conjured up with all the shortcomings of being filmed on campus, which is a shame because the “Midd Kid” rap is brilliant by comparison. Of course, if the Jokers are using musical form to manipulate lyrical content, suggesting we’re all hypocrites for making fun of each other, then hats off to them, because they’re right.
Contrary to what some might assume, I’m a fan of the new anthem. It’s catchy as hell and, if you ignore a few rhymes of the “back-track-smack-whack” variety, funny too. Plus, “Scientia et Virtus” just doesn’t have the same ring as “I’m a Midd-kid and you’re just a f-----g muggle.”
(02/11/10 4:59am)
I love that Valentine’s Day inspired a salon in my hometown to offer a “Hot Betty wax” — a bikini wax that leaves a heart-shaped landing strip and then they dye the special fuzz pink.
I didn’t take them up on the offer, but I think it’s awesome. I don’t love that Valentine’s Day inspires a lot of stress and gross commercialism. For many it goes by Singles Awareness Day (SAD, not be confused with Seasonal Affective Disorder, though that’s also prevalent this time of year), and even among couples it is rarely the beautiful celebration of mutual affection it’s cracked up to be.
But I will say this: Valentine’s Day at least promotes dating. Is it not a time-honored tradition to take your sweetheart out to a candlelit dinner on February 14?
I don’t want to become just another voice in the chorus telling students to date, but I think Jyoti Daniere, our devoted Director of Health and Wellness Education, has it right when she asks us to ask each other out. As a first-year, I participated in the first “Find Me Somebody to Love” dating game at the Grille, and honestly I loved it.
The Health Center isn’t even endorsing this column. Really. I loved it.
At what other point in my life will somebody set up a selection of eligible bachelors for me to choose from? It was fun, I met new people outside of the academic arena and my carefully selected date and I got a free fancy dinner.
My date and I didn’t go on to actually date, but he’s now a good friend — lucky, since he is someone I probably would not have met otherwise.
Speed dating in McCullough or the Dating Game at the Grille are not the most organic ways to get to know new people, but at least they’re opportunities to put yourself out there and get noticed, and I appreciate that they are the endeavors of someone who has students’ holistic well-being in mind.
They are also quick events, just an early evening’s worth of time, which battles the common complaint, one I have certainly made, that students just don’t have time to date.
The logic is discouragingly simple: if the average date takes a few hours and intense planning, but the average hook-up only takes 30 minutes (rough estimate here) and you were both already at that Suites party, the busy busy Midd-kid will choose the more time- efficient option.
To put it bluntly, I hate the more efficient option. I think sex just for sex’s sake has a place, and it’s certainly interesting to get to know (in the Biblical sense) many different people, to figure out what you like, etc., but I talk a lot about sex feeding a need, and there are lots of needs it doesn’t meet by itself. Dating meets them.
A date doesn’t always mean sex, but it offers a human connection, a respite from the stress of an overbooked schedule where all I have to do is be myself and witness someone else being. You don’t even have to buy into the “being” business to just enjoy hearing someone else’s stories and learning about a life experience different from your own.
It’s not advertised in our course catalog, but I’ve learned more from my peers here than I have in any class, so if anything, to get the most educational bang for my buck, I need to date. If you can consider socializing like a class that makes all of the other ones bearable, then a date is a guest lecture that might just change your life.
To bring this all back to Valentine’s Day, for all of the things the holiday is not, it is a good excuse to ask someone out on a date. Get to know a new Feb, ask that smart girl in your physics class to lunch, cozy up to the guy you thought about the whole time he was abroad.
Who can say no to “Would you be my Valentine?”
