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(04/01/21 9:58am)
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.
(03/31/21 5:59am)
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.
(03/25/21 10:00am)
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.
(03/18/21 9:58am)
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.
(03/18/21 9:56am)
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.
(03/18/21 9:54am)
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.”
(03/11/21 11:00am)
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.
(03/11/21 10:59am)
“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.
(03/11/21 10:58am)
I am writing to you from ADK (recently renovated from the CCI into a dorm), where I am staying as an identified close contact of someone with Covid-19.
I would like to begin by admitting that, no, I didn’t keep my mask on every time I was outside of my room. I thought I was being wise about who I unmasked in front of, but clearly the rules are in place for a reason, and I am now paying the price of breaking them. But regardless of how I got here, I am in this situation, and I have no choice but to feel the emotions that come with it (a concept introduced to me by Carter Branley, the Middlebury counselor getting me through this week).
To be blunt, it sucks.
As a friend of mine astutely pointed out — in what must have been an attempt at reassurance — I have never been alone for this long in my entire life. And though I am very lucky to be able to quarantine in such a safe place, I didn’t know at the start of this week what that kind of aloneness would feel like.
Now, you might be wondering how one passes the time for seven days in ADK 203. Every morning after I wake up, I strategically place my Zoom camera so my classmates can’t see the overflowing suitcase behind me (PubSafe’s offer to drive my belongings from Giff to ADK allowed me to overpack sufficiently). Then, around 11:30, the dining staff leaves the building’s residents’ lunches downstairs and shouts to us that food has arrived.
Usually, I eat lunch in my desk chair, and I try to keep myself busy until around 4:00 (that’s when things get really exciting). At that time each day, I try to move for at least 15 minutes, whether that be by doing a YouTube workout or some semblance of an exercise that feels like it should be good for me. After that, I take a shower, which requires a text in the “Bathroom” group chat that has been made to avoid running into anyone. I’ve taken to Zooming with friends over dinner to make all of this feel a bit more normal, and then from there, the night kind of takes care of itself — and that’s another day gone by.
This is not like the two-week pre-arrival quarantine or the two-day room quarantine, where we had decorations, photos, trinkets and familiar views to distract us from the work we were meant to be doing. It is just me in a big, white-walled room, looking out the window at people who don’t know I am in here.
Zoom, Facetime, phone calls, texting — we have so many outlets of communication that have proven helpful in the last week, but none capture the feeling of sitting in a room with someone, masked or otherwise, and feeling their energy.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]This may all seem dramatic, but I miss people. [/pullquote]
I am the type of person to sit next to friends instead of across the table from them, to fix their collars for them instead of telling them to do it themselves and to tell them how much I love them more than I should — it’s how I cope. I have anxiety like many others, and in order to block out the stream of “what-ifs” and “why-didn’t-I’s” in my head, I lean on people.
And not having that has been hard.
Despite the mental toll that this quarantine has taken, it is important to note that the Middlebury College staff members themselves have done all that they could to make me feel heard, protected and remembered in this last week. They have provided quarantined students with kettles, yoga mats, comfort food and daily phone calls from Parton staff, “just to check-in.” They really do care, and, if nothing else, it’s nice to know.
On my fifth day of quarantine, I walked into the back door of Parton to get my second of three Covid tests before (hopefully) being released after the third negative result. A nurse, Peg (known among my fellow quarantined students for her kindness) asked me how I was doing, and I burst into tears. Honestly, I cry at car commercials, so it wasn’t that big of a deal, but I really could not control myself this time. I hadn’t spoken with anyone in nearly a week, and I hadn’t previously realized how much I missed in-person conversation.
This experience, albeit difficult and my own fault, has been an important reminder of how much (safe) interpersonal interactions matter. Since the beginning of Covid-19, I have gotten more comfortable being alone — most of us have. And that is a good thing, but a global pandemic isn’t something one should go through alone, even if we think we can.
Seven days in isolation may not seem like a lot, but it is enough time to have noticed the absence of small gestures that mean more than I realized they did. I need hellos from across the path, awkward masked conversations and friends (close-contacts) barging into my room on Sunday mornings to collect me for Proc breakfast. If I’ve learned anything from being in here, beside the obvious “follow the rules,” it’s that I’ve created a family for myself on this campus, and being away from them has shown me how much I need them.
Editor’s Note: Eliza King Freedman ’23 is an Arts & Culture Editor for The Campus.
(03/11/21 10:57am)
For the past few days, Snapchat has been highlighting moments from this time last year, and while memories are usually bittersweet, these are tinged with a special brand of nostalgia. I feel like an audience member that knows something the main character doesn’t, leaving me no choice but to sit and watch as a series of unfortunate events unfold. Every photo and video feels like a memorium: This is your last WOMP show, too many bodies in a too-small space, everyone swaying in sync. This is your last time lingering in the Proc booths, socializing with your computer out just for the pretense. This is your last time sitting in a packed theater, awestruck whispers exchanged with friends sitting centimeters away. This is your last late-night Grille run, mozzarella sticks consumed under fluorescent lights — they taste best at 2 a.m. This is your last academic conference where the only technical issue is that there aren’t enough mics. This is your last time sipping a Starbucks-adjacent latte while poring over your textbook at Wilson Café. This is your last blissfully unaware morning before the world fell apart.
Spoiler alert: the world didn’t end. One year later and everything has turned upside down, but it’s been that way for so long I don’t notice it much anymore. In fact, it feels almost bizarre to see pre-Covid photos or people on television not wearing masks. That’s the new “abnormal,” or it would be, except that “normal” ceased to hold any real meaning the day we learned we were being sent home indefinitely.
March 10, 2020 demarcates a very clear “before” and “after” in my life, and everything in the “after” has been a case study in extremes. Following my departure from campus, I spent six months at home in Astoria, New York with my mom and brother. It felt like a regression. Just as I was starting to thrive at Midd — I had favorite spaces to hang out in, classes and extracurriculars I loved, multiple friend groups — I found myself back in my childhood bedroom, everything the same except for me. Polaroids from high school lined my walls, my graduation cap hung above my desk. I had to readjust all over again, but I took comfort in knowing that everyone else did too. As death tolls rose and states were put under lockdown, we were all in mourning — not just for lives lost but for life as we knew it.
Eventually the curve flattened and restrictions lifted, but because my mom and brother are immunocompromised, we engaged in very few activities. I haven’t ridden the subway since last February, and I can count on one hand the number of times I saw friends while in New York. My high school self would be shocked to discover that she had more freedom of movement — and a much more robust social life — than I did both times I was home. That’s not how it’s supposed to work, she would protest. I had envisioned carefree nights in the city, exploring museums and picnicking in Central Park — getting lost but not caring because that’s what adolescence is for. Instead, I lived different variations of the same day for six months, then again for another three, like a bad “Groundhog Day” remake.
If I wasn’t already bitter enough about this loss, the hours I spent scrolling through Instagram served as a reminder that even as my life was on pause, it had resumed for many others. Over the summer, interspersed with anti-racism infographics were lighthouses and lake houses, foreign locations serving as selfie backdrops. With “white privilege” on the tip of everyone’s tongues, it was hard not to notice the irony. My friends and I were stuck in small apartments, and access to the outdoors, which was already rooted in affluence, was further restricted for us. Meanwhile, people who have always gotten to enjoy the wilderness continued to do so.
My saving grace was that I had a backyard and was able to go on walks around my neighborhood. But even that respite disappeared when I returned home for winter and temperatures dropped. I went days without leaving my house or seeing the sun. Throughout J-Term, I sat on Zoom for hours, lamenting the loss of “J-Term, play term.” Meanwhile, the phrase took on a whole new meaning for other Midd kids; I watched as they skied, hiked and lived in houses together. It’s not that I didn’t want other people to have those experiences, but they brought already-existing socioeconomic divisions into sharp relief. They reminded me that the consequences of this pandemic bear themselves very differently across class lines, significantly altering the losses faced and sacrifices made.
Despite this bitterness, I’ve felt immensely aware of my own privilege in this unprecedented — as everyone likes to remind us — time. I reflect on it daily, listing at least three things I’m grateful for. I’m grateful that both of my parents can work safely from home and that no one I love has lost their life to Covid. I’m grateful that I have access to food, water, electricity, Wi-Fi and somewhere warm to sleep. I’m grateful for my health and safety. These are things that I can no longer take for granted.
When we returned to school in the fall, I avoided catching up with people. I dreaded being asked how my quarantine/summer was because I had nothing to say, few fun experiences to speak of. It was one of the hardest time periods of my life. I was, and still am, reeling from the trauma and didn’t have the emotional energy to pretend otherwise. Once the semester started, however, socializing was easier. I had talking points to cling to — the difficulty of the transition, how many in-person classes I was taking, how different campus felt with all the Covid restrictions — ways to talk to someone without actually talking to them.
And like clockwork, I’ve found myself in the same position as we transition from J-Term into spring semester. For the first few days, I worried that I had developed social anxiety. I feared running into people and having to make small talk. I felt like I had to remember how to be a person again, how to communicate outside the confines of a Zoom box. This was especially difficult given that I had avoided catching up with anyone over break — texting people that I missed them and wanted to FaceTime soon but never actually following through. It wasn’t for a lack of loneliness. FaceTiming people was gratifying, but also draining: while it was nice to interact with friends for a bit, seeing them on a screen served as a reminder of their physical absence, the actual distance between us. I felt guilty for not reaching out more, but checking in is a two-way street, and the mere thought of being asked “how are you” was enough to fill me with anxiety. So I went three months without talking to most of my friends, and now that I’m back, catching up feels even more daunting. However, like last semester, as classes started and dining halls reopened, I scheduled meals and study times with friends, making myself socialize until it felt comfortable again.
But just as I fell into a rhythm, Snapchat memories started to appear, reminding me of how drastically different my life was a year ago. I find myself slipping back into the five stages of grief. But then I refocus on gratitude. I’m grateful that I’m back on campus and that all my classes are in person, since so many of my friends have no choice but to do remote semesters. I’m grateful for the time I spent with my family; our nightly routine of bonding over Netflix shows, and that I was home for Ramadan and my brother’s college acceptance — celebrations I would’ve otherwise missed. [pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I’m grateful that this year has forced us to take a step back and reconsider our priorities, extending compassion and empathy when we might not have before. I’m grateful for growth and healing. I’m grateful that I’m alive. I’m grateful that I’m alive. I’m grateful that I’m alive. [/pullquote]
Editor’s Note: Daleelah Saleh ’23 is an Opinion Editor for The Campus.
(03/11/21 10:57am)
It’s Friday night. Through a hazy memory of Middlebury of ancient times (well, a year ago), you can picture what you would normally be doing: getting dressed up in ridiculous outfits, gathering friends from near and far into teeny tiny rectangular dorm rooms, and going out to all of the best spots on campus to dance the night away. Now, Friday night causes tension; students feel the strain of the restrictions they must adhere to in order to stay safe. Five people in your room? That’s a no-go. Dance parties? What dance parties? With Midd Movies, however, all these worries seem to dissolve.
Midd Movies is a Middlebury College exclusive streaming platform, hosted by MCAB. On the site, you will be greeted by a vast array of over 700 films, arranged by category: comedy, romance, action and more.
“This service offers backup programming and alleviates pressures from many student [organizations] to constantly plan events,” Trishabelle Manzano ’21, member of the MCAB board, said. “Those who are introverted, like myself, and/or those may not feel as comfortable leaving their rooms can simply use this service to their hearts content on the weekends. Sometimes we just have to give ourselves one of these mental health days as well.”
If you’re a fan of comedy, you’ll find classics like “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” as well as more modern films like “The Big Sick” and “Crazy Rich Asians.” Action, science fiction, horror and mystery movies are abundant, so you’re sure to find a film that you and your friends can agree on. Date night? Midd Movies has got you covered. With romantic movies like “Dirty Dancing” and “The Notebook,” you’re sure to lock eyes with a quarantine cutie while appropriately socially distanced and masked. From my first-hand experience watching “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” date night has never been so suave or exciting.
"Whether you’re from Middletown or the Midwest, Midd Movies offers anything but middling movies (i.e. Midway (2019)) to the Middlebury community. We have the ability to watch some of the greatest works of cinema in the past century: everything from “Boss Baby” to “Cats” is available on Midd Movies. It is the best use of your tuition since 10:00 p.m. Ross,” MCAB board member Gibson Grimm ’22 said.
This past weekend, my friends and I decided to watch “Mamma Mia.” We set a laptop at one end of the hall, hooked it up to a speaker and spread out so we could dance to all of the best ABBA tunes. Enjoying one another’s company and rekindling the best of Middlebury in times past has never been as easy as it is with the help of Midd Movies. What once seemed daunting and limited has grown into an exciting challenge. Instead of deciding whether or not we can spend time with our friends in a global pandemic safely, we are exploring fresh, new ways to do so.
(03/11/21 10:55am)
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
Programming Director’s Pick – Micah Raymond ’21
Album: “Devil’s Rain” - Maria BC ’19.5
Genre: Ambient, Dream Pop
RIYL: Grouper, Oneohtrix Point Never, Broadcast
Blurb: This debut album from Middlebury and WRMC alum was recorded in the solitude of Maria BC’s apartment bedroom during lockdown. Maria’s classical vocal training shines through against soft guitar loops and ghostly reverb. The album gets its title from a folktale in which sunshowers are the work of an evil spirit; it is beautifully intimate, expansive and full of dreamy longing. Maria’s music is “close and visceral, like Cocteau Twins’ melodies repurposed as choral pieces… [it] lands as softly and naturally as snow at night,” Pitchfork magazine said.
Concerts Manager’s Pick – Gennie Herron ’23
Album: “Atlanta Millionaires Club” - Faye Webster
Genre: Indie rock pop
RIYL: Ambient indie, good songs with snazzy lyrics, Better Oblivion Community Center
Blurb: Faye Webster weaves narratives using a wavy guitar and a solid rhythm. She has a lovely voice that conveys emotion in every note. Her songs are good for any mood: from moping break-ups to dancing in your room (alone or with friends). “Better Distractions” was also one of President Obama’s favorite songs from 2020.
Library Manager’s Pick – Jacob Raymond ’23
Album: “Old Time Feeling” - S. G. Goodman
Genre: Country blues
RIYL: Margo Price, Tyler Childers, H.C. McEntire
Blurb: S. G. Goodman’s debut album brings us to the life of a Kentucky farmer’s daughter through its bluesy and Southern rock and roll influences accompanied by Goodman’s wistful lyrics and harrowing vocals. From the smooth “Tender Kind” to the angry and moody “The Way I Talk,” this album is both a love letter to and a painful protest against the Southern experience that seems to stem from her own experience. If you are looking for an album that is both old and new, feels both loving and longing, and sounds both subdued and emphatic, you will find it in “Old Time Feeling.”
Creative Director’s Pick – Pia Contreras Balbuena ’22
Album: “YHLQMDLG” - Bad Bunny
Genre: Latin Urban, Trap
RIYL: J Balvin, Ozuna, Maluma, Daddy Yankee
Blurb: This album title might look like a typo, but it’s actually an acronym for “Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana” or “I Do What I Want.” It’s an excellent album that takes this phrase very literally, especially with regard to its lyrics and production, which vary widely between songs. I highly recommend listening to this album, but beyond that I recommend adding Puerto Rican icon Bad Bunny to your playlists.
Business Manager’s Pick – Maia Sauer ’22
Album: “The Tipping Scale” - Kinlaw
Genre: Dreampop, Artpop
RIYL: Caroline Polachek, Jenny Hval, Kate NV
Blurb: The album is dreamy, poetic and a little bit dancey for your “it’s still winter somehow, but all I really want is to be driving alone on a summer night with all my windows down” mood. Atmospheric and bittersweet, “The Tipping Scale” is chock full of sweeping synths and moments that sink into house beats and crowded basement sounds. Its lyrics center around memory and how to navigate changing relationships.
Social Media Manager’s Pick – Jose Morales ’22
Album: “take it, leave it” - Jackie Hayes
Genre: Alternative, Indie
RIYL: Billy Lemons, Indigo De Souza, No Vacation
Blurb: Jackie Hayes’ latest EP “take it, leave it” is a small set of tracks that showcase her creative experimentation with production and vocal performances. This is her first EP as a solo artist since she left her previous band Family Reunion, and it holds the feelings of a transitional moment in her life. The first two tracks, “headache” and “enemy,” follow some introspective thoughts of dissatisfaction, frustration and confusion. The last two tracks “belong” and “dead of winter” build off these emotions and take on a more aggressive tone. The drums pick up their pace while the guitar and her voice become increasingly distorted. There is a sharp, high-pitched distortion that comes in during “belong,” evoking the emotions of frustration that come with feeling displaced mentally and socially.
(03/10/21 8:07am)
From the bright red of the Japanese Maple outside the Emma Willard House, the warm yellow Ginkgos in front of Mead Memorial Chapel, the hot pink Rhododendrons behind Forest Hall or the blazing orange Sugar Maples outside Battell, the campus boasts stunning sights year-round.
For the most part, other than snapping daily nature photos to post or send to family members, you probably pay little attention to the other trees that surround you on campus. With all that has happened over the past year, it’s especially easy to lose the memories of foliage that fill out the edges of the most dramatic turning points and salient traumas. However, even though so much has changed since departing from campus last March, one thing has remained constant: our beloved campus itself.
The Darkest Day
Tuesday, March 10, 2020, 1:08 p.m.
Campus horticulturist Tim Parsons was walking across campus, ready to prune trees, when he suddenly received the text. Ding. “Date Change: Middlebury College will begin spring break this Friday, March 13, after classes end, which is one week earlier than scheduled. This will be a two-week break with classes resuming — remotely — on Monday, March 30. Remain Home After Break: Following spring break, students who can will be expected to remain at home and not return to campus until further notice.”
“I knew from the moment I read the screenshotted email, it was not going to be good,” Parsons said. “It just seemed off. Everything was so up in the air, and nobody knew what to do, or what to say. People get used to predictability, stability and it just felt off.”
Parsons noted that although the reckless acts of vandalism across campus and in town during the last week were apparent, the damage did not seem to have targeted trees as student vandalism often has in the past.
“I mostly saw signs being torn down, not trees that students are often keen to uproot,” he said. “It was yet another thing that felt odd.”
Speaking for the Trees
It is the deeply rooted love for the campus and Middlebury College community that makes Tim Parsons’ job both rewarding and a tall order.
Middlebury’s campus horticulturist since 2006, Parsons’ knowledge of the college’s greenery borders on encyclopedic. A Vermont-certified horticulturist and a certified arborist by the International Society of Arboriculture, Parsons was in the green industry for more than 25 years, running his own landscape design company and a garden center for nearly 10 years. Additionally, Parsons is a past president of Greenworks, The Vermont Nursery and Landscape Association and was chosen in 2003 as the Young Nurseryman of the Year by the New England Nursery Association. Although he grew up in Connecticut, he has lived in Vermont for 22 years and now lives at the base of Snake Mountain in Weybridge, Vermont with his wife, three daughters and “too many gardens.”
At Middlebury, Parsons’ responsibilities include the care and maintenance of the colleges’ robust urban forest, full landscape design and installation measures, and management of the sustainable turfgrass of the athletic fields. Along with caring for the abundance of trees on campus, Parsons has taught a “Trees and the Urban Forest” course several times, led field trips for other courses, and marshals a popular “Campus Tree Tour” each fall during Homecoming. He also writes a blog — appropriately titled “The Middlebury Landscape” — and is a member of multiple college committees such as the Master Plan Implementation Committee, the Emergency Response Team and Community Council. He has also served on the Environmental Council.
“I love everything about my job, but seeing how the college landscape makes people happy is the most rewarding part,” Parsons said.
Withering Life
Phenology — which comes from the greek “phaino,” meaning to show or appear — is the study of recurring life cycles of the living things around us, the seasonal experiences of insects, plants, mammals and the relationship of time to weather and climate. Parsons compares this to the collective experience between the environment and people during the Covid-19 pandemic.
As a landscaper, Parsons observed that the quiet looming over campus relates to the “natural ebb and flow of things.”
“I don’t know the exact class schedules all that well, but people certainly know when classes are out,” he said.
Parsons said after a majority of students left campus mid-March, he would walk to a certain part of campus where there are usually clusters of students studying or socializing, but there was no one there.
“The first week or so it’s nice to ride on those silly Gators and not be in the way of folks, but after that, it just wasn’t the same,” he said. “It was just really sad.”
“I remember the CFA parking lot is filled with crab apples. When those come to bloom they are absolutely spectacular,” Parsons said. “I was actually quite excited to see them this spring because I had never seen them bloom without any cars in the lot, so I made a specific point to walk to campus to see them.” But the crabapples did not bloom.
“Horticulturally, trees and shrubs sort of had their own pandemic too,” Parsons said. “We had a severe drought and it didn't rain for weeks on end. Lawns turned brown, leaves started to fall early, and wherever I looked, plants looked lifeless, much like how I felt.”
Parsons explained that like people and the pandemic, it can take years for the trees to fully recover from damage.
“I spent the whole summer watering trees, and I don't remember a year it was this dry for a long time,” he said. “I had hoped that some of the high traffic locations would receive a much-needed break, but the drought was so bad, there wasn't much of a difference.”
Throughout the summer, Parsons took solo walks around campus, checking in to make sure everything was still okay. He noted that the treasured hot pink Rhododendrons behind Forest Hall did, in fact, bloom as usual, a stark reminder of the loss of spring, and especially graduation. According to Parsons, the bright flowering bushes were planted there to serve as the original ceremony location, with chairs extending out across Battell Beach. After planning for the commencement ceremony all Winter, Memorial Day weekend eventually came that May, and with no students to graduate, Parsons had that weekend off for the first time in 15 years.
“When the students are gone after commencement and before language schools, it’s peaceful and nice, but after a couple of weeks of that, everyone’s ready for the energy to come back,” he said. “The whole point to working at the school is to help the students out, and that’s why we’re here, so it just doesn’t really feel right when campus is empty.”
Instagram Updates
Known for sharing snapshots of the college’s picturesque landscape, his family, sleeping pets and even an occasional baked good or two, Parsons’ Instagram (@middland) also happens to be a favorite account for many Middlebury students. His captions shared are pure musings that bring Parsons’ love for the small joys in life to the public eye.
On March 13, Parsons wrote, “Adopted a plant today, I named it Riley. Goodbye to all my student friends leaving today, hoping to see you again.” And on a photo of an empty campus, a sarcastic, “Day one at Middlebury College. 9:00, sidewalks filled as students walk to class.”
Parsons continued these logs the rest of the month, updating his followers on the life they abruptly left behind on campus. “Day three at Middlebury College. Cross country trail, missing the runners on the blue sky day.” “Day four. One of my traditions after the students move out is looking for rocks geology students don't want to bring home and leave in parking lots. Here's this year's finds. Anybody want to ID?” “Day five, quiet.”
As warmer weather arrived in Middlebury, Parsons continued to updated his small but mighty fanbase on the still life coming back to campus, highlighting the blossoming of White Siberian squill, serviceberry, daffodils, magnolias, the redbud trees in front of Axinn and the green grass beginning to show on the lawns. And on May 24, a picture of a flowering crabapple tree.
“Today would have been the day I decorated the commencement stage at Middlebury College then waited to see my former students and friends march in. So to them, I say so long, good bye, come back soon. Wish you could be here. #middseniorcelebration.” One student commented, “I miss the campus trees,” to which Parsons replied, “and they miss you!”
Parsons’ consistent updates continued throughout the summer, increasing as the date drew nearer for the August return to campus. He posted photos of the Adirondack chairs in storage, ready to be set outside again for use, renovated outdoor classroom spaces for the new norm of safe, socially distant learning and a shot of the Brobdingnagian tents outside of McCullough wittily captured, “Intense.”
And in October, Parsons called to action his growing fan base to fundraise for financial aid at the college. “As the Middlebury College arborist I've learned that the strength and resilience of our urban forest is based upon its diversity,” he commented. “If you can, help the ‘MoveMidd’ effort to help keep Middlebury the inclusive space it is. Link in bio, I figured out how to do that.”
Nearly half of all Middlebury students receive financial aid, and as the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic continues, disproportionately affecting students of color, that number grows and the need for student academic funding rises. “It’s important for everyone to have the opportunity to learn here, regardless of their background,” Parsons said.
Parsons’ fall semester updates petered out in December, ending with a quintessential photo of Mead Memorial Chapel that read, “And, just like that, campus empties out again, and it's just the cold trees and I. Hopefully students are returning in a couple months, if everyone can get their act together. For everyone that left for the semester, here is today at Middlebury College. We'll try and keep the snow around for your return.”
Staff Shifting
The college’s organic garden, The Knoll, holds a founding mission to educate and nourish its community. This came into clear focus when the onset of the pandemic left many staff and community members without a steady source of income.
As the pandemic continued throughout the year, staff concerns related to employment and compensation continued to loom large. A week after students left campus, the college committed to full wage continuity and no layoffs through June 30, a pledge administrators have since tentatively extended to next July in their new 2021 budget. Although the college set up the Covid-19 pay bank to support staff members throughout the pandemic, many staff who cannot work remotely still needed to use their own combined time off (CTO) to cover their days stuck at home. While many staff members have remained at home, others have begun to return to campus on staggered work schedules.
In anticipation of the community’s emergency food needs over the summer and fall, combined with the issues regarding staff employment hours, the college gave The Knoll permission to grow produce to meet community emergency food needs, and granted approval to bring in dining employees for paid full-time work over the summer. Parsons’ wife Nancy, a chef in Atwater Dining, was one of the individuals relocated there.
“I enjoyed getting to work with people I otherwise never would have,” Nancy said.
“Bringing staff members from other departments to work here was necessary,” Megan Brakeley ‘06, The Knoll’s current manager, said. “Even though life on campus stopped, life at The Knoll did not.”
“We missed the students this year because we connect with a lot of them in close quarters through dining, and you just grow to love them,” Nancy said. “With proper social distancing, safety measures and the change in schedules, that has drastically changed.”
Spaces that once connected students and staff don’t exist in the same form these days, and dining staff have taken notice.
“Students aren’t gathering in dining halls anymore, so we’ve completely lost all sense of community that happens in those spaces,” she continued. “It is one of the most drastic changes to campus life, and something not easily recreated in a pandemic-safe manner.”
Returning Where We Left Off
Just as Dining Services prepared for another round of individually packaged meals, the Grounds Department was also busy preparing for students to return to Middlebury for the spring semester, an ominous time that marked a year since the campus was abandoned.
“I’m always amazed at how smart and resilient plants are, and that’s exactly like Middlebury now,” Parsons said.
Before students returned, Parsons said, larger tents were installed across campus and the golf course was groomed for cross country skiing. The carpentry shop got busy building forty new adirondack chairs to add to the fleet to promote outside socializing, and the grounds crew assembled portable fire pits. “Pro tip for students? Bring marshmallows,” Parsons quipped.
“I’m really looking forward to having campus come alive again,” Parsons said that winter. “It’s comforting to know that we’ll all be together once again, and hopefully not have to miss out on another spring here.”
Symbol of Our Strength
From the growth around the pond behind the Mahaney Center for the Arts to the comforting line of trees between Axinn and Davis Library, the ivy-covered walls of Battell Hall to the unexpected diversity of the woods around the Trail Around Middlebury, the greenery of Middlebury College holds an important place on campus and within the hearts of Panthers young and old. And after a long, cold winter away from campus, Middlebury now invites the arrival of warmer weather, the opening of forsythia and the return of lifeo to campus as the harbingers of spring.
Author’s Note: Middlebury College sits on land belonging to the Abenaki Nation, and we have all contributed and been complicit in the brutal colonization of this Indigenous land. The Western Abenaki are the traditional caretakers of this Vermont area Ndakinna, or homeland. We give our gratitude to the Abenaki Elders and Indigenous inhabitants of Turtle Island past and present, and are thankful for the opportunity to share in the bounty and protection of this environment.
(03/04/21 11:00am)
For new students, the first few weeks at Middlebury can feel like a crash course in knowing everything you can about life here — and playing off the things you don’t. We remember what it’s like to show up for class in Twilight when you’re supposed to be in Axinn, so let us help you avoid that mistake (and quite a few others).
Google Maps can take you to specific buildings on campus. Apple Maps can’t.
Wilson Cafe is in Davis Library. Wilson Hall is in the McCullough Student Center.
The shorthand AXT is not Axinn Center – it’s Twilight Hall, the brick building by town. (Axinn is AXN.)
The second floor of Hepburn holds both a room of study carrels (called “Hep carrels”) and a theater (called “Hep Zoo”).
There’s also a performance space on the bottom floor of Gifford called the Gamut Room.
There are bathtubs in Battell. (We do not endorse their use.)
Students have free subscriptions to The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal (but not the crosswords).
There’s free sushi for lunch in The Grille on Thursdays.
You can print posters in BiHall and Davis Library.
Yogurt City, the frozen yogurt store in town, sells boba and dumplings.
To see the dining hall menus, go to go/menu, go/lies, go/noms or go/food.
Carillonneur George Matthews, the man who plays the bells from Mead Chapel, gives free bells lessons to any student with piano experience.
The Ceramics House holds open wheel hours for anyone who wants to throw pottery.
You can take free student-run yoga and spin classes on campus.
If you submit recipes to the dining hall through the “Recipes From Home” form, the dining hall chefs will add them to a future menu.
If you leave your bike unlocked, it may be taken for a joyride on Friday and Saturday nights, or disappear permanently.
Students have free access to the full Adobe Suite.
There are printers at Midd Express and in LaForce (a dorm in Ross).
You can write for The Campus anytime you want (and we hope you do)!
The Middlebury vernacular is an important part of feeling at home here — or at least understanding what anyone is talking about. Here are a few terms that may be confusing (or, at least, that perplexed The Campus’ editors when new students).
AC = the Athletics Complex
AFC = The Anderson Freeman Resource Center, a center dedicated to supporting students of color and first-generation students
Pub safe = Public Safety
Go/… = Go links, or web shortcuts, allow you easy access to common websites when you’re connected to Midd’s wifi. Popular links include go/lies (for daily dining menus) and go/directory (to find where anyone lives on campus). If you’re using Safari, add an extra slash at the end
BevCo = Middlebury Discount Beverage, students’ go-to beer source
Tindia = Taste of India, Middlebury’s Indian restaurant
Sabai = Sabai Sabai, Middlebury’s Thai food and sushi restaurant
The Bowl = The Snow Bowl, Middlebury’s ski mountain
BiHall = McCardell Bicentennial Hall
Proc = Proctor
Battell Beach = The field between Battell and Ross
Kenyon = Kenyon Ice Arena, the hockey rink in the AC
KDR = the old Kappa Delta Rho house that houses juniors and seniors
Tav = Tavern, one of Middlebury’s five residential social houses
The Ross Challenge = spending your entire J-Term in the Ross Complex, including eating, sleeping and learning, without stepping foot outside. (At least, it was a “challenge” before the pandemic.)
NESCAC = New England Small Colleges Athletic Conference, including Middlebury, Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College (or “Conn College”), Hamilton, Tufts, Trinity, Wesleyan and Williams
Two Bros = Two Brothers Tavern, a restaurant in town often attended for first dates or parent visits
Ups = Mr. Up’s, a 50-year-old restaurant and bar by the river in town
BBM = Big Beer Monday, a night for low-priced beer hosted by Mr. Ups and attended heavily by seniors
Parton = Parton Health Center, the campus’ in-person medical building
Porter = Porter Medical Center, the nearest off-campus hospital
WRMC = Middlebury College’s student-run radio station, 91.1 FM
The Marquis = the small movie theater in town (that serves Mexican food)
Rosie’s = Rosie’s Restaurant, the longstanding breakfast spot on Route 7
Midd Bagel = Middlebury Bagel and Deli, students’ go-to bagel source
GrillMe = The Grille delivery service for late-night food
(03/04/21 11:00am)
Tayler* started working full time at Middlebury right after high school, with a starting wage of just over $8 an hour. Twenty-one years later, through Middlebury's compensation program, they are making $14 an hour. A single parent, they find themselves in line at the local food bank several times a month to make ends meet, and HOPE Middlebury helps Christmas come together for their child. Many of Tayler’s fellow service workers at Middlebury also have second jobs, an option unavailable to those without childcare or other support mechanisms.
How did we get here as an institution, where over 20 years of service and dedication to Middlebury still merits only a poverty wage? Sure, endowment woes and a poor job market play a role, but one of the deeper problems is more insidious.
In the last 20 years, Middlebury has prioritized faculty wage increases over those of staff. Every year, when possible, a sum of money is added to the Middlebury budget for salary increases, which is then distributed to faculty and staff as a percentage increase of their current wage. By my calculations, in most years, rather than dividing wage increases equally between faculty and staff, faculty have gotten a larger percentage increase than staff. In a particularly egregious example from 2001, faculty received an average pay increase of 7.5%, while staff saw only 4.3%. Inflation that year as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was about 3.4%, so faculty got over a 4% raise above inflation, staff less than 1%.
More recently, in both 2019 and 2020, faculty saw a 4% increase, while staff saw a mere 2%. However, inflation was greater than 2%, so the value of the staff raise was ultimately canceled out, while faculty wages increased over inflation.
Small changes in the CPI have proportionally larger impacts for lower-wage workers. The cost of items that factor into the CPI can vary by year, but a seemingly minor change in some items can tear a budget apart. For example, a 50-cent increase in the price of gas may barely affect more affluent families, but these same changes can be crippling for a service worker with little discretionary income within their budget.
On average, faculty have gotten a 1.4% greater yearly compensation increase compared to staff in the raise pool. Cumulatively, from 2000 until last year, faculty received a 113% increase in salary, while staff have only seen a 73% bump. Subtract inflation, and faculty net a 40% increase, staff only 13%.
So, for example, a staff member making $50,000 two decades ago is now making $86,500, while a faculty member at the same starting pay would now be making $106,725.
Middlebury pays staff by length of service — the longer you work here, the greater your wage. Had staff wages not been increased to $14, staff like Tayler who had been working at Middlebury for 20 years would now be making $13.84. If they had received compensation increases at the same rate faculty did, they would instead be earning $17.04. Adjusted for inflation, $14 in 2021 is the equivalent of $9 in 2001.
So, in our pay-by-tenure system, that's only an additional five cents a year over inflation for all of their experience, commitment and dedication. But the starting wage for a new employee at Middlebury is now $14 an hour, so we aren't valuing experience and commitment at all. Imagine working your whole life at an institution and getting the same pay as someone who just walked off the street. When Middlebury raised the starting wage for lower-paid service jobs, it caused this wage compression, where a range of pay for work is now non-existent and independent of the length of service.
How can we do better?
Middlebury has proven a strong commitment to staff, seen not only by wage continuity during the Covid-19 shutdowns but by the recent staff reductions during workforce planning without resorting to layoffs. We need to build upon and strengthen this commitment, by first fixing wage compression for affected staff. Long-time workers at Middlebury deserve to be paid more than new hires and should see a one-time increase in pay under our pay-by-tenure system. This needs to be the top priority for the next fiscal year when the Budget Advisory Committee prioritizes items in the budget.
All employees of Middlebury need to commit to the "ongoing alignment of staffing and budgets to the strategic goals of the enterprise," but staff cannot do this without our faculty and administrative partners. Faculty and the administration need to decide, post-Covid, where their values lie, and reflect those values in the budget. The solution is not to reduce the number of staff positions, allowing the excess work to roll onto those who remain. Will we go back to pre-pandemic travel and entertainment spending, where catered lunches for departments are prepared by workers who leave work and head to food shelf lines? Or do we build on our current successes some departments have seen in workforce planning and together determine what sacrifices need to be made to return to our student-centric mission?
Staff also need a voice in this process and should have representation on the appropriate faculty committees, including Faculty Resources. Staff representation on the Budget Advisory Committee has been a welcome step, but it is not enough. After a recent Board of Trustee financial decision, the Middlebury AAUP chapter stated the decision was made "without any input from either Faculty Council or the Resources Committee so that also brings up serious concerns about 'faculty governance' if none of the relevant faculty bodies were consulted." The last 20 years of faculty wage increases show that staff need their own voice, without relying on faculty governance.
Lastly, let's think of the hundreds of invisible staff cooking meals, cleaning buildings, and doing countless other tasks that keep our institution running. Someone at Middlebury considerably smarter than I once told me if we were brave as an institution, we'd make our starting pay $20/hour, rather than the $14 we pay now. As Karen Miller said, Middlebury needs to become an "employer of choice for the next generation." If faculty and the administration want to achieve this distinction, they need to ensure everyone at Middlebury is fairly compensated.
*Editor’s note: “Tayler” is a pseudonym used to protect the identity of a staff member.
Tim Parsons is the college’s landscape horticulturist.
(02/04/21 11:00am)
After 13 seasons in the NFL, Stephen Hauschka ’07 is hanging up his boots.
The Needham, Mass. native departs the NFL with an impressive legacy, marked by a Super Bowl win with the Seahawks in 2014 and a career field goal accuracy of 85.2%. But when his achievements are put against the backdrop of his unorthodox beginnings, they become all the more impressive.
Hauschka enrolled at Middlebury in 2003 with the aspiration of playing varsity soccer, but that dream never panned out. Instead, he joined the junior varsity soccer team and played lacrosse. Football wasn’t in the picture — it had never been — but once Hauschka arrived at school, the sport surrounded him. His freshman roommate, Scott Secor, was a member of the football team, and Scott’s teammates frequented their dorm room in Battell Hall.
In 2003, the football team went 4–4, with only two field goals all season. Looking to improve, the team started thinking — and that’s when an idea sprouted.
Secor and his football teammates knew that Hauschka had a strong leg — they had seen him use it on the soccer pitch — and with deficiencies on the kicking end of the gridiron, they saw Hauschka as a possible solution. So, they alerted head coach Bob Ritter about Hauschka’s potential, and sure enough, he earned an invitation to preseason camp the following fall.
Hauschka was a hit.
“The first time I really remember him was when he came out in the fall and there were actually three other kickers [but] you knew right away that he was different,” Ritter told The Campus. “The ball just popped off his leg. You could tell right away that he had the skills and talent that the other guys didn’t.”
At first, the ex-soccer player sprayed his kicks all over the place with little accuracy. But after spending time with kicking coach Steve Wolf, who has since retired from coaching at Middlebury, he quickly improved.
“He would drive up from Rutland, and we got to work during practice every day,” Hauschka said in an interview with The Campus. “I learned so much from him and kept getting better and better.”
By opening day, on Sept. 25, 2004, Hauschka had earned a starting position.
“I think I was lucky,” Hauschka said. “My first game, I made my first field goal, which was really helpful. And back then I hadn’t really associated what it feels like to make or miss field goals — but I knew it felt good to make it.”
With such a strong leg, Hauschka was also employed as a punter, tasked with pinning teams far back in their end. Only a few weeks removed from his first football practice, Hauschka was a dual threat.
“He punted the ball inside the 20[-yard line] a ridiculous number of times,” said Ritter. “So he really did have a big impact on the game, not only in the points he scored, but also the hole he put defenses in when punting.”
Every year, Hauschka improved. He hit 10 field goals between his sophomore and junior seasons, and then hit another 10 his senior year. Those tallies lifted him to the top of the program record book in career field goals (20) and most field goals in a season (10). Those records still stand today.
Hauschka was evolving into a polished kicker, so Ritter sent some of Hauschka’s tape to the Baltimore Ravens during his senior year.
“We always felt he had the talent and leg strength to [play in the NFL],” Ritter said. “He would kick a lot of our kickoffs deep and out of the endzone, so we knew he had that leg, and we knew that pro teams also look at that.”
Still holding onto a year of NCAA eligibility since he didn’t join the team until his sophomore year, Hauschka began to consider options for a final season. While a return to Middlebury was possible, both Ritter and Hauschka knew that a bigger school would provide a sturdier stepping stone to the NFL. So Hauschka sent emails to Division I teams, targeting programs with a departing or underperforming kicker. The list included around 45–50 schools.
That’s when North Carolina State University called, offering Hauschka a spot to walk on during training camp. A storied program in the Atlantic Coast Conference, NC State competed against teams like Florida State, UMiami and Clemson. These programs performed on the highest echelon of college football and had a proven track record of producing NFL talent. It was an opportunity that Hauschka couldn’t pass up.
While the setting changed — NC State’s stadium seated over 50,000 — Hauschka's momentum didn’t dwindle. In preseason, he beat out the competition for the starting position and never looked back. That year, he went 16-of-18 for field goals and 25-for-25 on extra points, finishing as a semifinalist for the top college kicking award. It was a dream season.
“After playing at NC State, I think it was January of that year, a couple [NFL] teams started reaching out,” said Hauschka. “Then I put everything I had into it and got signed [by the Minnesota Vikings] as an undrafted free agent.”
Just like that, Stephen Hauschka, a former collegiate JV soccer player, was now signed to a professional contract in the NFL. It was a career that would span 13 seasons, including stops at eight different teams: Minnesota, Baltimore, Atlanta, Detroit, Denver, Seattle, Buffalo and Jacksonville.
Hauschka’s most successful stop was in Seattle. In his six seasons with the Seahawks, he captured six franchise records and was named an alternate for the 2016 Pro Bowl. He also played in two Super Bowls with the Seahawks, winning one in 2014 against the Broncos.
“Just seeing him reach those heights and handle it — it's really exciting to see,” Ritter said. “He just had a great mindset and he really learned how to operate his body under pressure and stay smooth, and that's really the secret to his success.”
JV-soccer-player-turned-Super Bowl winner: it’s a wild success story, punctuated by an unconventional path.
“I think the whole thing is unexpected,” Hauschka said. “I never really thought I'd even play football. I was excited just to play at Middlebury to be honest — I didn’t really know what I was doing. And then I had this great career — win a Super Bowl, lose a Super Bowl — have lots of success on a few different teams and travel all over the country. It really opened my mind to life in general. It's quite an experience being an adult playing a sport.”
Now that Hauschka has a little more time on his hands, he looks forward to planting some roots with his family. After bouncing around the league for the past 12 years, it’s a chance to focus on those relationships and enjoy some semblance of stability.
As for a return to Middlebury, Hauschka won’t rule that out. Once the pandemic calms, he says, Middlebury will be one of the first stops on the docket.
“I'm sure he’ll come back,” Ritter said. “He’s always been very true to Middlebury.”
(02/04/21 11:00am)
Following a decision by the Vermont legislature to allow mail-in voting for town meetings, Middlebury has decided to skip the annual in-person meeting and vote on all measures by ballot. The move, a response to growing Covid-19 cases, changes the nature of Vermont municipal politics for the time being.
Vermont’s annual town meeting stands as a revered New England tradition and a modern-day reminder of what direct democracy can look like. Many Middlebury residents treasure the “floor meeting” in particular, where hundreds of residents gather to debate and vote on policies concerning the town.
It is usually community-oriented, discussion-centered and — above all — in-person.
During a typical year, Middlebury holds its floor meeting the night before Vermont’s Town Meeting Day, which falls on the first Tuesday of every March. The town’s annual budget is the largest item of the night, but other municipal matters are discussed as well. On the following day, additional measures are decided by paper ballot, including the election of town officials.
This year, however, the town will vote on all measures solely by Australian ballot, the typical secret ballot that is used in U.S. elections.
Jim Douglas ’72, the former governor of Vermont, noted that the floor meeting offers a unique forum for amendments and explanation. Douglas moderated the floor debate in Middlebury for 33 years before retiring in 2019.
“It is pure democracy. Everyone is a legislator for a day and has an equal voice in the affairs of the community,” he said in an interview with The Campus, reflecting on the change to mail-in voting.
“Now there is no opportunity for amendments,” he said. “Generally, when the budget is up for debate, someone can motion to change it. On the ballot, it will pass or be rejected — there are only two options.”
However, there are some advantages to the Australian ballot that the floor meeting lacks. It holds the potential for wider turnout because voting at the floor meeting requires a person to be physically present. This means that people who are unavailable on that particular day — whether they are working, away from home, sick or unable to attend for another reason — will be able to cast their vote as well.
“It is kind of a catch-22,” said Ann Webster, Middlebury’s town clerk. “The Australian ballot may be more attractive for people who actually get a chance to vote on something they don’t normally vote on. But the debate, seeing people in person, that ritual — it is really important.”
In theory, mail-in ballots have the potential to provide the accessibility that the floor meeting lacks. Voter turnout broke records in both Vermont and Middlebury during November’s 2020 elections, when ballots were mailed to every registered voter in Vermont. However, Vermont used federal funding to send those ballots, and the state legislature is unlikely to do so again for the floor meeting ballots without more federal funding.
Dave Silberman, High Bailiff of Addison County, was encouraged by the high turnout in November.
“Clearly, the desire among the populous is to be able to vote easily and early by mail. People will have to request them for this election, but they have gotten used to voting by mail,” Silberman told The Campus.
Silberman also hopes that Middlebury College students will be requesting mail-in ballots.
“Students ought to know that they absolutely have the right to vote in Middlebury local elections. They are an important constituency in this town and crucial to our social fabric,” he said. “Town meeting votes are typically very small shares; having 100 people show up to vote can make a huge difference.”
Several elections this March also hold the potential to increase voter turnout among both college students and residents of the town. On March 2, Middlebury will decide whether retail cannabis stores will be allowed to open in Middlebury, as well as whether the town of Ripton will leave the Addison Central School District. Esther Thomas, a member of the college’s Residential Life staff, is also running for Selectboard.
However, Douglas fears potential negative consequences if Vermont democracy shifts away from in-person decisions.
“The essence of our tradition of direct democracy is human interaction, the ability to question municipal officials and to hold them accountable,” he said. “I hope this is a temporary shift, but I’m worried about it.”
Webster, on the other hand, is more open to allowing some of the more positive changes to subsist.
“I am certainly hoping there is a definite swing back to normal. I’m also excited about the opportunities we might have,” she said. “There are things we have learned about how we might better communicate and make things more accessible for people. I’m hoping we gain progress.”
The town of Middlebury will host an informational meeting about the upcoming election on February 22 at 7:00 p.m. For more information about this and the elections, visit townofmiddlebury.org.
(02/04/21 10:57am)
Karen Miller, former vice president of Human Resources and chief risk officer, left Middlebury for a position at Morehouse College this week. Laura Carotenuto, Cathy Vincent and Ellen Usilton, who all hold senior positions in Human Resources, will co-lead the department on an interim basis, according to an email announcement last Friday.
Risk Operations will also separate from Human Resources to become the Office of Enterprise Risk Management. Mike Thomas, former vice president for finance, is now leading the new department, stepping into the role of Vice President of Administration and Chief Risk Officer. Thomas will also act as an officer on the Board of Trustees’ Risk Committee and remain an authorized signer for contracts and financial matters at the college.
Now that Miller has departed, the administration is faced with continuing her numerous initiatives.
The college will form a search committee, with Vice President for Finance and Administration David Provost as chair, to select Miller’s replacement. Working with Koya Partners and Storbeck Search, two executive search firms, the committee will convene this month and aims to find a new vice president for Human Resources by July 1.
During her five years at Middlebury, Miller led several major projects in Human Resources. Notably, she oversaw workforce planning, the introduction of the Oracle HCM administrative software, the Mercer Compensation Study, the organization of the Leadership Alliance and the formation of the Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium with Champlain and St. Michael’s Colleges.
President Laurie Patton announced via email in December that Miller would leave the school at the end of January. Patton complimented Miller’s impact on the college and her coworkers, saying that Miller brought “renewed camaraderie to her teams, sharper focus on shared strategic goals and a customer-service orientation to our daily business activities and interactions.”
Patton said that she would “begin immediately to develop plans for continuity,” a considerable undertaking given the number of ongoing initiatives and recently completed projects with unsettled results in Miller’s department.
Miller discussed those newly implemented projects in an email to The Campus, many of which share a theme of streamlining, restructuring or introducing new technology into the college’s administrative employment system in pursuit of efficiency.
One of the most visible projects was workforce planning, which was undertaken in 2018 and 2019. The school consolidated employment structures with the aim of remedying budget shortfalls and making departments more efficient.
To meet the objective of reducing employee expenses by 10%, the college eliminated roughly 150 positions (100 of which were already vacant), created about 30 new positions and identified about 50 positions to be eliminated in the years following the project.
Workforce planning had a mixed reception. The employee buyout and position consolidation process was, for some, confusing and frustrating alongside other workforce changes like the rollout of the Oracle software. The project also sparked an unsuccessful unionization attempt among staff last fall.
The Oracle software rollout was another major undertaking of Miller and her department. Adopted as part of the Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium, the Oracle Human Capital Management software is a cloud system that digitalizes and consolidates data of everyday financial transactions at the college.
The rollout of Oracle sparked controversy because staff and students who had to make the switch — including everything from student club expenditures to the college’s accounts payable — felt insufficiently trained and therefore frustrated with the software.
Miller also started the Leadership Alliance, a group of about 120 managers from across the institution that meets weekly with HR leadership. Its goals, according to Miller, include enhancing communication, strengthening leadership and managerial competencies and fostering collaborative engagement and support within the group.
Coming down the road for the HR department is a potential adjustment of the staff evaluation system, called Annual Performance Summary (APS). The school has put the APS process on hold while HR considers implementing changes.
In his email, Provost listed the administration’s many priorities in supporting the Human Resources department during its transition, which were echoed by Patton in an email to The Campus.
“Throughout the spring, we are focused on wage continuity through Covid, completing the compensation study that was interrupted by the pandemic, addressing compression issues and continuing to work with Leadership Alliance and Staff Council on managing change,” Patton said.
Miller will serve as Chief Administrative Officer and Secretary of College at Morehouse College in Atlanta.
(01/28/21 10:59am)
On Dec. 3, 2020, Middlebury’s official Instagram account posted a story encouraging students to join the new Facebook Campus platform, a section of the app wherein college students can only interact with other students at their school, which rolled out at select colleges this fall. “As a Middlebury student you have access to @facebookcampus,” read the Instagram post. “Visit @facebookcampus and start developing a community based on your interests, hometown, class year, fandom, or field of study.” Such language is eerily similar to that used by Facebook in its own advertising for the new feature:
“College is a time for making new friends, finding people who share similar interests and discovering new opportunities to connect – from clubs to study groups, sports and more. In the early days, Facebook was a college-only network, and now we’re returning to our roots with Facebook Campus to help students make and maintain these relationships, even if they’re away from their college.”
This post raises a lot of questions regarding the nature of the college’s relationship with Facebook; it goes without saying that it is uncommon practice for official college accounts to post advertisements for private companies, much less one of Facebook’s size. When I noticed the college’s Instagram story in December, I asked on Twitter what the nature of the college’s relationship to Facebook was. I received a reply from @middlebury clarifying that “there was and is no financial exchange between FB/Midd for access to Facebook Campus.” Middlebury was one of the 30 colleges that was given early — free — access to the new platform this past fall. I’m sure most students are aware of this fact due to regular posting by Campus Ambassadors — students paid to turn their personal social media pages into advertising verticals for Facebook — that has flooded students’ feeds for the last few months. Further emails and direct messages inquiring about the relationship between Middlebury and Facebook remain unanswered.
Moving forward, the college should not only publicly clarify the nature of their relationship with Facebook but also sever whatever relationship that may be. Further advertisement of the platform by the college would serve as an endorsement of the unethical business practices that Facebook employs around the world to take advantage of their users — including Middlebury students.
There are many reasons to critique Facebook both as a company and as a social media platform. Some examples include but are not limited to: its ethically-questionable founding, its well-documented experiments with emotional manipulation, how Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp’s lack of moderation led to lynchings in India, how Facebook’s own lack of moderation led to genocide in Myanmar, its outsized manipulative influence on elections around the world, the inhumane working conditions its moderators are subjected to, Facebook’s fraudulent inflation of video metrics which led to mass layoffs in journalism, its permittance of rampant Covid-19 disinformation, its comically massive lobbying budget, its advertising of weapons accessories following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and many other transgressions.
Any one of these issues is reason enough for the college to distance itself from the platform. But if none of them hit close enough to home, here’s a fact that will: one of the biggest problems with Facebook is its extractive business model that treats users as reservoirs of accessible personal data and little more. Facebook Campus aims this model directly at students.
In that same December tweet clarifying the college’s relationship with Facebook, @middlebury added a claim that “[Facebook Campus] is 100% designed for students” before linking to marketing material from fb.com. This is a lie. Facebook Campus is no more designed for students than an oil rig is designed for the Earth. Facebook needs our user data to profit, and they are willing to go to great lengths to extract it.
At Facebook, the user is the commodity. Ninety-eight and a half percent of the firm’s revenue comes from advertising to users and harvesting user data. By being famously cagey and greedy with their privacy policies, Facebook has perfected mass data collection. Reading the Facebook Data Policy leaves one feeling curious at what aspect of a user’s experience they aren’t surveilling, with nearly every user action quantified and stored for later use.
In many ways, Facebook Campus presents an even scarier opportunity for such data surveillance. By centralizing the college experience onto its platform, Facebook no longer has to make educated guesses about the minutiae of students’ lives; instead, students give it to them. Facebook Campus is able to glean which classes, clubs and majors students are in, along with who they study with and even where they live. This intimately detailed personal data will then be auctioned off for any number of purposes or will be used by Facebook themselves to sell students things. Facebook Campus did not grant us early access because they care deeply about fostering community at Middlebury college. They did it for the free and robust collection of personal data that we provide them.
Of course, most students have already signed up for at least one of Facebook’s platforms and are already being surveilled. I once shopped for a hat by saying “baseball cap” into my phone’s microphone and looking through the resulting Instagram ads. But the purpose of this op-ed is not to shame individual students for using Facebook. The platform is good at doing what it is supposed to do — connecting people. Even if one is able to escape from Facebook and the portfolio of social media platforms it owns, true freedom from Facebook’s data supervision would require almost no usage of any online platform, something that is nearly impossible to do in 2021.
One may ask, then, what the purpose of Middlebury disavowing Facebook Campus is if the data extraction is already happening. Such an observation dismisses the importance of an institutional endorsement. Just as Middlebury rescinding Rudy Giuliani’s honorary degree matters and just as the college’s divestment from fossil fuels matters, so does the stance of the college on predatory products that target its students. Middlebury’s advertisement of Facebook Campus is a tacit endorsement of the shady practices and unethical policies that Facebook uses. Regardless of what individual students decide to do with their own personal data, the college should not be advertising for a platform that will overindulge and invade students’ personal privacy.
Facebook can be fixed — there are reforms, redirections and antitrust lawsuits that can be enacted to improve the company. There are some good, earnest people employed there who are actively working to create a better social media platform. Middlebury has no role to play in advertising these reforms, nor do we have a role to play in Facebook’s inevitable brand rehabilitation campaign. The stated mission of Middlebury — and of the other 29 colleges and universities that Facebook has chosen to test Facebook Campus on — is one that revolves around education, not the wealth of corporations. The college must prioritize students’ privacy over the access — and surveillance — that Facebook Campus is offering.
Jake Gaughan is a news editor and a member of the class of 2022.
(01/28/21 10:57am)
When the majority of students left Middlebury for winter break, leaving just 23 students on campus for the dining halls to feed in December, dining hall staffers were left with little work. As a solution, the college offered these staffers the option to temporarily work in other departments, which allowed them to avoid using up their Combined Time Off (CTO) during the break.
Staff members accumulate CTO the longer they work at Middlebury, and it can be used for vacation time or sick leave. Those who did not opt for positions in other departments will be required to use CTO to account for the time off.
Dining staff are currently helping across a range of departments, including Grounds and Custodial as well as at the Snow Bowl and Bread Loaf. There is also a “skeletal crew” working at Ross to feed the small number of students currently living on campus.
Coordinating requested time off and scheduling new positions for 100 dining staffers was no easy feat. According to Dan Detora, director of dining services, staff were given the choice of where they would like to work, and Middlebury made efforts to put them in their preferred spot.
Patti McCaffrey, a chef in Atwater, has worked in the kitchens of Middlebury for 22 years. After similar reshufflings last year, she had worked in the athletic center during the summer and was happy to return there for winter break.
The majority of the dining staff went to custodial services. The custodial team typically employs about 85 staffers, but this year it was down to about 65 during the fall semester after a hiring freeze that has been in place since last spring. The team has temporarily increased nearly twofold this winter with the addition of dining staff.
The custodial staff usually cleans small houses and suites during the semester but did not do so this year due to their reduced numbers and the health risks presented by Covid-19. Now that most students are away from campus, staff has been busy cleaning these houses and suites and moving the belongings of students assigned to new rooms for the spring. As things have slowed down, the college wants employees who accumulated more than 80 hours of CTO by November 29, 2020 to take time off. This is to reduce the likelihood of staff taking such breaks in June and July instead, when the college anticipates there will be a lot more work to be done.
Dan Celik is one of the custodial supervisors who has integrated teams of dining staff into facilities work. He also teaches an introductory course on cleaning, including safety aspects, PPE, chemicals to use and ergonomics to prevent injury. He has been busy teaching these classes to the dining staff members who recently joined the custodial team.
McCaffrey noted that Middlebury has been understanding about the difficulty of these changes.
“There’s been no pressure at all. It’s been like, ‘work at your own pace, take lots of breaks,’” he said.
According to Celik, everything has run smoothly, and the dining staff has successfully integrated with the team. Still, the situation is not perfect. The dining staff were hired as cooks, and many would much rather do that.
“For people who aren’t really happy about this, it’s a long enough time to not be doing what they really want to be doing,” McCaffrey said.
The dining staffers have been able to maintain their same pay, and they will return to their regular dining positions for the spring semester.
