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(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.
(11/14/19 6:03pm)
Hidden among the grey folds of the Freeman International Center — a bunker-like building known for its brutalist exterior — the YouPower spinning studio might just be a quintessential “diamond in the rough.” The blacked-out 1500 square foot studio has everything you’d expect in a fully-functioning “soul-cycle”-esque pain-cave: riders in bright lycra uniforms, massive speakers, racks of spin shoes, colored dumbbells, folded towels, floor candles, and, in the middle of it all, 22 well-oiled spin bikes.
“Once you get to the studio, the instructors do everything,” said YouPower co-president Anna Hubbell ’19.5, who teaches classes on Monday afternoons and Tuesday mornings. YouPower offers over 19 cumulative hours of instructor-led spin sessions every week, an activity that promises enough EDM and sweat to last you the entire semester.
However, the YouPower of today is unlike what is used to be. The idea to turn the Freeman International Center space into a spin studio was conjured after the organization’s original concept came to fruition — a project to increase energy awareness on campus. In 2012, a group of Middlebury students received money to create a spin-bike system that stored energy in a generator. At the time, YouPower leadership led events like Watt-a-thons, where participants tried to produce as much power as possible in a session. After a few years, however, this initial experiment died out, as the power-generation component of the studio became less of a focus. YouPower’s advisor, Franklin Dean-Farrar, cited that the spin bikes were able to generate an underwhelming amount of energy, which led to disinterest. The studio then became, in essence, a satellite workout room where students could spin when they wanted to without trekking to the athletic center.
“The YouPower room really provided, and still provides, a workout space across campus,” said Dean-Farrar, who has been involved with the organization since its founding. Both Dean-Farrar and Hubbell stressed the importance of the studio being across campus from the athletic center.
“The founders thought it would be a good idea to keep it on the other side of campus as an alternate space for people who didn’t feel comfortable going to the gym or for people who live far away from the athletic center,” Hubbell said.
YouPower was still undergoing drastic changes when Hubbell and co-president Andi Evans ’19.5 became involved with the organization. It was moving towards a more organized form of spinning, one that involved instructor-led classes, loud music, and a brand that focused on personal development and well-being. This is the YouPower of today.
INCREASING POPULARITY
In the last few years, YouPower ridership has increased significantly.
“YouPower has become more of a household name across campus,” Hubbell said, citing the increased number of riders and instructors involved since she came to Middlebury College. “It’s been really exciting seeing a ton more students walk in through the day, and seeing full and waitlisted classes. YouPower is definitely on peoples’ minds as a way to work out during the day.”
Isla Bowery ’20.5 said that she started spinning her sophomore year, and since has regularly attended YouPower sessions multiple times a week.
“There was a learning curve [at first],” she said, “but you just have to jump into the deep end.” Bowery said that even though she felt a little intimidated at first, she enjoys the fact that in the studio you can still concentrate on your own performance. “Everyone is so focused on their [own riding]; you’re not in a spotlight like you are in the weight rack in the gym,” she said.
One reason for YouPower’s increased success as a spin studio has been the recent efforts by leadership to decrease financial barriers to entry. Recently, YouPower’s $17,000 annual budget has been used to buy new spin bikes and buy equipment for participants to use. In the summer of 2018, the studio received a donation of around 40 pairs of spinning shoes.
“As presidents, Andi and I have tried to make YouPower accessible for everyone on this campus,” Hubbell said. To further increase accessibility, YouPower has tried to get their name out into the campus community as a fully-equipped spin-studio free of charge. The group started going to club fairs in the fall of 2018, which Hubbell said has been a successful advertising strategy.
“When I started it wasn’t uncommon for less popular time-slots to only have three riders in the class,” she said, citing early morning and later afternoon classes as the most popular. “Now we are seeing those [unpopular] timeslots frequently fill up.”
Another reason for the popularity can be attributed to the collective and peer-to-peer nature of the activity, something the Dean-Farrar has witnessed as Assistant Director of Athletics for Operations and Events.
“What people are looking for is a lead-bike in the front of the room, loud music and an actual spin instructor leading the class,” Dean-Farrar said. He said there is something about group-led exercises, like YouPower, Middlebury Crossfit and yoga classes, that are popular at the college. “[Andi and Anna] have done a tremendous job with the organization,” Dean-Farrar said.
SPINNING CULTURE
YouPower has been acknowledged by some students for being intimidating, due to the fairly homogenous demographic that attends spin classes. Bowery said that she has seen more men attend classes recently, in an activity that is dominated by women. In October, the Local Noodle ran a satirical article that jokingly described YouPower as an organization that idolizes “super-hot blondes.” The Local Noodle declined to comment when asked about the motivation behind the article.
Hubbell stressed that inclusivity is one of YouPower’s top priorities.
“I want YouPower to continue to be a comfortable and welcomed space on campus, and this is something that can be constantly developed and thought about,” she said.
This year, nine instructors, or about 40% of YouPower’s leadership, will graduate, leaving a large opening for new initiative. Hubbell and Evans hope that new instructors will get involved and continue the club’s trajectory of the past several years.
“I want [YouPower] to continue to foster an environment where people feel welcome and supported and comfortable trying something new,” Hubbell said.
If there is anyone that would convince you to go to a YouPower spin session, ask Hubbell. As soon as she arrived to campus in the February of 2016, Hubbell began attending spin sessions in hopes of picking up a new athletic endeavor in lieu of tennis and field hockey, two sports she played in high school.
“After I went to a bunch of YouPower classes, I quickly realized I wanted to be an instructor,” she said. “I feel like I have a group of people to rally behind in place of being on a sports team.” As for getting new students to attend classes, she is really enthusiastic about spin. “Spin is the best workout you can ask for on a college campus,” she said. “All you have to do is get yourself there.” Likewise, Bowery praised spinning as a form of escapism. “Middlebury can be such a pressure cooker,” she said. “YouPower is very efficient and a very effective form of exercise.”
To sign up for spin classes, visit mindbody.io.
(11/14/19 11:02am)
“Hey guys, my name is Destini.”
“And my name is Megan.”
“And we are two black girls, at a predominantly white institution; trying to survive, at a predominantly white institution; and here’s the latest tea, at a predominantly white institution.”
This is how each and every episode of BLCKGRLMGC, a podcast started by Destini Armstrong ’21 and Megan Job ’21, begins. The podcast has a light-hearted tone, often filled with laughter and relatable commentary from Job and Armstrong. Alienation, inclusivity and sense of belonging — issues common to women of color at a predominately white institution (PWI) like Middlebury — are among the important themes of the podcast.
The two hosts started the podcast two years ago, during the spring of their first year on campus. Both hail from New York City, making the transition to rural, predominantly white Middlebury a uniquely challenging experience.
The podcast originated from an idea that Job’s friend had, and eventually the two decided to use podcasts as a platform to tell their stories at the college. Job believed that the value of the podcast lies in using storytelling to show the potential challenges that students of color face at a PWI. “What does it come down to? I want to talk about those tiny things that people don’t mention, such as how intimidating a group project may be and how it makes you feel so small.” Armstrong shared a similar sentiment in an interview. “I think it’s nice to know that we can put something out there that can help other people because we have heard that a lot of people are relating, that is all we want to do.” Job was glad that people find their podcast helpful. “Giving comfort to other women of color in similar situations is such a good feeling,” she said.
Armstrong and Job pick their topic through a variety of means. Sometimes topics arise from the hosts’ personal experiences. “Megan might come back and be like, ‘oh my god this made me so frustrated [and] I can’t accept it’,” Armstrong said. Other times they hope to use the platform to address underclassmen specifically because they may need more advice and help to feel more at ease on campus.
The majority of the podcast’s audience is Middlebury students, including people who are abroad. Other listeners include Armstrong and Job’s friends from home. Armstrong initially presumed that there are more people of color listening because the themes seemed more immediately relevant. She added, however, that “a lot of white students come up to us and they’re like ‘we listened to your podcast, it’s such an eye-opener.’” Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric Hector Vila sometimes suggests topics, and many others also pitch topics to Armstrong and Job directly.
They are open to anything as long as the topic is related to the general theme of their podcast. Some of the interesting topics the podcast has covered include interracial dating culture on campus (“Episode 5 — White is Right?”), how professors teaching to the majority of classroom leaves students from underprivileged high schools at disadvantages (“Episode 25 — Mind The Gap”) and struggles with natural hair (“Episode 12 — Hair’s the Latest Scoop”).
Their hard work has garnered much recognition. After two years, they have produced 38 episodes, and on Apple Podcast, 71 ratings give them 5/5. Further, in April 2019, Armstrong and Job were awarded The Angels Award, which honors a sophomore woman of color who demonstrates leadership, scholarship and activism. To both, it was a recognition of their excellent podcast project. “It was exciting and humbling to know that people actually listen. We went in not knowing who is going to listen but people can actually relate which we found awesome,” Armstrong said.
The production process of the podcast has changed very little over the course of the past two years. When they first started, Armstrong and Job recorded every episode with GarageBand in either person’s room and took turns editing the recording. Armstrong is currently in a class about podcasting and is learning about new methods and techniques that could improve the quality of the podcast. “But it’s always been just talking into a laptop or mic and see what comes out of that,” she said.
[pullquote speaker="Destini Armstrong" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]When you first come to college you have this idea of what college is. You are very much hopeful that you’re going to be part of that imagination. And then it became clear that we weren’t. It was very hard to transition out of that mentality.[/pullquote]
The breadth and depth of the podcast has developed. Topics grew to cover more diverse narratives by including the voices of individuals of different races and genders, and the tone, though still passionate, comes with more sangfroid, and demonstrates their composure under circumstances and topics that can often be emotionally trying. “When you first come to college you have this idea of what college is. You are very much hopeful that you’re going to be part of that imagination. And then it became clear that we weren’t. It was very hard to transition out of that mentality,” Armstrong said when asked about the reason behind this shift in tone.
Indeed, underneath the surface of jokes and anecdotes in the first few episodes there was embedded frustration. “When we first made it in spring of freshman year, we hated it here,” Armstrong continued, “But as semesters go on, you begin to adapt to the environment and you become more accepting. As I got older, I’m handling a lot better. Acceptance gets stronger.”
As the podcast went on, the hosts took a step back to look at the bigger picture, and invited their friends to speak about their experiences. While the show is still centered on the experiences of women of color, it expanded its discussion of the themes encountered in these experiences by including a wider variety of perspectives. Specifically, they invited their white friend who transferred from Dartmouth to Columbia because of the unbearable frat culture at the former to tell her story, which raised the important question of the true meaning of fitting in (“Episode 30 — It’s Not Just Us”). “Once you realize that this is just a foundation you have and you can do so much more [beyond college], you start to really develop,” Armstrong said.
This year, as Job is studying abroad in Brazil, the traditional dynamic of the production is challenged for the first time. When asked about the future of the podcast, Armstrong and Job seemed unsure. “I think it’s definitely one step at a time,” Armstrong said, “like Meg being abroad was definitely a transition, and I will be studying abroad in China in the spring, so we don’t really know the bigger picture yet.” However, they are open to leaving the podcast to the college as a platform for people to utilize and develop upon.
“I definitely have anxiety so I can’t look at the future like that,” Job said. “But I feel like Destini and I are becoming older and we are getting more and more preoccupied with our careers. I definitely would love to keep it going, because it’s a journey that is very important.”
(11/14/19 11:02am)
Over three-quarters of Middlebury faculty come to the college with a partner. But inadequate college policies for employing these partners and integrating them into the Middlebury community have led some faculty to consider leaving, according to a survey conducted by the Faculty Council Working Group on Partner Inclusion in March.
In response to the group’s report summarizing the survey results, President Laurie Patton announced at the Nov. 8 faculty meeting the creation of a new half-time five-year position that will be specially dedicated to improving partner inclusion policy and practice.
Partner inclusion, while mainly focusing on employment, also encompasses concerns about helping partners feel part of the Middlebury community.
“Partners are not, contrary to popular belief, looking for a handout in the form of a tailored job,” wrote Sarah Laursen, assistant professor of history of art and architecture, in a 2018 internal report to the Faculty Council. “They are simply people who moved here with their partners in hopes of a better life but are continually faced with disappointment and rejection in the job search.”
Of the faculty who responded to the March survey, 90% said that an institutional partner hiring policy was important to them, and 76% came to Middlebury with a partner. Of these, there was a roughly evenly split between academic and non-academic partners.
The college’s current partner employment policy states, “Middlebury will strive to attract and retain the best faculty and staff. While doing so, Middlebury will also strive to increase the number of women and persons of color on its administration, faculty and staff.”
However, due to the lack of a robust partner inclusion policy, 18% of faculty reported that they are actively looking for other employment, according to the report. When accounting for faculty members passively searching for employment or those who have searched in the past, hypothesized the report, this figure is likely much higher.
“We moved from far away, into an isolated place with no network — a common story here — and so job hunting was difficult without having any college support,” wrote one faculty member in response to the survey. “[It] was a big letdown. The longer I’m here, the more I feel like my experience is not unique, and the college really doesn’t care about this at all.”
Issues of partner inclusion disproportionately affect female faculty, who, according to the 2008 Report of the Task Force on the Status of Women at Middlebury College, face uneven challenges in this area due to societal norms.
The report found that gender discrepancies among associate professors were due in large part to Middlebury’s partner inclusion policy, since female faculty were more likely to leave before achieving tenure if they did not think their spouses would be employed by the college or in the area. Between the fall of 1997 and the spring of 2008, 60% of departing female faculty cited spousal employment as the main reason for their resignation, while the same was true of only 10% of departing male faculty, according to the report.
Under the current policy, the dean of faculty informs new hires that they can contact Human Resources for assistance in partner employment. However, 92% of the respondents to the survey said that they did not receive any support, though many tried.
Another respondent to the survey expressed dissatisfaction with the way their partner was treated when he applied for a job at the college after the respondent was hired.
“When my partner did apply for a position that he was well-qualified for, he was treated poorly by the HR process — long delays between app submission and first interview, and then before the second interview, with little communication in between, and long lag before final rejection,” the faculty member wrote. “We are not alone. A colleague in my area had a similar experience with her partner. Neither partner has any interest in reapplying to Midd.”
The lack of partner inclusion affects faculty morale, creates problems in drawing talented prospective candidates and takes a psychological toll on both faculty and their partners, according to Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Merrill “Mez” Baker-Medard. Baker-Medard is a member of the Faculty Council Working Group on Partner Inclusion.
“Every day, we faculty come home from our dream jobs to our demoralized partners, and we feel miserable that our success comes at the cost of their self-worth,” wrote Laursen in the 2018 internal report to the Faculty Council. “The constant job search and the stress of trying to survive on less income … puts a strain on our relationships, and we come to resent the College too.”
The lack of prospects for faculty partners causes heightened turnover of faculty and can also deter new professors from taking jobs at the college. This creates extra work for hiring committee members and causes financial waste within the hiring process, according to Kristina Sargent, another member of the Faculty Council Working Group on Partner Inclusion and Assistant Professor of Economics.
“I find it ironic that the school is so obsessively cutting budgets while they spend who knows how much on recruiting to replace faculty who would have stayed if their partners could have found even marginally satisfactory employment nearby,” responded one faculty member to the working group’s survey.
According to Baker-Medard, faculty have raised concerns about the college’s faculty partner inclusion policy for the last 25 years with little to no change resulting.
“While my experience was over a decade ago, it looks like little has changed,” responded one faculty member to the survey.
“The people we are hiring as professors today are not the same as 30 years ago when the model was originally set up,” said Sargent. “The world is just different, so the policy should be different.”
Following the group’s report and its presentation to the faculty in September, Patton negotiated with a donor to secure funding for the new five-year position. The Faculty Council Working Group on Partner Inclusion hopes to work with administration and faculty to design the job description for this role and finalize the hire by the end of this academic year, according to Baker-Medard.
“The person who had this task before, it was one of many, many other things they did, so having a dedicated person is a big win,” Baker-Medard said. “I think it gives us a little bit of momentum. Maybe that person can also help us think about the no or low cost things we can do as well as the things we want to invest in financially in the future based on our recommendations.”
The creation of this new position addressed just one of eight recommendations from the working group’s report. These recommendations included having Human Resources proactively reach out to new hires about partner inclusion, offering courtesy interviews and introductions to partners to help them find local employment outside of the college, creating a formal process for two-year visiting appointments for partners, and creating better channels into staff positions for non-academic partners.
According to the report, “Partner employment is not just an opportunity for partners, it is also an opportunity for the College. Faculty partners are often highly skilled and readily employable.”
The working group also recommended that Middlebury put more effort into including partners in college activities and events, “revise existing partner employment guidelines into a clear and transparent partner inclusion policy” and continue allowing the Faculty Council Working Group on Partner Inclusion to address these issues.
“There’s definitely interest and a willingness and openness around these other requests, but nothing’s been concretized yet,” Baker-Medard said. “I think the Dean of Faculty as well as other administrators, including President Patton, are aware of the issue and thinking about it in new ways due to this report.”
(11/14/19 11:01am)
“The devil had my soul, I can’t lie,” proclaims Kanye West in “On God,” the fifth track of his long-awaited ninth studio LP, “Jesus Is King.” It is this acknowledgement of past mistakes and creative follies that underscores the thesis of West’s most recent work, the realization of his salvation as a Christian, an international superstar and a human being, just like the rest of us.
No stranger to experimentation with genres other than his native hip-hop, Kanye explores the themes, harmonies, instrumentation and lyricism of gospel music in “Jesus Is King,” taking multiple musical and lyrical risks in the meantime, albeit with mixed results. For everyone from diehard Kanye stans to those disenfranchised by his problematic outbursts (and, shall we say, political alignments), the release of this album served as a chance for Kanye to rectify his recent disappointments and serve as a reminder of his everlasting standing in the canon of modern musical greats. On some accounts, “Jesus Is King” achieves these objectives. On others, it falls short.
The album opens with “Every Hour,” the most traditional gospel song on the record, one that includes no vocals from Kanye himself. West’s Sunday Service choir provides a bright, uplifting entrance, quickly followed by a simple, yet percussive piano providing accent to the already- piercing vocals. The canon-like choral arrangement is impressive and jives for the entirety of the track, yet ends up standing in stark, even off-putting, juxtaposition to the second track, “Selah.” The transition between the two comes off as abrupt and confusing, a trend that continues as the record progresses. “Selah” enters with an ominous organ, almost reminding the listener of the darker side of church music and of Kanye’s spirituality itself.
Here, in Yeezus-like fashion, Kanye expresses his frustration with stardom, professing “I ain’t mean, I just focused.” The song builds with heroic splendor, as the gospel choir enters with a Hallelujah chorus that falls nothing short of epic.
“Follow God,” the third, and arguably most digestible, track on the record follows, opening with a sample of Whole Truth’s 1969 “Can You Lose By Following God,” specifically on the lyric “Father, I stretch my hands to you,” an allusion to West’s 2016 mega-hit, “Father, Stretch My Hands.” “Follow God” is a minute and a half of rhythmic excellence with few shortcomings other than its short length and lack of tonal evolution, not unlike many other tracks on the album. Other highlights of “Jesus Is King” include “Everything We Need,” a tour de force of harmonic production, and “Use This Gospel,” an unorthodox yet tantalizing construction of one of Kanye’s catchiest hooks, a mesmerizing Kenny G saxophone solo and the first Clipse reunion in ten years.
As “Jesus Is King” progresses, Kanye continues to incorporate elements of his past records in the production and lyrical construction of his new release. One can hear the pitched-up soul of “The College Dropout,” the resplendent orchestration of “Late Registration,” the popified techno-inspired synths of “Graduation,” the auto-tuned melancholic outbursts of “808’s and Heartbreak,” the deep, spiritual introspection of “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” the rashness of “Yeezus,” the gospel of “The Life of Pablo” and the direct, seemingly unfinished nature of “ye.” It’s all there. In fact, these incorporations might be the most impressive aspect of “Jesus Is King,” as Kanye quite successfully builds on virtually every element of his impressive discography while simultaneously taking his music in a completely different direction. Very few artists can make that claim.
However, “Jesus Is King,” like virtually every Kanye project, is not without glaring flaws, the most significant of which lies in the song order. Although the album stunningly provides the listener with a fully-fledged, ever-interesting spiritual journey over the course of only 27 minutes, the majority of transitions from song to song come off as precipitous and inconsistent.
The final track, “Jesus Is Lord,” arguably the most impressive song on the album, is a masterpiece of orchestration, but one that leaves the listener begging for more. Why Kanye chose “Jesus Is Lord” to finish the album, and not open it, is confounding. Furthermore, just like his past few releases, “Jesus Is King” appears to be drastically unfinished, riddled with flagrant errors of rhythmic execution, muddled production and painfully cheesy lyrics. Kanye’s attempts at conveying his spirituality to a broader audience falls short due to his insistence on associating his faith in Jesus Christ with the collective “we,” a choice that is sure to alienate his non-Christian listeners.
Kanye’s perplexing and often exasperating antics over the past year have rendered him as an artist virtually drowning in a sea of public scrutiny, just as he was ten years ago, upon his drunken interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards. In response to that scandal, West dropped “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” an album considered by most to be his magnum opus. “Jesus Is King” is emphatically not that album nor that attempt at redemption, as it falls victim to many of the inconsistencies that have plagued Kanye, both musically and personally, over the past few years. However, while it lacks the meticulous construction of his best works, “Jesus Is King” is filled with moments that remind us of the musical excellence that have escalated Kanye to the status he remains in today, arguably the most successful artist of the current century, and it is in those very moments where my gratitude lies.
(11/14/19 11:00am)
You’ve probably seen the posts: you’re scrolling through Facebook or Twitter, and a status or tweet pops up letting you know that so-and-so is “canceled.” More often than not, the statement is all you get; there isn’t any explanation as to why that person is canceled or what that might entail. Still, cancelations travel fast. In the wake of the #MeToo Movement, actors seen as problematic disappeared from Netflix shows. Comedians’ tours were postponed or scrapped altogether. In response to the R. Kelly scandal, Spotify even created a feature which allows listeners to “mute” specific artists (ensuring that they no longer appear in playlists, libraries or recommended mixes).
In short, cancel culture seems to have hit an all-time high.
On a basic level, canceling someone means refusing to engage with them. It means announcing, effectively, that someone’s beliefs and actions are beyond repair — and, as a consequence, you’re calling for their removal. This was the broader culture that came under fire recently from former President Obama, who, in an interview about youth activism, urged our generation to rethink how harshly we judge others. To clarify: in his interview, Obama criticized “call-outs” rather than “cancels,” which are a little different. “Calling out” connotes drawing attention to problematic beliefs or statements without providing a course of action for moving forward. Often, calling out is a step on the way to canceling (which, as it effectively removes any hope of moving forward, is decidedly more extreme). According to our former President, “calling out” isn’t activism.
We disagree. At least, partly. We endorse a more nuanced understanding of “calling out” and “canceling.”
Calling out and canceling aren’t inherently bad. They also aren’t all that new — in many ways, the impulse underlying call-outs or cancels is the same one behind boycotts, strikes or walkouts. By not showing up, literally or figuratively, to make space or provide a platform for certain issues and figures, you send a message. In this way, canceling can be incredibly activating; it allows you to punch up, to reclaim lost agency in the face of enormous, dehumanizing corporations and celebrities worth billions of dollars. And, more often than not, the harshness or extremity behind those cancelation statements is what lends those upward punches their very power.
Still, it’s worth interrogating the different, subtle ways that social media transforms the cancelation impulse. Online, canceling becomes all too easy: You can cancel someone or something in the time it takes to rattle off a couple of words and click “post.” The result is that, for many, canceling has become reflexive. And that reflex has extended beyond the internet and into the way that we interact with others in our day to day lives. Even in person, we’re quick to call people out. In a matter of seconds, we shut them down.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Canceling has become reflexive. And that reflex has extended beyond the internet and into the way that we interact with others in our day to day lives.[/pullquote]
Those shut-downs become a lot more complicated at a place like Middlebury. Here, we aren’t canceling far-removed, top-tier celebrities (who, as far as most of us are concerned, only exist in the form of tweets or television guest spots). If and when we cancel at Middlebury, we’re canceling our classmates, the people we belong to clubs with or pass on College Street.
That kind of cancelation calls for a little more thought.
The last few years have seen a rise in cancelation efforts at Middlebury. We regularly call out or cancel students, professors and staff members for comments made in class or actions taken around campus. Over the past couple of years, a number of controversial speakers have been — pardon the pun — quite literally canceled. And, in December 2018, a list of “Men to Avoid” was released on Facebook (a divisive, broad-reaching cancelation effort now simply referred to as “the list”).
We’re not saying you should or shouldn’t cancel at Middlebury. That’s your call. As we’ve said, sometimes canceling can be OK, even constructive. Canceling can constitute an important form of self-defense or an attempt to send a message when other institutions fail (the “list,” for instance, was largely released in response to the administration’s inadequate efforts to address sexual assault on campus). Other times, students’, professors’ and staff members’ repeated, obvious unwillingness to uphold values of tolerance and inclusivity leave us little choice but to cancel. At a place like Middlebury, where harassment, discrimination and abuse can go woefully unaddressed by the college, voicing cancelations often forms a vital, tangible tool for change.
Still, we’d caution you to think twice before transplanting virtual cancelation impulses into your immediate, everyday lives. At Middlebury, online or in-persons cancels can have immediate, even irrevocable impacts on the way that students inhabit the college’s very small, very real space. Sometimes, those cancelations seem unavoidable. Other times, they inhibit the kinds of growth we came to Middlebury to undergo in the first place.
Unfortunately, the nature and size of Middlebury’s social scene often encourages premature canceling. Rumors spread quickly, so that their subjects are sometimes canceled before they have a chance to defend themselves. Sometimes, entire groups of people (say, sports teams or Febs) are canceled by other groups on the basis of assumptions or predictions. Situations like those don’t demand cancels. Instead, they provide vital opportunities for others to learn, to ask questions and improve their own understandings of difficult and controversial topics. There are other times, however, when the burden of education cannot and should not fall on you. Then, canceling might be the best way to send a message. It might even be the only course of activism left.
It’s worth interrogating, too, the ways in which cancels are unevenly distributed among the student body. Just as white, male celebrities bounce back faster from social media cancels (see: Louis C.K.), so too are more privileged members of the Middlebury community often given the benefit of the doubt. We need to be careful that, in wielding our own cancelation tools, we don’t simply exacerbate the already profound power disparities which exist on campus.
At the end of the day, it comes down to determining the most effective way to send a message. Ideally, that message can be sent through conversation. This is what we think Obama was getting at: Rather than simply judging, we should strive for constructive, progress-producing conversations. Ideally, those conversations precede cancelation, hopefully rendering it unnecessary.
(11/14/19 10:59am)
Most students studying abroad in Chile chose to stay in the country despite civil unrest, after the college’s study abroad office gave them the option to leave.
After protests started three weeks ago, the study abroad office first considered an evacuation of all students enrolled in Middlebury programs in Chile. On Oct. 24, it elected instead to give them several options. They could remain in Chile, relocate to Buenos Aires, Argentina or return to the United States, where they could earn partial academic credit through remote work or full credit by adding a summer language course. Students were asked to decide on a course of action by Monday, Nov. 4.
Of the 23 students enrolled in Middlebury programs in six Chilean cities, three chose to return to the United States, one chose to relocate to Buenos Aires and the remaining 19 chose to stay in Chile, according to Assistant Director of International Programs Alessandra Capossela.
Students were first asked to decide on one of the four options by Nov. 1. However, many became frustrated by what they saw as limitations in the options. To earn full credit if they went home, students would have had to complete Chilean coursework remotely, in addition to the additional course of summer language school, the cost of which would have been covered by the college. Relocating to Buenos Aires would have allowed students to earn a maximum of 3.5 credits, rather than the full four.
For many students, the easiest way to earn full credit would be to remain in Chile, where credit wasn’t a guarantee either because many universities there remain closed. In response, students called and sent emails to the study abroad office requesting more flexible ways to earn credit. Capossela responded by sending students revised options in an email on Oct. 29, which included opportunities to earn more credits in Argentina and at home without taking a language school course.
“We are hearing from some of you that you are feeling like you are forced to remain in Chile because you need to get four credits for this semester,” Capossela wrote in that email. “As I had mentioned in a previous message, it certainly was not our intention to preference staying in Chile over any of the other options.”
Capossela followed up with another email to students later that day, detailing courses organized by the study abroad office, independent of Chilean universities, that students remaining in Chile would be able to take while host universities remained closed. The five-week long intensive course focuses on social movements in Latin America and is centered on Chile.
[pullquote speaker="Mason Arndt '21" photo="" align="left" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]
A lot of the violence has continued. We’re limited in our movements and things feel really off.[/pullquote]
“This was big for us because it means we aren’t relying on the universities to resume classes in order to get credit, something we thought was unlikely to happen,” Mason Arndt ’21 said. Arndt is living in Viña Del Mar and chose to remain there for the semester.
Along with the intensive course, students will earn half a credit for each university class they were taking (most took three or four), one letter-grade credit for internships or independent studies and one credit for a writing and culture class that was already part of the Middlebury program. With these options, students have the opportunity to earn the four credits they expected to receive at the start of the semester.
Sidra Pierson ’21 was one of 11 students living in the sister cities of Viña Del Mar and Valparaíso who signed a petition asking to remain in Chile when the study abroad office considered an evacuation in October. The guarantees of credit for remaining in Chile only made her more sure of her decision, she said.
“There was a lot I could still get out of the semester even though we’re giving up a lot of your typical study abroad experiences,” Pierson said. “Getting another month and a half at the time with my Chilean host family and friends, and speaking Spanish, it all felt worth it.”
In Santiago, Mireille Becerra ’21 agreed, saying that staying in Chile is “easiest for me compared to all other options.” Because her semester in Chile is scheduled to end on Nov. 20, she said, leaving the country made little sense.
Though Chilean president Sebastian Piñera lifted the national state of emergency on Oct. 28, protests and violent government response have continued. Students studying in the sister cities and Santiago have watched protests and police crackdowns in their neighborhoods in the past days.
“Marches with thousands of people take place both on the streets and in plazas, parks, or other commercial sectors,” Becerra wrote in an email to The Campus. “Various stores continue to be broken into or set on fire as well. Both to disperse the massive crowds and to stop the robbers, the police use tear gas and water pressure.”
In Viña Del Mar, Arndt said, protests did not ease much even after the state of emergency was lifted. On Nov. 12, Pierson watched smoke rise above the city as fires set by arsonists raged, and took video of police clashing with protesters several blocks from her homestay.
“A lot of the violence has continued,” Arndt said. “We’re limited in our movements and things feel really off. There might be an image of everything going back to normal for students who have stayed, but that’s not really the case.”
On Nov. 13, administrators in Valparaíso had to cancel a meeting of the intensive course for the second time in two weeks amid concerns about students moving between the sister cities
“We’re all feeling like, ‘how the heck are we going to get this course done in the next four weeks?’,” Pierson said.
Students scheduled to study in Chile in the spring said they have received mixed messages about whether they will be able to proceed with their semesters abroad as planned.
“I feel that things are really up in the air, and the abroad offices are not offering very clear or specific information,” said Ella Houlihan ’21, who was planning on studying in Valparaíso in the spring. Some students have filled out applications to study in other locations such as Uruguay, Argentina or Cuba.
“I opened up a second app to Buenos Aires and I’m even considering applying to an external program to Cuba last minute,” said Olivia O’Brien ’21. “I really hope to go to Santiago, though. If Middlebury runs the program in the spring, it is still my top choice.”
According to Capossela, the study abroad office is in conversations with Chile program director Juan Pastene as to options going forward for students scheduled to spend the spring semester there.
“We are planning to let Spring 2020 students know what their options will be by the beginning of December,” she wrote in an email to The Campus.
(11/14/19 10:58am)
I woke up Thursday morning to loud voices outside my door. I am not someone who enjoys being jostled from sleep by someone else’s conversation, however interesting. As a result, my internal monologue went along the lines of, “Who do these loud people think they are?”
And then I began listening to their conversation.
“It will be nice to have weekends off, now,” said one voice.
“Where were you working before this?” asked the other.
“I did security. I worked at McDonald’s for a little bit, too.”
They shared a laugh, from which I guessed that neither of them thought very highly of the employment opportunities offered by Ronald McDonald.
Then, the second voice asked, “How old are you?”
“I’m 22,” the first voice replied.
22. The person behind that voice was 22 years-old and cleaning bathrooms used by people about their age — people like me. That voice was 22 and spent what might otherwise have been their college years working seven days a week, while I am spending mine typing out op-eds and essays.
I am undoubtedly a member of the middle class. At Middlebury, there are many people who are more affluent than my family and I. There are also people who are as well-off as I am. There are also people who grew up with far less than I did (at least socioeconomically speaking).
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]The aspect of wealth I abhor is the distance it creates.[/pullquote]
On campus, discussion often turns to money. Money, here, is a topic of contention. There are people — and I have been this person at times — who roll their eyes at those who are from more affluent backgrounds. But the aspect of wealth I dislike is not the wealth. The aspect of wealth I abhor is the distance it creates. This distance can be observed in assumptions that we make about people whose socioeconomic statuses are different from our own. These assumptions range from assuming a person is able to buy a flashy new sweatshirt, to more severe notions such as the belief that peers attending community colleges are not motivated or ambitious. These kinds of money-related assumptions are not always symptoms of cruelty or malice, but are often simply the result of ignorance. This is an ignorance that I am not immune to.
In fact, this ignorance is why I was shocked to awaken to a 22-year-old talking about their previous work experience. I was shocked because, surrounded by my primarily wealthy or comfortable peers at Middlebury, I had forgotten my own privilege. Still, that conversation reminded me — first thing in the morning — that I am someone who is lucky. Lucky enough to forget about questions of distance and ignorance and privilege on a Thursday morning; lucky enough to attend a school where someone else (someone who is only a few years older than me) takes out the trash and wipes down the bathroom mirror.
I thought about that for a moment — thought about the way this other world was existing right beside my own. I shivered thinking that, if things had shaken out differently, that voice and I could have ended up in class together.
I began to reflect on the good fortune I had taken for granted — the way I had the means to spontaneously travel to Boston for Fall Break, the way my mother was determined to minimize my college debt. I thought about the way my aunt always wiped down the counter with a washcloth when we stayed at hotels, saying that she wanted to leave less work for whoever had to clean up after us. And then I thought about all the dried-yellow urine that was left on our Gifford toilet seat after every weekend, about this voice that was being trained to clean it up. I thought about the invisibility of their world, their world that did not have the opportunity that I had. Their world was right outside my door. I wasn’t going to forget that. I sighed and got up to use the bathroom.
Writer’s note: I would like to note that this op-ed makes the assumption that the “voice” is working as a custodian as a result of not attending school. I do not know the full story of this individual, as this is a conversation that I overheard. This piece is a reflection of myself, and I would like to acknowledge that I know only the context of my own privilege.
(11/07/19 11:04am)
Middlebury’s student body has more people of color and more students from Southern states this year than ever before. The 2019 Fall Student Body Profile points to small but distinct trends toward greater racial, ethnic and geographic diversity among students, making this the least-white student body in Middlebury history. At the same time, however, the college’s population is still primarily drawn from the same states it historically has been.
This year, Middlebury’s domestic student population is comprised of 26% students of color, the highest in the school’s history. The report also reports that the student body is currently 53.1% female and 46.9% male.
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Dean of Admissions Nicole Curvin is happy about how the admissions team has “made progress in bringing students from many backgrounds, geographies and lived experiences” to the college.
“The admissions team has worked intentionally to broaden our reach to more diverse student populations in the U.S. and I believe we have made good strides,” Curvin said.
Curvin cited over 50 community organizations in the country that the college works with — these groups provide support, such as application prep, internships and admissions counseling for college applicants from groups that are traditionally underrepresented in higher education, with the hopes of building bridges between students from these groups and the college.
Massachusetts is now the most represented state in the student body, taking the lead over New York, which held the top spot in 2018. California and Connecticut hold the next two spots, as they did last year.
However, the profile also points to increases in the populations of students in many traditionally underrepresented Southeastern states. North Carolina has seen a 37% increase among the student population, while Georgia has seen a 21% increase. Texas is now the 10th most represented state, while Virginia and Florida take the 11th and 12th spots respectively.
Natalie Figueroa, the admissions counselor for several Southeastern states including Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Carolina and Tennessee, pointed to an evolution in the way that admissions counselors reach out to students in these states. This can include group travel with other liberal arts colleges such as Bates, Harvey Mudd, Wellesley and Wesleyan to high school visits, college fairs and counselor breakfasts.
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“What has been especially important for me is to listen to the needs of students and high school counselors in those areas and to understand what best helps them through this process,” Figueroa said. “This can include elaborating on what a ‘liberal arts education’ entails, what winter is like, or how the transition has been for students coming to the Northeast for school.”
Visits from an admissions counselor can make the difference in a decision for some students from the South.
In addition to learning about the college from upperclassmen and being attracted to the language programs, Sophie Mueller ’23, a student from a private school in Atlanta, Georgia, met with a Middlebury counselor at a college fair during all four years of high school.
“These interactions encouraged me to apply and helped me learn more about Midd,” she said.
Curvin estimates that the high schools the admissions office visits are 60% private schools and 40% public.
Other students from the South have found their way to Middlebury through personal research, postings on sites like College Point, and through friends and peers who had gone to the Northeast for college themselves.
Ryan Kirby ’22 is from Lorena, Texas and applied to Middlebury at the recommendation of a friend up north. “I had never heard about Middlebury. New England was never even a thought to anybody at my school, and I am fairly certain I’m the only person in my class that came up north. Most did not leave the state.”
Kirby’s experience is not rare: Curvin pointed to lack of name recognition, as well as weather and financial challenges, as major factors that discourage students in the South from considering or attending Middlebury.
In a Newsroom article from last March, Curvin discussed a several-year effort to expand recruitment in Florida and other Southern states. Florida had the fifth highest rate of admitted students for the class of 2023, with 63 admitted, but ultimately had a lower yield than Northeastern states. Florida remains outside of the top-ten-most represented states on campus.
“There are a lot of conversations about affordability — coming to an institution like Middlebury over a state institution with merit money or funding for students is challenging, and those are conversations that we’re having,” Curvin said. “Florida is a beautiful lovely place with beaches and warm weather, and so talking to students about coming to New England can be a challenge, but I think we’ve seen a growth in students wanting to have this kind of college experience.”
“It was difficult to look at the price of Middlebury versus the University of Florida and Florida State and reason it,” said Kate Talano ’21.5 of Naples, Florida. “New England is a different way of life and if you’re not familiar with it, that can prevent you from wanting to go up north.”
“When you’re looking schools, you know the places that you know,” Talano said. “And in Florida, Middlebury is not one of those places.”
