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(05/07/20 9:54am)
“What do you define as the most pressing issue of our day?”
Each year, we have asked respondents one open-ended question that defines the theme of the Zeitgeist survey that year. This year — right before the turn of the decade — we asked students what they believed to be the most pressing issue of our day. The responses leaned heavily toward the climate crisis. While this answer took myriad forms – “Climate change”; “Climate change, f*cking duh”; “ummmm climate change have u heard of it??” and “The Earth is about to be one-a-spicy meatball,” among many others – “climate” was the most common term among the 535 responses. The “environment” was also written 43 times, “environmental” 39 times and “energy” seven times, suggesting similar concerns.
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Gun control came in second, with “gun” used 47 times. Healthcaret was also frequently referenced, with “health” used 18 times and “healthcare” used 16.
Some answers were combinations of a few issues, such as the response, “In my personal life, healthcare. In the public sphere, […] gun control.” Other issues raised were systemic racism, political polarization, economic inequality, the faults of the capitalist system, criminal justice, indigenous people’s rights and reproductive rights.
Some were specific to Middlebury at the time of the survey, including “Napkins at the dining hall” and “the new scan-in system.” Other responses were broad-spanning, including “unkindness,” “I just feel like our generation is f*cked,” “Learning how to connect as a society” and, for the indecisive anti-establishment, “They are all connected. Capitalism?”
At this point, it’s important to point out that this survey was issued months before the novel coronavirus came onto anyone’s radar. But the issues students outlined above have been exacerbated as the global health crisis exacerbates systemic inequality and access to public services, such as healthcare.
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As the U.S. rapidly approaches it’s next election year, political issues are at the forefront of many college voters’ minds. When asked to list the importance of 10 political topics from Politico’s list of 2020 issues as “very important,” “moderately important,” “neutral” or “not important,” respondents identified the most vital issue as “energy, environment and climate change.” 77% of respondents ranked the issue “very important,” while 95% ranked it important to some degree, backing Middlebury’s reputation as an environmentally-conscious school. The issue is also considered prominent nation-wide among youth and college-aged voters, validated at Middlebury by its strong turnout.
The other issues that exceeded a 90% response rate of moderate to very important were healthcare, gun control, immigration and abortion. However, these data were collected before the Covid-19 pandemic, which has served as a development that has reshaped U.S. healthcare policy. While healthcare fell slightly behind abortion and gun control in rankings of “very important” at the time, it is possible that more recent data would reflect an increased level of emphasis placed on healthcare.
The issue ranked least important by Middlebury students was, “support for the military,” with only 32% of students deeming it important. The penultimate concern was “marijuana and cannabis legalization,” with just over 50% of students signaling it as important.
(04/30/20 10:02am)
Increased financial stress has put the future of three public Vermont colleges in question as the Covid-19 crisis continues to unfold. On April 17, Chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges System Jeb Spaulding announced plans to close both the campuses of Northern Vermont University (NVU) and the Randolph campus of Vermont Technical College (VTC). Deemed financially necessary, with projections of high deficits and particularly low enrollment, the plan was to be effective in fall 2020. Spaulding withdrew the plan for immediate closure days later amid public backlash, and announced his resignation on Tuesday.
Under Spaulding’s original plan, liberal arts programs at Northern Vermont University would be moved to Castleton University. Technical programs at Vermont Tech would continue, albeit in different locations, while its main Randolph Center campus would close. The colleges’ administrations would also be restructured. The consolidations would result in over 500 employee reductions altogether. In the wake of Spaulding’s resignation, the fate of the colleges remains unclear.
Financial struggles
The April 17 press release from the Vermont State Colleges System explained that the Covid-19 crisis will exacerbate a long history of financial struggle within the system, and that these challenges demand a major reorganization. Projections estimate an operating deficit falling between $7–10 million this fiscal year; $5.6 million of that deficit will come from refunds issued to students following the shift to remote learning. For the 2021 fiscal year, Spaulding forecasts a deficit of nearly $12 million even with “substantial” budget cuts. Furthermore, residential campuses of VSC are expecting expected to see a 15–20% decline in enrollment if they remain open.
Significant financial issues were a major concern even before the Covid-19 crisis introduced further complications. A white paper released by the chancellor’s office in August 2019 outlined challenges such as the level of state funding and demographic shifts. The report cites data that Vermont ranks 49th in the country in state funding for full-time students. State appropriations have also declined significantly as a revenue source since 1980, according to data provided in the report. In fall 2018, VSC requested $25 million in additional funds on top of annual appropriation. The state legislature ended up providing an additional $2.5 million.
The report also focuses on shifting demographics as a major challenge to small New England colleges. The number of Vermont high school graduates has decreased by 25% in the past 10 years. Births in Vermont have been in steady decline, and 2015 saw the lowest birth rate since the start of the Civil War. The report indicates that demographic trends are unlikely to change soon.
These demographic trends translate into declining enrollment, a key contributor to the colleges’ financial struggles. In the past five years, enrollments have declined at every VSC college except Castleton. There were 540 empty beds in the VSC system for the 2018–2019 academic year, which represents a 20% vacancy rate. In addition to demographics, the report cites competition from online education providers like Southern New Hampshire University, exacerbating declining enrollment.
Public backlash
The chancellor’s plan was met with a surge of mobilization and public backlash in the days following the announcement. Protests are taking place online across New England due to Covid-19 restrictions, though some protesters are also demonstrating offline.
A Facebook group protesting the closure, started by Ben Luce, a professor of Physics at NVU-Lyndon, has since grown to more than 10,000 members. “Most of the effort is focused on contacting legislators and the Governor, and raising public awareness as well,” Luce explained in an email.
Since the state has already downsized its programs, state funding is the obvious solution for Luce. At the least, Luce would look for the legislature to appropriate an increase of $25 million in funding. “Such an investment would pay itself back many times over,” he wrote. Luce believes that the legislature is not meeting state law which requires public colleges to be funded “in whole or substantial part” by the state. Currently, only about 17% of VSC’s revenue comes from the state.
Patrick Wickstrom, a student at NVU-Lyndon, formed an online petition protesting his school’s closure, which has garnered nearly 50,000 signatures. A member of the men’s tennis team and residential life at NVU, Wickstrom explained that closure would be “simply devastating'' to faculty, staff and students. “A lot of people are connected to this school and the institution, and were very disheartened to see this even remotely be a proposal,” he commented.
Wickstrom was concerned about the uncertainty of the chancellor’s proposal. Wickstrom, who is double-majoring in Climate Change Science and Atmospheric Science, does not know whether his program could continue at Castleton. “I know a lot of students personally in my program who would have transferred schools or put a hold on college,” Wickstrom said.
A perfect storm
State Senator Ruth Hardy (D-Addison), a resident of East Middlebury who has worked in education and serves on the Education Committee, agreed that state funding for higher education is a major issue. Since taking office in 2019, Hardy has pushed for scholarship funding to increase enrollment at Vermont’s public colleges.
Hardy notes that Vermont has a particularly strong K-12 education system, but is not doing enough when it comes to its colleges. “We have one of the highest high school graduation rates in the country, but we do not do a very good job of getting those high school graduates to go to college,” she said.
Covid-19, she explained, has put the chancellor in a difficult position. “For institutions like the state's colleges, which were already vulnerable and already sort of deterring, the Covid crisis is just absolutely devastating.” Hardy concludes that demographic challenges, insufficient appropriations and the Covid-19 situation amounted to a “perfect storm.”
However, Hardy feels that higher education issues in the state have been prevalent for many years, noting the closure of four private Vermont colleges in 2019 and 2020. “I feel like we need to have a broader conversation about higher education in Vermont in general,” said Hardy. She hopes to help public and private institutions towards a more sustainable future.
Hardy and others stress the value of the state colleges in rural and economically challenged regions of Vermont. Caledonia County, where NVU’s Lyndon campus is located, sits at 12 out of Vermont’s 14 counties for per capita income.
“The colleges provide a higher education opportunity for those who wouldn't otherwise have it, and they are also economic drivers for the region,” said Hardy. According to her, Vermont State Colleges educate many lower-income and first-generation students.
Luce agreed that keeping the State College System intact would boost Vermont’s economy after the Covid-19 outbreak subsides.
“The truth is that our state colleges are actually fantastically efficient institutions that provide enormous and direct economic benefit to our state,” he said. “Energizing [state colleges] going forward would be an enormously effective way to both keep young people in our state and help with the recovery from this terrible pandemic.”
Luce explained that the colleges both produce a multitude of jobs and foster students who will later work in the community. Wickstrom said that Burke Mountain relies upon Lyndon students for its winter operations.
“I don't know what better investment that the state has,” Wickstrom said of the state college system. Wickstrom cites a statistic that the two NVU campuses bring $113 million per year in economic outlook, a high “return on investment” from state appropriations.
Looking ahead
Although the original closure plan has been shelved, an aggressive response continues. Wickstrom is planning to work with a larger group to present before the VSC Board of Trustees. Luce plans to continue to advocate for NVU and the other colleges, but acknowledges that damage has already been done. “The proposal has already severely damaged our prospects for enrollment next year,” he said. Many colleges, including financially stable institutions, are already predicting lower enrollments because of Covid-19.
The VSC Board of Trustees originally planned to meet in a special meeting on April 27. This meeting was canceled, and the Board will meet at a later date to discuss the decisions ahead.
Editor’s note: Ruth Hardy is married to Middlebury College Professor of Film and Media Culture Jason Mittell, who is the Campus’s academic advisor. All questions may be directed to campus@middlebury.edu.
(04/22/20 3:31pm)
Hope Allison '19.5 never thought of herself as a romantic. After graduating from Middlebury last February, Allison took on photography as a fulltime career. Operating out of Allston, Massachusetts, Allison launched her website and began picking up freelance work. However, her outlook on photography changed when she realized her passion for capturing moments that were emblematic of love and romance: weddings. Since then, she has been specializing in small wedding coverage, shooting receptions and ceremonies across New England and beyond.
“I kind of had an epiphany a couple of summers ago, trying to think about what I wanted to do with my life,” Allison told The Campus. “I realized that I wanted to do photography ... I just kept coming back to that.”
Before graduating, Allison garnered experience in the field, trying out one style after another. While abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland, she worked for a travel website, writing and contributing her photography. She took photos for a local boutique and an architecture firm while managing her own projects on the side. As she dabbled in different styles, she reaffirmed her passion for photography.
Allison initially wanted to focus on sparking global change with her work. “I was thinking, ‘You could be a war photographer, you could photograph the impacts of climate change,’” she said. “I think I had this idea of wedding photography as being kind of superficial. I wanted to do good with my work.”
Then, she looked at the photos her family had digitized of her grandfather's life. “I saw photographs of my grandmother and grandpa’s wedding, and it kind of clicked for me,” she said.
After her first few shoots, all doubt was gone. “I actually ended up really loving it,” Allison said. “I realized that naturally I’m a hopeless romantic ... I kind of surprised myself. I never thought I’d get into it ... But now I’m like ‘just kidding, I love it.’”
As Allison would realize, this new playing field came with a new set of rules.
“Architecture photography is about photographing things that are staged. And I’m a perfectionist, so it’s great to photograph beautiful, perfect things. But wedding photography is about anticipation and knowing to capture the unexpected — always being one step ahead.”
Despite these new sets of challenges, wedding photography also offers its own set of rewards. “It’s always satisfying when you can anticipate the moment and capture it the way that it felt. It feels like a gift to give that to a couple,” she said. Allison explained that she lets events happen as they unfold, capturing big wedding days as they actually were. “If a bride is hugging her grandmother,” she said, “I’m not going to stop it because I don’t have the best lighting.”
As a photographer, Allison pulls back the curtain on one of her clients’ most cherished days.
“The wedding photographer is one of the few people who is with the couple for basically every moment of the day. So when the bride is getting her dress on, it’s her, her mom, her maid of honor, and me.”
The balance between making the imperfect appear immaculate and crafting staged moments that look candid has been its own art form for Allison to master.
“When you’re taking the staged photos of the bride, the groom and their families, it’s kind of hard,” Allison said. “You can’t just say ‘Say cheese!’ You have to work with the crowd and read the room. I’m always saying things like, ‘In your sexiest voice say what you had for breakfast’ to get a natural laugh.”
Having traveled the East Coast for a summer capturing weddings, compiling newlywed blog entries and schmoozing with couples, matrimony has become something of a fixation for Allison.
“I’ve never been the kind of person who dreams of a big wedding. But you go to [12 weddings] in a summer and you can’t help but think about them all the time.”
With a dozen wedding shoots under her belt from the previous summer, Allison is lined up to do 16 more in the coming months. While the outbreak of Covid-19 in New England has shaken the foundation of the wedding photography business, Allison continues to keep the wheels of her work turning. “Right now I’m doing a lot of back-end work — creating pamphlets for the couples and working on [brand] logos.”
Many of her clients that originally scheduled their weddings for this coming summer have decided to shift to smaller alternatives for the time being. However, Allison expects that most will follow through on a complete ceremony once the opportunity arises. For many couples, the event itself is an irresistible part of the experience.
“The whole thing about a wedding day is hope. That’s the thing that’s so energizing about photographing them — it’s so joyful. Why wouldn’t I surround myself with people like this?”
Once the time comes, Hope Allison will be there to capture every moment.
(04/16/20 9:59am)
70 users participated in a webinar for Vermont's branch of the "Solve Climate by 2030" project, which aims to set 3 ambitious but attainable actions that communities can take against climate change.
(04/16/20 9:59am)
Middlebury hosted Vermont’s branch of the “Solve Climate by 2030” project, drawing more than 70 Zoom users to its virtual panel while universities in nearly all 50 states hosted simultaneous webinars last Tuesday. Dr. Eban Goodstein, director of the Center for Environmental Policy and the MBA in Sustainability at Bard College, launched the project last year with the aim of convening a panel of experts in every state who would determine three ambitious but attainable actions that communities could take against climate change.
“What you do locally will change the future,” Goodstein said in his pre-recorded introduction to the panel, which was streamed to attendees at the beginning of the Zoom conference. He reminded viewers of the 2030 deadline to prevent catastrophic climate change, set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2018, and emphasized the need for immediate, local action that will facilitate an equitable transition to clean energy sources and green jobs.
Transportation, heating and efficiency became the three areas of focus in the Vermont group’s discussion, which centered around constructing a Vermont that would work for all. The four panelists — Jared Duval, executive director of Vermont’s Energy Action Network; Carolyn Finney, scholar-in-residence in environmental affairs; Fran Putnam, a community organizer from Weybridge, Vermont; and Jack Byrne, dean of sustainability and environmental affairs — spoke at length about issues of justice and inclusion in future energy and transportation policy. Jon Isham, professor of economics and environmental studies, moderated the talk from the lounge inside Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest, with the familiar backdrop of Adirondack House and Forest Hall visible behind him.
Due to concern about “Zoombombing,” attendees remained muted for the duration of the panel, with their posts in the chat function visible only to the panelists. The biggest challenge seemed to be keeping panelists within time constraints; the introduction portion of the panel took up most of the webinar’s scheduled 90 minutes.
Duval, the first panelist to speak, addressed Vermont’s particular energy challenges: 70% of the state’s climate pollution is the result of transportation and heating, which also make up most of Vermonters’ energy costs. While the state has developed successful policy in its electricity generation sector, Duval said it has not seen the same success in the transportation and heating sectors.
“It’s important to focus on the fuel,” he said, “but the fuel is not enough. It's also about the equipment — the vehicles and the heating systems — and intervening at that point of purchase when you can avoid locking in a decade of fossil fuel use with vehicles, or two or three decades with the average life of a heating system.”
Duval noted that any policy addressing transportation and heating would need to focus on equity to ensure that low-income Vermonters are not left out of the transition to electric vehicles and heating systems.
Finney built on Duval’s point about justice in her introduction, discussing how the power dynamics and relationships present in Vermont decide who gets to participate in climate conversations. The issue of justice brings greater complexity to the conversation, she said, and this complexity must be addressed when developing solutions.
“It's as though we're asking ourselves to cut through to the solution,” Finney said of the panel’s aim. “And I think that makes a lot of people nervous — it makes me nervous — because I want to get there too, but I don't want to get there the same way we've always gotten there. Because a lot of people are going to lose.”
Like Goodstein, Finney drew comparisons between Covid-19 and climate change. “Climate change does not honor borders,” she said. “And we know that just like we've seen with Covid-19, that it can impact everywhere, but it doesn't impact everyone in the same way.” Throughout her introduction, she reiterated the importance of considering the diverse impacts that climate change will have in Vermont.
Putnam, who gave a talk last month about her self-designed study trip in the Nordic countries and is best known on campus for her work with the Sunday Night Environmental Group, spoke about her experience as a local environmental leader. As a retiree motivated to do something about climate change, she spearheaded programs for weatherization, waste management and transportation in Weybridge, Vermont and began volunteering with statewide environmental organizations and state legislators.
“If somebody like me with no academic credentials in this field, or expertise, can do something like this, anybody can do this,” Putnam said.
In Putnam’s experience, people in Vermont already want cleaner heating options and more efficient cars. The issue is affordability. “That's where the state of Vermont has to come in,” she said. “That's where our tax policies have to change. That's where the political structure has to buy into this and let us do what needs to be done.”
Byrne brought his experience developing Energy2028 — the college’s commitment to use entirely renewable energy sources, reduce consumption by 25%, divest from fossil fuels and integrate the commitment into its educational mission by 2028 — to the conversation. He emphasized the potential for other towns to draw from the college’s success.
Following more than an hour of introductions, Isham raised a question from the chat about including indigenous people in climate conversations. Finney responded by criticizing the idea of outreach and its implication of offering help, focusing instead on the need to build a relationship of trust with indigenous communities and respect the actions they are already taking to combat climate change.
Isham then invited atmospheric scientist Alan Betts to join the conversation. Betts spoke for several minutes about the inability of the capitalist economic system to withstand planetary crises like Covid-19 and climate change, and the need to construct a just and stable world. “We cannot have justice unless we confront the corruption of the system that we have bought into and make it pay all the costs,” he said.
As the panel’s time limit approached, Isham asked the panelists to summarize their own priorities. Duval reiterated the importance of establishing a comprehensive policy and regulatory framework centered around equity, while Finney pushed for honesty and truthfulness in legislation and education.
Both Putnam and Byrne referred back to Betts’s call for economic transformation. Putnam spoke about the need for climate policy with fixed goals, which is currently stalled in the state legislature, as well as a fairer tax structure that prioritizes climate solutions, and the inclusion of indigenous voices. Byrne cautioned against polarization, and said, “I echo Alan again. Truth to power.”
(04/16/20 9:55am)
Most of you probably think of Martha’s Vineyard as a summer paradise for the East Coast elite. In reality, this community that I call home faces a myriad of problems ranging from a lack of affordable housing to sea-level rise’s continuous assault on our shores. In 2018, I thought our County Commission, which was devoid of any members south of sixty years-old and known more for its dysfunction than anything else, could use a youthful, fresh presence to create the change and government transparency the Vineyard so badly needed. And so that year I ran for and won a seat on the Dukes County Commission.
In my campaign for elected office (as well as in my own political views more broadly), I was inspired first and foremost by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. I knew that I would be in for plenty of tough fights on the County Commission and these two politicians never backed away from a tough fight.
In 2016, I supported Sanders during his Presidential campaign. This time, I backed Warren, who I felt ran an unabashedly progressive, intersectional campaign focused on creating change through well thought-out, detailed plans on issues like climate change, LGBTQ+ rights and systemic racism. I also think that Sanders deserves an enormous amount of credit for mobilizing an entire generation of people who rightfully feel as though today’s politics don’t meet today’s challenges. The progressive moment that I am proud to be a small part of is better off because Sanders and Warren both ran spirited and uncompromising campaigns.
Now that Sanders has officially dropped out of the race, where do we go from here? I know that many of you are disappointed that Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee. So am I. He wasn’t my first choice. Or second. Or … you get the point. And his record and personal conduct leave many feeling understandably apathetic about supporting him. But unlike President Trump, he wouldn’t appoint grossly underqualified people to lifetime judgeships or put together such a grotesquely incompetent cabinet. And he certainly wouldn’t be the single most dangerous President any of us have ever seen. Our elections are choices between two candidates and Joe Biden is the candidate I choose. I hope you will, too.
Instead of allowing yourself to become disillusioned by the prospect of a Biden candidacy, I challenge you to channel the disgust you might very well feel after this primary to motivate yourself. Get, or stay, involved. If the Presidential race doesn’t inspire you, find a local one that does. A plethora of other candidates, from school board to the U.S. Senate, need your help. As someone who is involved in the lowest rungs of government, I can tell you honestly that change is being made right now from the bottom up, not the other way around.
And if you’re still struggling to find a race that speaks to you, be the race. Run for office.
If you care about the place you call home, then you’re qualified to serve. Endless government experience is no match for a genuine, persistent desire to make your community better. Warren and Bernie embody that kind of politics every day, fighting uphill battles for everything from single-payer healthcare to Wall Street regulations. Change is only going to be made if our generation leads the way. If you really want to honor the progressive Presidential campaigns of this cycle, then you should vote for progress, incremental or revolutionary, up and down the ticket this November. Better yet, think about being one of those progressive candidates on your ballot.
Keith Chatinover is a member of the class of 2022.5
(04/09/20 9:59am)
Two weeks ago, Middlebury College joined thousands of other schools when it was forced to shut down on-campus operations due to the novel coronavirus. Suddenly, what seemed like an overseas crisis became our reality. Many of us were left without a safe home to return to as we packed up our lives indefinitely. Scrambling to say our goodbyes, we were gravely aware of our time lost at Middlebury and the difficult months ahead. Taking shelter across the country, we have helplessly watched this crisis disrupt our world while taking thousands of lives.
As we are writing this, the United States has the highest prevalence of Covid-19 in the world with 431,838 confirmed cases (likely a drastic underestimate due to a shortage of testing kits, healthcare disparities and asymptomatic carriers). We have seen mass layoffs disproportionately affecting low-wage workers, small businesses and at least 27.5 million uninsured Americans; nearly 40% of New Yorkers of New Yorkers are unable to pay rent and almost 10 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance. Government officials across the country have scrambled to take action. Seattle has enacted a rent moratorium, New York state temporarily waived foreclosures and Congress has approved a two trillion dollar economic stimulus package.
While this unprecedented resource mobilization to fight the coronavirus is certainly warranted, it is shocking compared to our inaction tackling the climate crisis. The economic restructuring and dramatic lifestyle changes we have seen in the past weeks prove the kind of large-scale action needed to address climate change has been possible this whole time. We were in a global crisis even before this pandemic. In the past year we witnessed large parts of California, the Amazon and Australia burn, and floods devastated the central United States, Brazil and Ecuador. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations reached 415 parts per million, far above scientifically accepted safe levels needed to maintain a livable planet. Globally, black, brown and low-income people are disproportionately impacted by toxic drinking water, industrial waste, and other forms of environmental degradation. And climate change promises a future of more pandemics, more fires, more floods and more frequent and devastating events of every kind. These crises will shut down our country (and the world) time and time again, just like Covid-19 has. Without a concerted effort, the fear, sadness and destabilization we are currently experiencing as a result of Covid-19 will define life for generations to come.
But we also cannot ignore that coronavirus is part of climate change; both are symptoms of the same capitalist system that values profit over lives. The U.S. government's response to the mounting economic crisis is to bail out airline companies and fossil fuel corporations instead of reaching out to those most vulnerable — especially undocumented and migrant workers whose needs and essential contributions are consistently overlooked. Whether it be our overwhelmed healthcare sector or the lack of supportive infrastructure for at-risk populations, this crisis has and continues to reveal the cruel inadequacies of our social and economic structures.
Right now, we have the opportunity to radically rebuild our country. And many are already trying: workers at Amazon and Instacart, for instance, are striking to demand just labor standards. General Electric employees are protesting to shift production to medical equipment. Tenants struggling to pay rent are threatening rent strikes. Politicians like Stacy Abrams are advocating for bailing out people who have been hit the hardest by the crisis, rather than large corporations. College students all around the world are building mutual aid networks to help classmates and community members facing sudden displacement. All around us, people are beginning to imagine and enact a world in which they want to live. And so as Covid-19 continues to take and change lives we have a choice: do we allow governments and corporations to profit off of the increased vulnerability of people and devastate our planet, or do we learn from this crisis and replace the broken systems that got us here? Please, choose consciously.
Sophie Chalfin-Jacobs ’22, Claire Contreras ’22.5, Divya Gudur ’21, Jaden Hill ’22, Hannah Laga Abram ’23, and Asa Skinder ’22.5 are all members of Middlebury Sunday Night Environmental Group.
(04/01/20 2:06pm)
As the academic semester resumes in our calendars, albeit not on our campus, I have been gratified to see students actively and thoughtfully discussing grading as part of our academic practices. As a member of a faculty group that has been working to rethink grading at Middlebury since 2016, I am happy to see the topic thrust into the public eye, even under perilous circumstances. I hope that this conversation yields not only short-term agreement on how to cope with this disrupted semester, but longer term reflections and actions about how grades work — or don’t work— at Middlebury.
While I find good arguments about all the various proposals being advocated for, I am concerned about the assumptions which appear to underlie much of the conversation. Hence, I want to lay out some potentially provocative but important ideas for students and faculty to consider within these debates:
Grades evaluate assignments, not students. For the past few years, my syllabuses have included the following statement: “A letter grade is not an assessment of your intelligence, your abilities, or your value as a person — in fact, Professor Mittell never will grade “you” directly, and grading is never a reflection of who you are as a person. Rather, a grade reflects what you demonstrated that you learned in the course: no more, no less.”
This assertion goes against much of the educational climate students (and faculty) have internalized. Much of the world does and will continue to use grades to evaluate people — they’re what got you into Middlebury, they might be used to keep you here (as with some scholarship requirements) and they may launch your path onward into graduate school or careers. Still, I hope students truly consider detaching grades from their personhood. You aren’t your GPA. You aren’t “an A student,” but rather somebody who has produced work that has received A’s. If you receive a B, P, or an F in a course this — or any — semester, it won’t change who you are. We will all (hopefully) emerge from this pandemic as changed people, but not because of the grades we get or give.
Even at the best of times, traditional grades are not meritocratic. Any grading policy for this semester must grapple with the massive, moment-specific inequities students are currently facing, including widely varying technological access, personal health, financial precarity and support systems. But these inequities didn’t suddenly appear with COVID-19; even in normal semesters, many of these same inequities structure and shape students’ experiences. While faculty may strive to grade “objectively” (whatever that might mean in a given field), the disparate realities of students’ lives guarantees that their ability to meet course expectations will always be unequal, shaped by differences in educational and cultural backgrounds, access to technology, disability status and work obligations (to name but a few). These factors shape both what students know going into a class, as well as how their time and attention can be applied throughout the term. Acknowledging these inequities isn’t an excuse for any student receiving poor grades on an assignment, nor does it belittle the accomplishments of students who receive high grades. Rather, it reminds us that any revisions to policies we make this semester shouldn’t pretend that the status quo is an ideal way to evaluate student work.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Any revisions to policies we make this semester shouldn’t pretend that the status quo is an ideal way to evaluate student work.[/pullquote]
I have changed how I grade over the past few years to develop approaches that don’t reward students simply for coming to class better prepared to succeed. I try to focus instead on learning outcomes, calibrating assignments and grading systems to measure how students accomplish the course’s learning goals, rather than just writing “good papers.” While these approaches haven’t eliminated structural inequities by any means, they strive to emphasize all students’ learning in my class, rather than offering undue credit for some students' abilities to write a “good paper” before they arrived.
Increasing transparency and student agency improves learning. My teaching aims to create opportunities for students to learn by actively engaging in material and pursuing their interests, rather than simply assessing them on how they meet my expectations. Not only does this increased agency deepen the quality of the student work, but it also gives them options for how to balance my course with their other obligations on their own terms, such as opting-out of assignments with clear grade consequences as a trade-off with other courses and obligations. (I make it clear that I will fully respect students who opt-out, and tell them truthfully that some of my very best students have made similar choices in previous years.)
Such agency seems even more essential in the unpredictable and unprecedented contexts of this semester. For the course I’m teaching now, I have laid out specific ways that students might choose to engage throughout the rest of the semester to best accommodate whatever situation they find themselves in. For each choice, I have made explicit what the grade outcome would be. Thus if they complete the semester-long project they’d already started working on with a good faith effort, they know they will receive an A or A–. If they feel they cannot or do not want to pursue that choice, they have an alternative assignment requiring less time and ongoing participation that will result in a C for the course, with the encouragement to opt into P/D/F. By the time the deadline for declaring P/D/F arrives on May 1, they will know exactly what grade they are on track to receive and thus can make their own informed choices. I’ve also tried to make it clear that I will respect students for their decisions, not considering a P or C any less admirable than an A.
For me and (hopefully) my students, such an opt-in system seems to work well, because it maximizes agency and removes any stigma for choosing to get a P instead of a traditional grade. Regardless of whether our Spring 2020 grading system changes again in response to current conversations, I hope we all change the way we all talk about grades. As faculty, we need to work to maximize agency and depersonalize grades during this semester and beyond. In that way, one positive legacy of this uprooted semester can be a healthier approach to grading at Middlebury for years to come.
Jason Mittell is a professor of Film and Media Culture and a member of the Rethinking Grading Community of Practice. He is The Campus’s faculty adviser.
(03/28/20 10:59pm)
This is a reprint of a piece published in The Chronicle of Higher Education on March 19. You can see that version here.
I’m a visiting professor of government at Harvard, on sabbatical from my regular teaching job at Middlebury College. Like my colleagues around the world, I am trying, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, to remake a course meant to be taught in real time, face to face, into a rewarding distance-learning experience. I am teaching a small seminar and am confident I can make that transition. I am much less confident, however, that I can also grade students fairly when they have relocated around the globe.
Some institutions in recent weeks, including MIT and Smith College, have converted all of their courses for the spring semester to mandatory pass/fail to address the extraordinary challenges being faced by their students and faculty. Other colleges should follow their lead. Changing all courses to pass/fail and adding an asterisk to everyone’s transcript would eliminate any problems with fairness while allowing students and faculty to focus on creating a meaningful learning experience in anxious times.
In normal times, it makes sense to have individual faculty members determine fair assessment. But these are not normal times. Students were forced to leave campus on short notice and are now scattered around the world. Some will be tuning in from distant time zones, others from situations where a stable internet connection is an unaffordable luxury good.
Both Harvard and Middlebury have extended the deadline for converting a course to pass/fail, so students without access at least have that option. But it is unjust that some students should be forced to choose that path while other students continue to receive letter grades. That problem is solved at a stroke by a universitywide policy to switch all classes this semester to pass/fail.
Such a policy would also help with the matter of academic honesty in courses that require timed examinations. Questions about fairness only multiply for large lecture courses that have social distancing between faculty members and students embedded in the very structure of regular assessment. My son, a math and computer-science major, reports that one of his friends — a top performer — has been approached by multiple students asking if they could collaborate on assignments, including the final exam, in the new remote world. The student shared his concerns about cheating with the professor, who responded that he would just have to make the exam harder.
I can imagine measures to administer exams online in such a way as to minimize dishonesty, but all of these problems evaporate with a mandate from on high to evaluate outcomes using pass/fail. The same is the case for those worried about a negative effect on applications to graduate school.
The truth is that everybody would benefit from a pass/fail policy. Faculty members could focus on engaging students for learning in demanding new circumstances. Students would get a respite from direct competition with their peers to focus on both individual growth and doing their part in a common endeavor (a skill we are very much going to need in the months ahead). Parents could focus on loving and nurturing their children rather than worrying about how to assist them in navigating or gaming a new system.
Much as it did in shutting down, the university would reaffirm its commitment to the ties that bind us at a time when the world needs it most. If a few institutions lead, others will follow.
Some may protest the shift as unfair, because it invalidates the accomplishments of those who were at the top of the grade hierarchy when the regular semester ground to a halt. But what does excellence actually mean when global public health is under siege? The measures that are necessary to contain the pandemic require the strong to sacrifice their short-term selfish interests for the sake of other humans and the sustainability of our democracy.
Colleges could reinforce that commitment by recognizing that it will be impossible to decide what is a fair grade when the world seems to be spinning out of control for all of us. It is also a way of acknowledging that what we do together in face-to-face education cannot be replaced with a high-speed internet connection.
The pandemic has a way of taking all of us back to core questions about what we value and why, and the matter of grading while the plague rages is no exception. If our purpose in teaching is to engage students in the joy we ourselves have experienced from learning and the life of the mind, removing letter grades from the interaction, especially in dark times, only reinforces our shared commitment. Social distancing to flatten the curve is all about making small sacrifices for the good of others. Myopic, self-interested behavior, after all, is what got us into this predicament.
Global problems such as pandemics and climate change can only be addressed collectively; we can’t see each other as competitors in a zero-sum-game. In opposition to both experts and institutions of higher learning, President Trump has insisted that we live in a ruthless, might-makes-right world, where the strong do as they can and the weak as they must. It is up to each and every one of us to prove him wrong, to show that the human instinct to care for others can be stronger than the desire to dominate and dictate, that the hardships that lie ahead of us are also an opportunity to build a world that sustains and rewards empathy and community rather than the unfettered pursuit of power. A "pandemic asterisk" semester for all would be a step in that direction.
Allison Stanger is a professor of international politics and economics at Middlebury. She is currently on sabbatical at Harvard University, where she is teaching a course on the politics of virtual realities and holding fellowships with the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics and the Ash Center for Democratic Governance.
(03/12/20 10:01am)
Fran and Spence Putnam, local climate activists and community members of the Sunday Night Environmental Group (SNEG), spoke Friday afternoon about their recent research trip to Scandavia and Iceland. The talk, titled “Climate Action and Social Democracy—Lessons Learned from the Nordic Countries” discussed their five week, self-designed study tour of Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland, where the couple researched these countries’ climate policies.
The Putnams cited activist George Lakey, author of “Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians Got It Right and How We Can, Too,” as a source of inspiration for their trip. They had never visited the Nordic countries before and were fascinated by the countries’ economic systems.
“The Nordic model emphasizes society-wide risk sharing and the use of a universal social safety net to help their citizens,” Fran said. “From our observations, we would say that the Nordic model appears to be working and that it has support from all four coutries we visited.”
Components of the model include a very strong commitment to free education, generous family leave, child care, elderly care and strong social infrastructure. These programs are funded through high tax rates. The presenters said that while taxing is a point of contention in the United States, many citizens in the Scandanavian countries don’t mind the higher tax rates — almost double taxes in the United States.
“We did not hear complaints about the tax burden. We asked that question specifically many times,” Fran said. “We would ask people what they thought about the tax rates and they would say ‘I think they’re fair’ or ‘I don’t mind paying the taxes as long as I know what I’m getting for it.’”
Zoe Booth ’23.5, who attended the talk, said she was intrigued by the contrast between how people in the US and people in the Scandanavian countries view their taxes.
“The reality that people in the Scandanavian countries do not oppose them because they understand the causes differs greatly to the reality here,” Booth said.
The Putnams’ presentation focused on two communities that are taking large steps towards combating climate change. The island of Samsø in Denmark operates almost entirely on renewable energy from wind turbines and conserves energy through thermal efficiency. Akureyri, a small town in Iceland, is currently transitioning to become carbon neutral and derives much of its energy from geothermal and hydropower.
Both Samsø and Akureyri used communal decision-making tactics to reduce their carbon emissions, making sure town members were participating in the initiative. The towns implemented the co-op model so that people could own shares in public utilities such as wind turbines.
Spence believes many ideas from the Nordic model can be adapted to fit Addison County. Like the Nordic countries, Middlebury is a small place with a strong local identity and accessible government entities.
“We feel that Akureyri in particular has some lessons that can be applied here in Vermont,” he said.
Spence hopes more group decision-making will be incorporated in decision-making in Addison County and in greater Vermont. He described how Green Mountain Power, an energy transformation company in Vermont, is looking to make the state carbon neutral by 2030, while the Climate Economy Action Center of Addison County is also trying to take steps to model the Nordic countries as much as possible.
“The high functioning and faith in government allows the Nordic countries to tackle problems like climate change,” Fran said. “People aren’t constantly worrying about where their next problem is coming from, so they have the bandwidth to confront some of these big issues.”
The presentation concluded by offering steps community members can take to help combat climate change, including putting pressure on the state legislature to help pass the Climate Solutions Act, measuring and reducing your own carbon output and making more efficient transportation and food choices. Although she emphasizes the importance of individual action, Putnam hopes the Nordic countries can be a good symbol of the change that can happen when communities come together.
“The presentation gave me some hope in the sense that it gave an example of somewhere that was able to find enough political stability to do something about climate change, which I don’t think we have yet. And I think that’s one of the keys we’re missing in this equation,” Grayson Barr ’23.5, who also attended the event, said.
(03/12/20 9:58am)
On the night of November 8, 2016, I was shell-shocked by the news of Donald Trump’s victory. I spent most of the night struggling over my calculus homework, expecting a decisive victory for Hillary Clinton. After peeking my head into our common room and seeing the looks of terror on peoples’ faces, I realized the unthinkable happened. The media narrative that a moderate democrat was best suited to defeat Trump was wrong. That night taught me that beating Trump will require a bold, progressive agenda that speaks to the needs of everyday Americans, not a pursuit of incrementalism. I’m afraid that the country has forgotten this lesson. Bernie Sanders was the antidote then, and he is the antidote now; I believe only he can beat Trump.
Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election through victories in key swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. An NBC news report found Trump visited these states 46 times more than Clinton in the final 102 days before the election. Alarming? Definitely. There’s no way that another democratic nominee repeats these same mistakes, right? Unfortunately, Joe Biden is on pace to match the 2016 strategy. He skipped campaigning in most Super Tuesday states.
It’s not just his absence of campaigning in key states that should raise eyebrows. Biden’s record, current base, and policies will lose in November. Based on the evidence below, Joe Biden loses to Trump.
Biden voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, which cost the Rustbelt over 4 million jobs, per a 2019 NBC News analysis. We’re up against an incumbent president who won white working-class voters by 67% nationally, according to NYT exit polling data. Defeating Trump will require an unprecedented turnout of youth and disaffected voters who sat out the 2016 election. In a general election campaign with Biden as the Democratic nominee, Trump could hammer Biden on his anti-worker record and win among blue-collar workers again.
I believe Biden’s current platform and policies will lose to Trump. As of now, Biden’s essentially been running on a platform of “I can beat Trump.” That sounds great, but he rarely articulates how he will win. Trump’s campaign team has already fought this battle once before. Instead of bold and comprehensive plans to combat climate change, income inequality, or our dysfunctional healthcare system, Biden is advocating for a “return to normalcy” (which only plays well with his current base).
Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, will beat Trump.
Sanders’ voting record speaks to the key swing state voters we must win over in November. He voted against disastrous trade deals like NAFTA and PNTR with China. Sanders has proven to be the most pro-union member of Congress. Per the AFL-CIO, a federation of 55 unions, he has a nearly 100% lifetime pro-union voting record. Most importantly, Sanders didn’t trust Cheney and Bush when they lied about weapons of mass destruction In Iraq. Sanders led the effort against the war in Iraq. Biden supported the war.
Sanders’ base would be enough to defeat Trump. The Washington Post’s exit polling shows that Sanders’ median support in Super Tuesday states for voters under the age of 29 was 43 points above Biden’s, and his median support in these states for independents was 8 points above Biden’s. NBC News exit polls found that Sanders won 43% of first-time voters on Super Tuesday, significantly more than the other candidates. To beat an incumbent president, the younger voters, independents, and disaffected voters who overwhelmingly back Sanders must be acknowledged. Also, a study by the Democracy Fund found 92% of Biden supporters would vote for Sanders in the general election. On the flipside, 94% of Sanders supporters would vote for Biden. Both of these statistics prove a vast majority of Democrats’ main goal is defeating Trump.
Sanders’ current platform and policies would beat Trump. The Washington Post’s exit polling found that Super Tuesday voters agree with Sanders on the issues by 13 points above Biden. These issues include Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and a $15 federal minimum wage. Sanders’ vision would not only benefit the entire country by combating climate change and guaranteeing healthcare as a human right, but also inspire key voters.
It’s imperative we, as Democrats, unite against an establishment which is following the same 2016 playbook. Inspired by Sanders’ grassroots movement, I co-founded Midd Students for Bernie in October of last year. Through canvassing, phonebanking, friend-to-friend outreach, we are building a progressive movement to oust Trump. I hope supporters of Elizabeth Warren, a progressive champion for working-class families, choose to join our movement to beat Trump and transform our government and economy. Will we choose the moderate lane which ends in perpetual defeat to populists like Trump, or will we choose the progressive lane which can defeat Trump and improve the lives of millions of American families? If you haven’t voted yet, consider voting for the best candidate who can beat Trump: Bernie Sanders. Reach out to friends and family in states which have yet to vote like New York and Connecticut and remind them what we’re up against. If you’re inclined to volunteer for the campaign, visit BernieSanders.com/volunteer! While Biden has a SuperPac and Wall-Street donors behind him, Sanders’ has the support of millions of grassroots activists. Only Sanders has the agenda that can defeat Trump and bring-about much needed change. When it comes to defeating Trump, whose side are you on?
Tarik Shahzad is a member of the class of 2020 and co-founder of Midd Students for Bernie.
(03/12/20 9:57am)
Imagine this: a local farm uses food waste and manure from 900 cows to produce renewable natural gas. This gas is funneled through a 5.6 mile-long pipeline from the farm to Middlebury College. The school then uses the gas to produce 500kW of renewable electricity that powers 50% of the campus. College community members turn on their lights and feel content believing the energy powering them is not draining resources from the aching earth, but is instead sustainable, ethical.
This vision is part of Middlebury’s Energy2028 plan, which involves a transition to 100% renewable energy, 25% consumption reduction, fossil fuel divestment and engagement in education and research. The project depends on a partnership between Middlebury and Goodrich Family Farm to construct an anaerobic digester on the farm. Vanguard Renewables owns and will operate the plant. Vermont Gas is connecting the system to its pipeline, from which Middlebury pledged to purchase gas. In return, Goodrich will receive free heat, byproduct bedding and fertilizer, as well as annual lease payments.
This partnership has been described as an “innovative approach to the climate crisis.” However, this plan is neither sustainable nor ethical.
Several weeks ago, the Goodrich family allegedly denied José Ramos, a migrant farmworker, his paycheck and physically assaulted him when he asked for his earned wages. A few days later, a Migrant Justice organizer accompanied José back to the farm to ask for his wages. Yet again, they were met with physical and verbal violence at the hands of his boss and supervisor.
On Feb. 29, Migrant Justice organizers and community members rallied in front of Goodrich Farm. Over 60 protesters (including 20 Middlebury students) stood in solidarity with José, demanding justice. Protestors said the farm owners met them with aggression: charging at the marchers, pushing people and yelling obscenities.
José is not the only worker at Goodrich Farm to have experienced abuse. Following the rally, several farm workers previously employed on the farm came forward to speak about similar violence they endured during their time at Goodrich.
The partnership between Middlebury College and Goodrich Farm has been framed as mutually beneficial, helping the college achieve its energy goals and the Goodriches to diversify income. However, this mutual beneficiality is only surface level. As it stands now, the partnership perpetuates deep harm. If Middlebury proceeds with this partnership without demanding the Goodriches afford their farmworkers dignified working and living conditions, we will be directly implicated in violence towards our neighbors.
We must face the reality that 100% renewable does not equate 100% sustainable. “Sustainability,” narrowly conceived, aims to reduce carbon consumption and prevent depletion of natural resources. However, this understanding separates humans from the environment by framing them exclusively as consumers rather than inextricable parts of the environment. These ideas of sustainability perpetuate transactional systems devoid of justice. People and energy sources are not separate. Generating renewable energy must be grounded in reciprocal care. Reimagined, sustainability can support ecosystems and promote equitable social systems.
Middlebury must hold the Goodriches accountable for their actions if this partnership is to be sustainable. José’s case and similar cases show the irrefutable need for the expansion of Migrant Justice’s Milk with Dignity program.
The Milk with Dignity Standards Council enforces legally binding standards of living and working conditions. If farmworkers at Goodrich were protected under Milk with Dignity, the violence José experienced would not be tolerated. The farm would benefit as well, receiving a premium for their milk as well as other supports.
Middlebury has the leverage and power to demand that Goodrich Farm pay José Ramos his wages and apologize. We must also support the Milk with Dignity Campaign, currently targeting the Hannaford supermarket chain.
If Middlebury wishes to be a national leader in sustainability, we cannot pursue our energy goals through unjust means. Middlebury faces two choices: use our position of power to be an instrument for change, or continue to remain tolerant of deeply troubling labor practices.
At the end of the day, the energy produced by this project is not just coming from food and agricultural waste. It is also coming from human beings who expend their own energy laboring in extremely difficult conditions to care for the animals producing the waste that is turned into power. If farmworkers’ energy is not valued, the very root of Energy2028 will be corrupt.
We are calling on the Middlebury community and the Energy2028 team to entertain a broader definition of sustainability, one that does not continue to perpetuate violence and dehumanization. Sustainability cannot be surface level. Instead, it must be deeply rooted in respect, justice and humanity.
Signed by Alex Cobb ’20, Hannah Ennis ’22.5, Olivia Pintair ’22.5, Jaden Hill ’22 and Connor Wertz ’22
(03/05/20 10:55am)
I am not a climate change denier. Still, I struggle to connect with the green movement, and find myself lapsing in and out of doubt about proposed solutions such as the Green New Deal. While listening to Naomi Klein’s recent talk, I identified my position in the climate movement for the very first time. Klein described the movement as a “burning fire” which must shed away the “debris” of disapproval and disbelief. I rolled my eyes and thought, that’s me, the debris. She then said there are people at the margins of the issue who see the problem but are not committed to the cause. They are not debris — they are the people she hopes to reach in order to help fuel the fire. I am one of those people.
Why am I at the margin? How do I differ from my peers who are devoted to the movement? Klein’s words compelled me to ask myself these kinds of questions. The answer is that I cannot commit to a cause I only believe in sometimes.
I grew up in China, a country miles ahead of the U.S. in terms of the damage inflicted by anthropogenic climate change. In elementary school, I was taught about global warming. I made presentations of polar bears barely staying afloat in the melted glaciers. I saw pictures of factories emitting smoke that shrouded the sky. “Don’t let the last drop of water be our tear” read a slogan pasted in my elementary school bathroom. I had asthma because of the air pollution. To me, a “night sky” meant a subdued orange hue. The first thing my mom did in the morning was to check the PM2.5 scale for air quality. On days when the smog was most severe, we wore masks to school and were not allowed to play sports or go outside. In high school, I was told to use the phrase “climate change” instead of “global warming.” I remember thinking that was strange, because the earth is clearly warming, at least in China.
Growing up as the first generation of Chinese children most directly affected by human-induced climate change, it would be reasonable to assume that I am passionate about reversing its damages. Instead, the opposite is true: I have normalized climate change. I may have had asthma growing up, but so did all my friends. The smog was a nuisance, but we adjusted to it. The orange nights were accompanied by a spectacular skyline. As for the polar bears and the factories, I never actually saw them — they existed only in PowerPoints.
In high school, I took a quiz from the Global Footprint Network and learned that if everyone on earth lived like me, we would need six earths to sustain our consumption. I wasn’t proud of the result, but I knew if I wanted to see my family in China on holidays from boarding school, this is what it took.
And so I am not scared of the immediate effects of climate change because I have lived many of them myself. I know that our planet has exceeded its healthy temperature, but I also know that you can enjoy a childhood accompanied by inhalers and masks. I know that in times of crisis, I have adequate resources to combat the immediate damages.
And yet, as Naomi Klein stressed in her talk, these resources are not available to everyone. Perhaps I can’t see the permanent effects of climate change today, but I have begun to recognize the importance of equity and outreach at the flint of this movement. Klein’s talk made me realize how narrow my perspective has been up to this point. Climate change affects more than just me, my family, and my community; in fact, it affects everyone on this planet. It also often disproportionately affects those of greater age, or lower income.
As someone who needs six earths, I cannot be an activist and tell other people how to make the earth greener; I would be a hypocrite. I can, however, start by doing my small part. Right now, that means recognizing my place on the edge of the movement, so that maybe one day I will catch on fire too.
Rachel Lu is a member of the class of 2023.
(02/27/20 11:01am)
It’s a fact no ski resort, snow maker, liftie or snow hobbyist wants to hear: the temperature profile of Green Mountain winters is changing. Vermont has seen a decrease in average annual snow coverage since 1960, with the average high winter temperature rising at 0.64°F per decade, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The change has caused milder winters, earlier springs and more severe weather events, threatening the very foundation of Vermont’s ski industry.
Year by year, the total days of one or more inches of snow coverage has been on the decline, according the State of Vermont's website. Beyond charts and statistics, veteran skiers and snowboarders in Vermont have witnessed this change in action.
“Anecdotally, winters have seen later snows [in] March and April,” said Mike Hussey, the general manager of the Snow Bowl. Hussey mentioned that winter weather events have been shorter and more extreme, with short cold periods accompanied by abrupt, intense warm periods.
“The rain events have been more severe in the last three or four years,” said Stever Barlett, head coach of the Middlebury College alpine ski team since 2006. “As a result, skier visits tend to decrease when it’s ‘brown in town,’ as they say.”
Even younger generations have noticed the trend. While acknowledging the inevitability of winter-by-winter variation, students conclude that winters are getting warmer. In the past, blisteringly cold days were not uncommon, according to Pate Campbell ’20, a senior on the alpine ski team who has spent nine seasons on Vermont’s slopes.
“To have 10 of those –30°F days in a year used to be normal,” Campbell said. “Now you might just have one or two.”
Jenny Moss ’20.5, who has skied in Vermont since she was four and now works as a snowboard instructor at the Snow Bowl, has observed similar trends.
“The most consistent thing has just been how wildly inconsistent things are,” Moss said. “We are getting record colds and record [highs]; you really can’t rely on mother nature anymore.”
Unfortunately, according to Campbell, climate change will “hurt the small [ski] mountains the most.” While larger resorts such as those in Vail and Aspen can sustain rising costs by increasing ticket prices on its huge consumer pool (as those in favor of conglomerates have said), small mountains with a fraction of the capital have less leeway to do so.
The Bowl and Rikert Nordic Center have increased their snowmaking facilities, without which warmer weather could shorten the average 135-day season down to 50–70 days, according to Hussey. Despite changing weather patterns, Hussey remains optimistic about the College’s snowmaking abilities. “Shorter windows of opportunity have driven us to install equipment that can be started and shut down quickly in order to capitalize on as much of the window as possible,” he said.
However, snowmaking is only a temporary solution to the threat that warmer winter temperatures impose on the ski industry. Those looking to protect Vermont’s slopes can take action by joining and supporting environmental activist groups such as Protect Our Winters (POW). The organization believes that through a “three-way change” in politics, technology and culture, voters can prevent the worst impacts of climate change. As a college student, this can mean participating in climate activism, voting for green politicians, researching renewable energy resources, supporting environmentally friendly brands and companies, and being more aware of personal consumer habits and carbon footprints.
“The students are the generation that can change the habits of our culture,” Hussey said. “It is late in the game but not too late.”
(02/27/20 10:55am)
Exploring the role of education in a time of global uncertainty, an interdisciplinary panel and Q&A served as a follow-up to writer and climate activist Naomi Klein’s Feb.13 talk. Moderators Hannah Laga Abraham ’23 and Ivonne Serna ’23 asked five faculty members from across the disciplines — Carolyn Finney, scholar in residence in environmental affairs; Jamie McCallum, professor of sociology; James Sanchez, professor of writing & rhetoric; Kirsten Coe, professor of biology; and Tara Affolter, professor of education studies — to discuss their fields’ relevance in the midst of the climate crisis.
The event aimed to create an ongoing dialogue on environmental issues. The overarching question guiding the conversation was, “Why are we here?”
“Being at an institution that is deeply enmeshed in the systems perpetuating this crisis doesn’t give us an excuse to avoid these conversations,” Serna said. “It makes it our responsibility to have them.”
Dan Suarez, professor of environmental studies, opened the panel by asking what exactly it would mean to reform institutional pedagogy in light of the increasing severity and scope of compounding environmental changes.
Affolter and Finney both discussed the importance of intersectionality in engaging with issues of climate change.
“We first need to look at whose voices matter, who’s in the room to ask the questions, and who’s not here and why,” Affolter said. “Part of the importance of our place here is to decenter ourselves and learn to care beyond what we know and understand.”
Finney urged her colleagues and the audience to consider the history of marginalized groups — many of whom are now disproportionately affected by climate change — in environmental discourse.
“I keep hearing the term, ‘state of emergency,’ but there are people who have been living in a state of emergency for the past 400 or 500 years,” she said.
McCallum emphasized the importance of including the sociological lens in climate change analyses. “There is a social crisis that has to do with alienation, isolation, division, and loneliness that is influencing the climate crisis,” he said.
Sanchez spoke about the impact of rhetoric in environmental discourse.
“There’s a difference between being convinced and being persuaded,” he said. “I could be convinced that climate change is real, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to actually get out and do anything.”
Finney said that persuasion will only come by making climate change personal to everyone. She said that means finding emotional links with others who may not agree.
“If someone told me they were skeptical about climate change,” she said, “I wouldn’t ask them why — I would ask them what they value and what they prioritize,” she said. “Skepticism from climate change arises because people have fears about something else in their lives.”
During the Q&A, the panelists responded to questions about how to move from white guilt to white accountability.
“I see moving from guilt to accountability as a personal question, but also one that can be reflected in our pedagogy,” Coe said. “I think it has to do with investigating and understanding the origins of our privilege and being interested in those questions.”
(02/27/20 10:54am)
The Green New Deal, a legislative proposal seen by many as a radical answer to the question of climate change, went up for debate in Dana Auditorium last Thursday. The Alexander Hamilton Forum and the Political Science Department co-sponsored the debate.
Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Robert Pollin argued in favor of the Green New Deal, while Oren Cass, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, argued against it. Christopher Klyza, Middlebury’s Stafford professor of public policy, political science and environmental studies, moderated the debate, which came during an election year when Democratic voters are more worried about climate change than ever before.
“We thought the topic was especially timely, as the Green New Deal is an issue in the Democratic primary and is likely to be an issue in the general election,” said Associate Political Science professor Keegan Callanan, who serves as director of the Alexander Hamilton Forum.
The Green New Deal, sponsored by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), mandates a transition to clean energy in order to reduce greenhouse gas emission, offers a program to support those who are impacted and creates a variety of job and entrepreneurial opportunities.
Pollin first spoke to defend the Green New Deal on the grounds of its absolute necessity, and centered his definition of the Green New Deal around a zero-emissions deadline for the year 2050.
“If you believe in mainstream climate science, we are looking at a world that could be calamitous over the next couple of decades,” he said. “My version of the Green New Deal is to get to net zero emissions in a way that also creates more opportunities, raises living standards [and] expands job opportunities.”
He then proposed a multi-step course of action to achieve his vision of a Green New Deal globally. He suggested that governments begin by placing massive investments into energy sufficiency, including into operations of buildings, industrial machineries, transportation and more. Next, he advised investment in solar and wind power in order to reduce fossil fuel infrastructure down to zero.
He expressed belief that his Green New Deal, although costly upfront, is economically responsible in the long run. According to his research, investing in building the green economy generates about three times more jobs per million dollars than investing in the fossil fuel economy.
“Let’s understand that investment in energy efficiency, by definition, saves money,” Pollin said. “Yes, there are costs, but over time, those costs will get covered by the savings that are engendered by delivering this new energy system.”
Cass spoke second, voicing his objection to the Green New Deal on three fronts: feasibility, high-cost and poor outcomes.
“With the existing technologies we have, there are tremendous disputes over whether wind and solar [power] have any capability to actually solve the problem,” he said. “To the extent we put all of our eggs in the wind and solar basket, we are actually distracting ourselves from the kind of innovation we are actually going to need.”
He offered the example of Germany, where despite the government’s 30-year long project, the country failed to meet its goal of decarbonizing its economy. While the state of Vermont is politically progressive, it has not developed any wind projects for five years and has seen a rise in emissions in comparison with past decades.
Cass also emphasized the high price tag of the Green New Deal, then criticized Pollin’s claim that the Green New Deal generates jobs.
“The jobs that it [the deal] would destroy are particularly good ones: fossil fuel economy jobs are among the best for blue collar workers that we have,” Cass said. “[They are] the highest paying and they in turn support our manufacturing sector.”
Additionally, countries in the developing world have no incentive to join such a deal, he said, and the effort from the United States alone will not be enough to reduce emissions globally. He pointed to how the developing world pledged “no useful contribution” in the Paris Agreement, a United Nations agreement on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.
The assumption that the rest of the world would follow America’s lead is, according to Cass, “an extremely condescending and colonial point of view, as it suggests that the leaders of other countries do not know what is good for themselves.”
He proposed to invest in innovation to find an alternative energy source that is both cheaper than fossil fuel and reliable, so that people will have incentive to adapt.
“I believe that some version of a Green New Deal — or a project to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and stabilize the climate — will be implemented soon, for the simple reason that we truly have no alternative,” he said. “Mr. Cass is not reading the overwhelming body of evidence accurately.”
Students cited myriad reasons for attending the debate. Evelyn Lane ’23 chose to attend because writer and climate activist Naomi Klein’s Feb. 13 talk deepened her interest in the topic of climate change.
Elizabeth Kroger ’22.5, a conservation biology major, feels that she is often surrounded by people who hold the same opinion as she does, so she attended the lecture to learn about any potential downfalls of the plan.
“I am curious as to what opponents of the Green New Deal would propose in place of it,” Kroger said. “Cass did not speak of any specific policies or programs to replace the deal.”
Other students, concerned with the Alexander Hamilton Forum’s funding, held another climate-focused event at the same time. Organizers wrote about that event, “What Does it Mean to be a Student at Middlebury in the Age of Climate Catastrophe?: A Koch-Free Conversation,” in an op-ed published in The Campus on Feb. 13.
(02/20/20 11:00am)
Renee Wells, the college’s director of education for equity and inclusion, hosted workshops to review the school’s new protest policy. Workshops were mandatory for new members of the class of 2023.5 during their orientation, and available last Thursday and Friday to interested students.
Last week’s workshops were titled “Informed Activism: Understanding and Navigating Open Expression and Demonstration Policies on Campus.” The Feb orientation version of the workshop was titled “Free Speech: Effective Protests & Demonstrations.”
The workshops come three years after Charles Murray’s last talk on campus, less than a year after Ryszard Legutko’s controversial canceled lecture and six weeks in advance of Murray’s impending revisit. The workshop specifically aimed to provide explanations about the new Policy on Open Expression, which came into effect this past November, and to answer specific questions for students planning advocacy events.
Wells has extensive experience workshopping with students, staff and faculty, and a primary component of her role is to assess campus climate concerns and identify ways to address them. Last spring, she observed a nervousness surrounding students’ approach to planning protests in response to Legutko.
“I realized that there were a lot of students who wanted to participate in the protest, but were concerned about possibly being sanctioned.” Wells said, noting that the college sanctioned 74 students for their roles in the protests against Charles Murray.
Wells does not want students to feel discouraged from engaging in activism, as she believes it is an important component to the non-academic development of higher education.
“Preparing students to critically think about what’s going on around them and to respond and advocate for things they believe in actually prepares them for the greater context we live in.” she said.
This is the first year a workshop about activism has been mandatory for an incoming class. Wells believes this is part of the college’s effort to provide more transparency on what activism can look like at Middlebury.
“Returning students would know that we passed a new open expression policy, but that title would not mean anything for the Febs,” Wells said in regard to the differences in the titles of the workshop, and its mandatory attendance. “My idea behind the workshop is that I want students to feel like they can protest if they want to.”
The Feb workshop focused heavily on curiosity surrounding Charles Murray’s impending arrival. Wells had expected this to happen and was prepared to answer Febs’ questions, while being informative about campus activism in general.
Tim Hua ’23.5, who attended the workshop during Feb orientation, said he is open to participating in protests during his time at Middlebury. Hua said that the workshop did not change his general impression of activism at the college.
“I thought it was super helpful when Wells clearly laid out what’s allowed, what’s not allowed, and what the punishments are for actions taken during an activism event,” said Hua.
The Campus reporter was the only student who attended last Thursday’s workshop.
“When I read the description of the event, I initially thought it would be from an administrative perspective, so it might be trying to teach students why not to protest, or how to protest solely in a peaceful manner,” said Lily Jones ’23. “But after learning what the workshop actually was, I think I should have looked into it more because that wasn’t the intent of the workshop.”
(02/20/20 10:59am)
This election season, Bill McKibben is turning the spotlight to big banks. He was arrested last month during a sit-in at a Chase Bank in Washington D.C. that served as a trial run for the national mass action, “Stop the Money Pipeline,” set to take on the financial sector this April.
“I think it’s worth remembering that there are two levers of power on our planet,” said McKibben, a writer, activist and scholar-in-residence at Middlebury, in an interview with The Campus. “One of them is political and the other is financial.”
McKibben published a piece in The New Yorker last September calling climate change a timed test. He described political change as usually involving slow compromise even in a working system, something not seen in what he called a “dysfunctional gridlock” in Washington.
“Even if everything went great in the election in November, it’s still not like our government’s going to turn on a dime and do all the things we need,” McKibben told The Campus. He sees rapid political transformation as unlikely at best, especially on a global scale.
But Wall Street, McKibben said, remains the money capital of the world. With swift action needed worldwide, he said it should come from the financial sector as well as the political one.
“When Wall Street moves, it moves quickly,” McKibben said. “If Chase did make some announcement that they weren’t going to be, say, loaning for expansionary fossil fuel projects, then 45 minutes later, the stock market would have reflected that in powerful ways.”
McKibben identifies the money held by Chase and similar banks as a primary driver of the climate crisis in both The New Yorker piece and a New York Times op-ed he co-authored this January, .
“Chase is by far the biggest lender to the fossil fuel industry and they lend the most to all the most aggressive expansionary projects.” McKibben told The Campus. Chase Bank has lent more than $195 billion to oil and gas companies over the last three years — more than the market value of BP oil — to fund projects such as oil drilling in the deep ocean and the Arctic, according to McKibben’s piece in The New Yorker.
The January protest coincided with the last day of Jane Fonda’s Fire Drill Fridays, weekly climate demonstrations in D.C. during which Fonda has repeatedly been arrested. “While Jane and Joaquin Phoenix and Martin Sheen were up on Capitol Hill, about 25 of us went into the nearest Chase branch and had a nice chat with the manager, and just sat down,” McKibben said.
Fonda later led protesters down to the bank, where they rallied out front. Inside, McKibben said, the atmosphere was pleasant and low-key. “We were very, very clear to tell the people working there that we had not the slightest beef with them,” he said. The goal of the sit-in was to reach the bank’s higher-ups in New York — and to give people an idea of what the national day of action might look like in April.
“We’re hoping that there will be demonstrations at hundreds or thousands of bank branches across America,” he said. Among the top targets are Chase, BlackRock and Liberty Mutual, listed on the Stop the Money Pipeline website as three of the world’s biggest funders of fossil fuels.
Because there are no Chase branches in Vermont, McKibben expects that some Vermonters will travel out of state to protest. He said others will get together to cut up Chase credit cards, which include the Amazon credit card, the Southwest and United Airlines mileage cards, the Starbucks rewards card, and others.
Two of the most important things Middlebury students can do, McKibben said, are to let Chase know that they’re not going to ever take out a Chase credit card, and to make it clear that they’re not ever going to go to work at Chase.
McKibben cited Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America as three other major funders of the fossil fuel industry, cautioning that people shouldn’t just cut up their Chase credit card and get a Bank of America one. Better alternatives, he said, include fully-divested Amalgamated Bank on the East Coast, Beneficial State Bank on the West Coast, and Aspirations online.
“Most people don’t have a coal mine in their backyard,” McKibben said. “Most people don’t have a pipeline that runs through their neighborhood. But a lot of people, tens of millions of people, have a credit card in their pocket from Chase and a pair of scissors in the kitchen drawer.”
(02/20/20 10:56am)
Naomi Klein, acclaimed writer and climate activist, brought fire to Wilson Hall last Thursday.
Klein spoke to a packed Wilson Hall about her new book, “On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal” for this year’s Scott A. Margolin ’99 Lecture. The talk addressed justice and hope in a warming world, but fire was the key theme of the night.
Scholar-in-Residence Bill McKibben opened the talk with an abridged account of Klein’s long history in the climate movement, including her work as the first board member of 350.org, the climate action non-profit McKibben founded. Then, Klein and moderator Dan Suarez, a professor of Environmental Studies, took the stage.
Klein described in vivid detail the infernos still burning across Australia and the 2018 fire that claimed 86 lives in Paradise, California. She said that worsening wildfires and other unprecedented natural disasters are, unmistakably, results of global warming.
“I don’t think it is a coincidence that as our planet’s temperature increases, the political temperature is increasing,” Klein said. She identified growing political instability as a key reason behind the rise of far-right leaders like President Donald Trump, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“They are true planetary arsonists,” she said, “seemingly determined to torch the planet, convinced that their wealth and privilege will protect them.”
But Klein doesn’t think that wildfires and what she dubbed “the fires of hate” are the only important fires of our time. The third fire, she said, “is our fire.”
Klein has a clear message about what to do with that third fire: change everything. A radical future awaits us, she said. We must decide what kind of radical we want it to be. She envisions a future in which we rebuild zero-carbon societies founded on the ideals of equity and resilience. “Why wouldn’t we?” she said. “We’re changing anyway.”
And that change is already visible: three years ago, Klein said, climate ranked 19th on voters’ list of priorities at the Iowa and New Hampshire Democratic primaries. This year, climate came second, only after health care.
The house is on fire, she said, and to truly step into this moment in history, we must all work to clear away the debris from those flames — to move past whatever it is that’s stopping politicians from confronting climate change. For Klein, that means electing Bernie Sanders to the White House. She said she sees Sanders as the only candidate who will treat climate as the priority that it is.
During the Q&A portion of the talk, Suarez asked Klein how young people should deal with the questions of how to live, where to go, what to do, what to learn and who to be in the face of climate change.
“Whatever your expertise is, whatever your passion is, you need to figure out how the emergency is going to reflect in your work,” Klein said.
Lynn Travnikova ’20.5 brought up the question of inclusion and exclusion in the climate movement. “How do we get [people from marginalized communities] inside the conversation, and how do we make sure that regardless of race and socioeconomic status people feel like they are part of that conversation, and their voice matters?” she asked.
For a long time, the mainstream environmental movement has not represented the communities that are most impacted by environmental harms, Klein said. “Those are the communities that need to be first in line to own and control their own renewable energy projects,” she said, referencing the fights against pipelines led by indigenous people as an example of more diverse collaboration.
Suarez told The Campus that the talk, organized by the Environmental Council and other students associated with the Environmental Studies department, aimed to reach students beyond the department who were grappling with what it means to come of age in a time of climate breakdown. He said that achieving the radical transformation Klein called for will take everyone.
“It’s going to take all kinds of roles, all kinds of capacities and all kinds of contexts,” he said.
(02/20/20 10:55am)
I love working at Middlebury. I’ve been here 26 years, and have seen a lot of changes over that time. I was involved in the original creation of what was then the International Studies major in the mid-1990s, and have always appreciated Middlebury’s global reach. Now, as Middlebury’s chief academic officer, I occupy a unique position from which to observe and appreciate Middlebury’s vast array of academic offerings that span the globe. I also have the good fortune to be charged with transforming the Envisioning Middlebury strategic framework into action.
Through the Envisioning Middlebury process, we clearly articulated our mission and vision to guide us in developing the institution’s direction and priorities. The world is evolving, demographics are shifting and students and their learning styles are changing. The Envisioning Middlebury strategic framework acknowledges those changes and provides the guideposts for Middlebury to sit at the forefront of innovation in the liberal arts.
As an institution, we discovered (or, perhaps more accurately, rediscovered) that Middlebury has an incredible variety of pedagogies, of ways of learning, and ways of knowing. Our exceptional faculty at the undergraduate college, the Language Schools, our institute in Monterey, the Bread Loaf School of English, the School of the Environment and the Schools Abroad provide this diversity of pedagogies. Among liberal arts colleges, we are unique in the opportunities we offer our students.
In particular, the Envisioning Middlebury process highlighted our unique global network, a network that I experience and appreciate every day. One of our major goals is to open pathways throughout this very network, so that students can experience firsthand the diversity of our pedagogy, the benefits of place-based learning and the value of intercultural competence. We already know how this works for students at our Schools Abroad, who encounter different cultures and educational systems around the world with the guidance of faculty and staff colleagues at our various sites. But this can expand even further. We can treat our institute in Monterey as, in effect, another site for our students to study and take full advantage of the many areas where the Institute excels.
To this end, last fall, we started a program in non-proliferation and terrorism studies at the institute that a number of undergraduates have taken advantage of. We are also now in the early planning phase to create a semester away in Monterey for undergraduates that focuses on environmental issues specific to the Monterey peninsula and California. Students will learn from the expert faculty at the institute, and the knowledge and skills they learn from this semester will help prepare them to address one of the world’s most challenging problems: climate change. Addressing such global challenges is core to Middlebury’s mission.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Middlebury has an incredible variety of pedagogies, of ways of learning, and ways of knowing.[/pullquote]
In addition to using our impressive variety of places and expertise, we can also cross-pollinate our pedagogies to enhance student learning. The Beyond the Page project represents an example of such cross-pollination. For years, theater arts have been a significant component of teaching and learning at the Bread Loaf School of English. Theater arts promote intellectual risk-taking and help build trust in our learning community at Bread Loaf. The Beyond the Page project will bring the Bread Loaf pedagogy to the undergraduate college through a partnership with college faculty and students. We know that this particular kind of teaching and learning is effective at Bread Loaf, and if pedagogy works well in one place, we should build on this throughout the institution.
To accomplish these and other goals, I work closely with my colleagues on the Provost’s Academic Council: Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty Sujata Moorti , Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Institute Jeff Dayton-Johnson, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Language Schools Steve Snyder, and Dean of International Programs Carlos Velez. Together, we form the core academic leadership of Middlebury, and are currently working to further the goals of Envisioning Middlebury. In my office’s recent call for special funding proposals, we outlined our priorities as: strengthening the global network of Middlebury programs through collaboration and partnership, enhancing digital fluency and critical engagement, building learning communities of faculty and students, and promoting our Energy 2028 goals. Each of these priorities reflects our strategic framework. We are enthused and energized by the submissions we have received thus far and we look forward to watching and guiding these projects to advance Middlebury’s strategic vision.
This is exciting work. It’s why I love doing what I do.
Jeff Cason is the Provost and Edward C. Knox Professor of International Studies and Political Science.
