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(03/10/20 4:28pm)
Update: Since this article was published, the college officially and indefinitely suspended all on-campus classes. Check out our update here.
A campus-wide anxiety has ensued following a widely circulated email that said Middlebury will suspend all in-person classes starting this Friday, March 13 as a response to the Covid-19 viral epidemic. The email was sent by Héctor J. Vila, associate professor of writing and rhetoric and a member of faculty council, to students in two of his classes.
The college has not yet sent out an official statement about plans for suspension. The Campus is waiting for confirmation of the statements in the email, which explained that students will have a two-week spring break and classes will resume remotely beginning Monday, March 30. Vila and the college will not comment before the college's official email is sent out.
Most students are required to leave campus “until further notice,” the email read. Those who cannot — including some international students and domestic students who will be at a greater risk in their home community — can petition to remain on campus, during which they will take classes digitally.
Colleges and universities across the country have been taking steps to contain the virus. Many are moving students off campus and switching to remote instruction. New England schools that have acted accordingly include Amherst College and Harvard University. A list of schools that have taken action, curated by Campus Editor at Large Benjy Renton ’21, can be found here.
This story is developing and will be updated accordingly.
(03/05/20 11:05am)
Middlebury has canceled the three C.V. Starr Schools in Italy for this spring semester due to concerns over the coronavirus COVID-19.
In an email sent to students studying in Florence, Rome and Ferrara on Feb. 29, the college advised students to return to the United States as soon as possible. Each student will have the option to take the semester off and get refunded for the semester’s tuition, or to take online classes taught by professors at Sede Capponi, the Middlebury Center in Florence.
The decision was prompted by concerns that students might face more difficulties leaving the country as the virus spreads and governments impose stricter travel travel regulations, according to Assistant Director of International Programs Alessandra Capossela. The CDC raised the Italy travel advisory to “Level 3 — Avoid Non Essential Travel” on Feb. 28. The next day, the U.S. State Department raised the travel advisory level for Lombardy and Veneto, the epicenter of coronavirus in Italy, to “Level 4 — Do Not Travel.”
In January, President Trump placed strict restrictions on travel to and from China, where the virus originated. The college cancelled its schools in Hangzhou, Kunming and Beijing China that month.
Middlebury waited to suspend its programs in Italy even as multiple other universities with programs in Florence told their students to leave the country. Syracuse University announced it was canceling its program on Feb. 24, and both Fairfield University and Elon University followed the next day. On Feb. 24, New York University announced it was evacuating its students and suspending the program until March 29 at the earliest.
“We know that this decision came as a disappointment to many of our students and their families,” Capossela told The Campus. “We did not make this decision lightly, and it was made with the students’ health and wellbeing as our first priority.”
A prevailing sense of melancholy hangs over the Middlebury Schools in Italy students, according to Marco Kaper ’21, who was studying in Florence.
“A lot of students woke up to the email [on Feb. 29], cried a little bit and then cried a lot. For a lot of people, this is a really big deal,” he said. “They’ve been looking forward to going abroad for a very long time, and that opportunity has been taken away from them.”
However, Kaper understands that leaving the country is also a privilege.
“We are very privileged to be able to leave right now and ‘escape’ the pandemic as far as going to the U.S. is concerned,” said Kaper. “I live with a native Italian [roomate], and he’s freaking out right now because he doesn’t really have a home to go to to leave like we do.”
Twenty-three students were enrolled in the Middlebury Schools in Italy, including six Middlebury undergraduates, five Middlebury graduate students, and 12 students from other institutions.
Most were studying in Florence, with the exception of one student in Rome and one in Ferrara. On Feb. 24, the college closed its school in Ferrara, prompting the student studying there to transfer to the school in Rome.
Students were not in Italy long before the cancellation. All arrived in Italy by Feb. 9, and classes at Middlebury’s Sede Capponi Center began on Feb. 18.
Some students feel the decision exacerbates overblown fears about contracting the virus.
“The cancellations were very upsetting because none of us were afraid of getting coronavirus,” Eva Ury ’21.5 said. “The virus wasn’t impacting our daily lives in Florence at all. Only the Middlebury program’s fear of us getting the virus and their liability was affecting us.”
The Sede Capponi Center is set to begin online classes next week, which they will conduct through a mix of recorded lectures and video chats, according to a campus-wide email. Professors and students will have to surmount the logistical hurdle of differing time zones — Ury, for example, plans to remain in Europe and spend the semester traveling, while other students will return to their homes elsewhere.
The Sede courses are not designed to accommodate students who test into the advanced level of Italian. Those students are normally permitted to take only one class there, and must enroll in two local university courses or one university course and one internship. Those students, should they opt to take the online courses, will have to fit into existing intermediate or graduate level courses, according to Ury.
The college told returning students that they will most likely have to submit to health checks upon arriving in the U.S., but will not have to undergo quarantine unless they fail the screenings. But CDC and U.S. State Department guidelines could change in the upcoming days, according to Capossela.
Dean of International Programs Carlos Vélez said that decisions to close further schools will depend on a confluence of several factors, including increases in the number of coronavirus cases in the immediate vicinity of a program’s locations, indications that travel options will become limited, advisories from the Department of State and the CDC and decisions by local university partners.
Velez declined to comment on any specific sites that he is considering closing.
“Given the spread of the virus we have to actively monitor every site with [the] possibility [of closing them] in mind,” Vélez said. ”Health and safety are our primary concerns.”
(02/20/20 11:03am)
“This is a story about the transformative power of art,” said Assistant Professor of Dance Lida Winfield in a performance on Jan. 16. Her work, titled “In Search of Air: Growing Up Dyslexic,” has been performed across the country since 2011 and combines oral storytelling with dance to depict Winfield’s journey to knowledge.
Winfield, who struggled in school — a challenge exacerbated by the presence of a learning disability — says that this piece allows her to frame her disability as “a glimpse of brilliance.” In this manner, Winfield’s show inspires possibility and rebukes a narrative of humiliation and self-hatred.
In her show, Winfield is candid about the shame she experienced because of her learning disability and the love that surrounded her despite it.
“I think that shame is really the crux of what happens with learning disabilities,” she said. “I think I was loved by many of my former teachers, but I think because of the situation and the circumstances and the system, I was misunderstood.”
Toward the beginning of Winfield’s poignant program, she faces the audience and says that “opportunity was in our fingertips; love was in our arms.” In spite of the support, Winfield points out that she did not learn to read until much later in her life.
“[Not learning to read] happened because of a whole set of circumstances,” she said. “Part of what’s so tricky about these things is that our lives are rarely straight lines: they’re these wandering, messy, sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes amazing pathways. I think for me, the scale tipped that there was too much shame, there was not enough access [and] I then couldn’t get myself through.”
Though the show’s narrative is centered around Winfield’s learning disability, it is also a story that offers themes of hope, strength and resilience. Its universality allows the show to connect with audiences and leave an impact after its viewers exit the performance space.
For Winfield, connecting with her audience through personal story has been a pillar of her performances even before “In Search of Air: Growing Up Dyslexic.”
“Years and years ago, I was working on a different show and I told a story that [I now tell] in ‘In Search of Air.’ I was really struck by how moved and interested people were in that particular story,” she said. “It felt clear to me that there are so many folks that have amazing, rich and complicated lives who have stories to tell, and this happens to be mine.”
By speaking up about her experiences, Winfield has used her show to open up conversation about accessibility in education. As someone who “think[s] better when [she’s] moving,” Winfield’s performance is not just a celebration of knowledge, but also an invitation to revisit other methods of learning.
“I think before reading and writing really became a commodity in the West, [human interaction] was really how knowledge was passed,” she says. “I think my body and all of our bodies are smart, that there is wisdom inside of us, and I know that I process the world by moving, by doing.”
It is perhaps because of this initiation of dialogue – one culminating in a Q&A Winfield conducts at the end of each show – that “In Search of Air: Growing Up Dyslexic” remains regularly booked.
“I think [this show still gets booked] because there’s a desire and an interest to be talking about the value of the arts and to be talking about learning disabilities,” Winfield said.
Along with details of Winfield’s struggle to learn — beginning in elementary school and lasting through her high school years — the show also involves moments where she realizes her potential.
“I could be a doctor,” she tells the audience, later in the piece, during a moment when her character is attending college. “I could be your doctor,” she adds. Ensuingly, she says, “I start to think and I start to feel smart.”
It is this empowering feeling of capability that Winfield hopes to instill not just in her audience, but also in her own students.
“I think as a learner, you sometimes need someone else to help move [fear and self-hatred] out of the way,” she said. “There is so much self-hatred and there’s so much fear riddled inside of all of us and that is a barrier to being our best self. If, as a facilitator, I can help shift that in any way, then I think the other things just get to grow.”
(02/20/20 10:57am)
As students who have been actively involved in and have benefited from Alexander Hamilton Forum lectures, debates and dialogues, we write to set the record straight and defend deliberating on the Green New Deal.
First, we believe the Hamilton Forum is the most politically and philosophically diverse program on campus, both in terms of the speakers it hosts and the students involved. Since its inception in 2018, the Hamilton Forum has hosted the world’s leading Marxist economist, Richard Wolff; the editor of the foremost magazine of the American Left, Michael Kazin; a lion of the civil libertarian left and the first female president of the ACLU, Nadine Strossen; and Harvard professor and clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall, Randall Kennedy. The Hamilton Forum has also hosted several speakers on the political right, like New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, as well as speakers from the political center, such as former Clinton domestic policy advisor William A. Galston.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Political diversity is not a bug, but rather the most impressive and beneficial feature of the Hamilton Forum.[/pullquote]
On Thursday, Feb. 20, the Hamilton Forum will host Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Oren Cass and economist Robert Pollin, the latter of whom has actually designed Green New Deals for states like New York and Washington. This political diversity is not a bug, but rather the most impressive and beneficial feature of the Hamilton Forum.
In a recent op-ed entitled “We don’t need a Koch sponsored Green New Deal,” two students wrote that debates like the one happening this Thursday challenge “progressive ideals.” “The speakers don’t have to disprove every argument as long as they can plant doubts in our heads,” the authors wrote. “By hosting the debate, the organizers of the forum choose which questions to ask, therefore reinforcing and normalizing discourses that question climate activism.”
To us, this sounds like education. We think that challenging ideals, raising doubts and normalizing questioning is what good educators do. Shouldn’t we “normalize” the questioning of all political viewpoints, including both climate activism and opposition to climate activism? In fact, this would make a good, aspirational motto for our campus. “Middlebury College: Normalizing questioning since 1800.” Put it on the stationery, sweatshirts and key chains.
It is also puzzling that someone would suggest that the Hamilton Forum cherry-picks “questions to ask.” Does anyone really believe that it is the Hamilton Forum that determined the Green New Deal should be a topic of public and academic debate in America in 2020? It is important to discuss the hotly debated issues of our day, and we certainly believe that the Green New Deal is one of them. Also, as anyone who has attended Hamilton Forum events knows, the hosts leave a long amount of time for unfiltered student questions, and those questions come from students of every persuasion. Afterwards, speakers stay behind to continue discussion over dinner, which are some of the best out-of-the-classroom intellectual experiences we have had here at Middlebury.
Some maintain that the Hamilton Forum takes direction from outside sources. This is demonstrably false. As the list above indicates, no foundation or organization could possibly see the Hamilton Forum as its mouthpiece because the diversity of speech is so vast. You would need to be a Marxist, populist, libertarian, nationalist, neo-liberal, socialist, anti-traditionalist, Catholic, anti-populist, traditionalist and centrist to see the Hamilton Forum as your mouthpiece. We have never met any such individual.
The Hamilton Forum receives grants from external foundations just like many other programs on campus, and it operates with complete academic independence, as is evident in what we have said above. Additionally, anyone who wonders whether the Hamilton Forum’s director — Political Science Professor Keegan Callanan — is susceptible to political pressure should review his record of standing on principle and speaking his mind, even as a non-tenured professor back in 2017.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Challenging ideals, raising doubts and normalizing questioning is what good educators do.[/pullquote]
Those who speak of “Koch funding” for the Hamilton Forum leave out a key factual detail. The Hamilton Forum’s grant from the Institute for Humane Studies is funded by the Clifford S. Asness Family Foundation’s Free Speech and Open Inquiry Program, with no grant funds from the Koch family. Why do the editorialists never mention this fact? Could it be that they realize it may “put doubts in our heads” about their narrative?
The broader principle regarding gifts and grants to Middlebury is that there should be no political purity test. A purity test barring donations on the basis of a donor’s political views would be out-of-step with Middlebury’s stated commitment to political diversity. It would be discriminatory. It would be a great way to alienate a substantial portion of the alumni donor base. Middlebury should no more discriminate on the basis of political viewpoint in its acceptance of grants and gifts than it discriminates in its admissions or (let’s hope) in hiring new professors.
Middlebury is not a political campaign. We are a learning community, and we are here to ask important questions together, to be challenged, and to challenge ourselves.
Akhila Roy ’20, Joey Lyons ’21, Quinn Boyle ’21.5, Max Taxman ’22, Maddy Stutt ’21.5 and Rati Saini ’22, are 2019–20 Alexander Hamilton Forum fellows.
If you would like to attend Hamilton Forum events and dinners, you can sign up at go/joinAHF.
(02/20/20 10:54am)
When the Middlebury College Bookstore stopped stocking physical books in 2018 — some say the ensuing collective groan still echoes in the hills — a large part of its rationale was students’ increasing use of Amazon. As a result, the bookstore replaced its concrete, in-person services with an online supplier called MBS Direct; Amazon orders swelled. While students have always scrambled to get their school books in time for the start of classes each semester, the Middlebury College Bookstore once provided the most convenient on-the-spot option that guaranteed timely access. By removing this source, the college has created space for Amazon’s fast delivery and low prices to occupy an even greater portion of schoolbook sales than it once did. Whereas students once used Amazon in take-as-needed doses, the college has now essentially written the campus an open prescription to mainline it, leaving the hazardous side effects to fall on the book industry.
Many already revile Amazon for its laundry list of legal and ethical vices, though few are aware that the company had its not-so-humble beginning in book sales. CEO Jeff Bezos chose books as a jumping-off point because they were a uniquely exploitable commodity due to vast variety, worldwide demand and low unit price. The company has been dealing despotic blows to publishing houses and their authors ever since. After significantly expanding its merchandise, Amazon now relies on book sales for just a sliver of its revenue. However, the website is responsible for more than half of all books sold worldwide. So, while Amazon doesn’t rely on books, the company enjoys unparalleled leverage over book sales, including the ability to manipulate publishing houses and authors and abuse supply chains.
An example might help. As a student studying English and American literature and political science, I was required to order a total of 16 books for the spring semester — mostly novels and nonfiction titles published by single authors through conventional publishing houses. One item on my list is “Caucasia” by Danzy Senna, a phenomenal contemporary novel published in 1999 by Riverhead books, an imprint of Penguin Random House. A used copy, ordered through MBS Direct, costs $12; a brand-new copy of the same edition costs $5.88 from Amazon via a third-party supplier.
On paper, ordering “Caucasia” in better condition for half the price may seem like a no-brainer. But what does “third-party supplier” mean? Amazon intentionally leaves the answer murky. Oftentimes, these books are promotional copies circulated without permission; others are simply counterfeited. One thing that every purchase of a book from a third-party supplier has in common is that the publisher and author do not see a single penny of profit. Despite countless complaints, Amazon has excused itself from the responsibility of vetting these sources for such infractions, claiming that it is the suppliers’ responsibility to “ensure that [their] content doesn’t violate laws or copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity or other rights.”
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Whereas students once used Amazon in take-as-needed doses, the college has now essentially written the campus an open prescription to mainline it, leaving the hazardous side effects to fall on the book industry. [/pullquote]
Beyond the problem of third-party suppliers, the scope of Amazon’s business model allows it to routinely take intentional losses in book sales, often pricing books lower than the wholesale price it paid the publisher and making up for the profits elsewhere. The company then uses the sheer quantity of customers to strongarm publishing companies into agreeing to disadvantageous wholesale and royalty contracts. A notable example is a dispute between Amazon and major publishing house Hachette that occurred in 2014, during which Amazon raised listed prices of Hachette books and delayed delivery times by weeks — all the while advertising cheaper and faster-shipping books from other houses — to injure Hachette’s sales until the house was willing to renegotiate.
Publishing houses rely on the revenue generated by big-selling titles. In turn, these revenues provide publishers room to experiment with content, diversify their repertoires, take on new authors and publish the higher-quality, medium-to-low-selling content. These are the works that often win prestigious awards like the Pulitzer, Booker and Nobel Prize in Literature (and that we are often assigned at Middlebury). When Amazon uses its leverage to skimp publishing houses on profits or sells new copies from third-party suppliers, not only are these houses less able to produce high-quality, wide-ranging content, but new and diverse authors are dissuaded from entering the field at all due to lower financial rewards.
I am aware that, for many students, the cheapest option is the only viable option. Whether the bookstore is online or on campus, Amazon often fills this role, and I do not intend to shame students who use it for this purpose in any way. The problem is that, though the old Middlebury College Bookstore was not necessarily the most affordable, it was frequently the most convenient. By transitioning to an online supplier, the college makes room for Amazon to occupy this role as well. Thus, in the wake of the bookstore’s digitization, the student pivot to Amazon is unfortunately reasonable, as it is often the only service that can deliver books as quickly and cheaply as required by Middlebury’s quick-moving academic calendar and rigorous homework schedule — in one of my literature classes, for instance, my professor told students not to bother attending class until they have the book in hand.
By clearing the bookstore’s shelves and ushering students to the internet, Middlebury has raised a de facto white flag to Amazon’s literary abuses, inviting the company into our classrooms at the expense of the very books we study.
Hattie LeFavour ’21 is a Local editor for The Campus.
(02/13/20 11:00am)
ZhiZhong Pu ’24, a Chinese international student who intended to matriculate at Middlebury as part of the class of 2023.5, was barred from starting school this semester due to President Trump’s travel ban.
The ban, intended to prevent the spread of coronavirus, prohibits any foreign nationals, including F-1 student visa holders, from traveling to the U.S. if they have been in China within the last 14 days. Trump issued the executive order that instituted the ban on Jan. 31, and it went into effect on Feb. 2 at 5 p.m. EST.
On Feb. 4, after the ban went into effect, the college told Pu that he would not be able to begin at Middlebury as a February admit this spring, and would have to wait until the fall to matriculate.
As the last Middlebury students studying abroad in China quickly evacuated after the college cancelled the spring semester of the Middlebury C.V. Starr School Abroad in China, Pu remained stuck in the country without access to his passport.
“I’m so frustrated,” Pu said. “I’ve been looking forward to this for so long, and I had everything prepared. To suddenly have this tragic issue, I’ve never felt so bad in my life.”
Pu had intended to visit Montreal before beginning orientation at Middlebury on Feb. 5. He applied for a Candian visa through Visa Facilitation Services Global and submitted his passport to the agency. The company had not processed his request before the Lunar New Year began on Jan. 25.
Although the holiday ended on Feb. 2, many companies, including VFS Global, remain closed to prevent the spread of the virus.
“Technically, if I had paid a huge amount to get here before the deadline, I still could have come. I would have done that, except it was impossible [because VFS Global has my passport],” Pu said.
Once VFS Global reopens and returns Pu’s passport to him, he would still have to travel to a third country and remain in self quarantine for 14 days before coming to the U.S. With a growing number of airlines suspending flights to and from China, even leaving the country could prove difficult.
If Pu received his passport today, he would still miss more than two weeks of classes. According to an email sent to Pu on Feb. 7 by Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor, an absence that long would exclude him from enrolling at all this spring.
“We are a residential college where our living-learning community requires on-campus residency and participation,” Taylor wrote in the email. “I cannot grant your request to join the spring semester late. Please know that we are looking forward to welcoming you in the Fall.”
“The travel ban itself wasn’t that bad. I anticipated it very early on,” Pu said. “What I didn’t anticipate was the dean of students’ disapproval of me arriving two weeks late given this exceptional situation. I never thought that would be a problem.”
The returning Middlebury school in China students were instructed to self quarantine for 14 after their departure from China in accordance with Trump’s executive order and CDC guidelines. They may participate in the spring semester, though some will miss the first week of classes.
Pu lives in Xinjiang, the easternmost region of the country, more than 2,000 miles away from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak. Despite the distance, Pu said that the disease remains a constant presence in the minds and lives of the residents in his region.
“The situation in China is very depressing. The government is trying to limit people’s interaction and prevent people from going out or traveling across the country,” Pu said.
Pu said he receives constant temperature checks whenever he goes into public. When he visited the VFS office, security checked his temperature upon entering the building and again when he reached the fourth floor. Face masks are mandatory for entering train stations or other public spaces.
Pu spoke to the Campus via Skype on a train from Shanghai to Xinjiang. His face mask, usually carefully secured, was haphazardly hanging on one ear, his face open to the computer camera. As the only passenger in his compartment, he was not worried about the possibility of infection.
“I’ve never seen this in my life,” Pu said. “In China, train stations are always so busy. You can’t even find a seat in normal times, and now, all the seats are empty. I’m literally the only person.”
Pu said he is not afraid of contracting the virus, since he is confident that his youth and good health would protect him from its fatal consequences. However, he finds the atmosphere of tension and fear in China nearly unbearable.
“The situation is very bad, but the sensationalization of fear, that’s even worse than the virus,” Pu said.
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(02/13/20 10:59am)
I expected to write this column under vastly different circumstances. Today, Thursday, February 13, should have marked the start of Middlebury’s semester-long study abroad programs in the bustling Chinese metropolises of Beijing, Hangzhou and Kunming. Over two weeks ago, I finished a month-long intensive language program and was looking forward to traveling with my classmates on our new year holiday break and visiting the Snow and Ice Festival of Harbin and the ancient Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang.
Instead, I sit writing this piece at home, having repatriated back to the U.S. and a week into self-quarantine. The new year travel period, known as chunyun, is usually the largest annual human migration in the world. Normally, close to 3 billion trips are made over the 40-day period as workers across the country return to their families to celebrate the new year. And yet my new year holiday, like many others’, ended only two days after it started, train tickets refunded and plans upended.
Beyond holiday cancellations, the spread of the coronavirus has invoked a sense of fear and xenophobia towards Chinese around the world, causing division and provoking often discriminatory attitudes in shops, restaurants and college campuses. As countries have closed their borders to those from China in an attempt to halt the spread of the virus, disinformation spread through the media has resulted in a perceived global crisis.
So how did we get here?
On Jan. 16, Middlebury students studying abroad in China received an email from Global Rescue, indicating that the “U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ha[d] issued a Watch Level 1 Alert.” We were advised to “be aware and practice usual precautions” for an “outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, China, preliminarily identified to be caused by a novel (new) coronavirus.” It was not until the following week, however, on Jan. 21, when I began to focus on the coronavirus outbreak shaking China to its core. The virus was and is believed to have originated in Wuhan, the sprawling capital of central China’s Hubei Province and home to 11 million residents.
I visited Wuhan in the summer of 2017 and had fond memories of my time there. Under the blazing heat, I enjoyed dishes of reganmian — hot dry noodles — as I climbed the Yellow Crane Tower for a view of a city larger than New York or London. More than 500 Americans have been evacuated from that same city since the beginning of the outbreak.
From our position in Beijing — over 600 miles away — our group initially felt a sort of immunity to this new disease that few could confirm exact details as to its source and spread. And yet as cases began to pop up in Beijing and throughout the country (as of now, the virus has spread to every region in China), we began to echo the sense of fear and paranoia felt by our Chinese counterparts.
During the final week of our J-term program, residents of Beijing donned masks and started to cancel new year plans. We watched as a typically joyous time transformed into a grim one. Wuhan and the surrounding area went into lockdown and quarantine. Residents in Beijing rushed to the supermarkets and pharmacies, buying every face mask and hand sanitizer in sight. The Chinese government China made an impressive response to the coronavirus’ spread, shutting down tourist attractions nationwide and attempting to limit travel on the country’s extremely popular rail network. The effects of the virus were felt on a person-to-person level as well. On the eve of Chinese New Year, I had the privilege to be invited to a local friend’s celebration banquet. A depressing undertone filled the air of a usually lively restaurant, as the family next to us removed their masks only to eat.
The following day, I made the decision to continue with our small group’s trip up north to Harbin. After analyzing the situation as it stood at the time, I believed that the risk of anyone in our student group contracting the virus was still quite low. However, the country remained on high alert. China’s supply of thermometers seemed to quadruple as in every public place, temperature checks became ubiquitous. Even outside walking around Harbin’s Snow and Ice Festival, tourists wore masks as security guards pointed thermometers at every entrance.
Still, a day into our trip we received an email from Middlebury’s study abroad office, instructing us to return to Beijing and gather in our dorm hotel to await further instructions. The rapidly changing situation meant that each day brought new restrictions nationwide — intercity bus services suspended, the official new year holiday extended, schools and universities cancelled until further notice. Many of our Chinese counterparts spent upwards of a week at home, with friends in Harbin cancelling dinner plans in fear of spreading the virus. Upon arriving back in Beijing, myself and my classmates were all placed in separate single rooms to undergo 14 days of health screening, since we came from outside Beijing. This consisted of three temperature checks throughout the day: one in the morning, one at noon and one at night.
On the few occasions I ventured out during those days, I saw a city unlike the Beijing I had seen before. China’s capital had begun to show early signs of a “ghost town.” Many gated neighborhood communities in Beijing sealed themselves off from the outside. Taxis and cars sped along Beijing’s usually congested streets, with most people inside in fear of spreading the virus. Restaurants closed and dozens queued outside one of the only open eating establishments, hoping for a supply of fresh vegetables to bring home.
On Jan. 29, we woke up to notice from Middlebury that the college had made the decision to suspend all programs in China for the spring semester. The days that ensued consisted of trips to the bank and cell phone store, closing accounts and refunding phone plans. Our group of 24 dwindled as students left on flights operated by airlines that were constantly announcing cancellations. On campus, movement became more restricted as security guards required us to register and inform them of our whereabouts whenever entering or leaving campus. Fast food and takeout became the norm for meals, as they were the only establishments open and involved minimal amounts of close contact. Takeout drivers crisscrossed the city as bags of food piled up in restaurants, waiting to be delivered.
After 37 days in China, I was among the last Middlebury students to leave. On the final night before my repatriation, I walked around an eerily quiet dorm building. I mentally prepared to cut my semester abroad short by more than three months and wondered when I would return.
Leaving China is a privilege. I know that for many in the country, leaving is not an option. Many of my local counterparts have friends and family affected by the coronavirus epidemic. People who have visited mainland China in the past 14 days are currently unable to travel to the U.S. Fear around the global spread of the coronavirus has fueled racism and xenophobia around the world. These thoughts are misinformed and those who believe them fail to understand the vibrancy and diversity of China, its culture and its people. After completing my 19th trip to the Middle Kingdom since 2006, I have every motivation to return. Why? Because this country has given me hope, opportunity and energy, and we should give it the same.
Benjy Renton ’21 was The Campus’ senior local editor this fall.
(02/13/20 10:58am)
“If people are determined to be offended — if they will climb up on the ladder, balancing it precariously on their own toilet system to be upset by what they see through the neighbor’s bathroom window — there is nothing you can do about that.” — Christopher Hitchens
In 1755, the lexicographer Samuel Johnson published his famous dictionary of the English language. Shortly after his work was distributed, many people in London sought him out to praise him for his work. As the story goes, one group of ladies congratulated Johnson on excluding any inappropriate or indecent words from his dictionary. “Ladies,” Johnson replied, “I congratulate you on your diligence in searching for them.”
It’s easy to hear this story and connect it to contemporary occasions in which individuals go out of their way to find offense with a given author or speaker. Despite my best efforts, I cannot grasp the inner workings of the minds of those who embark upon these kinds of searches.
In some cases, the sought-for offense is more easily found than in others. “The Bell Curve” by the re-invited Charles Murray arguably represents a more obviously controversial publication (as is the case with his newest book). However, the actions of those at the 2017 protest who found offense in Murray’s work were far more serious than those of the ladies of London. They were so extreme that, when I was the treasurer of the American Enterprise Institute Club and co-president of the College Republicans in 2017, I could not have envisioned the outrage his presence generated on campus, which culminated in protests governed by a mob mentality the afternoon of his talk.
Would you return to a place that greeted you with, “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Charles Murray go away?” Perhaps the hundreds of student and non-Middlebury protesters should have been more diligent in the search to be offended — as the ladies in London were with Johnson — because they didn’t appear to be relying on accurate information. For example, one could choose to counter their chants by pointing out that Murray was one of the most forthright conservative intellectuals in favor of the Republican Party modifying its platform to support both gay marriage and abortion. Or by pointing out that Murray’s calls for a more socially liberal stance on those issues were made in 2013, when gay marriage and abortion were even more unpopular among Republicans than they are today, within just months of President Obama’s own 180-degree switch on the issue of marriage equality. But I suppose the protest chant had a nice jingle to it and seriously engaging in a dialogue with “sexist and anti-gay” Murray was much less convenient than reading a half-page summary of Murray’s work on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website.
Can I understand why some people were offended by Murray’s visit? Certainly. I came to Middlebury with a worldview that was challenged, shattered, built up and shattered again multiple times throughout my time there. But I sought out guest lectures on race, equity, religion; worldviews that often made me uncomfortable in my own skin, clothes and head. My time at Middlebury popped the bubble in which I was raised and forced me to encounter issues on my own through the free expression and engagement of ideas. Patting myself on the back through conversations with ideologically identical friends whose views echoed my own was of no interest or value to me.
Yet, despite running towards these challenges, I not only found the Murray protesters uninterested in engaging with any contrary viewpoints (or even understanding what they were really opposing), but found myself running away from the event. Literally. I still recall that evening in vivid detail, when my brisk pace turned to a full-on sprint as a masked protester (who I assume was not a student) holding a large sign chased me back to my dorm room from the event. I was wearing a suit and tie; I had to be with the bad guy, they figured.
If you didn’t feel that the protesters’ response — effectively shutting down the Murray event, as well as the events which occurred immediately afterwards — was an embarrassing moment for the college prior to reading this op-ed, I doubt I’ve convinced you. But for those who are on the fence, having Murray back provides an opportunity to engage without shutting down and redeem the college’s stained image in the eyes of many alumni, donors and the general public. Rarely do such second chances present themselves.
If you don’t agree with me, I want to leave you with this thought: Consider what would have happened if, instead of attending those lectures to challenge my viewpoints and gain more information, I had simply taken offense to paragraphs posted on Facebook. Imagine if I had organized a group of dozens, or even hundreds, of students to shut down that event. Or pulled the fire alarm three times. Or stood in front of a car carrying Murray and college staff. Or protested with outside professionals on campus, culminating in the concussion of a professor. Imagine if my gut reaction was not to engage, but to resist forcefully something which I hadn’t read about and based on my opinion of a speaker whom I heard third-hand. Now, imagine if this was done again. And again. And again. Would that be helpful to anyone? Would it further the college’s mission? Would it reflect well on my own (and my peers’) cause? Most importantly, would it right the supposed wrong embodied in the offense that was taken?
The views you cherish and express today might be offensive to someone else tomorrow. And if a precedent is set that offense justifies the cancellation of the exchange of ideas on the basis of offense, then you’ve cut off the very branch upon which you sit. My advice: Be careful not to make yourself a victim of your own actions.
Hayden Dublois '17 helped organize Charles Murray's 2017 visit to Middlebury. Dublois currently works at the Foundation for Government Accountability.
(02/13/20 10:54am)
Lucia Evans ’05 applied early decision to Middlebury. When she was a student here, she lived in Hepburn, Stew and Voter. She acted in plays, ate in the dining halls and took literature classes.
She is also one of more than 100 women who have accused famed Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, for an alleged incident that occured the summer before her senior year at Middlebury. She was part of some of the first criminal charges brought against Weinstein and an integral part of the dissemination of the #MeToo movement.
Evans, then Lucia Stoller, now runs a marketing consulting company, but was an aspiring actress in the summer of 2004 when she met Weinstein at a club in SoHo, New York. She agreed to a meeting at his office at a later date to talk about two scripts, where she alleges he assaulted her, forcing her to perform oral sex.
In 2017, Evans opened up about her experience to Ronan Farrow for his groundbreaking story in The New Yorker about allegations against Weinstein. The article prompted the New York police to contact Evans about pressing charges against Weinstein — they said she was “a highly credible witness” and repeatedly told her that she was “the only one who could put him in jail.” After months of deliberation, she agreed to join the criminal case.
Despite insistence from NYPD detectives about the viability of her case, Evans’ suit was dropped the following year when it was discovered that the lead detective on the case had failed to inform prosecutors about a witness with a conflicting testimony. Still, her decision to press charges helped jumpstart the legal process against Weinstein.
Now, Weinstein is on trial for five felony counts, including rape and predatory sexual assault, and six women are expected to testify against him. Weinstein and his lawyers maintain that all encounters were consensual.
The Campus spoke with Evans about her time at Middlebury, the process of prosecuting Harvey Weinstein and how the events of the summer before her senior year affected the rest of her life.
Editor’s note: This conversation contains references to sexual assault, rape and suicide. It has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
RILEY BOARD: When we first contacted you, you said that you’d be happy to speak with us because Middlebury had a special place in your heart. Can you talk about that? What did you do and study at Middlebury?
LUCIA EVANS: I was a Literary Studies and Theater double major. It was just a really special place for me. All of my best friends, my close friends now, are my friends from my junior and senior years there. Something about the place is so special.
I think the only thing that kind of soured it for me was, obviously, my sexual assault, which occurred the summer after junior year — so my senior year was a bit of a nightmare. But I think the people who go there just really want to make a difference in whatever field they’re in or whatever they’re doing, they always have multifaceted interests outside of class and really are the smartest people I’ve ever met. They continue to be the people that challenge me to this day.
RB: You mentioned in your most recent interview with Ronan Farrow that you had had a “magically good” life before [the alleged] assault happened, and that you had to reconcile how this affected and changed you, the before and after. It happened before your last year at Middlebury — then you came back to campus for another year. What was that like? What was it like in the immediate aftermath, the return to school?
LE: It’s so crazy, because that year was such a happy year for me a lot of the time. It was honestly the year where I had my closest friends and kind of my best group and took fantastic classes and had a really great social life. I was really active and — and yet at the same time, I felt like I was living this other life.
After I came back to school, I told my close group of friends, my roommates. We lived in Voter at the time, it was awesome. Voter was always a place I wanted to live, and I just never thought I would and I was so happy with this group of girls, with our space and our life that we shared. I really felt like I needed to tell them the honest truth. I didn’t tell anyone else the scope of what happened. Emotionally, it was a period of very high highs and very low lows.
I had the opportunity to play this role in the play “Necessary Targets,” which is a play by Eve Ensler [’75]. My character was on stage the entire play but she doesn’t speak except for one long monologue kind of toward the end where it is revealed — and she’s been holding a baby the whole time — and it’s revealed that the baby has passed away, and in her hands are just a bunch of rags, and she has been raped. And so she tells her whole story. And it’s heart wrenching. And I remember the director, when I was auditioning, saying, “You can just channel this character so well, it’s amazing.” And I remember thinking, “If only you knew why I could do this so easily.” And it was because it had literally just happened to me.
I kind of felt that in playing that role, that I had told my parents, which is ridiculous, but it actually really calmed me down and helped me deal with it for a few years, because I felt like in my own way that I had told them what happened to me. And then I could be at peace, which was, of course, not true. But it did give me some semblance of normalcy.
RB: Did you seek out help at Middlebury after that summer? From where did you draw support?
LE: When the cops came to my house two years ago and told me I could put him in jail, they were like, “Why didn’t you come to us right away?” And I said, “Why would I have come to you?” I mean, he was so powerful at that time — and he was the biggest producer in Hollywood. I couldn’t watch the Oscars or anything after it happened to me because I would see him everywhere. Every film, I still see his name everywhere.
I try to not beat myself up for what I didn’t do but obviously do wish I had gotten help. And I would advise anyone going through something similar to absolutely seek help, because it just compounds over the years and it becomes worse and worse and you’ll end up hurting yourself like I did for many years. And I don’t wish that on anybody else.
RB: We’re obviously in a very specific cultural moment, that of the #MeToo movement, in which survivors are coming forward in unprecedented numbers and college campuses are offering more institutional support for victims than ever before. What was the culture around consent and sexual assault when you were a student here? Was it possible to talk to your friends and peers about what you’d endured?
LE: If the #MeToo movement had happened then, there’s no question I would have said something right away. There was such a stigma around it then, and little did I know that 100 plus women were going through the same thing as me at the same exact time. And then obviously, women all over the world are dealing with much, much worse, and they have zero support.
It was hard for me to even say what happened to me and identify myself as a victim — or as a survivor, because now we’re meant to use the word survivor. Sometimes you feel like a victim, sometimes you feel like a survivor. You can be both, right? But I do remember at Middlebury, when I was feeling suicidal, my boyfriend at the time reached out to campus security — they were really fantastic. They were very supportive, even then. But the [#MeToo] movement didn’t exist. And there wasn’t yet that tipping point of cultural change where it became OK to talk about this, where people want you to tell the truth. Everyone I had met at Midd was great, I just was not ready. And the world probably wasn’t ready either.
RB: In the episode of “The Catch and Kill Podcast” on which you appeared, you spoke about how [the alleged] assault affected your confidence with acting and your career. Can you talk about that? How did that ordeal change your plans for the future?
LE: It completely changed it, for two reasons. One of them was that in my entire time as an actor, I’d always been of the school of thought that acting should come from a place of real emotion and raw energy — and you translate that into the character. Acting post-college was a struggle, because I was at a Meisner acting school that was all about coming from that place of real truth. So first of all, I couldn’t find my real truth because I was absolutely not ready to talk about anything. Whenever I tried to tap into any real emotion, I would just shut down. There was only one time when I was able to kind of let loose and then I knew after that I couldn’t do it anymore, it was just too painful. Even though everyone said, “Wow, that was amazing.” I was like, I can’t do it. I couldn’t act when I was hiding something that big.
The other reason was just because I had seen the worst of the industry, very quickly, and I thought that was what the industry was like. And I thought, I don’t want to do that. I have no interest. Now the whole narrative that they’re spinning is that people did it for roles. But I never got a role. And I never wanted a role after that, because I didn’t want to get a role like that. I just was not interested in being part of a system that just chewed up and spat out woman and didn’t respect them and forced them to perform sexual acts against their will.
RB: Now that your case has been dropped, what has it been like for you to experience Weinstein’s trial?
LE: I would have a lot more trouble experiencing it if it hadn’t been for this photo shoot [“100 Women vs. Harvey Weinstein”] that me and my fellow Silence Breakers participated in for New York Mag. It was so amazing meeting these people — we have an email chain that we’ve been on for years, but it was just me and a bunch of actresses. It’s so surreal for me. I’m the only non-actress on this email chain. It was like Rose McGowan and the other Silence Breakers, and I’m one of them, but I’d never met them. And meeting them was so meaningful and wonderful — and I just felt like I had all these sisters. And so thank God that happened before the trial, because now I have this amazing network of women who’ve been through some of the same things that I have and have been hurt by this horrible person but now we’re empowered and we’re a collective.
[pullquote speaker="Lucia Evans ’05" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"] Now the whole narrative that they’re spinning is that people did it for roles. But I never got a role. And I never wanted a role after that, because I didn’t want to get a role like that.[/pullquote]
RB: I wanted to talk a bit about an interview with Donna Rotunno, Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer, that was aired in an episode of “The Daily” last Friday. Have you listened to the interview?
LE: No, I couldn’t listen to it. And I think that’s also an important point. Just because I think it’s important to realize that you do not have to do everything, because media consumption is so damaging sometimes. And I would just encourage people to take a step back and just not feel like they have to consume everything. Because your health is more important than browsing Instagram, you know what I mean? Or reading or listening to the podcast that you think might be triggering for you.
Tell me what I missed.
RB: Do you mind if I read you a quote from Rotunno from the interview?
LE: OK, sure.
RB: “So when I make comments and say ‘if you go to the hotel room,’ doesn’t mean you deserve to have something bad happen to you. But if you go to the hotel room, you continue to perpetrate a culture that allows that to be acceptable. And so if women take the power and women say, none of us are going to a hotel room, then that culture must change.” This was in reference to the circumstances under which many of the alleged assaults by Weinstein occured. How would you respond to that quote?
LE: I knew that he was a really dangerous person, and that put me on extra guard — I wasn’t going to go and meet with him late at night because I was nervous about him. I wasn’t as nervous as I should have been. But I went to his office in the middle of the day, when there would be people, because how could something bad happen to me, surrounded by people?
Also, why would somebody want to put themselves through this hell? I mean, it’s not like we’re getting anything out of this. None of us have gotten a thing out of this. This is not a fame-seeking thing. In fact, we’ve only lost jobs, we’ve only lost like careers and opportunities because of this.
We just really want to help and that’s the only reason why we’re doing it. I hope people continue to want to help because it’s the only way that any changes are ever going to happen.
RB: What advice would you give to someone who has just graduated and is beginning to navigate industries, like the movie industry, that can be fraught with certain injustices and circumstances like the ones that you have experienced?
LE: I would just encourage people to talk to someone as quickly as you can, because I wasted far too much time not being open and honest. Even though you can have some great times — it wasn’t like I just wiped 13 years off of my life. I got married, I have a wonderful career, I’ve had great things happen to me. But there’s still something in the back of my mind that wouldn’t leave me alone. And this thing that I hadn’t told anyone was like eating me up. So I would encourage people to talk about it with someone they trust and trust that person that they’re talking to.
I remember thinking in college, during my senior year, I just wish that my parents would tell me that I was still a good person, that it was okay that this happened to me. I just needed some type of validation, that I was okay and that I was still a good person, because I still thought it was my fault, which obviously it was not.
Also, I would not be afraid of the criminal justice system, even though I’ve had a really horrible experience with it. Because honestly, if you don’t try to make a difference and change the law, there’s no way that anything is ever going to change around here. And we all know that things have to change. So I would just say if there is ever an opportunity that anyone has to try to make a difference in that way, don’t be afraid of it. I’ve had the experience I’ve had and I would do it again, even though it was painful. The more you revisit these horrible things actually really helps you heal, even though you don’t want to go back to these places. And I hope no one ever has to go through what I did. And some have gone through far worse than I have. But it really is amazing how much it can help you heal by talking about it.
(02/01/20 1:57am)
UPDATE — Tuesday, Feb. 4
Students returning from China will not be allowed to return to the Middlebury campus until 14 days after their departure to prevent any possible spread of coronavirus.
Following the suspension of Middlebury School in China, 11 students who had already arrived in China had to evacuate the country. The last program students evacuated China on Saturday and thus will not be allowed to return to campus until Feb. 15, five days after the start of classes on Feb. 10.
Middlebury made this decision in line with Center for Disease Control guidelines, which ask that travelers coming from China limit contact with others and submit to monitoring by health officials during the two-week period after their departure.
“You won’t be penalized for missing classes, since this isn’t your choice, but rather is something that the college is asking of you,” wrote Assistant Director of International Programs Bill Mayers in an email to returning students.
Sabian Edouard ’21 and Edgar León ’21 had already returned to campus when Middlebury made the decision to quarantine returning students. Two days after their arrival on campus, the two received an email requesting that they report to Parton Health Center immediately.
Director of Health Services Dr. Mark Peluso informed the students that their risk of infection was low because they had left China quickly and because their study abroad location was not near the epicenter of the outbreak.
Edouard and León elected to remain on campus for this period and will be quarantined in a house on campus. They chose not to return home due to concerns about potentially contaminating their loved ones.
“Back in Beijing, my study abroad site, my friends and I were heavily encouraged to stay indoors as much as possible during the outbreak, so this is nothing new,” Edouard said. While he is disappointed that he is unable to continue his study abroad experience in China, Edouard feels lucky.
He acknowledges the many who are suffering from the novel coronavirus and those in the immediate outbreak zone in Hubei Province. “We are privileged to be back home safe and sound,” he said.
Edouard and León are good friends, so he predicts that the two weeks in quarantine will not be too unpleasant.
“Besides, now I can start watching that Game of Thrones series everyone was raving about,” Edouard said.
__
Friday, Jan. 31
The three Middlebury C.V. Starr Schools Abroad in China will not run this spring due to concerns over the coronavirus, the college announced in a campus-wide email this Tuesday. The college advised students who were planning to study in Hangzhou, Kunming and Beijing beginning this February to re-enroll in their home universities this spring. Non-Middlebury students whose home institutions have begun spring classes have been offered the chance to attend Middlebury for the semester — an estimated seven or eight out of the 37.
The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a “public health emergency of international concern” on Jan 30. As of this morning, the World Health Organization confirmed 9,720 cases and 213 deaths in China, and that the disease had spread to 19 other countries. Today, the US State Department raised the China travel advisory to “Level 4 - Do Not Travel”, their highest rating. Only 13 other countries share this classification.
“There is too much at stake to risk any course of action other than suspending the program,” wrote Bill Mayers, assistant director of international programs, in an email to students enrolled in the Middlebury School in China for the spring semester and their parents. “We are considering both the potential health and safety risks, as well as the consequences for your academic progress,”
Program participants, hailing from 15 different universities, were set to arrive in China on Feb. 12. Eleven students, however, had already arrived when news of the cancellation hit — two of whom were planning to study there for the entire year and eight of whom arrived on Dec. 27 for a winter term course with CET Academic programs in Beijing.
Students began evacuating on Jan. 28, and the last student is scheduled to leave China at 6:30 p.m. local time on Feb. 1, according to Benjy Renton ’21, a Campus editor and one of the Middlebury students evacuating the country.
Capital Normal University, the location of the Winter Term class, is closed to all non-university personnel, including CET Beijing's resident director. In the interim, Renton is helping coordinate student departures and repatriation efforts. Middlebury will screen students upon their arrival on campus.
With several major airlines suspending or considering suspending flights to and from China, as well as President Trump’s administration instituting a partial travel ban, the Office of International Programs was worried that students might become stranded in the country.
“We don’t want them to be getting stuck there. We don’t know how Chinese authorities are going to react, if they are going to be clamping down more. We have no control over that, and that’s the part where we are a little more concerned,” Mayers told The Campus.
“When to make a decision and what we should decide to do are unbelievably challenging, given that the whole situation was changing so quickly,” said Zhang Kai, director of the Middlebury school in China in Beijing.
In addition to health and safety concerns, logistical challenges played a large part in informing the Office of International Programs’s decision, according to Mayers.
“We do this program hoping that students are going to have an immersive experience, but, frankly, they’re restricting gatherings of any size,” Mayers said. “You can’t go out and gather with other Chinese students. You can’t go to the movie theater, you can’t go to the club, you can’t do anything that Chinese people do in China. What are you going to do? Just stay in your dorm room the whole time? It’s not an immersive experience.”[pullquote speaker="Bill Mayers" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]You can’t go out and gather with other Chinese students. You can’t go to the movie theater, you can’t go to the club, you can’t do anything that Chinese people do in China. What are you going to do? Just stay in your dorm room the whole time? It’s not an immersive experience.[/pullquote]
Schools and universities are indefinitely suspended across the country, with municipalities deciding when to reopen campuses. The Chinese government has imposed wide-scale travel restrictions — and many train lines have closed across the country and many of the top tourist attractions have closed indefinitely, according to Renton.
“At Capital Normal University, security guards are becoming increasingly more strict with entering and exiting. Each exit requires the guard to call our Resident Director to seek her approval,” he wrote in a post on his blog.
The cancelation poses academic concerns to many students. Some majors require a semester abroad. The Office of International Programs plans to run the program in China next fall, and will offer spots to the students who were unable to study abroad this spring. Students who have fulfilled the relevant language and course requirements were also offered the opportunity to study at other Middlebury schools abroad, such as those in Latin America.
“We feel horrible about [canceling the semester]. We know a lot of students come to Middlebury because they’re planning on studying abroad and we’ve got good programs,” Mayers said. “They’ve been waiting for two and a half years and we pulled the rug out from under them .... We feel that it’s the right decision, but it’s not a good one.”
The Office of International Programs sent an email to the faculty encouraging professors to be understanding and flexible in their class sizes to aid registration for incoming students.
Mayers confirmed that the college has found housing for all 37 students, should they choose to come to Middlebury. Non-Middlebury students must make the decision to enroll in the spring by Feb. 3.
“We do hope that you will help us in every way you can to make them feel welcome,” wrote Vélez in his initial campus-wide email, “Whether they are Middlebury students to begin with or if they come to us from other institutions, they will be Middlebury students for the time they are here.”
Editor’s note: Middlebury Campus editor Benjy Renton ’21 has been independently reporting from China on his blog, “Off the Silk Road.” Read his posts here.
(01/23/20 11:18am)
Few people play squash in Nick Bermingham’s ’20 hometown of Denver, Colorado. Until his freshman year of boarding school in Connecticut, when he needed a winter sport that would supplement his lacrosse-playing in the spring, the future Middlebury men’s squash captain had not even heard of the game.
“I remember seeing the courts at Hotchkiss and being like, ‘Oh, this is a cool racquet sport I haven’t played before,’” said Bermingham, also a former tennis player. “I kind of fell in love with [squash] right away. I was always trying to play as much as I could.”
On summer vacations, Bermingham would sneak into an old court 15 minutes away from his house and practice by himself. Many of Bermingham’s prep school opponents, meanwhile, would receive instruction from private coaches and compete in tournaments throughout the northeast.
Today, Bermingham holds the top spot on the ladder for men’s squash and plans to play professionally after graduation. Bermingham’s ascendancy demanded that he climb a steep slope within a relatively short period of time, especially when considering his late entry into the sport and walk-on status. His professional aspirations suggest that he believes more has yet to be conquered.
But every journey must start somewhere.
In high school, Bermingham relied upon his height and athleticism to carry his success.
“I [had] a good first step and was able to retrieve [the ball] a lot when I was just picking up the game,” he said. “It allowed me to stay within points with people that were better than me. In doing so, I was able to keep up, have more court time, and therefore have the opportunity to improve more as opposed to when having shorter rallies.”
By junior year of high school, Bermingham wanted to continue his squash career into college, but the recruiting process seemed tilted against him.
“I played in no tournaments and most people my age had already built a resume that they were boasting,” he said. “Coaches certainly weren’t reaching out to me. I was reaching out to a couple of NESCAC and Ivy League coaches, kind of pleading that I’d be really good despite not having that resume.”
Bermingham later developed a correspondence with Middlebury’s men’s squash coach, Mark Lewis.
“I said I was interested in going to school at Middlebury, first and foremost,” Bermingham said. “I explained my experience with squash, such as picking it up late, being a former tennis player and anticipating that I’d improve as I progressed in college. I also told him that I was someone who was looking for specific pointers and tips because I was really just learning [squash] all on my own.”
Bermingham was admitted to Middlebury and earned a spot on the team as a walk-on. He posted an 11–8 overall record his freshman year, going 9–3 at the ninth spot, 1–5 at the eighth position and 1–0 at the seventh. The men’s squad went 11–8 during its 2016–2017 campaign.
Bermingham’s raw athleticism, however, still dictated his game.
“When Nick came here, he was a very physical, fit and defensive player,” said squash co-captain, Will Cembalest ’20. “Essentially, he’d work around the other person’s game and chase balls around as opposed to applying a lot of pressure and playing an attacking game. Especially because he’s tall, he was able to reach for a lot of balls and stay at the point for a lot longer.”
But come sophomore year, a hamstring injury threatened to interrupt Bermingham’s progression. He played in only two games, recording one win and one loss.
Now, his battles were physical and mental.
“Squash has always been a huge competitive outlet for me,” Bermingham said. “Having played sports for as long as I can remember, it’s been part of a balanced life for me. Not having that outlet, not being able to run, have a good sweat, or feeling like I was healthy was really frustrating.”
The injury forced the walk-on to improvise how he practiced. Although he couldn’t run around the court, Bermingham was able to use his solo time to sharpen his technical skills. “Once I was healthy again, I had an element of the game that I didn’t have before,” he said.
By junior year, Bermingham was elected captain and he tallied a collective 13–8 record playing between the third and sixth positions. His teammates recognized his polished game.
“His shot accuracy [was] better,” said Thomas Wolpow ’20, who played on the squash team from freshman to junior year. “If he wanted to put the ball on the front right and he didn’t want the ball to bounce back a lot, he was able to do that. If he wanted to send the guy to the back left back corner, he was able to do that with more precision and consistency.”
Bermingham’s leadership also drew the praise of his teammates.
“Nick has a fantastic work ethic, is very dedicated to the sport, and always shows up early to practice,” Cembalest said. “He embodies what a growing athlete is: someone that’s always looking to improve, cheering for players and wishing the best for the team, especially when it gets competitive between the players”.
For this season, the team named Bermingham captain once again.
Men’s squash is currently ranked 19th nationally.
When February rolls around, and the Panthers close out their final game, Bermingham won’t be hanging up his racquet for the last time; after graduation, he plans to play professionally.
“Given how much I think about squash and how competitive I am with myself, I don’t think I could, in good conscience, just call it quits my senior year of college,” said Bermingham. “I feel like I have still so much more to give and I don’t want to wonder in 20 years what could’ve been.”
Bermingham’s late introduction to squash also leaves him hungry for more.
“Everybody on the team has been playing since they were really young, and I haven’t,” he said. “I don’t think it’d be fair for myself to just walk away, and be like, ‘Oh well, I was good for what was given’”.
The Denver native intends on travelling to France for his professional career. It appears that his ascendancy in squash keeps pointing eastward.
(01/23/20 11:11am)
When Courtenay Roche arrived on campus as a first-year in the spring of 2017, she began to develop an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise. The problem worsened throughout her first two years of college, and Roche recalled having less and less energy to devote to friends and extracurricular activities.
“Because I wasn’t at home, I was more easily able to engage in bad behaviors that my parents would not have let happen,” she said. “Middlebury is a very isolating place. It was very easy to suffer in silence.”
Roche withdrew from school in the fall of 2018 and sought treatment. Once her recovery process was underway, she decided not to return to Middlebury at all. While her decision to transfer was driven by a number of factors, Roche said that Middlebury’s culture around dieting and exercise contributed to her desire to leave.
Middlebury can be a difficult place for students who struggle with body image and eating issues. Some students enter college with a history of disordered eating while others develop new unhealthy habits on campus, but many who need help often find on campus expectations about exercise and body types harmful and the college’s mental health resources insufficient.
While students spend a lot of time focusing on often-skewed ideas about “healthy” eating and the importance of exercise, there is very little conversation around what happens when those norms go unchecked. Despite the fact that students every year must leave to seek intensive treatment, there is not a common understanding of eating disorders on campus. Eating disorders can impact people of all genders, races, socio-economic backgrounds and ages. In addition to those with formal diagnoses, many students experience “disordered eating,” a term used to describe a range of irregular eating behaviors that may or may not warrant a specific diagnosis.
For many students, the way peers talk about food and beauty standards creates unhealthy expectations regarding body appearance. Abby Blyler ’19.5 began struggling with an eating disorder the summer before high school. She feels that Middlebury amplifies harmful standards about body size.
“Our culture is so fatphobic and I think that’s hyperprevelant here,” she said.
Blyler, who left campus to attend a residential treatment program last fall, said this can manifest in conversations between students about how much they eat and exercise, or comments that frame food as a reward for exercise rather than a daily necessity.
Quinn Boyle ’21, who recently wrote a widely shared op-ed in The Campus about her experience, said that for her, coming to Middlebury exacerbated an issue with which she was already struggling.
“Middlebury has a very perfectionist culture, and because society believes that skinny bodies are perfect and fit bodies are perfect, not only do we want to do 110% in our academics and extracurriculars but we want to do 110% when it comes to the way we look,” she said. “I got really sucked into that.”
Many students said structural factors can make college challenging for students with eating disorders. This includes having to navigate dining halls, where the public nature of eating and food can be an issue, according to Boyle.
“I was really socially isolated,” she said. “I couldn’t really do meals with people, I either ate in the dining hall alone or I ate in my room and I lost a lot of friends. It was really horrible.”
A lack of resources for mental health
The counseling staff at Parton Health and Wellness Center are generalists — they are able to help students who struggle with disordered eating until the issue has reached a certain level of severity, according to Gus Jordan, the executive director of health and counseling services.
“We treat eating disorders very much like we do any serious medical or mental health issue,” he said. “Last summer, I had all our staff go through a day-long eating disorder training with two specialists from a clinic in Boston.”
Jordan explained that part of the training was geared toward assessing whether students need more support than therapy every other week can provide. For students experiencing more severe symptoms, the college may not be able to offer sufficient care to help them start or continue recovery.
The level of care the college is able to provide to students has been impacted by a surge in students seeking mental health services on campus, The Campus reported last spring. Jordan said that demand has risen drastically in just a few years, which reflects a larger national trend.
“Five years ago we were capable of seeing every student who wanted care weekly,” he said. “We now have difficulty providing every other week therapy. My staff are carrying caseloads that are twice the size as they were five years ago in trying to manage all the people that are looking for care.”
This shortage of counselors means students who need more regular therapy to treat an eating disorder might not be able to schedule appointments frequently enough to help them. In the long term, Jordan explained, this kind of under-treatment can do more harm than good for people struggling.
“If you provide inadequate or too low a level of care relative to the severity of the condition, what you’re doing is you’re helping the student practice their eating disorder without it getting better,” he said. “In other words, if I’m providing once a week therapy, or every other week therapy, to a person who really needs intensive outpatient treatment, then they may be using the therapy to keep their head above water while they are practicing their eating disorder and so they are actually getting worse during that time.”
The lack of resources on campus leads some students to seek solutions elsewhere. However, in a rural setting like Addison County, the options around the college are also limited.
[pullquote speaker="Gus Jordan" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Middlebury students say that the college’s culture contributes to unhealthy expectations around food and exercise, and that the resources for struggling students are lacking.[/pullquote]
Amy Rice, a local dietician who frequently works with Middlebury students who have eating disorders, said that it can be challenging for patients to assemble the team they need, which usually includes a dietician, a therapist and a doctor. Rice explained that there are more options and more variation for those seeking care in the Burlington area, but traveling an hour each way for multiple appointments a week is often an unrealistic option for Middlebury students, especially for those without access to transportation.
Receiving care from professionals in town can also come with a hefty price tag.
“It was so hard to find people that would take my insurance,” Boyle said. “Being on the school’s insurance means that most people are not in-network with whatever health plan Middlebury provides. So then going through the process of talking to your insurance companies and then talking to your provider like your therapist or your dietician and coming up with a number you can actually meet is super difficult and stressful, and on top of that you still have to pay money out of pocket.”
Boyle and other students interviewed for this article expressed a desire that the college hire more specialists, such as a nutritionist or specialized eating disorder counselor.
Jordan said he also hopes to one day have a nutritionist at the Parton, either as a full time staff member or on a part-time basis. He explained that there was a part time nutritionist at Parton in the early 2000s, but very few students made appointments so the college decided to redirect funds used for the position elsewhere.
“But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work now,” he said, pointing to the increase in the overall use of mental health services since then.
Boyle said access to a nutritionist on campus would be a good first step. She also believes the college should hire or bring in a specialist to run a support group for students who are struggling with disordered eating.
Eating disorders and athletics
While eating disorders impact students across campus, being an athlete can present unique challenges for students trying to recover. This is especially true for students with teammates who struggle with similar issues. Blyler plays for the women’s soccer team, and said that in her experience, the environment on sports teams does not always facilitate healthy habits.
“Every season I have overheard or witnessed teammates expressing the desire to lose weight, become more toned or go on a new fad diet. You have people eating a Proctor bowl worth of food for their whole dinner,” she said. “To me, that just shows how little education there is around health and wellness. We live in such an active community, we need to be properly fueling ourselves.”
Part of the problem, Blyler said, is that teammates do not always talk openly about the issue.
“People don’t want to say, ‘I had an eating disorder.’ Instead you see what they eat,” she said. “Teams have meals together all the time. So you’re just like, ‘Oh my god she’s eating just a salad, should I be eating that?’ Especially for people who may have a greater tendency to fall into that stuff it’s such a slippery slope.”
Rory Kelly ’19, who ran for the cross country and track and field teams while in recovery from an eating disorder, said that being an athlete changed her relationship to her recovery process.
“There were a lot of toxic things going on about food and body image on both the men’s and women’s teams,” she said. “I was in a lot of conversations about mental toughness and being kind to yourself and pushing yourself and where that line is.”
For athletes struggling with eating, there is often little their coaches and trainers can do to help them. While many coaches are aware this issue exists for their athletes and want to help, there are few resources for coaches to learn how to approach this topic. Kelly said this problem goes beyond Middlebury and exists in sports at large.
“There’s no good training out there for coaches on how to step in,” she said. “[Our team] did feel comfortable talking about how to get faster, but balancing taking care of ourselves and also doing that thing called school .... The area that’s still lacking is in the moment [when someone is struggling], you have to buck up and step in and have a difficult conversation.”
Nicole Wilkerson, the head coach for both the men’s and women’s cross country teams, expressed frustration with the lack of information available to coaches about how to help an athlete struggling with an eating disorder. In the past, Wilkerson has brought speakers in to help educate her team on this issue and how to take care of themselves. But she said that when it comes to specific cases, it is hard to know what to do.
“There’s not a clear avenue to say hey you need to do x, y and z in order to be able to compete, in order to return to practice,” she said. “It’s just trying to tackle this on our own.”
According to Blyler, athletes often worry that if they tell their coaches about their eating disorder, they will be benched — or that if they start the recovery process in season, it will hinder their performance.
“How do you navigate healing and navigate getting help when you don’t necessarily feel like you need to get treatment, and you’re in the middle of a season, and you’re trying to outcompete your peers? How do you do all that?” she said.
The cost of leaving for help
The help Parton can provide to struggling students includes weigh-ins — regular appointments to check if a student gaining or losing weight in relation to medical recommendations. However, Jordan said that the health center cannot guarantee the accuracy of the results, given that students are not monitored to ensure they are not tricking the scale like they may be at a facility that specializes in treating eating disorders.
If a student appears to be at risk of serious health consequences from their eating disorder, counselors at Parton will start talking with students about taking a leave of absence.
“We take action when there is imminent risk to a person,” he said. “That’s when we ask and say, ‘you might have to go home.’ We might involve parents or a dean.”
Rice said that for students facing worsening symptoms, she believes it is often better to take time off and get more help than Middlebury and the surrounding area are able to provide.
“If they need those bigger centers or that higher level of care the question becomes is it in their best interest, is it better for them to take a semester off versus struggle trying to manage college and their eating disorder for the duration of their college experience?” she said.
For students, the decision to leave can be an incredibly difficult one. Many expressed that they reached rock bottom before they were willing to admit they needed to seek more intensive treatment. Blyler reached that point last November.
“It got to the point where it was infringing on my everyday. I couldn’t do school work,” Blyler said. “I was sleeping through so many things and I was socially isolating and trying to hide it from everyone.”
For Blyler, the decision to leave school came with significant financial implications, which is the case for many students contemplating a medical leave of absence for residential treatment. In addition to potential loss of tuition money for the semester a student withdraws, treatment programs for eating disorders can cost tens of thousands of dollars a month.
Blyler was able to negotiate for her college insurance plan to pay for 90% of her treatment last fall, but that still left her with a $6,000 bill.
“I was like, I don’t have that,” she said. “My parents aren’t financially involved – they don’t pay for anything and I have to pay for college, too.”
Blyler ultimately received a grant from a foundation to cover the rest of her treatment.
Boyle’s situation was also complicated. Her family cannot afford the cost of treatment, and Boyle said that she would not be able to recover living at home, leaving her with very limited options. Boyle said that she was ultimately able to access treatment because a friend’s family took her in and paid her medical expenses.
“I’m really lucky that this family is giving me financial support right now, if they were not I would not be able to get any help whatsoever,” she said. “I could have died if they hadn’t been there. It was so bad.”
Boyle also expressed frustration that she had not been able to access more regular therapy and appropriate medical treatment earlier, while she was still on campus, which she feels may have kept her disorder from worsening like it did.
“It’s really shameful that Middlebury does not provide those resources,” she said. “Not only does it set kids back mentally but it sets you back financially and it makes it way harder for you to recover and it really does disproportionately affect kids from low incomes who can’t support themselves or don’t have family to support them.”
After spending several months in treatment, Boyle recently re-applied to be allowed to come back to Middlebury for the spring, and last week she was given permission to return.
“I’m not cured by any means but I’m better than I’ve been,” she said. “Middlebury provides routine, it provides stability, it provides a home where I feel like I belong, and I have an entire treatment team currently in Vermont.”
She hopes that Middlebury will take steps to change the culture on campus and make more resources available to students.
Jordan said one thing he believes the school can do to help combat the broader problem is institute more preventative measures. He feels that educational programming through the Health and Wellness Office will have a positive impact on campus culture.
“To me that’s where the energy needs to go because I don’t think we can treat ourselves out of these situations,” he said. “We need to do much more preventative work.”
Blyler said that one of the best things students can do is destigmatize eating disorders and learn how to talk about them responsibly.
“It needs to be not so taboo because I know so many people who are so afraid to talk about it,” she said. “[But] if you pick five random people on this campus they will all say at one point in their life they have struggled with this to some extent.”
(12/08/19 3:28pm)
Some members of the Student Government Association (SGA) have spent the last two weeks discussing the possibility of impeaching President Varsha Vijayakumar ’20. However, whether or not Vijayakumar will face an impeachment inquiry has yet to be determined.
The SGA’s three-member impeachment committee, which was formed in September along with every other senate committee, notified Vijayakumar in an email on Tuesday, Dec. 3 that her plan to leave campus during the upcoming winter term may be a violation of the SGA’s constitution and is thus potentially an impeachable offense.
“President Vijayakumar, you have expressed the intent on several occasions to leave campus during the 2020 Winter Term,” the email read. “If you follow through with these intentions, then the impeachment committee will begin impeachment proceedings against you.”
Vijayakumar said that when she read the email, her understanding was that impeachment proceedings would begin at the next senate meeting on Dec. 8. However, despite the tone and immediacy of the email, opening an impeachment inquiry into the SGA President requires a multi-step process that has not yet been initiated. The process must start with either a petition signed by 25% of the student body, or a written statement submitted by a senator or cabinet member. No such petition existed, nor had any SGA members submitted a statement, at the time of publication of this article.
According to Drew Platt ’20, one of Vijayakumar’s chiefs of staff, the impeachment process also cannot start until the offense at hand has already been committed — in this case, until after Vijayakumar left for winter term.
If impeachment proceedings are initiated in the future, the impeachment committee would hold a hearing, and two out of the three members of the committee would need to vote the process forward. Then, the entire senate would hold a subsequent impeachment hearing, after which the senate would vote. Impeachment requires a two-thirds majority in the senate to pass.
If the president were to be impeached, Community Council Co-Chair Roni Lezama ’22 would assume the role of interim president. There would then be a special election to fill the position.
A constitutional debate
Whether Vijayakumar’s upcoming winter term absence violates the constitution comes down to the interpretation of Article II, clause E.5. While the constitution allows for senators and cabinet members to leave campus over winter term, the clause regarding the presidency reads, “The President of SGA must be on campus for the duration of their term,” and does not specify if winter term is included.
Vijayakumar said that, according to her interpretation, this clause does not include winter term.
“I chose to interpret ‘term’ as not inclusive of J-Term,” she told The Campus in an email. “We do not pay a separate tuition fee for J-Term, we do not change our housing, and the college only requires Middlebury students to remain on campus for two of four J-Terms— one of which must be in the first year.”
Others interpret the clause differently, including Wonnacott Senator Myles Maxie ’22.
“For clauses where you can miss J-Term, it specifies,” he said. “By not specifying for two clauses — for community council co-chair and president, the only two all-student positions — it seems sort of clear that it is set up that way. It seems intentional.”
When there is disagreement over the meaning of the constitution, the document states the president has the power to “resolve all questions of constitutional interpretation and interpretation of the Bylaws, except relating to procedures for Senate meetings.” However, the senate can overrule the president’s interpretation with a majority vote. The senate has yet to vote on this issue.
While a constitutional violation is an impeachable offense, there has also been discussion among members of the SGA about the gravity of impeaching an elected official.
Vijayakumar said she believes impeachment should be reserved for circumstances when a president is not acting in the best interest of the student body or is acting in ways that are intentionally malicious. She does not believe either is true in this case.
Vijayakumar explained that she has offered to video chat into any meetings that she misses, and said she feels her winter term plans will not detract from her ability to fulfill her presidential duties.
Paul Flores-Clavel ’22, the chair of the impeachment committee and a sophomore senator, expressed a similar sentiment about the nature of impeachment.
“The purpose of impeachment should really be about someone who is maliciously trying to not create a functioning SGA or is somebody who is clearly violating the expectations of the community,” he said. “Varsha is doing neither of those things.”
Several members of SGA noted that the climate of uncertainty surrounding the potential for future impeachment proceedings is due in part to the fact that the SGA’s constitution has a lot of vague language.
The SGA is currently undergoing a constitutional review process, which was spurred by the impending dissolution of the commons system. The removal of the commons requires the SGA to restructure the senate to remove — or at least adjust — the five commons-specific positions. Several senators expressed the hope that any confusing or vague language might be remedied as part of the current review process.
However, any constitutional changes that are made in the future will not go into effect in time to remove the ambiguity from Vijayakumar’s case.
Questions of access
Vijayakumar is going to India for winter term as part the BOLD Women’s Leadership Initiative, a program that offers young women mentorship and networking opportunities, in addition to scholarship funds.
“Going on this trip is a requirement of the BOLD program, and my funding is contingent upon successful completion of all program requirements,” she said.
Vijayakumar explained that she did not know that BOLD would require her to be away for winter term when she ran for president last spring.
The fact that Vijayakumar’s winter term absence is related to the terms of her scholarship has raised questions, both for her and some members of the senate, about the nature of equitable access to leadership roles on campus.
“Without BOLD, I probably would have had to transfer out of Middlebury two years ago or face the reality of crippling debt,” she said. “I find it inherently inequitable to be removed from office due to my commitment to BOLD. Are we implying that a student on financial aid must choose between a scholarship— funding that is crucial to my ability to be on campus— or being the SGA president? I find this to be directly against the college’s core mission and values.”
Platt emphasized that Vijayakumar and the rest of her leadership team has been preparing for her departure for months.
“It’s not like she’s leaving us out in the cold. This is something we’ve known about for a really long time,” he said. “This is something that quite frankly the rest of her executive team and the chair of the community council are ready to take on for this brief period of time that she’s not on campus.”
The personal becomes political
While the focus has largely been on the differing interpretations of the constitution, several members of the SGA expressed their concerns that the true motivations behind the impeachment effort stem from certain members’ personal grudges against Vijayakumar, rather than a legitimate concern about her absence over winter term.
“As a senator I understand that everybody has other things going on besides the senate, and I think people fail to realize that Varsha is no exception,” Flores-Clavel said. “People forget that she’s also a student.”
Flores-Clavel cited the elimination of the commons and subsequent conversations about restructuring the senate as one cause of tension within the government.
“People might have whatever feelings they might have for her, and I think what’s becoming apparent is that not every member of the government is able to separate their feelings for Varsha as a person from Varsha as the president,” he said. “Like it or not, she very much has been doing her job.”
Platt said that, in his view, the constitutional clause in question is intended to ensure the president is committed to the job.
“If this clause is about dedication to the position, it’s almost undeniable that Varsha has been dedicated to the position,” he said. “Anybody who wants to impeach her for this particular technicality is being disingenuous by saying her absence during J-Term represents any kind of argument against her dedication to the role.”
[pullquote speaker="Paul Flores-Clavel" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]People might have whatever feelings they might have for her, and I think what’s becoming apparent is that not every member of the government is able to separate their feelings for Varsha as a person from Varsha as the president.[/pullquote]
The impeachment process has also been complicated by last minute changes to the impeachment committee. Atwater Senator Jack Brady ’21 resigned from his position on the committee Saturday morning, leaving one seat unfilled. The constitution does not lay out specific steps as to how vacant committee seats should be filled mid-year, giving the president the ability to interpret the ambiguity in this area.
The third committee member, Senior Senator Anthony Salas ’20, recused himself from this case on Friday because of his past romantic relationship with Vijayakumar.
“If this process were to actually begin, the impeachment committee would have to make a recommendation to the senate,” Salas said over text. “I think it ethically and morally makes sense [for me to recuse myself], and I want to avoid a potential false portrayal of my intentions. I have a lot of pride in the work I’ve done in the SGA since sophomore year and I don’t want that possibly misconstrued because of this situation.”
While the constitution does not address the issue of recusal due to a conflict of interest, it does say that “if a member of the Committee has brought the charges, said member must recuse themselves. In such a case, the Chair of the Impeachment Committee shall select another member of the Student Senate to replace said member.”
A highly anticipated meeting
Various members of the SGA have been communicating with each other and with administrators about the impeachment process this week, but the matter has yet to come up at an official senate meeting. Vijayakumar hopes the upcoming meeting on Sunday, Dec. 8 — the last meeting of the fall semester — will give everyone a chance to be heard.
“I want all members of senate to be able to express their opinions, but to also take in the opinions of others. What I do not want is for this discussion of my abilities to splinter us as an organization,” she said. “It would be a shame if a conversation about me detracts from our credibility as an institution or reduces our ability to continue serving students’ best interests.”
Platt expressed his desire to make sure everyone is on the same page after a week of rumors and confusion about the process.
He also expressed his support for Vijayakumar on the basis of her work ethic, citing the progress she has made building relationships between SGA and administrators and her progress on forming a spring action plan.
“I think her track record speaks for itself, and I can say with complete confidence that starting over this summer she’s worked unbelievably hard to dedicate herself to this position,” he said. “I think ideally we can use this as an opportunity to reset as a unit, to make sure that we acknowledge the work that Varsha has done, and also just to improve communications with the body.”
Sunday’s SGA Senate meeting will occur in Axinn 220 at 3 p.m. and is open to the public.
This is a developing story and will be updated as necessary.
(12/05/19 11:04am)
This semester, the Community Council has discussed several issues concerning Middlebury’s future, including the addition of security cameras on campus, the implementation of the How Will We Live Together report, recurring problems with unreturned dining hall dishes and an upcoming review of the college’s social houses.
Staff members from several departments have attended meetings to present their work to the Community Council and answer questions posed by council members.
Public safety spoke about updating the ID card access systems on buildings across campus and installing security cameras, beginning this winter, in areas that experience heavy foot traffic from members of the college and from visitors.
Staff from the recently-expanded Health and Wellness Department presented on their work on Tobacco 21 and the college’s policies related to tobacco use reduction. They also spoke about methods for promoting health and wellness among students, as well as the department’s goals of providing more preventive and holistic care going forward.
“Community Council is a great way to get information out to students, and to get a great snapshot of how students might feel about things we’re developing,” said Maddie Hope, the assistant director of health and wellness education and mental health promotion specialist. “I think it will continue to be a fertile ground for sharing of ideas, receiving feedback from community council and disseminating information, so I’ve been thankful.”
The council also discussed the implementation of the How Will We Live Together report in a meeting, with presentations by Hope, Senior Associate Dean of Students Derek Doucet and AJ Place, associate dean of students for residential life.
According to Hope, a key part of the new BLUEprint housing model is the increased level of cooperation between the Residential Life staff and the Health and Wellness department.
“So the BLUEprint for Life, that section of that education model, is thinking about what can we do to make sure students get the information they need and feel like they’re in a place where they feel like they can build their skills around thinking about themselves as whole people,” Hope said.
Recently, Community Council has also focused on ways to encourage students to respect staff and shared spaces. Problems with students taking dishes from the dining halls and leaving them in residential halls, both in dorm kitchens and around other common spaces, have been of particular concern to the council, and members have begun working with dining hall staff to reduce the issue.
“I think there’s an overarching narrative of privilege on our campus and the problems that go into that, the big one being the dining plates conversation, was very insightful and impactful,” said Roni Lezama ’22, the Co-Chair of Community Council. “That conversation was kind of the tipping point for us as students ... so we chose to start meeting every week.”
According to Lezama, these conversations in part propelled student members of Community Council to begin meeting more frequently on their own time, to push individual projects and make progress on efforts they care about. This is a change in the structure of the council that Lezama hopes will continue.
Community Council has also been working on an upcoming review of the college’s social houses, including an examination of the role that they play in campus social life, the houses’ abilities to fill beds and how to better support the houses in their missions.
“Our conversation about the social houses is pretty huge because there seems to be a lack of structure and information being dispersed about how we can help the social houses, because they play such a crucial role on our campus,” Lezama said.
A committee is being formed to conduct the review next semester. Lezama also expressed an interest in discussing the well-being of the staff with regards to recent changes at the college during the next semester.
“I think a lot of the action is going to be J-Term and spring term,” Lezama said.
(12/05/19 11:01am)
About a month ago, I decided to take a medical leave from Middlebury mid-semester to seek treatment for my bulimia nervosa. I was a shell of a person by the time I left campus. After a sophomore year filled with salads and excessive exercise, I spent my junior fall gorging on food and forcing myself to throw it all up. Addicted to the cycle of bingeing and purging, I spent more time in the bathroom than the classroom.
My eating disorder started in eighth grade as an attempt to find control amidst a home environment of instability and parental abuse. I gained power by showing my abuser that I could do something to my body she had no control over. In college, I saw an opportunity to escape from my past; still, I could not escape my eating disorder. Instead, Middlebury’s culture of “wellness” proved to be a further catalyst for my disordered eating habits. My disease festered in an environment that values athleticism, healthy eating and perfectionism. And my restrictive habits were reinforced by other girls crippled by the same disease.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]The counselors at Parton were unequipped to help me combat my disorder.[/pullquote]
I sought help for the first time last January. I had a few meetings with counselors at Parton Health Center. However, with no background in treating eating issues, the counselors at Parton were unequipped to help me combat my disorder. To make matters worse, resources outside the college are slim. As Middlebury’s website warns: “Students should be aware that the closest eating disorder specialists are in Rutland, VT and Burlington, VT (approximately 45 – 60 minutes away).” With few resources close by, and a lack of insurance coverage, I struggled alone for a long time. For a school that claims to be dedicated to students’ health and wellness, the lack of resources for students with eating disorders is not only careless, but negligent. Clearly, on-campus resources are not enough for students; the administration needs to improve them.
My frustration with the school’s deficiency in resources escalated this fall. My off-campus therapist tried to help me assemble a make-shift “outpatient team” to support me throughout the semester. When she contacted Parton Health Center asking that a nurse perform weekly weigh-ins (which basically entails me stepping on a scale and a nurse writing the number down), Parton said that they could not perform the task. I was too much of a liability. Again, they referred me off campus.
For my own health and safety, I could no longer remain at school. When I met with my dean about the prospect of leaving school, he notified me of a policy that requires students who take medical leave to take the entire year off. If I decided to seek treatment, I would not be eligible for re-admission in the spring term. To add to my discouragement, I discovered that a student is only guaranteed eight semesters of financial aid, with the ability to appeal for a ninth semester if needed. Withdrawing from a semester that has been started counts as a semester toward this total, even if credits are not earned. Which means, even if I could reasonably withdraw and return, I would still lose out on a semester of financial aid and would either have to overload on classes to graduate on time, or navigate the school’s appeal process to finish my degree.
I was devastated. Coming from an abusive family, living at home until fall 2020 was not a possibility for me. I contemplated staying on campus, white-knuckling it and risking the chance of getting sicker. But, persuaded by my unique circumstances, my dean spoke with a number of people and gained permission that if I were to withdraw I would be considered for readmission for the spring 2020 semester. My dean made very clear that this would be an exception. Only once this agreement was solidified did I decide to leave Middlebury and seek a residential treatment program (where another Middlebury student soon joined me), hoping all the while that I would be able to return to school after passing through treatment.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]For my own health and safety, I could no longer remain at school.[/pullquote]
After two weeks of treatment, my dean had me submit a “Medical Return Form” that my therapist filled out outlining my readiness to return in the spring. I filled out the form in November with the standard expectation that an updated version of the form would be asked for sometime in January when there was a clearer sense of how I was doing and what the treatment recommendations might be. And yet last week — after merely two and a half weeks of treatment — the Care Team convened at Middlebury and decided my case for me. I would not be eligible to return in the spring. They did not seem to care that I still had three more months before the spring semester started, more than enough time to complete residential treatment along with a few weeks in a step-down partial hospitalization program. Middlebury College did not even given me a chance.
This experience leads me to believe that the administration is too blinded by liability to evaluate what is in a student’s best interest. The message this is sending to those struggling with eating disorders is: if you are struggling, do not tell the administration.
This policy is incredibly unfair to students like me, who lack homes to which they can return. It neglects the needs of students whose mental health issues stem from their upbringing, and those who do not have the resources to live independently. It disproportionately affects low-income students who lose out on the tuition they have already invested. These students are forced to leave campus to pay for treatment programs because Middlebury and the surrounding community do not have adequate resources to support students.
The Middlebury that instituted this policy does not sound like a Middlebury “deeply committed to creating a diverse, welcoming community with full and equal participation for all individuals and groups.” If Middlebury College strives to take into account students’ best interests, the administration should overturn this blanket policy and assess medical leaves and readmission on a case-by-case basis. Moreover, the school should invest resources into supporting students with eating disorders: hiring a nutritionist, employing a specialist, starting support groups.
Those struggling with mental health issues on this campus form a community that is, sadly, expanding. Still, it is a powerful one. I encourage others to put pressure on the school to provide these essential resources. To stand by those struggling and show them they are not alone.
Quinn Boyle is a member of the class of 2021.
(12/05/19 11:00am)
A couple weeks ago, an email popped up in your Middlebury inbox from the Office of the President. In it, President Patton introduced the student handbook’s new Policy on Open Expression (section A.5) and revised Demonstration Regulations (section C.4). As Patton outlined in her email, these new documents replace the old Demonstrations and Protests policy and represent the culmination not only of a host of open meetings, but two policy drafts (one released November 18, 2018 and a second on May 19, 2019).
You might not have read the new policies. We don’t blame you (after clicking on the link, our own impulse was to retreat fairly quickly, cowed by multiple pages of sub-clauses and hyperlinks). Still, we think what’s there — FAQ, resource page and all — is worth your time.
For one thing, we applaud the administration’s willingness to engage with criticism of previous drafts. A lot of students’ and faculty members’ feedback was acknowledged and included in the alterations. For instance, the new policy loosens restrictions prohibiting college staff from participating in protests, acknowledging that staff, too, have the right to open expression.
On that note, we deeply appreciate the new policy’s acknowledgement of the value of protest and expression. Where the old C.4 policy briefly affirmed that members of the Middlebury community “should always be free to support causes by orderly means,” and then turned immediately to the more legal and punitive stipulations of the protest policy, the new Policy on Open Expression devotes multiple paragraphs to the importance and legitimacy of peaceful protest and demonstration. It even recognizes that learning “occurs inside and outside the classroom, often involving public speech and action through which people affirm and enact their values” — allowing, in other words, that student activism and protest are not only important, but vital, educating tools for bringing about change on campus.
Finally, we applaud the new policy for its thoroughness. Sure, there are too many documents and pages for most students to parse through en route to class, or in between lengthy political science readings. Still, we appreciate the edifying impulse behind the FAQ’s lengthy itemization of “non-substantially disruptive acts,” and the list of links on the “Resources on Speech and Inclusion” page. We also appreciate the policy’s clear detailing of consequences for violating policy; now, students can go online and determine the fairly specific repercussions of certain actions. A student who is “warned, asked to leave, refuses and/or must be escorted or arrested by law enforcement officers,” for instance, will “ordinarily” face “probationary status to letter of official college discipline, depending on the severity of the disruption.”
To clarify: We don’t think the new policies are perfect. In fact, as student journalists, we’re sort of dying to give them an edit. Not only is the language difficult to decipher, but at times the policies read almost as though they were intentionally written to be vague or convoluted. We understand that college documents often adopt an elevated tone. But as policies primarily geared at student activists (not to mention, published as part of the student handbook), shouldn’t they be written with a student audience in mind? Unnecessarily elevated or vague language only reinforces the confusion and disconnect between students and the administration which often surrounds Middlebury protests in the first place. To that end, we’d also scrap some of the more jargon-y additions — phrases like “robust public sphere” more closely resemble the stuff of admissions pamphlets than they do concise, clear protest policy. Most student readers are less interested in sweeping statements of purpose and more interested in concrete details about how to stand up for what they believe in without incurring major consequences.
And then there’s the question of the policy itself. Taken together, the revised C.4 and new A.5 bring with them a couple of significant changes for Middlebury students activists. Now, student protesters are required not only to submit an “Event Scheduling Request,” but to sit down with the event management office and Public Safety to review any relevant policies or issues. While clauses like these don’t differ too much from the stuff of other colleges’ policies (Amherst, for instance, likewise makes students register with either college police, student activities or events), only time will tell how the new rules will play out in Middlebury’s own activist culture. In the event that these policies aren’t effective on Middlebury’s campus, we hope the administration remains responsive to feedback going forward.
To that end, we encourage students not only to continue to voice their opinions on the policies in question, but to hold the college accountable to the promises and values included in them. The FAQ states, for instance, that Middlebury is committed to an “everyday ethic of inclusion” and seeks to “make Middlebury a place where everyone’s voice can be heard.” That’s great, but begs the question — how? Statements like those would benefit from the same kind of specificity that was used to distinguish “substantive” from “non-substantive” disruption, or that which was used to outline potential consequences. Just as a multitude of conversations went into the creation of the new policies, so too should many more conversations arise from them.
In the wake of these new policies, Director of Public Safety Lisa Burchard is offering an inaugural J-Term workshop about “Activism on Campus.” Like the new policies, we think this workshop constitutes a step in the right direction. Again, we appreciate Public Safety’s willingness to engage with the subject. That said, the course description reads as slightly prescriptive; we’re not so sure Public Safety knows what constitutes “effective” protesting any better than we do. We hope the workshop looks more like a two-sided, mutually-instructive conversation, rather than a top-down lecture or course. We also hope that, if enough students show interest, Public Safety expands the course (or makes the information available elsewhere).
At the end of the day, students and administrators’ definitions of what constitutes “effective”— even acceptable — protesting will likely always differ. In the wake of the Murray and Legutko incidents, however, it’s especially important that the administration make their guidelines and policies as clear and accessible as possible. It’s equally important that students do their homework to understand the risks they’re taking and the consequences they’re incurring.
It’s also worth noting that not all effective student protesting takes place within guidelines. The recent Harvard-Yale football game protest reaffirmed that there are causes, like climate change, whose importance outstrips any kind of administration-imposed consequence. Often, breaking rules or coming up with creative methods of protest represent powerful statements in themselves. Still, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with the rules (not to mention, ensuring that those rules seem fair). That way, you can stand confidently behind whatever statement you’re making, and how.
(12/05/19 10:58am)
“There’s always this whirlwind of things that come to my mind when people ask ‘where are you from?’,” said Elsa Korpi ’22. Korpi lived in Finland until she was six, moved to Berlin for four years of school and then moved to Brussels and Helsinki before attending United World College Hong Kong and eventually coming to Middlebury.
“It’s hard to decide on a place to say where I’m from,” said Jackson Evans ’22, who was born in the US and lived in Melbourne, Australia for the last seven years of his life.
I also find the question “Where are you from?” a difficult one. I was born in Shanghai, China, moved to Hong Kong for high school and then New Zealand after I graduated. Now, I go to school in the States. Any answer that only references a single country feels like a lie. Not only that, but it is a lie constantly in danger of exposure by my ignorance of the good restaurants in Shanghai, my broken Cantonese or, if I say I’m from New Zealand, my lack of a kiwi accent. As a result, I have learned to spill my entire life story in a five-second-long, well-rehearsed answer to avoid questions such as “Who’s your favorite All-Blacks?” or an enthusiastic, fluent reply in Cantonese that leaves me with nothing but an awkward laugh.
I have always felt like an imposter, stuck between these nationalities and the stereotypes they carry. At Middlebury, I found many other “country-hoppers”. It’s comforting, but it also reveals a growing trend of global migration in the international community that needs recognition and support. “Breaking down those pre-formed ideas of you needing to be from one place is important,” Evans said to me. Especially at Middlebury, where many international students have prior study abroad backgrounds, national stereotypes are becoming increasingly inaccurate and misleading. Rejecting that requires effort from both the international and domestic students.
As a first step, it’s important for international migrants to be okay with developing a sense of identity without a sense of nationality. “I have roots in Chinese culture and a Chinese passport, but I don’t perceive myself as being loyal to the Party, ” said Katelyn Mei ’22, who was born in China and went to a public high school in Brooklyn, NY. “I am just a human being with mixed cultural backgrounds. I don’t think I belong to any specific nation.”
For a long time, I struggled with this lack of belonging. I have given a single response to the question: “Where are you from?” and tried to play along with the stereotypes of that specific nationality. I have also tried to force a sense of belonging by watching rugby or faking an accent until I realized after many failed attempts, that roots can’t grow out of anywhere and identity can exist without belonging to any particular region. “We are the weird foreigners in our own country,” said Korpi. At some point, I stopped “home searching” and started valuing these pieces of places that I carry with me. In the face of globalization, we may be increasingly obliged to shed the comfort of having roots in any one place. Still, this is not necessarily a bad thing: it’s only when you stop trying to fit into one box that you can truly embrace the fullness of international migrant identity.
For me, refusing to play along with stereotypes myself was a first step that allowed me to ask others to reject the stereotypes or simplifications they imposed on me. I realized I must learn to appreciate my own identity first before I can really show others how to understand or respect it.
Personally, I’m not offended by people’s initial assumptions based on my nationality — it’s hard to avoid stereotypes when they are often the grounds with which we use to assess others. However, it gets frustrating when your repeated attempts to correct such biases are ignored. “People wanted to box me into something that I know is untrue,” said Korpi.
Being ethnically Chinese, I very often feel the weight of tags like “brainwashed”, “nationalist” and “locked behind the firewall”, even after frequently emphasizing that, by being at Middlebury, we have the same access to the news sources like The New York Times. “There are certain political meanings to the Chinese identity that no one can avoid. I don’t think to be Chinese means that I am a Communist or I endorse everything my government does,” said Kexin Tang ‘22.5, a Chinese student who grew up in Chengdu, China and went to high school in UWC New Mexico. “I feel like most of the time people don’t listen. They come with preconceptions of what China is like and they only seek to confirm them.” Very often, I feel that my opinions are valued more when I identify myself as kiwi as opposed to Chinese– that’s a problem. We should learn to separate individual values with their nation’s political reputation. The fact that we are at Middlebury College is proof of our intellectual capacities and our ideas should be valued based on their content, not our nationality.
It’s not an easy transition to make but it’s an important and necessary one in order to accommodate the changing nature of internationality on campus. Middlebury has always campaigned for diversity and global education. It’s time for us to realize that diversity should be more than a statistic on the school’s admission’s website, but a mindset and an environment that is open to challenging stereotypes and giving students equal opportunities of expression regardless of nationality.
Editor’s note: Elsa Korpi, quoted in this piece, is an Arts & Academics editor for The Campus.
Florence Wu is a member of the class of 2022.
(12/05/19 10:53am)
I’m sobbing, furiously wiping tears from my eyes with the back of my sleeve as I push myself on a KneeRover scooter in a mad dash to make my orthopedics appointment. I slip and slide, desperately trying to maintain traction on the sidewalk covered in a thin layer of icy slush, clutching my mini handbrake fully against the handlebars as the scooter rockets down the College Street hill towards town. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the bus pull out of the stop. I’ve missed my appointment.
Thirty minutes before, I had called PubSafe, confident that they could give me a ride to my appointment just as they’d taken me to the hospital after my initial injury. They could not.
Since I hurt my foot three days before, navigating Middlebury had become a nightmare. The daily frustrations started at night, when unsteady and scared of falling on my crutches, I crawled on all fours up the two flights of stairs to my room on the third floor of Allen Hall, trying to ignore the pain of the built-up bruises on my knees. Leaving my building the next morning, I faced one of the many doors on campus with a decorative “Caution Automatic Door” sticker and a handicapped button that didn’t function.
That day, getting around campus had been particularly difficult. The thick flakes of falling snow and accumulation of slippery slush made the campus practically impossible to navigate. Trying to reach my classes in Warner and the Johnson Memorial Building class in Warner’s hemi, I desperately gripped the icy railing as I hoped up the stairs, swallowing my fear of falling down the rock slabs.
Luckily, everyone around me had bent over backwards to help me in those three days and beyond. A classmate who I barely knew refused any sort of payment and let me borrow his KneeRover for free. People I’d never spoken to before carried the scooter up and down stairs at my request, hurried past me to open doors and asked if I needed help as I maneuvered around the dining halls. I am so grateful for the incredible support of the Middlebury community.
However, a system that relies on luck, the goodwill of others, social connections and the ability and comfort level to constantly advocate for oneself is not a functioning system. Middlebury is not a functioning institution for people with temporary disabilities. It is certainly not for those with permanent mobility constraints.
Slowly renovating Munroe, then Warner, then every single non-ADA-compliant building on campus (and trust me, there are many) is not enough. Middlebury needs an institutional support system that is actively advertised so that when students injure themselves, they know who they can reach out to and how they can get help. For the buildings that clearly fail ADA requirements, the college needs to create ways to make them more accessible while they wait for the opportunity to redo them. Where they do have structures meant to increase accessibility such as automatic doors, they should at least work.
The kindness and generosity of the Middlebury community is wonderful, but it’s a band-aid solution for a problem that requires institutional change.
Sophia McDermott-Hughes is a member of the class of 2023.
(11/21/19 11:00am)
This past year has brought significant changes to the higher education landscape in Vermont, as Green Mountain College, College of St. Joseph and Southern Vermont College closed due to declining enrollment and financial issues. One more college has just announced changes to its operations — Marlboro College plans on giving its endowment and real estate assets to Emerson College in Boston.
This merger has been in the works since early 2019, according to a statement from Marlboro College. “The Board’s willingness to address all of these challenges now has meant that Marlboro, unlike our neighbors, has the resources to forge a partnership that ensures the continuation of our mission,” wrote Marlboro College President Kevin Quigley. Earlier in the fall, Marlboro investigated the possibility of merging with the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, but the deal fell through. In a campus memo, Laura Skandera Trombley, Bridgeport’s president, said that Marlboro’s “challenges are too great for us to proceed,” according to Inside Higher Ed.
The acquisition would mean that Marlboro’s 146 students would be admitted to Emerson, and its 24 tenured or tenure-track faculty members would be invited to teach at the school in Boston, which has 3,800 undergraduates and 633 graduate students.
“The Institute [for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies] will be renamed for Marlboro and will welcome existing Marlboro students and tenure-line and tenured Marlboro faculty who wish to continue their work at Emerson,” Quigley wrote to the Berkley Beacon, the student newspaper at Emerson.
In addition, Marlboro’s endowment and real estate holdings will be given to Emerson, valued at $30 million and $10 million respectively. For a school of its size, the endowment is considered to be healthy and the college will close virtually debt-free at the end of the 2019–2020 academic year.
“It is not a closure,” Quigley said in an interview with VTDigger earlier in the month, immediately following the announcement. “It is a transition of the Marlboro program to Emerson College.”
The transition of Marlboro College will leave an impact on the surrounding area, particularly on staff, due to its location in a town of around 1,000 in southern Vermont.
“Marlboro is a rural community,” Tim Patterson told The Campus. Patterson formerly served as the Dean of Admission and Financial Aid at Sterling College, an institution with 125 students in Craftsbury Common, Vermont.
“There are not a lot of jobs. It will be very challenging to find comparable employment unless some other organization comes in to fill this void.”
The fate of the Marlboro Music Festival, a retreat and concert series held every year on campus, remains unknown. Last year, administrators at the college signed a 99-year lease with the festival.
“It does leave staff and others — students and faculty who aren’t in a position to move to Boston — out in the cold,” Patterson said. “I hope that something will grow in the town of Marlboro.” Patterson speculated that students close to graduating would be willing to transfer to Boston, but those starting their college careers at Marlboro would be more reluctant to do so. “To go from a very rural hilltop campus in Vermont to Boston Common is a big cultural shift,” he said.
Anson Tebbetts, Vermont’s Secretary of Agriculture, Food, and Markets, graduated from Emerson in 1987 and pointed to the college’s location in the heart of Boston Common, close to the financial and theater districts. “My experience with Emerson is it’s one of the friendliest places on earth,” he said. “They’re always creative and always adapting to what they need to adapt.” Emerson’s academic offerings include strong journalism and creative writing programs, which led Tebbetts to a career in media and his role as the news director for WCAX in Burlington.
While this acquisition seems well on its way, some point to a potential turnaround of its closure by the Marlboro community, such as in the case of Hampshire College in Massachusetts with a fundraising campaign spearheaded by school leaders and alumni. Will Wootton, former president of Sterling and a 1972 graduate of Marlboro, encouraged the Marlboro community to consider revitalizing the school in a Brattleboro Reformer op-ed. “Of even greater importance, big current donors, and the families of those who have made restricted gifts to Marlboro’s endowment, to its scholarships, its buildings, libraries, and labs must willing to step up and say, ‘No, that’s not what this gift was intended for. It was for Marlboro College,’” he wrote.
“There is the possibility that Marlboro alumni and groups who care about the school might rally and go through a process of establishing control of governance and changing course, but the more time passes, the less likely that becomes,” Patterson said.
The merger of Marlboro and Emerson is only one of a few higher education changes in Vermont in the past few weeks, with Southern Vermont College in Bennington signing a $4.9 million purchase agreement with New Hampshire-based Oliverian School. According to its website, Oliverian is a “hybrid school that combines the best of traditional, alternative, and therapeutic education.” Enrolling 50 students in grades 9–12, the school hopes to use the 371 acres that formerly comprised Southern Vermont College to expand its middle school offerings and add a college transition program. “We are thrilled by this opportunity to continue the legacy of education and community that SVC brought to this remarkable campus,” Oliverian’s CEO Will Laughlin said to the Bennington Banner. “We feel that our students and faculty would thrive here.” Before the sale is complete, there is a three-month due diligence period to investigate the feasibility of the school moving to Bennington.
For Vermont’s 18 colleges and universities, a decline in high school graduates and a rise in tuition rates have led to hardships, as some small schools have struggled to survive. “There is a real need for colleges to move swiftly to ensure their programs are relevant and attractive in today’s higher education marketplace,” Patterson said. “Just sheltering in place isn’t a viable strategy.”
Colleges continue to attract students with affordability. Last week, University of Vermont (UVM) President Suresh Garimella announced a tuition freeze for the 2020–21 school year, the first move of its kind in 40 years. Tuition costs are currently $41,280 for out-of-state students and $16,392 for in-state students and will remain the same next year. “Our most sacred obligation is to ensure the success of our students and that starts with access and affordability,” Garimella said, as reported in the Vermont Cynic, UVM’s student newspaper.
“The struggle is the population decline, and we’re trying to attract young people to come to school here and stay here,” Tebbetts said. “Vermonters can get a wonderful education in-state.”
In the near future, Patterson sees more innovative programming in Vermont’s higher education landscape. “I think we’ll see colleges partnering more with dual-enrollment programming in high schools, as well as other ways of building pathways between secondary and post-secondary education and between two- and four-year colleges,” he said.
The Campus will be publishing more on the aftermath of these recent college closures and changes to higher education landscape in future editions.
(11/21/19 11:00am)
Roughly 25 students participated in a peaceful protest on Thurs., Nov. 14, during a lecture by Ishmael Khaldi, Israel’s first Bedouin diplomat and a former soldier in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Khaldi spoke at the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs about his experience facilitating conversations between Bedouins and Jews in Israel.
The event was co-sponsored by the Modern Hebrew Department, the Middle Eastern Studies Department and the Israel Institute, a D.C.-based non-advocacy organization that “enhances knowledge about modern Israel through the expansion of accessible, innovative learning opportunities, on and beyond campus,” according to its website.
Tamar Mayer, who invited Khaldi in her capacity as the director of the Modern Hebrew Department, felt he had a valuable perspective about the minority experience in Israel.
“Inviting an Israeli Bedouin Palestinian to tell his story and to provide an analysis of what it means to be a minority in Israel would be of interest to our community, especially since such perspective has not yet been heard in Middlebury,” she said.
Khaldi has experience speaking about this topic — he started a project called Hike and Learn with Bedouins in the Galilee to start conversations between Bedouins and Jews, and he is the author of “A Shepherd’s Journey: the story of Israel’s first Bedouin diplomat.”
However, protest organizers wanted to use Khaldi’s lecture as a platform to bring attention to human rights violations in Palestine. Organizers felt that, as a former diplomat, Khaldi represented the Israeli government and spread misinformation about Palestine on its behalf.
“Khaldi fails to acknowledge the severe human rights violations of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israel,” said Kamli Faour ’21, one of the organizers. “Most recently, his retweets have demonized the Palestinians who are imprisoned within the Gaza Strip without basic human necessities, instead, glorifying the IDF which has brutalized the Palestinian people for decades.”
Another organizer, who asked to remain anonymous due to extenuating family circumstances, said they believed that the timing of the invitation of Khaldi was insensitive. Khaldi has served in the IDF, which has engaged in heightened conflict in Gaza recently, including attacks that killed 34 Palestinians in Gaza last week.
Before the protest started, students gathered in the basement of Forest Hall to prepare. Organizers Faour, Emily Romero Rodriguez ’20 and the anonymous student organizer first briefly discussed the purpose of the protest and shared with the group what they considered problematic about Khaldi. They distributed black and white posters that read “End the Occupation,” “Apartheid is illegal,” “Stop bombing Gaza” and “Free Palestine.”
Participants were encouraged to take posters that resonated with them. The majority of protestors taped on their backs and under their jackets images of Handala, a figure created by Palestinian political cartoonist Naji Al-Ali as a symbol of Palestinian resistance.
As posters and images of Handala were being distributed, the leaders also shared the college’s protest policy with the group. They told participants that SGA President Varsha Vijayakumar ’20 had given them guidelines to ensure the protest did not violate policy. They repeatedly stated that it would be a silent protest, to best follow the policy that prohibits “noise or action that disrupts the ability of the audience to hear” an event in section C. 4.(2).
The organizers also said the group consciously chose the modality of the silent protest to symbolize the voicelessness of the Palestinian people.
Participants left Forest Hall and split up at Franklin Environmental Center before proceeding to Rohatyn Center in separate groups and entering the lecture hall. After the welcome address at the lecture had concluded, three protestors stood up with a Palestinian flag, while other participants subsequently stood with different signs. Organizers hoped the diversity of the group would show that it was not only Palestinian students demonstrating.
After about a minute, the group followed Faour’s signal to leave the space and gathered outside the center.
After the protestors left, about 25 people remained for the lecture. Khaldi did not engage with the protestors, and he kept talking during and after their demonstration.
When asked what she thought of the protest, Mayer said that “Khaldi’s critique of Israeli policies regarding land appropriation, unequal rights, etc. was informative and important and I am saddened that those who demonstrated did not stay to listen.”
Dan Golstein, a junior and exchange student from the United Kingdom, shared a similar sentiment.
“I have seen walkouts happen before in this context,” he said. “They’re completely antithetical to progress. People are less informed because they haven’t listened to the other side, which is the fundamental element to finding a solution. This speaker was someone who represents a significant Arab minority in Israel, and so has valuable insight to share on the potential for cooperation.”
Despite critiques, the protestors deemed the protest successful.
“A number of us have felt anxious about voicing our pro-Palestinian voices on this campus for some time,” Faour said.“The reality is that we receive a lot of resistance from those who do not recognize that Palestine has been brutally occupied for 70 years. It is time for us to reclaim our space.”
She added, “Seeing so many students standing with Palestine was remarkable and beautiful. It is was time that we, students on Middlebury’s campus, publicly acknowledge and resist the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and recognize it for the violent violation of Palestinian human rights and dignity that it is.”
Marisa Edmondson ’20, who participated in the protest, has visited Ramallah, Palestine before, which she said has helped her understand the weight of the issue.
“You can not turn a blind eye to injustices because then you’re being complicit,” she said.
This is not the first time that Khaldi has faced various kinds of resistance on college campuses in the United States. In 2011, at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, a group of approximately 60 students also staged a silent walkout. In the same year, during Khaldi’s visit to Kent State University, former Associate Professor of History Julio Pino shouted “death to Israel!” at Khaldi’s lecture.
Khaldi has also spoken at Amherst College and Tufts University, in public and private settings, respectively, without incident.
After the walkout, Romero Rordriguez expressed a desire to stage a successful protest at Middlebury to show that protest can be a positive contribution to public discourse.
“A successfully-executed peaceful demonstration could make protest a less taboo topic at Middlebury,” she said.
Romero Rodriguez also spoke about wanting to be an ally in support of Palestinian rights.
“I came to Middlebury to become a more global citizen, to understand the nuances of things and to be able to connect with people from different backgrounds,” she said.
The anonymous organizer felt the protest was a positive example of solidarity across different groups for a common cause.
“What’s so beautiful about this protest is that those who identify [as] Americans, Arabs, Jews, Christians and Muslims all came together,” they said. “The Israeli-Palestine conflict has always been modeled as ‘Muslims vs. Jews’ or ‘Arabs vs. Israelis,’ but regardless of our different backgrounds, we all stood with human rights.”
Correction: A former version of this article reported that the Jewish Studies Department also co-sponsored the talk. This information was incorrect, and has since been amended.
