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(03/07/19 10:59am)
Freelance journalist Abe Streep ’04 received the $100,000 American Mosaic Journalism prize last month for his coverage of marginalized communities in the American West. The prize, in its second year, is awarded annually to two journalists who have demonstrated excellence in longform reporting about misrepresented communities in the United States.
Streep’s award-winning coverage includes a New York Times feature about a high-school basketball team from the Flathead Indian Reservation that experienced a wave of suicides and a Harpers Magazine piece about a Syrian refugee family settling into a new community in Montana. Judges praised these stories for shedding light on the diverse cultures that layer this often-misrepresented section of the country.
“Abe Streep’s reporting bursts with compassion and urgency as he lifts up stories of often-overlooked communities in the American West,” the judging panel wrote. “With great sensitivity, his work reveals the rich tapestry of cultures and lives that intersect in a part of the country far too often characterized by the stereotypes of an urban-rural divide.”
The prize is funded by the Californian Heising-Simons Foundation, and is awarded based on confidential nominations from journalism leaders across the country. Each year, two recipients receive the $100,000 prize with hopes that the funding will help them continue working as freelance journalists — a difficult profession to eke out a living, but one that plays a critical role in the exposure of diverse stories and perspectives.
A panel of 10 judges, composed of reporters, freelance journalists, professors and former award recipients, selected Streep and Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah as winners. Ghansah won last year’s Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her profile of Dylann Roof, the Charleston Church shooter, which was published in GQ. She has also written articles on figures such as Toni Morrison, Missy Elliott and Kendrick Lamar.
Sue Halpern, a scholar-in-residence at the college who once taught Streep in a magazine-writing course, has remained friends with Streep since he left Middlebury. She commended the award for its capacity to motivate writers and give them the freedom to continue their work.
“A prize like this, first of all, gives other writers the motivation and the confidence to find stories worth telling that may not be on the radar of establishment editors,” Halpern said. “It gives writers who are lucky enough to win this kind of prize the freedom to go out and do that kind of reporting and that kind of writing. It gives them the freedom to fail, to find the right story but the freedom to go out and look for it which isn’t usually available to writers.”
In a short video produced about Streep after his selection, Streep said that he focuses on power dynamics and the lasting impact of history, using longform journalism to go deeper into the stories he is investigating. He noted that this can require careful attention.
“Being an outsider and writing someone else’s story is a really delicate process,” he said in the video. “But what I try to do is to spend enough time that I can let that person be a real person on the page. A complicated person. And to be responsible to them.”
During his time at Middlebury and briefly after, Streep was involved with the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, both as a participant and as a visiting editor.
“He was really terrific in his role because one of the wonderful things about Abe — and it’s not surprising for a journalist — is that he’s a really good listener,” said Michael Collier, who directed the Bread Loaf conference from 1994 to 2017. “He’s not just going to put himself forward right away. He has a really good sense about how to be in a group and how to listen to people. So he was really successful as a visiting editor because of that.”
Beyond his writing, Streep was actively engaged across campus during his time at the college. He transferred to Middlebury from Yale after his first semester and was an American Literature major.
According to a 2003 article in The Campus, Streep was a right fielder on the baseball team, a violinist and mandolin player for a student band called the Rt. & Ramblers and an avid flyfisher in his spare time. As a part of his band, he also spent two summers touring with Circus Smirkus across the Northeast.
“We tour with the circus and live in an old school bus,” Streep said in the article. “And we’re buying our bus, a 36-foot school bus, at the end of the summer for $1.”
Streep has expressed his gratitude to the foundation that awards the American Mosaic journalism prize, as well as to the Abdullah’s and the Arlee Community, the subjects of his recent writing.
(10/04/18 9:52am)
Dartmouth Professor Dr. Andrew A. Samwick predicted a looming economic recession and proposed a four-pronged plan to correct our fiscal and tax policies in a lecture on Sept. 26th. Samwick also explained the decisions contributing to this current economic state to a packed conference room in the Robert A. Jones house,
As evidence of the coming economic downturn, Samwick pointed to the perpetual gap we have between costs and revenues as well as the lasting deficit of 4-5% coming in future years.
“We’ve never had a year where deficits are so low and so are unemployment rates,” Samwick said. “Projections are showing that our economy is headed even further in that direction with no signs of getting better, indicating that a recession is probably coming. In sum, we’re not collecting enough revenues to cover our expenditures.”
Samwick analyzed the flaws in three different plans to adjust economic activity and proposed a plan that he suggests could work. This plan is built on four planks.
First, Samwick suggested balancing the budget. He emphasized that the non-entitlement part of our budget should be in balance and that the ratio of debt to GDP should show no large drift over time.
Next, Samwick suggested entitlement solvency. He stated that long term entitlements should be projected to be sustainable in solvency. Samwick suggested that social security would be rather easy to change as it’s simply moving money around, but medicare involves more care since the program itself is built around care rather than simple money moving. As evidence to support his claim for entitlement solvency, Samwick argued that the baby boomer generation cannot be the only problem that has lead us to where we are, seeing as the problem will still exist longer term beyond the scope of impact of the baby boom generation.
In his third plank, Samwick called for capital budgeting to address the long term infrastructure needs of both remediation and building for the future. He said that our government would be far more productive with a prioritized list of projects rather than a full budget. With a list of projects including everything from small to large projects, every project will be ready for work when the next economic downturn hits.
Finally, Samwick suggested re-examining the tax composition. He said that corporate and personal income taxes have the most negative consequences for growth while consumption and property taxes are less harmful. According to Samwick, this suggests that a shift in 1 percent from corporation and personal income taxes to consumption and property taxes estimates around .25-1 percent growth of GDP per capita long term.
Samwick ended his lecture on a hopeful note that our generation will make positive changes to economic policy in the year to come.
The talk was attended by three economics classes as well as many people from the town.
Following the lecture, the organizing Professor Phani Wunnava hosted a dinner in honor of Dr. Samwick. Professor Wunnava stated that “Dr. Samwick was very engaging!”
(03/08/18 12:39am)
In the wake of another school shooting, Dick’s Sporting Goods has taken steps to limit their sale of firearms. On Feb. 28, the company committed to no longer sell firearms to customers under the age of 21 and has eliminated their sale of assault style weapons.
In 2012, following the Sandy Hook school shooting, Dick’s also removed assault style weapons from their main stores and began selling them exclusively at their 35 remaining Field & Stream stores, a subsidiary of Dick’s Sporting Goods that specializes in outdoor activities.
The update to the policy comes following the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 students, teachers and staff and thrust gun control controversies back into the national spotlight. On a more local level, such a policy could have prevented a high-schooler from Rutland, Vermont, from purchasing the gun he intended to use in a foiled school shooting plan three weeks ago.
Dick’s released a statement saying that they “support and respect the Second Amendment” but believe that “the systems in place are not effective to protect our kids and our citizens.” The sports store decided to take initiative and put into effect the change they hope to see in legislation in the years to come.
Following similar courses of action, other big corporations such as Walmart and L.L.Bean also required purchasers of assault-style weapons to be 21. The changes in policy drew lots of attention as public figures, including many Hollywood actors and actresses, weighed in on Twitter. An article in The New York Times cited a statistic that “by midday, the number of Twitter messages containing Dick’s name had jumped 12,000 percent from the average over the previous ten days,” with about 79 percent of those tweets conveying positive sentiments.
However, local gun store owners in Vermont were disenchanted, though not surprised, with the corporate decisions. Jim Dattilio, owner of Dattilio’s Guns & Tackle in South Burlington said in an interview with The Burlington Free Press that “they’re a bunch of cowards,” and Henry Parro, owner of Parro’s Gun Shop and Police Supplies in Waterbury was not surprised, stating that Dick’s “has no passion for firearms,” and is mostly in it for the money.
The shared sentiment seemed to be that this would not affect business for local gun stores as they serve a more niche market than Dick’s. If anything, the policy change means that those under 21 would now turn to local stores in order to purchase assault-style weapons.
Conscious consumers have begun to vocalize their support of further gun control by conducting “shop-ins,” at stores such as Dick’s that have agreed to change their gun policies. In addition, many are staging boycotts against companies such as Amazon, Apple, and YouTube that have not thus far severed their relationship offering discounts to the NRA.
Students have also taken on an influential voice in nationwide protests that have caught the attention of corporate heads and legislators alike. One of the reasons that Edward Stack, chief executive of Dick’s Sporting Goods, cited in a press releasefor the change in policy was that “[we] love these kids and their rallying cry ‘enough is enough.’ It got to [us].” He also hoped to bring the fight beyond the social media sphere and turn it into legislative change. In his media statement, he implored for “elected officials to enact common sense gun reform.”
In a surprising shift in stance, Gov. Phil Scott and President Donald Trump recently made statements encouraging changes in gun control policy while reaffirming their support of the second amendment. Gov. Scott said that he is “committed to working with legislative leaders to identify policy changes that may better ensure the safety of our children and all Vermonters. That includes better identifying and treating mental health needs and other root causes of violence, determining why so many children slip through the cracks; and having an open conversation about gun safety.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy released a statement reaffirming his staunch support of gun control as “a leading voice in the Senate for common sense reforms to reduce gun violence and make communities safer.”