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(04/11/18 3:44pm)
The Patton administration faced widespread outrage from professors regarding salary practices for top officials at a faculty meeting on April 6. The faculty railed against bonuses and mismanagement, as well as payouts during the Liebowitz administration, which ended in 2015.
President Laurie L. Patton discussed executive pay during her routine report to the faculty and emphasized that she is committed to using fewer stay bonuses of smaller amounts. Stay bonuses were a main point of criticism in physics professor Noah Graham’s op-ed, “Executive Pay and Why It Matters,” published in the March 15 issue of The Campus.
“I’m still interested in maintaining a very modest use of these bonuses because they are used in higher ed to prevent a kind of constant searching and turning over,” Patton said. “But as you saw from the data, my interest and commitment to them is very modest. They are one tool among many, and I am committed to moving to most of those other tools before we do that.”
Though Patton was unable to stay after concluding her presentation, Provost gave a more in-depth presentation on the subject later in the meeting. Provost provided specifics regarding previously-issued retention bonuses.
“Since 2009, there were 11 different retention bonuses involving seven different administrators, ranging in annual amounts from $50,000 to $100,000. Those yielded pay outs anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000,” Provost said.
“Today there are three retention bonuses that range in the $40,000 to $50,000 range, with total expected payouts of $150,000 to $250,000” he added.
Cason, who presented alongside Provost, told the faculty that he was one of the three remaining employees with a retention bonus.
“This was offered to me in Laurie’s first year when I was interviewing for another presidency,” Cason said. “I’m just putting that out there, that’s just a fact. If I had understood how this was going to go on, I might have asked for a different kind of compensation at the time. I didn’t ask for [a stay bonus], so I’ll say that.”
Provost argued that stay bonuses are effective, given that they have resulted in faculty recipients remaining at the college for the duration of their bonus’ payout. Faculty had additional questions regarding the purpose of stay bonuses, however.
“Any of the previous 11 that were put in place in all cases achieved their anniversary date,” Provost said. “Yes, they worked from the standpoint of keeping that person here.”
Jason Mittell, a film professor, argued that some of the faculty who remained at Middlebury due to stay bonuses actually harmed the college.
“People were highly compensated at the exact same time that they were making financially irresponsible decisions at the college, which then they had left for Laurie and David to correct,” Mittell said. “What type of accountability has the board of trustees talked about for this? It’s the fault of people who made a lot of money from us while spending a lot of our money and mortgaging our future. . . . How do we make sure most importantly, that this never happens again?”
Erik Bleich, professor of political science, argued that stay bonuses actually encourage administrators to leave once they receive their full bonus.
“If I put myself in the position of someone who’s about to get a $500,000 pay out and then look the next year at the measly salary of $240,000, it’s an incentive to leave, an incentive to leverage that moment to exit,” Bleich said.
Earlier in his presentation, Provost stated that he had in fact been the recipient of a retention bonus at Champlain College, where he worked before coming to Middlebury.
“I had one previously at Champlain during the last presidential transition,” Provost said. “I had played a very active role in the transformation of Champlain, so they tied my hands for four years knowing they wanted me there. That had expired this past June, so when I started a conversation with Laurie, that wasn’t hanging over my head.”
In outlining potential reforms to the current executive pay system, Patton said that she and Provost were open to the idea of formulating stay bonuses in accordance with employees’ individual performance. She also said she was committed to maintaining the costs of and reducing the size of the Senior Leadership Group (SLG), citing that the costs of the SLG were already $30,000 less than they were last year.
Patton said that the college had decided not to award any employee making over $200,000 a raise last year, and shared information regarding her own salary, emphasizing that her take home pay is even less than that listed on the 990 tax form where the college reports executive pay.
“I do not have a retention bonus and my salary is $575,000,” Patton said. “I tied in scholarships and in fact I just finished my taxes, and with all the other charitable deductions I actually make about three-fifths of that. I am happy to share anything more about my own finances if you’d like to talk.”
Patton also reiterated her commitment to paying administrators in accordance with a “market rate.”
“To ask anyone to do these really tough jobs, tougher than they’ve ever been, and not pay market rate for folks to do these jobs doesn’t seem fair to either the candidates or to Middlebury,” Patton said.
Provost explained that the college decides on executive compensation by reviewing market information and by analyzing peer institutions. Patton then recommends executive compensation to the compensation committee, which is made up of the board chair, vice chair, resource committee chair and one additional board member. The compensation committee then approves the President’s recommendations.
Provost’s presentation compared peer institutions’ executive pay to Middlebury’s. The college’s total executive pay of $4.1 million dollars was higher than the $3.6 million average of its peer institutions.
Rick Bunt, a chemistry professor, argued that this gap of 14 percent between the peer group average suggested that the compensation committee did not actually base executive pay off of a “market value.”
“These institutions, Williams, Amherst, all have endowments at least twice our size,” Bunt said. “So our compensation for our top executives is supposed to be market driven, but its 14 percent above average.”
Bunt argued that this is unfair to faculty and staff, given their comparative wages.
“I’m pretty sure our faculty compensation is not 14 percent above average, and I’m really, really sure that our staff compensation is not 14 percent above average,” Bunt said. “We’re committed to paying market rate for our executives for running the school, why shouldn’t we pay market rate to the staff and faculty who actually do the hard work of educating the students?”
Provost explained that the stay bonuses, which will apparently continue to decline in number and value, were responsible for this 14 percent difference.
While Provost revealed that the college does not review staff compensation in the context of a such a “market rate” every year, he said that he and Patton hope to establish faculty compensation at an above average rate compared to their peers. He also said that most college staff actually earn above average wages.
“Laurie is not trying to pay the executives here differently than the faculty or the staff. That is not a goal,” Provost said. “It is our intention to pay our faculty at above market median. On the staff compensation, we are for the most part above the median, there are a few exceptions. We’ve been working with human resources to conduct a compensation study that will address that.”
Provost said that he hoped sharing the 990 tax forms with faculty sooner would help increase transparency.
“I don’t want to speak especially for the past board,” Provost said. “The folks on the resource committee are in that way of thinking, of saying if we see a 990 two years after the fact, that’s not prevention, that’s not awareness of what’s going on, so why aren’t we communicating these in real time when that’s happening? And you heard Laurie say she’s open to that conversation. So if that was in place that would help prevent it before it’s old news.”
Provost also announced that former President Ronald Liebowitz received a sizeable payout, the quantity of which will be released in early May with the disclosure of the FY ’17 990.
In their questions for Provost, faculty members criticized the conduct of past and present administrators, as well as some of the potential methods they feared the college would take to save money in the future.
Susan Burch, a professor of American studies, said that Provost and Cason brought up adjusting healthcare plans in their meeting with faculty earlier in the week.
“I’m very concerned to hear that [health care] might be leveraged. Please don’t do that,” she said.
While Provost said that he believes the college spends too much on healthcare, he clarified that they have delayed the decision on changing healthcare another year at the earliest due to employee concerns.
“Our existing health benefits at $25,000 a family, it’s too much, we’re going to spend $422,000 this year on massage therapy,” Provost said. “You as faculty have to come to the table and say this isn’t about destroying people’s healthcare. I couldn’t agree with you more. My concern is we can’t even have the conversation because that is what is inferred. I don’t like that we’re paying $25,000 per family, it’s probably not worth it, but I hope we can find common ground on some things we should talk about.”
Though Provost had no control over the order of the meeting agenda, history professor Rebecca Bennette expressed frustration that Provost’s presentation was the final one in a nearly four-hour long meeting.
“I’m deeply disturbed that you basically waited us out until almost everyone left and Laurie’s not even here to be here for this conversation. This should have been first,” Bennette said.
John Schmitt, a professor of mathematics, defended Provost and encouraged faculty to view him as an ally.
“I’ve been working with David since September and we have an opportunity here that didn’t exist under the previous administration,” Schmitt said. “David is looking to empower us to make good decisions about our future. We’re not going to get Ron’s payment back. And I’m hopeful that we see David as an ally.”
However, faculty continued to voice criticisms. Tamar Mayer, a geography professor, suggested selling the Middlebury Institute at Monterey in order to save money, to which several faculty voiced support.
Provost replied that though this might not be off-limits, it is not a simple fix to the college’s financial problems, and there are reasons to keep the Institute.
“The spirit of my approach is that I want everything on the table,” Provost said. “But if we’re serious about a conversation about things we want to explore, for me we’re the only one of those peer institutions up there that has a physical campus in the backyard of Silicon Valley. We have not leveraged a resource that we decided to invest in and it sits out there.”
Erik Bleich, professor of political science, issued Provost a warning.
“The decisions that have been made in the past, and some of the current administrators were involved in those decisions, were a disaster,” Bleich said. “I want you all on warning. Don’t let this happen again.”
Bennette argued that the current administration should begin to take more responsibility for the financial state of the college.
“We’re three years into this presidency now. And I’m not saying this was the greatest inheritance to come in to as a president. But you can play a hand of cards good or you can play it poorly, and I think a lot of people think it was not played that well.”
Provost urged faculty to view the college’s financial problems as more complex than a simple issue of executive overcompensation, and to recognize some of the positive conditions at the college.
“If we think Middlebury’s financial difficulties are caused by executive compensation, we won’t solve our problems,” Provost said. “Is there some responsibility there? Absolutely. But we are a very privileged organization. We have a lot of employees. We pay people well. Our benefits are off the charts. And if we aren’t willing to put everything on the table, we aren’t going to solve these problems.”
(04/04/18 8:33pm)
As Richard Sander spoke at the Kirk Alumni Center on Tuesday, dissenting students held a counter-event in the McCullough Student Center. They sat in a circle in the middle of Crossroads Café, eating pizza and snacks, and using their shared displeasure with Sander’s presence on campus as a platform to discuss the future of alternative protests at Middlebury.
Sander is a law professor at UCLA known for his criticism of affirmative action programs, and specifically his stance that affirmative action leaves minority students unprepared for overly-competitive college environments.
“I’m tired of student groups inviting speakers who consistently dehumanize members of our community,” said organizer Eliza Renner ’18.
“We said we should do something,” added Madeline Bazemore ’19.
The students who coordinated the counter-event were inspired by recent campus discussion about the influence of white supremacy, including the Feb. 26 teach-in Wilson Hall. At the teach-in, Renner recalled, professor of American studies Rachael Joo discussed Stanford University students’ reactions to Charles Murray’s Feb. 22 visit to the school. Instead of protesting at the talk itself, students held an alternate event in support of communities of color.
Renner hoped to create a similar event by hosting “Teatime” in Crossroads during the Sander talk. She described the informal meeting as “a very neutral event in terms of making people feel community.”
Counter-event participants immediately began drawing comparisons between Sander’s talk and Charles Murray’s visit to Middlebury last March. Many believed it was a poor and incendiary choice for the College Republicans to invite Sander given his views on minorities’ presence on college campuses.
Most students who came to the event were frustrated not only by Sander’s presence, but by how little publicity his talk received. They had only learned about it two weeks earlier, right before spring break, which they said left them with almost no time to prepare.
Some believed speakers like Murray and Sanders were using academia as an excuse to promote racist ideas. They questioned whether Sander would see colleges’ recruitment processes and special consideration of legacies as equally harmful as affirmative action.
“Choices academics make are never neutral,” said Victoria Pipas ’18, adding that the right way to look at issues is to make sure “you still have your moral compass on.”
“People like to surround themselves with yes-men,” added Hanna Abdelaal ’21. “It’s a human thing to do, we all do it.”
“It can be challenging to be vulnerable enough to have a difficult conversation,” said Renner. She acknowledged that both being called out and calling others out are uncomfortable and terrifying in the moment, and that receiving feedback in a non-defensive way can be tough, but said all of those things are necessary if we want to grow as a community and create a better Middlebury.
(04/04/18 9:00am)
Last week the baseball team headed west to Southern California for their annual spring break trip, and finished 5–4, the first time since 2012 the Panthers finished over .500 on the trip.
Middlebury also started its Nescac schedule with a bang, taking the first two games of its series with Williams, including a 20–1 shellacking in the first game, before falling in the final game. The Panthers return to Vermont with a 2–1 record in the conference.
The Panthers kicked it off with a matchup against Chapman University of Orange, California on Saturday, March 24. Though it ended with a tough 5–3 loss, Middlebury showed great resilience in the fourth inning after a difficult start left them facing a five run deficit.
Junior captain Colby Morris ’19 pitched the whole game and, while he struggled at times and let up five runs overall, he managed to rally and strike out five. Getting back on track to finish strong was easy for the Panthers’ ace.
“Physically it was a small adjustment, I just had to throw my changeup down in the zone and not leave it up,” explains Morris, who found that the bigger challenge was the mental side. “Mentally it was more challenging. I’m from San Diego so I had a lot of family at the game rooting for me and in past years I might’ve folded but I’ve been playing for them recently and more for my teammates. They definitely helped me flush that bad pitch and move on to the next few innings and give us a chance to win even though we couldn’t pull it out.”
Hayden Smith ’20, Justin Han ’20 and Sam Graf ’19 each crossed the plate for the Panthers, pushed across by RBIs off the bats of Kevin Woodring ’20, Alan Guild ’20 and Han.
Next up, Middlebury faced both the Claremont McKenna Stags and the Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens on Sunday, March 25. The Panthers started the day with a 10–8 win against the Stags, getting an early lead with a sacrifice fly out from Han to bring Brooks Carroll ’20 home in the first inning, followed by a run from Jack Miller ’21 off a hit from Han in the third.
Middlebury continued to get runs across to rack up their run total in the fourth inning with a critical home run from Phil Bernstein ’19, driving in Grant Elgarten ’20 and Graf to make it 5–0. This was Bernstein’s first home run at the college level, a feat made all-the-more special by hitting it in his hometown.
“It was awesome,” said an excited Bernstein. “My parents were there and it made it that much more special. I knew I hit it well but didn’t realize how far I hit it. I remember seeing the umpire giving the ‘homerun’ sign rounding first base and just having an insane rush of adrenaline. My teammates showed me lots of love coming back into the dugout. It felt great.”
Following Bernstein’s hit, the game took an interesting turn in the eighth inning when the Stags made a comeback to tie it up at six, but ultimately the Panthers pulled through to put four more on the board with scores from Han, Woodring, Smith and Henry Strmecki ’21.
Will Oppenheim ’21 proved his skills on the mound, pitching for five innings for the Panthers, only giving up three hits while striking out six. Also notable was the performance of Han, who went 3-for-4 in the game with three RBIs.
Sunday ended in a tough loss against the Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens. Neither team scored until the eighth when Pomona got four runs on four hits.
Middlebury stayed in the game, scoring two runs in the ninth, but it wasn’t enough and the game ended in a 4–2 loss.
However, Middlebury was not without success against the Sagehens. Colin Waters ’19 threw seven scoreless innings in which he gave up only three hits and two walks, striking out four.. Additionally, Han and Strmecki each finished with a 2-for-3 performance at the plate.
Furthermore, Middlebury proved not to be held down by these losses and went on to win their next two games against Whittier College and Caltech.
The Panthers needed 10 innings to dispatch the Whittier Poets on Monday, March 26. After three scoreless innings, Middlebury managed to get a run on the board in the fourth. After Han reached on a fielder’s choice which moved Smith to third, the Panthers executed perfectly a first-and-third situation, confusing the Poets’ defense as Han stole second and Smith scored on a double steal.
In the following inning, the Panthers scored three runs on four hits for a 4–0 advantage. Whittier answered in the fifth, however, with two-run homer to make it a 4–2 game and ultimately tying it up 4–4 in the eighth. Staying at 4–4 throughout the ninth, the teams were pushed into an exciting extra inning.
Carroll started the tenth inning off with a bang, hitting a solo homer -- his first of the season, but likely not his last, considering he hit three home runs last season and has already tallied five RBIs and thirteen hits to account for a .277 batting average and .379 on-base percentage so far this year. Throughout the obvious early success, he has remained humble. “My personal goal is to continue contributing to the team’s success both on and off the field,” says Carroll.
Han went on to seal the deal, taking advantage of a fielding error to get home. The Poets failed to answer, resulting in a 6-4 victory for the Panthers.
Smith’s batting skills were highlighted as he went 3-for-5 at the plate with two RBI and two runs score. Middlebury’s depth was on display against Whittier, as six other players had hits as well.
Middlebury went on to beat the Caltech Beavers 8–5 on Tuesday, March 27th in a back-and-forth game. Caltech scored four runs in the first two innings to Middlebury’s zero, but the Panthers answered with three runs on three hits in the third, making it a 4–3 game. Han had a single to bring home Senior Captain Sebastian Sanchez ‘18 and Carroll, while Graf singled to drive in Han. Hamilton Evans ‘20 belted a two-out homer — also his first home run at the collegiate level — to left center in the fourth to tie the game at 4–4. Caltech managed to get another run in in the bottom of the inning on an RBI single, but Middlebury regained the lead with a run from Smith. The Panthers scored three more with runs from Carroll, Han and Elgarten in the seventh inning to give them an 8–5 lead. Caltech was contained offensively for the last two innings, resulting in a strong win for the Panthers.
Of note is Han, who went 2-for-4 with two runs scored and two RBI against Caltech, and again the team’s depth was easily displayed, as seven other Panthers had one or more hits.
Though pulling off wins against Whittier and Caltech, the Panthers suffered a loss against the then 10th NCAA ranked Redlands bulldogs on Wednesday, Mar. 28. Middlebury had the first run of the game in the third inning when Andrew Hennings ‘20 scored on a sacrifice fly to left field from Carroll. The Bulldogs responded strongly with two runs in the bottom of the inning and then two more in the fifth, leaving the final score at 4-1.
Pitcher Justin Legowski ‘19 took a tough loss on the mound, allowing four runs and five hits over five innings of work. Legowski acknowledged this, saying “We made a few mistakes which good teams like Redlands will make you pay for. If you leave the ball up in the zone to good hitters, they will will hit it.” Yet, he knew what changes needed to be made and saw the Redlands matchup as an opportunity to grow and come back stronger. “Moving forward, and in order to bounce back, we have to keep the ball down in the zone from a pitching standpoint,” says Legowski. “We use this to motivate us, and we enjoy the challenge of competing with these more experienced teams to begin our season. We gain confidence as we work through the early-season rust to compete with, and beat, some very strong teams,” an experience he feels will be invaluable looking ahead to more division matchups.
Like Legowski, the team is overall proud of their performance against these tough out-of-conference competitors, despite the mixed bag of results.
“The California teams are obviously going to be more polished than teams like us because they start playing the first week of February. That being said, they’re very good teams, and opening our season with stiff competition challenged us from the get-go. It was a great way to see who on our team is a true competitor,” Smith commented.
After a well-deserved day off, the rejuvenated Panthers came back from their loss on Wednesday ready to take on their first Nescac opponents of the season: Williams.
Middlebury pulled off a season-high of 20 runs in the first game of three against the Ephs. They also limited their opponents to just one score. The last time the Panthers pulled of 20 runs was in their victory against Hamilton, which ended 20-8 in 2010. Furthermore, the Panthers scored in seven different innings and collected a season-best 19 hits.
Their success started early, scoring six runs in the bottom of the first inning with the help of key plays from Woodring, Carroll, Bernstein and Elgarten. Williams’ only run came during the top of the second inning. Many of the Panthers had the chance to show their stuff, as Hennings, Graf, Smith, Han, Andrew Corcoran ’18, and Strmecki, among others, all played vital roles in Middlebury’s offensive success.
On the mound, Morris improved to 2–2 on the season, giving up only one run on four hits in seven innings. Andrew Martinson ‘20 and Evan Stewart ‘21 stepped up to the plate as well as relief pitchers, both throwing scoreless innings.
Saturday, March 31, took a different turn for the team in their double-header against Williams, ending the day with a split.
The Panthers began the day with a 6–1 win over the Ephs. Williams quickly scored the first run of the game in the top of the first inning until Middlebury was able to hold them and take the lead in the fourth inning with a pair of runs by Smith and Guild with two outs. The Panthers tacked on four more runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to put their total for the game at six. Graf went 2-for-2 with two RBIs and Han had two hits with a run scored.
Defensively, Will Oppenheim ‘21 picked up his first collegiate victoring, throwing 5.1 innings during which he allowed only one run on five hits with four strikeouts. Additionally, George Goldstein ‘21 retired all five batters he faced for his second showing on the mound.
Legowski praises the performance of the team’s first-years.
“Our first-year guys did an awesome job all week,” Legowski said. “Coming in as first-year guy, and trying to understand your role and where you fit into the puzzle can be challenging. However, they were more than prepared and were a big reason as to why we won the series.”
Game two of the double header, however, ended on a different note as the Panthers suffered an unexpected loss against Williams. Though Middlebury first took the lead, scoring three runs in the first two innings, Williams answered with three runs in the third inning to tie the game. The score remained 3–3 until the seventh inning, when the Ephs added on two more, bringing the game to its final score of 5–3.
The dramatic shift in the final scores from the first game to the last was certainly on the Panthers’ minds coming out of the series. “I think that we got a bit complacent after winning the first two games,” says Carroll. “We came out flat which allowed them to stay in the game and come out on top.”
Despite this, Carroll remains optimistic.
“We won the series against Williams two games to one and that puts us in a great position as we head into our second series of conference games against Wesleyan this weekend. We showed in California that we are ready to compete for a playoff spot and I really like where we stand in relation to other Nescac teams.”
This positivity is certainly echoed by fellow teammates. “We feel very confident going into our conference matchups,” says Smith. “We have some freshmen stepping into key roles, and our bats our hot. I’m very excited about our potential in these upcoming conference games.”
The Panthers will next face Wesleyan in a three game conference series tomorrow and Saturday, April 6 and 7, followed by a game this Sunday, April 8, against Trinity.
(03/22/18 1:42am)
MIDDLEBURY — Last Wednesday morning in New York City, students laid down in the streets. In Washington, D.C., they congregated on Capitol Hill. In Middlebury, high schoolers from Middlebury Union High School (MUHS) braved the snow on the Cross Street Bridge to protest gun violence alongside thousands of their peers from across the country. The MUHS students, joined on the bridge by teachers, community members, faculty and students from the college, stood in silence for 17 minutes to honor the 17 people who were murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) High School in Parkland, Fl. last month.
The organizers of the event, which took place on March 14, sought to both commemorate the lives lost in Parkland and demand stricter gun control laws from state and national legislators. Theo Wells-Spackman, a sophomore at MUHS, spoke to the dual nature of the protest at the event.
“Those 17 minutes of silence were to remember the lives lost in Parkland, and to all the families who lost students there, our hearts are with you,” he said into a megaphone. “But we’re also here to demand change. Something has to happen in government. What is there right now is not enough.”
While high schoolers elsewhere walked out of their classes to protest gun violence, students at MUHS woke up Wednesday morning to a snow day. Although the weather made it difficult for some students to attend the event, both sides of the bridge were almost completely covered with protesters by 10 a.m. Many carried signs and chanted slogans such as “We want change” and “No more silence, end gun violence.”
Although there was no physical walkout at the March 14 protest, over 100 student demonstrators, determined to practice their acts of civil disobedience, stepped out of their classes and observed 17 minutes of silence the following Monday, March 19. After the moments of silence, 17 students read short bios for each of the victims.
“Just getting up and leaving class is typically something we would never do, at least I would never do, and it just shows how serious I am about it” said MUHS junior Marina Herren-Lage, who helped organize the protest. “I think to a lot of the teachers at our school recognize that the students who are participating in this are typically very good students, so if we’re leaving and we’re showing them that this matters enough to us, than I think that will just get our message across in a more powerful way.”
The protests in Middlebury and around the U.S. were organized in response to the Feb. 14 shooting in Parkland, in which a former student shot and killed 14 students and three staff members and injured 17 others using an AR-15 style rifle. This type of rifle has been used in five of the six deadliest mass shootings of the past six years.
In the wake of the shooting, around 20 students from MSD, the Florida high school, formed a gun control advocacy organization called Never Again MSD. The group has lobbied U.S. lawmakers to take tougher stances on gun control measures and has publicly criticized high-profile legislators, like Florida senator Marco Rubio, who have accepted donations from the National Rifle Association (NRA).
MUHS sophomore Sabina Ward, who helped plan the protest, said that she drew inspiration from the Parkland survivors.
“I think the fact that the Parkland students haven’t let people forget about them and are really really fighting and pushing has completely changed the game, because it’s obviously inspired students across the country and really taught us that we can use our voices and we can make change if we’re dedicated enough,” she said.
Ward also noted that she was influenced by the 2016 Pulse massacre in Orlando, in which a shooter opened fire in a gay nightclub and killed 49 people.
“I was in middle school when that happened and had just come out to my family and friends,” she said. “To have that happen just days after, that is the moment when I realized that I might not be safe being who I am as a person, and now I’m not safe being who I am as a student.”
On March 7, MUHS principal William D. Lawson emailed students expressing his support for the protests.
“I write to let you know that I share and support the goals of the many students and others who are voicing their urgent concern with school safety and the unfortunate incidents of gun-related violence that have plagued our schools across the country,” he wrote, adding that students would not face consequences for missing class for the walkout but would require parental permission for the march to the bridge.
“Immediately after the Florida school shooting, students in school were sharing/voicing their anxiety around the issue of school violence and safety,” Lawson said in an interview with The Campus. “I felt that it was important for them to give voice to their concerns and to take some reasonable actions that might serve to improve the current conditions. Psychologists tell us that these actions will help students re-balance their anxiety by giving them a sense of control.”
Ward said that the email got mixed responses at MUHS.
“We were really hoping to make a statement with leaving class, without permission,” she said. “A lot of us thought sure, it would be nice to not get detention, but at the same time, the civil disobedience part of it has kind of been taken away from our hands.”
The email came nearly two weeks after Vermont Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe sent out a memorandum asking superintendents not to encourage protests that would disrupt classes or pose safety threats to students leaving school without permission. Lawson noted that he coordinated with local police officers to ensure students’ security for the protest in town.
The assemblage of college students and faculty that joined the high schoolers on the bridge was in part led by Julian Gerson ’18, co-founder and president of Middlebury Students Against Gun Violence (MSAGV). Gerson and Cooper Babbitt ’18.5 founded MSAGV after the Parkland shooting and have been holding weekly meetings since.
Gerson created a Facebook event to advertise the protest and was aided by the SGA, which sent out a school-wide email about the event the day prior. Gerson also gratefully noted that there was support for the protest from many professors, who permitted and encouraged their students to miss class to attend.
Gerson said it was important to him to show solidarity with the MUHS protestors.
“I think it takes a lot of bravery and a lot of vulnerability to be a 17 year old organizing this big thing and I just wanted to make sure they had people there, supporting them, and that they knew this was a cause that a lot of people had their backs on,” he said.
“It was so powerful to see all of the college students there,” said Herren-Lage. “It was really wonderful to be able to combine forces and do it as one group because I think that’s really the point of this movement.”
Going forward, MSAGV will focus its efforts mainly on carrying out on-campus advocacy work and influencing gun control legislation.
Despite the impressive turnout and support from the school, MUHS senior and protest organizer Andrea Boe noted that the event was not unanimously supported.
“We have a pretty split community where there are a lot of very liberal people, but there’s also a big enough community who are very protective of their gun rights and the second amendment,” she said. “So I think we definitely had a huge community that was for the protests but also a smaller and slightly quieter community that was not.”
Vermont has a complicated history with gun control. Although a blue state in many respects, it has some of the laxest gun laws in the country. The dangers of these weak laws became apparent when last month, just days after the Parkland shooting, officials from Rutland County thwarted the plans of an 18-year-old from Poultney, Vt. who intended to shoot up Fair Haven Union High School in Fair Haven, Vt. The boy was preparing to buy a 9 mm Glock and an AR-15, both which he would have legally been able to purchase. He had planned to carry out the shooting Mar. 14.
The obstructed Fair Haven shooting proved influential within Vermont politics. Vt. Governor Phil Scott, a Republican and once-fervent opponent to gun control laws, has begun pursuing limitations on gun ownership as a result.
“I have thought for quite some time that Vermont was immune to this type of thing,” Scott said in Montpelier the week after the shooting.
Herren-Lage, whose father worked at Fair Haven high school until this year, talked of a similar feeling of immunity.
“I have friends that have always said, ‘Oh, it will never happen to us,’ but we really can never say that,” she said. “It’s genuinely terrifying to walk into school everyday and see all my friends and not necessarily know if I’m going to see them again.”
Lawson echoed her sentiments. “I have to say that there is not a morning that I don’t get up thinking about the bad possibilities that could happen to my students, colleagues or frankly to myself,” he said.
(03/21/18 10:43pm)
In an op-ed published in last week’s edition of The Campus, Professor Noah Graham discussed the massive paychecks allotted to top administrators at the college. During the 2015–2016 fiscal year, these included numbers like $482,773 for the Monterey President/Special Advisor for Initiatives and $458,932 for the Vice President for Finance and Treasurer. A commenter on Graham’s op-ed wrote that they were “embarrassed, infuriated, and pained by this information. Everyone knows that Middlebury College is not a beacon of equity and inclusion, but I did not realize that the situation was this dire — that our own administrators were perpetuating the income gap that I am sure they speak frequently of closing.” Truly appalling, however, is the stark contrast posed by a comparison of these paychecks to those on a spreadsheet of Middlebury staff pay ranges, where some yearly salaries amount to as little as $22,165.00. (It should be acknowledged that some staff work part time, thereby lowering this number.) Such inequality, while extremely pronounced, is not surprising; income inequality exists across the U.S., and the Middlebury College community is no exception. At the same time, Middlebury compares itself to 21 institutions — NESCAC and other liberal arts colleges — and finds itself among the upper echelon for exempt (salaried) workers, but just above the median for non-exempt (hourly) workers.
The workers who belong to the latter category form the vanguard of day-to-day staff interaction with students at Middlebury College, and wage inequality is just one injustice they face: we are all aware that the students with whom the dining hall and custodial staff interact on a daily basis behave disrespectfully and embarrassingly towards these workers. As a board, we would like to call for the improved treatment of Middlebury’s wage-earning staff on the part of both the administration and the student body. The administration, on its part, should increase non-exempt workers’ abysmally low wages. We as students can, and must, elevate our behavior in dining halls, dorms and other campus spaces from that of children to that of the college-age adults we are.
A recent example of student misconduct came last week when the SGA sent out an email announcing the suspension of 10 o’clock Ross. The email identified issues with “cleanliness, including ice cream spills, dirty dishes, and general disarray.” The email went on to point out how “the Ross Dining Hall Staff trusts the student body by allowing us to enjoy late-night snacks in the dining hall after hours and we have failed to step up to the task.” This is not the first cancellation of 10 o’clock Ross: last year, the discovery of beer bottles and other uncleanliness led to a similar suspension.
Students’ behavior indicates a severe lack of consideration for our staff, which manifests weeknight after weeknight. We are better than this; dining hall staff should under no circumstances be called upon to clean up childlike messes made by adult students. It’s hard to blame Ross Dining Hall for a suspension that seems so fitting; students are acting like elementary school kids, and as a result are having their ice cream and sugared cereal privileges taken away.
A similar pattern of thoughtlessness occurs in dorms. The custodial staff routinely has to deal with problems beyond what should be reasonably expected of them. Among these are dirty dishes, left out in the hallway by students too lazy to return them to their rightful dining hall. An email to residents of Coffrin Hall called for improved student behavior in light of beer cans being left in hallways, signs being ripped off of doors and vomit in bathrooms. On a floor in Milliken Hall, a custodial staff member has taken to leaving notes, often humorous in nature, in an attempt to make students realize that their actions have tangible consequences. “My mother works with disabled elementary school kids,” reads a note above the hall garbage cans, “and even they know how to recycle.” This indicates that the normal systems of response — which consists largely of hall-wide emails sent out by RAs — are not enough to keep students mindful of staff. Whether it be food fights in Ross, people drunkenly leaving behind their plates on St. Patrick’s Day or students leaving dirty dishes in hallways, students constantly act in ways that make the lives of staff members more unpleasant.
Another example of this lack of respect has arisen with the new swipe system implemented in dining halls. Students interact with dining hall workers every time they get a meal, swiping in inches away from a seated staff member. “If people forget their card, they get pretty upset with me,” says a worker at Ross who is responsible for overseeing the new swipe system. “I don’t make the rules, I’m just following them.”
Overall, the significance of students’ lack of consideration for staff cannot be overstated. Staff are working diligently to perform duties beyond the scope of their responsibilities while receiving inadequate compensation for the duties within their job descriptions. We are not arguing that paying non-exempt workers more would justify current student treatment towards them — regardless of income level, this treatment is unacceptable. Paying them more would, however, demonstrate that the Middlebury community values them and their jobs.
The President of Kentucky State University set a glowing precedent in 2014, taking a $90,000 pay cut and distributing it among the university’s lowest income employees. As a result, 24 employees salaries raised from $7.25 to $10.25 per hour, representing a huge increase in yearly earnings. “This is not a gift,” said President Burse, “it’s an investment.” We are not asking for anyone at Middlebury to take a pay cut, as such band-aid action does not challenge or alter systemic issues at the root of wage inequality. However, the ethos of Burse’s action applies; by treating staff with financial respect and care, we invest in the school the same way we do when paying out large “stay bonuses” to various administrators. Middlebury’s administration should apply this same ethos in considering future pay rates for non-exempt employees.
While profound disparities in Middlebury’s pay scale staff are beyond students’ ability to change, treatment of staff remains very much within student control. This means recycling, so that custodial staff do not have to do it for us. This means returning our own dirty dishes to the dining hall when we’ve finished our most recent unlimited meal. And it means recognizing that the staff are not in charge of systems like swipe-ins, however personally irritating we might find them. We as students may not be able to increase paychecks, but we can at least try to account for the difference in basic human decency.
(03/16/18 4:35pm)
Spring Break is almost here! To celebrate, here's the best work produced by our paper during February 2018!
P.S. If you read our paper regularly, you will have noticed this note by Ethan Brady, our editor in chief, announcing a change to both the Features and Opinion sections. Please read it. Also, our Cartoons section is now online, check our their work!
Disclaimer: It is my hope that our readers will use this monthly post to both rediscover old stories and find new ones they may have missed. Of course, most months I will probably leave out a piece that should have been included. It is important to note that I will be selecting stories more or less from memory, so I apologize in advance if I leave anyone out! I’m open to suggestions both before and after the post is published. Feel free to comment or email me at wdigravio@middlebury.edu. Also, there may be times when stories by me appear in this post. In those instances, I will have already reached out to another editor(s) to confirm that they belong. If you disagree, also feel free to email me or comment! Also, the selection of a piece does not constitute an endorsement.
News
Applicant Pool Reaches Record High Despite Murray Controversy - By Bochu Ding
Applicants Have Right to Protest, College Says - By Elaine Velie
Interview with President Patton by Ethan Brady, Amelia Pollard, and Elizabeth Zhou:
Edited Transcript
Article By Ethan Brady
Marijuana Policy Unchanged Despite New Vermont Law - By Elizabeth Sawyer
College Disciplines Dunn - By Catherine Pollack
Local
Vermont Furthers Equal Pay Act - By Joel Lyons
Career Center Hosts Maker’s Faire - By Sadie Housberg
UVM Students Protest Racism, Demanding President's Resignation - By Ally Murphy
Opinion
Why You Should Pick Up That Copy of New England Review Lying Around the Library - By Ellie Eberlee
Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby & You Are Not Alone - By Ivey Noojin
The Mammies of Middlebury - By Treasure Brooks
Study Abroad: The Hardest Four Months of My Life - By Laura Dillon
Gun Violence Is a Product of Social Illness, Not Mental Illness - By Elizabeth Zhou
Administrators Should Follow His Lead - By The Editorial Board
Redefining ‘Inclusivity’ as ‘Freedoms’ - By Shawna Shapiro and Michael Sheridan
Why Hate Crime Laws Shouldn't Exist - By Brendan Philbin
In Defense of Our Hate Crime Laws - By Kai Wiggins
We Need to Confront Civil War Falsehoods - By Joey Lyons
Arts & Sciences
Grace Kelly Charms - By Monique Santoso
The Big Sip Laps up Success - By Nate Obbard
Alum Talks Changing Environmental Markets - By Sarah Holmes
Feminism, Science Commingle - By Caroline Jaschke
Cabaret Captivates Campus - By David Gossens
Sports
Eagles Fans at Middlebury Rejoice - By Rob Erickson
Cavs GM Altman ’05 Tries to Save Sinking Ship - By Andrew Rigas
Women’s Swimming & Diving Takes Seventh at NESCACs - Lauren Boyd
Women Finish Third, Martinez Wins 400 - By Jordan Howell
Women's Squash Takes Down Amherst, Finishes 15th at Nationals - By Emily Bian
Men’s Basketball Earns NCAA Bid, Readies for Regionals - By Andrew Rigas
Men’s Lacrosse Committed to Overcoming Playoff Heartbreak - By Imran Ganda
Features
A Change to Features - By Ethan Brady
Professor Provides Local and Global Context to #MeToo - By Emma Patch
Dining Hall Staff Innovates with Dairy-Free Ice Cream - By James Finn
Speaker Defends Sandusky, Discussing Malleability of Memory - By Nicole Pollack
Professor Teaches Winter Term Class at Local Correctional Facility - By Kacey Hertan
MAlt Trips Culminate with Reflection Dinner and Presentations - By Benjy Renton
(03/15/18 2:46pm)
In case you don’t know me, I’m that guy at our financial meetings — the one who’s always asking questions (but not necessarily getting answers) about Middlebury’s executive pay. The data I’m talking about, the total compensation of our top administrators as listed in Middlebury’s IRS-mandated Form 990 filings for 2014–15 and 2015–16 (the most recent available), are shown in the accompanying chart.
I suspect that many students, faculty and staff will find the sheer magnitude of these numbers infuriating, especially at a time when tuition increases are significantly exceeding and average faculty and staff salary increases are lagging behind the rate of inflation. But I would argue that it is even more important to scrutinize executive compensation for the same reason we need to pay top executives well in the first place: because incentives matter.
According to the administration, a major contribution to these total compensation numbers has been a program of “stay bonuses.” Nominally associated with the presidential transition in 2015, these payments have been justified by the administration as a necessary tool to prevent senior executives from leaving for other institutions. According to our available Form 990 filings, top administrators accrued these bonuses regularly over several years (at least six in some cases). However, because these bonuses are paid out as lump sums, we account for them as one-time expenses, meaning that they are taken directly from the endowment rather than falling within the constraints of the operating budget. In other words, they are funded by dipping into our long-term savings — an approach that is often suggested, and rightly rejected, to address budget gaps in other areas.
While the administration has pointed out that our compensation committee sets executive pay to be competitive with peer institutions, it has also acknowledged that this comparison does not take these bonuses into account. And although this bonus program originated before she arrived, President Patton reported to Faculty Council in February 2017 that she has continued it and added additional bonuses for current administrators. At that meeting she also reported that former President Liebowitz is due a bonus that has not yet been disclosed in the available filings.
Since the right incentives can easily pay for themselves through the institution’s overall success, evaluating this approach requires us to reflect on Middlebury’s financial performance over the corresponding time period. Despite a strong economy, we swung to eight-figure deficits that peaked in 2015–16 at more than $22 million, roughly triple our worst shortfall during the 2007 financial crisis. Our credit outlook was downgraded, our auditors found “material weaknesses” in our financial statements, and we recognized that our accounting had underestimated depreciation costs for our facilities compared to generally accepted accounting principles. We added a new $46 million field house featuring a $7.8 million squash facility, a new office in Washington, D.C., and new off-site summer programs at the same time as we did little to address the college’s academic space needs, so that we are now scrambling to build a temporary building to accommodate growth in science enrollments and create swing space for overdue renovations. A New York Times report on family income of domestic college students listed us as the #9 college in the country for the highest ratio of the top one percent compared to the bottom 60 percent.
These outcomes have followed alongside growth in spending. We entered into an agreement to lease a spacious new townhouse dormitory, trading upfront building costs for ongoing rent payments. We committed to pay $14 million over 20 years to the town for a new municipal building and recreation facility, enabling us to establish a park entrance to campus on the site of the former town hall. We added new layers to the administration and created many new administrative positions. We brought in gifts and grants through new initiatives, centers and facilities, but now face the costs of continuing programs past the “fiscal cliffs” when their initial funding expires, along with the ongoing expenses associated with administration and maintenance. The Monterey merger and other ventures that were justified on the grounds that they would generate positive net income, or at least break even, have instead required millions of dollars in subsidies to cover their deficits, indirect costs, opportunity costs and assumed debt.
While faculty do not have access to the detailed financial numbers behind these trends, one data point from our Form 990 filing is that we spent $69.7 million on management and fundraising in 2015–16, compared to the $89.1 million we spent on instruction. It is taking nothing away from the dedicated individuals working hard at the jobs they were hired to do to question whether this allocation of resources reflects the core values and goals of a nonprofit educational institution.
One can argue that the value of these efforts justifies their costs, and that hindsight is 20/20; we should be willing to take risks, not all of which will succeed. But the structure of our executive compensation casts significant doubt on those arguments: Highly compensated administrators with one foot out the door might naturally be expected to focus more on short-term, externally visible benefits and correspondingly less on long-term costs and planning.
In this light, it is also natural to ask how these incentives interact with our decision-making, either explicitly or implicitly. To what extent did the opportunity for administrators to increase the scope of their responsibilities, and therefore their compensation, enter into their decisions to merge with the Monterey Institute, to embark on our now-terminated Middlebury Interactive Languages joint venture, or to expand administrative programs and staff? As we used to say when I worked in the software industry, maybe it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
It is particularly dangerous, as became clear after the dot-com bubble, to judge executives by the revenue they bring in without paying corresponding attention to the associated costs. But that is essentially what happens if the administration is evaluated by its ability to hit fundraising targets. Doing so creates a powerful incentive to solicit donor support in the areas that will yield the largest gifts, rather than focusing on the most lasting and cost-effective contributions to our highest educational priorities.
None of this is to suggest that anyone actively plotted to undermine the institution’s long-term well-being. As biology teaches us, systems will evolve in response to selection pressure alone, without the need for an overarching design; if one set of practices leads to growth and rewards, it will become dominant. Unlike the natural world, however, in our ecosystem these incentives are within our control because they are created within the institution itself.
Success in higher education is, fundamentally, a long-term proposition. While it’s easier to quantify quarterly fundraising revenue, it takes time to separate true progress from window dressing. As a result, our compensation practices should establish incentives that reflect long-term educational outcomes. They should be applied proportionally across the institution rather than to a select few, and should reward effective deployment of resources over mere expansion. Creating such a system is easier said than done, but facing up to and learning from our past experience is a good place to start.
Noah Graham is a professor of physics.
(03/15/18 12:51am)
Update: Since the publication of this story, the plaintiff withdrew her claims against Kevin Mahaney from the lawsuit.
A prominent alumnus of Middlebury College has been tied to a sexual assault case in the New York supreme court. In a civil lawsuit filed in January, Kevin Mahaney ’84, a major benefactor of the college and the namesake of its Center for the Arts, was accused of helping to “cover-up” and “emotionally manipulate” a 20-year-old woman after she had been allegedly raped and tortured in a Manhattan penthouse in 2015.
The allegation is the fourth sexual assault lawsuit brought against Howard Rubin, 62, a wealthy Wall Street investment manager. Although Mahaney denies any personal relationship with Rubin, Mahaney was named in the lawsuit after having a long-term “friendship” with the young woman.
The emergence of Mahaney in the suit — which alleges that he paid for the woman’s college tuition and rent in Los Angeles after the alleged rape, urging her not to report it to the police or seek medical treatment — comes a full two years after the initial alleged assault by Rubin.
The woman, who was allowed to proceed in the courts under a pseudonym, Julie Parker, met Mahaney, 55, at the Polo Lounge in Los Angeles in 2015. She was 20 at the time of their meeting, and according to the lawsuit, the two quickly became friends despite their age difference.
Shortly after, Mahaney flew the woman to New York, where their “friendship,” as referred to in the lawsuit, evolved into a relationship in which Mahaney “encouraged [Parker] to treat him as a ‘mentor’ and ‘confidant.’ ” The two never had sexual intercourse, but their relationship remained ambiguous — they sometimes “cuddled and kissed,” according to the lawsuit.
After spending time together, Parker told Mahaney that she hoped to attend college, but that her financial situation made the goal elusive. Mahaney, according to the lawsuit, put Parker in touch with a third party, Nicole Minton, who he claimed would connect Parker with a “wealthy guy willing to pay for having lunch and drinks together.” The client was Rubin and he offered the plaintiff $2,000 in exchange for lunch.
According to the lawsuit, the victim met Rubin in the Russian Tea Room in Manhattan on Nov. 5, 2015, where he provided her caviar and alcohol. After several rounds of tequila and other drinks, the suit stated, Rubin’s assistant supposedly arrived at the midtown establishment mid-meal, clutching a non-disclosure agreement. The agreement claimed that any disclosure of the interactions between Rubin and the plaintiff would leave her vulnerable to being sued for up to $1 million.
Allegedly, the victim asked Mr. Rubin and his assistant why she had to sign a non-disclosure agreement. He responded that it was to protect his marriage and children, as well as his business, the suit said, and so Parker signed it. “Hindsight is 20/20,” the lawsuit says. “It was an intoxicated, impromptu decision made by the plaintiff without legal counsel or even the thought that something horrible was about to transpire.”
The complaint said that Parker was then escorted by Rubin to his apartment tower next door.
The lawsuit details a violent attack involving electrocuting devices, clamps and other instruments in what Rubin called his “toy room,” a 200- to 300-square-foot space that other victims dubbed the “dungeon.” The suit further states that Rubin used a date rape drug on Parker and tied her wrists in order to immobilize her. He then punched and slapped her before sodomizing her with a dildo and later raping her himself. After assaulting her, he supposedly “thanked her for a pleasurable experience” before leaving to meet his wife and children for dinner.
Rubin’s lawyer declined to comment on the allegations.
On Monday, a spokesperson for Mahaney dismissed any notion of a cover-up. “As we have said all along, Kevin Mahaney did not introduce the plaintiff to Howard Rubin and does not know him, so Mahaney’s alleged participation in this incident is not just implausible, but impossible,” the spokesperson said.
After the alleged rape, the plaintiff immediately telephoned a friend and the two went back to Mahaney’s condominium, where the plaintiff had been allegedly staying at the time. Parker claims that Mahaney asked the friend to leave the room before she delved into the “details” of what had just occurred. The lawsuit said that Mahaney discouraged her from seeking legal or medical attention, telling her that Rubin could destroy her with his wealth and power, as well as the non-disclosure agreement.
“Ms. Parker’s claims are authentic and injuries genuinely real,” said a spokesperson for the plaintiff who requested anonymity. “Her privacy and well-being is of the utmost concern. Please consult the Complaint and public filing for further reference on all things related to Ms. Parker’s suit.”
Mahaney’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the case on Monday, arguing that the lawsuit’s claims were not substantiated. In the claim, Mahaney does not deny that Parker returned to his apartment following the meeting with Rubin. But his lawyers assert that any claim that he dissuaded her from going to the police was false. Further, the motion addresses the lawsuit’s assertion that Mahaney laid out the consequences of reporting the encounter, saying that the advice, “whether good or bad, is certainly not actionable.”
Mahaney’s motion to have the case dismissed also said: “These claims are belied by lack of even a single allegation that Mr. Mahaney knew or had any relationship with Mr. Rubin whatsoever, either before or after the alleged assault.”
“We continue to vehemently deny these preposterous allegations and are confident that when the Court reviews our motion to dismiss, the truth will prevail,” Mahaney’s spokesperson said Monday.
Parker’s primary cause of action against Mahaney cites “aiding and abetting fraud,” which indicates he is “criminally liable for the conduct of Defendant Rubin.” After the alleged assault, Mahaney confirms in his motion that he enabled her to attend college in Los Angeles to pursue stage and theatrical makeup design, by covering her tuition and rent payments in full.
But Parker and Mahaney provide very different contexts for his acts of generosity. Parker’s lawsuit indicates that the financial support stemmed from a desire by Mahaney to control the young woman, and enabled him to wield power in their relationship. It is unclear whether, after the alleged attack by Rubin, Mahaney and Parker continued to engage in the romantic ambiguity of “kissing” and “cuddling” that they had prior.
As Parker began suffering from panic attacks and depression, the lawsuit said, Mahaney would fly out to Los Angeles and “remind her of the terrible things that could happen if [she] told anyone” about the attack by Rubin, and that “if anything was reported, that Mahaney would no longer be there to ‘protect’ her, or pay for her apartment or college.”
Although Mahaney insists in his motion for dismissal that he in no way knew Rubin, it is unclear whether he can still be legally liable for his supposed knowledge of or involvement in Parker’s case after the alleged rape. According to Parker’s allegation, however, she appeared at his doorstep with visible “injuries that she had sustained from the rape.”
Mahaney won a silver medal for sailing at the 1992 Olympics and is now the CEO of Olympia Companies, a real estate firm based in Portland, Maine.
According to Colleen Fitzpatrick, Middlebury’s vice president for advancement, the college does not release giving information from donors. Although Fitzpatrick did not divulge the exact amount of Mahaney’s donations to Middlebury, he is a significant donor to the arts program. The college renamed the Center for the Arts after him in 2007 on the occasion of the building’s 15th anniversary.
After a Campus inquiry last week about Middlebury’s response to the allegations, the college released a statement on its website, saying that “Middlebury is committed to fairness for every person, which includes ensuring that people have the opportunity as a matter of due process to respond to allegations made against them.” The statement continued: “Middlebury strives to reduce sexual violence within its community, and responds to all allegations made under its policies. Middlebury will continue to monitor this case closely.”
Parker is seeking $17 million in damages, plus legal fees, against both Rubin and Mahaney. The plaintiff is expected to file an opposition to Mahaney’s motion to dismiss within the next 20 days.
(03/15/18 12:48am)
In the year since students protested a planned lecture by Charles Murray last March, political science professor Allison Stanger has emerged as a prominent public figure in the national debate over issues of speech and protest on college campuses.
In the immediate wake of the protests, Stanger wrote multiple op-eds, including two for The New York Times. Last October, she spoke about the protest on C-SPAN’s “Q&A” with Brian Lamb. Days later, she testified before a U.S. Senate committee in a hearing entitled “Exploring Free Speech on College Campuses.” She has also spoken publicly at a number of panels and conferences, including those at Yale University, Elmhurst College in Chicago and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.
Last month, Stanger spoke at Arizona State University (ASU) in a talk entitled “Speech on Campus: When Protests Turn Extreme.” The event also featured Lucía Martínez Valdivia, a professor at Reed College whose introductory humanities class was protested last year for featuring works that students deemed “white supremacist” and “anti-black.”
President Laurie L. Patton was also scheduled to speak at the event, but withdrew two months before the talk. The Campus requested comment from Patton, but Bill Burger, the college’s spokesman, said she was unavailable for comment due to traveling.
Both Stanger and Valdivia pointed to the current political climate as an aggravator for protests like those at Middlebury and Reed and spoke to the importance of harnessing reason and engaging in difficult conversations for the betterment of these institutions.
“From my perspective as a professor of political science, if we can’t have someone like Charles Murray on campus, who’s an influential voice in the Republican Party, well we can’t be a department of political science, we become a department of indoctrination if we can only allow Democrats to speak on campus,” Stanger said. “So for me on principle it’s extremely important that he be allowed to speak and I be allowed to engage him, along with my students.”
She also called upon administrators to stand up for the university’s core mission, which she deemed the “pursuit of truth.”
Stanger additionally spoke of her frustration that there is a sentiment emerging at Middlebury that freedom of speech and inclusivity are mutually exclusive ideas.
“I myself would like to do away with the terms ‘inclusivity’ and ‘diversity’ and instead talk about pluralism, and that freedom of speech is actually a means to greater inclusivity, greater diversity, and if we respect pluralism, the idea that there can be a multiplicity of views, and it’s interesting to contend with them,” she said, adding that this practice of pluralism is conducive to civil discourse both within and outside of academic institutions.
The Campus requested comment from Stanger with a series of questions, to which she replied from her office at the Santa Fe Institute with the following:
“I have been out and speaking about the larger issues that the Murray incident raises, which have to do with the challenges to American constitutional democracy,” she said. “Audiences have been receptive, and I have received wonderful support from Middlebury students.”
Stanger was scheduled to moderate a Q&A session after Murray’s lecture. Due to the protests, the lecture never took place, and the two instead engaged in a Q&A which was broadcasted to the college via live stream. When the two left the venue, Stanger suffered a concussion and neck injury. She began a two-year sabbatical in fall 2017, and is currently a scholar in residence at the New America Foundation in Washington D.C.
The purpose of the sabbatical program, according to the faculty handbook, is “to enhance the scholarly and teaching capacity of the individual faculty member and to promote the general interest of the college.” The handbook says that sabbaticals can be either a half year or a full year, but does does not discuss the possibility of a two-year leave.
Even before she moderated the Murray talk, Stanger was a high-profile scholar. She testified before three different Congressional committees in 2010 and was a guest on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” in 2011. Today, Stanger continues to deliver talks about her work around the country.
Still, many of Stanger’s public appearances within the last year have centered on Middlebury and its place in the greater national debate about free speech on college campuses, and these appearances have not come without contention. During her Congressional testimony last October, Stanger criticized the actions of her colleagues in the Sociology/Anthropology (SOAN) department in the weeks preceding Murray’s visit. This comment instigated a back-and-forth in the opinion pages of The Campus among various professors and Paul Carrese ’89, who introduced the ASU event.
The first piece, published Nov. 29 and written by the SOAN department, disputed Stanger’s accusations toward the department and emphasized that the department did not release any collective statements about the event. Stanger responded with a Dec. 1 letter of her own, in which she specifically faulted Michael Sheridan, chair of the SOAN department, for criticizing the political science department for co-sponsoring the talk.
Another Dec. 1 letter, by Russian professor Kevin Moss, replied to Stanger’s letter and called for a correction to the description of the then-upcoming ASU talk.
Referencing Murray’s talk, the ASU website claimed that “Professor Stanger was there to verbally challenge the speaker. She never got the chance, and the invited speaker never spoke.”
Moss claimed the school’s description of the Murray protests distorted the story and played into “the dominant narrative used to defame [Middlebury].” He argued that Stanger did have a chance to challenge Murray and that he was able to speak, referencing the live streamed Q&A. He also said that Stanger did not challenge Murray. Moss asked the university to correct its description.
Laurie Essig, director of the college’s gender, sexuality and feminist studies program, also reached out to Carrese via email to ask that he revise the statements.
“I would like all of these factual errors corrected as soon as possible,” Essig wrote. “I appreciate your attention to this since what you are doing is in fact spreading false information about a series of complicated events.”
In a letter to the editor published on Dec. 6 in this paper, Carrese denied that the information on the website was false.
While intra-faculty discord is not usually so apparent to students, statements like the feuding op-eds published post-Murray have made tensions more overt.
Political science professor Matthew Dickinson expressed dissatisfaction about the back-and-forth nature of the debate.
“It is clear that, for anyone seeking the truth, there are more than enough sources to understand what happened during the Murray incident. The facts are not in dispute,” he said. “In this regard, it is unfortunate that the debate has veered away from discussing the links between speech, toleration, diversity of ideas, and a liberal arts education, and toward a story about who said what to whom.”
On “Q&A,” Stanger condemned the actions of her fellow faculty more broadly.
“What disturbed me about what happened at Middlebury was that I think students were actively encouraged by some members of the faculty to do things that were not in their interest. And that upsets me,” she said when Lamb asked why she did not want to see student protesters punished. “So 18- to 21-year-olds are still developing and need to be advised in the right ways. But I think I’ll just — I’ll just leave it at that to say that I would fault some faculty more than the students for what happened [at] Middlebury.”
Moss and other faculty have said they find it problematic that Stanger’s remarks have been those which have most prominently defined the national story surrounding the Murray protests.
“The press comes and pays attention to the part where students appear to be overreacting to something, and that’s kind of the narrative that they prefer to give,” Moss said in an interview with The Campus. “And then the press moves on, and what tends to happen at the colleges is that they have a community discussion that can go on for several days and come to very interesting moments of reconciliation among themselves, and the students always tend to be much more articulate than the press makes them out to be, in part by just not quoting them.”
He acknowledged that while The New York Times quoted student perspectives in its March 7 article, “Discord at Middlebury: Students on the Anti-Murray Protests,” these perspectives remained eclipsed by the story Stanger promoted.
Sheridan, whom Stanger criticized in her Dec. 1 op-ed, expressed similar concerns.
“I think that the story of what happened last year has cohered into a single dominant narrative, but overall I think there are other stories of what happened too and a lot of those other perspectives have not gotten into that dominant narrative, precisely because they’re small, they’re local, they’re personal, they’re not amplified on the national stage,” Sheridan said.
Moss also pointed out that the narrative of Stanger being a liberal professor added fuel to the fire.
“The average person who is out there and doesn’t know what really happened will think, ‘Oh, well the students they don’t even support somebody who’s liberal and leftist, they’re so far off the scale that they’re attacking even this person,’” he said.
Other professors think that Stanger’s injury was not focus enough within the conversation about the Murray protests.
“In general, I think there is lack of empathy with Professor Stanger, actually,” said Ata Anzali, professor of religion. “Even though I might not agree completely with her position, for example I don’t think the portrayal of our differences along departmental lines like political science versus SOAN is accurate, I think it is unfair to think about her contributions without first taking a deep and long look at what we, as a community, did that resulted in her injury.”
Anzali said that although the nuances of arguments might be lost on the national media stage, he understands why a colleague would want to use such a platform to insert his or her voice into the national debate.
“I personally don’t make that choice, but I think people have justification to do that,” he said.
Keegan Callanan, a political science professor, also called attention to Stanger’s trauma from the protests.
“I think she has downplayed the heroic character of her own actions before, during, and after the event and assault,” he said, adding that he did not find her story one-sided. “She is a model for us all in her commitment to protecting freedom of inquiry within a scholarly community and freedom of speech for those with whom we disagree. She has demonstrated moral and intellectual courage of the first order.”
In many of her public appearances, Stanger has expressed worry that the media attention to the protests will fail to take into account the complexities of the situation.
“I wouldn’t want to downplay the anguish that was expressed through those protests and through the shutdown because it’s real, the emotions are real. They have to be validated,” Stanger said on C-SPAN. “But to me, the most important part is thinking about, O.K., you feel that way, what do we need to do about it so that it’s different? How can we move the needle forward and make this a better place for you?”
“I guess the main message I would want to give to your audience is that there’s a variety of views in Middlebury,” she said. “It’s not this monolithic, extremist place. It’s just that a certain small segment of the population’s voice was amplified in a variety of ways and you can draw all kinds of erroneous conclusions from that about Middlebury students.”
As the Murray story continues to cycle through the media and academia, the college community is left to come to terms with what the incident means for Middlebury going forward.
At the ASU talk, Stanger acknowledged these divisions and called for a mutual understanding between faculty.
“I really think we need to uphold a Treaty of Westphalia between different groups and departments on campus where you just respect the right of another group to put forward what they think is important to engage with, even if you are absolutely convinced that is totally worthless,” she said. “Let them do that, because the reciprocal principle that you will be allowed to do the same.”
Moss expressed worry that the media attention the college has received post-Murray has hindered reconciliation efforts.
“I think we’re starting to heal on campus, but I don’t think that things like the ASU event make that easier,” he said. “At the same time it’s provoked a lot of people to come out to address racism at the college in ways that they hadn’t before. But I’m not sure whether events like the one at Arizona necessarily make the divisions that were created at Middlebury any better.”
Though he is in agreement with the principles she has spoken to, Anzali noted that Stanger’s absence on the Middlebury campus might make it difficult for her to see the impacts of her appearances.
“My ultimate goal, and my main concern, remains our own small community. And that is why I am only interested in a kind of rhetoric that can move our small community forward,” he said. “That is why I would take some issue with the tone in some of professor Stanger’s public appearances. I think the larger goal for all of us has to be do we heal this community, how do we build this community, and I think when you are way from Middlebury like Professor Stanger is, it is really difficult to calibrate your rhetoric precisely.”
“But again, when I look at this in the context of what happened to her, and the lack of any meaningful response from our community to that, I am not sure if I would have reacted differently,” Anzali added.
Other faculty are optimistic that professors are rebuilding trust between one another.
“I have great friends all around this campus who have lots of different points of view, and even if we disagree I think we can agree to be a community and to be a faculty that respects each other. So I hope there hasn’t been fracturing that has damaged that truth,” said Bertram Johnson, chair of the political science department.
Sheridan, who was partly inspired by post-Murray discussions to have students in his “Trust: Social and Cultural Capital” class write reports on the status of trust at the college, also said that while the campus is still on the mend, he no longer sees rifts between the faculty.
“We’re not done healing, we’re not done getting over that feeling of conflict, but I think we’ve definitely turned the corner on that,” he said. “Do we trust each other? That is harder, that’s a longer term thing.”
(03/01/18 1:24am)
Over February Break, six Middlebury Alternative Break (MAlt) trips departed for destinations from Atlanta to Haiti and other places in between. MAlt aims to provide affordable, service-oriented alternatives to traditional February break activities. Student leaders and participants convened in Atwater Dining Hall on Wednesday, February 21 for a reflection dinner, during which each group presented about its trips and had the opportunity to answer questions asked by attendees and Center for Community Engagement (CCE) staff members. Co-presidents of MAlt Ana Sanchez Chico ’18 and Prasanna Vankina ’18 introduced the evening’s program. “We hope you understand the impact of your trips by bringing these connections back to campus,” Vankina said.
MAlt Appalachia explored the mechanisms of rural poverty through engaging with communities in West Virginia. Participants assisted low-income families through home repair and maintenance, tearing down one home that had been in place since 1970. “Obviously, we as a group of college students had very limited construction experience,” said Yuchen Zhu ’18, one of the trip’s leaders. Helping at a food bank, attending a church service and learning about West Virginia’s coal industry were also major parts of the trip. “It was a truly transforming trip, and I’m very lucky to have been with the people I was with,” said Gloria Breck ’18.
Learning about biodiversity and environmental conservation, MAlt Costa Rica partnered with Osa Conservation, a sustainable farm and nonprofit on the Osa Peninsula. The region holds 2.5 percent of the world’s diversity, which provided the participants with many opportunities to observe and engage with organisms such as birds, sea turtles, orchids and corn. The trip’s main activities fell into three greater projects: reforestation, sustainable agriculture and conservation. “One thing we learned [about] at Osa was the intersections with the environment,” said trip co-leader Ravi Patel ’19.
MAlt La Push lived and worked with members of the Quileute nation, a tribe based in northwest Washington State. This trip partnered with Xperitas, an organization invested in cultural immersion and building a global community. This was not a typical service trip, as intercultural learning was a key part of the experience. “Our trip was not meant to teach anyone. It was instead us learning how we live in the community,” said co-leader Valeriia Vakhitova ’20. The group participated in drumming circles, joi1ned a women’s domestic violence support group for lunch, helped the community’s elders and cleaned out transitional homes. “We were really honored to participate in those traditions,” commented trip participant Rebecca Strull ’20.5.
Focusing on food justice in urban environments and sustainable urban agriculture, students on MAlt Atlanta worked with Metro Atlanta Urban Farm in College Park, Georgia. Over the course of four days on the farm, they planted new seeds, cleaned out old sheds and met the other farm volunteers. Other activities included raking leaves at the community garden and visiting the Center for Civil and Human Rights and the King Center in downtown Atlanta. Participants also noticed a contrast between rural and urban areas and segregation in the American South. “Atlanta is actually the second-most-segregated city in the U.S., and by taking the MARTA [Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority] it was really evident. … We were lucky to not just [experience] the agriculture piece but [to] also interact with the city,” said trip co-leader Claudia Huerta ’18.
MAlt Haiti was based in Anseà-Pitres, and participants flew into Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and crossed the border by bus. “Considering today’s political climate, that was ... really special,” commented Georgia Grace Edwards ’18. The trip spent most of the time at École Anandamarga, a community day school and orphanage dedicated to raising women and children out of poverty through self-sustaining methods such as education and microfinance. Painting a mural and assisting at the school, trip members explored development and the role of international aid in a Haitian context. In addition, much of the trip took place without cell-phone service, which was a welcome part of the experience. “None of us really had our phones. We didn’t want to keep them out around the kids,” said trip co-leader Katherine Kulp ’20.
Partnering with the Life of Freedom Center, MAlt Miami engaged in conversations about sexual exploitation and human trafficking in the Miami area. Students participated in workshops and talked to a survivor of sex trafficking who managed to escape. One of the most striking aspects of the trip was a van tour during which a local contact pointed out sex-trafficking “hotspots” in restaurants and hotels. “It showed us how pervasive sex trafficking is,” Varsha Vijayakumar ’20 said. The average age of entry into the commercial sex industry is 12 years old, and participants brought pictures of missing girls to their work on the streets. MAlt’s reflection dinner was the culmination of over three months of careful planning, as participants for trips are selected in October. “People think of [MAlt] as a week, and it actually goes much longer than that,” said CCE program director Ashley Laux. In addition, unlike many peer institutions’ travel programs, MAlt is almost entirely student-organized. “MAlt is really unique in that students design trips, find community partners, fundraise and go on trips,” Laux added.
(03/01/18 12:47am)
Middlebury students received an email from the Parton student health center on Monday, Feb. 19 regarding an outbreak of the viral illness mumps at the University of Vermont and St. Michael’s College. A small number of students at these institutions had been affected so far, and there had been no cases reported among faculty or staff. The email assured Middlebury students that there had been no reported cases at the college.
Mumps is a viral illness most present in communities where people live in close quarters, like a college campus. For individuals who are immunized and in good health, mumps is usually mild and relatively non-dangerous. Middlebury College is considered a highly vaccinated community, with 99 percent of the student body immunized, according to the email from Parton.
But mumps is much more serious for those who are not immunized or have compromised immune systems due to other medical conditions. The virus is spread through sharing drinks or eating utensils, kissing, coughing and sneezing. Symptoms of mumps include tenderness and high swelling of the parotid gland, located between the jaw and ear, fever, headache, muscle aches, tiredness and loss of appetite.
“High vaccination coverage helps limit the size, duration, and spread of mumps outbreaks,” Parton medical director Dr. Mark Peluso said. Since the mumps vaccination program started in 1967, the number of reported mumps cases in the United States has decreased by 99 percent, proving the effectiveness of the program.
But the program has not completely prevented mumps. One dose of the vaccination is 78 percent effective while two doses is 88 percent effective.
Under Vermont state law, all Middlebury students must receive two doses of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine before coming to campus. A student may only be exempt from this law if the vaccine is detrimental to their health or if they have a religious exemption.
According to the health center’s email, the college is directly contacting students who have not been adequately vaccinated, and these students will be able to receive the necessary immunization.
The last time there were reported cases of mumps at Middlebury was in 2008, when a few cases were reported. Since then, there have been a few suspected cases, but no outbreaks. In 2016 and 2017, Bates, Bowdoin and Colby Colleges saw small outbreaks of mumps on their campuses.
The number of mumps cases reported each year in the United States has varied greatly. In 2009, there were 229 reported cases. In 2016, there were 6,366 reported cases.
Peluso also noted the challenge of diagnosing mumps in a highly vaccinated community.
“Vaccinated individuals may shed virus for a shorter period and might shed smaller amounts of virus,” he said, “thus degradation of the sample has greater consequences for successful detection of virus.”
Other viruses, such as the flu virus and the virus that causes mononucleosis, can also result in parotid swelling, making mumps challenging to diagnose and confirm.
If a student is suspected of having mumps, Parton will socially isolate the student for five days to prevent the spread of the virus. If three or more students are suspected to have mumps, or the college receives directions from the Department of Health, the school will encourage students without the vaccination to leave campus.
Peluso encouraged students to get eight hours of sleep a night, drink two to three liters of water every day, eat a well-balanced diet and avoid sharing saliva in order to avoid mumps.
(02/28/18 11:56pm)
Editor's note: The author of this op-ed has since asked her name be removed from this piece. The Campus has a strict policy that it does not retroactively remove names from stories, but given extenuating circumstances has agreed to do so for this piece.
CW: Sexual assault
Why is it so important for me to hear? Why do I need to be told that I am not the only survivor of sexual violence? Obviously I would not wish what happened to me on anyone. I still need those four words, though. You are not alone.
Growing up, I would listen to the news, hear stories about women in college I had some vague connection to, and watch “Law and Order: SVU.” I thought I understood what sexual assault was. I thought it would never happen to me. I thought that, if it did, I would go straight to the police.
Sexual violence is so much more complicated than that. It is more complicated than paying attention to your drink at a party. It is more complicated than having any signs of physical aggression documented by a hospital. It is more complicated than Olivia Benson slapping handcuffs on the wrists of a perpetrator.
It is my life, and it is the life of everyone else who has experienced sexual violence.
It is very hard for others to understand why it takes so long for survivors to come forward, if at all. People often ask, why did you let it happen to you? Why did you not scream or fight? Then, when the survivor does come forward and say something, they ask, why did you keep it a secret for so long?
I cannot answer these questions on behalf of every survivor, but I can give anyone who is reading this now a glimpse of understanding.
The first time was in the middle of May. I told him not to come over; he did anyway. The second time was in the middle of September. I wanted to go back to sleep after having been woken up by him banging on my door; he did not let me. The third time was Oct. 6th. I said stop; he did not.
Each time I knew something was wrong. Each time I felt gross afterward. Each time I regretted it. I thought everything was my fault. I was the one who must have done something wrong. I was the one who must be weird because I could not get pleasure from sex. I was the one who must have the issues because I did not want him to touch me. I blamed myself for everything.
Would you tell anyone something like that? Something that brings you shame. Something that sexualizes you. Something that can label you for the rest of your life.
It is very common for survivors to not understand what is happening in the moment and then gain a clearer comprehension with the distance of time. Why do you think it takes so long for people to tell their story? Maybe they did not even realize they had one. I sure didn’t.
As time went by, I began to realize how problematic everything that had happened between him and me was. At that time it was my normal. Now I know it should not be.
To this day, I continue to discover more and more violence that existed throughout my “relationship” with him, and that is okay. I do not have to figure out everything all at once, and neither do you. It is a process. The only thing I can do is be patient with myself, and I hope you do the same.
I have realized that a part of my healing process is being vocal. I have to tell people my story because then he loses power. He loses bits of his presence in my being.
However, today he is still here in my soul. Trying to take control. Crawling up toward my throat to choke the words before they even leave my mouth.
I still walk around campus, searching for him. I still ask who is knocking at my door. I still scream when someone unexpectedly touches me. He is always with me, even if not physically.
Using my words to describe my experience is the only way to loosen his grip. Today is not the day when he lets go; tomorrow will not be either. I do not know how long it will take, but I cannot wait for the day when I can look at him, holding on for dear life, and finally say: I am not scared.
Until that day comes, the only thing that brings me comfort is four simple words: you are not alone.
You are not alone.
(02/22/18 2:43am)
President Laurie L. Patton spoke for an hour with three Campus reporters last month in a wide-ranging interview which was by turns personal and philosophical.
Amelia Pollard ’20.5, Elizabeth Zhou ’18 and Ethan Brady ’18 interviewed Patton in her office on Jan. 31. Bill Burger, the college’s spokesman, was in the room for the duration of the interview.
The Campus agreed to provide Patton a summary of topics from which questions would be drawn, but not to give any questions in advance. The interview touched on Patton’s vision for the institution as well as topical issues, including free speech and the Me Too movement.
She said Middlebury is “committed to the First Amendment principles of free speech and by extension, academic freedom. That’s part of who we are as an American institution.”
“It is our responsibility to cultivate in our students active and critical inquiry which means exposing them to ideas that may be uncomfortable,” Patton said.
Patton called Charles Murray’s visit to campus last March “painful and difficult.”
“I have learned from and been forever changed by the degree to which people were hurt by the events that occurred — both on our campus and beyond,” Patton said.
Patton shared several personal anecdotes in the interview. She said she practices scholarship for an hour a day. She also shared some of her personal hobbies, including vipassana meditation and walking her dogs.
“Dogs keep you completely grounded. They don’t care about their image or reputation,” she said.
When asked who she turns to for advice, Patton spoke about a group of women presidents that she belongs to. The women “have started to hang out together, talk to each other, call each other when things are tense or when they need to talk through problems,” she said.
In response to a question about how she sees her role as president, Patton said she was committed to Middlebury’s values on a personal level.
“I wouldn’t have come to Middlebury if I didn’t believe as a person that this institution’s values were my own values,” she said.
Patton fielded several questions about financial aid, which she called “the number one priority for me for fundraising over the next ten years.” She said she favored “slowly” growing the number of students on financial aid “in a way that’s financially sustainable” and leaves a balanced budget.
But, Patton said, full-paying students are necessary for the school’s current financial model.
When asked about how the college will distinguish itself in higher education, Patton described Middlebury as an “elite liberal arts college with fantastic graduate programs.”
“I think there are days when we can’t decide whether we’re Amherst or Hampshire. We’re in between those two places,” she said.
Patton proposed ways for Middlebury to collaborate with other NESCAC schools beyond the athletic field. She cited Colby’s museum of art, which last week received a $100 million gift to establish an institute for American art.
“Wouldn’t it be interesting for them to collaborate with our museum, which is growing and changing and doing interesting things?” she said.
In the interview, Patton stressed her goal of balancing the institution’s budget. She said that Middlebury was meeting its budget goals and surpassing them slightly. Monterey surpassed its own goals “at a greater percentage than the college has,” she said, for which she was proud.
She defended how Monterey is valuable to Middlebury and to the world, citing the institute’s consistent citing in New York Times articles on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Patton also spoke about national and world issues. She called economic inequality “one of the major issues of our time,” and said that America is facing a “deeply difficult national moment.” She also cited Britain and Europe, where in the past several years populist movements have upended governments and institutions.
“Our challenge at Middlebury is that we need to embrace the difficulty of that moment and live through it.”
When asked about the nature of speech in the internet age, Patton said the instantaneous nature of communication “makes a huge difference to every minute of our days.” Students in 2018 exist “in a public sphere that nobody else has existed in, ever.”
It’s “very difficult to figure out at any given moment whether something is a public conversation or whether it’s a private conversation.” Because of that, she said, participation in the public sphere “takes more courage today.”
Patton often used terminology about travel to describe the school. “Middlebury now is not so much a noun, but a verb,” Patton said. “We are travelers.”
She mentioned travel across campuses — digital and physical. She cited interpreters for the United Nations who are affiliated with Monterey, professors who travel back and forth between Vermont and California, and video conferencing between Middlebury and Monterey, which occurred in the course on water Patton taught last spring.
Patton said she wanted to make sure “that instantaneous quality of life, as well as that hyper-connected quality of life, can be in service of liberal education.”
She said the college’s master plan, a campus planning document approved in 2008, should be connected to the school’s mission and vision. She used the temporary computer science building being built behind Johnson Memorial Building, in E lot, as an example of how her administration has adapted to changing times.
“This campus was not built for students from underrepresented backgrounds,” she said, but for “usually white” students in the 1800s going into “traditional male vocations.”
The spaces between buildings could be populated with works of public art, she said. She encouraged students to propose “pop-up contemplative spaces” on campus through the Fund for Innovation. She also praised a proposal by the Anderson Freeman Center to paint murals in buildings around campus.
Patton also answered questions about the Me Too movement and its impact on the college.
She said the movement “opened up all sorts of really important issues for everyone, around questions of sexual assault, around questions of reporting, and so forth.”
When asked how the college planned to address sexual assault in the wake of “The List,” Patton spoke about the Title IX office.
“If history is any indication, I expect and have confidence that the Title IX office will continue to respond to the needs of students,” she said.
She said the Title IX office needs to “continue to respond” to the campus’s changing needs while prioritizing “fairness for all students.” The college’s judicial system should be fair and open, she said, and the conversation about justice should be “always evolving.”
She spoke about three kinds of justice: one of equality, one of equity, and a moral justice, which deals with “righting historical wrongs.”
“All of those three ideas of justice should be at play in the mini-society that is Middlebury” — a society, she said, “of learners and teachers.”
Amelia Pollard and Elizabeth Zhou contributed reporting.
(02/22/18 2:34am)
College spokesman Bill Burger requested that the editors of this paper delay publication of an interview with President Laurie L. Patton, which The Campus had originally planned to publish in the Feb. 15 issue, after confusion and disagreement between Burger and Ethan Brady ’18, the paper’s editor in chief, regarding the nature of Burger and Patton’s role in reviewing and influencing the article’s content.
Burger’s request for the delay came twenty-four hours before that week’s issue was sent to print, and after the editors had planned to dedicate more than a page of the paper to the interview and a related news report. Brady agreed to postpone the interview and, as a result, The Campus published a blank page with the text, “This page was originally reserved for an interview,” printed in the center of page A3.
“Laurie and I would like you to hold the interview until the issue that closes next week,” Burger wrote in an email to Brady and Will DiGravio ’19, The Campus’ managing editor. “I have real concerns about ensuring the integrity of the various versions of the Q&A that we’ll need to review. My schedule tomorrow leaves almost no time for me to do this work.”
Brady and editors Amelia Pollard ’20.5 and Elizabeth Zhou ’18 interviewed Patton during winter term on Wednesday, Jan. 31. The editors planned to publish the interview in the first issue back from break, until Brady and DiGravio received the email from Burger quoted above.
The Campus finalizes print editions on Tuesday evenings, and the newspaper is distributed every Thursday morning. Brady and DiGravio received Burger’s email at 10:50 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 12, disrupting the paper’s plan to publish the interview that week. Brady agreed to delay the article’s publication in an email to Burger that night.
Brady and DiGravio first requested an interview with Patton in a Jan. 19 email. Patton replied on Jan. 23 with a directive to discuss terms of the interview with Burger.
“My guess is that we all would want the interview to be fair, accurate, and thoughtful in both tone and content,” Patton wrote. “In that spirit I’ll turn it over to Bill to discuss terms.”
That evening, Burger, Brady and DiGravio settled on a time to discuss the terms and timing of the interview. They settled on terms and scheduled the interview for Jan. 31 at 1:30 p.m.
At the end of the interview, Burger reiterated the previously agreed upon terms, and the reporters again agreed to them.
“Just to review our ground rules for this,” Burger said. “So you’ll transcribe this, I’m presuming, you’ll send it to us for a clarification, any clean up, if we need to expand on something, but not to fundamentally change the meaning of what was said.”
“Does that sound reasonable?” Patton asked.
Brady and Zhou responded in agreement.
On the Wednesday following the interview, Brady sent Patton an email with remaining questions that the editors had run out of time to ask, per an agreement made before and during the interview.
“We will send a transcript of the interview along in the next few days as discussed,” Brady added in the email with the additional questions.
On Feb. 5, Brady emailed Burger with the transcript of the interview. Burger replied on the same day that he expected the editors to compress the interview due to its length.
“No one wants to inflict an unedited 9,000 word transcript on the reader; its of almost no value,” Burger wrote.
Though Burger made some suggestions as to the type of editing Brady should do to the interview, he made no explicit request for an edited version of the transcript.
Brady received no further correspondence from Burger until Monday, Feb. 12., the first day of the spring term, when Burger inquired about obtaining an edited transcript of the interview. But Brady had sent the full, unedited transcript on Feb. 5, and had not finished editing the interview.
Burger expected Brady to send him the edited transcript of the interview that he would read before publication, and to allow him to approve each of Patton’s quotes to be included in the article.
“We will need to approve every quote — and of course the quotes in the piece will need to match the quotes in the abridged Q&A — and the full Q&A online,” Burger replied.
At 10:50 that evening, Burger emailed Brady and DiGravio and asked them to wait to publish the interview until the following week, citing “concerns about ensuring the integrity of the various versions of the Q&A that we’ll need to review.”
Brady agreed to delay publishing the articles. The next day, Burger emailed Brady, again asking for the edited Q&A and article.
“I hope you can get me the edited content (interview and written piece) by Sunday noon so I have time to look at it Sunday,” Burger wrote. “My Monday is pretty booked.”
On Feb. 14, Brady sent Burger an abridged transcript of the Q&A as requested, but did not attach the additional article. Brady said that he perceived Burger’s wish to approve the quotes included in the story as a violation of their original terms.
“The terms of the interview were that we would send you a transcript for clarifications/additions, not negotiate which quotes can or can’t be used in an article,” Brady wrote in the email.
Burger denied wanting to influence the quotes The Campus included in the article, and stressed his desire to instead protect their “integrity.”
“We have no interest in influencing which question/answers you want to touch upon in an article; our interest is in the integrity of the quotes themselves,” Burger said.
Patton sent a document with edits for clarification to The Campus on Monday, Feb. 20. Burger did not ask to approve quotes or view the articles prior to press time.
(02/16/18 11:33pm)
While the rest of campus enjoyed February break either in the sun or on the slopes, the men’s hockey team celebrated the competition in the rink. Middlebury earned a tie against both Conn. College on and Tufts, leaving the weekend before break with a 2–2 score against the Camels on Friday, Jan. 26, and a 1–1 count, Saturday, Jan. 27, against the Jumbos on Saturday. The men then fell to three conference teams over the next two weekends, losing to Wesleyan 3–1 on Friday, Feb. 2, Trinity 3–0 on Saturday, Feb. 3, and Williams twice by a score of 2–1 on Friday, Feb. 9 and Saturday, Feb. 10.
The Panthers kicked off the last weekend of January hosting the Camels in Kenyon Arena and looked to avenge a 5–0 loss earlier in the season.
Both teams’ defenses held tough throughout the first period, preventing either offense from gaining any advantage. It was not until five minutes into the second stanza when Conn. College’s Mason Evans capitalized off a power play. He slid a shot past the Panther goalie to lift his team ahead, a lead that would hold until the third period.
The hosts found the back of the Camel net just 56 seconds into the last period. Frank Cosolito ’20 worked his way past the Conn. College defense with ease, when he slapped the puck giving the Panthers their place on the board. The pressure was on both teams as they skated around Kenyon searching for an opportunity. The Camels were the first to respond five minutes later when Ryan Petti reacted quickly to his teammate’s rebounded attempt, and knocked a shot past Middlebury.
With time running out, the Panthers were anxious to equalize the competition. Although the Conn. College defense was impenetrable, Kamil Tkaczuk ’19 finished off Cosolito’s rejected effort with only a few minutes remaining, tying the game at two. Neither team scored in overtime, and the final score remained.
After their 5–0 loss earlier in the year, Middlebury tied Conn. College this time around, holding their own in Kenyon Arena.
“I think for us it comes down to being focused and playing our game for the whole 60 minutes,” said Danny Tighe ’20. “Earlier in the year we came out flat against them, whereas this time around we were ready to go from the start.”
On Saturday, Jan. 27, Middlebury faced Tufts for the second time this season, after beating the Jumbos 2–0 in December, and hoped to sweep the visitors. Their hopes were not realized as the Jumbos put up a tough fight, tying the Panthers 1–1.
Neither team was able to edge past one another in the first period. Stephen Klein ’18 played well all game, allowing only one of the 40 shots on goal past him.
“Klein has been playing great in net for us, but we just need to bury more of our own offensive chances,” said Tighe. “I think that starts with us placing heightened emphasis on executing when we work on scoring in practice.”
At the 9:31 minute mark in the second period, Tufts broke the tie. Ross Delabruere quickly jumped on a rebound, and Tufts led 1–0. But Middlebury had an answer for the visiting Bostonians less than eight minutes later, when Vincent Gisonti ’18 scored his third goal of the season on a power play opportunity. Brendan Dawson ’20’s shot was blocked, but Gisonti stayed with the play and hammered the rebound past the Jumbo goalie, tying the game at one. The score stay that way, as neither team could break through the rest of regulation or in overtime.
The Panthers traveled to Connecticut the following weekend to face Wesleyan on Friday, Feb. 2, looking at another opportunity to redeem themselves after dropping their last matchup 6–1.
Neither the Panthers nor their opponents scored in the first period for the third straight game, but Wesleyan snuck their way past Klein at 10:12 in the middle period on a powerplay. Four minutes later, the Cardinals doubled their lead when Matthew Zandi slapped the puck Klein
In the final stanza, Brett Dineen ’20 found the back of the net to put Middlebury on the board. The Panthers hope of knotting the score was quashed soon after when Jordan Jancze increased the Cardinal lead to two. Middlebury could not respond to that goal, and fell to Wesleyan 3–1.
On Saturday, Feb. 3, the men continued their journey in Connecticut when they faced Trinity. The men once again fell to the No. 5 Bantams by the same 3–0 score.
Following the same pattern, Middlebury defense proved impermeable in the first period but could not score either, entering the locker room knotted at zero still. It took the Bantams until the 17:34 mark in the second period to get by Middlebury. Michael Grande earned Trinity their first of three goals after a creating his own opportunity in a remarkable effort.
The Panthers refused to back down from this one-goal deficit. They continued to hold Trinity at bay, despite the Bantams offensive onslaught on Klein.
Trinity closed out the game in the final period. Ryan Pfeffer hammered in an easy shot six minutes into the stanza, giving the hosts a two-goal lead. Nicholas Polsinelli followed up Pfeffer, scoring on an empty net to give Trinity a 3–0 victory.
Heading into this past weekend, Friday and Saturday, Feb. 9 and 10, the Panthers had two good opportunities to topple a Williams team in the bottom half of the Nescac standings as well.
In the first contest on Friday at Williams, neither team scored in the first period. This continued Middlebury’s trend of strong defense, despite Williams significant advantage in shots. Finally, 10 minutes into the second period, Gisonti broke the silence. Off a Williams turnover, he broke past the Ephs to drive home his fourth goal of the season.
Gisonti’s goal fired up his teammates, as well as the Williams offense. So much so, that the Ephs has a response at the 17:40 mark in the same period. The hosts matched the visitor’s tally when C.J. Shugart got past Klein to make it anybody’s game once more.
Both teams grinded for the win in the final stanza but neither could break the tie in a highly contested third period, and the game entered overtime.
With no score in the first 4:30 of overtime, Middlebury pulled its goalie, needing a win to if they wanted to move out of last place and into the Nescac playoffs. But the move backfired when Williams’ Colby Cretella found the back of the empty net with ten seconds remaining to give Williams the 2–1 win.
Middlebury trailed Williams in shots on goal by 22 shots (43–21), as Klein turned in another impressive performance, stopping 41 shots.
On Saturday, Feb. 10, the two teams returned to the ice, this time in Kenyon Arena.
For the seventh game in a row, the Panthers held off their opponents in the first period. Although the Panthers did not score, they Trevor Turnbull ’20 and Kamil Tkaczuk ’19 had separate opportunities when they almost did beat the Williams netminder.
In the second period, C.J. Shugart again proved to be a danger to the hosts. Within the first minute, he took advantage of a power play and redirected a shot from his teammate to put his team in the lead. But, the junior from Toronto was not satisfied yet. With just a few moments remaining in the period, Shugart’s teammate found him after collecting a rebound, and whipped a shot past the Panthers.
Despite going down by two, the hosts were determined to find a way past Williams. The Panthers found some life in the eighth minute of the final stanza. Alex Heinritz ’21 slid in his second goal of the season on a power play to give bring his team within one and give it a fighting chance.
Middlebury found some opportunities in the final remaining minutes, but was unable to finish them off, losing its fourth straight game.
Middlebury will look for a way to end its losing streak when they play their last two games of the regular season this weekend. Mathematically eliminated from the Nescac playoffs, the Panther seniors will play their last two games in the blue and white on Friday, Feb. 17, when they host Hamilton, and Saturday, Feb. 18 when they welcome Amherst to Kenyon Arena.
(02/15/18 1:49am)
Tina Brook ’18 is the new face of the Community Council, serving as co-chair with Baishakahi Taylor, dean of students, for the remainder of the year. Brook, who ran a joint campaign with Kyle Wright ’18 last year, returned to campus this winter term from a semester at sea. She took the reins from Wright, who is studying abroad in Spain this spring.
Brook plans to pick up where Wright left off, prioritizing the three recommendations the Council has in the works. These include a proposal to review the residential life system, a proposal on supporting students and communities of color and an inclusive bathroom recommendation.
This academic year, the Community Council was tasked with kick-starting the process of reevaluating the residential life system.
“Residential life does not just mean dormitories, it also extends to libraries, it extends to the dining system,” Brook said, “So there will be an external review of that system and that will look at how we function as a whole community.”
In addition, the Council has been drafting a proposal on supporting students and communities of color in response to recent events at the college in the past year. The plan outlines seven points including hiring an anti-racist consultant and support for establishing a black studies major at Middlebury.
Though the Council has a developed draft, Brook also hopes to take into account of the voices of communities of color in moving forward with the proposal.
“We do not want to (take) over for communities of color on this campus so we are making sure that we are engaging with cultural organizations on this campus to ensure that they have a voice in this recommendation,” Brook said. “Although that may slow the process, that is definitely part of the process that we think is the most pertinent.”
Finally, Brook plans to finalize the inclusive bathroom recommendation pioneered by Wright. The recommendation drafts a timeline for the college to transition bathrooms in public spaces to all-gender and disability-accessible.
While Brook wishes to propel Wright and the Council’s previous work to the finish line, she also hopes to leave space for new recommendations in the second half of the year.
“I do not want to take away from the work that Kyle has done and so I hope to truly continue them, but also leave space to work on some recommendations of my own and to leave space for other Community Council members to bring up new recommendations,” Brook said.
Brook campaigned on a vision of encouraging inclusivity at Middlebury and plans on fulfilling that promise this term.
“I would like to support more recommendations to make sure that people from the athletics department to dance classes, from arts to sports to outdoors, all feel like they can have a vested interest without having to necessarily be a senator, or be on SGA or Community Council,” Brook said. “I think that there are always the same people speaking, which has not necessarily represented the entire student body, nor the full community’s interest.”
Community Council is a cross-sectional body comprised of students, faculty, staff and the administration which convenes weekly to seek multilateral solutions to community issues. The Council makes recommendations to specific offices or members of the administration and serves a consultative role to the President and the SLG. Weekly meetings are held on Mondays from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. in Axinn 104 and are open to the community.
(02/15/18 1:45am)
Transparency in the administration is an issue our board has raised numerous times over the past years, yet we still find ourselves writing the same editorial.
In the aftermath of recent discussions that have taken place in community forums and town halls, this issue has been raised again. The question we ask now is, How can administrators improve in order to make community discussions more valuable?
Many students feel that attending town halls and forums is not a worthwhile use of their time because they leave feeling more confused, angry and ill-informed than when they entered. Statistics, financial numbers and linear timelines often are skimmed over, ignored or diverted to examples of administrative successes.
There are significant opportunities for college administrators to exhibit greater transparency when discussing issues pertinent to student life and general operations of the college. Doing so would prompt a more fruitful discussion that leads to the “formation of community” that administrators have consistently called for.
We would like to acknowledge administrators who we feel could be emulated in providing students with transparent dialogue. College treasurer David Provost has provided a stellar example of administrative transparency that other administrators could aspire to when engaging in community discussions.
During a forum on Jan. 24, Provost thoroughly and transparently explained the reasons behind the September closing of college-owned restaurant 51 Main (now The Rough Cut). Instead of falsely painting 51 Main as a successful project, he told students candidly that the restaurant had been a financial disaster that had lost the college $250,000 per year.
Many feel that administrators often divert difficult or pressing questions about mistakes they have made to point out successes they have had. During the forum, Provost did the opposite when discussing issues like student diversity. He was engaging, funny and self-deprecating, answering student questions thoroughly and honestly.
Provost works with financial information that is often easier to disclose than the work of other offices such as judicial affairs, and we recognize that his candid style isn’t appropriate in every setting for community discussion. But aspects of Provost’s honest approach could still easily be translated to many other forums. If more forums are like last month’s, we gurantee more and more students will actually show up.
At the same time, this paper recognizes that complete and utter transparency is not always an attainable goal for every administrative position. The college may be legally obliged to maintain confidentiality when discussing certain topics, and is not always free to disclose details about sensitive issues that students might want to know during community discussions — for example, specific details of judicial cases, which are often bound by Title IX regulations.
The ability to disclose information in student forums depends upon the department of the given administrator engaging in discussion, the particular topic at hand, and a wealth of other factors. The Campus recognizes this fact.
Still, when these constraints around disclosure are present, administrators could provide students with thorough, transparent explanations of exactly why certain details aren’t available to the general public, as well as thorough background information that at least leaves students informed about the discussion they are engaging in.
This is another area in which Provost has excelled. During the Jan. 24 forum, he provided a wealth of background information that students found beneficial. Students who attended said they felt well informed about the topic they were discussing. Provost clearly and patiently provided background information concerning issues that gave the students the knowledge they needed to engage in a productive discussion.
This approach could be seen as a baseline for all administrators leading or engaging in challenging community discussions. When a sensitive question arises about a student engaged in a judicial process, for example, the administrator being questioned could provide as many facts as necessary and allowed. When they find themselves unable to disclose information, this point would ideally lead into an explanation of why certain information cannot be disclosed, rather than diverting the question to a discussion of administrative successes.
This open style of communication is also important because student dialogue and general gossip that circulates on campus has sometimes placed unfair blame upon administrators such as President Patton. More background and patient explanation during discussions would be a step towards remedying this.
Leaning into transparency are the first steps towards creating a community that is empathetic, supportive and committed to change. Time and time again, members of our administration have called for students to take on a role in “building community” and rebuilding a broken campus in which many of us feel isolated and alienated. It would be much easier for students to do this if they felt the respect granted through authentic, transparent conversation in student–administrator forums.
Without this transparency, students are left to draw their own conclusions, leading to false accusations and gossip. We hope this is the last editorial we have to write asking for transparency, and that we can work to fight for the future The Campus has sought to resist — one in which Middlebury dies in darkness.
(02/15/18 1:43am)
Middlebury’s Board of Trustees invests our billion-dollar endowment in a fashion that resembles a clandestine mission, code-named Operation Profit. We know little about where our money is invested, the global impact of these investments appears purposely obscured, and the college community of faculty, staff, and students has zero input on investment decisions. We only know that Middlebury’s endowment includes $60 million worth of stock in fossil fuel corporations due to years of campaigning for this basic information.
As a coordinating committee member of Divest Middlebury, I drove across the East coast to document the destruction of Operation Profit. I walked on blown-up mountains, visited impoverished communities living at the base of power-generating stations, and observed lakes blackened with coal slurry. As an Environmental Policy major, I was well aware of these acts of eco-genocide. However, witnessing the impact of Middlebury’s ownership of $60 million in fossil fuel investments and $750 thousand in coal assets specifically brought me to tear.
These investments hurt not only the places I visited, but contribute to injustices across the globe. Climate change, while produced primarily by wealthy nations, disproportionately harms those in the Global South, especially people of color, women, and those living in poverty. How could my beloved “carbon neutral” institution justify its ownership of any fossil fuel project? By defending these unjust investments, Middlebury has failed to listen to the 81% of students who believe environmental, social, and governance must be taken into account for our endowment, the 1000 students who have signed a divestment petition, or the more than 100 students who demanded divestment outside the Fall board meeting. Face to face with the repercussions of Middlebury’s decisions, I was ashamed to be associated not with the college community, but with those trustees who implement Operation Profit despite clear opposition.
Divest Middlebury’s sole demand since 2013 has been to “divest all endowment assets, both directly held and commingled, that include any of the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies.” Back in 2013, divestment would have made Middlebury a true environmental leader and sent a strong message to peer institutions. Instead, the trustees voted to remain owners of the fossil fuel industry, lending the college’s moral license and reputation for sustainability to corporations who profit off climate injustice.
When the trustees voted not to divest in 2013, they were able to hide behind a curtain of uncertainty. What would happen to our endowment returns? How would divestment work with our current money manager, Investure? These were legitimate questions at the time, but global institutions have repeatedly decided that divestment is not simply a moral imperative, but vital to their endowments’ financial security.
To date, 813 institutions with a combined divestment of $6.01 trillion agree that fossil fuel corporations will not reach current market evaluations without warming the Earth by 6 ̊C. As worsening extreme weather ravages the globe, low-lying areas face rising waters, tropical diseases continue to spread, and water supplies become increasingly stressed, governments will stop the burning of fossil fuels. The market for dirty energy will disappear, causing reserves currently valued at trillions of dollars to become worthless.
Peer institutions have acknowledged these stranded assets. Barnard College’s trustees unanimously committed to divest and have left Investure. The Rockefeller Foundation — the founders of ExxonMobil — divested and left Investure. Colby College became the first NESCAC school to divest. Even New York City and State decided to divest, causing billions to leave the industry and sending the endorsement of the world’s financial capital to the divestment movement. Every week, new Boards of Trustees determine that fossil fuel divestment is morally and fiducially responsible, it’s about time Middlebury does the same.
Divestment will eventually occur. But the question is, will it be too late? President Patton, Chair Parizeau, Mr. Provost, Mr. Truscott, and others, will you forgo your last chance to send a clear message that Middlebury demands a transition to a post-carbon economy? Will you forgo the opportunity to sell ownership in an industry whose current market evaluation is contingent upon the burning of all fossil fuel reserves and the irreversible alteration of Earth’s climate? It is too late for Middlebury to be a leader on divestment, but I hope that Middlebury’s noteworthy contributions to environmental stewardship will not be overshadowed by the moral outrage and fiduciary irresponsibility caused by your indefensible loyalty to Operation Profit.
Visit go/divest and join us Sunday 8 to 9 in Hillcrest 103 to get involved.
(02/03/18 7:32am)
This week marks the end of the Winter Term, during which we published two issues of The Campus. January is a time of transition for the paper, where we say goodbye to old editors who are heading abroad/graduating, welcome back editors from abroad, and invite new editors to join our board. This month we added seven new editors across four sections, and had other editors transfer over to different sections. We have a great team and are incredibly excited to return from February break and have a strong Spring semester. For now, here's our best work from January:
Disclaimer: It is my hope that our readership will use this monthly post to both rediscover old stories and find new ones they may have missed. Of course, most months I will probably leave out a piece that should have been included. It is important to note that I will be selecting stories more or less from memory, so I apologize in advance if I leave anyone out! I’m open to suggestions both before and after the post is published. Feel free to comment or email me at wdigravio@middlebury.edu. Also, there may be times when stories by me appear in this post. In those instances, I will have already reached out to another editor(s) to confirm that they belong. If you disagree, also feel free to email me or comment! Also, the selection of any piece does not constitute an endorsement.
News
Middlebury Dodge GOP Bill's Endowment Tax - By Bochu Ding
Panel Reopens Murray Debate with Legal Perspective - By Catherine Pollack
Residential Life Negotiations Reach SGA - By Elizabeth Sawyer
Student Who Posted 'The List' Faces Discipline - By Catherine Pollack & Elaine Velie
Local
Carol's Nears Closing - By Amelia Pollard
Vermont Sugarmakers Reflect on New Challenges - By Sadie Housberg
Vt. Lawmakers Legalize Recreational Marijuana Use - By Amelia Pollard and Andres Velazquez
Vt. Guard Proposes Waived College Tuition - By Kenshin Cho
Opinion
A New Presidential Tradition Is Needed - By The Editorial Board
Middlebury: Where White Supremacists, but not Survivors, are Worthy of Free Speech - By It Happens Here Past & Present
Grappling with 'The List' - By Members of the Distinguished Men of Color Board
The Law Should Not Restrict Speech - By Lukas Carvalho
Arts & Sciences
Five Hot Albums for a Cold Day - By Nate Obbard
Reel Critic: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - By Devin McGrath-Conwell
Esteemed Pianist Serenades College - By Bilal Khan
Features
Snow Removal Staff Tackles Winter Weather - By James Finn
'TIME' Editor Keynotes Women Leaders Summit - By Kayla Lichtman
Founder of Moscow Times Discusses Media in Russia - By Miguel Espinosa
Sports
Ski Squads Have Historic Weekend on Slopes - By Jake Turtel
Women's Hockey Sweeps Bowdoin - Sebastian Sanchez
McCluskey Sets School Record in 200 Meter - By Jordan Howell
Men's Basketball Climbs Atop NESCAC - By Andrew Rigas
(01/25/18 12:48am)
After months of tense negotiations between residential life staff and college administrators, a bill calling for increased pay, training and support was introduced to the Student Government Association (SGA) on Sunday.
The bill, entitled “Student Residential Life Revitalization and Just Compensation Act,” proposed that residential life staff be compensated at the college’s Level B wage scale, or a minimum of $5,410 for their first year on the job. It requests that each commons administration add two live-in supervisory positions to their commons team to be filled by a recent graduate or senior, and that commons administration provide a first aid certification program for residential life staff.
The bill also states that if the college does not grant residential life staff Level B compensation for the 2018–2019 school year, the SGA would endorse a student residential life strike if one were to take place.
“There was some language in the bill that was a little disturbing too, which was the idea of this body supporting a strike of residential life staff,” said Doug Adams, director of residential life. “I hope that we’d look at this and say that’s not where our staff sits.”
Adams argued that the bill’s requests were more appropriate for discussion among the Residential Life committee, rather than through an SGA bill. However, when the bill’s sponsor, Feb senator Alec Fleischer ’20.5, was asked if he would rather take the conversation to the Residential Life committee or continue the discussion in the SGA meeting next week, he responded that he wanted it on the SGA agenda for next week.
Negotiations between residential life staff and administrators began in the fall, when student staff struggled to adapt to this year’s replacement of commons residential advisors (CRAs) with commons residence directors (CRDs), and felt they lacked sufficient training to deal with alcohol-related emergencies.
“Training as a consensus, ask anybody, bombed. Bombed so hard,” said Kyle Wright ’19.5, a Wonnacott community assistant (CA). “Doug Adams was on medical leave. FYCs and RAs were not trained how to handle the most common residential situations they encounter, which is instances of alcohol poisoning and drug misuse. Can you imagine the anxiety that creates for a 19-year-old running into someone who is passed out on the floor, who has a dropping pulse, covered in their own vomit and they have been told to just call Public Safety and do nothing?”
Wright expressed additional frustration that residential life staff believed that CRDs would function in a way similar to that of the former CRAs, only to find that the position functioned far differently in practice.
“Student residential life staff show up [in August 2017] having signed a contract, a legally binding document outlining their roles and responsibilities, understanding that CRDs will be one thing," Wright said. “Once the CRDs were hired, the job description changed rapidly. We come to find out that not only are [most] CRDs not living on campus, not only are they not recent graduates, but also that there was only going to be one on call for the entire campus.”
Wright said that last year, students could always turn to CRAs for in-dorm support, even when their CRA was not on call.
“There were five [CRAs] present 24 hours a day, six days a week in the dorms,” he said. “So you could go to your CRA even if the one on call was preoccupied. There was accessibility to [the CRA] position, there was direct supervisory support on the weekends. That support no longer exists.”
Residential life staff argue that this lack of support felt from the transition to CRDs has resulted in a large increase in responsibilities for First Year Counselors (FYCs), who now feel pressure to act as first responders and provide support and programming.
“It should be noted that that level of support from CRAs was largely unsustainable with their stress levels and obligations. However, now [the CRAs’] stress and responsibility has been laid on the FYCs,” Atwater community assistant Peter Dykeman-Bermingham ’18.5 said.
As a result of widespread feeling that FYCs have had to bear an increased burden with the transition to a system with CRDs, many staff members believe that a pay increase is now more necessary than ever. FYCs will make $2,400 this year, which breaks down to an hourly wage that is less than Vermont’s minimum of $10.50 if divided by the hours Wright says FYCs work per week. RAs currently make $1,800 per year, and CAs $2,ooo.
“Residential life has always been underpaid here,” Atwater FYC Samantha Pearl ’18 said. “A breakdown of the hourly pay in comparison to any other campus job is absurd. But the expectations have increased this year. We as student workers are now firstly and directly responsible for afterhours supervision during the week and on the weekends. It’s a different job, a bigger job, and many of us have multiple jobs on campus because of the poor pay.”
In October, residential life staff drafted a petition urging administrators to consider these challenges. As a result of the petition, administrators and students participated in conversations meant to address the complaints.
“A number of us launched into a dialogue in the fall where we got together with commons teams, administrators, other res life staff. We had a series of really big meetings where we said this is not ok, we feel unsafe, we feel as if the system is broken, and you need to address salary,” Wright explained.
After these initial larger meetings, a proposal with a draft of a new pay scale and job descriptions was sent to residential life staff sometime in late November. The draft proposed that FYCs, Resident Assistants (RAs) and CAs all be granted a rebate of $3,000 for 15 hours of work.
Pearl and other residential life staff emailed with feedback, criticizing this uniform pay for all positions in particular.
“I was initially insulted and found the idea of equal stipends trivializing to the FYC position. Doing so to me seemed to continue to devalue the tolls and responsibilities of the FYC position, particularly those aspects that can’t be calculated into weekly hours or a job description,” Pearl said.
Wright echoed Pearl’s sentiments, stressing his belief that commons administrators are out of touch with the realities of the responsibilities of staff.
“The deans and CRDs are so out of touch with the residential needs of this college that they actually thought that paying these positions the same thing, valuing them at the same level was even remotely appropriate, after six months of dialogue to the contrary,” he said.
On Jan. 8, Atwater Commons Dean Scott Barnicle sent out a finalized proposal. The final proposal sets RA and FYC pay equal at $3,150 and CA pay at $2,250. This proposal also included more similar job descriptions for RAs and FYCs.
“It is clear the new RA role and the FYC role are far more mirrored than they are currently. And so we felt strongly and I think appropriately, given the feedback we’d gotten, those roles should be paid more than the CA role,” Adams said.
Many residential life staff appreciated the proposal’s adjustments in accordance with their feedback, but believe they deserve to be paid Middlebury’s Level B compensation.
“I responded to an earlier proposal and some of my suggestions appeared in the final decision, though still shy of what I considered fair pay for the work,” Dykeman-Bermingham said. “This plan represents something like a $60K increase to wage spending and I understand the difficulty of so abruptly changing the res life accounting. However, this pay increase should be accompanied by a plan to annually increase the salary of student staff until they are paid a fair wage for the very stressful work they perform.”
“I am grateful for the pay increases, but also I agree with Kyle that we should be making minimum wage, especially now that there are expected hours listed,” Pearl said.
Fleischer stressed the reasonable nature of these requests, considering the skill required for the job.
“This is a skilled job. There is 2 weeks of training in the beginning of the year, plus its a competitive application process. At a minimum it should be a level B scale, that’s $10.82 a year for the first year. We’re asking to bring it in line with every other job at Middlebury,” Fleischer said.
After discussing the outstanding demands of residential life staff with Wright, Fleischer agreed to work with him to bring a bill outlining their requests to the SGA for deliberation and a vote.
In the SGA meeting, Doug Adams and Cook commons dean Ian Sutherland stressed the importance of awarding residential life staff a rebate, as they do currently, rather than a weekly paycheck based off of an hourly wage for a set number of hours a week, in part because the hours can vary significantly each week. Furthermore, Sutherland claimed that a weekly paycheck would actually result in lower net earnings because a substantial amount would be withheld by taxes.
“The actual money that a student would see in the academic year would be much reduced,” Sutherland said.
But a calculation from SmartAsset.com suggests otherwise. At a Level B hourly rate of $10.82, a student working 15 hours per week for 28 weeks plus 80 hours of training at the beginning of the semester would make $3,350 according to Vermont income tax rates for a single person paid weekly. This number is higher than the college’s proposed $3,150.
Wright stressed that Taylor and Adams participated extensively in conversations with students, and that if he had to pinpoint where communication fell through, it would be between CRDs, commons deans and their student staff.
“Baishakhi was very proactive, but because her job is to delegate the actual work, she delegated that work to commons deans and CRDs primarily,” he said. “To my knowledge, CRDs and deans solicited feedback over email, but did not go to many lengths to create space for their staff to provide focused, critical feedback.”
When asked whether he thought commons deans and CRDs had had sufficient communication with their student staff before drafting the proposals, Adams said yes.
“They reached out through their teams, through regular one-on-ones, to ask, ‘here’s what we’re doing, do you have any feedback?’” Adams said.
“In advertising for next year, email and posters can be inadequate, so we’ve done an information session so far, we’re planning another information session closer to the [housing application] deadline next week, saying we’d really like to answer any questions people have,” Adams said, referring to the housing information session held on Jan. 16. In later email correspondence, Adams clarified that this meeting was “targeted at new applicants for next year.”
In an email from the Undergraduate Housing office, the event was described as an opportunity to “ask questions related to the Fall Term Pre-Open Draw processes,” where questions could be answered relating to "Res Life Positions, Language & Special Interest Houses, Superblocks, Off Campus Housing, and Social Houses."
Current residential life staff were either unaware of the meeting or did not think it was an opportunity to ask questions about the ongoing negotiations. When asked if Pearl attended the housing information session on Jan. 16, she replied, “I don’t think so? I didn’t go and didn’t think it had anything to do with that.”
When asked if he had met with anyone in person about the proposal sent over winter break, about the second proposal, Dykeman-Bermingham said he had only sent an email with criticism against the equal pay for all positions.
“I am assuming that Kyle Wright had one-on-one meetings. I never met one-on-one with a dean or CRD either,” he said.
When Wright was asked whether he had had any one-on-one communication with a commons dean or CRD, he replied that he had no correspondence with either commons deans or CRDs throughout the process.
The Campus reached out to all of the commons deans and CRDs for comment. Some did not respond, while others replied that Doug Adams could answer all questions.
In response to calls for increased pay, Adams stressed the significance of the accomplishment of attaining a pay increase for the 2018–2019 school year.
“The college is going through a restructuring time where we are actually reducing budgets, but in this case we were able to negotiate going into next year an increase in the rebates that we’ll offer to student staff,” Adams said.
Adams also plans to continue to seek pay increases.
“The rebate should be larger. I’d love to see that. I think finding the balance is really important. I’m going to continue to advocate for a higher rate going forward,” he said.
In response to calls for an additional position to provide in-dorm support to residential life staff, Adams said it was a possibility, but that it will require continued conversation that would include communication with students.
“The SRA can potentially exist if it solves the problem. We’re going to continue to explore that with our student staff,” he said.
Adams has already begun efforts to provide increased first aid and alcohol training to students.
“I’ve already reached out to Jen Kazmierczak, she’s our environmental health and safety educator who helps coordinate first aid trainings about setting something up so that students and res life staff who are interested in getting CPR or first aid certified can take care of that. Alcohol training is through health and wellness, so Barbara McCall, the health and wellness educator has agreed to do that program, so she’s going to come in and do a program with them next week,” Adams said.
Editor’s note: Managing editor Will DiGravio, who is currently an FYC and participated in residential life negotiations, was not involved in the writing or editing of this report.
