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(10/01/20 9:54am)
This year’s annual Clifford Symposium — titled “The Rise of Big Data” — focused on the growth of data across disciplines and its importance for the future of learning at Middlebury. The conference was held over Zoom on Thursday, Sept. 24.
‘Truth in Numbers? Data in Environmental Science’
Tony Sjodin
The event kicked off with a panel discussion featuring the four professors that teach the core classes of the Environmental Studies major. Director of the Environmental Studies program Dan Brayton moderated the panel, and the Howard E. Woodin Colloquium series co-sponsored the event.
Joseph Holler, assistant professor of geography, spoke about replicability in scientific studies and the issues surrounding transparency in research methods. Holler highlighted a proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule that would require the data and methods of research used for EPA regulations to be made public, such that others can reproduce the study. He also brought up the challenges of privacy in health data and intellectual property in making research more transparent.
Holler presented his own research that used data from 2017, when emergency call centers were overwhelmed during Hurricane Harvey and people took to Twitter to ask for help.
“I’m really concerned about breaking the science-policy relationship because of the way that we treat data computationally in our research and trying to achieve this standard of reproducibility while also preserving privacy,” Holler said.
Marc Lapin, associate laboratory professor of environmental studies, discussed the importance of pairing quantitative understanding with qualitative understanding. Lapin cited an analysis of carbon sequestration — the storage of carbon dioxide — in trees and spoke about how such data can be used to inform conservation efforts when paired with human knowledge.
“These are things that some may claim can be coded and quantified and put into these more analytical algorithmic tools, but ... our human minds are the best integrators of all this information,” Lapin said.
Kathryn Morse, John C. Elder professor of environmental studies, spoke about Morse’s research on the first New Deal and case files from families who applied for help to save their farms.
“The files are full of data … as a result I’ve gotten interested in how New Deal bureaucrats made sense of all of this, what they used it for, and how they grew meaning from it,” Morse said.
Morse shared maps created from this data displaying various metrics of New Deal programs and discussed how it was used to communicate with the public and Congress.
Christopher McGrory Klyza, Stafford professor of public policy, political science, and environmental studies, spoke about the Clean Air Act and the use of data for setting ambient air quality standards.
“The EPA goes through a multi-phase process to examine the latest public health science. In this process, the data is central and the EPA is typically reliant on scientific studies, including many large epidemiological studies,” Klyza said.
‘Clifford Symposium Welcome and Launch of MiddData’
By Genny Gottdiener
Jason Grant, assistant professor of computer science, and Alex Lyford, assistant professor of mathematics, introduced the symposium’s second event. Panelists from a variety of departments, including environmental studies, economics and sociology, introduced the MiddData initiative, a project aimed to make the idea of data usage less intimidating.
President Laurie Patton gave a speech about the power that data science has to unite people. The exploration of data science will serve as a way to honor the symposium’s namesake, Nick Clifford, a professor emeritus of history who passed away last year, according to Patton.
“MiddData is a major new initiative to provide equitable and inclusive access to powerful tools for empirical research, data analysis and critical digital scholarship from the moment students arrive on campus,” said Morse, a co-director of the MiddData initiative.
Although the initiative is still in the works, the group aims to introduce new campus-wide programming, such as introductory courses in statistics applicable across disciplines and credit-bearing data science boot camps. They also hope to expand data courses across the curriculum, starting from first-year seminars and expanding out across all majors, and introduce a data science minor along with other interdisciplinary minors in fields like public policy and medicine.
“We all need to be data and digital people,” said Caitlin Myers, co-director of the MiddData Initiative and professor of economics. “[This is the way we can] maintain timeless values of liberal arts in a world which is rapidly changing around us.”
‘Bigotry Data: How Big Data and Algorithms Perpetuate Racism and Inequality’
Nicole Pollack
Linus Owens, associate professor of sociology, gave this year’s Clifford Symposium keynote address. The talk explored big data through the lens of social analysis, highlighting the ways in which big data not only reflects reality but reflects and reinforces users’ expectations of reality, ultimately encoding and replicating inequity through data.
“Big data is not a neutral process,” Owens said. “And it's a relationship that gets rationalized.”
Owens spoke about the mechanisms through which data explicitly amplifies racial hierarchies and structural oppression. The use of data in policing can reinforce existing biases, with individuals and groups who have been disproportionately targeted in the past being more likely to then have additional data collected on them, which will increase the chances of them being targeted again, he said.
Owens said that the role of institutions like Middlebury is “to rationalize and streamline and normalize the data through our usage of it and treatment of it as real and true and objective.”
“When we think about structural racism, we have to think about the way in which it’s embedded in just about every institution in our society,” he said. “And so responding to that will require fundamental changes in the institutions that we are accustomed to.”
‘Meet Data, Your New Assistant Coach’
By Maggie Reynolds
Data in sports may be changing the game. As data usage in sports has skyrocketed, coaches at Middlebury now consider a variety of statistics to help them make strategic game-time decisions.
When Middlebury football coach Bob Ritter plans his team’s practices for the week, he uses recent game footage as well as data to track injuries and determine optimal pre-game rest for his players.
Data has also allowed coaches to be more informed while preparing for games. Women’s basketball coach KJ Krasco uses data on shot percentages for the Panthers and each opposing team to optimize the Middlebury team’s strategies. Baseball coach Mike Leonard uses data to provide players with specific cues to improve their technique and understand the tendencies of pitchers and players on opposing teams.
Though teams at all levels have adopted data to better inform coaches and players, challenges accompany the effective use of big data at the Division III level. When professional NFL, NBA and MLB teams use data, they have a much larger sample size. For Leonard, it is not always easy to determine which data points used at the Major League level are still relevant to the substantially shorter college season. Ritter said that with a season of fewer than 10 football games, it can be risky to follow strategies indicated by the data due to such small sample sizes. Still, Krasco believes it is possible to select helpful data points and use those as tangible goals for her team.
This readily available data has shifted the role of coaches in athletic competitions. The three coaches agreed that they try to make well-informed decisions based on the data but still take responsibility if an error happens in the game. Despite its applications, big data cannot replace coaches' personal connections with players or their goals of helping players grow as athletes and as people. But when data is balanced with human interaction, coaches can use it to give players motivation and instill confidence in their abilities.
(07/14/20 4:41am)
Police reform took center stage in the Vermont legislature as lawmakers voted unanimously to approve S.219 on Friday, June 26 before adjourning for six weeks. The bill, which aims to address racial bias and excessive use of force by law enforcement, was first introduced in January but gained new attention from lawmakers following the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis this May.
The bill, which now awaits Gov. Phil Scott’s signature, prohibits officers from using any restraint maneuver — including chokeholds — that “applies pressure to the neck, throat, windpipe or carotid artery that may prevent or hinder breathing, reduce intake of air or impede the flow of blood or oxygen to the brain.” In addition, the bill updates the definition of unprofessional conduct to include prohibited restraints. Officers who cause serious injury or death by using such a restraint face up to 20 years imprisonment and a $50,000 fine.
S.219 also requires that Vermont State Police officers begin using body cameras and that Vermont law enforcement agencies comply with existing race data reporting requirements in order to retain state grant funding. Under 20 V.S.A. § 2366, for all roadside stops Vermont police agencies are required to report the race, age and gender of the driver; the reason for the stop; any type of search that was performed; any evidence that was collected and the outcome of the stop.
Criticism
Although activists across the country have called for swift action to address police brutality, some Vermonters have criticized the bill as hasty and lacking in input from the state’s Black and Brown communities. Vermont State Senator and President Pro Tempore, Tim Ashe, explained that the legislature’s biggest challenge has been “the battle between time and progress.”
“I’ve watched ‘the process’ derail too many no-brainer reforms. So my encouragement as Senate leader was to act in as many instances as possible,” he wrote in an email to The Campus. “While these discussions will rightly continue in the months and years ahead, the will to act is now and it would be a mistake to miss it."
In addition, legislators set a repeal date of July 1, 2021 on the prohibited restraint and justifiable homicide statutes in order to prompt further action on them during the next session.
“In looking at [the justifiable homicide] statute, when our judiciary committee was taking up [bill S.219], they realized ‘this is really out of date and we need to do something with this,’ but we just didn't have the time to dig into it,” said Vermont State Senator Ruth Hardy in an interview with The Campus.
She explained that S. 219 is only a first step, and that the repeal forces the legislature to deal with the statute during its next session.
“It basically continues the conversation and continues the work and the testimony and the research into updating these statutes to make sure that they are relevant and timely and fair and unbiased and that they hold the police accountable for their actions,” Hardy said.
Furthermore, though this bill takes steps to address misconduct by individual officers, it does not include many of the demands made by advocates of institutional reform.
As part of his campaign for High Bailiff of Addison County, Dave Silberman began a petition titled “Repair Our Public Safety Systems: Center Justice and Community.” Calling for officials at all levels of government to move beyond words, it demands for civilian oversight of police use of force incidents, a review of all pending cases with Black defendants for signs of racial bias and the strengthening of existing hate crime laws.
Silberman said in a recent call with The Campus that addressing the systemic racism that “infests” policing systems starts with reevaluating the state and municipal budgets to reallocate resources towards models of public safety that center community justice instead of retribution and punishment.
His petition calls for reallocating law enforcement budgets to services such as crisis intervention and substance use counseling.
“Some people might want to call that ‘defund the police’; I call that reallocating our budget,” Silberman said. “But at the end of the day, it's about spending less on policing and more on effective models of community safety.”
Other bills
The legislature has made progress on other bills pertaining to policing and criminal justice reform. Bill S.338, also known as “Justice Reinvestment II,” passed on Wednesday, June 24 and also awaits Gov. Scott’s signature.
Based on the results of a decade of research into Vermont’s criminal justice system, it aims to reduce the state’s incarcerated population and reduce related expenses by streamlining furlough and parole policies.
The bill also commissions a new study into racial disparities in Vermont’s criminal justice system, with a focus on exploring the relationship between demographic factors and sentencing outcomes as well as whether the use and length of incarceration contributes to racial disparities.
In addition, the bill aims to reduce recidivism by providing greater support to persons transitioning into the community. Recidivism contributes significantly to Vermont’s incarceration rates, with an average of 78% of accepted inmates in the past three years returning from furlough, parole and probation. In addition, nearly 80% of furlough returns to incarceration are due to technical violations — such as a lack of housing or employment — rather than new criminal offenses.
When the legislature reconvenes in August, it will continue to work on S.119 — a bill that authorizes police use of deadly force only when “necessary” in the context of each situation — and S.124 – which modifies the state’s police recruitment, training and conduct standards and expands civilian membership in the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council.
Editor’s Note: Ruth Hardy is married to Middlebury College Professor of Film and Media Culture Jason Mittell, who is The Campus’s academic advisor. All questions may be directed to campus@middlebury.edu.
(05/07/20 10:03am)
This week, professors are wrapping up the final days of remote learning for the spring semester. Considering the challenges posed by Covid-19, professors showed increased flexibility as they reworked their syllabi; some even adapted their courses in creative ways to incorporate the pandemic into their teaching.
But a contentious debate over the college’s remote grading policy raised questions of equity, opportunity and motivation, with organizers on both sides raising an important point — students and professors all experience remote learning very differently.
Many students’ lives have been severely disrupted by the virus. Some returned home to parents who are fighting on the frontlines of Covid-19, while others had to navigate housing insecurity and address health concerns — including possibly becoming infected themselves.
[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]The playing field of a regular classroom, which was already tilted by unequal access to educational opportunities, has been replaced by a social platform with new inequities. I worry about that a lot, and not just in terms of my classes, but for how those classes will play out in the longer term.[/pullquote]
Anthropology professor Michael Sheridan expressed concern about the long-term consequences of remote learning. Sheridan was one of the co-signers of the faculty motion for a mandatory credit/no credit system, which faculty voted down on April 17.
“The playing field of a regular classroom, which was already tilted by unequal access to educational opportunities, has been replaced by a social platform with new inequities,” he wrote in an email to The Campus. “I worry about that a lot, and not just in terms of my classes, but for how those classes will play out in the longer term. Will the students who took a required course that’s a building block for their major only get 50–75% of the learning done? Will that affect other classes down the road?”
Professor of Psychology Jennifer Sellers said Canvas and Zoom are poor substitutes for the in-person classroom dynamic.
“As an instructor, I don’t have the cues to work with as I am assessing in real time how students are responding to material,” Sellers wrote in an email to The Campus. “I also have less of an idea what their environment is like, so I’m not as able to draw connections for them. It’s also more difficult to engage the affective component of learning without that in-person connection.”
Sellers chose to teach her classes asynchronously to provide her students with additional flexibility. She organized students into smaller groups within the class in order to help them maintain the peer connections that are essential to learning.
“I feel like I’m speaking into the ether with little idea how the sentences are landing,” Sheridan wrote. “I can’t see that person at the back of the room who’s wrinkling their brow with some sort of frustration during a lecture who I can ask what they’re thinking. It means that a lot of the intentions that come across in the class are mine, because I’m the one recording a lecture alone.”
Internet speed and reliability also pose challenges for faculty and students alike. Network infrastructure is being strained as people work from home, leading to unreliable connections on Zoom and other video-conferencing platforms. Sellers and Sheridan both faced difficulties with limited bandwidth in their homes.
“My big challenge is that I live in Cornwall and we have limited bandwidth just about every morning for the whole town,” Sheridan wrote. “There is no cable, only two roads have fiber optic internet. And there are five people in my house who all need to live their lives online at the same time. We yell to one another, 'Everybody get offline for 10 minutes so I can do X!'"
Environmental Studies professors Marc Lapin and Peter Ryan have been co-teaching "Natural Science and the Environment," an introductory Environmental Studies course, this semester. Distance learning poses particular challenges for classes with lab components, as field trips and lab experiments can no longer take place in-person. But Lapin and Ryan have substituted them with data sets, virtual field trips and other online content. Both explained that they are happy with student engagement and the quality of their work.
“ES112 labs are now me delivering data, including watershed land cover-land use maps and numerical data on that and on water quality ([Phosphorus] and [Nitrogen] in Middlebury River), and the students do some graphing and interpretation,” wrote Lapin, who teaches the lab section of the course. “We had a ‘virtual’ farm tour using some excellent videos of a very forward-thinking regenerative farm in the southern U.S., and the students did a systems sketch model as they would have had we visited a farm on the ground.”
Ryan, who teaches the lecture section, noted that he has seen greater engagement from some students during distance learning. “I am finding that written discussion forums provide an opportunity for students to participate in a way that is different than speaking up in class, so I have seen higher levels of insightful participation from some students that are not the type to speak up frequently in class, and I will carry that information forward into subsequent terms,” he wrote.
Building community
Despite all of the challenges created by remote learning, it has also created the possibility for a more compassionate and intentional learning environment. Katie Ostrow ’23, a psychology major, is happy with the support she has received from her professors.
“For my classes that are meeting synchronously, all of those professors either at the beginning of each class or at the beginning of the week take the time to check in with each student personally, giving them as much time as they’d like to share as little or as much as they’d like with the class about how they are doing,” Ostrow wrote in an email to The Campus.
She explained that in her creative writing class, students created a Google Doc to share recipes, TV shows, films, and books, and that they often send informal class-wide emails to share ideas or simply maintain regular contact with each other.
“Little things like this have, at least for me, made this extremely difficult time just a little more bearable.”
Bochu Ding ’21 said remote learning has given him a view into his professors’ personal lives. He explained how Sheridan is connecting with his class from afar.
“There’s a little discussion thread under ‘announcements’ on Canvas called community building where we can share updates about our lives — recipes, funny photos, etc,” Ding wrote. “We also have a group chat with him and he sent us a photo of his dinner one night.”
However, Sheridan said his biggest challenge is maintaining personal connections with his students.
“We very much need to connect with one another, just to talk about how we’re having super vivid dreams so we can find out that we’re not alone,” he wrote. “We need the informal moments that happen before and after class, over lunches in Proctor, and walking across campus. We can’t reproduce those online, so I try to make some space in classes on Zoom for people to hold their dogs and cats on their laps.”
Sellers echoed a similar sentiment. “Some students are worried about bothering professors, so they are less likely to reach out,” she wrote. “When I see students every week, I can usually check in and make sure things are going well. Also, I just like the short conversations I can have before and after classes. I like knowing the things that are on students’ minds. Small moments have big impacts.”
Editor’s note: Bochu Ding ’21 is a managing editor for The Middlebury Campus.
(04/26/20 9:17pm)
I have been in and around educational spaces as a TA, teacher, volunteer, educator and professor for 20 years. Long before I knew that the job of “professor” existed, I was an educator, or, at least, an aspiring one. However, as I was a first-generation college student, writing centers, much like my understanding of academia in general, were on the periphery of my experience.
When I was in college, my school’s writing center was largely unknown to the student body — none of my professors talked about it in class. The center, which had a couple of student workers and offered only a few hours of service a week, sat in the corner of a little-used academic “house.” Instead of attending the writing center, I struggled through my writing on my own or with the support of some very gracious and thoughtful English faculty. While I muddled through, I did not learn much about how to write in academic settings until much later in my academic career. Most of what I picked up about writing was implicit, unconscious.
It wasn’t until I entered graduate school that I worked in my first writing center. As a graduate tutor, I worked primarily with undergraduate students in the first-year writing program. Our main set of attendees were international students whose first language wasn’t English. Since most of the students who attended did so because their faculty demanded they go, it would take another four years for me to realize that writing centers weren’t just punitive spaces where teachers sent their “bad” writers. Later, I was the assistant director of the writing center at Northeastern. During this time, I realized that writing centers were professional spaces where its workers trained to do the very hard, but frequently misperceived, work of teaching writing.
Writing centers, however, are also spaces of social justice that theorize and enact equitable practices around language instruction, especially for first-generation and multilanguage students. They provide more than localized feedback to help a student get a better grade on a paper; they provide a safe and inclusive space for students who might otherwise be reluctant to share their writing and ideas. For many, as I later learned as the director of the writing center at Ohio State, the writing center is the only place where a student will receive feedback on their writing, their ideas, their processes, their struggles, their joys.
A common misconception about writing centers is that only “struggling” students seek them out. But writing centers actually attract high-performing, thoughtful and intentional writers who are motivated to develop their writing skills and knowledge further. I have worked with tenured faculty, postdoctoral fellows and advanced graduate students; often, the higher the stakes of the writing project — grants, manuscripts, journal articles — the more motivated the “client.”
In the eight months that I have been at Middlebury, I have met many faculty who are thoughtful and engaged in the process of teaching writing. I also have met many students who are excited by writing but terrified of “not getting it right.” Lately, given the current world-wide pandemic we are all facing, the phrase “perfect is the enemy of the good” has been circulating in many online spaces. Even before this moment, in my experience, this sentiment has prevented students from fully engaging in the educational process of writing. It has also caused students days, if not weeks, of procrastination, blank pages and scratched-out writing. Students, I promise you, writing doesn’t have to be that stressful.
This is where Middlebury’s own writing center comes into the picture. The Middlebury Writing Center is a space that accepts students on their merit, but also one that tries to tell every student that walks through its doors that they are OK: that their writing and ideas matter. In place of grades, tutors offer qualitative feedback. In place of critique, tutors offer praise. In place of strict edicts, tutors discuss possibilities. The writing center doesn’t follow you throughout your academic career like a millstone around your neck (like GPA blips might). The writing center will (hopefully) never cross out writing and simply write “no” on your essay (yes, I have been there). Instead, writing centers demystify feedback, assignment prompts, specific genres and the writing process in general. They help writers to slow down and think about their writing with little pressure to “get it right.” They are the best-kept secret of most colleges and universities, and I wish, as an undergraduate, that I had known about them and worked with and for them.
Genie Giaimo is a professor of Writing and Rhetoric and the director of the Middlebury Writing Center.
Recently, the Middlebury College Writing Center has launched online tutoring services. For more details, visit the Middlebury Writing Center website.
(04/22/20 9:56am)
First-years’ identities are inevitably tied to the dorms they live in — Allen, Battell, Ross and Stewart — where neighbors forge friendships. These relationships, generated by proximity, often become the support systems that carry students through the transition to college life. Yet they are sometimes the least expected friendships.
Emma Wheeler ’23 and Emma McKee ’23 are hallmates in Battell. Recalling the first time they met each other over lunch, both admitted that the connection was not immediate.
“I was so uncomfortable that I’m pretty sure I didn’t speak at all,” Wheeler said. “For some reason, I had this false assumption that I wouldn’t end up being best friends with my hallmates.”
Orientation offers first-years many opportunities to interact with their hallmates through Commons-based activities. Through workshops, which are designed to build relationships and push students out of their comfort zones, first-years are often constantly around the same people.
Ella Jones '23 lives in Hadley Hall and her core group of friends consists of her roommate, suitemates and a few hallmates. She traced the roots of these friendships to her first weeks at Middlebury.
“It is just so convenient. Going down to meals with people, hanging out after class, it all becomes easier the closer together you live,” Jones said.
McKee described the pressure first-years feel to go everywhere in packs during orientation.“It’s comfortable to have a group of friends right away, even if you’re not going to stay friends with them forever, just so you feel less alone,” McKee said.
But as first-years become more integrated into the rest of the college community, they often seek ways to branch out. Clubs, classes and parties all become important vehicles for social interaction.
Wheeler and McKee both became part of the water polo team. The team gave them a passion for the sport — and a new group of friends.
“I feel a close sisterhood with my waterpolo gals and guys,” Wheeler said. “And I feel like I’ve also met so many amazing people through my water polo friends.”
While students have agency to find and choose their friends, placements of first-years in dorms and halls is arbitrary. Friends by proximity are a testament to a combination of chance and fate that becomes the perfect recipe for human relationships.
“There are so many people on campus, and I think there are a lot of people that I am compatible with enough to form a friendship,” Wheeler said. “But it takes the combination of being compatible and having a shared experience to bond over.”
Three years later
For some students, these “proximity friends” carry them through all four years of college. As a first-year, Jack Kagan ’20 lived in the basement in Allen. He was not close with the other students on his floor, but a friend from high school looped him into his floor in Hadley. The floor was close, and many of the students who lived there have remained in a tight-knit friend group.
“We all got along so well and I'll never be able to thank those people enough for being so open to me, letting me crash on their floors and their couches, and being true friends,” Kagan wrote in an email to The Campus.
For Kagan, the keys to these friendships lasting through the ups and downs of college life were openness and humor. Even when the people in his friend group do not see each other for a while, they always pick up where they left off when they get back together.
His group of friends has expanded over the years, collecting new people and remaining open to new friendships, ideas and activities.
“I think we can always have fun together and joke around together and that's when we're at our happiest. We all would be so happy to just sit in a room and talk and just laugh,” he wrote.
Kagan, who does not identify as outgoing, considers himself lucky to have found the people he now considers some of his closest friends so early on.
“I think the lesson out of this is, freshman year, you really have to push hard to leave any expectations of college at the door. You have to try not to blame yourself or anything for your situation,” he wrote. “You have to trust that it will work out if you try to do what makes you happy because you'll find those people doing the same thing.”
The Sophomore Shuffle
As MiddKids return to campus for their sophomore years, they often observe shifts in their friendships.
With a year of college under their belts, many sophomores discover that they have a greater sense of self-confidence and familiarity with themselves and their surroundings, as well as a better understanding of what they care about most. Daily routines adapt as they delve deeper into their academic specialties and dedicate themselves to a handful of extracurriculars. These factors can all shape the changing landscape of existing — and developing — friendships.
Gracey Carroll ’22 believes that college friendships are more fluid than commonly thought. “I think a common myth about college friendships is that you have one circle of friends,” she wrote. “I don’t know anyone who has that! I have my roommates, my Model UN friends, my Radio Theatre friends and friends from classes.”
Carroll explained that she made fewer new friends this year than she did last year and is no longer as close with some of her first-year friends. Instead, she opted to strengthen her existing relationships.
“There were a few people I was very close with last year that I don’t talk to as much anymore,” she wrote. “I think part of it was that Battell got separated into Gifford and Pearsons, but I also realized at some point that I just didn’t like some of the people I’d grown attached to.”
New activities, new friends
While first-year relationships are decided by proximity, sophomore connections are often based on common interests. Claire Moy ’22 expanded her social circles in her sophomore year while also prioritizing certain extracurriculars.
“Like a lot of MiddKids, I joined so many orgs my freshman fall that I barely had time to attend any of them,” she wrote in a message to The Campus. “This year, I dedicated more time to my extracurriculars like ISO and Riddim, took on leadership roles and was just more confident, which helped me to reach out and really get to know people.”
This increased confidence also helped her connect with her peers outside of class. “As I took higher-level courses in Economics, I found I was spending a lot more time with more of the same people,” she wrote. “It was an incentive to get to know them and hang out outside of class.”
Moy explained that, although she made several new friends this year, her main friend group from her first-year hall hasn’t changed much. “Sophomore year definitely solidified this friend group, while expanding my network to include really diverse-thinking and interesting people,” she wrote.
Justin Cooper ’22 reflected on the role of confidence in his personal relationships. Like Moy, he found that his first-year friendships strengthened after returning to campus in the fall.
“I think what really allows us to both solidify and expand our social circles in sophomore year is confidence and comfort on campus,” he wrote. “With these as the building blocks for the sentiment coming back to a now-familiar place and lifestyle, it is easier to reach out to someone you wouldn’t have before or to spend your time with your friends how you please.”
Long distance friendships
The transition to distance learning strained social life at Midd for students and clubs alike. Michael Simons ’22.5 said he finds it challenging to build and maintain connections from a distance.
“I’ve tried to keep my relationships going, but it seems hard to build new friendships over Zoom,” he wrote. “I’m not connecting as regularly because everyone has busy schedules and it’s a lot harder to plan meetings when we live in different parts of the country and have changing family and work responsibilities.”
Like many other students, Simons began to branch out from his main group of friends in his second semester. He said that while he enjoyed having a group of Febs that he could reach out to at any time, it isn’t until the fall that many Febs start to meet new people.
Simons chose to live in Weybridge House and joined the sailing team this fall in order to broaden his network of friends. He has also been a member of Community Friends since his first semester and currently serves as a community coordinator.
“Joining the coordinator team was a great way to meet a kind, sincere group of friends,” he said. “It was nice having a friend group centered around giving back to the community.”
For now, Simons is staying connected through snail mail. “Writing lots of letters and postcards to friends is the biggest thing that I’m doing to stay connected,” he wrote.
Carroll acknowledges the difficulty of constantly saying goodbye to familiar faces at the end of each semester. "Middlebury is a revolving door of new people," she wrote. "Given the Feb program and the popularity of study abroad, I always feel like I am saying goodbye to someone and hello to someone else."
However, she remains optimistic about her next two years at Middlebury. “While the constant change can be challenging, I welcome the opportunity to maximize my pool of wonderfully diverse and ever-transforming friendships!” she wrote.
Editor's Note: Jack Kagan ’20 is a sports editor for The Campus.
(03/23/20 11:05pm)
We will actively update this map in response to how various Middlebury programs are affected by Covid-19.
(03/05/20 10:57am)
Two Middlebury alumni, Kris McGuffie ’97 and Alex Newhouse ’17, spoke last Thursday about the dangerous role of artificial intelligence in online extremism. They connected the growth of the Internet to the creation of large extremist communities online, challenging the conventional notion that extremists act as lone wolves and arguing instead that such online communities sometimes inspire real-world attacks.
The Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC) at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS) sponsored the lecture, titled “The Language of Terror: How Online Extremism and Artificial Intelligence Deepfakes Threaten Our Future.” McGuffie and Newhouse, both English majors who studied at MIIS, now work with the CTEC.
McGuffie began by analyzing the language that extremists use online, explaining that extremists often speak in group — “us versus them” — language and create memes to attract followers. They adapt the language they use to avoid moderation or takedown on major online platforms, often making obscure and codified references to several ideologies in a short phrase. This highly-compressed language is difficult to comprehend for outsiders, but easy for those in extremist networks who are familiar with these ideologies.
“Funny how you’ve been conditioned to react that way,” read one tweet from a right-wing Twitter account, responding to another user with antisemitic criticism of the Israeli state. It accused Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, of controlling large portions of the U.S. government and involving in conspiracies.
“Too bad the Mossad pedophile blackmail network has infiltrated every aspect of American government. They control huge portion of U.S Congress, ran Epstein and Maxwell, ran false flag ops on us, they sell US secret intelligence.”
Such phrases suggest that information is being intentionally withheld from the reader.
“Notice the placement of [the first sentence],” McGuffie said. “That’s at the beginning, right? As a second person, ‘Funny how you’ve been conditioned to react that way. So the implication is you don’t have all the information; you’re a pawn of somebody. And then what follows is some of that information you’re missing. Like, let me fill you in, you’re really missing out on — the implication is — the truth.”
One project of the CTEC is to dissect such tweets to understand which ideologies influence different phrases. The organizations behind many Twitter accounts have skilled teams that use bots to amplify their message — one account posted 50,000 times in 12 hours.
McGuffie stressed the urgent need for both public and private sector policy in this area of research, but she also encouraged audience members to take individual action by voting, assembling and petitioning their governments.
“We all are consumers of technology, we’re all online,” she said. “Policy is important, but setting cultural and social norms is even more important.”
Faculty from multiple disciplines are involved in this project, including professors of linguistics and political science.
Bea Lee ‘20.5, who attended the lecture, said it helped her better understand the risks associated with artificial intelligence.
“[The lecture] was a really important reminder that technological innovation (machine learning specifically) has the potential to be weaponized,” Lee wrote in a message to The Campus. “Just because it has the potential to benefit society doesn’t mean it can go unregulated.”
(02/20/20 11:00am)
“Untitled Romantic Comedy,” unofficially titled “Stop Kiss,” is an independent artistic venture that explores young love in the big city. Directed by Cole Merrell ’20.5, the piece ran in the Hepburn Zoo on Feb. 14 and 16.
(01/23/20 11:03am)
RIDDIM World Dance Troupe, one of the college’s oldest and most recognizable student dance groups, takes Wilson Hall by storm twice a year. Its biannual show consistently sells out, and its recent Fall 2019 show, “RIDDIM Throws It Back,” was no different. Nearly every seat was filled as members of the audition-only troupe performed a variety of pieces choreographed by fellow dancers.
So, what’s RIDDIM all about?
RIDDIM began as RIDDIM World Dance Club in Spring 1998. Started by Tessa Waddell ’02, the club aimed to present the Middlebury community with different styles of dance. From the club came the troupe, an audition-only and student-run group with a stated goal “to provide the Middlebury College community with an outlet of expression through diverse dance styles.”
The word “riddim” comes from the Jamaican Patois pronunciation of the English word “rhythm,” but in reggae and other Afro-Carribean music styles it most commonly refers to the instrumental background of songs.
Mariel Edokwe ’20, a RIDDIM board member, said that the troupe’s style of dance has shifted away from its Afro-Carribean origin over the years.
“As [RIDDIM] continued on, it started kind of shifting towards a contemporary, modern, more ballet-based [style],” Edokwe said. “I know that there’s controversy about that, but I know that since I’ve joined RIDDIM, freshman year in the fall of 2016, they’re really trying to diversify in terms of its members and in terms of its dance styles.”
Edokwe said that the group aims to create a positive, open space for students to dance on campus. She recalled her own experience as a ballet dancer before coming to Middlebury and noted that many dancers in her position choose to pursue their career instead of an education. On-campus groups like RIDDIM allow students who want to dance to do both.
With that being said, RIDDIM members come with varying levels of dance experience. Some members come from a competitive background and have several years of ballet experience whereas others have no formal dance training at all. The troupe remains open to all styles of dance, which Edokwe considers “part of the beauty of RIDDIM itself.”
“I know that for me, personally, and for a bunch of my friends and the group members, that it’s been really awesome for us to come in as, for me, say, a ballet dancer, and then to try hip-hop, try Latin dancing, and to try styles I’ve never done before and just grow as a person and dancer, and just kind of expose yourself to all there is that’s out there in a way that maybe you didn’t get to before," she said.
Malia Armstrong ’22.5 acknowledged the challenges of being a student dancer but said she feels supported by the RIDDIM community.
“Being in Riddim has completely reignited my creativity and passion after feeling burnt out after years of dancing competitively and has created a supportive and healing space on campus," she said. "It reminded me why I love to dance and that is something I will always be grateful for.”
RIDDIM is an inclusive environment that is welcoming to students of all classes and levels of experience. The nine-person board includes members of different years, which allows multiple voices to be heard, and any RIDDIM member can choreograph a piece as early as their second show.
Armstrong and Katie Koch ’22.5 choreographed their first piece, “Partition” for the Fall 2019 show. The dance was performed to Beyonce’s Partition – a song that celebrates female sexuality – and featured excerpts from speeches by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a renowned author and vocal feminist.
Armstrong said that she and Koch chose this song because it features a woman talking about sex and sexuality with strength and confidence, something that is often repressed in society. They overlaid Adichie’s speeches over the song in order to more concisely convey their message. The song ended with the phrase “I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness and femininity,” which Armstrong said sums up the intention behind their piece as a whole.
“My favorite part of choreographing this piece was being able to collaborate with Katie doing something that is out of my comfort zone,” Armstrong wrote in an email to The Campus. “I had never choreographed a heels piece, so exploring different movements with Katie was challenging, but being able to create something together that meant a lot to us was really exciting.”
“When I joined RIDDIM, I thought I was just joining a dance group,” she said. “I had no idea that this group would become my second family. I am so grateful to have connected with such an incredible community of people, all bonded by our love of dance.”
(11/07/19 11:01am)
With the 2020 presidential campaigns heating up over the course of this school year, many students and staff at Middlebury are already thinking about how to promote voting within the campus community.
As part of this effort, the NESCAC Votes summit convened at Middlebury’s Bread Loaf campus in Ripton during the last weekend of October. Designed in collaboration with the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, a nationwide non-profit organization designed to help colleges and universities increase voter turnout, students and staff from eight of the 11 NESCAC schools gathered to develop strategies for the 2020 presidential election cycle.
As part of a tightly-packed two-day schedule, delegates from across New England participated in workshops, learned from peers at other institutions and reflected on ways to increase civic engagement on their own campuses.
The idea for the summit emerged during the summer of 2018 from collaborations between staff at Middlebury, Bowdoin, and the staff at the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge. This effort culminated in President Laurie Patton and Bowdoin President Clayton Rose issuing an invitation to other NESCAC presidents to participate in a conference-wide challenge, the goal of which is for each school to increase its student voting participation rate by 11 points to reach a 64% voting average in the 2020 presidential election.
President Laurie Patton stressed the importance of democratic participation in an academic environment in a statement to the Center for Community Engagement.
“Preparing students for engagement in the issues of our day is central to the educational mission of our institutions,” she said. “NESCAC Votes is a meaningful partnership that allows us to build on our collective institutional strengths and collaborate to deepen civic learning and engagement within our individual campuses.”
In one breakout session on college-specific data during the summit, participants examined reports generated by NSLVE (National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement), which is conducted by the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education at Tufts University. The reports broke down voting rates at each school by race, gender, academic major and other demographics.
The report for Middlebury’s 2014 and 2018 midterm elections shows that although 51% of eligible Middlebury students voted last year, a large ethnic and racial disparity exists in voter participation. According to the report, 50% of white students and 44.2% of students of two or more races voted, but participation dropped to 35.0% for Hispanic students, 24.3% for black students and 20.8% for Asian students.
Participants at the summit reflected on factors that contribute to this disparity. One participant suggested reaching out to on-campus affinity groups and college resources — such as PALANA House and the Anderson Freeman Resource Center — to better understand the barriers that marginalised students face.
Although Middlebury’s overall voting rate surpasses that of many peer institutions, the data is slightly misleading. Middlebury’s overall voting rate jumped from 15% in 2014 to 51% in 2018, which is greater than a national increase in student voting from 19.3% to 40.3% in the same period, but this percentage also includes graduate students at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterrey (MIIS). Because of the data collection method used, which intentionally prevents NSLVE from receiving personally-identifiable information about students, the study cannot analyse data from the college without including MIIS.
During the summit, participants also discussed ways in which faculty can better engage with politics in their classes and contribute to a safer campus climate for all students. One person said that professors should closely consider the language they use in political conversations. Instead of expressing complete neutrality, professors should prepare to facilitate a political discussion in case one arises during a class. Many students recalled experiences in which professors avoided engaging with politics in their classes, which students felt was unproductive because every subject has public and civic relevance.
Participants also discussed technical barriers to voting that students face, and ways to better address them. Students at NESCAC schools often reside out of state and wish to vote in their home states, which presents logistical challenges for volunteers at registration drives. Nearly one-third of Middlebury College voters voted absentee or by mail in 2018, and many students are also unsure how to navigate the absentee voting process.
Ashley Laux ’06, program director at the Center for Community Engagement, said that she plans to continue to support student leaders working to promote campus culture of voting and help students navigate various absentee ballot systems.
“MiddVote and the CCE will continue to lower technical barriers to voting by sharing information about voting laws and processes to students,” Laux said in an email to The Campus. “I hope that more central campus processes can include encouragement to register to vote or request absentee ballots.”
On day two of the summit, students divided into breakout groups for peer-led discussions and reflected on the goals, strategies and organizational structures central to their on-campus voter engagement efforts. Questions such as, “Do the members of your group mostly hold similar or different identities than you?” provoked discussion on the importance of including diverse identities in get-out-the-vote efforts. Students also highlighted weaknesses in their respective on-campus efforts and identified solutions to remedy them.
“My biggest take-away from the event is that we can all do our work better with a strong network,” Laux said. “I learned so much from students, staff, and administrators at Middlebury and the other NESCAC schools. I hope to continue to be in touch across NESCAC as we all work to strengthen our democratic engagement efforts in the lead-up to the 2020 election.”
Participants left the summit having developed an action plan for their schools. As one of its long-term goals, students at MiddVote hope to demystify the voting process and stress the importance of civic participation by developing resources for professors and students alike.
(10/10/19 10:05am)
Economics is an increasingly popular major at Middlebury, and the department’s growing enrollment has placed a strain on its resources. However, a perception remains on campus that the majority of economics majors fit within a certain demographic — often male, certainly white.
This impression — somewhat based in fact — can impact which students feel comfortable taking economics courses. Wider national trends show that women and minorities are underrepresented in the economics profession.
Some students are trying to change that breakdown.
Together with the Economics Department, the largest department at Middlebury by number of majors, Lizzie Friesen ’20 hopes to start a conversation about the lack of diversity in economics and to address stereotypes about the field. The department held a dinner banquet in Atwater Dining Hall on Monday, Sept. 30, where Friesen — herself an economics major — formally announced the Rethinking Economics initiative and its associated student-led club by the same name.
To better understand the perception of economics at Middlebury, Friesen interviewed students on-camera and presented their responses in a video compilation at the Atwater dinner.
Common answers to the question “What kind of a person studies economics?” reinforced the stereotype that most economics students are athletic and finance-oriented. However, a few outlier responses mentioned that economics students might want to “dismantle the system.”
One student in the video said, “I think the stereotype is white male athletes, but I find that to not actually be that true.”
When asked, “What do economists care most about?,” the majority of students said “money”’ and “markets.” Some students said they don’t know, while others said economics is the “study of choices,” and economists are interested in the well-being of everyone.
Economics Department Chair John Maluccio spoke at the dinner about the benefits of race and gender diversity in the economics field. He referenced a paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, which stressed that diverse groups make better and more objective decisions. This is especially important because economics directly influences policy-making, and policy affects constituents of all backgrounds.
The Economics Department has already taken steps to explore ways to make economics courses more accessible to students from under-represented backgrounds. Economics Professor Erin Wolcott cited results from a Swarthmore College study, which looked at nine different colleges, including Middlebury, and explored how targeted outreach affects the diversity of economics courses.
Wolcott contributed data to the study, and in an email to The Campus, she said that the results of the paper show that enrollment in economics courses increased by nearly 20% when targeted information about economics was sent to incoming students from under-represented groups.
The students who launched Rethinking Economics have personal experience feeling out of place in the major. Friesen said that she often questioned whether economics was right for her.
“When people ask me what I major in and I say economics, I often get the response, ‘Oh, you don’t seem like an econ major,’” she said.
But over time, she began to wonder why certain people “seem” like economics majors and others don’t, and what effect those stereotypes might have on Middlebury students.
Friesen decided to reach out to fellow economics majors and organize a discussion. She connected with them over having to constantly dispel the common notion that economics is synonymous with money and finance.
“Some people haven’t really given it much thought or don’t really know what economics is, which is totally understandable,” she said. “I’ve been redefining economics for myself over and over again throughout my time at Middlebury, and I still don’t think I have a solid definition of what economics is.”
She said her own definition of economics has become more broad and nuanced during her time at Middlebury, and she hopes to encourage people to redefine economics for themselves.
Friesen has numerous ideas for the newly-founded club. She has plans to create a peer mentoring program, and looks forward to building a website that centralizes resources for economics students, especially job opportunities such as student research and summer positions. She explained these opportunities are not as equitably accessible, since they are often made available through connections and money.
The Rethinking Economics club held its first meeting of the semester on Tuesday, Oct. 8. More information about the club and and how to get involved is available at go/rethinkingeconomics.
(09/26/19 10:04am)
“There will never be a new world order until women are a part of it.”
These are the words of Alice Paul, an activist who fought for ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which declared that the right to vote shall not be denied on the basis of sex.
As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of that amendment, we ought to remember the people and organizations that worked to make this important milestone possible. That is the message behind Middlebury’s latest museum exhibit, “Votes… for women?”, which opened Sept. 13. Curated by History Professor Amy Morsman, the exhibit acknowledges the remarkable contributions of those involved in the push for women’s suffrage while also examining their words and actions through a critical lens.
The exhibit was partly inspired by the work of my first-year seminar, “The Woman Question.” Taught by Professor Morsman, the class explored the changing roles of women in the U.S. in the years prior to 1919, when women were relegated to housework and removed from the public sphere.
The exhibit begins with the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, organised by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. At the historic convention, delegates drafted the “Declaration of Sentiments,” a manifesto demanding gender equality. Resembling the 1776 Declaration of Independence in its language, the document insisted on the equality of men and women and their fundamental rights of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Among its resolutions was a call for suffrage, for which Stanton and Mott became subjects of ridicule in the press at the time.
A theme of the exhibit is that suffragists struggled with internal politics. They were divided over the 15th Amendment, which was passed in 1870 and prohibited voting discrimination only on the basis of race. This division led to the creation of two separate groups, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The NWSA sought enfranchisement through a federal amendment, whereas the AWSA took a state-by-state campaign strategy. The two groups later merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890, which decided on the state-by-state approach.
The National Women’s Party (NWP), another suffrage group, emerged during the 1910s. It was founded by Alice Paul, who had prior experience leading suffrage campaigns in England. She brought this experience to the U.S. and organised protests in Washington D.C. for federal suffrage legislation. The exhibit shows original banners that NWP members held while picketing in front of the White House, as well as images of these pickets.
The exhibit critically explores the intersection of women’s suffrage, racial justice and economic status and states that the suffrage movement was divisive at its core. It points out that Ida Wells-Barnett was told to march in the back with other black women during the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington D.C. It also says that working class women in the suffrage movement often worked behind the scenes since they had to balance activism with their employment, whereas the women at the center of the movement often came from backgrounds of privilege and status.
[pullquote speaker="Carrie Chapman Catt" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]The vote is a power, a weapon of offense and defense, a prayer. Use it intelligently, conscientiously, prayerfully. Progress is calling to you to make no pause. Act![/pullquote]
A panel dedicated to Vermont discusses the rather small suffrage movement in the state. It attributes the lack of a widespread movement to the rural nature of the state compared to neighboring New York, which had a very active suffrage movement. A separate timeline also features important milestones here at Middlebury. The college — founded as an all-male institution — became coeducational in 1883, and the Chellis House opened on campus in 1993 as a resource for female students.
As we celebrate the centenary of women’s suffrage in the U.S., the exhibit reminds us that further progress still needs to be made to secure voting rights for all Americans. According to the exhibit, the 15th and 19th Amendments were worded as vaguely as possible and, as a result, allowed for the possibility of poll taxes and other disenfranchisement techniques. For instance, black women could not vote until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Even today, citizens in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories cannot vote in federal elections even though they are just as American as those in the 50 states. Many states have attempted to enact strict identification laws that disproportionately affect certain marginalized groups.
Morsman concluded her opening remarks with an uplifting quote from Carrie Chapman Catt: “The vote is a power, a weapon of offense and defense, a prayer. Use it intelligently, conscientiously, prayerfully. Progress is calling to you to make no pause. Act!”
Catt said these words in celebration of the 19th Amendment being ratified in 1920, but they are just as applicable today.
The “Votes… for women?” exhibition will remain open through Dec. 8. Professor Morsman will also discuss key strategies of the suffrage movement this Thursday, Sept. 26 at 7 p.m. in the Museum.