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(09/24/14 2:38pm)
In honor of the endless technological innovations that shape the way the College community communicates, learns and engages, the 2014 Clifford Symposium centered on the theme of “Transforming the Academy in the Digital Age.” On Sept. 18 and 19, distinguished visiting scholars and faculty members of the College held discussions and gave lectures on the cultural, economic and social shifts caused by rapidly advancing technologies, focusing on the effects those shifts have on the academic community.
The Clifford Symposium’s culminating event on Friday, Sept. 19, “Of Water and Ice,” was a dynamic presentation and performance by New York City producer and intellectual Paul D. Miller, also known by his stage name, DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid.
Born in Washington, D.C., Paul D. Miller studied philosophy and French literature at Bowdoin College in Maine. Soon after, he began recording singles and LP’s under the stage name ‘DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid,” derived from the ‘spooky’ sounds of the hip-hop, techno and ambient music styles he samples, as well as the character The Subliminal Kid in William S. Burroughs’ 1964 novel “Nova Express”.
The performance explored DJ Spooky’s multidisciplinary study of Antarctica through stills from his 2011 text “The Book of Ice,” audio and visual samples of the uninhabited continent’s climate and algorithmically generated musical patterns based on climate data collected and processed in a temporary studio on his trip.
DJ Spooky is at once performer and intellectual, meticulous and improvisational. His focused attention is not just on creation, but the process of how artistic form is conceived through cultural influences and samples of previous works. Professor of Film and Media Culture Jason Mittell explained that this rare and unique combination of talents and interests proved to be a perfect fit for this year’s theme of “Transforming the Academy in the Digital Era.”
“It was really challenging to come up with an artist who would both speak to how digital technologies are transforming their artwork and have an intellectual foundation of that,” he said. “There aren’t many of those, so when my colleague [Assistant Professor of Film and Media Culture] Louisa Stein said that she’d just seen this artist who showed video and audio work and talked about the concepts of remix and digital manipulation and all the various social and cultural issues and creative possibilities of that, I said, ‘Wait a minute, he would be the perfect person!’”
DJ Spooky and his management team pitched a variety of performance options for the Symposium, including a DJ dance party rave or a lecture featuring the academic side of his persona, but the winning pitch, incorporating a variety of mediums from his study of Antarctica, provided a combination of both of these with an added environmental twist.
“For me, what was so appealing about this was, first, that it’s touching on an academic area of research that is obviously very important socially, but also very prominent here at Middlebury, talking about climate change and environmental studies, but also that he’s doing it not from a scholarly perspective, but from an artistic perspective,” Mittell said.
DJ Spooky began running through photos of his trip to Antarctica on his iPad. DJ Spooky’s ‘lectures’ in between songs would be better described as dynamic conversations in which the artist shared the sources of his inspiration and information while providing engaging, efficient examples of the intellectual thought processes of his work.
Using his iPad as the facilitator of the multimedia presentations within the performance, DJ Spooky showed first-hand how digital technologies have truly transformed access to content and tools never available before, making it possible for anyone with technological access to add to this new era of open creative expression.
The performance stimulated the senses through sets of juxtapositions. DJ Spooky engaged in discussion about his music, connecting each work to its intellectual basis before spinning each dynamic, throbbing track of music that will never be created in quite the same way again. This completely digital, revolutionary use of iPad technology and apps stood in stark contrast to the violin player standing on the other end of the stage using a 9th century instrument to both augment and combat the musical motifs of each piece.
DJ Spooky’s motivations for delving into a project steeped in discussion about climate change are connected to his goals as an artist.
“I grew up in a family that was very intensive about information, and my idea was that art and ideas are never separate from social justice or change, so climate issues for me are a part of that,” he said. “One of the things that really blew my mind was just how people are on autopilot about climate change and consumerism, so I feel that arts can help people reimagine and reframe what’s going on. I’m an avant-garde oriented artist, I’m not mainstream and I have no desire to be mainstream, but I do think that you can make room for new styles and new voices and new approaches, which are needed more than ever.”
By setting up a studio in Antarctica, DJ Spooky wanted to explore a way for electronic music to respond to climate issues and examine humankind’s ever-changing relationship with the vanishing arctic poles. By using the urban landscape as a sound tool, DJ Spooky remixed sounds generated from the most remote place on the planet to resemble styles that typically come out of the city like hip-hop and electronica. The first tune he performed, ‘Antarctic Rhythms,’ began with Jason Bergman, a Barnett, VT violinist who performs with the Vermont Philharmonic Orchestra.
All of the musical selections sampled at the performance came from the free DJ Spooky app, which the artist constantly referred to and worked with as his only performance tool. Designed in collaboration with Musicsoft Arts, the app allows users to sample tracks from their devices’ music collection or SoundCloud and use sound mixing features on the app to sample from other works and create original pieces. Downloaded over 25 million times, the app’s popularity is a testament to the prevalence of remix culture and the desire for more innovative technological creative outlets and tools.
Every musical sound and remix of the night came directly from DJ Spooky’s deft use of the app, which was entirely visible to the audience through a large screen projector. During each song, audience members absorbed audial information and the live visual of the violinist playing each of DJ Spooky’s coordinating compositions, the projection of the app in use in the middle of the stage and DJ Spooky at his iPad playing as an improvisational, reactionary force to the preordained violin compositions.
Though violin and iPad are not traditionally paired together, as soon as each performance began, it was remarkable how well the two instruments worked together. The audience, too, made up in equal numbers of both academics and students, buzzed with an electronic excitement at the end of the first song.
Citing one of his favorite filmmakers, Georges Méliès, DJ Spooky pointed to sampling and remixing in the short 1900 film One Man Band, in which Méliès transposes an image of himself seven times in the same shot, each version of himself with a different instrument. This time consuming process had to be spliced and crafted by hand, and is one of the earliest examples of a sampling and remix, a concept that pervades current discourse on artistic innovation.
DJ Spooky explained that every song is fundamentally comprised of loops and layers drawn from sound selections, motifs and elements, emphasizing that music is not something that should be played the same way time and time again, but instead should be revisited and reinvented.
DJ Spooky worked with quantum physicist Brian Greene on “The Book of Ice” to map the sounds of ice as data points that could be mathematically entered into software to generate algorithms of how ice actually forms. Calling this middle ground between poetics and science a form of ‘geek hip-hop,’ DJ Spooky compared patterns present in snowflakes as very similar to patterns that form in genres of music. Within “The Book of Ice,” QR codes unlock hidden data about climate change and the mathematical ice data that went into each piece of music.
In the four other songs he performed throughout the night, the distinct musical sounds and motifs made more and more sense as DJ Spooky explained a new kind of literacy based in the ability to record and recognize patterns in any form of life. While viewing a snowflake at high resolution, the motif matching the snowflake’s data patterns rang true throughout Wilson Hall, and only seconds later, the violin joined in the pattern in a slightly transposed way.
“[DJ Spooky] embodies this hybrid between the analog strings and the digital iPad, and the fact that digital is not just a gimmick but rather the form of the music where the sound generation is tied to the content of the piece,” Mittell said. “This is a perfect summation of what digital technologies can do to transform artwork and cross the boundaries that I think very often feel rigid between creative practice and scholarly research.
Nobody owns the ice, and one of DJ Spooky’s messages during the performance was that open systems allow anyone to remix. He enthusiastically encouraged those in the audience to download his app, listen to and remix any of his music and embrace the digital age’s open flow of information. The artist's work can be explored at www.djspooky.com and www.djspooky.com/antarctica.
Both students and academics attending the performance seemed impressed by the innovations of DJ Spooky’s imagination. His abilities as a DJ alone recommend him to the collegiate setting, but his added intellectualism made him a perfect candidate to fit into all aspects of campus endeavors.
“I think this is a wonderful approach to the topic, and I’m really optimistic that after all the various ways of thinking and disseminating ideas and exploring new possibilities that the lectures and workshops generated over the two days, the artwork of DJ Spooky will make you say ‘Wow, this is what you can do with all this,’” Mittell said.
(09/17/14 3:42pm)
Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin recently announced his bid for a third term in office. As the Democratic nominee, Shumlin will be running against Republican Scott Milne and Libertarian Dan Feliciano.
Shumlin’s platform emphasizes economic matters, including job creation, income inequality, healthcare reform, renewable energy sources and resolving Vermont’s opiate problems.
Shumlin insists he has focused on increasing job opportunities “like a laser.” During his time in office, approximately 9,200 jobs have been added to the market. Vermont’s unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the country.
However, Eric Davis, the retired Middlebury College Professor Emeritus of Political Science, says Vermont’s labor statistics are not as clear-cut as they seem. The low unemployment rate fails to reflect the lack of income growth in the middle class or the insufficient income tax revenues that have been plaguing the state.
Davis said that households in the middle class “have seen their incomes be stagnant for the last four years while health care costs are going up, property taxes are going up, and other aspects of the cost of living are outrunning their income gains.”
Shumlin, however, is aware of these challenges.
“The wealthiest are seeing their incomes expand, middle class Vermonters are continuing to get kicked in the teeth and lower income Vermonters are losing ground,” Shumlin said. “So we’ve got a lot more work to do.”
Shumlin has recently implemented a plan to raise the minimum wage in order to combat Vermont’s income inequality problem. In 2014 he signed a bill into law that will increase the state minimum wage, which is currently $8.73 per hour, each January over the next four years until it reaches $10.50 an hour by 2018. Shumlin advocated the gradual increase to mitigate the impact of the bill on business owners.
“Our challenge is to make sure that this state is affordable,” Shumlin said, “that we balance budgets, that we don’t raise taxes, income sales ... which I haven’t done in four years as governor, because we need to keep the state competitive.”
Despite these goals, Shumlin has been accused of ignoring in-state economic problems. Milne criticized the governor for focusing too much on national issues when he should have been addressing issues such as rising property taxes. Vermont has struggled with school properties, and Shumlin acknowledges that rising taxes combined with shrinking school enrollment are unsustainable.
He has stated that his administration will be working to find solutions for schools that are too small to be economically viable. However, Shumlin ultimately feels that such measures must take place on the local level.
“Changes need to come from the ground up and not the top down,” he said.
One of Shumlin’s most significant projects is his push for Vermont to be the first state in the country to implement a single-payer health care system. He has taken strong stances on health care, stating that “[healthcare] is holding us back as a nation.” He further says that adopting a single payer system will help the Vermont economy as out-of-state businesses will want to move their operations here.
“We think we can come up with a much better system moving from premiums to one where you pay for health insurance based on your ability to pay,” he said.
Shumlin has received criticism for the state’s handling of Vermont Health Connect, the state’s version of the federal Affordable Care Act. Technological difficulties made signing up for the program a challenge for many users and have yet to be completely resolved.
“The most frustrating job [I’ve] had to undertake is dealing with the health care situation,” Shumlin said, “There is no silver bullet.”
Vermont Health Connect was created to keep Vermonters’ health benefits higher than the federal exchange benefits. If Vermont joined the federal exchange, Shumlin has said he believes that health care costs in Vermont would rise.
By January, Shumlin aims to create a plan for implementation of the single payer system for the Vermont legislature to discuss, which will include a two billion dollar tax package to finance it. However, as a result of the Affordable Care Act, states cannot go to single payer health care until 2017.
Another key point in Shumlin’s platform is his strong support for renewable energy options.
“Climate change is the biggest challenge that we are facing,” Shumlin said.
He has expanded solar energy usage in Vermont during his time in office, and boasts that Vermont has more solar jobs per capita than any state in the country.
Shumlin is also an advocate of energy efficiency and affirms that his administration is serious about Vermont’s goal of being powered by 90 percent renewable energy by 2050. Shumlin was decidedly in favor of closing the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
Under Shumlin’s leadership, Vermont became the first state to ban hydraulic fracturing in 2012. Shumlin called the science surrounding the safety of fracking “uncertain at best,” citing potential water pollution caused by fracking.
Despite Shumlin’s strong stance on fracking, he is in favor of the Vermont Natural Gas Pipeline, which will transport fracked natural gas from Canada. In a recent interview on Vermont Public Radio, Shumlin commented that the pipeline would take people that are currently burning dirty oil and move them to a cleaner fossil fuel. He sees natural gas as a “transition fuel on the way to renewables.”
Shumlin is also dedicated to reducing Vermont’s opiate problem. During his 2014 State of the State Address, he spent his entire 34 minutes speaking about the heroin addiction problems plaguing the state. Each week, the value of the quantity of heroin and other opiates entering Vermont totals over two million dollars. Additionally, almost 80 percent of prisoners in Vermont jails are in jail due to drug charges.
Keeping these Vermonters in jail is costly, adding up to approximately $1,120 per week per person. To ease these costs, Vemont decriminalized marijuana in July of 2013, becoming the 17th state to decriminalize marijuana, making possession of less than an ounce punishable by a small fine rather than arrest and jail time.
Shumlin remarked that this was just “common sense,” adding that Vermont’s limited resources “should be focused on reducing abuse and addiction of opiates like heroin and meth rather than cracking down on people for having very small amounts of marijuana.”
To deal with the heroin problem, Shumlin is pushing for the creation of more treatment centers for drug addiction, which would cost $123 per week per person. This would allow the more than 500 heroin users currently on waiting lists to get receive treatment and potentially avoid jail time.
Additionally, Shumlin would like to create a system in which the police direct addicts to treatment centers when they are arrested, as this is the moment when addicts are most likely to agree to treatment. Shumlin also advocates imposing tougher laws to prevent drug dealers from entering the state.
Shumlin is also in favor of increased gun restriction. He has commented that “we should not be living in a country where someone can walk into a school and shoot up 23 little kids.” He added that semi-automatic weapons - like those used in the Newtown Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting - have no place in society. However, Shumlin does not advocate for a total ban on guns. He wants to allow guns to be used by hunters in Vermont and rural areas across the country.
In May of 2014, Shumlin signed into law a bill that will make Vermont the first state to require foods that contain genetically modified ingredients to be labeled as such. The new law is supposed to take effect in July of 2016 but faces challenges from food manufacturers who threaten to sue and from congressional legislation that would prevent states from implementing labeling requirements.
The implementation of this GMO labeling law and the handling of the state after Hurricane Irene are some of Shumlin’s most important accomplishments. Irene struck in 2011, his first year in office, destroying 500 miles of roads, hundreds of private homes and businesses, and damaging the state office complex in Waterbury. Despite the praise he has received, Vermont continues to rebuild to this day.
Like all incumbent politicians, Shumlin has a number of accomplishments and failures. Seeking a third term in office is a fairly recent phenomenon amongst Vermont governors. However, voters tend to favor incumbents, and Shumlin is currently heavily weighted to win the seat in November.
(09/17/14 3:38pm)
This past Wednesday, a wide variety of voices came together at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Middlebury to speak on climate change in light of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, which will be completed by the end of this year, for an update from the global climate movement. Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, facilitated a series of short talks by Fernando Sandoval ’15, Benjamin F. Wissler Professor of Physics Richard Wolfson, Erick Diaz, Professor of Economics and Director of Environmntal Studies Jon Isham and Marjeela Basij-Rasikh ’15. The talks were organized by students from Sunday Night Group (SNG) in advance of the People’s Climate March (PCM) on Sept. 21.
On Sept. 23, representatives from all over the world will come together in New York City for the 2014 UN Climate Summit to discuss the IPCC’s newest report and work to mitigate the effects of climate change. Leading up to the summit, over 1,000 organizations, including 350.org, are planning for the PCM. According to Laura Xiao ’17, about 120 people from the College will be heading to New York this weekend.
The evening began when McKibben introduced the speakers, stressing the importance of holding an event with speakers from the College in downtown Middlebury.
Sandoval spoke first, focusing on his home country of Mexico, a country “particularly susceptible to climate change” due to its reliance on farming and its high risk for hurricanes. If all other countries had the services and energy consumption of the United States, the world’s carbon footprint would be huge, said Sandoval. He spoke of the challenge of raising the quality of life for Mexicans while simultaneously reducing their carbon footprint. Some families with livestock have begun using biodigesters to create natural gas for energy, without needing to build a pipeline, said Sandoval.
McKibben introduce Wolfson, the next speaker, by detailing two recent news stories, the spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels recorded at the Mauna Loa Observatory and the release of the iPhone 6, the latter of which got more media attention.
“The carbon dioxide readings just go up and up and up … they’ve never gone down, they’ve never stabilized, since the 1950s,” Wolfson said. Since levels are constantly rising, records are constantly being set. It was the spike in carbon dioxide levels that made the news, Wolfson noted, not the record carbon dioxide level.
Wolfson began by holding up a book about four inches thick, which was one-third of the IPCC’s new report.
“The old understandings of climate change are good,” said Wolfson in reference to the previous IPCC reports. However, the new report includes better insight into regional differences, changes in temperate climate areas and the dire need to cut carbon emissions.
“Not only do we have to cut emissions to zero … we have to go negative,” Wolfson said.
McKibben spoke of the diversity of age, race, occupation and economic class of the people concerned about climate change and involved in the People’s Climate March to introdce Erick Diaz, a farmer from the south of Mexico who is now working as a migrant farm worker in Vermont because his own farm was destroyed by the chemicals from multinational corporations that farm areas nearby. Diaz spoke mostly on climate change and the effect that it has on people’s livelihoods.
Isham is “a leading thinker in environmental economics and divestment,” McKibben said next. Isham spoke on the pros and cons of economic disincentives foremitting carbon.
A carbon tax “is a bad idea in the U.S. because it’s called a tax,” Isham said. Two other alternatives are carbon caps or a cap and trade system. Isham talked about the recent Healthy Climate and Family Security Act of 2014, which includes three parts: a cap on overall carbon emissions, an auction system to “buy the rights to pollute” and the division of the 200 to 300 billion dollars raised in that auction among anyone in the US with a social security number.
Lastly, Isham said that he felt strongly about the importance of divesting.
“One of the reasons we divest is to try to weaken the fossil fuel industry,” said McKibben before introducing the final speaker, Basij-Rasikh.
“It’s not just an environmental issue in the traditional sense, it’s a social justice issue,” Basij-Rasikh said. Basij-Rasikh is from Pakistan, which was devastated by massive flooding in 2010 and is experiencing other effects of climate change. The effects of climate change are “damaging for the most vulnerable beings,” she said.
The series of talks ended by focusing on the upcoming People’s Climate March.
Bill Huntington of Middlebury was surprised by the diversity of people who spoke, ranging from professors, to students, to a migrant farm worker. Hearing from Diaz brought up how immigration is environmental, not just political, said Huntington.
(09/11/14 2:15pm)
The White House recently asked Governor Peter Shumlin if Vermont can harbor immigrants fleeing their homelands in Central America. Vermont is one of several states being considered to host the immigrants – predominantly children from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.
Governor Shumlin’s office responded that the adminstration was “...willing to investigate locations and logistical requirements...to determine if Vermont would be an appropriate host state for some of the children who have crossed the border and are in custody.”
Currently, around 1,500 undocumented immigrants live in Vermont. Most of them – around 80% – work on dairy farms, shoveling manure or milking cows. The wave of immigrants crossing the border in recent weeks often meet up with family members, like the aforementioned farm hands, already settled in the United States.
The sites Vermont proposed to house the new immigrants vary in size and type, from the Vermont Technical College in Essex Junction to the Ethan Allen Cinema in Burlington. Although all of the proposed locations do not meet the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) 90,000 square feet minimum, intended to provide adequate living space for the immigrants, it is unclear whether the requirement will change.
Both of Vermont’s Senators, Patrick Leahy (D) and Bernie Sanders (I), have advocated heavily for immigration reform. Although Leahy was far from enthusiastic about all of the amendments on the failed bill, he vowed to support it and said that “legislating is about making tough choices.”
“Vermont has a long history of supporting refugees in need,” said David Carle, a spokesman for Senator Leahy. “Governor Shumlin and his team reflect that history and that ethic, and Senator Leahy applauds the Governor for the state’s willingness to explore ways that Vermont may or may not be able to help.”
Historically, Vermont has been accomodating to refugees fleeing violence in Central America. In 1987, Vermont Refugee Assistance, now the Vermont Immigration and Asylum Advocates (VIAA) was founded to “support refugees fleeing civil wars in Central America.” The VIAA provides legal counsel to immigrants hoping to avoid incarceration or deportation, provides health assistance to survivors of torture, and “logistical and legal support” to refugees hoping to immigrate to Canada.
State Refugee coordinator Denise Lamoureaux stated that most refugees have adapted extrordinarily well to a climate and culture very different from their own. Still, “...all transitions require effort, flexibility and adaptation,” she warned Seven Days Vermont.
Other outreach workers warn that a combination of xenophobia and economic hardship could endanger the traditionally placid relationship between the immigrants and their host communities.
“We’ve been going through a long recession,” said Laurie Stavrand, an outreach worker for the Colchester-based Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program (VRRP) “and everybody has been trying to look out for themselves.”
For residents accustomed to living within hours of the Canadian border, the immigration issue can seem a world away. Yet racial tension in Vermont could actually be compounded by the state’s ethnic homogeniety; 93.7 percent of Vermonters are white, and only 1.7 percent are Hispanic or Latino.
The White House’s request for shelters comes on the heels of intense debate in Washington over immigration reform legislation, which Congress failed to pass before the midterm break. Although the Senate did pass the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S. 744) in April of 2013, it will likely die in the GOP controlled House.
President Obama has come under heavy fire for failing to secure the southern border, which an estimated 60,000 children have crossed in recent weeks. The head of U.S. Border Patrol has said that Federal agents are inundated with the amount of immigrants, and are unable to fulfill their traditional anti-terrorist and anti-cartel roles.
The President had previously promised to sign reforms into law before the end of the summer, but abandoned the timetable Sunday. Republican leaders claim that Obama is avoiding the volatile subject until after the November elections to avoid endangering Democratic candidates.
After the elections, Obama has warned he will utilize executive action.
“In the absence of action by Congress,” stated President Obama, “I’m going to do what I can do within the legal constraints of my office, because it’s the right thing to do for the country.”
Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner said that “the decision to simply delay this deeply controversial and possibly unconstitutional unilateral action until after the election — instead of abandoning the idea altogether — smacks of raw politics.”
(09/10/14 8:26pm)
It’s often said that we at Middlebury live in a bubble. Our little college sits deep in the Vermont woods, hours from the nearest major city and 45 minutes from Burlington, a town that’s hard-pressed to consider itself metropolitan in any way. We’re insulated from societal upheaval and cultural turmoil by the miles and miles of Green and Adirondack Mountains and national forests. And although we’re all undoubtedly fully immersed in the digital age, it’s still far too easy simply never to hear of events around the world. Because we have little to no exposure to the rapid, interdependent world around us, news, announcements and changes can go unnoticed.
In spite of the physical and metaphorical isolation of Middlebury, however, the students here are passionate. Activists, politicians and advocates make up the college. Our 2,500 students are determined, talented and dedicated individuals who want to make a difference. But in our little bubble, this is often a challenge.
And so, what we get is constant small-scale political and social revolution in a self-contained, self-sustained, insulated environment. Instead of protesting the tax breaks for massive oil corporations, Middlebury students push for the college’s divestment from fossil fuel companies. Instead of raising awareness for climate change as a large-scale phenomenon, we call for better efficiency in our heating and cooling. Instead of attempting to tackle homophobia on the societal level, we hold forums, write articles and stage protests against rappers for using homophobic slurs in their songs.
All of these social movements help make Middlebury a more progressive place, welcoming to people of every background. This kind of behavior of students is what made Middlebury a bastion of openness and tolerance. More than this, however, these acts allow students to make a meaningful change in their community. Protesting the investment of Middlebury funds in fossil fuels gives students an achievable goal, one that can significantly alter the way that Middlebury interacts with the outside world. It’s a monumental task to take on homophobia in the United States — but asking whether it is acceptable to let a musician sing homophobic epithets at Middlebury? That’s something manageable. That is something we can change.
At the same time, this isolated, inward-focused community we created brings about its own risks. For example, it’s entirely too easy to forget that the rest of the world even has problems. I didn’t know that a Malaysian Airlines flight disappeared over the Indian Ocean until almost a week after it happened. It took Russia invading and annexing Crimea for a large number of Middlebury students to learn something was wrong with Ukraine, even though the country had been going through extreme turmoil for several months. Most of us probably would say that when we live at home, we generally try to have one eye on current events. But at Middlebury, that habit can slip away.
So we end up with this community of people all concentrating solely on Middlebury. Everyone wants to help facilitate change, and so social movements frequently arise. The biggest danger that arises from this bubble is that people lose perspective. When a protest or a movement catches the College’s eye, it becomes almost a fad to be a part of it. And when activism becomes popular among a group of people contained within a small community clamoring to help, it occasionally can blow out of proportion.
This sounds counterintuitive at first glance — a social movement gaining popularity is bad? But it’s too often true: the zeal with which students respond to these movements can have unforeseen, and sometimes counterproductive, consequences. The exclusion of contrary voices is often the most obvious of these. One of the generally overlooked harms of zealous activism is the growth of the divide between a group and the rest of the community around it. We do not want activism to be driven by an “us vs. them” mentality. That isn’t conducive to equality and open-mindedness in a community.
We have to break down the bubble. We have to, as individuals and citizens of this world, take it upon ourselves to understand global events. As a result of Middlebury’s geographic and social isolation, it’s not easy to acquire knowledge and perspective of the eternally changing world, but it’s necessary. Each of us needs to put in the time to follow the news, even superficially, just so we have perspective. The more we know and the more we are aware of, the more tolerant, inclusive and effective our social movements will be. You can’t change a problem without understanding the complex background and issues that made that problem arise.
(09/10/14 2:10pm)
The College is a surprisingly busy place during the summer, with its hodgepodge of researchers, employees, Bread Loaf students, and language learners. This summer, 11 students attending the new Middlebury School of the Environment also joined the mix. The program ran for six weeks, from June 20 to Aug. 1.
The School of the Environment is the brainchild of its director and Professor of Environmental and Biosphere Studies Stephen Trombulak. Trombulak initially proposed the idea of a summer school in the late 1990’s. After years of planning, the Middlebury board of trustees approved the school in the spring of 2013.
Trombulak thinks the College is uniquely positioned to start a successful environmental summer school because of its long history of summer programs, large network of alumni in environmental careers and strong, pioneering environmental studies department.
“Middlebury has had an environmental studies program as part of its academic curriculum for almost 50 years,” Trombulak said. “In fact, Middlebury’s program in environmental studies was the first major anywhere in the country, founded in 1965. We have worked tirelessly over the years to build a program that highlights the best of what is needed to offer a full spectrum of exposure to the study of the environment.”
Despite being the school’s first summer, students thought it was a success.
“It was an amazing summer,” wrote Isaac Baker ’14.5 in an email. “Given that it was the first year of the program, I had my reservations, but the faculty really showed up and put in the time to make it an incredibly immersive and valuable experience.”
Students took three courses. Two courses, including Sustainability Practicum, equivalent to Middlebury’s Environmental Studies Senior Seminar, and Understanding Place, a course focusing on Lake Champlain as a case study, were mandatory. The third course was an elective. Kaitlin Fink ’16 explained they were not typical college courses.
“I came into this program thinking that I was enrolled in three environmental studies courses; what I came away with was a whole new method of approaching complex systems in general – not just the environment – and a set of skills that has given me greater confidence in my ability to hopefully affect broader change in the future,” she said.
Baker agreed that the courses were more hands-on than normal college courses.
“We had reading, and plenty of it, but most days were spent doing things like working on a project, going to a museum, taking a historically-oriented hike, interviewing folks a few years into their environmental careers, or taking core samples on the College’s research vessel [The RV Folger],” he said.
For a four-week project in their Sustainability Practicum course, students were tasked with identifying problems the College could face in the future because of climate change and formulating solutions. The School of the Environment will consider and possibly implement their ideas.
“We chose to propose the purchase of a high-voltage generator for extended power outages, the burial of all above-ground power lines on campus, and the implementation of a rainwater collection system for several of our campus buildings” Fink said. “It was amazing to get to have this sort of ‘real world’ experience. I’m hoping to continue to work on our proposals throughout the rest of my time here at Middlebury, and maybe help to push along the path toward implementation.”
On a typical day students were busy from nine until dinner with breaks in between. Fink found that the small size of the school had several benefits.
“We were all taking the same set of courses, so, unlike during the standard school year, we could draw on ideas or readings from one course in discussion with another. Our conversations in class would spill over into our meal periods, which our professors attended with us, making for an incredibly rich intellectual environment where it was entirely normal for dialogues about Marxism or animal rights to exist alongside standard lunchtime chatter.”
The school had ten visiting speakers - called “practitioners in residence” - come to talk about their experiences working for positive environmental change. The speakers included Schumann Distinguished Scholar Bill McKibben, renowned activist and founder of 350.org, Gus Speth, environmental author and former member of the President’s Task Force on Global Resources and Environment, and Alden Woodrow, business team leader for Google’s Makani airborne wind turbine project.
“What’s really unique about the school and what makes it so exciting is that we’re embedding not just information about the environment, but the skills necessary for students to become leaders in the field and to do something with the information,” Trombulak explained. “[The practitioners in residence] will not just talk about the skills in theory but how those skills have played out in their own settings and their own sectors they’ve been working in.”
Baker agreed that the visiting fellows were a highlight of the program.
“The mix of people the school brought in was what kept each long day feel manageable, while also making it exciting and meaningful,” Baker said.
The school was located in Middlebury its first summer but Trombulak thinks it will eventually move to a different location.
“There are many exciting possibilities,” Tromhulak said. “We could establish a campus in a city to explore issues associated with urban studies, or hold the school in a coastal region to explore curricula associated with marine studies.”
For Fink, her summer at the school was a motivating experience.
“The School of the Environment reignited my passion for the environmental challenges facing our world today, and I feel like I have started to develop the tools that will enable me to dive in somewhere and be able to effect positive change,” she said. “I don’t have all the answers yet – I don’t think I ever really will - but I know that I care, and now I at least know how and where to start.”
(04/30/14 10:59pm)
The Rotten Tomatoes description of Noah says that it succeeds in “… bringing the Bible epic into the 21st century.” That’s a case of damning with faint praise if I’ve ever seen it. What does it mean to “modernize” an old, canonical story? What sorts of prejudices are inherent in that kind of project? The recipe for Hollywood modernization often reads something like the following. Begin with the basic outline of a very famous story, preferably one that might inspire controversy so as to attract attention. Contort the story’s structure to fit a conventional action-movie plot-arc. Cast attractive people, preferably very famous attractive people. Saddle the thing with as many banalities and love scenes as it can handle before it collapses under the weight of its own clichés. For example, look to Dante’s Inferno, Beowulf, that Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters thing from last summer and so on.
I would have immediately assumed that Noah would follow the above checklist – where “modernize” is a synonym for “let’s make this story super badass, bro” – if not for the bizarre fact that Darren Aronofsky, of all people, is Noah’s director. Aronofsky is a man who made his name with the hallucinogenic math thriller (math thriller?) called Pi, which cost him a whopping $60,000 to make. Aronofsky has since directed strange, personal movies like Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan. With Aronofsky at the helm, Noah is at least willing to take some chances here and there. It’s in the first 10 minutes that we are introduced to a gang of giant rock men, fallen angels called “the watchers,” who appear precisely like you’d imagine Bible-era megatrons to look.
This degree of outlandishness proves good for the film. Certainly one of the appeals of Noah is the slow unveiling of the original tale: how it depicts the actual arc-building and the animals boarding the arc. These revelations are more interesting when mixed with Aronofsky’s strange vision. At the same time, because we do know the basic narrative, the obligatory sweeping battle scenes exist purely as visual spectacle. Noah will build an arc and the animals will board the arc, regardless of the fight’s outcome. These enormous battles simultaneously lack drama and feel totally irrelevant to everything else in the film.
The world of Noah, like the battle scenes, strongly resembles a fantasy epic à la Tolkien, but the film’s visual tone is inconsistent. In one breath we get the giant rock men grunting and lumbering around with a huge sense of scale, and in another we are snapped back towards a claustrophobic, faux-documentary handheld style that recalls Aronofsky’s unique imagery in Pi. The contrast is jarring, as if the bizarre fantasy that Aronofsky wants to make is at war with another, more standard special-effects driven epic. This feeling colors most of the final product.
To its credit, Noah does gesture in the direction of Genesis’ themes, particularly in the characterization of Noah the man. Russell Crowe seems like an inescapable casting choice as Noah, but his presence forces the character out of the stereotypical noble and upright caricature that we’ve seen in other retellings of the flood story. Instead, this is a narcissistic, broken man who believes that the human race deserves to die. More than that, there is no woman who might bare children to begin humanity anew; humans have wrecked the earth completely and utterly. There is a very clear attempt at a statement about climate change with Noah. However, we only see the bones of themes like this, or of any real artistic vision, because they are buried beneath computer generated images and genre conventions.
So I suppose Aronofsky has succeeded in modernizing the Noah story, which essentially is to say that Aronofsky has succeeded in producing a loud, hulking Hollywood action movie with just the occasional glimpse of imagination to pull us along. The movie is obnoxious in parts (many parts) and just kind-of boring in others. Now here I am complaining about an action movie starring Russell Crowe being loud and obnoxious though. It is what it is. It could have been much more than what it is, but if you want an action movie you’ve got Noah, which is no more interesting or insipid than the rest.
(04/30/14 10:57pm)
Since 2011 the United States has increased its hydrocarbon production faster than any other country. As mentioned in this column before, this tremendous growth has been driven almost entirely by the combination of two independent drilling technologies, as well as the practices of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to exploit gas and oil locked within shale rock formations. The economic benefits from increased domestic hydrocarbon production are evident and quantifiable — from lower energy costs, new jobs and the possibility of an American manufacturing renaissance, to a rebalancing of the trade deficit, along with increased GDP growth. However, even as politicians on both sides of the aisle demand to be recognized as fracking’s biggest supporters, a storm of negative public sentiment rooted in environmental concern is growing across the country. In 2010, New York State — which sits atop the Marcellus Shale Formation — placed a moratorium on fracking. In 2013, Boulder and Fort Collins, Colorado placed five-year bans on fracking, and the nearby town of Lafayette, Colo. prevented the drilling of any new oil and gas wells. As the spread of fracking continues, communities from Pennsylvania to North Dakota to Wyoming are questioning the utility of these wells.
It is often claimed that, in balance, the increased production of natural gas and the subsequent conversion from coal-fired power generation to natural gas power generation is beneficial for the environment and helps mitigate climate change. The burning of natural gas reduces air pollutants such as mercury and sulfur dioxide, which cause acid rain, and releases far less carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere. However, due to a lack of regulatory oversight and slow adoption of energy industry “best practices”, this statement lies in the realm of possibility and not truth.
There are four main environmental concerns for the production of natural gas. Throughout all stages of production, methane — a greenhouse gas that during its first 20 years in the atmosphere is 84 times more potent than CO2 — has the possibility to be released into the atmosphere. During the drilling process, chemically-enhanced fracking fluid can contaminate water sources. Drilling sites could also cause local air pollution such as smog, and fracking could possibly lead to increased seismic activity. All four of these concerns are rooted in the real-world experiences of drilling sites around our country. In a research poll conducted in September 2013, 49 percent of respondents opposed fracking, whereas just 44 percent favored it. The energy industry now faces crisis of confidence and needs to change the fundamental facts of natural gas production.
Through a combination of government regulations and the adoption of industry norms such as new emissions controls, better waste-water management practices and increased methane capture efficiency, shale gas production will be cleaner and more efficient. If the energy industry can realize the same magnitude in efficiency gains as they have in production gains going forward, the transition from coal to natural gas will be both environmentally and economically beneficial.
All this being said, shale gas is still a non-renewable resource that releases greenhouse gasses during production and consumption. It is most certainly not a solution to climate change and a warming planet. However, what it can do when implemented in its cleanest possible form, is create a technological bridge from the current hydrocarbon system to the renewable system of the future. The shale revolution gives us the ability to slow down the rate of greenhouse gas emissions while we accelerate the transition to a truly clean energy framework. That is the end goal we should not lose sight of.
(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.
