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Direct Your Attention: An insider’s look at America’s outsiders

Upon first glance, Andrew Callaghan is like any other news anchor: he wears a suit, holds a mic and stands in front of an ever-present cameraman. That is, however, where the similarities end, for even in his adherence to journalistic conventions Callaghan is most certainly unconventional. His iconic gray suit was purchased from a Goodwill in Tucson for $15 and, according to its eBay description, has never been washed; he adorns the suit with a pair of Nike Air Max 95s and — instead of in a news van — Callaghan and his crew tour the country in a 1999 Coachmen RV.  Callaghan doesn’t belong to any larger news organization, and it is precisely this freedom that allows his YouTube show “All Gas No Brakes” to be as untethered and chaotic as it needs to be. What separates Callaghan from his peers -- and I use that term broadly -- is his profound ability to listen. As the show has developed and matured over the course of its year-long existence, so too has Callaghan’s interview prowess.  Callaghan’s career began with his project “Quarter Confessions,” which was inspired by the drunken mayhem that unfolded in front of him night after night during his stint as a doorman in New Orleans’ French Quarter. The premise of the show was simple: Callaghan and his director/camera operator Michael Moises would roam the streets of the French Quarter in the late hours of the night and film anyone and everyone that could stand in front of the camera. Needless to say, in an area with cheap and plentiful drinks and tourists that had come from all over to lose their inhibitions, there was no lack of subjects to film.  “It’s an honor to be able to document this frenzy of sex, liquor, garbage and drugs,” Callaghan said in an interview with Office Magazine in 2019.    The differences in maturity between “Quarter Confessions” and “All Gas No Brakes” are drastic, though their underlying premises are not too dissimilar. Initially posted to Instagram, “Quarter Confessions” was a series of quick moments, each less than a minute in length, capturing people saying and doing whatever their drunken minds told them to do. These videos are lewd, jarring and pure pandemonium: some people lob insults at opposing colleges’ quarterbacks, others reveal themselves to the camera, and drunkards fight in the street — chaos. “All Gas No Brakes” is a continuation of this format but with an additional appreciation for the subject matter. Many of the show’s core components remain the same, such as the shouting, cussing and overly excited interviewees, yet Callaghan and his crew have expanded the show to be so much more than its predecessor.  Just as soon as Callaghan finished his first year of college, he fled, leaving his clothes, electronics and everything else in his dorm behind to hitchhike across the country. It wasn’t so much a manifest destiny-like want to become a more worldly person; he had just become fed up with the rigid structures of college and wanted to be free and untethered. So, for 70 days, Callaghan hitchhiked across the country, relying on the kindness of strangers to travel and eat. He turned the whole experience into a zine of the same title as his current show, and most interestingly, he removed himself and his stories almost entirely from it.  “I think it’s important to let people tell their own story, to remove yourself from it even if you disagree with what they’re saying,” Callaghan said in the Office Magazine interview. This, above all else, is the mantra of his current show: let people tell their own story.  “All Gas No Brakes” and its crew know no bounds. They have traveled to just about every state in the country, finding its most bizarre convention, event or individual; there are episodes on the Midwest FurFest, a Flat Earth Conference, the NASA/SpaceX rocket launch and a Donald Trump Jr. Book Club, to name a few. My reaction to his videos always follow the same emotional trajectory. The initial impacts of his videos are increasingly a slap in the face, like he reached out through my monitor and shook me awake. After being shocked by the mayhem of it all, I immediately feel a sense of superiority, as every interviewee that steps into the camera’s frame makes a fool of themselves. Yet, as the video progresses, I drop the superiority complex and am taken aback by how understanding Callaghan is of his interviewees.  He is a journalistic chameleon, always seeming to record people from within their own community, finding common ground and empathy everywhere he goes. Callaghan never interrupts anyone, and he always seems to understand and empathize with his subjects, even at their least intelligible. His ability to be a part of the very communities he is researching separates him from other news sources — so much so that when he cuts to footage of Fox News and Democracy Now! covering the very same Portland protests as he does, it makes them seem like uneducated third parties.  If you’re going to his YouTube channel to find ignorant people spout off about this or that, you’ll be satisfied, but if you go in with an open and empathetic mind, you’ll find yourself uncovering pockets of the United States you never knew existed. “All Gas No Brakes” is not a social media freak show. It is instead a magnification of America, a spotlight on its dark corners. What Andrew Callaghan and his crew are doing to modernize and democratize journalism is more than just drumming up viral social media. It is an unadulterated look at a greater collective of individuals; an inside look at America’s outsiders.

Phase Two start date pushed to Thursday, Sept. 17

The next period in the college’s “phased approach” to a safe reopening will be pushed back to Thursday, Sept. 17, two days after it was originally planned to begin. Phase Two allows for greater freedoms, including leaving campus for other locations in Addison County and relaxing physical distancing with a small number of close contacts.   The announcement was made in an all-school email in the afternoon of Tuesday, Sept. 14, and came just one day before the widely anticipated start date of Sept. 15, which was described in the Return to Campus Guide as the optimal Phase Two start date, and shared in the mandatory pre-arrival SafeColleges training.  Dean of Students Derek Doucet said that the transition to Phase Two was delayed because remote students and students taking leaves of absence who are living in the area and only recently arrived in town had not yet completed their arrival quarantine phase mandated by the state of Vermont. “We were concerned that an immediate move to Phase Two would open the possibility that students on campus who had been through multiple rounds of testing might be inadvertently interacting with these recent arrivals, which would pose an exposure risk,” he told The Campus. Doucet said that, additionally, observations of other colleges and “evolving public health guidelines” led the college to push the start date. He also clarified that Sept. 15 was the earliest possible start date for Phase One, as opposed to a set date. Only two individuals have tested positive for Covid-19 on campus, both of which were detected during the two rounds of arrival testing. Both of those cases are now listed as recovered, and there are zero active cases on campus after 5,362 tests. A few students have been asked to leave campus for violations of Covid safety rules. Some of the freedoms that come with a move to Phase Two will include local recreational travel within Addison County and the use of student vehicles. The college will also begin phasing in limited indoor dining hall seating, limited use of indoor athletic facilities and student use of outdoor athletic spaces such as the golf course, Snow Bowl and TAM. When using personal vehicles, students will be required to wear face coverings, keep the windows open at least two inches for ventilation and maintain physical distancing as much as possible. Phase Two will also allow students to define a small social circle of individuals with whom they relax physical distancing. The announcement email notes that students will be allowed to have no more than four individuals with whom they are “close contacts”.  A guide called Sex in the Time of Covid-19, published by the Health and Wellness office in August, noted that they “anticipate that any dating/sex partners would be part of this circle.”  Students will need to complete another online training before being released from campus quarantine. Engaging in Phase Two activities without completing the training will be considered a violation.

The only dating guide you’ll need this fall semester

Has quarantine loneliness got you down? Whether you’re crying into your third pint of vegan Ben & Jerry’s, finding yourself binging “Too Hot to Handle” or flirting through email, we’re all feeling the romantic frustrations of isolation. Since many of us have now returned to campus (and those who haven’t are already sorely missed), here is a list of ideas for your Phase I romantic endeavors.  Tired of playing GamePigeon 8 Ball? Try FaceTiming your crush to actually establish a solid foundation. This is where you can gauge interest, instead of both being drunk, walking from Brooker to the Grille to share some post-party fries. (Or, even worse, walking straight to your dorm to hook up, still not knowing how you actually feel about each other.) A socially distanced picnic on the basketball court behind Ross is a sure and steady way to lock in that corona cutie. Add a couple of masks and the only alcohol you’ll need on this date — the largest container of isopropyl alcohol you can procure — and you have yourself a successful rendezvous.  Club Penguin Pizzeria dates never fail to impress. For incredible service, perfect pizza and an even better date, look no further. If you’re looking for something that is not at all cliché, walk on opposite sides of the road down to the Knoll for a moonlit stroll. Once there, lay six feet apart and name as many constellations as you can, or honestly just use the app. We won’t tell anyone. Make up your own interpretive language and mime from opposite sides of a BiHall window. One person inside, one person outside, and both partaking in a vibrant and very visual conversation.  Use walkie-talkies and pretend to be in Mission: Impossible. The scavenger hunt will span the whole campus (minus barred buildings), requiring no contact, and the winner takes all. “All” being an air high-five or a kiss blown from across the room.  If your significant other, member of the preferred sex or person-of-interest happens to be your neighbor, utilize morse code to engage in robust intercourse... I mean, discourse. Three short taps, three long taps, then three short taps translates to SOS, which means, for our purposes: stupendously obsolete seduction.  [Chorus 1: Sammie] Kiss me through the phone. (Kiss me through the phone.) Organize a candlelit dinner at a table outside McCullough. Bring battery-operated candles to comply with fire safety precautions and wear your fanciest Blundstones or Chacos. Your MiddView trip leader can serve you and tell you scary stories while you feast on powdered hummus and Kombucha cocktails.  Hear me out: Hammocks, but make them six feet apart. Hammocks are like giant masks, so they're super safe. Send each other handwritten letters of endearment, complete with cursive, a wax seal and a lipstick kiss, through Middlebury campus mailing services. If you’re feeling frisky, send one to your Proc crush or the writer of this article… please. Please. Please. We could go to, like, Ross — just like you like to do when you get out of class at 12:15 Tuesdays and Thursdays — and get to-go meals together and then eat them outside of BiHall because we both have class there.  What if we air-kissed on Battell Beach? Haha, just kidding... … … Unless?        So now that you have all of these brilliant date ideas under your belt (or your fanny pack), build up the courage to take action on your quarantine crush and turn your relationship into a full-blown pandemic romance. Covid-19 is contagious, but love? Well, take it from me. That’s the strongest bug you can catch.*   *Statement not endorsed by the CDC.

MASK OFF, MIDD: A college senior’s take on romance amid Covid 

We’re in his American-made car, this blue beast equipped with two Lysol cans and enough sports equipment to outfit half a hockey team. As he rolls to a stop next to my Honda, he expertly (maybe a little too expertly) toggles to Niall Horan’s “Slow Hands” and the sensual lyrics fill the car. Slow hands, like sweat dripping off our dirty laundry. No chance that I’m leaving here without you on me. We make initial eye contact — you know, that look — and I’m ready to close off our date with a smooch. Unsure if we’re supposed to kiss through our masks (that could be hot, right?), I make the executive decision to take mine off. In a manifestation of my unparalleled sex appeal, the mask strings get caught on my dangly earrings and, when I finally wrestle them free, I’ve broken a sweat from the stress of my unexpected skirmish. Oblivious to my struggle, he seamlessly removes his own mask, revealing a set of lips destined for Chapstick advertisements. I ready myself for the soft impact of the kiss.  And then, in all of my wisdom, I lunge forward and give him a side-hug — a side-hug — and blurt out, “Thanks for such a fun time!” before bolting.   I’m a natural at a lot of things, but boys have never been my forte. Add a global pandemic into the mix, a healthy dose of personal anxiety, and Middlebury’s “We encourage sexting during Phase One” policy, and I am left wondering: what could possibly go wrong?  While I’m undeniably outgoing, have a deafening laugh (some would dare call it a cackle), and say “hi” to people I follow on Instagram but have never had a conversation with, my boldness does not necessarily translate into romance. Sure, I’ve asked out guys first, mailed some love letters and, most recently, private messaged my Zoom crush (ballsy, I know), but these spurts of confidence are nevertheless intertwined with my (somewhat endearing?) clumsiness.  You might not find “chronic awkwardness” on Web MD, but trust me, I have all the symptoms.  A relic of my high school love life (or rather, the wasteland that resembled a love life), my romantic awkwardness developed when my eight closest friends all started dating each other. The ninth wheel of my friend group, I was on my own to navigate proms and first dates while it seemed that everyone around me had already figured it out.  I’d like to think that I’ve stockpiled enough good karma to carry me through my love life, but I have stumbled through nearly every romantic milestone. Namely, when I had my first kiss, I pulled away after ten seconds and exclaimed “I’m a virgin!” Even more famously, one week after “Cupid Shuffling” my way through senior prom, my date, a dashing lad with a penchant for backflips, started successfully pursuing the 2016 U.S. Olympic gymnast, Laurie Hernandez. And finally, lest I forget the times during my freshman year that I would wake up in the morning to booty calls and, worried that not responding would be rude, message back with a genuine, “Sorry didn’t see this, was asleep!”  Thankfully, I have managed to survive these cringey moments with only mild bruising and a considerable amount of laughter. For the most part, I have kept my awkwardness at bay during college (I no longer flirt by sending my class crushes unsolicited Quizlets) and, despite hook-up culture at Middlebury, have found myself on a number of dates. With time, patience and a bit of hopeless romanticism, I have gained some footing when it comes to love.  Romance in college, naturally accompanied by its own anxieties, is even more challenging when you’re a girl of commitment. In truth, there’s a part of me that wishes I were comfortable with casual flings, those drunken hook-ups that end nearly as soon as they start (I’m talking figuratively and physically here, boys). However, through the years, I have learned that attracting the people you desire, whether that’s a short-term or committed connection, hinges on being honest with yourself and others.  As we begin at Midd, I wonder what love in our rural Vermont town will look like this year. The musky autumn breeze, usually crisp and sweet, will now mingle with the potent smell of hand sanitizer. Friends who typically reunite on Battell Beach will be replaced by individuals waving to each other as their masks hide their elation. Even Atwater, the setting of many freshmen’s first college party, will be overwhelmed by the sound of crickets chirping rather than drawn-out tones of “Mr. Brightside.” Despite limiting our physical connections, both romantically and platonically, our desire for love and acceptance remains steadfast. Now, more than ever, we will seek comfort in one another and search for unique ways to show others we care about them.  Tune in to my Middlebury Campus column, MASK OFF, MIDD. Laugh with me (or at me) as I navigate relationships during the era of Covid and have honest conversations about college romance.  MASK OFF, MIDD, I’m telling all.     Maria Kaouris is a member of the class of 2021.

The Librarian is in: '100 Times'

“100 Times” by Chavisa Woods is a compilation of autobiographical vignettes in which the author tells of the many times she has been sexually harassed, assaulted and/or discriminated against from the time of her childhood up until her mid-thirties. The author is a white, queer woman based in Brooklyn who also spent time growing up in the Midwest. The truth is that the stories are shocking, disconcerting and terribly familiar all at once. Unfortunately, they do not strike me as “out of the ordinary” and likely wouldn’t strike many American women as anomalous. For the record, I’m not proud of this assessment. I’m not proud to live in a society that desensitizes me to sexual harassment, assault and discrimination, and I imagine this is one of the reasons this book exists: to shake us awake, causing us to recognize, evaluate and interrogate what we have accepted as “normal.”  The work is invaluable as it highlights the multitude of unwelcome and unfair behavior women are socialized to tolerate and endure. It also raises questions regarding public violation of bodily autonomy and personal space. It features moments of gaslighting and the relentless testing of boundaries many women encounter as they assert themselves in interactions with men. In her youth, for example, adults told Woods that boys’ violence towards her was reflective of their interest in her. She recounts experiences in which her expressed disinterest in a man’s sexual advances seem to embolden their pursuits, as though her “no” is not the end of the conversation but rather the beginning of a negotiation. She has also been iced out of professional enrichment and development opportunities because she is perceived as a threat or a liability on the sole basis of her sex.  I’d recommend this work to any woman who has been admonished for turning down a man’s interest in her, who has been chastised regarding her clothing choices, who has been catcalled in the streets — “It was a compliment! What’s your problem?” — or who has had an appropriately angry reaction to someone disrespecting limits she has clearly set with phrases such as “Go easy on him” or “She was asking for it.” I’d also recommend it to all men, especially those who liberally use the phrases “It was just a joke,” “I was just kidding around,” or “Don’t take it so seriously.” I would also recommend this book to any man who has ever uttered the phrase, “You’re not that cute anyway” in an attempt to shake a woman’s confidence following her rejection of his advances. Readers should know that the book includes retellings of attempted rape, aggravated assault and nonconsensual drugging (i.e., roofie-ing) and I wouldn’t recommend the work to anyone who may be triggered by these themes. Another work in our collection that features autobiographical stories from women who have been sexually vicitimized is “Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture,” edited by Roxane Gay. If the book could grant me one wish, it would be a cursory roadmap that would tell us how to build toward better. But it’s not the victim’s responsibility to provide the solution.   Editor’s Note: Katrina Spencer was the Literatures & Cultures Librarian, and this book review was written for The Campus before she left the college. 

The Librarian is in: 'The Moment of Lift'

Melinda Gates, and her husband Bill, are computer scientists and major philanthropists whose works, software, devices and giving have far-reaching, likely unquantifiable impacts. With more money than they can spend, they have dedicated themselves to numerous humanitarian efforts, especially those concerning education within the United States, and this book, a memoir of sorts for Melinda, documents some of their efforts. I listened to this work as an audiobook on go/overdrive/ as Melinda Gates recounts her travels to some of the least privileged communities around the world. Some were burdened by fertility, others by a lack of infrastructure that kept people from accessing necessary services, and yet others were victims of the nasty nexus of unemployment and sexual abuse. Throughout the work, Melinda Gates’ focus and goal have been to bolster women and to support their needs all around the world. She repeated a central, two-part thesis over and over again throughout her work, forwarding the idea that a key factor in uplifting humanity is allowing social frameworks in which women can decide 1. when and 2. whether to have children. These succinct ideas, she proffers, allow women to dedicate a greater quantity and quality of resources to each child who is born. With such a simple and straightforward thought, she easily made me a disciple. What makes these notions more arrestingly compelling, however, is that these ideas are coming from a woman who is a known Catholic, given that, historically, the Catholic Church has not encouraged a variety of forms of birth control and Melinda Gates suggests that birth control can, in fact, assuage a number of social ills. In this respect, these beliefs might put Melinda at odds with her religion and her Catholic peers. Yet, she still dares to forward a platform that she sees has proven results. The book is not a revelation. It is not avant-garde. It is not an emotional roller coaster. It asserts basic truths that shouldn’t be labeled as “liberal,” but will be. It asserts that women have more to contribute to the world than the fruit of their loins. It asserts that women who labor have expertise to offer about improving the processes of that labor. It asserts that women are willing to engage in less than desirable work to protect their children and families. It asserts that bodily autonomy is a right. Little of this is news. It would seem that little of this would be debatable. So I have to wonder who Gates’ audience is and who exactly needs to hear this message. I fear that some people will only bend their ears to hear this message because it is coming from a rich and powerful person. But these ideas are found elsewhere throughout society in the calls to protect safe and legal abortions, to protect farmers’ rights and to decriminalize sex work, for example. I commend Melinda Gates for using her platform and visibility to shout the message louder and wider. But I can’t say any idea within the book is explicitly novel. The book suggests that even the truth must be presented persuasively.

The letter

Content warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of assault. “The following is an undocumented paper which does not necessarily express the views of the College Administration,” the letter began. “The topic is Contraception. Don’t expect to find much practical information on the subject in Egbert Starr Library, because I’ve looked and there isn’t any, aside from the Time Magazine report on pills.” It bore the title “Honi Soyt Qui Mal Pence,” a maxim written in Old French which translates roughly to “shamed be the person who thinks evil of it.” The letter went on to detail how conception occurs, different methods of birth control, their effectiveness and how to access them — on trying to get a prescription for the pill, it wrote: “go to Burlington or Rutland and borrow a plain gold or silver ring from someone, invent a married name and place of residence (but don’t tell any more of your “story” than they ask for and keep your cool.)” — and what to do if the reader believed she was pregnant. It included a comprehensive illustration of abortion methods as well as ways to attempt to obtain an illegal abortion.  The letter arrived in the first-year women’s campus mailboxes packaged with one male condom. Martha McCravey ’71 was on the other end of the mailbox. “I remember reading it and going back to the dorm and talking about it with a couple other girls, we were all sort of ‘Wow! Where did this come from? And who wrote this? And what does this mean?’” McCravey said. “My biggest reaction was that my parents must never ever see or hear about this. Because I won't be coming back to Middlebury.” She was shocked when Olivier revealed the letter at their 45th reunion. As far as she had known, everyone had “either hid it or burned it or thrown it away because [they] were so freaked out by it.” McCravey grew up in a family with doctors, so she knew about birth control. But it was still not something she was accustomed to thinking about in the context of her own life. During her time at Middlebury, McCravey knew female students who tried to obtain birth control prescriptions. They went to the student health center, but Middlebury’s Medical Director at the time, Dr. William Parton, for whom Parton Health Center is named, refused to write them prescriptions. She knew a few students in her sophomore and junior years who got abortions. “I think the college would have been just as happy for everybody to get an abortion and nobody to be pregnant walking around,” she said. “That was saving face.” Unlike McCravey, now-Writer-in-Residence Emerita Julia Alvarez ’71 did not receive “the letter.” She was a transfer student who arrived at Middlebury in the fall of 1969. “This is the first I hear of that letter,” Alvarez wrote in an email to The Campus. “Both hilarious, astonishing, confusing, and painful to read — how little we knew back then and how few were the options! I feel for the pressures on us as young women with ownership of our own bodies still in the future.” When Alvarez convinced her father to let her transfer from Connecticut College for Women, she conveniently omitted the fact that Middlebury was a co-ed institution. He almost turned the car around when he drove to drop her off and saw men walking around the campus. “I had a boyfriend — I was terrified that even petting and fooling around could impregnate me,” she wrote. “I recall my boyfriend drawing a diagram of my body and showing me how my reproductive organs worked.” To this day, most women from the Class of 1971 do not know who sent them “the letter.” *** When Sharon Smith ’68 mailed her early decision application from California to Middlebury, she had one goal: to get as far away from her dysfunctional family as possible. Smith lived in Battell her first year and took classes in anything and everything she could. With no idea what she wanted to study, Smith ultimately declared a French major after hearing a rumor that all female French majors got to live in “The Chat.” She later went on to switch her major to American Literature. The summer after her first year, Smith did not want to return home to the family she had finally escaped. Her deceased grandparents had left her money and she wanted to use it to take classes in New York City for the summer. First, she had to convince her father, who controlled her access to the money. “I told my father I wanted to go to Barnard and he said, ‘No, you can't go there. It's dangerous.’ And he wouldn't explain why, but I gradually figured out that he assumed that if I went to a girls’ college, I would automatically be recruited into lesbianism,” Smith said. She eventually convinced him to allow her to take courses at Columbia University instead. Smith entered into an affair with a man during her summer in New York. She visited him again for Thanksgiving break her sophomore fall. “I was very naive and I didn't want to do some of the things that I found myself having to do,” Smith said. At the time, Smith said, contraception was not something many women knew about — or knew how to get. She had tried to get a prescription for birth control pills from a doctor while at school, but when the Vermont doctor discovered she was unmarried, he kicked her out of his office. When Smith returned to campus after the break, she discovered she was pregnant and was forced to return home to California where she had no option but to live with her father. Smith spent her time at home writing to old classmates from her California boarding school and traveling to San Francisco to try and convince doctors to give her an abortion. Abortion would not be legal for another eight years until 1973, when the Supreme Court passed its landmark Roe v. Wade decision. One day, while Smith was visiting a doctor, her father went through her mail and opened a letter that revealed her pregnancy. Her father found a doctor who owed him a favor, and Smith received hormonal injections which induced a miscarriage. The process was incredibly painful and Smith bled heavily for several days. After finding out about her pregnancy — and thus her sexual activity — her father, who Smith described as a pedophile and “genuine psychopath,” acted out abusively and violently toward her. He beat her, punching her and leaving nasty bruises all over her face and body. Smith returned to Middlebury for her sophomore year. One of the doctors she visited in San Francisco had refused to give her an abortion, but agreed to give her a prescription for birth control. She had the pills shipped to Middlebury and continued to have the prescription sent from California for many years. “Between junior and senior year,” Smith said, “I decided I wanted to make sure that Middlebury girls had the knowledge that every female should have about how our bodies work, what conception is what contraception is, what sex actually can do besides being fun.” So, by doing as much research as she could and from her own experiences, Smith wrote what would go on to be known as “the letter” — the same letter that Olivier and her friends re-read with disbelief at their 45th reunion. Smith asked a couple of close male friends who were members of the Theta Chi fraternity—“a marijuana-smoking, acid-dropping, motorcycle-riding-up-and-down-the-stairs kinda place”— to purchase a large bin of condoms. She enclosed a condom in each envelope with a copy of the letter and sent them through the campus mail system, a couple at a time to avoid suspicion. “I was so afraid someone would find out because I might be expelled. You know, all this sex stuff is dangerous, at least for girls,” Smith said. “If the girls get the knowledge then the boys can't do whatever they want.” In the first edition of The Campus that fall, an article appeared on the front page entitled: “Frosh Women Get ‘Unofficial Guide.’” Dr. Parton commented on the letter and verified many of its facts. “Apparently someone did a great deal of research,” he is quoted saying. He described the letter as “on the whole, very, very correct.” Parton said that he was willing to speak with small groups of girls and women about contraceptives, but he would not prescribe the birth control pill. There were no legal or medical barriers to him doing so, but he believed “that [was] up to the individual and the individual’s family doctor.” When McCravey and her classmates matriculated in 1967, women still had to wear skirts to dinner and men wore jackets and ties. Women occupied the Battell side of College Street and dorm hours required them to check in to their dormitories before a set time each night. Things started to change during McCravey’s sophomore year. Dorm hours ended and “by the time junior year came, it was like all hell broke loose.” Casual sex became more common and drug use was rampant. But women still did not talk openly about sex or contraceptive use. McCravey recalls that one might have inquired to a close friend about access to contraception, but no one sat around in their dorm hallways chatting about it. That same year, there was a doctor in Middlebury affiliated with Planned Parenthood who was willing to prescribe birth control. “I just sort of took the bull by the horns,” she said. Rather than making up stories, she told the doctor: “I'm in this relationship and I don't want to get pregnant. I've got a life to live and I've got plans. Now's not a good time.” Today, McCravey is in awe of the risk taken by the letter’s author — to this day, she doesn't know who sent it — in delivering that information to first-year women. She sees it as an incredibly brave gift to all of the women who received it. “She was doing it as a warning and as a help to naive young girls that she thought we were — and that she knew we all probably were. I think it's astonishing and remarkable that she took the time and the effort and somehow managed to get it into our mailboxes and get it printed off,” McCravey said. Smith viewed her letter as a way to give back. Today she continues to do that as a neuropsychologist in Maine, where she works primarily with Medicaid clients. She found love in 1970. Smith and her husband celebrated the 50th anniversary of their friendship this past February, and the 47th year of their marriage in April. *** Over 50 years later, a lot has changed on Middlebury’s campus. Men live in Battell, women no longer have to wear skirts to dinner and no one has to find a fake wedding band to go to a doctor’s appointment. Izzy Lee ’20 is the leader of the student group Sex Positive Education College Style (SPECS), an organization whose creation was inspired by an idea from a class she took her freshman year. Lee’s first reaction to “the letter” was: “Thank God that birth control has come to where it is.” “I'm impressed that [the letter] cover[s] rhythm method, male contraceptive diaphragms, foams, jellies, creams and then the pill and stuff,” Lee said. “But the angle of how SPECS and other groups teach about birth control has shifted. “[The letter is about] how you can safely have sex so that a boy's happy, and you don't get pregnant. But if you do get pregnant, here's what you're supposed to do,” she said. SPECS education workshops focus primarily on consent and emphasize that “it's so normal and so fine to say, ‘we need to use a condom,’” Lee said. The club reviews how condom use can play into consent, pressure and abuse and the difference between pregnancy prevention and STI prevention. Their workshops cover different types of available contraception and how to access those methods, with an effort to be as inclusive as possible, according to Lee. Today, students can receive contraceptive counseling at Parton Health Center. They can schedule a visit to undergo a “risk assessment,” in which Parton staff help students determine the safest method of contraceptive for them and educate students on the method they select. Parton’s nurse practitioners can prescribe contraceptives including oral pills, injections, patches and the ring, according to Director of Health Services Dr. Mark Peluso. A local pharmacy processes prescriptions and delivers them directly to campus. Students who are seeking an implant or an IUD, two more permanent forms of contraception, are directed to local gynecologic practices. The Planned Parenthood of New England (PPNE) health center located in Middlebury offers birth control, pregnancy testing, emergency contraception and abortion referrals, among other health care services for men, women and LGBTQ services. The PPNE chapter was started in Middlebury in 1969 by David B. Van Vleck, a professor of biology at the college and science educator, according to a memoriam written after his death in 2019. The health center served almost 800 patients in 2019, according to PPNE Vermont Communications Director Eileen Sullivan. “We remain as committed as ever to delivering compassionate, non-judgmental care to patients of all backgrounds and regardless of their ability to pay,”  Sullivan wrote in an email to The Campus. “We love the Middlebury community and are so proud to have a presence there.” Lee added that the Health Center can administer pregnancy tests, provide free testing for STIs and dispense Plan B (emergency contraceptive) — though only after the recipient answers a slew of questions regarding why they need it. Like Smith, SPECS recognizes the importance of providing information about contraception and sexual relationships to students early in their Middlebury careers. SPECS holds workshops in first-year residence halls with the hope of getting resources to students who might be feeling overwhelmed by the amount of responsibility that comes with having a safe sex life. Lee observed that students enter Middlebury with varying degrees of knowledge and comfort surrounding issues of sex and consent, depending on where they are from and what kind of sex education they received prior to Middlebury. For Lee, the letter serves as a reminder that a lot has changed, but much still remains the same. Alvarez agreed. “I’m so relieved things have changed and chagrined that things have not changed enough for young women worldwide,” she wrote.

The Librarian is in: Three books by Roxane Gay

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay, 2014 Is it “good”? Yes. It’s Roxane Gay. Of course it’s good. It’s Roxane Gay. She is the definition par excellence of “good.” Does it deliver on what’s promised? Hey, wait a minute there. No. Not exactly. “Bad Feminist” is a collection of essays in which Gay examines her personal life, the media and race rhetoric in the United States, all within one tome. The work is equal parts memoir, musings and in-depth cultural analysis of television, movies and gender politics. It makes you wonder how Gay effectively pitched the collection to an agent/editor given the work’s somewhat negotiated cohesion. Let’s be clear: Roxane Gay is brilliant. She’s a deep thinker and a writer who makes her complex and nuanced ideas accessible to a broad public of people. But why is a recounting of her participation in a competitive Scrabble tournament in this collection alongside her critiques of Quentin Tarantino’s slavery era cinematic film “Django Unchained”? I want to be open to new types of publication, especially if they’re featuring the black, first generation, Haitian American child of immigrants who grew up in Midwestern towns, as Gay is and as she did. However, “Bad Feminist”challenges my concept of the very concept of a “book.” Assuming a book is a compilation of writing that is centered on a singular theme or narrative, as they often, but not exclusively, are, this is not a book. It happens to be a collection of essays that exists within the same binding and perhaps the reader should be given more of a clue as to what they’re in store for. Are we praising Roxane Gay because she’s engaging topics that are long overdue for public discourse? (Yes.) Or because she is producing work that makes sense in the publications, layouts and formats in which it appears? (Not so much.) What do I mean when I say the work is “good” then? Well, what I’m actually saying is Roxane Gay herself is an impressive person. She has fought tremendous self-loathing. She is undeniably an admirable activist for women’s rights and bodily autonomy. Her voice is a critical one that sees truth and does not balk from it, even when it’s ugly— especially when it’s ugly. However, “Bad Feminist” is an uneven work. It reflects her intelligence. Yet, it is an early and “green” work that does not reflect talented, editorial skill. I wouldn’t write her off — and I have the benefit of saying this after having read and listened to her works “Hunger” and “Not That Bad.” But I think she was still getting her bearings when this one came out— still sharpening her tools. I would only recommend individual essays of this work, for example, if someone was teaching a class on media representations of Black suffering, encouraging them to review Gay’s words on “12 Years A Slave.” But it’s harder to recommend the compilation as a whole as it’s so diffuse in its focus. For other thematic works like this one, maybe see “Why I’m Not A Feminist” by Jessica Crispin (which I have yet to read) or “Sister Outsider” by Audre Lorde, which I’ve listened to via OverDrive.   Hunger: A Memoir of My Body by Roxane Gay, 2017 Trigger Warning: This book regularly references rape and bulimia as lived experiences by the author. Brilliant. Personal. Timely.  Gay’s “Hunger” is a compilation of more than 80 autobiographical essays, vignettes and commentaries in which the author tells of growing up in a loving family and how she was traumatically gang raped at the age of 12. The rape destabilized her confidence, sense of self-worth and relationship with her body for decades to come. For the record, Gay refers to herself as a “victim,” not a “survivor.” As a tween, Gay believed that if she made her body unattractive, she would never again be subjected to the sexual violence she experienced. So she ate and ate and her body grew and grew. And while she engaged this protective mechanism, she was utterly unable to reveal the cause of her excesses to her parents and family for many, many years.  What’s special about this book is that Roxane Gay articulates a nuanced notion that isn’t nearly as broadly held as I believe it ought to be: who we are is wildly distinct from the bodies we inhabit. She is a smart writer, bisexual, Haitian American, a Midwesterner with a doctorate degree who also happens to be morbidly obese. And while we live in bodies that can be unruly, non-conforming and may not encounter appropriately accommodating furniture, walkways, vehicles and the sort, who we are and what we can accomplish is not determined by thigh gaps and washboard abs, despite what the culture might suggest. I would recommend this work to anyone who feels that their body is seen, read and assigned a narrative even before their thoughts are shared, heard and weighed. For more works like this, see “meaty” by Samantha Irby or “Shrill” by Lindy West.   Not that Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture edited by Roxane Gay, 2018 “Not That Bad” is an anthology of testimonies from people who have been victimized by rape culture. Rape culture refers to a whole series of phenomena that surround and may include rape: victim blaming and shaming, the proclivity to protect abusers, the widespread ignorance surrounding conversations that seek sexual consent and more. Editor Roxane Gay is a writer and academic who was gang raped as a child and shares some details surrounding her own story in the opening introduction. The gang rape she experienced caused her to lose her faith and to engage in eating habits that she believed would protect her from further abuse, which ushered in a decades’ long era of struggles with her weight, as documented in her memoir, “Hunger.” Gay has a strong history of seeking fair and broad representation of women’s voices and she achieves that goal in this compilation, including a few men’s testimonies as well. In “Not That Bad,” inviting over two dozen participants, Gay does everything you expect she would: she seeks out and collects a diversity of voices to speak to the nuances and fissures of a theme. She includes a Hollywood actor’s voice who was not touched, groped or raped but whose sense of bodily autonomy was violated in other ways via the media. She includes a story from a woman who studied law and was trained to discredit women through character attacks. She includes the voice of a woman who never learned to say no as she is much more familiar with acquiescence and prioritizing her sexual partner’s needs and demands. In terms of the prevalence of rape and rape culture, the book is much needed and long overdue. In some ways, rape is so commonplace that our societies have become desensitized to its impact as demonstrated by the use of rape narratives in video games or the word “rape” as a shorthand for minor, non-sexual violations or as a punchline for jokes. This collection shakes readers and re-awakens us to the actuality of rape-related trauma, reminding us that there are victims and victimizers all around us. This work is available in print and as an audiobook. For a different type of title that celebrates women’s pleasure in sex, see “Moan: Anonymous Essays on Female Orgasm.”

Notes from the desk: In favor of a less outrageous, more authentic online presence

I’ve spent the past week paging through Jia Tolentino’s “Trick Mirror,” a collection of nine brazen and spirited essays that explore what it means to exist in the messy and delusional world of contemporary pop culture. Under the umbrella of millennial angst, she writes about religion, drugs, feminism and, namely, internet culture.  “As a medium, the internet is defined by a built-in performance incentive. In real life, you can walk around and be visible to others. But you can’t just walk around and be visible on the internet—for anyone to see you, you have to act,” writes Tolentino in her opening essay, “The I in the Internet.” Unfortunately, as ordered by law, we cannot walk around and be visible to others at the current moment. Instead, all of our nuanced layers are being relegated to the digital realm, meaning our online world isn’t just a part of our lives anymore, it is our lives.  This performance is especially dangerous because it is slated to continually reinforce the unspoken rules for how adolescents (and women especially) should strive to be in the hyper-visible world of social media. These guidelines tend to go something like this:  You want your Instagrammed self to be beautiful yet down-to-earth, impeccably put together yet effortless. Your Twitter needs to be funny, but not like you’re trying too hard — therefore candidly and gloriously self-deprecating. The version of self that appears on your LinkedIn profile should be, in essence, employable, but not obnoxious. Your Tinder profile, which may be glanced at for just a couple seconds, should make you appear desirable yet natural. God forbid your Spotify listens are #basic, but they shouldn’t be too #indie either.  All of these online selves merge to create the amalgamation that we are told is the ideal twenty-something adolescent: to be witty but self-aware, mature but entertaining, undoubtedly humble but unquestionably gorgeous. This ideal twenty-something individual should encounter struggles, but only cute and palatable ones, lest their real trauma compromises their imperfectly perfect internet presence.  I, too, am guilty of trying to squeeze all of my selves into these elusive boxes, of attempting to flawlessly position myself atop this impossible tightrope. And, if pulling this endeavor seems challenging and daunting, there’s no need to worry, according to the social media deities, because registering more accounts (see: the finsta) is free. I know that it’s absurd that I have 2 Instagram accounts and 2 Twitter handles. This instinct is deeply ingrained in the pressure of catering one’s self to different audiences, all of which provide distinctive forms of validation. As Tolentino says, “People who maintain a public internet profile are building a self that can be viewed simultaneously by their mom, their boss, their potential future bosses, their eleven-year-old nephew, their past and future sex partners, their relatives who loathe their politics, as well as anyone who cares to look for any possible reason. On the internet, a highly functional person is one who can promise everything to an indefinitely increasing audience at all times.”  And that’s not to say that Midd Kids aren’t performative in person. When I arrived on campus, I experienced a fair bit of culture shock. I was expecting the crunchy-ness of Vermont to dampen the stifling East Coast preppiness I had hoped to avoid. Mostly, I was wrong — my plans to wear sweatpants to the majority of my classes dissipated as I was confronted with the seemingly perfect personas of my peers. This encapsulates an overarching pressure of the Middlebury experience: the expectation to do everything well but to also do it effortlessly, a dichotomy that shapes internet culture, too. We brag about how late we stayed up writing that paper but we somehow still look perky and ready to seize the day at Proc breakfast.  Luckily, in the real, non-online world, we get the opportunities to see each other's genuine selves, despite the ridiculous façades of busyness that plague higher education. We can tell by even the smallest mannerisms when our friends are happy or hurting — or when our professors are in a good mood or a bad mood. On campus, there is an intimacy and vulnerability present that doesn’t hinge on likes or retweets. Set against the backdrop of the Green Mountains, we see it all — the tears, the fatigue, the annoyance, the pain. But we also see the heartfelt joy, the jubilant pride and the uninhibited gratitude. Now, however, this authenticity has been lost, unable to be emailed or Zoom-ed or DM-ed.  The human experience was never meant to be replicated digitally. The vibrant occurrences and interactions that remind us what it's like to be, well, alive, have become fragmented without the help of proximity or context. We’re left solely with our fabricated online selves, steeped in faux-happiness and performative attention-grabbing. “The internet is governed by incentives that make it impossible to be a full person while interacting with it [...],” Tolentino writes. “Less and less of us will be left, not just as individuals but also as community members, as a collective of people facing various catastrophes.” Amidst these terrible and strange circumstances, we have a chance to consciously rethink our online worlds. Already, we are seeing social media become a little more reflective of our IRL authenticity. It’s less filtered, less contrived. But this is only the beginning, and overhauling the internet machine most of us have bought into won’t be a simple task.  I’ll admit I don’t have the answers. As I’m sure is the case with many of you, if you see me on College Street or in Proc lounge, I won’t have my hair tucked into a perfect messy bun, stomach pulled in and shoulders back, outfit matching, while looking ineffably at ease — like what any Instagram feed might have you believe. It’s more likely that you’ll pass me falling very, very, painfully on ice, rushing late to class unable to see because I’ve forgotten to put my contacts in and my shirt is inside-out. (Of course, I’m doing all of these things and worse in lockdown, but you don’t see it — what Tolentino refers to as “selective concealment.") Let’s face it: the internet, in all of its feverish madness and glory, was meant to supplement our everyday lives, not exist on its own. But right now, it’s kind of all we got. This, more than ever, is a decisive time for us to parse through the factors that have led us to create such disparate on and off-line selves. Until we figure out a way to accurately express our faults, eccentricities and emotions in a digital format, we’ll continue to fight an uphill battle between our true identities and our idealized self-image.  Lily Laesch ’23 is one of The Campus’s Opinion editors.

Methodology

In designing this year’s survey, The Campus’ Zeitgeist team reviewed questions from last year’s survey (both those that were on the survey itself and others that were submitted but did not make it into the survey) and then distributed a form to solicit questions via The Campus’ social media channels. After consolidating the questions that were submitted and in careful consultation with editors, members of the Zeitgeist team generated 65 survey questions in total, including 13 demographic editors. The Campus distributed the survey in all-student email on the evening of November 11, 2019. Responses were open for 15 days, until midnight on November 26. The survey was also distributed on The Campus’ social media platforms, posting at frequent intervals until the deadline. Campus editors set up tabling stations, alternating between Proctor, Ross and Atwater dining halls, in an effort to increase survey participation. Upon receiving the email, respondents followed an anonymous link to the survey hosted on Qualtrics. This link ensured that no personally identifiable data as to the respondent’s computer or location could be tracked. After completing the survey, respondents had the option to enter a raffle on a Google Form, which ensured that the participants’ identifying information for the raffle and the survey data were not linked.   Following the demographic questions, this year’s survey questions were grouped into five general categories: Academics and the institution, Midd after hours, Let’s talk about sex, Health and Wellness and This I believe. Survey respondents were encouraged to answer all questions, but were able to refrain from doing so. All demographic questions offered an “I prefer not to answer” option.   The survey data was stored on the Qualtrics platform and was distributed to a small group of reporters in sections via Google Drive.  Sharing permissions for the Google Drive folder were deleted after the completion of data analysis.   Data remained only on the devices of reporters and never shared externally, including the administration, other clubs, or academic departments. When analyzing the data, the team did not examine specific entries or attempt to extract the entirety of a respondent’s data, but worked with the data as a whole to survey general trends. In order to protect the confidentiality of respondents, we have chosen not to disclose or report the responses of groups with 5 or fewer members in demographic breakdowns. In total, 1245 students responded out of Middlebury’s on-campus undergraduate student population of 2555, making the response rate 48.72%. The findings were then compiled and published in the May 7 edition of The Campus. In total, 14 students were closely involved with the making of this year’s Zeitgeist.

Sexual health on campus: contraception, STIs and Title IX

!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Eight percent of Zeitgeist respondents reported experiencing sexual assault on Middlebury’s campus or during a Middlebury program, in contrast with last year’s 12%. Of those who have been victims of sexual assault, 75% identified as cisgender females. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Among respondents, survivors overwhelmingly decided not to report incidents of sexual assault — all in all, 90% did not report. Of those who did not report, respondents cited fear, a complicated reporting process, lack of support and power imbalances as reasons. Out of the 10% of victims that did report, two-thirds found themselves dissatisfied with how the process was handled. Since last year’s Zeitgeist, there have been more efforts to promote sex and consent-focused education on Middlebury’s campus. This past fall, the SGA Sexual and Relationship Respect Committee worked to bring an in-person consent training workshop to campus for new students. Currently, Middlebury students are only required to watch online videos provided by Show Some Respect, in addition to bystander training presented by the Green Dot initiative.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Condoms, pills and IUDs are the three most common methods that sexually-active Middlebury students use when engaging in sexual activity, according to Zeitgeist data. 8% of students turn to the withdrawal method, which is known to be significantly less effective than condoms, pills or IUDs.  !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Of the 1,218 respondents, slightly more than half have been tested for STIs. Of those who have been tested, one in five said they only get tested when they are worried they might have something, as opposed to getting routinely checked.  Students have had more exposure to on-campus organizations this year that aim to promote safer sex practices. This year, during orientation week, Sex Positive Education, College Style (SPECS) held a workshop table in Axinn for new students. SPECS was founded as a class project but later became a student organization dedicated to teaching students about safe and positive sex.

Students define "hook-up," discuss romantic scene at Middlebury

The Campus asked Middlebury students to participate in the second annual Zeitgeist survey in November, looking to gain insight into campus culture by asking the questions that are often not discussed. This year’s survey included an exploration of love, relationships and the ever ill-defined “hook-up culture.” A total of 1,245 students responded — nearly 48.25% of the student body. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); The vast majority of Middlebury students — 90.82% — prefer a romantic relationship to a hook-up, according to the second annual Zeitgeist survey. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); Despite this indicated preference, 50.44% of respondents said that they have had a one-night stand in the past and 43.53% reported having had an, “unspecified, slightly-monogamous ‘thing.’” !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); About 55.37% of respondents, or 686 students, reported having been in a committed romantic relationship before starting at Middlebury. However, only 39.43% of students, or 491 respondents, reported being in a committed/monogamous relationship at Middlebury. Athletes are 7.09% more likely to have partaken in a one-night stand and, on average, have a higher number of sexual partners than non-athletes. Students identifying as part of the LGBTQ+ community are equally as likely to participate in all forms of relationships and sexual activity as non-LGBTQ+ students. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); When asked about their satisfaction with the romantic scene at Middlebury, 46.01% of respondents answered that they were somewhat dissatisfied or extremely dissatisfied, 30.41% were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, 23.58% said that they were somewhat satisfied or extremely satisfied.   !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); The length of relationships for students have varied. 34.90% of respondents said that their longest relationship lasted over a year, while 22.35% have never been in a relationship. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); More than one in ten students — 10.17% of respondents — said they have cheated in a romantic relationship. Respondents were asked how many partners they have engaged in consensual sexual activity within the last 12 months. The most common response was 2-4 partners, with 386 students. 263 students reported they had not engaged in sex within the last year. Respondents who identified as cisgender female were more likely to have not engaged in sex compared to their cisgender male counterparts: 24.25% compared to 16.26%. Despite the fact that many students have participated in hook-up culture to some degree, it is not clear what this term actually means. Students attempted — and struggled — to define “hook-up” in the survey. 1,130 students heeded the call to demystify the ambiguous (and popular) term. “Hook-up is a deliberately ambiguous word in English that can connote anything from just making out to full-on sex,” reads one response, adding that “hook-up” is not a term they use when speaking of their own encounters. “I believe that encounters of any sexual nature would constitute a hook-up, but I’d be wary of defining mine as such because of the social implications this term carries.” Many responses stated that hooking up is the range that begins with making out and ends with sex. Some designated hook-ups as an act that must occur privately, while others included infamous Dance Floor Make Outs (DFMOs) in their definition. Many others explicitly defined hook-ups as, “anything more than kissing”, requiring some sort of sexual encounter. One respondent wrote that hook-ups are, “Something sexual in nature that can turn into something more, but [that] doesn’t necessarily have too much meaning or … emotion.” The word “party” appears in responses 40 times. One response says that hook-ups are “having sex with someone after a party and then not getting into a relationship for more than a couple weeks or so afterward.” The words “casual” and “casually” appear 66 times in responses. “Spontaneous” and “spontaneously” appear seven times. A common theme in the responses is a lack of emotional connection or significance. As one respondent puts it, hook-ups are, “Having a sexual relationship with someone without necessarily the need for an emotional/romantic connection or committment to that person.” !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); For those involved in the romantic scene at Middlebury, survey respondents were given a range of options to select how they have met romantic partners. The most popular option was through mutual friends, with 527 people, followed by on nights out (495), extracurriculars (275) and through residence halls (225). Respondents also pointed to orientation and on-campus jobs as places they met romantic partners. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); The data also shows that Middlebury students tend to download dating apps during their later years at Middlebury. The percentage of students who use dating apps increased as students aged, with only 17.25% of the class of 2023 respondents having used a dating app at the time of the survey compared to 44.19% of the class of 2022, 48.36% of the class of 2021 and 57.32% of the class of 2020. Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in The Campus' April 23 Love Issue. Riley Board and Caroline Kapp contributed reporting.

The Librarian Is In: "Meaty" by Samantha Irby

What’s easy to recall about this collection of autobiographical essays is that blogger Samantha Irby is frustrated with dating and 21st-century sexual economies and mores; she loves food and drinks, despite her sensitive bowels, given her Crohn’s disease and wavering income; and she has a complicated, self-hating relationship with her body, which is covered in a variety of types of moles.  In these respects, this author is the voice of my generation: (1) not knowing how to navigate intimacy, (2) feeling petrified and destabilized at a perceived lack of access to “the American Dream” and (3) having ongoing mental health and existential crises as we are increasingly and hyper-aware of the vulnerable, unpredictable, anatomical masses we precariously inhabit are trademark characteristics of being a millennial.  Ba da bing. Other details that are more easily overlooked are that Irby is an orphan and has been since her teenage years. Her alcoholic father was largely absent from her life and her ailing mother had a debilitating illness that prevented her from parenting, perhaps when Irby needed her most. Some critics would describe this work as “raunchy” given its explicit commentary about sex and details about scatological phenomena, i.e. poop. I’d call it fresh in its aggressive honesty as it holds a steady gaze on experiences we all have, without batting an eye. At one moment,  Irby critically reduces underperforming men to shreds. In another, she laments poverty, shared residences and the labors associated with the pursuit of wellness. The work is an incredibly vulnerable testament to what it means to be a woman in a capitalist and patriarchal society that teaches that a woman’s worth is irrevocably tied to her consumption of products and contingent upon her appeal to men. For more like this, see Irby’s “We Are Never Meeting in Real Life” or “It Looked Different On the Model” by Laurie Notaro, one of librarian Brenda Ellis’ recommendations.

Zeitgeist takes on love

The Campus asked Middlebury students to participate in the second annual Zeitgeist survey in November, looking to gain insight into campus culture by asking the questions that are often not discussed. This year’s survey included an exploration of love, relationships and the ever ill-defined “hook-up culture.” A total of 1,245 students responded — nearly 48.25% of the student body. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); The vast majority of Middlebury students — 90.82% — prefer a romantic relationship to a hook-up, according to the second annual Zeitgeist survey. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); Despite this indicated preference, 50.44% of respondents said that they have had a one-night stand in the past and 43.53% reported having had an, “unspecified, slightly-monogamous ‘thing.’” !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); About 55.37% of respondents, or 686 students, reported having been in a committed romantic relationship before starting at Middlebury. However, only 39.43% of students, or 491 respondents, reported being in a committed/monogamous relationship at Middlebury. Athletes are 7.09% more likely to have partaken in a one-night stand and, on average, have a higher number of sexual partners than non-athletes. Students identifying as part of the LGBTQ+ community are equally as likely to participate in all forms of relationships and sexual activity as non-LGBTQ+ students. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); When asked about their satisfaction with the romantic scene at Middlebury, 46.01% of respondents answered that they were somewhat dissatisfied or extremely dissatisfied, 30.41% were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, 23.58% said that they were somewhat satisfied or extremely satisfied.   !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); The length of relationships for students have varied. 34.90% of respondents said that their longest relationship lasted over a year, while 22.35% have never been in a relationship. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); More than one in ten students — 10.17% of respondents — said they have cheated in a romantic relationship. Respondents were asked how many partners they have engaged in consensual sexual activity within the last 12 months. The most common response was 2-4 partners, with 386 students. 263 students reported they had not engaged in sex within the last year. Respondents who identified as cisgender female were more likely to have not engaged in sex compared to their cisgender male counterparts: 24.25% compared to 16.26%. Despite the fact that many students have participated in hook-up culture to some degree, it is not clear what this term actually means. Students attempted — and struggled — to define “hook-up” in the survey. 1,130 students heeded the call to demystify the ambiguous (and popular) term. “Hook-up is a deliberately ambiguous word in English that can connote anything from just making out to full-on sex,” reads one response, adding that “hook-up” is not a term they use when speaking of their own encounters. “I believe that encounters of any sexual nature would constitute a hook-up, but I’d be wary of defining mine as such because of the social implications this term carries.” Many responses stated that hooking up is the range that begins with making out and ends with sex. Some designated hook-ups as an act that must occur privately, while others included infamous Dance Floor Make Outs (DFMOs) in their definition. Many others explicitly defined hook-ups as, “anything more than kissing”, requiring some sort of sexual encounter. One respondent wrote that hook-ups are, “Something sexual in nature that can turn into something more, but [that] doesn’t necessarily have too much meaning or … emotion.” The word “party” appears in responses 40 times. One response says that hook-ups are “having sex with someone after a party and then not getting into a relationship for more than a couple weeks or so afterward.” The words “casual” and “casually” appear 66 times in responses. “Spontaneous” and “spontaneously” appear seven times. A common theme in the responses is a lack of emotional connection or significance. As one respondent puts it, hook-ups are, “Having a sexual relationship with someone without necessarily the need for an emotional/romantic connection or committment to that person.” !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); For those involved in the romantic scene at Middlebury, survey respondents were given a range of options to select how they have met romantic partners. The most popular option was through mutual friends, with 527 people, followed by on nights out (495), extracurriculars (275) and through residence halls (225). Respondents also pointed to orientation and on-campus jobs as places they met romantic partners. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}})}(); The data also shows that Middlebury students tend to download dating apps during their later years at Middlebury. The percentage of students who use dating apps increased as students aged, with only 17.25% of the class of 2023 respondents having used a dating app at the time of the survey compared to 44.19% of the class of 2022, 48.36% of the class of 2021 and 57.32% of the class of 2020. Editor’s Note: All the results from the second annual Zeitgeist survey will be published on May 7, in the special Zeitgeist issue. Riley Board, and Caroline Kapp contributed reporting.

From the 1950s to 2020, couples recount falling in love at Middlebury

It’s exam week in the early 1950s and the endlessly ringing pay phone outside of Mary Peterson’s* room in Battell South is interrupting her studies. Determined to end the disturbance, Mary finally answers the phone. “I’d like to speak with Mary Peterson,” says the voice on the other end. “You’re speaking to her,” Mary says. The voice belongs to John Clermont ’53, a member of the baseball and hockey teams. Mary is impressed by John’s varsity status, but something else entirely is the clincher for her.  “He said that he had seen me at St. Stephen’s church,” Mary ’54 recalled in an interview with The Campus. “Any guy that gets up at the crack of dawn, and goes down to the early service at the episcopal church in the freezing cold … that sealed it for me.”  In those days, Mary said, men lived on the south side of campus, while women attended the women’s college and lived on the north side of College Street. Women had to be inside their dorms by 10 p.m. on weekdays, could not wear slacks or shorts, and had to have a signed parent’s permission slip in order to get into a car with a male driver.  Female students were also outnumbered by men by a ratio of about two to one, due in part to the G.I. Bill, which covered the tuition expenses of veterans who had served in World War II. Because of the bill, Mary said, her freshman class was a mix of 18-year-olds and veterans in their mid-twenties, some of whom had fought in Normandy on D-Day.  Men and women were not allowed inside each others’ residence halls. To pick a woman up from her dorm, a man would press the buzzer of the room of whom he wanted, and the woman would come down.  “Even if your father came inside to help carry a suitcase down, you would have to yell ‘Man on the floor!’ said Mary.  “And everyone would scurry because we walked around in our slips.” Mary and John married in 1954. Mary Peterson became Mary Clermont, and they had four children together, one of whom attended Middlebury. John died in June of 2017. The dating scene at Middlebury has changed quite a bit since Mary picked up the phone to find John on the other end. We wanted to know how. So, we interviewed Middlebury couples from the class of ’54 all the way through present day to hear their love stories, and find out what love has looked like at Midd over the past 70 years. *Editor’s note: Mary Peterson and John Clermont are pseudonyms — Mary asked for their real names to remain private, due to the personal nature of the story. All other names in this article are real. Peter and Julie Parker, both ’54, met driving back to the Midwest from Middlebury during Christmas break, with three other students in the carpool. Julie was drawn to Peter because he was not the “alpha male” type: he allowed another student to drive his car and “contentedly sat in the back seat with two women,” Julie recalled.  “I had fallen in love, head over heels, by the time I walked into my house in Detroit,” said Julie . “I was so wildly in love that I told my parents, ‘I met the man of my dreams.’” The road trip back to Middlebury cemented each person’s feelings for one another, but it was a few weeks before the couple reconnected. Julie didn’t know how to read Peter, who was a little shy; Peter didn’t think Julie was interested.  Julie would often go to the student union, located in a temporary building where Proctor Dining Hall is now located,  with a friend during a break in her classes. She began to notice that Peter was very dependably there when she took her break.  “I’d be watching his eyes,” Julie said, “and I thought I was getting more and more eye contact. So I asked my friend one day, dear as she was, if she would mind letting me go alone. And that was the day Peter asked me out, and everything was lovely from then on.” The day before their graduation, Peter proposed to Julie in a garden by Hepburn Hall. They were married in 1954 and recently celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary. They have three daughters together. [gallery link="file" columns="2" size="large" ids="50377,50216"] Fast-forward to parents’ weekend a few years later, where Janie ’63 and Pete Johnson ’62 were having their first date at a Delta Upsilon picnic. It did not go smoothly: Pete and Janie’s mothers began to drink martinis together, and Janie’s father was engaged in a lively discussion with a professor about sex from an anthropological perspective. “So I was really stuck with Pete at that point,” said Janie.  Luckily, Janie and Pete ended up enjoying each other’s company. The two liked to go dancing together and occasionally went to the movies.  Janie was soon pinned by Pete. “Pinning” was a symbolic tradition within the Greek life community in which a fraternity member would give his fraternity pin to his significant other, signifying that the pair are moving towards an engagement.  Despite receiving below-average marks in a sociology class they took together called “Marriage in the Family” (Pete received a D; Janie received a C-), Pete proposed to Janie outside of Battell during his senior year. Upon Pete’s graduation, Janie decided to forgo her senior year at Middlebury to follow Pete to Georgia, where he was starting his career in the military.   “At that point in time, there were [very limited] career opportunities coming out of my graduation from Middlebury,” Janie said. “It was a totally, radically, different time. I wasn’t looking to just find a husband, I just happened to think that Pete was fun and I wanted to be with him.” “That was the thing,” Pete said. “We had so much fun together, we just said, why would we put an end to it?”  The pair were married in December of 1962. They now have three children together. They live in Danby, Vermont. “We still have a laugh a day, even now in our old age,” Janie said. [gallery columns="2" size="medium" link="file" ids="50208,50209"] Nancy ’93 and Don Hunt ’92 became close friends after having three classes together during the fall of 1989. Nancy later found out that Don had intentionally switched into all three of those classes after hearing Nancy’s schedule, but played it off as a coincidence.  Nancy was drawn to her “very shy, but very sweet” classmate, who was raised by his mom and four sisters. Don was struck by the fact that Nancy — who is Italian, with dark, curly hair and a strong New York accent — hadn’t conformed to the style standards of the time for women at Middlebury. After getting snowed in on the sixth floor of Hadley while studying for their finals in December of 1990, Don finally got up the courage to kiss Nancy. They started dating shortly after.  “I can safely say my grades dramatically improved as soon as we started dating,” Don said. “Nancy wouldn't let me skip class, and we both had an instant study group for many courses.” Don and Nancy have four children together, one of whom attends Middlebury. After graduating together last spring, Cece Wheeler ’19 and John Natalone ’19 took their second cross-country road trip of college. Their first week-long drive took place the summer after their sophomore year — Cece needed to drive her car back to Seattle, where she’s from, and John generously offered to join her. “We took a week-long road trip cross country, which I think is a pretty good litmus test for any relationship. It must have gone well because we did it again with John’s car when we moved to the West Coast after graduation,” Cece recounted. John and Cece met during their first year in Atwater Commons, and dated for three years at Middlebury. Since moving, they have been enjoying some of the many perks of post-college life together. “Instead of sharing a bathroom with four people I now only share it with one. and Public Safety has ticketed my car zero times since moving to Seattle,” Cece said. Taite Shomo ’20.5 and Grace Vedock ’20 hit it off immediately when they met in Proctor during Taite’s very first semester. “I was listening to a podcast, and my friend Jack told me to stop and come meet the new Febs with him, so I did. I’m glad that I did,” Grace said. The two only talked for 15 minutes or so, but something clicked. A few days later, Taite received a Facebook message — hey girl, want to get dinner sometime? — and the rest is history. The foundation of their more-than-three-year relationship? Food. Their first year, the pair cooked together a number of times. “Our sophomore and junior years, we would cook dinner together every Friday,” Taite said, and for the past school year, “we’ve both been off the meal plan, so we grocery shopped together and made dinner together every night.” “We made tiramisu together once sophomore year, and we still talk about it regularly,” Grace added. The couple also described a favorite pasta recipe, lovingly nicknamed “our pasta”: chunky tomato sauce, kale, toasted pine nuts, red pepper flakes and a ton of parmesan. After a month-and-a-half flirtationship, Dula Dulanto ’20 and Melanie Chow ’22 were ready to put a label on their relationship. So, Dula asked Melanie to ask him out. “Usually the guy does that,” he explained, “so I asked her to ask me out because she’s a very fierce person, and she’s very empowered.” She asked, and he said yes. The couple has now been dating for four months. Dula remembered his friends’ surprise when he decided to begin a relationship during his final year at Middlebury. He described feeling pressured by popular “preconceived notions of what relationships are and how they function in college.” But, ultimately, once the two started talking, “that was it,” said Melanie. “Sometimes [college] can feel lonely, even with a roommate, even with really good friends,” she continued, “but with Dula, I never feel lonely.”  For a Q&A with the couples in this story, click here.

Postscript: A Q&A with Midd couples through the ages

We interviewed seven Middlebury couples for another story this week and we were so pleased with all the wonderful anecdotes they shared with us. But unfortunately, we had a word limit. So here’s an addendum, of questions we asked in every interview and then each couple’s answers. Interviews were all conducted separately, and we condensed responses for brevity. Check out the companion story first to learn more about the interviewees. Middlebury Campus: How would you describe the dating scene at Middlebury during your time as a student? Grace Vedock ’20: I think the queer dating scene is a totally different beast than the straight dating scene. It’s smaller, and it can feel competitive … It feels like there’s always people taking sides. If straight people think that [dating at Middlebury] is hard, I think they would be surprised or humbled by the queer experience at Middlebury. Julie Parker ’54: Very controlled. There were rules, confines, parietal hours. But any couple that was passionate had plenty of occasions to “mess up,” especially with a car. Sex was feared because pregnancy was such a taboo. Still, a few couples were known to be sexually active, and there were undoubtedly a few pregnancies hastily terminated, or sudden marriages.  Dula Dulanto ’20: A lot of people don’t know how to navigate relationships. It’s easy to brush something off, to disregard others and their feelings. It’s an environment where you don’t have to engage with someone if you don’t want to. It creates this repertoire of mess up and move on to the next person. Pete Johnson ’62: Archaic.  Janie Johnson ’63: [Laughs.] Archaic is right.  Pete Johnson ’62: I mean, it was different then. The women were very closely monitored and chaperoned. The men, not so much. We pretty much had free run of the campus at the time. Mary Clermont ’54: The dating scene at Middlebury was very important. It was the social life, really. I always felt bad for the girls who sat alone in the dorm on a Saturday night. You wouldn’t really have big groups of [female and male students] mixed. There was nothing to do [if you weren’t dating someone]. Nancy Hunt ’93: I think there were a lot of people who dated long-term at Middlebury. That's not to say that people weren't also "hooking up" at fraternity and social house parties. That happened all of the time, too.  Don Hunt ’92: The social scene was very much focused around social houses, most of which were fraternities at the time. It was definitely a drinking and hook up scene.     MC: Do you think anything about Middlebury specifically has contributed positively to your relationship? Pete Johnson ’62: We both moved around. My family moved all over New England. Hers moved because her dad was a professor at several different universities. And so, we never had a longstanding hometown. Middlebury has kind of become that for us, because that’s where the friends that we both know [are from], who knew us when we were in our twenties or younger. That’s sort of our hometown. Dulanto ’20: Midd brings all these students from diverse backgrounds and equalizes all of them, so Midd provided a platform for us to interact … I immigrated to New York when I was young. My parents don’t speak English. My family has 10 to 15 different aunts and uncles. There are cultural, language and socioeconomic differences [between Melanie and me]. Julie Parker ’54: It has given us shared memories and background and friends that have known us both, cementing the bonds.   MC: Conversely, have there been challenges that you think are specific to Middlebury? Cece Wheeler ’19: It’s sort of hard to measure a given relationship at Midd, because you’re likely not living together and your time is spread between classes, homework, sports, friends, clubs etc., so that you can “date” someone for a year and in reality not spend that much time together. That’s probably one of the bigger challenges at Midd — just making time for everyone in your life. Nancy Hunt ’93: I think the challenge with a college like Middlebury, at least at the time we were there, was the lack of diversity. Additionally, there is a challenge that goes with any small school in a rural area and that is the lack of people. Vedock ’20: I think visibility is a double-edged sword. We’re very visible because we’ve been together for a long time, but that’s not something everyone in a queer relationship necessarily wants or has the luxury of having. That’s something I struggled with at the very beginning, because I was not out when I came to Midd, and not out to my family when we started dating. Feeling very visible in that way was intimidating. Now I don’t feel any pressure or feel scared when I walk around on campus.   MC: What does love mean to you? Taite Shomo ’20.5: I think love is about knowing that Grace is going to be there for me and I’m going to be there for Grace, and having that constant in my life. Melanie Chow ’22: I think it just means feeling completely comfortable in your own skin, not having to hide anything. Knowing that no matter what you do or say, that person is still going to be there and want to be with you. Dulanto ’20: I think of it as an active choice. You don’t make it once, you make it every single day. You’re always wanting to choose the other person for everything they are. Wheeler ’19: It means that John still hasn’t commented on the cat I brought home six months ago but [he] wakes up at six every morning to feed her. Parker ’54: I feel an almost mystical connection to Peter, as if cosmic forces operated to bring us together. So Middlebury was the “mise en scène” for one couple's drama. Pete Johnson ’62: There’s sort of a comfort zone where you can say what you think and be who you are and know it’s going to be okay.  Janie Johnson ’63: Pete was in the military during the Vietnam War. And again, there was no communication, this was way before there were cellphones. He wrote me a letter every single day for 365 days.  Clermont ’54: I don't think I have ever sat around thinking about the meaning of love. It has so many facets and degrees. I remember my mother telling me not to use the word "love" unless whatever you were referring to could return love, so you couldn't love "pizza." So I guess love means, “listen to what your mother said.”

The librarian is in: Love

“When Katie Met Cassidy” by Camille Perri This book is everything you’d expect from a modern day romance: a mutual arousal of interest between two parties, some sexual tension, text messages, sex, the attempt to integrate one’s partner into one’s social circle, more sex, misunderstandings, efforts to reconcile moments of pain … followed by sex. The “novel” portion is that it involves two women visiting these stages of coupling. In addition to never having read a primarily prose-based book about two women falling in love, I also had never listened to one as I did with this audiobook on OverDrive (go/overdrive/). And while I want to offer praise and to promote an LGBTQIA story, the narrative was actually quite trite. Yes, we need more representation of women who love women in every form of media. We also need compelling stories that move us. This work didn’t feel artful or especially moving. It’s a popular work you pick up in an airport bookstore to pass the hours of a long layover and flight. It’s not a work that sticks with you. I won’t be reminiscing years henceforth over this tome. Essentially, Katie has just been dumped by her (male) fiancé and is emotionally reeling over the break up. In her heterosexual malaise, she encounters Cassidy at work, a woman who makes no effort to appeal to the patriarchy. They vibe, sparking a fire between them and Katie, who never knew she was allowed to explore homosexual relationships beyond close, intimate friendships, is introduced to a community of lesbians at a bar called The Met. While Katie’s not convinced she’s ready to abandon the comforts of heterosexuality, she cannot deny the attraction she feels to Cassidy. Curiously, while consuming this work, I felt that I was watching a television show or movie that was only later made into a novel. Books frequently spend more time on character development and provide more backstory. We get more information surrounding characters’ “origin stories” and find out more about what their “normal” is like in prose. This work seemed to accelerate through those steps. It’s as though the author “wrote by number,” metric or recipe: “We need a meet-cute by page X, a major conflict by page Y and a neat resolution just before the end.” It was a television dramedy, but on paper. So, while pretty tight and controlled, the writing felt as though it was for a different medium. Another disappointment is that the sex is really washed over. Given that Katie is making love to/with a woman for the first time, there’s a real opportunity for discovery there, but the author shies away from what happens in the bedroom between two women. Other works thematically like this one include “My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness” and “La fille dans l’écran”… but some erotica might be more ... satisfying. “La fille dans l’écran” by Manon Desveaux and Loubie Lou This French-language graphic narrative tells the story of two women who, despite being an ocean apart, fall in love. Barista by day, Marley is based in Montreal and dedicates her free hours to photography, spotlighting nature, landscapes and wildlife. She’s coupled with Vincent, a beau who’s well meaning but condescending and he regularly pushes her towards greater responsibility, discouraging her interest in art. Colline is based in France and though she has a striking talent as an illustrator, her debilitating social anxiety has stopped her university studies and prevents her from pursuing a fruitful career as an artist. Moreover, her mother’s tough love and overbearing nature are additional sources of pain and consternation as Colline’s confidence is already fragile. The work these women produce bring them together and, despite the distance, they make a deep and loving connection. What’s unique about this work is the authors’ need to tell the story from two perspectives, within two countries, in two time zones and with two artistic styles. It’s important to represent the feelings, personalities, milieus and aesthetics of two distinct characters and the efforts the execution is admirable. Note that the style surrounding Marley is frequently vibrant and colorful, representing cosmopolitan themes; meanwhile, the style representing Colline is more muted and sombre, representing a rural environment. The creators, Manon Desveaux and Lou Loubie, worked in tandem, creating a dual narrative, so the stories could be told side-by-side from two perspectives and with two voices. It’s a warm, LGBTQ love story that I’d recommend to anyone who finds the socially acceptable expression of their sexuality stifling, anyone who has maintained a long distance relationship and to any Francophile who likes to draw. For more works like this, see “Le bleu est une couleur chaude”/”Blue Is The Warmest Color” as a graphic novel or film adaptation and/or the Japanese manga “My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness.”To access the French-language graphic novel La fille dans l'écran, log in at go.middlebury.edu/requests to request it as an ebook.

A lover’s guide to Middlebury

College is an exciting three-and-three-quarters to four years for the raging hormone machines we call our bodies. It can also be a time of great angst and confusion. While many of us are simply looking for love, our college environment can sometimes lead us to act in ways that are ultimately counterproductive and harmful to those around us. This moment of social isolation has given us space from our peers — an opportunity to reflect critically on sex and romance in our college community. Okay, now that that’s over with, let’s talk about how to get laid at Middlebury! Never text first. If you get somebody’s number, always wait for them to text you. Otherwise, you’ll come off as “creepy” and “interested” and “having emotions.” Yuck! And, if you both wait so long for the other person to text that you never actually talk — eventually pretending not to know each other in the Proc panini line — it’s for the best. You don’t want to be with somebody who isn’t cool enough to pretend they don’t have feelings. Only flirt with someone if you’re drunk. That way, you can avoid taking any personal responsibility for your emotions. Plus, if you get rejected, it doesn’t count! You were drunk, you didn’t really care anyways. Use Tinder to see who’s into you and then never talk to them in person. This way, you can reap the benefits of knowing you’re desirable without the bothersome encumbrance of putting your self-image on the line. You would talk to them, but you’re not that interested. Like, you’d go on a date with them, but you don’t want to make it weird, you know? Since Middlebury is so small, you’ll get the extra perk of learning first-hand what cognitive dissonance feels like every time you see that person on campus. Be hot, or rich enough to pretend you’re hot. As long as you’re attractive, or rich enough to pretend, the emotions of others don’t exist. So go for it: treat that person like sh*t and don’t let it trouble your beautiful, effortlessly-manicured confidence. Isn’t being better than everyone great? Always string someone along, just in case. If it doesn’t work out with the person you were really trying to get with, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got somebody on deck to fill the gaping hole in your ego. It doesn’t matter if you actually like this person (it’s actually better if you don’t) because after one or two nights, you’ll be on to bigger and better things. Remember: Manipulating others in order to console yourself is the highest form of self-care! Ghosting people is cool. At one time or another, we’ve all ghosted and been ghosted. Why bother breaking the cycle? Nobody’s ever gotten hurt. And finally … Always pretend you’re not interested. If you take away one thing from this piece, let it be this. Having strong, genuine feelings for other people is decidedly not cool, and it leaves you vulnerable to the undesirable disruption of your personal fantasies and false self-confidence. Curate a disinterested but vaguely flirtatious persona, and then put it on so much that you eventually forget what it’s like to experience any semblance of authentic, life-affirming emotion. Deadening your inner self is hardly a high price to pay for the luxury of avoiding any kind of sexual or romantic rejection! As the saying goes, Virginia is for lovers and Middlebury is for pretending not to have feelings. Will O’Neal is a member of the class of 2020.

Who started Proc Crush Lists, anyway?

Each May, graduating seniors plaster the bulletin boards at the entrance of Proctor Dining Hall with so-called “Proc Crush Lists” — posters ranging from simple printed lists to elaborate craft projects, emblazoned with names of the creators’ crushes from their years at Middlebury. Proc Crush Lists originated in 2005, when the tradition was brought to campus by then-senior Jason Lockhart ’05. Crush lists, originally intended to be written lists of romantic interests students had developed from their first year onward, have evolved to include lists of platonic love and appreciation. A tradition Lockhart experienced as a student at Stuyvesant High School in New York inspired his desire to create the first crush lists. During his final year at Middlebury, he joined the Senior Committee, and while his peers planned the classic 100 Days party and Senior Week, Lockhart had one main goal: bringing crush lists to Midd. Armed with the emails of every senior, Lockhart introduced the idea to his classmates, and then hung a long, large sheet of paper between two columns in Ross Dining Hall — yes, Ross — where students could post their lists. He started by hanging lists solicited from friends, around 30 or 40, and provided paper and pens so that students could create their own on the spot. Initially, the display was intended to last only one day. But Lockhart’s friends encouraged him to leave the lists up indefinitely, and the collection eventually grew to around 100. “It was a minor success,” Lockhart said. The first year of crush lists elicited some drama: a friend of Lockhart’s put 200 people on his crush list, prompting the creation of the Facebook group, “I’m on John Parker’s* Crush List and I Don’t Feel Special,” and later the follow-up group, “I’m not on John Parker’s Crush List So What Does That Say About Me?”. Lockhart graduated, and had nearly forgotten the lists until the following spring, when a friend who hadn’t yet graduated sent him a message: “You’d never believe it, the crush lists are back!” along with a picture of a new set of lists. The lists have been a fixture at Middlebury ever since, although their location, content and style have all evolved over the past 15 years. Some of the lists have been archived by Special Collections, although they are not publicly available due to privacy concerns. Initially located in Ross, crush lists have moved locations a few times over the years, sometimes split between Ross and Proctor; sometimes in Atwater, according to Lockhart; and now at their current home on the Proctor bulletin boards. Seniors over the years have certainly raised the bar when it comes to crush list creativity. Now, they come in the form of Spotify playlists (with names as song titles), QR codes, athletics rosters, maps and more. They also exhibit a mix of intentions. While some students lean into the “crush” aspect, sometimes even including their phone numbers, others use the forum to list friends, professors, organizations or peers for whom they want to express appreciation. Most end up creating a hybrid of the two. Others jump further outside the box, like Taite Shomo ’20.5, who posted a list this spring titled “List of Places I’ve Cried at Middlebury College: 2017–Present.” This spring, as students were informed that they had just three days to evacuate the college due to Covid-19 concerns, the tradition appeared to be at risk. As seniors and senior Febs rushed to create their lists before a premature departure, a miscommunication about where lists could hang resulted in their removal from the Proctor bulletin boards. However, a March 11 email from SGA president Varsha Vijayakumar ’20 clarified the situation. Even in the complicated hurry to leave campus, the crush lists persisted. Not every student is an advocate for the lists. Last year, our Sex Panther columnist addressed some of the concerns with the practice, like the power dynamics of seniors listing mostly younger students and the publicness of the lists that some may find uncomfortable. In 2016, a student tore down many of the lists and posted a manifesto in their place, denouncing the practice as predatory, according to one student who graduated that year. The lists seem to invite a short fling or hook-up (or series of hook-ups) during the final days of college. But can crush lists help find long-lasting love? The fact that they crop up only in the final moments of a senior’s time at Middlebury means, probably not. But for some, like Harry Cramer ’16.5 and Masami Cookson ’17, the lists were the catalyst of a long-term relationship. Cramer had seen Cookson at a couple of parties and they had some brief conversations, but they traveled in different circles: Cramer was involved in a cappella and was a Local editor on The Campus; Cookson was on the swim team. “I decided, What the hell, I’ll add her to my list,” Cramer said. A mutual friend saw the list, asked if she could put the two of them in touch, and they went on a date shortly after. “We got lunch outside of Proc,” Cramer said, “I remember that I had just come from frisbee practice, so I was all sweaty.” They went on a couple more dates after that and when they returned in the fall (Cramer was only a senior Feb when he hung up his list) began dating. When they first formally met, having hardly talked before, things were a little awkward. But Cramer appreciated how a crush lists had pushed him to get to know somebody outside of his social circle. “People at Midd tend to get stuck in their social bubbles too much, and it was nice to interact with Masami because the fact that we didn’t have a lot in common was refreshing,” Cramer said. “A lot of people get to their senior year and fall into the same routines, always talk to the same people: Proc Crush Lists can be a good way to meet people you wouldn’t otherwise interact with.” The couple have been together for nearly four years, and now live together in Washington, D.C. As for Lockhart, love wasn’t in the cards in the inaugural crush lists season. However, today he is engaged, and had planned to get married in May, although social distancing and restrictions on gatherings have put off the wedding for a bit. Lockhart still keeps up with the crush lists, looks forward to seeing them at reunions and appreciates that the tradition appears to be a permanent fixture at the college. * Denotes pseudonym Editor in chief Sabine Poux ’20 contributed reporting.

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