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Review: Men's Baseball

Men’s baseball (2–6) concluded its regular season this past weekend, splitting a double-header with division leader Amherst College (8–3). Sitting at the bottom of the NESCAC West Division, Middlebury will miss out on the playoffs, with only the top team from each division — Amherst and Tufts (9-2) — playing in a single three-game series to determine the league champion.  In the first match, the Panthers played a competitive game but fell short, losing 8–5. Middlebury jumped out to a quick two-run lead in the first inning, capped by a solo home run from Lucas Cai ’24. Henry Gustavson ’24 started on the mound for Middlebury and put in a solid effort, striking out three and giving up four runs. He would leave the game after the fourth inning with the Panthers down 3–4.    Amherst tallied two runs in each of the next two innings to give the Mammoths a five-run lead going into the last inning. Middlebury was able to put the game in striking distance with RBI singles from Baker Angstman ’24 and Jack Torpey ’24. But with the tying run at the plate, Evan Hunter ’24 could not quite repeat his heroics from the week before, grounding out to the shortstop to end the game.  The Panthers continued their resilient play in the second game, completing the comeback this time to finish the season with a win. Andrew Gatland ’23 was on the mound for Middlebury and delivered his best performance of the season, giving up just one run off of one hit and two walks while striking out two. He attributed his good outing to the stellar defensive play of his teammates.  “I felt like I pitched well and that my pitches were working well, but I have to give a lot of credit to the defense,” Gatland said. “They were making all the outs for me and it felt like we really put everything together in this game.” Cai would give the Panthers the lead with an RBI single in the following inning before Amherts scored three runs in the bottom of the sixth, giving the Mammoths a 4–2 lead going into the final inning.  But the Panthers fought back yet again. Andrew Ashley ’24 delivered a sufficient RBI groundout, leaving a runner on third with only one out. Middlebury came down to its final out, but a timely error by the Amherst right fielder saved the game, tying it at four apiece.  After a quick 1-2-3 inning in the bottom of the seventh, a walk and a sacrifice bunt in the top of the eighth put a runner in scoring position for Sammy Smith ’24 who delivered with the RBI single that would give the Panthers the lead.  “I took it as an opportunity to see how relaxed I could be in a situation like that,” Smith said when asked about his approach to the at-bat. “I just let all the work I put in the offseason come into play then and not really think about the situation.”  Charlie Kutz ’24 was nearly perfect in relief for the Panthers, striking out four and giving up only one hit in just over two full innings of relief. He picked up the win and earned the save.

Review: Men’s golf

Men’s golf staged a come-from-behind win this weekend to earn the program’s ninth NESCAC title and its first since 2016. Entering the weekend behind both Tufts and Trinity on points, the Panthers clawed their way back to first with an impressive score of 304 on the day, leaving the Jumbos and Bantams in their wake.  Captain Jordan Bessalel ’21 and Hogan Beazley ’23 led the team in the second round, each scoring 75s and tying for fourth place individually. Captain John Mikus ’21 followed close behind in ninth with a 76, while Colin McCaigue ’24 notched a 78 and Porter Bowman ’21.5 scored an 83. Trinity College finished three strokes back on the day, with Tufts and Hamilton rounding out the top four. The Panthers, scoring a combined score of 607, ultimately edged out Trinity and Tufts by a single stroke.  Men’s golf has now won eight NESCAC titles since the turn of the century, making them the most successful team in the division over that period. The team concludes their successful season at the Ralph Myhre Golf Course on Saturday, May 8, with the Middlebury Spring Invitational. Editor’s Note: Porter Bowman ’21.5 is the senior opinion editor for The Campus. 

Giants Have Us In Their Books: Spring’s first faculty theater performance brings stories of change and growth

Think back to when you were younger, to a time when your creativity and imagination transported you into alternate worlds and transformed you into different versions of yourself. The childlike sense of wonder may be long gone, but fairytale daydreams have the lasting power to make difficult moments seem less daunting — even if just for a moment. The Middlebury College Department of Theatre’s production of “Giants Have Us in Their Books,” which ran from April 16 to April 18 both in person and online, transported its audience back to the fairytale stories of their childhood, while weaving in some of the harder things to deal with.  The play is a collection of short works written by two-time Obie Award winner José Rivera, the first Puerto Rican screenwriter to be nominated for an Oscar.  Rivera referred to the plays that comprise Act 1 as “the naïve plays,” stories which deliver realistic situations, like the trials of puberty and lying, with an air of lighthearted, fairytale-like wonder. Act 2 was a more sobering, introspective collection of short plays written by Rivera a decade later in 2017, and included timely topics like homelessness, grief and the effects of the  New York State’s 2011 Marriage Equality Law.  Associate Professor of Theatre and the department’s chair, Alex Draper, directed the performance.  “When it became clear that we were going to attempt to resume in-person performing this spring, Olga Sanchez Saltveit, who is directing our upcoming production of Branden Jacobs Jenkins’ “Everybody,” and I both began looking for plays that would honor our commitment to feature more underrepresented voices on our stages while also taking into account the considerable Covid-19 restrictions and their impact on how we can safely rehearse and perform” Draper said.  The faculty, cast and crew worked on “Giants Have Us in Their Books” through the difficulties that the pandemic has created for artists.  “[I] selected a group of plays that fit the talents of the cast, were joyous and slightly other-worldly, but that also spoke to issues that echoed beyond our immediate everyday lives,” Draper said. He explained that the plays were written in such a way that they could be rehearsed mostly in groups of two, and could be performed without actors overcrowding backstage areas and dressing rooms.  The curtain opened on a short scene called “Flowers.”  Lulu (Sara Massey ’23), a 12-year-old girl, begins the play with what looks like a pimple on her face, but the bump slowly grows into a tapestry of leaves and flowers all over her face and body: a metaphor for how, through puberty we are brought from adolescence to adulthood and taken over in ways we cannot control. “When it’s over you’re completely different, unrecognizable,” Massey said in her performance. Mostly though, we grow into better versions of ourselves with time, much like seeds transition to buds, which grow to become leaves. A short play, called "The Tiger in Central Park” closed out Act 1. This urbanized myth and parable for AIDS featured the supposed existence of a mythical beast: a human-by-day, tiger-by-night, reported to be strolling around Central Park. “[‘The Tiger in Central Park’] aimed to tackle sexuality and death, and establish a relationship between these two major aspects of human existence,” cast member Beck Barsanti ’23.5 said. “In my interpretation, sexuality and death were things that every character tried to control without fully understanding the implications of either one.” After the intermission, Act 2 opened on “Charlotte,” a scene set in a picturesque apartment. A homeless woman (Courtney Wright ’21.5 ) who does not want to be pitied, is taken in by a caring individual, and we see a verbal tug-of-war between the two. At last, the host, Felix (Masud Tyree Lewis ’22), expresses he had only hoped for Charlotte’s gratitude after he had helped her out of the rainy night, leaving the audience to wonder about the nature and sincerity of altruism.  The show concluded with “Lizzy,” a tense meal where two siblings address the passing of their mother, and “Paola and Andrea at the Altar of Words,” a reaction to the legalization of same sex marriage in New York State in 2011, shown through wedding vows.  “It was a joy to be able to share the plays with both live and virtual audiences,” Draper said of the performance. Looking ahead, he said,  “We have a busy spring lined up, with three of our majors presenting productions as their senior independent theses, and we close the season with Olga Sanchez Saltveit’s production of Everybody in and around Wright Theatre.”

Middlebury students have spent only a fraction of the last year on campus compared to pre-Covid semesters. They finished the spring 2020 semester online, returned to an abbreviated fall term or took classes remotely, and spent J-Term off-campus. Yet the time spent at Middlebury was spent in Middlebury — students developed a new awareness of the borders of Addison County as travel restrictions kept students near campus and isolated from the rest of the world. Life on campus changed too, with everything from social life to exercise altered by a long and evolving list of rules meant to keep Covid-19 prevalence in the community low. The pandemic transformed college life, and alongside it, students’ relationships with Middlebury. This year, we asked students whether Middlebury felt like home and how the ways they thought about Middlebury have changed since the beginning of the pandemic. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Almost 90% of students said Middlebury at least sometimes feels like home, but there were significant disparities between how white students and students of color viewed Middlebury. While one in two white students said Middlebury felt like home, the same was true for only one in three Hispanic or Latino students, one in three Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander students, and one in five Black students. Black students said Middlebury did not feel like home more than twice as often as white students. Seniors felt far more at home at Middlebury than any other class year, with nearly 60% saying it was home and another 33% saying it was sometimes home. On the other side of the spectrum, first years were a notable standout — only 30% said Middlebury was home, while just over 50% said it sometimes was. Legacy also made a difference in whether students felt at home at Middlebury. Students with two parents who went to Middlebury said they felt at home almost 25 percentage points more than students who had no parents attend Middlebury. How has the way you think about Middlebury changed in the last year? Respondents gave a mix of responses on how their thinking about Middlebury has changed, ranging from “I love it even more than I did before I got here,” to “f*** this school.” Students wrote about how being sent away from Middlebury and later confined to Addison County changed their attachment to the college. Several people referenced stability: “After the school kicked us off campus last year, I’ve felt nervous. I don’t feel like I have a secure home here,” one said. Another wrote that being on campus made them realize “how important having friends nearby and a stable working environment are.” Some mentioned finding new appreciation for the natural beauty of Middlebury, while others spoke about feeling trapped. One student said, “It’s a bit less like home when you’re stuck here and can’t leave.” Connection came up in dozens of responses. Some students wrote about building stronger relationships with their “close contacts,” and how being more intentional with their time helped forge deeper connections to friends. Remote learners wrote about feeling disconnected from the college and from friends, having not been on campus in over a year. Many students both on and off campus wrote about feeling isolated from the community at large. “I just feel less connected to the students here because I never leave my section of campus,” one said. Seniors were especially keen to finish the year. Responses included, “I cannot wait to get out of here, which is something I have not felt to this degree in previous years.”; “I will be glad to be gone.”; “I no longer want to be a student at Middlebury and feel no connection to the school or campus.”and “It won’t be my home forever. It will move on and I will move on.” Several people spoke about Middlebury as only a stepping stone in their life — a fleeting, transitory moment on their way to other goals. Many students spoke about changing perspectives, from lowering expectations for college during Covid-19 to becoming more aware of inequities throughout the pandemic. Rose-colored glasses came up often, as students described losing the idealistic view they had of Middlebury in their first year. Of course, students also spoke about home. “Often when you think about whether you like your college, you think about it as a school, in comparison to other schools,” one student said. “Now I’m thinking of it as a home, in comparison to other homes, and realizing I may never have a home like this again.”

Vermont Coffee Company sold to Stonewall Kitchen

Vermont Coffee Company, supplier of coffee to the college, is being sold to Stonewall Kitchen, a large specialty-food company based in Maine. It currently operates a cafe in downtown Middlebury and has product distributors throughout the Northeast.  Middlebury resident Paul Ralston established the coffee company in 2001. He has been looking to sell Vermont Coffee Company for the past three years and has been committed to putting together a  succession team to manage the company before he fully retires.  Ralston plans to stay with the company throughout the company’s adjustment to the new management. Over the past year and a half, he has trained and integrated two senior management hires into Vermont Coffee Company to ensure he will be leaving the business in good hands.  Stonewall Kitchen leadership cited Vermont Coffee Company’s prioritization of sustainable business practices over the past few years as one of the reasons behind its acquisition. In April 2018, Vermont Coffee Company became the first roaster in the United States to exclusively use renewable biogas as its energy source to roast its coffee. “The Vermont Coffee Company products are sustainably sourced, 100% organic and — most importantly — make a delicious cup of coffee. We believe these deeply rooted values and commitment to quality make Vermont Coffee Company the perfect addition to our family,” said Stonewall CEO John Stiker in an interview with the Addison Independent.  Ralston is hopeful that selling to Stonewall Kitchen will benefit the Middlebury community as well as the town’s economy. “We’re going to be busy and growing; there’s no question about it. And we’re going to be hiring,” Ralston said. Stonewall plans on opening a new, larger cafe in downtown Middlebury.  As a leader in the world of organic coffee roasting with a large potential to grow in popularity over the next decade, Vermont Coffee Company garnered a number of offers in addition to Stonewall’s, according to Ralston. However, the sale to Stonewall was an easy decision. “Vermont Coffee Company is going to have access to a lot more resources and a much bigger distribution network,” Ralston said to the Addison Independent.  The current Vermont Coffee Company cafe in downtown Middlebury is temporarily closed. Ralston’s primary role for the upcoming months is to develop the new cafe in a location yet to be determined, which he is hopeful will open in the fall of 2021. 

Midd administration: Give seniors an acceptable goodbye

Dear Middlebury College Administration, This year has been marked by tragedy, sacrifice and loss for the Middlebury community. We seniors are also mourning the loss of the normal, triumphant ending to our time here, which we and our families have anticipated for the last four years. Senior week, baccalaureate and graduation typically offer students a meaningful way to celebrate their accomplishments and say goodbye to their Middlebury community. We understand that graduation will look different this year, and we are grateful that Middlebury is pursuing an in-person ceremony. However, recent decisions about the nature of graduation and our final days on campus — and the poor communication about these decisions — left many of us feeling disappointed, frustrated and hurt.  Neither families nor our Feb ’21.5 classmates will be allowed to attend commencement as they typically do. In addition to cancelling senior week, Middlebury recently announced that graduation would be moved forward to 2 p.m. on May 29; seniors will only have until 11 p.m. that same day to leave campus.  We recently conducted an informal social media survey of some of our senior and senior Feb classmates to gauge how they are feeling about the commencement plans and recent changes. While the 64 responses gathered do not represent the perspectives of the entire graduating class, we hope to voice some of our peers’ concerns about graduation plans and open communication with the administration to address them. We ask the administration to extend the move-out date to at least Sunday May 30, improve communication with the senior class about recent changes, and welcome the senior Febs to attend the ceremony. Please consider signing our petition here if you agree.  Students will only have one day after finishing final exams to pack, graduate and say goodbye to friends.  The original graduation plan — with commencement and move-out on Sunday, May 30 — allowed students one day after finals (which end on Friday, May 28) to be with their classmates without worrying about schoolwork. This new, rushed timeline means that students’ final days and goodbyes will be characterized not by celebration and joy, but by stress and sleep deprivation.  As one student wrote in the survey, “eliminating any sort of time off between finals and commencement has the potential to cause much more harm than benefit because this creates a lot of stress for students who want to focus on doing well on their finals as well as say goodbye to friends ... and pack up all their belongings too. I don't feel as though the college is looking out for seniors' mental health during this time.”  Another student wrote, “With finals right before graduation, it will not feel like a celebration because there is zero time to digest and reflect (however briefly) on my Middlebury experience, or say goodbye to friends here.”  Rather than depriving seniors of this final opportunity to celebrate with friends without the logistical stress of packing and schoolwork, we ask that the administration extend the move-out date to at least Sunday, May 30.  The change in move-out date from the 30th to the 29th is problematic for many students’ travel plans.   As one of our peers wrote, “My mother's saying that I might have to miss commencement, as there are no flights leaving that day at a time that would allow me to both assist commencement and get off campus that same day.” Other students are facing non-refundable or changeable plane tickets or will be forced to get a hotel room Saturday night.  Another student noted, “It’s incredibly unsafe to ask people to drive home the night of graduation. I have a 12-hour drive and likely will stay up the night before to pack.”  While we understand that students typically leave the day of graduation, this is usually after having days of break to get packed and say goodbye.  Many families face logistical challenges to watching the virtual ceremony, as they must travel to pick up their students on the same day. One student wrote: “Both myself and my parents are really upset that the move-out date has not at least been extended to the day after graduation. Given the new timing, my mom will have to watch graduation from a hotel room after driving up to Midd.” Another student reported that their family will miss the entire ceremony while in transit. Furthermore, for parents who must travel longer distances, picking up students on Saturday versus Sunday or Memorial Day means they are more likely to have to miss work.  The date change and compressed timeline disproportionately impact less-privileged students and families. The FAQ page suggests that families “think about staying closer to campus the night before graduation,” and states that individuals must reschedule flights based on the new date. Lower income students and families will feel the financial impact of paying for hotel rooms, purchasing new flights and taking off work more harshly.  Additionally, for first-generation students’ families — for whom graduation may be particularly meaningful — the losses of attending an in-person ceremony or comfortably watching a remote ceremony may be espeically impactful. One student wrote, “This is a huge moment for some families especially for first-gen students, making small changes to allow families to recognize this moment is literally the least you could do.”  Also, as one student pointed out: “The lack of senior week is going to create incredible inequality because wealthy students will rent Airbnbs the week after graduation and some students won’t be able to do that financially.” Forcing students to vacate campus immediately after finals limits celebrations to those who can pay for private accommodations.  Rushing students off campus redistributes risk to less structured contexts, rather than reducing it.  Making students leave campus so quickly will not prevent them from gathering, but will simply move gatherings earlier or off-campus. One student wrote: “I understand their concern about large gatherings on campus, but do they really think moving it one day soon[er] changes anything? They are essentially just pushing off any partying/mass gatherings into the Middlebury community where they have no control.”  Instead of relocating these celebrations to the broader community, Middlebury should utilize the capacity of the institution to facilitate safe modes of celebration.  The exclusion of Febs is deeply upsetting to many while providing little-to-no benefit in terms of safety.  As one student wrote, Febs “were admitted to Middlebury as members of the class of 2021 and should be treated as such.” Senior Febs are typically considered part of the senior class.  These restrictions are particularly distressing to seniors who Febbed themselves due to the pandemic. One student shared: "I’m a Reg who is now a Feb and by these rules, I can’t see my best friends graduate—the very people I was supposed to walk with at graduation." Risk of outdoor transmission is low, so Feb attendance is not likely to increase risk of Covid-19 spread. Since they will already be on campus, excluding Febs feels both unnecessary and harsh. Communication regarding recent commencement changes has been unclear and insufficient.  The change in move-out date was not clearly communicated, and the student body has not had the chance to give feedback on or otherwise contribute to commencement planning. Many students have felt unheard in this process. One student noted: “When the school tells us it’s trying its best to make this a time we still can feel celebrated, it’s hard to believe them when they haven’t asked us how they can best do that.” Despite the possibility that conditions may improve, the college has stated that it will not consider changing plans in the future.  We are encouraged by vaccination rates, and the fact that Vermont’s gathering restrictions are due to relax considerably over the next several weeks. Furthermore, several other NESCAC schools plan to provide more traditional ceremonies; Bates, Bowdoin, Williams and Trinity, for example, are allowing graduating students up to two guests at their Commencement ceremonies. UVM will also be allowing two fully-vaccinated guests per student. With this in mind, we are frustrated by the college's unwillingness to remain flexible in light of changing conditions. While safety is paramount, we ask that the administration embrace a more optimistic plan for commencement that includes Febs and a delayed departure, while preparing to adjust to a more restrictive model only if conditions were to change.  Students have demonstrated their commitment to community wellbeing; the commencement plan feels disconnected from our current context.  Over this past school year, Middlebury students have consistently demonstrated a commitment to public health and safety. The decision to rush students off campus demonstrates a lack of trust in our ability and willingness to gather and celebrate safely.  As one student wrote, “Seniors have spent all year ... making sure that this year was safe and successful. The school owes seniors the same amount of care and respect.” After all of our sacrifice, the lack of trust seems callous.  Wrote another student, “We have proven time and time again that we are able to spend time on campus without causing a mass-outbreak. Be reasonable, let alone kind, and give us a few days to breathe (and pack) between exams and graduation. If this was your kid, you would do your absolute best to provide that.”  In conclusion We have collected our peers’ responses and encourage you to read them. We have also created a petition outlining some of the changes we believe should be enacted, where we encourage students and families to share their thoughts and sign if they agree.  Ultimately, we recognize that the college cannot control the pandemic, and we respect the administration’s right to respond to new conditions as they arise. However, we ask the administration to grant us more time to depart campus, allow Febs to celebrate alongside us, and communicate commencement plans and the reasoning behind them with clarity in order to facilitate a meaningful experience in our final days on campus. We ask that you work with your senior class to promote a positive graduation experience in a year that has already been marked by so much loss.  Editor’s Note: Hannah Bensen is the senior data editor and an editor at large.  Kayla Lichtman and Hannah Bensen are members of the class of 2021. Grace Metzler and Tia Pogue are members of the class of 2021.5.

Students struggle to keep afloat as isolation, workload and grief compound

Students have struggled to stay afloat during a year rife with uncertainty, grief and isolation. Counseling Services has seen a marked increase in students showing signs of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts on intake forms this year, according to Associate Director of Clinical Operations Ben Gooch. And for many students, the pandemic’s toll on mental health is only increasing, with stressors emerging from every corner of student life. Living in a pandemic Many students are grappling with existential questions about what it means to live through a global tragedy of this scale, according to Gooch.  Over the last year, students, along with the rest of the world, have watched Covid-19 deaths rise nationally and internationally and witnessed suffering on a massive scale. Many students come from cities and viral hotspots like Los Angeles and New York City, where they have witnessed the devastation of Covid-19 ripping through their communities. Many students are also grappling with the personal grief of losing loved ones. Isaac Byrne ’21 lost both of his grandmothers just before the start of the spring semester. One of their funerals fell within the two-week pre-arrival quarantine window, and Byrne had to negotiate with the college for approval to attend.  Soon after Byrne arrived in Middlebury, his uncle also passed away. As classes ramped up and Byrne’s work as a club leader began in earnest, he had to attend the funeral over Zoom. He watched his family’s grief and his mother’s pain through a screen, unable to be with them as support, then immediately had to transition to doing his homework and running a club meeting. While students deal with the profound personal and existential grief, they are struggling to keep up with the rigorous course load of a college semester.  “Students are coming back here and asked to be totally normal students who can perform 100% just like they would at any time with no recognition of the trauma and everything that's going on,” Ciara Carlson-Healy ’22 said.  No new normal Rather than becoming accustomed to the “new normal,” many students are experiencing worsening stress and mental anguish as the pandemic stretches on.   “The one thing that we know about stress and the effects of stress is that it's additive,” Senior Student Life Dean Jennifer Sellers said. “Even if [the pandemic] doesn't directly influence someone, that still adds an element of stress. If you're compounding these things, either the direct effects or just the overarching, it just adds, and then you add on the real stressors of school and finals and things like that. It's just a lot on people's shoulders.” For Carlson-Healy, the campus seemed to be in a perpetual “state of crisis” during the fall semester. With Covid-19 and its impact in the forefront of everyone’s mind, Carlson-Healy felt that a culture of empathy helped to alleviate some of the pandemic stress. She feels that has been lost this semester. “You can't remain in crisis for that long because you're just exhausted,” she said. “We've tried to create this new normal, but in that, I think that we have lost our discussion of how incredibly hard it is to exist in this new normal. Because even though it's familiar now, social isolation is only building up and causing more and more problems over time.”  While students in a pre-pandemic semester could turn to social activities to replenish their mental energy and let loose, the social isolation only compounds the standard stressors of a semester with little relief, according to SGA Co-Director of Health and Wellness Eloise Berdahl-Baldwin ’21.5. In years past, the number of students seeking counseling drops in the run-up to spring and Thanksgiving breaks as students anticipate the relief of time off at home with family. With an abbreviated break and no chance to leave campus, the number of students seeking counseling this spring has instead risen steadily throughout the semester, according to Gooch. Along with heightened levels of isolation, students seeking counseling are reporting shortened attention spans and an inability to focus, as well as getting “stuck in their thoughts” and in spirals of negative self-talk, according to Gooch. Academic stress These issues are also impacting students’ abilities to perform academically. Carlson-Healy said she dropped one of her classes this semester because she was feeling overwhelmed. But, even with three classes, she still struggles to keep up with her ever-growing workload and the stress of this semester, an experience she feels is widespread among students. Carlson-Healy also noticed that her professors were no longer checking in with her and her peers at the beginning of class, and both workload and course expectations seemed to return to pre-pandemic levels.  In light of students raising concerns, the Faculty Council and Educational Affairs Committee sent an email to all faculty members on April 7 urging them to adjust their teaching strategies to alleviate some of the pressure on students. The email encouraged professors to lighten reading loads, reduce the total number of assignments and exercise flexibility in their deadlines and grading, among other measures.  “We want to acknowledge that both students and faculty are also struggling,” the email said. “Some [students] feel overwhelmed because they believe that faculty have returned to a normal workload this semester despite the ongoing pandemic... While our teaching and learning might feel a bit more normal this semester, they still aren’t.” Counseling services and MiddTelehealth Counseling Services saw more than one in every six eligible students (17%) during the fall semester, according to Associate Director of Clinical Operations Ben Gooch. Based on data from Gooch, The Campus calculated that Counseling has already met with about 14% of students living on campus or in Vermont this semester, with an average of just under five sessions per student. Appointments conducted over MiddTelehealth were not included in these calculations. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var e in a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-"+e)||document.querySelector("iframe[src*='"+e+"']");t&&(t.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][e]+"px")}}))}(); Compared to last year, the data shows a dip in demand for counseling, which Gooch attributes to the difference in on-campus population. Many of the students who struggled the most with mental health before the pandemic and most frequently utilized the counseling services chose not to return to campus, taking semesters off or studying remotely instead.  Counseling Services are also only available to students in the state of Vermont. Remote students studying elsewhere in the United States have access to the online health platform MiddTelehealth for counseling, the statistics for which are not included in the above graphic.  Finding a lifeline Gooch encouraged students struggling with mental health to seek counseling if it feels right for them. Students on campus or in Vermont can schedule a Zoom consultation with Counseling Services, with options for regularly scheduled visits or more immediate sessions. Students throughout the rest of the United States can schedule sessions through MiddTelehealth, which offers the same two options. The Health and Wellness Education Center also offers programming for cultivating good mental health practices. The programs seek to develop students’ skills in coping, self-advocacy and help-seeking; foster a sense of belonging; reduce the stigma around mental illness; and increase awareness of available mental health resources, Assistant Director for Health and Wellness Education Maddie Hope said in an email to The Campus.

Students quarantined for Covid-19 violations regardless of evidence of exposure

Middlebury students have become accustomed to quarantining when they have been exposed to Covid-19 or as a preemptive move-in measure, but a new and unannounced policy temporarily places students into quarantine housing after they’ve committed Covid-19 policy violations if those violations included high-risk behavior.   This new measure, which Dean of Students Derek Doucet said has impacted around a dozen individuals, puts students in quarantine for Covid-19 protocol violations that the Office of Community Standards deems “a credible allegation of behavior that might lead to transmission.” Doucet said that the policy is designed to combat potential public health risks.  The policy The college enacted the policy of quarantining students who violated Covid-19 guidelines at the beginning of this semester, according to Doucet. Administrators realized that existing disciplinary procedures did not take into account the immediate public health risk posed by certain types of Covid-19 protocol violations like large gatherings in small spaces without masks.  “When we have those incidents, we're really worried about the possibility of exposure and transmission, and so we ask those students to go into quarantine as a public health measure,” Doucet said. “It's not intended as a punitive measure.”  Though this policy has reportedly been in place for months, the college never informed the student body of its implementation.  While the Spring Campus Guide Conduct Expectations section does inform students that they must “participate in isolation and quarantine when directed,” it does not mention the possibility of being placed in quarantine for a Covid-19 rule violation.  Instead, the Contact Tracing, Isolation, and Quarantine section describes quarantine as “a way for individuals who may have been exposed to Covid-19 through close contact with an infected individual to limit their contact with others while it is determined whether they have Covid-19.” Students were not placed in quarantine until up to two days following their violation. Doucet says administrators try to process Covid-19 conduct incident reports and meet with students within the first two days of the incident because “the science suggests that the chance of passing on the virus remains low in that time period.” Students may then be instructed to complete a quarantine if it is found that there is a credible allegation that the student engaged in unsafe behavior.  Unlike students under quarantine as close contacts, who are tested separately at Parton to avoid exposure to other students and in accordance with the exact timing of their day-seven tests, students quarantined for violations are tested at the Virtue Field House during the normal testing times with the rest of the student body, according to Environmental Health and Safety Coordinator Jennifer Kazmeirczak. Doucet said the discrepancy is “related to a different level of perceived risk.” “Quarantining students who have violated the covid guidelines is done out of an abundance of caution because of the heightened chance of exposure. Quarantining close contacts is done when there is known exposure,” Doucet said in an email to The Campus. “Sending students with confirmed exposure into close proximity with others [at general testing] is higher risk than asking a student about whom we're concerned about a heightened possibility of exposure.” Students whose Day Seven test falls outside of the college’s regular testing schedule may be able to schedule a test at Parton or at the Vermont Department of Health’s Creek Road testing center in town, according to Kazmeirczak.  Students quarantined for Covid-19 guideline violations also do not receive daily phone call check-ins from the college’s Covid Operations office asking about their health status as close contacts do. They are expected, like all students on campus, to fill out daily Policy Path health surveys for symptoms, according to Kazmeirczak.  The college also does not extend the disciplinary amnesty policy, which allows violations revealed through contact tracing to go undisciplined, to those quarantined for Covid-19 guideline violations. Students quarantined for Covid-19 guideline violations are not asked who else attended the gathering, but if other students are revealed to have attended, they will not be exempt from disciplinary action, according to Doucet. These students quarantining for conduct violations are not listed on the Covid-19 reporting dashboard, which only displays the number of quarantining close contacts. According to Doucet, that is not an intentional omission, and the college is “considering adding conduct-related quarantine numbers to the dash.” A timeline of a Covid-19 violation quarantine  The Campus spoke to 10 students who were quarantined for Covid-19 guideline violations in early March. Here’s a look at how the policy — which was confusing to many of the students quarantined under it — works. 11 p.m. Friday, March 5 - A group of 15–20 first-year students gather in the cavernous student activity room in the basement of Forest Hall on the night of Friday, March 5 to celebrate their return to campus.  11:30 p.m. - 12 a.m. - Several Public Safety officers and Reslife staff members block two of the three entrances and demand IDs from the students. Some bolt for the open exit but others mill about in confusion, unaware that, though a sign on the wall advertised a 30-person occupancy limit, students are only able to gather outside and in groups of ten.  DPS reports 10 students to the Office of Community Standards for Covid-19 violations. Weekend - The cited students go to the dining halls, attend in-person classes, practice with their sports teams and spend time unmasked with close contacts.   Monday, March 8 – Cited students attend in-person classes. Cited students go to mandatory testing. 7 p.m – Students receive an email from Dean of Community Standards Brian Lind asking them to schedule a disciplinary meeting. 3:39 p.m. - Nine of the students receive an email from Dean of Students Derek Doucet instructing them to begin room quarantine immediately and to prepare to move into temporary housing. They receive no guidance about their roommates who had not attended the gathering, with whom they had interacted closely. “We are concerned this gathering could have presented the opportunity for transmission of Covid-19,” Doucet writes in an email to cited students. Doucet says it was unlikely that any students were contagious yet if exposed, but that the choice to isolate students is necessary as they entered the period where transmission of the virus is most likely, had they been exposed to Covid-19 at the Forest gathering.  One cited student reportedly receives no such email. Midday Tuesday, March 8 - Students receive a call from Covid Operations telling them to move into quarantine housing at Porter, about three and a half days after their possible exposure Friday night. Students ask why they were being quarantined, but Covid Operations staff are reportedly not aware of the policy and unable to provide clarity.  Covid Operations Coordinator Daniel Celik confirmed administrators had not informed them of the policy. 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 9 - Lind emails students informing them of the disciplinary decision of removal from campus held in abeyance, which means that students will likely be kicked off of campus if they commit another Covid-19 rules violation this semester. They are informed that they will be released from quarantine pending a negative test result and are reminded to get tested at Virtue Field House the next day.  Thursday, March 10 – All students get tested at Virtue Field House alongside the rest of the student body. Friday, March 11 - All 10 students receive negative results and expect to be released from quarantine. Upon further inquiry, they discover that this does not count as a Day Seven test, and they will have to wait until the next general testing day on Monday in order to be released on Tuesday, 11 full days after the gathering. By this point, they have already missed several in-person classes.  Saturday, March 12 - At their request, Doucet allows the students to temporarily leave quarantine and walk to the Department of Health’s Creek Road testing center in town to get tested before the next college-administered student testing day on Monday. Morning of Sunday, March 13 – All students receive negative test results and inform Covid Operations. 4-6 p.m. Sunday, March 13 - All students are released from quarantine — nine days after the Forest Hall gathering and seven days into their quarantine. The gathering is shown to have resulted in no positive cases.

Vaccination should not come through exploitation

In the recent weeks, we’ve witnessed students scramble to sign up for Covid-19 vaccinations amid widespread confusion as to whether BIPOC students — and members of their households — are eligible to receive a vaccine. In the wake of this rush to get vaccinated, many BIPOC students were left feeling tokenized and exploited.  A policy allowing household members of people of color to also register for the vaccine excited students who were under the impression they were several weeks away from falling into any eligibility category. But as everyone living on campus technically holds the same address, this vague “household” qualifier has created a situation where students must individually judge their own qualifications. The nitty-gritty details, like whether a “household” includes college roommates, suitemates, housemates or close contacts, are left up to us to decide. We’ve seen qualifying suites and roommate groups sign up for vaccines together. That’s fantastic. But as Divya Gudur ’21 and Melynda Payne ’21 wrote on Instagram in a widely shared post, it can also leave BIPOC students feeling frustrated and tokenized to see white peers scour their list of friends to find that one BIPOC student they can use to register for the vaccine.  For many BIPOC students, this is reminiscent of experiences where they feel reduced to their identities for the convenience of their white peers, such as when they are asked to educate their peers by offering their opinions as — and only as — a BIPOC person.  If you had to think hard about whether or not you’re technically in a household with a BIPOC student, then you should carefully consider whether your choice leaves your friends and housemates of color feeling exploited. You might ask yourself, do you only appreciate their cultural and racial identity when it is convenient for you?  We want to encourage students to register for appointments when they feel that they are eligible. But if you’re going to use this method to get a vaccine, the least you can do is make sure you tell the person who has qualified you and confirm that they’re okay with it. And if they are, make sure they have already been able to schedule their own appointment before making yours.  This rule was created for a reason: to protect BIPOC individuals in the state. And while everyone benefits when the most people are vaccinated, your immunity should not leave your peers feeling used and disrespected. Get your shot. But don’t exploit your relationships with your BIPOC peers to get there.  This editorial represents the opinions of the Middlebury Campus’ editorial board.

New staff, record numbers and silver linings: How the pandemic has impacted the Ralph Myhre Golf Course

Derrick Cram turns to his side and looks at one of his co-workers. “You ready?” he asks.   Cram, the business manager of the Middlebury-owned Ralph Myhre Golf Course, is about to announce that the golf course will be open to students throughout the fall semester. He’s sitting at his desk in late summer, as nearby Middlebury students acclimate to a Covid-altered semester: Zoom classes, to-go meals, go/snitch — the whole shebang.  In the carefully-worded email, Cram writes that Middlebury students are welcome to the golf course throughout the fall semester — masked and socially distanced, of course — once they have cleared quarantine. It was a decision that necessitated hours of thought and planning, but ultimately one that the Ralph Myhre crew — and the administration — felt confident and excited about.  Cram hits send, knowing the next few hours might be a little crazy. He was right.  “I kid you not, as soon as I hit send, it wasn’t even two minutes before the phones started ringing,” Cram told The Campus. “We had three phone lines busy for no less than three hours.”  Many businesses have struggled to attract customers during the pandemic, but the Ralph Myhre Golf Course has not. Since they first opened during the pandemic on May 7, 2020, there’s been a steady flow of golfers, including first-time players, old faces who finally had time to golf again and, of course, the regulars.  Cram can’t say for sure, but last summer might have been the course’s most successful season to date; in his 23 years of working for the college, he can’t remember a year that compares.  “This summer was crazy busy,” Cram said. “This is the busiest summer I’ve ever seen. We did not expect this summer to unfold the way it did — we were blindsided by the amount of support and business that came through our course.” While Ralph Myhre had to curtail about 30% of their tournaments last year due to Covid-19 — including college tournaments and shotgun-style tournaments, in which all the golfers start at once — the traffic remained incessant. Business was booming, but it wasn’t without months of brainstorming, planning and flat-out waiting. When the pandemic first hit Middlebury in mid-March, Cram and his crew were kept at home for roughly a month, effectively sidelined until they received information on how to proceed from the state. The first group of employees allowed back onto the course was the grounds crew, tabbed as essential workers by the state. Without their maintenance, after all, the course’s terrain would’ve incurred lasting damages.  Finally, on May 6, Gov. Phil Scott announced that golf courses would be allowed to open. After about eight weeks of static noise, Cram and his co-workers finally had answers.  “The switch was flipped and we had to have a plan the next day,” Cram recalled. “We were on location the next morning. It was myself, our golf pro Paul Politano and our grounds crew. And that’s how we ran for the first couple weeks since the procedure for how to staff safely was still in the process of being implemented.”  It might have cost the Ralph Myhre crew a bit of sleep, but they did it. On Thursday, May 7 — the day after they were alerted that they could reopen the course — Ralph Myhre opened to the public.  From the get-go, the operation looked different. For one, seasonal staff was prohibited from working per state guidelines, leaving a sizable hole in the crew. The solution? Sourcing displaced dining and custodial workers who were eager for work once students were sent home.  With a patchwork staff manning the day-to-day, golfers returned to the course, which sits adjacent to the football field and against a picturesque Vermont backdrop. At first, golf carts were prohibited, as was other shared equipment, like divot bottles, ball washers, rakes and drinking coolers. Guests were also asked to wear masks when they floated in and around the clubhouse, and the Pro Shop was closed per state guidelines. Ralph Myhre’s staff also needed to reconfigure games with a shotgun start, like the popular member-guest tournaments. Given the risk inherent in inviting a flock of participants at once, the staff implemented structured tee-times, where players would arrive and tee off at staggered times.  Surprisingly, the new structure — although different — was a big hit among the golfers.  “People liked the tee times for the member-guest [tournaments] because they wouldn’t have to deal with the crowds,” Cram said. “It was more of a flow on the driving range, it was more of grab-and-go food, and it cut back the length of their commitment. They said it was actually nice to have shorter days.” The check-in table, usually positioned in the Pro Shop, was also shifted outside, placed adjacent to the first hole. While it was an adjustment at first, it might be a change that’s here to stay, according to Cram.  Now outdoors, the check-in table allows staffers to have a better sense of how busy the course is, when to hold people back a few minutes and when there’s a chance to pair up solo golfers.  Throughout the summer, the Ralph Myhre crew had to tinker with regulations as Vermont and the college’s guidelines shifted. It was an ever-moving pivot, but as long as the course was operational, Cram welcomed the challenge. “As the summer unfolded, procedures changed,” Cram explained. “Stuff just developed as the season unfolded. We actually became more stringent as things unfolded.” Once August hit, for example, seasonal workers were able to return to work, relieving dining and custodial staff of their atypical duties. It allowed the temporary helpers to shift back to their regular positions, just in time to welcome the roughly 2,000 students who returned to Middlebury last fall. Flash forward to the late-summer day when Derrick hit send on that email. Without NESCAC competition, access to the Peterson Athletic Complex or regular club sports, golfing offered an attractive alternative for cooped-up students.  And Midd kids were all over it.  Besides delineating the golf course’s plan for the fall, Cram’s announcement to students also included another attractive layer: golfing would be free for students that semester, excluding golf cart and club rentals.  It was an idea that had been floating around the administration for a while, Cram explained, and one that the administration felt well-positioned to pilot during a Covid-defined semester.  At first, students were only permitted to tee off during student-reserved time blocks, separate from those available to all other golfers. But once Middlebury transitioned into Phase 2, that barrier was eliminated.  As students were introduced into the fold, community members quickly learned to book their tee times far in advance, sometimes even two weeks ahead, indicative of the chaotic traffic at the course.  Like all other fall sports teams, the men’s and women’s varsity golf squads didn’t compete in the NESCAC last fall, but they still practiced daily at the course. There were noticeable changes to the day-to-day, though, including a two-person limit in the locker room. Throughout the fall, students and community members alike flooded Ralph Myhre, filling days from morning to night. In some instances, students were booked to tee off in the late afternoon, just an hour or so before sunset. It was a hectic season, and one that might repeat this spring. While the course hasn’t been open yet this semester — it was transformed into a cross country ski course for the first half of the semester — opening day is just around the corner.   Cram said he envisions April 10 as the tentative reopening date. Unlike last year, the vast majority of traditional tournaments and clinics will resume in 2021, including traditional collegiate golf meets.  As things stand, the course will host one collegiate competition on Saturday, May 8, when both the men’s and women’s teams will close out their five-match seasons.  While free golfing won’t continue this spring semester, it remains an idea that the administration could consider implementing long-term — and it might even extend to free season passes at the Snow Bowl, according to Cram.  If weather permits, the course will host their traditional spring clean-up day on April 10, an event that invites students and community members alike to bond and share stories from the winter.  “We’re going to offer a clean-up day on April 10, if weather permits,” Cram said. “We invite members and students alike to join in––it's a community-builder. After that clean-up, we have a little cookout with grab-and-go burgers and dogs, and we start tee times immediately following clean-up.”          

Whatever re-floats your boat: Our take on the Suez Canal conundrum

The world has waited with bated breath, and today we break our silence. A little over a week ago, the infamous Ever Given container ship ran aground in the Suez Canal, blocking the channel as well as the 12% of global trade that flows through its waters.  Although she has recently been freed from calamity, we drew on the brilliant minds of our editorial board to propose a set of alternative solutions. Without further ado, here is each section of our board’s plans for foolproof boat-dislodgement.  From the News Desk: We feel that the Middlebury administration could take steps to alleviate the crisis in the Suez Canal by issuing a vague statement in support of the boat. If necessary, the administration could even call upon donors to unrestrict earmarked endowment funds for this essential procedure. While we wait, the administration should send daily emails about how the boat hasn’t moved but may move in the future.  We also recall that the college has handled sudden evacuation processes in the past. Telling the Ever Given it needs to leave by Friday and sending some boxes and tape might help the boat get a move on. The Ever Given’s crew could also make use of some fidget spinners, Oreos, expired bread and a mental health flier in order to manage stress.  If all else fails, the administration can just delete the boat. From the Local Desk: We suggest finding two Middlebury horses to pull the ship. Each horse would have to pull 111,000 tons, which seems reasonable for a garbage-pulling horse considering the amount of dining hall containers that Midd students throw in the trash.  We also propose dumping enough milk into the canal to refloat the boat. Vermont currently produces 2.3 billion pounds of milk annually from 135,000 dairy cows on about 1,000 dairy farms. In the meantime, we don’t think Midd students will have any trouble subsisting on oat milk.  And if that doesn’t do the trick, we’re sure that Midd students can drunkenly tear the boat apart on Friday night and bring the pieces back to their dorm rooms.  From the Arts & Culture Desk: After much thought, we at Arts & Culture have decided that the best course of action is to move the boat emotionally. We suggest blasting Olivia Rodrigo’s “Driver’s License” until the boat’s emotional flood-gates fly open, unblocking the canal. The onlookers will surely be in a celebratory mood, but the boat will be a total wreck.  We also workshopped hiring the producers of “Up” to tie a million balloons to the boat and float it away. And if that doesn’t work, we suggest replacing every piece of the ship one-by-one and having Philosophy majors ponder if it is the same boat.  From the Opinion Desk:  The captain of the Ever Given just submitted a long-awaited NFTD (“Notes from the Deck”) affirming that the boat forgot to fill out its Policy Path, and is now in isolation housing under “dubious circumstances.” We await responses from the community.  In order to get the boat moving, the Opinions Desk has decided that a Hamilton Forum debate is in order, so that we can get to the bottom of contested questions such as: Are boats and canals compatible? Should Suez Canal maritime affirmative action be size or cargo-based? And finally, does the boat deserve to be unstuck? From the Sports Desk: We all know the men’s and women’s swim and dive teams were starved of a season this year, so why not give them a chance to compete? After the countless hours they’ve invested into weightlifting and carb-loading, you would think they’d have the power to free the boat stuck in the Suez Canal. I mean, if they’re not up to this task, how can they expect to compete against Williams or Amherst? “We’re one of the strongest teams in the NESCAC, and strong teams are expected to do big-time things,” a Middlebury swim and dive coach definitely didn’t say. “I mean, it’ll be great to just see the swimmers get out there and compete. The away trip will be a longer one than usual, but thanks to all the homework professors have been assigning, I think the kids will be able to stay engaged throughout the journey.”  From the Online Team: The online team encourages the ship experts to try turning it off and back on again. From the Photo Team: Why don’t they just photoshop it out of the way? It’s overtly clear that a group of college students residing in land-locked, rural Vermont has the maritime skills necessary to maximize efficiency the next time around. If only they had called upon us last week… This editorial represents the opinions of the Middlebury Campus’s editorial board.

On-campus students approved for day travel to home states for vaccination

The college has approved a small number of students to cross state lines to get their Covid-19 shot as eligibility criteria — such as having certain pre-existing health conditions — in some students’ home states qualify them to receive the vaccine.  Vermont’s rigid age-based rollout process has barred students who would otherwise be eligible for vaccines in other states to receive it in Vermont. Students and administrators alike also learned on Tuesday that out-of-state college students are not eligible to receive the vaccine in Vermont, which may result in an influx of student requests to leave the state for inoculation.  While the official rules regarding travel for the spring semester restrict students from traveling outside of Addison Country, students may receive approval from Dean of Students Derek Doucet to travel to vaccination sites outside of Vermont.  “We made the decision to treat requests to leave campus for vaccinations as we would other essential medical appointments,” Doucet said. There is no specific travel radius written in the rules, but appointments must be within reasonable driving distance for a day trip, according to Doucet. Any travel that would involve an overnight stay requires additional consideration and approval from the college, and the returning student would have to observe a seven-day room quarantine followed by a negative test.     Matt Brockley ’23 made an appointment in his home state of New York shortly after arriving on campus — before Vermont had expanded vaccine eligibility to include those in his age group with certain chronic health conditions. He received his first dose in Plattsburgh on March 27. Brockley emailed the Dean of Students explaining his eligibility and was approved under the condition that he did not make any stops and traveled alone. Along with pre-existing conditions, some students have been vaccinated in states where they will be employed for the summer. This June, Willie Thacker ’23 will be working at a summer camp in New Hampshire, a state that included camp counselors as essential workers. Thacker received a letter of hire from his boss attesting his employment, which he then showed to both the college and the vaccination site in West Lebanon. But Thacker initially weighed whether off-campus travel was worth it if there was a possibility he could be vaccinated through the college. “I feel safe on campus, but I also feel that I’m more likely to get Covid at Middlebury than any other place I’ve been,” Thacker said. “If I knew for sure that the college was going to vaccinate us before we left, I probably would have waited for that.”  Thacker did not know the college was granting out-of-state travel for vaccinations until another student mentioned it to him.  Other students have had more difficulty scheduling vaccination appointments, especially those whose home states are not a short day-trip away. Erin Hogan ’21.5, who has type 1 diabetes, was eligible in her home state of New Jersey before leaving for the spring semester. However, she could not make an appointment without violating the two-week pre-arrival quarantine that all in-person learners were asked to complete before returning to Middlebury this spring. Hogan appreciates what the college has done in regards to constant testing and feels safe on campus, but thinks the college could have had better communication about vaccinations.  “I wish the college had made the [vaccination] information more widely available. It kind of puts a burden on high-risk students to figure out this weird system by themselves which is frustrating,” Hogan said.  Elizabeth Callaway ’21 is eligible in her home state of Tennessee due to asthma, a condition that Vermont does not include in the high-risk category for vaccination. Callaway also expressed frustration over the college’s lack of communication.  “I would have really loved some assistance from Middlebury in figuring out where everyone places in the Vermont phases. At home I have a better sense for how to navigate it, but in Vermont, Middlebury really is our only contact,” Callaway said.  The college has not yet changed any of its safety guidelines for vaccinated students.  President Patton, Doucet and Dr. Mark Peluso stated in an email last Thursday that students who meet requirements in Vermont can register using the college address to demonstrate residency. However, Gov. Phil Scott announced on Tuesday that out-of-state college students are ineligible, contradicting the college’s guidance. Doucet and Peluso reaffirmed that students may seek approval to get vaccinated in their home state in an email update on Wednesday that also told students not to cancel existing in-state appointments.

The search for closure as graduation looms

As graduation approaches, I find myself gripped by a painful nostalgia. It’s as if all of my regrets from the past four years have materialized in the form of an inescapable specter. Sitting in class, I suddenly see myself making a joke at someone’s expense. Eating lunch, I cringe recalling when I slept through a date. I dream about a conversation that ended a close friendship. Like a curse, these memories I have entombed during my time here have been reanimated to haunt my final semester. The past few weeks have been fraught with these afflictive recollections. Reliving these memories has been an emotionally taxing experience. I oscillate between periods of guilt, melancholy and mourning. To avoid the flashbacks, I bury myself in my assignments or spend an inordinate amount of time at the gym. But they always return, accompanied by that same aching nostalgia. In essence, I feel a need for closure. A yearning to travel back in time to undo my wrongs, to hold my tongue, to make amends before a relationship frayed. My powerlessness to change the past is agonizing. In an absurd way, I feel like an ill-fated criminal — wrongdoings permanent — being led to the guillotine. While my tribulations are those of an ordinary college student — and I face graduation, not a death machine — it feels like my troubles have existential weight. But unlike the condemned, I may be able to redeem my mistakes. Though I have lost their friendship, those people are not gone. They live within shouting distance, frequent the same dining halls, and it would only take a simple text to meet with them to profess my remorse. Absolution may be an apology away. Why, then, do I feel paralyzed to reach out to those I have hurt? Why does gaining closure feel so unattainable? To answer these questions, I decided to take a critical look at my conception of closure and what it means to “move on.” My first realization was that my idea of moving on is rooted in ego. Wrongly, I believed recovering from a loss meant I could think about it without a negative emotional response. If I did not feel pangs of guilt or longing when it came to mind, then I assumed I had successfully and completely healed. Yet closure is more than just emotional resilience. Even with callousness, vulnerability remains. Apathy toward a memory becomes an excuse to avoid it, or hide it away and leave it unresolved. My need for closure has permeated through this emotional armor. Holistic closure is deeper, more intangible. It involves a comprehensive understanding of the causes of the loss: the nature of the relationship preceding it, the content of what was said, the emotions at play. One must estrange themself from their limited perspective and examine the event from afar. Since our memories are so intensely colored by personal biases, this dissociation is incredibly challenging. It often takes repeated contemplation and self-reflection to come to an adequate conclusion. Early junior year, some of my hurtful words resulted in the abrupt end of one of my closest friendships. It took me over a year to recognize the significance of what I said, to take a step back and measure the conditions that precipitated the event. After doing so, I feel closer toward coming to terms with the role I played in the damaged relationship. Yet loss involves more than one person. Does this mean I should involve others in my search for closure? Should I reach out to those friends I hurt junior year? Whether reaching out to those you’ve hurt is appropriate, or even intrinsic to gaining closure, is a difficult question. However, I believe wanting to reach out to those you’ve wronged is a natural impulse. Therefore, its implications need to be considered. I have defined two ways to address this dissonance: one is active, the other passive. An active approach involves reaching out to those you’ve wounded. It appeals to a romantic ideal — that reconciliation can be achieved through a single act of profession. While a heartfelt conversation could conceivably lead to closure, I am skeptical of its reliability. Consider, for example, when someone says that they accept an apology. How do you know they truly mean it? The appraisal of their forgiveness may simply be a projection of one’s desire for closure. In this way, the catharsis of profession can be used to pretend closure has been reached, when the issue may remain unresolved. On the other hand, the passive approach involves using artistic expression to reach closure. By manifesting one’s experience through art, it offers a sense of agency that alleviates the feeling of powerlessness. Through this process, one can close the book on past misdoings without having to confront the art’s muse. Personally, I do this by making playlists out of songs that I associate with a loss. The songs inspire me to think deeply, and sometimes a particular chord or rhyme produces a newfound clarity. As I have grown, so have the playlists. But in thinking about reaching closure before graduation, I am left with one final question: is it even worth the trouble? I will probably never see the people I’ve hurt here ever again after departing from campus. I am reminded of the image of the guillotine — if execution is inevitable, why would the condemned try to right his wrongs? In the same way, closure before graduation feels absurd. If that lost friendship from junior year is irredeemable anyway, then why do I even care? I still search for an answer, but one aphorism embodies my optimism. Albert Camus once wrote, “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.” Even as graduation makes its unassailable approach, I feel compelled by a transcendent desire to prevail over the specters of regret. There is an underlying beauty to the struggle that goes beyond atoning for a short-lived friendship. Compelled by this force, inconsolable and hopelessly idealistic, I will continue my search. Joseph Levine is a member of the class of 2021.

Out-of-state students should not be out of mind

Confusion, shock and anger rippled through the Middlebury community yesterday when Gov. Phil Scott announced that out-of-state college students in Vermont are ineligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine. The announcement was a surprise to many as it conflicted with information shared by the college, and it left many who have recently signed up for vaccine appointments under the state’s recent expansion of eligibility to people of color wondering how to proceed.  We, too, were taken aback, and we stand in staunch opposition to this short-sighted, illogical and dangerous restriction. The most prudent policy for the health and safety of our community is to vaccinate everyone in it — including students who claim residency in another state.  Gov. Scott said during the press conference that the state must “take care of Vermonters first.” But who are Vermonters? Does this category not include the students who pay taxes in Vermont, vote in Vermont and are counted as Vermont residents in the census? And were these students not included as Vermont residents in the American Community Survey, which was used to determine state vaccine allocations? Scott’s rhetoric of “Vermonters first” is both disconcerting and disappointing. It feels especially hypocritical given Scott’s desire for young people who come to Vermont — for college or otherwise — to build a life here. This nativist, protectionist approach estranges students who spend nine months or more out of the year living and working in Vermont. But more importantly, it denies them important access to the most effective protection against Covid. Under this new rule, all out-of-state students are ineligible in Vermont — even those with high-risk health conditions.  While this affects individual students, it has much larger ripple effects into the wider Middlebury community that we call home. The longer students remain unvaccinated, the higher likelihood that there could be an outbreak on campus and students, where staff and faculty alike will be placed at risk, especially college employees who work in person. Moreover, an outbreak could endanger the local Middlebury community, placing an undue burden on those who have no choice but to interact with students. While the college has allowed some students to return to their home states to receive vaccines, this policy privileges those with cars who live on the East Coast, and leaves many other out-of-state students without the vaccine, until at least the end of the spring semester. For some, the outlook is even bleaker, especially for students from countries that don’t have access to the vaccine yet, and others who may have to jump through more hoops to get appointments.  Vermont is one of the only states so far to have instituted such a rule. This means that many Vermont residents studying at colleges and universities in other states will be vaccinated with those states’ allocated doses. The majority of states that Middlebury students hail from will be vaccinating Vermont residents at their colleges and universities, yet Vermont is refusing to do the same.  Only students with a 14 Old Chapel Road address are impacted by this guideline — the many students studying remotely this semester will be eligible for a vaccine in their home state. What’s more, students studying off campus who are located in Middlebury or other areas in Vermont will be able to access the vaccine. Scott’s rule is arbitrary — ‘residency’ isn’t the logical metric by which to assess and protect a community. The point should be to protect the people who are here — and right now, students are here. In fact, most of us can’t leave. Today, Governor Phil Scott sent a message loud and clear to Middlebury students: no matter how much you buy into your life in Vermont, contribute to your community, support local businesses, work to preserve the health and wellness of your fellow Vermonters or call the state your home, Vermont won’t claim you as one of its own.  This editorial represents the opinions of the Middlebury Campus’s editorial board.

Hippo Campus concert ends Winter Carnival on a high note

While live concerts may seem like a relic of the past, indie-pop band Hippo Campus made an appearance at the college on March 20 in a virtual concert that served as the closing act of this year’s Winter Carnival. Students tuned in from the comfort of their rooms, and in-person viewings were set up in the parking lot behind Proctor, the patio of the Arts Center and the Ross Basketball Courts.  Formed in 2013 in Minnesota, Hippo Campus has established a fresh, lively sound that is uniquely their own, performing at major venues such as South by Southwest and Lollapalooza.  The band broadcasted in from their studio, where audiences were greeted by each of its five members rocking out on their instruments. The show kicked off with some of their bigger hits like the bubbly "Bambi" and the summery "Way it Goes," sometimes slowing down for creative instrumentals.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear some of my favorite songs, including the cheery "Tuesday,” played live. Their performance of the slow and sweet "warm glow" transported listeners to a mountainside morning with "warm glow morning soaked in pastel tea." They closed the night with a peppy encore of their popular song "Buttercup," leaving viewers energized as the night came to an end .  Even online, Hippo Campus retained its youthful spirit and upbeat sound. Their music is bright, and their lyrics are riddled with alliteration, colors and natural imagery. Trumpeter DeCarlo Jackson also brought a cozy jazziness to the music.  Unlike a traditional concert, where you would have to fight for a good sightline in a sea of fans, Zoom allowed us to get a private glimpse into their studio. They were a fun bunch, often cracking jokes with each other and entertaining the crowd with facts about the college in between songs, from its average ACT score to its famous alumni. At one point, the (nonexistent) men's volleyball team even got a random shoutout.   I began watching the concert from a projector outside of Proctor Dining Hall in a six-foot chalk circle, but I retreated to my room for the second half of the concert as the night got colder. As I finished watching Hippo Campus' performance from my desk with a cup of tea, it was impossible not to think about how fantastic it would have been in person, with a pulsing crowd and colorful lights. Students watching the outdoor screening cheered after each song, but the band could not hear or feed off their positive energy — it was like the band was having a private jam session, and Middlebury students were offered a window into their world.  As much as it was a fitting closing celebration for a unique Winter Carnival, the concert was also a looking glass into the dramatic ways that our lives have changed in the past year. “There's somethin' fiction ‘bout the way that reality's going,” lead singer Jake Luppen crooned in "baseball,” reminding viewers of the strange reality we’ve been living for more than a year.

WRMC Radio Roundup: Mid-March Mixtape

Have your Spotify playlists become stale? Is your weekly mix just not cutting it? Maybe it’s time to branch out and listen to something new. The Executive Board of WRMC, Middlebury College’s radio station, has selected a wonderfully wide range of albums, spanning time and genre, for your listening pleasure. Check back each week for a new set of recommendations.    *RIYL: recommended if you like Tech Director’s Pick – Maddie Van Beek ’22.5 Album: “Hey u x” – BENEE Genre: Indie Pop RIYL: Mallrat, Gus Dapperton, Still Woozy, Lorde Blurb: New Zealander BENEE followed up her TikTok-famous single “Supalonely” with a full-length album, “Hey u x,” in late 2020. It’s sincere, fun and star-studded, with features from Mallrat, Gus Dapperton, Grimes, Lily Allen, Flo Milli, Kenny Beats, Bakar and Muroki.   Creative Director’s Pick – Pia Contreras ’22 Podcast: “How to Save a Planet” - Gimlet Genre: Society, Environment, Science  RIYL: Drilled, Timber Wars Blurb: Hosted by Alex Blumberg and Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, “How to Save a Planet” is great for anyone who is even remotely curious about climate change. In each episode, the hosts explore a new topic related to the climate crisis — from the truth about recycling to kelp farming to electric cars. Even if you don’t like podcasts and hate the planet, the theme song alone (original music by Peter Leonard and Emma Mungard) makes the show worth listening to and earns it a spot on this roundup.   Music Director’s Pick – George Werner ’21 Album: “Roses” – The Paper Kites Genre: Indie, Folk Rock, Atmospheric RIYL: Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear, Iron & Wine, Bon Iver Blurb: For whom are the “Roses” in the Paper Kites’ newest album’s title meant? Perhaps it is a reference to the wistful love songs that dominate the album, but I suspect the album is above all else meant to honor the concept of the vocal duet. Every track has a different guest singer, each of whom shines in their own right. As a whole, the album reminds me of driving on an empty highway at 2 a.m. as you grow tired and feel the world around you start to blur. It is certainly worth a listen if you are in the mood for a slower, quieter album.   General Manager’s Pick – Rayn Bumstead ’21 Single: “Materialistic” – Remember Sports  Genre: Indie Rock, Pop Punk  RIYL: Bully, Forth Wanders, Diet Cig  Blurb: SINGLE ALERT! Get excited for a new Remember Sports album by listening to this single! “Like a Stone,” the band’s fourth album, is set to be released April 23.    Creative Director’s Pick – Chad Kim ’23.5 Single: “Trophy” – Crumb Genre: Ethereal, Indie, Dream Pop RIYL: Mild High Club, Drugdealer, Post Animal Blurb: Maybe it’s been a minute since you last gave Crumb’s EP “Locket” a listen, but fret not! Crumb has returned with its new single, “Trophy,” a pleasant reprise of a familiar dream sequence that will facilitate your self-dissolution goals. Their fully-realized sound pairs well with late night walks and sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool.   Social Media Manager’s Pick – Jose Morales ’22 Single: “Leave the Door Open” – Silk Sonic (Bruno Mars & Anderson .Paak) Genre: Soul, Pop RIYL: Kali Uchis, Bruno Mars, Anderson .Paak Blurb: “Leave the Door Open” isn’t necessarily underground, but this new collaboration from Bruno and Anderson hits hard! Their vocals mold beautifully under a grand and smooth production that has me excited for future projects. They go by the name Silk Sonic, which is fitting given their delivery on this track.

A match made in algorithm: 60% of students participate in the ‘Middlebury Marriage Pact’

Last night, 1,511 students opened their emails to find the name of their “optimal” match. They stared at their screens. They laughed, seeing their friends, or grimaced, recognizing an annoying classmate. They dismissed it or agonized over it, drafting and redrafting the same message over and over again. After all, how do you write an email introducing yourself to your future spouse? The Marriage Pact launched at Middlebury seeking to find each student’s most compatible partner on campus. Entries closed on Monday with nearly 60% of the student population responding, and participating students waited in eager anticipation until they received their matches yesterday. The pact The Marriage Pact — a project originally launched out of a Stanford economics class in 2017 — consists of an algorithm that uses participants’ answers to a 50-question survey designed to find their optimal romantic — or platonic — match.   The Pact’s mission is to find participants’ most compatible long-term partner and marital “backup plan” in case they end up single later in life.  “Among all the people at a school like Middlebury what are the odds that the one person you happen to be friends with because you met them freshman year, or you happen to be in the same a cappella group is actually the best person [who you could make a marriage pact with]?” said Liam McGregor, one of the Marriage Pact creators. "But surely, there's someone at Middlebury who's probably good enough, right? They might not be your soulmate. But, out of all the people, that's probably someone who is good enough for you to marry.” Since its founding, nearly 96,000 people have participated in the pact, forming 43,582 matches and one confirmed marriage. This year, the Stanford team began working with students at 33 colleges to launch the Marriage Pact on their campus, according to Mei-Lan Steimle, Stanford ’21, one of the Middlebury launch team project managers.  Kennedy Coleman ’21, one of the two students at Middlebury who helped bring Marriage Pact to the college, said the ultimate goal of the Marriage Pact at Middlebury is to “bring the community together at a time when we have to be ‘one Panther apart.’” “I'm just excited to be doing something collectively again,” she said. “Having a big chunk of the campus be in on something just feels really good and needed right now.” The matches  Participating students received an email with their match, their email, a list of shared values and how compatible they are compared to other pairs on campus. The top ten matches also received their ranking. From then, it was up to them to decide whether to reach out and chase after love.  However, 260 straight women were left without that option. Consistently across schools, the Marriage Pact is much more popular with straight women than straight, bisexual or pansexual men, leaving a “gap” of extra women with whom there is no one to match. Middlebury Marriage Pact (MMP) launched an Instagram and email campaign calling for men who are attracted to women to “be a hero” and “fill the gap,” but was ultimately forced to cut off romantic pairing for straight women for anyone who filled out the survey after 11:26  p.m. on March 10.  https://twitter.com/taiteishomo/status/1370891374128734208 Any straight female participants after that date were paired off with each other in the most compatible platonic matches.  Out of the 755 pairings, 625 were romantic and 130 platonic. With an odd number of responses, one lonely student was left matchless.   The survey  The survey began with demographic questions like class year, gender identity, sexual orientation, political stance, race and religion before branching into questions designed to get at participants’ core values and life outlook. Questions ranged from asking participants if they “prefer politically incorrect humor” to whether they would run a red light if no one else was on the road.  Your values uniquely represent you,” said McGregor. “[The algorithm] will look at your values and how all of those interact, and [from there] it will look for your ideal partner.”  The Marriage Pact works with school partners to tailor the process to each school. While the majority of the questions remain the same across colleges, local students like Coleman help select a few key questions based on the culture of their campus. The Middlebury Marriage Pact, for example, asked students if they agreed or disagreed with the statement “I keep some ‘friends’ here at Midd because they might be useful to me in the future.”  The Marriage Pact normally contains a question that allows participants to indicate their racial preferences for their matches, which is designed to protect BIPOC participants from racist matches. However, the Middlebury Marriage Pact decided to remove this question for fear that it might inadvertently invalidate or make students of color feel unwelcome on Middlebury’s predominantly white campus, feedback that Steimle has heard from other schools. “The Marriage Pact looks to find the best match possible for each person here on campus,” their online explainer reads. “How devastating would it be if a BIPOC student were matched with someone who was outright racist toward them? The most important thing the Marriage Pact questionnaire can do is discover discrimination like this privately, so that students won’t be exposed to it when they get their match.” Liza Obel-Omia ’21 is excited to receive her match, but worries that, without this option, her match may be expecting a white partner and be disappointed to find out she’s Black or may fetishize her for her skin color, traits she says are easier to ferret out and avoid when meeting people in person.  The MMP does allow participants to exclude potential matches based on religion and political affiliation and asks heterosexual participants if they would feel comfortable having gay children. Similar to the original race question, the idea is to protect LGBTQ+ participants from matching with someone homophobic, according to Steimle.  The participants  Much of the school partners’ job is to create excitement surrounding the Marriage Pact and a fun user experience. In the week leading up to matches, Midd Twitter buzzed with Marriage Pact memes and jokes. On March 13, participants received emails with their “hot takes,” the answers they gave that were the most different from the rest of the school population. Tuesday evening, as participants anxiously waited for their matches to be revealed the next day, they received an email with their matches initials and a taunting message to “stay tuned for matches tomorrow night.” https://twitter.com/miishapokladd/status/1370826401998372870?s=21 A self-described hopeless romantic, Obel-Omia is still hopeful that the Marriage Pact can help her find “the one.”  “I think it’d be a really cute story: to say, ‘Yeah, we both randomly did this thing, and we are meant to be together according to science,’” she said. “I think that's pretty romantic.”  Obel-Omia came to Middlebury expecting to meet her spouse here. Her father, a Middlebury alumnus, met her mother at a summer program at Bread Loaf School of English, and many of his old college buddies met their spouses at Middlebury as well.   Olin Robison, the Middlebury college president from 1975 to 1990, used to greet new classes at commencement by telling everyone: "Look to your left, look to your right: Two out of three of you will marry a Middlebury graduate." According to an article in The New York Times, he took credit for popularizing the myth that two-thirds of Middlebury graduates marry each other.  In reality, between 1915 and 1991, 17% of alumni married other Middlebury graduates, although love was in the air in 1929 when that figure jumped to 29%.  Calin Laine ’23 and Keith Chatinover ’22.5 have both resisted the romantic pull of the Middlebury marriage myth and were both more skeptical about the survey’s chance of success.   Laine doubts he’ll find his future spouse, but he is looking forward to the opportunity to make a new friend. “Best case scenario, maybe I meet somebody new who's interesting and cool,” he said. “Given what's going on with Covid and stuff, it's cool to have the opportunity to get to know somebody who I potentially have never even heard of.”  After initially dismissing the Marriage Pact out of hand, Chatinover was drawn in by the Twitter buzz. He filled out the survey Thursday night with several of his close contacts as they laughed over the questions, drank beer and celebrated the upcoming weekend. For him, falling in love or even having a crush is about intimate personal connection, so he doubts he’ll find his soulmate from an algorithm.  But even the staunch cynics are not completely without hope.   “If I somehow meet the person I end up being with from this, I'm gonna have a lot of crow to eat,” he said. Correction: An earlier version of this article mistakenly used the phrase "sexual preference" to refer to sexual orientation. An earlier version also misspelled the name of Olin Robison, the Middlebury College president from 1975 to 1990. These errors have been corrected. 

Tensions mount on campus as go-links turn the spotlight on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

A set of three go-links — the online shortcuts accessible to those on campus WiFi — drew attention this week after they were discovered by the Middlebury chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The links — go/palestine, go/palestinian and go/sjp — brought users to an Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs webpage titled “Palestinian terror and incitement.” The entries in the go-link directory indicated that the shortcuts were created by Benjamin Lesch ’24. Lesch later removed the go-links, according to an all-school email from the Community Bias Response Team (CBRT) on Wednesday. He did not respond to a request for comment. The links were discovered soon after SJP shared their new informational website through a poster-based advertising campaign that featured the go-link go/apartheid. The link leads to the home page of the site, which reads “End Israeli Apartheid.” SJP said the purpose of the website is to educate students and spread awareness, and that the use of the word “apartheid” was deliberate. “The term has increasingly been used by progressive activists in the U.S., Palestine, as well as Israel itself,” SJP leadership said. Several go/apartheid posters across campus were also torn down, according to a post on SJP’s Instagram page. The CBRT email also noted that a student associated with SJP has received multiple indirect threats that the Department of Public Safety is now investigating. The club responded to the vandalization of their posters and the creation of the go-links in an email to The Campus. “SJP disavows any and all violence. Not only is this a discriminatory act that delegitimizes our club as we responsibly engage in social justice work and educational initiatives, but it also blatantly condones anti-Arab racism,” SJP leaders said. Lesch has been placed on indefinite leave from the positions he held in Middlebury Consulting Group and on the Student Investment Committee, according to statements both groups gave to The Campus. Laurie Essig, faculty adviser to SJP, said she asked Dean of Students Derek Doucet to address the creation of the go-links. “I hope that some sort of restorative justice practices will be implemented so the student responsible can learn that disagreement does not mean we can harass and intimidate those with whom we disagree,” Essig said. “I do believe the symbolic weight for Palestinian persons on campus of being called ‘terrorist’ is a lot to bear and, as a community, we must all condemn this sort of harassment.” Many students became aware of the go-links after SJP Co-President Kamli Faour posted a screenshot of a statement to SJP members on her Instagram story on Saturday. “We do not take this discriminatory act lightly and are in communication with our club’s advisor, Laurie Essig, the Students Activities Office, and several Deans,” part of the statement read. “In the meantime, we would like to stress the importance of remaining peaceful and keeping SJP members, Palestinian, and other Arab students safe.” On Monday night, a new go-link was chalked on campus pathways — go/jewish. The link, described in the go-link directory as “a letter that reflects how many Jews currently feel on campus,” was created by Eyal Yakoby ’24. In the letter, Yakoby described feeling saddened and unsafe due to the events of the previous week and said that other Jewish students on campus felt similarly. He wrote that the Middlebury SJP chapter has “frightened many Jewish students here on campus” and listed examples of SJP chapters at other institutions who had reportedly targeted Jewish students or individuals on those campuses. Yakoby also cited a go-link created by Matt Martignoni ’21.5, co-president of SJP. The link, go/antisemitism, previously sent users to a Google Doc about Zionism, but Martignoni said it was removed before Yakoby shared his letter. “This link in itself is an act of anti-Semitism,” Yakobi wrote. “Indeed, the Google Doc has no mention of actual anti-Semitism in it, rather it mocks that which has plagued the Jewish community for so long.” Martignoni said they created and used this go-link out of fear that it might be exploited by right-wing extremists to spread misinformation. “My intention had been to write more extensively on anti-Semitism at a later date, but I linked it to the information that I personally wrote about Zionism as a placeholder since the nuance between it and anti-Semitism is touched upon at the end,” Martignoni said in an email to The Campus. “It should not need to be said, but Jews are not a monolithic group. I am a Jew who is deeply committed to the rights of the Palestinian people, but I do not speak for all Jews. No one does.” At the end of the letter, Yakoby shared a list of eclectic “fast facts” about Israel — from the Arab representation in its government to Tel Aviv’s ranking as a “best gay city” to the country’s ban of underweight models from fashion shows —  stating that he wanted to “attest that Israel is not the evil regime that SJP portrays.” Yakoby also called for an open conversation between himself, other Jewish students and SJP leadership. Yakoby declined to be interviewed by The Campus for this article. On Tuesday night, the Hillel Board released a statement addressing the recent events to members of their email list. The email referenced the creation of various go-links and noted that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has generally not been a major feature of campus conversations in recent years. The email also stated that the current discourse has brought challenges because of the small size of the college’s Jewish community and because Middlebury does not currently have a student organization that advocates for Israel politically. “As an organization, Hillel’s role on campus is to support all Jewish students,” the Hillel board wrote. “There is a wide diversity of perspectives about Israel in our community, and we welcome this diversity fully. Conversing on the topic of Israel is part of our organization’s mission as it is tied to Jewish identity, however it is impossible for us to be a voice for the entire community at once. We do not wish to risk the cohesiveness of our Jewish community by doing so.”

Offensive Zoom bombs interrupt virtual Activities Fair booths

Several Student Activities Fair meetings were interrupted last week by an anonymous participant who joined organizations’ virtual booths and disrupted their meetings in ways ranging from impersonating a campus administrator to making transphobic comments.  The person joined organizations’ Zoom rooms without their camera on, used a fake name — usually pretending to be an interested student — and asked questions about the organization from the representatives on the call. After a few minutes, however, they would say or do something to disturb the meeting.  None of the student organizations impacted could find an email address associated with the participant in the meeting report. However, administrators of an organization’s Zoom plan may be able to check more detailed reports from meetings, including the IP address of devices that were used to access the meeting.  It is possible that the incidents could have involved multiple disruptors; however, the students interviewed for this article all described a similar voice and pattern of behavior across different organizations and days of the Activities Fair.  Lily Shannon ’23 was running the Women’s Rugby Club meeting when the person entered the organization’s Zoom room. She and her co-host answered questions from the individual for several minutes, but the questions grew increasingly strange until the person made several transphobic comments and left, Shannon said.  The team’s board members spoke about the incident later and decided not to share details of what happened to avoid giving the person the attention they were likely seeking.  “Suffice it to say, there were transphobic comments made, and they were not cool,” Shannon said. “Our team wants to foster a sense of community and inclusivity, and we want all of our players to know that they are welcomed and valued on our team, so it was just really horrible.” Shannon and her co-host are planning to contact the Community Bias Response Team (CBRT), Middlebury’s group of staff, faculty, and students who address incidents of bias. They hope that the CBRT can help them address the issue and find resources for investigating the incident, including — if possible — identifying the culprit. Zoom has a setting that hosts can enable to allow only authenticated users — those who have signed in with their email address — to access a meeting, but it is not a default setting when meetings are created, and many Activities Fair meetings did not require users to be logged in. However, access to the spreadsheet with the time, date and link for Activities Fair booths required a Middlebury email address.  In past years, the Activities Fair has taken place in person, where students can visit tables set up by different student organizations and ask questions face to face. However, Covid-19 restrictions shifted the fair online for both the fall and spring semesters, leaving meetings vulnerable to anonymous online trolling. “Zoom bombing,” a phenomenon where uninvited participants disrupt video-conference calls — often by screen-sharing pornographic or offensive content — has become more common as more events take place through teleconferencing software during the pandemic. Middlebury’s Information Technology Services (ITS) lists security recommendations for Zoom meetings on their page, along with answers to other frequently asked questions about the technology. ITS suggests that public meetings be held as webinars where attendees cannot unmute themselves or share their screens, although this would limit the face-to-face interaction that is typical for the Activities Fair.  ITS also advises against posting Zoom links with passwords publicly. The spreadsheet with the schedule for Activities Fair booths included the Zoom links and passwords for each organization so interested students could participate in informal, drop-in meetings reminiscent of past fairs. At the fall Activities Fair, links and passwords were available in the same format but there were no reported incidents of Zoom bombing or other issues. Other calls were not confronted with the same offensive comments as the rugby team but still had meetings disrupted by the anonymous person. Julia Goyan ’22, president of the women’s crew team, was in the team’s virtual booth when the person joined.  “The person started talking and sounded sort of strange, and was asking strange questions… and we ultimately removed him when we realized it was maybe not a student — or maybe not someone who should be in the call at least,” Goyan said.  The person eventually asked Goyan if she was single, and this alongside other strange questions and the fact that the person had their camera off led the hosts to remove them from the meeting. At the Middlebury College Organic Farm’s Zoom meeting, someone logged in without a name or camera on and started making jokes, according to Clark Devoto ’23, who was running the meeting. “I could tell that he was sort of trying to prank me. It wasn’t very tasteful what he said, but personally, I didn’t mind too much,” Devoto said. “He just jumped right in and said, you know, ‘Is this a hippie club?’ and then kept joking.” Grace Hering ’21.5 was at an Activities Fair meeting for The Mill on Wednesday and the college’s Sailing Club on Thursday when the anonymous person joined. At The Mill, Hering and her co-host were explaining what the social house did when the person interrupted them and told them they were a campus administrator. “I started laughing because the guy did not sound like a campus administrator, and obviously no campus administrator would come on a Zoom with just the name Ryan and start questioning us about our college-sponsored events,” Hering said. Hering said the person seemed surprised when they said The Mill hosted parties that are school-sponsored and monitored by PubSafe, which cast further doubt on the person identifying themselves as an administrator.  At the Sailing Club’s Zoom meeting on Thursday, a person joined with their camera off and started asking questions. Hering and her co-host from The Mill were both on the call for sailing and suspected it might have been the same person, but decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and answered their questions about the team in case it was an interested student. Representatives for the team screen-shared an introductory “hype” video on which the anonymous participant drew a phallic sketch using Zoom’s annotation feature.  “Obviously we can all see it’s him. I don’t feel like he had a very good conception of how Zoom worked, because he immediately goes ‘Oh, who’s doing that?’ and we all know he is,” Hering said.  The person rejoined the team’s Zoom room shortly after the Activities Fair had ended, while team members were still chatting on the call. Hering and others on the call spoke with him for a few minutes, where he said the sailing team had exhibited the least animosity of the groups he had visited and told the team he was trying to elicit reactions from people. He also asked Hering if she was single. “I’m still not entirely sure that he was a Middlebury student. He seemed to know what baby Febs were, but he might have gotten that from all the clubs asking him if he was a baby Feb,” Hering said. He referred back to seeing Hering at The Mill’s meeting the previous day, and she told him they had tried to find his email address after he left The Mill’s Zoom room.  “He said he didn’t know that people could look up emails after they left in Zoom activity logs, but that he had just been clicking on emails and had purposefully not logged on with his email,” Hering said.  Several other events of a similar nature occurred, in which the same student presumably entered Zoom rooms and asked strange questions or made offensive comments. The school has yet to address the incident publicly.

Aid, apathy and Middlebury’s unwillingness to pay

“Help a Trans Asian Man Attend Middlebury College,” reads the header of the GoFundMe page built for Lee (a pseudonym), an incoming student who had been told that he will have to pay $30,000 in tuition on his own. The situation: He lives in an unstable home with a family who refuses to pay for his college and plans to kick him out by the time he turns 18 years old, leaving him homeless. As the organizer of the page writes, Lee has attempted to explain this situation to the Student Financial Services office, but was answered with, “We cannot base our financial aid decisions based on a family's willingness to pay. We base our decisions on a family's ability to pay."  I am too familiar with this story. I heard this sentence for the first time in 2015, after I was accepted to Middlebury via Early Decision. When my mom and I filled out our part of the CSS profile and the non-custodial waiver petition, our waiver was rejected, and Middlebury ultimately forced me to meet with my abusive father to make him sign his part of the CSS profile. At the time, he was making much more than my mother was. Middlebury footed us a bill that was $30,000 more than we had expected, as per Middlebury’s need-based financial aid calculator. So I, like Lee, was legally bound to Middlebury because of Early Decision, and I, like Lee, found myself in a position that I had not expected to be in, strategically predicting that Middlebury would fit my financial needs proportionately. In a Campus op-ed from 2018, I detailed how I spent two years desperately attempting to persuade Middlebury to change my financial aid package. I submitted all the legal documents I could, spent countless hours on the phone and attended multiple meetings with financial aid officers. I was forced to take a semester off since the cost was too much for my mom to bear. I talked to what seems like every staffer in the financial aid office, my Commons Dean and the Dean of Students at the time. Nothing changed. I was almost always left with the same response: “We base our decisions on a family’s ability to pay.”  Currently, Middlebury College claims that it meets 100% of students’ demonstrated financial need on its “Affordability” webpage. It lauds itself as being one of the few dozen undergraduate institutions that do. But how can Middlebury confidently say this for students like Lee, who are told they have to make $30,000 appear in Middlebury’s billing account in a matter of months? It is incredibly frustrating and difficult to understand how Middlebury gets away with this type of behavior, but truthfully, the answer is simple: Middlebury determines the need of every student. It is the financial aid office’s say, and not ours. It is tempting to say that Lee and I were stuck between a rock and a hard place, but this sentiment implies our struggle materialized by chance or coincidence. Lee has lost the support of his parents, who are culpable in their own right. But Middlebury is the one holding the rope to help him out of the abyss — a rope that is worth over $1 billion, actually. But instead of throwing the rope down to help Lee, they expected him, an 18-year-old who is about to be driven to homelessness, to throw up a $30,000 check. In other words, Middlebury has the ability to pay for Lee’s education but is unwilling to do so. Middlebury College has stated in these past years that it is working on increasing socioeconomic diversity on campus. In this area, Middlebury’s track record has been lacking.  The New York Times “Upshot” report from 2017 evinced that 76% of the Middlebury student body came from families belonging in the top quintile of the income bracket. Some efforts have seemingly made way for concrete action. Middlebury SGA passed a bill for JusticeProjects in September 2020, an initiative which reportedly aims to advance diversity, equity and inclusion on campus. But JusticeProjects only benefits students who have already made it to Middlebury College and have jumped over the hurdles of financial aid, not incoming students who are going through the financial aid process. The contradiction between a mission on increasing socioeconomic diversity and refusing to give more aid to a student coming from an unstable home situation only stands to demonstrate the institution’s apathy toward impactful, structural change. Middlebury College’s dismissal of the financial concerns of students from households of divorce, abuse and estrangement lays heavy on us. Lee and I both specifically planned to apply to Middlebury College with need-based aid in mind, in hopes that our unusual situations would not just be understood but reflected in the financial aid package that would be given to us. However, the financial aid office persistently assessed us on our family’s ability to pay. Many calls for appeals were raised, but our financial aid packages barely changed. As a result, the office’s detached stance only drives us further into our traumas and burgeoning pressures. As of this writing, Middlebury has reduced Lee’s tuition, but the price tag is still immense, given his current circumstances. The stress that Lee has to pay for his tuition this year is already large enough; the thought of continuing this on for three years is unspeakably daunting. On the other hand, if Lee cannot provide the money needed to pay for his tuition and cannot attend Middlebury, it will force him into homelessness.  Lee is stuck between a rock and a hard place, and Middlebury College is the last one standing with a rope.  Andrew Sebald is a member of the class of 2019.