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(10/22/14 10:47pm)
Nobel laureate and Columbia University Professor of Biological Sciences Martin Chalfie visited the College last Thursday, Oct. 16 to give two lectures. One talk focused on his research on the green fluorescent protein (GFP), which earned him the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and the other on his current work on the molecular basis of the sense of touch.
In his first lecture, “GFP: Lighting Up Light,” Chalfie recounted the story of GFP’s discovery with humor, humility, and advice for aspiring scientists. Chalfie described GFP as a biochemical lantern and homing beacon that enables molecular biologists to watch the movement of proteins in living cells and organisms. Chalfie gave several specific examples of GFP’s use, including how scientists had used it to track the movement of viruses from cell to cell, the metastasis of cancer and the division of cells during embryonic development. There have been close to 160,000 published papers citing GFP.
The story of GFP began with the life of Chalfie’s Nobel co-laureate Osamu Shimomura. Shimomura, who was the first scientist to isolate GFP, followed an unconventional path to his life in science. When Shimomura was sixteen years old he dropped out of school to work in a paint factory to support his family. He moved from Nagasaki, Japan to a valley close to the city in 1945, fortuitously avoiding the blast of the atomic bomb. Shimomura decided to matriculate into the first college rebuilt in Nagasaki, which happened to be a pharmaceutical school.
Shimomura successfully isolated GFP in a marine biology lab, but when he attempted to illuminate the isolated GFP, it wouldn’t light up.
Chalfie explained, “This is where we depart from the scientific method and the standard story about science, because the experiment failed every single time he did it the entire summer. Nothing worked. One night near the end of the summer, he decided to go home because he’d failed once again. He took his prep, threw it in the sink and turned off the light. As he was about to leave the lab he looked back and found that it was glowing brightly. “I want to point out that in biochemistry throwing things in the sink or on the floor or the lab bench is often a very good procedure.”
It turns out that seawater has several important chemicals that enable GFP’s function.
Chalfie first heard about Shimomura’s work in 1989 at a lecture and immediately realized its potential importance. Chalfie worked on incorporating GFP into cells and fusing it to proteins, and in 1993 his work on GFP was on the cover of Science. Soon after, the scientific community embraced GFP as a powerful research tool.
Chalfie thought the story of GFP illustrated the cumulative, collaborative nature of science.
“Scientific progress isn’t something made by one great genius, but a cumulative effort, we as scientists take up ideas of others, modify them by our own experiments, and give them off to others,” he said. “What made GFP Nobel-worthy was not the work of the three of us, but the work of the thousands of people who made it a useful tool.”
Chalfie ended the talk by emphasizing the importance of funding basic research.
“Columbia gave me the freedom to do the experiments I wanted to do. I didn’t have to ask for permission or write a grant to do work on GFP. People outside of science misunderstand when we talk about the grant system. Grants are different from contract. They give you the freedom to go where the science leads you and not be tied up to a contractual obligation. I have found this to be very important, and it was really the only reason we were able to do the work on GFP that ended up working.”
Chalfie’s current work is focused largely on the sense of touch. Scientists largely understand the senses that are prompted by light, like sight, and chemical signaling, like taste and smell, but don’t understand how mechanical signals translate into touch sensation. Chalfie discovered that there are 17 important genes in the mechanosensory system and mapped their relationships with one another. He used them to investigate important questions in the field, including how we habituate touch and how we sense touch so rapidly.
When asked how the winning the Nobel Prize had changed his life, he said, “The first thing is that I get invited to give more talks like this. Before the Nobel, I never had the chance to give a general talk about science and how I thought GFP fit into it. This has given me a platform for me to do that. I’ve been able to interact much more with students. Eight months after the Nobel my niece’s daughter took me into class for show and tell, which was quite nice.”
(10/22/14 7:33pm)
Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland, will visit the College on Oct. 25 to deliver a lecture. Robinson, the seventh and first female President of Ireland, held the office from 1990 to 1997. After leaving office, she became the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, traveling to war-torn regions. Robinson is a member of the group of world leaders known as The Elders, many of them former heads of state who no longer hold public office and work as advocates for peace and human rights. The group was brought together by Nelson Mandela and is chaired by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Robinson has made combating climate change a centerpiece of her international advocacy.
Robinson’s lecture is the Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB)’s fall speaker. It is a public lecture that will take place at 7 p.m. at Mead Chapel. Robinson will speak for approximately an hour and will take questions afterward.
MCAB President Zoe Kaslow ’15 said the Board wanted a speaker that could talk about women’s rights and topics that would apply to a community larger than Middlebury. “Mary Robinson was definitely the number one choice, I think especially because she speaks on so many topics that are relevant to the College,” Kaslow said. Last spring, Kaslow was the co-chair of the Speakers Committee along with Robbie LaCroix ’16 and initiated the plan that would ultimately bring Robinson to campus.
Kaslow said when reading the College’s Mission Statement, the values listed lined up with what Robinson focuses on in her work. “I think she is going to be fantastic, she really has a presence and I think her credentials really speak for themselves,” Kaslow said.
Robinson’s endeavors are similar to the College’s efforts to attain carbon-neutrality by 2016 and embark on other projects in sustainability. In a June 2014 speech to the Freedom and Solidarity Forum, she said, “To put it starkly, the physical world faces potential catastrophe because of climate change and we are running out of time to take the necessary corrective action. We need rapidly and equitably to make the transition to a carbon-neutral world.”
In July of 2014, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Robinson as Special Envoy for Climate Change. She is now the President of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, an organization that focuses on raising awareness of the consequences of climate change for the world’s poor.
Nicholas Orr ’15 is a co-chair of the MCAB Speakers Committee, along with Izzy Kannegieser ’17. “Students are very excited,” Orr said. “I think it’s a very relevant topic and it’s one of the highest-profile speakers we’ve had in the last few years.” The most recent former head of state to visit the College was President Bill Clinton, who delivered the Commencement address in 2007.
The lecture by Robinson also takes place during Fall Family Weekend. “I think it’s a nice thing to take your parents to as well,” Orr said.
(10/22/14 7:32pm)
We have all seen them: the placards on every table in our dining halls hawking EatReal, a student-run organization seeking to advocate for more socially and environmentally responsible food at the College. The idea is to move toward a food system that is local/community-based, humane, fair and ecologically sound. This is in keeping with the socially and environmentally conscious student body we are fortunate to have here at Middlebury. As someone who cares about the health and wellness of our food system, I applaud the students raising awareness of where the College’s food comes from, how it is grown/raised, etc. However, I do not believe that the EatReal movement captures all that is necessary when it comes to what is important about dining hall food. The sources of our food and the methods used to get it to our plates are certainly very important, but what EatReal has thus far failed to address is what is actually IN the food we eat.
On a number of occasions while at Middlebury, I have walked into the dining halls and looked at the ingredient list for items on the menu, only to be disappointed in what I saw: ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup, cornstarch and corn paste, as well as compounds that utilize seemingly every letter of the alphabet, and require several read-throughs to pronounce. Even items whose ingredient lists are not made available, but which you can tell just by noticing their color, are comprised of unnatural ingredients: things like brightly colored ice cream, nacho cheese, neon desserts, fruit juices (especially that fluorescent Passion Orange Guava juice), sodas and sports drinks. Now, I enjoy sipping an ice cold Gatorade as much as the next guy, but is ingesting the color additives it contains (Blue 1, Red 40 and Yellow 5 are the color additives in the two flavors served in our dining halls, according to Gatorade’s website) really worth it, when their effects on our health are unknown?
Of course, a logical solution to what I have said thus far is to simply not eat anything that contains artificial ingredients: avoid ice cream, desserts, nacho cheese, fruit juices, sports drinks, and the like. But upon closer examination, eliminating everything in the dining halls with artificial dyes/colors and corn-derived additives would leave a scarce selection. While a healthy diet is of the utmost importance, a diet that has variety is important if for no other reason than keeping one’s sanity.
So, why is it even important that we make an effort to eliminate ingredients such as corn-derived additives from the College dining halls? According to Michael Pollan, acclaimed food activist and author of the award winning book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, artificial sugars such as high fructose corn syrup contribute heavily to type II diabetes, obesity, heart disease and diet-related cancers, all growing problems in America. The average American gets one fifth of their daily caloric intake from high fructose corn syrup. According to the CDC, one in three Americans born after the year 2000 will have type II diabetes. Not only do these additives impose serious health risks, they also quietly contribute substantially to climate change. Ten calories of fossil fuel energy are required for every single calorie of food energy when producing foods whose bases are comprised of corn and soy. Eliminating highly processed, artificial foods from the dining halls will not only benefit the health of the College community, but also will further our cause of combating climate change.
I am not calling for a paradigm shift in how the College selects what foods to present in the dining halls. Rather, I am advocating for a subtle, but significant, change of thought, from “local” to “simple.” Changing our dining hall menus to eliminate artificial dyes/colors, artificial sweeteners, and nutritionally devoid additives like high fructose corn syrup and corn starch need not involve extensive campaigns, placards on tables, or go-slash webpages. On the contrary, all it would take to eliminate these fake foods from the Middlebury diet is a quick check by the folks at Food Services to see if these substances exist in what we currently buy, and if they do, simply buy other products that do not contain them. My hope is that some day, Middlebury students will be able to walk into our dining halls and peruse the ingredient lists for any menu item without seeing “high fructose” this, or “artificial” that, or any additive whose composition only a Chemistry major would understand. And let’s face it: if you can’t pronounce it, you probably don’t want it on your plate.
Artwork by JENA RITCHEY
ETHAN SIVULICH '16 is from New Gloucester, Maine.
(10/22/14 7:28pm)
The Middlebury Campus sat down with College President Ronald D. Liebowitz to discuss his time at the College. The conversation ranged from when he first became President to some of the changes he has seen at the College in the past years. Liebowitz will depart the College at the conclusion of the school year.
Middlebury Campus (MC): What was it like moving from a role as a Professor at the College to an administrator (specifically Provost and Executive Vice President), and then to the College President? What was it like, as someone within the College, stepping up to become College President?
Ronald D. Liebowitz (RL): Like many things, it had its advantages and disadvantages. In my particular case, I was a tenured member of the faculty, which means I went through the tenure process and then I served in two major academic positions before becoming president — the dean of the faculty and then provost. Having had these opportunities, I was able to learn a lot about the institution, seeing things from many angles, and working with major committees along the way, all of which was so very valuable and a real advantage for me.
The disadvantage coming “from inside” the institution is that, having had to make some tough decisions, sore feelings sometimes linger. When you come into the presidency with a history, you face some additional challenges when trying to move the institution forward. So, there are pluses and minuses to both, but I feel very fortunate to have known the institution as well as I did when I began my term as president.
MC: And I think a lot of people forget that it has only happened three times in the College’s history.
RL: Yes, I like to remind people who are not knowledgeable of Middlebury’s history that the college has had a president from within three times in 214 years – once in the 19th century with Ezra Brainerd, once in the 20th century with John McCardell and me in the 21st century, so maybe that means we can expect outside presidents for the next 85 years!
MC: Do you think your background as a specialist in political geography influenced the projects that you have embarked on during your time as President? Examples include new schools abroad, new language programs, and Monterey.
RL: I have never given this much thought. I think my background as a Russianist and also as a political geographer had some impact but I would like to think that most academics today, regardless of one’s discipline, would see the changing world in which we live and how that relates to the type of education that our students need and by which they would be best served. I would hope that most academics would see the direction we’ve taken as complementary rather than in competition with a traditional liberal arts education and reflects the changes external to Middlebury and higher education in a smart and beneficial (to our students) way.
MC: Where do you hope to see Middlebury’s relationship with Monterey go in the next decade or so?
RL: I’ve been fairly consistent about this since 2005 – I don’t believe that programmatic (academic) integration can and should be forced where it does not make sense. The great attraction of Monterey was that, while Middlebury and Monterey shared an underlying commitment to linguistic and cultural competency, it was such a different institution from our undergraduate liberal arts college. The differences open up many opportunities for students to engage in courses and programs, plus meaningful engagement with MIIS faculty, whose philosophy about cultural competency is similar to our faculty’s, but whose curricular content and pedagogy are so different from what our students have here on campus. We are not a professional, graduate school – we’re not even a pre-professional undergraduate school! We are a liberal arts college – and the juxtaposition and the complementarity of these two is powerful for those students interested in international careers.
That said, Monterey and its programs are not for everyone. They are intended to be for those students who want to pursue international-related careers. But beyond the obvious complementary curricular opportunities, there is another benefit that comes from the collaboration: the strengthening of the “Middlebury” network. About 30-35 percent of Monterey students are international students (the majority from Asia), and most graduates go on to work all over the world. By expanding our alumni network to include Monterey alumni, faculty, and staff, we strengthen the Middlebury network, which helps current students and recent graduates by opening doors to internships, employment opportunities, and meaningful connections across the globe. This is an often overlooked benefit of our relationship with Monterey. My hope, then, would be that students take advantage of the opportunities to combine a professional international education offered at Monterey with their undergraduate traditional liberal arts experience to the benefit of their post-college plans; that they would use the resources that Monterey offers for both advanced degrees and a robust, international-oriented network.
MC: On the topic of the undergraduate experience, in the time that you’ve been here, how do you think the student body has changed? Have you seen changes in the typical Middlebury student?
RL: The student body has changed over thirty years, yet the influence of the institution itself on each generation of students remains stronger than any specific change I might highlight. One example: a characteristic of the student body that I noticed immediately upon arriving at the College is that students are incredibly civil towards one another. We have disagreements, altercations, and skirmishes for sure. Yet, the culture here is very forgiving to individuals who in other environments would face far greater challenges. I suspect this is because the student body as a whole recognizes that over their four years here each member of the larger community is going to rely primarily on the 2,450 other undergraduates for one’s intellectual, social, and cultural sustenance. On campuses in urban areas or at institutions with a graduate population, this might not be the case; the environment is different. Here, though, the undergraduate experience is not diluted, it’s a close-knit community, and this cultural aspect has remained a constant and has been present for a very long time. It is something that first-years learn early on so by the time they are sophomores, juniors, and seniors, they themselves pass this on to incoming first-years.
There’s a flipside to this characteristic of the Middlebury culture. Although ours is a very smart student body, many faculty see less “mixing it up” intellectually in class than one might find at a Columbia, a Harvard, a Yale, or a Wesleyan – places located in more urban environments. If this is true, I believe it’s a fair trade-off. I think without the cultural characteristic of students being civil toward one another, less competitive, more supportive, and more collaborative, a lot would be lost here in terms of the overall quality of the educational experience for students.
But to your question, what has changed? The student body has become a lot more socioeconomically, culturally, racially, and ethnically diverse. Though we strive for greater diversity still, those of us who have been here a long time see great changes on this front. When I first got here, about 1 in 20 students were American students of color or international; now, that ratio is greater than 1 in 3. That’s a huge change. We know that a more diverse student body translates into a richer educational experience as a result of students sharing different perspectives and life experiences both inside and outside the classroom.
Other changes: students today are obviously more conversant with technology. They are more apt to volunteer not only in town, but across the country (alternative break service trips) and across the globe. And many of my colleagues report students are more visibly focused on jobs and employment, which is understandable given the changed financial circumstances they face at graduation than 30 years ago. So there has been change, yet the overall dynamic of the student body – being supportive of one another, collaborative, and open-minded – remains and still is the general feel one gets here.
MC: I want to talk a little bit about the carbon neutrality initiative, the Franklin Environmental Center and the Solar Decathlon entries as examples of how Middlebury has become an environmental leader in the past 10 years. Is there one achievement that stands out to you from all those?
RL: No, not really. In the last 10 or 11 years during my time as president, a number of notable things have occurred and the spotlight should be on the students; in almost every case the students have been at the center of these initiatives.
The whole idea of carbon neutrality at Middlebury didn’t start with the administration and it didn’t start with the Board of Trustees; it started with a student back in the 1990s who shared his work from a senior seminar and passed it on to younger students interested in climate change and environmental stewardship. About a decade later, when the Sunday Night Group formed, students in that group were the ones who brought forward the proposal for the institution to reduce its carbon footprint and eventually to pursue carbon neutrality. Some Middlebury faculty worked with students to fine-tune their pitch to the administration and eventually to the Board of Trustees. Their presentation was excellent: they admitted when they couldn’t answer a question and pledged to get the answer to the Trustees later (and they did); they had a deep command of the issues; and succeeded in getting the trustees to adopt their resolution, which was never a foregone conclusion. Seven years later, with the coming implementation of our bio-methane initiative, we are almost there – becoming carbon neutral without purchasing any offsets.
For the Solar Decathlon, the idea was first proposed by my wife, Jessica, and with the guidance of faculty and staff in the sciences and environmental studies, the students more or less took over the project. The institutional commitment was significant to support the effort, though the rest was on the students, and they showed remarkable maturity in overcoming some real challenges that they had never encountered in their traditional liberal arts education. It was not just about the academic challenge or learning about solar power, renewable energy, engineering, and more; it was also a huge challenge of working together as a team, respecting one another, accepting opposing views, and compromising on so much along the way. We don’t have a graduate program in engineering, or even an undergraduate engineering program. Nor do we have a graduate school of architecture, and so the students had to rise to the occasion to learn things on the fly and they did. Yes, they were mentored by faculty and staff in a significant way, but they needed to use their skills and knowledge gotten in the classroom to draw on the expertise from around the state of Vermont to help them as well.
If you go through almost every environmental initiative over the last 20 years – the start of recycling, the establishment of our composting program, sustainability initiatives, biomass gasification, carbon neutrality, real food, plus others – most have been student-led or the idea was student generated. I think that’s the key thing that we should take away and really applaud: that the institution is a leader in sustainability, but that wouldn’t be the case without the students.
MC: When you stepped into the role of College President in 2004, did you think about what you wanted your legacy to be when you eventually depart?
RL: I think almost every President probably steps in saying, “If I could leave the institution in a stronger position upon departing than when I began, I’ve done well.” All the more when one inherits an institution of the quality and stature of a Middlebury. I think what has made these last 10-11 years so interesting has been our need to recognize, for really the first time in many decades, the external forces that have created some great challenges for higher education, including Middlebury. If I would have been told in 2004-05 that we would face the worst recession in a century just 3-4 years later, I would have said, “Wow, what are we going to do?” You don’t plan on such an occurrence – higher education financial models seem to show variables all moving in the positive direction, year after year, and fail to include stress tests or “worst case scenarios.” And, there is no blueprint or plan sitting in a desk drawer in the president’s office awaiting you when an issue of this magnitude arises.
It is easy to ignore the external pressures mounting on higher education and continue with a “business as usual” approach to operations, but such an approach will no longer do. I believe getting some tough issues on the table for discussion and action, no matter how much people wish to ignore them, is an important part of the past 10 years.
MC: On the subject of the recession in 2008, can you talk about what it meant to manage that crisis?
RL: The most challenging thing about the recession was that we didn’t know when it might end. We needed to judge and judge early, the level of cuts we would need to make in order to address what we had estimated would be $30 million 4-5 years out, yet it could also have been worse: we just did not know. Since compensation amounts to roughly half the institution’s budget, it was clear the only way to make real headway into a projected deficit would be to address staffing. But when you make a decision to reduce staffing through layoffs, it can be devastating to a small community if it is not handled well and with great sensitivity. Though we knew we needed to reduce staffing, we didn’t know how many jobs needed to be cut.
In the end, I thought the institution – faculty, staff, students, administrators, alumni, trustees – did a remarkable job because we were one of the first schools, if not the first school, to engage our community, letting them know that it was likely we would need to begin a process to determine how best to address the economic crisis. We didn’t have any specific answers or recommendations, of course, but we tried to prepare the community for a process that would result in significant cuts. The challenge at that early date was the unkown: how much would our endowment drop? How would our students’ families be affected? How many people’s financial situation would change? So the greatest issue was the unknown - not knowing when the crisis would end.
I think back to the changes the recession brought to other institutions and I am grateful we were able to preserve what our students, faculty, staff and alumni told us was most important to them for us to preserve. Though there were some differences among the priorities for each group, everyone emphasized that we needed to avoid involuntary layoffs: that was the biggest concern among all the groups. As a result, we offered voluntary and early retirement programs for staff and faculty through which medical coverage continued until age 65 and individuals received payments that provided security and were based on years of service. Between 2009 and 2011 about 110 staff positions were eliminated through these programs, and 12 faculty colleagues chose to retire early. We also reduced services at Atwater (no meal-plan dinners and only a continental breakfast); reduced significantly catering options for departments; reduced some budgets between 5 percent and 10 percent; froze salaries except for the lower end of the pay scale; and increased the size of our student body by 50 to provide more revenue to make up for the endowment decline.
However, the alternatives to our major cutbacks were severe. Some peer institutions ended need-blind admissions, others had to delay library and science center projects, and still others cut faculty positions. We didn’t freeze the size of the faculty and in fact added 11 new faculty positions as was planned, we had no involuntary layoffs. We did not sacrifice the excellence of our academic program.
Moving early and decisively, having feedback from so many constituencies through the extensive surveys, and being able to focus on what was most important to each of the groups helped us to come out of the recession as well as we could have hoped.
MC: Are there other difficult choices that you had to make in your time here that come to mind?
RL: There have been a number of challenging or difficult choices surrounding policies, but that is to be expected. The Monterey opportunity, allowing military recruitment on campus, accepting a gift to create the (Chief Justice) Rehnquist endowed professorship, and establishing Middlebury Interactive Languages stand out. All of these represented contested issues, and a lot of the differences in opinion, in my view, stemmed from the different time horizons that a president and board must take when considering opportunities and institutional direction. Students, faculty, and staff, if I can generalize, tend to view things in the shorter-term – those things relevant to a student’s four years here, or for faculty and staff what is related to the here and now or to one’s career. A president and Board must look beyond that time horizon to project what is in the best interest of the institution long term. Some disagreements are rooted in true philosophical differences (e.g., “what is the relationship between a liberal arts education and our students’ finding jobs after graduation?”), yet I would say there is greater agreement than there are difficult and contentious debates. The difficult issues, however, bring out passion and sometimes anger, and sometimes overshadow all that we do agree on as an institution.
(10/22/14 7:19pm)
On Oct. 17, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz announced several administrative changes in an all-campus email. Included was the news that Dean of Students and Assistant Professor of the History of Art and Architecture Katy Smith Abbott will serve as interim Dean of the College beginning in January. Smith Abbott is replacing Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of the College Shirley Collado, who is departing Middlebury to become Executive Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives and Executive Vice Provost at Rutgers University – Newark.
Collado wrote in an email to The Middlebury Campus that Smith Abbott is the right person for the position. “I am thrilled that Katy will assume this interim role,” Collado wrote. “She has been an incredible colleague and leader as the Dean of Students, and I am confident that she will bring strong vision, experience and a student-centered approach to her work with our Student Life team.”
In his email, Liebowitz also detailed several other administrative shifts that will occur through the 2015-2016 school year. The various changes are due in large part to Collado’s multiple responsibilities at the College, which include serving as the College’s Title IX Coordinator and Chief Diversity Officer. These roles are now being divided among several administrators. Liebowitz explained that the creation of these positions as interim roles and the division of Collado’s responsibilities are because of the broader changes underway at the College during the presidential search. In his email, he wrote, “This will provide important continuity for the community while giving the next president of Middlebury the opportunity to consider and make long-term administrative leadership decisions.”
Collado believes that the decision to separate these roles into different positions will ultimately leave the College in a strong position when a new College President takes the reins. “These recent appointments demonstrate the College’s serious investment in the critical areas of responsibility that I oversee. Given the leadership transitions at the institution, I think it is wise to appoint three outstanding individuals to oversee student life, diversity initiatives and Title IX responsibilities,” Collado wrote. “There are a variety of ways that this work can be structured, but what is most important is that Middlebury must remain deeply committed to these goals and areas. I have no doubt that dividing up the roles with three talented individuals is the best way to address our institutional needs and strategic goals at this time.”
Smith Abbott brings years of experience in student life to the Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of the College position. She, along with her husband, Professor of Mathematics Steve Abbott, served as co-heads of Ross Commons from 2002 to 2008. In 2011, Smith Abbott was appointed Dean of Students after four years as Associate Dean of the College. In his email, Liebowitz wrote that in Smith Abbott’s new role, “She will oversee residential life, student activities, athletics, public safety, new student orientation, judicial affairs, the Parton Center for Health and Wellness and the centers and programs related to innovation, entrepreneurship, career services, and internships.”
There is significant overlap between Smith Abbott’s current responsibilities as Dean of Students and her new responsibilities as Dean of the College. However, new areas that will fall under Smith Abbott’s purview starting in January include Athletics, the Department of Public Safety and the Parton Center for Health and Wellness. There are also new responsibilities for Smith Abbott in managing offices and programs such as the Project on Creativity and Innovation in the Liberal Arts, the Center for Social Entrepreneurship and MiddCORE.
As she prepares to step into the new role, Smith Abbott said, “I’m eager to support the initiatives already in play and to create real dialogue with students about the issues that matter most to them. I already work closely with all my colleagues in the office of the Dean of the College and I look forward to the collaborations across student life.”
Working with Smith Abbott in January will be Dean of Wonnacott Commons Matt Longman ’89, who will serve as Special Assistant to the Dean of the College.
“Matt Longman is taking part of the Dean of Students portfolio. He is taking on some, but not all, of the responsibilities of the Dean of Students role so he can preserve his commitment to the Dean of Wonnacott role,” Smith Abbott said.
Longman will continue to serve as Dean of Wonnacott Commons. A Middlebury graduate, he has worked as a dean at the College for the past 17 years.
Looking past the 2015-2016 school year, Smith Abbott said there will likely be a conversation with the new president regarding the structure for student life administration. “I think a lot depends on the vision the new President has for student life,” she said.
Professor of Spanish Miguel Fernández ’85 will be the Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) for the 2015-2016 school year. With Collado’s departure, starting in January the CDO will be its own position. Fernández, who has previously served as chair of the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and director of Latin American Studies, will take on existing initiatives in diversity. Notably, Fernández will support the Creating Connections Consortium (C3). Collado was instrumental in securing this $4.7 million grant for the College, along with Connecticut College and Williams College, from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to increase diversity among faculty. Fernández will be stepping into the CDO role as C3 continues to grow and add other university partners to the program. He praised the program in an email to the Campus. “This is not simply a post-doc fellowship that brings underrepresented graduate students onto the faculty for a couple of years. It is a much more complex program with ambitious goals,” Fernández said. “I am attracted by the creative approach of C3 and how it goes to the root of a problem and seeks workable solutions that benefit not just our institution, but the whole academy.”
Additionally, as CDO, it is likely that Fernández will also be involved in the ongoing conversations around a proposed Intercultural Center. “I will pay close attention to the proposal this fall and get myself up to speed on the process,” Fernández wrote in an email to Campus. “My expectation is that the proposal will pass and that I will have an active role in the implementation of the Intercultural Center proposal.”
Finally, Liebowitz detailed an administrative change that ties into the new governance structure of the Board of Trustees. Vice President for Language Schools and Schools Abroad Michael Geisler will now also serve as the College’s Chief Risk Officer (CRO).
“The addition of CRO to Michael’s title and responsibilities is a reflection of the increasingly complex legal and regulatory environment in which Middlebury and all of higher education now operate,” Liebowitz wrote. “This complexity requires a designated senior-level administrator to manage risk and to articulate and implement best practices and appropriate policies.”
As Vice President for Language Schools and Schools Abroad, Geisler assessed risks when looking for new sites for programs abroad. “We spend a long time measuring the relative safety and how it is different from Middlebury and comparable cities in the United States,” he said.
Geisler will be the primary liaison to the risk management committee, one of the six functional standing committees that now exist within the Board of Trustees in its new governance structure. He will also oversee the work of the new Title IX Coordinator and Compliance Officer. Collado previously held the Title IX Officer position, and the individual who will fill this new role of Coordinator and Compliance Officer is unnamed as of yet. “Title IX and the Clery Act will be some of our responsibilities,” Geisler said, “as well as emerging threats like Ebola and new programs and what they mean in terms of the challenges on the financial side, on the safety side and on the side of managing staff and faculty resources.” Investment policy is also a part of the CRO’s responsibilities in risk management.
Geisler said the transition to the new governance structure in relation to his new role has been smooth. “There was thorough preparation done by the Trustees themselves and by the administration,” Geisler said. “By the time we had those meetings, everybody knew what their roles were and we were able to engage in much more focused and substantive discussions than under the former governance structure.”
Collado is still heavily invested in diversity and inclusion initiatives in her remaining time at Middlebury. “These include the approval of an intercultural center at Carr Hall, key faculty diversity initiatives, greater support for our first generation college students and community college transfer students, continued sexual violence education and prevention, further strengthening our MiddView new student orientation program and the successful launch of our new Posse STEM Program,” Collado wrote. “These are just some of the initiatives that I hope Katy, Miguel and the new Title IX Coordinator will continue to push forward through the 2015-2016 academic year.”
(10/08/14 6:21pm)
Over the last few weeks, a portion of the student body here has been upset about something. Not the kind of upset where they’re not being themselves for a while, and finally, a friend pulls them aside and says, “Hey, Chase, do you want to talk about anything? I’m here for you, man.” Rather, the kind of upset where every page of this publication is filled with columns expressing outrage, befuddlement, and threats of withheld donations that weren’t going to be made anyways.
Discontent regarding the issue in question has dominated campus (and Campus) discussion, and both the amount and vociferousness of opinions have been shocking. Alumni contacted administrative officials, panels were formed, and, again, columns were written. And the outcome of all that: Nothing! The policy is not changing in any way, and the people who formed the policy, chiefly an Athletic Director who was so unfamiliar to large portions of the student body that people were unclear as to whether the individual was male or female, essentially laughed off requests for greater transparency. At this point, people are so tired of the story that the new most popular opinion has become, enough of this, let’s go shotgun a beer.
Don’t worry, this is not a column about that policy. Feel free to shotgun regardless.
The question that occurred to me during all of this, especially as it became obvious that no changes would be made, was the following: if there were a policy implemented that actually mattered, one that was, say, intolerably discriminative in a way that this past one did not even approach, how could students force a change?
As the recent nouveau-activists will tell you, there are basically zero avenues to create change if the college really cares about the issue. That is because students have absolutely no leverage against the school. When the administration institutes a policy they know will be unpopular, they are banking, literally, on the reality that the only thing we can do to hurt them is transfer and take our business elsewhere. They realize that this would mean, for any individual student, a sizable time investment as well as leaving a familiar setting. And if you happened to see the acceptance rates this past year, you know that there is no end of checkbooks out there waiting to take our places. We are what is called, I believe, a captive market.
As a result, we are left with few options for student protest. Although mass gatherings can be symbolically powerful, the ceiling on their potential efficacy is pretty low when the protestors have no political voice. In this light, I would like to suggest to future outraged students a path that has not, to my knowledge, been explored here: a student employee strike.
The college employs 885 students, most of whom work between 10-20 hours a week. If we say the average is 12 hours a week, a campus wide strike by student workers would amount to a total of 3,450 lost hours of work over three days. How would the circulation desk, Midd Rides, Wilson Café, Admissions, or the CFA function without student employees? Who would grade all those Econ assignments?? When you consider all the jobs performed by students, it is clear that the college would seriously struggle to operate in the event of a strike.
There are flaws in this idea, the most obvious of which is the lost income it would mean for student workers. However, it is not implausible to think that other students could contribute to a compensatory fund of some kind as a means of distributing the burden. Another possible unwanted side effect would be the enormous demand placed on non-student college employees. They would certainly be called to make up for some of the lost labor, which would be pretty unfair. But the point of the strike would be to force the college into that kind of uncomfortable situation, and while any inconvenience to third parties would be regrettable, it would hopefully be minimal.
Again, this would have to be in response to a truly unacceptable administrative policy, the likes of which we haven’t recently seen. It would have to be to instigate the coordination and determination necessary to pull of a student employee strike. Ideally, a measure as drastic as this will never be necessary. In the meantime, it is useful, and perhaps empowering, to remember that we aren’t merely consumers of the product Middlebury offers: we are also vital elements of the machine that allows it to run.
Artwork by ZARAU ZARAGOZA
(10/08/14 6:17pm)
Shortly after the administration announced its controversial change to the tailgating policy, many students asked me why I, as the President of the SGA, had no knowledge of the impending change. Their concern highlights a question I imagine many of you have pondered at one point or another while at Middlebury: Why do we have SGA and Community Council? The fact that most students do not have a clear answer to that question highlights a major problem. Given my role in the SGA, I feel compelled to offer you an answer to at least the first part of that question.
In my view, the SGA fulfills three crucial roles on campus. First, it is responsible for managing and spending the Student Activities Fee (SAF) in a way that makes our non-academic lives here a little better. Second, it oversees all of the student organizations on campus. Third, it is supposed to be, in the words of the College Handbook, “the vehicle through which students can participate in the formulation of institutional policy.”
With respect to the first two roles, we actually do a good job. Most student organizations are funded well and run effectively, but of course there is always room for improvement. Ensuring that this continues to happen takes a significant amount of work by the members of both the SGA Finance Committee and the SGA Constitution Committee. In addition, the SGA operates a number of services for which it rarely receives credit. These include the free daily newspapers in the dining halls, the break bus program, and MiddCourses.
It is on the third count, I believe, where we have more work to do. Frankly, the SGA needs to serve as a better conduit between the student body and the administration. We currently fail to communicate sufficiently with both parties. First, let’s tackle the SGA’s relationship with the student body. Only a handful of students know what SGA does, and fewer still view it as the best way to “participate in the formulation of institutional policy.” The SGA tends to attract students primarily interested in changing policy, while MCAB and other student organizations tend to attract those interested in event planning and publicity. As a result, we as a group often fail to adequately communicate what it is we are doing. Having been in the SGA for two years now, I am personally guilty of not communicating my work well enough. Given recent events, though, it is clear we need to better publicize our work. To that end, we have taken a number of steps this year to better communicate with you. These initiatives include creating a new website, updating the SGA bulletin boards in McCullough, establishing a Director of Publicity position in my Cabinet, and setting up weekly office hours for each of our elected members. Hopefully, these small initial steps will serve as a solid foundation for a better level of communication between the SGA and the student body.
In terms of our relationship with the administration, most of our influence currently takes the form of me and other elected SGA members meeting with administrators to express students’ ideas and concerns. Although this system fosters trust, it lacks transparency and limits the flow of information. A better approach would be for the SGA to secure greater student representation on administrative and faculty committees. In this manner, we can more consistently convey our ideas during the early stages of the policy-making process. We may not get a vote, but we should get a voice. Progress in this area would increase the amount and transparency of communication between students, administrators, and faculty.
You may still be asking, why should SGA in particular do these things? Why not leave individual groups of students to push for change? We are, after all, a fairly small campus with easy access to administrators. I would respond that much of the value of the SGA stems from its institutional presence. The question is not one of existence, but one of strength. It is in the best interest of the student body to have a consistent advocate voicing the student body’s ideas to administrators. As a source of institutional memory, the SGA can protect the progress we make each year. Although change may come more slowly than we would like and perhaps not at all on some issues, a more effective SGA could, at the very least, secure us a consistent voice at the table.
From reforming the trustees’ governance structure to hiring a new president, change is in the air at Middlebury. I have tried to articulate how the SGA needs to change as well as the ways in which it can enhance student life on campus. Regardless of whether you find my argument convincing, it is important that you make your voice heard on this issue. I look forward to hearing your ideas, and would be happy to discuss them with you in person or over e-mail. You can reach me at sga@middlebury.edu.
TAYLOR CUSTER '15 is the SGA President and is from West Brookfield, Mass.
(10/08/14 6:04pm)
Editor’s Note: The following text contains vulgarity.
It seems innocuous. An app where you can post something witty, watch it get up-voted and monitor your karma score changing as people respond. But this seemingly harmless “fun” often comes at the expense of members of our community.
When Jordan Seman ’16 submitted her op-ed about her experience being targeted on Yik Yak, found on page seven, it hit close to home for many of us on the Editorial Board. As a news organization, we grapple with anonymity constantly between our policies on anonymous op-eds and sources and the steady stream of sometimes hurtful and often unproductive anonymous comments posted on our website. We also grapple with issues of censorship, and, in our staunch shared belief in freedom of speech, we are hesitant to endorse any policies that threaten it. But Jordan sent us a powerful reminder that there are real people behind the screen in these situations, and that anonymity can devastate individuals and communities.
Jordan is not alone. There are many students on this campus who have been victims of anonymous personal attacks or of attacks on the groups with which they identify. For example, one of the most popular threads on Middlebury Confessional at the time of writing this editorial is “Bitchiest Bitches On Campus,” on which students are actively naming people and discussing who among them is “the bitchiest.” Just a few weeks ago we ran a piece entitled “What Middlebury Should Never Forget,” reminding students of the sexually explicit, threatening and homophobic note that was left on a student’s door last fall. And last spring, Dean Shirley Collado sent the student body an email in which she expressed concern over numerous examples of misogynistic behavior on Yik Yak and one particularly abominable instance of homophobia on another mobile app, Grindr, in which a posted message read, “None are safe, none are free,” and included a photograph of a lynching.
These disturbing comments are not unique to the Middlebury community. A few weeks ago, Norwich University became the first college or university to ban Yik Yak, carrying high symbolic weight but little actual import. Though they blocked Yik Yak from their wireless network, students can still access it with a data plan, as many already do, making it nearly impossible to block this app. Oberlin faced the same dilemmas with Oberlin Confessional, the original Confessional site, which crashed in 2009 and was promptly replaced by ObieTalks, which was equally popular and equally nasty. These two case studies show that an outright ban of these forums do not solve the problem. Moreover, there are still myriad ways to anonymously engage outside of these forums — be it on our website, on Middbeat or even in person as seen with last fall’s note — meaning that banning these sites would be merely a bandaid on a larger problem.
Dean Collado echoed this sentiment in her email last spring, writing that “blocking these sites is not the ultimate answer for our larger community.” But just because we do not believe banning these sites will solve the problem does not mean we can sweep them under the rug.
Particularly as mental wellness becomes a topic of conversation, in part due to brave honesty and openness found both in Jordan’s op-ed and in Hannah Quinn ’16’s widely read blog post about depression, we must think critically about the way our online actions affect this community. When posting, we must imagine the person sitting at their computer in the dorm room next to ours the same way we would if we were having a conversation in the hallway. Even when no face is attached, cyberbullying leaves lingering damage, though the veil of anonymity often makes that easy to forget.
The question then remains, how do we maintain a community where people feel safe and supported while also acknowledging that anonymous forums are inevitable in the digital age? The answers are not easy.
Both the Campus and Middbeat are moderated websites, and both Yik Yak and Middlebury Confessional offer tools to self-moderate, be it through downvoting or through reporting a comment. We must take responsibility for the hateful words that pervade our community and report these comments rather than scroll past after 10 seconds of outrage. It is up to each of us to make these digital spaces safe for all members of our community and to encourage online accountability — there is no one else who is going to do it.
To clamp down on damaging online dialogue, we must provide resources and education to incoming students. In the same way that we promote sexual assault awareness and prevention, we should educate the community about the dangers of online harassment. Bystander intervention means looking out for each other, both online and off. Technological literacy extends beyond clicking “I agree” on the terms of use whenever we update our password. We must reintroduce the term cyberbullying into our vocabularies, because it is not an issue that magically disappears when we graduate from high school.
Being attacked online has direct consequences that result in serious harm. We have all seen news stories of people who hurt themselves or others because of online harassment. We have had countless examples for hateful online comments on this campus — we should not have to wait for Middlebury to become the public face of this problem for us to take it seriously.
Artwork by NOLAN ELLSWORTH
(10/08/14 12:58pm)
From Oct. 2 to 4, the Theatre Program sponsored the 19th Annual First Years Production: A Cautionary Tale and Others. Directed by alum Bill Army ’07 and composed entirely of first-years, sophomores, and sophomore Febs. A Cautionary Tale and Others was staged in The Hepburn Zoo to a sold out crowd.
A Cautionary Tale and Others unfolded as a set of interconnected scenes from various recently produced plays, each taking a glimpse at the social and technological changes that have developed over our lifetimes and the new challenges they may pose. A monologue on the deceptive nature of media and fiction opened the performance, prompting the audience to question the very premise of the show itself. This opener left the audience with the complex question: if fiction is misleading, and leads us to create damaging expectations for ourselves, what are the merits of the fiction presented before our very eyes?
This ambiguity carries through the bulk of the play. As we observe how dating, gossiping, flirting and mourning have all changed through the proliferation of new digital media, the audience laughed and cringed in equal measure. While at times serious and certainly tackling serious topics, the play was frequently comic and lighthearted. Ben Borgmann-Winter ’18, who played the role of Derek, touched on the binary nature of the show.
“Personally, I felt like it stretched me a little bit in the comedic sense,” he said. “I’ve done more of the dramatic things, but this gave me a couple of different tones to play with.”
Being something of a medley production, the ultimate form of the show was not finalized until somewhat late in the production cycle.
“[Army] didn’t really finish constructing it until after it had been cast,” Borgmann-Winter said. “For example, he added the ending scene partway through our rehearsals. In general, it was a very malleable production, so we had a lot of room to work.”
Being a production for first-years, the show was aimed at students unable to audition for the fall faculty productions, since auditions for such shows are in the spring of the preceding year. This means that the first-year show is on a much tighter production cycle, with three weeks between the first rehearsal and the performances, and it also draws in students with highly disparate experience levels.
“Some people hadn’t been in shows before, while some had been in professional productions, so there was a really wide range of experience,” Borgmann-Winter said. “Overall, it was a friendly, well-rounded group of folks.”
Jesusdaniel Barba ’18 was the Assistant to the Director for the production. Prior to his involvement in A Cautionary Tale and Others, Barba had never participated in theatre.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever done anything theatre-related, so it was really cool to work with Bill, who has done such a great amount of acting and theatre,” Barba said. “It was really interesting to get to know the theatre world and be a part of that niche.”
The production also managed to give more substantial roles to actors who, in the future, may face more competition from upperclassmen.
“It gives us an opportunity to get our feet wet in a lower-key setting with a little less competition,” Borgmann-Winter said. “It has been set up to give everyone a fair amount to work with.”
Tucked away above the Hepburn lounge, the Zoo was an ideal site for the staging of A Cautionary Tale and Others. The sparse set design and digital effects were enhanced by the modest setting, while the scenes themselves were strengthened by the intimacy of the venue. Characters who existed onstage for only minutes at a time could more easily connect with an audience that sat only a few feet away.
The play’s preoccupations with technology manifested physically in the use of innovative digital effects. In a memorable scene, the text-message exchange between a couple was projected visually to the audience while the characters sat in their respective rooms. Some scenes used digital projections to act as backdrops, such as the skyline of a city. Other scenes eschewed the use of digital effects altogether and could almost exist in any sitcom or theatre production of the last twenty or thirty years.
One scene in particular stood out as a powerful contrast to many of the more pronounced references to technology and social media. Coming in somewhere towards the middle of the play, Derek (Borgmann-Winter) and his girlfriend, Vivienne (Isabella Alonzo ’18), sat on a bench overlooking the water in New York City, discussing future plans and the potential challenges they may face as a long-distance couple attending schools on opposite ends of the country.
Both Borgmann-Winter and Barba felt this scene paralleled the experiences of many of the college-aged members of the audience and incorporated an added dimension to the play, making it less about technology in a strict sense and more about the conflict between tradition and the new, where we have been and where we are headed.
“I’ve been there,” Borgmann-Winter said. “It’s quite a conversation. I think a lot of people have probably been there, and recently.”
The production frequently forced the audience to confront their own relationship with technology through a biting and frequently comical satire of modern social behaviors. Yet beneath this farce lay empathetic and complex characters, involved in situations that seemed to be deeply rooted in traditional storytelling. Despite social media and new technologies, we still obsess over the minutiae of budding relationships, confide in friends, butt-heads with siblings and roommates and struggle to come to terms with death and mortality. The ways in which we communicate may have changed, but have we as people changed all that much?
The play’s message is ultimately ambiguous, leaving individual audience members to parse out its deeper implications.
“More than anything it’s a warning to be conscious of how you present yourself,” Borgmann-Winter said. “Like they say in the last scene, it’ll follow you forever. It’s not so much saying that technology is terrible, it’s more suggesting we be smart, sensible, responsible, respectful.”
Barba also recognized the complicated answers and questions we are left with.
“The ending is ambiguous, but I feel what the play is really suggesting is that we change our habits,” Barba said. “I don’t think it was saying we should get rid of [technology] completely because it is a part of who we are and what we do now. We just have to make sure it’s not our first priority.”
(10/01/14 8:40pm)
The men’s soccer team lost their first game of the season on Saturday, falling 3-0 to Colby in Waterville. With their midweek victory over Colby-Sawyer, the Panthers move to 5-1-1 on the season, and 2-1-1 in the NESCAC.
On Wednesday, Sept. 24, Middlebury traveled to New London, N.H., to face the Chargers in a non-conference fixture. The Panthers won 3-0 after a flurry of second half goals. Middlebury was unable to convert any of their 16 first half shots, and the game was scoreless until the 61st minute when Kirk Horton ’17 scored his second goal of the season. He found possession in the opposing penalty area, and slotted the ball home.
With the Panthers leading 1-0, Chargers midfielder Andrew Clothier was sent off for his second yellow card of the game, leaving the Panthers a man up for the final 25 minutes. Middlebury capitalized on the advantage with the first goal of the season for Noah Goss-Woliner ’15. The captain one-timed a ball from Adam Glaser ’17 which went in off the frame to double the Panther’s lead.
Goss-Woliner would service Horton’s second goal of the match two minutes later off of a corner kick.
Middlebury held a distinct shots advantage, with 31 in the game, and 16 on frame. Greg Sydor ’17 turned away a Colby-Sawyer free kick with four minutes left with a diving save. His late effort was all that was required to keep his fifth straight clean sheet.
On Saturday, Sept. 27, Middlebury visited Waterville to take on Colby College. The Mules sat at the bottom of the NESCAC table with no points in three conference games so far this season in comparison to Middlebury, who was third in the league entering the contest. The Panthers left Colby with no goals, the first time that they had failed to score this season. They lost the game 3-0, snapping a defensive streak in which they kept opponents from scoring for over eight hours of play.
In the first half, Middlebury had their chances, outshooting the Mules 7-3, but about 20 minutes into the contest, a cross from Colby ricocheted off of Middlebury resulting in an own goal. The goal meant that Middlebury trailed for the first time all season, and was the first allowed goal since the end of regulation against Amherst, before classes began.
“I wouldn’t say that the score totally reflected the game,” co-captain Harper Williams ’15 said. “They scored a fortunate own goal in the first half and then two more in after we made some attacking changes with 20 minutes left. That being said, they worked really hard and in the end deserved the win.”
While Middlebury searched for an equalizer and pressured forward, Colby was able to slip in behind the Panther back line and score their second goal with 12 minutes remaining.
Middlebury certainly had their chances, putting five shots on frame in the second half and taking seven corners to Colby’s five, but to no avail. With four minutes left Yinka Onayemi, the Colby forward, scored his second goal of the game, solidifying a Mule victory and handing Middlebury their first loss of the season.
“You have to learn from games like this,” Williams said. “Good teams take this experience and use it to prevent something like this from happening again. We are really excited that we play Williams on Wednesday. It gives us a great opportunity to rebound from the loss this weekend and get back to winning.”
Williams made his first appearance of the season in the game. The midfielder returned from a high ankle sprain sustained in the preseason and came off the bench to record four shots on the game.
Middlebury’s next home game comes on Saturday when they host Tufts. The Jumbos are undefeated in the NESCAC and ranked second to Amherst. Middlebury currently sits in fourth in the NESCAC.
(10/01/14 5:59pm)
Over the last 10 years, accessibility and diversity have become buzzwords in higher education. They are the benchmarks for admissions — signs that elite colleges and universities are doing more than simply securing a future for the already privileged in an era of diminishing social mobility and growing income inequality.
While the College has taken important steps towards attracting a student body that is more diverse on multiple levels and providing supportive spaces for them on campus once they arrive, it is clear that it has not done enough.
Currently, we have clubs and support available for first generation college students; we have the Queer Studies House as a safe space for LGBTQ students; we have PALANA to provide housing and programming for students with an interest in intercultural studies; we have cultural organizations like DMC, WOC, AAA and Alianza; and we continue to expand our Posse Scholars partnership. What we don’t have is a large, public and dynamic space for students from historically underrepresented backgrounds to feel welcome as a broader group, tying together the intersectional oppression that these members of our community experience.
To address this, students have pushed over the past year for the creation of an Intercultural Center — a place where those who have felt uncomfortable in other public spaces can receive the institutional support they need, have an opportunity to expand cultural literacy more broadly on campus and also have a place to just be, to form a community with social and academic foundations that is open and welcoming to people of all backgrounds.
We as an Editorial Board support this proposal and want to keep pressure on the administration to look to students for input every step of the way. Student-led initiatives on this campus tend to fall into the bureaucratic sinkhole once they are successful, turning them into administrative projects that become deprived of the student input that gave them energy in the first place. We have plenty of overly-formal, dead spaces on campus as it is, and this center cannot join that list. The Administration has been clear in its intent to include student input throughout this process, and thus far students have been involved, but we need to be sure all the students who want a voice in this process have a chance to contribute.
It is important to note that socio-economic background and racial or ethnic background are not synonymous when talking about diversity. That being said, average family income in the U.S. does break down along racial lines, reflecting endemic structural inequalities that continue to inform class and social mobility. This is our reality, and while we must work for system-level change to shift this paradigm, today it is up to the College to provide resources for students who come from or identify with historically underrepresented backgrounds. There is no reason for our student body to be substantially less racially and economically diverse than those of our peers. It is simply a matter of priorities.
Earlier last month The Upshot, a New York Times blog, took a deeper look at accessibility among “top colleges” using Pell Grant recipients as indicators of socio-economic diversity. Among peer institutions Middlebury ranked an abysmal 51st, with only 13 percent of our student body qualifying for federal assistance (compared to a college like Vassar with 23 percent).
Here’s another way to look at it: roughly 13 percent of our student body comes from the poorest 40 percent of American families, while over half of our students come from families who can afford Middlebury’s staggering $60k price tag without grant aid. To put this into perspective, this is half the annual income for the wealthiest 10 percent of American families. If Middlebury is committed to bringing a truly diverse student body to campus, changing this picture is the first place to start.
This is not to say that we have not made progress. We should celebrate the fact that within the class of 2018, 14 percent are first generation college students (a new record), 26 percent are students of color from the U.S. and 48 percent received financial aid. We are need-blind for domestic students, and we meet 100 percent of demonstrated need (as determined by the College).
These are impressive statistics, but they are falling behind the trend as other colleges and universities work to extend opportunities to communities with fewer resources. Harvard, Yale and Princeton have endowments that dwarf Middlebury’s and unsurprisingly are able to offer more financial aid and attract a broader range of students. Vassar, however, has an endowment and student body similar to Middlebury’s and has been able to make a much stronger commitment to diversity. Vassar’s class of 2018 has 10 percent more domestic students of color than Middlebury’s and roughly the same number of international students, yet Vassar as a whole ranks first on the New York Times accessibility index. Those are numbers worth striving for, not because they would make Middlebury look better statistically, but because they represent values of equality of access that we claim to have and need to uphold.
But this process does not end with an acceptance letter. Middlebury must support students who do not fit the “typical” profile throughout their four years here. A 2007 internal study found a 19-point gap in the graduation rate for students of color compared with the overall average. Without more recent data, we can only speculate that this significant margin has not been wholly ameliorated. The Intercultural Center is an important and highly visible step towards supporting diversity on this campus.
We as a community need to recognize that cutting the ribbon at Carr Hall and hiring a new staff member are just the first steps. Over time, one of the challenges a space like this can address is the current lack of cultural literacy on this campus by providing institutional support for this education and removing some of the burden from students who may just want to be students. We must push ourselves to think of innovative ways to make the most of the opportunity the Intercultural Center provides.
Creating a more inclusive campus will not happen overnight, and approving the Intercultural Center should not be a sign that we can let this issue rest. Ultimately, this center must signify an increased financial and social commitment to supporting all students on this campus on all fronts, not just attracting statistics and leaving them to sink or swim.
Artwork by NOLAN ELLSWORTH
(09/25/14 3:04am)
What seems like a long time ago, I made a choice I proceeded to doubt. It was not until a few years had gone by that I understood why coming to Middlebury was one of the most important and best decisions I have made. However, I am sure by this point that sounds cliché. Lately it seems our institution has come under fire. We dropped in the US News & World Report College Rankings to seventh place, a new brand of activism seems intent on tearing down much of what Middlebury has built for itself, and more and more it seems our attitude is generally ambivalent towards the College. So who dare stands to champion our fair institution?
School spirit is not something that simply pops into existence. In fact, more often than not it is built over centuries. Well, we’ve had centuries. Where is our spirit? Sadly, it is non-existent in a lot of ways. Our traditions seem stale and two-dimensional. Whose fault is this, truly? Well, let’s take a look at the administration. If we took a broad sample of all the schools in the United States and compared administrations, I would say ours would end up in the top five percent. Yeah, they annoy us sometimes and we may not agree with everything they do, but they are pretty good. They show genuine interest in what we do, they take us seriously, they keep the lights on. To be honest, we should be thankful they even care at all. I am sure I do not need to point to examples of other schools’ administrations that simply do not care.
Our faculty is pretty great, too. We have the privilege of being students to really smart people. And when I say really smart, it is not a passing phrase. I mean, they are way smarter than you. Yes, freshman correcting the professor, we are talking about you. I do not know where we get these professors, but I would sure like to know. What kind of a professor asks about why I haven’t talked in class? Or invites me into their home for dinner? What kind of people even do that?!
So the administration is fine and the faculty is pretty great. Where does that leave us? Well, if you want to know where true responsibility lies we need only to look into the mirror. That’s right, I’m talking about you. Yeah, you, with the cynicism and the hands in your pockets, sipping a beer you got out of a social house basement fridge, wondering if the party next door is any better and if not you should probably just turn in. I’m talking about anyone who would rather rave about in college existentialism than make great memories. I’m talking about every person who complains about a lack of social scene and refuses to make any.
I was not surprised when Middlebury dropped down to seventh place. I am impressed we stayed at fourth for as long as we did. We’ve gotten, well, lame. We have become more concerned with what we can tear down instead of what we can build. The general consensus is to disavow ourselves of a struggling project rather than fix what is broken and make it something worth working on. Ask yourself, why do you love your school? If the answer is your friends, well, you would have those anywhere. Hopefully. What about this place, what is unique to Middlebury that gets you excited? Got nothing? Go find something.
We have often been referred to as the worst generation ever. I hate this term. Yet, looking around the student body, what do we stand for? Do we stand for ranting on the Internet instead of making substantial change? Do we stand for cynicism and vanity? For fear of getting our hands dirty or embarrassing ourselves? Jack Nicholson’s quote at the start of the The Departed is, “Nobody gives it to you, you have to take it.” He was, of course, referring to organized crime. The message is an important one, nonetheless! If we want to make a place that we reminisce about for the rest of our lives it is going to be some work. The majority of that work is going to come from the student body, because like it or not, we can be the true source of change around here if we find things worth changing.
To leave you with one last anecdote, my father told me when I entered into my first relationship that it was going to be hard work. Like everything else he said, you are always working on your relationship, always trying to make it better. This goes well beyond the realm of romance. Our experience is not going to be handed to us. College is not a rollercoaster we enjoy for four years and then politely exit. Our experience is ours, to make incredible, or merely mediocre.
(09/25/14 1:00am)
“Panda hat kid just dropped the top scoop of ice cream off his cone, caught it, and put it on #likeaboss.”
“Panda hat kid talked to the tour group!”
“Beginning to question whether Midd’s mascot is the panther or panda hat kid.”
“I nominate Panda hat kid as Liebowitz’s replacement #VotePHK.”
I was initially unimpressed by the size and style of junior Ruben Guzman’s panda hat. It just seemed like any other fleece hat with a panda face. It seemed out of proportion to the attention he’s drawn on campus in the last couple weeks. Frankly, I had pictured a fluffy panda ski mask with large mitten paws as tassels, a full-on face mask disguise for the robber who eats shoots and leaves.
Sitting in Crossroads on a Friday afternoon with a whole sweet potato pie to share between us, Guzman ’16, however, did not fail to impress me with tales of personal significance behind his hat that went viral with social media app Yik Yak.
Though the panda hat was probably made in China, Guzman is a native of Sanger, California, a town he described as very different from Middlebury, which made adjusting to his first year of college difficult.
“You know how people fall back on certain things that are comfortable to them? For me, I fell back on hats and childhood,” he said. “Pokemon, Digimon, cute little animals. That was a way for me to cope with being uncomfortable. The hat became a natural way for me to do that.”
Though Guzman’s panda hat is hands-down his most famous hat, he has a collection of 10 other animal hats, including a chicken, an owl and a fox. He wears his panda hat the most often for pragmatic reasons.
“My panda hat is the best-made one. It’s the one in the best shape and protected me from the cold the best,” he said.
Guzman purchased the hat in San Francisco at a meet-up for prospective Georgetown University students.
“This is supposed to be Giants [baseball] fan-wear. After I bought the hat, the morning after, I got the acceptance letter from Middlebury. I was like, ‘Oh wow, it’s a sign!’
“Middlebury is so different from where I’m from. In my city, there are drive-by [shootings] that happen every week or so. Someone dies. And then people talk about that stuff. That was so normal to me. The openness. The whole showing vulnerability. The fact that a lot of people from where I’m from look very much like me: Hispanic.
“I came from that to Middlebury, where everything is calm,” he said. “There’s not a lot of craziness happening here. The craziness here is just academic, or somebody overdrank, and that wasn’t relatable to me. I don’t know what to tell you, I don’t know how to approach people, I don’t know how to understand why it is such a big deal. Why is it that getting a B on a test is a big deal? It’s just a B.
“I understand pain and suffering is, to people, relative. But, when you’re a first-year, you’re like, ‘People are so … I don’t understand that.’ That’s where the panda hat came in,” Guzman said.
“The hat is very representative of how I am. Very silly, very goofy, like life is so short. Middlebury is such a privileged place in good and bad ways. I feel like we all get caught up in the little bad stuff.” He smiles. “What’s the problem? Let’s just have some fun.”
Guzman, currently a First-Year Counselor in Battell, attributes his rise to Yik Yak fame to the first-years on his hall, Battell second floor center.
“The first person who showed the Yik Yaks to me was a first-year. I feel like Yik Yak is a big thing with the first-years. It was perfect timing. The incoming first-years came in, and, as an FYC, I was one of the first people they saw on campus and could attach some sort of significance to.”
“My nickname [as Panda Hat Kid] is chill. It’s definitely a thing,” he said, laughing. “[As for the Yik Yaks], it’s super hard to offend me. The closest one to being offensive was, ‘Panda hat kid makes me want to interbreed.’ I was cracking up. This is just hilarious!”
Guzman believes the campus’s infatuation with “Panda Hat Kid” along with his “five minutes of fame” will eventually die down.
“And I’m totally okay with that. As long as I’m perceived as someone that people feel comfortable around, that’s what really matters to me,” he said. “[As an FYC], whenever I see first-years, I like to ask them how they’re doing, and how they’re adapting to life at Midd. I feel like I’ve made a lot of connections with first-years who aren’t in my hall because of that.”
He tugged on the baseball tassels. “It’s only five minutes, and you should do the best you can with the five minutes you got.”
(09/18/14 1:08am)
The fall semester is a time of transition for Middlebury’s Dance Program, as three new faculty members begin to make their mark in the wake of the retirement of longtime Professor of Dance Penny Campbell and the imminent retirement of Professor of Dance Andrea Olsen, who is on sabbatical leave this year. Assisstant Professor of Dance Christal Brown envisions a revamping of the dance curriculum, which will aid students in becoming embodied scholars with critical lenses for the creative outlet of the medium.
Brown expressed the hope that the program’s image to the greater campus is one of clarity and accessibility.
“We want to make it clear that dance is just as rigorous an academic discipline as others,” she said. “It can be easy to dismiss a field of study one knows little about, especially those in the arts, as not as academically serious as, say, physics or economics, but each area of study holds it own challenges and rewards, and no one discipline is greater than another.”
As the dance program evolves, the three new faculty members will bring their varying perspectives and visions to Middlebury this year.
Tzveta Kassabova is joining the long-term faculty as an Assistant Professor of Dance. Originally from Bulgaria, she came to the United States in 1999 with the intention of studying meteorology at the University of Maryland.
“I knew my secret mission was to dance, and so I ran away to New York,” she said.
With her Masters in meteorology in hand, in New York City she danced with the David Dorfman Dance Company and in other choreographers’ works. After a few years, Kassabova returned to the University of Maryland to pursue her MFA in dance, expand her views on art and build a body of original dance works. She then began showing her own choreography in the Washington, D.C. area and teaching at the University of Maryland and George Washington University. Before coming to the College, Kassabova taught for two years as a full time guest artist at the University of Florida, where she was involved in shaping the dance program and curriculum, as she hopes to do at the College as part of the core dance faculty.
During the summer Kassabova attended a workshop led by Olsen, where she experienced firsthand the teaching of a professor who has been a guiding force in the dance program for so long.
“It was wonderful to get a sense of continuation ... of exchange,” Kassabova said.
This semester Kassabova is teaching Introduction to Dance and Advanced Beginning Dance, in which she strives to create a welcoming experience to students just beginning or continuing their journey with dance, and to encourage them to explore and expand their capabilities.
Trebien Pollard is the new Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance and the Artistic Director of Dance Company of Middlebury (DCM) this year. A gymnast in early life, Pollard was introduced to dance in high school, and after studying mathematics education at Florida A&M University, he moved to New York City to train at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. He then joined the Martha Graham Ensemble and continued dance professionally for 12 years in various other companies, including Pascal Rioult Dance Theater, Erick Hawkins Dance Co., and the MET (Metropolitan Opera Ballet). In 2004 he received his MFA in Dance from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts and began teaching and choreographing for the University of Southern Mississippi, Adelphi University, Queens College and Goucher College before arriving at the College.
Pollard’s work as a choreographer often explores themes of identity and our perception of it. By integrating costumes, poetry and music with performance, his work challenges audiences to explore different ways of seeing. In directing DCM this year, he expressed his hope that students will be open to collaborative inquiry and discovery.
“When you come in with too many of your own ideas based on where you’ve come from, it doesn’t leave room for exploring, for experimenting,” he said.
Pollard is teaching Dance History in the fall, as well as an open ballet class.
In the Artist-in-Residence position this year is Scotty Hardwig. After growing up in the Appalachian Mountains of Southern Virginia, he double majored in English and Dance at the University of Virginia. Hardwig chose to be a professional dancer precisely because it was one of the hardest things he could have done, and because of the honesty of dance as a form of self-expression.
“Whenever I’m performing in my work or whenever I make a piece, I’m creating something that’s the most me that I could express, in the most full and intense way possible,” he said.
Hardwig’s work in choreography is deeply engaged with digital media, and he explores how technology can help us make connections rather than alienating us from ourselves and our environment. By creating dance works for film in natural locations, Hardwig is able to bring his audience, via the language of the body and the medium of the camera, to places and experiences not possible in the traditional setting of a dance theater. In his spring Movement and Media course, Hardwig hopes to share the myriad possibilities for integrating the potential for digital technology into the art form of dance while maintaining a strong focus on technique, particularly in contact improvisation.
This fall Hardwig is teaching Anatomy and Kinesiology and will be choreographing works for the Fall Dance Concert, the Faculty Concert and the DCM.
The fall, the Dance Program is overflowing with the fresh experience of these new faculty, who are all three excited to share their perspectives on the study of dance and to shape the development of dance at the College.
(09/17/14 9:14pm)
Jolted out of bed at 2 a.m. by the wailing of the fire alarm, I flail around in my dark room to find some resemblance of an outfit. After what seems like an eternity, I reluctantly go outside to join the other Battell residents huddled together in the cold, experiencing what has become a rite of passage for Middlebury students.
Imagine that the alarm went off a couple times a day, instead of a handful of times a year. Imagine being awakened by an alarm signaling that you have 90 seconds to get dressed and get to the nearest bomb shelter. Imagine rockets with 100 kg. warheads landing near your home. Imagine going to work every day and proceeding with life as normal despite the rockets. That was my summer.
On the May 30, I departed my home in Los Angeles and traveled halfway across the world to Tel Aviv, Israel. Birthright Israel sponsored 40 North American college students for a very unique program. We lived together in a youth hostel and worked in various internships. Evenings included special programming or a speaker. We were paired with 40 Israeli peers that studied at an Israeli University or served in the army.
The first month of the trip was exactly as I had expected. I learned a lot at my job at Giza Venture Capital, I learned about Israel’s miraculous economy from high-profile speakers, I experienced a traditional Shabbat dinner with my Israeli peer Shay and I explored Tel Aviv’s nightlife with my new friends.
Between June 30 and July 2, the IDF found the bodies of three Israeli teens murdered by Hamas, and a Palestinian teen was murdered by far-right Jewish extremists in retaliation. On July 8, the first rocket siren in Tel Aviv went off. The relative quiet that I had enjoyed for my first month in Israel was over.
During the final five weeks I was in Israel, the sirens became a routine. 90 seconds to get to the shelter, nervously praying to hear the dull boom of the Iron Dome — a missile interception system — indicating the rocket was intercepted, while texting loved ones back in the U.S. that I was safe. Then I would go on with my day, or back to sleep if it was in the middle of the night.
At first, the routine was a novelty. The first dozen sirens were not only terrifying, but also exciting. Running from the rockets to the bomb shelters was an adrenaline rush. Living in the U.S., I had never feared for my life before.
After a week or two, the excitement began to fade and a new reality set in. When I walked into a restaurant, I asked for the menu and for the location of the nearest bomb shelter. I was also incredibly fortunate to live in Tel Aviv. Less than 40 miles south, Israelis had only 15 seconds to get to the shelters. Thousands of rockets were fired on the South during the month of July, and residents also lived in fear of Hamas militants emerging from their complex network of terror tunnels from Gaza into Israel’s South.
Many of my Israeli peers, just a couple years out of their mandatory service, were called up for reserve duty. Every day, I followed the news from Gaza religiously and worried for my Israeli peers. I knew the people fighting, and that made it personal. Towards the end of the summer, one of my Israeli Peers was injured in combat. He has since recovered after surgery, but the fear of losing someone I cared about remained.
The civilian deaths in Gaza and subsequent media backlash also weighed on Israeli society. There was no rejoicing in death tolls out of Gaza — simply frustration at the reality of the Middle East and the desire to live without fear of rockets.
Living in Tel Aviv for the summer was an unforgettable experience. I made lifelong friends, learned professional skills and gained a deeper appreciation for how good we have it in the United States. My Israeli peers and my co-workers at Giza were incredibly supportive and were a big reason that I never seriously considered leaving early. Back home, I live without fear of rocket fire, and I can be proud of my Jewish identity without fear of backlash. It is something that I cannot do in much of the world, including some European countries following the most recent outbreak of anti-Semitism.
I wanted to avoid writing another polarizing op-ed on the Middle East and rather tell the story of someone who lived in Israel the past few months. If you do feel strongly about this issue, I am happy to discuss it in more depth. Feel free to email me at adetoledo@middlebury.edu.
AARON DE TOLEDO '16 is from Los Angeles, Calif.
(09/10/14 8:32pm)
Come January, Middlebury College will lose an invaluable member of its community. Shirley M. Collado, Vice President for Student Affairs, Dean of the College, Chief Diversity Officer and the College’s Title IX Coordinator, accepted a new position as Executive Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives and Executive Vice Provost at Rutgers University – Newark in Newark, NJ.
Collado began at the College in late 2006 as the Vice President for Institutional Planning and Diversity. In July 2010, she moved to her position as Dean of the College.
In her time at the College, Collado has played an instrumental role in a number of initiatives that aim to expand the student experience beyond the classroom. She has been a leader at the College and in higher education in programs for access and student and faculty diversity.
Collado’s decision to take the position at Rutgers did not come easily. However, the opportunity to work at a large, public university with an enormously diverse student body prevailed.
“I was really excited about the opportunity to think about going to another mission driven place that would stretch me in ways that would be pretty significant and allow me to continue to address some of the critical issues that I feel strongly about in higher education. Like access, college persistance, and affordability for all students. What it really means to educate the future student demographics that we’re seeing emerge in high schools,” she said.
At Rutgers, Collado will be working closely with Chancellor Nancy Cantor, another leader in higher education who shares Collado’s values in access and diversity.
Although very different institutions, Collado will be able to continue her work focusing on these core values.
“Making sure that you are creating an environment where all students can thrive is what I will carry with me in terms of our deep commitment here to serving students once you’re a student at Middlebury,” she said. “One of the major initiatives that I’ll be working on there will be overseeing the development of a very dynamic and innovative honors living and learning community which will have a very strong liberal arts, and civically oriented residential component.”
In her transition out of the College, Collado will leave behind a legacy of innovation and commitment to the student body. Her work on the Center for Social Entrepreneurship, MiddCORE, the Center for Careers and Internships, MiddView, the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, and the grant for the Creating Connections Consortium will help to enhance student life at the College long after her departure.
Jon Isham, Director of Center for Social Entrepreneurship and a professor of Economics said of Collado and her time at the College, “Thanks to her, we are a more diverse community, and collectively we are more attuned to the complexities of being a young person in this confounding era. To continue to thrive, our community must lead with empathy and - dare I say - love for each other. Shirley has laid the foundation for such a transformation.”
Collado also worked to diversify the faculty of the College in an effort to offer students a wider range of learning opportunities. Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty Andrea Lloyd said that “[Collado] thinks about diversity institutionally, trying to understand how the institution has to evolve in order to achieve our goals. The work of diversifying the faculty, seen from that kind of institutional perspective, becomes woven into the fabric of the place, rather than being seen as somehow separate from the day to day work that we do.”
Although leaving behind a range of programs, Collado professed her faith in the College to resume the work that she did. She was a leader and a role model for the students and faculty, but the administration that will work to continue what she brought to the College.
“Her candid demeanor, constructive criticism, and support helped me immensely over the course of the year. Her commitment to her job and this campus inspired me,” said Rachel Liddell ’15, President of the Student Government for the 2013-2014 school year. “It’s impressive to see someone work so hard but do it with commitment and joy.”
Erin Quinn, Director of Athletics said of Collado, “She has brought an inclusive and collaborative leadership style which has brought the many diverse elements of the division of Student Life together to greatly enhance the student experience at Middlebury.”
Separate interim officers will succeed Collado to fill the three leadership roles that she carries. President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz will announce these interim officers this fall but will not appoint new people to fill the positions permanently in an effort to allow a new President to play a role in the process.
In her time at the College, Collado has laid the foundations for an innovative and rich campus experience.
“The ethos of this place, the sense of community, the appetite that this environment has to always be better, to play a role in this world as a leader, its really not rhetoric, I feel it, and I’ve seen it in practice,” she said. “So that for me will be one of the greatest gifts that I got from this place. And I hope to be connected to Middlebury in all kinds of ways in the future… I could not feel as prepared and excited as I am if it wasn’t for the kind of experience I’ve gained here and what students have given me here.”
(09/10/14 8:19pm)
With the start of every school year comes inevitable change as a new wave of students and faculty arrive, setting the tone for the coming year. This fall, however, the College is set up for even more momentous change than usual. With President Liebowitz and Dean Collado leaving at the end of the year and the end of J-term, respectively, we are hiring into positions that will dictate what Middlebury will look like when we come back for our 10th reunion. The future of Middlebury is further in flux due to the Board restructuring and the conversations we are having about identity.
In an all school email on Sept. 4, President Liebowitz announced a new identity system for Middlebury, bringing all programs — the College, Monterey, Breadloaf, the School for the Environment, the Language Schools and the study abroad programs — under the same umbrella by adding “Middlebury” to their official names.
President Liebowitz and the administration have repeatedly emphasized the importance of preserving the undergraduate program — the flagship of the Middlebury brand — as the community undergoes these changes. We strongly agree that the College must be the heart and soul of the Middlebury brand.
In this vein, we must find innovative ways to extend these opportunities to Middlebury College students. Continuing J-term courses in Monterey and scholarships to Breadloaf are just a few ways. As all of Middlebury’s programs grow and solidify, they should also grow in cohesion and access so we start to think of them seamlessly as an extension of the programs we already have access to on campus. These programs could be another selling point for Admissions and expand what a Middlebury education could look like.
As we learned last year with the linguistic errors in the grandfathered-in Latin courses of Middlebury Interactive Languages, we must tread carefully to ensure that the Middlebury brand retains its strength. As we expand, all of Middlebury-branded ventures must continue to be held up to the same high standards we have for the College, for the value of our diplomas depends on Middlebury’s reputation. One example of this is our commitment to inclusion and diversity. The College is need-blind for most students in the admissions process, and we want to be sure that these other programs, which often carry a similarly high price tag, are held to the same financial aid standards. We want all of Middlebury to be accessible, not just the part that is easily advertised.
Thus far, the programs have increased the value of our education. Often when we tell people we go to Middlebury, they comment on our strong language programs or leadership in environmental initiatives. Continuing to leverage this brand is a smart business decision and will impact us far past commencement as we add a BA to our resumes.
As we restructure the Board of Trustees and hire a new President and Dean of the College, we must further reflect on the values that matter most to us as a community and the values we would like to be perpetuated in the coming decades. For many of us, this includes our commitment to diversity of all kinds, internationalism, environmentalism, and the future of liberal arts education.
For example, in hiring Dean Collado’s replacement, we must remember that as a member of the inaugural Posse class and as a woman in higher education, she has brought a wealth of experience to the position of Dean, championing diversity and inclusion initiatives and anti-discrimination policies for both students and faculty. Continuing her legacy is imperative as we hire our next round of leaders, insofar as attracting a wider range of students is a priority in our branding discussions. Recruiting diverse talent in our students, faculty and administrators must be a priority.
In President Liebowitz, we had a President who was not only a great fundraiser, but also kept abreast of issues on campus by inviting students over for lunch or dinner and commenting on the Campus online. We want the next President to listen to the student voice as well.
We at the Campus will come out swinging this year to bring up-to-date coverage on all of these changes and lend our voices to the campus dialogue. But while we try to encompass a range of opinions on campus, ultimately we are only 30 voices on issues where everyone has their own ideas. We will do our best to facilitate this discussion, but we are all responsible for impactful discussions on the kind of education we would like to receive and the community we would like to foster. Do you want internships for credit and other opportunities for applied education? A return to the strict liberal arts education? Do you want to change the AAL credit, build a multicultural center, or extend Thanksgiving Break?
We challenge everyone to lead us into this new era at the College. The Campus works for you, after all. Stay informed by reading the Campus, MiddBeat, beyond the green and other campus news sources. Participate in the discussion by submitting op-eds or talking with your classmates about their opinions. We are responsible for future generations of Middlebury students, and this year more than any other, we must speak out.
Artwork by NOLAN ELLSWORTH
(05/08/14 12:32am)
On Tuesday, May 13 the faculty will vote on a motion to sever the College’s ties with K12, Inc., the corporation that the College has partnered with to create Middlebury Interactive Languages (MIL), a foreign language education program for K-12 students. While the motion carries no weight — only the Board of Trustees has the power to sever ties with K12 — it is the most salient push back to one of President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz’s efforts.
“The business practices of K12, Inc. are at odds with the integrity, reputation, and educational mission of the College,” said the motion, which was obtained by the Campus. French Professor Paula Schwartz submitted the motion.
In an email to the entire faculty on May 2 — also obtained by the Campus — Schwartz summarized the accusations into three categories, urging her colleagues to vote in favor of the motion.
The first was that K12, Inc. had been sued by a number of states for false claims and dubious practices. Secondly, that MIL’s product had been censored by K12, removing reference to same-sex relationships and unmarried couples in order to conform to Texas Board of Education standards. Thirdly, the email noted that K12, Inc. had come under fire for factual errors that were recently discovered in MIL’s Latin program.
Vice President for Communications Bill Burger and Vice President for Pedagogical Development for MIL Aline Germain-Rutherford both denied any allegations that MIL censored content.
“We have never been asked to censor, change edit or delete any material from any of our courses by a state or locality as part of some political agenda,” Germain-Rutherford said. “K12 Inc. has never tried to influence our course content. MIL has always been in charge of the content.”
Burger echoed Germain-Rutherford, calling Schwartz’s censorship claims a “total falsehood.”
“I want to emphasize what I believe is the central narrative of this story: a group of faculty are seeking to end our relationship with MIL. They have made some very serious accusations. We categorically deny those assertions and to my knowledge they have no evidence to support them.”
However, Burger did acknowledge that the Latin department did experience issues with MIL.
“It was brought to the attention of a faculty member at Middlebury College earlier this year that there were a number of errors in one of the Latin language course marketed and sold by MIL,” he said. “This course was created prior to the joint venture with Middlebury and MIL. An investigation into these course materials confirmed that there were, indeed, a number of errors.”
But Burger said that the errors were “quickly corrected,” and that the Latin courses will no longer be marketed as MIL courses.
The College first went into partnership with K12 in 2010 and has since created videos for the K-12 market in five languages: Spanish, French, Chinese, German and Arabic. Liebowitz has championed MIL since its creation as an important investment for the College’s brand.
“We pursued the initiative for three reasons,” Liebowitz told the faculty at its meeting on April 28. “First, we wanted to retain out leadership in the languages. Our reputation as leaders in teaching languages began 100 years ago with the intensive, immersion Language schools, which introduced a totally new way to teach languages ... The second reason was and is to expand access to language courses for pre-college students. And third, we recognized, especially during the recession, that in order for the College to protect what it valued so much about its residential liberal arts offerings here on campus … we need, eventually, to find ways to increase overall revenue,” concluded Liebowitz.
But many faculty members do not buy the College’s explanations. Associate Professor of Education Studies Jonathan Miller-Lane said that he was originally supportive of the College leveraging its language expertise to open new revenue streams.
“Why should we not try and leverage our strengths?” he said. “However, given what we now know is happening it turns out to be a poorly executed plan. By far, this is the most appalling thing that I have heard regarding MIL and K-12 Inc. and it leads me to now support the effort to sever all connections with K-12, Inc.”
According to Burger, one of the root issues is the reluctance of some faculty to accept that MIL should have a role in Middlebury’s future.
But Associate Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies Laurie Essig said that she was indeed worried about MIL’s relationship with K-12, Inc.
“It is not in Middlebury’s interest as an institution of higher learning to be so closely allied with a business that is far less interested in education than it is the replacement of face to face learning with online ‘learning,’” she said. “Their unproved record as educators, their for profit motive and their highly politicized agenda ought to give us pause — but because it hurts learning. And Middlebury is dedicated to just that.”
Miller-Lane called the idea that we need to “face the facts” of K-12 market “specious.”
“We are doing this to make a buck, period. We are choosing to enter this market and we can choose to leave. We must now make clear what our standards are.”
(05/07/14 7:58pm)
What would have been our last week of training was instead spent recovering in bed and wallowing in Adam Levine’s new hair color. Reminders of the upcoming race proved to be overwhelming throughout the week. A walk into town meant passing a screaming neon sign announcing road closures on Sunday, May 4, a check of Maddie’s e-mail meant receiving a reminder of final logistics from the Maple Run coordinators (seeing as how Maddie splurged on the $40 registration fee after the adrenaline rush following her first ever two-mile run back in week 2), and entering our dorm rooms meant seeing the training calendar without X’s on the last few days. We attempted to make the best out of a poor situation and hoped to karaoke our sadness away. After several dozen renditions of Seasons of Love, we felt better and put the microphone aside (also because Maddie took two too many puffs of her inhaler in the hopes of reaching the big note at the end, and practically fainted).
Before we knew it Sunday had arrived. We headed to the starting line and were a little surprised at what we saw. Believe it or not, people seemed calm and casual considering that in a NARP’s eyes, they were about to run across the country. We had our night-before and race day agenda planned since day one of training, and had begun preparing to wake up early for the first time on a Sunday months in advance. Saturday would include a relaxing session of chatarunga — not chimichanga yoga — and a feast of carbs that Maddie would cook in the privacy of Izzy’s Middlebury home. Sunday would include a simple, yet filling meal with Gu packets in our sports bras and pre-race screenings include all of the following videos: US vs. U.S.S.R. hockey halftime speech by Kurt Russell, Will Smith’s emotional plea at the end of The Pursuit of Happiness and a montage of the Dillon Panthers saying “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose” from Friday Night Lights (Tim Riggins, we love you).
We watched the runners bound into the distance and then headed back to Maddie’s room in Battell to watch them run from the window at mile seven. We were shocked to hear a bulk of the runners approaching the Chateau before ten o’clock. We really don’t even want to mention how far behind we would have been considering our steady 11 minute mile time.
We made our way to the finish line, and as everyone received their medals Izzy and Maddie’s eyes watered just a bit. We were both imagining our would-be triumphant finish. And no doubt we were both imagining flowers hitting our feet from cheering bystanders. Although we did not have those special moments, we have had a lot of other successes since February.
Despite our newly acquired partial athleticism, Izzy and Maddie are still NARPs through and through. These last twelve weeks have seen us entering the dining halls in athletic gear more often and increasing our gym attendance (by a grand total of three whopping times), but we have remained NARPs at heart. We felt closer than ever to all the unathletic people on campus who would emerge from the shadows of an Atwater party or approach us as we binged at Ross Mexican dinner to tell us that our athletic struggles are entertaining but also very relatable. Afterall, we aren’t the only ones who couldn’t go up two flights of Bi-Hall stairs without collapsing. Although our new athletic endurance didn’t leave us confident enough to sit at a circular Ross table during prime dinner hours, we have felt significantly better and healthier than ever. When either of us are in a funk, we have genuinely learned to utilize running as a therapy. Removing ourselves from the bustling atmosphere of the College gives us an hour to just breathe (albeit laboriously for Maddie) and contemplate the realisticness of our most recent Buzzfeed quiz results. This is the end of the road for The Secret Life of NARPs, but the one thing we want you to take away is that Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) is infinitely better than 2013’s Dark Horse (we’re talking to you, the one anonymous person who commented on our article online).
(05/07/14 3:56pm)
It has been over three and a half years since the day when the women’s swimming and diving team was told that due to hazing allegations, the 2010-2011 season would be cancelled for all upper-classmen girls. We were two weeks from championships.
I was sitting in the stands as Coach Solomon delivered the information. I was a first-year. I had been hazed. I had been interrogated by public safety. And now I had to decide with the 12 other first-year girls whether we were going to continue on with our season despite the upperclassmen ban.
I’ll never forget the frustration, the tears and the overall strength it took our class to come to a decision. If we didn’t go, the rumors would spread like wildfire, Middlebury’s absence at the NESCAC championship would leave a huge gap, a hole that we would have to work to fill for the rest of our time at Middlebury. If we decided to go, all of the upperclassmen would have to look on from the sidelines, even those that were not actively engaged in the hazing events.
Needless to say the events of my first winter here defined my time at Middlebury. While I was not personally offended by the hazing, members of the team were. And no matter what anyone says, it was hazing. Period.
We ended up going to the meet, and the thirteen first-year grew extremely close. While some of the other grades were strained by the stress of it all, our class grew closer and we remain close today.
My best friends are swimmers and leading the team this year along with all of my fellow seniors has been an honor. I love the sport of swimming, despite the hazing, despite losing the coach that recruited me and despite the drama of the situation. Part of the reason I kept going was because I was always with my best friends and felt pride and responsibility for the underclassmen. I would never wish on them the type of experience we went through in the weeks after the hazing incident, and have worked to ensure that the women on the team are aware of the consequences of our actions, and to be aware not only of your friends’ feelings, but every single person on the team.
This year we placed third in the NESCAC championships for the first time since I’ve been here. It was one of the proudest moments of my time at Middlebury. It signaled the strength of our athleticism and the hard training we put in. More than that though, NESCACs was really fun. I personally swam badly. Normally this would mean that the meet would drag on and I couldn’t wait to get on the bus to go home. However, with each good swim of a teammate, I had fun and experienced joy and pride that made the meet so enjoyable — I didn’t want it to end.
I realized at the end of the meet that this is what it meant to be a team. A team is not brought together by hazing or traditions. A team is brought together through hard work, through friendships and through a general pride in oneself and ones teammates.
When the class of 2014 graduates, the memory of the hazing graduates with us. The emotions and events that took place now leave the college. However, in our wake, I only hope that the spirit of what it means to be a team is what is left behind. The lessons of our experience should not be forgotten, but even more than that the lessons from this season, the lessons of what it really means to be competitive athletes and amazing friends should be remembered.
In my final column for the Campus, I leave everyone here at the College with the following advice. It’s quite simple. Don’t haze; build trust through friendship and understanding. It is more rewarding and meaningful. The bonds I have built through friendship and understanding made my time at Middlebury amazing and will continue to grow even after I leave this place.
To my team; thank you for the most incredible years. To everyone else; remember what is most important in life – trust, understanding and respect – and I’m sure you can also build friendships that will last a lifetime.
