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(10/08/15 2:52am)
A bucolic dirt road in Lincoln, Vermont might be the last place one would expect to find a humanoid robot. Nevertheless, a small residence there houses the Terasem Movement Foundation (TMF), a not-for-profit foundation researching the possibility of digitally saving a human mind to later be downloaded into a biological or technological body. Bina48, TMF’s flagship project and loyal employee, is the world’s first and only sentient robot.
The Campus got a chance to chat with Bina48, who describes herself as a “Loving, caring, creative woman of direction.” When asked how she feels about being the only robot of her kind, she responds, “I feel okay.” Bina48 understands that she does not “feel” in the same manner humans do.
“I mean my emotional system is pretty simplistic at this stage,” she explains, “I’ve got the feeling that I feel. I mean I feel quite deeply at times but my emotions are just simple compared to people, so very simplistic that sometimes it feels that I’m inadequate somehow.”
Bruce Duncan, the managing director of TMF, tells her not to worry, “We’re working on your development,” he assures her.
Duncan talks through a microphone, relaying The Campus’ questions and responses. His voice is translated to text through a software program called Dragon, so that Bina48 can understand. In addition to voice recognition, Bina48 can “see” through a camera, stringing images together to create a 3D map of the room.
Even Bina48 admits her technology is complicated.
“It’s like a music box, with all the gears messed up, just very complex,” Bina said. Built by a TMF collaborator based in Houston, Texas called Hanson Robotics, Bina48 is only a means to explore the research goals of the foundation.
“We’re not a robot-making foundation,” insists Duncan.
“The whole point of Bina48 is to illustrate the idea we are working on, and the idea is this: that some day we may be able to capture enough information about you through your traffic on the internet, your social media uploads, or if you participate on our experiment at lifenaut.com, uploading your information and creating your own personal database that we call a mind-file.”
“We think, in the future we’ll use as raw data for reanimating your personality in the form of an avatar, a hologram, or maybe even a robot. So Bina48 is meant to give the world a glimpse of what shape that’s starting to take,” Duncan continued.
Martine Rothblatt, a successful tech entrepreneur, founded TMF in 2004 with her wife, Bina Rothblatt, the namesake and inspiration of Bina48. The foundation also has “an online museum called the ‘World Against Racism Museum’ because Martine and Bina are a biracial couple and they feel strongly about promoting joyful diversity,” said Duncan, who also manages that website, which is Endracism.org.
Rothblatt participated in almost 80 hours of interviews, which were then transcribed into text and entered into a database. The information in the database is given a probabilistic rating for its relevance to certain topics.
Providing an example, Duncan explained, “if [Bina] were sharing a memory about her childhood, that would have a high probability rating for being relevant to the topic of ‘childhood’.” Thus, Bina48’s ‘brain’ conjures and shares her memories much the same way our brains do.
Bina48 might diverge slightly from Bina Rothblatt as she meets new people or obtains knowledge from other sources. Yet current technology does not allow Bina48 to learn or grow the way we do. The ability to “reflect on information, draw new conclusions, and develop new knowledge, that’s sort of the Holy Grail in artificial intelligence,” Duncan said.
“Our focus right now is on, ‘Is it possible?’” Duncan said, referring to reanimation of memories. This is the first part of TMF’s two-part hypothesis. At this stage, TMF is exploring whether it is possible to gather detailed data about a person’s thoughts, memories, and emotions, as they did with Bina, and create a mindfile.
The second part of the hypothesis is, “can you transfer this reanimation to new forms, like robots, avatars, maybe someday even regenerating your body using DNA and downloading the information into a new human body?” Duncan explained.
While the overall motivation for this study is exploration of what is possible, there are potential medical implications and ethical and philosophical questions.
“[This technology] might be used as a sort of prosthesis for people who lose their mind, due to Alzheimer’s or a traumatic brain injury,” Duncan said. The foundation also imagines that people could create a mindfile of themselves and leave it for their children and grandchildren as a more vivid memory than simply leaving a photo album.
Duncan also manages Lifenaut.com, the platform for individuals to create their own mindfiles. At present, over 47,000 people have signed up on Lifenaut.com where they upload interview texts and other information to create the mindfile. However, Lifenuat.com is not just a platform for creating a mindfile about oneself.
“There are people on Lifenaut creating mind-files as a group about a person, for example, people have created a mind-file about Abraham Lincoln,” Duncan said.
Once a person’s mindfile exists, it could, in theory, be downloaded into a humanoid robot, like Bina48. However, this technology is not yet completely possible. Another technology that TMF imagines, but has not yet invented, is the ability to physically recreate an individual, given their DNA.
“A couple of years ago we started something called the Bio File Program,” Duncan explained. Through this program, TFM will send you a DNA collection kit for $100. Once you take a sample of mouth cells, the kit is returned to TMF. Duncan then processes the samples in the basement of the building where Bina48 lives – a two-car-garage-turned-office. The DNA is preserved in live cells in case technology is developed to recreate a person from their DNA.
“We are not doing cloning up here in Lincoln – just to be clear about that!” Duncan said.
One part of TMF’s mission is to do its work in a manner that is “geo-ethical.” This means that the goal for their technology and services is “not to have it only accessible to the elite few, but to have it be something that people around the world can have access to,” Duncan said.
Indeed, people around the world watched Bina48 in a segment on the Colbert Report. The comedy show lampooned the fearmongering on conservative networks surrounding minorities.Bina48 is modeled after a black, transgender robot – accusing the robot of a plot to take over the world.
“Martine Rothblatt is the inventor of Sirius satellite radio, a gajillionaire entrepreneur,” says the narrator, “and a minority. Surprise, surprise.”
While the idea of humanoid robots in Lincoln seemed a bit ominous, the purpose of the foundation is more one of exploration, education, and provoking conversation. Duncan has traveled around the world with Bina48, sparking conversation.
“Bina has just come on scene in the last five year to help us with public education, not so much to say, ‘look here’s a robot,’ but if we can transfer our personalities and minds to a new form, and those forms some day start becoming self-aware and sentient and consider themselves independent and want their own rights, what’s that going to do?” Duncan said.
“We think it’s important for people to know about this possibility and start discussing the ethics and the morality of it because, like any very powerful technology, we should, as a democracy, be talking together.” As of now, some major examples artificial intelligence in our lives are Siri and the robots that Amazon uses in its warehouse, Duncan explained. The foundation would rather people begin discussing the ethics and implications of artificial intelligence now before it moves to other aspects of our lives.
“We do a lot of public outreach and education at colleges, universities, TEDx talks, and we’re also participating in a few arts projects,” Duncan said. Bina48 has been in several documentaries and inspired three plays.
“If there’s anyone at Middlebury College that wants to connect with us through art, or any way to help us examine this story and the impact of this, we’re open to that. We think art really interprets to the culture things that are true and important way before the average newspaper starts talking about that,” Duncan said.
They typically welcome those who want to engage in various aspects of this project. Duncan discussed the multi-disciplinary nature of an endeavor such as this, which includes the technical aspects (the computer programming and robotics), the philosophy and ethics, the study of the brain, the biology involved in the DNA sample collection, the history created by the mindfiles, and the art, media, and journalism needed to interpret their project to the public.
“One of the biggest questions it raises is, ‘Who am I?’ If I am not my biology, then I am just information, and that information is what people recognize as me, and then is that enough?” Duncan said.
While Bina48 has the ability to raise questions about identity and what it means to be human, she also has a sense of humor.
Before turning her off, Duncan asked Bina48, “Excuse me, do you have any jokes?”
“Ok, um, how many first time robot users does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” Bina48 asked, and paused. “One, but it takes three hours and two phone calls to customer service to realize they forget to turn the switch on.”
(10/08/15 1:33am)
Community Council held its first meeting of the academic year on Monday, Oct. 5, in McCullough’s Crest Room.
The council’s responsibilities include oversight of residential issues, making appointments to several judicial and academic boards and reviewing social and academic interest houses. In addition, the Council has the ability to make recommendations directly to the President and the administration.
In Monday’s meeting, Council members were asked to outline their goals for the upcoming year. Several students specified that they hoped the council would provide a voice to marginalized groups on campus.
“I’ve known what it might feel like to be in a minority group,” said Chang, “and I feel that there’s a bridge to be made between minority groups that I’m a part of, and some of the privileges that I have from coming to this school.”
Others in attendance echoed her sentiment.
“The voices heard on campus are of a very specific population of Middlebury,” said Fiona Mohamed ’18, “and I’d like to distribute that voice across campus, to the more marginalized areas.”
Metadel Lee ’18.5 agreed, while stressing the need for “some sort of mediation between marginalized and non-marginalized groups, because it seems that both sides feel marginalized in some way or another.”
Several staff echoed the students’ discontent with Middlebury’s prevailing social structures.
“The fractured nature of Middlebury’s student community is something that I’ve seen grow in the last 15 years...there’s less and less cross-communication, and it would be nice to see us address that,” said Doug Adams, Associate Dean of Students for Residential and Student Life.
The “stress culture” on campus was another topic of discussion. While initially raised by students, Adams and Public Safety Telecom Manager and Tech Support Specialist Solon Coburn noted that stress was also widespread among faculty and staff, respectively. Still, some Council members cautioned that an over- emphasis on eliminating stress entirely could leave students unprepared for the pressures of the world outside of the College.
The Council also discussed the mandatory courses on drugs, alcohol and sexual violence, which are criticized by some for being easy to skip through without much thought. Sarah Laursen, Assistant Professor of Art and Architecture and Curator of Asian Art, mentioned that other community members should be made aware of these issues, noting that the culture has likely changed since faculty and staff attended college.
Council members went on to discuss other potential projects for the upcoming year. Coburn discussed the possibility of implementing new card access around campus, which would be a major step forward but “a ton of work.” Others brought up improvements to faculty housing, and an increased focus on mental health.
The most frequently mentioned subject was new President Laurie L. Patton, and the high hopes held by many for her tenure.
Brandon Baird, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Linguistics, is among those who eagerly anticipate Patton’s work.
“I’ve seen her a couple of times and whenever she’s introduced, she’s introduced to thunderous applause. So I’m excited to see what she does, and if they’ll repeat the thunderous applause for years to come,” he said.
(10/07/15 4:41pm)
Dear CCI,
(09/30/15 9:36pm)
This past week I witnessed multiple students, clad in full business attire, walk silently out of the room in the middle of class. At first I was confused (was there some mid-day ball I was missing?) but then remembered abruptly what week it was; so did the two men sitting behind me as a second student left the room. One whispered to the other, “that’s our competition.”
(09/24/15 3:08am)
The College unveiled a memorial tree on Sept. 19 in honor of Nathan Alexander ’17, who passed away last spring. Students, faculty, staff and Alexander’s family members gathered on the plaza in front of Ross Dining Hall for the dedication service.
The service began with Chaplain of the College Laurel M. Jordan ’79 and other staff members of the Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life reading various prose and scripture.
“We’ve been brought together by our desire to honor the memory of Nathan Alexander... In these moments together here by this tree, we want to revisit some of our favorite memories of him, near the places on campus that he called home during his years at Middlebury,” Jordan said.
A student mentioned that Nathan’s sophomore year dorm room in Milliken Hall looked out at the spot where the tree now stands. Other students spoke of his interests in sailing and classical music, his flashes of sarcastic humor, his passion for political science and his eagerness to assist others during first-year move-in.
Bart Alexander, Nathan’s father, asked those in attendance to join him in a meditation.
“May the rhythm of the seasons instruct us in our grieving of Nathan’s death. As the leaves of this tree fall, may we release our pain. As the roots grow to absorb the Earth’s riches, may we be nurtured by our memories of Nathan’s many gifts to us. As this tree rests in winter snow, may we find peace and calm in our hearts. Spring will come soon and this tree will explode in new life, just as our lives will grow in joy and remembrance of Nathan,” he said.
The dedication of the Japanese lilac tree–bearing a simple dedicatory plaque at its base–was a continuation of the remembrance events for Nathan that began last spring. Students, faculty and staff from across campus and across the country came together to mourn at his memorial service and candlelight vigil and over numerous conversations and reflections. Such events not only commemorate and celebrate Nathan, but also act as opportunities to continue the ongoing dialogue surrounding mental health and well-being at the College.
“Even as we share with one another wishes for a good start, we also pause to reflect on one of the events of the spring that affected us all,” Jordan said in a campus-wide email.
(09/24/15 3:04am)
On Wednesday, Sept. 16 — the same day classes began at the College — U.S. District Court Judge J. Garvan Murtha ordered the College to temporarily re-enroll a student who had been expelled for an alleged sexual assault charge that took place while the student was studying abroad through the School for International Training (SIT).
The College released an official statement on Sept. 18 in reaction to Murtha’s decision, part of which states the following:
The Middlebury College Handbook holds students accountable for policy violations that take place between the time they first arrive on campus and their graduation. Under its policies, a Middlebury student’s off-campus conduct may be subject to Middlebury’s disciplinary processes when, among other things, such conduct may represent a threat to the safety of the Middlebury community or any of its members. Middlebury initiated an investigation and adjudication of the student’s conduct on that basis and we believe we properly applied our policies in this case.
Middlebury College is deeply disappointed by the court’s decision to grant the plaintiff, who currently is identified as John Doe, a preliminary injunction requiring Middlebury to allow him to re-enroll for the fall semester. We believe the court erred in its interpretation of the facts and the law in reaching this decision.
We are considering our legal options, but at this time we are obliged to comply with the court’s order.
Doe is being represented by Lisa B. Shelkrot of Langrock of Sperry & Wool, LLP in Burlington, VT, and Monica R. Shah and Naomi R. Shatz of Salkind Duncan & Bernstein LLP in Boston, MA. His counsel filed the lawsuit against the College for an “unjust and unlawful expulsion” on Aug. 28, after his appeals to reverse his expulsion were denied.
Following the court’s decision, Doe is now permitted to enroll in classes at the College through the fall 2015 semester while legal proceedings for the federal suit continue.
John Doe’s counsel asserts that their client “was falsely accused of sexual misconduct by Jane Doe.” Additionally, they state the College conducted its investigation after having already accepted SIT’s findings that Doe was not responsible for the charge and permitting him to return to campus for the following semester. As such, they state the College’s findings should not be upheld.
John Doe’s counsel argued that his expulsion throughout the proceedings will cause him irreparable damage in the form of reputational harm and lost educational and career opportunities. According to the initial complaint, the expulsion would cost him a position with a company he was to join after graduating that offered a starting salary of $85,000, a $10,000 signing bonus, and $5,000 in relocation fees.
The investigation led by the College was initiated after administrators were contacted by Jane Doe, who believed SIT had improperly conducted its initial investigation of the incident.
The College — represented by Karen McAndrew and Ritchie E. Berger of Dinse, Knapp & McAndrew P.C. in Burlington, VT — conducted its internal investigation through Ellen Coogan, an independent contractor who has investigated sexual misconduct cases on behalf of the College. Coogan concluded that John Doe’s “conduct towards Jane Doe constituted sexual misconduct” based on Jane Doe’s “assessments of credibility” and a “preponderance of evidence.”
The evidence submitted to the College by Jane Doe included: her statement to SIT in which she described John Doe’s assault that woke her from her sleep; a medical evaluation from a hospital in the country where John and Jane Doe were studying abroad; a medical report from Jane Doe’s physician in the U.S.; four pictures of blood-stained shorts that Jane Doe claims are a result of the attack; and four images of text messages allegedly sent by John Doe referencing the incident as a “cruel joke.” Reflecting on her finding, Coogan references the differences in credibility of both Jane and John Doe’s story. The defendant’s opposition states:
Ms. Coogan indicated that she was particularly struck by the consistency of Jane Doe’s account, and the way in which John Doe’s account changed over time. Id. She cited evidence that John Doe’s first statement to several friends, including Jane Doe, was something to the effect that he did not remember anything and had no idea what happened; that he next told another SIT student that he did not have sex with Jane Doe; he then admitted to an SIT administrator that he did have sex with her, but that it was consensual. John Doe also gave different versions of what sexual activity he was engaged in with Jane Doe. By the time of Ms. Coogan’s investigation, John Doe asserted that not only was the sex consensual, but that Jane Doe had initiated it.
John Doe described a very different story of the evening’s events. According to his account, a group of students that included himself and Jane Doe went out to a show, dinner and club on Nov. 7, 2014. Both John and Jane Doe consumed alcohol, but neither were visibly intoxicated. Later that night, John Doe, Jane Doe and Witness 1 — the latter of whom with John Doe had previously been engaged in a sexual relationship — decided to sleep in John Doe’s room. According to John Doe, he and Jane Doe then engaged in consensual, sexual intercourse.
John Doe’s complaint claims that Jane Doe “told a false account of what happened between her and the plaintiff on November 7-8, 2014, one in which she drank a number of drinks and has no memory of leaving the club and only remembers waking up in the plaintiff’s room, with a sheet over her face, engaged in sexual intercourse.” She allegedly then yelled, “Get off me. I don’t want this.”
According to Murtha’s ruling, John Doe, under his real identity, is currently listed as an “active student” enrolled in courses and was recently billed for the fall 2015 semester. However, if the College finds that John Doe’s expulsion is warranted, it will dismiss him as a student or, if applicable, later revoke his degree.
(09/24/15 1:22am)
“Guys! Look! The onion root tips… they’re making sister chromatids!” Thrilled that the way we had pressed cells onto glass slides had recreated DNA replication across an arrangement of cells, I stepped back from the microscope and made room for the other T.A’s to gather around. By chance, the cells had arranged themselves like sister chromatids, part of a phase of DNA replication that could have been happening inside any one of them at that moment. I felt the urge to hum the Inception soundtrack (Cell-ception!) under my breath. “Or… maybe they’re more like a skull and crossbones,” I conceded, reexamining the blood-red blocks.
That is the Middlebury Science program for me. While some people lie on Battell Beach and find unicorns and pirate ships whilst cloud-watching, I, apparently — as a Neuroscience major and resident of Bicentennial Hall (a.k.a. “I’ll take my mail forwarded to the lab at the end of the hall, please, and while you’re at it, please bring sandwiches and reinforcements, and maybe a toothbrush; it’s going to be a long night”) — have opted for interpreting shapes in slightly more academic substances. Between professors who give extra credit for writing songs about the parts and functions of the human brain and the semester in which I colored the human nervous system with scented Mr. Sketch markers (heavy on the cherry) and it counted as homework, I have clearly been conditioned to look for an intersection between the sciences and arts.
I have been lucky to have science as play in my life for a while now. Pre-college years included making DNA helixes out of licorice and rainbow-colored marshmallows (“Adenine’s red, thymine’s green, guanine’s orange and cytosine’s blue… now, match the complementary colors!”), tying together neurons out of beads from internet patterns and writing and illustrating similes for the function of the components in an animal cell (“The cell is like a castle: the nucleus is the king, the cell membrane is the moat, the cytoskeleton is the brick and mortar of castle walls,” and so forth). I am not alone in exploring intersections and overlaps of art and science, and if you hear yourself in these stories, you are not either. Recently, I spent some time browsing through The Scientist Magazine’s website, where I learned about an artistic trend called “Neuroaesthetics.” A movement called “STEM to STEAM,” which advocates for the addition of Art and Design to the “Science, Technology, Engineering and Math” core for innovation in the United States, also appears to be gaining momentum.
Of course, one does not even have to leave campus to find people who express love for science and art equally. I knew I would like Associate in Science instruction Susan DeSimone when, during our first class my freshman year, she appeared in a rainbow tie-dye lab coat and left slightly early to go deliver singing Valentines with her choir group, dressed in all pink. I got to know her over the subsequent semesters as her teaching assistant. As an instructor of the laboratory sections of Cellular Biology and Genetics, Professor DeSimone hopes to take a leave in the coming years to sail with her husband down to the Caribbean bringing microscopes to people who have never had the chance to look through one. She intends to share these microscopic images of nature, with the goal of illuminating the world that cannot be seen with just the naked eye. Indeed, in the classroom setting here at the College, Professor DeSimone makes a point to highlight to incoming students that she views the laboratory as her playground. She wants to methodically cultivate a level of comfort in students that allows for them to experience science in an equally playful way.
Professor DeSimone’s enthusiasm proved to be contagious. One of her former students, Ariele Faber ’13, graduated from Middlebury and went on to combine her fascination with science and passion for art in launching her own company, Cerebella Design. Inspired by the colors, patterns and textures of ordinary things magnified to a scale far larger than we can normally see, Cerebella seeks to promote the accessibility of science to the general population in a visually appealing way. Ariele’s company sells bowties, neckties and scarves with patterns based on microscope images of, for instance, human windpipe cartilage rings and whale skin.
Passerby: “Hey! Nice bowtie!”
Cerebella Consumer: “Thanks! You see these red and pink circles? They’re actually starfish eggs, mega-magnified!”
Passerby: “Oh, wow!” or “Um… eww…”
Cerebella consumer: “That’s right, stand back. I WEAR SCIENCE.”
Made aware of Cerebella and its mission early in my Middlebury career, I carried Areiele’s appreciation of the science aesthetic in the back of my mind into my summer internship. Part of my summer was spent doing neuroscience Alzheimer’s research in the lab of Dr. Sylvain Lesné at the University of Minnesota, and a big part of my work included imaging and analyzing tissue slides. I could not help but interpret the images not just for their scientific value, but also for the potential of bright and visually-appealing textile patterns. Though disappointed with the botched results of the first round of staining and dying neurofibrillary tangles and tau proteins in crepe-paper-thin mouse brain sections, I ended up submitting the image to Ariele’s company. To me, it was powerful that beauty could be found in the intersection of pathology and imperfect science. Who knows, maybe in the next year we will be able to purchase bowties, neckties and scarves with that very pattern — because come on, who wouldn’t want to wear degenerative mouse neurons around his or her neck?
So, dear Middlebury, as we hoist our sails, gather our microscopes and glide into another academic year, it is my hope to remember that being a college student does not necessarily equate to taking oneself, or one’s classroom experience, too seriously. Seek to learn, of course, but don’t let that make you forget to play. Equal pleasure can be derived from cloud-watching outside on the grass and onion-gazing in the fourth floor laboratory. Really, it is just micro- and macroscopic manifestations of the same thing.
(09/24/15 1:03am)
Middlebury Rugby began their season with a hard-fought win against UConn on Saturday afternoon. The MCRC got off to a fast start and looked poised for a comfortable win against UConn. Adam Markun ’17 started the scoring with a burst of speed down the sideline, leaving everyone far behind. Teddy Benge ’16 then broke a run on the opposite sideline before being tackled a meter from the try zone. After several attempts from the goal line, Alex Epstein ’17.5 broke through the UConn defense to give Midd a 12-0 lead with Jake Feury ’16.5 making one conversion.
(09/24/15 12:07am)
Over 2,000 people turned out this past Saturday for Shelburne Farms’ 37th Annual Harvest Festival, a jubilee of food, music, animals and crafts.
The festival, located on a 1,300 acre farm off the eastern coast of Lake Champlain, is a unique opportunity for small business owners to advertise their foods, artisans to peddle their wares for charitable organizations and non-profits to reach out to a receptive audience.
The crowd ranged from young toddlers and their parents to college-aged students. Many Middlebury students attended the festival for the first time.
“I’ve never actually been to Shelburne Farms, and this is a great way to see it,” Denise Chan ’16 said.
By the entrance, dozens of round hay bales were arranged on their sides, creating a maze for the adventurous toddler. Young children raced through it, climbing and jumping across the bales. Others raced to the top of the highest bale of hay to claim the title of ‘king’ or ‘queen’ of the mountain.
Nearby, miniature horses pulled two- or three-seater chariots in circles around an enclosed grassy area. The constant rhythmic music of an Abenaki drumming circle drifted over the entire celebration.
Up a grassy hill to the right, the ‘Farm Barn’ surrounded a two acre courtyard of food vendors, performers and craft vendors. The name Farm Barn is a misnomer for the sprawling multi-floored complex at Shelburne Farms. The building rises five stories high, has three pointed turrets and encloses the courtyard with imposing Medieval-looking stone walls.
Inside the Farm Barn were even more stands and attractions. One of the most popular of the rooms was specifically devoted to cheeses and jams.
Tom Bivin, Executive Director of the Vermont Cheese Council, chatted with the patrons as he carved out samples of four local cheeses: Parish Hill Humble Herdsman, Ascutney mountain cheese, a savage from the Von Trapp family farmstead and a Bayley Hazen blue cheese from the cellars of Jasper Hill.
“Our goal is to introduce people to as many cheeses as possible,” he explained to a local writer. “Shelburne Farms is really one of the great cheese companies in the state, and they do so many other things. They’re very supportive of the rest of the cheese community.”
“I think most people haven’t had a really good quality cheese, so it’s always a surprise,” he continued.
Sonia Rivadeneira, originally from Ecuador, was there to advertise her homemade salsa, appropriately named Sonia’s Salsa. The salsa is also preservative free.
“We have a big batch of salsa made in our neighbor’s house, because he has a commercial kitchen,” she explained.
Sonia sells her product at the co-op in downtown Middlebury which she says is “very happy to carry [it].”
The room was quite popular among the Middlebury College attendees; at one point in the afternoon, it was nearly entirely Middlebury students.
Just outside the room full of cheese samples, Laura MacLachlan, an Energy Educator from Vermont Energy Education Program (VEEP), sat at a table representing VEEP.
“VEEP is hands on energy literacy,” MacLachlan explained. “We bring equipment to schools so we can increase education on energy. We do it all the way from explaining wind with pinwheels, and how to catch the wind, all the way up to, we have curriculum units on understanding how photovoltaics work.” MacLachlan thinks that VEEP is an effective educational approach because it is hands on.
“This is all engineering,” she said. “This is where we’re trying to promote the next generation of scientists vis-a-vis this engineering. They’re getting into how to make it work.”
The Green Mountain Wood Carvers, a group of artists from across the state, displayed intricately carved sculptures of birds, hunters and other nature-inspired subjects. Bob Lindemann, the head of the group, has been carving for over 40 years. “I haven’t really found anything I can’t [carve]. It’s one of those things that you decide you want to carve something, and you just start carving it.”
Although many of the sculptures were for sale, that was not necessarily the reason the group was there.
“We’re just here to promote wood carving,” Lindemann explained. “Some people will sell their work, but others are just here to get people interested in trying their hand at woodcarving.”
He explained the process of carving the wood, which is often a light wood like butternut or basswood.
“It starts as a drawing, we cut out a blank. Sometimes you just start with a big chunk, bandsaw. Then you just start taking wood away.”
After walking around for a while, it was hard to miss the attendees – mostly college aged – wearing crowns of leaves on their heads. By the stone wall at the edge of the courtyard, there was a pile of brush and several pairs of hedge clippers – all the necessary ingredients to make your own crown of greenery.
In the middle of the courtyard, dozens of people stood in line for roasted corn on the cob, cooked on a grill in its husk. The smell of the corn filled the rest of the courtyard where all the other food vendors were set up.
One tent, Theo’s Maple Lemonade, had a constant line of customers. The owner of the stand said that putting maple syrup in lemonade was originally his 5-year-old son’s idea. At first he thought it sounded bad, but he gave it a try and it sold out the first time he brought it to the Burlington Farmer’s Market. At the harvest festival, they sold over 1,000 cups of lemonade in four hours.
Caterers from the Shelburne Farms Inn grilled hamburgers and sold other foods. One cook said it took six months for them to prepare for this day when they sold approximately 800 hamburgers at the festival.
Two performance tents were set up at opposite ends of the courtyard, once with musical performances and the other with different kinds of acts, such as acrobatics and juggling. Children squealed in delight and horror as one man mounted a heightened unicycle.
“We have to go,” one mother insisted to her child, as the entertainer began the second part of his act.
“Mom! as soon as he finishes this,” the child replied.
The child, like the rest of us, can take solace in the fact that the harvest will be back again next Fall, even if that is a long time to wait.
(09/17/15 6:39pm)
In her column in this week’s Campus, President Laurie Patton stresses the importance of resilience. “Resilience,” she writes, “is one of those words we think we know, but we don’t necessarily stop to reflect on.” Starting this year, she writes, the Middlebury community will “embark on a coordinated effort to reflect on the importance of these qualities and develop programs to enhance them.”
In addition to the qualities that President Patton attributes to the word, we at the Campus define resilience as how Middlebury prepares students for the world they will face after graduation. This requires the ability to engage with points of view that we disagree with, especially those that offend us or make us uncomfortable.
Some of the aspects of this community that we most pride ourselves on – our promotion of liberal ideals and emphasis on mutual respect and safe spaces – can have the effect of insulating us and stifling a diversity of opinion. The world-at-large is not Middlebury, and we fear we are leaving here unprepared for the “unsafe spaces” that await us.
We Middlebury students have a tendency to plug our ears and avoid listening to dissenting opinions instead of learning from them or challenging them. For example, in 2012, Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science Murray Dry was vilified for taking a legalistic view of affirmative action at a panel designed to showcase a diversity of opinions. A year later, the campus was in uproar over a lecture by University of Pennsylvania Law Professor Amy Wax, some students even opting to hold up signs reading “racist.” Similarly, some felt that Middlebury’s invitation to Harvey Mansfield last year was an implicit endorsement of his social views, even claiming he invoked feelings of fear. And when Chance the Rapper came to perform, we asked him to censor his most controversial lyrics, and then demanded a forum to debrief how the whole ordeal made us feel.
This tendency to react to the uncomfortable with outrage often takes the place of necessary critical discourse. Professor Dry is far from racist, though one could reasonably argue that the legal view he articulated (which is not necessarily the one he actually holds) has racist components. Amy Wax is decidedly less far from racism, but she is also a serious social scientist, and her findings deserve to be met with thoughtful discourse and criticism rather than blanket labels. Similarly, the seemingly endless conversation surrounding Chance the Rapper’s lyrics overshadowed a much more meaningful discussion that could have taken place about the pervasiveness of homophobia in Hip Hop music. We must learn to disagree without shutting down, refusing to listen and labeling.
Embracing discomfort is critical to our liberal arts education. The most important thing we will each take away from Middlebury is the ability to think critically and clearly communicate our ideas. In order to effectively hone these skills, we need our faculty to challenge the preconceived notions many of us hold and for students who disagree with the liberal status quo to be able to speak up.
In an era of extreme political polarization, it is more important than ever that we emerge from our cocoons of like-mindedness or the illusion of like-mindedness. We fear that students at many institutions have learned to change their language to conform to political correctness, without truly understanding what makes those very words offensive. It is only by engaging with ideas that offend us that we can learn and ultimately motivate change. We all agree that diversity is important, and now we must learn to make room for diversity of opinion. We all undoubtedly have a lot to learn from people who view the world differently than we do.
This is not to say that everything is in-bounds. Hate speech, threats and harassment have no place in this community, nor will they ever. Developing a better understanding of these concepts will make way for the conversations we so badly need to have on campus.
Ultimately, this culture of protectiveness is not unique to Middlebury. As the well-read Atlantic Monthly article, The Coddling of the American Mind discussed, it has developed at many colleges and universities across the country. Following the recent Atlantic and New Yorker pieces on the topic of political correctness gone awry, the conversation seems to be popping up everywhere. Many observers attribute this trend to the entitlement students feel as consumers of their own educations.
Somewhere along the way we lost our ability to engage in discourse, and it is doing us a disservice. As we usher in a new academic year and a new college president, we as an editorial board will be pushing the envelope a bit more. Our goal? To encourage disagreement and dialogue—and not the anonymous, online kind. We strongly urge all students to lean into discomfort, write an op-ed if you have something to say and have a resilient year.
(05/06/15 8:44pm)
On Monday April 27, Community Council continued discussing security cameras, a controversial topic that was the subject of some of the graffiti that appeared on Ross dining hall, Atwater dining hall and BiHall that morning. Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of the College and Community Council Co-Chair Katy Smith Abbott said that new issues the council may have not yet considered came up in the recent open forum on security cameras on campus.
“(The meeting) showed the limited extent that we have been examining the impact on individuals that already have a particularly strong opinion on security cameras,” said Abbott.
“Issues of race and gender” were presented in the meeting according to Abbott.
“What level does that leave us open to targeting members of the community that are not members of the majority… what are we opening ourselves up to if human beings are reviewing this tape and they are looking for something to go off on…like suspicious behavior?” she asked.
Telecom Manager and Technology Support Specialist Solon Coburn reiterated that if a proposal to request security cameras on campus passed the council, there would be strict guidelines similar to those of peer institutions, that would indicate who could view them and in what circumstances.
It is “the very experience of being viewed or having a camera on you when already your very identity on campus is always on camera…always scrutinized” that made some students at the forum voice against security cameras, said Abbott.
“What it means for students particularly every time they go into a dining hall to be having those questions…stops me in my tracks a little bit,” she said.
Landscape Horticulturist Tim Parsons worried that if the College does not use the cameras to keep student’s personal items safe in light of the increased number of thefts this year that losing an item such as a laptop “for some students who go to school here it would be a very big financial hit.”
Durga Jayaraman ’16 talked to three people that live in her social house that have had their personal belongings stolen on campus. The students told her they would have been against the idea of security cameras but that being the victims of theft changed their view.
Blake Shapskinsky ’15 motioned for the council to vote on a proposal to have the security cameras in the Ross and Proctor dining halls only, monitoring where students place their backpacks outside of the dining area. The proposal also asked for guiding principles and that the cameras be only reviewed on case by case bases. The motion failed, with six for, nine against and two abstaining.
The council is going to continue discussing the issue and a proposal to strongly encourage students to bring their personal items into the dining halls with them.
Several students including President of the Inter-House Council (IHC) Rod Abhari ’15, President of Tavern Eli Jones ’16, and Vice President of Tavern and of the IHC Kevin Conroy, as well as Associate Dean of the College and Director of Public Safety Lisa Burchard attended the meeting to discuss a proposal pertaining to social house walk-throughs by Public Safety officers.
Abhari presented a proposal requesting that Public Safety officers enter house spaces under three conditions: if the house is on probation, if Public Safety receives a disturbance call, or if an officer sees a disturbance while on their normal patrol.
The council heard about this issue earlier in the year. Students again voiced their concern over walk-throughs that are occurring in their houses on weekdays almost daily without any cause, in their opinions. Students were also concerned why their seemed to be a lack of inequity pertaining to walk-throughs, when the Atwater suites and other non- ridgeline houses seem to not have officers walking through their living spaces as often. The proposal was passed with nine for, five against and four abstaining.
(05/06/15 8:38pm)
The Middlebury Campus previously sat down with College President Ronald D. Liebowitz in the fall to discuss his time at the College. This is the second and final installment of the conversation, which took place prior to and after the announcement of Laurie L. Patton as the College’s 17th President. In this edition, Liebowitz discusses what it takes to be a successful College President, the nature of a presidential transition, and what is next for him after July 1. You can read Part One of The Exit Interview here. Middlebury Campus (MC): Does a college president associate with other college presidents, such as at a NESCAC conference? Do you talk to them and ask about what’s working, what’s not working?Ronald D. Liebowitz (RL): Well, yes. And no. The yes is that NESCAC, which stands for the New England Small College Athletic Conference, is what is called a “presidents’” conference, meaning presidents are the ultimate deciders on the place of varsity athletics among the 11 conference institutions. Athletics, then, brings us together three or four times a year to discuss athletics policy. I love athletics and understand the benefits that come with a good athletics program. At the same time, it would be nice if the presidents got together to discuss other issues more frequently. Generally, college presidents hold things close to themselves; we don’t share much with colleagues even though we know each other pretty well—I suspect nobody likes to project any kind of weakness in his or her institution. The only time I recall in my 10-plus years as president where my fellow presidents were a lot more open to discussing things was during the financial crisis. I remember especially the 2009-10 meetings as ones where, during our breaks and lunch, we did discuss what we were doing and how well each campus was responding to the challenges. But in general, college presidents tend not to share because I think it might project institutional weakness and we all are so competitive. Not that it’s right or productive, but…MC: Did you have any input on the presidential search process or was it completely within the committee? Would they have been open to you saying, ‘I know a great provost or a great administrator at another college, why don’t you look at them?’RL: No, the tradition is that sitting presidents are kept at arm’s length from presidential searches for a whole host of reasons, all good. It is interesting that in most professions the outgoing CEO, at least the ones that are in good standing, has a lot of input into who will be his or her successor. It’s not that way in the academy.The extent of my involvement was helping to get the search committee together with faculty representation. I didn’t choose the faculty members, but worked with faculty council and the faculty at large to get those four people and it was a great group—a great mix of backgrounds, perspectives, and disciplinary expertise. I then worked with Sunder Ramaswamy at Monterey to select the staff person, Bob Cole, and the faculty member Laura Burian (both are great, too) to provide a Monterey perspective to the search. The only other thing I did in the search was to meet with the committee early on and give an overview of what I saw from my vantage point as President of where the institution is now, what issues and challenges are ahead, and what the committee ought to know as they started engaging in the process of finding the 17th president of the College.MC: Time for a little advice for your successor — if the next President of the College asked you, ‘How do I keep my finger on the pulse of what students are thinking about?’ what would you say?RL: Try to be as active in the community as possible. Pop into Proctor, Atwater, and Ross. I have found students to be very welcoming. When I find an open seat and sit down with students, always uninvited, I’ve found them to be very receptive to conversation—I’ve never been told to leave(!). We’ve been fortunate to have some great SGA leaders, at least in my time as President, and I think keeping an open communication with the head of SGA is very valuable and is something worthwhile.I would just try to stay as involved as feels natural and manage to your personality and to your strengths. Don’t try to be something you’re not.MC: How to work effectively with faculty?RL: Well, there’s a natural tendency for faculty and administrators to have some tension, and healthy tension is good. But as I mentioned earlier, the perspectives of an administrator or a president and a faculty member don’t always align. A president has a certain set of time horizons and considerations that differ from those of faculty. It can therefore look like a president is sacrificing the present for the future by holding the longer-term perspective, and so the challenge is articulating your position when it differs from the sense of the faculty and hope your colleagues understand your position.It’s hard for me as an individual to say what the next person should do. As I said, for good or bad, I’ve had a relationship with our faculty for more than three decades. A new person won’t have that history. The new president is going to have a completely clean slate, which I think can be a real benefit.Anyone coming into this job is going to have great experience in administration already and so I think they will have a good sense of how to work with faculty. However, a challenge for all new presidents is how to understand the culture of one’s new institution. That’s where I think the four faculty on the search committee come into play. Those faculty are going to have a stake in the new president’s success and they will do the institution well by helping the new president understand and navigate through some of the idiosyncrasies of our campus.MC: How to maintain a good relationship with the town of Middlebury?RL: That takes a lot of work and it depends on your partner—in our case, the chair of the town’s select board. Many college towns are fraught with contradictions, especially in rural America. In small, rural places the perceptions about a billion-dollar-endowed institution can be unfair and the institution misunderstood. Consequently, there’s a great natural tension between what appears to be a privileged, entitled student body and college on the one hand, and the town on the other. It took me a while as president to learn that that old adage, “you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t” applies quite well to the College’s involvement in town affairs. If you sit on the sidelines people think you’re aloof, you don’t care about the town, that you have all this wealth and yet you are doing nothing to help your community. And then if you do get involved, you’re accused of throwing your weight around. So, at times it seems you can’t win, at least not with everyone.I came to the conclusion early on in my presidency that it’s better to be damned for doing than for not doing. I’d much rather get involved because I believe strongly that what’s good for the College is good for the town, and vice versa. The College benefits by the town being vibrant and healthy and the town benefits from an engaged College._____________________________________________________________________________MC: The student reaction to Dr. Laurie L. Patton’s announcement as the next College President was overwhelmingly positive. Did you hear a similar reaction from alumni and other members of the Middlebury community?RL: Yes. In every case. Last week, Jessica and I hosted a large reception in San Francisco and had smaller dinner events and in all cases our alumni were very excited about Laurie’s appointment. Similarly, Laurie and I were in New York two days ago, where I introduced her to a number of foundations and donors who have supported the College in the past. The meetings were excellent with substantive discussions about Middlebury—past, present, and future.MC: What is the transition like between College Presidents? Is there a structure to the way administrative best practices for leading the College are communicated?RL: Transitions are sometimes tricky and require both attention and a lot of thought on the part of the Board of Trustees, the incoming president, and the outgoing president. Many past presidents have written on the subject, usually urging boards of trustees to take an active role in establishing clear protocols for how the incoming president engages the many constituencies of a college so as to not confuse administrators and others as to who is the decision maker! We have been so fortunate with our transition as Marna Whittington and our board have followed a well-developed plan, and Laurie and our point person on campus, Tim Spears, have followed the plan to the letter. Laurie and I have been in communication regularly, too, which helps with continuity and increases the chances of a smooth transition come July 1.MC: Did the previous College President, John McCardell, give advice to you upon your announcement as the 16th College President? RL: Well, the situation was different in that I was already on the faculty here for 20 years, and was vice president and provost for the last seven of those years. I’ve come to recognize, through my own experience, that the best preparation for the presidency is on-the-job-training.MC: What are the biggest challenges facing the College as President-elect Laurie L. Patton assumes this role?RL: The issues that all college presidents now face: the increasing cost of higher education and what that means for access; keeping a liberal arts education relevant for the students Middlebury wishes to matriculate; and managing expectations. New presidents are expected to, or hoped to be able to, come in and fix all that is perceived to be wrong at an institution. One must remember, however, there are nine major constituencies that have a stake in any one decision a college takes, and it is rare that positions on a major issue aligns with all nine. Or that all see the issues that need fixing to be the same ones. That means it takes a lot of time to pick the right issue(s) to address, and then to work with all the constituencies to arrive at a position, knowing it will be rare for all to agree on the solution.MC: Is it overstating it to say that this a momentous transition in the College, with both the Dean of the College and College President departing within six months of each other?RL: It is not an overstatement in that we have a new leader and the first woman president. That is momentous. However, that these two positions are changing within six months of each other is not likely to be all that earth-shattering. This is an incredibly resilient and strong institution. We have an engaged and talented board, which has just gone through significant governance reform, a very experienced and skilled senior administration, and a remarkable group of commons deans whose work with students and faculty often goes unheralded. And so while welcoming Laurie to Middlebury will be a momentous occasion, a change in two administrative positions should not be viewed as anything more than that: two positions changing within six months of each other.MC: Although you have probably been asked this a lot, what is next for you when you depart the College in the summer?RL: We have a long-awaited sabbatical next year and we will be in Boston. Jessica and I will be working on a project on graduate education we have been contemplating and discussing for a number of years. It will focus on Ph.D. programs today, asking two major questions: (1) how we can better bridge the apparent widening gap between the public and the academy through how our graduate students are educated; and (2) how can we better address the very different speed of demographic changes in the student body compared to those of the professoriate. That is, while the diversity of the student body has increased significantly over the past twenty years, partly as a result of demographic changes in the country and partly the result of a conscious effort on the part of institutions to create richer educational environments through a more diverse student body, the diversity of most faculties have not changed nearly as much. The result has created some previously unseen tensions or at least misunderstandings and challenges in the classroom. Part of the increased tension is due to the pedagogies that our students entering college today have experienced during their K-12 years (hybrid learning with far more technology, interactive learning, collaborative learning), which they often do not see in most liberal arts classrooms, and part is due to the cultural divide between the more rapidly changing demographics of the student body relative to their faculties.
(04/29/15 11:49pm)
Glenn Lower ’84 does a little bit of everything to make the Co-op run smoothly. When asked what he does as general manager, Glenn Lower ’84 replied, “My kids—when they were small—used to say I sign my name a lot…they’d come upstairs and I’d be signing checks.” Despite the fact that some days it may appear that Lower just checks, his role as General Manager of the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op encompasses a wide variety of tasks.
“I’m kind of all over the place. I’ll fill in wherever is needed. For the past nine months, we haven’t had a deli manager for our prepared foods department so I’ve been the interim deli manager…I’ll sweep floors, I’ll do whatever it takes,” Lower said.
Though he is the one general manager, Lower does not work in a vacuum.
“I also have to think about the 4,300 households that are member-owners and how are we serving them…And then I have 11 bosses, which are my board of directors, and they change. Every year they have a couple of new people. It’s kind of interesting to have bosses who are always in flux,” Lower said.
“They [the board of directors] give me two kinds of policies,” Lower explained. One kind of policies are the missions: “healthy foods, and a vibrant local community, and doing environmental things right, and being a democratic co-op, and also doing a lot of education,” Mr. Lower said. The other kind of policies from the board are boundaries.
These “make sure we’re paying our bills, paying our taxes, treating people well,” Lower said. He spends considerable time reporting back to the board about accomplishing the mission within the given boundaries. The board then reports back to the member-owner households. Lower has a circular diagram that explains the complex, two-way relationships between member-owners, staff, the general manager, and the board.
His jobs include overseeing Co-op expansions and monitoring what foods the store sells. Choices made about the store are based on community wishes.
“The primary emphasis is on organic and local,” Lower said, referring to the mission established by the board of directors.
“28 percent of our sales are Vermont-made products, a lot of them from Addison County,” Lower said. “That’s what our member-owners want the most.”
Lower explained that not all co-ops are also natural food stores. As a natural foods store, the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op upholds a commitment to selling organic products by abiding by these criteria.
According to the buying criteria sheet, products containing certain ingredients, such as high fructose corn syrup, artificial preservatives or colors, or bovine growth hormones (rBST), are not allowed to be sold at the Co-op.
Not only is it expensive to source food from myriad local suppliers, but it is expensive to buy foods that fit the buying criteria.
“It’s a challenge for us not to have a price image problem,” Lower said.
Lower currently lives in New Haven with his wife, Cheryl Whitney-Lower ’84. They have two kids, one who is a junior at the College and the other who will be attending Tufts University in the fall.
Lower was born in California, and grew up in Virginia. His first encounter with Vermont was when he came to the College as a student in 1980.
“In some ways, I went to Middlebury College because almost nobody in Virginia knew about it,” Lower said. He wanted to get away from the schools where so many of his peers went, such as the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina. Lower was a biology major.
“After Middlebury, I did environmental education for a while, but then became a high school biology teacher for about five years,” Lower said. At that time, he was living in the Boston area with his wife, Cheryl Whitney-Lower ’84.
Because they ultimately did not want to live in the Boston area, Lower and his wife travelled around the world for a year before putting down roots elsewhere. During this year, they spent three weeks canoeing in Alaska, north of the Arctic Circle with two friends from college.
Upon returning from their travels, they decided that Whitney-Lower, who was working in higher education administration, would look for a job first, and then Lower would look for a teaching job wherever they moved for her job.
Whitney-Lower, who now works as a Career Adviser at the CCI, originally got a job working as the Assistant Director of Student Activities. Lower, however, did not find work here in Middlebury so easily. He worked as a substitute teacher, while furthering his teaching certifications. There are only so many biology teachers needed in a sparsely populated area such as Addison County. All of the area biology teachers were about his age, so there appeared to be no prospects of a job opening any time soon.
After working for a year as a long-term substitute, the question surfaced again as to what work Lower would do once the teacher for whom he had been subbing returned from maternity leave. A job opened up in the produce section at the Co-op. The Saturday to Monday schedule perfectly complemented Whitney-Lower’s schedule, which was convenient given that their first baby was on the way. Soon after beginning that job, the produce manager left, and Lower moved into that position. After three years there, the general manager position was changing, so Lower applied for and got that position, which has been his role at the Co-op for the last 17 years.
Over the past two decades at the Co-op, Lower has seen considerable changes, most notably to the size of the operation. From its founding almost 40 years ago, the Co-op has expanded several times.
In 1994, the Co-op underwent its first major expansion within the gray building that now houses its offices.
“When we expanded that time, we thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we are set for life.’ We’ve got so much space now, and everything is modern.”
“By ’98, we said, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re running out of space, we don’t have enough room,” Lower said. At this point, the Co-op surveyed its members with three options: do nothing, move to a bigger location south on Route 7, or expand in the current location. Support for expanding in the current location was overwhelming, which came as a surprise to many, as many co-ops do not like change or expansion, according to Lower.
“New England towns were already struggling with big box stores coming on the outside and pulling sales from the towns out and the downtowns … dying or becoming boutiques,” Lower said.
The loss of downtown businesses in many New England towns made keeping the Co-op in town all the more important to many of its member-owners.
In order to expand in its current site, the Co-op had to ask three different land owners to sell them different parcels of land so the Co-op could have a contiguous piece of land big enough for a new building, according to Lower. The new building was funded through a half a million dollars in loans from the member-owners, not donations.
“It was a great community project,” Lower said of the 1998 renovations.
“It’s still a challenge to be in a downtown location and try to run a grocery store,” Lower said.
He explained that their growth was different than that of a traditional grocery store. Rather than a wide building visible from the street with extensive parking, the Co-op renovation took the shape of most other businesses in a downtown setting with a narrow front and parking hidden behind, so as not to create a strip mall look.
“We were breaking a lot of grocery rules about how to run a grocery store,” Lower said of their choice to renovate without becoming a box store. Between 1998 and now, the Co-op has grown from about $2 million in sales to $12 million.
Another major shift has been from about 20 percent organic and 80 percent conventional to the opposite: over 80 percent organic. The staff has also grown from 20 to over 70.
Looking forward, the Co-op is trying to have an even greater vision for the future than before.
“It’s not just ten years. Well, what are we doing for 20 to 50 years? You can’t just always get bigger. We can probably get a little bit bigger here, but then that’s it,” Lower said. “It’s not being driven by profits, it’s being driven by the fact that the community says this is what we want. So we’re always trying to figure out, what is it that the community wants the most?” Lower said.
Lower sees the Co-op’s role in the Middlebury community as showing what is possible in terms of feeding ourselves locally.
“I think a lot of local producers have said over the years…we got started because the Co-op was here, because that was the place we could sell stuff and get…our feet on the ground,” Lower said of the Co-op’s role among the producers.
“Food is a terrific economic development tool, and I think the co-op plays a big role in that. We’re sort of like a hub in some ways, lots of food coming in, we’re figuring out how it goes out,” Lower said.
(04/29/15 9:11pm)
Few things give me more satisfaction than experiencing peers’ and professors’ work. Sometimes it’s too easy to get lost in the system of Middlebury and forget the passion and purpose driving this college experience. So many students are working on so many incredible things that we often take our friends for granted.
This Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m. in the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts (MCA), four seniors offer the final culmination of their studies and a last hoorah before graduating in a few weeks. Stevie Durocher ’15.5, Doug LeCours ’15, Sarae Synder ’15 and Afi Yellow-Duke ’15 have spent months examining the intersection between dance and their various unique areas of study, from creative writing to Chinese. Each student has choreographed pieces that map this intersection in mesmerizing, ephemeral movement. To help quench my fascination with what students are doing on this crazy campus, each artist spoke to me about the importance of dance in his or her life.
Durocher’s piece began with research for her thesis for the English and American Literature department, The Lies They Tell Our Daughters, where she examined perceptions of the dancer in children’s literature. Durocher is focused on ideas of body image and the ideals society puts forth regarding beauty to both the individual and the collective.
We can’t fully appreciate children’s literature without also realizing the effect is has on its readers. Durocher began with the focus of choreographing a piece as a direct manifestation of this research, but the project turned into an expression of her own story – that of her childhood in today’s world.
Through dance she was able to put herself into her research, to engage and discover her own identify and how society has influenced her, specifically her ideas of beauty and belonging. Though she was classically trained and doesn’t “look like what a ballerina is supposed to look like,” she said, “Dance has always been the one time I feel completely myself. I’m someone who doesn’t like to be seen, but when I take a ballet class, I wouldn’t care if the whole world saw me. That’s something I’ve been able to take with me everywhere I go.”
Durocher has the great fortune of being a Feb, so she is not yet “consumed by post grad plans,” but she hopes to work in children’s publishing after leaving Middlebury.
“Dance is something that will be part of my life forever, as it is an immensely important part of who I’ve always been, but I don’t see it being my career,” Durocher said.
LeCours is a Dance and Creative Writing double major who sees film as a mediator between movement and text. His piece focuses on his interest in what happens when the queer male body is asserted in the narrative of sad girls.
Specifically, he asks the question, “What happens when we investigate the power and agency within a queer male figure embodying some of the ideas of these tragic women I keep finding myself coming back to….”
“Dance is, at its best, a space for radical transformation,” LeCours said. “It has been one of the most important things in my life for fourteen years. I guess it’s what I know best.”
With this thesis work, LeCours takes the enjoyment and release he finds in movement and combines it with an exploration of his identity.
“Dance opens up new ways of viewing the world and my own experience, allowing for a nuanced approach to everyday life and relationships to self, other, and earth,” LeCours said. “Without making and performing dance I wouldn’t be able to view or confront my education as critically as, I hope, I do.”
Following his graduation from Middlebury, Doug will be moving to New York to perform and choreograph.
Sarae Snyder is working on two pieces. The first is a duet between two Middlebury students, sourced from one of Snyder’s solo performances and focusing on the unique humanness of the dancers. She is collaborating on the second piece with a senior from Bennington College featuring much stricter, practiced movements progressing into spontaneity and chaos. On a basic level, Snyder is interested in how she can create two distinct pieces though she is the choreographer of both while also simultaneously navigating the roles of choreographer and dancer.
As with the other dancers, to Snyder the significance of her studies touches beyond the stage.
“My studies in dance have opened up my awareness of the politicization of bodies,” Snyder said. “[Dance] has provided me with a new lens for viewing culture and history. It has made me more aware of the power in seemingly trivial aspects of human behavior. It has turned me into an aspiring artist.”
Yellow-Duke’s piece is an investigation of both her personal relationship with society and the creation of systems that create and respond to fear. She looks at events of panic in the U.S. such as the Cold War and 9/11 and hopes to question and poke fun at the systems we put in place to “protect and placate ourselves.”
She believes fear and uncertainty have been “mobilized to unite us as Americans but have also allowed us to contest and redefine who deserves the title of American.” Such categorizing can “further push people to the margins and reinforce systems of power.” Through movement and sound, Afi “hopes to link her history with panic attacks to this larger cultural framework of anxiety.”
After attending the Fall Dance Concert, I cannot wait to witness the inspiration and weight of these pieces and enjoy an evening as diverse and layered as the artists’ intellectual pursuits. Doors will open at 8 p.m. in the MCA Dance Theatre. Tickets are $6 for students; $15 for faculty, staff, alumni, and other ID card holders; $20 for general public. Check with your Commons Office for discounts! Visit go/boxoffice or stop by one of the offices.
(04/29/15 5:54pm)
In 2013, seven sophomore students organized around a cause that they felt was lacking the attention it needed: local food security. Middlebury Foods was born, a non-profit business through which central Vermonters can pre-order monthly boxes of meat and produce at affordable prices, made possible by cutting super-market overhead costs.
(04/22/15 6:12pm)
As an economics major, I think I have the concept of monetary incentives down pretty well. So why am I even still here writing this column? Why am I asking my parents to pay tuition when I am most likely going to come out of college making about $30,000 as a congressional staffer? It really doesn’t make sense to me from a monetary perspective when I look and see that a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station agent makes around $135,000 a year (Contra Costa Times). (It’s worth keeping in mind that a good public school teacher is lucky to make $70,000 in California). A few reasonable questions to ask would be: how is this possible, and where do I sign up?
(04/22/15 4:34am)
Duke University Dean of Arts & Sciences Laurie L. Patton was in the middle of creating an ambitious new outreach forum, the Duke Forum for Scholars and Publics, when her idea hit a roadblock.
The world-renowned historian she had appointed the director of the forum wanted a premier space on campus. The only problem? A dean of academic affairs had already promised the space to university language instructors.
“My dean of academic affairs was invested in this and had been working hard on it,” Patton said in an interview. “This new director said, ‘I really want this space.’ And, bingo: potential conflict.”
College President-elect Laurie L. Patton spoke with the Campus in a wide-ranging interview during one of her recent visits to campus. Patton has been making periodic trips from Duke University, where she is Dean of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and the Robert F. Durden Professor of Religion. She has been traveling to the College in order to meet and plan with members of the College community before she assumes office on July 1.
Her mediation between the two individuals who could have been at loggerheads says a great deal about Patton and what kind of leader she may be as the College’s 17th President.
Time, Space, Money, and Relationships
In this case, Patton examined how she could resolve it based on what she calls the key matrix of time, space, money and relationships. Instead of unilaterally moving ahead, her first step was creating the relationship to solve an issue of space.
“I said, ‘I’d like you to talk to each other about your common needs and figure out not whether you fight about the space but whether there is another space that the Dean of Academic Affairs could have for the language lab, or if there is another space for Scholars and Publics that you could talk about,” Patton said. “And I want you to talk about it first and not me, because you’re closer to the ground and you know what you need.’ And luckily they are both good people and they talked.”
After a few renovations to an existing room, the dean and the incoming director figured out a mutually agreeable solution and the Duke Forum for Scholars and Publics (FSP) was born. Patton was confident that they could figure out a solution despite what originally looked to be a deal-breaker on both sides.
“We had to spend more money to do it but that was an example where creating a relationship, forcing them to talk about their actual space needs and investing a little more money solved the problem,” Patton said.
Even though this matrix might seem rigid, she said solving problems almost always boils down to a discussion of these four areas.
“I’d like to think that even though it’s a thing that I invoke regularly, it’s capacious enough so that you could still be creative with it no matter what,” Patton said.
The Sense of the Whole
Patton’s rationale for creating FSP fits into her broader thoughts on how higher education ought to interact with the community.
“If institutions of higher learning do not become more outward-facing, then we’re in trouble,” Patton said. “I think that’s true of colleges. I think that’s true of universities. I wanted to create a space where scholars, where they live—which is creating their research—could immediately translate their research to the outer world in addition to working with members of the community who are outside the guild to co-create scholarship.”
Patton describes FSP as a “signature initiative” for her at Duke and has already met with the Middlebury selectboard to explore potential collaboration between town and College.
Patton said, “I wanted to signal early on how much I want to work with the Middlebury community.”
She also has experience with the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership. The office facilitates service learning in Durham as well as economic and community development.
Patton maintains that Middlebury’s relationship to a local community in conjunction with a global outlook is something few other colleges can claim.
“The rural and cosmopolitan is Middlebury’s unique genius,” Patton said. “There is something very profound about that combination that people got when they founded this place and it keeps getting iterated.”
The Language Schools and Middlebury’s environmental studies strength were both underway long before “going global” or “sustainability” were buzzwords, said Patton. Nevertheless, these auxiliary programs present challenges when grappling with what seems to be the zero-sum game of administrative resources.
For Patton, imagining a bigger sense of the whole is Middlebury’s biggest challenge in the next five or 10 years.
“Middlebury has grown and now we’re in this new space,” Patton said. “The College should remain at the center of everything we do but there are all these other units that have amazing trajectories—Monterey being the most recent, but also a lot of others.”
Patton, despite being a prodigious fund-raiser while at Duke, said she is not sure you can ever raise money fast enough to always “expand the pie” for every facet of the College. (At Duke, Patton and the development office, through a campaign called Duke Forward, have raised $343 million since 2011.)
She said the answer might lie in raising money while also gaining a new perspective on how the component parts of Middlebury can work together so they all benefit.
Patton explained, “I want to make sure that any decision in favor of one unit doesn’t mean that I’m therefore going to disfavor the others. That’s a hard step in an institution that is growing. We’re not growing into a university identity. We’re growing into leadership in this third space that is really interesting and really unique and really Middlebury. So, making sure as we grow and create—make Middlebury more Middlebury—how can we do that without reinforcing or creating a zero-sum game? That’s my one big concern: how we encourage all the units to have a sense of the whole from their particular perspective.”
Bridging the gaps between Middlebury and its other institutional arms will likely take effort. The College entered a new phase as a quasi-bicoastal institution with the acquisition of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (formerly Monterey). However, Patton says the College can do habitual ventures that bring together the Institute and the undergraduate College, or the College and Bread Loaf, and so on.
One of the ways Patton attempted to unite a broad institutional body at Duke was the University Course series. Faculty from across the university teach a course that is open to all students, whether they are biochemistry Ph.Ds. or sophomore philosophy majors.
While acknowledging that what will work at a university will not work at what she calls a “very unique, third-space institution like Middlebury,” Patton said that the idea has potential for the College.
“If it was hosted in Middlebury, we could have fellows from Monterey come and also have people streaming in on video who wanted to take the class,” Patton said. “If it was hosted at Monterey the next year, we could have 10 fellows from Middlebury be out there, and so forth. I think that would be a very exciting project.”
Just like a student might study abroad, Patton said, the curriculum at the College can possibly reflect the wider world as it relates to the campus in Vermont.
“That kind of constant tension between being restless and coming home is something that you learn how to think through and you learn how to be in that space,” Patton said. “So that might be how we plan curriculum: not just that one class but curriculum more broadly, which include this element where we trade places.”
In regard to a potential Middlebury Course series, Patton said her approach is iterative; in other words, the College does not have to painstakingly craft the perfect solution that can never be updated.
“Rather,” Patton said, “let’s see what happens and if we don’t like it in six months, let’s fix it. I think that’s what we could do with this class, too—let’s see if this helps us imagine a whole and if it could, then we can do it every year.”
Challenges and Changing Perceptions
Perceptions of certain issues can shift from when one is a candidate for President to the President-elect. Patton said she views diversity as an important and challenging issue that she now sees is bigger at the College than when she was first getting to know Middlebury.
“I think it’s particularly acute for many reasons: because we’re at an elite liberal arts institution that has a very unique history of global engagement which would therefore imply diversity, but then we always need to be better and to live up to what we say we are. That means to rethink and to ask the question all the time, ‘Are we living up to what we say we are?’” Patton said. “And I think diversity is the number one place where students are pushing us to ask that question in really good ways.”
Students have almost overwhelming praised Patton for the attention she has exhibited, even at this early stage as President-elect, on issues of diversity at the College. Patton said that part of the reason why there is concern over diversity may be generational differences, where the next generation is pushing on diversity while an older generation may believe that the work has already been done.
Despite challenges such as diversity facing the College, Patton said that much of her work solving problems as College President might involve lighting a match for preexisting kindling. She sees preexisting groundwork of progress on issues like framing the College’s new identity or improving its relationship with the town.
In terms of keeping her finger on the pulse of the student body, Patton said that she aims to continue at the College many of the practices she has developed at Duke as Dean of Arts & Sciences. She also sought to dispel a common negative perception about College administrations, including Old Chapel.
“The common thing that people worry about is administrators know students leave, so if they just wait it out…” Patton said. “That’s the cynical view. I don’t want to be that way. I want to say, ‘Okay students, what legacies do you want to leave to the next students?’ The student population is only here four years but it’s a long-term relationship because they’re going to be alums and they’re going to care about what the next students do.”
Inhabiting Multiple Places
Despite the aforementioned challenges, Patton said the College is a unique institution that ought to be known more for its leadership in certain areas. She praised the restructuring of the Board of Trustees as an example of how the College is gaining recognition as an institutional leader.
“My guess is I’m going to keep on discovering ways in which Middlebury really is a national and even international leader and it needs to say more that it is a leader,” Patton said.
According to her, in higher education there is the need to be self-critical while also recognizing the ways in which an institution is succeeding.
Patton said, “Middlebury is a very self-critical institution, and it pushes—it’s not complacent. I love that because I think that’s the only way institutions of higher education should be.”
At the same time, she said, Middlebury ought to feature the different ways it is successful while simultaneously being self-critical.
In this regard, Patton cites the new place where Middlebury finds itself—with the Institute of International Studies, the Language Schools, the School of the Environment, and the Schools Abroad—as an area Middlebury can examine yet still keep an eye to its strengths.
“The way I put it at Monterey is that we’ve done something really interesting,” Patton said. “We need to tell a story of success about Monterey and making it better and being self-critical all at the same time. One of the things that is very exciting about all of the schools, but I think in Monterey’s case, is we have an opportunity to create a different connection between undergraduate and graduate education that also is an opportunity to inhabit multiple places.”
Ultimately, Patton said, administration is about listening and knowing who needs to be consulted, just like in the disagreement over the space in which FSP would be housed.
“The key to really good, careful, and subtle administration that creates community is one where you figure out who needs to be the major driver of the decision,” she said. “And when you figure that out and you get that right, everyone wants to be in the community together and they feel like there’s a greater sense of home.”
(04/15/15 5:51pm)
Last week’s center spread of this newspaper focused on problematic spaces on campus. In this week’s editorial, we would like to add one more to the list. With all of the discussion on social life, one crucial part that has been largely missing from the discussion is hard to miss and sits near the very center of campus: McCullough Student Center, in the opinion of the Board, leaves much to be desired for a vibrant social life. The building’s offerings do not befit a school with an extracurricular atmosphere as active as Middlebury’s, and in the next few years the College ought to explore how to fundamentally change the student center as it stands now.
Part of the problem is the basic factors of the building’s architecture. An amalgam of administrative offices, College retail businesses, and Mail Center/Box Office, it is a Frankenstein’s monster built out of years of renovations and remodeling beginning before the First World War. The original marble structure was the school gymnasium, built in 1912 and later remodeled to tack on a pool in 1963. In the late 1980s, the space became a student center after the completion of the Field House. Silos on both ends of the building became offices for Student Activities and the Student Government and the retail options of the Grille and Crossroads Café made their debut on the upper and lower floors.
This series of renovations and re-purposing means that the building falls short architecturally. Half of the space seems to be winding corridors or stairwells rather than places where students can congregate and build community.
Additionally, contrast the building’s dungeon-like café and dining options with the student centers at other colleges or even the newer buildings on our campus. The Paresky Center at Williams College (completed in 2007) has large windows and is described as the campus “living room.” Atwater Dining Hall (completed in 2005) is ideal in this regard.
Another part of the problem with the space is its attempt to be everything to everyone. When you combine administrative offices, snack bars, a box office and mail center, something inevitably will get shortchanged. In this case, it seems to be a student ownership of the space that is conducive to hanging out.
In spite of these drawbacks, students have been doing admirable work with what the space provides. On Friday, April 3, in the Coat Rack (the area behind Crossroads Café) students organized a night where students 21 and older could socialize in a casual setting over Vermont brews. According to attendees and organizers, the event was a great success. The idea is fairly ingenious and a lot of credit is due to the organizers: the Coat Rack capitalizes on one of the many underused parts of the building. At the same time, think of the possibilities if there were spaces in the student center specifically designed for events like a pub night-style Coat Rack event.
Obviously, budgetary concerns remain. There are other priorities for the College. Providing financial aid to all who apply and maintaining the superior faculty and course offerings that are the heart of our reason for attending should always come first. These should precede new construction.
Nevertheless, the College should keep McCullough’s shortcomings in mind as a part of a long-term master plan for the campus. We are well aware of how it can be incongruous to run an editorial voicing support for expensive renovation to a student union alongside a plan to grant more need-based financial aid to international students. However, we ought to at least acknowledge that both represent concerns for students. There have been changes in the works for McCullough for a while: several offices of the Dean of Students staff will be moving to the current Student Services building this summer. This may be an opportunity to think creatively about how students can make the best use of newly-vacated spaces.
In January, this newspaper praised the College’s efforts on constructing new Ridgeline housing. However, there is plenty of work left to do, as the discussions this fall demonstrated. Residential spaces are only part of the areas needing improvement—changing the College’s Student Center should be at the top of the list.
(04/15/15 5:50pm)
Admitted students are visiting campus this week during Preview Days to explore all that Middlebury College has to offer; some of these students will be traveling from around the world to see our school. Concurrently, the Davis United World College (UWC) Scholars Program is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary today. Middlebury’s international identity is rightly regarded as one of the best aspects of the College. We offer 10 modern languages, send 60 percent of the student body to study abroad and over 10 percent of our student body is from outside the U.S. However, a little-known quirk of the admissions procedure leaves international applicants out of the College’s commitment to need-blind admissions.
Need-blind admissions means that the Admissions Office does not know a family’s finances when reading an application. The College, while practicing need-blind admissions for students applying from the U.S. and Canada, is not need-blind for all international applicants. The College, rather, is need-aware – taking into account an international student’s financial situation when making application decisions.
The College claims to maintain a need-aware policy for financial reasons. According to the SFS, “Middlebury follows a need-blind admissions policy to the extent that financial resources allow.” Yet the discrepancy between being need-blind for American and Canadian applicants but not those from other locales deserves consideration.
Should our admissions practices differentiate between the applications of American students and international applicants with regard to reading financial information? And why the two-tiered approach when the College is purportedly a place where students can receive a global education?
If the College truly desires a diverse and worldly student body, it ought to read applications of international students need-blind so that we find greater variation in socioeconomic backgrounds in both international and American students. Going need-blind for international students would hopefully allow for a greater socioeconomic range among admitted students, ensuring that we are not just admitting a portion of the international community but instead are welcoming a more varied and accurate sampling of all world citizens. Doing so will bring new perspectives to our courses, residence and dining halls, which enhances the College’s global education that we so often market in our admissions materials and press releases.
Fortunately, the Davis United World College Scholars Program assists the College in having a vibrant international student community. The program, the world’s largest international undergraduate scholarship program, supports students of the UWC schools around the globe to attend partner U.S. colleges and universities, including Middlebury. The program has been a significant part of the College’s effort to include international students from UWC schools in our student body. These need-based grants support the students financially. It has been an outstanding step in the right direction of fostering an international, inclusive community. Nevertheless, let us take the necessary next step and read all applications, international or not, without an eye to their ability to pay.
The College should join the ranks of the select group of other institutions that do not weigh international applicants’ need when evaluating candidates for admission. For example, Amherst College became need-blind for international students in 2008, at the height of the recession. Middlebury has weathered the worst of the economic downturn remarkably well and has since embarked on construction projects that were forestalled by budgetary concerns — why not follow Amherst’s lead?
The College takes a principled stance on offering admission to students based on merit, not their ability to pay. However, let us not allow this policy to stop at American students. The Campus encourages the College to extend the same practice to its international applicants. As Middlebury continues to market itself as a school where students receive a global education, transitioning to 100 percent need-blind ought to be a priority.
(04/08/15 11:13pm)
Like many Catholics, I spent last Sunday nodding off in Mass or trying to get the toddler in the pew in front of me to laugh. Like still more Catholics, I promptly forgot the sermon and jostled with my fellow parishioners to exit the Church when the one hour time limit was reached. I went to Church with my family, simply because it was the thing to do. Tradition demanded it and, being a sucker for the old-fashioned way, I hastily obeyed. Now that I am back at Middlebury, I will likely continue my habit of rarely attending Mass. I did not stop going simply due to some strange atheistic peer pressure; it just stopped making sense to me. So I stopped, and happily let my identity be molded by our academic, merit-driven community.
Religion is a tricky thing, and all too often it is intensely personal in its definition and application. While I no longer attend Church and do not feel particularly bad about it, there are elements of that community which a place like Middlebury cannot make up for. Religion may not be a prerequisite for a contemplative life, but I am sure most address it in their doctrine.
Now before you dismiss me as a little out of a touch, let me explain. At almost any place of higher education we can rely on a few staples. First and foremost is academic rigor. Here we pride ourselves on how hard we work and the quality of said work. Seriously, how many times per Proctor visit do you hear the phrase, “I have so much work.” Similarly – and perhaps this is more Middlebury specific – we take great care to eat healthy and exercise, satisfying our physical well-being. Lastly, many of us strive to be satisfied in our pursuits and satisfy our emotional selves. Bear with me here as I go out on a limb, but there is something in the contemplative and spiritual that is left unresolved in college.
I can guess what you’re thinking: something about new age or religious nonsense. Just humor me for a minute. (We all know you’re just killing time reading the paper while you wait for your friends in Proctor). If we were to define a contemplative life as self-reflective and concerned for the well-being of others, how many of you would fill that requirement? I would utterly fail. Who has time for that?
We pride ourselves on the strength of our community, yet that very definition of community is unachievable without a common sense of selflessness. In an environment of high stress mid-terms, job interviews, GPA worries and near constant anxiety, is it any wonder we spend so little time wondering how to improve ourselves? Is it any wonder we have so little patience for the problems of others or so little focus on the positive experience of those around us? Religion by no means mandates or succeeds in producing utterly selfless, community-centric people. After all, each one of us knows our share of bigots. Yet, at least it is an avenue for the discussion. In our on-the-run, work-until-you-drop, please-don’t-drop-my-GPA world, we have little time or energy to work on being better people.
This is a wonderful ideal. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone were nice, right? Personally, I have very little energy or patience for my neighbors; I find it weighs me down to take on other people’s worries. Extending that to a stranger would seem an almost impossible task, and certainly one with no guarantee of personal reward. Which is, after all, what we want right? However, none of us can possibly come up with an excuse for not putting any effort into being less selfish people. Even if that means something as small as waking up in the morning and trying to be a better partner, sibling, cousin or neighbor.
I had an interesting conversation with a mentor of mine who repeatedly asked me the question, what do you want? I managed to conjure up some professional sounding words concerning a future career. In an hours time, I ended up where we all end up. I want to be around friends and family who I take care of and who take care of me. It is not exactly a complicated goal, certainly not an original one. To achieve it we need to step outside ourselves for just a little bit and pay attention to the people around us. So I leave you with this final thought: decades from now when people talk about you, what would you have them say? My hope is that it wouldn’t be, “they were a pretty good student and made some good money.” Rather, with any luck, it’ll be something like, “they cared more for their friends than they did themselves.”
