1000 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(02/11/15 9:45pm)
When I peered into the stockroom on the first floor of Bi-Hall, Tom Sheluga and his assistant were hunched over a copy of the Middlebury magazine. He ushered me over and gestured at a picture of Roger Sandwick, a biochemistry professor. As I approached, I realized he was actually pointing at the bell on the shelf directly behind the photo. It was labeled as a superintendent’s bell once belonging to Sandwick’s grandfather.
“He says it’s a school bell,” said Sheluga. “But I’m convinced it’s a pirate’s bell, albeit a small pirate… [with] a rowboat type thing. He couldn’t afford anything better!”
You may not have met Mr. Sheluga unless you’ve broken enough glassware in Orgo lab to warrant being sent into the bowels of McCardell Bicentennial Hall in search of new beakers and test tubes. As the College’s laboratory stores manager and the safety director for the building, he is in charge of much more than showing clumsy students where to find replacement glassware. His day-to-day tasks include teaching safety classes, refilling tanks of liquid nitrogen, making deliveries when shipments arrive and greeting people who enter the stockroom in search of various items.
“Occasionally, we have a spill we have to handle. Occasionally, we have hazardous waste we have to take down,” Sheluga said. “[Otherwise] that should be the day unless something happens out of the ordinary.”
And things out of the ordinary certainly have happened while the stockroom has been under Sheluga’s jurisdiction.
He recalled one time, when they had “the explosive stuff,” chemicals disintegrated into what should have been highly explosive material. The college had to hire contractors to come (at 4 a.m.) to remove the chemicals from the stockroom.
Sheluga recalled, “I was so disappointed. The guy [who came to remove the chemicals] came in a pickup truck. We spent $5,000, and he came in a pickup truck. And then he told me I was his backup.”
But all of the concern turned out to be for naught, Sheluga explained.
“We thought we had something that was gonna go kaboomski. We had a little bit left, so we sprinkled it on the lawn and tried to ignite it. It didn’t ignite.”
There was also the mystery of the disappearing bovine kidneys.
“We put them outside, and then something took them. And it took them,” he snapped his fingers suddenly, “like that.”
“Now you know, a kidney, it’s a pretty good size, pretty firm. Something took them to eat them, we presume, although it might have played with them, I don’t know. We never saw those kidneys again. Still looking for ‘em. Now we leave them out there to see if something takes them, and they always disappear. So if you find those in the dining hall…” He winked.
Sheluga has held his position for 16 years, and was there for the science department’s big move to the then newly -constructed Bicentennial Hall.
“When we first set Bi-Hall up, we had to have a trapper in to get all the animals out. It was like an animal sanctuary. Now, of course, we’re just a regular metropolitan area here… a dramatic change from the Spartan days when we had to go to Freeman to go to the bathroom.”
Prior to coming to Middlebury, Sheluga held a position as Exxon Chemical Company’s Environmental Coordinator for the entire Northeast and oversaw the company’s activity in the United States, Latin America, South America, and Asia. But he never expected to have a career in the sciences; in fact, he claimed he “fell into it.”
“For a period, I was interested in girls,” he said frankly.
Sheluga more or less stumbled upon his current job.
“I was working as an attorney for the state of Vermont, and I kind of got disillusioned with the sense of justice. There just didn’t appear to be any. I was doing child support work, when this job came up. I didn’t hear anything [from Middlebury] for 4-5 months, and they called me in for an interview. Then, we were moving from the old science center to this building [Bi-Hall].”
Part of his job, too, is housing some of Bi-Hall’s stranger history. Sheluga directed my attention to two safes sitting on the stockroom floor, which he told me dated back to the 1860s.
“This one over here, which hasn’t been opened until recently, probably ten or fifteen years ago, supposedly has platinum in it. And it has a ball of opium, like the size of a softball.”
He once laid eyes on the opium, which had deteriorated. “I don’t know if that’s good for opium, or bad for opium, but there’s now an oozing black ball.”
Sheluga made sure I heard one last story before I rushed to class upstairs. There was a time when one of his student employees once hosted parties in Bi-Hall. In what was apparently a very lucrative setup, the student hid in the men’s room until the night watchman had left, and then brought in speakers, adult beverages, and charged five bucks a pop.
“Somehow they caught him, and he was never quite sure how they did that,” Sheluga smiled. “But I like the ingenuity.”
Although running the Bi-Hall stockroom involves an interesting and varied list of responsibilities, Sheluga described his job mostly as doing “things nobody else likes to do.”
“If you got a mouse in your room, we’ll come get it. If you’ve got a snake, we’ll come and take him away. If you spill something, we’ll clean it up. And if you’ve got too much trash, we’ll take it away. We’ll do anything you need to have done, as long as it’s not immoral, and I don’t know if anybody else does that,” he said.
(02/11/15 9:38pm)
Imagine going online and with just clicks having access to the status of all the laundry machines at the College. No dragging your gargantuan laundry bag down snowy paths only to discover the machine you wanted is full. No waiting hours for a machine to open up. No forgoing laundry for weeks because every machine you try seems to be broken.
This is the Middlebury that Sophomore Senator Karina Toy ’17 envisions. Toy has been working since January 2015 to create legislature implementing LaundryView, a new technology that would allow students to check the status of the College’s laundry machines remotely. With a site similar to Papercut, Toy describes, students could log on and instantly view whether laundry machines in any building are “Available,” “In Use,” “Idle” (stopped but have not been emptied) or “Unavailable.”
In the SGA’s 2015 Middlebury Student Life Survey, 71.77 percent of students who participated in the survey voted “Yes” in approval of the LaundryView system whereas only 33.8 percent of students said they were satisfied with laundry services as they currently are.
Toy explains the appeal of LaundryView: “I am a person who plans my day down to the T. So being able to plan when is best to do my laundry, showing up and having a machine available, or to know that there is a machine available before I even leave is a great thing.”
Toy says the system would also allow the school to monitor laundry machine use, collecting data that would allow them to decide where best to put future machines. This data could help the College please the 39.01 percent of respondents who complain that there are not enough machines near where they live, according to the SGA’s survey.
Additionally, through the system, Facilities Services would be able to be notified when machine are broken or malfunctioning, permitting them to address problems more quickly; currently, Facilities relies on students or custodians reporting broken machines to get their information. 32.55 percent of students who responded to the SGA survey said there were not enough functioning machines at the College.
LaundryView is already in use at many of the College’s peer institutions including Williams, Bowdoin, Trinity, Tufts and Wesleyan. Its use was suggested in SGA meetings in 2012 by former SGA President Charlie Arnowitz ’13 but was shifted to the backburner at the time because of other more pressing budget issues.
Of the fifteen buildings on campus with laundry facilities for students, Toy proposes LaundryView be implemented in ten: Atwater, Coffrin, Forest, Gifford, Hadley, Hepburn, Kelly, LaForce, Painter and Stewart. The proposal excludes facilities in social houses for the time being because, according to Toy, they are less in demand and easier for students to check the availability in the traditional way than the other, larger student residences.
The hurdle standing between Toy and the approval of LaundryView is funding. LaundryView is a system produced by Mac-Gray, the College’s current laundry machine provider, but would require the addition of Ethernet in the laundry rooms. Assistant Treasurer Tom Corbin, who has been working in conjunction with Toy on this project, estimates that the installation cost of LaundryView would be 6,000 to 7,000 dollars in addition to the cost of putting Ethernet capacities in every laundry room. Furthermore, according to Toy, the annual costs of LaundryView would be $2.75 per machine per month. This means that funding LaundryView could cost upwards of $11,000 in the first year alone.
The SGA believes these costs should be paid for by the administration not by the Student Activities Fee, the money the SGA has available to spend, because, in the words of SGA Chief of Staff Danny Zhang ’15, LaundryView is an “infrastructure-related cost.”
Corbin, however, takes the opposite opinion, affirming that funding should come from the SGA because “LaundryView is a convenience item for students.” To address student dissatisfaction with laundry services, Corbin’s office and the College’s Residential Life team has already added several additional laundry around campus in the past five years to address student complaints that laundry facilities were too far from their living spaces.
This question over the funding of LaundryView situates itself in the larger context of the debate about where the administration’s funding should begin and where should the SGA be responsible, a debate that Zhang says is constant. Still, Zhang is hopeful that the shared desire for efficiency on behalf of students and the College will push LaundryView and other similar technological improvements into approval.
“We’re always looking to do things more efficiently on this campus and members of the SGA [are] not the only people who are looking for that. […] [LaundryView] is part of a larger trend. We want to make use of technology if it is beneficial to students and the survey shows that LaundryView would be beneficial to students.”
If approved this spring, LaundryView could be available to students as early as Fall 2015.
(01/22/15 1:14am)
Madison Stebbins ’14.5 grew up in Col- orado eating homemade sourdough waffles on Sunday mornings. A Geography major at the College, Stebbins’ future plans lie in land management, yet he uses his space at the Old Stone Mill (OSM) for baking bread. This project developed from his love for geography, his belief in the value of self- production, and his desire to continue his family’s Sunday tradition.
Last summer, Stebbins worked as a wild firefighter in Wyoming, where living alone not only forced him to cook much of his own food, but also to consider the costs of his own consumption levels.
“I’m definitely trying to live more con- sciously and produce whatever I need to in life,” Stebbins said. “Living alone this sum- mer fighting fires made me ask how much of what I’m buying can I produce myself.”
When Stebbins returned to the College in the fall of 2014, this question of produc- tion value, combined with a spontaneous conversation with a friend who brews beer at the OSM, led him to become a tenant at the OSM. “I’m fairly confident that I can cook for myself for the most part, and I thought it would be interesting to learn to bake bread,” Stebbins said. “I’m very in- terested in hard skills like carpentry and metal welding, and the OSM is one of the few spaces to really teach yourself a craft.” He added that, economically speaking, he could bake a better quality pound of bread
OLD
STONE
MILL: MIDD’S CREATIVE HUB
for $1 versus buying a loaf of bread for $2, another benefit of self-production.
Stebbins has made a variety of breads over the past few months but has focused largely on making artisanal breads, im- proving from his first few misshapen loaves to ones that you might see in a pro-
fessional bakery, tweaking recipes to make them his own. Many of his breads are “long rises,” meaning that Stebbins makes the dough, lets it sit for 12 hours to let the yeast rise and then bakes it after. He most often bakes several different sourdough and whole wheat breads. Stebbins explained that bread is divided into two parts: the crust and the inner crumbs. However, add- ing whole wheat into the bread can make it more difficult to create the ideal light and airy crumbs.
“The best trick to make it work is to cook the bread in a cast iron pot. For the first half the steam is held in the pot, which makes the crust hard, and for the second half you take the lid off which allows the moisture to evaporate,” Stebbins said.
Stebbins has also made his own sour- dough bread at the College. He mixes flour and water in a jar and leaves it out, allow- ing the yeast in Middlebury’s air to form in the jar, thus making the sourdough.
“San Francisco sourdough is famous because the yeast in the air is tangy. The yeast colony is specific to location, and as a Geography major I’m super into that,” Stebbins said. “I can make bread from the yeast in the air of the OSM.”
Once the bread is done baking, the ab- sence of preservatives allows it to go stale quickly. So Stebbins often gives it away
to people. “It’s great, you can bring joy to people that easily,” Stebbins said. “It would be cool to bake bread for my kids one day.”
Although Stebbins’ graduation is quickly approaching, he continues to bake bread and experiment with different reci- pes in his off-campus apartment.
“A lot of what you pick up in school stops being useful in the most direct sense, but bread baking is something I plan on doing for the rest of my life,” Stebbins said. “This stemmed from my effort to be more conscious of the world and my impact on it.”
(01/22/15 1:12am)
At Middlebury, we claim to prioritize balance. Students here are not only students, but also actors, journalists, artists, unicyclists, and of course, athletes. But not all of these traits are created equal, both in the admissions process and on the Atwater dance floor.
The divide between NARPs and athletes is apparent from orientation. Athletes are juggling practice with mandatory orientation events, leaving them unable to fully commit to either. In the meantime, the NARPs are hunting for their own community, building friendships around any other shared interest.
The media this fall was full of stories of athletic privilege, from the Ray Rice scandal to the horrifying tales coming out of Florida State. At Middlebury, it is easy to look down from our mountain and pretend these cultural influences don’t affect us. We are a DIII school; we hold our athletes to the same academic standards as the rest of our student body. But athletic privilege is still at play on our campus. This piece is less a reflection of the athletes as individuals, and more a matter of the culture we create surrounding athletics, both as an institution and a society, providing behavioral signaling and direct messaging that bolster athletic superiority.
First is the way financial resources are allocated. For all other student activities, student leaders apply for a budget. This money comes from the student activities fee, a separate line item that is explicitly stated in our tuition bill. Other students judge the value that the club offers the student body and allocates funding as they see fit. For athletics, this is different. Teams are given budgets through the athletics department, which all of our tuitions fund, but from which only some of us benefit. This provides state of the art facilities, coaching staff, travel, uniforms, etc. to athletes, but these students rarely need to prove their worth.
We claim to support athletics because of the community they foster, which increases quality of life for the students involved and leads to greater alumni giving after graduation. But club teams, like Rugby and Crew, apply for budgets with the Finance Committee the same way the Campus does, or the Fly Fishing Club, and still manage to create an equally tight knit community. This puts an inequitable institutional priority on the extracurricular activities of some over others. While some clubs fight tooth and nail to get money from the finance committee, athletes sail through year after year with bloated budgets and only the occasional telethon to sponsor their break training trips. In exchange, they are given staff resources that other clubs could never have, with dedicated people on payroll to support them.
We propose sports teams apply for budgets with the rest of student activities. At the end of the day, though, sports are no different — they are very important to the participants, but no more important than anything else. This doesn’t mean that these sports shouldn’t be funded at their current level, but just that they should be considered of equal value as the myriad other activities we provide. This is about the message we send to our athletes from day one.
Which brings us to our second point. We are a DIII school. Very few, if any, of our current athletes will ever seriously play their sport again after college. And yet for these four years, they are disproportionately valorized and require a tremendous time commitment. Students get tremendous enjoyment out of their sport. They have learned teamwork and leadership, made their best friends and love their varsity Middlebury experience. But let’s be honest. You can reap these benefits without dedicating most of your time to your sport. Games are given priority to class. Practice is placed above all other commitments. But nothing else in our time here is given that kind of premium. If other students want to miss class for an extracurricular commitment, they must explain themselves to their professor or just take the unexcused absence. Athletes are given an implicit pass because their professors know the ropes.
Moreover, we have people who are incredible athletes in biking, snowboarding, and a host of other non-college sponsored sports, proving that institutional support is not imperative for athletic success. We also have students who go onto to do incredible things with the skills they learn from their non-athletic extracurriculars. Some students start businesses, or volunteer or learn other valuable lessons that are honestly more applicable to the job market than the ability to chase a ball. Yet these skills are not given the same premium. Athletes also lose in this system, for they often do not have as much time to invest in other activities about which they are passionate and feel peer-pressure to stick with their teams.
While the time commitment is a problem throughout Division III sports, this is an opportunity for Middlebury to be a leader, even if we take a hit in the standings. We should further limit sports practices and hours on the road for our student-athletes, which would allow them to engage with other parts of the community by making new friends or trying a new club. Both the broader community and the athletes would benefit.
This discrepancy in how we value different skill-sets is evident especially in the admissions process. While coaches are given a voice and athletes are assigned extra points, professors are not given a seat at the table when an incredible writer submits his application or when a young scientist applies with a slew of awards under her belt. Certainly, other extracurriculars also come into play, but shouldn’t athletics be in the same category and with the same emphasis? How is it fair that an athlete can know ahead of time that they will probably be accepted while a poet is left biting their nails waiting for letters to go live at 8 a.m.?
We call on the Middlebury community to revisit the premium we give athletics on this campus. We are paying into a system that fetishizes athletics at all levels, from parents who put too much pressure on their kids in Little League to the fans who romanticize professional sports players. Society lets athletes feel like they run the show — it’s the most classic high school rom-com plot line. But we should be leaders in pushing us into a world where the kid who loves chemistry is just as celebrated as the kid who loves hockey. We should value all skill-sets and passions equally and see how the effects resonate. It could improve the body image problem that is often discussed. It could lead to a more inclusive party scene. Who knows?
But we must be the first to take the plunge, to rethink the relationship between athletics and academics, and not use alumni donations as a cop-out, because people give to schools when they love the community, not because the sports teams win. We need a cultural shift, and that will take time, but no change happens without a leader, so put us in coach. We’re ready to play.
Hannah Bristol '14.5 is from Falls Church, Va. and Isaac Baker '14.5 is from Shelborne Falls, Mass.
(01/21/15 11:24pm)
Few Winter Term traditions enjoy as much student and community popularity as the J-term musical, started a decade ago by Town Hall Theatre (THT) Executive Director Doug Anderson and Department of Music faculty Carol Christensen. In celebration of its tenth anniversary season, Director Anderson and Music Director Christensen chose Ragtime, a sweeping portrait of early 20th century American life from three vastly different perspectives. Last year’s ambitious production of Les Miserables involved over 60 students and sold out in three hours, and this year’s selection, Ragtime, sold out in about a week.
Involving about 35 actors who mount a complete show in only three weeks, as well as 20 musicians under the direction of Opera Company of Middlebury Musical Director Emmanuel Plasson, Ragtime continues a tradition of excellence that has gained the J-term musical a reputation as one of the most popular events of the entire year, largely due to the unique resources available to the College through its partnership with THT.
“Middlebury is really very lucky to have two such amazing talents and teachers as Carol and Doug,” two-time J-term musical veteran Jack DesBois ’15 said. “It’s something that I doubt many small liberal arts colleges have as a resource. It’s the type of attention that you might get at a conservatory.”
This year’s production includes three visiting professional actors, a feature common to Theatre Department shows but brand new to the J-term musical. This addition to the cast brings a level of experience to the production that parallels and enhances the students’ own intensive efforts.
“It’s been really great working with these professionals,” DesBois said. “We can talk with them in our free time about what the performing life is like for those of us who are potentially considering it.”
Originally a novel of historical fiction written by American author E.L. Doctorow in 1975, Ragtime premiered on the Broadway stage in 1998 with a book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty. Featuring huge names of musical theatre like Audra McDonald and Brian Stokes Mitchell, the original production garnered four Tony nominations for leading actors and an astonishing thirteen nominations overall. Though a critical smash, the show closed after only two years due to financial troubles largely attributed to the lavish $11 million budget, which included features such as a working Model T automobile and fireworks in each performance.
“Ragtime includes a lot of historical figures and historical events in the storyline which makes it really interesting as an American. I’m learning about our own history in a sort of modified way because Doctorow, Ahrens and Flaherty take great liberties with chronologies,” DesBois said.
Despite its short run, nearly two decades later Ragtime’s timeless story and gorgeous, expansive score ensure that the production is a staple of the American musical theatre canon. Alternately following Jewish immigrants fighting the misery of tenement slums on the Lower East Side, a ragtime piano player in Harlem and upper-class residents of New Rochelle, Ragtime grapples with a distinctly American clash of cultures at the height of an era of national transformation.
“The interesting thing about this show is a lot of the characters are historical figures, like Booker T. Washington, and a lot of characters have names, and some of them don’t,”four-time J-term musical veteran Mike McCann ’15 said. “You can interpret that as the writer basically using these characters as archetypes to represent the different viewpoints.”
Musical styles within Ragtime, which includes a large number of solo and ensemble pieces, range from ragtime rhythms to klezmer styles of the Lower East Side to bold brass marches to period parlor songs, offering a taste of the multitude of prominent musical styles in the country at the beginning of the 20th century.
With only three intensive weeks to stage the show, students participating in the J-term musical undertake a grueling schedule of rehearsal five days a week in addition to building the set on the two Saturdays preceding the performance weekend.
DesBois, who directed the Spring 2014 Middlebury College Musical Players production of RENT and played the wolf in the 2013 J-term staging of Into the Woods, is taking on another leading role in Ragtime as Tateh, a Latvian Jewish immigrant to the Lower East Side in the early 1900’s. As the focus of one of the three main story arcs, Tateh transitions from the struggle of developing a livelihood from his artistry to eventual success in his chosen field, providing ample acting challenges for DesBois as he worked to craft the nuances of his role in under three weeks.
“He’s kind of two characters in act one and act two,” he said. “After he’s made it big he takes on a whole different persona, so there’s a lot of drama with Tateh but also the opportunity to play the comedy when he’s burlesquing and being over the top. This is challenging because one actor has to be able to get both of those aspects which are usually very separate types of theater, but it’s been real fun for me.”
McCann has held leading roles in Hairspray, Into the Woods, Les Miserables, and now Ragtime, in which he portrays a character simply known as father, the patriarch of the white, well-educated, upper-class storyline in the suburb of New Rochelle. Father, who sells fireworks and other, as he describes them, ‘accoutrements of patriotism’ to immigrants eager to show their national pride, leaves the comfort of his family for extended periods of time to venture on quests of exploration. After returning from a real-life journey to the North Pole with Admiral Robert Peary, father finds his family dynamic turned upside down in ways he had never imagined.
“At first glance he is the one static character in the show, as his one defining characteristic is that he doesn’t want anything to change,” McCann said. “The most challenging thing about playing him is deciding if I’m supposed to be portraying him as unchanging or if I can somehow show that inner confusion and turmoil within him as he tries to keep his perfect life together. He’s not one of the heroes of the story, but at the end he is definitely changed.”
Ragtime is perhaps such an apt show for this year because its timeless themes of race relations and acceptance are particularly topical in the wake of the recent events in Ferguson, Mo. and Staten Island, N.Y., which have again thrust racial issues under the microscope of national attention.
“It’s interesting how it deals with issues that are almost perpetually in the forefront of the American mind,” DesBois said. “The book was written in the 70’s in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, and it’s still completely relevant today.”
“I think a really cool, kind of interesting connection is one of the biggest numbers in the show after all of this violence and a great tragedy has occurred and the entire cast sings ‘Till We Reach That Day’ and it’s about this great day in the future where there will be no more violence and there will be equality and justice for everyone,” McCann added. “The thing is, we’re still not there. It’s over 100 years from when this play was set, and we’ve come a long way, but we’re still not there. There’s still a lot of work to be done, and that’s something that strikes home with the entire cast when we sing that song. It’s a beautiful number.”
Both DesBois and McCann have aspirations to enter the performing arts in some capacity when they graduate this spring, and their experiences working on the J-term musical have proved useful in shaping their future plans.
“It’s definitely been a great experience to work on a professional schedule, which is what we’re doing,” DesBois said. “It’s very helpful for gauging whether or not this lifestyle is for me, and I’m finding that I can handle this kind of grueling schedule, which is great.”
Musical theatre is often only popular with a niche audience, but each J-term production has drawn students from all over campus as well as the larger community, and the quality of the musicals continue to amaze.
“We work really hard and we put on great shows,” McCann said. “The reason the Town Hall Theater is able to do so many events is because people in this community love the arts so much. I think it’s popular amongst students because it creates this intense, close community. You spend three weeks, six hours a day with the same people. You build closer friendships in those three weeks than you do in your entire college experience, and I will continue to tell people that it is great and that they should do it because it’s terrific.”
Ragtime opens tonight, Jan. 22 in the Town Hall Theatre at 8 p.m., and will have subsequent shows at 8 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 23 and Monday, Jan 26, with a matinee performance at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 24. Tickets are sold out for each performance.
(01/15/15 3:53am)
If you happen to walk by the Middlebury Crew Team Sweatshop in the early afternoon, chances are you will see a former U.S. National Team rower plugging away on the ergometer with Middlebury students. Noel Wanner, the Head Coach of our crew team, is one of those coaches who believe that in order for their athletes to thrive, everyone needs to be fully committed to the task at hand, from rower to coxswain to coach. At the end of last semester, we received the sad news that Coach Wanner will be leaving us to become the Head Men’s Coach at Tufts University.
Coach Wanner began his rowing career as a novice walk-on at Wesleyan University in the late eighties. Although he came to Wesleyan expecting to play lacrosse, by the time spring season rolled around he was hooked on rowing. He rowed for his remaining years in the varsity men’s eight. After graduation, Coach Wanner stayed as the Novice Men’s Coach in addition to training for the pre-elite National Team selection camp. Beginning in 1992, he went on to row for several years with the U.S. National Team. He won national championships and raced internationally at the World Championships and the World Cup Series.
Middlebury Crew was founded in 1989, when two entrepreneurially spirited students sold off a laptop and a motorcycle to purchase the first wooden pair from Coach Harry Parker of Harvard University. The original team was in fact not the Middlebury Crew Team but rather the Polar Bear Rowing Club (the initials of the two founders were PB), as the college did not want to be held liable for any issues. Like most other club crew teams with limited funding and resources, Middlebury mainly raced fours. Coach Wanner joined the Middlebury Crew Team as the Novice Coach in 2007 and quickly transitioned to the Head Coach position. He has since been responsible for the growth and direction of our team, including the switch from rowing fours competitively to rowing eights. This transition required a big step up in commitment and competition, as we began racing against fully funded and established varsity programs. The first year that the women raced in the open eight event at the Dad Vail Regatta, they were destroyed. Last spring, the women’s eight won the Petite Finals.
To put it simply, Coach Wanner has had a tremendous impact on the Middlebury Crew Team. Under his direction, the team has grown from 20 athletes to over 70, and we are starting to see some of the team’s best results ever. Last spring, in addition to the win in the Petite Finals at the Dad Vail Regatta, the women’s varsity four won 2nd place. Both the first and second varsity boats made the Grand Final at the New England Rowing Championship. This past fall, the varsity women’s eight placed 9th in the Head of the Charles Regatta collegiate eight event. In addition, the women narrowly missed out on 2nd place to Williams College by .05 seconds at the Head of the Fish. These are the best fall results the women have ever seen. Our men’s team consistently places among the top ten eights programs in New England and wins in small boat events throughout the season. Last season, the novice men came in 4th at the New England Rowing Championship, and this fall the men’s varsity four came in 7th at the Head of the Charles.
When people ask us why we row, the answer usually revolves around competition, the thrill of success, a touch of masochism, a willingness to be in shape and the desire to participate in the ultimate team sport. Boats cannot cross the finish line without the dedication and passion of both the athletes and the coach, as crew requires a level of patience and teamwork not found in many other facets of life. Coach Wanner is responsible for a generation of student athletes who have learned to push through the wall and fight for the small successes, not only in rowing but also in life. Known for his inspirational speeches, particularly in moments of self-doubt and fear, Coach Wanner has had a knack for calming even the craziest of rowers.
Coach Wanner, thank you so much for all of the time, dedication, passion and love you have put into our crew team. If it weren’t for you, many of us would have given up a long time ago. While all of us are saddened by the news of your departure, this period represents an exciting transition for both you and us. We will sorely miss your life metaphors, your dog Daggoo and your pride in us as we cut the cake and toss the watermelon on every stroke. Your smile and congratulations at the end of races motivate us to work harder every day. We look forward to leaving it all on the line against your new team and wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors!
On behalf of THE MIDDLEBURY CREW TEAM
(01/15/15 2:10am)
During a recent survey, an overwhelming percentage of students said they wanted to see more storytelling events like TEDx, Moth and Cocoon. This Friday, Jan. 16 and Saturday, Jan. 17 in Wright Memorial Theatre at 8 p.m., students will have that opportunity. Mike Daisey is a monologist who demands a reaction.
A self-proclaimed mansplainer, Daisey doesn’t pull any punches as he tears into relevant political and personal topics without apology or censorship, poking fun at himself and his audience along the way while leaving his audience with a lot to chew on.
In Faster Better Social, he will be discussing the increasing presence of technology in our lives. What are we gaining? What are we losing? And what are we becoming? Not only will Daisey be offering two performances, but he will also field questions from J-term classes and the public in Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts (MCA) 232 on Jan. 17 at 4:15 p.m. All members of the community are welcome to listen and participate in what is sure to be a riveting dialogue about theater, journalism, truth and social change.
Acclaimed by the New York Times as “One of the finest solo performers of his generation,” and handling a berth of provocative topics, Daisey is one of the most illustrious and controversial performers of the College’s season.
His reactionary monologues weave together autobiography, gonzo journalism and unscripted performance to tell hilarious and intriguing stories that characterize our age. In Faster Better Social he examines the roiling landscape of technological change.
Daisey explores a new world where smartphones have fundamentally altered our perception and interaction with the world, “privacy” enables the commoditization of consumer information and time is redefined as we train ourselves to speak in 140 character haikus.
The Performing Arts Series is more than just string quartets. Daisey’s gig is a great example. The experimentation Daisey does with storytelling excites and enchants in an entirely different way. Apart from an enthralling stage presence and delivery, Daisey’s tales are enjoyable both for their own sake and for the larger picture he offers his audience.
He broaches issues many people don’t like, talking about consumer capitalism or how our world is built on the subjugation and ownership of women. In his show Yes Man this past summer, Daisey didn’t try to speak for women — instead he used his own life as a way of framing discussion about gender equality and the human experience.
In his 2010 monologue The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs he was taking a deliberate stance on the effect consumer capitalism has on the world. Unfortunately, however, the nature of Daisey’s crusade for truth and awareness has brought him trouble in the past.
Although Daisey is first and foremost a performer, in 2012 he came under fire and was accused of compromising journalistic integrity. Granted, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs was moved beyond the stage and adapted for the broadcast This American Life where artistic license is less well received.
This raises an important question. What obligation does an entertainer such as Daisey have to maintain strict interpretations of truth? How far does artistic license extend? Yes, Daisey is a man with a message, but the vehicle is humor. Ultimately, the public-radio broadcast was retracted by host Ira Glass, but today Daisey remains true to his mission to delight and incite dialogue.
Since his first monologue in 1997, he has created dozens of powerful solo performances, each characterized by biting and clever criticisms of social and political landscapes and provocative delivery.
This fall he performed a critically acclaimed 29-night live theatrical novel, All the Faces of the Moon. He is a longtime host and storyteller with The Moth, a contributor to The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, Newsweek, WIRED, Vanity Fair, Slate, Salon, NPR and the BBC and has appeared on both Real Time with Bill Maher and the Late Show with David Letterman.
Ultimately, Daisey raises a lot of questions. Apart from those he poses during performance, his continued success invites larger wonderings about what obligations a performer such as Daisey has to his or her audience.
Must facts be kept entirely pure or is elaboration an inherent and necessary part of the genre — does being a professional differentiate Daisey from my brother fudging the size of the fish he caught? To me it depends on whether the primary objective is to entertain or to inform. Regardless, Daisey is worthwhile on two levels, both for what he says and for what he represents.
Love him or hate him, Daisey is a fixture of public theater. His engrossing delivery and thoughtfulness guarantee an entertaining hour and something to talk about for many days after the performance. Come to the Wright Memorial Theatre this Friday or Saturday at 8 p.m. and start the evening off right.
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 our office in McCullough Student Center or the MCA!
(12/03/14 10:22pm)
If you ask a student what they are doing at 8 p.m. on a Friday night, you’d probably expect to hear about parties and relaxing after a tough week of classes. However, if there is ever a reason to mix up your weekend festivities, this is it.
On the weekend before exams, take a few hours for the opportunity to see world-renowned cellist Sophie Shao debut a piece written specifically for our own Paul Nelson in honor of his 30th and final season as Performing Arts Series Director, in addition to pieces by Haydn and Brahms. Come to the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts (MCA) Concert Hall this Friday, Dec. 5 at 8 p.m. to witness Sophie Shao and Friends.
This event is so much more than classical music. The genre is delightful by itself, but this event is a celebration of much more. It is the world premiere of the commissioned work “Revelations” by acclaimed composer, flutist and Professor of Music Su Lian Tan to commemorate the man who not only dedicated his life to both our school and to the musical world but kindled her own passion.
This concert reaches beyond classical music aficionados and has significance to every student here. Yes, there will be baroque and classical pieces, but there will also be the contemporary expression of one student’s admirations for her teacher.
“In Paul Nelson, I have not only found a very good friend, but a mentor whom I hold in the highest regard,” Tan said. “Much of the structure of the first movement is shaped to express life as scholar, teacher and role model. The effort of seeking while feeling the pressures to achieve, alongside devotion to a community of peers and students, are described in the layering of Baroque counterpoint and contemporary rhythms and note palette. These elements progress in their individual manner and are held together by form. The challenge of pursuing higher ground in the face of relentless distractions becomes the ethos. The instruments race urgently to an apex, a density of experience, only to give way to more thought and contemplation.”
Director of the MCA Liza Sacheli added that Tan’s new piece will be a departure from the rest of the concert program’s classical music.
“It will be contemporary music—not just safe, pleasant melodies—but edgy, challenging, totally modern sounds,” she said.
According to Tan, the piece ends in chaos—no one will leave the Concert Hall “humming the melody.” This is going to be very fresh, surprising work with so much meaning behind it. This is not just “older music,” it is a modern melody with a history and intimacy that is rarely so relatable. The rest of Shao’s repertoire on Saturday is also relatively accessible and should provide depth and interest for everyone. The Haydn piece, which many consider to be a masterpiece for a string quartet, should be exceptional, given that Ms. Shao has extensive experience performing baroque and classical pieces.
Ms. Shao has a celebrated history performing at the College and around the world. She attended the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia at thirteen and continued her studies at Yale, receiving a B.A. in Religious Studies and an M.M. from the Yale School of Music. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including an Avery Fisher Career Grant and top prizes at the Rostropovich and Tchaikovsky international music competitions.
Her career takes her all around the world. Highlights of last season include her Washington recital debut at the Phillips Collection, an appearance on “What Makes it Great” at Lincoln Center, performances of Howard Shore’s Mythic Gardens (a concerto written for her) with the BBC Concert Orchestra in London and the 21st Century Symphony in Switzerland. This weekend, she is joined by a full piano quintet for her annual Sophie Shao and Friends tour.
The College’s incredibly personal concert hall, a phenomenal venue for any performance, will thrust you into the forefront of the action. Not only will you be in a hall rivaled by no other college, these world-class performances are provided to us as a discount you will never see outside the bubble. Artists such as Shao and her companions cost dozens of times more expensive in the real world than the $6 tickets subsidized for us here.
A liberal arts education should include exposure to the arts as much as any other discipline. Classical music is a tradition that has spanned centuries with pieces being performed 300 years after their composition. How much can be said for the music being produced today? This concert in particular will display a breadth of music rarely found at a classical performance with pieces imbued with significance for the college community.
Give yourself a break before starting in on next week’s work and come to the MCA Concert Hall on Friday, Dec. 5 at 8 p.m. to broaden your cultural horizons, enjoy a phenomenal performance by world-renowned performance artists and make this weekend a little different than all the rest. Tickets are $6 for students, $15 for faculty, staff, alumni and other ID card holders and $20 for the general public. Visit go/boxoffice or stop by our office in McCullough or the MCA!
(12/03/14 6:11pm)
Students, faculty and staff walked out of classrooms and offices on Monday, Dec. 1 to stand in solidarity with Ferguson, Mo. in light of the recent grand jury decision not to indict former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown. The crowd of approximately 100 people gathered in front of Mead Chapel to listen as Rubby Valentin Paulino ’18 read the names of victims of police brutality, including Brown, Tamir Rice and others.
Paulino said, “1,100 miles. 1,100 miles away a black boy was murdered. 1,100 miles from Ferguson, here we stand. 1,100 miles away from Ferguson, here I stand. Just as brown, just as young, just as dangerous to America.” After a moment of silence, the crowd raised their hands in the now-famous “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” gesture.
The walkout took place at 1:01 p.m. and occurred in conjunction with other walkouts happening on college and university campuses across the country at 12:01 p.m. Central Time, the time Brown was shot. A week before the walkout, on Nov. 24, a Missouri grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against Darren Wilson, the officer who shot Brown. The jury’s decision was the impetus for the demonstrations across the country on Monday.
The mood was somber throughout the event; however, smiles broke out at one point, when Paulino told the attendees to hug the person standing next to them.
“Take the time to look at those around you. Come on, give someone a hug! These are your friends and allies,” Paulino said. “Look to each other for places of comfort and unity. Look to each other for change. We can rewrite our own history and you being here today gives me no doubt about it.”
The walkout on the College campus comes amidst several other events designed to facilitate discussion and raise awareness of the issues in play with the Ferguson decision. On Oct. 22, over 50 students and several faculty members walked across campus in a silent march against police brutality to mark the National Day to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation, which held particular significance given August’s events in Ferguson. On Nov. 25, Assistant Professor of Sociology Jamie McCallum and Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology Rebecca Tiger held a discussion on the grand jury decision in the Brown case.
“The discussion on the 25th was to allow people space and time to allow people to share their visceral feelings about the non-indictment verdict. There was no agenda planned,” McCallum said. “Many more people came than we anticipated and we had a good discussion. At the end of it there was some productive planning that happened, but ultimately it was a meeting to come and share thoughts and sentiments.”
Although the walkouts on Monday were the initiative of the national Ferguson Action Network, the event held at the College was not a part of any student organization. Paulino said the event emerged organically. Thanksgiving break did not leave much time for reflection on the grand jury decision, according to Paulino, and he wanted students to have a chance to mark the occasion upon their return to campus from break.
“I wanted to do more for my community,” he said.
Word quickly spread through social media over the weekend. “I invited 10 people and by the end of Sunday night there were 800 invites and 150 people who RSVP’d, so that was powerful,” Paulino said. “The most powerful part for me was watching people put their hands up. I directed everyone to use the time to reflect, look around and be in that space.” He said asking attendees to hug was intentional to emphasize the human interaction and collaboration needed for any movement or activism.
Paulino said the members of the College community who attended were not just students, which came as a surprise but a happy one nonetheless. “I walked up to the scene and basically thought, ‘Oh my God, there are adults here,’” he said.
A challenging and sobering part for Paulino prior to the event was sorting through the list of black victims of police brutality to create a list to read in front of Mead Chapel.
“There were a lot, and how do you pick which names to use?” Paulino said. “There is a sea of people. There is a website that lists black murders by police and specifies that they were unarmed cases — they update it every time somebody dies.”
Rod Abhari ’15 said he would not typically attend a walkout or protest, but that the events surrounding the Michael Brown decision made Monday’s event different.
“I realized that joining people here in solidarity is important for my own spiritual sake, realizing that we as a part of something larger can take action into our hands,” Abhari said.
He approached his professor to inform her of the walkout beforehand and was surprised by the response.
“When I talked to my professor about it, she actually proposed it to the class and our entire class walked out, a seminar class of 10 people,” he said.
Another walkout attendee, Aashna Aggarwal ’16, said that as an international student, the events surrounding the death of Michael Brown showed a different side of the U.S.
“When I first heard about the decision, I was really shocked — I’m from India and every time we talk about or hear about the U.S., it is the country where you want to be or the country that’s got it right,” she said. “I went to the meeting on Tuesday, and then I went to Burlington for the protest. I feel this is something we can change and have an effect on. I’m happy to show my support in whatever way I can.”
David Fuchs ’16 attended the walkout and said that he wanted to be there because he fit the typical demographic of the College’s student population.
“I’m a white kid from the suburbs from an upper-middle class family, and I feel that everything about my identity and my life experiences is built on a historical system of privilege and oppression that has created the spaces that I’ve lived in and created the reality that I was told to see. I feel that that reality is just as implicated as any other in this struggle,” he said. “So it’s important for someone like me to be here because it shows to other people who might identify with me and my demographic that they are just as implicated in this, too.”
When asked if the death of Michael Brown had opened eyes to police brutality for college students, McCallum said, “I think a lot of people grow up believing that we live in a place in which police aren’t allowed to kill people and get off without a trial, and that’s not true. I think students experience a moment of cognitive dissonance when they grow up thinking we live in a democracy, and this seems like an instance of failed democracy — what does it mean for them as students, American citizens, and young people interested in social justice?”
McCallum was not teaching a course at the time of the walkout, but said he talked to several faculty members who, like Abhari’s professor, gave permission for their students to attend the walkout.
A walkout’s significance, according to McCallum, comes from the disruption to the normal routine, whether one is an employee or a student. “The way people have power is to withhold their contribution to society, whatever that is. If you’re a worker, it means withholding your labor. If you’re a student, it means withholding your obedience or the ordinary course of your day to promote business as usual,” he said. “A walkout is a disruption of the ordinary life that is otherwise apathetic. And as a disruption, therefore, it has some power.”
The discussions will continue with a Ferguson deliberation event on Thursday, Dec. 4 at 4:30 p.m in the Warner Hemicycle to plan future action on campus.
“We began this semester with the tragedy of the shooting. We end the semester with the tragedy of the non-indictment and the ongoing police violence in Ferguson,” McCallum said. “So I think and hope this forum on Thursday will be to help people process the last three months of the issue.”
(11/20/14 4:07am)
Founder of Project Resilience Emma Erwin ’15 shares her story and answer to “What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done?”
Two and a half years ago, I was several thousand feet in the air, flying home from Vermont after my freshman year of college, crying. I reached into my backpack to grab a tissue and pulled out a pen and a notebook. Instead of wiping my tears away for the thousandth time on that late night flight back home to Texas, I uncapped my pen, and wrote a letter.
I wrote down the things that no one else knew: I was not the happy girl that everyone seemed to think I was; I had a habit of taking a sharp blade to my skin, intentionally; I rarely wanted to be where I was, I often didn’t want to be anywhere at all; I had never planned on living past the age of twenty.
Five or six pages later, I closed my Moleskin, capped my pen, and looked out the window at the Houston skyline as we touched down on deceptively solid ground. A few hours later, well after midnight, I sat down on my bed after a long day of travel and an incredibly tiring year. I was exhausted, could have easily fallen asleep. Instead, I got up and shuffled through my backpack, grabbed my notebook, tore out the pages I had written on the plane. I walked downstairs, quietly stepped into my parent’s room, found them both sound asleep, and left the letter on the nightstand next to their bed. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
A few hours later, I woke up as my mom came into my room, crying, and in an instant, everything had changed. Instead of hopping on another plane the next day to leave for my summer job, I met with a therapist that day and for many, many days after.
A psychiatrist and an additional psychologist were soon added to the repertoire, and my summer days quickly became full of crying, talking, sobbing, and sometimes just sitting in silence, folding pieces of paper nervously between my hands, not sure what to say. But it helped. I was honest with others, and myself, and gradually I learned that although I had depression, it didn’t have to define me. Just because my uncle shot himself in the head when I was younger, it didn’t mean I was going to.
After several months of a whole lot of talking, running, yoga, and soaking up some Texas sun, I started smiling—and for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t faking it. I picked up the phone and called the dean of my college, told him I wouldn’t be back at school for fall semester: there were some things I needed to do first. I booked a flight to South America and in September I was in Chile, climbing mountains with a crew of strangers on a semester course for a leadership school in Patagonia, and I was truly happy—no pretending involved.
One night in November, I left a camp we had made while sea kayaking on the coast of southern Chile and walked alone for several hours down the beach. I stopped, looked up at the sky, dug my fingers and toes into the ground, and cried for the first time since I left home.
I thought about how good it felt to let tears fall down my face, without falling apart. It was okay to think of all the horrible things that happened in the world, to let it affect me, but that it didn’t need to inhibit me from being alive. There were some pretty good things in the world, too, like the grains of sand falling through my fingers, and the water splashing on my toes.
Back in Houston in December, I picked up the phone again, called Middlebury again, and told them I wouldn’t be back in the spring either—there was something else I still needed to do: I needed to go to Alaska.
Alaska. That was where I told my high school boyfriend I wanted to go, whenever he asked. For a long time, my favorite book was about a girl named Alaska, who dies. That’s the Alaska I had always been referring to—but he never quite picked up on that.
So instead, I went to the geographic Alaska, and stayed there for quite a while. I lived with strangers, I worked on farms, I biked a lot, read a lot, and learned a lot. And then I climbed the tallest mountain on the continent. And it felt so good to be alive.
In August of 2013, I came back to school: I was a happier person this time around; I had a better relationship with my family, my friends, and was excited for all the things to come. But what came was not so great: a couple months into school, my best friend raped me.
But I didn’t fall apart.
A few months later, I got a phone call on a Thursday morning: the person I cared about most in the whole wide world was in the hospital, because she wanted to kill herself.
But I didn’t fall apart.
A couple months later I stood on the border of Mexico and California, and then I walked all the way to Canada, at twenty-one years old.
I walked a lot of miles, for 102 days, in the heat, in the rain, under the beating sun and shining moon, largely alone. My feet bled a lot, and I still have scars on my hip from my pack. But that was not the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
The hardest thing I’ve ever done was to leave that letter on my parent’s nightstand, to ask for help.
This is my story. What’s yours?
EMMA ERWIN '15.5
Share your story at go/resilience or go/light
You can contact Emma Erwin at eerwin@middlebury.edu.
(11/20/14 3:56am)
They say that when man (or woman) makes plans, God laughs. Visiting Lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology Pam Berenbaum started her academic career thinking she would end up a clinical psychologist, a far cry from where she ended up in the field of public health.
“So many of the patients really had public health problems,” Berenbaum said. “They were victims of domestic violence, or they had a sick child and they had no health insurance. And I realized I was so much more interested in working on the structural problems.”
Inspired by her epiphany, Berenbaum then matriculated to the Harvard School of Public Health where she earned her Masters of Science in Health Policy and Management. Her first job after this program was a health economics research position at Harvard Medical School.
Soon after, Berenbaum began working for the lead statistician at a survey research firm in Burlington that the government contracted for public health surveys. After a year there, Berenbaum moved to a job in the Infectious Diseases Epidemiology Unit at the Vermont Department of Health. The work there was “more closely tied to the public health topics that I found really exciting,” Berenbaum said.
“I loved epidemiology in my Masters program, so I was excited to do that,” Berenbaum said. “We did all the food-borne stuff, influenza surveillance, vector-borne diseases … for the whole state of Vermont.
After ten years at the Department of Health, “I had developed a surveillance system for hospital emergency departments that was really quite mature and served our purposes really well,” Berenbaum said, “and I was getting bored, frankly. I had done what I could do, and when you’re grant funded, your hands are tied in many ways…you’re not allowed to be that creative.”
Berenbaum began teaching at the College in J-term of 2010, having found out from a colleague that anyone can apply to teach a J-term class.
She then taught during J-term for three years, starting with Introduction to Public Health Policy and later developing the Disaster Public Health class. In the Fall of 2012, when Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology and Director of the Global Health Minor Svea Closser went on leave, Berenbaum taught the Global Health class.
Starting in January of 2015, Berenbaum will serve as the Coordinator of Global Health Programs. Through her new role, Berenbaum hopes to expand the program to encompass even more disciplines and to bring awareness among faculty members of how their coursework relates to the study of health.
“Global health is the ultimate interdisciplinary field,” Berenbaum said. Only a couple of classes are unique to the minor, including the signature Global Health class, which is required of all minors, and the Introduction to Public Health Policy class. All electives that count towards the minor come from other departments including economics, geography, history, environmental studies and biology. Additionally, students are required to take a methods course in statistics, GIS, or ethnography.
Berenbaum envisions adding a capstone class to the requirements for the minor, which would tie together said the content from the students’ electives. She also emphasized the need for more sections of the core Global Health class, since the demand far exceeds its supply.
The course also serves as the “gateway class” for the minor, so Berenbaum would like to have spots available for underclassmen so they can decide early if they want to pursue the minor and plan out their coursework.
However, Global Health will likely be the only class Berenbaum will be teaching in the foreseeable future, as she emphasizes that her new job is primarily a staff position. She wants to work to get the faculty more involved in the program and also promote collaboration with the Center for Careers and Internships (CCI).
“I want global health students to have opportunities to find internships and jobs in the field because it’s such a broad field with tons of different job offerings,” she said. Berenbaum mentioned her desire to offer more pre-professional guidance to students wishing to enter the field.
“It’s not the type of career path where you know what you’re getting into,” Berenbaum said. However, she’d like to help students get on the path they want within public and global health.
“There are many students who have graduated who I’m in touch with still and who I’ve helped get jobs, and that’s really gratifying,” she said.
Many students undertaking the Global Health minor are grateful Berenbaum is staying onboard.
“One of my favorite things about [Berenbaum] is the resources she brings to the table with all her professional experience in so many different forms of public health,” Anna Dennis ’17.5 said. Dennis came to Middlebury thinking that she might be interested in public health, and Berenbaum’s Introduction to Public Health Policy reaffirmed her interest both on an academic and professional level.
“I love teaching … and I love the students,” Berenbaum said. “Every semester I’m like, ‘I would adopt all of you.’”
(11/19/14 11:54pm)
The cold has finally arrived. Snow has carpeted the grass and framed the buildings with a border of white. Temperatures are dropping and freezing drizzles make walks to class ordeals. Those poor unfortunate souls who have to make the trek to Twilight or the Mahaney Center for the Arts know the pain of biting wind and icy rain. It’s almost winter here, and it’s that time when we break out the hot chocolate, throw on some sweaters, and insulate our rooms from the cold outside. Why brave the cold when our warm rooms have Netflix, good books, and food? This is, indeed, that time of year when the Ross J-term Challenge starts to make a little bit of sense. When it gets to January and the temperatures tumble down below zero, it’s hard to find a reason to ever leave the building.
I often want nothing more than to just lie in bed with a mug of cider and a good book and forget about the wintry weather outside. But I’ve come to believe that it is the winter, more than any other time of the year, when getting outside and away is most important. No other time during the year is movement more limited, and no other time of year is movement more vital to our mental health.
We need to get out. Often we hear of so-called “cabin fever,” which suggests that people go a little insane when cooped up in one building due to inclement weather. This is real, and it’s particularly bad in a dorm environment. All of us have small rooms, for one thing. We also live in extreme proximity to dozens of other students, who we see every day. So many people kept inside for a long period of time will naturally cause conflicts to arise. Diversification of scenery and people, then, is important to keep our minds and our communities peaceful.
I’m not just suggesting the typical method of walking to another Middlebury building to hang out, however. I believe that what we really need during those short, bitterly cold winter days is a complete change of location. At the very least, a trip into town can prove to be immensely valuable. Bundling up to brave the negative temperatures probably doesn’t sound all that appealing, but if you can survive the ten-minute walk to a cafe in town, I’ve found that the mental liberation brings relief. That metaphorical gray cloud that hangs over many of us during the winter isn’t so much a result of the cold itself, but rather a consequence of long stretches of stagnation. We need to move. It is essential to see something else besides the college, to break the monotony, to bring some form of change to our everyday lives. The skies are stagnant enough; when we aren’t going anywhere either, it makes sense that we feel depressed and gloomy. Seeing the same thing every day will have that effect.
Last year, I found my respite in skiing. Almost every afternoon I took the trip up to the Snow Bowl and skied for a couple hours. They were short trips, but they made a world of difference — I never felt trapped or affected by the cold. Even just the ride up into the mountains allowed me to get somewhere different. The trees and mountains were welcome changes to the gray buildings of the college.
It seems, then, that the main effect of the winter weather is to reduce our worlds down to small boxes. Bitter coldness traps us indoors, makes us unwilling to change our scenery and compels us to seek warmth and avoid the weather. Entire days become contained within one or two buildings, with only the shortest of walks between them. This does not happen during any other season. It’s a unique effect of winter, and it makes us feel imprisoned. In effect, it imprisons us. It is up to each of us to break out of that box. We need to get out, to walk around, to sit and be in a place that’s entirely separate of the college. You can see the weight of Seasonal Affective Disorder on students all throughout campus, but I strongly believe that we are not at the mercy of the cold weather. In my experience, the depressing stagnation of winter can be combated with only a short walk and a change of scenery.
Artwork by VAASU TANEJA
(11/13/14 1:15pm)
Last Sunday, I walked into the editorial office a few minutes before 5 p.m., as I’ve done most Sundays for the past two years, eager to discuss whatever it was we had decided to editorialize on that week. But instead of being greeted by the rest of the editorial staff, I found an empty and dark office. Someone — not even another editor — was working in the back room. I asked if she had heard anything about a rescheduled meeting and she said she hadn’t. But she had come to the office to do work with another editor, which suggested maybe there had been a change. When my fellow editor showed up and saw me sitting confused in the office, she started laughing, realizing what had happened. The meeting had been pushed until later in the evening so that we all could go to President Liebowitz’s forum on social life. And of course, the Editor-in-Chief had made the decision over email, forgetting that for seven days I was cut off of the Internet entirely.
Constant connectivity is something we all take for granted. Professors make last minute changes to assignments by emailing the class. When an unknown concept comes up on a homework assignment, we assume the answer is only a few seconds of Googling away. Most of these conveniences are exactly that — convenient. But sometimes it seems we are too connected. We spend hours scrolling through Twitter instead of writing that next paper on Shakespeare and we stress over finding that perfect angle for the next selfie we’re going to send out to 1000 of our closest friends. This is why I decided to unplug for an entire week. No internet at all and no phone on me all day to answer the question: is it even possible to unplug in today’s hyper-connected age?
When my editors and I first came up with this idea, I have to say I was a bit worried. The Internet and technology are huge parts of my life. My first concern was social. So many plans are made spur of the moment through text message; surely if I don’t have my phone on me, I’ll never see my friends again. And beyond the initial comments of ‘wow, I don’t think I could ever leave the Internet’, some of my friends had pretty serious concerns about my project. One of my friends insisted that I carry my phone on me on mute. If something horrible were to happen, he warned, no one would be able to get a hold of me and ‘the whole world would fall apart.’
On the first day of my tech fast, I spoke with Professor of Psychology Barbara Hofer, who is currently teaching a class titled ‘Psychology and Emerging Technologies’ where she and her students examine the ways the proliferation of technology has affected our lives. She explained that this anxiety about being disconnected from the internet is common among college-age individuals.
“The first year I taught this class, in 2011, there was a group of students who said ‘we want to find out what happens when students have to stay off Facebook,’” she said. “They were going to randomly assign students conditions: there was a group that could stay on Facebook and there was a group that had to stay off Facebook from Friday through Monday … they had a prediction of such dire distress that I actually had to get Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval to do the study because you can’t predict this level of distress and not get approval.” However, the study found that, given the opportunity to disconnect from Facebook, students responded in the complete opposite way and in fact benefited from being offline.
“The people who stayed off Facebook for a few days showed less of every single one of the distress measures,” Hofer said. “In many ways they were grateful for the opportunity and excuse to avoid using it for a few days.”
Similarly, after only the first few days of being away from the Internet, I could tell my world wasn’t going to end.
Email was consistently the hardest part of the fast. I told my professors that I wouldn’t be receiving emails and had an automated message set up, informing anyone who tried to email me what I was doing and why I wouldn’t receive their message for a week. I had one professor, for whom I am a TA, print out an email exchange with the TAs’ planning help sessions and put it in my mailbox so I’d be in the loop. But still, I was tempted to check my email. Especially during the first day of my fast, I found that, whenever I opened my computer, I reflexively clicked on the Google Chrome item without a second thought.
After a week away from my email, I had 105 unread messages in my ‘primary’ inbox on Gmail (thanks, Google filters!). And of those emails, maybe 20 or 30 of them were consequential and not a single one was critically important. That was one of the more eye-opening parts of this fast for me: that most of the emails we feel so urged to read are not all that important. With email on our smartphones, it’s expected that communication is immediate and that everyone is reachable at any hour of the day. Before I disconnected, I know when I’d be lying in bed trying to go to sleep and hear my phone buzz with an email, I’d roll over and check it because it felt so urgent. But once I was forced to ignore all my emails, I realized I have control over things like that and that 10:48 p.m. email from Bernie Sanders’ email list can probably wait until the morning.
Productivity was another change. The internet has a tendency to be an enormous time sink for people. How many times have you heard someone complain about not having free time, but then in the same breath talk about the two hours they wasted on Facebook? Engagement with social media is no longer talked about as free time; it’s started to feel like an obligation for people. No longer do we sit down and focus our attention on one single assignment for a long period of time. Now it’s five minutes of reading, then respond to a text, then read another paragraph, then jump on Facebook for 45 minutes, but wait, just one more Buzzfeed list, and then…
With the Internet off, it quickly became easier to focus on my work. That isn’t to say I didn’t waste time. Procrastination isn’t new and unique to the Internet. But during my week offline, procrastination meant reading a book that wasn’t for class, or spending an extra hour over lunch with friends.
A common criticism you often hear about the so-called ‘Internet generation’ is that we don’t know how to socialize. We are so caught up in being online, that we can’t form meaningful relationships anymore without the mediation of a glowing screen. Of course, often what we are doing online is socializing, but it’s a different form of socializing. I didn’t do this fast with Luddite aspirations of ending the Internet, and I definitely reject the notion that our generation doesn’t know how to connect with other people. But I think there’s something to be said about the quality of attention we give people face to face.
(11/13/14 5:06am)
In late September, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced its plan to divest its money from investments in fossil fuels. The fund, with nearly $860 million in assets, announced that it would divest roughly seven percent of its funds currently invested in fossil fuels.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, established by Rockefeller heirs in 1940, is a smaller organization in assets than the better-known Rockefeller Foundation. The fund’s announcement of divestment, a small amount of money when compared to the vast amount of capital in the fossil fuel industry, attracted great attention.
The announcement, part of a broader initiative, was timed to follow several large environmental marches around the world, and to precede the United Nations climate change summit in New York City.
At the College, the announcement triggered discussion and reinvigorated the divestment movement that had started. The move by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund is of particular interest to the College because it is divesting its investment from Investure, the money manager the college entrusted its endowment to. Students from two campus organizations, the Sunday Night Group and Socially Responsible Investment Club, gathered last Sunday to discuss their plans to carry the current momentum to campus and push for change.
Greta Neubauer ’14.5, a leader of the divestment movement at the College, stressed the importance of the movement. “I think divestment is important is because of the power we have as an institution to shift the narrative around the fossil fuel industry... I believe Middlebury has responsibility to use its social capital and its real capital to make a statement that is in alignment with its mission by divesting from fossil fuels,” she said.
She added, “The movement is saying that we need to take this part of our orbit into consideration. What happens on campus is not all that happens. Our institution actually has an impact in other places and we cannot be actively funding the extraction of fossil fuels.”
The College’s one billion dollar endowment is currently in a collective fund that has around three percent of its money in the fossil fuel industry.
Talking about her motivation to join the movement, Taylor Cook ’18 said that she was shocked by the fact that the College, a symbol of sustainable environmental practice, is invested in fossil fuels. She wants to join the movement to push the College to a higher standard.
Sophie Vaughan ’17 talked about her motivation to join the movement. She said, “If we don’t help push for a sustainable planet, who is? Because if you look historically, a lot of movements have been powered by students.”
The primary obstacle for divestment comes from the outstanding performance of Investure and its close business relationship with the College.
Neubauer commented on this complication in the process. “The board doesn’t want to leave Investure. Investure has done really well for the College, especially in the recession, and since the college has worked with them, they have gotten really good returns for the College, done better than peer groups, peer financial managers... We think that there is a way the College can divest that won’t hurt the endowment,” she said.
Neubauer talked about the long-term risk of fossil fuel investment in the context of the worsening climate crisis and emerging renewable energy prospects. She said that it seems that either Investure has to change or the College has to leave for the divestment to happen. Good investment return is not good enough, she claimed.
Last month, Governor of Vermont Peter Shumlin, responded to questions regarding the divestment of Vermont’s pension fund from fossil fuels during the governor’s debate. “It is not the sharpest tool in the drawer,” he said. He stressed his effort spent on the renewable energy implementation in the state.
“Peter Shumlin, as governor of Vermont, has a lot of tools in his toolbox. And I would like him to use some of them,” Jeannie Bartlett ’15 said in response to the governor’s opinion. Neubauer agrees that the state should use some of its tools more effectively than it does now.
Though the record of success of the movement is mixed, the momentum of the movement seems growing. Harvard and Yale both declined to divest. Stanford agreed to divest, but only from coal, while still invested in fossil fuels. However, in recent years, a huge number of individuals and organizations have pledged to sell assets tied to fossil fuel companies. The amount pledged by individuals and 180 institutions, including pension funds and local governments, is worth more than $50 billion.
“We want the College to divest in conjunction with carbon neutrality. We would love to see that the College divests by 2016, so that we are really, honestly and truly carbon neutral in all of our operations. And we also think that it would be really powerful for [President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz] to divest before he leaves the school. He is going to leave a legacy, and to leave a legacy of not divesting from fossil fuels when that is the direction of history is not the one that we think he should choose. So we are really hopeful that Liebowitz, who is committed to making Middlebury a climate leader, makes that choice,” Neubauer said.
(11/13/14 5:02am)
On Oct. 30, Michael Geisler, vice president for Language Schools and Schools Abroad, Chief Risk Officer, and Professor of German and Dr. Mark Peluso, the College Medical Director and College Physician, sent out a school-wide “Important Ebola Update.”
The message included new policies that will be instituted to minimize the threat of Ebola to students on campus and abroad. It said, “Effective immediately…Middlebury will not support sponsored travel to countries identified by the Center for Disease Control as high-risk areas.”
This means that the College will offer neither credit nor assistance to students, faculty or staff who perform any type of activity in Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone, the only exception being if the community member can provide evidence that they have “special expertise and training to assist in the humanitarian effort.” If a College community member were to travel to any of the high-risk areas, they would be required to abstain from returning to campus for 21 days — the maximum amount of time the virus takes to incubate.
This announcement comes on the heels of months of sensational news headlines, most of which have focused on the few cases that have been diagnosed in America. The severity of the virus and the lack of readily available cures have unquestionably contributed to the media circus.
Despite the amount of attention the American Ebola outbreak has gotten in the media, both Geisler and Peluso insist that the threat of an on-campus outbreak is incredibly low, especially with the College’s new policies.
Peluso said, “The risk of getting infected with Ebola is extremely low at this time…with Middlebury’s policy of asking people to wait for 21 days before returning to campus, the risk of someone becoming sick on our campuses and spreading diseases is extremely low.”
Regardless of the incredibly low risk of an Ebola case on any of the College’s campuses, members of the College Emergency Planning and Preparedness Team and the Emergency Core Team decided that it would be helpful to notify the community of the travel restrictions to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone while also informing them of the required 21-day leave from campus that a community member must take upon return from one of these countries.
If a community member were to disregard the new policies set forth and return to campus immediately after coming into possible contact with the Ebola virus, the College would be prepared. Peluso said that the team would “ask the person to stay where they were, and immediately notify the Vermont Department of Health. Consultation with infectious disease experts and CDC would quickly determine the next steps, and Vermont is prepared to transport and treat people with possible Ebola virus disease.”
Fortunately, Geisler is not aware of any student whose study abroad or traveling plans were or will be affected by these new policy changes. In addition, no student has come forward to say that they have been in any of the high-risk countries.
There are students abroad in European countries that have announced cases of Ebola, like Spain. However, the risk is still extremely low and the College is not taking any extra measures for students abroad in Madrid or any other places outside of Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone with confirmed cases.
Geisler said, “We assume that local health authorities will do their job as do ours over here. We do not anticipate that this is going to impact any of the Middlebury students in one of the Middlebury programs that we have.”
In response to national media outlets’ handling of the Ebola virus, Peluso thinks that the stories have become more balanced now that there is more experience with the illness. There has been a lot more coverage on people recovering from the Ebola virus in U.S. hospitals.
He added, “What I would like to see more of are stories that focus on the need for more health professionals in West Africa to prevent spread in that region, as well as stories about people who volunteered and did not get sick.”
(11/13/14 3:42am)
While most states have elected governors and legislators who will begin their terms in 2015, the identity of Vermont’s future governor still remains in question and will be decided in a secret vote by the 180 person State Legislature in 2015. Election Day ended with incumbent Governor Peter Shumlin (D) holding 47 percent and Republican candidate Scott Milne holding about 45 percent, with 92 percent of voting precincts reporting. Dan Feliciano of the Libertarian Party was the next runner up after Milne. Both Shumlin and Milne declined to declare the election either a victory or a loss, opting to wait until Wednesday when all the votes were counted.
Once all the votes were counted, however, Shumlin ended up with 89,883 votes, at 46.4 percent, and Milne with 87,788 votes, at 45.3 percent. This gave Shumlin a margin of about 2000 votes over Milne, a low enough margin for Milne to demand a recount. Vermont has a long history of strong third party candidates who notably affect the election, and this year was no different. Including Shumlin and Milne, there were a total of seven candidates running for governor. Feliciano, a Libertarian, ended up holding 4.4 percent of the vote. Emily Peyton, an Independent, came in next with 1.7 percent. Pete Diamondstone of the Liberty Union Party held 0.9 percent, independent Bernard Peters held 0.7 percent and independent Cris Ericson held 0.6 percent.
Although Shumlin won more votes than any other candidate, the Vermont Constitution requires that the governor be elected by winning 50 percent of the votes, plus one. If this does not happen, the decision then goes to the Legislature. It is not uncommon for the Legislature to have to choose the governor. A single gubernatorial candidate has failed to win the simple majority 23 times in Vermont history, including in 2010, when Shumlin first ran for governor against the Republican candidate, the then-incumbent Lieutenant Governor Brian Dubie. Shumlin received 49.5 percent of the popular vote in that election and was chosen by the legislature. In 2012, Shumlin had a decisive victory, winning 58 percent of the popular vote.
The fate of the governor is now in the hands of the Vermont House and Senate, both of which have a Democratic majority. The Legislature typically chooses the candidate who holds the plurality of votes, but legislators are technically free to choose whichever candidate they would like. However, the last time the Legislature chose the candidate that did not hold the plurality was in 1853 when incumbent Erastus Fairbanks of the Whig party held 43.9 percent of the popular vote, but Democratic candidate John S. Robinson, winner of 31.0 percent of the votes, was chosen by the Legislature instead.
The absence of definitive election results leaves room for speculation about the future. The lack of a simple majority and unexpected success of a Republican candidate challenging the incumbent make a clear statement about the current political climate in Vermont.
“We’re hearing a very clear message, that folks are frustrated, that they’re hurting, that with all the talk of economic recovery that’s going mostly to the top 1 percent, too many Vermonters are still struggling to pay their bills, working too many jobs to make ends meet,” Shumlin said.
“I am incredibly grateful to all of the Vermonters who cast their ballots on my behalf yesterday,” Milne said.
The close nature of the race surprised voters and candidates alike. The most recent polls before the election predicted Shumlin winning 47 percent of the vote, but with a 12 percent lead over Milne. Candidates and voters expected Feliciano to draw more votes than he ultimately did.
“It was never evident to me that Scott Milne had a chance to win,” said Darcie Johnston, Feliciano’s political strategist. Feliciano and his campaign team do not regret his staying in the election, even though had he chosen to duck out of the race Milne may have gotten his votes and won. Johnston suggested that some voters may have come out for Feliciano who would not have considered voting for Milne. Feliciano and his campaign team did not think either Feliciano or Milne would stand a chance against Shumlin.
Milne received minimal outside support on his campaign. Most notably, the Republican Governors Association chose not to invest in Milne, assuming he would be no competition for Shumlin.
Former Vermont Republican Governor and Executive-in-Residence at the College Jim Douglas ’72 was surprised that Feliciano drew so few votes and was disappointed that Vermont’s Republican minority failed to unite for Milne.
“When it comes down to it, they say, ‘I ought to pick someone who’s got a shot,’” Douglas said of voters who chose Milne over Feliciano. Such voters made Feliciano less of a serious candidate.
Shumlin could become the first incumbent governor in 50 years to lose to a challenger. The situation speaks strongly to how Vermonters are feeling about the direction of the state, and Shumlin recognized that fact.
“It’s a time for me to regroup,” Shumlin said. “You would have to be tone deaf not to be hearing voters’ concerns.” This may have implications for how Shumlin conducts his next two years as governor, as he sees that there is currently discontent and division among Vermont’s electorate.
“What is clear is that the majority of Vermonters do not agree with the path that we are on,” Milne said, referring to the fact that the majority of votes went to candidates other than Shumlin.
“I’m voting against whoever (are) the incumbents, just to shake things up,” Rene Churchill, a resident of Waterbury Center, said. Some voters appear to have just been looking for change, whatever the change may be.
The next two years will show whether Shumlin listened to the electorate or continued with projects that were controversial, such as transitioning Vermont to a single-payer healthcare system. However, the power to decide who ultimately becomes governor still lies in the Legislature when they convene in January of 2015.
Other elected positions in Vermont were not nearly as close as the gubernatorial rate. Incumbent Peter Welch of the Democratic Party won Vermont’s only seat in the US House of Representatives with 64.4 percent of the vote. He was running against Republican Mark Donka, who won 31.1 percent. Three candidates ran as independents, including Cris Ericson, who also ran for governor. Matthew Andrews ran for the Liberty Union Party.
Senators Bernie Sanders, Independent, and Patrick Leahy, Democrat, were not up for reelection this year. Sanders and Leahy will both be returning to Washington and to a Republican dominated Congress.
“Whoever controls the Senate it’s only going to be by one or two votes,” Leahy said. “Either way, whether it’s the Democrats or the Republicans what I would urge is let’s try working together for a while.” Leahy is hopeful about the future and does not view being in the minority party as a bad thing. Leahy, about to begin his 40th year as Senator, cited seniority, rather than majority, as being more important for holding power in the Senate.
Sanders, on the other hand, fears that a Republican majority Congress will cut spending for education, Medicare, and Medicaid, as well as give tax breaks to the wealthy.
“That is not a good agenda for the American people,” Sanders, who is in the second year of his second term as senator, said.
(11/13/14 3:03am)
Ryan Brewster ’14 wanted to capture the true community-based ethos of Middlebury College. Seeking to highlight the pride associated with the College’s spirit, Brewster spent his last semester at Middlebury wondering how he could best contribute to this dialogue.
“You go to the bookstore, and you see normal, generic, preppy clothing that doesn’t speak to the character of Middlebury,” Brewster said. “When it comes to capturing the real pulse of students, it’s lacking.”
From Brewster’s realization of this disconnect, Ron’s Closet Apparel Company was born.
“I saw it as my job to break down the gap between the students desire to identify themselves as a Midd student and their actual ability to do so,” he said.
Ron’s Closet Apparel Company, founded in February 2014, seeks to preserve and celebrate the many unique traditions of the College through clothing design. Brewster is in charge of all external facets of the company, such as design and marketing, while Jake Lessing ’13.5 plays a supportive role and is in charge of the legal side of the company.
For Brewster, clothing design seemed like the natural avenue to achieve his goal because he views fashion as a direct manifestation of personal expression.
“Midd students have this niche community that they are a part of,” Brewster said. “I thought clothing design would be a really great way to represent that culture. I really see one’s identity and self-expression communicated through what they are wearing. It’s what is right in front of you, and it’s the first evaluation you have.”
After its initial launch, the company experienced significant growing pains. At first, Brewster tried a top down business model approach in which he made all of the company’s inventory available upfront. With little marketing or advertising experience, Brewster realized that selling his product was more nuanced and complicated than he anticipated. With time however, Brewster realized how to create a business model that would best reflect this clientele.
“We are such a small, tight-knit group of students with, for the most part, shared beliefs and values,” he said. “I realized that the business model that would stem from that is one that takes advantage of this kind of tight-knit group of thinkers.”
Brewster credits Tee Spring, a company that helps designers sell custom apparel online, as the platform that really propelled Ron’s Closet Apparel forward. Tee Spring helps Brewster set a sales goal and give an estimate of how much each shirt will cost.
Then, Brewster launches a social media campaign to publicize his product. From there, when enough enthusiasm is solicited and the initial goal is met, the product can be printed and sold to the individual buyers. If the sales goal is not met, the buyers will receive a complete refund of their order. Brewster values this business model because it emphasizes the grassroots nature of the company, putting the prerogative on the consumer.
“The fact that the campaign cannot succeed unless people are involved makes buyers feel invested in the company,” he said. “It’s in the buyers’ best interest to promote the shirts and make sure they get printed. This is how I really want it to stay. This crowd-funded model really helps the products to have character behind them.”
Under its newfound business model, the company has had five complete campaigns. The company has sold around 70 shirts, of which the “Like a Prayer” shirt accounts for 25. In addition, Ron’s Closet Facebook page has over 300 likes. To help the company gain visibility, Ron’s Closet has started offering pro-bono services for clubs or events on campus that need marketing materials.
Brewster explained that his path to graphic design was not a typical one. Although Brewster has been an artist his entire life, he was not introduced to graphic design until his senior year of high school. His career as a graphic designer started to take off in his sophomore year at the College when he was asked to design that year’s orientation t-shirt and brochure.
As Coordinator of Communications and Social Media for GlobeMed, Brewster was offered a graphic design internship at Gardens for Health International in Rwanda, the club’s partner organization. With the pressure to minimize the budget as much as possible, Gardens for Health International had very limited and outdated communication with the outside world. By working to create infographics that brought life back into the organization, Brewster began to see graphic design in a new light.
“Through my work, I developed a greater passion for design work and how it can actually do good in the world,” he said.
As a Molecular Biology and Biochemistry major who is currently working at Harvard Medical School, Brewster exemplifies how the success of his business is a direct reflection of what he learned from a liberal arts education.
“The liberal arts really taught me to think holistically and be critical of existing models,” he said. “It also encouraged me to think outside of the box and be willing to fail.”
Brewster calls for artists from all backgrounds to get involved, and stresses that experience is of little importance.
“We are looking for young designers, creative minds, anyone who wants to get involved with the company. Experience is really irrelevant here because we are really naïve as well.”
As for the future, Brewster hopes to build Ron’s Closet as both a clothing brand and a collective of like-minded graphic designers who want to use their artistic abilities to give back to the College community.
“My vision is for the company to serve as a guild, and a marketing hub for the college,” Brewster said. “I hope in years to come that students will be eager to follow up what I’ve started and make this a clothing initiative where designers not only can submit to Ron’s Closet but also gain visibility and experience as artists and learn important marketing skills.”
(11/13/14 12:37am)
Despite having a wave of momentum behind them going into Saturday’s NESCAC semifinal matchup, the Middlebury women’s soccer team was unable to withstand a strong Williams offense and fell to the Ephs by a score of 0-2 on Saturday, Nov. 8.
Williams came out firing early in the game, shooting six of the first seven shots within the first 30 minutes of the game. The Ephs had their best opportunity at minute twenty-eight in the game, but were thwarted by Panther goalie Emily Eslinger ’18. Despite the pressure, Eslinger and the Middlebury defense remained strong during the barrage, and continued to fend off Williams throughout the first half.
With a scoreless game heading into the second half, both teams were playing aggressively coming out of the break with a trip to the NESCAC championship on the line.
The Panthers had a big opportunity at minute sixty-seven off of a free kick from Moria Sloan ’15 and an ensuing shot from Carter Talgo ’15 off Sloan’s rebound that sailed over the net.
After 71 minutes of failed opportunities, Williams’ Alison Magruder took advantage of a Middlebury mistake and finished a shot off of a stolen pass to put the Ephs up 1-0.
Up one goal, the Ephs continued the pressure on Middlebury’s defense and, five minutes after their first goal, scored a second after Williams’ Kristie Kirshe finished a header off of a cross from Crystal Lewin.
Despite a number of opportunities after the Kirshe’s goal from both ends, both teams failed to score after the 76th minute.
By the end of the game, Williams had significantly outshot Middlebury by a margin of 17-9. Carter Talgo led the Panthers in shooting with three shots in the game, while Amy Martin fired off the only shot on goal for the Panthers. Kristi Kirshe led Williams in shooting with five shots.
While Middlebury lost in the shooting game, the Panthers had more corner kick opportunities but were unfortunately unable to capitalize on them. Despite the loss Middlebury’s Emily Eslinger stepped up in net, making six saves on eight shots on goal.
Meanwhile Williams goalkeeper Hannah Van Wetter earned the shutout with one save on one shot on goal. It was Van Wetter’s 14th shutout of the season, and her sixth straight match without yielding a goal.
The lost against Williams leaves Middlebury with a final season record of 10-7. The Panthers did not receive a bid to the NCAA tournament.
Meanwhile the Ephs, who were ranked sixth nationally going into the game, played Connecticut College in the NESCAC final and lost in penalty kicks.
For the seniors on the Middlebury team, the early end to the season is a low point in a four-year career that saw the team qualify for three consecutive NCAA tournaments. Last season, the Panthers rode a 19-game winning streak all the way to the national semifinals, earning their first such trip in program history. The 2013 Panthers also won first NESCAC championship since 2006.
(11/12/14 9:53pm)
Sunday, Nov. 9 marked the fifth annual TEDx event at Middlebury College. TED is a non-profit organization that seeks to spark dialogue and spread ideas through talks, touching on anything from science to society to art. Since its inception in 1984, the organization has garnered massive global attention and now hosts an average of nine conferences per day around the world. Time and time again, TED talks have thrilled, captivated and startled audiences by uprooting pre-conceived notions and exposing innovative ideas and creations. With eight dynamic live speakers, two video presentations and an eclectic range of topics, the Middlebury conference proved to be no exception.
Each speaker took a different approach to the theme “Living in the Question: The Ongoing Process of Curiosity.” Will Nash, a Middlebury professor of American Studies, unraveled the importance of curiosity. As he explained, the greatest value lies not in an answer but rather in the continual exploration of a question – “the path around the circuit.”
“Access the path as many ways as possible,” Nash said. “You’ll be richer for it.”
Middlebury alumni Shane Scranton ’12.5 and Nate Beatty ’13.5 demonstrated the power of curiosity through technological experimentation. They showed the audience a prototype of the oculus rift, a lens that allows wearers to access a virtual reality – an image projected onto the lens to encompass the user’s entire field of vision. This type of technology was originally used to create immersive gaming experiences. Scranton and Beatty took it to the next level by developing technology that could transfer 3-D models of real buildings and landscapes to the oculus rift.
“Virtual reality takes away the need for architectural metaphors,” Scranton explained.
Renderings, 2-D images that Scranton referred to as “extrapolations of space,” require the brain to fill in the surroundings, whereas virtual reality allows architects to inhabit their own designs.
While Scranton and Beatty’s presentation dealt with innovative ways of using space, a talk delivered by Mordecai-Mark Mac Low, a curator of astrophysics at the American Museum of National History in New York, addressed physical reality on a much grander scale: the expanding universe. In his fascinating narrative, he explained that visible light has been traveling and stretching through the universe since the Big Bang. Scientists attribute the accelerating rate of expansion to a mysterious, hypothetical force known as dark energy, perfectly exemplifying that even within the realm of physics, uncertainty can still reign supreme.
Other talks from the conference challenged societal norms by addressing issues of sexuality and gender. Lourdes Ashley Hunter captivated the audience with her riveting stage presence and powerful rhetoric on the transgender community, particularly transgender women of color. A healer, orator and academic, she expressed the hope for a reconstruction of the gender binary that would eradicate oppression against transgender individuals.
“From birth, kids are indoctrinated to prescribed gender norms,” Hunter said. “[But] gender is an explosion of expression,” existing on a spectrum rather than in black-and-white terms.
Her riveting oratory resonated strongly with the audience, and provided an empowering voice to the trans-color movement.
Similarly, Rachel Liddell ’15 received an enthusiastic reception from her peers during her talk on sex, politics and power. Beginning with the story of a “dickish doodler” who vandalized one of her campaign posters, Liddell went on to challenge society’s tendency to sexualize women in power. From naked depictions of Cleopatra’s death to the media’s fixation on Hillary Clinton’s appearance, Liddell pointed out that we subject women to treatment that undermines female authority and disregards their pluri-potentiality as individuals.
Liddell’s grace, humor and charisma shined through in her speech, particularly during her analysis of the public’s obsession with Clinton’s pantsuits. Furthermore, her words provoked deep introspection within the room, as she challenged her peers to not fall into the same patterns of judgment that have long disadvantaged women and hindered societal progress.
Meanwhile, author Jack Hitt offered an insightful commentary on the changing societal attitudes toward legalizing marijuana in the United States. Engaging the audience with his easygoing but magnetic speaking style, he noted a dichotomy between “information you say you believe” and “information you’ll act on.” The latter, which leads to more widespread acceptance, is gained through everyday conversations.
“Revolutions don’t happen on election day,” Hitt said. “[Instead,] local cohorts show us the reality of lived life.”
In other words, interactions with normal people who happen to smoke pot subvert the negative stereotype of “loser stoners,” thus increasing societal acceptance of pot legalization.
By far the most visually enthralling presentation was choreographer and Assistant Professor of Dance Christal Brown’s beautifully improvised dance, which exhibited movement as a powerful medium of expression. For the first part, a screen behind Brown channeled her inner monologue. “Dance is my truest form of communication,” the opening line read. “Which is ironic because you have no idea what I’m trying to say, lol.” However, the audience soon came to understand her fluid movements as physical manifestations of her subconscious impulses.
“I speak volumes without saying anything,” Brown said after she had finished dancing.
Brown encouraged the audience to engage in new forms of expression, leaving them with the advice, “Before you think, respond with anything you have at your disposal.”
The TEDx Middlebury conference showcased a fascinating range of ideas that stretched the audience’s minds from the Big Bang to the Roman Empire, from virgin lovers to dark energy and from inside the clunky lens of an oculus rift to the far-reaching ends of the galaxy. Each talk was delivered in a uniquely resounding manner, creating a diverse panel of voices from which to draw inspiration and insight. Above all, however, the TEDx talks served to unite the Middlebury community through a tremendously significant idea – that it is not about having the right answer, but rather about asking the right questions.
(11/12/14 9:33pm)
The Jupiter String Quartet is a family of musicians in every sense of the word: the group began as a childhood musing and has flourished into adulthood over the years. It was honed through college all-nighters, strengthened by the bonds of marriage, and is now blossoming into one of the most renowned string quartets on the planet. Their secret undoubtedly lies in the intimate personal connections that are so vital to excellent chamber music. Jupiter has won countless awards around the globe for their masterful communication and stunned audiences everywhere with their energy and talent. Middlebury cannot wait to welcome them back to campus this Sunday, Nov. 16 at 3 p.m. in the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts Concert Hall.
Chamber music is one of the most difficult and mysterious musical configurations. It requires players to not only pay unwavering attention to their peers, but also to execute their own parts with detailed precision. It is not as structured and foolproof as an orchestra, yet still more absolute and demanding than a modern jazz or rock ensemble. Every note is heard, every microtone off-pitch noted. The personal musicianship of each player is naked before the audience. Yet the secret behind a magical, gripping chamber performance is not one’s own musical excellence, but rather the way it fits with that of the three other players. Attending a chamber recital is watching and listening to four people conjure a temporal realm, a celestial world where the creative energies of all members are understood without words, a communicative work of art in real-time. Playing chamber music is the closest thing we have to telepathy, and Jupiter’s magic is that they have mastered it.
On Sunday, Jupiter will play three monumental chamber works. They will start with Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier, transcribed for string quartet by WA Mozart.The Well-Tempered Klavier is a monumental work, a sort of treatise on the very material of music. Any person interested in music — be it classical, rock, dubstep or any other genre — would take interest in it. Bach, who knew the foundations of music better than anyone before or since, deconstructs the fabric of the music and sensationally re-engineers it across all keys. As an amateur pianist who has the pleasure of playing these stunning pieces, I cannot wait to hear them transcribed to strings, to hear what four different minds can do as opposed to just one.
Following the Well-Tempered Klavier, Jupiter will perform a 1939 Bela Bartók quartet. Written in Hungary during the outbreak of the second World War, Bartók’s sixth quartet brings a cool air of dry dissonance from modern Europe. It was a dark period in the composer’s life — he was starkly averse to the rise of Nazism in neighboring Austria and feared it would overtake his native Hungary as well, yet he was unable to leave due to his mother’s failing health. The manuscript of the quartet is pulsing with these conflicts, an embodiment of all the emotions and sentiments coursing through Bartók’s life. To feel them recreated by Jupiter will be a heart-wrenching experience indeed.
Saving the best for last, Jupiter will end with Beethoven’s 15th String Quartet in A minor. My favorite deaf composer had absolutely no connection to the aural realm when he wrote
this quartet two years before his death. Consequently, this piece, among his other late pieces, was written through purely intellectual motives. His collection of late quartets were highly controversial when they were published due to their deep emotional and intellectual content—legend says that the composer himself cried when he read his work. Only a century after their publication did these pieces become popular again. This composition is not one you can listen to as background music; it is a journey that grips all the attention it can find.
The Jupiter String Quartet, which enjoys a fruitful relationship with the Middlebury Performing Arts Series (this is their sixth visit) is not an event to miss. Not only is every Jupiter concert a collection of highly talented individuals, it is also a family gathering. As such we will see the masks taken off and the music flow freely. With a repertoire this stunning, I know where I will be on Sunday afternoon. Thanks to a generous endowment, this concert is entirely free, with no tickets required! Take the afternoon to treat yourself and experience the glory of a world-class quartet.
