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(11/07/19 11:03am)
Throat singing, multilingual monologues, aerial dance, hyperfemininity, hypermasculinity, Max Ernst aesthetics, blood, violence, sexual references and many more contrasting and disparate elements came together last weekend at the Mahaney Arts Center. The 90 minutes of Director and Assistant Professor of Theatre Michole Biancosino’s interpretation of “The Bacchae 2.1” ran from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2 at Seeler Studio Theatre. The production starred Kevin Collins ’20 (as Pentheus) and Marci Urban ’22.5 , Cecelia Scheuer ’21 and Zachary Varricchione ’21 (all three as Dionysus), with music by visiting artist Neel Murgai and Ronnie Romano ’20. Murgai looked to Hindu Shiva for inspiration while adopting different ragas and improvising throughout the show.
“Bacchae” was written by Euripides in the fifth century B.C. as a perplexing and disturbing study of the clash and struggle between wilderness and civilization. This Greek tragedy, along with other pre-existing texts, were appropriated and adapted into a new creation by Charles Mee in 1993. Mee’s version incorporated much more violence and sexual reference while also adding layers to the discussion of the complexity of human nature. Gender relations, suppression, identity, dialectics and plurality all became subjects of interest to Mee.
Yet Biancosino made the play into, as she says, “a Bacchae 2.1a or 3.1.” When she began working with the company on this rather messy play with “jarring juxtapositions,” as she phrased it, Biancosino took it as a creative challenge to sort out how far they can go with some of the ideas dealt with in the play. She and the actors worked hard to fill the play with humanity while preserving its poetic nature. After all the creative and artistic additions to the play, the core of the show still lies in its discussion of otherness, which gives it relevance in any historical context.
The significance of putting on a show that discusses modernity, civilization and otherness is not trivial at the college. Biancosino believed that “The Bacchae 2.1” is inherently an acknowledgement to the people who don’t fit in and to the otherness that barely has space at a “white institution that’s known as a ‘pillar of civilization.’”
The tone of Biancosino’s “The Bacchae” was exactly that: She was careful, conscientious and creative with how to present otherness at the college in 2019. She started with tossing out the inflammatory parts in Mee’s version and bringing in other voices, including works of queer writers and writers of color. These elements created a poetic and more comprehensive understanding of the world. Further, Biancosino purposefully made the connotation of the color orange ambiguous: A tainted and deceptive orange downplays its symbolism as the “Eastern color” used in Mee’s interpretation.
The representation of otherness is detail-oriented, evident through how makeup was a means to showcase and discern various groups of characters. Stern blue suits with minimal makeup made Pentheus look “strict and conservative,” while the women in the mountains have “whimsical and outgoing” looks to help establish their characters, said makeup artist Devon Hunt ’23.
Further, Biancosino pondered how to bring otherness on stage in novel ways. Her most daring redesign was to use a multilingual approach including German, Spanish, Mandarin, Bengali, ASL and others. Indeed, what’s a more Middlebury thing to do than showcasing students’ linguistic talents? This was at times disorienting. As the Lavender Woman (Nuasheen Chowdhury ’22) began speaking Bengali, evident gasps among audiences reveal how some felt utterly lost. But the value of this approach lies in its ability to force audiences to move pass literal meanings, and propel the audience to look at otherness in a uniquely Middlebury way.
The actors were able to bring this complicated show together in a short seven weeks, and they each contributed their unique understanding of its message to the performance. Director Biancosino allowed a great deal of freedom for actors when exploring their characters.
“As an actor, I had to let go of my dependence on rationality and logic in order to fully engage with and find meaning in this play’s poetic and visceral language,” Gabby Valdivieso ’20 (tattoo artist) said. In order to develop her character, she “explored the history of how women with tattoos have been perceived — from tattooed women put on display as sideshow attractions to tattoos not aligning with conventional ideas of femininity to feminist beliefs in empowerment and body ownership.” In a similar way, Madeline Ciocci ’20 (Agave) said her character “has a complete shift at the end of the play, where she gets primal and animalistic, and afterwards, she seems like a totally different person. She is much more real and raw at the end." In order to best present such a drastic shift, she is conscious of her postures, language and how she interacts with other characters.
The actors’ diligent inputs led to commends among audiences. The intensity of the play left many in awe as they leave the studio. There was so much to grab the audience’s attention and people were invariably drawn to different things: as some focused on the image of blossoming rose on the backdrop, some looked at the chatty Bacchae aside and others stared at the musician.
Bair Lambert ’22, who played a supporting role in the play, said days before the play that he hoped audiences would walk out thinking “What the f**k!” I certainly felt that way, and many around me concurred. “The Bacchae 2.1” was not a narrative, nor a story, but an experience, an utterly intense one that impels deep reflections about otherness.
(11/07/19 11:02am)
Arizona PBS news anchor Vanessa Ruiz, who made national headlines in 2015 for her accented pronunciation of words in Spanish while serving as broadcast anchor, visited Middlebury this week to share her unique experience as a reporter. Ruiz gave a lecture, “Speak American: How A News Anchor Became the News,” on Monday, Nov. 4. She also visited with students interested in media and communications careers at the Center for Careers and Internships, and ate with a cohort of students and faculty members from the Luso-Hispanic Studies Department.
In her lecture, held in the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, Ruiz recounted her ascent to a nightly co-anchor position in the major television market of Phoenix. It was there that Ruiz faced racially-charged attacks for her on-air pronunciation of Spanish words, including the names of nearby towns, like “Mesa” and “Casa Grande.” The packed audience on a Monday afternoon included Spanish majors, professors and students interested in journalism.
Ruiz was born in Miami and raised in Colombia until the age of five. She entered the field of journalism in college in 2001, taking an internship with Telemundo, a global Spanish-language television network based in Miami. From there, Ruiz worked as a foreign correspondent in Nicaragua and Venezuela, where she covered Hugo Chavez’s last presidential election. She returned to the United States as a reporter for the local NBC news station in Los Angeles.
Ruiz noted that in each site with a large Hispanic population, she was able to speak in her native accent without question.
“Growing up and living in cities like Los Angeles and Miami, you really are in a bubble – a multicultural bubble,” she said.
It was only once Ruiz arrived at KPNX or 12 News, the local NBC affiliate in Phoenix, that she faced criticism for her pronunciation of certain words. After just one month on the job, local viewers hurled insults at Ruiz on Twitter. One user wrote, “I turn in to watch a newscaster, not a mariachi.” Another viewer suggested in the tweet that Ruiz be deported, adding, “She isn’t American she has no right to be here no matter how much some corporation paid for her.”
Ruiz was offered the chance, by her bosses and co-anchor, to respond on-air to the acerbic commentary about her. On live television, Ruiz offered a rebuke of her critics.
“Some of you have noticed that I pronounce a couple of things maybe a little differently than you’re used to,” Ruiz said. “I do like to pronounce certain things the way they are meant to be pronounced.”
Following her response, Ruiz received support from local and national political figures, including Phoenix-area State Senator Martin Quezada. Quezada tweeted that “our news is now more mature, culturally accepting and accurate. How is that a bad thing?” The New York Times and BuzzFeed picked up the story and ran articles on Ruiz’s response to the contention she received.
The Phoenix community was also grateful that Ruiz decided not just to respond to backlash, but to stay at the news station too: they thanked her for not leaving.
“What does that say about a community, when they have to tell you ‘thanks’ for not leaving?” She answered her own rhetorical question at the talk: “They had been feeling repressed, antagonized, attacked for so long.”
During her lecture, Ruiz attributed her desire to respond and her upstanding demeanor to the pride she has for her identity. Acknowledging the privilege she experiences as a “fair-skinned” Latina, Ruiz told students that she felt the need to stand up for Hispanics in the Phoenix area, a city whose population is roughly three-quarters white, according to Census data.
Ruiz now reports for the PBS NewsHour West, based out of Phoenix, as well as Arizona’s PBS station, which is owned by ASU. She is also a professor at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she directs their Borderlands program.
Ruiz says she tries to do news “the good way,” by aiming to diversify the newsroom and encourage more bilingual students in the classroom to follow their professional goals.
“I look at bilingualism as an asset, nothing less,” Ruiz said.
Attendee Lila Sternberg-Schur ’21.5 read about Ruiz in professor Brandon Baird’s Hispanic Linguistics class last year. “Having the opportunity to hear Vanessa talk about what she’d experienced in person really brought the story to life and made it more tangible,” she said.
In a hearty question-and-answer session at the end of Monday’s lecture, Ruiz answered questions about her identity and her experience in journalism.
At one point in the Q&A, Ruiz spoke about the role journalists play in 2019, and how to write with one’s identity in mind.
“I still believe that I’m not the news – I shouldn’t be the news. At the end of the day, facts are facts,” she said.
However, she said that having diverse journalists engaged in the newsroom is essential.
“It’s up to us to bridge those gaps, and bring people together who may come from different backgrounds, different perspectives, and different experiences,” she said. “It’s not an easy muscle to flex, because it takes courage to be that person always raising your hand. But if we don’t do it, who will?”
(11/07/19 11:00am)
“Even though it’s idealized, it felt pretty real.”— Donovan Compton ’23
In the best of ways, this film brings us back into a simultaneously dreamy, yet dreary world of reimagining sexuality in our society. Director Céline Sciamma orchestrates a gorgeous French historical drama in “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” Brought to the college by the Hirschfield Film Series on Nov. 2, “Portrait” reinterprets the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, tugging at your heartstrings in a mixture of wry humor, beautiful cinematography and tender shifts in understanding love. In the best of ways, leads Marianne (Noémie Merland) and Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) dance around each other in a passionate performance.
“Portrait” takes place within the 18th century through the memories of Marianne, an artist both teaching and posing for her class, advising students as they sketch her. Emotions begin to run high as a student brings out a portrait of a woman by the sea, garbed in a burning blue gown, painted by Marianne herself. The eponymous painting “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” transports Marianne back to years prior, starting with her journey to the memory.
Here, the story begins to unfold on a tumultuous boat trip to a remote island, where she is commissioned to paint a wedding portrait for a notoriously uncooperative subject, Héloïse. Vehemently opposed to being married off, Héloïse thus refuses to sit for a portrait and is introduced to us in sombre rigidity, eyes cloudy and cold. Thus, as Marianne masquerades as her companion on the island, hoping to familiarize herself with her features so as to paint in secret, viewers are guided through the fascinating push and pull of forces that join and sever the duo. Albeit a definite exaggeration of the autonomy of femininity, the stark contrast of this narrative from portrayals of women in other period films is refreshing.
Merland and Haenel encompass the subtle beauty of their relationship in the little details that shift with their bond. Growing past the stiffness, we are introduced to Héloïse the blues of her eyes grow warm with mirth, dark with passion and unreadably pensive as the film progresses. Likewise, Merland captures the role of the brooding, impassioned artist as she renders Marianne with a full honesty that engulfs her in the performance. As the memory unfolds, so does the depth of the story — beyond the leading women, “Portrait” examines forms of female empowerment.
Through tongue-in-cheek humor at the desperation to be unburdened with fulfilling traditional familial roles, independence is a driving force as the film chronicles the trials of Sophie, a maid, trying for an abortion with the aid of Marianne and Héloïse by her side. It’s almost wacky — between watching the trio try remedies such as pushing Sophie to sprint to watching a group of women chant as Marianne and Héloïse battle feelings across a hearth, the multidimensionality of empowerment is highlighted in their agency. You are greeted with a new sense of love; companionship, art and community are highlighted as Sciamma strays from the conventions of recapturing individuality.
Visually, the film stuns as characters traverse a background of blues evolving through coldness and warmth in conjunction to the shifts between Héloïse and her mother. Set on the cliffside, the manor adopts a pensive aura with walls of blue, slivers of mahogany sconces cleverly designed to hint at warmth. Candlelight flickers at every corner, adding to the ambiance and solitude that amplifies every emotion in their rawness. “Portrait” hits its stride with its aesthetics as viewers are easily immersed in a vignette of their universe. By displaying women of the time with a certain freedom that would never have been realized elsewhere, a new perspective is ultimately fostered in the audience as Sciamma revitalizes possibilities to define oneself within an era that leaves no room elsewhere to breathe.
(10/31/19 10:05am)
After wrapping up the college's year-long workforce planning initiative this May, a process that saw 37 staff members take voluntary buyouts and caused a redistribution of workload among remaining staff, administrators announced via email to all college employees that the process had been a success — Middlebury could reduce its deficit without resorting to layoffs.
But an external email sent to facilities staff on Aug. 8 suggests the starkly different story, that some workers didn’t think workforce planning had been so “voluntary” after all.
“Middlebury Needs a UNION! -read on your break” the subject line of the email said.
It spelled out some of the pitfalls of the workforce planning process: Staff felt voiceless, overworked with insufficient pay, and as though the ground had been pulled from beneath them when they were offered buyouts and switched into new roles. Facilities staff specifically — those who work in maintenance and operations jobs, like custodial and groundskeeping services, as well as jobs in planning, design and construction — have reported to The Campus feeling exhausted and frustrated by failures in communication, too-long hours and last minute call-ins.
“I don’t know a bunch about unions — still don’t,” one facilities staff member said. “But I know the way that people get treated here. I’ve seen it. I just feel like we’ve got to do something.”
Throughout the summer, the email’s sender, David Van Deusen of the Rutland-based branch of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), met with facilities staff who sought to discuss how organizing a union would mitigate the heightened voicelessness brought on by the workforce planning process.
Not enough facilities staff have signed union authorization cards to trigger a vote to organize. Many said they see this as a sign that union efforts have failed. But Van Deusen remains adamant that efforts are ongoing. And facilities staff are insistent that something has to give.
Most of the 12 facilities workers The Campus spoke with for the story spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of retribution from peers and upper management.
Workforce planning raises “unanswered questions”
Most Middlebury students don’t know what workforce planning really means. But for staff, the process — which the college announced in June 2018 as a way to cut personnel costs and distribute work more efficiently — was ever-present for the better part of a year.
Department managers were tasked last fall with leading discussions within their divisions about how they could reorganize work more efficiently and cost-effectively, with the aim of shrinking staff compensation costs by 10% amidst an exigent budget deficit. That winter, senior leadership, in collaboration with human resources, finalized a list of positions that they would cut based on those findings.
The college identified 150 staff positions to be eliminated, though 100 of that number were “were already vacant through attrition and restrictions on re-hiring over the last few years,” The Campus reported in May. In February of 2019, the college handed out applications for buyouts — formally called Incentivized Separation Plans (ISP) — to 79 staff members, in hopes of cutting 45 of the remaining positions. Twenty-eight of those applications were offered to facilities and dining staff specifically.
The college sent more applications for the buyouts than were necessary, in the hopes that enough staff would elect to take them and the college would not have to resort to involuntary layoffs. If more staff than necessary applied, the most senior staff were offered buyouts first.
The college also created “close to 40” new staff positions based on needs identified during work reevaluations, according to Vice President of Human Resources Karen Miller. Applications for those positions were first made available to the staff who were offered buyouts, giving them the option to apply to stay at the college, rather than taking ISPs. To protect the privacy of the individuals who opted to take buyouts, the college has not made public the list of eliminated and added positions.
Ultimately, 37 staff took the buyouts, nine of whom were employees within facilities and dining. The college had hoped more staff would apply, but the number proved sufficient — the college did not have to resort to layoffs.
“This process has been both lengthy and challenging, and caused many in our community significant uncertainty and discomfort,” said President Laurie Patton in a May email to staff. “Thanks to your participation, the process was successful.”
Last year, The Campus reported growing anxieties among staff as they waited to hear from the administration about the futures of their jobs. For staff in some departments — like dining, in which a natural reduction of positions left few to be forcibly cut — these uncertainties have since mostly subsided. But in facilities, anxieties have subsisted. In some cases, they have worsened.
“There were a lot of unanswered questions. There still are a lot of unanswered questions,” said one Middlebury facilities staff member, a supporter of the union.
A 2017 survey, administered by the consulting firm ModernThink, shows that staff discontent surged even before workforce planning began. That survey showed frustration with communication from the Senior Leadership Group — Patton’s 17-member advisory council — a lack of transparency with decision-making and dissatisfaction with compensation, among other areas.
Still, workforce planning seems to have exacerbated many staff concerns. Some, for example, are frustrated with how work has been redistributed since some positions were cut, which has caused employees to feel overworked and underpaid.
“The work amped up with fewer people to do it,” said the aforementioned facilities staff member. “A lot of the extra stuff is taking away from the stuff that we need to do daily.”
The worker said he was frustrated with what he felt was a murky process. Decisions about the “voluntary” process were often made behind closed doors, he said, and the redistribution of work showed a lack of understanding about the work being done. “There was nothing voluntary about it,” he said.
Norm Cushman, vice president for operations, said communication can be a challenge in a department with so many workers. “It would have been very difficult to have solicited everyone’s input,” he said.
Cushman said the process of work redistribution will play out piecemeal, as employees who took buyouts gradually leave the college and their departments develop strategies for how to “do less with less.”
Low pay forces employees who work two jobs into a “balancing act”
The Campus has previously reported low wages as a source of dissatisfaction among employees. Separately, pro-union staff who spoke to The Campus said low wages were a major reason they sought to organize.
Many employees have to hold multiple jobs to survive. That balancing act, another facilities employee said, can become incredibly burdensome when workloads at the college are also increased in light of workforce planning. When many facilities staff did not show up to work after an unexpectedly severe snowstorm last year, for example, administrators questioned staff priorities.
“We had a meeting with a manager who was extremely unhappy because a lot of people weren’t here helping,” the employee said. “He told us that if we had second jobs, we needed to not go in and instead had to come in and shovel.”
The college has consistently framed workforce planning as a way to make staff feel more invested in the future of the institution. But according to staff, it doesn’t always feel like that.
“Yeah, you could say workforce planning is for us, because now [the college is] financially sustainable,” said Staff Council President Tim Parsons. “But if you’re only making $12.07 an hour and your shift in the custodial wing starts at 4 a.m., workforce planning doesn’t really feel like it’s for you.”
These low wages have led to shortages in some areas, like custodial and recycling services. To address these shortages, the college is currently spearheading a compensation review with an external consulting group. The aim of the study is to gather “market data” — information that will indicate what the college needs to pay going forward to make itself a competitive employer.
David Provost, executive vice president for finance and administration, said the college is undertaking the review now because it has been nearly a decade since the last one of its kind. He also said that the college has seen increased turnover in the last two years in positions within the lowest two pay bands, in which many facilities positions fall. Wages for OP1 positions — for example, some dining hall servery positions — begin at $11 an hour, while OP2 positions — including some groundsworking and custodial jobs — begin at $12.07 an hour.
Meanwhile, staff spoke about how comparable positions in town had wages that started three or four dollars higher, although without comparable benefits. Separately, custodians told The Campus that hiring shortages in custodial services might be due to the high costs of living in Addison County, costs which workers on an OP2-level budget are often not able to shoulder.
“We know over the last 18 to 24 months it has been more difficult to attract and retain OP1 and OP2 level positions,” Provost said. “If the review suggests we need to increase these salaries, then we will.” He added that the decision would have to be contingent on timing and availability of financial resources.
The college had to tackle workforce planning before the compensation review, Provost said, because addressing its financial management had to be a fiscal priority, given the severity of the deficit.
Provost said he is expecting the study’s data to show that the college should pay its OP1- and OP2-level employees higher wages. The study is set to be done by the spring. At that time, the administration will begin to work its findings into the budget for the 2021 fiscal year.
“A slap in the face”
The college did not officially lay off any employees. Some felt the offers they received backed them into corners anyway.
One employee, a servery worker who has been at the college for 31 years, said her situation felt like “a slap in the face.” She was previously employed in a facilities office job before her position was cut.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]At the college, seniority has never meant anything. I’ve been here 31 years — I’m a loyal worker, have always been on time, never been sick. Didn’t matter at all.[/pullquote]
Even though she shared a similar workload with the two other employees in her previous office, she had a different job title from her co-workers and hers was the only position that was cut. In other offices, where multiple workers held the same positions, the process was more “voluntary,” since one worker’s choice to take a buyout or job transfer meant others could refuse.
The servery worker was, as multiple staff members put it, “workforce planned.”
“At the college, seniority has never meant anything,” the employee said. “I’ve been here 31 years — I’m a loyal worker, have always been on time, never been sick. Didn’t matter at all.”
The staff member was informed by supervisors that her position would be cut toward the end of that phase in the process. But she couldn’t afford to take the buyout package the college was offering. The staff member instead applied for several of the then-newly-created positions posted on a private portal. Many of the available job postings required degrees, she said. “I don’t have a college degree,” she said. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t have the qualifications — I didn’t have the degree.”
All jobs for which she was eligible required higher levels of physical activity than she was used to. After working at a desk for so many years, the transition to a job that requires her to carry heavy loads and stand for hours at a time has taken a toll. Last week, she suffered a workplace injury.
Contacted by AFSCME while she was still in a facilities position, the staff member attended initial meetings and supported the effort to unionize. She said she would support unionization among facilities staff, even in her new role, “Because you’d have someone else looking out for you besides the people who are higher up here,” she said. “They expect the lowest paid people here to work the hardest.”
Despite low wages, staff like the servery worker identified the benefits the college offers to its faculty and staff as exceptional in comparison with other positions in the area. Among them are good healthcare, extensive retirement plans and paid time off, as well as discounts at some stores, free gym passes and roadside assistance.
“If it was not for the benefits, 90% of these facilities people would not be here,” the first facilities employee said.
“Benefits here are a lot better than what you would find anywhere else around here,” said the other. “But I can’t go down to Hannaford and buy groceries with my benefits.”
“Middlebury Needs a UNION!”
Van Deusen, the union rep and the president of the Vermont American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), said he was contacted by facilities employees over the summer about starting a union.
While some staff concerns, like low pay and abrupt, last-minute shift scheduling, have been prevalent for a long time, Van Deusen believes this round of workforce planning catalyzed the staff’s outreach.
After their first meetings in Ilsley Public Library in July, Van Deusen said he was in contact with “dozens of facilities staff.” At subsequent off-campus gatherings, he spoke with interested parties about what the union could offer them. Many were intrigued.
One of the facilities workers told The Campus he “absolutely” supports the formation of a union, “Mainly for pay. And also, to have a voice.” He cited the workforce planning process as a period during which he felt particularly left in the dark by his superiors.
The servery worker said she would be in favor of a facilities union, “because of the seniority part of it. And to negotiate a better raise,” she said.
Some workers were also inspired by the successful union effort at St. Michael’s College. In 2012, custodians there unionized with AFSCME. They later negotiated $15-per-hour pay in their second contract.
Despite this recent win for Vermont labor advocates, Sociology Professor Jamie McCallum, who specializes in labor studies, said union decline in the U.S. has been happening since the 1950s and picked up speed in the late 1970s.
Once word of mouth began to spread about the Middlebury union effort, Van Deusen handed out authorization cards for interested employees to sign. What followed was a flood of information and rumors circulating between staff and the administration. On Aug. 19, one month after union authorization cards were first distributed, Miller, the vice president of human resources, replied to the initial drive in a letter that administrators hand-delivered to all facilities employees.
“Middlebury supports your right to choose whether to unionize,” the letter said.
“We know that many of you have raised legitimate and important concerns about your jobs,” it later added. “We also believe that joining an outside labor union to address those concerns is not the answer.”
The letter highlighted some commonly cited “disadvantages” of forming a union, such as the potentially high cost of monthly dues.
A few days later, Van Deusen sent an email to facilities employees responding to the administration’s outreach.
“AFSCME, the labor union many of you are seeking to affiliate with, is aware that Management has been spreading false and misleading information in an effort to get you to NOT form a Union,” it said, before addressing what it called “actual FACTS” about forming a union.
In the days following, some staff opposed to the union left flyers in certain shops and break rooms on campus, countering Van Deusen’s points. Shortly after, the administration sent a list of FAQs to staff, based on questions it had received from facilities when administrators traveled shop-to-shop with Miller’s first letter.
The union effort has not yet reached the strong majority within facilities that it needs to move forward. There is no specific benchmark for that number, Van Deusen said, but it would have to be a number with which the group would feel comfortable. Some staff said they see the slowing momentum as a sign the effort is doomed. But Van Deusen said authorization cards have not been circulating for long enough to determine whether the effort will succeed or not. He plans to continue to collect and tally cards.
If he could gather enough, staff would then need to file paperwork with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an independent federal agency that protects the rights of private sector employees to better their working conditions and wages. The NLRB would then conduct a secret ballot election among facilities staff to decide whether a union would be formed.
If a majority opted for the formation of a union, the new effort would hold internal union elections for a bargaining team. From there, it would bargain a binding contract with the administration.
“This time next year, we would like to announce that a new union, with a contract, will be formed at Middlebury,” Van Deusen said. He hopes that contract would address staff concerns by forming a labor management committee, creating a binding grievance procedure and paying better for longevity and overtime, among other measures.
Not every staff member is in favor of a union coming to campus. One custodial worker said she would not support the formation of a union because she is worried about losing her benefits in the negotiations, although she is unhappy with her current wages. She was offered a buyout last winter, but did not have to take it because another worker on her team did.
“I enjoy my vacation time,” she said. “The health insurance isn’t what it used to be, but that’s changing in November, too. I enjoy my benefits.”
According to Miller, the college will put in place a new healthcare system this November, to go into effect in January, that will introduce more choice into the current plan.
Although some employees worry their benefits will be at risk if they unionize, McCallum said he finds it hard to believe that the college would target workers’ healthcare and benefits in negotiations.
“If Middlebury were to threaten the good benefits that workers now receive if they decided to go union, it would be joining a long list of union-busting corporations,” he said.
Besides, he said that employees would have to agree on any union contract with the college.
“Workers vote on any contract a union signs, and they would only vote ‘yes’ on a contract when their benefits improved or stayed the same,” he said.
McCallum said he sees collective bargaining as an “essential ingredient of a democratic workplace.”
“We need a living wage here, where everyone can live and work with dignity, and that will mean paying workers what they deserve, not just what the market dictates,” he added.
Middlebury’s “Black Tuesday”: A union effort three decades ago
The servery employee, who has worked at the college for 31 years and supports a union, was freshly employed at Middlebury when a series of job cuts in May 1991 destroyed a long-held perception of the institution as a reliable place to work. She remembers the day those positions were terminated, which has since come to be known by some as “Black Tuesday,” as a day filled with tears and disbelief.
The college administration has taken measures to avoid an event like Black Tuesday from recurring. Patton told two Campus reporters in an article published by VTDigger this fall that memories of 1991 have influenced how the college currently handles staff reductions, emphasizing its focus on giving people more of a choice and inviting them to think about the long-term trajectory of the institution.
Miller emphasized a similar sentiment in her conversation with The Campus.
“I can say that we were intentional to make this as humane as we could, to make sure that this was not a surprise to people and that they were engaged in conversations,” she said about this year’s workforce planning. “We really worked hard to do that. Were we 100% successful? I hope so, but maybe not.”
As in 1991, this recent round of workforce planning eliminated specific job “titles” rather than “people,” and both years saw efforts to organize. In September of 1991, The Campus reported that staff across campus were “exploring ways to increase their input in administrative decisions.” This included attempts by some to form a union, organizing for which would last four years before ultimately breaking down in 1995 after failing to garner enough support.
Those attempts were aimed at creating a wall-to-wall bargaining unit — a unit that would include all staff, unlike this year’s single-department effort in facilities. Bill Jaeger, director of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), an AFSCME affiliate, helped spearhead that effort. His team was contacted by Middlebury employees in 1991, two years after HUCTW negotiated their own first contract.
Jaeger said attempts to unionize arose because of anger about the layoffs, but that at its core were more permanent longings for democratic change at the college.
“People were feeling like their eyes had been opened to how consequential and important it can be to have some breadth and some inclusion in important policy matters and in decision making,” he said.
HUCTW members visited staff in Middlebury to talk about the union, at times once per week. Most interest came from those in administrative and technical jobs, although there was some level of support and involvement in all staff departments, Jaeger remembered. In response, the administration called all-staff meetings to address the efforts.
That union was not able to pique sufficient interest, but Jaeger said staff who were involved were united around a shared sense of excitement for what they were building. “Most people are driven in the most steadfast way if they’re really building toward something that’s going to make a positive difference in the long term,” he said.
By 1995, when the effort fell, the college seemed to be undertaking corrective policies that gave employees some reason for hope.
College looks forward, staff still waiting for change
The college has reiterated time and time again that workforce planning is not a one-time process. This means that administrators are still assessing its successes, as well as where it’s fallen short.
Administrators are hopeful that the workforce planning process will allow the institution to run more efficiently and proactively in the future. Some of the new jobs, for example — including some of the positions offered to staff whose positions were cut, requiring college degrees — are more specialized, and were intended to take into account potential demographic shifts in Vermont so that the college can be an “employer of choice for the next generation,” Miller said.
“The whole purpose of the workforce planning is we’ve got to be prepared for our future,” she said. “I know it was a difficult process for many, but for some, I think it really helped us to transform and leap into that future state,” she added, citing the How Will We Live Together review as a concurrent, future-oriented process.
Miller said that the administration is committed to revisiting any “pain points” among staff and addressing them accordingly. At an Oct. 24 staff meeting, Patton announced that Special Assistant to the President Sue Ritter will do a listening tour throughout staff departments to hear employees’ concerns. The administration laid out its plan for the compensation review at that meeting, as well as several other measures, like a restatement that Senior Leadership Group would attend the holiday party this December, that suggest an effort to reinforce commitment to community-building.
The custodial worker and nearly every staff member interviewed for this article spoke about an intangible change that has made the working environment feel more corporate, and less warm and community-centered.
“When I first came here, it was different,” the custodial worker said. “It was more family-oriented, and everybody looked out for each other. It’s not like that anymore. It’s more sterile.”
Parsons, the staff council president, said Middlebury used to be a small institution with a real family feel. “As we have grown and expanded both our physical footprint here and our global footprint, we have somewhat lost touch with that,” he said.
“It would be a real challenge to bring that back,” he added.
Staff also overwhelmingly expressed large amounts of pride in Middlebury as an institution, a collective sentiment that is backed up by data in the 2017 ModernThink survey.
“It’s a great place,” the first facilities worker said. “And the benefits are great. We’re just underpaid for what we’re doing.”
This pride seems to leave many staff members feeling hopeful. But they’re also worried that the college will continue to disappoint them. Some left initial workforce planning meetings a year ago with the impression that “everything was going to be open and that communication was going to flow.”
“But it never did,” one staff member said.
“With workforce planning, there were so many unanswered questions,” he added. “The administration wouldn’t have been able to do that without talking to the union first.”
As the dust settles on the consequences of workforce planning, staff are still waiting to see tangible changes.
(10/31/19 10:04am)
The commons system will no longer exist come next fall, the college administration announced in an email to the Middlebury community on Oct. 24.
The email detailed a host of changes to the current residential life system following a multi-year review of the system, including the creation of a new Office of Residential Life, a push to work towards building a new student center, and the consolidation of deans’ offices into two first-year “clusters.” All together, the administration is calling the changes “BLUEprint.”
The review process, which started to take shape in spring 2018, originated in Community Council in 2017, after a New York Times article about income inequality inspired the council to conduct a student survey . The survey ultimately pointed to discrepancies in residential life experiences among students. The following year, an external committee convened to build the report that would eventually become “How Will We Live Together.” The report’s recommendations informed the upcoming overhaul.
Currently, first-year students live in one of five first-year halls, depending on their assigned commons. Per the new system, first-years will instead either live in Allen and Battell halls on the north side of campus, or Stewart and Hepburn halls south of College Street, depending on which “cluster” they are in. These changes will turn Hepburn from a sophomore dorm to a first year dorm, while removing first years from Hadley, a first-year dormitory located in the Ross complex.
Administrators chose to move first-years nearer to each other in response to the external committee’s report, which said that relocating first year students to live in closer proximity to one another “should increase students’ sense of belonging at Middlebury, and reduce some of the tensions related to diversity and inclusion that we heard about during our visit to campus.”
These changes effectively put an end to the commons system, which was first established after the removal of Greek life from campus in 1989 and modeled off of the house system at universities like Harvard and Yale. The commons were put into place in 1991 and have faced major adjustments twice since then.
The upcoming changes to residential life attempt to combat the “inefficiency” produced by the commons model, while also working to better serve and support students, administrators told The Campus.
“I was shocked at how complicated the system was... and the faculty were not being used as effectively as they could be,” said Rob Moeller, a psychology professor who specializes in the mental health of college students.
Moeller has been an integral member of the How Will We Live Together Steering Committee. The committee formed in the spring of 2018 to develop and write the final recommendations.
“[We realized] that the experiment of randomizing students into communities didn’t work,” Moeller said. “You can tell someone that their new mascot is a squirrel or frog or a rhino, but it didn’t resonate with students. Students weren’t walking around saying, ‘Go squirrels.’”
The plan also suggests planning will soon be underway for the renovation or replacement of Battell Hall, the biggest first year dorm on campus, as well as for a new student center. Administrators said that the college cannot operate without the beds provided by Battell Hall, meaning that the building will likely continue to operate while a new facility is built.
A re-centralized residential life office
The shift away from the commons system will fundamentally change how the college approaches student residential life staff. It will also add two new positions to the residential life team, including an associate dean for residential life and an assistant director of student success. These positions will be filled by AJ Place,who served as theDean of Brainerd commons until spring 2019, and Michelle Audette, who now works as Middlebury’s ADA Coordinator, respectively.
The positions will both fall within a consolidated Office of Residential Life. This office, in addition to directing students towards resources, will work to remove some of the workload from deans, the number of which will be downsized from five to four.
The college will use new software to help deans manage student needs, and deans will be relieved of some of their residential life responsibilities. This shift is intended to help ease deans’ workloads as they become responsible for larger numbers of students.
The creation of these positions is already underway, according to AJ Place.
“I’ll be supervising the folks that we know now as the CRDs, which is what I’m already doing this year,” Place said.
Place will also be supervising Assistant Director for New Student Experience and Residential Education Kristy Carpenter and Assistant Director for Housing Operations Kady Shea.
These positions are one such way the college hopes to reach students “proactively” and move away from what Place termed a “purely reactive” approach. Place hopes this re-centralization will provide students with heightened access to resources, including programming that will help educate students on a range of topics.
“In Brainerd last year, we piloted a program in the fall [where] we did a number of series of events for first-year students, specifically,” Place said. “We had our first program with the CTLR on time management, which doesn’t sound like a fun topic, but we had well over 60 people at [the event] just here in Stewart. That tells me that students value having that [kind of resource] right here and that we’ve missed the mark on not doing that.”
With this shift, the administration hopes to have deans work in concert — rather than individually — to promote student wellness.
“When we think about what mental health is, when you think about health in general, it’s not just responding to problems, it’s about prevention,” Moeller said. “We’ve got all these great people on campus. We don’t need to just be in crisis response mode. Let’s start to use these skills in meaningful ways to really help all students.”
History of the commons
While the commons shape current students’ perceptions of how Middlebury organizes housing and residential life, this was not always the case. American Studies Professor Tim Spears was a member of the 1998 Residential Life Committee that fleshed out the College’s original idea for the commons system.
Spears said the original plan stipulated that each commons would have housing for all four classes, a dining hall, a dean’s office, and housing for the faculty head. If fully realized, these commons would have resembled Ross and Atwater facilities.
While this original plan was passed with hopes of creating five “microcosms” that would function together as the Middlebury experience, the plan was drastically altered in 2007, when it became clear that the college did not possess the financial means to build the infrastructure required by the 1998 plan. The last commons construction project was Atwater, which occurred at the same time the Davis Family Library was being built in 2004.
Due to the financial constraints, the college turned to a 4/2 plan, which features “a 4-year commons affiliation and a 2-year residency,” as described by a blog post written by Spears and dated September, 2007. This is the plan students at Middlebury have come to know — a plan under which students maintain their relationship with their commons Deans for the duration of their college experience, while only living within their commons for half of that time.
The 4/2 plan looked to keep the elements of the commons that had already been implemented, while letting go of the price tags required by the original framework. Though the move saved the college millions of dollars, it left the original commons vision largely unrealized.
Karl Lindholm, a retired American Studies professor who has worked in all five commons, including as faculty head of Atwater and the dean of Cook, explained that the idea behind the plan was to “decentralize” administrative offices.
“The word that was on everybody’s lips was decentralization,” he said. “In other words, we decentralized the Dean of Students office.”
Spears, who was the dean of the college when the 4/2 plan went into effect, said the goal of this decentralization was to create well-resourced communities to enhance the student experience. He wrote on his blog that he was saddened by the move away from the original vision of the commons, but that the shift was made with the belief that inter-commons relationships would be enough to sustain the reduced system.
“You build connections with students or faculty and commons staff during your first year or two, and then you move off and do other things, but those connections bring you back to the commons,” he said.
Those benefits were reflected in the 2018 survey — over 65% of students reported that the commons helped them to get to know other students, while 58% reported that the commons system helped them meet other people.
While the commons spurred inter-student connections, the data did not support the idea that the commons was central to community building, which was the intention behind its implementation.
“The impact [of the commons system] is only being seen mostly in the first two years and in a very small number of students, and it’s a very expensive program,” said Baishakhi Taylor, the Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students.
John Gosselin, a senior who has served both on Community Council and on the How Will We Live Together Steering Committee, said that the faculty head model in particular does not make financial sense.
“The role of the commons heads originally worked a lot better than they do now,” he said. “The way it works now is we have very small dinners that cost $150,000 to cater for the five houses. That money could be spent better elsewhere.”
Gosselin said three people could be hired to work directly with students for the same amount of money.
Though the college has not confirmed whether the commons heads positions will be eliminated in the new model, there is no evidence suggesting that positions will carry over. The recommendations submitted by the Steering Committee describe the faculty head model as “real,” but says that “the preponderance of evidence suggests that [the reach of the faculty head position] is limited to a relatively small number of students, and relatively limited in scope, manifesting mainly as hosting dinner events.”
Both the Steering Committee and the administration used information gathered in the 2018 Student Residential Life Survey to support the idea that the common head positions are largely ineffective: data show that only 32% of students report having gotten to know their commons head.
Spears said that it is a “fair question” to assess how impactful the faculty head position is, especially because faculty are moving beyond the classroom, in some capacity, to serve in that role. He also noted figures such as those provided by the survey are hard to interpret.
“Just putting a number on it doesn’t really explain whether or how faculty are enhancing residential life and benefitting particular students,” he said.
Even if over 50% of students surveyed reported not having gotten to know their faculty head, it remains difficult to imagine eliminating the position, which is founded on support and care, Spears said.
“I’m sensitive to the fact that, in doing these interviews and meeting with people, there isn’t one single person connected to the current system who didn’t put their heart and soul into it,” Moeller said. “Each person really cares about students. Sometimes it’s difficult being told that you’re a part of something that’s not working as well as it should — it’s hard to hear that you’ve been pouring your soul into something and the outcomes clearly are not where they should be.”
Commons senators and student res life staff opine
Many students involved in the commons feel they were not properly consulted regarding the upcoming changes. Myles Maxie ’22, Middlebury’s Wonnacott Senator, is worried about how students will represent themselves given that the recommendations do not specify how the Student Government Association will change with the elimination of the commons. The current structure has five Senate positions affiliated with the commons — one seat to each commons — and the possible elimination of those positions would decrease senate seats by one third.
“I don’t appreciate the fact that this [new] system doesn’t have full thought behind it,” Maxie said. “They’re unsure on the status of commons councils, given the fact that they’ve removed the commons.”
Teddy Best ’22, who serves as Ross commons Senator, expressed a similar worry.
“I am concerned that the administration did not notify commons senators or commons councils of where they were headed with this process,” he said. “There’s no doubt there are problems with the commons system — that isn’t the question. The question is, what should we do about it? If it’s the case that the commons system is going to be abolished, that seems like a drastic response.”
Maxie also identified poor communication during the plan’s creation as a source of concern. Commons senators were officially notified of the final changes at the same time as the rest of the student body, leaving many to feel that they were not adequately involved in the review process.
“I don’t appreciate the lack of transparency that exists throughout this process,” he said. “This report is titled How Will We Live Together, and how can you live together with people when you can’t trust them to actually tell you the details on how they’re completing this process?”
Maxie and Best are not alone — residential life staff, including Ross Community Assistant Steph Miller ’20, expressed concern with the move away from the commons structure.
“I think a lot was overlooked in the ways these reviews were done,” Miller said. “I think some of the reviews were done hastily. The external reviewers were on campus for less than two or three days,” said Miller, who also expressed concern with the methods used to conduct the review.
“They didn’t talk to that many people and they didn’t talk to the [commons] teams as a collective,” she said. “I think if they had done that, they would’ve seen what is so magical about the commons.”
The Steering Committee, however, viewed the process differently.
“I don’t think there’s anything we could do that would have made this more transparent,” Moeller said. “Everything, the notes, the meetings, the reports on the go site. We would actually send out email invites to groups, blasting out [messages and] saying, ‘who’s willing to come for 40 minutes, an hour?’”
The past week has seen little public backlash to the elimination of the commons system, but it is a dimension of this announcement that is undeniably present. Though the greater student body has, for the most part, shown indifference towards the changes, many people affiliated with the commons and their offices were not available for comment or unwilling to speak on the record for this story, and several alluded to feelings of uncertainty and sadness at the prospect of moving away from the commons system.
Correction: A previous version of the article misstated that commons senators were informed of accepted changes prior to the rest of the student body. The article has since been updated.
(10/24/19 1:56am)
UPDATE: Thursday, Oct. 24, 6:45 p.m.
Rather than evacuating all students enrolled in its schools abroad in Chile, Middlebury’s study abroad office is allowing students to choose how to proceed.
In an email to students enrolled in the programs in Chile, Assistant Director of International Programs Alessandra Capossela outlined four options students may take going forward. Students can either choose to remain in their host cities and await universities resuming class; relocate to Buenos Aires, Argentina for the remainder of the semester; or can return home to the U.S.
If they return to the U.S., they have the option to complete coursework remotely for up to 2.5 credits, or can earn up to 4.5 credits by adding a course of summer study with the Middlebury School of Spanish.
“We spoke with Global Rescue this morning and our advisors there confirmed that the situation was stable for the time being, with some slight improvements in that curfew hours are being shortened in a number of cities,” Capossela wrote in the email. “[Schools in Chile Director] Juan [Pastene] is cautiously optimistic that many of the universities will reopen on Monday.”
In her email, Capossela asked that students make a decision by next Friday, November 1.
——
Oct. 23, 2019
Middlebury’s study abroad office is considering evacuating students enrolled in its programs in Chile in response to widespread civil unrest and government attacks on protesters that have recently swept the country.
Currently, 23 students from Middlebury and other colleges are enrolled in the C.V. Starr Schools Abroad there, located in Concepción, La Serena, Santiago, Temuco, Valdivia, and sister cities Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. Most students in Middlebury programs are located in the capital city of Santiago and the sister cities, where protests erupted at the end of last week after a hike in public transportation fares.
The hike was later revoked by President Sebastián Piñera, but protesters declared on social media that the increased fees were only the “tip of the iceberg,” and have demanded change in wealth inequality, government corruption and high cost-of living — conditions many see as remnants of Augusto Pinochet’s 1970s dictatorship.
The Chilean government declared a state of emergency in some cities, including Valparaíso and Santiago, on Saturday. Members of the police and military have since attacked and detained protestors, shooting at them with rubber and live bullets and throwing tear gas bombs.
Assistant Director of International Programs Alessandra Capossela, who advises for the college’s schools in Chile, alerted students enrolled in the programs on Tuesday via email that the college’s study abroad office is developing plans for a possible evacuation “should things not improve in the next few days.” But even if the protests did quiet down, she wrote, it would be doubtful students could eventually return to their classrooms, given potential for longer-term university closures and student strikes.
In an email to The Campus, Capossela wrote that the study abroad office is considering “all possibilities for the program in Chile going forward, including but not exclusively an evacuation of the students.” Any plan that is implemented will apply to all students enrolled in the Middlebury program regardless of their home institutions, Capossela wrote.
If students are evacuated, they will be flown to Buenos Aires, Argentina or a city in the United States, likely Miami. From there, they will take flights to their home cities. Global Rescue, the study abroad program’s security adviser, is working on an evacuation plan for students and will be in charge of all operations in the event of an evacuation, according to the email sent to students in the program.
In that email, Capossela wrote that her office is exploring “alternative solutions” to earn academic credit, so that students can earn credit even if an evacuation takes place.
Still, some students expressed frustration at the possibility of leaving the country.
“I can’t speak for everyone, but we feel relatively safe and want to continue learning from this experience, even if it’s not a traditional semester abroad,” said Sidra Pierson ’21, who is enrolled at the Catholic University of Valparaíso and living in a homestay in Viña del Mar.
According to Mason Arndt ’21, who is attending the same university and also living in a homestay in Viña del Mar, students in the sister cities have created a petition asking to remain in Chile. Eleven of the 12 students in those cities have signed the petition. Arndt was the only student who chose not to sign, saying that though he has had a positive experience in Chile, he doesn’t believe strongly enough to sign that staying is the right move.
“If they decide to send us home I would definitely be sad because I’d feel like I’d be losing a valuable experience, but for me it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” he said.
In Chile, students in Middlebury programs have observed — either firsthand or through accounts by Chilean acquaintances — looting of stores by protesters, violent government response to protests and other signs of unrest over the past several days. Looting, arson and other violent tactics used by some protesters have created some conflict within the movement between those who do and do not condone the use of violent protest tactics.
Protests in Valparaíso and Santiago have significantly altered the course of students’ semesters. Some Middlebury students in Valparaíso had already missed substantial class time due to student strikes at universities that forced classes to start in September rather than mid-July. Classes at the Middlebury programs’ host universities were again cancelled this week when this round of protests began. Students have been told to remain indoors at all times in the face of various curfews put in place in major cities.
A 6 p.m. curfew was put into effect in Viña del Mar on Monday. Before then, beginning on Saturday, it was set to 8 p.m., Arndt said. With major cities under martial law, the Chilean military has repeatedly shot people for staying out past curfew.
Arndt saw protesters lighting trash cans on fire in the street outside his apartment window on Saturday night. One man threw a brick through the window of a pharmacy across the street, and protesters proceeded to steal items from the store. Later, Arndt watched police arrive and dispel the protesters, who were out past curfew, with batons and tear gas.
“It feels a bit apocalyptic,” Arndt said.
Over the weekend, Pierson said she tried to visit a friend’s homestay in the late afternoon, only to be turned around by a line of police officers advancing down a street and throwing tear gas at a throng of protesters.
“When I left my house, you could taste the smoke in the air,” Pierson said. “People were setting fires everywhere.”
Arndt understands the protestors’ cause, but he and other students have largely assumed roles as observers.
“It's easy to be empathetic in terms of the high inequality and the high cost of living,” Arndt said. “But it's really impossible for us to understand what it's like to live in a country like this that had a dictator.”
The program’s students have been told not to join protests in light of the violence, as well as for fear of possible deportation if they are caught. But the consequences of the protests and government response will not affect them nearly as severely as they affect Chileans, Pierson said.
"The way this is going to affect us is probably not going to reach far beyond our academics for one semester," she said. "It’s a pretty in-your-face reminder of our privilege and status as foreigners here. Chileans can’t just up and leave, this is their reality.”
Last year, students studying at the C.V. Starr school in Yaoundé, Cameroon were evacuated as a precaution following contentious presidential elections. That evacuation, to Morocco, was temporary.
This is a developing story and will be updated accordingly.
(10/17/19 10:05am)
The ongoing conversation about women in traditionally male-dominated professions was re-ignited at the college this past Wednesday, Oct. 9, with the opening of the “Women and Representation” lecture series.
Ruth Hardy, a Democratic state senator representing Addison County and a visiting professor at Middlebury this fall, kicked off the series with her talk, “Why Electing More Women Matters.”
Drawing on her experience as a state senator and her former role as the executive director of Emerge Vermont, Hardy focused her talk on worldwide statistics surrounding women in elected positions, the importance of electing women to office and potential barriers that deter women from running in elections.
“I started with a little story about when I first gave a talk like this just after the 2016 Democratic National Convention,” Hardy told The Campus. “I had gone [to the convention] and was really excited — I thought we were turning a corner in the whole ‘women in politics’ story and that we were about to elect our first woman president — and then, of course, what came after.”
The United States is ranked 76th in the world in terms of women in national legislatures; it falls far behind Rwanda, Cuba and Bolivia, which are the top three highest-ranked nations for female representation.
Within the U.S., Vermont does poorly in comparison with other states.
“It’s the only state that hasn’t sent a woman to Congress,” Hardy said. “You wouldn’t think so, but we haven’t.”
Hardy laid out the factors that prevent women from getting into politics, from structural barriers to personal ones. For example, women feel they need to be overly qualified to run for office, she said.
As Hardy explained in her presentation, many women face sexism and discrimination, bias in the media, voter bias and sexual harassment — obstacles that female candidates, especially women of color, must overcome but that men rarely encounter.
The lecture series, co-sponsored by Middlebury’s Political Science Department and the Feminist Resource Center at the Chellis House, aims to change the discourse surrounding the portrayal and representation of women, especially in elected positions.
Erik Bleich, chair of the Political Science Department, explained that his department decided to invite speakers around a particular theme decided upon last year. This year’s theme celebrates the 100th Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage.
“I asked [Hardy] to present because she is a dynamic local woman who has long been active in politics,” Bleich said. “Her talk was very well-received.”
The lecture series is of particular relevance because, as Bleich described, “Diversity is more than just an object of study. Institutions at every level function best when they’re at their most diverse, when everyone feels that they are represented and can represent themselves.”
According to Bleich, the “Women and Representation” series provides students with an “opportunity to think about things going on today — the rise of female candidates running for President of the United States, the surge of women running for office in the U.S., the issue of women’s rights around the world.”
“It’s becoming more and more important for political scientists to focus on gender,” he said.
In addition to Hardy, this year’s line-up of featured speakers will include Sabrina Karim, assistant professor of government at Cornell University, and Kimberly Morgan, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University.
For this first lecture, Hardy did more than highlight the gender inequalities within the U.S. political system: she spoke on the importance of electing women and how electing more women can become a reality.
“Women often make better leaders and better elected officials than men,” Hardy said. “They sponsor more legislation, bring more money to districts, improve the economy in their districts and have better health outcomes for counties and districts represented by women. Women are more collaborative and less partisan.”
Anna Durning ’19.5, who attended the talk, got to know Hardy when she volunteered for her state senate campaign last fall, and was excited to hear of her on-campus lecture.
“In her talk, Ruth did a really good job of bringing together scholarship on women and elections, and her own story of running for office, [for the] school board and then state senate,” Durning wrote in an email to The Campus. “She reminded us that here in Vermont, ‘We love to think we’re better than New Hampshire, but when it comes to women in office we’re not.’”
Durning also mentioned that during the lecture, a frustrating example of the treatment women sometimes face when they hold public roles came up. Durning explained that an older man answered a phone call and proceeded to talk loudly on the phone while Hardy was speaking about barriers that prevent women from running for office.
“In a somewhat small space such as the RAJ conference room, he was essentially speaking over Sen. Hardy, which I felt was incredibly rude and an absurdly well-timed example of how people do not value women’s expertise and experience,” Durning said. The man was eventually asked to leave.
Hardy’s talk had a lot of overlap with the class she is currently teaching this semester, focusing on issues such as the current status of women in politics and different identities of women in political positions — such as women of color, LGBTQIA+ women and Republican women.
Through both her lecture and her class, Hardy hopes to instill a sense of awareness in Middlebury students about Vermont politics and women in office.
Editor’s note: Ruth Hardy is the spouse of Prof. Jason Mittell, The Campus’ academic advisor. Any questions may be directed to campus@middlebury.edu.
(10/17/19 10:00am)
The word “inclusivity” gets thrown around a lot. At Middlebury, we commit time and time again to building an inclusive campus, to creating inclusive communities that stage inclusive conversations. Still, people rarely seem sure what inclusivity actually looks like — it’s much easier to say what it doesn’t look like, or to identify spaces in which doesn’t exist.
And so we as a board are impressed with the college’s new Inclusive Practitioners Program, which aims to implement tangible inclusivity measures in Middlebury classrooms and around campus more generally. The program, designed by Director of Education for Equity and Inclusion Renee Wells, is comprised of 14 different workshops related to inclusivity and anti-bias, from dealing with difficult student comments to properly using students’ preferred gender pronouns.
Although these classes are optional, we ask that faculty attend.
We’ve seen firsthand why this kind of training is so important. Members of the editorial board remember friends dropping courses after being excluded from class spaces. Others remember professors failing to make accommodations for religious observances, or offering inadequate support to students navigating disabilities. In some cases, these professors’ un-inclusive reputations preceded them — students were warned by their peers not to register for certain courses in the first place. Issues of inclusivity can impede not only a student’s ability to learn, but also a professor’s ability to teach.
While these are losses, we believe they’re avoidable ones. We’ve also had shining examples of what inclusive learning environments do look like — and these glimpses leave us excited about the IPP’s broader vision. We’ve been in lecture halls when professors have publicly apologized for comments that left class members feeling marginalized, and took the time and effort to adjust their discourse moving forward. We’ve received new syllabi after teachers, learning from students that assigned articles struck the wrong note, reconsidered their reading lists. And we’ve known faculty members who have skillfully turned tense, potentially divisive discussions into teaching moments.
Class period after class period, these classrooms held robust and challenging conversations. The saliency and impact of these conversations make these classrooms the kind that convinced so many of us to come to Middlebury in the first place.
As far as we’re concerned, every professor on campus stands to benefit from IPP workshops. We recognize the organizers’ deliberate decision not to make the program mandatory — Wells told The Campus she had better experiences with opt-in programs than with mandatory ones. “You can’t give someone a training that makes them not biased,” she told our reporter earlier this fall. “It’s a process of becoming critically more aware.”
Still, we encourage any and all professors to attend. What’s more, we want you to want to go, and we believe this to be a part of your responsibility as teachers. Just as doctors are expected to keep up with the latest medical terminology and procedures, so too should professors be made to brush up on any new vocabulary and strategies that allow them to perform their own pedagogical operations effectively. Students undertake their own anti-bias training in the form of JusTalks, which is far from all-encompassing but is certainly a good start.
We also urge you to take advantage of the wide variety of workshops available. Inclusivity can’t be created through any one measure; it takes many different strategies for a diverse group of students to feel supported in the same, shared learning space.
We realize some members of the faculty aren’t as excited about IPP as we are. As a result, most of the faculty have yet to sign up. We speculate that some professors see this training as unnecessary; others may even consider it part of a greater effort to encourage confining and cushy “PC culture” on campus. As your students, we’re telling you it is necessary. And claims about PC culture overlook the fundamental nature of inclusivity — by opening up the floor to all students, inclusive classrooms expand conversations rather than contract them. Students are much more likely to share difficult or unpopular opinions in classrooms in which they are made to feel comfortable and intellectually welcomed. Cognitively receptive professors provide students with supportive spaces in which they can collectively tackle the tough issues. It’s that simple.
Inclusivity also extends far beyond the classroom (even though that remains a great place to start). Semesters come and go, but many faculty and staff spend years working at the college. We believe the IPP can cultivate a more permanent culture of respect among all stakeholders in the Middlebury community, generating real progress that outlasts any one student’s individual college career (or any one bad MiddCourses review).
To be clear: We don’t expect you to attend every workshop offered this year. Instead, consider this a research project extended over the course of several semesters. When it comes to developing this kind of awareness, we students are learning too. But as the people standing at the front of the room, you occupy uniquely powerful positions from which you can set inclusive precedents and contribute to a culture of learning that reaches far beyond the confines of the classroom. We ask that you take advantage of it.
(10/17/19 9:59am)
Leaving behind your friends and family for a year is an immense decision, and when I touched down in Burlington after 30 hours of traveling, I couldn’t help but feel that I had chosen wrong. I was jet-lagged and overwhelmed, and to worsen matters, the only vending machine in the airport had run out of blue Gatorade. This seemed like foreshadowing. Had I made the wrong choice? Was yellow Gatorade better? More importantly, was postponing my life to spend a year abroad in a place where there are four cows to every one person the wrong decision? The answer was irrelevant, because there I was on a dark and empty bus, en route to a school I knew nothing about – my only friends the distant smell of manure seeping in through the open windows, and the same four Bryan Adams songs being blasted on repeat by the driver.
But I wasn’t alone for long. From the second I arrived at Middlebury, the International Student and Scholar Services made a fantastic effort to link all the international students together. Friendships are easier to build when people understand one another, be that in terms of common languages, shared values or mutual interests. It quickly became obvious that Middlebury is home to a sprawling global community. The student body is a melting pot of different cultures and creeds, and this made the transition for exchange students like me ineffably easier.
This was a little over a month and a half ago, however, and although efforts to ease the initial transition for exchange students were successful, we were scarcely prepared for the academic intensity that would follow. Adjusting to Middlebury’s working environment and its tight knit community is not easy. For many international students, the transition continues to be particularly tumultuous. As the work piles up and the homesickness builds, a dire institutional inadequacy becomes increasingly evident: Currently, exchange students lack any form of particularized representation or support within the SGA. This can and must be amended.
Middlebury, with all its quirks, is an overwhelming environment at the best of times. For everything from understanding the culture to just having someone to ask questions that seem far too simple to ask, exchange students are in need of someone to whom they can reach out. That someone should have both the knowledge to help, and the empathy to understand the difficulties of being an exchange student. The ultimate goal of all exchange students is to become bona fide members of this community of intelligent and eccentric individuals – and this immersion could be much easier if these students had consistent and accessible guidance.
Such representation wouldn’t just benefit exchange students. The inherent value of exchanges lies in our unique perspectives on global education. We come from Nottingham to East Anglia, SciencesPo to La Sorbonne, Potsdam to Freie Universität Berlin; our origins may be different, but our passion for learning – and our fidelity to the institutions that allow us to harness this passion – is certainly shared. Middlebury is our home for the year, and we want to be able to contribute to the chorus of student voices which seek nothing more than to ensure this college is serving its students to the best of its ability.
Attending this school is an honor, but many exchange students feel this lack of representation emphasizes the ephemerality of our time here. It’s true; this cohort of exchange students is temporary, as the next will be, and as the last was – but there will always be exchange students. If we work now to establish a means of providing them with the support and guidance they’ll need, we can be sure that future cohorts of exchanges will be better equipped to thrive at Middlebury.
This support doesn’t necessarily translate to the inauguration of an exchange student senator. On the contrary, exchange students are a collective – united by our disparate cultural identities and our concern for each other’s well-being and academic success. As such, we seek not to elect one individual, but to create an organization – one which harnesses all available resources to build a strong support structure that endures long beyond our time here. Inspired by a commitment to our future exchange brothers and sisters, a request to establish such an organization was submitted to the SAO on Oct. 14, 2019. While it is easy to admire Middlebury’s global community, one is also obligated to recognize the difficulties associated with the borderless pursuit of human excellence. It is therefore our unequivocal responsibility to ensure that future generations of exchange students remain unabated in this virtuous pursuit.
(10/10/19 10:04am)
“The important things in your life,” Katherine Arden ’11 said, “happen when you say, ‘screw it, let’s do it.’” Arden and I sat in the Adirondack chairs by McCullough on one of the last warm days in Middlebury, which comes about two months earlier than in many other places. Arden, a current Middlebury resident, is no stranger to this phenomenon. The national best-selling author, with five published novels and six more on the way, had no idea that post-Midd life would include being a full-time novelist.
Her plan was to take time off, get a masters degree in interpretation, and eventually work for the U.N. That path couldn’t be more different from the one she’s on now. Recounting her fascinating detour, Arden said that she worked on a farm in Hawaii with World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) during her free time. “I got bored farming so I started writing a book,” she said. “I enjoyed it and decided to put the interpreting on hold to finish the book, and I sold it to a publisher as part of a trilogy.” Arden’s first book, “The Bear and The Nightingale,” was published in 2017, and the series’ second and third installments were published in the two years that followed. More recently, Arden has written two children’s books titled “Small Spaces” (2018) and “Dead Voices” (2019).
“It’s been super rewarding and I enjoy the freedom, the traveling and making stuff up for a living,” Arden said.
Of course, as a college student, I was curious about how Arden’s Middlebury education had impacted her career. Arden graduated with a degree in Russian and French. She recalled using what she learned in class to “seed” her first novel, which is set in Russia. “I guess trying to create an authentic sense of a place is challenging, and it helps to have been there and to have studied it,” she said.
[pullquote speaker="Katherine Arden '11" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]You don’t have to know everything right away and make decisions right away. The achievements will still be there, the advanced degree will still be there if you take two or three years and just discover.[/pullquote]
On the topic of practicality and stability in career choice, Arden said that she is the only one of her friends to pursue the same career path since leaving college. “Everyone tries different stuff, everyone goes back for a second degree, everyone tries to make it work in this weird 21st-century economy,” she said. “It’s important to make decisions based off what is right for you. You can’t think, ‘This career won’t give me security,’ because, well, it has for me. Professionally, financially… spiritually. It’s been a good and stable career. You never know, and there’s so much self-motivation involved.”
Cognizant of the pressure that students feel to have their futures mapped out, Arden offered words of advice. “One thing that happens in college is that you have this sense that ‘I must hurry, I must decide, I must not get behind everyone else — the sense of a rush. In reality, when you’re 21 you have so much time; you have tons of time. Take a year off, go be a ski bum in Colorado. Do what I did and go work on a farm in Hawaii. You don’t have to know everything right away and make decisions right away,” she said. “The achievements will still be there, the advanced degree will still be there if you take two or three years and just discover.”
This leads us to another monumental influence in Katherine’s life: travel.
Already having spent a year in France and Russia before coming to the college, Arden returned to France and Russia in her junior year abroad. Before returning to Vermont, she farmed in Hawaii on two separate occasions, worked as a teaching assistant in the French Alps and backpacked across the world. “Traveling is important. It’s how you grow and learn about places that aren’t your place,” she said. “And it’s more than just being a tourist. It means going and trying to live somewhere else. Just going and looking at the Eiffel Tower isn’t going to make a difference,” she said. “Life surprises you, I didn’t expect to come back to Vermont. But I did, and it ended up being home.” According to Arden, it was travel that gave her confidence in herself and her purpose.
It’s easy to get caught up in the culture we establish on this campus. It’s even easier to get caught up in the opinions of others — on our goals, our majors, our summer plans. But coming from someone who has been in our Blundstones, who has hiked up the same Snake Mountain and found success in doing what she loves every day, I ask that you don’t take her advice too lightly.
“Take advantage of the freedom while you have it,” Arden said. “Because you will eventually have responsibilities, and then it gets harder to keep exploring. You might discover weird life curve balls, like being a novelist.”
(10/10/19 10:04am)
The fall high holidays can be difficult for Jewish students, as they try to complete their coursework while also making space to observe the two holiest days of the Jewish calendar. Rosh Hashanah, which this year began on the evening of Sept. 29, marks the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, which began the evening of Tuesday, Oct. 8, is the Jewish Day of atonement.
Both holidays are meant to be days of prayer and celebration, and some Jewish students feel torn between attending services on the holidays and going to class. Though the college offers excused absences for religious observance, the balance is still difficult to strike.
“I felt like I had two days in one,” Jenny Moss ’20.5 said about her experience going from service to class during Rosh Hashanah. “It was a weird and sort of abrupt transition.”
Having to immediately leave the service and re-focus on school means less time for reflection and can take away from the holiday, Moss said. However, missing class can mean added stress on a day meant for prayer.
While professors are discouraged from having tests or assignments due on either holiday, per the College Handbook, various students have said that their professors have not always honored this policy. This may require a student to take an extension, which could mean devoting time during the holidays to studying or completing the extended work.
“I didn’t necessarily have to make up a ton of work,” Noah Hochfelder ’22 said. “But it still felt like I kind of needed a little more space to observe and to reflect.”
This balance can be even more difficult on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in Judaism. The day is meant to reflect on, and ultimately atone for, any wrongs one may have committed, and traditionally there is a daylong fast. This year, Yom Kippur falls on Wednesday, Oct. 9, the middle of the school week. The fast can make going to classes hard, and some students who feel they cannot miss class elect not to fast at all.
There is not an easy solution to making these days less difficult for the students observing them. Students agree that while it would be ideal to have school canceled, it is not pragmatic.
“I think it’s a challenge to fit a religious calendar that is different from the dominant Christian and secular calendar into the [school] year,” said Danielle Stillman, a rabbi and associate chaplain at the college.
However, there are steps that students say could make the balance easier for them. Professors, for example, could refrain from assigning large projects due in the days immediately following the holidays. Stillman thinks that educating the Middlebury community about these holidays could help professors and the student body be more aware and accommodating during these weeks.
For now, however, practicing students must make a choice: take the day off to observe the holiday, or go to class and observe still.
“I would love to be able to take that whole day to reflect on myself and my past year,” Moss said. “But I’ll either do that or I’ll go to class. You can’t do both.”
(10/10/19 10:03am)
Sweaty students, rejoice! ... For now.
Laundry machines on campus, which students previously had to pay to use, will remain free for the rest of the fall semester. Typically costing between $2.75 and $3.00 to wash and dry a load, the old laundry system required students to first purchase a $2.00 reusable laundry card.
According to Director of Business Services Matthew Curran, the third-party vendor that handles laundry transactions, CSC Laundry, has changed its control system, and the college is in the process of transitioning to the new program. Come J-Term, students will have to pay for laundry services with their student ID cards, he said.
Curran said that Business Services had intended to charge students for laundry this fall, but they encountered difficulties using the student IDs as a payment method.
“While going through this process, it was determined that the data needed to be on the ID cards to procure laundry services was more difficult to upload than originally thought,” Curran said.
Throughout the summer, CSC Laundry changed its charging system in laundry units across campus. The result was that select locations had washing machines and dryers running free of charge.
According to Torre Davy ’21, who was on campus over the summer, one washing machine and dryer duo in Meeker House was free, while other machines in the building required the usual pay-card method. Now, none of the machines in the building require any payment to function, as is the case across campus.
Many students rejoiced in learning that their first few loads of laundry this academic year would be free. Vanessa Young ’20 said she hopes to run more laundry loads before having to pay again.
“It’s amazing to have free laundry,” Young said. “I’ve split my load into two each time I’ve gone, but I would have previously shoved the same amount of laundry into one washer.”
For some, a free laundry system isn’t entirely new. Varsity athletes enjoy free laundry in the Athletic Center, but the services are limited to athletic clothing during their season. Young, who plays for the women’s basketball team, said the washer and dryer unit that runs athletic apparel often leaves her clothes damp and musty.
“We aren’t ungrateful for having laundry, but we end up having to spend money still by washing stuff in the dorms during the season,” she said.
Natalia Santiago ’23 hopes laundry will remain free beyond winter break. Santiago said she often has to run the dryer twice to completely dry her clothes, and her bedding requires an entirely separate cycle.
“Paying for laundry would be such a burden because these washers and dryers do not work to their maximum potential,” she said. “I don’t want to pay over three dollars on one round of laundry for it to be sub-par quality.”
Cost is not the only barrier to easy laundry access. Laundry rooms are scattered across campus, and not all residential buildings have machines. Notably, students living in Battell, the biggest first-year dorm, must trek to the expansive laundry complex in Forest Hall’s basement.
Students have also complained that the machines used to load money onto laundry cards are distant from many laundry rooms, and that the machines require cash to add more value onto the cards.
Curran ensured that any money on current laundry cards will be transferrable to students’ ID cards when the new system launches. Although the Business Services office has no official plan yet, Curran said they are anticipating students may be able to submit their current laundry cards and ID numbers for the College to add value on their behalf.
“Students should hold onto the old laundry cards for the time being,” he said.
(10/10/19 10:03am)
“People are obsessed with Middlebury” — even and especially after they leave the college, according to Professor of the Practice Erin Davis. As a co-producer of “Midd Moment,” along with Juliette Luini ’18.5 she’s encountered a fair number of Middlebury fans. “For a lot of alumni ,” she said, “this is a real part of their identity.”
The first episode of “Midd Moment” was released on Monday, Oct. 7. “Midd Moment” is a new podcast hosted by Laurie Patton in an effort to connect with the Middlebury alumni community. In the brief introduction to the podcast, Patton explains that many alumni are interested in “a direct link to the Middlebury community.” The podcast features a different guest each week, including professors, alumni and other people with connections to Middlebury. In addition to Middlebury Magazine, the podcast is another outlet for alumni to connect with the Middlebury community. “When you’re not here anymore or on one of Middlebury’s campuses, directly participating in Middlebury, they miss it,” Davis said.
Davis explained that the podcast aims to “continue to give people access to the stuff that you miss once you leave Middlebury.” When asked about student interest in the podcast, she said that it is geared toward alumni so she is uncertain how current students will respond to it, but hopes that they will listen to it and see what they think.
According to Davis, something she has taken away from producing the podcast is how much the college has given so many alumni. “There’re just people doing really cool stuff, who went to school here,” Davis said. “It’s really made clear to me what Middlebury has to offer. It’s an incredible springboard.”
Producing “Midd Moment” was a humbling experience, Davis said. As a Professor of the Practice at the college, Davis sees students pushing themselves academically “to the limit every day,” but hopes that they will develop skills that help them make a difference in the world.
“[Podcasts] have the potential to make you feel connected, to make you learn something new, or to feel something new by the time the podcast ends,” Davis said. She hopes that this will ring true for “Midd Moment” as well.
When planning the podcast, Davis said that they were considering how to make it more appealing to current students, yet it did not seem like an effective way to engage with them. The production team threw around ideas such as interviewing students, but those ideas all “felt false, like old people trying to appeal to young people,” Davis said.
Davis said that the producers of “Midd Moment” want to be representative of the diversity of alumni career paths. They tried to find a diverse group of alumni to talk to about their current endeavors and how the college has impacted their work. One of the interviewees, Bianca Giaever ’12.5, found success immediately after graduating, and now, several years later, continues to develop her voice in the film and radio world. Koby Altman ’04, the general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers, spent years coaching after he graduated from Midd. Another alumna, Julia Alvarez ’71, has been publishing successful novels for over 30 years.
The first episode featured Environmental Studies Scholar in Residence Bill McKibben. McKibben, one of the world’s leading environmentalists, opens the episode by saying “I’m not convinced that there’s any institution in the world that’s produced more people doing more interesting things in the environmental world than Middlebury.” President Patton and McKibben discuss the college’s environmental initiatives, including the Energy 2028 plan and the college’s plan to divest completely from fossil fuels. Patton asks McKibben what he thinks needs to be done to change people and institutions to actively and effectively combat climate change and hey discuss the importance of individual responsibility and group action. According to McKibben, the key to effective action is in “individuals deciding to become a little less individual and joining together in movements large enough to make some difference.”
“I hope it scratches the itch that alumni feel to be reconnected to Middlebury,” Davis said. “So I hope that they can read the magazine and feel connected, I hope they can listen to the podcast and feel connected, I think it’s just another way for people to connect.”
This season of the podcast features 11 episodes with different guests each week. The podcast airs on Mondays.
(10/10/19 9:59am)
It’s week five of term and I can’t name a single movie in theaters. I check the date not once, but multiple times a day. I was in Wilson Café last Friday and I heard a student ask, “So wait, what happens if they impeach him?”
Her friend shrugged and sipped his iced coffee. A moment passed, and then:
“Hang on — they’re actually trying to impeach him?”
New students, I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that this place has a unique ability to block out the rest of the world. The space between BiHall and the Athletic Center is like our own Odyssean land of the Lotus-eaters, with footpaths unfurling in every direction like tributaries of the river Lethe. Really, it’s as though the minute we arrive in September we drudge up all knowledge of the outside world and put it in a Harry Potter-style Pensieve … which our parents promptly pack up and drive back to Boston in the family Escalade. Sure, there are exceptions, the kinds of people who turn heads in seminars by name-dropping every new White House hire. I suspect that for a lot of us, though, our best news-reading practices fall by the wayside during term-time.
To be clear, I sympathize. In many ways, simply being at Middlebury complicates any attempt to stay in the news loop. This campus isn’t exactly conducive to podcast listening (it’s tiny, and in the short walk from Forest to Davis you’ll run into at least four people who force you to pull out your AirPods and say hello). Print media is hard to come by; even when there were still free copies of The New York Times outside dining halls, these were picked to pieces by avid crossword do-ers (now, cruciverbalists have to get the app). And while articles appear from time to time in our News Feeds, we all know the only point of Facebook at college is to figure out whether the Alex you hooked up with in Munford last night is the same one in your friend’s GSFS lecture.
That said, the problem with these excuses became a lot clearer to me a few weeks ago. As a Toronto native, I was surprised to overhear the Canadian Prime Minister’s name while waiting in line for a Proctor panini press. A quick phone-check confirmed the worst: photos of the Liberal leader in brownface and blackface had surfaced and, in doing so, unleashed an understandable media storm.
Trudeau’s past abuses of privilege aside, I was shocked. The photos were released on Wednesday. At this point, it was Saturday. How had I missed that? Not to mention — what did it say about my literal and figurative living situation that I was able to miss that?
That afternoon, I FaceTimed my dad. When we talked about Trudeau, I struggled to keep up my side of the conversation. Proper noun-phrases like “Liberal Party” and “University—Rosedale Electoral District” (for which and in which I’d worked all summer) felt foreign on my tongue.
“Will it change the way you vote?” he asked. I wasn’t sure, so we switched to talking about things on the other side of the Pacific. My dad asked if I’d kept up with the protests in Hong Kong. I blushed. I hadn’t.
“What are they teaching you up there, Elle-Belle?” he asked.
Not everyone finds ignorance embarrassing. I’ve had conversations where the phrase “oh, I don’t read the news” is tossed around with relished irreverence, where obliviousness is worn as a blank badge of honor. Here, a lot of students seem to “Add/Drop” news-reading like it’s a fifth, eminently dispensable elective. If I were an advisor asked to sign off on that particular course switch, I’d remind my advisee that willful ignorance is a pretty profound privilege. At Middlebury, most of us can leave the outside world alone because we’re safe in the knowledge that, if we want, it’ll leave us alone too. But that isn’t true for everyone on campus, and it certainly isn’t true for the rest of the country.
Above all else, I’d remind my advisee that there’s a difference between getting an “education” and becoming world-aware. Many professors do their best to bridge that gap. Still, it’s one thing to study impeachment procedures in an Axinn lecture hall, and another entirely to appreciate that those procedures are happening right now, re-molding the socio-political landscape well beyond the next row of Green Mountains. I’d suggest that this second kind of awareness holds more value than any “A.”
And so it’s up to us to keep the outside world close, to search out headlines and perspectives and bring them into imaginative being on College Street. I realize it takes enormous effort. But it’s also enormously important — and, I’d argue, part of our duty as students at one of the best schools in the country. When I graduate in May, I’d like to re-enter a world I not only recognize, but might one day make an informed, meaningful contribution to.
(10/03/19 10:05am)
Political Science Professor Allison Stanger has begun her third year of academic leave from Middlebury. With minimal communication as to her whereabouts, students continue to wonder if and when she will return.
Currently a technology and human values senior fellow at Harvard University’s Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics, Stanger is “working on projects of her own,” according to Harvard Fellowships and Programs Manager Emily Bromley. Bromley was unable to provide further details of Stanger’s work at Harvard, but said “we are thrilled to have her here with us.”
Stanger is also a visiting professor with Harvard’s Department of Government, and will be teaching a course on the politics of virtual realities in the spring.
At the end of what was intended to be a two-year leave, Stanger disclosed plans to remain off campus for a third consecutive year in an email to the Middlebury Political Science faculty and staff. In the email, she announced her fellowship and visiting professorship, adding that she would also be a faculty fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance at the Kennedy School of Government.
Stanger’s official leave began in the fall of 2017, the semester after students shut down a lecture by controversial speaker Charles Murray. Stanger had been slated to mediate the Q&A with Murray, which she eventually did when the lecture moved to a livestream format following disruption from the protesters.
When the pair exited the venue, Stanger was jostled by a crowd. She suffered a concussion and neck injury.
The faculty handbook states that sabbaticals can last either six months or a full year, but does not make mention of two- or three-year leaves.
“When there are extraordinary opportunities faculty have the capacity to extend their leaves,” Dean of Faculty Sujata Moorti told The Campus.
Moorti did not say whether Stanger was on paid leave, since the matter is “relate[d] to confidential personnel information.”
One of Stanger’s former advisees, who asked to remain anonymous, has received minimal information about Stanger’s absence.
“When I asked Professor Stanger to be my adviser, she told me she was planning on taking a year’s sabbatical,” Stanger’s former advisee said. “It was only when I got back from the summer did I find out it was for two. I heard from a student and not the department.”
The advisee said the department was otherwise supportive, and they were able to find a new adviser to take Stanger’s place.
“I’ve tried to get in touch with Professor Stanger but despite sending her multiple emails, have never received a response,” the advisee said.
Political Science Department Chair Erik Bleich said the department has had to adjust to accommodate Stanger’s absence.
“She teaches a number of very popular courses in our department,” Bleich said. “We’ve been lucky to have Professor Felicia Grey join us for the three years of Professor Stanger’s time away from campus.”
Grey has been filling the department’s course offerings as a visiting professor in the international relations subfield, Stanger’s area of expertise.
Political Science Professor Kemi Fuentes-George said that the department has been able to offer more options for the International Politics course with Grey on the faculty, but that the college has not been able to offer Stanger’s American Foreign Policy course since her leave.
“My knowledge about her plans is and has been extremely minimal,” Fuentes-George added.
Grey will be teaching American Foreign Policy this spring.
Stanger has made a host of public appearances since her leave. In the immediate wake of the Charles Murray incident, Stanger wrote op-eds, spoke on panels and at conferences, and testified before a U.S. Senate committee about free speech on college campuses. Most recently, Stanger has been promoting her new book, “Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington to Trump,” which she released on Sept. 24.
The book was coincidentally released the same day that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, following a whistleblower complaint that detailed conversations between Trump and the president of Ukraine about Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
The day after the book’s release, Stanger published a piece about whistleblowers in The Atlantic and was interviewed about her book on NPR. Stanger told Vermont’s WCAX-TV in an interview posted on Sunday that she believes whistleblowing is “heroic, and a bipartisan, American duty necessary to keep our nation’s elites honest and our democracy intact.”
Stanger’s fellowship at Harvard is scheduled to end on May 31, 2020. According to Political Science Department Coordinator Linda Booska, Stanger plans to return to campus next year.
Stanger did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article referred to Stanger’s former advisee by name. The advisee has since requested their name to be redacted from the article.
A previous version of the article also did not note that Grey will teach American Foreign Policy this spring. The article has since been updated.
(09/26/19 10:06am)
VOLLEYBALL
By: HEATHER BOEHM
Women’s volleyball came up big this weekend, cruising past two NESCAC rivals. The Panthers tallied a 3–0 victory over Colby on Friday, Sept. 20 and closed out a 3–2 win over Bates College on Saturday, Sept. 21. They boast a 2-0 NESCAC record after the wins, and a 7-2 overall record.
If the Panthers were going to make the long trek to Maine, they were going to show up on court. Despite a rocky last weekend, the women were ready to take on their first NESCAC battle. Although Middlebury took the first three sets, each one was a fight to the very end.
Corley Doyle ’22 and Maggie Wise ’22 lead the squad to their sweep, putting up eight kills each. Gigi Alper ’20 protected her side of the net with 23 digs.
Middlebury’s matchup against Bates was a much tougher five sets. The Panthers bested the Bobcats in the first set before Bates stole the next two. The Panthers were able to respond by picking up the next two sets.
Wise proved to be a crucial part of Saturday’s win with 19 kills, while Alper dove around the court to a season high, recording 40 digs.
Beth Neal ’20 commented on the team’s excitement after a decisive weekend.
“Coaches and players were thrilled with the results of this weekend,” Neal said. “Our focus up until this point was to get ready for NESCAC play. The fact that we were able to come off of a seven-hour bus ride Friday night and leave with two conference wins is definitely a positive sign of what’s to come for the rest of the season.”
The women now look to next weekend’s challenge: Amherst. Middlebury will have some nice views on the road to the home of the Mammoths on Friday, Sept. 27.
Neal spoke about the team’s focus for this week’s practice.
“We have always matched up really well with Amherst,” Neal said. “With that in mind, we are definitely going to work on limiting our unforced errors in the coming week. Having no midweek game, we are set up perfectly. We have ample time to focus on the quality of our reps, rather than the quantity. Once we are able to make these minor adjustments and hone in on the potential for our deeply skilled team, we will be unstoppable in the conference.”
MEN'S SOCCER
By ERIK ARVIDSSON
After coming up without any goals in their past two contests, the luck of the men’s soccer team was due for a change.
Their busy last week began on Sept. 17 with a 1–0 win over Mount St. Mary of New York. Then, on Saturday, Sept. 21, the Panthers earned their first NESCAC win over Hamilton. Ben Potter ’20 scored in the 59th minute, and the Panthers held on for 30 more minutes to earn the win.
“I especially have been impressed by Ben Potter, or ‘Pawtah’ as he is called in the locker room,” former player Kye Moffat ’19 said. “He has been scratching together goals, not turning his back on any scoring chance.”
On Sunday, Sept. 22, the Panthers hosted Vermont rival Castleton University. The boys brought it to their opponents, winning with a final score of 7–1. Jake Labranche ’21 scored two goals.
“I saw the opportunity to score, and I told myself, ‘Come on Jake, you can do this,’ and then I did it, and then everyone gave me high-fives!” Labranche said.
Next up, the Panthers play Connecticut College at home on Saturday, Sept. 28, and Amherst on the road on Sunday, Sept. 29.
WOMEN’S GOLF
By MICHAEL SEGEL
This past weekend, eight players from the women’s golf team competed in the Mount Holyoke College Invitational. The Panthers earned an impressive second place finish out of the 16 participating teams, which included NESCAC rivals such as Bates and Bowdoin and some out of conference teams such as NYU and Vassar.
Williams won the two day event, finishing under 600 strokes with 599, leaving Middlebury and NYU in a second place tie with 622 apiece. Leading Middlebury to this near–top finish were Chloe Levins ’20 and Katie Murphy ’23. Levins tied for fourth out of a staggering 86 participants (73 on Saturday, 78 on Sunday) while Murphy put up a strong performance herself, rounding out the weekend with a four way tie for ninth overall (79-76). Kayla Li ’23, Anna Zumwinkle ’20 and Elizabeth Kenter ’23 all placed within the top 27, making it a strong weekend all around for the squad.
On another promising note, five of the eight Middlebury contestants tallied a lower score on Sunday compared to Saturday. The Panthers are back in action next weekend where they will host the Phinney Golf Classic, their last tournament before the NESCAC Qualifier.
MEN'S GOLF
By JACK KAGAN
The Middlebury men’s golf team is coming off a 16th place finish out of 25 teams after this past weekend’s Williams Fall Invitational. The tournament featured fierce rivals such as Williams, Trinity and Hamilton, all of whom finished in the top 10. Teams from 13th–16th place were separated by only a couple of strokes, with Middlebury finishing three strokes behind 13th place St. Lawrence University.
A bright spot of the weekend was standout captain Jeffrey Giguere ’20, who tied for ninth in the tournament overall. His performance is even more impressive considering he finished the first round tied for 14th. The next highest Panther finisher was Sean McGarrity ’23 who tied for 51st.
After a promising third-place finish last weekend at the Duke Nelson Invitational, Middlebury will need to avoid another middle-of-the-pack performance. Doing so could have significant implications for the conference standings, as they head to Wayland, Mass. for the NESCAC Championship Qualifier on Saturday, Sept. 28–29.
WOMEN'S SOCCER
By JENNY LANGERMAN
Women’s soccer struggled at Hamilton this past weekend, finishing with a 1–1 tie on Saturday, Sept. 21.
After some missed scoring opportunities by Middlebury, Hamilton got on the board first with a rebound shot midway through the first half. The Panthers then responded with a goal by Simone Ameer ’21. Ameer currently leads the team in scoring.
Nonetheless, Hamilton’s seasoned goalkeeper continually frustrated the Panthers’ attacks. Gretchen McGrath ’21, Eliza Van Voorhis ’21 and Ameer had strong chances to score, but all their shots were skillfully knocked down. Panther goalkeeper Ursula Alwang ’20 also held down Hamilton, with multiple saves throughout.
The Panthers hope to remain relevant in the rankings when they play against Connecticut College and New England College on Sept. 28 and 29.
CROSS COUNTRY
By JORDAN HOWELL
The Aldrich Invitational, hosted by Middlebury, gave the men’s and women’s cross country teams an opportunity to showcase their fighting spirit before friends, family and other members of the Middlebury community. The Invitational took place on Sept. 21.
The men’s squad achieved third place. Top finishers included Zander Kessler ’22 and Connor Montgomery ’20. Kessler took fifth place amongst all runners with a time of 26:52.4. Montgomery, meanwhile, finished in 13th place with a time of 27:25.8.
The women’s squad attained first place. Talia Ruxin ’20 got a time of 2:43.5, allowing her to capture second place. Chloe Smith ’21 came in right after Ruxin with a time of 23:50.6.
“I was pretty happy with it!” Smith said, when asked about her performance. “I’m excited to continue to build on my base this season and to race in spikes next week.”
The season continues as the men and women will compete in the Purple Valley Classic at Williams on Saturday, Sept. 28.
“Going into Purple Valley, we are excited to put together a full roster and spike up for the first time this season, because despite having three meets, we haven’t really competed at our full capacity yet,” Kessler said.
FOOTBALL
By LAUREN BOYD
Football shut out the Bates Bobcats 28-0 this past Saturday, Sept. 21, in its first away match of the season. The team will look to improve its record to 3-0 this upcoming Saturday, Sept. 28 against Trinity at home.
Middlebury dominated the offensive and defensive games, scoring 28 unanswered points. Led by quarterback Will Jernigan ’21, the Panthers tallied 292 passing yards compared to the Bobcats’ 94. Alex Maldjian ’23 led the rushing game with 141 yards, which was more than all the rushing yards produced by Bates. In total, Middlebury rushed for 176 yards.
Defensively, a plethora of Panthers contributed to keeping the Bobcats away from the end zone. Jack Pistorius ’21, Pete Huggins ’21, Zander Bailey ’21 and Nate Stewart ’21 each recorded four tackles, while Bailey and Huggins each earned a sack.
The first two scores of the game came from the Panthers’ pass game; on the first drive, Jernigan connected with Maxwell Rye ’20, followed by a second touchdown pass to Aidan Power ’20. After Maldjian rushed for a 4–yard touchdown, the Panthers were up 21–0 going into the half.
Both teams went scoreless in the second half, until Maldjian scored a 49–yard touchdown. With four completed PATs from Carter Massengill ’20, the Panthers finished the game with a 28–0 win, improving their record to 2–0.
For their next game, the Panthers will play the Trinity Bantams at home, hoping to avenge last year’s loss.
(09/26/19 10:00am)
After lifetimes of being told to turn off the lights and stick to reusable water bottles, it’s easy to feel hopeless about climate change. Take this week: On Sunday, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization released a new, harrowing report about rising temperatures. Rather than engage with climate strikers across the country, the President tweeted that Greta Thunberg “seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future” (“So nice to see!”). And Facebook photos of devastation in the wake of Hurricane Dorian offered demoralizing, daily reminders that we aren’t prepared for the even more immediate consequences of the climate crisis.
Still, for those who joined the protest at College Park last Friday, it felt like maybe — just maybe — we might still have cause for hope.
With an issue as confounding and urgent as climate change, collective actions like voting and protesting are the closest things we currently have to answers. At a basic, human level, participation in large-scale activist movements is unifying. On Friday, members of the Middlebury community found renewed strength in the knowledge that others were not only worried about, but that they were working on, the same issue as they were, whether that knowledge came from joining the crowds in College Park or pulling up Facebook to find friends from all walks of life clicking “Interested” on the page for their own local climate strikes.
Energy2028 — the college’s four-pronged framework for increasing campus sustainability over the next nine years — similarly was the culmination of years of student climate activism. If upheld, the college’s promises represent enormous, tangible progress.
It seems a bit soon, though, to start patting ourselves on the back.
Self-interrogation, on the part of this editorial board and the broader student body alike, is important. Many Middlebury students (including members of this board) consider themselves self-aware and thoughtful eco-citizens. Yet many of those same Middlebury students have little knowledge of their college’s ecological footprint, or the college’s plan to reduce those footprints, as evidenced by the amount of background research we had to require in composing this editorial.
That is no longer acceptable if we claim sincerity in calling for the kinds of sweeping structural change our climate crisis demands. How can we hold the administration accountable to promises if we have not properly investigated what those promises are? Collective action is crucial; still, it rarely comes about as a result of abstract or isolated, uninformed thought. The UN General Secretary, António Guterres, made a similar point in anticipation of this week’s Climate Action Summit in New York, warning world leaders to leave behind “beautiful speeches” and arrive instead “with concrete plans and strategies for carbon neutrality by 2050.” He closed the summit by providing a comprehensive overview of those concrete initiatives. We need to apply the same substantive standard to climate conversations on campus.
Once we stopped trying to write an editorial telling everyone to drive less and recycle more, the editorial board began discussing the different ways we can use our platform to cover climate activism on campus. As mentioned in our first editorial of the year, we often talk about “holding the administration accountable.” The Campus sees itself as a sort of campus watchdog, and when it comes to an unprecedented emergency like climate change, interrogating the role our institution plays in that emergency is of utmost importance.
To that end, we are committed to publishing more climate-related content (and would love to receive some of that from you, in the form of pitches and op-eds). Beginning this fall, we will be spearheading a special interactive project that will allow viewers to visually engage with the ways in which Energy2028 is hitting the marks — and falling short.
This commitment stems not only from our duty as truth-tellers, but out of our unwavering belief in the importance of collective action. For students, professors and locals alike, that formed a rare, raw moment of solidarity, even — dare we say it — hope.
(09/26/19 10:00am)
Climate activists in over 150 countries left work, school and business as usual to join last Friday’s Global Climate Strike.
The first event in a planned week of worldwide climate activism, the Global Climate Strike arrived in Middlebury as hundreds of students, professors and town residents gathered at College Park to protest government apathy toward climate change. College students walked out of class at around 9:45 a.m. to attend the rally, joining students of all ages from the Addison Central School District as well as educators and community members.
Student organizations Divest Middlebury, Sunrise Middlebury, and Middlebury Sunday Night Environmental Group planned the strike in collaboration with Extinction Rebellion Vermont, a local climate activism group. Organizers Cora Kircher ’20, Zoe Grodsky ’20.5, Connor Wertz ’22 and Divya Gudur ’21 had been coordinating the event since July.
Attendees gradually collected around the speakers’ platform, and when most had arrived, strikers kicked off the event by chanting, “We are unstoppable. Another world is possible.”
“In my three years doing the climate strike, this is maybe the largest turnout we’ve had,” Grodsky told The Campus.
Some protestors held handmade signs that displayed phrases like: “Denial is not a policy,” “Go Greta [Thunberg!]” and “There is no Planet B.” College students hoisted a banner that stated “Strike 4 Climate.” The excited chattering and passionate dialogues about climate change subsided as a series of inspired speeches began. Families, friends and strangers alike stood side-by-side and listened intently.
Kircher spoke first, concentrating on the necessary coordination of the climate justice movement with “decolonization, racial justice and indigenous resistance.” As Middlebury is situated on what she referred to as “stolen land,” Kircher included a moment of silence in solidarity with the Abenaki — a native people of Vermont.
“We are here to demand an end to the age of fossil fuels, and we are here to demand something better,” Kircher said. “We’re striking because we believe that another world is possible, and we’re striking because that world is only as close as we make it and only as far away as we allow it to be.”
Grodsky spoke next, focusing on the uprising against oppressive institutions and the impossibility of true climate justice in a society where migrant, racial, and economic injustice are systemic and institutionalized.
“The climate change and the systems we talk about have material consequences on people’s lives—not in some far-off future, not in some far-off place, but right here, right now,” Grodsky said. “We must acknowledge that the disproportionate harm of climate change is falling right now on the most marginalized populations.”
During her speech, Grodsky also asked the crowd to join in remembrance of Juan de León Gutierrez, a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant who, while fleeing the repercussions of climate change, was one of six children since September 2018 to die in United States custody.
Professor of Sociology and author of “Global Unions, Local Power” Jamie McCallum spoke after Grodsky, highlighting the power of protest to teach and to “win a better world.”
“There’s nothing I can think of that’s more ‘liberal arts’ than professors and students and community members being hauled off to jail together after such an action [as blockading the ICE Facility, or other acts of civil disobedience],” McCallum said at the rally.
McCallum also emphasized the ongoing alignment of the labor movement with the climate justice movement. He cited the United Auto Workers as an example of recent protest: On Sept. 20, they held a strike of 50,000 people against General Motors — a global corporation.
“We’re at a point where it’s pretty obvious that the climate crisis is an economic crisis, as well, and the people that have the power to transform an economic crisis, for the most part, are workers. Whether or not you work in an extractive industry, the climate crisis is beginning to affect all of us,” McCallum told The Campus. “There are all these ways in which these movements are cross-pollinating, and that is the holy grail of social change.”
Vivian Ross, a first-year at Middlebury Union High School, spoke fourth at the rally. She emphasized the onus on all community members — despite age, past activism (or lack thereof), or other obligations — to somehow actively engage in combating climate change.
“Walking out of school, leaving work, organizing a rally … These are actions that build and build into a barrier so high that the politicians and corporations can no longer scale it with their money and blatant lies,” Ross said. “As one human race, we are capable of making all the right decisions before the Earth as we know it dives off the cliff that it’s barreling toward. We are all perfectly capable of digging in our heels and refusing to let the worst of us get the better of us.”
Environmental Studies Professor Rebecca Gould then taught the crowd a Hebrew song called “My Strength,” traditionally sung in peaceful protests — at “racial justice marches in D.C., in front of ICE facilities, after the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, and in Jerusalem with women fighting for the right to pray at the Western Wall.”
“What music has done in social justice movements for hundreds of years, across cultures, is help us tap into the hope when we feel so much anger — not just righteous anger at the corporations but anger that gets in the way,” Gould said.
(09/19/19 10:01am)
Middlebury residents François Clemmons and Douglas Anderson will each receive a 2019 Vermont Arts Award from the Montpelier-based Vermont Arts Council. Both Clemmons and Anderson have been active in furthering the arts in the Middlebury community for more than two decades.
Clemmons will receive the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, announced originally by Governor Phil Scott on Sept. 6, 2019. In a Press Release from the Office of Governor Phil Scott, Scott said, “I am pleased to name François as the winner of this year’s Excellence in the Arts award. His renowned musical talent and years of service to his community made him the perfect choice. Congratulations, François, and thank you for making Vermont proud."
Clemmons served as the Alexander Twilight Artist-in-Residence and director of the Martin Luther King Spiritual Choir at Middlebury College from 1997 until his retirement in 2013. He is well known for his 25-year career portraying the role of Officer Clemmons on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and for his work as a Grammy Award-winning opera singer.
As an Artist-in-Residence at Middlebury College, Clemmons left a mark as a professor, community leader and mentor who interacted thoughtfully with students and other members of the college community.
“I would tell my students, ‘I want to know what you think’,” Clemmons said. “My goal up here was personhood. I was benefiting, and they were benefiting. It’s more than an artist in residence, it’s more than a music teacher, it’s how we as a society and as a race have to be together with one another.”
In addition to Clemmons, Anderson will receive the Arthur Williams Award for Meritorious Service to the Arts. Anderson is the current Artistic Director of the Town Hall Theater, Inc. in Middlebury. His previous directing projects include all Opera Company of Middlebury productions since 2004, as well as Middlebury College productions of ”Cabaret” and “Sunday in the Park with George.”
After moving to Middlebury in 1993, Anderson undertook the project of restoring the Middlebury Town Hall Theater. Built in 1883, the community’s theater had fallen into a state of disrepair, leaving room for a new hub of performing arts. After a ten-year rebuilding process, the theater reopened in 2008 and has been the home of several hundred events since. Anderson also founded the Opera Company of Middlebury in 2004.
Clemmons and Anderson have both been prominent artistic contributors to the town of Middlebury and Middlebury College. President Laurie Patton commended the two Middlebury artists’ work in the community.
“Through song and theater, François and Doug have brought to the Middlebury community much more than the beauty of art and performance,” Patton told the Rutland Herald on Sept. 14. “They’ve also shown us how emotionally powerful shared experiences can be.”
On Oct. 23, The Vermont Arts Council will hold a ceremony for the recipients at the Mahaney Arts Center.
(09/19/19 10:00am)
Imagine: You are a prospective student wandering the campus late last Thursday afternoon. Having marveled at the sheer scale of the Ross complex, peeked in through the narrow windows of Atwater dining hall and pestered your parents into buying you your first white-and-navy Varsity sweatshirt (as well as, of course, one for your younger sibling), you arrive at Chapel quad.
What you find there leaves an impression more vivid than any admissions pamphlet ever could.
There, long rows of tables extend out from McCullough Student Center, plastered with brightly-colored signs spelling out the names of different student organizations, covered in free candy. These tables stay in place for two hours, tittering in the mid-September wind as droves of socially-conscious freshmen straggle by. Every so often, one brave individual in Birkenstocks stops to talk to an upperclassman on the other side of the table, copying their email onto a sign-up sheet and snag a mini Snickers bar. Whatever you thought you knew about Middlebury College before, you will likely leave having made the following conclusion: To become a Middlebury student is to become involved.
As last Thursday’s Student Activities Fair illustrated, club culture is front and center at Middlebury. Back in high school, clubs were often fodder for our college applications, distilled to one-liners on our resumes or a singular talking point during an alumni interview. Here, they mean so much more. Let us explain.
For the first time in a long time, first years are given a moment to pause and reconsider their previous commitments and future aspirations. A number of us on the editorial board reflected on the many motivations for joining clubs in high school — fleshing out your Common App, for instance, or acquiescing to overbearing parents who are eager to fulfill their vicarious varsity football fantasies.
One editor vividly characterized her own arrival at college as a kind of “self-shedding:” gone were any perceived obligations to play the violin (as, at that point, she had for some 12 years) or dance ballet. Instead, she was free to follow her own, more up-to-date instincts and interests. To that end, we encourage you, first-years, to reflect on your own passions, and let current curiosities guide your extracurricular exploration. Do not be dissuaded by self-doubt, or any perceived lack of experience. One editor remembers starting out at The Campus by writing a regular film column — without “any knowledge about anything related to film whatsoever.” (“It worked out, didn’t it?” she laughed. A true case of “fake it ’till you make it.”)
Sophomores and juniors, conversations about joining clubs hold equal importance for you. Often, organizations form the crux of students’ social lives at Middlebury. One member of the editorial board, for instance, joined club tennis during her sophomore year. She said that, for her, “the importance of the actual tennis component was secondary.” She averred that the club could be about origami or roller-blading, but that at its core what was important to her was the continuity and security that comes from knowing a group of people for over two years.
The social benefits of being involved assume even greater importance in light of recent on-campus conversations about mental health. In an op-ed published over the summer, Arthur Martins ’22.5 alluded to the unique potential for isolation on a secluded college campus like Middlebury, or the often devastating burden that comes from trying to “figure out how to make sense of our experiences alone.” As many students know, this isolation assumes physical as well as emotional forms. In a place which regularly demands hours and hours of solitary studying — be it in dimly-lit thesis carrels among the furthest reaches of the Davis Upper Mezzanine or couches hidden on the fifth floor of BiHall — Middlebury students spend unavoidable amounts of time alone with their thoughts and textbooks.
Alternatively, participation in student orgs is an easy and effective way to engage with other people. For some, participating in an a capella group or improv troupe might be merely something different to do on a Tuesday night. But for others, when the sun begins to set around 4:15 p.m. and students find themselves sagging beneath an all-too-familiar February melancholy, an opportunity to leave the GIS lab and enter a vibrant room full of their peers forms nothing short of a lifeline. Many clubs, like Model UN and frisbee, even go so far as to eat dinner together. Aw!
Juniors abroad: ¡Escuchen! Vous pouvez rejoindre des clubs partout dans le monde. One member of the editorial board reflects that, had it not been for the “uniquely un-athletic” context of Oxford University, she would never have considered joining a women’s soccer team. Only among the “panting and pasty British” — her team’s goalkeeper, for instance, regularly smoked to relax while the opposing team took penalty shots — did she discover her own, somewhat athletic stride. Another editor identifies her choir as the “most valuable part” of her five months in Argentina.
And despite what you’ve heard, seniors, upperclassmen may even benefit the most from extracurricular activities. For instance, one board member talked about how various clubs helped him narrow down his career goals. We don’t have consulting or law classes, but we do have Middlebury Consulting Group and Middlebury Law. Take it from us: meeting late-night deadlines in The Campus office feels as real-life as it gets.
The benefits of getting involved at Middlebury extend well beyond freshman year. Even at a basic level, extracurriculars give students a chance to excel outside of Twilight seminar rooms; at an institution that places so much stress on academic achievement, this can provide a crucial well of confidence and identity for many members of the community.
If that doesn’t convince you, take it from the editor who pointed out that the stakes are “fairly freakin’ low”. If the walk to the ceramics studio turns out to be too long on a weeknight, or you stop attending Quidditch practices once it begins to get colder, do not fret. There will be another semester, and a fresh set of sign-up sheets to go with it.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Photos courtesy of Shirley Mao and Benjy Renton for the Campus.
