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(11/18/20 2:11am)
Two Middlebury students tested positive for Covid-19 according to early results from Covid-19 testing held Monday, the school announced in an email Tuesday morning.
The cases were the first among students at the college since two tested positive in early September during entry testing. They were therefore the first two cases acquired in Middlebury rather than before arrival at the college. In total, the college has had four student cases to-date this semester.
“This news underscores the importance of strictly abiding by Middlebury’s campus quarantine rules as well as Vermont Governor Phil Scott’s order restricting social gatherings,” Mark Peluso, Middlebury’s head physician, said in the email.
Peluso said the two students had been moved to isolation. The school completed contract tracing this evening and moved 15 student contacts into quarantine, according to the Covid-19 dashboard. Two students were previously placed into quarantine after contacting someone off campus who tested positive, putting the total number of students in quarantine at 17.
Colleges around Vermont have had spikes in cases and increased their Covid-19-related precautions, as Vermont has a surge of the virus. The University of Vermont on Monday reported 35 new cases that nearly doubled its total for the semester, and Northern Vermont University suspended all events and athletic practices last Friday after two students tested positive.
Vermont set several single-day case records last week, with a high of 122 cases reported Nov. 15. Officials at Gov. Phil Scott’s press conference Tuesday announced plans to ramp up statewide testing, and warned that new cases in the state could rise by as much as 50% in the next six weeks.
Middlebury administrators sent another email to students on Tuesday evening to share that an additional 1,100 tests were performed throughout the day Tuesday, and to urge caution. Peluso reminded students not to jump to conclusions simply because they might know a student who tested positive, or were a contact of someone who had.
“As we noted in the earlier announcement, simply knowing a person who has Covid-19 or having interacted with a person who is in quarantine does not mean you are a contact,” he said in the later email.
The college placed all students under “campus quarantine” last Friday, preventing them from entering the town or Addison County. On Tuesday, Peluso said that campus operations would continue as planned despite the new cases.
Most tests performed Monday and Tuesday were part of Middlebury’s exit testing plan, which offered all students a test on a voluntary basis on one of those days as they prepare to leave campus Nov. 21.
Departure testing is not mandatory. Peluso said in Tuesday’s initial email that “we have about 300 open appointments” for departure testing on Tuesday afternoon, and encouraged students to take advantage of them.
(09/08/20 1:18am)
Dozens of pages of online instructions and 151 minutes of educational videos laid out a plethora of restrictions and regulations that were put in place to make a return to campus this fall possible. Since the majority of students returned to Middlebury last Friday, those rules have become reality.
For the most part, students have followed regulations. By day, they widely obey mask guidelines when out in public on campus, usually only removing masks to eat meals. At the direction of staff, they follow delineated paths through dining halls, and students have taken to socializing safely in distanced settings on Battell Beach and the Knoll.
But nighttime gatherings that exceed 10 participants, sometimes without masks, have sprung up in the past week, leaving student Residential Life workers and orientation leaders to take on new roles as disciplinary figures tasked with curtailing gatherings that violate Covid-19 guidelines.
“For ResLife, the past three days have honestly been pretty intense,” Luisa Vosmik ’21, a Resident Assistant who works in sophomore housing, told The Campus. “We are all super excited to have residents living in our halls and to be able to put our training to use… That being said, there have definitely been some chaotic moments that were a bit disheartening. At times, it has felt as though other students don’t recognize the impact their actions might have on our ability to remain on campus.”
Dean of Students Derek Doucet is encouraged by the low number of positive tests in Middlebury’s mandatory testing for students (since students returned to campus, two rounds of all-student testing have yielded just two positive test results). What remains essential, he told The Campus, is practicing behaviors that preserve the encouraging results first seen after processing move-in day results. “We’re open,” he wrote in an email to The Campus. “Now we have to remain sharply focused on doing what we must to stay open.”
The burden of enforcing Covid-19 regulations that seek to maintain that reality has fallen heavily on student leaders, including Residential Life members and MiddView Orientation leaders. Student leaders “have been working tirelessly over the last week or more to help pull off the reopening,” Doucet wrote. “Without them it would not have been possible to get this far.”
While Doucet acknowledges Public Safety as an important part of the college’s enforcement policy, Maya Gee ’22, the Community Assistant for Voter Hall and Painter Hall, and other student leaders told the Campus that Public Safety has been given a reduced role this year. Unlike in previous years, Residential Life members are now expected to collect the names, and sometimes the ID numbers, of students who break college Covid-19 policies.
Public Safety and Residential Life administrators did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
The student leaders are expected to enforce regulations related to mask-wearing, social distancing, gathering sizes and the presence of parents during move-in. Issues within ResLife’s purview before the pandemic — such as alcohol consumption, noise complaints and large gatherings — now have higher stakes, as many of these activities can lead to increased Covid-19-related risks. Residential Life members can choose from a variety of steps in these situations, including asking students to correct their behavior, filing an incident report or calling Public Safety or their Residence Director for assistance.
“It all depends on the situation,” Gee said.
Sophie Smith ’21, a MiddView leader leading virtual first year orientation sees the role MiddView leaders are playing in enforcing Covid-19 policies as similar to that of the rest of the student body. They are tasked with providing students with reminders of Covid-19 policies, reporting through the online tool or contacting Public Safety upon noticing a Covid-19 policy violation.
Several students have already been asked to leave campus while more are awaiting appeals for violating guidelines, according to Doucet. Due to the college’s rule against disclosing details from the disciplinary process, Doucet did not specify the nature of students’ violations, but he wrote that “we’re taking a firm stance on Covid violations which expose the community to elevated levels of potential risk.”
Besides the students who have already been sent home, a number of other students have received a sanction or removal from campus housing, held in abeyance. This status indicates that if the student violates any additional Covid-19 protocol, they will be dismissed from campus.
Following the release of first years from room quarantine, Residential Life members noted many violations of college Covid-19 policies, including reports of large gatherings of students both on Battell Beach and near the baseball field.
“There have been groups of 10-plus the past few nights, [especially] Friday and Saturday, where students were disregarding the physical distancing requirement, even when asked repeatedly to distance and disperse into smaller groups,” Vosmik said last week.
Gee saw some of these violations and contacted her Residence Director and Public Safety.
“I am trying to deal with it more as a friendly reminder perspective, rather than a more enforcement perspective,” she said. While Gee said she’s fixated on helping protect the Middlebury community, she is also giving students the benefit of the doubt and recognizes that this semester has brought a lot of changes. “It is a very fine line between intentionally breaking the rules and forgetting,” she said.
Gee said that she did not know the full extent of her responsibilities until she arrived on campus on August 18 and underwent Residential Life training. She acknowledged that the role can feel overwhelming at times.
The boundaries of the job are changing and becoming less distinct than in previous years, Gee noted as one of the many ways in which this year is different from last year, when she served a First-Year Counselor in Battell Hall. “We feel like we have to oversee so many more things, both inside and outside,” Gee said.
“Some staff members are really struggling with not feeling burnt out, that they always have to be on,” she said. Gee feels that every time she goes outside there is constantly some small violation she could find.
Residential Life student workers have been given a $500 pay raise for the year, following salary increases that took place over the past two years. Gee said that this is not enough, but recognized the financial limitation of the college and said that “we’re getting there.”
Residential Life workers have been instructed to never put their own health and safety at risk; if a situation arises where close contact with another student is required, they have been directed to call Residential Life administrators or Public Safety, Gee explained.
“Their job is not an easy one and we all owe them a debt of gratitude,” Doucet said, also pointing to the role MiddView orientation leaders have played in promoting and enforcing Covid-19 policies.
The college has put in place an online reporting system through which anyone can report a Covid-19 policy violation. As of early last week, roughly 30 reports had been submitted through the system. According to Doucet, each report has received follow-up, but the majority have been minor violations.
“The college is not playing around,” Gee said, explaining how each situation needs to be treated differently depending on the circumstances and the nature of the violation.
Gee said she supports the reallocation of duties to student Residential Life leaders, particularly when it comes to no longer having Public Safety officers patrol dormitories. But she added that this creates an increased level of responsibility for Residential Life and could result in a type of hierarchy among students; she noted the array of challenges that can come with trying to find a balance between holding students accountable and not making them feel over-policed by peers.
“We are really starting to move towards more of a community policing model,” Gee said.
And while Doucet acknowledged the essential role of Residential Life, he also knows that they cannot do everything.
“We need to avoid the temptation to think of our student leaders as responsible for carrying the whole weight of this enormous undertaking for their peers,” he said.
(09/01/20 3:08am)
UPDATE: Tuesday, Sept. 1, 12:03 a.m.
The student in isolation in Porter House, who was placed in isolation Monday morning after developing Covid-19 symptoms, received a negative test result late Monday night for a test administered after they developed symptoms. The student told The Campus that they would remain in Porter House Monday night and would consult with college health workers the following morning about next steps.
——
After delays in the delivery of test results nearly doubled the “room quarantine” period for students who arrived on Middlebury’s campus Friday, results returned throughout Sunday afternoon and evening showed promising early signs for Middlebury’s reopening efforts, with no new positive results among those who arrived on campus Friday.
Updated Monday morning, the Covid-19 dashboard showed zero positives among the 1,109 tests conducted Friday and 26 from Saturday (six people tested Friday were re-tested due to insufficient samples). Middlebury has thus logged just one Covid-19 case since students returned to campus (a student tested positive after arriving on August 26). While the lack of positive results marks an early success in the college’s reopening, administrators cautioned in an all-school email against students taking a lax approach to Covid-19 guidelines in the week ahead.
“While we are encouraged by these early results, follow-up testing of all students seven days after their arrival is another vital component of our plan and an important safeguard against potential spread of the virus,” wrote Director of Health Services Mark Peluso and Dean of Students Derek Doucet in an all-community email Monday. All students who arrived Friday living on and off campus will be tested again on Sept. 5, seven days after their initial test.
At least one student developed Covid-19 symptoms, including a fever, sore throat and chills overnight Sunday after receiving a negative arrival test result earlier that day and being released from room quarantine. The student, who told The Campus about their situation on condition of anonymity because of privacy concerns, was moved into isolation in Porter House Monday morning and is awaiting results of a second Covid-19 test administered today.
The student said they were placed in Porter rather than Munford because the latter house is reserved for those with confirmed Covid-19 cases.
A Parton staff member initially told the student’s suitemates and residents of an adjacent suite who had spent time with the student to temporarily self-isolate. However, hours later they were told by a Parton nurse practitioner that they were allowed to return to campus quarantine pending the symptomatic student’s results.
Some of the students who were in contact with the symptomatic individual told The Campus that they have chosen to take extra precautions of their own accord, and all said they had followed distancing and mask protocols around the symptomatic person. None said they have developed symptoms of their own.
When asked about the status of the quarantined student, Director of Media Relations Sarah Ray wrote in an email to The Campus that “to protect the privacy of our community, we will not be releasing any information about individuals who test positive or who are in isolation for any reason.” Ray did not respond to a question about whether contact tracing had begun for students outside of the symptomatic student’s living partners, or whether contact tracing would take place only in the event of a positive test.
Students who arrived Friday were originally expected to receive test results sometime Saturday, and expressed increasing frustration as the hours of room quarantine wore on through Sunday evening. But negative test results began to arrive in inboxes that afternoon and evening, and students gradually trickled out of their rooms onto a changed campus, where masked, socially-distanced gatherings and outside dinners eaten from to-go containers are now the norm.
The delays in returning results occurred due to a staff scheduling issue at the Broad Institute, the Cambridge, Mass.-based lab that is providing Middlebury’s testing, Doucet wrote in an email to The Campus on Sunday evening.
“It appears to be less a total capacity issue and more a scheduling one,” he wrote, when asked if the slow turnaround was due to the increase in the number of tests Broad is performing, as it tests at other colleges with move-in dates this week. “Broad operates around the clock, but needed to adjust its staffing plan to ensure that it had sufficient staff at the busiest times of their processing day, which turned out to be at different times then they anticipated. They tell us they’ve now adjusted.”
In an email to The Campus, Broad Communications Director David Cameron said that Broad’s testing capacity is presently at 50,000 tests per day, and that “we should have that up to 100k per day in a few weeks if needed.”
On its website, Broad claims its tests are processed with turnaround time “typically less than 24 hours.” The institute is also providing testing for more than 100 other colleges and universities including Williams, Harvard, Colby and UVM, all of which have intensive testing plans and saw large numbers of students return to campus in the past week.
Most Middlebury students now on campus moved in on Friday, a day on which Broad performed the most tests of any day since it began Covid-19 testing in March. The institute processed nearly 44,000 tests that day, and more than 30,000 each of the two days prior.
Managing Editor Hattie LeFavour contributed reporting.
Correction 9/1/20: A previous version of this article stated that 1,103 tests were conducted Friday, Aug. 28. The correct number was 1,109 tests, with 1,103 negative results and six yielding insufficient samples that led to re-tests.
Update 9/3/20: A previous version of this article stated that the Broad Institute is providing testing to 25 colleges and universities The Campus was able to find. In a press release on Sept. 2, Broad stated the true number was 108 colleges and universities. The article has been updated.
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(08/11/20 4:18am)
With more than 3,000 Middlebury students, faculty and staff set to return to campus in late August, the college is planning to test 750 of them — on top of those who develop viral symptoms — for Covid-19 each week over the course of the fall semester, in a “targeted” testing approach directed towards higher-contact parts of the community.
Director of Health Services Mark Peluso described the testing plan in a July 28 meeting between college administrators and the Town of Middlebury Selectboard (the plan is also described in the college’s Return to Campus Guide.) Students will receive an initial test when they arrive on campus and another test seven days later, both in Virtue Field House. Following those two tests, students will be included with faculty and staff working “high-contact” jobs in “Targeted Dynamic Testing” (TDT), which will consist of 750 tests per week.
Acquired from the Broad Institute based in Cambridge, Mass., tests will be diagnostic PCR anterior nares swabs, which are more sensitive than antigen tests, the other common type of Covid-19 test. Broad claims it can return results in 24 hours.
Any student who develops Covid-19 symptoms will also be tested, and the college has reserve tests for symptomatic students so as not to draw from the weekly 750-test allocation for TDT, Peluso said. Students will receive an email when they have been selected for TDT, and tests will likely continue to be held in Virtue Field House.
Testing 750 community members weekly means less than one-fifth of the roughly 2,300 students, 300 faculty members and 1,200 staff occupying campus this fall could receive a test from the college every seven days, not including symptomatic individuals. And although both the Return to Campus Guide and administrators in town halls have said that the plan is to randomly test everyone at the college throughout the semester, TDT will be targeted towards some parts of the community more than others.
“TDT is intentionally dynamic” and “will focus on students living in congregate housing, and the staff and faculty members who work directly with them,” Peluso wrote in an email to the Campus. “Congregate housing” actually refers to all student housing and approved off-campus housing, he said, suggesting that any student would be eligible for a test each week. Staff such as healthcare workers, custodians, public safety, facilities, dining and residential life personnel will also be “targeted” for TDT, he said, and faculty members who interact with students “may also be tested.”
Peluso did not clarify how the college plans to break down the 750 weekly tests among students, staff and faculty each week, but wrote that “the breakdown will vary depending on local community and campus prevalence of illness.” The Return to Campus Guide urges faculty and staff to “consult their healthcare providers for medical advice, including testing options.”
Mirroring approaches at other colleges, administrators see testing as one piece of a broad plan for Covid-19 containment. Experts agree that strict behavioral interventions are also an essential part of safe college reopening, and that testing must be coupled with these measures to make campuses safe. “Physical distancing, gathering size restrictions, hand hygiene and face coverings have been very successful in mitigating the spread of illness in places using those strategies,” Peluso said.
Those steps are outlined extensively in the Return to Campus Guide, along with the college’s plan to have students quarantine prior to their arrival and to “open” campus in phases.
However, the 750 tests-per-week plan places the college’s testing frequency well behind some peer schools: Every University of Vermont student will be tested each week for the first three weeks of the university’s semester, after which UVM will re-evaluate its plan. Champlain College, Wesleyan and Tufts universities also plan to test all students weekly during the fall semester. Harvard will test students every three days and, in a plan that could cost up to $10 million, Colby will test twice-weekly. In the cases of Harvard and UVM, both schools could consider a TDT-type approach later in the semester, but only if their initial bouts of heavy testing yield low infection rates.
Johns Hopkins University — which is in a much denser urban area than Middlebury — had planned on testing all students twice-weekly this fall, but cancelled in-person classes last week. One of the university’s top infectious disease specialists later called the rigorous testing strategy it had planned to use “an incomplete defense.”
The college is prepared to raise or lower its number of weekly TDT tests depending on level of infection in the community, Peluso said, and if viral prevalence remains low, it may use some of the 750 tests allocated for TDT to test symptomatic community members. Testing will be free for students on the college’s health insurance.
“We have purchased enough test capacity to perform arrival testing for all students, and 750 tests per week for 12 weeks, plus some reserve testing for surge or symptomatic students,” he said.
Students interviewed by the Campus shared mixed feelings about the testing plan, with some grateful for arrival day and day seven testing, while others said they wished the college would test more throughout the semester.
“One of the reasons that I have any confidence in Middlebury's return plan at all is that everyone, including asymptomatic folks, is getting tested upon arrival to campus. Without that, I would be extremely hesitant to return,” said Keith Chatinover ’22.5.
Others are less optimistic. “One hundred percent of people tested once over a five-week period is not going to prevent an outbreak from exploding,” said Michael Koutelos ’20.5. (With the 750 weekly TDT tests targeting certain members of the community over others, it is possible that some students could go more than five weeks without being tested.)
Colleges’ Covid-19 testing plans depend heavily on finances, and many institutions around the country will test with less frequency than Middlebury.
The college’s plan to test students on arrival and seven days later is a step many smaller institutions are not able to take for financial reasons, for example: Small schools like Cornell College in Iowa will not test students upon entry. And free testing under college insurance is also not available at every school. Students at St. Michaels University, which plans to test students randomly and won’t test any student more than four times throughout the term, will have to pay a $150 testing fee, according to the Burlington Free Press. Syracuse University will charge students $49 for “testing kits.”
Testing 750 community members weekly falls short of some expert-recommended testing levels that may be required to maintain a “controllable” level of Covid-19 infection on campuses. A widely covered study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association called on colleges to test every community member once every two days to “yield a modest number of containable infections” — but acknowledged that doing so “sets a very high bar ...logistically, financially and behaviorally.”
When asked how Middlebury settled on testing 750 community members per week, Peluso pointed to the Center of Disease Control (CDC), Vermont Department of Health and American College Health Association Guidelines. He wrote that the possibility of false positive tests arising from widespread testing of asymptomatic students was one factor that pushed the college to do fewer tests. “The increased risk of false positive results in low prevalence situations, with ensuing isolation and quarantine of individuals who do not actually have the disease, must be considered,” he wrote.
While the likelihood of a test yielding an incorrect result does increase in communities with low disease prevalence, prevalence estimates are “a snapshot in time,” according to Director of Global Health Programs Pam Berenbaum. Disease prevalence at Middlebury and in Addison County could thus be different in late August, with students returning to campus from around the country, than it is now (the county as of August 10 had just 2.5 Covid-19 cases per 100,000 residents, according to the New York Times).
Another question about testing at Middlebury lies in the ability of the Broad Institute, the Harvard and MIT-based lab that will head Middlebury’s testing, to increase its testing capacity to fill the needs of dozens of Northeast universities and colleges. The institute plans to provide tests for at least 25 colleges the Campus was able to find, including Colby, Williams, Harvard and UVM, all of which have testing-intensive plans.
Broad has ramped up its testing in the past few weeks. Since it began testing in March, it has performed an average of 3,511 tests per day, and has the capacity to ramp up to 100,000 tests per day if needed, according to the Boston Globe. But the highest number of tests the institute has conducted to date was 13,008 tests on Aug. 6.
Middlebury will pay Broad $30 per test, which brings the cost of its TDT plan to $22,500 per week, assuming the college holds 750 tests weekly (Peluso added that “there are other fixed costs such as courier fees, staff time and PPE needs that add to the total cost,” and the total cost of testing could vary depending on testing of symptomatic people).
Administrators say they’ve worked closely with Vermont state and local governments in building a reopening strategy and describe Vermont’s stellar record in keeping infection rate low as a buffer in their plan not to test all students weekly.
“We have lower disease prevalence in the region which makes it less likely that the illness would come to campus from local community spread than if Middlebury were in a higher prevalence area. That does not mean it won’t happen, it’s just far less likely to happen,” Peluso said. “Vermont, and the Middlebury area in particular, has done a great job in keeping the spread of Covid-19 low.”
But that success could mean little when students come to campus from different parts of the country. While many students have spent summer in the town of Middlebury or other places away from home, a Campus analysis found that of roughly 12,000 students enrolled at Bates, Bowdoin, Tufts, Connecticut College and Middlebury, 20% are originally from states designated as White House “red zones” as of Aug. 3, with another 78% living in the “yellow zone,” areas with moderate levels of infection.
Just 2% of students reside in the only “green zone” that presently exists in the country — the Green Mountain State itself.
Digital Director Benjy Renton contributed reporting.
(07/03/20 10:00pm)
Update — July 3
AAUP chapter president Laurie Essig said in an email to The Campus that the AAUP would seek to support both Dr. Hernández-Romero and/or the accused professors if either went forward with filing an official complaint. However, she also stated the AAUP’s concern that “the accusations made in the letter were reiterated as factual rather than accusations in [the] letter to the community signed by senior leadership,” referencing the administration’s response. “It is the right of everyone accused of wrongdoing to have a clear and codified process of investigation and if those charges prove to be false or unsubstantiated, to have their reputations publicly restored,” Essig wrote.
——
After departing professor Marissel Hernández-Romero leveled accusations of racism at colleagues in a community-wide email over the weekend, four of the named professors sent an email of their own to administrators Thursday morning denouncing the college’s response to the allegations and calling for due process in determining the legitimacy of the claims.
Thursday’s email, signed by Spanish Professors Enrique García, Laura Lesta-García and Patricia Saldarriaga and Film and Media Culture Professor David Miranda-Hardy, was later made semi-public when it was posted to a popular student Facebook meme group, “Middlebury Memes for Crunchy Teens,” which has over 3,000 members, mostly current and former students.
Screenshots of the email were posted in the group by Sandra Luo ’18 on Thursday evening, with the caption “Imagine… [non-Black people of color] being held accountable for their anti-blackness??? Not at Midd apparently.” Another former student, Brenna Wilson ’20, shared the same screenshots in a Twitter post several hours earlier (their Tweet was public at the time of its posting and had garnered 32 likes by Friday afternoon, at which point Wilson’s account was made private).
It was not immediately clear how Luo, who did not respond to a request for comment by press time, came into possession of the email.
The domain list of the Middlebury chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) — a national organization advocating for faculty governance and academic freedom — was copied on Thursday’s email. That domain list contains the email addresses of nearly 200 faculty and staff members. In a Facebook message to The Campus, Wilson wrote that “many people got [the email] through AAUP,” but declined to say who had shared the email with them.
It is unknown if the Middlebury AAUP is pursuing a collective effort to advocate for the accused faculty members, and neither chapter president Laurie Essig nor vice president Jamie McCallum responded to requests for comment.
Sent from Enrique García’s account and addressed to Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernández, Dean of Faculty Sujata Moorti and President Laurie Patton, the letter decisively criticizes these administrators, saying that the statement “essentially admitted guilt for us without any consultation or investigation, by qualifying Professor Hernández-Romero’s allegations as ‘incidents of racism’.” The professors, however, did not explicitly deny such allegations in their email.
“We are very distressed by the administration’s failure to take a fair stance in the face of these accusations and before due process was given to the Middlebury POC employees named in the email,” the opening paragraph reads. The signees also note the damage they believe the administration’s statement will have on their professional careers, particularly in relation to promotions and reappointments.
The email also focuses on the identities of the professors themselves, stating that the administrative statement “fails to acknowledge that we ourselves are being disproportionately affected by white supremacy, despite the fact that we are the ones disproportionately advancing the anti-racist cause.” The four professors state their belief that undermining the accused — as people of color, “women of historically oppressed ethnic minorities” and queer people of color — served to exacerbate the silencing of marginalized individuals at Middlebury.
The email closes by outlining the professors’ demands for transparency and apology going forward. They ask the administration to restate the accusations as allegations, as they have yet to be verified, and request an apology both for the administration’s response and subsequent ramifications and for “amplifying” Dr. Hernández-Romero’s email by deleting it from the servers.
The authors of the email did not respond to requests for comment. In an email to the Campus, Hernández-Romero noted her disappointment that the message had been leaked, before writing that she is “more than open to have a conversation they never wanted in three years.”
Student reactions to the four professors’ email, expressed through comments on Luo’s Facebook post, mirrored the sentiment of her caption — criticizing the professors for not appearing to maintain accountability on their parts. Students also denounced the authors’ centering of their own identities, arguing that personal identity does not absolve them of allegedly engaging in anti-Black rhetoric.
While Luo’s post did not appear to make light or humor of the email in the ways a “meme” typically would, alumni had in previous days called for group members to publish content updating them on developments following Hernández-Romero’s original email. The posting of information on the platform meant for “memes” is not necessarily unprecedented — students have previously used the page to air grievances on controversial campus issues and to seek information.
Fernández, the Chief Diversity Officer, announced in a school-wide email on Thursday a plan to offer “anti-racism workshops” to staff and faculty later in the summer.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Editor’s note: Editor at Large James Finn is a minor in the Spanish department.
(06/04/20 5:24am)
We sent students a survey last week asking some of the questions that have continually shaped our lives since March 10.
From the data collected, we learned that:
Most students felt that professors were understanding. Ninety percent of surveyed students were satisfied with professors’ accommodations through remote learning.
Classes could get a lot smaller if we remain remote this fall, as 58% of students would elect to take a leave of absence if Middlebury chooses to remain fully-remote during that term.
The pandemic has not been kind to Middlebury students’ job opportunities. Sixty two percent of surveyed students at one point had a job or internship that was cancelled due to the pandemic.
Few people opted in to credit/no credit. In the wake of the failed movement for mandatory credit/no credit grading, 63% of respondents took all of their spring classes for letter grades.
At the end of the survey, we also gave students the chance to anonymously share opinions or anecdotes about experiences in quarantine. We’re really glad we did so — the responses you provided were at turns poignant, urgent and funny, and all of them capture the bizarre reality we’re living through. These anonymous opinions have been included in this article in places where they complement our findings expressed through data visualization.
General demographics
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Of the roughly 2,500 Middlebury students who were sent the survey, 583 — roughly a quarter — participated. Respondents were split fairly evenly across class years, with a slight majority of respondents coming from the classes of 2021 and ’21.5. (Though they will not be enrolled this fall, members of the class of 2020 were invited to complete the survey because of their perspectives on the spring semester and experience graduating during the pandemic).
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Reflecting the demographic reality of the college’s student body, a majority of respondents identified as white. Ten percent, or 58, respondents identified as international students.
Spring semester and summer
Mental health during remote spring semester
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A majority of students — 64% of respondents — reported having experienced mental health-related challenges during the course of their spring semester. Twenty-five percent reported knowing where to go to get virtual mental health support from the college, 27% said they did not know where to access care and the remaining 47% reported being “somewhat” aware of how to seek care.
But the logistical realities of being at home with parents, siblings and other family posed challenges for some students to seek help. “As someone who struggles with mental health, it's a lot harder to reach out for help when I'm at home and I feel at higher risk for falling into really bad lows and having no one around to help,” one student wrote.
“One challenge that I have faced has been less mental health problems myself,” a student wrote in their anecdotal response, “but more caring for family members struggling with their mental health.”
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Students reported feeling high levels of stress over uncertainty of life during the pandemic, as well as over jobs, relationships, academics, family life and home life. Often, multiple demands intersected to create unique challenges to tackling remote learning from home.
“Mother lost her job, father might too,” a student wrote. “Having everyone under the same roof in a small house has driven my parents to the brink of divorce.”
Approval rating of communication by college entities since March 10
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Students generally approved or were ambivalent about communication methods from college entities such as Schools Abroad, Parton counseling and the administration. However, several anecdotal responses expressed frustrations with a lack of solicitation of student input on the part of the college throughout the spring.
“Many other schools are hosting webinars and Zoom calls explaining directly to students what options they are considering in the fall,” one student wrote. “Middlebury has not told us the options and therefore there are more rumors/speculations. Even if the answer is ‘we don't know yet - here are some options,’ [that would be] better than barely hearing from them at all.”
Covid-19 infection among family, acquaintances and community
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Nine Middlebury students responded as having tested positive for Covid-19. Forty percent reported knowing a friend who had tested positive, and another 41% responded as not knowing anyone who had tested positive.
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Almost half — 48% — of students reported high levels of concern over viral transmission in their communities, while roughly 12% reported low levels of concern in their communities.
Opinions on spring remote academic programming
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A vast majority of respondents — 91% — reported professors being flexible in adjusting to the demands of remote learning. “Two of my professors were amazing — completely accommodating and conscious of the circumstances,” one student wrote. However, anecdotal responses saw many students report frustrations with how professors adjusted syllabi or failed to provide opportunities for asynchronous learning.
Many students wrote that some professors were patient and accommodating while others approached the semester in starkly different ways.
“I felt like most of the concessions certain professors claimed were just talk,” one student wrote. “One of my professors did not cut the workload at all and just added the material from the week we missed onto the post-break semester.”
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Despite high rates of approval for professors’ levels of accommodation, 64% of students reported that their academic experience this spring was at least “generally” impaired amid the adjustment to remote learning.
“If students were disadvantaged before, this pandemic only exacerbates the previous systemic issue,” one student wrote. “We should focus Middlebury's financial support to pledge to support students who have a less than ideal home situation for learning. This is a serious concern for accessibility reasons as well.”
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Students reported “news and outside distractions” as the most significant impediment to their distance-learning experience. Financial burdens were another — more than 100 students reported a need to make money while living at home as being at least somewhat of an obstacle to their learning, and thirty-four students reported lacking a home as a significant obstacle.
“I've been taking care of my two younger cousins whose both parents have brain injuries,” a student wrote. “Being home means that I have to step up in my family, and that involves home-schooling and helping to raise an 11-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy. It has also meant caring for my father who has early-onset Alzheimers. The playing field is extremely unequal when school is remote.”
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A significant majority of students — 63% — reported not taking any classes credit/no credit this spring. In the push for a credit/no credit system in the spring, students cited disadvantages faced by less-privileged students as the primary reason for offering such a system. Some students acknowledged that the credit/no credit system remained relevant because of these challenges, even if they were able to choose letter grades.
“My grades ended up good this semester,” one student wrote, “but I support universal credit/no credit because I know how much stress my friends have experienced in deciding whether to take courses for standard grading or for credit.”
Summer plans
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About half of students surveyed will participate in remote internships or jobs this summer. However, 62% reported previously having a job or internship that was later cancelled due to the coronavirus.
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A slight majority of respondents reported that they will be spending the summer months in the same location as where they spent their spring semester.
Fall 2020
“The Plan”
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Respondents favored an in-person, socially distanced semester for fall 2020 — a plan that raises questions about the college’s ability to enforce social distancing protocols in classrooms, dorms and the town of Middlebury. The other favorite options — delayed on-campus semester and pre-Thanksgiving end to the semester — raise similar questions that colleges will continue to grapple with as they consider on-campus possibilities.
Students are thus not enthused by the prospect of another semester of fully-remote learning. A significant percentage of anecdotal responses submitted at the end of this survey centered around respondents’ anxieties for the fall.
“I would easily trade my off campus/ traveling privileges for an in person-semester,” one student wrote. “Being able to socialize and learn in person with friends and colleagues is my highest priority.”
“I am going to be incredibly depressed if we can not return to campus in the fall,” another wrote.
But others expressed concern that the college committing to an in-person fall semester would pose too many uncertainties to be worth it. “I would rather have a clear remote fall than a chaotic one on campus,” one student wrote. More directly, others pointed out that an in-person fall would raise pressing questions about how to enforce social distancing guidelines.
Others offered their own tips on how the college should plan for the fall. “I think we should arrive to campus early, spend 14 days in isolation with the highest social distancing measures in place, and then have a normal fall semester,” a respondent wrote. “This would hopefully eliminate any risk of the virus spreading after the two weeks of isolation.”
As students sort through anxieties about what the fall will bring, immunocompromised students are experiencing higher degrees of concern about how the semester will look than most.
“As an immunocompromised student I am very scared of what life back at Middelbury would look like, yet also do not want to give up the rest of my college years,” a student wrote. “I worry about whether Middlebury is talking with the ADA coordinators/more vulnerable students to form a fall semester plan.”
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Four-hundred and twelve respondents — 71% — would be “very unwilling” to pay full tuition for a remote fall semester. And in the anecdotal responses, students posed concerns about how tuition payments and financial aid would work in the event of a remote semester.
“Will the college allow students on financial aid to take the semester off without restrictions? If I take the semester off and am on financial aid will I still be assured financial aid for the rest of my time at Middlebury? Will financial aid decrease due to financial hardships of the college? I am concerned that the college will hold financial aid over students' heads to prevent them from withdrawing from the semester if it is all remote,” a student wrote.
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41% of respondents said they would prefer a mandatory credit/no credit system in the event of a fully remote fall semester.
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And strikingly, 337 said they would attempt to take a leave-of-absence for the fall in the event of a fully-remote semester.
“Everyone I know would try to take a semester off if it were to be remote,” one student wrote in their anecdotal response. Another wrote that a fully in-person semester would be necessary for them to even consider paying full tuition and that “it isn't worth my money or my time otherwise.”
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In voicing anxieties about the fall, students — already three months into social distancing protocols by June — were most concerned about the ability of the pandemic in preventing them from socializing with friends.
Other significant anxieties stemmed from the ongoing public health risk and potential restrictions on campus activities.
“I am extremely concerned about the potential of party/social culture instigating an outbreak,” a student wrote. “I do not know that every student may follow social distancing/quarantining rules. In fact, I expect many to break them...I am worried that places of massive, close social gatherings (social houses, Atwater, etc.) will create a possible breeding ground for the virus.”
To the college, one student wrote, “good luck making these really tough decisions.”
Correction 6/4/20, 9:30 A.M.: A previous version of this article stated that "about a third [of students] reported knowing a friend who had tested positive and another third responded as not knowing anyone who had tested positive" for Covid-19. The correct figures are 40% and 41%, respectively.
(05/14/20 9:56am)
Anticipating new anxieties the realities of Covid-19 might impose on students, Parton Health Center overhauled its counseling program in the first week of an elongated spring break to provide therapy remotely for the remainder of the semester.
The counseling center has what Counseling Services Director Gus Jordan calls an “obligation to provide continuity of care”— that is, when students departed campus, Parton committed to ensuring that those who needed counseling would continue to receive support remotely. While spring break is usually a time when the health center quiets down, this year counselors spent that time educating themselves about remote counseling: learning Zoom therapy guidelines and studying ethics and risk-management practices for tele-mental health care.
However, they immediately faced a bureaucratic mess of state health department laws that restrict therapists in practicing outside of their state of licensure. While counselors on Middlebury’s staff are licensed to provide counseling in Vermont, licensing requirements for therapists vary from state to state, and call for different levels of certification ranging from Ph.D. to counseling certificates.
Some state officials recognized the need for quick access to tele-mental health services during the pandemic and changed their guidelines quickly (states like Mississippi and Illinois quickly offered “temporary licensure” for this purpose), but others did not. This meant that even as Middlebury counselors were available, they were in some cases unable to keep providing counseling over Zoom to students who had moved away from Vermont.
“The moment students scattered all across the country, we had to get looking at what the laws were that allow or prohibit providing counseling to students,” Jordan said.
Instead of continuing to provide therapy to every student, counselors divided their approach. They have held Zoom counseling sessions with the students whose home states permit it, while simultaneously taking a “case management” approach with those residing where regulations prevent continuity of care directly from a counselor in Middlebury. In these cases, counselors worked with student patients to locate a licensed therapist in their area who might be a good fit using Psychology Today’s Therapist Finder tool.
Jordan said that counselors have shifted from helping some students with pressures shaped by Middlebury’s environment—academics, social dynamics, feelings of not belonging—to new anxieties: fear of returning to unstable homes, in some cases, but more broadly the uncertainty of the pandemic. Counselors who have continued meeting with students have helped them work through that uncertainty—worry over finding employment during an emerging recession, concern about the health of family members and simple questioning of whether to make plans in the murky weeks ahead—alongside the usual worries that come with the end of a semester.
Brigett Weinstein ’20, who lived in Fairhaven, Vt. with her boyfriend during spring break before returning home to New Jersey, was able to meet twice with her Middlebury counselor via Zoom while she was still in Vermont. During those sessions, she said that discussions with her therapist focused on stress around future plans.
“Probably most of the anxiety is shifting towards looking towards the future, job stuff, and what that will look like in a pandemic,” she said. “I think that that's kind of natural—I wouldn't say that that's happening now because we're off campus, but also probably because we're just getting closer to graduating.”
Weinstein said that she did not initially assume she would be able to keep receiving care from her counselor once she left campus. She was surprised and grateful when her counselor reached out, and when they later offered to help put her in touch with a therapist in New Jersey. (She already had a therapist she is familiar with at home with whom she felt she could meet if necessary. New Jersey, according to Jordan, was a state that quickly changed its licensure rules so that therapists from out-of-state could meet with patients there.)
“My [Middlebury] therapist did the best she could with what she had,” Weinstein said. “I'm really grateful to her and grateful that Midd is still somewhat offering some things to help.”
Madeleine Ciocci ’20 had to stop seeing her Middlebury counselor, with whom she had been meeting regularly for two years, when she returned home to New Hampshire. But the two were able to meet several times over Zoom during spring break, and like Weinstein, Ciocci said that many themes of conversations they had had at Middlebury shifted in the face of uncertainties posed by the pandemic.
“All of us are trying to reconcile this huge life shift that we're trying to make with no warning or preparation,” she said. “At the same time dealing with all the stressors that come with graduating college and trying to make a huge life transformation while all these things are thrown into question.”
Ciocci said that the last session she had with her counselor, when she was told that they would no longer be able to meet, was “devastating.” Still, she was grateful for the efforts her counselor made to connect her with a new therapist in her area.
Technology has become a defining feature of remote mental health support, both in how it shapes the experience of interacting with a therapist and in how it dictates who is able to receive care (not every student has a stable internet connection or a private room in which to speak with a counselor). Using Zoom meetings as a primary communication method over the past two months has also led to what Jordan terms "Zoom fatigue"—people are simply tired of sitting in Zoom meetings at this stage of the semester. And, students said, speaking to a therapist over Zoom can lead to facial expressions, gestures and mood shifts not being picked up as readily as they are in person.
"Zoom definitely adds a weird dynamic where the body language isn't always there, and that's really important in therapy," Weinstein said.
Beyond therapy sessions with counselors, Jordan said that Parton has seen a “dramatic” increase in the number of students seeking guidance from Parton-run support groups, which the counseling department has held over Zoom in the past weeks. These groups included a weekly meditation series and a four-part workshop focused on college life called “Riding the Wave of Emotions: Being in College during Covid-19.”
Counseling appointments have been in high demand at Middlebury over the past few years. Still, Jordan said that on average when compared to past semesters, the number of students enrolled in counseling has decreased this semester as students are connected to providers in their home areas.
“If a student calls in and says ‘hey, I need help,’ we will have an appointment for them today, tomorrow...we can get them connected to a counselor right away,” Jordan said.
Students seeking counseling support may call Parton’s 24/7 counseling support line at (855) 465-5013.
Update 5/14/20, 11:00 A.M.: this article was updated to include more specific information about state-by-state counseling rules.
(04/27/20 3:00am)
Middlebury featured a photo of a student protesting Charles Murray’s 2017 campus visit in a promotional Instagram story last week, sparking anger among current and former students who accused the college of attempting to rewrite a painful chapter of its history for marketing purposes.
The Instagram story was posted Wednesday as part of the college’s “Midd Daily” campaign, which aims to give prospective students a taste of campus life. It featured a photo of Austin Kahn ’17.5, originally taken by Michael O’Hara ’17 on assignment for The Campus, protesting Murray’s visit in Wilson Hall. In the photo, Kahn holds a sign reading “this is an appropriate response” in front of the livestream of Murray’s conversation with Political Science Professor Allison Stanger. The Instagram story bore a caption that read, in part, “Social Justice and Activism: At Middlebury, we don’t just talk about social justice; we also act on it.” It was deleted later that afternoon.
In the hour before O’Hara took the photo on March 2, 2017, protesters shouted down Murray as he attempted to deliver his talk in Wilson Hall, forcing him and Stanger to livestream their conversation from a different room. Stanger was later severely injured by protesters while leaving the building.
Kahn was one of 74 students sanctioned by the college that spring for his role in the Murray protests (he did not reply to requests to describe the extent of sanctions he received as of press time, but has written publicly about being sanctioned on social media in the past). Severity of sanctions ranged from probation, which stayed on students’ records until the end of the semester, to official college discipline, which would remain on students’ permanent records.
If it intended to embrace a longstanding part of campus culture, the Instagram story of Kahn also prompted anger that Middlebury was using an event for which students were disciplined as part of an advertising campaign.
“Funny that you would punish students for protesting and then use their protest as part of an [sic] big advertising ploy,” wrote Cora Kircher ’20, a member of the environmental activism group Divest Middlebury, in an Instagram story of her own on Wednesday. Divest Middlebury later shared a screenshot of Kircher’s story to its Facebook page.
The Campus previously reported on the lengthy disciplinary process Murray protesters faced, which in part used photo and video evidence of the protests to pinpoint who was involved. That process garnered criticism from people on many sides of the free speech debate, with Murray lambasting the punishments meted out as "pathetically” insufficient while others decried the “terroristic” effects of a disciplinary process meant to “satisfy national audiences,” in the words of a professor.
“The funny thing is that after these protests, Middlebury launched an investigation where they used images like the one neatly featured on their account to discipline dissidents among the student body and intimidate sympathetic faculty,” Kahn wrote on his own Facebook page Thursday in a post that has since been shared 26 times.
In an email to The Campus, Social Media Director Andrew Cassel acknowledged criticisms of the Instagram story as “fully justified.”
“When we realized our mistake, of course we were concerned about any hurt it would bring to our community,” Cassel wrote. “In this case, both the admissions and communications teams recognized that we had made this oversight, and deleted the post.”
Kahn said he saw the promotional intent behind the posting of the photo as stripping away the “socio-political context” of the protest it captured. “The phenomenon of removing that meaningful act from its context totally perverted it and makes it meaningless,” he said. “It’s absurd.”
In what he saw as a silver lining, Kahn received a “wave” of messages from friends, many of whom had gone through the disciplinary process with him, notifying him that the image had been used in the college’s story on Wednesday.
O’Hara, the photographer, said that the Office of Admissions previously asked him permission to use the image, which he granted, but that he “was not provided context for how the photo might be used.” He granted permission under the assumption that the image would be included in #SixtyScenes, a collection of photos documenting campus life separate from the “Daily Midd” series that are shared as Instagram posts, not stories.
Cassel, who began as the college’s social media director last December, previously told The Campus that photos featured in the “Midd Daily” series are chosen collectively by multiple members of the admissions and communications offices. Midd Daily and #SixtyScenes fit Cassel’s vision of giving the college a more personal social media presence that better captures day-to-day realities of campus life, goals he described in a recent Campus profile.
Debate over Charles Murray’s work and his right to a platform at Middlebury had revived at the college in the months prior to Kahn’s surprise shoutout: Murray was scheduled to speak in Wilson Hall on March 31 on a new invitation from the College Republicans. But Covid-19 led to the cancellation of his visit, which would have been his third to Middlebury since 2007, along with the rest of in-person spring programming.
(04/09/20 9:57am)
College announces employee case of Covid-19
A Middlebury staff member has contracted Covid-19, Treasurer David Provost and College Physician Mark Peluso told the community in an email Tuesday afternoon. The staff member, who is the first college employee to test positive for the virus, is isolating at home and “doing well,” the email read.
Separate investigations by college health officials and the Vermont Department of Health determined there was “no risk of transmission of COVID-19 to any College student, faculty, or staff member.”
Porter Hospital announced the first case of Covid-19 in Middlebury on March 19. Since then, the Vermont Department of Health has reported 49 total cases in Addison County, which includes an employee at the Shaws grocery store in Middlebury. The county has not yet reported any deaths of the virus, which had infected 605 statewide as of April 8.
College pledges wage continuity through June
Middlebury will continue to pay all benefits-eligible staff — faculty, administration and other full-time staff members — through June 30, according to an email sent to employees on Wednesday. Paychecks will continue to roll out regardless of employees’ sick leave and combined time-off status.
The announcement of the June 30 date follows several weeks of planning shaped by the college’s March 18 to prioritize wage continuity. Administrators recognize that setting that date creates the expectation for employees that something “dramatic” might happen on that date, Provost wrote in the announcement. “While we cannot guarantee that that will not happen, we are naming the date because it is what our best budget projections allow us to say at this time,” he wrote.
The SGA has pledged $200,000 of its reserve funds this spring toward helping maintain wage continuity.
Mid-April date set for decision on summer programs
The college will make a decision in mid-April about the status of summer language schools and other summer programming, Provost told Campus editors in an interview on Monday.
The Campus reported on April 2 that the College was still accepting Language School applications, according to a recent email to a Language Schools mailing list. However, the email asked applicants not to make travel arrangements at that time, and said the college was “looking at alternative options depending on language and level, should our programs be disrupted.”
For more coronavirus updates, check here.
(04/02/20 8:40pm)
Following the lead of other colleges and universities, Middlebury will not bring students back to Vermont this semester and has ruled out the possibility of an in-person commencement in May, President Laurie Patton confirmed in an all-campus email Thursday afternoon. In a separate email, Treasurer David Provost detailed a plan to partially refund students’ room and board payments.
The approximately 120 students who remain on campus will be allowed to stay until the end of the semester provided federal and state governments do not change their policies, according to Dean of Students Baishakhi Taylor. “Students who are on campus can leave campus if they so choose, and we will help them with travel needs as appropriate,” she wrote in a text message to The Campus.
All classes will carry on remotely, “continuing the emergency approach to teaching and learning our faculty and students have already begun,” Patton wrote. She promised continued communication from the administration to help maximize students’ remote learning experiences.
Students have waited anxiously for news about commencement as the response to Covid-19 escalated around the country in recent days. Thirty-eight U.S. states had enacted stay-at-home orders as of April 2, and many colleges and universities around the country had cancelled graduation ceremonies. In the NESCAC, Bowdoin postponed its graduation ceremony without considering a virtual alternative, while Tufts will take Middlebury’s route of both a virtual May ceremony and a later, in-person gathering.
Patton acknowledged the disappointment members of the class of 2020 will feel at missing out on an in-person commencement in May, and said the college will still hold an in-person ceremony on an undecided date later this year or in 2021. The email did not describe possible formats for the virtual rendition of the ceremony, which will still be held the last weekend in May.
In his email, Provost wrote that the college will automatically place “prorated” credits for room and board fees on students' accounts beginning next Monday. Students will be credited between $1,000 and $4,380 — up to 55% of semester room and board fees — depending on families’ contributions to tuition costs.
Students have the choice of applying the credit to future charges or requesting a refund, Provost wrote. The credits, which will total close to $9 million, come as the college continues to pay all faculty and staff wages through the end of the semester. Families can also opt to make a tax-deductible donation to the college in their credit amount.
Middlebury’s annual June reunion ceremony has also been cancelled, according to Patton’s email. The school has not yet made a decision about the status of the summer language schools, but told those on a language schools email list two days ago that they are still accepting applications. However, the email also asked applicants not to make travel arrangements at the current time, and said that it is “looking at alternative options depending on language and level, should our programs be disrupted.”
This is a developing story. Check The Campus’ website for updates.
(03/24/20 3:29am)
While students on Middlebury’s Vermont campus worried last week about when they would next see friends, how to navigate remote coursework and where to go after school shut down, those enrolled in programs abroad were confronting the same worries, but with an added caveat: To make it home, many of them would have to travel halfway across the world amid a rapidly-spreading global pandemic.
Concerns over the Covid-19 virus have led colleges around the world to cancel study-abroad programs, and Middlebury’s own 16 programs have suffered the same fate. The college’s schools in China and Italy closed earlier this spring as the virus spread in those countries. Between March 10 and March 13, all remaining Middlebury schools abroad, from programs in Europe to Latin America, suspended their operations.
The college later put out a call for all students remaining in foreign countries — those in externally-sponsored programs or who had stayed in host countries after their Middlebury programs canceled — to return to the U.S on March 19, the day the State Department issued a Level Four Global Travel Advisory.
The result was several days of chaos and uncertainty for roughly 250 Middlebury students whose study abroad experiences had forcibly come to an end, as they sought to find their way home amid quickly-implemented travel bans and emerging facts about a mostly-unknown virus.
“‘Chaotic’ is the best way to describe it,” said Porter Bowman ’21.5, who was studying in Stockholm, Sweden through an independent program canceled on March 11.
Communication breakdowns
Students reported that occasionally poor communication from program coordinators, combined with rumors and bewildering information bites from national news sources, increased the stress of navigating cancellation of their programs and journeys home.
Kenzo Okazaki ’21 was enrolled in Middlebury’s CMRS program in Oxford, England, which was suspended on March 10. Students in his program became confused that morning, Okazaki said, after some of them received screenshots of the March 10 email in which Professor Héctor Vila leaked that the college would send students home from its Vermont campus later that week. Several nervous hours passed between when students first read Vila’s email and when they finally learned the fate of their own program from coordinators.
“I think everyone was frustrated that there wasn’t much of a heads up that our program might be shut down, so that at least people could start thinking about leaving more than six days in advance,” Okazaki said.
Abroad program coordinators have had to work “around the clock” to give direction to the movements of hundreds of students in programs across many time zones, according to Dean of International Programs Carlos Vélez. Vélez said the study abroad office made “every effort” to make decisions and update students on their programs’ status as quickly as possible, but that in any given country, information about travel advisories and restrictions “would change without warning, both from U.S. and local agencies.”
“One of the biggest challenges has been the relentless pace at which things have changed during this crisis,” he said.
Sometimes, lack of transparency from parties beyond students’ host institutions — like the president of the United States — caused problems. For students enrolled with Bowman in the DIS (Study Abroad in Scandinavia) Stockholm program, the hours between President Trump’s March 11 press conference, which aired at 2 a.m. Stockholm time on March 12, and the program’s official cancellation three hours later were “chaos.”
During that press conference, Trump announced he was banning all non-essential travel to and from Europe effective that Friday, failing to mention that U.S. citizens would still be able to travel freely. After the conference, assuming they would be unable to get back into the U.S., the Americans in Bowman’s program frantically rushed to make travel plans even without receiving confirmation that their program had ended.
“It was crazy,” Bowman said. “Flights were going like concert tickets.”
In an open letter written by Helene Gusman ’21 (who studied in Yaroslavl, Russia) and Megan Salmon ’21 (Santiago, Chile) and circulated the week of March 9, students in programs abroad called on the administration to provide clarity on their situations. They had never received President Laurie Patton’s email outlining the Vermont campus’s plan to shut down, according to the letter, and had to wait hours and sometimes days before receiving clarity on the status of specific schools abroad.
Vélez later clarified that messages sent to the “all student” mailbox are typically sent to students in abroad programs, but that a technical issue prevented the delivery of some such messages that week.
Gusman and Salmon’s letter received signatures from 40 students around the world; however, its writers ultimately chose not to send it to the administration after Trump announced his travel ban and abroad programs began to provide more information to students.
Trump’s travel ban caused panic for students across Europe. Gretchen Doyle ’21.5, who was studying in Middlebury’s program in Madrid, Spain, said she received a call from a friend at 5 a.m. local time on March 12 alerting her of the travel ban. Like Bowman, she was so concerned that she immediately bought a plane ticket home to New Jersey without waiting for confirmation of her program’s cancellation.
Doyle recognized the challenges posed to abroad program coordinators in uncertain times, but said she was still frustrated by a lack of communication from Middlebury.
“After Trump announced the travel ban and the majority of us had bought tickets to fly home, we didn’t hear anything from our program for a long time,” Doyle said. “I don’t blame anyone for the way things were handled because it was a stressful time for everyone, but I was frustrated.”
As confusing as Trump’s language in his press conference was for students, Vélez said that it was equally disruptive for the study abroad office. Though the press conference made it seem as though the travel ban would apply to all travelers, the study abroad office was not certain this was the case and decided to wait to make announcements until the U.S. State Department released its official proclamation on the travel ban, Vélez said.
“At that point, close to midnight in Vermont, all of our program directors communicated the correct information to all of our students abroad,” Vélez said.
Students worry about academic continuity
Just as students enrolled at Middlebury in Vermont worry about how coursework will continue as the college shifts to remote learning, those in programs abroad are wondering how curricula taught in different languages and across time zones will translate to life at home.
Okazaki’s coursework within the CMRS-Oxford program was largely focused on individual research in Oxford’s libraries, and weekly one-on-one check-ins with professors during which students are given rigorous feedback on written work. That intimate structure will not be easily replicated thousands of miles away from Oxford’s famed libraries, he said.
“The idea was to use Oxford's library and to become familiar with the resources you can get there that you can't get anywhere else in the world,” Okazaki said. “Well, now we are anywhere else in the world without a library.”
Other students, like Lila Sternberg-Sher ’21.5, had not even begun classes at their host universities when their programs shut down. Students in Sternberg-Sher’s Middlebury program in Temuco, Chile — as well as in all other programs in Latin America, where local university classes begin in mid-March — were given the option of receiving full refunds and forgoing academic credit for the semester or taking online classes through Middlebury’s program in Chile (not the public university where they had planned on taking classes).
Sternberg-Sher, a linguistics major, said she was disappointed that she will have to pass up on in-person linguistics research she was planning on doing in Temuco, but still plans to take remote classes from home.
“I’m lucky enough to be set up well within my major that it shouldn’t be a huge issue for me,” she said, adding that the Chile program is well-equipped for remote learning after navigating university shut-downs last fall.
Many students expressed relief that the Pass/D/Fail option would extend to those in abroad programs, like Hailey Kent ’21.5, who is directly enrolled in the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where classes began in January.
“This did not make for a very academically fulfilling semester, and I am glad that Middlebury is extending its pass/fail policy to students abroad because I feel my grades are not accurate representations of the quality of the work I have completed,” she wrote in an email to The Campus.
Experiential learning
Though the week of March 9 was mostly stressful for students, many said it was eye-opening to see the varied responses of governments and populations of their host countries during one of the more frantic times in recent history.
In Madrid, Doyle and other students were surprised by the lax approach residents seemed to take to the virus in a city that news outlets have reported as a Covid-19 hotspot. They watched Madrid’s metro system, restaurants, cafes and sporting events running like normal, even as they heard from friends in the U.S that worry over the virus was heightening there.
“There were people out in the central park, Retiro, and out at bars until the day I left,” said Lilly Kuhn ’21.5.
Jess Cohen ’21, who was studying at the main public university in Buenos Aires, Argentina through a Middlebury program, observed similarly low concern over Covid-19 at first. Students’ host families, he said, were quick to denounce anxiety over the virus as overblown, and students in the program were similarly unworried. Once the Argentine government began to shut down public spaces on March 13 (the day Middlebury canceled its program there), Cohen said the seriousness of the situation began to sink in.
No matter the reaction of varying countries’ populations, students said worry over the virus significantly impacted the truncated time they had in their host countries.
“I read the news every night before going to bed and right when I woke up, and I usually couldn’t sleep through the night,” Doyle said. “It was difficult to immerse ourselves fully in Spanish culture because we didn’t know how much longer we’d be there, so it wasn’t the study abroad experience I had hoped for, to say the least.”
Some students, disappointed at the prospect of losing a semester of language and cultural immersion, pondered staying in their host countries even after Middlebury had suspended programs or their host universities had closed entirely.
Cohen initially planned to continue living with his host family and taking remote classes after the Middlebury program in Buenos Aires was suspended. By doing so, he thought, he could still obtain the Spanish-immersion experience he had gone to Argentina for in the first place while weathering the storm of Covid-19 in an area that seemed relatively unaffected.
“I felt like all of the students in my program who had decided to leave were surprised that I was going to stay — but they had all wanted to stay,” he said.
In the 24 hours after he made his initial decision, though, as Cohen watched the city shut down, he decided to head back to his home in Colorado. Even Buenos Aires, a part of the world that was largely untouched by the virus at the time of the Middlebury program’s cancellation, was closing bars, soccer stadiums, museums and restaurants — steps that were being replicated around the world to prepare for unknown effects of the rapidly-spreading pandemic.
“Streets that were usually totally full of people and cars were completely dead,” Cohen said. “All the shops other than the grocery stores and a couple of cafes were closed that normally would be full.”
Cohen scrambled to buy a ticket home on Saturday, March 14, and got one of the last flights out of the country before Argentina shut its borders on Sunday.
Okazaki said that, between the Oxford program’s cancellation on Tuesday and his Sunday departure, there wasn’t much time to be preoccupied. When he finally found his seat on a direct flight from Heathrow to Salt Lake City, though, he said a sense of calm washed over him.
“As soon as I got on the plane I realized how relieved I was and how lucky I was to get out of there,” Okazaki said. “I got home and realized that the U.K. was going to start being shut down, and realized how much crisis I had averted.”
Editor’s note: Porter Bowman ’21.5 is a news correspondent for The Campus.
(03/19/20 10:09am)
We had three Covid-19-related stories on the docket a week and a half ago. Now, it’s hard to think about — and report on — almost anything else.
A lot has changed since then. We’ve since shared goodbyes, packed up our commons-office-provided boxes and dispersed around the world. Some watched their friends leave, unable to return to their own homes themselves. Some of us worried about work-study; others grappled with food insecurity.
As the dust settles, so many questions linger: What will online classes look like? What are the implications of the suspension for the town of Middlebury? Will the college provide its staff with financial security as operations come to a grinding halt?
The Campus is committed to continuing our investigation into these questions — and the coverage of the diverse narratives of our greater Middlebury community. Amid the ambiguity and uncertainty of current events, we want to provide a sense of clarity. And during a time when we are the furthest apart physically, we want to be a platform that helps Middlebury stay connected.
What can you expect from us?
The show must go on. The Campus will continue its coverage remotely, online. We will publish stories as they are ready this and next week, and will re-assume regular Thursday coverage on April 2, the first Thursday after spring break.
Our weekly newsletter will also highlight the key stories from the week, so don’t forget to sign up for it here. That newsletter will start back up on April 2 as well.
We see ourselves as a forum to amplify voices that can no longer chat around dining hall tables, greet each other between classes and convene at local coffee shops and teahouses in town. As we scatter geographically, we want to explore what remoteness means for the different members of our community.
This is work we cannot do alone. Here are some ways to get involved:
Help us with coverage: Let us know if you’re interested in joining our team of writers — no prior experience necessary and the commitment is flexible.
Express your opinion: Tell us what you’re thinking by submitting an opinion piece or a letter to the editor.
Keep us in the loop: Know something that’s going on or want us to explore a certain topic? Drop us a tip.
Tell your story: We want to fill our (virtual) pages with stories from every corner of the now-dispersed Middlebury. Send us a short story about your experience, or email us if you’re interested in contributing regularly with tales from your living room couch, quarantined city or quiet dorm room. We will have prompts regularly for potential letters to the editor (200 words) and op-eds (800 words). This week’s prompt is about all the feels that came with last week’s announcement.
Our mission is to serve our readers and to reflect the goings-on and spirit of the college in this extraordinary time, so please stay in touch. We are looking forward to seeing you engage with — and participate in — our coverage this semester.
(03/10/20 5:41pm)
For updates on the situation at Middlebury, check here.
For updates on the situation at Monterey and at the Middlebury programs abroad, check here.
President Laurie Patton confirmed Tuesday afternoon that students will be required to leave campus on Friday, March 13 to begin an extended two-week spring break in response to the Covid-19 viral epidemic. Following this break, Middlebury will begin remote classes on March 30. Students will be expected not to return to campus “until further notice,” according to Patton’s statement.
Students who may be compromised due to additional health conditions are permitted to leave campus before Friday. Those who cannot leave campus — such as some international students and domestic students who will be at a greater risk in their home community — can petition the school to remain on campus, where they will also resume courses digitally.
All students must indicate to the college their intentions to depart or petition to remain on campus. Students who wish to remain on campus must complete the form before 3 p.m. on Thursday, and will be notified of a decision before 9 a.m. on Friday.
The announcement outlines a myriad of other stipulations for the coming weeks.
The Campus will continue to update our coverage online as necessary.
(03/10/20 2:22am)
Will Nash ’20, an economics major from San Anselmo, California, died early Saturday morning after experiencing a “reaction related to drug use,” according to a statement sent to the Middlebury community by President Laurie Patton later that day.
The Middlebury Police Department (MPD) received a call from the college’s Department of Public Safety at 3:57 a.m. Saturday asking for assistance with a student who “was exhibiting unusual behavior,” according to a press release written by MPD Sgt. Michael Christopher. Officers determined that Nash, the student in question, “may [have been] experiencing a medical event.” Nash was subsequently transported to Porter Hospital by Middlebury Regional Emergency Medical Services (MREMS), where he was pronounced dead.
An autopsy is pending and an investigation ongoing, Christopher wrote in the press release.
Nash, who lived in Atwater Hall this year, was a Spanish minor and studied abroad in Madrid, Spain in the fall of his junior year. He was a pole vaulter on the men’s track team through his sophomore year. He and a friend founded their own streetwear company, Semiaquatics, in November, producing sustainably-sourced hoodies, T-shirts, sweaters and skateboards.
Patton’s email said that Nash is survived by his parents, Kristin and Lenny Nash; his twin brother, Drew Nash, a senior at Wake Forest University; and his sister Catie, a sophomore at the University of California, Berkeley.
Detailed plans for a celebration of Nash’s life will be sent to the community soon, according to the statement.
The Campus plans to publish an obituary of Will Nash with commentary from his family, friends and peers. If you were close to him and would like to share memories of Nash for publication, please email The Campus at campus@middlebury.edu.
(01/25/20 6:50pm)
Charles Murray will not receive financial compensation for his upcoming talk at Middlebury. Lodging and transportation fees for the visit will be covered by The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank where Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar.
Murray is scheduled to speak at Middlebury on March 31 in a talk sponsored by both the Middlebury College Republicans and the Open Campus Initiative (OCI). In a phone interview with The Campus, Murray confirmed that the AEI will cover transportation and lodging costs. He said he agreed to waive payment for the talk because the College Republicans’ budget would not have been sufficient to cover that cost.
However, student organizations are not allowed to fund speaking engagements through their Student Government Association-approved budgets, per the student organization handbook. MCAB President Zeke Hodkin said that at no point did a member of the College Republicans or the OCI reach out to the MCAB Speakers Committee to request funding for the talk, as is standard protocol for any club seeking to find funding for a speaking engagement.
Murray said he was willing to waive a speaker fee because he felt it was important that he return to Middlebury after the reaction to his 2017 talk.
“I was willing to do that because I thought it was an important statement to come back,” Murray said. He said he and the College Republicans had not yet decided on the topic of the talk, but that discussing his new book “Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class” would “sort of make sense.”
Murray’s visit will, however, incur additional security fees. The Campus previously reported that the college has hired extra security for the event.
Neither a spokesperson from the Department of Public Safety nor the AEI could be reached for comment before publication.
(01/22/20 7:42pm)
Charles Murray, the controversial conservative speaker whose 2017 campus visit incited massive student protests and made national news, has been invited to return to Middlebury.
Murray is set to speak in Wilson Hall on March 31 at 4:30 p.m. The Middlebury College Republicans issued the invitation, according to an op-ed written by the club’s co-presidents Dominic Aiello ’22.5 and Brendan Philbin ’21 and published in The Campus today. Philbin said that Murray has accepted the invitation.
“We understand that this will have ramifications for us personally and the community at large. Nevertheless, we will continue to support free inquiry on our campus,” Philbin wrote in a text to a Campus editor. “We wanted to be transparent, up-front, and as clear as possible about the planning of the event. In our view, The Campus is the best vehicle to communicate directly with the community.”
The talk, which is being co-sponsored by the Open Campus Initiative along with the College Republicans, will focus on Murray’s new book “Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class.” Many of the event’s details and logistics are still being discussed, according to a statement sent to The Campus by Director of Media Relations Sarah Ray.
Murray first visited the college in 2007 to talk about his book, "The Bell Curve." His second visit a decade later, on his book "Coming Apart," sparked protests by hundreds of students, which ultimately prevented him from speaking to a live audience in Wilson Hall. Murray later delivered his talk via live-stream on the college’s website. Political Science Professor Allison Stanger, who moderated the live-stream and had been set to preside over the live event, sustained serious injuries at the hands of protesters after she, then-Vice President of Communications Bill Burger and Murray exited McCullough Student Center.
In the op-ed, Philbin said that the administration has been involved in discussions about organizing the event since last September, when the College Republicans first proposed bringing Murray back to campus. Ray said that the college’s policy of open expression should not be interpreted as an endorsement or approval of Murray’s views, and acknowledged the importance of open expression and student protest during speaker visits.
“Each year Middlebury hosts nearly 300 speakers who come to campus from across the country and around the world, invited either directly by the institution, by its faculty, or by its registered student organizations,” Ray wrote in the statement. “With each event, we are committed to providing a forum in which the Middlebury community can engage in a thoughtful, rigorous, and respectful manner.”
Box Office Manager Debby Anderson told The Campus that the college has hired additional security for the event.
Murray’s ideology has been classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as white nationalism; the SPLC website describes Murray’s work as driven by “racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics [that] argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women and the poor.” Student protesters widely decried his views, such as those espoused in “The Bell Curve,” as racist, misogynistic and hateful.
After his 2017 visit, though, members of the American Enterprise Club (AEI), which invited Murray for that visit, argued that the prevention of the talk constituted a violation of campus free speech policies. Some national news outlets agreed.
Since 2017, Murray’s visit has contributed to re-evaluation of the college’s protest policy, prompted administration-led town halls and broadly influenced discussion about free speech on Middlebury’s campus and beyond.
Middlebury was thrust into the national spotlight after that visit, as news outlets including the New York Times, The Atlantic and Politico editorialized and reported on the event. Three weeks ago, Forbes magazine named the 2017 visit as one of 10 moments that “capture a decade in education.”
The college disciplined 74 students in the fallout of the event. In one case, an accused student filed a racial profiling complaint. Middlebury’s Title IX & Compliance Office launched an eight-week investigation and concluded that the Public Safety officer associated with the case did not violate its policies.
Charles Murray and certain members of the administration involved in the event’s planning process could not be reached for comment at press time.
This is a developing story and will be updated accordingly. Managing Editor Bochu Ding '21 contributed reporting.
Correction: A previous version of this story did not mention Murray's first visit to the college, in 2007. The article has since been updated to reflect that information.
(11/14/19 10:59am)
Most students studying abroad in Chile chose to stay in the country despite civil unrest, after the college’s study abroad office gave them the option to leave.
After protests started three weeks ago, the study abroad office first considered an evacuation of all students enrolled in Middlebury programs in Chile. On Oct. 24, it elected instead to give them several options. They could remain in Chile, relocate to Buenos Aires, Argentina or return to the United States, where they could earn partial academic credit through remote work or full credit by adding a summer language course. Students were asked to decide on a course of action by Monday, Nov. 4.
Of the 23 students enrolled in Middlebury programs in six Chilean cities, three chose to return to the United States, one chose to relocate to Buenos Aires and the remaining 19 chose to stay in Chile, according to Assistant Director of International Programs Alessandra Capossela.
Students were first asked to decide on one of the four options by Nov. 1. However, many became frustrated by what they saw as limitations in the options. To earn full credit if they went home, students would have had to complete Chilean coursework remotely, in addition to the additional course of summer language school, the cost of which would have been covered by the college. Relocating to Buenos Aires would have allowed students to earn a maximum of 3.5 credits, rather than the full four.
For many students, the easiest way to earn full credit would be to remain in Chile, where credit wasn’t a guarantee either because many universities there remain closed. In response, students called and sent emails to the study abroad office requesting more flexible ways to earn credit. Capossela responded by sending students revised options in an email on Oct. 29, which included opportunities to earn more credits in Argentina and at home without taking a language school course.
“We are hearing from some of you that you are feeling like you are forced to remain in Chile because you need to get four credits for this semester,” Capossela wrote in that email. “As I had mentioned in a previous message, it certainly was not our intention to preference staying in Chile over any of the other options.”
Capossela followed up with another email to students later that day, detailing courses organized by the study abroad office, independent of Chilean universities, that students remaining in Chile would be able to take while host universities remained closed. The five-week long intensive course focuses on social movements in Latin America and is centered on Chile.
[pullquote speaker="Mason Arndt '21" photo="" align="left" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]
A lot of the violence has continued. We’re limited in our movements and things feel really off.[/pullquote]
“This was big for us because it means we aren’t relying on the universities to resume classes in order to get credit, something we thought was unlikely to happen,” Mason Arndt ’21 said. Arndt is living in Viña Del Mar and chose to remain there for the semester.
Along with the intensive course, students will earn half a credit for each university class they were taking (most took three or four), one letter-grade credit for internships or independent studies and one credit for a writing and culture class that was already part of the Middlebury program. With these options, students have the opportunity to earn the four credits they expected to receive at the start of the semester.
Sidra Pierson ’21 was one of 11 students living in the sister cities of Viña Del Mar and Valparaíso who signed a petition asking to remain in Chile when the study abroad office considered an evacuation in October. The guarantees of credit for remaining in Chile only made her more sure of her decision, she said.
“There was a lot I could still get out of the semester even though we’re giving up a lot of your typical study abroad experiences,” Pierson said. “Getting another month and a half at the time with my Chilean host family and friends, and speaking Spanish, it all felt worth it.”
In Santiago, Mireille Becerra ’21 agreed, saying that staying in Chile is “easiest for me compared to all other options.” Because her semester in Chile is scheduled to end on Nov. 20, she said, leaving the country made little sense.
Though Chilean president Sebastian Piñera lifted the national state of emergency on Oct. 28, protests and violent government response have continued. Students studying in the sister cities and Santiago have watched protests and police crackdowns in their neighborhoods in the past days.
“Marches with thousands of people take place both on the streets and in plazas, parks, or other commercial sectors,” Becerra wrote in an email to The Campus. “Various stores continue to be broken into or set on fire as well. Both to disperse the massive crowds and to stop the robbers, the police use tear gas and water pressure.”
In Viña Del Mar, Arndt said, protests did not ease much even after the state of emergency was lifted. On Nov. 12, Pierson watched smoke rise above the city as fires set by arsonists raged, and took video of police clashing with protesters several blocks from her homestay.
“A lot of the violence has continued,” Arndt said. “We’re limited in our movements and things feel really off. There might be an image of everything going back to normal for students who have stayed, but that’s not really the case.”
On Nov. 13, administrators in Valparaíso had to cancel a meeting of the intensive course for the second time in two weeks amid concerns about students moving between the sister cities
“We’re all feeling like, ‘how the heck are we going to get this course done in the next four weeks?’,” Pierson said.
Students scheduled to study in Chile in the spring said they have received mixed messages about whether they will be able to proceed with their semesters abroad as planned.
“I feel that things are really up in the air, and the abroad offices are not offering very clear or specific information,” said Ella Houlihan ’21, who was planning on studying in Valparaíso in the spring. Some students have filled out applications to study in other locations such as Uruguay, Argentina or Cuba.
“I opened up a second app to Buenos Aires and I’m even considering applying to an external program to Cuba last minute,” said Olivia O’Brien ’21. “I really hope to go to Santiago, though. If Middlebury runs the program in the spring, it is still my top choice.”
According to Capossela, the study abroad office is in conversations with Chile program director Juan Pastene as to options going forward for students scheduled to spend the spring semester there.
“We are planning to let Spring 2020 students know what their options will be by the beginning of December,” she wrote in an email to The Campus.
(10/24/19 1:56am)
UPDATE: Thursday, Oct. 24, 6:45 p.m.
Rather than evacuating all students enrolled in its schools abroad in Chile, Middlebury’s study abroad office is allowing students to choose how to proceed.
In an email to students enrolled in the programs in Chile, Assistant Director of International Programs Alessandra Capossela outlined four options students may take going forward. Students can either choose to remain in their host cities and await universities resuming class; relocate to Buenos Aires, Argentina for the remainder of the semester; or can return home to the U.S.
If they return to the U.S., they have the option to complete coursework remotely for up to 2.5 credits, or can earn up to 4.5 credits by adding a course of summer study with the Middlebury School of Spanish.
“We spoke with Global Rescue this morning and our advisors there confirmed that the situation was stable for the time being, with some slight improvements in that curfew hours are being shortened in a number of cities,” Capossela wrote in the email. “[Schools in Chile Director] Juan [Pastene] is cautiously optimistic that many of the universities will reopen on Monday.”
In her email, Capossela asked that students make a decision by next Friday, November 1.
——
Oct. 23, 2019
Middlebury’s study abroad office is considering evacuating students enrolled in its programs in Chile in response to widespread civil unrest and government attacks on protesters that have recently swept the country.
Currently, 23 students from Middlebury and other colleges are enrolled in the C.V. Starr Schools Abroad there, located in Concepción, La Serena, Santiago, Temuco, Valdivia, and sister cities Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. Most students in Middlebury programs are located in the capital city of Santiago and the sister cities, where protests erupted at the end of last week after a hike in public transportation fares.
The hike was later revoked by President Sebastián Piñera, but protesters declared on social media that the increased fees were only the “tip of the iceberg,” and have demanded change in wealth inequality, government corruption and high cost-of living — conditions many see as remnants of Augusto Pinochet’s 1970s dictatorship.
The Chilean government declared a state of emergency in some cities, including Valparaíso and Santiago, on Saturday. Members of the police and military have since attacked and detained protestors, shooting at them with rubber and live bullets and throwing tear gas bombs.
Assistant Director of International Programs Alessandra Capossela, who advises for the college’s schools in Chile, alerted students enrolled in the programs on Tuesday via email that the college’s study abroad office is developing plans for a possible evacuation “should things not improve in the next few days.” But even if the protests did quiet down, she wrote, it would be doubtful students could eventually return to their classrooms, given potential for longer-term university closures and student strikes.
In an email to The Campus, Capossela wrote that the study abroad office is considering “all possibilities for the program in Chile going forward, including but not exclusively an evacuation of the students.” Any plan that is implemented will apply to all students enrolled in the Middlebury program regardless of their home institutions, Capossela wrote.
If students are evacuated, they will be flown to Buenos Aires, Argentina or a city in the United States, likely Miami. From there, they will take flights to their home cities. Global Rescue, the study abroad program’s security adviser, is working on an evacuation plan for students and will be in charge of all operations in the event of an evacuation, according to the email sent to students in the program.
In that email, Capossela wrote that her office is exploring “alternative solutions” to earn academic credit, so that students can earn credit even if an evacuation takes place.
Still, some students expressed frustration at the possibility of leaving the country.
“I can’t speak for everyone, but we feel relatively safe and want to continue learning from this experience, even if it’s not a traditional semester abroad,” said Sidra Pierson ’21, who is enrolled at the Catholic University of Valparaíso and living in a homestay in Viña del Mar.
According to Mason Arndt ’21, who is attending the same university and also living in a homestay in Viña del Mar, students in the sister cities have created a petition asking to remain in Chile. Eleven of the 12 students in those cities have signed the petition. Arndt was the only student who chose not to sign, saying that though he has had a positive experience in Chile, he doesn’t believe strongly enough to sign that staying is the right move.
“If they decide to send us home I would definitely be sad because I’d feel like I’d be losing a valuable experience, but for me it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” he said.
In Chile, students in Middlebury programs have observed — either firsthand or through accounts by Chilean acquaintances — looting of stores by protesters, violent government response to protests and other signs of unrest over the past several days. Looting, arson and other violent tactics used by some protesters have created some conflict within the movement between those who do and do not condone the use of violent protest tactics.
Protests in Valparaíso and Santiago have significantly altered the course of students’ semesters. Some Middlebury students in Valparaíso had already missed substantial class time due to student strikes at universities that forced classes to start in September rather than mid-July. Classes at the Middlebury programs’ host universities were again cancelled this week when this round of protests began. Students have been told to remain indoors at all times in the face of various curfews put in place in major cities.
A 6 p.m. curfew was put into effect in Viña del Mar on Monday. Before then, beginning on Saturday, it was set to 8 p.m., Arndt said. With major cities under martial law, the Chilean military has repeatedly shot people for staying out past curfew.
Arndt saw protesters lighting trash cans on fire in the street outside his apartment window on Saturday night. One man threw a brick through the window of a pharmacy across the street, and protesters proceeded to steal items from the store. Later, Arndt watched police arrive and dispel the protesters, who were out past curfew, with batons and tear gas.
“It feels a bit apocalyptic,” Arndt said.
Over the weekend, Pierson said she tried to visit a friend’s homestay in the late afternoon, only to be turned around by a line of police officers advancing down a street and throwing tear gas at a throng of protesters.
“When I left my house, you could taste the smoke in the air,” Pierson said. “People were setting fires everywhere.”
Arndt understands the protestors’ cause, but he and other students have largely assumed roles as observers.
“It's easy to be empathetic in terms of the high inequality and the high cost of living,” Arndt said. “But it's really impossible for us to understand what it's like to live in a country like this that had a dictator.”
The program’s students have been told not to join protests in light of the violence, as well as for fear of possible deportation if they are caught. But the consequences of the protests and government response will not affect them nearly as severely as they affect Chileans, Pierson said.
"The way this is going to affect us is probably not going to reach far beyond our academics for one semester," she said. "It’s a pretty in-your-face reminder of our privilege and status as foreigners here. Chileans can’t just up and leave, this is their reality.”
Last year, students studying at the C.V. Starr school in Yaoundé, Cameroon were evacuated as a precaution following contentious presidential elections. That evacuation, to Morocco, was temporary.
This is a developing story and will be updated accordingly.
(10/17/19 10:01am)
The Department of Public Safety (DPS) has been working on a plan over the past several months to update the college’s security systems before the end of this academic year.
The plan, introduced to the Middlebury community in an email on Sept. 24, will lead to the installation of an updated door swipe system and an undetermined number of stationary security cameras across campus — both measures scheduled to take effect this year. Administrators have also discussed the possibility of equipping public safety officers with wearable body cameras, but that measure has been only tentatively broached and will not be implemented this school year.
“Fundamentally, at the highest level, it’s about providing a safe environment for our students,” Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration David Provost said.
Discussions about installing stationary security cameras have taken place continuously over the past decade, according to Provost, as peer institutions have incorporated such cameras in their campus security plans in increasing numbers. Colleges like Colby, Bowdoin, Saint Michaels and University of Vermont have used cameras in past years. As recently as 2015, however, Community Council voted down a proposal to install cameras at Middlebury.
Administrators decided to proceed with a plan to install cameras this year because of a combination of community support — even the once-reluctant Community Council urged administrators to consider installing cameras in January — and a national climate that necessitated more stringent security measures. In the wake of several mass shootings nationwide in recent months, administrators began to consider ways to decrease the campus’ vulnerability, according to Provost.
Provost, Public Safety Director Lisa Burchard and DPS are still in the preliminary stages of devising the new security plan. Detailed “best practices,” the exact number of cameras and their locations, and policies around storage of stationary camera footage have yet to be determined.
Updated card access system
DPS has already begun upgrading the card access system used to regulate entrance into college buildings. DPS has been contracting with Minuteman, a Massachusetts-based security technologies firm, to add swipe pads to doors that haven’t had them in the past, like Old Chapel and the lower doors in Bicentennial Hall. Minuteman has previously installed security systems at Smith College, University of Massachusetts at Worcester and other Northeast colleges.
The new system will also give people who work in certain buildings jurisdiction over who can enter them with ID cards, removing some of that responsibility from DPS. DPS hopes to install the new Minuteman card access system by this December alongside the old system, before transitioning completely to the new system at the start of the spring semester.
Students will still be able to use their existing Middlebury ID cards once the new system has been installed.
“We don’t want people to think that the changes are going to suddenly overwhelm them,” Burchard said. “Most of the changes are going to happen within public safety.”
Stationary cameras
The September community email said that stationary cameras will be installed “beginning this winter.” But that timeframe was a rough estimate. Realistically, Provost said, students should not expect to see stationary cameras on campus until April or May of 2020. Though DPS has a sum of $10,000 allocated from its operating budget for the installation of cameras this year, a larger budget is needed before the plan can be carried out in full. Next year’s budget will not be finalized until May, so it’s unlikely that many cameras will be installed before the end of the spring, according to Provost.
DPS has yet to decide the exact locations and number of cameras. The Atwater parking lot, where cars have been broken into in recent months, is one site that Burchard identified as a likely candidate for an early-stage stationary camera — one that would be installed using the leftover $10,000.
Minuteman, the firm commissioned to upgrade the card-access system, will also work on installation of stationary cameras. This will allow for what Burchard describes as an “integrated” system between cameras and swipe systems.
Provost and Burchard acknowledged that the new plan would likely prompt student concerns about privacy, as discussions of cameras have done in the past. In 2015, for example, students voiced frustrations with plans to install cameras that emerged after a wave of vandalism.
Though they are still in the process of determining best practices, Burchard and Provost said definitively that camera footage would likely not be stored for more than 30 days. Stationary camera footage occupies huge amounts of space, Burchard said, and storing it for longer than a month would be impractical. She also said that camera footage will not be monitored 24/7, but will be consulted in the wake of a reported crime that is being investigated.
“By no means are we suggesting at all that this flies in the face of privacy,” Provost said. “This is about spaces that are most vulnerable, from our information as well as students’.”
Following recent instances of campus vandalism in some dorms, some facilities staff have voiced support for the security cameras.
“Hopefully this will cut down on vandalism,” Facilities Supervisor Wayne Hall said. “Over the last 10 years, my staff group has been reduced from 16 to 10. We have to cover more buildings than ever, and we don’t have time to fix things that don’t need to be fixed.”
Body cameras
Burchard said plans to equip public safety officers with wearable body cameras are in the “the very beginning discussion phases,” and that it is unlikely the college will implement these plans in the near future. She said that her staff remains unsure of camera model and exact policies around data storage and use of cameras by officers.
If they are implemented, Burchard said, body cameras will be part of an effort to increase transparency between DPS officers and the campus community.
“We want to improve the trust and transparency involved in the interactions when people have questions,” Burchard said.
Body cameras are implemented in many cases by police forces as tools to prevent racial profiling by officers. DPS officers have been accused of racial profiling in the past, such as when an officer alledegly racially profiled a non-white member of the faculty, according to a 2017 letter to the editor in The Campus.
Past camera controversies
Proposals to install stationary security cameras at Middlebury have surfaced repeatedly over the past two decades.
The 2015 plan to install cameras resulted in a spate of campus vandalism, according to a May 2015 report in The Campus. Graffiti sprayed around campus, some of it in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, had ignited a debate over whether or not to install cameras. In response to the proposed security response, some students spray-painted “no camera” graffiti at various locations.
An op-ed submitted by Beyond the Green in 2014 raised attention to the “hyper-policing” of minority people on and off Middlebury’s campus, urging students to consider who society teaches them to be worthy of policing.
“Certain bodies are already marked as scary and criminal before they have been ‘caught’ committing a crime: Black and Latino bodies have historically been watched on this campus, mirroring how they are hyper-policed in the ‘outside world,’” the piece reads.
The article goes on to recount an instance of a non-white, gender non-conforming student being confronted by Public Safety. The piece’s authors suggest that the student was confronted because their identity made them seem to have “something to hide,” arguing that “surveillance reinforces normative identities by making deviance ever visible.” Installation of stationary security cameras would continue to perpetuate such systems of oppression, the piece argues.
In an editorial published in April 2015, The Campus editorial board pointed to a surge in thefts as a reason for the installation of cameras, arguing that “there is a large divide between a police state and installing surveillance cameras to protect students’ belongings.”
Hall, the facilities director, remembered that when he was a member of staff council in the late 1990s, the Middlebury Openly Gay Alliance (which has since been disbanded) posted a bulletin board that was defaced several times. Staff Council discussed placing a camera in the location of the bulletin board, but student protests ended up shuttering the plan.
“The student responded was, ‘Big Brother’s watching. We don’t want it’,” Hall said.
Peer institutions
Many of Middlebury’s peer institutions have been using stationary security cameras for years. But few of them equip safety officers with wearable body cameras.
Bowdoin College has had a stationary camera system in place since 2000. A 2005 report on Bowdoin’s security surveillance network describes a system of 50 CVC-GANZ high-resolution digital color cameras that store video data for up to five weeks before deletion. The cameras were an “invaluable tool” in solving on-campus crimes, Bowdoin’s then-director of security said.
Colby College was one of the first schools to equip its public safety officers with wearable body cameras, according to Burchard. A July 2017 Patrol Procedures Summary for Colby’s security staff states that “body camera footage will be reviewed and interviews will be conducted by the Dean’s Office” in the event of a Colby student failing to show a security officer their ID upon request.
Burchard and Provost said that as plans for both stationary cameras and wearable body cameras develop, students, faculty and staff will have the opportunity to weigh in on the discussion through Community Council meetings and other forums.
(09/26/19 11:52am)
Administrators outlined a plan to implement new security systems on Middlebury’s campus, including stationary security cameras at “high-priority locations,” in an all-school email Tuesday afternoon.
Exterior building entrances and exits, locations where thefts have occurred and areas used for large public events are places where stationary security cameras are likely to be installed this winter. “90% of colleges and universities” already use such cameras, according to the email.
In addition to stationary cameras, new swipe readers will be installed beginning this winter at entrances to certain academic buildings that have not had them in the past.
The email also mentioned a still-developing plan to equip “safety and security personnel” with body cameras, “an effective tool for providing transparency and accountability concerning safety practices.”
“We are still in the research and information-gathering stages regarding these cameras,” the email read.
The email was signed by Director of Public Safety Lisa Burchard, VP of Finance and Administration David Provost and VP for human resources Karen Miller.
The Campus will continue to update this story in print and online.