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(11/20/13 10:22pm)
Recent incidents of homophobia on campus have prodded College administrators to unveil a number of planned initiatives earlier than originally intended. The ongoing goals and initiatives, spearheaded by the Office of the Dean of the College, are aimed at enhancing the existing programing in order to strengthen support for the LBGTQA community on campus this year.
While plans for bolstered official College support for the LBGTQA community have been in the works since the summer, recent incidents of homophobia on campus — including an incident in which a member of the LBGTQA community received an anonymous threatening letter taped to the student’s door in addition to the recent controversy regarding Chance the Rapper’s lyrics — have prompted the administration to announce their goals and plans prior to the official implementation of such programs.
Assistant Director of Student Activities and Special Assistant to the Dean of the College Jennifer Herrera is leading the initiatives in conjunction with Dean of the College Shirley Collado, Associate Dean of Students for Student Activities and Orientation JJ Boggs, Director of Health and Wellness Barbara McCall and the board of the Queers and Allies (Q&A) student organization.
“We’ve had these two major incidents occur on campus that have gained more visibility than us being able to share this news about our LGBTQA resources and support initiatives,” Herrera said. “So what needs to be understood is that our effort to strengthen existing support and implement additional programs is not in reaction to those instances … As we made more progress in our work, it was our intention to introduce some of these initiatives later this academic year.”
Herrera made sure to note that due to the recent nature of the implementation of these support programs, she has not yet been able to gather feedback from as many students as previously intended. Q&A, however, has been involved in preliminary discussions.
“I’m glad that the administration is moving forward with tangible goals,” said Q&A co-chair David Yedid ’15. “I think the College is very behind in the way that they support minority student groups and there needs to be a big change.”
An increased focus on addressing the needs of the LGBTQA community at the College began this summer, after the College completed its first assessment through the online organization Campus Pride.
Campus Pride is a national nonprofit run for and by students with the goal of helping campuses “develop, support and give ‘voice and action’ in building future LGBT and ally student leaders,” according the company’s website.
According to Herrera, the assessment provides an LGBT Friendly Campus Climate Index, touching upon eight factors to rate a campus on their LGBT-inclusive policy, programs and practices. These factors include LGBT policy inclusion, support, institutional commitment, academic life, student life, housing, campus safety, counseling and health, and recruitment and retention efforts. Rated on a scale of zero to five, the College scored three and a half points.
Herrera, Boggs and Collado used the results and suggestions of the Campus Pride assessment, along with recommendations from students involved with Q&A and earlier LGBTQ groups on campus to create a list of four goals.
“Obviously [the goals are] not totally comprehensive, there’s still a lot to do,” Herrera said. “We can’t just check off these goals. We’re working on developing sustainable programs and strengthening the current support and resources we have on campus now for students.”
According to Herrera, the first of these goals is the implementation of a sustainable training program on LGBTQA/diversity issues for Residential Life staff and campus constituencies, including Safe Zone training. Secondly, the Campus Pride assessment has led to the development of an accessible, simple process for students to identify a preferred name and preferred pronoun on College records and documents via an electronic Bannerweb request form. Increased programming will also focus on developing LGBTQ-friendly resource materials and the Gender and Sexuality Resources website as part of a broader Diversity and Community website in addition to the establishment of a peer-mentoring program to welcome and assist LGBTQ students in transitioning to academic and campus life.
Yedid expressed concern that although these goals are “sold and fair”, there is currently no staff or faculty position whose job is to specifically act as a contact for the College’s LGBTQA community.
“These goals are positive, but I think there needs to be a larger changing of culture and that needs to happen with the knowledge that that’s someone’s job,” he said.
Along with the efforts to achieve these four goals, the College is looking at initiatives in other areas as well: both the Athletics Department and Parton Center for Health and Wellness are working on their own LGBTQA projects.
This fall, the Athletics Department joined the You Can Play (YCP) project. Through You Can Play, colleges and universities create videos, posted to the YCP website, stating their commitment to “ensuring equality, respect and safety for all athletes, without regard to sexual orientation,” according to youcanplayproject.org.
“I certainly liked the message a lot, but I also liked the idea that there is a sustainable element to a video which is more permanent than a speaker or another one-time event,” wrote Director of Athletics Erin Quinn in an email, explaining why he and his staff chose to work on the project.
Parton faculty and staff have started to work with the RU12? Community Center, a Burlington-based organization that celebrates, educates, and advocates for the LGBTQA population in Vermont.
This September, Parton staff participated in a workshop run by RU12? and plan to hold another later in the year.
“Our hope is that through a variety of trainings and discussions over the next few years, Parton staff in health and counseling will continue to gain greater insight and understanding of the particular experiences of any students who may have felt stigmatized, misunderstood or dismissed by health care providers (at home or elsewhere) in the past, and through these trainings to increase our ability to provide excellent care,” wrote Executive Director of Health and Counseling Services Gus Jordan in an email.
The implementation of such programs and the achievement of the College’s LGBTQA community goals is expected to be a slow and fluid process, seeking feedback from students, faculty and staff, alike, along the way.
“We know that there are some holes and there is a lot that we can strengthen and improve but in order to not become overwhelmed by all of the potential work, we’ve narrowed it down to some concrete things to get off the ground and to develop in a real sustainable way this academic year so they can continue to move forward and be successful,” Herrera said. “We realize that new initiatives will surface and develop and we will be thinking about what the next things to tackle are.”
(11/14/13 5:08am)
Dear friends,
Today, on Nov. 14, I am going to voluntarily fast for a whole day in solidarity with the Filipino delegate to the UN COP19 climate talk, Mr. Yeb Sano.
I chose this day because on the same day, Divest Middlebury is holding a candlelight vigil to commemorate the lives that have been lost, and are still being lost, due to Typhoon Haiyan. Just as Mr. Yeb Sano is fasting because his “countrymen... are struggling to find food back home and… [his] brother... has not had food for the last three days,” I am choosing to refrain from eating on Thursday because I treat his countrymen as my countrymen, his brother as my brother, and I want to bring this issue to more people’s attention on campus.
Far too many people do not have the luxury that I do to choose to fast: Typhoon Haiyan alone has caused 2.5 million people in the Philippines to rely on food assistance. Many more storms like this one will come, and 95% of the death resulted from such “extreme climate disasters” is going to be people from developing countries.
The reason why this figure is so skewed towards people in “developing” countries is because they are less adequately prepared for coping with climate disasters than “developed” countries. Rapid population growth and urbanization produce clusters of poorly constructed houses in cities in developing countries which are extremely vulnerable to even smaller-scale climate events, let alone “extreme climate disasters.” Natural disasters, as it turns out, are only part of the story: poverty, a booming population, geography, meteorology, and shoddy construction, are equally, if not more, important factors.
Whether we accept it or not, climate change does not lie in the distant future. It is now, and it is right here. I have a few friends from the Philippines who have family members there, as I know that many of you do, too. Even if this is not the case, you may well know other friends that do. Thus, it is utterly impossible to deny how closely our lives are linked to the lost lives and survivors of the strongest typhoon to have ever hit land.
This record-setting storm has made it clear to the world that we are now living in an era of “Climate Changed.” Yet, governments around the globe are not doing enough to curb carbon emissions. Not only has CO2 concentration in the atmosphere risen to an all-time high last year, but the gap between the estimated level of CO2 in 2020, as calculated from the latest pledges made by countries around the world, and the targets required to keep temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius, has reached an all-time width as well. In other words, the chasm between ambition and reality is only widening year after year.
This is going to be an important day for us to remember the time we are in. I hope that many of you will join me, or at least support me, in this fasting, so that collectively, we can make a powerful statement that we recognize that climate change is not an abstraction, nor is it merely a scientific fact, but an indispensable part of our daily, lived reality.
With gratitude,
Adrian
ADRIAN LEONG ’16 is from Hong Kong.
(11/13/13 7:09pm)
Last week in Oslo, Marius Holm of the ZERO Foundation presented a report that I co-wrote this summer along with a number of environmental and financial professionals making the case for fossil fuel divestment in Norway’s government pension fund, a portfolio so large that it dwarfs the size of all American university endowments combined. Many of the arguments were specific to Norway, which, as one of the largest producers of oil and gas in the world, is ill-advised to double down on its exposure to shifts within the fossil energy industry. As a fund that already has in place the type of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria for investment missing from Middlebury’s endowment, the debate in Norway is not over whether divestment is an appropriate tool for creating change, but rather how far that tool should be extended. While Middlebury would be well advised to lead the way by creating similar investment screens, even in the absence of concerns about endowment ethics the arguments for divestment in Norway can inform the ongoing debate on this campus.
Over the past six months, many market analysts have revised their predictions for future oil prices from around $110 per barrel to down into the $80 to $90 range. A number of factors are driving this downward trend — increased efficiency of automobiles, uncertainty over future regulations and a Chinese economy far more overleveraged than that of the United States prior to the financial crisis. All of these factors contribute to falling oil demand, which in a world of abundant oil supply means that prices must soon begin to fall.
At lower prices, many of the types of tar sands, ultra-deepwater and shale oil projects currently under development would fail to earn back their investment capital. Any regulatory action that limits carbon dioxide emissions will inevitably require some of these reserves — which have already been factored into the share value of oil companies — to remain in the ground. Expectations about reserves have a significant effect on the share price of fossil fuel companies. When Shell reduced its estimated reserves by 20 percent in January 2004, its share price plunged by 10 percent in a single week. These concerns recently led a large group of investors representing over $100 billion in assets managed by companies that include Boston Common Asset Management and Storebrand Asset Management to issue a call that Norwegian Oil Company Statoil withdraw from tar sands extraction.
World Financial Markets – and, by proxy, the Middlebury College Endowment – are being inflated by a looming Carbon bubble. If you accept that there is a scant one-in-four chance that the world will meet the IEA’s targets to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius, the expected value of the endowment’s position in fossil energy equities is already ten percent inflated. The loss of value if climate change is defeated would be forty percent, which would affect the College’s ability to pay employees, undergo capital projects and award financial aid to deserving students.
The College Administration and Trustees no doubt have faith that, as professional investment managers, Investure will be able to anticipate the shift in fossil energy share prices before they actually arrive. But that poses a significant risk to the endowment – a risk that we would do well to avoid. When financial markets adjust to reflect the changing reality of fossil fuel use, the adjustment will not be smooth or gradual. It will come suddenly and leave those too slow to act with heavy losses. For some of the market, it already has. After an energy speech by President Obama that pledged increased regulation of power plants and an end to international development aid for non-Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) coal plants, the shares of coal companies including Peabody Energy and Walter Energy took dives of 3.4 and 10.4 percent respectively, adding to a year in which Peabody Energy has lost half its value and Walter Energy has lost three quarters. The Stowe Global Coal index, which lists coal-producing companies, fell the same day to its lowest level since the 2009 financial crisis. Utilities across Europe have similarly plunged unexpectedly in response to competition from renewable energy.
To be bullish on the future of the fossil fuel industry is the rough equivalent of a bullish outlook on the nuclear industry sometime after the alarm bells went off at Three Mile Island or after the wave headed for Fukushima. It is comparable to a bet on CFC-producing companies sometime between the discovery of the massive hole in the Ozone layer and the ratification of the Montreal protocol, or a bet on fax machines after the invention of the Internet. Coal and oil powered the 19th and 20th centuries. Their glory days are past. To bet on their future is to bet either against the future of humanity or against the overwhelming judgment of science.
(11/13/13 6:35pm)
We’ve become largely desensitized to words like ‘10,000 likely dead.’ It’s not our family, our friends. But can we stop for a minute and recognize that people have died and will continue to die, as Typhoon Haiyan razes Southeast Asia because of a storm greatly exacerbated by climate change. Though Haiyan has received significant mainstream media coverage, it’s framed to evoke pity, sadness, a sense of helplessness.
But this framing distracts from the true tragedy: our complicity. We are responsible, as people living in a country that pours the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and works the hardest to prevent substantive international action on climate change. Our actions are intensifying storms while those who have done the least to bring about climate change experience the deaths of their family members and the destruction of their homes.
Yeb Sano, Filipino delegate to the U.N. Climate Summit that kicked off this week said Monday morning that “disasters are never natural. They are the intersection of factors other than physical. They are the accumulation of the constant breach of economic, social, and environmental thresholds. Most of the time disasters are a result of inequity and the poorest people of the world are at greatest risk because of their vulnerability and decades of maldevelopment, which I must assert is connected to the kind of pursuit of economic growth that dominates the world; the same kind of pursuit of so-called economic growth and unsustainable consumption that has altered the climate system.”
When discussing climate change on our campus, we focus on a distant future, thinking about how we will smoothly, rationally transition off of fossil fuels. We “integrate sustainability” into our practices only when it requires no sacrifices of our quality of life. What the situation in the Philippines remind us is that while we wait for serious action to be comfortable, there are sacrifices. People are sacrificed.
People refer to divestment and the environmental movement as “radical,” but radical is watching 10,000 people die as a result of the largest storm in our history and refusing to take action. Radical is accepting such a storm as the new normal.
Moreover, it is inhumane. As residents of an exceedingly wealthy and powerful nation and as people with access to a political system that moves if we demand it, we have a responsibility to organize, to bring about a future that values a human life in the Philippines as much as a life at Middlebury College.
Climate change is truly, fundamentally terrifying. It is almost impossible to think about the reality we face and to refrain from despair, to continue getting out of bed in the morning. But we must, we must engage, because if we don’t we are going to spend our lives watching the world’s most marginalized suffer as a consequence. This we cannot do.
As Yeb Sano says, “it’s time to stop this madness.” Enough is enough.
Please join members of Divest Middlebury and Sunday Night Group Thursday, Nov. 14 at 5 p.m. outside of Mead Chapel for a candlelight vigil to remember those lost and suffering from Typhoon Haiyan.
GRETA NEUBAUER '14.5 is from Racine, W.I. and HANNAH BRISTOL '14.5 is from Falls Church, V.A.
(11/06/13 9:30pm)
We know that preservation of the South American rain forests is a necessary step in ensuring our future a stable climate. Why, then, is illegal logging in the Amazon still so prevalent?
Two weeks ago, the New York Times published a story explaining a recent chapter of Peru’s struggle to combat the black market timber industry ravaging its forests. The global demand for mahogany and other valuable hardwood types – more abundant in the Amazonian rain forests than anywhere else on Earth — has helped fuel illegal timber harvesting in some of the world’s most important forests. Like a similar story in National Geographic from April of this year, the Times articulates that many of the last big mahogany stands exist only within the boundaries of Indian lands. These areas prove difficult to patrol, and the indigenous communities that inhabit them are often as sympathetic to loggers’ cash as they are towards law enforcement.
What efforts are made to try and curtail illicit harvesting in protected areas and carry out conservation plans in managed lands are undermined by political corruption and a lack of other sources of income for the areas’ inhabitants. Military personnel, stationed to patrol locales and check that loggers have the appropriate documentation necessary to harvest trees, can only be so effective, and judges who are supposed to prosecute those caught in violation of policies, more often than not, take a bribe over the rule of law. Such conditions, together with the reluctance of distributors and businesses in the developed world to take precautions necessary for keeping “poached” timber out of their supply chains, might seem to draw a picture of a relatively bleak future for forests the Earth needs to breathe.
How might we go about trying to ensure that these forests — the importance of which links not only to climate change, but also biodiversity and human ecology — do not go damaged beyond repair? The problem will not be solved unless we tackle the conditions on the ground that perpetuates cutting as well as remedy the upstream demand that facilitates it.
Governance does not work in a given area unless it has the resources necessary for it to run. While I am not about to propose a solution for the lack of effective civil society in the Amazon, I do not think real progress can be made towards conservation goals without an effective means of enforcement. Military personnel can be paid off – the kind of social pressure capable of dissuading a judge from taking a bribe can only be instantiated through genuine community building. Getting people to take ownership over their political lives does not, and cannot happen overnight. However, if means are taken to lessen the influence that extra-governmental forces have on law enforcement and the justice system, then interests other than those of the governed might have a harder time interfering with regulation. Get the people involved in the way their government works — if we can set the scene for civic development, where livelihoods interact positively with an active role in the political process, conflicts like these will be easier to avoid and to mitigate.
At the same time, we in the North have our own part to play. If it is our demand for fine wood products that drives the illegal cutting taking place down south, then we should presumably do our best to make sure the wood we’re getting is ethically sourced. Sustainable forestry protocols can help, but as the examples at hand show, we have relatively little control what happens on the other end of the supply chain. I think we would do better to simply reevaluate what might be able to meet our material needs as conscious consumers. While we might not be able to control what emerging markets for rare hardwoods (read: China and India) demand, we might have a chance at trying to talk international markets into opting for more sustainable alternatives.
The story of the persistence of Amazonian logging only serves to bring our attention towards a central tension in our contemporary age — while economic development can appear to provide solutions for environmental problems, it invariably comes at a cost. Bringing commerce and nation-building to the global south might provide opportunities for development beyond natural resource exploitation, but questions regarding to the compatibility of capitalism and indigenous ways of life still fail to provide clear answers. Political liberalism, the panacea in vogue, may strengthen civil society to a certain extent. Problems arise, however, when liberal economics beat political liberalism out of the blocks.
(11/06/13 9:28pm)
A friend of mine once described “fun” as looking forward to an event and reminiscing about that event. Anticipation and nostalgia, he thought, were more important to explaining our experience of fun that the actual experience. Daniel Kahnman’s research, including his most recent book Thinking Fast and Slow, gives some credibility to this claim.
Through this lens, nostalgia is pleasure, derived from looking back at a memory that once inspired a positive feeling. The danger, however, is intellectual inertia. In a sense, nostalgia leads us to hold rigid ideas of how things should be, leaving us biased by the conventionality of how they could be.
Being aware of, and correcting for, irrational tendencies like nostalgia makes us smarter.
For example, there is nothing better than the feeling of taking off cold, wet socks and plopping yourself down next to a crackling, glowing fire. It is viscerally refreshing, plus it connects our experience, however indirectly, with pre-historic humans. Wood fires feel innate to humanity.
Problem is, some studies suggest that being around such fires is likely worse for you than cigarettes. Because household wood fires release tiny particles that we cannot smell, we are ignorant to the damage it does to our pulmonary and cardiovascular systems. It releases carbon sequestered in the wood, which exacerbates climate change when scaled to a national level (although electric and gas “fireplaces” may be worse still).
Worst of all, it is not just hurting the person enjoying the fire: recreational fires in modern fireplaces create an substantial “second hand smoke” effect in suburbs and medium population density zones. One study estimated that 70 percent of smoke released from household fires re-enters other nearby chimneys, with deleterious health impacts. While there is uncertainty about the true health impacts, the possibility of such disastrous side effects should make us critically investigate the status quo.
Our irrational love of wood fires illustrates the flaw of emotionally driven, non-rational decision-making that characterizes most human choices. All of our decisions are determined in large part by emotion, familiarity, and aesthetics. This is often a great way to simplify decision making to save intellectual bandwidth for other activities; however, it also means that when one argues that fireplaces should be illegal except in timber-rich, population sparse zones, people immediately and instinctually defend fireplaces. In fact, you — the reader — likely feel nostalgic about an experience you had near a fireplace and are therefore resistant to embrace my point.
Yes, there are valid arguments against banning fireplaces, like asking, “If there are greater evils out there, why fire places?” Fair, perhaps it should not be the top priority in D.C., but I do not believe that is the primary reason people instinctually defend fireplaces. There is a legitimate health benefit to the policy which, weighed against the mild infringement of liberty, seems comparable to the polarizing soda ban in New York City. In both cases, the small infringement of liberty is a means to correct a market imperfection — the negative externality of fireplaces or of sugar-fueled obesity and diabetes — that could lead to saving vast amounts of lives and health expenditures. The EPA agrees, and has quietly improved fireplace standards across the U.S. this year.
So why are we resistant to banning fireplaces all together? Because we have pre-established positions on fireplaces rooted in nostalgia. The real reason fireplaces still exist in semi-urban zones is that being against fireplaces is like being against hot chocolate and Christmas. Fireplaces symbolize family, togetherness, and relief from the cold. Thus, the archaic technology persists long past its usefulness.
We irrationally associate a secondary element of our memories - in this case, fireplaces - with the relief and togetherness that really made us happy. What makes fireplace memories special is how we got wet and cold and whom you were with when you warmed up, not the fireplaces themselves. Banning fireplaces would just allow for more moments about which to be nostalgic, by lengthening people’s lives. Even if the benefits are imperceivable on the individual scale, society as a whole will benefit.
My argument is not really about fireplaces, but around our willingness to embrace new ideas that challenge conventions and address problems. It is entirely possible that future evidence declares fireplaces safe, and that the new EPA policies are erroneous. But that is not the point: if we are to achieve a world that is connected, cohesive, and provides the fundamentals of human happiness - shelter, food, health, education and hope – it may require embracing non-conventional solutions. It is our responsibility to be open to arguments rooted in evidence, rather than emotion.
(10/30/13 9:01pm)
Past a locked glass door and a chair that belonged to Robert Frost is Special Collections within the Davis Family Library, the space in the Library’s basement that primarily comprises the books you will not find shelved in the stacks.
“It’s both a collection of materials that are either very rare, unique, expensive or fragile, so there are a few different varieties,” Director of Collections, Archives, and Digital Scholarship Rebekah Irwin said. “Generally, the oldest books in the collection are here, and some special collections are set aside.” Within Special Collections are the collections of books such as the Abernathy Collection – a trove of manuscripts and rare books from great American authors of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Priceless books such as Henry David Thoreau’s personal copy of “Walden” are kept in Special Collections.
“So that’s a very valuable and, of course, irreplaceable item which is kept in a safe,” said Assistant Curator of Special Collections and Archives Danielle Rougeau. Even if they are not books, items of significance to the literary world are also housed in the collections.
“Thoreau’s father and Thoreau for part of his young adulthood were pencil-makers. So we have Thoreau pencils and a box that the pencils came in,” Irwin said. “I don’t know how many students know that the chair that sits in the front is Robert Frost’s chair and his moth-eaten sweater that sits on top of it, and his radio from the Frost cabin in Ripton.”
Other collections are more unconventional, such as the Helen Flanders archive, made up of recordings collected by the eponymous researcher and folklorist who traveled across Vermont during the mid-1900s to record folk songs.
“We have 250 or so of her Edison wax cylinders that she used to record as well as thousands of records and early reel-to-reel tapes that she made,” Irwin said. “It is a collection wthat is very popular among folklorists, musicians and researchers who are interested in how folk music traveled from Europe to America.”
Rare Books and Manuscripts holds the books that, for the sake of preservation, have to be kept in certain conditions and not tossed in a backpack and walked around campus. These books are instead used in the Special Collections reading room.
“The Manuscripts part of [Rare Books and Manuscripts] is unique manuscripts, usually from authors,” Watson said. These manuscripts include drafts of books before they are published, as well as letters and research papers.
Oftentimes, these manuscripts reveal information about an author.
“We have those collections, so if someone is interested in the process an artist or writer goes through, we have those raw materials,” Irwin said. “And that is something you can study to learn about the person or the process of writing.” Rare books also includes a growing collection of Civil War letters.
A recent gift came from the spouse of an alumnus who was a niece of Ernest Hemingway and gave many of personal diaries and letters from the family.
“So if you’re really into Hemingway, you’d be thrilled the collection here,” Watson said. “It’s the kind of thing that we would have researchers coming nationally or internationally to do research on.”
The College Archives, a collection of any items and publications produced by people associated with the College, is an important part of Special Collections’ mission.
“By the nature of being as old a school as we are, we have an amazing range of materials in the collection dating back to 1800 and before,” Irwin said. “It reflects what is happening in society by the activities happening here and we have the benefit of over 200 years of collecting.”
While the priceless items in the collection are of use to researchers, the Special Collections staff primarily serves students as well as administrators.
“When the College does new things, they also like to look backwards,” Irwin said. Especially when considering changes to departments, such as the split of History of Art and Architecture and the Fine Arts department in 1997, according to Irwin, administrators like to examine the precedent that can be viewed in the Archives.
“We’re supplying them usually with research information that they need to produce flyers and brochures but they’re also asking us for images often,” Rougeau said.
According to her colleagues, Rougeau’s ability to recognize and name the faces in the photographs of the Archives is unrivaled.
“She’ll look at a photo of a dinner in 1905 or 1911 of the alumni group in New York City, and she names 10 people in the photograph,” Watson said. Rougeau speculates that working with the materials since 1994 is why her memory of the people in Middlebury’s past is so keen.
“I feel like I have a responsibility to try to document this so that the names are there and it’s available,” Rougeau said.
At the end of the day, however, Special Collections can only delay the inevitable.
“All things made of paper are made of organic materials, and all organic materials slowly degrade whether it’s our bodies or a tree or a piece of paper and the point of preservation is to slow that down as much as you possibly can if you want to keep it in the future,” Watson said. This reality has led to a digitization effort, with photographs, manuscripts, and materials from the Archives are being scanned in order to preserve them. Nevertheless, the ability to digitize has its downsides.
“We have photos and scrapbooks and letters and diaries of students of Middlebury College through the 1900s and into the 20th century but the last time one of you or your classmates wrote a letter to a friend, kept a journal on paper or took a photo and made a print of it, it’s been a long time,” Irwin said.
The Internet and digital media are hampering the Archives’ ability to tell the story of events that happened on campus.
“A student can come to our archives and can study how women at Middlebury organized themselves around women’s suffrage or abolition or any big political movement because we have documents that tell that story,” Irwin said. “But if a student 10 years from now wants to understand what was happening around climate change on campus or divestment, so much of that was happening not on paper but on social media and digital cameras and cell phones and on blogs. We need to make sure that we can tell that story and that a student doing a history thesis a decade from now is able to see those materials.”
(10/17/13 4:05am)
1. Eating Beef is horrific for the environment.
Eating beef results in an enormous amount of carbon emissions, to the tune of around 2.7 kilograms of carbon dioxide per 100 gram serving (or around 214 calories of 90 percent lean beef). In fact, a drive from Middlebury to New York City actually releases less CO2 than getting a burger along the way.
2. Lamb is actually worse, in-terms of CO2 emissions, than beef.
Producing lamb is estimated to release 34.2 percent more CO2 than beef for the same serving size. One of the main reasons is that the portion of edible flesh on lambs (42 percent by weight) is far lower than in cows (55 percent by weight), although the relative economic value of the meat from a single lamb is higher than beef, meaning there is an incentive for farmers to keep raising lamb. For any amount of protein harvested from lamb, the carbon emissions released will be more than eight times larger than the same amount of chicken would produce.
3. Pork is, relatively, more environmentally friendly than you might think.
In part because so much of each pig is edible (65 percent), CO2 emissions of pork production per weight of meat output are roughly four times less the same amount of beef, and only about two times more than chicken.
4. Locally raised meat, especially beef, does not drastically change environmental impact compared to non-local meat.
According to the Environmental Working Groups, 90 percent of carbon emissions related to beef comefrom the production and disposal — or waste — of beef, which does not include its transportation, storage, or preservation. Locally raised beef may be good for Vermonters, but it is only slightly better for the climate.
5. Cheese is drastically worse for the environment than you thought, but yogurt and milk are fine.
For every kilogram of cheese produced about 9.82 kilograms of CO2 are released, which is only 36 percent less than beef’s emissions by weight. That is more than twice as bad for the environment as bacon (although that is if you are eating 100 grams of cheese, which is unlikely). Yogurt and milk, in contrast, have emissions comparable to broccoli, tomatoes and other crops. The primary reason behind this discrepancy is that it takes 10 pounds of milk to make 1 pound of cheese.
6. Only looking at the weight of wasted food in the dining halls tells us very little.
The difference in the climate implications of an entirely wasted salad is less than the last bite of a hamburger. It is, however, useful to know the total weight if we can estimate the proportion of each type of ingredient that it is made up of (how much of the waste is London broil versus “bean greens”). A better way of doing this is simply measuring how much of what kind of ingredients are used by our dining halls. That said, it is an extremely noble cause: 15 percent of total beef emissions are a result of “avoidable waste”, compared to only around 1 percent for domestic transport and refrigeration.
7. Our binary conception of “vegetarianism” is irrational.
Vegetarianism and Veganism are generally conceived as absolute categories: you are or you are not. This is misguided and not just because vegetarian burritos at Chipotle come with free guacamole. It is very hard to give up meat, but replacing half the meat on your plate with a plant-based protein every day is far more impactful than adopting “meatless Mondays.” If you cannot be a vegetarian because you cannot give up bacon, then just give up everything else. Or just give up beef and lamb and order instead, when possible, vegetarian, chicken or seafood options.
8. There are decreasing returns for replacing proteins.
Although there is about a 20-kilogram difference in CO2 between beef emissions and chicken emissions per kilogram of meat produced, the difference between chicken emissions and tofu (which is similar to other plant based-foods) is only about 4.9 kilograms of CO2 emissions. This means that, although there are strong moral arguments for why eating tofu is preferable to killing chickens, environmentally speaking, you are getting around 80 percent of the benefit by switching from beef to chicken as compared to beef to tofu.
Feel free to reach out with questions regarding methodology, sources, or logic. Almost all of the CO2 emissions estimates for this piece come from the Environmental Working Group’s “Meat Eaters Guide (2011),” which is publicly available for free.
(10/17/13 4:03am)
Dear President Liebowitz, the College administration, and the Board of Trustees,
Thank you for your transparency in your statement regarding divestment and the Board’s internal processes and preliminary proposals. We appreciate the time you have dedicated and your willingness to collaborate with us as we work to divest our endowment of fossil fuels. While an increased commitment to socially responsible investment principles is a step in the right direction, it is not the end of this debate.
Liebowitz claimed that a number of critical questions regarding the College’s decision on divestment remain unanswered and asked whether divestment would have a practical impact. Past divestment campaigns targeting the apartheid regime in South Africa and the tobacco industry helped to stigmatize powerful forces wielding undue influence against the public good. In the 21st century, divestment provides an opportunity to remove the social and political license that allows the fossil energy industry to profit by passing on the costs of its pollution to future generations.
Liebowitz also asks if divestment is the most effective way to address reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This should not impact our decision. The fight against global climate change will require massive shifts in the economy, personal habits and public policy. Divestment is one tactic among many that will hasten this shift.
What impact would divestment have on our returns? Growing evidence suggests that the impact, if any, will be positive. Impax Asset management determined that a portfolio that excluded fossil energy stocks would have outperformed the MSCI world index by an annual rate of 50 basis points over the last five to seven years. Even compared with an “active” investment strategy, a portfolio that excluded fossil fuel stocks in favor of renewable energy and energy efficiency equity would perform 41 basis points greater each year. The five largest oil companies delivered returns of 1.8 percent over the past year compared with the S&P 500’s 16 percent. Although Investure outperformed this index, it seems improbable that a significant part of that performance comes from the small portion of the endowment invested in the 200 largest fossil energy companies. The Financial Times reported last month that for the industry, “costs were up and returns were down – even with oil prices at more than $100 a barrel.” Goldman Sachs released a statement warning that the “window for profitable investment in coal mining is closing” while according to Deutsche Bank, “for big oil companies, the writing is on the wall. Shrink and liquidate over the coming five years, before it is too late.” If fossil energy stocks underperform the market at the peak of their profitability, how can we expect them to perform as the world transitions to renewable energy sources?
We recognize the complications posed by the co-mingling of our funds through Investure. But divestment is possible without severing this relationship. Active divestment campaigns exist at four of the six educational institutions managed by Investure, and five of its other clients have missions that contain explicit environmental or social justice commitments. If Investure is unwilling to serve its clients by allowing them to divest, we must ask ourselves whether we can consider an endowment over which we have so little say to be responsibly managed.
In response to Liebowitz’s final question regarding the potential for future calls for divestment from other industries, we challenge the administration to find an industry that operates in such direct contradiction to the mission and work of the College. Environmental stewardship is one of the college’s most explicitly stated and practiced tenants. The College’s mission statement includes a clear commitment to integrate “environmental stewardship into both our curriculum and our practices on campus.” The management of our endowment is integral to everything we do on campus, and its impact reaches far beyond the Green Mountains.
Middlebury has long been at the forefront of institutional sustainability, even before programs like recycling and composting were fashionable. The College has made bold commitments like carbon neutrality because it knows these kinds of steps are the only way to truly mitigate the worst effects of climate change. This innovation has attracted many students to Middlebury. We are proud to be members of a community that has been a leader in environmentalism, from the first environmental studies program in 1965 to the founding of 350.org in 2007. We cannot turn our backs on this legacy.
We ask the President, administration and Board of Trustees to continue exploring pathways to divest. We hope to keep working with the administration towards a community whose finances no longer contradict our mission of “integrating environmental stewardship into our curriculum and our practices on campus.” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that “in this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late.” As people continue to suffer from environmental injustice and the climate crisis grows more dire, we cannot afford to ignore reality. We cannot afford to be late. We must be early. We must push ourselves and our peers to take further action, even when the path presented is not the most convenient.
In short, we must lead. Middlebury has embraced this challenge in the past, and we must continue to work for a sustainable planet.
Submitted by DIVEST MIDDLEBURY
(10/17/13 3:48am)
We owe much of what we enjoy here to the decisions and guidance of the Board of Trustees. But considering how much this group impacts us every day, how well do we really understand the board?
While some student groups engage directly with the trustees through positions like the Student Liaison to the Middlebury College Board of Trustees Investment Committee, to most students, the Trustees are nameless figures seen floating in and out of Old Chapel from afar three times a year, making crucial decisions on how the College runs and how our budget is spent. Few students truly understand the people who comprise the board and the process through which they operate, and often our existing conceptions are not accurate.
This disconnect exists on both sides of the aisle. Students often do not understand the board’s long-term responsibilities, and Trustees struggle to take the pulse of the student body. Nevertheless, the Trustees’ goals fundamentally align with the goal of many students on campus. We all desire to make Middlebury the best school possible.
The creation of an avenue to foster dialogue between Trustees and students would therefore benefit both parties. Students could view their own work on campus in the context of a larger picture, and Trustees could ground their long-term decisions in the current student experience. By aligning goals and cutting down on miscommunication, we can maximize our efforts to create positive change on campus.
Though some streams of communication between the students and the Trustees already exist through President of the College Ron Liebowitz and Special Assistant to the Board of Directors Stephanie Neil, the nuances of opinions and issues that concern students on campus cannot adequately be conveyed through a second-hand summary. Personalized discussions between students and Trustees would help both sides see eye-to-eye. While many Trustees are either alumni or parents of past or current students, the student body is dynamic and salient issues change with time. The board’s understanding of student issues should adapt with these changes, while still keeping track of the broader goals of the College and their fiduciary responsibilities. As Carolyn Ramos, a Trustee who sits on the Student Affairs Committee, said in an interview with The Campus last week, “Our core group — our client, if you will — is the students.” While her committee is especially responsible for keeping tabs on the student body, we encourage other committees to check the temperature at the ground level as well.
Because such discourse is outside of the established roles of Trustees and their physical time on campus is short, students must take the initiative to forge relationships with board members, be it for their expertise in a certain field or for their focus in a certain field of College functions. We, therefore, propose a streamlined liaison program in which student organizations or a group of students could reach out to a specific Trustee based on his or her personal background and role within the board. Trustees could then select one or two groups which whom they would meet if they so choose. The student groups that meet with Trustees during any given board meeting would vary depending on which groups feel moved to solicit the Trustees depending on the climate on campus. This process should be formalized so that Trustees are not overwhelmed by student emails, but should also not be intimidating for students who may be more hesitant to voice their opinions.
Take The Campus for example. Several Trustees have backgrounds in media, both purely in journalism and on the legal side. These Trustees would have a better understanding of the issues that concern us as an organization. Through this process, we would be able to research these Trustees and put together a proposal through Stephanie Neil in the hopes of sitting down and learning from each other.
To be sure, the liaison program is not for every Trustee, nor should it be a requirement. But for interested Trustees, the program would give them the chance to develop a meaningful relationship with groups of students that share their interests.
While we appreciate that the Trustees already time and money to the College, we also hope the love for Middlebury that compelled them to join the board in the first place will compel them to engage with the student body and get a taste of what the student experience is like today. Addressing the disconnect between students and Trustees would provide a productive outlet for concerns on both ends where opinions can be constructively communicated rather than indirectly conveyed through protest.
So, Trustees, as you meet and discuss big decisions on this campus, consider sitting down to lunch with us. We’d love to get to know you.
(10/17/13 1:18am)
Patrick McConathy is an entrepreneur of diverse interests and accomplishments. From Colorado, he joined the Middlebury College Board of Trustees in 2005. McConathy brings to the table a Western-U.S. perspective, enthusiasm for the institution, decades of experience and networks in the energy industry and a commitment to sustainability.
“I’m a kind of redneck affirmative action … I love this school … It doesn’t matter whether they’re twenty-five or seventy-five, alumni have done so many things with their lives, with the education they’ve gotten at Middlebury,” McConathy said.
McConathy bridges the distance between Denver and Middlebury and keeps up with developments regarding the College by reading The Middlebury Campus. He takes advantage of board meetings and graduation ceremonies to improve his touch with the Middlebury community.
“I come early to get out and about … and enjoy being around students – all students within reach … The student has to feel comfortable to talk to you around,” McConathy said.
By connecting with students, McConathy has come to believe that social life is their most pressing concern on campus.
“When I was on campus the first thing they bring up is social life. It’s been a significant issue since 2000,” McConathy said.
He recognizes the complexity created by different students’ conflicting views about the prevalence and restriction of alcohol consumption at Middlebury.
“[Some] think [there is] too much drinking,” McConathy said. “Some think there’s not enough access to alcohol … the issues revolve around social seams. I’ve heard so much conversation about it and I don’t have a solution. Ron and his staff has [have] worked a lot [on it but] it’s an issue that won’t go away.
McConathy notes that the greatest problem confronting the College administration is providing quality education at a reasonable cost. He suggests that Middlebury should follow the example of other institutions that make higher education more accessible by making tuition more affordable.
When asked to identify the most exciting strides the College is making into the future, McConathy expresses his hope that the College will increase social and economic diversity on campus.
“The college is doing a good job of that, but we can always do more. Ron’s been very committed to that,” McConathy said.
An environmentalist at heart, however, McConathy singled out Middlebury’s progress toward sustainability.
“I know it’s not as good as others want it to be,” he said, “but we are cutting edge on the front.”
After graduating from Louisiana State University in 1975 with a degree in political science, instead of going to law school, McConathy entered the oil industry through the recommendation of a relative. He explains that he was motivated by an appreciation for the business and the opportunity to make a profit.
“It’s a fascinating business,” McConathy said. “If you guess right about where energy is, you can make some money. But you can also lose. It’s a rollercoaster ride.”
McConathy made both a profit and a reputation for himself in the thirty-one years he worked in oil. He started off drilling wells in Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Wyoming. In 1989, McConathy established Phoenix Oil and Gas and purchased productive oil and gas holdings in these regions. By 2005, the company and its partners had acquired and operated on a significant portion on and offshore properties in California.
In 2006, however, McConathy relinquished his investments in the oil sector and shifted his attention to natural gas, sustainable energy, and environmentally-friendly ranching. Last year, he founded Yarmony Energy, which operates natural gas, alternative energy, and mineral properties in Colorado, Louisiana and Texas. Specific projects he has supported include a year-long solar venture, a wind-powered cattle ranch, and geothermal energy for a big multinational corporation.
“My perspective on the earth has changed since the late 80s,” McConathy said.
The transformation in his entrepreneurial focus embodies personal environmental sympathies that began to develop over two decades ago, when he served on a Louisiana commission that made him aware of the environmental consequences of the energy business in the state.
McConathy cites multiple reasons for his switch to cleaner investments.
“My older son, who came out of Middlebury as a fire-breathing dragon, wanted me to divest, and I wanted to move toward natural gas,” McConathy said. “I had a lot of access to climate research; that had some impact as well. I also thought it was a good thing to do economically. I’d been thinking about it for a while and thought it was the right thing to do.”
According to McConathy, divestment at Middlebury is a far trickier objective that can only be attained over a period of time.
“The human race is destroying the planet,” McConathy said. “It’s not all about money. But it’s very complicated by the fact that the board has a lot of responsibilities in other areas. It won’t take place overnight, but the board is aware of it and it’s a possibility.”
Despite the inertia regarding divestment, McConathy points out we are head and shoulders above other people in the way we address climate change and energy.
“We should be proud of that,” he said.
McConathy has suffered some losses in his new area of investment. He notes that alternative energy will not become viable on a large scale until it produces economic returns higher than conventional sources.
“Alternative energy needs to be able to compete economically for it to get good traction,” McConathy said.
McConathy has not put as much money behind green energy as he did behind oil, but hopes to do so in the future.
“I don’t have the funds I used to five years ago,” he said. “I would if I had the money. I’m no fan of the major oil companies. I can see it happening in the next fifteen years.”
The Yarmony enterprise also includes Yarmony Creek Sport Horses, which runs local cattle ranching, horse breeding, and hay operations in Colorado. McConathy mitigates the environmental impact of his ranches by following the advice of credible ranching consultants and implementing sustainable practices such as cell grazing.
“Every rancher should be an environmentalist,” McConathy said. “It’s in his best interest to take care of the land because that’s all he’s got … it’s in the best interest of livestock, land, and everyone around you.”
McConathy even addressed the human dimensions of environmental problems as the producer of Climate Refugees, which was the only film screened at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, and was shown on campus in 2010.
“You can’t see what’s happening to people and not be concerned,” he said.
(10/17/13 12:49am)
As the College works to bring the Biomass Plant back up and running after it ran for 16 straight weeks — the longest, consecutive period to date — increased questions have been raised over the viability of carbon neutrality as the College races towards its 2016 goal.
In 2007, the College Board of Trustees approved a plan to become a carbon neutral institution by 2016. The College has since cut about 40 percent of its carbon emissions in six categories: heating and cooling, vehicles, electricity, travel, waste transportation and carbon offsets. This significant reduction in carbon emissions, which is expected to reach 50 percent by the end of the 2013 fiscal year, is largely attributed to the biomass plant, which burns woodchips to create a renewable energy source, an alternative to oil.
The initial plan for carbon neutrality was a student-led movement. Former Professor of Chemistry at the College Lori Del Negro and Professor of Economics John Isham led a winter term class in 2003 focusing on the scientific and institutional challenges of becoming carbon neutral. The class culminated in the production of a blueprint detailing how the College could reach this goal.
In January 2006, another group of students participated in the same course to make a more specific plan. They presented the plan to the Board of Trustees in February of that year. The board then made a commitment in May 2006 to use the student plan and pledged carbon neutrality by 2016.
“It was all [students] work,” President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said. “They sold the trustees. It was not the administration. It came from students, and I think future innovations will come from students.”
The idea may have hatched by students, but it has quickly graduated to a booming administrative catch phrase primarily driven by the board and Old Chapel.
However, despite the College’s positive reduction of carbon emissions, neutrality seems to have become an increasingly complex goal, primarily because there are so many ways to define what exactly is included in carbon neutrality and whether true neutrality is even possible.
“I don’t think we can become truly carbon neutral according to the way that I would quantify it,” Professor of Geology Pete Ryan said. “There is the institutional way of quantifying carbon neutrality. And then there is the way I would quantify it. I think until we become basically a fossil free economy, true carbon neutrality is almost impossible.”
During fall 2009, Stafford Professor of Public Policy, Political Science and Environmental Studies Christopher Klyza taught an Environmental Studies class that looked at how the College was getting its biomass supply and if biomass was actually carbon neutral.
“The students were interested in this question, because it didn’t make sense that there is smoke coming out of the biomass plant,” he said. “It’s not obviously carbon neutral. So there must be more to it.”
“I think we’ve rethought biomass and how carbon neutral it is,” Isham said. “There were some critiques from faculty colleagues that proved to be true about overselling biomass as a carbon neutral process.”
According to Director of Sustainability Integration Jack Byrne, the reduction of carbon emission is defined within two boundaries: geographic and operational. The administration accounts for carbon emissions originating from the main campus, the Snow Bowl and the Bread Loaf School of English. Any place or product of which the College owns 50 percent or more counts toward its carbon footprint. For example, the College owns more than 50 percent of the recycling trucks that carry waste to and from campus, and therefore the emissions from those trucks are counted in the carbon emissions.
The accounting, nevertheless, can be tricky because many of the College’s daily activities emit carbon, which raises questions about what is included and excluded from the final tab. For example, the definition of travel is fluid as it only includes specific College-funded travel, while excluding travel funded through student activities or grants, according to the Climate Action Implementation Plan adopted in 2008. Even technology that moves us closer to neutrality is not carbon-free.
“Think about wind-turbines on campus and how they are made,” Ryan said. “They are made with tractors using dynamite to blow up rock to get metal out and the metal is finally refined into wind turbines that are driven here on trucks.”
The definition of carbon neutrality, however, is out of Old Chapel’s hands. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) officially defines what constitutes carbon neutrality and the official criteria for meeting this goal. Nevertheless, there still much variation in this definition.
Colby College recently declared carbon neutrality, but was only able to meet the IPCC’s criteria by buying a large number of carbon offsets. While some are willing to accept that carbon offsets are a reality in reaching neutrality, others argue that offsets are an imperfect solution.
“How do we feel about paying for other people to deal with our emissions? Because that’s what offsets are,” Ryan said.
Though Byrne could not say for sure, he predicted that the College would end up buying some offsets to reach its goal.
Regardless of the definition, the College has made tangible progress in carbon reduction. In the biomass plant, the College decreased its use of No. 6 Heating Oil — a cheap but dirty fuel oil — from 2.1 million gallons annually to 634,000 gallons last year alone.
Likewise, it has engaged in a bio-methane contract — a low-carbon renewable alternative to fuel — which, if successful, would contribute significantly to carbon reduction.
Bio-methane, which is produced by burning methane emitted from cow manure, would be used as an alternative to burning oil and would reduce the amount of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas.
“The biomass plant has been instrumental in carbon reduction and the use of bio-methane would bring us 10 to 15 percent of our goal and would create jobs in the local community,” Byrne said.
When a local agricultural entrepreneur said he had the capital to create bio-methane, the College was eager to participate. However, the logistical issue of transporting the bio-methane to the College remains unresolved.
“The challenge is how do we get the bio-methane here,” Klyza said. “Which is where I think we’ve been drawn into this larger pipeline. The producer would have a facility about 3 miles from campus and a spur to the pipeline, which would replace our oil. We would then use no oil for heating the campus.”
Longtime divestment student-leader Greta Neubauer ’14.5 called the use of bio-methane “a step in a positive direction,” but remained skeptical about the big picture.
“My criticisms are based around what is not included in carbon neutrality,” Neubauer said. “I think it is pretty hypocritical of Middlebury to be building the biomass plant and other green buildings off of money from the fossil fuel industry.”
“I’m not as hung up on whether we are carbon neutral,” Klyza said. “We’ve made some great progress in reducing our carbon footprint. When I am thinking of the globe, we are not going to reach carbon neutrality, but what we want to do is reduce the amount of carbon we are putting in the atmosphere.”
“We are caught up in this accounting gig because we want to say we are carbon neutral. But in the end if we get to 95 percent, it’s still phenomenal.”
(10/10/13 12:26am)
Climate change scares Fran Putnam, but it hasn’t paralyzed her. Instead, she leads the Weybridge Energy Coalition and has spearheaded the town’s latest energy related success – becoming the first town in Vermont to complete the Vermont Home Energy Challenge.
The Challenge, which was prompted by a partnership between Efficiency Vermont and the Vermont Energy and Climate Action Network (VECAN), began in January and is a competition between many towns in Vermont. The goal for participating towns is to have three percent of their homes weatherized by the end of the year.
Weatherizing a home - a process which requires steps such as changing windows and sealing cracks - increases its efficiency, thus saving money and reducing green house gas emissions. At the end of the competition, the winning town will be awarded $10,000 that will go towards funding an energy initiative.
Last Sunday, Weybridge celebrated not only the completion of the challenge but also being the first town in Vermont to do so, on their statewide Button Up Day of Action, a day in which towns encourage their residents to make their homes more efficient.
The town of Weybridge hasn’t officially won the competition, but many community members believe that they have a good shot at winning the statewide competition.
“There are only 300 houses in Weybridge and only 800 people, so we only needed ten houses,” said Putnam. “We’ve actually got eleven houses [weatherized] and we’re beyond our goal.”
Weybridge’s small size helped them achieve the three percent they needed. For a comparison, Middlebury, a larger town, needs to weatherize 91 houses to complete the same goal.
When asked what propelled Weybridge to the forefront of this challenge, Gwen Nagy-Benson, whose house was the first to be weatherized, said that the volunteers in the town and Putnam’s energy were key factors.
“Weybridge is a … close-knit community – people care about and trust each other, which makes this kind of community effort easier,” Nagy-Benson said. “And, we have Fran Putnam! She has been an expert leader of this initiative – she has inexhaustible energy for the Home Energy Challenge.”
One of the hurdles to getting a house weatherized is the cost, the pressure of which is put on individual home-owners.
When asked how big of an investment it is to weatherize one’s home, Putnam said, “It depends on how much needs to be done. The average is $6,000 to do a complete weatherization.”
Although there are financial incentives of up to $2,500 if a home reaches at least a 10 percent efficiency improvement, and even though weatherization saves the homeowner money in the long run, cost is, understandably, still an issue for many people.
“We had [a home energy] audit done about two years earlier, but we were never able to go forward with the work because the financing options were complicated or not readily available,” said Nagy-Benson. “By the time the Home Energy Challenge kicked off, we were able to secure a loan from our credit union and begin work.”
Although much of what motivates Putnam is driven by a need to mitigate carbon emissions contributing to climate change, many people are motivated to weatherize their homes because, in addition to being better for the environment, it is simply a practical measure to take.
“We never had any hesitations about weatherizing our home – we endured three winters in a drafty house that guzzled heating oil, and three summers baking in the heat,” said Nagy-Benson. “We knew that insulation and air sealing would help maintain a more even and comfortable temperature.”
Eric Lamy, owner of the tenth house in Webridge to be weatherized, had similar motivations as Nagy-Benson.
“We only moved to Weybridge last winter and the heating bills were pretty substantial,” said Lamy. “We decided to go forward with the renovations so that we could rely more heavily on the fireplace [to heat the house].”
Lamy also has long term financial incentives in mind and thinks that a more efficient home will help the resale value if he and his wife ever decide to sell their home.
When Putnam works to convince people to weatherize their homes, she highlights these financial incentives.
“It is the only home improvement that pays for itself, guaranteed,” said Putnam. “Every year you see more savings.”
Putnam believes that weatherizing one’s home also opens the door for people to consistently make more environmentally friendly changes in their lives in general.
“When people do this work [to their house], they become more sensitive to how they do things,” she said. She thinks that after renovating their houses many people might consider biking rather than driving, or installing low-flow showerheads to conserve water.
Overall, the town of Weybridge seems to have embraced the efforts of the Weybridge Energy Committee, as was evident on Button Up Day. Putnam said that over 100 residents attended Button Up Day and that they served 65 pieces of pie, countless doughnuts, cider and coffee in addition to handing out 35 vouchers for free energy savings kits.
This supports Lamy’s claim that the community is accepting of the program.
“I haven’t heard too much pushback towards the initiatives and that speaks well for the community,” he said. “We’re starting to make a name for ourselves.”
(10/09/13 9:14pm)
“Are Our Political Beliefs Encoded in Our DNA?”
Surrounded by news of the government shutdown, Iranian negotiations and Obamacare, this was the headline that caught my eye as I scanned the New York Times headlines. I think it was the jarring association of the two phrases, “political beliefs” and “DNA” – which I typically think of as unassociated, at least in the mainstream media — that grabbed my attention.
Written by Thomas B. Edsall, the article documents developments in a new methodology in political science called genopolitical analysis which examines correlations between genetics, physiology and political belief – and critiques of the new analytical method.
Political scientists are researching the extent to which genetics determines an individual’s political beliefs. An abstract from a Science paper from September 2008 entitled “Political Attitudes Vary with Physiological Traits” explains that, “although political views have been thought to arise largely from individuals’ experiences, recent research suggests that they may have a biological basis.”
That biological basis to which the paper refers is a battery of physiological traits that are associated with certain political leanings. The authors found that “the degree to which individuals are physiologically responsive to threat appears to indicate the degree to which they advocate policies that protect the existing social structure from both external (outgroup) and internal (norm-violator) threats.”
However, critics argue that no such correlation exists, or that if it does, it is embedded in such a complex web of factors that extracting any meaningful connections is nigh impossible.
But another paper from the American Political Science Association (APSA), defends the budding field of genopolitical analysis by arguing that, “it is not biological determinism to posit the existence of complex collections of genes that increase the probability that certain people will display heightened or deadened response patterns to given environmental cues. And it is not antibehavioralism to suggest that true explanations of the source of political attitudes and behaviors will be found when we combine our currently detailed understanding of environmental forces with a recognition that genetic variables subtly but importantly condition human responses to environmental stimuli.”
I’m inclined to agree with Alford et al., the authors of the APSA paper. Organs and tissues make up the human body (brain included), and all our interaction with the outside world – experience – is mediated through the physical body by the five senses. New research has found that physiology is tied to political ideology. Intuitively, it seems highly unlikely that a connection between genetic composition and political beliefs does not exist. But if a connection exists, and if current research is elucidating those connections, another issue arises. What do we do with that knowledge?
Edsall suggests using the knowledge to solve the political challenges of the day. He argues that “with so much riding on political outcomes — from default on the national debt to an attack on Syria to attitudes toward climate change — understanding key factors contributing to the thinking of elected officials and voters becomes crucial. Every avenue for understanding human behavior should be on the table.”
Delving into the genetic basis of political ideologies is a bit like cracking the lid of Pandora’s box. Using knowledge of genetic influences on behavior to educate citizens within a democracy about how and why they make choices would certainly be a good use of the information. But it’s not a far stretch to imagine an Orwellian society where that that knowledge is used as a tool to engineer repression and control.
Though I agree with Edsall that the knowledge can be used to elucidate our current political problems, I do not think any one person or group should try and use that knowledge to manipulate political outcomes. I think it’s a fine line that must be walked. The exploration of the human animal and all that it does will continue. Should continue. But as new knowledge is gained, we must, as a society, ask the question: How should this knowledge be applied?
(10/09/13 4:00am)
Ruby and Roman each carried a white paper bag overflowing with freshly picked apples and a tooth-splitting smile last Saturday morning as they clambered to sit atop the stone wall in Adirondack Circle.
“I got a bunch of tiny little apple ‘thingies,’” Ruby said, drawing an apple smaller than her nine-year-old palm out of her bag.
Giving Ruby a boost with one hand, her mentor Greer Howard ’16, used the other to save an apple on verge of tumbling onto the sidewalk.
“Roman got bigger ones,” Ruby said as she reached into the batch of apples collected by her brother, who was running circles around a nearby tree trunk.
“I want to make apple pie,” Roman interjected, a honey stick between his teeth, while his mentor, Emily Funsten ’16, attempted to roll up his too-long sleeves before he ran away again.
Ruby and Roman have been coming to the College since last fall through the Community Friends program. The siblings spend two hours every week with their mentors, Howard and Funsten, swimming, making gingerbread houses, doing arts and crafts or playing games.
“They don’t really care so much what they’re doing,” said their mother, Gillian. “It’s just that they have a special someone in their life.”
Such is the aim of Community Friends, a volunteer mentorship organization that has matched over 2,000 College students with six- to 12-year-old children from Addison County since its inception in 1960. Originally run by the Counseling Service of Addison County, the program is one of the oldest service organizations involved with the College. But after budget cuts in 2002, the College took over the program, which has since been run through the Community Engagement office.
Nestor Martinez came to the College last year via an AmeriCorps VISTA grant to run Community Friends. He now works as the Program and Outreach Fellow in the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs.
Last year, Martinez visited eight of 18 elementary schools in Addison County to talk to guidance counselors about introducing children and families to the program. At one such school, Bristol Elementary, the guidance counselor brought Ruby and Roman into the program and from there the organization matched the two with Howard and Funsten.
“I don’t know why we were chosen,” Gillian said of her family’s involvement in the program.
This is nothing out of the ordinary for Community Friends. Mentees are often referred to the program by a guidance counselor, clinician or social worker without parent involvement.
“A lot of times guidance counselors sign kids up if they see problems at home or [if] the kids clearly need extra attention or a positive role model,” Samantha Wasserman ’14, lead student coordinator, said. “They might be acting out in school or they’re a little shy or they have some behavioral issues.”
Martinez added that more of than not, their families lack a role model.
“Especially for boys coming in, it’s usually a lack of a male figure, or at least a positive male figure,” Martinez said.
Parents can also apply on their child’s behalf, though these applications usually focus on activities and interests, rather than behavioral or social issues.
“Sometimes you do get kids from —and I hate to use this word — perfectly adjusted families,” Martinez said, specifying the reason parents sign their children up as a child’s interest the family does not have time to nurture.
Last year, for example, he received an application from a counselor in Bristol advocating a child who spent his weeks with his father and weekends with his mother.
“The father worked so many hours and wasn’t around a lot, and [the child] was really showing an aptitude for music,” Martinez said. “He wanted to find someone who could provide an outlet for music but also had experience working with children and when challenges arose could support him.”
A Perfect Match
No matter how the child becomes involved with Community Friends, the first step coordinators take is to match them with a mentor who has been through a similar application process. Wasserman said the mentor’s application and interview process work not as a critical assessment of the applicant, but instead aims to get to know the soon-to-be mentor find them a suitable mentee match. Rarely are students denied a mentorship position; the obstacle is generally one of logistical or scheduling difficulties.
Matching mentors and mentees depends foremost on transportation availability — coordinators need to make sure that either the mentor or the family has a way to reach the other. With this base covered, the matches are then based on common interests or activities, and the age and gender that the mentor specified in the application.
“It was pretty common practice to match males to males, females to females,” Martinez said. “Sometimes college-aged females with little boys, but never college males with little girls.”
And finally, the personal connection can be fostered. Though their first meeting is in the company of a student coordinator and the mentee’s family, the Community Friends pair is free to make their own fun and establish a unique relationship.
“It’s mostly an individual one-on-one program, which is something that makes it a really special and important relationship between the mentor and the mentee,” Wasserman said.
In addition to weekly pair get-togethers, coordinators also host several program-wide events and optional gatherings for mentors and mentees to get to know others involved in the program. Autumnal crafting parties take place in the fall, and the pairs attend a scavenger hunt-picnic event in the spring, but the paramount event has remained the J Term pool party. Though events like these do not appeal to all the mentees, the pool party usually draws the biggest number of party-goers — about half the pairs show up.
Wasserman has also been working to host more mentor-only events.
“[These events will] create a network between us college students to help each other and discuss the issues we’re facing in our matches,” Wasserman said.
Participation Fluctuation
Student coordinators have managed to bulk up the mentor-training program, which in the past has been insubstantial. The program now features a local speaker who addresses issues students might see in Addison County, a staff member from Community Engagement to discuss the guidelines of the program and small group discussions.
Wasserman said her focus is to increase the support and training for the mentors. Pushing to better educate mentors has proved a two-fold effort — the program first needs to recruit said mentors.
“Participation has waxed and waned over the years, depending on funding and on staffing,” said Tiffany Sargent, director of civic engagement, who has been involved with the program since 1985.
Lack of participation often results from the inability for students to find time in to take on a mentee; the responsibility consists of a two-hour meeting once a week and a minimum commitment of one academic year.
“More often than not, [students] continue [their relationships] beyond a year, but some do cut it off after a year,” Martinez said.
Most of the relationships end because of scheduling conflicts, though some end because the connections between mentor and mentee have not worked well.
Currently, there are about 65 active Community Friends pairs and a handful more pending. Last year’s final count was between 75 and 80 pairs, but Sargent guesses it ould reach 90 this year.
Thirty-seven children from Addison County, however, are still waiting for their mentees.
Clearly, the program is in need of volunteers and, as Wasserman, Sargent, Martinez and Howard all emphasized, the lack of male mentors in particular has posed a consistent problem.
“Females are just more willing to volunteer across the board,” Martinez said. “Perhaps females in general are more willing to be with children than males.”
Discrepancies between male and female participants have followed a common pattern throughout the years. Generally, 75 percent of the mentors are female.
This trend heavily affects the kids’ ability to be matched with a mentor; midway through last year, Martinez remembered, the waitlist was all boys.
The Power of Friendship
To Ruby and Roman, however, these logistics matter little – for them, it is just fun. Roman’s favorite part about spending time with his mentor is that he “always beat[s] Emily at tic-tac-toe. In really tricky ways.” Ruby settled on, “Mostly all of it.”
Though her fourth grade self may not realize it, Ruby’s childhood has been altered because of her involvement with Community Friends.
“Last year, Ruby had an issue, something had gone on with her family,” Howard said. “After I met with her, her mom texted me saying ‘Thank you, I don’t know what she would have done if she didn’t get to see you that day.’”
Connecting with someone of a different age, background and perspective can change the way a child matures. Many parents alluded to a noticeable growth in their children in the 2012-2013 survey, saying their self-assurance and sociability had developed and flourished.
“She was pretty shy when we first started meeting,” Wasserman said of her mentee with whom she has been paired for three years. “She’s much more confident than she used to be.”
Whether this is a direct result of a relationship with a college student, or just a product of growing up is hard to say, but there is no doubt that the relationships nurtured through Community Friends had a lasting effect.
During her time abroad last spring Wasserman exchanged emails and postcards with her mentee, and on her one-day visit to campus this summer, the pair got together.
“We’re very close at this point,” Wasserman said. “She’s something that’s really important to me here at Middlebury.”
Wasserman, Funsten and Howard all noted that they have learned and grown along with their mentees, too.
“Patience is a big part of it,” Howard said. “And being understanding.”
Mentors become indispensable role models for the children they meet, and their company carries much more weight than just catching falling apples or rolling up sleeves.
Though the program is not intended to provide a tutoring service, Martinez recognized the importance of mentors imparting the importance of schoolwork, recalling several mentee applications that requested the child be exposed to good study habits.
“I like them seeing the college environment,” Gillian said. “We live in a small town – Bristol – and a lot of people don’t go to college, so it’s good for them to be on a college campus and learn what a dorm is and all that stuff.”
But the mentor-mentee connection teaches much more than educational lessons. For mentors, the philosophy behind the program emphasizes the opportunity for mentors to burst out of the Middlebury bubble.
“It gets people away from the 18-22 age group,” Funsten said. “It gets them into a different mindset and it’s an outlet from school. It’s also nice to get involved in the community and to have a family that we know and are decently close to in Bristol.”
Understanding the surrounding community remains a goal of the Community Friends program.
“I think it’s really easy to be on campus in this very academic climate and to think of Middlebury College as Middlebury, Vt. and even Addison [County] by extension,” Martinez said. “The reality is that poverty is pretty prevalent and children in poverty are pretty prevalent, and it’s more of a challenge here because it’s rural.”
Though they might not realize it, mentors are often deeply affected by the people and places they encounter. When asked in their applications why they want to get involved in the program, most students cite their desire to work with children or recall their own experiences with mentors.
But Martinez pointed out that he would hear a lot of students say, “I didn’t think of the kind of life this kid is leading here as a normal scene.” He recalled a conversation with one mentor just after she met her mentee.
“She came to me and said ‘We visited them at home because the family didn’t have a car, and the house really smelled of smoke and [the mentee] smelled of smoke and I didn’t know what to do,’” Martinez said. “I think that was a shock for her, and that’s just part of each of their lifestyles.”
Though many applicants have experience working with children, most of these come through camp or school, which don’t involve behavioral therapy or intervention, said Martinez.
For both mentors and mentees, the program opens doors, teaches lessons and provides a meaningful connection that would not otherwise be made. While raising money or packaging food can greatly benefit people in need, mentors believe having a personal connection with someone creates an entirely new dimension.
“There’s a direct impact you have on these kids’ lives,” said Howard after Ruby had hugged her goodbye and gotten in the car with Roman and Gillian.
(10/03/13 12:24am)
How do we use the skills and opportunities we have to make the world a better place? Middlebury students revisit this question time and time again, from conversations in the dining hall to the “Careers for the Common Good” blog from the EIA. Hudson Cavanaugh ’14 has explored this question over the past two weeks in his column, “Warm Glow,” but his simplification of this question into pure economic terms neglects some important elements of this discussion.
The world in which we live is inherently complex and full of inequalities. Some work to better this world saves lives directly, like the expansion of medical care, and some indirectly, like working to mitigate the impacts of climate change. In the long-run, climate change will lead to extreme weather events, crop failure, and rising sea levels that will cost many lives and threaten many more, but in the short term, medical care has a greater impact.
Thus, while donations with the goal of immediate lives saved are undoubtedly important, working towards a more equitable and sustainable world requires both short and long-term investments. The benefits of these investments are difficult to measure, for they operate on a longer time frame and are therefore discounted; however, they are no less important.
Moreover, individual passions are indispensable in creating a long-term model for change. We often talk about exploring our passions, acknowledging that this love allows us to work harder than otherwise possible and sustain energy over long periods of time.
As Michelle Obama often said on the 2012 campaign trail, “real change is slow.” Perhaps the hardest lesson I’ve learned from engaging in climate activism is that real change is also exhausting. Passion spurns the determination that allows me to keep working. know I wouldn’t be able to put as much into investment banking as I can into political and environmental organizing because I wouldn’t feel the same gratification.
Cavanaugh addresses the idea of marginal utility of job decisions and accounts for morality; however, there are many nuances in this argument. While his example, Jennifer, who pushes JP Morgan toward social responsibility, may be working to push an unjust institution into socially responsible practices, her impact could still be overrun by what I would consider a net negative impact from investment banks. The Koch brothers donate money to environmental organizations like the Nature Conservancy and to cancer research; however, they make their money in the oil, gas and chemical industries and use much of it to lobby for lax environmental regulations, leading to cancer-causing contamination. They definitely do not break even on damage from their industry, despite their philanthropic habits. For an individual like Jennifer, her influence only can extend so far. Creating the large scale, systematic change required to dismantle the oppressive system reinforced by her employer requires a much greater movement with both internal and external pressure.
We see this dichotomy on our own campus with divestment. Our College educates many students who go off and do good in the world, often in environmentally friendly fields. But these efforts are hindered by the fact that our endowment invests in fossil fuels, allowing these companies to further maximize their profits by exploiting our planet’s resources with little regard for the social cost of carbon. We are not morally exonerated from investing in fossil fuels because we have a strong program in environmental studies. Indeed, that program should serve as a strong reminder for why we must divest our endowment and put our money where our mouths are.
Even if everyone were to give money in the most short-term cost effective way, paying careful attention to the ethics of their employer as well as the ethics of the organizations to which they are donating, we still need people on the ground working tirelessly to distribute malaria nets or vaccinate children. Change requires time as well as money, and in many cases, time can be more difficult to give.
Just as we cannot value the life of an American over the life of anyone else, we cannot simply treat people as numbers and base decision solely on cost-effectiveness. What is the point of saving a life if you cannot provide other basic human rights and needs like access to a livable environment free from containments? We must work together to create a safer and healthier global community, and this is a multi-faceted project. We do not want to eradicate guinea worm only to find that we have raised the global temperature beyond a salvageable threshold. Working to increase gender equality and education opportunities may not specifically save a life, but it will increase economic opportunities and quality of life for many future generations and could save children who are not yet born.
So do what you love and incorporate social responsibility into all aspects of your life. In the long run, following your passions will sustain you far longer than working in an industry for the sake of opportunity cost and will allow you to maximize your total good. We need all pieces of the puzzle — both short and long-term goals, effective and fulfilling giving practices, and time and monetary donations. Creating lasting global change takes time and effort on all fronts, and there is no single solution. We can only do the most we can in a responsible and thoughtful way to comprehensively address the injustices that surround us both abroad and at home.
(09/25/13 11:33pm)
Walk through the farmer’s market in Marbleworks on Saturday morning or drive down Weybridge Street past the edge of campus, and it is easy to see that Middlebury College is nestled in a community where food and the land are integral parts of daily life. From dorm room windows, students see pastoral landscapes of farms and mountains in every direction. One could buy into the notion that Vermonters never go hungry because everyone must subsist on kale and carrots grown from their own gardens. However, this romantic concept is not the reality of food security in Vermont.
As the state with the highest number of farmer’s markets per capita, Vermont has a well-developed local food system compared to other parts of the United States. However, “Local Food for Healthy Communities,” a new report from the Vermont Community Foundation, found that 13 percent of Vermont families struggle to put food on the table, one in five children will suffer from hunger in their lifetime and two thirds of adults are obese.
The Vermont Community Foundation sees these statistics as an opportunity for growth and their Food and Farm Initiative is working to end food insecurity and increase overall public health throughout the state.
“The Vermont Community Foundation’s Food and Farm Initiative works at the nexus of hunger, health, and the state’s agricultural tradition to connect all Vermont families with healthy, local food-regardless of where they live, what they earn, or how much time they spend cooking,” said Emily Jacke, the Vermont Community Foundation’s Philanthropy Associate.
The common misconception is that the burgeoning local food movement is reaching all Vermonters.
“More and more local food is becoming a part of [our] cultural fabric, but there are a lot of people getting left behind,” Jen Peterson, Vice President for Program and Grants at VCF, said. “We see our Food and Farm Initiative as a place to champion the efforts to address food security while we are having this thriving local food movement in Vermont.”
Over 40 percent of children in Vermont qualify for free and reduced cost meals. The VCF’s Food and Farm Initiative will begin in Vermont public schools by giving intensive support to Farm-to-School efforts.
“We want to create a system where every kid who wants a healthy meal can get one,” Peterson said.
By focusing on educating children about local food, VCF believes that the movement will have a systemic impact. Not only will feeding young children healthier food help them create lifelong healthy eating habits, but kids will take what they learn about local food home to their families.
Richard Berkfeld of Food Connects, an organization that brings healthy, local food to classrooms and communities, states that farm to school models are key to creating food system change.
“Building a good Local food system touches on a lot of issues really big now,” he said. “The environment and climate change, eating fresh, local food has a big impact on our health and the local economy… these are all tied together by Farm-to-School.”
The Vermont Community Foundation has found that most Vermonters want to make healthier choices for their families. Berkfeld knows that this will help the movement progress more efficiently.
“We are lucky so many people care about local food,” he said.
However, there are common barriers that get in the way of families choosing to buy local food. Low-income families view the cost of healthy food as a big issue and for many in rural areas there is not a grocery store close by. The Food and Farm Initiative will focus on creating policy that promotes accessibility and builds farmer’s markets that are more professional and reachable. Additionally, the Foundation believes that expanding Farm-to-School programs will help them reach the majority of Vermonters currently without access to healthy food.
Another key part of the initial plans for Food and Farm is a meat processing facility in Middlebury, which will help to distribute local meat to schools. Many members of the Middlebury College community are excited to see the town get involved in this progressive initiative.
Robin Weisselberg ’16.5, a Campus Sustainability Coordinator and an active member of EatReal, a club at the College, said, “Eating local foods is a great way to begin developing an awareness of where your food comes from, how it is produced, how it is processed, and who did all of that work so that you could nourish yourself today.”
Maeve Grady ’16.5, an active member of the Divest Midd movement and the Socially Responsible Investment club on campus is also in support of the movement.
“One great thing about the local food movement is that it combines environmental activism, awareness of nutritional health and food security,” he said. “I am excited to see this effort begin in our community.”
The Vermont Community Foundation’s goal is to create a “fair and just local food system,” Peterson said.
As connected as most Vermonters are to one another and to the land around them, it is no surprise that the solution to a community issue as deep rooted as food insecurity lies at the intersection of philanthropy, healthy eating and taking care of the planet.
(09/18/13 10:59pm)
On Aug. 28, students and faculty received an email from President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz with the subject line “Statement on Divestment.” The message read, “Ultimately, the call to divest raises a number of important questions that must be answered … At this time, too many of these questions either raise serious concerns or remain unanswered for [the Middlebury College Board of Trustees] to support divestment. Given its fiduciary responsibilities, the board cannot look past the lack of proven alternative investment models, the difficulty and material cost of withdrawing from a complex portfolio of investments, and the uncertainties and risks that divestment would create.”
After a year of a high-energy activism, intense debate and impassioned protest on the part of student advocates, it seemed that the door was closing on divestment.
But when asked about the future of divestment, Adrian Leong — a soft-spoken sophomore called “a rising star” by divestment advocates on campus — simply shook his head.
“Divestment is not off the table,” said Leong. “This email is certainly not a defeat. In fact, I appreciated how clearly [Liebowitz] laid out his questions, and I found his willingness to commit to stronger responsible investment principles quite encouraging.”
“As long as that willingness is there, divestment is still alive.”
A Tumultuous Year
Just under a year ago, on a Friday afternoon in October as students departed campus for fall break, an email with the subject line “Middlebury College Divests from War on Eve of Dalai Lama Visit” scrolled our inboxes across campus.
The email, announcing the College’s divestment of its endowment from war, was met with excitement from some students and confusion among others. But two days later, when Tim Spears, vice president for academic affairs, issued an email to all staff, students and faculty clarifying that the press release was a “hoax,” the campus started to buzz with speculation about what this might mean. And when five students published an open letter to the community “coming clean” for sending the fake press release, signed, “The Dalai Lama Welcoming Committee,” it became clear that this was more than just a prank, and the buzz surrounding the incident grew to a dull roar.
Greta Neubauer ’15 returned to campus last fall committed to continuing her work on socially responsible investment and determined to start a divestment campaign at the College. While she had some prior knowledge of the Dalai Lama Welcoming Committee’s press release before its dissemination, she was caught off guard by the momentum it created on campus.
“The fake press release was really powerful at that moment because there was such an element of surprise, and if they had done it at another time, it wouldn’t have had the huge effect that it did on the dialogue here,” said Neubauer. “It’s a tough thing, because on the one hand, it undoubtedly made a huge impact on divestment, because the administration felt compelled to respond and it changed the way in which the campaign unfolded. But it also didn’t follow the typical arch of a campaign, and I think that alienated some people early on. And then throughout the year we saw this increasing dislike of anything that looks like or sounds like activism on this campus. That’s a hard thing to work against.”
Even as the storm of controversy surrounding the press release and the ensuing public trial faded away, divestment took hold as a mainstream topic of conversation among the student body. The campus witnessed the divestment movement move from a niche concern among a select group of student activists to a full-fledged campus-wide debate — in the dining hall, the classroom, the trustee’s boardroom, and the front pages of the Campus.
The conversation was characterized by heated debates over the College’s moral responsibility, impassioned students citing the works of civil rights leaders and adopting the mantra of Bill McKibben’s oft-repeated reasoning: “If it’s wrong to wreck the climate, then it’s wrong to profit from its destruction.”
There was also a lot of work going on behind the scenes — students engrossed in late night conversations, preparing thoroughly researched reports to back up recommendations made to sober administrators and a boardroom full of trustees. And yet these conversations were punctuated by loud rallies, demonstrations of students standing outside Proctor or Old Chapel with megaphones, pots and pans, sporting the bright orange felt square that emerged as a symbol of the divestment movement.
The flashes of orange sent a message: this conversation was loud, it was in your face, and it was impossible to ignore.
Looking Towards the Future
Now, at the beginning of a new school year, the movement is pausing for a breath.
“There is a cool opportunity at the beginning of the year to stop and reflect on how we worked together last year,” said Neubauer. “Hopefully we can take some lessons from that and be able to move forward this year and be better for it.”
As some students have graduated and others have gone abroad, there has already been some room created for new voices.
“We have some new faces this year,” said Ben Chute ’13.5. “I think you’ll be hearing a lot more from some of our younger members — we have some rising sophomores and rising juniors who are some real powerhouses.”
Chute, now in his final semester in college, is the source of much of the movement’s institutional knowledge; he served as the co-president of the Socially Responsible Investing committee for two years before his appointment to Student Liaison to Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees last fall, and he speaks about his younger peers the way a coach might talk about his players.
“We have a lot of kids this year who are really smart activists. They’re very knowledgeable and they’re very pragmatic. We’ll see how this year shapes up, and it comes down to who is in the room.”
Leong, an environmental policy major, joined the movement only a few months into his first year at the College, and is on the younger side of the cohort of students.
“I hope that people will see our movement as a whole, and not just associate it with one group of people and just think, ‘Those are the kids that disturbed my sleep with their pots and pans.’ We’ve done so much more than that. I really hope that more people can share our vision.”
“What I see is being the most powerful tool for us in terms of convincing the administration is having there being a huge crowd swell behind this issue, and there being very visible signs of mass support from students,” said Kristina Johansson ’14. “That means making spaces that are really inclusive and finding ways for people to get involved, no matter what their ideology or methods for making change. Just creating audiences for great engagement.”
“My hope is that a lot of the action taken last year acted as a catalyst,” said Teddy Smyth ’15, a member of the Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investment (ACSRI). “Now we have enough momentum to be somewhat more pragmatic so that we can focus on the strategic vision of the divestment campaign. I think we’ll spend some time considering what actions need to happen versus what actions aren’t as essential; what would be distracting versus what’s necessary and practical.”
“That being said, we need to keep the conversation going in a public way,” added Smyth. “Last year, other people filled the role of making noise and of attracting public attention, and so I might need to do more of that this year, although its not necessarily my skill set.”
“I think we’re going to try to have a really public, visible presence on campus and be the source of a lot discussion,” said Jeannie Bartlett ’15 while discussing possible tactics for the coming year. “But I think one thing we’re really looking to do is connecting with Trustees and talk with them on an individual basis to discuss research, because I think that having that kind of more isolated and direct conversations is what, at this point, is lacking in the discussion.”
“The fact that we’re not divesting right not is obviously disappointing,” Bartlett continued. “The commitments [Liebowtiz] laid out in his email are wonderful and I care about them a lot, but they don’t achieve the political statement that divestment does.”
“But I am optimistic. And if they actually do those three things laid out in Liebowitz’s email, that would be the biggest win that SRI has ever had at Middlebury, by far. So its really exciting. And I’m going to work to make sure that those things do happen.”
(09/18/13 10:51pm)
Students pumped up their bicycle tires to participate in a social-media-focused campaign by Greenpeace encouraging bike-riding to raise awareness for the plight of the Arctic on Sunday, Sept. 15. The main objective of the event was to bring attention to oil companies who plan to drill for oil made newly available by the melting of Arctic sea ice. Simultaneously, the student organizers made connections to the Addison Natural Gas Project pipeline underway locally.
The group of 10 biked 1.5 miles to the Apple Fest at Shoreham Town Green. Event organizer Ellie Ng ’14 said it was also a day for students from disparate environmental groups to connect with others.
At the start of the bike ride, event organizer Adrian Leong ’16 explained how in 116 cities in 33 countries, Greenpeace Ice Rides are springing up everywhere. Middlebury’s was the only one in the Northeastern United States.
The Ice Ride event is somewhat of a departure from Greenpeace’s norm of nonviolent direct action.
“Recently Greenpeace has been trying to occupy more of the dialogue surrounding this issue,” said Leong.
According to Leong, the goal of the campaign is to raise awareness of the risks associated with arctic drilling through the use of social media. To this end, Leong and Ng were sharing photos of Middlebury’s official Ice Ride event on Facebook and Twitter.
Some students walking by Adirondack Circle commented on the cyclists’ send-off.
“I think it’s good initiative, the fact that they’re using popular media to get people to know about it and I think it’s a very smart way to go about issues like this,” said Joanne Wu ’15.
Jeannie Bartlett ’15, who cycled in the event, heard about the event from an email sent to the Middlebury climate campaign list.
“I wanted to come because it’s a beautiful bike ride and a fun thing to do on a Sunday, but also because these collective actions that take place across the country or across the world at separate locations can be really powerful because of the power of digital media now,” said Bartlett, citing 350.org as another organization that connects local events to a national movement.
Bartlett also said the day was an opportunity to remember the implications of melting polar ice caps.
“I think we need to remember that the melting of the Arctic isn’t just the melting of the Arctic, it’s also the rising and warming of the seas and many other things that will really directly affect humans,” said Bartlett. “Even though I think the Arctic as an ecosystem is important in and of itself I also think it’s really important for the impact it has on people.”
While several students on the bicycle route were veterans of campus environmental groups such as Sunday Night Group and Divest Middlebury, others were just there to ride.
“I heard about the event through an email,” Nathalia Gonzalez ’17 said. “I didn’t hear about a lot of people that said they were going but I figured, why not? It would be a really fun ride to go to an Apple Fest.”
Gonzalez said she had heard about Greenpeace before but did not know much about the organization or this particular campaign.
Ng said the problem with energy sources like oil and natural gas is that the power is concentrated in large companies and governments.
“With renewable energy like solar panels, wind farms, or biomass, it is more local and people have more power,” she said. The bike ride symbolizes this power to the people.”
The cyclists also encountered signs of another environmental policy playing out right in their backyard. Leong said they saw signs that read “Keep Cornwall Safe” and “Keep Shoreham Safe” on their route, referring to the plan by company Vermont Gas to run a natural gas pipeline through several Vermont towns.
“Along the road to Shoreham there were a few signs about the [Addison Natural Gas Project] pipeline,” said Ng. “As with the gas pipeline and energy issues around the world, in that sense, when we passed by those signs we felt connected to this global movement.”
Leong said that the argument in favor of drilling for oil in the Arctic, like the argument in favor of Vermont natural gas, does not make much sense.
“Drilling in the arctic is what we call a false climate change solution,” he said. “A lot of governments or companies say that drilling for gas or drilling for oil are transitional fuels and that’s the reason why they are drilling in the arctic, buying time for others to develop renewable energy. But we’re saying the transition period has gone already. We don’t have any capital to burn any more fossil fuels. We have to switch from fossil fuels to renewables now.’”
Leong said making a last stand for an unspoiled natural Arctic is what makes the issue so urgent.
“The arctic ice is melting and that is what is allowing the drilling and fishing fleets to go in,” said Leong. “[Ice Ride] is about people standing up and saying, ‘There are enough pristine environments being exploited in the world. The Arctic is the last one we want to preserve.’”
(09/12/13 3:58am)
As Kyle Finck reported for the Campus earlier this week, "a 2,977 flag memorial was ripped out of the ground in front of Mead Memorial Chapel shortly before 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 11 by a group of five protestors claiming that the flags were on top of a sacred Abenaki burial site." This coverage supplemented middbeat's original post, featuring the photograph above by middbeat's Rachel Kogan.
Both the community and country were quick to react through word and action.
A group of about ten students began replanting the flags in front of Mead Memorial Chapel by 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday evening; Anthea Viragh captured the photograph below from the reaction. Our upcoming issue (Issue 112, Number 2) will feature a story, gallery and podcast about these students and their effort to replace the memorial.
Late Wednesday evening, middbeat stated that Anna Shireman-Grabowski ’15.5 had "come forward to confirm her involvement in disposing of the American flags." The alternative news source posted the following statement by Shireman-Grabowski:
Today I, along with a group of non-Middlebury students, helped remove around 3,000 American flags from the grass by Mead Chapel. While I was not the only one engaged in this action and the decision was not solely mine, I am the one who will see you in the dining halls and in the classroom, and I want to take accountability for the hurt you may be feeling while clarifying the motivations for this action.
My intention was not to cause pain but to visibilize the necessity of honoring all human life and to help a friend heal from the violence of genocide that she carries with her on a daily basis as an indigenous person. While the American flags on the Middlebury hillside symbolize to some the loss of innocent lives in New York, to others they represent centuries of bloody conquest and mass murder. As a settler on stolen land, I do not have the luxury of grieving without an eye to power. Three thousand flags is a lot, but the campus is not big enough to hold a marker for every life sacrificed in the history of American conquest and colonialism.
The emails filling my inbox indicate that this was not a productive way to start a dialogue about American imperialism. Nor did I imagine that it would be. Please understand that I am grappling with my complicity in the overwhelming legacy of settler colonialism. Part of this process for me is honoring the feelings and wishes of people who find themselves on the other side of this history.
I wish to further clarify that members of the local Abenaki community should in no way be implicated in today’s events. Nor can I pretend to speak to their feelings about flags, burial sites, or 9/11.
Today I chose to act in solidarity with my friend, an Indigenous woman and a citizen of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy who was appalled to see the burial grounds of another Indigenous nation desecrated by piercing the ground that their remains lay beneath. I understand that this action is confusing and painful for many in my community. I don’t pretend to know if every action I take is right or justified—this process is multi-layered and nuanced. I do know that colonialism has been—and continues to be—a real and destructive force in the world that we live in. And for me, to honor life is to support those who struggle against it.
Please do not hesitate to email me or approach me if you wish to discuss this in person.
On Thursday morning, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz released the following statement to the Middlebury College Community:
Yesterday, on the 12th anniversary of the horrific attack on our nation on September 11, 2001, a group of Middlebury students commemorated the loss of nearly 3,000 lives by placing American flags in front of Mead Chapel as they have done a number of times in the past. Sadly, a handful of people, at least some of them from our campus community, this year chose to desecrate those flags and disrespect the memories of those who lost their lives by pulling the flags from the ground and stuffing them in garbage bags.
We live in an academic community that fosters and encourages debate and discussion of difficult issues. It is also a community that requires of all a degree of respect and civility that was seriously undermined and compromised by this selfish act of protest.
Like many of you, I was deeply disturbed by the insensitivity of this act. Destruction of property and interfering with the rights of others to express themselves violates the standards of our community. The College has begun a disciplinary investigation of this incident.
There is always something to learn from differences of opinion. In this case, the disrespectful methods of the protesters overshadowed anything that might have been learned from the convictions they claimed to promote. We will not tolerate this kind of behavior.
On Thursday evening, a second protester named Amanda Lickers released a statement on Climate Connections, stating that she helped remove the flags from the grass. Lickers gave her reasoning in the posted statement:
i am a young onkwehon:we, a woman, a member of the turtle clan and the onondowa’ga nation of the haudenosaunee confederacy. i have been doing my best to be true to the responsibilities i have inherited through the gift of life, and the relationships i must honour to my ancestors and all our relatives.
for over 500 years our people have been under attack. the theft of our territories, the devastation of our waters; the poisoning of our people through the poisoning of our lands; the theft of our people from our families; the rape of our children; the murder of our women; the sterilization of our communities; the abuse of our generations; the
uprooting of our ancestors and the occupation of our sacred sites; the silencing of our songs; the erasure of our languages and memories of our traditions
i have had enough.
yesterday i went to occupied abenaki territory. i was invited to middlebury college to facilitate a workshop on settler responsibility and decolonization. i walked across this campus whose stone wall structures weigh heavy on the landscape. the history of eugenics, genocide and colonial violence permeate that space so fully like a ghost everywhere descending. it was my understanding that this site is occupying an abenaki burial ground; a sacred site.
walking through the campus i saw thousands of small american flags. tho my natural disdain for the occupying colonial state came to surface, in the quickest moment of decision making, in my heart, i understood that lands where our dead lay must not be desecrated. in my community, we do not pierce the earth. it disturbs the spirits there, it is important for me to respect their presence, their want for rest.
my heart swelled and i knew in my core that thousands of american flags should not penetrate the earth where my abenaki brothers and sisters sleep. we have all survived so much – and as a visitor on their territories i took action to respect them and began pulling up all of the flags.
i was with 4 non-natives who supported me in this action. there were so many flags staking the earth and their hands helped make this work faster. this act of support by my friends, as settlers, tho small was healing and inspiring. we put them away in black garbage bags and i was confronted by a nationalistic-settler, a young white boy who attends the college demanding i relinquish the flags to him. i held my ground and
confiscated them. i did not want to cave to his support of the occupying, settler-colonial, imperalist state, and the endorsing of the genocide of indigenous peoples across the world.
it is the duty of the college of middlebury to consult with abenaki peoples and repatriate their grounds.
yesterday i said no to settler occupation. i took those flags. it is a small reclamation and modest act of resistance.
in the spirit of resilience, in the spirit of survival
Throughout Thursday and Friday, the story gained national attention with various articles appearing on the Addison Eagle, Burlington Free Press, Business Insider, CBS, Daily Caller, Fox Nation, Indian Country Today Media Network, Inside Higher Ed, Times Argus, University Herald, and WCAX, in addition to a number of blogs, such as Breitbart. Many articles were filled with comments, condemning the protestors' actions. Further, WPTZ posted a video about the incident, while both the Huffington Post and Addison County Independent reached out to the College and community for additional comments.
Amanda Scherker wrote for the Huffington Post:
That said, Middlebury does not seem to have proof that the memorial had been placed on top of a burial site.
"It has never before been suggested that this is a Native American burial ground," Sarah Ray, the school's director of public affairs, told The Huffington Post via email.
Zach Despart at the Addison County Independent published the "Abenaki Response":
Don Stevens, chief of the Nulhegan Abenaki Tribe, called the vandalism “disgusting,” and believes the protestors were acting to promote their own political beliefs.
“We didn’t know anything about this and if we had we certainly wouldn’t have sanctioned it,” Stevens said.
He said that Abenakis do not publicize the locations of their burial sites in order to protect them, and that he has no knowledge of any such sites on the Middlebury campus. Stevens said that even if the site of the memorial had been a burial site, the American flags placed in the earth would not have been a desecration.
“Our burial sites honor our warriors and their bravery,” Stevens said. “Putting flags in the earth to honor bravery would not be disrespectful.”
Stevens served in the U.S. Army; his father fought in Korea and his son served in Iraq as a member of the National Guard.
On Friday evening, the College announced a series of events on "protest and civility" planned for next week. The announcement states, "the occasion for these meetings is the destruction of the 9/11 memorial earlier this week, but our larger purpose will be to consider together the responsibilities we have as an academic community to treat one another with respect and tolerance, even as we pursue political and social agendas that sometimes divide us."
The various sessions are as follows:
Professor of Religion Larry Yarbrough on Monday, Sept. 16 at 8:00 p.m. in the Mitchell Green Lounge at McCullough Social Space
Professor of American Studies and Director of the Center for the Comparative Study for Race and Ethnicity Roberto Lint Sagarena on Tuesday, Sept. 17 at 12:00 p.m. in Carr Hall Lounge
Professor of Religion James Calvin Davis on Tuesday, Sept. 17 at 4:30 p.m. in Carr Hall Lounge
Chaplain Laurie Jordan on Wednesday, Sept. 18 at 4:30 p.m. at the Scott Center
Professor of Environmental Studies Rebecca Kneale Gould on Wednesday, Sept. 18 at 4:30 p.m. in Coltrane Lounge
Professor of Political Science Erik Bleich on Wednesday, Sept. 18 at 8:30 p.m. in the Mitchell Green Lounge at McCullough Social Space
Professor of Economics and Faculty Director of the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship Jon Isham and Professor of Geography Kacy McKinney on Thursday, Sept. 19 at 4:30 p.m. at the Scott Center
On Monday, Sept. 16 Ben Kinney ’15, co-president of College Republicans, wrote to the Campus, "I just got an email from Public Safety that two boxes containing all of the stolen flags were just dropped off at their door anonymously."
On Monday, Sept. 23 the Student Government Association Senate released the following statement:
We condemn the method of protest utilized on September 11th outside of Mead Chapel. We believe it was highly disrespectful, destructive and in violation of the the Student Handbook’s policy on respect and community standards. We support the administration’s decision to pursue disciplinary action.
Many members of our campus community, including members of the SGA, have lasting and painful memories from that horrific September morning in 2001. These members viewed the protest as a highly offensive act. Whatever one’s feelings towards American policy and this country’s history, the lives lost on September 11th were those of innocent individuals.
The Senate also condemns the disrespectful, hateful and violent speech exchanged in the wake of the 9/11 flag protest. Much of this speech came from outside of the campus community. But some discussions on campus included unnecessarily malicious and personal attacks. This practice is also disrespectful, destructive and in violation of the the Student Handbook’s policy on respect and community standards.
Protest as a practice encourages valuable debate. Protest enables the exchange of critical ideas, the altering of opinions, and, eventually, change and progress. But as with all things, there are lines that one should not cross. We, as leaders of the campus community, want to foster a forum for productive exchange and dialogue. The protest on September 11th has absolutely no place in this forum. It is our hope that the student body will rise above the malicious actions and speech that have permeated our campus in the last two weeks and create an environment that fosters effective and respectful discourse in our community.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. - Martin Luther King Jr.
