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(04/17/19 3:41pm)
Editor's Note: The below letter has been widely circulated among members of the Middlebury community. It has been reprinted here with permission. The sections in bold were done by the author.
Dear Middlebury Faculty,
Those of you who do not know me – my name is Thomas Gawel, I graduated from Middlebury last May. I majored in International Politics & Economics with Russian and minored in Film & Media. I was raised in rural Poland and had the opportunity to intern at the European Parliament two summers ago. Currently, I’m working towards my JD degree.
When I first saw that Mr. Legutko was invited to speak on campus, my reaction was not outrage. It was, quite honestly, a mere surprise. Perhaps Mr. Legutko is recognized in academia, but, in reality, he is one of the most unremarkable and boring political figures that Poland has ever produced. Why would he be worth flying into VT to give what is likely going to be a very boring self-promotion lecture, I do not know.
Leaving the issues that many students and some faculty rightfully raise aside, I want to point your attention to another one. What I personally find surprising about this event is that some of you fail to recognize that Mr. Legutko is a hypocrite. He represents Law & Justice, a party that works tirelessly to destroy what is left of Polish free media and rule of law. This party has fired virtually all journalists from public media, placed its former MP as the president of the largest Polish TV network, and daily feeds ruthless propaganda to millions of unaware Poles. They have illegally taken over the Constitutional Tribunal and the Supreme Court, for which there are procedures pending against the country at the European Commission. They did so to bypass the Constitution and transform young Polish democracy into a very dangerous hybrid of economic socialism and nationalism/xenophobia.
Yes, they won democratic elections. But they illegally reached for much more power than they had the mandate for, and, one day, they will be held accountable. Hundredths of thousands of Poles took to the streets over the past three years to protest this mockery of a government. This is a single best proof of how problematic Law & Justice is.
If you want to shake hands and take smiley pictures with Mr. Legutko while he promotes his book, go ahead. But, if you do so, at least acknowledge a whole part of his ‘legacy’ that shows his lack of basic integrity. Mr. Legutko is not an innocent scholar whose work is a prophecy; he is a ruthless politician that contributed to Poland's downfall. If you do not think that you owe this truth to all Middlebury students, you should at least realize that you owe it to me and other Polish students, past or future.
You cannot and should not separate Mr. Legutko’s scholarship from his words and actions as a career politician. Your open letter to students, Mr. Callanan, paints a very positive picture of this unfortunate guest. But it is a very incomplete picture. Students should be told that the man that will lecture them about drawbacks of liberal democracy is working tirelessly to destroy one, just across the ocean. I find it outrageous that you would leave such an important part of Mr. Legutko’s ‘legacy’ out of your letter.
My country is going through quite a turbulent time; by giving Mr. Legutko a platform to promote his book, you legitimize the destructive party and government that he is associated with. As a Middlebury alumnus from Poland, I am truly hurt that you showed such level of insensitivity and ignorance.
I am all for Middlebury inviting speakers that hold views different than those of the campus majority. But you could at least seek speakers who are not bigots and hypocrites.
Thomas Gawel graduated from Middlebury College in 2018.
(04/11/19 10:00am)
With the Spring Student Symposium happening tomorrow, all of us here at The Campus cordially encourage you to embrace your inner nerd. This sort of academic initiative can take many forms. Maybe you attend a friend’s symposium presentation and discuss their work over dinner afterward. Maybe you go to a professor’s office hours and finally ask them about their independent research. Maybe you grab a meal with that one kid who always makes profound comments in class. At the end of the day, virtually any type of extracurricular academic engagement will be intellectually stimulating and provide you with unique perspectives on topics you may never have encountered.
The symposium is one of the few occasions where we can directly observe our peers’ work. Symposium presentations are amazing opportunities to expand your intellectual horizons and learn about topics beyond your specific major or coursework. You may also come across other like-minded students who share your interests and would be more than happy to continue academic discussions beyond the symposium. So, rather than wasting the entire day off, why not attend a few presentations and learn something new?
While we certainly encourage you to wholeheartedly embrace the Spring Symposium, we do not believe extracurricular intellectualism should stop there. Many of us on the editorial board have found that some of our most memorable and interesting discussions at the college have occurred in non-academic settings, and we encourage students to actively foster such discussions on campus as often as possible.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Rather than wasting the entire day off, why not attend a few presentations and learn something new? [/pullquote]
We would thus like to propose a series of recommendations that may promote the academic spirit of the symposium throughout the school year. First, we believe the administration should revitalize the college’s tradition of professor-student lunches by allowing professors to get a select amount of meals with students for free. Talking with professors in non-academic settings not only enables students to solidify their understanding of in-class material, but also provides an opportunity to explore tangential subject matter that may have been overlooked by the course syllabus.
We also think more academic departments should hold additional coffee hours or lunches to foster scholarly discussions among students interested in similar topics. These events should be accessible to everyone regardless of individual majors to encourage a culture of academic curiosity where students willingly leave their intellectual comfort zones and engage with new material.
The pilot computer science language table is a great example of an academic department taking initiative to foster extracurricular discussions among interested students, and should thus act as an example for other departments moving forward. These extracurricular events could encompass everything from coffee hours to meeting up at a professor’s house for dinner, so long as they provide students with adequate platforms to engage in intellectual discussions.
Joining academic clubs on campus is yet another way to surround yourself with individuals who are more than willing to engage in intellectual discussion. These clubs are open to all students across all disciplines, and represent a perfect opportunity to embrace academic interests in low-stress extracurricular environments.
We also encourage students to reach out to classmates whom they may not know but who make interesting comments in class. If a fellow student shares an idea that surprises or intrigues you, ask them to lunch! Take advantage of the fact that you both share a similar academic interest and discuss subject matter related to your class; you may even make a new friend.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Tomorrow’s Spring Student Symposium represents an amazing opportunity for us all to engage our intellectualism beyond the classroom.[/pullquote]
We also advocate for more professors to prioritize student participation in their classes over lectures. Many members of the editorial board believe in-class discussions provide more incentive to complete coursework and assigned readings ahead of time as a means to participate. When the professor simply regurgitates the contents of an assigned reading during class, students may feel less motivated to actually complete the readings themselves and may lack personal investment in the subject material as a result. As such, we think more discussion-based courses should be accessible to the general student body (rather than just upperclassmen) to encourage as much intellectual investment as possible throughout students’ academic careers.
We would also like more students to pursue their own academic endeavors outside of class. Whether this means creating an independent short film with a few friends or conducting independent research based on a historical topic covered in class, we believe these projects present valuable opportunities for students to take more initiative in their academic development throughout college.
The college’s Divestment Movement is a perfect example of students becoming inspired from their academic coursework and taking initiative outside of class to make a difference on campus. While not all extracurricular ventures need to have large institutional impacts on the college, we can all still appreciate the intellectualism that catalyzed the Divestment Movement and channel similar sentiments towards our own academic passions outside of class.
Additionally, the college should host more opportunities for students to intellectually engage with members of the local community. While it’s great that much of the college’s extracurricular intellectualism coincides with the invitation of outside speakers to campus, we should maintain these conversations year-round with the dynamic people who reside here in Middlebury. The white supremacy teach-in last month was an excellent example of facilitating discussion among the members of our community that should be emulated through future events.
Tomorrow’s Spring Student Symposium represents an amazing opportunity for us all to engage our intellectualism beyond the classroom, but why stop there? Why not make the most of these four years and meet new people, leave your comfort zone and learn something new?
(04/11/19 10:00am)
UPDATE — Wednesday, April 10: Professor Jeff Byers will be taking an immediate leave of absence from his teaching duties, the Chemistry department announced in an email to Byers' students Wednesday afternoon.
——
Monday, April 8, 2019
A question posed on a chemistry midterm last month asked students to calculate “a lethal dose” of the gas “Nazi Germany used to horrific ends in the gas chambers during The Holocaust.” The test question was brought to public attention last Friday through an article in the student-run satirical newspaper The Local Noodle. The question has garnered widespread condemnation while The Noodle’s article has sparked controversy over the use of satire to respond to such incidents.
Chemistry Professor Jeff Byers, who has taught at Middlebury since 1986, posed the question in early March. Several students reported it to the administration the week before spring break. According to Dean of Faculty Andi Lloyd, the administration responded immediately by reaching out to Byers.
“My reaction was that the question was completely inappropriate and deeply problematic, and that follow-up was needed,” Lloyd said. “We’ve been focusing on the situation within the class itself, and that culminated in an apology to the class by Professor Byers last week.”
In an email to The Campus, Byers said he would not comment further on the incident, which he called an “unfortunate error on my part.”
Several students in the class said they were disturbed by the way the question was framed. One Jewish first-year, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the question was distressing to read, especially in the middle of a test.
“I was pretty rattled when I saw the question, as the Holocaust is not something to make light of, especially since I am Jewish and the problem involved us calculating how much poisonous gas you would need to kill people in a room,” she said.
Most students outside of the class did not know about the incident until The Noodle’s article was published online on April 5. The article, which circulated widely on social media, prompted the Community Bias Response Team (CBRT) — a group that responds to bias incidents involving students on campus — to send an all-school email on Sunday, April 7.
In its email, the CBRT condemned the test question, stating, “The use of this exam question failed to provide any critical engagement with the historical contexts and atrocities of the Holocaust. It asked students to engage in problem solving that mirrors calculations used to implement systematic genocide. Our students should never have been put in this position.”
[pullquote speaker="The Local Noodle staff" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]If administrative bodies can publicly shame student publications who bring to light things they’ve kept quiet, that sets a dangerous precedent for our campus.[/pullquote]
The email also criticized The Local Noodle article. “We are aware that The Local Noodle published a satirical article about this incident,” the email read. “While satire can be an effective form of social critique, the article’s light handed references to and engagement with the Holocaust have caused additional harm.”
According to Renee Wells, the director of education for equity and inclusion and a member of the CBRT, the team was not planning to send out an email until The Local Noodle article elicited a campus-wide reaction to both the test question and the satire piece.
“The incident occurred in a class, so the impact was on the students in the class. Thus, the focus of the response in this situation was to work to ensure the faculty member understood the harm done and addressed it with his students,” she said. “When we began receiving emails about the Noodle article and its impact, we realized that the scope of the incident had expanded to the entire campus community, so we sent out a campus-wide email.”
The CBRT did not reach out to members of The Local Noodle before the email was sent.
Some students and faculty expressed concern that the email equated the Noodle article with the original test question, including Maggie Clinton, an associate professor of History and a member of the Faculty for an Inclusive Middlebury working group.
“Whether one found the Noodle’s article humorous or not, and I personally didn’t, student satire is hardly the same as exam questions given by a professor with a powerful gatekeeping role,” Clinton said, referring to Byers’s additional responsibilities as a member of the college’s Health Professions Committee, which evaluates students’ medical school applications.
“It’s unfortunate that the CBRT didn’t acknowledge either the power differential or the political difference between highly unethical and frankly horrifying exam questions, and a satirical response intended to criticize the posing of such questions in the first place,” Clinton said.
In a statement to The Campus, the staff of The Local Noodle wrote that the response from CBRT felt more like a public relations decision than an attempt to engage the issue. They also took issue with the fact that nobody from the CBRT contacted them in advance of the email.
“To denounce a satirical publication in a school-wide email like this is a form of public shaming designed to close off a complex and sensitive issue to any meaningful discussion, which is what would actually be productive,” they said. “If administrative bodies can publicly shame student publications who bring to light things they’ve kept quiet, that sets a dangerous precedent for our campus.”
The Local Noodle responded to the email in a second article titled “Community Bias Response Team Gets Mad at Noodle For Making Them Do Their Job.”
Although The Local Noodle staff feel the CBRT mishandled the situation, many students found The Noodle’s article offensive. There has been active debate about the article in comments sections on Facebook, and several students have posted in the “Middlebury Memes for Crunchy Teens” Facebook page, both defending and criticizing The Noodle’s article and the CBRT’s response.
At the Student Government Association (SGA) meeting on Sunday night, a senator expressed interest in exploring the possibility of pulling The Noodle’s funding next year, but the idea was not further discussed. Senators also discussed the possibility of requiring the editors of all student publications to participate in mandatory bias training. As of press time, no official action has been taken on either front.
Senior Senator Travis Sanderson ’19 said that while he took issue with the article, he does not support revoking the club’s funding.
“The Noodle is a satirical magazine attempting to do its job,” he said. “It is The Noodle's right to engage in the type of humor that relies on trivializations of seriously traumatic and genocidal terms, like ‘the final solution,’ but I am nonetheless disturbed by The Noodle’s apparent total lack of empathy for the legitimate concern about such jokes' effect on community members.”
Talia Raisel, a Jewish first-year, was among those who found the Noodle piece hurtful. While she felt the original test question was “in bad taste,” her bigger concern was the headline of the Noodle article, which joked that the professor was “a real Nazi” about grading.
“Calling people Nazis who aren't literal Nazis has really trivialized the term,” she said. “Satire can be wonderful and effective when used properly, but there's still a line where satire loses its efficacy and just becomes a series of inappropriate puns, and I feel that this line has been majorly crossed.”
Jenny Moss ’20.5, the co-president of Middlebury Hillel, said that she was not offended by the Noodle article. Rather, she appreciated the way the piece highlighted the issue of bias and anti-Semitism in academic spaces and the lack of response from the school. She also feels the school should have addressed this issue publicly earlier, especially because in her experience many Jewish students heard about the incident before break.
“If I were to have written the Noodle article, I think that I might have dialed the rhetoric back and focussed more on the lack of apology from the teacher and the school,” she said.
In the wake of the controversy, Moss also invited students, faculty and staff to participate in upcoming events for Yom Hashoah, the Jewish day of Holocaust remembrance, to learn more about the history of oppression within the Jewish community. The events will take place in late April and early May.
Looking forward, the CBRT email noted that this event has highlighted the need for more training for faculty and staff to promote inclusivity in the classroom.
According to Wells, she will pilot this program starting in the fall and will offer workshops and facilitated dialogues to faculty and staff on a variety of topics.
“The program will provide a framework for faculty and staff to access resources, engage in critical conversations, practice inclusive strategies, and be part of a community working to integrate what they learn in the context of their everyday work,” she said. “It is important to create space to engage in open and honest conversations about our campus climate and to be thoughtful and intentional about ways we can make Middlebury a community that everyone feels included in and wants to be a part of.”
Wells invited faculty and staff to reach out if there are specific areas they would like to see addressed in the program.
(04/11/19 9:59am)
Professor Jeff Byers will be taking an immediate leave of absence from his teaching duties for the rest of the semester, the Chemistry department announced in an email to Byers’ students on Wednesday afternoon, following campus-wide outcry over an offensive question he posed on a midterm exam last month.
The email, from department chair Bob Cluss, did not specify whether Byers' courses will be taught by another professor. It promised that the department would update students "by the end of this week" on how their courses will be completed in the remaining four weeks of the semester.
The question, part of an exam for the Chemistry 103 course, asked students to calculate “a lethal dose” of the gas “Nazi Germany used to horrific ends in the gas chambers during The Holocaust.” Although students in the class reported feeling uncomfortable at the time, it was not brought to public attention until last Friday, through an article in the student-run satirical newspaper The Local Noodle.
In a separate email sent to the college community later Wednesday afternoon and also posted to the college's website, president Laurie L. Patton called Byers' question an "inexplicable failure of judgment," which "trivializes one of the most horrific events in world history, violates core institutional values, and simply has no place on our campus." The message includes a link to a written apology by Byers, in which he committed to "spend the coming months reflecting deeply on the choices I have made."
Patton's message also revealed that an inquiry into Byers' past exams uncovered "a second objectionable question," which made a gratuitous reference to the Ku Klux Klan.
This story will be updated.
(04/11/19 9:58am)
Following the departure of its only full-time professor, next year, the college’s Hebrew program will no longer offer upper-level Hebrew classes on campus and will instead require students to video conference into Middlebury-devised courses at other colleges. These changes have raised concerns about the program’s future among students who see it is as an invaluable focal point of both academic learning and Jewish life on campus.
The program’s current professor, Oz Aloni, will leave the college when his contract expires after this semester. In the last year, Hebrew Program Head Tamar Mayer — who teaches only geography at Middlebury — requested twice that a new Hebrew professor be hired. Mayer’s requests were denied both times.
According to Vice President for Academic Affairs Andrea Lloyd, the college denied Mayer’s request because the Hebrew program continually sustains a very low level of enrollment in its classes. Since 2013-14, there has been an average of three students per semester enrolled in one of the introductory Hebrew courses, which are offered in a three-course sequence.
Additionally, the college must maintain an equilibrium of 248 full-time equivalent (FTE) professors across departments at all times, and must decide each semester which new hire requests to approve to keep that number constant. Enrollment level is one of the factors that the Educational Affairs Committee considers when approving new hire requests.
Board members from Hillel, the college’s Jewish student life organization, voiced fear in a March 21 op-ed in The Campus that reductions in the program will ultimately result in the end of the Hebrew program entirely. The op-ed, entitled “We Need the Hebrew Department,” encouraged the college to hire more Hebrew professors and advocated the importance of Hebrew studies, both linguistically and culturally, for Jewish students on campus.
“Middlebury is an academic institution; this title implies a commitment to academic excellence above all else and a responsibility to make the campus inclusive to all students,” the board wrote. “Refusing to fill this position in the Hebrew Department would be a failure on both counts.”
But although the op-ed said the reductions would “effectively end the Hebrew Department on this campus,” the college insists that the program will continue through its beginner-level Hebrew course offerings taught by a teaching fellow, who is scheduled to leave after next year, and through indeterminate alternative advanced language studies and video conference classes.
The Hebrew program has always had one FTE with a three-year appointment, meaning that the sole Hebrew professor changes every three years. The other professors are fellows, not FTEs. Mayer believes that this lack of continuity has hurt the program.
Each semester, the Hebrew program offers one 100-level introductory Hebrew language course, taught by the teaching fellow, and one or two intermediate and advanced Hebrew language courses at the 300, 400 and 500 levels, taught by Aloni. It also offers cross-listed courses about Hebrew culture and history, taught in English by Israel Institute Teaching Fellow Zohar Gazit.
The teaching fellow will continue teaching the introductory courses next Fall. The higher-level Hebrew language courses are listed in the Fall 2019 catalogue, but the professors teaching the courses remain unlisted. As it currently stands, these classes will be taught online through the video conferencing software Zoom, through which students will video conference with professors at other colleges.
300 and 500-level courses will no longer be available.
“People wishing to take advanced Hebrew will need to be in the one 400 level course,” Mayer explained. “This means that some students will simply have to stop their Hebrew education.”
Currently, students can minor in Classical or Modern Hebrew, as well as Jewish Studies. They can also make Hebrew their primary or secondary language in an International and Global Studies (IGS) Middle East major, or can integrate the language into a Comparative Literature or Religion major.
The new cutbacks will make these courses of study more difficult. The Hillel op-ed expressed concern for students currently planning to minor in or study Hebrew and highlighted the importance of maintaining Hebrew as a language option in the IGS Middle East major. In the absence of Hebrew, the major will now require the study of Arabic, which Mayer believes limits the Middle Eastern perspective that the study of Hebrew offers. When IGS Middle Eastern Studies was created in 2004, it was conceived of as a track that would include both Arabic and Hebrew.
“It is difficult to think of Middle Eastern conflicts while exposing students to one language only, providing a limited opportunity, at best, for those who would like to get the Israeli perspective,” Mayer said. “A loss of Hebrew at the undergraduate college means a loss of perspective and a narrower education for our students.”
Earlier this year, the Middlebury study abroad school in Beer-Sheva, Israel was suspended, again for reasons related to low enrollment.
Advocates of the Hebrew program’s continuation argue that low enrollment in Hebrew classes is not enough of a reason for its shrinking, and emphasize the cultural and academic significance of the program.
“Our argument is that you can’t base the value of a class on the number of people enrolled, and that Hebrew is really important on this campus, not despite low numbers but separate from them,” said Rachel Horowitz-Benoit ’21, one of the authors of the op-ed and a Comparative Literature major with a focus in Hebrew Literature. Horowitz-Benoit and Mayer both argue that Hebrew is a uniquely valuable program because of its connection to Jewish cultural and religious life on campus.
Horowitz-Benoit also does not see lack of interest as the sole reason for the program’s low enrollment.
“The size of the program inhibits many people who want and plan to take Hebrew from doing so,” she said. “It’s not necessarily a lack of interest but a lack of availability.”
Since only one Hebrew class at any given level is offered in a semester and all of the upper-level classes are taught by one professor, students with an interest in taking Hebrew may not be able to because the single class time conflicts with another course. Additionally, students might not click with the teaching style of the single Hebrew professor teaching those courses.
Horowitz-Benoit and other Hillel Board members formed a committee to advocate for the program. They are collecting signatures in support of increased Hebrew programming and used the op-ed to publicize the situation. Over four weeks ago, the committee sent suggestions to President Laurie Patton, Dean of Faculty Andi Lloyd and Provost Jeff Cason. These suggestions included hiring a student employee to promote enrollment in Hebrew classes and creating a committee of students to assist in the hiring of a new faculty member so that the professor is well-suited to the students in the program. This week the committee received a response from administrators and, as of press time Tuesday, are planning to meet with Dean of Curriculum Suzanne Gurland soon to discuss their concerns.
In the meantime, administrators have suggested creative solutions to learning Hebrew at an advanced level without a professor: in addition to the integration of video conference classes, they have proposed that students attend the summer Hebrew language school.
Mayer takes issue with both of these propositions, especially the language school, which she sees as an insufficient replacement for courses, and a resource only accessible to the wealthy.
“The language schools are expensive and even if students are able to secure a full ride, they are unable to spend the summer making money that they need for the upcoming year,” she pointed out. “I see this as an opportunity only for rich kids and that is not okay.”
Mayer also finds the new virtual class plan problematic.
“Students do not want to pay such high tuition to just sit in front of their computers,” she said. During this past Winter Term, Aloni was ill for a week and students in his class video conferenced with a professor at another university. Some students reported to Mayer that they were not satisfied with the experience, and that video conferencing does not replicate the classroom language-learning environment that Middlebury is known for.
Molly Babbin ’22 was a student in the intro winter term Hebrew class. “I understood the importance of filling Professor Aloni’s brief absence with the video calls, but I probably would not be satisfied with it as a long-term solution. I found that I was less engaged, as I was not sitting in a classroom and was not speaking as much Hebrew to the other students,” Babbin said. “The class therefore lacked the social aspect that I have enjoyed in my in-person Hebrew classes. I understand that online classes can be effective, but it felt more difficult in a language class where I would prefer to have an immersive classroom experience.”
It is unclear precisely what will happen to students who are already pursuing Hebrew studies. In an email to The Campus, Lloyd said that these students “will be working with their advisors to address any issues that arise with respect to course offerings.”
According to Horowitz-Benoit, there are five students hoping to take above-300-level Hebrew next year, and several first-years who were planning to minor in the language.
For these students, the future is uncertain.
“I’d probably have to switch my major to English,” Horowitz-Benoit said. “I’ll graduate, but I’m in the Comparative Literature major, I’ve done the prerequisites for that, and this is really out of left field.”
(04/11/19 9:55am)
As you probably know, NCAA March Madness is officially over as Virginia beat Texas Tech 85-77 on Monday night. If you’re looking for a technical recap of the game, look elsewhere. We here on The Campus will leave the hard-hitting Division I reporting to the professionals because we know what our readers are really craving: the results of the 2019 MiddMadness school-wide bracket.
Coming in first with an incredibly strong showing was Abraham Beningson ’21, who will receive $150 in his declining balance. Beningson finished with 1710 points, a full 230 points ahead of the second place finisher. Beningson correctly predicted each team that made it to the Final Four and picked Virginia to win it all against Texas Tech, 67-61. He placed 164th overall among all NCAA March Madness brackets. When asked about his selection technique, Beningson said he did a little bit of research but mostly balanced realistic expectations with some personal bias. “I started out by picking a fair amount of upsets in the first round because those are fun to cheer for and fun to get right,” Beningson said. “These were generally due to a small amount of stat research: if the team had a good defense or shot a lot of 3s, I was inclined to pick them – or for bias, like with UVM. Ultimately though, I wanted to have a good chance at picking the winner because that’s worth the most points, so I went with Virginia. I couldn’t go with the complete fa- vorite in Duke because that would be boring.”
Last year, Beningson used the same strategy but placed in the middle of the college’s bracket, and he attributes this year’s success to chance. “There’s absolutely no question about
it: the only reason I did this well was by being totally lucky,” Beningson said. “The tournament is just so unpredictable that an infinite amount of knowledge about college basketball really isn’t that much better than no knowledge at all. I’m just concerned that I’ve used up all my good luck for the foreseeable future.”
Coming in 342nd place, in a tragic last place finish, was freshman Jake Gaughan. Despite following college basketball “fairly closely” throughout the year and doing “pretty average in his other brackets, Gaughan finished the MiddMadness bracket with only 210 points. Gaughan predicted Vermont would take it all the way, despite their first-round loss. He told The Campus, “I always pick the Catamounts. They have three brothers [Robin, Ernie and Everett Duncan] on the team, and if that isn’t enough to win a national championship, I don’t know what is.”
The Campus checked in with Ben Yamron, the bottom finisher in last year’s Roll Pants! bracket, to see how the sophomore fared this time around. This year, Yamron finished in 333rd place, nine places higher than last year, but said he used the same selection strategy. “It is just instinct, you know?” Yamron said. “You see two teams in the matchup, and a sign hits you and you just know. You gotta go with your gut. Last year, this worked out very poorly, but this year I improved, so if I keep going with the process and and keep my eye on the prize, by senior year I’ll have a bracket I can be proud of.”
By 2021, The Campus hopes to see Yamron crack the top 200.
(04/11/19 9:53am)
The earth is not to be taken for granted.
Last Thursday evening in Wilson Hall, 30 years after publishing the seminal climate change volume “The End of Nature,” Bill McKibben revisited the many lessons he has learned since the book’s publication. That was the first one.
McKibben, known for his work as a journalist and environmental activist, founded the international climate change organization 350.org in 2008. In 2010, McKibben was named Middlebury’s Schumann Distinguished Scholar. Since then he has regularly given talks on campus and appeared at college events, while continuing his work as an activist outside of Middlebury. During last week’s talk, entitled “What I Learned in the Last Three Decades: A First Glimpse of My New Book,” he shared eight lessons about the climate crisis and human nature along with excerpts from his newest book, “Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?”
The talk began with introductions by Professor of Economics Jon Isham, Dean of Environmental Affairs Nan Jenks-Jay, and College President Laurie L. Patton. Isham read a new poem written by the environmental poet Wendell Berry about McKibben, the first entry in a book of writings gathered from close colleagues and friends of McKibben’s. Jenks-Jay presented McKibben with the book. Patton read her own entry, thanking McKibben, whom she called “the world’s colleague and friend,” for his many contributions to the college over the last 18 years.
About two months ago, Jenks-Jay suggested giving McKibben an award in recognition of the 30th anniversary of the publication of “The End of Nature,” Isham told The Campus. This idea evolved into the book they presented to him at the talk, a collection of 39 contributions from people who have worked with him on the front lines of the fight against climate change.
Today’s climate movement did not exist fifteen years ago, McKibben wrote in an email to The Campus. “Whether it’s strong enough to match the fossil fuel industry I don’t know,” he wrote, “but it is very good to know that at least there will be a fight.”
The second lesson McKibben learned is that some people actually do their jobs. The price of solar panels has fallen by 90 percent in the last decade, he said, thanks to the work of engineers — and the “ex-hippies” who spent their time “down in the basement fussing with the lead-acid batteries.”
“The good story of the last thirty years is that we know, now, how we could solve a problem that in a certain way seemed insoluble in 1989,” McKibben wrote. In 1989, there was no clear alternative to coal, gas and oil. Now, as solar power has become more affordable, there is.
His third lesson: it’s possible to win the argument, but lose the fight. Despite winning the climate change argument, scientists lost the fight to the world’s fossil fuel elites who had enough money and power to inhibit change. Oil companies knew all the basic facts of climate change by the 1980s, but their willingness to spread “the most consequential lie in human history” produced a 30-year debate about whether climate change was real at all.
For the fossil fuel companies, that lie remains a success. “The President of the United States believes that climate change was a hoax invented by the Chinese, an idea so odd that if you were sitting on the ACTR bus next to someone muttering this, you would get up and change seats,” McKibben said.
After the release of “The End of Nature” in 1989, McKibben worked to grow the global climate movement and continued to write books. Just over a decade ago, he began dedicating more time to organizing, combating the massive amounts of money in the fossil fuel industry, moving away from book writing. But “Falter” felt necessary, especially considering how far McKibben has come since he wrote “The End of Nature.”
“‘The End of Nature’ was a good book, but written by a young man,” he wrote. “That has both advantages and disadvantages.”
The fourth thing McKibben learned is that large numbers of people will gather and do the work they are asked to do, “if they’re given a — even mildly plausible — reason to think it might be successful.” He brought up the then-upcoming Climate Solutions Walk held last weekend, a five-day march from Middlebury to Montpelier. He described a similar march in 2006, during which protesters walked from the Robert Frost Cabin in Ripton to Burlington.
In 2006, when they reached Burlington, he said, they were greeted by then Congressman and senatorial candidate Bernie Sanders, who praised them enthusiastically for their activism. Sanders then asked, “What is this about, again?”
McKibben’s primary takeaway from the 2006 march was that people respond better when they are asked to do more challenging things, because they are more likely to step up if they feel that their work means something. This is also seen in the unexpected global success 350.org saw in 2009, when they coordinated thousands of protests around the world on the same day.
In 2009, McKibben said, climate activism was an unfilled ecological niche. But while nobody focused primarily on climate change, many worried about closely related issues: women’s rights, war and peace, development, public health, hunger, and “all the problems you couldn’t address on a planet that was rapidly destabilizing.”
Lesson five, he said, is that it is sometimes necessary to go beyond education and confront the problems. The Keystone Pipeline protests show, regardless of their outcome, that it is possible to stand up to big oil. Divestment of money invested in fossil fuels has also been more successful than McKibben ever anticipated, with coal and oil companies now recognizing the financial losses as a serious threat.
The sixth lesson: “it’s possible we may not win this fight.”
Never take a snowstorm for granted, McKibben warned, because winter as it exists now will not last much longer. The evidence of climate-related losses is rapidly becoming ubiquitous. Coral reefs, “once the most enchanted corner of God’s brain,” he said, “are now just lobotomized and vacant.” He played a video he had filmed of a glacier disintegrating into the sea.
The seventh lesson is a little bit more optimistic: to have any chance of “winning”— of slowing and limiting climate change enough for human civilization to survive—people will need to stretch well beyond their comfort zones. After all, he said, the planet is way outside its comfort zone. And what people have done so far is clearly insufficient.
McKibben cited two mechanisms which have been enhanced over the last 30 years and serve as reasons for hope. One is the solar panel. The other is the evolution of nonviolent resistance. Activism by pioneers like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi serve as the foundation of the climate movement protests.
“You shouldn’t have to go to jail to get people to listen to science,” McKibben said. But it works.
His eighth and final lesson is that the world is so beautiful, and so remarkable, that all of this is worth a try. Earlier that day, he said, as his flight to Middlebury passed over the Adirondacks, he found himself captivated by the view. And yet, while watching a recent SpaceX launch, he realized that the richest people on earth just want to leave this planet behind.
Moving forward, the next ten years are likely to be the most critical, McKibben said. “Can we make a decisive transition away from fossil fuels in that period? If not, I think the prospects for catching up with the physics of climate change become vanishingly small.”
“We are messy creatures, often selfish, prone to short-sightedness, susceptible to greed,” McKibben said at the end of the talk. “In a Trumpian moment, with racism and nationalism resurgent, you could argue that our disappearance would be no great loss. And yet most of us, most of the time, are pretty wonderful. Funny. Kind. Another name for human solidarity is love. And when I think about our world in its present form, that is what overwhelms me.”
(03/21/19 9:59am)
UPDATE: Thursday, March 21, 6:12 p.m.
Despite initial speculation that his proposals would not amount to action, President Trump signed an executive order Thursday instructing government agencies to ensure that universities uphold principles of “free inquiry.”
On Thursday and in his announcement earlier this month, Trump claimed the order would protect students with right-leaning views on college campuses, generating fears among experts about federal overreach in matters of speech. But the order seems much less intrusive than was originally anticipated, and remains vague about if and how it will monitor the protection of free speech on college campuses.
The seven-page order, obtained by The Chronicle of Higher Education, is entitled “Improving Free Inquiry, Transparency, and Accountability at Colleges and Universities.” The portion of the order regarding free speech states that its purpose is to encourage “free and open debate” and to avoid stifling competing perspectives on campuses.
“Free inquiry is an essential feature of our Nation’s democracy, and it promotes learning, scientific discovery, and economic prosperity,” it reads. “We must encourage institutions to appropriately account for this bedrock principle in their administration of student life.”
While the order is slightly more specific than Trump’s original proposal, it remains vague about logistics. The only details it provides regarding the order’s implementation is that agencies involved in distributing federal research funds to colleges, along with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, will “take appropriate steps” to ensure that recipient institutions of federal research funds “promote free inquiry.” It also clarifies that the order will apply to federal research grants and certain education grants, but will not apply to federal financial aid used for student tuition.
An unnamed senior administration official told Politico Thursday that the order just reinstates what colleges are already supposed to do.
“While many schools — or all schools — are frankly supposed to follow this currently, it will ensure that grant dollars are associated through the grant-making process, and schools will have to certify that they’re following this condition," they said.
Trump described the order as "a clear message to the professors and power structures trying to suppress dissent and keep young Americans — and all Americans, not just young Americans … from challenging rigid, far-left ideology.
"If the university doesn't allow you to speak, we will not give them money — it's very simple," Trump said.
The other part of the order addresses university transparency with students and their families, and seeks to make information about alumni’s average earnings and loan repayment rates available to the public through College Scorecard so that prospective students can make more informed decisions about where they will attend. It also directs the Education Department to create a report examining policy options for risk sharing on student-loan debt.
In response to Thursday’s news, Vice President of Communications Bill Burger did not comment on the specifics of the order but reaffirmed the college’s commitment to free speech.
"Middlebury, as always, is committed to fostering a robust and inclusive public sphere in which diverse points of view can be heard, and where members of our community can participate fully,” he said.
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March 14, 2019
Middlebury and other private universities could be targeted by an executive order that President Donald J. Trump proposed earlier this month, which would withhold federal funding from any institutions that do not uphold “free speech.”
The proposal serves as a response to longstanding complaints on the right that students at liberal universities are vilifying and stifling conservative viewpoints. But university administrators and educators around the country fear the ramifications of an attempt by the president to regulate campus speech.
In his address on the last day of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) a four-day gathering of prominent right-wing thinkers, politicians and students in National Harbor, Md., the president avoided specifics but announced that he would sign the order “very soon.” The crowd responded with uproarious applause and chants of “USA! USA!”
Trump was joined onstage by Hayden Williams, a 26-year-old conservative activist who was punched last month while recruiting for a conservative organization and holding a pro-Trump sign at the University of California, Berkeley.
[pullquote speaker="Hayden Williams" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]If these socialist progressives had their way, they would put our Constitution through the paper shredder in a heartbeat.[/pullquote]
“There are so many conservative students around the country who are facing discrimination, harassment and worse if they dare to speak up on campus,” Williams said. “If these socialist progressives had their way, they would put our Constitution through the paper shredder in a heartbeat.”
Trump’s announcement comes two years after the Charles Murray protests at Middlebury, which conservative critics lampooned as an example of suppression of free speech and right-wing views. That same year, students at Claremont McKenna College, a private liberal arts school in California, blocked the door of an auditorium during a conservative writer’s speech. Students involved in both protests were disciplined in the aftermath.
Although Trump named neither college in his speech, both schools have figured into his administration’s recent crusade against suppression of right-wing views on college campuses. In the last two years, congressional Republicans held multiple hearings on campus free speech, and in recent months the Justice Department has filed statements in support of students who have sued their universities for violating their speech rights. Last March, the White House held a panel called “Crisis on College Campus” that identified suppression of free speech as one of the two gravest college dilemmas, alongside opioid addiction. One of the panelists referenced Middlebury as an example of protests turned violent.
Now, Trump’s order seeks to link its defense of free speech with the federal dollars that private colleges collect from the government for research projects. Middlebury received $4,987,440 in federally sponsored research funds in the 2018 fiscal year, more than $3 million of which went to the Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Even more may be at stake for the private research universities which receive billions annually, like John Hopkins University in Maryland, which led all universities with $2.6 billion spent on research during the 2017 Fiscal Year.
Higher Ed Braces Itself
In an email to The Campus, President Laurie L. Patton expressed opposition to Trump’s proposal, saying it “raises many legal and policy questions and would be deeply problematic for the country’s 4,000 institutions of higher education.
“Middlebury believes freedom of expression is essential in higher education and that it allows people who have less power in society to have an equal voice in the public square,” Patton wrote. “While I think the federal government could do many things to help higher education in this country, saddling colleges and universities with an obligation this vague, easily abused, and impossible to administer is not among them.”
[pullquote speaker="President Laurie L. Patton" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Middlebury believes freedom of expression is essential in higher education and that it allows people who have less power in society to have an equal voice in the public square.[/pullquote]
Higher education experts and administrators appear united in their opposition to the proposal. Even those who have staunchly encouraged universities to protect free speech on their campuses, like University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer, have vocalized concerns about the motion.
Middlebury Professor of Political Science Murray Dry, who studies constitutional law and freedom of speech, thinks Trump should reconsider his statement and leave the decision making to the schools in question.
“The colleges and universities, such as Berkeley and Middlebury, are well aware of the problems and have taken steps to assure freedom of speech and to maintain security,” he said.
Private universities already comply with certain requirements to receive federal funding, such as ethical guidelines on research involving human subjects, but have typically enjoyed more leeway on matters of speech. Public universities, on the other hand, must follow certain rules regarding speech set forth by the government. For example, they must apply the same rules about inviting guest speakers to all student organizations, regardless of content, unless it can be proven that a speaker may incite or produce violence.
Trump’s order would most likely hold private universities to similar standards. What this means exactly is unclear, given the ambiguity of his speech. For now, experts can only speculate.
Dry and Matthew Dickinson, also a Political Science professor, both think that if it were implemented, the order would be overseen and implemented by the Department of Education, which would develop rules and procedures for holding universities accountable. But Dickinson wondered if the order will even get that far, suggesting it may be on shaky legal footing.
“It’s not clear to me that (the president) does have the authority to define free speech via an executive order,” Dickinson said. “If he does, and asks his administration to enforce it via withholding of funds, it almost certainly will be litigated in the courts.”
Deciding what is and what is not free speech historically has fallen outside the president’s purview. The courts usually set regulations on speech, and have previously upheld laws restricting what they deemed harmful or violent speech on campuses. Usually, the executive branch has only been involved in such matters during times of war to limit speech posing a “clear and present” danger to society.
In any case, the order has the potential to affect Middlebury and its peers negatively, Dickinson fears.
[pullquote speaker="Matthew Dickinson" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Historically, whenever people in positions of authority try to regulate speech, they typically do so in ways that disproportionately affect politically marginalized groups.[/pullquote]
“Historically, whenever people in positions of authority try to regulate speech, they typically do so in ways that disproportionately affect politically marginalized groups,” he said. “We saw this in the fallout from the Charles Murray protest. The college reacted by clarifying their protest policies. Without passing judgment on the college’s effort, I will say that it is the predictable reaction by those in authority to the damage inflicted on free speech by that incident.
“I would worry that in their effort to protect free speech, the Trump administration may inadvertently weaken protections that are so vital if a liberal arts college is to engage in the free and unfettered exchange of ideas,” he added. “ It is far better, I think, to err on the side of protecting speech from regulation than to rely on the government to define it for us.”
Contradictions & Ambiguities
Others see the proposal as largely symbolic. Lata Nott, executive director of the First Amendment Center at the nonprofit Freedom Forum, told The Campus that she supports the idea of conservative and controversial figures speaking at universities, but sees Trump’s attempt to meddle in the affairs of private universities as an overreach.
Nott finds the proposal strange for a number of reasons. For one, the incident at UC Berkeley, which seemed to precipitate the announcement, involved two adults who were not affiliated with the university in question, which makes Nott wonder where the administration will draw the line.
“Would that mean that anyone who does anything on the university is held accountable?” Nott said. “At what point does the free speech penalty kick in?”
In his speech, Trump told Williams he should sue UC Berkeley for the incident. The public university was already the target of a 2018 lawsuit that alleged it discriminated against conservative speakers, which it settled. Part of the settlement required the school to adopt policies that would make it harder for students to shout down conservative speakers.
Nott also noted that sometimes, government efforts like this one end up injuring the very doctrines they aim to protect. Most recently, states with Republican-led legislatures, including Arizona, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Georgia, have passed laws that would require universities to punish students for protesting on public college and university campuses, and other states are following suit.
But Nott argued that these laws are self-defeating because they they limit another manifestation of freedom of speech — the right to protest.
“I’m in support of speakers coming to campus, regardless of what their political stripe is or if they’re offensive,” Nott said. “But protest is also a First Amendment right. You can’t really pick and choose what you want.”
(03/21/19 9:56am)
Alongside drinking crappy beer and “finding yourself,” it is an American college tradition to be jaded about our country. I am no exception. I am a jaded, beer-drinking American college student trying to find himself. So, when it was time to go abroad, I was ready. I did not want to hear about the shutdown. I did not want to hear about an election still two years away. I escaped to Irkutsk, a medium-sized city deep in Russia’s Siberia.
It was the perfect to place to go. I am meeting a people that fearlessly battle frigid temperatures and possess warm personalities that blossom over a cup of tea. I am learning a beautifully complex language that has both amazed and humbled me. I recently saw the stunning, frozen expanse of Lake Baikal — a true natural wonder. But the most surprising part is how I am learning a lot about America, too. I am learning to appreciate it. This is what’s been in my head:
My car. Americans use cars for everything. Whether it be going to work, school, or Starbucks, there is almost always a car involved. In Irkutsk, public transportation reigns supreme, and it works well. Public busses and trams move tens of thousands of people everywhere around the city, every day. My personal favorite is the marshutka, which is a small van that weaves through traffic at dangerously high speeds, without seatbelts. Marshutkas during rush hour feel like Tavern parties on the first weekend of school, except everyone is completely silent. And if you want to get off, you must break the silence and yell out your stop. Awkward. But after a while, I began to miss my car. That feeling when you get to your car after a long day is irreplaceable. It is an “almost home” feeling that means “this is my metal box and I am safe inside of it.” Throw some friends into the backseat, roll down the windows and turn up the music and you have a distinctly American experience. I admittedly kinda miss my nerdy Honda CRV.
The American College experience. College in Russia is a world away. Most Russian students grow up and go to college in the same city they were born in. This brings a welcoming sense of comfort in a challenging time of life. Mom, dad, brother, sister, and the dog are not far away. Most students don’t live in dorms and go home after class instead, so the idea of college being more than just academics is almost nonexistent. For most Americans, it is the opposite. College is the capstone of our teenage angst. We get to leave high school and our hometown behind, so we can reinvent ourselves hundreds of miles away. This means our campus takes on a whole different meaning. Middlebury is more than just a school; it’s a place where we live, laugh, cry and fall in love. We celebrate life and learning together for four years and complain about to-go containers while we’re at it. A very American experience, indeed.
That quirky American spirit. It is well-known that Americans, especially young ones, are incredibly optimistic about their ability to shape their futures. Optimists say it is admirable. Pessimists say it is naive. My Russian friends don’t share the same mindset. They are very realistic and pragmatic about things. They often accept the status quo and work with it. They may not plan to change the world, but they will do what they can, given the constraints. I know I share a similar mindset. Maybe that’s why we get along. But that youthful American energy that wants to change the future is still something that I admire. And it is something I should pay more attention to. Just think about Middlebury. A dedicated commitment to tackling climate change by generations of Middkids is the reason why we are carbon neutral. It is why Middkids actively try to change their lifestyles to fight climate change. I always thought this American energy was naïve. But maybe I’ve changed my mind because it actually does deliver change.
There are plenty of reasons to be frustrated about America. And we should be. Being content with the status quo is not a part of that quirky American spirit that wants to change the world. But my time abroad has convinced me that there are many things to be thankful for. Living in a small campus community dedicated to learning both in and outside of the classroom is something you don’t see often outside of America. Blazing down the highway in a big SUV with the windows down, music up and the company of friends is a distinctly American experience. So, go study abroad and learn a new language and a completely different culture. You might learn something about America, too.
(03/21/19 9:54am)
At most colleges and universities, professional admissions officers deliver information sessions to prospective students and their families. Not so at Middlebury, where each year, eight seniors are tasked with serving as the face of the college to the more than 10,000 visitors that come to campus.
The senior fellows program, founded by Dean of Admissions Greg Buckles, was originally created to fill a staffing shortage created by traveling admissions officers.
“In a nutshell, the senior fellows are the group of seniors who basically are the main public relations agents at the college for the admissions office,” said Sam Prouty, associate director of admissions and the supervisor of the fellowship program. “The public can hear directly from someone who is about to get out of here who is an example of what Middlebury education might look like. It almost feels like they are living the life of a Middkid for a day.”
In addition to leading hour-long information sessions, senior fellows are responsible for working at open house events, performing administrative duties and assisting admissions with various programs and projects. They are given flexibility in the information they choose to share and represent a diverse cross-section of the student body — an intentional effort on the part of the Admissions Office.
“We want a group of people who, added up, represent as much of the college as possible,” Prouty said. “We don’t want them all to be neuroscience majors and we don’t want them all to be cross country runners.”
[pullquote speaker="Senior Fellow Kahari Blue ’19" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I’m really honest about Midd in my sessions. I don’t sugarcoat things that don’t need to be sugar coated, and I don’t lie about some of the college’s more negative characteristics.[/pullquote]
“I’m really honest about Midd in my sessions,” said Senior Fellow Kahari Blue ’19. “I don’t sugarcoat things that don’t need to be sugar coated, and I don’t lie about some of the college’s more negative characteristics. But my audiences seem to love that.”
Separately, Blue worked with the Institutional Diversity Committee of the SGA to create a Student Ambassador program. The program allows students from underrepresented communities to give short information sessions at local high schools when they are home over breaks.
“I have met many wide-eyed, ambitious high school students who are so enthusiastic about joining this community, which makes me optimistic the student body will be in good hands when I leave in a couple of months,” Blue said.
Both Blue and Hollie Haigh ’19, also a fellow, said that participating in the fellowship improved their public speaking skills. They also enjoy helping to plan programs like Preview Days and Discover Middlebury, which allows high school seniors from traditionally under-represented groups to visit Middlebury.
“To have your say in how certain programs or events are going to work is cool because we are the current students and we are influencing what the next generation of students are going to be involved in or be interested in,” Haigh said. “It feels very genuine from our part.”
[pullquote speaker="Senior Fellow Hollie Haigh ’19" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]To have your say in how certain programs or events are going to work is cool because we are the current students and we are influencing what the next generation of students are going to be involved in or be interested in.[/pullquote]
Last Friday, Haigh gave an information session to a school group of about 30 students and their teacher who drove 1,500 miles from Arkansas to tour various East Coast schools. Haigh said she enjoyed connecting with prospective students and sharing anecdotes from her time at Middlebury, including her misadventures from study abroad in Uruguay when she fell off a bus and hurt her ankle.
Teddy Gold ’16 said that the skills he learned as a Senior Fellow have been relevant in his career.
“The program ... stands out as some of the best program management I have experienced in the few jobs I’ve had out of college,” Gold wrote in an email to former supervisor Prouty, which was shared with The Campus. “For me, (it) was a year-long crash course in public speaking, narrative storytelling, and persuasive communication,”
The feedback from visitors has been positive.
“We have heard overwhelmingly that people enjoy connecting with students,” Prouty said. “I think it feels more topical and up to date to hear from somebody who is literally in the midst of a job search about where they are and what the CCI (Center for Careers and Internships) is doing to help them conduct that search.”
Members of the class of 2020 and 2020.5 who are interested in being a Senior Fellow can apply online at the Student Employment Office Website. The application is due this Sunday, March 24. Students can email Prouty with questions about the paid fellowship at sprouty@middlebury.edu.
(03/14/19 10:00am)
We would like to commend the Map Project created by It Happens Here (IHH) as a crucial step toward increased awareness of sexual assault and harassment on our campus. While the number of incidents represented on the map may come as no surprise to some students, the map is nonetheless an important call to rally the Middlebury community against rape culture. It also demonstrates a clear need for additional preventative measures to protect students from assault and harassment.
The concept for the Map Project is simple: an aerial view of Middlebury’s campus populated with a series of red dots, each one representing an instance of sexual assault or sexual harassment that has occurred on campus. To populate the map, students anonymously submitted data about instances of assault and harassment to IHH through a go-link posted last fall. By offering anonymity, IHH empowered survivors to share their experiences without losing their privacy or having to endure the process of formally reporting traumatic experiences.
The largest concentrations of red dots on the map appear in notoriously problematic buildings on campus, including Battell and Atwater Halls A and B, where athletic teams often host open parties. Since many parties on Middlebury’s campus are closed, Atwater parties are often the default social space for first-years who don’t have alternatives on weekend nights. It seems likely that the combination of an upperclassman living space and first-year partygoers contributes to a predatory sexual environment. Notably, the space with the second-largest number of red dots is Battell, a first-year dorm. This suggests that the online training intended to teach incoming students about consent and discourage them from committing sexual assault and harassment is not as successful as it ought to be in protecting first-years from assault and harassment by their peers.
Outside of residential and party spaces, even academic locations like Twilight and Axinn contain red dots, revealing just how pervasive sexual assault and harassment is at the college. If students are unable to occupy the spaces on campus that are explicitly devoted to education without fearing assault or harassment, then Middlebury is failing to fulfill its most basic purpose: to be an environment conducive to learning.
Currently, the majority of on-campus resources available to assault survivors are student-led, such as SPECS, MiddSafe, the SGA’s Sexual and Relationship Respect Committee (SRR) and IHH. While we commend these organizations for their work, we also recognize a clear need for additional administrative support to more effectively address the issue of campus-wide sexual misconduct.
We ask that the administration take the Map Project as evidence that the Green Dot sexual assault prevention program is limited in what it can accomplish. Although Green Dot’s bystander awareness training initiatives are an important first step, its organizers would likely be the first to admit that it does not change the culture at the heart of sexual assault and harassment. And the fact that the vast majority of the map’s dots appear in social spaces suggests that even when bystanders are present near instances of sexual assault, they do not reliably intervene. A real social shift needs to occur in order for cases of sexual assault and harassment to approach zero. Students may not always know which of their friends have sexually assaulted or harassed others, but many know which of their friends behave “badly” at parties or demonstrate unhealthy attitudes about sex and relationships behind closed doors. Those students are the ones most in need of productive conversations with their friends about consent and respect. Bystander intervention can help in potentially dangerous situations, but difficult conversations among friends — and the absolute social unacceptability of harassment and assault — will be required to end the minimization of consent and trivialization of assault and harassment that contribute to rape culture.
We recommend that the college implement a new anti-sexual assault training program that requires students to learn the nuances of sexual harassment and assault in-person rather than online. The current electronic educational program students undergo prior to their first year is too easy for a student to click through without internalizing its message.
As a more immediate measure, we also think the new program could place a greater emphasis on the punitive consequences of committing assault. Perhaps if more students understood and feared the disciplinary repercussions of sexual violations, the overall number of incidents would decrease, at least in the short term.
Of course, emphasizing the consequences of committing sexual assault or harassment will be meaningless if the college does not make the process of reporting less difficult. Some students who report their experiences of sexual assault become so overwhelmed or distraught during the process that they simply leave Middlebury. While we know there are no easy ways of changing this system, we know that the more intimidating this system is, the more difficult it will be for students to come forward.
We also recommend that the administration explore the option of updating the college’s weekend programming to provide students with additional options other than drinking. Middlebury’s isolated location means that weekend activities for students are quite limited, oftentimes encouraging a party culture based on binge drinking. Programs like the free Friday film are a good start, and we think additional programming on Friday and Saturday nights could give students alternatives to drinking heavily and heading to Atwater.
We would also like first-years to have more opportunities to host their own parties rather than constantly being shuffled into upperclassman environments. First-year students should have more room to party among themselves to properly acclimate to college rather than immediately jumping into older, potentially more dangerous settings.
The college has often prided itself on its relatively low number of sexual assault and harassment reports as documented in its annual safety reports. But these statistics are misleading — the majority of sexual assaults on this campus go entirely unreported, which means that even IHH’s Map Project is not a complete tally of on-campus sexual misconduct. We hope that IHH’s map has revealed the extent of on-campus misconduct to the Middlebury community, and that meaningful institutional and cultural progress follow as a result.
(03/14/19 9:59am)
Staff at the Middlebury Snow Bowl and Rikert Nordic Center just made skiing twice as affordable for students.
Administrators at both ski sites decided in late February to cut pass prices in half, according to an email sent to students on March 2. Under the new pricing plan, a season pass at the Snow Bowl now costs $97, down from $210, and season passes at Rikert go for $60 (previously $120). Prices for day passes were reduced as well, down to $20 from $50 at the Snow Bowl and $8.50 from $17 at Rikert. Per the terms of the Bowl’s annual March sale, those who purchase season passes between now and the end of the month will be able to use them for next year’s full ski season.
The reduced-price passes are available exclusively to Middlebury College students, a demographic staff hope to draw to the ski areas in greater numbers than have visited in recent years.
“If we have the same revenue with twice the amount of people on campus excited about what we’re doing, that’s a great thing,” said Mike Hussey, director at Rikert and the Snow Bowl. “That’s worth it for me to reduce the price to a more reasonable level.”
The price cuts have been already yielded positive results. Last year, Snow Bowl staff sold 40 season passes during its March sale, according to Hussey. They need to sell 90 March sale season passes this year for the price cut plan to be financially lucrative. As of March 11, they had already sold 70.
The decision to cut prices sprang from years of declining pass sales at the Bowl and a desire to reinvigorate student participation in the exclusively college-owned and operated ski area, one of only two of its kind in the northeastern U.S. alongside the Dartmouth Skiway. Season pass sales at the Bowl have plummeted steadily over the past decade-and-a-half, Hussey said. During the 2004-2005 ski season the Bowl sold 800 season passes; by the 2017-2018 year, that number had declined to 400.
That drop in sales over that period coincided with pricing trends at Sugarbush Resort, according to Hussey. For the past few years a season pass at Sugarbush went for the same price — around $210 — as passes at the Bowl. It made sense, Hussey realized, that Middlebury College students were spending their money on passes at the larger ski area.
But pass prices shouldn’t stand in the way of students skiing at their college’s mountain, administrators agreed.
“Students at Middlebury shouldn’t feel like they would get a better deal financially skiing somewhere else than at their own mountain,” said Ski Patrol director Sean Gryzb. “We want to populate the bowl with as many students as we can, and that’s worth the price reduction.”
Rather than setting the new Snow Bowl pass price at an even $100, Hussey, Gryzb and other administrators settled on $97 as a way to recognize next year’s winter carnival, which will be the 97th of its kind hosted at the Snow Bowl.
“That’ll tie in a little pride, hopefully,” Hussey said. “Winter carnival is one of these incredibly unique events that a lot of ski areas don’t have the way Middlebury does, and we want to recognize it.”
Philip Klinck ‘20, a member of the Bowl’s student ski patrol, conducted a survey along with fellow ski patroller Sam Scatchard ‘20 that asked students about barriers keeping them from skiing at the Bowl. The survey asked students to name their ideal Snow Bowl pass price, and the median response fell around $100, Klinck said. He and Scatchard presented the results of their survey to Hussey and Gryzb several days after the new price plan had been decided upon, confirming the upside of the new $97 price.
“Skiing is a sport with incredibly high barriers to entry,” Klinck wrote in an email to The Campus. “Ticket pricing makes up only a small portion of what keeps the majority of Middlebury students off the slopes, but it this change is definitely a step in the right direction and is in line with Middlebury’s larger commitment to making all aspects of campus accessible to all students.”
Other initiatives to make the Bowl more affordable include a scholarship program the Bowl launched this January to help subsidize costs for students learning to ski.
Ultimately, Gryzb and Hussey hope that students will take full advantage of the ski sites they have access to during their time at Middlebury. The Bowl’s staff is eager to attract students, skiers and non-skiers alike.
“We’re open and willing to work with all kinds of events and activities and recreation for year-round use of the Snow Bowl,” Gryzb said. “If students are interested in having specific events here, they should reach out to us directly and give us ideas. We actively want to attract and retain student patronage up here. Lay it on us.”
Hussey is saddened, he said, when he meets seniors visiting the Snow Bowl for the first time. Though he doesn’t expect every Middlebury student to leave the college a serious skier, he hope that all students at least learn to ski in the space that belongs to them.
“This is a mountain for the kids,” he said of the Snow Bowl. “This is a unique space, the college owns it, and we want to help students take full advantage of it.”
(03/14/19 9:58am)
The Hillcrest Orchard was filled to capacity for the “White Allies: It’s Your Turn” meeting last Thursday evening, with students lining the windowsills and crowding onto the floor as organizers Treasure Brooks ’21 and Wengel Kifle ’20 spoke about the need to eliminate racial violence from the Middlebury curriculum. [pullquote speaker="Treasure Brooks ’21" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]The academic institution is the greatest mobilizer of white supremacy.[/pullquote]
“Repeat after me,” Brooks told the crowd, “the academic institution is the greatest mobilizer of white supremacy.” Attendees echoed her words. Later, asked how she came up with the phrase, she said, “It’s just the truth.”
Promoted as an opportunity for white students, particularly those who oppose campus inequality but rarely speak up outside the classroom, to learn about advocating for racial equity, “White Allies” offered white students a glimpse into the social and academic difficulties faced by students of color. Brooks, who is black, described Middlebury as a site of colonial indoctrination, and said that the first step toward being on the right side of history is to decolonize the curriculum by incorporating diverse viewpoints that are often neglected by academia.
“Decolonizing the curriculum, I think, is to intentionally teach different authors and teach from perspectives that are non-western and non-white,” Brooks said. Most of the academic content used in Middlebury’s courses was produced in colonial and white supremacist systems, she said, and the intentional addition of different perspectives to curricula makes the context more complete.
“It’s not just adding in new voices,” said Renee Wells, director of education for equity and inclusion. “It’s adding in new voices that can name the ways in which our historical modes of thinking are oppressive.”
The event was completely student-run, but Wells described herself as a sounding board for student concerns, including those recently put forth by Brooks and Kifle regarding campus climate and curriculum.
During the meeting, Brooks referred to Carr Hall, which houses the Anderson Freeman Center, as a space for students of color. One white student, seated on the floor in the back corner of the room, turned to the person beside her, and whispered, “What’s Carr Hall?” The other student, also white, just shook her head.
At the end of the meeting, the presenters had participants break into groups by academic department and then passed out petitions, urging students to approach professors about the need for Middlebury to undergo an institutional process of academic decolonization, and to request that faculty members sign on in support.
The meeting organizers began co-writing the petition the day after Brooks served as guest discussion leader for Middleground, a new student group created as a platform at the end of last year for students to share personal stories about the challenges they face at Middlebury. Brooks, a History major, told The Campus about a STEM major who spoke at Middleground and started to cry while describing an experience with intolerance in the classroom, and the profound effect it had on her own attitude toward college academics.
[pullquote speaker="Treasure Brooks ’21" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]The violence we experience in the classrooms is truly across disciplines.[/pullquote]
“The violence we experience in the classrooms is truly across disciplines,” Brooks said.
Changing the social climate on campus is a complex endeavor, but Brooks and Kifle see expanding diversity within curricula as a goal that is both critical and attainable. Brooks read the college’s mission statement aloud during the meeting, emphasizing its claim to prepare students to “contribute to their communities, and address the world’s most challenging problems.”
“Whose community are we learning how to help, to engage with?” she said. “Whose?”
Most Middlebury students would describe themselves as allies, Kifle, who is also black, said in an interview with the Campus. But she noted that white students lack the double consciousness held by students of color and, as a result, frequently don’t realize that they are not getting the entire perspective. Expanding the curriculum, she said, helps everyone.
“It’s not that people of color need this more,” Brooks said. “The chasm in our education is more visible to us because we know our own history and we know what’s missing.”
Middlebury’s mission statement promises to prepare students to address the world’s most challenging problems, but the current lack of global, critical perspectives presented in the classroom fails to accomplish that, Kifle said. Limiting the voices available to students to one dominant demographic, specifically white men, hinders the scope of their education and leaves them unprepared to face real world issues.
“Professors are just serving as moderators instead of educators,” Kevin Mata ’22 said, after Brooks invited students of color to share their opinions about the academic environment.
“A lot of them are teaching the way that they were taught,” Brooks said at the meeting. “That does not make it right.”
Kifle told The Campus that the petition circulated at the meeting demands the education Middlebury already claims to provide its students, holding the college accountable for what its mission statement promises.
“What we’re attempting to do is not radical whatsoever,” Brooks said.
[pullquote speaker="Francoise Niyigena ’21" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]We all come with different misconceptions about people who are different from us.[/pullquote]
“We all come with different misconceptions about people who are different from us,” said Francoise Niyigena ’21, one of the founders of the student organization Middleground. She started the organization with a group of friends after they realized that they had all come to college expecting to have transformative conversations with people who were profoundly different from them, but that those conversations rarely happened. Niyigena said that most students who currently attend meetings are struggling with some aspect of campus culture, or face discrimination in the broader community, but that the group welcomes anyone who wants to learn.
Middleground meets every other Thursday from 6–7:30 in the Hillcrest Orchard. Kifle will facilitate its next meeting, focusing on immigrant students’ experiences, on March 14.
Kifle told The Campus that the petition serves as concrete evidence of support, but that their main motivation for holding the meeting was to raise awareness about, and increase student involvement in, the process of decolonizing Middlebury’s curriculum. The “White Allies” organizers said they had big plans moving forward, but added that those plans depend on white allies’ continued support.
(03/14/19 9:57am)
Editor’s note: This piece was written for a longform sports journalism course in Winter Term 2019. The Campus is publishing it due to its relevance in today’s politicized climate. The author supplemented research and interviews with past and present Middlebury students with her perspective as a member of the Middlebury Pranksters.
It was the day after Charles Murray visited Middlebury College, leaving in his wake a community torn apart and questioning its identity. The arrival of the author of The Bell Curve sparked campus-wide protests, as students of color braced themselves for yet another message that they didn’t belong. Many members of the college’s ultimate frisbee team, the Pranksters, had attended the protests and were now arriving at the athletic center for practice.
Miyo McGinn ’19.5, then a first-year, walked down the stairs of the Virtue Field House and sat down next to Mary Thomas, a senior captain of the women’s team. Most of the players had already moved onto the field for warm-ups, and they were alone. McGinn is half Japanese-American, so she hadn’t felt personally attacked by the events of the previous day like Thomas, who is half-black. Sitting there, off to the side, both felt isolated from their team. Looking around, McGinn thought, “I don’t feel like they understand how tired I am right now, and I don’t feel like they understand how deeply, deeply hurt I am right now.”
While others set the turmoil aside in order to practice, McGinn and Thomas stayed where they were, coming to the harsh realization that their teammates and friends could not grasp the pain they were in. “We kinda just started putting on our cleats and never got past that,” Thomas said.
Ultimate was first introduced in 1968 and has yet to become as institutionalized or bureaucratic as it does not have the extent of sponsorship, advertising or oversight from an officiating body like other popular American sports. Instead, frisbee has carried the countercultural attitude of its first decade into the 21st century. At its essence is “Spirit of the Game,” the idea of spirited sportsmanship that places the responsibility of fair play and respect on each player, with players self-officiating games even at the highest level. Across the nation, ultimate communities pride themselves on being open and welcoming. And yet, students have indicated that in so many ways, despite welcoming players, the ultimate community’s structure and behavior leaves something to be desired.
McGinn didn’t realize this until her eighth year of the sport. She grew up playing in South Seattle with the All Girl Everything Ultimate Program (AGE UP), which empowers young women of color and uses ultimate to work toward social justice. To her, ultimate and social justice were inextricably intertwined. Then she came to Middlebury and joined a new ultimate community. “[That’s] when I was like oh, wow, this is the norm, where I came from is not the norm.” Suddenly, she saw that what ultimate was most intertwined with was whiteness. Holding up her hands and forming a Venn diagram, she says, “I think frisbee culture and white culture are almost entirely overlapping.” Coming to this community and to this realization, McGinn reeled. Ultimate to her had always been about social justice, and now it seemed to be purely a vehicle for socializing and drinking.
Why are those two circles in McGinn’s Venn diagram so often nearly completely overlapping? For the Middlebury Pranksters, the reasons seem endless. Spirit of the Game and self-officiating instill many in the ultimate community with the attitude that their sport as superior. The reality is that these unique aspects bring their own problems, highlighting implicit bias and inadequate cultural competency in coaches and players alike. Spirit of the Game, for example, relies on shared norms of acceptable behavior, which vary dramatically based on culture. If white players are those establishing what a foul looks like, what disrespect looks like, then whiteness is woven into the fabric of the game.
The costs of playing ultimate also present barriers, both to playing the sport and to participating in the community. Thomas remembers that new players were sometimes reluctant to go to tournaments because spending the weekend off campus was both socially and financially burdensome. Between dues for tournaments and parties, expenses become prohibitive for some. Connor Hanify, a senior who was captain of the men’s team last year, says leadership tries to reduce any barriers. They fundraise to be able to subsidize whatever individuals can’t afford. “We always say come talk to us if there’s a problem,” he says, “but it’s not easy doing that.”
Divya Gudur, a sophomore on the team, says there’s another dimension that adds to a feeling of inaccessibility. The team has frequent parties, but “if you’re on financial aid you start counting every day the amount of money your parents are spending,” she says. It makes it hard to justify participating in the party culture of the team. McGinn feels similarly: as a student who’s taking out loans and whose mom is working two jobs, all just so that she can get this education, she feels like she can’t afford to indulge in the ways other students with a safety net can. And if you’re not at social gatherings, it’s hard to be as integrated. This of course can apply to anyone, regardless of race, but it’s frequently an obstacle for students of color who often don’t feel like they can take the same liberties as their peers.
You can find binge drinking on any college sports team at Middlebury. But ultimate culture isn’t just a drinking culture. It’s a culture of weirdness. Miles McQueen, a junior who no longer plays but remains what’s known as a “social member,” remembers his first frisbee party vividly. Thomas came up to him, and said, “Ok, here’s a shot of vodka,” extending one hand. “And here’s a carrot,” she added, extending the other. So the two did a shot and chased it by eating a carrot.
McQueen was both bewildered and amused at the time, but recognizes that some of this weirdness can be off-putting for new players. Certain strange activities and traditions are specifically intended to build community, like “circle questions” at the beginning of practices, where all players stand with arms around each other and share their response to a random question of the day. A choice example used this past fall is: Would you rather fart butterflies or sneeze marbles?
Most newcomers are surprised by and maybe slightly uncomfortable with this goofiness at first, but learn to love or at least accept it. McQueen and Gudur, both people of color, take issue with the assumption that it’s just something to adjust to. “POC communities have different cultural norms than majority white communities do,” says Gudur. “I think the quirkiness sometimes doesn’t fit into POC culture.” If we already stand out, she says, why would we want to draw more attention to ourselves?
Students of color are hyper-visible at Middlebury regardless of their behavior, so “Already being at Middlebury is pushing,” says McQueen. His freshman year when the team did its bi-annual “naked run,” a nighttime streak through the library during finals week, he knew he wouldn’t have the privilege of anonymity from wearing a mask. “Being the only black guy on the frisbee team, I just did not want to do that,” he said. For this reason, the team didn’t wear masks this year during its fall semester run.
But there’s an important element that McQueen and Gudur come back to over and over again. Gudur says she has always felt incredibly welcome on the team, and McQueen acknowledges that while he was in a very white space, that the team’s unfailing openness and acceptance was what made him feel comfortable from the start. Neither feels that they have been treated differently on or off the field because of the color of their skin. McQueen looks back on his freshman year and notes how many genuine people he met who to this day he considers cherished friends.
Hanify was also surprised by and grateful for the community he discovered when he became a part the team. He joined simply to play the sport he loved, but says, “The unique culture we had made it an amazing experience and challenged a lot of beliefs I had.” In many ways, he says, the team is diverse. The variety of opinions, identities, and sexualities represented on the team along with the open and trusting nature of the community has taught him to think differently.
It makes it easy for him to wonder: maybe ultimate is just white because it’s a new sport that originated in places of privilege. Maybe it just hasn’t spread to other places yet and become pervasive across race and class divides like more popular American sports. Maybe it just takes time.
But when Thomas recalls her reaction in the aftermath of Murray’s visit, it’s impossible to deny that something more is at play. That day when she and McGinn sat on the side while watching their teammates play, she admits she may have jumped to conclusions about others’ ability to empathize. She had already decided “there are just things that I don’t talk about with people on the frisbee team.” When her teammates became her primary friend group, she extended this logic: “here at Middlebury there are just things that I don’t talk about and no one else will be able to relate to.”
Why didn’t she at least give her teammates a chance to prove her wrong? Because the year before, she had already seen what they would do with such a chance. A series of racist op-eds in The Campus caused an alarmed Black Student Union to join several other cultural organizations in writing a lengthy open letter to students. A player who was abroad at the time constructed a “Reader’s Digest” of the message, and sent it to the team. She urged everyone to read it in case they hadn’t had the chance to read the longer letter, and to think seriously about the issues in their community. It was an eloquent and compassionate email, recalls Thomas.
Immediately, a captain on the men’s team wrote back: he scolded the individual for inappropriate usage of the email list, and for not clearing the message with captains first. “This was my pivot point with my relationship with the Pranksters around race,” says Thomas. She thought, “Holy sh*t,these people I’ve been captaining with and friends with really don’t value the things that I value and don’t see racial justice and inclusion as something the Pranksters need to be dealing with.”
Thomas has thought a lot about what happened. “Spirit of the Game absolves people of their need for self reflection,” she says, and that plays out at Middlebury. She loved the weird culture and fully participated in it. But, she adds, “I’ve seen that operate as a shield against criticism … like, ‘oh, we’re just these fringe weirdoes, we can’t possibly be the oppressor.’”
There’s a clear dichotomy between how the ultimate community presents itself — as fun loving and accepting — and how certain members perceive and interact with the community. If the Pranksters want to be what they say they are, there’s work to be done.
But McGinn isn’t sure this is the take-home. “Is what communities of color need ultimate frisbee?” she wonders. Speaking from a place of passion about social justice, she views making the sport equitable and diverse as of low importance. Other issues are more pressing. “Maybe we should stop police brutality or the school to prison pipeline.”
Hanify holds more hope. “The idealist in me wants to think that frisbee is a really cool thing and a way to bring people together and that Spirit of the Game lets people learn how to stand up for themselves and have a platform to speak on.”
Across the nation, individuals and groups are working to bring reality closer to aspiration. In 2017 USA Ultimate launched a Vision Tour, during which it facilitated community conversations in nearly a dozen cities. The purpose was to discuss the ultimate community’s hopes and concerns about the sport’s future, and the first topic listed on the agenda was equity and diversity.
Change at the national level will be hard and take time. But in the meantime, Thomas sees hope in specific communities. “Individual teams can make little oases of inclusivity,” she says. “That’s my dream.”
(03/14/19 9:56am)
This Friday, March 15, students in over 90 countries will walk out of school to demand action against the climate crisis. In recognition of the fierce urgency of this crisis, we faculty look forward to joining the action organized by Middlebury College and Middlebury Union High School students: to leave campus at noon and rally in the park across from Shafer’s Market. We encourage all faculty, staff, and community members to walk in solidarity with Middlebury students at noon on Friday.
Signed,
Martin Abel
Molly Anderson
Julia Berazneva
Tanya Byker
James Chase Sanchez
Molly Costanza-Robinson
Laurie Essig
Kemi Fuentes-George
Peter Hans Matthews
Jonathan Isham
Rebecca Kneale Gould
Marc Lapin
Bill McKibben
Jason Mittell
Erica Morrell
Linus Owens
Michael Sheridan
Dan Suarez
Carly Thomsen
(03/07/19 11:36am)
EAST MIDDLEBURY — When Chef Paul Dow left his job working for Middlebury College dining after 20 years to open his own barbecue restaurant, he wasn’t expecting to fill a student niche. Paul’s Deli and BBQ, officially open as of Feb. 11, is nestled in East Middlebury where restaurants are spread thin. For Dow, this location just makes sense. The store is within walking distance of his house and has next-to-no culinary competition. For hungry Middlebury students returning from a day at Snow Bowl, the stop-in restaurant also makes sense, but for a different reason: it provides a much needed reprieve from settling for a bag of gas station chips on the way home from the ski slopes.
Paul’s Deli and BBQ, located at 51 Ossie Road at what was formerly the Down Home Deli & Market, is still evolving, but it’s already serving some serious fare. Dow’s current specialty is his pulled pork. After being slow-cooked for hours, it’s served either straight up, in a bun with homemade coleslaw, in a Cuban sandwich or in the customer-favorite style: on a fresh waffle.
“I’m trying to do as much as I can homemade,” Dow said. “It’s coming out really well.”
Dow’s current menu also includes items like breakfast sandwiches made with sausage, bacon or tomato; grilled cheeses; sides like macaroni and cheese, baked beans and potato salad; cookies and brownies; and daily specials. He also makes his own sauces, including a maple barbecue sauce that’s prepared with maple syrup made by his family just up the street.
For now, all of this is a one-man show. Open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, Dow runs nearly everything himself. Luckily, Dow’s culinary background makes it easy. He grew up learning to cook from his parents, who both worked in Middlebury College dining.
He started working for the college himself on a part-time basis when he was 14, beginning as a dishwasher before moving to the kitchen in Proctor dining hall. He then attended Johnson and Wales University to study pastry for a semester before transferring to the New England Culinary Institute where he received his degree.
After graduation, he returned to Middlebury College for a total of 20 years of full-time service. He began at the juice bar, which has since been replaced by Crossroads Café. He then moved on to work in Ross and Atwater dining halls, at Bread Loaf and in on-campus catering before serving as the night manager of The Grille for the last eight years. (When asked what it was like working weekend nights there, Dow left it at “I have seen a lot of things.”)
For Dow, leaving The Grille was a pretty significant transition. “I went from getting done at 3 o’clock in the morning to getting here at 6:30 in the morning,” he explained, adding that he’ll have to show up even earlier once he starts adding long-cooking items like brisket to his menu.
But he doesn’t seem to mind. “It’s something I’ve always wanted I think,” Dow said. “I’ve been (making barbecue) as a hobby for probably 10 years now.”
Although pulled pork has been the central dish so far, Dow has lots of ideas in the works. He’s waiting on a new smoker that will allow him to add different kinds of meat to the menu. “I can’t wait to start doing brisket because I don’t really see much,” Dow said, explaining that he slow-cooks it for 16-20 hours to get it just right. “I love brisket a lot.” He also plans to offer chicken and ribs, as well as pre-order to-go dinners.
For the summer, Dow is considering adding a charcoal grill to prepare hamburgers and hot dogs. “I’d like to get into some sort of homemade ice cream and milkshakes type stuff,” Dow said.
In a neighborhood lacking quick-bite options, Paul’s Deli and BBQ has been well-received. The restaurant already has customers that come in daily and a 5-star Google review. One customer, who ordered a Cuban sandwich, raved, “It was by far one of the best sandwiches I’ve had in the area! The pork had just come out of the smoker when I arrived. It doesn’t get any better than this.” Other reviews cited the breakfasts, macaroni and cheese, pulled pork sandwiches and Dow’s homemade maple barbecue sauce as particularly tasty.
Dow expects that the restaurant will pick up even more during the summertime, when he hopes to add outdoor space and see more foot traffic. For the winter, it makes for a convenient and hearty stop for skiers returning from the Snow Bowl.
Paul’s Deli and BBQ is still gaining its footing, but it has started off strong in the somewhat precarious Middlebury restaurant scene. Chef Dow is positive about the future, and he’s happy to be able to finally cook and serve what he loves. In a place like East Middlebury, Dow said, “It’s nice to have something a little bit more homemade.”
(03/07/19 10:59am)
[gallery ids="43497,43498,43499"]
The doorway that separates the lower level of Davis Family Library from Middlebury’s Special Collections is rather unassuming, considering it is the entrance to a space that contains some of the college’s most prized material belongings. It is rather like a certain pub in Harry Potter that is visible to witches and wizards while Muggles walk past every day without turning their heads.
“We often meet students in their senior year who have never come down here,” said Rebekah Irwin, the director of Special Collections. “This is a really secure space: it’s both a temple and a prison. We’re behind locked doors and we have special security systems, so that can be quite intimidating and can feel a bit privileged.”
Indeed, the hyper-secure space located under Wilson Café is a fascinating juxtaposition between temple and prison. In a space that contains two first editions of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and books written over 400 years ago, the intimidation of interacting with Special Collections is undoubtedly warranted. To enter the space and to engage with the materials, however, is a priceless experience that is available to anyone who asks.
“We try to be as open as possible,” Irwin said. “That’s one of our challenges — making sure that this feels like a space that students can come to.”
Though its closed-off appearance may be daunting, however, the discovery of Middlebury’s Special Collections and Archive feels like the discovery of an ancient ruin, an oasis tucked away in a desert of bleary eyes and blue recliners.
“In Special Collections, we adhere to the idea that an artifact itself can teach us something and speak to us in a way that a digitized copy cannot,” Irwin said. “Digitalization is great and can do all sorts of things like a keyword search, but we like to think that side-by-side, the two complement each other. When you see a book that was held by an antislavery activist in the United States in 1850, it gives you a sense of the experience and the lives lived at that time.”
To Irwin, Special Collections is an opportunity to learn about the past with the aid of physical objects. If nothing else, the collection is a space created to humor the visceral response humans have when holding documents and articles held by other humans centuries in the past. Its existence, furthermore, is a testament to the importance of history and the humanities at Middlebury College.
“Recently in the news there have been these stories of the catastrophic declines of humanities majors in colleges across the United States, and some people have worried that studying history has become an exclusive privilege,” explained Irwin. “But when you have a historical view, you can see that the fights we are still fighting today have been going on for decades, and you can learn from them and win battles that are still ongoing. We can see that through lenses of race, sexual identity and gender. Without that, you feel like the battles today have no historical precedence, and you try to fight them without any ammunition that’s been learned from the past.”
Though Special Collections exists to teach Middlebury students about the past, Irwin has been tasked with focusing on the preservation of the present for future students.
“We need to collect as much as possible to tell our stories,” she said. “How we preserve the past is changing, and we don’t exactly know what it will look like to study the history of Middlebury College fifty years from now. We just had a class in that was looking at when the first student organizations and clubs for LGBT life and African American life emerged. We had newspapers and some meeting notes, but no student organizations take meeting minutes anymore. We don’t know the answer to how history will be preserved going forward.”
Through the uncertainty, however, Irwin believes that people will continue to create physical items that can ultimately end up in the archive.
“We try to collect things off of bulletin boards. Students still make lots of posters,” she said. We try to actively collect those and other things that capture the events on campus. I don’t see a time when students will stop making posters.”
Even if they do, Irwin is confident that Special Collections will find a way around digital obstacles.
“I hope that it will always be important to express political and cultural ambitions physically, through t-shirts and water bottles, because we can collect all of that,” she said. “And though the physical material may slowly go away, we hope that something will take its place. We hope that a student will still be able to search on [the Special Collections] Instagram pages 25 years from now to get a sense of what student life was like.”
(03/07/19 10:57am)
The Middlebury women’s lacrosse team took to Kohn Field with a loud home crowd behind them for the first time since last May. Ranked the second squad in the country after an exhilarating NCAA run, the Panthers walked out on the turf hungry for another almost flawless season. But, on Saturday, March 2, the women fell short, trailing Bates 11-10 by just one goal in overtime.
The Panthers got to work early on, throwing up the first two goals on the scoreboard. Emily Barnard ’20 and Kirsten Murphy ’21 snuck two shots past the Bobcat goalie before the third minute ticked by. The field was quiet for another 20 minutes, as both teams failed to find an open net. The silence was broken by Barnard once again, when she cradled the ball to the crease, giving the Panthers a three-goal advantage.
Barnard came out looking faster and stronger than ever, picking up a career-best of five goals during the contest. Despite a relaxing semester abroad in Madrid, Spain, she showed no signs of any respite and posed a huge offensive threat to the Bobcat defense. If this matchup says anything about her, Barnard will continue to be a leading scorer throughout the 2019 season.
But Bates answered the deficit. They snapped the host lead, adding two goals to their name before Kate Zecca ’20 tallied another for the Panthers. At the end of the half the Middlebury offense held their ownclosing out the period still having a narrow margin of 6-5 over their NESCAC foes.
As the second half whistle blew, the women hit the ground running. The Bobcat defense was helpless against an unrelenting Middlebury offense. Erin Nicholas ’21, who was a big part of Middlebury’s success last year, started off the scoring followed by Barnard and Casey O’Neill ’19. But a four goal lead was simply not enough. In the final 15 minutes of the half, Bates knocked back five more goals to Middlebury’s one, tying the game and leaving Middlebury parents at the edge of their seats.
Captain Susanna Baker ’19 spoke about the team’s play on Saturday. “Our play in the midfield was awesome on the draw and in transitions. However, we struggled to finish on offense, which gave Bates more possessions that they capitalized on. This week we are really focusing on taking only high percentage shots and communicating well on defense,” Baker said.
The underdogs were in for an overtime fight and they got the upset that they came for. In the final moments of play, Bates sophomore Summer Dias propelled her team to victory with an unassisted goal, closing out the match with a score of 11-10.
Captain Sara DiCenso ’19 commented on the team’s unexpected loss this past weekend. “We were definitely upset at the outcome of the game. We are not going to dwell on the loss and our mistakes, but rather hope to learn from them. I think this will be a good learning experience for our team and can be a positive turning point in our season,” said DiCenso.
The women will look to find revenge in their two matchups this coming weekend. The Panthers will face off against another NESCAC rival, Connecticut College, on home turf Saturday, March 9 at 12:00 p.m. The following day, on Sunday, March 10 at 1:00 p.m., they will challenge Springfield at home.
(02/28/19 10:59am)
Bill Burger, the college’s vice president for communications and chief marketing officer, will leave his position on April 30. President Laurie L. Patton announced Burger’s departure in an all-school email on Feb. 14. According to the email, Burger will remain as one of Patton’s senior advisors until June 30.
Patton said the college will immediately begin the search for Burger’s successor and that she hopes to hire someone before the fall. Until then, Robin Gronlund, the current associate vice president of marketing and creative services, will serve as his interim replacement, beginning May 1.
Burger leaves behind a complicated legacy, as many in the college community associate him closely with his role in the controversial Charles Murray protest and its aftermath in March 2017.
While news of his departure came as a surprise to some, Burger said he told Patton over a year ago that he intended to leave the role. He said the demanding nature of jobs like his cause increased turnover, not just at Middlebury, but at similar institutions. Of the 11 NESCAC schools, Burger is currently the third-longest serving head of communications.
“I think from an institutional perspective it makes sense for the transition to happen now,” he said. “Middlebury is embarking on several long-term projects, and continuity will be helpful.”
Among these projects, Burger named the continued implementation of Envisioning Middlebury and an upcoming fundraising campaign.
Patton did not return a request for comment on Burger’s departure.
Leaving His Mark
In her email, Patton detailed some of Burger’s contributions to Middlebury, including his role in increasing the college’s social media presence and his influence on the award-winning Middlebury Magazine. Patton also praised Burger’s work in integrating the various parts of the Middlebury institution under one identity.
“He arrived at a point of critical transition as Middlebury began to fully embrace the complexity of its schools and programs and the need to think strategically about its identity and operations,” Patton said in the email. “He led the institution through the successful introduction of a new identity system that linked all our schools and programs”
Patton also described Burger’s relationship with The Campus, writing, “Bill has regularly and effectively worked with individual students, coaching on ethics, reporting, and best practices, and with editors at The Campus, while always respecting the independence of student journalism.”
Ellie Reinhardt ’17, a former editor in chief of The Campus, worked with Burger during the time of the Murray protest, and recalled having a productive relationship with Burger’s office.
“He constantly challenged me and challenged the staff, pushing us to reflect and refine our processes and our content,” she said. “He held The Campus to the highest standard of journalism, gave candid feedback and demanded professionalism. I will always appreciate his candor.”
Ethan Brady ’18, another former editor in chief, disagreed with Patton’s description of The Campus’ relationship with Burger. Brady said that he and Burger had different views of the role The Campus should play in the Middlebury community. He recalled a meeting with Burger and Patton in which both expressed they believed the paper was publishing too many negative stories.
“He articulated this idea that The Campus is a morale booster or a community builder, and if we print negative coverage or bad coverage then we’re not doing our job,” Brady said.
After this meeting, The Campus ran an editorial pushing back on the request for more positive coverage and affirming the paper’s independence from the Communications Office.
“There’s no such thing as negative coverage if it’s accurate and factual,” Brady said. “The school should not be immune to any sort of scrutiny.”
Brady acknowledged that Burger was simply doing his job in trying to protect the image of the school. Still, as editor in chief, Brady had a different view of the newspaper’s purpose.
“The duty of The Campus is to provide a check on the institution,” he said.
Role in the Murray Protests
Outside the newsroom, many students associate Burger with the role he played in the Murray protest.
As the protest played out, Burger planned to shuttle Murray and Political Science Professor Allison Stanger, the talk’s mediator, away from the event. The official college account, published by the college newsroom, said that Burger accelerated away from McCullough Student Center and that students jumped onto the hood of his car after it had begun to move. In the aftermath, many students disputed that account, alleging that Burger drove through the crowd and into protestors, at one point accelerating with a student on the hood of his car.
Sarah Karerat ’18, who was among those put on probation for her involvement in the Murray protest, said that for her Burger represented the administration’s effort to punish her and her fellow students for their actions.
“He became a figurehead of the anxiety and fear of the administration that we had about how the judicial process was going to affect our futures,” she said. “He was the voice of the protest policy that night, and one of the things that sticks out to me is in the whole free speech argument was that the protest policy and the judicial process eventually became censorship in its own right. And in a public manner he represents that censorship.”
Throughout the judicial process and after, when Karerat had already received her two semesters of probation, she recalls feeling anxious often. This feeling was accentuated in the presence of administrators who she associated with the protest and the trial, including Burger.
“Whenever I saw him in public spaces I was pretty immediately uncomfortable and afraid. At the beginning, that spring of 2017, I usually would leave spaces because of that discomfort,” she said.
Life After Middlebury
Burger intends to take some time to decide on his next move. He and his wife Susan Greenberg, who teaches writing and journalism at the college, plan to remain in Middlebury for the next year and a half. Greenberg will continue to teach in that time.
“I’ve spent time in media, the corporate sector, and higher education,” Burger said. “I’ve enjoyed working in all of those fields and so I don’t rule out anything for the future.”
He also noted that he is proud of the work his team has accomplished during his tenure.
“Middlebury has become a more transparent place than ever before,” Burger said. “We are more willing to engage with the media in good times and challenging times. There’s not a lot of room for hiding in today’s media environment and the best institutions — and I’m proud to say Middlebury is one of them — must be accepting of being in the public eye more than was the case even a decade ago. That’s been a growing experience for some people, but there’s no going back.”
GiGi Hogan contributed reporting.
(02/21/19 11:04am)
MIDDLEBURY - Homelessness in Vermont is sometimes hidden within the state’s signature rolling green hills and idyllic pastures. Though the issue may not be as obvious or prevalent in Vermont as in urban centers across the country, it is nonetheless a serious and growing problem.
The Vermont Coalition to End Homelessness (VCEH) recently released a report showing that homelessness increased from 2016 to 2018. The winter months, in particular, can create life-threatening situations for those experiencing homelessness.
Between October and April, organizations across the state work to meet the increased demand for shelter caused by extreme cold weather. Doug Sinclair, co-director of Charter House Coalition, explained that “shelter life is not easy … so, in the warmer months, some people prefer to camp. Many official and nonofficial campgrounds have people living there who are homeless, even if it’s not apparent.”
Middlebury’s Charter House provides clients with a Winter Warming Shelter from Oct. 15 to April 15 annually. As reported by The Campus earlier this year, the shelter opened on Sept. 1. The need is especially pronounced by Dec. 1, according to Sinclair.
Peter Kellerman, co-director of the John Graham Housing & Services in Vergennes, Vt., noted a similar trend of increased need in the winter. But Kellerman continued, “we’re full year-round and maintain a waitlist. There’s a greater need during winter months, but the truth is, we’re always full.”
“Need seems to have grown every year over the last 10 years,” Sinclair observed. This may have to do with a variety of factors.
Firstly, there is a lack of employment opportunities, and the jobs that are available do not have adequate wages. The National Low Income Housing Coalition released a report last year showing that “both average renter wages and prevailing minimum wages are insufficient to afford modest rental apartments throughout the country.” According to the report, a federal minimum wage earner would have to work 122 hours per week for 52 weeks per year, in order to afford a two-bedroom apartment.
“A lot of retail minimum wage jobs are available [in Vermont], which don’t create enough of an income to sustain housing,” Kellerman explained.
“Folks who could’ve afforded to live on their wages 15 years ago, have ended up in a situation where they just don’t have enough income to afford housing,” Sinclair said, echoing Kellerman.
Dawn Butterfield, treasurer for the VCEH, elaborated on the issue. “The cost of living in Vermont is pretty high; some scales rate it number 42 in affordability. Wages have not kept pace with the cost of living, so households with moderate incomes are falling farther and farther behind,” she stated.
These problems are compounded by a severe shortage of affordable housing. “There is a less than 1 percent vacancy rate for affordable housing in Addison County,” Sinclair noted. “Someone can have a [housing] voucher to help them with rent, but can’t find an apartment because it’s not there, so they lose the voucher.” Butterfield agreed that “truly affordable housing is rarely found.”
In Addison County, a perfect storm of events contributed to this shortage leaving many experiencing homelessness in vulnerable positions. Previously, three motels accepted housing vouchers. One however — The Blue Spruce Motel – was destroyed in a fire in 2017 , and another, Greystone, now Middlebury Sweets Motel, was sold to “folks who are less inclined to receive people with vouchers,” as characterized by Kellerman.
This left just one, the Sugarhouse, that according to Kellerman, also holds some “reticence.” Those experiencing homelessness can have “complex service needs, such as mental illness or addiction, so the experience for the proprietor is not always great,” he continued.
Those who are lucky enough to find affordable housing may still face a multitude of challenges in acquiring and retaining the housing. Landlords may be reluctant to “Landlords, both public and private, are loathe to take chances on people who have a poor rental history whether because of payment issues, violence, or crime. That’s understandable, of course, but it does make it challenging to find housing for people, even when they have made changes in their lives that might make them ‘better’ tenants,” Butterfield said.
People experiencing homelessness are also more likely to suffer from severe mental illness, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. “You have to think about domestic violence victims, addiction, mental illness, and people who have experienced extreme trauma,” Kellerman said. “There are a lot of layers to homelessness and how people get affected.”
Butterfield also mentioned the impact of the opioid crisis on increased homelessness. People experiencing homelessness are disproportionately affected by substance abuse and overdose, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Additionally, the Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018 identified stable housing as a critical part of treatment and recovery. These factors left homeless populations across the nation very much at risk to be impacted by the opioid crisis
Finally, Kellerman spoke about the effect of the changing political landscape. “People have been staying with us longer and longer. There is fear [on the part of the clients], because much of the human services funding we rely on has been threatened.”
Kellerman also noted that state agencies are taking a conservative approach following the government shutdown. “They want to make sure they’ll be able to sustain what’s already active, and don’t want to hand out too much,” he said. “But I think it’s worth taking a chance… because people are suffering.”
In order to address this daunting problem, organizations in each county of Vermont work together on a process called Coordinated Entry. Developed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the process is intended to “make sure the most vulnerable among us are housed the quickest,” explained Jan Demers, Executive Director of the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity (CVOEO).
Organizations find available housing, use a vulnerability assessment to look at who is most in need of housing, and then assess what those people need to get into the housing, Demers elaborated. “Even though there may be more households in need, the process of being referred by one of multiple community partners and assessed for level and type of housing need, means we are able to more quickly get people the help they need,” Butterfield said.
Despite the efforts of organizations such as CVOEO, VCEH and shelters, more support is needed to tackle the problem of homelessness in Vermont. For example, Kellerman discussed the importance of ongoing support for formerly homeless people when they are housed.
“When they acquire housing, there’s a new set of stressors, and what had them at risk in the first place doesn’t disappear that quickly. After people are safely housed, ongoing outreach is essential,” he said.
Demers agreed, and pointed out that “funding is no longer there for agencies like CVOEO, and other social service agencies, that used to get funding for supportive services for people who are recently housed.” She agreed that being able to follow people, especially through their first year being housed, would be beneficial.
Butterfield brought up multiple other points including the creation of more “truly affordable housing for households with limited incomes and more money to subsidize rents. He went on to describe the importance of supporting case management for households with multiple barriers to obtaining and retaining housing, as well as more incentives like risk pools so landlords are more willing to take chances on challenging tenants.
Community can also be important in supporting people experiencing homelessness. “If you’re homeless, you feel disenfranchised. You don’t feel part of the community,” Sinclair said.
Some of the challenges faced by people experiencing homelessness can derive from judgment or misunderstanding of their circumstances. “People think that ‘homeless people’ are somehow to blame for their misfortune, and so they don’t ‘deserve’ to be helped,” Butterfield noted. In Kellerman’s words: “It’s not what’s wrong with them, it’s what’s happened to them.”
Demers emphasized the importance of compassion and considering people as individuals. “No matter if you are at Middlebury College, walking around the campus, there are people on your grounds who are in circumstances where there is trauma and great difficulty. Being open to knowing who those people are and what their needs are is essential,” Demers said.
To contact or donate to Charter House Coalition: www.charterhousecoalition.org
