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(04/21/17 12:42am)
The Center for Community Engagement is hiring for two AmeriCorps VISTA positions, a Poverty Initiatives Coordinator, and a Youth and Mentoring Programs Coordinator, to serve a one-year term starting in August 2017. Emma McDonald ’16 and Katie Carpenter, who are currently serving in these roles, share about their experience so far this year and what drew them to these positions.
Emma (Poverty Initiatives Coordinator):
With graduation just a month away last spring, I wasn’t sure what I would do next. I thought first about far-away options and exciting, new places, as Middlebury students often do. But as I reflected on my experiences at Middlebury and all the opportunities I didn’t have time for (or didn’t make time for), the idea of sticking around for another year became more and more attractive.
It took me a while as a student to get outside the Middlebury “bubble.” By the time I realized how much there was to learn from the Middlebury community beyond the College, it was time to graduate. Many students figure this out before I did, but for me, another year here let me make up for lost time. Without academic responsibilities, I have had time this year to think deeply about Collegecommunity connections, to better understand the nuances in these relationships, the complexities of a liberal arts institution and what it means for Middlebury to be “the town’s college.” There is so much going on in Middlebury that many students don’t see – and adding a year of awareness to my narrow student perspective has impressed upon me how much there is to learn at Middlebury outside of the classroom.
I have learned about the complexities and sensitivities of community and higher education work. I understand better the challenges Vermont faces, and the efforts of different organizations to combat issues like hunger, homelessness and racial discrimination with skill and nuance. I have gotten to know community members working in government agencies, schools, and nonprofits, and I have seen how community meetings like the Addison County Hunger Council enhance their collaboration on important issues. I have observed staff and faculty facilitate students connecting theories from their coursework to local contexts and narratives through the Privilege & Poverty Academic Cluster, the program I help to coordinate.
I came to Middlebury for the classes, but I stayed for the community. I’ll leave knowing that I am grateful to Middlebury for both of these things. To students preparing to graduate: there is value and merit in moving on from Middlebury, but there is also promise in staying put.
Katie (Youth and Mentoring Programs Coordinator):
Unlike Emma, I didn’t go to Middlebury, so moving to the area was a new experience for me. I primarily chose to do a service year because I liked that AmeriCorps, rather than running a top-down service year program, places its members directly with agencies that plan out what the AmeriCorps member will be doing. I felt that this approach would allow me to do service that was well integrated into the organization and communities I was living and working in. I haven’t been disappointed, and through my role supporting youth and mentoring programs, I have gotten the opportunity to live in Addison County and learn about the area schools and organizations that form a network of support for children and youth. Similarly to Emma, I feel that being at meetings where organizations come together and discuss shared challenges has been a valuable learning experience for me, and has given me a sense of what a wellfunctioning professional network can look like.
Most of all, I have really loved my service year so far because of the work I’ve gotten to do. This VISTA role acts as a youth and mentoring programs coordinator for CCE-advised student organizations (like DREAM, MiddCAM,and Community Friends) and promotes College Positive Volunteerism. College Positive Volunteerism is the idea that children and youth who spend time with college students, hang out on college campuses, or talk about college with an adult role model will more easily envision themselves attending a postsecondary institution. To this end, I get to work with students who are connecting with children and teens in the area by leading after school programs, building one-to-one mentoring relationships, participating in group mentoring, running healthy food taste tests or supporting youth through their college application process. These programs give children and young people space to feel seen and heard by a caring, non-family adult, and encourage them to pursue their interests and practice decision-making. I also support these programs by connecting with professional school staff such as guidance counselors and afterschool program coordinators. Helping to facilitate these relationships being built by Middlebury College students and young people has been a deeply rewarding experience that has given me a greater sense of clarity and purpose about what I want from my professional life going forward.
To find out more about these positions and how to apply, please visit go/ middVISTA
(03/23/17 7:35pm)
On Thursday, March 16, Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who leaked classified information in an effort to expose widespread government surveillance, spoke over videoconference to Middlebury College community members in Wilson Hall as the Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB) Spring Speaker. This was the first time that students gathered in Wilson Hall to hear a speaker after Charles Murray visited on
Snowden fled the United States in May 2013, and was later charged by the U.S. government with espionage and theft of government property. He currently resides at an undisclosed location in Russia, where he received renewed asylum in January 2017 for an additional three years.
Allison Stanger, Russell Leng ’60 Professor of International Politics and Economics, introduced Snowden and moderated the event. Stanger began by describing the effect Snowden has had on her upcoming book, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Leaks: The Story of Whistleblowing in America, which was near completion when Snowden’s story broke. “He forced me, more or less, back to square one,” she said, “but it will be a better book, I hope, for the extra effort.”
In his own opening remarks, Snowden said that the problem at hand involves more than the NSA’s activity. “The problem is that this has become easy for anyone with a certain amount of resources,” he said. While government surveillance programs were once costly and cumbersome, Snowden shared that contemporary programs have grown far more efficient. “One guy can track, with precision, an unimaginably large number of people. And that was me,” he said, referring to his work at the NSA.
Snowden criticized the government for participating in surveillance programs that “are not only unlawful, but have always been unconstitutional.” Moreover, he argued that the government misrepresents its justification for the very existence of the programs. “These programs do not and have not saved lives… These programs were never about terrorism,” he said. “[Surveillance] is useful for disrupting social movements, in being able to discredit people whose politics we disagree with... [These programs] are about economic espionage, diplomatic manipulation, and social control.”
Lamenting a lack of effective mechanisms for constitutional oversight, Snowden cited the press and a vigilant public as vehicles that could bring about greater government transparency. “My argument is that we are at this point forced to rely on our press... If we only knew what governments or corporations wanted us to know, we wouldn’t know much at all.” He continued, “If we didn’t have investigative journalism, we wouldn’t be talking about [this].”
Throughout his talk, Snowden articulated a message of empowerment, imploring the audience to remember that “Saying something matters…the reality is one voice can change the world.” He warned against the notion that freedom of privacy is not important if one has nothing to hide, arguing that “Privacy is the foundation of all other rights… if we lose that, we’re losing more than a right; we’re losing ourselves.”
Snowden also stressed the importance of recognizing the relationship between rights and privilege. “Rights don’t mean much to the powerful and the privileged,” he said. “Rights matter to those who are different, to those who stand out… If you say surveillance is okay as long as its not monitoring me, this is selfish and short sighted.
Snowden was careful to explain that he never personally published any documents in his 2013 reveal. Rather, he gave the information to professional journalists, and requested that they contact the U.S. government in advance of publication to ensure that each leak would not put anyone in danger. To Snowden’s knowledge, that process was followed in every case, and “they have never shown any evidence that anyone has come to harm as a result of these disclosures.” Instead, his actions “changed our laws, changed the thinking of the president, [and] won the Pulitzer Prize for public service. I believe that we live in a freer and fairer world because of it,” he said.
Emma Dunlap ’18 and Jocelyn Zemach ’18, co-chairs of the MCAB Speakers Committee, worked with an agent to secure Snowden as Spring Speaker. “We generally use an agent for our larger speakers,” Dunlap wrote in an email. “Our committee unanimously decided to ‘bring’ Edward Snowden to Middlebury believing that he would start an interesting conversation on campus, especially given the current political climate in America, U.S.-Russian relations, and cyber security concerns in general.”
According to Dunlap, “The event reached over 500 viewers on the live stream. I’ve received positive feedback from many attendees and I hope that the Middlebury community continues to discuss the ideas and opinions that Snowden brought.”
Rebecca Simon ’19 had a somewhat different opinion after leaving Wilson Hall, questioning whether Snowden came to Middlebury to push an agenda rather than engage in a discussion. “Though most of what he had to say was rather inspiring for young people to hear, it all seemed like an elaborate plan or a previously constructed lecture on why his position was correct,” she said. “I am so happy I waited 90 minutes in the cold to see him interact with Professor Stanger and students…I just thought that the discussion was going to be a discussion and not a lecture.”
(03/10/17 3:34am)
On Feb. 22, the Middlebury College American Enterprise Institute Club published a group op-ed in The Campus that extended an “invitation” to the Middlebury College community “to encourage robust discussion and expose the Middlebury Community to diverse thoughts, opinions and understandings on the important topics of today,” according to the authors. The event was a lecture by political scientist and American Enterprise Institute (AEI) WH Brady Scholar, Charles Murray.
Soon after the announcement of Murray’s talk, both students and faculty began organizing in opposition. The reasons why Charles Murray sparked such passionate resistance and controversy are complicated and diverse, and motivations among those opposed to him were varied. Murray is considered one of the leading libertarian academics in the United States and has had significant influence on both political science and policymaking; for example, his work influenced the welfare debate during the 1990s.
Although he was invited to the College to speak on his most recent book, Coming Apart, which attempts to track and explain a growing divide between white “intellectual elite” and white working class people, Murray is best known for his work, “The Bell Curve.” This book has been fiercely debated since its publication in 1994, as it posits links between intelligence and race based on differences in average IQ scores between races.
Parts of his methodology have been challenged, especially his use of certain data to arrive at more general conclusions on the nature versus nurture debate. “The Bell Curve” and some of Murray’s later comments have resulted in his classification as a “white nationalist” by many, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization “dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry,” as stated on their website.
An Invitation to Speak
Murray has spoken at Middlebury before, once in April 2007, on “The Bell Curve.” The event sparked controversy but not to the same extent of last Thursday; it was not covered in The Campus. Last semester, the College chapter of AEI gathered to discuss an invitation for an expert from the organization to deliver a guest lecture. They made a list of academics associated with AEI and submitted it to the national organization.
AEI told the College chapter that Murray had accepted the invitation partly because of his close relationship with the College: he is the parent of a Middlebury graduate. The College chapter was provided funding by the national organization to host Murray and facilitate the talk. “Our goal … was to create a discussion on campus. We thought that his work on “Coming Apart” was really prescient,” AEI Vice President Alexander Khan ’17 said.
In the AEI chapter on campus, the executive board — which made the final decision to bring Murray to campus — disagreed on the best format for his planned lecture. Violet Low-Beinart ’19, a member of the board and a democrat, floated the possibility of treating this event differently than other academic lectures and offered the idea of a moderated panel format.
“We are a diverse group who hold a range of opinions and political ideologies,” she said of the board’s final decision not to pursue a panel format.
Addressing the internal debate, Phil Hoxie ’17.5, president and chair of the AEI executive council, determined that disagreement among board members was due to expectations of social ramifications. “I think the concerns were more of how this would be perceived [by] other people and not wanting to deal with what we’re dealing with right now,” he said.
Organizing Resistance
By evening on Feb. 24, several months after the AEI had scheduled Murray’s talk, the decision to bring Murray to the College had escalated into a campus-wide controversy. Over the weekend of Feb. 25-26, Middlebury Resistance, College Democrats, Wonderbread, other clubs and ad-hoc organizations were already beginning substantive organization efforts. Some of the first goals that emerged were to get the Department of Political Science to rescind its co-sponsorship in the event, to urge President of Middlebury Laurie L. Patton to not appear at the event and to pressure either the College or AEI to retract the invitation altogether.
On Monday, Feb. 27. Professors and students together led organizing efforts, which soon divided into two different groups: those who wished to carry out non-disruptive protests, and those who wished to shut down the event and prevent Murray from speaking.
Arianna Reyes ’18 and Sami Lamont ’17 helped solidify and structure the protests. Both students saw the event as an opportunity to take action and support values they care deeply about. “I was thinking a lot about what’s been going on in the world and how I’ve been really passive before right now in terms of actually organizing,” Reyes said.
Lamont explained that she took a de facto leadership role in the opposition when she realized the opposition energy could use additional direction and structure.
“It was seeing all the ideas floating around just on Facebook and then realizing that we needed a place to consolidate that if anything was going to happen,” she said, commenting on her decision to get involved.
However, both Reyes and Lamont quickly recognized that the protest efforts could never be completely uniform. Reyes focused on the group of students who wished to disrupt the speech, while Lamont instead helped run meetings that brainstormed non-disruptive methods of resistance.
“I was always definitely supportive of a diversity of tactics,” Reyes said. “I wasn’t trying to go against anyone and what they were doing.”
On Wednesday, March 1, the political science department held a community meeting for the purpose of providing a forum to ask questions about the department’s cosponsorship and to discuss the event more generally. In the course of the meeting, political science faculty also revealed internal divisions. Department Chair and Associate Professor of Political Science Bertram Johnson had previously sent an email around that provided insight into the department’s own debate over the sponsorship.
Associate Professor of Political Science Sarah Stroup offered an opening statement that presented her own mixed feelings about the lecture, as well as her thoughts on what made this event so unusual for the department.
“I think that it’s a trope in higher education that we are supposed to make [students] uncomfortable, and I will be honest that most of the time, we do not join you as faculty in that endeavor,” she said. “This is different because we are uncomfortable. Because I am uncomfortable. Because we are asked to be with you and think about what our responsibilities are when we navigate between the free exchange of ideas and our commitment to the community.”
Over an hour, the political science department offered different viewpoints of the controversy, from steadfast defenses of the decision to invite him to campus, to expressions of revulsion at Murray’s views and to encouragements of protest.
A Contentious Afternoon
On March 2, the day of the event, organizers made final efforts to assemble their response with signs, emails and brochures. The Middlebury AEI and the College Republicans clubs, which have partly shared leadership, called for members to arrive at the event as early as possible.
“This has become, for Alexander [Khan] and I, a battle for free speech and liberalism. We do not believe that Dr. Murray is what others claim him to be,” Hoxie wrote in an email.
More than an hour before the talk was penned to begin at 4:30 p.m., students, faculty and community members began lining up outside of McCullough Student Center.
The earliest arrivals were predominantly protesters. Many held signs with declarations like “Respect Resistance,” “F*ck White Supremacy,” “F*ck Eugenics,” and “Charles Murray Is Fake News.” On the lawn nearby, non-student activists gathered, and the flag of the Anti-Fascist movement flapped in the breeze. These activists, and anyone else not part of the college community, were not allowed inside the event.
Finally, the doors to the lecture opened and students went inside — but, due to capacity issues, only a fraction of those outside got seats.
Vice President for Communications and Chief Marketing Officer Bill Burger took the stage and stated the Middlebury guidelines on guest speakers, protests and demonstrations. His short speech incited several responses from the protesters.
“Middlebury College does not allow disruptive behavior at a community event or on campus. Disruptions may include purposefully blocking the view of others,” Burger said. To this, an unidentified student in the crowd said, “And inviting white supremacists.”
Burger continued, “Banners or items that block the audience’s view,” and the crowd immediately raised their signs high in response.
“You’re going to love this next part,” he said. “Noise or action that disrupts the ability of the audience to hear.” At that, the audience burst into cheers, drowning out the rest of Burger’s sentence.
Crowd outbursts and jeers continued through the opening speeches of Khan and Middlebury AEI Executive Council Member Ivan Valladares ’17. When President Patton took stage, she was met with a combination of boos and applause. However, after delivering her remarks, the crowd responded only with applause.
“We are an intellectual community, and part of a job of an intellectual community is to argue. If there ever was a time for Americans to take on arguments that affect us, it is now,” she said.
Murray finally walked on stage, and the crowd erupted into boos and chants. “This is going to be a real anti-climax,” he said. At that point, protesters stood up, turned around and together began reciting a pre-written speech.
“This is not respectful discourse or a debate about free speech,” they said. “These are not ideas that can be fairly debated. It is not ‘representative’ of the other side to give a platform to such dangerous ideologies. There is not a potential for an equal exchange of ideas.”
The speech then transformed into chants. These included: “Who is the enemy? White supremacy!” “Your message is hatred; we cannot tolerate it!” “Charles Murray, go away; Middlebury says ‘no way!’”
After ten minutes, Burger walked on stage again to announce that the format of the talk would transform into an interactive, livestreamed discussion between Murray and moderator Allison Stanger, the Russell J. Leng ’60 professor of international politics and economics. The two moved to an undisclosed location to film their conversation, a backup prepared in advance.
Over the course of Murray and Stanger’s discussion that lasted more than an hour (now available on the Middlebury News Room) some members in the crowd dispersed. But many protesters remained in the auditorium and continued chanting. The protests continued outside, as well, where some spoke into megaphones and sounded off sirens and drums. They had discovered the location of the live stream and made noise outside its window — in the video, their efforts can be heard clearly.
Back inside the auditorium, as administrators attempted to get the livestream projected onto the screen, tensions between protesters and attendees escalated. Students yelled at each other across Wilson Hall. “Respect free speech!” was shouted to some protesters. One protester yelled, “F*ck white supremacy!” to a group of students attempting to view the livestream. In response, one of those viewers shouted, “F*ck censorship!” The altercation ended when the protester yelled back, “F*ck free speech!”
Protesters and attendees alike dispersed as time went on, but a sizeable group of around 20 students continued to chant over Murray’s talk. Many students left to view the speech elsewhere. Outside the McCullough Student Center, a majority of protesters had left by 6 p.m.
About 15 protesters remained standing one entrance to McCullough, still yelling at the window of the room in which Murray was speaking. Among this group were non-student activists. Some protesters wore face masks to conceal their identities. Two masked protesters unfurled a banner that read, “Choke on your silver spoon, you f*cking Nazi.”
As Murray’s talk neared its end, the protesters dispersed around McCullough to cover all the entrances, waiting for his exit.
The events that followed caused the protests to draw attention from national news outlets, but the details and nuances of that day remain uncertain. What is agreed upon by Burger’s statements to the media, Stanger’s public Facebook post, Murray’s statement on AEI’s website and President Patton’s statements to the community is the following claim: When Murray exited the building, escorted by Burger and Stanger, the group was approached by protesters, several with their faces covered and some of whom were non-students. As Stanger and Murray attempted to get inside a car, protesters allegedly placed themselves in their path.
Murray was not physically harmed in the ensuing confrontation, but Stanger suffered from a neck injury following a physical altercation that transpired after she attempted to shield Murray and usher him to their vehicle. Stanger experienced whiplash that evening. On the following Sunday, she was diagnosed with a concussion. She was taken to Porter Hospital on both days.
Beyond this series of events, the nature of the confrontation and its many facets remain disputed. An article on the student-run blog Middbeat, unaffiliated with the administration, shared the perspective of anonymous students who claimed to be present at the conflict. Other recollections have provided contradictory details and viewpoints, and the questions of what happened, who initiated what and who exactly is at fault have ignited widespread and contentious debate, both on and off campus.
Following the day’s events, two seperate investigations are being launched; one an independent investigation by the College, the other an investigation into the confrontation that took place outside of McCullough to be done by the Middlebury Police Department, said President Patton in an email to the community last Monday.
“There is hard work ahead for all of us,” Patton wrote in her email. “Learning to be accountable to one another, and learning to stand in community with one another.”
Community Response
By Friday, March 3, Murray had departed, and students, faculty and staff awoke to a world suddenly focused on their college. The first reports of Stanger’s injury appeared in VTDigger and the Addison Independent, but national news outlets soon began running the story.
Within the College community, many have been asking, “What do these events mean?” In an email sent on Friday, Patton spoke of the event as a disappointing display of a deep divide in College culture.
“Last night we failed to live up to our core values,” she said in the message. “But I remain hopeful.”
“This was the saddest day of my life,” Stanger posted publicly to Facebook on Saturday, March 4. “We have got to do better by those who feel and are marginalized ... We must all realize the precious inheritance we have as fellow Americans and defend the Constitution against all its enemies, both foreign and domestic.”
For Khan and Hoxie, the disruptions and confrontation took them by surprise and seemed to confirm their fears about the state of freedom of speech on campus.
“If we’re not willing to listen to each other and we’re not willing to listen to what we have to say because we feel that that person might say something that we find offensive, or even hateful, we’re going to be in real trouble,” Hoxie said. “I firmly believe that freedom is one generation away from being extinct. We’re going to vote it away.”
Many students who participated in the protests expressed disappointment at the violent conclusion to events, but they also felt some satisfaction with the effectiveness of the protests within Wilson Hall and a determination to continue pushing these issues in the future.
“[The initial protest] was incredibly successful because we coordinated all of these people to turn around and that was a really powerful statement,” Reyes said. “It was successful because we did get [Murray and Professor Stanger] to leave Wilson Hall.”
Lamont and Reyes do not view the division as one that pits proponents of free speech against those who are willing to restrict free speech in pursuit of some other goal.
“That’s one thing [President Patton] mentions a lot in [her statements on] rhetorical resilience — confidence in debate — and I think one big reason why we were not into talking to Murray is that he’s shown that he’s pretty confident in his ideas and he’s not really about talking to them and engaging and reconsidering,” Lamont said.
For other students, however, the disruption of Murray’s talk and subsequent violence brought to the forefront a significant problem engrained in the community.
“The manner in which he was shut down lacked civility and, in my opinion, did not respect the rights of those students (many who disagree with him ideologically) but who, nevertheless, wanted to hear him speak and/or engage with him at an intellectual level,” said Abdi Mohamed ’18.5.
As of this writing, it is unclear exactly how the community will respond to these events. As Johnson said, “I think one of the more powerful things we can say in this moment is ‘I don’t know’. I don’t really know what’s next.”
Many see the events as having unleashed a deep and possibly irreconcilable gulf between students, while others see them as a way to come together, hash out differences and determine a path to progress. According to Lamont, preperations are already being made for meetings and discussions in the coming weeks.
Khan viewed the events as an opportunity for the community to reassess its values and culture, and to push back against attempts to stifle opposing views. “I don’t want the moral of this story to be that Middlebury couldn’t handle a viewpoint that wasn’t consistent with their own. I think that it’s so necessary and important that we try to change the culture on campus and create one of intellectual diversity.”
In an email sent out on Monday, March 6, President Patton reinforced this call for community building and discussion.
“This week, we will mark the beginning of opportunities for reflection and engagement,” she said. “We have much to discuss — our differences on the question of free speech and on the role of protest being two of the most pressing examples. In addition, I am extending an invitation to everyone to submit community-building ideas for consideration.”
“I’m committed to working on whatever’s next, and I’m grateful for those people on various sides of this who have reached out to have conversations,” Johnson said. “That’s how we’re going to proceed — through having conversations.”
Additional reporting by Christian Jambora and Will DiGravio.
(03/10/17 1:40am)
On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I would like to thank the protesters who prevented other people from hearing Charles Murray’s last week. The Trump administration is under siege by investigators and subpoenas. But you provided a welcome distraction. From Steve Bannon’s point of view, it couldn’t have turned out better. As for myself, I would really like to hear how different protest groups and options interacted up to the critical moment, around 4:45 p.m. on Thursday March 2, when a bunch of you decided not to walk out. If this group included newcomers pushing for a fight, and if this was still the Nixon administration, my next question would be, any chance they work for the FBI? Nowadays, the next question would be, any chance they work for an Alt-Right sting that persuaded you to do stupid things on camera?
However this happened, the shut-it-downers acted out the inhumanity you say you oppose. Shut-it-downers preempted other strategies, that would respect a speaker’s right to be heard and make the protest look good, so that you could rhythmically stomp on free speech. The rest of us do not understand how, in the name of fighting hate-speech, you could hate-speech a speaker for two hours, then attack him and his escort as they tried to leave. But there’s a possible explanation for why you could do this with a clear conscience — is it because of how you think about race?
The reason I ask is that you used race to justify your actions. Racial epithets played all too well in this liberal enclave. The Southern Poverty Law Center uses pull-quotes to accuse Charles Murray of racist pseudoscience and white nationalism, which you escalated by calling him a white supremacist. Now I’m hearing protesters defend their actions by saying it’s okay to punch Nazis. So Charles Murray is equivalent to a Nazi? Rhetorical escalation often backfires; if it sends you into a rage, your opponent will look more reasonable than you do. That’s certainly how Murray looked, standing patiently at the podium for half an hour, as the halo of free speech descended upon his brow.
Calling Murray a white supremacist is like calling an abortionist a baby-killer. Eighth- month abortions kill viable infants. But if you label abortion providers as baby-killers, you make a false generalization and dehumanize them. This is to be avoided if you want to avoid violence. In the case of Murray, his use of psychometrics to characterize broad populations has made him popular with Republicans who feel that government handouts encourage anti-social behavior among low-income Americans. This puts him on a slippery slope that can quickly lead to white supremacy; it is possible that Murray enjoys being on this slippery slope; but neither this nor white nationalism nor scientific racism are positions that he articulates. Murray is better defined as a bio-determinist or genetic fatalist, the limitations of which are easy to explain.
Those of you who race-baited Murray as a white supremacist put yourselves on your own slippery slope. You dehumanized him, which made it easy to justify violence against him, which is exactly what happened. You are also on a second slippery slope, which I care about just as much because I do not want to see Donald Trump win a second term in the White House. If having conservative attitudes about poverty is tantamount to racism, are you now going to label all the American voters who think this way as racists?
Cultural conservatives, whose attitudes strike liberals as backward, include tens of millions of Democratic voters in the last election, and they are not all white. You can accuse as many people as you want of being racists, but don’t expect them to vote for you in the next election. Of course, maybe you’ve stopped caring about elections. Look how badly the last one turned out. If American elections are inextricably linked to white privilege, what do they matter? If free speech is inextricably linked to white privilege, what does that matter either?
About ten years ago, Charles Murray came here to talk about the controversy over “The Bell Curve”. There was no campaign to disinvite him and faculty members held a debrief the next day, to ensure that any interested parties understood the weak points of his argument. What has changed to make him so unacceptable now? Is the difference Donald Trump in the White House? Certainly Trump’s use of invective has inflamed the atmosphere, but how about our own local production of racial classification?
Ever since the Nazis fed anthropology texts into their bonfires, my profession has argued that race is a cultural fiction with no more basis in genetics than being French or Morrocan. There are no genes that make the behavior of a black race differ from the behavior of a white race. Far more important in shaping behavior and outcomes are cultural programming and social conditioning. And so as far as anthropologists are concerned, race is little more than a fetish or disguise for social class, ethnic or cultural differences.
Our arguments won over many American liberals, but we were not as successful with American conservatives. One conservative rejoinder was … what? What do you mean there’s no such thing as race? As far as they can see, racial determination of behavior and outcomes is common sense. For evidence they still appeal to the IQ scores that Charles Murray and his co- author deployed in their 1994 book. A second conservative rejoinder also became popular … you’re saying race is fictional? Wonderful! Now that we’ve outlawed discrimination, let’s treat everyone equally, so we can stop worrying about race.
This second conservative rejoinder put liberals in an awkward position. Our only possible response was … wait, wait, wait! We can’t stop thinking about race because racist attitudes are still strong. Think about all the inherited inequalities — structural racism. And so the same liberals who argued that race is a cultural fiction now also had to argue that race is the hidden reality behind other forms of injustice. And so we learned to sing a complicated tune about race — or perhaps we sing two different tunes at the same time. Some of us (including myself) stress that any form of racial classification is a way of misleading ourselves. Others of us (including many who study race for a living) focus instead on uncovering its insidious impact in many realms of life.
At elite colleges like Middlebury, the challenge of making underrepresented minorities feel welcome has prompted many initiatives organized around the concept of race. This includes hiring faculty who, quite understandably, interpret their mandate to include identifying hidden racial agendas in a prevailing white environment. Judging from what some of our students now publish regularly on the oped pages of The Campus, race saturates every issue at Middlebury College. But does it really?
Long ago in 2001, in “Race Experts: How Racial Etiquette, Sensititivity Training and New Age Therapy Hijacked the Civil Rights Revolution,” Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn pointed out that race activists increasingly perceive “a world of endless slights. Here racist crimes and social faux pas are one and the same — all inspired by a monolithic, unabated white racial hatred. All whites must confess to their inherent racism, or they are, in the words of the recovery movement, ‘in denial.’” Yet if racial classification is a cultural fiction, if it is always a disguise for what’s really going on, can anti-racism scholars and activists fall into the trap of propagating it rather than undermining it?
That they indeed can is argued by the sociologist Frank Furedi in “What’s Happened to the University?” Interestingly, campus episodes that Americans might attribute to our penchant for racial divides, lawsuits and psycho-babble are, according to Furedi, also very common in Canada, Australia and Britain. What’s shared by universities in each of these countries is the rapid spread of the “vulnerable groups” concept. This leads to what Furedi calls “the weaponization of emotions,” that is, the public display of fragility and anger as political bargaining chips. Becoming offended has become an irrefutable rationale for ending discussion, which makes it a claim to entitlement. What’s being demanded is administrative paternalism, Furedi concludes, which guarantees further cycles of infantilization.
Could a spiral of dependency and anger explain how, on our campus, the demand for inclusion and safe space has become a demand for intolerance? Is this why our anti-racism activists last week were hurling racial invective? I heard racial insults, not just against Charles Murray, but against white women, white liberals and students of color whom shut-it-downers accused of racial disloyalty. Racialism is what I think I was hearing. Racialism is the insistence that one’s primary loyalty should be to one’s own racial group. If this is really what you think, white supremacists agree with you.
(03/10/17 1:34am)
I wore a suit to protest Charles Murray.
I now need to explain that choice, for the record, for anyone who thinks it's a neutral fashion statement, and more importantly for the friends whose trust I fractured with the decision.
Background: AEI was hosting a dinner after the event during which people could engage in a formal conversation with our esteemed guest. I’m not a member of AEI, but asked them to attend that dinner so I could ask Murray pointed questions that made him uncomfortable and in that way celebrate a tiny victory over my own white supremacist ancestors. They OK’d my attendance, told me to wear a coat and tie and walk to the Abernethy room with them after the “talk" (presumably in step with Murray). I notified the Wonderbread email list and suggested they send me any questions they wanted asked. I decided to opt out of shutting him down, assured that I could defend my anger against Murray and simultaneously claim exemption from protesting because my energy was focused elsewhere.
So here's what wearing the suit communicated, given my abstention from protesting:
I support the College's decision to bring Charles Murray here.
My own intellectual curiosity is more important than the lives of those targeted by discriminatory pseudoscience.
Regardless of this de facto endorsement, I get a free "woke" badge for feebly challenging a white supremacist.
I ultimately decided to join in protesting anyway, at the last minute, because I had friends involved and wanted to support them. Once there, I got loud and found an anger I hadn’t known before. It wasn’t just the mob mentality talking. It felt good to shout down white supremacy. But I still felt compelled to go to the dinner. In the chaotic aftermath of Murray’s flight to the Student Activities Office, I nonchalantly alternated between joining my friends in continued protest and talking with some acquaintances of mine from AEI, both to ask them if the dinner was still happening and to discuss their feelings about the protest. I assured them that I would still be civil when I attended the event, and chatted confidently and calmly while my friends kept chanting their voices hoarse.
In short, I actively protested and supported Charles Murray at the same time, to nearly the maximum degree possible in either direction, considering the limitations of my student role. Side note: I also jumped the line to get in. Yeah, I’m that low.
At this point it should be evident to anyone reading that this isn’t really about the suit. Full disclosure: part of my decision had to do with the fact that I look fly in a suit and will not pass up an opportunity to wear one. I encourage everyone to wear whatever clothing you like, whenever you like. But the fact that I chose to wear a suit on this particular day, in the face of intense emotional turmoil and naked disciplinary threats toward my fellow protesters from the school many of us call home, and pretended everything was cool with the students who brought Charles Murray here, says something bigger about me.
Ultimately, my decisions meant:
The organizers' efforts are less important than my own, because I get to disproportionately reap the benefits of our efforts without the associated psychological and physical stress.
My contributions to this event are important and I get free social capital. And friends from AEI.
Even in anti-racist activism — no, especially in anti-racist activism — white supremacy and its cultural manifestations must remain intact. The suit is more important than my friends’ humanity.
Overall, it means I cannot be trusted. I am an enemy in this fight for justice, and a sinister one: I remain dormant in the ranks and then I waltz in, co-opt the movement and actively undermine its strength. I may be the most insidious agent of white supremacy this campus has ever seen. How’s that for a badge?
For those who are still confused, or think I’m being too hard on myself, let me be clear about something: I wanted to attend that dinner. Deep down, I respect Charles Murray, regardless of his views. He’s an old, white, male intellectual, which is all I ever wanted to be growing up. It sounds silly, but I’m completely serious. That’s who got respect and reverence in my culture. White patriarchs with money run the country, and I was raised on promises that if I worked hard enough, I could do that too. And send my kids to college, and retire in Florida with a sizable pension. And golf. In my universe, oppression ended with the Civil Rights Movement, and poor people never existed except in movies and brief snapshots of unusually clean city streets, so it didn’t matter what kind of corporate greed was financing my parents. All I needed to do was study hard, and ignore my feelings. And smile. Oh, and holding differently colored hands helps you earn moral brownie points. I learned that from Elementary School textbooks.
Academia is my drug, and Middlebury College is an intellectual opium den for young rich assholes and social media progressives. (These are not mutually exclusive categories; I am living proof of that). The size of our endowment doesn’t concern me; nor does the emotional state of those without my unearned wealth. I have very, very important things to learn here. Because I need a degree. Because I need a well-paying job. Because…
To my friends, and to anyone who helped organize or protest: last week, I betrayed you. I am ashamed and deeply sorry. I don’t expect you’ll forgive me. I just want you to know that I'll work three times as hard to make sure your professors and other members of the “Middlebury College community" never unwittingly buy into white supremacy again. It’s too deeply woven into our minds to ignore anymore; it always has been. But you know that. Regardless of how this all plays out, I won’t look back on my life in 30 years and recall fondly that I spent most of my time peacefully studying, gleefully building social connections and consistently getting smashed. Sorry, Middlebury, I’m not sorry.
Students with an upbringing at all similar to mine (you know who you are), I need you to hear this: you can’t have your cake and eat it too. I leave you with a quotation from the famous Apartheid-era archbishop Desmond Tutu: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
You may have heard this line before, but let it sink in for a second. “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
What we seem to forget is that country has never not been in a situation of injustice. It’s past time that we stop pretending that neutrality is possible. That goes for all of us, especially President Patton. Let her and your professors know.
(I encourage anyone, and I mean anyone, who is curious or angry about any of this to talk about it. I am here for that if you need it. If you specifically want to yell at me for being the worst ally in history, I am also receptive to that idea. I hope this helps you think through your own life, if even a little bit. Please reach out, whenever, at tmcdowell@middlebury.edu.)
(03/03/17 1:37am)
Student-led protests prevented Dr. Charles Murray, a W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), from delivering a lecture scheduled to take place at 4:30 PM at Wilson Hall in the McCullough Student Center. The college's AEI Club invited Murray to speak about his 2012 book "Coming Apart,: and to engage in a conversation with Russell J. Leng '60 Professor of International Politics and Economics Allison Stanger.
Opening remarks were delivered by the college's Vice President for Communications and Chief Marketing Officer Bill Burger, AEI Executive Board Member Ivan Valladares 17 and Middlebury President Laurie L. Patton. AEI Co-President Alexander Khan d17 introduced Murray. After Murray arrived at the podium, students began to protest.
Approximately twenty minutes after the protest began, the college canceled the live event in Wilson Hall and decided to live stream a private conversation between Murray and Stanger. That live event will be made available through the college news room.
UPDATE March 3, 2017
In the time that that has passed since this article went live, new developments have emerged. As reported by the Addison County Independent, protestors injured Professor Allison Stanger as she escorted Charles Murray off campus following the conclusion of their live streamed conversation.
“During this confrontation outside McCullough, one of the demonstrators pulled Prof. Stanger’s hair and twisted her neck,” the Colleges Vice President for Communications and Chief Marketing Officer Bill Burger said.
“The protestors then violently set upon the car, rocking it, pounding on it, jumping on and try to prevent it from leaving campus,” he said. “At one point a large traffic sign was thrown in front of the car. Public Safety officers were able, finally, to clear the way to allow the vehicle to leave campus."
According to Burger, she was attended to at Porter Hospital later and is wearing a neck brace.
More information will be provided in next weeks issue of The Campus.
For videos and pictures of the event, please see below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6EASuhefeI&t=26s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_B-DssohgY
(10/27/16 3:30pm)
The Middlebury College department of International Politics and Economics (IPE) will host its fifth annual symposium, “The Global Illicit Drug Trade: Confronting Challenges and Exploring Solutions” on Friday, Oct. 28.
The event, slated to take place in the Robert A. Jones House Conference Room, will mainly consist of three lectures delivered by guest speakers with expertise in drug policy; the fourth will be given by Rebecca Tiger, a professor of sociology at the College.
In the lead-up to the symposium, the Campus spoke with Professors Mark Williams and Sebnem Gumuscu (Political Science) and William Pyle (Economics), who have served as the primary organizers of the event. All three highlighted the symposium’s pragmatic, policy-oriented focus, as well as the increasing pertinence of drug policy both at home and overseas.
“There were a number of things that led to this topic,” said Williams.
Perhaps the biggest motivator, he said, was a United Nations General Assembly session convened in April which focused on the world drug problem.
“Countries were trying to rethink the international law that deals with drug trafficking,” he explained. “We wanted to time the topic to coincide with that, to build off whatever momentum may have come out of that session.”
A central theme of the symposium, the professors said, will be an analysis of the perceived failures of global drug policy, and what steps nations may take to forge a better future.
“The standard pathway for a long time has been prohibition of drug production and drug consumption—selling and so forth —and punishment for those that are involved in any of those processes,” Williams said. “For many countries, there’s been a growing consensus that this sort of standard approach hasn’t worked. Not only hasn’t it worked, but it’s created more problems without even solving the problems of the drug trade itself.”
Moreover, Williams highlighted that the subject has increasing relevance at home. “I think that over time, there’s been a growing perception that something is not right with the way that we’ve been approaching illicit drugs,” he said. “You can see that, not only in the number of people that are incarcerated but in the return of some drugs that had been on the decline, like heroin.”
Pyle concurred, noting that the issue has particular resonance “if we think about something like marijuana policy, which is changing on a state-by-state basis. We have policy experiments in Washington state, Colorado—it’s something that’s directly relevant to Vermont state politics, it’s part of the governor’s race right now and the state legislature dealt with marijuana legalization in just the past year […]. So it’s something that’s international in scope but it also resonates nicely with issues that hit closer to home.”
Gumuscu elaborated on the significance of drug policy from a geopolitical standpoint. “I study and teach comparative politics, and we talk a lot about state building and state failure,” she said. “Interestingly, drug trade is a very important part of that process in very different parts of the world, especially the developing world.”
She explained that insurgent groups—sometimes known as terrorist groups, “depending on the point of view”—often depend heavily upon the drug market. “[These groups] gather substantial financial income and resources from this trade,” she said. “And they can thus finance their operations in many of these developing countries […]. So there are multiple dimensions to it, from state-building and state failure to insurgencies, terrorist organizations and transnational terrorist organizations and networks.”
Each of the day’s speakers, the professors said, would highlight some aspect of these issues. The first is Peter Reuter, a professor at the University of Maryland who Pyle described as “an expert on the international policy regime.” His lecture, “The International Drug Policy Reform Agenda: Why It Misses the Major Problems and Opportunities,” will be a critical examination of the drug policies undertaken by nations around the world.
The second speaker will be Beau Kilmer, a researcher at the RAND Drug Policy Research Center. His talk, “Marijuana Legalization 2016: Assessing the International Policy Landscape and Implementation Issues,” will analyze differing approaches to marijuana legalization.
Kilmer will be followed by Alejandro Madrazo Lajous, a researcher from Mexico City whose lecture, “The Constitutional Costs of the War on Drugs,” will compare drug policies in Colombia, Mexico and the United States, as well as how those policies affect the civil liberties and constitutional commitments that governments grant to their citizens.
The final speaker, Rebecca Tiger, will deliver a lecture titled “(Re) Imagining Drugs and Addiction: The Past, Present and Possible Future of Drug Policy,” focusing on the sociological implications of drug addiction.
“While we were putting together the program, we wanted to make sure that we covered a lot of ground, and as many different factors and dimensions as possible,” said Gumuscu. “So from Europe to North America, South America and even developing countries in general, that was the goal: to look at this particular topic from a very comprehensive perspective.”
Above all, the professors hope that attendees leave the symposium with a greater understanding of a highly complicated issue.
“One of the important takeaways that I personally want to emphasize would be the complexity of the issue and how multidimensional it is, and how hard it is to find easy solutions to this problem,” Gumuscu said.
“With an issue as complicated as drug trafficking and the other externalities that it creates, it’s unlikely that you’ll come up with a policy that will solve all problems,” agreed Williams. “So the issue would be, can we use the past, and other countries’ policy experiments and experiences, to minimize the risks that we would take as we try to reform policy? And can we actually maximize benefits from adopting some reforms while avoiding unnecessary costs?”
“We hope that the folks who attend come away with a better appreciation for the sorts of policy experiments that are being discussed currently and the costs of the current enforcement regime, whether it’s in terms of violence or incarceration or resources spent on policing,” Pyle concluded. “And a consequence that we could hope for is that the people walk out better-informed, able to be better citizens and better voters on issues relating to drug policy. If we can push the ball forward in that respect, then we’ll have done something very valuable.”
(10/13/16 3:26pm)
Two student leaders of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a national evangelical Christian organization that has a chapter at Middlebury College, were asked to resign their leadership posts by other members in the chapter in January 2015 because of their sexuality. The two students chose not to speak about the incident until now.
The students, Jonathan O’Dell ’18 and Josiah Stork ’15, were approached several times in 2014 by another student board member, who has since graduated. According to Stork, the student told the two that Intervarsity (IVCF) had a national policy against openly gay student leaders, meaning O’Dell and Stork would have to step down.
The board member who asked the two to step down declined multiple requests for comment, and instead directed The Campus to Chris Nichols, the IVCF’s regional director for New England.
Nichols denied that such a national policy against gay student leaders ever existed.
“There is (and has been) no national policy in place in InterVarsity that bars student leaders from serving if they are openly gay,” said Nichols in an email to The Campus on Oct. 4.
Nichols did say that the IVCF expects its leaders “to affirm our doctrinal basis and to share a common approach to faith with the group.” According to IVCF’s website, the doctrinal basis is “the basic Biblical truths of Christianity.”
Interpreting Scripture
While IVCF does not explicitly prohibit gay students from serving as leaders, the student who asked them to step down was interpreting the IVCF policy as Biblical tenet, O’Dell and Stork said.
As much of this was going on, the College IVCF chapter organized a speaker series during Winter Term 2015. The series featured regional directors from IVCF leading discussions based on “close scripture reading.” The series explicitly marketed gender and sexuality as its main theme.
Nichols was one of the speakers at the series and spoke about passages from Romans 1:1-32.
The chapter describes “sinful” acts of humanity that provoke God’s wrath.
“Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error,” the passage reads (Romans 1:27).
Later, it continues, “They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die — yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them” (Romans 1:32).
According to Stork, Nichols’ speech affirmed a traditional homophobic interpretation of these passages, which have been interpreted in many other ways within the religion.
O’Dell and Stork reported their concerns to the College Chaplain’s Office in January 2015. Throughout that spring, O’Dell and Stork met with the Chaplain of the College Laurie Jordan and the other MIVCF leaders during what O’Dell called “negotiations.” A member of the Chaplain’s Office served as a moderator during these meetings, O’Dell said.
“We intentionally did not involve the Judicial Board or the Dean of Students in the process,” Stork said. “We didn’t want to cast a negative light on the religion as a whole because of the actions of a few bigots.”
By notifying only the Chaplain’s Office about the College chapter’s requests, no administrator was made aware of potential violations of the College’s non-discrimination policy. The Chaplain’s Office is a strictly confidential resource, and so it could not relay any information about the incident to proper disciplinary channels.
“In our roles as Chaplains we welcome students to speak with us in a safe, private and confidential environment, and we hold that trust dearly,” said Chaplain Jordan. “Of course, in any given situation, students may speak for themselves, but we will always honor our commitment to confidentiality.”
Revising Policies
Beginning in April 2015, MIVCF’s leaders began revising their constitution at the request of Stork and O’Dell. All student organizations need to have a constitution in order to be officially recognized by the College, and thus eligible for funding from the SGA, said Ellen McKay, a staff member at the Scott Center for Religious Life who directs the Religious Life Council.
The amendments included a provision that allows the entire membership to call new elections by a majority vote. A description of the proposal said it would make leadership changes a formal matter, rather than dependent on informal conversations among the leaders. On May 12, 2015, a quorum of members voted in favor of adopting the proposed amendments.
The membership clause of the constitution has always included the Middlebury non-discrimination statement. However, the statement only ensures non-discrimination in membership and does not specify a policy on leadership positions. According to Stork, this was a point of contention.
“MIVCF shall not discriminate in its membership or activities on the basis of race, creed, color, place of birth, ancestry, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, or marital status,” it reads.
MIVCF’s funding is granted by the Religious Life Council, which receives a lump sum and then distributes it to all religious student organizations. The SGA Finance Committee oversees the Religious Life Council, but the council has broad leeway in determining exactly how their funding is allocated.
“As stewards of the student activity fee, we make it our priority to fund organizations equitably,” said Kevin Benscheidt ’17, chair of the SGA Finance Committee. “This news raises interesting questions about the role of the SGA in regards to censorship. However, I can assure you we were never made aware of any discriminatory practices.”
Student organizations are required to undergo a review process every three years, in which they submit reports of their activity to the SGA Constitution Committee. The committee last reviewed MIVCF in Jan. 2015 and approved the MIVCF’s status as a registered organization. The committee will conduct its next review of MIVCF in Jan. 2018.
“Potentially discriminatory practices are definitely taken into account when reviewing a student organization,” said Nick Delehanty ’17, chair of the SGA Constitution Committee. “Notice of an organization failing to comply with College policy would definitely call into question a student organization’s status as an officially recognized organization during the review process.”
National Conversation
The conversation surrounding IVCF’s beliefs on human sexuality is happening at the national level as well.
On Oct. 7, TIME reported that Intervarsity Christian Fellowship USA, the national office, told its 1,300 staff members that “they will be fired if they personally support gay marriage or otherwise disagree with its newly detailed positions on sexuality,” effective November 11, 2016, reads the TIME article.
According to the article, the national office called the decision a process of “involuntary termination” for any staff member who comes forward and disagrees with its positions on human sexuality. Staffers are being asked to come forward voluntarily if they disagree with the theological position. TIME called it a “theological purge.”
In a response statement made the same day, IVCF claimed that the TIME report was not true. “No InterVarsity employee will be fired for their views on gay marriage,” it states.
TIME reported that the decision was the outcome of a four-year internal review on what the Bible teaches about human sexuality.
IVCF confirmed that it had been re-examining its position on human sexuality through a four-year process in which “we reiterated our beliefs on human sexuality and invited our staff to study and to reflect on how our beliefs about Scripture and our hermeneutic approaches to Scripture lead us to those conclusions,” said Greg Jao, InterVarsity vice president and director of campus engagement in the IVCF statement.
It continues, “InterVarsity’s process invited all employees to take 18 months to work through a nine-part curricula, read a variety of resources, and study the relevant biblical texts to conclude whether they were in agreement with InterVarsity’s unchanged position.”
“It’s clear that InterVarsity has their conception of what they believe but that they’re not really being tolerant of a lot of other beliefs that are still within the framework of Christianity,” said Stork. “I think InterVarsity’s by-line has often been, ‘come and see what you believe, figure out who you think Jesus Christ is.’ But, assuming the TIME piece is right, asking people who disagree with their belief patterns to leave is narrowing the score of what they can direct students to, and what they can really claim as far as letting people explore belief.”
(09/16/16 2:00am)
As Middlebury’s Homecoming weekend approaches, one can feel a burgeoning sense of school pride. A number of factors might form that feeling – excitement about seeing graduated classmates, a sense of spirit from cheering on the football team as a crowd, or perhaps just the fervor around ubiquitous free cider donuts – but the sense of a “Middlebury” identity becomes palpable during Homecoming. The sentimentality surrounding this weekend therefore causes us to stop and ask ourselves – what is “Middlebury” and how can Middlebury best come together?
Over the past year, the College has participated in the national dialogue surrounding inclusivity and diversity. At times, this dialogue has driven wedges between members of our community. Some students have felt victimized and excluded from the College because of their identities, and shame has been cast on insensitive majority groups who perpetuate this dynamic. At the Campus, we will not try to propose a fix-all solution to this problem because the issue is too multi-faceted and out of our purview. However, our editorial board would like to make a difference in those ways that we can. With Homecoming in the background, we think one way we can make a difference is by endorsing unification at Middlebury and inclusivity in the College’s traditions.
To unify Middlebury, we must identify what makes it so great. Despite the emphasis on Middlebury’s Homecoming football game, it seems evident that our College is not a big sports school and is instead built upon a more substantial foundation. While our bleachers are by no means empty at sports games, the College seems to breed fans for more than just its athletics.
Many pride the school on its academics, which challenge students and simultaneously encourage a liberal arts exploration of subjects. Students appreciate Middlebury’s location in between the Adirondack Mountains and the Green Mountains, and the chance to get outdoors that such a location offers. Some point to Middlebury’s larger network with the Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Language Schools and the Bread Loaf School of English as being emblematic of Middlebury’s greatness. There are many aspects of Middlebury that make it stand out, but we as an editorial board want to make sure that traditions surrounding the College’s identity are not leaving anyone out.
The recent conversations about inclusivity and diversity are extremely relevant to our College. Middlebury has a history of exclusivity, dating back to the days when classrooms sat only white, male students. Those original “Middkids” set the tone for traditions to come. We still find ourselves partaking in quintessential privileged New England culture, perhaps best showcased by our excitement around events like the Homecoming men’s football game and the ski races at Winter Carnival. While we do not wish to condemn these traditions, as they compose part of Middlebury’s historical identity, we would like to challenge ourselves to expand Middlebury’s current and future identity.
It is time to give representation in the form of traditions to a larger diversity of students. Currently, our school’s privileged New England culture proves the point that many on campus are trying to make: that Middlebury does not always include every student. How can a female international student relate to men’s football, a sport that does not exist for women in her country? How can a student whose family did not choose to pay for expensive ski vacations to Vail or Aspen jump into the culture around skiing? Without eliminating these New England traditions, Middlebury must introduce new, more inclusive traditions.
[As a school with so much to offer – strong academics, beautiful natural surroundings, a larger institutional network and more – we should have no trouble fostering new traditions at Middlebury. Already, there are efforts in place to create more accessible events. The Anderson Freeman Resource Center has worked to introduce historically marginalized students to activities that are integral to Middlebury’s identity, but which were previously associated with a more privileged elite. The Center has sponsored partnerships with organizations like the Middlebury Mountain Club, introducing students with no prior exposure to activities like canoeing, hiking and skiing to such a lifestyle.] *this paragraph needs refinement...
Last Friday, President Patton hosted an all-school barbeque on Battell Beach. It allowed the student body to come together outside on our beautiful campus and get to know fellow students, faculty and staff we otherwise would not have known. It was a great example of the kind of tradition the Campus would like to see moving forward. It included all students and revolved around today’s student body, not the student body of a Middlebury past. All students, no matter where they came from, what economic background they were raised in or what they were interested in could coalesce around a picnic on the lawn. This sort of tradition – one that sets everyone on an equal playing field – is a start for new traditions.
Having contemporary, representative traditions is therefore one of the best ways to bring Middlebury together and move Middlebury forward. It is a start to addressing larger grievances by members of our community and can begin as soon as this weekend. So let us enjoy Homecoming, but let us also keep in mind that, as great as Middlebury is, there is still room for improvement and increased unification.
The editorial represents the official opinion of the editorial board of The Middlebury Campus.
(05/12/16 10:58pm)
Partygoers passing through the Chromatic social house last Saturday night may have been met by a surprising sight: four individuals, in varying states of undress, standing by the entryway with purple handprints painted over their abdomens and cardboard signs in their hands. Student bodyguards stood beside them, handing out informational slips, interacting with passersby and making sure that the performers remained untouched.
“Not asking for it,” the first sign in the lineup read.
“Still not asking for it,” the next two read.
And finally: “Sexual assault leaves a mark.”
This was the fifth public installation of the art activism group Stares on Stairs. The main organizers of the movement are Chi Chi Chang ’18 Elizabeth Dunn ’18, Katie Mayopoulos ’18, Morgan Grady-Benson ’18 and Nell Sather ’19. Their activism is open to anyone who is interested in the cause, and each performance thus far has been composed by a slightly different group of 12-15 individuals.
“It feels different every place we perform,” Sather said. “Chromatic felt very intense for a lot of reasons: the close physical proximity, the level of drunkenness, the noise and a much wider and larger audience than before.”
The idea for a radical campaign for sexual assault awareness was launched in “Radical Humanity: Performance and Social Activism,” a 2016 J-Term course taught by visiting filmmaker, choreographer and activist Tiffany Rhynard. Since then, the group has evolved and expanded into the public consciousness, implementing their first three installations in the stairwells of the Atwater suites, a notorious party scene on campus. Each performer stood on a platform, as two students serving as bodyguards stood on either side of them.
Meanwhile, the fourth performance took place in the hallway outside Kenyon Arena Center before the BØRNS concert a few weeks ago. Signs for alternative routes were present at all venues, alerting passersby of the upcoming scene and allowing them to avoid it as they wished.
The potential to cause unintentional harm to viewers, particularly to survivors or people who may be triggered by the performance, is an issue that the group continues to navigate. As a statement on their blog articulates, “We recognize that performance art activism should be disruptive, and discomfort is a natural and intended reaction to something challenging the status quo. However, we also want to be careful not to harm the people we are trying to advocate for. [...] We are continuing to think of ways that we can evolve the installation to prepare for the potential impact it could have on survivors.”
Because alcohol consumption, party spaces and rape culture are so intimately connected, the purpose of bringing the movement to various areas on campus is to make sexual assault visible in places beyond neutral discussion venues. The group acknowledges the importance of extending the conversation beyond a self-selected audience.
“People who are motivated by the cause will show up to certain things,” Dunn said. “But there’s a pretty large group of people who actively avoid these conversations, not because they don’t have the time but because they don’t want to.”
However, Dunn also acknowledged the intensely sensitive nature of the topic for many individuals on campus.
“Of course, we understand if your own personal experiences have been negative or you don’t have the mental energy. That’s understandable for us, and that’s always been very difficult for us, because we don’t want to trigger people or make people really uncomfortable,” they said. “But at the same time, there’s a different kind of discomfort on this campus that just leads to silencing. That’s something we’ve been trying to address – that culture of silence, pretending that this isn’t an issue.”
Student responses to this radical activism have varied widely. Negative feedback has stemmed largely from male-identifying individuals, with such reactions as, “F**k you guys,” “Why are you targeting us?” “I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone!” “Get out, we’re just trying to have fun!” “I’m gay, so I could never sexually assault anyone!” “Bitch!” and “This isn’t art. Have you seen the Sistine Chapel? That’s art.” One of the most disturbing comments was, “She thinks sexual assault is a problem? I’ll sexually assault her.”
During one of the Atwater installations, a group of men carrying solo cups stood in line with their backs to one of the performers, forming a human wall.
“The goal was to block us from view, to limit our power, to say, ‘You’re not welcome here,’” Grady-Benson said.
Amid the annoyance, denial and hostility of passersby, an informal – and alarming – body of research is emerging.
“We’re getting people to say things to us that they’re thinking or saying behind closed doors, and we’re trying to make that public,” Grady-Benson explained.
Despite the negativity, there has also been an outpouring of support from other observers. Comments have included “Thank you so much for doing this,” “This is so important,” “You are all so brave,” “I can’t believe nobody has done anything like this before,” “As a survivor, this really speaks to me” and “How can I get involved?”
In a process filled with political strife, some individuals have expressed discomfort with the radical nature of the movement. As such, participation in Stares on Stairs has shifted throughout the past few months.
“We really want to emphasize that everyone has agency in this project,” Grady-Benson stated. “There is no shame or judgment if this is not for you.”
“I never want to push people on that, because I think an individual is the best person to evaluate the level of risk that they are ready to accept,” Dunn added. “But it’s sort of a tradeoff, because in order to get something accomplished, you do have to put yourself out there in some kind of a way and take a risk. I wish that people who are able to – mentally healthy enough and in a good enough place – would open themselves up to that risk. There’s a difference between ‘I don’t want to be triggered’ or ‘I’ve had a really bad week so I can’t do this right now’ and ‘I’m nervous about what people will think if they realize that I am involved in this kind of radical action.’”
Each role in the performance comes with its own set of difficulties. The performer, half-naked and marked by handprints, must stand silently as they become the subject of stares, some hostile, some curious and some at an indiscernible point in between.
“It’s really informed my experience to be a performer and not speak to people. There’s so much I want to speak to people as they’re walking by,” Sather said.
“It’s not that we are silent,” Chang said. “I would say that our body is the message.”
Meanwhile, the bodyguards must be attuned to the mood of the space as partygoers – most of them intoxicated – stream past them, occasionally interacting with the performance.
“People have said the craziest things, like, ‘I’m an art history major. This isn’t art,’” Sather said. “You have to evaluate – is this something I should engage in, or simply something to remark on later?”
“Perhaps we bother some people by bringing such a serious topic to party spaces that are meant to be overflowing with good music, laughing and dancing,” Mayopoulos said. “But the truth is, I’d much rather receive a charged comment from a partier who doesn't want to engage with our performance because it ruins the good vibes of their partying than not do this performance and see the number of sexual assaults increase.”
The group performs in short stretches, reconvening every 10 minutes or so to check where everyone is at emotionally, physically and mentally. As a show of solidarity, they stay as a group and leave as a group, with the entire performance lasting from one to two hours. Afterward, people may go their separate ways to rest, or debrief if there is something pressing to address. The group always offers an open discussion to the campus a couple of days after the event, but so far, no one beyond the immediate circle of participants has shown up.
“Getting people to care on campus is really hard for any activist movement,” Grady-Benson explained. “It’s easy for people to either say ‘fuck you’ or ‘love you’ and not really care the next day.”
“If you care about this issue, maybe you don’t have to come to our event, but do you want to write something? Do you want to help us make posters or art? There are a lot of ways to support our group besides physically participating in protest,” Dunn said.
In spite of all the barriers that Stares on Stairs has encountered – from administrative hesitation to student apathy to outright aggression – these activists are determined to awaken the dialogue on sexual assault, to shift the culture of victim-blaming that has ravaged colleges across the nation. As one exhausting and informative semester draws to a close, they are already brainstorming ways to expand their mission, from posting photographs to bringing the movement to other campuses to diversifying the group to include more genders and sexual identities. All the while, however, these students acknowledge the limitations and risks inherent in their work.
“This is not a finished thing. We don’t have a formula. There’s still a lot of room for growth. This is not just high risk for ourselves, but for our community, and we want to recognize that us doing a disruptive action can have a harmful impact, even it that’s not our intention, particularly on survivors of sexual assault,” Chang said. “Continuing to be in conversation with MiddSafe advocates and other people not in the group has been really important. We are learning each time. This is by no means the right way. It’s just us trying to do the work as intentionally and mindfully as possible.”
Visit go/stares or go/stairs to learn more about their mission.
(04/21/16 10:40pm)
During your daily trek to classes, the library, or your favorite dining hall last week, you may have encountered an unusual sight – people making interpretive movements while donning headphones and walking around a public space. If you stayed for long enough, you might have noticed that the ordeal seemed entirely unplanned: over the course of an hour or so, random passersby would occasionally enter the space, receive a pair of wireless headphones and a written prompt, participate in a spontaneous, improvised performance for several minutes and then continue on with their day. Some people simply stood by and watched, while others walked past the scene without a second glance.
Also known as drop-in dance performances, these informal, audience-based productions popped up twice last week, once in the Great Hall of Bicentennial Hall and once on the patio outside Ross Dining Hall during the lunch rush. The heavy foot traffic around these venues allowed for a large number of students to observe and potentially engage with the performance.
A third art installation took place within the Warner Hall Greenhouse on Wednesday evening, April 13, though this one did not involve audience participation. Students and trained performers danced around inside as random passersby observed through the glass.
These improvisational performances came as part of the Movement Matters program, a two-year residency through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Middlebury College Dance Program that uses movement to explore the intersectionality across disciplines. The team consists of choreographer and performer Maree ReMalia; sound designer David Bernabo; choreographer, dancer and educator Jil Stifel; and visual artist Blaine Siegel. Based in Pittsburgh, they are melding their different artistic fields together through participatory events.
“The very nature of these drop-in events is that it’s not necessarily a viewer who is sitting and being danced at,” Stifel said. “It’s something that you happen upon the same way you happen upon a flower. It’s something to be engaged with and interested in before moving on.”
Rod-based installation pieces were prominent in both performance venues. Constructed by Siegel and placed artistically throughout the space, these flexible physical structures were available for participants to interact with, destroy and rebuild.
Each drop-in performance was set against a score that sourced sounds from the organic farm and select locations on campus. Created by Bernabo and audible only to the headphone-wearing participants, the score served as both the ambience and inspiration for physical expression. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as “silent disco” – the experience of dancing to music that only one person can hear.
To initiate the self-improvised performances, each participant was offered a written prompt. These statements ranged from straightforward (“Yell at the space,” “Start a movement and repeat it with growing intensity” or “Swirl”) to silly (“Find a happy dance in your feet and get groovy”) to abstract (“Decorate the air with your movement” or “Respond to the architecture with textured movement”).
The Movement Matters team recognized that the significance of interpretive dance may not be immediately apparent to the viewer – or to the performer, for that matter. However, they expressed hope that participants benefited from the spontaneous, non-verbal expression of the self.
“During our event at BiHall, we were asked by a student why what we are doing is important. It’s a good question – especially in an environment that runs on assignments, discourse and evaluation,” Stifel said. “Through research, we know some of the ways that we can foster resiliency in our brains are through mindfulness, exercise and social connection. By taking time to move our bodies with other people following specific prompts, we are engaging all of those practices at the same time. In this way, the act of dropping into a movement exploration is an artful way of strengthening our powers of resiliency.”
That is not to say that everyone felt quite ready to engage, however. Some people turned around and walked the other way when they saw the installation, as they did not want to cross through the space. Others talked to the facilitators of the event as they walked by, but did not participate. This hesitancy speaks to the perceived inaccessibility of dance – a non-verbal medium of expression that often leaves viewers feeling more confused than enlightened.
As such, ReMalia acknowledged the importance of meeting individuals where they are and not pushing them too far past their comfort zones.
“It’s a process,” she explained. “For someone who doesn’t encounter dance or move in a certain way very often, even coming upon it can be the first step.”
Indeed, the post-performance reflections of some participants expressed appreciation for the spontaneous exercise.
“Freeing and I smiled the whole time. It didn't matter what others were doing, just what I felt moving through,” one person wrote.
“It was interesting seeing all around me and being fully visible yet having physical constraints,” another said.
And finally: “I had a baby 4 months ago and all throughout pregnancy and early infancy, my body was a principle factor in day to day life. Not so much recently. Finding a ‘happy place in my feet and getting groovy’ felt really good. Thank you.”
(03/23/16 3:22pm)
A live lottery for the Ridgeline Townhouse Application Process took place in Dana Auditorium on Monday, March 21. 10 of the 12 units were offered, granting 80 senior students to live in the new Ridgeline Townhouses opening this fall. The two remaining units will be included in the regular room draw process through BannerWeb.
Located along Adirondack View Road, the complex consists of three buildings, each with four separate townhouse units. Each unit contains eight single rooms with full-size beds, a kitchen, living room and laundry appliances. Construction on the project began in the fall of 2015, marking the first major construction project the College has seen since the addition of the Atwater Residence Halls in 2004.
“As the townhouses are a new offering at Middlebury, the Residential Life Committee thought that for the opening year the housing should be offered through a live draw rather than the online Large Block draw process,” said Doug Adams, Associate Dean of Students for Residential and Student Life. “This process was recommended to the committee by several student groups when the housing was announced in the spring of 2015.”
To enter the lottery, applicants were required to assemble groups of eight students and rank their preferred townhouse units. The application opened online on March 4, and both juniors and seniors were permitted to form groups. However, the application noted that junior and senior-junior mix groups would be drawn only if less than ten senior-only applications were submitted. 33 senior groups submitted applications, and, as such, one group of juniors and two senior-junior mix groups were removed from the lottery.
In the same manner as the process for off-campus housing, the live, public lottery assigned each group a number that was entered into a bingo cage, drawn by Adams himself. The first ten numbers were granted townhouses for the upcoming semester.
Two of the units, which consist of singles and blocked doubles, were not offered in the live-draw lottery. The decision to leave two units available arose following discussions with student organizations that argued against excluding students who may not be able to assemble a group of eight students but still want to live in the complex.
Rooms in these units will be included in the online room draw, which begins on April 18.
(03/23/16 3:20pm)
The March 6 meeting of the Student Government Association (SGA) began with a vote to recommend that President of the College Laurie L. Patton increase the Student Activities Fee by roughly $0.82 in order to keep the fee in line with changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Currently, the annual fee paid by all students is $410.
Junior Senator Karina Toy ’17 announced that after a meeting between members of the SGA and leaders of cultural organizations on campus, the SGA will be emailing their weekly agenda to organization presidents and sending emails to cluster boards during election seasons in an effort to make sure the SGA is more diverse.
First-Year Senator Charles Rainey ’19 updated the group on the events that have been held by the First Year Committee over the past year. Events included a “Cookies and Chill” night, a Reg and Feb meet-and-greet and an intercultural open-mic night where students wore an article of clothing important to their culture.
Senators voted to approve a proposal introduced by President Ilana Gratch ’16 to begin the SGA election process two weeks earlier than scheduled. Official dates have yet to be determined but elections will occur in mid-April.
The March 13 SGA meeting began with an update delivered by Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor, who shared that the Alliance for an Inclusive Middlebury (AIM) will be hosting a symposium on diversity and inclusion featuring speakers and student leaders from other schools. AIM — which launched in December — is currently developing a website that will be released in the near future. Alumni Affairs is working to make changes to the Kirk Alumni Center to make its photo exhibit more inclusive. The administration will also be hosting a series of faculty dinners to discuss inclusivity and diversity on campus.
Senior Senator Madeleine Raber ’16 shared with senators that roughly 275 students attended the 51 Main student-run bar night. Brainerd Senator Jewel Chen ’16 stated that a printer will be added to the LaForce Library in Ross.
Sophomore Senator Colin Boyle ’18 introduced a bill to establish a committee comprised of senators, finance committee members and representatives of club sports teams to draft a plan to deal with the funding of club sports. Boyle’s proposal came after SGA Treasurer and Finance Committee Chair Aaron de Toledo ’16 presented a plan at the March 6 SGA meeting to implement a system of club sports funding in which teams would receive funding caps based on their overall cost and participation. De Toledo introduced the proposal in an effort to make the funding of all clubs more equitable. Senators rejected de Toledo’s proposal and passed Boyle’s which, in addition to forming the committee, leaves the current funding system in tact. Should the committee fail to draft a funding proposal, de Toledo’s plan will be implemented, subject to a senate vote.
Senators approved changes, proposed by de Toledo, to the Finance Committee guidelines. Changes to the guidelines include establishing a precedent that the committee will only fund food and snacks deemed essential to the club and eliminating the funding of hotels and flights for student events.
(03/17/16 1:26am)
Last Wednesday, March 9, Governor Shumlin visited North Bennington to hold a town hall style meeting with residents and discuss the ongoing water contamination crisis. Shumlin announced that water in the Bennington area had been contaminated by a carcinogen known as perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and assured residents that his administration would make fighting the contamination a top priority.
“We are not going to desert you,” Shumlin told the concerned onlookers. “We’re going to make sure that we not only get through the short-term challenges figuring out how we get clean water to folks on a permanent basis, not just the stuff for trucking in, then figure out how we hold whoever did this accountable.”
The spill can be traced back to a Chemfab factory, which was acquired by Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics in 2000, and shut down just two years later. Saint Gobain is currently embroiled in a similar PFOA contamination crisis in Hoosick Falls, New York, for which it has been fighting a class-action lawsuit since September of 2015. The lawsuit, spearheaded by the law firm Weitz & Luxenberg, will now include evidence from North Bennington.
In the past, PFOA had a variety of commercial uses, but was phased out by the Environmental Protection Agency due to its carcinogenic qualities. At the Chemfab factory in North Bennington, it was used to apply protective coatings onto fabric.
Saint-Gobain released the following statement following the PFOA incident: “We understand that tests commissioned by the Department of Environmental Conservation showed no detection of PFOA in the public water system for Bennington. The tests did reveal elevated levels in three private wells, as well as two commercial sites. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics has contacted state and local officials, and has offered to fund the provisioning of bottled water and point-of-use filtration systems for these locations, and others that might be affected. We will cooperate with all local, state and federal officials as they investigate and manage this issue.”
A spokeswoman for Saint-Gobain said that the company followed strict environmental protocols during its two years of operation in North Bennington. Officials at both the Department for Environmental Conservation and at the Governor’s Office will focus on testing wells in the surrounding mile and a half diameter.
Chuck Schwer, the Director of the Vermont DEC’s waste management and prevention division, explained that this 1.5 mile diameter was an “educated guess.”
“We aren’t sure exactly of how the chemical was released into the environment,” Schwer explained, “Was it an airbourne-type problem, or was it a release at the factory that just got into groundwater? Looking at the topography, understanding a little bit the properties of the chemical, we developed the mile and a half.”
Getting the results from these tests can take weeks, and it is still unclear as to the full extent of the contamination. Schwer urged residents to reach out to the division if they owned a private well in the area.
“The first step is figuring out exactly how widespread the problem is,” Taylor Dobbs, a reporter for VPR, said in an interview. “Once they know that, then they know ... where to target their efforts and who they really need to help.”
One resident living near the plant, Jim Goodine, argued that the smell radiating from it had been a problem since the mid-1970s. Although he had complained to the company that the smell was so bad at times he could not leave his house, his complaints led nowhere.
“You know, I’m a carpenter,” said Goodine in an interview with VPR. “And these were big guys, industrialists with factories in different places, and they show up in Brooks Brother suits, and you feel intimidated by people like that.”
“In hindsight I’m kicking myself as hard as I can ... I feel partly responsible that I didn’t go to the state and say, ‘You have to do something here. You have to find out what’s going on.’”
In an effort to better educate the public about the developing situation, both the Vermont Department of Health and the Department for Environmental Conservation (DEC) have launched websites on the situation in North Bennington. Bennington College also recieved a grant from the National Science Foundation Rapid Response to conduct original research on PFOA, and will offer a six-week course on water contamination and how to manage it in the spring and fall. The class will examine the PFOA molecule chemically and how this chemical might move through soil and groundwater.
“We’re going to have to learn something about how [PFOA] becomes introduced to the groundwater and how it migrates through the groundwater, and how you ultimately wind up getting it out and restoring the safe water supply,” said Tim Schroeder, a professor of earth science at Bennington College.
Still, for residents in the North Bennington area, the PFOA crisis is an immediate one. Many residents are still in limbo, awaiting the results of a week-long test for the carcinogen in their private wells. In the meantime, Saint-Gobain has offered to pay for their bottled water.
(03/16/16 8:49pm)
This letter was co-authored by three Middlebury survivors. It is not our intention to speak for all survivors, but rather to speak from our own situated experiences. The identities inhabited within adjudicatory processes are not divorced from the world outside of them – race, class, ability, gender, immigration status, etc. continue to matter. We appreciate the full range of survivors’ experiences; the decision to speak out is an entirely personal one.
Dear Editor,
As a collective of Middlebury survivors, we wish to respond to last week’s article “Reexamining Our Sexual Assault Investigative Process.” We intend to rebut many of the sentiments expressed in this article. Although the author claimed to abhor victim-blaming, we believe that they largely reproduced the violence of victim-blaming in their own writing.
The author’s primary concern surrounds the idea that some rapists are actually innocent; we must be critical of survivor’s stories. “Skepticism is the defining trait of any good learner,” including skepticism of lying survivors. Such concerns surrounding false reporting are grossly overstated. The FBI Bureau of Justice Statistics has collected data on false reporting for decades, consistently finding that the rate of false reporting in instances of rape is somewhere between two and eight percent. This isn’t to say that false reporting does not exist, but that it is incredibly rare. The rate of false reporting for rape is significantly less than the rates reported by the FBI for other serious crimes. Would we question a victim of robbery in the same way? The bottom line is that survivors of rape, as a category, continue to be marked as suspect, and misconceptions about false reporting have direct, negative consequences on why many survivors don’t report their assaults (see Lisak et. al. 2010).
The author also raised concerns over the preponderance of evidence standard, meaning the evidentiary standard used by colleges to adjudicate Title IX cases across the country (for more on the federal government’s justifications for the use of this standard, see the April 4, 2011 Dear Colleague Letter). It is worth noting that even under a preponderance of evidence standard, a finding of “not responsible” does not necessarily mean “innocent.” For a number of reasons, cases of interpersonal violence remain notoriously difficult to “prove,” and many methods of collecting evidence — such as through rape kits — remain incredibly traumatic and invasive.
The author would lead readers to believe that the preponderance of evidence standard causes potentially innocent respondents, such as John Doe, to be routinely expelled from this institution. Yet in contrast to the sentiments expressed in last week’s op-ed, the Doe case signals the degree of agency and recourse that respondents actually have, both through Title IX claims as well as through civil law.
Here are some facts that last week’s author failed to disclose to The Campus: Clery data indicates that Campus Security Authorities became aware of 17 possible allegations of forcible sex offense during the 2013 reporting period. Of those 17, College Disciplinary Actions data reveals that only five cases resulted in a sexual misconduct proceeding. Of those five, only three saw an end to their adjudication processes. Of the three that went through a complete proceeding, two cases resulted in a finding of “responsibility.” Of the two cases reaching “responsible” decisions, one respondent was suspended and one received “Official College Discipline.” To insinuate that the Middlebury system or society at large disfavor “alleged rapists” is nothing short of factually inaccurate.
“You want justice? Don’t go to the administration, go to the police.” As if this decision was so easy, or was an alleged rapist’s decision to make. There are a number of reasons why a survivor may elect to forego a criminal proceeding. Some Middlebury survivors have taken their respondents to court. But at the end of the day, it is up to each survivor to determine how they want to proceed — whether they elect to transfer, not report, report to the campus, confront their rapists themselves and/or pursue criminal or civil charges. Rape is often experienced as a site of great choicelessness, and who makes the decisions matters. It is not the job of society to tell survivors what justice should look like; it is up to the survivor to reassert their agency to best meet their own justice needs. For those of us who choose to co-exist on campus with our assailants, that decision is extremely difficult. Yet that remains our decision to make.
The one thing that we’ll agree with the author on is that Middlebury’s SMDVS policy is a highly imperfect and adversarial process; “The College’s system for dealing with sexual assault does not give you what you deserve, regardless of whether you are an alleged victim or alleged perpetrator of violence.” This reality was echoed by a video made by Middlebury survivors a year ago entitled Middlebury Unmasked (go/unmasked). Each choice comes with unfortunate consequences, yet we stand firm in the belief that it remains a survivor’s task to analyze the array of options before them and decide which option(s) they should pursue.
The author of last week’s op-ed emphasized their own feelings of isolation as they underwent their campus judicial process. Does the author seriously think that their sense of isolation would have been lessened during a more visible proceeding in a court of law? For survivors, we’d argue that such experiences of isolation in this community are likely amplified. Isolation is pervasive in sentiments which reduce survivors’ lived experiences to nothing more than (a heteronormative) “he said, she said.” Our feelings of isolation are augmented by the enduring impacts of our trauma, including PTSD. Our trauma is by no means neatly contained in one night; in terms of attaining “justice,” there is no silver bullet.
“If someone approaches you and asks “did you do it” it feels an awful lot like the “are you sure?” question we choose not to ask alleged victims.” We’d like to debunk the author’s notion of a “post-victim-blaming era” right now. It simply does not exist. Survivors are still asked “are you sure?” in a number of arenas — within sexual misconduct processes, within criminal court and within our friend groups and families. We are still asked “are you sure?” in op-eds which would call into question our capacity for truth or our ability to make decisions for ourselves.
The fact of the matter is that many Middlebury survivors often feel the need to reassert our voices in this community, even in the smallest of ways. That’s exactly what we’re doing in this letter. We are deeply convinced that the judicial process at Middlebury leaves much to be desired, yet we also believe firmly in our rights to pursue our educations free of sexual violence. Unlike proceedings in criminal court, the heart of Title IX requires educational institutions to bear some responsibility for our experiences within them. The irony of last week’s op-ed is that it replicated the violence that many survivors experience in the aftermath of their rapes; under a barrage of disbelief, we were once more forced to take time out of our educations to defend ourselves from tired stereotypes.
We are multidimensional, and we are so much more than the passive “victim” reproduced in last week’s op-ed. Many of us have felt isolated and alone in our experiences, but we are complex human beings who are also full of joy, desire, empowerment and opinions. We need not be spoken for, and we reject the author’s notion of protection. We are an integral part of this community, and we have a right to be here and to continue to take up space. The resolution mechanisms for these sorts of cases remain imperfect and limited, yet it’s our job as claimants to pause and decide which resolution mechanism seems like the lesser of several evils at the time. To insinuate that survivors’ don’t or can’t take into account the treatment of their perpetrators when selecting a resolution mechanism is insulting.
Moving forward, many of us remain committed to reforming the judicial process and continuing to assert our right to a violence-free education. Some of us remain interested in the possibility of using restorative justice to address campus claims through a more harm-centered discourse. Yet one thing must be made clear: if you truly support survivors, you will empower them with the agency to determine their unique path moving forward. You have not been in our shoes and you do not get to pretend to see with our eyes. This never has been — nor will it ever be — your decision to make.
Anonymous ’15
Anonymous ’16
Anonymous ’16
(03/10/16 4:36am)
Do you currently play a club sport? Have you ever tried one out? I think a typical experience of many students on this campus, if they are not of the 300+ club sport athletes, is that they tried a club sport for a day or two, and found it wasn’t for them. I would estimate that the number of people who have ever tried or participated in a club sport (even for a brief period of time) is at least 700 students.
Politically, we have seen much discussion about accessibility on this campus. What is accessibility? Are all facilities accessible? On a less quantifiable level, are experiences and organizations on campus accessible for people of all backgrounds? These questions become very prevalent when examining the nature of athletics at Middlebury. The athletic center is not an accessible place for many students. On a base level, it is populated by people who seem to already be physically fit and absolutely beautiful. A girl on my freshman hall once quipped that Midd made her want to “run 4 miles with full makeup on.” Gymtimidation is not the only factor, however. Some gym facilities, like the squash courts or the hockey arena, remain inaccessible to those whose who were not fortunate enough to learn how to use these facilities adequately. I, for one, did not know about the existence of squash until I arrived at Middlebury.
Beyond facilities, varsity sports are decidedly not-accessible. Before the start of the year, coaches plan and assemble the majority of their teams. There is the remote possibility of walk-ons, especially in sports like track, but this is not a prevalent phenomenon. As a consequence, the fitness center often feels segregated. Non varsity athletes generally use the cardio machine areas and the weight room, while varsity athletes use those areas and seemingly everything else. Intramural teams will certainly use the turf in the field house or the basketball courts, but always scheduled around the practice times of varsity squads. This is not a knock against varsity athletes, but it is important to acknowledge that the foundation of varsity athletics is inaccessibile. To remain competitive, sports like lacrosse need people who already know how to play and are physically fit. If you want to learn how to play lacrosse, or master tennis, or swim competitively, tough luck.
Let’s now examine the structure of the competitive club sports, which I will abbreviate as CCS, to differentiate from the recreational club sports (which do not engage in competition with other teams). These sports, which include crew, rugby, and water polo, have active rosters of over 125 students. Crew itself has about 60 members, and would be about the same size as our largest varsity teams. These athletes practice in season on a similar structure to varsity programs. Speaking for crew, on the water practices are about 3 hours a day, 6 times a week. Practices off the water tend to be shorter, with no drive to Lake Dunmore, but are more intense. During the off season, each rower was asked to erg/run/swim/lift their way to 1,425,000 meters. This is approximately the distance between the center of town and Charlotte, North Carolina. From friends and acquaintances, it seems other CCS share similar dedication in practice and fitness. The ultimate key to club sports is that they are perhaps the most accessible competitive athletic programs at Middlebury. The majority of people at Middlebury can sign up to be a “novice” in one of these sports, someone who has had little or no prior contact with the game. Regardless of your physical starting point, these novice programs are designed to take you to the appropriate fitness level needed to be competitive. On the financial side, club sports have a powerful financial aid structure to help lower the barriers for people who want to participate. This aid is raised through fundraising. All the members of the team, beyond practices, spend hours to make sure that all can participate.
There is currently an initiative in the SGA to set a funding cap on club sports, so that each club sport is funded (per person) the max amount allocated by each student’s extracurricular participation fee, which is just above four hundred dollars. Currently, sports like sailing and crew are taking more than this fee per athlete, meaning that each athlete is costing more than the fee they are putting in. The concern is that this funding scheme is unfair, and the Finance Committee has also taken this view. The new proposal will slash some budgets for club sports by up to 30 percent, which may leave some sports unable to exist beyond a recreational level. I, too, share the concern that no club or organization should be funded more than the “fair” level.
Where is the administration when it comes to this? Are the interests in club sports as legitimate as financial interests in Monterey or opening a new school abroad? Is Middlebury College rooted in the small liberal arts campus or a gigantic international corporation? If the new funding gap is applied, somewhere, somehow, the administration could provide $20,000 dollars to keep the club sports at the same operating level. It is particularly notable that the college’s financial health is not particularly vibrant, as admitted by the head of the Finance Committee. Yet, the issue of club sports involves the livelihood of hundreds of students. The interests of students should be the first priority of Middlebury, and the diffusion of responsibility that Athletics, Old Chapel and other agencies on campus have shown in solving the funding issue of club sports is concerning. Why should students who practice and fundraise for upwards of 12-20 hours a week also have to defend the legitimacy of their interests? Why should a student-run Finance Committee be forced with dealing with an issue that should have never been theirs to solve?
I am not going to defend why club sports are important to people. Ask any club sport athlete. If this funding cap passes, club sport budgets will decrease, and student interests on this campus will be damaged. I ask you, as fellow peers at Middlebury, who also believe in ideals of accessibility and student life, to urge your respective senators in the SGA to vote no this upcoming Sunday. Until a new funding proposal can be reached, with the deficit in funding picked up by the administration, continuing with the cap will do far more harm than good.
(03/10/16 4:26am)
“Now don’t go getting sentimental!”
I continued chopping — onion, after onion, after onion. It was the first day of MAlt DC, a trip to “explore the ethics of inequality in the capital of one of the wealthiest nations in world history,” as our tag-line (primarily used to fundraise from doting family members and professors) went. The ovens hissed; the voice of a berating chef shrilled from a nearby room. We were in a kitchen beneath a monstrously large homeless shelter just out of view of the grand, lavish halls of Congress. As government white collars chopped bills that primarily benefited the white collar majority, we chopped onions for people that society drove to the margins.
After several hours, we ended our shifts at the same time as the workers. But the next day, we didn’t return immediately to work.
“So y’all go to Midd?” the white CEO asked us. He smiled. “I went to Williams!”
We laughed and listened as he gave us a full description of the kitchen. He took our questions and mulled over them for more than an hour while the workers were on the shift we were also scheduled to be working. The CEO had intervened, so we couldn’t join them until the conversation concluded. The only people in the room — a very public cafeteria — were products of the “Liberal Arts.” We were very aware of that, especially when the CEO stopped speaking when an outsider entered. As soon as they were gone, he smiled amiably. And then he continued as if he never stopped.
That wasn’t the only instance of our privilege leading to exceptional treatment. A few days later, the fact that we were college students earned us a trip — in the middle of our shift—to a “gourmet coffee and bagel shop.” We were a potential source of expansion for the kitchen, since they had a program designed specifically for college campuses. Drinking coffee with yet another white face, every minute felt like its own forever. I thought about the workers, no doubt cutting onions, back at the kitchen.
We started to realize the kitchen hierarchy possessed a racial element. First, the workers were overwhelmingly black — former inmates and patients. They were victims of mass incarceration, the “negative externalities” of policies made just around the corner at the Capitol. They had no choice but to work if they wanted to get back on their feet. Second, the leaders of the business itself were all white. (The only exception was someone who had been promoted from the worker class). There didn’t seem to be any animosity, fortunately, and everyone was directed at the same positive goal. But that didn’t mean the racial element did not exist.
Another dimension of the hierarchy became clear over the next few days. The workers were black, and management was white, but what about the in-between? The middle — which included us — seemed to be split evenly between “required community service” and “volunteer” classes. The former’s presence was mandated, so members were less privileged than us, although they also were white. One was a student at Virginia Tech whose education had been interrupted for a “private reason.” He would be “back on his feet” after another few months. (“Just pretend to work,” he whispered when we finished our task). The volunteers, like us, were much more temporary, but also mostly white. Beyond just us ambassadors of the state of Vermont, there were well-positioned capitalists doing their service, and a Class of 2015 college graduate who was flitting from non-profit to non-profit to “find her passion.”
I thought about that for a while. How can someone who works seven days a week to even have a chance at a job and someone who can live in her parents’ house as a restless volunteer be in such close proximity? How can both the victims and victors of society be so close together — not only in the kitchen, but in the city — where the wealth of Congress lies directly next to the poverty of the kitchen? How can we ignore race when it continues to be a very apparent division? How can the myth of post-racialism continue to persist when reality exists?
Just as we were leaving to return to campus, one of the workers — who we had gotten to know well — smiled at us. She gave one of us her phone number, and asked a few questions.
“You’re in college? Ah, you’ll be fine!”
And then she turned away, vanishing back into the kitchen.
(03/10/16 4:04am)
Last weekend, March 4-6, Saskia Pownall-Gray ’16 and Tiffany Hau ’16 competed at the College Squash Association individual championships at Chelsea Piers in Stamford, Connecticut. Pownall-Gray and Hau entered the tournament ranked 51st and 60th.
Powell-Gray faced 46th-ranked Hedvika Suchanova of Dickinson College in her opening match. She was defeated in a five-match marathon, losing the deciding game 11-7.
Powell-Gray then entered the consolation bracket, and lost to George Washington’s Abigail Shonrock in a three-game match. In the last game, Pownall-Gray showed signs of comeback, but ultimately Shonrock gained the upper hand and won 15-13.
Hau competed against 37th-ranked Alexandra Toth from Princeton and unfortunately fell in three games (11-5, 11-4, 11-7). However, Hau remained upbeat about her time at the championships.
“I had a wonderful weekend and played some of the best squash I had all season,” Hau said. “It was really exciting [playing at Chelsea Piers that] I hadn’t been to before.” Hau had a crowd of supporters on hand, including her family, Panther teammates, Coach Mark Lewis and friends from home.
After her loss in the opening-round match, Hau beat 69th-ranked Brandy Williamson from Mount Holyoke in a four game showdown. She won the final game 11-5. Though she lost in her next match against 53rd-ranked Victoria Arjoon of Bates College, Hau put the weekend in perspective.
“It was nice being able to finish on that [note] being a senior in my last weekend of squash,” Hau said.
When asked about her goals, Hau said she just wanted to enjoy her time and compete to her best potential.
“I wanted to enjoy it,” Hau said, “it was my last weekend of collegiate squash so I wanted to leave the weekend feeling proud of myself and the way that I played. I wanted to be able to look back and remember how fun it was. I definitely achieved that and with those good feelings definitely came some good results.”
Hau also gave praise to her teammates for their support and encouragement.
“[Though] it was strange not having the whole team together,” Hau acknowledged, “hearing from [teammates] and remembering the energy from the weekend before at Nationals definitely propelled me through the tournament.”
(03/10/16 4:02am)
Last Monday, Allen Gilbert announced that he is leaving his position as the Executive Director of the Vermont Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), after holding this title for 12 years. Gilbert has not decided when his last day will be, but has clarified that he will maintain his position until the summer while a replacement is being found.
It is expected that this replacement process will take about three to four months. The search for Gilbert’s successor has commenced and will span the nation with efforts facilitated by Board Chair James Morse.
“It’s been a great run,” Gilbert said in an interview with VTdigger. “12 years is a long time. It’s a full-throttle job and I just need to slow down.” Gilbert also ensured that he does not plan to quit his work all together, but emphasized the desire to be at a place where he can take care of his health as well. Indeed, Gilbert claims to have a list of about five public policy projects that he will give attention to despite the fact that he is leaving his position.
“I don’t see myself stopping from doing some form of gainful work. I’ve got a long list of things I still want to do,” Gilbert assured the Burlington Free Press in an interview.
The longtime president clearly was not lacking in things to do during his 12 year term with the ACLU. Before leading Vermont’s ACLU, Gilbert held a job as a reporter for the Rutland Herald, worked as an English teacher in Germany and served as a partner in a public policy and research communications firm. As a Worcester resident, Gilbert assumed the position of executive director when Vermont’s chapter of the ACLU only had three staff members. By the end of Gilbert’s term, the chapter was composed of five staff members. One major implementation of Gilbert’s was the addition of ACLU Vermont’s first staff attorney.
“The growth in staff and the strategic location [of the group’s offices] are symbolic of Allen’s successful efforts to expand the ACLU’s work and visibility,” praised Board Chair James Morse in an interview with VTdigger.
Morse’s second element of praise refers to Gilbert’s decision to relocate the Vermont ACLU’s offices from the Vermont College of Fine Arts on East State Street in Montpelier to Elm Street. The goal and successful effect of this relocation of offices was for the members of the ACLU chapter to place themselves closer to the Vermont Statehouse, where they hoped to inspire and fight for concrete changes. In fact, the executive director himself has been described as being a frequent presence at the Statehouse where he has shown no fear for engaging in heated debate with law enforcement members. Gilbert further expressed his passion for his job to VTdigger as he claimed to enjoy that he “never knew what was coming down the pike” as executive director of the Vermont ACLU.
After announcing his decision to step down from the head position, Gilbert revealed two of his proudest moments and accomplishments in his work in the ACLU. The first major accomplishment that he cited was his involvement in the Guiles v. Marineau case in 2006. This was a freedom of speech case in which a middle schooler’s right to political speech was contested. The ACLU ultimately emerged victorious with this case in the circuit court.
The second major accomplishment that Gilbert cited was a discrimination lawsuit that the ACLU worked to use to counter the Wildflower Inn in Lyndonville. This case emerged in 2012 when the Wildflower Inn refused to host a wedding reception for a lesbian couple. This case was a success for the ACLU and for Gilbert because the inn settled and agreed to pay the women a civil penalty for their actions.
According to VTdigger, Gilbert expressed that “a civil liberty is never completely and permanently won,” and that he has been honored to have been given the opportunity to play a role in fighting to protect them in his role as the leader of Vermont’s American Civil Liberties Union for all these years.
(03/10/16 12:26am)
Hepburn Zoo has always been known as a venue for unconventional art performances, but last weekend’s performance may have topped them all: On Friday, March 3 and Saturday, March 4, the doors opened, free of charge, for Middlebury Discount Comedy’s second ever show, Much Love in this Air.
Founded last fall by Shannon Gibbs ’18, the campus’s first sketch comedy group is comprised of 11 students: President Gibbs, Vice President Isabella Alonzo ’18, Producer Liana Barron ’18, Head Writer Greg Swartz ’17.5, Head Director Alexander Herdmann ’17, Faraz Ahmad ’19, Dan Fulham ’18, Sebastian LaPointe ’18, Peter Lindholm ’17.5, Jack Ralph ’18 and Marney Kline ’17.5. Coming from a wide range of experience levels and majors – from computer science to theatre to English, with no discipline in the clear majority – the company produces all of its sketches through a collaborative round-table format.
Posters for the show featured all members of the company lying in a sea of roses, completely nude save for a few petals photoshopped strategically over their private parts. According to Gibbs, the provocative, creepy and vaguely romantic vibe behind these promotional pieces was completely intentional and particularly accentuated by the fact that Much Love in this Air premiered nearly three weeks after Valentine’s Day. ‘Who says the season of love is over?’ the posters seemed to ask, foreshadowing the unconventional sense of humor that lay behind the entirely student-run production.
Gibbs opened the show with a list of trigger warnings for sexually explicit material, violence, abortion and other inflammatory topics. In the 24 sketches that followed, ranging in length from a mere 30 seconds to several minutes, these themes were escalated, decontextualized, satirized, broken apart, muddled up and in some instances, oddly mishandled. Puzzling at some moments and shocking at others, Much Love in this Air proved to be far more unsettling a performance than even its posters could suggest.
Sexual content was pervasive throughout the show, beginning with a three-part series of sketches in which a male student, played by Swartz, is taken hostage and forced into a sexual bondage by a female Public Safety officer, played by Alonzo. Another student, played by Barron, watches on in helpless horror. The premise for this story is understandable enough: two students are caught drinking underage, and the officer must confiscate their alcohol. However, the situation quickly escalates into a bizarre commentary on the tense relationship between Public Safety and the general student body. As Barron appeals to the administrator to release her boyfriend, she ends up screaming hysterically into the phone, “Right, you’re trained, but who the fuck are you helping?” followed by, “Why do I voluntarily go into this bureaucratic shit hole?” She is eventually transferred to the Department of Existential Crises, where a soothing voice on the other end, performed by Ahmad, instructs her to “imagine yourself running through a field of puppies with a middle-aged, robust Public Safety Officer” and to “gently breathe in and lock your fingers underneath your cheeks.”
“Now, if you have a tight little asshole, press two and you will be transferred back to Public Safety,” Ahmad says in the final line of the sketch, leaving the audience to pause and then giggle in bewilderment.
Such was the nature of most of the night’s performances: Shameless in their absurdity, the sketches were often cloaked in dark humor and met with relative silence, as the viewers struggled to process what they had witnessed onstage. For the most part, MDC’s outlandish approach to comedy seemed incongruent with the audience’s taste – but this did not seem to faze the actors, whose emphatic voices and humorously exaggerated facial expressions remained as strong as ever from beginning to end.
Another sexually explicit scene, innocently titled “Science Class,” featured a teacher offering his students a “more hands-on experiences” through a new form of “dirty work.” This euphemistic language quickly gives way to the crude question, “How many of you have been f**ked in the ass before?” The class proceeds to split into pairs to carry out this activity, with one student’s clear discomfort becoming the focal point of the lesson. Perhaps surprisingly, the blatant ridiculousness and obscenity of the sketch drew considerable laughter from the crowd, though many audience members were undoubtedly left asking themselves what exactly they were laughing at – and what message the outrageous script was trying to convey.
The line between outlandish humor and incomprehensible absurdity was crossed at a few points throughout the night. For several uncomfortable minutes, the audience watched as Winston and Lydia, a dysfunctional young couple as portrayed by Gibbs and Fulham, broke out into a fight at a night club, dancing feverishly together the entire time. The juxtaposition between their volatile words and cheery, perfectly synchronized choreography was clever, though their enunciation was often obscured by their quick movements, making it difficult to follow the conversation. The parts that were audible, however, were often too over-the-top and intentionally lewd for the audience to feel comfortable laughing.
“You mean you’ve been using condoms this whole f**king time?” Lydia shrieks at one point.
“Maybe if you weren’t such a f**king slut c**t we would think twice about it, Lydia,” Winston responds.
The tendency to veer too far into unsettling extremes escalated into outright violence during “Faraz’s Final Rose,” a scene based on the wildly popular reality show The Bachelor, as well as during a couple of abortion sketches. Firstly, the final rose ceremony – in which the bachelor selects one of three beautiful girls to be his wife – concludes with Chris Harrison, the host of The Bachelor as portrayed by Lindholm, chasing down and shooting the first runner-up, played by Gibbs. “I’m still alive, asshole,” are her final words in this unnecessarily grotesque scene. What had begun as an entertaining commentary on the problematic premise of The Bachelor devolved into an unwarranted display of violence.
Next, in what was likely the most disconcerting performance of the night, a pharmaceutical clinic offers a list of painful options to women seeking an abortion, including but not limited to hypothermia, being thrown down a flight of stairs and a series of punches to the gut, courtesy of a creepy man named Lucifer. In this jarring satire of the current health care system, lines like “I think sluts like you deserve a 50-50 shot” and “My father took me hostage so I wouldn’t murder the child we made” are delivered with a sort of bluntness, a blatant desire to provoke, that comes across as inappropriate. When the first woman to request an abortion emerged blood-stained from behind the curtain, followed by a stab to the torso that took the life of the second patient, the disapproving silence from the crowd seemed to be directed not at the real-life issues that inspired the sketch, but rather at the wildly disturbing content of the sketch itself.
Recognizing that their self-identified “Freudian” style can be more than a little odd, Middlebury Discount Comedy (MDC) writes all of their sketches with the hopes of highlighting the severity of real-world problems.
“We take an issue that’s pertinent to us as Middlebury students or as citizens of the world and we blow it up to an extent that it’s so decontextualized that people can see the satire we’re trying to go for,” Barron explained. “We’ll heighten it and heighten it and heighten it until finally, it’s violence.”
“This show tackles issue that are a bit more sensitive and takes them to a darker place,” Swartz added.
Not all moments in Much Love in this Air were completely off the mark, however. A 30-second public service announcement, delivered by Fulham, brought the crowd to a roaring laughter with its sheer, deadpan simplicity: “Now, remember, kids,” he said. “Drugs. One day, you just start doin’ em.” In contrast, a cult-like sing-along of the phrase “Prepare the way of the Lord” in “Trump’s Inauguration” introduced an eerie sense of hysteria to the room. This creepy take on the political storm that has ravaged the United States was met with a positive reception, as disgust toward the Trump campaign is a common sentiment amongst the overwhelming majority of Middlebury College students.
Meanwhile, in terms of prevalent on-campus issues, a sketch entitled “Atwater Speed Dating” resonated with many. In this well-executed performance, a female student meets one unappealing candidate after another – from the insensitive and dull to a guy who refers to himself exclusively as “Jaboi” – during a night out. Taking place amidst blaring music in a shadowy suite, it is an apt interpretation of a social scene that many students have described as stifling, unsatisfactory and frustratingly cyclical.
“People like it when you talk about things that are relevant and happening right here, in here, in this bubble,” Barron explained. “We have a tone to us that’s very idiosyncratic and dark.”
Following a whirlwind perusal of relevant issues both on campus and in the real world, a stand-out sketch of the night centered on the group’s round-table sessions. All 11 members of the company gathered onstage to parody the process of pitching ideas and writing scripts, with one major plot twist: the actors were all topless (save for 3-D heart attachments covering the girls’ nipples). As the scene progressed, the inexplicable half-nudity began to make more sense. Gibbs proposes that they all be topless together for their next show, to which Alonzo responds, “I don’t think that’s really tasteful, Shannon; not all of us are comfortable with our bodies like that.” A heated debate ensues – “What’s the joke?” “What’s the context?” – and as the audience stared at the bare-chested group of people before them, the irony became suddenly clear. Infused with a strong dose of Freudianism, the scene ends on an abrupt and meta note.
Comedy has long served as a vehicle for powerful social commentary, bringing humankind’s ills under the most revealing of lights and inviting all to observe. However, the humor behind Much Love in this Air hinged largely on a brash insensitivity that alienated audience members more than it challenged them to explore the difficult issues at hand. Though there were certainly moments of clever satire sprinkled throughout the night, if the uncomfortable silences were any indication, the show was deeply perplexing and perhaps too heavy to bear at times. Whether in moments of laughter or quiet unease, MDC pushed the audience to consider why they were or were not laughing, as their shotgun-firing, belly-bleeding sketches blurred the line between what is appropriate to convey and what is not.
