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Club sports at Middlebury have rapidly increased in popularity among students in recent years, but many of their leaders say that the administration and the Student Government Association (SGA) have not given them the budget necessary to maintain safe and competitive teams.
Zoe Sipe ’23.5 waited to die in the parking lot of the Middlebury Marriott.
The largest anaerobic biogas digester in the Northeast began production on Goodrich Family Farm in Salisbury on July 21. Standing beside Vermont Governor Phil Scott and Lieutenant Governor Molly Gray at the summer kickoff ceremony was the college’s executive vice president for finance and administration and treasurer, David Provost. Renewable natural gas produced by the digester will provide about one third of the energy that the college uses for heating and cooling — at the time, Provost called this partnership “critical” in helping Middlebury reach its renewable energy goals.
Among students, it is common knowledge that Middlebury’s mental health resources fall short in a myriad of ways. The counseling office has long remained understaffed and overbooked, leading students and even professors to suggest that students would be better off searching in Burlington for services or not bothering at all. Members of the board who have also served as orientation leaders noted that they err on the side of honesty with their new students, expressing that mental health support on campus is inadequate at best and devastatingly lacking at worst.
Most of the campus dreams on with a few more hours of sleep to spare at 6 a.m. But in Proctor dining hall, the kitchen is up and running for the day. Coming through the backdoor, Wayne, the truck driver, was busy moving in boxes of food supplies. Most staff did not know who I was or what I was doing there but greeted me with a smile and a “good morning” nevertheless.
The idea came to me while watching a snowboarding movie called “Offline” which started with a neon-coloured, 3D, spinning sign that said: “The Internet Never Sleeps.” In the background was a dizzying collage of memes, likes, emojis and phones. The introduction nauseated me so much that I decided to go offline for some time.
Middlebury College is located in a beautiful autumnal environment. Amidst the peaks of the mountains and turning leaves, Midd students bustle through rolling hills to class, practice and meals, but on Halloween and the days leading up to the holiday, what can Middlebury students do to celebrate? From scary to sporty to beautiful, here are The Campus’ recommendations as we go into Halloweekend.
The heart of Addison County is aged and well worn. Past the pumpkin spice storefronts, oreo cows and paint-chipped houses dotting the hills lies an ancient site with stories to tell. It is the color of rain-dampened sugar maples and ginger leaves, trampled to a fine pulp on the forest floor. It smells of moss and walnuts left to rot under a blanket of fresh snow. The heart of Addison County is fire-singed and beaten by the steel-toed boots of men, unaware of the clouds grimacing from above. We call it Snake Mountain. Locals call it cryptic, beautiful and home.
I have anxiety and depression. My favorite color is purple (or blue, depending on the day). I’m happiest in libraries, at concerts, on the beach or watching sunsets. I’m passionate about multimedia storytelling and creating positive representation for marginalized communities. Fall is my favorite season (partially because my birthday is in October and partially because of how beautiful the leaves look). I’m a New Yorker and thought I would never survive outside a city, but am learning to love the access to nature that living in a rural setting affords me. I understand rationally that these are all facets of my being, that without any one of them, I would not be the person I am. But I’m still wary about attaching the label of “mentally ill” to myself. I’ve been grappling with my mental health for most of my life. After my parents divorced, my mom decided it would be healthiest for me and my brother to learn how to process our feelings in therapy. As first and third graders, respectively, we weren’t thrilled by this prospect — especially since we had some therapists we didn’t get along with. In retrospect, I give her major kudos for this: recent studies have found that only about 10% of children see a therapist before they turn 18. I was in sixth grade when we found someone we really liked and I have been meeting with her ever since. I’ve also been a proponent of mental health initiatives and in high school I advocated for more accessible mental health resources on a local and state level through the New York Civil Liberties Union. As a student at Midd, I’ve had multiple conversations with peers about mental health, some of them even among the Editorial Board of the Campus. On a wider level, mental health isn’t the taboo it once was. Whether diagnosed officially or not, many of my friends are open about the ways in which they’ve struggled with their mental health, both on and offline. Over the years, social media accounts dedicated to raising awareness around mental health and promoting resources have become more commonplace. There are varying stats on Gen-Z mental health, but studies agree that more than 2/3 of Gen-Zers are mentally ill in some capacity — a proportion much higher than for previous generations. Despite this generally more mental-health savvy culture and all of my own resources — having access to a therapist, having a mom who “got it,” having a Posse mentor and a greater support network on campus, I still fell through the cracks. I spent my first semester in college on a schedule fit more for a vampire than an 18-year-old. I’d wake up at 7:30 a.m., spend my morning trying not to fall asleep in classes, get lunch, then go back to my room and pass out until 7, 8, or sometimes 9 p.m.. I would proceed to stay up until anywhere from 2 to 5 a.m., struggling to focus and get my homework done. Rinse and repeat. On paper, I had a great first semester. Sure, I was constantly on the verge of a breakdown, but at least my transcript and résumé were strong. In retrospect, this feels like an almost superhuman feat. I can’t imagine pulling off the grades and extracurriculars I did, while running on the consistent lack of sleep I had. Maybe it’s because Covid-19 drained me of the capacity to run on nothing but sheer willpower, caffeine and adrenaline. Or maybe it’s because I’ve learned not to push myself past my limits anymore — or at the very least, how to stop prioritizing everyone and everything above myself. I don’t think I turned a single assignment in on time that semester. While I had been repeatedly assured that everyone struggled with adjusting to their college course load, this felt outside of the realm of typical transition-period difficulties. People in my hall and in my classes were still somehow able to be up at the same time the sun was, and maintain some sort of a social life. While I recognized that functioning in a constant state of burnout wasn’t healthy, it was second-nature to me — I didn’t have a blueprint for operating any other way. I graduated from high school with an IB diploma at the cost of my sleep and my sanity. I was privileged to learn how to write strong analytical papers, how to conduct research, how to engage with my course material and the world around me in meaningful and critical ways. But I also adopted a really toxic mindset of prioritizing assignments and grades over my mental and physical health. This mindset transferred over to my time at Middlebury. It’s one that seems to thrive in high-pressure academic environments known for their rigor. After multiple FaceTimes with my mom that ended in tears, I was forced to admit to myself that something was wrong, that I was drowning, that I needed help. But asking for help was easier said than done. I worried that admitting I was struggling would be conceding that I didn’t belong at Midd, that I wasn’t capable of handling the workload, that I didn’t deserve to be here. These fears were rooted in imposter syndrome — which is especially common for women of color at predominantly white institutions. I eventually reached out to all the resources at my disposal. Soon, my mentors knew I was struggling, my professors knew I was struggling, my dean knew I was struggling, my academic advisor knew I was struggling. They were sympathetic, outlining various avenues of support I could access — but not one of them suggested that I try to get accommodations. Instead, they advised me to go to the Center for Teaching, Learning and Research and work on creating schedules for myself — a method I had already been taught in high school. I was made to feel like it was my fault, like if I just managed my time better and worked more effectively I could stay afloat. [pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="off" background_color="#ffffff" border="none" border_color="#FFFFFF" border_size="5px" shadow="off"]I was made to feel like it was my fault, like if I just managed my time better and worked more effectively I could stay afloat. [/pullquote] While schedules and time-blocking can be helpful, no amount of time-blocking could cure my brain fog. I'd sit and stare at my computer for hours, willing words to appear on the screen, but I couldn't do it. I spiraled into a vicious cycle where I would get so anxious about something having to be not only good, but perfect, that I would avoid doing it. Then, when the deadline had passed and I was still faced with my blank screen, I felt guilty, which made me more anxious. With fight or flight out of the picture, that left me with a third option: feeling frozen. These are classic symptoms of mental illness, symptoms that, in retrospect, so clearly point to a need for help. It’s not that I’m unfamiliar with accommodations, it’s that I never thought they applied to me. Being high-functioning means that the struggles I go through because of my mental illnesses exist below the surface. One of my family members has ADHD and he’s had an Individualized Education Program, the pre-collegiate version of accommodations, for many years now. Professors are required to include information about the Disability Resource Center on their syllabi and they often encourage students to reach out for accommodations. I always skipped over this part. My perception of accommodations was that they were for people with learning disorders or physical disabilities, not those struggling with anxiety and depression. You can’t advocate for yourself if you don’t think you deserve help. [pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="off" background_color="#ffffff" border="none" border_color="#FFFFFF" border_size="5px" shadow="off"]You can’t advocate for yourself if you don’t think you deserve help.[/pullquote] Halfway through my sophomore fall, I discovered that one of my friends was given accommodations because she had panic attacks — something that I also dealt with. This surprised me, not because I didn’t think she deserved them, but because so much of the language surrounding accommodations highlights “disability.” I was forced to redefine disability — not only on a larger scale, but in my own relationship to it. My mental illnesses were so ingrained into my daily life that I overlooked the fact that they were just that: illnesses. More importantly, I overlooked the fact that being neurodivergent meant I had to work harder than my neurotypical peers to complete the same assignments — not because I was any less capable, but because I had to overcome the barriers that come with anxiety and depression in the process. Somewhere along the way, I forgot to be proud of myself for what I've been able to accomplish despite having to overcome so much. Instead, I fell into cycles of beating myself up for not meeting my fullest potential. The next week, I applied for accommodations. Despite this being a multi-step process, as outlined on the Disability Resource Center website, it was less of an ordeal than I had braced myself for. I had expected to undergo an interrogation of sorts, to prove that I genuinely needed help and wasn’t trying to cheat or find an “easy way out.” I reached out to my therapist beforehand to ensure that she could produce documentation to back up my claims. While this streamlined the process, I later found out that it wasn’t even necessary (despite what the language on the site about documentation suggested), and that students could get assessed through the school. In comparison to these daunting preconceptions, the actual process seemed almost overwhelmingly simple. I emailed the Disability Resource Center, set up an appointment with them, and over the course of an hour, explained the ways in which I was struggling and was presented with different solutions in the form of accommodations. Almost immediately after, I received a provisional Letter of Accommodation and got a permanent one after filling out some paperwork and sending documentation from my therapist. While I was grateful for how straightforward the process was, and for the lack of red tape around it that I had previously envisioned, I felt bitter (and still do) that it took so long to get there, that I had been so wary about reaching out for help before. There’s an astounding amount of irony in the fact that the site for the office dedicated to accessibility uses official language that is inaccessible to students and doesn’t have clearer guidelines on what qualifies as a “disability” for the sake of acquiring accommodations. [pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="off" background_color="#ffffff" border="none" border_color="#FFFFFF" border_size="5px" shadow="off"]There’s an astounding amount of irony in the fact that the site for the office dedicated to accessibility uses official language that is inaccessible to students and doesn’t have clearer guidelines on what qualifies as a “disability” for the sake of acquiring accommodations. [/pullquote] While I wasn’t told to seek out accommodations my first semester, I was advised to drop a class. This happened again last semester, when I was falling behind on readings and assignments. Both times, I refused. I told myself I could stick it out, despite the sleep and peace of mind I knew it would cost me. Even though I was granted the institutional support I so desperately craved two years ago, there’s a sense of shame that continues to hang over me, that exists in tandem with a self-imposed expectation to prove myself: at first, just as a woman of color at Middlebury, but then, as a woman of color who qualified as having a disability. At the beginning of this semester, I was hesitant to send a professor I admired my letter of accommodation, worried it would make him think less of me, that I’d have to work harder to prove I was a “good student.” I think this is representative of a wider stigma associated with mental illness, that it is something that is a burden, something to be worked around, something to be “dealt with.” On the flip side of this stigma, I’ve seen discourses that reframe mental illnesses in an overly positive light, even going so far as to call them “superpowers.” Neither of these feel right to me. My anxiety and depression mean spirals and panic attacks — where it feels like the walls are closing in on me and I can’t catch my breath no matter how hard I try. On good days, though, I can acknowledge that they’re the parts of me that make it easier to empathize with others, to provide a good listening ear and advice if needed. The fact that I have mental illnesses is not good or bad, it just is. They’re a part of me just as much as my favorite colors, settings and seasons. But even as I type that sentence, I know that it is something that I’m still coming to terms with. [pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="off" background_color="#ffffff" border="none" border_color="#FFFFFF" border_size="5px" shadow="off"]The fact that I have mental illnesses is not good or bad, it just is. They’re a part of me just as much as my favorite colors, settings and seasons. But even as I type that sentence, I know that it is something that I’m still coming to terms with. [/pullquote] My ability to acquire accommodations was entirely circumstantial, a combination of privilege and luck. If I had never met my friend who had accommodations because of her panic attacks, I’m not sure that it would’ve ever crossed my mind to pursue accommodations for myself. If my mom hadn’t put me in therapy, it might have taken me a lot longer to name the issues I was facing and learn how to cope with them. The list goes on. I want to envision a world (or at least a better version of Middlebury) where if you’re struggling, you get the help you need. Not just through individualized support like accommodations, but more structural solutions that allow grace and create room for students to get extensions and similar “aid”— not because a Dean said they should, but because they know themselves best, and they know they need it. But that can’t happen until we’re able to have open, honest, vulnerable conversations about the ways in which we are struggling. This, in turn, requires overcoming the shame and guilt associated with not meeting expectations — whether those be your own or those imposed upon you. I hope that this article is a start.
Otter Creek Used Books looks and smells exactly like what one would expect of a secondhand bookstore in rural Vermont. Hidden behind the main highway that cuts through the town, the store had a sign that announced the weekday hours and a cheeky “Sundays by chance.” Next door, a deli played jovial jazz tunes, and customers at a nearby teahouse chatted out in the sun.
After a year and a half of quarantining, distancing and Zooming, Middlebury is beginning to again resemble what it once was, and the desire to return to a pre-pandemic campus life — pre-dispersion of friends and classmates taking semesters off or learning remotely, pre-seeing close contacts only, pre-off-campus travel restrictions — is palpable. There seems to be a shared sentiment that we all need to make up for the time and freedom we lost to Covid-19. Super senior Febs, seniors and senior Febs are simultaneously daunted by their impending graduation date, another reminder to fill every single possible moment before running out of time. Juniors and junior febs who only had three-quarters of a year or less want to recapture the brief, “normal” college experiences they had before packing up to go home. And sophomores, who have only ever known Middlebury during the pandemic, have the same excitement, sense of wonder and pressure to have a great start to their college experience that first years have. After so much time spent alone, it can feel like a disservice to oneself to not take advantage of every opportunity for social interaction. Plus, a desire to live life to the fullest in the wake of a huge, life-altering event (especially one that caused massive casualties) is a natural human response. Not to mention that concerns that Covid-19 could once again spike and send us back into isolation leave students wanting to make sure they aren’t regretting turning down a social event when they had the chance. These internal and external pressures to take advantage of the “return to normal” only add to preexisting societal forces that claim college needs to be the best four years of your life and to a pervasive Middlebury busyness culture. Accordingly, for the past three-and-a-half weeks, many students have been going non-stop. This incessant “going” can manifest as sitting in the dining hall for five hours “doing work” (but really chatting), or as partying as often and as hard as possible. It can manifest as making travel plans for Fall Break despite being exhausted, or as falling victim to FOMO so hard that you attend a Flo Milli concert you know you will not enjoy — but no matter what, existing this way can only last so long before our social batteries, emotional stabilities and physical well-beings utterly deteriorate. This editorial is meant to be a reminder that college is a lot, and that sometimes, even in this pandemic-recovery era, it is okay to just get by. Everyone needs a break at some point, and we can tell many people desperately need one right now by the amount of coughing happening in Davis. To assuage our collective anxiety, we think it would first be helpful to confront what we have lost. As a board, we are of the opinion that it is not exactly “time” that perished; certainly, social events, academic and professional opportunities, athletic competitions and study abroad programs disappeared, but we still experienced more than a year of life. We struggled, and we also learned, grew and often made connections and memories that we may not have otherwise. Most importantly, we experienced a collective grief that cannot be swept under the rug in a quick return to pre-pandemic life. We ask the college faculty and administration to support students in accepting the past so we can move forward more calmly. Many professors have already completely eliminated the forgiving late policies they enacted at the start of the pandemic and have overall lessened their flexibility, but we are still in a pandemic. We are still readjusting. And we are certainly still learning how to cope with our grief. The administration should encourage continued understanding in addition to creating spaces and times for students to face and accept the stress, sadness and anxiety the pandemic produced in us. It can be extremely difficult to remember to self-reflect and reevaluate what is really meaningful to you — but amid all the horrors of the pandemic, perhaps increased intentionality can be a silver lining. We hope students will stop thinking of the pandemic in terms of “time lost” — which can lead to a temptation to run ourselves into the ground — and try instead to conceptualize the pandemic as “joy lost,” which might aid us in spending our time more intentionally as we work to reevaluate what brings us that joy. So, instead of focusing on what mainstream Middlebury culture or other influences tell you the college experience “should” be, transitioning back to pre-pandemic freedom can be an opportunity to redefine what your individual, ideal college experience looks like. For some, the dream may well be sticky Atwater parties and off-campus darties; for others, making the most of Middlebury might come in the form of chill movie nights with just a couple friends or exploring the vastness of Vermont through hikes, apple picking, swimming and brewery visits. To each their own, and that is what makes college great. As we continue through this year, we can acknowledge the pain that comes from losing parts of the regular college experience (an experience that is, though not the last joyful part of life as lore holds, still a special and short time in our lives) in a way that does not encourage overloading ourselves. Remember to take a breath, be kind to yourself and try to rediscover balance.
Assistant Professor of Black Studies Viola Huang, teaching African American Activism in Education and Beginning German this semester, missed the new faculty group photo because she arrived at the Middlebury campus only a week before classes started. She moved from Passau, Germany to Vermont after finishing her degree at Columbia University and completing post-doc work at University of Passau. Her travels were largely disrupted by the new restrictions in place because of Covid-19. Indeed, beginning a teaching career at the college in the middle of a global pandemic has been a challenge for many. This fall, Middlebury welcomes nine new tenure-track professors and 44 new faculty in total. Huang was attracted to the college because she wanted to apply for teaching-focused institutions so she could work closely with a diverse group of students. Despite roadblocks on her way to the campus, she felt supported by her colleagues in the Black Studies Department, the German Department and by other administrative staff. Huang has not taught any in-person class for the past one and a half years. “I have lost out on many of the most rewarding aspects of my job over the past semesters: I have never met my recent students except on Zoom and missed sending those off that graduated,” she said. The Arabic Teaching Assistant Maryait Khader said that teaching a language in a pandemic is a strange experience. Specifically, she finds it difficult because of masks. “Sometimes you need [the students] to focus on the letters, so ideally you could show your mouth to your students,” she said. On the other hand, she also thinks that people have learned how to be more forgiving and have more patience for each other since Covid-19. Khader was happy to see students working diligently amid fast-paced changes. “People are always smiling and give me a lot of good energy,” she said. Khader holds a master’s degree from the University of Jordan. She came to the college leaving two young children in Amman. On campus, she works with Arabic language students and professors to foster an Arabic learning community. Living at the Arabic House, she offers a variety of culture lessons for interested students. Khader found out about Middlebury College by chance from a friend, and she is most excited about the nature in Vermont. “Nature is fabulous here, although at the same time, I’m a bit worried about the snow,” Khader said. Similar to Khader’s experience, Assistant Professor of Studio Art Matthew Schrader, formerly a faculty member at the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts at Bard College, felt incredibly welcomed by the area as he went for hikes, shopped at farmer’s markets and explored local food. He arrived in August from New York City and found the specificity of his new position unique as it reflects his life experience as an artist over the last decade. This fall, he is teaching a cross-listed course between the Studio Art Department and Black Studies Department titled Spacing. Students meet twice a week to explore the built environment through the lenses of race, class and gender. In contrast to Professor Schrader’s drastic change of scenery, Assistant Professor of Biology and Global Health Sam Byrne comes to the college from St. Lawrence University, located in one of the most rural areas of New York State. Because of that, he felt that there wasn't much of a transition. “I love rock climbing, foraging for mushrooms, fishing, gardening and many other outdoor activities, so I am happy to be in an area that provides great opportunities to be outside,” said Byrne. This term is Byrne’s second time teaching an epidemiology course during a pandemic, and it is equally interesting and challenging for him. “Public health is a field defined by difficult problems that require deeply interdisciplinary answers, so public health education is a perfect fit for a liberal arts institution like Middlebury,” Byrne said. Most of his research is focused on the health effects of persistent organic pollutants among Alaska Natives. He thinks that community-minded epidemiology can be used to benefit people experiencing environmental injustice, and to meaningfully impact policy to prevent future injustice. According to him, in the Covid-19 context, there has been a radical shift in the culture of health behavior that really emphasizes personal reasonability. Byrne said that he tends to not explicitly discuss Covid-19 as an example in class because it remains raw for many people. “It isn't easy to focus on learning if your thoughts are pulled away by real personal concerns and losses,” he said. Like many of the other new faculty this year, Byrne is excited to return to in-person teaching. “Part of what I love about residential liberal arts institutions is the concerted effort at community building,” Byrne said.
When Piper Boss ’23 reached out to Middlebury with concerns about studying abroad in Spain — then a country classified by the State Department as “Level 4: Do Not Travel” — she was informed by her abroad coordinator and Dean of Students Derek Doucet that she had two options: go to Madrid or take a leave of absence. Concerned about the rise of Delta variant Covid-19 cases in late summer, a number of Middlebury students questioned the safety of their plans to study abroad for the Fall 2021 semester. When they inquired about withdrawing from their international programs and re-enrolling at Middlebury, they were informed that Middlebury’s over-enrollment precluded the possibility of returning to the Vermont campus. “My family and I were very nervous for me to be living in this large metropolitan area and interacting with local people, which is a large component of abroad programs because the goal is language immersion,” Boss said. Boss had planned to begin her semester in Madrid in mid-August. Covid-19 cases spiked in Spain toward the end of July, prompting the U.S. State Department to announce its Level 4: Do Not Travel classification on July 26, 2021. According to Boss, the administration at the C.V. Starr School Abroad in Madrid informed the fall enrollees that the only way the program would be cancelled was if Spain closed its borders to international travel. Covid-19 vaccination, Boss also learned, was not a requirement for host families. The vaccination rate in Spain has since increased, with 80% of the population having received at least one dose as of Sept. 21. Boss was placed with a vaccinated host family. Thus far, her experience has been positive, but she noted that her time could easily have been much more dangerous and felt that Middlebury did not seem to care about this possibility. “Considering that Covid is still very much a problem in most of the world, it just seemed like there was a huge lack of forethought for international programs,” Boss said. Eliza King Freedman ’23 and Abby Schneiderhan ’23 faced similar circumstances, having planned to study abroad in Rabat, Morocco. Like Spain, Morocco was classified as a Level 4: Do Not Travel destination on Aug. 23, 2021. As of that date, 48% of the population had received at least one vaccine dose, and as of Sept. 22, 59.2% of the population had received at least one dose. Host families were not required to be vaccinated, and the country currently enforces a 9 p.m. curfew that has been in place since Aug. 2. Despite serious concerns for physical and mental health when traveling to a Covid-19 hotspot with strict public safety measures in place, King Freedman felt she had no choice but to go ahead with her original plans — having received no assurance from the administration that she would be permitted to return to Middlebury. “I just feel like I couldn’t actually make an informed decision about whether or not it was safe to come [to Morocco] because Middlebury essentially took away any safety net we had throughout the process,” she said. Schneiderhan made what she called a “now-or-never” choice to travel to Rabat. The day after she left Canada, her point of departure, the country terminated flights to Morocco. “One of the most stressful parts of this whole experience was deciding what to do when travel was so uncertain,” Schneiderhan said. “Had I waited another day, I wouldn’t have even been able to get to Rabat, and I didn’t have the fallback option of knowing that I would be able to go back to campus.” Ultimately, all students whose programs abroad were cancelled or who decided not to participate in those programs were able to return to campus this fall and received housing, according to Dean of Students Derek Doucet. The college’s late summer purchase of Inn on the Green allowed for more available space at the Bread Loaf campus than expected earlier in the summer. By the time the college created a waiting list for on-campus housing, Boss already had plane tickets to Spain departing just four days later. “I felt very ignored,” she said. “They were clearly prioritizing their struggle with housing over the safety of their students who were going abroad.” Doucet told The Campus in an email that all college decisions to run study abroad programs were based on a review of pandemic conditions in each country. “It sounds as though those students definitely had a difficult time working through some very difficult decisions,” Doucet said. “As we continue to manage the effects of the pandemic, we have made every effort to provide students with opportunities to study on campus and abroad when feasible.”
The Feb class has been a welcome winter addition to campus for the past 50 years, bringing fresh faces and new energy as students head into the spring semester. In recent semesters, however, an increasing number of students are taking time away from school, moving into and out of Feb class years. Prospective students can indicate on their application if they are interested in being part of the Feb class, allowing them to spend a semester elsewhere before attending the college as a first year. Every February, about 100 students, a mix of students who did or did not indicate that they wanted to enter mid-year, are selected as Febs and arrive on campus after taking a semester off (dubbed a “Febmester”). However, with athletic competition halted, classes online, study abroad complications and general Covid-19 fatigue, students have been taking semesters off in the middle of their college experience to reflect, recharge or work. Increasingly, students are “Febbing” themselves and blurring the lines between Febs and regs. Tired of online classes, Ella Roelofs ’23.5 took the spring 2021 semester off and spent time working on a farm, at a restaurant and doing an internship. But even though she now has a “.5” at the end of her class year, Roelofs still does not think of herself as a Feb. “I don’t really consider myself a Feb because I was not part of the initial Feb class, and I think coming in as a Feb defines the Feb class more,” Roelofs said, adding that she refers to herself as a fake junior Feb given that she started as a reg student. Helen Vaughan ’24.5 agreed that coming to the college during the winter and her semester as a first year Feb was crucial in building connections with other Febs. “There is a pretty strong sense of community you build that first semester,” she said. Though Vaughan did not check the Feb box on her application, she was offered admittance as a Feb. Upon reflection, Vaughan is glad she took time off and worked on a farm in her hometown. Like Roelofs, Per Alexander’s ’24.5 decision was influenced by Covid-19. Alexander initially did not indicate a preference for Feb or regular acceptance but was happy to ultimately be admitted as a Feb and welcomed the time off. Other Febs were specifically drawn to Middlebury for the Feb program, which is one of the largest and oldest mid-year enrollment programs in the country. Mary Nagy-Benson ’24.5 applied specifically for Feb admission and was really excited to be part of a small cohort of students on campus. “I really wanted to be a Feb, especially since I’m from this town [of Middlebury], and I wanted to go somewhere else and have some time off from school,” Nagy-Benson said. She spent her Febmester on a canoe trip in Minnesota and working in the Middlebury area. There are often stereotypical traits associated with Febs, but with more students taking time off, that image is changing. “I feel like the Feb stereotype is that you’re very outdoorsy and crunchy, but I feel like in reality — meeting people who are Febs — it’s like a really wide variety,” Vaughan said. “There are people who are Febs who come from all walks of life.” With time passing and more students joining and leaving the Feb class, Febs and regs have become more integrated. “There’s much less of a cookie-cutter Feb right now,” Finn Warner ’24.5 said. Warner said that in the future, he believes that more students will welcome the time off, and the Feb path might gain more traction. Alexander added that in his second semester with a new dorm and classes, he has met many more reg students. “When you come in the middle of the year, everyone is so deeply ingrained in their routines,” Alexander said. “I just think that generally as we go on, the idea of a Feb is going to get less and less [concrete] because more people are going to Feb themselves or reg themselves or study abroad.” Despite lots of movement in and out of the class, being a Feb is still a cornerstone of the Middlebury experience for some and remains a unique opportunity for students to take a nontraditional college path.
At the end of morning classes at 12:15 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday, students begin flooding into Proctor Dining Hall. The food line stretches beyond the doors and out to the Middlebury Chapel. In Ross, the line runs from the serving stations to the Ross Fireplace Lounge and wraps back on itself, leading out into the hall. As Middlebury faces the dual challenges of over-enrollment and understaffing, aspects of student life from dining hall lines to parking tickets have demonstrated the ways the college’s resources are stretched thin. Dining halls have struggled in the first weeks of the semester, with more students than ever to feed and about half of the staff that they had before the start of the pandemic, according to Michael Gose, who has worked as a dining hall staff member at Middlebury for six years. The crowds that file into the dining hall during rush hour overwhelm the staff, who are working triple their normal workload. As students leave, dishes pile up, and it takes longer to clean them with fewer staff. In 2019 — when the school was fully enrolled at approximately 2,500 students — the dining hall had one staff member at each station. Now, one person works about three stations at a time, taking on additional responsibilities with more than 300 extra students to serve and clean up after. In addition, all dining hall staff are pulling more overtime hours and have to close stations earlier so they can leave closer to a normal time. “Dealing with pandemic things [in the dining hall] changed a lot, and now we have to get back to normal, which is a challenge. With Covid, a lot of our staff have left and we have not been able to bring back the amount of workers we need to support us,” Gose said. The number of dining hall staff members has declined over the past year, as employees have left for other jobs or quit out of concern about contracting Covid-19 from students in the dining halls, according to Gose. “I don’t remember a time I’ve ever seen the Proc line actually go outside. Ross sometimes got pretty crowded, but I’ve still never seen the lines get this long,” Kristina Pompilio ’23 said. In an email sent from Dean of Students Derek Doucet on Sept. 23, students were encouraged to eat outside of the lunch rush — if possible. “We all know that lunchtime on Tuesdays and Thursdays can be hectic,” the email reads, “but there are some ways you can help to spread out traffic, help our friends in dining services, and enhance the dining experience for all. If you don’t have a class that ends at 12:15 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays (there are approximately 1,300 of you who don’t), consider taking lunch early on those days. Or opt for Atwater, which is less heavily used than Proctor and Ross.” Along with long wait times in dining halls, students have struggled to find spaces in the college’s parking lots — and have received tickets for parking on grass or in faculty lots as a last resort. “I have not even used my car yet because I’m afraid I’ll get a ticket if there isn’t parking when I return. Middlebury needs to be more flexible or come up with a solution,” Thea Joseph ’22 said. Public Safety has ticketed cars parked outside of their permitted lot, or on the grass, where many students have been parking when there are no available spots in the lots close to them. First year students are required to park their cars in the Q Lot, beside the Mahaney Arts Center on the edge of campus, while sophomores, juniors, and seniors are allocated space in both the Q Lot and in other student lots around campus. The Q Lot — a fifteen minute walk from many upperclassman residences — often has spaces when the far closer R Lot and E Lots are full, but students returning to campus late at night when lots are full are reluctant to walk nearly a mile to their dorms. “Parking is available on a first-come first-serve basis,” PubSafe said in an email to The Campus. “There is adequate student parking on campus. It just is not always in the lot preferred by the vehicle operator.” Jonah Joseph ’24 said it still felt like too many passes were distributed to students. “It’s very clear Middlebury needs more parking,” Jonah said. “And if they don’t provide it, they need to be more flexible.” Tickets range anywhere from $10 to $50 for parking in the wrong place. Students are also allowed to use most faculty and staff lots during the weekend, but must move their cars back to a student lot before Sunday at midnight.
“It’s like walking around a museum, looking at the few trees that survive.” Jay Leshinsky, Middlebury’s first Garden Advisor, stands rooted to the lush Knoll on which he worked for 15 years. Throughout his time in the garden and long before, Middlebury’s ash trees have stood firmly and proudly along the Vermont hillside. Now, they are under threat of extinction. The culprit? The Emerald Ash Borer (commonly known as “EAB”), an invasive, deceptively beautiful green beetle that has, over the course of almost 20 years, extirpated America’s ash trees from much of the country. The ash is one of the most common large trees in the northeastern United States. They can grow up to 115 feet tall (35 meters) and can live for up to 200 years, but you might know them from their “helicopter” seeds that spin their way to the ground each fall. The most common species in eastern Vermont is the White Ash; these trees tower over our campus and the town of Middlebury. They provide shade for students lounging outside of Davis, nesting sites for birds, which feed upon their fallen seeds, and respite for our campus’ beloved grey squirrels. In a matter of years, these giants may be dead or entirely erased from Middlebury’s landscape. The Emerald Ash Borer enters ash trees from openings in their bark and eats the inner tissues of the tree, destroying its channels for transporting water and nutrients. In less than four years, even the oldest and largest ash will die. The beetle affects all eighteen US-native species of ash, as well as the White Fringe tree. It was first discovered in Detroit in 2001 and has since spread across the entirety of eastern North America, wiping out massive ash populations. Vermont is one of America’s last ash localities to be affected by EAB, the current range having spread through ten confirmed counties, including Addison. Emmet Schmehling ’24 remembers finding afflicted ash branches in the woods around his childhood home in Caledonia, Michigan. Carved into each was a unique pattern of lines, bored into the wood by the vandal like a calling card. “I always thought that they were some artifact from people long ago or a carving from somebody, not realizing what it actually was,” Schmeling said. The state of Vermont is known to have been monitoring traps for EAB since 2013, according to Ginger Nickerson of the Vermont Urban and Community Forestry Program, an organization that works in conjunction with the University of Vermont and the local governments to educate the public about the state’s forests. EAB was first detected in central Vermont in December of 2018, and the state has since deployed several measures for monitoring the invasive pest. Most notably, condensed groups of ash trees have been inoculated against the beetle using an injected pesticide. This method, while effective, is not very feasible or practical when applied to larger ash stands. Additionally, state officials have released parasitoid wasps in specified areas, which target EAB larvae. The wasps are part of a larger effort to combat the beetle using biocontrol, or the introduction of natural predators to eliminate a known pest. Although the EAB is not expected to be completely eradicated, the release of these wasps into more intensely affected areas has been effective in slowing its spread. The crisis facing Middlebury’s ash trees is not a unique event. In particular, it is reminiscent of the American Chestnut blight, which all but eradicated the “Redwoods of the East'' in the early 1900s, and the Dutch Elm disease which continues to threaten America’s elms. Twenty-eight such elms stand firmly across Middlebury’s campus, maintained through regular inoculations. Part of Vermont’s, and possibly the East Coast’s, largest ongoing collection of old elms, some are over 90 feet tall and over 150 years old. There is no telling whether the methods used to protect the elms will prove to be effective in shielding our ash trees, but nonetheless efforts are being made to save these great environmental landmarks. Tim Parsons points excitedly around campus from where he stands, outside McCullough Plaza. “There’s one there… one there… a big one there,” he said. Parsons has spearheaded Middlebury’s efforts against EAB since it first threatened campus 10 years ago. In the meantime, he has worked alongside the college and its students to map Middlebury’s ash population, marking those in “high risk” areas. If an ash tree is more than 25% dead, it becomes entirely unpredictable. It can break or fall over, so Parsons and his crew have no choice but to remove it. This is a major difference between ash and elm, Parsons explained. Elm is a strongwood, so it can be dead and stand for ten or twenty years without falling, whereas ash cannot be trusted to stay upright. Further, Parsons explained, elms are capable of reproducing long before they are susceptible to Dutch Elm disease, so we'll always have our elms. On the other hand, Parsons said that “EAB will kill an ash before it reaches a reproductive age, so we could very likely lose all of them.” As bleak as this situation may seem, Middlebury does not plan to let its ash trees die without a fight. “We have been talking about this for about 10 years now,” Parsons said, “About eight or nine years ago, the state of Vermont did a test plan for towns to use as a template to start to prepare for EAB. We took the draft of this plan and used it for the town of Middlebury, and about two years later, we used that same plan for our school.” Of the two or three hundred ash trees on Middlebury’s campus, Parsons has inoculated 40 with a pesticide that kills EAB and prevents decay. “For those forty trees, from what I’ve read it’s been really effective,” he said. “I do 20 trees each year and the inoculation lasts for two years, so I alternate. But those 20 trees take two, three, four days to do all of the injections, so to do all two or three hundred campus trees would just be huge. We just don’t have the resources to save all of them.” A quick search of go/EAB will land you on a page with detailed maps and information about EAB and Middlebury’s ash trees. However, it hasn’t been updated in years. “Like the rest of the school, we’re shorthanded in our department,” Parsons explained. He remains the only person on campus with the pesticide license needed to inoculate the trees. Thinking ahead, Parsons imagines using the wood salvaged from downed ash trees as fuel for the school’s biomass plant, acknowledging that infested wood will be unusable and would have no commercial value. “People don’t realize how much space these trees take up, so we need to plan ahead before they become a ‘problem,’” he said. To this end, the Town of Middlebury recently received a grant from the state of Vermont to be used for the removal of ash trees and their replacement with 28 to 35 trees of various species. “When ash dies, I don’t know if folks are prepared for what it will look like.” A simple glance up at the Green Mountains on a fall day reveals a forest ablaze with a palette of reds and oranges, yellows and greens. In a couple of years, ten to fifteen percent of those trees will be grey, un-blossoming ghosts. We are in the calm before a violent storm that will permanently alter Vermont’s landscape, and the hills will be speckled with grey before long. On our own campus, ashes tend to stand in clusters, so although they account for only ten percent of our trees, their disappearance will seem much worse. “I’m really scared about what might come into the holes that the ash will leave,” Parsons said. “In an ideal world, all of those holes will fill in with oak or sugar maple, or nice high-value trees. My fear is that all of these holes will get choked out by invasive plants and trees that you don’t want, and will spread from there.” There is no saying exactly what will happen or how campus will respond to the arrival of the Emerald Ash Borer, but Parsons, backed by an abundance of passionate students, is determined to play his cards right. “I’ve been yelling about this for years now. That’s my big takeaway: regardless of where I am on campus, I can point to an ash tree. It will have to come down,” he said. Thanks to important work from people like Tim Parsons, Ginger Nickerson of the Vermont Urban and Community Forestry Program at UVM, and the Middlebury Tree Committee, Middlebury is prepared for the worst. For the protection and preservation of Middlebury’s Ash trees, it is necessary to detect the pest as soon as possible. Signs of EAB infestation include the emergence of adult green beetles in late May to early June, split bark, S-shaped tunnels behind the outer bark, D-shaped exit holes (about ⅛ inch wide) on the bark surface, woodpecker damage (often called “flecking”), dead top branches, and leafy offshoots from the lower trunk of the tree (per Town of Middlebury). If signs of infestation can be seen, it’s advised to take photos and report the site to Vermont Invasives (VTInvasives.com). To prevent the spread of EAB, the state of Vermont advises against the transportation of firewood and infested ash wood. For more information on the Emerald Ash Borer, visit go/EAB, the Town of Middlebury, or the USDA online.
I remember with nauseating clarity when my high school boyfriend paused an episode of Black Mirror, turned to me, and said, “I think we should break up or go on a break for the summer.” What I said in response has been erased in my memory by the brutal shock of the blow and the paradoxical feeling that I should have seen it coming. I felt the same way when my best friend at Midd told me she had decided to transfer. It was the last minutes of a Thursday or the first minutes of a Friday too close to finals for anyone’s comfort, and one of the first days Middlebury felt like home to me. The air just beyond Axinn’s doors was surprisingly warm, and as I processed the pleasantness of this, my friend filled a momentary lapse in our conversation with the news of her decision. My other friends, who hadn’t known she’d been considering transferring, must have expressed their shock. But I was too preoccupied by the strain of attempting to keep my face neutral and my voice even to process their reactions. Those efforts were likely wasted; my face is useless at disguising my feelings. Her transfer was a possibility I’d known about since October, but when she told us her decision I realized I never believed she wouldn’t stay. That night, once we left Axinn and reached the entrance to our dorm, I could tell she wanted me to hang back with our other friend so we could talk, but I claimed exhaustion, feeling righteously annoyed by the inconsiderate hour she chose to break her news. Back in my dorm, I listened to music in the single use bathroom (my roommate had long since fallen asleep), sent a long volley of texts to my mom, and eventually tried to get some sleep myself. The last two weeks of my semester were consumed by trying to spend as much time with her as possible and my anticipatory grief over a Middlebury without her. When a relationship or a situationship (as we Middlebury students are so familiar with) ends, it can be devastating, but there is certain comfort to be found in breakup rituals. I find it easy to talk about breakups, to come up with pejorative nicknames for my exes (what can I say, I’m a writer) and to receive the ready sympathy of my friends. There are inadequate rituals and language to describe the loss of a friend. When I returned home, I was also processing the end of a situationship which I talked about at length to friends from home. I talked less about my friend’s infinitely more devastating transfer. If I did, it often felt awkward, like my friends avoided the topic, not due to a lack of empathy but because they didn’t know what to say. I’ve been fortunate to have many deep relationships with friends that bring me great solace and joy; however, my relationship with her was unlike any friendship before, just by virtue of her being a college friend. Before leaving for college, one of my cousins told me that because you leave your family behind at college your friends become your family and essential support system. My friend lived two floors above my room. I knocked on her door to borrow peanut butter, solicit opinions on dresses, cry and everything in between. She was my family and her absence from campus is still a loss that stings keenly. I mourn the future we could have had together. She’s still a close friend of mine, but we live on opposite coasts, and she likely won’t be in my life in the same capacity, neither in college nor after it, than if she had stayed at Middlebury. Campus feels lonelier without her and I expect it to remain that way for some time. I’ve been reassured that I will eventually find other friends who fill the void she left, but I’ll never find another her, just like she will never find another me. Our culture is one that tends to valorize romantic relationships sometimes (unfortunately in my case) at the expense of friendships. This holds especially true for me, as both a college student and a woman. The unparalleled and continued grief over my friend’s transfer taught me at this point in my life I value and need friendships far more than romance — a lesson I think most people learn far before 14th grade, but one I’m grateful to have learned. In All About Love, bell hooks writes we are taught love will foremost come from our romantic relationships, but she argues it is our friendships which ground us and teach us how to love. At this stage in my life, and quite possibly for the rest of my life, I have found my deepest and most fulfilling relationships to be with my friends; however, in conversation, conflicts and breakups can feel secondary to the consuming, less devastating, “juicier” boy drama. In some senses, it’s reductive to compare friendships to romantic relationships, diminishing the value of both by creating such a binary; however, I seek not to diminish the value of romance but to elevate the importance and weight with which we discuss friendships. I don’t talk about my friend’s transfer much, mostly to avoid getting too emotional, and because it's an ache that has yet to dissipate, boring in its perseverance. It’s an ache that swells at odd moments (by the McCullough printer where I printed her return labels because she could never figure out Papercut, the back entrance of Hep, etc.) or just when I’m especially lonely. A couple of nights ago, I was talking with a guy and I started to cry. Some girls enveloped and comforted me assuming I was just another girl crying over a boy, a ritual of sisterhood. The assumption wasn’t completely incorrect, a guy I’d once hooked up with had prompted some tears, but it was another guy’s question that had precipitated my tears: if I missed my friend.
“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.
For the first time in history, Middlebury will house undergraduates at the Bread Loaf campus to accommodate some of the more than 300 extra students enrolled at the college this fall. The college also purchased the Inn on the Green in August and arranged several rooms at the Marriott Hotel on Court Street to house students during the semester. Disruptions from the Covid-19 pandemic led to a drastic increase in the college’s student population. This fall, several hundred students returned after taking time off during the 2020-21 academic year, approximately 150 more students remained on campus who would typically have been abroad, and high enrollment in the first-year class brought the student body to more than 2,800. After exhausting campus dorm spaces and allowing all upperclassmen who applied to live off-campus, additional rooms were still needed to house students. Residential Life assigned 63 students to Bread Loaf and an additional 20 to the Inn on the Green, which the college intends to use for student housing over the next three years. Another 15 students will reside in the Marriott Hotel, according to AJ Place, associate dean of students. The decision to reserve 33 Adirondack View and 220 College Street as quarantine and emergency use spaces further limited on-campus housing options. The college announced the new Bread Loaf housing option via email July 15, presenting it as a “unique opportunity for juniors and seniors” and an “intentional community.” Middlebury initially tried to incentivize students to volunteer to live at Bread Loaf by offering a $1,500 room and dining credit to Bread Loaf residents. However, the incentives were later expanded to 50% off room and board costs, an advanced housing selection draw for fall 2022, free ski equipment rentals and passes to the Snow Bowl and Rikert Nordic Center, complimentary laundry service and a faculty/staff parking pass to allow parking anywhere on campus aside from ADA-only spaces. “After further consideration and conferring with some student groups, we decided to offer a more significant incentive to draw more applicants,” Place said. He also said the costs of housing students at Bread Loaf would exceed any revenue from extra tuition but could not offer more specific estimates. Only 22 students elected to live at Bread Loaf, while another 41 had no other choice due to a late housing draw time slot. The Marriott residents will receive the same discounted room and board as the Bread Loaf students, but those at Inn on the Green will not. “We got to Middlebury expecting to have a Middlebury experience, paying to have a Middlebury experience, and not being a part of campus life and having a room on campus is in no way that experience,” Sam Lipin ’23.5 said. Lipin was assigned involuntarily to live at Bread Loaf. For Lipin, the college’s incentives are insufficient compensation for the social and academic costs of living at Bread Loaf. Further increasing Lipin’s frustration is that he has only had about five weeks of normal campus life. He and other members of the class of 2023.5 living at Bread Loaf came to Midlebury in the spring of 2020 and have not yet experienced a full, normal semester on campus. “The incentives to me are basically nothing. Honestly, it should probably be all of room and board off, and maybe even some of tuition,” Lipin said. Residential Life has worked to create the advertised “intentional community” at Bread Loaf by planning social and outdoor activities at the satellite campus, but isolation from the main campus and other obstacles have hampered efforts. “Since the group of students living at Bread Loaf will be fairly small, we’re expecting to help build a strong community for these students,” Place said. “This will include programming that utilizes outdoor spaces and the resources that are abundant at Bread Loaf.” Bread Loaf students were promised an on-campus student lounge, but as of Sept. 14, the college is still working to identify and designate an on-campus space to serve as a lounge. Another concern for Bread Loaf students is transportation between the campuses. Shuttles depart from Bread Loaf beginning at 6 a.m., and run every hour with a mid-morning and mid-afternoon break in service. The shuttle also stops at the Marriott before reaching Adirondack Circle (ADK), an estimated half hour after leaving Bread Loaf. On weeknights (Sunday through Wednesday), the final shuttle departs ADK for the Marriott and Bread Loaf at 11:30 p.m., and on weekends (Thursday through Saturday), the last time slot is extended to 1:30 a.m. Bread Loaf students will have full access to dining halls on the main campus, as well as a continental breakfast from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., dinner from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. and grab-and-go options offered in the Bread Loaf dining hall. Four positions were added to the dining department to staff the new dining hall; two new hires and two previous employees from the main campus will work at Bread Loaf, according to Executive Director of Food Service Operations Dan Detora. The dining department currently has 12 vacant positions. Despite the obstacles, Place and Dean of Students Derek Doucet remain optimistic about the success of Bread Loaf. “We know that there are some inconveniences to the location,” Place and Doucet said in an email to The Campus. “But we are confident this group will find the experience of living at the Bread Loaf campus rewarding.” Note: Sam Lipin ’23.5 is a Sports Editor for The Campus
The leaves are beginning to change in Vermont, and it's starting to feel like fall. I compiled a list of books that remind me of autumn, my favorite time of year to curl up with a cup of tea and a good read. “Circe” by Madeline Miller When I think about fall reading, “Circe” is one of the first novels that comes to mind. Although Miller does not specify the season in which it takes place, “Circe” is filled with magic and stunning landscapes, two aspects that remind me of fall at Middlebury. There is an enchanting feeling on campus that is echoed in the book — the time when the leaves begin to change and golden light filters through the trees. Circe is the daughter of the sun god Helios and the ocean nymph Perse. There’s something unusual about her from a young age as she quickly discovers that she possesses the power of witchcraft. This power is strong enough to threaten even the gods, leading Zeus to banish her to a remote island. Circe is one of my favorite female protagonists. She is strong-willed, independent and resilient. Miller expertly weaves countless well-known Greek myths into this story, making it a very fun read. “Writers and Lovers” by Lily King I love stories that are deeply rooted in a place. In “Writers and Lovers,” the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts is tangible to the reader. The novel follows Casey Peabody, a young woman who feels lost as she arrives there in 1997. She picks up a waitressing job and is forced to find her way in a new place with new people. I found a lot of comfort in this book, making it perfect to curl up with in the fall. Casey has no idea what she’s doing, and I read it during a time when I was feeling a bit unmoored myself. Casey is a relatable protagonist, and I appreciated that King does not sugarcoat her experience. “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt “The Secret History” is a classic New England fall read. This novel takes place at a small liberal arts college in Vermont, a place that draws many parallels to Middlebury with its intimate classes and beautiful campus. However, unlike its setting, the plot of “The Secret History” is far from tranquil. The tight-knit group of classics majors, who are the central figures in the novel, murders one of their closest friends. I loved the unpredictability of this novel as well as the suspense that grows with each page. It is not a whodunnit story, but instead an investigation into what led to the dire circumstances that are revealed in the prologue. The characters are vibrant and twisted, each carrying their own secrets and demons. “Sing, Unburied, Sing” by Jesmyn Ward “Sing, Unburied, Sing” is a Southern Gothic novel filled with ghosts and complicated family dynamics. Jojo and his younger sister Kayla live with their grandparents, since their parents are largely absent. This is a sad read, dealing with drug addiction, prison and parents ill-equipped to raise their mixed-race children; however, I loved the relationship between Jojo and Kayla, which is both beautiful and heartbreaking. Jojo is forced to take on responsibilities that no child should have to deal with at the age of 13. The paranormal aspect of “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” in particular reminded me of fall. It is rare to find a novel that successfully mixes elements of spookiness with strong lyrical writing, something Ward achieves effortlessly here. I also loved the Mississippi setting.