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(05/02/19 10:00am)
Movies, television shows and popular music frequently glorify hook-up culture, especially on college campuses. While Zeitgeist reveals that hook-up culture is a large part of college life for many Middlebury students, it is not what they prefer.
When asked what campus cultures students participate in that they do not enjoy, hook-up culture was identified second, only after a culture of “busyness.” Hook-up culture outpaced drinking and outdoorsy-ness, among other aspects of life at Middlebury.
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In the past twelve months, the majority of respondents have had consensual sexual relations with one-to-three partners. A little over 8% have had more than seven sexual partners in the past year.
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Many students responded that they do not prefer hook-up culture. Over 87 percent of respondents indicated a preference for a romantic relationship, while only 6.96 percent favor hook-ups. These proportions remained relatively consistent across demographic markers including gender and sexual orientation.
This data corroborates a thesis published in 2015 by Leah Marie Fessler ’15 for the English and American Literatures Department. The thesis, titled “Can She Really ‘Play That Game Too’?” explores romantic and sexual culture at Middlebury, focusing on women’s experiences with hook-up culture.
Fessler used anecdotal evidence, data collected through an online survey and other forms of data such as Yik-Yak posts to conclude that female students at Middlebury almost always desired committed and consistent romantic relationships.
“Call it anti-feminist (which I’ll soon explain it’s not), call it old-fashioned (which sure, it is), call it dependent (which it may be) call it whatever you want,” Fessler wrote, “But I’d be so bold to respond: Call it true.”
Hook-up culture is glorified, Fessler explains, and students cite a number of reasons for participating. Fessler recognizes that some might criticize as anti-feminist her claim that hook-up culture is not compatible with females. But she argues that “by actively subscribing to male’s preferred sexual behavior… women ironically bolster, rather that react against male dominance.”
Zeitgeist results demonstrate that not much has changed since Fessler graduated four years ago. Students are still widely participating in a culture of hook-ups, while they would prefer romantic relationships. But, Zeitgeist data suggests that this is not only true for females at Middlebury and rather holds true across student respondents.
(04/25/19 9:44am)
Dear Thomas,
Thank you for your heartfelt and thoughtful letter. It’s always good to hear from you!
I recall fondly your assistance in my research, as well as your excellent presentation to our class on Poland, explaining why the Justice and Law party (PiS) won the 2015 election overwhelmingly and what it might mean. Then and subsequently, we had many conversations about the party’s illiberal tendencies and worried about where Poland was headed. And as you point out, we were right to worry.
It will therefore surprise you that I regard Professor Ryszard Legutko’s visit to Middlebury an excellent pedagogical opportunity for interested students and colleagues, and that even before I knew he was speaking at Middlebury, I added one of his essays to my East European Politics syllabus. Allow me to explain.
The results of the 2015 Polish election came in the wake of a growing popular backlash against the EU and its institutions in countries from Hungary and Greece to Austria and Germany. The proponents of “illiberal democracy,” to use Hungary’s Viktor Orban’s slogan, are winning democratic elections. Since then, the backlash has only grown in intensity and geographical scope such that it now engulfs Britain and Italy. Some of the same illiberal afflictions have manifested themselves in the United States. Much like the Poles, Americans today are deeply divided about their politics. Lest there be any doubt about it, the EU, liberalism and liberal democracy are in crisis.
While surprised and puzzled by these developments, we can ill afford to ignore what the critics of EU and liberalism actually say. Legutko is one of the most articulate among them. He was a dissident and a liberal under communism and editor of Solidarity’s underground philosophy journal. He is a distinguished professor of philosophy at Jagiellonian University in Krakow and author of a half dozen scholarly books on Plato, Socrates, liberty and most recently, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (English ed., 2016). The latter has attracted considerable attention, especially from conservative political theorists, who laud it as first rate.
Some months ago, while updating my fall syllabus, I had already decided to assign Legutko’s 2018 article, “Battle for Europe” for my East European Politics, the same class to which you made your excellent presentation. You will find it here. He identifies with the thesis that the EU and its elites “have been trying to construct a new European identity, turning European peoples into a post-historical, post-national, post-metaphysical, post-Christian, even post-religious society held together by a universalist ideology of ‘Europeism.’” Is he right? Students, informed by other readings, can debate the question.
My motivations in assigning this article were identical to (though entirely independent of) those of Professor Keegan Callanan (author of a recent important book on Montesquieu that defends liberalism) who invited Legutko to talk about his book: if we refuse to contend with the arguments of liberalism’s contemporary critics, what gives us the certainty that our own views and convictions are sound and valid? Simply denouncing them and burying our heads in the sand will not make them go away. It goes without saying that assigning an article or hosting a talk does not constitute an endorsement of the speaker’s views.
You are right, Thomas, that apart from his scholarly books and articles, Legutko is also engaged in the public sphere as an elected member of the European parliament, representing the PiS. That is why my department also organized a faculty panel (held before your letter’s arrival) on “Populism, Homophobia, and Illiberal Democracy.” The goal was to provide “context for the Legutko talk and to address some of the key concerns raised about his positions,” so that students could be informed and hold him accountable for his and his party’s views.
Political Science as a discipline distinguishes the study of politics from political action. If we and our students cannot engage with conservative views, we’ll have to shut down the department. Having experienced two decades of totalitarianism first hand, I know from experience that learning to contend with disagreeable arguments is at the heart of both education and of liberal democracy. You are obviously free to disagree.
Best,
Michael Kraus
(04/18/19 10:38am)
It can be difficult to break out of the Middlebury College bubble. Especially if you don’t like the cold. Whether you’ve felt cooped up all winter or you skied every day, there are so, so many outdoor activities to do now that it’s spring. Here are personal reflections on four different hikes not too far from Middlebury College:
Snake Mountain Hike:
Two weekends ago I decided on a whim to hike Snake Mountain with a friend. It’s a relatively short drive from the college (about 20 minutes). With access to a car it is easily reachable. We parked at a small lot near the start of the trail. The start of the hike was extremely muddy, so expect to get a little wet, but the farther up we hiked the less muddy it got. There were some small patches of ice and snow along the way, but they were easy to avoid. We went on a Saturday morning, so we passed lots of families, dogs and Middlebury students. It was a great quick escape from campus and the view from the top was pretty amazing. It would have been a great spot for a picnic and the next time I hike it I’ll be bringing some snacks to sit at the top longer. The hike in total took about a two hours (one up and one down).
The Robert Frost Interpretive Trail:
I’ve always been fascinated by Robert Frost, the famous 20th-century American nature poet who lived in Vermont for most of his life. He taught at the Middlebury’s Breadloaf School of English for forty years and spent his free time writing poetry about the Vermont landscape that surrounded him. The Robert Frost Interpretive Trail, one of my favorite spots to wander near Middlebury, gives you a chance to experience this VT landscape for yourself. The trail can be found along Route 125 between Middlebury and Breadloaf. It’s an easy loop: about one mile, mainly flat and takes about 45 minutes to complete. Frost’s poems are mounted along the trail to contemplate, and the trail meanders across and alongside a stream. Plants such as birch trees and wild raisin are identified with wooden signs. During the summer, there are blueberries to pick and the forest is green and lush. In the winter, the trees may be bare, but they create a dramatic contrast with the sparkling white snow.
TAM Class of ’97 trail:
If you’re in search of an easy escape from the Middlebury’s campus, and maybe even hoping for a reminder of a Pacific Northwest-esque landscape, then the TAM ’97 trail near the Knoll is the place for you. After following a field for a bit and crossing a marshy area filled with the croaks of frogs, you’ll duck into a trail shaded by pine trees where you’ll sense a shift: the air is slightly cooler and there is a faint smell of pine. You might have to dodge by a couple inches of pine needle-filled ice, which, despite spring’s increasing temperatures, has been kept frozen in the shade of the trail. If you make it past the ice, you’ll continue by some fields until reaching the highway, where you can cross to the part of the trail that follows a creek. I really like this part of the TAM because it is easy to get to from campus, but is still an escape from the college.
Mount Abe Hike:
On Sunday, April 7, I did a sunrise hike of Mount Abe. We — myself and CATZ, a group from an early morning workout group that has members from the broader Middlebury community — left around 5:30 a.m. It was light out by the time we got to the trailhead. Mount Abe is in Lincoln, VT, around 35 minutes from campus. The Green Mountain Club has already declared mud season so we hiked up Battell Trail instead of the Long Trail. There was still a lot of snow on the hike. Microspikes (slip-on spikes that lend traction in snowy and icy conditions) were necessary, and, in some places, you could see holes where people had sunk through at least 2 feet of snow. The last time I hiked Mount Abe was in the fall during peak foliage. What had been a slight scramble up rock in the fall had become a steep trek through snow. The top of the hike was as beautiful as always and not too windy. We ate some snacks, took some pictures and then headed down. The best part of the hike was the people that I went with! After our hike we went to Bristol Cliffs Café, ate some breakfast sandwiches and made it back to campus to start homework by 11 a.m.
(04/18/19 9:55am)
There were countless things I looked forward to when preparing to study abroad in Paris, but the idea of having a semester in which I felt more like a child than I have for over a decade, was not something that had crossed my mind.
At Middlebury, the sea of 18-22-year-olds is rarely punctured by anyone under the legal marital age. Moreover, we—the budding innovators, intellectuals and entrepreneurs who will soon spill into the alumni pool of possible donors—are often in a position in which acting like a child is looked down upon.
The Center for Careers & Internships is constantly reminding us of the need to have our résumés reviewed in the hope of landing a pearly banking internship, and great-aunts and uncles pester us with questions about our future at our first autumnal family weekend. These acupuncture-like pressures can induce symptoms of anxiety, dizziness or nausea.
My first days in Paris seemed like more of the same. The city was fast-paced and the busy Parisians often curt, not wanting to deal with another American. Similar to Middlebury, everyone was rushing from point A to point B, without really thinking, feeling or slowing down to eat a baguette or sip on some vin chaud. Attending one of the grandes écoles here, SciencesPo, a university that a slew of French Prime Ministers and Presidents have attended, only heightened this sentiment of accelerated professionalism and unwavering ambition.
But in fact, this at-first hardened exterior has lent itself to innards that prove to be much softer (yes, maybe even softer than maple-candy-sweet Vermont). Part of this shift has been my own drastically altered way of thinking. After far too many years of taking French, I arrived in the country with what quickly began to feel like a child’s capability of communication in comparison to native French speakers.
In beginning to really familiarize myself with living through a different language, I have found that my mind’s capacity for incisive thinking and debate had shrunk considerably. As someone who plays with and mulls over words much too long, this has actually improved my ability to communicate concisely. Instead of getting bogged down in the jargon and BS of political science, I am forced to focus on what is concretely occurring (because I honestly can’t communicate much more than that). There is no faking it when my vocabulary is approximately 1/3rd of the size of mine in English. I am held almost eerily accountable of pure knowledge and my ability to regurgitate facts.
Even still, when cashiers, street vendors and government employees hear my American accent, they often switch to a slower tone, enunciating each word in a painful, although still helpful, way. Just this week, when the grandparents of a three-year-old girl I babysit here arrived at the house for a visit, I realized I could process every word they were saying with ease. But wait—were they speaking like this for the preschooler or me?
The uncertainty of my language ability in comparison to that of a small child is concerning. But this stunted feeling has in fact spiked a positive and unintended effect in which I’ve begun to yearn to return to this simpler and elementary era.
A paradigm shift has been set off in that my simpler thinking and speaking have seeped into my way of being. Just this afternoon, I thought I had packed a lunch that was entirely appropriate for a 20-year-old college student. Surveying the kitchen counter, I came to realize that the contents before me were laughably juvenile: a rice cake with peanut butter and banana, a yogurt, an oddly cute jar of carrot sticks and a small pouch of squeezable applesauce. I am sure that I ate this exact lunch every day of Kindergarten.
Yet, the benefits of my newfound child-like outlook aren’t confined to my lunchbox. I’ve also found that many social interactions are tainted with innocence. Without the immediate ability to evaluate nuance of speech or opinion, I constantly find myself giving people the benefit of the doubt.
It is at times frustrating that I can’t find more descriptive adjectives for new friends’ dispositions other than ‘sweet,’ ‘kind,’ or ‘friendly.’ But as self-deprecating of my French ability as this piece has been, I’m not entirely incapacitated. I can converse with other students in my classes and hold my own at one of my host family's festive Sunday lunches, often accompanied by bottles of champagne, with their extended family. My slower thinking and simpler language simply force me to take a bit more time to exact what I want to say. And, in turn, to refrain from making quick or unfounded assumptions about the others I’m meeting.
Come spring, although I may not strip entirely nude and jump into the nearest park fountain as I did the first time I was in Paris (age four), I do hope to retain some of the joys I’ve found in being forced to act a bit more like a child.
(04/11/19 9:58am)
Following the departure of its only full-time professor, next year, the college’s Hebrew program will no longer offer upper-level Hebrew classes on campus and will instead require students to video conference into Middlebury-devised courses at other colleges. These changes have raised concerns about the program’s future among students who see it is as an invaluable focal point of both academic learning and Jewish life on campus.
The program’s current professor, Oz Aloni, will leave the college when his contract expires after this semester. In the last year, Hebrew Program Head Tamar Mayer — who teaches only geography at Middlebury — requested twice that a new Hebrew professor be hired. Mayer’s requests were denied both times.
According to Vice President for Academic Affairs Andrea Lloyd, the college denied Mayer’s request because the Hebrew program continually sustains a very low level of enrollment in its classes. Since 2013-14, there has been an average of three students per semester enrolled in one of the introductory Hebrew courses, which are offered in a three-course sequence.
Additionally, the college must maintain an equilibrium of 248 full-time equivalent (FTE) professors across departments at all times, and must decide each semester which new hire requests to approve to keep that number constant. Enrollment level is one of the factors that the Educational Affairs Committee considers when approving new hire requests.
Board members from Hillel, the college’s Jewish student life organization, voiced fear in a March 21 op-ed in The Campus that reductions in the program will ultimately result in the end of the Hebrew program entirely. The op-ed, entitled “We Need the Hebrew Department,” encouraged the college to hire more Hebrew professors and advocated the importance of Hebrew studies, both linguistically and culturally, for Jewish students on campus.
“Middlebury is an academic institution; this title implies a commitment to academic excellence above all else and a responsibility to make the campus inclusive to all students,” the board wrote. “Refusing to fill this position in the Hebrew Department would be a failure on both counts.”
But although the op-ed said the reductions would “effectively end the Hebrew Department on this campus,” the college insists that the program will continue through its beginner-level Hebrew course offerings taught by a teaching fellow, who is scheduled to leave after next year, and through indeterminate alternative advanced language studies and video conference classes.
The Hebrew program has always had one FTE with a three-year appointment, meaning that the sole Hebrew professor changes every three years. The other professors are fellows, not FTEs. Mayer believes that this lack of continuity has hurt the program.
Each semester, the Hebrew program offers one 100-level introductory Hebrew language course, taught by the teaching fellow, and one or two intermediate and advanced Hebrew language courses at the 300, 400 and 500 levels, taught by Aloni. It also offers cross-listed courses about Hebrew culture and history, taught in English by Israel Institute Teaching Fellow Zohar Gazit.
The teaching fellow will continue teaching the introductory courses next Fall. The higher-level Hebrew language courses are listed in the Fall 2019 catalogue, but the professors teaching the courses remain unlisted. As it currently stands, these classes will be taught online through the video conferencing software Zoom, through which students will video conference with professors at other colleges.
300 and 500-level courses will no longer be available.
“People wishing to take advanced Hebrew will need to be in the one 400 level course,” Mayer explained. “This means that some students will simply have to stop their Hebrew education.”
Currently, students can minor in Classical or Modern Hebrew, as well as Jewish Studies. They can also make Hebrew their primary or secondary language in an International and Global Studies (IGS) Middle East major, or can integrate the language into a Comparative Literature or Religion major.
The new cutbacks will make these courses of study more difficult. The Hillel op-ed expressed concern for students currently planning to minor in or study Hebrew and highlighted the importance of maintaining Hebrew as a language option in the IGS Middle East major. In the absence of Hebrew, the major will now require the study of Arabic, which Mayer believes limits the Middle Eastern perspective that the study of Hebrew offers. When IGS Middle Eastern Studies was created in 2004, it was conceived of as a track that would include both Arabic and Hebrew.
“It is difficult to think of Middle Eastern conflicts while exposing students to one language only, providing a limited opportunity, at best, for those who would like to get the Israeli perspective,” Mayer said. “A loss of Hebrew at the undergraduate college means a loss of perspective and a narrower education for our students.”
Earlier this year, the Middlebury study abroad school in Beer-Sheva, Israel was suspended, again for reasons related to low enrollment.
Advocates of the Hebrew program’s continuation argue that low enrollment in Hebrew classes is not enough of a reason for its shrinking, and emphasize the cultural and academic significance of the program.
“Our argument is that you can’t base the value of a class on the number of people enrolled, and that Hebrew is really important on this campus, not despite low numbers but separate from them,” said Rachel Horowitz-Benoit ’21, one of the authors of the op-ed and a Comparative Literature major with a focus in Hebrew Literature. Horowitz-Benoit and Mayer both argue that Hebrew is a uniquely valuable program because of its connection to Jewish cultural and religious life on campus.
Horowitz-Benoit also does not see lack of interest as the sole reason for the program’s low enrollment.
“The size of the program inhibits many people who want and plan to take Hebrew from doing so,” she said. “It’s not necessarily a lack of interest but a lack of availability.”
Since only one Hebrew class at any given level is offered in a semester and all of the upper-level classes are taught by one professor, students with an interest in taking Hebrew may not be able to because the single class time conflicts with another course. Additionally, students might not click with the teaching style of the single Hebrew professor teaching those courses.
Horowitz-Benoit and other Hillel Board members formed a committee to advocate for the program. They are collecting signatures in support of increased Hebrew programming and used the op-ed to publicize the situation. Over four weeks ago, the committee sent suggestions to President Laurie Patton, Dean of Faculty Andi Lloyd and Provost Jeff Cason. These suggestions included hiring a student employee to promote enrollment in Hebrew classes and creating a committee of students to assist in the hiring of a new faculty member so that the professor is well-suited to the students in the program. This week the committee received a response from administrators and, as of press time Tuesday, are planning to meet with Dean of Curriculum Suzanne Gurland soon to discuss their concerns.
In the meantime, administrators have suggested creative solutions to learning Hebrew at an advanced level without a professor: in addition to the integration of video conference classes, they have proposed that students attend the summer Hebrew language school.
Mayer takes issue with both of these propositions, especially the language school, which she sees as an insufficient replacement for courses, and a resource only accessible to the wealthy.
“The language schools are expensive and even if students are able to secure a full ride, they are unable to spend the summer making money that they need for the upcoming year,” she pointed out. “I see this as an opportunity only for rich kids and that is not okay.”
Mayer also finds the new virtual class plan problematic.
“Students do not want to pay such high tuition to just sit in front of their computers,” she said. During this past Winter Term, Aloni was ill for a week and students in his class video conferenced with a professor at another university. Some students reported to Mayer that they were not satisfied with the experience, and that video conferencing does not replicate the classroom language-learning environment that Middlebury is known for.
Molly Babbin ’22 was a student in the intro winter term Hebrew class. “I understood the importance of filling Professor Aloni’s brief absence with the video calls, but I probably would not be satisfied with it as a long-term solution. I found that I was less engaged, as I was not sitting in a classroom and was not speaking as much Hebrew to the other students,” Babbin said. “The class therefore lacked the social aspect that I have enjoyed in my in-person Hebrew classes. I understand that online classes can be effective, but it felt more difficult in a language class where I would prefer to have an immersive classroom experience.”
It is unclear precisely what will happen to students who are already pursuing Hebrew studies. In an email to The Campus, Lloyd said that these students “will be working with their advisors to address any issues that arise with respect to course offerings.”
According to Horowitz-Benoit, there are five students hoping to take above-300-level Hebrew next year, and several first-years who were planning to minor in the language.
For these students, the future is uncertain.
“I’d probably have to switch my major to English,” Horowitz-Benoit said. “I’ll graduate, but I’m in the Comparative Literature major, I’ve done the prerequisites for that, and this is really out of left field.”
(04/11/19 9:55am)
Middlebury will welcome all of its language schools back to Vermont next summer. Beginning with the 2020 summer session, Bennington College will host the three schools that are currently held in Oakland, Calif., joining the eight schools that are already held on the Middlebury campus.
President Laurie L. Patton and Bennington College President Mariko Silver announced the agreement last Wednesday on the Bennington campus.
“Middlebury and Bennington really are sister institutions and this is a great opportunity for higher-ed in Vermont,” Silver said at the signing event. “What we want here truly is a partnership. It is not a transactional relationship.”
Dean of Language Schools Steve Snyder said that the college selected Bennington, after surveying many Vermont institutions, for its excellent facilities, isolated environment and its goals and values, which align with those of Middlebury.
Bennington granted language schools exclusive use of its campus during the summer session. This is critical, as it provides an environment free from “language pollution,” and allows students to deeply engage with the curriculum and language pledge.
Middlebury’s language schools currently offer 11 programs, three of which have been housed in Oakland at Mills College for the last decade. The language schools educate about 1,500 students each summer, ranging in age from 17 to 70 and coming from all over the world.
Snyder said the directors of each school came together to identify some new goals during a recent strategic planning process as part of the“Envisioning Middlebury” framework. Curricular innovation, faculty professional development, research in language pedagogy and digital learning were among the top priorities they identified.
These new objectives required that all the Language School faculty and directors be in one place and able to meet before and after the summer session.
“To have one-third of the faculty located in California was preventing us from achieving some of our major strategic goals,” Snyder said.
The college is planning to create time at the beginning of the summer to bring in experts from around the world to hold a workshop for faculty professional development and curricular innovation.
The expansion to California in 2009 was an effort to accommodate a growing population of Language School students in Middlebury, and in recent years about 300 students each summer have studied Arabic, Italian and Korean at Mills. The schools also hoped that students at the Monterey Institute would enroll in the provided language courses, though the idea didn’t catch on in the way they anticipated.
“In the end it was a very marginal number of students (from the Institute) that actually attended the Language Schools.”
Snyder praised Mills as a wonderful institutional partner, even as they have experienced challenges of their own in recent years. The increasing number of English-speaking summer programs on their campus, combined with the operational difficulty of travel between the two locations, were some of the factors in the decision to relocate the schools to Vermont.
This new proximity will allow a cooperative and interconnected relationship between Bennington and Middlebury, as first demonstrated in the co-signing ceremony attended by the colleges’ presidents.
“We are hoping to create a broad relationship where the faculty exchanges, where Bennington students are able to attend the Language Schools more easily and we begin to think about various areas where we can cooperate across the institution,” Snyder said.
Snyder foresees only a few challenges that may accompany this upcoming transition, primarily concerning the demanding use of the Bennington campus over the summer and the residential problems that often arise when hosting such a diverse group of students.
“These are things we are used to handling and we will work with Bennington to manage what may arise,” Snyder said.
It has not yet been decided which schools Bennington will host. The remaining schools will stay at Middlebury.
(03/21/19 9:59am)
This Friday night in Hepburn Zoo, as I watched the full cast of womyn and femmes dressed in red and black perform My Revolution Begins in the Body, the opening monologue of this year’s Beyond the Vagina (Monologues), I found myself remembering a cab ride I took through Delhi one Saturday night in September.
Beyond the Vagina (Monologues) is a collection of performance pieces in the tradition of Eve Ensler’s groundbreaking 1994 feminist theater piece “The Vagina Monologues.” In September I was on my way home with my friend Maya, driving through the chaotic streets of Delhi and talking about the performance by Indian dancer and theater artist Maya Krishna Rao we’d just watched called “Loose Woman.”
The two performances were, of course, quite different. Rao wore rope sandals and makeup that was dramatic, bordering on grotesque, as she stomped and gestured in the kathakali style (a form of traditional Indian dance historically performed by men) while delivering her monologue. I’m sure I missed ninety-nine percent of the meaning she was trying to convey, given my limited understanding of Hindi, Indian culture and dance, but I was nonetheless captivated by Rao’s commanding strength and charisma for the entire two-hour performance.
Beyond the Vagina (Monologues) was in English, performed by my classmates and mostly devoid of dancing — with the notable exception of Caleb Green’s beautiful original choreography to Andrea Gibson’s “Your Life” – but the entire performance still viscerally reminded me of Rao’s “Loose Woman.” Both performances illustrate the palpable, undeniable power of a woman unapologetically taking up space, power that’s recognizable in a way that can transcend the particulars of language and culture.
Empowering female and non-binary identifying individuals wasn’t the only goal of the Monologues. Breaking the silence was another. Co-directors and producers Stella Boye-Doe and Steph Miller say that they hope the show starts conversations that continue on campus. “It’s about breaking down stigma, starting to talk about things that are taboo right now,” said Miller.
Described in the program as having “a new eye for inclusivity and intersectionality,” Beyond the Vagina (Monologues) builds on the 1996 “Vagina Monologues” by “recogniz[ing] the extent to which our global conversations of womanhood, femme, gender, sexuality and identity have changed and grown.” Boye-Doe and Miller spent winter term selecting the monologues and pieces that would speak to a contemporary, diverse feminism.
After only about three weeks of rehearsals, the company put on a show that covered a range of subjects, from sex and pleasure, to assault and trauma, to gender identity. In addition to three original monologues written and performed in this year’s show, there were also sketches and monologues from Ensler’s original script, as well as past performances of Beyond the Vagina (Monologues).
The range of topics was matched only by the range of tones struck by the performers over the course of the night, and sometimes in a single scene. A monologue called “MeToo is a movement, not a moment,” adapted from a TED Talk given by the movement’s founder Tarana Burke, made me tear up. Immediately afterwards, two women armed with dark red lollipops came on stage for “Reclaiming Cunt,” poetically reminding the audience of the power of a woman in command of her own sexuality. A funny song about what a scary time it must be to be a man was followed by a group of women talking about their vaginas, gracefully moving between humor, relatability and exasperation. After one woman helps another find her clitoris in “Clit” with perfect comedic timing, sex positivity and a little help from a mirror, a large portion of the company implored the audience to embrace their flaws and imperfect humanity — their “ugly” — and remember that “you are magnificent,” in the final monologue, “Moving Towards Ugly.”
More could be said about each component piece that comprised this year’s Beyond the Vagina (Monologues). But Maya’s words in the cab that night after watching Rao dance in September best capture the feeling I walked out of Hep Zoo with on Friday: “That made me feel like I don’t at all want to be a woman who is quiet.”
(03/14/19 10:30am)
Replacing the usual microgreens and honey-ginger soy elixir of Burlington restaurant Butch + Babe’s menu on Wednesday, Feb. 27, was an unlikely selection; Vermont meatloaf and veggie tots. The school lunch-inspired dinner, called the Love School Lunch dinner, was held as a fundraiser for the Burlington School Food Project, an organization working to provide healthy meals to all Burlington school district students.
The Food Project serves daily lunches, free to students at certain schools in the district, as well as free breakfast and supper for all students and free lunches during summer break.
“A lot of times, the focus of schools is test scores, classroom sizes, or curriculum development. But all of this is not really important when your students are showing up to school hungry and malnourished. Our work is ensuring students are ready to learn,” Assistant Director Heather Torrey explained.
Torrey studied community nutrition at the University of Vermont, where she realized the impact she could have on the community by working in food services. “The work we do every day impacts the students who have our meals,” Torey said. In total, the Project provides over a million meals to students in the Burlington school district per year.
Burlington School Food Project is also committed to buying local whenever possible. According to their website, 20 percent of their annual food costs goes directly to local producers and growers, and this number increases to 33 percent when fluid milk is included in the costs.
The organization receives a combination of state and federal funding for school meals, but has to self-fund other programs. The funds raised from the Love School Lunch dinner will go towards these efforts.
One inititive the Burlington School Food Project has taken on is hunger relief over school breaks. The organization began preparing food for students to take home over breaks to help meet this need. “What some folks don’t think about is that holiday breaks are often a source of stress for many of our students— they’re missing the opportunity to get the only meal they have during the day, which is school lunch,” Torrey said.
In addition, the Burlington School Food Project provides educational opportunities— school gardens, cooking classes and its summer food truck, Fork in the Road. Food Education Manager Sarah Heusner has been running the truck for six seasons. It functions as job training for students in “culinary and hospitality skills, workplace obligations, self-advocacy and confidence,” Heusner detailed.
The truck has also become a huge mentorship opportunity. Heusner finds mentorship lacking for teenagers, and so has made that a focus of her work. She also pointed out that most of her employees are ESL students, so working on the food truck also serves as an opportunity to improve their English.
Aside from raising funds, the Love School Lunch fundraiser was also intended to “highlight how essential Burlington school kitchens are to the community,” according to Torrey. Heusner hoped the dinner would “bring about community awareness of who we are.” She believes many community members do not understand the work of the Burlington School Food Project, and also do not know that 55 percent of youths in the school district are on the verge of being food insecure.
One of the owners of Butch + Babes, Jaclyn Major, used to work as a school cook for the School Food Project. For the Love School Lunch fundraiser, Major teamed up with Jordan Ware of Hen of the Wood, another Burlington hotspot, and three cooks from schools in the district.
Heusner spearheaded the event, meeting with the chefs to go over the menu, plan the flow of the evening and do the marketing. To get inspiration, “the chefs thought about what they ate in school lunch,” Heusner recounted.
Torrey hopes to expand community outreach efforts like this dinner in the future, in order to support the multitude of ongoing projects. She is currently working on overhauling the online nutrient database, “to make it more user friendly for families to get nutrition information for our food.”
Also in the works is a new building project for the Burlington High School, the organization’s largest site to date. “We’re trying to improve our on-site composting efforts and reduce our food waste,” Torrey explained. “With the size of our program, we have the potential to make a huge impact on reducing food waste.”
Heusner’s ultimate goal for her work would be to open a sliding scale restaurant, staffed by students and serving community members. She also wants to continue providing food to families over school breaks. She described how impactful it was “making hunger relief packages and delivering them to people’s houses, hearing the responses and how happy people are to be in the Burlington community. It’s lovely to see that people feel taken care of.”
Visiting Professor at Middlebury Lana Povitz, who is teaching a course on food activism this semester, spoke to The Campus about the importance of school lunches. “Our federally funded National School Lunch Program provides essential support to families throughout the United States, in urban and rural areas alike,” she said. “Advocates need to keep pushing the envelope, even during these austere times.”
Povitz cited ending the separation of children by income levels in school cafeterias as the next item on the agenda. “Universal School Meals (USM) is the surest way to remove poverty stigma sometimes associated with using the National Program and get more children eating the food they need,” Povitz said.
Although the Burlington School Food Project has managed to provide many universally free meals and has made progress on their other goals, some roadblocks stand in their way. Even though the Child Nutrition Program is permanently funded, the level of funding is debated every time the bill is reauthorized. “We will always be funded, it’s just a matter of how much,” Torrey said.
The recent government shutdown also presented an obstacle for schools and school meal providers. Confusion regarding the future of school lunch funding diminished the quality of some meals. Memos went out to schools, assuring them that they would continue to receive funding through March, even if the shutdown continued through February. “Some schools [panicked] and decided to stop serving fresh fruits and vegetables in case of the possibility that they wouldn’t get funded,” Torrey said. “We chose not to change the quality of our meals.” Still, these added stresses can complicate the work of organizations serving school meals.
Torrey and Heusner both described feeling motivated, despite the challenges of their jobs, by the people that they serve. Torrey recounted working with a focus group of middle school students, discussing improving the breakfast program offerings to meet their tastes. “One student mentioned that she was happy she was part of the group because she always participated in breakfast, because sometimes she hadn’t gotten something for dinner the night before. These moments remind me why I’m doing what I’m doing,” Torrey said. “I feel lucky that I don’t have to wonder where my next meal is coming from."
(03/14/19 9:59am)
Every weekday shortly after noon, students fill the Redfield Proctor dining room and sit down at one of more than a dozen different Language Tables for a served meal with professors and TAs. At each table, everyone including the student waiter that serves it, speaks only the designated language. The idea is straightforward — to provide students learning the foreign language a space to practice.
With more than 60 years of history, the student-run facility is now looking to extend its reach. On Mar. 4, students and faculty member of the computer science department sat down at the pilot Tech Table.
“We would like to extend this platform to non-language majors and would like to provide spaces for what Language Tables value and love, which are languages but also passion toward their learning subjects, the celebration of diverse cultures and inclusive platform for community engagements,” reads the Language Table’s official instagram account on the day.
Subin Cho ’19 and Stephen Chen ’19.5, Language Table managers for the academic year, shared that the idea of a Tech Table came partially from the fact that their technology manager, a computer science major, had not attended a Language Table yet.
The managers invited six students and one faculty member to the very first English-speaking academic table.
“Unlike the normal language tables, the focus of the table was not an improvement of a language (we didn’t speak in a computer language if you’re wondering),” one of the attendants Takao Shimizu ’20 said, adding that the conversation topics ranged from internship experiences and academic decisions.
“I’d love to see non-language language tables to continue because they would facilitate communications and build communities within departments,” Shimizu said. He also noted that because the Tech Table was open to non-majors and minors, undeclared first-years and sophomores could use the opportunity to explore the department and connect with each other.
Being from Germany, Professor of Computer Science Daniel Scharstein used to go to the German Table sometimes, and said that the Tech Table was successful.
“I think it’s a good idea,” he said. “And if they do one table like that for different departments — it doesn’t have to be tech, I don’t think there was anything special about it being a tech table — but if they have other things in addition to the languages, it’s a nice form that you don’t usually have.”
One of the main realizations that the managers had was that there is a lack of space for students to talk to professors in a non-academic setting. While the Language Tables have been providing students that for decades, Chen said that the the language-learning community represents a small fraction of the academic community, and the students who come to the Language Tables only comprise about 10 percent of the student body.
“So how do we expand that?” Chen said. “How do we open up the space where people can do that?”
Both Chen and Cho started working as Language Table waiters in the fall of 2016. Cho sees the Language Table as a particularly global and international space not only because of the diversity of languages represented, but also because of the way student attendees and student waiters bring encouragement to each other.
“What we deliver is not only the food, but also the spirit and the sense of language community,” Cho said, explaining that the same sense of community applied to the Tech Table, even though they are speaking English.
At the same time, Chen brought up that there has been some concerns over English-speaking tables at a space that’s otherwise solely dedicated to foreign language learning. Similarly, Scharstein said that English-speaking tables should probably be a small component of the initiative.
There are 15 different languages at the Language Tables, some of which are offered only seasonally, including Korean, Cantonese, Swahili, Vietnamese and ASL. While the food is prepared by Proctor Dining Hall, the entire process from recruiting student waiters to arranging daily attendance is completely organized by students.
“I’m just completely amazed that the whole thing is student-run,” Scharstein said.
The Vietnamese Table was a new addition to the Language Tables this spring term. Following the founding of Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) this year, Nathan Lam Nguyen ’19 reached out to the Language Table managers about having a table for the Vietnamese community on campus. Now every Friday, Nguyen serves as the Vietnamese waiter for the table.
“You don’t really need 20 students to set up a table,” Cho said. “As long as there are some regular attendants or there are some demand of setting up a table, you can ask us and come to us; be like ‘open up a table.’”
“There’s enough Vietnamese students on campus for us to be able to probably have a table going,” Nguyen said, explaining that he knows personally at least nine new Vietnamese first-years.
Consisting of 55 students serving tables of different languages, the work environment is a unique one in that student workers get to use a foreign language.
“It’s a very interesting space just because everyone here speaks at least two languages, and more likely than not they probably speak three, maybe four,” Chen said. “Meeting so many people who will go abroad, or have gone abroad or are from abroad really creates this interesting community within the workplace.”
The next pilot table in planning is the Japanese Heritage Table, which will take place on Mar. 18. According to the managers, new tables in the future could be either academic and cultural oriented. “The focal point of the pilot tables is to give the space to those people that are unrepresented,” Cho said.
(03/07/19 10:58am)
The U.S. Department of State has named Middlebury a top producer of Fulbright U.S. Students and Fulbright U.S. Scholars. Three college faculty members along with 10 students and recent alumni received Fulbright grants for the 2018-2019 academic year.
The prestigious and competitive Fulbright program, established in 1946 by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, is open to U.S. citizens and operates in more than 140 countries. The program awards its 8,000 annual grants to college students through the Fulbright U.S. Student program and college faculty through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar program.
Fulbright students pursue two types of international work, English teaching and study and research. While individual countries determine the number and placement of assistant English teachers they receive through the Fulbright program, study and research applicants are responsible for developing their own projects and finding host universities within their target country. Research funded by the Fulbright encompasses most academic disciplines.
Middlebury is consistently listed as a top producer of both students and scholars. This year, it is one of just 11 institutions nationally, including seven baccalaureate colleges, to be ranked for both Student and Scholar grants. The college is ranked seventh among Bachelor’s institutions, tied with Davidson College and Hamilton College, for its total number of Fulbright Student grants, and tied first for Scholar grants with Colgate University and Trinity College.
“One of the things that is really key here is that our students study abroad, and they actively learn other languages, and they’re interested in other cultures,” said Lisa Gates, Associate Dean for Fellowships and Research. Gates is one of the students’ primary resources throughout the extensive Fulbright application process.
Samuel Finkelman ’14 referenced many of these same factors as the reasons he pursued a Fulbright year in Russia. “My decision to study Russian language, literature, culture and history at Middlebury was truly life-changing,” he said. “This decision, and especially my experience studying abroad in Irkutsk during the spring of my junior year, convinced me that I wanted to continue engaging intellectually and professionally with the post-Soviet space.”
Finkelman went on to live in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, while teaching English at Siberian Federal University.
“I began to learn the boundlessly difficult art of teaching, and I continued pursuing my own love for Russian language and literature,” he said. “Without a doubt, the Fulbright year was key in setting me on the path that has led me to where I am today: pursuing a PhD in Russian and Soviet history at University of Pennsylvania.”
Another reason Gates cited for the strong candidacy of Middlebury students is the college’s strong culture of senior work. She said that over half of Middlebury students do some form of senior work, including the senior thesis and senior research, adding, “Having that experience is also really important...in terms of being competitive in the applicant pool and being prepared to be successful when you’re on the ground and doing the work.”
Fulbright students identified the Center for Teaching Learning and Research (CTLR) as a particularly helpful resource during the grant application process.
“The CTLR staff constantly reminded us of upcoming deadlines, offered useful feedback on personal statements,” said Georgia Grace Edwards ’18, a current Fulbright student teaching English in the Czech Republic. “They wrote wonderful letters of recommendation and challenged us to think critically and creatively about how and why a Fulbright would be beneficial to both us and our chosen communities abroad.”
The CTLR works with seniors and recent graduates during the application process. Each year, approximately a quarter of Middlebury’s Fulbright applicants are alumni.
“I applied as an alumna, so I had the option to either apply through Middlebury or ‘at large,’ but I knew of Middlebury’s strong track record of Fulbright scholars and other grantees, and also I had pleasant experiences with the Fellowships and Research team prior to graduating,” said Brennan Delattre ’16, a current Fulbright student whose research investigates the positive impact of cooperative movement in Brazil. She became interested in the topic during her time at Middlebury and pursued it in her senior thesis.
Elena Cutting ’14 described the application process as longer for research applicants than for teaching applicants, because of the statement of grant purpose required alongside the personal statement.
“Unlike any other scientific grant you will ever apply for, this research proposal is going to be reviewed by non-scientists,” she said. “So you have to be really careful to break down complex methods or ideas that may seem commonplace in the lab down into digestible bits of information.”
Cutting, who spent her Fulbright year at the National Center for Oncologic Investigation in Madrid, Spain, said she decided to become a doctor during the eight months she spent in Argentina in high school. For her, the Fulbright was an opportunity to spend a year doing something different before entering medical school.
Gates emphasized how the Fulbright Scholar program focuses on international academic exchange, allowing college faculty to conduct research at universities abroad. “It supports bringing scholars from other countries to the United States and supports scholars going to other countries,” she said.
The three faculty members abroad this year are Mez Baker-Médard, assistant professor of environmental studies, Svea Closser, former associate professor of sociology and anthropology and Carrie Anderson, assistant professor of history of art and architecture.
Anderson said she applied for a Fulbright scholar grant for a number of reasons, including the chance to live in a country that had long been a subject of her research. “The prospect of living for a year in the country that has been the primary focus of my research and teaching was particularly appealing,” she said. “I knew it would enable me to teach directly from paintings and objects housed in some of the most amazing collections of Dutch art in the world.”
Anderson has not been disappointed with the research materials she has worked with since arriving in the Netherlands. She has also found the experience rewarding beyond the research opportunities.
“I have also met so many amazing people during my time here so far,” she said. “Other fulbrighters, students, faculty, neighbors, friends. I feel so fortunate to be a part of this incredibly welcoming and generous community.”
Professor of Economics Jon Isham spent the 2016-2017 academic year as a Fulbright Scholar developing and teaching a social entrepreneurship course at Ashesi University in Ghana. He spoke highly of the Fulbright program’s generous financial support and the effort it put into integrating his family into the embassy community.
“The Fulbright is a wonderful thing, and faculty know that,” Isham said. “Franci Farnsworth in the grants office is a tremendous aid and carries decades of experience to make the process both understandable and efficient, and she plays a big role in the success that Middlebury faculty have had getting Fulbrights.
“For most of us, it’s a once-in-a-career opportunity, and I certainly feel very lucky that I got one,” Isham said.
20 of the 31 Middlebury seniors and alumni who applied for Fulbright grants for the 2019-2020 academic year were selected as semifinalists, and will hear back about moving forward in the process between March and April.
(02/28/19 10:58am)
Dining halls are hubs for students to take breaks, catch up with friends and talk about their days. They serve as classic forums for both impromptu get-togethers and planned meetings.
Sophomore Student Government Association (SGA) Senator Eun Ho Lee ’21 saw an opportunity in these gatherings as the perfect places to foster conversations between Middlebury students and the faculty and staff that serve as essential parts of the college community. After several months of work last fall, he created a new program: The Faculty/Staff Student Tables.
The inspiration for the program came from Lee’s high school experience.
“When I first came to the U.S for the first time as an international student five years ago, I was socially awkward,” he said. “My daily conversations with my English lit teacher, music teacher, and many others gave me the courage to reach out to American students and to really get out of comfort zone.”
When Lee came to Middlebury, he wanted to form similarly-close relationships with his professors. He admitted that he has struggled balancing getting good grades with getting to know faculty and staff on a personal level.
Lee then began to think about how he could facilitate such relationships.
“If we wanted to socialize with students and not with faculty, we could have easily gone to one of the big state schools,” Lee said. “But we didn’t.”
Lee’s idea for the Faculty/Staff Student Tables program is to match students and faculty/staff for meals on Thursdays. The groups can then learn about one another and connect through conversation.
Lee said that he will have two separate Google forms: one for students and one for faculty and staff. Interested participants can fill out their respective forms by Sunday night and Lee will then match up students and faculty/staff members.
Lee is still facing some funding challenges, but he hopes to get the program into operation in the next few weeks. He will be looking to the SGA Finance committee as well as specific departments to fund the meals for faculty and staff who do not have a meal plan in the campus dining halls.
Feb Senator Bobbi Finkelstein ’21.5 showed support for the program as a way to improve relationships between students and faculty and staff.
“Our dining and facilities staff work consistently throughout campus, in our dorms and dining halls, and are rarely appreciated and thanked,” she said.
John Schurer ’21, who serves as sophomore senator and the SGA speaker, thinks the program will have a significant impact on the campus.
“Even in a small community like Middlebury, it is understandable that students, staff and faculty associate in separate circles,” he said. He believes the program will help people meet individuals who they might not have interacted with otherwise.
After The Campus’ staff issue over Winter Term, SGA has made a concerted effort to find new ways to support faculty and staff.
“I hope that Eun Ho’s faculty/staff-student tables can improve the relationship between students and staff members by encouraging respect and recognition for all the work they do,” Finkelstein said.
(02/28/19 10:58am)
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What do Hinduism, accents, deafness, antibiotics, poverty and identity have in common? They were all topics addressed by the six finalists for the first-year Spencer Prize for Oratory who competed for the Grand Prize last Tuesday, Feb. 19 in the Robison Concert Hall at the Mahaney Arts Center.
Contestants Roni Lezama, Sophie Hochman, Regina Fontanelli, Jack Rudnick, Justin Celebi and Ellie Thomson are all members of the Class of 2022. They were tasked with connecting a concept they learned in a Middlebury class to something they cared about. Lezama secured the trophy for his speech about his father, who emigrated from Mexico, the English language and power.
The Spencer Prize process began in the fall, when faculty members nominated students they felt had exceptional public speaking skills to be a part of the Oratory Now-sponsored event. Students competed at the Commons level first, and the five champions — as well as one “wild card” winner — competed for the Grand Prize last Tuesday. Lezama was the wild card champion, Hochman represented Wonnacott, Fontanelli from Brainerd, Rudnick from Cook, Celebi from Ross and Thomson from Atwater.
The topics covered a diverse array of subjects, all united by the passion the speakers had for their particular issues.
“The sheer variety of people nominated, and of topics covered, meant that we had a cool dynamic going; there was a real sense of mutual respect among us,” said Hochman, who spoke about the connection between the principles of Hinduism and reform of the prison system.
Other speeches included Thomson’s about adoption and identity, Fontanelli’s discussion of privilege and poverty in bootstrap America, Rudnick’s speech about antibiotics and over-prescription, and Celebi’s about deafness and the border between disabled and able-bodied people.
“The best part for me was the process of writing that first speech, of connecting something I learned in class to something I care about, and realizing that I actually had ideas I wanted to express,” Hochman said.
Lezama dedicated his speech to his father and focused on languages, accents, perception and power in the United States. It was inspired by conversations in his first-year seminar, Language and Social Justice.
With the content of his speech in mind, it’s not surprising that Lezama was appreciative of the freedom afforded to the speakers throughout the process.
“There wasn’t a point when they wanted to change our speaking styles or points,” he said. “They heavily believed in us being our authentic selves, and I personally really appreciated that.”
(02/28/19 10:55am)
Yamiche Alcindor found her purpose as a high school student when she heard a Kanye West song that referenced Emmett Till, a young black boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955.
“I had this burning desire to cover more of the Emmett Tills that are out there,” Alcindor, the White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour, said in her Feb. 22 lecture in Mead Chapel. “I wanted to tell stories about people who needed to have their voices heard.”
Alcindor’s aspiration to be on the frontlines of stories like Till’s and contribute to the nation’s collective consciousness catalyzed her early career as a journalist. At her lecture, entitled “My Journey through Journalism,” Alcindor spoke about her career path as well as the purposes and principles that have guided her throughout her “journey.”
The talk was part of the Robert W. van de Velde ‘75 lecture series. According to Professor of History and Interim Dean for Faculty Development and Research Amy Morsman, who introduced Alcindor, the lecture series was established in 1981 to honor van de Velde, a Middlebury student who was active in WRMC radio during college and worked in broadcast radio after graduating.
“The van de Velde lecture is all about bringing people to campus who can address questions of public policy and the press,” Morsman told The Campus. “I wanted to bring somebody who was young, and dynamic, and I knew it would be fascinating to get somebody who could talk about their work in the White House every day.”
Alcindor often reports stories about civil rights injustices and police violence. As a student at Georgetown University, Alcindor studied English, government and African American studies. She frequently assured her parents, who are Haitian-American immigrants, that she would be going to law school so that they “wouldn’t ask too many questions.” Meanwhile, Alcindor prepared herself for a career in journalism.
When she started out as an intern, she knew she had to pay her dues, covering stories about puppies, snow and dead whales.
“If you really want to do something, go after it with a fervor and a passion that makes people step back and say, ‘This person really wants it this much, I can maybe respect their ideas,’ ” she said. “If you have an opportunity, you should grab onto those opportunities.”
She was soon hired by USA Today to cover national breaking news, writing stories about the protests in Ferguson, Missouri and the Sandy Hook school shooting. Later, she was approached by The New York Times to cover the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
Now, Alcindor covers Trump’s presidency for PBS NewsHour and is a contributor to NBC News and MSNBC.
As a journalist, Alcindor has a history of asking tough questions. Early in her career as a local reporter for Newsday, a publication based in New York, she wrote an article about a city council ordinance that allowed a councilman to get permanent life insurance, costing taxpayers millions of dollars. When covering Bernie Sanders, she questioned the lack of diversity on his campaign.
In November, while reporting for PBS, Alcindor asked the president at a press conference if he felt his rhetoric emboldened white nationalists. He responded by accusing her of asking a racist question.
As Alcindor grappled with this now-infamous interaction with the president, she found stability in the people who stood behind her, and in those she was asking the questions for.
“I focused on my purpose,” she said describing how she grappled with the interaction. “I was steadied by the people who brought me to the United States so I could even ask that question,” Alcindor said.
“That’s going to be a moment that’s replicated for everyone else in this room” she said. “You want to be ready for it, and you want to be strong. Because it will change you, and it will define you. I’m now known as ‘the girl who Trump called racist.’”
Alcindor carries the stories of the people she has met with her. She told the crowd that politicians should be made to answer tough questions and held accountable for their beliefs. People who have platforms should understand what they believe in, and stick to that platform and purpose, Alcindor said.
“What I’ve learned is that you should really stand for something. Journalism must be the medium within which we dig and ask questions, and ask those questions in a more complex way. And we shouldn’t be afraid to push candidates. So in 2020, get ready to see me on stage asking all sorts of questions that make people uncomfortable.”
After the lecture, Middlebury student Ruhamah Weil ’21 reflected on the importance of Alcindor’s talk.
“Right now at Middlebury and in the country at large, we are dealing with questions like how do you stand behind what you believe in, and what do you believe in, and how do you talk to somebody else who believes in something different than you,” Weil said. “Sometimes I think I want journalists to convince people that have other opinions than me that my opinion is right. But I think (Alcindor) reminded me that that’s not always the point of journalism.”
(02/14/19 11:00am)
The Middlebury Board of Trustees unanimously voted to divest last weekend, the culmination of a more than six-year effort by student-activists to rid the institution's endowment of investments in fossil fuels.
Divestment is one of four components of the institution’s new 10-year Energy2028 plan, which also includes a framework for committing to 100 percent renewable energy, reducing energy consumption on campus by 25 percent and expanding environmental education initiatives. President Laurie L. Patton publicly announced the plan yesterday before an energized crowd in Wilson Hall.
"I feel like everything I've learned in all of my classes at Middlebury has led up to this moment,” said Alec Fleischer ’20.5. Fleischer is a member of the student-run Sunday Night Environmental Group (SNEG) and works with Divest Middlebury, an SNEG campaign formed in 2012.
“This process has taught me how to be an activist, how to push this institution, and how to create sound environmental policy,” he said. “I'm glad to see this institution implementing the lessons it's teaching its students.”Energy2028, Patton said, is a natural progression in the college’s long history of environmental leadership, dating back to the founding of the nation’s first Environmental Studies program in 1965. Today’s announcement makes Middlebury one of the most prominent institutions to pledge full divestment from fossil fuels, and marks a new chapter in its mission to combat climate change.
The decision does not come without risk, with trustees acknowledging that divestment may pose a small cost to the endowment over time. But the potential loss was a significant part of the trustees’ debate, and Patton described their ultimate decision as the most responsible choice the board could make.
“This plan is true to Middlebury’s culture and values,” Patton said. “It acknowledges that we do not have all the solutions at our disposal at this moment to meet these goals, but it commits us to make every effort to do so. I could not be prouder or more inspired by our institution than I am today.”
DIVESTMENT’S DEEP ROOTS
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(02/13/19 2:28am)
The Campus is excited to launch a new translation initiative with the aim of making its articles and content accessible to a broader community of readers whose preferred language is not English. Learn more about the initiative and how to get involved here.
Interested in getting involved with The Middlebury Campus? Reach out directly to the senior editor in your section of interest.
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(11/29/18 11:00am)
As Professor of Computer Science Daniel Scharstein sees it, writing a computer program requires just as much intellectual creativity as writing an English essay or proving a mathematical theorem.
When Scharstein first encountered the discipline as a teenager, “that was the thing that blew me away,” he said. “You have this power — you have this computer that does your bidding.”
“You can concoct whatever you want,” he said.
With boundary-pushing innovations in computer science filling headlines every day, the role of computer science (CS) as a means of bringing about change seems both exciting and endless. And at Middlebury, surging interest in the discipline has caused the department to grow rapidly, and prompted the institution to begin remaking the campus to accommodate it.
On Middlebury’s campus, there are around 160 declared CS majors. This statistic is even more impressive when compared to the previous decade when there was an average of seven graduating CS majors per year. This ranks CS as the second-largest major on campus, after Economics.
Course enrollment has grown tremendously, too. A decade ago, the computer science faculty taught an average of 210 students per year. This past year’s total enrollment rose to over 1000 students, with an additional rise to about 1150 expected by 2020.
Middlebury students and faculty have designed complex computer programs capable of drawing and animating pictures on the screen, solving computational puzzles and detecting dangerous and abnormal crowd behavior using computer vision techniques. But Middlebury faculty also emphasize the basics — Scharstein reasoned that, far from being a vocational field of study, computing is a basic skill, just like reading, writing and arithmetic.
“I honestly think everyone should take an intro to CS class,” said Aiko Hassett ’20, a computer science major. “Technology is becoming such a huge part of our daily lives,” Hassett observed, that simply knowing the basics of computer science can help one gain “some fresh creative insights” and a better understanding of how our society works.
“[Programming] trains your brain in another way of thinking,” Scharstein said. “You learn how to put lines together that put these computations together for you. [Computing] teaches you precision — one missing semicolon and your code won’t run,” he said. “But it’s also an art.” A single code could be written in a hundred different ways, each resulting in a different solution with its own unique pros and cons.
“Coding, for me, is like a completely new language,” said Emely Zeledon ’20. “When I approach a problem, I have to first stop and plan out every single step that I'll have to take to get to the final solution. You have to be methodical yet concise and that's a skill that is valuable in many careers.”
A Molecular Biology and Biochemistry major, Zeledon noted that CS is integral in the field of molecular biology and biochemistry, as it is in many others, because of “its ability to make algorithms, predict patterns and [organize and interpret] data.”
Professor Matthew Dickerson, who has taught in the CS department at Middlebury for almost 30 years, echoed this view.
“[Computing] doesn’t just mean sitting in front of a terminal writing computer programs,” he said.
Students of CS are discovering an exciting field with computational aspects that extend into not only the sciences, but also art, music, history and economics, Dickerson explained.
The data supports this observation, too. In the Fall 2017 Student Profile released by Middlebury’s Office of Assessment and Institutional Research, more than a third of the 101 declared computer science majors also double-majored in another discipline.
Thea Bean ’19 took one of the department’s introductory courses, Computing for the Sciences, because she wanted to become a more well-rounded scientist. She believes that her background in both biology and coding was what had helped her get a job this past summer.
With larger enrollments, however, come changes in dynamics both in the classroom and in the department. In introductory classes, for example, faculty are tasked with accommodating students with vastly different levels of CS experience. Some have taken advanced computing courses in high school, while others have next to no prior exposure to the field.
“The professors somewhat struggled to teach in a way that challenged every level,” Bean said.
Compared to students with previous knowledge and experience in CS, for whom the introductory classes may be only mildly difficult, students without background in the field can find the introductory classes to be quite challenging.
“Success in the class can depend on the student's ability to attend office hours as well as T.A hours,” said Zeledon, citing a common problem faced by students whose packed class and extracurricular schedules get in the way of seeking help outside of the classroom.
Zeledon felt that the level of difficulty in introductory computer science courses has “increased in comparison to past semesters as a function of the spiked interest in CS majors,” reflecting that taking a CS course helped her “feel more comfortable with failure being part of the journey to success.”
The department now has eight full-time faculty on campus, with three joining the team in the past academic year. Even with three new tenure-track lines granted in the last two years, however, the computer science department remains severely short-staffed.
Middlebury’s average faculty to student ratio is one to eight. With more than 1000 students enrolled in CS classes last year and only eight full-time professors on campus to teach those classes, the faculty to student ratio for the CS department is higher than one to 50. Naturally, the department is currently searching for its 11th full-time faculty member.
“We want to serve all the students,” Dickerson said. “But it’s hard with that many students.”
“It’s harder for me to get to know the names of students when there are 30 of them instead of 12,” he admitted. “In a bigger class, there may be students who feel less comfortable asking questions. [During office hours,] if there are 10 students waiting in line for help, one student might not get as much individual help or attention.”
The department employs a full-time Assistant in Instruction, Ruben Gilbert, to aid students — a system that imitates the teaching assistant model commonly found at larger research universities. According to Bean, Gilbert’s help was crucial to her success in the class. “I learned most of what I know from Ruben,” she said.
A larger faculty brings the possibility of offering more electives, and larger student enrollment brings energy to the CS scene at Middlebury, Dickerson said. However, he noted, “it’s easier to create energy when you have a lot of people but harder to create community.”
Student organizations such as Middle Endian and wiCS++, as well as summer research experiences and group projects in classes help build community, Dickerson explained. Middle Endian, whose name is a play on the concept of endianness, the order in which numbers are stored in bytes, aims to foster a sense of community within CS at Middlebury. wiCS++, which stands for women in computer science, aims to create a culture and space for historically underrepresented groups in the field.
The percentage of women CS majors at Middlebury wavers at around 33 percent. Hassett said that the gender distribution in the CS department was better than she originally thought, but noted that “as a woman in STEM, and especially CS, it’s so easy to feel doubtful of your ability,” calling for a community of “females who support, encourage and inspire one another.”
“TIGHT FOR SPACE”
The department’s growth was a major factor behind the construction of the new transitional building on the south side of the parking lot behind Wright Memorial Theater. The new building, expected to be completed in June 2019, will house the CS department and provide office space for other departments, giving the CS department more room to grow and freeing up much-needed lab area for other science departments in McCardell Bicentennial Hall.
“There’s a certain exciting event energy in Bihall,” said Dickerson, but “we are tight for space up there.”
It turns out, however, that this move might bring a couple drawbacks of its own.
“It’ll be a huge blow, as far as I’m concerned,” said Professor of Biology Jeremy Ward of the anticipated relocation.
For Ward, the physical presence of the computer science department in Bihall fosters collaboration between the scientific disciplines.
“I’m not going to see Michael in the elevator again,” he said, referring to Professor Michael Linderman, whose research in genomics overlaps with Ward’s. “Computer science is now fully integrated into every science discipline — I couldn’t do any of the work I do now without computer science,” he said. “But there’s always email.”
Dickerson said he also regrets the move away from colleagues in the sciences. “I will miss the collaborations with other science disciplines and seeing students from other majors in Bihall,” he said. “It’s nice to walk up and down the stairs and see my colleagues in geology or chemistry, and I think it’s nice for students in computer science to interact with other students in other majors.”
A white paper report from the National Academy of Sciences in 2016 suggests that an increase in demand for graduates with quantitative skills is a possible reason for the increase in demand for CS majors.
According to data from the Center for Career and Internships, 11 percent of Middlebury students who graduated in 2017 pursued careers in technology.
“It’s not that there’s ten times as many students who are interested in computer science,” explained Dickerson. “You also get students who do computer science because they think it’ll get them employed.”
But the notion of learning for learning’s sake, a foundational principle of a liberal education, remains alive within the CS department. Dickerson noted that it is not unheard of for students to declare a CS major for practical reasons, only to discover a passion for the discipline further down the line
“I don’t judge their motivations,” Dickerson said. “I’m just here to teach whatever they want to learn.”
(11/29/18 10:58am)
Speakers discussed the painful and sometimes tragic experiences of immigrants seeking new lives in the United States during a Nov. 15 panel in Dana Auditorium, titled “Trauma and the U.S. Immigration System.”
The panel featured University of Vermont College of Medicine Professor Dr. Andrea Green, Albany Law School Professor Sarah Rogerson, Migrant Justice activist Marita Caneda and Hannah Krutiansky ’19, who worked as a summer intern with the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES).
Meron Benti ’19, who was born in Ethiopia and moved to Italy before making her way to the United States, served as the moderator. She opened by talking about her own experience as an immigrant and her 18 month wait for asylum.
Krutiansky shared her experiences working with RAICES, a non-profit based in San Antonio, Texas, where she spent time in detention facilities and worked directly with detainees to provide legal support. She focused on injustice faced by indigenous migrants that she observed during the job.
[pullquote speaker="Hannah Krutiansky ’19" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]What they really need is counseling, but what they’re going to get is interrogation about the most intimate, traumatic, events of their life.[/pullquote]
“I was in a courtroom where the mother and the interpreter clearly were not understanding each other and the judge just said, ‘Please give your best interpretation,’” she said.
Krutiansky’s work with RAICES gave her a first hand perspective of the trauma that immigrants endure.
“They’ll be told that they need to sign a paper that might be in English and if they ask what they’re signing a very typical response could be, ‘Do you think I have time to explain this to you?’” she said. “What they really need is counseling, but what they’re going to get is interrogation about the most intimate, traumatic, events of their life.”
In one incident, she and other RAICES staff were forced to leave the holding facility without explanation.
“We exited visitation and we were met by a literal army of ICE officers, it was probably anywhere from 30 to 50 officers in bulletproof vests, guns, shields, handcuffs,” Krutiansky said. “This was just to terrorize this population.”
After this incident, 16 fathers were randomly selected and put in solitary confinement for a day with no explanation. One of the fathers tried to commit suicide.
Krutiansky witnessed the effect that this attack had on the children whose fathers were taken away with no explanation.
“One seven-year-old boy whose eyes were completely glazed over after the incident, bloodshot, you could have put your hand in front of him and he wouldn’t have flinched,” Krutiansky said.
Rogerson elaborated on immigration from a legal perspective and described a variety of legal terms. She also described traumatic experiences helping 300 refugees who had been flown to a county jail in Albany to be detained.
“No one ever told them where they were, so the first thing that the lawyers did when they went in was draw a map of the United States and show them where they were, and where their family members were in some cases,” she said, describing many of the refugees as “incredibly disoriented.”
[pullquote speaker="Albany Law School Professor Sarah Rogerson" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]The Trump administration made the decision to limit asylum claims for people who were fleeing gang violence and people fleeing domestic violence.[/pullquote]
Rogerson criticized many recent changes to immigration policy.
“The Trump administration made the decision to limit asylum claims for people who were fleeing gang violence and people fleeing domestic violence,” she said.
She also emphasized collaboration with law enforcement.
“We’re creating our own system of humane immigration system enforcement and we’re using law enforcement allies to do it,” Rogerson said.
Dr. Green, a pediatrician with experience serving refugees, focused on the physical effects of trauma and immigration, especially on children.
“Young people, they will trade sex for their basic needs,” she said, calling it “survival sex” which leads to sexually transmitted infections, in addition to other diseases and injuries acquired through the arduous process of coming to the United States as an asylee or refugee.
“The bigger issue, in addition to all those health issues, is the effects of trauma,” she said. “Stress, trauma causes inflammation in the body, and that inflammation in the body affects health in the long term, and actually changes your genetic makeup.”
The effect at a broader level is a higher suicide rate among immigrants. Green spoke about her own experience serving Bhutanese refugees in Vermont, which has twice the suicide risk of the general population.
“That trauma affects that parents ability to parent that child,” she said during discussion of parents coming to the U.S. to get a better life for their children. “That trauma is now a multi-generational trauma.”
Caneda, a Migrant Justice activist, gave a brief overview of the organization’s current work. She spoke about its mission to protect Vermont dairy workers with the goal of improving lives of migrants and advancing human rights, and highlighted that immigrants do not have the same human rights as others.
“Since 2014, a lot of members of migrant justice have been arrested” she said. “Nine of those detentions have clear evidence of retaliation for coming in and speaking out about human rights.” Caneda added that many detentions and arrests by ICE also involved illegal cooperation with the DMV.
Caneda emphasized that not all immigrants are necessarily fleeing violence, but also lack of opportunity and unsafe working conditions.
“When the only options to work are for a fracking company or for an oil company or joining the army, a lot of people don’t have those values and they come and migrate here and end up working on the dairy farms” she said.
“When you work at a dairy farm you live on the farm, you become a 24/7 worker” Caneda said, pointing out food safety concerns. “When you live on a farm, especially up north, you depend on others to bring you food, sometimes it’s every 15 days, so if day 13 you run out of food, you don’t have an option and you spend two days without.”
[pullquote speaker="Migrant Justice activist Marita Caneda" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Right now in Vermont anyone can get a driver’s license regardless of your immigration status, which was a big change because now people could start driving cars, going to stores, not depending on others for food.[/pullquote]
In a positive moment, Caneda explained that this condition has improved.
“Right now in Vermont anyone can get a driver’s license regardless of your immigration status, which was a big change because now people could start driving cars, going to stores, not depending on others for food,” she said.
This panel fit within a larger national conversation around immigration. The narratives of the speakers stood in striking contrast with the president’s recent military response to the alleged “migrant caravan” of immigrants approaching the border from Central America.
(11/15/18 10:59am)
Since leaving China to attend college in the United States, I’ve come to associate foreign news coverage on my home country, perhaps unfairly, with something that resembles a skeleton. I’m referring to those plastic skeletons most high school biology teachers keep in the back of their classroom (the ones that, you might recall, were given names like Neil or Albert and wheeled out for the occasional educational digression on someone’s dog’s fractured femur) — the kind that is structurally correct in the information it conveys, but lacking in the flesh and blood of the stories it tells.
Occasionally, however, something comes along and turns this analogy on its head. As most of my understanding of China had been based on the narrative of state-sponsored media, stories told about China from outside of the country sometimes draw back the curtain to aspects of Chinese society that I was previously blind to.
Such was my experience last Thursday evening, when I sat down in Axinn 232 for the screening of director Hao Wu’s boldly-titled documentary “People’s Republic of Desire.” Its Chinese title translates roughly to “Your Virtual Life,” a title that seems a touch more generic than its English counterpart.
Reviews of the film have compared it to a real-life “Black Mirror” story.
“It is sort of dark,” Wu said jokingly of his third documentary feature, “but that wasn’t how I had intended it to be.”
A Chinese filmmaker and a fellow at the Washington-based think tank New America, Hao Wu hopes to “explain China to people outside of China.”
In a Q&A session after the screening, Wu discussed his motivation for the film.
“I wanted to capture the changes in China,” he said. To Wu, the online phenomenon of live-streaming is a reflection of the real, offline human desires that run rampant in the rapidly modernizing country.
As the film opens, we are introduced to what seems like an office space for live-streamers, who sit in undecorated cubicles, singing and speaking to strangers in online chatrooms. Such is what Shen Man and Big Li do for a living.
The film is driven by its two protagonists — 21-year-old Shen Man and 24-year-old Big Li, two of the Chinese live-streaming platform YY’s highest ranking stars.
For her monthly income from YY of $40,000, Shen live-streams her videos from the comfort of her own desk at home, where she performs karaoke and responds to comments in her chat room, which regularly hosts over 10,000 viewers.
Shen explains what she calls the “Love Triangle of YY,” which connects live-streaming hosts to two very different types of fans. The diaosi viewers, usually young men of mediocre appearance, financial means and social standing, idolize the hosts. The tuhao, or nouveau riche, patrons shower the hosts with virtual gifts of roses, diamonds, cars and planes that materialize into real financial boons.
A graphic of an awards podium at the upper left corner of her chat room lists her most generous viewers.
“Fans follow you if you spend a lot,” one of Shen’s high-profile tuhao viewers says. “People chat with you.” He admits that he used to have a spending problem, but has since dialed back his spending to the more “rational” sum of $35,000 a month. Where does this absurd pool of funds come from, you ask? “I’m a profiteer,” he divulges nonchalantly.
In Shen Man’s chat room, another user by the handle of “YY Fish” gifts Shen a considerable amount of money, signified by a virtual car that whizzes across the interface, stirring up an excited flurry of viewers’ comments. “Who is this [patron]?” They ask. “He must be rich,” the comments speculate.
“F-ck, all that money…” Shen Man’s father muses as he watches one of his daughter’s live streams. “If only any of it were mine.”
YY capitalizes on these desires, too. Later on in the film, we learn that the platform takes a whopping 60 percent share of the virtual gifts’ monetary value.
While the tuhao patrons certainly have the upper hand in visibility, the diaosi viewers dominate the online live-streaming platform in numbers. The film explains that just as the tuhao get a kick out of the virtual social recognition brought by their extravagant virtual gifts, the diaosi followers become addicted to watching the large gifts occur online as a glimpse into the lifestyle they no longer dream of having.
The slang term diaosi grew in popularity as a self-deprecatory term for millennials to jokingly refer to themselves. In Chengdu, where the documentary was filmed, as in many Chinese cities, this demographic likely encompassed most of the migrant workforce who left their hometowns in search for a better future. Separated from old friends and family, many migrant laborers lead isolated existences.
Yong, one of Big Li’s many fans, is an 18-year-old migrant worker who makes around $400 per month packing motorcycle parts in a factory. “Sometimes I really want to find someone to have a heart-to-heart, but it’s very difficult,” he admits. “But I’m not lonely. I can watch Big Li on my computer.”
For those like Yong, live-stream hosts like Big Li are not merely sources of entertainment. Yong sees Big Li as a role model, as perhaps proof that even those from humble beginnings like himself can eventually come into fortune and fame — a prospect that seems increasingly unlikely under China’s steeply declining social mobility.
Off screen, Shen Man holds no illusions about what she calls the “hidden rules of this world.”
“You think [the big-spending patrons] are idiots, spending all that money for nothing? They will ask to meet in person, or something else,” Shen says matter-of-factly. “In front of money, family, love, friendship — they are all bullsh-t.”
Formerly a “poor nurse,” Shen Man is now her family’s sole breadwinner. “The whole family depends on me,” she tells the filmmaker with a mixture of pride and resentment. Shen is buying an apartment for her father and her stepmother, who both live with her, has purchased a house in her hometown for her grandfather and also plans to pay for her younger sister’s college tuition.
Like many of her viewers, Shen Man lives in social isolation. “When I think about it,” Shen says, “I’m disconnected from society. I don’t go out. I don’t even see the sun.”
In an interview with a local television station exploring the social phenomenon of internet streaming stars like Shen, a television producer asks Shen a question that throws her off guard.
“Are you happy?” he asks.
“In what sense?” Shen redirects the question.
“In every sense,” the producer replies.
“Yes, I am,” Shen answers almost automatically. After a pause, she seems to reconsider her answer.
“Compared to many others,” she says, “I think I should be happy.”
(11/15/18 10:57am)
Windor Castle: Oxford students and tourists watch the changing of the guard at Windsor Castle. Windsor Castle is a royal residence in the English county of Berkshire. The castle was built in the 11th century following the Norman invasion of England by William the Conqueror. It is the oldest and largest inhabited castle in the world and The Queen’s favorite place to spend her weekends.
(11/08/18 10:57am)
Inside Kirk Alumni Center, a colorful panel on the wall includes two photos of club activities and two paragraphs outlining the evolution of social landscapes at Middlebury College, all on the background of a photo showing a group of students dissecting pig feet.
The neatly designed collage-style panel is titled “Living Together: Social Life.” At first sight, pig dissection may seem to many, including President Laurie L. Patton, more like a classroom activity.
“We heard that this is the Pre-Med Society, whose idea of fun gatherings outside the classroom is dissecting pigs,” Patton said at the exhibit opening on Oct. 26 to an amused audience. “Go, Midd.”
The panel is one of more than a dozen featured in the new exhibition “Continuity of Change: Living, Learning, and Standing Together,” an exhibit that looks at the history of the college from the student perspective. The exhibit was curated by a group of six interns of the 2018 MuseumWorks, an intensive summer internship program supervised by Jason Vrooman ’03, curator of education and academic programs of the College Museum of Art.
“[The exhibit] is Middlebury’s story told through the hearts and minds of its students, and it looks to a future where diversity and inclusivity is Middlebury,” said college archivist Danielle Rougeau, who co-supervised the project.
Throughout the eight weeks, the interns met every Monday with Rougeau to go over huge amounts of archival materials of the college’s history, from scrapbooks and photographs to student publications and official reports, attempting to understand the past, present and future of Middlebury. The team wanted to formulate a narrative that, according to intern Jessie Kuzmicki ’19, “was true and also aspirational.”
“I think we all are in agreement that Middlebury is a pretty awesome place, and I think we always strive to be positive,” Kuzmicki said at the opening. “We always try to do the right thing.”
Student activism constitutes an important element of the exhibit, with several panels dedicated to various points in time in the college’s history of student protests. One shows student protestors outside Mead Memorial Chapel after the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Another explains the organized “Die-In” in Ross Dining Hall in December 2014 after Eric Garner and Michael Brown were killed by police earlier that year.
The challenge to represent Middlebury’s 218 years of history in one small exhibition was always present during the curatorial process. Elizabeth Warfel ’19 said that they were “constantly bombarded with new ideas,” trying to figure out what direction the exhibit should take and what to include in it. Warfel also appreciated being able to work with not only Art History majors, but also with English and History major Kuzmicki and Theater major Sam Martin ’19.
Unlike other interns who worked on other projects at local museums or libraries, Martin worked on the exhibit full time and helped design the panels in Photoshop.
“I do a lot of work in theater and design for the stage,” Martin said. “It was really exciting to bring about what I’ve learned about visual storytelling and aesthetics of this exhibition.”
He explained that the design of the panel in a relatively free collage-style is intentionally challenging the previous exhibit on view at Kirk Center, which consisted of mostly historical black-and-white photos.
“It’s really meant to look like something students made with paint, glue and tape and just put up [by] ourselves,” said Martin. “I hope it’s empowering to the students to take control of our narrative of Middlebury and what we want it to be.”
Part of what made the exhibit possible was, according to Rougeau, the interns’ dedication to understanding Middlebury’s evolution throughout the years and to place their own experience in that context. Exploring the diverse panels, there is no doubt that this sense of continuity shines through. Elements one might find familiar include dance performances in recent years and clippings from The Campus.
At the same time, viewers are guaranteed to find something new and unknown to them in the exhibition. On the panel titled “The Women’s College,” various images and scans of documents illustrate the prevalence of gender inequality both in the past and present, the students’ struggle against that, as well as a little known attempt to build separate campuses for women and men before the administration gave up the idea in 1950.
Above a photo of The Feminist Resource Center at the Chellis House and another of student protests marching outside Ross, three headshots of women are accompanied by notes, written or printed in the 1930s, outlining their “offenses” and the punishments they received. All three had their rights for “nights out” taken away for a couple days because of misconducts like “entertaining in a classroom at the Chateau with the lights out and the door closed” or “smoking on campus.”
“It’s a wonderful view into how women are treated differently than men, the rules that dominated their lives and did not pertain to men,” Rougeau said, explaining that these particular materials came out of what she called “miscellaneous historic topics” consisting of important stories that do not necessarily fit into the archive’s record groups.
The exhibit initially stemmed out of conversations between the MuseumWorks program, the Alliance for an Inclusive Middlebury and the president’s office to redesign the Kirk Center, and bringing the college’s archives to life in the long run is a crucial part of that.
Rougeau is excited that the archive materials are becoming part of the curriculum, as there is generally an increasing awareness of the importance of going to the primary sources in the country. Yet the exhibit marks the first time where “archives is the impetus.”
Having the exhibit at Kirk Center, Rougeau said, does bring limitation to its availability, as it is an alumni center that is only open when they host events. Meanwhile, the Special Collections room in Davis Family Library is always open to interested students.
“We are open five days a week, [and] anybody is welcome to come here,” she said. “We are hoping that through curricular exposure that there will be a genuine curiosity among the students themselves to come and do their own research.”
