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(09/30/21 9:56am)
Bill McKibben, Schumann distinguished scholar at Middlebury, renowned environmentalist and co-founder of 350.org — the first global climate campaign of its kind — was joined by his 350.org co-founders to kick off this year’s Clifford Symposium.
The Clifford Symposium occurs each year at the beginning of the fall semester, bringing scholars, faculty and students together around a relevant theme. It is named for former Professor of History Emeritus Nicholas R. Clifford, who taught at the college from 1966 to 1993.
This year’s symposium, titled “Radical Implications: Facing a Planetary Emergency,” featured talks from experts, faculty and students that confronted questions about how to navigate a world actively undergoing a climate crisis.
The event featured several keynote speakers, including adrienne maree brown, whose works, such as “Pleasure Activism: the politics of feeling good” and “We Will Not Cancel Us,” ask questions about transformative justice, using emotional empowerment as an organizing principle and radical imagination about the future.
Sarah Jacquette Ray, another keynote speaker, spoke about climate anxiety and other powerful emotions sparked by climate change — why people feel them, how to overcome them and what can be done to empower oneself.
Other keynote speakers included Jane McAlevey, Mary Annaïse Heglar and Julian Brave NoiseCat. Faculty and students also presented on the impact of the climate crisis on the academic experience.
Giving the first talk of the symposium, Bill McKibben and other 350.org founders, including May Boeve ’06, Jeremy Osborn ’06, Phil Aroneanu ’06, Kelly Blynn ’07, Jon Warnow ’06, Will Bates ’06 and Jamie Henn ’07, gave advice on how to balance activism and being a college student.
They reminisced about the early days of the organization — before climate justice was a central focus at Middlebury or considered an issue deserving of international attention. The project originated from Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies Jon Isham’s J-Term course about the threat of the climate crisis.
Today, climate activism is a robust part of the Middlebury community, with student organizations like the Sunday Night Environmental Group (SNEG) and a Sunrise chapter boasting large memberships, among numerous other student environmental groups.
The panel suggested that a reassessment of priorities might be in order for Middlebury students to address the climate crisis. According to the founders, Middlebury provides students with incredible resources, but the potential for change lies in how the students choose to leverage those resources and the prestige of a Middlebury degree.
“Stay in school –– lower your GPA,” Osborn said.
Other student questions centered around making a life for oneself during an ongoing global crisis. McKibben and the other panelists described the fight for justice as unrelenting and the strength to persevere as collective rather than individual. For the 350.org founders, Middlebury is a place with unmatched opportunities for young people to build those necessary relationships.
Employment in climate-related fields — spanning from scientific research to media to politics — are numerous and more available to Middlebury alumni today than when the 350.org founders graduated, creating greater opportunities for young people to make fighting climate change a part of their futures.
“[Today,] the climate movement is a lot larger, it’s a lot more diverse, and it pays a lot better than it used to,” said Aroneanu.
Bill McKibben and the 350.org founders expressed to the audience that there are no limits in what the community can accomplish as Middlebury students. They urged students to look to opportunities like J-Term to provide them with the necessary time and focus for getting involved in climate activism. McKibben also urged students to look outside of Middlebury.
Most talks are available as recordings to view on the Clifford Symposium website.
(09/23/21 10:00am)
Welcome to the first installment of Spin Doctor, a biweekly dose of music reviews and recommendations by Yardena Carmi ’23.
Our current culture seems to be defined by an ever-increasing ability to hyperfixate and obsess. If there is an actor or athlete you like, their life story is immediately accessible through Wikipedia and social media. Your crush from class is probably also on Instagram, where you can analyze their public life — where they go, who they see, their favorite snacks — at your leisure.
What does it mean when we start using the same platforms and tools to study our idols as we do to interact with our friends? In 1956, psychologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl coined the term “parasocial relationship” to describe one-sided friendships forming between everyday people and the daytime TV hosts they had begun to identify with from afar.
Six decades later, we have fandoms and cultures that exist entirely online, through which one’s desire and capacity to invest themselves in a stranger becomes something close to a way of life.
In “Back of My Hand,” the first track on the album “Doomin’ Sun” from new indie group “Bachelor,” a celebrity crush becomes real life as the narrator hangs uneasily in a space somewhere between girlfriend and fan, love and codependency, unsure if she wants to actually date her hero or just wishes she could be her. The speaker begins to negate herself — holding back emotions, questioning her own thoughts, skipping meals and compromising herself in an attempt to better suit her new partner.
Obsessive love is a core theme for Bachelor, a collaboration between two already well-established indie rockers, Palehound and Jay Som. According to the duo, they drew inspiration for their name from the hit reality dating show franchise. But in “Doomin’ Sun,” love isn’t all flowers and chocolate. Instead, it becomes blood, spiders, melted ice cream and lost sleep as the album’s loose narrative explores a romance that doesn’t live up to the infatuation that preceded it.
Palehound and Jay Som emerged around the same time in the indie scene but on opposite coasts. On their own, both artists have been making some of the most refreshing and earnest indie rock and pop released in the past five or so years. Now united as Bachelor, they marry their respective gifts into a unique, collaborative sound. The raw, grungy guitar riffs on songs such as “Sand Angel” and “Anything at All” are signature Palehound. The infectious vocal and synth melodies have Jay Som’s distinctive pop-y touch, buoying tracks — such as the aforementioned “Back of My Hand” — that are otherwise emotionally devastating.
Other songs, such as the riotous “Stay in the Car,” are lighter and more fun. The real-life friendship between the two musicians is a tangible element of the album’s sound (and can be seen in the colorful and campy music videos Bachelor has released). They even include sound bites of themselves goofing around in the studio. Having lived, however, through the part of the 2010s where it seemed like everyone and their mom (ahem, SZA) was putting voicemails in their music, nothing snaps me out of the zone harder than random dialogue tacked on to the end of a song. I could have done without these production easter eggs, cute as they are, popping up in key spots like the album’s halfway point, right after the icily beautiful mental breakdown of “Spin Out.”
Lyrics have always been a strength in the artists’ past work. Jay Som and Palehound both write with the directness of a journal entry. As Bachelor, the duo’s lyrics are mantra-like in their repetition and simplicity. Songs like “Went Out Without You” and “Aurora” have a meditative quality to their hushed refrains. At the same time, the writing on this album is an unflinching look at desire and power dynamics in a relationship between two women as it sours.
Full disclosure, I fell in love with this project from the moment I heard Bachelor’s hard-hitting first single (and stand out track on the full album) “Anything at All,” which combines terrifying lyrics with a driving guitar line and cathartic vocals, but not every song on the album is as effective. The album closer and title track “Doomin Sun,” for example, doesn’t quite hit home with its abrupt thematic pivot to climate change (somehow, one of the most cheerful songs on this album). Overall, however, Bachelor’s first LP is cohesive, both introspective and playful, and musically-compelling enough for heavy listening. It holds up not just as music, but also as satisfying storytelling and an exciting development in the indie music world.
(09/23/21 9:58am)
“How crazy would it be if a bee flew into your mouth while you were eating?” Charlie Reinkemeyer ’21.5 asked his friends over breakfast outside Proctor.
When Reinkemeyer stood up with a yelp and announced that he’d just been stung, his friends thought he was joking. But the wasp that had alighted on the piece of fruit he was eating, dodging his gnashing jaws to jab the soft flesh on the inside of his cheek, was deadly serious.
Reinkemeyer is one of the latest in a long line of the wasps’ victims. Each fall, returning students are greeted by swarms of the black and yellow bugs outside of the dining halls descending on anyone who dares to eat outside. The picnic tables buzz with students complaining about the insects’ presence, debating whether they are bees or wasps and speculating as to why the college isn’t doing more to deal with them.
The Campus reached out to Middlebury’s bug experts for answers.
The bugs that swarm the dining halls are primarily yellowjacket wasps, easily identifiable by their thin waist, which allows them to swing their abdomen forward and sting in front of their bodies as well as behind, an important defensive feature, according to Assistant Professor of Biology Greg Pask, who studies insect neurobiology.
Yellowjackets can sting multiple times, unlike bees. However, each sting comes with a high energy cost, so wasps tend to reserve their venom for defensive purposes. Grabbing or swatting yellowjackets are good ways to get stung — as is being unlucky enough to trap one between your skin and clothes, or in your mouth.
Yellowjackets are especially territorial when it comes to protecting their nests. They sense approaching threats both by vibrations and by smelling exhaled carbon dioxide. A careful person can approach a wasp nest and study it at close range without getting attacked, as long as they hold their breath.
Only female wasps have stingers, which are actually primarily egg-laying tubes through which they can inject venom when needed. The venom includes a pain-inducing neurotransmitter called acetylcholine that “activates pain neurons in the skin,” Pask said in an email to The Campus. A variety of other proteins cause the severe inflammation that follows.
Entomologist Justin Schmidt let himself be stung by more than 80 varieties of insects to rate them on a pain scale in his book “The Sting of the Wild.” He gave the yellowjacket sting a two out of four, the same as most bee varieties, and described it as producing an “instantaneous, hot, burning, complex pain” that “lasts unabated for about two minutes, after which it decreases gradually over the next couple of minutes, leaving us with a hot, red, enduring flare to remind us of the event in case our memory should fade.”
While yellowjacket wasps may bug Middlebury students, they are popular with local farmers. They prey on bugs like biting flies, caterpillars and other pests that plague crops and gardens. Though not to the same degree as bees, they do occasionally drink nectar and pollinate plants as well.
Worker wasps bring the protein back to their nests and feed it to the larvae. The larvae consume the insects’ flesh, digest it and secrete a sugary substance that the adult wasps then eat.
This time of year, when the summer is ending and the wasps’ natural food sources are diminishing, sweet treats from the dining hall are extra appealing. Yellowjacket wasps have a keen sense of smell, and their antennae are covered with powerful scent receptors similar to nostril hairs. Yellowjackets are social insects and will communicate the location of food to their nest-mates by transferring the odor cue to their antenna. Then they will search out the source of the odor together, which often brings them to the dining halls on warm days when hundreds of students bring their meals outside.
Pask said the wasp swarms on campus are likely to worsen for future generations of students. With climate change extending the summer season, the wasps will hang around longer and multiply even more fruitfully. If conditions are good, a queen can lay 50 eggs a day, and a mature nest can host anywhere between 2,000 to 4,000 wasps.
Facilities staff try to remove wasps when they are a nuisance, like the yellowjackets that populate the area outside the dining halls, but there’s not much they can do if they can’t find their nests. Yellowjackets can forage as far as a mile from their nests.
They are primarily ground nesters, and their colonies can often be found at the base of trees, under porches or even in cracks in the sidewalks. They also seek out spaces between walls, and college horticulturalist Tim Parsons said he removed one nest from between the two window panes of one unfortunate student’s dorm room.
Depending on the year, the landscape team might remove anywhere between 10 and 30 bee and wasp nests a week, often by suctioning them out with a shop vacuum. This year, though, they are struggling. Over-enrollment is stretching their already-limited resources even thinner.
The landscape team is severely understaffed. They’re missing one out of their standard roster of 14, and they were only able to hire one out of the normal five seasonal workers they bring on for the busy fall time. They are now examining options to contract out wasp removal to relieve the burden on the limited workers, according to Parsons.
Wasp season should end in the next few weeks, before the time of the first frost. Before they die, the male wasps — “flying sperm packets” with little use beyond reproduction, according to Pask — will mate with future queens. The fertilized females will fatten up to “hibernate” over the winter before leaving the nest to form their own colonies next spring.
In the meantime, Parsons said it's best to “leave them be, no pun intended,” and hope you don’t have Reinkemeyer’s extraordinary bad luck.
Since his unfortunate experience, Reinkemeyer has taken to eating his meals indoors. If the weather is particularly nice, he might be tempted to brave the wasps and eat outside. But he’ll be carefully inspecting any food he puts in his mouth from now on.
Correction: A previous version of this article contained the wrong credit for the drawing of the wasps. The artist is Pia Contreras.
(09/16/21 9:59am)
After a two-year hiatus, Senator Bernie Sanders returned to the annual Labor Day Rally on Middlebury’s Town Green last Monday, Sept. 6. The event also included speeches from Congressman Peter Welch, Bill McKibben, Dr. Deborah Richter, Iris Hsiang, and Jubilee McGill. The speakers highlighted the current challenges that Vermont faces, from labor shortages to rising healthcare costs.
Middlebury was the final stop on Monday for Sanders, who also held meetings in Springfield, Newport, St. Johnsbury, and Brattleboro earlier in the weekend.
“I didn’t know there were this many people in Middlebury,” Sanders joked as he took the stage.
Sanders spoke to a large crowd of community members, touching on climate change, Covid-19, housing issues, and childcare and education costs. The senator accordingly emphasized the current Democratic legislative agenda, as the party looks to pass a $3.5 trillion spending plan with razor-thin majorities in Congress.
“We have issue after issue after issue,” Sanders said. “We must look these problems in the eyes, and not only can we solve them, [but] we can move this country and our world to a much better place.”
Sanders spoke first on the American Rescue Plan, which was passed in March to address economic fallout from Covid-19. Sanders discussed the resulting decline in poverty and other points of progress, emphasizing the persistence of small businesses like those that line Middlebury’s downtown.
Sanders also addressed current work in Congress, including moving forward with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF) and other initiatives supported by President Biden.
Some of the other speakers at the rally addressed one of the issues closely tied to Sanders platform: climate change.
Bill McKibben, a distinguished scholar at Middlebury College, then praised Sen. Sanders and credited his 2016 presidential bid for awakening a progressive reckoning in the country.
Iris Hsiang, a youth member of Vermont’s climate council and high school student, delivered a speech that stressed the intersectionality within climate change issues and the need to combat those challenges individually in order to combat climate change as a whole.
(05/20/21 10:00am)
The Faculty and Staff section focuses on increasing hiring equity, training new and existing faculty and staff in DEI practices, and building community among new hires to increase retention. Many view it as an important first step in an ongoing process that requires much deeper and continual institutional change.
Of the 11 strategies included in the section, 10 have been completed or involve ongoing programs that are underway, although two programs have been temporarily put on hold because of the pandemic. Only one strategy, the term for which begins this year, is still in development.
HIRING
One of the major pillars of the section is hiring more BIPOC faculty and staff and those from other “historically underrepresented groups.”
The college has historically struggled to hire a more diverse staff because most are recruited from the overwhelmingly white communities surrounding Middlebury, according to Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández. Almost 93% of Addison County residents are white.
Resistance to diversifying the faculty body often comes from the perception of diversity and qualifications being opposing qualities, according to Associate Professor of Political Science Kemi Fuentes-George.
“You tend to see a lot of language about [how] what we need are the most qualified people, and that usually gets taken to be an argument against seeking diversity,” he said. “There's this kind of equation of, if you're orienting around a diversity hire, by definition, you're not seeking qualified people.”
Of the 329 current faculty members, 57, or 17%, identify as belonging to a minority ethnic or racial group, according to Dean of Faculty Sujata Moorti.
While there is a formal hiring freeze for faculty and staff, the college is filling limited positions that were planned before the pandemic or are needed on an urgent basis. Faculty and staff search committees now receive DEI training (Strategy #3 and #4), and job candidates are asked to include their own experience with inclusive practices in their application as a measure to assess their “multicultural competence” (Strategy #5).
New employee orientations now include workshops on diversity, equity and inclusion, though the college has not offered staff orientations — which normally happen periodically as opposed to the the once-a-year faculty orientation — during the hiring freeze (Strategy #6), according to Director of Education for Equity and Inclusion Renee Wells.
The college has also approved a staff position to help with partner inclusion, and Moorti is currently working with the Educational Affairs Committee to see if an institution-wide policy is possible (Strategy #2).
RETENTION
A second large part of the section is an attempt to improve conditions for faculty and staff from historically marginalized communities. As part of Strategy #11, the college has developed exit interview questions “related to campus climate… to identify and address barriers to retention.” Moorti hopes that, over time, these interviews can inform the administration on how to improve the climate for remaining faculty.
Faculty and staff say that some of the current barriers to retention are not feeling supported by the college and academia as a whole, the extra — often uncompensated — burden of advocating for students and not feeling a sense of belonging in the community. The plan addresses some of these areas, but critically does not include provisions for others.
Measures to support incoming faculty hires have been put on pause because of the pandemic. The OEIDI has not been able to host social networking opportunities for faculty from historically underrepresented communities (Strategy #10) or DEI workshops in departments expecting new hires (Strategy #8) but are looking forward to bringing those back next year.
The college has been able to expand mentoring opportunities for new and junior faculty from historically underrepresented groups. In addition to regular departmental mentoring, the college has purchased membership with the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (Strategy #9), which provides resources for development, training and mentorship. The college will also be expanding mentorship and development opportunities available through the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity this summer. Moorti hopes that junior faculty will be able to avail themselves of this resource for more support and networking opportunities.
Measures like these have been crucial for retaining current BIPOC faculty despite the struggles they face.
“One of the primary reasons that I stayed at Middlebury … was that I found my community,” Fuentes-George said. “I found people who were supportive and who mentored me, some of whom had tenure, some of whom didn't, some of whom were in my department, some of whom weren't, and it pretty clearly underlined to me how important those kinds of social networks can be.”
Still, these measures are designed primarily to build support for incoming faculty and staff members and do little to address the underlying conditions current faculty members face.
Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric James Chase Sanchez views academia as a whole as a white space within which people of color can struggle to feel welcomed or valued, and Middlebury is no exception. That fact became abundantly clear to Fuentes-George after hearing his colleagues defend the invitation of Charles Murray to campus in 2017. Fuentes-George recalls other faculty members insisting that Murray was not racist, despite his claims that Black people — like Fuentes-George — and Latinos are genetically less intelligent.
In the wake of Murray’s visit, Fuentes-George strongly considered leaving Middlebury.
Both Fuentes-George and Chase Sanchez credit their luck in finding their own small communities at Middlebury as one of the major reasons they have stayed here, something they say can be difficult for many faculty of color. They both discussed how easy it is to feel isolated on a predominantly white campus in a predominantly white area.
Chase Sanchez recalled visiting a restaurant in Bristol with a Black colleague. At one point, he looked up from his plate and idly scanned the room. To his surprise, he realized he was making eye contact with nearly everyone around him. They had been staring at him, and he felt suddenly acutely aware of how much he stood out as a Latino in an overwhelmingly white space.
“There’s a little bit more of that uncomfortable nature of being a minority living within the community that is very, very white,” Chase Sanchez said. “All these variables can just build up pressure.”
Admissions Counselor Maria Del Sol Nava ’18 has also struggled to feel completely welcome in the local community.
“Middlebury has become a home for me because I have now been here for seven years (four as a student and three as a staff member), [but] I am keenly aware that I am a brown woman in a very white town,” she said in an email to The Campus. “There are many times when I don’t feel safe.”
The reaction of other faculty and academia as a whole to the scholarship of BIPOC faculty also make some feel unsupported or valued at Middlebury. BIPOC faculty who do race-based research often see their work devalued in academia, where it is viewed more as activism than empirical inquiry and seen as contributing less to their fields than the development of theory, according to Chase Sanchez.
In the wake of the Jan. 6 capitol riots, Fuentes-George led a class discussion about the racial motivations behind them. He was taken aback when one of his colleagues accused him of engaging in advocacy rather than real scholarship.
He views that interaction as emblematic of “a number of practices, discourses and comments about personal relations and about how departments and institutions function that make it difficult for people of color to feel supported.”
While faculty and staff from historically marginalized communities often do not feel valued or supported by Middlebury as an institution, they contribute significantly to the college — well beyond the scope of their positions. Many shoulder the extra burden of pushing for institutional change and advocating for marginalized students who turn to them for support, labor that is often uncompensated or not rewarded in performance reviews.
“[I feel] a social responsibility for the other first-gen and underrepresented students that I meet and worked with,” Del Sol Nava said in an email to the Campus. “[I take] on additional emotional labor that my white colleagues do not take on, or do not to the same extent.”
Fuentes-George serves on the Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (CDEI) and is also a Posse mentor. He also frequently provides informal mentoring and support for BIPOC students who turn to him for advice in navigating through Middlebury and has worked to spearhead change within his department — labor that is uncompensated.
“These are things that I do feel passionate about doing,” Fuentes-George said. “But the reality is that it takes a lot of time and energy, and it's also emotionally taxing.”
Del Sol Nava hopes that the school works toward being a place where such sacrifices don’t need to be made. “I think we can imagine more for ourselves as an institution so that our BIPOC staff and faculty don’t feel burdened with being the ones who have to create change or be the only ones who support the students who want to make change,” she said.
At the same time that the extra, uncompensated advocacy work drains faculty and staff of color, it’s also a major reason why some stay despite the institutional challenges they face.
“There are a lot of students I didn’t want to leave alone,” said Fuentes-George “I didn’t want them to just be here with one less voice to advocate. There’s few enough for them already, so [I decided] to stay here and advocate for them.”
Supporting BIPOC students also animates Chase Sanchez’s work, especially in light of his own experiences trying to navigate through a predominantly white college as a Latino student.
When Chase Sanchez told his advisor — who was white — that he wanted to become a professor, Chase Sanchez recalls him replying, “Someone like you wanting to be a professor is what makes someone like me laugh.”
Chase Sanchez turned his advisor’s doubt into motivation and worked triply hard to prove that he belonged in academia despite what his advisor thought. But he knows this kind of experience can set other students back or discourage them from pursuing their original goals altogether. This year’s Zeitgeist survey found that BIPOC students reported feeling imposter syndrome — “the experience of doubting one’s abilities and feeling like a fraud” — at a significantly higher rate than their white peers.
“I remember what it feels like to have no one believe in you,” Chase Sanchez said. “I always want to help other people going through that, because it's a very tough space to navigate.”
TRAINING
While the advocacy of BIPOC faculty and staff and the promise to increase institutional diversity are crucial to students from underrepresented groups feeling supported, Del Sol Nava emphasized that the practices of the entire staff and faculty body must shift.
“I think more students at Middlebury would feel more supported if they saw more people who looked like them, but that doesn’t mean that is the only step we take,” she said in an email to The Campus. “It also means teaching our current faculty and staff to learn and unlearn how to make students feel more comfortable.”
Wells hopes that the Inclusive Practitioners Program (Strategy #7) will help usher in the culture change necessary to shift people’s practices and reform the institution in the long run. The program, launched in the fall of 2019, consists of a series of workshops within which faculty and staff “engage in critical conversations and skill building related to diversity equity and inclusion.”
“It is about creating the kind of critical awareness that builds people’s skills and capacity to actually change their practices,” Wells said. “It's about developing your ability to actually change what you're doing and how you're doing it in ways that create more access, and opportunity, and equity and inclusion.”
While many of the workshops have focused specifically on race in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, Wells has begun reincorporating other workshops in the series with topics that range from “Designing Accessible Course Syllabi” to “Knowing and Respecting Who's in the Room: A Guide to Using Gender Pronouns.”
“They were really valuable,” Food and Garden Educator Megan Brakeley, who has attended eight workshops, said. “I think that part of the power of doing this work is the power of it being done in community. There's so much that can happen when we are literally sitting in the same room.”
Partly inspired by the lessons she’s learned in those workshops as well as through the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, Brakeley has worked to make antiracism a cornerstone of her job at the Knoll, including reevaluating the organic farm’s mission statement, learning to identify and address harm as it happens and holding BIPOC affinity gardening hours.
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Mez Baker-Médard has attended 10 Inclusive Practitioners workshops and incorporated the lessons they have learned, including redesigning their course material to include more diverse voices and “bringing a lens of power onto the work” they are doing.
“I think it's opened my eyes to a variety of ways in which I can really work on this in the classroom, and there are just so many ways that I can be thoughtful and more nuanced,” they said. “Engaging in that way, it's kind of an act of appreciation and respect for my students, and myself, as well as my own ignorances.”
The workshops are optional to ensure that those who attend want to be there and are willing to put in the work. But it does mean that participants are self-selecting and the staff and faculty who might benefit the most from this education often never show up, according to Wells.
While the Inclusive Practitioner Program aims to increase awareness and proper practices in and beyond the classroom, the DEI plan does not address the curriculum or broad pedagogical reform at an institution-wide level, steps Associate Professor of Education Studies and CDEI Chair Tara Affolter views as crucial for the next action plan.
In the meantime, the initiatives in the plan are supplemented by the work of the Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (CDEI), a body for faculty governance on DEI issues formed this year. They created a grant program for academic programs and departments to “find structural ways to engage in anti-racist work” and awarded grants to three departments — Luso-Hispanic Studies, Educations Studies and Economics — this year, according to Affolter.
MOVING FORWARD
All those interviewed for this article emphasized that, while they were optimistic about the potential for the DEI strategies and other current initiatives, they are only the start in a long road towards reforming the college.
“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Baker-Médard said. “The landscape of learning and teaching needs to shift as society shifts.”
Despite the uphill and prolonged battle ahead of them, most expressed a feeling of hope for the future of Middlebury.
“I’m definitely hopeful,” Fuentes-George said. “If I thought that there was no hope I probably would have left.”
(05/20/21 9:58am)
“The rich will find their world to be more expensive, inconvenient, uncomfortable, disrupted and colorless; in general, more unpleasant and unpredictable, perhaps greatly so. The poor will die,” Kirk R. Smith, an environmental scientist, said of the coming impacts of climate change on the world.
While some complain about quarantining, self-isolation and staying “one panther apart,” many of us are not as lucky to be able to have those privileges. Within our own community, we are all impacted, but in disproportionate ways. Who can say that the person who just passed by you in the hall isn’t facing food or housing insecurity, exacerbated by the pandemic? Or perhaps the person who sits beside you in class has recently had a family member pass away from Covid-19. Yet the injustices brought on by Covid-19 are disproportionate not only at the small scale (person-to-person), but also clearly on a global scale in the way that some countries have more access to vaccines and tests than other countries. If anything, Covid-19 reveals the structural violence operating in society — violence that also inflicts victims of climate injustices.
Structural violence can be used to explain why some people suffer more than others through acknowledgement of the historical, political and economic contexts that shape global phenomena as pertinent as poverty or epidemiology. According to Paul Farmer, “structural violence is violence exerted systematically — that is, indirectly — by everyone who belongs to a certain social order.”
Public health is one area where structural violence operates most intensely. This is the case today, when many countries are struggling to tackle Covid-19 because of the lack of infrastructure or political issues such as the hoarding of vaccines and patent rights. In the case of India, a new variant of the virus led to soaring death tolls and hospitals faced shortages of oxygen, medicine and space.
Although many news outlets blame the government's lack of capacity to contain the spread of disease, the situation might in fact be caused by structural violence and the deep inequalities it imposes between and within countries. Within the country itself, vast inequalities exist between people, whether between the people in slums and the people living in lavish skyscrapers or between people of different castes. “A decent life was the train that hadn’t hit you, the slumlord you hadn’t offended, the malaria you hadn’t caught,” Abdul Husain, a teenager living in the Annawadi slum of Mumbai, said in the book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers.” Unable to “work from home” or quarantine within the confines of pristine walls, Abdul and others in the dense Annawadi slum must have been some of the people most direly impacted by Covid-19.
India is a periphery in the global system, a country once colonized by Britain. The British used a system of divide and rule to conquer, leaving India with even greater social and economic inequalities following independence. After colonization ended, the Green Revolution brought by the United States wreaked havoc to India as it caused environmental damage, the loss of soil fertility and the loss of farmers’ livelihoods. This led many farmers, unable to repay debts, to commit suicide.
Increasing market liberalization imposed by richer countries has caused increasing economic inequality, including the growth of the Mumbai slum population — those who, according to the government, have been “lifted out of poverty.” Surely, India’s response to the pandemic today cannot be understood without considering these historical, political and economic contexts of India’s past and present — without understanding structural violence.
Similarly, understanding climate injustices requires an explanation that considers structural violence. Covid-19 itself was likely the result of climate change and its associated problems, particularly the expansion of human settlement and the consequences of our intrusion of wildlife. In terms of the response to climate change, the countries which were once colonizers are most equipped to respond to the effects of climate change. Yet this will happen at the expense of the lives of those in the periphery, as money spent on mitigating climate change issues is not spent on issues of poverty, disease, hunger and disasters of poor countries. Within our own community, perhaps the richest and luckiest among us will be able to move to the places in the country that are safe from environmental turmoil in the future, while others must weather through zones of uncertainty — perhaps even watch their own home sink. Is that fair? Where is the justice in being forced to leave your home?
Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia and my birthplace, is predicted to sink in the future. By 2050, 95% of North Jakarta’s land mass will be underwater. This is because of the increasing strain on water sources, which has caused groundwater levels to diminish. The problem of overcrowding is overshadowed by rising sea levels from climate change. The overcrowding of the capital city is inevitable. After all, there is rampant inequality throughout the country in terms of facilities, services and resources offered — yet another form of structural violence. The effect, though, is that Jakarta is polluted, perpetually jammed with traffic, littered, water-stressed and, in the future, at risk of disappearing altogether. Again, I ask, what is the justice in being forced to leave your home? What will happen to the people who have barely anything to start anew? There are many other places like Jakarta in the world — island countries like Kiribati, Tuvalu and Maldives — that will no longer be. Where will their people go? If they become climate refugees, what of the affront to their personhood and dignity, since the land they call their country no longer exists?
Even now, the issue of pollution from transnational companies seeking to minimize their profits and outsource costs hurt people in periphery countries most, where environmental regulations are lax and labor cheap. The consequence is the jeopardization of human health, as those living in polluted, toxic areas have higher risks for various illnesses like cancer.
These types of problems are considered wicked problems, a term used to describe issues that lack clear solutions and cannot be solved through trial and error. Facing these wicked problems, the question that surely arises is what can we, as Middlebury students, do about it? Perhaps the answer is to build more empathy. Though these problems seem insurmountably difficult to solve, we have strength in our ability to feel. It is easy to forget that the injustices inflicted by Covid-19 or climate change are affecting real people with real lives and families. But there are students even within our community who can speak on the disparity between Middlebury and their home (read “The Storm of the COVID Crisis in Brazil” by Zaba Peixoto). How can we build empathy? Practically speaking, students from my environmental anthropology class have suggested several ideas: an annual forum on climate injustice, making climate literacy (or another globally relevant topic) a distribution requirement or even offering full-ride scholarships for climate refugees.
It is not enough for the college to ask students to come up with solutions to deeply systemic issues. Such a method is neoliberal, making these issues seem like a game or another achievement that we as individuals need to choose to accomplish. Systemic issues entail systemic solutions; they also require utmost cooperation and a strong, empathetic community.
Hamia Sophia Fatima is a member of the class of 2024.
(05/20/21 9:56am)
Over two years after Middlebury unveiled Energy2028 — a plan to divest the endowment from fossil fuels, while investing in renewable energy and environmental education — the college has advanced towards each of these goals while making equity and justice a cornerstone of its work.
Jack Byrne, Dean of Environmental Affairs and Sustainability, explained that there are four main pillars of Energy2028: getting to 100% renewable energy, conserving energy on campus, divesting from fossil fuels and integrating sustainability into the educational mission. He noted that progress has been made towards each of these goals but that finding new ways to integrate the goals of Energy2028 with the educational mission of the college will take the longest amount of time.
Academics
Chair of the Environmental Studies Program Dan Brayton said that Environmental Studies readily adopted the Energy2028 goals as soon as they were presented to them. Consistent with the equity and justice pillar of Energy2028, core faculty in the program are regularly modifying their courses and placing greater emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Such changes have already been underway in Contested Grounds, a core Environmental Studies course that Brayton has taught for over a decade alongside other professors. He noted that he now covers texts from three or four Native American writers, an increase from one or zero when he first started teaching the course. In addition, conversations about race and identity are now central to in-class discussions about humans’ relationships to their natural environment.
Brayton uses these conversations to pose questions that challenge conventional notions about nature and environmentalism. “Who [traditionally] gets to be an environmentalist in US history? What do environmentalists look like and why? These kinds of questions lead to some really exciting conversations and often some pretty hard conversations,” he said.
Progress towards Energy2028 goals in Environmental Studies is largely constrained by limited staffing, Brayton said. He underscored the need for more faculty who are fully affiliated with the program and expressed hope that future faculty are “more representative of global humanity” in their diversity.
New courses and initiatives are also being designed for the discipline, some of which extend beyond Middlebury’s Vermont campus. Middlebury Climate Semester, a new study-away program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, will commence in Winter and Spring 2022.
According to Brayton, this new program was necessary in order to introduce cross-curricular courses in the humanities. He explained that it will undergo a two-year trial in the 2021-22 and 2022-23 academic years, with the potential to continue as a permanent, year-round offering if successful.
The study-away program will be directed by Brayton and led jointly by the undergraduate Environmental Studies program in Vermont and the International Environmental Policy (IEP) master’s program in Monterey. The program centers around climate change, environmental justice and international environmental policy, according to Brayton.
Brayton sees room for potential growth in undergraduate programming at Monterrey and envisions more environmental studies courses being offered in addition to the Climate Semester program. He also anticipates more students opting to study-away in future years as the partnership continues to develop.
“I could imagine more environmental studies offerings at Monterey on top of the Climate Semester — maybe a semester study of the marine environment, maybe a semester study of food and agriculture — these will all be built into the Midd Climate Semester,” he said. “But I can imagine all of these aspects of the Climate Semester kind of building out and becoming bigger.”
Justice
Energy2028 acknowledges the role of inequity and environmental racism in the climate crisis and aims to make justice a central consideration in all efforts. Byrne described a “do no harm” philosophy in which the equity and justice consequences of a decision, both positive and negative, are considered before taking action.
“I think what we want to be sure of is that we're very conscious of the potential consequences from an equity and justice perspective of different ways we would be thinking about achieving some of these goals,” he said.
Byrne pointed to a March 2020 op-ed that demanded better treatment for workers at Goodrich Farm — which supplies renewable natural gas to the college as part of an anaerobic digester partnership — following alleged incidences of wage theft and physical and verbal abuse against migrant farmworkers. He echoed the authors’ calls for Middlebury to expand the scope of sustainability to its own labor practices and those of its vendors.
“In the dairy industry in Vermont, there are a lot of migrant workers, and we know in general that they are dealing with difficult circumstances and conditions,” Byrne said. “So that was the impetus for us to say ‘we really need to have an explicit framework around justice and equity’ — to make sure that when we do a project like that, we're taking into account opportunities to advance justice from a migrant standpoint or from other perspectives.”
Bryne explained that a working subcommittee on justice exists within the college’s Environmental Council and expects to share a preliminary report by the end of the year on next steps in the development of this framework.
Kate Goodman ’24 believes that the language surrounding justice in Energy2028 does not go far enough. Goodman, who works as a Climate Action Fellow with the Climate Action Capacity Project (CACP), explained that some students are working to incorporate the theme as a more integral facet of each pillar in Energy2028.
“I've heard a million times that justice isn't one of the pillars because it should be incorporated in all other pillars, which I like totally agree with: it shouldn't be separate from conservation, it shouldn't be separate from divestment, it should be incorporated,” she said in an interview with The Campus. “But I think that incorporation just hasn't happened, and it has just meant for [justice] to be left out of the language.”
Goodman considers the CACP — which debuted Fall 2020 with its first cohort of fellows — to be an accessible stepping stone to environmental organizing at larger institutions like Middlebury. She explained that although she had prior experience with environmental organizing in high school, she didn’t realize the operational complexity involved in continuing that work at Middlebury ahead of time.
With that being said, Goodman underscored the importance of building climate awareness through organic interactions. “I think if you're talking about how we increase climate capacity, I think a lot of the work — the ways I feel that I've helped increase climate capacity — are more natural, like having authentic conversations with friends, other fellows, and people in SNEG [Sunday Night Environmental Group], and less of just individual work on your own,” she said. “But it’s also important to push your own capacity as an individual to know.”
(05/20/21 3:16am)
The Transparency and Accountability section of the Action Plan (Section V) was designed to assess and communicate progress towards strategic goals and ensure responsible parties complete them. The section also commits to ongoing assessment and planning to ensure the mission behind DEI continues into the future.
Section V aims to create intentionality behind the work and enable the completion of tangible progress and goals rather than merely written promises, according to Director of Education for Equity and Inclusion Renee Wells. Of the 13 strategies in this section, two have been completed, seven are underway and four have not yet started due to a later timeline.
The section differs from the rest of the plan due to the greater variety amongst the strategies. Many of the strategies are based on sharing progress and data, while others introduce key initiatives and projects to the college. This has made the Transparency and Accountability section more challenging to work on, according to Miguel Fernández.
“The thing about this kind of work is that if there's no intentionality around being accountable and no process for being held accountable, it's really easy for stuff to just not get done,” Wells said. “So we're saying to ourselves that we need to be accountable for doing this work, but we're also saying to the community we need you to hold us accountable for doing this work. We're going to try to be as transparent in an ongoing way about where we're at, so that we don't just issue a plan and then assume that everything is magically happening, because that rarely is the case.”
Communication with the college community is a central theme in the Transparency and Accountability section, and the opening strategy of the section commits to developing a communication plan to “ensure the centrality of diversity, equity and inclusion to Middlebury’s mission is clear and messaged both consistently and effectively.”
“The communications plan to be developed will take into account the needs and voices of all Middlebury stakeholders and include all means of connection—letters to the community, podcasts, news and magazine stories, social media, press outreach, and more” David Gibson, vice president for communications, said.
Four of the strategies in the section propose a timeline for the 2020-2021 school year, most of which are still currently in the works.
Strategy #4 of the plan, one of the four of the 2020-2021 strategies, aims to create and maintain a dashboard that tracks progress towards institutional DEI goals and anti-racist initiatives. The Office of Institutional Diversity Equity and Inclusion (OIDEI), however, has had difficulty trying to create a proper model for the website, and a dashboard has not yet been made available to the community.
“We have found that a dashboard is very hard to create when you don’t have numbers, this work is qualitative and not quantitative ...we have work to do in that area; we’re trying to improve our communication,” Fernández said.
OIDEI has a mock-up for the dashboard and is working with Information Technology Services and the SGA Innovation and Technology committee to complete the project.
While OIDEI works towards a way to properly present this material, Fernández has started a monthly update sharing information addressing aspects of the plan. These alternative forms of communication have included newsletters via email and webinars with students, alumni, parents and faculty. Both Fernández and Wells noted the importance of the dashboard in regards to creating transparency and accountability and hope it can be up and running soon.
Two other 2020-2021 strategies include the creation of the Anti-Racist Taskforce (Strategy #7) and a DEI committee within the Board of Trustees (Strategy #8), both of which have been formed and are ongoing initiatives.
The Anti-Racist Taskforce was created last fall and meets twice per month with a consistent group of 18 members comprised of faculty, staff and students. The force is divided into three working groups: funding transformative projects, launching an Anti-Racist learning hub in the Davis Library and creating a community dialogic standard. The task-force also facilitates monthly Story Circles, which seeks to understand the school’s collective history through sharing personal stories.
“The Anti-Racist Task Force is interested in creating pathways towards anti-racism by educating and empowering individuals to evaluate their dependance on racist principles and ideologies,” Associate Professor of Dance Christal Brown, who heads the task force, said. “By creating personal accountability and relational understanding, we believe sustainable institutional change is possible; being accountable to one another is the first step.”
In addressing strategy #8, the Board of Trustees voted to create a DEI subcommittee last October which reports to the Strategy Committee within the Board. The group had their first meeting as a subcommittee last January and plan on having more meetings to best identify ways the Board can align with and support efforts outlined in the DEI action plan. The fourth and final strategy for the 2020-2021 school year involves collecting and reporting out aggregate data on the diversity of students, staff and faculty. This data, however, will not be collected until the end of the academic year, according to Fernández
A majority of the remaining plans have a later timeline, so many initiatives have not yet been implemented. This includes providing an annual State of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion address starting in the 2021-2022 school year (Strategy #5), hiring an external consulting firm to conduct campus climate studies (Strategy #9), and integrating inclusive excellence goals and benchmarks into the evaluation of senior academic and administrative leaders (Strategy #13). Other strategies, however, are in the early stages of progress and are more difficult to concretely track.
Strategy #12, for instance, aims to “support unit-level efforts to identify and implement DEI goals and strategies relevant to individual departments, units, programs or offices.” Although it is more difficult to track the progress on strategies such as these, OIDEI is giving time for different departments to lay out their DEI goals.
“I'm working with different departments and currently that's more of them reaching out proactively versus me reaching out to every department on campus. A lot of folks have been really trying to think about and identify what this support looks like in their respective units,” Wells said, in reference to Strategy #12. “Some of those are academic units, some of those are student affairs and student life units. So some of that work is already starting to happen.”
Wells and Fernández both hope these goals within the Transparency and Accountability section will help create ongoing conversation and responsibility in the school’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion that goes beyond just numbers.
“Diversity is about numbers and bringing people in, but the real work is in equity and inclusion,” Fernández said. “You can bring in all the people you want, and if they don't feel that they are a part of this community or a sense of belonging then what have you really achieved? You haven't achieved much right? And so the hard work as far as I'm concerned is that equity and inclusion.”
(05/20/21 3:15am)
The Fostering and Restoring Community section involves strategies that are concerned with creating restorative mechanisms to address harm, facilitating spaces for critical conversations and workshops, creating avenues for dialogue between different stakeholders and providing opportunities to report incidents of bias and discrimination. These strategies are wide in scope, addressing students, faculty, staff, administration and community members.
Director of Equity and Inclusion Renee Wells said that being in a community means that people will both experience and cause harm that is often unintentional.
“Harm is happening all over the campus all the time,” Wells said. “I think that cultural change requires that we acknowledge where systemic, institutional, interpersonal barriers and harms exist and the ways in which we are either unintentionally complicit in or sometimes benefit from that.”
“Due to differences in lived experience, every individual has a different comfort level navigating and talking about harm, and it is important to meet students where they are at in their journey,” Wells said. Though some people may feel discomfort during conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion, ultimately, they are feeling discomfort with a threat to the status quo, Wells explained.
“But what we have to acknowledge is that this status quo is a whole bunch of interconnected systems of oppression that perpetuate inequity and harm,” she said. “So we have to get comfortable with the fact that people are going to be uncomfortable with that.”
Of the 14 strategies detailed in the Fostering and Restoring Community Section of the Action Plan, 10 were scheduled for completion this year. Twelve of the fourteen have either been accomplished or commenced at the time of publication, and eight strategies are ongoing.
Responding to incidents of harm
Strategy #1 is about developing a system for using restorative practices, which is a framework used to proactively build community in response to incidents that cause harm on campus. There is a current framework in place, but the Restorative Practices Steering Committee — which includes several staff and administrators — is constantly tweaking the framework and is still integrating it into bodies around campus.
Associate Dean of Community Standards Brian Lind said that restorative practices, which have been employed by the college for several years in place of traditional disciplinary avenues, consist of three pillars: community building, responding to harm, and leadership. Residential Life and staff members have been trained in facilitating community building circles and restorative frameworks to address breakdowns in community, such as when communities cause harm to each other.
The restorative practices framework can be used in a variety of contexts, but often involves bringing parties who have experienced and caused harm together to discuss the impact of a behavior or breakdown in community.
“Restorative practices give us a meaningful framework to develop relationships so that we have stronger bonds when we cause or experience harm,” Lind said. “And we have a shared practice of how to respond to [harm] appropriately.”
Strategy #12 establishes alternative options for responding to incidents of relationship misconduct outside of the traditional adjudication process. Before this alternative pathway was available, students who wished to report misconduct filed a complaint with the Title IX office and underwent a formal investigation, according to Lind. This strategy creates another option.
“The [adaptable process] gives us a way, I think, to address it in a form that isn't punitive, that will hopefully help repair the harm that's been caused, and help everybody involved kind of process and work through writing the situation.
Establishing opportunities for critical conversations
Strategy #2 is about engaging students in critical conversations around healthy relationships including sexual encounters and consent, and strategy #4 is about critical conversations about consent, sexual violence, and misconduct. These initiatives have commenced and are ongoing.
According to Emily Wagner, assistant director of health and wellness education, their office has already had successful engagement with a variety of programs, including ProjectConnect, a six-week group series where students learn about developing authentic relationships, and Finding Your People, a panel for students to share ideas about expanding your friendship circle and creating community at Middlebury.
Green Dot, a pre-existing program that aims to prevent sexual violence and promote healthy relationships through bystander intervention and conversation, will begin providing training at each of the Middlebury schools abroad. The training will be tailored to the cultural and linguistic differences of that country beginning in the fall of 2021, Wagner said in an email to the Campus.
Sex Positive Education for College Students (SPECS) and confidential advocacy services such as MiddSafe have also sought to create a safer space on campus regarding relationships and consent.
For the past three semesters, the Title IX office has also incorporated Speak About It — a program about consent and communication — into first-year student student orientation. The Title IX office also hosted a book club for students for the book Sexual Citizens, which discusses sexual assault on college campuses, according to Wagner and Civil Rights and Title IX Coordinator Marti McCaleb.
“As we move into the 2021-2022 school year, we are working closely with Residential Life and other campus partners around strategic ways to reach more students in person,” Wagner said in an email.
Avenues for dialogue and feedback
Several strategies in this section are concerned with establishing channels of communication between students and staff, faculty, and administration.
Wells hosts weekly office hours on Fridays from 12 to two and by appointment where students, faculty and staff can share concerns, seek support, and explore strategies to address concerns, an initiative introduced in strategy #6 of the Plan.
Per strategy #7, the Senior Leadership Group (SLG) — a collection of senior-level administrators — has been meeting monthly with a group of BIPOC students who “represent key stakeholders and leadership of different cultural organizations to have collaborative discussions that aim for the implementation of institutional change,” according to a school-wide email from Dec. 15.
Strategy #8 calls for the creation of a Student Advisory Council for the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to provide feedback and recommendations related to campus concerns, barriers to marginalized students on campus and forms of oppression. According to Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández, this strategy has not yet been implemented.
Strategy #9 tasks Faculty Council and the Educational Affairs Committee with “explor[ing] the possibility of including a question about accessibility, equity, and classroom climate on Course Response Forms.” This strategy is slated for 2021–2022, and work has not yet begun on this initiative, according to Faculty Council member Natalie Eppelsheimer.
Strategy #13 tasks Community Council (CC) with exploring the role of Public Safety and collaboration with police and security. CC will then present a proposal to SLG outlining their findings. According to Co-Chair of Community Council Christian Kummer, CC has been in conversation with administration to create a formal recommendation on this topic, which will likely be completed next fall.
Workshops
Strategy #5 calls for regular workshops for faculty and staff to better understand the reporting requirements and investigation process for discrimination, harassmaent and sexual violence, and appropriate resources for members of the campus community. OIDEI provides the workshops and has presented them to various offices and groups, including Directors of the Language Schools, faculty and staff at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, staff of the Schools Abroad and incoming new faculty at Middlebury, according to McCaleb.
“Every Middlebury employee has the responsibility to participate in and promote a respectful environment at Middlebury,” said McCaleb in an email. “Our conversations in this area are geared towards individuals understanding their personal impact and obligations within our community.”
Strategy #14 calls for “regular education opportunities related to diversity, equity and inclusion in the local community.”
Wells has spearheaded these efforts, and has facilitated various workshops in the past year about anti-racism, microaggressions and stereotyping for local non-profits, the Rutland NAACP, campus and community members, Middlebury Co-op managers and the Ilsley Public Library.
Communication and Reporting
Strategy #3 is concerned with clear communication about behaviors prohibited under the Non-Discrimination Policy and how to report breaches of this policy. This strategy has already been implemented.
Strategy #10 advises the creation of an online form that can be used to report incidents of discrimincation, harassment and violence. This form has been in use since at least last fall, and can be found at go/bias. As of January of this year, the form had received 28 incident reports representing 16 incidents, according to Fernández.
Strategy #11 recommends that an online form be used to report incidents of discrimination, harassment and violence. This form can be found at go/report and has been promoted through various social media channels and partners, though it is not yet widely utilized, according to McCaleb.
(05/13/21 10:00am)
Activists at Middlebury have spent the last year creating mutual aid networks, educating peers about anti-racism and fighting for a myriad of reforms both on-campus and from their homes across the country. While the pandemic limited in-person events, organizers saw their work become more urgent than ever as the effects of Covid-19 disproportionately impacted marginalized communities and exacerbated existing social inequities.
In recent years, activism on campus has not been a rare sight. The invitation of Charles Murray, whose work the Southern Poverty Law Center says features racist pseudoscience and white nationalist ideology, sparked campus-wide protests in 2017. In spring 2019, students also prepared to protest the invitation of Ryzard Legutko, a Polish politician known for making homophobic remarks, before the college canceled the event out of a concern for “safety risks.” In October 2020, organizers used digital protest tactics during a Zoom debate titled “Was America Founded on Slavery?”, with some turning their profile pictures into a photo of the debate poster with the answer “YES.” across it.
Between these events, organizers have also pushed for reforms and created support networks at the college. When the college abruptly instructed students to leave campus in spring 2020, organizers created a mutual aid spreadsheet to connect their peers with temporary housing, rides home or to the airport, and other types of help.
The new, online learning modality coupled with the effects of the pandemic also created new challenges for students managing schoolwork, which #FairGradesMidd activists aimed to address by creating a Pass/Fail grading system. Over the summer, students participated in Black Lives Matter protests occurring across the country and organized Middlebury Cops Off Campus to dismantle policing on campus. Environmental groups have been active at Middlebury for decades, pushing the college to address climate change and divest fossil fuels from the endowment.
Middlebury students buy into activism to different degrees during their four years at the college. Over a dozen organizations at Middlebury are involved in activism and advocacy, from affinity groups to environmental organizations to community service clubs. And many students work outside of conventional organizing spaces to share resources on social media, plan or participate in events and advocate for causes of personal importance. Informal personal connections and intentional collaborative networks link these activist spaces, shaping a culture that is sometimes universal and sometimes unique to individual organizers.
A year of online activism
Divya Gudur ’21 has been a co-manager of the Sunday Night Environmental Group (SNEG), worked with Divest Middlebury and organized with many other activist groups on campus. She said the pivot to social media has been essential this year and was a helpful tool for organizing during the pandemic.
“One of the protests we did last semester — against the event that the Hamilton Forum organized around ‘Was America founded on Slavery?’ — that whole protest was all digital organizing strategies, sharing resources on Instagram and asking people to show up to this digital space, because a lot of these conversations are now happening digitally,” Gudur said.
Charice Lawrence ’23 became involved with activism on social media in early 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and renewed national attention to the Black Lives Matter movement. Throughout the year, she has fostered discussion about anti-racism, sharing information and talking with peers online.
“On social media, it's been a lot of people wanting to have conversations, but also calling things I see out. People are obviously really well-intentioned, but the ways that some of the activism plays out is still racist,” Lawrence said.
“When Elijah McClain was killed, everybody was like, ‘Oh my god he was so innocent, he didn’t deserve this.’ Even though it was well-intentioned, it was anti-Black rhetoric. So if someone is illegally selling cigarettes, that’s a death warrant?” she said. “Our activism can’t be conditional, and Black lives can’t matter only when they’re super innocent.”
Lawrence said that the relationships she made in her first year at Middlebury gave her a platform to speak about anti-racism among a predominately-white student body. Nevertheless, navigating race and identity in those conversations has been challenging, as she does not want her “likability” to be the only reason her peers listened to her.
“They shouldn't have to be friends with me to listen to Black people,” Lawrence said.
Arlo Fleischer ’21.5, who uses they/them pronouns, has been involved with several activist movements, including SNEG, Divest Middlebury, #FairGradesMidd, Middlebury Cops Off Campus and other groups at the college. They said social media has been a helpful tool for organizing, but has its limitations.
“I think sometimes it can come across as pretty performative, and that’s a discussion we’ve been having a lot, especially over the summer in terms of the Black Lives Matter protests when people got involved mostly by sharing Instagram stories,” Fleischer said. “Sometimes it can be hard to know what to do, but that’s when I think that, what’s really important, is taking that opportunity to be a student and continue to learn.”
Connection across movements
Students from different activist groups have also found opportunities to work together, often in opposition to an event or speaker.
“Activism can be very visible in the Middlebury community sometimes,” Fleischer said.“I think about the way we as a community responded to the Charles Murray incidents, and Legutko being invited, and the Hamilton Forum lecture that happened earlier this year… In that sense, these are instances where the Middlebury community really comes together.”
Connections between activist groups at the college have historically formed around informal personal contacts and friendships, but organizers have recently been working to deepen the networks that link activists to each other.
“I think sometimes it feels like activism here can be siloed, but everyone’s really trying to be more intentional about creating a more intersectional activist community on campus. I think with environmental organizing, we’ve been putting in a lot of work in working in solidarity with other organizations on campus,” Gudur said. “All activists, what they have in common, is the way they’re treated by the administration. So when we share strategies for organizing, when we share strategies for dealing with the administration, it is more successful.
Fleischer has been working with Concerned Students of Middlebury to create an activist collective that formalizes communication across different organizations to make activism more effective and accessible.
“When we rely on personal connections, it makes it really hard for first-years to get involved — you kind of have to know the right people. If someone graduates, those connections are just lost,” Fleischer said. “In order to continue those connections, we’re trying to hold cross-org mixers and social events to solidify these connections for years to come.”
Leif Taranta ’20.5, who uses they/them pronouns, first became involved with activism in Philadelphia during high school, and began working with SNEG, Divest Middlebury, the Trans Affinity Group and other organizations when they came to college. They organized with groups both on and off campus during their years at Middlebury and have spent the past year working for the Climate Disobedience Center and the No Coal, No Gas campaign.
“There’s a pretty strong community around it,” Taranta said. “And also there’s a lot of people who are just exhausted and tired of doing this work, and tired of needing to do this work especially against the institution. So there were a lot of people supporting each other in that burnout and in the frustration.”
Activism beyond campus
Middlebury’s activist groups often play dual roles in on-campus and off-campus organizing, localizing nationwide movements to the college and bringing student voices to issues around Vermont and the country.
“A lot of student activism is targeted at the institution, thinking about ways to make the institution change,” Taranta said. “A lot of what I thought about was, “How do we keep that not just in a silo, how do we connect the work we’re doing on campus with the work people are doing off campus, in Vermont, or back home?”
Taranta said organizations at the college, in town and on other college campuses have shared strategies and missions that grew out of broader national issues.
“I know Middlebury can feel like a bubble in terms of the ways that we get things done,” Fleischer said. “But also, there are a lot of real-world issues that reflect back at Middlebury. You see Cops Off Campus getting started out of the national Black Lives Matter movement, and there are Cops Off Campus movements at all these other schools across the nation. So while we’re a bubble, we’re also a thing that’s happening in a bigger movement.”
Lawrence said that being in Vermont and at an overwhelmingly liberal college makes some people blind to the ways they still contribute to racism.
“With Middlebury, because this is such a liberal town and Vermont is seemingly very liberal, people think that there’s no possible way that they could be harming marginalized communities,” Lawrence said. “It’s like this protective shield — being in Vermont and being in a liberal place.”
Environmental activism
Environmentalism features prominently in the college’s history — and its admissions pitch — from Middlebury offering the nation’s first undergraduate environmental studies program in 1965 to student activists’ years-long and ultimately successful push for fossil fuel divestment. Gudur, Taranta and Fleischer were all involved in Divest Middlebury, and built connections with other student activists through the movement.
“We saw Divest Middlebury as a tool towards broader organizing goals, for Middlebury as an institution to move towards justice, move towards relying on renewable energy sources in a just way,” Gudur said. “You replicate the same systems of oppression and destruction when students aren’t involved.”
Mainstream environmental groups — at Middlebury and across the country — are often overwhelmingly white spaces. Many of these organizations have worked to center their activism around environmental justice and make activist spaces more welcoming to students of color, but, as an op-ed published this year in The Campus highlighted, exclusivity is a lingering concern for many.
“It’s easier for people to use a metal straw than it is to constantly be checking themselves for prejudice, so it’s a lot about ease and comfort,” Lawrence said. “It’s also easier to be told that we all need to do this effort, that we all need to be using metal straws and recycling, than being told ‘You are the oppressor.’ They’re just very different messages.”
Fleischer said activists have been working to build solidarity across organizations and ensure that BIPOC students have a space in existing activism groups.
“When we have conversations about whiteness in activist spaces, I think it tends to be in organizations that are commonly associated as having been white historically, so it's kind of trying to upend those dynamics to make space for BIPOC organizers. But there are already a lot of BIPOC organizers on campus, and expecting those organizers to come into white spaces isn’t necessarily the right approach,” Fleischer said.
Backlash
While often visible at Middlebury, activism at the college is not without its challenges. Resistance from the administration and other students has slowed progress and created tensions in the past.
“Middlebury really wants to have this image of supporting student activists and being really progressive and innovative, and honestly a lot of what that looks like is taking credit for a lot of student activists’ work while actually making student activism really hard to do,” Taranta said.
In spring 2020, the college posted a photo to its Instagram account of a student protesting Charles Murray’s visit to Middlebury to highlight activism at the college. The student was one of 74 protesters sanctioned in the wake of the event, sparking backlash over the attempt to paint the college as supportive of activism when students were punished for their actions.
“There was a line to walk of being cordial with the administration, so that they would work with us and be willing to make a shift, but then also not wanting to sacrifice our own radicalism or our own commitment to much more transformational change than they were willing to talk about,” Taranta said.
As an incoming SGA Vice President, Lawrence said she looks forward to having a greater platform to push for change at the college, but expects to be limited to incremental changes more than she wants.
“There are so many barriers that prevent SGA from doing more,” Lawrence said. “I’m really excited for it because we’re working on things like bringing in a more diverse staff for mental health resources, and things like that I think are incredible, and I’m so glad that we're able to do this. But there are other things that simply, we won't get approval to do if we suggest it to people in higher positions.”
Taranta also said that they had seen backlash from different groups at the college. When they advocated for changing the to-go containers in dining halls to reduce waste, some athletes strongly opposed the change. They also saw opposition from conservative members of the Economics department who pushed back against divestment, and from students involved in organizations like the Alexander Hamilton Forum and the Middlebury chapter of the American Enterprise Institute.
“There’s a very big, at least in my experience, divide on campus between students who are more on the left or — if not actively organizing for causes — supportive of them, and then really conservative, really wealthy students. They were not always very supportive, sometimes things became fairly antagonistic,” Taranta said.
Lawrence said there are structural barriers to what activism on campus can achieve. She said students work to get into Middlebury because of its elite reputation, and that reputation comes from elitism rooted in capitalism and racism.
“I do think people are trying, but it’s hard to imagine systemic change at a place that is founded on oppression,” Lawrence said. “We can’t separate Middlebury from these issues because it’s what makes Middlebury, Middlebury.
(05/06/21 9:58am)
Vermont Electric Cooperative (VEC) plans to reach carbon neutrality by 2023 and transition fully to renewable, carbon-free energy sources by 2030, according to an announcement released last month. CEO Rebecca Towne cited member enthusiasm and statewide climate goals as the company’s main motivations for the change.
With 32,000 members, VEC is the state’s largest consumer-owned energy distributor in Vermont, serving seventy-five communities and eight counties. The company was established in 1938 and is based in Johnson, Vt..
Currently, around 75% of power distributed by VEC is already produced carbon-free. In the next two years, VEC will seek to phase out the remaining quarter of its energy produced from fossil fuels – mainly, natural gas.
The final decision to achieve carbon neutrality was largely unanimous among board members, according to VEC Energy Services Planner Jake Brown.
“Every few years we do member surveys, and our members had begun to express some interest in us developing a cleaner power supply,” Brown told The Campus. “It became clear that there was a pretty significant number of members who felt that was an important objective.”
VEC’s Board of Directors reached a similar conclusion at around the same time and enlisted the company’s employees to brainstorm creative ways to reach the goal.
“The question is: how are you going to get to 100 percent?” Brown said.
Brown indicated that VEC is exploring opportunities to replace power currently generated by natural gas with clean energy supplies across New England, including wind power from New York or Maine and hydropower from the Connecticut River. While details of the future remain uncertain, Brown is confident that VEC will reach its goals.
“The board made the commitment, and now it's up to the power supply people to figure it out,” Brown said. “We kind of have a rough road map of where to go.”
VEC, which serves many lower-income and rural communities across the state, is working to combat any potential price increases as a result of the shift. According to Brown, price changes will largely be negligible for consumers.
“Forty percent of our residential members are on fixed incomes,” Brown said. “We serve a lot of relatively low-income Vermonters … The board was really careful to analyze the impact.”
Assistant Professor of Economics Akhil Rao predicts a positive economic outcome from the transition to clean energy in the long term. The shift will require an initial investment but will ultimately result in lower day-to-day energy costs for consumers.
“Carbon free sources of energy like solar and wind generate electricity at very low average costs,” he explained. “Combined with the appropriate storage, they will prove the cheaper sources in the long run.”
Another factor to consider in a long-term cost-benefit analysis is the improvement in public health, according to Rao.
“The averted health impacts can be a really big deal,” Rao said. “Avoiding the health impacts of the emissions will save people money on health-related costs.”
Brown noted that VEC’s goals are ahead of Vermont’s goals. State officials are aiming for 90% use of renewable energy across the state by 2050, a change which would involve increasing the use of electric vehicles by Vermonters and installing more efficient heating systems, among other initiatives. One of the co-op’s stated motivations for its project is to help make progress toward the state’s goal.
“We’re trying to lay the groundwork for that transition,” Brown said.
“People should have low-cost, clean energy in their lives, and that's something that everybody deserves,” Brown said, articulating his hope that “everyone gets a crack at cleaner and more efficient energy and power supply in their life.”
(05/06/21 9:50am)
Inspired by the theme “Back to Baseline,” TEDxMiddlebury hosted a conference featuring six speakers from the campus community on Thursday, April 29.
Each speaker came with their own interpretation of what it means to pull back and reflect, especially during a pandemic. The conference was split into two shows that were available via limited live seating or livestream.
The lineup began with Francoise Niyigena ’21 who examined the impact of education globally and personally. Having grown up in a large family with her mother as the sole provider, Niyigena knew the value of education from a young age. For her, education extended beyond books; it meant opened doors and opportunity. Through scholarships and competitions (“for the money,” she slyly noted), Niyigena earned her way through school. Incredibly personal, with a galvanizing touch, her talk lauded the importance of educational equity.
Next up, Frank Ji ’24 told his story of immigration to the U.S. and related his childhood stressors to those of the past few months. He discussed the effect of past stressors on his current loneliness and on recent experiences with familial tensions, death and a breakup. For Ji, finding himself in tough situations had been out of his control, but he still had the power of his choices. “I chose to stay and hold myself together, no matter how painful [a situation] was,” he said.
Middlebury Director of Athletics Erin Quinn ’86 gave a heartfelt, vulnerable talk about moving through major life changes. Quinn discussed growing up as a child with anger issues and emotional vulnerability, noting the ways he is impacted by them today. Quinn referred to his problems as childhood-onset “energies,” complete with adult-onset “troubles,” pervasive throughout his shifts in career and responsibility. Quinn likened life challenges to swimming like a duck, struggling beneath the surface. Focusing on personal development for the crux of his speech, Quinn emphasized mindfulness in learning to trust in others, finding joy and developing a sense of empathy.
Assistant Director of the Anderson Freeman Resource Center Janae Due spoke about fatness and its interactions with body positivity. Due identifies as a queer and disabled fat activist, and in her talk she highlighted the importance of not only recognizing divergent narratives in activism but the importance of liberation and prevalence of privilege. Her talk was packed with an informative synthesis of recent movements and subgroups in fat activism. Alongside a discussion of how she grew into her own body, Janae provided audiences with an exploration into how we learn to love ourselves.
Usman Ghani ’22 joked about his experimentation with the Middlebury Shooting Sports Club (MSSC) that came about because of a love for archery gone awry. As someone largely inexperienced with guns, Ghani discussed his accidental foray into a different side of shooting sports, connecting the experience to the modern political climate. Ghani’s talk felt relevant as he relayed conversations with close friends, both at Middlebury and back home in Brooklyn, about the way we organize and interpret symbols of violence or sport.
In the final TEDx talk, Omar Kawam explored the influence of faith and spirituality in the way we orient ourselves. As an Interfaith Fellow, Kawam works heavily in his daily life to recognize spiritual differences, seeking to bridge gaps in communication. Kawam noted the invariable divergences of worldview made possible through faith, and how they can make us feel either alienated or secure. Kawam talked about how it is important to recognize diverse practices and voices and provide a platform for understanding and accepting each other as well as possible. In a world with countless spiritual or theological leanings, Kawam pushed the audience to lean into moments of consternation, confusion and even disagreement as we learn to situate ourselves in the lives of others.
Each speaker came with a unique story and speech, from the questions raised by Kawam to the emotions highlighted by Ji. The theme of “Back to Baseline” prompted more than pure reflection; the speakers centered their talks in curiosity and growth.
(04/15/21 10:00am)
The editorial board is proud to endorse Roni Lezama ’22 for SGA president. As the current vice president, former co-chair of Community Council and member of the Institutional Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, he has copious experience working alongside institutional bodies to advocate on behalf of the student body. We trust that he will use his pre-existing relationships with administrators and key stakeholders to push his agenda items and make them a reality. With a strong commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, he has a clear vision of what remains to be done at Middlebury to make it a place where all feel welcome and supported. We have no doubt that he will rise to the occasion.
Although Lezama has strong leadership skills, he also understands that the SGA operates not as a central authority but as a catalyst for change. His honesty and sense of realism regarding the SGA’s abilities is not only refreshing but necessary to convert ideology into action. Previous candidates for SGA president have had more theoretical approaches to students’ concerns in lieu of substantive ideas and were, often unable to realistically deliver on their hopeful promises. With a concrete action plan and the credibility to back it up, Lezama has accountability built into his platform.
In his conversation with The Campus, he explained that he joined SGA due to personal struggles he faced during his first year. He promised himself that he would do as much as he could to make sure that no student ever feels what he felt, and to ensure that Middlebury is a place that feels like home for every individual, including and especially members of marginalized communities.
Running alongside Lezama as his vice presidents are rising sophomore Meg Farley ’24 and rising junior Charice Lawerence ’23. Farley and Lawrence offer a vital perspective that is necessary for understanding the broader range of student experiences. By having representation from an array of class years on his executive team, Lezama is much more likely to maintain a pulse on the issues that are affecting people at various levels of the student body.
Lezama and his opposing candidate Myles Maxie ’22 share a genuine desire to make Middlebury better and have the passion and determination to do so. Myles and his team, comprised of Arlo Fleischer ’21.5, Niyafa Boucher ’22, and Bakari Moitt ’X, have similar ideals for the future of the Middlebury community, and we commend them for their continued dedication to uplifting marginalized communities and centering anti-racism as well as diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. We believe in their capabilities and their convictions, and that they will continue to advocate for these principles.
Going into next fall, we as a community will continue to grapple with the collective trauma and grief experienced in this past year. Covid-19, the turmoil surrounding the presidential election, the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement, the push for LGBTQIA+ rights, and climate justice, to name a few, will continue to affect us all. Moving forward, it is necessary that we have leaders who intend to center the voices of those marginalized groups who have been impacted the most and whose action plans put their needs at the forefront so that Middlebury College can serve as a better community for all.
Lezama has already demonstrated an awareness of the importance of such community. In speaking with us, he noted that at the end of the day it’s his team’s job to help lead the SGA. We believe this mindset of teamwork over individualism will be incredibly beneficial. As a team, Lezama, Farley and Lawrence’s empathy, care and passion already shine through.
This editorial represents the opinions of the Middlebury Campus’ editorial board.
(04/01/21 9:59am)
An EF1 tornado touched down near Painter Road in Middlebury during the heavy storms on Friday afternoon, injuring two and causing damage to several houses.
One of the two people injured was a child, who was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. One home near 112 Painter Road was deemed uninhabitable by rescue crews, and the Red Cross was called in to assist the family occupying the home.
Middlebury resident Amanda Werner told NBC5 that she was working outside when winds from the tornado caused her to tumble across the yard. Werner suffered a scalp laceration that was treated by EMTs in the area.
The tornado also ripped trees from the ground, detached a standing garage from a house and flipped a car. Werner Tree Farm, which was in the path of the tornado, suffered minor damage.
https://twitter.com/MichaelWassers1/status/1375778568094023680
Meteorologist Tyler Jankoski and his team at NBC5 were the first to call in the tornado.
“The urgency was there immediately and it was unlike any storm that I’ve ever covered in Vermont in four years' time,” Jankoski said in an interview with The Campus.
According to the Storm Event Database at the National Weather Service (NWS), the tornado on Friday was the second to touch down in Addison County since 1950, with the only other tornado occurring in 1965 in New Haven.
“Out of all tornadoes [in Vermont] since 1950, only one has occurred in March, so it’s an extremely rare occurrence,” Michael Wasserstein ’21 said.
Wassertein worked with NBCUniversal as a meteorology intern for the past few years and taught a winter-term workshop in meteorology.
Jankoski noted that an unusually warm March brought high levels of humidity preceding the storm.
“With climate change, we’re seeing warmer spells of weather more frequently than we used to at all points in the year. That opens up the door for severe weather,” Jankoski said.
Jankoski and his team identified the tornado through its debris signature, which is visible on radar and happens when a tornado sucks debris into the air.
“We saw debris in the air on radar up to five-thousand feet,” Jankoski said. “The only way that can happen is if you have a tornado, on the ground, damaging things and sucking up debris.
The tornado lasted five minutes and winds reached 110 miles per hour, according to the NWS. The agency did not warn residents of the tornado before it touched down.
“Tornadoes are the most difficult meteorological phenomenon to forecast,” Wasserstein said. The tornado on Friday was caused by instability in the atmosphere combined with heavy winds and rain.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misclassified the tornado as an F1. The tornado was actually an EF1 using the Enhanced Fujita Scale. In addition, an earlier version of this article misspelled Werner Tree Farm.
(04/01/21 9:54am)
Have your Spotify playlists become stale? Is your weekly mix just not cutting it? Maybe it’s time to branch out and listen to something new. The Executive Board of WRMC, Middlebury College’s radio station, has selected a wonderfully wide range of albums, spanning time and genre, for your listening pleasure. Check back each week for a new set of recommendations.
*RIYL (recommended if you like)
Music Director’s Pick - Dan Frazo ’23
Album: “The Mighty Project” — Total Football
Genre: Indie Pop, Surf Rock, Dream Pop
RIYL: Beach Fossils, Real Estate, Woods, Vundabar
Blurb: “The Mighty Project” is a six-piece band of fun-lovers from Beppu, Japan. Influenced by the sounds of American indie pop, frontman Keito Otsuka gathered up a group of his childhood friends to try his own hand at making music in 2018. Since then, the band has been busy crafting simple, atmospheric tunes that bridge dream pop and surf rock, all the while performing at local venues in Beppu.
Studio Manager’s Pick - Lucy Rinzler-Day ’21
Album: “Amiture” – The Beach
Genre: Dance, Electronica, New Wave
RIYL: New Order, Spelling, Drab Majesty, TR/ST, Pet Shop Boys, Bronski Beat, Choir Boy
Blurb: This album instantly transported me back to last spring, briefly abroad in Prague, at a low-ceilinged, hole-in-the-wall nightclub during its ’80s night, where dark, pulsing beats reverberated through the purple smoke. If you think “Blue Monday'' by New Order goes hard, try this. Whether cleaning my room or putting on silver eyeshadow for a small get-together this past weekend, “The Beach” did the trick. (Also, one of WRMC’s official additions last week, so we encourage you to play it on your show to support emerging artists like this!) Amiture’s gorgeously smooth, tenor/contralto vocals are reminiscent of the bands who pioneered ’80s New Wave, while his instrumentals are smooth, danceable and incredibly well-produced. Viiiibes.
Music Director’s Pick – George Werner ’21
Album: “Music from the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle” – The Olivia Tremor Control
Genre: Neo-psychedelic Rock, Experimental
RIYL: The Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Thee Oh Sees
Blurb: The Olivia Tremor Control — a member of the Elephant 6 Collective that produced Neutral Milk Hotel and The Apples in Stereo — were part of a resurgence of interest in the songwriting and production practices of the 1960s, those which were used to produce albums like the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds.” The album ranges from pleasing-to-the-ear retro pop like “Jumping Fences” to the bizarre — and occasionally haunting — soundscapes of the ten successive tracks titled “Green Typewriters.” A great album to listen to all the way through, it interweaves familiar notes and experimental music together seamlessly.
Creative Director’s Pick - Chad Kim ’23.5
Album: “Nico and Her Psychedelic Subconscious” – Mr. Elevator
Genre: Jazz Band, Psychedelia, Rock
RIYL: Mdou Moctar, Beyond the Seasons, KGLW
Blurb: As the name of the album suggests, “Nico and Her Psychedelic Subconscious” features a series of jam sessions punctuated with moments of calmness that act as a chance for the listener to catch their breath. The evolution of each track allows an exploration of a broad gamut of genres — from experimental to more classic psych rock. If you’re the kind that enjoys having your senses knocked around in the presence of novelty, then this is the perfect album for you.
Programming Director’s Pick - Micah Raymond ’21
Album: “Stay in the Car” – Bachelor
Genre: Indie Rock
RIYL: Jay Som, Palehound, Hand Habits, SASAMI
Blurb: Best friends Melina Duterte (of Jay Som) and Ellen Kempner (of Palehound) — two classic WRMC faves — just started a band together. They’ve released a couple singles from their upcoming album (you can preorder it on Bandcamp) and they’re everything you thought they’d be. The music is fun and playful, with the just-gritty-enough crunch that we’ve come to expect from the two. Duterte and Kempner write that while they did shed tears in the creative process — especially around themes of queerness and climate change — “they couldn’t remember a time they’d ever been so delirious with creativity, so overwhelmed with joy.” A must-hear, and a must-look-forward-to.
(03/18/21 9:58am)
Have your Spotify playlists become stale? Is your weekly mix just not cutting it? Maybe it’s time to branch out and listen to something new. The Executive Board of WRMC, Middlebury College’s radio station, has selected a wonderfully wide range of albums, spanning time and genre, for your listening pleasure. Check back each week for a new set of recommendations.
*RIYL: recommended if you like
Tech Director’s Pick – Maddie Van Beek ’22.5
Album: “Hey u x” – BENEE
Genre: Indie Pop
RIYL: Mallrat, Gus Dapperton, Still Woozy, Lorde
Blurb: New Zealander BENEE followed up her TikTok-famous single “Supalonely” with a full-length album, “Hey u x,” in late 2020. It’s sincere, fun and star-studded, with features from Mallrat, Gus Dapperton, Grimes, Lily Allen, Flo Milli, Kenny Beats, Bakar and Muroki.
Creative Director’s Pick – Pia Contreras ’22
Podcast: “How to Save a Planet” - Gimlet
Genre: Society, Environment, Science
RIYL: Drilled, Timber Wars
Blurb: Hosted by Alex Blumberg and Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, “How to Save a Planet” is great for anyone who is even remotely curious about climate change. In each episode, the hosts explore a new topic related to the climate crisis — from the truth about recycling to kelp farming to electric cars. Even if you don’t like podcasts and hate the planet, the theme song alone (original music by Peter Leonard and Emma Mungard) makes the show worth listening to and earns it a spot on this roundup.
Music Director’s Pick – George Werner ’21
Album: “Roses” – The Paper Kites
Genre: Indie, Folk Rock, Atmospheric
RIYL: Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear, Iron & Wine, Bon Iver
Blurb: For whom are the “Roses” in the Paper Kites’ newest album’s title meant? Perhaps it is a reference to the wistful love songs that dominate the album, but I suspect the album is above all else meant to honor the concept of the vocal duet. Every track has a different guest singer, each of whom shines in their own right. As a whole, the album reminds me of driving on an empty highway at 2 a.m. as you grow tired and feel the world around you start to blur. It is certainly worth a listen if you are in the mood for a slower, quieter album.
General Manager’s Pick – Rayn Bumstead ’21
Single: “Materialistic” – Remember Sports
Genre: Indie Rock, Pop Punk
RIYL: Bully, Forth Wanders, Diet Cig
Blurb: SINGLE ALERT! Get excited for a new Remember Sports album by listening to this single! “Like a Stone,” the band’s fourth album, is set to be released April 23.
Creative Director’s Pick – Chad Kim ’23.5
Single: “Trophy” – Crumb
Genre: Ethereal, Indie, Dream Pop
RIYL: Mild High Club, Drugdealer, Post Animal
Blurb: Maybe it’s been a minute since you last gave Crumb’s EP “Locket” a listen, but fret not! Crumb has returned with its new single, “Trophy,” a pleasant reprise of a familiar dream sequence that will facilitate your self-dissolution goals. Their fully-realized sound pairs well with late night walks and sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool.
Social Media Manager’s Pick – Jose Morales ’22
Single: “Leave the Door Open” – Silk Sonic (Bruno Mars & Anderson .Paak)
Genre: Soul, Pop
RIYL: Kali Uchis, Bruno Mars, Anderson .Paak
Blurb: “Leave the Door Open” isn’t necessarily underground, but this new collaboration from Bruno and Anderson hits hard! Their vocals mold beautifully under a grand and smooth production that has me excited for future projects. They go by the name Silk Sonic, which is fitting given their delivery on this track.
(03/10/21 8:07am)
From the bright red of the Japanese Maple outside the Emma Willard House, the warm yellow Ginkgos in front of Mead Memorial Chapel, the hot pink Rhododendrons behind Forest Hall or the blazing orange Sugar Maples outside Battell, the campus boasts stunning sights year-round.
For the most part, other than snapping daily nature photos to post or send to family members, you probably pay little attention to the other trees that surround you on campus. With all that has happened over the past year, it’s especially easy to lose the memories of foliage that fill out the edges of the most dramatic turning points and salient traumas. However, even though so much has changed since departing from campus last March, one thing has remained constant: our beloved campus itself.
The Darkest Day
Tuesday, March 10, 2020, 1:08 p.m.
Campus horticulturist Tim Parsons was walking across campus, ready to prune trees, when he suddenly received the text. Ding. “Date Change: Middlebury College will begin spring break this Friday, March 13, after classes end, which is one week earlier than scheduled. This will be a two-week break with classes resuming — remotely — on Monday, March 30. Remain Home After Break: Following spring break, students who can will be expected to remain at home and not return to campus until further notice.”
“I knew from the moment I read the screenshotted email, it was not going to be good,” Parsons said. “It just seemed off. Everything was so up in the air, and nobody knew what to do, or what to say. People get used to predictability, stability and it just felt off.”
Parsons noted that although the reckless acts of vandalism across campus and in town during the last week were apparent, the damage did not seem to have targeted trees as student vandalism often has in the past.
“I mostly saw signs being torn down, not trees that students are often keen to uproot,” he said. “It was yet another thing that felt odd.”
Speaking for the Trees
It is the deeply rooted love for the campus and Middlebury College community that makes Tim Parsons’ job both rewarding and a tall order.
Middlebury’s campus horticulturist since 2006, Parsons’ knowledge of the college’s greenery borders on encyclopedic. A Vermont-certified horticulturist and a certified arborist by the International Society of Arboriculture, Parsons was in the green industry for more than 25 years, running his own landscape design company and a garden center for nearly 10 years. Additionally, Parsons is a past president of Greenworks, The Vermont Nursery and Landscape Association and was chosen in 2003 as the Young Nurseryman of the Year by the New England Nursery Association. Although he grew up in Connecticut, he has lived in Vermont for 22 years and now lives at the base of Snake Mountain in Weybridge, Vermont with his wife, three daughters and “too many gardens.”
At Middlebury, Parsons’ responsibilities include the care and maintenance of the colleges’ robust urban forest, full landscape design and installation measures, and management of the sustainable turfgrass of the athletic fields. Along with caring for the abundance of trees on campus, Parsons has taught a “Trees and the Urban Forest” course several times, led field trips for other courses, and marshals a popular “Campus Tree Tour” each fall during Homecoming. He also writes a blog — appropriately titled “The Middlebury Landscape” — and is a member of multiple college committees such as the Master Plan Implementation Committee, the Emergency Response Team and Community Council. He has also served on the Environmental Council.
“I love everything about my job, but seeing how the college landscape makes people happy is the most rewarding part,” Parsons said.
Withering Life
Phenology — which comes from the greek “phaino,” meaning to show or appear — is the study of recurring life cycles of the living things around us, the seasonal experiences of insects, plants, mammals and the relationship of time to weather and climate. Parsons compares this to the collective experience between the environment and people during the Covid-19 pandemic.
As a landscaper, Parsons observed that the quiet looming over campus relates to the “natural ebb and flow of things.”
“I don’t know the exact class schedules all that well, but people certainly know when classes are out,” he said.
Parsons said after a majority of students left campus mid-March, he would walk to a certain part of campus where there are usually clusters of students studying or socializing, but there was no one there.
“The first week or so it’s nice to ride on those silly Gators and not be in the way of folks, but after that, it just wasn’t the same,” he said. “It was just really sad.”
“I remember the CFA parking lot is filled with crab apples. When those come to bloom they are absolutely spectacular,” Parsons said. “I was actually quite excited to see them this spring because I had never seen them bloom without any cars in the lot, so I made a specific point to walk to campus to see them.” But the crabapples did not bloom.
“Horticulturally, trees and shrubs sort of had their own pandemic too,” Parsons said. “We had a severe drought and it didn't rain for weeks on end. Lawns turned brown, leaves started to fall early, and wherever I looked, plants looked lifeless, much like how I felt.”
Parsons explained that like people and the pandemic, it can take years for the trees to fully recover from damage.
“I spent the whole summer watering trees, and I don't remember a year it was this dry for a long time,” he said. “I had hoped that some of the high traffic locations would receive a much-needed break, but the drought was so bad, there wasn't much of a difference.”
Throughout the summer, Parsons took solo walks around campus, checking in to make sure everything was still okay. He noted that the treasured hot pink Rhododendrons behind Forest Hall did, in fact, bloom as usual, a stark reminder of the loss of spring, and especially graduation. According to Parsons, the bright flowering bushes were planted there to serve as the original ceremony location, with chairs extending out across Battell Beach. After planning for the commencement ceremony all Winter, Memorial Day weekend eventually came that May, and with no students to graduate, Parsons had that weekend off for the first time in 15 years.
“When the students are gone after commencement and before language schools, it’s peaceful and nice, but after a couple of weeks of that, everyone’s ready for the energy to come back,” he said. “The whole point to working at the school is to help the students out, and that’s why we’re here, so it just doesn’t really feel right when campus is empty.”
Instagram Updates
Known for sharing snapshots of the college’s picturesque landscape, his family, sleeping pets and even an occasional baked good or two, Parsons’ Instagram (@middland) also happens to be a favorite account for many Middlebury students. His captions shared are pure musings that bring Parsons’ love for the small joys in life to the public eye.
On March 13, Parsons wrote, “Adopted a plant today, I named it Riley. Goodbye to all my student friends leaving today, hoping to see you again.” And on a photo of an empty campus, a sarcastic, “Day one at Middlebury College. 9:00, sidewalks filled as students walk to class.”
Parsons continued these logs the rest of the month, updating his followers on the life they abruptly left behind on campus. “Day three at Middlebury College. Cross country trail, missing the runners on the blue sky day.” “Day four. One of my traditions after the students move out is looking for rocks geology students don't want to bring home and leave in parking lots. Here's this year's finds. Anybody want to ID?” “Day five, quiet.”
As warmer weather arrived in Middlebury, Parsons continued to updated his small but mighty fanbase on the still life coming back to campus, highlighting the blossoming of White Siberian squill, serviceberry, daffodils, magnolias, the redbud trees in front of Axinn and the green grass beginning to show on the lawns. And on May 24, a picture of a flowering crabapple tree.
“Today would have been the day I decorated the commencement stage at Middlebury College then waited to see my former students and friends march in. So to them, I say so long, good bye, come back soon. Wish you could be here. #middseniorcelebration.” One student commented, “I miss the campus trees,” to which Parsons replied, “and they miss you!”
Parsons’ consistent updates continued throughout the summer, increasing as the date drew nearer for the August return to campus. He posted photos of the Adirondack chairs in storage, ready to be set outside again for use, renovated outdoor classroom spaces for the new norm of safe, socially distant learning and a shot of the Brobdingnagian tents outside of McCullough wittily captured, “Intense.”
And in October, Parsons called to action his growing fan base to fundraise for financial aid at the college. “As the Middlebury College arborist I've learned that the strength and resilience of our urban forest is based upon its diversity,” he commented. “If you can, help the ‘MoveMidd’ effort to help keep Middlebury the inclusive space it is. Link in bio, I figured out how to do that.”
Nearly half of all Middlebury students receive financial aid, and as the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic continues, disproportionately affecting students of color, that number grows and the need for student academic funding rises. “It’s important for everyone to have the opportunity to learn here, regardless of their background,” Parsons said.
Parsons’ fall semester updates petered out in December, ending with a quintessential photo of Mead Memorial Chapel that read, “And, just like that, campus empties out again, and it's just the cold trees and I. Hopefully students are returning in a couple months, if everyone can get their act together. For everyone that left for the semester, here is today at Middlebury College. We'll try and keep the snow around for your return.”
Staff Shifting
The college’s organic garden, The Knoll, holds a founding mission to educate and nourish its community. This came into clear focus when the onset of the pandemic left many staff and community members without a steady source of income.
As the pandemic continued throughout the year, staff concerns related to employment and compensation continued to loom large. A week after students left campus, the college committed to full wage continuity and no layoffs through June 30, a pledge administrators have since tentatively extended to next July in their new 2021 budget. Although the college set up the Covid-19 pay bank to support staff members throughout the pandemic, many staff who cannot work remotely still needed to use their own combined time off (CTO) to cover their days stuck at home. While many staff members have remained at home, others have begun to return to campus on staggered work schedules.
In anticipation of the community’s emergency food needs over the summer and fall, combined with the issues regarding staff employment hours, the college gave The Knoll permission to grow produce to meet community emergency food needs, and granted approval to bring in dining employees for paid full-time work over the summer. Parsons’ wife Nancy, a chef in Atwater Dining, was one of the individuals relocated there.
“I enjoyed getting to work with people I otherwise never would have,” Nancy said.
“Bringing staff members from other departments to work here was necessary,” Megan Brakeley ‘06, The Knoll’s current manager, said. “Even though life on campus stopped, life at The Knoll did not.”
“We missed the students this year because we connect with a lot of them in close quarters through dining, and you just grow to love them,” Nancy said. “With proper social distancing, safety measures and the change in schedules, that has drastically changed.”
Spaces that once connected students and staff don’t exist in the same form these days, and dining staff have taken notice.
“Students aren’t gathering in dining halls anymore, so we’ve completely lost all sense of community that happens in those spaces,” she continued. “It is one of the most drastic changes to campus life, and something not easily recreated in a pandemic-safe manner.”
Returning Where We Left Off
Just as Dining Services prepared for another round of individually packaged meals, the Grounds Department was also busy preparing for students to return to Middlebury for the spring semester, an ominous time that marked a year since the campus was abandoned.
“I’m always amazed at how smart and resilient plants are, and that’s exactly like Middlebury now,” Parsons said.
Before students returned, Parsons said, larger tents were installed across campus and the golf course was groomed for cross country skiing. The carpentry shop got busy building forty new adirondack chairs to add to the fleet to promote outside socializing, and the grounds crew assembled portable fire pits. “Pro tip for students? Bring marshmallows,” Parsons quipped.
“I’m really looking forward to having campus come alive again,” Parsons said that winter. “It’s comforting to know that we’ll all be together once again, and hopefully not have to miss out on another spring here.”
Symbol of Our Strength
From the growth around the pond behind the Mahaney Center for the Arts to the comforting line of trees between Axinn and Davis Library, the ivy-covered walls of Battell Hall to the unexpected diversity of the woods around the Trail Around Middlebury, the greenery of Middlebury College holds an important place on campus and within the hearts of Panthers young and old. And after a long, cold winter away from campus, Middlebury now invites the arrival of warmer weather, the opening of forsythia and the return of lifeo to campus as the harbingers of spring.
Author’s Note: Middlebury College sits on land belonging to the Abenaki Nation, and we have all contributed and been complicit in the brutal colonization of this Indigenous land. The Western Abenaki are the traditional caretakers of this Vermont area Ndakinna, or homeland. We give our gratitude to the Abenaki Elders and Indigenous inhabitants of Turtle Island past and present, and are thankful for the opportunity to share in the bounty and protection of this environment.
(03/04/21 10:56am)
This is the first installment of the column “WRMC Radio Roundup” from the Middlebury College radio station, in which WRMC executive board members offer album recommendations.
Are you tired of listening to “Channel Orange?” Have you decided it's time to branch out, spread your musical wings and hear something new? Look no further. The Executive Board of WRMC, Middlebury College’s radio station, has selected a wonderfully wide range of albums, spanning time and genre, for your listening pleasure.
*RIYL = Recommended If You Like; if you like these artists, you’ll probably enjoy this recommendation
General Manager’s Pick — Rayn Bumstead ’21
Album: “For The First Time” - Black Country, New Road
Genre: Post-Punk
RIYL: Black Midi, Iceage, Deeper, Slint
Blurb: “For the First Time” is the debut album from the Brixton, England-based band Black Country, New Road. The group has already been hailed by Stereogum as “one of the most exciting, transformative young bands to come out of not just the Speedy Wunderground/Windmill ecosystem, but out of this new generation of genre-mutating rock artists overall.” The band describes its sound as “jazz-inflected post-punk,” and “For the First Time” delivers on that claim. It is dark and moody, makes use of a saxophone and contains some re-appropriated Phoebe Bridgers lyrics. Sounds weird? You should give it a try.
Tech Director’s Pick — Maddie Van Beek ’22
Album: “The Leo Sun Sets” - Serena Isioma
Genre: R&B/Soul
RIYL: Dua Saleh, Arlo Parks, Orion Sun, MICHELLE
Blurb: After the release of her hugely popular single “Sensitive,” Isioma returns with her EP, “The Leo Sun Sets,” which deals with identity, youth and independence. Each song unlocks another part of her narrative, punctuated with playful riffs and melodies that echo childhood lullabies.
Creative Director’s Pick — Chad Kim ’23
Album: “L. W.” - King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard (KGLW)
Genre: Microtonal Rock
RIYL: Kikagaku Moyo, levitation room, Babe Rainbow
Blurb: Back in the fall, these boys from down under reprised their affinity for microtones with their K. G. album, followed a week later by the single, “If Not Now, Then When?,” hinting at the advent of an ensuing “L. W.” album. They did not disappoint. In addition to completing their microtonal trilogy, “L. W.” laments and warns of the modern apocalypse of climate change and corruption through their creative acoustic tones paired with their signature rock style.
Concerts Manager’s Pick — Eric Kapner ’21
Album: “I Don’t Hate Hate You” - Ogbert the Nerd
Genre: Emo
RIYL: Sorority Noise, Snowing, PUP
Blurb: It’s been a while since I’ve gone to a show in a dingy New Jersey basement, but this album takes me back to that experience anytime I listen to it. Ogbert the Nerd’s debut record is as messy and loud as it is well written and catchy. Continuing a long tradition of semi-underground emo, “I Don’t Hate You” deals with getting over the past, stumbling into adulthood and generally feeling bad all the time.
Music Director’s Pick — Dan Frazo ’22
Album: “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” - Chinatown Slalom
Genre: prog-rap, pop/rock
RIYL: Bamily, extremely bad man, Mosie
Blurb: Most bands entering the music scene lead with an EP, a few singles, or something of the sort. Chinatown Slalom is not most bands. Right out of the gate, this Liverpool-based group released a full-length album titled “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” The band’s four members live together in a house in their hometown, with the words “Everyone’s Invited” spray painted onto the walls, so naturally their music is a seriously eclectic mix. If you like collage-style samples, pedal-driven synth or eerie background harmonies, this album is definitely worth a listen.
Studio Manager’s Pick — Lucy Rinzler-Day ’21
Album: “Kids Talk Sun” - Camila Fuchs
Genre: Dream Pop, Psychedelica, Darkwave
RIYL: Björk, Cocteau Twins, Beach House, Katie Dey
Blurb: Listen to while stoned in the dark.
(12/03/20 10:58am)
It’s the easiest small talk to resort to on campus: how much work do you have, how much sleep are you getting, how stressed are you? Before lunch, you’ve had at least half a dozen conversations about how much work everyone has, and because of this repetition and constant comparison, you probably start to identify as an overachiever, someone who bites off just enough to chew. After all, everyone else is doing it.
And then, on the edge of burnout, when we’re ready to accept that it’s time for a break, we feel this twinge in our guts that tells us whatever we’re doing must still in some way be productive, impressive or aesthetic. Before, I’ve found it easy to believe that this is just what a high-performance culture entails. Maybe there is no other way to surround yourself with highly motivated individuals while receiving some of the best education and experiences that the world has to offer.
It took leaving Midd for me to discover that this isn’t true.
I took this fall semester off, spending time organizing in anticipation of the presidential election. I had thought taking a semester off would be a surefire way of burning out; previously, when I engaged in organizing work during the academic year and on breaks, I had loved it but it also exhausted me.
But this time, things have been different. I no longer had those panicky conversations about being overwhelmed that make my cortisol levels skyrocket, I didn’t drink four cups of coffee a day anymore, and I didn’t go out on Saturday nights anymore just because I felt like I was supposed to. This time last year, I was at rock-bottom — anxious, depressed, stuck. Now, every day is a gift. Days just flow in and out of each other, and I can breathe.
Here in my family’s little bubble in the Philadelphia suburbs, all four of us have found a slowness we haven’t before. We don’t set alarms but instead get to work when we feel well-rested. We cancel meetings and commitments when we’re sick — mentally or physically. We snatch snippets and hours of time from each other throughout the day for planning, cuddling with our puppy or taking time to be present with each other. I even have time to explore sustainable living, classic and modern literature, and creative writing.
This doesn’t mean that we aren’t “productive.” My mother is healing herself from a spinal surgery that leaves her with chronic pain two years later. My dad is figuring out how to distribute pediatric vaccines all over the world. My trans sister works at a rock climbing gym and is taking the year to find herself during her transition. And I was working with Sunrise activists in Vermont and Pennsylvania to win the 2020 election; preserve its integrity; and fight for climate, racial, and social justice.
I believe it’s possible to find the balance between slowness and productivity at Midd because I don’t think they’re actually antithetical. Most of us are here because we love learning, not because we love all-nighters. After the past nine months, I still want that intellectual stimulation, and I’m sure many of you do, too. But we can have that without the constant need to compare, perform or over-achieve. And when we do rest, maybe no one else notices it, but maybe at the end of the day, we’ve grown more and fallen in love with our lives just a bit more. My days during Covid-19 honestly would seem pretty boring to my former self, but I know I wouldn’t go back.
We need to change Midd’s culture so that we can all find the slowness, rest and acceptance we need. Like all societal changes, slowness at Middlebury must come from all levels. As students, this could mean making space for ourselves instead of always prioritizing our grades, whether that be cooking a meal with friends, meditating or calling loved ones. This also looks like changing the conversations we have in dining halls, classrooms and offices so that work is not our primary focus. For professors, this looks like restructuring syllabi so students have more time to soak in material and hold onto it years from now. And institutionally, Middlebury could begin to identify as a school where we value the depth and richness of higher education — not chaos, overwhelm and burnout.
As this year comes to a close, a fear of returning to Midd dwells in the back of my mind: a fear of failure, of burnout, of not being able to relate to the grind culture or the culture of performative leisure anymore. But I know I’m not the only person who holds mixed feelings about their lifestyles at Midd. So please, share your pockets of slowness with each other. Be gentle and generous with one another. I hope you all find stillness and rest throughout the holidays.
Emily Thompson is a member of the class of 2023.
(10/29/20 10:00am)
Governor Phil Scott and challenger Lieutenant Governor David Zuckerman talk budgets, climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic. (COURTESY PHOTO)
