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(09/24/15 1:31am)
In February 2015, a U.S. national security report called climate change “an urgent and growing threat to our national security.” Over the past two decades, climate change has become an increasingly important topic in the United States and across the world. Researchers have demonstrated the far-reaching effects of increasing levels of greenhouse gases and have pointed to more extreme weather patterns, such as the California drought and Hurricane Irene in Vermont, as signs of what is to come if climate change is not addressed. As issues involving climate change have risen to prominence, colleges and universities across the country have begun to develop more sustainable practices and promote conservation on their campuses.
In 2004, the College joined other leading higher-education institutions when the board of Trustees passed a resolution to reduce emissions by eight percent from 1990 levels by 2012. Then, in October 2006, the Trustees approved funding for a new biomass plant which would help the college achieve the eight percent emission reduction. In response to this development, students and faculty began advocating a new, more ambitious objective for the College: carbon neutrality. Thus, in 2007, amidst growing awareness about climate change and the effects of greenhouse gases on our atmosphere, the Board of Trustees approved a resolution to achieve carbon neutrality by 2016.
What is carbon neutrality? The fancy term you hear tossed around so often means net zero carbon emissions, achieved by balancing emissions with carbon sequestration and, usually as a last-ditch effort, by purchasing carbon credits.
To reach carbon neutrality, the College developed a “Climate Action Implementation Plan,” adopted on August 28, 2008. Focusing on areas like heating and cooling, electricity and transportation, the plan detailed several strategies for the College to reduce its footprint and shift toward carbon neutral energy sources. One of these strategies includes the construction of the new biomass plant, which reduced the College’s dependence on #6 fuel oil, and pursuing opportunities for renewable energy sources. In addition to suggesting alternative energy sources, the plan calls for efficiency upgrades of campus buildings in compliance with LEED guidelines.
Since the plan went into effect in 2008, the College has made progress in its quest for neutrality. In February 2014, Jack Byrne, the Director of Sustainability Integration, released an update stating the College’s carbon emissions for FY13 were 50% below 2007 baseline emissions. Byrne attributed this progress to the biomass plant and “numerous energy efficiency projects the College has completed over the past several years.”
Despite the College’s progress, it is not the first institution of higher education to approach carbon neutrality — not even the first in the NESCAC. In 2013, Colby College announced that it had achieved carbon neutrality, thanks in part to its own biomass plant. Colby College joined the ranks of three other small colleges, including Green Mountain College in Vermont, that have become carbon neutral.
Carbon neutrality remains an important goal for the College. When the class of 2016 arrived, they were touted as the “Carbon Neutral Class.” During their orientation, students learned about carbon neutrality and were encouraged to get involved with the initiative. Now, with the 2016 deadline drawing close and the Carbon Neutral Class nearing graduation, it is time to reflect on where we are. What has the College done to reduce its carbon footprint? What can still be done to improve the sustainability of the College? Every other week, this column will explore answers to these questions and more. Will the College actually be carbon neutral by 2016? The Carbon Countdown will help you decide.
(09/17/15 8:43pm)
Summer is a time for reflection. A moment to consider who we are and how we have changed after experiencing the fever dream that is a Middlebury semester. For me, this meant taking a hard look in the mirror and coming to the conclusion that I’m not too happy with some of the choices I’ve made and patterns I’ve fostered over the last half year.
It goes without saying that last semester was a difficult one for many on Middlebury’s campus. We struggled with the untimely death of a peer and the invisible pain of countless others. We grappled with the challenge of achieving “success” at an elite college and, more, having to define that term for ourselves.
I was dangerously sleep-deprived, valued my friendships less than their worth and forgot to live in the present. What’s worse, I felt weak and ashamed for struggling with my sense of self. I felt as if spending time on “personal” issues of balance and body was somehow selfish, a product of first-world privilege.
Who am I to worry about the correct pro- portion of schoolwork time to socializing time when people in our world’s poorest countries are being displaced as a result of climate change and Syrian children are washing up on shores dead due to violence and a global shortage of compassion?
I believed that you could either care about the internal world or the external one. I chose the latter, spending my time writing about environmental injustice and immigrant rights and advocating for Middlebury to divest from fossil fuels. History, let alone our present society, confirmed my assumption.
The 1960’s countercultural movement was divided into two camps. While the politically oriented “New Left” marched in opposition to the Vietnam War, the “New Communalists,” who held no trust in the power of political activism for social change, fled to the countryside to create self-sufficient communities, believing a truly egalitarian society could only manifest itself through a collective transformation of consciousness.
And more recently, in 2008, environmental activist Van Jones bemoaned the environmental community’s inability to unite as a single movement, writing, “Leaders from impoverished areas like Oakland, California, tended to focus on three areas: social jus- tice, political solutions and social change,” while those “from more affluent places like Marin County (just north of San Francisco), San Francisco and Silicon Valley had what seemed to be the opposite approach,” focusing more on “ecology, business solutions and ‘inner change.’”
My hyper-political beliefs are undoubtedly influenced by the fact that I did indeed grow up in that mecca of political activism, Oakland, CA. But it wasn’t until I returned there for a brief hiatus at the end of summer and reflected more intensely on how I want to approach this new semester that my blindly political beliefs changed, or rather morphed into something more true to their core.
Almost subconsciously I began repeating the mantra, “The Personal is Political,” a phrase I likely picked up from a feminist documentary but never understood beyond a basic level. I did some research and discovered the phrase was first used in the title of a 1969 essay by radical feminist Carol Hanisch.
In the essay, Hanisch addresses criticism of “consciousness raising groups.” These were discussion groups that popped up around the country in the late 1960s for women to share their personal, and otherwise unheard, experiences in patriarchal society. They discussed issues such as workplace discrimination, housework, the family and abortion, issues with political dimensions that had been previously been ignored by the dominant New Left groups of the early 1960s. Opponents, mainly women who considered themselves “more political,” considered “consciousness raising discussions” to be nothing but meaningless “therapy” and “personal” work. Hanisch sought to dispel this notion, instead asserting that “consciousness raising discussions” were themselves a form of political action that united women to fight male supremacy as a movement, rather than blaming individual women for their oppression.
A year before the publication of her essay, Hanisch put the sentiment of “consciousness raising discussions” into practice by protesting the Miss America pageant. She argued that women are oppressed by impossible standards of female beauty, including the contestants. Though Hanisch’s Miss America protest had some strategic flaws, the concept – that the personal truly is political – is powerful, and one which I propose we adopt and sustain throughout the year.
As I advocate for President Patton and the Board of Trustees to divest our endowment from fossil fuels, I will work hard to see the ways in which the fossil fuel industry not only exploits the environment of low-income communities and people of color, but also creates a toxic political culture that holds politicians captive to the fossil fuel industry for campaign donations and distracts those politicians’ from building local renewable energy sources. This energy could fuel a new environmentally sustainable, just economy with the capacity to better support my neighbors.
(05/07/15 2:52am)
Last Thursday, US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont announced that he would run for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. He will be challenging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who, so far, is the only other major candidate in the race. Though he has formally announced his bid, Sanders will kick off his campaign in Burlington on May 26.
“I am running for President of the United States because America needs a political revolution,” wrote Sanders on his Facebook page on April 30. “We need a government which represents all of us, and not just a handful of billionaires. In this campaign, we won’t have the support of the big-money interests, Wall Street or the military-industrial complex. That’s why I need you to join me in an unprecedented grass-roots effort.”
Sanders announced his campaign at a news conference on the Capitol lawn. In a brief speech, Sanders identified the 3 major issues he intends to address: growing economic disparity, excessive spending on political campaigns, and climate change.
The most central issue to Sanders’ campaign is the growing gap in income in the U.S. and the inability for many working families to support themselves.
“We can’t continue having a nation in which we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major nation on earth, at the same time as we’re seeing a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires,” Sanders said in his announcement speech.
Specific problems that concern Sanders on the topic of economic disparity are the exorbitant cost of college, the stagnation of wages, increasing wealth among the wealthy and the rising cost of healthcare.
“The second issue directly related is the fact that as a result of the disastrous supreme court decision on Citizens United [vs. Federal Election Commission], we now have a political situation where billionaires are literally able to buy elections and candidates,” Sanders continued. Sanders’ campaign fund pales in comparison to that of his competitor, Clinton. Sanders prefers to take donations from citizens, rather than corporations, to show that his campaign is a grassroots effort, not corporately funded.
OpenSecrets.org is a website run by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that researches the effect of money on politics and makes information about it publicly available. According to OpenSecrets.org, Sanders’ top 3 campaign contributors throughout his career have been the Machinists/Aerospace Workers Union, the Teamsters Union, and the United Auto Workers. In contrast, Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Lehman Brothers have been among the top 10 contributors to Clinton throughout her career.
Sanders’ campaign received $1.5 million in donations within 24 hours of announcing his bid for president. Sanders lives his ideals about keeping money out of politics. The bottom of his campaign website reads, “Paid for by Bernie 2016 (not the billionaires).”
Finally, Sanders addressed the importance of taking climate change seriously and acting accordingly.
“We have a Republican Party with virtually few exceptions that does not even recognize the reality of climate change, let alone that it is caused by human activity, let alone that the scientific community tells us this is the major global environmental crisis that we face,” Sanders said. “And I want to see this nation lead the world in transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel, to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.”
Coming from Vermont, Sanders is well-poised to make this claim, as Vermont has actively tried to increase green energy use and reduce fossil fuel consumption.
In the realm of foreign policy, Sanders has emphasized that he opposed the war in Iraq, something that Clinton supported. Sanders supports President Obama’s use of sanctions against Russia regarding Ukraine. However, Sanders opposes Obama’s view on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Sanders opposes TPP because of its negative effect on jobs of American people and favoritism toward corporations.
Sanders is also a strong supporter of gay marriage.
“It’s time for the Supreme Court to catch up to the American people and legalize gay marriage,” Sanders said in a press release. In 2000, he supported the legalization of civil unions in Vermont and in 2009 he supported the legalization of gay marriage in Vermont.
Sanders began his political career in Vermont in 1971. During the 1970s, Sanders ran under the anti-Vietnam Liberty Union Party, a non-violent socialist party in Vermont that still sends candidates to several elections statewide. Sanders won no offices with this party. After this point, he proceeded to run as an Independent until now when he has entered the race for Democratic nomination.
From 1981 through 1989, Sanders was mayor of Burlington. From 1991 to 2007, Sanders served as a US Representative from Vermont as an Independent. He is now on his second term as junior senator from Vermont. With 24 years of experience in the House and Senate combined, Sanders is the longest serving independent in Congress.
Sanders engaged in various jobs before his career in politics. Upon graduating from James Madison High School in Brooklyn in 1959, Sanders attended Brooklyn College, but then transferred to University of Chicago. During college, Sanders was active in the Civil Rights movement and graduated in 1964. After graduation, Sanders lived on an Israeli kibbutz, then moved to Vermont. In Vermont, before getting into politics, Sanders worked various jobs such as carpenter, film-maker and writer.
Because of his small campaign budget, lack of experience in foreign affairs, and populist, (sometimes considered socialist) persuasion, many believe he stands no chance against Clinton, a more moderate, high profile and amply funded candidate.
(05/06/15 9:24pm)
Twenty-nine years ago, the Middlebury College Board of Trustees stood on the right side of history when they voted to divest from the South African Apartheid. The College was one of over 150 campuses across the country to divest from companies doing business in South Africa – the leading ethical issue of the time. Now, Middlebury College is at a crossroads and has the chance to once again stand on the right side of history by divesting from fossil fuel companies. Climate change is the defining ethical issue of our generation. The College has the opportunity to make history once again, or to be vilified by it.
Middlebury College prides itself on its practices of environmental stewardship and its innovations in institutional sustainability. The College started the first environmental studies program fifty years ago this fall, helping to kickstart an era of environmental policy and legislation the likes of which our nation had never seen. The College was an incubator for programs of recycling and composting far before these issues reached national prominence and gave rise to 350.org, one of the fastest-growing environmental justice organizations in the world. The College also plans to go carbon-neutral by the end of 2016 and is well on its way to achieving this admirable goal.
However, the College’s investment in fossil fuel companies jeopardizes its reputation as a champion of climate justice by profiting from the exploitation of the environment and marginalized communities. Professor Emeritus of Religion Steven Rockefeller –yes, a member of the Rockefeller family that made their fortune on oil – wrote during his time here that the College should “avoid investments in businesses and products that are inherently unhealthy for human beings or that threaten serious environmental harm.” Rockefeller wrote these words twenty years ago, yet they still remain true today. As long as the College’s endowment is invested in fossil fuel companies like Exxon and BP, it is actively contributing to a system that threatens the future of our planet.
From UC Berkeley to Harvard, students on campuses around the country are asking their administrators whose side they are on: the side of the fossil fuel companies who feed on the Earth and its people like parasites to maximize economic success, or that of the new generation calling for a just transition to a greener future. Arrests of students at Yale University and University of Mary Washington show administrators that this fight is about something much bigger than the institutions we attend. And people are noticing. Just in the past month, Syracuse University, the Guardian Media Group and Prince Charles have committed to move to fossil free investments.
With the quest for carbon neutrality nearing its completion, we have to ask – are we truly carbon neutral if we are invested in fossil fuels? It is time for Middlebury to rise up and once again do what is right over what is easy. It is time to change the system that perpetuates social and economic inequalities. The environmental movement is always evolving and can no longer be an elitist movement that only wealthy white folks can access and engage in. It has shown its ability to bridge gaps of race, gender, generation and wealth as it has spread across the world. Climate justice is a global issue, one that affects all people.
It is our responsibility as Middlebury students to be at the forefront of this battle. Students have organized here to usher in peaceful change in the past, and I know that this will happen again. Through education, thoughtfulness, organization, passion and hard work, we are fighting to create a movement that will be larger and longer than the four years we spend in Addison County. So the question remains: whose side are YOU on?
Vignesh Ramachandran '18 is from Fremont, Calif.
(04/22/15 6:00pm)
Each year around this time, the Campus turns its focus to the upcoming Student Government Association presidential election. Unlike last year, there will be competition for the position and a field of strong, well-rounded candidates has emerged. Each one has come to the Campus office to present their platform and to take questions from our editorial board. Though each candidate brings much to the table, there is one who stands out above the rest: Caroline Walters.
A newcomer to the SGA but a veteran leader, Walters boasts an impressive resume. In 2011, Caroline co-founded International Energy Alliance, a non-profit organization that works with high schools in the U.S. and China to raise climate awareness. Over the past three years, she has organized conferences in China and has begun the process to team up with similar-minded organizations here at the College.
Her position with the IEA, her role as Vice President of Friends of the John Graham Shelter in town and her work in the mail center have all demanded much of her extracurricular attention during her time as a Middlebury student. Though these experiences all took place outside of the Crest Room, we believe that the analogous leadership, teamwork and management skills she has fostered on her way to the ballot make her more than qualified for the job of SGA President.
Although Walters has not participated in Middlebury’s SGA thus far, it is important to note that she is not entirely out of the SGA’s loop. She has attended a number of meetings in person and read the minutes for every meeting this year in preparation for this election. Nevertheless, some may point to her dearth of experience in the Senate as a drawback. We, however, see it as an advantage. Walters brings a fresh perspective and an undeniable enthusiasm to shake up the SGA.
Shaking up the SGA is sorely needed at the present moment. Nearly all of the candidates who visited the newsroom expressed their disappointment in the lack of leadership and results this year. The editorial board could not agree more. In the view of many students, this year’s SGA has accomplished less than any student administration in recent memory. Previous years have seen the creation of MiddCourses, progress on internships for credit, the launch of the We the Middkids petition site, the implementation of a Pass/D/Fail option, and the funding of orientation trips for first-years. This year? A Proctor printer is what most students would point to as the biggest accomplishment.
In light of this and a slew of uncontested races (including SGA President and Student Co-Chair of Community Council) last spring, the SGA is quickly becoming a running joke on campus. It makes sense, therefore, why several candidates have positioned themselves as “SGA outsiders” to combat the image that they will be a continuation of an SGA on cruise control.
In a time where the majority of students feel that their representatives are not living up to their title or are otherwise inaccessible, one of the things that impressed us most about Walters’s vision for next year is her strategy for student outreach. Although this week saw the first SGA Coffee Hour, the effort is too little, too late. In a refreshing change, Walters wants the student government to take an active interest in its various constituencies – going to club meetings, holding more frequent and flexible office hours and increasing visibility in places like the dining halls, sports games and large school events. In effect, she means to bring SGA to the students rather than making the students come to the Crest Room.
Another plus in her platform is a student-developed website, Midd Connect. Aiming to increase convenience when shopping for course textbooks and when coordinating ride-shares to major cities, Walters’ website will help students conserve two of their most precious resources: time and money.
Furthermore, Walters takes compassionate stances on some of the most difficult issues at the College today: sexual assault and mental health. She, like the other candidates, is aware of the present dissatisfaction with on-campus resources for these problems and has plans to bring about positive change for each one.
Here, however, the Campus would like to note that although we are endorsing Caroline Walters, it is imperative that whoever wins the race shall increase resources to survivors of sexual assault and those suffering from mental or emotional stress. That being said, we have faith in Walters’ abilities to tackle these issues; in particular, her willingness to work with others seems to be one of her strongest assets as a leader.
When looking for partners to accomplish goals that matter the most to our community, Walters’ running mates might just be the best place to start. Including Ilana Gratch and Josh Berlowitz would be a great way to bring their knowledge of the inner workings of the SGA to her team. The board believes both of these candidates to be outstanding individuals who would do well as SGA President. Nevertheless, change starts at the top and Walters’ go-getter attitude and new approaches are the best bet for revitalizing the SGA. At the same time, she can also rely on the experience of reelected Senators to fill in any gaps in her knowledge.
Additionally, we would like to endorse Durga Jayaraman in the race for Student Co-Chair of Community Council. The editorial board was impressed by Jayaraman’s enthusiasm and sense of duty to Middlebury’s student body; she explained to us how she decided to run for Community Council Co-Chair upon realizing that she was the person best-suited for the job. We believe this to be true.
Jayaraman has experience serving on Community Council and understands both the opportunities and limitations inherent in the role. She also brings a multifaceted perspective as Co-Chair. An international student, woman of color and member of many different campus organizations, Jayaraman can represent many aspects of the College’s community. Examples of her leadership and involvement also stand out: she is the president of Palmer, has led diversity initiatives through the SGA Institutional Diversity Committee and reviews sexual misconduct through the Sexual Assault Oversight Committee. Such a range of experiences will serve her well as the Co-Chair of Community Council, which deals with issues that cut across many sides of the campus community.
For all the reasons above, the Campus editorial board enthusiastically and confidently endorses Caroline Walters and Durga Jayaraman as the best candidates for SGA President and Student Co-Chair of Community Council.
(04/16/15 1:31am)
“The more we understand the world, the more voice we have in shaping it.”
These were the words of a young student of Kevin Murungi ’01, Director of Human Rights and Foreign Policy Programs at Global Kids, who returned to the College on April 9 to deliver the Spring Symposium’s annual keynote speech. In his speech, this theme of global understanding was highlighted as Murungi shared the story of his journey from Nairobi to Middlebury to his current work in Global Kids, a non-profit education organization, and the incredible stories that he is helping other students write for themselves.
Murungi began his lecture with a broad grin.
“I’m an educator, so I like to connect with my audience,” Murungi said.
Education was one of the driving forces in Murungi’s young life. He grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, “the best city in the world.” (“Where else can you see giraffes on the city skyline?”) Murungi’s parents and older siblings studied at American universities; international perspective was highly valued in his family.
Murungi headed to Middlebury with excitement, a feeling that was hardly dampered even when he was pulled aside in the U.S. airport for a “random” security check. This event would foreshadow the presence of social injustice in Murungi’s surroundings, as well as his eagerness to address it.
Initially, Murungi believed he would study biology, but three hours of lab per week convinced him otherwise. He turned, on a whim, to political science, and Introduction to Comparative Politics with Professor Emeritus of Political Science David Rosenberg soon became his favorite class.
Murungi recalled how this subject really struck a chord with him.
“I am a Kenyan, [from a country where] speaking up against social injustice was tantamount to speaking out against the ruling elite.”
Even then, though, the significance of a major in political science didn’t weigh heavily in his mind. It wasn’t until a light-hearted conversation with Rosenberg, in which Rosenberg suggested Murungi major in political science, that his life took an unalterable course towards political science and social justice.
One of Murungi’s strongest messages to students was to fully appreciate their advisors.
“Relationships with professors at Midd are critically important,” Murungi said. “Don’t take them for granted.”
His advisor, James Jermain Professor Emeritus of Political Economics and International Law Russell Leng ’60, taught Murungi’s favorite undergraduate course: International Law and Organization. The combination of theory in the classroom and social injustice in his home country spurred Murungi to engage in social activism at the College. He helped plan an annual African Symposium, which still occurs today.
Furthermore, when racial injustice surfaced in the Campus, he was at the forefront of protests against it. During one of his undergrad years, the paper published a racist ad featuring a picture of three black men with the title “Thugs, Gangsters, and Hoodlums.” The backlash was ferocious, and Murungi recalled how the ad “stirred in him a desire to face injustices.” Even in Vermont, he was made aware of “what it meant to be a black man in America.”
Murungi’s leadership at Global Kids since 2006 enables middle and high school students from underserved areas of New York City and Washington, D.C. to learn about international policy, participate in the democratic process, and become change-makers in their communities. Many of the students come from schools whose dropout rates are 50 to 60 percent, yet students who participate in Global Kids summer programs have a 96 percent college acceptance rate.
Additionally, at Global Kids students are expected to spread their knowledge within their communities. For example, students in NYC are at the forefront of a proposal to mandate elementary school climate change education.
In his lecture, Murungi imparted his deep admiration for the “cultural competence” of the students he works with. His proudest moment at Global Kids was taking five students to Kenya in 2009, where they assessed the role of youth in human rights campaigns.
After the speech, he shared that, at Global Kids, the point of departure is always the students and their stake in the projects.
“All I can do is...provide the tools for them to access their global citizenship,” he said, just like the College did for him.
Murungi’s story comes full circle; he inspired a Global Kids participant, Amosh Neupane ’18, to apply to and attend Middlebury. Neupane shared his admiration for Murungi and the positive impact of his GK summer building green roofs in NYC public schools.
“Global Kids was/is the perfect after-school program — a combination of an academic support group, a mentorship and college counseling program, and a stage for youth empowerment,” Neupane said. “Perhaps the most important thing I learned in Global Kids was to unbridle myself and face my fears with confidence. Mentors like Kevin guided me through this process of development.”
Other students were equally impressed with Murungi’s social work in an environment that engages kids and his humility in recounting the opportunities he provides to children.
“[His speech] had just the right amount of cliché, but it was also real,” Leo McElroy ’18 said.
“I had lunch with him, and he’s a very low-key, very comfortable guy,” Kyler Blodgett ’17 said. “I’m glad he didn’t transform and button-up in his talk; he was the same relaxed guy.”
(04/08/15 3:43pm)
As this column has emphasized before, global environmental and climate trends will hinge on the emissions of the developing world. Just this month, China’s largest oil refiner, China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), has indicated to the world that China may reach peak oil and gasoline consumption much quicker than previously predicted by western energy companies and consulting groups. For instance, the esteemed Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) has forecasted that China’s oil demand will most likely increase through 2040. This is a massively different time frame than the official predictions by Sinopec. China sees peak diesel consumption in 2017 and peak gasoline consumption within the next 10 years.
These Chinese predictions are a sobering revelation to any oil-bull. The common theme among energy companies is that demand trends in India and China will remain positive for decades to come — supporting global oil markets in the process. This Chinese-Indian demand is essential for stability in the oil market given the very real slowdown in oil consumption from developed nations. Exxon-Mobile, the world’s fourth largest oil company, predicts that from 2010 to 2040, gas and diesel energy needs in the 32 countries of the OECD are projected to fall about 10 percent. However, Exxon believes that these needs are expected to double throughout the rest of the world.
The signs are already evident that these IEA and Exxon predictions may be overly enthusiastic. In China, diesel demand declined last year, and growth in crude oil consumption has shrunk. Crude oil use is projected to rise about three percent this year, less than half the rate of the total economy. These declines in growth rates are symptoms of very powerful forces from within China. For instance, the political leadership in China is trying to transition the economy away from debt-fueled real estate investments and heavy ‘smoke-stack’ industries towards service industries and increased domestic-consumption. This will limit the need for energy-intensive investments and stymie the growth of petroleum use.
Even Sinopec itself, with 30,000 gas stations and 23,000 convenience stores, is prepping for a future in which selling fuels is not its primary business plan. As a microcosm of the Chinese economy, it hopes to rely on the consumption of goods and services at its shops and filling stations. Sinopec Chairman Fu Chengyu is quoted as saying, “In the future, fuels will become a non-core business of Sinopec … petroleum or oil and gas will continue to be a major energy source in the future, but they won’t be the only source; more emphasis will be put on our new energy and alternative energies.”
China is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. As such, the policy decisions made in Beijing will have a greater effect on global climate change than any other unilateral announcements. According to the World Bank, China accounted for roughly 24 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2014. Within the country, roughly 16 percent of greenhouse gases are emitted from the consumption of petroleum products. It appears that through Sinopec’s retail plan, China is signaling that it is committed to meaningful reductions in emissions. However, there can always be more progress and greater efficiency. It will be illuminating to follow China’s path to peak gas and diesel over the next few years.
(03/19/15 12:04am)
Terracotta hexagons tessellate the floors at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington D.C., where I intern. Soles pat, dignified, across them as agents flood in and out of the aisles office to office, a loose collared dance. My desk, flush with the copier, features an Escher print, a portrait of my parents and soft stones I collected on California’s coast. I doze watching swarms of foot traffic in the corridor, which evokes a Southwest terminal moments after deplaning. One of the pebbles warms in my fist.
The internship started Monday, but my mentor is out West for the next two weeks. I do not have a badge for building clearance yet – they say two weeks, though the office veterans add six – and my computer setup has been tortoise-pace. I am the youngest in the building, probably on the whole block.
I am here in search of meaningful work. Two years into college and back from the honeymoon, disenchantment set in. The outcomes for my Middlebury 60-hour work week were letters and numbers, not social reform or justice. In the age of the climate refugee and Black Lives Matter, thousands were sounding the alarm, and meanwhile, I was unresponsive, a bovine bumming around greens under snow, spouting facts like broadsheet and nightly holed up in a dusty inglenook of Axinn.
Last fall, I met with Dean Hanson, asked for temporary leave and so started my gap semester, a season released from routine, hypothetical coursework and doused in rough-and-tumble “real” life. I was interested in enhancing lives, not proceeding with mine.
My time away did, however, start inward at a Buddhist monastery in the orchards north of Escondido, California. I lived under the rules and regimes of practicing monks of the olden Thai forest tradition. As a layman for one month, I attended morning and evening chants, prepared meals, swept paths and hiked to the groves down in the foothills to collect fruits – avocadoes, oranges, kumquats – to trade in town. The experience nursed my inner self. I read, wrote and meditated insatiably. I found sustentative calm, millennia-old wellsprings of wisdom, and more distilled notions of what I hope to accomplish this year, decade and century.
Days after leaving Metta Forest, I was back East, attending the weekly roundtable brief for EPA’s Climate-Ready Water Utilities (CRWU) Initiative, the office in which I now sit. CRWU is a program within the Water Securities Division that develops climate change risk assessment tools and strategies for water utility infrastructure operators. Picture an extreme weather remediation panel, though specific to the water sector, scaled nationwide and tailored by U.S. region. So far as glimpsed by the intern, there seems to be an overwhelming amount of impactful work conducted here. The CRWU Initiative’s efforts directly protect water treatment and transport infrastructure around the country, for decades and for millions.
In the thick of my semester away from Middlebury, I see clearer. Not in the sense of waning astigmatism or wearing prescription lenses, but in the sense of understanding. I can hear a procession of gridiron coming-together: intelligibility. So inexorable are our bounds today from college to employment that my generation’s youths – particularly, those of the nation’s college elite – are losing sight of themselves. College-age millennials are wearing blinders, and as I have come to discover, it has meant stepping away from schoolwork to lower them, take another look and gain finer resolution. That mental image we sustain of how we are supposed to go through our education should not, and cannot, blind us. College “conditioning” can wait. It is time to know – precisely and concisely – what we are doing in college in the first place. As the globe gains weight, its temperature rises slowly and sprawl persists on the scale of continents, I cannot proceed listlessly, without genuine purpose or anchorage. In the light of the heat, this is my time to reassess. I welcome you to join me.
What our Connected Generation understands and a warmed world portends do not agree. There is a mountain range of evidence without manifesto and we are complacent, afraid to ask fresh or difficult questions – to look diagnostically at the old – because we do not want to see what we will find. Do not trivialize the importance of introspection. Evaluate and reevaluate. Critically review the armature of your plan. Consider time away, and take a closer look: it is the only way to create a climate tolerant of and furnished for reform. The view is not all bad.
(03/12/15 2:44am)
It was a harsh Vermont winter in December 1963 and, in the midst of the subzero temperatures, a landmark student life initiative had also frozen over. “The ‘question of honor’ at Middlebury College seems to have plenty of support as an ideal and not so much as a working system,” read a December 5 front-page Campus article. The article, which included student concerns about a code’s implications, foreshadowed the proposed Honor Code’s defeat in a student vote for the second time that May.
Over the past year, the Campus has investigated the untold story of the creation of the Honor Code. Although the story of the origins of the Honor Code at Middlebury is often that of a system fashioned by students and for students, the historical picture is much murkier.
A lengthy search in the College Archives and interviews with those who witnessed the process firsthand reveal that the Honor Code had a slightly turbulent history from the start.
It was a story that dominated the early 1960s at the College: a group of students and administrators who saw the Honor Code as an important opportunity for students to take ownership over their education. And yet, they received surprisingly strong pushback from students on the language and specifics of the proposed code.
The code’s proponents even dropped a compulsory peer-reporting clause, a hallmark of honor systems at Princeton University and elsewhere, from the Middlebury Honor Code in order to ensure its passage via a student vote. Moreover, after two failed student referenda on the Honor Code, evidence found in the Archives shows that at least one administrator recommended enacting the Honor Code without a student vote of support. However, in March 1965 the Code received sufficient support in a student vote to pass. Faculty opted for a streamlined approval process to avoid sending the Honor Code back with revisions to be subject to another student referendum, which they thought could be tantamount to its defeat.
The question of student votes on the Honor Code has renewed relevance of late. On Sunday, the Student Government Association (SGA) Senate voted in favor of amending the Honor System’s Constitution to put the code to a biennial student referendum with the options to maintain, revise, or eliminate the Honor Code. The amendment now must receive 2/3 of the vote in a referendum in which 2/3 the student body votes and must also be ratified by the faculty.
Change in the Air
Middlebury’s academic Honor Code, far from a lone initiative, was the product of social changes on campus that created profound shifts in student life during the 1960s. The College of the 1930s-50s was on its way out in several ways that precipitated the creation of an Honor Code.
Historians of the College have written much about the changes that took place in the 1960s. Among these reforms were major social changes to the institutional rules surrounding student freedoms. The influential Dean of Women Elizabeth ‘Ma’ Kelly oversaw a period in the ’60s when the ground shifted under students’ feet regarding their freedoms and rights as young men and women.
In the ’60s, parietal hours — the now seemingly antediluvian rules that governed when men and women could visit opposite-sex dorms —were gradually phased out. The College began to offer help to students with questions about birth control and sexually transmitted diseases. Finally, the fraternities and sororities, long the bastions of the social life of yesteryear, became less and less of a mainstay of the campus party scene.
Historian of the College David Stameshkin said the ’60s were a period of remarkable change, bar none.
“Students wanted to be treated as adults. The administration wanted to treat the students as adults in certain ways but not others,” Stameshkin said in an interview. “It was incredible how things changed in the time [James] Armstrong was President.”
These changes, taken together, amounted to a climate of dramatically increased student responsibility in social life. Naturally, this trend simultaneously made its way into the academic realm.
As discussions were underway about a potential code, the Campus polled 254 students in October 1962 and found 80 percent approved of a code in theory. The newspaper also polled students and found that 35 percent of those surveyed had experience with an honor system at their high school. However, “a majority indicated they would not speak directly to a student if they found him cheating.”
The first instance of bringing the Honor Code to a vote occurred on November 19, 1962, when it failed. Harold Freeman ’62, the Student Association (SA) President, informed the Campus that the vote to inaugurate an Honor Code was defeated, 623-512, a combination of students voting “no” as well as “No-with-Qualification.” 235 voted no, 388 voted no with qualification and 512 voted yes. The students in favor did not reach the 85 percent threshold of “Yes” to send the measure to the faculty for a vote.
However, Freeman gave hints that the fight for a code was not over. “Freeman observed that by adding together the Yes and No-with-Qualification votes, almost four-fifths of the students were in favor of at least some form of Honor Code,” reported the Campus. Nonetheless, it would not be easy to convince the students who voted No-with-Qualification.
The SA, in a postmortem, theorized that a main cause for the defeat was the clause requiring students to report observed violations. This clause was considered a hallmark of longstanding honor codes at universities, including Stanford and Princeton.
Peer-Reporting Controversy
These qualms about the code reared their head repeatedly in the next two years. Surveys revealed approximately 80 percent of students supported an honor system as an ideal, but blanched at the proposal under consideration. “The main objection was to the obligation to report an offense committed by another person,” reported this newspaper.
Helen Gordon, president of the Panhellenic Council, “agreed that an honor code would be a benefit to Middlebury, but thought reworking of the ‘obligation’ clause necessary,” according to the Campus.
Gordon said, “It’s unrealistic to assume that human nature will [report others] but I don’t think they ought to leave out entirely this kind of an idea because it denies the opportunity to a person who’s really honest.”
The peer-reporting requirement would remain an issue through the end of the 1960s and beyond. As the clause became a sticking point in the debate, those in support of the Honor Code pushed back on the idea that peer-reporting meant “tattling” or being a “rat.”
In a December 1963 issue, Campus Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey J. Joseph opined that “whenever one brings up the subject of an Honor Code, the listener politely nods, makes a disparaging grimace, and quickly manages to say something like: ‘You going to the hockey game tomorrow night?’”
For all of the social life changes happening contemporaneously with the Honor Code debate, a large number of students felt comfortable enough with the status quo to stymie any efforts at instituting an honor system. Joseph explained that many students thought of the proposed Honor Code as either a way to end fraternities or to increase social code regulations and theorized that these factors led to its defeat.
“Let’s face it,” he wrote, “if someone wants to cheat, he cheats. If someone wants to ‘tell’ on him, he should be allowed to ‘tell.’ It is important to realize that a provision for ‘telling’ on someone is not included for the main purpose of making enemies out of friends. It is there to protect every honest student by presenting to the cheater a possibility that he will be caught. If you have any qualms about ‘telling’ on your buddy, keep your head down in your paper where it belongs.”
Despite the support of students like Joseph, the SA leadership began to contemplate foregoing the peer-reporting requirement. The Vice President of the SA was reportedly “willing to drop the stipulation that students report others, adding that ‘the maturity of Middlebury students ought to be able to make an honor code successful.’”
In December 1963, the chair of the student Honor Code Committee, Michael McCann ’65, cautioned against pushing the code too vigorously without almost unanimous student support. Two months later, the SA polled students on a potential honor code in what would be the run-up to a second push to pass it via a student body vote. A point of particular emphasis in the questionnaire was intended to gauge how students would feel about peer-reporting. The article stated that “McCann stresses the importance of questions dealing with student and faculty reports of offenders.”
The survey occurred concurrently with the 1964 election of a SA President, in which candidates weighed in on an honor code. Both John Walker ’65 and Peter Delfausse ’65 made an honor code a part of their platform.
Delfausse, who would win the election, said to a Campus reporter, “We on this campus are treated as adults in everything but the integrity of our academic work. Shouldn’t this be the first area in which we should be trusted? Nothing can force the student body into accepting something which isn’t wanted, but if an honor system is desired, we will find the right words with which to express it.”
Nevertheless, concurrent discussion about combating student apathy regarding the SA gives the impression that the Honor Code was an issue important to the members of its committee, but perhaps was less relevant to the wider student body. Richard Hawley ’67 was the Editor-in-Chief of the Campus, and said other issues captured the student body’s attention more than the Honor Code, particularly parietal hours — although he nonetheless appreciated the code when it was instated.
“I remember feeling a kind of relief,” Hawley said in an interview. “What a relief it was to take your exam to the library and do it there. I remember thinking, ‘This is wonderful.’ But I don’t remember student passion about it.”
Princeton on the Otter
Within the next few months, a figure who would be pivotal to Middlebury’s history weighed in on the code. College President James Armstrong, who had stepped into the position in 1963, approved of the proposed Honor Code in a meeting with McCann.
Armstrong said in a comment to the newspaper in April 1964, “Herding of students into the fieldhouse like animals, with proctors standing over them like jailkeeps, is not in keeping with the ideals of a liberal arts education.”
The influence of the college president and other key members of his administration may have been crucial to the Honor Code’s passage. Before arriving at Middlebury, Armstrong had spent his entire academic career at Princeton, an Ivy League school with one of the nation’s oldest academic honor codes — passed in 1893, with an obligatory peer-reporting clause. Armstrong earned his B.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton and then served as a faculty member and dean until he was appointed Middlebury’s 12th President.
“When Armstrong came as president from Princeton, he started bringing people from Princeton,” Stameshkin said in an interview. “In fact, the joke on campus was it was ‘Princeton on the Otter.’ That’s what they used to call Middlebury during the ’60s because Armstrong kept bringing people there.”
Another Princeton man, Dennis O’Brien was previously an assistant dean there before arriving at Middlebury in September 1965 to serve as the Dean of Men. His experience with the honor system at Princeton impacted his view of a potential Honor Code at Middlebury.
“Because myself and Jim came from Princeton, we had lived with it and we found it comfortable,” O’Brien told the Campus in a recent interview. “It seemed to establish a different relationship between faculty and students. Faculty were not always snooping over students’ shoulders to make sure they weren’t cheating; we were more like mentors. To suddenly switch over from being the person who is teaching someone to someone who is monitoring your honest behavior seemed not to be the image the faculty wanted to have.”
On top of a Princetonian as president, Middlebury’s stature as an institution was on the rise during the ’60s. O’Brien believes the Honor Code was part of the improvements.
“I think there was clearly a kind of an upgrade in terms of the quality of the students and the quality of the faculty that we were able to attract at that time,” he said, “and so it seemed like a much more senior, adult institution than one having proctored exams.”
The desire for an upgrade to Middlebury came from both above, with the administration, and also below, from students of the ’60s, particularly those who were tired of the fraternities’ hold on campus life.
“There was a genuine feeling that there should be more seriousness at the College intellectually,” Stameshkin said. “And the same thing was happening at Williams and other schools. This idea that there should be more intellectualism and more feeling of scholarship was also happening in the early to mid-60s.”
Nonetheless, the vocal support of Armstrong and O’Brien did not help the Honor Code at the ballot box at first. The proposed code failed in May 1964 to clear the 85 percent hurdle of students voting in favor, and the referendum did not receive even half of the student body’s participation. The result was devastating for those students who had worked tirelessly on behalf of a code.
“After two full years of preparation, an academic honor code was put before the student body Monday via a yes-or-no ballot – and failed to gain the needed support,” said a front-page article in the Campus. The measure received 69 percent “yes” votes from the 45 percent of the student body that voted. The rejected code included “that the test-taker pledge that he had neither given nor received aid” and that students report those they suspected of cheating within 48 hours.
The aforementioned Honor Code Committee displayed dogged, even stubborn, persistence to pass the measure. McCann told this newspaper, “This year’s balloting was far more encouraging than last year’s and there will be another honor committee next year trying to get this thing through.”
Victory, at a Cost
Despite McCann’s optimism, the outlook was grim: two votes and two defeats for an Honor Code within three years. But finally, in March 1965, the Honor Code was approved in a landslide. With 1,000 “yes” votes to 313 “no” votes, it was a marked improvement from the previous two tries in the fall of 1962 and the spring of 1964.
However, the code approved by students contained no compulsory peer-reporting clause such as that of Princeton, due to the fact that the committee viewed the clause as the reason for previous defeats. The Middlebury code stated that students with knowledge of an infraction should confront the student and if he or she does not report themselves to the honor board within 24 hours, the observer should. In O’Brien’s words, it was a passive reporting clause, with no teeth to punish a student who observes cheating and does not report it. The code that passed, unlike the previous versions, said students “should” report those they observed cheating, not “must” or “shall” of previous drafts.
The compulsory reporting clause had also been under fire in the opinions pages of this newspaper. In a Letter to the Editor on Feb. 25, 1965, William Michaels ’66 wrote: “Under the present system of exam proctoring, the College denies us the privilege of attempting to live up to the ideals of moral responsibility … this would also be the case if an honor code were passed which possessed a mandatory student reporting clause, since the student is not thus delegated the responsibility of looking after his own morality: it is merely shifted from the proctors to the other students.”
It was also a significant change that the threshold for victory was lowered to 75 percent from a lofty 85 percent, what it had been in 1962 and 1964. Some students grumbled about the idea of voting for an Honor Code for a third time, suggesting that other factors may have been at play in its success. A joke printed in the Campus poked fun at the code’s long-awaited victory. “Did you favor the Honor System at the recent election?” a student asks. His friend replies, “I sure did. I voted for it five times.”
President Armstrong was understandably pleased following the successful vote, as it was an initiative he had supported since the past spring, and he immediately set to work assigning administrators to it. In an October 1965 letter to the four members of the new subcommittee of the Faculty Administration Committee on the Honor Code, including Dean of Men O’Brien, Armstrong said, “Although I do not think you will be called upon for heavy duty quantitatively, I know you understand how important I believe the Honor Code is for the College and that a guiding hand from the faculty will be important and possibly crucial.”
Armstrong also probably worried that a lack of faculty support might end the last chance for the Honor Code to become a reality. He was present in a meeting of the Faculty Educational Policy Committee (EPC) in March 1965, after the code had been approved by the referendum.
“The honor code statement worked out by the students and brought to us with a large supporting student vote … was discussed,” states the meeting’s minutes. “It was felt best not to subject the statement to the scrupulous kind of inspection the EPC would normally employ in surveying a faculty document, but vote on it yea or nay as it stood; some felt that return of the document for a second student consideration and vote would defeat the proposal. Vote was a unanimous pro.”
It appears the EPC’s worries about the Honor Code failing in the student body led them to streamline its approval process, despite reservations that undoubtedly existed among the faculty.
The faculty also approved a key word choice in the code in April 1965. During the faculty meeting in which they approved the code, according to the article in the Campus, the faculty “did not demand a change to ‘must’” in the reporting clause.
Students Not Sold
There is a small piece of evidence that the College may have enacted an honor code regardless of the student vote. Dean of the College Thomas H. Reynolds wrote in his annual report dated July 1, 1964:
“There is an excellent chance that an almost unanimous student vote will be achieved next year. In the event that this kind of a program does not succeed next year, I recommend the College take some action towards bringing an academic honor system into effect.”
While Reynolds never ended up having to make that recommendation, O’Brien disagreed with his premise.
“I don’t think you should impose it without a successful student vote. I think that would have been a mistake to try to do that,” O’Brien told this reporter. “I think the whole idea of an honor code, to a certain extent, is to get away from the high school syndrome of, ‘You have to be proctored and not entirely trusted.’”
The following year, as new Dean of Men, Dennis O’Brien’s first annual report was pessimistic, illuminating the reasons why Reynolds or others might have pursued an Honor Code if the student body would not.
“By the time the student reaches the last half of his college career we have pretty much either got him involved intellectually or we have lost him for good … they may be active in fraternity life, extracurricular life, athletics, they may be valuable citizens in other ways, but academically they run along on minimal requirements seeking the gut courses and paying only lip service, if that, to the intellectual community,” wrote O’Brien in his annual report in June 1965.
He went on in that report to comment on the lackluster implementation of the Honor Code.
“The Honor Code was approved by students in early March,” O’Brien wrote. “I may have missed something, but I think no further initiative toward its implementation came from students until practically exam time, if then.”
O’Brien also observed how the administration was involved from the very beginning and that students were not yet invested in the code:
“Many students are far from ‘sold’ on the Honor Code. They feel that the Administration has been determined to have an Honor Code here no matter what and that the students finally let the Administration have its way. These students have a sort of uninvolved, ‘play it cool’ attitude. They intend to wait and see how ‘they’ will work it out. If students who felt that way could see the minutes of the Ad Hoc Committee on Honor Code for May 27, 1965 they would feel that their perception was largely confirmed. These minutes make it clear that the Honor Code Committee, chaired by the Dean of the College, consists of several professors and administrators and that to the meeting of this committee were ‘invited’ several specified undergraduates.”
O’Brien also cited a study from Columbia University that said for honor codes to be effective, the motivation should come from students and should appear to be coming from students. The difference between the honor codes at Princeton and Middlebury, he told this newspaper in October 1965, was not Princeton’s “obligatory clause for reporting, but a strong and firm belief in the system by faculty and students.”
Of the code, “it was held with a great deal of pride,” O’Brien said. “Most complaints of the new Middlebury system that I have heard have not been substantive, but procedural. And I think there are some false expectations about the system by a few students.”
A Reversal in Student Perception
Two years later in another report, O’Brien suggested that the honor code might have already backfired soon after its implementation.
“The Honor Code seems to be functioning well although there is still a certain amount of feeling against signing the pledge,” he wrote. “I personally feel that the distaste for the pledge grows out of a hypersensitivity on the part of students today that they are not trusted. As they are not trusted to close their dorm doors during parietal hours, so they feel they are not trusted in the matter of honor in examinations.”
This reversal in opinion was extraordinary. The push for the Honor Code, at least from students, was based on the idea that it would give the students more responsibility and was in the same spirit as a move away from parietal hours. Based on O’Brien’s report, the code had the opposite effect, making students feel like the administration trusted them less than before.
Whether the code was truly being followed is difficult to assess based on available records, but O’Brien writes that “a student was convicted of a violation of the Honor Code this year and suspended for a semester,” a low number of convictions by any standard.
Although during the 1960s the social rules at colleges and universities like Middlebury were being chipped away from all sides, it still took a great deal of effort on the part of members of the SA to pass an honor code via a student vote. Additionally, the faculty minutes and annual reports of the College show that at least one top member of the administration was ready to intervene to institute an honor code and held back probably because of concerns of its effectiveness if instated and operated by Old Chapel.
O’Brien’s 1967 assessment is revealing. There had been two unsuccessful votes from students amid vocal support from the administration and faculty; as a result, many students identified the Honor Code as an administrative device. A corollary explanation is that the social changes in the 1960s cut both ways on an honor system: while these sweeping changes helped make the code a possibility, they also changed the way a code was viewed in the years afterward. Increased freedom for students allowed them to pass the code; however, the perception of the code after 1965 was that it was an administrative measure — not a student-owned freedom.
“It’s very important that the students read the honor code as an administrative imposition as opposed to something that boiled up from the students,” Stameshkin said. “The students felt often as if the administration was kind of the enemy. They wanted to be adults and they felt the administration was treating them like children—you have to be in at this hour and all that — it wasn’t paranoia, but the students felt that way about a lot of things.”
The Campus reported in March 1968, three years after the code passed, that the student Honor Board was worried about the new system’s efficacy. The board had only heard six cases since 1965, and three of those were in the 1967-68 year. Two cases resulted in convictions, and only one of the six cases was because of a report submitted by another student. “This the board felt suggests either that only two students have cheated in the last three years, or that students have not accepted the responsibilities implicit in the system,” reported this newspaper.
The Honor Board, as a result, began to consider changing the constitution of the new Honor Code from passive acceptance of the code to hold responsible a student who did not report a violation.
A decade later, in January 1976, the student body approved by a landslide the revisions proposed by a committee on the honor system. There were dual changes: students now had a moral obligation to report cheating, moving away from the ambiguous language of the original code, and also proctors would be allowed in some cases with the specific authorization of the Judicial Review Board. Even under the best of circumstances, O’Brien said in a recent interview, getting students to report their peers may be asking too much.
“My guess is that [peer-reporting] never works terribly well, unless you’re in a highly codified organization like the military academy,” O’Brien said. “I’m not even so sure how well it worked at Princeton … it’s a nice thing to have: there’s a certain moral responsibility, and I love the idea of going up to somebody else and saying, ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ But I suspect it doesn’t happen very often.”
It is difficult to assess whether the code cut down on cheating, as suggested by research that shows colleges with an honor code have less self-reported cheating by students. On that front, Emeritus Dean of Advising and Assistant Professor of American Studies Karl Lindholm ’67 said the Honor Code did not hurt and probably helped.
“I remember thinking it was a great idea. I don’t think there was any greater level of cheating than when the exams were tightly proctored,” Lindholm said. “It was almost a challenge to see if you could beat the system then,” with stories of notes written on hands and crib sheets hidden during an exam. “With unproctored exams, I don’t recall any greater level of cheating,” he said.
Approaching Another Vote
In a January survey by the SGA, 33 percent of the student body said they support the Honor Code in principle but that there need to be changes. 59 percent of the 1438 survey respondents said they support it in its current form and about 7 percent said they don’t support it.
Additionally, the Campus published (“Cheating: Hardly a Secret,” Oct. 30, 2013) the results of a survey by Craig Thompson ’14 for the course Economics of Sin where 35 percent of 377 students surveyed admitted to violating the Honor Code at least once in the 2012-13 academic year. 97 percent were not punished.
On Sunday, the discussion came to a head when the SGA Senate approved, in a nearly unanimous vote, the decision to move ahead with a bill that would subject the Honor Code to a biennial student referendum. Per the Honor System's Constitution, 2/3 of the student body must vote, and 2/3 vote in favor, for the change to take effect. The amendment would then need to be ratified by the faculty at large. If the amendment passes, a spring 2016 referendum would give students three options: to vote to maintain the honor code as it stands, to eliminate it or to revise it. A majority in favor of revision would cause the Honor Code committee to survey opinions during a two-week revision process. Students would then vote on the revised Honor Code to either approve it, to maintain the original code, or to eliminate the code.
Student Co-Chair of Community Council Ben Bogin ’15 was an impetus behind the SGA proposal and said fighting atrophy was a goal. “The idea behind our method is to encourage people to continue talking about the Honor Code after they sign it as a first-year,” Bogin wrote in an email. “The Honor Code only works if it’s a living, breathing document that people cherish and take seriously. We’re trying to breathe a little more life into it.”
SGA Director of Academic Affairs Cate Costley ’15 added that the idea is to reclaim the Honor Code as a document students care about and take ownership of.
“Through conversations and debates, we settled on a schoolwide vote to try to solicit the voices of our peers and to see what they think,” Costley said. “And having an edge to it with the possibility of eliminating the Honor Code is to say to people, ‘Let’s not take this document for granted.’”
Vice President for Student Affairs, Dean of the College and Assistant Professor of the History of Art and Architecture Katy Smith Abbott said she believes discussion has also been sparked by the decision in the Economics Department to proctor exams in introductory classes starting last spring.
“It’s not that proctoring hasn’t been an option for faculty — it has been — but it’s required a certain kind of approval process that most people thought was not necessary or wasn’t in the spirit of the Honor Code,” Smith Abbott said. “And I think when that decision was made (thoughtfully, and at great length) by the Economics Department, it meant that a larger number of students were being exposed to the question of whether the Honor Code is working.”
Smith Abbott also said that the code could possibly fail in a referendum, based on what she has heard from students.
“I think some of my lack of a firm sense of how it would go is based on the variety of opinions out there right now about whether or not the Honor Code is working,” she said. “I think if we have entered into a period where more students, through their own experience or inherited wisdom, think the Honor Code isn’t working, we could see it fail.”
Several on Community Council, according to Smith Abbott, have raised doubts about the wisdom of a biennial survey in which the Honor Code could be eliminated.
“I think a lot of folks on Community Council — and I have mixed feelings about this — felt that those are insurmountable odds that, if two years later, you have two classes of students who have never lived with an Honor Code,” Smith Abbott said. “What’s their investment in bringing it back? Why are we putting that on them by saying, ‘[An honor code] worked for some people and didn’t work for others, but it’s on you to decide to overwhelmingly vote it back into existence?’”
Bogin, however, said that that he is not worried about failure and that the discussion of the code’s relevance is worth having through a referendum.
“I think that it’s incredibly unlikely that the Honor Code would fail in a vote. According to our most recent student survey, in which about 60 percent of the student body voted, 92 percent supported the continued existence of the Honor Code,” Bogin wrote. “I also think that it’s important to say that if something isn’t working, and everybody agrees, we should be able to get rid of it. It’s hard to say that the Honor Code is student owned if students don’t have the power to get rid of it.”
Hawley, who was at Middlebury during the Honor Code debate, said renewed attention to the code is not a bad thing.
“I think the cycle of concern is probably the best thing, whatever the outcome, because it’s heightening student awareness of how it’s my responsibility to do my own work. I don’t think there’s anything that would prove that a certain kind of honor code produces more honor,” Hawley said. “It’s sort of what Jefferson said about the American Constitution: it should be revisited; there should be at least a thread of revolution every 20 years to keep attention fresh on what the values are. I think raising the climate of concern about it is probably the most important thing with respect to honor, not necessarily what code you have written down.”
(03/11/15 11:23pm)
Middlebury may have lost control over its investments. In his Report On The Recent Board Of Trustees Meeting, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz wrote that our current investment strategy “raises questions about sharing authority with more institutions and therefore having less say in how, where, and with whom Investure invests.” The review of our investment manager that Liebowitz proposes is the first step towards regaining control over our investments, and with that control the ability to divest.
For the past ten years, Middlebury has outsourced our investment office to Investure, a company that manages our billion-dollar endowment along with those of a dozen other institutions. Because this structure responds to so many different institutional interests, those who hold responsibility for the College’s long-term success have little direct say over where our endowment is invested (go/endowment101). Over the past three years of campaigning for Middlebury to divest our endowment from fossil fuels, Divest Middlebury succeeded in raising the President’s concern over this shortcoming of Investure’s structure.
Divest Middlebury is part of the global movement to divest from fossil fuel companies, because we believe we should invest in the future we believe in, not contradict our efforts of carbon neutrality. We are asking for Middlebury to immediately stop buying new positions in the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies and get out of any current investments in these companies within five years. Because of Investure’s current model, however, we can’t do that.
Whether or not the College can keep Investure and divest from fossil fuels is unknown. Last November, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund left Investure in order to divest its $860 million endowment from fossil fuels. Their departure suggests that the probability of divesting within Investure is slim.
“It is paradoxical for environmental grant makers to fund climate solutions while investing in companies that are accelerating climate change,” states DivestInvest’s mission statement, an organization of divested institutions that includes the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. “We can get good, safe returns while helping to build a new energy system.”
It’s also possible that Investure might adapt to give us more control. In 2010, Investure created a way to dedicate some of our investments to renewable energy. Investure launched the Sustainable Investments Initiative with funds from Middlebury, Dickinson College, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. At the time of its launching, Middlebury committed one fifth a percent of our endowment to these “green” investments. After Divest Middlebury’s first year of campaigning, the College agreed to up our position to five percent of our college’s investments. Clearly sometimes Investure can customize their offerings, and then in some ways we can have a say over where our endowment is invested.
Whether we stay with Investure or leave, we can collaborate with other investors who share our values. If Investure creates a “fossil fuel free” option for Middlebury, Dickinson College and other like-minded clients can join it. Otherwise, Middlebury and our peers should form a new investment-consortium with a manager who has expertise in environmentally and socially responsible investing.
The consortium model of investing has worked well for Middlebury, financially. As Liebowitz said in his February 2nd email, “Investure... continues to generate excellent endowment returns that place Middlebury in the top quartile of colleges and universities.” Of course, as students who appreciate all that this College offers us – from financial aid and top-notch academics to Real Food and biomass energy – we don’t want to see the College get lower returns on investments. But we believe that fossil-fuel-free investing can make equally good returns, and that, in fact, investments in fossil fuels may pose an investment liability in the form of stranded assets. Our belief is founded on well-documented research, solid numbers and resounding expert opinion. go/endowment; go/rbf; go/divestment
When the College concludes the review of Investure, how will we know whether we have enough “say” in our investments? What are the particular questions this review will ask, and what do the answers mean for us? Divest Middlebury knows one question this review should ask: Through Investure, do we have the power to screen certain sectors or companies from our portfolio? If yes, we might stay. If no, we’re out.
Let’s start customizing our investments to match our mission, beginning with fossil fuel divestment.
(03/11/15 11:20pm)
What will our government do going forward? This issue serves as more than mere content for nightly news shows. It is on the minds of students at Middlebury who want to see something done about the issues that our country is facing. While it is discussed among friends sitting around a table at Proctor, unfortunately, the debate and discussion usually stops there.
The American Enterprise Institute club began at Middlebury as a way to extend this debate. The American Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington D.C., does research and analysis on the political and economic situations of the United States. At Middlebury, AEI provides a platform for open debate and discussion on issues ranging from the economic situation of America’s middle class to the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Syria. Through weekly meetings, discussions of articles, books and movies and bringing speakers to campus, AEI hopes to facilitate the much-needed open debate that is missing on Middlebury’s campus.
Today, Republicans hold control of both the House and Senate, while President Obama is in the White House. As politically responsible citizens, we are driven to ask – how will our government function under these conditions? A divided government will not only affect what bills are passed, but also what bills are brought to the floor. When looking at the issue of divided government we are really looking at the future of the immigration debate, tax reform, the issue of climate change, as well as many other issues that affect us in the present as well as after college.
The vast effects of divided government on the American populace as well as the Middlebury student body must be discussed and debated. For this reason, the topic of AEI’s first policy conference, to take place on March 14, will be divided government and what it means for both the constitution and the legislative process.
Professor Shep Melnick of Boston College will give the conference’s keynote address. Melnick, who currently teaches courses on American politics, is a scholar of the Constitution and examines the intersection of law and politics. In addition to giving the keynote address, Melnick will be sitting on the first of two panels, which will focus on divided government and the legislative process.
The first panel also features former governor of Vermont, Jim Douglas. Governor Douglas, now an Executive in Residence at Middlebury College, started his career in Vermont politics as a representative in the Vermont House of Representatives. He has also served as Secretary of State, State Treasurer and Governor of Vermont. Professor of Political Science Matt Dickinson and Chair of the Political Science department and Professor of Political Science Bert Johnson will also be sitting on the first panel.
The subject of the second panel will be the legislative agenda of the 114th Congress. This panel features Governor Douglas, Melnick, Assistant Professor of Political Science Adam Dean and Stan Veuger, currently a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Veuger’s research focuses on political economy. He is also a frequent contributor to The Hill and the U.S. News and World Report among other publications, and writes on a range of topics including health and tax policy.
AEI’s policy conference will begin at 11:00 a.m. this Saturday, March 14 in Wilson Hall (formerly the McCullough Social Space). It is open to the public and is intended to serve as a platform for debate and discussion on a wide variety of issues that affect America in the present and future. Whether you are interested in politics and economics, or you simply want to learn more about an issue, this conference will be the first step towards sparking a larger conversation about the future of America at Middlebury.
(02/26/15 1:50am)
“We strive for 105% support,” chuckled first-year Taylor Cook after reading the section of the most recent Campus feature regarding students opinions on divestment from fossil fuels. Cook’s comment referred to a large info-graphic, which allegedly claimed in bold that, “55% of students support divestment from fossil fuels,” and “50% of students are not for divestment or have no opinion.”
I was not a star on my high school’s math team like Cook, but it didn’t take me long to realize that 50 + 55 do indeed equal 105 and that to have data on 105% of the student body’s opinions on fossil fuels divestment is impossible. I too started to chuckle.
This light-heartedness was soon clouded by motivation to uncover truthful data on students opinions, however, as I realized this issue — divestment — is too important to be reported on inaccurately.
The data purportedly used to create this info-graphic and provide substance for the text alongside it came from the recent SGA student life survey. Lucky for me, I am on the SGA and was able to access the information easily.
I found no errors in the SGA data; all of the categories added up to a clean 100%. Thus, my first order of business is to rectify the data and its portrayal. According to the survey, 55% of students support divestment, 15% of students do not support divestment, and 30% of students have no opinion. Rock-stars Krista Karlson and Day Robins have provided this new info-graph which for one, adds up to 100% and two, does not lump together the “no opinion” and “not for divestment” categories which we feel was an arbitrary and misleading combination.
Unfortunately, my concerns with the quality of the reporting presented in this section of the feature do not end here. The article interviewed two sources for comment on the results of the survey, and despite the fact that a majority of students are in favor of divestment, both sources were highly critical.
In order to make up for the imbalance in the reporting I would like to challenge the thinking of source one, who was quoted saying that, “divestment doesn’t have a shot in achieving what a carbon tax or cap and trade can achieve in reducing emissions.” To this I would say that we are by no means advocating divestment instead of other means of addressing carbon emissions. To the contrary, divestment works to raise the saliency of issues related to climate change and expose and undermine the inordinate power and exploitative practices of the fossil fuel industry so as to build a movement powerful enough to push the carbon emission reduction legislation source one suggests, through our fossil fuel funded legislature.
For those who question whether a divestment movement is really necessary and believe that Congress will pass meaningful carbon reduction legislation just by looking at the facts, let me remind you: we live in illogical times. This past year, 2014, was the warmest year on record. Let’s repeat that: 2014 was the hottest year to date. And yet, Congress has yet to pass a carbon tax or institute a cap and trade program for carbon emissions. And when we look to history, we can’t deny that the most significant pieces of legislation in the last century could not have been achieved without a powerful movement, often with forceful student support, pushing them forward.
In continuation, the second source quoted in the feature displayed concerns about the financial risks of divestment. I have written extensively about the financial argument for divestment in previous op-eds that you can access on the campus website, but to recap: socially responsible investment, and in this case fossil free investing, in fact provides higher-risk adjusted returns. Additionally, in this discussion of costs and benefits I would also like to bring awareness to the costs Middlebury is already accruing by not divesting in the form of damage to our brand and reputation as an environmental leader, and donations to the school from alumni who are unwilling to give money as long as we are invested in fossil fuels.
The section of the feature about which I have been referring had no ending, it merely stopped in the middle of a sentence, an obvious mistake which I can’t help but feel was a little meant to be as it has allowed me to fill in the parts of the article I felt missing. In the same way, I hope everyone in the Middlebury community challenges themselves to learn about and engage with divestment as we move into the next few months of the campaign, as the world burns.
(02/25/15 7:10pm)
The inception of the Rohatyn Center for Global Affair’s Student-Led Conference was only a little over a year ago, and yet this year’s “Apathy and Action: Exploring Youth-Driven Movements” conference had the appearance of being a long established event on campus. Last year’s conference, entitled “Immigration in the Neoliberal Age,” set a precedent for progressive and internationally-relevant themes, which continued into this year’s conference.
Seeking “to put the latest youth-led movements in perspective and look to the future, aiming to determine the key factors that will be responsible for either bringing or deterring social change,” according to the event’s online description, students Gabbie Santos ’17, Bilal Khan ’18, Forest Jarvis ’15 and Karen Liu ’15 applied to lead and organize this year’s conference. Members of the Rohatyn Student Advisory Board (RSAB) selected the “Apathy and Action” proposal and other than financial support, Santos, Khan, Jarvis and Liu have been entirely responsible for orchestrating the conference. Their months of hard work and commitment to exploring the topic of youth-led social action were evident at last week’s conference.
After two days of guest speakers, discussions and screenings, the event concluded on the evening of Feb. 20. The conference addressed pertinent topics that were divided into the following five sessions: “Between Protest and Powerlessness: The Startling Ubiquity of Student Activism”; “The Radical Mind”; “Combatting Apathy”; “Collective Action and Strategy”; and “The Climate Movement.”
Compelling guest speakers, such as Shannon Galpin, founder and director of Mountain2Mountain, Marcela Olivera, the Latin American coordinator for Water for All and Alexandra Barlowe, outreach coordinator for Fossil Free Yale, supplemented each of these sessions — some traveling from as far as Bolivia to attend. In addition to these speakers, Schumann Distinguished Scholar Bill McKibben and Associate Professor of Sociology Linus Owens also imparted important knowledge and incited meaningful conversation.
Attendance and engagement was impressive. The Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs (RCGA) Director Tamar Mayer found the event “very successful” and attributed some of the conference’s success to the thoughtful ordering of the discussions, “starting with an academic discussion about protest and radicalism and continuing with practitioners.”
Thinking back the organizers’ involvement in the planning process, Liu was initially drawn to their preliminary conversations.
“These were not just conversations, they were dialogues that we could translate into something larger — something that could engage the entire community and broaden the scope of participants,” Liu wrote in an email.
Santos also expressed a desire to have the conference act as a means to “engage the community in thinking about what our roles might be as youth, in the context of social movements, from the spectrum of apathy to action.”
Similarly, Jarvis expressed witnessing “a lot of high-profile student-led events and protests here [at Middlebury], which have been met with varying levels of success … it seems to be about finding a ‘happy medium’ between drawing people’s attention and getting people on campus to care about relevant issues and not being too divisive or aggressive about the movement.”
“If our students will move to organize around a topic, which is close to their hearts, and mobilize to bring change, this conference’s impact will last for a long, long time,” Mayer said. “Wouldn’t that be the ultimate success?”
With youth-driven activism sweeping the globe, it is likely that the success Mayer speaks of and the intention of the conference — to provide students with the opportunity to reflect on how to “affect and support change in the real world” — is well on its way to being realized.
(02/18/15 9:58pm)
Last week, Vermont Gas announced that due to a nearly 80 percent price increase in the past six months, the company has terminated Phase II of their two-part pipeline extension plan, which means the plant will no longer extend from Middlebury to the International Paper plant in Ticonderoga, N.Y.
Skepticism began to rise over the summer when Vermont Gas released that the projected cost required for Phase I would surpass the predicted $86 million, and likely reach $154 million. As a result, the Public Service Board asked for a remand from the State Supreme Court in order to investigate the price jump. Although this request materialized in a 30-day examination of cost-related developments, the project was allowed to continue without much scrutiny.
When an updated cost estimate for Phase II was released, which predicted a required $105 million instead of the former $74.4 million, plans to complete Phase II, the International Paper plant, which had previously agreed to cover a portion of the cost, no longer found the project commercially worthwhile and withdrew from the deal.
In an interview with the Addison Independent last month, Chris Recchia, the Commissioner of the Department of Public Service (DPS), shared that the more recent budget increase would be examined more carefully than the one in July. Although the DPS initially supported the pipeline project, the department has grown wary of the exploding costs due to its loyalty to ratepayers and landowners along the pipeline route who bear some of the burden of greater construction costs.
Louise Porter, member of the DPS counsel, wrote in a statement that, “the department strongly urges the board to investigate whether the Phase I project remains in the public good in light of the revised cost estimate.”
Porter further notes that a “cost increase of this magnitude” is reason to revisit Vermont Gas’ Certificate of Public Good, a requirement for utilities infrastructure and services, and urges the board to look into “all relevant changes to the project to date,” not just financial ones.
In line with the department’s request, the Vermont Supreme Court has granted regulators unlimited time and scope concerning the second investigation, unlike the previously limited examination of cost-related developments. Although Vermont Gas rejects the need for increased breadth, the South Burlington-based company has stated it accepts the push for a second project inspection.
Despite the pipeline’s recent setback, the company continues to assert that the pipeline will provide cheaper, more environmentally friendly energy to customers.
Don Rendall, president and CEO of Vermont Gas, insisted in his interview with VT Digger, “this is still a good deal for the customers in Addison County and will be a good deal for the state of Vermont.”
Governor Peter Shumlin told the Burlington Free Press that he is supportive of both the pipeline extension plan and the Public Service Board’s new position as overseer.
Governor Shumlin states, “I am gratified Vermont Gas will be putting a renewed focus on offering strong public benefits and a choice for Vermonters of natural gas service through its ongoing expansion to Middlebury and continued exploration of how to drive farther south to Rutland. I know that the Public Service Board and Department will provide vigorous oversight. The state’s interest and mine has always been in getting the choice of affordable natural gas to more Vermont residents and businesses, to help expand economic opportunity.”
Unfortunately for Vermont Gas, few are as encouraging as the governor. The termination of Phase II has reinvigorated protests against the pipeline.
The opposition coalition, comprised of groups such as Just Power, Rising Tide Vermont and 350Vermont, stated to the Burlington Free Press that the Vermont Public Service Board should “revoke the Certificate of Public Good for Phase I in light of the near doubling of Phase I costs, the stark climate impacts of fracked gas, and impacts on landowners in the path of the pipeline.”
Similarly, Greg Marchildon, the Vermont State Director of AARP, commented, “the public deserves to know what the additional costs are, how they are being justified, and if the project is still viable given that the projected cost has now gone from $86 million to $154 million in just a matter of months.”
Paul Burns, Executive Director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, who also opposes the pipeline, admits that it would be “astounding” if either Vermont Gas or the PSB terminated Phase I. Burns insists however, “I think it’s a very real possibility.”
Despite the uncertain fate of Phase I, Vermont Gas plans to continue construction after winter under its currently valid Certificate of Public Good.
(02/11/15 2:59pm)
The Vergennes solar project just completed its first year of operation, but energy output results were not as great as its developers had hoped. In 2012, the city of Vergennes leased land by its wastewater treatment plant to Encore Redevelopment, which installed a solar array in that area with the value of $500,000. This array began producing energy on Dec. 31, 2013.
As one might expect, Vermont is not the sunniest place around, especially not this time of year. On average, Vermont has a 51 percent chance of seeing the sunlight during daytime hours. Not only are solar panels inhibited by the lack of sun, but they are also blocked by several inches of snow that may pile up over the winter. Despite the lack of ideal weather and climatic conditions, Vermont continues to prioritize the solar power industry. The Vermont government has instituted policies to incentivize solar for individuals, businesses and municipalities.
Throughout the first year of operation, the Vergennes solar array was expected to produce about 200,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. However, the actual output fell short, producing only 176,502 kilowatt hours, which was 88 percent of what was expected. The city of Vergennes was estimated to save between $4000 and $5000 annually, but only saved $3960, leaving them just shy of the initial estimate.
This lower-than-expected energy output may be due to uncontrollable variables, such as weather, snowfall or shading from nearby trees. However, engineers can predict this outcome given their ability to predict energy yield with high levels of certainty.
“Generally, a bad year and an exceptional year do not vary a tremendous amount,” said Nathaniel Vandal, co-founder of GreenPeak Solar, a solar development company out of Waitsfield, VT aimed at reducing the cost of solar energy for customers.
“Typically there is a 90 percent probability that the generation in a given year will meet or exceed the estimate,” Vandal said. Given this statement on the accuracy of estimates, 88 percent production does not appear to be too far off target.
Ironically, while solar panels are an effort to reduce carbon emissions and slow climate change, the very effects of climate change may actually be stifling the production of solar power in New England. Climate change models predict that New England will experience more cloud cover and precipitation.
(01/22/15 1:14am)
We all know fossil fuels are contributing to Climate Change, but do you know how much power they hold in Washington?
Generally, our democratic system allows for voters to communicate with and affect those who represent them in Washington by writing letters, fundraising and voting. Unfortunately, the fossil fuel companies have rigged the system such that the normal pathways are blocked to the average citizen. Divesting our money from fossil fuel companies is the one route we have left to limiting their power and sway.
The government awards billions of dollars to fossil fuel companies every year in the forms of tax breaks, lower interest rates and price control incentives. These companies receive between $10 and $50 billion every year, much more than the entire budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. Rather than giving this money to companies contributing to climate change, it could be channeled into improving this problem or even alleviating the national debt. The president has, time and time again, brought this matter to the Congress but it has yet to change anything.
According to several polls, the majority of the general public agrees on cutting off fossil fuel subsidies. Nevertheless, our lawmakers continue to provide huge benefits to these companies. Why? Because of the large campaign contributions that fossil fuel companies provide.
Clean energy sources played a huge role in the discussion surrounding the 2008 elections. As a result of concern about dirty energy spending, environmentally friendly actors spent 1.5 times more on ads than fossil fuel companies. By 2012, the situation had completely reversed. This time around, fossil fuel companies spent four times as much as clean energy groups. The combination of drastically increased spending by fossil fuel companies and the stalling of climate change legislation in Congress left many people feeling powerless. The Climate Reality Project decided not to buy any ads in the 2012 election because they felt any money spent would only be a washed-out waste in comparison to the vast swaths of money fossil fuel companies poured in. Currently, coal, oil, and natural gas corporations are playing a huge role in Congressional decisions by supporting the campaigns of policy-makers aligned with their goals, lobbying in Washington, and running ads all over the country.
In 2014, the fossil fuel industry injected over $721 million into electoral races across the country. With so much money to throw around, it is not surprising that they have, more or less, gotten their way in the political realm. Even the engaged citizen cannot dream of swaying the government to the extent that the fossil fuel industry can.
How did this change come to pass, you might ask? Well, in 2010, the Citizens United v. FEC court case changed the rules on campaign finance. The Supreme Court ruled that, under citizens’ First Amendment right to free speech, corporations are now allowed to engage in the political process by spending exorbitant amounts of money and drowning out public opinion with misleading media content. Despite two previous Supreme Court rulings, which upheld citizens’ rights over those of corporations, the 5-4 decision opened the floodgates to the past six years of corporate rights. This ironically entitled shift has allowed for an increasingly corrupt political regime and a Citizenry that, even when United, remains disenfranchised in comparison to the pull that fossil fuel companies now possess.
Ads put out by the Natural Gas Alliance and Piedmont Natural Gas promote a heart-warming vision of American families benefiting from natural gas supplying cleaner energy throughout the country. What they neglect to mention is the harmful effects that fracking has on communities surrounding drill sites, and this obfuscation manipulates public perception.
With fossil fuels controlling the media and the government, and with common forms of political engagement largely unavailable to us, we turn to divestment as our last opportunity to speak. Many other divestment campaigns have come to the forefront in the past but none more powerful than Divest from South Africa of the late 1970s and 1980s. At that time, divestment grew to the point where corporations such as IBM and General Motors felt the impact on their business and withdrew their factories and contracts from South Africa. Eventually, with the added pressure of US legislation, the isolation of the apartheid regime resulted in its falling apart.
Keeping South Africa in our memory backpack, the environmental movement carries on, chugging away at our opposition. In just the past couple of years, 18 colleges, 64 religious institutions and a number of cities and other organizations have all taken the pledge to divest from fossil fuels. Oil, gas and coal are starting to feel the pressure, and every day we gain sway in their rigged system. Divestment signals to politicians the importance of climate change issues to the public, forcing them to act on these matters so vital to our lives. As Ghandi said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Emma Ronai-Durning ’18 is from Salem, Ore., Kate Johnson ’18 is from Bedford, Mass. and Amosh Neupane ’18 is from Queens, N.Y.
(01/21/15 11:06pm)
“On Tuesday, January 13, about 45 people gathered in front of Mead Chapel for a ‘rejection rally’ against the Keystone XL pipeline, joining over 130 rejection rallies nationwide. Encouraged by 350.org and 350 Massachusetts, rallies took place all across the country in the wake of Nebraska’s decision to allow the pipeline to pass through.” - The Middlebury Campus, “Students and Vermonters Rally Against - and For - the XL Pipeline,” Jan. 15
***
For the last five years, since the commissioning of the Keystone XL pipeline, there has been spirited debate from every imaginable sector of the American public as to the pipelines benefits or lack thereof. As the 114th Congress prepares to push the pipeline through and President Obama threatens to veto any such order, it would appear that the debate is continuing its familiar path. However, one variable in the Keystone XL pipeline debate has changed since the issue came to the forefront of the news cycle: oil prices have undergone a sustained drop in price. So instead of picking an ideological side to the pipeline debate I am going to ask how lower oil prices affect the economic and emissions development of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Informed discussion has mainly revolved around the State Department Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS). Though the study concluded that the pipeline would not substantially increase greenhouse gas emissions, there was one major exception to this statement. If oil prices hovered around the $65-$75 a barrel range, then the reduction in transportation costs accrued from the pipeline would tip the economics of Canadian oil production from red to black — thus increasing emissions. Now that oil is currently in the $45-$55 a barrel this point of discussion seems meaningless.
However, it is not the current price of oil that decides whether or not this project makes sense in terms of economics or emissions. It is the long-run price that determines the effect of a pipeline that could be in service for decades. The absolute impact of Keystone XL on both price and emissions depends on how global producers and consumers react to the oil price increase or decrease caused by the pipeline’s completion or lack thereof.
Lower oil prices reduce both the costs and the benefits of approving the Keystone XL pipeline by reducing the odds that it will ever be fully built or used. If prices are kept at their current low level, there is a very small chance that the Keystone XL pipeline will never get built because of the economics. This is highly unlikely though, because if Canadian production does not grow, the chances of sustained low prices decreases. The more realistic possibility is that the pipeline is approved and utilized. In this case, lower oil prices reduce the economic benefits without changing the climate effects of the pipeline.
However, the biggest takeaway from this debate is that both the climate damages and the economic benefits from Keystone XL are small in the grand scheme of climate change and the U.S. and global economies. A Keystone XL decision will not drastically alter the current science behind climate change or drastically affect the U.S economy. The debate says more about how we as a nation feel about the economy and climate change than what the science or economics says about this topic.
(01/21/15 7:49pm)
On Jan. 17, alumni from the Sunday Night Group (SNG) and 350.org held a ten-year anniversary reunion for the conference “What Works? New Strategies for a Melting Planet.” SNG is Middlebury’s first environmental activism group, and 350.org is the largest international campaign for climate action.
Ten years ago, this conference helped establish SNG. Three years later, SNG alumni and Scholar in Residence in Environmental Studies Bill McKibben co-founded 350.org. In celebration of the conference’s 10-year anniversary, alumni returned to campus to reflect on what has worked and to generate new ideas for the local and global climate movement .
Co-organizers Jeannie Bartlett ’15, Hannah Bristol ’14.5 and Teddy Smyth ’15 opened the event. Alumni shared their stories and held roundtable discussions.
Executive Director at 350.org May Boeve ’06.5 reflected on SNG’s founding in 2005.
“We were beginning to experiment on campus like lowering the thermostats in dorms and changing light bulbs. But then we marched in Montreal with 40,000 people, the largest climate demonstration that had ever happened up to that point. And we got this infusion of energy we brought back to Middlebury,” Boeve said.
“It’s one of the most wonderful feelings to be back here with all of you in this community and to remember that the relationship between Middlebury and the world beyond Middlebury is so alive,” she added.
According to Boeve, the capstone of this was the People’s Climate March in September, the largest to have ever occurred.
“If history is any guide, there will be other, larger marches because we need every large climate march we can get. We are in a race against time,” she said.
In addition to sharing their experiences, the alumni also discussed their thoughts on current events.
U.S. Policy Director at 350.org Jason Kowalski ’07 spoke about fighting the Keystone Pipeline.
“One cool thing coming back to Middlebury is seeing the carbon neutrality goal. That was a campaign we were pushing [when I was a student here]. Now it’s something the campus has bought into,” Kowalski said.
“Just last week I had 30 different senator staffers asking for talking points. We have produced a sea change with this campaign that is really similar with what’s happened with carbon neutrality on this campus. We started on the margin, and we’ve dragged the mainstream to our position. Bold ideas can have power in Washington, and that to me is what carbon neutrality and SNG is all about, and that to me is what the keystone campaign is all about. That’s what I’m really excited about.”
The manner in which language and psychology influence how people view climate change interested Hilary Platt ’12.5, an environmental policy and psychology major.
“A study found that the most effective strategy was to say, ‘Save energy in your home; your neighbors are saving energy too.’ This study led to [the founding of] a company called Opower, where I am working today…we are using behavioral science to impact the way people use power in their homes and reduce consumption. We saved enough energy to take all the homes in Hawaii and Alaska off the grid for a year. Together we’re making a big impact on the climate,” Platt said.
Alumni reflected on their efforts to have fair-trade coffee available in the dining halls by reducing food waste and saving money.
“The path to victory is often not what you expect. People are beginning to do that with climate change. People thought that we would get one big climate bill out of Congress and the world will be saved. Clearly that was never going to happen,” said Communications Director at 350.org Jamie Henn ’07.
He continued, “The solution is going to be diverse and come from different directions, it’s not one beautiful linear from problem to solution. The media doesn’t get it and politicians can’t track it, but I think that’s part of our generation. There’s innovation out there and people are beginning to realize that we can piece it together.”
He added: “What I’m excited about is how do you tell that story. It’s a harder story to tell but it’s a more exciting story and it will require more people telling it, not just one voice.”
Henn explained the mechanics of getting a message out.
“One of the things we’ve learned is that if you’ve set up in the right way, what you’re really doing is finding many different messengers who can then speak to their community in a way they already know how. We can expand the messenger base and find people that can speak to their own communities about climate change and provide resources to support them,” Henn said.
Greta Neubauer ’14.5 spoke on how the movement embodies a lot of historical privilege.
“One thing we’ve been thinking a lot about in the divestment movement is with Black Lives Matter happening, and how we can not just go to rallies and then come back to our own movement and do our work independently, but really see those [efforts] as being connected. We can be proud of being climate activists but also do the work of being allies,” Neubauer said.
A roundtable group suggested creating a map linking different movements such as social inequality and racial inequality with current activism and demonstrating it in a visual manner.
Faculty Director of the Center for Social Entrepreneurship (CSE) and Professor of Economics Jon Isham expressed his enthusiasm for seeing alumni interact with current students.
“What I can do as a faculty member is provide a certain kind of support just by encouraging them to try things and not get frustrated. But the best part of SNG is not only that its 100% student conceived, but it remains 100% student run. And that’s exactly one of the many reasons it’s so effective. I guarantee you some of these ideas will see fruition,” Isham said.
“Our goal was for current and past SNG students to meet each other and create these connections so we can continue to share ideas across generations and different places in our lives,” concluded Bartlett.
(01/15/15 7:16pm)
This January is set to be a big month for the Middlebury Divestment from Fossil Fuels Campaign, otherwise known as DivestMidd, as we lay the groundwork for a presentation to the members of the Board of Trustees in the spring, when we will ask them to once again to consider and vote on divestment. In order to achieve success in the spring, the Middlebury community must unite in support of divestment to signal to the Board of Trustees the necessity of our ask.
We as DivestMidd realize, however, that in order to unite in support of divestment we must all understand the reasons for divestment, at least to the extent that one feels he or she can have an informed decision on the subject. Thus, in pursuit of an “educated electorate” on divestment, we are holding three “teach-ins,” or information and discus- sion sessions, each one focusing on a different pillar holding up the argument for divestment, which include financial, political and social justice reasons.
The subject of this article and of the first teach-in, which was held yesterday, is the financial argument for divestment. In many ways, this is a great place to start in launching Divestment 2.0, for the financial argument proves the surprising and well-substantiated reasons why we’re advocating for divestment. To those who think supporters of divestment are just ignorant tree-hugging environmentalists whose sole goal is to save the Earth, be warned: the financial argument for divestment is sound, even independent of environmental concerns. So listen up. We know our stuff, and we think you should too; we just might save the planet in the process.
For starters, one of the great myths surrounding divestment is that the elimination of investments in the top 200 fossil fuel companies from our endowment would necessarily result in lower returns and subsequent budget cuts in areas such as financial aid. In fact, the investment literature repeatedly shows that fossil free portfolios have higher risk-adjusted returns.
So, what does this mean? Essentially, fossil fuel companies generally have more risk due to their presence in often politically and economically volatile countries. Additionally, the increased costs fossil fuel companies would have to incur as a result of new legislation placing a price on carbon would prove substantial in adding costs to production. And, a price on carbon sometime in the near future is not farfetched considering recent advances in discussions related to climate change and international agreements on carbon emissions, not to mention the growing urgency due to climate impacts.
Yet we don’t even need a price on carbon for divestment to make financial sense. As a matter of fact, one of Blackrock’s numerous iShares ETFs (with the ticker DSI) is composed of 400 companies with positive environmental, social, and governance practices (compared to industry competitors), includes only one of the top 200 fossil fuel companies, tracks the S&P 500 Index, and, since inception in 2007 has outperformed the S&P 500 by over 3 percent. This is sub- stantial, as the S&P 500, which includes 14 of the top 200 fossil fuel companies, is considered to be one of the broadest benchmark indexes of large U.S. publicly traded companies. In this way, DSI has steadily demonstrated high returns in spite of, or rather because of, a lack of reliance on the most impactful fossil fuel companies.
Furthermore, we are not advocating divestment because of some antiquated obsession with peak oil. Of course, fossil fuels are a finite resource and thus a theoretically unsustainable resource, but we’re not kidding ourselves. We know that recent technological advances have shed light on enormous reserves of oil. Total reliance on this fact, however, may lead us into dangerous territory. Oil companies are valued by their proven or predicted reserves, which means that if these reserves cannot be burned or taken out of the ground for a variety of reasons, such as carbon pricing or water constraints, the value of these compa- nies would see a significant negative impact. For oil companies, reserves in the ground are future revenue streams, and if reserves cannot be drilled, refined, and sold, revenue will be hurt. Shocks to revenue would lead to changes in profit- ability, which impacts stock prices and returns to shareholders.
Just because oil companies have the knowledge that reserves are available, that doesn’t mean that they’re easily accessible or necessarily worth the cost of extraction. This could be due to a number of factors including the changing resource landscape to shale gas and phosphate or the falling costs of clean technology costs, especially for solar PVs and onshore wind. In this way, we may be grossly over-evaluating fossil fuel companies, an idea commonly known as stranded carbon asset theory, which essentially predicts the presence of a carbon bubble that when it breaks, could result in severe losses for owners of long positions in fossil fuel companies.
If that’s not reason enough to divest from fossil fuels, let’s consider the fact that fossil fuel companies are still vehemently spending enormous amounts of money on capital expenditures (CAPEX) to develop and discover new reserves that have the potential to become unburnable, a prospect which, according to a 2013 Carbon Tracker Initiative report, could result in up to $6.74 trillion in wasted capital investments by the top 200 fossil fuel companies over the next decade. Why, you ask, are fossil fuel companies not investing more into research and development of clean technologies? One would assume fossil fuel companies are rational actors and would obviously want to increase efforts at developing clean technology sources that, given our concerns above, are most likely to prove profitable in the energy market of the future. These companies, however, are also stuck in their ways and have a hard time imagining a world not dependent on fossil fuels. But we at Middlebury, on the other hand, should certainly have within our capacity the ability to imagine a world powered by clean technologies and should therefore have the foresight to divest from fossil fuels and reinvest in clean technologies.
Finally, if we were to divest, the process of selling off our holdings would not be done in a haphazard manner that could in any way endanger our financial performance. In all likelihood the process would take between two and five years, which proves even more reason to announce divestment from to top 200 fossil fuel companies as soon as possible.
In sum, it makes clear financial sense to divest from fossil fuels. If you agree please sign the petition at go/divestmidd and come to the next divestment teach-in on Wednesday, Jan. 21 at 4:30 p.m. in BiHall 438!
SOPHIE VAUGHAN ’17 is from Oakland, Calif.
NATE CLEVELAND ’16.5 is from Devon, Pa.
(01/15/15 3:49am)
Have you seen the movie Boyhood? I watched it on my plane ride back to school this January — United had free movies for once, shocker! — and the film left an impression on me.
For those who don’t know, it follows a boy, Mason, over a twelve-year period as he grows to be an adult. Boyhood therefore doubles as a sort of societal documentary, spanning from 2002 to 2013. That chronology aligns perfectly with my own growing up. I, and all other 90s babies from the year of the dog or year of the pig, experienced our righteous tween and teen years during that period.
While I was able to appreciate the expired trends the movie brought back to life — 1990s Volvo station wagons, Soulja Boy songs and the iPod Mini just to name a few — the final product, an 18-year-old Mason, evoked a less empathetic response from me.
Mason embodied a sentiment my generation seems all too familiar with: ambivalence. Whether it was seen through his low number of smiles and laughs or his lack of involvement and interest in activities and people, Mason didn’t bring a whole lot to the table, and what’s more, he didn’t seem to care.
I asked a few of my friends if they knew this type in real life — the kid vegging out on Thursday afternoon, Netflix remote in one hand and cellphone in the other. He texts “LOL” back to a friend without actually cracking a smile. The sun beats into his bedroom, highlighting the dust on the TV screen that his mom asked him to clean a few days ago.
Seem familiar? Seem sad? The image does not preview that generation of change-makers for which our predecessors have stressed a need. Gone is the generation of dreamers, replaced instead with a level of contentedness and lethargy we have not yet earned for ourselves.
Our planet’s temperature rises with each passing day, technology poses increasingly dangerous threats and our American government remains as called upon as ever, yet historically unproductive. These unsustainable trends make our generation the linchpin of progress; we just need to take on the challenge.
Some events have recently demonstrated clear social objectives, like the climate march last fall. These social uprisings are reminiscent of past student protests — civil rights, anti-Vietnam War, et. cetera — and they are one way to counteract the ambivalence that runs rampant in our generation.
There is, however, another, even easier way to stay involved in public life: voting.
For some reason that I cannot fathom young people (aged 18-24) have had historically low voter turnout rates since gaining the right to vote in 1972. In 2012 only 41 percent of young people came out to vote. This is no small thing — the “Millennial generation” makes up a quarter of the electorate! — stressing the potential influence young people could have.
So, we return to that dude watching Netflix and texting in his room. I can’t tell you the number of my peers who were that guy this past midterm election, too lazy or “busy” to vote. I myself came close to being that guy after seeing the paperwork, trips to the post office and research involved with voting by mail.
But then I remembered the outcome of voting. I remembered that I might not be deeply impassioned about that proposition on medical malpractice suits or even who the lieutenant governor of my state was (am I the only one who doesn’t know what they do?), but doing a little research and casting my ballot kept me in the game of democracy. Voting on (sometimes seemingly unimportant) issues might not have changed my life, but it helped make sure that I lived a life that could one day incite change. Because it all comes down to this: when we do not vote, we disenfranchise ourselves; individuals lose their say in political life and extremist groups accrue concentrated power.
This wasn’t exactly a partisan political argument, as is normally the nature of this column, but I felt it an important enough issue to set the tone for this new year of writing. While I myself cannot claim to be above this youth ambivalence that I have laid out, I still want to highlight it. As Middlebury students, we all like to think of ourselves as educated, involved world citizens, but I think we must also keep in mind the privilege and ease of living that we experience in this 14-square-mile New England utopia. While it’s great to push the Real Food movement through campus, partner with Divest Middlebury and the like, let us not forget about an even more basic yet overlooked way to stay involved: the civic duty of voting.
