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(12/04/13 11:16pm)
After viewing the documentary made in a 2011-2012 Middlebury Union High School (MUHS) English Class on middbeat, Local Editor Molly Talbert and Editor-in-Chief Kyle Finck reached out to MUHS Journalism teacher Matthew Cox. In a new partnership, The Campus will work with MUHS journalism students to produce local content.
Steve Small: Theater Instructor by Isabel Velez '15
Steve Small is a man of many talents. He works at the Middlebury Hannaford Career Center as the theater instructor. The Hannaford Career Center is attached to Middlebury Union High School. Steve has been working at the Career Center since 1994 and has been introducing students to the world of theater since then. When asked how he began his career in Middlebury he mentioned that a local playwright saw him act and asked him if he would sit in on a meeting about the new theater arts program at the Career Center. At the meeting Steve gave his opinion about what he thought the program could be, and the next day he was offered the job. The program in the Career Center that Steve teaches is called Addison Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) This program allows students the chance to run and create a theater company. This also allows students to immerse themselves in the world of acting. Every day students from local high schools have the opportunity of taking this course for either a semester or an entire year. People who go through A.R.T. learn not only acting skills but skills such as screen writing, lighting, sound, set designing, costuming, and theater management to name a few. As busy as Steve is teaching high school students everything he knows about theater, he also manages to keep his acting skills sharp by being involved in local plays at the Town Hall Theater. He recently played the role of Lennie in a production of “Of Mice and Men” and was just in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” as well.
Steve attended the University of North Carolina School of the Artsn where he majored in drama. During the course of his teaching at the Hannaford Career Center he has taught some incredible students who later went on to become stars. One of the students that he taught was Jake Lacy, one of the actors in the show “The Office”. Others include Quincy Dunn-Baker, Tristan Cunningham and Toby Schine along with many others. When asked about his most rewarding moment teaching theater he responded, “I think that it comes when the students finds that connection to the craft ... That is the moment I like best.”
Marshall Eddy: Longtime MUHS Teacher by Zoe Parsons '14
Marshall Eddy has been working at the Middlebury Union High School since 1970, and is one of the school’s longest tenured teachers. Before he was an art teacher at Middlebury Union High School, he got his Juris Doctor degree from University of Michigan Law School in 1968 and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Middlebury College in 1965. He has worked as an operating room orderly, a Russian language linguist in Army intelligence, a lawyer, and even a history teacher at MUHS before becoming an art teacher at the high school.
Moving from law to art is a big change, but Eddy became interested in art while he was practicing law in Middlebury. During one court case, he was snowed-in while staying in a hotel, and he started making art to pass the time. It started out as a hobby, but it grew to something larger, and he liked it more than he liked practicing law and teaching history. So when a position opened at the high school where he was working as an history teacher, he applied for the job and has been teaching art ever since.
Eddy acted in this year’s production of “Shrek: The Musical” at the Town Hall Theater with his family. He has acted in many productions before, and even preformed a one man opera with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, playing a “conductor” who sang while conducting. He also commutes to work every day on foot, year-round. “I’ve walked 14,000 miles to and from school in the last 43 years, but only moved two feet,” he said in a previous interview with The Tigers’ Print, the MUHS newspaper. He also led an extracurricular mime group at MUHS for 12 years.
As a teacher, Eddy has taught six current teachers, three staff members, and the chairman of the Union District #3 board. Eddy plans on retiring at the end of the next school year. Even though he has been teaching for over 40 years, he is always learning new techniques and taking art classes.
Jeff Clark: Bike Enthusiast by Jessica Prisson '14
Jeff Clark, a world history and photography teacher who has taught at Middlebury Union High School for 15 years, leaves at at 5:50 every morning and bikes 12.5 miles to and from the school year-round, regardless of the weather.
Clark has an extensive educational background and holds a degree in Political Science and Master’s degree in Computer Application Programming. He also did Ph.D. work in intellectual history and is ABD (all but dissertation). His dissertation traces the intellectual origins of western attitudes towards nature from the biblical period to the present through the lens of deep ecology and eco-feminism.
A partial list of colleges he attended includes St. Michael’s, Nova University, Florida State University, and Arizona State University.
Clark got his first bike, a Schwinn Varsity, as a high school graduation present and soon embarked on a 130-mile trip from Saxton’s River in Rockingham to Glover, VT. He currently owns six bikes.
In 1983, he biked about 600 miles to Acadia, Maine and back.
In 1989, the biking enthusiast sold his car and began commuting by bike as he worked on a Ph.D. for 3 years at Florida State University.
Just last summer, he spent two weeks touring between 16 Vermont Breweries with science teacher Noah Hurlburt.
These days, biking up and down the colossal hill to Ripton proves more difficult during winter because of the late sunrise, early sunset, and snowy or icy road conditions. Clark has outfitted his Salsa Fargo and Salsa Vargo bikes with studded snow tires and bright lights comparable to a car’s headlights.
He averages about 25 miles per day for a school year total around 4,400 miles. He recently passed the 10,000-mile mark since he began biking to work 2 years ago. That’s the equivalent of riding from Maine to California nearly 3 times!
When asked why he does it, Clark will answer that he bikes partly for mental health, but mostly for “a more direct, intentional relationship with the outside world.” Aside from the meditation aspect, Clark bikes solely for the experience.
Mr. Clark’s future summer plans include the Great Divide Ride, a 2,745-mile trip from the Canadian Rockies to the Mexican Plateau.
Jonah Lefkoe: MUHS Senior Class President by Samuel Messenger '14
Meet Jonah Lefkoe, Middlebury Union High School’s senior class president. Well, he’s not only the senior class president. He’s also president of the Middlebury National Honor Society, Brain Science club member, tenor sax player, and lineman on the undefeated football team that just won the state championship. As president of the National Honor Society, he helped organized many community service events and fundraisers, like the recent blood drive. Athletically, besides dominating people in the trenches on the football field, he also has thrown javelin, shot put and discus on the track and field team since middle school.
Also involved in the Brain Science club for all four years of high school, he hopes to major in neuroscience in college. He’s interested in the medicinal field, but is also considering careers in research or teaching after college. Jonah worked as an intern in the neuroscience lab at Middlebury College. Working with Assistant Professor of Psychology Mark Stefani, Jonah assisted in his research. He liked working there a lot, saying it “made him want to pursue neuroscience even more.” Jonah also is taking a computer science class at the college, which he also enjoys, taught by Professor Matt Dickerson.
In addition to playing tenor sax in band since freshman year, he also plays the ukulele in his free time. He has diverse musical tastes, ranging from Zac Brown Band to Al Green to Brother Ali. Jonah likes to read biographies and books about the brain. He lives in Middlebury with his parents Todd and Karen, his little sister Sophie, and his dog Pipin, a Havanese. He lives by Alexis Carrel’s quote, “Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.”
Yeweon Kim: Foreign Exchange Student by Krisandra Provencher '15
Middlebury Union High School has one foreign exchange student this semester; 18-year-old Yeweon Kim of Seoul, South Korea. Yeweon, meaning “Jesus Wants Me” in Korean, is a cat owner who loves piano, traveling and anything to do with cheese! Yeweon came to the United States through the Program of Academic Exchange, or PAX, a non-profit educational group that describes its mission as an effort “to increase mutual respect among the people of the world, to foster an appreciation of our differences and similarities, and to enhance our ability to communicate with one another.” Through PAX, Yeweon has been placed with the Foshays, a local Bridport family who have previously hosted three exchange students.
“When Grace, our oldest daughter, left for the Air Force, we had an extra bedroom and a hole that needed to be filled,” Jenny Foshay, Yeweon’s host mother, said. “Olivia, our youngest is 17 and homeschooled, so we thought it would be nice for her to have a sister around.”
Prior to coming to America, Yeweon had traveled to the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Japan, as well as Cambodia and the Philippines for missionary work. She dreams of going to Egypt one day. Even though she may be well traveled, Yeweon’s biggest adjustment while staying here in America centers around school. In Korea Yeweon experienced a very strict and methodical setting, yet here in America she is experiencing much more relaxed and amicable environment. One of the biggest differences involves student and teacher interaction. “Most students don’t ask the teachers questions or talk to them during class, mostly because students are shy. We just listen to the teachers speak during class.” said Yeweon. Schooling in Korea doesn’t end when school finishes at 4 p.m. though. “We normally have extra study so we tend to finish at 10 p.m. I know it’s crazy!” Many of the subjects taught here are the same as in Korea, she said, the learning environments just happen to be different. Yeweon said that while in America, “I hope to use this time in Vermont to improve my English, become more confident, and learn about American culture.”
(12/04/13 9:00pm)
The Middlebury men’s basketball team hoped to have plenty to be thankful for over the break with two games in the Hoopsville National Invitational Classic on Friday, Nov. 22 and Sunday, Nov. 24. Unfortunately the Panthers fell short in both contests, first by being upset by the host Stevenson Mustangs on Friday, and then by dropping an overtime thriller against 10th-ranked St. Mary’s (Md.). The Stevenson loss was the program’s first pre-New Year’s defeat since 2008.
The Panthers rebounded on Sunday, Dec. 1, with a victory on the road against Rensselaer, 92-79, and added to their win total with a 90-80 defeat of Castleton St. at home on Tuesday, Dec. 3.
Stevenson, who entered the game 1-0, disrupted the Panthers previously fluid offense and won the battle on the boards despite a disadvantage in height — grabbing 47 rebounds to Middlebury’s 42 and pulling down 19 on the offensive end. The Mustangs led 10-5 at the first stoppage in play and never looked back, dropping Middlebury to 2-1 with a 80-69 final score.
Captain Joey Kizel ’14 continued his slow start to the season. On the positive end, Kizel shot well from the line (7-8), a department in which the Panthers as a whole struggled (59.1 percent), and picked the Mustangs for six steals. Yet all that was not enough to make up for his 2-10 shooting from the floor and six turnovers.
The struggles continued for Vermont-native Matt St. Amour ’17 as well. In the starting lineup for the third consecutive game, St. Amour managed just two points on 0-6 shooting from the field.
Jake Brown ’17, in just his second game after missing the season’s first two contests due to injury, played a solid 25 minutes off the bench and handled the ball with poise. The newcomer gathered 14 points on 6-9 shooting to go along with five assists.
“I have a lot of confidence in Jake’s ability to lead our offense,” head coach Jeff Brown said. “[He] has made a quick adjustment to the college game.”
Hunter Merryman ’15 provided the team with an offensive spark. Since coming off the bench in the season opener, Merryman has started every game and has been a consistent scorer. On Friday, Merryman filled it up for 21 points on 8-17 shooting and 5-11 beyond the arc.
The Mustangs outplayed Middlebury physically and attacked the Panthers’ interior, forcing Kizel and others into foul trouble. Kizel fouled out late in the game, while some early whistles relegated Matt Daley ’16 to just 18 minutes in the contest.
Middlebury had a day to recover before squaring off with number 10 St. Mary’s.
Stepping into the starting lineup for St. Amour, Nate Bulluck ’14 had a great start to the game, scoring the Panthers first nine points and giving Middlebury a 9-4 lead. The Panthers led 34-31 at halftime, but with 10 minutes remaining St. Mary’s knotted the score at 52 all.
Kizel found his form in the game’s second half, particularly down the stretch, scoring 20 second half points on 6-10 shooting. With 1:30 left in the second, Kizel completed a three-point play to bring Middlebury within two. A minute later, Kizel went to the line down three and hit both free throws under pressure to make it a one-point game. After the subsequent foul, St. Mary’s hit both of its free throws, leaving the Panthers with 12.9 seconds to make up a three-point deficit. In classic fashion, Kizel knocked down a buzzer beater to send the game into overtime.
Responding well to his change of role, St. Amour played 29 strong minutes, tallying eight points, including a critical three points in overtime to give the Panthers a one point lead, followed on the next possession by two successful free throws.
Merryman played 39 minutes on the night, but did not have his typical solid shooting game. As the clock ticked down in the final second, Merryman got two looks from beyond the arc with a chance to tie the game once again and go to a second overtime period, but failed to tickle the twine, with the buzzer giving Middlebury the 81-78 loss.
For the second game in a row, Jake Nidenberg ’16 contributed significant minutes off the bench, scoring 12 points on 6-7 shooting in 23 minutes. Nidenberg seemed to be taking advantage of the void left by Dylan Sinnickson’s ’15 voluntary leave of absence and the injury of James Jensen ’14, who dressed for the first time on Sunday, but did not play.
“Jake has developed into a strong offensive post player,” the elder Brown said. “His ability to get us high percentage shots inside is his greatest asset.”
From the sideline, Brown looked for more positives despite the disappointing outcomes.
“I don’t view the two losses in Baltimore as a negative,” he said. “We had some bright spots in both games. Playing a strong non-league schedule on the road can be helpful going into the NESCAC schedule in January.”
The Panthers finally got back to their winning ways against the less-heralded RPI Engineers (0-4) on Sunday, Dec. 1, with a 92-79 win — improving to 3-2 on the year.
The Panthers led throughout most of the affair, though the outcome was in doubt until late in the second frame. With 4:28 left in the game, Middlebury led by just six, but their good day from the charity stripe (20-23) allowed them to seal the deal.
Brown, a promising first-year point guard, earned his first start of the season and distributed all game long, attempting just one shot but racking up six assists in 25 minutes. The first-year point guard did not know he would be counted on so heavily early on.
“Honestly, coming in I had no idea what to expect,” he said. “I think I can alleviate some of the pressure [Joey] faces every night. I knew I had an amazing opportunity playing with Joey so every chance I get I try and learn from his play.”
Brown believes he can be successful without scoring, as he was against RPI.
“I see myself as a pass first point guard that can score,” Brown said. “Setting up shots for Joey is a big part of our offense, so any time I can get him the ball I think it makes his job easier.”
Merryman returned to his scoring ways, hitting three shots from deep en route to a 23-point performance. Jensen saw his first action of the year, providing 17 high-energy minutes, 10 points, and three boards while also drawing a charge, earning the praise of coach Brown.
“Jensen adds a lot to our playing group,” coach Brown said. “After Joey he is our most experienced player. He is a tough matchup because of his mid-range game and his ability to drive to the basket.”
Nidenberg, again, shot well (6-12) in 16 minutes off the bench. Kizel, too, put together a strong stat line, with 14 points, nine rebounds, seven assists and three steals.
On Tuesday, Dec. 3 the Panthers defeated in-state opponent Castleton St. (1-3). The Spartans one victory on the season was impressive, coming over WPI who was ranked ninth at the time.
Castleton came into the game shooting 34 percent from behind the arc, but rode strong three-point shooting in this match-up to an early lead, and finished shooting 50 percent from deep.
Castleton St. took a one point lead into halftime, shooting 57.1 percent from the field in the first period and knocking down seven threes, but the Panthers’ significant rebounding advantage (22-12 in the first half) and the performance of Jensen kept it close. Jensen finished the game with a career-best 22 points, shooting 12-15 from the line, and locked down Castleton’s top offensive threat, forward Cornelius Green, who fouled out with zero points.
Jensen's head coach was happy to have Jensen back.
“On offense, he is a tough matchup because of his mid range game and his ability to drive to the basket,” Brown said.
In the game’s final three minutes Castleton could only muster two free throws, allowing Middlebury to pull away with the 90-80 victory.
Kizel had a typical game, scoring 19. Jack Roberts ‘14 tossed away an astonishing nine shots to go with 12 points and seven rebounds.
Despite the team’s losses in Maryland, there is optimism amongst the team and coaching staff.
“For a lot of guys on this year’s team,” Jensen said, “not only were out two weekend tournament games their first big games, but it was also the first time they saw significant minutes. Obviously I wanted to win the Invitational, but I was happy with how some of our younger players stepped up against good competition.”
The Panthers will be 5-2 when they travel to Skidmore on Saturday, Dec. 7 for their final game of 2013.
(12/04/13 8:45pm)
As I counted the bruises up my shins, I also kept counting down the days until the bubble would be torn down. I thought that I would never miss that two-and-a-half lane track — one of the lanes just disappearing into nothingness, the sharp corners, and concrete straightaways disguised with a thin layer of rubber. We dreamt of the new field house we had been shown on building plans and posters since the day we had our first recruitment meeting. We hardly thought about what we were going to do in the interim without a track, nervously giggling when we mentioned it off the cusp and our coach even shrugging with a grin when we asked about our plans for next year. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” With that bridge now ahead of us — and the baseball, softball, ultimate frisbee, and lacrosse teams all waiting to cross it with us — life outside the bubble all of the sudden feels very real.
I love running for its simplicity. That it’s just you out there on the trail or in your starting blocks, and that all you need is a pair of shoes. Abebe Bikila even won the 1960 Olympic Marathon in Rome barefoot. You are the creator of your own destiny. No one else.
However, it’s easy to say that simplicity has not been the theme of this year’s season. We leave now our fate in the hands of the weather gods, constantly checking the weather app on our phones for whether the temperature will peak at 2 p.m. or 3 p.m., when the sun will set, switching our off-day from Sunday to Wednesday in pursuit of an extra ray of sunshine and one more day on the outdoor track. 43 degrees used to be our outdoor cut-off point; we’re now pushing low 20s — snowflakes mixing with our cold sweat.
Indoors, Nelson Arena resembles something of a refugee center. Sprinters run on rolled out pieces of rubber or hug the walls of the arena trying to replicate 200m intervals. Hurdlers walk over hurdles set up in the middle of tennis courts. Throwers hurl javelins that occasionally get stuck in basketball hoops and jumpers launch themselves onto mats squished in the back. Other teams watch on patiently, waiting often until 7 p.m. or later for their turn.
Yet no one complains.
We are still the creators of our own destiny and nobody can change that. I’ve often been called crazy for choosing track and field as the sport I wanted to pursue in college. And to be honest, I probably am crazy; most of this team crazy is for how much they love running. That love is what is making life outside the bubble tolerable. The desire to get better, faster, and stronger never stops. I’m still hungrier than ever, and lamenting the fact we have no real place to practice doesn’t win races.
The future of Middlebury Track and Field is exciting; in the next year, and for the next 30 years and beyond, this team will be practicing in a facility that is capable of hosting NCAA competitions. Seniors, in their last year of racing and unable to reap the rewards of the new field house, still excitedly talk about the benefits of the construction. While racing is an individual event, this team is truly a family. While we run for ourselves, we ultimately each run for each other. We run bubble-less for this year for what it gives the next generations of Middlebury athletes, with the schedule changes, crowded spaces and sore shins are more than worth it.
Sport is sometimes sacrifice, but it makes the victory so much sweeter.
(11/20/13 11:27pm)
In response to criticism that he could only write for men, playwright David Mamet penned the farcical “Boston Marriage” in 1999, following two Victorian era women as they explore their relationships with each other and the people who surround them. The play enjoyed a Nov. 14-16 run in the Hepburn Zoo, delighting audiences with its careful presentation and razor sharp wit.
Members of the audience may have been expecting a scene out of a Jane Austen novel when they walked into the Zoo, greeted by Victorian furniture and harpsichord music playing overhead. Many were happily surprised by the vibrancy with which they were greeted over the next 90 minutes. The senior acting work of Christina Fox ’13.5 and Meghan Leathers ’13.5, turned the play “Boston Marriage” into a comic piece, examining relationships between gender and class through a fresh, playful lens, engaging the audience from the first quip to the final bow.
After much deliberation, Fox and Leathers departed from typical theater department productions and the roles they have filled in their time at the College to chose a play recommended to them by Assistant Professor of Theatre Alex Draper.
“It’s hard to find a comedy featuring two female protagonists that aren’t full of angst or misery,” Leathers noted. “The leads in this play are fantastic – they’re exciting and great and strong and absurd, and it’s been really challenging and fun to play with.”
“Boston Marriage” is built around the protagonists’ dynamic dialogue. Anna, played by Leathers, is the narcissistic, impossibly witty mistress of a wealthy man and a friend of Claire’s, acted by Fox, a woman visiting to tell the news of the new love of her life – a young woman. The emotional and physical tension between the leads is instantly recognizable, Anna sporting her lovers’ family heirloom emerald necklace, touching its garish size to reinforce its representation of all she has acquired. The necklace proves to be the key to the development of the plot, Claire’s lover stealing away to Anna’s residence only to find her father’s necklace sitting on a strange woman’s neck. Both women are potentially ruined financially and socially, and they turn to each other for comfort and complaining.
Anna and Claire are in a Boston marriage, a term used to refer to two single women living together in Victorian times with possible sexual implications. They curse each other’s faults, often likening one another to some sort of farm animal, only to be driven together by moments of affection and desire.
The two women are delightful to watch, with members of the audience jealously wishing that they too could join the action. The deliciously wicked gleam in Fox’s eye as she counters Leathers’ practically perfect comedic timing, along with Leathers’ revelling in the depth of her character, delivering line after line of complex, nuanced dialogue, is truly a treat for the audience.
Mamet does not give Claire as many bracingly funny lines, and in the wrong hands she could appear to be a weaker, more subservient version of Anna, but Fox breathed vibrant life into Claire with a graceful, realistic subtlety that revealed her character’s power over the duration of the show.
The only other character who appears in the play is Anna’s maid, Catherine, who finds herself in her own difficult situation as she must grapple with the possibility of pregnancy and the power that men hold over women in Victorian society. Charlotte Michaelcheck ’15 quickly became an audience favorite, charming with her character’s accent and tendencies for emotional outbursts (as well as, I suspect, Michaelcheck’s extremely expressive eyebrows and facial expressions).
Though the Irish – no, Scottish – maid has intimate access to Anna and Claire’s lives, in many respects she holds, like the audience, the role of an objective viewer, separated by class, nationality, and her love for men. Seemingly oblivious and occasionally rendered incompetent by nervousness, Catherine surprises the audience and the women she serves with an unassuming, profound wisdom that even the clever and confident Anna and Claire do not possess. These bits of wisdom interrupt a role that, if possible, provided even more comic relief to the play than the two characters already displayed.
Indeed, some in the audience were simply giddy in anticipation of the next laugh, gasping between breaths and nervously waiting for one of the three characters to continue the comedic rhythm.
Costume designer Elisabeth Harmor ’16 provided Leathers and Fox with beautiful wardrobes, supplying them each with two intricate Victorian period outfits, as well as accessories for a game of psychic dress up that did not disappoint.
Overall, the show had a vitality of spirit that radiated into the audience.
Director Jake Schwartzwald ’14 has been following Fox’s and Leather’s thesis play production process since last year, first agreeing to direct another play that the pair had selected before transitioning to “Boston Marriage” this semester.
“We sought Jake out because we knew we wanted to do a comedy and Jake is a comedian and we knew he could work with us and guide us in that comic spirit,” Leathers said.
Indeed, Leathers, Fox and Schwartzwald enjoyed an ease in each other’s company over casual lunch that transferred into a fluidity of performance onstage. It takes a lot of effort to appear at ease, and Leathers, Michaelcheck and Fox performed gracefully and naturally under Schwartwald’s direction.
The audience responded so well to “Boston Marriage” because it made them laugh, and after they finished laughing, they realized that Anna, Claire and Catherine were more relatable than first appearances may have allowed.
“Though this play is so different from Mamet’s other works, it’s very much the same in dealing with wealth, appearances, personal gain and the emptiness that can create,” Fox said. “There is timelessness to romantic relationships and the competitiveness within them.”
“Anna and Claire are competing for and with each other,” Schwartzwald succinctly noted.
“Boston Marriage” speaks to lives left behind and sacrifices made to search for better days, whether one is leaving a homeland to serve wealthy women or rejecting passion for a female friend to find financial security in a man. The audience left satisfied, connecting with each of the characters through their humor and pain, relating to women seemingly worlds away.
Some of the plays put on by the theatre department are thought-provoking, disturbing, subversive and puzzling, and those plays need to be shown to an audience of college students that may not usually be exposed to that certain brand of theatre. It is important to also remember that sometimes people go to plays to at once forget their troubles and be reminded that they are not alone, and that this is equally important, as “Boston Marriage” showed. As Anna sagely notes, “We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”
(11/20/13 10:39pm)
Members of the Student Government Association’s (SGA) Educational Affairs Committee will meet with the faculty Educational Affairs Committee (EAC) today, Nov. 21, to discuss issues surrounding credit-bearing internships. The talks occur amidst extensive conversation within the committee and the administration regarding awarding credit for summer internships.
Last spring, members of the EAC began discussing the possibility of credit bearing summer internships. Through these discussions, members of the EAC wrote a working document that was sent out to members of the faculty last summer. With faculty and student feedback, the EAC hopes to expand the working document to an official piece of legislation that would put forward the policy necessary for students to receive credit. When such a document is complete, a majority of the faculty must vote in favor of the policy for it to be effected. Right now though, the EAC is still in what Dean of Faculty and chair of the EAC, Andi Lloyd describes as an “information gathering stage.”
For the first two months of school, the EAC focused on identifying College-wide learning goals, a topic not unrelated to the committee’s new top priority – internship credit.
“I think the question of internships is not unrelated to those questions about the point of a liberal arts education because part of the question we are trying to answer here is what is the relationship between an internship and the curriculum? Are they separate?,” Lloyd asked. “Can they be connected? Should they be connected? What are the advantages of giving credit to these internships? What are the advantages of connecting internships to the curriculum? What are the disadvantages?”
Dean of the College Shirley Collado believes that these internships are advantageous and should be tied to the College.
“I’m an advocate for credit for internships because I see the value in what’s happening within the Center for Careers and Internships (CCI) – I see the value in student led projects and the work that students accomplish during the summer,” said Collado. “If they were able to pursue a more structured way of tying it to their experiences at Middlebury and having their work be acknowledged in a particular way, credit for internships makes sense.”
Several reasons prompted the EAC to begin seriously considering the issue last spring including the fact that some internships are open only to those students who will receive credit from their institution.
Another reason comes with a discrepancy that has plagued many students, like SGA President Rachel Liddell, in the fact that students may be awarded credit for internships taken over J-term as well as some internships completed abroad. Internship credit awarded over J-term may be used only as a credit for that term and may not be counted towards fall or spring credits, while internship credit assigned abroad is taken only in lieu of a class taken while abroad. However, the question still looms in the minds of many – what is different about an internship during the summer than an internship during the winter?
“If you do an internship over J-term you can receive a credit and if you do it during the summer, you don’t” said Liddell. “That kind of low-hanging fruit is an inconsistency, and there are many other examples like that.”
In attempts to describe why this inconsistency exists, Lloyd cited the fact that J-term was originally a time for more experimental learning.
“Why in J-term and not the summer is one essential question. Historically Winter term was conceived of as a more experimental place in our curriculum — a time when things happen that didn’t happen during the fall and spring,” said Lloyd. “Although maybe an unsatisfying answer, that history explains why students can take internships for credit during J-term but not during the fall or spring semesters.”
However, she echoed Liddell’s feelings towards the seeming inconsistencies with this type of policy and explained that this is something the EAC will take into consideration when drafting the legislation.
“The why winter not summer question has a less clear answer and that’s one of the things the EAC is talking about – is there any rationale for saying yes to something in winter and no to the same thing in the summer?” Lloyd said.
These are just a few of the wide sweeping questions that the EAC has been asking while considering the possibility of awarding credit. Professors from a wide range of disciplines have argued on both sides of the issue, discussing various complicated issues such as faculty compensation for summer work. The EAC seeks to foster these debates while finding a middle ground with a policy that would meet both student and faculty needs.
“We want to be confident though that we aren’t setting up for a conflict in the legislation where students have a reasonable expectation to be able to do a new program and get credit for internships, but faculty say, ‘well why is this getting added to my responsibilities when my summer is already planned to be working on research or traveling or something else,’” said Associate Professor of Physics and EAC Member Noah Graham.
Vice President for Academic Affairs Tim Spears also saw the importance in a discussion that resolved many of the complications of the issue, pointing towards the major advantages students would gain from legislation on this topic.
“We want to have a good conversation about this proposal and we want the conversation to reflect all the complications that come with the topic, but I hope we can have the conversation in a positive spirit, keeping our eye on the advantages that can be gained from expanding educational opportunities for students,” Spears said.
One of these issues has to do with assessing the quality of an internship and the academic relevance that such an internship might hold.
“Internships vary widely in the type and depth of learning opportunities they provide. I’m open to the idea that some might be worthy of credit, but I think the challenges are how to identify the worthy subset reliably, and how to demonstrate their substance, rigor, and congruence with our goals. If we can find a way to do those things, we can provide students with exciting, novel opportunities to apply their liberal arts education outside the classroom, while still preserving the quality and integrity of a Middlebury education,” wrote Associate Professor of Psychology and fellow EAC Member Suzanne Gurland in an email.
To award credit for internships many professors feel the need for students to make a connection to the academic realm. This may come in the form of a paper, journal, or even a class. Graham acknowledged that pigeonholing internships into certain academic fields might be problematic.
“We wouldn’t want to get too narrowly constrained to say that a certain course corresponds with a certain internship because tomorrow a new startup may start in some new area,” Graham said. “I think we need to be wary about micromanaging too much, so we want to create an environment where that can kind of happen but where the unexpected can come in. An opportunity may arise and we hope to give a student that nimbleness to grab that opportunity.”
However, Spears stressed the fact that a strong connection between academics and the work experience must be made in order for the internship to be counted as a credit, which could effectively replace a class.
“I don’t think we are going to move into a situation where students are going to get credit simply for completing an internship. There will have to be something associated with the internship that we can identify as being academic in nature for a student to get credit,” Spears said.
Beyond issues of connecting internships to the academic world, there looms the question of finding a way to make internships equal to all students, an issue echoed by many faculty, staff and students.
For Russell J. Leng ‘60 Professor of International Politics and Economics Allison Stanger, this matter holds the utmost importance when deciding if the College should give credit for internships. As the number of unpaid internships throughout the U.S. climbs, the question of forced labor and widening inequality has come to light. Stanger and many others feel the College must address inequality when looking at internships.
“There is a major inequity in the current system that we need to address at Middlebury College,” she said. “I think that it is problematic to expand the possibilities to get credit for internships until that inequity has been addressed, and everybody who wants an internship can actually afford to have that experience.”
If the EAC were to grant credit to internships, many consider their support contingent on whether all students at the College will have equal opportunities to access these internships.
“It puts some students at a profound disadvantage compared to their wealthier peers. I wouldn’t want to support any policy that would exacerbate that divide, even though knowing that for some students in a more privileged position, it would be really helpful to get credit for the internships that they are able to do,” Stanger said. “There is a broader issue at stake.”
Liddell spoke similarly about the grave need for more funding within the CCI in order to make this a fair process.
“I’m really committed to ensuring that internships for credit don’t become one more way that a lack of financial means disadvantages students,” said Liddell.
Lloyd also sees the issue of equity as an important topic to discuss when writing legislation.
“I think that equity and access issues are huge, and EAC has certainly discussed them. As this discussion moves forward, I hope that we can provide some clarity to the broader faculty on what those equity and access issues are. The reality that there are internships that our students can’t participate in without earning credit is an important element of this discussion that we need to grapple with.”
With all these considerations in mind, the EAC hopes to get legislation out to members of the faculty within the next few months. Then, depending on the amount of feedback from faculty, it will hold open meetings in which faculty members could introduce amendments and air issues they may have with the policy. With approval of a majority of the faculty, the legislation will go into effect, although the logistics of such a complicated issue may take longer to actually be enacted.
While Liddell feels that this may be her most “optimistic campaign promise,” she feels that the implementation period may go far beyond this academic year.
“If the policy is implemented, I would say it will probably be three to four years before it’s really accessible to students,” she said. “We all have this four-year concept within our brains, and it will be hard for me to just walk away and never reap the benefits of this change, but I think it’s still powerful to leave a legacy.”
(11/14/13 4:13am)
As we once again gripe and groan about the inadequacy of BannerWeb, it’s easy to lose sight of other registration frustrations many students face as we choose how to spend the chilly month of January.
Instead of enrolling beachside at some Southern Californian college or braving the hustle and bustle of a city school, students of the College choose to spend the greatest four years of their lives in rural Vermont. This four-week haven from the crush of a real semester’s workload is allegedly an opportunity for students to capitalize on their decision to come all the way out to beautiful nowhere. But with a number of students left out in the cold to fulfill important requirements due to dubious course credit policies and a shortage of crucial classes, is this magical month all that the Admissions department dresses it up to be?
J-term’s selling points are its dialed-back rigor and the possibilities its surplus of free time affords: immersion within a singular subject of choice, the pursuit of a passion outside the myopia of one’s major or the exploration of the myriad extracurricular opportunities the College and its activity-laden environs provide. For some, this means taking a break from their strict regimen of lab science courses and indulging their interest in French poetry with a visiting poet, or putting down the paintbrush and trying their hand at business strategy in MiddCORE. For others, it means taking a class on dinosaurs and hitting the slopes every day after lunch. Despite the disparity in rigor, all are valid uses of the term — they demonstrate a willingness to take a break from their primary goal and to explore uncharted territories, academic or otherwise.
In a perfect world, this is the reality of J-term for all. However, many students find themselves incapable of realizing the vision of a semi-academic winter wonderland for one reason or another. Students who are in their first year of language study are required to take a class in that language, which meets five times a week with additional language table and recitation obligations. Others, like double majors or students who have changed their major later than most, discover themselves to be in an even more precarious situation wherein they need to take more credits to complete their major than they have semesters left. Especially in highly class-time intensive concentrations — like the Sciences, where it is simply impossible to take on a full schedule of classes in the field — J-term could be the time in which students can find a class to put themselves back on track. But, most of the time, it is not.
In order to incentivize the idealistic, exploratory usage of J-term propagated by tour guides and PR releases, some majors limit the number of winter term credits they allow to be counted towards one’s degree, while others do not accept any at all. Furthermore, even if one’s major might accept a J-term credit, this does not necessarily guarantee that a class in the subject will even be offered during the term. As a result, students who are in dire need of a major credit are forced to take a more whimsical class than they would have desired — because although learning about craft in the digital age with a visiting professor is insightful and beneficial for those who are interested in the subject matter, it does not serve much of a purpose for a Psych major who needs one more credit but does not have any classes offered in his/her area of study.
Another problem that perhaps exasperates the lack of substantial offerings during the winter term is that the College stands at an impasse regarding course credit. Every J-term, a throng of visiting professors are hired to teach classes within their fields of interest not only to help students expand their horizons, but also to give resident professors time off. If they were to teach a winter term class in addition to two semesters, professors would barely have any time to spend time with their families or conduct their own research between grading periods. Since the College wants its employees to both stay here instead of leaving for another school that will afford them the time off and to publish prominent research to increase its reputation as an institution, most professors are granted that time off. But, at the same time, the departments do not want to award credit for classes taught by professionals who may have a wealth of experience with the subject matter but a dearth of experience in the classroom. Therefore, while the “real” professors are away, students often have to take classes that do not count for anything as they wait for the barons of course credit to return.
While many students do enjoy the multitude of exotic classes and experiential learning opportunities, there still remains a crowd in need of one more credit that they cannot find during J-term. Therefore, in order to promote and encourage the timely success of every enrolled student, it is of vital importance that the College considers offering more courses in all majors that yield credit towards the major. If this makes for fewer classes like “The Elements of Murder,” unless the Chemistry or English department will accept the credit, so be it. The College has a hierarchy of fiduciary responsibilities to its students: ensuring them the opportunity to earn a degree in a four-year time frame should stand much higher than hiring a non-professors to teach supplementary classes.
(11/14/13 1:30am)
An entirely sophomore-driven and remarkably thought-out production, “Cock” was the collaborative brainchild of director Jordan DuBeau ’16 and producer Alexander Burnett ’16. Written by British playwright Mike Bartlett and debuted in 2009, the Hepburn Zoo production starred Burnett, Arnav Adhikari ’16, Juliette Gobin ’16 and Dylan Gilbert ’16 and ran from Thursday, Nov. 7 through Saturday, Nov. 9.
While on a break from his negative and domineering boyfriend (Burnett), John (Adhikari) finds refuge in a tender divorcée (Gobin) who shows him the light of a not-terrible partner, which John mistakes as the light of heteronormativity, thus throwing him into an identity tailspin that carries us through the rest of the play. We follow a meandering John as he demonstrates his complete inability or his unwillingness to make a decision, leaving his two overbearing paramours to battle it out over our meek hero.
The play’s climactic scene — a dinner party with John, his boyfriend, his girlfriend and, for some reason, his boyfriend’s dad (Gilbert) — culminates in (spoiler alert) John’s deciding to stay with his boyfriend, not because he really wants to, but because he is afraid to give up the identity that he has spent so many years constructing for himself.
Despite its intrepid title, “Cock” thankfully relies less on sensationalism and titillation than it does on sharp humor and skillfully drawn characters. Bartlett’s dialogue is precise and adept enough to carry the piece without much semblance of context.
“Looking at the script, with its zero stage directions and its incredibly particular layout of dialogue, I get the sense that the playwright cedes control of how the play is staged, with the condition that the dialogue comes through as he intended,” DuBeau wrote in his director’s note. “It’s written so well that it seems to scintillate regardless of the visuals.”
There is no set or props to speak of (although the costume design from Yvonne Chan ’16 was spot-on), and though we can glean enough from the text to determine that we are in contemporary London, we are given little framework for the characters’ lives off-stage. John is, in fact, the only named character — M, W and F comprise the rest of the cast — making “Cock” a modern-day take on the love triangle archetype.
Of course, in making John’s choice between a man and a woman, Bartlett explores more (post)modern themes than Shakespeare did — themes of sexual identity and labeling that feel especially relevant in a college setting. It gets a little heavy-handed towards the end, when John will not stop musing about the irrationality of the straight-gay binary — a deft filibuster, it seems, while he tip-toes around the inevitable decision at hand. But generally speaking, “Cock” presents a theme worth exploring at Middlebury: as Burnett put it in his producer’s note, “What happens when we forget the labels? Are there parts of ourselves we haven’t realized exist?”
At 90 minutes without an intermission, “Cock” felt, at times, too long. Part of this seemed intentional, an attempt to mimic structurally the frustration that all the characters feel at John’s indecision. As a rhetorical device, it was effective: I, too, was frustrated. When the girlfriend and the father took their respective exits in the final scene, I was relieved to see them go, simply because it meant that a choice was finally made.
What was best about “Cock,” though, was the cast, which brought Bartlett’s archetypes to life, fleshing them out into three-dimensional, if nameless, people with idiosyncrasies and flaws and shimmering humanity.
Burnett’s M was not just an antagonistic boyfriend but also a man who is deeply, adoringly in love. Gobin’s W was not just a magnetic, self-possessed seductress but also a woman with her own history, needs and insecurities.
Gilbert’s F was more than just a third-act wrench thrown into the three-wheeled dinner party — he was a hilarious and adept take on the overprotective father figure, adding depth to the M character and perspective on the evolving question of sexual identity.
Adhikari offered perhaps the most multilayered interpretation: he succeeded in creating a character that was alternatively infuriating and charming, pompous and unsure, and relatable through it all.
(11/13/13 9:30pm)
For college students across the country, class registration is a high-stress, high-stakes time of year. Not only do we have to pick the classes we want to take, we have to successfully register for them. Inevitably, around registration time, complaints and frustrations about BannerWeb and class registration flood the College. With J-term registration this past week and Spring Term registration fast approaching, familiar questions arise surrounding BannerWeb’s inevitable crashing and what we can do about it.
In the past few years, many J-term students have experienced BannerWeb crashing when they try to register, leaving them locked out of the system and unable to register. During registration this past week, many students, like Rachel Kinney ’16.5, found themselves locked out of registration for several minutes, causing frustration, stress and impatience.
“Although BannerWeb was only frozen for about 10 minutes, it seemed like a long time to worry about whether I would get into the class I wanted,” said Kinney.
As of now, it is impossible to say why the system failed, but Michael Roy, dean of Library Information Services (LIS) and his team are working to diagnose the problem with the vendor of BannerWeb, Ellucian.
According to Roy, problems usually seen with BannerWeb “appear to be associated with the volume of simultaneous requests being submitted to the system.”
But last week’s registration for J-Term was worse than usual.
“We are very disappointed with the performance of the BannerWeb course registration system this week and we apologize to students for the frustration they have experienced,” said Roy. “We do not yet have a definitive answer as to why the system locked up during times of peak usage.”
It is not just students who find fault with BannerWeb — Professor of Mathematics Frank Swenton is disappointed with the system as well.
“Given the multiple millions of dollars that Middlebury has spent on the Banner system,” he said, “including the initial purchase, presumably yearly costs, and a huge amount of staff time spent on it, I take it as completely unacceptable that our online registration has had such major and consistent problems.”
According to Swenton, Ellucian, BannerWeb’s vendor, should be paying penalties each time it crashes. Swenton pointed to outsourcing as one of the main problems.
“The fault here is essentially with the Banner system, over which we have limited control – this is unfortunately part of the game the College plays when outsourcing to outside companies,” he said.
Is BannerWeb the best option for a class registration system? Prior to using BannerWeb, the College used a self-made system for registration; however, this system presented many drawbacks, prompting the switch to an outside system, BannerWeb. For the past 10 years, the College has used BannerWeb with fewer problems than the previous system had.
Though countless colleges and universities across the country use BannerWeb, many institutions of higher learning have chosen other methods of registering for classes. Colgate University, with about 2,800 undergraduates, staggers and rotates registration based on last name. For example, a student with a last name beginning with letters E through G might get to register first with all other students in that category, but the next semester they would rotate two spots and register third, then fifth, then second, etc. Alexander Flagle, a sophomore at Colgate, does not find this system effective.
“It has crashed both times I have used it, and many people think registration is the most stressful time of the year,” he said.
At the University of Maryland, with 26,000 undergraduates, students register based on the number of credits they have.
Sophomore Samara Cohen has found drawbacks to this system, saying, “Many people complain about the system because they get shut out of popular classes.”
This system gives priority to upperclassmen, meaning that first-years and sophomores often do not have the chance to register for more popular classes.
Perhaps a revert to the student-to-professor method of registration could be the best solution. Professor Swenton thinks it could be worth a try.
“Was Arena Registration really that bad? Yes, students found it to be sometimes stressful — but faculty and advisors were there to answer questions, and yes, there were a lot of people, but Middlebury College is about people,” said Swenton. “Is it really better for our students’ first experience of course registration at Middlebury College to be hovering over their computers clicking furiously? Is that what we’re really about at this institution, or are we about student-faculty interaction, a place where people interact with other people to build as strong a learning environment as possible?”
Despite the problems seen in other registration systems, it is possible that those could be an improvement over BannerWeb. By using registration windows, it might be possible to avoid a crash caused by the influx of log-ins. Though this change could put students with a later registration time at a disadvantage, it might still be an improvement over BannerWeb.
As one student pointed out to Professor Swenton, “Is it really better for things to be determined by crashes and who can click their mouse at 7:00:01 instead of 7:00:02?”
The College will continue to use BannerWeb as its system for registering, is there anything an individual student can do to improve their registration odds? A common piece of advice is to take a deep breath and understand not getting everything on your class wish list is not the end of the world. In fact, many students may end up taking something unexpected and really enjoying it, only because they could not register for a class that was originally on their ideal schedule.
Second, having plenty of back-up options at the ready is essential. If one is unable to get into a popular class because of BannerWeb, preparedness with a second, third, fourth, and fifth option can earn a well-prepared student with a spot in a second-choice class.
Another precaution that is worth taking is e-mailing professors in advance.
“Most professors are pretty understanding when it comes to registration, especially if you contact them ahead of time,” said Sierra Stites ’14.
Getting on the wait-list for a class in advance or just conveying interest to the professor of a class can never hurt when BannerWeb remains so unpredictable.
(11/13/13 7:09pm)
Last week in Oslo, Marius Holm of the ZERO Foundation presented a report that I co-wrote this summer along with a number of environmental and financial professionals making the case for fossil fuel divestment in Norway’s government pension fund, a portfolio so large that it dwarfs the size of all American university endowments combined. Many of the arguments were specific to Norway, which, as one of the largest producers of oil and gas in the world, is ill-advised to double down on its exposure to shifts within the fossil energy industry. As a fund that already has in place the type of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria for investment missing from Middlebury’s endowment, the debate in Norway is not over whether divestment is an appropriate tool for creating change, but rather how far that tool should be extended. While Middlebury would be well advised to lead the way by creating similar investment screens, even in the absence of concerns about endowment ethics the arguments for divestment in Norway can inform the ongoing debate on this campus.
Over the past six months, many market analysts have revised their predictions for future oil prices from around $110 per barrel to down into the $80 to $90 range. A number of factors are driving this downward trend — increased efficiency of automobiles, uncertainty over future regulations and a Chinese economy far more overleveraged than that of the United States prior to the financial crisis. All of these factors contribute to falling oil demand, which in a world of abundant oil supply means that prices must soon begin to fall.
At lower prices, many of the types of tar sands, ultra-deepwater and shale oil projects currently under development would fail to earn back their investment capital. Any regulatory action that limits carbon dioxide emissions will inevitably require some of these reserves — which have already been factored into the share value of oil companies — to remain in the ground. Expectations about reserves have a significant effect on the share price of fossil fuel companies. When Shell reduced its estimated reserves by 20 percent in January 2004, its share price plunged by 10 percent in a single week. These concerns recently led a large group of investors representing over $100 billion in assets managed by companies that include Boston Common Asset Management and Storebrand Asset Management to issue a call that Norwegian Oil Company Statoil withdraw from tar sands extraction.
World Financial Markets – and, by proxy, the Middlebury College Endowment – are being inflated by a looming Carbon bubble. If you accept that there is a scant one-in-four chance that the world will meet the IEA’s targets to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius, the expected value of the endowment’s position in fossil energy equities is already ten percent inflated. The loss of value if climate change is defeated would be forty percent, which would affect the College’s ability to pay employees, undergo capital projects and award financial aid to deserving students.
The College Administration and Trustees no doubt have faith that, as professional investment managers, Investure will be able to anticipate the shift in fossil energy share prices before they actually arrive. But that poses a significant risk to the endowment – a risk that we would do well to avoid. When financial markets adjust to reflect the changing reality of fossil fuel use, the adjustment will not be smooth or gradual. It will come suddenly and leave those too slow to act with heavy losses. For some of the market, it already has. After an energy speech by President Obama that pledged increased regulation of power plants and an end to international development aid for non-Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) coal plants, the shares of coal companies including Peabody Energy and Walter Energy took dives of 3.4 and 10.4 percent respectively, adding to a year in which Peabody Energy has lost half its value and Walter Energy has lost three quarters. The Stowe Global Coal index, which lists coal-producing companies, fell the same day to its lowest level since the 2009 financial crisis. Utilities across Europe have similarly plunged unexpectedly in response to competition from renewable energy.
To be bullish on the future of the fossil fuel industry is the rough equivalent of a bullish outlook on the nuclear industry sometime after the alarm bells went off at Three Mile Island or after the wave headed for Fukushima. It is comparable to a bet on CFC-producing companies sometime between the discovery of the massive hole in the Ozone layer and the ratification of the Montreal protocol, or a bet on fax machines after the invention of the Internet. Coal and oil powered the 19th and 20th centuries. Their glory days are past. To bet on their future is to bet either against the future of humanity or against the overwhelming judgment of science.
(11/13/13 6:54pm)
“I love Middlebury College because it is in Vermont: everything seems to work here, I feel like I’m far away from those sad things that we see in the news!” That was one of the first things I heard from a Middlebury student, back when I was applying to the College. Indeed, on a campus that abounds with rich food and intense academic opportunities, it is easy to generalize our reality and think our surroundings are the same way.
But I want to tell another story, one that could be compatible with “the sad things we see in the news” the student referred to — except it is happening only a few miles away from our end-of-history campus. This is the story of the Mexican migrant workers in Vermont.
Back in 1994, Mexico, Canada and the U.S. implemented a trade liberalization agreement named the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Mexico approved this treaty under the promises of expanded and globalized trade that would bring more foreign direct investment, and a greater number of high paying jobs, which would increase the standard of living in the country as a whole. After almost 20 years, we see that the reality is the opposite: while the standard of living grew within historical Mexican oligarchies, the country in total suffered from severe levels of unemployment and underemployment while millions of jobs were lost and many farmers went bankrupt as heavily subsidized American products flooded Mexican markets.
A 2008 report by Agence Global stated that every hour Mexico imported $1.5 million worth of food; in that same hour, 30 farmers migrated to the U.S. This phenomenon brought many of those farmers to the United States, some to places like Vermont.
Those who managed to get here, after a risky and dangerous border crossing, integrate into Vermont’s dairy farms’ workforce. Most of these workers are undocumented and typically work 60-80 hours per week enduring extreme isolation in Vermont’s rural areas. This situation leaves the migrant community in a vulnerable position in one of the whitest and most rural states in the U.S. Workers have reported being subject to racial profiling, highly precarious living and labor environments, and are overly dependent on employers to meet their basic needs.
Some of the Migrant Workers also report facing poor living and working conditions. They mention living in improvised, insect-infested shelters that once were barns. Others mention living in trailers overcrowded with other workers. And while most of them have developed solid working relationships with their employers, some workers report having gone months without getting paid for their labor.
Could the farmers not simply give better conditions to the workers? Ironically, some of the nasty effects of globalization have also hit Vermont’s dairy farmers.
“Globalized competition has led to unstable and oddly low prices. We have seen times when the price paid to a farmer for a gallon of the milk produced was $2 lower than the actual price of production,” said Clark Hinsdale III, President of the Vermont Farm Bureau.
Indeed, with fierce, and often times unfair, competition from businesses as far away as New Zealand, many local dairy farmers have been struggling to provide for their own families. Thus, it often becomes complicated to also provide good living conditions for their employees.
And here is where I believe the student with whom I spoke before coming to Middlebury was awfully wrong. In this globalized world, there is no way poverty, poor living conditions and other issues can be limited to the places “we see in the news.” These issues happen here, now, and they deserve our attention.
I believe this issue deserves Middlebury College students’ attention. How many times do we seek places abroad to work on high-impact community projects, while there are big issues just around the corner?
Fortunately, several people in Vermont (including Middlebury students) are starting to take notice of the 1,500 Migrant Farm Workers in the state and are getting involved in their communities. Through grassroots advocacy and the effort of many workers and volunteers, the state government just approved a law that allows the migrant population to get drivers licenses without providing full documentation that could be implemented as soon as next year. This is a big victory — one that may help remedy some of the problems these people face in accessing other regions.
However, there is a lot more that we can do. The Middlebury student-run organization JUNTOS approaches this issue on many different levels: under policy and advocacy, it seeks to influence Vermont policymaking towards harmonizing and stimulating fair relationships between the Migrant Workers community, employers and the state community as a whole.
JUNTOS also has the compañeros program, in which the students reach out to local migrant workers and start friendships with them, learning from them and helping whenever possible. This way the members involved learn how to better help the community. “Who better understands what they need than they themselves?” questions Guadalupe Daniela.
Want to get involved? Get in touch!
email: juntos@middlebury.edu
phone: (832) 889-5798
MARCOS BARROZO FILHO ’17 is from Uberlandia, Brazil
(11/07/13 10:53pm)
Snake Pit with Adeline Cleveland ’13.5 & Alan Sanders ’13.5
Middlebury Campus (MC): How did you form?
Addy: Both of us came together at the beginning of this semester. We’ve been friends for a while and we’ve each had different shows all four years. We’re in our last semester, and our former partners graduated last year, so we were just chatting one day and decided to do a story together.
MC: How did you come up with the name?
Alan: I came over to Addy’s house one day, and her friend from high school was there, and he works in a reptile house.
Addy: He makes snakes, like he alters different parts of their DNA.
Alan: It was a wild experience. And the next day we were supposed to fill out the application. So we came up with SnakePit.
MC: How would you describe the sound of your show?
Alan: We are a hip-hop show, but we also play a lot of new electronic and electronic-pop acts.
Addy: It’s not really a theme every show, but sometimes a common thread will appear as the show goes on and we kind of just go from there, depending on the flow of the show.
Alan: We try to play new music as much as possible – we play what came out each week.
MC: Three adjectives.
Alan: Slithery
Addy: Dangerous
Alan: Venomous
MC: Why should listeners tune in?
Addy: We generally play songs that flow well into each other so it’s nice to listen not only for one song, but the show is pretty coherent as a whole, and our banter is pretty on point. It’s intentional and informative. Alan is pretty knowledgeable and up-to-date on the artists and albums we’re playing, and I don’t know that stuff. So we’re not both talking at people, we’re both conversing.
Alan: It’s a good way for listeners to get to know new music and new artists. Also, our show is on a Thursday night, so people can listen when they’re in the library studying or in their dorm rooms, not studying. Eighty percent of our listeners are from town, not on campus. Our listeners vary between lots of different age groups.
MC: How do you broadcast to listeners across different age groups?
Addy: Making a conscious effort to not just have our conversation center around stuff that happens at the College. We definitely bring things that are happening on campus, but I think by keeping our conversation centered around current pop events and music, that’s easier to relate to than two students talking about Proctor dining hall.
Second Hand Groove Machine with Jebb Norton ‘13.5 and Eric Benepe ‘13.5
MC: How did you form?
Jebb: Destiny.
Erik: We went to the first meeting our second semester, and we had known each other before. We had very similar musical taste and decided to do a show together.
MC: How would you describe your musical style?
Erik: We do a different genre every week, we have different themes. Sometimes we’ll pick a genre, sometimes we’ll pick a period in musical history, sometimes we’ll play instrumental beats with different speeches we’ve gotten by famous people.
Jebb: We did a show for Shel Silverstein a month ago. We played a bunch of his poetry and songs that he wrote and stuff by his friends. We have fun with it.
Erik: Basically, we both listen to a lot of music and on our show we try to play things that we’re interested in and use it as a way to find out more about the music we like.
MC: Three adjectives.
Jebb: I’d say funky. More than most people would think of, I think funk music is about doing what you want to do, and we definitely bring the funk.
Erik: Goofy. We get kind of ridiculous sometimes. We’ve got a solid core of fans, but sometimes we get callers and we have no idea who they are.
Jebb: I like it because every week, we have a two hour period where we never do work. It’s just a period where we can listen to music and talk, or just think. It’s just a separate mind space from normal time at Middlebury.
MC: Do you think that vibe is communicated to your listeners?
Jebb: Yeah totally, I hope so. If we were doing homework, I think they would know. It would change, we wouldn’t be as engaged.
MC: Do you plan ahead?
Erik: We’ve gotten to a point where we don’t know how to plan that much. We know each other’s music style well enough and we have good chemistry. We sort of improvise what sounds good.
MC: Why should listeners tune in to your show?
Erik: Because we emphasize playing good music, and we don’t talk too much. When we do talk, we try to contribute things to teach people about the music.
Jebb: We don’t ask each other what we had for lunch, and then talk about it for fifteen minutes. People should listen to us because everyone needs an escape. And that’s what we give.
Rock in Rio with Fabiana Benediini ‘15 and Jess Parker ‘16
MC: What is Rock and Rio?
Benedini: So Rock in Rio is actually not a world show, it’s Brazilian music – Brazilian country and rock. Brazilian rock says a lot about Brazilian history so most of the bands complain about the government and how corrupt it is. There are a lot of songs about disillusionment and anger and those are really good. And Brazilian country is about Brazilian daily culture, so heartbreak, drinking a lot and women.
MC: How did the show start?
Benedini: Jess and I were having dinner at Proctor. She wants to learn Portuguese so I said okay, let’s have a show so you can practice by listening to music and you can talk in Portuguese. Her mom’s Brazilian and she wants to learn Portuguese so she knows a little bit and she’s taking Portuguese for Spanish speakers right now.
MC: Do you speak Portuguese on the air?
Benedini: We do speak in Portuguese to each other when she asks about the lyrics.
MC: Are the songs from growing up in Brazil or are they more modern?
Benedini: It’s hard to find modern songs but I can usually message my friends in Brazil and they can tell me what good music is going on right now. So I get input from Brazilians.
MC: When does the show air?
Benedini: It airs Wednesdays from 7 AM to 8 AM. It’s super early. It feels like it’s super early. It’s so fun to see Jess there and hang out with her. And it’s a good way to start our morning, especially because it’s music about heartbreak or anger – it’s hilarious.
MC: What you might hear:
Capital Inicial, “It is usually about corruption or disillusionment and it is rock.”
Ivete Sangalo, “It’s pump up music. It’s a style that is very typical of Brazil.”
MC: Any callers?
Benedini: Jess’s mom called once.
Almost Famous with Ben Goldberg ’14 and Maddie Dai ’14
MC: As the General Manger, what is your role at WRMC?
Goldberg: I kind of do a little bit of everything. I am learning as I go. The official description of my position is I’m the student president [of WRMC], I’m responsible for budget and the money side of things. We have a business director for that as well but I’m very much involved. I’m also a link between us and the administration, student activities and probably most significantly, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission). On a day-to-day basis, making sure everyone else is doing what they need to be doing. So, it’s a full time job.
MC: What would be your pitch to listen to WRMC?
Goldberg: It’s nothing like anything else you have on the air in Addison County – commercial free radio, tastefully picked music. We’re not catering to a certain audience, we’re not playing just top 40 hits.
Dai: There’s a lot of banter, there’s a joke a minute.
Goldberg: It’s nice to hear a range of student voices giving input. It’s a surprisingly personal experience to listen to someone’s show and what they’re up to and what they’re listening to.
Dai: If you’re driving a car, what else are you going to do?
Goldberg: All the shows are pretty different. We are predominately music, alternative music (whatever that means), but it’s at least diverse to some degree. We try to make it as diverse as possible but the fact that you’re listening to peers or even to someone you don’t know playing music they care about, have something to say about and want to share that with you, that’s a way to connect with other people. It’s so much more fulfilling than just putting on your iPod or putting on a CD when you have someone crafting a playlist for you.
MC: Almost Famous’ description says, “From boy bands to mental breakdowns.” What does that mean?
Dai: We go through all those iterations. One day we’ll be a boy band and the next we’ll have a mental breakdown. It’s actually our third show together and it’s been the evolution of us. We started in Oxford, we went abroad there.
Goldberg: Oxcide student radio.
Dai: There’s not many things Middlebury does better than Oxford but radio would be one of them. They have more Nobel prize winners in general but we have a good radio station. So we went there and then we had a show last semester called Zig-a-Zig-Ah which was a Nineties tribute show and now we do pop.
Goldberg: It was sort of a natural evolution. On our first show, Back to the Boombox, we would pick a different era of music but focusing on some sort of pop era, more or less.
Dai: We relive a lot of our childhood memories. But at a time when we were extremely awkward probably and it’s not necessarily overly sentimental, at an exciting time of middle school dances.
Goldberg: Maddie and I come from wildly different places but strangely enough we are able to connect through Nineties pop culture. That was the foundation of Zig-a-Zig-Ah and we didn’t want to have to be stuck playing just nineties music and the nineties music we were listening to for the most part was pop or some variation thereof. So now on Almost Famous we’ll do each week a different phenomenon in pop music.
Dai: Not to intellectualize it but it is interesting to look at pop as industrialized, very attuned to different cultural fads and movements and the movement from boy bands to girl bands.
Goldberg: We’re taking a stab at sociology.
Dai: Via Wikipedia.
Goldberg: Neither of us are trained sociologists. I still haven’t taken a sociology class but we can speak at length about Britney Spears or Justin Timberlake or Beyoncé and it’s nice because everyone who’s listening knows what we’re talking about.
MC: What are some typical songs or artists on Almost Famous?
Goldberg: Lately there’s been a lot of Lorde.
Dai: And also because I’m a New Zealander so I’m shamelessly promoting her.
Goldberg: And also her album is just objectively pretty good.
Dai: Britney is often the epicenter from which we like to compare other artists, in terms of her career that’s gone through so many evolutions, rising and falling, so there is some Britney but we talk about her more than we play her.
Goldberg: I don’t feel like there is a pattern in the artists we play but I guess as far as pop goes we play a lot of Beyoncé, Rihanna here and there, Justin Timberlake. Music we respect, whether as individuals we respect them or we respect their music.
Soul Food with Josh Swartz ’14.5 and Alia Khalil ’14.5
MC: Tell me about the formation of Soul Food.
Swartz: I spent part of the summer in New Orleans and inspired by the music culture down there and going to see live music down there and pretty much everyday thing that people do. That’s something that I loved. It’s also just the time of our show from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. when ppl are just finishing up classes, getting a burger at Proctor and getting ready for the weekend. It’s easy to listen to, puts you in a good mood, old and new. This is the first semester that SF has been in existence. Alia and I have a good rapport. We have a good time.
MC: Explain what Soul Food is.
Khalil: It’s two friends sharing their music with all their other friends. In every set, there’s definitely one song you can fit your taste to. We play a lot of different types of music, but even within the soul genre, there are older and recent songs.
Swartz: A big part of the show is us bantering about Halloween costumes and favorite animals, community events, and things that happen at Middlebury. Our last guest has a particularly good Norah Jones impression. Our conversation focuses on light-hearted fun things, like talking about Halloween or movies. The tone of our conversation is very upbeat and easy to listen to. It is something we’re conscious of: everything we do is geared toward a universal audience.
Khalil: Regardless of if you’re in Middlebury or not, you’re able to understand our conversations. A lot of radio shows have inside jokes, but that is not us.
MC: What does the music do to you?
Khalil: It energizes you. We always say it is music that feeds your soul so it’s not limited. Our generation doesn’t realize how versatile soul music can be which can include lyrical ballads or some songs with strong beats.
Swartz: One tradition is that we always end every show with the same song: “September” by Earth Wind and Fire. That song really legitimizes what our show is about. Everyone recognizes it; it’s a happy song. It used to make more sense because it used to be September. Now we just use it to feed people’s souls.
MC: What is the best show moment to go down in Soul Food history?
Swartz: We got a call from Vergennes, who I think calls in to WRMC a lot — so this might not have been that special — but he said, “Wow, I really loved the show” and was super supportive. I actually think that he is someone who calls in pretty frequently, but I like to pretend that he just called in our show.
Khalil: My favorite moment was when we introduced “September” for the first time and we were just kind of joking about autumn activities and announced that we were going to. Closes the show.
Swartz: From that moment, we could both feel it was the start of a very powerful tradition. It happened in our very first show; it happened so organically.
MC: What can you guarantee that your listener will hear when they tune into the show?
Khalil: You will hear Josh’s awesome radio voice, which a is a bit of an alter ego from his normal voice. He sounds like a radio DJ who plays soul music.
Swartz: We always talk about a concert that is happening or happened at Middlebury. We do talk about local music scenes. In our last show, we played Apenglow to promote that concert on Higher Ground on Sunday. There’s a local consciousness to our show. That’s being part of the Middlebury community and the Vermont community — that’s an important part of being a radio show.
Khalil: We both have different taste in music and we both complement each other in new bands we’ve heard of and introduce each other. Even in my own radio show, I’m always finding new songs.
The Campus Voice with Greta Neubauer ’14.5 and Ian Stewart ’14
MC: Explain to a 5th grader what the Campus Voice is.
Neubauer: The Campus Voice is a way to bring the work of the Middlebury Campus and its writers into broader dialogue with the members of the community who are commenters on the story written in the Campus. They relate to those issues and we make that vocal and in a dialogue, where people can interact beyond the pages.
MC: What is the difference between the dialogue on the Campus Voice and one with your friends?
Stewart: It seems in most conversations with your friends, you kind of try to get to an agreement on an issue. Whereas with the show, no one has to leave agreeing. Part of what we do is to try to tease out the distinct arguments that are being made at different sides of the issue. When you’re with your friends you’re less likely to push your friends that we can be with our host hats on.
Neubauer: The differences among people who go on the show are greater differences than those in our groups of friends. A lot of the friends that I have these conversations with — we all sort of have the same opinions about this issue. The Campus Voice brings the dialogue out of niches on campus.
MC: Why should someone who reads the newspaper want to tune into the show 4 days later?
Stewart: Issues are changing constantly on the campus. The dialogue is changing, new events are coming out, absurd emails are being sent out and are not being sent out and so the story, as with any story, evolves. This is a nice chance to check in a few days later. There’s not that pressure of the 500 or 600 words [in print]. Just tell the straight facts. Get your three quotes in. Tell it in this neat, closed story. Another thing is that it’s different to hear someone’s voice and to hear their pauses and their inflections and their emotions, their excitement. That’s something that no amount of adjectives and adverbs on print will be able to recreate. You’re taking out a layer and so you’re closer to the people and story than you might be with a story on the page.
Neubauer: I also think that we’re taking an issue that’s come up on campus and bringing it back to the broader conversation. Whether it’s homophobia on this campus or the topic of dialogue.
Kyle Finck: Also, moving forward the point is not only to read the news but to interact with the news, so in terms of submitting questions, getting them answered, whether it’s having Dean Collado on or a student provoked by Collado’s blog. This is about interacting with the news.
MC: What is the best moment captured on your show?
Stewart: The one I keep thinking about is when we did a show on spoken word artists and hip-hop rap artists on campus. To see their art on campus and the way they talked about it was almost seamless. I was so blown away by their articulateness in the Q&A part of the interview that I felt like it was an extension of the rhymes and language in their art.
Neubauer: That too was my favorite moment of the show. There was something really special about seeing the performance and the question. I always love when I go to an art museum and I want to hear the whole description of the painting on an audio guide or docent and so I really like to hear interpretation. That was cool to hear them in spoken terms give us that description. Similarly, talking about the interpretation of Chance’s lyrics. I come to a different place on the issue having engaged with people who talking about it a lot.
Stewart: The idea that you can change our opinion in a conversation in the same way it had naturally is unique to the radio. You’re just selecting snapshots in newspaper — that’s what is going to represent what you felt at that moment and that’s valuable, but we have the chance to change someone’s mind over the course of the show and see the evolution the same way it happens to us sitting there and listening.
MC: What’s one thing you can promise listener in every show?
Stewart: Almost everytime when someone says something, they were sincere about it. You will hear a true sincere moment that is not a sound byte. It’s something they thought about or believed.
Neubauer: You think you understand Middlebury, you talk in classes but it’s not the same as hearing people’s perspectives. It’s surprising. I have this idea that I understand Middlebury and its student body, and it’s not true.
(11/06/13 11:13pm)
Old Chapel released a comprehensive report of student policy violations via a new webpage on the College’s site unveiled Monday, Nov. 4. The page details incidents and consequences of student conduct violations and disciplinary actions since 2007, and its release marks a new commitment to transparency in the College’s judicial affairs process.
While the administration has released limited information surrounding judicial affairs in the past, the new reporting system entails a much more transparent and detailed annual report available to all students, faculty and staff on the full range of student conduct violations and subsequent disciplinary actions.
Last year’s report included 447 reported policy violations that resulted in some form of official sanctions during the 2012-2013 academic year. Of these violations, 105 were alcohol citations, and 27 constituted cheating, plagiarizing or some other form of academic dishonesty. The report also included five incidents of sexual misconduct, three of which were met with sanctions by the Sexual Misconduct Review Panel.
Compared with national statistics of incidents of sexual assault on college campus, the number of incidents that received sanctions at the College last year is relatively low.
“[National] statistics indicate that one in 36 college women are sexually assaulted within any seven month period,” Ian Thomas ’13.5, student co-chair of the Academic Judicial Board, said. “Applying that math to Middlebury, that works out to be approximately 34 sexual assaults per one academic year. Looking at last year’s numbers, there were five reported instances of sexual misconduct. I do believe that sexual misconduct is under-reported on our campus, and everything must be done to counteract that. If survivors see that their school has an effective judicial process for them, then perhaps they would be more likely to report what happened.”
Dean of the College Shirley Collado said in an all-school email on Nov. 4 that it is disheartening to not live up to community expectations.
“Only by being honest with ourselves about where we struggle, as individuals and as a community, can we chart an effective course for progress,” she said.
The report found that alcohol played a key role in the majority of policy violations resulting in sanctions. While many alcohol citations are met with a warning, alcohol played a key role in more severe cases of policy violations and discipline: 67 percent of violations that resulted in expulsion involved alcohol.
“I don’t think it would surprise anybody in the country familiar with alcohol use on college campuses to find that policy violations are often, though not always, tied to alcohol use,” said Katy Smith Abbott, dean of students and co-chair of the Task Force on Alcohol and Social Life. “But I think the thing that’s hard about alcohol, to be honest, and one of the things that’s so discouraging, is that when you are working with students who have violated college policy at a level such that they are looking at a CJB [Community Judicial Board] hearing, or are staring down the possibility of official college discipline, or suspension, or expulsion — most of the time, had the student been sober, they never would have acted in such a way that would leave them facing that kind of disciplinary action.”
Smith added that the students who receive such disciplinary action rarely think that they would have been the ones to be in their positions.
“They think they have control over their drinking, but they actually don’t always have the ability to determine what their actions are or control their impulses,” she said. “And that’s part of what is difficult to address about this problem.”
Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs and Student Life Karen Guttentag said that the increased transparency was meant to educate students on all parts of the judicial affairs system.
“Our goal is not only to educate the community about conduct outcomes, but about the disciplinary system itself,” she said. “It’s important for students to understand the guiding philosophy we bring to conduct concerns, the various systems we have that address them and the range of outcomes that can result.”
Thomas said that the release of the data is an important step forward.
“I am very pleased to see these reports,” he said. “The previous method of posting judicial outcomes left much to be desired. These reports are an important part of the judicial process’s transparency, and they reinforce the Judicial Board’s accountability to the community.”
(11/06/13 10:57pm)
At first the decision looks simple — Middlebury’s town offices are outdated and something needs to be done. Renovation? Relocation? As it turns out, the problem is not so simple, nor is the solution.
The town offices are currently located across the street from Alexander Twilight Hall and are, essentially, the burned-out remains of the old high school, which raises many complications.
One problem is that the building is drafty and drains money in the winter as the heat seeps through the windows and walls and into the icy Vermont air. A second problem is that the building isn’t entirely wheelchair accessible. There is an elevator but it is faulty and unreliable.
In 2011, the town of Middlebury hired Vermont Integrated Architecture (VIA) to conduct a study estimating how much it would cost to replace the current Town Hall structures. VIA came back with estimates and proposals that ranged in cost from $6 million to $10 million — a high price to pay, especially because it would require the support of a bond and an increase in local property taxes.
Even though the proposed projects were expensive and the funds were not there, leaving the town offices as they are isn’t viewed as a feasible option because of their serious disrepair. Therefore, the town of Middlebury started talking to the College to find a mutually beneficial plan.
After discussing the situation, the current plan stands as such: the town and the College would do a land swap. The new municipal buildings, which would include offices and a recreation center, would be built on a piece of land currently owned by the College, near Mary Hogan Elementary School.
The College would then be given ownership of the strip of land on which the town offices are currently located, demolish the building and create a park — incidentally opening up a sweeping vista of the College that is otherwise obstructed by the current buildings.
Chairman of the Town Center Steering Committee Selectman Victor Nuovo along with Selectboard Chairman Dean George initially requested funding from the College. A press release issued this past June on behalf of the College announced the College’s intent to fund the request.
“We are committed to the view that what is good for the town is good for the college and vice versa,” President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz said.
While the College agreed to assist in this project should it be approved by the steering committee, not all involved share in this exclusively positive response. Some concerns were raised at a public hearing in Middlebury in July, during which more than a dozen local residents introduced worries about handing more land over to the College, as well as the lack of parking that would exist at the new town center.
The most specific-to-date plans, with a totaled budget of $6.5 million, were presented at an ID-4 school board meeting on Oct. 16, as well as at a public gathering on Oct. 17 at the municipal gym.
Attendees expressed many concerns, several of which related to parking space issues. Jason Duquette-Hoffman, an ID-4 board member, spoke out against some reassurance from organizers that there are around 30 spaces available when the recreation center is being used as it currently stands.
“Thirty spaces is your traffic management plan? I’m sorry, I don’t find that convincing, and I don’t think that’s a very thoughtful approach to this plan,” said Duquette-Hoffman.
Others expressed similar concerns, many of which shared the common thread that the plans were not fleshed out well enough. As a result of the many concerns raised with the proposed plan, the steering committee strongly recommended that the town postpone voting on the proposal from December to March.
Their justification was that further time is needed for the projects to be more clearly explained and delivered to community members. Such a delay, however, has the potential to raise expenditures by $350,000.
The Middlebury select board met on Tuesday, Nov. 5 and revisited the proposed project. Look for follow-up coverage in next week’s issue.
ILANA GRATCH contributed to this report.
(11/06/13 8:31pm)
During one of my first weeks in college, I did what every self-respecting Middlebury freshman did: I signed up for every and any club I thought I might find even remotely interesting. Although I naturally cut most of the clubs off my list, one standout was Socially Responsible Investing Club.
The club looks to invest Middlebury’s endowment in more sustainable companies — not just for idealistic reasons but because the SRI argues it is more financially stable as well as socially responsible. One subgroup of the club concerns itself with ESG criteria, that is, the Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria that would classify a company as sustainable. Since Middlebury College has recently pledged to substantially increase the part of its endowment that is invested sustainably, the dominant question at SRI meetings has become: what does it mean for a company to be sustainable and whom can we invest in? ESG criteria seek to define this question more concretely.
At Middlebury, it seems everyone wants to see our investments line up with our values. But, judging on how difficult fossil fuel divestment appears to be for the administration, it is unlikely that Middlebury, a business itself which needs to turn a profit, can pull out industry by industry according to what we deem in-line with our values. ESG criteria can be a practical tool for our investors to use as they assess future investments not only their sustainability, but also their profitability. The SRI will be conducting a survey this week to ask students which of the ESG criteria they value most highly in Middlebury’s investments so that future investments can be more in-line with community values.
The first criterion is environmental. Many people think that while being environmentally conscious is a positive, it does not actually affect a business directly. Often, however, environmentally conscious companies employ business strategies that will be more effective in a long-term perspective.
In order to understand how environmental factors affect businesses, I have used two principles we have been studying in my Intro to Macroeconomics class. The first is that to most companies pollution is an externality, and, although pollution is an inefficiency (in that it damages the environment thus spoiling resources), it may not affect the company directly so the company has no reason to factor it in to their operations. Governments, however, can internalize pollution by implementing carbon taxes, environmental regulations, and fines for excessive pollution. As governments begin to employ these tactics, environmental sustainability starts to have a direct impact on profits.
The second principle is that markets are directly affected by expectations and opinions. With more public awareness of global warming in social media, and journalists calling out companies left and right for negative environmental impacts, businesses’ environmental performance is already directly affecting their profits. In an article written by Dinah Koehler in the Deloitte Review, she asserts that negative environmental news concerning any given company has resulted in an average of a 1.12 percent decline in stock returns over the past decade, whereas positive environmental news has resulted in an average 0.84 percent increase.
Because they are easier to quantify, environmental factors are often the main focus of ESG. However, Social and Governance issues also have profound impacts. The social element consists of equal rights employment and human rights issues. In her article, Koehler also claims that human rights issues in the form of boycotts, protests, or simply a bad public reputation “have triggered an average $892 million drop in market value.” While non-publicized social practices cannot be directly linked to profit, for Middlebury’s purposes it is still important. Middlebury markets itself as a forward-thinking, environmentally aware, international school; for it to invest without consideration of the effect its money is having on the world would be hypocritical.
Governance has also proven to be correlated with good financial results. Treating workers well with preventative safety measures and quality management can lead to better crisis control and publicity, both of which leading to more reliable profits. A more stable company is less likely to go under after a crisis, making it a safer investment.
Middlebury cannot just leave its money sitting around. It is a business, and, like any business, it must invest its endowment so that it can earn money and continue to operate. That is why ESG is such an ideal tool for Middlebury investors to use. It provides the opportunity to assess sustainable and profitable investments that are also in-line with our community values. The survey will play the critical role of letting the administration know where students stand. It can be found at the go/ESGsurvey.
EDWARD O’BRIEN ’17 is from Lincoln, M.A.
(11/06/13 8:17pm)
In a classroom packed with people sitting on the windowsills, students, faculty and administrators gathered on Monday to engage in an honest dialogue unpacking the controversy surrounding Chance the Rapper’s performance Saturday night.
This discussion, which has dominated campus debate for the past few weeks, provided a space to voice many issues we face here, from racism and homophobia to censorship and the administration’s role. These concerns were broader than just the presence of Chance the Rapper. They reflected building frustration on a myriad of events that have occurred since the beginning of the school year and throughout people’s time at Middlebury.
For the dozen Campus editors who attended the forum provided an opportunity to listen and reflect as others spoke of their experiences and concerns that proved invaluable in broadening our understanding of the different social issues at play. Nevertheless, many of the people in the room were the usual crowd, the people who have these conversations time and time again. This trend in such spaces leads students to feel like they are trapped in a silo. Their opinions circle around, but never leave a confined space.
A good turnout to this forum still left the majority of voices unheard and ears untouched. This absence shows a need on campus for deeper listening. Part of the value of the liberal arts education, and a point emphasized heavily on Monday, is the need to confront discomfort. Discussions of privilege are particularly challenging, and we must push ourselves to embrace that discomfort and think deeply about what our fellow classmates are saying.
Even within the dialogue, people sometimes failed to truly listen, constantly focusing on their own feelings on the issue without responding to the points of others. Because the tension on these issues has been building for so long, people rushed to assert their ideas without full critical engagement with others. Provocative questions were posed only to be greeted by, “this is unrelated to that point, but…”
A truly productive dialogue necessitates thought and weighted response. We must hear out the opinions of others, for they are deeply routed in their experiences and identities. This is the responsibility not only of the students present at the forum, but also the students who were not able to attend. Though we are unable to do full justice to the diverse range of opinions expressed, some key questions arose that could help open the silo:
How do we listen to and support students of marginalized identities without placing undue burden on them to represent the minority? How can students in positions of privilege support marginalized students without tokenizing them?
How do we work towards a community where students of all identities feel safe? How do we support students struggling with multiple marginalized identities who often feel conflicted in discussions like this forum?
Where can we embrace the intersection of different identities to build a cohesive and inclusive campus?
What is the difference between our community standards and our standards as individuals?
Why did this conversation spark when a black male rapper came to campus, while we stay quiet when other speakers or performers whose words threaten members of our community come? Why do we use racially loaded language when describing the debate about Chance and how can we acknowledge and combat this?
What makes some art free from censorship, even when it includes offensive material, while rap sparks outrage? What role does the social acceptability of certain art forms play in this?
How does the administration react to controversy on campus? Why was the 9/11 incident so strongly condemned by President Liebowitz while the threatening homophobic note saw delayed action? What is the administration’s role in fostering the proactive dialogue necessary to move the campus forward?
If you don’t know that these questions are being asked, then you are out of touch with the issues that are relevant to our college at the moment. If you don’t care about any of these questions, you don’t care about Middlebury. It is your responsibility as a member of this community to listen deeply and think critically to the voices of others on this campus. It is easy to hear but not listen, letting the words of others flow in one ear and out the other as you think of what to say next. Actively listening to what someone says is hard takes practice.
But this kind of listening is the first step towards building a safe community where people are not afraid to be fully and unabashedly who they are. And while this listening is critical, just listening is not enough. We cannot just pat ourselves on the back for having attended a forum and for planning to attend the next one. We must spur this engagement into action. It is easy to push responsibility for such tasks onto groups like Queers and Allies (Q&A) or the African-American Alliance (AAA), but the majority identities have a duty to respect and protect other members of this community. Do away with the phrase “that’s not my issue” and realize that none of us are truly safe until every marginalized group feels their views are listened to and respected.
We as an editorial board have tried vigorously to make our editorials this year solution-based. Complaining about an issue is no use to our community if we can’t provide viable alternatives or recommendations for change. But there is no easy answer or quick fix to making marginalized groups feel safe here. Chance did not create these issues, and they didn’t leave on his tour bus. It’s time to push back the comforts of privilege and actively listen to the concerns of our peers.
(11/06/13 8:08pm)
13 miles of sidewalk. Over 300 acres. Even for a 14-year Landscape Services veteran like John Quelch, these numbers are daunting. Nevertheless, Quelch has an eye for detail when mowing and holds his team to a high standard.
“Maybe it would surprise [students] if they saw what we didn’t do or if they saw someone who didn’t care how it looked,” said Quelch. “For me in particular, no matter what it is, I look for the end result – what it looks like when you’re done. When you start off, it’s not pretty, but you chug away and get it done.”
Landscape Services Supervisor Clinton Snyder pulls out a map of campus full of little Sharpie markings that divide the campus like a battlefield; a commander keeping track of troops on the battlefield. “We have an average of 12 to 18 guys working in landscaping and it’s broken up into three groups,” said Snyder.
North, Central and Athletic are the three zones in which Landscaping operates.North encompasses everything from College Street toward Bicentennial Hall, Central covers the areas around Old Chapel and Athletic demarcates the athletic fields to the south. Quelch is the crew chief in charge of Central and is responsible for 5 or 6 staff members who run the landscaping from Old Chapel to the CFA.
“He makes sure everything is looking good,” Snyder said. “This is a high-profile area of the College and he works with his guys making sure everything is mowed and it looks primo.”
The mowing happens on a schedule. “The North crew mows on Monday and Tuesday, and we mow Central on Wednesday and Thursday,” said Quelch. “Usually it takes us a little over a day and a half to mow our section and then we have to string trim it, all around the trees and any objects that you can’t get to with a mower. That’s quite a bit of work just doing that. In the summer it’s pretty much mowing and weed whacking.”
The team has a Toro lawnmower with wings on it that drop down and can mow 10 to 12 feet on either side which they use to mow large fields and open areas. As the weather turns colder, Landscaping has been preparing for the first snowfall with an eye to keeping the exits of buildings free from snow.
“We were working on it yesterday. We have to distribute shovels to every building and the custodians,” said Quelch. “The custodians will sometimes take care of the front and they’ll just shovel 6 or 7 feet out for us just to help out because we’re sometimes short-handed in that department.”
Landscaping also has to work with the Facilities auto shop to prepare the tractors and trucks for moving snow.
“We have plow trucks that we are responsible for maintaining and guys out in plow trucks. Then we have tractors to do all the sidewalks and the larger equipment (the backhoe and the payloader) doing the parking lots and removing the snow,” said Snyder. “They just started doing it now, right into Thanksgiving, getting every piece of equipment ready so when the snow falls, we’re ready with the trucks, the tractors and the snow blowers. This is the rotation we start now – taking out winter stuff and putting away the summer stuff.”
Once heavy snow begins falling, the real work begins.
“Bicentennial Hall has to be shoveled on the roof – the entire top,” continued Snyder. “We have 200 plus buildings and over 300 acres that we’re taking care of, so every building has an entrance and an exit, everything has to be shoveled, usually six feet wide out to a walk or out to a drive.” The wear and tear on machines and tools is evident after only a few years. “Brand new shovels get worn right down,” added Snyder.
Quelch also has his share of snowstorm horror stories.
“We had a really big storm on Valentine’s day 7 or 8 years ago,” said Quelch. “It was brutal; lots and lots of snow. I called up here and told people if they didn’t have to travel not to do it,” said Quelch. “People stayed here that night and the College paid for however many hours you worked in that storm, they gave you double your hours. They had cots out for people to stay in.”
On the Gator, Quelch does hesitate to do some clean up at a moment’s notice.
“I’m going to pick up this branch while I’m here,” said Quelch, stopping the vehicle to grab a large branch that had fallen down in from of the Emma Willard House. Right now, however, the main target is fallen leaves.
“We have a lot of leaves and a lot of them are still on the trees now. Oaks always hold them,” Quelch said. “We are constantly after leaves, as long as we can do it before the snow hits.”
All the leaves are collected via vacuum devices that are attached to either a box on a Gator or a separate truck.
“We have a leaf vacuum – a vacuum that goes in a straight shot and sucks them up,” Quelch said. “And then we have another one that we are experimenting with this year. The auto shop people built a box on the back of it. It has an engine on it and it has knives and it chops the leaves up and blows them into the box on the back of a Gator.”
“They also like to mulch as much as they can with the mowers,” said Snyder, a tactic used to get as much organic matter as possible back into the ground. “But at some point they have to stop doing it because you get so many leaves you’re basically just plowing because there are so many leaves so they need to start picking it up.”
The leaves are first brought to the Facilities services building but eventually they go to a site off of the TAM which Landscaping calls the ‘stump dump’. Quelch pointed out this site while on the Gator, where Landscaping keeps gravel, brush, woodchips, and manure from the Morgan Horse Farm. Leaves are piled next to the manure and food compost from the dining halls is mixed in. “We turn that into topsoil so we have fresh topsoil,” said Snyder.
A little-known part of Landscaping’s duties are R-25 forms, a variation of a work order which lists events all over the College that require the department’s attention.
“It’s our responsibility to read that and see what is going on each day,” said Snyder. “It says in each event to see if it’s something we need to do. It could be as little as getting garbage cans out there or roping something off.”
Landscaping also takes care of the brunt of Monday morning’s trash pickup.
“I get sick of that but to keep it looking nice it’s got to be done because there’s always beer cans, broken glass, napkins. We start our day out Monday morning with campus pickup,” said Quelch. “Usually it takes about 2 hours with 4 people.
“We’ll get a call like, ‘At FIC there’s broken glass across the whole parking lot.’ You have to stop what you’re doing and take care of it,” said Snyder. “They stood by that parking lot and drank and every time they drank a bottle they threw it. By the end of the night there was broken glass across the whole parking lot.”
The ridgeline houses and the mods are reportedly the worst spots for garbage in the campus. Despite incidents like this, Quelch is nonplussed.
“It is our job, but sometimes it’s frustrating if you go down there three or four times, but it’s in our job description,” said Quelch. “Most of them are very respectful like when we are cleaning off a sidewalk. A lot of students come by and say thank you. That’s pretty nice to hear that they appreciate what you are doing for them.”
The importance of being alert is obvious on a Gator. While driving the Gator around campus on Friday, Quelch made a point to veer off whenever pedestrians were near, an unspoken rule of landscaping.
“When we are mowing and students come by we idle down, shut our blades off, and let them come by,” said Quelch. Quelch also said his crew is mindful of keeping the noise down around lecture halls and other classrooms.
Quelch grew up in Vermont and started work at 12 years old as a butcher and meat cutter. “That’s pretty much what I’ve done for most of my life until I cam here,” said Quelch.
“You learn a lot about blood and guts, that’s for sure. But I can do the whole job.”
Quelch pulls up at 468 McKinley, a College house near the athletics center and points to a group of three facilities crew members. The three all wear the backpack-style leafblowers and use them to drive leaves into a pile, fighting gusts of wind.
“We definitely play the wind and we couldn’t really suck the leaves up today because they don’t suck up when they’re wet and it clogs a lot,” said Quelch, referencing a rainy morning.
Despite the monotony of mowing, Quelch says he enjoys his work.
“Mowing up the leaves and chopping them up with the smell of the fresh air is awesome,” said Quelch.
(10/31/13 12:18am)
An unusually high number of students at the College have decided to take a voluntary leave of absence this semester, leaving administrators with more questions than answers about the significant change.
59 sophomores, juniors and seniors are currently taking a voluntary leave of absence. The number does not include students who declared a leave of absence after the start of the fall semester for medical, family-related or other personal reasons. The data, compiled by the five Commons Deans, notes the reason for a student’s leave of absence, but does not display any noticeable trend in terms of reasons or motivations for taking time off.
“There is no pattern, and that’s what’s so interesting,” said Dean of Students Katy Smith Abbott, who has been working with Commons Deans and fellow administrators to analyze the data. “We thought we might see a lot of students citing academic stress, needing time away, or financial pressures, or needing to work. I don’t know what we thought we’d see exactly, but we thought we’d seem more of a trend and it’s really all over the place.”
While the specific information about voluntary leaves of absence is confidential under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Smith Abbott cited training with an Olympic team, extending a study abroad program, international students spending time with family in a home country, medical withdrawal for surgery and working on a farm in an unusual location as among the reasons why students have chosen to take time off.
The administration believes that further investigation into the spike is necessary for a better understanding of the change. The majority of instances of students taking time off, however, can be divided into two groups: a need for personal recuperation due to academic pressures, and a desire to pursue opportunities related to post-graduate plans.
Both President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz and Dean of the College Shirley Collado cited burnout as possibly influencing the spike.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if, in some ways, what we’re seeing is a reaction to how difficult it is to get here,” Liebowitz said. “Another thing is that we’d like to look into what the reasons are. Is the workload excessive? Is the atmosphere in some way not what students thought? We want to be open-minded about what the causes are.”
After taking a leave of absence last spring to work in Burlington, Lucy Whipps, admitted to the class of 2014, decided to extend her leave of absence into the fall semester.
“I needed a break to get my bearings about what I’m doing in college in the first place, and I was feeling less and less like Middlebury is a place where I want to be in general,” Whipps said, noting that she is unsure whether she will re-enroll in February.
While Smith Abbott acknowledged that academic pressure can contribute to a student’s decision to take time off, she cited the College’s recent emphasis on experiential learning and entrepreneurship through programs such as MiddCORE and the Center for Social Entrepreneurship as additional influencing factors.
“As our language as an institution becomes more about student innovation, students charting their own course and developing ways of mapping their education [in a way] that really resonates with them and supports who they want to become … is there something about that ethos that we’re creating at Middlebury that means we’re going to see more of this?” Smith Abbott mused, citing the unlikelihood of a school adhering to a more traditional definition of the liberal arts as experiencing a similar spike.
Collado echoed Smith Abbott’s feelings, citing students’ diverse ideas and desires as pushing them to explore relevant work and life experiences before returning to the College.
“The thing about college is that you’re kind of just going along this course and trying to figure things out, and sometimes students need space to figure things out,” Collado said. “I see that as a life skill.”
Unresolved medical issues led Madie Hubbell ’14.5 to take a leave of absence in the middle of her Junior fall semester, and while she wasn’t initially planning to take time off, she has returned to campus with a different outlook on her college experience.
“Coming here, I actually think I have learned more about myself ... than I have academically. The environment at Middlebury is like nothing else I have ever experienced. It’s intense academically, socially and athletically, and it’s filled with really intense people,” Hubbell wrote in an email, adding that time off allowed her to realize that “there is life outside of college, and while school is important, so is your health and your well-being.”
Smith Abbott went so far as to call the sudden spike a “new version of the gap year,” allowing students to take the time to enrich their college experience, take ownership of their education and chart new territory with once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
“I think Middlebury is a place that encourages students to think creatively and expansively about how they’re putting their education together, and I think we’re just starting to get better at that,” Smith Abbott said, citing the College as being especially encouraging and accommodating in such situations.
Lander Karath ’14.5 took a leave of absence during the fall semester of his Junior year to work on the Obama presidential campaign, but his decision was not without hesitation and a fear of missing out on life at the College.
“I had felt extremely bogged down with academia in my first two years here and I was craving hands-on, practical experience,” Karath said. “The campaign work provided that for me and more. Even though I had moved from one high-stress environment to another, I felt like I was doing something that enriched my life, which was a feeling I never had at Middlebury,” adding that the campaign led him to realize the career path he wants to pursue.
The College’s openness with regard to individualized experience is reflected in the Feb program and rising number of admitted first-years taking gap years.
“We have an entire Feb class, we have the term super senior, which students use affectionately and with pride,” Collado said. “It’s something you don’t usually see at top liberal arts colleges. Usually there’s a pathology associated with taking extra time, taking a semester off or starting college late. But for us, it’s something that we generally celebrate. I’m proud of the fact that we have the room, and even a language and a culture, around people coming in later.”
A student’s decision to take a leave of absence is collaborative and requires meetings with the student’s Commons Dean and academic advisor, along with family members. However, there exist possible negative implications of taking a voluntary leave of absence, particularly regarding financial aid.
If a student who has been granted aid takes a voluntary leave of absence, he or she remains entitled to eight semesters of aid. Problems arise, however, if a student takes more than eight semesters to graduate or if the decision to withdraw is made after the official start of the semester. In such situations, students must petition the College for a ninth semester of financial aid approval, as outlined in the Student Handbook. Financial aid is very rarely granted to a student for more than nine semesters.
With regard to a student’s ninth semester, however, Director of Financial Aid Operations Michael McLaughlin said that, upon being approved, the College will meet 100 percent of a students’ demonstrated need.
Smith Abbott, who views the voluntary leave of absence spike in a mostly favorable light, noted that if this semester’s spike continues and becomes a noticeable trend, the College will need to change planning for housing, enrollment and other facets of student and academic life.
“I think we can manage it and I think understanding it is important, but that’s going to be a matter of looking at the numbers over a number of years,” she said.
(10/30/13 10:54pm)
At the age of 20, most people are still thinking about what they want to do when they “grow up.” This is not the case with up-and-coming musician Chancelor Bennett, who is by no definition ‘most people.’ Better known by his stage name Chance the Rapper, the Chicago born hip-hop artist is riding his growing momentum on The Social Experiment Tour, which stops at the College on Nov. 2.
But the concert created as much controversy as excitement, centering around an initial lack of tickets and an ongoing uproar over perceived misogyny and homophobia in his lyrics. In response, the administration asked Chance not to sing the controversial lyric “slap-happy faggot slapper” of "Favorite Song" or use any homophobic terms during his entire performance. According to Dean of the College Shirley Collado, Chance agreed to these terms.
Releasing his first mixtape, 10 Day, after a ten day suspension during his senior year of high school, Chance soon garnered 80,000 downloads and the attention of Forbes magazine, which featured 10 Day in their ‘Cheap Tunes’ column. This growing recognition landed Chance a spot opening for fellow rapper Childish Gambino on tour, and spurred further collaborations with rappers Hoodie Allen and Joey Bada$$. Acid Rap, Chance’s second mixtape released in April of this year, has already achieved 250,000 downloads and catapulted the rapper into wider national recognition. Featuring other artists such as Twista, Vic Mensa and Action Bronson, Acid Rap received critical acclaim and a BET Hip Hop Award nomination for best mixtape, landing him a spot on the famous Lollapalooza festival.
Will Brennan ’16 grew up in Chicago and attended school just a few train stops away from Chance’s school, Jones College Prep, learning of the rapper’s huge ambitions through mutual musical friends.
“He and other rappers on the Save Money label like Vic Mensa were making singles and dropping mixtapes left and right,” Brennan said. “But when I left Chicago I had no idea that Chance would make it as big as he has in recent months.”
The Middlebury College Activities Board, or MCAB, chose the fall concert because of demonstrated student interest in more rap and hip-hop and Chance’s up-and-coming potential, according to MCAB President Elizabeth Fouhey. Chance’s music was relatively well known on campus before his appearance was announced, discovered through the internet or on WRMC. Will Brennan started playing Chance on his own WRMC show because of the home connection, but became a much bigger fan after the release of Acid Rap.
“His jazz harmonies and electronic beats made a really interesting combination that I had never heard before,” Brennan said. “I didn't know what to think of his squawkish noises at first, but I realized it was a part of his playful nature as a musician. I think Chance makes music that is ultimately true to himself and more importantly true to the environment in which he surrounds himself in Chicago.”
Brennan was not the only student impressed by Chance’s distinctive sound. Adam Benay ’13.5 is a huge fan of Chance, listening to Acid Rap every day this past summer.
“I was getting so into him,” Benay said. “I heard a rumor the first or second day of school that he would be coming, and I was thrilled. Kid Cudi came my first semester and this was a nice capstone.”
When MCAB announced Chance the Rapper as the fall concert, needless to say, many people on campus were extremely excited. In an all-student email on Sep. 23, MCAB revealed the Nov. 2 concert date, announcing “Tickets on sale soon,” and directing people to look to Twitter and Facebook for more information. MCAB decided to advertise the event solely through their Facebook page and on the Middlebury Box office website, leaving many students without tickets. Late in the day on Oct. 14, the campus buzzed with news that the tickets to the concert had sold out, leaving many scrambling and willing to pay well above the $12 ticket charge to obtain a highly sought after ticket.
Fouhey explained that the organization decided how to advertise the event at MCAB executive board meetings, brainstorming for electronic advertising alternatives to the all-student email, which has in recent years experienced a push for limited use.
“MCAB made an online status which was shared by dozens of students on MCAB in the hopes that it would reach all corners of campus,” Fouhey said. “We thought that with the excitement on campus and word of mouth, the ticket release information would spread throughout the student body. Our standard procedure is to release the tickets and then do an advertising push once they have been put on sale.”
Benay, who had not ‘liked’ MCAB on Facebook, was one of the students shocked to discover that he had missed his opportunity to purchase a ticket.
“There was a huge portion of people who fell through the cracks,” Benay said. “I found person after person who said ‘What are you talking about? When did the tickets go on sale?’”
Due to uncertainties regarding the Memorial Field House construction, MCAB booked the concert in the McCullough Social Space, which only allowed for 600 tickets to be sold. In addition, the event was limited to students only and each ID holder could only purchase two tickets.
Many students may not be aware of the multi-step process involved in bringing an artist to Middlebury, including the important role of a middle agent to assist in communicating with MCAB which artists fit the desired genre, dates and price range. According to Associate Dean of Students JJ Boggs, bringing a desirable artist to rural Vermont for the right price is no easy task, and the MCAB committee decides which of the suggested acts fits the College.
“[MCAB has] a challenging job, and they have been criticized in the past for hosting unpopular shows,” Boggs said. “They are simultaneously trying to meet student interest, manage their budget responsibly, offer a variety of programming, and at the same time, consider ‘what might the social ramifications be for Middlebury College?’”
The problem with MCAB’s marketing strategy, according to many students, is that not every student is on Facebook, and even those who are may not check their accounts on a regular basis. At the time of the sale, MCAB had a little over 1,100 followers in a student body of 2,500, many of which were alumni. The organization had previously used posters and emails to advertise concerts and many criticized the decision to publicize through social media accounts that students had to join and actively use to be notified.
Fouhey acknowledged that the ticket release issue is a learning experience for MCAB and that the organization never meant to cause the dissatisfaction resulting from the social media marketing idea.
“We understand the frustrations of students about ticket sales,” she said. “It was never our intention to limit or restrict who would know about the ticket release information. We fully acknowledge that we could have done a better job navigating this ticket release. We will certainly learn from this mistake, and in the future we will look to broader methods of communication.”
Boggs reacted to an impassioned letter from Benay, first published on middbeat, and other general student concerns over the way the ticket sales were handled, quickly taking action. On Friday, Oct. 25, Boggs sent out an all-student email announcing that the College was able to secure Nelson Arena, and that more tickets would be made available for purchase soon due to the larger venue. The move to Nelson was motivated by safety concerns, as administrators realized that McCullough did not have the capacity for the crowd or the extensive set and entourage that travels with Chance.
“The real hero of this story is JJ Boggs,” said Benay, pleased with this outcome. “People are reasonable here and it’s very reassuring to know that things can get done.”
Lyric Controversy
In the email, Boggs also referenced student concerns expressed over the perceived misogynistic and homophobic language in Chance the Rapper’s lyrics. But for students like Luke Carroll Brown ’14, Co-Chair of the Community Council, limiting the lyrics and song choice was not enough.
“I think we can all agree that violent homophobia and misogyny are clearly out of bounds and have no place on this campus,” Brown said. “Multiple songs on Acid Rap depict actions that are in clear violation of our community standards, a reality that should prohibit Chance's presence on campus. This performance is especially upsetting in light of the recent hate-letter that managed to combine homophobia with the threat of rape against a student at this college; at a time in which our community should be finding ways of making maligned groups feel safer, we instead chose to hire an unabashedly homophobic singer to perform a concert.”
“The Concert Committee co-chairs and I were completely unaware of the content in question when we booked Chance,” Fouhey said. “The concerns over some of the lyrics were brought to our attention last Monday, Oct. 22. I do sincerely apologize. We never intended to hurt anyone.”
Besides Brown, the controversy has sparked a debate from a variety of other opinions about discussing homophobia on campus and applying community standards to artists visiting the College.
SGA President Rachel Liddell ‘15 said that Chance’s content is disrespectful and offensive to many students on campus, but worries that talk about completely canceling the concert would have crossed a line from concern to censorship.
“I find the content offensive, yet I respect the right of others to tell me things with which I don't agree,” Liddell said. “I don’t want people to be censored. I think that saying ‘bringing Chance to campus condones homophobia’ is an overstatement.”
Liddell further explained that if the concert had been canceled, Middlebury still would have been obligated to pay Chance for a show that never happened. She also believes that the debate resulting from the controversy is a positive outcome, asserting that, “the concert will spark the conversations people wanted to have.”
Boggs added that a complicated conversation took place when considering what to do about the concert.
“Right now we don’t have criteria for evaluating these kinds of decisions. Our struggle was to figure out how to be compassionate and effective allies amid all the complexity in a short period of time. We have a lot to learn from this situation, and we need to figure this out together,” Boggs said.
Collado personally spoke with Chance’s management, requesting that the artist leave homophobic lyrics out of his performance.
“[Chance] is aware of our concerns and our plans for an engaging and honest community forum,” wrote Collado in an email. “[Chance’s manager] said he understood and respected our request and that he was looking forward to being on campus and performing for us.”
Cailey Cron ’14 appreciated the censorship of the lyric, but feels that the controversy should be channeled to discuss a larger campus issue.
“If a lyric is missing, it’s not going to matter unless we seize the opportunity to have a conversation about homophobia on this campus,” Cron said. “Chance will come on Saturday and then on Sunday he will leave. This is not about Chance the Rapper. What we need to fight is blissful ignorance. Chances to address homophobia have come up twice in the past few weeks, and as a campus we need to talk. I’d like to see the administration take a strong, public stand against homophobia. I’m at a loss as to why that’s controversial.”
Benay disagrees with the idea of canceling the concert.
“Of all rappers, Chance’s stuff is way more about drugs and how hopeful he is about his future, and he has lyrics about anti-violence.”
While Benay disagrees with Chance’s use of the word ‘faggot’, he thinks that the compromise between Chance and Collado is reasonable.
“It sort of bums me out that he uses that word, but the idea that he would not come just because of that is sad especially because MCAB hit it out of the park in terms of choosing an act this time.”
To address this issue, Boggs announced that at 7 p.m. on Monday, November 4 in Axinn 229, Student Activities and MCAB will be hosting an open forum to discuss how decisions are made about all kinds of possibly offensive art forms at the College. The forum aims to allow candid conversation about the application of community standards to artistic expression and how they should affect choices about who is invited to campus. MCAB also hopes that this conversation will help to better inform the student group’s decision making in the future.
Forum
Cron does not think that the controversy should revolve around two groups of students pulled to join one extreme opinion or the other. “We’ve created a false choice between having performers violate community standards and censoring all dissenting opinion,” Cron said. “I hope we can use the concept as an entry point to a far more important conversation that has to do with us as a community and the relationship between the student body and administration. It is a hard conversation to approach if the administration hasn’t publicly stated its commitment to protecting and welcoming the queer community and concerns.”
Boggs has high expectations regarding the potential impact of the forum.
“I hope that while we wrestle with these issues, we can commit to listening carefully, act in ways that foster inclusivity, and bridge the divide that’s happening right now,” she said. “Knowing that this is just an initial conversation, I’m hopeful we can both show support for students who feel marginalized and influence MCAB’s work in positive ways.”
[CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article, as well as that in print, stated that "the administration asked Chance not to sing Favorite Song." This was incorrect; they asked Chance not to sing the lyric “slap-happy faggot slapper” or use any homophobic terms during his entire performance. ]
(10/30/13 10:09pm)
Midway through a semester of routine cheating, an economics professor told Billy – whose name has been changed to protect his identity – and his friends to write down their names and where they sat in the examination room. The professor’s unvarnished command plunged Billy into an emotional apocalypse.
“We had been going overboard with the cheating. That whole week we were freaking out – what are we going to tell our parents? What are we going to do?”
Billy and three other friends had sat in a line together, the smarter of his friend passing solutions down the line. In a class of 25 students in Warner Science Building and no proctor, Billy would copy the answers from his friend to the left and down the line the answers went, with little effort to conceal their shifting eyes.
Even as he was in crisis, the thought of self-reporting never crossed his mind.
“We were absolutely sure it was 100 percent us,” he recalled. “There was no good reason to report it. If it was coming out we’ll hear about it within the next few days. I thought about telling my parents, just because I couldn’t keep it to myself, but I had my friends.”
But the twists just keep coming. They overheard later that week that it was, in fact, another group of guys in that same exam room that got caught cheating—not Billy and his friends. “My guess is that someone pointed them out. It shows the prevalence of cheating on campus. In a class of about 25 students, pretty much half the class cheated in that exam room.”
“It was a huge wake-up call,” Billy said, throwing his hands down in one of the few statements he made without stumbling through words like pretty much or I guess. “We were saying to each other that we will never cheat again and that we’ll just take the F.” But even after nearly getting derailed, he admits that the experience “didn’t completely reverse” his cheating habit.
What makes Billy’s story so compelling is that he is emblematic of a larger trend.
According to a survey last spring conducted by Craig Thompson ’14 for his Economics of Sin class, 35 percent of the 377 surveyed students admitted to violating the Honor Code at least once in the past academic year (2012-13), the latest volley of cheating allegations landing on Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs Karen Guttentag’s desk just last week. But 97 percent of the self-admitted Honor Code violators in his survey went uncaught.
“If I were to take those numbers at face value, I’d be very concerned about what it means for us and what it means for the student body,” said President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz, who admitted to bringing cheating charges against students as a professor. “I’ve been here for 30 years and I’ve always been concerned about the veracity of honor codes like the one we have.”
Even though the percentage of self-reported cheaters last year was only slighter higher than those in 2008, the number of convictions for cheating – excluding plagiarism, which is less cut-and-dry – is climbing. According to the Honor Code Review Committee report published last spring, the number of instances in which a student was found guilty of cheating increased four-folds over the course of just three academic years.
But it’s tricky business figuring out why cheating convictions and cases of self-reported cheating are on the rise. Dean of Judicial Affairs Karen Guttentag said there are only theories right now and no definitive answers to the why questions.
“Maybe it’s a reflection of an increase in comfort in admitting to cheating,” she said. “But sadly, my sense is the taboo on cheating seems to be weaker, so students are less inhibited about acknowledging their unethical actions. All of which is to say – bad news.”
But from talking to numerous student leaders, administrators, faculty members and national research experts, there is a clear shift in the academic culture that is threatening to hollow out the Honor Code.
A Close Call
“It seemed easier to cheat, because cheating was more acceptable than a C-,” said Billy. “I was scared, coming into freshmen year and worried about my GPA and potential for the future.”
Since his close call in the first-year microeconomics course, Billy claimed he swore off the large-scale cheating. But he hasn’t been totally clean. When asked when the last time he cheated was, Billy sighed. He had a look like he was finding his footing into more honesty and before leaving self-preservation, but decided to sidestep the question entirely: “Well, the best way I can put it is that I’ve gotten a lot more self-conscious – well, not self-conscious – but I have a lot more integrity from the work,” he said. “But I couldn’t say that I haven’t glanced over a person’s test and taken an answer.”
“I am in something that genuinely feels like a passion and not in economics trying to get into a high-paying finance job,” he said. “Personally, I would take the lessons I learned and take them with me into the real world, but I could see how someone who, after having abided by the honor code for four years and then getting into the real world where there is no honor code, could get back into cheating in many ways.”
When asked whether every cheater gets what is coming to them, he let out a smile. “I don’t think so.”
Billy’s story is something of a failed morality tale, one driven by a desire to survive, scarred by the threat of losing everything, and changed — maybe only slightly — by the College’s culture of academic integrity central to the Honor Code. But whether he was changed by it, even he didn’t seem to know.
“After that experience, it was more about the integrity of the work. It’s a good feeling to know that I don’t need anyone else’s answer and I can accept it.”
By the end of our conversation, it was clear that he was scarred, but not transformed.
“I couldn’t promise you that if a person’s answer was right in front of me, and all I needed was just one more question, I wouldn’t say there’s a 100 percent chance that I wouldn’t look at that person’s paper,” he explained. “But I haven’t done that in a while. I wouldn’t say that I would never cheat on anything in my life.”
Here and Now
Associate Professor of History Amy Morsman was struck by the cynicism in academic integrity from students in the first-year seminar she taught last fall. She passed out an article about the recent cheating scandal at Harvard University, thinking this was a chance to impart to her students what life means with an Honor Code.
“I expected them to be shocked and outraged by this breach in ethics,” she said. “I was mystified by the sort of ho-hum response my first-year students gave.”
Some of her first-years embraced an attitude of “well, in the world of today, to get ahead you might have to do this,” Morsman recounted. “Some of my students already seemed so jaded by the world.”
As it stands, the Code requires students to report witnessed cheating. But students who fail to, face a punishment that even the Chair of the Student Honor Code Committee (SHCC) Alison Maxwell ’15 couldn’t articulate.
“I don’t know what the specific punishment is [for a witness who failed to report cheating], because it’s not common for the judicial board,” she said. “We can’t actually know when someone has broken the honor code in that way.”
All the assets that an Honor Code offers — an unique trust between student and professor, the freedom to take an exam without suspicion in the room — gets no play at Middlebury, if integrity is lost on students in that same room. This failure has sent the SHCC to reevaluate the sustainability of peer-proctored exams.
But the chronicity of cheating and rising number in cases of apprehended cheaters is not a sure-fire sign that the community’s morality is hemorrhaging red. Approximately one in four allegations, usually in the context of plagiarism, are cases, in which the students are confused, “the result of insufficient instruction on the part of the College, [but more likely] a failure on the part of the student to internalize that information,” according to Guttentag.
The flurry of information sharing has also led to more confusion where the Internet has colored gray an area in plagiarism. Constant information juggling obscures our original ideas from the ideas we read and, as a result, the lines on plagiarism blur.
“Notions of originality have transformed today, because things are so easily copy-able,” Film and Media Culture Professor and Academic Judicial Board (AJB) member Jason Mittell said. “So much of what people are reading are re-blogs of other people’s works or references to other people’s creativity — with or without citation. We live in a culture of quoting and of remix and reference.
“I think traditional citation guidelines are hard to wrap your head around if you’ve been brought up in this generation of — I don’t want to say loose standards, but different types of practices where citing is not relevant. Precise referencing or asking permission to quote someone just doesn’t make as much intuitive sense to many students today. And sometimes that doesn’t make sense to me either.”
And SGA President Rachel Liddell hinges on Mittell’s point about the clash of tradition and today. For her, the Honor Code has a different meaning when its tradition, over a breadth of time, is worked into today’s context, a state of academic honesty she is “dissatisfied with at Middlebury.”
“The Honor Code has a beautiful history, where students got together and worked really hard to write it and pass it,” she said. “We don’t own it anymore. And if we don’t want to own it, then we have to figure out what else we want to own.”
Dean of the College Shirley Collado, suggest that the pressure to succeed doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
“We’re seeing a trend not just in Middlebury but at a number of selective colleges – and I’ve talked to many colleagues around the country about this – that students are really feeling the pressure: what it’s going to be like to be part of a global job market and exceling and being an excellent student at Middlebury,” she said. “So I don’t know how much of a role that plays in stress or academic dishonesty. It’s a question I raise.”
Beyond the Bubble
But cheating is not a Middlebury-centric issue. In fact, cheating happens less in schools with an Honor Code, according to the research.
The College’s cheating statistic runs consistent with similar schools with honor codes like Duke University, which identified in 2006 that 29 percent of students admitted to unauthorized collaboration. But in larger schools without an honor code, like Harvard University, more than 40 percent of freshmen admitted to cheating on homework, according to a survey conducted by the The Harvard Crimson earlier this year.
“Schools with honor codes are better off,” said Donald McCabe, professor at the Rutgers Business School and leading researcher in cheating. “Overall, honor codes work reasonably well though not perfect. The smaller the community, like at Middlebury, the easier it is to do. It creates a sense of community in which students realize that when they cheat, they’re cheating their fellow classmates. Large schools like Penn State and Rutgers are trying to increase the level of integrity among students and finding it very difficult.”
But compare Middlebury to the University of California, Berkeley, with nearly 36,000 students, where there is more anonymity and less noticeable impact.
“Cheating is no big deal, because it happens all the time,” Jasmin Soltani, a chemical-engineering student at UC Berkeley said. “It is ridiculously easy at a school this big with understaffed faculty in test-taking rooms.”
When explained the intention behind the Honor Code — that there is supposed to be ethical temptation, Soltani was skeptical. [1]
“The kind of unproctored exams at Middlebury would not work at all in Cal. 500 students taking the same exam in an unsupervised room? That sounds like a joke,” she said. “The academic environment (at Cal) is very cut throat and people would not pass up a chance to get ahead of the curve.”
Other students offer a more nuanced take on the cheating culture at UC Berkeley.
“Honestly, I saw very little cheating during my four years at Cal,” said Emma Vadapalas, a history and economics major who graduated UC Berkeley this year in May. “Most of the instances I recall involve minor infractions, such as students copying problem sets from each other or getting a friend more versed in the material to do a problem set for them. I call these minor infractions because if caught cheating, the student would get a zero on the assignment but not flunk the class.”
McCabe warns against this kind of lowered standards that qualify cheating. “The number of general cheating have gone down, but at the same time, there are a number of students who dismiss low levels of cheating and feel okay justifying it. I see it as a danger,” a slippery slope toward rationalizing severe acts of cheating.
Unlike UC Berkeley, Middlebury’s judicial process reviews cheating cases by the case.
Even if the College does have a lower prevalence of cheating than its larger counterparts, Liddell said that especially at a small community, there is a real cost to dishonesty – and we all pay it.
“The truth is, if I were to cheat, I hurt myself, but I also hurt professors and my fellow students,” Liddell said. “If I were to cheat and I get a 98, and then the professor looks at you, who got an 82, and you look worse. Cheating of all forms damages all students.
The Future of the Honor Code
That does not mean improvements are not in order. But even with great strides taken to address problems of the Honor Code in last year’s review – the HCRC redesigned go/citations and developed field-specific responses to ethical dilemmas – this semester, nine professors are currently piloting Turnitin.com, a plagiarism detection service. After this semester’s trial run, there will be talk of Turnitin’s expansion, the implications of which could severely shake the trust built into the Honor Code.
But students and professors staked out different views on the introduction of Turnitin.com.
“The point of using Turnitin.com is not to catch and haul students into the AJB room on charges of plagiarism, but to fix the problem before it becomes a habit,” said Morsman, one of the nine professors experimenting with Turnitin.com.
“We do ask professors to check for plagiarism when they read our papers and Turnitin provides a more efficient method of the same process,” Liddell said. “But though not a violation of student rights, Turnitin is not congruent with the idea of the Honor Code, because it does not rely on trust and it does not rely on mutual respect.”
The introduction of Turnitin might be a prelude to the far greater changes the Honor Code could suffer if cheating continues.
Indeed, at a time when cheating reports are climbing, strides are being made to tackle the problem from all directions: top-down — through Turnitin — as well as ground-up. A main focus of the recently formed SHCC is to fix the system of peer proctoring, which Maxwell says is a broken part of the Honor Code.
“I feel like we are forcing students to break the honor code when we ask them to proctor each other,” Maxwell said. “Everyone we’ve talked to said ‘I will never tattle on a fellow student,’ so it’s very clear it doesn’t work. We’re coming up with a solution, but I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. Only time will tell.”
But Associate Professor of Economics Jessica Holmes, who teaches Economics of Sin, too, concedes that peer-proctoring empirically does not work, but offers a quick solution.
“The fix is simple: proctoring. It is too small of a community and no one wants to be viewed as the ‘rat.’ Proctoring [would] reduce both cheating and the pressure on students to report on each other,” she said. “How can I ensure the academic integrity of the exam environment if I am not in the room?”
But even professors who have not brought students up on charges are aware of the shifts.
“I’ve been teaching here for 12 years and I’ve never brought a student up on charges,” Morsman said. “But I hear about cheating more from students and I hear it more from staff and the people bringing cases to the judicial board. I’m aware that it exists, that it’s getting worse, and the College is responding to it.”
Members of the community are slowly backing away from the original vision of the Honor Code. Doubtless, students and professors hope to see the Honor Code hold its own in an increasingly competitive society and succeed. But there are signs that things are about to be different. In the midst of the decisive failure of peer proctoring, the formation of the SHCC and the fortification of preventative measures like Turnitin, it is entirely possible that perhaps a decade from now will look entirely different — a proctor in every exam room and a website reading each paper.
[1] With regard to this article's definition of the Honor Code: "When explained the intention behind the Honor Code — that there is supposed to be ethical temptation, Soltani was skeptical" was adapted not from the Middlebury Handbook, but from a New York Times piece about the general Honor Code: "The intention of honor codes is to generate the very situation you describe as precarious: they’re supposed to create ethical temptation."
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article, as well as that in print, quoted Professor of Media Studies Jason Mittell of saying, "Precise referencing or asking permission to quote someone just doesn’t make intuitive sense to students today. And it doesn’t make sense to me either sometimes.” There was a missing qualifying statement; it should be "Precise referencing or asking permission to quote someone just doesn't make as much intuitive sense to students today."
(10/10/13 12:34am)
Over the last three years, enrollment in Computer Science courses at the College has tripled. The growth is the largest in any department in recent history, and is in keeping with nationwide enrollment trends, spurred by job opportunities and the glamorization of start-ups, entrepreneurship and new technologies.
Enrollment in Computer Science courses was tallied at 451 for the 2012-2013 academic year, up from 164 in 2008-2009. The number of students majoring in Computer Science has increased significantly as well, with 10 declared majors in the class of 2014 and 20 in the class of 2015 — the most that the Computer Science department has ever experienced.
This growth is in keeping with national trends, as a report by the Computing Research Association published in March 2013 revealed that the number of undergraduate students studying computer science had risen by double digits for the third consecutive year. Earlier this fall, Harvard University announced that enrollment in its introductory computer science course had grown 590 percent in a decade, from 112 in 2004 to 771 in 2013.
Founded in the mid-1980s, the Computer Science major was originally housed within the department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Computer Science courses were taught initially led by mathematics professors and Library Information Services (LIS) faculty members. However the College gradually expanded the department and hired more full-time faculty including Computer Science Department Chair Matthew Dickerson, hired in 1989 as the College’s first professor with a doctorate in Computer Science.
Dickerson noted the early challenges for liberal arts colleges seeking to establish Computer Science departments in he 1980s, as larger universities offered greater research opportunities and more competitive salaries. By the time Computer Science became a freestanding department in the early 2000s, the discipline had seen substantial growth and development.
“By that time, we had our own critical mass,” Dickerson said. “We had five computer science professors, we had our entirely own curriculum, we had our entirely own major.”
Student interest in Computer Science has grown steadily since then, with more students enrolling in 100-level courses than ever before.
“Next year, for the first time ever, there will be [all five Computer Science professors] on campus teaching all at once. In the past, someone has always been on leave,” Dickerson said. “That will enable us to offer a lot of 100-level sections so that everyone who wants to get into a 100-level class will be able to. And we’re also doubling the number of sections of our 200-level classes.”
Dickerson said that the increased enrollment became especially noticeable three years ago, and subsequent growth has been accommodated with and aided by the addition of two new 100-level courses, as opposed to a single one-size-fits-all introductory course.
“I think that helped students to see how interesting the discipline was and how it related to other disciplines,” Dickerson said, noting that the new courses cater to the multiple problem solving strategies taught in Computer Science, with emphasis on experimentation, deductive reasoning and engineering.
Such is the reason that Bryan Holtzman ’14 decided to enroll in CSCI 150: Computing for the Sciences.
“It’s a growing field with many applications to areas beyond computer science. As such, I decided to enroll to see what all the fuss was about, and I hope to learn the ways in which computer scientists think,” he said.
Increased demand for computer programmers, website and app developers and a general knowledge of coding languages in the post-graduate realm has also contributed to increased enrollment.
While no other department at the College has experienced a change as extreme as Computer Science, enrollment statistics over the past five years have displayed growth in Biology, Economics, Education Studies, Mathematics and Women’s and Gender Studies. By contrast, enrollment in English and American Literatures and Religion courses has decreased slightly.
“Over a five-year period, you get a lot of up and down and it’s hard to see what’s just fluctuating and what’s really changing,” said Dean of Faculty and Philip Battell/Sarah Stewart Professor of Biology Andrea Lloyd. “It’s striking to see how much enrollment can change from year to year because of what people happen to be interested in.”
Lloyd noted that the College’s enrollment shifts are mostly consistent with nationwide trends.
“The thing we’re seeing in the longer-term data is an increase in the sciences and interdisciplinary programs, and declining enrollment in some, but not all, of the humanities,” she said.
“The Computer Science [enrollment trend] is an unbelievably striking pattern,” Lloyd said. “Though I’m actually less surprised that the numbers are high now than I am that they were low back then,” citing the growing emphasis on new technologies as a major influencing factor.
