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(02/26/14 6:47pm)
A sea of blonde and brunette ponytails filled the social space for a discussion on body image disorders and ideals for women led by Courtney Martin, author of “Perfect Girl.” She argued that a dire consequence of college women pursuing the image of “the perfect girl” is the self-hate of the “starving daughter”: formed from frustration with having dark circles under one’s eyes to eating disorders and compulsive fitness habits. Martin called on women to take action by using campus resources and surrounding oneself with positive-minded people.
While Martin seemed to skirt describing any characteristics of her “perfect girl” — she seemed to imply that any type of woman can strive to this ideal — to me she named the most important feature of all by not mentioning it at all: whiteness. By not meaningfully engaging with the way that race shapes her analysis, she fed my skepticism of mainstream feminism.
The standard of beauty in America is the skinny, white, blonde woman. It is a heteronormative ideal that women should strive to embody and men should strive to conquer. Martin’s “starving daughter” is this woman.
She is all around us, although in reality is very few of us. Take a quick flip through fashion magazines or a stroll through beauty parlors at a department store. If you search the word “beauty” in Google images, chiseled chins and rouged cheeks grace the page. This lack of diversity in women’s body shapes and skin colors reinforces what I perceive as a type of beauty that women are conditioned to strive for in America.
Growing up in a community as a black male and in a household where my mother and other black women earnestly invested in perms, hair relaxers and weaves, I interpreted these actions as attempts to skip the negative labels created and associated with the innate quality of knotty hair. While some women might argue that they are doing it for self-satisfaction, I feel that there is a strong media influence to assimilate into the white standard of beauty.
Of course black men are not immune from white standards of beauty, even if sexism keeps us from acknowledging it. We claim we keep our hair close-cut because it looks good, when in reality, racism likely taught us it looked good because there was not enough length to form a nap. I change my appearance to combat and flee the negative portrayals of black men in the media. If I dressed and spoke in a certain way, I assume a lot of the people I currently interact with at Middlebury would feel unsafe and be hesitant to approach me.
During my brief time here at Middlebury, I have found that feminism embraces white women’s privilege, championing a cause driven by a certain group of women for the benefit of a particular group of women. While I want to fundamentally champion the rights of all women, the contemporary mainstream feminism movement in America seems only to embrace the white woman’s narrative, as the only narrative victim oppressed by the hegemonic, patriarchal forces that be. I cannot support a feminism that is led exclusively by the women who crowded into McCullough; a feminism that, while aiming for total equality, does not acknowledge itself as a political sphere entwined with racism.
CHRIS GRIGGS '16 is from Chicago, Ill.
(02/26/14 6:41pm)
I did not plan to write for the Campus this semester. I am studying abroad and had hoped to spare the Middlebury community my whining and myself the dangerously inflated ego that being published in the Campus might cause. And, frankly, I was looking to get away. Alas, many things are easier said than done. Ideally, someone better read than I would construct the argument I present below. Due to the apparent absence of such a voice in this debate, I feel compelled to add my own.
During the last semester, the SGA began to consider the issue of distribution requirements. As a dutiful cabinet member whose position had little connection to academic matters, I decided it was best to keep my opinions private. Now, however, I can be more candid. While it is important that we discuss and debate the value and nature of our education, I believe that efforts to remove the Europe (EUR) requirement are misguided. Studying Europe — its history, culture, literature, languages — is essential to a liberal education. Contrary to what proponents of reform argue, European thought is, particularly with regards to our education, more important than that of other parts of the world.
I suspect that last sentence is controversial. It shouldn’t be. This is not a matter of pro-Western jingoism. Liberal education is a European invention. It is the product of centuries of thought which, aside from a crucial period in the middle ages in which Islamic scholars translated, interpreted, and resuscitated the likes of Aristotle and Plato, is uniquely Western. This is not to say that only Europeans can be liberally educated. The value of a Western education is that it is universal. Rational inquiry is not the domain of Europeans alone. The rational study of human nature transcends class, race and sex, even as it gives insight into all of those subjects. Sciences and humanities as we conceive of them today are the products of a European tradition. It is no coincidence that Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud — perhaps the greatest critics of Western thought — studied Aristotle and Plato, Hobbes and Locke, Homer and Virgil. More recent critics such as Richard Rorty and Foucault did likewise. If one seeks to criticize the West, one should study it first.
As Requirement Reformers correctly argue, education has moral implications. What we study affects how we think. Most education systems teach their students what to think. They seek to impose a belief system on their students. Liberal (Western) education takes a different approach. Its goal is more ambitious and more just. At the end of a successful liberal education, one is not expected to hold any particular belief, but rather to be able to think for oneself. The study of Europe is not merely the study of a certain ethnicity or language, but rather a necessary part of an attempt to free one’s mind.
Critics of Western education often point out all the bad things for which Europeans are responsible. Yet they attribute these sins not to the flawed human condition, but rather to the much derided “dead white males.” Thus, one rarely hears complaints about the Ottomans and no one seems to mind that Jordanians occupied the West Bank and Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip. Not to mention China’s ongoing oppression of its Uyghur Muslim population or the atrocities the Indian government has committed in Gujarat. Alongside the Western tradition’s very real errors is a debate about the Good. In other words, it is hardly coincidental that we spend so much time criticizing British imperialism while no one in Qatar seriously complains about the slave-like conditions Egyptian and Palestinian workers face in Dubai’s shiny new hotels. Our self-criticism distinguishes us far more than our sinful past and present.
The ridiculousness of an argument over whether to require the study of Europe is that it is itself a Western discourse. If we do not study the history and development of that conversation, how will we ever understand the purpose of a Middlebury education?
HARRY ZIEVE-COHEN '15 is from Brooklyn, N.Y. Artwork by NOLAN ELLSWORTH.
(02/19/14 6:58pm)
Here at Middlebury, we live by an extensive set of rules. Some are necessary to maintain our safety, but many are superfluous and actively undermine our autonomy as students. A student body that lacks agency also lacks community standards. I simply propose that we deserve more trust. The presence of a doubtful watchdog inherently creates an antagonistic relationship. Only through an environment of mutual trust — and it must go both ways — can we truly thrive as a community. If the expectations for the student body were set higher, I have no doubt that we rise to the occasion. As it stands, we act like children because we are treated as such.
I have had this feeling since arriving here and have heard it from many mouths, but I am compelled to express it only now. A good friend of mine told a surprising story about the 100 Days party that broke my camel’s back (to read his full story, check out middbeat.org, a student-run blog). Fed up with the level of control imposed upon our senior class at a party organized in our honor, he purposely and impulsively broke a rule and was booted from the building. To be fair, he was acting like a drunken fool, but sober reflection has shown him the error of his ways.
The rule he broke – no water on the dance floor — is entirely justified and necessary for maintaining safety. Three people went to the hospital after slipping on the wet dance floor at the 200 Days party. His actions, however, were motivated by the generally draconian enforcement of rules that undermined trust. For example, I watched a reasonably sober friend be kicked out for drunkenness after tripping while removing her high heels. This is fairly characteristic of many experiences with Public Safety. The music is always too loud; there are always too many minors; the punch gets dumped down the drain; I can’t drink a beer on my own porch. Don’t get me wrong, I had a great time at the party, especially while consuming the free food and booze provided by our generous buddies in the Administration. However, I would have liked to enjoy my beer in the space between the Grille and the Social Space. I would have liked to step outside briefly for a breath of fresh air.
Neither of these things were allowed, but why? Are there significantly more risks associated with trusting us to make appropriate decisions about alcohol on our own? If given the opportunity, would we take advantage of these simple freedoms to our own detriment? Personally, I have more trust in us.
Call me an optimist, but a policy of trust seems to work elsewhere. Take Haverford College as an example. Here’s an excerpt from their Honor Code: “As Haverford students, we seek an environment in which members of a diverse community can live together, interact and learn from one another in ways that protect both personal freedom and community standards…We uphold the Code by engaging with the values upon which our community depends: mutual trust, concern, and respect for oneself, one another and the community.”
An institution renowned for the strength and pervasive nature of its honor code, Haverford holds a trusting policy toward alcohol—students are held to a higher standard, responsible for monitoring their own consumption and intervention only occurs when students ask for help. The result is a happier and safer environment not only for drinking, but also for social life in general. Granted, this claim is based solely on anecdotal evidence from friends.
While I work on gathering some empirical evidence to prove this point, let’s try imagining a Middlebury with this kind of trust. Students should have more autonomy to make personal decisions and hold more agency regarding their social life. At the very least, it would be nice to know the reason behind the rule, just as you might tell a child, “Don’t hit because hitting isn’t nice.” Administrative intervention should only occur where there is an immediate and preventable threat to safety. I recognize that, to some, this may seem like a pretty bold proposition. Indeed, if taken literally, it has some huge implications for the College’s policies.
Rather than paint that whole picture right now, I want to imagine a 100 Days party that follows these guidelines. We are allowed to exit and re-enter the party. Some may take this opportunity for over-consumption of alcohol (they probably did anyway) while others simply take a break for fresh air, a cigarette or healthy consumption of alcohol in a different location. We are allowed to exit the Grille and be in the gallery with alcoholic beverages to maximize the area for socializing while consuming. We are still not allowed to take drinks onto the dance floor as this poses an immediate and preventable threat to safety. Everyone has a better time and rises to the expectation that we will act like adults.
It sounds reasonable to me, but is it feasible? That is a question to which I have no answer, so I would like to pose it to you. After hearing my friend’s story, I suppressed my initial instinct to write a wordy and confrontational email to someone important (hopefully you’re reading this now) and opted to try and start a conversation instead. I have heard countless people express frustration about this issue, and I think it’s time to do something about it. This will start with a conversation, whether it be late at night among friends or in the next Board of Trustees meeting. Read the full story on middbeat and comment—hopefully such a forum can help serve as a venue to begin considering this idea:
Do we deserve more trust? Does a lack of autonomy inhibit the development of strong community standards?
JEREMY KALLAN '14 is from Washington, D.C.
(02/19/14 6:56pm)
When I read the article by Jeanette Cortez, class of 2015 and from Los Angeles, not Philadelphia, as reported in last week’s issue, “Not Like a Fifth Class,” I had an immediate, almost visceral reaction. In her article, she criticized the negative reactions of students of color to incidents of racism and began with a reference to a quote (incorrectly attributed to Debanjan Roychoudhury ’16) from my friend, Victor Filpo ’16 that “being a student of color at Middlebury is kind of like taking a fifth class.” Jeanette directly opposed this quote, writing, “being a student of color at Middlebury means nothing more than that you are a student of color at Middlebury.” When I read this, I felt a swell of frustration spread inside my chest. First, the fifth class quote was out of context, and second, her statement dismissed the very real discrimination faced by students of color at Middlebury, and their efforts to fight against that discrimination.
After hearing from Jeanette directly this past Sunday at an African American Alliance (AAA) meeting, I understand that her intention in writing the op-ed was to express a different perspective than the one she feels usually speaks for all people of color on campus, and that to her, seems negative. I appreciate her voice and respect whatever beliefs about race and identity help her feel happy and productive at Middlebury. However, I take issue with many of the messages in her article, and even more than that, the prevalence of those sentiments within the greater Middlebury community: essentially, that the brown people on campus keep complaining about petty issues and should just be happy to be here.
When I asked Victor what he meant when he said that being a student of color at Middlebury could feel like taking a fifth class, he explained that identifying or being identified as a person of color often seemed like additional homework; he was constantly expected to teach others about issues of race and even fix deeply seated institutional racism.
For me and some of my friends, this “fifth class” feeling means having to pause conversations with white peers and tell them why it is offensive when they say “ghetto,” or touch your hair without asking, or ask what your story is and how you got to Middlebury. It means having to listen to professors when they pull you aside after class and, with sympathetic smiles, reassure you that they understand “that it’s hard to keep up with the class coming from where you’re from.” It means feeling obligated to raise your hand in class after a student explained that societal fear of young black men makes sense because “way more black guys do and sell drugs and kill people to, you know, feed their families.” It means the weight of guilt swirling around in your head when you decide that this time, you don’t want to raise your hand.
It’s okay if these kinds of moments do not make every student of color feel uncomfortable, unhappy or burdened. It’s okay if not every student of color, when faced with these interactions, feels as though it negatively affects their Middlebury experience. It does not necessarily have to. However, I’ll be damned if anyone says that a student of color who does feel this way shouldn’t.
People have a right to their own anger, frustration and exhaustion. Yes, we are at Middlebury—a school that we are constantly reminded is an “elite” institution, surrounded by a beautiful Vermont landscape and fixed with certain lifestyle privileges that many of us do not get anywhere else. Yes, we are here, but by no means do we always have to be happy about it. Because typical Middlebury descriptors like our elite status, the Vermont outdoors and a privileged lifestyle—food when we want it, cleanliness without having to clean, etc.—hold different meaning for different people.
When students of color decide to point out and change some of the structural and individual racism at our school, it is out of an effort to shape this institution into a more inclusive and safe one, both for current and future students. It is dismissive and inaccurate to describe these voices, these calls for action, as complaints or even as barriers to the success of students of color. In fact, many of the students I know who are most active around issues of race and social justice on campus are doing quite well here academically. These students are not making “extra obstacles for themselves,” but instead trying to remove obstacles that already exist, so that other students may pass through Middlebury more freely, less burdened and with the kind of fifth class that only comes with an orange add card.
MAYA DOIG-ACUÑA '16 is from New York, N.Y. Artwork by AMR THAMEEN.
(02/12/14 5:04pm)
To the Editors:
I am writing as an alumnus and recent visiting instructor (Winter Term 2014) in support of the student cultural organization, Midd Included, and in particular their campaign to revise the Cultures and Civilizations requirement at Middlebury. As Midd Included accurately puts it, "Under the current requirements, the college seems to place an emphasis on the study of Western cultures and civilizations, while minimizing the importance of all other cultures and civilizations of the world by lumping them together into one category." The aims of the campaign, as its website articulates are to revise the Cultures and Civilizations requirement such that a student’s course of study would have to cover a reasonably wide geographical and cultural range.
Middlebury College, like many small liberal arts schools in this country, trumpets the cultural diversity of its incoming classes each year with statistics about the numbers of countries and states represented. These numbers are indeed something to be proud of. Now it's time — or rather, past time — to reflect this interest in diversity at the pedagogical level, too. I hope that students, professors, and administrators will come together and support this important campaign.
Sincerely,
NATHAN JANDL '05
PhD Candidate, Literary Studies
University of Wisconsin-Madison
(02/12/14 5:00pm)
Last night I had another terrible experience with Western Union. It was supposed to transfer my money to my friend in need in Rhode Island within a minute. But, the transaction was not processed until the next day. I spent four hours trying to fix it. The company told me that my first name “Muhammad” and last name ”Ahmadi” is very GENERAL and is on a government list. That is why I am required to submit my passport copies to verify my full name and identity. I guess Uncle Sam is really careful about its foreign nephews, the one billion people with Muhammad(s) name.
I paid the fee for the transfer service and was supposed to be treated equally, but was denied my rights as a customer. Trust me, nothing feels more insulting than having your passport scrutinized for 15 minutes because of a stereotyped identity. Sometimes, I feel so ashamed and embarrassed that I can’t see the eyes of people waiting behind me in the line. I even think they hate me for wasting their time by being in front of them and making them wait until someone verifies that I am a real human being. In such times, I have always wished that I could dig into the earth and hide myself from the embarrassment. I can write tons of such examples but I want to tell this world a very short version of my whole life to let them know how real life is seen by me.
It was not my choice to be born in Afghanistan in 1990s when Afghans were killing Afghans for ethnic tensions and political ambitions. Sometimes, I feel I was born mistakenly in the wrong time and in the wrong place. The half of my life that I lived in Afghanistan, my race, religion, language, appearance and background created many barriers to overcome. The world is structured with walls that I need to climb and climb to get somewhere.
I lived six months in Pakistan and was forced to move to Iran because I am Afghan and seen as an inferior person. I spent six years inside the house and feared going out because of racial prejudices. One week in Istanbul, Turkey, I was scrutinized for a long time, and my luggage was checked for three hours. The other Turkish passengers looked at me and my other Afghan friends in anger because we delayed them too. For two weeks in India, it took five whole days to carry out my visit obligations with the immigration office. For two years in Costa Rica, people thought I was Venezuelan, Mexican, and Latin American, so I was only asked to show my ID twice. For 17 days in Cuba, I was scrutinized for hours and finally got to enter because I was with two friends — European citizens — who told the inspector that I am their friend. The inspector let me in not because I had all the required documentations but because I was with two Europeans. For one day in Panama, I was escorted to a hotel inside the city because Afghans needed visas.
In Tennessee, an old Korean-war veteran asked me if Muhammad ” the prophet” told me to kill infidels, would I, “the Muhammad named kid,” kill a non-Muslim? Making it to Middlebury College was not easy at all, and there are tons and tons of kids like me who fall to the ground and can’t stand up again. But, I did and I will keep standing back on my feet. I wont give up this easily.
Since childhood, I saw many different kinds of regimes, Mujaheedin and the Taliban, the racist Iranian regime, the corrupted Afghan warlords in the government, and many other types including Uncle Sam’s. Sometimes, I feel my experiences force me towards anarchy. Since childhood I needed to fight these all with every bit of my teeth to overcome them.
My family and relatives think I am the genius for studying in the US, making them proud. I am not genius for sure. I am simply a human being who is very ambitious and works his ass off to create a world for himself where he can finally live a normal life.
There have been many times when I told myself that life is too heavy on me and is not worth continuing. There have been many times that I wished some natural disease would come and take me out of this hostile place. But every time, I become hopeful when I think of the many warm-hearted people that I have seen in different chapters of my life. Hope to me stands for He (me), O as overcomes, P as prejudices and E as eternally. So, the hopeful life is overcoming the anti-me world forever.
I sometimes think that maybe I should conform more because I am here in this world with no other option. If I dress up and look nicer, there will be fewer stereotypes, less scrutiny and easier life. Imagine me entering US through JFK airport with a black suit and a tie, with an Afghan traditional cloth or with a simple shirt and pants. I promise the immigration officer would treat me differently in all three situations.
Despite all this, I sincerely am happy with my current home, Middlebury. This is the first place that I feel welcome and treated well. And for that, I thank all of you, my friends.
JAWEED AHMADI '15 is from Kabul, Afghanistan. Artwork by TAMIR WILLIAMS.
(02/12/14 4:54pm)
A recent student initiative suggests that Middlebury’s system of academic requirements is in need of reform. Specifically, the authors of the proposal, Daniela Barajas ’14.5 and Rana Abdelhamid ’15, criticize the AAL requirement for failing to embody the College’s commitment to expose students to a variety of the worlds’ cultures and civilizations. Their proposal is rapidly gaining traction: it is the most successful initiative in the history of the We The Middkids online platform, and last week it gained an endorsement from SGA President Rachel Lidell.
The proposal is right to point out the oddity of lumping Africa, Asia, and Latin America together. This label cannot be explained in terms of geography or culturally affinity. The existence of AAL is only explainable as a transparent and inelegant attempt to avoid calling a spade a spade – that is to say, to avoid using the label OTH (“other”), AAL’s predecessor prior to 2003.
The proposed initiative would keep the NOR (North America) requirement, but eliminate AAL and instead require students to chose two regions from the following five: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Europe. On the surface, it seems inherently logical to disaggregate the AAL region into its constituent regions, as well as to recognize the Middle East as a distinct region.
But this suggestion masks a sea change in the distribution requirements: EUR (Europe) would no longer be required. Students could graduate without ever having taken a class covering the cultural and civilizational heritage of Europe – the Western heritage that is the fount of Middlebury College.
The authors of the proposal concede that the NOR requirement should remain in place, out of deference to Middlebury’s geographic location. But Middlebury’s position cannot simply be defined by physical geography. Middlebury is physically located in North America, but it is a Western educational institution, and as such it cannot be viewed as separate from the European tradition. Middlebury’s structure as an institute of higher learning dates back to the European Middle Ages; its values harken from the European Enlightenment. The fact that Western civilizations are especially emphasized at Middlebury is wholly appropriate, and should remain so.
This initiative suggests that the college errs somehow by emphasizing the study of Western cultures and civilizations. By privileging the study of North America and Europe over the rest of the world, they argue that it demeans non-Western thought. But the existing set of requirements does not somehow “minimize” the importance of non-Western culture and civilization. Any student worthy of admission to Middlebury can recognize that non-Western thought is neither uniform nor somehow less important.
But a four-year education is limited in scope, and cannot possibly encompass the study of the entire world. Choices have to be made, and, given the cultural roots of Middlebury itself, it is reasonable that Middlebury students should expect their education to uniquely emphasize the Western tradition. One would hardly think it fair to criticize al-Azhar in Cairo for paying disproportionate attention to the Arab cultural heritage, or Peking University for focusing on the achievements of Chinese civilization.
I commend Ms. Barajas and Ms. Abdelhamid for their work. Many students have undoubtedly pondered Middlebury’s graduation requirements and speculated on how to improve them, but they have created a logical, well-reasoned, and cogent proposal and have unsurprisingly gathered significant support. But while they are right to urge the scrapping of the AAL requirement, I believe their proposed solution would move Middlebury’s curriculum in an inauspicious direction.
With this in mind, I would like to present a modified proposal. Rather than beating around the bush, why not bring back the OTH requirement? What OTH lacks in political correctness, it would make up for in intellectual honesty. The exhaustive nature of the OTH category would at least recognize the inherent futility of trying to rationally subdivide the non-Western world into neat little groups. One need only look at the proposed new categories to see that any such attempt will result in an inelegant, un-nuanced framework. The ASI (Asia) requirement, for instance, would still lump together over half the world’s population, including the bulk of the world’s Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim civilizations. If the goal is to bestow a greater respect for the diversity of non-Western cultures, this hardly seems an improvement over the status quo.
The winds of change are in the air. President Liebowitz is leaving. Rumors surround the future of the honor code. Now Middlebury’s degree requirements also seem to be in flux. This is an exciting time to be a Middlebury student. Although I will likely not be around to witness the conclusion of these trends, I trust in the Middlebury community to resolve these issues logically and in the spirit of cooperation, collegiality, and reasoned discourse.
MAX KAGAN '14 is from Freeport, ME
(02/12/14 4:52pm)
An article in the November 13, 2013 edition of the Campus, “Racial Casting Call Criticized” quoted Debanjan Roychoudhury ’16 as saying that “being a student of color at Middlebury is kind of like taking a fifth class.” I hope that after this piece comes out, someone quotes me saying that being a student of color at Middlebury means nothing more than that you are a student of color at Middlebury. Everything else you feel about that is your own doing. Everyone warns you about the culture shock. Nobody ever said that you have to let it affect you negatively.
Maybe this comes with my personal identity, but I don’t really relate to every issue with which students of color sometimes find issue. I have trained myself not to let trivial things separate me from that which what I truly believe. If I believe that I can make it in this world regardless of my social class, of my ethnic background, or of my gender then I should do my best to try. I do not make extra obstacles for myself and I feel like that separates me from a handful of the other students on this campus. I do not care if wealthy students throw wealth-themed parties for other wealthy students. I do not care if I get a cast calling for a theater role for which I fit the description. I do not care if a demographer tells me that people that share my race and class don’t often amount to anything. I do not care because I am here.
I am here because I want to succeed. To succeed you should learn from those who have succeeded before. So listen to them. Everyone is ignorant to some extent. Teach them about your world and, in exchange, have them teach you about theirs. I’m taking advantage of my resources. I’m networking. I’m learning about the world I never had access to, and I’m learning how to make it work for me. People might cringe to read this, but when Murray Dry spoke at the panel last year about affirmative action and said, “don’t worry about it, be happy that you’re here,” I couldn’t help but feel the same way.
Now, saying that I don’t care about what the demographer said or even simply agreeing with one of Murray Dry’s statements doesn’t mean I don’t care about what I’ve left behind or who I am. I don’t need either one to tell me what I already know. I live it every time I go home to gang violence, the drug wars that come with it and the impoverished community in which I have lived my entire life. When I get back to Middlebury, it is those memories that help me push through the next ten page paper, through the next French text analysis, through the next three all-nighters and meal-less days I power through in the library. I’m trying to be successful for everyone I’ve left behind — so I can give back and teach them the secrets to success we have been denied our whole lives.
I am not saying I have never had a bad experience at Middlebury. The rigor of everything constantly depresses me because it’s a reminder of the abysmal education I received my whole life. Spanglish is not an acceptable means of communication, I have to put up with Americanized Mexican food, and I can’t expect people to waltz instead of grind on the dance floor. I feel homesick every few weeks. I want to see more brown and black faces. It’s rough. I’m sure these setbacks are not unique to me. But these are all things that I can get over and cope with. I’m not willing to make more problems for myself. I don’t see the logic in it.
I want to be an educator. I want to be a mentor. I want to be that stepping stone that is too often overlooked because it hides beneath the water’s surface. I can’t do that if I constantly over-analyze and judge the white, upper-middle-class society I chose to immerse myself in for every mistake they may or may not have made in an attempt to cater to what they assume are our needs. I have my share of worries, but I never go out of my way to find myself more. I’m too focused on the task at hand.
JEANETTE CORTEZ '15 is from Los Angeles, CA
(02/12/14 4:45pm)
To honor Valentine’s Day, what better to discuss than relationships and sex? Middlebury is probably not unique in its messed up idea of courtship.
Think about how you usually meet the people you sleep with. It’s at a party full of grimy, sweaty students that you weave your way through. As a woman, it’s common to have someone grab your butt and push it into his or her crotch, as you wait for a sign of approval from your friends. The music is loud, and it’s pretty much dark anyways, so do you even really know what they look like? It’s sad that that’s all the courtship we need to exchange saliva with someone and, maybe later on in the night, perform the most intimate act you can with someone.
The classic booty text has the same function. We’ve all sent them and gotten them — that post 10 p.m. “hey what are you up to tonight?” or if you’re feeling really courageous, a “we should meet up later.” I even know someone who was told she was being taken to the Grille to talk, and then went straight to Painter to a guy’s room because she was so drunk.
Alcohol is no excuse for disrespect, but we have set our standards so low that even a gracious ‘hello’ from last night’s hookup the next day seems like a gift from God. Yet we all, myself included, complain that nobody here dates, hook-up culture sucks and nobody treats anybody well. I’ve heard several girls say, “I can’t text him because I don’t want him to think I’m crazy” or “I have to give it a few days because I don’t want him to think I’m already attached” or “I’ll just wait for him to text me or I’ll text him next weekend”.
Why should we have to wait to text? Why is it always that the women are often stereotyped as being clingy, emotional and attached after the first hookup? If this stereotype didn’t exist, I think that the hookup scene would be less emotionally draining. I have had experiences and have seen my friends have experiences where a guy will ask a girl to hang out and watch a movie or prophesize his desire to take her on a date. A few weekends of casual sex, and then they never talk again. Expectations build if you set them. Casual sex is absolutely fine, but not when it’s peppered with sweet things that give someone hope for more. Even a text the next day saying “I had so much fun last night, hope to see you soon” can be interpreted as “he is totally into me,” because why else would someone be bothered to text you the next day?
Hookup culture exists because we are attractive people around the same age who are stressed out, want to have fun and we have a lot of choices. But what about people who aren’t conventionally attractive? What about exoticizing? I have heard so many minorities say that they feel like white people don’t think they are attractive or they feel like nobody wants to hook up with them except to “experiment”. It could just be that people are attracted to those similar to them, so for students that have grown up in a homogenous environment, only people who look like them fit the mold. But attractive people are attractive people, so why is there a stark lack of bi-racial couples on campus? Shouldn’t we move out of our comfort zone and be open to new possibilities?
As someone who is colored, I have had my ethnicity referenced in every sexual interaction I have had on this campus. I’ve hooked up with guys who have told me that they’ve never hooked up with someone of my ethnicity before, that their parents would think this is cool since they’ve traveled to my country of origin, or that they really like the food from my country. I know Africans here who have had several comments on their penis size — how many of us have heard “once you go Black, you can never go back”? I’ve heard girls describe guys by saying “he has a thing for Asians” or “he lost his virginity to an Indian girl, so maybe he likes them.” People of color are often sexualized and experimented with, and through this are othered.
I think that I am really pretty. Just not here because here the image of beauty and what’s acceptable in a partner is so skewed. I feel like people don’t see me as attractive and am surprised when someone approaches me, all because I am not white and don’t fit the mold. I know other minorities feel this way too — you either feel like you stick out and everyone is looking at you, or that nobody sees you. It’s never blending in.
We slap a racial label on minorities the second we see them and then define them by it forever. Think about it, have you ever heard of someone having “White Fever”? We have to remember that whether you’re making out with someone or having sex, it’s with a person, not a race. You connect with people, not their ethnicity. We aren’t foreign. We’re just a few hues darker! There seems to be a sort of fear of more than a one-night stand with someone who looks different or speaks differently because it’s the unknown.
We are in a liberal arts school and are supposed to learn, change and grow. We can’t do this unless we get rid the blinders with which we entered college. So the next time you’re at Atwater, try talking to the girl you hope to dance with. Or ask your Proctor crush on a date! Don’t let race be a boundary or a reason for you to make your move and defy the rules of hookup culture.
Artwork by NOLAN ELLSWORTH
(01/23/14 12:47am)
It is no secret that Midd has a predictable social scene. You know that, for example, you will usually find the athletes at Atwater and the minorities at KDR. Several friend groups are dictated by socioeconomic status, whether it is being highly privileged or being here on a full ride. I’m somewhere in the middle - I am a minority who is extremely privileged. I am friends with athletes and non-athletes and have tried my best to sample the options on the social platter at Midd. Still, I struggle to find a place where I truly belong and find that the social scene here can at times be exclusive. This article expresses the opinion of someone who wishes for a more integrated nightlife on campus and feels that some themes of parties here are only strengthening the cliquey-ness of the student body, as well as reflecting poorly on the campus’s elite.
“There is no way in hell I am going to the white privilege party,” is a statement I heard last weekend. I was confused; I couldn’t fathom an event with the theme of white privilege, something highly discussed by certain groups on campus. Upon further inquiry, I learned that last Saturday night there was a “Country Club” theme party at an off-campus house being referenced by others as a gathering of the white and privileged.
Themed parties are usually a blast, but some themes disgust me not just as a member of a society but also as a woman. Parties like “CEOs and Office Hoes,” “Tennis Pros and Yoga Hoes” and “Naughty Professor and Slutty Schoolgirl” show men as accomplished and women as nothing but sexual beings, but for the sake of this article I’ll put my feminist rant aside and say that these themes are all right because they are inclusive. The majority of people on this campus identify as male or female and can be included in these types of themes. There is no specification on race or class.
These themes celebrate sex, and maybe that’s okay. Hookups are rampant on our campus, and we are young and looking to have a good time. It is fun to dress up and be someone else for a night, and if you’re happy to be a yoga hoe, go for it! But while you can fake being a Slutty Schoolgirl for a night, can you fake being rich?
Parties like “country club” aren’t celebrating something that everyone has — they celebrate wealth. Urban Dictionary definitions of “country club” include a “group of an elite few,” “referring to, in a derogatory manner, ease and privilege” and “pertaining to wealthy people and things that characterize them.” A common theme here: wealth. Still don’t buy it? Even the Merriam-Webster dictionary gives a definition of “country club” as “having qualities (as affluence) associated with the members of a country club.” This “country club” party created and ensured access to only the elite, because who else goes to country clubs? It also seemed to be based on the underlying assumption that everyone who would be attending this party had a level of extreme wealth.
The theme of this party further perpetuated the stereotype of “biddies and bros” on this campus. It is not hard to tell who the elite are in our respective years and having themes like “country club” only increases the existing classism at Middlebury. To the people who held this party: did you think about it? If the theme was one of unintentional exclusion, then I mean no offense to you, but I encourage you to think. Are all your friends in the same socioeconomic class? Do you want to help bridge the divides on campus? And if this theme was intentional and you did mean to keep out those who cannot attend country clubs, I am outraged.
As a student body, we need to contemplate what we want out of our time here. People often complain and discuss the high school-esque experience of being at Midd and the harsh lack of racial and socioeconomic diversity. Our social scene is definitely filled with cliques, but the only way to move towards ending this is by stepping out of your clique. We need to be inclusive in order to create a more accepting environment on campus, and learn from each other’s experiences. The wealth we need to focus on here isn’t the one in peoples’ pockets, but the wealth of having an increasingly diverse student body. So let’s not be stuck in our own bubble, inside the bubble.
Artwork by TAMIR WILLIAMS
(01/23/14 12:40am)
About a year ago the SGA hosted a student forum on the future of the Honor Code. Members of the SGA, the Judicial Board and some faculty members were present, and an invitation was sent to all students encouraging them to come and voice their opinion. As it turned out, a grand total of two students attended the forum (excluding a pack of Campus reporters), and I, as one of them, came away with some serious doubts about the health of our Honor Code. In the year since the forum I have served as a member of the SGA Honor Code Committee working to better understand the role that the Honor Code plays here at Middlebury and how we can build a productive conversation about this evolving document. To that end, we asked two students to share their thoughts on the Honor Code and its place on this campus.
A Limited Reach
As we review the Honor Code, we must consider carefully what the Honor Code is and is not, and what the Honor Code does, and more importantly, does not do.
The Honor Code is useful as a declaration of values to which (ostensibly) the entire student body at Middlebury subscribes, as demonstrated by our signing it at the start of our first year at the College.
The Honor Code is not useful as a deterrent against cheating on exams or against dishonesty writ-large, and to argue otherwise is blind idealism. It is inconceivable that the simple act of signing the Honor Code will bring a person who lacks integrity suddenly to act honorably. We fool ourselves if we think that signing the Honor Code prevents students from cheating; existent instances of cheating themselves are enough to suggest that the Honor Code does not prevent some students from this behavior. A person’s character — their tendency to act with or without integrity — is not easily modified when they matriculate at the College at eighteen years old; rather it is the formation of their character in the eighteen years preceding their matriculation that will weigh most heavily when they decide whether or not to cheat.
The Honor Code is not useless. It does voice a shared set of values and expectations for the student body and for instructors. However, instances of cheating that occur despite the presence of the Honor Code suggest that the Code itself does not provide a sufficient deterrent to cheating.
A more pragmatic approach to the problem would be a “zero-tolerance” policy wherein a single incident of academic dishonesty (perhaps narrowly defined as cheating on an exam, in order to avoid the problem of intent inherent with plagiarism) would lead to severe punishment of the perpetrator that would include a lengthy suspension and would not exclude expulsion. This policy would underscore the College’s belief in the values written into the Honor Code, and more importantly, would clarify that the College will refuse to tolerate those who fail to abide by these values.
- Anonymous
The Weight of Signing
Those that argue that we don’t need a formal honor code simply because there is already an informal “honor code” which we all obey ignore a key aspect of the debate. Sure, we are Middlebury College students and we are here to study and to learn, not to cheat and plagiarize. Still, I will never forget when I was a freshman being introduced to the honor code and one of our FYCs said something stirring about the value of a signature. He said that when you sign your name to something, you sign away part of your soul, part of yourself. He said that there is an essence to your name in ink that is intangible and important, as though the honor code in the air becomes binding when it is manifestly before your face, singed into the paper.
I agree with him. I recall a moment freshman spring when a friend and I exchanged Spanish papers for proofreading. It became apparent very quickly that we had, by coincidence, written eerily similar papers. Some of our sentences were nearly identical. We panicked: is this a violation? Is this “unauthorized aid”? We went straight to the professor and asked him what we should do. He asked, “did you sign the honor code?” We said yes. He said, “then you are fine.”
We don’t need a complex honor code, yet signing one’s name to that substance in the academic air is not without merit. It is a reminder of our integrity, a codification of our own existing beliefs, a confirmation of our place in this environment. It should be simple: “I did not cheat,” or “this is my own work,” or “I am a student of honor.” I for one appreciate the honor code, but I believe it should be revised, simplified, and acknowledged for what it is: a mere affirmation of that by which we all already live, or should be living. There is value to a signature that should be respected, and vitality to a tradition that should be carried on.
- Nathan LaBarba ’14
Today, our Honor Code stands in the face important changes. Questions about professor proctoring, peer reporting and an increasing prevalence of academic dishonesty loom large, but one thing remains sure: our Honor Code must reflect the views of the student body. Since its creation, students have shown ownership and an active interest in the code, and we cannot let this stop. Students, please share your thoughts and ideas in a survey that will be sent out later this week, and help us make the Honor Code truly our Honor Code.
CARTER MERENSTEIN '16 is from Philadelphia, Penn.
(01/23/14 12:34am)
On Jan. 13, seven students from the class of 2013.5 auditioned to be the student speaker at their graduation at the end of the month. While only one student, Danny Loehr, will be delivering his speech at the ceremony, the following three students submitted their speeches to the Campus.
It is not without a bit of irony that I write this. To be honest, I didn’t choose to be a Feb. I had barely heard the word until the admissions office called me during June of my senior year of high school, just a few weeks before my graduation. “We can let you in off of the waiting list,” I was told. “You’ll be a Feb”. “Great!” I said enthusiastically, and hung up the phone. Almost immediately, I realized that I had no idea what I had just done. “Wait…what’s a Feb?”
Over four years have passed since that day, and I still haven’t figured out the answer to that question—at least not in a way that I can present pithily to you now. I’m sure you all have your own ideas as to what the essential Febness is, but for every such conception there is an exception. At the 2010 Feb celebration, it was rather famously suggested that Febs are the people who show up late to the party and are then left at 3am, still dancing around the room to Michael Jackson, alone. I think the truth, for better or for worse, might be that not all of us quite fit that bill. Some of us got too drunk or too tired and went to bed. Some of us stayed in to do some studying or watch TV. Some of us turned off the Michael Jackson and put on Blink-182.
But, of course, to focus on that would be to miss the point. Setting aside all generalizations about what being a Feb is or isn’t all about, we will gather together in just over a week because we share a common experience. That simple act of taking an extra semester, regardless of how or when that semester was spent, means that by definition we haven’t quite followed that “plan” that is the standard operating procedure these days. It might seem insignificant on paper, but for us, there was a slight glitch in the plan. You had to explain it to your high school friends, to your aunt at Thanksgiving dinner, to the boss you bailed on after a few months of work. Perhaps understandably, no one really got it. Some probably felt sorry for you. One of my friend’s moms sent me a care package during finals week that fall just so I wouldn’t be left out. It was nice, but kind of weird.
Well, being a Feb is kind of weird. And I don’t necessarily mean weird in that cool, quirky—dare I say Febby—way that we love to talk about so much. I also mean it in a different way: uncomfortable, awkward, unsettling. As fashionable as it can be, showing up late to the party can also lead one to feel a bit out of sorts. I think almost my entire hall during that first semester knew me only as “The Feb”, though the closer friends at least called me “Mike the Feb”. I tried to embrace it, but was never sure of exactly what I was embracing.
But that’s all part of the Feb experience, isn’t it? We don’t discuss those particular aspects a lot, but there’s a reason that they come about. When you break from what’s expected, there are certain consequences. You might have to rely on yourself a little bit more than you were prepared to. You might have to go out of your way to make things happen, instead of waiting for them to come to you. I’m sure we’ve all felt that at some point or another during our college careers. Over the past month, reflecting on those experiences—everything from taking forever to make friends, to sitting alone in the dining hall, to constantly getting hosed on class registration—has made me realize how important they are in the context of today.
That is because February 1st, our college graduation, marks the end of that part of our lives whose structure was predefined. Everything up to this point has been more or less laid out for us. I do not mean to say that we haven’t worked to get where we are—merely, that most of us have been on a path through relatively charted waters. Most of us have always known that we would go to high school and college, and that we would probably do pretty well there. Few of us have had a concrete plan beyond that.
That last bit is equal parts exciting and terrifying, but what I want to point out is that our college lives were a bit more uncharted than most others. And therein lies the greatest thing about being a Feb, besides getting to ski down the Bowl with our caps and gowns on. That weirdness that I’ve talked about, as hard as it’s made things sometimes, it’s meant that Febs have developed a tendency to make their own way through Middlebury. That is invaluable preparation for whatever is coming next. Amidst all of those big, inspirational ideas about changing the world that we find in Ted Talks and Upworthy posts, our postgraduate lives will inevitably bring us a day-to-day existence marked at various times by uncertainty, ambiguity, banality, and loneliness. So let’s embrace it, just like we embraced our Febness for the last four years—without always knowing what we’re embracing or exactly why we’re embracing it. Let us welcome and even encourage discomfort. Life is about so much more than fitting in.
I don’t know an easy way to explain what a Feb is. I do know that the graduates that will sit in Mead Chapel on February 1 are some of the most intelligent, engaging, and challenging people I’ll ever know. I know that we came into this place at the same time and that we’re about to walk out, together, four weird years later. And I know that we’re ready. Wherever we go, let’s take a piece of this place with us. We are Febs, and we can do whatever we want. Let’s get out there and do it.
MIKE GADOMSKI is from Moorestown, N.J.
A little over a year ago, I was sitting in my car outside Munroe, hands shaking on the steering wheel. It wasn’t because of the temperature, although it was bitterly cold. I had just returned from a semester abroad in Australia and had last seen Middlebury amid the greenery and blooming trees of May, during the two weeks out of the year when the campus becomes alive before we disappear for the summer. It wasn’t that I hadn’t talked to my friends since then – in the world we’ve grown up in, the people we talk to on a daily basis are decided not by geography but rather by choice – but nonetheless, I was nervous, unsure of how it would feel to be back at this place, experiencing the lives of my friends and vice versa without the filter of carefully curated pictures uploaded onto the internet. At the time I was working at home, and I figured that I could catch up with what I had missed while still setting aside some time to do work. Needless to say, I was terribly wrong.
I was wrong both about the work and about being able to catch up on what I had missed. The amount that goes on here over J-term is really incredible for a place that we tend to often complain is isolated and sleepy. I went to talks about energy and to Two Brothers, panels about Divestment and parties at Palmer. I skied at the Snow Bowl and sang “Like a Prayer” at Karaoke night and enjoyed the best that the dining hall had to offer: taco day (Please, President Liebowitz, if you do nothing else in your remaining months at the helm, make the dining halls have more taco days. For the sake of the febs who will follow us). I had the best of the Middlebury experience in a week, and so of course I did nothing productive. I was too busy “seizing the day” and “only living once” and so on and so forth.
But that week could have been very different, as far too many are.
I know that I am not alone here in saying that I have lost entire weeks of my life to absent-minded scrolling through information that is not relevant to either my success or personal happiness. On good days you might click through the New York Times” and the Atlantic, but more often than not it ends up being “23 Goats Who Cannot Believe They’re Really Goats,” “17 Animals Who Just Found Out Columbus Was A Terrible Person,” and “36 Things That Are Going to Make You Feel Ancient.” Did you know, for instance, that “Mean Girls” came out more than a decade ago? And those are all just from a single site whose name I am sure you could guess.
The defining challenge of our age is the constant flow of interrupting information and the ease with which we can satisfy our every curiosity and need for entertainment. This is certainly less of an obstacle than attacks by saber tooth tigers, mass starvation, or global thermonuclear war. It is, at its core, a “first-world problem.” But the fact that new information is constantly beeping its way into your head at every moment of every day is still an important phenomenon. Where our parents once had to hunt for information on shelves and through pages, for us the trail never goes cold. The challenge is not that we have too few variables, but far too many. After all, it is easier to watch somebody hit a massive ski jump on television that it is to learn how to do it yourself; easier to read every blog post on the subject than to actually talk to the proverbial Proctor crush. The challenge is to know when to stop taking in new information and to jump.
Especially in the freezing days and the never-ending nights of winter, this presents a dangerous trap. One of the greatest things about Middlebury is that the quality and even the quantity of the real distractions exceed the virtual ones. But in other places where the alternatives might be harder to find and the people further away, the temptation to stay inside and scroll can become overwhelming. With the internet, you have on your computer or in your pocket every word ever written down by Thucydides or Hawking, Shakespeare or Fitzgerald. You have the words of every great leader, the movies of every great filmmaker, and the sounds of every great musician. But you also have Rebecca Black, Ylvis, and every season of Scandal. It is not as much that we struggle to manage our time as it is that distractions spring up to make us forget that it exists until it has already slipped away.
The reach of ideas has never been further and the rewards of success have never been greater. One of the most amazing realities of this time is that the spread of a song, a speech, or a slam poem that makes us feel something in our core is constrained only by the speed with which we are able to pass it on to those with whom we believe it will resonate. But, like the Harlem Shake or The Fox, this success often proves fleeting. And the punishment for an accident or an ill-considered action forever stick to your name, plastered across Google for all to see: the future employer or the potential girlfriend, the angry young men in their armchairs at home or the grandmother who just signed up for Facebook and likes every single thing that you post. We live in a world without a delete button, in a giant town square where humiliation has become more public than ever.
This is not to say that technology is evil or that pop culture isn’t worth your time. But it has become incredibly difficult to separate what is actually meaningful or useful from the cascade of interruptions and quick alternatives. It is hard to muster the presence of mind to read a whole book when your pocket keeps buzzing with snapchats, text messages, and emails from Bob Smith about intermural sports. In the competition between the information that improves our lives and that which merely satisfies our brain’s addiction to dopamine, the trivial content has a home field advantage.
So what is there to stop us from giving into the temptation to binge watch another season of House of Cards instead of making the changes we fantasize about? Mostly, I think, our overpowering fear of missing out, or, as it was labelled during orientation, “FOMO.” FOMO is a powerful force, and not necessarily a bad one. It is what gets us out of bed and to that party that friend is having. It is what drives us to the mountain despite the bitter cold of the polar vortex. It is what compels us to plaster the names of our crushes on the walls of Proctor, if just for a few days.
On the Campus newspaper, we like to joke about how we come up with the headlines for our editorials. If you are one of the dedicated few who glanced at more than a couple during your time here, you might have noticed that they all follow the same format: don’t do this thing, do that thing instead. So here’s my version of that template: don’t get over your fear of missing out. Do the things that you’ll remember later. Don’t give in to information paralysis; take in the facts that you need and then move on. Don’t give into clickbait and mindless scrolling. Take advantage of the fact that we live in an era where knowledge is free and unfettered.
For when you are at a party and it is two a.m. and “Like a Prayer” comes on, there is no time to sit back and think about whether you have worked out recently or how many layers you are wearing, or whether it is actually an appropriate occasion. If you spend too long thinking about it, the song will be over. But here is what is great about Febs: That song is ancient; it was big when our parents were in college; it is practically Bach. But every time it comes on, it’s as if it is the first. So you tear your eyes away from your phone and your fingers away from the keyboard. You join your friends in the excitement of that moment, with that same grin on your face that each and every one of us had on day two of orientation running around in the February sun at the snow bowl. You jump, and that is the moment that you never forget.
ZACH DRENNEN is from Canandaigua, N.Y.
I will always remember the day I got my acceptance letter to Middlebury in the mail. I was so excited it took me about a week to realize I had been accepted as a Feb. To this day, I believe I checked the September only box. When I realized I was accepted as a Feb I felt semi-rejected. You can imagine my surprise when I arrived for orientation only to learn that most people specifically check the February-only box. Little did I know that I would soon come to realize how accepting to be a Feb was the greatest decision I could have made in my academic life. Having just lost my mother the summer before my senior year of high school, my aunts were very concerned with my future going in the direction she would have wanted. They feared I would go away somewhere, fall in love and never come back. This may be because my mother often went places, fell in love and was only convinced to come back because a sister was getting married. I am definitely my mother’s daughter, but I knew that college was not something to give up, no matter how in love I thought I was during my Febmester.
At orientation I was overwhelmed, I found out I had pneumonia the night I arrived and I had a cast on my hand. Not the best setup for a winter orientation. I remember hearing stories of people traveling in Senegal, trekking the Himalayas, teaching photography classes in Rwanda, living in Paris, adventuring in Laos, or working at home—wherever that was. I was amazed by how different the past three to six months had been for all of us, but how together we managed to feel— how together we wanted to be. That night as we walked from Ross dining hall through the candles of our Feb leaders into Mead Chapel I ended up alongside a girl who would end up being my best friend for the next four years.
After just a few days of orientation we had begun to form the bonds we were told we were destined to create. Within two weeks of being on campus we were skinny-sledding down the mead chapel, taking our shirts off every “Like a Prayer” we heard, and I learned the words to “Wagon Wheel” real fast so I didn’t feel so left out when everyone decided to start singing it. They say that the great thing about coming in as a Feb is that you create an instant community that follows you throughout your college years. I think that while our Feb class has gained a few members and lost a few—while we have all explored different social groups on this campus and made new friends along the way—at the end of the day a Feb is a friend you can always count on. Just like family, there will always be the cousins with whom you get along best, or the siblings with whom you feel you can share the most, but regardless you have a fundamental love that will always be there for one another. I believe that even though many of us have drifted in our own directions, it is just a reflection of us truly trying to find ourselves here. I can still look around this room today and say genuinely that there is not one of you I wouldn’t want to be there for.
I came to Middlebury as this young girl from Tucson, Arizona. I’d had one snow day in my life and it lasted until 10am. I had never experienced daylight savings because we don’t do that in Arizona, it wouldn’t make a difference. I knew cold as 60-degree weather. And although I still don’t know what is going to happen when I attempt to ski down at the snow bowl today, in my four years here I have done more than my fair share of streaking in mid-winter, I have cross country skied from the Mill to the Bunker, I have gone swimming in a frozen over pond at the snow bowl, and gone sledding down Mead Chapel every year, and I have my fellow Febs to thank for all of that.
Another great thing about being a Feb is although we feel pretty old by the end, we experience the greatest amount of people leaving and coming in to this school. We know things that no one else here knows but us. We were here for the very first screening of the Midd Kid music video. We lived the days of Asian carp and avocados, language tables in Atwater, and take-out cups from proctor. We know about MiddTwit, and know the founders of Middbeat. We know what the real Purple Jesus tastes like and we know how good a DJ Officer Chris is. We brought Dominique Young Unique to campus before she became a big deal. We knew Frank Sweeney before The Real World. We started spontaneous percussion during midnight breakfast and choreographed an amazing flash mob for the Hunt. We have lived through the ADP apocalypse, which has been more traumatic for some of us than others. I personally really enjoyed dancing in those window-frames.
We, as Febs, are thrill seekers and passionate believers. We may have felt a semester behind at times, but we have lived so much more than everyone else that showed up on time. And for those of you who have joined us along the way, you too have made choices in your life to redefine the path of what we are taught college is supposed to look like.
Now we get to redefine what the path of post-college is supposed to look like. Graduating from an institution like Middlebury gives us all a great responsibility to do something meaningful and successful with our lives. However, that does not need to be as stressful as we are pushed to believe. Whether you end up at Medical school, consulting in DC, bartending in San Diego, starting a farm in Vermont, or opening up a cupcake shop, success is about so much more than your starting salary or lack thereof. If I have learned anything these 22 years, it is how painfully short life can be, and how beautifully intense love can feel. Once we understand these things, we understand that a fulfilling life comes from choosing how we built it rather than just reading a manual.
For me, success is always living the adventure. Success is giving yourself fully so your loved ones know how much they mean to you. Success is looking yourself in the mirror everyday and always smiling back. Mostly because “we woke up like this” but also because no matter what happened the night before or what awaits us tomorrow, we have been doing the most we can to do our lives justice. For me, we make a difference through the people we choose to love, sing, laugh, and dance with. We are successful when we know ourselves well enough to be so fully there for the world around us.
I think that Middlebury, along with giving us a degree from one of the top liberal arts schools in the country, has also given us the opportunity to figure out who we are and what we want most. We have been given access to professors, who are not just great because of how they do their job, but because of the people they are and the life of knowledge they carry. We are more than just the grades we earn, the internships we’ve had, the important people we’ve met or attempted to meet—we are kids in our twenties who began this adventure of college in our own way. We are friends, and lovers, and family, and what we have learned from each other is just as valuable as what we have learned in the classroom.
Today I want to leave you with part of a poem from spoken word artist Anis Mojgani. This poem reminds us that whether we initially “chose” to be Febs or not, whether we identify today as a Feb or not, no matter where we begin or end upon leaving this college, we must never forget that we are Febs. For above all, we have learned that feeling set apart from others is not at all a negative experience, but rather a thrilling gift that opens us to all the endless possibilities which lie ahead. We must remember that sometimes the uncertainties presented to us by life, are the beginnings of the best adventures we’ve had yet.
So in the words of Anis Mojgani:
“You have been given a direct order to rock the (fuck) out.
Rock out like you were just given the last rock and roll record on earth and the minutes are counting down to flames.
Rock out like the streets are empty except for you, your bicycle, and your headphones.
….
Rock out like you’ll never have to open a textbook again.
Rock out like you get paid to disturb the peace.
Rock out like music is all that you got.
Rock out like you’re standing on a rooftop and the city’s as loud and glowing as a river flowing below you.
Rock out like the plane is going down, and there are 120 people on board, and 121 parachutes.
Rock out like the streets and the books are all on fire and the flames can only be extinguished by doin’ the electric slide.
…
Rock out like your eyes are fading but you still got your ears. But you don’t know for how long so rock out like 5 o’clock time, meant pop-and-lock time.
Rock out like you got pants full of tokens and nothing to do but everything.
Rock out like you are the international ski-ball champion of the entire universe.
Rock out like you just escaped an evil orphanage to join a Russian circus.
Rock out like your hero is fallen and you are spinning your limbs until they burst into a burning fire of remembrance.
…
Rock out like your dead grandfather just came back to take a drive with you in your new car.
…
Rock out like the walls won’t fall but, (dammit), you’re going to die trying to make them.
…
Rock out like it’s raining outside and you’ve got a girl to run through it with.
Rock out like you’re playing football! Football in the mud and your washing machine is not broken.
Rock out like you threw your window open on your honeymoon because you want the whole world to know what love is.
…
Rock out like a shadow of a man passes behind you, drops you to your knees. You’re buckling in sweat, cold metal’s pushed to your forehead, the trigger’s pulled and the gun jams.
Rock out like you got an empty appointment book, and a full tank of gas.
…
Rock out like the mangos are in season. Rock out like the record player won’t skip.
Rock out like this was the last weekend, like these were the last words, like you don’t ever want to forget how.”
Thank you all for loving, singing, laughing, and dancing with me these past four years. I know that no matter what our respective futures hold, we will find success in the earth beneath our feet, the music in our eyes, the hope in those around us, and the stories we hold in the palms of our hands.
Middlebury Class of 2013.5
Let’s Rock Out.
BELLA TUDISCO-SADACCA is from Tucson, A.Z.
(01/16/14 1:00am)
Before having ever stepped foot inside my freshman dorm, I had already landed myself in academic hot water. I had not been performing to the academic standard that was expected of me upon my acceptance to Middlebury College, and I was warned to do better. Before I was even an official student, there was already a concern about whether I would make it here amidst the — often understated — competitive Middlebury environment.
Needless to say, I was slacking.
Balancing varsity basketball with Shakespearean theater rehearsal plus having to meet with my Posse Scholarship cohorts once a week and keep up with a multitude of other organizations proved to be very difficult when added to the already rigorous curriculum of my super fancy selective enrollment high school in TriBeCa, a one and a half hour trek from my mother’s and father’s homes in Jamaica, Queens.
Stuyvesant High School doesn’t slow down first semester senior year, and for a kid who already had trouble keeping up, all that stress hitting me at once was becoming very overwhelming. I thought I could scrape by, and in the end I did, but it wasn’t without the few stern talking-to’s, the stomach-dropping letter home, the occasional tears, and the always-present self-doubt that have stuck with me ever since.
I still don’t know if I belong here. I’m not built without rough edges, in or outside of the classroom, and I’m not the only one who feels that way. While in elementary school, I received disciplinary action quite often. Being sent to detention was customary, the principal knew about me for all the wrong reasons, and teachers would often scold me for being too talkative in class.
I never fit the cookie-cutter model for admissions, here or anywhere else. In middle school my grades were solid but nothing really extraordinary, and I had many of the same issues that I did in elementary school. Fortunately — and I use that word with reluctance — I tested well enough on the Specialized High School Admissions Test to place into one of the most selective public schools in the city.
I most certainly did not thrive academically at Stuyvesant, but I did well enough to stay relatively afloat when it came time for college applications. I suppose everyone dismissed my subpar performances especially in math and science classes as an inability to grasp quantitative concepts. Perhaps it was attributed to my just being lazy. I’m not sure what people thought or currently think — students, teachers, mentors, tutors, etc. I do know, however, that there is much more to classroom behavior than meets the eye.
School has always been hard for me, but not because I am not intelligent or because I don’t want to do the work. I don’t believe that anybody truly dislikes learning. Even if that were true, I don’t think that that correlates with academic success or lack thereof. I do believe, however, that there are people for whom school is hauntingly alienating. In second grade when two friends and I fought a kid for referring to us as n-words, we were not displaying juvenile and criminal behavior. We were merely fighting back in a hostile environment, where prejudice was pervasive and where we seldom felt supported. Middlebury College can often feel the same.
My “bad kid” behavior growing up was attributed to some type of flaw that could presumably be fixed with a new wave teaching method of discipline, which involved hole punches and circles, stickers and sad faces or whatever bogus device my disciplinarians decided was appropriate. Not once was it considered that something might be of concern outside the classroom. Rarely was it taken into account that maybe I wasn’t behaving in a delinquent manner because I was incapable of learning, but because so much else was on my mind. With each successive punishment be it detention, letters, or phone calls home, I don’t believe I grew more motivated but rather more removed.
Throughout my schooling process, though I exhibited poor behavioral conduct, I also demonstrated great intellectual ability and academic potential in other ways. While I fought and got in trouble in elementary school, I also competed with my school’s math team. I tested into an eighth grade gifted program on an exam that included all types of complex riddles and puzzles and things not normally found in Kaplan, Stuyvesant, or even Middlebury classrooms. Eventually I was admitted to Middlebury College on the Posse Scholarship which looked into much more than just GPA, and despite being watched carefully for fear of not being able to keep up, I’ve been a dean’s list student all of my three semesters here.
Anyone who has taken Education in the USA with Tara Affolter or Jonathan Miller-Lane knows that you don’t check your identity at the schoolhouse gate. I am still the same kid who acted out when I was younger, who couldn’t sit still in class. I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit-Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) at the same time that safety at home was beginning to become a concern due to domestic violence. To not recognize that the latter was completely complicit in the former was a failure on the part of any school system that I have been a part of. I could not check at the classroom door what had been going on outside of it. It’s time we start recognizing that for every struggling student.
In many ways I suppose I’ve overcome my obstacles, though I haven’t completely conquered all my academic weaknesses. What bothers me though is how many other students won’t have the same unique path that was carved out for me. There are too many gifted kids who aren’t fortunate enough to maximize their academic and intellectual potential, not because they are any less smart than any student here or at any other elite private institution, but simply because no teacher or mentor has taken the time to find out what’s going on for them outside of class — those students who aren’t placed on a math team, or whose parents can’t afford to get them a little extra preparation for placement exams, or those students who don’t live in a region where scholarship programs like Posse exist.
We live in a nation where we use “reading achievement levels of students in the third grade as a basis for projecting the number of future prison beds needed,” according to the National Center on Education, Disability and Juvenile Justice. It is scary the kind of life that we as a society imagine for each other. If we choose to create a more educationally equal environment, it’s time we start recognizing giftedness everywhere that it exists and stop dismissing it at the first sign of behavioral delinquency.
“This is a song for the genius child.
Sing it softly, for the song is wild.
Sing it softly as ever you can -
Lest the song get out of hand.
Nobody loves a genius child.
Can you love an eagle,
Tame or wild?
Can you love an eagle,
Wild or tame?
Can you love a monster
Of frightening name?
Nobody loves a genius child.
Kill him - and let his soul run wild.”
–Langston Hughes
DEBANJAN ROYCHOUDHURY ’16 is from New York, NY
(01/16/14 12:56am)
The start of J-term is one of the happiest times of the year for Middlebury students. Unless you are one of those masochistic types who has opted to take J-Orgo or a CW, most Middkids have plenty of free time to ski, sleep, and relax. For me, J-term has always been a good time for soul-searching and some of the best possible soul-searching can be done with the aid of graduation speeches. Think about it: some of the world’s most successful people are asked to summarize the most valuable things they have learned in life in twenty minutes or less. Every year, scores of speakers across the US take up this challenge and his or her words are ingrained forever in the immortal walls of the internet. Here are ten of my favorite graduation speeches. I bet you a Dr. Feel-Good that you will find yourself inspired by at least one of them.
1. Cyma Zarghami (UVM, 2012)
This UVM alumna and president of Nickelodeon gives graduates reasons not to despair as they enter a tough job market. Warning: be prepared to listen to Spongebob diss Middlebury at the end of the speech.
2. Bill Watterson (Kenyon College, 1990)
The legendary cartoonist of Calvin and Hobbes describes how he took procrastination to a whole new level by recreating Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” from the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of his dorm room. He also gives a lot of great advice on how to live a good life.
3. Oprah Winfrey (Spelman College, 2012)
Oprah shares three valuable pieces of advice with graduates of one of America’s oldest historically black colleges for women.
4. Steve Jobs (Stanford, 2005)
Ever wonder if that class you’re taking will be of any use to you in the future? Jobs describes how if he hadn’t taken a calligraphy class while he was at Reed, computers probably wouldn’t have the wide array of typefaces and fonts that they have today.
5. JK Rowling (Harvard, 2008)
Rowling, who with the success of Harry Potter became wealthier than the Queen of England, tells graduates that she herself was the biggest failure she knew seven years after her college graduation. She ends her speech by describing the power that imagination has to change the world.
6. Salman Khan (MIT, 2012).
The founder of the revolutionary educational website Khan Academy takes graduates through a powerful and entertaining thought experiment that has allowed him to live a life with minimal regrets.
7. Michelle Obama (Virginia Tech, 2012)
The First Lady takes a unique approach of giving a commencement speech by focusing on the lessons that the Hokie Nation has taught her in the wake of their 2007 school shooting rather than imparting her own advice to graduates.
8. Jonathan Safran Foer (Middlebury College, 2013).
In this speech, Foer makes the best argument that I have heard against the pursuit of human immortality. After listening to this speech, you will also find yourself spending more time taking in the scenery as you walk across campus and less time staring at your phone.
9. Ellen DeGeneres (Tulane, 2009)
Addressing the “Katrina Class,” DeGeneres details how she does not regret for a second her decision to come out publicly as a lesbian, even though it resulted in the canceling of her sitcom. Staying true to herself allowed her to make a return to television with an extremely successful talk show.
10. David McCullough, Jr. (Wellesley High School, 2012)
In this controversial, yet amazing, graduation speech, a high school English teacher tells his former students point-blank that none of them is special. A good reminder for most of us Middkids as well.
JONATHAN BRACH '13.5 is from Melrose, MA
(01/16/14 12:44am)
The newspaper you are holding in your hands would read very differently had the school administration not deliberately shied away from an important civil dialog. This should reveal something to all of us about the attitude that the administration is taking on this issue, and even more importantly, why more people need to be talking about this right now.
One of the headlines that you might have found on the front page of this paper would read: Finance Experts Debate Value of Fossil Fuel Divestment, or more probably, Finance Experts Say Divestment “Can be Done”. But even though the administration promised one more panel and Middlebury College Vice President for Finance and Treasurer Patrick Norton confirmed that it would fall on Jan. 14, the panel did not happen.
Last year, the Middlebury College administration promised Divest Midd that the school would host three panels in total, the first with an array of professionals, a student and a representative from our investment manager, Investure. The second would feature students, and the third would be composed of financial experts. The first two have taken place already, and throughout the fall we were reassured that the third panel would happen. Yet, the date for the third panel has come and passed, and the administration did not host the panel. The only response we’ve heard from Norton is that the administration needs more time to reach out to speakers, many of whom were already identified by Divest Midd and the administration.
As is often the case, the real reason is more complicated. However, the reasons for having a third panel cannot be clearer. Finance experts are the ones who know the actual workings of how divestment can be done. They are the ones who know the whole business better than do either students or administrators and who really can use their expertise in making this decision about whether or not to divest completely from fossil fuels. Each colleges’ situation is unique. That is why Middlebury needs its own divestment panel with finance experts.
The most fundamental question when it comes down to divestment is this: should the school care about where its money is coming from, and where it is going? If our money comes from investing in companies that have questionable business ethics, or disrespect the consequences of their malpractices, does the school have a moral obligation to pull out their investments in these companies? So long as this tension is not resolved, we still have to commit ourselves to figuring out ways to at least ease this tension.
Yet, the administrators have postponed this important discussion indefinitely. Then we have to ask ourselves why. Are they afraid of an inconvenient truth? Why would they want to delay such an important conversation? Understandably, there are disincentives for the school to organize such a panel, because the status quo is less work and has lower risks. But are we, wware other students who care about the future of the College, along with all the staff and faculty who have a vision for this community, going to allow this to just happen? It doesn’t matter if you support divestment from fossil fuels or not, but how can the administrators be let off making a false procedural promise, until perhaps no meaningful actions regarding divestment can be taken by the end of the school year?
ADRIAN LEONG '16 is from Hong Kong
(01/16/14 12:40am)
The most marked observation I took away from my short-lived skiing experience is the recognition that people of color are not skiing along with me, but rather operating the ski lift, pouring the hot chocolate, and serving the poppy-seed scones to skiers.
“American ski culture continues to exist as an increasingly wealthy culture exclusive of minorities [where] even in the American West, noted for its racial and ethnic diversity, ski resorts have remained as white as snow.” These words, written by Professor Annie Coleman of Notre Dame, unfortunately mirror my brief times on the slopes.
I realized the overwhelmingly whiteness of skiing at Middlebury when a friend greeted me back for J-term by sobbing about how lonely a New York City apartment can get when your parents are skiing Vail. Other friends surrounded me at dinner grinned, waxing nostalgic about annual family ski trips to Beaver Creek and the Swiss Alps. Yet the starkest reminder of my place as a minority comes during J-term by walking through dorms and dining halls festooned with towering skis and snowboards, passing lolling ski poles and snowboard boots, and the sight of zip ties from expired ski passes dangling off coat zippers.
I became apprehensive to speak to this observation, in fear of being pinned as the “angry black man” incapable of mingling with his peers. However, in my hesitation I came to realize that skiing is emblematic of white America, characterized by a classist paradigm that safeguards the social status of well-off white citizens at the cost of everyone else’s.
It is no secret that skiing is expensive. According to the National Ski Areas Association, overall spending at U.S. ski resorts between 2011 and 2012 totaled a whopping $5.8 billion. While published Census data indicates only 12 percent of all households earn more than one hundred thousand dollars annually, the same organization claims that 54 percent of people out on the slopes fall into this category.
Unsurprisingly, the sport continues to attract a wealthy and white demographic, creating a culture that, as Professor Coleman notes, “create[s] [a] culture that exclude[s] people of color.” While some can contend that skiing is becoming more accessible to those with lower incomes, the impermeable elitist culture attached to alpine sports has not.
Though my parents are now able to decipher between alpine and Nordic skiing with pride, thanks to a quick flip through the photos in the free 2014 engagement calendar, this progress amounts to nothing more than seeing from below how long the hike up is, while the privileged few continue on their rotating chairlift to the top.
This culture and disparity of wealth plays out over J-term as some students prepare and head to the Snow Bowl and Mad River Glen, while others head to their dorms. Hearing some students continue to speak about the financial burden of purchasing textbooks while others whimper about the price of season lift passes further highlights this divide.
There is a large population of students that cloak a presumed prep-school status by ironically foregoing traditional cable knit sweaters and pastel-colored bottoms for tattered flannels and boxy Carhartt pants. Some of these students, who zip across campus on bikes that are worth more than some nations’ GDP per capita incomes, are walking examples of the subtle ways in which stereotypical preppy new-Englanders present themselves. Through this image, I roughly sketch the multiple ways that classism showcases itself in the exclusive outdoor scene here at Middlebury.
Nevertheless, I aspire to become a Mountain Club Guide, a role in which I would assist in coordinating and leading hikes and camping trips. Becoming a February Outdoor Orientation (FOO!) leader would fulfill one of the prerequisites to become a guide. While outdoor experience is irrefutably essential to ensure safety for participants, everyone does not have the access and the resources to be qualified, highlighting the privileges that enable some to participate, and render others not.
A feeling of inutility overwhelmed me as I completed the application. Several questions reasonably asked about personal outdoor experience, including snowshoeing and backcountry skiing. While other applicants presumably retold their experiences with real-life accuracy, I was left trying to make up a backcountry ski trip and snowshoeing experience I lacked.
In that moment I thought my hope of becoming a FOO! leader was squashed and becoming a mountain guide would be postponed. Amidst a “large pool of well-qualified applicants,” I was shocked to learn I had been chosen as an “alternate” to fill a spot if one opens. While I am grateful for the potential that this opportunity might bring, I cannot help but be reminded by the classism embedded in winter sports, and the fact that the privilege of participation in outdoor activities is not readily afforded to me.
CHARLES GRIGGS '16 is from Chicago, IL with artwork by HANNAH BRISTOL and IAN STEWART
(12/05/13 1:51am)
When simple solutions and polished narratives are applied to complex issues, there is often something fishy lurking beneath the surface. Such is the case for Teach for America (TFA), which presents itself as an organization that recruits graduates of elite colleges, like Middlebury, and provides them with two-year teaching positions in “high-need” rural and urban schools.
Several of our friends and peers who we respect and admire and whose intentions we trust have become involved in TFA as corps members, recruiters or in other roles. Our goal is not to demonize them. After all, we personally know many past, current and future TFA members who are committed to teaching and who were even positively impacted by TFA teachers themselves growing up. But, we believe that, as a whole, the TFA organization threatens public education in our country by giving priority to the desires of private interests over the needs of American children whose communities have been impoverished by unjust economic and societal structures.
TFA began 20 years ago, seeking to address teacher shortages by placing inexperienced college grads in schools where their presence would be better than no teachers at all. Since then, the public education landscape has changed drastically: there is now a surplus of qualified, veteran teachers who are getting laid off, often via massive school closings. But instead of adapting to its diminished need, TFA has grown to 32,000 people and boasts assets totaling over $400 million. This huge amount of human and monetary capital is needed, TFA claims, to further its work using “innovative” tactics to address a “crisis” in our public education system caused, they imply, by lazy teachers and corrupted teachers’ unions. This “crisis” has occurred at the same time the Program for International Student Assessment found that, when controlling for poverty, American public school students outperform top scoring nations like Finland and Canada.
Something, indeed, is fishy.
And it is time for us as a campus community — which is one of the top 20 schools TFA recruits from — to closely examine what is going on. Here are some places to start:
First, TFA is “deprofessionalizing” the teaching profession. TFA corps members, often entering classrooms with only a 5-week training course, are rarely equipped to deal with large classes of struggling students. Not only that but 80 percent of them leave the classroom after 4 years. This increase in the teacher turnover rate destabilizes school systems and makes teachers into interchangeable commodities instead of long-term community members and leaders.
And while apparently 60 percent of TFA corps members continue in the education field, that figure represents not only teachers, but also those who enter into school administration, education policy and charter schools, where they often push the same agenda of privatizing public education.
As these TFA corps members flood classrooms, veteran, unionized long-term community teachers in both public and charter schools are being laid off. In Chicago, for example, the city closed 48 schools and laid off 850 teachers and staff while hiring 350 corps members. And those TFA positions are often funded with the heavily lobbied help of federal and state subsidies and grants, in addition to corporations invested in TFA’s privatizing methods such as ExxonMobil Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, Monsanto Fund, and Shell Oil Company who have bolstered TFA’s endowment with six and seven figure donations.
TFA claims that it is challenging the status quo, but we believe that it is part of maintaining an unequal system. Instead of addressing societal and economic structural problems that create poverty and inequality, TFA preaches that the courageous efforts of “leaders” from elite colleges and innovative (read: neoliberal) approaches to education are what is needed to address the “solvable problem” of education inequality.
Catherine Michna counters in Slate that in order for education inequality to have been eliminated at the school where she was a TFA corps member, “We needed smaller class sizes, money for books and materials, money to renovate the crumbling school building. We needed more professional development…Our students’ parents needed jobs that paid a living wage. We needed the police to stop profiling and imprisoning the young men in our community. We needed the War on Drugs to end. We needed all these problems addressed.” Instead, the polished narrative of TFA and the corporate education reform movement conveniently leaves out these issues while calling for an increase in high stakes testing, charter schools, and interchangeable TFA corps members in schools across the country in an effort to privatize them, bust teachers’ unions, “commodify” the teaching profession, and undermine public education.
We challenge Middlebury students to reconsider applying for Teach for America and accepting positions in the program, and instead find other ways to learn about and get involved with education in our country.
Students Resisting Teach for America, including ELMA BURNHAM ’13 (Student Teachers Program) of Fishers Island, NY/Stonington, CT, LUKE GREENWAY ’14.5 of Seattle, WA, HANNA MAHON ’13.5 of Washington DC, ALICE OSHIMA ’15 of Brooklyn, NY, MOLLY ROSE-WILLIAMS ’13.5 of Berkley, CA, LUKE WHELAN ’13.5 of Seattle, WA, ALLY YANSON ’14 of Naples, FL and AFI YELLOW-DUKE ’15 of Brooklyn, NY
(12/05/13 1:48am)
We are the generation that is the least aware of how technology is changing our lives. Our gadgets, and the virtual realities that we can enter through them, can make us forget why we need to be present in the here and now, but only if we allow them to.
I am writing in response to Cheswayo’s brilliant piece ‘Check Your Authenticity’ which appeared in this newspaper three weeks ago. In his piece, he attributes the cause of the inauthentic interactions that go on between some people here at the school to the fact that “we are too preoccupied with what is going on in our lives to ever notice others.” He proposes that we take a personal initiative to “get out of [our] bubbles and embrace the larger one” by demonstrating our eagerness to connect with other people through our actions, not just our thinking.
I cannot agree with him more. First, though, I want to pose a question. Why are we too preoccupied with ourselves here? Is it to preserve the imaginary aura of perfection that we’ve created for ourselves on our Facebook profiles? Or should we put the blame on the devices that we carry around with us everywhere that give us instant access to the outside world? But couldn’t it be something even more fundamental than any of the above, that we are simply “very afraid people,” as Cheswayo posited?
I argue that although all of the above are part of the problem, a factor that we often overlook is that many of us do not yet realize how precious these four years are as a window in our lives for us to challenge ourselves socially and intellectually. We need strong support from the faculty to do that — which Middlebury does provide, and is why we should maintain a good relationship with our professors — as well as constant reminders from our friends. Friends are not merely a safety net that we can fall back onto every now and then and especially in times of desperation, but they are people who love and care for us enough to challenge us to become who we truly are and more.
Electronic gadgets can’t do that for us, so they are not our friends. (And following through with this logic, we should rethink our relationship with our friends that behave like our electronic gadgets.) Yet, some people spend more time with their electronic counterparts than with their friends, even though these gadgets can do nothing to understand and care for us as complex, constantly in flux, human beings. Why should we settle for a less-than-personable world when we have such kind and stimulating people all around us? A loyal friend has a memory storage larger than all of our email inboxes combined, and a good listener and observer is a better search engine than Google or Yahoo! or Bing. The ultimate goal of using any sort of electronics must be to foster stronger human connections, not to retreat from thereof.
At the same time, these four precious years are not just for our own personal growth, but they are also for us to engage with our civil responsibilities. Higher education occupies a very unique role in the domain of public discourse because any respectable educational institution that promotes a culture of integrity and excellence on their campus must also be both a bearer and a practitioner of truth. In a world that is so full of ideological interests and corporate greed, colleges and universities have an irreplaceable voice which members of these learning communities must seize on and aptly utilize.
How better to realize this responsibility and power than by working side by side with the people we find around us here? In our own personal effort to bring about equality and justice to this community and beyond, what can be more enjoyable — not to mention more effective — than seeking positive change through making new friends and forming new alliances?
Although we are the least well-equipped generation of all to handle technology in our lives, none before ours has enjoyed the same level of access to such a diversity of people as we do. This wonderful clash of cultures, perspectives, faiths, and values can help us to better understand ourselves, and if we preoccupy ourselves with the right amount of technology at the right time, we can even fulfill our civil responsibilities with our friends here like no previous generation.
ADRIAN LEONG '16 is from Hong Kong
(12/05/13 1:44am)
From across Ross dining hall you spot a girl. It’s the same brown face you often see in passing around the campus. Long black braids swinging past her shoulders in the mid-lunchtime frenzy, you smile at her and she smiles back. You’ve never spoken to her, or maybe you have? You shake the idea from your head, dismiss it, assume that she is who you think she is. Because she has braids. Because she wears glasses. Because it’s Tuesday. Because of any arbitrary reasoning you can assign. Because who else could she be? So in your mind she fades into the background.
Paint the Middlebury portrait and find that hues in brown account for fewer than a quarter of the entire portrait. With so little color in a college crayon box, wouldn’t it be theoretically easy to separate the Chestnut from the Alloy Orange? The Sepia from the Burnt Siena?
It’s easy. Or rather it should be. If one paid a little more attention to detail, to subtle variations between each stroke, to the nuance in every iris, then maybe things would be different.
For me, the problem is that I am NOT every other brown girl on campus. “We” are not all the same. It is a truth universally acknowledged, yet this truth is so little fixed in the minds of the average Middlebury student that I begin to worry.
I’ve had my name, and therefore my identity, stripped from me more times than I can count, tossed aside because “Delia” was not as distinct or as memorable as “Diku” or “Debanjan.” While five letters may not seem like a lot, they encapsulate me. Everything that I am. My experiences, my thoughts, my likes, my dislikes, and even my Facebook typing habits. Who I am is in those five letters, the neatly wrapped ribbon and bow on this 5’4 package. I should be treated as such — a unique individual, more than the sum of my parts.
To some, it might sound like a generalization to say that everyone mixes me up with other brown girls on campus. But one must understand that after two years of experiencing the same confusion, it’s time to speak out.
We often call Middlebury a bubble, because perched atop a violet mountain, the college seems separate from the rest of the world. But I see Middlebury as more of a box, a space that someone else has made for us, a mindset where our self-image is dictated by what or who others say or think we are.
Once I was complimented on a great Verbal Onslaught poem that I never performed. When I, eyebrows raised and polite smile set, replied that I wasn’t at all involved in Verbal Onslaught, the acquaintance apologized, and claimed that he’d seen my boots that day that were similar to that of the poet . . .
In another instance, I’d received an email from a person who’d lived in the same building as me last year. She’d had a conversation with someone who she thought was me, but was actually another brown girl. Instead of stopping to ask that girl to mention her name again during their conversation, she took a chance, and sent me the email. She got the wrong girl.
Once during lunch, I greeted a boy that I’d met at the Grille one weekend. I’d called him by his name, and he tried to guess mine. When he got it confused with that of my friend, he instantly got nervous. Apparently I intimidate people. He started rambling furiously, saying the last thing that anyone wants to hear “Oh, I’m sorry. I have a lot of black friends at home. I’m sorry, I don’t have white privilege like that!” I did as I always do in such situations. Told him it was okay, smiled weakly, and continued to eat.
What all these examples tell me is that people have looked through me instead of at me. Conversation is moot because it doesn’t matter what they get to know about me through talking. It seems that people have relied and will continue to rely on trivial aspects like my hairstyle or my boots to distinguish who I am. No effort has otherwise been taken to get to know me as a human being. I just wonder if it would be too hard to take the time to look a person in the face before deciding that you’ve got them pegged.
Living away from home for the first time is difficult enough without constantly having to defend my identity. There’s something about anonymity that condones exclusivity. I can’t shake the feeling that for the rest of my time here, I will remain a stranger, a color in the box that was never appreciated. I can try hard to make a good first impression, to come off as genuine and warm, only to have that impression washed away at the first rainfall of the month. I’ve built up a wall of my bitterness that will only end up hurting those around me. The cycle starts. Will I fold people into that box as well and decide that they are whatever I make them out to be?
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my struggle for identity, it’s that we must all do better, or at least try — to put time into relationships we hope to foster. This is something I must remember. This includes never treating these relationships, both acquaintances and otherwise, lightly. Because honestly I’d hate to think of this campus as a web of faceless interactions. We’re here for four years — why not make it personal? Let’s try this again.
Hi, my name is Delia Taylor. If you see me, introduce yourself. Don’t be shy.
DELIA TAYLOR '16 is from Brooklyn, NY
(12/05/13 1:42am)
“Privilege” is a word we love to use at Middlebury. It works well with our classroom discussions on the global south, how we perceive our relationships with the town, and even how we treat waste at our dining halls. It is not a term that often enters our bedrooms.
I had a shocking reminder of exactly what privilege meant when I brought a guy home from a party for the first time this semester and since being abroad. This was someone who I considered a friend and a nice guy, someone who I had known since freshman year and who had always been kind to me. Frankly, I had always had a crush on him, but we hung out with very different groups and it was never something I would have pursued.
So I was cautiously excited as I was bringing him home. When we got to my room, the conversation we had been having was immediately cut off as things started getting physical. At a certain point I admitted that I had my period and didn’t want to do much, which put a quick damper on things. When I said I didn’t want to have oral sex with him because it wouldn’t be reciprocal, he seemed even more put off. When I asked if we could do something when I didn’t have my period, he was quick to tell me that he didn’t want to be “boxed in.” Finally after about two minutes of awkward silence, he made a half-hearted excuse about needing to get up early and left.
So what, right? It was a bad night. The kind of night you attribute to Midd just being Midd and complain about with your friends the morning after. You can’t expect anyone to want more than casual sex at Middlebury right? That would be absurd.
What is actually absurd is how far we as a student body have lowered our expectations both in the bedroom and in romantic relationships. We expect all relationships to be primarily physical and initiated at a party when both partners are intoxicated. We expect them to last one night. We have even come to expect that we may not acknowledge each other the next day. This is not limited to gender or sexual orientation. It is pervasive. It is more than the complaint that “no one dates anymore” at this school. It is a complete and utter lack of respect for each other summed up in, and yes I’ll say it, privilege. We’ve all had a rough week and now we deserve to get drunk, go out and, if we’re lucky, get some. At its best, it ends the way my night did. At its worst, it is manifested in acts of sexual violence, which we all know do in fact happen here.
I think most of us know that this is not acceptable behavior outside of this college in the “real world.” Ever. It should not be acceptable here either, and we need to take a hard look at why it has become our normal. I’m not saying that all romantic interactions must end in committed relationships. Frankly, I don’t see anything wrong with casual sex if both partners communicate their expectations, use protection, and respect their partner’s integrity. Oh, and maybe say hi the next day.
As a student body, we’re always eager mobilize to find the next hot issue we can pick over with friends, read about in The Campus or host a panel discussion about. The state of our romantic relationships at this school hardly ever makes the cut. Or how it is now taboo to be in any way romantic or sexual (unless you’re already in a relationship) outside of a sloppy party. Changing our hook-up culture does not need its own organization; it does not need high profile meetings or official endorsement. It requires us to shift our own behavior and attitudes and not accept inconsiderate treatment from others.
And it needs to be our next big topic. Because at the end of the day, none of us (no matter how beautiful, athletic or privileged) deserve sex. Or a relationship. We have to earn that by treating others with, if nothing else, respect.
LIZZIE GOODING '14 is from Jamestown, RI