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(04/11/14 6:51pm)
Forgive me, psych majors, if I am wrong in this, but I seem to recall learning in my Psych Disorders class two years ago about several studies which proved that the life-outlook of individuals suffering from Depression is, in fact, not overly pessimistic, but rather fairly realistic compared to the realities of probability. Psychologically “healthy” individuals, by contrast, tend to be overly optimistic in their predictions for the future. That is, if depressed individuals and not-depressed individuals were asked to predict whether or not they would get a job in the first year out of college, according to these studies, the depressed individuals would be more likely to be correct.
Whether or not this is, in fact, true, we could certainly make a case for all the terrible things happening across the world everyday which we choose to ignore, as well as the terrifying existential questions which we usually put out of our minds, and say that on the whole, day to day, most of us are choosing to live in blissful ignorance. We could, of course, make the case in the other direction—that on the whole, day to day, we ignore most of the beauty and the miracles of life (I mean, I am not a science major, so the fact that our brains can heal from trauma and that plants know to grow upwards out of the soil and not downwards into the soil and that the universe is expanding and folding in on itself at the same time— all of that feels like a miracle to me, but call it what you will).
However, Ben Marcus, author of the new short-story collection Leaving the Sea released this January by Knopf Publishing, is most certainly of the former opinion. A narrator in his story “Watching Mysteries with My Mother” notices that the families of individuals with terminal illness insist that their loved one is “a fighter”; she will be the one to “beat the odds.” But “odds should be odds, and they should never be beaten,” he writes, “If they are, then the odds are incorrect and should be changed.” Later he recognizes that his mother’s odds of dying are increasing at every moment as she ages. “Right now, sleeping in her bed, she has never in her entire life been in greater danger of dying.”
The moral, I guess, would be that life is often more arbitrary and unpleasant than we would like to think, which is possibly the only certitude standing behind the characters of Marcus’s stories, fifteen middle-aged male protagonists who seem painfully aware of the fact that their lives are not at all turning out as they would have hoped. Marcus, the author of three novels including The Flame Alphabet and the winner of three Pushcart Prizes, finds his own place among such bleakly sardonic storytellers as Kafka, Beckett, and the Coen brothers. His characters are often pathetic, utterly failing to communicate, and disgusted with the shortcomings of language and of their own bodies. If they happen to fall in love, it is “through several mutual misunderstandings.”
The stories begin in a familiar and disappointing modern world—a divorced dad finds his cubicle at work overtaken by interns, a middle-aged son watches British mystery-dramas on PBS and cannot forget about his mother’s mortality. Marcus’s voice feels grippingly vivid and current; he doesn’t try anything fancy with his sentences (save for one sentence which goes on for six pages—and yet miraculously manages not to be annoying). Here and there, Marcus points out small sensations of daily existence which we might never before have noticed.
As his stories progress, the recognizable world and the forms of language themselves begin to dissolve, and the characters waver between struggling to survive and wishing to disappear. The reader is left alone without sign posts, only grounded in the recurrent rhythms of the stories, and in the glimpses of suggestion which make these wildly violent dystopias seem strangely similar to the reality we swim in every day. “We know nothing about the future,” the characters of one story remember from a sort of gymnasium cum bomb-shelter—we know very little for sure at all.
The reader is as lost as the characters, and often frustrated and exhausted by the tediums of the everyday and by the devastating awareness that human life might be nothing more than a mistake. “I would have gills,” thinks one of the narrators, “if I were something better that had never tried to leave the sea.” But one keeps reading, I think, because every so often, even as Thomas inches for what feels like a thousand years worth of over-wrought anxiety down the office hallway towards the beautiful, indifferent colleague at the coffee cart—every so often, one miraculously finds a moment of peace.
(04/09/14 11:20pm)
Following the recent restructuring of the Board of Trustees, July 1 will mark a wide-sweeping change in faculty governance. These changes come at a pivotal transition point for the College, as the new President will assume his position in 2015.
President Ronald D. Liebowitz wrote in an all school email, “The transitional nature of the amended responsibilities is intended to provide continuity for the College’s new leader, and also to allow for important coordination with the Board and its new committee and governance structures.”
The Board of Trustees is now organized into three boards of overseers. There is a one board of overseers for the College as well as two different boards for its affiliate programs.
Shirley Collado, Dean of the College, will also become the Vice President for Student Affairs. Steve Trombulak, Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies, will take on the role of Director of Sciences. Stephen Snyder, Professor of Japanese studies, will become the first ever Dean of the Language Schools.
Liebowitz wrote in his email, “[Snyder’s] new position reflects the growth of our language schools, the likely increased collaborations between the Schools and other parts of Middlebury, and the current leave taken by Associate Vice President Aline Germain-Rutherford to serve as Chief Learning Officer at Middlebury Interactive Languages.”
Andi Lloyd, the current Dean of the Faculty, will assume the newly created role of Senior Administrative Officer for the College Board of Overseers. She will also take on the role of Vice President for Academic Affairs.
“I will work with the chair and vice-chair of the College Board of Overseers to set the agenda for the year and provide materials for meetings,” Lloyd said. “Probably the best way to think about it is that I am a liaison to the Trustees serving on the College Board of Overseers.”
Tim Spears, the current Vice President for Academic Affairs, will become the Vice President for Academic Development. Spears sees his new role as bringing the needs of initiatives that might be bubbling up between faculty as well as different new and already existing programs to the college advancement and grant offices.
“It makes sense, I think, from the President’s perspective to have an administrator who is familiar with the academic program to work with his office, College Advancement, the academic administration and the faculty to develop new initiatives,” Spears said.
Suzanne Gurland, currently an Associate Professor of Psychology, will succeed Bob Cluss as the Dean of the Curriculum. Gurland has an extensive background that will prepare her well for this new position.
“One of the first committees I was ever on when I came to Middlebury was the curriculum committee,” Gurland said. “And at that time Bob Cluss was the chair of the committee, so I feel that I learned from him and got a broad perspective on the College curriculum from that experience.”
Gurland has also served on the Educational Affairs Committee and the Governance Working Group.
“Serving on the educational affairs committee has given me a broad view of the college and an appreciation for the similarities and differences among departments and programs and how things work in various parts of the curriculum,” Gurland said.
All of the new roles will have a year to adjust under the leadership of Liebowitz before the new President assumes his position in 2015.
“The administrative transitions were timed so that President Liebowitz will still be in office when the changes occur,” Lloyd said. “This gives all of us a year to get up to speed on both the new positions and the new governance structure, so when the new president comes in we should all be comfortable in our new roles.”
(04/09/14 4:50pm)
The next time you walk by a tree, and a dead branch does not come crashing down, knocking you off your feet, you can thank the College’s Facilities Services Maintenance and Operations. As spring thaw approaches, the College’s landscaping crew is busy pruning trees on campus before the snow melts and reveals quads of yellow grass and muddy shortcut eyesores that need to be dealt with.
At 8:30 a.m. on a crisp and sunny Thursday morning, I met with Horticulturist Tim Parsons, Crew Chief Jon Quelch and the rest of the landscaping crew to learn about tree pruning at the Emma Willard House. Walking from Atwater Dining Hall, the 45 degree temperature and sunny clear skies made athletic shorts and sneakers feel like a great life decision — much better than waddling around in sweatpants.
Fast forward another 30 minutes, shivering underneath the shade of trees in need of pruning and slip-n-sliding across the half-frozen lawn trying to keep up with Parsons, as he flitted from one tree to another, getting more and more excited about each one — now I understood why these men were all wearing jeans and winter jackets.
Meanwhile, Parsons was busy explaining to me why pruning is done mainly for safety and aesthetic reasons.
“In the wild, trees don’t need to be pruned,” he said. “I’m not saying a tree won’t be healthier because of pruning, but generally we don’t prune for the health of the tree, but for our own safety.”
Though pruning happens naturally in the wild, this can be dangerous in the “urban forest,” such as the College campus, if a dead branch could finally give and land on a pedestrian, though Parsons admits “the chance of this happening is very slim, but still.”
As he clipped off the lower branch of a young crab apple tree, Parsons explained the three D’s of pruning: “Dead, Diseased and Dumb. For example, these two branches growing on top of another, competing for the same sunlight? That’s dumb.”
Behind the Emma Willard House, Parsons noted how “cavernous” the backyard appeared with overgrown and overhanging branches. After pruning, the backyard felt more “spacious and welcoming” to visitors.
Late winter is an ideal time to prune trees because the branches are easier to examine and handle without leaves while the temperatures aren’t as cold and harsh. Some little critters also appreciate this timing.
“Because we prune in the winter for the most part, there are no birds in the nests,” said Parsons.
But not all little critters leave their nests empty.
“There was a subcontractor that was doing some tree work on a tree down at the Kitchel House, and a squirrel ran three feet above his head, and ran down into the limb he was on. It was a hollow limb and he couldn’t get the squirrel out to save his life. He didn’t want to work on the tree because he was scared he would hurt the squirrel. So, he was waiting for the longest time for that squirrel to leave because he didn’t want to hurt it.”
Parsons also showed me the three main tools used in pruning. For smaller trees, hand pruners are used. Parsons own several pruners, which he hand-sharpens at the end of every winter pruning season. For medium-sized to large trees, hand saws are used. For even larger trees, pole-saws are the tool of choice.
“The pole-saw”, he pointed out, “has a fitting name.” Picture a hand saw stuck on top of a long, re-tractable pole.
Hand saws are the most commonly used, especially in conjunction with the tree climbing method. Workers climb trees, secured by a special rope on a limb, and prune within the branches. According to Parsons, there haven’t been any accidents (knock on wood).
“As long as you go slow and think carefully about what you’re doing, climbing with a rope is a safe way to prune trees.”
For Buzz, a member of Facilities Services, who learned to climb trees just last winter, the shift to pruning as the days get warmer “breaks up the long cold winter, especially this year, when we did a lot of shoveling. From up there [in the tree], it’s a whole different view.”
Some crew members, like Groundsworker Steve Rheaume, have been climbing for over 10 years.
“You can probably learn to climb a tree [using the rope] in a day or so, but it could take you 12 years to get as good as Steve.”
Rheaume was busy climbing and pruning when we stopped by, but he shouted down at us, “It’s a good workout; you definitely break a sweat! The highest tree I’ve ever climbed was 25, maybe 30 feet.”
As a photographer tried to get Parsons to pose next to the tree being pruned, he pointed at Rheaume and said, “Well, he would be the star, here. Doesn’t that look like fun?”
During my Pruning 101 session, Parsons also pointed out some of his favorite trees on campus, including what he believes is the oldest tree, a huge sprawling 80-foot Bur Oak right by the CFA. Insisting it was worth seeing in person, Parsons offered to drive me down to take a look. I’ve always wanted to ride one of those green John Deere tractors and who wouldn’t want to see a tree that was alive at the same time as George Washington, so of course, I jumped at the chance.
“How fast does this thing go?” I asked as the motor hummed.
“A lot faster than I’m allowed to drive it.” He chuckled.
Parsons is not sure exactly how old the Bur Oak is.
“I’d say 200 years or more. The only real way to age a tree is to count the rings, and to do that, you have to use a special bore technique or cut down the tree and count the rings. I’m not willing to do either on this tree. But, this has been here at least as long as the school, if not more. It is spectacular.”
When asked about pruning an old specimen like this, he said, “You can see all the dead wood here, there’s a large piece of dead [wood] right there that would have to come off. But for the most part, when trees are this old, they don’t need anything.”
Parsons hopes the Bur Oak has another 200 years, but knows this might be far-fetched. Health-wise, though, the tree seems to be in good shape.
“There’s not a lot dead [branches], it has a lot of nice young shoots, new twigs, it’s still putting out a decent amount of growth this year,” he said. Though 200 might be unrealistically long, Parsons believes the tree sill stick around for a long time.
(04/09/14 4:29pm)
On April 2, a motley crew of professors, students and local denizens came together to share in a discussion titled “Acting Righteously in Times of Danger.”
The event sought to spark conversation regarding two key questions: “When others are threatened in times of danger, what is it that moves us to act courageously on their behalf and risk our own safety and those closest to us?” and “How do we foster tolerance, understanding, empathy and courage?”
To help guide the exploration of such nebulous — and fundamental — questions, the audience was first given an exceptional anecdote from the film “Two Who Dared,” whose chosen center is on Martha and Waitstill Sharp, two Americans “who played a vital role in saving hundreds from persecution during World War II.” As one might expect, any literal comparison between the Sharps’ life and that of most Middlebury students would be unfair.
However, when attention turned towards the values that guided the Sharps, an enlightening and applicable conclusion was reached. As one of the older participants said, “If Middlebury students want to spread the values they hold dear, they must first devote themselves to those ideals in the day-to-day, the mundane. This isn’t a new thought, but it is underappreciated.”
The Sharps’ lives were, above all else, defined by an unwavering devotion to virtue. In “Two Who Dared,” one of the main points of emphasis was that Waitstill and Martha Sharp were the 18th choice for relief volunteers. The 17 previous ministers declined for understandable reasons: young children, a job and a stable life. The Sharps were different. Waitstill often used the word “must” while describing why he and Martha made the decision to go on both of the two missions, the first to Prague and the second to Southern France during the German invasion. They had two young children, a stable job and a stable life, yet Waitstill continued to use that decisive word. The discussion group had some trouble with this — why must they leave their children? Why must they give up their lives when there were those who were better equipped?
One attendee saw the reasoning to be simple, remarking, “It’s a matter of holding true to your virtues. It seemed as though they — Waitstill especially — didn’t see a choice. If they didn’t live by the idea of absolute equality in every action then they just couldn’t be equipped to create equality.”
Although this sentiment did not hit home with some in the room — seeing as much of the space was filled with mothers and fathers — many believed it could very well be the Sharps’ perspective. In either case, Waitstill and Martha had an undeniable impact. During these two tours, the Sharps helped over one hundred refugees find safety and security, and were “recognized by the state of Israel as Righteous Among the Nations for risking their lives to save Jews and dissidents during the Holocaust.”
The Sharps’ story is an extreme one. Leaving one’s children in their most formative years for a potentially life-threatening mission is not something most parents feel they “must do.” It is certainly not something any student can fully appreciate at this point in their lives. As such, much of the conversation turned towards the realm of moral take-aways rather than literal ones. The take-away: it is the little choices we make every day that create real change, not implausible end goals.
Seeing as the College’s Board of Trustees have outwardly lauded the College as the first global liberal arts institution, it seems as though its students would be some of the best at enacting sweeping change.
But one student solemnly asked, “How can we consider ourselves to be the best equipped if many of us don’t stand by the virtues of equality and fairness when we don’t respect something as small as peer proctoring?”
For a student, one of the most common “little choices” is to respect the tradition of peer proctoring. Although it may not seem comparable to the idea of gender equality, for example, it is less a matter of the topic and more about the fundamental value driving any sort of change.
As Lecturer in Religion and GSFS Maria Hatjigeorgiou stated after the discussion, “Even at a school like Middlebury, the most important class is that of the students ‘walking the walk.’”
That is to say, it is not enough to learn what equality is; it must also practice such virtues on a day-to-day and moment-to-moment basis. To this sentiment, Adrian Leong ’16 added, “Being virtuous does not have to be known all the time: we delude ourselves to think that until a grand goal is reached, our efforts are without worth.”
By the conclusion of the discussion and event as a whole, a consensus of sorts was reached. Students at the College, like all students, teachers and human beings, are shaped by our daily interactions with the world. Although something as uncelebrated as taking peer proctoring seriously is not “acting righteously in a time of danger,” it equips students to spark just as much change as any class or peer-proctored exam.
(04/04/14 1:20am)
It was a one-in-a-million chance or a message from God. In Nov. 2008, Sierra Stites ’14 was standing on the sidelines watching her high school soccer team play. Then, a ball kicked from an adjacent field slammed into her head, whipping her skull forward and forever changing her life.
“My original thought was ‘what did I do wrong?’ But that got me into religion and sinning, and I never felt comfortable with that thought because once you start thinking like that it can lead you down a very dangerous path, and I was already in a precarious position,” she told me, reflecting five years after the concussion.
On that day, she was not playing specifically to avoid worsening the “standard” concussion she sustained after butting heads with an opponent for a jump ball two weeks earlier in a tournament in St. Louis, Mo. The second concussion could not have come at a worse time. In the midst of the junior year rat race to get into top colleges, her test scores plummeted from the 90th percentile to the 30th percentile. Stites was forced to complete speech cognitive therapy to help her regain understanding of what was happening in class.
“I never took that much time off of school, because I defined myself as a student-athlete, and I already had the athlete part taken away,” Stites said. “I ended up having autonomic injuries as well, which meant that any change of planes – getting up, lying down – would make me really dizzy with black spots in vision.”
Stites had battled back from two torn ACLs – rehab she now calls “easy” in comparison – but that second concussion became an immovable obstacle, strapping her with physical and emotional baggage she was forced to carry with her to Middlebury.
The step from high school to college was especially challenging because Stites lost the direct support from her family. One of the biggest challenges for victims of head injuries is that there are no physical manifestations. Without a cast or crutches, a blinding headache is easily seen as lethargy or even laziness by the outside world.
“I had a friend tell me ‘you were moping there for a while’. Are you serious? I couldn’t think. That was always disappointing to hear but it tells you who your real friends are. But comments like that are why I retreated into my family because my parents were both doctors and knew, at least medically, what I was going through. The stigma is definitely there, but I stopped caring what people thought.”
While the College’s administration and counseling services gave her constant support, Stites struggled to overcome what at times seemed an unwinnable war. During the fall of her sophomore year, Stites’ recovery hit a plateau, her symptoms neither improving or worsening and the constant headache hurting her ability to concentrate. Running out of options, Stites and her father found themselves at the Famed Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. More physical therapy and a semester later, she returned to the College.
During her junior year, the physical symptoms subsided enough that she could stay up past 10 p.m. and drink in moderation, things most students take for granted. But that was only half the battle.
“Part of post-concussion syndrome is the emotional side affects. I struggled with depression and anxiety junior year because I had a lot of trouble finding the support that I needed. I was never someone to tell everyone what I was feeling, and so I had a lot of trouble re-adjusting junior year and by the end I was almost ready to leave Middlebury.”
Even thought she has lived a quarter of her life with a concussion and cannot remember most of high school, Stites still plans on becoming a doctor after graduation and even gives her head injury credit.
“It’s made me a better person and made me more self-aware. People come to college saying they are going to find themselves, and I think I came in knowing who I was and what I’m about. It forced me to grow up quickly and take a hard look at things. I don’t think I would even be at Middlebury if I didn’t have a head injury. It’s been a part of my life for so long that I can’t imagine what it would be like without it.”
A Three Month Headache
Possibly the cruelest part of concussions for athletes is the recovery. People who shape their lives around movement in sport are forced into static solitude, something they are wholly unaccustomed to.
With five minutes left in a weekday lacrosse practice on April 17, 2013, John Montgomery ’14 scooped up a ground ball in front of the net and ran up the field. But a teammates’ stick jarred it loose, and as he jumped to retrieve it, the two players’ heads collided. He blacked-out on contact and blacked-in when he hit the ground, beginning a dizzying five-month journey of doctors, darkness, and frustration.
Montgomery had sustained a concussion playing high school football at St. Mark’s School in Dallas, Texas. While he was “so mentally out-of-it it wasn’t even funny” at the time of the hit, he went back to class within four days of being hit and simply sat out a few weeks. But this one was different.
“I heard horror stories about it, and I’d seen other people get concussions, but I had sustained one, I knew what that’s like, they must have been doing something wrong.”
The day after the initial hit on Youngman Field at Alumni Stadium, Montgomery didn’t feel any of the telltale signs of a concussion – blinding headaches or nausea – only a self-described “foggy-headedness.” After consulting with Associate Director of Sports Medicine Kelly Cray, he suited up for practice the next day. While it was supposed to be a non-contact practice, Montgomery ran into a pick from another teammate, hitting the same side of his head for a second time in as many days.
Montgomery was hindered by the fact that the second concussion was not cut and dry. In those crucial five days between the initial hit and the following Monday when he finally shut everything down – now known to be the most important in dictating recovery time – Montgomery most likely exacerbated the concussion.
“When I tell this story, I feel like an idiot because I kept going and going and going. Part of it was that I didn’t know I was hurt, and I had so much schoolwork I needed to do. I couldn’t just sit there and be like, ‘oh well, I got hit in lacrosse, so that’s why I can’t write your paper, Professor.’ Doing work was probably the thing that pushed me over the edge. You wouldn’t ask someone who just broke their leg to go run a marathon. So translating that comparison to a concussion, you wouldn’t ask that person to run a marathon mentally, doing a bunch of schoolwork and writing a bunch of papers. And that’s exactly what I did. It was stupid.”
As the warmer months crept onto the College, Montgomery was bed-ridden, spending 16 hours a day staring at the dark ceiling. All stimulation was forbidden, which in essence, is almost everything. The only contact he had with the outside world was texting friends to bring him meals. After three weeks of darkness in Starr 311 and little progress, Montgomery decided to take incompletes in all four of his classes and fly home to Dallas with the help of his mother. Once home, he went through an array of doctors from a chiropractor to a neurosurgeon, even spending hours in a hyperbaric chamber.
It took the headache and accompanying symptoms three months to fully subside, after which he finished his class work and completed a truncated internship in Houston, Texas.
The bravest, or most foolhardy, part of the story is that Montgomery plans to play lacrosse this coming year.
“It’s a large gamble. I already have a job after I graduate and I would hate to have that taken away from me because of my decision, but at the same time, when you fall off a horse, you always get back on to show yourself and the horse that you can do it, and I don’t see how this situation is any different.”
A Concussion Speaks
If you talk to enough athletes who have sustained concussions, you start to notice a common trend. While few can remember the crucial moments – many black out – every one I talked to can remember the exact date and time of day they were concussed, even years later. The odd paradox speaks to the unintended consequences and importance a concussion has.
For ex-skier Emma Kitchen ’14.5, that was just after dark on Dec. 1, 2010. On her bike, bombing down the hill on College Street below St. Mary’s Church, Kitchen collided head on with another student at the intersection with Shannon Street. The impact left her in the intensive care unit for three days with a fractured skull, hemorrhaging, and cerebral contusions that kept her bed-ridden with no screens for six months.
Kitchen’s recovery came in meager steps. At six months, she was able to get her heart rate above 150 beats per minute. At eight months, she started drinking with her friends. Finally, after nine months and 11 doctors, she made a full recovery.
The unending days of confined darkness became some of the hardest in her life.
“You’re locked in a prison, and if someone tells you otherwise, then they haven’t done it. Recognizing that it hurts to live, that’s terrible. The problem I had was that I felt like I was lying there for someone else. Everyone from a neurosurgeon to a psychotherapist told me the same thing: ‘go lie in a dark room. You’ll recover slowly, but we don’t know when.’ It was really frustrating in that regard. There was nothing else out there. It made me feel like an addict who had done something wrong.”
But necessity became the mother of invention. Frustrated with the lack of alternative therapies, Kitchen and Kait Surdoval ’12 founded Concussions Speak in Jan. 2012.
“The idea came from me not being able to talk about my concussion. It was just a matter of finding more people like myself, who had gotten their sport taken away from them,” Kitchen said.
After Director of Athletics Erin Quinn sent an email petitioning athletes to share their concussion stories, the group received ten stories.
“The similarities between the stories were uncanny. Everyone has a similar story of the denial stage, the depression stage, and then the very slow recovery stage. It is really painful and difficult. I found that I didn’t trust anyone who hadn’t been through it because it impacts every second of your life. Everyone has the same experience of not feeling 100 percent there. We realized that it was fine to tell these stories, but what we really needed was a way for people to connect, talk about it, and answer questions.”
Today, Kitchen said she speaks to a different concussion survivor about once a week. Concussions Speak has grown from a modest Facebook page to full-fledged non-profit, traveling to speaking engagements far beyond the College. Most recently, Kitchen, Stites and Surdoval spoke to a group of kindergarten through 12th grade students Hammond School in South Carolina on Nov. 22.
Reflecting back on her years at the College, Kitchen may be the only athlete who calls her concussion “the best day of my life.”
“The ski culture is very insular. You are required to spend so much time with the team because it’s such a demanding sport. They are always on the hill, or preparing to be on the hill. On a time perspective, I would not have had the opportunities to do what I’ve done since. If I had gotten through half my Middlebury career and then decided I didn’t want to ski, there would have been a lot of emotional detachment for letting the team down. I was brought here to ski, and I found them to be a family-oriented bunch, and to let them down like that would be hard on me. I didn’t have to go through any of that. The decision was made for me.”
Challenging Traditional Treatments
The high-intensity community that the College is praised for makes treating concussions often a fool’s errand. The first five days are the most critical in determining the severity and length of recovery. While the College has a four-step diagnostic process, asking students at the College to push pause on their entire lives is often a task many fine impossible to embrace.
“Another challenge is getting concussed students to slow down and allow their brain to recover. The pressure to keep up with academic work is one of the most significant and detrimental factors impairing recovery from concussion,” wrote Medical Director, College Physician and Team Physician Dr. Mark Peluso in an email. “Students that try to push through symptoms to keep up with their academic work tend to require a longer recovery times than students who rest and follow our symptom-based recovery process.
In light of the imperfect treatments and challenging atmosphere for recovery at the College, concussions are not going anywhere. Peluso said that between Parton Health Center and Sports Medicine, he treats between 15 and 30 concussions a year, which is rising nationwide because of better patient reporting.
During the five-day period after Montgomery was initially hit, he did anything but rest, attending class, practicing multiple times, and taking numerous tests. After weeks of bed rest at the College, he decided to go home early, which he called the “best decision” he made over the course of the whole ordeal.
When asked what advice they would give to students who have recently sustained concussions, both Kitchen and Montgomery were critical of the bed rest treatment program.
“Past a certain point it actually works against you. I told my parents that I didn’t think I would ever have this much time to sit and think unless I went to prison in solitary confinement. You just sit there and think, ‘do I have a headache? Do I have a headache?’ Eventually, you are going to give yourself a headache. I felt like I was starting to go crazy by the end of it,” Montgomery said.
Peluso wrote that to a certain extent, prevailing medical methods of treating concussions are starting to change.
“More recent expert opinion suggests that lying down in a dark room fir several days may not be helpful. The concept is known as sub-symptom threshold recovery, and allows concussed students to gradually increase class attendance and school work activities in small graduated intervals based on symptoms.”
Kitchen encouraged people to take recovery into their own hands.
“The part that hurts the most is when you are lying there because someone told you so, in your own prison. Don’t let someone tell you cannot go outside,” she said.
(03/19/14 5:41pm)
As students, we live our lives in proximity to our peers, and thus have the opportunity to see them not only in an intellectual environment, but also in the social sphere. We see our friends on dining hall dates, at Atwater parties, on long walks to the organic farm, and “studying” in the library — our curiosity is satiated by observation and gossip. But faculty and staff remain an enigma: though we may get to know our faculty and staff we hardly ever see their personal lives. The Campus sat down with many of these couples individually this week to find out if they know each other as well as they know their subject matter.
Director of Sciences Support Services Tim Wickland and Director of Student Fellowships & Health Arlinda Wickland by Emilie Munson
Middlebury Campus (MC): How did you meet?
Tim Wickland (TW): We went to high school together in Chicago, but moved in different circles. Arlinda was a socialite and I was a nerd. (Our high school actually had more students than Middlebury College does.)
MC: What was your first date?
TW: Arlinda sought me out when she was part of a group planning our 10th year high school reunion. We went out to a little creperie in Hyde Park, near the University of Chicago, and after that, we pretty much never looked back.
MC: How long have you been married?
Arlinda Wickland (AC): A lot of good years -- who’s counting!
MC: What is one of your spouses quirks?
AW: Tim likes sugar: brown sugar on Greek yogurt; chocolate Quick (powder) on vanilla ice cream; a packet of raw sugar in a pinch.
TW: After so many years, quirks become such a part of the normal fabric of things that you hardly notice them anymore. I guess one thing would be that she can’t tolerate any red decor in the house after the end of February.
MC: What is your favorite quality of your spouse?
AW: Tim is incredibly intelligent and well-read, but at the same time is handy around the house; for example, he services all our cars, built personalized bookcases for each of our sons, and rewired the electrical system in our house by reading a manual.
TW: Arlinda has just about the perfect blend of caring and feistiness. That, and she is an absolutely fabulous culinary artist.
MC: What is their most annoying habit?
TW: Cutting the time too close for my comfort when we have a performance to go to. That being said, we’ve never missed an opening curtain that I can recall (though I don’t always get a chance to read the program before the lights go down).
AW: He often is doing something else (crosswords, sudoku, reading magazines) when I am talking to him! Then when I ask him what I just said, he tries to fake his way through, but it’s clear he wasn’t listening.
MC: What is your spouse’s favorite book?
AW: The Taylor Branch Series on Civil Rights is probably his all time favorite, but he just read Don Mitchell’s new book and had great things to say about it. I just re-read a trilogy that was incredible, but I would never admit what it is.
TW: I think her favorite author has been Rosamunde Pilcher, particularly The Shell Seekers. I think probably the most memorable and compelling at this point in my life would be Taylor Branch’s great trilogy on Dr. King and the civil rights movement.
Professor of Mathematics Steve Abbott and Dean of Students/Professor of The History of Art & Architecture Katy Smith Abbott by Isabelle Stillman
MC: How did you meet?
Steve Abbott (SA): We met at New Faculty Orientation at St. Olaf College. I think we were the only two single people in the room, so it felt like a trick.
Katy Abbott (KA): Steve was wearing rag wool socks and Tevas, so that was the sign that he hadn’t needed to care what he looked like in a while.
MC: What was your first date?
SA: Some early weekend that fall, we ended up downtown. They had a town celebration to honor the defeat of Jesse James at a bank in town. They have a midway carnival.
KA: With fried food on a stick.
SA: Very Midwestern carnival, and we were there with a bunch of faculty.
KA: We rode the tilt-a-whirl together, and Steve almost threw up. [laughs]
SA: And we got to the end of the evening, and Katie’s house was on one side of town, and everybody else lived somewhere else, and she was going to walk home. So I offered to give her a ride on my bike.
KA: Your Harley.
SA: My bicycle. And she accepted. And she got on the back of my mountain bike.
KA: I sat down on the seat, and he stood up on the pedals.
SA: I was stuck, because I didn’t take any art history in college, so I didn’t have any tools. But that summer I was working in D.C., and [in the National Gallery] there was a specific exhibit about one painting. And I said I saw this exhibit this summer with this painting. And Katie said, “I saw that exhibit too, I love that painting.”
MC: How long have you been married?
KA: Eighteen?
SA: Nineteen?
KA: Nineteen, yeah.
MC: What is one of your spouse’s quirks?
KA: There are so many! So much material to work with…Hmm…Steve has never worn a watch and never kept a calendar.
SA: She has probably fifteen different mechanisms for making coffee. And they’re all perfect for about four days. And then it’s not quite right. The French press, the drip thing, the foamer that doesn’t foam, it just spins it really fast. We haven’t done the thousand dollar espresso machine.
KA: That’s the destiny.
MC: One thing you love about your spouse.
SA: Just one, sweetie, you can only do one.
KA: Steve is an incredible parent. He’s always one hundred percent all in, so it’s always been fifty-fifty.
SA: If somebody comes up with an idea, you need Katie around to make it happen. She’s an instigator. The wall between concept and implementation is very thin. Like, “we should get a dog”—she was afraid of dogs when we first met. I went away for a week, and I came back, and we had a dog. We didn’t even have plans to get a dog.
MC: What is it like working at the same college?
SA: Well. When we were Commons Heads, for six years—that was the first time we collaborated. Saying yes to the job was partly inspired by the desire to do something together.
KA: Spending six years together thinking about connecting intellectual life outside the classroom, that was such a rich time for both of us. But in general, I can’t think of any downsides we’ve ever felt.
SA: It’s always funny when students figure it out.
KA: One of the things that’s great about it, is we definitely have a lot of interest in the institution as an institution, and what we’re doing for students here.
John G. McCullough Professor of Chemistry Sunhee Choi and William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Chemistry Jim Larrabee by Emilie Munson
MC: How did you meet?
Sunhee Choi (SC): In the chemistry research lab at Princeton Grad School.
MC: What was your first date?
Jim Larrabee (JL): Sunhee cooked a Korean dinner for me and we watched the Academy Awards ceremony on TV (it was early 1978).
MC: How long have you been married?
SC: 33 years.
MC: What is one of your spouses quirks?
JL: She is very demanding and does not tolerate any effort other than your best effort.
SC: Be[ing] ready for everything 1000 hours ahead.
MC: What is your favorite quality of your spouse?
JL: She is very demanding and does not tolerate any effort other than your best effort.
SC: Devotion.
MC: What is their most annoying habit?
JL: She is very demanding and does not tolerate any effort other than your best effort.
SC: Seeing and questioning unnecessary details to my amazing ideas.
MC: How do you take your coffee?
SC: [I take mine] Black and strong. [He takes his] Black and stronger.
JL: [We] Both take it black, no sugar.
Fulton Professor of Humanities Stephen Donadio and Associate Director and Chief Curator of the Museum of Art Emmie Donadio by Emilie Munson
MC: How did you meet?
Stephen Donadio (SD): Emmie and I met at a party in New York (Upper West Side).
MC: What was your first date?
Emmie Donadio (ED): After the party we went to the West End Cafe, near Columbia University, and talked about everything.
MC: How long have you been married?
ED: Since before our children were born.
SD: We have been married since before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
MC: What is one of your spouse’s quirks?
SD: Unusual enthusiasm for foreign travel (i.e., to places beyond Middlebury town limits).
ED: Just one?
MC: What is your favorite quality of your spouse?
ED: Sense of humor!
SD: Capacity for lasting friendship with others, near and far.
MC: What is their most annoying habit?
ED: Resistance to time away from work.
SD: See above.
MC: What is your favorite movie?
ED: [I] couldn’t say [mine]. [His is] Citizen Kane, without a doubt.
SD: My favorite movie: Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise), an old French film. Her favorite: Dirty Harry (starring Clint Eastwood).
Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies Deb Evans and Professor of American Studies and English & American Literature Will Nash by Emilie Munson
MC: How did you meet?
Will Nash (WN): We met in an Emerson seminar in graduate school.
Deb Evans (DE): But we really met in the mailroom of our grad school program; I was working in the office and we started up a conversation. He had recently shaved a full Grizzly Adams-esque beard, so I had no idea it was the same guy from class I was talking to. It kept rolling after that.
MC: What was your first date?
DE: For our first date, he came to my house for dinner. One of the most memorable parts of the evening was that after we brought dinner out to the porch, I sat down and the wicker chair collapsed – completely! – underneath me. I cracked up; so did he. I think that was when we knew we had a future.
MC: How long have we been married?
WN: It will be 21 years in August.
MC: What is your favorite quality of your spouse?
DE: Will is a very genuine person. When he cares about something – an issue, a person – it is for keeps. And it may be a cliche, but he is a tremendous father, and I love to see him with our three kids.
WN: She is very compassionate and very thoughtful. And she is smart and funny.
MC: What is their favorite color?
DE: His: Red, maybe blue. Mine: green, maybe turquoise.
WN: Her favorite color is blue. That’s my favorite color.
Associate Chaplain Rabbi Ira Schiffer and Commons Coordinator Linda Schiffer by Jiya Pandya
Middlebury Campus (MC): How did you meet?
Ira Schiffer (IS): Our common friends Hank and Roxanne lived in Wilmington, Delaware, and we met at their housewarming party. As we sat talking at the party, I asked her how she knew them. I found out that she had worked on a political campaign with them, and we hit it off ever since. Our friends still claim that they are responsible for introducing us.
Linda Schiffer (LS): Oh that’s a fun story! We met at a party in Wilmington, Delaware, that friends of ours were throwing as a sort of housewarming occasion. I asked him how he knew them. “I married them,” he said. I was taken aback for a moment, and then I realized he was a Rabbi, but I didn’t want to ask outright. We spoke for a bit, and then I broke my cardinal rule of meeting men, letting him have a cup of coffee and driving me home the first time we met each other. I didn’t hear from him for over a month after that, but then he called, a month later, and we started dating!
MC: What was your first date?
IS: It was Christmas Eve, and we went to the restaurant open on Christmas Eve: a Chinese place, with our friends ‘who introduced us’, Hank and Roxanne. After that, we went to Midnight Mass together at the Episcopal Cathedral of Wilmington. We both found it fascinating.
MC: How long have you been married?
LS: We got married in November 1981. He proposed 3 months after we started dating, but we decided to keep the whole thing quiet until he finished his degree. We announced our marriage at his ordination.
MC: What’s one of your spouse’s quirks?
IS: She always makes sure I wipe up all the water around the sink in the bathroom, keep it clean and dry. She’s very particular about things like that.
LS: He’ll do things like feed the cat, which is lovely, but then he’ll leave the empty can of food on the counter. He’ll start something, finish it, but then leave things behind.
MC: What you love about him/her?
IS: Her energy. She just embraces life. She has a motorcycle, she built a sports car when our daughter was a baby, almost 25 years ago, and she still uses it. She ski races on Fridays (we spend a lot of time outdoors), and she ice fishes, one of the activities I don’t join her for.
LS: We lived in Israel for 5 years. We loved everything about our life there. But I had an Uncle in Philadelphia who I was very close with. He was ailing, and I wanted to be with him. I decided to shift back for a little while, to be closer to him, and told Ira I would travel back and forth. Even though he really loved Israel and we were very happy, he decided to move back to the US with me. He said, “No, we’re family and that’s not the way to do it. If one of us goes, we all go.” That’s what I love about him. He understands the importance of family.
MC: What annoys you about him/her?
IS: I don’t hate anything about her. We’ve made life a fun adventure together.
LS: Sometimes he nags. It drives me crazy. I’m like, I get it Ira. But after 33 years of being together, you get used to it.
Associate Professor of English and American Literatures Antonia Losano and Associate Professor of English and American Literatures Daniel Brayton by Julia John
MC: How did you meet?
Daniel Brayton (DB): We met in my first class at graduate school, in her second year.
Antonio Losano (AL): Dan and I met in a grad school class – Victorian Non-Fiction Literature – in August 1992 at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill where we were getting our M.A.s. We moved from Chapel Hill two years later to Ithaca, NY to get our Ph.D.s at Cornell University.
MC: When was and where did you go on your first date?
DB: We went to a Halloween party together. She was Nefertiti and I was a mendicant friar.
AL: We were friends for a while before we started dating, so I can’t really remember a “first” date.
MC: How long have you been married?
DB: We’ve been married since May of 2001.
AL: We got married in 2001, at Mead Chapel on campus.
MC: What is one of your spouse’s quirks?
DB: Antonia is a great disco dancer, but she likes to lead.
AL: Dan has no quirks. He’s perfect!
MC: What do you love about him/her?
DB: I love absolutely everything about her, including all her foibles, neuroses, quirks, and bad habits.
AL: See above.
Chair of the Math Department Frank Swenton and Assistant Professor of German Florence Feireisen by Emma MacDonald
MC: How did you meet?
Frank Swenton (FS): We met when Florence moved into the apartment beneath mine when she started at Middlebury—I think our first actual meeting was when she came up to ask about paying something since she was using my wireless (I told her not to worry about it).
Florence Feireisen (FF): We met “through the internet”, but not online. When I moved from Western Mass to Vermont, I moved into the apartment underneath Frank’s and used his wireless connection for a few days until I decided to go upstairs, introduce myself and offer to chip in for the wireless connection.
MC: What was your first date?
FS: It’s hard to identify a first date as such. She invited me to watch the whole series Six Feet Under through Netflix (actual DVD’s, not online)...I think that initially she was looking for a group, but it ended up being just the two of us watching the series from start to finish over the course of some number of months.
FF: Never really had a first date. We were friends and all of a sudden realized that we had been living in both apartments together for a while. I’d say it’s pretty typical for Germans to be friends and then have that develop into something more.
MC: How long have you been married?
FS: It’ll be five years in August.
FF: 4.5 years.
MC: What is one of your spouse’s quirks?
FS: Well, being German, the strangest thing about her is that she really doesn’t have a German accent (most people ask her if she’s Canadian or something, just because she tends to over-enunciate relative to an American).
FF: Frank has a schizophrenic palate: he loves kids’ things like orange Kraft’s mac and cheese and fruit snacks, but he also appreciates elaborate fancy dinners with grown up ingredients. When we eat out, he often takes risks by trying something completely new. But then he also eats pop tarts.
MC: What is one thing you love about your spouse?
FS: That she’s smart and nice are a little trite, so I’ll say I’m impressed with her hockey skills.
FF: Obviously many things, but you asked about one thing? Ok. I love that this semester Frank is taking an unpaid leave from teaching to be [our son] Max’s primary care giver (Max is 5 months old). He still has chair duties and some advising to do, so he just scoops up Max and takes him to Warner Hall. Max has been called the co-chair of math! He has his own travel bed in Frank’s office. Anyways, I love this about Frank: he did not have to do this, Max could have easily gone to daycare once my maternity leave was over, but it was really important to him to be with both of his boys when they were little.
MC: What is one thing you don’t particularly like about your spouse?
FS: Related to the above, she sort of plays down when she plays hockey, rather than pushing herself and playing with groups that are nearer her potential skill level...she’s just not that competitive in hockey, which is sort of a shame!
FF: Not a big fan of Frank competing in programming contests when we are on vacation.
Associate Professor of Spanish Juana Gamero de Coca and Visiting Lecturer in Spanish Ricardo Chavez-Castenada by Emilie Munson
MC: How did you meet?
Juana Gamero de Coca (JG): In New Mexico State University.
MC: What was your first date?
Ricardo Chavez-Castenada (RC): We never really had a first date.
JG: Many years after we first met, in Mexico City.
MC: What is one of your spouses quirks?
JG: He lives out of this world. Always inside the worlds in his novels.
RC: Her extreme empathy with everything around her.
MC: What is your favorite quality of your spouse?
RC: The world that comes out of her eyes, her mouth, her heart. It is really the world in which I live.
JG: He is a very good person.
MC: What is their most annoying habit?
JG: He does not know how to stop working.
RC: She takes too, too long cleaning her teeth before going to bed.
MC: What is your spouse’s favorite food?
JG: He loves rice and beans. I love shrimps and all kinds of seafood.
RC: Her favorite food is seafood. For me [it] is earth food.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater Andrew Smith and Visiting Lecturer in Theater Lisa Velten-Smith by Emilie Munson.
MC: How did you meet?
Andrew Smith (AS): We first met as we entered an MFA Acting Program at the University of California, San Diego in 2002. It was my first night in San Diego, having arrived with my Uhaul that day with my girlfriend at the time. Lisa knocked on my door because she was meeting my roommate to go see a show at the La Jolla Playhouse. We all met and introduced ourselves as members of the same acting class. I remember thinking: “Cool! She seems great.” But my girlfriend at the time, once Lisa left the room, immediately turned to me and said: “Wow. Good luck with that one.”
MC: What was your first date?
Lisa Velten-Smith (LV): Thinking. Thinking. Yep, no idea.
AS: As members of the same acting class of nine in a very intensive program, neither Lisa nor I came to graduate school to date our classmates. We came there for the work and to learn. So, we denied for a bit the mutual attraction that was developing, even though the directors in the program saw the chemistry, and immediately began casting us together in classwork and productions. We have played opposite each other on stage many, many times. Eventually it became more of a distraction to deny what was so evident to all around us, so we started dating. We didn’t have the normal “let’s go on a date” kind of start.
MC: How long have you been married?
AS: We got married on July 3, 2006.
MC: What is one of your spouse's quirks?
LV: He is really obsessed with making sure the keys are put back on the key holder.
AS: When Lisa gets really excited about something, especially an intellectual idea, her diction becomes pronounced.
MC: What is your favorite quality of your spouse?
AS: She is relentless in pursuit of truth. It is inspiring.
LV: His humility and generosity. Sorry that’s two but he has a lot of favorable qualities. S’why I married the guy.
MC: What is their most annoying habit?
AS: I get annoyed at myself when I get annoyed at her. She is free to have her habits without me judging her.
LV: Leaving the wet bath towel on the bed. Though, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen it happen so perhaps we are experiencing a breakthrough.
MC: What is your spouse’s favorite local restaurant?
AS: My favorite local restaurant: the grill on my front porch. If not that, then maybe Fire and Ice? She likes Fire and Ice too. Any place that has a boat for a salad bar deserves our business.
LV: I don’t necessarily favor one restaurant over another, but I will say the salmon from Costello’s or the chicken from Misty Knoll’s on the grill is outstanding. He might say Fire and Ice because we always seem to have a good time there, but when he sees my answer, he’ll go “oh, yeah, no —what Lisa said.”
(03/13/14 1:40am)
A Brainerd Commons policy of fining students for leaving items in the hallways of residence halls has led to Brainerd’s levying fines of hundreds of dollars on students.
Each Commons attempts to discourage students from leaving items in the hall, and when contacted for comment, representatives from each Commons responded that the primary issue at hand was fire safety.
Cook Commons Dean Ian Sutherland wrote in an email, “There is no hard and fast rule for how Cook Commons responds to possessions left in halls, corridors, stairways and landings, etc. But in general, the problem created is related to ‘blocking the egress’ and falls under general violations of the fire code and are subject to a fine of $50.00.” Cook Commons has not fined any students this year.
Representatives of Wonnacott, Ross and Atwater Commons confirmed that their Commons have similar policies. Neither Wonnacott nor Atwater Commons have fined any students this year, but Ross Commons has fined students who failed to remove items from hallways after being asked to do so.
Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature and Dean of Brainerd Commons Natasha Chang said that Brainerd Commons policy is to fine students 100 dollars for each item left in the hallways of first-year and sophomore residence halls affiliated with Brainerd, that is Stewart Hall and Hepburn Hall. She strives to be “clear in communication, consistent in enforcement” with regard to the policy, and emailed residents of Stewart during J-term saying said the policy would be strictly enforced.
Chang said that there are several reasons for imposing such fines on students for violation of the rules regarding hallways in residence halls.
“First of all [items left in the hallway are] a fire safety violation — things that are in the hallway are considered to be blocking the means of egress,” she said. “That’s why we take it seriously. The policy is also meant to support custodial staff as well as the community in the dorm — it’s not nice to come home to a dorm with a hallway full of stuff.”
Environmental, Health and Safety Coordinator Jen Kazmierczak confirmed that, per College policy written in the Student Handbook, any items in the hallway might constitute obstacles for fire safety purposes. Custodial Services is responsible for correcting and reporting fire safety issues, but Commons Deans enforce fire safety policies.
Custodial Team Leader Liza Rheaume agreed that items in the hall pose a fire hazard, noting that in the event of a fire in a residence hall, smoke may obscure items left in the hallway which might cause students to trip. Therefore, she said, students who leave items in the hall may not only endanger themselves but also their neighbors.
Brainerd student Linley Shaw ’17 was fined during J-term for leaving her ski boots in the hallway of Stewart. A member of the Alpine Ski Team, Shaw missed an email about enforcement of the policy. Shaw returned from practice at about 11 one morning and left her wet ski boot liners next to her ski boots, with her mittens tucked inside the boots.
Thirty minutes later, Shaw was told that although technically there were six items — two boots, two liners and two mittens — she would only be fined 300 dollars instead of the possible 600. She met with her Commons Coordinator and came away with the fine lowered to 200 dollars, which will be added to her tuition bill.
Linley said that she understands the ramifications of crowded hallways for fire safety, but “200 dollars is a lot of money for 30 minutes outside my door without receiving a warning and without even having seen the email.”
Chang noted that this year, five students in Hepburn or Stewart had been fined, out of approximately 300 living in those two residence halls.
“The vast majority of people are extremely respectful of the rules and follow them, a small percentage don’t listen to them and don’t follow, and those are the ones who get in trouble,” Chang said.
According to Chang, the money from the fines goes into the Commons account, which funds community events such as the recent Bite of Brainerd.
“I’m aware as a Commons Dean that students have different economic capacities. If it’s taxing for students to pay that fine I work with them to come up with a creative solution that works for them.” Chang said.
She suggested that a student could work at several Brainerd Commons dinners over the course of their four years at the College in order to pay their fines, or their roommate or somebody else could pay their fines for them.
Lottie Hedden ’14 was fined 300 dollars for leaving her shoes in the hallway during her first year at the College.
“I thought 300 dollars was excessive, and that the policy sends the wrong message about how much cash Middlebury students have access to,” Hedden said.
(03/06/14 2:24pm)
On Wednesday March 5, the Christian holiday of Ash Wednesday marked the beginning of Lent, a six-week long period of discipline and devotion. Ash Wednesday emphasizes human mortality and Lent traditionally asks observers to take up a specific discipline. Many students describe this period as a specially reflective and humbling experience, one that can both connect students with their faithful traditions from home or add unique challenges and significance in a college environment.
In honor of the holiday, Chaplain Laurie Jordan ran a service at Mead Chapel that required her to respect the varied styles of worship within the Christian tradition, unlike most church services that cater to a specific denomination.
“I try to use the basics, prior to all the splits in Christianity,” said Jordan. “So it’s not really dealing with the tender breaking points.”
The service included a Psalm of Confession, when the congregation asks God to absolve their sins, A Litany of Penitence, when sins are detailed with greater specificity, a Great Thanksgiving, when the congregation thanks the lord for his gifts, the Breaking of Bred, a communion, and an organ postlude.
Jordan expressed particular enthusiasm for one defining ceremonial practices of Ash Wednesday — the imposition of Ashes — when the chaplain draws a cross with ashes over one’s forehead and recites, “Remember that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.” According to Jordan, this reminder can be particularly important for students.
“The ashes represents that you may feel young and vital and invincible. But every one of us is going to die one day and our bodies are either going to be burned or decayed,” said Jordan.
Blake Harper ’15, whose father is a priest and is involved in numerous religious life organizations on campus, echoes a similar sentiment.
“Sometimes you can feel like on the college on the hill you are on top of the world,” said Harper. “It is a humbling experience [on] Ash Wednesday just to know how small we are.” He added that this notion uplifts not discourages him.
After the service, many students leave the ashes on their forehead for the remainder of the day.
Blake reports seeing many people he did not know were observant Christians with the ashes.
“It’s just a time when people are not afraid to express their religious identity,” said Harper.
Matthew Blake ’16.5 claims many people who are not familiar with Christianity ask him questions about Lent.
“I’ve had to do a lot of translating,” said Blake. “I’ve had to express what it means to be a Christian to other people and that has made me more reflective on what it means to be a Christian.”
After Ash Wednesday, Christians enter Lent, a time when many observers fast, deny themselves a particular luxury and involve themselves with various religious practices.
Shannon Reinert ’15, who leads the Newman Catholic Student Organization, cited desserts and makeup as examples of indulgences she gave up.
Gregory Markowitz ’15 said that he was not raised religious but has became a more involved Christian while on campus and was officially accepted into the catholic church last summer. Last year, he did not attend Ash Wednesday service but fasted every Wednesday and Friday, ate exclusively vegetarian foods, and tried to meet someone new every day during Lent.
“I was constantly asking myself ‘why am I doing this...to please God,” Marowitz said. “So when you’re hungry, it’s a constant reminder.”
Some do not give something up but add another ritual into their routine.
According to Faith Whang ’15, the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship plans to practice a daily fifteen minute pray period but she expresses concerns over maintaining this routine on campus.
“When you’re at Middlebury, you’re in this bubble where everything is about you,” said Whang, “I’ve noticed that even trying to take a little piece of the day away from me is hard.”
She refers to a popular axiom while referring to the struggles of maintaining her faith at school.
“Someone told me freshman year that college is three things: sleep, study, and social life and you can only do two. Adding faith is like a fourth thing,” Whang said.
Like Whang, Harper does not give up a specific luxury but adds a new ritual to his day: devotional readings with friends.
“It is a time to think about the way we spend our time, think about the way we use our resources, think about the way we treat each other,” Harper said.
(03/06/14 2:23pm)
Room 404 may not be the most recognizable student-run publication on campus, but its little-flaunted presence could be intentional. The publication’s distribution strategy, developed by the organization’s founders Moss Turpan ’14.5 and Dylan Redford ’14.5, does not rely on the typical grab-and-go allocation that other organizations utilize. For those who do not even know what Room 404 is, here is some background information on one of the College’s hidden gems.
The publication features poetry and prose with a purpose, creative graphics, comic quizzes and other ramblings that Turpan says “don’t have a place in any other campus publications.” All of the components are created, edited and designed by a team of contributors at meetings that occur “wheneverly.”
Although the idea for Room 404 sprouted during Turpan and Redford’s freshman year, the first publication did not come out until Winter 2013, but a Spring 2014 edition quickly followed, leading the club to run on a twice-a-year publishing basis. The Spring 2013 edition featured a Choose Your Own Friday Night Adventure at Middlebury, an erasure poem from a book by Freud, Unconventional Love Letters and a comedic Genealogy of Herbals (a family tree portraying personified and characterized herbs with Bay Laurel and Sage as the common ancestors). If the content itself did not make the publication unique enough, its distribution process is notable as well.
The members of Room 404 work hard to compile an email list of prospective contributors and interested readers to get their word out. Leading up to a new edition of Room 404, the staff organizes a non-exclusive release party. All attendees receive an issue of the most recent publication. However, that is not the only opportunity for students to get their hands on a copy. Posters are plastered around campus inciting people to request their own copy via email. A requester is entered into the email server and a personalized copy of the publication is delivered promptly to his or her mailbox.
This is a key feature that separates Room 404 from other student-run publications on campus like Blackbird, the literary magazine, or even the Campus issue you are reading right now. Publications can be as easy to leave behind or throw away as they are to obtain. Everybody has picked up a newspaper or magazine lying around and skimmed it during a spare minute, only to abandon it as quickly as they had found it. Turpan and his peers believe that requiring readers to order their copies, and then presonalizing each copy, increases the chances of students reading the publication thoroughly and also hanging onto it.
I experienced this myself during my interview with Turpan as he brought out the Spring 2013 edition of Room 404, and neatly wrote my name in block lettering along the black line that was preceded by “This Book Belongs To.” I immediately wanted to read every line and every post script and admire every drawing including a very well-constructed ring pop. And, indeed, I did just that as soon as I went back to my room.
The idea of receiving an aesthetically-pleasing and personalized gift in a mailbox that is more commonly designated for tutoring flyers and useless advertisements is tantalizing, and if nothing else, simply new. Although this tailored distribution of magazines is a factor in why Room 404 is less of a “big name” compared to Blackbird or the Campus, it arguably could produce a more dedicated and stronger readership.
(03/06/14 2:18am)
At 9 p.m. local time on March 1 in Kunming, China, a group of men dressed in black began stabbing people with long knives at random, aiming for the head, neck and shoulders, according to witnesses. The attack left 33 people dead, including four of the assailants, and another 130 were wounded. Four more terrorists were apprehended soon after the attack.
A group of Xinjiang separatists have been linked to the terror attack that took place at a train station in Kunming. All 25 students participating in the C.V. Starr-Middlebury School Abroad in Kunming are safe and have been accounted for.
“We have been in touch with our director there [in Kunming] and we are relieved to report that all students at the Kunming program are accounted for and our safe,” wrote President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz in an email to students, faculty and staff. “Our thoughts are with all the citizens of Kunming who are such welcome hosts to our students.”
The school in Kunming is one of three that the College operates in China, and the only one located in the western part of the country. Kunming is a notoriously multiethnic city and tends to attract students interested in anthropology and environmental sciences.
In the hours following the attack, students on the Middlebury program were instructed to remain in their dorms. A number of students were traveling outside of the city for the weekend and were instructed to “be in touch with … staff about the best way to return to Kunming,” according to Dean of International Programs and Edward C. Knox Professor of International Studies Jeff Cason. An all-student meeting was convened with the program’s staff in Kunming the day after the attack to discuss the incident and security measures students should take.
During the meeting, students were reported to be relatively calm and in good spirits, according to Cason. Students were advised not to leave their dormitories at night, to travel in small groups at all times and to avoid public transportation, at least for the next several days. Organized program outings were cancelled until further notice.
“These are all precautionary measures, to be sure; reports from staff indicate that life in Kunming is relatively normal, with local residents out and about as usual,” wrote Cason.
Karen Liu ’15 is currently studying in Kunming and was traveling outside of the city with two other students when the attack occurred. They learned of the incident when a parent of one of the students called to find out if they were safe.
“What I can say is that we are very lucky,” Liu wrote in an email. “Two other [students] and I had travel plans and were at the train station just three hours before. We will be arriving back to Kunming via train [on Saturday night] and have been directed by [Assistant Director of the C. V. Starr-Middlebury School Abroad in Kunming] Peter Robbins to stick with our original travel plans because security will have increased by then.”
That advice changed, however, as staff members ultimately chartered a bus to retrieve the students from outside of the city and bring them back to Kunming on Sunday evening, simply because of the increased risk.
“So far the attack has been isolated to just the train station, and staff members have not yet advised against [visiting] certain areas of Kunming,” Liu continued.
While tensions between the Muslim Uighur ethnic group in the west and China have been rising over the years, according to The Guardian, this is the “first time people from the north-western region have been accused of such a major and organized attack outside its borders.”
(03/05/14 4:58pm)
I had the unique opportunity of speaking at The Moth this past Thursday (the Moth, for those of you who don’t know, is a live story telling event held in the Gamut Room). The experience proved to be extraordinarily fun and exciting, yet I realized something as I stood up there recounting my tale. The loudest laughs, the greatest applauses, the most visible signs of excitement all came from a particular group. It was the latest batch of baby Febs who had shown up and beyond all logic seemed generally attentive to what I had to say.
Now I do not mean to judge Febs as stereotypically more enthusiastic. After all, we are all excited about being in college when we first get here. In truth, my fascination was less a product of them (sorry, Febs) than of an internal trouble. Here I was two years into college and what had happened to all my enthusiasm? My genuine optimism? My eagerness to participate? Had I even had any of that to begin with?
I am convinced the mid-Midd crisis is a thing. It happened to me slowly, quietly, and so subtly that I did not even notice it. No, it was my parents that noticed. They pulled me aside a couple times and asked vague questions like “How are things?” “Is anything bothering you?” and “You seem off?” With mental illness now getting the awareness it deserves, I am lucky to have such attentive parents. I had no clear answers for them though. Nothing seemed particularly wrong; my grades were good, my friends were good and everything was fine. Just fine. Nothing was bothering me and nothing was making me excited. The emotional plateau I hit mid-college was odd to experience and even odder to get away from.
We change as time goes by here, or at least I hope we do. We get smarter, more mature, and more confident. In theory we have more figured out, at least in terms of our academic interests. Yet there are dangerous pitfalls at this stage of the college experience just as there were at the beginning, and I am sure there will be towards the end. Enthusiasm wanes and Middlebury becomes, in a sense, disenchanting. Classes seem to blur together and academic life follows a predictable routine. Even weekends seem deeply scheduled procedures, pre-game, actual game, post-game, Grille, sleep, wake up at 1, rinse and repeat.
The trouble is that upon hitting the mid-Midd crisis, we cannot buy ourselves a Porsche and drive across America. Nope, we are still stuck here, going through the paces of a college experience that has stopped surprising us. The worst thing anyone can feel about college is that they are wasting their time. Apathy and boredom are our greatest enemies here, not alcohol or midterms. So what is left for us to do? We have to confront the age-old riddle of “Here I stand. What shall I do?” That is the only question that matters. What is to be done? We may love our routines, but even so, they should be broken at times. Can we change ourselves? Or must we rely on familiar faces, classes and experiences? Why not give something else a shot?
If I were to prescribe a remedy to this (and I am by no means out of my mid-Midd crisis) I would start with people. Yes, people. When we count our blessings here, it usually comes in the form of beautiful buildings, brilliant professors and a point free dining system. Rarely do we look to our peers as sources of inspiration or uniqueness. Expanding our social circles is never a bad thing and gives us new avenues to re-invention. There is nothing wrong with aspiring to be like our peers, whether it be trying to recapture underclassman enthusiasm or the reserved intellect of seniors in our classes. Often we hesitate, perhaps out of pride, to exemplify profoundly good qualities we see in other people.
Experience has to be the second component of escaping the mid-Midd crisis. Change for the sake of change is often thought of as bad, in terms of the college experience, however, I disagree. Sometimes change for the sake of change is necessary, even if it turns out for the worse. Better we make a mistake now, surrounded by great institutions and people, than later, no? Changing our everyday experience may be as simple as conscientiously making discussion sections about the group and not the individual, going out of your way to say hi to people you have just met or, in my case, telling a story about Glitter at the Moth.
The mid-Midd crisis can leave us jaded and apathetic if we let it run its course. If we see it and acknowledge it, then at least we have a chance to make our middle chapters at Middlebury just as profound, just as exciting as the first weeks we were here.
Artwork by CHARLOTTE FAIRLESS
(03/05/14 4:30pm)
For most of us the Mead Chapel bells are background noise to our daily activities, so when we hear them ringing our impulse is not to stop and listen. Accordingly, one might take for granted the immense skill of George Matthew Jr., the College’s carillon player.
The carillon, which is often mistaken for bells, is the largest type of percussion instrument in the world. The Middlebury College carillon sits at the top of a narrow 75-foot staircase in the steeple of Mead Chapel.
Each key is a rounded wooden lever that, when struck, pulls a wire that causes a clapper to strike a bell.
The resulting sound echoes across campus and beyond. For this reason, Matthew Jr. regards himself “as not only the college carillonneur, but the town carillonneur...it’s a town instrument.”
Matthew has been the carillonneur at Middlebury College for twenty-eight years, and also plays the carillon for Norwich Univeristy. He has been playing for 52 years, and has composed and made arrangements of over one hundred compositions for the massive instrument.
A graduate of Columbia University, the University of Bridgeport and Wesleyan University in different degrees, Matthew Jr. worked in chemical research for fifteen years after graduation.
This was before, “music kind of took over,” he recalled. “I decided, ‘I won’t fight this any longer,’ and I went into music full time.” He was 35 years old when he gave up his career in science and went back to school to earn a Masters in music.
Matthew’s passion for the carillon began at the age of four when his grandfather took him to the 1939 World’s Fair. Sitting atop his shoulders, Matthew Jr. remembers watching “what looked like to me an incredibly old man with a long white beard who was pounding away…and it made the most glorious racket. I thought ‘I want to do that some day.’”
His passion for the carillon continued during his education at Columbia. Riverside Church, just down the street from the University, housed the largest carillon in the world at the time.
The great Dutch carillonneur, Lefevre, was playing at Columbia at the time, so Matthew Jr. arranged his class schedule around hearing him play. Lefevre told a disappointed Matthew Jr. that he didn’t give lessons.
Undeterred, Matthews Jr. considers himself a ‘student’ of Lefevre. “I listened to him so much and studied his style ... I always tell people that I studied with Lefevre but he didn’t know it.”
Matthew Jr.’s relationship with Middlebury College began when the college’s choir director needed a carillon demonstration, and asked Matthew Jr. to perform. After the performance, Matthew Jr. met with the President of the Board of Trustees of the College, who agreed to finance Matthew Jr.’s dream: a four-octave carillon. He soon moved to Middlebury.
Watching him play in the intimate and drafty room at the top of the chapel steeple, it’s easy to forget the publicity his songs get. This is the paradox of the carillon: it is played in solitude but, as Matthew Jr. reminded me, “you never know when you’re playing, are there two people listening or two-hundred? You don’t know.”
The force required to play the instrument mandates that Matthew Jr. hit the wooden keys with his entire hand. He leans in slightly to compensate, and the clunking noises of the keys are as much a part of the music as the bells above.
Matthew Jr. was the first American to play carillon in Russia, and has toured numerous times throughout Europe and the United States. Still, he isn’t upset when I tell him that many students think the music they hear is automated or recorded.
“If you hear the bells a real live person is playing...it’s either me or one of my students,” he states.
For Matthews Jr., the carillon is “part of the acoustic environment of Middlebury.” He always leaves the door unlocked while he plays as an invitation to student visitors. Matthew performs tunes ranging from Samuel Barber and Menotti to ragtime music every week, always ending with Middlebury’s alma mater.
Although Matthew is 78, he is not quite ready to retire from his post as carillonneur for both Middlebury College and Norwich University.
“I’ve tried (to retire) several times and I’ve come back several times ... I’ve been playing this fifty-two years,” said Matthew, “… and I just love to play the carillon.”
(02/27/14 1:21am)
On Monday, Feb. 17, Community Council continued the ongoing discussion of hard alcohol policies with the Commons Deans. Dean of Brainerd Commons and Visiting Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature Natasha Chang, Dean of Wonnacott Commons Matt Longman and Dean of Cook Commons Ian Sutherland were present at the meeting.
Hard alcohol has been a main topic for Community Council since last spring when President Ron Liebowitz asked the Council to examine the role of hard alcohol on campus as a condition of his approval of the Mill Hard Alcohol Exception. During its meetings in the fall semester about the issue, the Council met with Dean of Students Katy Smith-Abbott and Coach Bob Ritter, co-chairs of the 2011-2012 Task Force on Alcohol and Social Life, Gus Jordan, executive director of Health and Counseling Services, and Barbara McCall, director of health and wellness education. A number of members on the Council felt that it was necessary to continue the conversation surrounding hard alcohol with the Commons Deans.
The deans have a more personal understanding of this issue as they work directly with the students who struggle with substance abuse. The College emphasizes education over punishment for students who abuse alcohol, unlike many peer institutions. All students who have to meet with their deans to discuss their alcohol usage are required to go through the Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students (BASICS) program that focuses on educating the student to make better informed decisions about alcohol consumption.
“We work most closely around health and safety, ” explained Longman. “It’s very important to me that students feel that our approaches are reasonable. There are some on campus whose perception is […] that the administrators and the deans are not doing enough about [alcohol issues] and are not coming down hard enough. From my standpoint as someone who sits with students following up after these really tough weekends […], it is easier to see it that way [in a distance] but when you’re really with [these students] you realize that this is a human question […] about who we are as a community and how we treat each other.”
The Sober Friend System, which is one of many safety nets that the college implements, was discussed at the meeting. The Council also debated the idea of having the Parton Center for Health and Wellness open on Friday and Saturday nights.
“The same people are asked to be Sober Friends over and over again because they are usually people who are nondrinking, and it’s problematic to continue with the same people taking these caretaking positions,” said Chang about the Sober Friend System. “A second flaw is that at times the Sober Friend will leave the person, which is concerning. I don’t think there’s an easy solution to either of the two programs and I’m don’t feel that those are great enough problems to do away with the Sober Friend system I really feel that the system is part and parcel of the Good Samaritan policy.”
Ann Hanson, Posse Mentor, former Dean of Students and proxy for Dean of Ross Commons Janine Clookey, pointed out that safety nets, while making the campus generally safer, also encourage students to make irresponsible decisions:
“One of really big challenges in grappling with this issue is [to consider whether] you are hampering or enabling students to drink more by having [those] safety nets. In the real world, you can go to the hospital if you drink too much […] We at Middlebury have always struggled with what our philosophy is and I think we try really hard to keep people safe at a huge expense… [By having those safety nets] we are making it easier for students to drink and be irresponsible.”
This week, the Council continued the conversation about financial aid and heard a petition from the residents of Munford house to become an Interest House.
(02/26/14 8:55pm)
Following a weekend of excellent individual play at the D3 Singles Championship, the focus for the athletes in the Middlebury women’s squash program was once again on team play at Team Nationals from Friday, Feb. 21 to Sunday, Feb. 23.
Following a regular season in which the Panthers went 8-7 against some of the best competition in the country, the women found themselves this weekend at Princeton University ranked 14th nationally. This ranking translated to the Panthers’ earning the 6th seed in the B Division at Team Nationals, competing for the Kurtz Cup.
On Friday evening, the women’s squash team drew 11th ranked George Washington University in the first round of play.
The Colonials were no strangers to Middlebury, with the two sides having squared off at the Yale Round Robin a month ago. With George Washington having taken the first match 7-2, the Panthers were eager to balance the series.
Unfortunately, the Colonials showed their might and proved too much for Middlebury to handle. Play opened poorly for the Panthers, with the usually dominant trio at the top of Middlebury’s lineup, Abby Jenkins ’14, Charlotte Dewey ’15 and Annie Wymard ’15 falling to their counterparts from George Washington. Despite solid wins from the consistent Zoe Carey ’16 and Saskia Pownall-Gray ’16, the final score was not favorable to the Panthers, who fell 6-3 to George Washington.
Despite the early setback, the Panthers still had a full weekend of play ahead of them. While the possibility for a championship was gone, the women’s squash team had the opportunity to compete and improve its national ranking. In the consolation bracket, Middlebury once again faced a familiar foe in Williams College. Having dropped their previous matchup against the Ephs 5-4, Middlebury was aware of the challenges winning would entail, but were confident in its ability to compete with Williams.
Jenkins, after falling behind early, got Middlebury off to a fine start with a win in the first singles slot. However, Williams’ 2nd through 5th ranked players shut down Middlebury, who did not record a win until Carey and Amanda Chen ’14 both picked up their second wins of the weekend at the tail end of the match. After falling 6-3 to Williams, the women were left with only one matchup left to determine the 7th and 8th place finishers in the Kurtz Cup.
The Panthers then faced conference foe Hamilton, a matchup that presented the opportunity to exact some revenge on a team that scored an unexpected win over Middlebury in the Panthers’ first match of the season.
Middlebury took great measures to ensure the match against Hamilton would not be as dramatic this time around. With all around dominant performances, Middlebury won the first eight matches against Hamilton, leaving absolutely no doubt as to who the winner would be.
At the end of the tournament, Carey and Chen remained undefeated through this tough weekend of play.
In addition to the weekend’s play, a pair of women’s squash players were named to All-NESCAC teams over the weekend. Both Jenkins and Dewey represent Middlebury on the all-conference first team. This is Jenkins’ third time on the first team, and Dewey’s second.
With the win over Hamilton, the team finishes up the 2013-2014 campaign with an even record of 9-9, with their primary highlight coming in the form of a third-place finish at the NESCAC championships. Middlebury ends the season with the 15th ranking overall in the country.
(02/26/14 5:53pm)
The music scene here at the College is leaving its underground home for the center stage, as Middlebury Musicians United (also known as MMU) provides a new venue for campus performers.
MMU’s main goal is to bring student music to the Middlebury community. They currently manage a rehersal space in the facilities building and a recordining studio in the Stephen A. Freeman International Center.
In MMU’s latest initiative to promote campus musicians, they launched an event called Wednesday Night Open-Mic Night (WOMP) — taking place every week at the Gamut Room. Students sit on couches throughout the cozy space, eating warm crepes, making small talks as they wait in anticipation for performers to step onto the stage like Nellie Pierce ’16.5 — who wowed the crowd last Wednesday in WOMP’s inaugural night.
“When I first came to campus there wasn’t a music scene,” Mitchell Parrish ‘14, the head of MMU, said. “Three years ago, there were only a few student bands on campus.”
As a sophomore, Parrish formed Thank God For Mississippi, an Appalachian jam band, which has become a prominent group on campus the last few years. Over the past several semesters, the student run, underground music scene at the College has grown tremendously, with the formation of bands like Stoop Kid, Boat Taxi, Iron Eyes Cody, Will Cuneo’s Band and Alpenglow.
MMU is at the center of much of this recent activity, as a network for connecting student musicians.
“MMU is the Facebook for music,” Parrish said. “It puts bands together.”
MMU’s primary initiative is to unite students who play instruments and encourage them to make music. The group is responsible for coordinating the two band rooms on campus, as well as many student performances.
The practice room under the smokestack of the Biomass plant contains a drum set, a PA system, amplifiers for instruments and lockers for students to store their equipment. The room is almost always occupied on weekday nights. With a simple go-link click, (“go/practice”), students can schedule to play music whenever the room is free.
The second space, a recording studio under the Freeman International Center, has a more substantial amount of equipment, with a great drum-set, more microphones, amplifiers and a separate room with a computer for mastering music. This space (accessed through “go/record”) has been used to record and produce many student bands, such as Iron Eyes Cody and Thank God For Mississippi.
Though these two facilities, supervised and managed by MMU, are crucial spaces to bring student musicians together, more can be done to encourage and increase participation by all students in the musical activity that often goes under-recognized on campus. Students like Parrish see opportunities such as WOMP, which will be happening every Wednesday night this semester, as the next step – a way of bringing musicians and listeners together in an informal setting.
“People love the idea of getting together to watch live music,” Rob Shaw ’16 of Iron Eyes Cody said. “People are very quick to engage with that. People want to be in that communal setting where they can drop their boundaries and share in a musical experience.”
Clearly, the student music scene has grown in the last couple years on campus. With the growth of student bands and opportunities for listening that WOMP provides, in the next semester the College will hopefully begin to see more musicians like Pierce, who had never performed for an audience until last Wednesday.
(02/26/14 4:37pm)
I had noticed a couple of times a locked door in Bihall with pictures of octopuses and a sign “octopi wallstreet”, so when my friend Jacob Dixon ’16.5 mentioned he was going to feed the baby octopuses my curiosity was naturally raised and I offered to tag along. When I stepped inside the cephalapod room with its loudly humming pumps and filters and its strong stench of marine biology, I felt removed from Middlebury. Packed inside the room, originally a small janitor’s supply closet, were two 300-galllon tanks containing the octopuses (octopodes is also an acceptable plural, but not octopi). In the first tank one of the three adult California two-spot octopuses floated in sight. Its tentacles stretched nearly a foot and a half, and on its side was its characteristic bright blue dot, one of the two false eyes that give the octopuses their name. Jacob went about feeding small shrimp to the 48 thumb-nail sized babies floating in Tupperware containers on the top of the two tanks.
The College has intermittently kept octopuses for neurological and psychological research since 2008, when two students along with Biology Professor Tom Root opened the lab to study invertebrate intelligence. Researchers have found that octopuses have remarkably complex minds and have evolved emotions, individual personalities and intelligence. Students at the College have sought to build off these discoveries and delve into the workings of the octopus brain and the nature of the mind. In past experiments, students have tested the memories of octopuses by placing them in mazes. Jamie Hillas ’15 will begin a project this spring also investigating the learning capabilities of octopuses. But before Hillas is able to do research, the octopus babies will have to survive and mature.
Alexandra Spencer-Wong ’16 and Amity Calvin ’16 head a crew of volunteers including Jacob Dixon ’16.5, Lisa Wooldridge ’16, Michelle Irei ’15, Tiff Ting ’14, Max Anderson ’14, and Alix Bickson ’14 in charge of the daunting task of looking after and feeding the baby octopuses. Last year another team of caretakers ran into unfortunate problems while taking care of a different group of baby octopuses.
“They had them during the spring and they survived for 6 weeks,” Calvin said, “but they went off on a break and when they came back they found out there was a high spike in nitrate levels, and they all died.”
Dixon, a published aquarium enthusiast, also explained how maintaining good water quality and monitoring the levels of dangerous chemical byproducts is the most essential part of keeping an aquarium.
“Octopuses and invertebrates in general are very sensitive to nitrate,” he said, “and I think that was the reason for their deaths. For example in my aquarium at home I tried to keep the nitrate levels between zero and five parts per million (ppm). In here they spiked about forty.”
He described a number of ways he kept nitrate levels in check in his previous aquariums and how they are currently trying to do so with the octopus tanks.
“You can introduce live rock with resident nitrifying bacteria that convert nitrate into a more disposable form, or you can introduce macroalgae and they consume nitrates as they grow,” Dixon said. “One of the best ways is to cycle clean pure water through and remove the water with nitrates.”
The octopus eggs were laid in December, and they hatched during February break. Spencer-Wong recalled the excitement of that day.
“We were about to leave — it was just a routine feeding,” he said, “then I looked down and I said ‘Amity, what’s that there’. All of a sudden there were babies everywhere. They would hatch in waves of 15. We had literally made the Tupperware container the day before. I put up this really desperate Facebook status calling anyone on campus to come to the room and help, thankfully a couple of friends showed up. There was a frenzy to try and catch them and put them in the right place and make sure they didn’t slip through the cracks of the aquarium. That was a challenge.”
Since then they have been busy feeding and looking after the octopuses.
“We’ve been feeding them twice a day and we do one head count a day,” Calvin said. “It’s been difficult finding out how much we need to feed them to keep them from eating each other.”
Another difficulty is keeping them from escaping.
“They are the greatest escape artists that you have ever seen,” Wooldridge said. “I’ve opened the tank to catch one and I’ve seen one trying to climb out of the tank and I have to push them back down.” Reportedly 6-foot long octopuses can squeeze through a hole the size of an orange.
“We didn’t anticipate this continuing in the spring,” Spencer-Wong said. “We thought we would come by and maybe feed them once a week. But now we’re pretty much in charge of feeding the babies which is intense but it’s been a fun experience and we’ve learned a lot.”
After watching the creatures for a few minutes jet around and wrap their snarling tentacles around prey I could easily see how spending time with them was enticing.
“One of the best things about working with them is that you can see a personality,” Spencer-Wong said. “You can see for instance ‘oh, Reggies is grumpy today’ or when I wear a very intensely patterned sweater the octopus would put up these angry horns and run away so I stopped wearing that sweater around them.”
“Their color changing capabilities are just incredible,” Calvin added. “They can blend in so perfectly, and they change color a lot of the time. When you feed them, sometimes their blue spots will pulse very quickly. When they are relaxed they turn this calm, pale, white shade. “
The group hopes that at least 10 of the baby octopuses will survive into the spring. Currently they have 7 student volunteers.
“You can never have too many volunteers,” Calvin said. “If you know anyone whose interested send them over. We’re gonna work with the octopuses until there are no more left.”
(02/20/14 4:17am)
Middlebury College’s Office of Sustainability Integration declared the College to be on track towards its goal of carbon neutrality by 2016 in its most recent report citing the biomass plant, efforts by a variety of groups on campus, and the new biomethane initiative as critical to the progress.
In his Winter Term update, Director of Sustainability Jack Byrne wrote, “Our FY13 carbon emissions were 50 percent below our 2007 baseline year emissions due to the high performance of our biomass system AND the cumulative effects of the numerous energy efficiency projects the College has completed over the past several years.”
The poster child of the College’s push for carbon neutrality has been the biomass plant, which has cut the College’s use of #6 fuel oil from 2.1 million gallons to 634,000 gallons since 2009.
Despite its success, the biomass plant cannot always handle the College’s large energy demand. “The next big step will be the switch to using biomethane to displace the fuel oil we still burn when biomass is not enough to meet heating and cooling demands,” according to Byrne’s report.
The process of switching over to biomethane to supplement the biomass plant will not be quick and is reliant on the successful construction of the recently approved Vermont Gas Systems pipeline project. The pipeline will allow for cost-effective access to biogas when the biomass plant requires it to maintain operation. The Office of Sustainability Integration estimates the biomethane project will be online by early 2015 at the latest.
The success of the biomethane project is essential to the attainment of carbon neutrality as Byrne anticipates that it will reduce the College’s carbon emissions by 40 percent from the baseline emissions. This amounts to about a 90 percent reduction overall from the baseline year.
“Once this is achieved, [the] remainder of our carbon emissions will be from College related travel, electricity purchased, vehicle fleet and waste sent to the landfill,” Byrne wrote.
College-related travel will account for roughly half of the remaining 10 percent of carbon emissions. According to the 2008 Climate Action Implementation Plan, the current definition of travel includes exclusively College-funded travel, and excludes travel that is funded by student groups or is funded through grants.
However, Byrne reports, “We are in the process of revising the method for calculating emissions from travel as it represents more than half of the total that would remain to assure that we are using as accurate an estimate as feasible.” Other efforts to reduce emissions due to travel include converting some of the College’s vehicles to run on carbon-neutral fuel.
That leaves about five percent of emissions that need to be cut and much of that can be done with the involvement of College students.
“I think a lot of people don’t realize how easy it is to reduce their day to day energy use,” said Campus Sustainability Coordinators (CSC) President Ali Rotatori ’14. “Most of the students on this campus are very eager and willing to live greener, but the issue is they aren’t sure how.”
The CSCs are one of a handful of student groups on campus committed to educating the student body on responsible energy use.
Rotatori acknowledges that not everyone can commit the time to environmentally-focused groups.
“If people can’t be directly involved and commit time to helping Middlebury become a more environmentally friendly place, they can at least help out by changing their own habits,” she said.
Rotatori and her fellow Campus Sustainability Coordinators have many suggestions in their “Greening Your Dorm Room” pamphlet including turning off power strips, taking shorter showers, and walking instead of driving around campus.
With the deadline just two years away, the College is planning to reach its goal thanks to the efforts of many students, facilities and maintenance staff, faculty and administrators.
However, if Middlebury finds itself falling short of its carbon neutrality goal, there is a back-up plan in the form of “carbon credits” that can be purchased to offset our emissions. Colby College employed this tactic when it claimed its own carbon neutrality, sparking debate about the validity of using carbon credits to assert carbon neutrality.
For now though, the College is focusing on furthering what progress has been made in the effort to achieve its goal.
(02/19/14 9:38pm)
Let’s talk about vaginas. Or, rather, let’s talk about The Vagina Monologues, a student produced play performed on Valentine’s Day in the Hepburn Zoo.
Writer Eve Ensler ’75 wanted to start a taboo conversation about female genitalia, and she started interviewing women about their views on sex, relationships and violence, compiling a piece that is ultimately a celebration of vaginas and femininity as well as a movement to stop violence against women. The monologues themselves are endearing and whimsical, heartbreaking and powerful, enlightening and shocking. Inspired by interviews with over 200 women of varying ages, ethnicities, nationalities and sexual experience conducted over two decades, the play reveals tales of feminine oppression, liberation, discovery and shame by discussing that most elusive part of the female figure: the vagina.
Premiering in 1996 at the HERE Arts Center in New York City, The Vagina Monologues also enjoyed a limited run at the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts in the same year. Eventually gaining popularity through a word of mouth campaign, the play has been performed at Madison Square Garden and was featured in an HBO television adaptation.
Traditionally performed around the country on Valentine’s Day, the productions usually benefit rape crises centers and shelters for women. All of the proceeds from Middlebury’s production were donated to WomenSafe, an Addison County organization working toward the elimination of physical, sexual and emotional violence against women.
Director Rebecca Coates-Finke ’16.5 became involved in the production through discussions about staging the play with fellow Chellis House Monitors.
“I volunteered [to be director] kind of on a whim,” Coates-Finke said. “I’ve had a solid amount of experience working on shows in the Hepburn Zoo and I’ve worked closely with so many directors I wanted to try my hand at it. Also, I’d never seen The Vagina Monologues and that seemed so wrong.”
One of the first monologues, “Hair,” perhaps says it best. “Vagina” is not an enjoyable word. As the piece points out, it sounds more like a harsh medical instrument than a revered part of the body, and saying it in any context will undoubtedly provoke squirms and blushes of embarrassment from people of any age or gender. The Hepburn Zoo was packed with male and female audience members from ages 18 to 65, and Coates-Finke began the show by informing the crowd that hearing words like “vagina,” “pleasure” and “clitoris” throughout the night did not constitute an emergency. These are words that do not appear in everyday conversation, but The Vagina Monologues aimed to, at least for a few hours, create a forum for open dialogue about a part of the body that has so much effect on women, and indeed, men, but is rarely acknowledged or discussed.
“When Eve Ensler wrote the Vagina Monologues, she tore away the stigmatizing silence surrounding women’s vaginas,” wrote Coates-Finke in the Director’s Note of the program. “She gave a voice to thousands of stories and empowered thousands more to spread them. In this moment…we are adding ourselves and our stories to the many that have come before, and the many still to come.”
As Coates-Finke noted, the show began with a piece written and performed by Jiya Pandya ’17 based on interviews with every member of the cast. Aptly named “The Period Monologue,” Pandya breathlessly exclaimed her 12-year-old excitement at becoming a member of the exclusive ‘club’ of womanhood only to discover that the implications of this transition involved serious mental and physical pain, confusion and maturity. The choice to begin with an original, relatively relatable monologue successfully eased the audience into the rest of the play.
Four narrators, Katie Carlson ’15, Akhila Khanna ’17, Marium Sultan ’16 and Helen Wu ’16.5 provided contexts for each of the monologues, discussing the origin of each piece and adding statistical information when necessary.
Dana Tripp ’14 sat down as if she was about to get a haircut in “Hair,” but she wasn’t talking about the hair on her head. Looking pointedly at the audience, she explained her husband’s request for her to remove the hair around her vagina and her subsequent embarrassment and physical pain. The cheating husband insisted that it would save their relationship, and even a female marriage counselor agreed that everyone must make sacrifices, but in the end Tripp’s character decided that the hair was there for a reason and that it is a personal decision for each woman. The audience was nervous, shifting and looking around for other reactions, but Tripp’s captivating delivery of the monologue successfully captured the attention of the spectators, leaving everyone wondering what else to expect.
In each interview, Ensler asked, “What would your vagina wear?” and “If it could speak, what would it say?” and the responses are peppered throughout the piece.
Two ensemble presentations near the beginning of the play aimed to provide a sampling of responses to these questions. In the second, more memorable piece, the women paired up and formed – what else – visual vaginas, hands stretched up and together and bodies curving inward. As each pair recited a phrase that vaginas said, their bodies moved outward and inward, ‘lips’ opening and closing as the words were spoken. Nervous laughter and squirms were rampant throughout the audience.
Fourteen women comprised the cast of the production, all dressed in black with a few key red accessories. The play included students from many majors united by their interest in feminism and portrayals of the female body. Seven of the actors were international students, a much higher percentage than is usually present in theater productions on campus.
“I’m proud of the women I’ve worked with—or I guess inspired would be a better word,” Coates-Finke said. “They are amazing, brave and bold, and they took risks without hesitation, even though for many of them this type of theater and/or these kinds of conversations are new and can be kind of intimidating.”
Adara Wicaksono ’17 acted the story of a woman in her 60’s who had never experienced an orgasm and only referred to her vagina as her “down there.” In “The Flood,” she recounted with nuanced pain and regret an encounter with a handsome young man from her adolescence, haltingly revealing that she had unwillingly flooded the seat of his car after their first kiss, prompting his judgment and her decision never to enter into relationships again. She remembered with glee her dreams of ‘Marlon and I,” in which she and Marlon Brando went out for dinner dates only for the restaurant to be flooded with water, fish and Marlon’s good friend, Al Pacino, swimming by. The embarrassment and longing caused by her natural bodily reaction was heartbreaking, and raises questions about why women (and men) are so afraid of vaginas.
Lorena Neira ’17 sported pink pajama pants as the rest of the cast circled around her, enraptured by her tale “Because He Liked to Look At It.” The audience was equally enraptured by Neira’s subtle use of humor and insight as she described Bob, an ordinary man who was not smart, interesting, funny or handsome. He was the most ordinary man she’d ever met, she explained, until their chance meeting led to a revelatory bedroom experience. Bob, it turned out, was ordinary in every way except that he wanted to look at Neira’s character - not her face, she soon discovered, but to really look at the essence of her – her vagina. Initially uncomfortable, Neira eventually described her most powerful and connected sexual experience through acceptance of her vagina’s existence and appearance.
Sarah James ’17 recounted another story of empowerment in “The Vagina Workshop,” in which she described her experience at a class full of women as they lay back on mats with mirrors, looking at their vaginas and eventually finding their clitorises.
While this may sound like the most uncomfortable workshop ever invented, James delivered the monologue with a gentle seriousness that distracted from the awkward nature of the class. For James’ character, finding her clitoris (“I’ve lost it! I’ve lost my clitoris!”, she exclaimed at one point to her instructor) reconnected her to her femininity and allowed her to embrace her vagina.
In deciding to incorporate multiple players into a dramatized rendition of each of the monologues, Coates-Finke created a more visually engaging theatrical experience, capitalizing on the vivid textual material and individual talents of each involved student. They also broke the mold with these innovative staging decisions, as the play is traditionally presented as a series of “single-actor-on-stage” monologues.
“The play was a little hard to grapple with at first. It’s usually done very informally with women just sitting on chairs to deliver their monologues, ” Coates-Finke said. “I didn’t want to do that because I didn’t like that from an artistic or aesthetic standpoint, and I wanted the women in the cast to be a constant and active part of every moment in the show.”
In perhaps the most lighthearted monologue of the night, Maeve Grady ’16.5 portrayed “The Woman Who Liked to Make Vaginas Happy,” describing her transition from a corporate tax lawyer to female dominatrix, strutting across the stage in red heels as she described the feeling of empowerment stemming from making women moan. As she culminated her monologue, each of the cast members rested back on their hands, facing away from the audience, each demonstrating one of the many moans classified by Grady, prompting the biggest laughs of the night. A few of the linguistically describable include the Jewish Moan—Oy, oy—and the Irish Catholic moan—Forgive me, Father!.
Positioned as a stark juxtaposition, Sandra Markowitz ’16 recounted one girl’s traumatic experiences from ages 5 to 16 in “The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could.” Markowitz described a familial rape that caused her to want to hide from her sexuality forever before detailing her “salvation” at age 16, when she was seduced by a powerful, 24-year-old woman who gave her such a positive sexual experience that she felt “healed,” though she never saw the woman again. This monologue originally included the line “If it was rape, it was good rape,” which was removed from later versions. Is it more heartbreaking that she was only able to start the healing process through another form of abuse, or is it a relief that she was able to again confront her sexuality? It is for the audience to decide.
Coates-Finke thinks that though the play is performed from a female perspective about the female body, people of any mature age can benefit from a viewing.
“Male-identified, male-bodied people do not belong in this play because it addresses oppression affecting female-identified people with vaginas,” Coates-Finke said. “But men should be feminists; men should support gender equality; men should seek solutions, and so this play is important in that it is educational and eye-opening for anyone to see. I love that this play is extremely sex-positive and body-positive. A lot of time is spent discussing the ways that our bodies do not function or look the way we want them to, and no time is spent talking about the awesome things they do for us—like sex!”
Celeste Allen ’16 burst onto the stage to confront a word with a mostly derogatory connation, “Cunt.” At the beginning of the performance, she unbuttoned her black dress shirt to reveal a tank top falling above “CUNT” spelled in red tape above the area it described. Bracing and cold, the word is almost more uncomfortable to say and hear than vagina, but Allen’s alternating rapid and slow patterns across the stage, fluid arm movements and smooth, relaxing voice worked to change that. By the end of the performance, the word did not sound as harsh or jarring. The monologue revealed that a word is only as embarrassing or crass as it is made out to be.
Jingyi Wu ’16.5 closed the show with a performance of “I Was There in the Room,” a monologue penned by writer Eve Ensler about watching her grandaughter’s birth. As Wu poetically described the opening and the motions of the vagina in childbirth, the rest of the cast formed a half-circle in front of her, each woman leaning against the cast member in front of her. As the birth progressed, the circle began to move, waving in and out until Pandya made her way, sitting on the floor, out of the middle. This piece of dance added a powerful layer to the monologue, prompting even more thought about what childbirth really means for the female body.
Talking about the vagina is uncomfortable. Actually, even writing this article was uncomfortable. The Vagina Monologues asks why society is so scared to talk about this part of the female figure and invites women to open up about their own relationships with their vaginas. In sharing their stories, they connect with audiences around the world while bringing attention to the abuse and pain suffered by so many. It’s supposed to be uncomfortable, but Coates-Finke and the cast and crew of the College’s production tackled the task with grace and depth by adding choreography and personal experience. The audience laughed, squirmed and was forced to think, at least for a little while, about a subject that is usually completely ignored, which, in my mind, is a recipe for a great night at the theater.
(02/19/14 9:21pm)
Though Sochi might be over 5,000 miles from our home here in Vermont, Middlebury’s connection to the home of this year’s Winter Olympics may not be as far as you think. Since the 1940s, the College’s Snow Bowl and Rikert Center have produced some of the nation’s most impressive nordic and alpine skiers. This year, the College has five alumni at the Olympics: Nordic ski racer Simeon “Simi” Hamilton ’08, men’s US Alpine Ski Team coach Forest Carey ’00, US Nordic Ski Team coach Matt Whitcomb ’01, women’s US Alpine Ski Team trainer Brie Pike Sprenger ’04, and US Alpine Ski Team strength and conditioning coach Bobby Poehler ’10. We even have an Olympian in our midst, alpine skier Yina Moe-Lange ’15 who went to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics! This week, the Campus caught up with some of these talented athletes and other former Olympians from the College to learn about their journeys from tiny Middlebury to the premier world stage of athletics.
Dorcas Wonsavage '87-- Nordic Skiing
Wonsavage ’87 has competed in three Olympic Games: Calgary in ’88, Albertville in ’92 and Lillehammer in ’94. From Hanover, New Hampshire, she began Cross-Country skiing in her senior year of high school. “Give the world your best that you have and the best will come back to you,” she recalled the quote she lived by. “I had parents who always told me ‘we don’t care what grades you get, we just want you to learn what you want to learn.’ It wasn’t about results or grades—and it was so liberating and that created a vacuum where I didn’t have huge expectations set upon me. But I wanted to prove them wrong.”
Even while directing her attention to passion rather than tallied victories, she delivers real results: She ranked 8 in Calgary ’88 women’s 4x5 kilometers relay race. Her best result was a 24th place in the women’s 20km skate race at Calgary—the top result of any U.S. or Canadian Cross-Country skier.
However, Wonsavage’s favorite Olympic Games by far was held in Lillehammer, Norway. “By the 1992 Olympic Games in [Albertville,] France, we were in a country where women, winter and sports like Cross-Country skiing were not highly valued. It was a tough two weeks!” she said. “But in Lillehammer (’94), where the entire country embraces winter sports. My husband would be leaving Storgatta at midnight to head to his house by the ski jumps and ski trails, and people were hiking up with huge backpacks to camp out and save a place by the trail so they could cheer on their country. In the middle of the trail system, fans had built a tent city where they stayed for the entire two weeks. We’d ski by during training and they’d invite us in for some aquavit! Families were completely at home outside in the snow. After the races, we’d see parents cut snow benches and tables, start a fire and roast hotdogs and marshmallows for their kids. We were from a country where our sport was overshadowed by the ball sports; but in Norway even when we finished in the second page of the results, they’d cheer us on by name.”
Wonsavage now lives in New Hampshire with her husband, Paul, and son, Max. Twenty years after the Lillehammer Olympics, she is still taking on new challenges, going back to school to get her masters in Education - Teaching of Writing. and never forgetting her Middlebury teammates, professors and coaches who constantly challenged her and made the journey fun. “I had my best results in my first Olympics, when I had no expectations and skied just to do my very best. I try to bring that same combination of humility and a sense of humor to everything I do. I love accomplishing something that no one expected me to do.”
Gordon Eaton '62-- Alpine Skiing
“I guess I just like going fast,” said Olympian Gordon Eaton ’62, of why he enjoyed competing in downhill alpine skiing, which is the fastest and therefore most dangerous alpine Olympic event. Eaton spent seven years as a student at Middlebury College because every other year he would take off to ski race on the world circuit. His experience skiing at the College was immensely defined by another Olympian: US Olympic Ski Team coach (Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy ’56) and Middlebury ski coach Robert “Bobo” Sheehan, whom Eaton describes as the best race day coach he ever had.
“We were always prepared, always eager, always fired up,” remembers Eaton, “and a lot of it had to do with Bobo’s character and personality. Everybody liked skiing for Bobo.”
Eaton’s hard work on and off the snow landed him a spot on the US Ski Team for the 1960 and 1964 Winter Olympics. In 1960 in Squaw Valley, Calif., he placed 17th in the downhill event, having the second best time of the American competitors. In 1964 in Innsbruck, Austria, he did not race due to injury. The experience of being unable to compete was disappointing to Eaton, but as he said, “You go into this understanding that there are gonna be bumps and bruises along the way, so it’s all part of the deal.”
Luckily, Eaton had the opportunity to return to the Olympics in 1968 in Grenoble, France; this time as a men’s coach of the US Ski Team. After his Olympic experience, Eaton coached the Alpine ski team at the College from 1975-1978. Today, he lives in Middlebury and owns a restaurant, sells ski clothing to ski vendors and participates in ski design with K2. In his free time, Eaton still likes to ski at his old training hill, the Middlebury College Snow Bowl, and will sometimes meet up with his college racing buddies. “Going to the Olympics was awesome,” said Eaton, “but it’s the journey and the people along the way that still have real meaning to you [years later].
John Bower '63-- Nordic Skiing
John Bower, a native of Auburn, Maine, graduated from Middlebury in 1963 and went on the following year to make the US team for the Nordic combined event (a combination of ski jumping and Cross-Country ski racing) for the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. Bower said he was “awestruck” at the ’64 Olympics. The high pressure of the games interfered with his ability to ski at his greatest potential, and he placed 15th. Returning home, he put his “heart and soul into training” for the next three years. In 1968, he returned to Middlebury as the head ski coach, but was given the winter off to compete again in Nordic combined in the ’68 Olympics in Grenoble, FR. He hoped that his further experience at maintaining composure under pressure would help him perform better in his second Olympics, but he was still “trying too hard to win”, and placed 13th.
Only one month later, however, Bower competed in the King’s Cup in Norway against the same field of athletes. In this final competition of his career, he became the first non-European to win the cup. In Norway, Bower “figured out how to relax” and enjoy racing in a way that he had never managed to in the Olympics. As the champion, Bower met the king of Norway, who was “very congratulatory” and put Bower on his list of requested guests for a state dinner in the king’s honor at the White House. Bower described the black tie affair as “one of the most intimidating experiences of my athletic career. It’s a whole different level of social interaction.”
Bower returned to Middlebury to coach fall Cross-Country, winter Nordic skiing and spring Track for seven years. He saw several of his skiers go on to make Olympic teams, including Joe McNulty ’72. “There are a lot of distractions at Middlebury,” Bower admits, and it is the students that make sacrifices to stay focused and disciplined who are generally successful. Bower went on to serve as the Nordic team leader for the 1976, 1980, and 1992 Olympic Games, and to work as the Nordic program director for the US ski team in Park City, Utah. He is now retired and lives in Moab, Utah with his wife, Bonnie.
Yina Moe-Lange '15-- Alpine Skiing
From an early age, Yina Moe-Lange ’15 proved herself one of the best female skiers in Denmark, but she had not expected to meet the Danish Ski Federation’s qualifications. Her success in many competitions leading up to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics had distinguished her among her compatriots, and she was chosen to represent Denmark for the women’s alpine team.
“The Olympics were absolutely terrifying and exhilarating at the same time,” Moe-Lange said. The size and significance of the Games intimidated her, but did not affect her performance.
“While I probably could have skied a bit faster, I was extremely happy since I had made it down and had accomplished what most people only dream of doing,” she said. For her, the point was the surreality of the experience and the memories she made at the Games.
Now, Moe-Lange is competing for the Middlebury Alpine Ski Team, and the league in which the College competes “is about as competitive as you can get without becoming professional,” she said.
Balancing school and skiing is always a tricky maneuver, especially for Moe-Lange, who remains determined to devote one hundred percent into academics and athletics alike.
“The hardest part of it is having to complete everything you want to do while also doing a good job on everything, since both parts are so important,” she said.
But Moe-Lange is still thankful to be a Panther. She credits the College with teaching her the “magic of time management” and allowing her to converge the important things in her life. Her team, which she describes as a family, has allowed her to improve her skiing while simultaneously “bring[ing] out the best athlete in everyone.”
At this point, Moe-Lange has no concrete future plans beyond finishing her final year as a Panther and then taking a year off before “entering the real world to continue pursuing the dream.”
Simi Hamilton '08-- Nordic Skiing
Middlebury’s only athlete competing in the 2014 Winter Olympics is Nordic skier, Simi Hamilton ’08. A native of Aspen, CO, Hamilton began skiing at the young age of two and his current sport, Cross-Country skiing, at thirteen. Before coming to the College, Hamilton collected an impressive nine Junior National titles and three Colorado high school crowns. As a competitor on the College’s Nordic team, Simi added three All-American honors to his resume and went to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics during his senior year where he competed in the 4x10km Relay, Sprint Classic and 15km Free. Since 2010, Hamilton was been a consistent scorer on the World Cup circuit, placing as high as seventh and earning him a spot on the 2014 US Nordic Ski Team. In Sochi, Hamilton placed 21st in the Men’s Sprint Free on February 11 and 11th in Men’s 4x10km Relay on February 16.
“Everyone who’s reading this has probably had that experience at some point in their life of really wanting to do things over again,” commented Hamilton about his 11th place finish on his blog. “That’s pretty much where I’m at with how the sprint turned out. But what I’ve realized in the last few days since the race, is that I do get to do it over again, because there are going to be SO many more races—Olympic races, World Cup races, World Championship races—ahead of me in the future.”
For now, Simi gets to enjoy the privilege of being in the company of the best athletes in the world. He said on his blog of the experience, “to be part of a larger team—not just an American team but a World team—is the most awesome feeling that exists, I’m pretty sure.”
Chris Waddell '87-- Alpine Skiing
Waddell came to Middlebury in the winter of 1988 as a Feb and a promising member of the ski team. But on December 20 of the same year, Waddell suffered a skiing accident that paralyzed him from the waist down. After two months in the hospital, Waddell came back to campus. Though the College had never been home to anyone in a wheelchair, “they made everything wheelchair accessible,” Waddell said, lauding the community’s support and compassion.
Shortly after his accident, Waddell’s friends and teammates bought him his first Monoski, which is made up of a molded seat bound to an ordinary alpine ski. For the next three years, he stayed on the team, becoming captain as a senior.
“It was kind of like being a disembodied head,” Waddell said, laughing, of the transition from standing skis to the monoski. “My mind knew what I was supposed to do, and my body had no ability whatsoever to obey any of the instruction from my mind.”
But after just one week, Waddell was making it from mountaintop to the bottom without falling. His training mirrored that of the rest of the ski team, though he jokes, “Mine was more about trying not to kill myself, whereas they were trying to go fast…It really took me about three years to feel like I was actually good.”
But Waddell greatly underplays his achievements. In May of 1991, just two and a half years after his accident, Waddell made the US Olympic Disabled Team. After graduating in February of 1992, Waddell became a full-time athlete, competing in the Paralympics in Albertville, France.
Winning silver medals in both his events, Slalom and Giant Slalom, in Albertville, Waddell launched in on what he calls his “breakthrough year”. “Tthe year where I felt like I got good, and actually became the best Monoskier in the world, which was pretty cool,” he said nonchalantly.
In the 1994 Lillehammer, Norway Games, Waddell won all four races he entered – Slalom, Giant Slalom, Super G and Downhill.
Lillehammer remains the most significant Games in Waddell’s career because he beat all the other monoskiers–not just those at his level of sensation. Monoskiing is divided into levels based on what vertebrae the athlete has broken and the corresponding degrees of sensation retained. Waddell skies at a higher level of injury, with sensation starting at his belly button. He lacks a great amount of core strength compared to other monoskiers, some of whom still maintain walking abilities. Therefore, rising to the top of the monoskiing heap, in Lillehammer meant more to Waddell than his medal count.
But Waddell’s athleticism did not confine him to winter sports; his talent in wheelchair racing, a component of his dryland training, allowed him to compete in three summer Games as well. Waddell’s wheelhouse was massive, encompassing six events: the 100, 200, 400 and 800 meters, as well as the 4x100 and 4x400 relays. Waddell competed in the 1996 Atlanta Games, won the silver in the 200 meters in the 2000 Sydney Games, and appeared in the 2004 Games in Athens, Greece. His success in wheelchair racing has made Waddell one of the few athletes who have won World Championship competitions in winter and summer.
Since retiring his ski, Waddell has developed an organization called One Revolution, whose mission is to “turn perception of disability upside down,” he said.
“The definition of ‘disability’ is that you’re effectively something less,” Waddell said. In an attempt to overturn this conventional understanding of the term and to spread One Revolution’s message, Waddell climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in a hand cycle in 2009, aiming to become the first paraplegic to climb the peak.
But the trip went differently than he planned. Obstructed by one rocky outcropping, Waddell was disappointed that his team had to carry him 100 feet to a steadier place. Looking back, he believes the obstacle was rather a blessing, as it shattered the superheroic image that had shadowed him since leaving the hospital in Middlebury.
“A superhero never has a bad day, so [that image] didn’t allow me to be real,” Waddell said. “Not making it that hundred feet was actually the most liberating thing; in some ways, I failed, but it was also the greatest gift because it allowed me to distance myself from the superman doppelganger.”
(02/19/14 6:48pm)
Hey kidiots! Does that start us out on the wrong foot? These days I’ve been feeling like my social filter is made out of Swiss Cheese, holes punched through with the heavy artillery of being “totally over it.” I am frustrated with how seriously we take each other and bummed with how we casually we dismiss our own influence over each other. You are kidiots! And scummos! But also fragile Jenga towers of Babylon! And leavers of invisible legacies! And so am I. We are Taylor Swift-esque with the power to be a milli things at once. We are simultaneously gross and arrogant and insecure and great and isn’t that pretty cool?
I want to introduce you to this column about anything that loosely has to do with this ambiguous idea I’ve termed “fake science.” A boring example: I take my coffee with milk. The only reason I do it is because once my mother told me that I’d get an ulcer without a splash of milk to protect the lining of my stomach. Not true. I realize now that she said it because she takes milk and kind of liked the idea of us taking our coffee the same, or just because she likes correcting me, but since then, I have taken milk in my coffee. It isn’t out of some sort of familial loyalty, but because I half-secretly-out-of-the-corner-of-my-eye believe that I’m actually engaging in a kind of ulcer-prevention. Often our decisions are not based on any generally accepted truths, but are tics and tendencies and coping mechanisms motivated by irrational reasons buried in our formative years or rootless whims.
Fake science is folklore, magical thinking, misrememberings, superstition and myth: the correct cadence of spelling a word aloud, the order of your morning routine, fear of certain animals, debatable pop trivia remembered as fact. It is small versions of what Danny Loehr articulated in his February Celebration address this past month: the stories we tell ourselves become our reality. We adopt them and drop them, not realizing their groundlessness until years later. Sometimes they stick and continue to manifest themselves in our preferences, actions and expressions in the long run.
Sometimes we are endearing. One of my friends used to insist on only wearing cute pajamas every night in case there was a fire and she would have to evacuate the house in the middle of the night and the cute neighbor boy would see her out in the street. Sometimes our fake science is sinister. A different friend used to obsessive compulsively knock on wood to ward off danger; another had convinced herself that her eating disorder was a vegan diet. Locating your irrationalities does not always end in exorcising them—the aim is simply to be more thoughtful. Thoughtfulness is critical because, believe it or not, someone out there is learning how to live by observing you living out a fake science, through your words or emotions. It is a very frightening and exciting responsibility. Trust me when I say: You have an effect on other people.
I didn’t make up “kidiots.” It was the name of a blog active in 2010 run by some funny Middlebury students, one who is still a friend of mine. On the Kidiot blog, she wrote a short piece about turning 20. I recently saw her and she’s doing really well; she owns a pet hedgehog in Brooklyn and has really healthy chakras, which were somewhat shaken when I shyly mentioned how much that old piece meant to me and thanked her. She hadn’t expected anyone to be reading.
The site where we make a legacy that sticks to someone’s brain will not be where we expect it to be, and it is happening all the time. It won’t be what we wanted to have been remembered by, and it will not be by the people we care about the most. We won’t even notice all the micro-legacies we leave and collateral damage we cause for the most part, unless that person is moved to tell us about it. So that’s what I’m interested in here — the awareness of our own absurdities, the way they effect our community and the effort to reach out and make the stakes feel real for someone, even for a second.
This column isn’t Mythbusters. I’m not going to always talk about how we are dumb kids and what it is we’re getting wrong or right. I just want make some hazy observations and opinions on the intersection of “culture” (which is what exactly?), college students and the way we live. Most of these articles are inspired by nightmare notes I wrote to myself in the middle of the night or Gchat conversations or visions that come to me when I’m lying on the floor of my thesis carrel underneath my coat, reading Joan Didion. I’m just your neighborhood neurotic, popping an anti-anxiety Rx in Proctor and admiring your hair from the next table over. Humans! We’re so crazy! It’s so great, right? Lets talk about it until 4 a.m.
