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(10/10/19 10:03am)
“I have a confession: I am a true romantic. I fervently believe in happily ever after and true love always,” Professor Laurie Essig of the Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (GSFS) Department read to supporters of her newest book, “Love, Inc.”
“I am also a cynic,” Essig said. “I have a sinking feeling that romance blinds us with fairy dust.”
The audience of college students and Vermonters gathered at Stonecutter Spirits on Friday, Oct. 4, for “Love Stinks: 80s Rock Ballads + Laurie Essig’s Love Inc.,” an evening in which Essig deconstructed the “romantic industrial complex.” It seemed fitting that the event was held at a local, female-owned business that also temporarily houses a female-owned vintage pop-up shop called Reel Vintage. Co-hosted by Womensafe and Planned Parenthood NNE, the event sought to envision the feminist future Essig advocates for in “Love, Inc.”
Situated between barrels of gin and whiskey and racks of vintage clothing, Essig imparted her argument to the Blundstone-donned audience: the further capitalism drives the world towards environmental, economic and political chaos, the more society is driven towards the romance industry as a coping mechanism.
She began her argument with a tale of matrimony rendered sensational due to the then-modern technology of the mid-19th century. Queen Victoria’s white wedding was the first of its kind to become popularized by telegraph, a technology that allowed for the beginning of a cultural obsession with white virginal dresses, wedding rings and the tale of happily-ever-afters. Essig fast-forwarded to the 20th century era of Reaganomics (where all roads seem to lead), which was born amidst the global fascination (read: distraction) with Princess Diana and Prince Charles’s elaborate white wedding in 1981.
Instead of critiquing trickle-down economics and consequently engaging in productive civil discourse, as Essig might have preferred, the American public was being sold an idea of romantic bliss only made possible with the purchase of a wedding priced at — on average — $32,641 as of 2016. She notes that we continue to drug ourselves with romantic falsehoods to this day. Deconstructing the “dream[s] about a land of (white) plenty” in bestselling romance novels like “Twilight” and “Fifty Shades of Grey,” Essig argued that these books teach readers to value the attainment of unrealistically wealthy, white, heterosexual lifestyles.
Essig did not eschew “romantic” connection itself but rather urged the emotional and spiritual connection with another human being to be the foundation for positive change. She encouraged people to focus on this concept of love as opposed to false, purchased marital harmony that distracts us and drains our wallets. When asked by an audience member how to combat capitalism through our romantic lives, Essig jokingly responded,“Canvassing together works really well.”
On a more serious note, however, Essig urged her audience to not mistake her for propagating singleness and apathy as cures to this phenomenon, nor does she believe that wallowing in scientific projections of the climate crisis is a productive use of our time and mental capacity. “A future is possible — that’s the most romantic thing you can think.” Essig encouraged the audience to realize that the romantic future we all desire cannot be achieved just by spending an average of $2,379 on fresh flowers for their wedding celebration.
“I don’t see love or intimacy as a withdrawal from the world, but rather as a way to find someone to confront the hardships of the world with,” audience member Christian Kummer ’22 said.” Kummer pointed out that love — not necessarily even romance — can distract from civic engagement. He referenced obstacles of domestic life like laundry and errands — as reasons people often withdraw from the public sphere and advocated for healthy relationships that foster political action.
Of course, arriving at a place where one can think critically about public narratives and begin to dispel the tales of happily-ever-afters that drench our society is not simple.
One audience member who identified herself as the mother of a preteen attended Essig’s event as an avid opposer to the romance ideology, and said she actively works to counteract the powerful effects of “the Machine” that has made so much of our society numb and oblivious. In her household, her daughter doesn’t have a phone and is not allowed access to television. As a mother, the audience member tries to instill positive body image messages like encouraging her daughter to ask herself “What does [my] body need?” instead of succumbing to the pressures of mass media that sell fairy tales of what bodies look like to impressionable youth and adults alike.
While navigating romantic relationships is ultimately personal and these decisions are different for everyone, Essig stressed that this personal experience is fundamentally political and collective as well. She writes, “in that happy ending we ride off into the future not with our prince or princess to a castle on the hill, but with each other, all of us — married, single, straight, gay, old, young, white and black and Latino/a and more — fighting harder than we have ever fought before for a collective future.”
(10/03/19 9:59am)
Sometimes we think we’re awake when we’re merely sleep-walking. I was taught to recycle and compost kitchen waste in my youth and have since considered myself fairly environmentally conscious. “Waste is bad,” and “Conservation is good,” are mantras that I grew up with and have passed on to my children (both Midd grads).
On a recent visit to the Galápagos, I woke up to some startling discoveries. However environmentally conscious I might consider myself, when I was invited this past summer to join a group of students from Planet Forward, a George Washington University-based environmental communication and storytelling program, I was in for an eye opener.
Frank Sesno, Middlebury ’77, trustee emeritus and founder of Planet Forward, introduced their mission “to inform, engage and inspire people to take action to move our planet forward.” This program, which has involved Middlebury students over the years, brought 10 undergraduate students to the Galápagos to experience a life changing adventure. As a mentor, I was with them every step of the way as we explored this incredible place, teeming with life: the place Charles Darwin called “a little world within itself.”
I was immediately struck by each student’s concerns about the global environmental crisis. Despite the polarizing debate about the reality of the climate crisis, all 10 students from colleges around the country were determined, focused and hopeful about the future. Last April, their prize-winning journalism had been celebrated at the annual Planet Forward Summit in Washington D.C. The prize-winning StoryFest topics ranged from energy conserving electric buses and algae that digest plastic, to programs to reduce food waste and meditation practices to enhance environmental awareness.
CEO of Lindblad-National Geographic Expeditions Sven Lindbland announced the StoryFest winners. Each of these winners chose a topic relevant to the Galápagos that they investigated by conducting interviews with naturalists aboard the ship and at the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island. Their videos, photo essays and journalism focused on invasive species, ocean plastics, the balance between conservation and tourism, among other topics.
The wildlife taught us about a world of interactions without fear (but with respectful boundaries). We learned that, historically, the most serious invasive species in the Galápagos is human beings. We came within a few feet of sea lions who were not the least bit perturbed by our presence.
My own big “aha” moment came when students talked about the massive threat plastic poses to our environment. We sit in judgment of those who hunted tortoises, quietly condemning their brutality while the world drinks from an estimated 500 billion plastic cups each year. We then toss those cups into bins when we could be carrying reusable bottles or cups instead, thereby reducing the megatons of waste that choke our landfills and desecrate our oceans.
My experience with the Planet Forward students galvanized my commitment and imagination. I saw how these 10 students inspired an entire ship full of vacationers and explorers to think about the life lessons contained in this pristine environment. Observing the tenderness of a mother sea lion feeding her pup made us realize how interconnected all life is in the quest for survival. Each one of us felt compelled to think about what we can do to move from anxiety and dismay to action.
As stewards of our planet, we bear the responsibility to examine our own values and actions and assess whether they correspond to a genuine concern for the environment. Every product we buy casts a vote for what we value. Agreeing to buy food packaged in plastic or styrofoam is a vote for continuing to package products this way. We shouldn’t vote this way anymore. Each of us needs to share stories to inform and inspire others, write to our senators and representatives, and get involved in efforts to reduce energy consumption. We must all ask ourselves what personal changes we will make, which environmental groups we could join and how we will galvanize others to move our planet forward.
Middlebury students are invited to submit their own stories and podcasts, along with college students from around the country, to Planet Forward’s StoryFest. The next trip is this summer in Iceland.
(09/26/19 12:04pm)
Middlebury’s student voting rate increased from 15% in the 2014 midterm elections to 51% in 2018, according to a national voting report released last week by the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education (IDHE) at Tufts University.
“This increase is incredibly important because it demonstrates how Middlebury College students are engaged in both local and national politics, and have realized the importance of their generation going to the polls and casting their vote for causes they believe in,” said Nora Bayley ’21, co-president of the non-partisan student organization MiddVote. MiddVote, which was founded in 2006 encourages and helps students participate in local, state and national elections.
Middlebury is not alone in this upwad trend. College voting across the United States has more than doubled from 2014 to 2018, with national voting rates skyrocketing among eligible college students from 19% to 40% within the four years. These statistics were published in the IDHE’s Democracy Counts 2018, which analyzed voting patterns for more than 10 million college students on more than 1,000 campuses across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The IDHE report shows that Middlebury students turned out to the polls in greater numbers than most other colleges across the United States, Bayley noted. This difference can perhaps be attributed to MiddVote’s efforts to engage students; last fall, MiddVote held at least 10 voter registration drives and absentee-ballot request drives for the midterm elections.
“We also provided free stamps for students to use when sending their ballots back to their home state, and helped students who were experiencing difficulties requesting or receiving their ballot in the mail,” Bayley said.
MiddVote also received a grant from the organization #VoteTogether, which allowed it to provide transportation to and from the Middlebury Town Offices on election day for Vermont voters, and to host a “Party at the Polls” for both college students and locals.
“Helping remove barriers to voting can encourage participation and we hope to carry on this initiative during the 2020 presidential elections,” said Ashley Laux, program director at the Center for Community Engagement. “MiddVote’s in-person outreach method of hosting many on-campus voter registration and absentee ballot drives is a useful mechanism for Middlebury College students to get their questions answered by trained peers,” she said.
IDHE intended for this study to “support political learning and civic engagement, as well as to identify and address gaps in political and civic participation,” according to a press release. It did not receive information that could individually identify students or how they voted.
The IDHE findings looked at differences across genders, race and ethnicity, year, major and various other factors when it came to determining voting habits.
Nationwide, women in college continued to vote at higher rates than men in 2018. This trend was true for Middlebury as well. The report showed that black women maintained their position as the most active voters on campus, and Hispanic women made the largest gains.
The largest voting rate increase nationally across racial or ethnic groups was among Hispanic students, from 14% in 2014 to 36.5% in 2018.
“Voting gaps between disciplines persisted in 2018,” according to the IDHE press release. Turnout among students in STEM fields and in business lag behind students studying the humanities, social sciences and education.
At Middlebury, of the majors included in the study, Visual and Performing Arts ranked the highest in 2018 voting rate, with Natural Resources and Conservation trailing closely behind.
Historically, older Americans vote at higher rates than their younger counterparts. But the turnout gap between students under 22 and students over 30 decreased 2014 and 2018, the study found.
According to the U.S. Elections Project, the voting rate increased among all Americans by 13% in 2018 as compared to 2014. In comparison, the college and university National Student Voting Rate (NSVR) rose 21%.
Increased political involvement on college campuses will likely impact the 2020 presidential elections, according to an article published in the Washington Post. NBC News analysts credited voters under 30 as a key group in bringing about the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives in 2018. Surveys indicate that young voters tend to oppose President Trump, especially on issues such as climate change, immigration, gun violence and student debt.
MiddVote will continue its efforts this semester. Most recently, the organization hosted a voter registration outside McCullough on Tuesday, Sept. 23 for National Voter Registration Day.
(09/26/19 10:05am)
Curious students on the heels of the global climate strike movement turned out in droves to the three-day Clifford Symposium this past week.
There, they grappled with the future of the global ocean and were introduced to exploratory and conservationist efforts. The symposium brought together researchers, activists, filmmakers and students to offer a multidisciplinary perspective on one of the world’s most precious resources.
“I wanted to strike a balance between sounding the alarm and asking people to share research that would incite a sense of wonder and hope,” said Associate Professor of English and American Literatures Daniel Brayton, one of the symposium’s organizers who also teaches in the Environmental Science Department.
Keynote speaker Dr. Kara Lavender Law, of the Sea Education Association (SEA), struck that balance in her talk, “Reflections of an Oceans Plastic Scientist” on Thursday night in Wilson Hall. Law, a leading scientist in the study of marine plastic debris, spoke about her educational path and discussed the harm that plastics, especially microplastics (pieces less than five millimeters long), can have on marine life.
Law and colleagues recently estimated that between 1950–2016, there were 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic produced globally. “I can’t even tell you a reasonable number of Empire State Buildings or elephants or football stadiums to give you an idea of how much material that is,” she said.
Scientists don’t know exactly how much of that plastic debris is now in the ocean, what form it takes or how it will impact human health. However, they widely agree that plastics are hazardous to marine animals, who are likely to ingest or become entangled in the material. Some bio-families will even grow on floating microplastics.
To Law, solving the ocean plastic pollution will require a multidisciplinary overhaul of the current system. She suggested the audience start locally, by asking themselves: “What happens to my trash?” Although the question may seem obvious, acting on it can be hard.
“The conveniences of [using plastic] don’t impact us on a daily basis and we’re privileged enough to live in this beautiful clean, green environment regardless of the waste we’re producing and the impact on our earth,” Alex Cobb ’20 said.
[pullquote speaker="Daniel Brayton" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]We tend to think of the environment as green. We think of green space, of grassy meadows and forest, and yet 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water.[/pullquote]
Outside Wilson Hall, a group of local women from Sewing For Change, a “community effort to end the use of single-use bags,” were working to reduce our collective waste. Since January of 2019, they have sewn 500 bags from reused materials. Bethany Barry Menkart, a group member, said they hope to reach 1,000 bags by the end of the year with the help of students.
On Friday afternoon, attendees crowded the Rohatyn A. Jones conference room to hear about whale watching in New Zealand at a talk comparing previous and present global whale population numbers. Jennifer Crandall ’20.5 and Caitlin Dicara ’20 presented alongside visiting Associate Professor of Maritime History and Literature Richard King of SEA.
The students opened by discussing their experience conducting six weeks of fieldwork on a tall ship off the coast of New Zealand. Crandall described being woken up at 3 a.m. one day amidst rough seas. The waves were over 13 feet high and it was pouring rain and windy. In that moment, Crandall recalled, “the ocean became more alive to me because I saw how powerful it was.”
Over the course of the semester, Crandall, Dicara and their 14 classmates transcribed the log book of Commodore Morris, which detailed where and when the sailor had seen and killed whales in the 1850s. Using data from the log and their own journey, they created a Geographic Information System map and studied shifts in whale populations.
King presented an overview of the history of right whales (or black whales), whose coastal living and bountiful oil made them the “right” whales to hunt. His discussion, like Law’s, struck the balance between underscoring the perils of the present and offering hope for the future. King explained, for example, that from 1927–1963 not a single right whale was sighted off the coast of New Zealand, in large part due to over-whaling. Now, with the population on the rebound, there are around 70 sightings per year.
Throughout the symposium, audiences and speakers alike grappled with the idea of how to get oceanic issues on peoples’ radars. As Dicara explained, “it’s really hard to get people to care who are inland of the ocean.”
“We tend to think of the environment as green,” Brayton said. “We think of green space, of grassy meadows and forest, and yet 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water.”
The symposium’s message was clear: If we want to understand environmental issues and advocate for a healthier world, we can start by looking to the ocean.
(09/26/19 10:00am)
After lifetimes of being told to turn off the lights and stick to reusable water bottles, it’s easy to feel hopeless about climate change. Take this week: On Sunday, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization released a new, harrowing report about rising temperatures. Rather than engage with climate strikers across the country, the President tweeted that Greta Thunberg “seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future” (“So nice to see!”). And Facebook photos of devastation in the wake of Hurricane Dorian offered demoralizing, daily reminders that we aren’t prepared for the even more immediate consequences of the climate crisis.
Still, for those who joined the protest at College Park last Friday, it felt like maybe — just maybe — we might still have cause for hope.
With an issue as confounding and urgent as climate change, collective actions like voting and protesting are the closest things we currently have to answers. At a basic, human level, participation in large-scale activist movements is unifying. On Friday, members of the Middlebury community found renewed strength in the knowledge that others were not only worried about, but that they were working on, the same issue as they were, whether that knowledge came from joining the crowds in College Park or pulling up Facebook to find friends from all walks of life clicking “Interested” on the page for their own local climate strikes.
Energy2028 — the college’s four-pronged framework for increasing campus sustainability over the next nine years — similarly was the culmination of years of student climate activism. If upheld, the college’s promises represent enormous, tangible progress.
It seems a bit soon, though, to start patting ourselves on the back.
Self-interrogation, on the part of this editorial board and the broader student body alike, is important. Many Middlebury students (including members of this board) consider themselves self-aware and thoughtful eco-citizens. Yet many of those same Middlebury students have little knowledge of their college’s ecological footprint, or the college’s plan to reduce those footprints, as evidenced by the amount of background research we had to require in composing this editorial.
That is no longer acceptable if we claim sincerity in calling for the kinds of sweeping structural change our climate crisis demands. How can we hold the administration accountable to promises if we have not properly investigated what those promises are? Collective action is crucial; still, it rarely comes about as a result of abstract or isolated, uninformed thought. The UN General Secretary, António Guterres, made a similar point in anticipation of this week’s Climate Action Summit in New York, warning world leaders to leave behind “beautiful speeches” and arrive instead “with concrete plans and strategies for carbon neutrality by 2050.” He closed the summit by providing a comprehensive overview of those concrete initiatives. We need to apply the same substantive standard to climate conversations on campus.
Once we stopped trying to write an editorial telling everyone to drive less and recycle more, the editorial board began discussing the different ways we can use our platform to cover climate activism on campus. As mentioned in our first editorial of the year, we often talk about “holding the administration accountable.” The Campus sees itself as a sort of campus watchdog, and when it comes to an unprecedented emergency like climate change, interrogating the role our institution plays in that emergency is of utmost importance.
To that end, we are committed to publishing more climate-related content (and would love to receive some of that from you, in the form of pitches and op-eds). Beginning this fall, we will be spearheading a special interactive project that will allow viewers to visually engage with the ways in which Energy2028 is hitting the marks — and falling short.
This commitment stems not only from our duty as truth-tellers, but out of our unwavering belief in the importance of collective action. For students, professors and locals alike, that formed a rare, raw moment of solidarity, even — dare we say it — hope.
(09/26/19 10:00am)
Climate activists in over 150 countries left work, school and business as usual to join last Friday’s Global Climate Strike.
The first event in a planned week of worldwide climate activism, the Global Climate Strike arrived in Middlebury as hundreds of students, professors and town residents gathered at College Park to protest government apathy toward climate change. College students walked out of class at around 9:45 a.m. to attend the rally, joining students of all ages from the Addison Central School District as well as educators and community members.
Student organizations Divest Middlebury, Sunrise Middlebury, and Middlebury Sunday Night Environmental Group planned the strike in collaboration with Extinction Rebellion Vermont, a local climate activism group. Organizers Cora Kircher ’20, Zoe Grodsky ’20.5, Connor Wertz ’22 and Divya Gudur ’21 had been coordinating the event since July.
Attendees gradually collected around the speakers’ platform, and when most had arrived, strikers kicked off the event by chanting, “We are unstoppable. Another world is possible.”
“In my three years doing the climate strike, this is maybe the largest turnout we’ve had,” Grodsky told The Campus.
Some protestors held handmade signs that displayed phrases like: “Denial is not a policy,” “Go Greta [Thunberg!]” and “There is no Planet B.” College students hoisted a banner that stated “Strike 4 Climate.” The excited chattering and passionate dialogues about climate change subsided as a series of inspired speeches began. Families, friends and strangers alike stood side-by-side and listened intently.
Kircher spoke first, concentrating on the necessary coordination of the climate justice movement with “decolonization, racial justice and indigenous resistance.” As Middlebury is situated on what she referred to as “stolen land,” Kircher included a moment of silence in solidarity with the Abenaki — a native people of Vermont.
“We are here to demand an end to the age of fossil fuels, and we are here to demand something better,” Kircher said. “We’re striking because we believe that another world is possible, and we’re striking because that world is only as close as we make it and only as far away as we allow it to be.”
Grodsky spoke next, focusing on the uprising against oppressive institutions and the impossibility of true climate justice in a society where migrant, racial, and economic injustice are systemic and institutionalized.
“The climate change and the systems we talk about have material consequences on people’s lives—not in some far-off future, not in some far-off place, but right here, right now,” Grodsky said. “We must acknowledge that the disproportionate harm of climate change is falling right now on the most marginalized populations.”
During her speech, Grodsky also asked the crowd to join in remembrance of Juan de León Gutierrez, a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant who, while fleeing the repercussions of climate change, was one of six children since September 2018 to die in United States custody.
Professor of Sociology and author of “Global Unions, Local Power” Jamie McCallum spoke after Grodsky, highlighting the power of protest to teach and to “win a better world.”
“There’s nothing I can think of that’s more ‘liberal arts’ than professors and students and community members being hauled off to jail together after such an action [as blockading the ICE Facility, or other acts of civil disobedience],” McCallum said at the rally.
McCallum also emphasized the ongoing alignment of the labor movement with the climate justice movement. He cited the United Auto Workers as an example of recent protest: On Sept. 20, they held a strike of 50,000 people against General Motors — a global corporation.
“We’re at a point where it’s pretty obvious that the climate crisis is an economic crisis, as well, and the people that have the power to transform an economic crisis, for the most part, are workers. Whether or not you work in an extractive industry, the climate crisis is beginning to affect all of us,” McCallum told The Campus. “There are all these ways in which these movements are cross-pollinating, and that is the holy grail of social change.”
Vivian Ross, a first-year at Middlebury Union High School, spoke fourth at the rally. She emphasized the onus on all community members — despite age, past activism (or lack thereof), or other obligations — to somehow actively engage in combating climate change.
“Walking out of school, leaving work, organizing a rally … These are actions that build and build into a barrier so high that the politicians and corporations can no longer scale it with their money and blatant lies,” Ross said. “As one human race, we are capable of making all the right decisions before the Earth as we know it dives off the cliff that it’s barreling toward. We are all perfectly capable of digging in our heels and refusing to let the worst of us get the better of us.”
Environmental Studies Professor Rebecca Gould then taught the crowd a Hebrew song called “My Strength,” traditionally sung in peaceful protests — at “racial justice marches in D.C., in front of ICE facilities, after the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, and in Jerusalem with women fighting for the right to pray at the Western Wall.”
“What music has done in social justice movements for hundreds of years, across cultures, is help us tap into the hope when we feel so much anger — not just righteous anger at the corporations but anger that gets in the way,” Gould said.
(09/26/19 9:58am)
Four million people across the globe went on strike last Friday, Sept. 20, because they know that for our world to understand the scale and urgency of the climate crisis, we must completely shatter our consent to the status quo that is killing us. Four million citizens of this world shouted and sang and screamed and cried that we cannot simply continue business as usual in a world of apocalyptic chaos.
Though I use alarmist language to describe the climate crisis, I actually don’t think much about this emergency anymore. When I first realized the scale and urgency of our current moment, the fires, floods, refugees, hurricanes and images of our demise bled into my brain and stained every moment. But there is only so much literature I could pore through before it simply became unproductive and self-destructive; before the fear became all-consuming.
That isn’t to say that I stopped this activism business. And it isn’t to say that I didn’t show up at the climate strike rally in Middlebury; that I didn’t stand on the steps of City Hall and pour out my thoughts on climate change to the 3,000 people who showed up to the rally in Burlington. And that isn’t to say that the climate crisis and all the contributing layers of oppression are not the reasons I get up in the morning, that I work to understand and combat this problem every day. They just aren’t the only reasons anymore.
Like so many others, I was steeped in the fear of our impending doom after the 2016 election and the IPCC report of October 2018. The cardboard signs at the strike echoed these fears with phrases like “There is no planet B” and “March now or swim later.” This messaging resonates with Greta Thunberg’s call-to-action. The 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who started these school strikes famously declared, “Our house is on fire … I want you to panic.” Unflinching in their declarations of institutional and generational responsibility, Thunberg and major climate justice organizations like Extinction Rebellion echo the alarm and fear. The crisis bled into their rhetoric, rendering it desperate, drowning and daring.
Thunberg’s rhetoric has a place. Extinction Rebellion’s cathartic actions have a place (wouldn’t you love to glue yourself to Jeremy Corbyn’s house?). They break down the blindness we have built up against our seemingly inevitable demise, and force us to reckon with our roles in the narrative of human history. Will I drop everything for this one thing that matters the most?
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I believe what sustains movements is the picture that appears in your mind when you think of why you wake up in the morning, and what you are striking for.[/pullquote]
However, narratives of fear and chaos can also drive us deeper into the climate anxiety that grips our generation. They might even paralyze potential activists. Fear and urgency can catalyze moments of mobilization; these charged events in which organizers have managed to make something out of the panic of a generation. But movements cannot sustain themselves purely on the fear of loss. No, I believe what sustains movements is the picture that appears in your mind when you think of why you wake up in the morning, and what you are striking for.
As I looked out at the crowd from the steps of City Hall at the Burlington rally, I felt the beauty of that truth, that picture, ripple through the crowd. Every person who flooded the street cared and wanted to be a part of a collective vision for a better world. When I spoke of the Green New Deal, the crowd cheered at the declaration of green job guarantees, decarbonization, regenerative agriculture, migrant justice and indigenous sovereignty. Those thousands of activists reminded me why I bothered to stand on those steps, to speak of legislation in Washington and Montpelier that does not even exist yet. It is the palpable enthusiasm for, and the faith in the concept of a Green New Deal, a vision, a promise to begin to untangle the web of oppression that has brought us here.
So I don’t wake up thinking of death anymore, heart hammering to the beat of the latest alarm screaming from the headlines. I wake up in the morning because I love the smell of sycamores after it rains. I wake up in the morning because this summer I learned to crave and appreciate getting my hands dirty in the garden. I wake up in the morning because I love long car rides with activists, learning about their lives and their passions and why they took this new exhilarating and uncertain path. The reason I wake up is grand vision found in the promise of tiny actions: planted trees, real, regenerative food, connections that pull us from our corners of the earth towards something greater than ourselves. Those beautiful moments are the seeds of the Green New Deal, the political vision’s essence as it struggles against the brutality of our American politics. The climate strike was a gorgeous, human moment, but it was just that — a moment. Following this moment in history, it is our responsibility to deeply question What will I do now? What will I fight for now? Will I drop everything, change everything, for this vision that matters most?
(09/19/19 10:05am)
Middlebury College broke ground on an anaerobic digester facility at the end of August, pushing the college towards its goal of using 100% renewable energy sources by 2028. The digester, the first of its kind in Vermont, will combine cow manure and food waste to convert the energy stored in organic materials present in the manure into Renewable Natural Gas (RNG).
During the event, spokespeople from the college, Vanguard Renewables, Goodrich Farm and the State of Vermont gathered at Goodrich Farm in Salisbury, Vt., to discuss the significance of the facility for the community and the college.
“This is a unique partnership between a Vermont college, local dairy farm, utility, and renewable energy company,” said John Hanselman, executive chairman and CEO of Vanguard Renewables. “The exciting result will be a sustainable source of energy that didn’t previously exist and the recycling of tons of organic waste that was once sent to landfills. The project will also enable food producers and users in Vermont to comply with Act 148, Vermont’s Universal Recycling law that bans all food waste from landfills and goes into effect in 2020.”
Vanguard, a renewable energy company based in Wellesley, Mass., will build, own and operate the digester. Vanguard currently owns and operates five other digesters located in Massachusetts, and its collaboration with Middlebury will be its first with a college.
“There isn’t another college in the country that’s in a partnership with a digester,” Hanselman said. “Middlebury is a true leader in this regard.”
The college will be the primary consumer of the RNG produced at the dairy farm. The energy from the digester is created by combining locally sourced food waste with the cow manure. This allows for a process of anaerobic digestion to take place and produce renewable gas that will be used to supply approximately 50% of the energy the college uses for heating and cooling. The other 50 % will be supplied by the college’s biomass plant.
Gabe Desmond, ’20.5, a student organizer and summer Sustainability Solutions Lab intern, toured the project site at Goodrich Farm.
“Although we meet the majority of our heating needs from gasifying woodchips in our biomass plant, during peak consumption, we still rely on fossil fuels, namely fracked natural gas,” he said. “Fracked gas is not only bad in terms of climate change, but it is also detrimental to the communities who live near fracking sites. Transitioning to RNG that comes from manure and food waste will allow us to stop relying on fracking, while also repurposing food waste and manure.”
Vermont Gas, another shareholder in the Goodrich Farm digester, is spearheading the construction process of the five-mile pipeline that will connect the farm with the company’s pipeline network in Addison County. Once completed, the natural gas produced at the farm will travel via the pipeline to Middlebury College’s main power plant.
Beth Parent, the communications and brand manager of Vermont Gas Systems, said that her company is the first local distribution company in the country to offer customers a renewable natural gas service.
“With the Vanguard project, VGS is proud to have a local source of RNG, with all of the benefits it brings to this community and our state,” she said. “This is another big win for Vermont — a big step forward in helping achieve Vermont’s clean energy goals, and we at VGS are proud to do our part.”
The digester is expected to produce 180,000 Mcf per year, with each Mcf containing 1,000 cubic feet of renewable natural gas. The college will buy 100,000 Mcfs from Vanguard, Vermont Gas will buy 40,000 Mcf and Vanguard will retain 40,000 Mcf.
While the partnership between Middlebury College, Vanguard Renewables, Vermont Gas and Goodrich Farm was announced in 2017, the Goodrich family and the college first engaged in talks of such a project over a decade ago, and have been working on it in various forms ever since.
“Our family is excited to see this project transition from a dream into a reality,” said Chase Goodrich, who is among the fourth generation of his family to operate the farm.
The farm will reap the benefits of the digester, both environmentally and financially; free heat for farm use and an annual lease payment for hosting the digester will diversify the farm’s revenue sources.
According to Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Anson Tebbetts, the environmental benefits of the digester all have serious potential to transform the dairy industry, one of the main contributors to climate change. These benefits include the production of quality liquid fertilizer that will reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers, as well as a reduction in the farm’s phosphorus levels and greenhouse gas emissions.
At the digester’s launch, Tebbetts credited the Goodrich family for their leadership.
“We hope a project like this spark more innovative partnerships that include other Vermont farms,” Tebbetts said.
President Laurie Patton voiced a similar sentiment, confident that the facility will “provide our students and faculty with new research and teaching opportunities” and will serve as a fundamental component in the college’s Energy 2028 plan.
The 2028 initiative also includes a 25% reduction in overall energy use and a complete divestment of Middlebury’s endowment in fossil fuels.
Construction of the anaerobic digester is slated to be completed by 2020.
(09/19/19 10:02am)
The college is launching a new workshop program for faculty and staff that will give employees tools to check their biases and create an inclusive campus environment. Called the Inclusive Practitioners Program, this new initiative comes in the wake of several high profile bias incidents in classrooms last spring.
Renee Wells, director of education for equity and inclusion, has designed 14 workshops this fall. She explained that the workshops fall under three different tracks: inclusive design for learning, engaging and supporting diverse communities, and climate and dynamics in learning environments.
The workshops are open to faculty and staff, and participants can either choose to register for individual sessions or to enroll in the program. Program participants commit to attending three workshops this year, as well as brown bag lunch sessions where faculty and staff meet to discuss workshop material further.
Wells said the program is designed to offer faculty and staff the choice to engage in the kind of learning they want surrounding how to create a more inclusive campus community.
“People can self-select whatever sessions they want,” she said. “If you’re enrolled in the program, you’ve agreed to do three workshops but all three could be in inclusive design. It doesn’t direct faculty into any particular track.”
While many students called for mandatory anti-bias training in the wake of offensive material being used in classrooms last spring, Wells said in her experience opt-in programs work better.
“You can’t give someone a training that makes them not biased,” she said. “It’s a process of becoming critically more aware. All of these workshops collectively are meant to create ongoing opportunities for people to build capacity across all these areas.”
Wells hopes to attract motivated faculty from the start, and encourages participants to discuss what they have learned with their colleagues to increase interest further. Many faculty and staff, Wells said, have preconceived ideas of what development workshops look like that might make them less interested in participating in these discussions.
“We’ve all sat through really terrible workshops,” she said. “What I’ve found is once faculty start participating in them they realize very quickly, ‘wow this is really different than I thought it was going to be and I see where I’m benefiting from this.’ So it tends to lead to increased participation.”
The first workshop, scheduled for Sept. 25, is titled “Turning tension into learning opportunities: responding to offensive comments in the classroom.”
Wells has designed the work- shops as spaces of self reflection where participants can build new skills. She explained that some of the workshops will be in a presentation format, and others will involve group problem solving around common issues that come up in the classroom.
Many faculty members and staff have expressed interest in both the workshops and the program. As of the print deadline, 26 faculty and 27 staff have enrolled in the pro- gram, and another eight faculty and staff members have registered for one or more individual work- shops.
Assistant Professor of Economics Tanya Byker signed up for all the workshops that fit in her schedule.
“When it comes to creating an inclusive classroom, I am pretty sure I don’t even know what I don’t know,” she said. “Ignorance is no excuse for screwing this up, especially when I am being offered an opportunity to learn.”
Hector Vila, an associate professor of writing and rhetoric, hopes the five workshops he has signed up for will help guide dialogue about how professors engage on Middlebury’s changing campus.
“As a teacher and professor, it’s my responsibility to keep learning, trying to always be better, more creative about what I do,” he said. “We have a changing student body, we have a changing culture, and so we have to address our teaching so that we can meet the needs of students, now and tomorrow.”
Carol Wood, the college’s costume shop director, decided to participate in the full program. She said she’s looking forward to the workshops’ less-structured atmosphere, which she hopes will allow for participants to share ideas and hear other perspectives more openly.
“It is so necessary to open our minds to other ways of thinking about how the world should work, how we can make sure everyone has a fair shake, how we can transcend our cultural bias,” she said. “I want to become more aware of my own biases, have fewer blind spots, and pass on that learning to others.”
According to Wells, the work- shops will be offered more than once for faculty who could not at- tend the first time, and new sessions will be added. She hopes that, as the program continues, it will start to reach hesitant faculty and staff and start to create true cultural change.
“Part of what we’re trying to do is build this as an expectation for part of the work at Middlebury,” she said.
Part of that expectation will also come out of new hiring practices that ask prospective faculty about how they incorporate inclusivity into their work.
“If you’re submitting something in your application, if you’re going to be asked about it in your interview, if when you get here you are invited to participate in this program, [the culture] shifts.”
Wells has been pleased to see the interest in faculty and staff have already expressed for the program’s first steps.
“A lot of people have already signed up for three or more work- shops already in the fall semester,” she said. “It’s funny because ever since the workshop line up came out ... people will start talking, and then I feel like I’m Elizabeth Warren because I’m like ‘I’ve got a workshop for that.’”
(05/09/19 9:55am)
In the culmination of a highly successful season, the 2018-19 Middlebury Debate society traveled to Panama City, Panama last week for the Pan American Championships (Pan Ams) and achieved a historic performance for the program.
The annual title tournament features teams from North, Central and South America, bringing together college debaters from the United States, Panama, Colombia, Jamaica and Mexico, among other countries. The tournament includes both an English-speaking division and a Spanish-speaking division, which take place simultaneously. In an international debate community dominated by English-speaking speakers and events, this Spanish facet of Pan Ams increases inclusivity across language barriers and fosters cross-cultural community.
The society sent two debate pairs to the tournament, consisting of Amanda Werner ’21 and Justin Cooper ’22, as well as Nate Obbard ’21 and Charlotte Massey ’19. Additionally, Middlebury Debate member Van Barth ’21 served on the tournament’s adjudication team.
“It was quite exhilarating to compete in Pan Ams,” said Cooper, the society’s Vice President in an email to The Campus.“To represent Middlebury College to all of North, South and Central America is a big role to fill, but I feel that we did a good job of filling it.” Cooper and Werner made it to semifinals
Both Middlebury teams made it through seven preliminary rounds and placed in the top eight teams in the semifinal rounds. Obbard and Massey continued onto the final round, which covered climate change ethics. They ultimately won the tournament’s English division. This marked the team’s first time winning a title tournament in known history since its conception in 1912.
Massey explained that competing with Obbard was a deciding factor in their success at Pan Ams. “We were very in sync and had our prep time and speaking roles dialed in.” She explained that they have different strengths and that their skill sets balance well.
In fact, Massey and Obbard had seen success together in several tournaments over the course of the season, competing abroad in Oxford, England and Cape Town, South Africa. One week prior to Pan Ams, the pair ranked 22nd at the United States Universities Debating Championship (USUDC) in Clemson, South Carolina.
“In total, we did 20 full rounds of competitive debate during an eight-day period between USUDC and Pan Ams,” Massey said.
For the society, which has a particularly young membership this season, it has been a record year. In December, Massey and Obbard placed 70th at the World Universities Debating Championship in Cape Town, a competition including 400 teams from over 90 countries. Werner and Quinn Boyle ’21 ranked 224th.
At the Berkeley IV in January, Massey, Barth and Boyle made it to the semifinals, with Massey ranking third speaker overall. In February, Barth and Obbard made it to the quarterfinals of the US Universities Eastern Championship at George Washington University. At the Empire Debates at Kings College in New York City, Massey and Cooper made it to the semifinals, Massey won second varsity speaker, and Cooper won second novice speaker.
Massey reflected on her four years on the team, noting that, after graduating a class of talented debaters her first year, the team underwent a redeveloping period. Now, the majority of the team is composed of sophomores and first-years.
All debaters said that the sense of community on the debate team is the reason they keep working towards their goals, not to mention the valuable critical thinking and presentation skills they are building.
“Since joining the debate team in my freshman year, I have formed close friendships with other members of the team,” Werner said. “I truly love debate’s close-knit community, and I value how much we support one another both inside and outside of debate rounds.”
Next year, the team will look to build on its current success with a new group of novices. For more information about the debate society, or to join, contact debateso@middlebury.edu.
(05/02/19 10:34am)
Last September, 100 people from all over Vermont gathered at the Bread Loaf campus in Ripton to discuss their visions for their state’s future. Activist Fran Putnam led the charge, with Middlebury College Economics Professor Jon Isham acting as a moderator for the event. Today, these Vermonters have formed Vision for Vermont, a grassroots group working “to try to help bridge the divisions that have come to the surface in our country and in Vermont in the last several years,” according to their website.
Although the first meeting was held in 2018, Putnam dates the organization’s origin back to the 2016 election. After Trump was elected, Putnam and several others from the Middlebury area participated in the Women’s Marches in Montpelier and Washington, D.C.
They decided they wanted to continue this work to “move forward with turning this country [into] what we want to see rather than how divisive it [was] and still is.” So, they formed “Huddlebury,” a group that has met every two to three weeks since January of 2017. The group has been “trying to find ways to move forward, both locally and regionally,” Putnam said.
Huddlebury members began by reading climate activist Naomi Klein’s book “No Is Not Enough.” In it, Klein encourages Americans to have a particular vision rather than simply saying ‘no’ to everything. “That book was very inspirational to us,” Putnam explained.
Next, the group read George Lakey’s “Viking Economics” and attended several of his lectures in March of 2018. In April, Middlebury College Food Studies Professor Molly Anderson invited Lakey to campus to speak. Lakey described Nordic countries’ visions and how they were able to transform their governments and societies.
Putnam and her cohort asked themselves, “How can we do this in Vermont?” and decided on a vision summit, inviting people from all over the state to come together last September at Bread Loaf.
Isham became involved through, as he described, a serendipitous moment: he ran into Putnam and Anderson early last summer at the Natural Foods Co-Op. When they mentioned they were looking for a facilitator for a summit in September, Isham volunteered himself.
Isham has kept up with the groups since September and has “loved following their progress.” Through the fall, he worked with Putnam on developing a project for his Environmental Studies senior seminar class.
Over the course of the spring semester, Isham’s class has been working on a podcast for the Vision for Vermont website. Students have interviewed Vision for Vermont members and other Vermonters, including teachers, farmers, indigenous people and people of color.
Isham emphasized the importance of students looking at people a generation before them who were trying to affect change. “It’s helpful to see what worked for them, what didn’t, what their frustrations were, what they wish they had done differently,” he said.
One goal of the students’ project has been bringing more diversity to Vision for Vermont. The senior seminar is “trying to reach different demographics … to learn from these folks,” Isham stated.
Putnam expressed gratitude for the students’ work. “We’re trying to reach out to people whose voices are often not heard … we want to talk to people feeling disgruntled or angry, or that no one is listening to them, or that their voice doesn’t count,” Putnam said.
In addition to his senior seminar class, various other students have worked with Putnam on the project, including those involved in the Sunday Night Environmental Group (SNEG); Bayu Zulkifli ’21 designed the website while Leif Taranta ’20.5 and Cat La Roche ’21 have also collaborated with the group.
Over the course of the summit and following meetings, the group drafted a vision statement, published on their website. The statement addresses issues ranging from healthcare and food security to affordable housing and a strong and fair economy. It imagines “a future where Vermonters care for each other, their communities, and the earth; where the issues that matter to all of us are resolved in a way that protects our environment and combats further climate change; and where access to health care, and economic, racial and gender equity are assured for everyone.”
Putnam discussed the importance of the positivity and optimism of the group and vision statement. “The news is so bad every day … if I can get a group of people together moving forward and looking ahead to something more positive, it makes me and everyone around me feel better,” she said.
“Social change is [a] hard thing to steer, to understand and to manage,” Isham said. He believes starting with conversations is essential. “Think of churches in [the] civil rights movement, or college campuses in fights for women’s liberation and gay rights.”
La Roche believes people’s ideal worlds are not so different between parties, and that the vision statement is getting at these universal core values. People want the same things, “they just disagree on the methods to get there.”
Ultimately, the group hopes to finalize their vision statement and then start sharing it with politicians, activists and others. They plan to “meet with state representatives and senators, and perhaps organize a teach-in or rally,” La Roche said. However, they are in no rush; project members are “just letting the vision statement come together,” La Roche added.
“When enough people support [the vision], you can take it to the government and show them we want big changes, not little actions,” Putnam explained. “We’re not exactly sure where it’s going to end up, we’re just going to see how far we can go with it.”
Next on the group’s agenda is a gathering with George Lakey on May 9, followed by a second summit on Sept. 14. Students are welcome to attend both, Putnam emphasized.
“It’s easy to get caught up on individual issues,” La Roche concluded, so “to have in your mind what the future you would like to live in looks like is really useful.” The vision statement transcends the challenges of the present and looks towards an idealistic future.
(04/25/19 10:30am)
When you walk downtown along College Street, your eye may be drawn to one of Middlebury’s iconic and historic buildings — the Old Stone Mill. Built in 1840, this four-and-a-half-story building standing on the south bank of Otter Creek is turning a new leaf in Middlebury’s history. Stacey Rainey and Mary Cullinane, the co-owners of Community Barn Ventures (CBV) took over the property from the college — the previous owner for the last decade or so, finalizing the transaction in January.
“The plan for the building is to really create a destination in the community that people can come to daily, see their neighbors, hang out with their friends and celebrate the makers and producers in the area who are making ... some goods we at Middlebury sometimes don’t have access to easily,” Cullinane said.
According to the renovation plan, the building will bring in a new restaurant on the first floor, open a public market on the second floor and provide a coworking space on the third. Meanwhile, an Airbnb will operate on the upper levels where short-term lodgings can be rented. While each floor has a different function and purpose, there is an interplay between those floors that encourages people to move from one to another while fostering a sense of community.
“Each of those floors have some type of relationship with the things that are going on on the other floors,” explained Cullinane. “If someone is at the coworking space and they want to take a meeting, they could go down to the coffee shop and meet with the person down there.”
Rainey and Cullinane hope to create a unique experience for the community by curating the space in a thoughtful way and designed the renovations so that each floor highlights varying dynamics within society.
“We are trying to demonstrate how we can rethink some of these old paradigms based upon how things are working today,” Cullinane said. “The way people stay is changing — this idea of Airbnb really has had an impact on the opportunity for folks to get a different type of experience when they go into a community.”
Cullinane explained that coworking is “changing the way people work” as freelancing becomes more and more common. “There are more folks who are able to work remotely and yet people still want a community.”
Regarding the long legacy of the Old Stone Mill itself, Cullinane especially loves its dedication to innovation, and hopes to maintain this symbolism within the renovations. “[The building] has represented throughout its history Middlebury’s ability to adjust ... it personifies innovation,” Cullinane said. “It personifies what we need to do as a community to react to our changing times, and it’s going to continue to represent that for us.”
By broadening choices for customers and removing barriers for vendors to enter the Middlebury market, the public market on the second floor aims to provide a retail experience reimagined.
“[The vendors] are all focused on products that you really want to see, or touch or feel in person, that don’t necessarily work as well if you are purchasing them online. That’s another way that we are thinking of the types of organizations we are talking to,” said Rainey.
Just over 9,000 square feet, the Old Stone Mill is still structurally sound and its stone is still in fantastic shape. Despite the building’s good condition, it nevertheless poses certain architectural challenges for the renovation.
“It’s actually easier to design new buildings, generally speaking, but this one we really wanted to do because of its significance and its potential in the community,” said John McLeod, Assistant Professor of Architecture at Middlebury College. McLeod works on the Old Stone Mill renovation project with his firm McLeod Kredell Architects.
Seeing the falls and the mills as nurturing sources for the town of Middlebury and the college, McLeod felt it was “a chance to preserve and give a new life to a building that is a fundamental part of this place and this community.”
“The challenges are that, with any old building, things tend not to be square and plumb and level and clean and precise,” McLeod explained. “But what we are trying to do architecturally is really to honor and respect the historic building, and then have what’s new, especially on the inside, reveal that historical material and architecture and also have a conversation with it.”
After moving to Middlebury 15 years ago, McLeod spent the first three and a half years living in a little yellow house right across from the Old Stone Mill. Built at the same time as the mill, the house was the home of the miller.
“I always felt this connection and fondness towards the Old Stone Mill. I taught actually for a semester in the mill ... and my office is just up the hill a little bit from the Old Stone Mill. I see the building and walk by it every day. I have just always admired it architecturally,” said McLeod.
The renovation plan includes the installation of a new elevator, an outdoor dining space with a terrace, a bigger deck in the direction of the pedestrian footbridge and a revamp of two stair towers to make them more translucent.
Considering energy efficiency as part of a good architecture design, McLeod believes the renovation project will improve the energy performance of the building.
“The good thing is that ... thick stone walls are really good at dealing with fluctuations in the temperature throughout the day, and even throughout the seasons,” said McLeod, explaining that the thick stone walls help temper the climate in both cold and warm weather. They do plan, though, to improve efficiency by adding insulation in key areas such as the roof.
Previously part of the Old Stone Mill program of the college, the building provided a supportive space for many students to pursue non-academic, self-designed projects. The place served as an incubator for entrepreneurialism, creative passions and new ideas.
“Part of the beauty is that so many people use it for so many different things. We had one guy who wanted to store his computer to develop an app. He was the winner of MiddChallenge,” said Sarah Haedrich ’19.5, an environmental studies and geography major and a board member of the Old Stone Mill.
While the program is in transition to a new space and a rebranded name, Haedrich hopes that the kind of collaborative supportive creative energy will continue at the Old Stone Mill.
“It would be really cool for that space to be a good link ... for town people and students to interact and hopefully it can be an inviting space. People are working, and hopefully they are collaborating too, and new relationships can be formed,” Haedrich said.
“It’s a really cool old building that is right in the center of town, so it will be fun to see what they do with it,” said Erik Arvidsson ’21, a joint History and Political Science major and another board member.
“I think it’s great idea, especially because nicer Airbnb apartments probably get used by a lot of visiting parents and alumni. And hopefully CBV can provide the advice and support for the businesses that inhabit the space to stay afloat because I know there have been a lot of businesses going under and closing their doors in town,” continued Ardivsson.
According to Rainey, the college will have access to one of the vendor stalls in the public market and ten spaces in the coworking level for a period of ten years. Both Rainey and Cullinane wanted the building to continue providing a stage for student work as well as to support student lifestyle.
“It really is a local team, the owners, the contractor, we the architect, the engineers, everybody is part of this community, and everyone is excited to bring this online to invigorate what’s already a great downtown and really have an opportunity to bring the town and the college together,” said McLeod.
For any ideas, questions, and comments regarding the renovation plan, please contact CBV at connect@communitybarnventures.
(04/25/19 9:57am)
The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion will release the findings of a yearlong “campus climate assessment” tomorrow. The assessment reviews student, faculty and staff perceptions of diversity, inclusion and other facets of life at Middlebury. In addition to painting an image of dissatisfaction with realities of diversity and inclusion on campus, the 89-page report contains a set of “actionable recommendations” that will serve as cornerstones of a strategic three-to-five year plan to improve campus equity.
The report is the product of interviews with small focus groups and two campus-wide surveys. The study was conducted over the past year by the Washington Consulting Group (WCG), a firm based in Bethesda, MD the college has previously used to conduct campus assessments. WCG remained in contact with the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion along the way.
This report is part of a fairly regular cycle at Middlebury. Campus climate surveys have surfaced roughly every six years over the past two decades, according to Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernandez, and they’re usually triggered by a major event like Charles Murray’s visit two years ago.
The 2019 Campus Climate Assessment reflects tensions that have arisen in conversations at Middlebury since Murray visited campus: it paints a picture of a campus that has a long way to go before becoming an equitable space for students, faculty and staff.
In writing the report, WCG sought reactions from those three groups about the state of campus life across six categories: diversity, inclusion, campus accessibility, harassment and bullying, employment practices and meaningful interactions.
The climate assessment was conducted in three phases. First, WCG collected qualitative data last spring from faculty and staff “focus groups” – small groups organized by “social identity” like ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. Second, students were brought into focus groups that fall. Focus groups were small, ranging in size from two (the female students focus group) to 12 (female staff). While the focus groups’ small size limited their effectiveness as indicators of campus-wide sentiment, there were also benefits to kicking off the assessment by speaking with smaller groups.
“Sometimes that small size was very effective, because the folks running those groups were able to dig deep,” Fernandez said.
Third, campus-wide surveys were sent out last fall that asked students, faculty and staff questions similar to those posed to focus groups. Fernandez said that since the focus groups were small, more data was needed, and the campus-wide surveys gave all members of the community the opportunity to contribute to the climate assessment.
“Regarding completion rate, 617 students viewed the survey, 398 completed all of the questions and 111 started but did not answer all of the questions,” the report reads. “For the faculty and staff survey, 1010 respondents viewed the survey, 531 completed all of the questions, 145 started but did not answer all of the questions.”
Both surveys asked questions pertaining to “perceptions and experiences of diversity and inclusion, meaningful interactions with individuals of varying socioeconomic status; harassment; bullying and intimidation; physical accessibility; and disability,” according to the report. The staff and faculty survey asked questions about tenure, promotion and annual review process in addition to diversity and inclusion-oriented questions posed in the student survey.
Survey respondents and focus group participants were asked to agree or disagree with statements like “diversity is important to me” and “diversity is important to Middlebury College” on a scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” In the first section of the report, which showcases responses to questions pertaining to diversity, participants largely agreed with the statement “diversity is important to me.”
While survey participants generally agreed with the statement “diversity is important to Middlebury College,” with 39% of respondents strongly agreeing with that statement, few participants agreed with the statement “there is a positive atmosphere at Middlebury College that promotes diversity among students” – just 4% of students, 8% of staff and 3% of faculty agreed strongly with that statement.
Survey and focus group results also convey dissatisfaction with Middlebury’s inclusiveness. 48% of students responded “slightly dissatisfied” to the statement “Middlebury College is inclusive for students.” White students and students of color responded with striking difference to the statement “Middlebury College is inclusive for students who share my race/ethnicity”: 79% of white students strongly agreed with that statement, compared to just 9% of students of color.
One of the most notable points in the report came in the harassment, bullying and intimidation category, where Fernandez was surprised by how far-reaching the effects of harassment are on campus.
“The statement ‘Middlebury is free of harassment,’ a huge amount of faculty, staff and students disagree with that,” Fernandez said. “Same with bullying and same with intimidation. That was an eye-opener for us, seeing how many people felt that across all groupings. It wasn’t just people from minority groups.”
Data surrounding perceptions of campus accessibility, too, illustrate frustration with accomodations in dining halls, campus housing, computer labs, athletic facilities and classroom buildings.
According to Fernandez, who heads the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the report will serve as much more than a helpful indicator of how community members feel about some of the divisive issues raised in the wake of Murray’s visit in the spring of 2017. It will be used as a cornerstone of a new strategic plan that Fernandez’s office is working on as a way to affect tangible change in the areas that the 2019 report identifies as frustrations for many members of the Middlebury community.
The strategic plan, which Fernandez said will take three-to-five years to implement in full, will draw upon “actionable recommendations” included at the end of the 2019 report. The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion will begin work on the strategic plan this summer, and will work with community stakeholders into the fall before presenting the plan by the end of 2019. One of the ways the report recommends changing campus culture is continued education for students around diversity, equity and inclusion, which Fernandez’s office has worked to promote with Director of Education for Equity and Inclusion, Renee Wells.
“Building on education around diversity, equity and inclusion is an actionable step that we believe will have a real effect on campus culture,” Fernandez said.
Fernandez also plans to listen closely to student concerns as the strategic plan is rolled out. A recent student campaign to diversify and decolonize college curricula is an example of a student group whose input the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion hopes to hear as the plan gathers steam this fall.
“It’s important to keep in mind that student concerns change rapidly,” Fernandez said, adding that his office should be held accountable for keeping a finger on the pulse of campus opinion as the action plan is written and rolled out.
“We’re talking about decolonizing curricula right now, but that conversation could evolve drastically in three to five years, and we want to take that into account,” Fernandez said.
(04/25/19 9:57am)
This past week, we were angry. We were disappointed. We were not surprised. The Political Science Department (PSCI), the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs (RCGA), and Middlebury administration had blatantly disrespected the Middlebury community once again.
On Saturday, April 13, we wrote an open letter (go/openletter), inviting the Middlebury community to join us in urging PSCI and RCGA to rescind their co-sponsorship of the far-right funded Alexander Hamilton Forum’s (AHF) event featuring the Polish bigot (see our open letter for analysis of his bigotry), Ryzard Legutko, scheduled for the evening of Wednesday, April 17. Rescinding co-sponsorship, which we understood to be symbolic (PSCI nor RCGA provided funds), would have meant a lot to current Middlebury students.
By Tuesday night, April 16, our letter represented the concerns of over 840 Middlebury community members, including student leaders, alumni, faculty, staff, and many others. Many of the signees interact daily with and have had their Middlebury educations greatly impacted by these two institutional bodies; their pain and frustrations, caused by these trusted figures’ decision to sign on to the engagement of a notoriously racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic speaker, are evident.
The responses from PSCI and RCGA (go/responses) were predictable at best and flippant and contemptuous at worst. PSCI and RCGA’s subsequent actions, however, which were undoubtedly carried out in coordination with administration, further disregarded the pain and frustrations of marginalized Middlebury community members and of the 840+ community members and groups on our open letter.
PSCI additionally disregarded the concerns of many PSCI majors, while RCGA Director Tamar Meyer ignored the dissent of multiple faculty members of the RCGA faculty steering committee and the entire student steering committee. PSCI and RCGA were not done ignoring the Middlebury community, however — they also proceeded to host two private events with Legutko, closed to the public, preventing any expression of dissent or protest. Their privately-hosted discussion and dinner events stood in direct opposition to the same free-speech rhetoric that was touted in their responses and at the last minute pre-Legutko panel, where it was reiterated by PSCI faculty that students should challenge Legutko in community, in order to educate peers or third-parties who may not already understand the gravity of bigotry. We ask, where were the third-parties during these private events?
We were angry. We were disappointed. We were not surprised.
Two years ago, administration strung students along, meeting to meeting, empty promise after empty promise. We have seen no meaningful institutional change, and we will not see meaningful change until we collectively demand it.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Up until this point, we, as current students, have been on the backburner of everyone’s agendas.[/pullquote]
This is why we support the SGA’s Thirteen Proposals for Community Healing (go/signfor13).
SGA’s proposals were made in conjunction with members of the student body at a town hall meeting on Monday, April 22. Students were given time and space to discuss, challenge and amend these proposals in small groups, with senators listening and taking notes. Regardless of anyone’s level of awareness about the current campus climate or about SGA processes, senators were patient and receptive to questions, steadily providing answers with whatever insight that they had.
As two seniors who have been here since 2015, this is the first time that we have felt so heard by our elected student senators. It is easy to disregard the role of an SGA senator, especially when you forget who they are a few days after election results are announced. The SGA showed themselves to be taking their work seriously this past Monday.
We crafted these proposals in community, and we believe that the final list of thirteen requests adequately reflects not only the desires of those in the SGA but of a vast number of students on this campus.
Up until this point, we, as current students, have been on the backburner of everyone’s agendas. We have had enough of having our educations dictated to us from someone else’s pulpit and our concerns brushed aside in favor of those coming from non-student voices.
We demand Middlebury College to recenter students and our needs in the education it offers us. Administrative acceptance and dedication to the Thirteen Proposals for Community Healing are a key component to this long-term revisioning.
We were angry. We were disappointed. We are taking action.
We encourage all students and student leaders to pay close attention to the administration’s response to these community proposals. We encourage vocal, explicit support from students for our administration to meet these requests.
We have a few suggestions for what support can look like. Support can come in the form of social media posts, letters of endorsements from student leadership, mass emails to student membership sharing these proposals and why your group supports them.
We wholeheartedly believe in the strength of our collective student voices, and we believe in the capacity of our administration to strive for and to achieve our communal requests.
(04/25/19 9:57am)
In celebration of Earth Day, The Sunday Night Environmental Group (SNEG) and Sunrise Middlebury hosted an Eco Fair last Friday in Wilson Hall, followed by a Town Hall Meeting on the Green New Deal in Mead Chapel.
Eco Fair
Representatives from an array of environmentally conscious on-campus and local organizations sat at rows of tables at the Eco Fair, describing their forms of activism to interested students and community members.
Several of the groups that attended specialize in encouraging more sustainable dietary practices. MiddVegan, a club that started in the fall, promoted their monthly vegan dinners at their table. Weybridge House, the local foods interest house, explained their emphasis on sustainable eating; they purchase all of their food, except oil and spices, from within 70 miles of the college. The Environmental Affairs Committee (EAC) displayed a possible version of the reusable, fully recyclable and compostable to-go cups they plan to introduce in the near future.
Other organizations highlighted the less-obvious connections between their work and environmental issues. Members of Feminist Action at Middlebury, representing Planned Parenthood, emphasized the disproportionate effect climate change has on female and minority communities. Juntos talked about the impacts of of environmental threats on migrant farmworkers.
Some displays were more interactive. Students painted flower pots at a table labeled, “Plant a friend.” Luke Bazemore ’21 piled the Mountain Club table with sticks and challenged passerby to try starting a fire by rubbing the sticks together. Fortunately, nobody succeeded.
Haley Goodman ’21 ran a waste-sorting game at the Sustainability Solutions Lab table, asking students to determine which bins frequently-misplaced waste products really belonged in. “All of the disposable containers that you get from the Grille and Wilson Cafe, and our to-go cups, are all compostable, so that includes even things that look like plastic,” Goodman said. She said that plastic Amazon packages and bags are newly recyclable.
SNEG, Divest and Sunrise Middlebury, the college’s chapter of a national youth coalition combating climate change, shared a table with 350.org, the international climate organization founded at Middlebury in 2007. Across the aisle, the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) discussed their effort to ban single-use plastic bags in Vermont.
Margie Bickoff from Huddlebury, a new Addison County group that also advocates for a ban on single-use plastic bags and sews reusable cloth bags from repurposed fabrics to donate to food shelves and businesses, said the project grew from its founders’ shared desire to make change after the Women’s March.
“We call them re-bags for ‘reduce waste, reuse and recycle,’ and the fabric that’s being used is recycled,” she said. “In fact, some people have brought in their old curtains.”
Town Hall
Sunrise Middlebury organized the Town Hall as part of a series of similar events hosted by affiliated groups nationwide to resolve misrepresentations and spark community conversations about the proposed Green New Deal.
Each of the six student presenters — Molly Babbin ’22, Phoebe Brown ’22.5, Katie Concannon ’21, Leif Taranta ’20.5, Emily Thompson ’22 and Olivia Sommers ’21 — began with their own reasons for joining the Sunrise Movement and organizing the Town Hall.
For Taranta, it was the devastating impact of fossil fuels on the air, water and people in their hometown of Philadelphia. For Babbin, it was witnessing the effects of rising sea levels at home in Connecticut. For Concannon, it was overwhelming climate grief following the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. For Brown, it was the impending loss of winter as it exists now.
They started the presentation with a brief history of the climate crisis and the influence of the wealthy on climate denial. A slide on ExxonMobil read, “They knew. They denied. They deflected responsibility.”
“I personally think money speaks louder than words,” Concannon said.
But unlike fossil fuel companies, young people have numbers, and “this system can’t stay up if we don’t let it,” Taranta said.
Over the next decade, the presenters said, the Green New Deal, aimed at combating climate change and economic inequality, will facilitate a just transition to a livable future through a national mobilization for all.
Using an interactive format that asked audience members to reflect on their own communities’ needs and to share those ideas with the people around them, the presenters introduced the three pillars of the Green New Deal — good jobs for all, a democratic economy and a good life for all — and described its plan to expand the lowest-carbon parts of the US economy to form an energy democracy and put wind and solar in the hands of the people.
“Green jobs,” they said, “have to be good jobs.”
They ran through a few frequently asked questions: “How will it become concrete?” Through future legislation. “Is it technologically feasible?” Yes. “How will we pay for it?” In response, Babbin read a quote from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to resounding applause “Why is it that these questions arise only in connection with useful ideas, not wasteful ideas? Where were the ‘pay-fors’ for Bush’s $5 trillion wars and tax cuts, or for last year’s $2 trillion tax giveaway to billionaires? Why wasn’t financing those massive throwaways as scary as financing the rescue of our planet and middle class now seems to be to these naysayers?”
“In some places, I wouldn’t just get cheered when I read the quote,” Babbin later told The Campus, referencing the cynicism many outspoken opponents of the Green New Deal have already expressed. “In other states, maybe they’re skeptical, but here people were so on board.”
During the Town Hall, Taranta emphasized the importance of talking about the Green New Deal and combating the widespread misinformation that it is not economically, technologically socially or politically possible. “The idea that this will never happen is a propaganda campaign used against us to discourage us,” they said. It can happen — it has to.
Members of Sunrise Middlebury and SNEG are also drafting a Vermont Green New Deal, which they plan to present to the state legislature in January, nearly a year before the national proposal makes its way through Congress.
The six students concluded the presentation portion of the Town Hall by inviting local organizers, many of whom presented at the Eco Fair, to join them at the front and sing, “Social Justice Song 2019,” composed by Bickoff, the Huddlebury representative from the Eco Fair.
Gabe Desmond ’20.5 was the first audience member to speak. “Raise your hand if you’ve ever been affected by climate change,” he said. Every hand in the room went up. Desmond talked about a time last summer when he was unable to finish a hike in Seattle, Washington, because smoke from wildfires to the north, east and south had caused Seattle’s air quality to be the worst in the world.
“I think the really scary thing about climate change, to me, is that it’s hidden,” Desmond said. “When something like Irene happens, you don’t always think about climate change as being the thing that floods your home, right? It’s the water. When I can’t breathe, ‘Oh, it’s the fires. It’s not climate change.’ But it is climate change.”
One community member, who said he graduated from college more than 50 years ago, said politicians are cowardly, and their constituents need to push them to do greater things.
Another said that people do things for two reasons: out of fear of loss and out of desire for gain.
“We keep living in the fear of loss,” he said. “We need to change our minds. We need to change our hearts.”
A self-identified baby Feb asked about the best way to reach a Representative. An email? A phone call? A letter?
Fran Putnam, a local resident closely involved with SNEG, answered, “All of the above.”
“In 11 years,” said a girl at the front of the room, “I will be 24 years old. And I am completely terrified and overwhelmed by that, because I will only have lived a quarter of my life, hopefully, at that time. And if this doesn’t work out—though I’m hoping that it will—that’s it for me.” Describing the renewed hope she gained while participating in the Next Steps Climate Walk earlier this month, she started to cry. Her comment received one of the longest rounds of applause of the evening.
“I was anticipating more questions,” Concannon told The Campus. “I was ready to answer questions about how to pay for it. I was ready to answer questions about, ‘Why do you need to include the social aspect with the environmental aspect?’”
“We thought we were gonna get drilled on the details, because generally when I have a conversation with a friend or a parent, they drill me on the details,” Babbin added. “But it seemed like the people who showed up there were already very much wanting large change.”
“I have struggled a lot with ecological despair, to the point where sometimes it just feels like there’s nothing to do about anything, and everything’s hopeless, and I just get in my head, like, why even try,” Sommers told The Campus. “Which I think is a more common thought pattern than we let people know. And I found that channeling that into activism and planning and this town hall, where I’m bringing awareness about the Green New Deal, and bringing people into that, is a way to deal with my climate anxiety, and hopefully make it productive.”
“Climate change isn’t always associated with strong emotions and grief,” Babbin said.
“But it is,” Concannon said. “It’s loss of life. It’s loss of place. It’s loss of home.”
(04/18/19 10:30am)
Two weeks ago, extensive collaboration among members of Middlebury’s Sunday Night Environmental Group (SNEG) and a number of local and statewide activist organizations culminated in the “Next Steps: Climate Solutions Walk.” Protesters joined in for as much of the 5-day, 65-mile walk as they could, beginning at the Middlebury Town Green on Friday and concluding on Tuesday, April 9 with a protest at the Vermont Statehouse in Montpelier.
The Next Steps march was inspired in part by a climate awareness walk held during the fall of 2006. Thirteen years before Next Steps, Bill McKibben and six others gathered at Carol’s Coffee Shop, formerly located where The Daily Grind stands now, to think through the branding, logistics and outreach of a climate walk. Professor of Economics Jon Isham was one of the six. Isham told The Campus that the group settled on a route from the Robert Frost Cabin in Ripton to Burlington, themed around the idea of a road less traveled.
Because Middlebury “has the oldest environmental studies department in the world,” McKibben wrote in an email to The Campus, “it naturally focused on these issues before others did.” He identified SNEG as “an early example of fine organizing,” and said he gave the first talk on his 1989 book “The End of Nature”, the first book on climate change written for the general public, at Middlebury at the request of a student.
“To see that this spirit has reached even the trustees, with their landmark decision on divestment, makes me extremely proud to be part of this community,” McKibben wrote.
Isham also praised SNEG, saying that Middlebury students’ activism is continuous, though their methods have varied, mentioning a past group of students who put fake parking tickets on SUVs to draw attention to emissions.
“One generation of students passes down victories and ideas and frustrations to the next,” Isham said.
Divya Gudur ’21 is a student activist and SNEG member who played a central role in organizing the Climate Solutions Walk. Her primary roles included registering participants and coordinating the younger walkers, whose involvement was a key feature of the Climate Solutions Walk.
“It’s like, I’m responsible for this one thing, but there’s so much planning going to other things,” Gudur said. “Everything had to come together.”
Gudur said the march was a communal activity — a time for people brought together by a shared cause to get to know each other, with no distractions except the beautiful land around them. It was an opportunity for everyone to connect personally to climate issues, and for Middlebury students, especially, to engage more closely with surrounding communities.
“I had a blast,” said Leif Taranta ’21, another student activist and SNEG member who marched for several days. He said the walk was a fun, cheery experience, which was something he had not anticipated because of the grimness of climate change. It was musical, too, he added, as participants sang along the walkand were occasionally joined by bands along the way.
The marchers began walking around nine each morning and took frequent rest stops throughout the day. The days all had themes — reunion, resist, recreate, reimagine and reform — and the stops matched those themes. On Sunday, April 7 they explored “recreate” by looking at climate solutions including a solar farm, and held a greeting ceremony in Hinesburg, where the Vermont Gas Systems pipeline passes through Geprags Park.
At the end of the day, communities hosted the marchers for the night in churches, houses, and community centers and held potlucks for the marchers. “All these community members would make us food,” Gudur said. “It was amazing. The food was amazing.” After-dinner programming varied daily, but consisted of nonviolent direct action training, action planning, community conversation and an art build.
The Climate Solutions Walk focused on three resolutions coming up in the Vermont legislature related to banning fossil fuel infrastructure. A number of marchers will testify at the recently announced public hearing on April 23. In recognition of the resolutions, the protestors carried pussy willow branches into the statehouse and placed them at each representative’s spot in the House and Senate energy committees. On tags attached to the branches, the younger participants wrote the things they wanted to preserve.
About 300 people packed into the halls of the statehouse at the end of the march, with the youth standing in the middle. As they sang “More Waters Rising,” Gudur said the solidarity was powerful, referring to it as “literally the best day of my life.”
Taranta stressed how valuable it would be for more Middlebury students to get involved in climate issues and work to make change themselves. “Not everyone can walk 65 miles,” he said, but “there are hard things that all of us can do.”
(04/18/19 9:55am)
Last fall, days after Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Dan Suarez gave a talk branding climate change the impending end of the world, Kyle Freiler ’19 walked into Suarez’s office in a panic. He was experiencing what the American Psychological Association now recognizes as climate grief: the shock, hopelessness and despair that result from worsening effects of climate change. Freiler called it an awakening.
“I think what Kyle is going through is akin to a microcosm of what a lot of people are going through,” Suarezsaid. “How do you find your way in this world? What do you do? How do you live in it?”
While Freiler’s climate awakening was beginning, he and Charlotte Massey ’19 were in the process of arranging speakers for a panel sponsored by the Symposium Philosophy Club and the Debate Society. Inspired by his awakening, Freiler wanted to host a panel discussion with leading environmental thinkers. Suarez suggested Rupert Read, an activist, environmental think tank leader and member of England’s Green Party, as one panelist. Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org and Middlebury’s Schumann Distinguished Scholar, was an obvious choice. Suarez and Keiler reached out to several contributors to the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report before selecting Kim Cobb, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Tech and the lead coauthor of the 2018 IPCC report.
Freiler told The Campus that he asked Suarez to moderate because of his role in bringing in panelists and because “he’s young, he’s in the same boat as us, and he has a really clear-eyed look at the problem.”
Suarez moderated the resulting panel, “Climate Change: What Should I Do About It? How Can I Live With It?” in Wilson Hall last Monday. Read and McKibben appeared in person. Cobb spoke via videoconference, because she adheres to a strict personal carbon budget that limits her ability to fly.
Middlebury President Laurie L. Patton introduced the panel, drawing on the words of former French president François Hollande: “The time is past when humankind thought it could selfishly draw on exhaustible resources. We know now the world is not a commodity.”
In his own opening remarks, Suarez said, “It wouldn’t be quite right to say that it is my pleasure, exactly, to be with you here today, although it is, given the circumstances that have brought us together. And specifically the bewildering and preposterously grave seriousness that defines our subject matter.”
The panel aimed to confront the discomfort, anger, heartbreak and fear felt by many in the face of climate change, and to investigate the perennial question: what is to be done? By forcing reevaluations through exploration of justice and injustice, the panelists urged attendees to reject complacency — as Suarez said, “finally facing what needs to be faced.”
Read was the first of the panelists to give his opening statement. Stepping to the podium as Suarez returned to his seat, he said, “Your so-called leaders have failed you. Your parents, I’m sure, mean well, but they and their generation have failed you. Your teachers, despite their best intentions, have failed you. And we, despite our best endeavors, even we have failed you. We’ve all failed you because we are sending you, naked and unprepared, into a deteriorating future.” He went on to say that the Paris Agreement was “a voluntary agreement to do far too little to stop catastrophic climate change from occurring,” that climate-related agricultural breakdown will end the lives of some audience members long before rising sea levels inundate Boston and New York, and that the older generation has failed younger ones through complacency.
Love, Read said, caring enough about life, wilderness, future generations and encouraging one another to really show up to the climate fight, are the only things that can propel humanity through this.
Cobb opened by talking about her own wake-up call. For most of her career as a climate scientist, she thought climate change was someone else’s problem to fix, while her own role was to publish papers and raise her four children. That changed in 2017, when, over just five months, she witnessed the death of 90 percent of the corals at her Pacific research site, Christmas Island, which she described as an “absolute tropical paradise.” Soon after, she started biking to work and created her carbon budget.
“I know that the young people today will fix this,” Cobb said. “I have absolutely all the confidence in you guys. And it’s my job to try to give you the best head start that I possibly can.”
McKibben tied it all back to the iron law of climate change: “The less you did to cause it, the more and more quickly you suffer its effects.”
“How do we do this better?” Suarez asked, referring to the work of educators in guiding students in the face of climate change.
Read said that climate grief can be liberating. It eliminates the expectation of a predictable future, freeing people from the assumption that comfort is to be expected. It offers people the chance to be part of the generation that tries to save the future.
“In my experience,” McKibben said, “the great antidote to angst about all this is to be engaged in thefight.”
The discussion moved to the need for a massive change in consciousness related to climate change. Cobb said there has already been a rapid shift in public opinion in recent years. Read urged everyone to keep warning people, to take them into threatened nature, and to spread the messages of the panel.
Read said that the degree of transformation necessary to combat climate change is roughly equivalent to the human revolution — when humans first evolved. And it needs to happen fast: unless people make a serious start at turning things around in the next eighteen months, it will be impossible to complete that task within the eleven years before the consequences of climate change become even more disastrous.
“The polling in this country took its most decisive shift in the week or two after the fires in California,” McKibben said, describing the shift in people’s understanding of what is natural and normal and obvious. “Watching a town literally called Paradise literally turn into hell in half an hour had a sobering effect on a lot of people.”
“This is the world we now live in, whether folks choose to accept it or not,” Suarez told The Campus. He emphasized that in this exceptional moment of urgency, as climate change finally catches up with those who have been most responsible and most insulated from its effects, the issue of privilege, and the influences of responsibility and complicity, should not be overlooked.
(04/17/19 3:28pm)
Professor of Geology Pat Manley included a cartoon on the introductory slide of a slideshow in her Ocean Floor class on Tuesday that joked about the slave trade. The cartoon, which appeared on a slide titled “Humor for Today,” depicted a slave ship crossing the ocean with a person strapped to the back, with text reading, “the better-equipped slave ships, of course, always carried a spare.”
This incident occurred less than two weeks after a Holocaust-related chemistry midterm exam question caused widespread controversy on campus.
Charlie Caldwell ’22, a student in the class, said that people immediately noticed that the comic was in poor taste.
“There was one of those awkward tensions in the room when someone says or shows something that people are uncomfortable with,” he said.
Caldwell said that Manley always shows a comic at the beginning of class, and that the comics are often unrelated to the content of the course.
“Generally they are pretty cheesy humor and sometimes they get a giggle or two,” he said, explaining that this cartoon felt much different from the norm. “The objectification of a human is supposed to be the humor of it, which is not funny.”
Caldwell decided to address the situation in the moment. He raised his hand and told Manley that she should not show the comic in the future. He said she was receptive to that feedback.
In response to an email from The Campus, Manley apologized for her decision to show the cartoon in class.
“I am deeply sorry for including a cartoon that makes light of historical atrocities,” she said. “I will be apologizing to the class during our next meeting and expressing my deepest regret that I made anyone in the class uncomfortable, and am working with the administration on the possibility of holding a restorative practices circle with my class.”
Aaron Bode ’22, another student in the class, feels that students should communicate directly with Manley about their concerns as next steps develop, although he also acknowledged that not all students feel comfortable addressing incidents like this with their professors directly.
“I think it’s important to remember that she’s a human being, we all are, and I think it’s important to be in contact with her. I think it’s important that there is a lot of communication with her about this,” he said.
Bode, who is also in the Chemistry 103 class where the offensive midterm question was posed, also expressed his desire for all professors to undergo mandatory bias training.
“Coming to Middlebury, I didn’t think this sort of thing would happen here, but now seeing that it can I think that it’s incredibly important that professors realize these things have big impacts on people,” he said.
According to Andi Lloyd, the dean of faculty, the administration is currently discussing the best way to proceed regarding the potential of mandatory training given recent events.
“Early next week, we will be holding a facilitated dialogue on classroom climate for faculty who have already asked for a chance to participate in such an opportunity,” she said.
Renee Wells, the college’s director of education for equity and inclusion who will pilot an anti-bias training program in the fall, has mixed feelings about requiring mandatory training.
“In theory, making training mandatory means everyone participates, but what that ‘participation’ looks like can vary widely depending on whether people actually want to be there, which can impact the experience and effectiveness of the space for all the participants in the room,” she said. “We need to be intentional about determining the best way to meaningfully engage our faculty and staff in these conversations so those conversations can benefit the entire campus community.”
Wells explained that her pilot program is not currently designed to be mandatory, but rather to further ongoing conversations that will help reduce bias and change the culture around such incidents on campus.
“The ongoing education program for faculty and staff is designed to create space for those conversations to happen and to strategically focus on concrete ways we can adapt our practices to better achieve those goals,” she said.
Correction: an earlier version of this article stated that the cartoon depicted the transatlantic slave trade. In fact, the cartoon did not specify which slave trade was being depicted.
(04/11/19 10:41am)
(04/11/19 10:41am)
The protesters stood in a circle on the Middlebury Town Green, holding their handmade signs high: “Every Day is Earth Day,” said one; “Got Emissions?” read the text beneath a cow-patterned milk jug; an arrow pointing to a hand-painted globe declared, “I’m with her.”
United by their shared desire to take action against climate injustice, Middlebury College students joined community members for the kickoff of the Climate Solutions Walk that took place this past weekend. The crowds took to the hills, inspired by the young legislators propelling the Green New Deal forward in Congress and the teenagers strengthening the climate movement around the world. Their goal, in solidarity with Vermont’s native communities, was to recognize the climate emergency. The activists hoped to celebrate solutions to this emergency while also grieving the damage it has already caused.
The walk, a 5-day, 65-mile trek from Middlebury to Montpelier, began on a windy, overcast Friday morning, but people chatted enthusiastically in spite of the sharp breeze and the rain forecast for the next several days. Most of them wore winter coats, knit caps, waterproof shoes, and backpacks. Some wielded cloth signs with “Climate Justice for Us” printed in bright colors around a drawing of a flower. Others pinned smaller “Climate Justice” signs to their backs and wore them like capes.
Organizers structured the kickoff as an interfaith ceremony of opening and reunion, and asked those present to call out brief invocations as they were moved to. Among the shouted phrases were: high peaks, love, my daughters, facts, climatic freedom, justice, transformation, tenderness, resistance against extinction, power of the people, resilience, hope, wilderness, gratitude, earth, compassion, reciprocity, clean water, and joy.
Four people then blessed the natural elements, each represented by an object resting on a cloth square in the center of the circle: shreds of fabric tied to a stick, a candle inside a lantern, a clear vase of water, and a potted plant. Divya Gudur ’21, one of the student organizers of the march, invoked Hinduism as she blessed the fire.
The speakers asked people to call out their intentions for the walk. Responses included: the power of the climate movement, awareness of the precious earth, healing, make our concerns visible, for the sake of future generations, giving truth to power, embodying our nature, my grandson, waking up, visibility, relationships, connection, going deeper, amplifying solutions, finding new directions, living by example, remembering what it means to be a true steward of this land, and being thankful.
Environmental journalist and activist Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org and the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury, concluded the kickoff.
“As we walk, think about the people—even in the last two weeks—the people in the Midwest who dealt with floods like they’ve never seen before, lost their cattle, lost their crops, lost their homes,” McKibben said, going on to outline some of the countless instances of suffering caused and exacerbated by climate change.
“Think about the people in Mozambique, who two weeks ago suffered what they’re now describing as the worst natural disaster in the history of the Southern Hemisphere, when a cyclone smashed into Mozambique and Malawi and Zimbabwe and left a thousand people dead, and huge areas just turned into malarial lakes,” McKibben urged. “Think about the people in Iran, where they’re having the worst flooding right now they’ve ever had, every region of the country under an emergency order.”
McKibben left his speech with words to keep the climate activists motivated even when their feet tired of walking: “Something like that now happens every single day. Someplace in the world people get their Irene now, every day. That’s what happens when you change the atmosphere.”
This walk follows in the footsteps of another climate march, from the Robert Frost Cabin in Ripton to Burlington, organized by McKibben in 2006.
“Middlebury—college and town—has been a real cradle of the climate movement,” McKibben wrote in an email to The Campus. “Because it has the oldest environmental studies department in the world, it naturally focused on these issues before others did.”
McKibben also described the residents of the town of Middlebury and of the state of Vermont as key players in the climate movement. He offered less credit to the state of Vermont, writing “Vermont should be making clear and steady progress, but it really isn't: the legislature hasn't risen to the occasion, and so even here it is necessary to keep reminding them. It's always necessary to keep the pressure on!”
The protesters marched out of the Town Green, their signs aloft, singing, “Lead With Love,” and paraded off down Route 7 for the start of the climate walk.
