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(01/28/21 10:59am)
The college canceled its spring abroad program in Japan on Friday, marking the last of the 16 schools abroad to make the decision to close. While the schools typically generate over a million dollars in surplus, the college is projecting a $3.5–3.7 million dollar net loss from the schools abroad alone in the Fiscal Year 2021. This loss comprises more than one-third of the latest $10.2 million deficit projection, according to Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration David Provost.
In pre-pandemic years, the Middlebury schools abroad program has typically enrolled 700 students annually, accounting for $10–12 million in tuition revenue. Operating costs have amounted to about $9.5–10 million each year, and the collective Middlebury schools abroad have routinely generated an annual surplus of $1 million, according to Dean of International Programs Carlos Vélez.
Though the schools abroad are closed for in-person instruction, Provost estimates that they will generate roughly $1 million in total revenue through FY2021 in tuition from online classes and internships offered through the schools.
While not having to host students cut operating costs in half, Middlebury’s commitment to wage continuity for all of its employees means the college will still spend an estimated $5.2 million on schools abroad in FY2021, according to Provost.
Middlebury schools abroad directly employs 47 full-time staff members across its 16 schools, all of whom are included under Middlebury’s commitment to maintain wage continuity through June 30. They primarily serve in administrative roles as directors, assistant directors, deans and housing and program coordinators, Vélez said in an email to The Campus.
In countries that offer them, the schools have availed themselves of government-subsidized furlough programs to cut costs while still maintaining wage continuity, according to Provost.
The rest of the schools abroad staff are primarily contracted on a short-term basis according to program enrollment. These positions, which include course instructors, orientation assistants and program tutors, among others, do not fall under the umbrella of the college’s wage continuity pledge. As a result, schools have been able to cut costs by not hiring anyone to fill those positions, according to Vélez.
The remaining skeleton staff of the schools continue to work hard despite closures. Staff spent much of the fall semester trying to plan and make possible school reopenings in the spring. Middlebury had hoped to run at least 75% of the programs but ultimately decided to keep them shuttered. The staff will resume planning in anticipation of restarting their programs in the fall of 2021.
In the meantime, several schools are offering online classes, including seven courses that were available to Middlebury undergraduates in the fall, as well as facilitating and coordinating remote internships. Vélez said 83 students — including some graduate students — enrolled in online schools abroad offerings this fall, and the schools plan to hold more than 30 remote courses over J-Term and spring. Some schools have also hosted activities for students within their respective language departments, keeping the remaining staff busy, according to Vélez.
Vélez said Middlebury fully intends to reopen the majority of the schools abroad in the fall of 2021. The college considers a number of factors before deciding to open a school for in-person instruction, including the state of the pandemic in host countries, travel restrictions and availability of medical care and appropriate housing options.
“The safety of the students in our schools is our central consideration in making these decisions, followed then by our ability to maintain the core academic mission of the programs,” Vélez wrote in an email to The Campus.
However, even if some schools cannot reopen for the foreseeable future, the college has no plans to make any closures permanent. “There are no discussions right now about backing away from study abroad. There are no discussions about closing programs,” Provost said.
Although the Middlebury schools abroad as a whole are profitable, some of the individual schools do not turn a profit, even during pre-pandemic times. Provost and Vélez emphasized that the schools are considered a collective regarding finances, so Middlebury does not consider the profitability of any individual school.
“This overall financial picture allows us to place the importance of offering options in specific languages and of having a presence in certain regions of the world ahead of revenue considerations in making decisions about each school,” Vélez said.
The college remains committed to ensuring the quality of a Middlebury education, including the opportunity to study abroad, despite the financial difficulties posed by the pandemic, according to Provost.
“One of the key pillars of [what makes Middlebury, Middlebury] is our distinctive global network, and study abroad plays a critical component of that,” Provost said. “Our thinking this year has been, we can manage through this once-in-a-century pandemic. But it will not change our commitment, or the importance of a Middlebury education, inclusive of that global network.”
(11/19/20 10:54am)
When the media called the 2020 presidential race for Joe Biden on Nov. 7, many Middlebury students responded with relief — dancing outside their residence halls, blasting music or sharing excited messages on social media.
Julia Ulsh ’24, a first-time voter, returned her absentee ballot by mail to her home county in rural Pennsylvania, the state which pushed Biden over the 270 electoral votes he needed to win the election.
“I pretty much cried tears of joy. Not a lot, but it was such a relief,” Ulsh said.
Sophie Mueller ’23 voted by mail in Atlanta, Ga. Mueller worked for Georgia WIN List, a PAC that supports Democratic women in the state. Though she “gave herself a little bit to just celebrate [and] be happy,” she quickly switched her focus to the two January senate run-offs in Georgia, which will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.
Although many in the U.S. are celebrating Biden’s victory and world leaders have congratulated the former Vice President, President Donald Trump has yet to concede. In fact, the President tweeted that he had won the election on Monday morning, a claim which Twitter marked with a message reading “multiple sources called this election differently.”
The Constitution does not require that a candidate concede for the transition of power to begin, and Biden has already started to appoint members of his administration. However, the General Services Administration (GSA) had not yet issued a letter of ascertainment to Biden, which would give him greater access to resources for the transition, such as secure spaces for classified briefings.
Bert Johnson, professor of political science, said that the GSA technically has some leeway when it comes to issuing the letter. According to the President Transition Act of 1963, the GSA must issue the letter to the “apparent successful” Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates. Johnson noted that the law does not define what “apparent successful” means, so it is somewhat up to the agency’s discretion.
“Although I don’t know what the GSA is thinking, I would imagine that once the Electoral College meets and votes, that’s definitely the apparently successful presidential candidate,” Johnson said.
Apart from Maine and Nebraska, all electors in each state are pledged to vote for the winner of the state’s popular vote. In 2016, seven “faithless” electors were successful in their attempts to go against their pledge and vote for neither of the two main candidates. Many states have laws that require electors to vote for the candidate to which they are pledged, and the Supreme Court ruled to uphold these laws in July.
“The Supreme Court was always unclear whether that binding was actually legally enforceable because, under the original Constitution, the idea was the electors would be independent actors. They wouldn't be committed to anybody beforehand, and they would just choose the individual that they thought would make the best President,” Professor of Political Science Matt Dickinson said.
A faithless elector has only voted for the nominee of the opposing party of their pledged candidate once in U.S. history, which occurred in 1796. All of the faithless electors of the 2016 election voted for non-candidates, including Colin Powell, Bernie Sanders, John Kaisch and others. Dickinson does not believe electors will change the outcome of the election.
“If you're worried about things that could threaten the outcome, faithless electors are way down the list. Don't worry about that,” he said.
States must certify their slate of electors by Dec. 8, and electors will cast their ballots on Dec. 14.
Dickinson said he is paying close attention to Trump’s ongoing legal challenges to the results, the counting and recounting of votes, and the Senate race in Georgia. Neither he nor Johnson believes the Trump campaign’s lawsuits will impact the election results.
“His lawsuits do not appear to be going anywhere,” Johnson said. “Unless he produces more evidence of fraud, they won't go anywhere.”
While Trump has made constant claims of election fraud, there is currently no evidence that any occurred.
Johnson said he is focusing on how Biden is assembling his team and noted that the former Vice-President has already decided on a Covid-19 task force — a sign of the times.
While many Middlebury community members believe challenges to the election results are far fetched, students wondered how the President’s rhetoric might influence his followers. Many students, especially students of color, expressed concerns for their safety, and the college assembled volunteers and hired private security to patrol campus during election week.
Students also expressed concerns that — with the election called for Biden — their peers might not be motivated to continue pushing for legislative and social change.
“I think that the best way that we can make the democratic system work is to work within it, just get involved, as involved as we can,” Mueller, the student from Georgia, said. “I’d really encourage everyone to do their duties to be an active citizen, call, stand up for what they want.”
(11/12/20 11:00am)
Students and community members gathered on the Town Green, holding signs and listening attentively to speakers, united by one central message: every vote that was cast must be counted.
Middlebury students joined local residents and community members on Nov. 4 at the Protect the Vote Rally, carrying hand-painted banners that read “Every Vote Counts” and “Our Voices Count.” Roughly 200 participants gathered for one of several Protect the Results rallies around the country advocating for upholding the results of the presidential election.
The event was the brainchild of local residents Fran Putnam and Bethany Barry, who began planning it about seven weeks ago. The two friends have organized together in the past and, as Putnam put it, “go all the way back to the Women’s March in 2017.” Putnam was inspired by a personal message from activist George Lakey, who encouraged local action to prevent a compromised election. Following Lakey’s suggestion, Putnam and Barry formed an affinity group composed of around 20 people, including both community members and Middlebury students.
Putnam, who frequents college Sunday Night Environmental Group (SNEG) meetings, reached out to students and assembled a group of student organizers for the event. This included Divya Gudur ’21, who relayed information about safety and Covid-19 protocol to student participants gathered on McCullough lawn on Nov. 4 prior to proceeding into town.
With Covid-19 cases on the rise, the organizers required that all attendees wear face masks and maintain physical distance. They also discouraged chanting and asked students to walk from campus to the green in groups of ten or fewer.
College employees served as traffic monitors, ensuring students made it safely to the Town Green on Wednesday afternoon.
“We were hoping we wouldn’t even have to do this today,” Putnam said, in an interview with The Campus. “We were hoping that our president wouldn’t announce that he had won an election when all the votes hadn’t been counted.”
Putnam and other organizers stressed that the event was non-partisan in nature. Local artist Sarah Ashe, who worked with Barry and Leicester resident Kate Williams to create some of the signs for the rally, said they had tried to keep the messaging on the signs neutral. Ashe and Williams hoped to emphasize the universal importance of counting every vote.
“It really is not a partisan issue. It’s a democracy issue,” Williams said.
The rally included speeches from Shoreham resident and activist Beatrice Parwatiker, local tenth-grader Vivian Ross and Keith Chatinover ’22.5.
Parwatiker opened her speech with praise for the late Congressman John Lewis, who she described as “a great ambassador of voting.” She then recounted the struggle for suffrage in the U.S. and the challenges faced by those who sought it.
“The vote is sacred because it has been given to me by the blood of my past relatives,” she said.
Ross delivered a message that attested to the fears she and other young people are facing, warning of potential disenfranchisement.
“People complain about how young people don’t vote, but imagine what the next election will look like if people my age have been shown that our votes will not be counted, that our thoughts are not wanted, that the majority of the people who live in this country are not the ones who shape it,” she said.
As the wait for election results drew on, subsequent Nov. 5 and 6 rallies attracted a smaller, though no less determined crowd of 20 to 25 community members. They stood on the side of the Town Green facing North Pleasant Street. Many of those who stayed for all three days were no strangers to activism, and, for some, civil disobedience had shaped the trajectory of their family history.
Tom Nicholson and Mimi Love-Nicholson, longtime residents of Middlebury, stood with their handmade signs at the end of the line of protestors on Nov. 6. Nicholson has been heavily involved in civil disobedience throughout his life. In addition to protesting, he refused the Vietnam War draft and served a 16-month prison sentence.
Though he noted that the vote count appeared to be going smoothly, Nicholson is prepared to keep protesting if Trump refuses to leave office.
“I might go down to D.C. and blockade the White House or something, lay in the street,” he said.
Though she does not currently have plans for more election-related organizing, Putnam is also ready to coordinate and engage in nonviolent mobilization.
“Until Jan. 20 gets here, we’re going to have to be on alert,” she said. “But if something really goes wrong, we have our people now.”
(10/01/20 9:56am)
Student MiddView orientation leaders, prepared to introduce first years to Middlebury and help them bond, were surprised to find that they were expected to facilitate conversations about race and prejudice this semester. After widespread criticism from BIPOC student leaders, staff organizers apologized and said that the plans were never finalized, retracting the proposed programming.
Student leaders pointed out that they had received no training on the subject except for a mandatory microaggressions workshop led by Director of Education for Equity and Inclusion Renee Wells, which some criticized as being centered around white students. Wells later apologized for the shortcomings of the presentations.
This summer, the team of three Student Activities Office (SAO) staff members who organize the MiddView orientation program each year prepared a new format in anticipation of an orientation week heavily altered by Covid-19 restrictions. Orientation leaders are typically tasked with leading three-day trips and facilitating bonding between their groups of first years; this year, they met twice-daily in groups of 10 to 12, with some interacting in person and others convening virtually.
MiddView leaders felt unsure of the specifics of orientation prior to their arrival for training on campus, according to Suria Vanrajah ’22, who led a MiddView group this fall.
“In one of the first few days we got a list of daily agendas of things to do with the first years,” she said. “Some of the days it was talking about the honor code; it was talking about drinking, drugs, and there was one day where they wanted us to talk about race, primarily in the context of Black Lives Matter.”
Brittney Azubuike ’22, a first-time MiddView leader who organized affinity group lunches during orientation, said the conversation was planned for one of the first few days of orientation. She noted that this worried some leaders who had expected their role in orientation to be more like previous years, during which they had primarily been responsible for ensuring the safety of their group on trips and encouraging first years to connect with one another.
Though the college initially included the conversation about race — with the idea that it would be facilitated by student orientation leaders — it was eventually removed from the schedule after student leaders expressed concerns about lack of training, the burden it placed on leaders of color and the discomfort BIPOC first years might feel if the conversation were facilitated by a white MiddView leader.
“Even if you are a person of color, you're still not equipped to talk about [issues of race] in an institutional context, especially to first years, and, certainly, white leaders are not equipped to do that,” Vanrajah said.
The Student Activities Office (SAO) team had drafted guidelines for holding such conversations that were criticized by some MiddView student leaders. The original document was eventually deleted from the shared Google Drive to which all leaders had access.
“It was like, ‘Talk about racism because it's a very important topic right now.’ That wording was also problematic for a lot of people because it made it seem as if we're only bringing it up because it's on trend,” Azubuike said, describing the guidelines.
Azubuike said her herd leaders, the students who had served as MiddView leaders in the past and headed groups of leaders this fall, created a copy of the document with the guidelines in which they noted the features they saw as problematic.
Amanda Reinhardt, director of the SAO and one of the three staff members who organized MiddView, said that the group was still working to finalize many of the agendas and that the version that listed the conversation about race was still a work in progress.
“This summer, with the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many others, the national climate and just the injustice of all of that, it felt pertinent to hold space for that — not only pertinent but ethical, the right thing to do,” Reinhardt said.
She acknowledged that an all-white MiddView team — which included the three SAO staff members and two MiddView student interns — organized orientation, leading to oversights. She said they are working to change this in the future. Reinhardt also explained that the team had not spent enough time reviewing the phrasing and content of the daily agendas and guidelines that were available to leaders through the shared Google Drive.
“We weren't ready, as a team, to have our leaders check all those out,” she said.
Reinhardt and the other members of the MiddView team apologized to leaders during a morning check-in meeting, sent out a written apology and organized an 8 p.m. meeting to discuss what had happened.
The three SAO staff members laid out some of their long-term goals in the written apology, including creating a MiddView Advisory Board with paid positions for students of color. The team also plans to evaluate leader recruitment, hiring and training, as well as work with the Anderson Freeman Resource Center and Miguel Fernández, chief diversity officer, to consider the orientation program’s role in dismantling racism at the college.
Even though the leader-facilitated conversations about race were removed from the orientation schedule, many still sought ways to address the topic within their groups. Rasika Iyer ’22, a herd leader, said she and her co-leader, Jessica Buxbaum ’23, compiled a list of resources for their first years, invited them to ask questions and spoke about the college’s history with Charles Murray, who was scheduled to visit campus again last spring until students were sent home due to the pandemic.
MiddView leaders received no mandatory training related to race apart from a microaggressions workshop led by Renee Wells, director of education for equity and inclusion. The workshop was divided into two parts, the first of which focused on defining microaggressions. The second explained how to acknowledge and apologize for committing a microaggression.
MiddView leaders criticized the training, saying it did not represent a broad variety of microaggressions, instead focusing solely on racial microaggressions. Some shared that they felt the second portion of the training was centered on white learning and overlooked leaders of color. A few students brought these concerns to Wells’ attention during the training, including Melynda Payne ’21.
“I think that what I had an issue with with the microaggression training — and I vocalized this during the training — was that it was very centered on the white leaders and leaders who hadn't really had any type of trainings or any type of experience with anything having to do with race,” Payne said. “I think it was more aimed at them and their perspectives.”
Wells sent out an email with the subject line “An apology to MiddView leaders of color,” in which she acknowledged the specific ways she had caused harm and offered to meet with students to discuss the workshop and other concerns.
Wells said in an interview with The Campus that she had worked with faculty and staff over the summer, running workshops on anti-racism and racial microaggressions. She explained that the student microaggression training she conducted for MiddView leaders was focused on racial microaggressions because of what she had been working on over the summer.
“I think my brain was so wrapped up in doing all the antiracism stuff this summer that I didn't really change the presentation from what I had been doing,” Wells said.
In the past, she has run workshops with examples of microaggressions rooted in racism, sexism, ableism, heteronormativity and other forms of prejudice.
“It wasn't until the students were naming the fact that ‘this is centering white student learning’ that I was like, ‘Yeah, I did not change the presentation,’” Wells said.
First years also received training on microaggressions, which took the form of a three-hour pre-recorded webinar. Wells said she changed the workshop following the MiddView leader training, so the groups that followed — including first years and residential life staff — had a slightly different workshop. Wells said she did not receive the same criticism during those later training sessions.
Reinhardt sent out an email on Sept. 7 to students who had reached out to express their concerns as well as those who planned and led affinity group lunches during orientation. The email thanked these students for their additional time and energy and offered each of them a $50 Visa gift card as compensation.
Several students expressed discomfort, feeling that their emotional labor had been quantified. Vanrajah said she plans to donate the money and has heard that several other leaders plan to do the same.
Many leaders who were critical of the way the MiddView team handled the issues that arose also acknowledged the burden that had been placed on the three SAO staff members. Student leaders noted that three staff members were responsible for designing what essentially became a completely new orientation program as the college made decisions about the format of the fall semester.
Alex Burns ’21.5, a herd leader, said she did not think any individual or group was at fault and felt that there had been a lot of oversight but that the SAO staff had been receptive to student ideas and concerns once they had initiated those conversations. Burns noted that she believed many people quickly realized the kinds of changes that needed to be made in the future.
“While this year it especially felt really necessary for us to be centering these conversations or at least acknowledging them and acknowledging how they impact our life on campus and at Middlebury, I think that that's something that needed to happen before this year,” she said.
(09/24/20 9:57am)
When the Class of 2024 arrived on campus on Aug. 26, they were not whisked away on the three-day trips that typically characterize the finale of Middlebury’s first-year orientation program, MiddView. Instead, they met with MiddView student leaders twice-daily in groups of 10 to 12, with some interacting in person and others covening virtually.
Covid-19 threw a wrench into the college’s standard orientation model. Planning for MiddView begins in January, so the Student Activities Office (SAO) had already booked campgrounds, reserved vans and started making arrangements for various trips long before it was clear how life on campus — and throughout the world — would be altered by the pandemic.
Amanda Reinhardt, director of student activities, said her office finished selecting trip leaders for fall 2020 about a week before students were sent home in March. The usual on-campus spring training for leaders, which gives prospective leaders an introduction to orientation and community building, moved online for spring 2020, with opt-in sessions for the roughly 150 selected leaders.
Even before the college published its Return to Campus Guide detailing the guidelines for the fall semester, SAO staff anticipated the need for a different approach to orientation. MiddView leaders arrived on Aug. 18 and underwent training during the week prior to the arrival of the first years. Groups of first years and leaders then had hour-and-a-half-long meetings twice a day from Aug. 28 through Sept. 8, engaging in the usual ice breaker and community-building exercises but also participating in conversations about school policies.
Rasika Iyer ’22, a leader who also led a trip in fall 2019, reflected on her two MiddView leadership experiences.
“Last year when I was leading a trip, the responsibilities of a MiddView leader were primarily ensuring the safety of everyone on your trip and then also building community,” Iyer said. “This year we had a lot more duties that in previous years were either that of ResLife — like FYCs and RAs — or responsibilities of faculty members.”
These included explaining the college honor code, conducting pre-advising for course registration and discussing the school’s alcohol and drug policies.
“In years past, [first years] would have met with 150 other students and staff in a room and learned about the Honor Code, and that was definitely not an option,” Reinhardt explained.
MiddView this year was modeled after Feb Orientation, during which new students meet daily with leaders who guide them through all aspects of the orientation process, not just trips. Given this fall’s capacity limits and gathering size restrictions, hall and large group meetings could not occur in person. First years learned about school policies through a combination of MiddView group conversations and pre-recorded videos.
Though the videos were required, first years said they did not believe anyone was keeping track. Quinn Pidgeon ’24 said first years were often assigned videos that they later discussed in their MiddView groups. One of these videos was a three-hour pre-recorded webinar on microaggressions. Pidgeon noted that he believes the topic is very important but also added that he knows many students did not watch the webinar in full and that he preferred his group’s in-person discussion to the recorded video.
“I got more out of that, just sitting, talking with people face-to-face, than staring at a screen,” he said.
Brittney Azubuike ’22, a MiddView leader and president of Black Student Union (BSU), organized two days of affinity group lunches for up to 80 students per day. Because of gathering size restrictions, first years who signed up were split up into groups of 10 over two different time slots, with each group eating under one of the tents on McCullough lawn.
MiddView leaders volunteered to organize lunches for students of color, LGBTQ+ students and disabled students. Azubuike facilitated one of the lunches for students of color and said her group has continued to meet for meals throughout the semester.
Not all MiddView groups were on campus. Miguel Sanchez-Tortoledo ’23, a MiddView leader, was unable to return to campus on Aug. 18 because of his job and was assigned to lead a virtual group. Sanchez-Tortoledo’s group increased from 12 to 15 members after a few students who had intended to study on campus faced unexpected travel complications and joined virtual programming.
According to Sanchez-Tortoledo, students’ locations ranged from China to Turkey to the U.K., and he and Rachel Lu ’23, the other co-leader of the group, settled on 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. ET meetings to better accommodate their different time zones.
Lu is studying remotely from Shanghai this year. She organized an in-person meet-up in Shanghai with several first years, including some from her group.
“The idea kind of came about because most people in my group are from Shanghai, and they already have a group on social media that they were connected through,” Lu said. “I think it was a really good opportunity for them to have some sort of in-person community while being remote.”
For their two-hour Zoom meetings, Lu and Sanchez-Tortoledo drew from a list of virtual activities compiled by the SAO, organizing rounds of two truths and a lie, explaining school policies and even asking group members what kitchen utensil they would be.
“I was definitely nervous that there were going to be awkward silences, and people wouldn't want to participate, but that was definitely not the case,” Lu said. “People were eager to get to know each other, and they came up with ways that they thought would help them connect with each other, which I was really happy to see.”
(06/21/20 8:27pm)
A majority of faculty members voted in support of students’ return to campus this fall, passing the “motion regarding modality” during a Tuesday faculty meeting. While 74% (136) of the faculty who participated voted in favor of passing the motion, many abstained after an attempt to table the motion failed. The motion is non-binding, and the administration will release the final decision about fall plans on Monday.
The motion regarding modality reads, “Based on our existing state of knowledge regarding health protections, campus preparations and college resources, the faculty supports bringing the majority of students back to campus for the Fall 2020 semester, with courses offered in person and/or online.”
Some faculty raised concerns about the motion, citing inadequate information about health and safety guidelines for the upcoming school year, uncertainty whether students would abide by new precautions and troubling data regarding classroom transmission. Others believed that the college would not give a faculty ruling much weight in their decision-making.
The Working Conditions subcommittee of Middlebury’s American Association of University Professors (AAUP) chapter wrote a proposal to table the motion indefinitely, which Philosophy Department Chair Lorraine Besser presented to the body.
Besser acknowledged the importance of making a decision about the fall in an efficient manner, but also noted how an in-person fall might have an asymmetrical impact on Middlebury community members.
“We are concerned that a Covid-19 breakout on campus could lead to a health crisis which may fall unequally upon staff members who lack the option to work remotely,” she said in an email to The Campus. “We also worry that the sense of the faculty vote itself was complicated by the ongoing budget discussions, which suggest that an in-person fall semester is best from a financial perspective.”
Despite mixed support for the motion, only 36% voted in favor of tabling.
Some faculty felt that they did have enough information to make a decision and that it was important for the body to express its position. Peter Schumer, professor of mathematics, spoke out against tabling the motion and in favor of passing it during the meeting. He said he believes the administration will take the faculty’s decision into account.
“The administration, the Board of Trustees have other concerns besides academics and have different points of view to bring to the table, but the faculty can at least speak on what we hope from an academic viewpoint,” he said in an interview with The Campus. “And I truly believe they take that seriously into consideration since, after all, we are an academic institution.”
While Schumer said he did share some of his colleagues' concerns, he was reassured by an informational meeting with administrators, including Director of Health Services Mark Peluso.
The motion regarding modality is one of the four, non-binding Sense-of-the-Faculty Motions submitted by the Academic Planning Group. Faculty passed the first two motions during an earlier meeting on June 12, calling for faculty discretion regarding course design and the upholding of the 12-4-12 week academic calendar with no in-person classes between Thanksgiving and the start of the spring semester. Faculty decided to push back the vote on motions three and four — the motion regarding modality and a motion calling for the creation of an experiential learning credit — to the June 16 meeting so they could receive more information about health and safety planning.
The motion seeking to establish an experiential learning credit passed with 81% of the vote. The initiative would give students the option of completing such a credit in place of a traditional fourth course in the fall, spring, or both semesters. The Educational Affairs Committee (EAC) is still developing the details of the initiative and held a preliminary meeting about it on June 18.
(06/02/20 4:36am)
Students living within 500 miles of Middlebury who are not returning to campus this fall were asked to reserve a 90-minute time slot between June 3 and 17 to retrieve any belongings left at the college. These students — including seniors who graduated and students intending to study abroad in the fall — can also designate a proxy if they are unable to pick up their belongings themselves, according to Deans of Students Baishakhi Taylor and Derek Doucet in an email sent to students May 22.
Students who live more than 500 miles from campus will have their boxes shipped to them, though the college says furniture and other large items will have to be donated if students cannot pick them up or designate a proxy to retrieve them.
The school has coordinated with Vermont government officials for the staggered, brief return of students who need to collect their belongings stored on campus, according to Director of Health Services Mark Peluso.
“On May 19, Governor Scott made a narrow exception to the 14-day quarantine rule allowing students to enter Vermont for one day only, requiring no overnight stay with no non-essential stops within the state,” Peluso wrote in an email to The Campus.
Bitrus Audu, Ross commons residence director (CRD), said the Vermont government has stipulated that no more than 20% of the student body may return to the college for their belongings at the same time. Audu noted that the college’s plan allows a much smaller percentage to return simultaneously. Only about 10 students or proxies will be on campus during each 90-minute increment. In order to promote social distancing, residential life staff will reschedule students if roommates, suitemates or several hallmates reserve the same time slot.
“This plan is put in place recognizing that it's not a one size fits all, Audu said. “There's definitely going to be a handful of people that, you know, have special case situations, might need reasonable accommodations, exceptions, and we're working with those students to really try to navigate what that looks like.”
To reduce health risks, the college will ask students to abide by a health pledge. Peluso also listed several of the college’s additional requirements, including that each student or their proxy self-quarantines and practices social distancing for 14 days before they come to retrieve possessions.
Two facilities staff members will help each student move out their belongings. Jen Kazmierczak, environmental health and safety coordinator, said the college has implemented several measures to reduce health risks for employees during the move-out process next month. These include social distancing measures and requiring that students and staff wear cloth masks. Employees are also required to complete covid-19 safety training if they are approved to work on campus.
“Middlebury’s priority is the health and safety of our employees and students,” Kazmierczak said in an email to The Campus. “The process will be managed carefully to allow for the safe pickup of personal belongings.”
Facilities staff will also move the belongings of students who are returning to campus in the fall into their new rooms. However, the college will not announce the plan for the upcoming fall — including whether students will be on campus — until June 22.
(05/29/20 6:01am)
Students returned to Middlebury this month — many during “senior week,” a time usually dedicated to pre-graduation festivities and traditions — despite initial calls by the college that students vacate the town of Middlebury. Although a May 19 email from the Vice President of Student Affairs reaffirmed that returning violates state and college safety protocols, residents spotted students congregating and celebrating on campus and in town during the following days.
The Middlebury Police Department (MPD) has been in touch with the college about students returning to Middlebury, and Chief Thomas Hanley said the department notified the school about a gathering on college grounds on Saturday, May 23. MPD was first alerted to returning students after receiving multiple complaints from residents concerned about cars with out-of-state plates parked in their neighborhoods, according to Director of Media Relations Sarah Ray.
Matt Jennings, the editor of Middlebury Magazine, said that until last week, he occasionally saw a student or two walking around campus or into town, usually wearing masks and keeping their distance from others. So he was surprised to notice a group of 10 or 12 students, who were neither wearing masks nor maintaining six feet of distance from one another, taking photos on campus last week.
“I understand how hard this is for seniors, and I feel for the senior class, and I celebrated their senior celebration yesterday,” Jennings said in an interview with The Campus. “And I get the frustration some have, but equal frustration is when you see a small group — and I do think it's a small group of the senior class — who are not behaving responsibly.”
Administrators sent an email to all students on May 19 warning of the risks that students returning to campus could pose to the community. The email cited Vermont’s successful but still delicate containment of the virus and warned that early returns could hinder a fall return for all students — a possibility that hinges on cooperation between the college, town of Middlebury and local health officials.
Ray said two college Department of Public Safety (DPS) officers reported seeing five small groups of students on Sunday, May 24 — with an average size of about seven students each — sitting on the football field during sunrise, following senior week tradition. The groups sat far apart from each other and agreed to maintain social distancing when the public safety officers asked them to do so, according to Ray.
Later on Sunday, the college heard from worried town residents about a crowd of students that had been seen walking down South Street and through Chipman Park by means of an email list that administrators were included on. Previously, the residents had discussed concerns over a surge in students around graduation week.
In a different email, retired Psychology Professor Barbara Hofer also wrote to President Patton and other Senior Leadership Group (SLG) members about having seen students walking around the neighborhood. The email claimed students were partying and later walked through the South Street and Chipman Park neighborhood in groups. Hofer’s email also claimed that 100 students had returned.
“To date, DPS does not have information that indicates there were any large parties or gatherings on our campus or in the Chipman Park area during that time,” Ray said in an email to The Campus. “We are continuing to reach out to concerned neighbors who may have observed or heard anything in the area.”
The students’ path followed a route seniors sometimes take on graduation morning, when many watch the sunrise from the football and lacrosse fields before walking into downtown Middlebury for breakfast.
Barbara Marlow and her husband Hugh Marlow ’57, who live on South Street, said residents of her neighborhood are accustomed to being awoken at 4:30 or 5 a.m. on commencement weekend when students process from the fields. They were not awoken this year, but heard about the incident from neighbors.
“It’s very quiet when there are no students around, and we love having the students come back and all the energy they bring,” she said, referring to the return of students each fall. “This [incident] did not feel like that to the people who were affected. It felt disrespectful, and it felt frightening because of the health concerns involved.”
For some, sightings of students who returned to town last week foreshadowed possible worries about the fall semester, raising concerns about the public health risk posed by the return of students in general.
“These seniors have made it evident that while the pandemic continues, the return of Middlebury college students to campus will represent a significant threat to the health and well-being of the Middlebury community,” Hofer wrote in her May 24 email.
Marlow sees the return as two-sided — many residents love the presence of college students, but now may not be the best time for the relatively-isolated town of Middlebury to host them, she said.
“I think people want the students back, love having students around, but are concerned that — with all that's going on right now, with the worldwide health crisis, and all the cautions that they were given — if a few couldn't handle just one or two days, what on earth are they going to do if they return to campus this fall, and how safe will the community be?” she said.
Many students, such as Marissa Baker ’20, have stayed in their off-campus residences since the cancellation of in-person classes. Baker noted that rising concern about returning students has negatively impacted off-campus students who have remained in town after the college evacuated students from campus, even while she and her two roommates have continued to follow social distancing guidelines.
“Only one person from the house goes to the grocery store. They go to the grocery store, they use a mask and gloves and sanitize before they come back in,” she said. “We cross the sidewalk when we see someone when we're walking. We stay six feet apart for anyone that's not living in the house.”
Baker said she knows that some students returned to Middlebury this month, but said that those she has spoken to quarantined when they arrived. She also described how the phenomenon of returning students places pressure on students who have lived in Middlebury since the end of in-person classes.
“There's definitely been increased pressure on us to not come off as an out-of-stater or as a college student just because the town is getting worried that too many kids are coming back,” she said. “I've heard stories where, if you have too many out-of-state plates in your driveway, your neighbors might call the cops.”
Administrators have also taken steps to discourage students from returning to town and gather more information on those that did return. Besides the May 19 email, the college reached out to students’ parents and asked members of the Student Government Association (SGA) to appeal to their classmates.
On Sunday, members of the SLG wrote to the South Street neighborhood email group, acknowledging residents’ concerns and asking them to share information and photographs so the school could investigate the situation. The email mentioned that they will contact residents for their perspectives as the college develops a plan for next year. Barbara Marlow said she knows the administration is grappling with many difficult decisions as they determine what the fall will look like.
“I personally hope the college finds a way to reopen — I don't want them to do it in an unsafe way, but they don't want to do it in an unsafe way,” she said. “You know, I think everybody's goal is the same. The town is certainly dependent on the college, and the college is dependent on the town, and, you know, they're talking to each other and need to continue to do so. I'm sure they will. They always have.”
(05/17/20 6:59pm)
The last day that students remaining at the college — roughly 70 in total — can stay on campus is May 31, according to an email sent to those students on Monday by Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor. However, Taylor wrote that some students may be approved to stay beyond that date “in cases of exceptional personal circumstances.”
(05/14/20 10:01am)
Faculty members have reestablished the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) to expand their influence in the college’s decision-making. The chapter has been reactivated in the past, including during the 2008 financial crisis and following Charles Murray’s 2017 visit to campus. In its two weeks of existence, the revived chapter has held Zoom meetings, elected leaders, formed subcommittees and amassed a 60-person email list.
The AAUP is a national organization with campus branches at colleges and universities across the country. The group promotes academic freedom and shared governance between faculty and administrators.
Laurie Essig, director and professor of gender, sexuality and feminist studies, was elected president of the campus chapter. She said the AAUP can help with three things: protecting faculty governance, protecting academic freedom and aiding salary negotiations. Concerns about the future of employee compensation helped spur the revival of the campus AAUP chapter. With the school exploring ways to reduce the financial toll of the pandemic, Essig said employee compensation packages may suffer.
“Even before the pandemic happened, there were certain austerity measures that were confusing to many faculty,” Essig explained. But once the pandemic began to unfold, Essig noted that the focus of budgetary cuts were employee compensation packages instead of selling certain pieces of property or ceasing to develop new properties.
Essig clarified that these are not official policy proposals, but scenarios put forth by senior administrators. As of last week, some of the scenarios included cuts to retirement contributions and salaries.
One possible scenario suggests an up to 15% percent cut from salaries and retiree benefits. Even if the school does not reduce employee salaries, Essig states that a cut to benefits is especially concerning to her because employees are encouraged to consider their total compensation packages — which include benefits like retirement plans — alongside salary when accepting their positions.
The school’s financial plan has been a major point of discussion for campus AAUP members. Last week, the chapter released a document entitled “A Financial Future for All of Us” that was sent to President Laurie Patton, the trustees and members of the Senior Leadership Group. The statement urges the administration to increase the usual 5% annual draw on the endowment to 7% to avoid scenarios in which employees are fired or compensation is decreased.
The statement details the potential impact of a reduction in employee compensation. “Less money will translate to lower productivity because, necessarily, faculty will find alternative ways to generate income, such as freelance work, to pay their rent, mortgages, and support their families,” it reads. The statement notes the possible disadvantages to students if faculty are forced to split their time and focus in this way.
The statement also proposes a collective bargaining approach, suggesting the formation of a committee to advocate for faculty and staff in the ongoing discussions regarding employee compensation and college finances.
The chapter is also working to involve staff and has established a subcommittee for outreach. According to the national AAUP constitution, non-faculty are able to join the organization as associates. There is, however, no information on AAUP’s website regarding staff members.
Members have spread the word about the chapter through virtual faculty meetings and an all-faculty email, but Essig said it has been more challenging to get in touch with staff remotely. Noting a recent, unsuccessful unionization attempt, Essig said she hopes staff are eventually able to unionize.
“I think the AAUP is a stopgap measure for staff, but we are certainly willing and hopeful to bring them into the process and allow them to express their concerns," she said, noting that the AAUP chapter can represent both staff and faculty concerns.
Middlebury’s AAUP chapter is not a union. Essig said the organization may function similarly in some ways, given its focus and training on collective bargaining.
The AAUP website lists an assortment of resources and benefits available to its members, including insurance plans and various channels for expert advice and training. However, Jamie McCallum, sociology professor and vice president of the campus AAUP chapter, said Middlebury faculty are not interested in the AAUP for its member benefits.
“I think the important thing to realize from our standpoint is that the AAUP is not really a service organization. It's not like, what do you get. It's what can you do with it,” he said. “So, we see the AAUP as a platform from which to launch, or from which to start an organization that has greater faculty voice and greater faculty input into important decisions that the college makes.”
Essig said AAUP meetings thus far have involved a lot of information sharing and brainstorming. The chapter is still working to establish a collective bargaining process, the focus of one of its subcommittees, especially considering concerns about compensation cuts and the long-lasting effects of such decisions.
“What Middlebury does now with regards to faculty compensation will impact it for more than a decade in the future,” said McCallum. “It is very important that faculty and staff have a voice in that process.”
(04/30/20 9:55am)
Among the 13 candidates on this year’s Student Government Association (SGA) election ballot, only two were female-identifying. On April 16 and 17, Middlebury students elected the SGA president, representatives and Community Council co-chair for the upcoming school year. Though women have run for and won the presidential seat for the last five years, none ran for the position this spring.
Varsha Vijayakumar ’20, the current SGA president, said getting women to run and retaining those who are elected from year to year is a recurring problem. While she acknowledged having a woman leading the SGA may be inspiring, she hasn’t seen a change in the makeup of the senate during her time at the college.
Vijayakumar served as a class senator for the two years prior to her presidency. Before her sophomore year, she encouraged several other women to run for their class senator positions. She said that she only ran after none of them decided to.
“I don't blame them because at the beginning of this year, I had to write an op-ed in The Campus publicly to get men to stop objectifying me in my role,” she said.
Vijayakumar suggested that the election process itself might be a deterrent for female-identifying candidates. Students running for SGA positions include photos of themselves in candidate statements, campaign posters and other promotional outlets. Vijayakumar noted how women in politics beyond Middlebury often face criticism based on their appearances that men are not as often subjected to. This kind of scrutiny may be a concern for female-identifying SGA candidates.
“It is nerve wracking to find a picture of yourself that you think looks good, and to hope that people care more about your platform than the shirt you're wearing or the way your makeup is done,” Vijayakumar said.
Mariana Tahiri ’22, who was elected junior representative for next year, said she was nervous about running, both because she was the only woman in the junior representative race and because she was the only candidate for her position without any SGA experience. She said running remotely was easier in some respects, explaining that her attitude toward running might have been different had she been on campus.
“I definitely would have thought about it more because I really would have had to put my face all over campus,” she said.
Tahiri, who described herself as a peacemaker, said she opts to talk things out rather than argue, so when she felt some of her peers were not taking her campaign seriously, she worked to explain why she was interested in running. Regarding the small number of female-identifying candidates in this year’s election, Tahiri pointed to the gender gap in politics as a whole and how it might come into play at Middlebury. She hopes to better understand what barriers face SGA candidates and why students are often apprehensive to run.
“Specifically that people feel really scared to really put their names out there,” she said. “Because that's really what we're doing, is that we're introducing ourselves to our entire class, which is a lot of people and that can be very nerve-wracking, that can make people really anxious.”
Current member of the First-Year Committee, Khasai Makhulo ’23, was elected sophomore representative this spring. Makhulo said that while she was surprised that so few women ran for SGA positions this year, she is more concerned about her lack of senate experience and that she is an international student than about being one of only a handful of female-identifying representatives on next year’s senate.
The two Feb representatives are women, although their elections take place at a different time.
Vijayakumar has continued to encourage women to run and reached out to some she believed would be good candidates this spring. As a sophomore senator, Vijayakumar spoke at the Elect Her workshop organized by Chellis House and encouraged women and non-binary students to run for SGA. She said she was unsure the workshop increased the number of women interested in running, but that such workshops are opportunities to provide women with leadership tools and connect them to women in positions of power. She noted the importance of having a network, saying she contacted former SGA presidents to ask how they dealt with descrimination and objectification.
Vijayakumar shared a few ideas for increasing representativeness in the SGA overall. She mentioned how reaching out to academic departments and student organizations might be a more effective means of procuring cabinet director nominees. The current process, which began on Sunday, involves collecting nominations from the student body.
“I think this year was a huge transition year and a year of rebuilding, essentially, the SGA and what we stand for,” Vijayakumar said. “So, I feel like next year has a really good chance of honing in on the representativeness factor of everybody in the senate.”
(04/17/20 8:58pm)
The student body elected John Schurer ’21 president of the Student Government Association (SGA) for the upcoming school year. Schurer won by a landslide, receiving 1,081 votes (77.27% of the 1,399 total votes cast). He ran against Arthur Martins ’22.5 and Myles Maxie ’22, who received 183 votes (13.08%) and 135 votes (9.65%) respectively.
Schurer intends to tackle the plan for a new student center, changes to the curriculum and issues related to representation and financial accessibility, among other plans. Prior to the election, he announced Sophia Lundberg ’21.5 and Roni Lezama ’22 as his chiefs of staff.
"In the last three years, I have worked alongside passionate, innovative, diligent, strong, reliable, and kind SGA Presidents, Jin Sohn ‘18, Nia Robinson ‘19, and Varsha Vijayakumar ‘20, who have instilled in me the virtues of leadership. As I take on this role next year, I will be thinking of you all at every twist and turn," Schurer said in an email to the Campus. "Now, more than ever before, I am eager to get back home, if you know what I mean. The magic of Middlebury awaits."
Christian Kummer ’22 won the Community Council co-chair seat with 53.08% of the vote. Kummer ran against Joel Machado ’22, who received 46.92% of the vote. Kummer’s platform pushes for expansion and restructuring of mental health resources, greater outreach to staff and putting an end to vandalism, among many other initiatives.
"What makes the Community Council idiosyncratic is its ability to foster cohesive dialogues between students, faculty and staff in real time," Kummer told The Campus. "The group holds significant respect and influence in the eyes of the Senior Leadership Group and yet its potential is often left inactivated. As co-chair, I hope to bring Community Council into the forefront of Middlebury community members’ minds. When there is a proposal or idea circulating around campus, I hope to make a Community Council meeting the first place to go to. Under my leadership, the group’s presence and transparency will expand and equity and access will remain at its core."
With voting open for 24 hours, 55.27% of the school participated in the elections (1443 votes). This is compared to 36.81% voter turnout during last year’s spring elections. Turnout has only exceeded 50% one other time in the last four election cycles, reaching 68.3% in 2018 when the divestment referendum questions were included on the ballot.
The coronavirus pandemic prompted several changes to this year’s election. Candidates gathered signatures electronically rather than on a physical petition form. The debate on Monday, which featured both presidential and co-chair candidates, took place over Zoom. SGA reimbursed the candidates for the cost of promoting their remote campaigns, refunding up to $100 of the costs incurred by each presidential and co-chair candidate and $25 for representatives. Thomas Khodadad ’22, chair of SGA’s elections council, said this money was intended to cover the cost of creating websites or promoting ads on social media. The SGA has previously only reimbursed candidates for PaperCut expenses.
Update Saturday, April 18: This article has been updated with a photo and quote from Christian Kummer '22.
(04/15/20 10:44pm)
Even in the midst of a global pandemic, the Student Government Association (SGA) elections are moving forward. The three presidential and two Community Council (CC) co-chair candidates on Thursday’s ballot engaged in a live-streamed debate via Zoom on Monday evening.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/axTvLqT2hgg
They have also been campaigning remotely, creating websites and posting on social media to communicate their platforms and generate support. The five candidates shared their ideas and spoke to their qualifications in Zoom interviews with The Campus.
For SGA president:
Arthur Martins ’22.5
Hometown: Brasília, Brazil
Martins, co-president of the International Students Organization (ISO) and co-founder of #FairGradesMidd, said that he wants to make SGA more proactive and engaged with the student body. Martins is the only presidential candidate who has never held an SGA position. However, he has worked closely with members of the organization in past initiatives such as seeking SGA endorsement for #FairGradesMidd and working with senators to draft legislation supporting an ISO house.
As ISO co-president, Martins helped restructure and expand the organization’s executive board this year, creating what he calls a “student-centered bureaucracy.” He also co-authored a letter to the Senior Leadership Group advocating for international students in the wake of the campus closure this spring. While working on #FairGradesMidd, Martins gathered dozens of student testimonials and restructured the campaign’s platform in accordance with feedback from other organizers. Martins said he has been involved in activism work at home in Brazil as well.
“In my experiences as a grassroots organizer, as a community organizer, I've seen how powerful students can be, how much we can come together and truly rally behind causes that we believe in and make them happen,” he said.
Martins said he’s hoping to bring this type of leadership and activism to the SGA. He broke down his platform into three parts: advocating for student rights and resources, creating a strong college community, and putting students first. He wants to improve mental health resources, residential life training and support for underrepresented communities. Martins also explained his belief that the SGA is not transparent or accessible enough to the student body and is too bureaucratic.
“Everything has bureaucracy in life, but how can we make sure that the bureaucracy doesn't detract from the mission of being attuned to students, but that it lends itself to it,” he said.
His website proposes office hours and greater online outreach as a means of remedying the transparency and accessibility issues he sees.
Myles Maxie ’22
Hometown: Upland, California
A two-year SGA member, Maxie is the current Wonnacott senator and has served on several SGA committees. This is his first year as a senator, though he was involved in cabinet committees last year. Maxie has worked on creating student advisory councils for all academic departments, making the Gamut Room more accessible to student groups and providing more information about textbooks before registration. Maxie also co-sponsored a bill supporting changes to the grading system this spring. As a member of the Academic Affairs Committee, he has collaborated with faculty in an ongoing effort to revise the course credit system.
Beyond SGA, Maxie is also the social house secretary for PALANA and an admissions office student ambassador. In his role as chair of the Wonnacott Commons Council, he said he has discussed ways to continue supporting students after the dissolution of the commons system with his commons coordinator.
Maxie’s platform emphasizes greater outreach to students for ideas and feedback. His website relays his plan in acronym form, using the letters of the word “focus.” He said he believes SGA’s initiatives should be founded upon the concerns of its constituency.
“I have a bunch of student-generated issues that I want to address next year and that I'd brainstormed with students on effective ways to solve,” he said.
These include keeping laundry free or low cost, increasing transparency about SGA initiatives and providing better representation for student organizations. Maxie explained the broad objectives of his potential administration.
“It'll be about being actionable when we're faced with a problem and communicating what we're doing, having a plan for how we're addressing a problem and collaborating with others on it,” he said.
John Schurer ’21
Hometown: Glenview, Illinois
Schurer, junior senator and speaker of the senate, said he was “the most excited person on campus” when he arrived for his first semester, but soon discovered the campus was not as tight-knit as he had hoped. He attributed his involvement in various Middlebury organizations to a desire to create the community he had initially expected.
This is Schurer’s third year as a class senator and his second time as senate speaker. He is also a marketing executive for Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB) and producer for the Middlebury Moth-Up, an organization that puts on live oral storytelling shows. Some know Schurer as the founder of MeetMidd, an Instagram-based compilation of brief student profiles, which he launched when the current juniors were first-years.
Schurer has also worked in several roles in residential life. His time working in the Student Activities Office even led to a brief stint as the Middlebury Panther, an experience which he said motivated him to push for a new costume that increased both school spirit and comfort. On SGA, Schurer has aimed to make student resources more accessible and affordable, co-founding MiddBooks and supporting a bill that established financial aid for Snow Bowl use.
Schurer also worked with trustees to create plans for a new student center, an effort he said he wants to continue. Some of the other initiatives included in his platform are creating a co-curricular transcript and acquiring athletic trainers for non-varsity athletes. Schurer said he wants the SGA to better represent all students.
“We get a lot of bright minds who come into SGA and want to make a change, but we don't often enough get students who feel like Middlebury isn't built for them,” he said.
He highlighted collaboration as an important aspect of his platform, and noted how he has already named his two chiefs of staff, Sophia Lundberg ’21.5 and Roni Lezama ’22, whose qualifications are listed on his website.
For Community Council co-chair:
Christian Kummer ’22
Hometown: Southbury, Connecticut
Kummer, who served as a first-year senator last year, said that he based his entire platform on student input, soliciting feedback in the form he used to collect signatures.
“I was really hesitant to be super prescriptive, because the entire point of the co-chair is to be a voice for student concerns, not to push your own agenda,” Kummer said.
Kummer is committed to reforming mental health resources and said he wants to work with Barbara McCall, director of health and wellness education, and Gus Jordan, executive director of health and counseling services, to redesign the approach to mental health. He hopes to push for hiring more counselors and counselors who specialize in particular areas.
Kummer expressed interest in increasing access to campus resources and programs, suggesting greater funding for First at Midd, as well as tackling environmental sustainability and vandalism issues. He also wants to provide better support for survivors of sexual assault and take greater steps in regard to preventing potential assaults.
On SGA, Kummer served on several cabinet committees and worked on initiatives such as the snowbowl financial aid bill and the reinstitution of 10 o’clock Ross. As co-director of the first-year committee, he collaborated with the Center for Careers and Internships to create a first-year internship workshop. Kummer’s website lists the positions he has held beyond SGA, ranging from membership on the Community Judicial Board to PALANA to the Dance Company of Middlebury.
“I love working with people in pretty much every aspect of my life at Middlebury, both in student government and outside,” he said.
Joel Machado ’22
Hometown: The Bronx, New York
Machado’s website divides the initiatives in his platform into pillars. Some of his intended objectives, such as a push to end the waste of dining hall dishes, connect directly to his earlier efforts in SGA and Community Council roles. Machado has been outspoken about campus issues in the past. His Spencer Prize Championship speech criticized the school for being “an institution of higher learning second and a business first.”
Machado is a first generation college student and said his personal experiences and those of his family members have fostered his passion for combating inequality.
“Like any other leadership role, the most important experience needed is having a real reason to care about what you are doing,” he said in an email.
Machado noted the additional responsibilities of next year’s co-chair, who will play a role in familiarizing the new Dean of Students, who serves as the other chair, with the campus culture and outlook.
Polls open Thursday, April 16 at noon, and close the following day at noon. Vote at go.middlebury.edu/vote/.
(04/09/20 9:56am)
The Student Government Association (SGA) will give $320,000 of its reserve funds to the administration to aid community support efforts amid the Covid-19 pandemic — $200,000 for supporting college staff members and $100,000 for the Student Emergency Fund, according to a bill passed on March 29. The SGA is still considering various uses for the remaining $20,000 in reserve funds.
The $320,000 is this year’s reserve money from the SGA budget, which comes from the student activities fee. Budget money is allocated to various campus organizations, which then return remaining funds back to the SGA at the end of the year so they can be rolled over into the following year.
SGA Treasurer Kenshin Cho ’20 said the reserves were unusually large this year for a number of reasons, including an eight-dollar increase in the student activities fee, a smaller Middlebury College Activities Board budget and very high returns from organizations. Cho said he believes the switch to Oracle last spring might account for the higher returns, since organizations no longer received budget reports and may not have known how much money they had remaining. Cho said SGA’s reserve money is usually around $120,000.
Cho and SGA President Varsha Vijayakumar ’20 worked to bring the bill before the student senate.
“I think it definitely started as much more directly student-oriented. We were trying to find ways to pool more money into the Student Emergency Relief Fund,” Vijayakumar said.
However, the SGA decided to expand the scope of the fund’s recipients after communicating with administrators and receiving an email chain from students concerned about supporting staff. The new bill designates $150,000 for financing staff wage continuity.
The other $50,000 of the sum allocated to supporting staff has not yet been put towards a specific purpose. It might go to the Scott Center’s Chaplains’ Fund, to which staff members can apply for grants or loans, or it could also go toward wage continuity. The SGA is waiting to see if other resources for supporting staff arise before they make any decisions, according to Cho, and want to remain mindful of how some staff are disproportionately affected by the crisis.
“We don't know the extent of that yet, because I think for a lot of people, the financial impact hasn't hit yet,” he said.
The fact that the reserves come from the student activities budget was a sticking point during senate conversations about how to use this year’s reserve money throughout the spring. Cho made clear in earlier meetings that, given the source of the money, the reserves should be put towards student activities in some way. Vijayakumar explained why the SGA believes this usage supports student activities.
“I think the way that we considered it was that staff are so critical to the functioning of our college and also to the maintenance of student activities and student programming, and supporting them in any way possible is integral to making sure that we have a smooth environment when students do get to come back,” Vijayakumar said.
The $100,000 that the SGA has pledged to the Student Emergency Fund will help support extra travel, housing, food and other costs students have incurred as a result of Covid-19. In addition to the money from the SGA’s reserves, the college had also raised nearly $49,000 at the time of publication of this article for the fund from donors. It also aggregated money from two preexisting student emergency funds and the Seizing Opportunities Fund, Cho said.
Students must contact their deans to apply for funding from the Student Emergency Fund.
Cho and Vijayakumar mentioned a few possible plans for the flexible pool of $20,000 yet to be allocated. The money may eventually be given to the staff wage continuity effort or the Student Emergency Fund, but could also be used to support the local businesses that are taking a hit this spring. However, none of those options has been finalized, and Cho said the SGA will continue conversations to determine the most responsible use of that portion of the money.
“From the very beginning, I just wanted to make sure that we were cognizant of the impacts that this crisis might have, and I wanted the SGA to help all of the members of the college community in the best way possible,” Cho said. “And I'm pretty satisfied with the bill as it stands.”
(04/02/20 9:57am)
Update: Since this article was published, Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor told The Campus that students remaining on campus will be allowed to stay until the end of the semester, as long as federal and state governments do not change their policies. See that update in full here.
For the approximately 120 students who have remained at Middlebury since in-person classes were discontinued on March 13, campus life is far from what it was just a few weeks ago. As the threat of Covid-19 continues to rise, the college has implemented a series of changes geared towards social distancing and outbreak preparedness. Students are still waiting to hear whether they will be allowed to stay on campus for the remainder of the semester or asked to go home.
Nearly all campus buildings, including libraries, Atwater and Ross dining halls, and most residence halls, are closed to the remaining students. Students received an email on Wednesday, March 18 that asked them to relocate to Gifford, Hepburn, and Forest Halls by Saturday, March 21.
Last weekend, Meili Huang ’23 packed up her Battell double and moved into a single in Hepburn. Huang said the move-out process was similar to that which many students who left campus experienced the week prior.
“They offered the boxes and everything and there was a sign up sheet for asking for people to help, and they will help you move everything,” she said.
Xuan He ’20, recounted a similar experience. She said college facilities staff drove students and their boxes between their old and new rooms.
“I was really moved to see so many people working together to make sure that students on campus still have a place to stay,” she said.
Although the school consolidated students into three residence halls, they strategically assigned rooms in a manner that promotes social distancing. Individual halls within the dorms are at half occupancy at most, and all students are living alone.
“The halls are pretty empty, quiet, and it's just kind of weird,” Huang said.
No more than two students share a single bathroom and some students have a bathroom to themselves. Custodial staff are working even harder to ensure spaces are clean — He said it seems they are now cleaning the bathrooms daily.
Francoise Niyigena ’21, a First Year Counselor who lived in Hadley, said that a piece of paper on the doors of students’ former rooms stated they were approved to stay on campus until the end of spring break. The school has not yet confirmed whether students can live on campus beyond April 5, but some are taking their relocation as a sign that they will be permitted to stay until the end of the semester. Niyigena’s Commons Residence Director said the rooming situation could potentially change depending on Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines.
The email students received regarding dormitory relocation said that moving would make things easier on staff and that the school had a responsibility to the greater Middlebury community. Niyigena said she thinks this means empty dorms could be repurposed to increase Porter Hospital’s capacity need be. He, who previously lived in the Interfaith House, said her former residence is being converted into a potential quarantine space.
Vermont Governor Phil Scott issued a statewide stay-at-home order on March 24, asking residents to cease nonessential travel. Niyigena said that students essentially already adhered to such standards prior to the actual order. Students are not permitted to leave the town of Middlebury, and many businesses have closed. Middlebury’s grocery stores are open, but news of a local Shaw’s employee who tested positive for Covid-19 has spread concern among students.
At Proctor, the only dining hall that has remained open, staff members serve food in disposable to-go boxes, and students can no longer eat in the dining rooms.
“For the last couple of days, the dining hall tables have been removed,” said Niyigena. “There's like a chair wall between us and the staff that are serving us.”
Despite these changes, students still have many food options available to them. He said there are usually four or five hot food options as well as some salad bar items, milks and a few different desserts. In order to limit how many people touch food and serving utensils, students can no longer serve themselves. Staff members place each student’s meal into a to-go box for them.
“The positive thing about this experience is that now students actually have more interactions — direct interactions — with dining hall staff,” He said. “We say ‘thank you’ and ‘hello’ and they ask us what we would like to have.”
Though nearly all campus spaces are now closed to students, MiddExpress and the Grille have remained open with limited hours. Even so, the school discouraged gatherings of more than ten people in an email to on-campus students. The Mail Center is also currently open, but is scheduled to close after April 5. Cater Wang ’21 said that students have been practicing social distancing by standing further from the Mail Center window, and staff now sign for picked-up packages instead of students.
“I guess the major difference is just you have less people waiting in line for a package,” he said.
In the absence of typical on-campus activities and hang-out spaces — and with coronavirus precautions minimizing face-to-face interaction — students are finding different ways to fill their time and see one another.
“For me, I go take walks and try to keep my room sanitized and meditate,” He said. “I meditate quite often or try to do yoga, and sometimes my friends and I do workout sessions outside together.”
Huang said she has spent a lot of time in her room doing work and watching TV shows, but she sometimes asks friends if they want to pick up lunch and eat it together. Niyigena has also appreciated small-scale group activities such as evening yoga sessions planned by one of her friends.
“Or you do a movie night or have tea or cook together with just like three, four other people, just to kind of have that sense of community,” she said. “I think that's been really, really helpful for me.”
While small get-togethers provide a degree of normalcy, students noted how much emptier the campus feels.
“I've gone for a couple walks, maybe for like a run around, and you barely see anybody,” said Niyigena. “Or maybe you see like two or three other people, but that's it.”
(03/12/20 10:02am)
The Middlebury Board of Trustees approved at their Winter Term meeting the use of universal design in the renovation of Warner Hall, a set of standards that goes beyond the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guideline. It also approved the addition of a second student constituent advisor (SSCA) to the board, applications for which will be solicited this spring.
Making Warner universally accessible
An item approved by the trustees will incorporate universal design into renovations ofWarner Hall which are slated to begin this summer. Universal design is based on the concept that a space should be accessible and should provide the same experience to all those who use it.
The Advisory Group on Disability Access and Inclusion (AGDAI), a group of students and faculty, advocated for the implementation of universal design when discussions of the renovation began two years ago. The school has consulted the AGDAI throughout the construction of the 75 Shannon Street building and during the ongoing renovations of Munroe Hall.
Mark Gleason, the co-chair of the AGDAI, explained that universal design differs from ADA compliance. One of the differences is that buildings with multiple floors must have an elevator in order to be ADA compliant, but are not required to have accessible bathrooms on every floor.
“Universal design goes a little bit further than that so that any individual’s experience in getting into the building and using the building is as close to anybody else’s as possible,” Gleason said.
For the Warner Hall renovations, AGDAI pushed for an entrance on the south side of the building that is flush with the ground, eliminating the need for stairs or a ramp. Gleason said that, from what he has seen, that recommendation has been incorporated in the plans.
The college does not always take the group’s suggestions. Gleason explained how AGDAI advocated for an accessible entrance on Munroe’s eastern side, facing Voter Hall, but community members who need to use an elevator will need to use the north entrance, as both entrances on the east and west of the building will have stairs.
“I think Middlebury has come a long way towards understanding universal design,” Gleason said. “I think it’s got a ways to go to really say that, yes, we implement universal design on campus. But I think it’s a process. There’s a lot of discussions we have today that we wouldn’t have had five years ago.”
More student representation on the Board of Trustees
Formerly, the Student Government Association (SGA) President served as the sole student constituent advisor to the College Board of Advisors, one of three boards within the Board of Trustees. Varsha Vijayakumar ’20, the current SGA president, explained that SGA has been working to add a SSCA to the College Board of Advisors for a few years. The initiative was spearheaded by Jin Sohn ’18, former SGA president, and Ish Alam ’18, Sohn’s chief of staff from March to May 2018. Sohn and Alam sponsored a bill calling for the addition of a SSCA to what was then called the College Board of Overseers. The bill also recommended a two-year term for the SSCA and voting power for both constituent advisors.
Vijayakumar pitched the idea again during the Board of Trustees’ October meeting. Since the SGA president constituent advisor only serves for one year, some trustees expressed a desire for greater continuity between student constituent advisors, Vijayakumar said. The SSCA’s two-year term is intended to create that continuity.
She also noted the importance of including the voice of a student not involved in SGA to expand which topics are brought to the attention of the board. She explained how her time in SGA has given her an insight into why some initiatives take longer than others or why some are less feasible.
“And that’s really great for many reasons, but also can sometimes dilute the amount of information that is shared with trustees,” Vijayakumar said. “For example, I know that I implicitly prioritize certain agenda items based on what I think is most feasible or tangible to accomplish.”
An email from the SGA to students last Thursday provided details about the position and a link to the application, which is open until noon on March 19. The three-member selection committee, made up of First-Year Senator Kaitlyn Velazquez ’23, First-Year Senator Miguel Sanchez ’23 and new Feb Senator Melisa Gurkan ’23.5, was appointed during Sunday’s SGA senate meeting, and is responsible for choosing three or four candidates from the applicant pool to present to the senate. SGA will recommend one applicant to the college by March 30.
(03/05/20 10:59am)
As the housing application process kicks off, the International Student Organization (ISO) is eying a residential space for international students that would function as a space for intercultural dialogue across the student body. The ISO executive board voted to apply for superblock status for the 2020–2021 school year after presenting its proposal to the SGA senate and the Community Council.
ISO members drafted a house charter and superblock application last week and will present the application to the housing office on March 5. If awarded the house, they will run applications for seven resident spots from March 6 to 20.
The idea of creating an international student house has existed for many years, according to Kelly Zhou ’22, co-president of the ISO. Co-President Arthur Martins ’22 took the lead in organizing a team to work on pursuing a residential space. Though they initially wanted to apply for special interest house status, Community Council advised that they apply for a superblock this year due to the short timeframe for approval.
Superblocks are only traditionally open only to juniors and seniors. However, the senate passed a resolution Feb. 23 in support of reevaluating the proposal next winter and supporting ISO in applying for a special interest house in the following school year, which will also be open to sophomores.
“The house came as this proposal for institutionalizing a space on campus where not only international students could live in or anyone who has interest in international issues could live in, but it could act as a hub for an active engagement with diversity, for promotion of intercultural dialogue,” Martins said.
Martins was clear that the ISO house welcomes all students — not only international students — who want to learn how to participate in cross-cultural discussions. One issue he said ISO members frequently face is students disengaging with the organization because they do not identify as international.
“A joke that we have inside the board is that whenever we’re at activities fairs, it’s so common that students will just immediately shut us down, say, ‘Hey, ok, but I’m not international,’ but we would say, ‘Well, you’re international to us,’” he said.
Martins noted how three or four of the seven ISO executive board members are what he called domestic international students — students who may not be legally defined as international students because they have a U.S. passport or U.S. Permanent Resident status.
ISO intends to extend the benefits of the potential international house to the Middlebury community as a whole. Dan Golstein, a junior exchange student serving as ISO’s first Exchange Student Experience Coordinator, explained that ISO is hoping to host community dinners and other meals and increase the frequency of the current monthly Monday tea, which serves as a space for discussion.
As an exchange student, Golstein will never have the opportunity to live in either an international superblock or special interest house. “It’s not about credit,” he said. “It’s not about saying it was us that did it. It’s about just getting it done because, ultimately, we’re here to represent and to care for and to serve and to protect international students.”
(02/27/20 10:53am)
The Office of Health and Wellness Education will introduce Mental Health Peer Educators (MHPE) next fall. This initiative aims to further discussion, support and guidance surrounding mental health at Middlebury. The office, which added several new positions this school year, has been working on the MHPE program since last summer.
“There has been a steep increase in requests for counseling appointments and interest across campus in discussing mental health,” Madeline Hope, assistant director of health and wellness education, said in an email to The Campus.
The new program will rely heavily on student members who will be responsible for attending weekly group meetings and conducting peer listening hours, among other activities.
Peer listening hours, which will allow students to seek support from peer educators during 30-minute sessions, are still under development, but Hope specified that they will not be the same as counseling. The office has not yet finalized the role of confidentiality, according to Hope.
“We are still working out the details of peer listening hour confidentiality, but before the group goes live in Fall 2020, these details will be shared with our community,” Hope said. “It is my hope that we can offer a safe and private space for students to be heard.”
Becca Gorman ’20, the former student government association health and wellness director, said she believes the program will be useful to students who have not yet been able to see a professional or are unsure if they should, and could serve as a resource for those who cannot access certain mental health resources for financial or insurance reasons.
Gorman is currently one of the presidents of Active Minds, a club that promotes increased discussion about mental health. Last year, Gorman participated in a focus group about mental health resources on campus. She said that some of the group’s participants proposed the idea for peer mental health advocates.
Hope believes that peer education makes information more accessible and ensures that the programs remain conscious of student needs.
Students interested in becoming mental health peer educators must fill out an online application by March 2 and will be interviewed. Selected students will then undergo training in the fall. Online information about the program estimates a four-hour time commitment per week, though Hope says she anticipates peer educators will have some lighter weeks.
Hope is looking for applicants who are passionate about tackling mental health issues and are ready to both listen and lead. She also noted the importance of representing a variety of voices in the program, encouraging queer students and students of color to apply.
The MHPE program will join existing student-led education programs including Sex Positive Education for College Students (SPECS) and MiddSafe, which are completely student-run, and Green Dot, which is run by the school with student involvenment.
Although they will have some overlap with MHPE as programs providing peer support, MiddSafe advocates and student residential life staff cannot join the initiative. Hope cited conflicting fall training times and the potential for burnout and compassion fatigue.
“I think our community is longing for more ways to speak openly about mental health and MHPEs can be a part of meeting that need,” Hope said.
(02/20/20 10:55am)
Students will now have access to free New York Times and Wall Street Journal subscriptions, the Student Government Association (SGA) announced in an email to the student body on Sunday evening.
The initiative to provide students access to the two subscriptions, spearheaded by SGA director of institutional affairs Miki Nakano ’20 and SGA treasurer Kenshin Cho ’20, has been in the works since October, Cho said.
SGA arranged the daily delivery of 60 print copies of the Times for several years, but eventually decided that the limited number of papers was not worth the cost — which would have been $27,394, plus a price increase, for annual campus-wide print and web access. In November 2018, the SGA stopped funding campus-wide online access to the Times, also for financial reasons.
The newest decision to provide the student body with online subscriptions to the two newspapers was informed by a survey conducted of other colleges by the library. The results indicated that most of the roughly 80 schools contacted had subscriptions to one or both of the publications, according to Cho. SGA also felt it was important to provide the subscriptions so that students could more easily stay informed about world events and complete assigned reading for classes without running into paywalls.
Cho was unable to share how much SGA is paying for either subscription, as both newspapers included non-disclosure agreements in their contracts with the college. Cho explained how this made the price-negotiation process challenging, as SGA could not legally compare what they were quoted with the prices paid by peer institutions. SGA will have the opportunity to renegotiate pricing at the end of the two-year Wall Street Journal contract and three-year New York Times contract.
The two subscriptions are for digital versions of newspapers, and do not include additional features like crosswords or New York Times Cooking.
“We don’t want to burden the entire student population with paying for the crosswords that some people want to do, whereas we could justify the cost of paying for the actual paper,” Cho said.
Cho explained that SGA opted to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal and the Times in particular because they hoped the two papers would provide different content. He noted that some believe the Wall Street Journal has better business coverage, and that the op-ed sections of the two papers together provide a broader spectrum of voices.
“If we want people to be educated about the world and we are not providing that resource, then I wonder if we are being true to our word,” Cho said.
(02/20/20 10:55am)
With flu season in full swing, students across campus spent J-Term coughing, downing Emergen-C and trekking through the snow to Parton Health Center. This flu season was particularly bad due to inaccuracy in this year’s flu vaccine.
“Parton Health Services was quite busy in mid-late January helping students with influenza-like-illness,” said Dr. Mark Peluso, the director of health services and the college and head team physician.
Flu season can run from October to May but is usually at its height between December and February in the U.S. Parton Health Services encourages students to get vaccinated in anticipation of the annual epidemic, and provides 450 to 750 flu shots each year.
Vaccines vary from year to year, depending on the circulating strains of influenza. The food and Drug Administration (FDA) identifies the strains for the upcoming flu season nearly a year in advance so that manufacturers have time to produce enough doses. This can result in an inaccurate vaccine, since strains of the virus change over time.
This flu season, one of the FDA’s B-lineage predictions was inaccurate, resulting in a less effective vaccine.
Ella Jones ’23 remarked that she and many of her Arabic 102 classmates fell ill during J-Term.
“There was a day when like half the class was gone,” she said.
Jones herself developed a fever and a cough halfway through J-Term and visited Porter ExpressCare where she was prescribed antibiotics for a potential ear infection, but was not tested for flu. She explained that she had hoped she would be tested for the virus so she could warn friends and be prescribed Tamiflu, an antiviral that can shorten the duration of flu symptoms.
The doctors at Parton told Sophie Bolinger ’22 that she most likely had the flu when she came in during J-Term. Bolinger said she had to wait two hours for an appointment after she walked in since she had not scheduled one ahead of time. She explained that she was not tested for the flu, but the doctor offered to prescribe Tamiflu.
Both Jones and Bolinger said they attended classes for some of the time they were sick. With such a limited number of class meetings during J-Term, neither felt she could afford to be absent for long. “I definitely should have missed more, but I went because I felt like I couldn’t miss class because I had already missed three days, and it honestly really affected my performance in the class,” Bolinger said.
“Flu testing is available at Parton,” Peluso said in an email to The Campus, “However, when flu is widespread in the community, the CDC guidelines for flu testing support a clinical diagnosis (i.e. no testing is necessary) unless the patient is being admitted to the hospital or is at high risk of complications.”
Local health services attempt to mitigate the effects of the virus within the Middlebury community through vaccination, Tamiflu and the typical protocol for preventing the spread of illnesses. However, with so many students living so close together, viruses like flu can spread quickly throughout the college.
“Dorms, dining halls, classrooms and other shared facilities place students in a unique situation with respect to exposure,” Peluso said. “Flu shots, cough etiquette, hand washing and hand hygiene, maintaining hydration, and getting plenty of rest are good ways to reduce risk of getting the flu.”