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(05/13/21 10:00am)
Activists at Middlebury have spent the last year creating mutual aid networks, educating peers about anti-racism and fighting for a myriad of reforms both on-campus and from their homes across the country. While the pandemic limited in-person events, organizers saw their work become more urgent than ever as the effects of Covid-19 disproportionately impacted marginalized communities and exacerbated existing social inequities.
In recent years, activism on campus has not been a rare sight. The invitation of Charles Murray, whose work the Southern Poverty Law Center says features racist pseudoscience and white nationalist ideology, sparked campus-wide protests in 2017. In spring 2019, students also prepared to protest the invitation of Ryzard Legutko, a Polish politician known for making homophobic remarks, before the college canceled the event out of a concern for “safety risks.” In October 2020, organizers used digital protest tactics during a Zoom debate titled “Was America Founded on Slavery?”, with some turning their profile pictures into a photo of the debate poster with the answer “YES.” across it.
Between these events, organizers have also pushed for reforms and created support networks at the college. When the college abruptly instructed students to leave campus in spring 2020, organizers created a mutual aid spreadsheet to connect their peers with temporary housing, rides home or to the airport, and other types of help.
The new, online learning modality coupled with the effects of the pandemic also created new challenges for students managing schoolwork, which #FairGradesMidd activists aimed to address by creating a Pass/Fail grading system. Over the summer, students participated in Black Lives Matter protests occurring across the country and organized Middlebury Cops Off Campus to dismantle policing on campus. Environmental groups have been active at Middlebury for decades, pushing the college to address climate change and divest fossil fuels from the endowment.
Middlebury students buy into activism to different degrees during their four years at the college. Over a dozen organizations at Middlebury are involved in activism and advocacy, from affinity groups to environmental organizations to community service clubs. And many students work outside of conventional organizing spaces to share resources on social media, plan or participate in events and advocate for causes of personal importance. Informal personal connections and intentional collaborative networks link these activist spaces, shaping a culture that is sometimes universal and sometimes unique to individual organizers.
A year of online activism
Divya Gudur ’21 has been a co-manager of the Sunday Night Environmental Group (SNEG), worked with Divest Middlebury and organized with many other activist groups on campus. She said the pivot to social media has been essential this year and was a helpful tool for organizing during the pandemic.
“One of the protests we did last semester — against the event that the Hamilton Forum organized around ‘Was America founded on Slavery?’ — that whole protest was all digital organizing strategies, sharing resources on Instagram and asking people to show up to this digital space, because a lot of these conversations are now happening digitally,” Gudur said.
Charice Lawrence ’23 became involved with activism on social media in early 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and renewed national attention to the Black Lives Matter movement. Throughout the year, she has fostered discussion about anti-racism, sharing information and talking with peers online.
“On social media, it's been a lot of people wanting to have conversations, but also calling things I see out. People are obviously really well-intentioned, but the ways that some of the activism plays out is still racist,” Lawrence said.
“When Elijah McClain was killed, everybody was like, ‘Oh my god he was so innocent, he didn’t deserve this.’ Even though it was well-intentioned, it was anti-Black rhetoric. So if someone is illegally selling cigarettes, that’s a death warrant?” she said. “Our activism can’t be conditional, and Black lives can’t matter only when they’re super innocent.”
Lawrence said that the relationships she made in her first year at Middlebury gave her a platform to speak about anti-racism among a predominately-white student body. Nevertheless, navigating race and identity in those conversations has been challenging, as she does not want her “likability” to be the only reason her peers listened to her.
“They shouldn't have to be friends with me to listen to Black people,” Lawrence said.
Arlo Fleischer ’21.5, who uses they/them pronouns, has been involved with several activist movements, including SNEG, Divest Middlebury, #FairGradesMidd, Middlebury Cops Off Campus and other groups at the college. They said social media has been a helpful tool for organizing, but has its limitations.
“I think sometimes it can come across as pretty performative, and that’s a discussion we’ve been having a lot, especially over the summer in terms of the Black Lives Matter protests when people got involved mostly by sharing Instagram stories,” Fleischer said. “Sometimes it can be hard to know what to do, but that’s when I think that, what’s really important, is taking that opportunity to be a student and continue to learn.”
Connection across movements
Students from different activist groups have also found opportunities to work together, often in opposition to an event or speaker.
“Activism can be very visible in the Middlebury community sometimes,” Fleischer said.“I think about the way we as a community responded to the Charles Murray incidents, and Legutko being invited, and the Hamilton Forum lecture that happened earlier this year… In that sense, these are instances where the Middlebury community really comes together.”
Connections between activist groups at the college have historically formed around informal personal contacts and friendships, but organizers have recently been working to deepen the networks that link activists to each other.
“I think sometimes it feels like activism here can be siloed, but everyone’s really trying to be more intentional about creating a more intersectional activist community on campus. I think with environmental organizing, we’ve been putting in a lot of work in working in solidarity with other organizations on campus,” Gudur said. “All activists, what they have in common, is the way they’re treated by the administration. So when we share strategies for organizing, when we share strategies for dealing with the administration, it is more successful.
Fleischer has been working with Concerned Students of Middlebury to create an activist collective that formalizes communication across different organizations to make activism more effective and accessible.
“When we rely on personal connections, it makes it really hard for first-years to get involved — you kind of have to know the right people. If someone graduates, those connections are just lost,” Fleischer said. “In order to continue those connections, we’re trying to hold cross-org mixers and social events to solidify these connections for years to come.”
Leif Taranta ’20.5, who uses they/them pronouns, first became involved with activism in Philadelphia during high school, and began working with SNEG, Divest Middlebury, the Trans Affinity Group and other organizations when they came to college. They organized with groups both on and off campus during their years at Middlebury and have spent the past year working for the Climate Disobedience Center and the No Coal, No Gas campaign.
“There’s a pretty strong community around it,” Taranta said. “And also there’s a lot of people who are just exhausted and tired of doing this work, and tired of needing to do this work especially against the institution. So there were a lot of people supporting each other in that burnout and in the frustration.”
Activism beyond campus
Middlebury’s activist groups often play dual roles in on-campus and off-campus organizing, localizing nationwide movements to the college and bringing student voices to issues around Vermont and the country.
“A lot of student activism is targeted at the institution, thinking about ways to make the institution change,” Taranta said. “A lot of what I thought about was, “How do we keep that not just in a silo, how do we connect the work we’re doing on campus with the work people are doing off campus, in Vermont, or back home?”
Taranta said organizations at the college, in town and on other college campuses have shared strategies and missions that grew out of broader national issues.
“I know Middlebury can feel like a bubble in terms of the ways that we get things done,” Fleischer said. “But also, there are a lot of real-world issues that reflect back at Middlebury. You see Cops Off Campus getting started out of the national Black Lives Matter movement, and there are Cops Off Campus movements at all these other schools across the nation. So while we’re a bubble, we’re also a thing that’s happening in a bigger movement.”
Lawrence said that being in Vermont and at an overwhelmingly liberal college makes some people blind to the ways they still contribute to racism.
“With Middlebury, because this is such a liberal town and Vermont is seemingly very liberal, people think that there’s no possible way that they could be harming marginalized communities,” Lawrence said. “It’s like this protective shield — being in Vermont and being in a liberal place.”
Environmental activism
Environmentalism features prominently in the college’s history — and its admissions pitch — from Middlebury offering the nation’s first undergraduate environmental studies program in 1965 to student activists’ years-long and ultimately successful push for fossil fuel divestment. Gudur, Taranta and Fleischer were all involved in Divest Middlebury, and built connections with other student activists through the movement.
“We saw Divest Middlebury as a tool towards broader organizing goals, for Middlebury as an institution to move towards justice, move towards relying on renewable energy sources in a just way,” Gudur said. “You replicate the same systems of oppression and destruction when students aren’t involved.”
Mainstream environmental groups — at Middlebury and across the country — are often overwhelmingly white spaces. Many of these organizations have worked to center their activism around environmental justice and make activist spaces more welcoming to students of color, but, as an op-ed published this year in The Campus highlighted, exclusivity is a lingering concern for many.
“It’s easier for people to use a metal straw than it is to constantly be checking themselves for prejudice, so it’s a lot about ease and comfort,” Lawrence said. “It’s also easier to be told that we all need to do this effort, that we all need to be using metal straws and recycling, than being told ‘You are the oppressor.’ They’re just very different messages.”
Fleischer said activists have been working to build solidarity across organizations and ensure that BIPOC students have a space in existing activism groups.
“When we have conversations about whiteness in activist spaces, I think it tends to be in organizations that are commonly associated as having been white historically, so it's kind of trying to upend those dynamics to make space for BIPOC organizers. But there are already a lot of BIPOC organizers on campus, and expecting those organizers to come into white spaces isn’t necessarily the right approach,” Fleischer said.
Backlash
While often visible at Middlebury, activism at the college is not without its challenges. Resistance from the administration and other students has slowed progress and created tensions in the past.
“Middlebury really wants to have this image of supporting student activists and being really progressive and innovative, and honestly a lot of what that looks like is taking credit for a lot of student activists’ work while actually making student activism really hard to do,” Taranta said.
In spring 2020, the college posted a photo to its Instagram account of a student protesting Charles Murray’s visit to Middlebury to highlight activism at the college. The student was one of 74 protesters sanctioned in the wake of the event, sparking backlash over the attempt to paint the college as supportive of activism when students were punished for their actions.
“There was a line to walk of being cordial with the administration, so that they would work with us and be willing to make a shift, but then also not wanting to sacrifice our own radicalism or our own commitment to much more transformational change than they were willing to talk about,” Taranta said.
As an incoming SGA Vice President, Lawrence said she looks forward to having a greater platform to push for change at the college, but expects to be limited to incremental changes more than she wants.
“There are so many barriers that prevent SGA from doing more,” Lawrence said. “I’m really excited for it because we’re working on things like bringing in a more diverse staff for mental health resources, and things like that I think are incredible, and I’m so glad that we're able to do this. But there are other things that simply, we won't get approval to do if we suggest it to people in higher positions.”
Taranta also said that they had seen backlash from different groups at the college. When they advocated for changing the to-go containers in dining halls to reduce waste, some athletes strongly opposed the change. They also saw opposition from conservative members of the Economics department who pushed back against divestment, and from students involved in organizations like the Alexander Hamilton Forum and the Middlebury chapter of the American Enterprise Institute.
“There’s a very big, at least in my experience, divide on campus between students who are more on the left or — if not actively organizing for causes — supportive of them, and then really conservative, really wealthy students. They were not always very supportive, sometimes things became fairly antagonistic,” Taranta said.
Lawrence said there are structural barriers to what activism on campus can achieve. She said students work to get into Middlebury because of its elite reputation, and that reputation comes from elitism rooted in capitalism and racism.
“I do think people are trying, but it’s hard to imagine systemic change at a place that is founded on oppression,” Lawrence said. “We can’t separate Middlebury from these issues because it’s what makes Middlebury, Middlebury.
(05/13/21 10:00am)
In the 1920s
On a sunny Saturday morning in the spring of 1921, you wake up in your room in Battell Cottage. This women’s dorm is located on the Battell Campus, rather than across the road on the men’s “old campus.” Classes meet six days a week, so after a quick breakfast at Battell Dining Hall, you drag yourself to 8 a.m. Latin, which fulfills your classical requirement.
At 9:00 a.m., you are off to a course in home economics. Before registration, you considered classes devoted to specific subjects like food preparation or hat-making, but settled on the more general “Household Administration.” The class focuses on a “woman’s place in the home and the community; buying, arrangement, and storing of general household supplies; care of the house; domestic service; labor saving devices; division of income and accounting.”
From 10–10:30 a.m., students have a break built into their schedule so they can attend chapel service. While Middlebury is nonsectarian, it emphasizes religious devotion of some kind. “A chapel service is held each week-day at 10 a.m. and a vesper service on Sunday at 5 p.m. All students are required to attend unless excused for urgent cause,” the college writes in its catalogue. One of your friends doesn’t much appreciate this mandatory attendance, although she protests in her scrapbook that “I do go to church sometimes.”
After chapel, you have your last class of the day: physical education. Men and women have separate offerings for P.E. Men can choose from Gymnastics or Athletic Coaching, while women select from a Playground Course or Methods of Teaching Physical Education. You’ve opted for the former, and you and your classmates spend the period learning folk dances from your instructor, Miss Young.
Once classes have finished for the day, you are eager to meet up with friends. In the afternoon, you decide to attend a baseball game against St. Michael’s College. While you watch, your friend reports that she called home. Her parents were relieved to hear that tuition would only come to $150, plus $300 for room and board. The Panthers’ victory leaves you both in high spirits.
A busy evening lies ahead. Tonight is the annual banquet for the Theta Chi Epsilon sorority at Betsy Buttles Tea House. Greek life plays a large role on campus, although strict rules from the college limit its activities, and social gatherings occur almost exclusively on Fridays and Saturdays. The rulebook states, “any group of students in the men’s college desiring to have a party of any sort to which women are invited...is required to secure permission from the Chairman of the Student Life Committee.” These co-ed events are, of course, chaperoned. Consumption of alcohol is grounds for expulsion from the college given that the country is in the midst of Prohibition. As one of your classmates puts it, “Rules are the bane of our young lives.”
Following the banquet, you are torn between all the different options that weekends provide. Some of your friends opt to go into town (in reality, “a village of about 2000”) to see a movie. There is also a New York Philharmonic Concert at Mead Chapel, and Richard Burton is giving a lecture. In the end, you decide to attend the college dance. The sponsoring group took such time to craft delicate paper invitations, and you are eager to fill in the spots on your dance card. The event concludes at 11:30pm, and you return to Battell Cottage with a smile on your face, happy to have spent another day at Middlebury College.
Over the next three years, you hope to meet Robert Frost at the Bread Loaf School of English and to attend the Middlebury Summer Language School to sharpen your French. While you are certain to complain about the cold, you will also be delighted to try your hand at skiing. By the time commencement rolls around in 1924, your scrapbook is full and you are ready for anything the Roaring Twenties have left to throw at you.
Editor’s Note: This article is based off of beautiful scrapbooks created by female Middlebury students in the early 1920s. These women preserved their college experiences on pages filled with detailed notes about their day-to-day schedules, ticket stubs from events they attended and elaborate party invitations and dance cards. This resource was supplemented with research in the college’s archives, and with information from the 1920 Middlebury College Catalogue.
In the 2020s
Beep. Beep. At 8:30 a.m., your phone alarm wakes you from a deep sleep. Reluctantly, you pull open the blinds to reveal a cloudy Friday morning in the spring of 2021. Outside the window of Hepburn Hall, you see students carrying backpacks already making their way across campus.
After a quick breakfast in your room, at 9:10 you log onto your first class of the day: Intro to Computing. These days, most of your classes take place on Zoom. After two semesters of virtual courses, you’ve gotten used to interacting remotely with classmates and professors. Ensuring that your microphone is muted, you force yourself to stay engaged by taking notes. After class, you drop in to your Arabic professor’s Zoom office hours to ask a question about your upcoming presentation.
At 12:40, you have your only in-person class of the day: Feminist Foundations. Every time the class meets, you are amazed to learn more about how far the women’s rights movement has progressed in the last century. Although everyone is wearing a mask and desks are spaced six feet apart, it is still refreshing to spend time in a shared classroom environment after a long morning looking at a screen.
That afternoon, you decide to exercise with MiddRuns. In addition to meeting students with a common interest, the club fulfills one of your P.E. credits. You decide to grab dinner afterward, and you are unsurprised to see that Proctor is serving its frequent Thanksgiving meal, complete with turkey and mashed potatoes smothered in gravy.
After dinner, you hesitate choosing an evening event. The Middlebury College Activity Board is sponsoring a number of online events, including a concert by Hippo Campus. Plus, a few of your friends are gathering in Axinn to watch a movie. Room capacity restrictions limit the number of people who can be in a shared space, making weekend socializing more difficult than in previous years, but parties still occur. You settle for streaming the concert with a couple of friends in one of their dingles.
Over the next three years, you look forward to campus reopening and the opportunities post-pandemic life will provide, from attending classes in person to watching live events. You plan on studying abroad your junior year and want to complete a summer internship related to your major. Due to your canceled high school graduation, you are already eager to hear your name announced and walk across the stage to receive your Middlebury diploma in 2024.
(05/13/21 9:58am)
Ever since 1971, a group of roughly 100 students has arrived on campus during the snowy month of February, joining the small community of Middlebury students and alumni with half year graduation dates. These students — called “Febs” after their unusual matriculation and graduation month — have often led slightly different paths than students who enter the college during the regular cycle. The college’s February Admissions page describes Febs as members of “a long tradition of adventurous students who aren’t afraid to do things a bit differently.”
But being a Feb has changed this year. Instead of traveling, many first-year Febs spent their Febmester in quarantine, while graduating Febs were unable to take part in the traditions they have looked forward to since orientation. While there is not one singular Feb experience, many described feeling especially close to their peers, the presumption of stereotypes — and even certain disadvantages of the program.
Febs by the numbers
For some, being a Feb is a starkly different experience than being a “Reg” — the colloquial term for those matriculating in September — for better or for worse. For starters, each Feb class is fairly small — around 90 to 100 students. This can be an attractive selling point for those who are interested in the possibility of a close-knit graduating class.
Eli Richardson ’23.5 said the program was a significant part of his decision to apply to Middlebury.
“I enjoy coming in with a smaller community of people,” Richardson said. “I have interacted with people different from me and grown as a result of it.”
But class sizes have shifted significantly in the past year. Many students elected to take a semester off amid pandemic precautions, health concerns and increased financial strain. As a result, some Febs have shifted back into a Reg class year, while some Regs have done the opposite — joining a Feb class with which they did not matriculate.
Richardson’s class currently sits at 90 students, the smallest of all the current Feb classes, according to the college’s email list. The senior Feb email list includes 200 students.
The Feb community
Many Febs have found a kind of instant community among members of their class, bonding during the adjustment period when they first arrive on campus. Charlotte Cahillane ’19.5 noted that the experience of joining Middlebury a semester later than the Reg class had a significant impact on the friends she made.
“Based on the nature of starting at the same time and not having easy ways to build community with other classmates, some of my closest folks were Febs from my year,” Cahillane said.
Despite initial apprehensiveness about their later start date, Cahillane said that the 2019.5 Febs eventually began to feel more connected to the class of 2019.
“You realize everyone is in similar boats and not that much farther ahead than you are,” she said.
First-year Febs participate in orientation trips and events each winter, led by Febs in the grades above. This year’s first-year Febs were the first class to have a fully remote orientation; they were also given the option of living together in Forest — where all the first-year Feb counselors (FebYCs) live — or being placed in random housing assignments.
Long after the initial orientation, many Febs maintain strong relationships with their smaller class.
“The greatest Feb tradition is the sense of camaraderie amongst a subset of students with a single shared experience that persists through your time at Midd,” Noah Fine ’20.5 said.
While most Febs do not feel like there is a clear divide between Febs and Regs, they do think there are certain Feb stereotypes that have persisted throughout time.
“Febs were people who were enthusiastic, outgoing, a little bit weird, and people who didn't get in during regular admissions, which put a chip on our shoulders,” Colonno said of the stereotypes.
Though she graduated a semester early — making her part of a Reg class — Colonno’s friends from Middlebury still call her by her nickname, “Febbie,” 16 years after graduation.
Cahillane remembers her classmates being interested in a variety of hobbies and activities, but there were some commonalities that stood out. “A lot of folks were into hiking, being outside… a lot of geography,” Cahillane said.
“There's definitely a Feb stereotype that holds up to a certain extent, but there are a bunch of different personalities in my Feb class, and I don't really see a divide between Febs and regs,” Richardson said.
While there are no official college demographics for Feb classes, they have often been seen as more white and wealthy than the overall student population. This perception has become so ubiquitous that it is part of campus humor. In 2018, the college’s satirical newspaper, The Local Noodle, ran an article with the headline “Elizabeth Warren to Join Class of 2021.5, Creating Most Diverse Feb Class to Date” featuring Warren’s headshot photoshopped into a picture of students at the college rock climbing wall.
Some students described feeling the impact of Feb class demographics.
“It definitely shaped my social sphere. Febs historically have been white and upper middle class — not 100% — but those are the folks who can take a semester off,” Cahillane said.
For Sophia Lundberg 21.5, the lack of diversity in her Feb class had a significant impact on her social life and mental health at the start of her college experience.
“I felt like I tried very hard to be a straight, wealthy, white student for a very long time with varying levels of success before realizing that that’s really tiring and burdensome, and I should just try to embrace my identities and experiences instead,” Lundberg said.
Niki Kowsar ’21.5 says that, as an immigrant, she felt out of place in North America — and coming to Middlebury was no different. However, she found her fellow Febs to be empathetic, allowing her to connect with her peers despite demographic differences.
“There are activities where wealth, privilege, and access come into play, specifically with traveling and outdoor activities like skiing, golfing, etc., but that's not just specific to the Feb classes, but more so toward the general Middlebury community,” Kowsar said.
Lundberg, who is one of the two SGA Vice Presidents, hopes that the college pursues policies that diversify Feb admissions and create strong support systems for Febs throughout their four years at Middlebury.
Student leaders aimed to increase awareness about privilege, microaggressions, and anti-racism, among Febs by adding a JusTalks component to this year’s Feb orientation
“I think the inclusion of JusTalks was an exceptional first step, but broadly, it's important for Middlebury to admit more racially and socioeconomically diverse groups of students for future Feb classes to bring in different perspectives while ensuring that all students feel valued and accepted,” Kowsar said.
The “Febmester”
The defining feature of being a Feb is the gap semester, referred to as a “Febmester,” that members of the class take before entering college. Many Febs are grateful for the opportunity to take time off between high school and college without the commitment of a full gap year.
Libby Scarpota ’24, formerly a member of the class of 2023.5, was one of the Febs who became a Reg this year, spending the spring working at an environmental nonprofit in Hawaii. But, as a former Feb who matriculated a few weeks before Covid-19 was declared a pandemic, Scarpotta was able to spend her Febmester working as an au pair in Italy.
“I would highly recommend taking time off school while you're young,” Scarpotta said. “In a sense, it's not like I had a ton of huge responsibilities, and I was able to gain skills and learned a lot as a person.”
But Scarpotta also acknowledged that Febmesters full of travel and work experience are not universally accessible.
And joining campus in the middle of the semester can also pose a unique set of challenges. “I knew going to Middlebury that I wanted to study languages, so it was really tricky that I couldn't study new languages in the spring… that was why I graduated early,” Colonno said. “I had to do summer school and hustle to get on track.”
To some, the lack of immediate access to some aspects of campus life are part of what makes the Feb experience unique.
“Being a Feb can make it difficult to join clubs and other activities your first semester but there’s a certain sense of community that Febs thrive off of as a result,” Fine said.
Feb graduation
A beloved Feb tradition takes place on the day of their graduation: when students ski — or otherwise descend — down the Snow Bowl in their caps and gowns.
“I'm not a great skier, so I'm genuinely scared for graduation, but even if you don't ski it is a huge bonding moment,” Melisa Gurkan ’23.5 said.
The night before graduation, the Febs are invited to a “Febs and sibs” dinner, where Febs and their siblings head to Atwater Dining Hall for a meal and a party. The morning afterwards, Febs don their caps and gowns to hit the slopes. While most choose to ski, some opt for more creative ways of getting down the slope — including canoes.
Feb life during Covid-19
As the Covid-19 pandemic has shifted learning online and forced restrictions on campus social life, many students have chosen to “Feb” themselves and graduate a semester earlier or later than planned.
Lundberg knows students who have taken time off for reasons ranging from mental health to simply wanting to have a relaxing semester after a long year of isolation.
“I think Covid has just shown many people that it’s OK to have a “non-traditional” college experience,” she said.
Febs, once a close-knit identity, are now composed of a large number of Middlebury students, which has shifted what it means to be a member of a mid-year graduating class.
“I think [identifying as a Feb] is becoming more irrelevant with the number of people Febbing themselves,” Scaperotta said.
Changes in graduation date have caused some to rethink their social circles given that new members of Feb or “Reg” classes may still primarily have friends from their previous class year.
“I am nervous about that last semester,” Scarpotta said. “My friends make fun of me that I will have to find freshman friends to live with, but I just hope to meet people in every class year.”
The traditional image of the close-knit Feb class has also faced new obstacles this year. Some members of the Class of 2024.5 have struggled to meet other Febs and first-years due to Covid-19 restrictions on campus. Unlike the first years who entered in the fall, class of 2024.5 Febs only had two to three days as Middlebury students before classes began.
“There's a sentiment that we didn't have a proper orientation. The regular freshmen had a week of getting to know each other and we were just thrown in,” Julia Lininger-White ’24.5 said.
But even without the traditional Feb Orientation and in the absence of typical social activities this year, first-year Febs have still found ways to connect with members of their residence halls or classmates in their first year seminars.
The Class of 2020.5 also missed out on some traditional aspects of the Feb experience. Like the Class of 2020, they were not able to have a formal graduation ceremony. Instead, the Super Senior Febs joined a substitute celebration at Alumni Stadium organized by Julia Sinton ’20.5 and Ben Slater ’20.5. While the college has planned an in-person graduation ceremony for the Class of 2021 that remote seniors can attend, remote Febs were not allowed on campus to celebrate with their peers this February.
Fine feels lucky that he was not in the class of 2020, self-named the “Class of 19.75,” who were sent home abruptly in March. Instead, he had the option of spending his final semester on campus, enjoying the friendships he had established over several pre-pandemic semesters.
Conversely, current sophomore Febs were forced to leave campus only five weeks into their college experience.
“The 23.5 class was really small, so right off the bat we were a very close grade,” Gurkan said. “And with Covid, people rushed to stick with the friends they made to have people to talk to over the summer and to go into housing with.”
But even without class-wide events and traditional social activities to bring them together, some Febs still feel a close bond with their peers. For Lininger-White, the level of camaraderie is closely connected to the small size of Feb classes.
“I think the best thing is having this smaller class,” she said. “When I see a Feb, I know I’ll like them.”
(05/13/21 9:57am)
Less than a month from graduation, I’ve recently caught myself doing that thing most seniors do at this point in our college careers: reflecting on all of the moments over the past four years — both miniscule and monumental — that have made this place home. Looking back, my time at Middlebury has a distinct before and after — a divide defined by that fateful day last March when a single email tilted our world on its axis. It’s not surprising to realize that I have grown and changed drastically over the past four years, but in a time defined by “a new normal,” there is an even more poignant sense that the campus I first stepped onto in September 2017 is not the same one that I will be leaving behind.
Many of my best memories at Middlebury have been shaped by my experiences as a student-athlete, an identity that remains significant despite the loss of my senior season and this semester’s absence of most of my teammates. From the moment I stepped onto this campus, it seemed like there was a place for me here. Being part of a team was an immediate comfort in a college environment that was so new and intimidating. It was simple: I was on the hockey team so I would always have a table to sit at during lunch, people to say hi to as I walked to class and a place to go on Friday and Saturday nights. Outwardly, it looked like I fit in. But having a team doesn’t necessarily mean having a sense of belonging; feeling like there is a place for you often comes with the corresponding pressure to change yourself to fit into it.
Even the identities I hold closest are not free from the distinct discomfort that comes when I enter a space that is not built for me. I am a hockey player, but I am also gay, and at Midd those two identities sometimes feel conflicting. On Friday and Saturday nights, my team would make its weekly pilgrimage to Atwater, a social scene that is athlete-centric but also aggressively heteronormative. In the beginning of the night, screaming along with my teammates to whatever music was blasting over the speakers, I did feel like I belonged. Inevitably, though, the entire mood would shift. The boys’ team would enter and suddenly, I was on the outside looking in — standing and watching as everyone else chatted and flirted and danced, keeping up a performance to gain a stranger’s fleeting attention.
Most people think the ticket into an Atwater party is the athlete identity. But as gay athletes know, that’s not the case. The key is being straight — being able to play into the hypersexual dynamic that plagues Atwater every weekend. And while to some extent everyone may feel the artifice of it all, when there’s nothing to gain at the end of the night, playing this game feels like a greater sacrifice.
So most nights, I would leave early, opting to walk home alone instead of pretending to be someone I’m not. The next morning, I would sit quietly at the breakfast table, listening as my teammates recapped the night’s escapades. Every weekend it was the same thing — I would muster the enthusiasm to attend the next event, only to realize that nothing had changed: I was still an outsider. And as much as I wish I could walk away, it’s not as simple as just finding something else to do with my weekends. There’s always a choice to be made: leave a part of myself behind in order to fit in, or miss out on memories shared with my teammates and friends.
I am not an anomaly. It is no secret that Middlebury doesn’t always feel like a place for everyone. The Campus’ 2019 Zeitgeist survey found that almost 1/3 of surveyed students felt othered here, a sentiment shared by a greater proportion of students of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community and recipients of financial aid. We know that many of the social spaces at this school leave people feeling left out or uncomfortable. So why has it been so hard to make a change?
The truth is that there is nothing holding us back from reshaping the way we interact. But we need to listen to the voices of people who are struggling and we need to understand that even if we feel like we belong, someone else may feel unwelcome. Tradition is not unshakeable, and adhering to it is not always the right thing to do, especially when it comes at the expense of inclusivity.
I have no doubt that soon, weekends will again be filled with music blaring from the open windows of Atwater suites, and that Sunday breakfasts will consist of spirited recounts of the night before. But as we seek a return to normal, what’s stopping us from rethinking what “normal” meant in the first place? For all of the horror and heartbreak we have experienced over the past year, we’ve been able to step back from many of the social structures that we took for granted before. Even though this pandemic has fractured many of our college experiences, Middlebury now has a unique opportunity for a fresh start — to carefully consider who our spaces have historically been built for — and to rebuild them so they are welcoming to all. Let’s not waste it.
Meghan Keating is a member of the class of 2021.
(05/13/21 9:56am)
Middlebury’s campus is deceptively large, and a walk from Lang Hall to Mahaney can take anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes. If you live in Allen or Atwater, a trip to get a Covid-19 test is a major event that requires your best walking shoes. To shorten the commute from place to place on campus, students have gotten creative about how to get around.
For example — albeit rare — roller skaters, with their colorful wheels jutting out from the soles of their feet, can sometimes be spotted on Middlebury’s flatter terrain. The same can be said for the few who choose to sport Heelys, the iconic shoe brand with built in wheels in the heel of each shoe.
Isabeau Trimble ’24.5 bought their pair a month before leaving their home in southern Virginia. “Not without my mother’s disapproval,” Trimble added. “Although it’s very fun, and people on campus love it.”
However, there aren’t many places on campus that are conducive to Heely activity. Trimble claimed that their Heelys are perfect for sunny weather and on smooth surfaces, but their use can quickly come to an end when conditions get rough. And when rain falls, there is a high chance that their wearers will, too.
Rain is a common enemy for all who rely on wheeled transport. Wet conditions can cause corrosive rust to form on metal and eliminate the traction of rubber, making steep hills treacherous.
For bikers, rain is less of a danger but still limits their capabilities. “I would go on trails if the weather was clear,” Sarah Kimmel ’24 said.
On our campus, some students have also found a way to hop, spin and kickflip their way over the fine line between transportation and art. Abraham Merino ’24 has a reputation as “the scooter guy,” news which has spread from Stewart to Bicentennial Hall. Merino, from Los Angeles, has been scootering since 2014 and said that he’s happy with the attention and the nickname he’s received.
“I have a mustache, but I can’t show it off because I’m always wearing a mask,” Merino explained. “I’m happy to still be able to express my personality through scootering.” His scooter holds the power to transform any dry surface into a playground and, of course, to get him across campus in the blink of an eye. “I couldn’t make it very long without it,” he said. Always learning new tricks, Merino can be seen outside Battell and throughout campus sliding, jumping and spinning over the day’s obstacles.
There are often heated debates about which dining hall is the best. Regardless of your own opinion, it’s safe to say that Proctor has the best entertainment. On an average sunny day, skateboarders can be seen attempting the most daring jumps and tricks, flying down staircases and sliding across railings. Noe Horiwaki ’21 and Johan Wichterle ’23 both grew up in New York City and attended the same middle school and high school. Now, they skate together on a makeshift skate park outside Proctor.
“The hilly campus is perfect for skating,” said Horiwaki. “Skateboarding makes travel around campus really fast. It’s great for going to get Covid tested.”
However, the transition from New York City skate parks to Proctor has led to some disappointment. As Wichterle put it, “without a practical way to express ourselves, it’s like having basketball practice but never playing a game.”
Despite the limitations, skating at Middlebury has become more popular than ever. Quarantine boredom and curiosity led to many students picking it up over the summer and some brought their boards to campus with them. “As cliché as it sounds, there’s always something new to learn. We keep falling and getting back up again,” Witchterle said.
On the college’s wide, hilly campus, many have found ways to ease their daily commutes. Whether on a bike, a scooter, Heelys or roller skates, students make the most of their transportation. A tool used to get places faster can quickly become a form of self-expression. And in an era characterized by isolation, Middlebury is more mobile than ever.
Editor’s Note: This article primarily focuses on the transportation modes of people who do not live with a physical disability. We acknowledge that this does not encompass all members of our community. We hope that the college campus becomes more physically accessible in the coming years and are committed to spotlighting issues related to accessibility.
(05/13/21 9:54am)
While students with cars enjoy day trips around Addison County and grocery shopping at Hannaford, students without cars on Middlebury’s rural campus have historically faced a set of travel-related hurdles. And this year, these challenges have expanded to include traveling to vaccine appointments, some of which are hours away from campus. Having a car on campus shapes fundamental aspects of the Middlebury experience — and sometimes widens existing gaps in access.
Liam Ferry ’24 feels that having a car on campus has significantly expanded his area of immediate access, opening up more options for outdoor recreation in Addison County. Ferry, who drives a Subaru Forester, appreciated being able to go up to the Snow Bowl this past winter with his friends.
“It allowed me and my friends, some of whom hadn’t skied or snowboarded before, to go to the Snow Bowl and start,” Ferry said.
Liza Toll ’24, who drives a silver Toyota Prius she affectionately nicknamed “Elliot,” also enjoys exploring the local mountains and lakes that are only reachable by driving.
“It’s also been nice to get out and go for hikes,” Toll said. “I visited the lovely Abbey Pond trail this weekend, which was wonderful.”
Maggie Allen ’24 has her mom’s car on campus this semester and mainly uses her vehicle to go out to eat. She and her friends often stop by Middlebury Bagel and the Natural Foods Co-op.
“It’s definitely been really nice. Especially with Covid, it’s harder to ask someone to use their car,” Allen said. “It’s nice to have the option to go grocery shopping and little things like that.”
Having a car also allows students to have more spontaneous adventures around Addison County, since students with cars do not have to rely on others to make longer-distance trips.
“I wouldn’t have been able to just randomly drive up to Snake Mountain without a little more preparation,” Ferry said. “Although Middlebury is in such a good spot outdoor-recreation-wise, none of it is accessible without a car unless you’re willing to walk 10 miles.”
For those without a vehicle on campus, these types of planned or spontaneous outings are anything but feasible. Hugo Bocker ’22 noted feeling limited from certain activities without having his own car. “I probably would have gone skiing a lot more if I had a car. It’s just so annoying having to take the bus with all your stuff and not having the flexibility to come and go when you want,” he said.
Disparities in travel opportunities may be lessened by Covid-19 restrictions, which make it so that students cannot leave Addison County this semester. Currently, students are allowed to travel within the county for outdoor recreation activities like hiking and biking, but unguided overnight outings or off-campus outdoor gatherings are not permitted at this time. Still, students with cars on campus are able to be more mobile within the county.
Additionally, Vermont’s unpredictable weather — including some April snow this year — has had a role in keeping students close to campus. Allen said she hopes the weather improves in the next couple of weeks to take advantage of nearby swimming spots.
Still, having a car has also helped students more easily travel to get vaccinated. Instead of trying to find a ride to a nearby town, students were able to drive themselves to vaccine appointments even if they were far away.
Until the college began offering appointments on campus, some students without a car worried about getting to their vaccine appointments in addition to struggling to find transportation for other errands. “As an international student, for example, I need to sort out my social security number and other administrative things, which has been difficult without a car. Getting a vaccine was also a problem before they began offering them on campus,” Bocker said.
Meagan Tan ’21 noted some of the inconveniences that result from not having a personal vehicle on campus, including the difficulty of making short trips to the grocery store and the inability to make excursions around Addison County. She mentioned that there is also a dimension of guilt to having to ask friends with cars for rides.
“I feel bad asking more than once for rides,” Tan said. “I don’t want to impose on the schedules of others. There’s this dynamic here where people are friends with people with cars just because they have cars, so it becomes a friendship of convenience, and I don’t want my friends to feel like that.”
Tan also expressed that bicycling is not always a viable alternative to transportation via car, since the roads in Middlebury are not specifically designed with the safety of cyclists in mind.
“There are always huge trucks speeding by all the time when I ride my bike, so it doesn’t feel very safe,” Tan said.
While some without cars on campus expressed frustration with the resulting inconveniences, other students indicated that they felt having a car on campus has not significantly changed their experience.
“I don’t think honestly it’s had a huge effect on my quality of life,” Ferry said. “If you don’t have a car, you’ll find other people on campus who do, or you’ll hang out on campus.”
Ferry added that by virtue of having a car on campus, he sometimes feels more pressure to explore the surrounding area instead of just hanging out on campus.
“Now that I do have a car, it’s like every time I have free time it’s like ‘Wow, I’m here, but I have the capacity to go be hiking or exploring Vermont, should I be doing that and taking advantage of this nice day?’” Ferry said.
(05/06/21 10:00am)
Stuck on campus for the entire semester, many students long for home-cooked meals and the warm smile of someone preparing food just for them. Alejandra’s Tacos supplies both, accepting orders for tamales, empanadas, tacos and more.
The go link go/sundaytacos leads to a sign-up form for Alejandra’s email list. And the menu, which goes out to her email list Friday evenings, changes each week. Alejandra makes the deliveries Sunday at 12:30 p.m. at the drop-off shed in front of 75 Shannon Street.
Alejandra prioritizes affordable prices over profit — $3 for each item on her campus menu — because, above all else, she wants to be able to share the joy of her cooking and culture with those around her.
“I was born poor, and I’m sure I will die poor as well,” Alejandra said. “I’m never going to be a millionaire, but that’s not my goal. I have a different, more human goal: to create bonds, to give a little bit of Mexico to those who don’t know her, and, for my countrymen, to give them a dish that makes them remember their mother, their home, their grandmother. That’s what I want, and that’s what makes me happy.”
Alejandra makes all of her food by hand, including the flavorful salsas that accompany each order of tacos and the corn masa shells encasing each empanada. Students can order for a Sunday lunch or stock up on items like tamales to pop in the microwave for a delicious meal throughout the week whenever dining hall food isn’t quite doing it for them.
In addition to now selling food to Middlebury students, Alejandra sells a wider variety of dishes out of her home in Addison County each Sunday and prepares meals for migrant workers on a daily basis. She hopes to continue to grow her business and save up enough money to eventually return to Mexico.
Alejandra first immigrated to the U.S. in 2009 from her hometown, Querétaro, in central Mexico, joining her father in North Carolina. He owned a Mexican restaurant and taught her how to cook when she was not working her job at the paper factory. Within a year, her father moved back to Mexico to be with her mother, and Alejandra moved to Vermont, where she struggled to adjust. The cold came as a brutal shock to Alejandra, who had never seen snow before. She spent her first winter stuck inside her house, unable to drive on the icy roads, longing for the community she left behind.
Soon, she met and fell in love with the man who would become her husband and began cooking for her own family. Over the next couple years, they had three daughters together — twins who are now 11 years old and their now nine-year-old little sister.
While her husband went to work at a dairy farm, Alejandra struggled to find a job. She takes great pride in her work ethic, and she couldn’t afford to sit idle. She needed to support her parents back in Mexico, and her medical bills for her diabetes were a constant strain on the family’s finances. Alejandra decided to start her own business selling food to other migrant farmworkers, many of whom work 12- to 14-hour shifts, leaving them little energy to cook.
Her business and her reputation grew steadily as she began to cater some college events, providing food for the Spanish house, Juntos and other groups. Two years ago, she was offered an opportunity to teach a Mexican cooking class at City Market in Burlington. She quickly befriended her students with her vivacious personality and unfailing optimism, and they encouraged her to branch out and sell more of her own food.
She started a mini restaurant out of a makeshift kitchen she set up in her garage and began selling food on Sundays. Over the last two years, her business has grown considerably, almost entirely through word of mouth. She now employs one or two other women each week to help her out.
Sundays are a marathon. Alejandra begins cooking at 4 a.m., and the other women arrive to help her five hours later. They cook “until the meat runs out,” sometimes stopping at 2 p.m. and sometimes continuing until 5 p.m. It's grueling work, standing on her feet in a hot kitchen all day, though the music and the company of her friends lightens the load considerably. “My body is tired,” Alejandra said. While the hard work combined with her diabetes symptoms leave her completely drained, she still loves to cook.
“Cooking is like therapy; it takes away a little of the sadness,” Alejandra said. “I’m not thinking about when I can return to Mexico. Instead, I feel comfortable and relaxed. It excites me to think about how my dishes will taste, if it will taste good. I love to see the happy faces of people when they say, ‘This is delicious!’”
Though she loves Vermont, Alejandra longs for home. She misses the market she used to visit with her mother. Perusing the stalls for ingredients to use in their dishes, they would chat with local farmers selling their harvests and friends and acquaintances they ran into. She misses Sunday evenings when she would sit on the benches outside of church after mass and lick an ice cream cone from one of the vendors parked right outside the gates as everyone mingled in the afternoon glow. Most of all, she misses the sense of community and togetherness imbued in every aspect of life in Mexico.
Some days, Alejandra closes her eyes and imagines she is a bird. With just a few flaps of her wings, she is airborne, soaring over the Vermont pastures, past the Carolinas where she first lived after migrating to the U.S. She flies across the border, over the Rio Grande, and through the desert. She imagines in just a few minutes, a few wingbeats she will find herself back home. But when she opens her eyes, the spell is broken.
She feels closest to home on Sunday afternoons when her customers gather on her lawn to eat her food. They set up picnic blankets and chat amongst themselves about their lives, troubles and families. Gazing over the picturesque tableau each week, Alejandra is reminded of the community she left behind in the new one she is creating through her food.
“I think that cooking is a form of communication, of demonstrating love, of creating bonds with those you love,” she said. “It’s a form of saying, ‘I love you, and I care for you.’ And that’s why it makes me so happy to cook.”
Editor’s Note: The interviews in this piece were conducted entirely in Spanish, and the quotes were translated by the reporter, Sophia McDermott-Hughes. The translation of all quotes featured in the piece were corroborated by an independent native speaker. Alejandra’s full name has been redacted to protect her privacy.
(05/06/21 10:00am)
Now in his fifth year as general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers (NBA), Koby Altman ’04 Zoomed with Campus reporter Josh Rosenstein '24 to discuss basketball, the pandemic, societal issues and Middlebury. Altman has worked every job in basketball — from towel washer to assistant coach. A three-year starter on the Middlebury men’s basketball team, Altman then earned his master’s degree in sports management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: What was your experience navigating the Covid-19 pandemic while also managing an NBA organization?
A: There are a lot of parallels between what we’ve had to do in the NBA and what President Patton had to do at Middlebury. It takes a lot of preparation, a lot of planning, and you need collective buy-in from your players and staff. Just like at Middlebury, you guys needed a collective buy-in and compliance to make that work. You need people to change their behaviors and buy into the bigger picture — which, on our side, is playing an NBA season during a global pandemic. So there have been a lot of challenges, but I do think that we have come together as a league and as an organization to meet those challenges and put together a really good product for the fans. I think it takes tremendous leadership from the top with our commissioner Adam Silver. And what President Patton did the first semester with zero positive cases [for most of the semester] from the student body is equally as incredible, if not more so.
Q: What has the NBA done so far with vaccinating its players and staff members?
A: I want to say at least two-thirds of NBA teams have had vaccination events already. We’ve had a vaccination event. There are people who have their concerns and don’t want to get it. I think that’s a challenge. Whether they cite health concerns, how fast it was rolled out or religious concerns, there are a lot of different reasons why people would not want to get the vaccine — and you have to be sensitive to that. I also think the challenge for college campuses is: Do you mandate it? And next semester, is that something that will be in place for Middlebury? That’s a big question to ask, but I think at the end of the day, we all want a really safe environment for students and athletes.
Q: Racism plagues our country right now. NBA players and organizations consistently use their platform to demonstrate and call for change, but many times college students and younger generations feel as though their voices aren’t heard. What are your thoughts on this racial reckoning currently happening in our country, and what advice would you give to students hoping to lead the charge towards change?
A: I don’t think [NBA players] get enough credit for their bravery. We look to them to help the movement, or even lead the movement in a lot of ways. That’s a lot of pressure. You have to be tremendously brave to put yourself out there because it’s a risk. It’s a risk when you dive into different movements like that, especially a movement that’s so emotional and hard for us all. They were able to accomplish tremendous feats, whether that was opening up every single NBA arena for voting, speaking about police reform [or] talking about education.
For the Middlebury side, there is a lot to do and a lot that has already been done. I’ve been really pleased to see a few things happen. I’m away [from campus], but I’m still on the board of trustees, and I’m very involved and try to stay abreast with what’s going on, especially on the athletics side. I was really pleased to get a call from Erin Quinn, the athletics director, about the initiatives he wants to put in place. The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committee’s five-year plan to address those issues is a really tremendous first step. I think the hard part is how you continue to make that sustainable, even after you leave campus. It’s up to everybody at Middlebury who really cares to ask how can we help and what can we do — that’s the first step. We all have to step outside of our comfort zone. And you could say that it’s not affecting us here on this beautiful campus and the friendly confines of the Middlebury community, but it is. We all have to step outside our comfort zone and take a risk, and what does that look like for Middlebury students? Is that social media posts? Is that learning more about the issues that plague these black and brown communities? Is it protesting? Is it donations? What is it that you're doing to take that step, and not just saying “you know what, that’s not really affecting me”?
Q: Can you talk about your journey from Middlebury to the Cleveland Cavaliers? What advice would you give Middlebury students who branch out on their own journeys and inevitably run into obstacles?
A: I still pinch myself every day. It’s an unbelievable job, and I’m very fortunate. I get to watch basketball every day. If you’re going to work every day and having a blast, that’s the goal. I think Middlebury students are really well-versed to get to the highest level of whatever industry they want to get into. We think of ourselves as a small school, and that we can accomplish great things, but can we get to the top? I think we can because the thing that Middlebury teaches us is to become incredible thinkers. It also teaches us to navigate a bunch of different scenarios, to think on our feet and to make arguments that we back-up with data. We’re very analytical, but we can also write. That’s going to serve everyone really well, no matter where they go. I remember writing a thousand papers at Middlebury, and I hated it. But now at my job, I have to make an argument every day. I have to back that argument up with sound data points, make a conclusion, and sell that.
In terms of my journey, every year I try to create a great basketball experience for myself. Whatever level that was, I grabbed a hold of that, and I wanted to be great in that role. I think that’s helped wherever I’ve gone. Each step along the way, whether it’s at USA Basketball, where I had to wash towels and bring ice around, to what I have to do now, I was great in my role. At one point, I was the best towel washer in the country. Hands down, best in the country. And that helped me get more responsibility at the next step and the next.
Q: I’m sure being an NBA general manager comes with its fair share of stress and pressure. What are some of the moments where you feel the most pressure, and how do you deal with it?
A: Mental health has become a really big issue, and the misconception is that there is something wrong with you. I also think that the high stakes I might have to go through is no different than you having to prepare for a big exam. I think reaching out to talk to someone is a really healthy thing. I also know you have to find your own routine. For me, every day I need some level of decompression, something mindless. Whether it’s 20 or 30 minutes, I don’t ever get an hour, where I’m literally decompressing and not thinking about basketball. I’m either by myself, or I put on a shitty show, or something that takes my mind off of basketball completely. You can’t be all consumed with that exam for 24 hours a day. That’s not healthy. Whatever it is, going for a run or going to that special place to be by yourself, that brings you to some level of equilibrium, so you’re ready to go back and attack the problem. And it’s not hard to find a beautiful spot at Middlebury. We need to love ourselves and give ourselves that time to regenerate to go back and attack the problem, or else we’re going to burn ourselves out.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?A: I’m really happy we did this. We have great alumni. I really am pleased that you reached out, and I also think that as a community, the students should reach out to talk to these alumnus in different areas more. We’re excited to give back to the campus and the community from afar, because we can’t come up as much as we’d like. This has to continue on, and I think you’re starting a trend which is great, in reaching out to alums, and getting their thoughts on society, and bringing them back into the fold.
(05/06/21 9:57am)
Men’s baseball (2–6) concluded its regular season this past weekend, splitting a double-header with division leader Amherst College (8–3). Sitting at the bottom of the NESCAC West Division, Middlebury will miss out on the playoffs, with only the top team from each division — Amherst and Tufts (9-2) — playing in a single three-game series to determine the league champion.
In the first match, the Panthers played a competitive game but fell short, losing 8–5. Middlebury jumped out to a quick two-run lead in the first inning, capped by a solo home run from Lucas Cai ’24. Henry Gustavson ’24 started on the mound for Middlebury and put in a solid effort, striking out three and giving up four runs. He would leave the game after the fourth inning with the Panthers down 3–4.
Amherst tallied two runs in each of the next two innings to give the Mammoths a five-run lead going into the last inning. Middlebury was able to put the game in striking distance with RBI singles from Baker Angstman ’24 and Jack Torpey ’24. But with the tying run at the plate, Evan Hunter ’24 could not quite repeat his heroics from the week before, grounding out to the shortstop to end the game.
The Panthers continued their resilient play in the second game, completing the comeback this time to finish the season with a win.
Andrew Gatland ’23 was on the mound for Middlebury and delivered his best performance of the season, giving up just one run off of one hit and two walks while striking out two. He attributed his good outing to the stellar defensive play of his teammates.
“I felt like I pitched well and that my pitches were working well, but I have to give a lot of credit to the defense,” Gatland said. “They were making all the outs for me and it felt like we really put everything together in this game.”
Cai would give the Panthers the lead with an RBI single in the following inning before Amherts scored three runs in the bottom of the sixth, giving the Mammoths a 4–2 lead going into the final inning.
But the Panthers fought back yet again. Andrew Ashley ’24 delivered a sufficient RBI groundout, leaving a runner on third with only one out. Middlebury came down to its final out, but a timely error by the Amherst right fielder saved the game, tying it at four apiece.
After a quick 1-2-3 inning in the bottom of the seventh, a walk and a sacrifice bunt in the top of the eighth put a runner in scoring position for Sammy Smith ’24 who delivered with the RBI single that would give the Panthers the lead.
“I took it as an opportunity to see how relaxed I could be in a situation like that,” Smith said when asked about his approach to the at-bat. “I just let all the work I put in the offseason come into play then and not really think about the situation.”
Charlie Kutz ’24 was nearly perfect in relief for the Panthers, striking out four and giving up only one hit in just over two full innings of relief. He picked up the win and earned the save.
(05/06/21 9:57am)
Men’s golf staged a come-from-behind win this weekend to earn the program’s ninth NESCAC title and its first since 2016. Entering the weekend behind both Tufts and Trinity on points, the Panthers clawed their way back to first with an impressive score of 304 on the day, leaving the Jumbos and Bantams in their wake.
Captain Jordan Bessalel ’21 and Hogan Beazley ’23 led the team in the second round, each scoring 75s and tying for fourth place individually. Captain John Mikus ’21 followed close behind in ninth with a 76, while Colin McCaigue ’24 notched a 78 and Porter Bowman ’21.5 scored an 83. Trinity College finished three strokes back on the day, with Tufts and Hamilton rounding out the top four.
The Panthers, scoring a combined score of 607, ultimately edged out Trinity and Tufts by a single stroke.
Men’s golf has now won eight NESCAC titles since the turn of the century, making them the most successful team in the division over that period. The team concludes their successful season at the Ralph Myhre Golf Course on Saturday, May 8, with the Middlebury Spring Invitational.
Editor’s Note: Porter Bowman ’21.5 is the senior opinion editor for The Campus.
(04/29/21 10:00am)
Think back to when you were younger, to a time when your creativity and imagination transported you into alternate worlds and transformed you into different versions of yourself. The childlike sense of wonder may be long gone, but fairytale daydreams have the lasting power to make difficult moments seem less daunting — even if just for a moment. The Middlebury College Department of Theatre’s production of “Giants Have Us in Their Books,” which ran from April 16 to April 18 both in person and online, transported its audience back to the fairytale stories of their childhood, while weaving in some of the harder things to deal with.
The play is a collection of short works written by two-time Obie Award winner José Rivera, the first Puerto Rican screenwriter to be nominated for an Oscar.
Rivera referred to the plays that comprise Act 1 as “the naïve plays,” stories which deliver realistic situations, like the trials of puberty and lying, with an air of lighthearted, fairytale-like wonder. Act 2 was a more sobering, introspective collection of short plays written by Rivera a decade later in 2017, and included timely topics like homelessness, grief and the effects of the New York State’s 2011 Marriage Equality Law.
Associate Professor of Theatre and the department’s chair, Alex Draper, directed the performance.
“When it became clear that we were going to attempt to resume in-person performing this spring, Olga Sanchez Saltveit, who is directing our upcoming production of Branden Jacobs Jenkins’ “Everybody,” and I both began looking for plays that would honor our commitment to feature more underrepresented voices on our stages while also taking into account the considerable Covid-19 restrictions and their impact on how we can safely rehearse and perform” Draper said.
The faculty, cast and crew worked on “Giants Have Us in Their Books” through the difficulties that the pandemic has created for artists.
“[I] selected a group of plays that fit the talents of the cast, were joyous and slightly other-worldly, but that also spoke to issues that echoed beyond our immediate everyday lives,” Draper said. He explained that the plays were written in such a way that they could be rehearsed mostly in groups of two, and could be performed without actors overcrowding backstage areas and dressing rooms.
The curtain opened on a short scene called “Flowers.” Lulu (Sara Massey ’23), a 12-year-old girl, begins the play with what looks like a pimple on her face, but the bump slowly grows into a tapestry of leaves and flowers all over her face and body: a metaphor for how, through puberty we are brought from adolescence to adulthood and taken over in ways we cannot control. “When it’s over you’re completely different, unrecognizable,” Massey said in her performance. Mostly though, we grow into better versions of ourselves with time, much like seeds transition to buds, which grow to become leaves.
A short play, called "The Tiger in Central Park” closed out Act 1. This urbanized myth and parable for AIDS featured the supposed existence of a mythical beast: a human-by-day, tiger-by-night, reported to be strolling around Central Park. “[‘The Tiger in Central Park’] aimed to tackle sexuality and death, and establish a relationship between these two major aspects of human existence,” cast member Beck Barsanti ’23.5 said. “In my interpretation, sexuality and death were things that every character tried to control without fully understanding the implications of either one.”
After the intermission, Act 2 opened on “Charlotte,” a scene set in a picturesque apartment. A homeless woman (Courtney Wright ’21.5 ) who does not want to be pitied, is taken in by a caring individual, and we see a verbal tug-of-war between the two. At last, the host, Felix (Masud Tyree Lewis ’22), expresses he had only hoped for Charlotte’s gratitude after he had helped her out of the rainy night, leaving the audience to wonder about the nature and sincerity of altruism.
The show concluded with “Lizzy,” a tense meal where two siblings address the passing of their mother, and “Paola and Andrea at the Altar of Words,” a reaction to the legalization of same sex marriage in New York State in 2011, shown through wedding vows.
“It was a joy to be able to share the plays with both live and virtual audiences,” Draper said of the performance. Looking ahead, he said, “We have a busy spring lined up, with three of our majors presenting productions as their senior independent theses, and we close the season with Olga Sanchez Saltveit’s production of Everybody in and around Wright Theatre.”
(04/29/21 4:13am)
Middlebury students have spent only a fraction of the last year on campus compared to pre-Covid semesters. They finished the spring 2020 semester online, returned to an abbreviated fall term or took classes remotely, and spent J-Term off-campus. Yet the time spent at Middlebury was spent in Middlebury — students developed a new awareness of the borders of Addison County as travel restrictions kept students near campus and isolated from the rest of the world. Life on campus changed too, with everything from social life to exercise altered by a long and evolving list of rules meant to keep Covid-19 prevalence in the community low.
The pandemic transformed college life, and alongside it, students’ relationships with Middlebury. This year, we asked students whether Middlebury felt like home and how the ways they thought about Middlebury have changed since the beginning of the pandemic.
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Almost 90% of students said Middlebury at least sometimes feels like home, but there were significant disparities between how white students and students of color viewed Middlebury. While one in two white students said Middlebury felt like home, the same was true for only one in three Hispanic or Latino students, one in three Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander students, and one in five Black students. Black students said Middlebury did not feel like home more than twice as often as white students.
Seniors felt far more at home at Middlebury than any other class year, with nearly 60% saying it was home and another 33% saying it was sometimes home. On the other side of the spectrum, first years were a notable standout — only 30% said Middlebury was home, while just over 50% said it sometimes was.
Legacy also made a difference in whether students felt at home at Middlebury. Students with two parents who went to Middlebury said they felt at home almost 25 percentage points more than students who had no parents attend Middlebury.
How has the way you think about Middlebury changed in the last year?
Respondents gave a mix of responses on how their thinking about Middlebury has changed, ranging from “I love it even more than I did before I got here,” to “f*** this school.”
Students wrote about how being sent away from Middlebury and later confined to Addison County changed their attachment to the college. Several people referenced stability: “After the school kicked us off campus last year, I’ve felt nervous. I don’t feel like I have a secure home here,” one said. Another wrote that being on campus made them realize “how important having friends nearby and a stable working environment are.”
Some mentioned finding new appreciation for the natural beauty of Middlebury, while others spoke about feeling trapped. One student said, “It’s a bit less like home when you’re stuck here and can’t leave.”
Connection came up in dozens of responses. Some students wrote about building stronger relationships with their “close contacts,” and how being more intentional with their time helped forge deeper connections to friends. Remote learners wrote about feeling disconnected from the college and from friends, having not been on campus in over a year. Many students both on and off campus wrote about feeling isolated from the community at large. “I just feel less connected to the students here because I never leave my section of campus,” one said.
Seniors were especially keen to finish the year. Responses included, “I cannot wait to get out of here, which is something I have not felt to this degree in previous years.”; “I will be glad to be gone.”; “I no longer want to be a student at Middlebury and feel no connection to the school or campus.”and “It won’t be my home forever. It will move on and I will move on.” Several people spoke about Middlebury as only a stepping stone in their life — a fleeting, transitory moment on their way to other goals.
Many students spoke about changing perspectives, from lowering expectations for college during Covid-19 to becoming more aware of inequities throughout the pandemic. Rose-colored glasses came up often, as students described losing the idealistic view they had of Middlebury in their first year.
Of course, students also spoke about home. “Often when you think about whether you like your college, you think about it as a school, in comparison to other schools,” one student said. “Now I’m thinking of it as a home, in comparison to other homes, and realizing I may never have a home like this again.”
(04/15/21 10:00am)
Vermont Coffee Company, supplier of coffee to the college, is being sold to Stonewall Kitchen, a large specialty-food company based in Maine. It currently operates a cafe in downtown Middlebury and has product distributors throughout the Northeast.
Middlebury resident Paul Ralston established the coffee company in 2001. He has been looking to sell Vermont Coffee Company for the past three years and has been committed to putting together a succession team to manage the company before he fully retires.
Ralston plans to stay with the company throughout the company’s adjustment to the new management. Over the past year and a half, he has trained and integrated two senior management hires into Vermont Coffee Company to ensure he will be leaving the business in good hands.
Stonewall Kitchen leadership cited Vermont Coffee Company’s prioritization of sustainable business practices over the past few years as one of the reasons behind its acquisition. In April 2018, Vermont Coffee Company became the first roaster in the United States to exclusively use renewable biogas as its energy source to roast its coffee.
“The Vermont Coffee Company products are sustainably sourced, 100% organic and — most importantly — make a delicious cup of coffee. We believe these deeply rooted values and commitment to quality make Vermont Coffee Company the perfect addition to our family,” said Stonewall CEO John Stiker in an interview with the Addison Independent.
Ralston is hopeful that selling to Stonewall Kitchen will benefit the Middlebury community as well as the town’s economy.
“We’re going to be busy and growing; there’s no question about it. And we’re going to be hiring,” Ralston said. Stonewall plans on opening a new, larger cafe in downtown Middlebury.
As a leader in the world of organic coffee roasting with a large potential to grow in popularity over the next decade, Vermont Coffee Company garnered a number of offers in addition to Stonewall’s, according to Ralston. However, the sale to Stonewall was an easy decision.
“Vermont Coffee Company is going to have access to a lot more resources and a much bigger distribution network,” Ralston said to the Addison Independent.
The current Vermont Coffee Company cafe in downtown Middlebury is temporarily closed. Ralston’s primary role for the upcoming months is to develop the new cafe in a location yet to be determined, which he is hopeful will open in the fall of 2021.
(04/15/21 9:59am)
Dear Middlebury College Administration,
This year has been marked by tragedy, sacrifice and loss for the Middlebury community. We seniors are also mourning the loss of the normal, triumphant ending to our time here, which we and our families have anticipated for the last four years. Senior week, baccalaureate and graduation typically offer students a meaningful way to celebrate their accomplishments and say goodbye to their Middlebury community.
We understand that graduation will look different this year, and we are grateful that Middlebury is pursuing an in-person ceremony. However, recent decisions about the nature of graduation and our final days on campus — and the poor communication about these decisions — left many of us feeling disappointed, frustrated and hurt.
Neither families nor our Feb ’21.5 classmates will be allowed to attend commencement as they typically do. In addition to cancelling senior week, Middlebury recently announced that graduation would be moved forward to 2 p.m. on May 29; seniors will only have until 11 p.m. that same day to leave campus.
We recently conducted an informal social media survey of some of our senior and senior Feb classmates to gauge how they are feeling about the commencement plans and recent changes. While the 64 responses gathered do not represent the perspectives of the entire graduating class, we hope to voice some of our peers’ concerns about graduation plans and open communication with the administration to address them.
We ask the administration to extend the move-out date to at least Sunday May 30, improve communication with the senior class about recent changes, and welcome the senior Febs to attend the ceremony. Please consider signing our petition here if you agree.
Students will only have one day after finishing final exams to pack, graduate and say goodbye to friends.
The original graduation plan — with commencement and move-out on Sunday, May 30 — allowed students one day after finals (which end on Friday, May 28) to be with their classmates without worrying about schoolwork. This new, rushed timeline means that students’ final days and goodbyes will be characterized not by celebration and joy, but by stress and sleep deprivation.
As one student wrote in the survey, “eliminating any sort of time off between finals and commencement has the potential to cause much more harm than benefit because this creates a lot of stress for students who want to focus on doing well on their finals as well as say goodbye to friends ... and pack up all their belongings too. I don't feel as though the college is looking out for seniors' mental health during this time.”
Another student wrote, “With finals right before graduation, it will not feel like a celebration because there is zero time to digest and reflect (however briefly) on my Middlebury experience, or say goodbye to friends here.”
Rather than depriving seniors of this final opportunity to celebrate with friends without the logistical stress of packing and schoolwork, we ask that the administration extend the move-out date to at least Sunday, May 30.
The change in move-out date from the 30th to the 29th is problematic for many students’ travel plans.
As one of our peers wrote, “My mother's saying that I might have to miss commencement, as there are no flights leaving that day at a time that would allow me to both assist commencement and get off campus that same day.” Other students are facing non-refundable or changeable plane tickets or will be forced to get a hotel room Saturday night.
Another student noted, “It’s incredibly unsafe to ask people to drive home the night of graduation. I have a 12-hour drive and likely will stay up the night before to pack.”
While we understand that students typically leave the day of graduation, this is usually after having days of break to get packed and say goodbye.
Many families face logistical challenges to watching the virtual ceremony, as they must travel to pick up their students on the same day.
One student wrote: “Both myself and my parents are really upset that the move-out date has not at least been extended to the day after graduation. Given the new timing, my mom will have to watch graduation from a hotel room after driving up to Midd.”
Another student reported that their family will miss the entire ceremony while in transit. Furthermore, for parents who must travel longer distances, picking up students on Saturday versus Sunday or Memorial Day means they are more likely to have to miss work.
The date change and compressed timeline disproportionately impact less-privileged students and families.
The FAQ page suggests that families “think about staying closer to campus the night before graduation,” and states that individuals must reschedule flights based on the new date. Lower income students and families will feel the financial impact of paying for hotel rooms, purchasing new flights and taking off work more harshly.
Additionally, for first-generation students’ families — for whom graduation may be particularly meaningful — the losses of attending an in-person ceremony or comfortably watching a remote ceremony may be espeically impactful. One student wrote, “This is a huge moment for some families especially for first-gen students, making small changes to allow families to recognize this moment is literally the least you could do.”
Also, as one student pointed out: “The lack of senior week is going to create incredible inequality because wealthy students will rent Airbnbs the week after graduation and some students won’t be able to do that financially.” Forcing students to vacate campus immediately after finals limits celebrations to those who can pay for private accommodations.
Rushing students off campus redistributes risk to less structured contexts, rather than reducing it.
Making students leave campus so quickly will not prevent them from gathering, but will simply move gatherings earlier or off-campus. One student wrote: “I understand their concern about large gatherings on campus, but do they really think moving it one day soon[er] changes anything? They are essentially just pushing off any partying/mass gatherings into the Middlebury community where they have no control.”
Instead of relocating these celebrations to the broader community, Middlebury should utilize the capacity of the institution to facilitate safe modes of celebration.
The exclusion of Febs is deeply upsetting to many while providing little-to-no benefit in terms of safety.
As one student wrote, Febs “were admitted to Middlebury as members of the class of 2021 and should be treated as such.” Senior Febs are typically considered part of the senior class.
These restrictions are particularly distressing to seniors who Febbed themselves due to the pandemic. One student shared: "I’m a Reg who is now a Feb and by these rules, I can’t see my best friends graduate—the very people I was supposed to walk with at graduation."
Risk of outdoor transmission is low, so Feb attendance is not likely to increase risk of Covid-19 spread. Since they will already be on campus, excluding Febs feels both unnecessary and harsh.
Communication regarding recent commencement changes has been unclear and insufficient.
The change in move-out date was not clearly communicated, and the student body has not had the chance to give feedback on or otherwise contribute to commencement planning. Many students have felt unheard in this process. One student noted: “When the school tells us it’s trying its best to make this a time we still can feel celebrated, it’s hard to believe them when they haven’t asked us how they can best do that.”
Despite the possibility that conditions may improve, the college has stated that it will not consider changing plans in the future.
We are encouraged by vaccination rates, and the fact that Vermont’s gathering restrictions are due to relax considerably over the next several weeks. Furthermore, several other NESCAC schools plan to provide more traditional ceremonies; Bates, Bowdoin, Williams and Trinity, for example, are allowing graduating students up to two guests at their Commencement ceremonies. UVM will also be allowing two fully-vaccinated guests per student. With this in mind, we are frustrated by the college's unwillingness to remain flexible in light of changing conditions.
While safety is paramount, we ask that the administration embrace a more optimistic plan for commencement that includes Febs and a delayed departure, while preparing to adjust to a more restrictive model only if conditions were to change.
Students have demonstrated their commitment to community wellbeing; the commencement plan feels disconnected from our current context.
Over this past school year, Middlebury students have consistently demonstrated a commitment to public health and safety. The decision to rush students off campus demonstrates a lack of trust in our ability and willingness to gather and celebrate safely.
As one student wrote, “Seniors have spent all year ... making sure that this year was safe and successful. The school owes seniors the same amount of care and respect.” After all of our sacrifice, the lack of trust seems callous.
Wrote another student, “We have proven time and time again that we are able to spend time on campus without causing a mass-outbreak. Be reasonable, let alone kind, and give us a few days to breathe (and pack) between exams and graduation. If this was your kid, you would do your absolute best to provide that.”
In conclusion
We have collected our peers’ responses and encourage you to read them. We have also created a petition outlining some of the changes we believe should be enacted, where we encourage students and families to share their thoughts and sign if they agree.
Ultimately, we recognize that the college cannot control the pandemic, and we respect the administration’s right to respond to new conditions as they arise. However, we ask the administration to grant us more time to depart campus, allow Febs to celebrate alongside us, and communicate commencement plans and the reasoning behind them with clarity in order to facilitate a meaningful experience in our final days on campus. We ask that you work with your senior class to promote a positive graduation experience in a year that has already been marked by so much loss.
Editor’s Note: Hannah Bensen is the senior data editor and an editor at large.
Kayla Lichtman and Hannah Bensen are members of the class of 2021. Grace Metzler and Tia Pogue are members of the class of 2021.5.
(04/15/21 9:59am)
Students have struggled to stay afloat during a year rife with uncertainty, grief and isolation. Counseling Services has seen a marked increase in students showing signs of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts on intake forms this year, according to Associate Director of Clinical Operations Ben Gooch. And for many students, the pandemic’s toll on mental health is only increasing, with stressors emerging from every corner of student life.
Living in a pandemic
Many students are grappling with existential questions about what it means to live through a global tragedy of this scale, according to Gooch.
Over the last year, students, along with the rest of the world, have watched Covid-19 deaths rise nationally and internationally and witnessed suffering on a massive scale. Many students come from cities and viral hotspots like Los Angeles and New York City, where they have witnessed the devastation of Covid-19 ripping through their communities.
Many students are also grappling with the personal grief of losing loved ones. Isaac Byrne ’21 lost both of his grandmothers just before the start of the spring semester. One of their funerals fell within the two-week pre-arrival quarantine window, and Byrne had to negotiate with the college for approval to attend.
Soon after Byrne arrived in Middlebury, his uncle also passed away. As classes ramped up and Byrne’s work as a club leader began in earnest, he had to attend the funeral over Zoom. He watched his family’s grief and his mother’s pain through a screen, unable to be with them as support, then immediately had to transition to doing his homework and running a club meeting.
While students deal with the profound personal and existential grief, they are struggling to keep up with the rigorous course load of a college semester.
“Students are coming back here and asked to be totally normal students who can perform 100% just like they would at any time with no recognition of the trauma and everything that's going on,” Ciara Carlson-Healy ’22 said.
No new normal
Rather than becoming accustomed to the “new normal,” many students are experiencing worsening stress and mental anguish as the pandemic stretches on.
“The one thing that we know about stress and the effects of stress is that it's additive,” Senior Student Life Dean Jennifer Sellers said. “Even if [the pandemic] doesn't directly influence someone, that still adds an element of stress. If you're compounding these things, either the direct effects or just the overarching, it just adds, and then you add on the real stressors of school and finals and things like that. It's just a lot on people's shoulders.”
For Carlson-Healy, the campus seemed to be in a perpetual “state of crisis” during the fall semester. With Covid-19 and its impact in the forefront of everyone’s mind, Carlson-Healy felt that a culture of empathy helped to alleviate some of the pandemic stress. She feels that has been lost this semester.
“You can't remain in crisis for that long because you're just exhausted,” she said. “We've tried to create this new normal, but in that, I think that we have lost our discussion of how incredibly hard it is to exist in this new normal. Because even though it's familiar now, social isolation is only building up and causing more and more problems over time.”
While students in a pre-pandemic semester could turn to social activities to replenish their mental energy and let loose, the social isolation only compounds the standard stressors of a semester with little relief, according to SGA Co-Director of Health and Wellness Eloise Berdahl-Baldwin ’21.5.
In years past, the number of students seeking counseling drops in the run-up to spring and Thanksgiving breaks as students anticipate the relief of time off at home with family. With an abbreviated break and no chance to leave campus, the number of students seeking counseling this spring has instead risen steadily throughout the semester, according to Gooch.
Along with heightened levels of isolation, students seeking counseling are reporting shortened attention spans and an inability to focus, as well as getting “stuck in their thoughts” and in spirals of negative self-talk, according to Gooch.
Academic stress
These issues are also impacting students’ abilities to perform academically. Carlson-Healy said she dropped one of her classes this semester because she was feeling overwhelmed. But, even with three classes, she still struggles to keep up with her ever-growing workload and the stress of this semester, an experience she feels is widespread among students.
Carlson-Healy also noticed that her professors were no longer checking in with her and her peers at the beginning of class, and both workload and course expectations seemed to return to pre-pandemic levels.
In light of students raising concerns, the Faculty Council and Educational Affairs Committee sent an email to all faculty members on April 7 urging them to adjust their teaching strategies to alleviate some of the pressure on students. The email encouraged professors to lighten reading loads, reduce the total number of assignments and exercise flexibility in their deadlines and grading, among other measures.
“We want to acknowledge that both students and faculty are also struggling,” the email said. “Some [students] feel overwhelmed because they believe that faculty have returned to a normal workload this semester despite the ongoing pandemic... While our teaching and learning might feel a bit more normal this semester, they still aren’t.”
Counseling services and MiddTelehealth
Counseling Services saw more than one in every six eligible students (17%) during the fall semester, according to Associate Director of Clinical Operations Ben Gooch. Based on data from Gooch, The Campus calculated that Counseling has already met with about 14% of students living on campus or in Vermont this semester, with an average of just under five sessions per student. Appointments conducted over MiddTelehealth were not included in these calculations.
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Compared to last year, the data shows a dip in demand for counseling, which Gooch attributes to the difference in on-campus population. Many of the students who struggled the most with mental health before the pandemic and most frequently utilized the counseling services chose not to return to campus, taking semesters off or studying remotely instead.
Counseling Services are also only available to students in the state of Vermont. Remote students studying elsewhere in the United States have access to the online health platform MiddTelehealth for counseling, the statistics for which are not included in the above graphic.
Finding a lifeline
Gooch encouraged students struggling with mental health to seek counseling if it feels right for them. Students on campus or in Vermont can schedule a Zoom consultation with Counseling Services, with options for regularly scheduled visits or more immediate sessions. Students throughout the rest of the United States can schedule sessions through MiddTelehealth, which offers the same two options.
The Health and Wellness Education Center also offers programming for cultivating good mental health practices. The programs seek to develop students’ skills in coping, self-advocacy and help-seeking; foster a sense of belonging; reduce the stigma around mental illness; and increase awareness of available mental health resources, Assistant Director for Health and Wellness Education Maddie Hope said in an email to The Campus.
(04/15/21 9:57am)
Middlebury students have become accustomed to quarantining when they have been exposed to Covid-19 or as a preemptive move-in measure, but a new and unannounced policy temporarily places students into quarantine housing after they’ve committed Covid-19 policy violations if those violations included high-risk behavior.
This new measure, which Dean of Students Derek Doucet said has impacted around a dozen individuals, puts students in quarantine for Covid-19 protocol violations that the Office of Community Standards deems “a credible allegation of behavior that might lead to transmission.” Doucet said that the policy is designed to combat potential public health risks.
The policy
The college enacted the policy of quarantining students who violated Covid-19 guidelines at the beginning of this semester, according to Doucet. Administrators realized that existing disciplinary procedures did not take into account the immediate public health risk posed by certain types of Covid-19 protocol violations like large gatherings in small spaces without masks.
“When we have those incidents, we're really worried about the possibility of exposure and transmission, and so we ask those students to go into quarantine as a public health measure,” Doucet said. “It's not intended as a punitive measure.”
Though this policy has reportedly been in place for months, the college never informed the student body of its implementation.
While the Spring Campus Guide Conduct Expectations section does inform students that they must “participate in isolation and quarantine when directed,” it does not mention the possibility of being placed in quarantine for a Covid-19 rule violation.
Instead, the Contact Tracing, Isolation, and Quarantine section describes quarantine as “a way for individuals who may have been exposed to Covid-19 through close contact with an infected individual to limit their contact with others while it is determined whether they have Covid-19.”
Students were not placed in quarantine until up to two days following their violation. Doucet says administrators try to process Covid-19 conduct incident reports and meet with students within the first two days of the incident because “the science suggests that the chance of passing on the virus remains low in that time period.” Students may then be instructed to complete a quarantine if it is found that there is a credible allegation that the student engaged in unsafe behavior.
Unlike students under quarantine as close contacts, who are tested separately at Parton to avoid exposure to other students and in accordance with the exact timing of their day-seven tests, students quarantined for violations are tested at the Virtue Field House during the normal testing times with the rest of the student body, according to Environmental Health and Safety Coordinator Jennifer Kazmeirczak.
Doucet said the discrepancy is “related to a different level of perceived risk.”
“Quarantining students who have violated the covid guidelines is done out of an abundance of caution because of the heightened chance of exposure. Quarantining close contacts is done when there is known exposure,” Doucet said in an email to The Campus. “Sending students with confirmed exposure into close proximity with others [at general testing] is higher risk than asking a student about whom we're concerned about a heightened possibility of exposure.”
Students whose Day Seven test falls outside of the college’s regular testing schedule may be able to schedule a test at Parton or at the Vermont Department of Health’s Creek Road testing center in town, according to Kazmeirczak.
Students quarantined for Covid-19 guideline violations also do not receive daily phone call check-ins from the college’s Covid Operations office asking about their health status as close contacts do. They are expected, like all students on campus, to fill out daily Policy Path health surveys for symptoms, according to Kazmeirczak.
The college also does not extend the disciplinary amnesty policy, which allows violations revealed through contact tracing to go undisciplined, to those quarantined for Covid-19 guideline violations. Students quarantined for Covid-19 guideline violations are not asked who else attended the gathering, but if other students are revealed to have attended, they will not be exempt from disciplinary action, according to Doucet.
These students quarantining for conduct violations are not listed on the Covid-19 reporting dashboard, which only displays the number of quarantining close contacts. According to Doucet, that is not an intentional omission, and the college is “considering adding conduct-related quarantine numbers to the dash.”
A timeline of a Covid-19 violation quarantine
The Campus spoke to 10 students who were quarantined for Covid-19 guideline violations in early March. Here’s a look at how the policy — which was confusing to many of the students quarantined under it — works.
11 p.m. Friday, March 5 - A group of 15–20 first-year students gather in the cavernous student activity room in the basement of Forest Hall on the night of Friday, March 5 to celebrate their return to campus.
11:30 p.m. - 12 a.m. - Several Public Safety officers and Reslife staff members block two of the three entrances and demand IDs from the students. Some bolt for the open exit but others mill about in confusion, unaware that, though a sign on the wall advertised a 30-person occupancy limit, students are only able to gather outside and in groups of ten.
DPS reports 10 students to the Office of Community Standards for Covid-19 violations.
Weekend - The cited students go to the dining halls, attend in-person classes, practice with their sports teams and spend time unmasked with close contacts.
Monday, March 8 – Cited students attend in-person classes.
Cited students go to mandatory testing.
7 p.m – Students receive an email from Dean of Community Standards Brian Lind asking them to schedule a disciplinary meeting.
3:39 p.m. - Nine of the students receive an email from Dean of Students Derek Doucet instructing them to begin room quarantine immediately and to prepare to move into temporary housing. They receive no guidance about their roommates who had not attended the gathering, with whom they had interacted closely.
“We are concerned this gathering could have presented the opportunity for transmission of Covid-19,” Doucet writes in an email to cited students. Doucet says it was unlikely that any students were contagious yet if exposed, but that the choice to isolate students is necessary as they entered the period where transmission of the virus is most likely, had they been exposed to Covid-19 at the Forest gathering.
One cited student reportedly receives no such email.
Midday Tuesday, March 8 - Students receive a call from Covid Operations telling them to move into quarantine housing at Porter, about three and a half days after their possible exposure Friday night. Students ask why they were being quarantined, but Covid Operations staff are reportedly not aware of the policy and unable to provide clarity.
Covid Operations Coordinator Daniel Celik confirmed administrators had not informed them of the policy.
7 p.m. Wednesday, March 9 - Lind emails students informing them of the disciplinary decision of removal from campus held in abeyance, which means that students will likely be kicked off of campus if they commit another Covid-19 rules violation this semester. They are informed that they will be released from quarantine pending a negative test result and are reminded to get tested at Virtue Field House the next day.
Thursday, March 10 – All students get tested at Virtue Field House alongside the rest of the student body.
Friday, March 11 - All 10 students receive negative results and expect to be released from quarantine. Upon further inquiry, they discover that this does not count as a Day Seven test, and they will have to wait until the next general testing day on Monday in order to be released on Tuesday, 11 full days after the gathering. By this point, they have already missed several in-person classes.
Saturday, March 12 - At their request, Doucet allows the students to temporarily leave quarantine and walk to the Department of Health’s Creek Road testing center in town to get tested before the next college-administered student testing day on Monday.
Morning of Sunday, March 13 – All students receive negative test results and inform Covid Operations.
4-6 p.m. Sunday, March 13 - All students are released from quarantine — nine days after the Forest Hall gathering and seven days into their quarantine. The gathering is shown to have resulted in no positive cases.
(04/08/21 10:00am)
In the recent weeks, we’ve witnessed students scramble to sign up for Covid-19 vaccinations amid widespread confusion as to whether BIPOC students — and members of their households — are eligible to receive a vaccine. In the wake of this rush to get vaccinated, many BIPOC students were left feeling tokenized and exploited.
A policy allowing household members of people of color to also register for the vaccine excited students who were under the impression they were several weeks away from falling into any eligibility category. But as everyone living on campus technically holds the same address, this vague “household” qualifier has created a situation where students must individually judge their own qualifications. The nitty-gritty details, like whether a “household” includes college roommates, suitemates, housemates or close contacts, are left up to us to decide.
We’ve seen qualifying suites and roommate groups sign up for vaccines together. That’s fantastic. But as Divya Gudur ’21 and Melynda Payne ’21 wrote on Instagram in a widely shared post, it can also leave BIPOC students feeling frustrated and tokenized to see white peers scour their list of friends to find that one BIPOC student they can use to register for the vaccine.
For many BIPOC students, this is reminiscent of experiences where they feel reduced to their identities for the convenience of their white peers, such as when they are asked to educate their peers by offering their opinions as — and only as — a BIPOC person.
If you had to think hard about whether or not you’re technically in a household with a BIPOC student, then you should carefully consider whether your choice leaves your friends and housemates of color feeling exploited. You might ask yourself, do you only appreciate their cultural and racial identity when it is convenient for you?
We want to encourage students to register for appointments when they feel that they are eligible. But if you’re going to use this method to get a vaccine, the least you can do is make sure you tell the person who has qualified you and confirm that they’re okay with it. And if they are, make sure they have already been able to schedule their own appointment before making yours.
This rule was created for a reason: to protect BIPOC individuals in the state. And while everyone benefits when the most people are vaccinated, your immunity should not leave your peers feeling used and disrespected. Get your shot. But don’t exploit your relationships with your BIPOC peers to get there.
This editorial represents the opinions of the Middlebury Campus’ editorial board.
(04/01/21 10:00am)
Derrick Cram turns to his side and looks at one of his co-workers. “You ready?” he asks.
Cram, the business manager of the Middlebury-owned Ralph Myhre Golf Course, is about to announce that the golf course will be open to students throughout the fall semester. He’s sitting at his desk in late summer, as nearby Middlebury students acclimate to a Covid-altered semester: Zoom classes, to-go meals, go/snitch — the whole shebang.
In the carefully-worded email, Cram writes that Middlebury students are welcome to the golf course throughout the fall semester — masked and socially distanced, of course — once they have cleared quarantine. It was a decision that necessitated hours of thought and planning, but ultimately one that the Ralph Myhre crew — and the administration — felt confident and excited about.
Cram hits send, knowing the next few hours might be a little crazy. He was right.
“I kid you not, as soon as I hit send, it wasn’t even two minutes before the phones started ringing,” Cram told The Campus. “We had three phone lines busy for no less than three hours.”
Many businesses have struggled to attract customers during the pandemic, but the Ralph Myhre Golf Course has not. Since they first opened during the pandemic on May 7, 2020, there’s been a steady flow of golfers, including first-time players, old faces who finally had time to golf again and, of course, the regulars.
Cram can’t say for sure, but last summer might have been the course’s most successful season to date; in his 23 years of working for the college, he can’t remember a year that compares.
“This summer was crazy busy,” Cram said. “This is the busiest summer I’ve ever seen. We did not expect this summer to unfold the way it did — we were blindsided by the amount of support and business that came through our course.”
While Ralph Myhre had to curtail about 30% of their tournaments last year due to Covid-19 — including college tournaments and shotgun-style tournaments, in which all the golfers start at once — the traffic remained incessant.
Business was booming, but it wasn’t without months of brainstorming, planning and flat-out waiting. When the pandemic first hit Middlebury in mid-March, Cram and his crew were kept at home for roughly a month, effectively sidelined until they received information on how to proceed from the state.
The first group of employees allowed back onto the course was the grounds crew, tabbed as essential workers by the state. Without their maintenance, after all, the course’s terrain would’ve incurred lasting damages.
Finally, on May 6, Gov. Phil Scott announced that golf courses would be allowed to open. After about eight weeks of static noise, Cram and his co-workers finally had answers.
“The switch was flipped and we had to have a plan the next day,” Cram recalled. “We were on location the next morning. It was myself, our golf pro Paul Politano and our grounds crew. And that’s how we ran for the first couple weeks since the procedure for how to staff safely was still in the process of being implemented.”
It might have cost the Ralph Myhre crew a bit of sleep, but they did it. On Thursday, May 7 — the day after they were alerted that they could reopen the course — Ralph Myhre opened to the public.
From the get-go, the operation looked different. For one, seasonal staff was prohibited from working per state guidelines, leaving a sizable hole in the crew. The solution? Sourcing displaced dining and custodial workers who were eager for work once students were sent home.
With a patchwork staff manning the day-to-day, golfers returned to the course, which sits adjacent to the football field and against a picturesque Vermont backdrop. At first, golf carts were prohibited, as was other shared equipment, like divot bottles, ball washers, rakes and drinking coolers. Guests were also asked to wear masks when they floated in and around the clubhouse, and the Pro Shop was closed per state guidelines.
Ralph Myhre’s staff also needed to reconfigure games with a shotgun start, like the popular member-guest tournaments. Given the risk inherent in inviting a flock of participants at once, the staff implemented structured tee-times, where players would arrive and tee off at staggered times.
Surprisingly, the new structure — although different — was a big hit among the golfers.
“People liked the tee times for the member-guest [tournaments] because they wouldn’t have to deal with the crowds,” Cram said. “It was more of a flow on the driving range, it was more of grab-and-go food, and it cut back the length of their commitment. They said it was actually nice to have shorter days.”
The check-in table, usually positioned in the Pro Shop, was also shifted outside, placed adjacent to the first hole. While it was an adjustment at first, it might be a change that’s here to stay, according to Cram.
Now outdoors, the check-in table allows staffers to have a better sense of how busy the course is, when to hold people back a few minutes and when there’s a chance to pair up solo golfers.
Throughout the summer, the Ralph Myhre crew had to tinker with regulations as Vermont and the college’s guidelines shifted. It was an ever-moving pivot, but as long as the course was operational, Cram welcomed the challenge.
“As the summer unfolded, procedures changed,” Cram explained. “Stuff just developed as the season unfolded. We actually became more stringent as things unfolded.”
Once August hit, for example, seasonal workers were able to return to work, relieving dining and custodial staff of their atypical duties. It allowed the temporary helpers to shift back to their regular positions, just in time to welcome the roughly 2,000 students who returned to Middlebury last fall.
Flash forward to the late-summer day when Derrick hit send on that email. Without NESCAC competition, access to the Peterson Athletic Complex or regular club sports, golfing offered an attractive alternative for cooped-up students.
And Midd kids were all over it.
Besides delineating the golf course’s plan for the fall, Cram’s announcement to students also included another attractive layer: golfing would be free for students that semester, excluding golf cart and club rentals.
It was an idea that had been floating around the administration for a while, Cram explained, and one that the administration felt well-positioned to pilot during a Covid-defined semester.
At first, students were only permitted to tee off during student-reserved time blocks, separate from those available to all other golfers. But once Middlebury transitioned into Phase 2, that barrier was eliminated.
As students were introduced into the fold, community members quickly learned to book their tee times far in advance, sometimes even two weeks ahead, indicative of the chaotic traffic at the course.
Like all other fall sports teams, the men’s and women’s varsity golf squads didn’t compete in the NESCAC last fall, but they still practiced daily at the course. There were noticeable changes to the day-to-day, though, including a two-person limit in the locker room.
Throughout the fall, students and community members alike flooded Ralph Myhre, filling days from morning to night. In some instances, students were booked to tee off in the late afternoon, just an hour or so before sunset.
It was a hectic season, and one that might repeat this spring. While the course hasn’t been open yet this semester — it was transformed into a cross country ski course for the first half of the semester — opening day is just around the corner.
Cram said he envisions April 10 as the tentative reopening date. Unlike last year, the vast majority of traditional tournaments and clinics will resume in 2021, including traditional collegiate golf meets.
As things stand, the course will host one collegiate competition on Saturday, May 8, when both the men’s and women’s teams will close out their five-match seasons.
While free golfing won’t continue this spring semester, it remains an idea that the administration could consider implementing long-term — and it might even extend to free season passes at the Snow Bowl, according to Cram.
If weather permits, the course will host their traditional spring clean-up day on April 10, an event that invites students and community members alike to bond and share stories from the winter.
“We’re going to offer a clean-up day on April 10, if weather permits,” Cram said. “We invite members and students alike to join in––it's a community-builder. After that clean-up, we have a little cookout with grab-and-go burgers and dogs, and we start tee times immediately following clean-up.”
(04/01/21 10:00am)
The world has waited with bated breath, and today we break our silence. A little over a week ago, the infamous Ever Given container ship ran aground in the Suez Canal, blocking the channel as well as the 12% of global trade that flows through its waters.
Although she has recently been freed from calamity, we drew on the brilliant minds of our editorial board to propose a set of alternative solutions. Without further ado, here is each section of our board’s plans for foolproof boat-dislodgement.
From the News Desk:
We feel that the Middlebury administration could take steps to alleviate the crisis in the Suez Canal by issuing a vague statement in support of the boat. If necessary, the administration could even call upon donors to unrestrict earmarked endowment funds for this essential procedure. While we wait, the administration should send daily emails about how the boat hasn’t moved but may move in the future.
We also recall that the college has handled sudden evacuation processes in the past. Telling the Ever Given it needs to leave by Friday and sending some boxes and tape might help the boat get a move on.
The Ever Given’s crew could also make use of some fidget spinners, Oreos, expired bread and a mental health flier in order to manage stress.
If all else fails, the administration can just delete the boat.
From the Local Desk:
We suggest finding two Middlebury horses to pull the ship. Each horse would have to pull 111,000 tons, which seems reasonable for a garbage-pulling horse considering the amount of dining hall containers that Midd students throw in the trash.
We also propose dumping enough milk into the canal to refloat the boat. Vermont currently produces 2.3 billion pounds of milk annually from 135,000 dairy cows on about 1,000 dairy farms. In the meantime, we don’t think Midd students will have any trouble subsisting on oat milk.
And if that doesn’t do the trick, we’re sure that Midd students can drunkenly tear the boat apart on Friday night and bring the pieces back to their dorm rooms.
From the Arts & Culture Desk:
After much thought, we at Arts & Culture have decided that the best course of action is to move the boat emotionally. We suggest blasting Olivia Rodrigo’s “Driver’s License” until the boat’s emotional flood-gates fly open, unblocking the canal. The onlookers will surely be in a celebratory mood, but the boat will be a total wreck.
We also workshopped hiring the producers of “Up” to tie a million balloons to the boat and float it away. And if that doesn’t work, we suggest replacing every piece of the ship one-by-one and having Philosophy majors ponder if it is the same boat.
From the Opinion Desk:
The captain of the Ever Given just submitted a long-awaited NFTD (“Notes from the Deck”) affirming that the boat forgot to fill out its Policy Path, and is now in isolation housing under “dubious circumstances.” We await responses from the community.
In order to get the boat moving, the Opinions Desk has decided that a Hamilton Forum debate is in order, so that we can get to the bottom of contested questions such as: Are boats and canals compatible? Should Suez Canal maritime affirmative action be size or cargo-based? And finally, does the boat deserve to be unstuck?
From the Sports Desk:
We all know the men’s and women’s swim and dive teams were starved of a season this year, so why not give them a chance to compete? After the countless hours they’ve invested into weightlifting and carb-loading, you would think they’d have the power to free the boat stuck in the Suez Canal. I mean, if they’re not up to this task, how can they expect to compete against Williams or Amherst?
“We’re one of the strongest teams in the NESCAC, and strong teams are expected to do big-time things,” a Middlebury swim and dive coach definitely didn’t say. “I mean, it’ll be great to just see the swimmers get out there and compete. The away trip will be a longer one than usual, but thanks to all the homework professors have been assigning, I think the kids will be able to stay engaged throughout the journey.”
From the Online Team:
The online team encourages the ship experts to try turning it off and back on again.
From the Photo Team:
Why don’t they just photoshop it out of the way?
It’s overtly clear that a group of college students residing in land-locked, rural Vermont has the maritime skills necessary to maximize efficiency the next time around. If only they had called upon us last week…
This editorial represents the opinions of the Middlebury Campus’s editorial board.
(04/01/21 9:59am)
The college has approved a small number of students to cross state lines to get their Covid-19 shot as eligibility criteria — such as having certain pre-existing health conditions — in some students’ home states qualify them to receive the vaccine.
Vermont’s rigid age-based rollout process has barred students who would otherwise be eligible for vaccines in other states to receive it in Vermont. Students and administrators alike also learned on Tuesday that out-of-state college students are not eligible to receive the vaccine in Vermont, which may result in an influx of student requests to leave the state for inoculation.
While the official rules regarding travel for the spring semester restrict students from traveling outside of Addison Country, students may receive approval from Dean of Students Derek Doucet to travel to vaccination sites outside of Vermont.
“We made the decision to treat requests to leave campus for vaccinations as we would other essential medical appointments,” Doucet said.
There is no specific travel radius written in the rules, but appointments must be within reasonable driving distance for a day trip, according to Doucet. Any travel that would involve an overnight stay requires additional consideration and approval from the college, and the returning student would have to observe a seven-day room quarantine followed by a negative test.
Matt Brockley ’23 made an appointment in his home state of New York shortly after arriving on campus — before Vermont had expanded vaccine eligibility to include those in his age group with certain chronic health conditions. He received his first dose in Plattsburgh on March 27. Brockley emailed the Dean of Students explaining his eligibility and was approved under the condition that he did not make any stops and traveled alone.
Along with pre-existing conditions, some students have been vaccinated in states where they will be employed for the summer. This June, Willie Thacker ’23 will be working at a summer camp in New Hampshire, a state that included camp counselors as essential workers. Thacker received a letter of hire from his boss attesting his employment, which he then showed to both the college and the vaccination site in West Lebanon. But Thacker initially weighed whether off-campus travel was worth it if there was a possibility he could be vaccinated through the college.
“I feel safe on campus, but I also feel that I’m more likely to get Covid at Middlebury than any other place I’ve been,” Thacker said. “If I knew for sure that the college was going to vaccinate us before we left, I probably would have waited for that.”
Thacker did not know the college was granting out-of-state travel for vaccinations until another student mentioned it to him.
Other students have had more difficulty scheduling vaccination appointments, especially those whose home states are not a short day-trip away. Erin Hogan ’21.5, who has type 1 diabetes, was eligible in her home state of New Jersey before leaving for the spring semester. However, she could not make an appointment without violating the two-week pre-arrival quarantine that all in-person learners were asked to complete before returning to Middlebury this spring.
Hogan appreciates what the college has done in regards to constant testing and feels safe on campus, but thinks the college could have had better communication about vaccinations.
“I wish the college had made the [vaccination] information more widely available. It kind of puts a burden on high-risk students to figure out this weird system by themselves which is frustrating,” Hogan said.
Elizabeth Callaway ’21 is eligible in her home state of Tennessee due to asthma, a condition that Vermont does not include in the high-risk category for vaccination. Callaway also expressed frustration over the college’s lack of communication.
“I would have really loved some assistance from Middlebury in figuring out where everyone places in the Vermont phases. At home I have a better sense for how to navigate it, but in Vermont, Middlebury really is our only contact,” Callaway said.
The college has not yet changed any of its safety guidelines for vaccinated students.
President Patton, Doucet and Dr. Mark Peluso stated in an email last Thursday that students who meet requirements in Vermont can register using the college address to demonstrate residency. However, Gov. Phil Scott announced on Tuesday that out-of-state college students are ineligible, contradicting the college’s guidance.
Doucet and Peluso reaffirmed that students may seek approval to get vaccinated in their home state in an email update on Wednesday that also told students not to cancel existing in-state appointments.
