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(09/17/14 9:16pm)
The summer before my senior year of high school I joined a pretty radical group working for environmental justice in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland, Calif., my hometown. I had read about the new group in an article online and asked to join in its efforts.
We ran a free environmental education summer camp for kids in the neighborhood, started an urban garden and rehabilitated a property that was to become the group’s new home. When not working we meditated with anarchists, practiced yoga and held sessions on restorative justice during which we cried for the world and each other (In retrospect, I may have joined a cult).
At one of these sessions we studied the work of the esteemed environmental activist Joanna Macy. A senior member of the group read aloud one of her quotes, “the heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.” I remember the moment distinctly; these words sank into me, cementing a truth I understood but had not been able to fully articulate.
The previous year, my junior year of high school, I fell in love with my AP Environmental Science class because it led me to a realization that now seems so simple, but at the time it was, and still is, profound: the fundamental interconnectedness of all life on Earth.
High school had come with all of its usual — and some not so usual — traumas, but through environmental science I came to see the disconnections in my own life as a microcosm of the larger disconnections in the global environmental system. I was broken open, as Macy says, by the realization of my own disconnections, and thus could accept and act upon disconnections in the global environmental system. I could “contain the whole universe.”
For me, environmentalism means acknowledging interconnectedness — within ourselves, friends, communities, institutions and countries — and examining when these connections are severed and the often consequent environmental damage to ecosystems that ensues. As an environmentalist, I work to return to and repair connections — connections which are unlike puzzle-piece connections, but that are dynamic and perceptive of societal and environmental changes.
I am far from my cult days but the premise of my work and thinking remains the same: connection. Through this column I hope to broadly explore a range of disconnections from the personal to the communal to the global, and tackle themes related to balance and identity and to my work in the Socially Responsible Investment Club, Research and Investment in Sustainable Equities (RISE), the SGA and the Commons System because I think we could all use a little more broken openness — a little more connection. I will, however, leave out more discussion of anarchist meditation. For that, you will need to speak with me directly.
SOPHIE VAUGHAN '17 is from OAKLAND, Calif.
Artwork by JENA RITCHEY
(09/17/14 9:14pm)
Jolted out of bed at 2 a.m. by the wailing of the fire alarm, I flail around in my dark room to find some resemblance of an outfit. After what seems like an eternity, I reluctantly go outside to join the other Battell residents huddled together in the cold, experiencing what has become a rite of passage for Middlebury students.
Imagine that the alarm went off a couple times a day, instead of a handful of times a year. Imagine being awakened by an alarm signaling that you have 90 seconds to get dressed and get to the nearest bomb shelter. Imagine rockets with 100 kg. warheads landing near your home. Imagine going to work every day and proceeding with life as normal despite the rockets. That was my summer.
On the May 30, I departed my home in Los Angeles and traveled halfway across the world to Tel Aviv, Israel. Birthright Israel sponsored 40 North American college students for a very unique program. We lived together in a youth hostel and worked in various internships. Evenings included special programming or a speaker. We were paired with 40 Israeli peers that studied at an Israeli University or served in the army.
The first month of the trip was exactly as I had expected. I learned a lot at my job at Giza Venture Capital, I learned about Israel’s miraculous economy from high-profile speakers, I experienced a traditional Shabbat dinner with my Israeli peer Shay and I explored Tel Aviv’s nightlife with my new friends.
Between June 30 and July 2, the IDF found the bodies of three Israeli teens murdered by Hamas, and a Palestinian teen was murdered by far-right Jewish extremists in retaliation. On July 8, the first rocket siren in Tel Aviv went off. The relative quiet that I had enjoyed for my first month in Israel was over.
During the final five weeks I was in Israel, the sirens became a routine. 90 seconds to get to the shelter, nervously praying to hear the dull boom of the Iron Dome — a missile interception system — indicating the rocket was intercepted, while texting loved ones back in the U.S. that I was safe. Then I would go on with my day, or back to sleep if it was in the middle of the night.
At first, the routine was a novelty. The first dozen sirens were not only terrifying, but also exciting. Running from the rockets to the bomb shelters was an adrenaline rush. Living in the U.S., I had never feared for my life before.
After a week or two, the excitement began to fade and a new reality set in. When I walked into a restaurant, I asked for the menu and for the location of the nearest bomb shelter. I was also incredibly fortunate to live in Tel Aviv. Less than 40 miles south, Israelis had only 15 seconds to get to the shelters. Thousands of rockets were fired on the South during the month of July, and residents also lived in fear of Hamas militants emerging from their complex network of terror tunnels from Gaza into Israel’s South.
Many of my Israeli peers, just a couple years out of their mandatory service, were called up for reserve duty. Every day, I followed the news from Gaza religiously and worried for my Israeli peers. I knew the people fighting, and that made it personal. Towards the end of the summer, one of my Israeli Peers was injured in combat. He has since recovered after surgery, but the fear of losing someone I cared about remained.
The civilian deaths in Gaza and subsequent media backlash also weighed on Israeli society. There was no rejoicing in death tolls out of Gaza — simply frustration at the reality of the Middle East and the desire to live without fear of rockets.
Living in Tel Aviv for the summer was an unforgettable experience. I made lifelong friends, learned professional skills and gained a deeper appreciation for how good we have it in the United States. My Israeli peers and my co-workers at Giza were incredibly supportive and were a big reason that I never seriously considered leaving early. Back home, I live without fear of rocket fire, and I can be proud of my Jewish identity without fear of backlash. It is something that I cannot do in much of the world, including some European countries following the most recent outbreak of anti-Semitism.
I wanted to avoid writing another polarizing op-ed on the Middle East and rather tell the story of someone who lived in Israel the past few months. If you do feel strongly about this issue, I am happy to discuss it in more depth. Feel free to email me at adetoledo@middlebury.edu.
AARON DE TOLEDO '16 is from Los Angeles, Calif.
(09/17/14 9:12pm)
You have probably heard of the rapper Gucci Mane. You might have a song or two of his. Or you remember his cameo in 2013’s Spring Breakers, in which he played Big Arch (and actually fell asleep while filming a sex scene). Perhaps you’ve seen his Bart Simpson chain or his ice cream cone tattoo with lightning bolts coming out of it. The one on his face.
What you might not know is that Gucci Mane, the man they call Guwop, is currently on the most prolific run of record releases in the history of music.
Gucci, who is from Alabama, started his rap career in 2005 with the self-released album Trap House, followed by a handful of mixtapes, which are essentially less polished albums that rappers release between albums. Between that first album and signing with Warner Bros. in mid-2009, Guwop released five albums and 14 mixtapes. His popularity quickly expanded outside the South, and he was able to release his music through his own record label.
At this point, it is probably necessary to spend a little time describing Gucci’s music to those who aren’t familiar. Gucci is considered one of the modern fathers of the sub-genre of hip-hop known as Trap, the combination of a hazy, promethazene-addled rapping style with snare and bass heavy beats. His lyrics, like most within the genre, are highly violent, depict heavy weed, molly, and cough syrup consumption and contain relentless misogyny. If you agree with literally any of the common criticisms of rap, you will probably dislike Gucci Mane’s music. Hold that thought.
Gucci’s 1017 Brick Squad label (the name is a reference to his grandfather’s Bessemer, Alabama address, and a kilo, aka. a brick, of cocaine) continued its success. However, by the fall of 2013 Gucci’s life was in shambles. In a span of 15 days, Gucci launched a Twitter tirade aimed at dozens of artists, including Waka Flocka Flame, Nicki Minaj, Drake and countless others with whom he had repeatedly collaborated, was revealed to have defrauded several 1017 rappers and was accused of murdering yet another. After initially claiming that a former manager hacked his Twitter, he went on to admit he sent the messages and revealed that he was struggling with an addiction to codeine cough syrup.
Allow me a quick aside: I was following this story every day as it happened last fall, and I honestly don’t remember experiencing anything like it. We’re used to watching the lives of public figures from Charlie Sheen to Mike Vick to Tiger Woods crumble. There’s nothing unique about that. But in those cases, one event revealed a past of wildly destructive behavior. What set this apart was that we were watching this dude, in real time, act out similar behavior in a manner that was so insanely self-sabotaging and nonsensical that it defied all understanding. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, only if the driver was purposefully ramming into every object in sight while dousing himself in gasoline.
The fallout? Gucci Mane is currently in jail, after pleading guilty to firearm possession by a convicted felon. He will be out in either 2015 or 2016, depending on if you believe him or the government. He is reportedly attending rehab in jail. And somehow, unbelievably, Gucci is putting out more music than ever before.
Since going to jail on May 13, 2014, Gucci has released six mixtapes and five albums. Read that sentence again. Going back to the beginning of 2013, the total is seventeen and seven. That rate is pretty much consistent dating back three years. Even though all the material was pre-recorded, it is hard to imagine that this level of output has ever been reached before.
But what is equally amazing is the undying popularity of his music. All of his mixtapes achieve hundreds of thousands of downloads, despite the fact that all of his songs are more or less the same. Which brings us back to the earlier point about his lyrical content. Gucci Mane embodies, and advocates for, most everything that is popularly disliked about hip-hop, even by its listeners. However, he is in some senses the most popular individual currently practicing the art, adored by fans who unquestioningly love most everything about hip-hop. As Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber winkingly adapt pieces of hip-hop culture and whitewash them for mass consumption, Gucci has targeted a decidedly non-mainstream audience. He is considered by most casual music fans to be somewhat of a joke, known for his drug and legal problems and that bizarre face tattoo (seriously, google it). But to write him off as such misses the fact that no artist has better employed the Internet as a means to reach a massive audience and that his 1017 label continues to produce popular artists. He has essentially ignored the standard rules of the industry, and as a result, he deliberately operates out of the sights of America’s consuming class. Gucci’s historic run is proof that there are pockets of hip-hop culture that Miley Cyrus and the mainstream have yet to claim for their own.
LUKE SMITH-STEVES '14 is from New York, N.Y.
(09/17/14 9:11pm)
Editors’ note: The following text contains vulgarity and obscenities. Printed with Ada’s permission.
They say that if you forget your history, you are doomed to repeat it.
So, Middlebury, I think it’s time to do some remembering.
A year ago today a student received a rape threat at Middlebury College. In the words of the original letter left on the student’s door, “[you] carpet-munching dyke,” “burn in hell,” “you say you’re gay but we know you’ve never fucked a guy… so we’re gonna fuck you till you’re straight” and finally, “I know you want it.”
Needless to say, these phrases are exceedingly not okay.
Let me rephrase that. NO. NO. NO. YOU DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, TREAT ANOTHER HUMAN BEING LIKE THIS.
I was not the person who received the letter, but I do know the recipient. She told me that she had been targeted in a homophobic threat her freshman year and that she was also the person who had to deal with this letter.
To be honest, I was and am completely and totally enraged. I believe people to be fundamentally human, so I’m not out to hunt down the person who wrote her that letter in order to casually castrate them. But my strongest memory of Ada is of her warm smile during a sign language club meeting that somehow seemed to laugh with me as I fumbled to form something coherent with my hands and at the same time to give me, a young first-year trying desperately to make some sort of home at Middlebury, the sense that someone here valued me.
So just be damn glad that I am too committed to my belief in people to endorse casual castration.
I’ll let her tell the more detailed story of the two homophobic attacks, in a text she sent it to me, and then we’ll come back and chat. Here is a very small fragment of the illustrious life of Ada:
“So, freshman year, someone wrote ‘Hey Dyke! Go to Hell!’ on my whiteboard in Sharpie. It happened during Spring semester (March or April, not sure which). I reported it to my Dean and to Public Safety, who took some notes and talked to me once or twice. My Dean was incredibly helpful, and there was an all-student email sent out (I can forward it to you if you want, if I find it). But beyond that, there wasn’t very much done about it. I think we had a MOQA meeting about it — I also reported it to the MOQA co-presidents at the time. But MOQA had about 5 consistent members at that point, so word didn’t really get out.
So that was that incident. Then, this past semester, there was that whole incident with the letter being left on someone’s door that threatened to rape them because they were gay. That was me. I also reported that one to my Dean, and Public Safety talked to me and people on my hall several times about it and said they did everything they could to find out who had done it, but never came to a real conclusion. There was an all-student email that was sent out, but it didn’t discuss the homophobic nature of the letter and I was, to say the least, miffed about that.
In both situations, I didn’t come out with this publicly, with my name attached, but I did what I could to make the incidents as known as possible without the possibility of revealing myself as the recipient of these attacks. Unfortunately, not very much was ever done about it, which was disappointing at the least. I really do wish more had been done about it — the fact that people don’t know this stuff happened/happens is really upsetting, because people think Middlebury is this really accepting place where LGBTQ people can get on without problems, but that’s not actually the truth, particularly for those who are not white, cis, and/or mainstream.
So that’s about it. Let me know if you have any other questions for me, and I actually don’t have a problem with you using my name. The first event (the one that happened my freshman year, in Spring of 2010) I’m a lot more open about, mainly because I felt really threatened by the second one and became quite anxious about my personal safety after receiving that letter, but I don’t think there’s reason to fear for my physical safety anymore, so if you’d like to use my name, you may. Of course, you’re not required to, and if you do, just let me know so that I know that that’s happening [which of course I did before I published this].”
Here’s the reason I won’t let you forget this history, Middlebury College: because you, because we, failed her. A student was attacked and was left without any reason to believe that she was safe from someone raping her. Not only did we fail to protect her when she needed us, Middlebury, but this exact same situation could happen again to another student.
In terms of homophobia, Google and a few hours of research tell me that what Ada experienced was hardly an isolated incident of homophobia. In 2007, homophobic graffiti was sprayed in three different buildings on campus over the course of a month. In 2010, posters for “Gaypril” were ripped down. Last semester, a number of LGBTQ students were sent homophobic and racist messages on the app Grindr, one of which (and this is a direct quote from the campus wide email) included the statement “None are safe, none are free” and contained a photograph of a lynching.
In terms of rape and sexual assault, I personally know two people who were assaulted on Middlebury’s campus. They are the reality behind the It Happens Here Campaign, these two people who should not have had to experience physical violence in their institution of learning (if you don’t know what IHH is visit go/ithappenshere). I’ll also say this. After my run in with a sexual assault-ish situation, I remember thinking: all a part of being a female college freshman. I’m a junior now, and I still think that easy expectation of violence says some pretty horrible things about what we like to call normal.
In terms of not white, cis and/or mainstream, just yes. If one more friend of color tells me about how they doubt their own attractiveness at Middlebury, I think my heart is going to break. Each person who has told me that is one of the most beautiful people I am privileged to know, in both appearance and spirit. I’ve now gone far enough away from Middlebury to understand that there is a very specific type of mainstream, of normal, present and to be outside that normal means you have to constantly measure yourself against it because everybody else certainly is. Physical violence is awful, but it is far from the only way to hurt another person.
Now let’s talk about responsibility. An individual, like the student, has a lot of power at Middlebury. But it is not the responsibility of any student to address a systematic failure to guarantee basic safety. That would be the responsibility of the governing systems of Middlebury.
It is the responsibility of the individual to be outraged. To be kicking and screaming mad that someone was attacked on our campus and we didn’t do anything to protect her or to protect ourselves. I am. And I hope you are too.
CELESTE ALLEN '16 is from Scottsdale, Ariz.
(09/17/14 9:09pm)
To the Middlebury Community,
This weekend, we at Tavern hosted our annual first weekend party. We’d like to thank everyone who showed up and helped make that party the success it was — we saw a lot of people having a great time, and we were happy to host you.
While we got a lot of positive feedback from many who attended the party, we are writing to address some of the negative feedback we got in response to our theme: Naughty Schoolgirl, Dirty Professor. We’d like to apologize to anyone who was offended by our theme. This was never our intent.
Naughty Schoolgirl, Dirty Professor has been a Tavern first-weekend tradition. Our current members did not come up with the theme, we just continued on with a theme name that started before any of we, the current membership, arrived on campus. We understand now that this is one tradition that needs further consideration and discussion.
At Tavern we strive to create an inclusive, positive and fun community. Our biggest regret is throwing a party with a theme that anyone would find offensive. Know that we will keep this situation in mind in all of our future endeavors, and especially in theming our parties. We apologize again and hope to see you at another Tavern event soon.
CONOR LUCK ’15 is the president of Tavern and is from Laporte, Ind.
KELSEY O'DAY ’15 is the vice president of Tavern and is from Fairfield, Conn.
(05/07/14 4:16pm)
My home state has been in the news a lot recently, neither for maple syrup nor for skiing, but as the face of drug use and crime in the U.S. Since the Feb. 27 New York Times article, “A Call to Arms on A Vermont Heroin Epidemic,” the rest of the country has reached the startling realization that Vermont has a drug problem. Ask anyone who’s lived in Vermont during the past decade and she can tell you that this is not news. We’ve lived with this for a long time. At the same time, Vermont hosts a thriving food system that brings life and connectivity to an otherwise struggling state.
I can see these two versions of Vermont in my hometown of Rutland. Downtown, drug deals happen regularly. People don’t make eye contact as they pass one another in the streets. Sirens race from one call to another. This isn’t the friendly, small-town Vermont of our imaginations. But everything is different on Saturday mornings. Tents pop up in the park. Trucks caked in mud haul in mountains of fresh produce. People wander from booth to booth, not hurrying to avoid attention or glaring to keep trouble at bay. They talk — to the vendors, to their neighbors and to the friends they haven’t seen in years. They ask about the weather, about family and about politics. The farmers’ market works some kind of magic on this sad little city. Suddenly, there’s a community. Suddenly, people care. Everyone there has gotten so used to keeping their heads down and minding their own business that when they finally get the chance to be engaged, they realize what they’ve been missing.
This is the power of food. It can turn a drug-laden, crime-burdened city into a hub of vibrant social and economic activity. I love going to the market. It was my gateway to real food — the kind that’s grown only ten minutes away, with no chemicals, on a little family farm where the chickens wander freely, the cows are free of hormones and I know the people who grow my food. It inspired me. I started researching food. I learned about standards of local, fair, humane and ecologically sound growing methods. I studied up on factory farming and agribusiness. I hit the books to see how food and health were related. I started to rail against GMOs at my high school and preach about food miles and carbon footprints to my family.
Here at Middlebury, these are the things that we talk about when we talk about food. We either look at things on an institutional scale, discussing how the college can make food purchasing choices that ideologically benefit its students or on a global scale, studying how purchasing local food can help reduce CO2 emissions from transportation. But somehow we seem to forget that our food doesn’t exist separately from the communities where it grows. We never talk about how hard it is for farmers to make a living and how the college could play a role in partnerships mitigating their difficulties. We never talk about the satisfaction that you get from knowing that your money has gone to someone who lives just down the road and who has grown your food with such love and care. And we never talk about the good things that are happening in Rutland. We never say that food brings people together and builds communities. And I can’t stress enough how wrong it is for us to overlook this.
Most of us here are only visitors to Vermont, so we lack an understanding of this food-based community. But I’ve seen Rutland go from the state’s heroin hotspot to a glowing community of people who share a love of food in a matter of hours. Rutland is a long way from being perfect or even okay. But it’s not the desolate place that that the media suddenly portrays it as. And for me, the way that food impacts my troubled community in a positive way is more important than any ideological, environmental or economic argument for choosing local food.
ELLEN BEVIER '14 is from Rutland, Vt. Artwork by NOLAN ELLSWORTH.
(05/07/14 4:15pm)
You may not know it, but there is a very real military presence on the Middlebury campus. Maybe you’ve seen someone wading through the crowds of flannel and Toms in camouflage and combat boots. Maybe you’ve wondered what the U.S. Army was doing occupying ADK on a Wednesday afternoon. Maybe you’ve done a double-take when you realized there was a soldier waiting in line behind you at the Grille. Wonder no longer, because I’m taking this opportunity to reveal the nature of this military presence: it’s me. I am the one and only member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps from Middlebury, and I’m here to put a name to the face. Or the uniform: I’m Callie to you Midd kids, Cadet Bullion to UVM’s Green Mountain Battalion, and soon to be Lieutenant Bullion to the soldiers I will lead as an officer in the U.S. Army. Over the past four years, I have balanced the life of a student and a cadet. With very little awareness and very little support for Middlebury students who choose this path, it’s a long and challenging journey to embark upon, involving hundreds of dollars in gas spent driving back and forth to Burlington every week, schedules rearranged to accommodate ROTC classes, and countless weekend and summer plans broken to make space for training. You get used to the odd looks, the questions, the inability to put into civilian words what this life is like. Having a foot in these two worlds has never been easy. But it has always been worth it.
To provide a little perspective, let me describe what a typical weekend field training exercise looks like: I wake up at 0400 on Friday morning, roll out of bed, put on my uniform, lace up my boots. I take the hour long drive to 601 Main, ROTC headquarters at UVM, downing an energy drink and a power bar on my way to try to kickstart the weekend. A quick bus ride dozing off against a rucksack packed with three days worth of gear and we arrive at our destination: Camp Ethan Allen Training Site, Jericho, Vermont. Then it’s non-stop training: first aid, learning how to evacuate casualties in a Blackhawk helicopter, day and night land navigation (Ever been given a map, a compass, some grid coordinates, and a flashlight you’re not supposed to use and been told to go out into the woods alone on a moonless, rainy night to find those coordinates? It’s an experience), qualifying on the firing range with an M-16 rifle, a six mile march carrying 35 lbs., and twelve hours of simulated situations learning how to conduct ambushes, attacks and reconnaissance missions. By the third day I am exhausted, running on less than ten total hours of sleep the entire weekend, and looking forward to a hot shower, a good meal and sleep. But first there’s another hour drive south on Route 7 and a pile of homework waiting for me. But despite it all, I fall into bed that night smiling because I have taken another step toward the end state, a dream four years in the making: a gold bar on my chest.
And in just a few weeks, that dream will come true. The day before I receive my diploma, I will raise my right hand, and take an oath that few Middlebury students have taken: “I, Caroline Louise Bullion, having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of second lieutenant do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter. So help me God.” With that oath I shoulder a huge responsibility. It’s the responsibility for the soldiers under my command, men and women who heard the call just like I did. It’s the responsibility to always try to do what’s right even when it’s difficult. It’s the responsibility to lead. And this responsibility is a lot heavier than that 35 lb. rucksack. But I look forward to it all the same. I hope this legacy will not end with me, that other Midd kids will continue this quiet but proud tradition of service to a world outside the proverbial “Middlebury Bubble.” Because on that commencement weekend I will be both a Middlebury Panther and a Green Mountain Battalion Catamount, proud to call both my family, unable to have gotten to this point without their love, support and encouragement. Go Midd, Catamounts Lead the Way!
CALLIE BULLION '14.5 is from Millis, Mass. Artwork by TAMIR WILLIAMS.
(05/07/14 4:10pm)
It’s not uncommon that college students turn to the Internet to seek relief from the papers, exams, problem sets and job applications that lie ahead. For Middlebury students in particular, a site called Middlebury Confessional is one option for when morale is low during a late night in the library. Given the definition of confessional — “an admission or acknowledgement that one has done something that one is ashamed or embarrassed about” – the site would seem innocuous enough. However, it is anything but.
Middlebury Confessional is not actually used as a forum for students to publicize genuine confessionals, so don’t expect to log in and read about the embarrassing time where a girl walked into the boy’s bathroom only to run into her crush from Bio lab. Students use the website anonymously to spark debate on who has the nicest ass on campus and, more frequently, to air their every grievance about the college and its people. Ranging from opinionated pseudo-intellectuals to reasonable mediators to blatant instigators, posters craft paragraphs of arguments, proudly declaring their beliefs without taking any responsibility for them.
I can understand why people feel the need to use the website. Regarding certain issues, it can be difficult to make your voice heard on this campus and the anonymity of Middlebury Confessional offers security and protection. However, for students who desire progress and change at Middlebury, speaking out on Middlebury Confessional is, to put it simply, a waste of time. The administrators of this school don’t hunker down after dinner each night to read up on students’ latest complaints. I absolutely encourage students to express their opinions, but I also encourage owning those opinions and taking accountability for the harsh dialogues to which they contribute, rather than hiding behind the promise of anonymity.
Middlebury Confessional is a conduit for the most spineless form of bullying. While some posters may be well-intentioned, they are nevertheless inviting commentary from others and are ultimately contributing to unproductive, unnecessary discourse. I encourage users of Middlebury Confessional to consider the consequences of their actions and to heed the advice of Cady Herron from Mean Girls: “Calling somebody else fat won’t make you any skinnier. Calling someone stupid doesn’t make you any smarter. And ruining Regina George’s life definitely didn’t make me any happier. All you can do in life is try to solve the problem in front of you.”
Maybe I would have been wise to request anonymity with the publishing of this piece; it’s a touchy subject, and I’m sure I’ve offended a few diehard posters. However, anonymously writing an article about the cowardice of anonymity would make the article a little too ironic, so I’ve chosen to share my name and attach it to my opinion.
MAGGIE CAPUTI '16 is from Brunswick, Maine.
(05/07/14 4:06pm)
In the Campus on April 24, we read an op-ed written by Hannah Bristol describing her experience with the senior class gift and the fundraising methods being used. As Senior Committee members, this article was a great learning opportunity for us, and we would like to take a brief moment to respond.
The Class of 2014 & 2014.5 Scholarship Fund has the ability to change an incoming student’s life. As a committee, we believe supporting this student is a great way for us to create unity as a class while giving another student a chance to experience all that Middlebury has to offer. This gift is about a cumulative effort that we can make as seniors.
Through our fundraising efforts we have found that some members of our class do not feel inclined to give for a variety of reasons. As a committee, our job is not to convince you to give, our job is to make the case for giving, and hopefully inspire you to give; but giving is a personal, voluntary choice. That being said, we would like to address some of those reasons and clear up any ambiguity or confusion.
1. Your gift matters.
Our goal for the scholarship fund is to raise a total of $10,000. This is a big number! In our experience we found that if we went around saying “We want to raise $10,000!” many people would be too overwhelmed by the amount to even give. Although it might be easy to believe a donation of $20.14, $15, $10 or even $5 might not make a difference, it does. Gifts of $21 or less to the fund have totaled over $3,000! With over 600 students in our class, your combined donations lead us closer and closer to passing our goal.
Our gifts towards the scholarship fund have also inspired parents of our class to show enormous support for our senior class gift. The parents of our class are helping us make this scholarship possible and this speaks volumes to their commitment to Middlebury and their understanding of the importance of giving back.
2. Percentages
Our goal this year is to get 68 percent of our class to support the scholarship fund. There are a few reasons we strive this number. We believe this is a way to unite our class and a way to challenge one another to support a fund that will make a member of the class of 2018’s Middlebury experience possible. We understand that not everyone is in a position to give $20.14 to support the fund, so we stress participation to show that everyone, regardless of giving amount, can have an impact on the gift and help us get closer to our larger goal of $10,000.
3. The Scholarship Fund
Earlier this year our class voted on where we wanted our Senior Gift money to go. By a huge majority we voted to give money to a Scholarship Fund. We hope that everyone who voted will also follow up and make a donation to this great cause. We have heard from some that this gift is not “tangible” enough:
“How will we know this actually goes to a student?”
“Will this go to one student in need? Or will it be distributed between a few?”
“We won’t even know who gets the money, how can we be sure this is where it’s going?”
These are GREAT questions and we encourage you to continue asking them! What we can tell you is that yes, this money goes directly to a student’s financial aid package and no where else. This money will not be distributed but will be given to one student who cannot afford Middlebury but will be able to attend because of the Class of 2014. The Senior Committee is currently working with the Annual Giving Office to work on a way to update our class on who this student is once he or she arrives on campus. This way, we can take pride in knowing exactly where and to whom our gift is going.
4. Solicitation
There is no one perfect way to appeal to the masses, so our efforts have been multi-faceted. We announced on Facebook a few weeks ago that Senior Week might be at risk due to our low participation rate and our lack of funds. Thanks to many of you who got the word out, our percentage went from 25 percent to 34 percent in just one week. Our Committee has worked tirelessly sending emails, making phone calls and tabling around campus to encourage people to donate. If we don’t ask, we don’t get donations — simple as that.
We were not trying to use Senior Week as a “pawn,” but rather make public the very real situation that we have been trying to deal with at every Senior Committee meeting. We understand that a boat cruise during senior week, along with other activities scheduled for that week, are not a necessity, but we have received feedback from much of our class that they would like to participate in these activities. We are working to make our last week at Middlebury a special time for our entire class, and these activities are a way to do that.
5. It is a personal choice.
As mentioned earlier, as a committee, we are not here to convince you to give, but rather to make the case to support the Scholarship Fund. If you, as a senior, do not want to give to the Scholarship Fund, then we cannot make you give. We can, however, clear up any confusion that you might have. For example: If you don’t support Middlebury’s stance on divestment, giving to the class gift will not force you to go against that belief. Giving to the class gift is the one way to have complete control over where your money goes, and this money will allow a future student to experience the “things [you’ve] loved here” and the “opportunities [you’ve] had.”
Money going to the Scholarship Fund will not go to the administration or the endowment. The funds raised will go into the student’s financial aid package. It is simply a gift from us to a future student. We have all been so fortunate to attend a place like Middlebury, and our gift is to allow someone else to have that opportunity. Who knows, this person could make your goals a reality in their time here at Midd.
6. Come Join us!
We invite you to come to a meeting so you can learn even more about the issues we are dealing with and offer some constructive advice on how we can better convey our fundraising priorities. With your help we can better convey the goals of the fund and how this is a great opportunity to give back.
Thank you for the insight that your article provided. I hope we have been able to address some of your concerns.
Written on behalf of the SENIOR COMMITTEE. Artwork by JENA RITCHEY.
(05/07/14 4:03pm)
We have a lot of problems on this campus. There are a lot of issues that keep people up at night, issues that people believe need to be solved in order to make life here better for everyone. We are too racially segregated. We sexually assault one another. We need to divest. We need a multicultural center. We drink water out of bowls. I could not agree more with these sentiments, and I love student activism. Unfortunately, what many students do not understand is that we have a wonderful, effective and abysmally underutilized tool for enacting effective change: the Student Government Association.
For those who aren’t sure, the SGA is an elected body of student representatives (senators) working in conjunction with a group of students appointed by the student-elected President to serve certain functions (alumni relations, athletic relations, LIS-relations, etc.). In the eyes of the College Administration, these elected senators act as the voice of their respective constituencies. That means that if a senator votes for something, the administration draws the implication that at least a simple majority of the members of that constituency also support what that senator has voted for.
People complain that the SGA doesn’t get anything done. I would take serious issue with this misconception. Since 2010, the SGA is directly responsible for MiddView, the implementation of Pass/Fail, the YouPower spin room, pointed but failed efforts to achieve academic credit for summer internships, ice-skate rentals, the new cafes in BiHall and the CFA, the arts space in the Crest Room, decreases to our parking fines, a recent, faculty-supported effort to reform the AAL requirement, and much more. None of this would have happened without the SGA. That’s a fact.
I have heard a lot more complaints as well. The SGA is too white. It’s too rich. It spends more time dealing with its proceedings than its pronouncements. It’s full of people who “aren’t cool” or who are “out of touch”. That I agree with some of these claims and disagree with others is beside the point. This is not a defense of the SGA. It’s a call to arms.
When I ran for President in Spring 2013, Ms. Liddell crushed me in the votes. I was sad at first, but Rachel has done an absolutely unbelievable job, better than I ever would have been able to do. I remember a big sticking point during election season was how exciting it would be to have a female SGA President. We hadn’t had one in ten years! I agree. It was an excellent move for our student body — electing a female SGA President.
This year, one person ran. A white man from Massachusetts. Unopposed. He could have received one vote, from himself, and then assumed his position with exactly as much political legitimacy as Rachel Liddell did last year. That’s not the SGA’s fault. That is solely, exclusively, lamentably the fault of the student body.
I’m not a big time social activist, although I support those who are. I like small changes. I want dishes in the dining halls, better food, better knowledge of our classes before we take them, better financial aid. Simple stuff. I have been on the SGA for four years and I’ve worked hard to do my part to listen to my peers and do what little I, as one person, have been able to do to meet their interests. Sometimes I have succeeded, and sometimes I have failed, but at least I have tried.
This year, in 10 elections for voting positions on the SGA Senate, there was ONE competitive election: for sophomore senator. We had ten winners and one loser. At the same time, we have rampant dialogue taking place, often anonymously, on platforms such as Midd Confessional, middbeat, the Campus, and beyond the green about contentious issues. Certainly, there are cultural and social problems here that are beyond the scope of the SGA to change. There are so many students here who want, nay, demand, change, but who refuse to engage with the most powerful change-making implement that we have created for ourselves. This is counterproductive and pernicious behavior.
I have sat in on the SGA and witnessed ten-minute debates about whether or not we have followed proper election procedures. I am sick of wasting time on issues like this. People that are aggravated that this is “all the SGA does” would serve themselves better by running for office and bringing more spirited, controversial, impassioned voices to the floor.
Where is the Brainerd Senator that tirelessly pushes divestment legislation until, with the voice of the entire student body behind her, the administration is forced to listen? Where is the Junior Senator that thinks sexual violators or academic cheaters should be expelled after one strike? Where is the President who thinks all student organizations’ budgets should be cut by 10% to raise enough money for the construction of a new multi-cultural center on campus?
The SGA is a powerful tool. To try to get more people involved, I have brought the Competitive Elections Act to the Senate floor. This is an amendment to the Elections Procedures of the SGA bylaws that gives students, after the manifestation of uncontested elections, additional time to decide whether or not they are interested in seeking office before the candidates are finalized. There are few things more destructive to accurate representation of student views’ than uncontested SGA elections.
Run for office. Or don’t. Every student is entitled to bring bills to the Senate floor, and every Sunday our 7 pm meeting is open to the public. Only those who are elected get a vote, though. And a vote is a powerful tool.
NATHAN LABARBA '14 is from Oakland, N.J. Artwork by JENA RITCHEY.
(05/07/14 3:54pm)
In recent weeks some faculty colleagues have questioned the College’s investment and participation in Middlebury Interactive Languages (MIL). MIL is a for-profit, joint venture created in 2010 by Middlebury and K12 Inc., a Virginia-based company that creates online educational and curricular content for students in grades K-12. Today, approximately 170,000 students learn languages through MIL courses in elementary and secondary schools across the country. For many of these students, these courses provide the only opportunity they have to study a language other than English.
This venture, something new for our institution, raised concerns from the beginning. Colleagues noted that one of the founders of K12 Inc., William Bennett, was a political conservative whom they viewed as hostile to public education. Bennett, however, was long gone from the company by the time we began MIL. Critics also claimed that K12 was aiming to undermine the country’s public education system because of its association with charter schools. In fact, MIL’s courses, which are taught in 1,200 school districts, are making it possible for public schools to continue offering language courses rather than eliminate them as has happened all too often during the past decade. In addition, many new teaching positions have been created as a result of the adoption of MIL courses.
This past year, MIL alone has hired more than 110 language teachers, certified in multiple states, to teach MIL courses. For example, the state of Delaware asked MIL to hire and train four language teachers (two Spanish, one Chinese, and one French), each of whom teaches in multiple schools across the state. For the coming year, Delaware will expand its MIL offerings, which will require the hiring of two additional Spanish teachers. The city of Baltimore, which has contracted this year to use MIL courses, will offer Spanish in ten elementary schools this Fall, and then in all of its elementary schools the next year. The city is hiring new teachers to teach across the 10 schools. And here in Vermont, Weybridge hired a Spanish teacher a couple of years ago to teach the MIL Spanish elementary course, and that teacher now offers Spanish in neighboring elementary schools where MIL is used as an after school program.
The latest round of criticism arose earlier this year after a high school Latin teacher contacted the chair of our Classics Department, Professor Marc Witkin, and noted that a course sold by MIL (but developed by a predecessor company) contained a number of errors, and could be misunderstood to say that the course was developed by Middlebury faculty. Understandably, Professor Witkin found this disturbing. He brought this to my attention and to the attention of others and I thank him for that. The management team at MIL acted quickly: it notified those taking the Latin course of the errors in the course, corrected them, and clarified in its marketing materials that the Latin courses were not developed in partnership with Middlebury or by Middlebury Classics faculty.
I believe MIL acted appropriately and we have put new controls in place to help prevent similar issues in the future. Though Middlebury is a “minority” partner in this collaboration (it owns 40 percent of the company), all new course development has been done by a Middlebury development team, with full authority over the content. This control is a non-negotiable requirement for Middlebury to continue in the venture, as the institution is keenly aware of the need to protect its reputation.
The incident with the Latin course opened the door for those who opposed the MIL venture to propose we sever ties with K12 Inc. and end the venture. Unfortunately, they have chosen to do so by putting forth a narrative that neither provides a full context nor aligns with the facts. A proposed, non-binding faculty motion calling on Middlebury to sever the relationship with K12 Inc. suggests that MIL censored curriculum content to satisfy the Texas Board of Education or other unnamed entities. This is a misleading claim. MIL ultimately decided not use some raw footage it shot for the French and Spanish courses that showed people smoking and drinking alcohol. Such scenes were in the authentic videos shot on site as the courses were in the development process, but were never included in the courses themselves. It was understood that elementary and secondary schools (and parents) would not want to encourage those activities by having them in pre-college textbooks or courses. This strikes me as a sensible decision that hardly rises to the level of censorship.
More to the point, perhaps, is the criticism raised about the exclusionary nature of MIL’s course content; colleagues have objected to how same-sex couples and non-traditional families were excluded from MIL courses. This is largely true, and the MIL development team, led by Middlebury Professor of Linguistics and MIL Chief Learning Officer Aline Germain-Rutherford, has already begun to work on guidelines for a greater inclusion of lesser represented groups in future MIL courses. The team will follow guidelines established by state boards of education, including California, many of which now encourage and even require greater representation of diverse populations in K-12 textbooks and course materials.
Ironically, MIL courses today include greater diversity and are more inclusive of a range of family structures and multicultural perspectives than the course materials used in most, if not all, of the College’s introductory language courses.
Perhaps lost in the criticism, and what should certainly be of interest to all of us, is the positive reviews of MIL course from students, teachers, administrators, and independent researchers at Johns Hopkins University. In a comprehensive study released last year, researchers judged MIL courses to be among the best available of their kind.
It is worth restating the reasons why Middlebury entered into this venture:
• First, we seek to retain our leadership in language teaching, which began 100 years ago with the founding of the Middlebury summer intensive Language Schools and their distinctive approach to language learning. To achieve this goal, we need to experiment with new pedagogies, including online learning. We purposely pursued experimenting outside the “college educational space” so as not to interfere with the traditional pedagogies at the College or confuse MIL’s mission with the College’s. MIL has contributed much to our understanding of what works and does not work with online courses in foreign language teaching and learning, and continues to represent a valuable and cost-effective research and development (“R&D”) vehicle.
•Second, we believed it was important that, as leaders in language instruction, we expand access to language education for pre-college students. The United States continues to lag behind much of the world in language education, and recent cuts to public school budgets have affected the teaching of languages disproportionately: foreign language courses are among the first to be eliminated when budgets need to be trimmed. MIL has the potential to increase access to language education for many students across the country, and has already done that. While little of what we learn might find its way back to our residential liberal arts curriculum, there is no doubt that online learning will soon complement our Language Schools intensive summer curriculum, our Bread Loaf School of English curriculum, and a number of degree programs at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
•Third, we recognized that this venture was an opportunity for Middlebury to develop new revenue sources that would help us sustain our commitment to need-blind admissions, increasing our student body’s socioeconomic diversity through greater financial aid, small class sizes, and competitive salaries to attract and retain an excellent faculty and staff. We can no longer count on annual tuition increases to generate the resources needed to achieve all these goals, and so if MIL ultimately provides revenue to the institution, it will help us preserve what we value most in our residential liberal arts program.
We chose to partner with K12 Inc. due to its experience in creating online pre-college courses successfully in disciplines outside the foreign languages. We knew we could not launch courses independently, as we needed the technological experience and scale to allow for course development and meaningful student and course assessment. Our $4 million investment in MIL, for which we received a 40-percent share of the company, was an investment from our endowment and has no effect on our annual operating budget.
Middlebury’s long record of innovation and experimentation has frequently been questioned by those comfortable with the status quo. This was true in 1915 when the first summer Language School was founded here at Middlebury by a German professor from Vassar College. The Middlebury faculty opposed the idea, arguing that such a program had no place on the Middlebury campus. It was not part of the Middlebury mission, many argued. Thankfully, President John Thomas went ahead with the creation of the Language Schools despite the opposition. Thomas recognized the risks, but also saw the possible long-term rewards from what was then a novel and new way to teach languages and culture.
One hundred years later, there is no doubt that everyone who has studied at Middlebury, whether in the summer at the intensive Language Schools, or here as an undergraduate student, has benefitted from the leadership in language education the Schools have brought to the College. Likewise, pursuing online education with a partner in the pre-college educational space, though beyond the traditional mission of our undergraduate college, has allowed us to experiment, learn, and, hopefully, remain in the forefront of language education for the foreseeable future. Such leadership for a liberal arts institution is rare, and we should neither take it for granted nor rest on our past accomplishments.
RONALD D. LIEBOWITZ is the President of Middlebury College
(04/23/14 2:58pm)
Exactly a week ago, PALANA house hosted PALANA Uncensored: “Multicultural Center or nah?,” a discussion in the Hillcrest Orchard. (This event is related to and in communication with other initiatives happening around the creation of a multicultural center). At the event, PALANA house members and attendees split the large audience into four groups, each of which was tasked with answering one of four questions: envisioning a multicultural center assuming we have access to unlimited resources; imagining how a multicultural center could be formed strictly from the re-purposing of existing resources; coming up with what the multicultural center should not be; and imagining why getting a multicultural center would be a bad idea. In the discussion that ensued, a number of interesting ideas were exchanged.
One person spoke about resources and how we distribute them; she argued against the idea that resources are scarce at Middlebury College and that a multicultural center must be formed strictly from the repurposing of existing resources. Clearly, she argued, Middlebury has certain priorities and is willing to spend the money to live out its values. The best example of this is environmental diversity: Middlebury has thoroughly invested in being the “best” when it comes to carbon neutrality and sustainability (even as Divestment continues to call the college out on investing in fossil fuels). What if Middlebury invested equivalent resources in supporting and fostering the “diversity” that it brings to its campus? This student made a case for the importance of the multicultural center, as she has seen too many friends of color quietly leave the campus, and one has to wonder about the toxicity of this environment and the resources that we don’t offer for certain students.
Another preson warned us against assuming that “multicultural center” naturally means exclusivity, or that white and/or non-marginalized students are not “allowed” to make use of such resources; rather, while keeping the needs of the most marginalized at its center, the multicultural center can serve a diverse body of students. As it was imagined with unlimited resources, it would be a centrally located, spacious center with various programming, services and amenities such as a kitchen, a space for arts and media, a lecture hall for speakers brought to campus, offices for the various staff, programming around cultural appropriation for Halloween and reminders to avoid “culturally” themed costumes and parties. Students agreed that the center would conduct outreach, working with all other departments and offices on campus, would push the teachers to develop more inclusive curriculum and pedagogy, would continuously advocate for diversity measures in recruiting students, faculty, speakers and performers to campus, and in this way, would remain dynamic.
Many talked about the importance of comfort and safety, and creating a space that can be home-like for students who do not already have other means of feeling comfortable on this campus. We entertained the idea that the center would be open 24 hours to students who have applied for access. We realized that in terms of repurposing resources, it would be impossible not to hire new, highly trained and well-supported staff for the center, and that taking any faculty away from their current job would simply be to overstretch them and disrupt their ability to serve what they are already serving. Moreover, one student argued that it should not be the job of certain faculty, often faculty of color, to emotionally care for students; and it should not be the job of upperclassman students to be the primary mentor for younger students.
One student whom I corresponded with stated that for her, a multicultural center would be really important in both tangible and symbolic ways. It would provide more comprehensive resources and a safe, physical space for people of marginalized identities in particular. But it would also speak to Middlebury’s values and show that this institution responds to the needs of all students. She imagines that having a multicultural center, as long as it was designed and carried out in an effective way, would create a safer and more inclusive community here.
In hearing about the possibility of a multicultural center, discussing this possibility and imagining what it might look like, it is important to keep in mind how this need is symptomatic of an ongoing struggle to practice progressive racial politics and cultural inclusivity, waged in various ways such as AAL to ALL (Midd Included). It is also important to respect that some students on this campus have already given this Center an enormous amount of thought, while other students are just becoming aware of the initiative. I became involved in this initiative only a month or two ago, but am in full support of the Center. As a white woman, I argue that we all have a stake in creating a multicultural center. I support the construction of this Center because I realize that Middlebury is set up as a white space, familiar to some, but uncomfortable and unsafe to many; I recognize that Middlebury has not committed to progressive racial politics, as it is resistant to making its curriculum culturally inclusive. Middlebury continues to recruit primarily from extremely prestigious, predominantly white private schools and stands idly by as some students of color take leave or suffer from the toxicity of this place; I realize that racial microaggressions continuously occur and that there needs to be a larger, more structural way to address these daily ignorances and assaults. As power is institutionalized, fixed in structures and systems, it might be helpful for some to ask, how might a multicultural center disrupt the whiteness and upperclass-ness (exclusion) inscribed in the institution of Middlebury College? I would really like to see structural change that both creates infrastructure to addres racism on this campus (and would make extensive use of this infrastructure) and also invests in the well-being of my peers.
As a white woman engaging in this discussion, I must always remember from where I speak and consider what experiences or lack of experiences are influencing my opinion. This especially applies for those of us who make up any kind of majority on this campus: white, upper-class, straight, cis-gendered or gender-conforming, fit-bodied, etc. Listening and creatively imagining are crucial to engaging in dialogue, and what I have learned from listening is that creating a multicultural center would be a significant step in the right direction for Middlebury. As we continue to support initiatives to maintain diversity in the student body or increase that diversity, we must be set up to support students who do not fit the outdated “norm” of a student that Middlebury is designed to serve.
LILY ANDREWS '14 is from Minneapolis, Minn. and was helped by many others involved in BEYOND THE GREEN
(04/16/14 4:06pm)
Last week’s Op Ed piece on “Connecting the Dots with CCI” raised some valid points but also included some misrepresentation of the facts. The invitation from The Campus to respond and help set the record straight prompts me to take advantage of this space to do a little “myth busting” and provide a sense of what the Center for Careers & Internships is up to these days, all in the service of 2500+ students who could not be more diverse in their four-year paths to their post-graduate pursuits.
We get what students want and think they need, and we are working hard to deliver on that. But what do we want? We are ambitious for our students and ambitious for our center. It is our goal to create a signature career education planning experience that is interwoven throughout the undergraduate years and provides ample guidance and opportunity for exploration, reflection, and decision-making. We’re looking for students to be partners in the process. To be engaged with CCI early and often. To be open to possibility. To stop deleting e-mails when they may have just ignored an opportunity of a lifetime. To understand that it is their future to embrace — and that planning for it needs to be as much a part of their undergraduate journey as choosing their major, studying abroad, playing a sport or volunteering.
We have a deeply committed staff here to work with students throughout their time at Middlebury, from their first semester to Senior Week (and beyond!) to provide advice on opportunities; review cover letters and résumés; conduct practice interviews; offer self-assessment tools; run workshops, career action groups, career conversations, and employer information sessions; and much more. In the spirit of encouraging independence, exploration and aspiration, we are working hard to engage students earlier in their time at Middlebury to make the process of personal and career development less stressful, more intentional and even exhilarating. It’s a partnership we are striving to develop with each and every student on this campus.
President Liebowitz, Dean Collado, the Board of Trustees and College Advancement could not be more supportive in their commitment to make real-world experience a touchstone of a Middlebury education. Three summers ago, the College provided approximately $125,000 in internship funding; this summer it approaches the half-million-dollar mark. And in terms of overall experiential funding provided directly to students (including PCI, URO, academic departments, etc.), last year College support hit $1.5 million collectively, primarily for summer and Winter Term experiences.
There is not a career center among liberal arts institutions in the country that is not undergoing or considering profound change in how it best serves students (and future employers). Conversations about the cost and relevance of a liberal arts education are occurring on campuses everywhere. Despite economic recovery, graduates still must address an uncertain job market. Students face pressure from family members who challenge them on “what in the world can you do with a history — or fill in the blank — degree” (by the way, for a great answer, check out go/alumprofiles). Employers still laud the benefits of hiring interns and employees who are the product of a liberal arts education but bemoan their lack of practical experience and even workplace etiquette — not to mention unrealistic expectations for a first job. Parents and students carry a greater debt load than ever. Most faculty continue to support traditional pedagogy, acknowledging that internships have their place — but never as a credit-worthy extension of the classroom experience. So, what’s a Career and Internship Center to do?
Here are a few steps we have taken already. Last year, the College created a new Director of Employer Outreach & Development position, with Jeff Sawyer joining us this summer. We have already added 25 new employer organizations and 125 new “Midd-friendly” opportunities to MOJO, ranging from the arts to media & entertainment to healthcare. We have developed an in-depth plan for future development in this area that addresses both the interests of Middlebury students and “where the jobs are.” To complement these efforts, we have created several new programs. “UpNext” (which debuted in February with a focus on Media & Entertainment), brings together students, employers and faculty over two days, building student awareness of the breadth of pathways within various industries and to help them prepare to compete for these opportunities. The “Field Guide” series works with departments to bring back alumni for panel discussions on the paths they took to a wide range of careers (in the spirit of “major doesn’t necessarily equal career”), followed by a dinner for further in-depth conversation and advice; the first was held in March with the Geology Department, with one student saying that “this event was the single most practically valuable experience we have had at Middlebury.” We currently have finance advisory and mentoring groups that include both monthly phone calls and ongoing individual summer meetings in New York and Boston. In addition, we’re working with the new “Middlebury in DC” office to set up a mentoring program for our summer DC interns with young alums. And we’re in the process of setting up two new advisory boards in Technology and Media & Entertainment, again to provide a network of real-world advice and mentoring.
One initiative in our efforts to meet students “where they are” is to hold drop-in hours and appointments in BiHall, in the Commons and in the evenings. We have also reached out to academic departments to meet with faculty to determine how we might work together to connect their majors to career exploration in special evening working sessions; our work with the Psychology Department is a great example of such a collaboration. In September, we will be launching a new integrated and inclusive advising model, providing students with highly individualized and cohesive academic and career advising. This focus will increase the depth and breadth of our individual advising content expertise, improving the quality and relevance of our programming, our outreach efforts and our work with faculty and students. In addition, a new online appointment scheduling system will enable students to make their own appointments with the advisor best suited to their needs. But we will still serve those students with the quick question and those who are in exploratory mode, the many “undecideds,” looking for general advice. CCI will never become a place just for those who already have determined their paths.
Some other clarifications regarding concerns voiced by the Campus:
Opportunities in areas other than finance and consulting are hard to find on MOJO — and when do, they are often outdated: We have posted more than 500 internships this year (a new record) in every field. The Campus mentioned just a “smattering” of postings, with particular concern about the lack of media opportunities, yet there were more than 100 postings in Media & Entertainment alone this year, including dozens of new ones at NBC Universal, ABC Disney, Sports Illustrated, CBS, The Christian Science Monitor, PBS, and more. And the comment that MOJO postings are often outdated by a few years — that’s impossible, as all postings are automatically deleted from the system within two days of the application deadline.
We’re out of touch when it comes to internships and student needs in terms of funding deadlines: Over the last four springs, we’ve gone from one deadline to three to two and now back to one again. Despite advice throughout the year regarding starting the internship search early, so many students wait until the last minute. Because we are responding to student feedback for full funding to be awarded (i.e., in their bank accounts) by June 1 to enable them to buy airline tickets, put a deposit down on a sublet, etc., we therefore need to have hundreds of applications reviewed by staff and faculty committees and then multi-step paperwork processed and pre-departure workshops held — all done in time to hit that June 1 goal and which necessitated the April 6 deadline. It is no easy feat — and it’s worth noting that it was very clear in the Funding FAQs that if there were extenuating circumstances, a student just needed to e-mail or meet with me to discuss — as a result, 20 extensions were granted. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that our funding has more than tripled in three years and the number of students supported quadrupled. It is also worth noting that paid internship postings on MOJO have increased by 50 percent in the last two years. And one last point: students who got their unpaid internships through MOJO absolutely do not receive funding priority as stated in the Campus piece.
The deluge of e-mails and why we need a weekly newsletter instead: Two major points here: 1) We do have a weekly newsletter — it’s called CCI Connect (visit go/connect), and it is sent out every week to all students and department coordinators, with all new MOJO postings, upcoming deadlines and events, etc., and is categorized by industry field. 2) The recent deluge of e-mails is due to the number of deadlines tied to the end of “internship hiring season” — and both student surveys and focus groups told us that students wanted to be reminded of upcoming deadlines three days in advance. Believe me, we would love to eliminate these e-mails and all the work they involve and have students use their weekly CCI Connect as their primary source of information on opportunities. But the fact that the Campus editorial board didn’t even know of its existence demonstrates why the reminders are important — and that we need to do a much better job in communicating about our resources.
CCI has limited effect with the exception of a few fields: Since September, we’ve had 2,500+ student visits in drop-ins and appointments, with interest in every field. On the recruiting front, we held 80+ employer info sessions in a variety of industries and 29 related special events, with more than 400 on-campus interviews to date. Our record number (500+) of MOJO internship postings in every field has generated 2,900 applications to date. More than 2,600 students have attended a variety of dozens of CCI workshops and programming, including a series of sophomore dinners focusing on summer internships, LinkedIn workshops, The ABCs of Finding Work in the Government, Grant-Writing for Not-for-Profits, Preparing for Your Finance Interview, The Business of the Arts, and many more
We are happy to respond to constructive criticism and welcome new ideas on how we can better work with students and faculty to “connect the dots.” But we ask that the critique and ideas reflect an accurate understanding of what is already in place and what lies ahead. Meanwhile, on behalf of my CCI colleagues, I’d like to remind students that there is nothing we would rather do than work with them throughout their time at Middlebury on the creative process of inventing their futures.
PEGGY BURNS is Director of Internships and Interim Director of the Center for Careers and Internships
(04/16/14 4:03pm)
The college announced this week that it is going to be investing $50 million in a responsible investment fund. This is an amazing thing. Why? Because $50 million can make a big difference if it’s invested in companies with good environmental, social and governance practices. Because the college is recognizing that its endowment can be a tool for positive change and that it should reflect the mission of the school. And finally because it shows that student organizing is working! The school created this fund as a consolation prize for a hard fought divestment campaign.
We are really excited about this, but we are not the kind of people who settle for the goldfish in a plastic bag. Desmond Tutu endorsed divestment this week, recognizing that climate change is not an issue to trifle with. Pitzer College divested from fossil fuels this week and we are going to follow suit. Wash U students continue a sit-in demanding their school cut ties with Peabody Coal, and over 100 Harvard Professors endorsed divestment in an open letter that made it to the Guardian and Bloomberg. Harvard Professors y’all! They are so smart.
We are going for the gigantic, purple teddy bear you only get after you’ve practiced shooting baskets into a moving, flaming hoop that is divestment all summer, because we think it’s worth all the sweat, the tears and the missed shots. We like our goldfish, $50 million is no joke, but we are not leaving this carnival without getting what we came for. It is the time to take serious action on climate change, and we have the opportunity to do so by divesting our endowment from fossil fuels. There is no reason why we can’t make this basket.
Written on Behalf of DIVEST MIDDLEBURY
(04/09/14 4:42pm)
Geert Wilders, the leader and founder of the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), appeared proudly before his loyal following in The Hague on Wednesday night, still hoping that the local elections would solidify his political power. Against the backdrop of a Dutch flag spanning the entire backside of a medium-sized beer cellar in the political capital of the Netherlands, Mr. Wilders asked his boisterous audience three questions.
“Do you want more or less European Union?” The audience, familiar by now with Mr. Wilders’ crusade against the ever-closer cooperation of European nation-states—he has suggested violent rebellion if the EU gains powers of taxation—responded with a somewhat scattered but loud “Less! Less! Less!” The crowd repeated the word 13 times. Wilders, building momentum, continued with the precise eagerness of a hunter who is about to corner his prey. “Do you want more or less Labour Party?” The Dutch Labour Party (PVDA), it had become apparent before Mr. Wilders entered the room, had lost political control over Amsterdam, the Dutch capital and most populous city with roughly 800,000 inhabitants, for the first time since coming to power in 1949. Even Wilders’ disciples, whose confused populism combines leftist and rightist conservatism, seemed to commiserate with the social-democrats. “Less! Less! Less!” they uttered just eleven times.
Wilders, visibly in need of a brief recovery after the underwhelming response, looked down on his bright green tie, then turned his eyes to the floor, before prefacing his third question with an expression of acute awareness of what his next move would bring about. “And the third question is…and I’m not actually allowed to say this, because I will be reported to the police… But freedom of speech is an obvious good. We haven’t said anything illegal. Nothing that is not true. So, I ask you. Do you want, in this city and in the Netherlands, more or fewer Moroccans?” This time, the ensuing chant was reminiscent of the response Joseph Goebbels elicited in his Berlin Sportpalast speech of February 10, 1933, which offered the national-socialist ‘solution’ for Germany’s Post-WWI pains. Mr. Goebbels, who served as Hitler’s Minister for Propaganda between 1933 and 1945, racing in the rhythm of his rhetoric, assured his audience that “the Jewish insolence has lived longer in the past than it will live in the future.” The crowd laughed derisively, applauded, and clamored, with many rising to their feet to extend their right arm at a 45-degree angle.
The congregation of Wilders-devotees in The Hague responded in unison to the question on the presence of Moroccans—a group that makes up about 2% of the total Dutch population—yelling “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!” The chant lasted a total of 16 repetitions of the word (‘minder’ in Dutch). Basking in the success of his kill, Mr. Wilders observed his surroundings, wetted his upper lip twice with his thin tongue in a gesture that completed his unnerving resemblance to a colubrid, and assured the Dutch on national television that “we will take care of that, then.” The crowd laughed derisively, applauded, and clamored.
As Mr. Wilders would find out soon after his address, the Dutch midterm elections forced the Party for Freedom, which thrives on the populist appeal of Mr. Wilders—he is the party’s only member—to surrender political dominance in all but one municipality. Having previously suffered significant defeat in the Dutch national elections of September 2012, Mr. Wilders differs much from Minister Goebbels in terms of executive power. That is not to say, however, that his populist rhetoric has failed to make an imprint on Dutch politics. Mr. Wilders’ hard-right campaign against European integration, Islam and ethnic groups brought him as far as holding a position of de facto governing power when the PVV served as the supporting party for the 2010 minority coalition of the Dutch Conservative Party (VVD) and Christian Democrats (CDA). Today, Mr. Wilders’ 15 seats in the Dutch lower chamber still see him represent 10% of the total population. Far more problematically, Mr. Wilders’ influence has pulled the Conservative Party (VVD) closer to demagoguery and xenophobia, and has successfully normalized anti-EU, anti-immigrant, and nationalist discourse in Dutch politics.
But for all the negativity that has surrounded the Dutch midterm elections, their outcome also holds the promise of a reversal in the populist trend of the past 10 years. Mr. Wilders’ speech has provoked public outrage among the Dutch, leading one PVV parliamentarian to cut all ties with the party on Thursday afternoon. As of Thursday night, over a thousand Dutchmen have reported Mr. Wilders’ discriminatory remarks to the police. Perhaps even more promisingly, Prime Minister Rutte (VVD), finally collapsing under the weight of party elders and European peers, announced late Thursday night that he has ruled out the possibility of forming a coalition government with Mr. Wilders if he maintains his views.
Finally, Democrats 66 (D66), the only Dutch party that has consistently refused to accept the Mr. Wilders’ brand of populism as tolerable political practice, emerged from the local elections as the undisputed victor, becoming the largest party in three of The Netherlands’ most populous cities: Amsterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht. The progressive centrists of D66-leader Alexander Pechtold will seek to translate this local power to a widening influence on a national and European scale. To a large extent, the Dutch reputation for religious tolerance depends on how successful Pechtold is in meeting his challenge.
FELIX KLOS '14 is from Hilversum, The Netherlands
(03/12/14 6:58pm)
It seems each week there is a new article in the Campus that has dangerous implications. These articles are the mouthpiece of hegemonic ideology — dominant discourse — that challenge the legitimacy of marginalized groups’ liberation movements. It is impossible to respond to each prejudice, though someone always responds to the articles — whether it be “Chris” calling out the racism of typical campus speakers and events or the Midd Included group defending their effort to adjust the eurocentricity of Middlebury’s curriculum. However, I don’t think we always have to be on the defensive. I write this article to encourage us to be the first to publish our opinions and to start to wage a comprehensive battle to frame our pressing issues in terms of their racism, cissexism, classism, imperialism and misogyny in order to start to promote our epistemology and our politics. I refuse to be constantly put on the defensive – pointing out the flaws in the arguments that others make. There are plenty of people at this school who feel similarly to me, albeit for different reasons. We are angry, and to the extent that the Campus can accommodate our dissidence and our dissent, I say we start to use it to publish our accounts of pressing issues before Nathan Weil beats us to the punch.
I do not wish to respond to “Jared Leto and the Thought Police” in full. However, it is necessary to call attention to the misunderstandings of racism and anti-racism in the piece: racism is not having a lack of empathy for people of color. In fact, racism is a complex mechanism of systematic subordination. It operates through institutions such as elite colleges and SAT tests, the prison-industrial complex and housing policy, through an unequal distribution of wealth along racial lines and other statistical inequalities, through controlling images that secure stereotypes in our national imagination, as well as through interpersonal bias and internalized notions of inferiority. To reduce racism to lack of empathy — and to believe that anti-racism amounts to developing empathy (though this may play a part) — is to laugh in the face of centuries of oppression and continuing violence. Similarly, to imply that straight people accomplish trans and gay activism when they agree to play a queer character in a movie is to trivialize real issues such as LGBT homelessness and the violence faced by trans women in which we are all complicit.
The conversations around race, gender, class and sexuality at Middlebury tend to get locked into defending progressive beliefs against dominant beliefs, but I do not want to be having these conversations that Nathan Weil starts. There is a lot happening on campus, and I think we should use this activism as a way to set the terms of the conversations, rather than accept the terms that are set for us. For instance, the Gender, Sexuality and Feminist studies department has been actively hosting events; JusTalks has run successfully for the second-year; the Posse Plus retreat has again honored issues relating to identity-based oppression; Sadé Williams’ produced a performance of For Colored Girls; the African American Alliance and other cultural advocacy organizations single-handedly organized Black History Month programming; a new student-led coalition for Racial and Economic Justice is starting; Midd Included has brought new life to a decade-old effort to change Middlebury’s Eurocentric curriculum; MiddSafe has launched a sexual assault hotline; other unnamed, daily efforts prevail. This campus activism shows that there are progressive-minded individuals who are working to change the culture, climate and policies of Middlebury College. Using these activisms as a starting point, I call for us to start writing, framing issues that are important to us as we see them, using mediums such as the Campus to influence campus life and thought, and doing so before opinions antithetical to our lives are published.
LILY ANDREWS '14 is from Minneapolis, Minn. The undersigned students add their names in support: Alex Jackman ’14, Alex Strott ’15, Alice Oshima ’15, Ally Yanson ’14, Daniela Barajas ’16, Feliz Baca ’14, Ian Stewart ’14, India Huff ’15, Jackie Park ’15, Kate McCreary ’15, Katie Willis ’13, Lily Andrews ’14, Marcella Maki ’14, and Molly Stuart ’15.5. Artwork by SAMANTHA WOOD.
(03/12/14 6:53pm)
I don’t know how many months I spent at Middlebury before more than just a few people knew that I hunted. It wasn’t that I was expecting a negative response to my hobby — it was just that no one on campus ever talked about hunting. No one discussed their plans to head to the woods for the weekend in November like a handful of students did every year where I went to high school in Wisconsin. When I touched the subject as I got to know people on campus, I was met with a variety of responses: curiosity, disinterest, bewilderment and shock were some of them. A few people claimed, “You killed Bambi!” Anyone who has seen the movie knows that Bambi makes it out alive.
As I learned to predict a variety of responses to sharing this part of my upbringing, I became more comfortable with the subject. I had stories to tell if anyone wanted to hear them, I had arguments as to why I hunted and I had reassurances that I still voted Democrat (though the fact that this would even be necessary is problematic as well). To clarify, hunting every year since the age of twelve was my own independent choice, one that my dad offered to my brother and I once we were old enough. In that sense, I consider hunting to be my personal lifestyle choice, much how like some of my friends choose to pursue a vegetarian diet (I know it will raise a few eyebrows to compare the two at all). While I have only gone back home once for hunting in four years at Middlebury, I still consider it to be part of my identity. I enjoy knowing where my meat comes from, and I like feeling responsible for my consumption of it.
Sometimes, I enter a conversation in which my choice to hunt is stigmatized — to be fair, this does not only happen at Middlebury. For some reason, it carries political weight. It identifies me as a gun-touting animal hater who doesn’t respect nature. While any outdoor enthusiast (be it a hunter, a hiker or a kayaker) is capable of disrespecting the surrounding environment, in general, one who spends time outdoors gains a sense of responsibility and stewardship. What draws me to hunting more than anything is that connection with nature: it is a physical and mental challenge that I consider to be a sport in its own right.
My goal is not to promote hunting as a lifestyle that everyone should pursue; instead, I am merely pointing out that it is a lifestyle practiced by a sizeable handful of Middlebury students, faculty and staff. So is vegetarianism. So is a person’s own choice of diet in general. I have the right to be honest about this particular aspect of my culture, and I also have the right to defend it.
My argument about hunting boils down to the meat itself; as many vegetarians argue that a meatless diet is more environmentally sustainable, I argue that hunting for one’s meat is the most sustainable way to procure it if one chooses to eat meat (provided that the game population is sustainably controlled). Anyone who consumes meat is responsible for the death of that animal, plain and simple. Our distance from the source of the meat as consumers is problematic in our understanding the sacrifice of life that makes this form of nourishment possible. When I hunt, I know that the animal has lived a relatively happy and healthy existence, no massive amount of carbon was expended in its lifespan, and all of the meat is local. For me, it is a way to exercise simplicity and ownership over what I eat (however rarely I get to indulge in the treat of venison at this point).
Yes, as humans have developed more accurate firearms we’ve gained a greater advantage over deer, grouse, turkeys or whatever we choose to hunt. But humans are wired to create and manipulate tools, and from experience I know that no matter how advanced our weapons and tools are, we will never understand the woods the way that the animals do. Through at least 95% of human history, we have subsisted on foraging and hunting (yes, many human cultures are also vegetarian and yes, our teeth are designed for us to eat more vegetables than meat, but the body gains nourishment from the occasional protein of a successful hunt). Given this, I wish to see hunting as a lifestyle that has space for celebration and expression on campus. I have argued that it is a sustainable way to supplement the consumption of meat as well as a cultural practice that students should feel comfortable bringing with them from home. While hunting may not be the most common activity Midd kids bring from home, a handful do, and we are excited to share this part of our lives with those around us.
ADAM LANG '14 is from Milwaukee, Wis. Artwork by TAMIR WILLIAMS
(03/05/14 5:09pm)
Last week, our fellow editor Edward O’Brien ’17 wrote an interesting Notes from the Desk calling out a group of straight Middlebury guys who verbally berated men who tried to dance with them at a Q&A (Queers and Allies) party, telling them to “fuck off.” We were talking about that situation that Edward presented and think that the conversation we ended up having hit on an issue that we at Middlebury spend a lot of time thinking around, yet never seem to talk about. What follows is our (corny) attempt to recreate that conversation:
Fritz: Yeah. So. What do you think?
Olivia: I think he has a point because if I yelled that at a guy at the social house formerly known as ADP, I would’ve gotten called out.
Fritz: But should that be okay?
Olivia: What do you mean?
Fritz: Random sexual advances that are totally unsolicited. Are you in the wrong for getting upset at a guy who comes up to you at an Atwater party and starts grinding on you?
Olivia: As someone who’s dated and flirted with both men and women here, I feel like at one of those parties, that’s happened a lot, and I’ve just kind of run away if I didn’t want to do that with them. But I would never flirt with a girl at one of those parties because I’d be so afraid that I’d make them uncomfortable. That feels messed up to me is that I feel like a guy can hit on me whenever he feels like it without worrying about making me uncomfortable, but a guy can’t hit on another guy without getting yelled at.
Fritz: But is it messed up that you feel uncomfortable making unsolicited sexual advances towards women or that men feel comfortable making those advances towards you?
Olivia: I would never go up to a random woman and start grinding on her at a party.
Fritz: But is that a good thing? Should everyone maybe feel a little less comfortable about making sexual passes at people when it’s not wanted?
Olivia: Yeah. I mean, I guess I don’t think anyone should be able to just go up to someone and grind their genitals on them. And it’s not all that different from my being angry with some guy making cat calls at women on the street is it?
Fritz: Exactly. My point is that I think that more of us should be telling people who make unsolicited sexual advances to “fuck off.” Those two words go pretty far towards sending the message that overtly sexual attention — at least in the context of a sweaty dance party — is never flattering. I’d like to think that message transcends the boundaries of sexuality. Random dance-floor creeping is never the move. End of story.
So the point of us typing up our relatively casual conversation for you all to read is to deconstruct the ideas that Edward brought up and the reactions that we had to them. For both of us, Edward’s op-ed inspired an instinctive emotional response. Olivia’s was inspired by her experience as a queer-identifying member of campus and a MiddSafe advocate; Fritz reacted as a straight guy with firm beliefs surrounding consent.
It’s important to understand that a display of verbal aggression towards a gay man for expressing his sexuality at a party specifically designed to be a safe space for the LGBTQ community is absolutely unacceptable. Having different standards for how people interact with you based on their sexual orientation is also unacceptable. However, it should be understood that it is — or should be — unacceptable to make unsolicited physical contact of a sexual nature with another member of this community, regardless of the environment or either party’s sexual orientation.
The conclusion that we have come to is that the real issue in Edward’s story is that there is an unspoken code at Middlebury that we are not allowed to feel threatened by those who make unwanted sexual advances on us and that we are implicitly told we should feel “flattered” by these advances. Perhaps the unwanted attention that people experience — regardless of sexual orientation — is the real issue.
OLIVIA ALLEN '15 is a Design Editor from Charlottesville, Va. and FRITZ PARKER '15 is a Sports Editor from Arlington, Va.
(02/26/14 7:00pm)
On February 12th, Max Kagan ’14 wrote an op-ed in The Campus entitled “Just Call AAL Other” in response to a recent student-led campaign that seeks to modify the current Cultures and Civilizations requirement. The current system requires students to take one class with a large focus on each of the following geographic areas: NOR (Northern America – US or Canada), EUR (Europe), AAL (Africa, Asia, and Latin America), and CMP (Comparative). Many on campus have pointed out that grouping Africa, Asia and Latin America together does not make much sense.
In response, this new campaign proposes that students be required to take one NOR course, due to the location of our institution, one CMP course, and two courses that focus on one of any of the following regions AFR (Africa), ASI (Asia), EUR (Europe), LAC (Latin American and Caribbean), MDE (Middle East). As some of the students behind this proposal, we want to address Kagan’s argument and expand on the reasons why we believe a change in our current system is absolutely necessary and appropriate.
Kagan acknowledges that Middlebury’s current system is fundamentally Eurocentric, but asserts that such a biased system is “wholly appropriate” because this institution was founded in a European tradition and on European values. According to him, “Middlebury’s structure as an institute of higher learning dates back to the European Middle Ages; its values harken from the European Enlightenment;” therefore, it would be wrong for any Middlebury student to be allowed to graduate without studying Europe.
Here, Kagan incorrectly assumes that making the EUR credit an option rather than a requirement will result in a lack of study of Europe. He ignores that, even when studying other regions of the world, we are learning about Europe. For example, in a class about African Politics, we learn about European colonization. Even in classes that are not region focused, such as literature, science, theater and economics, students are constantly exposed to Western thought and European tradition. Thus, making the EUR credit an option rather than a requirement does not mean that students will never be exposed to European thought. It does mean that students who wish to study other regions of the world will have greater educational opportunities, while students who wish to pursue the study of Europe can still do so.
There is no doubt that the founding of the college, a school whose original mission was “to train young men from Vermont and neighboring states for the ministry and other learned professions,” was based on European values. But should that mission from 1800 dictate our institutional values today? We think not.
While Kagan’s argument might seem appealing to some, it is limited in that it disregards the new global context we live in. Today’s era of globalization calls for a very different kind of education than the one the College offered 200 years ago. The world has changed, and so has Middlebury and its mission. Today, part of our institution’s mission is to “strive to engage students’ capacity for rigorous analysis and independent thought within a wide range of disciplines and endeavors, and to cultivate the intellectual, creative, physical, ethical, and social qualities essential for leadership in a rapidly changing global community.” Even though Kagan is correct to point out that we were founded in European tradition, Middlebury’s current mission statement does not include “Europe’s intellectual tradition.”
Fortunately, Middlebury College has realized that the world we live in today calls for a new education for students who come from all over the world and who will go off to be leaders in both Western and non-Western regions, not just an education for the “young men from Vermont” who will serve in the ministry. As we mentioned earlier, however, our curriculum still remains Eurocentric. We still have a lot of work to do to truly achieve that new mission, but changing the Cultures and Civilizations requirement is a key first step in the right direction towards a curriculum better suited for educating this new generation of global citizens.
Throughout its history, Middlebury has been at the forefront of innovation and progress in higher education. After thoroughly researching the distribution and cultures requirements among other institutions of higher education, last year’s SGA found that most institutions lack systems that allow students to be exposed to a variety of cultures and civilizations. By changing the cultures and civilizations requirements, Middlebury can once again blaze a trail in higher education.
We know change can be difficult, but it is necessary for progress. Middlebury itself acknowledges that it is “a liberal arts college of the first rank” as a direct result “of a process of growth and change that began in 1800.” We must not stop that process of continuous self-reflection and improvement for fear of the work that this change will require; we must not stall our progress by clinging on to outdated and exclusive requirements.
To improve our educational opportunities and really be a 21st century first class liberal arts college that educates global citizens, we must revisit our cultures and civilizations requirement. While we understand that our proposal does not present a perfect alternative, we strongly believe that it proposes a system that is far better than the one we currently have. Moreover, our proposal is a work in progress. We have started this conversation among students, faculty and administrators, in the hope that as a community we can create and implement the best alternative possible. We are not the first generation of Middlebury students to be raising this issue, but we hope that we will be the last. We must not wait any longer.
Submitted by MIDD INCLUDED and Signed by Adriana Ortiz-Burnham ’17, Daniela Barajas ’14.5, David Ollin Pesqueira ’17, Douglass Gledhill ’14, Jihad Hajjouji ’14, Hanna Hemenger ’13.5, Kate McCreary ’15, Greta Neubauer ’14.5, Jiya Pandya ’17, and Molly Stuart ’15.
(02/26/14 6:58pm)
Last week, the Campus updated us on Middlebury’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2016. The degree of precision found in this initiative is incredible. To cite but one example, Middlebury collects data on where each and every woodchip burned in our biomass plant is harvested and milled.
This seems like a rational approach to limiting our carbon impact, but it is precisely the opposite approach we take with our students. The detailed accounting standards laid out in the 2008 Climate Action Implementation Plan have plenty to say about woodchips, but do not include any similar consideration of the impact of the student body.
Of course, students are not woodchips. For one, students exert a far larger impact on the climate. Woodchips can be transported thousands at a time in the back of a truck. By contrast, most students fly to campus or take a personal car. The woodchips make a one-way trip; Middlebury students come and go several times throughout the year. And while Middlebury scrupulously limits its woodchip consumption to a 75-mile radius of the college, we proudly trumpet the fact that Middlebury students hail from all 50 states and over 70 countries.
Middlebury’s definition of “carbon neutrality” requires us to assume that students miraculously appear in rural Vermont every September before mysteriously vanishing once again every May. We are eager to track and quantify our carbon footprint — at least as long as it does not require us to make the painful choices that true carbon neutrality would entail.
The only real reason for excluding students from the carbon calculus is that it would be too hard — hard not just because the climatological impact of student air travel would prove nigh on impossible to mitigate, but also because true carbon neutrality would require us to compromise on other values we hold dear. In an age where long-distance travel is only possible through burning fossil fuels, how can we credibly claim to be both “carbon neutral” and “global”?
Maybe some would make the case that Middlebury is only responsible for travel it directly funds, and thus we are justified in excluding student travel from our calculations. But this is a slight-of-hand argument that masks the inconvenient truth that Middlebury College is just as responsible for student travel to and from campus as it is for burning thousands of gallons of no. 6 heating oil. It is not as though the College is passively witness to an onslaught of students who happen to arrive each fall. Rather, we actively cultivate a diverse, geographically disparate student body through dedicated recruitment efforts and financial subsidies in the form of aid, knowing full well that this leads to an increase in carbon emissions.
If we truly care about fighting climate change, there are hugely significant actions the college could take immediately. I do not mean the existing feel-good measures: turning off the lights in unoccupied rooms, having students ride the bus to the Snow Bowl or switching food suppliers in the dining hall. I mean drastic cuts that would vastly reduce the carbon emissions associated with students travelling to and from campus. These include closing the C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad, revoking all financial aid to international students, suspending our participation in the Davis Scholars program and ending the Chicago Posse as well as the new Los Angeles expansion. Middlebury could even limit admission to those who reside in the Northeast by requiring that students use mass transit to and from the college — both Boston and New York are accessible by bus and train, and there are more than enough qualified students from these two cities to fill future freshman classes.
But these options are not even on the table — and with good reason. The answer is simple: we accept — nay, encourage — the cultivation of a global student body despite the climatological costs because it is worth it. In addition to our relatively recent commitment to carbon neutrality, we also have a longstanding institutional commitment to diversity. Too many people take a fundamentalist approach to saving the environment while ignoring the fact that all actions have costs and benefits, and, sometimes, the benefits of burning carbon may indeed outweigh the costs. I happen to think that a pound of carbon spent furthering the educational mission of Middlebury College is a pound we are justified in spending. Judging from the fact that most students willfully emit thousands of pounds of carbon each year in their journeys to and from campus, it appears that nearly all my peers already agree with me.
This is not to say we should not strive for greater efficiency. But “carbon neutrality” is only possible through arbitrary accounting and heroic assumptions. Being a responsible steward of the environment is an important ambition for Middlebury College, but it should never be our only goal.
MAX KAGAN '14 is from Freeport, Maine. Artwork by TAMIR WILLIAMS.