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(04/09/20 10:00am)
The ubiquitous pressure to stay home to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, formalized by Governor Scott’s statewide “Stay Home, Stay Safe” mandate on March 24, begs the question: what if you don’t have a home to stay in?
In an effort to answer, local nonprofits such as the John Graham Shelter, Charter House and WomenSafe have been working together to move dozens of Addison County’s housing-insecure into vacant rooms at the Middlebury Inn, Sugar House Motel, Courtyard Marriott and Middlebury Sweets Motel. Middlebury College Dining has joined the effort as well, donating three fresh Proctor-concocted meals to the relocated Vermonters each day.
The rooms are subsidized by a state voucher system that is typically implemented to shelter those living outside during Vermont’s frigid winters. In the face of Covid-19, the state declared such “adverse weather conditions” to allow continual voucher distribution to those who need to self-isolate safely. In Addison County, the program now serves between 47 and 50 residents.
Ongoing medical conditions and homelessness often go hand-in-hand, as do shelters and close quarters, explained Jubilee McGill, the primary project coordinator at the John Graham Shelter. This leaves those in need particularly vulnerable to Covid-19.
“Shelters are close communal living spaces where things are more likely to spread,” McGill said. “The state has worked really well to make sure that the people who are highly vulnerable and without permanent housing are able to socially isolate somewhere.”
The program’s organizers have also recognized that self-isolation necessities go beyond housing security. They contacted Middlebury College Dining, who immediately agreed to donate food to those in need. The Proctor Dining Hall staff, still working to prepare food for the 100-odd students remaining on campus, now package two hot meals per day from the pre-planned menu, as well as a cold breakfast for the next day delivered with dinner.
The lunch and dinner meals typically consist of the prepared entrée, vegetable, starch and dessert, while breakfasts include a combination of muffins, fruit, bagels or cereal. As Middlebury College struggles to maintain staff employment after most students have left campus, the donations also generate hours for dining hall workers.
“This program certainly helps with keeping the staff employed,” said Dan Detora, Middlebury’s Executive Director of Food Service Operations in an email to The Campus. “The staff are happy to help and happy to continue to be working. They feel like this is their way to help the community in these unprecedented times.”
Once prepared, the dining staff leave the meals on the Proctor loading dock, where they’re picked up by John Graham Shelter staff and delivered to the doorsteps of those in need.
The meal delivery service is both a great way to provide nutrition to the food-insecure and to minimize contact between people who are self-isolating, McGill explained. “We’re ensuring that there’s not a lot of people coming in and out, and that the meals are delivered safely for everyone’s health,” she said. “It feels very dark and scary at times, but I think getting that meal they feel remembered and seen.”
Walter Stugis, chair of Charter House’s board of directors, also expressed his gratitude in an interview with The Campus last week. “God bless Middlebury College,” Stugis said. “This is all while operating to serve the students who are still living on campus. It’s amazing.”
Organizers and volunteers at the nonprofits have also begun extending their delivery services to include personal hygiene products like shampoo and toothpaste, as well as items to keep residents entertained during self-isolation, such as art supplies, puzzles, books, magazines and decks of cards.
“We also want to make sure we’re paying attention to their emotional health,” McGill said, adding that the organizations are working with Middlebury College’s Center for Community Engagement to connect their clients with student volunteer “buddies” to talk to. “We’re thinking to have someone else who they can vent to and talk to and potentially advocate for them as needed.”
Addison County’s nonprofits plan to continue housing and feeding those in need indefinitely.
“I think it really helps for people out in the community to hear good stories and know that things are being done,” said McGill. “Makes us all feel a little less lost."
Correction April 9, 2020: A previous version of this article referred to the John Graham Shelter as John Graham House. Additionally, meals prepared by the college are picked up by John Graham Shelter staff, not staff of the Charter House.
(04/09/20 9:57am)
College announces employee case of Covid-19
A Middlebury staff member has contracted Covid-19, Treasurer David Provost and College Physician Mark Peluso told the community in an email Tuesday afternoon. The staff member, who is the first college employee to test positive for the virus, is isolating at home and “doing well,” the email read.
Separate investigations by college health officials and the Vermont Department of Health determined there was “no risk of transmission of COVID-19 to any College student, faculty, or staff member.”
Porter Hospital announced the first case of Covid-19 in Middlebury on March 19. Since then, the Vermont Department of Health has reported 49 total cases in Addison County, which includes an employee at the Shaws grocery store in Middlebury. The county has not yet reported any deaths of the virus, which had infected 605 statewide as of April 8.
College pledges wage continuity through June
Middlebury will continue to pay all benefits-eligible staff — faculty, administration and other full-time staff members — through June 30, according to an email sent to employees on Wednesday. Paychecks will continue to roll out regardless of employees’ sick leave and combined time-off status.
The announcement of the June 30 date follows several weeks of planning shaped by the college’s March 18 to prioritize wage continuity. Administrators recognize that setting that date creates the expectation for employees that something “dramatic” might happen on that date, Provost wrote in the announcement. “While we cannot guarantee that that will not happen, we are naming the date because it is what our best budget projections allow us to say at this time,” he wrote.
The SGA has pledged $200,000 of its reserve funds this spring toward helping maintain wage continuity.
Mid-April date set for decision on summer programs
The college will make a decision in mid-April about the status of summer language schools and other summer programming, Provost told Campus editors in an interview on Monday.
The Campus reported on April 2 that the College was still accepting Language School applications, according to a recent email to a Language Schools mailing list. However, the email asked applicants not to make travel arrangements at that time, and said the college was “looking at alternative options depending on language and level, should our programs be disrupted.”
For more coronavirus updates, check here.
(04/08/20 4:41pm)
With the future of the novel coronavirus unpredictable, it seems like everything has changed in a heartbeat. It was not long before Middlebury, like many other institutions across the country, announced its decision to hold remote classes and asked its students to leave campus. The unfolding of such news brought waves of chaotic emotions, stress and sorrow to the student body, especially the senior class.
The depth of the current crisis is impacting various aspects of all our lives, but its punch hit the senior class differently. As seniors, we still had roughly two-and-a-half months of our last semester remaining before we lost it all. We lost late nights with our friends. We lost the chance to enjoy our last semester in VT. Above all, we lost the senior events we were all waiting to celebrate to cap off our academic successes from our four years. On top of this, some of us lost the opportunity to perform in our final show, whether that was with dance, a cappella or a theatre group. Others, including myself, missed out on our spring break training trip with our team and the spring athletic season. We lost a great deal of our time at Middlebury, cutting short the last chapter of our college year.
For us, this was truly a curveball. Only a few months ago, we started the fall semester and were thrilled about the upcoming year. I remember beginning my senior year with a bit of awe and a lot of mixed feelings. I was delighted it was my last year, yet devastated about the impending end. I was also amazed by how swiftly time flew and how my class had so quickly reached the final stretch of our college career.
The sudden turn of events threw many of us into mourning. It stripped us of our time together and left us feeling speechless. It seemed like no words could ever properly convey our heartaches and the lingering uncertainty about graduation. The icing to all this bitterness was the loss of any sense of closure. We did not have the chance to conclude our final chapter as we saw fit. Instead, everything abruptly came two months early: the tears, the move out and the goodbyes. We rushed to fill the fleeting moments, trying to squeeze everything the next two months would have held into just the couple of days we had left together.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]It is only a matter of time before this red light becomes green and the whirlwind will pass. [/pullquote]
This loss will likely leave a gap and a lingering sense of absence in us. And frankly, it sucks. It sucks that our last few months of college got screwed up. I'm sorry to those who missed out on their final performance. I'm sorry to the athletes who lost their season and the opportunity to be with their team. I'm sorry to the seniors who've been working tirelessly on their thesis. This is all still surreal and I'm sorry it happened to us.
Amidst all this despair though, I'm still hopeful about our class. I believe we can navigate through this ambiguous course. It certainly won't be easy, but we entered Middlebury during a tumultuous time and have weathered through it all these past three years. We've been resilient since our arrival and can continue to be as we move forward. Growing up, we learned about how the generations before us have witnessed similar troubling events. And like them, we are currently living through history, soon-to-be stories we speak of to future generations. It is only a matter of time before this red light becomes green and the whirlwind will pass.
However, for now, it seems the loss we encountered is still the source of our grieving. This is not to detract from the larger issue but only to acknowledge and reassure our feelings are valid. Each of us has had undoubtedly distinct experiences on campus, but there is comfort in knowing that such a mishap has served as a bonding moment for us. And so, although we were afforded less time together than we expected and are deeply saddened by that, I would like us to think of one of my favorite quotes as we reflect on our time at Middlebury: "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." Thank you Midd!
Submitted March 27, 2020.
(04/08/20 4:25pm)
All right so! As we were unceremoniously kicked off campus, I was put in an interesting circumstance as I, like many others whose work was campus-specific, had to think about how I could finish my thesis while away. My project is a stop-motion film and requires a fair amount of college equipment, as well as a dark space big enough to house my set and film. Originally, I was planning on staying at Middlebury for an extra week to finish everything up, but was not approved to do so. So THEN, I was planning on staying off-campus and sneaking into the building where I was working for that week and just hoping no one would catch me. My department head strongly advised against this and, after much inner debate, I eventually relented. My final option was to check out roughly a car's load of equipment and move my set to a friend's house in Stowe, which is where I am now.
For the past week, I have been filming in an upstairs bathroom with all its windows and light sources blocked by layers of black trash bags. I must say it has been a much more pleasant experience than sneaking into a building day after day. However, as I am currently in Vermont and my home is in Miami, I'm struggling with how I will be able to get home after I finish filming and before school starts back up again.
What has been your greatest worry or day-to-day concern as coronavirus has spread?
I'm not sure how or when I am going to be able to go home, and how I can do so without endangering my family.
What has made you happy over the past few weeks?
I've found that filming my thesis has been a great way to pass the time, and I have amassed a growing list of mostly Dungeons & Dragons-related podcasts to listen to while I work. It’s also very convenient to have your set in the bathroom, cause that means you never have to leave to pee! Also, cooking is fun. The friend in question just pulled out the absolute dankest of banana breads.
Submitted March 25, 2020.
(04/02/20 8:40pm)
Following the lead of other colleges and universities, Middlebury will not bring students back to Vermont this semester and has ruled out the possibility of an in-person commencement in May, President Laurie Patton confirmed in an all-campus email Thursday afternoon. In a separate email, Treasurer David Provost detailed a plan to partially refund students’ room and board payments.
The approximately 120 students who remain on campus will be allowed to stay until the end of the semester provided federal and state governments do not change their policies, according to Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor. “Students who are on campus can leave campus if they so choose, and we will help them with travel needs as appropriate,” she wrote in a text message to The Campus.
All classes will carry on remotely, “continuing the emergency approach to teaching and learning our faculty and students have already begun,” Patton wrote. She promised continued communication from the administration to help maximize students’ remote learning experiences.
Students have waited anxiously for news about commencement as the response to Covid-19 escalated around the country in recent days. Thirty-eight U.S. states had enacted stay-at-home orders as of April 2, and many colleges and universities around the country had cancelled graduation ceremonies. In the NESCAC, Bowdoin postponed its graduation ceremony without considering a virtual alternative, while Tufts will take Middlebury’s route of both a virtual May ceremony and a later, in-person gathering.
Patton acknowledged the disappointment members of the class of 2020 will feel at missing out on an in-person commencement in May, and said the college will still hold an in-person ceremony on an undecided date later this year or in 2021. The email did not describe possible formats for the virtual rendition of the ceremony, which will still be held the last weekend in May.
In his email, Provost wrote that the college will automatically place “prorated” credits for room and board fees on students' accounts beginning next Monday. Students will be credited between $1,000 and $4,380 — up to 55% of semester room and board fees — depending on families’ contributions to tuition costs.
Students have the choice of applying the credit to future charges or requesting a refund, Provost wrote. The credits, which will total close to $9 million, come as the college continues to pay all faculty and staff wages through the end of the semester. Families can also opt to make a tax-deductible donation to the college in their credit amount.
Middlebury’s annual June reunion ceremony has also been cancelled, according to Patton’s email. The school has not yet made a decision about the status of the summer language schools, but told those on a language schools email list two days ago that they are still accepting applications. However, the email also asked applicants not to make travel arrangements at the current time, and said that it is “looking at alternative options depending on language and level, should our programs be disrupted.”
This is a developing story. Check The Campus’ website for updates.
(04/02/20 10:10am)
Whether called “shelter-in-place” or “stay-at-home,” local and state-wide orders across the country all have the same blaring message: leave your home as little as possible.
Early last week, Governor Phil Scott followed suit with a “Stay Home, Stay Safe” executive order that went into effect on Tuesday, March 24. The directive is one of 37 state orders to limit citizens’ movement in an effort to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Scott’s order came after many college employees had already transitioned to remote working. Faculty and administrators were settled into work via Zoom and some professors had reportedly already experimented with creative backgrounds for their first classes (think a photo of the second floor of Davis Library for “continuity’s sake” or an iconic Zoom meme).
With many employees working from their living rooms, staff have taken the greatest hit from Scott’s order.
Karen Miller, the vice president for human resources, and David Provost, the college’s executive vice president for finance, reached out to staff with the college’s game plan shortly after Scott’s announcement. They had anticipated stricter measures restricting resident mobility.
“They’re now implementing the plan they told us was going to happen if things got worse,” said Patti McCaffrey, an Atwater cook whose work has been modified since the executive mandate.
The college identified “essential workers” that must continue reporting to work — on a limited basis — in order to provide for the 120-odd students that remain on campus. Essential workers who must resume their work on campus include health care staff, public safety, facilities services, dining services, and information technology support, according to the staff-wide email sent out last week.
From plumbers to student mail staffers, there are a number of workers that are integral to the functioning of the college, said Mike Moser, director of facilities services — making them “essential workers” by definition. The college’s hope is to have these staff members work on a rotational basis to limit the number of them on campus at any one time.
“In short, we have approximately 125 students on campus that need our service support,” Moser said in an email to The Campus. “We’re aligned to provide that support and continue to adjust our plans daily as this situation evolves.”
He said that facilities wouldn’t have the capacity to adapt to such a dynamic situation save for the college’s new Covid-19 compensation plan. The plan includes a 21-day Covid-19 Pay Bank that increases employees’ allotted sick days.
Before the governor’s executive order, dining services had a different plan of action. With only one dining hall remaining open, around 70 dining employees were set to lend a hand with facilities, deep-cleaning and doing odd-jobs — like painting — as needed.
In light of the new mandate, this plan is no longer in motion. But barring the previous roadmap to move a number of workers to facilities, the backbone of dining services’ coronavirus-strategy remains intact, according to Dan Detora, executive director of food services. Employees will work in rotational teams of eight to limit their contact with other workers and only one dining hall will remain open.
In the new system, staff will end up working fewer hours. The days they will be forced to take off because of the stay-at-home mandate will come out of their Covid-19 Pay Banks.
After being assigned to teams of eight during their final meeting, dining staff accepted a somber reality: Aside from the seven other workers on their teams, employees did not know when they would see their colleagues and friends again.
“Usually right before Christmas break, when you know you’re not going to see each other for two weeks, we give each other hugs,” said McCaffrey of the Atwater dining staff. “This time, we couldn’t hug each other goodbye.”
(04/02/20 10:00am)
“Are you coming home tomorrow?” I texted my mom on my third day of social isolation, still in a hazy state of heartbreak and denial and seeking a familiar comfort.
A minute later, she responded: “This makes me sad. I don’t think so.”
Not the answer I wanted, but the one I knew was coming. As an internal medicine physician at the Seattle Swedish Medical Hospital, my mother had finished her four shifts for the week. And yet she still had to stand by on call, waiting.
At the time, internal hospital projections said it would be 10 days until Seattle — where the first American coronavirus death took place — looked like Italy. This wasn’t hard to believe: All over the city, hospitals had canceled all elective surgeries and non-essential appointments in order to transform entire wings to prepare for the coming influx of Covid-19 patients. On a soccer field where I used to play, they’d begun construction of a 200-bed field hospital. By all accounts, it would be mere days until the healthcare systems were overrun and overextended — and so my mom stayed, to linger amidst the strange calm that preceded the terrifying, inevitable storm of patients.
After I left for college, my family moved to North Central Washington, with my mom commuting in and out of Seattle for work. Now, she remains in the city alone, unable to return to her family, and each day that passes without her feels like a tremendous loss. It may be safer for me out here, but it is stranger; especially now that the physical presence of my mom has been replaced with a speakerphone that occupies the fifth spot at the dinner table.
Already, my mother is beginning to feel the strain. At 3 a.m. on the same night my mom confirmed she would not be returning home, she checked herself into urgent care with unusually high blood pressure accompanied by a serious anxiety attack. This was the result of a vicious cycle of news consumption and somber conference calls in regards to ventilators, masks, fatality rates and testing availability. In an eerie late-night role reversal, she was reassured by the urgent care specialist that many other doctors felt the same way, and then dispatched. Moments like those challenge my own false preconceptions about healthcare workers, who seem like these invincible and untouchable beings that will swoop in to save us all. In reality, they’re significantly more vulnerable than most — and their ability to effectively do their jobs hinges on us.
In fact, for many healthcare providers, it is a manner of when, not if, they will become patients themselves. Nationwide, many are opting to sew their own masks or use bandanas as the medical supply quickly depletes. Additionally, all over the country, the burden of hazardous care is fragmenting families like mine, as many clinicians opt to separate from loved ones instead of risking exposing them to the virus.
In the weeks leading up to my departure from Middlebury, I called my mom once a day (if not multiple times) to worry and ask ridiculous questions and then worry some more. I relied on her in each moment of coronavirus-adjacent uncertainty while still on campus — but now it had become apparent that I needed to stop. I needed to stop asking her if my persistent cough meant the world was ending. I needed to stop pretending she was this untouchable and omniscient superwoman who could instantly assuage my unease. (I’m now forbidden from uttering anything along the lines of “I’m bored” to her, as she reminded me that she would give up her frenzied panic and despair for boredom in an instant.) What she is up against is unimaginable, and far more dismal than my not-leaving-the-couch and missing-my-friends grumpiness will ever be. Last week, my mom jokingly asked who I thought my 14-year old brother would prefer as a legal guardian. I wondered how much pain was disguised behind her lighthearted tone.
It may be months before I see my mom again, but this time I’m not across the country at Middlebury. I’m mere hours away, wrangling my siblings in some messy semblance of fabricated mothering, trying and failing to fill her shoes. The other day, during one of our frequent, petty arguments about whose turn it was to load the dishwasher, my younger brother uttered one of his favorite lines: “Don’t tell me what to do, you’re not my mom.” But then he paused, letting a tiny, nervous laugh escape. “Well, I guess now, you kind of are.”
When we talk about “flattening the curve”, we are not just looking to protect obscure and cryptic bureaucratic systems. The framework of these institutions is comprised of valiant individuals who are not immune, and not superhuman. And yet despite their own humanity and susceptibility, they will continue to show up even if there are not enough ICU beds, or ventilators, or testing kits, or equipment to keep them safe. My mom stays at work for you, miles and hours away from her loved ones. Please, please stay at home for her.
Lily Laesch ’23 is one of The Campus’s Opinion editors.
(04/02/20 10:00am)
The NESCAC canceled all competitions, including conference championships, on March 11 to reduce the spread of Covid-19. The presidents of all 11 NESCAC institutions agreed unanimously on the decision. Following the announcement, athletic directors NESCAC-wide agreed to suspend in-person recruiting through April 30 while simultaneously allowing electronic and written forms of communication.
A day after the NESCAC’s decision, the NCAA canceled all remaining competitions and winter championships, including the women’s hockey’s NCAA quarterfinal between Middlebury and Endicott College. The game was slated to take place on Saturday, March 14.
Similarly affected were athletes planning to participate in NCAA skiing, track & field, and swimming championships.
Senior athletes, who were looking forward to rounding out their final seasons, reacted to the news with disappointment.
“The timeline on the decision was so quick,” said Weston Brach ’20, co-captain of the men’s tennis team. “It felt like one day we were training and getting mentally prepared for the first spring matches, and the next day we were told to leave campus.”
Some athletes were already on the cusp of achieving their championship dreams.
“I was simply heartbroken. 27 games, 21 wins, a NESCAC championship appearance and a bid to the NCAA's — all for that NCAA tournament,” said Sidney Porter ’20, a member of the women’s hockey team. “Everything we had worked for the entire season that led to the unbelievable opportunity to host that quarterfinal game and have a chance to go to final four, the first time in my four years, was taken away.”
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(04/02/20 9:59am)
Political Science Professor Allison Stanger has extended her sabbatical another year after winning awards that will take her to Stanford, Calif. and Washington, D.C. next fall and spring.
Stanger, who spent this past year as a fellow and visiting professor at Harvard University, will be the Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress for 2020–2021. On a separate appointment, she will also be a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) during that time.
She will spend the year working on her new book, tentatively titled “Consumers vs. Citizens: Social Inequality and Democracy’s Public Sphere in a Big Data World,” she said in an email to The Campus. She noted that the locations of her upcoming posts will position her ideally for this kind of work, since she will be close both to the offices of the government and Silicon Valley.
Stanger said she plans on returning to Middlebury for the 2021–22 academic year.
“I’m very grateful to both my colleagues in the Political Science Department and to the administration for their exceptional support, and I am looking forward to returning to Middlebury when my fellowships end,” she wrote. “The experiences I have had these past few years should make me a better teacher and resource for Middlebury students.”
Stanger was injured by protesters during Charles Murray’s visit to Middlebury in 2017. In the fracas that followed the disrupted talk, Stanger, who mediated the talk and escorted Murray out of the venue, suffered whiplash and a concussion.
The following fall, Stanger began what was slated to be a two-year leave. But at the end of the second year, Stanger announced to the Middlebury Political Science faculty and staff her plans to remain off-campus for the 2019–2020 academic year.
Stanger is currently a technology and human values senior fellow at Harvard’s Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics, and is teaching a course at the university (now remotely, from Vermont) called “The Politics of Virtual Realities.” In her email, Stanger added that she was recently appointed to the Science Board of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico.
The handbook states that the college does not guarantee to faculty “extraordinary leaves” — leaves that last more than one year — but that the college may grant such a leave when a professor is offered “an unusual professional opportunity.”
Dean of Faculty Sujata Moorti said that the college prioritizes “departmental and college planning in approving leaves.” The Political Science department in particular typically has between two and four professors on leave in any given year, according to Political Science Department Chair Erik Bleich. Next year, only one other professor — Professor Nadia Horning, who teaches in a different subfield — will be on leave.
According to information available on the college’s website, Stanger’s current leave of absence is unpaid by the college. When asked if next year’s leave would also be unpaid, Moorti said Stanger “will be paid by the institutions hosting her.”
The CASBS offers stipends to first-time fellows, and an endowment at the Library of Congress funds the chair position, which pays a stipend of $13,500 per month. Nominees for that position are sourced from a number of individuals and are recommended to the Librarian of Congress by a selection committee.
Bill Ryan, the director of communications at the Library of Congress, characterized the position as one that “supports exploration of the history of America with special attention to the ethical dimensions of domestic economic, political and social policies.” He said the start and end dates of the chairmanship have not yet been finalized. The CASBS position runs September 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021.
Before the coronavirus led to the cancellation and postponement of all on-campus events, Stanger was scheduled to visit Middlebury April 7 to talk about her most recently published book, “Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington to Trump,” alongside the New York Times’s David Sanger. The book was fortuitously released this September, the same day House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. The inquiry was spurred by a whistleblower complaint against the President.
In the months that followed the book’s release, Stanger made a number of high-profile radio and TV appearances, and penned pieces for the New York Times and The Atlantic. In February, Stanger was one of about 50 authors to win a Prose Award from the American Association of Publishers for the book, in the category of Government, Policy and Politics.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the location of Stanford University. It is located in Stanford, California.
(04/02/20 9:58am)
The college’s ski areas at both the Snow Bowl and Rikert Nordic Center have cut their seasons short. Despite previous plans to stay open for the weekend of March 13, the ski areas had their last day of the season that Saturday — the day before Middlebury students were required to leave campus, and three weeks ahead of their planned closure date of Saturday, April 4.
“Making this about community safety was easy with respect to deciding to close,” said Mike Hussey, general manager of Rikert and the Snow Bowl. “It absolutely made sense to all of us involved in the decision making process.”
Closure discussions
Hussey and his team began discussions about an early closure once they received word on Tuesday, March 10 that Middlebury was suspending in-person classes and sending students home.
“On Wednesday the 11, I met with the team at the ski areas and determined that keeping the areas open would not further the cause of ‘social distancing,’” Hussey said. “The Base Lodge [at the Snow Bowl] is a melting pot of a vast cross section of people.”
Hussey recommended to Middlebury’s Senior Leadership Group (SLG) that the ski areas close on Friday, March 13. “The decision was initially left to me then the SLG took it up,” Hussey said. After the college announced it was extending its deadline for departures and that Middlebury students were allowed to stay on campus through Sunday, March 15, the two parties agreed to keep the ski areas open through the weekend.
Hussey said that the Middlebury ski areas, which publicly announced their closure plans on March 13, were some of the first ski areas in the country to do so.
While Vermont has not issued a state order to shut down ski resorts, as was seen in Colorado, Vail Resorts (including Stowe and Okemo), Alterra Resorts (Sugarbush, Stratton) and Powdr Resorts all announced on March 14 that they would close immediately.
As a result, the Snow Bowl became a popular backup option on Sunday to skiers who had been left stranded by the immediate closures at other mountains along the Route 100 valley. However, at 8:20 a.m. on Sunday, 10 minutes before the scheduled opening of the lifts, Hussey made the decision to close the mountain as the lodge was already in excess of a 250 person maximum set by the state government of Vermont.
“This was initially a hard decision as it was a great opportunity for new customers to experience the Snow Bowl, something we strive for,” Hussey said, “but in reality it was easy because it wasn’t about the Snow Bowl or the skiing but the safety of the people.”
Lost revenue and opportunity
The need to shut down quickly — sometimes temporarily, sometimes indefinitely — in response to the virus has greatly affected local business across Addison County and Vermont. Hussey said he doesn’t have an estimate yet of lost revenue from the early closure of the ski areas, but did note that the end of March is not typically a highly profitable time.
“The main revenue sources are season pass sales, the holidays, and [the college’s] Feb vacations,” said Hussey. “We missed a few weeks of weekend skiing, mostly for pass holders, and a couple events.”
Jack Brady ’21 was one of the many pass holders seeking to take advantage of the last weeks of the season. “I like to get out at least a couple of times a week through the end of March,” Brady said. “The conditions may not be as great towards the end of the season, especially with the amount of snowfall this year, but it is always fun to ski with friends.”
Thanks to the decision to keep both campus and the ski areas open into the weekend, Brady was also one of many students able to take advantage of the Snow Bowl’s last days.
“I was lucky enough to go to the Snow Bowl on Saturday, which ended up being closing day,” Brady said. “While many students had already left campus the prior day, I enjoyed this last opportunity to ski at the bowl.”
Next steps
Hussey and his team are still working hard to officially wrap up the ski areas for the season.
“Currently, we are able to do the customary closure work for the ski areas as it is primarily independent work on the mountain and office work that can be done remotely,” Hussey said.
He does not expect a major disruption in the work plan, with the early closure being close enough to their normal business cycle, but shares the uncertainty that most small business owners are facing amidst the crisis.
“That said, we do not know what this pandemic will bring and are planning for how to work effectively in the next months.”
(04/02/20 9:58am)
Not many would characterize Middlebury’s student-administration relationship as “simple.” Mere weeks ago, the college faced intense, sustained outcry from students protesting Charles Murray’s third controversial invitation to speak on campus. On Murray and other issues, students have critiqued the administration for a lack of forums for accessible, inclusive dialogue, as well as a broader lack of transparency around decision processes. It’s tough to blame these critics: Communication relaying decisions made by the administration often assumes a distant, all-too institutional tone.
Like pretty much everything else in our lives, though, that tone — not to mention the broader student-administration relationship — shifted over the past few weeks.
Take the days leading up to students’ departure from campus. Per the college’s March 10 email, nearly all students were initially expected to vacate their rooms by the night of Friday, March 13. Responding to students’ stressed objections, though, the college extended that move-out date to late Sunday, allowing more time to book plane tickets or make arrangements to stay with friends. While students were unable to reap the benefits of this extension — like those who had already scrambled to purchase Friday plane tickets — we appreciate the flexibility and humility exhibited in this gesture, which recognized that the original timeline was neither practical nor sympathetic.
This same tone imbued administration communication throughout spring break, wending its way into regular emails, social media updates and resource pages from various college bodies. While these updates rarely claimed to have all the answers (many simply alluded to decisions under consideration), they went a long way toward making scattered students feel in the loop. These dispatches weren’t purely informative, either; they contained as much well-wishing and community-building as they did logistics, from photos of seniors at sunrises to poetry courtesy of President Laurie Patton. Plus, rather than silo updates into discrete emails to students, faculty and staff, information was compiled together onto a single, publicly-available page. We’re pleased by how many of these announcements read less like stiff, official college communications and more like the reflections of individuals likewise mourning the loss of our on-campus community. During a crisis which has quite literally stripped us of the comfort of others’ company, such virtual displays of humanity were and continue to be deeply appreciated.
Our appreciation extends beyond Facebook posts or emails, to initiatives like Student Emergency Funds and offers to compensate for lost work studies. And comparing Middlebury’s response to that of other schools has only reinforced our sense of pride. Rather than make an immediate decision on, say, commencement proceedings (some schools have cancelled them outright or else intend to stage virtual ceremonies), Middlebury has held off for the time being in order to consider all options — and, in an email sent over spring break, President Patton even asked for students’ help in coming up with those options. The school is also providing staff with a Covid-19 Pay Bank, which will allow them to take off 21 additional sick days without dipping into their regular banks of days. We are pleased by the continued reassurance that wage continuity is one of the college’s priorities, even amidst an uncertain financial situation.
This isn’t to say that the college’s response to our current crisis has been perfect. Many students find themselves frustrated or confused by unanswered questions — what, for instance, has Middlebury done with students’ possessions left on campus? Is the college planning to standardize the wide range of teaching approaches individual professors have adopted? Will the 120 students remaining on campus be asked to leave before the semester is over? Others are unsatisfied with current plans for the semester, as the debate around opt-in and universal pass/fail grading indicates. And the remote resumption of classes this week will inevitably be attended by its own fresh set of concerns.
While we recognize that confusion and ambiguity are unavoidable during such a sudden, unprecedented period, we ask that the college exercise the same striking flexibility and empathy in addressing these and future issues. As the spring semester carries on, we want the college to continue to value Middlebury’s off-campus community by maintaining a consistent openness to students’ feedback. We’d hope, too, that this accessible, human approach to administration extends beyond our current crisis and into future academic years. Setting inevitable fears and frustrations aside, the last few weeks have left students proud of the college which most of us have, for the moment, left behind. We trust we’ll be just as proud of the one we return to.
(04/02/20 9:57am)
Update: Since this article was published, Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor told The Campus that students remaining on campus will be allowed to stay until the end of the semester, as long as federal and state governments do not change their policies. See that update in full here.
For the approximately 120 students who have remained at Middlebury since in-person classes were discontinued on March 13, campus life is far from what it was just a few weeks ago. As the threat of Covid-19 continues to rise, the college has implemented a series of changes geared towards social distancing and outbreak preparedness. Students are still waiting to hear whether they will be allowed to stay on campus for the remainder of the semester or asked to go home.
Nearly all campus buildings, including libraries, Atwater and Ross dining halls, and most residence halls, are closed to the remaining students. Students received an email on Wednesday, March 18 that asked them to relocate to Gifford, Hepburn, and Forest Halls by Saturday, March 21.
Last weekend, Meili Huang ’23 packed up her Battell double and moved into a single in Hepburn. Huang said the move-out process was similar to that which many students who left campus experienced the week prior.
“They offered the boxes and everything and there was a sign up sheet for asking for people to help, and they will help you move everything,” she said.
Xuan He ’20, recounted a similar experience. She said college facilities staff drove students and their boxes between their old and new rooms.
“I was really moved to see so many people working together to make sure that students on campus still have a place to stay,” she said.
Although the school consolidated students into three residence halls, they strategically assigned rooms in a manner that promotes social distancing. Individual halls within the dorms are at half occupancy at most, and all students are living alone.
“The halls are pretty empty, quiet, and it's just kind of weird,” Huang said.
No more than two students share a single bathroom and some students have a bathroom to themselves. Custodial staff are working even harder to ensure spaces are clean — He said it seems they are now cleaning the bathrooms daily.
Francoise Niyigena ’21, a First Year Counselor who lived in Hadley, said that a piece of paper on the doors of students’ former rooms stated they were approved to stay on campus until the end of spring break. The school has not yet confirmed whether students can live on campus beyond April 5, but some are taking their relocation as a sign that they will be permitted to stay until the end of the semester. Niyigena’s Commons Residence Director said the rooming situation could potentially change depending on Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines.
The email students received regarding dormitory relocation said that moving would make things easier on staff and that the school had a responsibility to the greater Middlebury community. Niyigena said she thinks this means empty dorms could be repurposed to increase Porter Hospital’s capacity need be. He, who previously lived in the Interfaith House, said her former residence is being converted into a potential quarantine space.
Vermont Governor Phil Scott issued a statewide stay-at-home order on March 24, asking residents to cease nonessential travel. Niyigena said that students essentially already adhered to such standards prior to the actual order. Students are not permitted to leave the town of Middlebury, and many businesses have closed. Middlebury’s grocery stores are open, but news of a local Shaw’s employee who tested positive for Covid-19 has spread concern among students.
At Proctor, the only dining hall that has remained open, staff members serve food in disposable to-go boxes, and students can no longer eat in the dining rooms.
“For the last couple of days, the dining hall tables have been removed,” said Niyigena. “There's like a chair wall between us and the staff that are serving us.”
Despite these changes, students still have many food options available to them. He said there are usually four or five hot food options as well as some salad bar items, milks and a few different desserts. In order to limit how many people touch food and serving utensils, students can no longer serve themselves. Staff members place each student’s meal into a to-go box for them.
“The positive thing about this experience is that now students actually have more interactions — direct interactions — with dining hall staff,” He said. “We say ‘thank you’ and ‘hello’ and they ask us what we would like to have.”
Though nearly all campus spaces are now closed to students, MiddExpress and the Grille have remained open with limited hours. Even so, the school discouraged gatherings of more than ten people in an email to on-campus students. The Mail Center is also currently open, but is scheduled to close after April 5. Cater Wang ’21 said that students have been practicing social distancing by standing further from the Mail Center window, and staff now sign for picked-up packages instead of students.
“I guess the major difference is just you have less people waiting in line for a package,” he said.
In the absence of typical on-campus activities and hang-out spaces — and with coronavirus precautions minimizing face-to-face interaction — students are finding different ways to fill their time and see one another.
“For me, I go take walks and try to keep my room sanitized and meditate,” He said. “I meditate quite often or try to do yoga, and sometimes my friends and I do workout sessions outside together.”
Huang said she has spent a lot of time in her room doing work and watching TV shows, but she sometimes asks friends if they want to pick up lunch and eat it together. Niyigena has also appreciated small-scale group activities such as evening yoga sessions planned by one of her friends.
“Or you do a movie night or have tea or cook together with just like three, four other people, just to kind of have that sense of community,” she said. “I think that's been really, really helpful for me.”
While small get-togethers provide a degree of normalcy, students noted how much emptier the campus feels.
“I've gone for a couple walks, maybe for like a run around, and you barely see anybody,” said Niyigena. “Or maybe you see like two or three other people, but that's it.”
(04/02/20 9:55am)
The college and the wider Middlebury community are closely collaborating to prepare for the rapidly-mounting Covid-19 crisis. Following the college’s decision to suspend in-person classes and evacuate the majority of students on March 10, the college has leveraged resources and unique opportunities that come with the mass exodus of students to support local organizations.
The college has partnered with several homeless shelters to feed displaced Addison County residents and is preparing college facilities to aid Porter Medical Center as it copes with the expected influx of patients.
“The college, town, and hospital are stronger together than we are alone,” President Laurie Patton said in an email to the Campus. “It's important that we collaborate and assure the community that we are doing so as we face Covid-19.”
Donating meals
Prior to students leaving campus, the Center for Community Engagement (CCE) worked with commons coordinators and facilities staff to create drop-boxes in each commons office, where departing students could leave non-perishable food items for donation to the Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects (HOPE) food pantry.
Donations also came from the dining halls. Dining Services were unable to cancel some food orders as the college decided how long and in what capacity the dining halls would remain operational. While it is standard protocol for the dining halls to donate excess food to HOPE, Charter House and Community Suppers during breaks, the sudden and dramatic decrease of students created a much larger surplus than normal.
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Instead of letting the food go to waste, Dining Services, the CCE and several local organizations worked together to distribute it to those in need throughout the Middlebury community, said Director of Media Relations Sarah Ray on behalf of Bo Cleveland, assistant director of Dining. Dining Services donated perishable and dairy products to the Charter House, a local homeless shelter, and gave non-perishable goods to the HOPE food pantry.
The CCE worked with the United Way of Addison County to convene a group of local service providers and discuss how to sustain these services during this crisis. Through this group, the CCE was able to identify areas of community need, according to Jason Duquette-Hoffman, assistant director of the privilege and poverty academic cluster at the CCE.
On March 20, the Charter House and John Graham Shelter had to move several former residents to local hotels and motels due to the health risk of the close living quarters of the shelters. As a result, they lost access to the meals that the shelters normally provide them. The CCE coordinated with Dining Services and the shelters' volunteers to feed the 14 evacuees, according to Duquette-Hoffman.
After the Charter House closed its warming shelters entirely on March 21, sending the remaining guests to hotels and motels, demand for alimentation assistance rapidly spiked. Again, Middlebury stepped in to close the gap, providing 42 lunches and dinners on March 21 and 42 breakfasts and lunches and 46 dinners March 22, according to Cleaveland.
The following week, on March 24, Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration David Provost committed the college to providing up to 50 meals to those in need each day as long as the dining halls remain operational, according to Duquette-Hoffman.
“In a time when things were changing nearly by the minute, Dining Services was working throughout the weekend and in constant contact with us and community colleagues to understand, adapt to and meet these needs,” Duquette-Hoffman said. “I am deeply grateful for their work and the support of the college in so readily meeting this most critical need.”
Individual staff members also stepped up to address community needs. Dining staff at Proctor packaged and provided meals for four families of migrant dairy workers, according to Cleaveland.
Lending college spaces
The college is temporarily housing Porter Medical Center clinical employees in Munford House residential hall. The employees are all healthy, and none are suspected to have been exposed to Covid-19. By providing them with isolated housing, however, the hospital and college hope to reduce the risk that they will become infected by the larger community and endanger the residents of Helen Porter Nursing and Rehabilitation Center with whom they work, or vice versa. The employees will move into Munford today, according to a campus-wide email.
A greatly diminished campus population has dramatically decreased the demand for dining and facilities’ labor. In order to retain staff, the college is also prepared to assign extra facilities and dining staff to work in the town and hospital if they cannot find tasks on campus, according to a campus-wide email on March 18. Given safety and health concerns, staff members would not be mandated to work in this capacity, but instead asked to help if needed, according to Provost.
As Covid-19 spreads throughout Vermont, Middlebury is prepared to repurpose Chip Kenyon Arena to host a Department of Health mobile hospital unit in the event that coronavirus cases exceed Porter Medical Center’s current capacity. Porter hosts 25 acute care beds under normal circumstances. The mobile hospital unit at Kenyon could nearly double that capacity, according to the Addison Independent.
“The College’s guiding principle is to be ‘on call’ for the community and help in any way it can,” Patton wrote in a joint letter written with Brian Carpenter, chair of the Middlebury select board, and Thomas Thompson, interim president of Porter Hospital.
To that end, the college is preparing for scenarios in which it would “share its building, dining, and other infrastructure resources” with the town and hospital, Patton explained in her letter. While the administration is still consulting with town and hospital officials, Patton expects they will be able to announce more details soon.
“This work is so critical not only because this community is where we study and learn, but because it is where we (faculty, staff and students) work, live and make our homes, said Duquette-Hoffman, “It is part of what makes Middlebury, Middlebury.”
(04/01/20 1:56pm)
A week since I was asked to leave Middlebury, my family has set up a makeshift office for me in our living room. We bought a WiFi extender so I could Zoom from this basically unused far corner of the house. I’ve been baking, walking my dogs and decluttering our house during my extra week of spring break. My parents will start to work from home this week; thankfully, Covid-19 has only changed their place of work, rather than putting them out of a job altogether. My younger sister is starting her second week of remote learning and has set up her own office in another room in the house. It’s a full house and it’s more family time than I bargained for, but I have everything I need and more to have a successful semester.
I am one of many Middlebury students who has gone home to nothing more difficult than a little too much family time. Other Middlebury students are not so lucky. My friend is living with a friend because her parents live abroad and the ticket home is too expensive. Another is returning to an abusive household. Others don’t have internet access, or their parents have lost their jobs as a result of Covid-19, or their younger siblings are home from school and they are expected to watch them while their parents are working. Needless to say, the remainders of their semesters are going to look a lot different than my own.
This is why I support universal pass/fail. Universal pass/fail ensures students an equal grading scale as opposed to optional pass/fail, which gives students the choice to opt in or out of traditional grading for the semester. The problem with an optional pass/fail system is that students like me will have no trouble opting in for traditional grading, while others — those with more difficult home situations, for example — might face competing priorities that make pass/fail the only feasible option.
I know I do not work any harder than many of my classmates, but I also know that when it comes time to apply to graduate school, our transcripts may say otherwise if I am able to earn letter grades while less-advantaged peers must choose Pass/D/Fail. Plus, graduate schools such as the prestigious Harvard Medical School have already said that they will recognize pass/fail grades as valid to fulfil medical school prerequisites, “provided it is the policy of the college/university to only award pass/fail grades.” I do not think that any student should be punished academically because of their living situations — nor do I think I should be rewarded for coming from a home that is not negatively affected by Covid-19. Only with universal pass/fail will we be able to do right by ALL of our students.
What drives the pushback against universal pass/fail is the unwillingness of privileged Middlebury students to forego the unmerited benefits they receive from said privilege. It’s a pattern I’ve seen time and again at Middlebury — I find that oftentimes, students are willing to acknowledge inequity, but fall short when it comes to rectifying it. Students would rather have the semester positively affect their GPA than stand in solidarity with their peers.
This petition serves as a litmus test of community empathy. I encourage my peers to reflect on their own reluctance to implement universal pass/fail. If your reason for not signing is because you want a couple of A’s, then you are complicit in perpetuating a system that benefits the privileged and precludes those without means from succeeding. When I wrote this there were only 250 signatories. Although that number continues to increase, there is still a large group of students who have yet to sign. If we really cared about our community and its most vulnerable members in this time of crisis, more students would have signed by now. As a reflection of Middlebury’s commitment to uplift those without means, the response to universal Pass/D/Fail so far has been pretty telling.
Lily Colón is a member of the class of 2021.5.
(03/29/20 12:10am)
The transition to remote learning sparked debate about equitable grading during the Covid-19 pandemic, after most students were sent home to continue the spring semester on digital platforms such as Zoom and Panopto.
On March 16, Middlebury announced a grading policy that would allow students to continue working toward a letter grade or to opt for a Pass/D/Fail grade in any class. Because of the emergency nature of the pandemic, decisions about changing academic policies — which would typically require several months of debate and be made with the input of a broader range of faculty — have been taken on by the college’s “ad hoc academic continuity group,” composed of five faculty and five faculty administrators.
Following the email announcing the new grading system, some students organized a petition — originally titled #NoFailMidd — to advocate for a universal pass/fail grading system.
The five student organizers of #NoFailMidd raised concerns in the petition about socioeconomic inequalities inherent in an opt-in Pass/D/Fail system, citing a lack of resources or added responsibilities at home as challenges that might push some students toward the Pass/D/Fail option, while allowing their more privileged peers to pursue GPA-boosting letter grades.
Following the launch of #NoFailMidd, other student advocates launched a sister campaign pushing for a Dual A policy modeled after some Harvard students’ “Double A proposal”. The two campaigns have since merged, evolving into #FairGradesMidd. An updated petition and an op-ed in The Campus, written by organizers, have since been publicized.
“People have come out and acknowledged how this approach that the college is taking is really blind to privilege,” said Arthur Martins ’22.5, one of the organizers of the petition. “When we talk about any argument that’s about choice, we need to see it as a material reality. If you have two people that have very different material circumstances, you can’t ask them to make the same choice.”
Martins said the petition now has over 1,000 signatures. The petition encourages students to contact their representatives from the Student Government Association (SGA), as well as faculty members, to advocate for their prefered grading method.
“At Middlebury … everyone had the classroom to go to, everyone could go to the dining hall, have a meal, go back to the library, do their work. All the work that was happening had support, and everyone had access to a very similar structure of support,” Martins said.
Other educational institutions across the country have also been grappling with an unprecedented shift to online classes, and the consequences that shift has for existing grading systems. Several other universities have adopted universal pass/fail or similar systems, including undergraduate programs at Dartmouth College, Columbia University, Bowdoin College and MIT, as well law schools at Harvard University and Stanford University. Organizers at Yale University — another institution considering a shift to mandatory pass/fail — sparked the movement with their “No Fail Yale” petition.
At Harvard, dynamic debates and frequent stance reversals reflect the complexity of the fair grading movement on all fronts. The college’s undergraduate council — its SGA equivalent — reversed its stance three times in 24 hours on which grading system to endorse, The Harvard Crimson reported earlier this week. The latest update from the college announced that it would follow a universal satisfactory-unsatisfactory grading system.
Middlebury’s SGA does not currently plan to endorse any one model, but will hear the different proposals at its Sunday meeting so that it can develop a survey to gauge student opinion.
Movements collide
The initial #NoFailMidd petition was met with opposition on two fronts: some students called for the opt-in system to continue, while other students believed a Dual A system — where every student receives either an A or an A- in each class — would be fairer.
The organizers of #NoFailMidd, who see it as their mission to generate conversation on equitable grading this semester, reached out to the students advocating for Dual A and incorporated their ideas into the new #FairGradesMidd petition, which outlines the strengths of both the universal pass/fail system and the Dual A system.
Meanwhile, opponents have voiced concerns, both in class Facebook groups and in Campus op-eds, about students being insufficiently motivated or not properly learning the material if they are not given the option of pursuing letter grades. There are also questions about whether graduate programs that typically require letter grades will accept pass/fail classes taken this semester, and that students — especially seniors — will not have the chance to boost their GPAs with grades from this semester.
Priya Kaur, ’22, Yasmine Signey ’22, Nellie Zhang ’23 and Maya David ’23 started a counter petition, titled #OptInMidd, describing the case for a continued opt-in pass/fail system.
Advocates of the Dual A system say it can operate as a middle ground between the two proposals. Students would still receive letter grades for their work, but the system would be more uniform and therefore more supportive of students in vulnerable situations, according to Chloe Fleisher ’21.5, an organizer who joined #FairGradesMidd when Dual A was added. Students applying to postgraduate programs, internships and jobs or looking to maintain scholarship eligibility would see their GPA positively impacted, while allowing greater accommodations for their new situations.
“This rewards students for the work that they have already done and for being able to work in really adverse conditions in a global pandemic, and basically creates, in my view, the most equitable system,” she said.
In an email to The Campus, the organizers of the #OptInMidd counter petition said they were glad that the #NoFailMidd organizers recognized its call for maintaining a grades-based grading system for the semester. “We also support a Dual A grading system, but with some hesitations,” they wrote.
The organizers of #OptInMidd expressed hope that under a system like Dual A, Middlebury students would adhere to the Honor Code and work for their grades. But they maintained concerns that students would abuse the system or not put in enough effort to learn the material.
“We believe that opt-in Pass/D/Fail encourages students to do their best since they are still graded in the typical manner, but can also provide a choice for all,” the #OptInMidd organizers said.
Calling the shots
Neither the updated #FairGradesMidd proposal nor the #OptInMidd petition were available when the academic continuity group last met on Thursday morning. But the committee did discuss the universal pass/fail proposal at length.
“We are most definitely interested in a solution that guarantees as much equity as possible,’ said Luso-Hispanic Studies Professor Daniel Silva in an email to The Campus. Silva serves on the academic continuity group as a representative for the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion faculty committee.
“We will be meeting again early next week and will likely discuss the new developments and options,” he added. “Many of our students are facing tremendous challenges back home due to the pandemic that are unimaginable to many other members of the Middlebury community. My hope is that we find a solution that addresses their needs first and foremost.”
Some professors have already voiced their support for pass/fail grading. Allison Stanger, a Middlebury professor currently on sabbatical and teaching at Harvard, recently wrote an op-ed for The Chronicle of Higher Education advocating for colleges to move to pass/fail. The Campus reprinted that op-ed online.
“It is unjust to assume that there is a level playing field for students who have been forced to leave campus,” Stanger said in an email to The Campus. “We assume that it is so when we bring students together on campus, even though it isn’t the case, but it is a bridge too far to maintain that assumption in a global pandemic.”
Going forward, Martins, the #FairGradesMidd organizer, invites students to share testimonials about their experiences, sign onto the various petitions and contact their representatives about the changes they want to see.
“I think [students] are already being impacted positively through the process,” Martins said. “This is a grassroots movement … I hope it leaves this question of what can student activism look like, what can engagement with the community really look like? I think that it’s really been a beautiful exercise of community-making.”
Editor's note: The Campus has published multiple op-eds on suggestions about grading policy. Read them here.
If you would like to submit your own op-ed, please email campus@middlebury.edu.
(03/28/20 11:00pm)
Many Middlebury students have set tangible goals for this semester: to improve their GPAs, to get A’s in certain classes, or to make the Dean’s list. With the current grading options available, the college maintains a sense of normalcy and students can still strive to achieve these goals, making the most of the circumstances they have been dealt.
While some students fear that offering the choice of traditional letter grades alongside the Pass/D/Fail option will put them at a disadvantage, many others see this semester just like any other: an opportunity to perform well in classes to develop a strong resume for graduate school through strengthening their GPAs. Switching to a mandatory pass/fail system would remove the opportunity for students to achieve these goals.
We have been dealt difficult circumstances, not only as students and faculty at Middlebury but as a nation. Challenging situations are unavoidable, and will come and go throughout the course of our lives. We still have a chance to make the most out of this situation and to find opportunity amid crisis. Now is the time to strive to learn and achieve in the face of adversity. When confronted with difficult issues in life, it is in our best interest to remain motivated and seek a sense of normalcy. To remove the ability to achieve letter grades this semester would be to remove fuel from our students’ learning interests, which we need now more than ever.
Despite our best efforts toward equity, every classroom — remote or traditional — advantages some students over others. Students all have different needs and challenges. In our current remote educational setting, it is the job of the faculty to equip students with the tools to succeed. Frequent communication between faculty and students is an absolute necessity in order to help address these needs. Faculty must be understanding of the unique challenges individuals may have, ranging from family struggles to health to material accessibility. Faculty and students should work together within this current grading structure to tailor this semester to help meet each individual’s needs and support all students in achieving their goals.
At a stressful time like this, other schools’ plans provide helpful examples. For instance some schools, including RIT and Carnegie Mellon have instituted options where the decision to invoke pass/fail can be made after final grades are posted. These options can help alleviate the stress of “Will I be able to succeed in a remote-learning environment?” while still allowing students to be engaged, motivated, and driven to achieve.
In these difficult times, we have to be honest with ourselves about our goals and the effort we’re planning on putting into our work. Whether we like it or not, many students are motivated by grades. Are we going to put forth the same effort in a Pass/D/Fail scenario — in which a C is equivalent to an A — as we are in an environment which allows us to set goals, improve our GPAs and bolster our graduate school resumes? To remove the ability to achieve letter grades this semester would be to remove fuel from our students’ learning interests, which we need now more than ever.
One bright side to this situation is that the entire world is confronting the same circumstances, so there will be a significant amount of understanding and awareness regarding this time. The range and magnitude of this pandemic will leave employers no choice but to be empathetic and recognize that many schools are presently providing pass/fail options. The opportunity to choose between Pass/D/Fail and letter grades is only beneficial: Receiving good grades in a time of stress has the capacity to impress employers, and employers are also likely to be understanding and forgiving if students do invoke pass/fail. I find it difficult to believe that employers will be able to, or even want to, differentiate between applicants who had the option to Pass/D/Fail classes and applicants who were mandated to Pass/D/Fail their courses.
As a transfer student in my second semester at Middlebury, I have fewer semesters here than most students in which to build a GPA I feel proud of. Each semester feels critical for me. There are relatively few transfer students at Middlebury, and as a result our voices are not well-represented during this time of critical decision-making. Transfer and first-year students who feel they under-performed in their first semesters are eager to showcase their improvement, in addition to proving to themselves that they can be successful. A mandatory pass-fail option strips them of that ability.
Although no single option presents a perfect scenario for all students, I believe our current grading structure provides versatility and flexibility and permits each individual student to choose an option that best suits their academic goals. To constrain us to a single option fails to support the varying goals of a diverse community of learners.
Tommy Eastman is a member of the class of 2021.
(03/28/20 10:59pm)
This is a reprint of a piece published in The Chronicle of Higher Education on March 19. You can see that version here.
I’m a visiting professor of government at Harvard, on sabbatical from my regular teaching job at Middlebury College. Like my colleagues around the world, I am trying, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, to remake a course meant to be taught in real time, face to face, into a rewarding distance-learning experience. I am teaching a small seminar and am confident I can make that transition. I am much less confident, however, that I can also grade students fairly when they have relocated around the globe.
Some institutions in recent weeks, including MIT and Smith College, have converted all of their courses for the spring semester to mandatory pass/fail to address the extraordinary challenges being faced by their students and faculty. Other colleges should follow their lead. Changing all courses to pass/fail and adding an asterisk to everyone’s transcript would eliminate any problems with fairness while allowing students and faculty to focus on creating a meaningful learning experience in anxious times.
In normal times, it makes sense to have individual faculty members determine fair assessment. But these are not normal times. Students were forced to leave campus on short notice and are now scattered around the world. Some will be tuning in from distant time zones, others from situations where a stable internet connection is an unaffordable luxury good.
Both Harvard and Middlebury have extended the deadline for converting a course to pass/fail, so students without access at least have that option. But it is unjust that some students should be forced to choose that path while other students continue to receive letter grades. That problem is solved at a stroke by a universitywide policy to switch all classes this semester to pass/fail.
Such a policy would also help with the matter of academic honesty in courses that require timed examinations. Questions about fairness only multiply for large lecture courses that have social distancing between faculty members and students embedded in the very structure of regular assessment. My son, a math and computer-science major, reports that one of his friends — a top performer — has been approached by multiple students asking if they could collaborate on assignments, including the final exam, in the new remote world. The student shared his concerns about cheating with the professor, who responded that he would just have to make the exam harder.
I can imagine measures to administer exams online in such a way as to minimize dishonesty, but all of these problems evaporate with a mandate from on high to evaluate outcomes using pass/fail. The same is the case for those worried about a negative effect on applications to graduate school.
The truth is that everybody would benefit from a pass/fail policy. Faculty members could focus on engaging students for learning in demanding new circumstances. Students would get a respite from direct competition with their peers to focus on both individual growth and doing their part in a common endeavor (a skill we are very much going to need in the months ahead). Parents could focus on loving and nurturing their children rather than worrying about how to assist them in navigating or gaming a new system.
Much as it did in shutting down, the university would reaffirm its commitment to the ties that bind us at a time when the world needs it most. If a few institutions lead, others will follow.
Some may protest the shift as unfair, because it invalidates the accomplishments of those who were at the top of the grade hierarchy when the regular semester ground to a halt. But what does excellence actually mean when global public health is under siege? The measures that are necessary to contain the pandemic require the strong to sacrifice their short-term selfish interests for the sake of other humans and the sustainability of our democracy.
Colleges could reinforce that commitment by recognizing that it will be impossible to decide what is a fair grade when the world seems to be spinning out of control for all of us. It is also a way of acknowledging that what we do together in face-to-face education cannot be replaced with a high-speed internet connection.
The pandemic has a way of taking all of us back to core questions about what we value and why, and the matter of grading while the plague rages is no exception. If our purpose in teaching is to engage students in the joy we ourselves have experienced from learning and the life of the mind, removing letter grades from the interaction, especially in dark times, only reinforces our shared commitment. Social distancing to flatten the curve is all about making small sacrifices for the good of others. Myopic, self-interested behavior, after all, is what got us into this predicament.
Global problems such as pandemics and climate change can only be addressed collectively; we can’t see each other as competitors in a zero-sum-game. In opposition to both experts and institutions of higher learning, President Trump has insisted that we live in a ruthless, might-makes-right world, where the strong do as they can and the weak as they must. It is up to each and every one of us to prove him wrong, to show that the human instinct to care for others can be stronger than the desire to dominate and dictate, that the hardships that lie ahead of us are also an opportunity to build a world that sustains and rewards empathy and community rather than the unfettered pursuit of power. A "pandemic asterisk" semester for all would be a step in that direction.
Allison Stanger is a professor of international politics and economics at Middlebury. She is currently on sabbatical at Harvard University, where she is teaching a course on the politics of virtual realities and holding fellowships with the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics and the Ash Center for Democratic Governance.
(03/24/20 9:55pm)
The minute I found out we were leaving campus, I knew what I would miss the most: my friends. I felt a sympathetic pang for the seniors who I knew would be missing one of the final steps in their college careers. Then, I took a moment to feel for myself. My fellow first-years and I were also in a crucial developmental stage. I was just starting to get into the rhythm of the second semester. Feeling secure in my classes, I was excited for spring, and I wanted to dig deep into friendships that I felt were just beginning to grow stronger.
But all of that was cut short.
I see myself mostly as an introvert. I like to spend time alone to recharge before I can engage in lots of social activity. That’s not to say that I don’t like to spend time with my friends (I do!), it’s just that I need more time than others to prevent myself from becoming overwhelmed. This particular trait has made college slightly difficult, as Midd often feels like a place where extroverts thrive from constant contact. And, as a first-year, coping with loneliness is a big part of learning how to navigate the college social scene.
But being back home now, my biggest concern for my social life is: How do I build deeper connections with people I find special when I already find reaching out in-person difficult?
As my good friends know, I’m an analog person. I listen to music from the ’70s, I prefer calling over texting and my average daily screen time is rarely above 30 minutes. I try to stay off social media and prefer to live in the present and focus on those around me. This was easy when I was on campus, where many of my friends lived in my dorm or right nearby — but now, it is considerably more difficult without that physical connection. I have found myself using Snapchat and Instagram more often and being anxious to call people. I don’t want others to feel like I’m intruding, but I also crave a connection with the people I spent so much time with this year. It’s hard to find a balance; I don’t want to be seen as over-eager, yet I want to speak to my friends (even though my biggest update is that I finished re-reading another “Harry Potter” book). It’s during these times that I try to remind myself that if I got a FaceTime or phone call from one of my friends out of the blue, I would be excited to hear from them.
In the midst of all this chaos, I have found myself trying to reevaluate which aspects of the interweb and social media I actually value, and which ones get in the way of connecting with others. In order to have the most authentic, nitty-gritty and tangible mode of communication and friendship building I’ve been searching for, I have turned to snail mail. There’s nothing quite like sitting down and writing a letter to make you feel like you are actually connecting and communicating with a person. Letters can act as snapshots of what life is like in that moment. They can be saved and put in a box to be found years later, forever preserving that exchange. A letter is not a message that disappears after 10 seconds and it’s not a post sent en masse. Like conversations held over Atwater breakfasts, or during the long walk from Allen to the AC, or even waiting for Proc paninis to be ready, letter writing is personal and intentional. In this way, it reminds me of friendships at Midd; you know that you’re special when someone has taken the time to write a letter, address an envelope and run all over the house trying to find a stamp. So, give someone you care about that nice feeling and write a letter.
Genevieve Herron is a member of the class of 2023.
(03/24/20 3:29am)
While students on Middlebury’s Vermont campus worried last week about when they would next see friends, how to navigate remote coursework and where to go after school shut down, those enrolled in programs abroad were confronting the same worries, but with an added caveat: To make it home, many of them would have to travel halfway across the world amid a rapidly-spreading global pandemic.
Concerns over the Covid-19 virus have led colleges around the world to cancel study-abroad programs, and Middlebury’s own 16 programs have suffered the same fate. The college’s schools in China and Italy closed earlier this spring as the virus spread in those countries. Between March 10 and March 13, all remaining Middlebury schools abroad, from programs in Europe to Latin America, suspended their operations.
The college later put out a call for all students remaining in foreign countries — those in externally-sponsored programs or who had stayed in host countries after their Middlebury programs canceled — to return to the U.S on March 19, the day the State Department issued a Level Four Global Travel Advisory.
The result was several days of chaos and uncertainty for roughly 250 Middlebury students whose study abroad experiences had forcibly come to an end, as they sought to find their way home amid quickly-implemented travel bans and emerging facts about a mostly-unknown virus.
“‘Chaotic’ is the best way to describe it,” said Porter Bowman ’21.5, who was studying in Stockholm, Sweden through an independent program canceled on March 11.
Communication breakdowns
Students reported that occasionally poor communication from program coordinators, combined with rumors and bewildering information bites from national news sources, increased the stress of navigating cancellation of their programs and journeys home.
Kenzo Okazaki ’21 was enrolled in Middlebury’s CMRS program in Oxford, England, which was suspended on March 10. Students in his program became confused that morning, Okazaki said, after some of them received screenshots of the March 10 email in which Professor Héctor Vila leaked that the college would send students home from its Vermont campus later that week. Several nervous hours passed between when students first read Vila’s email and when they finally learned the fate of their own program from coordinators.
“I think everyone was frustrated that there wasn’t much of a heads up that our program might be shut down, so that at least people could start thinking about leaving more than six days in advance,” Okazaki said.
Abroad program coordinators have had to work “around the clock” to give direction to the movements of hundreds of students in programs across many time zones, according to Dean of International Programs Carlos Vélez. Vélez said the study abroad office made “every effort” to make decisions and update students on their programs’ status as quickly as possible, but that in any given country, information about travel advisories and restrictions “would change without warning, both from U.S. and local agencies.”
“One of the biggest challenges has been the relentless pace at which things have changed during this crisis,” he said.
Sometimes, lack of transparency from parties beyond students’ host institutions — like the president of the United States — caused problems. For students enrolled with Bowman in the DIS (Study Abroad in Scandinavia) Stockholm program, the hours between President Trump’s March 11 press conference, which aired at 2 a.m. Stockholm time on March 12, and the program’s official cancellation three hours later were “chaos.”
During that press conference, Trump announced he was banning all non-essential travel to and from Europe effective that Friday, failing to mention that U.S. citizens would still be able to travel freely. After the conference, assuming they would be unable to get back into the U.S., the Americans in Bowman’s program frantically rushed to make travel plans even without receiving confirmation that their program had ended.
“It was crazy,” Bowman said. “Flights were going like concert tickets.”
In an open letter written by Helene Gusman ’21 (who studied in Yaroslavl, Russia) and Megan Salmon ’21 (Santiago, Chile) and circulated the week of March 9, students in programs abroad called on the administration to provide clarity on their situations. They had never received President Laurie Patton’s email outlining the Vermont campus’s plan to shut down, according to the letter, and had to wait hours and sometimes days before receiving clarity on the status of specific schools abroad.
Vélez later clarified that messages sent to the “all student” mailbox are typically sent to students in abroad programs, but that a technical issue prevented the delivery of some such messages that week.
Gusman and Salmon’s letter received signatures from 40 students around the world; however, its writers ultimately chose not to send it to the administration after Trump announced his travel ban and abroad programs began to provide more information to students.
Trump’s travel ban caused panic for students across Europe. Gretchen Doyle ’21.5, who was studying in Middlebury’s program in Madrid, Spain, said she received a call from a friend at 5 a.m. local time on March 12 alerting her of the travel ban. Like Bowman, she was so concerned that she immediately bought a plane ticket home to New Jersey without waiting for confirmation of her program’s cancellation.
Doyle recognized the challenges posed to abroad program coordinators in uncertain times, but said she was still frustrated by a lack of communication from Middlebury.
“After Trump announced the travel ban and the majority of us had bought tickets to fly home, we didn’t hear anything from our program for a long time,” Doyle said. “I don’t blame anyone for the way things were handled because it was a stressful time for everyone, but I was frustrated.”
As confusing as Trump’s language in his press conference was for students, Vélez said that it was equally disruptive for the study abroad office. Though the press conference made it seem as though the travel ban would apply to all travelers, the study abroad office was not certain this was the case and decided to wait to make announcements until the U.S. State Department released its official proclamation on the travel ban, Vélez said.
“At that point, close to midnight in Vermont, all of our program directors communicated the correct information to all of our students abroad,” Vélez said.
Students worry about academic continuity
Just as students enrolled at Middlebury in Vermont worry about how coursework will continue as the college shifts to remote learning, those in programs abroad are wondering how curricula taught in different languages and across time zones will translate to life at home.
Okazaki’s coursework within the CMRS-Oxford program was largely focused on individual research in Oxford’s libraries, and weekly one-on-one check-ins with professors during which students are given rigorous feedback on written work. That intimate structure will not be easily replicated thousands of miles away from Oxford’s famed libraries, he said.
“The idea was to use Oxford's library and to become familiar with the resources you can get there that you can't get anywhere else in the world,” Okazaki said. “Well, now we are anywhere else in the world without a library.”
Other students, like Lila Sternberg-Sher ’21.5, had not even begun classes at their host universities when their programs shut down. Students in Sternberg-Sher’s Middlebury program in Temuco, Chile — as well as in all other programs in Latin America, where local university classes begin in mid-March — were given the option of receiving full refunds and forgoing academic credit for the semester or taking online classes through Middlebury’s program in Chile (not the public university where they had planned on taking classes).
Sternberg-Sher, a linguistics major, said she was disappointed that she will have to pass up on in-person linguistics research she was planning on doing in Temuco, but still plans to take remote classes from home.
“I’m lucky enough to be set up well within my major that it shouldn’t be a huge issue for me,” she said, adding that the Chile program is well-equipped for remote learning after navigating university shut-downs last fall.
Many students expressed relief that the Pass/D/Fail option would extend to those in abroad programs, like Hailey Kent ’21.5, who is directly enrolled in the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where classes began in January.
“This did not make for a very academically fulfilling semester, and I am glad that Middlebury is extending its pass/fail policy to students abroad because I feel my grades are not accurate representations of the quality of the work I have completed,” she wrote in an email to The Campus.
Experiential learning
Though the week of March 9 was mostly stressful for students, many said it was eye-opening to see the varied responses of governments and populations of their host countries during one of the more frantic times in recent history.
In Madrid, Doyle and other students were surprised by the lax approach residents seemed to take to the virus in a city that news outlets have reported as a Covid-19 hotspot. They watched Madrid’s metro system, restaurants, cafes and sporting events running like normal, even as they heard from friends in the U.S that worry over the virus was heightening there.
“There were people out in the central park, Retiro, and out at bars until the day I left,” said Lilly Kuhn ’21.5.
Jess Cohen ’21, who was studying at the main public university in Buenos Aires, Argentina through a Middlebury program, observed similarly low concern over Covid-19 at first. Students’ host families, he said, were quick to denounce anxiety over the virus as overblown, and students in the program were similarly unworried. Once the Argentine government began to shut down public spaces on March 13 (the day Middlebury canceled its program there), Cohen said the seriousness of the situation began to sink in.
No matter the reaction of varying countries’ populations, students said worry over the virus significantly impacted the truncated time they had in their host countries.
“I read the news every night before going to bed and right when I woke up, and I usually couldn’t sleep through the night,” Doyle said. “It was difficult to immerse ourselves fully in Spanish culture because we didn’t know how much longer we’d be there, so it wasn’t the study abroad experience I had hoped for, to say the least.”
Some students, disappointed at the prospect of losing a semester of language and cultural immersion, pondered staying in their host countries even after Middlebury had suspended programs or their host universities had closed entirely.
Cohen initially planned to continue living with his host family and taking remote classes after the Middlebury program in Buenos Aires was suspended. By doing so, he thought, he could still obtain the Spanish-immersion experience he had gone to Argentina for in the first place while weathering the storm of Covid-19 in an area that seemed relatively unaffected.
“I felt like all of the students in my program who had decided to leave were surprised that I was going to stay — but they had all wanted to stay,” he said.
In the 24 hours after he made his initial decision, though, as Cohen watched the city shut down, he decided to head back to his home in Colorado. Even Buenos Aires, a part of the world that was largely untouched by the virus at the time of the Middlebury program’s cancellation, was closing bars, soccer stadiums, museums and restaurants — steps that were being replicated around the world to prepare for unknown effects of the rapidly-spreading pandemic.
“Streets that were usually totally full of people and cars were completely dead,” Cohen said. “All the shops other than the grocery stores and a couple of cafes were closed that normally would be full.”
Cohen scrambled to buy a ticket home on Saturday, March 14, and got one of the last flights out of the country before Argentina shut its borders on Sunday.
Okazaki said that, between the Oxford program’s cancellation on Tuesday and his Sunday departure, there wasn’t much time to be preoccupied. When he finally found his seat on a direct flight from Heathrow to Salt Lake City, though, he said a sense of calm washed over him.
“As soon as I got on the plane I realized how relieved I was and how lucky I was to get out of there,” Okazaki said. “I got home and realized that the U.K. was going to start being shut down, and realized how much crisis I had averted.”
Editor’s note: Porter Bowman ’21.5 is a news correspondent for The Campus.
(03/22/20 1:00pm)
Editor's Note: On April 7, the college committed to continuing staff wages through June 30, 2020, regardless of an employees' accrued time off, through the Covid Pay Bank, or sick leave.
As storefronts and institutions shutter their doors to ward off the spread of Covid-19, thousands of employees are being laid off across the country. At Middlebury — the largest employer in Addison County — the college’s crisis management team has developed a roadmap for maintaining staff wages after most students departed during the unfolding pandemic.
The plan, shared with the community in an email Wednesday, outlines the college’s goal of continuing both staff work and compensation in the coming months, laying out nine “tenets” in support of this objective. This commitment to pay staff in full will “continue to be evaluated on a month-to-month” basis, according to the email.
For many Middlebury employees, from groundskeepers to cooks, employment revolves around the 2,500 students who typically reside on campus. With fewer than 140 students now remaining in the dormitories, much of that work is dissipating. Moreover, the college expects to refund students for these unused services, which creates a gap in financing.
“We are committed to wage continuity as our first priority for as long as possible,” said Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration David Provost in an email to The Campus. “We are doing this knowing that we will be making a significant refund for unused dining and room charges, an obligation that reflects our commitment to our students.”
The commitment to continue paying staff applies to all benefits-eligible employees, meaning both full-time workers and workers who work at least 50%, plus one hour, of a full-time schedule.
Examples of part-time workers excluded under the plan are high school students who work a limited number of hours in the dining halls, according to Provost.
The college’s response to the dwindled demand for certain services is to move some employees into different jobs. As of now, there are around 70 dining employees who will soon be temporarily transferred to facilities. These employees’ work will focus on deep-cleaning college buildings and landscaping, according to Sarah Ray, the director of media relations for the college.
Patti McCaffrey, a cook in Atwater dining hall, is one of these employees who will be moving to work with the custodial team. She said that in the past week, the dining staff cleaned Atwater as she had never seen it cleaned before. Usually, they clean tabletops and floors. This time, they were also disinfecting chair legs and walls. “Usually we mop the floor, but we don’t usually do walls,” she said. “This time we did.”
Some employees expressed worry about continuing with business as usual during a health crisis. One staff member, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from management, cited having a child at home with respiratory problems as a reason for their concern. They fear that continuing to work on campus will put their family at risk.
“All the people who can’t work from home, they are expected to be here, working every day,” they said. “That’s not really safe for us. I have family members who are extremely vulnerable to this virus. I’d much rather be at home with them.”
The staff member said the college has yet to provide protective gear for employees who are still reporting to work on campus. McCaffrey says employees are wearing gloves as usual, but that she suspects masks will be provided if the situation at the college becomes severe.
“We have to feed these remaining students somehow,” she said. “Even if it gets so bad that we’re pre-boxing food and leaving it at their doors. That’s when they’ll probably have us wearing masks.”
The college’s plan also provides a so-called Covid-19 Pay Bank. This bank gives staff an additional 21 sick days to stay home if they or a family member becomes ill with the virus. Staff can use the four weeks without dipping into their regular banks of sick days.
Middlebury’s staff plan for the viral crisis is comparable to other colleges’ plans--and in many cases, it is more generous. Tufts University has committed to pay employees if they need to quarantine, but did not specify how many days they will grant full compensation. Bowdoin College will assess compensation on a case-by-case basis, and advised staff to contact their supervisors for additional information if they become sick.
But staff are now facing another dilemma: childcare, which has long been in high demand in Addison County, even in the best of times. “While I appreciate that [the Pay Bank] is 21 days, the only issue I have is now I have to make the decision to use it in order to take care of my kids or save it in case I get sick,” said Erin Jones-Poppe, the college bookstore manager.
In accordance with Vermont’s mandate to close all “non-essential” childcare facilities, many daycare centers in the Middlebury area have stopped operating.
Otter Creek Child Center in Middlebury closed on Tuesday, March 17. The daycare only had 11 kids on the final day of operation, according to its executive director, Linda January. The center usually has 45.
“I haven’t received any pushback from family members,” January said. “Most families opted to keep their children home before we even closed. They get it.”
The college’s outreach to the wider community also holds uncertainty for staff. In an open letter to the community co-written with other community leaders, President Patton offered some of the college’s infrastructure — such as buildings — as local officials prepare for the worst.
President Patton said the college had already drained the ice hockey rink so that the arena could be used as a “portable hospital, if necessary” during an interview with the Addison Independent. As coordination between the hospital and the college is still in the planning stage, it is at this point unclear how the relationship might impact Middlebury staff’s responsibilities.
Although administrators are already in communication with local health officials, Provost clarified that no staff member would be required to work if there is future collaboration with Porter Hospital. He insisted that the college would only ask staff members to help if needed.
“From my perspective, I think the college is really going to bat for staff and trying to do what they can," McCaffrey said. "When I look at neighbors having to file for unemployment, I feel pretty good about what the college is doing.”
