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(02/27/20 11:00am)
Not all college students have an easy time voting in their school’s state. During recent election cycles, politicians in New Hampshire, Texas and Florida made conscious efforts to suppress the student vote — everything from enacting voter-suppression laws to shutting down polling stations convenient for college-aged voters.
In Vermont, we’re lucky. Relatively speaking, students choosing to participate in local politics face few roadblocks to civic engagement. Town halls and elections are readily accessible. In fact, Vermont’s same-day online registration allows any Middlebury student with a U.S. passport and proof of residence to cast a ballot with virtually no prior planning. With the March 3 elections approaching fast, this ability assumes immediate importance.
Next week, we have two important political days in rapid succession: March 2 and 3. On March 2, communities come together on Vermont Town Meeting Day to elect local officials, approve an annual budget and discuss town issues. March 3 marks Super Tuesday, when 14 states and one territory hold their nomination contests, collectively determining a third of the delegates for the Democratic National Convention over the course of a single day.
In light of these fast-approaching days, we’re calling for all Middlebury students to vote, and to do so consciously, wherever you do it.
Many students feel strongly about sending absentee ballots back home. Students from swing states, for instance, might feel their votes matter more there. Others cast their votes in attempts to either oust or maintain current leadership. And many may simply choose to vote in the state they grew up in, and continue to consider “home.”
And yet there are compelling reasons to vote in the Green Mountain State too, beyond logistical voting accessibility. The state’s scale — with only 600,000 residents — and long tradition of split-ticket voting make Vermont idyllic to begin one’s political engagement. Vermont’s size places emphasis on local politics and town hall meetings that have open doors to students.
Politically, it is well known that residents of Vermont tend to “vote their conscience” as opposed to along party lines. As the rest of the country has become increasingly polarized, Vermont has managed to maintain common ground between parties, as voters regularly swing from Democrat to Republican depending on any given candidates’ platform. The lack of political divide allows students to think critically about the issues as opposed to being swept in the tide of blue or red.
Still, voting in Vermont shouldn’t be taken lightly, and votes on Vermont-related issues should be cast with intentional research and consideration. While ballot questions about flood-resilience measures or funding for the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity might not directly impact the lives of students on Middlebury’s campus, they represent vital issues for the surrounding community.
Anyone who can vote should vote, regardless of location. For many Middlebury students, that entails mailing a pre-requested absentee ballot back to their home state. For others, that means taking advantage of same-day registration in Vermont, and showing up to the Middlebury Recreation Center between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on March 3. In either case, however, we ask that students to engage purposefully with the issues behind their ballot.
If you are voting in Middlebury next week, check out our guide here.
(02/20/20 11:00am)
Touring Middlebury, prospective students are told to be excited about J-term. “January is a chance to take a break,” we’ve heard tour guides explain, “to try things that are out of your comfort zone, or take on independent projects.” A similar narrative dominates once students actually get to campus; all throughout fall, new Midd Kids listen as upperclassmen float potential party themes for “J-term, play term” or deliberate over Vermont ski-pass purchases. They listen, too, as professors and club leaders allude to exciting J-term opportunities — classes where you make a movie rather than sit a final exam, say, or workshops that give you a chance to finally try bread-baking.
In light of these kinds of conversations, the average first year seems fairly justified in expecting the four weeks following winter break to rank among the best of their college experience. And for a lot of Middlebury students, this holds true: They walk out of J-term smiling beneath a fresh, freckly goggles tan, having picked up some extra sleep, an easy A and a couple of Instagram posts along the way.
For others, though, the return to spring semester is cause for relief. In fact, for a lot of us, the term “J-Term, play-term” carries with it an alienating, even cruel irony. Not only are the socioeconomic divisions and mental health stressors that make being at Middlebury difficult during regular term still at play, but those same dynamics are magnified, brought into sharp relief by cold weather, high expectations and a reduced class schedule. Still, because J-Term has been so successfully branded as a uniquely fulfilling social and academic experience, students often feel uncomfortable talking about January as anything less than a four week-long party.
As a board, we’re pretty fed up with this particular narrative. To be clear: A lot of us love J-Term, and valued our experiences last month as much as any we’ve had throughout college. Still, we believe it’s important to acknowledge and talk about the ways that, for a significant part of the Middlebury community, January is a month to be endured, not celebrated.
For one, the classic J-Term schedule-fillers — skiing, going to dinner, taking weekend trips to Montreal — do not run cheap, which can intensify existing socio-economic divisions within the student body. We acknowledge that those are only some of the many ways students pack their snowy January days, and that there are plenty of activities that don’t break the bank. But when the predominant narrative is that everyone is out “shredding,” it can be profoundly isolating. Off-campus, too, these socioeconomic disparities can come into play — CCI grants are not always sufficient for covering the costs of New York City internships or other for-credit opportunities.
J-Term also takes a serious toll on a lot of students’ mental health. As though cold weather and a lack of daylight wasn’t enough, a reduced class schedule often strips students of structure in their day-to-day lives. With less to do than usual, many retreat into their dorm rooms, alone. And, because people might assume they’re off skiing (or having other wintery, Vermont-based adventures), friends are often less likely to check up on them.
Some students find J-Term stressful in an entirely different way. While students often talk about January courses as “easy A”s, or more fun and less academically rigorous than normal Middlebury courses, this isn’t always the case. Really, there’s a striking disparity in workload across the January term course catalog. Where some students find themselves virtually flooded with free time, unfettered by homework, others (taking, say, intro languages course or finishing up their theses) spend much of the month in the library — being asked, all the while, why they aren’t off with their friends partying. Similarly, many clubs are markedly more active in January, working off of the assumption that members have little else to do. These kinds of disparity in experience only contribute to what can be, for some students, the most demanding month of the year.
And so J-Term isn’t always a “chance for a break,” or a fun and free time to pursue “things out of your comfort zone.” To make matters worse, students who struggle during January typically often feel uncomfortable sharing experiences that run contrary to the powerful narratives that push J-Term as pure, unadulterated fun.
To that end, we’re hoping to facilitate more nuanced discussions about J-Term, both to manage expectations and to let students know they aren’t alone in struggling. As part of our effort to create a realistic, constructive conversation around J-Term, we invite you to share your own experiences in the form of op-eds — whether that be the ways in which you find the month challenging, or coping mechanisms for sad, snowy days.
It’s OK if you spent most of last month looking forward to Feb break. You’re certainly not the only one.
(02/13/20 11:00am)
Three weeks ago, the Middlebury College Republicans (MCR) published an op-ed titled “An Invitation to Reengage.” In the piece, MCR co-presidents Dominic Aiello ‘22.5 and Brendan Philbin ‘21 announced Charles Murray’s return to Middlebury’s campus this March. Aiello and Philbin say they invited Murray to discuss his latest book, “Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class.”
We’re not so sure that particular motivation comes across — at least, not in the op-ed.
For one thing, Aiello and Philbin don’t mention “Human Diversity” until the fourth paragraph. Even then, their allusion to the “subject of the talk” seems peremptory at best. Nowhere does the piece make any reference, for instance, to Murray’s belief that the intellectual orthodoxy surrounding social sciences is faulty, or his claims that recent advancements in genetics and neuroscience undermine this orthodoxy. Really, the other nine paragraphs suggest that the MCR are a lot less concerned with issues of biology, gender, race and class than they are with those related to free speech and protest policy.
That isn’t a complete surprise. Anyone on campus in 2017 knows that bringing Murray back inevitably represents an enormously symbolic act. Still, there’s a bit of a double standard here: despite repeated calls for “academic inquiry,” Aiello and Philbin don’t seem terribly interested in the subject of the inquiry they’re calling for.
That irony is made worse by the piece’s claims at transparency, as the two promise to be “as transparent as possible with [readers] about [their] planning process in order to avoid many of the mistakes made in 2017.” To be clear: we think transparency is a good thing. We appreciate the MCR’s explanation of their decision timeline, as well as the ensuing planning process around the event. Still, we think the Middlebury community deserves more.
We believe there’s a fundamental difference between transparency and clarity. Attempts at transparency are often passive; they involve revealing the necessary details, usually in order to avoid error or scrutiny. Attempts to clarify, by contrast, are active. They’re born out of a desire not just to avoid confusion or cover your bases, but to help everyone involved achieve genuine understanding.
Many of us are still struggling to understand the MCR’s decision to restage the event. On first reading that Murray is set to return, we’d be willing to bet many students’ first reaction wasn’t to wonder what the specific date and time of Murray’s talk would be, or when exactly Aiello and Philbin proposed the event to administrators. We’d bet that, like us, the news provoked questions of a slightly deeper, more pressing kind. For instance, are we supposed to believe the MCR thinks the Middlebury community will really benefit from the specific research contained between the covers of “Human Diversity”? Or is the event better understood as symbolic, even statement-making? If so, what exactly is that statement (not to mention, how do the MCR believe it’s a constructive one for the Middlebury community)? What does the MCR believe that the Middlebury community stands to gain from “engag[ing] diligently and respectfully” with Murray’s work on March 31?
However helpful some of the logistical details may be, Aiello and Philbin’s “transparent” article doesn’t come close to answering these kinds of questions. The Campus has reached out to the co-presidents on multiple occasions for elaboration on their decision to bring back Murray, and neither co-president has agreed to meet in person. We believe that anyone involved in re-engulfing Middlebury in such profoundly polarizing debates on campus has a responsibility to make their justification and thought process as coherent and accessible as possible.
The need for clarity extends beyond the MCR. We’re left similarly confused by the administration and SGA’s roles in the planning process; if the administration was planning the event with the MCR since September, why wait until now to let the broader community know? Why did the initial news come from the MCR (and by way of op-ed), rather than from the administration? At the SGA Cabinet and Community Council’s most recent meetings, members discussed the logistics of Murray’s upcoming arrival. Because they went into “executive sessions,” neither the public nor Campus writers were allowed to sit in. Why not? At very least, haven’t the last three years demonstrated the need for inclusive, accessible dialogue?
Murray’s anticipated return has, predictably, thrown Middlebury’s campus into widespread conversation. And yet for all of these discussions, debates and purported explanations, there remain a lot of questions. Members of the Middlebury community deserve open, thoughtful and — above all else — clear answers.
(12/05/19 11:00am)
A couple weeks ago, an email popped up in your Middlebury inbox from the Office of the President. In it, President Patton introduced the student handbook’s new Policy on Open Expression (section A.5) and revised Demonstration Regulations (section C.4). As Patton outlined in her email, these new documents replace the old Demonstrations and Protests policy and represent the culmination not only of a host of open meetings, but two policy drafts (one released November 18, 2018 and a second on May 19, 2019).
You might not have read the new policies. We don’t blame you (after clicking on the link, our own impulse was to retreat fairly quickly, cowed by multiple pages of sub-clauses and hyperlinks). Still, we think what’s there — FAQ, resource page and all — is worth your time.
For one thing, we applaud the administration’s willingness to engage with criticism of previous drafts. A lot of students’ and faculty members’ feedback was acknowledged and included in the alterations. For instance, the new policy loosens restrictions prohibiting college staff from participating in protests, acknowledging that staff, too, have the right to open expression.
On that note, we deeply appreciate the new policy’s acknowledgement of the value of protest and expression. Where the old C.4 policy briefly affirmed that members of the Middlebury community “should always be free to support causes by orderly means,” and then turned immediately to the more legal and punitive stipulations of the protest policy, the new Policy on Open Expression devotes multiple paragraphs to the importance and legitimacy of peaceful protest and demonstration. It even recognizes that learning “occurs inside and outside the classroom, often involving public speech and action through which people affirm and enact their values” — allowing, in other words, that student activism and protest are not only important, but vital, educating tools for bringing about change on campus.
Finally, we applaud the new policy for its thoroughness. Sure, there are too many documents and pages for most students to parse through en route to class, or in between lengthy political science readings. Still, we appreciate the edifying impulse behind the FAQ’s lengthy itemization of “non-substantially disruptive acts,” and the list of links on the “Resources on Speech and Inclusion” page. We also appreciate the policy’s clear detailing of consequences for violating policy; now, students can go online and determine the fairly specific repercussions of certain actions. A student who is “warned, asked to leave, refuses and/or must be escorted or arrested by law enforcement officers,” for instance, will “ordinarily” face “probationary status to letter of official college discipline, depending on the severity of the disruption.”
To clarify: We don’t think the new policies are perfect. In fact, as student journalists, we’re sort of dying to give them an edit. Not only is the language difficult to decipher, but at times the policies read almost as though they were intentionally written to be vague or convoluted. We understand that college documents often adopt an elevated tone. But as policies primarily geared at student activists (not to mention, published as part of the student handbook), shouldn’t they be written with a student audience in mind? Unnecessarily elevated or vague language only reinforces the confusion and disconnect between students and the administration which often surrounds Middlebury protests in the first place. To that end, we’d also scrap some of the more jargon-y additions — phrases like “robust public sphere” more closely resemble the stuff of admissions pamphlets than they do concise, clear protest policy. Most student readers are less interested in sweeping statements of purpose and more interested in concrete details about how to stand up for what they believe in without incurring major consequences.
And then there’s the question of the policy itself. Taken together, the revised C.4 and new A.5 bring with them a couple of significant changes for Middlebury students activists. Now, student protesters are required not only to submit an “Event Scheduling Request,” but to sit down with the event management office and Public Safety to review any relevant policies or issues. While clauses like these don’t differ too much from the stuff of other colleges’ policies (Amherst, for instance, likewise makes students register with either college police, student activities or events), only time will tell how the new rules will play out in Middlebury’s own activist culture. In the event that these policies aren’t effective on Middlebury’s campus, we hope the administration remains responsive to feedback going forward.
To that end, we encourage students not only to continue to voice their opinions on the policies in question, but to hold the college accountable to the promises and values included in them. The FAQ states, for instance, that Middlebury is committed to an “everyday ethic of inclusion” and seeks to “make Middlebury a place where everyone’s voice can be heard.” That’s great, but begs the question — how? Statements like those would benefit from the same kind of specificity that was used to distinguish “substantive” from “non-substantive” disruption, or that which was used to outline potential consequences. Just as a multitude of conversations went into the creation of the new policies, so too should many more conversations arise from them.
In the wake of these new policies, Director of Public Safety Lisa Burchard is offering an inaugural J-Term workshop about “Activism on Campus.” Like the new policies, we think this workshop constitutes a step in the right direction. Again, we appreciate Public Safety’s willingness to engage with the subject. That said, the course description reads as slightly prescriptive; we’re not so sure Public Safety knows what constitutes “effective” protesting any better than we do. We hope the workshop looks more like a two-sided, mutually-instructive conversation, rather than a top-down lecture or course. We also hope that, if enough students show interest, Public Safety expands the course (or makes the information available elsewhere).
At the end of the day, students and administrators’ definitions of what constitutes “effective”— even acceptable — protesting will likely always differ. In the wake of the Murray and Legutko incidents, however, it’s especially important that the administration make their guidelines and policies as clear and accessible as possible. It’s equally important that students do their homework to understand the risks they’re taking and the consequences they’re incurring.
It’s also worth noting that not all effective student protesting takes place within guidelines. The recent Harvard-Yale football game protest reaffirmed that there are causes, like climate change, whose importance outstrips any kind of administration-imposed consequence. Often, breaking rules or coming up with creative methods of protest represent powerful statements in themselves. Still, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with the rules (not to mention, ensuring that those rules seem fair). That way, you can stand confidently behind whatever statement you’re making, and how.
(11/21/19 11:00am)
We’re not sure if you’ve heard, but this semester has been a chaotic one in the world of student journalism.
In September, students at Harvard openly lambasted the school’s student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, when the paper sent a request for comment to ICE for a story about student protests of the agency. Fearing this request for comment might have placed undocumented students in danger, over 1,000 students and organizations signed a petition to boycott the Crimson. By adding their names to the petition, signees refused to comply with interview requests from the Crimson until the publication agreed to apologize, change its policies, and declare its commitment to protecting undocumented students.
Two months later, Northwestern University’s student newspaper, the Daily Northwestern, came under fire from the student body over a perceived lack of empathy in its reporting on student protests of an on-campus talk with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Students called the photos of protesters that were posted online after the event “trauma porn” and criticized the Daily for reaching out to students through the directory. In response, the Daily removed the photos. In an editorial published later that week, the paper apologized for its “invasive” coverage and committed to more empathetic reporting practices in the future.
Professional journalists responded uproariously in columns and on Twitter, condemning the Daily’s “inexperienced” apology and asserting that truth, not empathy, is the aim of reporting on any level, college or otherwise.
We’re not sure it’s that simple.
Like the Crimson and the Daily, The Campus has experienced its own fair share of backlash. We’ve had friends and classmates accuse us of spreading rumors and gossip in the wake of articles that cast them in unflattering light. We’ve had professors and classmates explicitly ask us, whether in class or at school functions, not to record what they were saying, as if we were hiding microphones under our clothes. A couple weeks ago, a professor openly criticized The Campus in his classes for publishing what he felt was a negative article about a Middlebury professor, demanding of our coverage, “Where is the empathy?”
As far as we’re concerned, these criticisms aren’t fair, or even professional. Still, they point to the intimacy of life on a college campus, which makes student journalism uniquely difficult.
In our first editorial of the year, we wrote that, above all else, reporting is truth-telling. We stand by this. At the same time, we understand calls for heightened empathy in campus journalism. At a small college, we’re incredibly close to the events we cover (and notably more so than the New York Times and Washington Post columnists who were so quick to reprimand the Daily). When a NYT critic pans a play, it’s unlikely that they’ll ever have to confront the human repercussions of that review. When a Campus reporter publishes a critical take on a Middlebury production, odds are they’ll be standing next to the director in the same Proctor panini-press line later that week. That kind of closeness necessitates higher levels of care.
There’s a difference, though, between being thoughtful about the reporting process and sacrificing journalistic standards altogether. In our experience, exercising the kind of empathy a small school demands doesn’t have to interfere with truth-telling. The kind of empathy we see fitting into a newsroom is not one that sacrifices meaningful coverage for the sake of placating members of our community. Rather, it is one that reports both accurately and responsibly, even if it means shining light on an uncomfortable reality.
Even if we do not explicitly name it as such, empathy is a constant factor in our reporting. For example, journalists usually only grant sources anonymity in extenuating circumstances. In our work at Middlebury, granting anonymity is sometimes a necessary step toward preserving the safety of students, administrators, staff workers and professors — our sources — in and beyond our tight-knit community.
Timing is another essential aspect of journalistic empathy. In the Harvard case, for instance, Crimson reporters waited until the protest had ended to contact ICE, mitigating the risk of protesters being targeted and possibly arrested. Campus editors also had timing in mind when, in the wake of Ryszard Legutko’s controversial visit to campus last spring, we acted quickly to publish essential information clarifying that the protesters were not the reason the college cancelled Legutko’s original talk, contrary to national media coverage that was saying otherwise.
It takes empathy, too, to reach or recognize the perspectives of marginalized individuals at Middlebury. While The Campus sometimes struggles with this, we are committed to diversifying both our board and coverage in the future.
Other times, exercising empathy is what allows college journalists to report truthful coverage in the first place. Only through careful, human consideration can journalists build the kind of long-term relationships with others that lend themselves to effective reporting on a small campus. Sometimes, choosing not to immediately run a story, even if it’s a “scoop,” makes for better journalism in the long run.
And so professional journalists’ assertions that empathy has little place in reporting don’t quite hold true in a community as small as Middlebury. To that end, assumptions from students and staff (whether at Middlebury or Northwestern) that college reporters are unempathetic are not only unfair, they undermine the level of thought and awareness that we bring to our work. We’re not “gotcha” journalists. We represent the goings-on in and around Middlebury as faithfully as we can, with an eye to fact and the facilitation of constructive and challenging conversations.
Just as we can be empathetic and report the truth, so too can we be students and journalists.
(11/14/19 11:00am)
You’ve probably seen the posts: you’re scrolling through Facebook or Twitter, and a status or tweet pops up letting you know that so-and-so is “canceled.” More often than not, the statement is all you get; there isn’t any explanation as to why that person is canceled or what that might entail. Still, cancelations travel fast. In the wake of the #MeToo Movement, actors seen as problematic disappeared from Netflix shows. Comedians’ tours were postponed or scrapped altogether. In response to the R. Kelly scandal, Spotify even created a feature which allows listeners to “mute” specific artists (ensuring that they no longer appear in playlists, libraries or recommended mixes).
In short, cancel culture seems to have hit an all-time high.
On a basic level, canceling someone means refusing to engage with them. It means announcing, effectively, that someone’s beliefs and actions are beyond repair — and, as a consequence, you’re calling for their removal. This was the broader culture that came under fire recently from former President Obama, who, in an interview about youth activism, urged our generation to rethink how harshly we judge others. To clarify: in his interview, Obama criticized “call-outs” rather than “cancels,” which are a little different. “Calling out” connotes drawing attention to problematic beliefs or statements without providing a course of action for moving forward. Often, calling out is a step on the way to canceling (which, as it effectively removes any hope of moving forward, is decidedly more extreme). According to our former President, “calling out” isn’t activism.
We disagree. At least, partly. We endorse a more nuanced understanding of “calling out” and “canceling.”
Calling out and canceling aren’t inherently bad. They also aren’t all that new — in many ways, the impulse underlying call-outs or cancels is the same one behind boycotts, strikes or walkouts. By not showing up, literally or figuratively, to make space or provide a platform for certain issues and figures, you send a message. In this way, canceling can be incredibly activating; it allows you to punch up, to reclaim lost agency in the face of enormous, dehumanizing corporations and celebrities worth billions of dollars. And, more often than not, the harshness or extremity behind those cancelation statements is what lends those upward punches their very power.
Still, it’s worth interrogating the different, subtle ways that social media transforms the cancelation impulse. Online, canceling becomes all too easy: You can cancel someone or something in the time it takes to rattle off a couple of words and click “post.” The result is that, for many, canceling has become reflexive. And that reflex has extended beyond the internet and into the way that we interact with others in our day to day lives. Even in person, we’re quick to call people out. In a matter of seconds, we shut them down.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Canceling has become reflexive. And that reflex has extended beyond the internet and into the way that we interact with others in our day to day lives.[/pullquote]
Those shut-downs become a lot more complicated at a place like Middlebury. Here, we aren’t canceling far-removed, top-tier celebrities (who, as far as most of us are concerned, only exist in the form of tweets or television guest spots). If and when we cancel at Middlebury, we’re canceling our classmates, the people we belong to clubs with or pass on College Street.
That kind of cancelation calls for a little more thought.
The last few years have seen a rise in cancelation efforts at Middlebury. We regularly call out or cancel students, professors and staff members for comments made in class or actions taken around campus. Over the past couple of years, a number of controversial speakers have been — pardon the pun — quite literally canceled. And, in December 2018, a list of “Men to Avoid” was released on Facebook (a divisive, broad-reaching cancelation effort now simply referred to as “the list”).
We’re not saying you should or shouldn’t cancel at Middlebury. That’s your call. As we’ve said, sometimes canceling can be OK, even constructive. Canceling can constitute an important form of self-defense or an attempt to send a message when other institutions fail (the “list,” for instance, was largely released in response to the administration’s inadequate efforts to address sexual assault on campus). Other times, students’, professors’ and staff members’ repeated, obvious unwillingness to uphold values of tolerance and inclusivity leave us little choice but to cancel. At a place like Middlebury, where harassment, discrimination and abuse can go woefully unaddressed by the college, voicing cancelations often forms a vital, tangible tool for change.
Still, we’d caution you to think twice before transplanting virtual cancelation impulses into your immediate, everyday lives. At Middlebury, online or in-persons cancels can have immediate, even irrevocable impacts on the way that students inhabit the college’s very small, very real space. Sometimes, those cancelations seem unavoidable. Other times, they inhibit the kinds of growth we came to Middlebury to undergo in the first place.
Unfortunately, the nature and size of Middlebury’s social scene often encourages premature canceling. Rumors spread quickly, so that their subjects are sometimes canceled before they have a chance to defend themselves. Sometimes, entire groups of people (say, sports teams or Febs) are canceled by other groups on the basis of assumptions or predictions. Situations like those don’t demand cancels. Instead, they provide vital opportunities for others to learn, to ask questions and improve their own understandings of difficult and controversial topics. There are other times, however, when the burden of education cannot and should not fall on you. Then, canceling might be the best way to send a message. It might even be the only course of activism left.
It’s worth interrogating, too, the ways in which cancels are unevenly distributed among the student body. Just as white, male celebrities bounce back faster from social media cancels (see: Louis C.K.), so too are more privileged members of the Middlebury community often given the benefit of the doubt. We need to be careful that, in wielding our own cancelation tools, we don’t simply exacerbate the already profound power disparities which exist on campus.
At the end of the day, it comes down to determining the most effective way to send a message. Ideally, that message can be sent through conversation. This is what we think Obama was getting at: Rather than simply judging, we should strive for constructive, progress-producing conversations. Ideally, those conversations precede cancelation, hopefully rendering it unnecessary.
(11/07/19 11:00am)
Last week, we published a story about efforts among facilities staff to unionize. The article gave an overview of last year’s workforce planning process, as well as the movement on the part of many of you to create a union in the wake of that process. It referenced a broad swath of your experiences as Middlebury employees, both during workforce planning and in your everyday working lives. As student journalists, we’re grateful and honored that you shared those experiences with us. As ordinary Middlebury students, we’re incredibly troubled by what those experiences suggest.
In particular, we’re troubled by the obvious and deeply upsetting disconnect between the thought and effort you put into constructing our day-to-day lives here and the ways in which the administration treated you throughout the workforce planning process. We’re saddened that, as a work environment, Middlebury has lost the “family feel” it once had. And we’re also aware of (not to mention profoundly apologetic for) our own roles in taking away that feel, whether it be through a general attitude of disrespect or larger, more direct offenses, like recent Atwater damages.
But above all else, we’re concerned by your repeated allusions to “voicelessness.” Again and again, you spoke about an inability to vocalize your frustrations and concerns. You expressed feeling like there aren’t effective lines of communication between yourselves and the administration, or the broader institution. Feeling like, throughout a process that determined the fate of your livelihoods, you were “left in the dark.”
We want to be clear: in no way do we think that kind of voicelessness is OK. We want you to know that, just as you support us — at all hours of the day, all over campus and in ways we will never fully be able to appreciate — we support you. We also want to extend an offer. The Campus might be a “student newspaper,” but it isn’t just a newspaper for students. We’d like to publish more stories like last week’s. We’d like to continue to hold the administration and student body accountable for what are, as often as not, the less-than-satisfactory ways in which you’re treated. We’d like to open up our pages — as widely and in as many different, vivid ways as possible — to your concerns and experiences.
Our inbox and office are always open. Because after last week, we hear you. Or, maybe more accurately, we’d really, really like to.
(10/31/19 10:00am)
Choosing your major is a big decision. It should be: a lot of money and effort goes into earning your diploma. These days, the professional world places so much emphasis on education that for some, filling out their major declaration form feels like the first step in a job application. As an editorial board, we weren’t surprised to come across a recent Washington Post article explaining how — as a direct result of this perceived professional pressure — there’s been a big shift in the kinds of majors students declare. Ever since the financial crash in 2008, English and History departments across the country are a lot less crowded. Students in Economics or STEM classrooms, on the other hand, find themselves struggling to find a free seat.
At Middlebury, things are no different. Humanities departments report declines in both major declaration and individual class enrollment over the past several years, while the Comp Sci department seems to grow bigger by the day. Class numbers aside, there’s a pretty pervasive belief on campus that an Economics or science focus leads to a surer or higher-paying job. A lot of the time, STEM subjects are equated with “practical skills,” while humanities or languages courses are treated almost like intellectual hobbies. Many students seem to think that the only reason to declare a humanities major is out of pure passion.
As the semester progresses and job and internship searches collide with many sophomores’ major decisions, these kinds of course-related anxieties are only intensifying. All over campus, Music or Literary Studies majors can be overheard making the obligatory deprecating jokes about future employment challenges. We wouldn’t run off to Forest for an Add/Drop card quite yet, though.
As it turns out, many of the assumptions we make about the relationship between majors, job prospects and earnings simply aren’t true. For instance, the fields of arts and communication formed the largest employer for the Middlebury class of 2018, while financial services came in second. The Post article further points out how, while graduates with science and technical degrees initially earn higher salaries than say, English majors straight out of college, this pay gap disappears over time. Numerous reports attest to how employers at large banks and tech companies seek humanities and social science majors. As often as not, humanities majors (and liberal arts students in general) are championed as “well-rounded” and “highly adaptable.”
And so, contrary to Middlebury myth, the kinds of skills which students gain through humanities courses are enormously important in the working world. As an editorial board composed largely of humanities or language majors, we realize we might be a little biased. In our experience, however, the stuff we’ve learned in class proves incredibly, professionally valuable.
This past summer, for instance, one editorial board member worked as an Investigative Intern at a public defender’s office in D.C. She stresses just how crucial storytelling was in and around the courtroom; her job involved listening to clients and writing clear, compelling statements. She roots these skills — namely the ability to appreciate and tell stories — in a lot of the classes she’s taken at Middlebury, both within and beyond her Political Science major. Even the structure of humanities courses teach professionally valuable skills; another member of the board reflected on how the ability to write and defend a thesis, or argument — something she gained, in large part, through English Literature essays and seminars — came in handy speechwriting and canvassing for her local political representative.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Contrary to Middlebury myth, the kinds of skills which students gain through humanities courses are enormously important in the working world.[/pullquote]
The benefits of humanities majors extend beyond purely professional skills. To that end, many editorial board members pointed out that job prospects aren’t the only reason for declaring a major. There are other, equally valid ways to go about compiling your course schedule. One editorial member reflected on how important a role her History major plays in her broader, “personal” education. She explained how the things she learns in class have proved more applicable to her everyday life than she could have ever expected. Another board member explained how she declared her GSFS major because of the profound impression left by a couple of the department’s professors. In her experience, creating a close relationship with a department — any department — represents a thoughtful and rewarding way to approach your education.
It’s equally important to acknowledge that, for some students, the choice of major isn’t really a “choice” at all. Many students entering the workforce face unavoidable financial concerns. For many international students, there are visas to consider (for example, US Immigration Law means that international college students who choose to major in STEM-related fields are substantially more likely to receive an HB-1 visa for two years, rather than one). Some international students may circumvent these kinds of restrictions by studying liberal arts or choosing to double major or minor in non-STEM fields. But even at schools like Middlebury College, obtaining a visa often comes at the cost of complete freedom of major choice. These considerations too, form important and worthwhile reasons for approaching your education a certain way.
At Middlebury, there are as many valid reasons for declaring a major as there are students. Our goal isn’t to pretend that job prospects don’t figure significantly in those reasons; we simply want to point out that they aren’t the only reason. Not just that, but the majors which lead to jobs aren’t always the ones you might expect to. And so we encourage you not to silence your passions. Instead, embrace them — they might translate to the next chapter of your life much better than you imagine.
(10/17/19 10:00am)
The word “inclusivity” gets thrown around a lot. At Middlebury, we commit time and time again to building an inclusive campus, to creating inclusive communities that stage inclusive conversations. Still, people rarely seem sure what inclusivity actually looks like — it’s much easier to say what it doesn’t look like, or to identify spaces in which doesn’t exist.
And so we as a board are impressed with the college’s new Inclusive Practitioners Program, which aims to implement tangible inclusivity measures in Middlebury classrooms and around campus more generally. The program, designed by Director of Education for Equity and Inclusion Renee Wells, is comprised of 14 different workshops related to inclusivity and anti-bias, from dealing with difficult student comments to properly using students’ preferred gender pronouns.
Although these classes are optional, we ask that faculty attend.
We’ve seen firsthand why this kind of training is so important. Members of the editorial board remember friends dropping courses after being excluded from class spaces. Others remember professors failing to make accommodations for religious observances, or offering inadequate support to students navigating disabilities. In some cases, these professors’ un-inclusive reputations preceded them — students were warned by their peers not to register for certain courses in the first place. Issues of inclusivity can impede not only a student’s ability to learn, but also a professor’s ability to teach.
While these are losses, we believe they’re avoidable ones. We’ve also had shining examples of what inclusive learning environments do look like — and these glimpses leave us excited about the IPP’s broader vision. We’ve been in lecture halls when professors have publicly apologized for comments that left class members feeling marginalized, and took the time and effort to adjust their discourse moving forward. We’ve received new syllabi after teachers, learning from students that assigned articles struck the wrong note, reconsidered their reading lists. And we’ve known faculty members who have skillfully turned tense, potentially divisive discussions into teaching moments.
Class period after class period, these classrooms held robust and challenging conversations. The saliency and impact of these conversations make these classrooms the kind that convinced so many of us to come to Middlebury in the first place.
As far as we’re concerned, every professor on campus stands to benefit from IPP workshops. We recognize the organizers’ deliberate decision not to make the program mandatory — Wells told The Campus she had better experiences with opt-in programs than with mandatory ones. “You can’t give someone a training that makes them not biased,” she told our reporter earlier this fall. “It’s a process of becoming critically more aware.”
Still, we encourage any and all professors to attend. What’s more, we want you to want to go, and we believe this to be a part of your responsibility as teachers. Just as doctors are expected to keep up with the latest medical terminology and procedures, so too should professors be made to brush up on any new vocabulary and strategies that allow them to perform their own pedagogical operations effectively. Students undertake their own anti-bias training in the form of JusTalks, which is far from all-encompassing but is certainly a good start.
We also urge you to take advantage of the wide variety of workshops available. Inclusivity can’t be created through any one measure; it takes many different strategies for a diverse group of students to feel supported in the same, shared learning space.
We realize some members of the faculty aren’t as excited about IPP as we are. As a result, most of the faculty have yet to sign up. We speculate that some professors see this training as unnecessary; others may even consider it part of a greater effort to encourage confining and cushy “PC culture” on campus. As your students, we’re telling you it is necessary. And claims about PC culture overlook the fundamental nature of inclusivity — by opening up the floor to all students, inclusive classrooms expand conversations rather than contract them. Students are much more likely to share difficult or unpopular opinions in classrooms in which they are made to feel comfortable and intellectually welcomed. Cognitively receptive professors provide students with supportive spaces in which they can collectively tackle the tough issues. It’s that simple.
Inclusivity also extends far beyond the classroom (even though that remains a great place to start). Semesters come and go, but many faculty and staff spend years working at the college. We believe the IPP can cultivate a more permanent culture of respect among all stakeholders in the Middlebury community, generating real progress that outlasts any one student’s individual college career (or any one bad MiddCourses review).
To be clear: We don’t expect you to attend every workshop offered this year. Instead, consider this a research project extended over the course of several semesters. When it comes to developing this kind of awareness, we students are learning too. But as the people standing at the front of the room, you occupy uniquely powerful positions from which you can set inclusive precedents and contribute to a culture of learning that reaches far beyond the confines of the classroom. We ask that you take advantage of it.
(10/10/19 10:00am)
What the f**k.
It’s what we’re all thinking — anyone, at least, who’s heard about the damage done to Atwater two weekends ago. It’s the only appropriate response to hearing that signs were ripped from walls outside suites, that elevators were peed in. And we’d imagine it’s what the custodial staff were thinking as they scrubbed urine off of elevator floors in Atwater on that Sunday morning. Afterwards, they threw out the mop.
This isn’t the first time we’ve editorialized on respect. It isn’t the first time we’ve editorialized on treating the custodial staff with due kindness, or bringing a basic level of awareness to interactions with our immediate environment. But this instance stands alone because of the absurd levels the destruction of two weekends ago reached. It’s ridiculous to have to tell grown men and women not to pee in elevators, or cause thousands in damages to shared living spaces by tearing signs off walls. Behavior like this seems to transcend previous level of disrespect, conveyed by leaving personal items in the bathroom or throwing out dinner plates — although we certainly don’t condone that, either. Destruction on this level is uniquely nefarious and egregiously entitled, and holds direct and degrading repercussions for custodial staff. It isn’t in Facilities’ job description to mop up urine from adults drunk on Pabst Blue Ribbon and privilege. As far as we’re concerned, it shouldn’t be in anyone’s.
But the script at Middlebury seems to have been written: When students stoop to this level of disrespect, when they choose to live out weekend fraternity fantasies, the job of cleaning up falls on custodial staff, while students carry on and deny accountability for damage they cause. To be clear, that denial of accountability isn’t limited to weekend nights. This Sunday evening, for instance, The Campus received a series of anonymous emails criticizing our response to the Atwater damages. Looking into the damages, asserted the sender, isn’t our job; “if an investigation is necessary,” they wrote, “the school should do it.”
We disagree, and we’re sure the facilites staff member who asked us to follow the story would, too. This level of disrespect can’t only be addressed by a CRD meeting and a fine of 30-something dollars per student. Changing this kind of deeply-ingrained, habitual behavior cannot be achieved on a case-by-case basis. Instead, it requires a holistic shift in Middlebury culture, or students’ own fundamental restructuring of the way we think about our lives here.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Students’ fundamental disrespect and consequent destruction of the places where we live, study, and socialize has gone too far and must come to an end.[/pullquote]
Right now, a lot of us seem to think of the Middlebury campus (lowercase “c”) as a world without consequence. Stagger into Atwater on any given Saturday and you’ll find that mentality writ large, in neon body paint and alcohol stains all over the walls. Caught carrying your cider outside? Don’t worry, Pub Safe won’t actually call the police. Those beer cans on the floor there? Kick them aside, they’ll get picked up eventually. Sure, dance on the table if you want. You don’t have to worry about landlords, or authorities, or even working a vacuum in the morning. You don’t have to worry about anything, really — tomorrow, you’ll wake up and make the Sunday morning library-trek alongside the rest of the student body, untouched. Worst case scenario, you’ll have a lousy headache.
The assumption underlying all of this — that Middlebury isn’t the “real world”— is not only dangerously enabling of further destruction, but unacceptably entitled. As a member of the custodial staff pointed out to one of our editors, most of the Facilities workers were here long before we were, and will be long after. For staff, faculty and parts of the student body, this campus is very much the “real world.”
And so it’s our job not only to respect that world while we’re here, but to set a good precedent for future Middlebury generations. The extent to which underclassmen take their cues from juniors and seniors is pretty clear; this past weekend, signs were ripped down in Allen Hall, a freshman dorm. An editor was asked by her Discover Middlebury prospie if that represented “normal Middlebury culture.” Does it?
Chances are you’ve heard the term “work hard, play hard” used to describe Middlebury culture. Students here are committed to peak academic performance and, when the week concludes, many are looking to “blow off steam” built up throughout the arduous week. This over-compartmentalized, polarized lifestyle is toxic when taken to destructive heights. Put simply, students’ fundamental disrespect and consequent destruction of the places where we live, study, and socialize has gone too far and must come to an end.
This weekend is Homecoming. For alumni, it’s a chance to come back to campus and reminisce about their time at Middlebury. For current students, it seems all too fitting an opportunity to reflect on how we treat the school we’re lucky enough to still call home.
It’s time to grow up.
(09/26/19 10:00am)
After lifetimes of being told to turn off the lights and stick to reusable water bottles, it’s easy to feel hopeless about climate change. Take this week: On Sunday, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization released a new, harrowing report about rising temperatures. Rather than engage with climate strikers across the country, the President tweeted that Greta Thunberg “seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future” (“So nice to see!”). And Facebook photos of devastation in the wake of Hurricane Dorian offered demoralizing, daily reminders that we aren’t prepared for the even more immediate consequences of the climate crisis.
Still, for those who joined the protest at College Park last Friday, it felt like maybe — just maybe — we might still have cause for hope.
With an issue as confounding and urgent as climate change, collective actions like voting and protesting are the closest things we currently have to answers. At a basic, human level, participation in large-scale activist movements is unifying. On Friday, members of the Middlebury community found renewed strength in the knowledge that others were not only worried about, but that they were working on, the same issue as they were, whether that knowledge came from joining the crowds in College Park or pulling up Facebook to find friends from all walks of life clicking “Interested” on the page for their own local climate strikes.
Energy2028 — the college’s four-pronged framework for increasing campus sustainability over the next nine years — similarly was the culmination of years of student climate activism. If upheld, the college’s promises represent enormous, tangible progress.
It seems a bit soon, though, to start patting ourselves on the back.
Self-interrogation, on the part of this editorial board and the broader student body alike, is important. Many Middlebury students (including members of this board) consider themselves self-aware and thoughtful eco-citizens. Yet many of those same Middlebury students have little knowledge of their college’s ecological footprint, or the college’s plan to reduce those footprints, as evidenced by the amount of background research we had to require in composing this editorial.
That is no longer acceptable if we claim sincerity in calling for the kinds of sweeping structural change our climate crisis demands. How can we hold the administration accountable to promises if we have not properly investigated what those promises are? Collective action is crucial; still, it rarely comes about as a result of abstract or isolated, uninformed thought. The UN General Secretary, António Guterres, made a similar point in anticipation of this week’s Climate Action Summit in New York, warning world leaders to leave behind “beautiful speeches” and arrive instead “with concrete plans and strategies for carbon neutrality by 2050.” He closed the summit by providing a comprehensive overview of those concrete initiatives. We need to apply the same substantive standard to climate conversations on campus.
Once we stopped trying to write an editorial telling everyone to drive less and recycle more, the editorial board began discussing the different ways we can use our platform to cover climate activism on campus. As mentioned in our first editorial of the year, we often talk about “holding the administration accountable.” The Campus sees itself as a sort of campus watchdog, and when it comes to an unprecedented emergency like climate change, interrogating the role our institution plays in that emergency is of utmost importance.
To that end, we are committed to publishing more climate-related content (and would love to receive some of that from you, in the form of pitches and op-eds). Beginning this fall, we will be spearheading a special interactive project that will allow viewers to visually engage with the ways in which Energy2028 is hitting the marks — and falling short.
This commitment stems not only from our duty as truth-tellers, but out of our unwavering belief in the importance of collective action. For students, professors and locals alike, that formed a rare, raw moment of solidarity, even — dare we say it — hope.
(09/19/19 10:00am)
Imagine: You are a prospective student wandering the campus late last Thursday afternoon. Having marveled at the sheer scale of the Ross complex, peeked in through the narrow windows of Atwater dining hall and pestered your parents into buying you your first white-and-navy Varsity sweatshirt (as well as, of course, one for your younger sibling), you arrive at Chapel quad.
What you find there leaves an impression more vivid than any admissions pamphlet ever could.
There, long rows of tables extend out from McCullough Student Center, plastered with brightly-colored signs spelling out the names of different student organizations, covered in free candy. These tables stay in place for two hours, tittering in the mid-September wind as droves of socially-conscious freshmen straggle by. Every so often, one brave individual in Birkenstocks stops to talk to an upperclassman on the other side of the table, copying their email onto a sign-up sheet and snag a mini Snickers bar. Whatever you thought you knew about Middlebury College before, you will likely leave having made the following conclusion: To become a Middlebury student is to become involved.
As last Thursday’s Student Activities Fair illustrated, club culture is front and center at Middlebury. Back in high school, clubs were often fodder for our college applications, distilled to one-liners on our resumes or a singular talking point during an alumni interview. Here, they mean so much more. Let us explain.
For the first time in a long time, first years are given a moment to pause and reconsider their previous commitments and future aspirations. A number of us on the editorial board reflected on the many motivations for joining clubs in high school — fleshing out your Common App, for instance, or acquiescing to overbearing parents who are eager to fulfill their vicarious varsity football fantasies.
One editor vividly characterized her own arrival at college as a kind of “self-shedding:” gone were any perceived obligations to play the violin (as, at that point, she had for some 12 years) or dance ballet. Instead, she was free to follow her own, more up-to-date instincts and interests. To that end, we encourage you, first-years, to reflect on your own passions, and let current curiosities guide your extracurricular exploration. Do not be dissuaded by self-doubt, or any perceived lack of experience. One editor remembers starting out at The Campus by writing a regular film column — without “any knowledge about anything related to film whatsoever.” (“It worked out, didn’t it?” she laughed. A true case of “fake it ’till you make it.”)
Sophomores and juniors, conversations about joining clubs hold equal importance for you. Often, organizations form the crux of students’ social lives at Middlebury. One member of the editorial board, for instance, joined club tennis during her sophomore year. She said that, for her, “the importance of the actual tennis component was secondary.” She averred that the club could be about origami or roller-blading, but that at its core what was important to her was the continuity and security that comes from knowing a group of people for over two years.
The social benefits of being involved assume even greater importance in light of recent on-campus conversations about mental health. In an op-ed published over the summer, Arthur Martins ’22.5 alluded to the unique potential for isolation on a secluded college campus like Middlebury, or the often devastating burden that comes from trying to “figure out how to make sense of our experiences alone.” As many students know, this isolation assumes physical as well as emotional forms. In a place which regularly demands hours and hours of solitary studying — be it in dimly-lit thesis carrels among the furthest reaches of the Davis Upper Mezzanine or couches hidden on the fifth floor of BiHall — Middlebury students spend unavoidable amounts of time alone with their thoughts and textbooks.
Alternatively, participation in student orgs is an easy and effective way to engage with other people. For some, participating in an a capella group or improv troupe might be merely something different to do on a Tuesday night. But for others, when the sun begins to set around 4:15 p.m. and students find themselves sagging beneath an all-too-familiar February melancholy, an opportunity to leave the GIS lab and enter a vibrant room full of their peers forms nothing short of a lifeline. Many clubs, like Model UN and frisbee, even go so far as to eat dinner together. Aw!
Juniors abroad: ¡Escuchen! Vous pouvez rejoindre des clubs partout dans le monde. One member of the editorial board reflects that, had it not been for the “uniquely un-athletic” context of Oxford University, she would never have considered joining a women’s soccer team. Only among the “panting and pasty British” — her team’s goalkeeper, for instance, regularly smoked to relax while the opposing team took penalty shots — did she discover her own, somewhat athletic stride. Another editor identifies her choir as the “most valuable part” of her five months in Argentina.
And despite what you’ve heard, seniors, upperclassmen may even benefit the most from extracurricular activities. For instance, one board member talked about how various clubs helped him narrow down his career goals. We don’t have consulting or law classes, but we do have Middlebury Consulting Group and Middlebury Law. Take it from us: meeting late-night deadlines in The Campus office feels as real-life as it gets.
The benefits of getting involved at Middlebury extend well beyond freshman year. Even at a basic level, extracurriculars give students a chance to excel outside of Twilight seminar rooms; at an institution that places so much stress on academic achievement, this can provide a crucial well of confidence and identity for many members of the community.
If that doesn’t convince you, take it from the editor who pointed out that the stakes are “fairly freakin’ low”. If the walk to the ceramics studio turns out to be too long on a weeknight, or you stop attending Quidditch practices once it begins to get colder, do not fret. There will be another semester, and a fresh set of sign-up sheets to go with it.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Photos courtesy of Shirley Mao and Benjy Renton for the Campus.
(09/12/19 10:00am)
A college newspaper is not a public relations office.
That, at least, is the point freelance writer Adam Willis makes in his Atlantic article, “Bureaucrats Put the Squeeze on College Newspapers.” We agree. When one of our editors sent Willis’ article around to Campus staff in August, we took the opportunity to reflect on our own responsibilities and experiences as student journalists at Middlebury.
To us, reporting is truth-telling. In each article that appears in our pages, we aim, above all else, to be honest and informative. While a PR office is concerned with promoting a flattering, marketable narrative, the Campus seeks to highlight a diverse range of Middlebury experiences, no matter how messy. To that end, we see ourselves as College Street’s own “watch-dogs.” We strive to embody the kind of newspaper envisioned by the Chicago Evening Post’s Mr. Dooley, who quipped that the “job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
Still, as we write, college newspapers like the Campus confront growing, even existential threats. In his piece, Willis explains how student publications find themselves “imperiled by the same economic forces that have hollowed out local newspapers from coast to coast.” The Campus is fortunate to receive SGA funding to power its operations. This also means the Campus is dependent on the resources of the college, which at times makes reporting on administrative decisions a complicated experience.
While we realize that this financial dependency is an unavoidable reality of journalism at a small college, we remain firmly committed to holding all members of the college accountable. Like the reporters in Willis’ piece, Campus reporters and editors have previously felt pressure from the administration to help promote a glossy image of the college. Several months after the 2017 Charles Murray incident, two editors were called into an administrator’s office and asked to refrain from publishing negative coverage. In the weeks following, we published an editorial affirming our commitment to the truth. Many editors who helped craft that piece have since graduated, but those who remain on the board still see that sequence of events as seminal in our journalistic education.
Reporting on Murray was a wake-up call for most: Facing an administration that was dealing with its own agenda not only drove the Campus to raise its own journalistic standards, but to also reaffirm its commitment to objective truth-telling. We needed to let Old Chapel know that on no occasion would we sacrifice accurate reporting in the name of optics or ostensible campus-wide unity.
We are interested in revisiting those primary motivations, not in re-hashing the Murray episode. As we head into a new year, we simply ask administrators to consider how pressures like these complicate the already difficult role of a student journalist at Middlebury. In such a small and delicately interconnected community, balancing our desire to create a safe and cohesive community with our journalistic obligation to tell the truth is challenging enough. The people who populate our articles live in the next dorm over, teach our classes and work to prepare our food in the dining halls.
Regardless, we are firmly committed to what we see as the Campus’ chief mission: ensuring information is accurate and accessible for the Middlebury community at large.
Of course, we understand Old Chapel’s aversion to stories that paint the college in a bad light, and the desire across the school’s institutions — the Mahaney Arts Center, the Department of Athletics — to cast a positive sheen on their goings-on. Yet branding remains their job, not ours.
The 2019-2020 Campus editorial staff is not interested in antagonism for antagonism’s sake. Above all else, we believe that engaging in informed discussions about division and the college’s shortcomings is not simply the best, but the only way to achieve long-lasting and relevant change on campus. While difficult, the kinds of conversations that stem from scrupulous truth-telling are usually the worthwhile ones — and we at the Campus are committed to having them.
Willis ends his piece poignantly. “The erosion of the student press threatens the integrity of the university in America,” he writes, “and the quality of its future.”
We sincerely hope that the administration, student body and other community stakeholders share in this sentiment.
(05/09/19 10:00am)
This year, The Campus has grown its online presence, extended its investigative reporting, and most importantly, extended its reach to include the perspectives of more members of the Middlebury community. We are proud of the work we have done this year, but we recognize there is room for improvement. Reflection is always valuable. We hope by recognizing how we can improve our paper, we will resist complacency and continue to enhance our publication and its reputation.
We see ourselves as a paper for students, alumni, staff, faculty and town residents. Middlebury is a small community filled with engaged and passionate people. We know The Campus reaches audiences beyond the confines of the college. This is why we covered the local elections during the 2018 midterm season and why we devoted an entire issue to staff at the college and the workforce planning process. After all, students are stakeholders in the broader Middlebury community too. We hope to continue reporting on local issues, paying special attention to the ramifications of the workforce planning process, local governments and the economic development of the town in the coming year.
We believe one of our most important roles is to create a public historical record of life on campus. We hope our reporting continues to include as many voices as possible to create a more comprehensive record. Early in the year, we ran four powerful student responses to the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Recently, a wide array of students, faculty members, alumni and even academics outside of our community have written in to comment on the Legutko controversy. We want to keep doing this: providing a platform for impassioned opinion pieces. Thank you for submitting your thoughts to our publication. We hope you continue to do so.
This publication is reliant on thoughtful and inquisitive student writers. We are grateful for their hard work and dedication. Next year, we hope to organize more events in which writers and editors can meet. Perhaps, having “live edit” sessions could help writers feel appreciated and supported.
We’d also like to thank our copy editors. They are often the last students to read over our content before we send the paper to print. We are grateful for our online editors who upload all of our content to our website and help spread our news beyond the physical boundaries of the college. Our photographers and cartoonists work hard to capture footage and create illustrations which not only make the paper look nice but also make wordy content easier to digest.
In our latest issue, we relied on graphics to detail the results of Zeitgeist, our first general survey of student opinion. The goal of the survey was to capture student attitudes about campus culture. We are grateful that nearly 50% of the student body responded to the survey. We hope, in the future, to continue reporting news stories, creating surveys and constructing graphs which indicate students’ concerns and feelings about life on campus. Zeitgeist was special because it revealed some of the common concerns students on campus have, like, for example, feeling a lack of belonging.
We published more news in real time this year — delivering news to the community online instead of waiting until our Thursday print issues. Especially during the recent weeks of controversy over the inappropriate chemistry test question that referenced Nazi gas chambers, a professor’s decision to show a cartoon referencing the slave trade in a classroom, and the Legutko controversy.
Our investigative work this year also delved into the long-term impacts of the events of the past several years. In March, we published a retrospective piece following up on the ramifications of the Charles Murray incident and the disciplining of student protesters two years later. This week, we’re publishing the results of a monthslong investigation into mental health services on campus.
We fell short this year when we failed to break the story about the inappropriate chemistry test question that referenced Nazi gas chambers. But in the future, as we try to provide a record of campus life that our whole community feels they can contribute to, we hope that similar incidents will not go unreported. We need to keep calling attention to the incidents and factors — both positive and negative — that affect every member of our community.
In order to do that more effectively, we need to diversify our editorial board. We work to explore a broad range of Middlebury experiences in our reporting, but we cannot do that if we have a limited set of perspectives in the room. We want more students of color to serve on our board. We’d also like to have students on the board who have a wide range of academic and intellectual interests. You don’t have to be a English major to write or edit for the paper.
To our writers, and to those who have never written for The Campus before: we want your voices, not just on our pages, but on our editorial board. If you are interested in joining the board, keep writing for the Campus, pitch us your stories, and let your section editors know you want to join us. We need your perspectives to report Middlebury’s history.
(05/02/19 10:00am)
Middkids encounter many tough decisions throughout their time at the college: which courses to take, when to study, when to party, what career to pursue after graduation, etc. However, perhaps the most divisive and controversial decision students must make boils down to one simple question, asked daily between 4:30 and 8:30 p.m., Proctor or Ross?
As an editorial board, we are here to tell you that Proctor is the better dining hall. (We are definitely not biased by the fact that it’s like a hundred feet from our office.) Proc has got it all, so if you’re a Ross-er, go ahead and check your Ross privilege at the door and listen up.
First up: lines. Proctor conveniently has two lines serving the same dinner food while Ross’s single line is so long that you need a new haircut and have to make another tuition payment by the time you finally get your food. The lengthy Ross queues also create an epidemic of line-cutting. Don’t be one of those people. You aren’t sneaky. We all see you.
Ross’s layout feels more like a high school cafeteria than Proctor’s. The long tables, the drab color scheme, the panini machines all the way at the back. It’s just sad. Proctor has cozier — albeit stuffy — feel. (No joke, one of our editors has to bring her inhaler just to breathe there.) When you’re in Proc and decide to go for a panini, it’s easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. In Ross? Difficult-difficult-lemon-difficult. Only once you assemble your materials and then walk the runway in between all of the sports teams, friend groups, classmates, and people you’d rather never see again do you finally make it to the panini press (and only two out of the four are EVER turned on?! What’s up with that?). That’s if you make it there without tragically stumbling and falling, causing a dish to crash to the floor and receiving thundering applause from your merciless peers.
“Ross is treacherous,” said one member of the editorial board. We have confirmed reports of pizza-slips and coffee tumbles, of ice-water-dispenser-overflows and awkward run-ins. One of our own editors got physically squished between two varsity basketball players hugging on her very first day of college four years ago. That would never happen in Proctor.
Proctor has a versatility of seating arrangements that Ross just can’t match. Because of its multiple seating options (circle tables, long tables, the booth room, the lounge if you’re a Feb), Proctor is much more conducive to eating alone than Ross. When we want to get away from our friends for just a few minutes of solace over a meal or a coffee, Proc is the place to go.
Does upper Proc occasionally feel like you’re inside one of those croissants you put in the toaster even though it says not to and is about to catch on fire? Yes. Does the women’s soccer team have a permanent stranglehold on one of the circle tables? It appears so. (If you have any insight as to how we can get that setup as well, let us know.) Do you have to sleep there overnight to get a booth? Potentially.
You may say all of this is a bunch of baloney, but we actually have the data to back it up. According to Zeitgeist findings, students prefer Proctor (39.2%) compared to Ross (26.6%) and Atwater (33.0%). To those students that haven’t hopped on the Proctor train yet, you don’t know what you’re missing. In the Proctor vs. Ross debate, there can only ever be one winner: Proc forever and always.
(04/25/19 10:00am)
Last week, the administration canceled a talk by conservative Polish scholar and politician Ryszard Legutko due to safety concerns. Prior to the cancellation, students had planned a non-disruptive protest in conjunction with a queer pride celebration to challenge Legutko’s homophobia and misogyny.
The administration took two days to specify that student protesters were not the cause of their security concerns. Regardless of the administration’s good intentions, the lack of specificity about the threat subjected Middlebury and its student protesters to an unjust swarm of national criticism which understood protesters to be the cause of the security threat.
Many student organizers devoted hours to carefully planning the protest in accordance with Middlebury’s new protest policies. The protest had been meticulously set up to be non-disruptive and strictly non-violent; the student protesters did their part to adhere to college policy.
Middlebury, however, did not uphold its end of the bargain. The institution failed to provide an adequate space for free expression. Any vetting that took place was obviously not thorough enough to prepare the college to accommodate Legutko’s visit. Had the administration been more prepared, they could have hired additional security to enable both the talk and the protest to proceed as planned.
Although the public talk at the Kirk Alumni center did not take place, Legutko did speak on campus, to Political Science Professor Matthew Dickinson’s “American Presidency” seminar in the Robert A. Jones House conference room. While Legutko’s appearance there was initially private and restricted to the seminar’s nine registered students, the talk became somewhat public as word spread throughout campus and more students began to arrive. At the talk, asked about his views on homosexuality, Legutko replied, “Same-sex marriage is against the fundamental law of the human race.” His comment is disgusting, and would most likely lead to disciplinary action if said by a student in the classroom.
Because student protesters were not informed of this semi-private talk in advance, they had no adequate opportunity to protest or challenge Legutko’s ideas. This was partly due to their concern for their own safety. After the office of the provost cited unnamed “potential security and safety risks” in the email canceling the event, some students who had dressed for the pride event did not know whether they were safe on campus.
Although the cancellations of both the protest and the talk are regrettable, we disagree with the choice to give Legutko a private platform after student protesters had been denied a chance for public expression. Students have the right not only to hear and debate ideas with which they disagree, but also to protest them. The college’s handbook specifically states that students may express ideological opposition so long as their protests are non-disruptive and non-violent. Professor Dickinson has said it was a shame that the student protest did not take place, but the decision to invite Legutko to speak in R.A.J. showed disrespect and disregard for the students who had spent hours planning the protest.
Middlebury was deeply divided after the Charles Murray protests in 2017, but the college community is now largely in agreement that the Legutko protest ought to have happened. Student organizers deliberately planned their protest to accommodate college policy, but were robbed of their platform. The community could have benefited from the protest as well as the talk. The two events together would also have been a perfect opportunity to test the new protest policy.
In the future, Middlebury must seriously consider how it can simultaneously support both protesters and speakers in its quest for a robust public sphere; these two goals do not have to be at odds.
(04/18/19 10:00am)
We are proud to endorse Varsha Vijayakumar for SGA President. We believe that Varsha’s past experience on SGA and her extracurricular involvements will enable her to run an effective government while remaining in touch with the student body. We were especially impressed with the way she created her platform: through conversations and collaboration with many students. We think this community-oriented strategy indicates how she would gather information and set priorities as president, pairing smaller, practical goals with big ideas and long-term proposals.
Varsha has shown that she has learned from her previous experience on SGA and from past presidents. We know she will act thoughtfully and respectfully with all students and administrators. We also trust her to hold herself and all SGA members accountable to the student body by remaining transparent.
We would also like to recognize and commend John Gosselin for his committed work with SGA and Community Council. John shares Varsha’s thoughtfulness, and we believe that his dedication and attention to detail make him a strong candidate for many top cabinet positions.
We appreciate all the enthusiasm for student government demonstrated by first-year students who care about campus issues. While there are many invested students, there are also races that are uncontested and at least one position that will be vacant for one semester next year. We challenge more students to get involved in elections so that our student government can have vibrant debate and healthy competition.
(04/11/19 1:20pm)
Okay, let’s take it from the top.
Three weeks ago, the Local Noodle received a picture of a CHEM 103 test with a question asking students to calculate lethal doses of gas as it was used in the Holocaust. We unanimously agreed it deserved to be publicly known and formally denounced, but had heard nothing from the administration. We waited a couple weeks, and still, even after spring break, heard nothing. Not from the administration, not from the Community Bias Response Team (CBRT), and not from The Campus, whom we knew were also aware of the incident. So, we drafted our article, and after some group reflection and deliberation, we decided it ought to be published. Thirty-six hours after our article went up, at 9:12 a.m. on a Sunday, without having reached out to us, the CBRT sent out an all-school email. In it, they denounced the test question, acknowledged the student initiative to decolonize the curriculum, and criticized our article, saying its “light handed references to and engagement with the Holocaust have caused additional harm.”
That email, in our mind, was inappropriate. The CBRT grouped our article into the same paragraph as the chemistry question and apologized for both together, as if the professor’s question was equally offensive as our attempt to bring it to light. This joint condemnation of both the question and our article was then reiterated in an all-grade email to the senior class and again in an email to Atwater Commons. These new emails also announced that motions were made for the entire faculty, and yours truly, to have to attend sensitivity training, still without any attempt to contact The Noodle. (We reached out to the CBRT on Sunday and have yet to hear back from them, or from any other administrative body.)
Let’s pause.
This was not the CBRT’s attempt to give us feedback. It was not an attempt to respectfully open dialogue about this incident, or the implications of our article. It was a strong-arm tactic used by the administration to scare a student publication. It’s a way to publicly shame The Noodle, to make a show of denunciation while covering their asses. The CBRT did not explain their accusation beyond the fact that we “caused additional harm.” They don’t say to whom, or in what way, or why. This email was meant to clean up the CBRT’s image and deprecate the group that called attention to their initial failure.
As an editorial board, we struggled to figure out whether and how to respond to this shaming. Our initial thought was to issue a rote apology, because given how such denunciations typically unfold, we feared that defending our article would automatically be perceived as insensitive and ignorant. We nonetheless decided to respond because we think that not doing so would be a missed opportunity to have a serious discussion about who we are as a campus, and how we protect the role of social criticism even if it touches on sensitive topics.
It’s okay to critique satire. We are more than happy to hear and talk about when we may, in our attempt to expose abuses of power, bump up too hard against protected social values. But the CBRT did not try to engage in this conversation. It flattened the complexity of our article into a misstep, as a way to blame us and defend its own passivity and lack of public response.
In doing so, the CBRT shifted the conversation. They distracted it from the thing we ought to be focusing on — like, say, the actual test question, and their own public inaction — to a debate about whether our article is offensive. The truth is, like with any hard-hitting satire, some people will think our article was offensive, some will think it wasn’t, and there’s not much good trying to convince people one way or another. We stand by the publication of this article the way it is, but, to any who were hurt by it, we do honestly assert that was not our intention.
From what we’ve heard, most of the specific feedback has centered on the name choice of Richard Klement. To address this directly: this was unintentional. Our idea was to Anglicize the name Ricardo Klement, the pseudonym Eichmann used when he moved to Argentina. The fact that Richard Klement also happens to be the name of a Holocaust victim was a total accident. We appreciated the direct feedback on this because it helped us clear up a misunderstanding that had nothing to do with the satirical purpose of the piece.
Satire’s goal has never been to win everyone over. It uses tools like absurdism and irony to make its point, but its goal is to offer very real and constructive social criticism. It’s inherently provocative and uses humor to draw attention to social actors and reflect their failings back at them. Inevitably, satire echoes those failings, and thus can easily be confused with the wrong it seeks to criticize.
In this case, we feel like the public conversation surrounding this incident has been distracted by our article, when it could — and should— be directed at the things we ought to be talking about: an appallingly insensitive chemistry question. The fact that a professor asked students to calculate the mechanics of a gas chamber used in the Holocaust is unthinkable. The fact that the CBRT was not planning on publicly addressing it, even though news of it had spread amongst students feels unfathomable.
But at this point, the debate over our critique has taken on a life of its own, as evidenced by the mass reaction. Something seems to have struck a deeper note. What’s prompting such a forceful response, from students and faculty alike? Clearly it’s something much bigger than the question of whether a satirical article does or doesn’t cross the line.
We believe that the CBRT answered that question in their vague, blanketing critique of our article. The offense, again in their words, was “light handed references to and engagement with the Holocaust.” The fact that that was the only explanation of the “additional harm” our article caused highlights a questionable cultural norm: the idea that engagement with a sensitive topic, just by the nature of its engagement, must conform to a certain script or run the risk of being labeled as harmful.
Yes, we called attention to a problem, and yes, we did it in a provocative way, but that is the point of satire and of our publication. We aren’t saying we did it perfectly. But to condemn the article in such a reflexive and public way preemptively silences any constructive discussion of the topic. Such a reaction is antithetical to open conversation, and it speaks to a larger trend on our campus of fear-based self-censorship around topics that should and need to be to discussed.
We would like to use this platform to make a broader argument: that as a campus, we should be able to authentically engage with sensitive issues, free from the fear of being labeled, shamed, and denied the opportunity to open dialogue. If not, we’ll build barriers to engagement with the things that divide us— the very things that need engagement most.
The Local Noodle is a student-run satirical newspaper.
(04/11/19 10:00am)
With the Spring Student Symposium happening tomorrow, all of us here at The Campus cordially encourage you to embrace your inner nerd. This sort of academic initiative can take many forms. Maybe you attend a friend’s symposium presentation and discuss their work over dinner afterward. Maybe you go to a professor’s office hours and finally ask them about their independent research. Maybe you grab a meal with that one kid who always makes profound comments in class. At the end of the day, virtually any type of extracurricular academic engagement will be intellectually stimulating and provide you with unique perspectives on topics you may never have encountered.
The symposium is one of the few occasions where we can directly observe our peers’ work. Symposium presentations are amazing opportunities to expand your intellectual horizons and learn about topics beyond your specific major or coursework. You may also come across other like-minded students who share your interests and would be more than happy to continue academic discussions beyond the symposium. So, rather than wasting the entire day off, why not attend a few presentations and learn something new?
While we certainly encourage you to wholeheartedly embrace the Spring Symposium, we do not believe extracurricular intellectualism should stop there. Many of us on the editorial board have found that some of our most memorable and interesting discussions at the college have occurred in non-academic settings, and we encourage students to actively foster such discussions on campus as often as possible.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Rather than wasting the entire day off, why not attend a few presentations and learn something new? [/pullquote]
We would thus like to propose a series of recommendations that may promote the academic spirit of the symposium throughout the school year. First, we believe the administration should revitalize the college’s tradition of professor-student lunches by allowing professors to get a select amount of meals with students for free. Talking with professors in non-academic settings not only enables students to solidify their understanding of in-class material, but also provides an opportunity to explore tangential subject matter that may have been overlooked by the course syllabus.
We also think more academic departments should hold additional coffee hours or lunches to foster scholarly discussions among students interested in similar topics. These events should be accessible to everyone regardless of individual majors to encourage a culture of academic curiosity where students willingly leave their intellectual comfort zones and engage with new material.
The pilot computer science language table is a great example of an academic department taking initiative to foster extracurricular discussions among interested students, and should thus act as an example for other departments moving forward. These extracurricular events could encompass everything from coffee hours to meeting up at a professor’s house for dinner, so long as they provide students with adequate platforms to engage in intellectual discussions.
Joining academic clubs on campus is yet another way to surround yourself with individuals who are more than willing to engage in intellectual discussion. These clubs are open to all students across all disciplines, and represent a perfect opportunity to embrace academic interests in low-stress extracurricular environments.
We also encourage students to reach out to classmates whom they may not know but who make interesting comments in class. If a fellow student shares an idea that surprises or intrigues you, ask them to lunch! Take advantage of the fact that you both share a similar academic interest and discuss subject matter related to your class; you may even make a new friend.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Tomorrow’s Spring Student Symposium represents an amazing opportunity for us all to engage our intellectualism beyond the classroom.[/pullquote]
We also advocate for more professors to prioritize student participation in their classes over lectures. Many members of the editorial board believe in-class discussions provide more incentive to complete coursework and assigned readings ahead of time as a means to participate. When the professor simply regurgitates the contents of an assigned reading during class, students may feel less motivated to actually complete the readings themselves and may lack personal investment in the subject material as a result. As such, we think more discussion-based courses should be accessible to the general student body (rather than just upperclassmen) to encourage as much intellectual investment as possible throughout students’ academic careers.
We would also like more students to pursue their own academic endeavors outside of class. Whether this means creating an independent short film with a few friends or conducting independent research based on a historical topic covered in class, we believe these projects present valuable opportunities for students to take more initiative in their academic development throughout college.
The college’s Divestment Movement is a perfect example of students becoming inspired from their academic coursework and taking initiative outside of class to make a difference on campus. While not all extracurricular ventures need to have large institutional impacts on the college, we can all still appreciate the intellectualism that catalyzed the Divestment Movement and channel similar sentiments towards our own academic passions outside of class.
Additionally, the college should host more opportunities for students to intellectually engage with members of the local community. While it’s great that much of the college’s extracurricular intellectualism coincides with the invitation of outside speakers to campus, we should maintain these conversations year-round with the dynamic people who reside here in Middlebury. The white supremacy teach-in last month was an excellent example of facilitating discussion among the members of our community that should be emulated through future events.
Tomorrow’s Spring Student Symposium represents an amazing opportunity for us all to engage our intellectualism beyond the classroom, but why stop there? Why not make the most of these four years and meet new people, leave your comfort zone and learn something new?
(03/21/19 10:00am)
Last week, news broke that the Justice Department is charging dozens of wealthy parents with trying to cheat the college admissions system. Parents allegedly paid to have athletic and academic records fabricated, including SAT scores, and bribed college officials to help get their children into elite universities. This multi-million dollar scandal is disheartening but not entirely surprising, and it sheds light on the deep flaws within the American educational system.
It is frustrating that it took a large admissions scandal to unveil the fact of inequitable educational opportunities to the public. We hope the absurdity of the scandal will encourage admissions counselors, school administrators, athletic coaches, parents and students to think more critically about how educational institutions are not meritocratic systems and to work to increase access, diversity and equity.
The families involved in the scandal are wealthy: some parents work as CEOs of large companies, others as executives of real estate firms, and some are Hollywood actors. These families have the money for good private schools, SAT/ACT prep, summer enrichment programs and private college counselors. They already have a leg up in the admissions process — why resort to bribes and cheating?
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]They already have a leg up in the admissions process — why resort to bribes and cheating?[/pullquote]
In some cases, it seems as if the students implicated in the scandal didn’t have a strong desire to go to college. But parents seemed to ignore this, encouraging their children to attend university. Perhaps this is because, in the age of helicopter parenting, parents view the name of their child’s college as a direct reflection of their parenting skills.
Instead of encouraging their children to find schools with programs that reflect their interests and values, these parents decided they would send their children to elite schools, where prestige, parties and social networking are abound. If you’re not interested in school or if money isn’t a concern for you, then really all that matters is you get into a “good” school and just have fun for four years.
Parents and students took advantage of testing accommodations on standardized tests meant for students with disabilities. These accommodations are meant to level the playing field, giving students with diagnoses like dyslexia or ADHD extra time on tests. But, by encouraging students to claim they had a disability, families cheated the system meant to protect individuals with learning disabilities. We are angry this happened because it will likely make it difficult for those who really need accomodations to receive them in the future.
Many of the students involved in the scandal got into schools like Yale and the University of Souther California as “athletes.” Sometimes parents would take staged photographs of their children playing a sport or even photoshop their child’s head onto an athlete. These parents were taking advantage of the often privileged admissions process for athletes and exploiting it to its utmost. They knew that passing off their children as athletes could prove advantageous.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]The underlying problem of inequitable educational access is evident on our campus.[/pullquote]
It’s true that this would not have been possible without coaches and admissions officers accepting bribes or looking the other way, but it should also prompt reflection on the privileged admissions process that exists for different types of students, including athletes.
Middlebury College is not implicated in this scandal, and we believe that our coaches and admissions counselors operate with integrity. But the underlying problem of inequitable educational access is evident on our campus. Although we are one of thirty-six “need-blind” schools in the country that meet demonstrated financial need (for domestic, non-transfer students only), it is clear that we, either inadvertently or purposefully, select for wealthier students. Even if nothing about our admissions system is illegal, that does not make it perfectly moral.
Middlebury’s athlete recruitment system deserves some renewed scrutiny. Though our Division III system works differently from the Division I schools implicated in “Operation Varsity Blues,” we’re troubled by the underlying idea that some students are privileged in the admissions process because they are good at a sport that often requires large amounts of money in order to practice.
Athletes at prestigious schools, Middlebury included, are usually hardworking, dedicated and smart students who balance schoolwork with travel, games, practice and other team activities. This doesn’t take away from the fact that their athleticism may have helped them get in. In 2018, The Atlantic published a report on the relationship between admissions and college sports. 79 percent of Division III NESCAC student athletes were white last year, and athletes have an overall higher acceptance rate than non-athletes.
The college can do more to attract poor and middle class students by actively recruiting in neighborhood public schools across the country and not just at elite preparatory high schools. The college’s affiliation with the POSSE Foundation brings diverse public school students to Middlebury who may not have even applied otherwise, but this is a leadership scholarship and is not based on financial need. We would like to see the college broaden its recruiting practices to inform more students about Middlebury and its options for financial aid.
Overall, this scandal is forcing people to talk about issues that have always been present in college admissions. We want to have a legitimate and fair admissions process because we want classrooms full of motivated, intelligent and thoughtful students with whom we can learn. We hope the colleges use this scandal as an opportunity to rethink the admission process and address educational inequality.
