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(10/14/10 3:59am)
Almost every day at Middlebury College, I receive an influx of emails announcing the latest environmental initiatives and encouraging students to make their voices heard. Last weekend, climate change activism took the global stage by storm with the 10/10/10 Global Work Party organized by 350.org. The group inspired a groundbreaking 7,347 events across 188 countries. With such broad-based support, the case for change seems fairly clear: people are demanding a global transition towards a clean energy economy.
What remains less certain is the question of why so little has been accomplished in the political sphere here in the U.S., especially considering that change was a fundamental platform of President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. When even the military is taking strides towards reducing its dependence on fossil fuels — the Navy and the Marines plan to generate 50 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020, according to a recent article in the New York Times –– the impetus for government action is incredibly high.
While the world’s impending energy crisis has a technical solution, the fundamental driver of change has to come from an altered mindset within the global community and, more importantly, from the world’s leaders.
The Senate’s failure to pass an energy bill this past spring and Obama’s surprising lack of support for the bill’s sponsors reveal a startling disconnect between public opinion and the actions of our elected leaders. If the Maldives’ President Nasheed has installed solar panels on his roof in a token of the commitment to eliminate his country’s reliance on foreign fossil fuels, one would hope President Obama could demonstrate the political audacity to assume leadership of the necessary energy policy overhaul.
(10/14/10 3:59am)
Thanks to dogged efforts this month by leaders of “Race to Replace” — yet another inspired project of Middlebury’s Sunday Night Group — several hundred college students at University of Vermont and Middlebury are newly registered to vote. Whether from Vermont or out-of-state, these newly enfranchised young folks must now ask: how should I vote?
If they care about climate change (and a host of recent polls puts this concern at the very top among young voters), the answer couldn’t be easier: vote against the Republican Party. For in Vermont and around the country this fall, we are witnessing a historic moment in the American political tradition — a major party that is taking pride in being anti-science. In doing so, the party is risking its political future.
To illustrate, let’s start with Paul Beaudry, the Vermont Republican Party’s candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. Beaudry isn’t just casually anti-science, he’s a leading spokesperson. For years, he used his perch as the host of WDEV’s True North to pound home the idea that global warming is a hoax. On Aug. 13, during a pre-primary interview with Vermont Public Radio, he stated, “Global warming, manmade global warming in my opinion is nothing but a lie.” A lone voice for Vermont’s Republican leaders? Hardly. On the same show, John Mitchell, another GOP primary candidate for the House seat, declared that climate change science “is not a viable scientific process.”
This would be amusing if it were nothing more than Vermont’s quirky politics at work. In fact, Beaudry is part of a large chorus of House Republican candidates who dismiss the science of global warming. As recently documented at GetEnergySmartNow.com: Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) has called global warming a “fraud” and a “modern rain dance.” Candidate Ed Martin (R-Mo.) devotes part of his website to bashing “global warming hucksters.” Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) considers global warming a “farce.”
In the Senate races, it looks no better. Check out these recent whoppers from GOP candidates (thanks to Brad Johnson at The Daily Grist): Ron Johnson (Wis.) believes that global warming is “just sunspot activity.” Sharron Angle (Nev.) does not “buy into the whole ... man-caused global warming, man-caused climate change mantra of the left.” Pat Toomey (Pa.) believes that there is “much debate in the scientific community as to the precise sources of global warming.”
Might science have a better chance in the high-tech state of California? Think again. Even former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, contending for Barbara Boxer’s senate seat, has gone anti-science. Despite having once run a company that, according to Climate Counts, was an advocate for public policy that addresses climate change, Fiorina is now “not sure” that climate change is real, and she supports Proposition 23, the oil-company effort to overturn California’s climate policy. There’s more of the same from California’s GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, who recently declared that she would “probably” veto a global-warming law if she were California governor today.
I find this all to be terribly sad. At its best, the Grand Old Party has been truly grand. For 150 years, great American leaders carved the modern foundations of our republic while wearing the GOP mantle. What distinguished Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and others was the courage to stand up for what was right, to embrace and lead the moral crusades of their day.
The current Republican leadership, faced with the great moral fight of our age, has extinguished courage. It’s true that the elections next month may bring them temporary gains; they may even succeed in convincing some voters that global warming is a hoax. But when they study the election data, I am sure that they will note an unmistakable trend: the hundreds-of-thousands of new young voters, from Vermont and around the country, will have none of it.
As these voters grow to dominate the political landscape, this could mean the end of the Republican Party as we have come to know it. Indeed the GOP leadership should ponder a menacing historical comparison — how the Whig Party disintegrated as the anti-slavery movement crested in the 1850s. Unless they reject Beaudry and his ilk for a new generation of pro-science candidates, the same fate might well await the current GOP.
What then? Maybe the Sunday Night Group is already working to start a new political party! It’s not hard to make the case that this is exactly what our nation needs.
Jon Isham is an Associate Professor of Economics.
(10/14/10 3:59am)
It’s not easy being green.
If I have learned anything about living a sustainable lifestyle (and I have learned a lot while at Middlebury), it’s that going truly green requires a significant level of self-awareness and effort. Making small changes is a great idea, and the more of us who make those changes, the bigger the impact they will have. But as I have become increasingly aware over the last four years, what really needs to happen is a paradigm shift, a change in our fundamental values and habits as a society. I won’t comment on the nature of that change because the Opinions section is already full of people better qualified than I am to do so, and besides, this is a sex column, and you came here to read about sex. So how do we apply environmental sustainability to our sex lives?
In last year’s green issue, I told you about proper condom disposal (please don’t flush them!), petroleum-free lubes and choosing the most environmentally friendly sex toys. This year, I want to look at sex through the lens of sustainability and move past the small changes toward some personal paradigm shifts. But the shifts I want to talk about don’t really have anything to do with the environment — short of refusing to have sex in anything except an adobe yurt that you built yourself, or at the very least practicing good birth control to keep our population from skyrocketing further, I’m not so sure there are sex-specific values to be altered, at least not when trying to be eco-friendly. I think the process of seeking big changes for the better, though they might not be easy, is still useful even if it’s not saving the environment, however. So let’s talk about positive climate change in the climate of the climax — change in the environment of sex, as opposed to change in sex for the environment.
You have read through all of my contrived setting up of this grand extended metaphor, and really all I want to tell you is to talk. Talk about sex. Talk during sex. Talk after sex. Get naked and then get vocal. My biggest bad habit in the bedroom — bad in that it wasn’t serving me, my partners or the friends who then had to deal with my anxiety — was not communicating well regarding sex for the first, oh, two years of having an active sex life. That’s a long time not to voice what you want, how you want it, if you want it. Just like the first step to saving the planet is starting an open dialogue on what needs to be saved in the first place, the first step to saving yourself from silent suffering and bad to mediocre sex is to say something.
The most important thing to speak up about is obviously whether or not you want to have sex. Developing self-awareness is just as important in protecting yourself as it is in reducing your carbon footprint. If you don’t feel good about getting down, DON’T DO IT. If we can learn to call out people for driving to the gym when they could walk, we can learn to call out others for pressuring us into sex when we don’t want it. It is our responsibility to take care of the environment, and I think it is equally our responsibility to take care of each other, to be gentle with each other in such a vulnerable state as practicing procreation.
If you get it out there that you do want to get sexual, and so does your partner, don’t clam up now! Your bodies shouldn’t be the only things speaking to each other in the dark of your dorm room. Making the first peep can be a challenge — it can feel less nerve-wracking to let your partner gnaw your nipples off than to risk turning him or her off by speaking up (unless biting is your thing). But isn’t it so validating to know you’re giving your partner what he or she wants (and not giving what he or she doesn’t want)? You can both have the kind of sex you enjoy the most. I really think the biggest problem facing Middlebury’s sexual environment today is the lack of communication — if we don’t change, neither will the climate.
(10/14/10 3:56am)
Sunday, Oct. 10 — the serendipitously timed 10/10/10 — saw a profusion of environmental activism under the auspices of 350.org, the campaign to reverse climate change spearheaded by Scholar-in-Residence in Environmental Studies Bill McKibben.
In an effort to catalyze the global reduction of green house gases, McKibben created a “global workday,” in which volunteers from around the world agreed to physically do something that promoted environmentalism. Projects included installing solar panels, riding bikes, planting organic gardens or picking up trash, and 350.org-organized events took place in locations all around the world.
In Middlebury, the events were lively and varied. The Student Government Association Environmental Affairs Committee aimed to promote the often unseen and unnoticed recycling center. The group, headed by Rachel Callender ’12, gathered numerous bags full of clothes, pillows, shoes and other items and set up a three-hour-long thrift shop on the Proctor Terrace. The items comprised handmade scarves, Tommy Hilfiger polos and even Columbia jackets. Each item, regardless of intact price tags reading upwards of $95, was priced at $1.
“The purpose of the project was to expose students to the reality of wasting that takes place on even one of the most environmentally friendly campuses in the region,” said Callender.
The group successfully sold over 100 items and donated all proceeds to the Recycling Center. The initiative’s participants expressed great enthusiasm for their project and for the 350.org events in general.
“Being that 350.org is such a relatively new organization, I see a lot of hope and potential for the environment through it in the future,” Callender said.
The Sunday Night Group participated in 10/10/10 as well, traveling door-to-door in the town of Middlebury to create a list of signatures of people who agreed to vote for Patrick Leahy, the incumbent Democratic U.S. senator from Vermont who supports many environmental issues.
McKibben, who is off campus currently, expressed great enthusiasm for the work being done on Oct. 10.
“It meant, ‘game on,’” he wrote in an e-mail. “Far from being discouraged about the failure of the Copenhagen talks and congressional inaction, people were energized — ready to show their leaders how to do what needed doing.”
The 10/10/10 events comprised “the most widespread day of civic engagement in the planet’s history,” McKibben continued. 7,347 events were held in 188 countries, everywhere but North Korea, Equatorial Guinea and San Marino.
“I think that by itself [10/10/10] accomplished a lot of good in a lot of places,” said McKibben. “But more than that, it is a key step in helping build a movement — the kind of movement we’re going to need to take on the financial power of the fossil fuel industry. This will not be an easy fight, not in any way.”
(10/14/10 3:52am)
On Oct. 9, hundreds of Vermont college students were registered to vote as part of an effort through the Race to Replace campaign. Teams of environmental advocates across the state organized in this “dorm storm” to help promote clean energy resources.
The Race to Replace campaign was created by a group of Middlebury students in spring of 2010 after the Vermont Senate voted 26-4 against relicensing Vermont Yankee, a controversial nuclear power plant in Southern Vermont which produces about a third of the energy used in the state. Vermont Yankee faced widespread discontent among residents after lawmakers found out about radioactive tritium leaks as well as inconsistencies in testimonies by officials running the plant, and the College-based movement encourages the Vermont legislature and residents to replace Vermont Yankee with cleaner and more sustainable sources of energy.
“The way that we choose to replace these plants that are coming up for relicensing or shutdown, especially coal plants, will determine an enormous amount of the energy and climate future in the United States for the next 40 years, so the time is now to get engaged,” said Pier LaFarge ’10.5, a founding member of the movement.
Other initiators of the movement explained the recent activity led by the Race to Replace, as they celebrated 10/10/10, Global Work Day, with 350.org, the environmental organization led by Scholar-in-Residence in Environmental Studies Bill McKibben.
“We decided the best way for us to ‘get to work’ would be to register young voters at Middlebury and across the state,” said Ben Wessel ’11.5, another key leader of the Race to Replace effort. “Since the governor’s election this year is so close, and since it has such huge ramifications for clean energy development in the state, we thought registering new voters who pledge to vote for clean energy candidates was the best way for us to make a concrete difference in tackling climate change.”
The team pointed out that all students at Middlebury or at any school in Vermont are considered Vermont residents by state law, and are therefore able to participate in all Vermont elections. Wessel and Olivia Noble ’13, another key member of the Race to Replace team, emphasized how Vermont’s small size makes it possible for motivated students to make a substantial difference in Vermont’s energy future.
“We’ve actually switched a lot of students’ voter [registrations] to Vermont from states that don’t have significant races this year,” Noble wrote in an e-mail.
The Race to Replace campaign is also working alongside the College Democrats and the College Republicans in order to encourage students to register to vote.
“Middlebury students have incredible resources at our advantage that we can use to help advance the clean energy cause among the Vermont populace,” said Wessel. “Not only do we have some financial resources available at the College, but the respect that the Middlebury brand carries can help get press and get people to pay attention. Political organizing in such a small state is particularly rewarding because each individual voice is taken seriously.”
Noble agreed, pointing to how Middlebury students have already had an impact on the community through interaction over the last summer.
“We’ve really made it a priority this summer and throughout the campaign to tie our efforts in with those of the people already here,” she said. “Race to Replace had a lot of conversations with Vermont residents this summer, making sure that the policies we were pushing were initiative[s] that Vermonters cared about. From that, we’ve been able to find common ground and work together with Vermont residents to achieve our goals.”
LaFarge also spoke in depth about potential energy replacements should Vermont Yankee be permanently decommissioned, emphasizing “wind, biomass, microhydro and solar energy” technologies. According to LaFarge, there are also massive economic benefits to reap for the state should these emerging industries be established in place of the current nuclear plant.
Race to Replace will continue to be visibly active on campus over the next few weeks and will be registering more students at the College to vote, as the Vermont gubernatorial elections approach. It has been working with the Vermont League of Conservation Voters, which endorses the gubernatorial candidate Peter Shumlin as the best choice for voters concerned about green issues and climate change.
“There are a lot of important state representative and state senate seats in Vermont that are coming up that could determine the balance of how future votes on something like relicensing Vermont Yankee could go,” said LaFarge. “So there a lot of smaller ballot races that are important, but the governor’s race is definitely the key — it’s also the closest of all the races.”
(10/14/10 3:48am)
Few Americans seem to know about the Canadian government, people or history. While Americans may not know the name of our current prime minister, they are however becoming increasingly aware of the impact that Canada’s climate policies are having on the global community. In recent months pressure has mounted on the Canadian government to clean up one of the largest sources of oil production in the country, the tar sands in Alberta.
The tar sands, or oil sands as they are often referred to, are a naturally occurring source of crude oil located under the ground. There are three major deposits spanning an area of 140,200 square kilometers in Alberta. Canada has one of the largest proven crude oil reserves in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia. It is estimated that the tar sands contain enough oil to meet Canada’s current oil demand for the next 400 years. The oil however, is not just being extracted to meet the demands of domestic citizens. Canada is the United State’s main supplier of crude oil, and provides the nation with 20 percent of its supply.
Though the Canadian government touts the project as a necessary part of the nation’s energy plan, many remain skeptical of the adverse environmental side effects. In order to extract the usable crude oil from the tar sands, an energy-intensive process must occur, wherein the oil in the tar sands must be converted from a form called bitumen (in which the oil is combined with sand and water) to a usable form. It is estimated that the this process produces 40 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, which is more than all of the cars in Canada combined. According to Greenpeace, two tons of tar sand is needed to produce a single barrel of oil, and three to five times more water and energy are required to produce a barrel than any other known oil source.
Greenpeace has also noted the detrimental impact the project has had on the rivers surrounding the tar sands, as well as the adverse side effects on the air quality and forests in Alberta. Studies have also noted higher than usual rates of cancer in First Nations communities near the tar sands, raising questions about the social and health costs associated with the project.
According to Greenpeace, “Because of the tar sands, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions have grown more since 1990 than those of any other G8 nation.”
The government of Alberta has produced a comprehensive series of provincially funded studies into the impacts of the tar sands, but these studies seem to produce results conflicting with those of independent studies.
The Canadian federal government has been largely unresponsive to criticism from the international community. Political support in Alberta in recent years has been mainly devoted to politicians who pursue policies that increase the economic growth of the province. Such support is detrimental to the global community. The remedy seems twofold. First, Canadian citizens must put pressure on the national government to increase the surveillance of the impacts of the tar sands. Second, the global community must apply pressure to the federal and provincial governments and shame them into action. If the initiative to be green will not come from the inside, that it must be forced out by other countries willing to take a stronger stance on climate change. No country is blameless on this issue.
(10/07/10 4:02am)
Founded by local author and environmental advocate, Bill McKibben, as well as several other Middlebury alumni, 350.org is an international organization whose mission is “to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis.” It focuses on reducing carbon emissions and reaching the number 350, as this marks the point between where our Earth needs to be and the direction in which it is currently headed. For the past several years, 350.org has organized rallies and demonstrations all over the world, many of which have occurred at the same time in different places. Last year, it organized a global Day of Action to spread awareness about carbon emissions and the town of Middlebury celebrated with a community potluck on the town green. This year, however, 350.org has decided that a potluck is simply not enough and it is throwing a full-blown party. The invitation has three pieces of information, the date — 10/10/10, the place — wherever you live and the theme — CHANGE. It is a Global Work Party.
This Sunday, people will gather together all over the world to fight global warming. In Auckland, New Zealand, people are having a bike fix-up day to help encourage citizens to bike ride. In Costa Rica, people will be planting thousands of trees, and in South Africa, people will learn how to cook organically. The goal of 10/10/10 is to send a message to the world’s political leaders. Now more than ever, our planet needs energy policies and legislation that can make a dent in this “350” goal. If the leaders see how invested the population is in climate change, the hope is that it will inspire them to take environmental action. Though each individual effort in this Global Work Party will count towards the final goal, what matters most is the collective unity with which we approach this task.
In Middlebury alone, there will be eight different Global Work Parties on Oct. 10. The day has been organized primarily by the Sunday Night Group, the College’s environmental activist organization, with two themes in mind: living more sustainably on campus and achieving sustainability in the community. In the morning, a variety of campus activities will take place. Festivities begin with a “hanging out” of clothes on Proctor Rd., followed by a harvest festival in the organic garden and tentatively a yoga session led by Andrea Olsen. The afternoon’s focus is on the community, and activities include gleaning, canvassing for green candidates and home weatherization/solar power lessons. The day will culminate in a Carbon Buster Fashion Show on the town green. The options are endless. Participate in as little or as much as you wish; the point is simply to do something. For more information about these or any other Global Work Party events around the world, visit 350.org’s website.
(09/30/10 4:05am)
When it becomes too cold for chlorophyll, tourists flock to Vermont. According to the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing, tourists spend over $370 million in the fall.
“We’re on track for another spectacular fall season,” said Ginger Anderson, Chief of Forest Management for the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation. “Most parts of the state had good summer moisture, and early color can already be seen in some places.”
Behind all that breathtaking beauty, however, lies an interesting science. With the onset of autumn come longer nights. Leaves are able to sense this change, and as a result, a layer of cells called an abcission layer forms near the stem of the leaf, blocking transport of vital nutrients like carbohydrates. The production of chorophyll, the pigment responsible for giving leaves their green color, stops relatively quickly. Other pigments such as xanthophylls and carotenoids (which provide the leaves with yellow and orange color, respectively) now show, giving leaves beautiful bursts of color. When these pigments eventually freeze, tannins are left. These pigments are responsible for the brown color of leaves after the great foliage season has ended.
If this phenomenon occurs in deciduous trees all over the world, why is Vermont such a destination location?
“If you look at the map of the United States and figure out where the places are that have a foliage tourist industry, it’s very closely related to where there are maples,” said Andrea Lloyd, Professor of Biology. “It makes a very big difference to have a landscape that’s got red in it… As the leaves turn those conifers really pop out, and you get this amazing moment when the reds and oranges are at their peak and those conifers just look so dark green in contrast.”
The Green Mountains in particular showcase this well because trees in higher elevations change earlier than lower elevations, making the turning of colors gradual. From many places on campus you can look at a mountainside and see most of Vermont’s trees in a single collage. It can look as if someone is sprinkling color directly on the summit, and it gradually trickles down until it is replaced by snow.
Tree diversity is key to the beauty of Vermont’s foliage, and New England’s climate gives the state a broad mix of trees. As described by Lloyd, brown-turning oaks are more prevalent as you go south, and red-turning maples disappear as you go north into Canada. Vermont has the best of both worlds.
Middlebury College students take note, says Kristen DeGraff ’13.5 who has been living in Middlebury for her entire life.
“I love the smell of fall, and I love the colors of fall, but I kind of take it for granted,” said DeGraff. “I really have to stop and remember that this is beautiful, and when I do, it blows me away.”
Thanks to Tim Parsons, the Middlebury College Horticulturalist, trees from outside Vermont also enhance the tree diversity on campus.
“In Middlebury, there’s a broader pallet of colors that you don’t see up in the hills,” said Parsons. “[Here on campus] there’s a greater variety of oaks. There are certainly ornamental trees that you don’t see out in the woods, and there are a handful of trees that aren’t even supposed to live this far north. There’s even a pecan tree.” It’s on the left as you walk up the sidewalk from McCullough to Hepburn.
When Mother Nature strokes her brush across the tops of the Green Mountains, the campus peaks with beauty, with temperatures perfect for outdoor trips and activities. Autumn traditions such as apple picking, cider donuts and corn mazes are popular. Outdoor enthusiasts also enjoy hiking and boating especially.
“As soon as the leaves change, they’re not taking up water anymore,” said Christian Woodard ’10.5, resident extreme kayaker. “All the water that falls can go straight into the rivers. It’s higher water. It’s better boating.”
Other students enjoy the changing of seasons regardless of their preferred activities.
“Everyone appreciates the landscape around here,” said Anoushka Sinha ’13. “It’s not so cold that everyone wants to huddle up and hibernate. I feel much more active and lively in the fall.” Gabriela Juncosa ’13 compared the fall in Middlebury to where she grew up in Ecuador.
“Some of the trees lose their leaves, but it’s not an event,” said Juncosa.
The event, however, doesn’t simply end when the leaves drop. What happens to the foliage when it gives this season its name?
Usually, Parsons and his team pick up fallen leaves and combine them with food waste from the dining hall to produce compost. This year, they will try a new program. Instead of raking and removing the leaves, Parsons and his team plan to mow them and leave them on the ground.
“It chops them up real fine, and we just leave them right where they are and over the winter they will either break down, or the earth worms will come and drag them down,” said Parsons.
The fruits of this program will be healthier trees next spring and even more beautiful foliage in fall 2011.
(09/23/10 4:07am)
It’s no news to a Middlebury student that something needs to be done to protect the environment. As the first college in the US to establish an Environmental Science major (in 1965), and one of only six schools to receive an A- on its Sustainability Report Card in 2008, it is clear that Middlebury is committed to being as green as it can. We have the biomass plant next to McCullough, the school’s commitment to being carbon neutral by 2016, and any number of other green initiatives. But Middlebury wants to make an even larger impact through giving students with a vision a larger audience, and the College is achieving this mission with Middlebury’s Environmental Journalism Fellowship program.
Now in its fourth year, the program allots 10 $10,000 grants to up and coming graduate journalists for use towards an intensive year-long reporting project about an environmental issue. In addition to their individual research, the recipients meet bi-annually to participate in workshops about the journalistic process and edit their articles with a visiting reporter (once in the fall at Bread Loaf and once in the spring at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California).
Past stories written during the fellowship have appeared in Mother Jones and on NPR, while writers have gone on to be featured in major publications ranging from National Geographic to The Economist. This year two graduate fellows, Aylie Baker ’09 and Kathryn Flagg ’08, were both from Middlebury, as was the undergraduate fellow, Sarah Harris ’11.
This past week, the writer’s first conference allowedthe journalists not only to exchange stories, but to begin to learn about what environmental journalism truly is and what it aims to accomplish. Sometimes categorized as a niche discipline, the impact of environmental reporting is often questioned due to the fact that its audience is often those already involved in environmental protection. But these issues are not just issues that affect only a small, specific area; they involve everyone. This session’s visiting reporter, Middlebury graduate and editor of Orion magazine Jennifer Sahn ’92, highlighted the importance of the fellowship in her talk on Sept. 15. She said that environmental writing does not just address an issue in nature, but an issue of humanity.
“Change will not happen if only environmentalists are the ones willing to make that change, or even have the conversation about it,” Sahn told the audience. “Everybody has to get invested in that change,“
For Harris, who is investigating the impact of cement production in Midlothian, Texas (a city 30 miles outside of her hometown of Dallas) the importance of the fellowship is obvious.
“Environmental journalism is something that must be written, and must be talked about, because the stakes are very high.,” said Harris. “To tell these stories is to tell a tale with certain urgency.”
The stakes? Well, the world. To encompass this, the guidelines for the fellowship state that it will support any project as long as it “[centers] in some way on the human relationship with the physical world.” Or as Harris put it, “the irreparable change we are forcing on our planet.”
Because of this, journalists have quite a task ahead of them: to get people to realize it’s not “humans against the world,” but “humans with the world.” Too often, even major disasters, like as the recent BP oil spill, become only fleeting issues in the public eye because it’s hard for people to see how it will affect them. This transitory attention to the environment is something the fellowship seeks to change.
“People always refer to the environmental crisis as something happening out there and we need to stop it. [But] it’s our problem. We need to be the ones to address it,” said Sahn.
The attendees of the talk were mostly conviced or already a believer in Sahn’s logic.
“It has been proven throughout history that writing can change the world,” said Renee Igo ’11, an attendee of Sahn’s talk.
Moreover, “good journalism can be a force for positive change,” Harris said.
With this in mind, it could very well be this new wave of writers that starts us equating change with people, and not just the climate.
(09/09/10 4:58am)
Administrators have enacted a major strategic realignment of responsibilities in recent months as part of an ongoing effort to integrate academics and student life on campus. Though most of the changes became effective July 1, many remain in transition as areas of administrative oversight shift.
President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz outlined the changes in a campus-wide e-mail sent July 6. Among the most striking is the return of Shirley Collado, who left her position as Vice President of the Office for Institutional Planning and Diversity in December 2009 and returns this year as the new Dean of the College and Chief Diversity Officer (CDO). In this role, Collado acts as both the College’s chief student affairs official as well as its head of diversity-related initiatives.
“What we’re doing is folding all of the diversity goals of the CDO and fusing them essentially into the function of the Dean of the College,” said Collado. “That allows me … to really infuse diversity initiatives and goals that are in line with the mission of the College. And actually I think it’s exactly what we need to be doing.”
Collado cited a seminal 2006 report, submitted by the Human Relations Committee under the guidance of chair and Dean of Students Gus Jordan, which was tasked with evaluating “the current climate of diversity on campus across all sectors of the College,” as the report states. The number one recommendation presented to Liebowitz was the appointment of a CDO on the presidential cabinet.
Collado’s “hybrid” role, as she phrased it, as the College’s chief authority on both student affairs and diversity initiatives, marks a turning point in Old Chapel’s approach to examining issues of diversity and multiculturalism on campus.
“There’s no better place to use the diversity goals and the mission of the College than alongside student life, with what the Dean of the College does,” said Collado. “What I’m most excited about is ‘operationalizing’ that mission — how can we fuse these goals about diversity into every facet of student life?”
Liebowitz seconded Collado’s emphasis on integration — the fusing of what might seem like disparate priorities into a more comprehensive and holistic approach to student education, institutional development, and streamlining the sometimes overwhelmingly bureaucratic structure of College administration.
“If you let the issue of diversity sit off in the corner, nothing happens,” Liebowitz said. “[Collado] can sit off in the corner and preach all she wants about, ‘We’re going to do this and we’re going to do that,’ but it means nothing to the institution unless it’s infused across the whole institution, and that’s how she sees her role.”
As Dean of the College, Old Chapel’s chief student affairs officer, Collado will assume many of the responsibilities formerly associated with previous Dean of the College Tim Spears: she will have direct oversight of the Commons, Community Council, the judicial boards, health and counseling, Public Safety, and the new Center for Education in Action: Careers, Fellowships and Civic Engagement, located in Adirondack House. Her hybrid position as CDO will allow her to, as Liebowitz wrote in his all-campus e-mail in July, “advance diversity initiatives in [the student affairs division], while also supporting diversity initiatives across the institution related to staff, faculty and the academic program.”
A particular focus of Collado’s is the Commons system and residential life as a second key administrative change enacted this summer takes effect. Commons deans will now report directly to their faculty Commons heads instead of reporting separately to the Dean of the College, as was the case previously. This move gives the Commons heads, faculty members who have crossed over from the academic sector of the College to its residential sector, unprecedented authority in the realm of student life.
Both Liebowitz and Collado underscored, however, the administration’s shifting vision of these two areas — academics and student affairs: instead of being kept largely separate administratively and conceptually, Old Chapel, with the wholehearted support of the Board of Trustees, intends to increasingly integrate these two institutional sectors.
It is an approach more closely in line with the College’s Strategic Plan, Liebowitz explained. Just as Collado’s new role will fuse Old Chapel’s academic mission of diversity with its oversight of and involvement in student affairs, giving Commons heads more authority, influence and involvement in their Commons will — the administration hopes — strengthen the connection between academics and “non-academics.”
“Students experience this place as whole people,” said Collado. “They don’t compartmentalize what happens in the classroom and what happens in the residence halls. And we’re trying to mirror that experience structurally. That’s my wish for student life. We’re not off in a corner doing one piece of student life. It’s all of it. And that means integrating the faculty with our work.”
Liebowitz and Collado emphasized how such a strategic approach will set the College apart from peer institutions.
“Middlebury’s doing this very differently than other liberal arts colleges,” said Collado.
Collado will continue former Dean of the College Spears’s “One Dean’s View” blog on student affairs, and says she will encourage students to blog alongside her on issues pertaining to student life. While she adjusts to her new role, both Spears and Dean of Students Gus Jordan are assisting her with her new responsibilities — “to sort of make sure Shirley understands the wackiness that goes on in student life while she gets up and running,” as Liebowitz quipped.
It is a transitional phase; Jordan is enjoying his last semester as Dean of Students. In December, he will replace retiring colleague Gary Margolis and become the new Executive Director of Health and Counseling — a new position, as this year the departments of health and counseling have been combined.
Spears, meanwhile, has assumed the role of Vice President for Administration, taking that title and many of the areas of oversight associated with it from the former Vice President for Administration, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Patrick Norton.
“[Norton]’s plate is very full,” Liebowitz explained. “If you look at his role now, compared to almost any CFO at almost any comparable school, he is up to his ears.”
Spears assumed oversight of Dining and Facilities Services, from Norton, a huge load that marked a dramatic shift for the two administrators. As Liebowitz noted, it makes more sense. Spears was already a “good candidate” for assuming these kinds of responsibilities, given his prior administrative experience, and “just the amount of work that our CFO has to do made it really impossible to have one person do it all.”
As Vice President for Administration, Spears will continue his oversight of Library and Administration Services, athletics, communications, scheduling and other administrative areas less directly related to student affairs — Collado’s jurisdiction — or academics — the jurisdiction of Provost and Executive Vice President Alison Byerly, whose responsibilities remain more or less unchanged this year.
The motivation behind the whole set of changes is twofold. Streamlining cuts costs, and budgetary issues — including staffing cuts — were certainly behind the juggling of oversight that administrators have undertaken this year. But Liebowitz repeatedly stressed the thematic significance of these moves. According to him, they break down the barrier between academics and student life, they utilize administrators’ skills and resources in a more effective way and they will lead to increased transparency between Old Chapel and students — a hugely important issue, and one that is often the source of much controversy and frustration for students.
“The things that matter most are — are the people that students need to see as accessible there, are they responsive to student needs?” Liebowitz said. “And is our administration becoming better — I don’t think we’ll ever be perfect — at reducing the bureaucratic walls that get in the way of a student’s education and the smooth functioning of the institution? All of the changes that we make are done toward improving the overall education and running of the institution.”
(09/09/10 4:45am)
On Sept. 7 at 7:30 p.m., only two days after the new first-years filed into Mead Chapel for Convocation, the pews filled once again with students, faculty, staff and community members to welcome a special guest: critically acclaimed fiction writer Ian McEwan. The English author gave a reading of his latest work at the behest of his friend and D. E. Axinn Professor of English & Creative Writing Jay Parini.
McEwan’s reading was part of what Parini called a “long tradition” of famous writers coming to the College, a tradition that has included the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Updike, John Irving and Joyce Carol Oates. McEwan, who lives in London, is a prolific novelist whose work has garnered him numerous awards including the 1998 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for his book, Amsterdam. Many of his books have also been adapted for film, with the 2007 film version of Atonement receiving seven Golden Globe Award nominations.
Parini, who has known McEwan since the 70s, said he has been trying to get McEwan to pay the College a visit for years, and in a flurry of good fortune, the author was able to come up for a reading while on the East Coast for a personal trip.
Though the event was planned very quickly, McEwan addressed a full audience, reading a selection from his latest book, Solar. Students and staff alike chuckled at the antics of the novel’s main character, Michael Beard — a somewhat hapless Nobel prize winner who lives in the shadow of his own former greatness — and those who stayed for the Q&A after the reading were treated to McEwan’s candid reflections on everything from e-books to climate change.
“I think what’s great is when the College comes together around a figure like this, it stimulates conversation and it becomes a shared experience,” said Parini. “I think these kinds of occasions are a very important part of a student’s memory bank.”
Leaving a lasting impression on the students in the audience is, Parini says, a primary goal with any speaker invited to campus.
“To get a writer of this quality here is terrific for us,” said Parini. “Whenever you can put a first-rate artist before students, you hope to inspire them, and that’s enough. That’s all we’re trying to do. I think putting an example of good writing before students is important to the writing program.”
Evan Masseau ’11 was one of many students for whom McEwan’s reading served Parini’s purpose.
“It’s no surprise I enjoyed the passage so much,” said Masseau. “His speaking, like his writing, was full of quick, dry wit. It certainly got me more interested in his writing and motivated me to improve my own for the sake of those who have to read it.”
Brittany Gendron ’12 was another student who left the reading more than impressed.
“[McEwan] has written so many incredibly beautiful books and the prose just seems to flow out of him like a river from a mountain, and I can only hope to aspire to write something that lovely someday, even when he’s talking about difficult things,” said Gendron.
McEwan’s writing moved Gendron to more than improving her own — she was one of several audience members who lined up to ask McEwan a question during the Q&A. She wanted to know if he could think of any must-read books for aspiring writers, and in a rare moment of unity, the award-winning author thought back to his days as a hopeful student much like those filling the room and listed four authors — Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce and Vladimir Nabokov — without whom his writing would not be the same.
Identifying with his audience made McEwan’s reading, especially for Gendron, all the more meaningful.
“He was much more down-to-earth than I expected,” said Gendron. “It’s very refreshing to see someone coming down from an ivory tower where a lot of other prominent writers seem to stay.”
(09/09/10 4:07am)
For most of the world’s people, climate change is inextricably linked to starvation, migration and extinction; the phenomena cannot be mentioned independently of declining crop yields, rising seas and vector-borne disease. For the overwhelming minority of us living in the developed world, however, this is far from the case. Here, the social sciences insist that speaking about the costs of global warming is commensurate to fear-mongering; that the dialogue must be framed instead in the context of green jobs, trade competitiveness with emerging economies and the need to reduce dependence on dangerous foreign oil. But for children in the Maldives and high school students in Montana, fear of coming of age in a sunken nation and outsourced manufacturing and service jobs is a matter of lived experience; in the Global North entire societies have been built an arm’s length away from the Earth’s natural systems, while poorer populations live and die by subsistence economies.
This fundamental disconnect is all too tangible when nations gather to discuss and debate solutions to the climate problem. Copenhagen was fraught with mistrust and misunderstanding between the developed and the developing, riddled with economic excuses for inaction from the former and impassioned pleas for survival from the latter. Parties were practically speaking different languages; some employed the metrics of GDP and GNP while the others had nothing to leverage but potential body counts. It is no wonder negotiations culminated in an agreement leagues away from the fair, ambitious and legally binding international climate agreement that is still needed.
We desperately need shared experience. We need metrics around which we can build solidarity and understanding and trust. And we need them from every nation on earth; scientists maintain that stabilization of the climate system will require both sweeping emissions reductions from the world’s richest nations (on the scale of 80-95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050), and ‘substantial deviation from business as usual’ from the poorest. Economists have called for the collective mobilization of hundreds of billions of dollars for low-carbon growth and adaptation crucial to delivering billions from poverty in an already warmer world.
A common thread does exist in the form of a threat to our collective humanity. Nowhere is this more apparent than where I spent the summer: West Kalimantan, Indonesia. There, indigenous Dayak populations are starving. Their centuries-old agricultural practices are incompatible with a climate that no longer experiences a dry season, and their rice supplies are devastatingly insufficient as a result. National and multi-national palm oil companies have responded by buying up significant swaths of land made cheap by desperate families, and the vibrant culture of the Dayaks is diminishing in parallel with their sovereignty.
Worldwide, roughly 300 million people still retain strong indigenous identity, wedded to a particular geographic place through myth and memory and with a distinct history and language. These cultures account for 60 percent of the world’s spoken languages and collectively represent more than half of humanity’s intellectual legacy.
They face, however, assimilation and acculturation similar to that confronting the Dayaks of West Kalimantan. The likelihood of violence, conquest, famine or natural disaster compromising their unique ways of life increases every day climate change continues unabated.
The demise of cultural diversity is not among those climate impacts frequently listed, but it is among those affronts against which we can unite. The ‘ethnosphere’ — the full complexity and complement of human potential that lives and breathes in languages, medicinal practices, agricultural systems and oral traditions the world over — is sacrosanct. It is that which separates us from other species, that which could, above all else, justify the preservation of our entire race, as opposed to simply a wealthy portion of it.
This piece is, of course, the act of a desperate person: a frantic searching for a motivation that will deliver all nations to the negotiating table immediately. Idealistic it most certainly is. But in all our picketing and protesting and lobbying, I do believe that we have failed to approach those responsible as fellow people. We have failed to reach out to them on a spiritual level and discuss climate change as something that transcends national interest. It is time we celebrated the beautiful complexity that lines our shared humanity; time we saw that in a universe that remains largely a mystery, we cannot afford to silence the sacred pluralism of the human race. At the very least, it’s time we tried.
(09/09/10 4:02am)
The College’s colors may be navy and white, but most know that Middlebury, the town and the College, tries hard to stay green. At the forefront of the town’s efforts to reduce environmental impact is Laura Asermily, the Middlebury Energy Coordinator. Appointed by the Middlebury Select Board, Asermily has held this volunteer position since the fall of 2007. Her job is to implement the Middlebury Climate Action Plan, the goal of which is to reduce the town’s carbon footprint by 10 percent by 2012.
To do so, Asermily works to educate community members about climate change and to develop programs to decrease the town’s energy consumption. Two of these programs, “Way to Go” and “Efficiency First,” were a result from the town’s 2002 measurement of its carbon footprint.
“Way to Go” is a campaign that encourages people to travel in ways that use less fuel. Though Asermily admits it is sometimes difficult to work within the tight streets of Middlebury, she has seen positive changes. There are now pedestrian and bicycle markings and there is increased ridership for the ACTR buses (Addison Country Transit Resources).
“Efficiency First” helps community members find effective ways to weatherize their homes. Locals are encouraged to use proper insulation and to heat their houses in an energy efficient way.
She has aligned her efforts with local groups, including the Addison County Relocalization Network (ACORN), with the hopes of adding to, and not duplicating, their work. Whereas Asermily’s efforts are concentrated on climate change, ACORN focuses on eliminating the effects of peak oil. Asermily also works closely with the College’s environmental groups. She regularly attends meetings for the student club, Sunday Night Group and she recruits at the Midd Action Fair.
Asermily has also joined forces with state programs such as, Efficiency Vermont, Renewable Energy Vermont and Connecting Commuters. In addition, she has implemented Button Up Vermont, a training program for weatherizing homes. With the help of College students, Asermily completed 120 home energy visits last spring and installed energy saving devices. She hopes to repeat the program next year.
“There must be a local voice for exposing these programs to the community,” said Asermily. “They wouldn’t have this much exposure without our participation.”
Asermily first became involved in Middlebury’s energy plans after participating in an adult discussion group led by the Vermont Earth Institute. The group encourages local environmental action.
“Out of that we became aware of global warming,” said Asermily. “We have to do something to help prepare people for the consequences of this. The people hardest hit were going to be least able to respond to it.”
Driven to help plan the first annual Earth Day Fair in 2001, Asermily helped spread awareness of climate change. The fair had activities, exhibits and speeches, including a presentation by Richard Wolfson, Benjamin F. Wissler Physics Professor at the College. The talk aimed to educate the public about global warming and what locals could do to help. Soon after the fair, the select board passed a resolution to both reduce and measure greenhouse gases. It completed a carbon measurement in 2002, and created the Middlebury Climate Action Plan. Asermily, who had remained involved throughout the process, was invited to join the board as the energy coordinator, as she was essentially already functioning in that capacity.
Yet Asermily did not always plan to do this. Irked by the lack of information about Watergate, she went to St. Bonaventure University with the intention of becoming an investigative journalist. After graduating with degrees in Political Science and Economics, she wound up teaching social studies.
“I entered teaching without real adequate preparation,” said Asermily. “I had the right idea but I burned myself out pretty fast.”
She then spent ten years working at Prentice Hall, an educational publishing company, before returning to the teaching world. She taught at Fairhaven High School, Middlebury Union High School and Otter Valley High School.
Though her career has taken her in different directions, Asermily asserts that there has always been a consistent line in her work.
“The common thread is making sure people have information that they need,” said Asermily. “I’m really very passionate about making sure people are aware of [climate change] and can mitigate it.”
Asermily is optimistic about the future, but she is still frustrated by the pace of change. She is not sure that the town will meet its goal for 2012, suggesting that it is possible they will not have achieved an actual reduction, but will have kept carbon levels the same.
Despite these possibilities, Asermily remains motivated. Raised as a Franciscan Catholic, Asermily says there is a strong spiritual underpinning that drives her.
“Reverence for nature inspires it all,” said Asermily. “There is a deep commitment for wanting to protect creation that motivates me to stay in action.”
(05/06/10 9:30pm)
It was James S. Davis ’66 and his wife, Anne, who in 2007 kicked off Middlebury’s $500 million capital campaign with an anonymous donation of $50 million. It was the Davis family that — for the past five years running — anonymously matched every alumni pledge to the College, dollar for dollar. And it was the Davis family that supported the Main Library’s construction when the dot-com bust put the project in jeopardy.
Now, the library that Jim Davis helped build will bear his family’s name.
At an unveiling ceremony today, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz introduced Davis as the anonymous donor behind some of the most sweeping changes to have affected the College in recent history. Speaking at the newly named Davis Family Library, Liebowitz recognized Jim and Anne Davis, as well as their son, Chris Davis ’08, and their daughter Kassia for their longtime dedication to service and generosity to the College.
"In their own lives,” said Liebowitz, “they have consistently demonstrated the creativity, innovation, pursuit of knowledge and commitment to excellence that are at the core of a liberal arts education.”
Davis is the chairman of New Balance, the Boston-based athletic shoe company with annual revenues in excess of $1.5 billion. At the time Davis bought the company in 1972 for a $10,000 down payment, New Balance was making 30 pairs of shoes a day with six employees. Today, it operates in 13 countries around the globe and is among the five largest companies in the athletic footwear industry. But what sets New Balance apart from its competitors are the values that support the company, administration officials said in interviews Tuesday.
“He built this company in a unique way,” said Mike Schoenfeld, vice president for College Advancement. “It was all about family.”
After nearly 40 years, New Balance is still privately held.
Davis’ loyalty to family and community has consistently included Middlebury. Since graduating, Davis has donated over $70 million to the College. He has also spent 15 years as a member of the Board of Trustees, and considerable time as a behind-the-scenes advisor to Liebowitz and to President Emeritus of the College John M. McCardell, Jr.
With his $50 million starting pledge to the Middlebury Initiative, Davis helped establish a financial aid fund that slashed the loan burden for all students receiving assistance from the College.
“The first thing we did with that money,” said Schoenfeld, “was cut everybody’s loans from $4,000 a year down to either one-, two- or three thousand dollars, depending on your income.”
Through a tip from a college classmate, Davis introduced Middlebury to the Monterey Institute for International Studies (MIIS) — paving the way for an acquisition that is to become increasingly important as Old Chapel leans more heavily in the future on its satellite operations for income. The College is expected to take full ownership of MIIS this summer, when the California-based institution formally becomes “a graduate school of Middlebury College.”
The Monterey Institute offers a wide range of language and translation training programs, as well as Master’s degrees in international environmental policy and nonproliferation and terrorism studies. Davis became a member of the Board of Trustees at MIIS after the Middlebury-Monterey partnership was signed in 2005. Liebowitz and Schoenfeld credit Davis with making the agreement possible at all.
“His philanthropy has touched every single piece of Middlebury College for the last 30 years,” said Schoenfeld. “It’s unbelievable.”
Davis proved equally instrumental in the construction of the Main Library, which opened to students in July 2004 after nearly a decade of planning and building. The idea for a new library came about amid discussions over the future of nearby Starr Library — a hundred-year-old structure that, according to C.A. Johnson Professor of Art Glenn Andres, students avoided at all costs.
“Starr Library had 18 levels, and an inscrutable floor plan, and could never be made handicapped-accessible,” said Andres. “You couldn’t run technology there. You couldn’t run proper climate control through there. It was hopeless.”
A stone’s throw away, a science building stood in the Davis Library’s current position. But instead of drawing the eye to the sweeping lawns that sit beside South Main Street today, Liebowitz said, the edifice did little more than cut the College off from the town.
Calling the science building “obtrusive,” “a disaster” and likening it to the Berlin Wall, Liebowitz said the trustees ultimately voted to demolish the offending sight and construct a library in its place. Though some trustees questioned the need for a library in the digital age, Davis argued consistently and forcefully for the project as “the right thing to do” — even when the burst of the dot-com bubble at the turn of the century threatened to kill it off.
When the building finally opened its doors, Liebowitz stopped by one day on his way home from work.
“I talked to some of the language school students — I was only able to talk to the Russian students because of the language pledge — and they loved the space,” said Liebowitz. “They’d been there for 10 days, and they were there every night. It was more crowded in that library that summer than I’d ever seen.”
Nearly six years later, the Davis Library still fills up every night. Mike Roy, dean of Library and Information Services at the College, anticipates that the institutional mission of the library will only become more important as scholarship migrates to the Web.
“Much of a liberal arts education has to do with learning how to use information, evaluate information, present it in various formats and use it ethically,” said Roy. “And so we’re always thinking about what role the library can play in developing those sorts of capabilities.
“As more and more stuff becomes available digitally,” Roy added, “and people begin to prefer the digital, how do we have to change our habits in order to meet the needs of our community?”
Roy’s strategic foresight follows in the Davis family tradition. In his remarks, Liebowitz praised Davis for encouraging Middlebury to become a leader among its peers.
“He has always pushed the College to think big and to be alert to new opportunities,” said Liebowitz. “His goal has been to make Middlebury stronger by, in his words, ‘balancing the College’s traditional but unique heritage with a continuing enhancement of the Middlebury experience, as we prepare our students for leadership in a rapidly changing, more complex world.’"
For a photo gallery of the event, click here.
(05/06/10 4:00am)
This summer, students plan to embark on myriad adventures across the globe, from London to Nevada, Florida to Israel. The Campus talks to students about their upcoming plans.
Josh Johnson ‘13
Nevada Research Expedition
“Geology rocks,” Josh Johnson ’13 quipped when asked about his plans for the coming months. This summer, the prospective geology major will be joining Professor Jeff Munroe on a two-week research expedition to northeastern Nevada. The trip, led by Munroe and Dr. Ben Laabs, geology professor at SUNY Geneseo, will have students from both schools backpacking through the Ruby and East Humboldt Mountains.
“They’re trying to develop climate change records from the region, looking at sediment cores of high-elevation lakes,” Johnson said.
This is the second year into the professors’ three-year project. With the help of National Science Foundation funding and a team of pack mules, the researchers will be drilling cores and taking sledgehammers to glacier boulders in an effort to collect samples for dating.
As one of just two Middlebury first-years taking part in the project this year, the Washington D.C. native is “super excited” about this opportunity.
“It’s going to be the most exciting part of my summer,” Johnson said.
Maddie Niemi ‘11
London Hedge Fund
Full immersion, it seems, is not a technique reserved solely for language majors. Maddie Niemi ’11 will shortly be crossing the Atlantic and diving headfirst into the business world.
Over the course of eight weeks, Niemi will be working on two major projects for a London-based hedge fund. The first entails researching the legal and economic implications of opening a branch of the company in Turkey. The second involves looking into Middle East- and Southeast Asia-based companies that may be good investment options.
“I’m at a place now where I’m considering a law degree, a business degree or a Ph.D. in economics,” she said. “This might give me insight into all of them.”
Though nervous about being on her own and possibly the company’s only intern, she looks forward to exploring a new city and learning about business practices around the world. After spending last summer doing legal research for her advisor at Middlebury, she is especially interested in the tax and business laws of the regions.
Having joined a firm that rarely takes interns in an already-sparse market, Niemi feels quite lucky. “I’m really happy to have this job,” she said.
Santiago Zindel ‘13
Palm Beach Zoo
After a year in Middlebury, where a glimpse of a deer is a respectable dose of wildlife, Santiago Zindel ’13 has his sights set on some slightly more exotic companions. Zindel, originally from Mexico City but currently residing in Palm Beach, Florida, will be working as an intern at the Palm Beach Zoo this summer.
Zindel is one of many college students participating in the internship program offered by the zoo. The program is divided into four areas of concentration: avian care, primate care, carnivore care and behavioral training. While interns in the first three groups will have feeding and cleaning duties for specific types of animals, Zindel will be shadowing trainers of a wide variety of species.
“I’m planning on a bio major, so I was looking for an internship to do with animals,” he said.
Zindel took a “backstage tour” of the zoo over Feb break where he was able to get a closer look at the training and care of the animals. He was especially impressed by the zoo’s humane approach to the animals’ monthly check-ups.
“Most zoos just tranquilize them, but with Palm Beach’s policy, they train the animals for the least intervention possible,” he said. For example, tigers are trained to keep their mouths open and put their paws up against a fence for examination.
After sending in his application earlier this spring, Zindel was interviewed by phone and selected for the internship. Though he has not settled on a career path just yet, he looks forward to beginning his foray into the study of animal behavior.
Jared Smith ‘13
Birthright Israel
For Jared Smith ’13, a safe and all-expenses-paid trip to a land relevant to both his own roots and current world issues sounded like an excellent summer plan.
Smith is one of seven members of Middlebury Hillel who will be traveling with Birthright Israel this summer. The students will embark on a 10-day journey with an itinerary that includes rafting down the Jordan River, a seminar on Arab-Israeli relations, exploring Jerusalem, camel riding and much more.
Birthright is funded by donations from philanthropists and Jewish communities worldwide in an effort to give young adults a chance to learn more about their heritage and strengthen the international community. Eligible participants are Jewish, between the ages of 18 and 26 and have not studied or lived in Israel after the age of 12.
For Smith, the application process alone, though not all too difficult, was eye-opening. “I think the hardest part was the statement of intent,” he said. “It wasn’t really until I got to that part of the application that I really had to think of why I wanted to do it.”
Though the prospect of free travel was alluring in itself, he was mostly drawn to the trip’s personal value.
“The biggest part for me is getting to experience a culture that would otherwise be difficult to experience, especially for safety reasons,” he said.
Dan Murphy ‘11
Sheperd Poverty Alliance Internship in Atlanta
Dan Murphy ’11 began crafting his summer plans when a campus-wide email from the Alliance from Civic Engagement (ACE) office caught his attention earlier this year. The message mentioned internships offered by the Shepherd Poverty Alliance, based at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.
“The alliance is a group of colleges that gets together to promote poverty curricula in colleges, studying poverty in America and promoting anti-poverty work,” he said. “It sounded like something that I was really interested in — community mental health and psychosocial well-being in low-income families.”
After a rigorous application process requiring a resumé, transcript, multiple recommendations and an interview, Murphy was chosen to fill one of two available positions. He will be working for Families First, a social services organization in Atlanta, Georgia. His work will consist of “promoting community integration” for primarily low-income families in the area. By making house visits and working on collaborative projects such as a community garden, he hopes to make a difference in these families’ lives.
“We’ll be determining what they need and how we can help,” he said.
Murphy is also eager to live independently for a change, as he and three other interns will be living in an apartment at Georgia Tech.
“Hopefully I’ll make some new friends and connections,” he said, “and I’ll be in charge of my own food.”
(04/29/10 4:00am)
On April 23, the Robert A. Jones ’59 Conference room hosted presentations by the fall 2009 Sustainable Study Abroad Grant recipients.
As the Dean of International Programs Jeff Cason explained, the Sustainable Study Abroad Grants began in the spring of 2008 as part of a cooperative effort between the Office of International Programs and the Office of Environmental Affairs. These grants of up to $500 awarded by International Programs and Off-Campus Study give students the opportunity to pursue research projects related to the environment and sustainability while they’re studying abroad. Ten grants were given out this year, showing that this is becoming an increasingly popular program.
Students interested in applying for the grant are encouraged to contact the Office of International Programs and Off Campus Study for more information. Former recipients had a few words of advice about the application process:
“My advice for students applying to these grants would be to not shy away from applying, even if the project is still developing,” said Jonas Schoenefeld ‘11. “There was no way I could have foreseen or planned everything I did in the fall of 2009, but the grant was flexible enough to accommodate my needs.”
Shannon Engleman ’11 offered that “it is important to apply for the grant if you think that you will want to contribute to your community while abroad in a sustainable way.”
Kaitlynn Saldanha: “Sustainable Development in Patagonia, Argentina”
Middlebury School in Argentina
Saldanha ’11 focused her project on a key sustainability dilemma faced by developing nations in today’s increasingly globalized world: should development come at the cost of environmental concerns, or should the environment take priority over development? As a developing nation with an emerging economy, Argentina faces this challenge constantly. Argentina’s environmental problems stem from the mismanagement of resources, mainly land, in Patagonia. Despite conservation efforts, Patagonia is unprotected virgin land prone to resource and land spoilers.
“During my time in Patagonia, I spent days at a time traveling on buses, and I was able to physically grasp the geographical scale of the development projects and extent to which these projects have altered the landscape,” said Saldanha. She spoke about how her travels in Patagonia and her interactions with the people there had lit a new perspective. “Arriving there, I had the vast perspective that most of the new development projects were unsustainable. After walking the roads and talking to people at the estates, I realized that some projects are bringing prospects and purpose to this desolate land.”
However, Saldanha continued to question whether or not the indigenous Mapuche people needed this economic incentive.
“Do these people need these jobs and these changes in their lifestyle imposed by the development projects? This remains to be determined, but the research that my Sustainable Study Abroad Grant funded prompted me to reflect on the purpose that these projects are bringing to the land.”
Shannon Engelman: “Land of Hidden Treasure: A Vegetation Study of Jazani’s Coral Rag Forest”
SIT Tanzania
Engelman originally planned to apply her grant towards research in a malaria clinic in Stone Town, but after spending time in Zanzibar, she realized that her grant would be better spent in helping Jozani Forest. Zanzibar is a small island off the coast of Tanzania, and the Jozani Forest is a national park and a “global biodiversity hotspot.” The biodiversity has been threatened by development in the area, and only 10 percent of the original forest remains. Zanzibar is increasingly becoming a tourist island, causing controversy as to the sustainability of these practices. The goals of Engelman’s project involved a vegetation study, tourist surveys and tourist products, like a brochure and a trail map. The brochures offered a history of the Jozani forest as well as information about conservation initiatives and environmental education. Engelman helped establish a nature trail with a path of least cutting and had trail signs made to encourage tour guides to stick to these pre-existing trails and to educate tourists about the vegetation of the forest.
“The Sustainable Study Abroad Grant enabled those of us with interests in conservation to help the local community, wherever we were,” said Engleman. “It is important for other students to see that it is possible to push for sustainability, even in completely foreign cultures.”
Engelman also felt that studying abroad broaden her perspective on environmental issues. “At Middlebury, environmental issues are often the subject of conferences, workshops, lectures, etc., and I would say that Middlebury strives to be as eco-friendly as possible. But while abroad, it was easy to see that environmental issues do not always receive as much attention as they should. Hopefully students will continue to take advantage of the grant and bring a bit of sustainable interest wherever they travel.”
Jonas Schoenefeld: “Iniciativa ‘Cooperacion Inter-Universitaria de la Region Metropolitana de Santiago Campus Sustentables en el context de la Historia Ambiental de Chile” (Sustainable University Initiative Chile)
Middlebury School in Chile
While studying abroad at the Middle School in Latin America, Chile, Schoenefeld used his Sustainable Study Abroad Grant to work on the Sustainability University Initiative. This initiative brings together university representatives, government officials and outside entities such as Middlebury College and other groups in order to write an inter-university agreement to further the efforts to make the campus more sustainable. Five big universities in the Santiago region are participating in this initiative, including The University of Chile, one of the most prestigious universities in Chile and Latin America.
Schoenefeld traveled around Chile to attend about 70 meetings and to give presentations on sustainability practices at Middlebury College. He spoke about the power plant, the finances and economics of being sustainable and projects in which students, faculty and staff were all involved.
“I tried to give a picture of how projects can work here and really show that these projects are integrated, that it’s not just the administration that is working towards sustainability, but other entities too,” said Schoenefeld. “I wanted to present these projects as being accessible to encourage student participation in the initiatives at Chilean universities.” Schoenefeld also worked with 350.org, an international campaign dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate change crisis.
Schoenefeld was grateful for the support of the International Programs and Off Campus Study Office and as well for as the opportunity to present during this International Studies Colloquium. “I think it is important to share these projects with Middlebury students to show the incredible possibilities and resources we have to do these projects.”
(04/29/10 4:00am)
Gates urges Harvard students to give back
Renowned Harvard dropout, Bill Gates returned to the university on Wednesday to encourage students to seek philanthropic jobs. In his address to a packed audience, Gates stressed the importance of youth’s involvement in social issues such as alleviating poverty and improving the standards of education and global health. He believes that by increasing research, the problems of education and health can be solved.
Gates believes that a lot of bright talent is engaged in work “that is focused on the specific needs of the rich.” He did not dissuade students from pursuing careers that offer high remuneration but instead, he focused on the current generation’s ability to positively impact and solve current world problems, the need of the hour.
Gates will be touring four more college campuses in California, Chicago and Boston. He said that he felt inspired to urge students to direct their energy to more noble causes.
— The Harvard Crimson
Environmental activist addresses Northwestern
Environmental activist Jean-Michel Cousteau addressed Northwestern University students and Evanston community members on Thursday night about the importance of ocean conservation. The event was organized by the Initiative for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern on Earth Day as part of the University’s One Book One Northwestern Project.
Cousteau emphasized the importance of the oceans. He said that in spite of increased awareness of the environment and technological developments, humans are still harming the oceans. Increased levels of carbon dioxide emissions and changes in the climate have caused the oceans to acidify. Apart from that, problems such as over-fishing, coastal habitat destruction and chemical dumping are impacting the ecosystem and humans.
Cousteau proposed that sustainable herbivore-fish-and-plant farming, protecting coastal areas such as the mangroves, and regulating the chemicals released into the ocean can solve each of these problems.
— The Daily Northwestern
Costa Rican president visits Duke for eco-talk
Former Costa Rican president, José María Figueres, supported environmental sustainability over economic growth, in a speech on ‘Democracy and Environmental Sustainability’ at Duke University on Thursday. The university’s Latino Student Association, Mi Gente, organized the talk as part of its first United College Conference.
Figueres said that the current recession illustrated that government policy, and not the economic markets, would play a key role in shaping Latin America’s development as an eco-friendly economy.
He believes that Latin America has great development opportunities if it discontinues its policies of “banking on the growth of other countries” and making profits from exporting to carbon-dependent countries. Instead, Latin America should directly jump to using sustainable technology in light of global environmental problems and limited resources.
Figueres asserted that Latin America could be “constructive and leapfrog directly into the global economy.”
— The Chronicle of Higher Education
(04/15/10 4:00am)
Addison County Transit Resources (ACTR) expanded service in the county by 40 percent on March 8, and as a result, ridership has significantly increased. In March alone, transit use grew by 14 percent on the Middlebury Shuttle, 25 percent on the Tri-Town Shuttle and 55 percent on the Saturday LINK to Burlington. College student use of the Saturday LINK alone increased by 87 percent, according to the Executive Director of ACTR Jim Moulton.
The ACTR increased its services from Middlebury to Burlington on Saturdays from two to four trips. Among other changes to the ACTR schedule, the bus now runs direct services to Bristol and Vergennes.
Moulton and Nadine Barnicle, community relations manager of ACTR, made the changes in early March and have had the month to make small tweaks to the schedule before heavily advertising.
“We did a soft start to make sure we were getting the schedule right,” Barnicle said.
Now, the ACTR has started to run a widespread promotional campaign, advertising on the radio and in various newspapers. The company also printed 7,500 brochures, 2,000 of which went to Middlebury students in their mailboxes.
“It’s 40 percent more service, so we want 40 percent more riders,” Barnicle said.
Barnicle related the response from the community to the shape of a bell curve. She noted that some people who have called have loved the changes and some have complained, but most have comfortably adjusted to the new schedule and routes. These responses indicate to ACTR administrators that the new schedule will stick.
“I’m optimistic there won’t be major changes,” Barnicle said.
ACTR will publish an updated schedule with more exact arrival and departure times in October when they have significant data, collected over the course of many months.
However, with the short-term review, Moulton and Barnicle are pleased with how business has been affected. Moulton attributed part of the jump in ridership to changing gas prices.
“Fuel prices have been going up slowly but steadily over the past few weeks,” Moulton said. “A rise which always causes commuters to consider using public transportation.”
Additionally, Barnicle is optimistic that more and more people will take the bus because of climate issues.
“We’re really part of the solution to climate change,” Barnicle said. “Transportation is a part of the energy conundrum.”
She noted that 46 percent of Vermont’s carbon emissions come from transportation, a percentage that can be easily decreased.
Barnicle observed that in a crowded room of Vermonters, two- thirds of those in the room would likely raise their hand when asked who used alternative fuels and ate organically. However, she speculated, if you asked the same room, “how many people take public transportation”, only five or six hands might go up.
“They’re making other important lifestyle choices,” Barnicle said of Vermonters. “We have to make a public transportation system accessible to them.”
In keeping with this mission, ACTR will be one of the sponsors of the “Way to Go Commuter Challenge” this year. During the week of May 17-21, the “Way to Go” challenge will encourage people to use forms of transportation other than their car
.
“The hardest part is to take our first step to change our behavior,” Barnicle said. “It’s about making people look around and say, ‘wow, there are ways to get somewhere other than my car.’”
As Middlbury residents seek changes in their transportation routine, Barnicle mentioned that the College has also been supportive of ACTR and she encouraged students as well as staff to use the bus.
“It can be a pleasant experience.” Barnicle said. “It helps college students to get around and is great for commuters.”
(04/15/10 3:59am)
Last Sunday afternoon, the five Democratic candidates for governor of Vermont gathered in Dana Auditorium to discuss and debate a variety of policy issues, including renewable energy, healthcare, education, agriculture and economic development. Professor Emeritus of Political Science Eric Davis acted as moderator for the forum, which was jointly organized by the Middlebury College Democrats and the Addison County Democrats.
The five candidates are Susan Bartlett, state senator from Lamoille County from 1992 to the present; Matt Dunne, manager of Community Affairs at Google and former state legislator; Deb Markowitz, secretary of state since 1998; Doug Racine, current senator and former lieutenant governor from 1997-2003; and Peter Shumlin, president pro tempore of the Vermont Senate and who spearheaded the gay marriage act last year.
Much of the debate was centered on their individual capabilities to beat Brian Dubie, the Republican hopeful. Rasmussen polls in March showed notable leads by Dubie over each individual Democratic candidate in head-to-head races for governor. Deb Markowitz is currently faring the best against the current lieutenant governor in polls, earning 39 percent of the votes to Dubie’s 46 percent.
Davis launched the debate by asking about the ticket-splitters who voted Democratic on a federal level but who voted for current Republican governor Jim Douglas.
“Why do you believe Douglas won those elections,” asked Davis, “and what is your strategy for keeping the ticket-splitting voters in the Democratic party in this year’s elections?”
After the debate, Davis said that it was still early in the electoral process to see a front-runner but emphasized that whichever candidate could keep “the people who voted for Leahy and Welsh in the Democratic column [will] win.”
Renewable energy was an issue of great concern with the current controversy surrounding Vermont Yankee, a nuclear power plant that will likely be decommissioned in 2012 after repeated leaks of potentially hazardous materials and false statements under oath by company executives. The Senate has voted 26-4 to decommission the power plant, but the House is still awaiting a decision.
Middlebury students, mostly from the Sunday Night Group, had started the Race to Replace campaign to encourage Montpelier to replace Vermont Yankee with 100 percent clean energy if it closes in 2012. The plant in southern Vermont supplies the state with as much as a third of its electricity annually.
Ben Wessel ’11.5 of the Race to Replace group represented the organizing Middlebury College Democrats in the debate. He said that students around the state “view this election as a race to replace Vermont Yankee” and asked candidates, “What will you be doing [to] make sure that we replace that one-third of the state’s electricity with carbon-free, affordable electricity?”
Most of the debaters were hesitant about making promises to immediately replace Vermont Yankee with renewable energy, though they agreed on a gradual transition to clean energy with power coming from HydroQuebec in the short-term.
Matt Dunne stood out as the firmest supporter of renewable energy, communicating a plan for “significant industrial level biomass … and two 50 to 75 megawatt biomass [woodchip] plants.” He also proposed utilizing Vermont’s AAA bond rating to invest in green technology businesses in Vermont.
Deb Markowitz tackled the problem from another angle, speaking about the loss of about six hundred jobs that would come with the decommissioning of the nuclear power plant and called “for the creation of a green zone in southern Vermont for incubator businesses, for green energy and energy efficiency.”
After the forum, Wessel spoke to his concerns that the candidates were not doing enough to push the renewable energy movement forward. “I was a little disappointed with many of the candidates’ ‘no-can-do’ attitude, suggesting that we would need to rely on natural gas for baseload power in the near future. I know that it’s a big, scary thing to try and push for 100 percent renewable electricity for the state, but I think Vermont can do it in an affordable way, and I’d push all the candidates to look into it.”
The organizers also presented an audience question inquiring about the feasibility of a single-payer healthcare system for the state of Vermont.
Susan Bartlett replied, “Under the federal legislation as it passed, they say that no state can ask for a waiver for single-payer until 2017.”
However, Bartlett remains optimistic that the additional money set aside by Washington would help Vermont find solutions for lower reimbursements and further establish Vermont’s reputation as a progressive and green state.
“When we’re ready to do the final flip to single payer — that, I think, will be well before 2017 — that’s when as governor we go to Washington and say, ‘Okay, we’re ready to go [to single-payer].”
The forum ended with closing statements from each candidate, and they all took the time to talk about jobs and economic development in Vermont, based on future jobs in “renewable energy, biotech and niche tourism.”
Markowitz said, “I’m going to be focusing on existing businesses first, making sure they have the infrastructure to succeed and making sure they have the money to succeed.”
After the forum, candidates were approached on future partnerships between the colleges of Vermont and the statehouse in Montpelier. Peter Shumlin went so far as to say Vermont’s future was connected to cooperation with Middlebury College. “I’m convinced that our jobs future is dependent on a partnership with Middlebury and our higher education institutions that prepare our students for the jobs of the 21st century that result from our moving away from our addiction to oil.”
Matt Dunne was equally excited about getting students at Middlebury and other schools to participate in Vermont politics, citing his initiative in starting a policy research program at UVM and Dartmouth “where undergrads were directly involved in creating research for legislature on demand … I was elected straight out of college and will never forget that opportunity to get involved at that level.”
Shumlin also mentioned his efforts to encourage colleges in Vermont to offer degrees in environmentally related topics. “I’ve approached the president of UVM to be the first university in the country to offer a degree in climate change.”
Doug Racine urged students to start by “getting involved in the local and regional level” and said he “would love to invite students to talk to them about what they’re learning at the local level.”
Bartlett and Markowitz were not available after the debate for comment.
Will Bellaimey ’10.5, co-president of the Middlebury College Democrats, praised Matt Dunne for his energy and understanding of the issues.
“He has done the best job of connecting with students, and I’ve talked to many students who walked out of the debate ready to vote for him … [He] speaks with the mix of energy, idealism and pragmatism that we of the Obama generation look for in a politician … His plan to replace Vermont Yankee with 100 percent renewable energy is the most complete and most ambitious of any of the candidates and that alone will win him the loyalty of many activists on campus.”
Bellaimey also encouraged students on campus to get involved with the elections, saying that “most Middlebury students love Vermont and care about its future. Many of us would consider living here after graduation if there were jobs and opportunities available. The next governor will be key in determining that future. Vermont is a great state to get involved in politics, because it’s such a small community that you really can make a difference.”
(04/08/10 3:59am)
Middlebury’s Febs do all sorts of wild and wonderful things during their semester before college, so it is impressive if not surprising that Morgan Boyles ’12.5 decided to hike through the Himalayas with his father on a search for ancient documents of the Bon religion.
The Middlebury Mountain Club (MMC) had screened the film, entitled “Secrets of Shangri-La: Quest for Sacred Caves” on March 11. Despite being scheduled in the middle of midterms, the event drew a sizable mixed audience of climbing enthusiasts, religion studies majors, history buffs and other curious students.
Bon is the oldest spiritual Tibetan tradition, and has been losing influence among the Tibetan people since the rise of Buddhism in the 7th century. Boyles was a climber and assistant cameraman for the trip, which was made into a film documenting the expedition.
The expedition took place in Mustang, Nepal in the fall of 2008. The goal of the trip was to investigate previously inaccessible caves to find artifacts, texts and Buddhist and Bon cave murals, in order to paint a clearer picture of the region’s past. Boyles’ father, Edgar Boyles, was the director of photography and main cinematographer on the trip. Christian Woodard ’11, current president of the MMC, succinctly summed up what might have been a typical reaction to the film.
“Morgan’s experience there sometimes makes me wish that I had a videographer for a father,” said Woodard.
Boyles, an Environmental Studies-non-fiction major, quipped, “Basically, I want to major in John Elder.”
On the expedition he was able to combine two of his passions, climbing and film, quite literally, as his job was to film the climb as well as film in the caves where the larger cameras could not be taken.
On the expedition, the climbers often had to resort to dangerous “choss” climbing — that is, climbing loose or rotten rock — to reach these caves. Whether making the exciting discovery of a Bon library dating from the mid-15th century or finding untouched human remains, the journey was filled with adventure.
In the film, the story of the climbers is interspersed with Bon legends and commentary on the changing cultural and political environment of the remote Mustang region, which Boyles described as “frozen in time because of its poverty.” Boyles does not agree with the title of the film, explaining, “A subsistence-farming region losing its cultural identity to globalization and its crops to climate change in a country where half of the population lives on less than $1.25 is not a Shangri-La.”
The film was followed by a slideshow presentation by Boyle of photographs from his trip. Among the photographs of breathtaking panoramas and colorful cave-paintings were scattered snapshots that gave the audience a glimpse into the intimate lives of the vibrant people of the region, as well as into their changing lifestyle.
“Crocs are a real favorite among the old, traditional ladies,” Boyles joked. He went on to discuss the Westernization of the region, coupled with overgrazing and deforestation, as the “[erosion] of culture and landscape.”
One of his last pictures depicted an old woman in a traditional outfit standing at the threshold of a house as a youth stands outside it dressed in Western clothes. The two are gazing in opposite directions in a poignant symbolization of the generation gap being experienced in Mustang.
Generation gaps exist everywhere, but can be bridged with shared time and experiences. Whilst Boyles said that rappelling into caves where no one had been for hundreds of years and filming the discovery of ancient artifacts was a “beyond-thrilling and culturally surreal experience,” he took care to add that “the best part of the trip was being able spend time working and traveling with my father, who is my biggest hero.”
Edgar Boyles is currently in Chile working on an anti-dam project on the Rio Baker in Patagonia, but continues to influence his son, who plans to use this anti-dam project in a nonfiction essay he is currently working on that compares rivers to narratives.
Boyles is also allegedly in negotiation with MMC treasurer Pier LaFarge ’10.5 to organize a fully funded spring break trip to Nepal next year, which we hope will become a reality so that other students can experience the wonder of the region firsthand.
