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(03/22/18 1:10am)
Literatures and cultures librarian Katrina Spencer is liaison to the Anderson Freeman Resource Center, the Arabic department, the French department, the Gender Sexuality & Feminist Studies (GSFS Program), the Language Schools, Linguistics and the Spanish & Portuguese departments. These affiliations are reflected in her reading choices.
“While I am a very slow reader, I’m a very critical reader,” she says.
habibi
by Craig Thompson, 2011
672 pages
Trigger Warnings: Multiple scenes of rape are visited in this work. There is also a good deal of partial female nudity.
The What
“habibi” is a graphic novel that tells a fantasy tale of love in the fictional land of Wanatolia, a landscape that is both desertous and urban, “timeless” and modern and distinctly Middle Eastern in aesthetic and tradition. Dodola, the female protagonist, is sold as a child into marriage and saves a baby, Zam, a black African, who was headed towards a similar fate of slavery, subjection and oppression. Making a daring escape from potential captors, Dodola raises Zam in isolation from society.
Her engagement with the rest of civilization (spoiler alert!) involves her exchange of sex for provisions. After years, this set-up begins to fail and leads our characters down paths of new adventures when the two become separated. These include Dodola’s navigation of a palace harem where she becomes the object of a lusty sultan’s desire and Zam’s adoption into a band of hijras who believe in castration and harass society into giving them alms for their survival.
Yes, there’s that much going on in the work! Rape, suggestions of incest and a battle for water rights are all interwoven by sacred scripture from the Qur’an, parables and tapping into a rich tradition of storytelling from Arabia.
Visually the text is intoxicatingly gorgeous even in its monochrome. The visual appeal is the least disputed of the the book’s characteristics among critics. Despite not knowing the Arabic language, Craig Thompson learned the alphabet (abjad) and its ligatures and employs them alongside Middle Eastern motifs like ornate tile design to effectively conjure the feeling of having traveled elsewhere for his Western audience. Truly, if the tale had no words, merely looking at the text would be a treat for the eyes.
The Why
The tone is visually arresting. Its design, deeply maroon and textured, makes one feel they are encountering something special and unique. On the cover, Thompson melds English and Arabic in the strokes he uses for the letters in the title. That alone had me. Unlike German or Spanish, one of the initial features that attracted me to Arabic was that I couldn’t decipher it: I couldn’t read it, pronounce it or make any sense of it given my ignorance of the alphabet. So when I saw this work, “habibi,” a popular term of endearment meaning “my beloved” or “my darling” (for males) used by Arabic speakers, it drew me in. Having become a working adult, I had to violently tear myself away from my love of language study. So now, when I can fit in a brief and fleeting moment to make love and draw near, I do. This was one of my chances to do so. [Note: Don’t ever grow up. #srsly]
I wanted to like this work. It is meritorious for its sheer beauty and naked ambition alone. It is over 600 pages worth of drawing! However, in reading this work, it is as though the author had never heard of Edward Said and “Orientalism” before.
The narrative relies on dangerous tropes that ring of colonialism, exotification and a global divide. In comparison to the values we espouse today in the 21st century, the work is strikingly anachronistic in its representations of women, Arabs and the Middle East. It’s as though Thompson mined every stereotype he could find that casts the white, Western gaze over the Middle Eastern region and said, “Yes, I want that in story! Naked, lounging women here! Shisha pipes there! And many camels in a caravan! Yes, I want it all!”
Moreover, while allusions to the Qur’an, the Bible and “1,001 Arabian Nights” appear throughout the work along with cryptic mysticism, parables and talismen, it’s unclear what the author wanted to accomplish with them. They add to a sense of otherness and geographic distance but their objective beyond these is vague and beyond my comprehension.
While I would happily consume this artist’s graphic work in another publication, I’d hope that he’d collaborate by letting someone else lead a more modest venture in text-based storytelling and he, himself, assume responsibility for drawing. He must work harder by many measures to more fairly, accurately and humanely depict people who are not white or male. In a text that approaches verisimilitude in its late chapters, it leaves much to be desired elsewhere in the narrative. For a different taste, see the author’s 2003 memoir release “Blankets” that received more critical praise.
(03/22/18 12:59am)
On Saturday March 17, six Middlebury College students graced the stage of Robison Hall in a vocal concert entitled “Songs and Arias.” The concert featured performances by Annie Beliveau ’18, Miguel Castillo ’18, Tevan Goldberg ’18, Paige Guarino ’18.5, Michael Koutelos ’20 and Miranda Seixas ’20. These students take non-credit vocal lessons for 45 minutes each week and were invited to perform by their vocal teachers.
The Middlebury Department of Music produces powerhouse vocalists who perform with a professional level of talent and poise, as demonstrated on Saturday night. The 90-minute concert included a diverse repertoire of 22 different classical pieces, containing both solos and duets and pulling from 16th to 20th century operas. Five different languages were represented, including English, French, Spanish, Italian and German. The lyrics to each piece, alongside an English translation, were printed in the playbill.
Carol Christenson, a Middlebury College Music Department faculty member of 27 years, coordinates this annual event. She approximated that Saturday night’s show was her twentieth rendition of “Songs and Arias.” She chooses students “who have been singing long enough that they have the technical prowess to handle some of [the] more challenging repertoire.” In preparing for a classical performance, she and her students first review pronunciation of the language and technical aspects of the music.
“[They] must do many exercises to be in the physical shape to sing the pieces,” Christenson said. “It’s like any other elite physical activity…I liken it to ballet, we do a lot of bar exercises in the studio. Then they have to add communication and artistry on top of it.”
The process, as intense as it is, allows for the students and Christenson to form great relationships.
“I get very close to the students,” Christenson said. “We work one-on-one and some of them I’ve had all four years. They’re all special [and] just really great people. We’ve had fun being together.”.
The concert’s repertoire also contained small snippets from larger operas.
“When we’re working on [the music] we learn the story of the whole opera, so we know where our characters fit in at that certain moment” said Miranda Seixas ’20, a soprano vocalist.
Many of the performers got the chance to workshop one of their songs this past Tuesday, in an opera master class with Stéphanie Pothier. Seixas said the class brought the performers closer together and gave them a chance to put the final touch on their pieces right before the big night.
“I’ve had a really good time and I think most of that is dependent on Carol,” Seixas said. “She puts in so much work and she’s really passionate, especially about classical stuff, so she really pushes all her students. I’ve been challenged and really developed over the past year and a half through the music department here.”
“Songs and Arias” showcased an array of melodious pieces. Some songs were upbeat and exciting, others slower and more somber, but all were sung with passion and poise. The Middlebury Department of Music is a robust community that is home to endlessly talented students, so keep your eye out for more spectacular musical events headed to campus this semester.
(03/21/18 10:42pm)
As faculty members who helped to spread the word about the Mar. 14 school walkout led by students from the Middlebury Union High School, we were gratified to see such a large turnout this morning from the college community, including President Patton. It is heartening that so many Middlebury students, faculty, staff and other community members joined in solidarity with young people at the forefront of social change.
We are distressed, however, with some of the content of an “all staff” email that our staff colleagues received at 2:00 p.m. on Mar. 13, on the eve of the march.
That email stated that “[the institution’s] obligation is to conduct classes and provide services to our students. In order to provide these services we need all of our scheduled classes taught and offices opened and staffed.” If the leaders of the institution expected scheduled classes to be taught during the walkout, why wasn’t this (or a comparable) note sent to all faculty? Are the expectations about “employees’ engagement in protests and civic activity” different for faculty and staff? If so, why?
The “all staff” email went on to say that “[i]f staff choose to take time off for such activities, they should follow the college’s regular time-off policy by requesting time off in advance, and supervisors should review and approve those requests keeping in mind our need to maintain normal operations.” It is not clear to us that all staff would have had the time — from 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday to 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday — to secure such approvals from their supervisors. Moreover, we are concerned about the possibly intimidating effect of this email’s iteration of staff responsibilities, particularly since the email’s ostensible function as a “reminder” about the need to request permission for an absence from work is belied by its timing right before the protest. Furthermore, Middlebury faculty (as far as we know) were certainly not asked to secure permission from their department chairs, program heads and/or the Dean of Faculty to participate in this civic event. Is this a double standard? If so, why is this appropriate?
We do not doubt the sincerity of the email’s final sentiments: “We are supportive of your civic engagement, and encourage you to increase your awareness of the issues of our times.” Indeed, it is precisely because we are certain that the college’s leadership feels this way that we hope, upon the occasion of the next comparable community event, that staff and faculty will be treated in the same manner. Regarding robust civic engagement in the public sphere, the faculty’s status should never be privileged.
Laurie Essig, Gender, Feminist & Sexuality Studies;
Jon Isham, Economics and Environmental Studies;
Michael Sheridan, Sociology/Anthropology;
Marion Wells, English & American Literatures
(03/21/18 10:34pm)
We kids, the youth of America, those of us still figuring out who we are and what we want to do and whether or not we really do know anything after all, have more power than we could ever know. This is a realization I arrived at on the Cross Street Bridge, as I looked into the eyes of adults — many of them professors at the college — and saw fear and humility and pride, but certainly not a single answer.
No, it was we kids — planned by a few articulate and courageous 16- and 17-year-olds from Middlebury Union High — who had organized and led the Walkout Against Gun Violence, not because we were more Facebook adept or knew how to make better signs than the adults, but rather because we are burdened by the weight of innocence.
It is not we kids who have compromised our integrity by bending our will to NRA campaign donations, nor is it we who have stood aside complacently as these shootings have grown more frequent and more destructive. Yet when anyone sees their defenseless classmate shot, their body brutalized and their memory violated through systemic inaction and hollow, meaningless offers of thoughts and prayers, it is us. We have grown up in an America where toddlers are trained for active shooter drills, where kids halfway through puberty hear a loud sound in first period English and instinctively text their parents that they love them, where students have to stream out of their schools by the thousands, wiping the sleep from their eyes, to plead with the adults who make the decisions to change something so that they don’t have to worry about getting shot while they’re trying to figure out who to ask to prom. The urgent voices of David Hogg and Emma González and Theo Spackman-Wells cannot be silenced because they are loud and they are innocent and they are right. We are innocent because no one else is.
At 10 years old, I was a fifth grader who cared only about his dog and convincing his parents that he was responsible enough to scooter to school alone. It was also then that I got suspended from school for getting into a fight. A friend of mine — or someone I thought was a friend — had come up to me at recess and pushed me, hard. A few minutes later, he came back and did it again. When I saw him circling back a third time, I walked up to him and told him in no uncertain terms that if he pushed me again, I would punch him in the face.
He pushed me, I punched him, and 10 minutes later — recess a distant memory — all I could think about was how urgently my principal needed to invest in more comfortable chairs. I cried as I was lectured about the principles of verbal de-escalation and pacifism. I sobbed even more when I was taken home, ashamed of my actions and embarrassed that I had disappointed my parents. But we didn’t go home — instead, my Mom took me to my favorite restaurant, where she bought me a burger and a massive slab of chocolate cake. She told me that I had acted exactly as I should have. “When someone is mistreating you,” a mother explained to a boy whose tears had turned his cake molten, “you have no choice but to stand up for yourself, even if that means placing yourself in a precarious, vulnerable situation. Otherwise, nothing will ever change.”
It was that brilliant lesson, that there is good trouble and there is bad trouble and, boy, good trouble is sometimes just absolutely necessary. This guided me last Wednesday morning as I helped lead a contingent of hundreds of Middlebury students, faculty, high schoolers and townspeople to the Cross Street Bridge. As we stood there in silence for 17 minutes, many among us intentionally derelict from class or work, the snow-enveloped quiet punctured only by the honking of supportive cars driving by. I was young when my mother had delivered her chocolate-coated wisdom that day and I was still young on that bridge, but for the first time, my youth did feel like an obstacle but rather a platform of immense power. This was good trouble.
Kids don’t typically get involved in the political process. Maybe it’s because a lot of us can’t vote (or don’t know how to), maybe it’s because video games and first kisses are more appealing than tort reform, but whatever the case, it’s contributed to a perception of American youth as apathetic and uninvolved. This criticism is certainly well-founded; we definitely should vote more (it is in our interest, after all). I’m beginning to wonder, however, if the adults of America truly understood the sleeping animal they were prodding as they beseeched America’s youth to get more invested. This is not a small group — the census places the number of Americans between the ages of five and 24 at roughly 83 million — and it’s a group that is as exceptionally talented at harnessing crucial online mediums of communication as it is willing to bravely and boldly contest authority.
After all, if Parkland and the ensuing mass walkouts have proven anything, it’s that the young voices of America have as much of a capacity to resonate loudly and fiercely as they have an unparalleled ability to identify corruption and cowardice in our public servants (just look at Marco Rubio’s humiliation at the hands of Cameron Kasky). We’re fixed in our convictions as well, impossible to placate through phony gestures and empty promises. We certainly have our shortcomings — look no further than the typos in our tweets or the enthusiasm that can verge on aggression as we challenge our elected officials — but those shortcomings are strengths, for they serve as the clearest evidence of our undiluted passion and our inexperienced innocence.
There is little moderation in our policy demands — we have no re-election campaigns to run, no constituents to appease — and the result has been legislators and governors throughout the country, prodded by the thought of the extreme, willing to begin considering change. Since Parkland, there has been a surge of legislative debates over raising the minimum age to buy guns, the expansions of background checks, the banning of automatic weapons, and the closing of loopholes open to domestic abusers. What we lack in refinement, we make up for in resolve.
The push for gun control reform started long ago, led by principled adults and a select few kids often devastated by personal loss. Yet for a very long time, even after the horror of Newtown, nothing changed, with death and fear accepted as the norm. At Parkland, however, something shifted. For the first time, the kids who were forced to huddle in silent closets and locked classrooms for hours, wondering if the last thing they’d ever see was a dark muzzle emerging around a corner, refused to maintain that silence when they emerged into the light.
Something changed in the kids who survived, and as they spoke out, their stubborn activism refusing to evaporate, something clicked in thousands of other kids around the country. I am one of those kids. All of the students who walked out are those kids. For a long time, we’ve been quiet, hoping the adults would do their jobs and keep us safe while we learned how to ride our bikes and ask our crushes out. We aren’t naïve anymore. We know the impact our protests carry and the change our mobilization can effect. Not only can you count on us to stay involved, you can count on us to make our voices heard.
The kids are not all right. But we’re changing that.
(03/08/18 2:51am)
When I arrive, it is tea time.
“It’s mango black tea,” Carolyn Kuebler ’90 says. She offers me local honey before leading me back to her office. The surprisingly sunny day lends the office a brighter mood than one might imagine of a literary magazine. Her desk is strewn with papers, notes and the most recent issue of the quarterly. The cover is a black-and-white sketch-like piece of artwork; a rhinoceros and birds, scribbles like words and a metronome.
Carolyn Kuebler has been with the New England Review (NER) since 2004. She worked as managing editor until 2014 when she became editor after Stephen Donadio returned to full-time teaching at Middlebury College. Her job includes reading submissions, handling the budget of the magazine and organizing events.
“I do a lot of reading,” Kuebler said when I ask her to describe her job. “And looking for great new content. Sometimes we pursue writers. When we want to do international sections, we’ll track down writers of different nationalities, who speak different languages. We have to find some kind of literary ambassador for those sections because we don’t tend to get a lot of submissions from people from say, China or South Africa or Germany. When we want to have more international content, we have to track that down.”
She is obliquely referring to the final issue of 2017, which featured South African writers.
In her editor’s note of the volume, Kuebler writes, “No one author--or even a dozen authors, as you’ll find here--can represent the voice of any nation. In South Africa, though, the idea of a national literature is particularly fraught, as the laws of apartheid, established to keep people ‘apart’ … created radically inequitable nations within nations.”
NER’s focus on South Africa came about by a series of happenstances, know-somebody-who-knows-somebodys and inquiries into the literature of the nation. Kuebler had hoped especially to publish translations of pieces written in languages other than English, considering South Africa is home to eleven official tongues.
That turned out, however, to be a challenge.
“So many writers in South Africa write in English even if they speak other languages,” she said. “It ended up being a real lesson for me.”
Due to a smorgasbord of political, socioeconomic, institutional and educational reasons, most of the work submitted had originally been written in English. So, unlike other issues the magazine has published, the South African issue is not translation-focused.
This lack of translation, however, does not detract from the poetry and prose of the South African writers who deal with themes of place, power and language. Even the cover art, “Magic Flute Book: Newspaper,” was done by a South African artist, William Kentridge.
While broad, the scope of the publication does not overlook its current home: Middlebury College. The college has published the magazine, and therefore been responsible for its budget and employees, for over 30 years.
“Unfortunately, I think NER goes largely unnoticed by most of the students at Middlebury,” said Robert Erickson ’18, one of two summer 2017 interns. “Most of us wouldn’t expect that we have one of the nation’s most well-respected literary magazines in our own backyard.”
Even with its seeming remoteness, however, the publication enjoys a bond between the college that publishes it as well as the town it finds itself in.
“Literary magazines add to the culture in ways that are beyond just the journal,” Kuebler said.
In recent years, NER has collaborated with the Mahaney Center for the Arts and Oratory Now to produce “NER Out Loud,” during which students read selections from the magazine. NER also hosts events that bring together local and student writers at places like Carol’s and the Marquis Theater for readings.
Hearing the poems and stories aloud, which granted the writings different, sometimes surprising reinterpretations, has inspired NER to continue the practice in the form of a podcast, which is currently in the works.
“We have some of our J-term interns and some Oratory Now students putting together readings,” she said. “Hopefully they’ll release that by the end of the semester.”
Another connection between the College and NER is their hiring of interns like Erickson during the regular fall and spring semesters as well as over the summer and J-term.
Erickson interned with Victoria Pipas ’18 this past summer, where they read submissions, worked on online content, conducted interviews and started some long-term projects for the publication.
“I think I came away with a new appreciation for just how difficult it really is to write good literature,” Erickson said. “As a literary studies and classics major at Middlebury, 99 percent of my reading consists of books that are generally acknowledged to be of high caliber and have ‘withstood the test of time,’ so to speak. But spending as much time as I did reading and discussing fiction submissions from writers with a range of talent levels helped me to develop the vocabulary necessary to explain why one piece might have succeeded where another failed, or what separated the ‘great’ stories from the simply ‘good’ ones.”
“In my view, one of the most impressive things about NER is their commitment to finding and publishing new talent,” he said. “Many literary magazines of NER’s caliber rely heavily on work acquired through a contract or an agent to fill their pages, but NER is committed to publishing fresh, new, exciting voices alongside more well-established ones. The Poetry Editor, Rick Barot, makes it a point to include one issue each year that exclusively features poets whom the magazine hasn’t published before. For NER, the work on the page is what earns a spot in the magazine; nothing else.”
This year, NER turns 40, and Kuebler said they have special events planned for the anniversary.
“We’re going to release different pieces from the archive that are not currently up on our website with introductions from the editors over the past decades,” she said. “For instance, the first managing editor has written a little piece about an essay that came out in 1980. It’s a way for people to meet all the people who have edited here in the past and to see some material New England Review published way back when.”
(01/25/18 12:38am)
In a college town like Middlebury, a local coffeehouse is a staple for study sessions, reunions, first dates and interviews. For the past 12 years, Carol’s Hungry Mind Café has served as a hub for students and professors alike to share ideas away from campus. Three weeks ago, though, owner John Melanson received an eviction notice after months of missing his rent payments.
Melanson said the recent downtown bridge construction has severely hurt the café’s sales and now, even though the building’s landlord has been patient and generous — a letting him pay, he said, “a thousand here and there” — he is left with no choice but to close.
After a few regular customers learned of Melanson’s decision, one of them, Doug Patterson, a local environmental consultant, started an online GoFundMe campaign to keep the café afloat. As of Jan. 23, the campaign had raised more than $2,800 from 46 donors toward the $20,000 goal. Still, Melanson said that while he was grateful for the GoFundMe effort, he doubts he can remain open much longer. (He declined to give a closing date.)
The business’s financial troubles began last summer when the downtown rail bridges closed on Main Street and along Merchants Row. The protracted construction has led to the loss of 14 parking spots near the coffee shop, as well as the obstruction of pedestrian walkways around the café, which is located at 24 Merchants Row.
“If I looked at my books from the year before last, it has cost about $30,000,” Melanson said. “The summers are a very important part. That’s when the tourists come, they sit, they spend 30 bucks and they go.”
Melanson started the café with the late Carol Ross in 2005. Melanson had been widowed a few years earlier, and in 2004 he met Ross through the online dating site Match.com. After meeting in person, Ross pitched the idea of starting a coffee house together. Just a few months later, the business plan was in place and the two opened Carol’s Hungry Mind. In June of that year, Ross was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and passed away soon after.
Although they met on an online dating site, Melanson and Ross were never romantically involved together. “That doesn’t mean that I didn’t love her. I did,” said Melanson. “I admired her, we shared much of the same musical and literary background.”
Today, Melanson is romantically involved with one of Carol’s closest friends. They started seeing each other after Carol passed away. “I am not only grateful to Carol for giving me the gift of the coffee house but also for introducing me to Karen and making my life whole again,” Melanson said.
Before opening the café, Ross worked at the Vermont Community Foundation and Melanson worked for a furniture design company. For Ross, opening a coffee shop was a longtime dream. She came into Melanson’s life, he said, at a point when he was lacking direction and purpose and so he was easily persuaded to give the café a try. “I did leave my work at Vt. Tubbs, the furniture factory, soon after deciding to start Carol’s,” he said. “It wasn’t a hard decision.”
“I had no idea I would love it so much,” Melanson said in an interview Sunday. “I was a very reclusive type of person. I wouldn’t go out and meet new people. And I knew I was going to be on stage at Carol’s. Now I love it. I go on vacation and I can’t wait to get back.”
Although the shuttering of Carol’s would be life-altering for Melanson, the Middlebury community — professors, students, and those not connected to the college — would also feel its sting. Just last summer, Middlebury Chocolates, another popular spot for meeting over café au lait or cocoa, closed when its owners converted the shop to a wholesale business and moved to Vergennes.
On a campus that can feel cut off from the town’s community, Carol’s provides students with a link to the outside world. Melanson sometimes furthered that connection by befriending students. “I was looking at the painting exhibition at Carol’s last February, and he started a conversation with me out of the blue about art and books,” said Daniel Cho ’19.5. “From then on, our relationship has grown to becoming actual friends who catch up regularly. He’s so eager to get to know students from Middlebury.”
Authors like Jay Parini, a professor of English and creative writing, have written entire books within the café’s confines. The café’s high ceilings, ocher walls and chalkboard menu seem to encourage linger over an espresso. “For many years I considered Carol’s my study,” Parini said. “I sat at a small table at the back and wrote poems and novels. I loved working there. It would be shame to see this café gone from Middlebury.”
Melanson insisted that the college was critical to the café’s success and, as a result, he has no plans to move the business elsewhere. “As I always say, without the college, I wouldn’t be here,” he said. “I wouldn’t open up a place like this in Brandon, let’s say, because the college is essential to it and everything that surrounds the college—the students, the professors.”
Robert Cohen, a professor of English and American literatures, can often be found at Carol’s, planted at a table by the window. He lamented the café’s looming closure in an e-mail, penning an ode to the coffee house that also captured the solipsistic life of the academic. “It’s a good place to write or read or just stare into space, pretending I’m not eavesdropping on my colleagues’ conversations,” Cohen wrote. “Maybe for those of us who spend a lot of time in our own heads, the buzz of human discourse in the background serves as an important lifeline.”
As businesses come and go in Middlebury, the college has realized its own stake in a vibrant downtown, where restaurants and shops are a draw for prospective students. Employees of the college serve on committees and boards like those of the Better Middlebury Partnership (BMP), the Addison County Chamber of Commerce and the Addison County Economic Development Corporation (ACEDC).
Last year, the BMP and the ACEDC secured funding to help merchants whose businesses were disrupted by the construction. Although the grant has since expired, the organizations are now looking for more funding to assist businesses. “We have been an active partner in those conversations,” said David Donahue ’91, an assistant to college president and the college’s director of community relations. “Those organizations are also thinking about new and creative ways to bring energy, and customers, into the downtown.”
Still, some residents argue that local officials are not doing enough. In a recent column in the Addison Independent, Gregory Dennis expressed concern that the $52 million bridge project could have lasting consequences. “Without measures to protect existing businesses and fill empty storefronts,” he wrote, “in a worst-case scenario we could end up with fancy new bridges over trains running through Nowhere: a place that used to be called downtown Middlebury.”
Cohen, the English professor, also imagined the town without a meeting place like Carol’s. “Ideally the presence or absence of one little coffee shop wouldn’t be a world historic event,” he said. “But imagine this town without it. It’s hard to feel good about civic life without some civic spaces that draw people together.”
(01/24/18 10:22pm)
On the evening of Thursday, January 18, students and faculty gathered at the Robert A. Jones Conference Room to hear the talk “Russian Media Today,” delivered by Derk Sauer, CEO and founder of the Moscow Times. Sauer offered insights into the social, economic and political conditions affecting Russia, and shared how his publishing company gained popularity. Headquartered in the Russian capital, the Moscow Times is a weekly English-language newspaper first published in 1992.
To begin his talk, Sauer presented a reality of Russia misunderstood by most Americans. He insisted that Putin and Russia “are not the same thing,” and that people are mistaken to focus their attention on one person when examining the political character of a nation. Many people in Russia actually disassociate themselves from Putin. Sauer admits, however, that talking about Russia is difficult because of its massive size and diverse population. He suggests attempting to understand the country as belonging to three different societies.
The first society comprises those living away from the cities, many of whom are unable to access today’s technology. Sauer even compares their lifestyle to being stuck in time 100 years ago.
The second society contains private enterprises. Currently, Russia is experiencing growth in the technology sector, with some locations incubating startups like Silicon Valley’s. Sauer considered the Moscow Times to belong to this category before it was sold, since he needed to find and attract a market to become successful. Interestingly, he pointed out that more women lead companies in Russia than anywhere else in Europe or the United States.
The third society consists of rich industrialist oligarchs. He estimates that there are 1,000 people in Moscow who know each other and are in control of the city’s important institutions. One famous example brought up by Sauer was Mikhail Prokhorov, who gained his fortune producing nickel and palladium and was wealthy enough to become owner of the Brooklyn Nets.
For the past 20 years, some of the most powerful oligarchs have included media owners because media is used to influence public opinion. With money being exchanged for articles, Sauer insists that journalism in Russia is corrupted. Conversely, newspapers in Russia threaten companies with malicious articles in return for advertisements.
As the talk progressed, Sauer spoke at length about managing the Moscow Times. He humorously recalled how he once fired 1,000 employees because he encountered many people who were unsure of their jobs at the company. Sauer considered such organizational inefficiency to be very “Soviet.”
The Moscow Times’ popularity began to skyrocket during the Ukrainian crisis in 2014. The Times was the only media company to cover the event, and it became the biggest news outlet in the country, exceeding state television. Once the company became profitable, Sauer sold it to Prokhorov, who initially refused the offer out of fear of upsetting the Kremlin. Despite his enormous power over the newspaper, Prokhorov never told the Times what to write.
Sauer shared his own stories about his troubles with the Kremlin. The Moscow Times reported that Putin’s son-in-law became a billionaire at 32 because the state bank gave him $1.3 billion to buy shares in the company where he works. The Times also wrote about Putin’s daughter becoming the chair of an important real estate committee in Russia. Such stories did not sit well with the Kremlin, and Prokhorov’s offices were raided as a result. For the Moscow Times, the message was clear: writing about Putin and his inner circle was off-limits. Prokhorov was forced to sell the newspaper, and Sauer eventually left Russia.
After the talk was finished, Sauer opened the floor for questions.
“Media is a big way [Russia] control[s] information, and so knowing how the media works lets you really understand how to play the game in Russia,” said Charles Smith ‘20. “If you don’t play the game, they’ll kick out the country, or put you in jail, or have you killed. It’s sort of a critical way of understanding how business works in the country, how politics works, pretty much how everything works. So if you can follow the flow of information, you can make a connection.”
(01/17/18 10:48pm)
On the evening of Wed., Jan. 10, members of the College community gathered at Dana Auditorium to hear the talk, “The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux.” The talk focused on how the current system of higher education was designed to meet the needs of an increasingly industrialized, late 19th century United States. It showed how such a system is incapable of preparing students for today’s highly digitalized and multicultural society, since it fails to promote creativity, innovation, and social leadership among its students.
The speaker, Cathy N. Davidson, is a distinguished professor of English, and the founding director of the Futures Initiative at the City University of New York Graduate Center.. Davidson is also the co-founding director of HASTAC, (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory). Laurie Patton provided her introduction.
Davidson began with the story of Charles Eliot, who studied theoretical sciences at Harvard University in 1853 and was a professor of Mathematics and Chemistry at the same institution in 1858. Controlled by clergymen, Harvard’s educational system followed a Puritanical model at the time, offering mostly courses in classical curricula, with few dedicated towards practical studies, such as the sciences or business. Eliot eventually left Harvard and travelled to Europe to investigate how their methods of education correlated with economic growth. Among Eliot’s discoveries was a system dedicated toward teaching technical knowledge and skills for essential occupations and trades.
Eliot believed that the United States was growing into a technological force, but the existing educational system was unable to prepare students for such a future. In an article for the Atlantic Monthly called “The New Education”, Eliot suggested than in education, while students should strive for moral character, they should learn to sharpen and exercise their intellect, so they can utilize it to sustain and transform society. Eliot was named President of Harvard at the age of 53.
A new, more efficient educational system began to emerge in the United States following Eliot’s tenure at Harvard. Secondary schools allowed farmers to become factory workers, while higher education allowed shopkeepers to become managers. Higher education now offered majors and minors, offering courses comprised of lectures and seminars. Such a system became reliant on placement exams for entering universities, and determined the educational success of a student through an “ABCDF” grading scale. To legitimize the existence of universities, graduate schools and secondary schools, a credentialing system was created.
The second part of Davidson’s talk focused on the present, and touched upon the rise of the internet since the early 1990s. She pointed out how the computer makes it possible to communicate ideas without interference from third-parties like corporations. According to Davidson, we live in a “new era in human connection and reach”. She then presented examples of educational institutions attempting to revolutionize the current methods of learning. Yale University utilizes a “cohort” instead of a “core” model for obtaining a degree in history, offering “Pre-Professional” and “Global” tracks. As a result, history has become Yale’s most highly enrolled major. In another example, Hampshire College removed SAT or ACT score requirements from its admissions processes, and is no longer ranked by U.S World New and Report. This resulted in an admissions yield increase from 18% to 26%, and an increase in diversity by 21%.
Towards the end of the talk, the audience was invited to respond to the prompt, “What three things would you revolutionize about your institution and how?” on a piece of paper. Groups sizes of between three and five shared their answers amongst themselves.
(12/07/17 12:23am)
While some see opportunity for self-reflection amidst nature and solitude among Vermont’s idyllic landscapes , others see entirely different opportunities. This December marks the ten-year anniversary of the destruction of Robert Frost’s historic cabin in Ripton. In 2007 a group of high school students threw a party at the cabin, which is located on a plot of land that now belongs to Homer Noble Farm.
According to current Public Safety Investigator and former Police Sergeant Lee Hodsden, the idea for the party came from a seventeen-year-old employee of the college, who asked an older friend to buy five thirty-racks of beer for the occasion. Word spread, and close to fifty teenagers arrived at the cabin, colloquially called “Frost Farm,” on a cold winter evening. As the night progressed, the party grew out of control, resulting in broken furniture, urine and vomit on the carpets and an estimated $10,000 of damage.
Hodsden responded to the case after a hiker called the police about the damage when passing through the farm.
According to Hodsden, the students had shown a fair amount of determination in getting to the cabin: they had parked at the bottom of the hill by the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail and walked all the way up to the cabin through the snow. In the frigid winter weather, one vehicle had gotten stuck in a ditch near the Interpretative Trail and was left behind by its owner. Hodsden ran the license plate number and linked it to a high school student. Through that individual, Hodsden was able to identify many of the people who had attended the party and pieced together what had happened. Nearly thirty teens were charged with trespassing.
According to a Washington Post article published at the time, the prosecutor in the case had an unusual idea for a potential punishment, which the judge supported. They contacted Jay Parini, a professor of English and creative writing, and asked if he would teach the partiers a course on Frost’s poetry.
Parini, who himself had lived in the cabin when he taught at Bread Loaf in the summer, felt a personal stake in the issue and accepted the job.
“I remember being quite upset when I heard, first on the radio, that the Frost House had been overrun by high school kids who had been partying there and caused quite a bit of damage and nearly burned the place down,” he said.
Every student accepted the deal and enrolled in Parini’s special course. Parini said he met the students for several weeks in a public building and tried to get the students to reflect on how Frost’s poetry may be applicable to their own lives. For instance, one of Parini’s lessons involved an analysis of “The Road Not Taken.”
“[I] suggested to them that they stood at a crossroad in their lives, and that this is not uncommon, and that we’re always making choices that will affect us, often in ways we can’t foresee,” he said.
Not everybody in the community was on board with this non-traditional sentence. Edward Brown, an innkeeper at Bread Loaf during the School of English, had his doubts about the efficacy about the punishment. “I, for one, didn’t like the idea of having writing as a punishment because it taught them that writing is something you do when you’re bad or wrong,” he said. Brown also noted that the cabin’s destruction led to fundraising efforts by the college and Paul Muldoon to endow the property and help restore it.
Despite some pushback, however, Parini said that he thinks that this restorative justice practice was effective. He notes that before his class, some of the perpetrators did not know who Robert Frost was. He also remembers being surprised by the amount of press coverage his class received at the time. “I was a bit startled by the presence of reporters, who sat at the back of the room and spread the story. On the Associated Press wire it went around the world,” he said. “I think it was a big human interest story. Even the New York Times ran an editorial about this event.”
For Parini, though, his role in teaching these students about the importance of Frost and his poetry was personal.
“For me, the Frost House and cabin on the property are a sacred place. I wrote a biography of Frost, and continue to read and teach Frost every year,” he said. “I live in his poetry, which informs the world around me here in Vermont. So the fact that Frost lived here, and was part of Middlebury, where I’ve been teaching for nearly four decades, means a great deal to me.”
(12/07/17 12:17am)
The Sixteen Days Campaign Against Gender-Based Sexual Violence began on International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Nov. 25, and will end on International Human Rights Day, Dec. 10. Each day that passes between November 25 and December 10 represents the movement towards the understanding that perpetrating any form of violence against women is, at its core, an issue of human rights.
In honor of this campaign, the Chellis House held an event Tuesday Nov. 28 at which students, staff, and faculty read and discussed passages from Juana Gamero de Coca’s monograph “Sexualidad, Violencia y Cultura” and from Julia Alvarez’s novel “In The Time of the Butterflies.”
In the reading of de Coca’s monograph, audience members were moved by the eloquence and power of her writing, which explored a wide array of topics, including the societal limits of democracy human notions of romantic love. The United Nations declared a Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in honor of Minou, Patria, and Maria Teresa Mirabel, whose activism to bring down Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship were the subject of Alvarez’s book. The discussions that followed readings from both of these works gave listeners the opportunity to process and explore their reactions to the texts as well as engage with the readers themselves.
In reading English translations of passages audience members felt compelled to discuss the role of translation in reading a text. This discussion of the literary works themselves reflected the elevated importance of the topics covered, the notion that sharing these stories and growing the audience is in itself a profoundly important form of activism. In gathering to listen to “Sexualidad, Violencia y Cultura” and “In The Time of the Butterflies”, attendees are were of the indisputable need to expose the reality and voice truth.
“It’s very important to name things by name to give the message that this is happening,” said Marissel Hernández-Romero, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese.
After reading the epilogue from “Sexualidad, Violencia y Cultura,” the room sat in silence for a few seconds. One woman was crying. The weight of the text was definitely felt throughout the room.
“That’s Juana’s passion…and I love that,” said Gloria Gonzalez Zenteno, a professor of Spanish. “I just found that so eloquent…because I don’t know what genre to call a book like this because it’s like a book of essays…but it’s so personal and so burning with passion…and I just found it so effective.”
The United Nations has made it their mission to both demonstrate the gravity of addressing gender violence on its own as well as linking it with the human rights movement. Here at Middlebury, the 16 days of activism to end gender violence is manifesting itself through meaningful, heartfelt and powerful conversation and spreading awareness through sharing the voices of others, taking time to reflect and call upon our peers to gather and participate.
There are several upcoming events to look out for in the remaining days of this campaign. On Friday Dec. 8, the Chellis House will take a stroll through the trails around campus for those seeking a breath of fresh air and the chance to participate in what they call “Walking Through Resistance”. The group will leave from Chellis House at 12 p.m., though in case of rain, snow or weather below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, they will meet at the indoor track.
(12/07/17 12:08am)
Students, faculty, and community members gathered on Nov. 29 to hear Assistant Professor of Spanish Professor Brandon Baird present on his work as part of the Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series. In a talk titled “Unequivocally Authentic: Mayan Language and Identity in Modern Guatemala,” Baird presented on his recent linguistic research in Guatemala and the contemporary implications of his results.
Baird’s was the last faculty lecture of the fall semester, and many of his students were in attendance. A Middlebury faculty member since the fall of 2014, he is currently teaching classes in the Spanish and Linguistics departments. His research interests include Hispanic linguistics, Mayan linguistics, phonetics, phonology, bilingualism, and sociolinguistics. Next semester, Baird will be teaching two courses titled “Bilingualism in the Spanish-Speaking World” and “The Sounds of Language: Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology.”
Baird posed the question of how languages are lost among native populations and used bilingualism, or the action of picking up another language, as a bridge toward language loss. For many Spanish-speaking immigrants to the U.S., for example, the first generation of the family is monolingual in the native language, the second generation is bilingual in the native language and English and the third generation is monolingual in English. “Grandparents and grandchildren may not speak the same language,” Baird said. Discussing language dominance, he used the term diglossia, which he defined as when two languages are used under different conditions within a community. Individuals tend to be more dominant in one language than the other, and may use one language at home and the other at work, for example.
According to Baird, he is often asked if anyone still speaks the Mayan language. Contrary to common misconception, he explained, there are 32 distinct Mayan languages, 30 of which are still spoken today. Baird’s research focuses on K’iche’ language, which one million people in Guatemala speak. Baird summarized the recent language policies of the country. In 2003, the Law on National Languages declared Spanish as the official language of Guatemala but recognized the importance of indigenous languages to national identity. However, according to Baird, the law has not been effective in promoting and preserving indigenous languages.
“These people aren’t able to use their language in certain necessary aspects of their lives,” he said, referring to the lack of interpreters in the national court system, among other critical social services.
Baird’s research was conducted in two Guatemalan communities, the rural area of Nahualá and the urban area of Cantel. Using quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews as methods of data collection, Baird sought to discover linguistic correlations with language dominance. The quantitative results showed that the population of the more urban area of Cantel tends to be more Spanish dominant, while Nahualá tends to be more K’iche’ dominant.
“The younger [the people] are, the greater tendency there is for them to be Spanish dominant,” Baird said. While many residents speak K’iche’ at home with family, they tend to use Spanish at school and work, drawing attention to a diglossia between Spanish and K’iche’.
The qualitative results illustrated the value of bilingualism and a motivation among the residents to continue speaking K’iche’.
“Someone who speaks two languages is worth two people,” a Cantel resident commented in the survey. There is an important value assigned to learning Spanish for job opportunities and to communicate with people such as doctors and judges. Finally, the results demonstrated a fear of the loss of K’iche’ language and culture, especially as other cultural traditions shift to adapt to the modern era. For example, Baird said that men in Guatemala tend not to wear traditional clothing anymore.
Baird concluded his lecture with a hopeful outlook. While there is a diglossia between Spanish and K’iche’, members of the population have been promoting their native culture and pushing the native language in sports and music. Baird brought his findings to an American context by drawing a parallel between the situation in Guatemala and the current attitudes towards English as the national language of the U.S in today’s political climate. While immigrants in the U.S. find English to be very vital to their new lives, he said, they also express the necessity to preserve their native languages.
“You can’t shut off their language and expect [people] to do better,” he said.
(11/16/17 1:14am)
What do state politics, design, racial identity, and linguistics have to tell us about self-discovery and loss? Six speakers posed—and answered—those questions and many more on Saturday at the eighth annual TEDxMiddlebury conference held in Mahaney Center for the Arts.
With nothing but a projector behind them and a rug under their feet, à la traditional TED, these speakers brought their unique and varied backgrounds to the stage to speak to this year’s theme, “Lost and Found.” The theme centered around the stories and memories that shape each person’s understanding of the world, and the reshaping of those narratives that can occur throughout one’s life.
“[It] is about the perpetual discovery and rediscovery that is essential to our existence as human beings,” the event organizers wrote. “It calls us to remember people, places, words, and histories we have left behind or taken for granted, but simultaneously invites us to reclaim, reshape, and reconstruct what we know.”
Since the conference was founded in 2010, it has been entirely run by a board of nine students. The students spend from March through November planning everything from recruiting speakers, to choosing a theme, to catering, to tech. According to the board, the conference’s success has only grown in the past few years.
“As a board member for the past three years, it amazes me to see how much our student org has grown and continues to grow. This was the first TEDxMiddlebury event to sell out and it was the first to have ASL interpretation and accessibility copies available to attendees,” said Natalie Figueroa ’18, a board member.
This year’s speakers were Daniel Erker, Lecia Brooks, Michael Jager, Attica Scott, Nia Robinson ’19, and Rana Abdelhamid ’15. Each speaker took the stage for exactly 18 minutes to share their experiences of the feeling of being lost and the beauty of finding purpose once again.
The first speaker of the morning, linguist Daniel Erker, spoke about the power of language as a way to help people find their way in life. Some see language as a barrier between different races and nationalities, but Erker sees language as a bridge to be crossed, and one that can facilitate human connection rather than inhibit it. Language can particularly offer solutions to the 30 million immigrants who live in the U.S., who are often seen as facing an inability to assimilate due to language difficulties, or, “The Hispanic Challenge.”
“What if someone told you that in our country there was a large group of people who lacked the desire to use language this way, or that there were millions of people who willfully ignored the urge to linguistically connect with their fellow Americans? You would likely and this surprising, if not simply difficult to believe. But this is precisely what some very influential and powerful individuals are asking to you believe when it comes to Americans who were born outside of the United States and then at some point later in life, moved to this country,” Erker said.
Erker used data that he and several other linguists collected from Spanish speakers in New York City and Boston to show how “The Hispanic Challenge” is not empirically supported, and immigrants are actually becoming increasingly proficient in English and using it even more than Spanish in some instances.
“The Hispanic Challenge is not real, nor is any other challenge claiming that a particular immigrant group is unwilling, unable, or unmotivated to linguistically connect to the people who live in the communities around them,” he said.
Erker finished by urging students to keep this newfound linguistic discovery close to their hearts: language is a bridge, not a barrier.
Nia Robinson ‘19, the only student speaker and the winner of the 2017 student speaker competition, gave the penultimate TED talk, reminding us “we are not as lost as we think we are.”
Robinson spoke about how being black in predominantly white spaces made her feel out of place growing up, and how she struggled to accept her own identity.
“I knew I wasn’t supposed to like myself, so I didn’t. I remember trying to pour bleach on myself to make me lighter. It didn’t work. I remember scrubbing as hard as I could because people told me I was covered in dirt. As a result, I have very soft skin, but it left me with deep invisible scars,” Robinson said.
Moving forward, Robinson told the audience, took a mix of emotional and generational memory. Emotional memory is a remembrance that triggers deeply felt emotions from the past.
“Each time someone called me the wrong name, sent me death threats, or told me I was pretty for a black girl, it was all familiar, but it would hurt more because I would remember each time it happened before,” Robinson said.
Generational memory, as Robinson defines it, is “how history affects generations…[where] we find solutions to problems that already exist somewhere.” She explained how past generations' wisdom could be applied to today, using education as an example. How can we fix the problems of poverty and segregation facing our education system, except by looking to where those problems originated?
Still, Robinson said, sometimes it seems like we can’t use memory to solve everything. However, she said: “When the two poles are pulling and my memories are at odds, I realize they both are part of me, so I can’t go wrong.”
These and the four other speakers taught the audience about lost and found through the diverse lenses of racism, creativity, politics, and more, helping to realize a wonderful event in the process.
The TEDxMiddlebury board hopes the community takes with them these lessons about what it means to be lost and found:
“[Lost and Found] makes space for both grief and joy, fate and intention, exile and belonging, context and abstraction. Most of all, it asks that we rethink our narratives of time and progress as we navigate our individual and collective past, present, and future.”
(11/16/17 12:54am)
Middlebury’s endowment increased by $74 million in the 2017 fiscal year after an investment return of 13.8 percent, ending the year totaling $1.074 billion. This year’s figure represents an improvement over the previous year’s return rate of −4.5 percent.
Middlebury withdrew $68.5 million from its endowment last year, which funded the college, the Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Middlebury Language Schools, Schools Abroad, the School of the Environment, the Bread Loaf School of English and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
In an April 2017 article entitled “Rises in Financial Aid Cause Deficits,” The Campus reported that recent budget deficits had compelled the college to cut spending and attempt to raise endowment funds. Escalating financial aid expenditures were largely responsible for the deficits.
While Middlebury aims to admit classes with approximately 42 percent of students on financial aid, this percentage has risen significantly in recent years as a result of the adoption of a need-blind admissions process. Roughly 48 percent of the classes of 2018 and 2019 receive financial aid.
Although the rise in expenses initially caused budgetary strain, Middlebury opted to remain need-blind and reduce spending in other areas.
College treasurer David Provost noted that this year’s endowment gains will not drastically increase financial aid money specifically, and that the college will continue to rely on gifts to fund financial aid.
“This [year’s gain] is compared to a net decrease in endowment of −$100 million in 2015 to 2016. So any one year investment return will not necessarily provide new sources of funds for financial aid,” he said in an email.
“Having said that, financial aid continues to grow at a higher rate (8.5%) than tuition and fees (5%), and we expect that to continue. The long-term strategy has to be that we grow the endowment specifically from gifts for financial aid, and President Patton is committed to leading us in that direction.”
(11/09/17 12:42am)
On Friday Nov. 3 in Mead Memorial Chapel, the world-famous a cappella group, The King’s Singers, returned to Middlebury after their first performance in 2015. Marking the beginning of their 50th anniversary world tour, the Grammy Award-winning group filled the chapel with beautiful harmonies and melodies to old and new songs.
In 1968, six choral scholars and recent graduates of King’s College in Cambridge formed the King’s Singers. The group consisted of two counter tenors, one tenor, two baritones and one bass. Throughout the years the singers themselves have changed, but these roles have remained the same.
After building up a fan base across the United Kingdom and around the world, the group began performing on television shows such as “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” and in concert venues such as the Sydney Opera House and Carnegie Hall. They have received two Grammy Awards for their recorded albums and one Emmy Award. Since their founding, they have embarked on many world tours to bring their love of music across the globe.
To celebrate their 50 years as a vocal group, the Singers began a grand world tour that ranges from across the United States all the way to New Zealand.
Dubbing this anniversary year their “GOLD” season, all work produced by the group in this year including their book, album and tour “[celebrates] the amazing musical heritage of The King’s Singers, and also looks at the bright future of vocal music in all of its forms” according to their website.
The concert in Mead took the audience through time with diverse choices of music. The group not only sang in English, but also devoted an entire selection to French songs by Francis Poulenc. The audience reveled in “The Prayer of King Henry VI” by Henry Ley and the song “M.L.K.” by U2. The group chose this song to pay homage to Martin Luther King, Jr., who was killed the year the group was founded.
A major goal for the group is to elaborate on global unity through music. Part of the group’s opening selection was “We Are” by Bob Chilcott, which preaches that, “we are more alike than we are unalike.” In our national and local state of affairs, hearing the upbeat and energetic tune from foreigners brought an air of happiness and inclusivity to the performance. The focus of unity during an a cappella performance functions in many ways because the art form itself is based on the perfect unison and equal distribution of voices in order to create a beautiful rendition of music for all to enjoy.
The Singers also emphasize the importance of education and community outreach with their performances. After their concert, they encouraged all members of the audience to come up and their their thoughts about their music.
In a blog post on their website talking about their Middlebury concert, baritone Christopher Gabbitas detailed how the group’s focus on education “has opened up a whole new avenue of outreach that allows us to connect with singers young and old alike, to further our message that everyone has a voice and should use it as much as possible!”
A broad range of ages came out to support the performance. Members of Middlebury’s own a cappella groups were in attendance, as well as young children and adults in the community.
A love of music brought together all these groups of people, demonstrating the harmonies that it can create across backgrounds.
(11/01/17 11:08pm)
On a sunny Saturday afternoon, a group gathered inside Mead Chapel to celebrate the life of Juana Gamero de Coca, a Spanish professor, who passed away suddenly on Oct. 6. The room was full of photographs and colorful flowers that the attendees brought with them and placed in vases. Juana’s family and friends spoke in three languages about a woman full of love, life, and passion. To celebrate Juana, The Campus has gathered excerpts of those eulogies and statements from Juana’s students, published with permission. Some of the passages have been edited for length.
I used to always complain that you weren’t a normal mom. You wore a lot of black. You never once made me chocolate chip cookies. Or meatloaf. You always kissed me a lot. And I mean a lot. On my cheeks. My arm. You really liked to kiss my knee. You had an accent that made it sound like you were saying “bitch” instead of “beach”. The first time you took me on a vacation, you chose Peru instead of the Florida Keys. You didn’t live in a big home, with a picket fence and a photogenic dog. You smoked cigarettes. You cried a lot. You laughed a lot. You yelled a lot. You weren’t the mom that hid your feelings from your kids. Or pretended that because you were a mom you had life figured out. You told Carmen and I to feel the weight of this world. To let our emotions in and let them blanket us from all sides. You never told us to pick ourselves up. We were allowed to feel the comfort of staying fallen. To take a break from the exhausting demands of being eye-level with everyone else.
Why can’t you just be normal? I used to say. Why do you always have to embarrass me? I would say. Now, what I long to say most is that I loved the way you were. I understand that this world weighed down on you. It was hard on your body. Tough on your heart. I don’t blame you for leaving so early. For wanting to escape Trump America and leave while Cataluña is still a part of Spain. The last few years, I met you in a new capacity. You opened up to me about your heartaches and troubles. You showed me what happens behind your bold red lipstick. That there are times when you feel fragile, too. Sometimes when you woke up in the morning, you would ask me if I thought you were pretty. When your relationship was stung by conflict, you lay paralyzed for days. When your sickness took you to different hospital beds, you asked to borrow my hand to be fed. And when you realized life isn’t always as happy as in the books, you asked Carmen and I to be happy for you. It was hard for my self-absorbed college student self to understand the gift of being able to take care of my mother. I’m sorry I didn’t offer more, but thank you for letting me in.
I stay up now thinking about the stories I never heard. About the memories that never had the chance to become memories. But just like you used to say to me. We are more than the same blood and bone. We are mother and daughter. Carmen and I will carry on for you. We will travel the world, go to India, have your grandchildren, and fall in love.
The last time I talked to you was the night that you passed away. I told you I was having a sad day. I had broken up with my boyfriend and I felt lonely. You called me and again, for the millionth time, told me that it was okay to feel sad. You said that hard things happen and I shouldn’t expect to get over them. Instead, sometimes you just have to leave sadness in a little pocket nearby. Life will carry on but the sadness will stay to help you remember and to help you grow. I’ve put you in a brand new pocket that I made out of silk and cashmere. You’ll stay there forever. And I’ll never mix you up because you were not a normal mom. You were special. And as my sister already said, you are the most beautiful woman we will ever meet.
by Izzy Fleming ’17, Juana’s Daughter
...
Mi mama era la mujer mas hermosa que conocí en toda mi vida. Y no lo digo por como se veía físicamente porque eso es obvio. Lo digo por su forma de pensar, su manera de bailar, su pasión para la justicia y la importancia que daba en asegurar que todos los demás estaban bien. Ella lucho mucho con ella misma durante su vida y creo que eso la hizo querer mas para los demás que para ella.
She taught Izzy and I to be aware of the world and what was happening to people everywhere. She taught us to be proud of being different. She taught us to speak our minds. And she was successful, because she taught me to really, really speak my mind, which meant that when I grew up we had similar ways of arguing and discussing issues. When we discussed issues of social justice and politics we would start calmly and then without fail begin to yell at each other for 10 minutes until we realized we were agreeing with each other and just saying the same thing in different words. We used to scare my sister Izzy and my friends because they would think we were fighting but really she just taught me to be passionate like her about what I believed.
When my mom came to the U.S. her father told her that he had lost her and she would never go back. She told him he was crazy and that she was just going to work as a nanny and take English classes and would be back soon. She met my father and everything about her life changed and her father was right, she stayed.
The other day our dad said that he was always so impressed and so proud of her for what she accomplished, coming to the US without speaking English and making it to where she did. Izzy and I are so lucky that we had our mother and father as parents, who unlike other divorced parents always truly cared so deeply for each other that we all remained a very close knit family.
Mi mama fue alguien con quien todo el mundo se enamoraba con solo conocerla. Hizo sentir a todos que eran importantes y felices. En su presencia todos se reían y bailaban y reían y bailaban. Creo que mi mama es la persona mas hermosa que todos aquí hemos conocido y somos todos mas hermosas con solo haberla conocido.
My mom was someone that everyone fell in love with after meeting her. She made everyone feel important and happy. In her company everyone laughed and danced and laughed and danced. I think my mom is the most beautiful person that everyone here has ever met and we are all more beautiful just from having met her.
by Carmen Fleming ’10, Juana’s Daughter
...
Lo que viví toda esta semana no tiene nombre ni palabras. Por eso fue tan difícil tejer el manto delgadisimo y frágil que quise venir a compartir hoy con todos porque a todos nosotros pertenece. La red de protección que es el amor de los otros por mí, por ti, por ustedes, por ellos, hasta convertírsenos en amor de nosotros por nosotros.
Gracias de todo corazón... Roto.
Finalmente para dar remate a la más tierna ceremonia que los vivos pueden hacer por los muertos - recordarlos que significa literalmente “volverlos a pasar por el corazón”- subieron Isabel y Carmen, la verdadera sangre viva de Juana, su verdadera mirada y su verdadera sonrisa hecha dos seres humanos. Subieron a decirnos con muchas historias y pocas palabras que son ella, que ellas son su madre - la más amada, la más admirada, la mejor del mundo- y que en ellas perdura nuestra Janita, aquella bendecida por todos los dones y todas las virtudes que hoy perduran porque Juana es Isabel y Juana es Carmen, e Isabel y Carmen están salvando siempre a su madre por ellas y por nosotros.
Y así llegó a su final lo que será el principio de nuestra vida. Nuestro “sin ti” , que es el larguísimo porvenir, pero “con nosotros”, que es el presente y que ya está aquí.
Qué puedo decirte, Jana mía. Voy a ser tú, voy a intentar ser tú, yo, como tus hijas, voy a emprender la increíble e imposible tarea de multiplicarte.
by Visting Lecturer Ricardo Chávez Castañeda, Juana’s Partner
...
No le puedo escribir cartas
porque en la muerte no hay dirección.
Ayer para clase (como si hoy
o mañana nos importaran las clases)
leí una flor amarilla. Los árboles
eran chispas bajo la lluvia y hoy
lloramos por ella.
Juana nunca volverá a verse
en autobús, sudando, la línea 95.
Todos somos inmortales pero
ella fue mortal. We’re never too grown
to stop growing but what if we just
stop.
No creo en el cielo y de hecho
prefiero imaginarla en la biblioteca
de Babel (Borges, sé que por el velo
me puedes escuchar). En el laberinto
en las estanterías infinitas
se sienta tranquilamente en un sillón.
Sabe que un día vendrá la locura
para comernos crudos, salados,
más lindos que lo rojo en una capilla.
Yo soy joven y torpe y no sé
que tipo de flores llevan al velorio.
Pensaba rosas pero ahora
girasoles que brillan hasta morir.
by Hayley Jones ’18.5, Juana’s Student
...
Eso que acabas de leer es una juanería.
Juanerías. Juanerías extremendas. Juana es de Extremadura. Extremeña. Y bien sabemos, es tremenda. Extremenda.
Gestos excéntricos, salados, brillantes.
Bailar vestida de rojo, con la mano en alto, curveando la muñeca, su cuerpo esbelto y grácil. Sonreír como nadie.
Llenar de flores la casa de la amiga que sufre por sus seres queridos. Repartir abanicos a las chicas guapas.
Saber la importancia del contacto. Aplicarlo sin hacer cuentas. A alumnos, a colegas, a amigos. Sea políticamente correcto o no.
Insistir en cuidarnos, y bueno, por desgracia, no siempre cuidarse muy bien.
Defender a quienes lo necesitan, arriesgue lo que se arriesgue. Hace meses en Crossroads café, rodeada de estudiantes que habían protestado racismo e injusticia. Estudiantes investigados porque le habían gritado al racista. Ante la noción de que gritar es peor que cuestionar la humanidad de alguien, qué hizo Juana? Gritar. Es una juanería.
Qué es la ética, sino abrazar al débil, ver su dolor, la injusticia, y nombrarlos en voz alta? En voz muy alta.
Cariño: Manejar horas y horas al hospital Dana Farber, tomar la mano de nuestra amiga Ana. Hacerla reír con chismes y gracias mientras le metían la quimio en el sillón de los venenos.
Subirse a un estrado como éste—es decir, a este estrado, y dirigirse a un público como éste que lloraba a nuestra Ana, la primera chica guapa que se fue. Con su vestido rojo y unos tacones tan altos que Ricardo le dio el brazo, no fuera que tropezara al bajar.
Saben que Juana era ombudsman del profesorado? Ahora no tenemos ombudsman.
Juanerías. Juana es todo eso. No es una santa. Es una persona que iba y venía por el mundo, repartiendo abrazos ante el dolor, el dolor que terco la rondaba. Repartiendo el antídoto: besos y abrazos y cariños.
Juana dio y dio y dio. Intuía que la vida no podía durar mucho viviéndola de juanería en juanería. Que la vida se va gastando al vivirla. le decíamos que no, que claro que no. que mientras más das más tienes.
Aquí estamos. ¿Y tú, extremenda?
Pues no sé a dónde huyes, ni sé a dónde voy,
¡tú que lo supiste!
by Professor of Spanish Gloria Estela González Zenteno
(11/01/17 5:20pm)
What do the Addison County Parent/Child Center, Addison County Farm Worker Coalition, Addison County Dental Care and Alliance for Civic Engagement at Middlebury College have in common? Here is the answer: Cheryl Mitchell is heavily involved in all of them.
Throughout her more than 40 years in the Middlebury area, Cheryl Mitchell has been active in spearheading a remarkable number of social welfare programs, including the four listed above, that continue to make their positive impact in this community. WomenSafe, an Addison County organization that fights domestic and sexual violence, awarded Mitchell the 2017 Kimberly Krans Women Who Change the World Award for her work in and dedication to the community.
Mitchell cited her parents’ influence as one of the main reasons for her lifelong involvement in social justice. As a child, she observed the example of her mother, who taught a preschool class for children with autism and was involved in diverse volunteer work.
“My mother would pick up people on the street,” Mitchell said. “She’d see an old woman struggling with a bag of groceries, offer to give her a ride, and they would become friends.”
Every summer, Mitchell would get her feet wet in a different social justice–oriented program. Because of her experiences in social work, Mitchell initially thought that she would be a sociology major when she went to college. After taking coursework in the sociology department at Swarthmore College, however, she thought, “Well, this is all sort of common sense.” She much preferred reading poetry and literature and graduated in 1971 with a double degree in English literature and religion. She continued her active involvement in social justice in the summers, when she worked for organizations like Ecology Action. After graduation, working in the child care program at the Mary Johnson Children’s Center opened her eyes to the deeper struggles of families in the Addison County area.
“I grew up in a pretty comfortable middle-class family in the suburbs,” she said. “I didn’t have the day-to-day understanding that people’s lives were a lot more challenging.”
This experience prompted her to found the Addison County Parent/Child Center in Middlebury, which serves 1,700 rural families annually and has a special focus on supporting pregnant and parenting teens. The parents at the center were often abused or traumatized when they were children, and they struggle to support their families.
“It changed my perspective to see that it was not that people were incapable of managing their own lives, but that there were big social systems that were making things very difficult for them,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell believes that helping people live better lives takes more than individual help. For long-term, effective progress, it is imperative to address the larger social structures that affect these people.
She became involved in policymaking through her 10-year service with the state of Vermont, where she worked as deputy secretary for the Agency of Human Services under Gov. Howard Dean.
The work is fascinating, Cheryl explained, “but it’s only fascinating for me if it’s still connected to what individuals need.” Mitchell believes that significant and lasting change comes from the people. “It’s that coming-together piece that makes our lives different,” she said. “We all need health insurance, so let’s work on that. We need better housing, so let’s work on that. Policies that start at the government level don’t do very much unless they are a response to what the community wants.”
Mitchell has seen improvements in affordable housing to allow for mixed-income communities, in access to college education through the local branch of the Community College of Vermont, and in graduation rates of high schools and vocational centers.
Mitchell also cited new growth in local agriculture.
“It’s been wonderful seeing new small farms develop. Small farmers have been able to make it, and people are becoming interested in organic food and wellness.”
However, Mitchell noted that more progress is necessary, as migrant workers employed on these farms are still not recognized and embraced as full-fledged members of the community.
“I know that for a lot of people of color in this community, it’s still a struggle just because such a large proportion of the community is white. There is an assumption that everybody is nice, and we’re not all nice. People need to be vigilant to make sure that nobody is feeling excluded.”
That vigilance comes from people’s understanding that they come from a place of privilege. “Sometimes I’m not sure that a lot of people understand that well enough, myself included,” Cheryl said. “You sometimes say, ‘Why don’t they just stop doing something, why can’t they just finish high school, why don’t they just get a job?’ when it’s not that easy. When you’ve had a good education and you’ve had a lot of family support, when things have been comparatively easy for you, sometimes you tend not to pay enough attention. I think that it’s something that we in this community need to work on.”
Part of creating inclusivity for migrant workers is allowing them to communicate effectively with the community around them. “This is going to be my new career, I think,” Cheryl said. “I’ve been teaching English as a second language, and I just love doing it. I’d like to do that more, for more people and maybe in other countries some day. [It’s important] for people to have a grasp of the language and to be able to communicate directly. Instead of me saying ‘This is what they need,’ they are able to say, ‘This is what I need,’ and that is so much more powerful and persuasive.”
Cheryl’s first love is her world of family and friends and people whom she loves, and she channels this love into her passion for supporting families with young kids.
“I continue to work with the issue that people who care for young children are abysmally underpaid and not given the recognition they deserve. I’ve been working to make sure that they can get the training and education they need, and that they can move into a world where they will be recognized and recompensed for the work they do.”
Outside of her social work, Cheryl loves taking care of her two grandchildren and working on Treleven, a working sheep farm that she and her husband, Don, own. Here they host school field trips, writers’ retreats and creative residencies. They have recently received a permit to host summer programs that will allow families to explore the natural environment of their farm and forest.
Mitchell’s current focus is on making the farm open and available, which echoes her spirit of sharing and her all-encompassing love for the community. “I have problems with the idea of private property,” she said. “If you have a piece of land and just put up a fence around it so nobody can get in, it just doesn’t make any sense.”
(10/19/17 12:02am)
Amid the reunions, career talks and campus tree tours of Fall Family Weekend, a storytelling event called Cocoon brought capacity levels of parents, students and community members to Robison Concert Hall on the evening of Saturday Oct. 14. One would be hard-pressed, as co-organizer Jocelyn Zemach ’18 says, to find an audience as supportive and responsive as the one cheering, clapping and chuckling in the concert hall that evening.
The six storytellers of the evening each stood alone in the spotlight of an empty stage, sharing their experiences on the theme of “boundaries.” The setting was reminiscent of the hushed and intimate back-porch beginnings of the Moth, upon which Cocoon and the monthly Middlebury Moth-UP are based. Now a nationwide storytelling phenomenon, the Moth began as a gathering of friends in Georgia on a porch where moths would “flutter in through a hole in the screen” and was later recreated in a living room in New York City.
First to take the stage was former chaplain Howard Fauntroy ’89. An alumnus of both Middlebury College and the Dissipated Eight acapella group, he recalled a story from his preschool years when he channeled the strength of his mother Carmen to stand up against a person of power — his father, in this case — to challenge an unfair judgment on his actions.
“Our spirits and bodies are mixes of both our moms and our dads,” he noted.
Ben Sanders ’18, an aspiring poet and avid hiker, followed with a story about a camping trip with his mom, a “meticulous planner,” his dad, “a metaphysical photographer,” and his two siblings. He shared that despite the points of tension their family experienced on the trip, a conversation with his mother was still able to bring him face to face with the visceral and vulnerable state of “feeling like a baby.”
The process of crafting a story can also be enlightening for the storyteller. Kathryn Bervin-Mueller P’18, the third speaker of the event, expressed afterwards that articulating her story helped her better appreciate parallels between her childhood experiences in foster care and the decisions she and her husband made in building their own family later in life.
Nonetheless, Zemach, who served with Tabitha Mueller ’18 as co-organizer and host for the event, said that the purpose of storytelling, cathartic as the process may be, is not only to appease oneself.
Through storytelling, she reflected, we “move closer inch by inch, to strangers and friends [in the audience] alike.”
“The inclination to want to share a story is step one,” Zemach said.
The production of a relatable and effective story, however, requires extracting parts of a deeply personal narrative to produce a shareable experience that resonates with the listeners. All Cocoon storytellers undergo a workshopping process where producers help the storytellers enhance and refine aspects of their stories while keeping intact the tales’ authenticity, in an approach similar to that of curators working with artists to better present their work to the audience.
After the intermission, Josh Goldenberg ’18 described his first unsuccessful attempt at romantic intimacy, which brought a few knowing chuckles in the audience. Facing the subsequent “wave of insecurities” taught him to “ride [his] emotions,” a lesson he shared with the audience.
Community member Hannah Manley of Homeward Bound, Addison County’s humane society, recounted her physical and emotional struggles with infertility and shared her journey in coming to terms with events in life that are out of her control.
In keeping with the spirit of Fall Family Weekend, all of the stories shared were rooted in familial and romantic relationships. The stories presented family as a common narrative of the human experience that connected listeners and speakers of different genders, ages, personal and political beliefs, and life experiences. The atmosphere of rapport in the auditorium reflected the listeners’ appreciation of the speakers’ generosity and courage in relaying, to an audience of mostly strangers, their deeply personal stories of fear and hope, struggle and belonging.
The last speaker of the night, Brett Millier, a professor of English and American literature, told a serendipitous story about a former student who reminded her very much of herself. She spoke about the chain of kindness that supported her and her student in their own academic and professional lives and in later supporting others in the world community.
“We affect one another’s lives in ways we don’t realize,” Professor Millier said, “even when we didn’t mean to, even when we are thinking only of ourselves.”
(10/18/17 11:05pm)
Before I came to the U.S. for the first time as an exchange student in grade 11, I had to attend a week-long seminar that was supposed to prepare us for the American culture waiting for us on the other side of the ocean.
I very vividly remember one of the volunteers telling us that the biggest problem they had with German exchange students was something they called der deutsche Diskutierer, which translates to “the German debater.” We were told not to argue so much with our host parents, to not discuss politics at the dinner table and not to constantly express our opinions about the rules that our host family set for us.
But here I am, 6 years later, again an exchange student, still always up for an argument (or “discussion,” as we like to call it), still constantly expressing my opinion when no one wants to hear it. Imagine my joy when I was offered to write a bi-weekly opinion column!
In my first few weeks here, I have already observed many things that are foreign to me. Many of them I do not know how to feel about, others make me angry or annoyed, yet others make me think about how things could be better at home. I have many opinions and questions on dorm life, sports and competitiveness, class and wealth, politeness and etiquette, academic life and of course the political situation on campus. In this column, I want to try to get these thoughts written down in a somewhat coherent way that, if I succeed, also make you think about and question some of these things.
When you are abroad and away from home, it is very easy to slip into a default mode of thinking everything is better at home. I am guilty of that. I keep talking about the parliamentary democracy, Berlin techno, flea markets, recycling, vegan food options, public transportation, tuition fees and grocery stores in Germany. The other day when it was raining, my lovely fellow German exchange student and I were walking and complaining about “why Americans cannot manage to design and put down the pavement in a way that avoids the creation of puddles.” Words more stereotypically German have never left my mouth. I always think it is interesting how much better home seems when you are far away from it. When I am in Germany, I instead keep talking about how much further evolved certain discourses are in the United States, how much better I like the high school system, and how involved students are.
What I am trying to say is, I am aware of my own biases. I am well aware of the dangers of slipping into essentialist, generalizing, universalizing rhetoric and I will try my hardest to avoid this. In the end, this column is only my subjective observations about a country that I do not know nearly everything about and about a campus that I know nearly nothing about. That is also why the full name of this column should probably be “Observations of a Not So Neutral Outsider.”
My next piece will most likely be on all my feelings about small talk or having English as your native language, unless something more interesting happens to me in the meantime (hard to imagine, I know). Thank you for reading, ciao and bis bald.
(10/11/17 10:19pm)
Staff-members of the Open Door Clinic (ODC) arrived at the Axinn Center to train students to become future volunteers and interpreters on Saturday, Oct. 7. The ODC, according to its mission, “provides access to quality healthcare services, free of charge, to those who are uninsured or underinsured and who meet financial ability guidelines.”
Their services “are provided in a compassionate, respectful and culturally sensitive manner until a permanent healthcare provider can be established.” The ODC’s office is located in a trailer adjacent to the Porter Medical Center in Middlebury. Since its inception in 1993, the ODC has expanded its operations, offering seven clinics per month.
Open Door Clinic staffers Julia Doucet, Josh Lanney, and Christiane Kobuko, led the volunteer training session, which lasted from 9:30 a.m to 11:00 a.m. At the beginning, students were given folders containing extensive information about the ODC’s mission and operations and were required to complete a questionnaire.
Volunteer roles available for students included medical provider as an EMT, clinic reception, website design and technological assistance, administrative projects, J-term intern, Spanish and English translation and transcripts, and bilingual medical interpreter. A slideshow, presented by ODC staffers, gave an overview of the clinic’s funding and patient demographics, and provided a comprehensive background on the migrant workers who comprise 60 percent of the clinic’s patients. The presenters also highlighted barriers for migrant workers in receiving care.
Specialized training for medical interpreters lasted from 11 a.m to 4 p.m. The beginning of the session was spent disproving several myths about the reality of medical interpretation. For example, while family, friends, or any bilingual person can be thought of as sufficient at being a medical interpreter, several problems can arise, such as role reversal, editing, accuracy mistakes, guilt, omission and confidentiality.
Another myth included the idea that interpreters should interpret literally. What’s required, ultimately, is that the idea and context behind someone’s message is clearly conveyed. The students were also presented a formula to keep in mind: “Bilingual proficiency in medical terminology + a complex set of interpreting skills + the skilled use of ethical principles = qualified medical interpreter.” The rest of the training session focused on role-playing, where methods of interpretation were tested on the spot.
“Our office and Middlebury College work closely with the Open Door Clinic, and I would say we really appreciate the learning opportunities for students, and how students can make a positive impact for our local community,” said Ashley Laux, associate director of the Center for Community Engagement, when asked to describe the relationship between the college and the ODC.
“For at least five years, we’ve been offering trainings on campus, sometimes for general volunteer positions, and sometimes more specifically for medical interpreter positions,” Laux said. “It’s a rare opportunity to be in a really intimate client-doctor setting, and so that’s why quite a bit of training goes into it.”
“Students have been serving as paid summer interns [at the Open Door Clinic] since the summer of 2013, and that’s through Addison County privilege and poverty internship program,” Laux said. “Middlebury College pays their salary, but they work full-time for the full summer at the Open Door Clinic, which is a wonderful opportunity for them to immerse themselves in the work that the Open Door Clinic does.”
“Our relationship with the Center for Community Engagement is very important,” said Josh Lanney, patient services coordinator at the Open Door Clinic. “They provide us with an intern every year, which is invaluable help to us when none of the volunteers are around.”
“[Volunteerism] requires professionalism, reliability and then, more than a lot of other things, cultural competency, which is kind of an abstract term which refers to treating everybody like people,” Lanney said, when asked about the qualities the ODC looks for in volunteers.
“As far as student volunteers go, and who we’re looking for, the Open Door Clinic provides excellent mentoring opportunities to the students who volunteer with us. They are given a lot more roles and responsibilities than if they were to volunteer for any other organization,” Lanney said.
“I believe that the service through the Open Door Clinic helps students meet community-based needs,” Laux said. “The second half of the CCE’s mission is to strengthen communities, and so helping the Open Door clinic fulfill their mission is strengthening the local communities.”
(10/04/17 11:46pm)
This past summer was the first time since 1893 that eight or more major hurricanes formed in a row in the Atlantic. This hurricane season was also the only season on record with three hurricanes with an Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) — a scientific measure of the strength of the hurricane — over 40.
Only 26 of 424 Atlantic hurricanes since 1950 have had an ACE value above 40, making this summer anomalously active for a hurricane season. This level of activity and the devastating effects of these hurricanes have elicited many questions, many of which were addressed at the “Harvey, Irma, Maria: A Community Teach-in” event at the Franklin Environmental Center at Hillcrest on Sept. 29. The event gathered students and faculty alike to discuss these questions and the implications of this summer’s flurry of hurricanes.
The moderator of the discussion, economics professor John Isham, began by asking participants to posit the questions they had in order to create a list of questions before the discussion started. Questions ranged from specifics about the correlation between climate change and hurricanes to the media’s reaction to the hurricanes. The breadth of subjects touched by these questions emphasized how interdisciplinary a conversation about hurricanes should be, a need which was only reinforced throughout the conversation.
The first question discussed was the relationship between climate change and hurricanes. Environmental studies professor Molly Constanza-Robinson said the general conclusion of scientists was that “we aren’t causing them, but we’re intensifying them.” Dan Brayton, an English and American studies professor, backed Costanza-Robinson up by making clear that behind the complicated science of hurricanes lies the simple fact that “hurricanes are all about warm water.” Not only do hurricanes form over warm water, but they are also intensified by warm water. Together, the professors’ responses make clear that climate change is causing a rise in sea temperatures, which allows hurricanes to intensify easier.
From there, the conversation branched into the tragic situation in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico was hit by category four Hurricane Maria on Sept. 19, causing the entire island to lose power, cell coverage and running water. This, coupled with the destruction of buildings and roads, has caused a dire and dangerous situation for all Puerto Ricans.
One student brought up how it took the United States a full week to lift the Jones Act to allow Puerto Rico to receive aid from other countries. The Jones Act prevents Puerto Rico from trading with any country but the United States, and delineates that if a ship from any other country wants to go to Puerto Rico, it must get explicit permission from the U.S. government.
This brought up questions about the role the United States should play in aiding Puerto Rico. Professor Isham described how Puerto Ricans are subject to U.S. Federal Taxes and economic limitations like the Jones Act without the privileges of U.S. citizenship. He viewed these as important aspects of this “post-colonialist” period in history.
Professor Rebecca Gould mentioned how the U.S. government said it was difficult to access and aid Puerto Rico due to its poor infrastructure, and said the government should instead be asking itself what is actually causing that poor infrastructure. Costanza-Robinson brought up how rich Americans in hedge funds profit off loans to Puerto Rico, the process of which is throwing Puerto Rico into increasing debt. She noted how this exemplifies the power of a small group of rich Americans to control the fate of millions of people.
Later in the conversation, Alec Fleischer ’20.5 of the Divest Middlebury movement brought up this point. He described how Middlebury is still invested in companies like these hedge funds and asked the question, “How are we different from these hedge funds if we’re still invested in them?”
Joseph Holler, a geography professor, then passed around a paper that showed a map that was part of the Flood Insurance Study done in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The map was blanked out by a white square with writing on it that said “Flood hazard information for this portion of the transect has be superseded by the revised interior drainage analysis performed in 2014.”
Holler described how political processes redacted the actual flooding hazard information. Now companies are building and rebuilding in New Orleans as though it is safer than it was before Katrina, regardless of the fact that, in reality, it is not.
Isham concluded the discussion by asking the group, “What should we do?” One student’s response was to simply elect the right people. Participants generally agreed with this as a solution, though there was some debate about how to elect the right people. Another student lamented how he felt that those who are currently in the position to be elected are not people he would want to elect. Another student brought up the need to inform voters on the issues brought up in this conversation, from climate change to the U.S. international affairs in Puerto Rico.
This conversation brought up a lot of important problems surrounding this past hurricane season, too many to address in this article alone. While not all the mentioned issues were about the hurricanes themselves, they were all directly tied to the causes and devastating effects of hurricanes. This reporter left the conversation not feeling very optimistic about the issues that were brought up, but was impressed by the intelligent and open discussion. Conversations like these and the actions that result from them are vital if we are to address these challenges we face as a college, as a nation and as humans.
