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(04/24/14 3:06am)
This week’s commemorative event for Sexual Assault Awareness month will take place tonight at 6:30-8 p.m. in Crossroads Café. While in recent months on both a national and local level here on the campus, there has been a tremendous influx in dialogue surrounding sexual violence, the event Sex, Hooking Up, and Consent: What You Need To Know sets itself apart from other opportunities that work towards awareness and solutions. The poster asserts that it will be, “A Workshop and discussion about sex, relationships, communication and violence prevention for students of all genders.” This advertisement promises an interactive discussion aimed at equipping students with knowledge and necessary rhetoric to navigate the complex nexus of emotions, gender politics and potential for violence, infused in the hook-up culture.
The College is using funds awarded from the grant from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women, which the college has won due to the combination of students and the administrations unabashed readiness to confront sexual violence on our campus.
Facilitating the discussion is University of Vermont’s Men’s Outreach Coordinator, Keith Smith. Since 2006, Smith has worked as both a counselor and workshop leader with the goal of, “Fostering healthy masculine identity development and non-violence.” It is essential to have a well-versed and thoughtful facilitator, like Smith, when it comes to such a complex topic, “Especially when it comes to sex,” Professor of Creative Writing and Gender Sexuality and Feminist Studies Catharine Wright said.
“Where so many aspects of our humanness are involved: our body, our identities, our emotional development, our spirituality, even,” she said.
From extensive interviews with community members at the College, it is clear that many feel that in an intense academic climate, with various pressures threatening to asphyxiate many students’ well-being, students use sex as a way to escape their anxieties and release pressure.
“Sex can be a healthy way to release pressure, [but] the combination of substances and sex and no social accountability is deeply problematic,” Wright said. “Add to that the fact that there are so many aspects of social identity and emotional development that never get adequately addressed on campus. And the fact that students, like everyone, inherit larger histories of gender, sex and power that most of them never unpack.”
Sex gets complicated faster than we consciously comprehend. Of course, there are undeniable moments of respect and connection that arise from the College’s prominent hook up culture, but there are still unavoidable instances of violence and dishonesty that arise from the more shallow, abusive and opportunistic facets.
When asked why a discussion about sex and consent are part of the event, Director of Health and Wellness Barbara McCall said, “These topics are now interfacing with the discourse around sexual violence on campus which I think is an important combination. To focus only on stopping violence in a “now” moment is short-sided because we know that giving students tools to create and explore healthy and consensual relationships is a foundational prevention strategy.”
Raising awareness about sexual assault is a hugely important first step, but a critical next step is to provide students with the necessary communication skills to cultivate a lasting, safe and vibrant sexual environment for all.
Alex Potter ’16.5 expresses that he feels pride when both Middlebury students and administration come together to foster a dialogue about such a prevalent issue because it, “is an issue that affects all members of community regardless of sexual orientation. It affects the health and well-being of all, and being open about sexual violence and sexual health is the first step towards improving it.”
Fortunately, these conversations are being bolstered by amazing work done by Middlebury students to speak out against sexual violence. It Happens Here, MiddSafe, and The Red Tent Event run student forums on sexual health and sexuality. Discourse surrounding sex and consent is clearly gaining momentum on campus.
If issues of sexual violence are to be overcome as they need to be, breaking patterns of silence and censorship are necessary. Silence supports ignorance. It is imperative that people talk about the issues and the patterns, and try and tease out the various factors inhibiting Middlebury from being a completely sexual violence free campus. Events like the Sex, Hooking Up, and Consent are a big, necessary step towards evaluating the oppression that can occur in a hook up culture like that of the College. They give students the communication skills to foster a healthier sexual dialogue when it comes to hooking up. Whenever sexual violence is happening, a change is necessary, and as Wright argues, “That’s what dialogue, in concert with policy, can do.”
(04/23/14 5:57pm)
One chilly September morning in 2011, Kristin Lundy heard someone ascend her front steps and knock on her door. When she opened it, police Sgt. Mike Fish asked her to gather everyone living in the house. "Your son is dead," he said.
"I ran up the stairs," Lundy later recalled in an interview with the Burlington Free Press. "I just screamed until I went into shock...I thought he was coming out of the woods. I thought we were beginning to understand this opiate thing.” Joshua Lundy, at just 23 years old, had passed away from a heroin overdose.
Sadly, Kristin's horror story is a tired one in Vermont. Statewide treatment for heroin addicts has increased 250 percent since 2000, and the number of deaths from by heroin overdose has doubled in the past year.
In last year's State of the State Address, Governor Shumlin asserted optimistically that Vermont was "... healthy, resilient, and strong. We are blessed to live here," he said, "and we care deeply about our shared future."
In his 2014 State of the State address, Shumlin's tone changed dramatically. "In every corner of our state, heroin and opiate drug addiction threatens us," said Shumlin.
Unfortunately, the stigma attached to heroin addiction makes it much harder for users like Joshua Lundy to get clean. Heroin addicts face intense social pressure to hide their addictions, and candid public discourse about heroin abuse is difficult.
In response, Governor Shumlin sought to reclothe the crisis as a medical emergency in his 2014 State of the State Address. "We must address it as a public health crisis," said Shumlin, "providing treatment and support, rather than simply doling out punishment, claiming victory, and moving onto our next conviction," he said. "Addiction is, at its core, a chronic disease."
Many health care professionals and recovering addicts agreed with Shumlin.
“I think that’s hard for some people that struggled with addiction to move on, if they’re always being labeled an addict forever,” said Gina Tron, a recovering addict and local journalist. “If you’re trying to fix a problem as a person or a state it should be something admirable instead of something to be looked down upon.”
“I imagined a heroin addict as, you know, some super-skinny guy laying on the ground in a back alley of New York City,” Tron said. Her perception began to change in 2002, when she heard about a high school classmate — a “very Vermont girl” — struggling with heroin addiction.
Dr. John Brooklyn, cofounder of the state’s first methadone clinic, refuted the idea of a ‘typical’ heroin user. “We think it’s some gangsta in a hoodie sticking up a convenience store,” Brooklyn said. “Not the person serving your coffee, pumping your gas or taking care of your kids at a daycare center.” In reality, Brooklyn knows recovering addicts at each of these professions.
In an interview with ABC, Dr. Richard Besser even asserted that the term ‘Ex- addict’ is a misnomer, because heroin addiction is a lifelong battle. All of the users Dr. Besser spoke with self-identified as “recovering addicts.”
The intensity of this battle is largely attributed to heroin’s extremely addictive nature. About one in four users becomes dependent after their first injection – an addiction rate higher than that of crack-cocaine or crystal methamphetamine.
Whether snorted, smoked or injected, heroin instills its trademark ‘blissful apathy’ by binding exogenous endorphins to opiod receptors in the user’s brain. After extended use, a heroin addict will no longer endogenously produce endorphins, and an ensuing dependency spiral can be lethal. Since opiod receptors are located in the brain stem — the part of the brain responsible for automatic processes like breathing — respiratory arrest is the leading cause of heroin related deaths.
Despite these dangers, “You’re gonna get hungry,” said recovering addict ‘Jen,’ who asked to remain anonymous during her interview with VICE. “Childbirth was nothing compared to kicking heroin."
Another recovering addict said that heroin addiction consumes all other priorities. “The first thing you think about [is] not feeding your kids,” she stated, “It’s how am I going to get high ... ”
Even heroin users brave enough to overcome the social stigma and seek help may not be able to find it. Over 750 people are relegated to wait lists at methodone clinics and rehabilitation centers across Vermont.
In order to supply this burgeoning market, smugglers have ramped up their efforts across the Northeast.“We’re seeing thousands of bags at a time, multiple raw ounces and grams, levels of heroin that we’ve never seen before” said Lieutenant Matthew Birmingham, the head of the Vermont State Police Narcotics Task Force.
Approximately two million dollars worth of heroin is trafficked through Vermont every week. Yearly, this means heroin smuggling is a 100-million dollar industry.
Even a small package of the drug can cause big problems. Heroin is most often sold in 25-40 milligram bags, or ‘folds,’ which are half the size of a sweetener packet. Just one kilogram of heroin provides nearly 30,000 of these bags.
Heroin’s pervasiveness can partly be attributed to Vermont’s geographic location. Interstate highways from Montreal, New York, Boston and Philadelphia all converge in Vermont, in what some analysts have described as ‘the perfect storm.’
During one sting, Burlington police and DEA agents traced Videsh Raghoonanan through his cellphone. The signal traveled from Burlington down interstates 89, 91 and 95 to Ozone Park, Queens. Less than 24 hours later, Raghoonanan retraced his path and arrived in Burlington before midnight.
New York is one epicenter of Vermont-bound heroin. Another particularly lethal type of heroin, known as “Chi” or “Chi town dope,” comes from Chicago. Authorities are often able to pinpoint the heroin origin because of signature ‘stamps’ on the packaging.
If the heroin comes into the state in its purest form, dealers will often cut it with other substances. “I’ve ripped people off by throwing hot cocoa in an empty bag,” ‘John’ told VICE in one interview. “Scoop a little dirt off the ground and throw that in there, dude.”
To make matters worse, some dealers have begun to cut their heroin with Fentanyl, a deadly synthetic narcotic. The powerful drug — between 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine — has been attributed to dozens of grisly deaths throughout the northeast, including three in Addison County. Some of these users were found with the needle still sticking from their arm.
In October of last year, Vermont state police arrested two New York smugglers in one of the largest busts in state history. When Marcus Davis and Eddie Eason were brought into police custody, Davis admitted to having bought 30,000 dollars worth of heroin in New York City.
If smugglers like Davis succeed, their potential profit margin is nearly impossible to comprehend. One dealer in Colchester buys heroin out of state for 6 dollars, and resells it in northern Vermont for 30, a markup of 500 percent.
Accordingly, the drug has brought organized crime with it. “There are real and legitimate organized gangs and organized criminal groups that are operating drug rings … and establishing themselves in Vermont,” said State Police Lt. Matthew Birmingham, commander of the Vermont Drug Task Force.
Still, a stronger police force is not the only solution, said Lt. Birmingham. “You can’t just keep arresting people coming in as runners,” he said.
Already, 80 percent of Vermont’s inmates are incarcerated for drug related crimes. The state pays more to incarcerate its prisoners than it does on higher education.
Behind the empty syringes, plastic baggies and gun-toting drug dealers lies a darker reality: heroin addiction often starts with legally prescribed painkillers like Oxycodone.
The opiate crisis arguably exploded in 2010, when Purdue Pharma changed the formula of Oxycodone. By making pills harder to crush up and slower to dissolve into the blood, the pharmaceutical company successfully reduced prescription abuse, from 47.4 percent to 30 percent in the past thirty days. Yet in the same period, rates of heroin abuse nearly doubled.
“It’s like Whac-A-Mole,” said Barbara Cimaglio, Vermont’s deputy commissioner or alcohol and drug abuse programs. “We address one thing and then something else crops up.”
“Let’s be honest about this,” said Shumlin in an interview with ABC. “OxyContin and the other opiates that are now prescribed and approved by the FDA, lead folks to opiate addiction.”
Shumlin’s assertion was not just political maneuvering. According to one poll, 4 out 5 new addicts turned to heroin after abusing prescription painkillers.
Even more tellingly, Shumlin’s claim resonates with many current addicts. 32 year-old Andreia Rossi asked: “Why spend 80 dollars on an Oxy 80 when you can get a bag of heroin for 20 bucks?”
“You’re pretty much doing heroin anyway,” said another anonymous user. “It’s much cheaper than doing Oxys.”
In 2012, roughly a million doses of Oxycodone were prescribed in Rutland county alone.
“Not many things make my jaw drop, but this did,” said Clay Gilbert, director of Evergreen Substance Abuse Services. “[It] figures out to 17 pills for every man woman and child in the county.” Per capita, Grand Isle and Bennington had even higher prescription rates.
Furthermore, just like prescription painkillers, heroin can also be snorted and used intravenously. Combine this with its price and availability, and heroin is the ‘logical’ next step.
To parents who have lost their children to heroin, like Kristin Lundy, painkillers are far from logical. In an interview with The Burlington Free Press, Lundy recalled when her 17 year-old Joshua was administered morphine for a severe stomach bug.
“He lit up like a Christmas tree,” she said. “He said it was the best feeling he ever felt and that he wished he could do it forever.”
Lundy attended the sentencing for Kevin Harris, the smuggler who allegedly sold her son the deadly heroin, five years later. Harris was born in a jail, and both of his parents died before he turned 11.
“I’m sorry you didn’t have a good childhood,” read Lundy’s statement to Harris. “We have something in common. We have both suffered great loss due to drugs and addiction. My hope for you is that someday you will experience the love I felt for Josh, and that he felt for his daughter.”
Local Westland native and rehab worker Michelle Flynn was concerned for her own children. “It scares me for people’s well being that it’s this available,” she said in an interview. “I have two young kids – 18 and 20 year old boys – who have not found [heroin], which I am grateful for. But it scares me for that generation. Your generation.”
“I know what addiction life is like,” she recalled, “and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. It’s not an easy change to give up on what used to be mind altering. What used to be your escape.”
Paramedics and EMTs on the front lines witness this loss firsthand. When the heart and lungs have stopped, a quick response is critical. Permanent brain damage can occur after 4 minutes without oxygen, and death just 5 minutes later. And even by medical standards, heroin overdoses can be messy. EMT Lisa Northup recalled when one semiconscious patient began to vomit onto her on January 9.
“I kept talking to him,” said Northup, “telling him he was going to be alright. I mean, that’s just what we do.” The patient was lucky. Just hours later, Middlebury Regional EMS arrived too late for another heroin victim. For him, “Everything we could do we had done,” recalled Paramedic Kevin Sullivan. “Unfortunately, he had been down too long at that point.”
Consequently, one wonder-drug has helped pull many patients back from the brink of death, including the Salisbury patient that Northup revived. Naloxone hydrochloride — whose trade name is Narcan — is an µ-opioid antagonist that kicks heroin off opiate receptors in the brain.
The drug is administered intravenously by paramedics, or nasally through a device known as an atomizer. The effects of the drug, which untrained civilians can administer, are almost immediate.
Mike Leyden, Deputy Director of Emergency Medical Services at the Department of Health, said the atomizers are an ‘infallible’ safety net. “[They’re] a good reliable safe route,” he said. Still, since heroin in the patient’s system can outlast the Naloxone’s effects, administration should always be accompanied by a 911 call.
In 2013, Vermont Legislature passed Act 75, which aims to provide a “comprehensive approach to combating opioid addiction and methamphetamine abuse in Vermont ... ” As a result of the legislation, the Vermont Department of Health began developing a statewide pilot program to distribute Narcan, which is now available at many health clinics.
“They’re just going to hand it out to folks,” said Chris Bell, director of emergency medical services at the Vermont Department of Health.
“It is a relief for any family member to know there is something they can do immediately if that horrible occasion might occur,” said Nancy Bessett, who lost her husband to heroin last November. “I will always feel guilty because I wasn’t there. If I had been there. If I had Narcan. Maybe I could have revived him.”
For legislators and medical professionals, preventing overdoses is only part of the battle. Establishing programs to rehabilitate heroin users may prove to be an even larger hurdle.
One such positive initiative is Chittenden County’s Rapid Intervention Community Court (RICC). The program is designed to allow addicts to avoid further prosecution if they accept medical treatment shortly after their arrest. Governor Shumlin has called the program a ‘humane’ option for heroin addicts.
After attending just 90 days of counseling, drug treatment and life skills training, RICC attendees can get their charges dropped. At its best, the ‘pre-charge’ initiative helps recovering addicts avoid a criminal record and take back control of their lives.
Heroin users tried in conventional courts often reoffend shortly after their trials. RICC reduces recidivism by focusing on repeat offenders with no violent record and a clear indication of addiction.
“What we’re trying to do is break the cycle,” said Chittenden County State’s Attorney T.J. Donovan. “We can do the same thing that’s not working, or we can do something different.”
The program is effective: only 7.4 percent of recovering addicts that completed the program reoffended. Of those who did not, 25 percent reoffended.
Despite their success, the novel programs are imperfect. Not everyone who applies is accepted, and rapid intervention is harder to implement in rural areas where applicants cannot easily commute.
Emmet Helrich, a manager at the RICC, said the program strikes at the underlying trigger of criminal activity: the user’s health. “Forget about the court case,” Helrich said. “Get healthy.”
Anonymous recovering addict and Burlington mother ‘Jessica’ appreciated the second chance.
“I just needed somebody, one person, to give me a chance and have a little bit of hope,” she said.
Inspired by the success of RICC, Addison, Lamoille, Rutland and Franklin counties have begun to implement similar programs. Governor Shumlin advocated investing $760,000 to expand and strengthen the programs.
Like Shumlin, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick labeled opiate addiction a public health emergency. “We have an epidemic of opiate abuse in Massachusetts, so we will treat it like the public health crisis it is,” Patrick said in a statement.
Because of the interstate nature of the crisis, officers from across the Northeast convened to discuss cooperation. On March 28, roughly 90 officials from Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, as well as members of the US Drug Enforcement Administration and Department of Homeland Security met at the Sheriff’s office in Washington County, NY.
The discussion largely focused on two heroin pipelines, Routes 149 and 4, which pass through Washington County into Vermont.
“This will also help us exchange information and tie all the pieces together,” said Washington County Sheriff Jeff Murphy.
Officials determined routes of travel, trends in drug distribution, and began to formalize a cooperation agreement.
Still, Shumlin recognized that solving the heroin crisis in Vermont will take more than just good police work. “We’ve got to stop thinking we can solve this with law enforcement alone,” said Shumlin in an interview with ABC.
Imprisoning a heroin dealer in Vermont is incredibly expensive – around $1,120 a week – or ten times the weekly cost to treat an addict at a state-funded center.
“Today, our state government spends more to imprison Vermonters than we do to support our colleges and universities,” noted Shumlin in his State of the State address.
To many officials, this is an untenable path. Rutland beautification project Rutland Blooms has responded to the influx of heroin with a resilient positivity. The beautification project plants flower gardens around Rutland. It was established by Green Mountain Power and Rutland officials to “highlight the community’s incredible spirit and beauty.”
Yet, Rutland Blooms is more than just flowers. According to their website, the organization consists of over 50 local groups all intent on “supporting and increasing the sense of community that will be necessary to solve the issues the city faces.”
Rutland Mayor Chris Louras has helped spearhead the effort. “This is one more step in efforts to improve the economic and social climate of the community,” Louras said. “Its impact will be visible and symbolic. The outpouring of interest, even before today’s announcement as GMP quietly began planning, has been extraordinary.”
This sense of community is important, especially to those who have lost loved ones to the drug. Skip Gates, whose son Will was studying at UVM when he overdosed, now works to spread awareness of the devastation heroin can cause.
“I never knew anything in human experience could be this hard,” Skip said. “I never knew any human being could feel this much pain. It has redefined the rest of my life.”
In his 2014 State of the State address, Governor Shumlin explained that Skip “speaks for all grieving families.” At the end of the speech, Shumlin called the state to arms: “All of us, together, will drive toward our goal of recovery by working with one another creatively, relentlessly, and without division. We can do this. I have tremendous hope for Vermont, and for our efforts to overcome this challenge and keep the Vermont that we cherish for generations to come."
Graphics by OLIVIA ALLEN
(04/16/14 4:03pm)
The college announced this week that it is going to be investing $50 million in a responsible investment fund. This is an amazing thing. Why? Because $50 million can make a big difference if it’s invested in companies with good environmental, social and governance practices. Because the college is recognizing that its endowment can be a tool for positive change and that it should reflect the mission of the school. And finally because it shows that student organizing is working! The school created this fund as a consolation prize for a hard fought divestment campaign.
We are really excited about this, but we are not the kind of people who settle for the goldfish in a plastic bag. Desmond Tutu endorsed divestment this week, recognizing that climate change is not an issue to trifle with. Pitzer College divested from fossil fuels this week and we are going to follow suit. Wash U students continue a sit-in demanding their school cut ties with Peabody Coal, and over 100 Harvard Professors endorsed divestment in an open letter that made it to the Guardian and Bloomberg. Harvard Professors y’all! They are so smart.
We are going for the gigantic, purple teddy bear you only get after you’ve practiced shooting baskets into a moving, flaming hoop that is divestment all summer, because we think it’s worth all the sweat, the tears and the missed shots. We like our goldfish, $50 million is no joke, but we are not leaving this carnival without getting what we came for. It is the time to take serious action on climate change, and we have the opportunity to do so by divesting our endowment from fossil fuels. There is no reason why we can’t make this basket.
Written on Behalf of DIVEST MIDDLEBURY
(04/09/14 11:18pm)
On Monday, April 7, the College hosted its third panel on the subject of Socially Responsible Investing and the College’s endowment in the past 15 months.
Six investment experts were invited to speak on how fossil fuel investments are evaluated and how institutions such as the College can best incorporate Environmental-Social-Governance (ESG) consciousness into their investment process.
Vice President of Advisor Markets at Pax World Tom Gainey, Managing Director and Director of ESG Research and Shareholder Engagement at Boston Common Asset Management Steven Heim, Real Assets Director at Investure Jon Hill, Partner and Portfolio Manager at Trillium Asset Management Stephanie Leighton, Senior Vice President of Essex Investment Management William Page and Proprietary Trading and Risk Management Team member at Mariner Investment Group Akila Prabhakar served on the panel. The panelists hail from different genres of work, ranging from advising to investing at both large and small firms or hedge funds.
The panel came on the heels of the College’s announcement that, as of February 28, a $25 million portion of the endowment will go toward investments that generate social, environmental and economic value and are in keeping with good ESG practices. The $25 million represents approximately three percent of the College’s total endowment.
Additionally, the College has placed $150,000 of its endowment under the management of the Research and Investment and Social Equity (RISE) group, a division of the Socially Responsible Investment Club (SRI). RISE will be using the funds to invest in companies that meet particular ESG standards. The group will present a report on the status of the fund to the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees each year. On April 7, RISE announced its first trades using the endowment funds.
The panelists began by introducing themselves and explaining their work in socially responsible investing, and transitioned into a discussion amongst themselves about working directly with companies to improve ESG-related practices and about the complexity of clean energy investments.
The panelists agreed that, particularly as climate change has moved to the forefront of political dialogue in recent years, companies have become more eager to address workplace sustainability practices and engagement between investors and companies has become much easier.
Heim noted that sustainability reports have proven to be advantageous not only with regard to the relationship between companies and managers or investors, but also between companies and employees, for employees are often more willing to work for a company that promotes transparency and boasts strong ESG practices.
The panelists noted that even clean energy investments, however, are not perfect. The mining of rare earth minerals, which are found in many phone and computer batteries, as well as solar panels and wind turbines, is an expensive and environmentally invasive process.
Throughout the evening, Hill emphasized Investure’s long-term outlook on investments. He argued that many of the company’s clients have been around for centuries and will be around for centuries more, and so slower, steadier and more promising investments are what they look for.
Adrian Leong ’16 found Investure’s stance to be problematic, however.
“It was surprising for me to hear … that they [Investure] think they’re currently investing with a view of the long term,” Leong wrote in an email. “As long as they are investing in the fossil fuel industry, they are not doing that.”
He alluded to United Nations Rapporteur Olivier De Schutter’s warning of a broken food system, prolonged poverty and increased risk of violent conflicts if current emission trends continue.
“Maybe we are still making money now, but sooner than we think, the consequences of our short-sighted vision and reluctance to lead will imperil the fundamental conditions that make life in a organized society possible,” he said.
The panelists emphasized that there is no right way to go about divesting, or any right alternative to fossil fuel investments. Leighton suggested that those involved in the divestment movement at the College speak to students at other colleges—particularly those that are managed by Investure—to find allies and press money managers to make changes.
“I was pleased that all of the panelists addressed fossil fuel divestment,” Greta Neubauer ’14.5 wrote in an email. “The panelists made clear [during the panel and in conversations afterward] that Middlebury could divest if the College considered it to be a priority,” noting that she felt a “sense of inevitability” rooted in the increasing number of socially responsible options for investment due to the worsening climate crisis.
Jeannie Bartlett ’15, too, remains optimistic about the feasibility of divestment in the College’s future.
“In talking with a couple of the panelists afterward, they said they think Investure could create a separately managed fund that was fossil fuel free but otherwise diversified,” Bartlett wrote in an email. “We would just have to ask them for it, which so far Patrick Norton and the trustees have been unwilling to do.” She added that in giving a portion of the endowment to RISE, “we have already seen that they can create a separate fund.”
(04/09/14 4:39pm)
In light of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the calamitous threat posed by Vladimir Putin’s regime to the global order, we cannot lose sight of what an overreaction would do to America. If we allow Neo-Cold War ideology to drive American foreign policy and reshape our domestic economic and political institutions towards serving military purposes — the so called “Military Industrial Complex” — we will put at risk not only our international authority, but we, the United States, may pose a threat to global stability rivaling that of Putin. In the words of the esteemed English historian A.J.P. Taylor, “The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.”
Paul Ryan’s newly released budget proposal would represent a return to Bush-era military funding, reversing the military spending cuts initiated by the sequestration. It seeks to revive the U.S. war machine in a time of peace. In order to avoid escalation with Russia, it may be more important for the world that the U.S. elects “doves” than Democrats in the 2014 and 2016 elections.
Russia’s recent acts of aggression are not only concerning in themselves, but provide rhetorical ammunition for war-mongers to call into question the timing of the military drawbacks initiated by the sequestration. These facts will likely be spun by pundits and “hawk” politicians into the simplistic narrative that while Moscow grows stronger, we cannot be seen as weak and therefore we must ramp up military funding. We, the educated public, should be deeply skeptical of such claims.
The truth is our military already has the capacity to defeat any state. Increasing military spending will not make us more secure and should be a policy of last resort. Harsh economic sanctions, energy diplomacy and multilateral cooperation with allies remain our best strategies for deterring Russian aggression and avoiding conflict.
We must be aware of the risks posed by our own state, over which the public has little control in times of war. Since World War II our government has covertly overthrown countless regimes, fueled war by supplying weapons to states around the world and unilaterally initiated conflict. This, in turn, fed a negative feedback cycle of increased military funding. U.S. militarization represents an existential threat to international peace and the health of our democracy.
The recent overhaul of Russian offensive capabilities, despite Russian economic stagnation, suggests a new vision for Russian foreign policy in which its offensive military capacity will play a defining role. In light of Putin’s apparent belief in Russia’s manifest destiny to reclaim the territories lost during the collapse of the U.S.S.R., these developments are very concerning to states around the world, especially the former U.S.S.R., whose independence we should defend. Nonetheless, building allegiances with non-aligned states may be the best deterrence to Moscow’s aggression. If we are to make new allies, our authority in countering Russian aggression must be based on trust, soft power and democratic accountability, not just military strength.
The risks associated with increasing military spending are largely internal: increasing the influence of private military contractors could threaten our commitment to institutionalized conflict resolution and pacifism, thereby undermining our moral high ground over Russia. The recent Supreme Court ruling McCutcheon v. F.E.C. has gone beyond Citizens United in liberalizing campaign spending, expanding the latitude of defense contractors to lobby government efforts. We are likely to see a flood of campaign funding intended to move the political needle, among both Democrats and Republicans, towards increasing defense spending.
We must beware the influence of these glorified mercenaries, whose interests are not aligned with those of America. The empowerment of our increasingly privatized defense sector, who will profit greatly from conflict, represents the greatest potential accelerant to escalation with Russia — or any other enemy.
Russian coercion of the Ukrainian state by raising energy prices foreshadows an era of global energy diplomacy in which the expansion of domestic fracking and other energy infrastructure investments, like Keystone XL, may be increasingly justified if the U.S. is to compete with Russian oil reserves. Though liquefied natural gas is years away from being export-ready, the ability of the U.S. to offer subsidized energy to Russia’s neighbors to withstand a potential oil embargo or balance our budget may prove more valuable than an extra fleet of F-16s and, to some, justify the catastrophic climate impact of increasing fossil fuel extraction. We should expect to be faced with no good options; we must weigh accelerating climate change by expanding our energy capacity against the long-term impact on health of the planet. We need to foster open, thoughtful, public debate about the trade-offs of these looming, painful decisions. It only stands to reason that those most vulnerable to climate change, fracking and pipeline construction will be forced to shoulder the costs of an energy arms race. We must keep them — and the health of our planet as a whole — in mind. Seeking alliances with energy-rich countries like Venezuela, Azerbaijan and even Iran, despite the unsavory and corrupt regimes in power, may be necessary. On a brighter note, investments in promising innovations in renewable energy may become increasingly important for national security. Bearing in mind the strategic importance of such decisions, we must hold our government accountable lest we lose our national character in the fog of war.
Projections about what may happen in the coming years are purely speculative. Indeed, I hope that fears of Russian aggression are overblown. Nonetheless, pacifism, the development of alliances and the institutional resolution of disputes must triumph over military escalation if we are to avoid the worst.
It is not Putin, but the fear of our own weakness, that poses the greatest threat to American democracy, to the environment and to the stable and prosperous international status quo. We must stand up against war until the United States is left with no other option but to respond with force. In the words of the French philosopher and activist Simone Weil, “The great error of nearly all studies of war... has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics.” If the will of the American people is tested with the temptation of false security and the fleeting glory of war, we must steadfastly demand peace.
(03/19/14 3:08pm)
As the political situation continues to develop in the Crimean peninsula, there have been frenzied calls among American politicians to break Russia’s energy dominance in the region. The principle idea is to leverage the burgeoning North American shale revolution by exporting natural gas to continental Europe and weaken a key facet of Russian power. However, though there is abundant natural gas in North America, the complex export infrastructure in America that is needed to ship liquefied natural gas is still years away from being completed at any meaningful scale. In addition, many of the terminals that are closest to being completed have already inked long-term gas contracts with customers. Even if European politicians wish to flood their markets with cheap American gas — as the ambassadors to the United States from Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia asked for in a letter to congressional leaders — they would still have to compete with Asian customers who are willing to pay nearly 50 percent more than Europe. Fundamentally, regardless of the political posturing, gas producers would never choose to leave money on the table in order to further American geopolitical aims.
As I talked about in an earlier column, with an eye towards the long-term, the shale revolution has the potential to alter political and economic policies around the world. But with regards to the current circumstances in the Ukraine, America simply cannot help besieged allies by making it easier to export natural gas. This does not mean America has no way to exert influence through global energy markets. There are two separate and specific tools that the U.S. can immediately lean on to disrupt the current status quo in Europe.
The first of these tools is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) located in both Louisiana and Texas, which currently holds 696 million barrels of government-owned crude oil. With oil and gas making up more than half of Russia’s budget revenues and a budget that is only balanced when oil remains at $110 a barrel, Moscow is vulnerable to price shocks. By releasing a mere 500,000 barrels a day from the SPR, prices could fall by about $10 and cost the Russian government roughly $40 billion in annual sales. The U.S. government could maintain this for years if it wanted to, and could drop about 4 percent off Russia’s GDP.
The other option is something we are already doing and have been doing for years but is not high on the Obama administration’s agenda nor is it palatable to his counterparts in Europe: cheap, plentiful American coal. As natural gas prices fell in the U.S. and electrical generation began to switch to cleaner, more efficient gas, King Coal lost its leading role in the American electrical generation portfolio. The U.S set a record in 2012 for coal exports – with the majority already going to Europe’s remaining coal-fired power plants. The infrastructure for exporting coal is already in place and, unlike natural gas, coal is not governed by antiquated and complicated U.S. export regulation. The obvious downside to increased coal consumption is that when burned for power it releases roughly twice the amount of greenhouse gas as natural gas does.
As Europe continues to struggle with shifting power structures and long-term questions about their energy security, European leaders cannot rely on these stop-gap measures. In order to reestablish economic competitiveness and continue to set the benchmark for climate change goals, Europe needs to look within its own borders to find the solutions to these problems. However, right now, in this current situation, American and European leaders need to be examining all of their options to see what will have an effect at the negotiating table.
(03/12/14 6:58pm)
It seems each week there is a new article in the Campus that has dangerous implications. These articles are the mouthpiece of hegemonic ideology — dominant discourse — that challenge the legitimacy of marginalized groups’ liberation movements. It is impossible to respond to each prejudice, though someone always responds to the articles — whether it be “Chris” calling out the racism of typical campus speakers and events or the Midd Included group defending their effort to adjust the eurocentricity of Middlebury’s curriculum. However, I don’t think we always have to be on the defensive. I write this article to encourage us to be the first to publish our opinions and to start to wage a comprehensive battle to frame our pressing issues in terms of their racism, cissexism, classism, imperialism and misogyny in order to start to promote our epistemology and our politics. I refuse to be constantly put on the defensive – pointing out the flaws in the arguments that others make. There are plenty of people at this school who feel similarly to me, albeit for different reasons. We are angry, and to the extent that the Campus can accommodate our dissidence and our dissent, I say we start to use it to publish our accounts of pressing issues before Nathan Weil beats us to the punch.
I do not wish to respond to “Jared Leto and the Thought Police” in full. However, it is necessary to call attention to the misunderstandings of racism and anti-racism in the piece: racism is not having a lack of empathy for people of color. In fact, racism is a complex mechanism of systematic subordination. It operates through institutions such as elite colleges and SAT tests, the prison-industrial complex and housing policy, through an unequal distribution of wealth along racial lines and other statistical inequalities, through controlling images that secure stereotypes in our national imagination, as well as through interpersonal bias and internalized notions of inferiority. To reduce racism to lack of empathy — and to believe that anti-racism amounts to developing empathy (though this may play a part) — is to laugh in the face of centuries of oppression and continuing violence. Similarly, to imply that straight people accomplish trans and gay activism when they agree to play a queer character in a movie is to trivialize real issues such as LGBT homelessness and the violence faced by trans women in which we are all complicit.
The conversations around race, gender, class and sexuality at Middlebury tend to get locked into defending progressive beliefs against dominant beliefs, but I do not want to be having these conversations that Nathan Weil starts. There is a lot happening on campus, and I think we should use this activism as a way to set the terms of the conversations, rather than accept the terms that are set for us. For instance, the Gender, Sexuality and Feminist studies department has been actively hosting events; JusTalks has run successfully for the second-year; the Posse Plus retreat has again honored issues relating to identity-based oppression; Sadé Williams’ produced a performance of For Colored Girls; the African American Alliance and other cultural advocacy organizations single-handedly organized Black History Month programming; a new student-led coalition for Racial and Economic Justice is starting; Midd Included has brought new life to a decade-old effort to change Middlebury’s Eurocentric curriculum; MiddSafe has launched a sexual assault hotline; other unnamed, daily efforts prevail. This campus activism shows that there are progressive-minded individuals who are working to change the culture, climate and policies of Middlebury College. Using these activisms as a starting point, I call for us to start writing, framing issues that are important to us as we see them, using mediums such as the Campus to influence campus life and thought, and doing so before opinions antithetical to our lives are published.
LILY ANDREWS '14 is from Minneapolis, Minn. The undersigned students add their names in support: Alex Jackman ’14, Alex Strott ’15, Alice Oshima ’15, Ally Yanson ’14, Daniela Barajas ’16, Feliz Baca ’14, Ian Stewart ’14, India Huff ’15, Jackie Park ’15, Kate McCreary ’15, Katie Willis ’13, Lily Andrews ’14, Marcella Maki ’14, and Molly Stuart ’15.5. Artwork by SAMANTHA WOOD.
(03/12/14 6:55pm)
This past Sunday, a New York Times opinion piece entitled “Global Warming? Not Always” made the claim that “the scientific evidence does not support an argument that human-induced climate change has played any appreciable role in the current California drought.” To support his argument, NOAA climate scientist Martin P. Hoerling writes that droughts of this magnitude are nothing new to Californians — similar, or even more severe, droughts have occurred in California in the 1930s and 1970s, suggesting that the recent dearth of rainfall in California might fit in perfectly with the observed historical precipitation and climate patterns. In turn, Hoerling concludes that we can’t lay claim to the knowledge that the draught is the product of an anthropogenically changed climate; my concern, however, is whether or not the claim to such knowledge should be all that important to us.
In contemporary philosophy, the standard account of knowledge — that is, the criteria that must be met in order to claim we “know” something — is tripartite, consisting in “justified true belief.” In short, we can say we know something if it is a belief about the world that we actually hold, when that belief accurately represents what is the case out there in the world, and that belief is held appropriately or with good reason. So while it might seem that I’ve just said the same thing twice in a row, there are actually important delineations that can be drawn between these three criteria that I won’t go into here. What’s important to us here is that we might take the claim Hoerling makes in his article to assert that in terms of empirical evidence, our claim to knowledge about whether the droughts in California were caused by anthropogenic climate change in some way fails the tripartite test. I’m now going to propose that we shouldn’t care whether or not it does; or, in a somewhat milder sense, that it doesn’t make much difference.
A recent joint publication produced by the National Academy of Sciences and British Royal Society outlines what, according to climate scientists, is our best evidence supporting the notion that humans are in fact changing the climate. The executive summary: we now, maybe more than ever, know we are. Our understanding of physics, climate models, and fingerprinting of climate change patterns has shown us that there is no realistic way that global temperatures and carbon levels could have increased the way they have without human involvement as it’s played out since we’ve industrialized.
The natural processes that have helped bring about the 0.8 degree (C) warming of the atmosphere are complex and multifaceted, such that I think it would be hard for us to deny that they are the same processes aggravating the conditions in California. Warmer weather means a longer growing season, which leads to increased water usage in commercial food production, as well as in the residential sector. While recent research might propose that “recent long-term droughts in western North America cannot definitively be shown to lie outside the very large envelope of natural precipitation variability in this region,” we might be able to make a claim to other important pieces of knowledge: that if global warming trends continue, human life as we know it will have to change dramatically and struggle more and more to respond to droughts like this one, we won’t be able to bring carbon levels back to pre-industrialized levels in any time-scale smaller than that of millennia, and countless species of plants and animals will go extinct. Fortunately, the NAS and Royal Society agree.
We might also make a different kind of claim — that it would, for one reason or another, be morally wrong for all of the above mentioned things to take place, if we can prevent their doing so. There’s also a funny thing about moral propositions: our criteria for saying that we know something to be true morally often differ from those things we claim to know empirically. Moral knowledge, at least in ordinary cases, seems not to request from us the same standards for empirical truth or justification. We might simply say that it would be a grave injustice for people to be marginalized by water shortages or biological diversity to be sacrificed for economic profit because we believe it to be so.
This article was not intended to lay out any kind of formal argument about the conditions we deem necessary to make claims for knowledge, or whether or not moral knowledge is the same kind of knowledge as empirical scientific knowledge. I think it’s obvious that the two should inform one another. “Knowing” whether or not one catastrophic drought was connected to anthropogenic climate change shouldn’t affect our decision to take the actions necessary to move towards a sustainable, resilient future.
(03/06/14 2:07am)
On Feb. 28, 12 Middlebury students travelled down to Washington D.C. for XL Dissent, a student-organized protest of the the Keystone XL Pipeline. They were joined by 1200 other protesters — primarily students — from across the country. The event culminated in an act of civil disobedience, during which 398 students were arrested — seven of them being students at the College.
Keystone XL is a proposed pipeline that would carry over 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day. If completed, the pipeline will span 1,664 miles from oil sands in central Alberta, Canada to refineries on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The project has garnered unprecedented attention due to its scale and size. Proponents argue that it would provide vital jobs and reduce foreign energy dependence. Its detractors argue that it would cause detrimental damage to the environment and cancel out any efforts to reduce carbon emissions in North America.
The students joined students from four other Vermont schools on a bus traveling down to D.C. Hannah Bristol ’14.5, a D.C.-area native, put up the Middlebury students at her home. On Sunday, the protest began at Georgetown University, the site of President Obama’s climate change speech last June. The crowd then marched to Lafayette Park for the main rally, making a stop in front of Secretary of State Kerry’s house to demand that he intervene before the project is approved.
“The energy and solidarity at this protest was unlike any of the other Keystone rallies I’ve attended,” Bristol said. “I think part of that comes from the fact that many of us knew we were going to be arrested. It created an instant bond.”
After the two mile march, the group gathered in the park to hear five speakers. Bristol, who took last fall off to work on President Obama’s campaign in New Hampshire, spoke last to the energetic crowd.
“President Obama was voted in by unprecedented youth turnout,” Bristol said. “I spoke to hold him accountable to his campaign promises on climate change.”
After the rally, the large group staged a sit-in. Many participants zip tied themselves to the gates of the White House while others spread banners on which they performed “fake deaths” caused by adverse effects of the tar sands. Within a few hours, the D.C. Park Police encircled the group, barricading them in. Slowly, they arrested the participants.
By the end of the day, police had arrested 398 protesters, seven of whom were Middlebury students, and brought them to the police station for processing.
“Everyone complied, and the police were courteous,” said Bristol, who was among those arrested. “The arrests demonstrated that we are willing to make serious sacrifices as a movement, and we are committed to this fight.”
The XL Dissent protest is part of a series of events opposing the Keystone XL Pipeline until President Obama announces his verdict on the project.
While 79 percent of voters under the age of 35 support climate change action, 56 percent of American adults support the pipeline. While the percent of support has waned in recent polls, both proponents and opponents of the project remain highly vocal. On campus, students like Bristol will continue to show their solidarity through protest.
(03/05/14 4:57pm)
What do you want to do when you graduate? Although I only have a year left, that question is quickly joining the list of things strangers ask you when you’ve just met them and they have nothing left to say. The answer is that I have no idea. When I think about how much I have changed every year since I arrived here, the prospect of thinking that far ahead seems laughable. No matter what I say to my parents’ friends or curious professors, even by tomorrow the answer will probably have changed.
But I’ve always believed that being passionate is half the battle. And I mean real passion, for I think we often confuse it with just anything you do. I mean the passion where you will go 110 percent even when you think you’ve reached your limit.
As most people who’ve met me quickly realized, I’m passionate about climate justice. So when the opportunity to travel to D.C. this weekend to protest the Keystone Pipeline arose, I and eleven other passionate students hopped on a bus and travelled ten hours to join 1200 other young people in front of the White House. Seven of us were arrested.
Now to many people I’ve talked to, this course of action seems silly. Why would you risk arrest? Aren’t you worried about finding a job? What would do your parents think? (For the record, my parents are the best and have been totally supportive, if a little taken aback.) Putting aside the fact that my arrest was the most privileged view of our criminal system one could get — it reminded me of the programs for parents to send their troubled kids to jail for a night to scare them straight — this was a risk worth taking, regardless of the career consequences or judgment of others. I want an employer who thinks it’s cool I was arrested for civil disobedience anyways, and the potential repercussions on my life are minute compared to the effects the construction of Keystone XL will have on frontline communities from Alberta to Houston and the climate impacts we will face for generations.
But too often, we get hung up on the conveyor belt consequences, the preconceived notion of what we are supposed to be doing as students at this college. How many times have you or your friends weighed a summer opportunity you are stoked about but is off the beaten path with a boring internship that may or may not lead to future employment but will at least be a resume booster? How many times have you not taken a class because you’re afraid it will be hard and god forbid you drop your GPA? How many times have you not joined a club because you were afraid it wouldn’t be seen as “cool”?
I too am guilty. The path we’ve been set on is narrow, and deviating is scary. But not doing what you love is even scarier. With a constant barrage of metrics, from grades to standardized tests, we’re constantly subject to the hierarchy of what society decides is valuable. Some of us succeed in this — our goals align with the goals set out for us — but for many, this push and pull gnaws away as you grapple with a future of financial insecurity or societal questioning.
But you never know what will happen when you take a risk and let your passion guide you. And if I were an employer, I would hire the passionate and enthusiastic kid with a few bumps on the road than the kid with the immaculate record (not limited to criminal records). Because the vulnerability of doing what you love teaches lessons that will last far longer than that Calc class you took. Because that kid knows what it means to fail and how to recover from it.
Maybe my arrest will haunt me later, but for now, I felt the strongest sense of community among strangers that I ever have and met incredible and inspiring young activists. I’m exhausted, my head is cloudy, I’m behind in everything, and I’ve never been more content. And I wouldn’t trade this feeling for the world.
Artwork by NOLAN ELLSWORTH
(02/27/14 1:07am)
Tim Perkins and Abby van den Berg of the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center have discovered a new technique for extracting sap from maple trees that would produce 10 times more sap per acre than the current method. Unlike the current technique, which utilizes wild maples, theirs uses young, cultivated saplings.
The industry has undergone a number of modifications since the era of spigots and buckets. Today, most farmers harvest sap from maples using a network of tubing that winds through the natural forests from tree to tree. Vacuums are placed at the end of tubes to draw out the sap more efficiently.
Perkins and van den Berg’s breakthrough occured while they were studying the movement of sap through the maples, intending to augment their yield. By chopping off the tops of saplings and placing a vacuum directly over the stem, water is sucked from the soil straight through the plant.
The younger trees are able to regenerate their branches before the next harvesting season. This method allows growers to plant the maples in a “plantation,” rather than relying on wild trees.
Reactions to the proposed technique have been mixed. The plantation method will increase predictability during the harvesting process and allow farmers to expand their businesses without investing in increasingly expensive woodland. The technique also mitigates the effects of natural disasters, decreasing the recovery period by decades.
However, many farmers fear of losing touch with the tradition that the industry is steeped in.
“[The new process] is the antithesis of what people expect from the maple syrup industry,” David Marvin, owner of Butternut Mountain Farm in Morrisville, Vermont, said.
Marvin is proud of his undomesticated maple production.
“Informed consumers like a wild crafted product,” he said, emphasizing the sustainability of natural resources involved in the current process. “I’m not faulting the researchers. They’re just doing what researchers do, but it needs to be put in a human context.”
Saplings are resistant to pests, particularly the Asian longhorned beetle, which threatens a number of hardwood trees in North America. Most crucially, saplings freeze and thaw with smaller temperature fluctuations than mature trees, a necessary component of sap development, making them a bastion against climate change for the industry
The new method vastly opens up the maple industry, as anyone with several acres of arable land could now start producing sap. Laura Sorkin, co-owner of Thunder Basin Maple Works, wrote in a recent article, “Any region with the right climate for growing maples would be able to start up maple ‘farms.’”
Other farmers worry that the industry will shift away from areas with natural maple treasuries, such as Vermont, to regions that lack forests but are abundant in labor.
The maple industry is a weighty component of Vermont’s economy. In 2013, Vermont churned out 1.32 million gallons of syrup, accounting for 40 percent of the nation’s annual production, and commercial manufacturers operate in every county in the state.
Perkins has made it clear that the new technology is not yet on the market and, at this point, would not be economically advantageous.
“There are so many small trees and sap collection devices needed, “ Perkins said in a recent interview with CBC news “that the price right now is roughly about the same for the plantation method as the traditional method.” Though it might take several decades, he insists the method will get cheaper with time.
Still, Perkins does not predict farmers will completely abandon the traditional process.
“This new technique isn’t meant to replace the traditional maple production methods,” he said. “It’s made as an additional tool that maple producers can use in certain circumstances if needs dictate.”
(02/26/14 6:58pm)
Last week, the Campus updated us on Middlebury’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2016. The degree of precision found in this initiative is incredible. To cite but one example, Middlebury collects data on where each and every woodchip burned in our biomass plant is harvested and milled.
This seems like a rational approach to limiting our carbon impact, but it is precisely the opposite approach we take with our students. The detailed accounting standards laid out in the 2008 Climate Action Implementation Plan have plenty to say about woodchips, but do not include any similar consideration of the impact of the student body.
Of course, students are not woodchips. For one, students exert a far larger impact on the climate. Woodchips can be transported thousands at a time in the back of a truck. By contrast, most students fly to campus or take a personal car. The woodchips make a one-way trip; Middlebury students come and go several times throughout the year. And while Middlebury scrupulously limits its woodchip consumption to a 75-mile radius of the college, we proudly trumpet the fact that Middlebury students hail from all 50 states and over 70 countries.
Middlebury’s definition of “carbon neutrality” requires us to assume that students miraculously appear in rural Vermont every September before mysteriously vanishing once again every May. We are eager to track and quantify our carbon footprint — at least as long as it does not require us to make the painful choices that true carbon neutrality would entail.
The only real reason for excluding students from the carbon calculus is that it would be too hard — hard not just because the climatological impact of student air travel would prove nigh on impossible to mitigate, but also because true carbon neutrality would require us to compromise on other values we hold dear. In an age where long-distance travel is only possible through burning fossil fuels, how can we credibly claim to be both “carbon neutral” and “global”?
Maybe some would make the case that Middlebury is only responsible for travel it directly funds, and thus we are justified in excluding student travel from our calculations. But this is a slight-of-hand argument that masks the inconvenient truth that Middlebury College is just as responsible for student travel to and from campus as it is for burning thousands of gallons of no. 6 heating oil. It is not as though the College is passively witness to an onslaught of students who happen to arrive each fall. Rather, we actively cultivate a diverse, geographically disparate student body through dedicated recruitment efforts and financial subsidies in the form of aid, knowing full well that this leads to an increase in carbon emissions.
If we truly care about fighting climate change, there are hugely significant actions the college could take immediately. I do not mean the existing feel-good measures: turning off the lights in unoccupied rooms, having students ride the bus to the Snow Bowl or switching food suppliers in the dining hall. I mean drastic cuts that would vastly reduce the carbon emissions associated with students travelling to and from campus. These include closing the C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad, revoking all financial aid to international students, suspending our participation in the Davis Scholars program and ending the Chicago Posse as well as the new Los Angeles expansion. Middlebury could even limit admission to those who reside in the Northeast by requiring that students use mass transit to and from the college — both Boston and New York are accessible by bus and train, and there are more than enough qualified students from these two cities to fill future freshman classes.
But these options are not even on the table — and with good reason. The answer is simple: we accept — nay, encourage — the cultivation of a global student body despite the climatological costs because it is worth it. In addition to our relatively recent commitment to carbon neutrality, we also have a longstanding institutional commitment to diversity. Too many people take a fundamentalist approach to saving the environment while ignoring the fact that all actions have costs and benefits, and, sometimes, the benefits of burning carbon may indeed outweigh the costs. I happen to think that a pound of carbon spent furthering the educational mission of Middlebury College is a pound we are justified in spending. Judging from the fact that most students willfully emit thousands of pounds of carbon each year in their journeys to and from campus, it appears that nearly all my peers already agree with me.
This is not to say we should not strive for greater efficiency. But “carbon neutrality” is only possible through arbitrary accounting and heroic assumptions. Being a responsible steward of the environment is an important ambition for Middlebury College, but it should never be our only goal.
MAX KAGAN '14 is from Freeport, Maine. Artwork by TAMIR WILLIAMS.
(02/26/14 6:56pm)
The discipline of political science has come quite a long way since Aristotle’s Politics, arguably the classic work in the study of politics, which asked and answered questions about our nature as political animals. Whereas Aristotle’s methods in that book were primarily observational and logical, academics working in the study of politics today have rigorously developed and tested analytical and empirical methods at their disposal to “define, describe, explain and evaluate [political] phenomena.” However, beyond a descriptive account of why political phenomena play out the way they do, one might wonder what exactly an empirically-minded political science has to contribute to ventures of a more pragmatic type, especially when we’re presented with normative problems.
If the political problems that help give rise to environmental crises are primarily problems of action — that is, questions that require a particular answer that prescribes action in a given situation — then it seems like answering questions about how groups respond (or might respond) to a given political action should be useful, at the very least. That, maybe uncontroversially, might be what political science can be said to do. The graphs and tables displayed in journal articles and book chapters offer metrics (think changes in GDP, voter approval ratings, and the like) that give us supposedly objective means of looking at how various political events are caused. If all we wanted the study of politics to do was tell us what percentage of states a candidate needed to win in order to win the presidency, or tell us how Congressional spending rates have changed over time, then descriptive and analytical methods might be able to tell us the whole story.
Unfortunately, describing the way our government works isn’t the only project political studies have facing them; we might remember that the primary concern of Aristotle’s Politics was to identify the best type of state and how citizens in an ideal state might behave. As critical as the positive study of how humans interacted with one another was, his ultimate task was normative; the primary object of inquiry was to provide us with an idea of how the state and its citizens should act. Nearly everything that concerned the ancient study of politics centered around notions of the good — a far cry from the subject matter of today’s political science.
Maybe an obsession with power politics is why we’ve yet to find a political solution to the environmental problems we face on the local, national and global level. Is the study of the good too far removed from what we call political science? Commentators have criticized the methodologies political scientists use for a number of reasons.
In a 2012 New York Times article Jacqueline Stevens, Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, writes (rather harshly) that “Research aimed at political prediction is doomed to fail. At least if the idea is to predict more accurately than a dart-throwing chimp” and that her discipline has picked up the nasty habit of “mistaking probability studies and statistical significance for knowledge.”
New York University’s Bertell Ollman, is somewhat less critical of the discipline’s methods, but more so of it’s motives – “… with a few honorable exceptions— [Political Science] presents a view of society that either misses, or dismisses, or at best trivializes the fact that the political game is rigged.” While not wholly dismissive of departments’ attachment to Karl Popper’s scientific method, Ollman derides the discipline for perpetuating an impossibly one-sided dialogue centered around the desires of those in power.
And finally, an anonymous contributor to The Economist, Ripton, Vermont’s “MD,” while commentating on the efficacy of attempts to model the outcomes of presidential elections, points out that the kind of retroactive tweakings frequently made to predictive political theories don’t typically help validate the scientific methods employed in crafting forecasting models. If political scientists continue to ask for research dollars to develop models and other predictive tools that might help reaffirm its methods as “scientific,” then the ideal should be to strive for real scientific rigor.
Unfortunately, scientific rigor is only one of a number of tools that we’ll need to advance goals related to climate change, conservation and other environmental problems. Another large substantial of the equation concerns ironing out what precisely we think the best way of living on this planet is; what I’m suggesting is that while models might help us in making decisions by providing us with an idea of how political moves may be responded to, they can’t tell us much about how the masses should respond, and what they should demand of government. Environmental problems ask us for right action that considers more than just power interests — they ask that political power be exercised justly.
(02/20/14 4:17am)
Middlebury College’s Office of Sustainability Integration declared the College to be on track towards its goal of carbon neutrality by 2016 in its most recent report citing the biomass plant, efforts by a variety of groups on campus, and the new biomethane initiative as critical to the progress.
In his Winter Term update, Director of Sustainability Jack Byrne wrote, “Our FY13 carbon emissions were 50 percent below our 2007 baseline year emissions due to the high performance of our biomass system AND the cumulative effects of the numerous energy efficiency projects the College has completed over the past several years.”
The poster child of the College’s push for carbon neutrality has been the biomass plant, which has cut the College’s use of #6 fuel oil from 2.1 million gallons to 634,000 gallons since 2009.
Despite its success, the biomass plant cannot always handle the College’s large energy demand. “The next big step will be the switch to using biomethane to displace the fuel oil we still burn when biomass is not enough to meet heating and cooling demands,” according to Byrne’s report.
The process of switching over to biomethane to supplement the biomass plant will not be quick and is reliant on the successful construction of the recently approved Vermont Gas Systems pipeline project. The pipeline will allow for cost-effective access to biogas when the biomass plant requires it to maintain operation. The Office of Sustainability Integration estimates the biomethane project will be online by early 2015 at the latest.
The success of the biomethane project is essential to the attainment of carbon neutrality as Byrne anticipates that it will reduce the College’s carbon emissions by 40 percent from the baseline emissions. This amounts to about a 90 percent reduction overall from the baseline year.
“Once this is achieved, [the] remainder of our carbon emissions will be from College related travel, electricity purchased, vehicle fleet and waste sent to the landfill,” Byrne wrote.
College-related travel will account for roughly half of the remaining 10 percent of carbon emissions. According to the 2008 Climate Action Implementation Plan, the current definition of travel includes exclusively College-funded travel, and excludes travel that is funded by student groups or is funded through grants.
However, Byrne reports, “We are in the process of revising the method for calculating emissions from travel as it represents more than half of the total that would remain to assure that we are using as accurate an estimate as feasible.” Other efforts to reduce emissions due to travel include converting some of the College’s vehicles to run on carbon-neutral fuel.
That leaves about five percent of emissions that need to be cut and much of that can be done with the involvement of College students.
“I think a lot of people don’t realize how easy it is to reduce their day to day energy use,” said Campus Sustainability Coordinators (CSC) President Ali Rotatori ’14. “Most of the students on this campus are very eager and willing to live greener, but the issue is they aren’t sure how.”
The CSCs are one of a handful of student groups on campus committed to educating the student body on responsible energy use.
Rotatori acknowledges that not everyone can commit the time to environmentally-focused groups.
“If people can’t be directly involved and commit time to helping Middlebury become a more environmentally friendly place, they can at least help out by changing their own habits,” she said.
Rotatori and her fellow Campus Sustainability Coordinators have many suggestions in their “Greening Your Dorm Room” pamphlet including turning off power strips, taking shorter showers, and walking instead of driving around campus.
With the deadline just two years away, the College is planning to reach its goal thanks to the efforts of many students, facilities and maintenance staff, faculty and administrators.
However, if Middlebury finds itself falling short of its carbon neutrality goal, there is a back-up plan in the form of “carbon credits” that can be purchased to offset our emissions. Colby College employed this tactic when it claimed its own carbon neutrality, sparking debate about the validity of using carbon credits to assert carbon neutrality.
For now though, the College is focusing on furthering what progress has been made in the effort to achieve its goal.
(02/20/14 4:15am)
According to a press release from the Peace Corps, the College ranked 14 on a list of top volunteer-producing small colleges. There are currently 12 former students volunteering worldwide, serving in Botswana, China, Jordan, Kenya, Malawi, Paraguay, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo and Uganda. Since the Peace Corps was founded in 1961, 481 alumni have traveled abroad to aid in the humanitarian effort.
Zoe Armstrong, the Peace Corps volunteer recruitment and selection representative for the College, credits Middlebury’s success with the Peace Corps to the global citizenship of students and their commitment to finding sustainable solutions.
“Of [the College’s] 150 student organizations, almost all of them are dedicated to either service or cross-cultural exchange,” Armstrong said. “Middlebury students are already global citizens and that makes them great candidates for Peace Corps service.”
“[The College] shares the Peace Corps’ commitment to finding sustainable solutions to community challenges. Middlebury students always impress me with their commitment to helping marginalized populations and also their passion for finding environmentally sound innovations to combat climate change. They humbly talk about amazing work they are doing in environmental conservation, sustainable farming, LGBTQ rights, empowering youth, refugee outreach, and immigrant advocacy,” she added.
The College’s intensive language programs also makes students more attractive candidates for the Peace Corps, according to Armstrong.
“Students consistently come to interview sessions with files that reflect years of language study. They highlight their commitment to linguistic study because they want to use these skills to serve cross-cultural goals,” she said.
Assistant Director in Career Services and Careers in the Common Good Tracy Himmel-Isham emphasized this commitment to language as a driving factor for students.
“Two huge driving factors for students who are interested in the Peace Corps are an interest in using language skills and an interest in living internationally,” Himmel-Isham said, adding that the International Politics and Economics and Environmental Studies majors are two particularly attractive majors in the eyes of Peace Corps recruiters.
A commitment to international development, language study, and sustainability is evident among College alumni who are currently working as Peace Corps volunteers.
“I am working as a sustainable agriculture extension agent and speak the local language,” said Rosalind Vara ’10 of her experience working in Senegal in a press release. “I work with farmers to increase their crop yields, improve soil fertility, and reduce chemical inputs.”
Margaret Bale ’10 drew a parallel between her education at the College and her experience in the Peace Corps.
“I came to Botswana as a health volunteer, but my work has predominantly been in a primary school assisting with improving education for almost 200 children. Remembering what I had learned from my interdisciplinary experiences at Middlebury, I have been able to turn this into one of the best learning experiences I’ve had in my life,” she said in a press release.
Armstrong emphasized that the accessibility to small villages around the world is a unique draw for the Peace Corps program.
“Peace Corps uses a last kilometer approach; volunteers serve in many small villages and thus make resources available to an expansive number of people,” she said.
“Volunteers may learn a language that very few people in the world speak, volunteers gain new and unique perspectives to community challenges; when they come back to the United States, they bring leadership skills home with them and innovative ideas about how to become community leaders here,” she added.
(01/22/14 4:29pm)
It just so happens that every once in a while, the Middlebury community misses out on the opportunity to hear fantastic visiting speakers due to the distraction of spectacular glorious skiing conditions. This past weekend was one such opportunity.
The Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs sponsored the 1st Annual Student-Led Global Conference titled “Immigration in the Neoliberal Age.” This year’s leaders featured Molly Stuart ’15.5 and Fernando Sandoval Jimenez ’15.
Last year, a competition, open to all students who wish to lead the events, invited applicants to share their visions of the future conference. Jimenez, who studies Environmental Studies and Geography, shares how it all began: “Molly was the one to have the idea. At the time, I was in Lebanon, taking a semester off, and Molly was abroad, studying neoliberalism in Mexico from the perspective of the Southern Mexican Zapatistas.”
A professor emailed Stuart, asking her to submit a proposal into the contest. Inspired by her surroundings, she formed an idea based on neoliberalism’s effect on migrants and immediately reached out to Jimenez, a friend and previous project collaborator.
One year later, Jimenez and Stuart found themselves facing their original ideas in the flesh — that is to say, they found themselves leading discussions and introducing speakers, among other organizational responsibilities.
The conference kicked off Jan. 16 with a panel discussion of the Mexican-US border, continued into Friday with a workshop presenting “Neoliberal Globalization” and a film screening of the documentary Last Train Home, and finished off on Saturday with four lectures by visiting speakers.
“I think that the lectures themselves were all fantastic and they brought a perspective to Middlebury that we usually do hear about or we read about and we study and dissect and analyze and we write papers about, but we don’t care much about [it when] down to actually connecting to the people that this is happening to,” Jimenez said. “The people that came to talk about that reality spoke in a very close up way, so you could actually feel it.”
Neoliberalism, as Jimenez admits, is a concept both simple and complex. He explains it simply.
“It’s a vision of capitalism in which the entire world needs to be connected for everything, but in general it doesn’t really work, at least not for everyone,” he said. “It facilitates a lot the accumulation of capital by some people, and it allows such people to have capital and markets everywhere. But that doesn’t mean that commonplace people have access to the global economy. They are part of it, but they are not necessarily the players. They’re not playing, they’re being played.”
By way of this capitalist endeavor, neoliberalism exploits the masses in favor of the few, often overtaking local industry and creating a huge economic gap, all of which displaces people from their homes in various ways. Thus, immigration, as Colin Rajah, International Coordinator of the Global Coalition on Migration and one of Saturday’s speakers, puts it, is one “symptom” of these global problems — as, he argues, is climate change.
“I thought that [Rajah] was going to say that the environment affects people, etc., and that we need to fight the environmental degradation, etcetera,” Jimenez said. “But he actually came to the idea that what we need to fight is the imbalance of power and that that’s what’s causing both climate change and the displacement of people. That is, people are being displaced not just because of climate change but also because of the balance of power. And I cannot do justice to the way he explained it; he put it very powerfully.”
The call to fight neoliberalism and free trades agreements was Rajah’s response when Jimenez asked what we could do to help the problem. The answer, Jimenez said, took him aback in its immensity.
When realizing the full extent of these huge issues, Jimenez confesses to feeling overwhelmed.
“Partly because, when I was away in Lebanon, I saw very closely that difference between having a lot of power and not having any power at all. I’ve always been sensitive to that topic; Lebanon made me even more so.”
“And I do feel powerless, I guess, but I also feel really angry because then we’re all here like “Oh, but what can we do about this?” And it’s like, well, could we start to live a bit of a more simple life? Like do we really need to have the library be extremely hot in winter and extremely cold in winter, you know, is that necessary? Do we really need to have lights on all night?” Jimenez said. “Coming from Mexico and having been also to places where the vast majority of people live in more modest situations, being in Middlebury does make me feel uncomfortable about all the things that we have that we don’t have to have.”
To the few who attended the events, the conference was doubtless as enriching and provocative as Jimenez describes it. The Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs is currently in the process of preparing for next year’s continuation of this lecture series, which will become an annual event committed to engaging our community on global issues and, if it is anything like this year’s discussion, humble us in the process.
(11/21/13 5:00am)
On Saturday, Nov. 16, students took part in “Tour de Fracked,” a bike ride organized to peacefully protest the Vermont fracked gas pipeline that is proposed to run through Middlebury.
The College has expressed its support for the pipeline, maintaining that it will provide an inexpensive, local form of energy for the school and residents of the town. Many students, however, are fighting the College’s stance because they believe the environmental and social side effects of fracking are too high of a price to pay.
Hydraulic fracturing is a process of obtaining natural gas by pressurizing liquids, including harmful chemical substances, to fracture rock below the earth. These chemicals have the potential to leak into groundwater near wells and thus contaminate drinking water.
Rosalie Wright-Lapin ’15, one of the organizers of the bike ride, is fearful of the social issues associated with fracking.
“[The] pipeline poses a major ethical paradox,” Wright-Lapin said. “Many argue that fracked gas will provide affordable “clean” heat for Vermonters. The importance of making heat affordable for Vermonters is undoubtedly a social justice issue — all humans (especially living in a climate like Vermont’s) should have access to affordable heat. However, the mere process of fracking disrupts towns and threatens the health and environment of those communities.”
People in the residential communities near a fracking site are often put in compromising situations in which they do not usually have the power to change. This brings into question the ethics of using fracked gas.
Zane Anthony ’16.5 is another passionate orchestrator of the Tour de Frack who wants to make the possible implementation of the pipeline, and the controversy over fracking in general, more of a focus on campus. At Powershift, an environmental convention for students across the country that occurred over Fall Break, Anthony and others became motivated to do more related to the climate crisis and environmental justice movements.
Anthony has been working with an organization called the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG), which aims to bring the voice of Vermont citizens to public policy debates. Anthony’s work with VPIRG helped him gain momentum for spearheading the Tour de Fracked.
The bike ride was meant to be a symbolic showing of “Middlebury activists riding together in solidarity in opposition to the Vermont pipeline.” The Tour de Fracked group had advertised for their cause. Other advertisements were more creative, such as a caution-tape patch that served as a statement of solidarity, because caution tape symbolizes the precautionary principle; a huge element in the sustainability movement. Advertisements have included flyers, notification of the local media, a planned conference and over 75 photo petitions of students holding up their statements of disapproval of the pipeline.
Despite their efforts, Anthony feels that environmental activist groups are somewhat lacking on campus. He noted the major focus on the issues of divestment and local food, and the absence of strong activism for any other area.
“[It’s] a fallacy [that] Middlebury prides itself on its progressive nature — divestment and [local] food are longer term [issues] but the pipeline could be built in February,” said Anthony. “Now is the time, before it is built, for people to see that they are opposed to it.”
According to Wright-Lapin, there are many reasons to be opposed to the construction of the pipeline.
“Any organic farms through which the pipeline passes can no longer be organic, thus ruining the living that many hardworking Vermonters have built for themselves and their families,” said Wright-Lapin.
“Providing affordable heat for some is only a step towards social justice if it is not ruining the homes of others. Bettering people’s lives is only meaningful when it is not harming people on the other end,” she said.
These students held Tour de Frack to bring the broad spectrum of environmental issues, and the effects that could result from the pipleine for both the College and the Middlebury community to the attention of the college community at large.
(11/21/13 1:56am)
Akrasia is the ancient Greek word for “weakness of will,” or, in other words, acting against one’s better judgment. This past week makes me think that the U.S. might have itself a bad case of the stuff when it comes to climate questions.
As Greenwire and The New York Times report, the EPA lowered federal renewable fuel targets for the first time since 2007. Up until last Friday, the agency had hoped to have roughly 18.15 billion gallons of renewable fuels blended into the rest of the petroleum-based gasoline and diesel fuels on the market — 3.75 billion gallons of which was to include advanced biofuels not derived from corn inputs. On the revision, the nation’s fuel mix must contain 15.21 billion gallons of renewable fuels, 13.01 billion being conventional ethanol and 2.2 billion gallons of advanced biofuels. The question concerning the viability of ethanol as an alternative fuel notwithstanding, the EPA’s move appears to me to be little more than a concession to industry pressures.
That the rollback was called “a step in the right direction” by Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, disturbs me almost as much as his follow-up comment that “more must be done.” The EPA justifies its decision by appeal to the lack of market support for alternative fuels both at the pump and on the assembly line. However, the agency fails in any real way to provide an offsetting measure for the corresponding boom in domestic petroleum production in recent years. With less support for renewables and increased production of conventional fuels, reductions in emissions from nationwide automobile traffic take a huge hit.
In another equally depressing news bit, the U.S. seems to be preparing itself for a repeat performance of its 1997 Kyoto Protocol blunder. As world players gather in Warsaw, Poland for UN climate talks, the tone coming from Congress is less than enthusiastic. While some elected officials like Senators Ed Markey (D-Mass) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.) favor U.S. involvement in an international climate agreement, the two acknowledge that the present makeup of the Senate will make it extraordinarily difficult to win U.S. support for any such measure.
The President’s administration and others worldwide have pledged to develop an international arrangement to address the climate crisis by 2015, which would likely go into effect by 2020. However, sentiments from Senator John Barraso (R-Wyo.) that effectively damned EPA regulations for power plants for their economic effects as well as those of Senator Warren Hatch (R-Utah) who appealed to the “legitimate question of science” regarding the legitimacy of claims about climate change indicate that conservatives dogmatic denials of the facts might undermine yet another opportunity for the U.S. to take a leadership role in the global climate battle.
When the best evidence repeatedly points us towards taking action, we have seemed to develop a nasty habit of turning the other cheek and neglecting where our best deliberations might take us.
There is no denying that economic concerns should be an important consideration, but as my fellow columnist and editor, Zach Drennan, pointed out last week, fossil fuels — especially new, riskier extraction methods — are hardly a safe long-term investment. Investing in more resilient pathways makes more sense than leaving our future up to chance.
Policymakers, unfortunately, still see some reason to gamble on carbon — whether they are reasons to which we average citizens are blind or they are being hidden behind congressional backdoors, I cannot say. To open up fuel markets for more petroleum consumption while simultaneously resisting active contribution to mitigating problems caused by that consumption sets us up for nothing but failure. A few billion gallons of alternative fuels might only be a small portion of our total energy mix, but when we actively undermine progress, we drill holes in the water buckets that are supposed to help us put out a climate fire that is only growing.
(11/21/13 1:52am)
8,446 miles. That is how far it is from Middlebury to Tacloban City, Philippines.
When the Earth suffers, we suffer with it, but not everyone suffers equally. Today, the Philippines is bearing much of the burden. Since our community often tends to feel apathetic towards the people and communities that are distant from us, we are fasting today not only to stand in solidarity with the Filipino people, but also because we believe that shared suffering is a path to empathy. Although fasting will not have an actual impact on the lives of the people who are suffering, it brings our attention closer to their suffering. It gives us a feeling which we cannot simply forget about: every time we feel a pang of hunger we are reminded of people living with this condition but are without much hope of relief. Fasting is a way to at least incorporate a very small part of their struggle into our lives, helping to bridge the geographic gap between us.
Our idea of fasting for climate justice came from the Filipino delegate to the UN climate talk, Mr. Yeb Saño. He is fasting for the whole length of the current conference “until meaningful outcome is in sight”. This is the second time in a row where he has addressed the international community at the annual climate talk after a disastrous storm had struck his country. At present, youth groups attending the conference in Warsaw, as well as many people around the world and other Middlebury students, are also fasting.
If this storm had happened in a wealthier area, the damages done to human lives may not have been so great. An IPCC report from 2011 shows that 95 percent of the deaths resulting from “extreme climate disasters” are in developing countries. The reason why this figure is so skewed towards people in developing countries is because they are less adequately prepared for coping with climate disasters than developed countries. Rapid population growth and urbanization produce clusters of poorly constructed houses in cities in developing countries that are extremely vulnerable to even smaller-scale climate events, let alone “extreme climate disasters.”
At the end of the day, we still know that we will have food available for us to eat. But as climate change becomes an increasingly significant problem, and stronger and more frequent storms become the new climate norm, more and more people will not have that food security. What should we do in order to be able to relate to them on a deeper, more personal level? Fasting is a good first step, because it draws our attention to what they are going through and keeps them in our thoughts. It helps to bring us closer to the reality of the words and images that we hear and see on news reports. But it will not relieve the suffering in the Philippines. Fighting for environmental and social justice cannot be tackled in one day, we must incorporate these ideals into our everyday thoughts and actions.
ASH BABCOCK '17 is from Deerfield, Ill., ADRIAN LEONG '16 is from Hong Kong and VIRGINIA WILTSHIRE-GORDON '16 is from Wilmette, Ill.
(11/20/13 10:34pm)
Students gathered outside Mead Chapel for a candlelight vigil on Thursday, Nov. 14 to mourn the devastation and damage caused by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and Southeast Asia and to call attention to climate change. Mourning at the vigil, which was hosted by Divest Midd, was furthered by a number of students electing to fast in solidarity with Filipino climate delegate to the U.N., Naderev “Yeb” Sano.
At the start of the U.N.’s two-week-long climate talks, Sano announced his fast.
“In solidarity with my countrymen who are struggling to find food back home … I will now commence a voluntary fasting for the climate. This means I will voluntarily refrain from eating food during this [conference] until a meaningful outcome is in sight,” he said.
Gabbie Santos ’17 is from Cavite, an hour north of Manila in the Philippines and spoke at the vigil with sadness in regard to the current situation and cautious optimism for the future.
“In the face of adversity, one after another, let it be known to the world that, as we Filipinos like to say … ‘the Filipino spirit is waterproof,’ the Filipino people are a resilient people. But this does not mean that we are willing to place more and more lives on the line in the face of future, potentially more devastating disasters and calamities,” she said.
Santos also spoke at the vigil on behalf of Oliver Wijayapala ’17, who is from the affected area of Leyte in the Philippines. Leyte was among the areas hit hardest by Typhoon Haiyan, which left nearly 3,000 dead and approximately 920,000 displaced.
Reading Wijayapala’s words, Santos said, “My family’s hometown in southern Leyte was in the direct path of the typhoon. It’s difficult to get in contact with my family members there, but I believe and hope they are all okay. There is a lot of damage and debris, though … Please keep in your thoughts and prayers my family and all those affected by this disaster.”
Members of Divest Midd recited Sano’s speech from the Climate Summit at Thursday’s vigil as both a call to action and a means of mourning the destruction. In further solidarity, Adrian Leong ’16, Ellie Ng ’14, Greta Neubauer ’14.5, Ashley Babcock ’17 and Virginia Wiltshire-Gordon ’16 fasted on Thursday. A number of other students participated in fasts over the weekend and into this week.
“I am choosing to refrain from eating on Thursday because I treat his [Sano’s] countrymen as my countrymen, his brother as my brother and I want to reflect deeply on the dire state of our climate, as well as [the] social justice system and bring them to more people’s attention,” Leong wrote in a post on Facebook.
Leong created a Facebook event for his fast, encouraging others to join him. Over 40 friends listed themselves as “going,” thereby implying participation. Leong said that word of his fast spread rapidly to friends at other schools.
“Many who fasted alongside with me told me that my action inspired them to reflect on their responsibilities to the world in this time of great change,” Leong wrote in an email, calling the response to his actions “overwhelmingly positive.”
The purpose of Sano’s and students’ fast is twofold — to mourn the loss of life and destruction and to recognize the gravity of the ongoing climate crisis.
“Whether we accept it or not, Climate Change does not lie in the distant future,” Leong wrote in his Facebook event. “It is now, and it is right here. I have a few friends from the Philippines who also have family members there, as I know that many [others] do, too. Even if this is not the case, you may well know other friends that do. Thus, it is utterly impossible to deny how closely our lives are linked to the lost lives and survivors of the strongest typhoon to have ever hit land.”
