Search Results
Use the fields below to perform an advanced search of The Middlebury Campus's archives. This will return articles, images, and multimedia relevant to your query.
69 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
A Call to Mothers: Tell Your Daughters It’s Okay to Masturbate
“You know it’s okay to masturbate, right?” These jarring words came from my mother while we were making sun-tea together in our kitchen. I was 14 and horrified. I uttered a curt “Yes, mom” to shut down the conversation as quickly as it had started. From my memory, her rhetorical question was brought on by no comment of my own. I was a private teenager and had less than no interest in talking to my parents about sex (along with most of America’s teens, I’d imagine). Sun-tea unfinished, I casually, yet swiftly, left the room to avoid a very-much-unwanted continued conversation. All she had said were seven words. She clearly thought there was no need for an explanation (thank you, Urban Dictionary) as she knew that one sentence would do the trick in unwinding the bundle of prejudices I had held in regard to masturbation. ‘Masturbation is gross. Sacrilegious. Dirty. Un-lady-like. For boys.’ These were the sentiments that the vast majority of my female friends held growing up and that, unfortunately, some still hold. My hometown was exceptionally progressive and homogenous, with only one outwardly conservative student in my graduating high school class of 138. Regardless of its supposedly liberal ideals, our public high school had its share of gendered afflictions, just like any other. And due to the hushed nature of sex, the problem wasn’t put into words. For girls, we didn’t know what we were missing because no one was willing to talk to us about it. Starting in the final years of middle school, some boys were already joking about sex and masturbation at recess—normalizing the conversation from the outset. While boys learn from others at sleepovers, along with YouTube, Urban Dictionary, Pornhub and maybe even their overly presumptuous fathers, girls are left in the dark. According to Dr. Perri Klass in an Op- Ed from December for The New York Times, this isn’t just a problem in the social realm: there’s a complete deficit of conversations about masturbation in pediatricians’ offices as well. And when these conversations do happen? “We do leave girls out of the conversation almost totally,” said Dr. Elizabeth Erickson, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Duke University, in an interview in the New York Times Op-Ed. From conversations with friends, I am the only female I know whose mother even uttered the word “masturbation” while growing up. In hindsight, I was the lucky one. According to our friends at Planned Parenthood, masturbation also comes with a host of emotional and physical benefits: reduced stress, sounder sleep, improved self-esteem and body image, even “strengthened muscle tone.” However, this is not a call for universal masturbation. It does not interest everyone and that is, quite honestly, not my concern. This is, rather, a call to normalize conversations about masturbation for girls as a means to enable them to take agency over their own sexual health at a young age. Masturbation can help girls learn about their own bodies before getting involved with anyone else’s. When we don’t broach the subject, we risk creating power imbalances. When it’s normal for boys to talk about sex while the same conversations are stigmatized for girls, one sexual partner in a heterosexual relationship will be inherently more informed than the other. By “informed,” I mean to say that the sexual partner’s primary education may stem from porn sites and graphic boasts from pubescent peers. Heterosexual porn is infamous for focusing on the “male gaze,” which means that for the pubescent viewers, sex will appear to hinge on a female performance, as opposed to a reciprocal experience. Telling girls that it’s okay to masturbate is also a way of fighting against what has become known as the “orgasm gap” that exists in heterosexual encounters and relationships. In one study that examined the rate of orgasming among couples, researchers found that among 800 college students, 91% of men reported orgasming nearly every instance of having sex, while only 39% of women did. This gap runs the risk of making girls feel as if they don’t deserve to be as physically pleased as their male counterparts, potentially contributing to a feeling of being lesser than. (For comparison, 95% of lesbian women report orgasming with their partners.) Allowing girls to go ahead and discover what is pleasurable and comfortable before engaging in sex may strengthen communication with future partners and enhance overall well-being. And it will hopefully avoid instances in which she’s told what to do by a “more informed” partner wearing Vans and a snapback. So why is masturbation still such a taboo subject? To put the topic in a historical perspective, U.S. Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders was forced to resign in 1994 by President Clinton after publicly saying that masturbation is “a normal part of human sexuality” and should be taught in sex-ed classes. This was only 25 years ago, just around the time that people of my generation were entering the world and our parents were mulling over various parenting tactics. A close friend recently confided that she first learned it was okay to masturbate during her sophomore year of college in a “Gender and Women’s Studies” class when the professor insisted that every woman in the room buy a vibrator. At this point, my friend had already had a boyfriend for a year and a half. Evidently, 20-something is too late to realize it’s fine to masturbate. Destigmatizing masturbation equips girls and women with the power of sexual knowledge from an early age. There are few greater gifts to a young girl than giving her the ability to take agency over her body; casually telling her it’s okay to masturbate may be the first step.
Foreign Correspondents: Returning to Childhood in Paris
There were countless things I looked forward to when preparing to study abroad in Paris, but the idea of having a semester in which I felt more like a child than I have for over a decade, was not something that had crossed my mind. At Middlebury, the sea of 18-22-year-olds is rarely punctured by anyone under the legal marital age. Moreover, we—the budding innovators, intellectuals and entrepreneurs who will soon spill into the alumni pool of possible donors—are often in a position in which acting like a child is looked down upon. The Center for Careers & Internships is constantly reminding us of the need to have our résumés reviewed in the hope of landing a pearly banking internship, and great-aunts and uncles pester us with questions about our future at our first autumnal family weekend. These acupuncture-like pressures can induce symptoms of anxiety, dizziness or nausea. My first days in Paris seemed like more of the same. The city was fast-paced and the busy Parisians often curt, not wanting to deal with another American. Similar to Middlebury, everyone was rushing from point A to point B, without really thinking, feeling or slowing down to eat a baguette or sip on some vin chaud. Attending one of the grandes écoles here, SciencesPo, a university that a slew of French Prime Ministers and Presidents have attended, only heightened this sentiment of accelerated professionalism and unwavering ambition. But in fact, this at-first hardened exterior has lent itself to innards that prove to be much softer (yes, maybe even softer than maple-candy-sweet Vermont). Part of this shift has been my own drastically altered way of thinking. After far too many years of taking French, I arrived in the country with what quickly began to feel like a child’s capability of communication in comparison to native French speakers. In beginning to really familiarize myself with living through a different language, I have found that my mind’s capacity for incisive thinking and debate had shrunk considerably. As someone who plays with and mulls over words much too long, this has actually improved my ability to communicate concisely. Instead of getting bogged down in the jargon and BS of political science, I am forced to focus on what is concretely occurring (because I honestly can’t communicate much more than that). There is no faking it when my vocabulary is approximately 1/3rd of the size of mine in English. I am held almost eerily accountable of pure knowledge and my ability to regurgitate facts. Even still, when cashiers, street vendors and government employees hear my American accent, they often switch to a slower tone, enunciating each word in a painful, although still helpful, way. Just this week, when the grandparents of a three-year-old girl I babysit here arrived at the house for a visit, I realized I could process every word they were saying with ease. But wait—were they speaking like this for the preschooler or me? The uncertainty of my language ability in comparison to that of a small child is concerning. But this stunted feeling has in fact spiked a positive and unintended effect in which I’ve begun to yearn to return to this simpler and elementary era. A paradigm shift has been set off in that my simpler thinking and speaking have seeped into my way of being. Just this afternoon, I thought I had packed a lunch that was entirely appropriate for a 20-year-old college student. Surveying the kitchen counter, I came to realize that the contents before me were laughably juvenile: a rice cake with peanut butter and banana, a yogurt, an oddly cute jar of carrot sticks and a small pouch of squeezable applesauce. I am sure that I ate this exact lunch every day of Kindergarten. Yet, the benefits of my newfound child-like outlook aren’t confined to my lunchbox. I’ve also found that many social interactions are tainted with innocence. Without the immediate ability to evaluate nuance of speech or opinion, I constantly find myself giving people the benefit of the doubt. It is at times frustrating that I can’t find more descriptive adjectives for new friends’ dispositions other than ‘sweet,’ ‘kind,’ or ‘friendly.’ But as self-deprecating of my French ability as this piece has been, I’m not entirely incapacitated. I can converse with other students in my classes and hold my own at one of my host family's festive Sunday lunches, often accompanied by bottles of champagne, with their extended family. My slower thinking and simpler language simply force me to take a bit more time to exact what I want to say. And, in turn, to refrain from making quick or unfounded assumptions about the others I’m meeting. Come spring, although I may not strip entirely nude and jump into the nearest park fountain as I did the first time I was in Paris (age four), I do hope to retain some of the joys I’ve found in being forced to act a bit more like a child.
December Brings Surge of Holiday Cheer (and a Cement Mixer) to Town
[gallery ids="42190,42194,42189"] MIDDLEBURY — Snow-capped mountains and pine trees are not the only elements that imbue the Green Mountain valley with an aura of holiday spirit. This past weekend, a surge of holiday-themed events came to downtown Middlebury. With the start of December, the Better Middlebury Partnership (BMP) has again seized the opportunity to revamp and strengthen community interaction with downtown businesses. The overarching marketing model of this month’s festivities comes with the slogan, “A Very Merry Middlebury.” According to Vermont Book Shop owner Becky Dayton, the tradition dates back nearly 10 years, with many Decembers being devoted to holiday cheer and shopping in the quintessentially Vermont town. “It’s a nice thing for the community to offer for people who don’t have a lot of money to spend on holiday activities because all of the events are free,” Dayton said. One of the most popular events is “Midd Night Stroll,” which will take place on the evenings of Thursday, Dec. 6 and Thursday, Dec. 13, for which many downtown businesses plan to stay open later than usual. Originally dubbed “Stag & Doe Night,” the stroll had been targeted at couples. Over the years, it has become more inclusive and is now aimed at a range of ages. “Downtown businesses really like the Very Merry Middlebury events, in particular the Midd Night Stroll, which provides a significant bump in sales for many restaurants and merchants,” said Karen Duguay, executive director of BMP. “Any time town is filled with people, it feels alive and has energy, and that’s good for businesses.” Last Saturday, the monthlong event kicked off with a day devoted to Christmas-themed events such as visits with Santa at the Middlebury Inn, a hot chocolate hut on Main St. and horse-drawn wagon rides. The hot chocolate hut boasts steaming drinks for 25 cents. And getting “The Works,” a generous topping of marshmallows, whipped cream and a peppermint stick, is free of charge. According to Duguay, the college has been a large supporter of the group’s endeavors over the years. The college donated the hot chocolate for the hut this season. With craned necks and cheers, residents and college students lined Main St. to catch a glimpse of Santa arriving in Middlebury by fire truck. Arguably, though, the most festive truck in the state is a less suspecting vehicle — a cement truck affixed with over 25,000 Christmas lights. The SD Ireland Light Mixer, a now well-known cement truck that makes its way across the western part of the state during the holiday season, is returning to Middlebury on Dec. 6 and 13 for the Midd Night Stroll. SD Ireland, the construction and concrete company that owns the cement trucks, has worked on a slew of local projects, including the college’s very own Bicentennial Hall. While the company is based in Williston, Vermont, the sparkly, light-adorned trucks make their way across the northwestern region of the state each winter. [gallery ids="42204,42195"] This is not the first philanthropic project of the concrete company, though. The family-run business, founded in 1975, also started a 501(c)(3) nonprofit for cancer research. But Scott Ireland, one of the co-owners, decided he wanted to add another dimension to their community involvement. Ireland concocted the truck idea on a whim 14 years ago. His wife, Kim Ireland, described the process of dressing up one of the trucks in anticipation of December. “It takes a good two weeks to do one truck with two to four guys working on it,” she said. Ireland explained that attaching the lights — even to the rotating cement mixer — requires an unimaginable amount of clear duct-tape. After more than a decade, Ireland said she still feels like a little kid again when seeing the ebullient truck roll down the driveway for the first time each season. Asked how they keep the 25,000 miniature lights aglow while driving down Route 7, Dayton provided a more cryptic response. “That’s the Christmas magic,” she said. The lights themselves cost the family-run company around $5,000 per a truck. But beckoning one of the twinkling vehicles to a community event is free. Ireland said that people from across the state call to reserve the trucks during December. The company even has a “Christmas Mixer Schedule” on their website highlighting where the cement trucks can be found next. This season, they are on the road from Thursday, Nov. 29 to Saturday, Dec. 29, with 37 events already lined up. Several years ago, they expanded the operation to two trucks, with growing demand at local events. “There were just too many tree lightings going on at the same time,” she explained. And when the trucks aren’t being featured at holiday pop-ups and tree lighting ceremonies? “The guys just enjoy driving them [along] Route 7,” Ireland said.
Hallquist Presents Progressive Vision for State's Future
Until Nov. 9, 2016, running for governor had never been in the playbook. A lifelong environmental activist and decade-long CEO, Christine Hallquist made a sharp professional detour after the election of President Donald Trump. Hallquist is the first openly transgender person nominated for governor by a major party, and she is taking on Vermont’s incumbent Phil Scott, a Republican, who is finishing his first term. On Election Day, she will appear on the Democratic line. “I’m not a politico,” she said as she sat down for an interview with The Campus at a picnic table outside Mead Chapel. “I had never marched before, was more a science, engineer-type person. But science isn’t going to solve this. You have to be political.” After President Trump’s victory, she began participating in a series of marches as a means of dealing with her state of “political depression.” Then she made the leap into politics herself, announcing her candidacy for statewide office in March. Hallquist arrived in Vermont in 1976 from upstate New York. She quickly settled into her new home while involving herself in an array of local issues, including challenging a mining pit. “I wouldn’t call myself an activist, but I was always doing something,” she said. “That’s what you do in Vermont if you’re responsive — you get involved. But I decided to run for governor without having a clue.” After spending more than a decade as the chief executive of the Vermont Electric Co-op (VEC), she found that her experience in the utility sector dovetailed neatly with her gubernatorial platform. Hallquist’s political agenda is centered on the junction of economic development and environmental sustainability. The thing that ties the two together, she says, is fiber optic cable, a material made from tiny glass filaments that can transmit data at tremendously high speeds. Currently, only 17 percent of Vermonters have access to fiber optic. Her ultimate goal: providing high-speed internet to all of Vermont. [pullquote speaker="Christine Hallquist" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I wouldn’t call myself an activist, but I was always doing something.[/pullquote] Hallquist is convinced that expanding fiber optic cable across the state would have far-reaching benefits, from drawing young people to the state to reinventing the nature of the dairy industry. For dairy, she envisions a push towards artisanal products that can be sold across the globe via online retailers (she cites the popularity of Vermont maple syrup in Japan as a pioneering industry model). It could even lead to a rebirth of Vermont’s rural communities, she said, many of which remain marginalized due to a lack of internet access. The emphasis Hallquist places on fiber optic weaves through nearly everything she talks about. In her eyes, fiber optic applies to the range of challenges confronting Vermont: an aging population, a deficit of young people and economic stagnation. Regarding the dairy industry, Hallquist anticipates a looming transformation in the market. “Dairy is a world that’s already shifted,” she said. “We’re producing 30 percent more milk than we did in the 1960s, yet people are consuming fewer dairy products.” MICHAEL BORENSTEIN Instead of wholesale milk, she envisions a move towards small-batch, boutique products like organic cheeses, labeled “GMO-Free” and “Made in Vermont” and sold across the world. “That’s where the market is: the artisanal products,” she said. However, older dairy farmers, who make up the majority of the industry’s demographic, have not had the most enthusiastic response. “Some are migrating, but it’s like any other business; some people made buggy parts while cars were being sold,” she said. “People have a hard time letting go.” Yet the state’s infrastructure, including fiber optic networks, needs to be there, she said. And the government has the power to spearhead that. She’s emphasized the need for new welfare programs, like Medicare for All — a sharp contrast to Scott’s recent dodging of those sorts of initiatives. Scott’s avoidance has manifested in a slew of vetoes in recent months, which have emerged as a frustration and talking point for Hallquist. [pullquote speaker="Christine Hallquist" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Some are migrating, but it’s like any other business; some people made buggy parts while cars were being sold.[/pullquote] Still, she acknowledged that she supported his initial candidacy more than a year before she decided to run against him. “I voted for Phil Scott, but I think I truly represent the electorate of Vermont,” she said. Despite Scott’s shift to the center on some issues, like gun control and marijuana legalization, Hallquist now believes he has more in common with the national Republican Party than with most Vermonters. After all, Hillary Clinton beat Trump easily in Vermont, winning 56.7 percent of the vote to Trump’s 29.3 percent. “He’s just a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” she said of Scott. Voters in Vermont are known for splitting their tickets on Election Day, pulling the lever for, say, a Democratic state senator but a Republican governor. “That’s been the trend in the state for some time now,” said Eric Davis, professor emeritus of Political Science at the college. “Half the people who didn’t vote for Trump for president voted for Phil Scott.” In her first days in office, Hallquist says her number one priority would be to pass a raft of bills that Scott has vetoed in the last few months. Those bills would have enacted a minimum wage increase, paid family leave, the monitoring of toxic substances in toys and toxic pollution producer liability. Hallquist hopes to resurrect them all. “When it comes to a living wage and Medicare for All, that’s not a political issue — that’s called being a civilized society,” she said. “If your leader’s not heading in that direction, you need to fire them and get someone who is.” [pullquote speaker="Christine Hallquist" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]When it comes to a living wage and Medicare for All, that’s not a political issue — that’s called being a civilized society.[/pullquote] Hallquist has followed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ national trail in doggedly supporting a government-financed, single-payer system, where all Vermonters could receive healthcare coverage. Although Scott ultimately looks favorably upon Medicare for All, he is not sure the state’s economy can withstand a single-payer system on its own. Incarceration is another issue she feels passionately about. Hallquist contests that moving people out of prison is not only more humane but will also save money. Her goal is to cut the state’s prison population in half. Last month, Vermont moved over 200 out-of-state inmates to a correctional facility in Mississippi in an effort to save money and deal with overcrowding. Each year, the state spends $73,000 per prisoner and there are currently 500 people behind bars. The issue of mass incarceration, she said, is entangled in a bevy of other problems currently facing Vermont. Some prisoners battle alcohol and substance abuse, while others struggle with mental illness. Still, others are forced to delay their release for the simple fact that they cannot find an affordable place to live. MICHAEL BORENSTEIN Aside from Scott’s policies, Hallquist is also vehemently critical of his leadership. She has often described his management style as one of “command-and-control,” manifesting in “divisional leadership.” Although she has no previous experience in politics, she says her supervision of the VEC allowed her to practice a collaborative form of leadership that she insists is more effective. She said the way in which Scott “barks orders from Montpelier” needs to be changed. When asked how she planned to bring the leadership approach she established at VEC to the state capitol, she mused that she might remove the lock from her office door and turn the space into a conference room, something she did at the utility company. Her campaign coffers — totaling $415,000 — are equally rooted in a cooperative effort. As reported to the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office in mid-October, the bulk of her fundraising has come from small donations. Indeed, more than 3,000 contributions were in the amount of $100 or less. Though Scott’s total contributions exceeded $500,000, only 1,100 came from donations of $100 or less, according to the same report. “We’ve put all of our money into a ground game,” Hallquist said. “We have over 300 volunteers in the field, 30 people on staff. And we probably make 10,000 to 12,000 phone calls a night.” Her old-fashioned campaign tactics — phone banking, door-knocking and postcard-writing — are similar to ones that Sanders spearheaded across the country during his 2016 presidential bid. And they have been used by a wave of other progressive candidates running for office this election season, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the democratic socialist who pulled off a stunning primary upset against longtime Democratic congressman Joseph Crowley of New York City. Though Hallquist’s base of support is centered in Vermont, donations have poured in from across the country. Because of her status as the first transgender person to win a major party nomination, national media coverage spiked in the days following her primary win, with profiles in The New York Times and Washington Post. Sanders’s media team in Washington estimated that more than 3,000 news stories were written on Hallquist globally after the primary, in which she won 48 percent of the vote. [pullquote speaker="Christine Hallquist" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]If there’s anything we’ve learned in Vermont and nationally, it’s that we have an underbelly of racism that’s finally exposed itself to white people.[/pullquote] Despite the historic nature of her candidacy and her status as a national role model for transgender youth, Hallquist believes that it is another difficult issue that college students should be paying more attention to: racism. “If there’s anything we’ve learned in Vermont and nationally, it’s that we have an underbelly of racism that’s finally exposed itself to white people,” she said. “People of color have known for a long time that this is a problem that hasn’t been solved.” Hallquist’s progressive platform and activism have also piqued the interest of Middlebury students. The student organization Sunday Night Environmental Group has held phonebanks for her campaign, and last month, the College Democrats hosted an event that featured a documentary made by Hallquist’s son about her transition, accompanied by a Q&A discussion, though this was advertised as an explicitly apolitical event. Regardless of the outcome on Nov. 6, Hallquist’s candidacy will have had a profound impact on not only the LGBTQ community, but the state’s Democratic Party. The legacy of her campaign in Vermont has transcended her status as the first transgender person nominated for governor. With her progressive agenda, she’s pushed for the state’s legislative reality to match the Green Mountain state’s crunchy reputation.
Journalist Sue Halpern on Election Hacking
GINGER ADAMS How secure is U.S. voting, anyway? This debate has been ongoing since the 2016 presidential election, and at its forefront is Middlebury Scholar-in-Residence Sue Halpern. Halpern has been reporting on the question of election security since 2016 for publications like The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. In recent months, She has written about a hacking conference in Las Vegas, a slew of divisive Facebook propaganda emanating from Russia and Breitbart and a contested gubernatorial race in Georgia that raised questions about the state’s voting security. Antiquated voting machines, lack of well-distributed government funding and GOP resistance to address Russian influence have prevented any national progress towards securitization in the last two years. Although she avoids speculation as to how vulnerable the country remains in this upcoming election, Halpern has doggedly worked to illuminate weaknesses in the election system and vulnerabilities in voter data. In an interview with The Campus, Halpern discussed Russian tactics in election meddling, what the U.S. is (or rather, isn’t) doing to counteract foreign influence and how Vermont stacks up in terms of its own voting security measures. Her responses were edited for flow and clarity. What are Russia’s different strategies in its hacking endeavors? The kind of hacking that people were probably most aware of was divisive Facebook infiltration of propaganda. That was all produced in St. Petersburg at a place called the Internet Research Agency. They had people working 24 hours a day pretending to be Americans, tweeting and sending stuff out on Facebook in the U.S. And so that’s a kind of psychological hack that was happening and continues to happen. Then there was a second thing going on, and that was the actual hacking and stealing of emails and documents from various people, particularly Democrats. Some of [these documents] were leaked out strategically through WikiLeaks, particularly John Podesta’s [Hillary Clinton’s main campaign advisor] emails, to undermine the authority of both the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton. They stole these documents from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which laid out the strategy that the Democrats were going to use in the states. The third kind of hacking that happened was the hacking in which the GRU — an intelligence agency of Russia — had agents infiltrate at least 22 American states’ voter registration databases as well as some private companies that oversee and manage American elections. And these three types of hacking were happening simultaneously from different parts of the Russian government. Which strategy do you think can be the most acutely countered by the U.S.? Well, none of them are going to be treated by the American government in the midterm elections. The American government is the Trump administration and Congress, which have absolutely no interest in solving or curbing any of this activity. Within some of the states, there have been efforts to create a more robust cybersecurity defense for their elections, but that is also somewhat problematic. Elections in this country are run through counties, which have a variable amount of money to spend on elections. Obviously, there’s a correlation between economic inequality and the quality of one’s election security. Which is to say that poorer counties that don’t have a lot of money to devote to elections tend to be using older, much more hackable machines. Those counties tend to be in communities that the Republicans, in particular, would like to see not vote. They tend to be Democratic. So, there’s really no concerted effort on the part of the government to do anything about this. Is there anything that’s counteracting Russian meddling, then? The hacks of our mind are on-going on social media, and are pretty unpreventable. We’ve got Facebook hiring 20,000 new fact-checkers, but it’s a bit of a misnomer to call them fact-checkers. A lot of that very insidious divisiveness that we’re seeing on social media will continue just because it’s almost impossible to curb it. Then we’ve got the potential to harden our election system, but that requires both political will and a fairly significant infusion of cash, which itself requires political will, so it’s an unlikely scenario at least right now. Are you seeing a surge among academics and private hackers on the scene, of non-state actors taking initiative in helping the U.S. securitize their election system? Academics, computer scientists and other election integrity advocates have been working very hard for many years. In the year 2000 the election was so highly contested — this was the one with the hanging chads and Bush v. Gore — and it was so destructive to our country that Congress was very clear that they wanted the election systems in this country to be updated. That’s when they first passed HAVA (Help America Vote Act). But, as soon as those fancy new machines were being deployed, computer scientists started to examine them and try to determine how safe they were. So, these academics and lawyers and other interested parties had a tremendous effect, if not on changing particular ways of voting, then on what we know. They haven’t just uncovered problems, they’ve made actual recommendations for how these problems could be overcome. How has the HAVA fund of $380 million been distributed? That money sounds like a lot, and it seems like the government is taking it seriously, but the thing about that money is that it was allocated in 2002 and is only just being released now, and very little of it is going to election machine security. The $380 million, which is allocated in a weird proportional way in each state, didn’t provide any state enough money to entirely replace their machines with more robust ones. So, yes, that money went out there, but there was no rule for what that money had to be used for. If states and counties wanted to use it for putting better locks on the doors of the gym in which elections were going to happen, they could. Because the whole election system is decentralized, there are very few rules for how it needs to be administered, and that extends to that money. Why is the decentralized system of elections in the U.S. always pinned as a point of a security, when it seems to also be a weakness? Do you think the U.S. would ever move to centralize its voting system? Centralization would never happen because there’s a wall between the federal and the state governments. The wall is that states are mandated to run elections. The states are very proprietary about that rule. And so, [centralization] would never happen because it’s a states’ rights issue and it would never be part of anyone’s political future to take that on. In theory, a decentralized system is actually way more secure than a centralized system. If you have a centralized system, you have a very obvious attack surface. In a decentralized system, it’s just a mess. You have to go hither and yon to deal with it. The system, weirdly, is often much more centralized than it appears on first glance. Elections, although they’re run by states and counties, are often administered by private vendors and companies that will run election-management systems for multiple states all at once. And so, they become an attackable surface. Decentralization, then, is a bit of a misnomer. It’s never not going to be run in this somewhat disjointed way, but it’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world. It’s just that that notion that it’s decentralized has been used as an excuse for why we shouldn’t be worried about hacking, and that’s just not true. Was there something novel about the 2016 elections and Trump’s candidacy that made us particularly susceptible to Russian influence? Or do you think the midterm elections are just as vulnerable to foreign meddling? First of all, the kind of psychological hacking that was happening in the 2016 presidential elections started long before then. It was an attempt to begin to slow discord in an attempt to drive a wedge between us. It was certainly in response to Obama’s presidency. So, it’s not correct to say that it was specific to 2016 — it started well before that. With all the Twitter bots, Facebook ads and all of that. And those continue. A lot of that propaganda that began seeping into social media was then picked up by places like Breitbart and the Daily Caller and other outlets that are homegrown, and then they get repeated, and you start seeing things like the Proud Boys and what happened in Charlottesville. So, there’s a viral nature to setting the fuse. Now we have a president whose point is to be divisive. His point is to inflame his base. It matters tremendously who gets elected in these midterms. The kinds of divisiveness that we’re seeing coming from the Trump administration and that are being replicated in places across the country will either be challenged in this election or will be ratified. In some ways, this election is as important, if not more important, than what happened in 2016. Because of the public outcry that’s emerged since the 2016 elections, do you think we’re better off now than we were in 2016? I sort of decided early on in this election cycle that I was never going to read anything that was speculative because it’s just someone’s opinion. I think it’s irresponsible to say, “It’s going to be worse!” or “It’s going to be better!” Because we don’t really know. We don’t know what the Russians are thinking or what they’re capable of, and I think we’d be remiss to imagine that it’s just the Russians who would be interested in messing with our election system. The most we can do is point out where the vulnerabilities are and hope that the people who are in charge of these systems are paying attention. In terms of Vermont, are you personally aware of any securitizing of Vermont elections? Has it been a topic of discussion, or do you think people should be talking more about it here? Vermont is an amazing state in respect to elections. First of all, over 90 percent of eligible voters in Vermont have registered to vote. We are a very democratic state — we care about elections. We’re such a small state that many elections take place in places where I live, in a small town, where we vote on a paper ballot that is put into a ballot box. At the end of the day, a group of citizens volunteers to sit together and count them. Those systems are so remarkably secure because you have a document in front of you, you have 12 people counting together. In that sense, Vermont has a built-in security system. That isn’t to say that larger towns in the state don’t vote on electronic voting machines, they do. But we have a very proactive secretary of state and we have a lot of voting reforms that have occurred in this state that suggest that people here care about elections and are paying attention. So, I’m not very worried. It is a very rare day in Vermont when elections are contested. And that’s the thing in states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan or anywhere where an election is close — that’s where it becomes particularly sticky. That, and where it looks like the registered population coming out of the polls appear to be saying one thing, and the votes are saying something else, that’s suspicious. Those are the places where you really need to be worried, and that does not describe our state.
CROP Hunger Walk: Middlebury Marches to Fight Food Insecurity
[gallery ids="40195,40193,40198,40192,40194,40196,40197"] Students, community members, golden retrievers and President Laurie Patton all gathered on Sunday, Sept. 30 for the CROP Hunger Walk. The nationally organized event’s mission is to fight food insecurity through an annual fundraiser walk. Last week, the Middlebury community gathered to raise money for a slew of local organizations. The seven organizations aided through the fundraising event showcased their missions in thwarting food insecurity through poster boards and volunteer representatives. Ranging from the Charter House Coalition to H.O.P.E. (Helping Overcome Poverty’s Effects), the local non-profits represented have become essential to Middlebury residents. Founded in 1947, CROP was originally an acronym for Christian Rural Overseas Program. Today, the walk has outgrown its Christian roots to be an interfaith and education-based fundraising event embraced by people of varying backgrounds across the country. Community members gathered on the Town Green mid-afternoon Sunday, where President Patton was the honorary chair and speaker. Students of the Middlebury Track and Field team have been notable participants in the last few years, raising thousands of dollars for the event through the organization’s website and repping the team’s gear the day of the event. Following President Patton’s remarks, the crowd began the 2.8-mile route in support of the seven local food shelves and organizations that help thwart hunger in Addison County.
News Tips
At a small institution like Middlebury College, anonymous news tips can be an essential way to investigate stories on campus. Let us know if you think there's an issue you think we should look into. If you're open to being contacted about your tip, please leave your name and email below. This doesn't mean we'd ever publish your name — it just allows us to contact you in case we have questions about your submission. [ninja_form id=2]
Power Outage Hits College Night Before Classes; Causes Flashlight Party
A power outage struck the college and parts of town Monday, plunging students here into darkness the night before the first day of classes. The outage occurred just before 10 p.m., when a fallen branch struck utility equipment on the portion of Weybridge Street between Shannon Street and Murdock Court. Within the span of a few minutes, the power came back on, but then went out again for more than an hour. According to Michael Moser, director of the college’s facilities services, the outage left the entire campus without electricity. The damage originated at the local substation, not on the college campus, and so the staff in Facilities Services did not immediately know the cause of the problem. “A branch went down on some lines and knocked out power to about 600 customers,” said Kristin Kelly, the director of communications at Green Mountain Power, the electrical company from which the college sources its power. GMP was able to restore electricity to the college by 11:36 p.m. that night. Some students described hearing a jarring sound just before the lights cut out. Leena Chawla ’19.5, was walking across the field between Shannon and Weybridge Streets at the time. She was thus one of the closest people to the scene of the downed tree limb. “There was a loud explosion sound and a flash of light before everything went completely dark,” Chawla said. “The power briefly came back on, and then the same explosion and light flash happened again before the power was out for a longer chunk of time.” During the outage, Lisa Burchard, the director of Public Safety, was tasked with keeping the campus community up to date through a series of emails. The local substation, located at Marble Works, is responsible for distributing electricity across the region through transmissions. When interfered with, disrupted substations can result in an electricity shortage to a region. The college last experienced an electrical outage this summer on July 4. In preparation for outages, Moser explained that 15 buildings on campus have emergency generators in place. “These machines provide backup power to critical systems in these facilities,” Moser said, referencing heating as one such critical system. Situated in Vermont, the college makes maintaining heat through the harsh winters a top priority. Facilities has full emergency power designated to the Central Heating Plant in the event that the campus loses electricity. Student responses to the blackout were mixed. Some students were scrambling to finish assignments on laptops that were low power, while others found it quaint to breach the fire code for the evening and illuminate their dorm rooms with candles. One first-year, Samara Scharf, said that the lack of light evolved into a makeshift social event in her dorm. “The hall ended up having a mini-flashlight party,” she said.
Notes from a day at the Vermont Cheesemakers Festival
[gallery size="full" ids="39374,39373,39375,39376,39377,39378,39379,39380,39381,39382,39383,39384,39385,39390"] We spotted the marker of the day’s purpose to the left of the giant stone gates, a sign inscribed in black Sharpie: “Cheese Festival SOLD OUT." We had decided some weeks before that a summer spent in Vermont called for a quintessential end. Attending the 10th Annual Vermont Cheesemaker’s Festival was our celebratory send-off. I had been studying French at one of the college’s language schools when I learned of the cheese event and immediately thought of my friend Griffin — a fellow French student, cheese lover, and a begrudging lactose intolerant. I sent him a text message with a picture of the poster, a quasi-ironic invitation that somehow evolved into our investing a New York-music-festival amount of money, all to indulge in a ritual well-suited to the state with the highest number of cheesemakers per capita. The event was held at Shelburne Farms, which sits on 1,400 acres overlooking Lake Champlain. We quickly came to the realization that the ticket price wasn’t the only element of the Cheesemaker’s Festival that mimicked a music festival: with deft arm movements, volunteers directed vehicles to park in meticulous rows while colorful wristbands indicated the various tiers of prestige. The leisurely hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. left many festival goers, like ourselves, rolling into the event about an hour late; sampling cheeses and ciders for six hours on a humid mid-August day seemed like overkill. The shuttle bus rattled over the estate’s dirt paths, guiding us along the lake to the cavernous Coach Barn, a temporary temple of cheese. Dismounting the bus, we promptly received a branded tote bag and glasses for sampling wine and beer throughout the day. Entering the first of two steamy tents and overtly overwhelmed, we were approached by an enthusiastic volunteer. “Not sure where to start?” he inquired. Nope, no idea. Hoping he would tell us there was some structure to the swarms of people flooding the nearly 200 vendors, we were told instead that there wasn’t a clear way to tackle the crowds or the cheese. “I’d suggest heading to a corner and just working your way through,” he offered. We started at the far right with Jasper Hill Farm. The Northeast Kingdom producer is renowned for its on-site “cellars,” a 22,000-square-foot underground facility devoted to cheese maturation, also known as affinage. Its selection of a dozen cheeses ranged from the spoonable Harbison, a runny substance swaddled in strips of the innermost layer of tree bark to the nutty Haley Bazen Blue, which I deemed one of the day’s frontrunners. Despite the volunteer’s advice, the crowd was no more penetrable at the far end of the tent. Fifteen minutes in, we had already brushed against a few too many sweaty shoulders for our liking. The aisles were congested and the cheese patrons overly excited. It was the dairy equivalent of a mosh pit. But I was undeterred. My lifelong love affair with cheese dates to my earliest months. My first two-word combination, in fact, was “more cheese,” and by age four, I was attacking tubs of cream cheese with a spoon. In middle school, while other kids were stuck on Swiss and American, I was consuming ripe slabs of sheep’s milk cheese from the Hudson Valley and stinky rounds of aged goat from southern France. Despite my amorous relationship with cheese, I was out of my league here. This event was filled with professional cheese purveyors who had come from across the country to sample potential candidates for their shelves. As we ducked out of the tent in search of fresh air, we made our way into the Coach Barn, which had workshops and seminars led by experts in the field. Intrigued, I leaned through the doorway during “The Future of Cheese with Rory Stamp,” only to hear him discussing something along the lines of “prime time cheddaring.” Other seminars included “Cheese Science 101” and “What is a Cheesemonger?” The festival went well beyond cheese and beer to encompass other forms of dairy. In the courtyard of the Coach Barn, Griffin and I stumbled upon a homemade butter demonstration. Gripping clear, round basins, children churned handles round and round, turning cream into butter. A woman behind the stand offered us sweet-peppercorn and chive butter created moments earlier. Of course, if anything can reinvigorate two overwhelmed cheese tourists, it is soft butter and fresh air. We were finally ready to head back into the tent. This time, we had a clear goal of finding the makings for a picnic. We spotted Red Hen Baking’s stand, a bakery located just outside of Montpelier, and were instantly allured by the bread’s offbeat ingredients. The company adds polenta or potatoes to bolster flavor and texture. Adjacent to Red Hen Baking’s stand, family-owned Parish Hill Creamery handed out cheese samples while explaining the unique source of its milk. Co-owners Rachel Schall and Peter Dixon use cream produced at the Putney School’s farm. In keeping with the school’s philosophy, students not only study agriculture but also handle chores on the farm, which include milking cows. That leaves them with a surplus of fresh milk. Parish Hill transforms this raw milk into memorable cheeses, with whimsical names like Humble, Reverie and West-West Blue. After sampling a dozen more cheeses, we were feeling more than a little sated as the crowds began to thin. At this pause in the action, Griffin remembered to take another lactaid pill. Then we walked past the V.I.P. area where we spied a man, semi-comatose, sprawled on a lawn chair sleeping with his mouth wide open. Hoping to avoid the same fate, we walked toward the lake. As the buzz of cheesemongers faded into the background, the lake’s surface mirrored the gathering clouds above. Griffin waded in up to his knees and, without saying a word, dunked his head in the water.
Subscribe
To receive at-home delivery of The Campus, register through Middlebury College's bookstore here. Through a subscription, readers are able to access in-print coverage of Middlebury College and its surrounding community. Subscriptions help support the mission of the college's only student-run newspaper and allow alumni, parents and prospective students gain insight into breaking news and in-depth coverage of the Middlebury community.
Masthead
[one_third] Editor in Chief Bochu Ding Managing Editors Hattie LeFavour Riley Board Digital Director Emmanuel Tamrat Business Manager Shaye Anis Editors at Large Caroline Kapp Sadie Housberg Hannah Bensen Nora Peachin Benjy Renton [/one_third][one_third] News Desk Abbie Chang* Jake Gaughan Tony Sjodin Sophia McDermott-Hughes Local Desk Lucy Townend* Ariadne Will Becca Amen Kenzo Okazaki Ideal Dowling Jack Summersby Arts & Culture Desk Owen Mason-Hill* Emily Ballou Acadia Klepeis Eliza King Freedman Opinion Desk Porter Bowman* Lily Laesch Constance Gooding Micaela Gayner Daleelah Saleh Nic Pantelick Sarah Miller Sports Desk Blaise Siefer* Erin Kelly Brinlea La Barge Isabella Marcus [/one_third][one_third_last] Photos Van Barth* Max Padilla Soph Charron Shirley Mao Visuals Sarah Fagan* Sean Rhee Sabrina Templeton Pia Contreras Data Desk Hannah Bensen* Benjy Renton Online Emmanuel Tamrat* Sophie Hiland Christopher Fridlington Mihir Singh Communications Estelle Martin Copy Editing Becca Amen Avalena Baird Leander Ruhl Layout Cheryl Engmann Audio Caroline King Jeremy Navarro Sadie Housberg Video Augie Schultz [/one_third_last] * Section senior editor.
The Opinion pages of The Middlebury Campus provide a forum for constructive and respectful dialogue on substantive issues. The opinions expressed by contributors to the Opinions section, as well as reviews, columns, editorial comics and other commentary, are views of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the newspaper.