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(09/30/21 10:00am)
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.”
(09/30/21 9:59am)
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.
(09/30/21 9:58am)
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.
(09/30/21 9:58am)
“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.
(09/23/21 9:59am)
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.
(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)
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
(09/16/21 9:59am)
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.
(09/16/21 9:58am)
Middlebury will hold commencement ceremonies for both the class of 2022 and the class of 2020 this upcoming May.
Graduates from the class of 2020 will return for an in-person commencement after their initial graduation ceremony in spring 2020 was moved online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Members of the class of 2020.5, who were given an impromptu Feb graduation in Nov. 2020 after new Covid-19 gathering restrictions were put in place by the Vermont government, will be invited to join as well.
The class of 2022 will celebrate commencement on Sunday, May 29, while the classes of 2020 and 2020.5 will commence the following Tuesday, May 31. There will be two commencement speakers — one for the class of 2022, who has yet to be announced. Jason Collins, the first openly gay NBA player, is slated to speak at the ceremony for the classes of 2020 and 2020.5.
There is some confusion over why the make-up commencement will be on a Tuesday, two days after the ceremony for the class of 2022. A significant consideration for the ceremony being on Tuesday was consideration for staff, according to Jennifer Erwin, Director of Event Management.
“Even in a normal year, [staff] work overtime during the month of June to prepare for the annual spring and summer campus events such as Reunion and the summer sessions of Bread Loaf and the Language Schools,” Erwin said in an email to The Campus.
According to Erwin, the college will provide support for travel assistance, and more information will be released when available. There are also discussions underway regarding where to house members of the class of 2020(.5), with details likely to be available later in the fall.
Marisa Edmondson ’20 is planning to return to campus for graduation, but is frustrated with the lack of communication surrounding senior week activities and housing.
“Even if only half the class comes back, that's still 300+ kids and their families. There aren’t enough places to stay,” Edmondson said. “I do feel like the college kind of forgot about us and has done a bad job at communicating with us about our belated ceremony.”
Abby Okin ’20 also plans on attending commencement.
“I want to go because I never really got to say goodbye to that part of my life,” Okin said. “It’s strange to live somewhere for four years and build a life there and then have to leave abruptly.”
Erwin said she is excited to welcome the classes of 2020 and 2020.5 back to campus.
“We felt that hosting graduation as a short extension of the Memorial Day weekend, and giving notice a year in advance, was a way we could fulfill our promise to our students and to show staff the care and respect that our students themselves would want,” Erwin said.
Edmondson hopes that the commencement ceremony will bring a sense of closure after a chaotic end to her on-campus senior year in March 2020. She also added that due to the pandemic and travel restrictions, she has not been able to see many of her classmates since their early departure from campus.
“I am excited to be able to celebrate with my friends and be back in Vermont,” Edmondson said, “And I know my parents and family are excited to actually see me in a cap and gown walking across the stage.”
(09/16/21 9:57am)
My first love was my home. Mine is the block with the broken sidewalk tiles and the dogs that always bark at inconvenient times and the houses that have seen a century more of the world than I ever could or would. Now, though, I know in my heart — and most definitely in my parents’ bank account — I’ve opened my mind to a new home. And since home and love are synonymous in my head, it seems I’ve also opened my heart to a new love.
But Middlebury wasn’t always a love of mine. There were certain undesirable attributes that Middlebury left off its online dating profile: the emotional unavailability that took the shape of cold spells, the lack of hygiene that was that curious stain on the Battell wall, and the gaslighting which made me question whether it was possible to miss home as much as I did, or if I was simply crazy. By the end of first semester, soon after our relationship had just begun, I was ready to break up. Middlebury was determined to win me over, though, and by our 75th date (J-Term), I began to see Midd in the romantic way I see it now.
As it commonly happens when people fall in love, some of the aspects that drove me crazy about Midd became some of my favorites. Since love is the closest thing we have to magic, Battell had a certain magic to it: the late-night conversations in common rooms, the constant bustle of energy wafting through open doors, and even the bathroom rendezvous were endearing. I didn’t know that living with so many people in a tight space or sharing embarrassing moments with someone who hears you talk in your sleep Every. Single. Night. could be so full. These moments can only be described as the type of joy where you feel like your face could break from smiling so hard, of moments where you’re staining your friend’s shirt with tears or singing happy birthday to another and of brief romances with flames old and new.
Middlebury was resourceful, though, and like in the movies when a person uses their musical talent or cooking skills to woo a suitor, it played to its innate strength: the students and professors. In balancing moments of fun and study, Davis and elevated surfaces, everyone maintains a passionate, open-minded and driven spark to them. They all exude an encouraging, graceful attitude towards the success of their peers. The best example was my freshman year in Chemistry 103. I had been so used to my high school peers asking what scores I had gotten on exams; whether these conversations were competitive boasts or unintentional probes, I was surprised to learn that my Middlebury classmates seemed to be more interested in supporting their friends through the class rather than competing against them. We had study sessions, answered one another’s questions, and kept our grades to ourselves — and every class I’ve taken here since has followed this “collaboration over contest” principle.
After a brief long-distance relationship, Middlebury and I knew we were bound to get back together for The Great Return in the fall, which attracts nothing short of magic itself. Like any good suitor, Midd always welcomes us with a flower bouquet: the rolling green hills speckled with crimson blooms that constitute our beloved Knoll.
And what is romance without a sunset? Middlebury’s are sherbet-colored, and you can spend your time on long walks (or rounds of frisbee) on the Beach or share a private moment alone in the woods on the Trail Around Middlebury. Opportunity lies in those 15-person classes about topics you REALLY care about, the ones you research for (gasp) FUN, and in the clamor to ask your professor that question burning a hole in your notebook you’ve held onto for ages. Bonding with the people you love can be found tucked into the jeans you wear dancing at PALANA or Brooker, on hikes near and far, trips into the freezing Gorge (you think I’m being dramatic, try swimming there sometime), and in the seemingly mundane ventures to the bagel deli or the supermarket or the Best Coffee Shop In the Entire World, Dunkin’ Donuts.
Where does this love, this magic, manifest itself? Sometimes you’ll find the magic on the bottom floor of BiHall in the armchairs by the big picture windows where all you can see is sky and cows. Sometimes it’s in the class you never thought you’d take (but you really need an art credit and a theater class), where you slow dance with a broom. Too specific? I’ll try again. Maybe it’s in the challenge to take a class in a subject you thought you weren’t designed for, but you learned something that you’ll never forget and you’re glad you took it in the end. Maybe it’s in the date you went on at the bench overlooking the fields, or in the a cappella group you joined on a whim, in a packed WOMP, or perhaps just in the content quiet that Middlebury usually embodies, except for those nights that the artistic, athletic, academic energy has seeped under your door frame, making it impossible to sleep at night.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my fair share of challenging moments at Middlebury. I’ve lost friends, pulled all-nighters to study for exams, gotten less-than-perfect grades, missed home, had breakups, and felt imposter syndrome more often than I’d like to admit. These frustrating moments, though, helped me grow as a student, a friend and a daughter because I began to see Middlebury, and life, more realistically. Though magical, this campus still has flaws, my days still have ups and downs and, despite and because of these imperfections, I felt more appreciative for the “ups” than ever; my love transitioned from superficial to real.
Though one might not necessarily call this a “romance piece,” I would politely disagree. This love affair with a place that has shown me more joy, more confusion, more curiosity and more challenges than I have ever experienced in any other home, is not really a love affair, after all. Unlike love affairs, Middlebury is a place that lasts, that really has meaning to me, I’m sure to you — and to any of you who are new, to you, too, even if you don’t feel it yet. Middlebury might be one of the Greats, the Great Loves one has in their life. The Great Loves don’t fade, even with time’s gentle touch.
Yours truly,
The Middlebury Romantic
The Middlebury Romantic is a way to open conversation around romance and love in the Middlebury community, in whatever form it might take. People have preconceived notions of what romance is truly like at Midd, like the prevalence of hookup culture or the marriage expectation, yet these notions still leave room for missed connections, confusion and, in extreme cases, heartbreak. Stay tuned for articles on when people say, “I love you,” online dating at a small school, horoscope compatibility (Co-Star put this in my “dos” for the day, I don’t make the rules), dating archetypes, Atwater romance and romantic comedy parallels to college life. Consider the gates around all things romantic opened, and should you have suggestions or need anonymous advice, please contact the writer of this article (no expert, simply a hopeless romantic) directly.
(09/16/21 9:56am)
Middlebury Senior Technology Specialist Scott Remick was arrested July 7 on federal charges of possesing child pornography. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison and would be required to register as a sex offender. At his preliminary hearing on July 26, he pleaded not guilty.
Remick allegedly had images of young children in various restraints, which a hacker discovered and turned over to authorities. The hacker was later granted immunity.
According to authorities, the informant also discovered chat files which included exchanges of images of child pornography with someone named “Jeanie,” who the hacker believed to be a teenager.
The college declined to comment on Remick’s employment status, but he has most likely been placed on leave.
“Middlebury complies with and cooperates in all matters involving lawful requests from authorities,” Director of Media Relations Sarah Ray said in an email to The Campus. “In the rare event of an arrest, we ordinarily place the employee on leave and take other appropriate steps while we gather more information.”
Authorities confiscated over 100 hard drives, computers and digital media from Remick, many of which belong to the customers of the computer repair business that he owned, Vermont Geek. Prosecutors have presented no evidence that Remick produced any images himself or had direct contact with any producers. The deadline to file pretrial motions is in November.
(09/15/21 9:55am)
Two students and two employees at the Middlebury Language Schools tested positive for Covid-19 near the end of the college’s seven-week summer program, prompting tighter restrictions for those staying on campus. Both students remained in self-isolation on campus, the college announced on Aug. 13, while positive employee cases recovered off campus.
Rumors began to circulate around Thursday, Aug. 12, just two days before many students planned to leave campus. Students in different language programs received conflicting information about the source and location of the outbreak, while some were led to believe that canceled classes were a result of scheduling conflicts, according to Sydney Armor ’24, who attended the German Language School over the summer.
“I did have a friend in [another language school] who was texting me and said, ‘All of my classes got canceled, but they didn’t tell us why,’” Armor said. “They just said it was due to ‘scheduling conflicts.’ And then I explained to her what I had heard, and then she didn’t hear the truth from her school until about two days later.”
Ben Beese ’21.5, also a member of the German school this summer, said the program’s administration communicated some information about Covid-19 exposure and event cancellations on Thursday afternoon.
“Most information we were working with were [essentially] rumors,” Beese said in an email to The Campus. “We heard bits and pieces of info from admins as we ran into them outside but nothing concrete. It sounded like the students might have been from the Spanish program. Maybe they were unvaccinated.”
Until August 13, when the college updated face covering requirements and visitor policies via email, vaccinated students were not required to wear masks in any setting.
According to Beese, masks and Covid-19 guidelines were loosely enforced, especially after arrival testing yielded zero positive results. All students were required to be vaccinated before or during the summer session, and vaccinated students were not tested during the summer.
Meanwhile, student research assistants and lab workers relied on their peers for any information they could gather. Hira Zeeshan ’22, who studied in a neuroscience lab on campus this summer, said she heard about the two active Covid-19 cases from a group of peers.
“I first learned about the Covid outbreak amongst language school students from my fellow RAs,” Zeeshan said. “The school didn’t inform us until a few days later when they started implementing Covid restrictions in the dining halls and in buildings.”
Zeeshan said that many language school students and research assistants did not mix over the summer, instead forming their own factions within the school. She expressed disappointment with some language schools students’ failure to respect Covid-19 protocols. She also suggested that the guidelines for social gatherings among research assistants seemed to be undefined.
“One thing, however, that we were unclear about was that [sic] whether research assistants could have small gatherings, because they were common for language school students,” Zeeshan said. “There was a strong divide between the language school students and the research assistants… RAs were quite disappointed with language school students because we were respectful of the Covid guidelines but had to adjust to this change after a summer of not wearing face coverings.”
Before the outbreak, students experienced a “near-normal” summer session, thanks to a high vaccination rate among students in the language programs and lower rates of infection near Middlebury.
“We were going in town, having parties, masks were just about nowhere to be seen. It was great, and I think everyone felt pretty safe,” Beese said. “We weren’t being tested regularly — after all, we all thought the vaccines were going to prevent infection until Delta took off this summer.”
In the final weeks of the session, the college offered testing to students who needed to show a negative PCR test for international flights, but did not provide universal testing for vaccinated students. Some language schools directors instead encouraged their students to receive testing at a site in town, but there were few available appointments before groups were scheduled to depart on Aug. 13 and 14.
As the college commences what seems to be a more “normal” fall semester thus far — with in-person classes, traditional dining hall operations and sports competitions — student concerns about Covid-19 cases and the spread of the Delta variant linger.
“It was amazing to be back to normal,” Beese said. “Hearing that there were [Covid] cases on campus then and that we should be masking and distancing, etc, made it feel like we’d been too optimistic… So realizing that there was a chink in our utopia was a big wakeup call, and I think we were unsure of what that meant for us personally, for the fall and for the pandemic in general.”
(08/26/21 8:55pm)
At a small institution like Middlebury College, anonymous news tips can be an essential way to investigate stories on campus. Let us know if you think there’s an issue you think we should look into.
(06/24/21 4:03pm)
Faculty and staff will receive a 2% raise on July 1, and the college will address wage compression, according to a June 18 email from Provost Jeff Cason and Treasurer David Provost. A second email sent 10 minutes later from Provost and Cason — received only by facilities and dining staff members — contained details of department-specific bonus incentive programs which aim to alleviate the “significant staffing shortage brought on by the low unemployment rate and the pandemic.”
In the first email, administrators announced that “all eligible faculty and staff hired before April 1 will receive a 2 percent increase for the 2021-2022 fiscal year beginning July 1, with the exception of those receiving increases due to promotions.” These raises come after vocal concerns about wages voiced by staff members after a year of increased workloads, reshuffling and scheduling changes.
The first email also announced that after a year and a half of student and staff advocacy, the college would address widespread pay compression among its staff members. Pay compression occurs when the wage for entry-level employees is raised, but the wage for more experienced employees remains the same, ‘compressing’ the pay gap between the two. In the email, administrators promised to “apply adjustments to ensure that length of service is considered consistently when setting individual pay rates.”
In an email to The Campus, Provost clarified that the administration was aware of the resulting pay compression from the January 2020 pay raises, and is now taking steps to address it.
“The rates of pay of all benefits-eligible staff in these ranges were analyzed to ensure a minimum difference in pay for each year of service,” he said. “This step will redistribute employees’ pay above the new minimums, effectively reestablishing a difference in pay between individuals throughout the range, based on length of service, alleviating compression.”
One longtime dining staff member, who spoke to The Campus on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retribution from management, attested to the impact of wage compression on staff.
“[Pay compression] is probably the biggest reason why employees at our level are leaving. It has created a significant amount of disgruntlement,” the dining staff member said. “They should have addressed that immediately when they instituted the fair wage entry level raises. People don't buy into the reasoning that the budget wasn't there during the pandemic to take care of compression.”
The dining staff member also expressed discontentment with the July 1 raise.
“Two percent is not enough, especially for going on two years sacrificing without a raise and being here throughout the pandemic, putting family in jeopardy. Thank goodness they did just about everything they could to make it as safe as possible for us,” they said.
The first email also announced significantly increased shift differentials for shifts in the evenings and nights. Staff who work evenings will now make an extra $1.50 per hour from their base wage, up from an extra $0.60, and staff who work nights will make an extra $3.00 an hour, an increase from $1.50.
In a May statement to The Campus, Assistant Vice President of Human Resources Laura Carotenuto cited what she described as “recent unemployment incentives” as affecting the college’s ability to fill open positions in dining and facilities. The first email announces that the college “will be implementing a number of programs focused on recruitment and retention of staff” in the dining and facilities departments in response to “a significant staffing shortage brought on by the low unemployment rate and the pandemic.”
The second email, sent only to dining and facilities, details the college’s three new programs to fill these open positions.
First, all facilities and dining staff members employed on July 1 will receive a $1,000 retention bonus at the end of the Fall 2021 semester, provided that the employee remains at the college until then.
The email also announced two new programs aimed at incentivizing applications for open staff positions at the college. New hires in dining and facilities will now receive a $750 bonus after 180 days of working at the college. Furthermore, current college employees who refer a new hire that goes on to work at the college for at least 90 days will receive a $500 bonus.
“We are certainly very happy that the senior administration has been giving this its full attention, and we are hopeful this will help us recruit and retain staff,” Dan Detora, executive director of food service operations, said. “Employees I have talked with are very excited and grateful for the $1,000 retention bonus and the fact that their salaries are being reviewed.”
Detora noted that if dining is unable to fill the 12 full-time positions that are currently open, they may not be able to open some of their retail operations such as the Grille or Midd Xpress. Such concerns were echoed by the dining staffer.
“Staffing issues are a big problem at our levels,” they said. “Lose any more and something drastic will have to happen as to how we serve and prepare food.”
The staff member also said that the efficacy of these new incentives is hard to assess at the moment.
“The hiring bonuses and incentives are a starting point, but … it will be hard to judge whether it will be enough,” they said. “The college has fallen behind in its wage and benefit competitiveness. They needed to start catching up earlier.”
(06/10/21 2:03pm)
The college has appointed Smita Ruzicka as the new vice president for student affairs (VPSA). The position has remained vacant since the previous VPSA, Baishakhi Taylor, left in April 2020.Along with overseeing the student affairs division, Health and Wellness and Public Safety, Ruzicka will be responsible for “removing systemic barriers and building new structures that will enable all of Middlebury's students to thrive.” “At the end of the day, my biggest goal is for each and every student to feel like they belong and are valued,” Ruzicka said. A core part of her job as vice president for student affairs will be to improve diversity, equity and inclusion on campus and incorporate restorative practices into student affairs. Ruzicka’s own experiences as an Indian immigrant have left her committed to championing racial justice efforts in higher education.Coming to the U.S. for the first time as an international college student, Ruzicka often found herself alone as the only South Asian woman in the room. She took on the added burden of having to teach those around her about racism while simultaneously dealing with the “emotional trauma” of its effects. “College shouldn't be something that you just sort of survive. You should thrive,” she said. “And so many times, especially our underrepresented students are coming to institutions of higher education and don't feel safe on those campuses. [They] barely survive and leave those institutions with additional trauma.”Ruzicka plans to spend the fall semester getting to know as many students as possible, attending sporting events, performances and hanging out in residential and dining halls. She hopes to form a bridge between administrators and students to address students’ needs and help them mold Middlebury into the institution they want. “I try not to speak for students, but with students,” Ruzicka said. “ And part of that has been really thinking about how to bring students to the table for important institutional decisions in whatever space I've been in.”Ruzicka comes to Middlebury with 18 years of experience in student-life administration. She previously served as dean of student life at Johns Hopkins University, where she was responsible for “a wide portfolio of services and programs aimed to enhance the overall student experience,… [including] student leadership and involvement, diversity and inclusion, health and wellness, residential life, crisis management and support services.” Prior to that, she was assistant vice president for campus life at Tulane University. There, she oversaw new student orientations, student organization management, sorority and fraternity life, student government, campus-wide programming and leadership development among other responsibilities. While serving in various leadership positions within the student dean’s office, Ruzicka earned her PhD in higher education administration at the University of Texas at Austin.Ruzicka earned masters in counseling psychology from Texas State University and worked as a therapist for YEARS, Her experience in mental health continues to inform her work as an administrator, work that is animated by her desire to form relationships with the students around her. Ruzicka chose to come to Middlebury after pandemic isolation inspired her to reflect on her life and career. She recalled her own experiences as an undergraduate at Trinity University, a small liberal arts college in Texas. The school president at the time knew many of the students by name and frequently invited students over to her house for meals. Ruzicka realized she too wanted to work at a college small enough for such intimacy to be possible, and Middlebury seemed the perfect fit. “I want it to be in a place where I could really have the opportunity to truly get to know as many students as possible not just by name, but by their stories, by their experiences,” Ruzicka said.Ruzicka describes herself as an optimist, a huge foodie who can’t cook, a practical joker, and a lover of the theater. She often bursts into song when the mood strikes her; these days she and her four-year-old son enjoy belting out Beyonce’s “Who Run the World” or U2’s “It’s a beautiful day.” She smiles often and widely. Ruzicka has never visited Vermont and has yet to taste a maple creemee, but she hopes to put down roots and make Middlebury a home for her and her family.
(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 9:57am)
A year ago, on May 14, 2020, Middlebury College faculty members reinstated the Middlebury chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which by then had been dormant for a few years. Born out of budget austerity concerns, the group of faculty and staff are “dedicated to making sure employees have a seat at the table when the institution makes decisions that affect us all.”
Initially, the chapter’s membership consisted of a 60-person email list; now, President of the Middlebury AAUP Laurie Essig, professor of gender, sexuality and feminist studies, estimates that there are over 200 members of the group, consisting of faculty and staff from both the College and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS).
“We as a community need to take care of each other,” Essig said in an interview with the Campus.
Essig synthesized the impetus behind the AAUP’s current work. “When we have staff members, who are risking their lives to be frontline workers, and not earning enough money to eat, that’s a problem. When we have the inability to attract the best and the brightest professors, because our compensation is lower.”
A year of work
The Middlebury chapter of the AAUP’s reinstatement last year coincided with one of the most challenging years in recent memory. Many faculty and staff that The Campus interviewed for this story viewed baseline maintenance of employee pay and benefits at 2019 levels as a success in light of the pandemic burdening the college’s already weak financials.
“I think Middlebury handled the operations/logistics side of things during the pandemic very well. I am grateful for the clear communication around Covid protocols, the ability to work remotely, and the hard work of so many people to keep Middlebury up and running this academic year.” Associate Professor Tara Affolter, a member of the Middlebury AAUP, said in an email to The Campus. “Middlebury's commitment to keep folks employed through the pandemic is important and noteworthy.”
Essig believes the administration’s pandemic commitment to employees was due in part to the AAUP’s public lobbying, such as introducing Sense of the Faculty Motions, submitting op-eds in The Campus and the chapter’s working conditions subgroup thinking through employee’s return to campus.
Nevertheless, as a recent article in the Campus notes, not all staff members are happy about recent changes made in the name of ‘workplace safety’. One custodian interviewed in the article was blunt about the effect of seemingly top-down decision making has had, “We’re all very upset; morale around campus is really low for staff. We just don't feel like we're appreciated. I don't think any of us feel like we've got an opinion that is heard.”
Essig notes that the AAUP is currently working within their five subcommittees: Communications, Representation, A People’s Budget, Alliance Building and Alternative Survey.
Furthermore, the group is heavily involved in the Middlebury Open the Books campaign, which is advocating for the publication of the entirety of the College’s financial records.
“We believe radical fiscal transparency can happen and we think Middlebury could be a leader in it,” Essig said. She said that the campaign is motivated by a desire to know how many employees are earning less than a living wage, how many executives are earning high salaries, what discrepancies exist in pay among staff and other aspects of college finances that affect staff livelihood.
Another central pillar of the AAUP’s ongoing advocacy is the practice of faculty governance, allowing faculty a seat at the table in major financial decision making.
“Many of us serve on committees and do a lot of work behind the scenes to try to move the needle on making Middlebury a more equitable and just place,” Affolter said in an email to the Campus. “Yet, when big decisions (such as the recent financial decisions) are announced, faculty committees are not consulted and Sense of the Faculty motions are ignored.”
A bumpy road
Although the Middlebury AAUP was heavily involved in lobbying for different pandemic safety policies at the College — in June 2020, the Middlebury AAUP’s Working Conditions Subcommittee endorsed a remote fall semester — some wish that their advocacy was more inclusive of staff members as well.
One long-time facilities staff member who wished to remain anonymous believes that the 2020 revitalization of the AAUP could have been inspired by the public staff unionization campaign in the fall of 2019. “It was weird because the talk of the union came and it seemed like we had a lot of support from [faculty]. And I think that might have given them the idea, but they actually went together, and we completely fell apart.”
The staff member noted that at one large meeting in that fall unionization effort, a faculty member stood up and pleaded with administration to take better care of staff.
“Six months later the AAUP came. So you’re like, we put an idea in all these people’s heads,” they said.
“What some staff expressed to me, and it’s all anecdotal, was that last spring, the AAUP was loud, vocal, they helped preserve our checks, with the administration, of course. They were a large voice in dipping into the endowment. And they were making some noise about paying essential workers more,” Tim Parsons, the college’s landscape horticulturist and former President of Staff Council, said. “And then, after the semester was over, it was radio silence, and some staff I talked to felt like, well, where are they now for us? And we never heard from them again until October.”
However, one long-time administrative staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity disagreed with Parsons’ description of AAUP-staff relations, “[the AAUP] is intended to be a faculty organization, but the Middlebury group has welcomed staff membership and has identified staff equity as a priority.”
In an email to the Campus, librarian Brenda Ellis noted that friction between faculty and staff often comes from the budgetary realities defined by the administration.
“There is actually no rift between faculty and staff. In fact faculty are very supportive of higher wages for staff,” she said. “But there’s a limited pie — a limited amount of money the College is willing to spend for employee compensation, so if the College increases faculty salaries to keep up or rise with their competition (as they’ve advocated for), it is going to mean that the staff raise pool won’t increases as much unless the College increases the amount for overall employee compensation.”
Essig acknowledged that the criticisms of the Middlebury AAUP regarding staff representation have merit.
“Here’s the problem: the AAUP was set up for professors of the American Association of University Professors. That’s what it was set up for,” she said. “I 100% agree that we don’t do a good job working for staff because that’s not what we are.”
The AAUP does include staff on every committee, including the Executive Committee. However, according to Essig, they are almost exclusively professional staff and are still far outnumbered by faculty.
Not all staff members even knew that they could join the AAUP.
“I didn’t realize [the AAUP] could also include staff… I thought it was like a different aspect of basically the same thing, a union for faculty, but I didn’t realize staff could also be involved,” said another longtime facilities staff member who wished to remain anonymous.
On May 3, the Middlebury AAUP website was updated with a new introductory section clarifying their mission in regards to including staff members, “We use the AAUP principles of faculty governance to make sure the voices of employees are heard and support our colleagues on staff with any movement toward collective representation they make.”
An approaching horizon
Faculty cannot currently unionize under the National Labor Relations Act due to the landmark 1980 U.S. Supreme Court case National Labor Relations Board vs. Yeshiva University, which ruled that faculty at private universities are managerial employees.
Essig believes that professors should organize anyways.
“I support professors’ attempts to unionize. I mean why not? We can be the first, I don’t see why Middlebury can’t lead,” Essig said, “We don’t have to just follow what everyone else does.”
Until recently, the college’s Senior Leadership Group had refused to even recognize the Middlebury AAUP’s existence. After repeated requests from the AAUP over the last year President Laurie Patton agreed to meet with members of the AAUP budget subcommittee on April 16 regarding their concerns over the Board of Trustees’ January meeting in which the Board capped endowment draw to 5% and raised student tuition and fees by 2.5%.
Such a hardline stance by the Board on the endowment has many concerned about the already prevalent issues of pay compression and undercompensation that affect many employees. At that same April 16 faculty meeting, a Sense of the Faculty motion drafted by the AAUP expressing discontent with the Board’s recent budgetary decisions passed with 87% of faculty in support.
“The administration’s attitude seems to be that if staff don’t like it, they can ‘vote with their feet.’ We have actually seen a lot more of that in recent years. Staff leave the college for less stressful jobs,” said the administrative staff member in an email to the Campus. “This used to be a workplace where people built lifelong careers and was known locally as the place to work. Not so much anymore, when wages are low and expectations are very high.”
There are currently 37 unfilled positions on the Middlebury College job board. The college is struggling to fill dining and facilities positions. In 2019, due to a shortage of custodians, the College hired independent contractors to clean some small houses on campus.
In response to advocacy for higher staff wages in late 2019, in early 2020 the College raised its minimum wage to $14.00 an hour. But this increase had broader repercussions of pay compression, as longtime staff members suddenly found themselves making little more than their newcomer peers. Even still, many employees are still earning below a living wage in Vermont.
An op-ed that Parsons wrote in March detailed how after working at Middlebury for 21 years — and while also working a second job — one staff member has to regularly go to the local food bank to feed their family.
“I know I’m not going to get rich doing what I’m doing,” said the second facilities employee, “It’d be nice to not have to worry about, ‘am I going to have enough money to put gas in my vehicle so I can get to work?’ That’d be nice.”
With the end of the pandemic in sight, many staff want to return to the conversation about low pay at the college. “It’s going to take the work of faculty, staff and administration to say, ‘This is our priority, this is what we want to spend money on,”’ said Parsons.
“They’re in the middle of trying to figure out whether or not we’re going to get a percentage raise July 1,” said the second facilities employee. “So that’s a lot of ‘hurry up and wait’ right now, and whether or not we’re going to have to storm the castle, you know?”
The first facilities employee provided a different characterization. “I think if we don’t get a raise in July, there’s going to be a lot of people who are really, really upset.”
Editor’s Note: The staff members interviewed in this piece were granted anonymity because of their fears of retribution from staff or management.
A previous version of this article included a quote that contained a noted grammatical mistake. The error has been corrected in the original source and in this article.
(05/20/21 9:56am)
Men’s track and field ended their season on a high note as they traveled to Williams College this weekend, competing against several colleges including Tufts, Amherst and Williams.
While the event wasn’t scored, it didn’t stop Middlebury from showing out: Quinlan McGaugh ’22 placed second in the 1500-meter with a time of 3 minutes, 57.21 seconds, while Aaron Tobias ’24 took the silver in the 100 with a time of 11.03.
Nothing stopped Middlebury in the throwing events either, as Nathaniel Klein ’21 snatched first in both the hammer throw (46.01 meters) and shot put (13.93 meters). James Caprio ’21 also won the discus with an impressive throw of 42.58 meters.
“I feel incredibly thankful to the coaches and administration who worked hard to make it happen,” Klein stated. “I am sad to leave but I had a wonderful time competing for Midd, and I know our team has a bright future.”
Some athletes will get the chance to compete a final time in the Tufts Last-Chance Meet at Tufts University today, May 20, yet most will be finished and looking onward toward summer.
While there was no NESCAC Championship meet this season, several Panthers earned All-NESCAC honors. Nadji Ngbokoli ’24, Matthew Durst ’21, Finn Warner ’24, and Tobias each earned this honor with their 43.54-second mark in the 4x100, while Arden Coleman ‘21 also took home the distinction with a 49.72 second 400.
Klein and Zack Seib ’21 were also tabbed All-NESCAC athletes, the second time each thrower has earned the honor.
(05/20/21 3:16am)
This fourth section of the Plan includes eight initiatives, which are designed to address barriers to accessibility in the built environment, academic settings and technology or online systems. Though none of the strategies are slated for completion in 2021, work on many of them has already begun. And, as Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández explained, some of the strategies will never truly reach completion since they introduce what he hopes will be ongoing principles and processes regarding accessibility.
“The whole action plan is about removing barriers,” Fernández said. “A student shouldn’t have to go through a lot more steps and barriers to get the same education as someone else.”
Physical accessibility
The physical aspects of Middlebury — its sprawling 350-acre campus, rolling hills and historical buildings — can prove challenging for some students with physical disabilities to navigate.
Several initiatives in the plan are aimed at identifying and addressing accessibility issues in the physical campus environment. The principles proposed in Strategy #7 — which introduce more inclusive construction and renovation protocol — have already been implemented to some degree in many of the college’s most recent construction projects, according to Fernández.
In 2016, the college formed the Advisory Group on Disability, Access and Inclusion (AGDAI) — a committee of faculty, staff and students formed after conflict regarding the construction of the Ridgeline Suites, some of which are not accessible up to the third floor. AGDAI is one of the responsible units listed for a number of the Accessibility section initiatives, including Strategy #7.
Fernández, who sits as co-chair of the body along with Professor of American Studies Susan Burch, said part of the group’s responsibility is to assess accessibility issues in the built environment. The group has advocated for college building projects to incorporate universal design, the practice of making a space accessible to all beyond Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance. AGDAI called for universal design in the renovations of Warner Hall, which the Board of Trustees reapproved this January, and Munroe Hall, which underwent renovations last academic year.
But, despite the push for universal design, not every entrance in Munroe Hall is accessible for all — the west entrance of the building has a step up to the door. AGDAI was not involved in the early part of the planning process for the Munroe renovation, Fernández explained.
“We were able to make some tweaks but maybe didn’t get everything that we had hoped,” he said.
Going forward, however, the college does plan to fully incorporate universal design. This fall, Middlebury is planning to break ground on a new dorm on the north end of Battell Beach and has hired a consultant who specializes in universal design to advise the process, according to Fernández. Dana Auditorium, which is scheduled to be renovated beginning in August, will also incorporate universal design, according to a February recap of the January Board of Trustees meeting.
Work on the other three strategies that address issues of accessibility in the built environment — a publicly available campus map with detailed accessibility information, a timeline for tackling barriers and a platform for reporting barriers — has not begun.
Regarding the timeline for addressing barriers, Fernández said that Facilities Services asked that they reconsider the strategy given the immense amount of time and resources it would require to produce. Instead Facilities proposed a project-based model. Mike Moser, director of Facilities Services and member of AGDAI, did not respond to interview requests for this article.
Fernández said he expects the timeline for the campus map, currently 2021–22, will need to be pushed back. As for the system for reporting accessibility barriers, he said they are still ironing out the details for how reports would be addressed.
Inclusive technology and web-based electronic systems
Work has already begun on the third and fourth strategies, which address accessibility in academic technology and online systems. The pandemic sped up the college’s plans to make changes to academic and classroom technology, according to Fernández. Some software and technology for remote study such as Zoom has already been purchased and implemented to facilitate education during the pandemic. Fernández also mentioned the possibility of rewiring classrooms such that they include a microphone or speakers.
Information Technology Services is currently developing a roadmap and public education materials to explain changes to Middlebury’s web-based electronic systems, which they expect will be completed by the fall.
The college is currently engaged in a review of Information and Communication Technology through the Paciello Group, a web accessibility consulting group.
“In the short term (this fiscal year) they will be helping us understand our current position, conducting a gap analysis, and drafting a roadmap which will include policy recommendations,” Fernández said. “Part of this project will also be the creation of a public information hub for technology accessibility, training, and a communication plan.”
Exam scheduling and extra time
Work on the second initiative in the accessibility section, which is designed to address difficulties in scheduling exams with extra time or make-up exams, is scheduled to occur from 2021–22.
Students have noted that professors sometimes have the ability to deny certain accommodations. In an earlier article, Isaac Byrne ’21, who runs the Divergent Learners Collective (DLC), said that a member of the DLC was denied accommodations due to old paperwork. For some kinds of accommodations, it is up to professors to decide whether or not to comply with them.
Isabel Linhares ’22, a Social Entrepreneurship Fellow working on a project about accessibility in STEM education, said that the Disability Resource Center makes some of the accommodations included in students’ Letters of Accommodation optional, leaving them up to each professor’s discretion.
“I've had conversations with the Disability Resource Center about why they're making certain aspects in accessibility optional because then that treats it as a favor and not a human right,” Linhares said.
Linhares noted that ADA requires that reasonable accommodations be provided to disabled students, leaving the definition of “reasonable” up to individual institutions and their members.
The DRC did not respond to interview questions by publication time.
Resources and workshops
According to the plan, Director of Education for Equity and Inclusion Renee Wells will design and offer workshops around how to organize accessible events beginning next year. However, these workshops have already begun, according to Fernández, and other offices such as the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Research (CTLR) and Digital Learning & Inquiry (DLINQ) have also started work in this area.
Wells runs the Inclusive Practitioners Program, which provides workshops for faculty and staff.
“About 75% of what I do is people asking me specifically to do things with and for them,” she said. “And then the other 25% is the Inclusive Practitioners Program, which I set up and offer workshops for faculty and staff all the time.”
In April and May, the program offered workshops that addressed best practices for administering exams and the use of a variety of tools to assess student learning outcomes.
Maintaining momentum
Much of what the college’s plan addresses are concrete solutions to specific issues that students and employees face during their time at Middlebury. But what some are looking for is a broader cultural shift in the way disability is perceived and treated. Linhares said she feels that some of the people with the ability to implement change still view disability through the lens of the medical model rather than the social model — which proposes that disability occurs due to the interaction between individuals and their environment.
Linhares noted that tangible changes are still immediately necessary, but worries that there is not enough emphasis on changing the way people perceive disability, and that momentum will fizzle out without a deeper understanding of and sense of responsibility for solving systemic and structural accessibility issues.
“At some point you’re going to have to start thinking not even, ‘outside the box,’ but, ‘get rid of the box altogether,’” Linhares said. “You’re going to have to dig up the foundations and build something entirely new because the way that higher education as a whole was designed — it was not designed with disabled students in mind.”
