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(09/16/21 9:58am)
Middlebury will hold commencement ceremonies for both the class of 2022 and the class of 2020 this upcoming May.
Graduates from the class of 2020 will return for an in-person commencement after their initial graduation ceremony in spring 2020 was moved online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Members of the class of 2020.5, who were given an impromptu Feb graduation in Nov. 2020 after new Covid-19 gathering restrictions were put in place by the Vermont government, will be invited to join as well.
The class of 2022 will celebrate commencement on Sunday, May 29, while the classes of 2020 and 2020.5 will commence the following Tuesday, May 31. There will be two commencement speakers — one for the class of 2022, who has yet to be announced. Jason Collins, the first openly gay NBA player, is slated to speak at the ceremony for the classes of 2020 and 2020.5.
There is some confusion over why the make-up commencement will be on a Tuesday, two days after the ceremony for the class of 2022. A significant consideration for the ceremony being on Tuesday was consideration for staff, according to Jennifer Erwin, Director of Event Management.
“Even in a normal year, [staff] work overtime during the month of June to prepare for the annual spring and summer campus events such as Reunion and the summer sessions of Bread Loaf and the Language Schools,” Erwin said in an email to The Campus.
According to Erwin, the college will provide support for travel assistance, and more information will be released when available. There are also discussions underway regarding where to house members of the class of 2020(.5), with details likely to be available later in the fall.
Marisa Edmondson ’20 is planning to return to campus for graduation, but is frustrated with the lack of communication surrounding senior week activities and housing.
“Even if only half the class comes back, that's still 300+ kids and their families. There aren’t enough places to stay,” Edmondson said. “I do feel like the college kind of forgot about us and has done a bad job at communicating with us about our belated ceremony.”
Abby Okin ’20 also plans on attending commencement.
“I want to go because I never really got to say goodbye to that part of my life,” Okin said. “It’s strange to live somewhere for four years and build a life there and then have to leave abruptly.”
Erwin said she is excited to welcome the classes of 2020 and 2020.5 back to campus.
“We felt that hosting graduation as a short extension of the Memorial Day weekend, and giving notice a year in advance, was a way we could fulfill our promise to our students and to show staff the care and respect that our students themselves would want,” Erwin said.
Edmondson hopes that the commencement ceremony will bring a sense of closure after a chaotic end to her on-campus senior year in March 2020. She also added that due to the pandemic and travel restrictions, she has not been able to see many of her classmates since their early departure from campus.
“I am excited to be able to celebrate with my friends and be back in Vermont,” Edmondson said, “And I know my parents and family are excited to actually see me in a cap and gown walking across the stage.”
(09/16/21 9:57am)
My first love was my home. Mine is the block with the broken sidewalk tiles and the dogs that always bark at inconvenient times and the houses that have seen a century more of the world than I ever could or would. Now, though, I know in my heart — and most definitely in my parents’ bank account — I’ve opened my mind to a new home. And since home and love are synonymous in my head, it seems I’ve also opened my heart to a new love.
But Middlebury wasn’t always a love of mine. There were certain undesirable attributes that Middlebury left off its online dating profile: the emotional unavailability that took the shape of cold spells, the lack of hygiene that was that curious stain on the Battell wall, and the gaslighting which made me question whether it was possible to miss home as much as I did, or if I was simply crazy. By the end of first semester, soon after our relationship had just begun, I was ready to break up. Middlebury was determined to win me over, though, and by our 75th date (J-Term), I began to see Midd in the romantic way I see it now.
As it commonly happens when people fall in love, some of the aspects that drove me crazy about Midd became some of my favorites. Since love is the closest thing we have to magic, Battell had a certain magic to it: the late-night conversations in common rooms, the constant bustle of energy wafting through open doors, and even the bathroom rendezvous were endearing. I didn’t know that living with so many people in a tight space or sharing embarrassing moments with someone who hears you talk in your sleep Every. Single. Night. could be so full. These moments can only be described as the type of joy where you feel like your face could break from smiling so hard, of moments where you’re staining your friend’s shirt with tears or singing happy birthday to another and of brief romances with flames old and new.
Middlebury was resourceful, though, and like in the movies when a person uses their musical talent or cooking skills to woo a suitor, it played to its innate strength: the students and professors. In balancing moments of fun and study, Davis and elevated surfaces, everyone maintains a passionate, open-minded and driven spark to them. They all exude an encouraging, graceful attitude towards the success of their peers. The best example was my freshman year in Chemistry 103. I had been so used to my high school peers asking what scores I had gotten on exams; whether these conversations were competitive boasts or unintentional probes, I was surprised to learn that my Middlebury classmates seemed to be more interested in supporting their friends through the class rather than competing against them. We had study sessions, answered one another’s questions, and kept our grades to ourselves — and every class I’ve taken here since has followed this “collaboration over contest” principle.
After a brief long-distance relationship, Middlebury and I knew we were bound to get back together for The Great Return in the fall, which attracts nothing short of magic itself. Like any good suitor, Midd always welcomes us with a flower bouquet: the rolling green hills speckled with crimson blooms that constitute our beloved Knoll.
And what is romance without a sunset? Middlebury’s are sherbet-colored, and you can spend your time on long walks (or rounds of frisbee) on the Beach or share a private moment alone in the woods on the Trail Around Middlebury. Opportunity lies in those 15-person classes about topics you REALLY care about, the ones you research for (gasp) FUN, and in the clamor to ask your professor that question burning a hole in your notebook you’ve held onto for ages. Bonding with the people you love can be found tucked into the jeans you wear dancing at PALANA or Brooker, on hikes near and far, trips into the freezing Gorge (you think I’m being dramatic, try swimming there sometime), and in the seemingly mundane ventures to the bagel deli or the supermarket or the Best Coffee Shop In the Entire World, Dunkin’ Donuts.
Where does this love, this magic, manifest itself? Sometimes you’ll find the magic on the bottom floor of BiHall in the armchairs by the big picture windows where all you can see is sky and cows. Sometimes it’s in the class you never thought you’d take (but you really need an art credit and a theater class), where you slow dance with a broom. Too specific? I’ll try again. Maybe it’s in the challenge to take a class in a subject you thought you weren’t designed for, but you learned something that you’ll never forget and you’re glad you took it in the end. Maybe it’s in the date you went on at the bench overlooking the fields, or in the a cappella group you joined on a whim, in a packed WOMP, or perhaps just in the content quiet that Middlebury usually embodies, except for those nights that the artistic, athletic, academic energy has seeped under your door frame, making it impossible to sleep at night.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my fair share of challenging moments at Middlebury. I’ve lost friends, pulled all-nighters to study for exams, gotten less-than-perfect grades, missed home, had breakups, and felt imposter syndrome more often than I’d like to admit. These frustrating moments, though, helped me grow as a student, a friend and a daughter because I began to see Middlebury, and life, more realistically. Though magical, this campus still has flaws, my days still have ups and downs and, despite and because of these imperfections, I felt more appreciative for the “ups” than ever; my love transitioned from superficial to real.
Though one might not necessarily call this a “romance piece,” I would politely disagree. This love affair with a place that has shown me more joy, more confusion, more curiosity and more challenges than I have ever experienced in any other home, is not really a love affair, after all. Unlike love affairs, Middlebury is a place that lasts, that really has meaning to me, I’m sure to you — and to any of you who are new, to you, too, even if you don’t feel it yet. Middlebury might be one of the Greats, the Great Loves one has in their life. The Great Loves don’t fade, even with time’s gentle touch.
Yours truly,
The Middlebury Romantic
The Middlebury Romantic is a way to open conversation around romance and love in the Middlebury community, in whatever form it might take. People have preconceived notions of what romance is truly like at Midd, like the prevalence of hookup culture or the marriage expectation, yet these notions still leave room for missed connections, confusion and, in extreme cases, heartbreak. Stay tuned for articles on when people say, “I love you,” online dating at a small school, horoscope compatibility (Co-Star put this in my “dos” for the day, I don’t make the rules), dating archetypes, Atwater romance and romantic comedy parallels to college life. Consider the gates around all things romantic opened, and should you have suggestions or need anonymous advice, please contact the writer of this article (no expert, simply a hopeless romantic) directly.
(09/16/21 9:56am)
Middlebury Senior Technology Specialist Scott Remick was arrested July 7 on federal charges of possesing child pornography. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison and would be required to register as a sex offender. At his preliminary hearing on July 26, he pleaded not guilty.
Remick allegedly had images of young children in various restraints, which a hacker discovered and turned over to authorities. The hacker was later granted immunity.
According to authorities, the informant also discovered chat files which included exchanges of images of child pornography with someone named “Jeanie,” who the hacker believed to be a teenager.
The college declined to comment on Remick’s employment status, but he has most likely been placed on leave.
“Middlebury complies with and cooperates in all matters involving lawful requests from authorities,” Director of Media Relations Sarah Ray said in an email to The Campus. “In the rare event of an arrest, we ordinarily place the employee on leave and take other appropriate steps while we gather more information.”
Authorities confiscated over 100 hard drives, computers and digital media from Remick, many of which belong to the customers of the computer repair business that he owned, Vermont Geek. Prosecutors have presented no evidence that Remick produced any images himself or had direct contact with any producers. The deadline to file pretrial motions is in November.
(09/15/21 9:55am)
Two students and two employees at the Middlebury Language Schools tested positive for Covid-19 near the end of the college’s seven-week summer program, prompting tighter restrictions for those staying on campus. Both students remained in self-isolation on campus, the college announced on Aug. 13, while positive employee cases recovered off campus.
Rumors began to circulate around Thursday, Aug. 12, just two days before many students planned to leave campus. Students in different language programs received conflicting information about the source and location of the outbreak, while some were led to believe that canceled classes were a result of scheduling conflicts, according to Sydney Armor ’24, who attended the German Language School over the summer.
“I did have a friend in [another language school] who was texting me and said, ‘All of my classes got canceled, but they didn’t tell us why,’” Armor said. “They just said it was due to ‘scheduling conflicts.’ And then I explained to her what I had heard, and then she didn’t hear the truth from her school until about two days later.”
Ben Beese ’21.5, also a member of the German school this summer, said the program’s administration communicated some information about Covid-19 exposure and event cancellations on Thursday afternoon.
“Most information we were working with were [essentially] rumors,” Beese said in an email to The Campus. “We heard bits and pieces of info from admins as we ran into them outside but nothing concrete. It sounded like the students might have been from the Spanish program. Maybe they were unvaccinated.”
Until August 13, when the college updated face covering requirements and visitor policies via email, vaccinated students were not required to wear masks in any setting.
According to Beese, masks and Covid-19 guidelines were loosely enforced, especially after arrival testing yielded zero positive results. All students were required to be vaccinated before or during the summer session, and vaccinated students were not tested during the summer.
Meanwhile, student research assistants and lab workers relied on their peers for any information they could gather. Hira Zeeshan ’22, who studied in a neuroscience lab on campus this summer, said she heard about the two active Covid-19 cases from a group of peers.
“I first learned about the Covid outbreak amongst language school students from my fellow RAs,” Zeeshan said. “The school didn’t inform us until a few days later when they started implementing Covid restrictions in the dining halls and in buildings.”
Zeeshan said that many language school students and research assistants did not mix over the summer, instead forming their own factions within the school. She expressed disappointment with some language schools students’ failure to respect Covid-19 protocols. She also suggested that the guidelines for social gatherings among research assistants seemed to be undefined.
“One thing, however, that we were unclear about was that [sic] whether research assistants could have small gatherings, because they were common for language school students,” Zeeshan said. “There was a strong divide between the language school students and the research assistants… RAs were quite disappointed with language school students because we were respectful of the Covid guidelines but had to adjust to this change after a summer of not wearing face coverings.”
Before the outbreak, students experienced a “near-normal” summer session, thanks to a high vaccination rate among students in the language programs and lower rates of infection near Middlebury.
“We were going in town, having parties, masks were just about nowhere to be seen. It was great, and I think everyone felt pretty safe,” Beese said. “We weren’t being tested regularly — after all, we all thought the vaccines were going to prevent infection until Delta took off this summer.”
In the final weeks of the session, the college offered testing to students who needed to show a negative PCR test for international flights, but did not provide universal testing for vaccinated students. Some language schools directors instead encouraged their students to receive testing at a site in town, but there were few available appointments before groups were scheduled to depart on Aug. 13 and 14.
As the college commences what seems to be a more “normal” fall semester thus far — with in-person classes, traditional dining hall operations and sports competitions — student concerns about Covid-19 cases and the spread of the Delta variant linger.
“It was amazing to be back to normal,” Beese said. “Hearing that there were [Covid] cases on campus then and that we should be masking and distancing, etc, made it feel like we’d been too optimistic… So realizing that there was a chink in our utopia was a big wakeup call, and I think we were unsure of what that meant for us personally, for the fall and for the pandemic in general.”
(08/26/21 8:55pm)
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(06/24/21 4:03pm)
Faculty and staff will receive a 2% raise on July 1, and the college will address wage compression, according to a June 18 email from Provost Jeff Cason and Treasurer David Provost. A second email sent 10 minutes later from Provost and Cason — received only by facilities and dining staff members — contained details of department-specific bonus incentive programs which aim to alleviate the “significant staffing shortage brought on by the low unemployment rate and the pandemic.”
In the first email, administrators announced that “all eligible faculty and staff hired before April 1 will receive a 2 percent increase for the 2021-2022 fiscal year beginning July 1, with the exception of those receiving increases due to promotions.” These raises come after vocal concerns about wages voiced by staff members after a year of increased workloads, reshuffling and scheduling changes.
The first email also announced that after a year and a half of student and staff advocacy, the college would address widespread pay compression among its staff members. Pay compression occurs when the wage for entry-level employees is raised, but the wage for more experienced employees remains the same, ‘compressing’ the pay gap between the two. In the email, administrators promised to “apply adjustments to ensure that length of service is considered consistently when setting individual pay rates.”
In an email to The Campus, Provost clarified that the administration was aware of the resulting pay compression from the January 2020 pay raises, and is now taking steps to address it.
“The rates of pay of all benefits-eligible staff in these ranges were analyzed to ensure a minimum difference in pay for each year of service,” he said. “This step will redistribute employees’ pay above the new minimums, effectively reestablishing a difference in pay between individuals throughout the range, based on length of service, alleviating compression.”
One longtime dining staff member, who spoke to The Campus on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retribution from management, attested to the impact of wage compression on staff.
“[Pay compression] is probably the biggest reason why employees at our level are leaving. It has created a significant amount of disgruntlement,” the dining staff member said. “They should have addressed that immediately when they instituted the fair wage entry level raises. People don't buy into the reasoning that the budget wasn't there during the pandemic to take care of compression.”
The dining staff member also expressed discontentment with the July 1 raise.
“Two percent is not enough, especially for going on two years sacrificing without a raise and being here throughout the pandemic, putting family in jeopardy. Thank goodness they did just about everything they could to make it as safe as possible for us,” they said.
The first email also announced significantly increased shift differentials for shifts in the evenings and nights. Staff who work evenings will now make an extra $1.50 per hour from their base wage, up from an extra $0.60, and staff who work nights will make an extra $3.00 an hour, an increase from $1.50.
In a May statement to The Campus, Assistant Vice President of Human Resources Laura Carotenuto cited what she described as “recent unemployment incentives” as affecting the college’s ability to fill open positions in dining and facilities. The first email announces that the college “will be implementing a number of programs focused on recruitment and retention of staff” in the dining and facilities departments in response to “a significant staffing shortage brought on by the low unemployment rate and the pandemic.”
The second email, sent only to dining and facilities, details the college’s three new programs to fill these open positions.
First, all facilities and dining staff members employed on July 1 will receive a $1,000 retention bonus at the end of the Fall 2021 semester, provided that the employee remains at the college until then.
The email also announced two new programs aimed at incentivizing applications for open staff positions at the college. New hires in dining and facilities will now receive a $750 bonus after 180 days of working at the college. Furthermore, current college employees who refer a new hire that goes on to work at the college for at least 90 days will receive a $500 bonus.
“We are certainly very happy that the senior administration has been giving this its full attention, and we are hopeful this will help us recruit and retain staff,” Dan Detora, executive director of food service operations, said. “Employees I have talked with are very excited and grateful for the $1,000 retention bonus and the fact that their salaries are being reviewed.”
Detora noted that if dining is unable to fill the 12 full-time positions that are currently open, they may not be able to open some of their retail operations such as the Grille or Midd Xpress. Such concerns were echoed by the dining staffer.
“Staffing issues are a big problem at our levels,” they said. “Lose any more and something drastic will have to happen as to how we serve and prepare food.”
The staff member also said that the efficacy of these new incentives is hard to assess at the moment.
“The hiring bonuses and incentives are a starting point, but … it will be hard to judge whether it will be enough,” they said. “The college has fallen behind in its wage and benefit competitiveness. They needed to start catching up earlier.”
(06/10/21 2:03pm)
The college has appointed Smita Ruzicka as the new vice president for student affairs (VPSA). The position has remained vacant since the previous VPSA, Baishakhi Taylor, left in April 2020.Along with overseeing the student affairs division, Health and Wellness and Public Safety, Ruzicka will be responsible for “removing systemic barriers and building new structures that will enable all of Middlebury's students to thrive.” “At the end of the day, my biggest goal is for each and every student to feel like they belong and are valued,” Ruzicka said. A core part of her job as vice president for student affairs will be to improve diversity, equity and inclusion on campus and incorporate restorative practices into student affairs. Ruzicka’s own experiences as an Indian immigrant have left her committed to championing racial justice efforts in higher education.Coming to the U.S. for the first time as an international college student, Ruzicka often found herself alone as the only South Asian woman in the room. She took on the added burden of having to teach those around her about racism while simultaneously dealing with the “emotional trauma” of its effects. “College shouldn't be something that you just sort of survive. You should thrive,” she said. “And so many times, especially our underrepresented students are coming to institutions of higher education and don't feel safe on those campuses. [They] barely survive and leave those institutions with additional trauma.”Ruzicka plans to spend the fall semester getting to know as many students as possible, attending sporting events, performances and hanging out in residential and dining halls. She hopes to form a bridge between administrators and students to address students’ needs and help them mold Middlebury into the institution they want. “I try not to speak for students, but with students,” Ruzicka said. “ And part of that has been really thinking about how to bring students to the table for important institutional decisions in whatever space I've been in.”Ruzicka comes to Middlebury with 18 years of experience in student-life administration. She previously served as dean of student life at Johns Hopkins University, where she was responsible for “a wide portfolio of services and programs aimed to enhance the overall student experience,… [including] student leadership and involvement, diversity and inclusion, health and wellness, residential life, crisis management and support services.” Prior to that, she was assistant vice president for campus life at Tulane University. There, she oversaw new student orientations, student organization management, sorority and fraternity life, student government, campus-wide programming and leadership development among other responsibilities. While serving in various leadership positions within the student dean’s office, Ruzicka earned her PhD in higher education administration at the University of Texas at Austin.Ruzicka earned masters in counseling psychology from Texas State University and worked as a therapist for YEARS, Her experience in mental health continues to inform her work as an administrator, work that is animated by her desire to form relationships with the students around her. Ruzicka chose to come to Middlebury after pandemic isolation inspired her to reflect on her life and career. She recalled her own experiences as an undergraduate at Trinity University, a small liberal arts college in Texas. The school president at the time knew many of the students by name and frequently invited students over to her house for meals. Ruzicka realized she too wanted to work at a college small enough for such intimacy to be possible, and Middlebury seemed the perfect fit. “I want it to be in a place where I could really have the opportunity to truly get to know as many students as possible not just by name, but by their stories, by their experiences,” Ruzicka said.Ruzicka describes herself as an optimist, a huge foodie who can’t cook, a practical joker, and a lover of the theater. She often bursts into song when the mood strikes her; these days she and her four-year-old son enjoy belting out Beyonce’s “Who Run the World” or U2’s “It’s a beautiful day.” She smiles often and widely. Ruzicka has never visited Vermont and has yet to taste a maple creemee, but she hopes to put down roots and make Middlebury a home for her and her family.
(05/20/21 10:00am)
The Faculty and Staff section focuses on increasing hiring equity, training new and existing faculty and staff in DEI practices, and building community among new hires to increase retention. Many view it as an important first step in an ongoing process that requires much deeper and continual institutional change.
Of the 11 strategies included in the section, 10 have been completed or involve ongoing programs that are underway, although two programs have been temporarily put on hold because of the pandemic. Only one strategy, the term for which begins this year, is still in development.
HIRING
One of the major pillars of the section is hiring more BIPOC faculty and staff and those from other “historically underrepresented groups.”
The college has historically struggled to hire a more diverse staff because most are recruited from the overwhelmingly white communities surrounding Middlebury, according to Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández. Almost 93% of Addison County residents are white.
Resistance to diversifying the faculty body often comes from the perception of diversity and qualifications being opposing qualities, according to Associate Professor of Political Science Kemi Fuentes-George.
“You tend to see a lot of language about [how] what we need are the most qualified people, and that usually gets taken to be an argument against seeking diversity,” he said. “There's this kind of equation of, if you're orienting around a diversity hire, by definition, you're not seeking qualified people.”
Of the 329 current faculty members, 57, or 17%, identify as belonging to a minority ethnic or racial group, according to Dean of Faculty Sujata Moorti.
While there is a formal hiring freeze for faculty and staff, the college is filling limited positions that were planned before the pandemic or are needed on an urgent basis. Faculty and staff search committees now receive DEI training (Strategy #3 and #4), and job candidates are asked to include their own experience with inclusive practices in their application as a measure to assess their “multicultural competence” (Strategy #5).
New employee orientations now include workshops on diversity, equity and inclusion, though the college has not offered staff orientations — which normally happen periodically as opposed to the the once-a-year faculty orientation — during the hiring freeze (Strategy #6), according to Director of Education for Equity and Inclusion Renee Wells.
The college has also approved a staff position to help with partner inclusion, and Moorti is currently working with the Educational Affairs Committee to see if an institution-wide policy is possible (Strategy #2).
RETENTION
A second large part of the section is an attempt to improve conditions for faculty and staff from historically marginalized communities. As part of Strategy #11, the college has developed exit interview questions “related to campus climate… to identify and address barriers to retention.” Moorti hopes that, over time, these interviews can inform the administration on how to improve the climate for remaining faculty.
Faculty and staff say that some of the current barriers to retention are not feeling supported by the college and academia as a whole, the extra — often uncompensated — burden of advocating for students and not feeling a sense of belonging in the community. The plan addresses some of these areas, but critically does not include provisions for others.
Measures to support incoming faculty hires have been put on pause because of the pandemic. The OEIDI has not been able to host social networking opportunities for faculty from historically underrepresented communities (Strategy #10) or DEI workshops in departments expecting new hires (Strategy #8) but are looking forward to bringing those back next year.
The college has been able to expand mentoring opportunities for new and junior faculty from historically underrepresented groups. In addition to regular departmental mentoring, the college has purchased membership with the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (Strategy #9), which provides resources for development, training and mentorship. The college will also be expanding mentorship and development opportunities available through the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity this summer. Moorti hopes that junior faculty will be able to avail themselves of this resource for more support and networking opportunities.
Measures like these have been crucial for retaining current BIPOC faculty despite the struggles they face.
“One of the primary reasons that I stayed at Middlebury … was that I found my community,” Fuentes-George said. “I found people who were supportive and who mentored me, some of whom had tenure, some of whom didn't, some of whom were in my department, some of whom weren't, and it pretty clearly underlined to me how important those kinds of social networks can be.”
Still, these measures are designed primarily to build support for incoming faculty and staff members and do little to address the underlying conditions current faculty members face.
Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric James Chase Sanchez views academia as a whole as a white space within which people of color can struggle to feel welcomed or valued, and Middlebury is no exception. That fact became abundantly clear to Fuentes-George after hearing his colleagues defend the invitation of Charles Murray to campus in 2017. Fuentes-George recalls other faculty members insisting that Murray was not racist, despite his claims that Black people — like Fuentes-George — and Latinos are genetically less intelligent.
In the wake of Murray’s visit, Fuentes-George strongly considered leaving Middlebury.
Both Fuentes-George and Chase Sanchez credit their luck in finding their own small communities at Middlebury as one of the major reasons they have stayed here, something they say can be difficult for many faculty of color. They both discussed how easy it is to feel isolated on a predominantly white campus in a predominantly white area.
Chase Sanchez recalled visiting a restaurant in Bristol with a Black colleague. At one point, he looked up from his plate and idly scanned the room. To his surprise, he realized he was making eye contact with nearly everyone around him. They had been staring at him, and he felt suddenly acutely aware of how much he stood out as a Latino in an overwhelmingly white space.
“There’s a little bit more of that uncomfortable nature of being a minority living within the community that is very, very white,” Chase Sanchez said. “All these variables can just build up pressure.”
Admissions Counselor Maria Del Sol Nava ’18 has also struggled to feel completely welcome in the local community.
“Middlebury has become a home for me because I have now been here for seven years (four as a student and three as a staff member), [but] I am keenly aware that I am a brown woman in a very white town,” she said in an email to The Campus. “There are many times when I don’t feel safe.”
The reaction of other faculty and academia as a whole to the scholarship of BIPOC faculty also make some feel unsupported or valued at Middlebury. BIPOC faculty who do race-based research often see their work devalued in academia, where it is viewed more as activism than empirical inquiry and seen as contributing less to their fields than the development of theory, according to Chase Sanchez.
In the wake of the Jan. 6 capitol riots, Fuentes-George led a class discussion about the racial motivations behind them. He was taken aback when one of his colleagues accused him of engaging in advocacy rather than real scholarship.
He views that interaction as emblematic of “a number of practices, discourses and comments about personal relations and about how departments and institutions function that make it difficult for people of color to feel supported.”
While faculty and staff from historically marginalized communities often do not feel valued or supported by Middlebury as an institution, they contribute significantly to the college — well beyond the scope of their positions. Many shoulder the extra burden of pushing for institutional change and advocating for marginalized students who turn to them for support, labor that is often uncompensated or not rewarded in performance reviews.
“[I feel] a social responsibility for the other first-gen and underrepresented students that I meet and worked with,” Del Sol Nava said in an email to the Campus. “[I take] on additional emotional labor that my white colleagues do not take on, or do not to the same extent.”
Fuentes-George serves on the Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (CDEI) and is also a Posse mentor. He also frequently provides informal mentoring and support for BIPOC students who turn to him for advice in navigating through Middlebury and has worked to spearhead change within his department — labor that is uncompensated.
“These are things that I do feel passionate about doing,” Fuentes-George said. “But the reality is that it takes a lot of time and energy, and it's also emotionally taxing.”
Del Sol Nava hopes that the school works toward being a place where such sacrifices don’t need to be made. “I think we can imagine more for ourselves as an institution so that our BIPOC staff and faculty don’t feel burdened with being the ones who have to create change or be the only ones who support the students who want to make change,” she said.
At the same time that the extra, uncompensated advocacy work drains faculty and staff of color, it’s also a major reason why some stay despite the institutional challenges they face.
“There are a lot of students I didn’t want to leave alone,” said Fuentes-George “I didn’t want them to just be here with one less voice to advocate. There’s few enough for them already, so [I decided] to stay here and advocate for them.”
Supporting BIPOC students also animates Chase Sanchez’s work, especially in light of his own experiences trying to navigate through a predominantly white college as a Latino student.
When Chase Sanchez told his advisor — who was white — that he wanted to become a professor, Chase Sanchez recalls him replying, “Someone like you wanting to be a professor is what makes someone like me laugh.”
Chase Sanchez turned his advisor’s doubt into motivation and worked triply hard to prove that he belonged in academia despite what his advisor thought. But he knows this kind of experience can set other students back or discourage them from pursuing their original goals altogether. This year’s Zeitgeist survey found that BIPOC students reported feeling imposter syndrome — “the experience of doubting one’s abilities and feeling like a fraud” — at a significantly higher rate than their white peers.
“I remember what it feels like to have no one believe in you,” Chase Sanchez said. “I always want to help other people going through that, because it's a very tough space to navigate.”
TRAINING
While the advocacy of BIPOC faculty and staff and the promise to increase institutional diversity are crucial to students from underrepresented groups feeling supported, Del Sol Nava emphasized that the practices of the entire staff and faculty body must shift.
“I think more students at Middlebury would feel more supported if they saw more people who looked like them, but that doesn’t mean that is the only step we take,” she said in an email to The Campus. “It also means teaching our current faculty and staff to learn and unlearn how to make students feel more comfortable.”
Wells hopes that the Inclusive Practitioners Program (Strategy #7) will help usher in the culture change necessary to shift people’s practices and reform the institution in the long run. The program, launched in the fall of 2019, consists of a series of workshops within which faculty and staff “engage in critical conversations and skill building related to diversity equity and inclusion.”
“It is about creating the kind of critical awareness that builds people’s skills and capacity to actually change their practices,” Wells said. “It's about developing your ability to actually change what you're doing and how you're doing it in ways that create more access, and opportunity, and equity and inclusion.”
While many of the workshops have focused specifically on race in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, Wells has begun reincorporating other workshops in the series with topics that range from “Designing Accessible Course Syllabi” to “Knowing and Respecting Who's in the Room: A Guide to Using Gender Pronouns.”
“They were really valuable,” Food and Garden Educator Megan Brakeley, who has attended eight workshops, said. “I think that part of the power of doing this work is the power of it being done in community. There's so much that can happen when we are literally sitting in the same room.”
Partly inspired by the lessons she’s learned in those workshops as well as through the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, Brakeley has worked to make antiracism a cornerstone of her job at the Knoll, including reevaluating the organic farm’s mission statement, learning to identify and address harm as it happens and holding BIPOC affinity gardening hours.
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Mez Baker-Médard has attended 10 Inclusive Practitioners workshops and incorporated the lessons they have learned, including redesigning their course material to include more diverse voices and “bringing a lens of power onto the work” they are doing.
“I think it's opened my eyes to a variety of ways in which I can really work on this in the classroom, and there are just so many ways that I can be thoughtful and more nuanced,” they said. “Engaging in that way, it's kind of an act of appreciation and respect for my students, and myself, as well as my own ignorances.”
The workshops are optional to ensure that those who attend want to be there and are willing to put in the work. But it does mean that participants are self-selecting and the staff and faculty who might benefit the most from this education often never show up, according to Wells.
While the Inclusive Practitioner Program aims to increase awareness and proper practices in and beyond the classroom, the DEI plan does not address the curriculum or broad pedagogical reform at an institution-wide level, steps Associate Professor of Education Studies and CDEI Chair Tara Affolter views as crucial for the next action plan.
In the meantime, the initiatives in the plan are supplemented by the work of the Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (CDEI), a body for faculty governance on DEI issues formed this year. They created a grant program for academic programs and departments to “find structural ways to engage in anti-racist work” and awarded grants to three departments — Luso-Hispanic Studies, Educations Studies and Economics — this year, according to Affolter.
MOVING FORWARD
All those interviewed for this article emphasized that, while they were optimistic about the potential for the DEI strategies and other current initiatives, they are only the start in a long road towards reforming the college.
“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Baker-Médard said. “The landscape of learning and teaching needs to shift as society shifts.”
Despite the uphill and prolonged battle ahead of them, most expressed a feeling of hope for the future of Middlebury.
“I’m definitely hopeful,” Fuentes-George said. “If I thought that there was no hope I probably would have left.”
(05/20/21 9:58am)
“The rich will find their world to be more expensive, inconvenient, uncomfortable, disrupted and colorless; in general, more unpleasant and unpredictable, perhaps greatly so. The poor will die,” Kirk R. Smith, an environmental scientist, said of the coming impacts of climate change on the world.
While some complain about quarantining, self-isolation and staying “one panther apart,” many of us are not as lucky to be able to have those privileges. Within our own community, we are all impacted, but in disproportionate ways. Who can say that the person who just passed by you in the hall isn’t facing food or housing insecurity, exacerbated by the pandemic? Or perhaps the person who sits beside you in class has recently had a family member pass away from Covid-19. Yet the injustices brought on by Covid-19 are disproportionate not only at the small scale (person-to-person), but also clearly on a global scale in the way that some countries have more access to vaccines and tests than other countries. If anything, Covid-19 reveals the structural violence operating in society — violence that also inflicts victims of climate injustices.
Structural violence can be used to explain why some people suffer more than others through acknowledgement of the historical, political and economic contexts that shape global phenomena as pertinent as poverty or epidemiology. According to Paul Farmer, “structural violence is violence exerted systematically — that is, indirectly — by everyone who belongs to a certain social order.”
Public health is one area where structural violence operates most intensely. This is the case today, when many countries are struggling to tackle Covid-19 because of the lack of infrastructure or political issues such as the hoarding of vaccines and patent rights. In the case of India, a new variant of the virus led to soaring death tolls and hospitals faced shortages of oxygen, medicine and space.
Although many news outlets blame the government's lack of capacity to contain the spread of disease, the situation might in fact be caused by structural violence and the deep inequalities it imposes between and within countries. Within the country itself, vast inequalities exist between people, whether between the people in slums and the people living in lavish skyscrapers or between people of different castes. “A decent life was the train that hadn’t hit you, the slumlord you hadn’t offended, the malaria you hadn’t caught,” Abdul Husain, a teenager living in the Annawadi slum of Mumbai, said in the book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers.” Unable to “work from home” or quarantine within the confines of pristine walls, Abdul and others in the dense Annawadi slum must have been some of the people most direly impacted by Covid-19.
India is a periphery in the global system, a country once colonized by Britain. The British used a system of divide and rule to conquer, leaving India with even greater social and economic inequalities following independence. After colonization ended, the Green Revolution brought by the United States wreaked havoc to India as it caused environmental damage, the loss of soil fertility and the loss of farmers’ livelihoods. This led many farmers, unable to repay debts, to commit suicide.
Increasing market liberalization imposed by richer countries has caused increasing economic inequality, including the growth of the Mumbai slum population — those who, according to the government, have been “lifted out of poverty.” Surely, India’s response to the pandemic today cannot be understood without considering these historical, political and economic contexts of India’s past and present — without understanding structural violence.
Similarly, understanding climate injustices requires an explanation that considers structural violence. Covid-19 itself was likely the result of climate change and its associated problems, particularly the expansion of human settlement and the consequences of our intrusion of wildlife. In terms of the response to climate change, the countries which were once colonizers are most equipped to respond to the effects of climate change. Yet this will happen at the expense of the lives of those in the periphery, as money spent on mitigating climate change issues is not spent on issues of poverty, disease, hunger and disasters of poor countries. Within our own community, perhaps the richest and luckiest among us will be able to move to the places in the country that are safe from environmental turmoil in the future, while others must weather through zones of uncertainty — perhaps even watch their own home sink. Is that fair? Where is the justice in being forced to leave your home?
Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia and my birthplace, is predicted to sink in the future. By 2050, 95% of North Jakarta’s land mass will be underwater. This is because of the increasing strain on water sources, which has caused groundwater levels to diminish. The problem of overcrowding is overshadowed by rising sea levels from climate change. The overcrowding of the capital city is inevitable. After all, there is rampant inequality throughout the country in terms of facilities, services and resources offered — yet another form of structural violence. The effect, though, is that Jakarta is polluted, perpetually jammed with traffic, littered, water-stressed and, in the future, at risk of disappearing altogether. Again, I ask, what is the justice in being forced to leave your home? What will happen to the people who have barely anything to start anew? There are many other places like Jakarta in the world — island countries like Kiribati, Tuvalu and Maldives — that will no longer be. Where will their people go? If they become climate refugees, what of the affront to their personhood and dignity, since the land they call their country no longer exists?
Even now, the issue of pollution from transnational companies seeking to minimize their profits and outsource costs hurt people in periphery countries most, where environmental regulations are lax and labor cheap. The consequence is the jeopardization of human health, as those living in polluted, toxic areas have higher risks for various illnesses like cancer.
These types of problems are considered wicked problems, a term used to describe issues that lack clear solutions and cannot be solved through trial and error. Facing these wicked problems, the question that surely arises is what can we, as Middlebury students, do about it? Perhaps the answer is to build more empathy. Though these problems seem insurmountably difficult to solve, we have strength in our ability to feel. It is easy to forget that the injustices inflicted by Covid-19 or climate change are affecting real people with real lives and families. But there are students even within our community who can speak on the disparity between Middlebury and their home (read “The Storm of the COVID Crisis in Brazil” by Zaba Peixoto). How can we build empathy? Practically speaking, students from my environmental anthropology class have suggested several ideas: an annual forum on climate injustice, making climate literacy (or another globally relevant topic) a distribution requirement or even offering full-ride scholarships for climate refugees.
It is not enough for the college to ask students to come up with solutions to deeply systemic issues. Such a method is neoliberal, making these issues seem like a game or another achievement that we as individuals need to choose to accomplish. Systemic issues entail systemic solutions; they also require utmost cooperation and a strong, empathetic community.
Hamia Sophia Fatima is a member of the class of 2024.
(05/20/21 9:57am)
A year ago, on May 14, 2020, Middlebury College faculty members reinstated the Middlebury chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which by then had been dormant for a few years. Born out of budget austerity concerns, the group of faculty and staff are “dedicated to making sure employees have a seat at the table when the institution makes decisions that affect us all.”
Initially, the chapter’s membership consisted of a 60-person email list; now, President of the Middlebury AAUP Laurie Essig, professor of gender, sexuality and feminist studies, estimates that there are over 200 members of the group, consisting of faculty and staff from both the College and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS).
“We as a community need to take care of each other,” Essig said in an interview with the Campus.
Essig synthesized the impetus behind the AAUP’s current work. “When we have staff members, who are risking their lives to be frontline workers, and not earning enough money to eat, that’s a problem. When we have the inability to attract the best and the brightest professors, because our compensation is lower.”
A year of work
The Middlebury chapter of the AAUP’s reinstatement last year coincided with one of the most challenging years in recent memory. Many faculty and staff that The Campus interviewed for this story viewed baseline maintenance of employee pay and benefits at 2019 levels as a success in light of the pandemic burdening the college’s already weak financials.
“I think Middlebury handled the operations/logistics side of things during the pandemic very well. I am grateful for the clear communication around Covid protocols, the ability to work remotely, and the hard work of so many people to keep Middlebury up and running this academic year.” Associate Professor Tara Affolter, a member of the Middlebury AAUP, said in an email to The Campus. “Middlebury's commitment to keep folks employed through the pandemic is important and noteworthy.”
Essig believes the administration’s pandemic commitment to employees was due in part to the AAUP’s public lobbying, such as introducing Sense of the Faculty Motions, submitting op-eds in The Campus and the chapter’s working conditions subgroup thinking through employee’s return to campus.
Nevertheless, as a recent article in the Campus notes, not all staff members are happy about recent changes made in the name of ‘workplace safety’. One custodian interviewed in the article was blunt about the effect of seemingly top-down decision making has had, “We’re all very upset; morale around campus is really low for staff. We just don't feel like we're appreciated. I don't think any of us feel like we've got an opinion that is heard.”
Essig notes that the AAUP is currently working within their five subcommittees: Communications, Representation, A People’s Budget, Alliance Building and Alternative Survey.
Furthermore, the group is heavily involved in the Middlebury Open the Books campaign, which is advocating for the publication of the entirety of the College’s financial records.
“We believe radical fiscal transparency can happen and we think Middlebury could be a leader in it,” Essig said. She said that the campaign is motivated by a desire to know how many employees are earning less than a living wage, how many executives are earning high salaries, what discrepancies exist in pay among staff and other aspects of college finances that affect staff livelihood.
Another central pillar of the AAUP’s ongoing advocacy is the practice of faculty governance, allowing faculty a seat at the table in major financial decision making.
“Many of us serve on committees and do a lot of work behind the scenes to try to move the needle on making Middlebury a more equitable and just place,” Affolter said in an email to the Campus. “Yet, when big decisions (such as the recent financial decisions) are announced, faculty committees are not consulted and Sense of the Faculty motions are ignored.”
A bumpy road
Although the Middlebury AAUP was heavily involved in lobbying for different pandemic safety policies at the College — in June 2020, the Middlebury AAUP’s Working Conditions Subcommittee endorsed a remote fall semester — some wish that their advocacy was more inclusive of staff members as well.
One long-time facilities staff member who wished to remain anonymous believes that the 2020 revitalization of the AAUP could have been inspired by the public staff unionization campaign in the fall of 2019. “It was weird because the talk of the union came and it seemed like we had a lot of support from [faculty]. And I think that might have given them the idea, but they actually went together, and we completely fell apart.”
The staff member noted that at one large meeting in that fall unionization effort, a faculty member stood up and pleaded with administration to take better care of staff.
“Six months later the AAUP came. So you’re like, we put an idea in all these people’s heads,” they said.
“What some staff expressed to me, and it’s all anecdotal, was that last spring, the AAUP was loud, vocal, they helped preserve our checks, with the administration, of course. They were a large voice in dipping into the endowment. And they were making some noise about paying essential workers more,” Tim Parsons, the college’s landscape horticulturist and former President of Staff Council, said. “And then, after the semester was over, it was radio silence, and some staff I talked to felt like, well, where are they now for us? And we never heard from them again until October.”
However, one long-time administrative staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity disagreed with Parsons’ description of AAUP-staff relations, “[the AAUP] is intended to be a faculty organization, but the Middlebury group has welcomed staff membership and has identified staff equity as a priority.”
In an email to the Campus, librarian Brenda Ellis noted that friction between faculty and staff often comes from the budgetary realities defined by the administration.
“There is actually no rift between faculty and staff. In fact faculty are very supportive of higher wages for staff,” she said. “But there’s a limited pie — a limited amount of money the College is willing to spend for employee compensation, so if the College increases faculty salaries to keep up or rise with their competition (as they’ve advocated for), it is going to mean that the staff raise pool won’t increases as much unless the College increases the amount for overall employee compensation.”
Essig acknowledged that the criticisms of the Middlebury AAUP regarding staff representation have merit.
“Here’s the problem: the AAUP was set up for professors of the American Association of University Professors. That’s what it was set up for,” she said. “I 100% agree that we don’t do a good job working for staff because that’s not what we are.”
The AAUP does include staff on every committee, including the Executive Committee. However, according to Essig, they are almost exclusively professional staff and are still far outnumbered by faculty.
Not all staff members even knew that they could join the AAUP.
“I didn’t realize [the AAUP] could also include staff… I thought it was like a different aspect of basically the same thing, a union for faculty, but I didn’t realize staff could also be involved,” said another longtime facilities staff member who wished to remain anonymous.
On May 3, the Middlebury AAUP website was updated with a new introductory section clarifying their mission in regards to including staff members, “We use the AAUP principles of faculty governance to make sure the voices of employees are heard and support our colleagues on staff with any movement toward collective representation they make.”
An approaching horizon
Faculty cannot currently unionize under the National Labor Relations Act due to the landmark 1980 U.S. Supreme Court case National Labor Relations Board vs. Yeshiva University, which ruled that faculty at private universities are managerial employees.
Essig believes that professors should organize anyways.
“I support professors’ attempts to unionize. I mean why not? We can be the first, I don’t see why Middlebury can’t lead,” Essig said, “We don’t have to just follow what everyone else does.”
Until recently, the college’s Senior Leadership Group had refused to even recognize the Middlebury AAUP’s existence. After repeated requests from the AAUP over the last year President Laurie Patton agreed to meet with members of the AAUP budget subcommittee on April 16 regarding their concerns over the Board of Trustees’ January meeting in which the Board capped endowment draw to 5% and raised student tuition and fees by 2.5%.
Such a hardline stance by the Board on the endowment has many concerned about the already prevalent issues of pay compression and undercompensation that affect many employees. At that same April 16 faculty meeting, a Sense of the Faculty motion drafted by the AAUP expressing discontent with the Board’s recent budgetary decisions passed with 87% of faculty in support.
“The administration’s attitude seems to be that if staff don’t like it, they can ‘vote with their feet.’ We have actually seen a lot more of that in recent years. Staff leave the college for less stressful jobs,” said the administrative staff member in an email to the Campus. “This used to be a workplace where people built lifelong careers and was known locally as the place to work. Not so much anymore, when wages are low and expectations are very high.”
There are currently 37 unfilled positions on the Middlebury College job board. The college is struggling to fill dining and facilities positions. In 2019, due to a shortage of custodians, the College hired independent contractors to clean some small houses on campus.
In response to advocacy for higher staff wages in late 2019, in early 2020 the College raised its minimum wage to $14.00 an hour. But this increase had broader repercussions of pay compression, as longtime staff members suddenly found themselves making little more than their newcomer peers. Even still, many employees are still earning below a living wage in Vermont.
An op-ed that Parsons wrote in March detailed how after working at Middlebury for 21 years — and while also working a second job — one staff member has to regularly go to the local food bank to feed their family.
“I know I’m not going to get rich doing what I’m doing,” said the second facilities employee, “It’d be nice to not have to worry about, ‘am I going to have enough money to put gas in my vehicle so I can get to work?’ That’d be nice.”
With the end of the pandemic in sight, many staff want to return to the conversation about low pay at the college. “It’s going to take the work of faculty, staff and administration to say, ‘This is our priority, this is what we want to spend money on,”’ said Parsons.
“They’re in the middle of trying to figure out whether or not we’re going to get a percentage raise July 1,” said the second facilities employee. “So that’s a lot of ‘hurry up and wait’ right now, and whether or not we’re going to have to storm the castle, you know?”
The first facilities employee provided a different characterization. “I think if we don’t get a raise in July, there’s going to be a lot of people who are really, really upset.”
Editor’s Note: The staff members interviewed in this piece were granted anonymity because of their fears of retribution from staff or management.
A previous version of this article included a quote that contained a noted grammatical mistake. The error has been corrected in the original source and in this article.
(05/20/21 9:56am)
Men’s track and field ended their season on a high note as they traveled to Williams College this weekend, competing against several colleges including Tufts, Amherst and Williams.
While the event wasn’t scored, it didn’t stop Middlebury from showing out: Quinlan McGaugh ’22 placed second in the 1500-meter with a time of 3 minutes, 57.21 seconds, while Aaron Tobias ’24 took the silver in the 100 with a time of 11.03.
Nothing stopped Middlebury in the throwing events either, as Nathaniel Klein ’21 snatched first in both the hammer throw (46.01 meters) and shot put (13.93 meters). James Caprio ’21 also won the discus with an impressive throw of 42.58 meters.
“I feel incredibly thankful to the coaches and administration who worked hard to make it happen,” Klein stated. “I am sad to leave but I had a wonderful time competing for Midd, and I know our team has a bright future.”
Some athletes will get the chance to compete a final time in the Tufts Last-Chance Meet at Tufts University today, May 20, yet most will be finished and looking onward toward summer.
While there was no NESCAC Championship meet this season, several Panthers earned All-NESCAC honors. Nadji Ngbokoli ’24, Matthew Durst ’21, Finn Warner ’24, and Tobias each earned this honor with their 43.54-second mark in the 4x100, while Arden Coleman ‘21 also took home the distinction with a 49.72 second 400.
Klein and Zack Seib ’21 were also tabbed All-NESCAC athletes, the second time each thrower has earned the honor.
(05/20/21 3:16am)
This fourth section of the Plan includes eight initiatives, which are designed to address barriers to accessibility in the built environment, academic settings and technology or online systems. Though none of the strategies are slated for completion in 2021, work on many of them has already begun. And, as Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández explained, some of the strategies will never truly reach completion since they introduce what he hopes will be ongoing principles and processes regarding accessibility.
“The whole action plan is about removing barriers,” Fernández said. “A student shouldn’t have to go through a lot more steps and barriers to get the same education as someone else.”
Physical accessibility
The physical aspects of Middlebury — its sprawling 350-acre campus, rolling hills and historical buildings — can prove challenging for some students with physical disabilities to navigate.
Several initiatives in the plan are aimed at identifying and addressing accessibility issues in the physical campus environment. The principles proposed in Strategy #7 — which introduce more inclusive construction and renovation protocol — have already been implemented to some degree in many of the college’s most recent construction projects, according to Fernández.
In 2016, the college formed the Advisory Group on Disability, Access and Inclusion (AGDAI) — a committee of faculty, staff and students formed after conflict regarding the construction of the Ridgeline Suites, some of which are not accessible up to the third floor. AGDAI is one of the responsible units listed for a number of the Accessibility section initiatives, including Strategy #7.
Fernández, who sits as co-chair of the body along with Professor of American Studies Susan Burch, said part of the group’s responsibility is to assess accessibility issues in the built environment. The group has advocated for college building projects to incorporate universal design, the practice of making a space accessible to all beyond Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance. AGDAI called for universal design in the renovations of Warner Hall, which the Board of Trustees reapproved this January, and Munroe Hall, which underwent renovations last academic year.
But, despite the push for universal design, not every entrance in Munroe Hall is accessible for all — the west entrance of the building has a step up to the door. AGDAI was not involved in the early part of the planning process for the Munroe renovation, Fernández explained.
“We were able to make some tweaks but maybe didn’t get everything that we had hoped,” he said.
Going forward, however, the college does plan to fully incorporate universal design. This fall, Middlebury is planning to break ground on a new dorm on the north end of Battell Beach and has hired a consultant who specializes in universal design to advise the process, according to Fernández. Dana Auditorium, which is scheduled to be renovated beginning in August, will also incorporate universal design, according to a February recap of the January Board of Trustees meeting.
Work on the other three strategies that address issues of accessibility in the built environment — a publicly available campus map with detailed accessibility information, a timeline for tackling barriers and a platform for reporting barriers — has not begun.
Regarding the timeline for addressing barriers, Fernández said that Facilities Services asked that they reconsider the strategy given the immense amount of time and resources it would require to produce. Instead Facilities proposed a project-based model. Mike Moser, director of Facilities Services and member of AGDAI, did not respond to interview requests for this article.
Fernández said he expects the timeline for the campus map, currently 2021–22, will need to be pushed back. As for the system for reporting accessibility barriers, he said they are still ironing out the details for how reports would be addressed.
Inclusive technology and web-based electronic systems
Work has already begun on the third and fourth strategies, which address accessibility in academic technology and online systems. The pandemic sped up the college’s plans to make changes to academic and classroom technology, according to Fernández. Some software and technology for remote study such as Zoom has already been purchased and implemented to facilitate education during the pandemic. Fernández also mentioned the possibility of rewiring classrooms such that they include a microphone or speakers.
Information Technology Services is currently developing a roadmap and public education materials to explain changes to Middlebury’s web-based electronic systems, which they expect will be completed by the fall.
The college is currently engaged in a review of Information and Communication Technology through the Paciello Group, a web accessibility consulting group.
“In the short term (this fiscal year) they will be helping us understand our current position, conducting a gap analysis, and drafting a roadmap which will include policy recommendations,” Fernández said. “Part of this project will also be the creation of a public information hub for technology accessibility, training, and a communication plan.”
Exam scheduling and extra time
Work on the second initiative in the accessibility section, which is designed to address difficulties in scheduling exams with extra time or make-up exams, is scheduled to occur from 2021–22.
Students have noted that professors sometimes have the ability to deny certain accommodations. In an earlier article, Isaac Byrne ’21, who runs the Divergent Learners Collective (DLC), said that a member of the DLC was denied accommodations due to old paperwork. For some kinds of accommodations, it is up to professors to decide whether or not to comply with them.
Isabel Linhares ’22, a Social Entrepreneurship Fellow working on a project about accessibility in STEM education, said that the Disability Resource Center makes some of the accommodations included in students’ Letters of Accommodation optional, leaving them up to each professor’s discretion.
“I've had conversations with the Disability Resource Center about why they're making certain aspects in accessibility optional because then that treats it as a favor and not a human right,” Linhares said.
Linhares noted that ADA requires that reasonable accommodations be provided to disabled students, leaving the definition of “reasonable” up to individual institutions and their members.
The DRC did not respond to interview questions by publication time.
Resources and workshops
According to the plan, Director of Education for Equity and Inclusion Renee Wells will design and offer workshops around how to organize accessible events beginning next year. However, these workshops have already begun, according to Fernández, and other offices such as the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Research (CTLR) and Digital Learning & Inquiry (DLINQ) have also started work in this area.
Wells runs the Inclusive Practitioners Program, which provides workshops for faculty and staff.
“About 75% of what I do is people asking me specifically to do things with and for them,” she said. “And then the other 25% is the Inclusive Practitioners Program, which I set up and offer workshops for faculty and staff all the time.”
In April and May, the program offered workshops that addressed best practices for administering exams and the use of a variety of tools to assess student learning outcomes.
Maintaining momentum
Much of what the college’s plan addresses are concrete solutions to specific issues that students and employees face during their time at Middlebury. But what some are looking for is a broader cultural shift in the way disability is perceived and treated. Linhares said she feels that some of the people with the ability to implement change still view disability through the lens of the medical model rather than the social model — which proposes that disability occurs due to the interaction between individuals and their environment.
Linhares noted that tangible changes are still immediately necessary, but worries that there is not enough emphasis on changing the way people perceive disability, and that momentum will fizzle out without a deeper understanding of and sense of responsibility for solving systemic and structural accessibility issues.
“At some point you’re going to have to start thinking not even, ‘outside the box,’ but, ‘get rid of the box altogether,’” Linhares said. “You’re going to have to dig up the foundations and build something entirely new because the way that higher education as a whole was designed — it was not designed with disabled students in mind.”
(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.
