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(03/10/16 12:26am)
Hepburn Zoo has always been known as a venue for unconventional art performances, but last weekend’s performance may have topped them all: On Friday, March 3 and Saturday, March 4, the doors opened, free of charge, for Middlebury Discount Comedy’s second ever show, Much Love in this Air.
Founded last fall by Shannon Gibbs ’18, the campus’s first sketch comedy group is comprised of 11 students: President Gibbs, Vice President Isabella Alonzo ’18, Producer Liana Barron ’18, Head Writer Greg Swartz ’17.5, Head Director Alexander Herdmann ’17, Faraz Ahmad ’19, Dan Fulham ’18, Sebastian LaPointe ’18, Peter Lindholm ’17.5, Jack Ralph ’18 and Marney Kline ’17.5. Coming from a wide range of experience levels and majors – from computer science to theatre to English, with no discipline in the clear majority – the company produces all of its sketches through a collaborative round-table format.
Posters for the show featured all members of the company lying in a sea of roses, completely nude save for a few petals photoshopped strategically over their private parts. According to Gibbs, the provocative, creepy and vaguely romantic vibe behind these promotional pieces was completely intentional and particularly accentuated by the fact that Much Love in this Air premiered nearly three weeks after Valentine’s Day. ‘Who says the season of love is over?’ the posters seemed to ask, foreshadowing the unconventional sense of humor that lay behind the entirely student-run production.
Gibbs opened the show with a list of trigger warnings for sexually explicit material, violence, abortion and other inflammatory topics. In the 24 sketches that followed, ranging in length from a mere 30 seconds to several minutes, these themes were escalated, decontextualized, satirized, broken apart, muddled up and in some instances, oddly mishandled. Puzzling at some moments and shocking at others, Much Love in this Air proved to be far more unsettling a performance than even its posters could suggest.
Sexual content was pervasive throughout the show, beginning with a three-part series of sketches in which a male student, played by Swartz, is taken hostage and forced into a sexual bondage by a female Public Safety officer, played by Alonzo. Another student, played by Barron, watches on in helpless horror. The premise for this story is understandable enough: two students are caught drinking underage, and the officer must confiscate their alcohol. However, the situation quickly escalates into a bizarre commentary on the tense relationship between Public Safety and the general student body. As Barron appeals to the administrator to release her boyfriend, she ends up screaming hysterically into the phone, “Right, you’re trained, but who the fuck are you helping?” followed by, “Why do I voluntarily go into this bureaucratic shit hole?” She is eventually transferred to the Department of Existential Crises, where a soothing voice on the other end, performed by Ahmad, instructs her to “imagine yourself running through a field of puppies with a middle-aged, robust Public Safety Officer” and to “gently breathe in and lock your fingers underneath your cheeks.”
“Now, if you have a tight little asshole, press two and you will be transferred back to Public Safety,” Ahmad says in the final line of the sketch, leaving the audience to pause and then giggle in bewilderment.
Such was the nature of most of the night’s performances: Shameless in their absurdity, the sketches were often cloaked in dark humor and met with relative silence, as the viewers struggled to process what they had witnessed onstage. For the most part, MDC’s outlandish approach to comedy seemed incongruent with the audience’s taste – but this did not seem to faze the actors, whose emphatic voices and humorously exaggerated facial expressions remained as strong as ever from beginning to end.
Another sexually explicit scene, innocently titled “Science Class,” featured a teacher offering his students a “more hands-on experiences” through a new form of “dirty work.” This euphemistic language quickly gives way to the crude question, “How many of you have been f**ked in the ass before?” The class proceeds to split into pairs to carry out this activity, with one student’s clear discomfort becoming the focal point of the lesson. Perhaps surprisingly, the blatant ridiculousness and obscenity of the sketch drew considerable laughter from the crowd, though many audience members were undoubtedly left asking themselves what exactly they were laughing at – and what message the outrageous script was trying to convey.
The line between outlandish humor and incomprehensible absurdity was crossed at a few points throughout the night. For several uncomfortable minutes, the audience watched as Winston and Lydia, a dysfunctional young couple as portrayed by Gibbs and Fulham, broke out into a fight at a night club, dancing feverishly together the entire time. The juxtaposition between their volatile words and cheery, perfectly synchronized choreography was clever, though their enunciation was often obscured by their quick movements, making it difficult to follow the conversation. The parts that were audible, however, were often too over-the-top and intentionally lewd for the audience to feel comfortable laughing.
“You mean you’ve been using condoms this whole f**king time?” Lydia shrieks at one point.
“Maybe if you weren’t such a f**king slut c**t we would think twice about it, Lydia,” Winston responds.
The tendency to veer too far into unsettling extremes escalated into outright violence during “Faraz’s Final Rose,” a scene based on the wildly popular reality show The Bachelor, as well as during a couple of abortion sketches. Firstly, the final rose ceremony – in which the bachelor selects one of three beautiful girls to be his wife – concludes with Chris Harrison, the host of The Bachelor as portrayed by Lindholm, chasing down and shooting the first runner-up, played by Gibbs. “I’m still alive, asshole,” are her final words in this unnecessarily grotesque scene. What had begun as an entertaining commentary on the problematic premise of The Bachelor devolved into an unwarranted display of violence.
Next, in what was likely the most disconcerting performance of the night, a pharmaceutical clinic offers a list of painful options to women seeking an abortion, including but not limited to hypothermia, being thrown down a flight of stairs and a series of punches to the gut, courtesy of a creepy man named Lucifer. In this jarring satire of the current health care system, lines like “I think sluts like you deserve a 50-50 shot” and “My father took me hostage so I wouldn’t murder the child we made” are delivered with a sort of bluntness, a blatant desire to provoke, that comes across as inappropriate. When the first woman to request an abortion emerged blood-stained from behind the curtain, followed by a stab to the torso that took the life of the second patient, the disapproving silence from the crowd seemed to be directed not at the real-life issues that inspired the sketch, but rather at the wildly disturbing content of the sketch itself.
Recognizing that their self-identified “Freudian” style can be more than a little odd, Middlebury Discount Comedy (MDC) writes all of their sketches with the hopes of highlighting the severity of real-world problems.
“We take an issue that’s pertinent to us as Middlebury students or as citizens of the world and we blow it up to an extent that it’s so decontextualized that people can see the satire we’re trying to go for,” Barron explained. “We’ll heighten it and heighten it and heighten it until finally, it’s violence.”
“This show tackles issue that are a bit more sensitive and takes them to a darker place,” Swartz added.
Not all moments in Much Love in this Air were completely off the mark, however. A 30-second public service announcement, delivered by Fulham, brought the crowd to a roaring laughter with its sheer, deadpan simplicity: “Now, remember, kids,” he said. “Drugs. One day, you just start doin’ em.” In contrast, a cult-like sing-along of the phrase “Prepare the way of the Lord” in “Trump’s Inauguration” introduced an eerie sense of hysteria to the room. This creepy take on the political storm that has ravaged the United States was met with a positive reception, as disgust toward the Trump campaign is a common sentiment amongst the overwhelming majority of Middlebury College students.
Meanwhile, in terms of prevalent on-campus issues, a sketch entitled “Atwater Speed Dating” resonated with many. In this well-executed performance, a female student meets one unappealing candidate after another – from the insensitive and dull to a guy who refers to himself exclusively as “Jaboi” – during a night out. Taking place amidst blaring music in a shadowy suite, it is an apt interpretation of a social scene that many students have described as stifling, unsatisfactory and frustratingly cyclical.
“People like it when you talk about things that are relevant and happening right here, in here, in this bubble,” Barron explained. “We have a tone to us that’s very idiosyncratic and dark.”
Following a whirlwind perusal of relevant issues both on campus and in the real world, a stand-out sketch of the night centered on the group’s round-table sessions. All 11 members of the company gathered onstage to parody the process of pitching ideas and writing scripts, with one major plot twist: the actors were all topless (save for 3-D heart attachments covering the girls’ nipples). As the scene progressed, the inexplicable half-nudity began to make more sense. Gibbs proposes that they all be topless together for their next show, to which Alonzo responds, “I don’t think that’s really tasteful, Shannon; not all of us are comfortable with our bodies like that.” A heated debate ensues – “What’s the joke?” “What’s the context?” – and as the audience stared at the bare-chested group of people before them, the irony became suddenly clear. Infused with a strong dose of Freudianism, the scene ends on an abrupt and meta note.
Comedy has long served as a vehicle for powerful social commentary, bringing humankind’s ills under the most revealing of lights and inviting all to observe. However, the humor behind Much Love in this Air hinged largely on a brash insensitivity that alienated audience members more than it challenged them to explore the difficult issues at hand. Though there were certainly moments of clever satire sprinkled throughout the night, if the uncomfortable silences were any indication, the show was deeply perplexing and perhaps too heavy to bear at times. Whether in moments of laughter or quiet unease, MDC pushed the audience to consider why they were or were not laughing, as their shotgun-firing, belly-bleeding sketches blurred the line between what is appropriate to convey and what is not.
(03/09/16 10:59pm)
By Renee Chang
As spring semester gets underway, the College is abuzz with activity. From classes to sporting events, there is hardly room to deny that life at the College is anything but uneventful. But besides classes and extracurricular activities, there is something else that lingers on students’ minds this season: the summer internship.
In addition to navigating the process of applying for suitable internships, students may face the challenging task of securing funding for opportunities that do not provide compensation. While the financial burden of an unpaid internship may deter students from taking on an otherwise exceptional opportunity, the Center for Careers and Internships (CCI) hopes to remedy this situation. Last year, the CCI rolled out a new funding program wherein rising juniors and seniors could apply for a fixed grant of $2,500 that would go towards funding an unpaid opportunity.
Cheryl Whitney Lower, Associate Director of Internships and Early Engagement at the CCI said, historically, students were provided with “significantly less” funding than the current $2,500 grant.
“The grants cover more expenses and allow students decision-making power over how they want to spend their summer and gain experience or explore an interest,” Lower said. “This amount will typically cover a significant portion of a more expensive experience in another country or in a city away from home, for example. Others may choose to do an internship with lower expenses and use some of the money to offset lost summer wages.”
And for Joel Wilner ’18 and Andrew Hollyday ’18.5, the grant did just that. Wilner and Hollyday both received funding to participate in the Juneau Icefield Research Program (JIRP), a program that recruits a select group of undergraduate and graduate students to participate in hands-on research in glaciology, or the study of glaciers.
Wilner, who hopes to pursue a PhD in glaciology, says that his time in Juneau, Alaska, was the perfect complement to his interest in glaciers.
“I have always been fascinated by the Earth’s cold regions, from both scientific and cultural standpoints,” Wilner said. “Even when I was very young, my favorite geographical areas to study were places like Greenland and Antarctica. I became interested in studying glaciology in an academic capacity after climbing the glaciers of Mount Rainier before coming to Middlebury. ”
In Alaska, Wilner’s scientific and cultural interest in glaciers naturally converged. On top of “traversing the entire width of the Alaskan panhandle” from Juneau to Atlin, British Columbia — all on a single pair of cross-country skis! — Wilner also got the opportunity to assist in first-hand scientific research.
“I worked with Dr. Seth Campbell, a research geophysicist from the University of Maine and the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory,” Wilner said. “We used ground-penetrating radar to investigate how surface meltwater percolates from the surface of glaciers to form layers, which has important implications for improving our models regarding how glaciers will respond to climate change.”
Nonetheless, the value of Wilner’s time in Alaska went beyond simply gaining work experience.
“The most memorable part of my experience at JIRP was staying at Camp 8, which is essentially a one-room metal shed near the summit of Mount Moore, a 7,000-ft-high jagged mountain near the US-Canada border,” Wilner said. “Two other students and I took a three-day shift at Camp 8 with the purpose of relaying radio messages between other camps on the Juneau Icefield that couldn’t communicate with each other directly by radio. Because this was our only real duty for those three days, we had a lot of free time. We spent this time looking out over a vast expanse of the Taku Glacier watching the sunset from our sleeping bags on the roof of the shed. The solitude was simply enchanting and life-changing, despite the abundant mold and mouse droppings in the shed where we lived!”
For Camille Kim ’16, the $2,500 grant went primarily towards paying for housing and provided a jumping off point for exploring her interest in software development. As a summer intern at the Wyss Institute for the Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Kim was given the opportunity to develop her own software.
“The main project I was working on involved writing software to operate a device that researchers would use to automate the process of growing bacterial cultures, as well as a web application and user interface that would allow users to control and monitor their experiments remotely.”
Kim said the most satisfying moment of her internship was when the code she authored was allowed to run on its own.
“I still remember the first time we actually hooked up all the different hardware components and just let our code do its thing — it was a really satisfying moment to see what we’d been working on all summer start moving and coming to life,” she said. “It was a huge feeling of accomplishment to see that happen right in front of me.”
Similarly, Divesh Rizal ’17 says that teaching science and mathematics to eighth and tenth grades at the Udayapur Secondary English School in his native Nepal would not have been possible had it not been for the funding he received from the CCI.
Surrounded by “highly energetic, mischievous and curious” students, Rizal views teaching as an “art” that requires a heightened sense of awareness.
“Teaching is an art that requires an acute understanding of people around us,” he said. “It requires a state of being when you can truly speak to somebody, ensure your words are being heard. An important aspect of teaching is learning about the art of teaching itself, about your audience, about their opinions.”
Although he was only able to spend a month at Udayapur, Rizal found it difficult to distill his experience into a single memorable experience.
“Almost everything was memorable,” Rizal said. “But perhaps the most would be the impromptu singing competition we had in our class one day. It was the day when it rained heavy outside. Since the classrooms do not have glass windows, the water disrupted the class and the students on the opposite side made more room for the students by the window. Since we had a rather dense part in the room, we abandoned our books and took on a suggestion from one of the students. The ‘competition’ was between girls and boys in the class. The girls did a rather great job and they won the competition without a sweat.”
In addition to the $2,500 grants for rising juniors and seniors, the CCI also offers $1,000 “Explore Grants,” which are targeted towards first-year students and first-year Febs who have not yet committed to a particular career path and simply wish to “explore” different fields.
Students who posses a strong passion for dance can also take advantage of the CCI’s “Dance Festival Grant,” which Lower said were designed keeping in mind that “for many dance majors, participation in these festivals is important to their development as dancers and artists.”
To learn more about the different kinds of grants offered by the CCI and how to apply, visit go/funding.
(03/03/16 12:03am)
In the mind of bandleader Michael League, Snarky Puppy was born out of a passion for jazz. League studied the form and started the band of like-minded musicians at the University of North Texas. The band later transplanted to a base of operations in Brooklyn, N. Y., and has grown in both members and musical dynamism since its debut album in 2006. Lovingly known as “the Fam” to their fans as well as to one another, the rotating 24 plus member group consistently charts unprecedented pathways through funk, with welcome detours into jazz, soul and every turn of music they can handle.
Recorded live, as most of their albums are, in New Orleans, Family Dinner Vol. 2 is a direct descendant of the group’s 2013 album Family Dinner Vol. 1. Assembling a flock of virtuosic musicians and performers, League and company deliver a genre-defying set of music that incorporates both original pieces written by “the Fam” and their guests, as well as inventive takes on already recorded music brought to the table by the visiting performers. Family Dinner is an apt name for the album, for it has the feel of a meal prepared by many hands that somehow manages to hit each distinct flavor of music without spoiling your appetite for the next course.
The album begins with “I Asked,” which features American folk and jazz singer Becca Stevens, as well as members of the Swedish folk band Väsen. It begins as a chiefly acoustic track that features Stevens’ voice, but after four minutes it evolves into an atmospheric bit of prog rock, with a sparse electronic and percussive instrumentation overlaid with vocals that border on chants. It is arguably the weakest installment on the album, but if nothing else it reinforces the risk-taking tendencies of a group that is willing to do anything, as long as they have never done it before.
Latin rock and salsa infused “Molino Molero” follows this up, and with guest turns by legendary singer-songwriter Susana Baca and guitarist Charlie Hunter, the song is infectiously good-natured. Baca’s voice is perfectly backed by the instrumentalists, and when she cedes the floor to Hunter the arrangement puts his playing on full display. Hunter dances through a nearly two-minute solo that feels right out of any of Carlos Santana’s best work, which crescendos to bring back Baca and the rest of the band for the end of the song. It works as an ideal segway into the upbeat tone of the majority of the album.
With another 180-degree twist, “Liquid Love” is an overhauling of guest singer Chris Turner’s soulful rocker. “The Fam” gives center stage to Turner and his back-up singers, but also serves as a proper introduction to the stellar horns sections Snarky Puppy is blessed with. Turner turns in a vocal performance that is dripping with sultry tone, and even though the song goes on a bit too long when all is said and done, the song builds well on the energy and fun of “Molino Molero.”
Not content to settle into soul and stay there, “Soro (Afriki)” provides a dramatic shift in tone from the closing notes of “Liquid Love.” It features guest vocals from Salif Keita, a singer-songwriter from Mali known as “the Golden Voice of Africa,” as well as solos from South American musicians Bernardo Aguiar on drums, and Carlos Malta on flute. Snarky Puppy delves further into the world music genre. It opens with Malta’s solo, and gives way to Keita and a contingent of back-up singers who blend traditional African music with the jazz provided by “the Fam.” The piece as a whole possesses a highly cinematic quality. It moves through different tones and modes in a narrative fashion, presenting distinct segments of sound that would not be out of place backing a Quentin Tarantino movie.
“Sing to the Moon” harkens back to the soul of “Liquid Love,” but while Turner focused on a sexy soul, Laura Mvula, who here provides a powerhouse vocal on a reinterpretation of her song, settles into a slow build performance that is haunting in its beauty. As the song progresses, it builds from minimal instrumentation that evokes the quiet moonlit that Mvula sings of, and bursts forth into a passionate crescendo with all hands on deck. It is easily a highlight of the album that shows how much can be done with so little when a song is in the hands of master craft musicians.
The last three songs of the album, “Don’t You Know,” “I Remember” and “Somebody Home” are a trio of pieces that bring the musical works full circle. “Don’t You Know” features English prodigy Jacob Collier on a piano part that ebbs back and forth equal parts Duke Ellington and Maurice Ravel. “I Remember” sees American electronic duo KNOWER channeling their inner Michael Jackson with saxophonist Jeff Coffin bringing out the best in the horns section with his animated playing. After these two pieces centered on crackling performances of pure musical energy and camaraderie, “Somebody Home” revisits the folk introduced on the first track, but this time in a much quieter fashion celebrating a man who has been in the business for decades: David Crosby.
“Somebody Home” is Crosby’s, and he takes a minute to introduce the song, joking with the audience and talking with the band. What follows is the most reserved performance on the album. Much of the song is solely Crosby on acoustic guitar. When Snarky Puppy does join, they do so with a tenderness that showcases their ability to go from bombastic to gentle seamlessly. While many bands may be tempted to send an album out on an energetic piece, “the Fam” sees an opportunity to slow down and enjoy a performance with another legend.
As a whole piece of art, Family Dinner Vol. 2 displays a group that celebrates musicians of the past and future that all bring a distinct and celebratory tone of creation to a group devoted to the exploration of the craft. The sprawling instrumental sections may not be the most accessible music on the market, but for those who will take the time to sink into it, there are many rewarding moments.
(02/25/16 3:32am)
Harper Lee’s beloved classic To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. The zeitgeist novel depicted in bare terms racism in America and reaffirmed the values of equality and unity. The book has sold more than 40 million copies globally and has become a staple of high school curriculums. But despite the book’s acclaim and instant success, Lee repeatedly vowed never to publish a novel again. For the next 56 years, she lived a private life in small-town Alabama and an anonymous one in New York City, her career a single gem.
Not long before she went dark to the public — just four years after the publication of Mockingbird and two years after the film version — Lee recast her literary objectives in a 1964 interview with Roy Newquist, the editor of a book titled Counterpoint. Perhaps because of the rarity of such encounters with Lee, the Newquist interview has become one of the few sources of material that illuminate her mystery. In it, Ms. Lee clearly stated her literary ambition: “to describe a disappearing way of small town, middle class Southern life. In other words, all I want is to be the Jane Austen of south Alabama.”
Less often quoted than this statement is her explanation of it. She wanted to “leave some record of the kind of life that existed in a very small world. She hoped to do this “in several novels, to chronicle something that seems to be very quickly going down the drain.”
Lee said she was always fascinated with the “very definite, rich social pattern” that makes up the tiny towns of the South. “I would simply like to put down all I know about this because I believe that there is something universal in this little world, something decent to be said for it, and something to lament in its passing.”
Beyond Harper Lee’s crowning achievement of Mockingbird and her lone interview with Newquist, the front-page obituary of Lee in Saturday’s New York Times recalled the literary world’s biggest story of 2015: the publishing of her second novel, Go Set a Watchman. The book, in all its controversy, is crucial to considering Lee’s legacy, which had been fixated for more than half a century on one work. Watchman was met with a considerable amount of backlash, with some accusing Ms. Lee’s publisher of taking advantage of her in her old age.
They raised eyebrows at the timing of the manuscript’s discovery and the announcement that it would be published, which was only weeks after the death of her sister, Alice Lee, who had long been Harper’s confidante and whom many considered to have been her protector. Skeptics use reports of Lee’s deteriorating state at the time the manuscript was discovered as evidence that she could have easily been coerced into agreeing to something she had not wanted for 56 years. “It would be very difficult to prove this one way or another,” Bertolini said.
In a New York Times column, Joe Nocera called the book a “fraud” and “one of the epic money grabs in the modern history of American publishing.” Jonathan Sturgeon wrote in Flavorwire that Watchman is not Mockingbird’s sequel or prequel, but rather its prototype. Lee herself described the book as her first book’s “parent.” Sturgeon points to wholesale passages in Watchman that were later reworked for Mockingbird.
Pieces of literature have been published against some authors’ wishes, noted John Bertolini, Ellis Professor of English and Liberal Arts. He noted Vergil and Franz Kafka as examples. “Of course the same thing happened with Kafka: he ordered that all his works be destroyed, but they weren’t. Fortunately for all of us, Vergil’s orders orders on his manuscript of the Aeneid weren’t followed either.”
With all the debate over the origins of Watchman, the biggest bombshell turned out to be an explosive plot twist that no one saw coming. Atticus Finch, the crusading lawyer of To Kill a Mockingbird, whose principled fight against racism and inequality inspired generations of readers, is depicted in Watchman as an aging racist who has attended a Ku Klux Klan meeting, holds negative views about African-Americans and denounces desegregation efforts. “Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?” Atticus asks his daughter, Jean Louise — the adult Scout.
Bertolini said he was astonished by the reaction to the book. “It involved one of the most colossal misreadings of a book that I’ve seen. It was said that it turns out Atticus is a racist after all, and that’s not, I believe, the point Harper Lee was making in that book. She was demonstrating that Atticus was continuing to educate Scout, and that he thought it was a flaw in her that she idealized him so much. He did that precisely to provoke her to think about his having a flaw, about his not being a perfect man.”
The very fact that the manuscript exists, he said, means a lot. “The book makes an important statement that should be read — about not blindly idealizing somebody, not expecting perfection from all human beings under all circumstances. Atticus may have done that deliberately to help to Scout grow up, to become a mature, understanding, forgiving human being. This is, after all, what he spent his whole life doing.”
Claire Borre ’18, an English major, said that Watchman complicates the emphatic depiction of Atticus as a hero and exposes his flaws to modern readers. “I read Go Set a Watchman as a completion of Scout’s coming-of-age that was started in To Kill a Mockingbird,” she said. “Having read Mockingbird as a young girl and then reading Watchman this past summer, I connected to both in very different ways. Scout’s first attempts at understanding the world, like my own, were heavily influenced by those around her, whereas Jean Louise, and myself as a college student, must learn to look inward for her own value.”
Borre continued: “The more adult perception world presented is not as strictly good or evil as in Mockingbird, and Lee reveals a more nuanced worldview that makes people reevaluate their perception of the hero Atticus. It is a shattering of the hero image of Atticus.”
Bertolini pointed to the strength of her first novel as a lasting part of her legacy. “To Kill a Mockingbird, both the book and the film, had an influence in the Civil Rights Movement that was analogous to the impact of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in persuading people to be against slavery. I first encountered it when I was in high school, first the book and then the film, which had a big influence on me. I will never forget that.”
The general consensus among book critics is that Go Set a Watchman is not as well written as the masterpiece of Mockingbird is. “Isn’t that true of all the secondary books by great authors?” said Bertolini. “They’re usually much better than the best of the ones being published today, because true artistic talent and genius is a rare thing.”
For all the excitement, confusion, surprise, drama and controversy, the world nevertheless has another Harper Lee work.
(02/25/16 12:54am)
In the Wright Memorial Theater last Saturday night, Feb. 20, a burgeoning audience waited impatiently for the beginning of “Force and Heat: The Early Plays,” the first part of Tina Packer’s show Women of Will. Alongside co-star Nigel Gore, Packer delivered an exhilarating analysis of the development of female characters throughout Shakespeare’s early plays.
Packer, a renowned actor and playwright, is the founder and director of the Massachusetts-based Shakespeare & Company. Well versed in Shakespeare’s works, she has directed and taught all of his plays at over 30 colleges in the U.S. Having begun her Women of Will project in the mid-1990s, Packer took a break from the artistic directorship of Shakespeare & Company to focus on the Women of Will show and a book of the same name, which was published in 2015. Joining her in this performance of “Force and Heat: The Early Plays” was Nigel Gore, a veteran Shakespeare & Company actor whose credits include the title roles in Richard III and Macbeth. Both “Force and Heat” and their Sunday performance of “Chaos and Redemption: The Later Plays” were sponsored by the College’s Performing Arts Series, the Theatre Program and the Town Hall Theater. Women of Will was brought to Middlebury as part of the Shakespeare celebrations centered around the month-long Middlebury College Museum of Art exhibition of “First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare.”
The show consists of a series of short scenes sampled from early Shakespeare plays like Twelfth Night and Antony and Cleopatra, interspersed with short analyses of the scenes presented directly to the audience by Packer and Gore. Saturday’s show began with a passionate scene from Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. This play, controversial for its misogynistic elements, proved a powerful introduction. The first scene culminated with Packer struggling onstage with Gore’s character, who sought to strangle her into submission with his belt. With practiced ease, Packer stepped out of the role and walked to the front of the stage as the house lights slowly turned on. Packer began introducing the performance and the material she would be analyzing, laying out the development of the female roles throughout Shakespeare’s plays. These short analytical pauses, placed between every scene, formed a key element of the show and allowed Packer to explain why she chose to include each scene.
The casual manner of Packer and Gore’s interactions contributed greatly to the atmosphere of the analytical portions of the performance. Speaking directly to the audience, Packer sounded completely at ease, explaining the most critical aspects of each scene like an English teacher picking apart a passage. Gore occasionally chimed in as well, commenting on aspects that Packer may have overlooked. This off-the-cuff discussion between these two veteran actors and old friends was immensely enjoyable.
The lighting in the show was superb, alternating seamlessly from the dark, violent battlefield scenes to bright palace environments in plays like Henry VI. Working with a couple of costumes and a very simple set consisting of a merely a chair and a few chests, the actors and their movements were the focal point of the show. The lighting design took this into account, expertly highlighting the actors and their positions on the stage.
Some scenes included audio clips that I found to be more hit-and-miss in their effectiveness. For instance, although the sound of seagull cries added a realistic ambiance to a beach setting, the scene from Antony and Cleopatra seemed to rely excessively on short sound bites of Packer’s voice reading lines from the play. The recording that played through speakers as the actors sat in stony silence sounded clipped and robotic. Although an interesting use of media, I felt it would have been more impactful if the actors had simply spoken the lines.
The highlight of the show was definitely Packer’s performance, which featured a strong, fluid delivery of lines and passionate monologues. Her familiarity with Shakespeare was apparent through her mastery of tone and pace. This powerful, emotional performance across a variety of roles was reminiscent for me of Dame Judi Dench’s Lady Macbeth from the 1978 version of Macbeth with Ian McKellen. After seeing Women of Will, I would certainly be eager to see a full Shakespeare production with Packer as its lead.
(02/24/16 9:08pm)
To the generally privileged, poverty is incomprehensible. People of privilege, with pale skin and/or free vacations and/or “intellectual conversation” — which is almost always defined by conformity to the standard of the privileged class — cannot understand how central poverty, or social disadvantage, can be to a person’s life. Disadvantage shapes every opportunity, thought and desire. While privileged students can afford SAT prep books, poorer ones may not even know what those three letters stand for. While privileged students can debate what college to go to, poorer ones are oftentimes unsure about going to college — or simply unable to do so.
I am acquainted with certain types of disadvantages. My middle school was a tiny spot in the middle of the Mojave wasteland, a place where — two years after my family moved out — a war between Bloods and Crips erupted. Thinking about “college,” a term so distant and irrelevant that it bore absolutely no meaning, was unheard of. All conversations were combative, a show of masculinity or cruelty, often interlaced with homophobic and racist slurs. Most of my friends were trapped, unable to imagine a reality outside of this de facto oppression that perpetuated itself with each successive generation. My friends’ parents couldn’t speak English — or at least the version of English that is deemed “correct” — and their livelihoods depended on the whims of the government’s “immigration policy.” Others were the products of the United States’ history of black oppression, of redlining and segregation never corrected. In the words of Ta-Nehisi Coates, they were “responsible for the worst actions of other black bodies, which, somehow, will always be assigned to [them].” Their livelihoods also depended on the whims of government and the ruling class — namely, the government’s constant debate on whether to be “tough on crime,” oppressing the oppressed, or not.
I escaped merely because my family had the privilege of mobility, and of conforming to the ruling class’s standards. We were white, natively spoke English and could devote our time and resources to moving instead of surviving. We moved to Las Vegas, where I attended a public high school in a neighborhood known as one of the most dangerous spots in the county (a privilege compared to the many who remain trapped in the Mojave). There are more than three thousand students at that high school. Every class crams fifty students, and there are never enough seats. I happened to be accepted on luck — literally, via a lottery — to a selected community within that public high school with more courses and increased availability. Although almost all of those students came from disadvantaged families, pretty much all of them wanted to succeed academically. The privilege of that community allowed my escape. I learned that people were nice, what SATs were, that “college” actually existed. I am at Middlebury today because of the opportunities made available to me through that program.
These experiences inform my reaction to Rachel Frank’s “Conversation in Confines,” which was published last week. It’s frankly ridiculous that people of such disadvantage are oftentimes compared equally to students who face no obstacles but themselves, who have studied for the SATs since middle school, who come from backgrounds where college was “real.” I suffered disadvantage, but not nearly as much as many others face. Affirmative action is a means of making up for all of those obstacles; it is a basic step to actual equality of opportunity. To drop affirmative action is to confirm the immoral notion that the privileged have more of a right to attend colleges — to attend programs like my high school’s, which was the only reason I escaped — than those who face obstacles incomprehensible to the privileged.
Affirmative action is a moral requirement for more reasons than just the facilitation of “institutional diversity.”
(02/24/16 9:06pm)
Politics today seems to be more about shouting insults than offering solutions. Fox, MSNBC, Donald Trump, all seem to be more interested in ratings than the issues faced by every day Americans. At this point, we are all numb to it. For years we have looked at politics in terms of red and blue and have failed to consider the motivations of our counterparts. We have refused to listen to any opposing ideas, and arguments now occur more frequently than discussions. As students at Middlebury College, we see this occurring on a daily basis. This has led us to a point where progress no longer seems possible. We believe that progress can be made with thoughtful political discourse. To us it seems that the solution to our current problem lies in better understanding the values and principles that guide us. In this spirit, we would like to introduce our values and principles.
We believe that every person has the right to work towards achieving his or her dreams.
We believe that every American is a unique individual and not simply a member of a group. We believe that each individual knows how best to achieve his or her own happiness. We are conservatives.
With Donald Trump and Ted Cruz both throwing around the word conservative so much, it is often forgotten what the word really means. When defining conservatism, it is important to remember what is being conserved. Fundamental to conservatism is the preservation of our founding principles, the right to life, liberty, property and the federal structure of our nation. These principles guide our understanding of policy, the role of government and how we solve the many issues facing our nation today. It is clear from this that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are more concerned with promoting populism and the values of the religious right than in conserving these principles.
Conservatives care about the first generation college student who could not find a job. Conservatives care about the little girl who grew up in a poor neighborhood who was forced to go to a failing school when there was a successful one a district over. Conservatives care about the skilled immigrant who wants to start an auto shop, but does not have the money nor the English skills to comply with the licensing requirements. Conservatives care about the single mother who has to work multiple part-time jobs because she cannot find full time employment. Conservatives care about the average American.
We need to change the way that we go about our political discourse, and we want this article to start the discussion. We hope that we can focus our conversation on policy solutions rather than political attacks, and we hope that we can go beyond the talking points and delve deeper into the substance of the issues. Only through thoughtful debate and discussion can we truly achieve a more perfect union.
(02/18/16 1:47am)
On Thursday, Feb. 18th, recent graduate Forest Jarvis ’15 will discuss his research in environmental policy and natural disasters as a Fulbright scholar in the Philippines. Jarvis is one of the growing number of graduates to apply for a fellowship with the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, which funds college graduates and young professionals to study abroad for one year.
Jarvis, who is presenting his research at 12:30 p.m. in the Robert A. Jones ’59 Conference Room, developed an interest in environmental policy while at the College. During his junior year, Jarvis received the Mellon Research Grant and traveled to Bolivia to research environmental policy, where his interests deepened.
“By the time I got to senior year, I realized that I wanted to go into development economics, especially relating to disaster risk management,” Jarvis said.
Jarvis decided to apply for a Fulbright in the Philippines to continue his research after graduating from the College.
“I chose to go to the Philippines because it’s a country I’ve always wanted to visit, and more importantly because it’s unfortunately a really good place to go if you want natural disasters,” he said.
Jarvis is currently working on a project that is searching for the connection between land tenure and vulnerability to natural disasters.
“I’m carrying out surveys in Sorsogon, one of the poorest provinces in the Philippines, to create a household-level disaster vulnerability index, and then compare vulnerability with land tenure and livelihoods.”
Jarvis himself is susceptible to the natural disasters he is researching.
“I also managed to get caught in the middle of a huge typhoon, Typhoon Nona, so my research is looking at preparation and recovery from disasters as they happen.”
Jarvis applied for the Fulbright Study/Research Grant in which a student designs and executes a research project for a specific country, but many Middlebury students also apply to the Fulbright’s ETA (English Teaching Assistant) program.
As the Fulbright website states, the ETA programs place students in schools “overseas to supplement local English language instruction and to provide a native speaker presence in the classrooms.”
Mary Robinson ’14 applied for the ETA program in Poland and was placed in Rzeszów, a small city in the southeast of the country. Robinson applied to the Fulbright to gain teaching experience — she hopes to be a professor one day — but also to get the experience of living abroad. “I considered the Peace Corps and various other grants and fellowships, but ultimately decided on Fulbright because I would get experience teaching and would get to choose which country to apply to.”
Lisa Gates, Associate Dean for Fellowships and Research, says that she has seen the Fulbright become a more popular option for Middlebury graduates.
“I have seen a significant increase in applicant numbers. I have also seen a slight increase in number of ETA applications, so that we are closer to 50/50 in application types,” Gates said.
According to the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the Department of State, the Fulbright program awards approximately 2,000 grants for U.S. undergraduates each year. In the 2014-2015 academic year, Fulbright awarded 12 Middlebury students with grants from the 42 applicants. The grantees receive funding from the U.S. State Department to cover travel costs, room and board and incidental costs. In some countries, grants can be used to fund research or language study. The program is immersive and supportive. Since its founding in 1946, approximately 310,000 “Fulbrighters” have participated in the program. Each students is drawn to the Fulbright for different reasons.
Joseph Flaherty ’15 applied to Fulbright’s ETA program so he could deepen his understanding of Turkey’s culture and history after having studied abroad in Istanbul during the spring of his junior year.
“The Fulbright seemed like a great opportunity to represent the U.S. abroad in a positive way and also to learn more about Turkey and to deepen my interest in the country and the history.”
Flaherty is currently working in Sakarya University, where he has been since late September. He teaches English to university students while simultaneously working on side projects.
“Fulbright encourages students to engage in their communities. So, I have been working on research for my articles.”
Flaherty is interested in journalism and is researching the affects 1999 Earthquake in Sakarya as well as the Ruins of Ani, a medieval Armenian city in the Kars Province. He is hoping to have his articles published while he continues his 10-month journey in Turkey.
Zeke Caceres ’15, also an ETA grantee, spends his time when he is not teaching, volunteering for an NGO in Agadir, Morocco. Caceres works on the NGO’s social media campaign. Caceres was a language enthusiast in high school and at the College and decided to apply to the Fulbright to not only continue practicing his Arabic, but also develop a greater understanding of the complexities of the Middle East.
“I believe in cross-cultural exchange and sharing the diversity of the U.S.,” Caceres said. “I have learned a lot about the U.S.’s diplomatic relations with Morocco during my time here and about the Middle East in general.”
Although each student is completing different projects in different parts of the world, they have all reported feeling welcome in their respective countries and a sense of accomplishment that the work they are doing is meaningful.
Steven Dunmire ’13 is currently working as a 6th grade English teacher in the Boston Public School System. He completed his Fulbright in Villa Hermonsa, Mexico the year after he graduated from the College and speaks highly of his experience.
“I gained so many life experiences,” he said. “I learned Spanish skills, like translating on the fly, and how to rely on myself emotionally and psychologically. I felt so accomplished when I created a functional and viable lesson for my students.”
Dunmire, like most of the College’s Fulbright grantees, loved their Fulbright experience.
“I loved Mexico. I never felt unsafe. It is a beautiful country with an amazing history and I am so happy I got to spend a year of my life living there,” he said.
(02/18/16 1:40am)
As an elite liberal arts school that routinely tops lists of college rankings, Middlebury has a reputation for attracting a certain kind of student: predominantly white, relatively affluent, hailing from boarding and preparatory schools in the Northeast. Most of these students have been successful all their life academically, and have received very well-rounded educations. They have had access to resources like guidance counselors, college counselors, a high quality curriculum, well-paid teachers and beautiful campus facilities.
Historically, preparatory and boarding schools were, by design, intended to prepare their students to attend prestigious schools. Phillips Exeter Academy, for example, was considered more or less a pipeline for Harvard. Films like The Dead Poets Society dramatize the pressure these boarding school students feel to attend elite higher-education institutions, and the almost mythic nature of doing so.
This is the stereotype, at least. And the Campus set out to explore it: does it really exist? Does the stereotype work both ways — that is, does it create a culture here, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy? The thoughts of students, professors and administrators help to tell the story.
***
This semester, Professor of English and American Literatures Kathryn Kramer is teaching a course called “Boarding School: Fiction & Fact.” With the exploration of the boarding school experience forming the heart of the class, the course considers novels, memoirs and films, from Roald Dahl’s Boy to Anita Shreve’s Testimony.
Kramer noted that these works often feature humorous accounts of boarding school life wherein it is not uncommon to see characters forming tight, familial bonds with their peers and responding to everyday experiences “with a kind of irony” and admirable sense of adventure. Nonetheless, Kramer also said that the unfazed quality these characters project is, in reality, not always so effortless.
A particular example that crossed Kramer’s mind is S.R. Khan’s ethnography Privilege, which provides a rare glimpse into student life at the St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire. An institution that is highly steeped in tradition, St. Paul’s offers all students the chance to participate in a weekly formal dinner.
While the idea of a formal dinner seems simple and harmless on the surface, emotions can run deep.
“The weekly dinner teaches the students about manners, but it also teaches them to never look uncomfortable in a situation no matter how uncomfortable it is,” Kramer said.
Just as students strive to maintain a stoic air of “coolness under fire” in front of their peers, Kramer said that the boarding school can also become a contradictory — and confusing — institution that, on the surface, promotes student growth, but simultaneously binds them to seemingly unbreakable tradition.
“There is a paradoxical sense of real tradition and things having always been that way, but also a sense of open possibility,” Kramer said.
***
To hear first-hand accounts of these places, we interviewed several students who went to boarding schools. They are all students of color who now attend Middlebury. We asked the students about their academic, social, athletic and other experiences, if and how their experiences prepared them for Middlebury, and what their perceptions are of the boarding school stigma.
Sunho Park ’18 — Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Mass.
“I haven’t thought too much about it, but I guess going to Deerfield was somewhat of a middle ground between college prep and interest in learning. Students generally took five classes every year. Teachers were always willing to help us out, whether we were struggling or doing just fine. We had sit-down meals on certain nights of the week, and I would often see students staying behind with a faculty member and going over some class material. And, faculty apartments were often visited by students during study hall hours.
“Living with my friends on campus, I found all of the school year to be a lot of fun. There were so many ways to befriend everyone on campus, through class, dorm life, sports teams, community service, meals and so on. People often tend to stereotype the kind of students that attend boarding school, and yes, there are many students that fit that stereotype, but there are also many other students that come from different backgrounds who have their own stories to tell. It was great meeting these people, and becoming best friends with some of them.
“During my sophomore year, nine other students and I wanted to help out with the kitchen staff during meals, so we formed a group called ‘Dish Crew.’ Some of us were close friends from the start, but others only knew of each other vaguely. Many of us had different friend groups during our time at Deerfield and came from different backgrounds, but Dish Crew gave us a place to came together as classmates. I share this story because cliques do naturally form on campus according to similar backgrounds sometimes, but there are also many times where everyone just comes together.”
***
Qadira Al-Mahi ’19 — Peddie School in Hightstown, NJ
“Peddie was pretty challenging academically, and the school induced much more anxiety than it cared to admit for the students. Peddie did prepare me well for college academics, though. Socially, it is a different environment for everyone. I personally did not have a good social experience at Peddie because of who I was, how everyone perceived me based on their preconceived notions of black women and where I come from, as well as the pervasive Eurocentric beauty standards. I obviously had friends, but all of my closest friends were students of color. We all ended up gravitating toward one another because no one else would accept us into their groups. This led us to form our own friend group.
“Despite the intense pressure to be outstanding academically and the stress that that induced, I will always look upon my boarding school experience positively because of the friends I had to get me through it. The people who made up the administration and the institution I do not look upon as fondly because many were ignorant, blatantly or subtly racist, some sexist and unwilling to make Peddie a more inclusive places for students of color when we, particularly the women of color, asked to work with them to make a more inclusive space. Even though that is not something I consider a positive, this aspect also prepared me for the lack of effort for inclusivity I knew I would face at an institution like Middlebury from both students and administration.
“My perception of boarding school versus public high school is that there is a bit more pretension among boarding school students than at public, and a bit more of a sense of entitlement to the education. I think we earn that in our own right by being there, which is fine, but when I think of public high school, I feel like people have less motivation to like school or figure out what they want. My perception is that they do not have as many resources or sometimes the same quality of resources — because the curriculums steer them to becoming worker bees instead of finding a passion, and more often than not the teachers themselves don’t even want to be at school, much less teach. That discourages people from wanting to be there even more.”
***
Addis Fouche-Channer ’17 — Westover School in Middlebury, CT
“My Westover experience was definitely academically challenging. My middle school is a feeder for a lot of boarding schools, so I felt really prepared to do the schoolwork once I got there, but there were definitely times where I felt overwhelmed. I think because it was a relatively competitive environment everyone wanted to get into an impressive, name-brand college and that definitely fueled a lot of the students’ desire to do well.
“Westover was an all-girls school, so socially it was interesting. Everyone was really focused on being themselves, discovering who they were and having fun. Obviously, it wasn’t a utopia; there were definitely people who didn’t get along but it was generally great. My friend group of six girls still talk almost everyday, and I feel like I’ll be friends with those girls for a really long time.
“Comparing Middlebury to Westover is a little tough because of the addition of boys. I definitely noticed myself becoming more conscious of how I looked and what I wore after coming to college, and there is definitely more pressure to be perfect here. But I felt academically prepared to come here, and also I had been living on my own since I was 13 so that wasn’t too difficult.
“Honestly, many of the students here from public schools have the same ability to do well here as the ones from boarding schools because of general wealth inequality.”
***
One student at Middlebury, Jessica Gutierrez ’17, went through the very experience Fouche-Channer described. After attending a charter high school in Chicago, Gutierrez was nominated for a scholarship to attend the College via the Posse Foundation, a non-profit organization that seeks to identify highly motivated student leaders at urban public high schools. The result of this rigorous selection process is a diverse group — or “Posse” — of scholars who are eager and ready to bring new dimensions to social and academic life at whichever institution they ultimately matriculate at.
Nonetheless, Gutierrez said that while the program does bring an incredible amount of diversity to campus, many students at Middlebury often remain shortsighted in their understanding of what constitutes a diverse campus. “I think Posse is often stereotyped by students as being a program that upholds ‘diversity’ as its sole purpose and hence attracts only a certain type of student. There is an overarching sentiment on campus that the large majority of Posse scholars are of a certain ethnicity and come from same socioeconomic class.”
Interestingly, Gutierrez’s remarks push us to a more nuanced — and important — discussion of campus diversity across both boarding schools and colleges: she noted that the very conception many students hold of ‘diversity’ is stereotypical and restricted to a certain kind of individual.“In my experience, the Posse program is stigmatized as bringing diversity to the campus, but the diversity within each Posse is not recognized. I have met Posse students who come from so many different academic, socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds.”
***
While the consensus seemed to suggest that there is nothing inherently wrong with seeking a quality private education for high school, the boarding school experience still has a stigma, whether deserved or not, associated with it — as a place of entrenched privilege by which the families who least need class ascendancy benefit the most. But most — if not all — of the country’s most sought-after boarding schools, following in the footsteps of elite colleges and universities, are taking deliberate actions to increase campus diversity through programs such as the Posse Foundation, affirmative action and class-conscious admissions practices. Ultimately, as Kramer noted in her interview, it remains up to us to observe whether boarding schools are actively bringing progressive “change to the culture” of secondary and higher education, or whether the students are becoming “honorary members” of age-old institutions that keep privilege in the hands that hold it.
The Campus hopes to run more stories in the future evaluating and deconstructing the boarding school stigma at Middlebury. To add your voice to the conversation, please email campus@middlebury.edu.
(01/28/16 12:59am)
Just as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men playing company once toured England over 400 years ago to perform the plays of William Shakespeare, the First Folios of the man regarded as the most influential writer of the English language are about to embark on a grand tour of their own. As part of this yearlong, nation-wide tour, one of them will pause for display at the Middlebury College Museum of Art from Feb. 2 to 28 in the exhibit “First Folio! The Book that Gave us Shakespeare, on Tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library.”
Shakespeare’s First Folio, published in 1623 – seven years after his death – is, to our knowledge, the first book ever to record the complete collection of his plays. Of the 750 editions published, an estimated 233 survive. 82 of these are held in a special vault at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C., according to the Folger website. It is the largest collection of First Folios in the world.
This year, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Folger Library is taking 18 of its editions out of the vault for public viewing. A copy will pass through each of the 50 states of the US, as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Middlebury College will serve as the only host site in Vermont.
While the application process to be a host site involved countless people collaborating over the course of a year — notably, community partners, the Ilsley Library, the Town Hall Theater and the Vermont Humanities Council — two figures on campus were particularly involved: Professor of English and American Literatures Timothy Billings, who wrote the grant application, and the Director of Special Collections, Rebekah Irwin, who coordinated logistical and event planning.
Billings admits to being “in love with Shakespeare for over 40 years.” His admiration began from a viewing of Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, which he saw with his mother at the age of six or seven. Growing up, his parents regularly took him to Shakespeare productions, often at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival at the Angus Bowmer Theater in Seattle, which Billings’s architect father helped design. Billings went on to study Shakespeare during and after college, and got the rare chance to see Folger’s collection of First Folios during a summer fellowship.
“There’s a special vault inside the vault — which is where the very, very precious things are held,” Billings said. “Most researchers never get to see that. They lay them on their sides because setting them upright puts pressure on the bindings, so the safest way is to have them all horizontal on each shelf. You see all these bindings, all different, some of them are gorgeous and ornate, some of them are really just dark and simple. All 82 of them. It’s a stunning thing to see.”
Each First Folio is unique, both in its binding and its interior, due to the printing and publishing practices of the time each was made. Billings explained that in Shakespeare’s time vendors sold books as interiors; the customer would buy the pages of one or several texts sewn together and take them to a binder, who would then create a cover for the pages, as simple or ornate as the customer could afford. Because of the stop-press correction process used by printers at the time, each Folio contains pages with features exclusive to that version.
“And so the particular one that we get has its own history and carries with it the lives — in this very tangential way, this kind of aura of the lives — it has touched along the way,” Billings said.
Irwin shared that paper produced for the Folios further distinguishes the editions and their histories. “Paper during that time and the early renaissance was made using rags. Rag pickers was a medieval term for the very poor members of a social class who would gather rags and those rags would be made into paper. So the paper from books that are really old is actually quite beautiful and in very good condition compared to the paper that was made, let’s say, in the 1870s. The paper that the First Folio’s made out of is beautiful paper and in wonderful shape,” said Irwin.
While each Folio boasts its own physical features and personal history, all of them together have contributed to the legacy of Shakespeare. Each Folio contains 36 plays. Of those, 18, including Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night and even Macbeth had never been formally recorded and would have been lost had they not been printed in the Folios. The fact that the Folios were published at all, and preserved so well, has also played a role in forming Shakespeare’s place as an emblem of Western culture.
And then there is the unspoken, obvious reason why the Folios are so valuable: the stories inside are really, really good. “Even when I re-read Shakespeare I’m continually taken aback and even surprised at how good some parts are,” Billings said. “Just when I’m starting to feel blasé with overfamiliarity something smacks me, and I think, ‘This is just so damn good!’”
Because of the rarity and value of these Folios, security and safety are major priorities during this tour. Not even Irwin, who has coordinated so much of the project, knows how the book is getting to Middlebury or where it is coming from. She asked. They haven’t told her. According to Irwin, it’s coming in a sensitive, specially made box, equipped with temperature, light and humidity controls.
Once on campus, the Folio will remain in the box for about 12 hours before being handled. The museum will maintain proper temperature and light conditions, as well as humidity levels right at 50 percent, ideal for book preservation.
“Paper is like skin,” Irwin said. “Our conservation manager will often say that all of our books are organic, and they’re dying, rotting, like anything else. And so we just do everything that we can to slow the decay process. With this special book, we have to not just slow the process, but try to get as close to stopping it as we can.”
She added, “For every day that a book is kept in bad conditions, it reduces the life cycle by years. There have been scientific equations that can show that the paper will degrade faster for every temperature degree below its ideal set-point.”
The exhibit taking place at the Museum will include multi-panel displays provided by the Folger Library, in addition to digital content and activities. “The scholars at the Folger are first rate, so the material we’re getting from them is going to be superb, I have no doubt,” Billings said.
The College has collaborated with the greater Vermont community to provide as much free programming to as much of the public as possible surrounding the Folio, including visiting and resident speakers, workshops, theater performances, film screenings, a folio festival featuring live Renaissance music and more.
While none of us will ever know what it was like to hear Hamlet’s famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy from the mouth of Richard Burbage, who played him in the work’s original productions on the Elizabethan stage, the upcoming exhibit will give college students and Vermonters alike the rare chance to read the words of that very speech on a page almost as old as Burbage himself. It’s the closest thing to time travel we’ve got.
(01/28/16 12:48am)
Last Thursday, Jan. 21, above the faint hustle and bustle of Crossroads Café, students, faculty and staff took the stage to take part in a night of poetry and spoken word performances. Organized by MOSAIC, Middlebury’s Interfaith Programming Board, and co-sponsored by the Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life, the one-hour event centered on the theme of gratitude. Attendees, who floated in and out of the space throughout the evening, were asked to bring a non-perishable food items for donation to the HOPE Food Pantry.
MOSAIC was founded last year by Eli Susman ’18.5, Alex Freedman ’18 and Mariam Khan ’16.5, who met at a religious life leader retreat hosted by the Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life during spring break. The following summer, the three went on a trip, also sponsored by the Scott Center, to learn how to participate in interfaith dialogue and create events on college campuses that unify people from all religious and non-religious backgrounds. This past fall, MOSAIC celebrated its launch with an Atwater dinner, featuring Laurie Patton as a keynote speaker. The current board members – Henry Burnett ’18.5, Mariam Khan and Alex Freedman – are looking to gain recognition as an official student organization in the near future.
Thursday’s poetry night, dubbed “GRAT-I-TUDE,” was MOSAIC’s second public event. Burnett emphasized the importance of the theme in his opening remarks to the audience.
“Gratitude is not just to the benefit of the person feeling grateful,” he stated. “For instance, I think I tend to smile at people when I am having a good day. There might be someone that I pass who is having a very difficult day for some reason. I can’t see how they’re feeling on the inside. But when I practice gratitude in my own life and I smile at that person, maybe I remind them that not everything in the world is a dark storm. As we raise our own gratitude, we are able to propagate that through the campus in a ripple effect.”
The program included Director of Parton Counseling Ximena Mejia, Writer-in-Residence Julia Alvarez, David Dennis ’18, Hamza Kiyani ’17, Executive Director of College Mental Health Services Gary Margolis, Laurie Jordan, Izzy Cass ’19, Hasher Nisar ’16.5, Professor of American Literature Brett Millier, Associate Chaplain Rabbi Ira Schiffer, Maryam Mahboob ’18, Assistant Professor of Modern Hebrew Orian Zakai, and Bilal Khan ’18. The final act featured a poem written by President Laurie Patton, who was unable to attend but submitted a piece to be read aloud.
From “Help, Wow, Thanks: The Original Prayer” to “Flat: Sentences from the Prefaces of Fourteen Science Books,” the thirteen performances of the evening reflected a wide array of beliefs, practices and worldviews. One by one, students, faculty and staff recited such sentiments as, “I am thankful for the mess to clean up after a party because it means I have been surrounded by friends,” “There are a million invisible muscles I never took the time to thank” and “Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will sink deep into your life.”
Mejia and Alvarez collaborated in their presentation of “Gracias a la Vida,” with one reading the song aloud in English while the other recited the Spanish version. Often considered the Bob Dylan of Latin America, Chilean composer Violeta Parra originally wrote the song as a suicide note.
“Thanks to life, which has given me so much,” Mejia read at the end. “It gave me laughter and it gave me tears/With them I distinguish happiness from pain.”
Despite the serious nature of many of the presented works, the evening still gave way to a few moments of humor. Before presenting the two versions of his poem, Khan joked that he was not sure if his translation was entirely accurate, as he had hastily jotted it down on a paper fifteen minutes prior.
“I will do the translation first and then the English version. I will not mix the two, because that is sinful,” he added, making a jab at a previous student presenter’s decision to switch to the Indonesian translation after each English line.
Other highlights from GRAT-I-TUDE included a piece about an overnight bus ride from rural Nova Scotia to Boston in the 1940s and Patton’s Hebrew poem, “When You Go Forth.” Freedman read the work aloud to close the evening, beginning with the biblical verse, “When you reap your harvest in the field, you shall not go back to catch it.”
Another memorable moment came from Cass’s recitation of “Flat: Sentences from the Prefaces of Fourteen Science Books”: “However, Chapter 7 was written in a relatively self-contained fashion, so the serious student may skip Chapter 6 and delve directly into the theory,” one line read, prompting chuckles from the audience.
The purpose of the event was to play on a commonality amongst all religious traditions: gratitude. Likewise, the fall Atwater dinner was inspired by the universality of food as a socialization tool across cultures. MOSAIC is intentional in its programming, as it strives to attract not only people across all religions, but also those without faith backgrounds. The organization is actively looking for new members.
“The sound of interfaith can sound exclusive to people who come from a non-faith background,” Burnett stated. “In reality, interfaith means all faith and non-faith identities.”
(01/27/16 5:10pm)
The trustees who serve on the College Board of Overseers discussed diversity and inclusivity last week during one of three of the Board of Trustees’ annual conferences. The Board’s governance system is divided into three Boards of Overseers: one for the College, one for the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and one for the Schools, including the School of the Environment, Bread Loaf School of English and the Language Schools.
“This issue is absolutely a priority for the Trustees, and they are very supportive of the work that has been happening on campus, while also understanding that there is much work yet to be done,” said Dean of Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs Andi Lloyd.
She continued, “Diversity and inclusion has been a focus for the College Board of Overseers since last year. It emerged as a priority during conversations last year about innovation and change in higher education — diversity and inclusion emerged, in those discussions, as a priority that was seen as central to the College’s mission. This has, therefore, been an ongoing conversation for the Trustees. They were, however, eager to hear about what has been happening at Middlebury during the fall, so we did provide them with an update on what has happened here, and we talked about events at Middlebury in the context of the broader higher education landscape.”
The Board met over the course of the weekend, inviting Leslie Harris, a professor at Emory University who has done research into campus climate, to speak to the trustees. Lloyd, along with Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernandez and Dean of the College and Vice President for Student Affairs Katy Smith Abbott, also briefed the trustees on campus events.
“Diversity and inclusion was the primary agenda topic,” Lloyd said. “We covered other pieces of business during our three-hour meeting on Friday afternoon, but this was the focal point for discussions.”
Multiple committees met and discussed new programs, strategic plans, master planning and international programs related to the matter. The standing committees and overseers reported the progress that had been made in their sectors to the other members of the board.
President of the Student Government Association (SGA) Ilana Gratch who serves as the Constituent Overseer to the College Board of Overseers, was also present.
“[The trustees] are 100 percent interested in student opinion and seem to genuinely care about the student experience at the College,” she said.
“We are very lucky at Middlebury,” Chair of the Board Marna Whittington said. “We have a very committed, very engaged Board that is really there wanting the best for Middlebury and they come to work. They work hard.”
(01/27/16 5:06pm)
The College announced on Jan. 14 that Colleen Fitzpatrick, a current administrator at Duke University, will succeed Jim Keyes as Middlebury’s next Vice President for Advancement. Fitzpatrick currently serves as an Assistant Vice President for Trinity College and the Graduate School and also previously served as Assistant Dean for Arts & Sciences Development at the University of Virginia.
As Vice President for Advancement, Fitzpatrick will be responsible for fundraising and alumni relations for the College and its affiliated institutions such as the Bread Loaf School of English and the Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
In an official announcement, President of the College Laurie L. Patton said that she was excited for her former colleague’s arrival.
“I’m delighted that Colleen will join the senior administration at Middlebury,” Patton said. “Having worked closely with Colleen at Duke University, I know first-hand what a positive impact she makes and the value she places on an institution’s mission —particularly in institutions that have liberal arts at the center of their common life. As Middlebury has grown in size and complexity, and expanded the reach of our programs, the need to think globally and strategically about our relationships with alumni and friends has never been greater. I am confident that Colleen will build on the success our alumni relations and advancement teams have enjoyed in recent years.”
Fitzpatrick, too, shared her excitement.
“The opportunity to work with President Patton and the senior leadership team at Middlebury was irresistible,” she said. “Middlebury College alumni are among the most engaged and supportive in the country, as is evident from their extraordinarily high giving rates year after year. That is a legacy I will be proud to help build upon.”
At Duke, Fitzpatrick helped raise $418 million from 1996 to 2003, and an additional $425.5 million in an ongoing campaign. Her office also raised over $200 million in need-based scholarships and graduate fellowships during Duke’s 2005-2008 Financial Aid Initiative.
“Laurie Patton is fortunate to team up with Colleen again to further Middlebury’s historic accomplishments in development and alumni affairs,” said Stephen Bayer, Duke’s Associate Vice President for University Development.
Keyes announced his retirement in Sept. after five years in the position. During his time, Keyes helped spearhead the Middlebury Initiative, a seven-year fundraising campaign whose goal of $500 million was ultimately exceeded by $30 million.
In an email to advancement staff on the day of the announcement, Keyes concurred with Patton.
“I’ve spent time with Colleen and I’ve been extremely impressed with her development and alumni-relations expertise and her insights and perspective on higher education,” he said. “I look forward to working with Colleen during a transition period and I know you’ll join me in welcoming her to Middlebury and to our office.”
(01/20/16 6:54pm)
Last Friday, the Middlebury faculty voted to indefinitely renew the Pass/D/Fail program. The program permits students to take two courses for college credit, receivng a “Pass,” D or “Fail” in lieu of a traditional grade. The faculty also extended the deadline to invoke the Pass/D/Fail option — students now have four weeks to decide instead of two. This gives students more time to experience a class and complete more graded assignments before making their choice.
The editorial board commends the faculty for taking student input into consideration and voting in favor of the Pass/D/Fail program. Middlebury students, generally speaking, are risk averse. Many students are planning on attending graduate school, applying for fellowships and seeking jobs that value high GPAs. Even without these incentives, Middlebury students are typically high achievers and are naturally compelled to seek high grades, with no purpose beyond the pride of achieving Magna Cum Laude come graduation day. The Pass/D/Fail option encourages students to leave their comfort zones and incentivizes academic risk-taking, giving students the chance to explore a topic they are unfamiliar or un- comfortable with. The liberal arts education is characterized by both depth and breadth, and the Pass/D/Fail option allows students to broaden their horizons without fear of falling below their own standards.
Some faculty members expressed concerned about the program. Many professors are worried that students will use Pass/D/ Fail to “game the system” in order to protect their high GPAs without having to do as much work. The most frequent grade for students who invoked Pass/D/Fail is a B, demonstrating that the performance of Pass/D/ Fail students is typically average. We under- stand the weariness amongst some faculty over a GPA-driven student body. However, given that we attend a competitive institution of higher education where risk-aversion is both inherent and rewarded, we do not see how the presence or absence of Pass/D/Fail will change the culture. Students gravitate toward academic environments where they are comfortable and feel successful. Pass/D/ Fail allows students to feel a similar level of comfort in an unfamiliar discipline. Two Pass/D/Fail classes taken outside of one’s major and distribution requirements will not significantly affect a student’s ability to graduate with honors. Two of the 36 credits needed to graduate from Middlebury should permissibly become an opportunity for risk and exploration.
Our time is both valuable and finite. Taking a course Pass/D/Fail allows students to test out a new interest without taking on too much additional stress or compromising their focus on their major. If he or she has the time, a student may be able to do perfectly well in a course outside of his or her major or area of interest. But rarely do overscheduled, overcommitted Middlebury students have that extra time and energy. The Pass/D/Fail option gives students the chance to pursue a subject that would normally require a disproportionate percentage of their attention. This is not laziness; rather, it is time management, a critical skill that college does and ought to teach us. We concede that perhaps some students are “gaming the system” by putting less effort into a class that they would ordinarily take for a grade. However, this does not diminish the importance of having the option for students to take advantage of opportunities they would not otherwise seek out. The benefits, in our opinion, outweigh the possible costs to academic rigor.
While extending Pass/D/Fail is a progressive step in encouraging exploration and reducing stress, we can continue to look to our peer institutions for inspiration. Other colleges and universities have taken a more lenient approach to Pass/D/Fail. Students at Williams College, often ranked the most academically rigorous of the NESCAC schools, may take up to three courses on a Pass/Fail basis and have up to the tenth week of the semester to decide. Bowdoin allows students to take up to four Pass/D/Fail courses and have up to the sixth week of classes. Harvard University does not place a specific limit on the number of pass/fail classes students can take, though they cannot be used to satisfy any requirements. Yale has a similar policy to Harvard, and even allows students who invoked Pass/Fail to switch back to a letter grade until shortly after midterms if they find themselves doing better than anticipated. These examples should quell any fears that expanding Pass/Fail comes at the expense of academic integrity.
We the students must challenge ourselves by fully and authentically using the Pass/D/ Fail option. A Political Science major who uses Pass/D/Fail to take a difficult History course has, perhaps, not fully utilized this opportunity. We encourage students to step outside their comfort zones and take courses that will push them to think differently. Pass/D/Fail is an opportunity for English students to study Computer Science and Biology majors to study Classics. We ought to use the Pass/D/Fail option as productively as we can. There are 34 other chances to play it safe at Middlebury. Let’s take this one risk and use it to add unforeseen value to our education.
(12/10/15 12:46am)
If mystery and suspense are your genres of choice, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson is a must-read. A tense, unpredictable novel with frightening characters and a crafty plot, this book has become an international sensation. Originally published in Sweden under the title Män som hatar kvinnor, meaning Men Who Hate Women, the book has been translated and published worldwide, followed by its two sequels, film adaptations in both Swedish and English and a graphic novel adaptation, published by DC Comics. Although critics’ reviews have been somewhat mixed, the novel’s sheer popularity speaks to its power to capture an audience.
The story opens with Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist hired by retired CEO Henrik Vanger to look into the cold case of his grandniece Harriet’s disappearance. Henrik believes Harriet was murdered by a family member. After uncovering new evidence which puts him on the trail of the killer, Blomkvist requests assistance with his research and is joined by Lisbeth Salander, the eponymous girl with the dragon tattoo. She is an exceptional computer hacker, extremely anti-social and, when need arises, unapologetically violent. Since she was declared legally incompetent as a child, she has a legal guardian – placing her in a position of dependency which she resents.
What ensues is a familiar mystery story full of unexpected twists and turns. Larsson successfully takes tropes that appear in dozens of novels – such as the “locked room” mystery set-up – and keeps them exciting, making the ending unpredictable. He achieves the perfect balance of the mystery novel by giving you just enough information that you feel like you should be able to figure it out, while obscuring enough to make sure you’re still surprised when the twist happens. As with any good mystery, Blomkvist and Salander discover there are far more skeletons in the closet than just Harriet’s ¬ both proverbial and literal ones. As they delve deeper into the history and secrets of the Vanger family, they discover murders spanning decades as well as danger in the present.
As good as the suspense and mystery is, stay away from this book if you do not do well with violence in media. Larsson does not shy away from revealing the ugliest side of human nature. His characters are intelligent and enjoyably complex, but many of them are also incredibly vicious and have no qualms about causing physical harm. The story takes many dark and unpleasant turns and leaves behind bloodied corpses in the process - other characters move forward with a horrifying lack of remorse. Larsson’s graphic descriptions of kidnapping, murder, rape and torture sometimes make Game of Thrones look positively tame. It creates a definite atmosphere for the book, making the characters gritty and self-sufficient, while dragging the ugliest realities into the spotlight. Just don’t read it if you aren’t prepared to hear a story where savagery and retribution are everywhere.
Despite all the violence, the book is not devoid of emotion or happiness. In fact, without spoiling too much, I can say that part of the ending seems almost too happy, slightly out of place in a book with so much darkness. Still, the relationship between Blomkvist and Salander remains intriguing: they are definitely the most developed and most interesting characters in the book and thus their partnership creates many of the novel’s high-points. The pair have some genuinely touching moments that feel like gasps of air of human goodness, although they certainly clash against one another from time to time as well. Through and through, they challenge each other and are both better for it.
Although the announced mystery is Harriet Vanger’s disappearance, the character of Lisbeth Salander is the true enigma of this novel. From her first entrance, Larsson raises a number of questions about her backstory. What could have led to her current personality? Why does an apparently brilliant though anti-social woman need a legal guardian? How much of a criminal is she? The hints we are given are murky at best and often raise more questions than they answer. Blomkvist is more often the reader’s point of view character and typically we follow his revelations and deductions more than Salander’s – yet Salander is the character who captures more interest and imagination. Larsson does ultimately reveal more of her backstory in his sequels, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, but for this book, Salander remains mostly indecipherable.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo may not be for everyone, but if you’re looking for an intense, scary, enigmatic ride, this is the novel to get. It will puzzle you, disturb you and ultimately leave you breathless and dying to know what happens next.
(12/03/15 12:07am)
In the aftermath of the devastating terrorist attacks in France and Beirut, the United States refugee resettlement program has come under intense scrutiny. The national dialogue surrounding resettlement has grown increasingly polarized, especially after President Barack Obama’s decision in September to admit an additional 10,000 Syrian refugees. With the 2016 gubernatorial elections in Vermont fast approaching, politicians on both sides of the aisle have weighed in.
Governor Peter Shumlin (D), who has already declared he will not be running for reelection, has expressed his support for accepting Syrian refugees into Vermont.
“You’ve got to stand up for what’s right,” Shumlin said. “I believe the right thing to do is for Vermont to say, to folks fleeing torture and terror, we are a welcoming state.”
Governor Shumlin has been very active on Twitter in his support. In November, he posted videos and pictures of his meetings with refugees from a variety of countries. Vermont has a long histroy of refugee resettlement. Since 1989, Vermont has resettled over 6,000 refugees primarily from Bosnia, Bhutan, Nepal, Burundi, Congo, Rwanda, Somalia and Sudan.
“Two days before Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for refugees who have come to Vermont,” read one tweet.
Ultimately, Shumlin claimed that those who hoped to stop refugee resettlement were espousing values antithetical to what it means to be American.
“When people are dying,” said Shumlin in an interview with NPR, “when people’s lives are being threatened, when they’re getting in little rafts to escape wherever they were ... we don’t become the country that says, ‘We’re closing the borders. We don’t trust you, and we’re not going to let you in.’”
Although Shumlin’s support has drawn the ire of some Vermonters, individual states do not have the legal authority to block refugee resettlement. According to the Refugee Act of 1980, the authority over refugee resettlement rests at the federal level. In 2012, the Supreme Court took up a similar case regarding immigration from Mexico, and ruled that individual states do not have the right to enforce unique immigration laws.
Historically, Vermont has allowed roughly 350 refugees a year to resettle, using a screening process that takes 1,000 days.
Other candidates in the 2016 Vermont Gubernatorial election have been less receptive. Two Republican candidates, Lieutenant Governor Phil Scott and former Wall Street banker Bruce Lisman, have called for resettlement efforts to cease.
“I think it’s incumbent upon us to [cease resettlement efforts],” said Scott, “until such time as the federal government can prove it is meeting its national security obligations; making sure that there is a rigorous process, to make sure that it’s just those peace loving Syrians, and others, that want to come into our states.”
Bruce Lisman, a fellow Republican candidate expressed a similar sentiment.
“It’s very tempting to see these pictures and videos and say we’ve got to do something,” said Lisman. He urged that the state “take a step back” and consider the security ramifications of allowing Syrians to resettle in Vermont.
Sue Minter, one of two Democratic candidates for Governor, supported Shumlin’s call to welcome Syrian refugees.
“Keep Vermont compassionate and open,” read one of Minter’s tweets. “Thank you Governor Shumlin and Representative Peter Welch for votes opposing intolerance and standing up for refugees.”
Matt Dunne, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, agreed. “I have to say that when I heard Phil Scott’s position on it, I was extremely disappointed.”
“I would have hoped that Phil would be someone who would not just fall in line with the right-wing Republicans in Congress,” Dunne continued.
After facing this intense criticism, Scott toned back his statement – if only slightly.
“When asked what I would do, I probably should have gone a little further to explain that I don’t understand the situation and I certainly don’t feel like we can pause or stop the refugee program in its entirety,” he said. “But I do honestly feel the highest obligation of any government is to ensure the safety and security of every citizen.”
Currently, the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program (VRRP) serves as the only resettlement program in Vermont. No Syrian refugees have yet been resettled, but the VRRP expects to bring Syrian refugees to Vermont within the next year.
In fact, lost amongst the polemics of the debate are the specifics of the resettlement process itself, and the attendant screening procedures. For Syrian refugees, officials say screening procedures are among the most stringent in the world.
First, refugees are screened by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The process includes in-depth refugee interviews, reference checks in their country of origin and biological screenings. Only a small percentage of these refugees are viable to be resettled overseas, including survivors of torture, victims of sexual violence and targets of political persecution.
If a refugee passes this stage and is referred to the United States, they undergo a strict process performed in coordination with the State Department, the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security. Fingerprints are collected, backstories checked for accuracy and VISAs scrutinized. Of the applicants, approximately half will pass this two-year test.
Supporters of resettlement in Vermont believe that these layers of security are strong and that terrorists would not bother to infiltrate such a secure system.
“No terrorist will wait four or five years in poor circumstances to come into the United States,” said Achraf Alamatouri, an English teacher who left Syria in 2011 and currently works with the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program.
Amila Merdzanovic, speaking on behalf of the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program with WPTZ News, said that “Americans, Vermonters, need to trust the system because the system works.”
Nationally, these voices are in the minority. Thirty governors, of both parties, have called for the United States to cease the resettlement of refugees until security concerns can be addressed. In the Northeast, this includes governor Charlie Baker (R) of Massachusetts, Paul LePage (R) of Maine and Maggie Hassan (D) of New Hampshire. Notably, Governor Hassan was the first Democratic governor to call for resettlement to cease.
Rhetoric has also varied, with some governors more adamant than others. Idaho Governor Butch Otter said that he would use “any legal means available” to block Syrian refugees from resettling there.
The issue has also been addressed by most presidential candidates. In an interview with Fox News, Ted Cruz (R) declared that “those who are fleeing persecution should be resettled in the Middle East, in majority Muslim countries. Now on the other hand, Christians who are being targeted for persecution, for genocide, who are being beheaded or cruxified, we should be providing safe haven to them.”
Jeb Bush expressed a similar sentiment: “There are a lot of Christians in Syria that have no place now. They’ll be either executed or imprisoned, either by Assad or by ISIS. I think we should focus our efforts, as it relates to the refugees, to the Christians who are being slaughtered.”
Perhaps the most impassioned plea to resettle refugees came from Senator Patrick Leahy (D) of Vermont. In an open letter published last week, he called for his fellow Vermonters to reexamine their “knee-jerk” reactions to the refugee crisis.
“Intolerance has no place in this great and good country,” read the letter. “Accepting refugees is a part of our history, our culture, of who we are, and it can be done safely with the proper screening procedures. This week, we give thanks for our freedom and for the American tradition of serving as a beacon of hope to those who are persecuted and in need of refuge. It would be a cruel irony if a terrorist attack in France caused us to abandon the American values embodied in France’s gift to America, the Statue of Liberty.”
(12/02/15 10:36pm)
To put it bluntly, Felly is the epitome of cultural appropriation and white privilege. He takes the culture, the language, the style and the stereotypical criminality of black culture and uses it for aesthetic purposes. His music continues on the tradition of musical blackface, in which white musicians culturally appropriate African American Vernacular English (AAVE) for their own personal gain despite not being connected to the culture. Felly, those who were responsible for bringing him here and those planning to attend his concert are unaware of the systematic racism black people face, and how even seemingly innocuous or insignificant actions, like going to a concert, reinforce discrimination.
For example, in addition to appropriating AAVE, Felly appropriates Rastafarianism. Felly flashes the Rastafarian flag in his video “Gorilla,” which is also featured in the link to his album, and he uses lines like “My inner being Rastafarian.” According to scholars, the definition of Rastafarianism is “an afro-centric religious and social movement based in the Caribbean island of Jamaica. It stems from the roots of Rastafari in rising against the post-colonial oppression of poor blacks.” It is intrinsically tied to blackness and a sense of place, and the obstacles and violence black people face as a result of white supremacy. It is not smoking weed, waving around a flag or listening to Bob Marley. Rastafarianism is black. It is exclusive, radical, politically charged and has been appropriated almost to the point of incoherency by white people who, despite what they say, seem to have no understanding of how the labels and practices they plagiarize actually work.
The thing is, because Felly, and other white people, have privilege because of their race, they don’t really need to understand how black culture or systematic racism works. For example, while black people and white people smoke marijuana at the same rate, black people are four times more likely to be arrested for it. Black people are also more likely to be incarcerated, and for a longer amount of time. And those black people are the lucky ones; the unlucky ones being Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Sandra Bland and too many others. Luck isn’t the right word though, since the exploitation and murder of black people serves to support white supremacy. But white people aren’t interested in appropriating that side of black culture – the pain, uncertainty and fear.
Felly doesn’t seem especially interested in interacting with actual black people either. There are few black people in his videos, and a quick scroll of his SoundCloud page reveals pictures of him hanging out with his white friends and singing to a majority white crowd. People of color generally, and black people specifically, are difficult to find in his media, and searching for them almost feels like playing “Where’s Waldo.”
Or maybe it’s because his hometown of Trumbull, Connecticut is 94 percent white and 2 percent black, and he couldn’t find any black people to associate with. But more likely it’s because black people aren’t “cool”; black culture is “cool.” Black sound is “cool.” Being a criminal, which in this country is synonymous with being black, is “cool.” The human beings who produced these things, who live these lives and who die because they can’t escape the same things Felly so superficially embraces? Not so much.
Considering Middlebury College’s own history with appropriation, it’s no surprise that Felly was chosen as our visiting artist. Diversity is more than just a word; it’s recognizing the cultural backgrounds of all of our community members and being cognizant of those when making decisions that affect our campus. People don’t recognize that what’s fun for them can be incredibly harmful to students of color. Some individuals cannot remove the features appropriated for entertainment value once confronted with a racist reality. The bulk of the community wide conversations, like the ones before and after Thanksgiving Break concerning issues of inclusivity and appropriation, didn’t occur until after Felly was booked, but hopefully in the future people will be more aware of the implications of bringing certain artists to campus.
(11/19/15 12:54am)
How often do you get the chance to watch one of the best films of the year about one of the most influential people in the last century and listen to a follow-up lecture given by the world’s leading expert on the topic? Not often enough. Frame that within the context of a Nazi invasion, a desperate race to crack an infamously tricky code and a genius mathematician who saved the English-speaking world only to be persecuted for his sexuality, and you have a pretty entertaining night.
The Hirschfield International Film Series screens extraordinary foreign and independent films every Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m. in Dana Auditorium, and pairs each with special events and lectures that complement the movie and facilitate greater understanding. This week’s picture won the 2014 Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay, and was nominated for seven others, including Best Motion Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Original Score. The American Film Institute awarded it with Best Movie of the Year.
The Imitation Game is based on the true story of Alan Turing and a team of cryptanalysts who struggled to crack the most infamous coding machine of all time, the Enigma. Spoiler alert: They succeed. While the story itself is incredible, intoxicating performances by Benedict Cumberbatch, Kiera Knightly and the rest of the cast elevate the experience to even more mesmerizing heights. Though universally acclaimed, the film is not without its controversies. To add a layer of depth not found in Hollywood, Middlebury has brought in one of the world’s foremost experts on the main topic of the movie: cipher machines.
Dr. Tom Perera’s lecture, “The Real Story of The Imitation Game and the Enigma of Alan Turing,” will correct and enhance bits of the film, as well as comment on the complexity and excitement of the time period. As the author of the only definitive book on the Enigma, Perera is very uniquely situated to discuss the fact and fiction behind The Imitation Game.
Code-breaking was arguably one of the most critical components of World War II. Germany’s various military branches transmitted thousands of coded messages every day, conveying critical information about everything from situation reports given by Hitler himself to the contents of supply ships. The Allies’ inability to access such correspondences wreaked havoc on the United States’ defenses for years. Cue Alan Turing.
Turing was a brilliant mathematician recruited during WWII to work in England’s code breaking hub at Bletchley Park. Although he did not singlehandedly crack the Enigma code, as The Imitation Game suggests (Perera is sure to discuss how his work was based on significant advances by the Poles), he is accredited with designing an anti-Enigma machine that could quickly and consistently discern the appropriate ciphers.
By 1943, Turing’s machines were cracking approximately 84,000 Enigma messages every month. When the Germans upgraded the Enigma into the much more sophisticated “Tunny” machine, it was another Turing breakthrough that allowed its messages to also be deciphered. It is not a stretch to say that Turing’s advances not only changed the course of the war, but also shortened it by as many as two to four years, thereby saving 14 to 21 million lives.
To this day, he is recognized as the father of computer science. His achievements reach far beyond simply cracking some of the toughest ciphers of our age. Currently, the Turing Test is recognized as a benchmark for evaluating the effectiveness of artificial intelligence. In the test, a human converses with an A.I unit. If the human cannot tell the difference between talking with the machine and talking with another human, the machine is considered intelligent.
In addition to being one of the most brilliant minds of his era, he was also gay at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England. Found guilty of gross indecency, Turing was forced to choose between jail and hormone therapy. He opted to take a year of estrogen supplements, and one year after the course’s completion, committed suicide by eating a cyanide-laced apple. Two years ago, the Queen of England granted Turing a Royal Pardon and an apology for the treatment he suffered. In terms of accuracy, the film gets some things right and some things wrong. That is where the second half of the Hirschfield event comes into play.
While the basis for The Imitation Game – Andrew Hodges’s book, Alan Turing: The Enigma – is the biography of one man, Dr. Perera’s book is the most comprehensive tomb on the inner workings of cipher machines ever published. In 1987, he established the Enigma Museum to collect and preserve antique cipher, telegraph, scientific and communication devices. We can expect his lecture to discuss how the Germans developed and used the machine during the war, how cracking the codes at Bletchely Park changed the course of the war and how the science behind cryptography works. The Imitation Game offers a remarkable snapshot of one man’s contribution to the war, while Dr. Perara provides a panorama of how that man fit into a much larger scheme of codes, espionage and triumph.
Dr. Perera’s lecture will take place on Saturday, Nov. 21, at 5:45 p.m. in Dana Auditorium of Sunderland Hall. It is sponsored by the Department of Mathematics and the First-Year Seminar program. Screenings of The Imitation Game will bookend Dr. Perera’s lecture at 3 and 8 p.m., with an expected runtime of 114 minutes. Both events are free and open to the public.
(11/18/15 9:22pm)
The College has opened the Anderson Freeman Resource Center (AFC) to support minority students in an institutional effort to take new steps to better serve an increasingly diverse campus. Director Roberto Lint Sagarena said the AFC, located in Carr Hall, will house cultural organizations, a study library and drop-in counseling and advising, among other resources.
“The goals of the Anderson Freeman Center include addressing the unique social and cultural concerns specific to students of color, students who are the first in their families to attend college, students from low-income backgrounds, LGBTQ students and others that have been historically underrepresented or marginalized in American higher education,” Lint Sagarena said.
So far, the AFC has hosted events related to orientation, Homecoming and a Halloween gathering at Carr Hall. A grand opening is planned to coincide with Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January.
AFC fellow Gaby Fuentes ’16 said the Halloween event was part of the center’s larger push to initiate conversations on cultural appropriation that resulted in a campus-wide video about respectful costumes for the holiday.
Debanjan Roychoudhury ’16, another fellow, said the AFC has dually advocated for underrepresented students and provided them a place to feel welcome and safe.
“Halloween was definitely huge,” Roychoudhury said. “We spearheaded most of the initiative to rid our campus of racist costumes. It’s become quite an epidemic in the last few years.”
“On one hand we were advocating for students, we were pushing administration, we were raising awareness,” he added. “On the other hand we were providing a space here for students who maybe felt Halloween wasn’t a safe space outside this center.”
According to Roychoudhury, the fact that cultural insensitivity makes some students feel unsafe on campus shows how the College advertises for a diverse student body but has allowed minority students to fall through the cracks.
“Students have fought for this center for a very long time,” added Social Media and Marketing Fellow Diku Rogers ’16.
“We’ve been doing a lot of work that institutionally is supposed to be provided for us,” Roychoudhury said. “We were told we would be supported in these ways. We have Discover Middlebury. We have Prospective Students day. We have particular ways that this school markets itself to be a particular institution. We were not told the whole truth.”
What’s in a name?
As part of its marketing, the College claims a legacy of inclusion because it graduated the nation’s first black student, Alexander Twilight, in 1823. But Twilight’s ancestry was not rediscovered until 1971, when elite schools were fighting to claim the first black American graduate, Conor Grant ’15 wrote for the Campus last year.
“When Twilight was admitted, Middlebury administrators did not know that he was black,” Grant wrote. “In fact, most who knew him assumed Twilight was white.”
“That was a diversity effort, not an effort to say who was actually best serving black students,” Roychoudhury said. “Middlebury won.”
When choosing a name for the new center, the AFC team decided to honor two alums of color whose blackness was known during their time at the College.
“The first known black student at Middlebury was Martin Henry Freeman,” Roychoudhury said.
“He was the first black president of a college in the entire United States. The fact that that man went to this school and that so many students of color don’t know about it is a shame.”
The other honoree, Mary Annette Anderson, was the first black woman to attend the College and the first black female Phi Beta Kappa inductee.
“Both of them led lives of academic excellence,” Roychoudhury said. “They were both pioneers and they both very much gave back in their time after Middlebury. We thought that dedicating the center in their name would be important in terms of cultivating a sense of pride and a sense of history among students of color, who for a lot of us feel like we’re the first people of color to ever come here.”
That isolation exists in part because many students of color have never met their predecessors.
Roychoudhury said the College had not hosted an Alumni of Color weekend for ten years until this fall.
“Coming to a school like Middlebury, the alumni network is really one of the most important things,” he said. ”Think about it. For ten years, there were students who spent their whole time here and didn’t have an Alumni of Color weekend. That’s a disservice. When we’re talking about these things, these aren’t just accidents. These are institutional disservices to students of color. We are in the business of reversing and correcting some of those disservices.”
Problems that persisted
According to the fellows, historically underrepresented students have struggled in the past because the College is still designed for its legacy of wealthy white students.
“When you have an institution that was historically based to serve only one demographic and then you try to diversify it without providing the necessary resources and support, you have students not succeeding not because they aren’t capable, but because the institution isn’t serving their needs,” Fuentes said.
Roychoudhury said many faculty members at the College are unprepared to encourage students of color, students for whom English is not their first language and other historically underrepresented students, and that some faculty were instead the source of the microagressions that made those students feel unsafe.
Students who face racial prejudice or discrimination are often referred for counseling rather than helped to handle the situation directly.
“Instead of addressing racism, what has happened in the past is students have been sent to the counseling center,” said Cindy Esparza ’17, AFC fellow and Alianza member. “There, they still haven’t been met with the means to really unpack what happened on campus.”
Even when referred for mental health services, some students met a staff that was as equally homogenous as the student body.
“The first counselor of color on staff at this school was Ximena [Mejia] in 2008,” Roychoudhury said. “Students of color didn’t just get here in 2008. They’ve been here for a long time.”
According to Esperanza, when the College didn’t help minority students, campus leaders did their best to step in.
“Before the center, cultural organizations had to wear a really big hat,” she said. “As a board member, you had to be there for your membership, which is part of the point, but you were solving problems that really weren’t your place as a student to have to deal with.”
“The upperclassmen were happy to help, but at the end of the day, it was really draining on them to have to help students,” she added. “I came here to learn, not to teach, and so being able to have a center where we have people that are trained and there are resources for the students, that’s really important.”
Steps to a solution
The fellows said Anderson Freeman Resource Center and its various systems of support have helped many students so far, but that much work remains to make the College a truly inclusive institution.
“I think we’ve been very successful if you look at the numbers of people we’ve had coming in and out,” Roychoudhury said. “We’ve had entire workshops held here on cultural competency for faculty. More than 1,200 visits were logged at the AFC in October.
“Now, when a student comes in and for the first time in class they’re told, ‘I can’t understand you. You have an accent,’ we can say, ‘Listen, we’re going to report this. We are going to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen on a regular basis,’” he added.
Esparza said having dedicated faculty and staff to support minority students has shifted the burden off cultural organizations and renewed communication with Old Chapel.
“Having [Associate Director] Jennifer Herrera and Roberto all in one space, I think that’s a huge thing to acknowledge,” she said. “Because before, it was like we would reinvent the wheel every year. You would have [student] leadership changing and you would have students facing the same issues and the administration would never reach out a hand. Now, there is a path for us to talk more directly to administration and for the administration to be more receptive.”
Rogers said that previously students who asked for dedicated resources were told, “The whole campus is a safe space.” Now, she said, students have more of the resources they need.
“Talking to the faculty here, they can say, “Oh, this is a project you’re think of? Talk to this person. Oh, this is something that happened to you? Okay, talk to the Dean of Students,” she said. “When things happen and I’m affected by it, there are people I can go to. We as students feel a lot that we have to work for Middlebury, but we also have to make Middlebury work for us.”
Roychoudhury added that when students visit the Anderson Freeman Center, for whatever reason, they will be met with acceptance and understanding.
“We don’t treat students that come into this center as if there’s a problem with them,” he said. “We treat students that come into this center as, ‘You are gifted. You are talented. And you are looking for a space where that brightness is going to be encouraged. We are working on less stigma and more assistance.”
Combined with a lack of resources, that stigma when seeking support is often what holds minority students back from getting the help they need. Roychoudhury added that the AFC aims to support students by treating them like valued members of the College and giving them a place to feel like a part of the campus.
“Someone who graduated last year was visiting this weekend,” Esparza said. “They said to me, ‘Man, if a space like this would have existed, I’d easily have a 3.8 GPA. Because I’d have had a place to work were I felt comfortable.’ It’s amazing how much better you perform when you’re comfortable in a space and when you feel like you belong.”
“Students of color are not the weakness of the campus, and that’s very much how we’ve been viewed,” Roychoudhury said. “Low retention rates. That we need academic services. That we’re here on handouts. That we don’t deserve to be here. These are the things we get told every single day. We’re fighting for diversity to not be something that is just part of this campus, but is a central strength of this campus.”
(11/13/15 4:15am)
They dress like debonair secret agents, win over more hearts than a basket of puppies and sing like angels. Founded in 1968 at King’s College in Cambridge, England, The King’s Singers are one of the world’s most foremost vocal ensembles. While Pentatonix and Pitch Perfect have rekindled popular interest in the vocal arts, The King’s Singers have been using their musical virtuosity and irresistible charm to garner international fame for decades, performing for hundreds of thousands of people each season all over the globe. Now, they are coming to Middlebury.
Instantly recognizable for their immaculate intonation, vocal blend, diction and incisive timing, The King’s Singers are consummate entertainers. If you love our campus a cappella groups half as much as I do, this performance offers an exceptional treat and insight into the very highest level of talent. Tickets are selling out so quickly that the venue was changed from the MCA to Mead Chapel.
Since the group’s founding, there have been 25 King’s Singers — the original six and 19 replacements, each joining as somebody else leaves. Current members include: countertenors David Hurley and Timothy Wayne-Wright, tenor Julian Gregory, baritones Christopher Bruerton and Christopher Gabbitas and bass Jonathan Howard. The longest tenured is Hurley, with 26 years to his credit as a King’s Singer. This is his final concert tour with the ensemble.
“I am now into my twenty-sixth year standing at the left hand (as you look at it) end of The King’s Singers, and I don’t know where the time has gone,” he said. “I still love the variety that each day brings as we travel to wonderful places around the world, and I always get a buzz from sing- ing to a live audience. I was the youngest child of three, with older sisters, so I rather enjoy the novelty of being the oldest in the group.”On the other end of the spectrum, Julian Gregory is the group’s youngest member, having joined just last year.
“I will always remember the summer of 2014: the time when I was having an incredible time living in Aix-en-Provence, singing in two inspirational operas at Le Festival d’Aix, exploring the stunning Mediterranean coastline nearby and, one wholly unsuspecting morning, being called out of the blue by The King’s Singers to ask whether I’d like to be flown out to Riga in Latvia the following week to audition for the tenor spot of their group,” Gregory said.
Auditions are only offered when a current member is ready to step down. This alone makes them exceedingly rare. Furthermore, auditions are never open to the public. You do not go to the King’s Singers; The King’s Singers come to you. When it is time to replace a member, they evaluate the best vocal talent in the world and invite a few for a chance at the spot. Members come from all walks of life, but the presiding thread is an unparalleled love for and appreciation for singing. For Timothy Wayne-Wright, that recognition came when he was just six years old, singing the daily services as a boy chorister at Chelmsford Cathedral.
With almost all the group’s members initially finding their love via singing in church choirs, it is appropriate that The King’s Singers perform in our beloved Mead Chapel. The chapel was built in 1916, and while service requirements disappeared decades ago, it is still the favorite place of many choral and a cappella groups on campus, from the College Student Choir to the Mamajamas to Dissipated Eight. According to Christopher Gabbitas, although The King’s Singers have performed in the world’s most renowned venues, he is happiest in chapels like ours.
To Christopher Bruerton, being a King’s Singer is more than simply astounding audiences all over the world with vocal prowess and presence: It is an unparalleled opportunity to guide and inspire those who will keep the tradition alive.
“Since making my debut in The King’s Singers I have loved every moment,” he said. “I am so fortunate to have had the chance to sing in world-renowned concert halls from New York to Sydney with Beijing in between. However, I get the biggest buzz from being able to pass on my experience to the next generation through the workshops we do across the world. There is no greater joy than seeing others making their first steps in a cappella and ensemble singing.”
The group’s diverse repertoire includes more than 200 commissioned works, including landmark pieces from leading contemporary composers such as Luciano Berio, György Ligeti, Sir James MacMillan, Krzysztof Penderecki, Toru Takemitsu, Sir John Tavener, Gabriela Lena Frank and Eric Whitacre. The King’s Singers have also commissioned arrangements of everything from jazz standards to pop chart hits, explored medieval motets and Renaissance madrigals and encouraged young composers to write new scores. They are two-time Grammy award-winning artists, and were recently voted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame. For Jonathan Howard, a King’s Singer since 2010, the music never gets old.
“The breadth of our repertoire also staggers me,” he said. “I smile seeing pro- gram sheets that list all of Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsaries for Maundy Thursday and our staged Great American Songbook show in consecutive concerts. But most of all, it brings me such joy to think that, as the group grows and we approach our 50th anniversary, we still dare to defy musical classification. We’re not just classical singers, folk singers, jazz singers or pop singers. We’re simply six friends who love to sing, and we’re thrilled there still seems to be a place in the market for groups like ours that aren’t bound to a stereotype.”
The King’s typically either sing a set of Renaissance music or more contemporary pieces. However, The King’s Singers have agreed to do a very unique program for Middlebury. The first half of the show, drawn from the group’s recording Pater Noster: A Choral Reflection on the Lord’s Prayer, will include sacred music from the English Renaissance. After intermission, The King’s Singers will take a musical tour around the globe with songs from their “Postcards Project,” a collection of folk and popular songs amassed on their travels. This half will include works from Canada, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, Italy, France and the United States.
Special thanks to our amazing Performing Arts Series Director Allison Coyne Carroll for arranging this incredibly unique program in reflection of the College’s international strengths and outreach.
To learn more about The King’s Singers, come to the pre-concert lecture given by Jeffrey Buettner, Chair of the Department of Music and Director of Choral Activities, at 6:30 p.m. at Mead Chapel. Audience members are more than welcome to come to hear more about the ensemble, their musical tradition and the works to be performed.
The King’s Singers concert will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 17 at 7:30 p.m. in Mead Memorial Chapel.
Tickets are $6 for students. Visit go/ boxoffice or stop by one of the offices in McCullough or the MCA.
