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(02/29/24 11:02am)
On the plush red seats of Axinn 232, attendees perched last week for a screening of “Human Flow,” Ai Weiwei’s 2017 visual exploration of human displacement. Co-sponsored by the Middlebury College Museum of Art and Middlebury History of Art and Architecture department, the event drew a mix of community members and students seated inconspicuously at the back of the room.
(01/25/24 11:04am)
The arrival of the Takács Quartet, heralded by The New York Times as “one of the world’s greatest string quartets,” has been highly anticipated since the group’s genre-bending performance as a part of the Middlebury Performing Arts Series nearly two years ago. The group made its return to campus with two performances at the Mahaney Arts Center, on Friday, Jan. 19 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Jan. 21 at 2 p.m..
(05/05/22 9:57am)
On Sunday, May 1 — on the holiday known as May Day and International Workers’ Day — a large crowd gathered outside Hannaford supermarket in Middlebury to promote Milk with Dignity, a Migrant Justice program in support of migrant dairy workers. They held signs reading “The Cows Don’t Milk Themselves” and “I Am An Essential Worker,” alongside homemade signs in both English and Spanish. Chants of “Si se puede!" (“Yes we can!”) rose in full voice from the assembly, which included farm workers, local Middlebury residents and Middlebury students.
(12/09/21 3:27pm)
(10/28/21 10:00am)
The heart of Addison County is aged and well worn. Past the pumpkin spice storefronts, oreo cows and paint-chipped houses dotting the hills lies an ancient site with stories to tell. It is the color of rain-dampened sugar maples and ginger leaves, trampled to a fine pulp on the forest floor. It smells of moss and walnuts left to rot under a blanket of fresh snow. The heart of Addison County is fire-singed and beaten by the steel-toed boots of men, unaware of the clouds grimacing from above. We call it Snake Mountain. Locals call it cryptic, beautiful and home.
(09/30/21 9:58am)
“It’s like walking around a museum, looking at the few trees that survive.”
Jay Leshinsky, Middlebury’s first Garden Advisor, stands rooted to the lush Knoll on which he worked for 15 years. Throughout his time in the garden and long before, Middlebury’s ash trees have stood firmly and proudly along the Vermont hillside. Now, they are under threat of extinction. The culprit? The Emerald Ash Borer (commonly known as “EAB”), an invasive, deceptively beautiful green beetle that has, over the course of almost 20 years, extirpated America’s ash trees from much of the country.
The ash is one of the most common large trees in the northeastern United States. They can grow up to 115 feet tall (35 meters) and can live for up to 200 years, but you might know them from their “helicopter” seeds that spin their way to the ground each fall. The most common species in eastern Vermont is the White Ash; these trees tower over our campus and the town of Middlebury. They provide shade for students lounging outside of Davis, nesting sites for birds, which feed upon their fallen seeds, and respite for our campus’ beloved grey squirrels.
In a matter of years, these giants may be dead or entirely erased from Middlebury’s landscape.
The Emerald Ash Borer enters ash trees from openings in their bark and eats the inner tissues of the tree, destroying its channels for transporting water and nutrients. In less than four years, even the oldest and largest ash will die.
The beetle affects all eighteen US-native species of ash, as well as the White Fringe tree. It was first discovered in Detroit in 2001 and has since spread across the entirety of eastern North America, wiping out massive ash populations. Vermont is one of America’s last ash localities to be affected by EAB, the current range having spread through ten confirmed counties, including Addison.
Emmet Schmehling ’24 remembers finding afflicted ash branches in the woods around his childhood home in Caledonia, Michigan. Carved into each was a unique pattern of lines, bored into the wood by the vandal like a calling card.
“I always thought that they were some artifact from people long ago or a carving from somebody, not realizing what it actually was,” Schmeling said.
The state of Vermont is known to have been monitoring traps for EAB since 2013, according to Ginger Nickerson of the Vermont Urban and Community Forestry Program, an organization that works in conjunction with the University of Vermont and the local governments to educate the public about the state’s forests. EAB was first detected in central Vermont in December of 2018, and the state has since deployed several measures for monitoring the invasive pest. Most notably, condensed groups of ash trees have been inoculated against the beetle using an injected pesticide. This method, while effective, is not very feasible or practical when applied to larger ash stands.
Additionally, state officials have released parasitoid wasps in specified areas, which target EAB larvae. The wasps are part of a larger effort to combat the beetle using biocontrol, or the introduction of natural predators to eliminate a known pest. Although the EAB is not expected to be completely eradicated, the release of these wasps into more intensely affected areas has been effective in slowing its spread.
The crisis facing Middlebury’s ash trees is not a unique event. In particular, it is reminiscent of the American Chestnut blight, which all but eradicated the “Redwoods of the East'' in the early 1900s, and the Dutch Elm disease which continues to threaten America’s elms. Twenty-eight such elms stand firmly across Middlebury’s campus, maintained through regular inoculations. Part of Vermont’s, and possibly the East Coast’s, largest ongoing collection of old elms, some are over 90 feet tall and over 150 years old. There is no telling whether the methods used to protect the elms will prove to be effective in shielding our ash trees, but nonetheless efforts are being made to save these great environmental landmarks.
Tim Parsons points excitedly around campus from where he stands, outside McCullough Plaza.
“There’s one there… one there… a big one there,” he said.
Parsons has spearheaded Middlebury’s efforts against EAB since it first threatened campus 10 years ago. In the meantime, he has worked alongside the college and its students to map Middlebury’s ash population, marking those in “high risk” areas. If an ash tree is more than 25% dead, it becomes entirely unpredictable. It can break or fall over, so Parsons and his crew have no choice but to remove it. This is a major difference between ash and elm, Parsons explained. Elm is a strongwood, so it can be dead and stand for ten or twenty years without falling, whereas ash cannot be trusted to stay upright. Further, Parsons explained, elms are capable of reproducing long before they are susceptible to Dutch Elm disease, so we'll always have our elms. On the other hand, Parsons said that “EAB will kill an ash before it reaches a reproductive age, so we could very likely lose all of them.”
As bleak as this situation may seem, Middlebury does not plan to let its ash trees die without a fight.
“We have been talking about this for about 10 years now,” Parsons said, “About eight or nine years ago, the state of Vermont did a test plan for towns to use as a template to start to prepare for EAB. We took the draft of this plan and used it for the town of Middlebury, and about two years later, we used that same plan for our school.”
Of the two or three hundred ash trees on Middlebury’s campus, Parsons has inoculated 40 with a pesticide that kills EAB and prevents decay.
“For those forty trees, from what I’ve read it’s been really effective,” he said. “I do 20 trees each year and the inoculation lasts for two years, so I alternate. But those 20 trees take two, three, four days to do all of the injections, so to do all two or three hundred campus trees would just be huge. We just don’t have the resources to save all of them.”
A quick search of go/EAB will land you on a page with detailed maps and information about EAB and Middlebury’s ash trees. However, it hasn’t been updated in years.
“Like the rest of the school, we’re shorthanded in our department,” Parsons explained.
He remains the only person on campus with the pesticide license needed to inoculate the trees. Thinking ahead, Parsons imagines using the wood salvaged from downed ash trees as fuel for the school’s biomass plant, acknowledging that infested wood will be unusable and would have no commercial value.
“People don’t realize how much space these trees take up, so we need to plan ahead before they become a ‘problem,’” he said.
To this end, the Town of Middlebury recently received a grant from the state of Vermont to be used for the removal of ash trees and their replacement with 28 to 35 trees of various species.
“When ash dies, I don’t know if folks are prepared for what it will look like.”
A simple glance up at the Green Mountains on a fall day reveals a forest ablaze with a palette of reds and oranges, yellows and greens. In a couple of years, ten to fifteen percent of those trees will be grey, un-blossoming ghosts. We are in the calm before a violent storm that will permanently alter Vermont’s landscape, and the hills will be speckled with grey before long. On our own campus, ashes tend to stand in clusters, so although they account for only ten percent of our trees, their disappearance will seem much worse.
“I’m really scared about what might come into the holes that the ash will leave,” Parsons said. “In an ideal world, all of those holes will fill in with oak or sugar maple, or nice high-value trees. My fear is that all of these holes will get choked out by invasive plants and trees that you don’t want, and will spread from there.”
There is no saying exactly what will happen or how campus will respond to the arrival of the Emerald Ash Borer, but Parsons, backed by an abundance of passionate students, is determined to play his cards right.
“I’ve been yelling about this for years now. That’s my big takeaway: regardless of where I am on campus, I can point to an ash tree. It will have to come down,” he said.
Thanks to important work from people like Tim Parsons, Ginger Nickerson of the Vermont Urban and Community Forestry Program at UVM, and the Middlebury Tree Committee, Middlebury is prepared for the worst. For the protection and preservation of Middlebury’s Ash trees, it is necessary to detect the pest as soon as possible. Signs of EAB infestation include the emergence of adult green beetles in late May to early June, split bark, S-shaped tunnels behind the outer bark, D-shaped exit holes (about ⅛ inch wide) on the bark surface, woodpecker damage (often called “flecking”), dead top branches, and leafy offshoots from the lower trunk of the tree (per Town of Middlebury).
If signs of infestation can be seen, it’s advised to take photos and report the site to Vermont Invasives (VTInvasives.com). To prevent the spread of EAB, the state of Vermont advises against the transportation of firewood and infested ash wood. For more information on the Emerald Ash Borer, visit go/EAB, the Town of Middlebury, or the USDA online.
(05/13/21 9:56am)
Middlebury’s campus is deceptively large, and a walk from Lang Hall to Mahaney can take anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes. If you live in Allen or Atwater, a trip to get a Covid-19 test is a major event that requires your best walking shoes. To shorten the commute from place to place on campus, students have gotten creative about how to get around.
For example — albeit rare — roller skaters, with their colorful wheels jutting out from the soles of their feet, can sometimes be spotted on Middlebury’s flatter terrain. The same can be said for the few who choose to sport Heelys, the iconic shoe brand with built in wheels in the heel of each shoe.
Isabeau Trimble ’24.5 bought their pair a month before leaving their home in southern Virginia. “Not without my mother’s disapproval,” Trimble added. “Although it’s very fun, and people on campus love it.”
However, there aren’t many places on campus that are conducive to Heely activity. Trimble claimed that their Heelys are perfect for sunny weather and on smooth surfaces, but their use can quickly come to an end when conditions get rough. And when rain falls, there is a high chance that their wearers will, too.
Rain is a common enemy for all who rely on wheeled transport. Wet conditions can cause corrosive rust to form on metal and eliminate the traction of rubber, making steep hills treacherous.
For bikers, rain is less of a danger but still limits their capabilities. “I would go on trails if the weather was clear,” Sarah Kimmel ’24 said.
On our campus, some students have also found a way to hop, spin and kickflip their way over the fine line between transportation and art. Abraham Merino ’24 has a reputation as “the scooter guy,” news which has spread from Stewart to Bicentennial Hall. Merino, from Los Angeles, has been scootering since 2014 and said that he’s happy with the attention and the nickname he’s received.
“I have a mustache, but I can’t show it off because I’m always wearing a mask,” Merino explained. “I’m happy to still be able to express my personality through scootering.” His scooter holds the power to transform any dry surface into a playground and, of course, to get him across campus in the blink of an eye. “I couldn’t make it very long without it,” he said. Always learning new tricks, Merino can be seen outside Battell and throughout campus sliding, jumping and spinning over the day’s obstacles.
There are often heated debates about which dining hall is the best. Regardless of your own opinion, it’s safe to say that Proctor has the best entertainment. On an average sunny day, skateboarders can be seen attempting the most daring jumps and tricks, flying down staircases and sliding across railings. Noe Horiwaki ’21 and Johan Wichterle ’23 both grew up in New York City and attended the same middle school and high school. Now, they skate together on a makeshift skate park outside Proctor.
“The hilly campus is perfect for skating,” said Horiwaki. “Skateboarding makes travel around campus really fast. It’s great for going to get Covid tested.”
However, the transition from New York City skate parks to Proctor has led to some disappointment. As Wichterle put it, “without a practical way to express ourselves, it’s like having basketball practice but never playing a game.”
Despite the limitations, skating at Middlebury has become more popular than ever. Quarantine boredom and curiosity led to many students picking it up over the summer and some brought their boards to campus with them. “As cliché as it sounds, there’s always something new to learn. We keep falling and getting back up again,” Witchterle said.
On the college’s wide, hilly campus, many have found ways to ease their daily commutes. Whether on a bike, a scooter, Heelys or roller skates, students make the most of their transportation. A tool used to get places faster can quickly become a form of self-expression. And in an era characterized by isolation, Middlebury is more mobile than ever.
Editor’s Note: This article primarily focuses on the transportation modes of people who do not live with a physical disability. We acknowledge that this does not encompass all members of our community. We hope that the college campus becomes more physically accessible in the coming years and are committed to spotlighting issues related to accessibility.
(02/04/21 10:57am)
On Jan. 6, I watched an attempted coup spurred by online conspiracy theories unfold at the nation’s Capitol; two weeks later, I began the J-Term class “Online Extremism: Theory, Research, and Practice.”
Instructed by Alex Newhouse ’17, the research lead at MIIS’ Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, “Online Extremism” offers lessons about the dangerous extremist groups that plague the online underworld and the increasing importance of exercising caution on the internet.
I was fewer than 10 miles away from the insurrection at home, and in the days that followed, I rode my bike through the dirt paths of Rock Creek Park and onto the National Mall, where I watched armed officers exchange uneasy glances from behind a newly erected fence. The newspapers told of white supremacist online forums and infamous conspiracy theories spread by QAnon. At the heart of the Capitol riot was the internet and the lie that it spread: that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump. In “Online Extremism,” we’ve unraveled this thesis to understand the history of online extremist groups and the platforms that have allowed digital hate to transform into real-world violence.
On Jan. 27, the Department of Homeland Security released the first national terrorism bulletin about domestic terrorists, raising the question of why the consideration of domestic threats is such a new development. Since 9/11, the term “terrorism” has been mainly associated with Islamist extremists and Salafi-Jihadists, but there are other terroristic threats that have gone uninvestigated, and even unacknowledged, by our government in recent history. These hidden extremists are not really hidden at all. The internet has made it easy for them to spread messages of hate, misogyny, racism and xenophobia. Newhouse’s course teaches us where to look and what tools to use to prevent these online threats from intensifying and expanding beyond the internet.
In our hybrid learning environment, we use websites like Discord and YouTube to listen to lectures and engage in nuanced conversations. We discuss the dangers of online rabbit holes and notable extremist organizations — as well as how to identify them. We explore the terminology used by Neo-Nazis and the lax efforts by social media giants to restrict the spread of hate. We talk about what’s going right in the fight against terror and what needs to change (spoiler: a lot).
Sometimes, topics of discussion fall right into our laps. Another bomb defused; another plot unveiled. This is what makes the class so necessary: its relevance. Every day, the consequences of online extremism are evident, whether or not they’re on the front page of your favorite newspaper. What we’re learning is how to protect ourselves from the dangers of the internet, and how to protect others in the process.
(10/22/20 9:59am)
Clover Magazine, Middlebury’s only student-run fashion publication, aims to serve as an outlet for the stylish mind within academia. By snooping around their website, you'd get the impression that it has been around since more than six people could be in a room at the same time, but it was founded this summer by Karinne Aguirre ’21 and Madison Brito ’21.5.
According to its website, the magazine was founded as a platform for students “to think critically on the world of fashion within our own boundaries and on a global stage, provide an outlet to capture and create new forms of sartorial expression and redefine what New England fashion can be.”
Clover's current all-women staff, selected through an online application process, was cemented last summer. Each member has their own distinct passions, ranging from embroidery to portrait writing. The team is always accepting new members.
In consultation with their writers, the founders made the decision to adopt a blog-style publication method. Article topics are decided at a monthly meeting and subsequently released on a regular schedule, with a few days between posts. This way, according to Brito, the magazine is "more casual, more reader friendly and more honest."
"It's a snapshot of the times in which we live," Brito said. "We're not skirting around uncomfortable topics and writing about what we think the readers want, instead of what they actually want to read."
The magazine’s content focuses on the fashion world’s complexity. “Fashion has a more profound meaning. It's hard to pinpoint, but fashion as a way of expression became more interesting to me over time. There's a lot to be said about it," Aguirre said.
“How the Pandemic Changed my Relationship to Fashion” by Meili Huang ’23 is an example of how the magazine offers students a new blend of artistic and cognitive expression. The piece provides a thoughtful and multi-faceted assessment of fashion in the Covid-19 era as observed through the lens of Huang.
Clover seeks to place itself in the conversations that explore the role of fashion in the global community and how it affects the lives of students. In the months and years to come, Brito and Aguirre want to go far. Aguirre has dreams of modeling. She sees herself on the runway, sporting the outfits she loves to write about and exploring fashion behind the scenes. In her words, she wants to explore "clothes in motion."
Brito wants to work in publishing. Understanding her natural writing ability and appreciative of the instruction she's received at the college, she hopes to find her home in a publishing house. As for the future of Clover, they see an opportunity for growth.
“Everyone contributes to [fashion], consciously or not,” Aguirre said.