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(10/10/13 12:33am)
Fall is my favorite season. I love how the brightly colored trees pop against the blue skies. I love the sound of leaves rustling beneath my feet. I love the excitement of a new school year juxtaposed with the shortening days and the threat of winter. My favorite part of fall, however, is the apples. Their sweetness cannot be compared; their crunch cannot be characterized. They are perfect. Perhaps the most impressive attribute, however, is their source. The apples served in our dining halls are local, grown in our very own state of Vermont.
Middlebury College Dining Services is committed to serving local food to students, and items such as applesauce and dairy products, are locally sourced. One-fifth of the dining budget is currently spent on buying food that is grown or processed in Vermont and one-third is spent on “local” food, or food that comes from within a 250-mile radius. However, many students desire more. Last year, nearly 75 percent of you said that you would support the College increasing its dining budget in order to provide more locally-sourced foods. The local food movement is growing exponentially on this campus, and the SGA is committed to bringing more local food into our dining halls, but there are some important questions we must ask first.
As a campus, we need to think about what we’re trying to accomplish through this goal. Are we trying to care for the environment? Stimulate the local economy? Protect producers of food from poverty? Do the phrases ‘just food,’ ‘sustainable food,’ or ‘organic food’ better achieve these goals? Do we value fair-trade coffee as much as getting milk from down the road? What are we willing to sacrifice in exchange for sustainable food? Do we want less red meat in the dining halls? Should we commit to only serving local meat? Do we want to trade vegetal variety for Vermont-grown produce? We all want to be good stewards of the environment, but at what cost? Are we willing to change our meal plan in order to afford more sustainable food? Let’s take time to consider these questions, strengthen the food movement as a whole and educate ourselves about these different issues. We must be informed in order to make these difficult decisions.
In the coming weeks, the SGA will be conducting a comprehensive survey on everything food-related to help us answer some of those questions. We aim to ask more questions, develop pragmatic goals, and create a practical plan of action to achieve them.
But we need your help. Let us know what’s important to you. Email us at sga@middlebury.edu, write on our Facebook, tweet us @Midd_SGA.
(10/10/13 12:29am)
Whether you eat there once a week, or just enjoy a sub from time to time, we can all agree that Costello’s Market is a staple of Middlebury.
Many students of the College frequent this Italian market in the Marble Works Many move in and out quickly, rushing to class or to a club meeting, just picking up a sandwich and leaving. As a result, many of us have yet to meet the faces behind it all.
Meet Carolyn Costello. She has lived in Middlebury her entire life and co-owns the market, located at 2 Maple St., with her husband John Costello.
The couple has worked in the restaurant business for their entire lives, but as John began to approach his sixties, he chose to leave the stress of working on-the-line after 40 years.
The couple then decided to open Costello’s market in 2007, which Carolyn describes as a daunting leap of faith. They were uncertain whether the Restaurant’s business could support them both. Costello’s, however, has since earned a loyal customer base.
Costello’s boasts an extensive menu of unique sandwiches, salads, pasta and seafood. It occupies a cozy storefront with authentic Italian products covering every inch of it.
The couple purchases vegetables from local growers but are influenced primarily by their almost yearly travels to Italy. According to Carolyn, however, John has an open mind and believes that he can learn about cooking from anybody.
She attributes a great deal of the business’s success to her husband’s culinary skills and speaks about him with admiration.
“John is extremely talented, I believe,” Carolyn said. “That is my opinion. He is very humble, so he would never say that. I think he is very creative.”
A long past with the community has also aided Costello’s success. Carolyn comes from a long line of successful Middlebury business owners; her uncle ran a bakery here, and her grandfather owned a gas station where the Otter Creek bakery currently is.
“That is another plus when you’re opening a business,” said Carolyn, “for people to know who you are and a little bit of your history.”
The couple works tirelessly around the clock, sometimes seventy hours a week.
“But it’s ok,” said Carolyn, “because all this hard work is paying off. We have this great business.”
For those of us who spend only four years here in Middlebury, it is hard to imagine the connection that Carolyn feels with the town.
“When I go shopping it takes me an hour to get one thing because I know everybody at the grocery store,” Carolyn said. “I just love the people. Everyone knows everyone.”
She believes that Middlebury has changed noticeably throughout her time here, growing in size and developing new commercial centers. Still, she believes that it retains its distinct charm and intimacy.
“It is nice to have that small feel even though I know it isn’t as small as it used to be,” said Carolyn.
She chats with nearly all her customers, extending her small town friendliness to Middlebury students.
“A lot of times, I feel they are my own kids,” said Carolyn.
To her, meeting new customers and connecting with old ones is her favorite part of going to work. The couple lack any grand ambitions of expanding but hope to maintain their pattern of consistent growth.
“We just want to keep on going like we have been going,” said Carolyn. “We feel quite lucky to have what we have.”
And the Middlebury community feels lucky to have Costello’s as well.
(10/09/13 4:00am)
Wes Doner climbs into the driver’s seat of the truck and pulls on a pair of plastic gloves. “Are you guys ready?” he asks with a grin. It’s 12:30 p.m. on a Friday afternoon and Doner, a waste and recycling handler with facilities services, is about to start the third leg of his daily route collecting garbage from around campus.
The massive vehicle revs its engines and throttles up the hill from the Recycling Center. “We’ve got to hit Hillcrest Road, grab all the bags on toss them on the truck,” Doner said.
Doner has worked for the College for four years but this is his first week as Recycling Handler.
“Before, I was a floater and before I was a floater I was on crew, so I used to clean carpets and buff floors,” he said.
The first stop is behind Proctor Dining Hall, where a garbage truck is lifting bins of food waste into the back of the truck using a mechanized arm. Mounds of uneaten food pour from the upside-down containers into the truck, en route to be turned into compost.
Around the corner at Stewart Hall is the visible sign of student waste, with around 30 plastic bags piled at the corner. According to Doner, today’s amount of garbage is typical.
“If it’s real nasty then we’ll toss it but if it’s alright we’ll go through it a little bit,” Doner said, referring to the sorting that happens at the Recycling Center. A CD with “Mumford & Sons” written on it in Sharpie is visible in one of the garbage bags before Doner grabs it and tosses it in the truck.
Grabbing several bags at a time and throwing them into the truck, Doner said, “One thing that frustrates me is a lot of them aren’t tied and we have to tie them.”
Dorms like Stewart generate much of the garbage Doner takes down the hill in the truck. When asked which dorms are the biggest garbage-generators, Doner responds, “Battell and Allen (because they are together), or over in Atwater.”
At the Davis Family Library, Doner pulls around to the back and opens a sliding garage door. Although the Library is not a site one would think of as generating heaps of trash, Doner immediately begins hauling bags filled with Coke cans into the truck. A cardboard box filled with dirty dishes and cups sits on the ground next to the containers.
“We’ll gather them up after a while and bring them back to the dining hall,” Doner said.
Some of the plastic bags Doner is loading into the truck are practically bursting with the refuse of studious individuals. The truck is already almost a third full of plastic bags. Doner says the truck — the size of two minivans — can sometimes get completely filled with garbage bags.
“Some Mondays it can get like that. We just open it up and start grabbing and then get up into the truck,” he said.
Doner, who used to box at the Boys’ and Girls’ Club of Connecticut, goes after the garbage bags with the same tenacity as a prizefighter in the ring. The nature of Doner’s job is it can never be completely finished — every day, more trash fills the containers in dorms and academic buildings, and in turn ends up on the corner for him to grab. When asked if it gets frustrating, Doner is nonplussed.
“I just go with the flow – it’s work, you know,” he says.
Most of the time Doner unloads all the bags himself, as he was doing on Friday. He says he would not have it any other way.
“Usually I would rather do it myself anyways so I can get it done and get back on the route again,” he said.
Doner is no slouch when it comes to completing the route. “We usually have break about two o’ clock but I don’t take break; I just go back there and unload and go back out,” he says.
Mondays bring a titanic amount of garbage to pick up, Doner said, but that Friday presents it own challenges.
“Friday I have to make sure I get everything” he said. “we can’t leave anything out over the weekend.”
The route seems like it should take two people; Doner single-handedly drives the truck, parks it, jumps out, opens whatever gate is in the way, grabs the bags and hurls them into the truck.
Glancing into some of the bags by Meeker, Doner explains one of his frustrations with the job.
“There is one thing that gets me. When the students don’t take the time to throw the can into the recycling bin, when they throw it right in the garbage, that pretty much sucks right there,” said Doner. “Some days it is mixed and it gets the guys at the Recycling Center a little aggravated. And it’s hard for me to sort it and it’s frustrating.”
Melissa Beckwith, assistant director of support services in facilities services, dispelled the fustrating myth about Waste Management.
“One thing we hear frequently is, ‘Well, we don’t have to sort it because they’re going to sort it.’ That’s totally the wrong attitude. We would like people to sort it so we don’t have to because it makes the whole system much more efficient.”
When asked if the lack of sorting happens a lot, Doner said some stops are worse than others.
“I usually throw the garbage on the right side of the truck, and when I get down there I’ll look through to make sure there isn’t spaghetti sauce all over or something,” he said.
Doner has his share of horror stories – finding bottles filled with urine is not out of the question, he says incredulously.
“Come on, are students too lazy to go to the bathroom?” he asks.
While there were no encounters with wildlife on Friday, Doner has had to tangle with squirrels hoping to access the garbage.
“There was sometimes when I’ve had to move a bag around so they can get out. But now they’ll hear the truck and get right out of there,” he said.
The nature of the work at the Recycling Center can be constant. In 2012, Waste Management processed 2,485,000 pounds of recycling, compost, universal wastes and hazardous waste.
“If you empty a couple carts, within an hour they’re full again,” Beckwith said. “It’s kind of like the research paper you can never finish.”
(10/03/13 1:00am)
How heavily is our style influenced by our surroundings? Jack Supple ’14 went to Berlin, Germany last fall with one self-identity and left with a new, improved and slightly more European one.
Before leaving to go abroad Supple didn’t necessarily consider style among his top priorities, although he was constantly searching to add new, unique items to his repertoire.
“I basically wore sweats and basketball shoes in bright colors,” commented Supple. Supple credits the College for initially pushing him to try out new styles and become more free in his wardrobe choices.
“Before coming to Middlebury I only wore the clothing that my mother and father bought me or that I picked up in college gift shops,” said Supple. Initially in shock in his first weeks abroad, he realized that he had never been exposed to such a vibrant, evolving culture of street style. He’s also from Boston, Mass.
“I got to Berlin and thought why do all these people look 10,000 times more cool than me? I know I have it in me to look as good as them.”
When asked if one article of clothing in particular spawned his new style he responded with an anecdote about his first experience thrift store shopping in Berlin.
“It’s just a bunch of really cool, really old clothes,” said Supple. He described his encounter with one man who owned an upcycling store (a store that takes old clothes and essentially refurbishes them) who sold him a pair of sweatpants made from an old sweater.
“I basically lost my mind when I saw those pants. It’s a great feeling when you realize something was literally made for you,” he laughingly said.
Supple, after hours of contemplating German street style and the European aesthetic decided to put a more conscious effort into his dress.
“Now I like to surprise someone or put something where it doesn’t belong and have it still look really cool,” he said.
In addition, Supple has a new-found penchant for cutting his shirts into different shapes and sizes.
“Just wearing a t-shirt is boring. You can do so much with just a pair of scissors and an old tee,” he said, adding that it is also a good incentive to layer your clothing when your t-shirt is not covering much.
In his Sociology of Gender class Supple learned about Judith Butler’s theory that dress is a performance.
“I think that really applies to me. I enjoy spending time in clothes that I feel good in,” said Supple. He also commented that one of the advantages of having so many cool clothes is that it allows you to try on new identities.
“One of my favorite pieces of clothing was formerly a woman’s blouse and it’s amazing to wear on flowery summer days in the wind.”
The flexibility of Supple’s wardrobe choices demonstrates his wiliness to try on new identities and be constantly involved in the creation of his ever-evolving self-identity.
When asked if he could describe his style in three words Supple struggled to respond. After a couple minutes of thought he finally blurted three words out.
“Adventurous. Disheveled. Dank.”
(10/03/13 12:42am)
Before the school year began, Dean of International Studies Professor Jeffrey Cason decided to close the College’s school abroad in Egypt based at the University of Alexandria due to the political turmoil that continues to rock the country.
After the removal of President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt erupted into a state of chaos. After June 30, protests became violent and to date more than 600 people have been killed. Andrew Pochter, a 21-year-old American student from the Washington, D.C. area, was stabbed to death during a protest in Alexandria. Pochter was teaching English to 7 and 8 year-old children while studying Arabic.
Tragedies like the one involving Pochter are exactly why the college decided to postpone the program in Egypt.
“Our main concern is the safety of the students,” said Cason, “Alexandria has seen its fare share of protests and clashes.”
The current situation is not unfamiliar either to Hileil or to Cason. The College evacuated all of the students out of Alexandria in February 2011, but reopened the Alexandria program once again for the 2012-2013 academic year.
Nihad Hileil, the director of the program in Egypt, agrees that the decision was a logical one.
“(Cancellation) for the Fall was a more natural decision,” said Hileil. “A regime had been toppled and people were in the streets. Strife was inevitable.”
The closure was initially only meant for the Fall, but it became clear to both Hileil and Cason that the school should remain closed through the spring. A resident of Alexandria herself, Hileil noted that “While things are relatively calm now, there has still been sporadic violence, and there is this overwhelming uncertainty. It has only been two months since the situation became truly bad.”
For students of the College and other universities who applied to study in Alexandria, this means spending either the semester or the entire year in Amman, Jordan instead. However, not all students have been driven away by the danger in Egypt. Jeremy Kallan ’14 spent the summer in Cairo after having studied in Alexandria during the first semester of his junior year.
“When it comes to politics in Egypt, it is impossible to predict what is going to happen”, said Kallan. “But I know that I got a lot out of being there, despite the unrest.”
Even before the closure, the Alexandria program maintained strict rules for the American students. Often, students were prohibited from leaving campus due to protests in the city. Both Kallan and Hileil agreed that these restrictions can be stifling to the learning process, but are necessary concessions to student safety.
The program has a variety of other safeguards in place to keep students safe and to expedite an evacuation, if and when the program returns. The College maintains a contract with Global Rescue, a firm that facilitates evacuation from any location in the world, along with a detailed contingency plan.
“In the end it will be a 24-hour job,” said Hileil of considerations to re-open the Egypt program in fall 2014. “We will have to be constantly aware of the constantly changing nature of the situation”.
Although Hileil and Cason are hopeful that the program will return for the 2014-2015 school year, they remain unsure as to whether or not that will be possible.
(10/03/13 12:21am)
We often discuss the need for more community engagement as a student body. We’ve devoted barrels of ink and hours of our time to panels, papers, and symposia. Yet all of that leaves us with little more than a general agreement that something needs to be done differently. We would like to suggest a concrete solution to this problem: the implementation of a Community Education (C.E.) credit to be completed by every student before graduation.
The Weigh the Waste initiative launched by Molly Shane ’13.5 and Cailey Cron ’13.5 this year takes a look at the food waste produced in our dining halls by getting volunteers to scrape the extra food from student plates before putting them on the conveyer belt to the dish room. That this is not a step performed by students themselves on a daily basis speaks volumes about life here at Middlebury. In this community, we are divorced from much – if not all – of the work that keeps our lives comfortable. When we put food on our plates, we don’t consider the work required to cook it. When we finish eating, our dishes become somebody else’s problem. We don’t cut the grass outside our houses or trim the trees along our paths. Staff members mop up after our parties and take away the beer cans overflowing from every receptacle. Breaking a glass in the dining hall is met with mocking applause and a blue-uniformed staff member rushing to sweep up the shards while the student who dropped it continues on to their meal. At Middlebury, the only responsibility that many students have is their classes and their laundry, and some don’t even do the latter themselves.
We do not intend to ignore the many students who do have campus jobs, but few of those fall into the category of maintenance, grounds work, or cleaning. This should feel strange to us. This should feel uncomfortable. At home, we play a part in these essential tasks, and we will once again find ourselves thrust into them after graduation. That labor is what gives us ownership in our living space and pride – or shame – in its state of repair. That labor is the difference between a home and a hotel.
Although for students, Middlebury is a transitory space, it should feel like a home for our short time here. The implementation of a C.E. credit that would replace the second required Physical Education credit would endow students with an extra appreciation for this campus. While physical fitness is an important life skill – and one at which Middlebury students excel – it is no less important than an awareness of the work that goes into maintaining a habitable space. If golf, tennis or sailing are pastimes that can last a lifetime, the tasks performed by Middlebury staff members are no less critically important and often more physically demanding.
The C.E. credit would allow students to participate in one of these many tasks, whether gardening, scraping plates, or changing light bulbs. Like the P.E. credit that it would replace, it would require a minimum of eight hours of commitment – hardly a crippling burden to a chronically overcommitted student body. Seven colleges around the country currently form a consortium of institutions that require students to work at least ten to 15 hours per week, regardless of financial need. While a change to the working college model would be drastic, a lighter work requirement would serve to increase student ownership in their living space and to allow them to gain an appreciation for the hard work done by our many staff members without threatening their jobs.
A C.E. credit would also help to abate many of the challenges that we often blame on a lack of respect by the student body. A sense of ownership provides a better incentive to preventing vandalism than offers of free pizza. Students tasked with trimming the trees could watch them climb upwards over four years and feel the same anger as Landscape Horticulturist Tim Parsons when their branches are stripped in careless drunken shenanigans. Students who roll up their sleeves and wash dishes in Proctor might better appreciate the pressure created by cups that disappear faster than they can be returned to use. Students who help mop the floors of Atwater suites on Sunday mornings would feel disgust and contempt at the messes left by their peers.
These problems will never be fixed by abstract calls for dialogue and community without investment. Ownership creates respect, and respect creates change. We call on the SGA to petition the administration to implement a Community Education credit requirement that would help to create a community that feels like home rather than a well-manicured holding tank. This requirement would represent a major leap forward to a Middlebury College that truly integrates students into their community.
[audio mp3="http://middleburycampus.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Zach-Editorial-Podcast.mp3"][/audio]
Listen to Opinions Editor ZACH DRENNEN read this editorial.
(10/02/13 11:44pm)
John Wetzel, founder of Stone Leaf Teahouse in downtown Middlebury views tea as more than just a drink. Rather, it is a way of connecting people.
“It’s history, it’s culture, it’s modern society,” Wetzel said.
Wetzel had not truly tasted tea until he worked on a fishing boat after he graduated college. Sure, he had drank “tea” before in his life, but the ship’s captain informed him that his mass-produced bagged tea was not real tea. It was an imposter.
He introduced Wetzel to an Oolong variety of the rural Yunan region, China. Its sweet scent inspired Wetzel’s career.
Wetzel worked a series of jobs in construction and outdoor education, maintaining a fervent curiosity with tea all the while.
Years later, Wetzel rode a motor-scooter across the Central Highlands of Taiwan, visiting various tea growers. It was this experience that prompted him to open his very own tea shop.
“The hardest thing is buying the plane ticket,” said Wetzel, “That’s the analogy, taking that one leap when you’re not coming back,” referencing his signing the shop’s lease in 2009.
He remembers customers asking him behind the counter, during the store’s infant stages, whether he believed it could succeed. 2009, a year after the recession’s height, was a difficult time to open a business. Wetzel attributes his success to perseverance and to doing his homework.
He has traveled to India, China, Taiwan, Japan and elsewhere, finding suppliers for the shop. Two specific experiences he recalls with great joy include visiting the traditional Dai tribesmen in China harvesting tea leaves, as well as exploring an industrial tea complex in Japan.
To Wetzel, the economic component comes second to honing his craft.
“Making money is not the focal point,” said Wetzel “It’s my study, so that’s the focal point.”
The Stone Leaf Teahouse provides sustainably grown teas from China, Japan, Taiwan, India and Nepal. Each tea’s detailed description demonstrates an exceptional expertise, yet Wetzel humbly insists that making tasty tea requires no special knowledge.
Wetzel tells his customers, “The right way to make tea is how you like it.”
He sees his role bringing teas from across the globe to Middlebury as part of a larger operation.
“The reality of the world is we are connected,” said Wetzel. “We’re still breathing the same air and seeing the same moon and this is our way of sharing that connection.”
(10/02/13 11:39pm)
On every test and paper turned in by Middlebury College students, the honor code is scrawled across the bottom of the page. But outside of the Middlebury bubble, students may encounter a slightly different kind of honor code: ones that exist at meat and dairy farm roadside stalls in the local area.
A mile down Weybridge Road, at Scholten Family Farm, is a tiny cube-shaped structure painted red and marked by a neat white sign advertising the “Farm Stand.” It is an experiment in trust. Anyone can drop in and peruse the fridges full of whole chickens and ground beef sausage while eying a smaller selection of eggs, as well as the Scholten family’s “Weybridge” cheese.
If one finds produce to his or her liking, he or she can consult with a whiteboard hanging on the wall for the price, leave money in a jar while taking the proper change, and head home, purchases in hand.
Patti Scholten, who produces her cheese in a building not 20 feet from the stand, quotes her husband Roger on the logic of the honor system farm stand:
“Our consumers trust us to put up high-quality food, so we should trust them too,” said Scholten.
The Farm Stand isn’t a unique entity in the township of Weybridge, however. Just one mile north of Scholten Farm lies Duclos and Thompson Farm, home to what Middlebury students have nicknamed, “The Meat Shack.” The operation is comparable to the Farm Stand in the way that it is run, but Lisa Thompson, who manages the farm with her husband Tom Duclos, is hesitant to publicly label her store any which way.
“We don’t try to hide the fact that there’s a store, but there’s a reason we don’t have a sign out and that we don’t advertise,” Thompson said. “Because you know, the wrong people learn [how it works] and it gets abused and we have no business left.”
Despite Thompson’s reservations, neither farm has encountered major problems.
“I had a New York plate stop in here once and they took what was in [the cash box],” Scholten said.
Thompson too had the cash box stolen one night seven or eight years ago, but she suspects that it was high school students.
“It wasn’t what they took, it was just feeling violated. In general people are very appreciative of the way we do it and they want the meat … and they’re willing to respect that,” said Thompson
Students at the College rave about the services provided by these two farms. In fact, if you were at Weybridge House on Sept. 28 for the Weybridge Feast, you probably consumed Duclos and Thompson bacon. At 10 p.m. the previous night, Isaac Baker ’14 and a cohort of Weybridge House members ventured out to purchase the bacon. Baker and his friends gathered the meat they needed, left over fifty dollars in the cash box and went home.
If you were one of the lucky ones in attendance at Jordan Collins’s ’15.5 “Local Bacon” themed Dolci shift last spring, you enjoyed the very same bacon. Or, if you managed to make it to Brooker last spring for the Pig Roast, again you would have tasted a Duclos and Thompson raised hog.
Both Collins and Myles Kamischer-Koch, ’15, who helped to plan the Pig Roast, are frequent customers at the “Meat Shack” and can attest to the high quality of Duclos and Thompson bacon and other meats.
For Kamischer-Koch, it is the variety of the meats. He attests that it is a quality that you often can’t find at the store, which brings him back to the Meat Shack again and again.
When Baker wants chicken he skips the Meat Shack and goes to the Farm Stand, which he has also visited about fifteen times.
The Meat Shack and the Farm Stand are, on the whole, profitable enterprises for their owners. Scholten estimates the profits of the Farm Stand to account for only one to two percent of the farm’s yearly income, taking in approximately $600-900 a month. The Meat Shack brings in $4,500-5,500 in business most months, one-third of Duclos and Thompson’s annual income.
Thompson explained that for many years her farm’s focal point was the “hot-house lamb” or “roaster lamb” market, meaning that most of the lambs were sold at Easter and Greek Easter to be consumed for holiday dinners.
“The economy tanked after 9/11 and the people in the cities weren’t ready to celebrate [and as a result business] slowed down significantly. It came to a point where we had been planning on the income from those lambs going and when they didn’t go we had to do something because we had to market the animals. So we built the store,” Thompson said.
Thompson also explained that the Meat Shack is unstaffed, partly to save the cost of labor and partly because the farming schedule keeps them in the fields. And of course, there is the aspect of convenience.
“People come all times of the day and night, because it doesn’t have hours,” Thompson said.
Five years after the Meat Shack opened, the Farm Stand arrived up the road at Scholten Farm with a slightly different origin. Roger Scholten, intent upon producing organic milk and selling his family’s farmstead cheese, started visiting farms to gain a better sense of the industry. What he found was that many of the farms he visited had farm stands, derivative of their inclination towards a local customer base.
Scholten estimates that on average, the Farm Stand will attract six customers a day. An exceptional day might bring twenty.
“Even on our worst days we get someone. It’s a very diverse group,” Scholten said.
At the Meat Shack, Thompson describes a similar situation.
“There is never a day that people don’t come and sometimes there is never a week when we don’t have new customers,” she said. Citing the invoice papers left in the Meat Shack for customers to fill out as her source, Thompson estimates that the Meat Shack sees 300 customers a month.
Customer-producer relationships are a potential subject of debate with the honor system service. For the Scholtens, said relationship was the “inspiration” for the Farm Stand.
“When you’re just shipping fluid milk, milk drivers pick up and leave,” said Scholten. These days, she enjoys receiving notes from the Farm Stand’s customers, many of whom she has gotten to know over the years.
Not everyone is convinced that this kind of connection between consumer and producer exists with such shacks and sheds, however. Meat Shack customer Rebecca Roe ’15 is torn in terms of how she feels about the business model.
“I love that the Meat Shack operates [the way that it does] — but that means that I’ve never met or talked to the people who raise the animals,” Roe said. “I’ve only read profiles of the farmers online, so I’ve lost a key part of the consumer-producer relationship.”
But Nicholas Frazier, ’16.5, a Meat Shack regular disagrees.
“Half the times I’ve been there, [Tom and Lisa] walk in and say hello,” he said. “I think they do make an effort to try to meet as many of their customers as possible.”
Frazier’s testimony is consistent with Thompson’s admission that while there are times during the summer when she and Duclos are “gone on tractors all day long . . . there [are other] times we’re around here a lot, and if I come home and there’s a customer there I always go check and see if I can help.”
Thompson’s check-ins at Meat Shack have given birth to friendships, not only with Middlebury students, but with visiting families as well. Thompson recounted the story of a certain Middlebury graduate of 2012.5 whom she came to know.
Though the student was from the Keene Valley in New York, an hour and 45 minute drive from Middlebury, she had introduced her parents to the Meat Shack on a visit.
“It got to the point that her folks were here almost every week. And even though she’s graduated they’re still here on a pretty regular basis getting their meat,” Thompson said.
“Sometimes it’s the parents, the grandparents, a stray uncle,” said Thompson. “Parents weekend, homecoming, whatever, your folks are visiting, a huge number of kids bring their parents out and say ‘you’ve gotta see this,’ and then the parents say ‘you couldn’t do this where we live!’”
(09/25/13 7:22pm)
While some students claim to have filled out a work order, the work of the Facilities Services staff that keeps Middlebury running smoothly often happens under the radar. As a result, many students do not know the extent of Facilities’ operations.
“I think the magnitude and the time we spend would be the most surprising thing that I think people would find,” said Wayne Hall, Facilities Maintenance Supervisor for carpenters, painters, and locksmiths.
The trades that fall under Facilities’ purview include carpentry, plumbing, heating, landscaping, electrical, an auto shop, car rentals, night watch and waste management — not to mention snow removal. That magnitude is apparent from even a brief tour of the Facilities building.
The first point of contact students have with Facilities happens at a front office.
“All phone and computer information comes through the control desk and the intention is to have it funnel through here so we don’t miss anything,” said Hall. The control desk prints work orders based off that information.
Most of the staff carry two-way radios so they can be contacted immediately. A corridor with offices of management personnel and an IT staffer is next to the control desk. An additional room in that hallway is the plan room, with large metal filing cabinets with original floor plans of various buildings.
“All of the buildings from when they were constructed have all their plans here – electrical, everything,” said Hall. “If we have questions this is our resource for checking in history.”
One of Hall’s responsibilities is managing the locksmiths.
“We have a full lock shop here,” said Hall near the entrance to the office where locksmiths solve broken locks. “All the keys you need, all the keys we need, they do it here.”
The locksmith shop is also an example of how the work of the Facilities staffers is evolving all the time.
“Now we are going install more keypad locks,” Hall said. “Each year we are trying to do more and more so we rely less on keys and more on combo.”
A large table next to the lock room is where staff repairs windows, screens, and window shades.
While the Facilities staff does most of the work that is needed, contractors are occasionally brought in. Chimney repair, masonry and other major painting projects are handled by contractors who are contacted by a Facilities staffer specializing in outsourcing work.
Downstairs, custodial services staff can pick up their radios from a wall of equipment and keys. According to Hall, some of them report in at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. to clean buildings when no one is using them.
“Our service time used to be very shrunk but now expectations with the way the world is and schedules it has really broadened,” said Hall.
The carpentry shop, near Hall’s office, has a box with the name of each staffer with work orders in them.
The plumbing department is headquartered in a cavernous room where above a conference table are shelves of stock supplies and uniforms. The paint shop, close by, has two hockey goals on large tables that are being painted in anticipation of the hockey season.
By the end of a short walk through the building the broad range of tasks completed by Facilities is clear.
Hall began working for Facilities in 1994. “It’s been a good learning experience,” he said. “I’ve got a great group of guys with a wide range of skills and aptitudes. We’ve got a great group. We all complement each other and work as a team.”
Hall also coordinates with getting tenants off-campus since many faculty live off campus in college-owned housing that require Facilities staff to repair. He also said he has the advantage of being able to interact with students.
One of the staff members working under Hall is Ed DeMatties, a maintenance carpenter who has worked at Middlebury since 1990. DeMatties is also on the emergency response team for confined space rescue, trained to rescue people trapped in elevators, manholes or other spaces where Facilities works.
On Friday, he could be found jetting around campus in a green John Deere Gator. The first stop was an unoccupied room in Stewart Hall where DeMatties had to install a new window shade.
“This used to be a lounge here,” said DeMatties, pointing to a room adjacent to the one where he was working. “I put this wall in and installed that door. We did that just a couple weeks ago.”
DeMatties said Facilities makes a point to be both as efficient and non-disruptive as possible when working on student rooms. This time, a piece to repair the shade was missing.
“You think you have everything and you get all the way up there and you’re missing one thing,” he said. But I’ll be back and this room is empty so it’s not a real rush.”
A minute later, DeMatties’ two-way radio crackled to life with a call about 51 Main’s basement hot water heater leaking. “Plumbers get more stuff like that,” he said. “They all carry radios. I’m the only one in our shop besides Wayne who carries a radio.”
After evaluating the Stewart room and determining he needed more parts, DeMatties selected the next work order. After taking the Gator back to the Facilities building to pick up a door stop, he went back to Stewart to install it in another student room to prevent a cabinet from hitting a wall mounted sprinkler when opened.
DeMatties said they see a lot of student damage work orders come in.
“Usually after the weekend,” said DeMatties. “This year I haven’t seen much at all.” DeMatties added with a laugh that it was hopefully a part of the learning process.
Having worked at the College for over 20 years, DeMatties has seen his fair share of projects on campus, including a repair of all the sinks in the bathrooms of Hadley and Milliken Halls. “I came up with a design to replace them,” said DeMatties.
“Hopefully now they should last a long time,” he said.
Commencement used to take place behind Forest Hall, but when it was moved to Voter Hall, DeMatties helped arrange the setup for the ceremony and put the flags atop Voter.
“I went to school for architecture and so they had me come up with the plan for the seating layout and so it was kind of cool I got to do that,” said DeMatties. “Now they come to me for questions.”
Aside from his work on campus, he put his training in architecture to use when he designed and built his own house. After successfully installing a doorstop on the wall, it was over to the Mahaney Center for the Arts to pick up a framed poster of the upcoming Fine Arts events to be installed in Axinn. DeMatties deftly measured an area on the wall by the entrance to the building and screwed in the hangers for the poster.
DeMatties is also in the process of working on guardrails for beds in Voter. “When I put the first one in, somebody else said, ‘I’ll take on too,’ and so I put two in and now somebody else has seen it, and now I’m making one for all of them.”
Although Facilities sees between 1,200 to 1,500 work orders sent to them every month, that does not mean their work is highly visible.
“A lot of the stuff we do probably doesn’t get noticed, such as in student rooms,” said DeMatties. “If the person is there, we’ll tell them we fixed it. If they’re not there, we’ll leave a note tag inside the door telling them we were there and what we did.”
Hall echoed DeMatties’ sentiment. “[Facilities] is behind the scenes. Nobody realizes it until we’re called on,” he said. “Everybody plays a role whether you’re a custodian or a manger, no matter what, because the faculty and the students wouldn’t be able to do their jobs if it wasn’t clean or if the lights didn’t work. Everybody’s job, no matter what it is, is a key part of making it all work.”
(09/25/13 12:00pm)
MiddCAM is a new student organization that pairs a senior from Middlebury Union High School with a student from the College who acts as a mentor throughout the college admission process. Its goal is to prepare high school students for navigating the oft-daunting process of standardized testing, college essays and all else that comes with applying to colleges.
The high school works to identify students who have particular interest in college and the idea of a mentor. The organization’s philosophy underscores what a help guidance from someone with first-hand experience can be during a time that is simply overwhelming for many students.
A friend of Megan Ernst ’15 approached her in the summer of 2012 about starting a branch of a program based in Palo Alto called Phoenix Scholars. The success of Phoenix Scholars is apparent; they annually send dozens of their students to top-tier institutions around the country. That fall, Megan pitched the idea of opening a branch of Phoenix Scholars to the College.
Phoenix Scholars and MiddCAM have similar principles that revolve around mentorship throughout the college application process. A key distinction between the two organizations is that Phoenix Scholars imposes three demographic criteria — that a student must be a minority, low-income and a first-generation college student — out of which its students must satisfy two.
After demographic research of Addison County, Ernst found that such requirements would seriously limit the eligible number of students the College could work with. Ultimately, she decided to start a completely new program, MiddCAM, that would cater to the specific needs of the students through an involved one-on-one mentor. Through a mutual friend and shared interest Ernst teamed up with Jessica Kong ’15. They determined that financial aid could not be MiddCAM’s primary concern.
“We have expanded our focus to writing application essays, helping with college research and helping prepare them for every aspect of college.”
Mentors and mentees are often paired up randomly, Kong conceded.
“It’s hard to match based on academic interest because no one really knows what they want to study,” she said.
Though a perfect match is not always possible, the goal is for the relationship between mentor and mentee to be personalized. In all cases, a mentor will be a helpful resource with a fresh impression the college process.
Midd students understand the value of mentorship during application season, especially from a peer, rather than a trained expert. Caroline Guiot ’16 had a college counselor in high school, but does not hesitate in saying what a help it would have been to have a college student to talk to about the application process.
The value of such a mentor often proves irreplacable for certain students. “First generation kids don’t have the answers, partly because their parents never went to college or don’t speak enough English to get that kind of information,” MiddCAM Program Administrator Jessica Cheung ’15 said.
The inaugural MiddCAM mentors went to a training session hosted by the Middlebury College Admissions office, leaving the session remembering their own college search process, a flashback that will inform their mentoring strategies.
Middlebury Union played a big role in identifying students who would be matched with mentors. This year, mentors will meet mentees in early October, midway through the fall of their senior year. However, both Kong and Ernst feel confident that in subsequent years students will be paired with mentors in the second semester of junior year, just in time for the SAT. Once mentors and mentees are paired, they are granted a fair amount of autonomy.
There is no end date to the mentorship, nor is there a specific time commitment, but Ernst estimates that the face-to-face interaction will be about an hour per week along with editing and research that might not require meeting in person. Mentors cover the academic side of the process, navigating the Common App and its intricacies, but they will also be there for questions that students might have about what awaits them.
The mentor is responsible for establishing an agreeable schedule. Although the mentors have been briefed extensively, Guiot admits that this inaugural year could be tricky.
“We are starting a little late in the college process because it’s our first year, so we only have a couple months to work with our mentee,” she said.
A tenet of the mentorship is first-hand experience and Guiot acknowledges that she is not a professional but that her main job is “to share from my experience and help them stay on track.” The mentors will not be completely on their own in this process. Kong and Ernst, along with program administrators Cheung and Steven Zatarain ’15 will continually check in with mentors and offer an outlet for questions or concerns they may have.
MiddCAM exists to assure that students at an information disadvantage but have a demonstrated interest in attending college don’t fall through the cracks. MiddCAM is the first program of its kind to exist in the community — something Ernst describes as Middlebury’s “unique ability to provide mentors.”
Ernst and Kong have their eyes on the future and admit that in focusing on the senior year, “we don’t change the academic course of someone’s high school career.”
Looking forward, expansion seems imminent. Primarily, MiddCAM hopes to start with students in junior year, which would cover the bulk of standardized testing. While it is only MiddCAM’s first year, Ernst already has hopes to bring the program to other high schools in Addison County. For now, though, everyone involved is tremendously excited that the program is coming to life and that the first class of mentees and mentors are but days away from being matched up.
(09/19/13 12:16am)
In concession to strong student demand, the College has agreed to continue offering a finance course this academic year in a last-minute addition to the course catalog.
When the Alan R. Holmes Professor of Monetary Economics Scott Pardee, the College’s only finance professor, announced his intention to leave the economics department at the end of the last academic year, many students were concerned that finance courses would no longer be available at the College.
The economics department received several emails, letters and course evaluations voicing this concern. In response to students’ demands, the faculty has reinstated a finance course within the Interdepartmental category. Corporate Finance and Accounting (INTD 306) was a last-minute addition to the course catalog for the fall semester, and will be co-taught by Professor David Colander and newly-named Center for Careers and Internships (CCI) Emeritus Faculty Fellow Scott Pardee.
INTD 306 will be the only finance and accounting course offered this semester, a reduction from previous semesters when Pardee taught four courses devoted to the subject.
Following the College’s announcement of the course, 48 students enrolled in the class and 80 more were added to the waitlist, in spite of its last-minute appearance in the course catalog.
The demonstrated popularity of this course, in addition to the reduction of finance courses from four to one, has edged out some students hoping to prepare themselves for a career in finance.
“The Economics program at Middlebury is outstanding and I have benefitted immensely from it,” said Jake Feury ’16. “However, I strongly believe that adding more finance courses into Middlebury’s curriculum will help us perform better in job interviews and succeed in a career in finance after college. It would certainly make me feel more comfortable applying for jobs if I had the opportunity to take more finance courses here at Middlebury.”
Even Middlebury alumni are speaking out on the subject.
“As an alum who works in finance and took all of Prof. Pardee’s classes, I can definitely say that my experience looking for a job in finance would not have been the same without the knowledge that I gained in Prof. Pardee’s classes and more importantly, his real world experience in the field,” an online commenter to The Campus’ article titled “College Drops Finance Courses,” published last spring wrote. “When a MiddKid is out there competing with a Finance major from Yale, Dartmouth, it is better for the company to hire someone who needs less training.”
Both Colander and Pardee expressed a desire to spend the fall developing a curriculum of several new finance courses to supplement the current single offering.
Pardee emphasized the importance of these finance classes in giving students a competitive edge in the job search, as well as to the College’s standing.
“If you don’t have somebody here who is teaching that stuff then we lose,” said Pardee. “These schools that we are in deadly competition with have these courses so we have to have them to even maintain the position that we have.”
The debate over whether finance courses belong at the College represents a much larger discussion happening across departments about the role of specialized courses at a liberal arts college based on the current job market.
Christian A. Johnson Professor of Economics and Head of the Economics Department Peter Matthews disagreed, responding that the “out-of-the-box” thinking that a liberal arts education generates will make any Middlebury student marketable.
“The liberal arts experience … prepares students for all pursuits, not individual jobs, [and] for a lifetime of engagement with the world, not specific job interviews,” said Matthews. “I believe that the current Economics Department, with its renewed commitment to ‘research-based learning,’ embodies this experience, and I’m confident that our students are well prepared to excel in the world. I also know, however, that there are more opportunities than ever at the College to acquire marketable skills.”
Many students question if this is enough, however.
“Middlebury needs to reconsider what it means to be a liberal arts college in the 21st century and offering finance courses is part of this,” said Max Kagan ’14. “Students need job skills in order succeed in an increasingly competitive job market. The world is changing; the oft-repeated refrains that a liberal arts degree is a degree in ‘learning how to think’ and that ‘you can do anything with a liberal arts degree’ are under threat.”
(09/19/13 12:12am)
Six weeks ago I stepped out of the airport with a suitcase, two backpacks and new passport stamp. Having overconfidently thought that I could survive the Argentine “winter” in sandals after spending two J-terms in Vermont, my toes immediately froze in the crisp breeze. I gazed with envy over at the Argentine girls fashionably sporting Ugg boots with their leather jackets and made a mental note to invest in some close-toed shoes. The heat and humidity of North Carolina hadn’t followed me to the southern hemisphere.
Living in Buenos Aires and thinking, living and breathing in Spanish 24/7 is simultaneously fun, challenging, rewarding and exhausting. To give my adjustment a little context: I’ve been hanging out with Vermont’s cows in the Organic Garden for the past two years and spent my childhood in a small southern town where the biggest event was the annual Labor Day BBQ Picnic. Needless to say, transitioning to life in South America’s second largest metropolis has been an adventure. For starters, I’ve given up on introducing myself as Sayre and have learned to love the name Sarita. It’s easier than explaining my name as “pronounced like slayer, but without the L.”
Learning how best to take advantage of the city’s public transportation has also been a tricky adjustment. Although I need to leave myself at least an hour to get anywhere in the city, I can arrive at nearly any destination by Subte (metro) or Colectivo (bus) for about 31 cents, and it gives me time to knock out a few pages of reading and get in some solid people watching. In spite of the ease of the Colectivo, I typically shell out a few extra pesos for night transportation and take taxis after 11 PM. While the park by my apartment is my go-to place to run during the day, transvestite hookers are known to strut their stuff and linger on street corners after sundown. But it’s all part of the experience, right?
Buenos Aires nightlife and dining have presented me with equally unique experiences in relation to college life in Vermont. My nighttime schedule is far different from a standard Saturday night quilombo (translation: hot mess) at Midd. My host family sits down for dinner and Malbec at around 10:30 p.m., which is already go-time by my American college student standards. While at Midd, I like to hit the sack by 3 a.m. at the latest. Here, however, I was laughed at by my platform tennis shoe-wearing Argentine friends for trying to sneak out of a birthday party at 4:30 a.m. I learned soon enough that rolling into bed as the sun starts to peek through the morning clouds and sleeping until empanada lunchtime is how the Argentines do nights out.
It’s strange to think that I won’t be waiting in line for the panini machines in Proctor or stealing a quick nap in the dangerously comfortable red and blue chairs in Bi Hall when classes start this week, but at the same time it’s incredible to reflect upon the relationships and experiences I’ve already had in the past month and a half. Whether it’s waking up in the middle of the night, ecstatic at the realization that I was dreaming in Spanglish, mustering up the courage to pose a question in class or the fact that I’m on a first name basis with the staff at my two favorite cafes, I have found that venturing outside of my comfort zone and outside of the Middlebury bubble can be immeasurably entertaining and rewarding. Suerte con el semestre and see you fools in Play-Term.
Written by SAYRE WEIR '15 from Buenos Aires, Argentina
(09/18/13 8:32pm)
For those just arriving as well as those preparing to leave in a few months, the fall at Middlebury is the perfect time to explore all that Vermont has to offer. Since the beginning of 2013 alone, over 2.2 million cars have passed into the state, many of them tourists coming to experience the very things we Midd Kids have all around us every day. Vermont is famous for its fall foliage, but there are always hidden gems to explore. Below are some must-do items to place on your bucket list this fall.
Vermont Flannel Store: Nothing, and I mean nothing, says Vermont like flannel. A quick drive up route 7, and on your left as you leave Middlebury, the Vermont Flannel Store offers some of the best you can get, and was even inducted into the 2010 “Made in the USA” hall of fame. Not only are the products good, but the store sits next to an iconic covered bridge covered in tasteful lights that will give anyone who goes an authentic Vermont vibe. But be warned - shirts go for around $50 a piece.
Fiddlehead Brewery & Folino’s Woodfired Pizza: If you’re 21+ and appreciate amazing beers, head on up to Fiddlehead Brewery in Shelburne. Even if you can’t yet legally drink or prefer other beverages, the brewery also features a pizza restaurant that is incredible. It’s well worth the drive to taste some Vermont native beer and enjoy some of the best pizza around with a group of good friends.
Morgan Horse Farm & Museum: For avid runners, you may have trotted past the Morgan Horse farm and admired the buildings, but not given it much thought beyond that. I urge you to make a special trip not past the farm but onto it. The Morgan Horse farm is on the National Register of Historic places and the University of Vermont has cultivated one of the best lines of the Morgan Horse in the world there. A short walk from campus, you’ll never regret it. Careful though! The farm closes to visitors on Oct. 31.
Shelburne Farms: Their website asserts that the Shelburne farm is “a nonprofit education organization whose mission is to cultivate a conservation ethic for a sustainable future.” At 1,400 acres, the farm offers an incredible view of Lake Champlain and is a National Historic Landmark in Shelburne, Vt. You’ll have to take a car, but if you’re on Route 7 headed towards Burlington, you shouldn’t miss it.
Champlain Orchards: Fall is apple picking season and nowhere hosts a better selection and atmosphere than Champlain Orchards in Shoreham. A 20-minute drive from campus, Champlain Orchards offers all manners of apple picking from the tree as well as apple cider, cider donuts and other apple-themed tasty treats.
The Skinny Pancake: The iconic creperie of Burlington, Vt. is a key stop any time you’re in the city. The Skinny Pancake features sweet and savory crepes as well as some of the best fries I’ve ever had – seriously. Set on a corner near Lake Champlain, the atmosphere is young and geared towards foodie appreciation. They are now collaborating with “Localvore Today” to host an après-work get-together at the restaurant from 5:30 - 9 p.m. every Thursday night.
Church Street, Burlington: If you haven’t already been to Burlington, find a car (or take public transportation – its easy!) and head on up. Church Street is a pedestrian only causeway that runs through the heart of Burlington. Featuring shops as unique as Burlington Records for your LPs and 45s and as convenient as an Apple store, Church Street is perfect for meandering and missions to purchase specific items. There are also street performers to dazzle and delight.
“The Big Picture”: This café/theater in Waitsfield, Vt. is, according to their website, “the Mad River Valley’s unofficial cultural center and café.” The Big Picture is perfect for dinner and a movie, serving locally grown vegetables and herbs from the Small Step Farm as well as local meats and cheeses. They have show times available online as well as nightly specials and music too!
Burlington Bagel: If you like to eat at Middlebury Bagel, you will be blown away by Burlington Bagel. The small building sits in South Burlington, right off of Route 7. Its size doesn’t do justice to the big taste packed into each bagel. It’s well worth the drive on its own, but it’s also a great addition to any excursion to Burlington.
The Organic Farm: Students at the College have a wide range of relationships to the Organic Farm. A great way to change your previous experience of the college’s student maintained plot of land is to watch the sunrise over the hill and Meade Chapel one morning. If you’re not an early riser, there are Adirondack chairs and a fire pit positioned perfectly to watch the sun go down over the mountains on the other side.
Snake Mountain: Standing 1,287 feet tall in Addison and Weybridge, Snake Mountain is great for the outdoorsy and less adventurous alike. The hike isn’t steep, takes about an hour and opens out into a panoramic view featuring lake Champlain and the mountains of New York. If you time it correctly, you can watch the sun set from the top – it is a moment you’ll remember for a long time, I promise, but be sure to bring a flashlight if you do a sunset hike!
Ben and Jerry’s Factory: Located in Waterbury, Vt., the Ben and Jerry’s factory offers a tour of the facility. With your ticket, you receive a discount on a t-shirt and a free pint of ice cream. I would also check out the “Ice Cream Graveyard” that features all the discontinued flavors Ben and Jerry’s had over the years, commemorated by poems on gravestones.
Shelburne Museum: Located, as many of these bucket list items are, along Route 7 as you head towards Burlington, the Shelburne Museum is another must-see. There are over 150,000 works of art in 39 different exhibition buildings. Buildings ranging from The Ticonderoga Steam Boat to a brand new facility completed last year give any tour of the museum a unique character that you wont find anywhere else.
Robert Frost Trail: In East Middlebury as you head towards the College’s Snow Bowl, the Robert Frost Trail offers an easy and picturesque hike. The loop is 1.2 miles and takes on average 45 minutes to an hour. The trail commemorates Robert Frost’s poetry by featuring mounted poems along the woods and fields for you to read and experience.
Magic Hat Brewery (21+): Although Vt. is home to many breweries, none have a tour quite like that found at Magic Hat in South Burlington. Something you have to see to believe, the tour is free and can be guided or self-guided. It includes views of the factory that cranks out 400 bottles of beer per minute, but transcends the typical tour by offering a film about their Mardi Gras event and punk-themed decorations throughout. The group is friendly and dedicated to their work, willing to chat about the process as they offer samples of classics such as #9.
Cookie Love: A tiny shack easy to miss on Route 7 North, Cookie Love has some of the best you’ll ever taste. It’s situated in North Ferrisburgh and features pre-made cookies, cookie dough and creemees. All the flavors are named after a type of love: “first love” is chocolate chip, “puppy love” is peanut butter chocolate chip and “it’s a wonderful love” is holiday sugar, for example.
The Camel: I can’t give much explanation beyond this: if you’re driving on Route 7 North towards Burlington, about 20 minutes away from Middlebury, you will pass a dilapidated looking farm that has a camel who hangs out with sheep like he’s a sheep. Pull the car over, take as many pictures as you possibly can. The camel has two humps and if anyone finds out his or her name, please let me know.
Vergennes: A short and beautiful drive or do-able bike ride from Middlebury gets you to Vergennes, a perfect weekend brunch destination. Restaurants such as 3 Squares and Vergennes Laundry (a bakery, not a Laundromat) are perfect to eat at and even to get a little homework done on a Sunday.
This is just a short list of the many opportunities available in the area. The most important thing is to pop the Middlebury College bubble and explore this glorious area we’re in for four years of our lives.
(09/18/13 6:44pm)
Learning is painful. It took me a summer to realize that, but our liberal arts education can be unpleasant. Or at the very least allow us to see unpleasantness that already exists.
The jump from our cozy bubble of educated students and professors into the real world can be jarring. You find that people under the age of 18 still exist, not all cars stop for you to cross the street and food is surprisingly expensive. Even more though and perhaps most rattling is stepping back into a world with the experience of a liberal arts education.
My friends from high school are some of my oldest and most dear, but they have not had the experience I have had here. So when I hear one of them use the word “faggot” and then watch as nobody responds, I feel uneasy. Three years ago hearing that word would not have bothered me. I corrected my friend and was greeted with surprise: “Oh sorry Andrew, yeah sure I won’t say that again. Do you actually know any gay people though?”
Yes. Yes I do.
At one point this instance would not have bothered me. This was not a product so much of my education as it was experience. Sure, I have gay friends but – sorry guys – they are not the motivation for my response. Even more than defending my friends, morality makes me find that word unacceptable.
Re-entry into everyday society is filled with these instances and it is not my responsibility to correct the world because I deem myself more educated. However it is part of the responsibility, or burden, of a liberal arts experience. The privilege of education would be spoiled if we did not use it to affect the world around us. On campus this feeling is fleeting or oftentimes non-existent. The burden does not feel so heavy when surrounded by people who share similar points of view and educational experience.
A subtler example came at dinner a few weeks ago. For whatever reason, the topic of marriage and relationships in general came up. Both my parents are college educated, and I think quite smart, but they did grow up in a different time and culture. I would not describe their views as traditional, but they were certainly influenced by Italian-American cultural norms. So when my mother made the comment “Andrew, you wouldn’t want to marry a girl who had been with a lot of men,” I could sense an old world mentality. What I found more troubling was that when I asked “Why not?”, she could not give me a response.
I don’t mention this to highlight the failures of my mother; far from it. At one time I may have made a similar statement and I have plenty of friends who would have no problem with it. Why not though? What is wrong with a woman sleeping with as many men as she likes? Does that make her a worse marriage candidate? Most of us would sense the double standard, especially when my sister would likely be told to make sure her choice of spouse was kind, compassionate and loyal above caring about the number of people he slept with.
Every summer it has been more jarring to leave this very real bubble. The first summer I was ambivalent, and the second my arguments were flimsy, but now after nearly three years in this place I can no longer ignore the fact that the world has stayed more or less the same, and we, as students, have become something different.
I don’t mean to sound preachy or to highlight what a wonderful, life-changing experience we have here. Nor do I think it is our duty to go out into the world and make it politically correct. The ability to recognize injustice in the world around us makes a sense of responsibility unavoidable. It is the byproduct of education. I do feel a sort of selfish envy for friends who have not been exposed to that. They have the luxury of ignorance at times, while it can feel we are burdened by the responsibility of education.
Whether we like it or not, Middlebury takes the blinders off. Or at least we think so. Professors, I’m sure, see us as ignorant in our own way as students. There is no denying the amount left to learn. As we step back into the bubble, I cannot help but reflect on the responsibility that comes with education. Learning is painful because it makes injustice and unpleasantness more visible in the larger world. Hopefully, by the end of our four years we will have solutions to the problems we now see.
(09/18/13 6:34pm)
One of Middlebury’s strengths is the drive with which students endeavor to make the world a better place. We don’t always agree on how to do this, and thus the College has recently witnessed impassioned debates on a number of important issues. Many, including myself, have been enriched by these discussions. Yet there are those who reject our community’s embrace of civil discourse in favor of so-called “activism.”
Whether out of egocentrism or simply blind passion, these people have alienated supporters and foes alike with their self-aggrandizing tactics and moral absolutism. They have broken the law and willfully disregarded College policies. So convinced are they of their own righteousness that they eschew the need to win over supporters through rational argument and compromise, preferring the familiar intellectual comfort of demagoguery.
I have very strong feelings about this issue. But these thoughts were far from my mind on the morning of Sept. 11, 2013. It was a bright, warm day, just as it was twelve years ago. It was not until that evening that I learned that group of individuals had uprooted thousands of American flags that students had carefully laid out in front of Mead Chapel as a memorial to those who died on that terrible day twelve years ago. A picture available online shows Anna Shireman-Grabowski ’14.5 shoving flags into a black trash bag.
To be honest, I’ve never been sure about how to feel about this annual memorial. On the one hand, I am proud that Middlebury students are still dedicated towards remembering the events of Sept. 11, 2001. On the other hand, I am uncomfortable with the implication that we need a display in order to remember the significance of the day — as if anyone could ever forget.
Yet that cluster of 2,977 flags has a deep symbolic meaning for many members of our community. Just as each and every one of us has our own unique tale of what we went through on Sept. 11, we each have our own ways of remembering our loss. The Middlebury community standards — to say nothing of common decency — demand that we respect everyone’s right to grieve as they see fit.
I had thought that this spirit of mutual respect was self-evident to all members of the Middlebury community. To my shock and dismay, it apparently is not.
Shireman-Grabowski and her co-conspirators have brought shame upon Middlebury and upon themselves. There can be no justification for their actions; they deliberately exploited a terrible tragedy to gain publicity. The Middlebury community welcomes constructive dialogue and collegial dissent, but it cannot and should not accept deliberately provocative action intended only to cause pain.
Shireman-Grabowski has attempted to cloak her petty vandalism in the veneer of moral righteousness. She claims that placing the flags in the earth constituted an offense towards the Abenaki people, and that this ostensible cause justifies the hurt she has caused. Leaving aside the fact that the Abenaki — with whom Shireman-Grabowski could not even be bothered to consult — reject her action, her own actions belie this rationalization as self-serving and dishonest.
There is in fact no evidence to support her bloviating claims; the Abenaki themselves are unaware of any burial sites in the area and the geology of the site seems to preclude its use as a burial grounds in any case. If Shireman-Grabowski truly cared about the rights of the Abenaki, she could have easily reached out to the organizers of the memorial ahead of time in order to share her concerns and work towards an appropriate compromise.
Indeed, organizer Ben Kinney ’15 proposed several such compromises to the five vandals even as they were the process of stealing the flags. But these people have no interest in compromise. After all, compromise doesn’t get your name published in the Huffington Post.
The College Community must now come to terms with these repugnant acts. We have already begun to do so. On the night of the vandalism, students united to re-create the memorial with flags they were able to recover. Other community members reached out to local and national media to make it clear that this heinous act does not represent Middlebury College. President Liebowitz has stated that the administration is beginning a disciplinary investigation. The other four individuals should be charged with theft and vandalism and banned from returning to Middlebury College. They have forfeited their right to meaningfully contribute to our community.
That leaves Shireman-Grabowski herself. After several days, she issued an online apology to members of the Middlebury community she harmed by her actions. The question now remains whether she and her cohorts will learn from their mistakes and accept our community standards embracing civil and collegial discourse or whether they will continue to gleefully defy our shared values in the future.
MAX KAGAN '14 is from Freeport, ME.
(09/12/13 1:13am)
Nothing says possibility like the first day of school. With each autumn, we lucky youth are given the opportunity to start from scratch. In third grade, it’s new crayons, in high school it’s new sneakers, and now, in college, it’s new everything. New classes, new dorms, new faces, new sushi bars in Crossroads. Not to mention the influx of 626 freshman, who are completely and utterly new to the rest of us.
And since we’re all overachieving Midd kids, we’ve just spent our summers doing amazing things, like saving orphans in Ghana, climbing Kilimanjaro, curing cancer at the Mayo Clinic, or writing about condoms and erectile dysfunction at Cosmopolitan. So, with three months full of new and amazing experiences, we’re all coming back a little bit new too.
But since this is a sex column, and since I’ve practiced writing about love and lust all summer, of course I’ll be focusing on one thing in particular: new hookups. The question is foremost in everyone’s mind: Who will you be locking lips with tonight on Atwater’s overcrowded and slimy dance floor? (R.I.P. ADP.)
Have you been thinking about it all summer? Or maybe you’re utterly surprised at your newfound attraction for So-and-So who looks really good with a tan. Or perhaps you’re reserving your judgment until you’ve gotten a chance to scope out the first-years.
So while that excitement is overwhelming, it’s not always rainbows and lollipops. What if the girl you’ve been dreaming about all summer has flown across the Atlantic with almost every other junior girl for a semester abroad? Or, maybe you fell head over heels for a senior last year, who’s graduated from the Middlebury bubble. (Sigh, been there.) Or perhaps all you can think about is that SOB ex who broke your heart last spring, who you’ve been trash talking and hate-texting all semester, but now that you’re back in Vermont you really want nothing but to kiss and make up.
Have you made a new school year’s resolution for hooking up? “This year, I’m only going to sleep with someone if we’ve hooked up sober.” “This year, I’ll only sex-ile my roommate if the guy is really, really hot.” “This year, I’m going to spend more time interpreting Shakespeare than his text messages.”
Whether you’re looking for your future spouse (we all know the Midd marriage stat) or just someone to pass a weekend with, everyone’s coming into this year with an expectation – a new expectation.
Freshmen, these first hook ups are your first firsts, unless maybe they already happened at orientation, but either way these are the most exciting. You are beginning the whirlwind that will be your lives as sexually-active college students.
Sophomores and juniors, you’re in the nebulous zone – not the new kids on the block, but still not the big kids. These first hook-ups are just another great way to punctuate the beginning of a brand new year.
And seniors, class of 2014, this is your last first hook up. Pretty scary, huh? Because when we graduate in 9 short months, we’ll be leaving behind us not only classrooms and dinning halls, but also the collegiate-styled hook up culture. Never again will we all be living in a one-mile radius of each other, consuming unhealthy amounts of alcohol, and living without supervision or responsibilities in the height of our sexual prime. When else can we be so reckless with our hearts and hard ons?
College hook ups are fun and exciting. They have the potential to lead to something huge, and they offer the possibility to lead to nothing. And never, never are they as highly anticipated or as thrilling as the first ones of the year. So enjoy it – and remember it. As it’s happening, catalogue it as your first first, the year’s first, or your last first. And even if you’re a bit black-out, ask your roommate to remember it for you, and then fill you in. Maybe it’s your first kiss with they guy you’ll marry, or maybe it’s your first and last kiss with that girl from your first year seminar. It doesn’t matter. It’s the year’s first hook up and it’s important. It’ll be Sunday morning’s brunch conversation, and it’ll also be how you remember the start to your freshman/sophomore/junior or senior (AHH!) year of college.
Brand new year. Right now, it’s a fresh slate. This weekend’s antics will be the first on the record. What will you do to kick it off?
(09/12/13 1:06am)
A weakened Middlebury men’s soccer squad traveled to Amherst for a matchup with the heavily favored Ephs on Saturday, Sept. 7. Middlebury played well against its eighth-ranked NESCAC rival, taking a 1-1 tie into overtime before Amherst ended the drama quickly with a goal in the fourth minute of extra time, sealing a 2-1 final score.
The team’s roster of 25 players includes 11 first-years, none of whom were present because of the mandatory MiddView orientation trips, leaving only three substitutes on the bench for coach David Saward. A handful of first-years are expected to see significant time the remainder of the season.
Amherst controlled the tempo in the first 15 minutes, setting a frenetic pace. Middlebury tried to slow the ball down, but Amherst was able to continually apply pressure and speed up the game. However, by the middle of the first half the Panthers settled in and put together a few chances. Late in the half the Panthers drew a clear foul and earned a penalty kick, which Harper Williams ’15 netted in the 42nd minute.
Amherst again applied steady pressure to begin the second half. Less than 20 minutes in, keeper Thomas Bull played a long ball forward to the head of Nico Pascual-Leone who redirected the ball to teammate Greg Singer. Singer ripped a low shot into the net and past goalkeeper Ethan Collins ’14.
Amherst appeared to have momentum after drawing level. But the Panthers were able to rebuff the Amherst offensive.
“They bunkered down and defended well,” said Saward. “Ethan was coming and getting the ball for us, which really helped.”
In extra time Amherst used a long throw to earn the game-winner. Max Fikke tossed the ball into a mass of bodies and found Ben Norton, who played the ball to the back post where Pascual-Leone scored the game winner.
“They worked so hard to get to that point,” said Saward. “I think they knew they did really well. I just hope that it carries forward into Wednesday [at Norwich]. I was definitely encouraged.”
Saward’s options were limited with the absence of 11 first-years.
“Especially when you think you’ve got three or four impact-level players, the lack of depth had an effect on the team’s spirit and attitude as well,” said Saward.
One such first-year, Greg Conrad ’17 was disappointed, but felt the decision aided the team in some ways.
“Obviously, it wasn’t what I wanted to hear when arriving on campus, especially the fact that it was Amherst,” Conrad said. “But, it has really fired up our squad and we are anxiously awaiting our first game with everyone back.
Saward would not use a reduced roster as an excuse, however.
“You work hard, you do your best over whatever period of time you play, and if you’ve got some talent, then some good things will happen,” he said.
“Overall you have to be disappointed with a loss,” said midfielder Andres Rodlauer ’16. “It was a beatable Amherst team and a good performance for 90 minutes but ultimately we came up short.”
A few individuals performed particularly well in the close loss. Deklan Robinson ’16 had a strong match, and captain Adam Batista ’14 “worked his socks off” according to coach Saward. Williams shook off the pressure to score the Panthers’ only goal.
Despite the defeat, the Panthers are confident that success is on the horizon.
“We’re confident that we are the best team in the NESCAC and are poised to make a big run at a championship season,” said Rodlauer.
The Middlebury men where back in action on Wednesday, Sept. 11 at Norwich whom they beat 2-0 last season, and will be reinforced by the return of the first-years. NESCAC play will resume on Saturday, Sept. 14 at home in a tilt against Conn. College.
(09/12/13 1:01am)
There has been a long-standing myth at the college: in halcyon summer days on an idyllic campus, chatter in Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish twirl in the open air like dandelion seeds dance across campus. Students fill the campus with passion and curiosity for a language, entering a new world but still remembering an old-aged rumor. In the corner of their eyes, they are on the lookout for tall men in black shades, trailing behind their combat boots, suspicious that they might disappear into revolving bookshelves in Axinn—yes, they are on the staking out the mythical FBI and CIA recruiters.
“It is true that the CIA and FBI have recruited at Middlebury,” Associate Director of Career Services Tim Mosehauer said. “They are interested in students for their language skills, including Arabic, Russian and Chinese — what you would call critical languages.”
“There is no cloak-and-dagger story here,” Vice President for Language Schools Michael Geisler said. “No special opportunity courses,” where agents are stowed away secretly in dark underground classrooms.
Dispelling the myth takes away the James Bond dramatizations. Yet mystery and intrigue remain in the question this debunked rumor left behind: what is it about learning a second language that makes a student so worthy?
“It is important for anyone working in a global society to acquire intensive-immersion linguistic and area studies skills,” Geisler said. “We don’t teach language. We teach culture broadly with classes on linguistics, media studies, art, history, the social system, the political system.
“The real connections you need to make as a journalist, government employee or business [partner] are connections that can’t be made in English or university classroom,” Geisler said. “It’s in the pubs.”
The Middlebury Summer Language schools has a long history of attracting students who come to learn a language having caught a fever for a culture from a song or historic event. But there has been a quiet but noticeable shift in the kind of students that enroll in the Middlebury Language Schools.
“Traditionally, language school has served students who are curious about a culture—we still have those students and they may be the majority,” Geisler said. “But a growing and strong minority of people come to language school with a more utilitarian approach, interested in adding business and journalism skills. People realize they need cultural and language skills in an economic global society.”
Applications surged in recent years, namely in the critical languages. The increased demand comes as the Language Schools are adjusting to predict how many more spaces they should add to the language schools of high interest and determine the faculty they will hire to teach additional courses to accommodate increased enrollment, while keeping the student-teacher ratio low.
Just in the past five years, the Hebrew School doubled its size of enrollment, according to School of Hebrew Coordinator Tania Bolduc. In 2013, the language school broke the record for most students ever enrolled with 1,533 students.
“For schools like Portuguese that enrolled beyond projections, we managed our yield by particular demands, and supplemented our offerings with additional faculty and courses,” Assistant Dean of Middlebury College Language Schools Elizabeth Karnes Keefe said. “The director of the school would in such a case expand the scope and offerings of the school to accommodate particular levels and academic interests.”
The changing marketplace and diversifying economy hastens the demand for spaces at foreign language education institutions.
“I see linguistics, language and ESL not in the field of teaching, but in the world of business,” Chinese School Coordinator Anna Sun said. “I guess it’s a good trend. I have two kids who graduated from the liberal arts colleges and knowing a second language gives them grounding and real life application. My son stepped into the job market as a religion major but was able to get a career as a union organizer (because of a second language).”
It used to be the case that multi-lingual competency wasn’t all about material payoff. It wasn’t even about speaking. It was about transporting yourself into the mind of a nation. It is a mosaic of history and culture on a language that, the more you build your vocabulary and idioms, forms a running, constantly expanding world.
But the passion-over-payoff trope is dying. Students, like it or not, will enter a marketplace, forced to compete against other graduates emerging out of the talent pool, or they fail to get a job.
But for some language school officials, there is no division between the students who come to learn a language for professional reasons and those who come for personal reasons. Their reaction: so what if you do turn to a language because of its emerging economy or political conflicts?
“Their professional reasons are resultants of personal reasons,” Sun said. “They are one in the same, if not just more practical.”
“When talking about why students come to the Language Schools, you can’t necessarily separate personal and professional goals,” Keefe added. Even if you are a student who wants to learn Chinese in order to gain entry into the financial community in Beijing, for example, “you also want to develop personal relationships and cultivate language skills along with cultural understanding.”
Of course, the Language School depends on students who come for professional reasons. The very fact that the job market is shifting in favor of graduates with language skills is what prompted the steady rise in applicants.
While the federal government and other universities funnel money to launch programs for the day’s critical languages, in the past, it was Japanese; now Arabic and Chinese, language schools at Middlebury, according to Geisler, have long established these programs before it became a popular language. When created, “these languages are here to stay,” he said.
But the fact that language school officials are jumping in with talk of expanding the studies to include Korean, Farsi and Swahili indicates that the Language Schools is itself changing. The brand of the school is changing with the pace of its students toward marketable languages: Swahili—a language with growing popularity in the west, Farsi—a language in high demand by federal agencies, and Korean—a language with South Korea’s economy on the rise and culture breaking into Western markets.
The growing trend of students coming to the Middlebury Language Schools to become marketable, in turn, leave that spirit with the administration, now interested in expanding its languages to ones that appeal to students with professional purpose.
Whether good or bad, the trend exists and carries with it the drastic potential to change the philosophy of education not just in language schools but educational institutions across the board: With the emphasis on professional outcomes, might we run the risk of teaching students to put a premium on money over pursuing their ideals? Or can passion and profession really be inseparable?
Perhaps, it is not enough anymore to do something simply for the love of it. Most would like to think that in an increasingly specializing setting, there is still be a place in the world where learning something gave one a fever, where learning is not a means to something but an end to itself. But maybe, for a student in a globalizing age, the follow-your-passions orthodoxy, is now something of the past.
(05/09/13 3:42pm)
This past Thursday through Saturday, May 2 through 4, the College’d theatre program presented the play “The Castle: A Triumph” by contemporary British playwright Howard Barker in the Seeler Studio at Mahaney Center for the Arts. The college website says the play is “blasting with humor, bawdiness, violence, and the limits of desire, pain and sexuality.”
In “The Castle,” a group of 12th-century English Crusaders return to their homeland after a long period of time, but find that the civic, agricultural and religious practices they were familiar with have been turned upside down while they were away. The women who were left behind in the village had radically changed the government and religion into an egalitarian culture. With the return of these reigning crusaders, they brought back an engineer who plan the largest castle in the region in order to regain control over the women. As the construction of the castle went on, they not only transformed the landscape of the village, but also the power dynamics manifesting in gender, sexuality, race and age. The play is serious, mature but yet comical in its exploration of gender and love.
Director Richard Romagnoli, the Isabel Riexinger Mettler professor of theatre at the College, is an authority on the work of Howard Barker. He has directed six of Barker’s plays and a few poems for the theatre department, PTP and companies in Boston and New York City since his first year at the College.
In Director’s Notes, Romagnoli viewed “The Castle” as “a story about love – love rejected – love betrayed – love pursued – the inability to love.”
With inciting action, a series of compelling conflicts and a resolution followed by an ironic denouement, the play formed the theatrical polarities of humor and sadness, a beautifully structured story.
Telling Barker’s story, conventional exchanges between characters were interrupted by direct addresses to the audience, inviting the audience to participate in the dramatic dynamic. The direct connection between the audience and the performer was not only engaging, but also challenged the imaginative boundaries of the audience.
Limited by the space and the budget, set designer Jon Crain and the director decided to have curtains dyed and painted shades of green, furnishing the landscape at the beginning of the play. The castle was revealed through the abrupt, violent tearing down of the curtains. The walls of the Seeler Studio became a part of the castle as the plot unfolded. In addition to that, the set provided the literal embodiment of a forbidding and dehumanizing structure in the space where the show finally took place with concrete columns and cinder block walls.
Instead of using traditional music scores as a melodramatic device to intensify the emotional scenes, the sound designer Cormac Bluestone used construction sounds to underscore some of the emotional moments. “The Castle” starred Christina Fox ’13.5 as Skinner, a witch, Meghan Leathers ’13.5 as Ann, a changed woman, and Noah Berman ’13 as her husband Stucley, a knight, embattled lord of the land.
Tickets sold out for all three performances. Students, professors, parents of the cast and friends of the production crew came and watched the two-and-a-half hour play.
“This play is not likely to leave the audience unaffected and indifferent and that makes for a potentially productive evening in the theater,” said Stephen Donadio, Fulton professor of humanities, sharing his experience in an email after the performance on Saturday night. “For what it is be worth, my own sense is that “The Castle” reveals the nature and scale of Barker’s dramatic ambition, which is Shakespearean, and that the changeable, conflicted texture of the play reflects Barker’s uneasiness with such an ambition, which he cannot help but find suspect, because it may be associated with pretentiousness and a will to power and domination.”
“As Romagnoli’s production makes clear,” he continued, “the playwright’s handling of this bleak assessment involves a lot of humor — subtly ironic humor and humor of the broad, loud, vulgar music hall variety. So, in the end, ‘The Castle’ seems to me unstoppably exploratory and genuinely unsettling.”
Unsettling seems to be a frequently mentioned adjective after the performance. Some of the students refused to leave any comment on “The Castle” because they do not know how to respond to this dramatic theatre work and were not sure if they got the underlying meanings of the work right.
Jack DesBois ’15 said that it was helpful for him to understand “The Castle” better with the experience of learning about Howard Barker in class. He said the abstract concepts of conflicts, domination and power might be hard to get out of the play if the audience came without knowing what to expect.
Precise construction of the castle, demolition of nature, betrayal in love, doubts in religious belief and conflicts in power; there are so many themes discussed and explored in “The Castle” that the general audience had a hard time grasping them all.
From a techniqual perspective, Sumire Doi ’13, who did her senior acting thesis “17 ½,” one month ago, thought “The Castle” was a brilliant project.
“The wall of the Seeler Studio was always standing there,” Doi said. “It’s nice to see the crew use it as a part of the castle, so the studio itself represents the castle. Besides, I really appreciated the poetic dialogues in the play.”
This summer, “The Castle” will be a part of summer shows in Season 27 of the PTP/NYC project off-Broadway.
(05/08/13 8:52pm)
Last Friday afternoon the Davis Library hosted a reception to honor all 22 members of the faculty and staff who have published works in the last year. The works were displayed in the Special Collections room, and after each author gave a brief overview of their book, the staff mingled and had a chance to take a closer look at each other’s work.
“It is always great to see what your colleagues are up to,” said Paul Monod, A. Barton Hepburn professor of history and acting dean of international programs, who recently authored Solomon’s Secret Arts: The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment.
According to Monod, Solomon’s Secret Arts “is a study of occult thought in England and Scotland, including alchemy, astrology and ritual magic.” This is his fifth book, but not the last — a sixth, a short book on British politics in the period of the American Revolution is in its early stages.
Christina Cartwright, German School coordinator, and translator of Zoo Station, agreed with Monod and commented on how “nice it is to feel recognized” by other members of the staff faculty. Zoo Station was originally published as Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo in Germany in 1979. It is an autobiographical piece by a former drug addict on her troubled teenage years. The book is very famous in Germany and is required reading for most high school age students.
“Teens of Addison County and Middlebury students [should] read it as well,” said Cartwright. “It may be based in a different culture, but the issues the book confronts carry over. It is a tough story, but a good one.”
Another Middlebury author also has published a work confronting the same issue, but from another direction. Rebecca Tiger, assistant professor of sociology, recently published Judging Addicts: Drug Courts and Coercion in the Justice System. Tiger was not able to attend the lecture, as she is on leave this year, mainly researching from New York City and working on another book about addictions. Rock Bottom: Celebrity and the Visual Culture of Addiction focuses on the representation and construction of drug use and addictions in popular press and reality television shows.
Juggling teaching and writing on campus this semester is Visiting Lecturer in Spanish Ricardo Chavez-Castaneda, who has had four works published in the last year, and 40 in his lifetime. He writes narrative literature for children, young readers and adults. In 2012, he received the “Premio Iberoamericano” for his short story Julio Cortázar, along with numerous other awards. His book El Libro que Se Muere was selected this year by the “Banco del libre de Venezuela” as one of the 10 best books published in the Hispanic world and in Spanish.
“Writing and teaching is like a blood transfusion,” said Ricardo, “students constantly give me a fresh look at all the things around us, and they renew my curiosity about life and the world. With that renewed curiosity, perplexity and fresh perspective, those of us that dedicate ourselves to teaching are stimulated to explore many new ideas.”
Another book published by a member of Middlebury’s languages department was Assistant Professor of Spanish Luis Castaneda’s Viaje al Norte de Verano, a coming-of-age novel for young readers, set in the northern coast of Perú, dealing with father-son conflicts, romantic relationships and personal ethics.
Two works by Middlebury professors were published in the Latin language in the past year. Professor of Classics Randall Ganiban collaborated on Vergil: Aeneid, Books 1-6, containing the first half of Vergil’s Aeneid with line-by-line commentary and other material to aid college-level students in translating and appreciating the classic poem.
“I’m lucky to be able to write on authors I teach in my courses,” said Ganiban. “I have my own students in mind when I draft the commentaries. The opportunity to ‘test’ these commentaries in class has been invaluable.”
Associate Professor of Classics Christopher Star published The Empire of the Self: Self-Command and Political Speech in Seneca and Petronious, a book on Latin literature and philosophy. Star has received a grant from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, and agreed with Ganiban that his “classes at Middlebury have all been helpful in refining ideas.” Star has nearly completed his next book, an introduction to the life and works of Seneca.
Many of the works written will be helpful to the Professors in their classrooms as well as aid the teachings of their colleagues. For example, Larry Hamberlin, associate professor of music, co-authored a college textbook on American music. Director of the Breadloaf Writers Conference, Michael Collier, most recently published his sixth collection of poems, titled An Individual History. He was the Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2001-2004, and teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Maryland. Retired professor Gary Margolis published A Poets Journey to the Shamans in Ecuador, and his previous work, Fire in the Orchard, was nominated for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Charles A. Dana Professor of Philosophy Emeritus Victor Nuovo edited and introduced John Locke: Vindications of the Reasonableness of Christianity, which looks at several writings by John Locke on religion. He also is a senior research fellow at Oxford University.
Director of Arts and Associate Curator at the College Museum Pieter Broucke, editor of Edward Burtynsky’s Vermont Quarry Photographs in Context, made a point nearly all writers agreed on. “I just love it when I learn from my students,” he said. All authors also repeatedly thanked their colleagues for the continued advice and editing.
This is just a selection of the 22 works published by Middlebury faculty and staff in the last year. The full collection of works is housed in the Davis Family Library, to the left of the Circulation Desk.
