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(02/19/14 3:41pm)
The Middlebury women’s basketball team wrapped up its season this past weekend with road games against conference foes Trinity and Amherst. The Panthers fell behind in the second half in a loss at Trinity on Friday, Feb. 14, before being beaten from tip to buzzer in Sunday’s matchup with twelfth-ranked Amherst, the final game in a Panther jersey for Middlebury’s senior class.
By virtue of their loss to Bowdoin the previous week, Middlebury was eliminated from possible contention for the NESCAC playoffs before beginning the final weekend of the regular season. This was the second time in three years that the team had fallen outside the top eight in the regular-season conference standings and thus failed to qualify for the conference tournament.
For the team’s five seniors, this meant that they knew going into the weekend’s games that they would be the last of their college careers.
“It is strange to think that Sunday was the last time that I’ll play basketball competitively because I’ve been playing since I was three years old, so I’m not entirely sure that it has hit me yet,” Laura Lowry ’14 said. “As always, it was great to be able to get the opportunity to put on my jersey and compete with my teammates.”
Middlebury got out to a quick start in Friday’s matchup with Trinity, taking a 7-2 lead three minutes in on a jumper from Elizabeth Knox ’17. The Bantams came storming back, however, knotting the score at 11 with a pair of free throws four minutes later. Trinity used a large rebounding advantage to stretch that lead through halftime, going into the break with a 35-25 lead.
The Panthers played their way back into the game in the opening minutes of the second half. After Rachel Crews ’15 hit on a pair of free throws, Knox converted a layup to cut the lead to 42-38 with 15 minutes left to play and force a Trinity timeout.
From that point, a rash of turnovers and poor rebounding from the Panthers allowed the Bantams to regain control of the momentum. Trinity was able to extend its lead to over 20 with seven minutes to play before a late Middlebury run cut the lead to a 65-50 final in favor of Trinity.
Guard Sarah Marcus ’14 led Middlebury with 10 points in the losing effort, while Lowry and Crews each added nine. The Panthers struggled to match the Bantams on the glass throughout the game, conceding a 48-33 rebounding deficit that led to 11 fewer shots for Middlebury. Trinity held Middlebury’s leading rebounder, Scarlett Kirk ’14, to just six rebounds in the game, nearly four below her season average.
Back on the road against twelfth-ranked Amherst on Sunday, the Panthers put up a fight early before letting the game get out of hand in the later stretches of the opening half.
After Amherst took an early lead, Crews converted a three-point play six minutes in to draw the Panthers within two at 9-7. Over the next 12 minutes, however, the Lord Jeffs went on a 29-3 scoring run that effectively ended the game before halftime. During that stretch – which included a seven-minute scoreless drought for Middlebury – Amherst used strong rebounding and deadly three-point shooting to overwhelm the Panthers. At the half, Middlebury trailed 43-15.
With Amherst’s reserves playing significant minutes, Middlebury was unable to mount any sort of comeback in the second half. The Lord Jeffs shot over 50 percent from the field after the intermission, allowing them to further stretch the lead. While the Panthers were more efficient on the offensive end in the second half, the lead was simply too much to overcome, and they fell by a final tally of 79-41.
That result was a bitter ending for Middlebry’s seniors.
“Obviously, I wish that the outcome was different but I love competing against the best teams in the country,” Lowry said. “I chose Middlebury because I wanted to play in the best conference in the country, among other things of course. I loved the four years that I got to play on this team and I learned an incredible amount.”
With the sour end to the regular season, Middlebury finishes the 2013-2014 campaign with a final record of 7-17, including a 1-9 mark in conference play. The Panthers finish in a three-way tie with Colby and Bates for last place in the NESCAC, a setback from last year’s 4-6 conference record and fourth-place finish.
For the team’s seniors, the season is the culmination of a rocky career which saw them go winless in the conference as sophomores in 2011-2012 before rebounding to make the playoffs during their junior seasons.
Nevertheless, Lowry believes that the seniors have left on a mark on the program that will allow the current underclassmen to build on their struggles going forward.
“When the underclassmen and the coaches look back and think about my class, I want them to remember us as a hardworking, unselfish group of competitors who embodied what Middlebury basketball is,” Lowry said. “I want them to remember us as great teammates, who cared about every girl on the team and put them before ourselves.”
In the senior trio of Kirk, Marcus and Lowry, Middlebury graduates nearly 30 points and 16 rebounds per game, a considerable void which they will need to fill if they are to start the rebuilding process in the 2014-2015. The seniors leave behind a core of talented underclassmen – including Knox and Crews, the team’s second and fifth leading scorers – who will hope to improve on this year’s record as they lead the Panthers into next season.
“I want the underclassmen to continue the unselfishness and relentless play that has characterized Middlebury basketball for at least the last four years and I am very confident that they will continue to do so,” Lowry said.
(02/13/14 2:57am)
Language Tables Head Waiter, Ricardo Martini '16
Ricardo Martini, is a language table super-star. He started working as a humble Italian waiter during the J-term of last year, and after just one semester, was chosen to be a head waiter this past fall. Martini says the position of Head Waiter is more than being a “glorified bus boy” in the dining room. “Behind the scenes, you have to clean the space, you have to mop, wipe down counters, grab the bread and salad, make sure everything’s there, the dishes are there, the utensils. At the end of the day, it’s under your belt that everything goes smoothly.” When hiring new waiters/waitresses, Martini said he looks for applicants who are “patient and attentive and will actually put in an effort into translating the menu; that’s why google translate and word reference exist!”
Martini also pointed out a key difference in shifting roles from a waiter to a head waiter. “You have more creative freedom as a waiter than as a head waiter where you have to act more like a responsible manager.” He recalled, “One time [as a waiter], I wore a suit and I was part of the Italian Mafia serving them the food.” However, Martini’s favorite memory as a language table waiter was serving special birthday treats to tables accompanied by a hearty performance of “Buon Compleano!”
“One thing I like to do with language tables is make people feel important,” Martini said. “They’re not just students sitting down [for a meal]; they’re key members of the culture they’re sitting at. I truly believe your mind changes based on the language you speak. Different cultures influence your thoughts and that’s something great that can happen in a place like Ross Dining.” Martini is now being promoted to the co-manager position alongside senior veterans, like Cameron McKinney ’14 and Niko Lambert ’14.
Usher, Jiaya Zhu '14
“This is a really good time to be thinking about becoming an usher,” Jiayi Zhu said, “because half of the current staff is going to be gone by the end of this year, so we need people to be trained now.” There are few jobs on campus that make you look more professional than being an usher. The white-top-black-bottom classic attire exudes an air of professionalism. You have most probably by now seen an usher at work: they check your tickets and hand you a program at the door, lead you to your seat in the concert hall and do a whole host of other things that you never noticed. These include checking that all the exits are clear before an event begins, for example, and picking up the programs on the floor and in the seats after everyone has left. “Getting the job was quite straightforward,” Zhu said. “Shannon Bohler-Small [Arts Events Manager] did an informal interview with me and asked me where the toilets are and how to go from the CFA [Center for the Arts] to Old Chapel, for example.” You only need to have been trained for crowd management to be qualified for the job, since most things can be learnt on the job. “What I like about my job is that I get to go to the CFA for theatre performances, concerts and dance shows that I wouldn’t have gone to otherwise. It’s mostly our community members that make the most out of these opportunities,” she said.
Bike Shop Mechanic, Peter Peltzer '17
An avid mountain biker, Parker Peltzer spends many of his evenings at Middlebury Bike Shop teaching students how to repair their bikes or even construct new ones entirely from spare parts. Having worked in a bike shop throughout high school and during his most recent gap year, Peltzer first learned the craft of fixing bikes through reading books including Zinn & the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance and by watching repair videos online. “Fixing bikes has always been something that has felt familiar to me and remains something I enjoy,” Peltzer said. “What I love most about my job at the shop is how enthusiastic the students are about fixing their own bikes here. Students who come in are ready to put in hours working on their bikes.” Interestingly, Peltzer recalls that he first landed the job through a stroke of coincidence in a game of Nerf War. “I was at BiHall at midnight and one of the guys I was playing Nerf War with said he had to wake up early for the Tour de Farms, and that his bike was broken. I went and I fixed his bike and he happened to know who to talk to about a job opening at the bike shop.” When asked if he had any advice for future prospective bike shop teachers, Peltzer encouraged students to drop by the workshop and get to know the work, the space, and the other mechanics. “As long as their skills are ready to go, I’d say that the most important quality is the ability to teach and communicate with others.”
Lead Help Desk Computer Consultant, Anis Mebarki '15
Anis Mebarki’s rapper name at the Help Desk is A.M.—in part because of his initials and in part because he voluntarily takes the early morning shifts. He is “genuinely happy” to go to work each day. He greatly respects his boss, Joe Durante, who Mebarki feels is training the Help Desk employees for work in the real world. “It’s way more than a job,” Mebarki said; you get to learn, serve, and get paid. Mebarki has always enjoyed working with computers. Before coming to Middlebury he owned a Linux machine, an alternate operating system to Mac or PC which “iwas a full time job” but taught him a great deal about computer operations. When he arrived on campus in the fall of 2011, Mebarki saw an advertisement for positions at the Help Desk, applied, and was interviewed and selected for the job. Within that year, he worked his way up to become a lead computer consultant, which, coming from Algeria, felt like the American Dream to him. At the Middlebury Help Desk, if not everywhere in the US, Mebarki believes that hard work really pays off.
Gift Planning Assistant, Meghan Buckley '16.5
Maybe one of the farthest “on campus” jobs for students is the post of Office Assistant at the Gift Planning Office, which is located off campus in the Painter House, across the street from Middlebury Inn.
Every afternoon, Monday to Friday, Meghan Buckley, makes the hike from her room at Hepburn to her desk at the Painter House, home of Middlebury founder, Gamaliel Painter, where she begins her two hour shift of answering phones and calling alumni.
“Depending on the weather, it can be a fifteen to twenty minute walk. Most days, I make it there in about fifteen.”
Buckley, who landed the position after she saw a posting on the Student Employment webpage earlier this year, says she didn’t realize “there are so many people who work at the college behind the scenes, making everything work for us. They put in so many hours, so much of their time, and I had no idea.”
“The up is hearing about different alum’s experiences from their time here. It makes me really appreciate the time I have here and makes me want to make the most of it.”
Crossroads Marketing Director, Naila Jahan '15
The brilliance of the Princess Peach and All That Razz smoothies at Crossroads Cafe has finally been uncovered. Naila Jahan, Middlebury’s own vibrant Junior, has adopted the role of Marketing Director at our favorite student-run cafe. Illustrating the range of employment opportunities, Naila’s job is simple: to make Crossroads sexy. Responsible for utilizing social media to publicize the cafe, Naila also collaborates with other workers to create new drink flavors, as well as their corresponding clever names. Her proudest accomplishment has been independently designing a new Crossroads website in hope to attract more attention from students. Although it can be difficult when an executed idea does not find success, the ability to simply “get [her] creative juices flowing” is her favorite part of the job. How did she land this gig? Connections. After getting a job at the cashier her first year with the help of her neighbor that already worked there, Naila gradually moved up to her marketing director position. Now, as the café greets more and more popularity each year, it is exciting for Naila to simply see the growing waiting list of students who wish to even work at the youthful cafe.
Theater Set Maker, Lydia Delehanty '17
When Lydia Delehanty arrived at Middlebury she was an experienced performer and musician, but had no knowledge about theatre and the backstage work that goes into a production. She saw a job posting for set construction on the student employment page and jumped at the chance to exercise her brain “in a way that classes don’t.” She’s been building sets for Middlebury’s various theatre productions, most recently Pentecost, since late September and is happy to have a job “that’s active and actually requires thinking.” Her main reservation about building sets? “I get covered in dust a lot. I end up leaving looking like I either have grey hair or really really bad dandruff.” Despite the dust, Lydia plans to continue working set construction for the rest of the year. As she told me, before the job “I couldn’t have actually gone and been like oh I can build this thing, but now I feel like I could do that.”
Admissions Office, Vladimir Kremenović '17
Vladimir Kremenović, a first-year from Bosnia and Herzegovina, has been working at the admissions office since his first week in college. Admissions is one of the most sought after gigs by student employees, and Kremenović made sure to get on the job three months before he even got to Middlebury; with his job interview taking place on his first day on campus. Now, he helps with filing and documentation at the Admissions headquarters in the Emma Willard house, occasionally answering emails and phone calls and answering questions for prospective students and their families. He stated that good communication, openness and “a good spirit” are key skills for a job at Admissions. The strangest part of working with Admissions, he says, are the amount of questions, some ridiculous, that come from parents rather than the prospective student themselves. Although he acknowledges that alphabetizing files can get tedious at times, he enjoys the job, especially interacting with and meeting new people, saying that his favorite part is being able to contribute to a prospective student’s decision in coming to Middlebury, that, as he puts it “might change their life.” His advice to novices searching for jobs is to contact the offices directly and as early as possible, instead of waiting for online postings.
(02/13/14 12:12am)
After leadership changes at the end of last year rendered the YouPower bike room nearly forgotten, new management and programming boosted bike use during J-term.
YouPower was founded in 2012 by a group of students who turned to MiddSTART, the College’s microphilanthopy network, to raise money for 10 spin bikes linked to generators to be connected to the College’s energy grid. Watt-hours produced by students riding the bikes go directly into powering the College.
Located in the Freeman International Center, the YouPower bike room has been used for individual riding sessions, free student-led classes, private classes and Watt-A-Thons — relay-style events in which teams compete to produce the largest amount of energy in a set period of time.
YouPower’s struggle stems from a lack of continuity. In the past, seniors would assume leadership roles, spend several months organizing classes and schedules and then graduate, leaving YouPower without a leader. This year alone, YouPower classes did not begin until November.
After this period of uncertainty, Nan Philip ’16.5 and Spencer Petterson ’14 are at the helm of YouPower and are working to improve programming, increase regular use and set future goals.
Petterson first became involved with YouPower in Fall 2012 when she served as an instructor. After a call for new managers went out over the summer, she decided to seek a leadership position.
“It was something that I really didn’t want to see die,” Spencer said noting the ecological impact YouPower can have and the value of it being a student-run initiative.
“It took a while for us to get it [YouPower] reorganized,” said Philip, who cited a string of miscommunications and misunderstandings as a roadblock to YouPower’s success.
In spite of past struggles, a recent boost in support has left Philip optimistic about YouPower’s future. Petterson noted Operations and Events Manager Franklin Dean-Farrar and members of the Student Government Association (SGA) who helped to boost operations and instructing YouPower’s leaders on exercise safety rules and regulations.
The location of the YouPower bike room on the north end of campus, adjacent to Ross, Coffrin, Atwater and the Chateau, offers an alternative to the athletic center.
“The YouPower room is a great alternative to the gym, especially because I live in Ross and that’s a long, cold walk in the winter,” said Rachel Kinney ’16.5, who plans to use YouPower throughout the spring semester.
As of Jan. 23, 323 students used YouPower during J-term, with most staying on the bikes for 30-60 minutes. The average watt-hours generated by students in an hour-long session is enough to power two 60-watt light bulbs for an hour.
YouPower currently has six student-instructors registered, some of whom are officially certified to teach classes and others who are merely passionate about spinning. Philip and Petterson are looking to expand their roster and bring on new leadership. Information about YouPower student-led courses, open ride hours and becoming involved with the bike room can be found at go/youpower.
“It’s cool … to think about the amount of energy needed for even the simplest things,” Petterson said. “It’s amazing to realize that after I turn my lights off, I would have to bike for an hour just to get them running again for that amount of time.”
(02/12/14 4:54pm)
A recent student initiative suggests that Middlebury’s system of academic requirements is in need of reform. Specifically, the authors of the proposal, Daniela Barajas ’14.5 and Rana Abdelhamid ’15, criticize the AAL requirement for failing to embody the College’s commitment to expose students to a variety of the worlds’ cultures and civilizations. Their proposal is rapidly gaining traction: it is the most successful initiative in the history of the We The Middkids online platform, and last week it gained an endorsement from SGA President Rachel Lidell.
The proposal is right to point out the oddity of lumping Africa, Asia, and Latin America together. This label cannot be explained in terms of geography or culturally affinity. The existence of AAL is only explainable as a transparent and inelegant attempt to avoid calling a spade a spade – that is to say, to avoid using the label OTH (“other”), AAL’s predecessor prior to 2003.
The proposed initiative would keep the NOR (North America) requirement, but eliminate AAL and instead require students to chose two regions from the following five: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Europe. On the surface, it seems inherently logical to disaggregate the AAL region into its constituent regions, as well as to recognize the Middle East as a distinct region.
But this suggestion masks a sea change in the distribution requirements: EUR (Europe) would no longer be required. Students could graduate without ever having taken a class covering the cultural and civilizational heritage of Europe – the Western heritage that is the fount of Middlebury College.
The authors of the proposal concede that the NOR requirement should remain in place, out of deference to Middlebury’s geographic location. But Middlebury’s position cannot simply be defined by physical geography. Middlebury is physically located in North America, but it is a Western educational institution, and as such it cannot be viewed as separate from the European tradition. Middlebury’s structure as an institute of higher learning dates back to the European Middle Ages; its values harken from the European Enlightenment. The fact that Western civilizations are especially emphasized at Middlebury is wholly appropriate, and should remain so.
This initiative suggests that the college errs somehow by emphasizing the study of Western cultures and civilizations. By privileging the study of North America and Europe over the rest of the world, they argue that it demeans non-Western thought. But the existing set of requirements does not somehow “minimize” the importance of non-Western culture and civilization. Any student worthy of admission to Middlebury can recognize that non-Western thought is neither uniform nor somehow less important.
But a four-year education is limited in scope, and cannot possibly encompass the study of the entire world. Choices have to be made, and, given the cultural roots of Middlebury itself, it is reasonable that Middlebury students should expect their education to uniquely emphasize the Western tradition. One would hardly think it fair to criticize al-Azhar in Cairo for paying disproportionate attention to the Arab cultural heritage, or Peking University for focusing on the achievements of Chinese civilization.
I commend Ms. Barajas and Ms. Abdelhamid for their work. Many students have undoubtedly pondered Middlebury’s graduation requirements and speculated on how to improve them, but they have created a logical, well-reasoned, and cogent proposal and have unsurprisingly gathered significant support. But while they are right to urge the scrapping of the AAL requirement, I believe their proposed solution would move Middlebury’s curriculum in an inauspicious direction.
With this in mind, I would like to present a modified proposal. Rather than beating around the bush, why not bring back the OTH requirement? What OTH lacks in political correctness, it would make up for in intellectual honesty. The exhaustive nature of the OTH category would at least recognize the inherent futility of trying to rationally subdivide the non-Western world into neat little groups. One need only look at the proposed new categories to see that any such attempt will result in an inelegant, un-nuanced framework. The ASI (Asia) requirement, for instance, would still lump together over half the world’s population, including the bulk of the world’s Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim civilizations. If the goal is to bestow a greater respect for the diversity of non-Western cultures, this hardly seems an improvement over the status quo.
The winds of change are in the air. President Liebowitz is leaving. Rumors surround the future of the honor code. Now Middlebury’s degree requirements also seem to be in flux. This is an exciting time to be a Middlebury student. Although I will likely not be around to witness the conclusion of these trends, I trust in the Middlebury community to resolve these issues logically and in the spirit of cooperation, collegiality, and reasoned discourse.
MAX KAGAN '14 is from Freeport, ME
(01/23/14 3:43am)
This weekend at the Hepburn Zoo, a group of five students will present “Gruesome Playground Injuries,” a two-character play written by Rajiv Joseph. The story follows the relationship of Kayleen and Doug, played by Alia Khalil ’14.5 and Ben Kramer ’13.5, from the ages of eight to thirty-eight as they experience various injuries throughout their lives.
The play is performed in a series of chronological vignettes, each presenting a new injury one of the characters has sustained and providing snapshots of the relationship.
“The physical injuries are metaphors for emotional injuries,” Khalil said. “I hope that the show will provoke thoughts on timing and why people come into our lives at a certain time.”
Growing up and the resulting maturation of relationships also permeates the work. The audience observes as the characters share brief encounters and bond over their painful injuries at irregular intervals of up to ten years without seeing each other. Their comparison of physical scars becomes an exploration of emotional self-portraits of their lives.
“Gruesome Playground Injuries,” penned by contemporary American playwright Rajiv Joseph in 2009, presents an unusual type of theater, composed of only two characters who remain on stage the entire duration of the 70 minute play. The staging allows the audience to witness the actors shifting their age, costume and props during scene transitions. Participants face a unique challenge to portray believable shifts in their characters with little transition time and without the opportunity to momentarily leave the stage to occupy a slightly different character. The actors must explore the idea of how people change over time as they live through new experiences, while also retaining a core sense of self—a concept not unfamiliar to Middlebury students.
“Gruesome Playground Injuries” is possible due to the dedication of the five involved students, including actors Kramer and Khalil, director and set designer Teddy Anderson ’13.5 and lighting designers Nick Hemerling ’14.5 and Mari Vial-Golden ’14. After Khalil chose the show this past October, the group began rehearsing throughout the fall before J-term, which allowed them to devote more time to preparing the show for production.
“I chose the show because of the intriguing roles of Kayleen and Doug, and the challenge of playing roles whose greatness stems from their difficulty for the actor,” Khalil said. “I constantly question the role and how to portray it successfully onstage.”
The students presenting “Gruesome Playground Injuries” have worked hard on their own time outside of their sizeable Middlebury workloads, and are proud to present their efforts to the college audience. Khalil is excited to connect with an audience of peers and share with her friends what the group has been working on.
“It’s not performing a play to an audience of strangers in the Hepburn Zoo,” Khalil said.
The students will present “Gruesome Playground Injuries” this Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8pm each night. Tickets are $4. Come support your fellow students and enjoy the result of their hard work and dedication!
(01/23/14 1:51am)
The College is expanding its network of schools abroad with the newly re-named Middlebury College - CMRS Oxford Humanities Program, in which the College will take on operations conducted by Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS) at Oxford.
This is the College’s first C.V. Starr School Abroad in the United Kingdom and is affiliated with Keble College, the largest of the more than three-dozen small, independent, self-governing communities at Oxford.
Prior to the venture, students at the College wishing to study abroad in Oxford were limited to a highly competitive, yearlong stay with Lincoln College at Oxford University, or through CMRS, which is specifically for students who have not matriculated with Oxford.
While CMRS specializes in Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, students also have the option to pursue a general course of study in the Liberal Arts. The program will be open to students of all academic disciplines and will provide the option of a semester- or year-long study abroad experience. In keeping with College policy, students studying with CMRS will receive academic credit for their coursework while abroad.
CMRS follows Oxford’s one-on-one tutorial teaching, in which students register for two private tutorial courses with experts in the material they wish to study. Formal essays are due each week based on primary and secondary source readings. The individual attention by tutors allows for more flexible teaching methods and courses of study.
In addition to Oxford-style tutorials, students register for one seminar course and one Integral Course. The seminar course expands upon work completed in tutorials and allows students to learn from each other. The Integral Course is a larger lecture-based class that provides a broader overview of history, literature and scholarship of the Medieval period and the Early Modern period. Students present extensive formal research papers at the end of the semester, serving as the culmination of a semester’s worth of tutorial and seminar work, as well as independent research.
According to a College press release, A. Barton Hepburn Professor of History Paul Monod, who has been on academic leave this year, will become the program’s director.
“Middlebury-CMRS is an excellent program for students with an interest in the humanities who want to spend a semester or year in Oxford and experience an intellectually challenging environment,” Monod said in the press release. “At the same time, students have a wonderful chance to learn about British culture firsthand.”
Students who studied at CMRS in the past noted the benefits of the tutorial system, in particular, but also acknowledged educational inconsistencies that Middlebury can improve upon.
James McMillan ’14 called his oratory tutorial at CMRS “one of the most productive, formative learning experiences of [his] entire college career.”
“Even with discussion-based classes, … Middlebury doesn’t quite facilitate or foster the development of oral skills. Much of our future professional lives will, at least to some extend, require public speaking,” he noted.
While McMillan himself was paired with tutors who also taught at one of Oxford’s many colleges, his fellow students were not so fortunate.
“Their tutorial experiences were not nearly as strong,” McMillan said. “With Middlebury now overseeing the program, it will be interesting to see if the strength of the faculty becomes more consistent.”
(01/23/14 1:49am)
At the December 2013 Board of Trustees meeting, Professor of Philosophy Lorraine Besser-Jones, Professor of Economics Nicholas Muller, Professor of French William Poulin-Deltour, and Professor of Political Science Amy Yuen were promoted from assistant professors to the rank of associate professor without limit of tenure.
Tenure is granted to professors in tenure track positions after a series of forums and interviews by the faculty review committee. While candidates are evaluated primarily on performance reviews and research published while at the College, the process of granting tenure can remain flexible.
Poulin-Deltour, who has been a member of the College faculty since 2005, followed a non-traditional path to tenure after delaying the process after a year while he took a leave of absence due to throat cancer. The College then gave him an additional year before being reviewed for tenure.
“Because I had been here that extra year, I was starting to feel part of the furniture, as they say,” Poulin-Deltour said. “Having the tenure gives a feeling of rootedness. You’re obviously more willing to invest in the institution because the institution has taken this huge investment in you.”
Besser-Jones echoed Poulin-Deltour’s sentiments on the value of tenure.
“The importance of getting tenure is not only having job security, but also being included,” Besser-Jones said. “Being firmly part of the Middlebury community is why I’m so happy to have tenure. The community, the connection, between faculty and student and between faculty, is strong and cohesive, and I hadn’t found that at other places.”
Besser-Jones also noted that tenure is somewhat of a byproduct of her job, and not necessarily her primary motivation.
“If I were doing things for the sake of tenure I think I would be less successful,” Besser-Jones said. “I’m very motivated and receptive to making changes, and I am continually looking at how classes can go better. I’ve been successful from a research perspective largely because I’ve been willing to put myself out there, and I haven’t hesitated to put my work out there.”
Muller noted that the caliber of students and faculty — active people and active minds interested in talking about ideas both new and old — are what makes him excited to stay at the College.
With regards to research — tenured professors’ responsibility in addition to teaching — tenure can open doors.
“It’s supposed to protect things like academic freedom, so doing research that can be controversial, for example, but useful,” Yuen said. “But I think more else, especially in an institution like this, it also feels like you are accepted in an institution that values what you do.”
While camaraderie among faculty can be counted as a benefit of tenure, the practice and the job security it provides comes with the risk of abuse, according to Yuen.
“When people are granted tenure, most grow through the process and recognize their responsibilities, but some can get distracted and slow down in research,” Yuen said, noting that research and teaching responsibilities offer ample structure and can work to “keep faculty engaged with students, to keep them engaged with research and to keep them engaged with the institution.”
(01/23/14 12:55am)
I spent most of my life wanting to be more alone: wanting to leave neighborhood pickup whiffle ball games early so that I could instead go read a book, wanting my own bedroom at home instead of sharing with my brother, wanting to leave home for college and, once here, waiting anxiously to have a single. No roommate for me; I just wanted to be alone.
That fantasy of seclusion is deeply carved into the American psyche, built into the narratives of every successful politician and every movie superhero. Even the bible sends its protagonist to the wilderness for rebirth. We aspire to retreat into the backwoods when all else fails, and then to wall ourselves off in gated houses ringed by hedges when we succeed. While we work towards that lofty vision, we make do with white wires that plug music into our heads and lounges that have been converted into dorms because we don’t value the space that we provide as much as we value the contributions of a few more paying customers.
Even in our romantic efforts, such as they are at this place, we tend towards the solitary. There is no lonelier moment than the long walk home the day after a meaningless encounter, no deeper connection in a single drunken rendezvous with a stranger, where the conversation is scattered, not remembered, or entirely absent. We say that we would like to fix this, but we never take action to change.
We have become far too skilled at being alone together.
This is my fiftieth and final column for the Campus. While turning in my thesis last week might have seemed a more momentous occasion, these pieces stacked on top of each other would make a taller pile. In a little over a week I will ski down the Snow Bowl, pack my possessions into my car, and hope that it doesn’t break down on my way out of the state. I will finally have the option to be completely alone. I could call it soul-searching, or recharging, tell everyone that I need some space. But at long last, perhaps later than I might have hoped, I know that is not what I want.
We blaze trails not so that we might escape the world, but so that others might follow. Life is better with companionship. We are not born alone nor do we die that way; we are born into the embrace of our families and when we die they gather around to recount the happy moments of our lives, and the moments in between where we steal solitude from company are the moments most likely to later bear the tinge of regret.
As I move on into the next chapter, I do not regret the excesses of my time in college: the times that the night ended and the sun rose over the Green Mountains while my friends and I sat and talked about everything and nothing, the hours spent in Proctor over many tiny courses, or the morning classes that I blew off to head to make fresh tracks at the Snow Bowl. What I do regret are the times that I held back. I regret waiting until junior year to try out the sailing and debate teams. I regret waiting to join my social house and the Campus editorial staff until my senior spring, content for too long to contribute only this column. I regret valuing solitude and down time over team spirit and hard work.
The best friends that I have made here have been when I have taken a chance and given other people the chance to reject me flat out or welcome me into their circle. That may seem like an incredibly obvious point for a final column, but it is one that we only think about at orientation and I know too many people here with that same problem. Instead of complaining about hookup culture, ask somebody out the dinner, drinks or skiing. A shocking number of my male and female friends complain about the lack of dating at Middlebury. Too many seem to fear that the sheer act of asking reeks of desperation, but the regret of not acting far outlasts whatever embarrassment it might cause (especially if you don’t write about it in the Campus). Middlebury only changes when we do.
Some last shout-outs from my bully pulpit: Hannah — I was convinced that we would be at each other’s throats, but I have really looked forward to working with you every week to put this section together. Kyle and Alex — you have done an amazing job this semester. Middlebury — fossil fuel divestment makes financial sense. Rachel and the SGA — please reconsider the community education requirement. Dining services — more taco days! To everyone who read “Apply Liberally” over the past four years — it’s been a pleasure. I leave you with the words of President Josiah Bartlett (D-Sorkinland):
What’s next?
Illustration by NOLAN ELLSWORTH
(01/23/14 12:34am)
On Jan. 13, seven students from the class of 2013.5 auditioned to be the student speaker at their graduation at the end of the month. While only one student, Danny Loehr, will be delivering his speech at the ceremony, the following three students submitted their speeches to the Campus.
It is not without a bit of irony that I write this. To be honest, I didn’t choose to be a Feb. I had barely heard the word until the admissions office called me during June of my senior year of high school, just a few weeks before my graduation. “We can let you in off of the waiting list,” I was told. “You’ll be a Feb”. “Great!” I said enthusiastically, and hung up the phone. Almost immediately, I realized that I had no idea what I had just done. “Wait…what’s a Feb?”
Over four years have passed since that day, and I still haven’t figured out the answer to that question—at least not in a way that I can present pithily to you now. I’m sure you all have your own ideas as to what the essential Febness is, but for every such conception there is an exception. At the 2010 Feb celebration, it was rather famously suggested that Febs are the people who show up late to the party and are then left at 3am, still dancing around the room to Michael Jackson, alone. I think the truth, for better or for worse, might be that not all of us quite fit that bill. Some of us got too drunk or too tired and went to bed. Some of us stayed in to do some studying or watch TV. Some of us turned off the Michael Jackson and put on Blink-182.
But, of course, to focus on that would be to miss the point. Setting aside all generalizations about what being a Feb is or isn’t all about, we will gather together in just over a week because we share a common experience. That simple act of taking an extra semester, regardless of how or when that semester was spent, means that by definition we haven’t quite followed that “plan” that is the standard operating procedure these days. It might seem insignificant on paper, but for us, there was a slight glitch in the plan. You had to explain it to your high school friends, to your aunt at Thanksgiving dinner, to the boss you bailed on after a few months of work. Perhaps understandably, no one really got it. Some probably felt sorry for you. One of my friend’s moms sent me a care package during finals week that fall just so I wouldn’t be left out. It was nice, but kind of weird.
Well, being a Feb is kind of weird. And I don’t necessarily mean weird in that cool, quirky—dare I say Febby—way that we love to talk about so much. I also mean it in a different way: uncomfortable, awkward, unsettling. As fashionable as it can be, showing up late to the party can also lead one to feel a bit out of sorts. I think almost my entire hall during that first semester knew me only as “The Feb”, though the closer friends at least called me “Mike the Feb”. I tried to embrace it, but was never sure of exactly what I was embracing.
But that’s all part of the Feb experience, isn’t it? We don’t discuss those particular aspects a lot, but there’s a reason that they come about. When you break from what’s expected, there are certain consequences. You might have to rely on yourself a little bit more than you were prepared to. You might have to go out of your way to make things happen, instead of waiting for them to come to you. I’m sure we’ve all felt that at some point or another during our college careers. Over the past month, reflecting on those experiences—everything from taking forever to make friends, to sitting alone in the dining hall, to constantly getting hosed on class registration—has made me realize how important they are in the context of today.
That is because February 1st, our college graduation, marks the end of that part of our lives whose structure was predefined. Everything up to this point has been more or less laid out for us. I do not mean to say that we haven’t worked to get where we are—merely, that most of us have been on a path through relatively charted waters. Most of us have always known that we would go to high school and college, and that we would probably do pretty well there. Few of us have had a concrete plan beyond that.
That last bit is equal parts exciting and terrifying, but what I want to point out is that our college lives were a bit more uncharted than most others. And therein lies the greatest thing about being a Feb, besides getting to ski down the Bowl with our caps and gowns on. That weirdness that I’ve talked about, as hard as it’s made things sometimes, it’s meant that Febs have developed a tendency to make their own way through Middlebury. That is invaluable preparation for whatever is coming next. Amidst all of those big, inspirational ideas about changing the world that we find in Ted Talks and Upworthy posts, our postgraduate lives will inevitably bring us a day-to-day existence marked at various times by uncertainty, ambiguity, banality, and loneliness. So let’s embrace it, just like we embraced our Febness for the last four years—without always knowing what we’re embracing or exactly why we’re embracing it. Let us welcome and even encourage discomfort. Life is about so much more than fitting in.
I don’t know an easy way to explain what a Feb is. I do know that the graduates that will sit in Mead Chapel on February 1 are some of the most intelligent, engaging, and challenging people I’ll ever know. I know that we came into this place at the same time and that we’re about to walk out, together, four weird years later. And I know that we’re ready. Wherever we go, let’s take a piece of this place with us. We are Febs, and we can do whatever we want. Let’s get out there and do it.
MIKE GADOMSKI is from Moorestown, N.J.
A little over a year ago, I was sitting in my car outside Munroe, hands shaking on the steering wheel. It wasn’t because of the temperature, although it was bitterly cold. I had just returned from a semester abroad in Australia and had last seen Middlebury amid the greenery and blooming trees of May, during the two weeks out of the year when the campus becomes alive before we disappear for the summer. It wasn’t that I hadn’t talked to my friends since then – in the world we’ve grown up in, the people we talk to on a daily basis are decided not by geography but rather by choice – but nonetheless, I was nervous, unsure of how it would feel to be back at this place, experiencing the lives of my friends and vice versa without the filter of carefully curated pictures uploaded onto the internet. At the time I was working at home, and I figured that I could catch up with what I had missed while still setting aside some time to do work. Needless to say, I was terribly wrong.
I was wrong both about the work and about being able to catch up on what I had missed. The amount that goes on here over J-term is really incredible for a place that we tend to often complain is isolated and sleepy. I went to talks about energy and to Two Brothers, panels about Divestment and parties at Palmer. I skied at the Snow Bowl and sang “Like a Prayer” at Karaoke night and enjoyed the best that the dining hall had to offer: taco day (Please, President Liebowitz, if you do nothing else in your remaining months at the helm, make the dining halls have more taco days. For the sake of the febs who will follow us). I had the best of the Middlebury experience in a week, and so of course I did nothing productive. I was too busy “seizing the day” and “only living once” and so on and so forth.
But that week could have been very different, as far too many are.
I know that I am not alone here in saying that I have lost entire weeks of my life to absent-minded scrolling through information that is not relevant to either my success or personal happiness. On good days you might click through the New York Times” and the Atlantic, but more often than not it ends up being “23 Goats Who Cannot Believe They’re Really Goats,” “17 Animals Who Just Found Out Columbus Was A Terrible Person,” and “36 Things That Are Going to Make You Feel Ancient.” Did you know, for instance, that “Mean Girls” came out more than a decade ago? And those are all just from a single site whose name I am sure you could guess.
The defining challenge of our age is the constant flow of interrupting information and the ease with which we can satisfy our every curiosity and need for entertainment. This is certainly less of an obstacle than attacks by saber tooth tigers, mass starvation, or global thermonuclear war. It is, at its core, a “first-world problem.” But the fact that new information is constantly beeping its way into your head at every moment of every day is still an important phenomenon. Where our parents once had to hunt for information on shelves and through pages, for us the trail never goes cold. The challenge is not that we have too few variables, but far too many. After all, it is easier to watch somebody hit a massive ski jump on television that it is to learn how to do it yourself; easier to read every blog post on the subject than to actually talk to the proverbial Proctor crush. The challenge is to know when to stop taking in new information and to jump.
Especially in the freezing days and the never-ending nights of winter, this presents a dangerous trap. One of the greatest things about Middlebury is that the quality and even the quantity of the real distractions exceed the virtual ones. But in other places where the alternatives might be harder to find and the people further away, the temptation to stay inside and scroll can become overwhelming. With the internet, you have on your computer or in your pocket every word ever written down by Thucydides or Hawking, Shakespeare or Fitzgerald. You have the words of every great leader, the movies of every great filmmaker, and the sounds of every great musician. But you also have Rebecca Black, Ylvis, and every season of Scandal. It is not as much that we struggle to manage our time as it is that distractions spring up to make us forget that it exists until it has already slipped away.
The reach of ideas has never been further and the rewards of success have never been greater. One of the most amazing realities of this time is that the spread of a song, a speech, or a slam poem that makes us feel something in our core is constrained only by the speed with which we are able to pass it on to those with whom we believe it will resonate. But, like the Harlem Shake or The Fox, this success often proves fleeting. And the punishment for an accident or an ill-considered action forever stick to your name, plastered across Google for all to see: the future employer or the potential girlfriend, the angry young men in their armchairs at home or the grandmother who just signed up for Facebook and likes every single thing that you post. We live in a world without a delete button, in a giant town square where humiliation has become more public than ever.
This is not to say that technology is evil or that pop culture isn’t worth your time. But it has become incredibly difficult to separate what is actually meaningful or useful from the cascade of interruptions and quick alternatives. It is hard to muster the presence of mind to read a whole book when your pocket keeps buzzing with snapchats, text messages, and emails from Bob Smith about intermural sports. In the competition between the information that improves our lives and that which merely satisfies our brain’s addiction to dopamine, the trivial content has a home field advantage.
So what is there to stop us from giving into the temptation to binge watch another season of House of Cards instead of making the changes we fantasize about? Mostly, I think, our overpowering fear of missing out, or, as it was labelled during orientation, “FOMO.” FOMO is a powerful force, and not necessarily a bad one. It is what gets us out of bed and to that party that friend is having. It is what drives us to the mountain despite the bitter cold of the polar vortex. It is what compels us to plaster the names of our crushes on the walls of Proctor, if just for a few days.
On the Campus newspaper, we like to joke about how we come up with the headlines for our editorials. If you are one of the dedicated few who glanced at more than a couple during your time here, you might have noticed that they all follow the same format: don’t do this thing, do that thing instead. So here’s my version of that template: don’t get over your fear of missing out. Do the things that you’ll remember later. Don’t give in to information paralysis; take in the facts that you need and then move on. Don’t give into clickbait and mindless scrolling. Take advantage of the fact that we live in an era where knowledge is free and unfettered.
For when you are at a party and it is two a.m. and “Like a Prayer” comes on, there is no time to sit back and think about whether you have worked out recently or how many layers you are wearing, or whether it is actually an appropriate occasion. If you spend too long thinking about it, the song will be over. But here is what is great about Febs: That song is ancient; it was big when our parents were in college; it is practically Bach. But every time it comes on, it’s as if it is the first. So you tear your eyes away from your phone and your fingers away from the keyboard. You join your friends in the excitement of that moment, with that same grin on your face that each and every one of us had on day two of orientation running around in the February sun at the snow bowl. You jump, and that is the moment that you never forget.
ZACH DRENNEN is from Canandaigua, N.Y.
I will always remember the day I got my acceptance letter to Middlebury in the mail. I was so excited it took me about a week to realize I had been accepted as a Feb. To this day, I believe I checked the September only box. When I realized I was accepted as a Feb I felt semi-rejected. You can imagine my surprise when I arrived for orientation only to learn that most people specifically check the February-only box. Little did I know that I would soon come to realize how accepting to be a Feb was the greatest decision I could have made in my academic life. Having just lost my mother the summer before my senior year of high school, my aunts were very concerned with my future going in the direction she would have wanted. They feared I would go away somewhere, fall in love and never come back. This may be because my mother often went places, fell in love and was only convinced to come back because a sister was getting married. I am definitely my mother’s daughter, but I knew that college was not something to give up, no matter how in love I thought I was during my Febmester.
At orientation I was overwhelmed, I found out I had pneumonia the night I arrived and I had a cast on my hand. Not the best setup for a winter orientation. I remember hearing stories of people traveling in Senegal, trekking the Himalayas, teaching photography classes in Rwanda, living in Paris, adventuring in Laos, or working at home—wherever that was. I was amazed by how different the past three to six months had been for all of us, but how together we managed to feel— how together we wanted to be. That night as we walked from Ross dining hall through the candles of our Feb leaders into Mead Chapel I ended up alongside a girl who would end up being my best friend for the next four years.
After just a few days of orientation we had begun to form the bonds we were told we were destined to create. Within two weeks of being on campus we were skinny-sledding down the mead chapel, taking our shirts off every “Like a Prayer” we heard, and I learned the words to “Wagon Wheel” real fast so I didn’t feel so left out when everyone decided to start singing it. They say that the great thing about coming in as a Feb is that you create an instant community that follows you throughout your college years. I think that while our Feb class has gained a few members and lost a few—while we have all explored different social groups on this campus and made new friends along the way—at the end of the day a Feb is a friend you can always count on. Just like family, there will always be the cousins with whom you get along best, or the siblings with whom you feel you can share the most, but regardless you have a fundamental love that will always be there for one another. I believe that even though many of us have drifted in our own directions, it is just a reflection of us truly trying to find ourselves here. I can still look around this room today and say genuinely that there is not one of you I wouldn’t want to be there for.
I came to Middlebury as this young girl from Tucson, Arizona. I’d had one snow day in my life and it lasted until 10am. I had never experienced daylight savings because we don’t do that in Arizona, it wouldn’t make a difference. I knew cold as 60-degree weather. And although I still don’t know what is going to happen when I attempt to ski down at the snow bowl today, in my four years here I have done more than my fair share of streaking in mid-winter, I have cross country skied from the Mill to the Bunker, I have gone swimming in a frozen over pond at the snow bowl, and gone sledding down Mead Chapel every year, and I have my fellow Febs to thank for all of that.
Another great thing about being a Feb is although we feel pretty old by the end, we experience the greatest amount of people leaving and coming in to this school. We know things that no one else here knows but us. We were here for the very first screening of the Midd Kid music video. We lived the days of Asian carp and avocados, language tables in Atwater, and take-out cups from proctor. We know about MiddTwit, and know the founders of Middbeat. We know what the real Purple Jesus tastes like and we know how good a DJ Officer Chris is. We brought Dominique Young Unique to campus before she became a big deal. We knew Frank Sweeney before The Real World. We started spontaneous percussion during midnight breakfast and choreographed an amazing flash mob for the Hunt. We have lived through the ADP apocalypse, which has been more traumatic for some of us than others. I personally really enjoyed dancing in those window-frames.
We, as Febs, are thrill seekers and passionate believers. We may have felt a semester behind at times, but we have lived so much more than everyone else that showed up on time. And for those of you who have joined us along the way, you too have made choices in your life to redefine the path of what we are taught college is supposed to look like.
Now we get to redefine what the path of post-college is supposed to look like. Graduating from an institution like Middlebury gives us all a great responsibility to do something meaningful and successful with our lives. However, that does not need to be as stressful as we are pushed to believe. Whether you end up at Medical school, consulting in DC, bartending in San Diego, starting a farm in Vermont, or opening up a cupcake shop, success is about so much more than your starting salary or lack thereof. If I have learned anything these 22 years, it is how painfully short life can be, and how beautifully intense love can feel. Once we understand these things, we understand that a fulfilling life comes from choosing how we built it rather than just reading a manual.
For me, success is always living the adventure. Success is giving yourself fully so your loved ones know how much they mean to you. Success is looking yourself in the mirror everyday and always smiling back. Mostly because “we woke up like this” but also because no matter what happened the night before or what awaits us tomorrow, we have been doing the most we can to do our lives justice. For me, we make a difference through the people we choose to love, sing, laugh, and dance with. We are successful when we know ourselves well enough to be so fully there for the world around us.
I think that Middlebury, along with giving us a degree from one of the top liberal arts schools in the country, has also given us the opportunity to figure out who we are and what we want most. We have been given access to professors, who are not just great because of how they do their job, but because of the people they are and the life of knowledge they carry. We are more than just the grades we earn, the internships we’ve had, the important people we’ve met or attempted to meet—we are kids in our twenties who began this adventure of college in our own way. We are friends, and lovers, and family, and what we have learned from each other is just as valuable as what we have learned in the classroom.
Today I want to leave you with part of a poem from spoken word artist Anis Mojgani. This poem reminds us that whether we initially “chose” to be Febs or not, whether we identify today as a Feb or not, no matter where we begin or end upon leaving this college, we must never forget that we are Febs. For above all, we have learned that feeling set apart from others is not at all a negative experience, but rather a thrilling gift that opens us to all the endless possibilities which lie ahead. We must remember that sometimes the uncertainties presented to us by life, are the beginnings of the best adventures we’ve had yet.
So in the words of Anis Mojgani:
“You have been given a direct order to rock the (fuck) out.
Rock out like you were just given the last rock and roll record on earth and the minutes are counting down to flames.
Rock out like the streets are empty except for you, your bicycle, and your headphones.
….
Rock out like you’ll never have to open a textbook again.
Rock out like you get paid to disturb the peace.
Rock out like music is all that you got.
Rock out like you’re standing on a rooftop and the city’s as loud and glowing as a river flowing below you.
Rock out like the plane is going down, and there are 120 people on board, and 121 parachutes.
Rock out like the streets and the books are all on fire and the flames can only be extinguished by doin’ the electric slide.
…
Rock out like your eyes are fading but you still got your ears. But you don’t know for how long so rock out like 5 o’clock time, meant pop-and-lock time.
Rock out like you got pants full of tokens and nothing to do but everything.
Rock out like you are the international ski-ball champion of the entire universe.
Rock out like you just escaped an evil orphanage to join a Russian circus.
Rock out like your hero is fallen and you are spinning your limbs until they burst into a burning fire of remembrance.
…
Rock out like your dead grandfather just came back to take a drive with you in your new car.
…
Rock out like the walls won’t fall but, (dammit), you’re going to die trying to make them.
…
Rock out like it’s raining outside and you’ve got a girl to run through it with.
Rock out like you’re playing football! Football in the mud and your washing machine is not broken.
Rock out like you threw your window open on your honeymoon because you want the whole world to know what love is.
…
Rock out like a shadow of a man passes behind you, drops you to your knees. You’re buckling in sweat, cold metal’s pushed to your forehead, the trigger’s pulled and the gun jams.
Rock out like you got an empty appointment book, and a full tank of gas.
…
Rock out like the mangos are in season. Rock out like the record player won’t skip.
Rock out like this was the last weekend, like these were the last words, like you don’t ever want to forget how.”
Thank you all for loving, singing, laughing, and dancing with me these past four years. I know that no matter what our respective futures hold, we will find success in the earth beneath our feet, the music in our eyes, the hope in those around us, and the stories we hold in the palms of our hands.
Middlebury Class of 2013.5
Let’s Rock Out.
BELLA TUDISCO-SADACCA is from Tucson, A.Z.
(01/22/14 4:31pm)
Exactly one year ago, I was tapped on the shoulder in Ross Dining Hall by a sophomore guy who asked me, “Are you the girl that wore those patterned leggings last week?”
My answer was “yes,” as I grinned ecstatically, so incredibly pleased that someone noticed those leggings that were going to be either a total hit or miss. That conversation sparked the first of many, many conversations that Ola Fadairo ’15 and I have shared over our love of fashion.
Even if you do not know Fadairo, you know Ola. You have heard him, noticed him, admired him, and I guarantee you’ve wanted to befriend him. He walks around campus in his classic black pea coat, sporting either some type of NYC flat cap or exceedingly cool sunglasses.
The kid has style and there is no question about that.
Born and raised in New York City, Fadairo’s style originated in what some would call the fashion capital of the world.
“Every time I go out I feel like I need to be on par with everyone else in terms of what I wear,” he said. “I like seeing what I can do with my wardrobe in the context of a city where fashion is an essential part of its identity.”
Both of his parents emigrated from Nigeria and have become extremely successful individuals in their new New York City home. His father has his Ph.D. in computer science and is the chair of the computer science and information systems department at Medgar Evers College in New York. His mother has her masters in architecture and works as a real estate broker. His parents’ motivation to come to a different country for a better life and more opportunities has inspired Fadairo to “treat every facet of [his] life with dedication.”
According to his parents, part of success is “looking the part.” They believe that dressing maturely is an essential part of achievement, especially in a professional environment. Bottom line, they teach Fadairo that he will be assessed on the way he presents himself.
One of the things I admire most about Fadairo is his ability to admit the obvious. You will be judged. Everyone will be judged. Even though you cannot stop that, you can have some sort of control over what people think of you through the way you dress.
Fadairo’s style is a combination of urban and prep. Growing up in New York City, he rolled with a circle of people that were from lower-end parts of the city, but attended the private schools of high society. Their involvement in both ends of the economic and social demographics of the city influenced their mixture of hip-hop and classic elite prep.
“It isn’t too often you’ll find men from an urban background in a private school setting,” he said, which is why his hybrid style is not just for show, but a political statement.
By diving deeper into this idea of fashion as a kind of political propaganda, one can understand why Fadairo feels caught between two worlds.
“If I dress too urban, certain negative normative judgments will be passed and the same is true on the preppy side,” he said. “Finding the balance not only allows me to look good, but it makes my life a lot easier. It’s kind of crazy to think that the way one dresses has social implications.”
Fadairo was not always into fashion. When he was younger, he simply wore what fit. It was not until a guy two years older than him at Collegiate High School “took [him] under his wing in terms of transforming [his] sense of style.”
It was then that everything his parents had taught him about presenting himself properly made sense. The way Fadairo used to dress represented the way he was feeling on the inside, which at the time was purposeless. Once he really took a look at the way he dressed, he started taking himself more seriously and started having dreams and aspirations.
“It’s kind of ironic that something that can be viewed as superficial, such as fashion, helped me find myself on a deeper level,” he said. “Isn’t that what fashion is about? Dressing to express yourself, make a statement or just bring you confidence and happiness…not to imply your economic status or capability to wear things that others cannot.”
As far as inspiration goes, Fadairo is most profoundly impacted by his older brother’s fashion. His brother owns his own public relations firm in New York City and is surrounded by the industry, as he works fashion weeks in New York, London and Paris. To Fadairo, his greatest advice is to be yourself regardless of what people may think.
“He believes being stared at is a privilege,” he said. If people take time out of their day to acknowledge you regardless of their opinion, it means you’re doing something worth noticing.”
With that type of attitude as his role model, Fadairo “likes to take risks and develop something new everyday.”
Fashion can be seen on multiple levels. On the one hand it can be interpreted as superficial, materialistic and egotistical. On an entirely different spectrum, fashion can be used as a technique to bridge the gaps of our society and our world — it is up to you to decide which path you will let fashion take you down.
“Fashion connects humans on a more personal level than people realize, so if I can achieve a more personal interaction with people based on the way I dress, I’m content,” he said.
I think the relationship Ola and I have is a perfect example of that idea. We connected over fashion; it brought us together regardless of our different genders, interests, hobbies, backgrounds etc. So I leave you with the wise words of Fadairo and his incredibly unique taste:
“Fashion gives us a sense of identity. To know that you own a piece that is unique to you or that has some sort of sentimental value is a special value. I constantly ask myself ‘why are you wearing this?’ Some might consider this level of analysis to be too in-depth, but I feel if I’m not questioning myself, I’m going through life blindly.”
(01/16/14 4:14am)
The men’s basketball team (8-5 overall, 1-1 in NESCAC) went into winter break on a high note with a nail-biting 89-84 victory at Skidmore, but the long layoff did not favor the Panthers, who opened 2014 with three straight losses, including the NESCAC opener on Friday, Jan. 10 against Bates. Middlebury then captured its first NESCAC victory with an impressive defeat of a young and athletic Tufts team 80-66 on Saturday, Jan. 11, and followed-up that performance with a convincing victory over a struggling Lyndon State squad with an 81-69 win on Tuesday, Jan. 14.
Following two sloppy losses against out-of-conference opponents, Middlebury opened NESCAC play at home this past weekend. The Panthers had not lost to Bates since Feb., 2007, but suffered a 64-61 defeat on Friday night. Shots consistently fell for Middlebury in the first half, who took a 36-25 lead at halftime after making six three-pointers and shooting 45 percent from the field.
Prior to the game, Coach Jeff Brown spoke about Dylan Sinnickson ’15, who was poised to return from a personal leave of absence.
“We expect for Dylan to contribute, and in terms of how much, it will really depend on the performance,” Brown said.
Sinnickson rewarded his coach’s decision, exploding off the bench for 17 first-half points on 6-10 shooting, including three of four from beyond the arc.
Despite shooting just 24 percent from the floor in the second half, Middlebury maintained their lead as Bates bailed out the hosts with multiple fouls early in the second half, and 15 personal fouls total after halftime. As a result, the Bobcats (8-4, 1-0) worked tirelessly to cut into the Panthers’ lead. With less than five minutes to play, a missed layup on the Panther end resulted in a dunk for impressive Bates center Malcolm Delpeche to draw the Bobcats within one. On the ensuing Panther possession, another missed layup in traffic gave the ball back to the visitors. The crowd cried for a foul and the volume in Pepin Gymnasium reached a crescendo as the Panthers settled in to protect their one point lead. However, Delpeche made his presence felt again with a follow-up lay-in on the other end to put the Bobcats ahead 54-53.
Trailing by one at the 2:30 mark, captain Joey Kizel ’14 knocked down a free throw to tie the ball game at 56. Kizel, an 82 percent free throw shooter on the season, uncharacteristically missed the second, but the Panthers came out of the crowd underneath the basket with possession and Kizel knocked down a go-ahead three-pointer. On the other end, Adam Philpott retaliated with a three of his own. And then, with 10 seconds remaining, Bates’ leading scorer and co-captain Graham Safford drilled a back-breaking three. The Bates 64-61 victory was sealed when Kizel missed an off-balance three-point attempt of his own as time expired.
Sinnickson finished as the game’s leading scorer with 23 points, and attributed his performance to increased concentration.
“I was very focused heading into this weekend,” he said. “We were struggling prior to Bates and Tufts, but I think we have turned the corner,” Sinnickson said.
Kizel managed 12 of his own, primarily by getting to the line (7-11), and dragged down seven rebounds.
The Panthers played a much more complete game on Sunday against a freshman-laden Tufts (7-6, 0-1) team. With the Jumbos getting two experienced guards back from injury just in time to meet the Panthers, Sunday’s match-up provided a stiffer challenge than Tufts’ record would have suggested. However, Middlebury’s dead-eye shooting throughout made the difference. The Panthers shot at a 51 percent clip from the field, 47 percent from deep and 81 percent from the charity stripe, where Brown’s team has been inconsistent on the year.
The first half featured fast-paced basketball and dominant post-play by Tufts’ first-year big man Hunter Sabety, who was perfect from the field, making all eight of his first-half attempts and adding three boards. Hunter Merryman ’15 led the Panthers in scoring at halftime, knocking down two three-pointers and tallying eight points. As a whole, the Jumbos dominated the first half rebounding battle, played tight perimeter defense and made quick substitutions to keep legs fresh in order to secure a three-point lead going into halftime.
With the game close five minutes into the second half, the physicality picked up when, after the whistle, Sabety slammed the ball through the hoop onto a sprawled Matt Daley ’16. The insult drew a shove from James Jensen ’14, which resulted in a technical for the senior forward and outrage from the Middlebury fans. A minute later, further physical play resulted in a double foul on Jensen and Tufts’ first-year forward Drew Madsen. The rough play meant that both teams were in the double bonus with more than eight minutes remaining, a development that favored Middlebury, as the Jumbos converted only 56 percent of their second half free throws. Both Madsen and Tufts’ junior guard Ben Ferris left the game early due to foul trouble.
The game remained tightly contested until the last two minutes, when a Daley three, followed by an old-fashioned three-point play by Matt St. Amour ’17 pushed the game out of reach as part of a 20-5 Middlebury run over the final 8:54 of the game.
The victory over Tufts halted the team’s first three game losing streak in eight seasons. In Middlebury’s first action of 2014, the Panthers dropped a road game at Salve Regina (9-4) after an eight hour bus ride due to inclement weather and only a 30-minute warm-up. Middlebury followed that by shooting an abysmal 28 percent at home against Plattsburgh St. (8-3) in a 63-47 loss, the team’s lowest scoring performance of the season.
Coach Brown believed that the team’s offense executed well against Plattsburgh, despite displeasing results.
“I think it really just sort of got contagious in that we missed some shots we normally make and we got tighter as the game went on, but in reviewing the game I think our offensive execution was pretty good,” Brown said.
After the two out-of-conference losses, Brown admitted that his team’s resolve had been challenged.
“I think our confidence has been shaken a little bit, not coming out of the gate strong in the second semester,” he said.
On the heels of the conference victory over Tufts, the Panthers traveled to Lyndonville, Vt. to take on in-state opponent Lyndon State.
The Panthers lead throughout, eventually closing out a 81-69 win. Merryman, Sinnickson, St. Amour and Jensen all scored in double digits, while Jack Roberts ‘14 lead the squad with eight rebounds.
Now sitting at 1-1 in conference, the Panthers will resume NESCAC play this coming weekend with road games at Wesleyan and Connecticut College.
(01/16/14 4:11am)
MiddCORE Receives Innovation Award
MiddCORE, the mentor-driven experiential learning Winter Term and summer course on entrepreneurship and innovation, received the Ashoka U Cordes Innovation Award. MiddCORE was one of six recipients of this year’s award, which is given annually by Ashoka, the world’s largest network of social entrepreneurs.
“This is a tremendous honor and we’re proud to be in the company of the other winners,” Jessica Holmes, director of MiddCORE and associate professor of Economics, said in a press release. “We also recognize the strong support we received from our incredible mentors, the administration and our colleagues at the Center for Social Entrepreneurship and the Programs for Creativity and Innovation. We are fortunate to be part of such a strong ecosystem for innovation at Middlebury College.”
The award is given to programs which “demonstrate how students, faculty and community members can achieve social impact through colleges and universities — from admissions, curriculum and career services, all the way to community and alumni engagement,” according to Ashoka’s website.
The six winners, including MiddCORE, will be featured at the annual Ashoka U Exchange, an annual international conference featuring 140 institutions from 40 countries which will take place at Brown University on Feb. 20-22.
Mellon Recognizes Dance Department
In early December the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a $310,000 grant to the College in support of “Movement Matters,” which a College news release described as “a multi-year interdisciplinary endeavor to bring emerging artists in the field of dance together with Middlebury faculty and students for creative and curricular development.”
According to a College press release, Assistant Professor of Dance and Chair of the Dance Program Christal Brown will be the director of the project, which will address the literal and metaphorical interactions between the human body and “our physical and political worlds.”
As part of the project, “emerging movement artists” will come to the College during Winter Term 2015, and one of those artists will receive an appointment as the Mellon Interdisciplinary Choreographer at Middlebury.
In the press release, Brown said that the grant could make the College a home of dance innovation.
“This is an investment in the field at large which we hope will lay the groundwork for our dance program to grow into a hub for creativity and innovation among emerging movement artists.”
According to Brown, the grant is likely to boost the prestige of the College’s dance program, attracting both students and visiting artists alike.
College Mourns Armstrong, 12th President
Dr. James Armstrong, the 12th president of the College, passed away on Dec. 16, 2013. Armstrong helmed the College from 1963 to 1975. During his time in office, he instituted the College’s first system of tenure, created a professional leave program, worked furiously to surpass fundraising goals, increased faculty salaries and worked to improve curricula first-hand.
Armstrong’s tenure was marked by social and political unrest, along with financial difficulties. Nevertheless, Armstrong successfully posited the College as one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges.
Armstrong was born in Princeton, New Jersey where his father was a member of the faculty. He attended the Taft School in Connecticut, and then Princeton, where he studied Classics. After Princeton, he served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and was recalled for the Korean War.
Armstrong was an instructor at Princeton and Indiana University before he was approached in 1963 by the Board of Trustees to replace Samuel Stratton, the College’s 11th President.
After his term as president, Armstrong headed the Charles A. Dana Foundation. In 2010 the College established the James I. Armstrong Professorship in Classical Studies, currently held by Professor of Classics Jane Chaplin. Armstrong and his wife Carol had three children and numerous grandchildren.
With Additional Reporting by NATE SANS
(01/16/14 1:39am)
Students were faced with difficult travel conditions caused by Winter Storm Hercules and a polar vortex while attempting to return to the College for the start of J-term, forcing instructors to make accommodations for those who were absent because of travel delays.
The storm, which battered the Midwest and Northeast from Jan. 1-3, has been cited for at least 16 deaths and complicated travel for several days thereafter. Illinois experienced up to 17 inches of snow, while New York was hit with anywhere from six to 11 inches, and parts of Massachusetts received almost two feet of snow.
According to a Fox News report, on Jan. 3 alone, almost 1,500 flights were cancelled due to Winter Storm Hercules. Such cancellations snarled the travel plans of students such as Colleen Harper ’14, a member of the Women’s Swimming and Diving team who spent 48 hours travelling from her home in Chicago to Middlebury in order to dive at the team’s meets at Bates and Colby on Jan. 4 and 5.
“My flight to Burlington [on Thursday] was cancelled, so I took another flight to Newark that was delayed, causing me to miss the last flights to Burlington until Sunday,” Harper said. “I ended up taking a train from Newark to New York and then on to Burlington, and then drove to Middlebury, arriving at 1:30 a.m. on Saturday morning after leaving Chicago at 6:00 a.m. on Thursday morning.”
Delays also forced some instructors to make accommodations for missing students during the first few days of classes. Philip B. Stewart and Sarah F. Cowles Stewart Professor of Chemistry Jeff Byers is currently teaching Organic Chemistry I, which meets five days a week for over five hours each day, putting students who miss even one class at a great disadvantage. Byers turned to new technologies to aid those who were unable to return to campus on time.
“Two students missed the first lecture, and I was recording my full lecture on a Smartboard, so they had full access to everything,” Byers wrote in an email. “They got caught up pretty much immediately.”
C.V. Starr Professor of Russian and East European Studies Tom Beyer, whose Beginning Russian course meets for three hours every day, also leveraged technology to keep an absent student up to speed in the class as travel troubles kept her at home.
“We used FaceTime to let her participate fully in our intensive language where she was able to view, listen and respond,” Beyer said. “In the past for reasons of weather and personal emergencies, I have also used Skype to stay connected with class members.”
Other professors opted for replacement or make-up class meetings. Sasha Whittle ’17, whose flight from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport was cancelled, missed the first class in her J-term course “Infectious Disease: Historical Epidemics, Current Dilemmas, and Emerging Problems.” She was not alone in her absence, however.
“About 15 people missed our first class, so the professors [Visiting Professors Andy Hale ’06 and Russell Johanson ’06] held a make-up lecture so we could catch up,” Whittle said.
(01/16/14 12:46am)
I am very comfortable with myself, thank you very much. I like to think I am confident with who and where I am. Do I regret not studying abroad? Me? Why would I ever regret something like that? You must have me confused with some other less confident person! Okay, fine; maybe just a little kind of sort of dreading the semester when most of my people depart, leaving me flannel clad, exactly where I have been for the last two years.
Perhaps dread is too strong a word. In truth, I have looked for reasons to regret sticking around and have come up with few. After all, we do spend two years or so trying to figure college out only to decide that it is time for a break. On a more personal level, I feel I have earned my position as a junior Feb. I made it through angsty freshman weekends and sophomore slumps to reach the good life. I’m nearly legal, I get to go skiing any time I like and do work I genuinely find fascinating. What’s not to like?
Now I enjoy my friends, my sense of home and setting down my roots, so studying abroad was never truly in the cards for me. What I find particularly troubling is not that I am missing out on some great experience, but that people leave for reasons not necessarily abroad but here in Middlebury. The narrative of fantastic new lands to explore rarely seems to match the reality. It seems to be far more common for Middkids to leave because they simply want out of Middlebury for some time and see going abroad as that escape. I understand that, but that exchange seems to carry consequences beyond changing your country of residence for a few months.
As the first wave of my fellow juniors return there is a common theme in their response to “how was your study abroad?” There’s usually a blank stare, maybe a few ums and ahs and then, “It was good. Really good.” When pressed for details they are noncommittal and vague and you quickly look for a way out of the conversation.
I exaggerate, but in these responses there is another untold story: loneliness, hardship and genuine difficulty, and not the kind that builds character. Studying abroad is not the luxurious, adventurous experience we want it to be. It certainly can be, if done for the right reasons. A passion for a certain region and the chance for academic progress at different institutions are fantastic reasons. Needing to get out of Middlebury or simply because it seems to be the thing to do tend towards these stories of melancholic loneliness in a foreign land.
I wonder if part of it is just the need to reset. You get to return and reinvent yourself, give people time to grow up or work on themselves. But why do we choose that way to do it? Why not simply travel? Take time and go places and see things you want to see. Experience regions and cultures without the looming academic rigor. Go and take the experience you truly want, not the one imagined by the grandeur of studying abroad. Are we really convinced after all that at an academic level these schools outdo Middlebury? A handful, sure, but all of them?
I do not mean to simply rant at our study abroad system. In truth I think it provides some incredible experiences for the right people. If students want to have terrific experiences abroad they need a better reason than wanting to leave Middlebury. And we can’t ignore the very real challenges that being in a foreign country presents. This takes tenacious, outgoing people with global mindsets and usually quite a bit of optimism. I lack many of those things. So when asked whether or not I am study abroad I am comfortable with my response. For me, that experience of loneliness and melancholy seems to be more real than an incredible time abroad.
We have a terrific luxury in our ability to travel around the world and we would be misusing our time if we did not do it as often as we could. There is time for travel and experience beyond studying abroad though. For those of us considering it, I hope there is a sincere reflection on the motivation to study abroad so we can hopefully avoid summing up what should be terrific experiences with, “It was really good.”
(01/16/14 12:43am)
The day that I was supposed to head home for winter break and the holidays, I put my foot down on the brake pedal of my car and it didn’t stop. It was a scary moment that could have resulted in serious damage, so I decided to take my car to the mechanic before braving the 300 mile journey to Western New York. Two days later and $1200 poorer, I finally made it home.
I didn’t buy that car. I never had to scrape together enough savings or make a monthly car payment. When he bought it new in 2002, my grandfather had — rightly — called it the last car that he would ever own. It was my first.
I don’t pay the insurance on that car, either. My parents cover the cost of that through their policy (and if they haven’t given that recent thought, this will be a very expensive column for me). I pay for the gas and the maintenance costs, and for small repairs. But when calamity strikes, my parents are still my first call. This does necessarily not make me lazy; when my parents wanted to buy their first house, they too called their parents, who probably never could have called on their own for such a favor. If the goal of each generation is to leave their children better off, then success is not something that happens overnight. It builds over years, through family, across generations. We benefit from the hard work and good fortune of those who came before.
Most people in the United States do not have this option. Their ancestors weren’t on the boat as early, or were denied the same opportunities, or were unlucky. If they run into car trouble around the holidays, they must take it out of the money that they might otherwise spend on Christmas presents for their kids, on family trips, or on visits to the dentist. Or they scrap their car and hope that a bus comes along. Millions of Americans live just one piece of misfortune away from utter financial ruin. Some of them may be lazy or unimaginative. Some of them might not have given their bootstraps a tug. But the vast majority are pulling with all of their might, and their fingers are getting sore, but they stay locked in poverty, struggling to make things work out somehow. Until one day their brake pedal sinks to the floor and it all falls apart.
In the alleged economic recovery of the last few years, the type of middle class jobs that come with the type of salary that allows for saving have largely been replaced by low-wage or minimum wage jobs. With a federal minimum wage stuck at $7.25 an hour, a worker who might need a car to get to their job every day would need to work for more than 160 hours — four full-time weeks — just to pay for those repairs. Ford could help by making more reliable cars, but the federal government can help by raising the minimum wage, which when adjusted for inflation is a third lower than its original level. Raising the minimum wage will not slow job growth, especially since many of the worker who would benefit work in service sector jobs that cannot move overseas. Instead, a raise in the wage would help to shift money from record corporate profits and executive compensation to the people who will immediately return that money to the economy. This is not because they lack in thrift, but because their daily needs exceed their daily income.
I have worked in a number of jobs throughout my time in college — landscaper, janitor, web designer, research assistant. For me this has always been a point of pride. I like to think of myself as financially independent and fiscally responsible. But this ignores some inconvenient realities. It ignores the nature of success and the nature of generational improvement. When you are one unexpected serious illness away from bankruptcy, or homelessness, or not being able to afford breakfast for your children — situations that plague millions of Americans — every day is a battle and every spin of the roulette wheel could be deadly. When you struggle to survive it is much more difficult to further your education or build a career. When you struggle to stay out of the ditch it is much more difficult to climb the slippery hill and look beyond it to the stars than if you started two thirds of the way up the slope, where the pitch starts to level. The American Dream is not a rocket ship, but rather a hard slog and the people just starting the trek do not deserve our scorn. They deserve our help.
(12/12/13 6:43pm)
President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz will step down at the conclusion of the next academic year, effective June 30, 2015. He announced the decision in an email sent to students on Dec. 12 in conjunction with major revisions to the structure and governance of the Board of Trustees.
“It has been an honor of the highest order to serve as the 16th president of this remarkable institution,” he wrote in the email. “With its dedicated and committed staff, superb faculty, and outstanding students, Middlebury has never been stronger or better positioned for the future.”
Liebowitz has been at the helm of the College since 2004. During his presidency, the College acquired the Monterey Institute of International Studies, opened 23 Schools Abroad sites and added 120 endowed student scholarships for financial aid in addition to 15 endowed faculty positions.
“Middlebury is a far more complex place than it may look. From the outside, it might look like a university, or something like a university, but not so. Undergraduate education needs to remain the focus of Middlebury, no matter what other programs it acquires or develops,” he said.
Liebowitz, a New York City native, graduated from Bucknell University in 1979 majoring in economics and geography while competing as a varsity swimmer. After receiving his doctorate from Columbia University, he joined the faculty at the College in 1984 and was promoted to full professor in 1993. In 2009, Time Magazine named him one of the 10 best college presidents in the country. The President acknowledged the difficulty of this decision, but noted that the time was right for both the institution and for him.
“This isn’t something I just thought about last night.. “The average collegiate presidency these days is now around six years. I’ve had thirty-plus years on the faculty here and 11 years as president, and I think it’s good for the institution to change leadership and I think it’s good for me as a person to take on different challenges.”
Board of Trustees Chair Marna Whittington said that the board would provide information about a presidential search committee following the February board meeting.
Liebowitz also took the chance to announce changes to the governance structure of the board. Of note, the number of standing committees will be reduced to six from the current 15, with three overseeing boards: one for the undergraduate College, one for the Monterey Institute, and one for the rest of the “Schools.”
“We are involving students, faculty, and staff on these overseer boards for the first time. That will allow the board to hear more perspectives beyond just the president and senior administration,” he said. “What we need with the many challenges facing higher education are more voices, more opinions to be heard. There will be a student sitting on the board of overseers for the College. They will be full-fledged members of that board. The only thing they will likely not partake in are personnel decisions such as tenure decisions. Student, faculty, and staff participation on the board of overseers represents a fairly big change for the College.”
Liebowitz would not discuss what he plans to do after leaving the College, saying that his focus is on continuing to work with faculty, staff, and students on the institution’s “already ambitious agenda” during the next 18 months.
(12/05/13 2:57am)
During the week of Nov. 18, prior to Thanksgiving break, the Faculty Council, in consultation with members of the administration, sent a survey to all faculty with the goal of learning about pre-vacation attendance policies across the College.
Classes are typically held on the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving, with vacation officially beginning at 4:15 p.m. on Tuesday. A large number of students do not attend classes on Tuesday, and sometimes Monday, due to travel plans. Airline tickets are less expensive and highway traffic is less severe earlier in the week than it is one or two days before Thanksgiving. Thus, students often choose to miss class in favor of more convenient travel options.
Professors choose for themselves whether to cancel class in the days before break. Due to varied policies and frequent early departures by students, the Faculty Council sent a survey asking about “their practices regarding the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the reasons they have adopted such practices and the extent to which they find the current Thanksgiving schedule agreeable,” according to Associate Professor of Philosophy and Faculty Council member Kareem Khalifa.
Dean of the Faculty and Philip Battell Sarah Steward Professor of Biology Andi Lloyd consulted with Faculty Council members on the survey.
“Discussions of our calendar at Thanksgiving have been going on, at least informally, for years,” Lloyd wrote in an email. “Faculty tend to point out that many students leave early, resulting in low attendance. Students will likewise point out that they leave early because flights are cheaper or because faculty cancel classes. [You can see] the feedback loop that could result … We decided to get a quick estimate of what’s happening this year in order to inform [future] decisions.”
Peer schools Amherst, Bates and Hamilton hold a week-long Thanksgiving break, but most — Williams, Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Connecticut College, Trinity, Tufts and Colby, Swarthmore, Wellesley, Smith and Vassar, among others — all begin vacation at the end of the day on Tuesday.
Professors at the College who choose to cancel class before Thanksgiving do so of their own accord and choose to schedule an alternate class time if they deem it necessary.
Dean of International Programs and Edward C. Knox Professor of International Studies Jeff Cason co-teaches a class with Professor of Economics William Pyle called Democracy, Development and Globalization on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Cason and Pyle cancelled the class in anticipation of poor attendance.
“We decided to reschedule that Tuesday afternoon class to Wednesday evening of the final week of class, figuring that we would get a better attendance during the final week,” Cason wrote in an email. “We did not reduce the overall number of class sessions; we simply readjusted our class meeting times to avoid the Thanksgiving week.”
Cason believes that a weeklong Thanksgiving break makes sense and that it would be easy enough to extend the fall semester by a few more class days.
“We have shortened the exam time in recent years, so we could certainly manage a few more class days at the end, to give students a longer Thanksgiving break,” Cason said.
(12/05/13 1:53am)
It’s that time of year again. The ‘jobs/internships’ tab on MOJO is slowly filling. Questions like “is there any way Middlebury would give me funding for this?” and “Do they really mean econ majors only?” are once again popping into our heads as we scroll. The emails from home are growing increasingly passive-aggressive. Internship season is upon us.
If you’re a junior like me, you’re probably feeling a little extra tug of anxiety as you contemplate possible options for next summer, wary of your one final opportunity to pad the résumé in anticipation of entering the real world. If you’re a senior, that anticipation might have boiled over into full-blown panic as you face the imminent reality of life after Middlebury. For all of us, the next several months feel like a personal crossroads, a chance to make or break our prospects for future success.
I think we’re right, but in a totally different way than you might expect.
For me and others that I’ve spoken to, this crossroads seems to have presented a pair of distinct options: pursue a traditional career – in law, journalism, consulting, whatever it is – or do something pro-social and thus risk what seems like a lifetime of underemployment and romanticized futility. Most I have heard from seem set on taking the first route, putting their liberal-arts idealism on the backburner – at least in the short term – in order to gain skills or simply to ‘keep their options open.’ I think that, for many of us, that choice would be a mistake.
I don’t mean to imply that seeking a career in the business world is bad, nor that strategies of effective altruism and top-down social change are necessarily untenable. What these paths often miss, however, is the undeniable power of occupation: the fact that what you do on a daily basis changes you.
As much as you might think something like “I only want to be an investment banker for a few years, then I’ll quit and teach high school math” (as a friend of mine told me a few weeks ago), you might consider the relative dearth of banker-turned-teachers in assessing the possibility of that ever happening. More likely, I would wager, is that there are hordes of bankers out there who once made themselves that same promise. Again, that does not mean that none of us should pursue careers in finance or any similar field; the world needs people to manage money just as much as it does people to teach math, and anyone who truly wants to pursue such a career should go for it. For the rest of us who aren’t totally sure what we want, though, it means that we should be realistic about the significance of the choices that we make over the next few months, and where those choices are likely to lead.
The reason I decided to write this (and the reason that I, a 21-year-old college student, feel licensed to dish out what looks like career advice) is that I don’t think this message is in any way specific to jobs or the professional world. I need only to reflect on how much I have changed in less than three years at Middlebury to see the power of occupation in action: it’s as if I have been constantly and subconsciously internalizing little snippets of the culture here. These changes have built over time and, at least it seems to me, will remain with me long after I leave Middlebury. In short, I have become a different person because of what I do here.
As this pertains to internships and the job search, I think we should all be intentional about what we choose to do, and about the impact of five or ten years spent teaching in an underfunded school district – or doing market research for a private equity firm or any other career option that you might be considering – on the people we are going to become and the decisions that we are going to make down the line. At the end of the day, delaying the opportunity to do what we feel called to do – pushing it back until we have achieved some nebulous standard of wealth, success or power – really means reducing the likelihood of ever doing it.
If you’re like me and internship season makes you feel a bit self-conscious about your lack of marketable skills, realize that the thoughtful idealism that you have cultivated since arriving at Middlebury might be just the angle you have been looking for. You will likely never be more idealistic than you are right now. Embrace it. Take advantage of the perspective that your education has given you and try to position yourself to become the sort of person that you really feel, deep down, that you should be.
(12/05/13 1:51am)
When simple solutions and polished narratives are applied to complex issues, there is often something fishy lurking beneath the surface. Such is the case for Teach for America (TFA), which presents itself as an organization that recruits graduates of elite colleges, like Middlebury, and provides them with two-year teaching positions in “high-need” rural and urban schools.
Several of our friends and peers who we respect and admire and whose intentions we trust have become involved in TFA as corps members, recruiters or in other roles. Our goal is not to demonize them. After all, we personally know many past, current and future TFA members who are committed to teaching and who were even positively impacted by TFA teachers themselves growing up. But, we believe that, as a whole, the TFA organization threatens public education in our country by giving priority to the desires of private interests over the needs of American children whose communities have been impoverished by unjust economic and societal structures.
TFA began 20 years ago, seeking to address teacher shortages by placing inexperienced college grads in schools where their presence would be better than no teachers at all. Since then, the public education landscape has changed drastically: there is now a surplus of qualified, veteran teachers who are getting laid off, often via massive school closings. But instead of adapting to its diminished need, TFA has grown to 32,000 people and boasts assets totaling over $400 million. This huge amount of human and monetary capital is needed, TFA claims, to further its work using “innovative” tactics to address a “crisis” in our public education system caused, they imply, by lazy teachers and corrupted teachers’ unions. This “crisis” has occurred at the same time the Program for International Student Assessment found that, when controlling for poverty, American public school students outperform top scoring nations like Finland and Canada.
Something, indeed, is fishy.
And it is time for us as a campus community — which is one of the top 20 schools TFA recruits from — to closely examine what is going on. Here are some places to start:
First, TFA is “deprofessionalizing” the teaching profession. TFA corps members, often entering classrooms with only a 5-week training course, are rarely equipped to deal with large classes of struggling students. Not only that but 80 percent of them leave the classroom after 4 years. This increase in the teacher turnover rate destabilizes school systems and makes teachers into interchangeable commodities instead of long-term community members and leaders.
And while apparently 60 percent of TFA corps members continue in the education field, that figure represents not only teachers, but also those who enter into school administration, education policy and charter schools, where they often push the same agenda of privatizing public education.
As these TFA corps members flood classrooms, veteran, unionized long-term community teachers in both public and charter schools are being laid off. In Chicago, for example, the city closed 48 schools and laid off 850 teachers and staff while hiring 350 corps members. And those TFA positions are often funded with the heavily lobbied help of federal and state subsidies and grants, in addition to corporations invested in TFA’s privatizing methods such as ExxonMobil Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, Monsanto Fund, and Shell Oil Company who have bolstered TFA’s endowment with six and seven figure donations.
TFA claims that it is challenging the status quo, but we believe that it is part of maintaining an unequal system. Instead of addressing societal and economic structural problems that create poverty and inequality, TFA preaches that the courageous efforts of “leaders” from elite colleges and innovative (read: neoliberal) approaches to education are what is needed to address the “solvable problem” of education inequality.
Catherine Michna counters in Slate that in order for education inequality to have been eliminated at the school where she was a TFA corps member, “We needed smaller class sizes, money for books and materials, money to renovate the crumbling school building. We needed more professional development…Our students’ parents needed jobs that paid a living wage. We needed the police to stop profiling and imprisoning the young men in our community. We needed the War on Drugs to end. We needed all these problems addressed.” Instead, the polished narrative of TFA and the corporate education reform movement conveniently leaves out these issues while calling for an increase in high stakes testing, charter schools, and interchangeable TFA corps members in schools across the country in an effort to privatize them, bust teachers’ unions, “commodify” the teaching profession, and undermine public education.
We challenge Middlebury students to reconsider applying for Teach for America and accepting positions in the program, and instead find other ways to learn about and get involved with education in our country.
Students Resisting Teach for America, including ELMA BURNHAM ’13 (Student Teachers Program) of Fishers Island, NY/Stonington, CT, LUKE GREENWAY ’14.5 of Seattle, WA, HANNA MAHON ’13.5 of Washington DC, ALICE OSHIMA ’15 of Brooklyn, NY, MOLLY ROSE-WILLIAMS ’13.5 of Berkley, CA, LUKE WHELAN ’13.5 of Seattle, WA, ALLY YANSON ’14 of Naples, FL and AFI YELLOW-DUKE ’15 of Brooklyn, NY
(12/05/13 1:41am)
This week our paper looks a little different because we have a few new writers — high school students!
Two weeks ago, middbeat posted a video made by an English class at Middlebury Union High. Although the video was made a few years ago, it is still relevant and highlighted an issue we, as the College community, don’t talk about very often — town-College relations. As an editor for the local section, I wanted to find a positive way to explore town-College relations through The Campus. Rather than an article, we decided on a different method — The Campus has partnered with Middlebury Union High School’s journalism class to bring you this issue and insight into Middlebury Union High.
The partnership, which we hope will be ongoing, is mutually beneficial — the high schoolers will give our readers valuable insights they don’t normally have the privilege to see about the town we live in. We can give them by-lines (good for college applications!) and insight into our lives. I imagine only good can come from something like this, right? In the end, my goal is selfish — I want to learn from these students and see what their lives are like since, in the end, I don’t know very much about the town and people that have generously hosted me for the past four years.
My mom’s side of the family has lived on the same piece of land for nearly a century, so my sense of home and belonging is strong. As a super senior feb, technically I’ve lived in Vermont for four years, but I would never say that — somehow that feels false, especially when I think about my personal feelings regarding my home and my family. Even after being the local section editor on and off for several semesters and making every effort to pop the Middlebury bubble, I got swept up in school, lost touch with Vermont and began obsessively counting the days, hours and minutes before I could go home.
Looking back on my four years here, I’m saddened by this disconnect and by the fact that, by the end of the year I was too frazzled and homesick to stay in Vermont. Hopefully, in my last month and a half here, a little can be salvaged and my sense of place heightened. This is one attempt to do so.
Even though it can be difficult, it is important to make an effort to reach out. The town of Middlebury hosts each college student for four years and then most of us leave without a trace or an idea of this place. Ideally, I would love for this partnership between The Campus and Middlebury Union High School to continue while I’m gone, but it depends on the interest and free time of the high school students — they’re awesome but it’s hard to fit it all in!
Regardless, I hope the Middlebury Union High School students know that they always have a voice in our paper and advocates in our office. It is a small effort to make, but important to me and The Campus.
