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(10/30/13 9:01pm)
Past a locked glass door and a chair that belonged to Robert Frost is Special Collections within the Davis Family Library, the space in the Library’s basement that primarily comprises the books you will not find shelved in the stacks.
“It’s both a collection of materials that are either very rare, unique, expensive or fragile, so there are a few different varieties,” Director of Collections, Archives, and Digital Scholarship Rebekah Irwin said. “Generally, the oldest books in the collection are here, and some special collections are set aside.” Within Special Collections are the collections of books such as the Abernathy Collection – a trove of manuscripts and rare books from great American authors of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Priceless books such as Henry David Thoreau’s personal copy of “Walden” are kept in Special Collections.
“So that’s a very valuable and, of course, irreplaceable item which is kept in a safe,” said Assistant Curator of Special Collections and Archives Danielle Rougeau. Even if they are not books, items of significance to the literary world are also housed in the collections.
“Thoreau’s father and Thoreau for part of his young adulthood were pencil-makers. So we have Thoreau pencils and a box that the pencils came in,” Irwin said. “I don’t know how many students know that the chair that sits in the front is Robert Frost’s chair and his moth-eaten sweater that sits on top of it, and his radio from the Frost cabin in Ripton.”
Other collections are more unconventional, such as the Helen Flanders archive, made up of recordings collected by the eponymous researcher and folklorist who traveled across Vermont during the mid-1900s to record folk songs.
“We have 250 or so of her Edison wax cylinders that she used to record as well as thousands of records and early reel-to-reel tapes that she made,” Irwin said. “It is a collection wthat is very popular among folklorists, musicians and researchers who are interested in how folk music traveled from Europe to America.”
Rare Books and Manuscripts holds the books that, for the sake of preservation, have to be kept in certain conditions and not tossed in a backpack and walked around campus. These books are instead used in the Special Collections reading room.
“The Manuscripts part of [Rare Books and Manuscripts] is unique manuscripts, usually from authors,” Watson said. These manuscripts include drafts of books before they are published, as well as letters and research papers.
Oftentimes, these manuscripts reveal information about an author.
“We have those collections, so if someone is interested in the process an artist or writer goes through, we have those raw materials,” Irwin said. “And that is something you can study to learn about the person or the process of writing.” Rare books also includes a growing collection of Civil War letters.
A recent gift came from the spouse of an alumnus who was a niece of Ernest Hemingway and gave many of personal diaries and letters from the family.
“So if you’re really into Hemingway, you’d be thrilled the collection here,” Watson said. “It’s the kind of thing that we would have researchers coming nationally or internationally to do research on.”
The College Archives, a collection of any items and publications produced by people associated with the College, is an important part of Special Collections’ mission.
“By the nature of being as old a school as we are, we have an amazing range of materials in the collection dating back to 1800 and before,” Irwin said. “It reflects what is happening in society by the activities happening here and we have the benefit of over 200 years of collecting.”
While the priceless items in the collection are of use to researchers, the Special Collections staff primarily serves students as well as administrators.
“When the College does new things, they also like to look backwards,” Irwin said. Especially when considering changes to departments, such as the split of History of Art and Architecture and the Fine Arts department in 1997, according to Irwin, administrators like to examine the precedent that can be viewed in the Archives.
“We’re supplying them usually with research information that they need to produce flyers and brochures but they’re also asking us for images often,” Rougeau said.
According to her colleagues, Rougeau’s ability to recognize and name the faces in the photographs of the Archives is unrivaled.
“She’ll look at a photo of a dinner in 1905 or 1911 of the alumni group in New York City, and she names 10 people in the photograph,” Watson said. Rougeau speculates that working with the materials since 1994 is why her memory of the people in Middlebury’s past is so keen.
“I feel like I have a responsibility to try to document this so that the names are there and it’s available,” Rougeau said.
At the end of the day, however, Special Collections can only delay the inevitable.
“All things made of paper are made of organic materials, and all organic materials slowly degrade whether it’s our bodies or a tree or a piece of paper and the point of preservation is to slow that down as much as you possibly can if you want to keep it in the future,” Watson said. This reality has led to a digitization effort, with photographs, manuscripts, and materials from the Archives are being scanned in order to preserve them. Nevertheless, the ability to digitize has its downsides.
“We have photos and scrapbooks and letters and diaries of students of Middlebury College through the 1900s and into the 20th century but the last time one of you or your classmates wrote a letter to a friend, kept a journal on paper or took a photo and made a print of it, it’s been a long time,” Irwin said.
The Internet and digital media are hampering the Archives’ ability to tell the story of events that happened on campus.
“A student can come to our archives and can study how women at Middlebury organized themselves around women’s suffrage or abolition or any big political movement because we have documents that tell that story,” Irwin said. “But if a student 10 years from now wants to understand what was happening around climate change on campus or divestment, so much of that was happening not on paper but on social media and digital cameras and cell phones and on blogs. We need to make sure that we can tell that story and that a student doing a history thesis a decade from now is able to see those materials.”
(10/17/13 1:29am)
When the Biomass plant, a lynchpin of Middlebury College’s carbon neutrality goal, shuts down, it is a massive undertaking. Starting the night of Thursday, Oct. 10, the plant’s input of wood chips was stalled, the burners died down and steam pumping through the College’s pipes was heated by oil instead of the gasification process.
Kelly Boe, central heating plant manager, said the longer the plant runs, the greater the effort required to clean it.
“This thing has about an eight to 10 week cycle on it before we have to shut it down and clean it out,” Boe said. “Since it started up five years ago we’ve tried to increase that cycle so we can run longer and have more of the work for the campus be done by biomass as much with oil. We just went 16 weeks, which is the farthest we’ve ever gone.”
Understandably, an operation as large as the Biomass plant does not shut down without planning ahead of time.
“The real issue with this guy is you don’t just shut it off for an hour,” Boe said. “It’s like a fireplace. The way you shut it down is you just shut the wood off and starve it. And if it goes out then you have to restart it. It’s not like pushing a button and it starts for you.”
The run-up to the shutdown meant letting the gasifier burn through the remaining supply of wood chips that arrive at three tall garage doors at the back of the plant. Ninety tons a day of wood chips arrive daily at the plant.
“The bunker holds a one-day supply,” Heating Plant Operator Myron Selleck said, gesturing to the pit.
Although the plant is a highly visible part of Middlebury’s campus, most students probably do not grasp the extent of the process that starts with semis pulling up to plant and ends with hot water and heated buildings. In another difference from a wood stove, the Biomass gasifier does not simply burn wood chips.
“The way the whole system works is we put wood in the [gasifier], and we restrict the amount of oxygen that we let it see,” Boe said. “The wood won’t actually combust. It will give up a gas which is a flammable gas that is primarily hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which both have energy value. We maintain the gas at about 3 percent oxygen. It goes over to the boiler, and just before it gets to the boiler, we hit it with another shot of oxygen, and that’s when it catches on fire, and it’ll actually burn at that point.”
Burning the wood-gas rather than the wood itself makes the plant heat up water to create steam more efficiently.
September was an ideal time to run the biomass for the last leg of its 16-week marathon.
“In the month of September, 23 out of the 30 days were oil-free,” Boe said.
Having temperate weather meant the demand for steam from the plant was not as great as it is in summer, when the Biomass plant sends it to Bicentennial Hall.
“We use steam to cool the building,” Boe said. “The steam will regenerate the refrigerant.”
The plant has been a financial boon to the College on top of being a highly visible reminder of Middlebury’s commitment to sustainability.
“It was put in place because of the carbon-neutral goal the College had for 2016, but there is a great financial windfall that comes with that when it runs and you don’t burn oil,” Boe said.
Despite a glitch-free 16 weeks of operation, the success of the plant was never certain, especially when the plant was first installed.
“There’s not many of these out there, and this one was one of the first put in of its size,” Boe said. “So even the manufacturer was in uncharted waters. We had to learn our way around it and figure out how we needed to run it full capacity and how to get from four weeks to six weeks to eight weeks to 16 weeks.”
Despite the numerous steps in the Biomass process, Boe said the plant can be run by one person. Nevertheless, the 10-hour shifts that the heating plant operators work overlap by several hours just in case.
The plant operators continue to strive for greater efficiency for the plant and less reliance on oil when the plant is not running. Boe said that the goal of maximizing efficiency leads to some discussion.
“Going to 16 weeks gets a little bit of a debate going because there are seven or eight of us, so we all have an opinion about how the next thing should work,” he said.
One theory that is moving forward has to do with supplementing the plant with bio-methane purchased from a supplier south of Middlebury. That proposal, however, is not without controversy and complicated engineering.
“It’s all tied into the natural gas pipeline that is getting some attention now, as to whether or not that’s the way we convey it to the boiler,” Boe said. “And as for the burned [methane], we will have to reconfigure the boilers.”
A misconception students and faculty have about the plant, Boe said, is that the Biomass facility is configuring heating for individual classrooms and dorms.
“If you go to turn your thermostat up and it doesn’t heat up, you don’t necessarily call here and say, ‘Hey heating plant, can you turn our heat on?” Boe said. “But we’ll get a call every now and then from a professor saying, it’s a hundred degrees in this building, can you guys shut this thing off? And we say, ‘Well, the steam is in the line but something else is not allowing it to shut off.’”
Even so, Boe said the plant operators attempt to navigate the peak times for steam demand, which are, according to Boe, in the morning, lunchtime, when the cafeteria dishwashers start up, and in the evenings.
While it takes meticulous planning to configure, Boe said from an engineering perspective that he prefers working with the biomass plant than flipping a switch to turn on the oil-burning side of the plant.
“In addition to being expensive and bad for the environment and everything else, the oil boiler is relatively boring,” he said.
(10/17/13 1:14am)
Instead of the steady hum of steam and woodchips moving through pipes, on Monday, Oct. 14, the biomass plant was a hive of activity.
Power-washers sprayed water onto the machinery, large vacuum tubes crisscrossed the plant, and staffers clad in white protective suits and masks cleaned the gasifier and boiler from a buildup of ash that has occurred over an unprecedented 16 continuous weeks of operation. Heating Plant Operator Myron Selleck was there to see it all, just as he has been for every clean up since the plant’s inception.
“I’ve worked at the biomass plant since it opened and I’ve been at the College for 14 years,” he said. “It’s pretty neat that you guys get to come in here during a maintenance shutdown. It’s one of those things that usually is not glamorous so very few people see it.”
The focus of the heating plant operators’ cleanup efforts was also the main component of the biomass gasification process.
“Inside of this big red box is where we actually gasify the wood chips,” said Selleck of the large structure. “So all of this stuff gets filled up with ash and crud. They’re hydroblasting it with water and big vacuum hoses and people are going in to do some inspections.”
Selleck walked over to the gasifier and points out a pile of what look like football-sized pieces of charcoal.
“Unfortunately, there’s a few chunks,” he said. “What that primarily is is the dirt or any mineral that might be in the wood. Trees come out of the woods so they may have some nails or fencing.”
The size of the charcoal pieces notwithstanding, Selleck says he is not worried.
“Out of 8000 tons of wood, that’s the only bad stuff,” said Selleck. “The rest of it gets taken out with the vacuum truck.”
Despite the apparent scale of the cleanup efforts, Selleck said it should not be surprising given the amount of woodchips they are working with.
“In the last 16 weeks we gasified 8000 tons of woodchips to make steam. Because of the magnitude of the system it takes a little more cleaning than just a bucket and a shovel,” said Selleck.
Making sure that the smokestack above the biomass plant is emitting nothing but water vapor is another goal of the cleanup process.
“The economizer takes all the exhaust gases coming off the boiler and passes through these bins that takes heat out of the exhaust gases and heats up the boiler water,” said Selleck. “They’re cleaning out the economizer with a high-pressure washer and they can run up to six to ten thousand pounds of pressure with their water gun.”
The staffers in the plant are all wearing white protective suits and masks to work with and spray down ash-covered equipment.
“There’s water and there’s ash, so it’s pretty corrosive,” Selleck said. “If it gets on your skin it probably won’t kill you, but it could irritate it.”
A huge tarp had been hung off the edge of the boiler to contain some of the mixture of ash and water that had pooled on the floor in places.
“Before we tried the tarp, the water was everywhere,” Selleck laughed. “Water and the tubes that bring it take the ash and fling it everywhere. We’ve learned over time that the more we can harness that, the less mess we have to clean up.”
Selleck said the plant also has effects beyond the glass façade of the facility.
“Because of our fans, we’re sucking air from wherever we can, and I think we suck every leaf in Addison County up to our doors,” he said. “So inside and outside we’re sweeping up.”
To get up close to the boiler, Selleck pushes aside some caution tape. “Throwing caution to the wind,” he joked. Up at the boiler, the cylinder had been opened up to show the innards of the boiler, and peering inside is like looking into a cave.
Selleck is proud of the work he has done for the biomass plant, and for good reason. He walked around to the oil-burning side of the plant to show what fuels the College when the biomass plant is not running – a pail brimming with thick, black oil.
“They call it Number 6 residual, so it’s not very refined,” said Selleck. “When we burn this, we need to use either compressed air or steam to atomize it and break the droplets up small enough so you can even burn the darn stuff. If you dropped a match in there, it would just go out.”
“It’ll be really nice to get rid of that,” Selleck added.
The job of a plant operator like Selleck requires great vigilance. Pouring over a lengthy checklist, Selleck explains that the biomass plant’s activity has to be monitored almost constantly.
“We’re watching how much oil we’ve burned for the day, we’re watching our temperatures,” he said. “We watch what our kilowatt meter is registering.”
Even while Selleck is speaking, another heating plant operator motions to him to take a look at a printout of some unusual readings for the plant. Scanning the data, Selleck explained that the plant had been using much more water than usual, to the tune of 10,000 more gallons than normal.
“We’ll look at today’s usage tomorrow morning, and if it’s high, we’ll go to the HVAC shop and say, can you guys go out on campus and look for a condensate pump that’s not working? We’re not getting that condensate back,” Selleck said.
Selleck’s verdict on the 16-week-run was unequivocal.
“It’s been spectacular. Certainly we want to try to do that again,” he said.
As for whether they will try to push the limit again, Selleck demures.
“We’ll see,” he said.
Until then, Selleck said the biomass plant will continue to run without stopping for an astonishing amount of time, with little leeway given for its source of fuel.
“Our bunker is only a one-day supply,” he said. “We’re talking about not shutting down again until February, so Christmas Eve, New Year’s Day, we are still going to have three truckloads of chips come in. A truckload of chips lasts 8 to ten hours. We only have a 24-hour cushion in that bunker. It doesn’t stop. There’s someone here 24/7, 365 days a year. We never shut down — even if the trucks stop coming because of a big storm or something.”
Ultimately, the work that Selleck and his colleagues did on Monday and for the rest of the week will make their next run a success as well.
“We’re hoping that by being vigilant custodians and making sure we have a good clean system when we’re done this week, that we’ll get another 16 week run,” he said.
(10/09/13 4:00am)
Wes Doner climbs into the driver’s seat of the truck and pulls on a pair of plastic gloves. “Are you guys ready?” he asks with a grin. It’s 12:30 p.m. on a Friday afternoon and Doner, a waste and recycling handler with facilities services, is about to start the third leg of his daily route collecting garbage from around campus.
The massive vehicle revs its engines and throttles up the hill from the Recycling Center. “We’ve got to hit Hillcrest Road, grab all the bags on toss them on the truck,” Doner said.
Doner has worked for the College for four years but this is his first week as Recycling Handler.
“Before, I was a floater and before I was a floater I was on crew, so I used to clean carpets and buff floors,” he said.
The first stop is behind Proctor Dining Hall, where a garbage truck is lifting bins of food waste into the back of the truck using a mechanized arm. Mounds of uneaten food pour from the upside-down containers into the truck, en route to be turned into compost.
Around the corner at Stewart Hall is the visible sign of student waste, with around 30 plastic bags piled at the corner. According to Doner, today’s amount of garbage is typical.
“If it’s real nasty then we’ll toss it but if it’s alright we’ll go through it a little bit,” Doner said, referring to the sorting that happens at the Recycling Center. A CD with “Mumford & Sons” written on it in Sharpie is visible in one of the garbage bags before Doner grabs it and tosses it in the truck.
Grabbing several bags at a time and throwing them into the truck, Doner said, “One thing that frustrates me is a lot of them aren’t tied and we have to tie them.”
Dorms like Stewart generate much of the garbage Doner takes down the hill in the truck. When asked which dorms are the biggest garbage-generators, Doner responds, “Battell and Allen (because they are together), or over in Atwater.”
At the Davis Family Library, Doner pulls around to the back and opens a sliding garage door. Although the Library is not a site one would think of as generating heaps of trash, Doner immediately begins hauling bags filled with Coke cans into the truck. A cardboard box filled with dirty dishes and cups sits on the ground next to the containers.
“We’ll gather them up after a while and bring them back to the dining hall,” Doner said.
Some of the plastic bags Doner is loading into the truck are practically bursting with the refuse of studious individuals. The truck is already almost a third full of plastic bags. Doner says the truck — the size of two minivans — can sometimes get completely filled with garbage bags.
“Some Mondays it can get like that. We just open it up and start grabbing and then get up into the truck,” he said.
Doner, who used to box at the Boys’ and Girls’ Club of Connecticut, goes after the garbage bags with the same tenacity as a prizefighter in the ring. The nature of Doner’s job is it can never be completely finished — every day, more trash fills the containers in dorms and academic buildings, and in turn ends up on the corner for him to grab. When asked if it gets frustrating, Doner is nonplussed.
“I just go with the flow – it’s work, you know,” he says.
Most of the time Doner unloads all the bags himself, as he was doing on Friday. He says he would not have it any other way.
“Usually I would rather do it myself anyways so I can get it done and get back on the route again,” he said.
Doner is no slouch when it comes to completing the route. “We usually have break about two o’ clock but I don’t take break; I just go back there and unload and go back out,” he says.
Mondays bring a titanic amount of garbage to pick up, Doner said, but that Friday presents it own challenges.
“Friday I have to make sure I get everything” he said. “we can’t leave anything out over the weekend.”
The route seems like it should take two people; Doner single-handedly drives the truck, parks it, jumps out, opens whatever gate is in the way, grabs the bags and hurls them into the truck.
Glancing into some of the bags by Meeker, Doner explains one of his frustrations with the job.
“There is one thing that gets me. When the students don’t take the time to throw the can into the recycling bin, when they throw it right in the garbage, that pretty much sucks right there,” said Doner. “Some days it is mixed and it gets the guys at the Recycling Center a little aggravated. And it’s hard for me to sort it and it’s frustrating.”
Melissa Beckwith, assistant director of support services in facilities services, dispelled the fustrating myth about Waste Management.
“One thing we hear frequently is, ‘Well, we don’t have to sort it because they’re going to sort it.’ That’s totally the wrong attitude. We would like people to sort it so we don’t have to because it makes the whole system much more efficient.”
When asked if the lack of sorting happens a lot, Doner said some stops are worse than others.
“I usually throw the garbage on the right side of the truck, and when I get down there I’ll look through to make sure there isn’t spaghetti sauce all over or something,” he said.
Doner has his share of horror stories – finding bottles filled with urine is not out of the question, he says incredulously.
“Come on, are students too lazy to go to the bathroom?” he asks.
While there were no encounters with wildlife on Friday, Doner has had to tangle with squirrels hoping to access the garbage.
“There was sometimes when I’ve had to move a bag around so they can get out. But now they’ll hear the truck and get right out of there,” he said.
The nature of the work at the Recycling Center can be constant. In 2012, Waste Management processed 2,485,000 pounds of recycling, compost, universal wastes and hazardous waste.
“If you empty a couple carts, within an hour they’re full again,” Beckwith said. “It’s kind of like the research paper you can never finish.”
(10/03/13 3:00am)
Although much of the attention on immigration reform in Congress centers on the policy toward illegal immigrants, Professor of Public Policy at the College of William and Mary Harriet Duleep brought to light a surprising fact about immigration.
“For almost half a century family unification has been the cornerstone of U.S. immigration policy,” said Duleep. “But now buried in the comprehensive immigration reform proposal that’s been put forth by the Senate is a recommendation that the relatives such as siblings and the children of immigrant citizens could not get in unless they obtain visas for specific job skills.”
In the D.K. Smith ’42 Economics Lecture on Sept. 24, Duleep gave a talk titled “The New Immigrants – Blessing or Bane?”
“Most of the attention in the newspaper is about illegal immigrants but I thought that I would speak about something you may not realize and it has received almost no attention and yet it is a major change,” she said.
Duleep began by saying that contrary to popular belief academic research does have an impact. According to her, the studies on the downsides to family reunification have had a major effect in shaping the immigration reform debate. Duleep is well aware of what federal policymaking can be like. In his introduction, David K. Smith Professor of Applied Economics Phanindra Wunnava praised Duleep’s contributions to the economics of immigration.
“In my view, Professor Harriet Orcutt Duleep is an authority on ‘immigration economic assimilation models.’ Her work is relevant to the ongoing debate concerning the direction U.S. immigration policy should take,” said Wunnava in an email.
Duleep has taken part in that debate personally.
“Given her expertise on immigration over the years she was invited to testify in front of the House of Representatives commission on immigration reform and the Senate Judiciary Committee,” said Wunnava.
Duleep explained how there are two motives behind the drive to cut family reunification.
“One is that family admissions serve humanitarian goals only,” said Duleep. She then quoted the late Senator Edward Kennedy who said it would be inhumane to cut out sibling preferences.
“But he didn’t mention that there would be economic fallout from doing so,” Duleep said.
The second belief, said Duleep is that immigrants who gain entry to the U.S. because of kinship ties are not helpful to the economy.
“It falls from that that to be economically competitive the U.S. needs to bring down family-based admissions and increase employment-based admissions,” said Duleep.
She said there may also be some underlying mistrust of lax immigration laws at work. The two groups entering the U.S. in the greatest numbers recently are Asian and Latin American immigrants, with European countries sending fewer migrants, and that the U.S. has historically viewed new immigrant groups with suspicion.
“Would there be the same concerns about the economic productivity of recent immigrants if most came from Europe and Canada? I think that’s a legitimate question although you’ll see from the earnings profiles that although immigrants may still face discrimination … there is enough openness in the economy that this can be overcome,” said Duleep.
The crux of Duleep’s argument was that how we measure immigrant earnings affects whether we think today’s immigrants are a blessing or a bane for the U.S. economy. She also said people who already thought we need to cut down on family admissions were handed a tool in these types of studies that may assume too much.
Duleep explained a variety of reasons why family-based immigrants are not a drag on the economy. First and foremost, employment-based immigrants have siblings too.
“A family friendly policy may be one reason the U.S. has been able to attract the best and brightest,” said Duleep. “Eliminating the siblings preference may make the U.S. a less attractive destination for employment-based immigrants.”
She went on to say kinship based immigrants also contribute economically by a willingness to learn new skills. In some instances, a greater percentage of immigrant groups go to school than U.S. natives. Additionally, in order to add to the economy, one has to stay in the country.
“Immigrants with family ties are more likely to stay in the U.S. and a prerequisite for investing in U.S.-specific human capital is permanence,” said Duleep. “If you’re not going to stay here, there’s no incentive to learning skills that may be applicable to the U.S.”
Duleep also said those who were asked when they decided to stay in the U.S. had high earnings growth beginning that very same year.
“The intent to stay permanently in the U.S. affects behavior and the likelihood of learning new skills,” she said.
Even a quality like entrepreneurship has ties to whether immigrants have relatives here.
“When you look at research examining the likelihood that an immigrant starts a business, the most important variable that far surpasses any other variable like education or age is whether an immigrant has siblings in the U.S. It’s a very strong result,” said Duleep.
An overarching point to the lecture was a word of warning about assumptions in academia.
“When you read economic studies as they are reported in the newspaper, be wary of assumptions. The assumptions are perhaps what you should pay most attention to and think about if there is a way one can approach this issue without making assumptions,” said Duleep.
Ian Thomas ’13.5 was in attendance and said in an email that the U.S. sought to continue family-based immigration.
“Prof. Duleep accurately highlighted the importance of permanence in our ever-changing world. Citizens and immigrants are much more likely to invest time in acquiring country specific skills if they believe they will settle in that country,” he said.
(09/25/13 7:22pm)
While some students claim to have filled out a work order, the work of the Facilities Services staff that keeps Middlebury running smoothly often happens under the radar. As a result, many students do not know the extent of Facilities’ operations.
“I think the magnitude and the time we spend would be the most surprising thing that I think people would find,” said Wayne Hall, Facilities Maintenance Supervisor for carpenters, painters, and locksmiths.
The trades that fall under Facilities’ purview include carpentry, plumbing, heating, landscaping, electrical, an auto shop, car rentals, night watch and waste management — not to mention snow removal. That magnitude is apparent from even a brief tour of the Facilities building.
The first point of contact students have with Facilities happens at a front office.
“All phone and computer information comes through the control desk and the intention is to have it funnel through here so we don’t miss anything,” said Hall. The control desk prints work orders based off that information.
Most of the staff carry two-way radios so they can be contacted immediately. A corridor with offices of management personnel and an IT staffer is next to the control desk. An additional room in that hallway is the plan room, with large metal filing cabinets with original floor plans of various buildings.
“All of the buildings from when they were constructed have all their plans here – electrical, everything,” said Hall. “If we have questions this is our resource for checking in history.”
One of Hall’s responsibilities is managing the locksmiths.
“We have a full lock shop here,” said Hall near the entrance to the office where locksmiths solve broken locks. “All the keys you need, all the keys we need, they do it here.”
The locksmith shop is also an example of how the work of the Facilities staffers is evolving all the time.
“Now we are going install more keypad locks,” Hall said. “Each year we are trying to do more and more so we rely less on keys and more on combo.”
A large table next to the lock room is where staff repairs windows, screens, and window shades.
While the Facilities staff does most of the work that is needed, contractors are occasionally brought in. Chimney repair, masonry and other major painting projects are handled by contractors who are contacted by a Facilities staffer specializing in outsourcing work.
Downstairs, custodial services staff can pick up their radios from a wall of equipment and keys. According to Hall, some of them report in at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. to clean buildings when no one is using them.
“Our service time used to be very shrunk but now expectations with the way the world is and schedules it has really broadened,” said Hall.
The carpentry shop, near Hall’s office, has a box with the name of each staffer with work orders in them.
The plumbing department is headquartered in a cavernous room where above a conference table are shelves of stock supplies and uniforms. The paint shop, close by, has two hockey goals on large tables that are being painted in anticipation of the hockey season.
By the end of a short walk through the building the broad range of tasks completed by Facilities is clear.
Hall began working for Facilities in 1994. “It’s been a good learning experience,” he said. “I’ve got a great group of guys with a wide range of skills and aptitudes. We’ve got a great group. We all complement each other and work as a team.”
Hall also coordinates with getting tenants off-campus since many faculty live off campus in college-owned housing that require Facilities staff to repair. He also said he has the advantage of being able to interact with students.
One of the staff members working under Hall is Ed DeMatties, a maintenance carpenter who has worked at Middlebury since 1990. DeMatties is also on the emergency response team for confined space rescue, trained to rescue people trapped in elevators, manholes or other spaces where Facilities works.
On Friday, he could be found jetting around campus in a green John Deere Gator. The first stop was an unoccupied room in Stewart Hall where DeMatties had to install a new window shade.
“This used to be a lounge here,” said DeMatties, pointing to a room adjacent to the one where he was working. “I put this wall in and installed that door. We did that just a couple weeks ago.”
DeMatties said Facilities makes a point to be both as efficient and non-disruptive as possible when working on student rooms. This time, a piece to repair the shade was missing.
“You think you have everything and you get all the way up there and you’re missing one thing,” he said. But I’ll be back and this room is empty so it’s not a real rush.”
A minute later, DeMatties’ two-way radio crackled to life with a call about 51 Main’s basement hot water heater leaking. “Plumbers get more stuff like that,” he said. “They all carry radios. I’m the only one in our shop besides Wayne who carries a radio.”
After evaluating the Stewart room and determining he needed more parts, DeMatties selected the next work order. After taking the Gator back to the Facilities building to pick up a door stop, he went back to Stewart to install it in another student room to prevent a cabinet from hitting a wall mounted sprinkler when opened.
DeMatties said they see a lot of student damage work orders come in.
“Usually after the weekend,” said DeMatties. “This year I haven’t seen much at all.” DeMatties added with a laugh that it was hopefully a part of the learning process.
Having worked at the College for over 20 years, DeMatties has seen his fair share of projects on campus, including a repair of all the sinks in the bathrooms of Hadley and Milliken Halls. “I came up with a design to replace them,” said DeMatties.
“Hopefully now they should last a long time,” he said.
Commencement used to take place behind Forest Hall, but when it was moved to Voter Hall, DeMatties helped arrange the setup for the ceremony and put the flags atop Voter.
“I went to school for architecture and so they had me come up with the plan for the seating layout and so it was kind of cool I got to do that,” said DeMatties. “Now they come to me for questions.”
Aside from his work on campus, he put his training in architecture to use when he designed and built his own house. After successfully installing a doorstop on the wall, it was over to the Mahaney Center for the Arts to pick up a framed poster of the upcoming Fine Arts events to be installed in Axinn. DeMatties deftly measured an area on the wall by the entrance to the building and screwed in the hangers for the poster.
DeMatties is also in the process of working on guardrails for beds in Voter. “When I put the first one in, somebody else said, ‘I’ll take on too,’ and so I put two in and now somebody else has seen it, and now I’m making one for all of them.”
Although Facilities sees between 1,200 to 1,500 work orders sent to them every month, that does not mean their work is highly visible.
“A lot of the stuff we do probably doesn’t get noticed, such as in student rooms,” said DeMatties. “If the person is there, we’ll tell them we fixed it. If they’re not there, we’ll leave a note tag inside the door telling them we were there and what we did.”
Hall echoed DeMatties’ sentiment. “[Facilities] is behind the scenes. Nobody realizes it until we’re called on,” he said. “Everybody plays a role whether you’re a custodian or a manger, no matter what, because the faculty and the students wouldn’t be able to do their jobs if it wasn’t clean or if the lights didn’t work. Everybody’s job, no matter what it is, is a key part of making it all work.”
(09/25/13 12:00pm)
Does the Constitution make America a great nation?
On Thursday, James W. Ceaser, professor of politics at the University of Virginia, made the case in a lecture for the Constitution as the wellspring of American greatness.
Professor of Political Science Murray Dry introduced Ceaser, explaining how the origins of the Constitution Day lecture can be traced to a provision in a 2004 federal spending bill. The late Senator Robert Byrd included a requirement in that bill: any college or university receiving federal funding implement an educational program to observe Constitution Day (September 17, the day the founders signed the Constitution).
“I imagine that Senator Byrd and Congress intended this as an imprecatory law, similar to the law that tells us how to dispose of worn-out flags, meaning that it was recommended but the government was not going to be checking up on us,” Dry said.
“Nonetheless, in the spirit of the rule of law I was delighted to comply.”
Ceaser began by stating his goal.
“The crux of the topic must be to show how the Constitution causes American greatness, if it does,” Ceaser said. “I’ll eventually set the bar even higher than this, asking how the Constitution almost by itself, and not as a consequence of any of its secondary effects, directly contributes to greatness.”
“Most discussions of greatness I know focus on the individual person, not the nation,” Ceaser said, citing George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as examples.
But Ceaser said it may surprise some that the founders believed national greatness could be found by studying individuals.
Ceaser also said a good nation is not necessarily a great nation.
“Great nations by contrast, aim for something commendable.” According to Ceaser, nations such as Norway or Luxembourg do not aim for greatness and may in fact spurn the idea.
“At the end of the day, however, national greatness is a concept that must be understood at least partially, on its own terms, as a distinct phenomenon, and not merely as a copy of individual greatness,” Ceaser said.
Ceaser then listed four characteristics that capture the idea of national greatness.
Ceaser said that a great nation will have the means to impact other nations in the world.
“The power can be employed defensibly, say, to thwart the conqueror bent on crushing and enslaving others,” Ceaser said.
He argued that time and again the United States has intervened in defensive actions, including on behalf of Western Europe, South Korea and Kuwait.
Second, Ceaser said that a great nation will add to civilization through cultural or scientific achievement. On this front, said Ceaser, “where America clearly is singular and made a massive contribution is in its innovation in modes of production and use of technology.”
“A great nation might be one chosen by God to play a role in his providential plan,” Ceaser said.
As for this third mark of greatness (religious mission), Ceaser said many New England Puritans thought of America as building a city on a hill.
“It’s not beyond the bounds of faith or reason to consider that there might be a special role for this almost-chosen people in providing a safe haven for the biblical religion and in offering a modicum of protection for those threatened and persecuted around the world in its name,” said Ceaser.
Finally, he said a great nation produces a new and worthy mode of political organization as a model for others.
“America has staked its claim to greatness on a new form of government for the modern age,” said Ceaser, arguing that the transformation of governments around the world is a result of the United States Constitution.
Considering the importance of the constitution to American government and society, Ceaser said the constitution must be a “precondition” to American greatness.
“The constitution, its conception, production and adoption, make it a monument of achievement in the theory and practice of government, and for this it needs no one else,” said Ceaser.
A significant aspect of the greatness of the Constitution was the way it was conceived.
“The adoption of this new government was by choice or consent rather than force,” said Ceaser. “The requirement that the Constitution had to be ratified by the large body of the people … is the decisive fact in the establishment of modern government in the world.”
Ceaser also said an argument in Federalist No. 49 makes the Constitution into something more than a contract binding together the United States.
“The dimension of reverence was deliberately added as a way of stabilizing the Constitution into something more than paper or parchment,” said Ceaser.
“The Constitution comes in some sense to occupy the same status as the crown in England, a symbol of the nation, beyond the will of any institution or leader.”
Zak Fisher ’16 said he had not heard of the law requiring a Constitution Day event.
“I didn’t know that that was an actual law; however, given the character of the American spirit, the fact that we’re celebrating our principles, our ideals, it doesn’t surprise me,” said Fisher. “I have no doubt that if there were no law we would still be celebrating just as we are today.”
As for the content of Ceaser’s lecture, Fisher said, “Personally, I don’t find myself agreeing with everything Professor Ceaser had to say but I think he was eloquent and he gave very thoughtful and well-reasoned remarks.”
(09/18/13 10:51pm)
Students pumped up their bicycle tires to participate in a social-media-focused campaign by Greenpeace encouraging bike-riding to raise awareness for the plight of the Arctic on Sunday, Sept. 15. The main objective of the event was to bring attention to oil companies who plan to drill for oil made newly available by the melting of Arctic sea ice. Simultaneously, the student organizers made connections to the Addison Natural Gas Project pipeline underway locally.
The group of 10 biked 1.5 miles to the Apple Fest at Shoreham Town Green. Event organizer Ellie Ng ’14 said it was also a day for students from disparate environmental groups to connect with others.
At the start of the bike ride, event organizer Adrian Leong ’16 explained how in 116 cities in 33 countries, Greenpeace Ice Rides are springing up everywhere. Middlebury’s was the only one in the Northeastern United States.
The Ice Ride event is somewhat of a departure from Greenpeace’s norm of nonviolent direct action.
“Recently Greenpeace has been trying to occupy more of the dialogue surrounding this issue,” said Leong.
According to Leong, the goal of the campaign is to raise awareness of the risks associated with arctic drilling through the use of social media. To this end, Leong and Ng were sharing photos of Middlebury’s official Ice Ride event on Facebook and Twitter.
Some students walking by Adirondack Circle commented on the cyclists’ send-off.
“I think it’s good initiative, the fact that they’re using popular media to get people to know about it and I think it’s a very smart way to go about issues like this,” said Joanne Wu ’15.
Jeannie Bartlett ’15, who cycled in the event, heard about the event from an email sent to the Middlebury climate campaign list.
“I wanted to come because it’s a beautiful bike ride and a fun thing to do on a Sunday, but also because these collective actions that take place across the country or across the world at separate locations can be really powerful because of the power of digital media now,” said Bartlett, citing 350.org as another organization that connects local events to a national movement.
Bartlett also said the day was an opportunity to remember the implications of melting polar ice caps.
“I think we need to remember that the melting of the Arctic isn’t just the melting of the Arctic, it’s also the rising and warming of the seas and many other things that will really directly affect humans,” said Bartlett. “Even though I think the Arctic as an ecosystem is important in and of itself I also think it’s really important for the impact it has on people.”
While several students on the bicycle route were veterans of campus environmental groups such as Sunday Night Group and Divest Middlebury, others were just there to ride.
“I heard about the event through an email,” Nathalia Gonzalez ’17 said. “I didn’t hear about a lot of people that said they were going but I figured, why not? It would be a really fun ride to go to an Apple Fest.”
Gonzalez said she had heard about Greenpeace before but did not know much about the organization or this particular campaign.
Ng said the problem with energy sources like oil and natural gas is that the power is concentrated in large companies and governments.
“With renewable energy like solar panels, wind farms, or biomass, it is more local and people have more power,” she said. The bike ride symbolizes this power to the people.”
The cyclists also encountered signs of another environmental policy playing out right in their backyard. Leong said they saw signs that read “Keep Cornwall Safe” and “Keep Shoreham Safe” on their route, referring to the plan by company Vermont Gas to run a natural gas pipeline through several Vermont towns.
“Along the road to Shoreham there were a few signs about the [Addison Natural Gas Project] pipeline,” said Ng. “As with the gas pipeline and energy issues around the world, in that sense, when we passed by those signs we felt connected to this global movement.”
Leong said that the argument in favor of drilling for oil in the Arctic, like the argument in favor of Vermont natural gas, does not make much sense.
“Drilling in the arctic is what we call a false climate change solution,” he said. “A lot of governments or companies say that drilling for gas or drilling for oil are transitional fuels and that’s the reason why they are drilling in the arctic, buying time for others to develop renewable energy. But we’re saying the transition period has gone already. We don’t have any capital to burn any more fossil fuels. We have to switch from fossil fuels to renewables now.’”
Leong said making a last stand for an unspoiled natural Arctic is what makes the issue so urgent.
“The arctic ice is melting and that is what is allowing the drilling and fishing fleets to go in,” said Leong. “[Ice Ride] is about people standing up and saying, ‘There are enough pristine environments being exploited in the world. The Arctic is the last one we want to preserve.’”
(09/12/13 12:45am)
Following the disbandment in May of MOQA (Middlebury Open Queer Alliance), several students overhauled the organization’s image and mission to better serve the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community. Renamed Q&A: Queers and Allies, the group is “essentially a new organization” according to Bekah Moon ’15, the Q&A board member in charge of communications even though MOQA did not officially disband according to the documents submitted to the College. Moon explained the difficulty of starting a new organization caused Q&A to be more of a “rebranding” effort instead of an entirely new group.
Katie Linder ’15, Q&A co-chair, said that after MOQA’s announcement, “A lot of people were asking, ‘What are we going to do?’ There were a couple meetings that were open to everyone and so the people that were the former leadership of MOQA came, [along with faculty, staff and other students.]
“We all got together at the end of the year and had a discussion about whether or not we should rebrand, rename,” said Linder.
After deciding the campus needed a social space for LGBTQ students, the Q&A leadership revamped the website over the course of the summer and publicized the changes via a Facebook page.
According to Linder and Moon, their efforts appear to be working.
“So far I’ve noticed that a couple of my friends that aren’t part of the LGBT community but want to be involved have said that they feel more included now because the name explicitly says Queers and Allies, so that was one of our major goals with rebranding,” said Moon.
Q&A hosted a meet-and-greet event on Sept. 5 for first-years.
“A bunch of first-years showed up and I’m hoping they’ll stay interested and maybe want to be on the board next year,” Moon said.
Q&A co-chair David Yedid ’15 said improvements to Q&A’s board will make it a more effective voice for LGBTQ students.
“We have a larger board this year with more specific roles, rather than two or three Co-Chairs,” said Yedid in an email. Creating committees that fit more specific identities on campus is another goal of Q&A.
“An example would be Queer People of Faith or Queer People of Color,” said Yedid. “This allows members who want a meeting that more specifically meets their needs to have that space, even if it isn’t weekly.”
Differentiating Q&A from MOQA as a student group has helped generate interest in the group.
“For whatever reason, I think MOQA had a big stigma on campus amongst different communities and with different queer people as being too political or not political enough and at least thus far (maybe because we haven’t done anything yet) everyone’s excited about something different,” said Linder. “The opportunity to make something different is what people who are not first-years I have talked to are excited about.”
The board members described Q&A as more relaxed and informal than its predecessor.
Q&A aims to provide a social foundation, rather than academic, as the Queer Studies House covers this base.
“[We] wanted Q&A to be more of a social space for queer students and allies,” said Moon. “I think we are planning on alternating every week between a social gathering and something for planning events.”
Yedid said a long-term goal of Q&A is proposing an LGBTQ student coordinator. He described the position as one designed to support LGBTQ-identifying or questioning students in their academic, social and personal endeavors.
“It’s unfair for us to call Middlebury a ‘safe space’ if so much of the activism is student-driven and nothing is happening top-down from the administration,” he added.
Although the potential absence of any student-run LGBTQ group was not the deciding factor for creating Q&A, it was part of the board’s motivation.
“It wasn’t the only thing that I thought about with MOQA disbanding but it definitely struck home that we couldn’t not have [a student-run LGBTQ group],” said Linder.
Moon said the board was more worried about incoming LGBTQ students when thinking about a campus without Q&A or an equivalent organization.
“There are definitely queer students in every class so when they come to college and there’s nothing there it makes it seem as either the school doesn’t care or for some reason the campus isn’t as queer-friendly,” said Moon.
Linder emphasized the importance of an LGBTQ student group existing on campus even if students feel they do not need a formal organization.
“A lot of the people in my year that I’ve talked to and in the new sophomore class have said, ‘I don’t really need MOQA to be my queer community,’ but that’s not always true for incoming first-years,” said Linder. “And even if you don’t need it I want it to be a space to talk or just see people.”
(05/01/13 8:54pm)
Barbara McCall, currently the Campus Wellness Education Coordinator at Castleton State College, was hired as the new Director of Health and Wellness Education in March and will begin working at the College this fall. Though the position is not new to the College, the role has remained unfilled for two years.
“We took time to reflect on what we wanted in that role, what we needed in the College right now, whether we needed to reshape the position in any way, and then we launched into the search,” said Dean of Students Katy Smith Abbott. Given the importance of student outreach in the role of director of health and wellness, the position was changed slightly so the new director can work more closely with the Office of the Dean of Students.
Smith Abbott explained, “Before, the director of health and wellness reported within Parton, and now she will be located right in the Dean of Students’ Office.”
According to Smith Abbott, McCall’s background makes her well suited to Middlebury.
“She comes out of a rich background of experience, both as an undergraduate at Mount Holyoke and her graduate work at [the University of Massachusetts Amherst],” said Smith Abbott. “So I think she comes well equipped to match the needs and the conversations that are really afoot on our campus right now.”
The Campus contacted McCall to talk to her about her new position.
Middlebury Campus: What issues do you focus on at Castleton that you think will translate to your new role at Middlebury?
Barbara McCall: I am a generalist by trade which means I cover lots of different topics – alcohol, drugs, stress, sleep, sex, nutrition, cold and flu – you name it, I get to do it, which is really great. It means no day is the same here at Castleton or otherwise. And I think all of those topics are really going to have some relevance at Middlebury because I think they are all really pertinent to the ways that college students interact with their campus and interact with their emerging independent lives as they get ready to leave Middlebury when they graduate.
I think two of the topics that have been brought to my attention in my interview process and in my initial interactions with Middlebury folks are alcohol and social life and then sexual violence and sexual respect. And so I imagine I am going to be spending a fair amount of my time working on those two issues with a lot of the campus committees, coalitions and taskforces that have already been set up and have been primed to be having those conversations on campus. I’m excited to join in those conversations and hopefully get moving on some programming for responding to those concerns and those questions that the conversations have been bringing up.
MC: Do you have a favorite topic in college-based health education?
McCall: The thing that gets me really excited, that I’m passionate about, is talking about sexual health, women’s health and LGBTQ health. Those are my favorites to talk about.
MC: As a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, are there any issues pertinent to working in campus health and wellness at a small, highly selective and academically rigorous school like Mount Holyoke or Middlebury?
McCall: I think it’s a double-edged sword. What I think is so fabulous and wonderful about small, exclusive liberal arts colleges is that you are dealing with a student body that is incredibly informed, incredibly vocal and they are evolving all the time in knowledge and understanding. I think it’s such a special and inspiring place to work. What can be difficult about those same wonderful attributes of a place like Mount Holyoke or Middlebury is that sometimes you can find pockets of campus being on different pages of a book or pages of a conversation. So it can take some real time and effort to unite folks who may be just entering into a conversation with the folks who have been having that conversation for a while and are ready to move into action. So I think sometimes uniting all people in all of the places where they are in their knowledge and their behavior can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. As I’m sure you know, when folks get ready to go on an issue or a topic, it can take a little time for [others] to play catch-up, whether the catch-up is getting stakeholders involved or alerting the campus administration to student needs or alerting students to administrative needs. I love that fired-up energy and I think sometimes it can take a little finesse to get everybody together to move with that energy in a direction that actually gets us somewhere. It’s one thing I love and find equally as challenging about schools like that. And I’m really looking forward to returning to that high-energy, high-achieving environment at Middlebury.
MC: In this position, you will be working under the Dean of Students at Middlebury – how is your position at Middlebury going to be different from your role at Castleton?
McCall: We’re a pretty small staff here in wellness at Castleton. There are four of us who are full-time and that’s counseling and health services. We’re an integrated center, so it’s really small compared to what you all have going at Middlebury, which means that, essentially, it’s pretty similar to working under the Dean of Students at Middlebury. I’m part of the Student Life team here – my supervisor is supervised by the Dean of Students – and I interact daily with folks from student activities and career services. We’re highly integrated in student life. So I actually think that building those relationships here and understanding how to co-program and interact with those folks is really going to translate well to Middlebury, where I’ll still definitely get to interact with folks and will be working right alongside the folks from student life. So that won’t be that big of a change. It’s actually a model I really enjoy and it’s one of the things that drew me to the position at Middlebury – getting to really be integrated as a member of the student life team.
MC: What do you do in your free time and what else should the student body know about you?
McCall: I have really missed being able to go out to a coffee shop and read and just sort of people-watch – we don’t really have the setup for that in Castleton, I have to drive to Rutland to do that. And so I’m really excited to be able to do that in Middlebury. I have a dog (her name is Maddie, I call her my canine soul mate), so I imagine I will bring her to campus to go on walks. She loves students, she loves being on college campuses. I’m also a huge foodie, so I’m really looking forward to getting to explore some of the food culture at Middlebury on campus because I know you guys have great food service but also getting to poke around, eat at some local restaurants and check out the farmer’s market. I’m trying to be a locavore since I moved to Vermont two years ago and so I think that’s going to be really fun to expand my access to local foods and products by moving to Middlebury.
(04/24/13 1:10pm)
Sword & Plough, the company founded by alumna Emily Núñez ’12, had the kind of launch on the crowd-funding site Kickstarter that most start-ups can only dream of. On its April 15 launch, the company received pledges that surpassed their $20,000 goal in two hours. At the time of print, they have raised over $150,000 from over 700 donors.
Sword & Plough offers bags made of surplus military materials that are manufactured by veterans with the goal of reducing waste and improving citizens’ understanding of the armed forces. Haik Kavookjian ’09.5, another alum and Sword & Plough’s communications director, spoke about what Kickstarter can do for a start-up like Sword & Plough.
“Kickstarter is essentially a crowd-funding platform,” said Kavookjian, “A start-up or an individual with an idea such as ourselves can post a project on there and it provides you with two really great opportunities.”
The first, Kavookjian explained, has to do with manufacturing costs.
“Basically, you’re getting the money up front that you would need to place a manufacturing order,” said Kavookjian. “If you were going the traditional route of trying to launch a company, manufacturing is really expensive, and you need a lot of capital to place a big order. So unless you’ve got the funds, it’s just not going to be possible.”
The Kickstarter platform works by offering “rewards” in exchange for a donation to fund a project, with the understanding that it may take some time before the final product is ready to be shipped.
“The way Kickstarter is set up is it’s technically not a store, or they don’t advertise it as a store,” said Kavookjian. “When you log onto the Sword & Plough Kickstarter campaign page, you’re going to see what is called a donation. And in exchange for that donation, you get a reward from us.
Kavookjian added that Sword & Plough is trying to get their product out as quickly as possible, with many expected shipping dates to fall around July to August. The other opportunity Kickstarter presents is a network of people looking to fund and write about innovative projects.
“It’s gotten to the point where there are people who cruise around on Kickstarter looking for really awesome products that they want to donate to,” said Kavookjian.
Launching their company on Kickstarter has allowed Sword & Plough to expand beyond the circle of family and friends that were their initial supporters to people around the world who want to donate. Kavookjian said the motivation to donate often stems from a desire to be one of the first to support an innovative company.
“A lot of it is this idea of getting in at the ground level, of being able to jump in from the start so that when the company does become successful and goes on to do incredible things, you can say, ‘oh yeah, I was there from the beginning,’” said Kavookjian.
More than just a good platform for fundraising, Kavookjian believes Kickstarter fits with the greater Sword & Plough mission.
“It’s more than just the product, it’s about creating this community around the product and what the product represents,” said Kavookjian. “Sword & Plough is about this bigger mission not only to employ veterans but to improve the quality of veteran life and improve civil-military understanding and tighten that gap between the civilian population and the military population.”
Sword & Plough has had a tremendous couple of months, with two wins in the Harvard Pitch for Change competition and articles in Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek, The Huffington Post and Inc. Kavookjian said the Sword & Plough team was “cautiously optimistic” about the launch.
“Based on the fans we had built up on our Facebook page and the general response that we had gotten from so many friends and family, we had a feeling it was going to do well,” said Kavookjian, “but we weren’t expecting to get launched and then immediately blow past that goal in two hours, so that was definitely a shock.”
Kavookjian said the company is unique in having strong Middlebury roots. Many of the team members listed on Sword & Plough’s website are Middlebury alumni and the Sword & Plough board of advisors includes Director of Environmental Studies, Faculty Director of the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship and Professor of Economics Jonathan Isham, Middlebury Executive-in-Residence Dr. Charles MacCormack ’63 and Cully Cavness ’09.5.
“We are very appreciative of the work that they’ve done in a consulting capacity, helping us along in making contacts and just providing insight and their own input into the project,” said Kavookjian. “I think it’s really cool that this project has maintained those Middlebury alumni roots and I don’t know if that’s something you necessarily see that often.”
Elizabeth Robinson ’84, director of the Project on Innovation in the Liberal Arts, said Sword & Plough’s success is an example of students taking advantage of Middlebury’s resources related to social enterprise.
“The inspiration for Sword and Plough was supported by the Center for Social Entrepreneurship and [Núñez] utilized the Project on Creativity and Innovation (PCI) funding and mentorship opportunities — through MiddSTART and MiddCHALLENGE — as a springboard for her venture,” wrote Robinson in an email.
“We are so proud of what she has accomplished and how far she has come in so little time.”
Kavookjian emphasized preparation and networking as crucial steps to ensure a successful start-up launch. He said one reason a lot of Kickstarter projects fail is that while entrepreneurs may put a lot of thought into their project, they often underestimate how much work is required to get the word out.
“We spent months cultivating media contacts and reaching out to people with media contacts and once we had exhausted our list of friends with media contacts, we went on to LinkedIn and looked for second and third connections and reached out to those people,” said Kavookjian, describing the process as akin to the job search, where having a connection to someone can make a huge difference. “Kickstarter is great as far as this incredible marketing tool, but it will only get you so far. If you can hit launch and sort of hit the ground running, I think that’s going to do you a lot of good in the long run; for us, it certainly did.”
(03/14/13 4:00am)
TEDxMiddlebury 2013, the “independently organized TED event,” took place on Saturday March 9, with students gathered in the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts Concert Hall to listen to a diverse group of speakers, including one current Middlebury student. The theme for the event was “The Road Not Taken,” and many of the speakers organized their 18-minute presentation around ideas of adventure, vocational searching and personal growth. Although they were all tied to the event’s theme, the speakers’ topics ranged from encouraging savings in developing countries to the importance of selflessness to mountain climbing. Interspersed with the live speakers were videos from past TED talks.
Josh Swartz ’14.5, a TEDx board member, said the planning required to make TEDxMiddlebury happen had paid off.
“I’m really starting to appreciate all the hard work we put in the last year,” said Swartz. “I think the speakers have tied our theme together in ways I couldn’t even think of.”
Swartz said the theme of TEDxMiddlebury 2013 was central to the planning process and the speakers the board sought to bring to campus. “It was kind of the first thing we set out to do when we started planning the event, and it inform[ed] a lot of our decisions that came afterwards,” he said. “I think the theme both relates to the speakers’ backgrounds that we sought out and also obviously is very much tied to Vermont and Middlebury.”
Alex Cort ’14.5 was in the audience and appreciated the wide-ranging experiences the speakers brought to the stage. “I think it’s a diverse group of speakers bringing a lot of new ideas and experiences to the community,” said Cort. “It’s not often that you get people of such diverse backgrounds in one space at one time and I think that is what makes a day like today really special.”
The event had 10 speakers who gave their talks in three sessions. Reverend Andy Nagy-Benson, pastor at the Congregational Church in Middlebury, opened the event with his talk, “All the Difference.” Nagy-Benson recited Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” and spoke about its relation to finding his calling as a pastor.
TEDx featured several influential people working for social change. Ai-Jen Poo, the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, spoke about the need for fair labor standards and respect for elderly caregivers. Dean Karlan, a professor of economics at Yale University and president of the non-profit Innovations for Poverty Action, explained some of his research on the behavioral economics of human motivation to save money in developing countries. Kate Clopeck, executive director for Community Water Solutions, talked about finding her way to Ghana despite a childhood dream of working for NASA.
Some talks involved audience participation. Derek Amato, who acquired a gift for the piano after a head injury in the extremely rare “Acquired Savant Syndrome,” played the piano and lead the crowd in a spirited rendition of “Ho Hey” by The Lumineers.
Jamie Laidlaw ’02, a Middlebury alumnus and lead guide for a heli ski company in Nevada, shared photography and stories of “failure in the mountains.” Laidlaw said in an interview that it was surreal to be back.
“I listened to TED talks for years and years and I couldn’t have been more surprised to be invited back to speak here – it’s a huge honor,” said Laidlaw. “I’ve given talks for industry folks and whatnot but to come back here to Middlebury and speak for the students and a bunch of academics, it means a lot to convey my experiences to a much more intellectual, learned crowd.”
TEDx also featured Ryan Kim ’14, who won TEDxMiddlebury’s first student speaker competition in November. In his talk titled “Train American,” Kim described encounters with people he had while traveling by train across the country this summer. While Kim was proud to have won the competition, more than anything he was honored to be part of the event.
“It was really a great experience, and it was cool to be able to represent the student contingent on stage,” said Kim. Kim’s talk on Saturday was different than the one he gave to win the competition.
“The way I think about it is as I write about the trip and as I share stories about the trip, I want each piece to reflect different stories of the trip so that if there were to be, theoretically, a fanatic about my trip, they could see all the different pieces and not hear any repeated material,” said Kim. “I don’t expect anyone to ever do that, but to me, I’m sort of the fanatic about the trip and so I want, at least for myself, all of these to be different.”
The event also had several candid exchanges between speakers and audience members during the breaks between presentations when audience members could offer comments. In one such exchange, Max Hoffman ’14.5 expressed the urge to “drop out of college and do something” in response to the often entrepreneurial and trailblazing efforts of the speakers.
“It’s sometimes hard to find what you want to do,” said Hoffman, “So if anyone has had an experience like that or has experienced similar frustration, I’m anxious to hear what you have to say, especially in reaction to these people who seem to have found their pathway and their calling.”
Natalie Randolph, the only female head coach of a high school football team in the nation, responded to Hoffman’s comment: “I have an answer, and I don’t think you ever figure it out, so stop trying.”
Another speaker, Polly Young-Eisendrath, clinical associate professor of psychology at the University of Vermont, added a metaphor that resonated with many students in attendance.
“It can look like we know we are doing because we are up here, but I want you to think about this metaphor of a grassy field,” said Young-Eisendrath. “When you’re walking straight ahead in a grassy field, there’s no path, but then you look behind you, and where you’ve walked there’s a path.”
Swartz, along with many other students in the audience, said the exchange between Hoffman, Randolph and Young-Eisendrath was one of his favorite moments of the day.
“The audience feedback has been really good,” said Swartz. “It’s been great to get not just a one-on-one question-and-answer but to include everyone in the audience in that feedback and self-reflection process.”
Becca Hicks ’15 attended the event and believed everyone in the audience found a different personal meaning from the day’s speakers.
“Something that I find really beautiful about TED is that new ideas are presented ... but each audience member takes away their own message,” said Hicks in an email. “Looking around the room, it seemed like many new ideas were germinating, as people tied what they had heard back into their own lives, making it relevant to them.”
(03/07/13 5:00am)
While students have probably seen Colby Horn ’13 wheeling around campus on a unicycle, he is not one to brag about his unique skill.
“I’m probably one of the newest additions to the collection of unicyclists,” said Horn. “But I have been learning and using it to drive around campus.”
Horn said the unicycle is his way of staying active to counteract the more sedentary aspects of his major.
“Because I’m a computer scientist, and I spend all day staring at computers I like doing what some people might classify as ‘extreme sports’ or things that really get my body outside of its usual range of motion,” said Horn.
Horn does martial arts, mountain biking, windsurfing, slacklining and capoeira when he is not “staring at a screen.”
“Right now I’m transitioning into Brazilian jiu-jitsu,” said Horn, a style of self-defense wrestling that he has mainly taught himself. “Everything I do is a little self-taught; it’s part of why I like computer science,” said Horn.
Horn, a computer science major and math and music double minor, grew up in southwest Vermont, where his home did not have Internet or continuous power.
“So, learning computing in my early days was very interesting — it was a lot of text and a lot of theory and not so much running things,” said Horn. “I got here as a [first-year] and people would talk about Facebook and StumbleUpon, and I was like, what? I still don’t have a Facebook page,” added Horn.
While this might seem like a disadvantage for a computer scientist, Horn thinks there may be an upside.
“In [a] cold, calculating way, I like my prospects in the job market when you’re the only computer scientist who can handle living in the middle of nowhere.”
Although Horn entered Middlebury as a first-year, he also attended Bard College at Simon’s Rock for his senior year of high school.
“If I wanted to stay there for four years I could get a Bachelor’s Degree from them,” said Horn, “but usually people go to Simon’s Rock and transfer to another school, and that’s what I did.”
Horn is interested in machine learning, which he describes as the “area of computer science under artificial intelligence that is specifically concerned with teaching computers to learn and become more clever based on their observances of certain environments.” Horn’s thesis is related to mental interface, a process in which he gives a mental command and a computer executes it.
As a result of his focus on artificial intelligence, a unicycle is not the only extreme vehicle Horn has driven. He spent last summer writing an artificial intelligence computer program that drives Marine supply convoy trucks as a part of doing research with the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
“Effectively, I was giving eyes to these vehicles,” said Horn, “so that they could identify, say, concrete barriers and know to drive around them or decide which concrete barriers were the most infirm and drive through them.”
While Horn said the research was “an incredibly awesome experience,” not being able to publish his research for security reasons was disappointing to someone interested in going into academia. Horn, a teaching assistant in the computer science department, says he may want to become a professor someday.
“I really do love to teach,” said Horn.
As a music minor, Horn’s interest in instruments is as wide-ranging as his penchant for extreme sports.
“I play a lot of instruments, but that’s not like I play a lot of instruments [well],” said Horn. “I like to experience what each instrument can do and the sound qualities that each instrument can produce.”
Horn, and is best at the saxophone and most woodwind instruments. Horn also likes to compose electronic music and write music mathematically.
“Being someone in artificial intelligence … a subtle goal is to prove that our creations have some human qualities,” said Horn. Creativity is one human ability he has tried to give to a computer, writing programs that enable computers to recognize patterns in music and write music based on those patterns.
This power to create is what makes computer science fascinating for Horn.
“If you’re a computer scientist, you can build anything,” said Horn. “I want to be politically correct here but you are a god inside a computer if you know how to program correctly … there’s nothing quite like the power over how these machines work and think.”
(02/27/13 4:48pm)
Last Thursday, Feb. 21, the Middlebury community had the rare opportunity to hear stories of Hindu heroes from Lindsey Harlan, Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of the Religious Studies Department at Connecticut College. Harlan’s lecture, titled “Hindu Heroes with Muslim Fast Friends: Contemporary Narratives on Moghuls and Rajputs in Udaipur,” addressed ideas of heroic narrative and religious perspectives.
The Moghuls were a Muslim dynasty from Central Asia that ruled a large part of India from the 16th to 19th centuries. The Rajputs were a military caste that challenged, and sometimes allied with, Moghul power throughout those centuries. Harlan spoke at length about hero worship in Hinduism and Islam (the topic of a book she is currently writing) and her own experiences hearing the stories told by people she met during her travels in South Asia.
In an email, Harlan described how a debate sparked her interest in studying religion in South Asia. “I became interested … after getting into a debate with an ethics professor, while I was pursuing a masters degree in ethics,” wrote Harlan. “It was about Aristotle and the Indian jurist Manu. He told me I should go to India to see how very wrong I was, then told me how I might do that.” Harlan then spent several months traveling around India visiting temples before completing a PhD.
Harlan, who recounted several narratives during her lecture, said analyzing these stories is a difficult and complex task. “The written and oral narratives that I have collected over the past three decades have varied wildly in some major ways. They often clearly reflect the positioning of tellers who are diverse in terms of caste, class and gender,” said Harlan. “In fact, there are so many discordant positions and agendas in these narratives that I have been at times undone; both negatively (as in frustrated) and positively (as in awed).”
These narratives, continued Harlan, are sometimes not the product of academic scholarship, but rather, “What is presented as ‘known’ comes courtesy of devotees living in Udaipur and its environs.”
As a part of her research on hero worship, Harlan recounted several fantastical stories of the Moghuls. One involved a Moghul soldier who was decapitated in battle but, it is said, continued fighting and killed soldiers of the enemy. “This scenario,” said Harlan, “is recognized as a Hindu category of hero,” despite the fact that the soldier was a part of the Muslim Moghul army.
In another tale, Harlan described a legend that the Moghul emperor Aurangzeb was struck blind after attempting to break the idols in a Hindu temple. So, Aurangzeb swept the steps of the temple with his long beard in penance, and his sight was restored.
“There are many stories like this,” she said, “representing Aurangzeb as being successfully challenged by Hindu deities.”
According to Harlan, some say these stories were created to enhance the reputation of the shrines Aurangzeb was unable to destroy.
In response to a question from a student in attendance, Harlan said most people do not know these stories despite their extraordinary content.
Harlan described how she finds these stories “interesting but deeply problematic.”
“In terms of my own ethnographic work, I’ve observed that the stories of opposition and alliance depend so very much on the frames utilized and the agendas they reveal,” she explained.
Harlan believes examining the perspective of the storyteller is key. “Because the frames often tied to claims of properly understanding history or properly understanding how history has led us to the current political situation, including animosity between Hindus and Muslims, they are anything but unrelated to the agendas of the tellers of tales.”
This attention to the agenda of the narrator can help explain the diverse and seemingly contradictory narratives present in Hindu and Islamic myth. “I’ve often thought that the legends of animosity and friendship between Hindu heroes and [Muslim heroes] are like blobs in a lava lamp,” said Harlan. “They converge and diverge depending on how one is feeling at the moment and which narrator feels what way at a particular moment or whom one happens to be speaking with.”
Harlan wrote in an email that these shifting perspectives make the study of history a vibrant field. “I believe that history is always being re-framed by new perspectives,”said Harlan. “People do this with their own histories and their understandings of societies. Scholarship requires looking at everything anew. It requires contributing some fresh ideas to scholarly conversations.”
(02/20/13 9:40pm)
On Feb. 10, Sword & Plough, a company founded by recent Middlebury graduate Emily Núñez ’12, won first place and the audience choice award in the Harvard Pitch for Change competition. The competition welcomes contestants who present ideas promoting the creation of social value. Sword & Plough aims to increase veteran employment and civil-military understanding while reducing waste by offering bags crafted of surplus military materials.
An officer in the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Branch, Núñez is co-founder and chief executive officer of Sword & Plough. The company was named after the ancient saying “to turn swords into ploughshares,” meaning to move from the battle field to the civilian realm. In the contest, hosted by the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference, Sword & Plough competed against other social entrepreneurs to give a winning elevator pitch for their idea or project.
“Just getting to spend the day with all these other social entrepreneurs with awesome ideas for social innovation and change was incredibly inspiring,” said Núñez.
“There were over 100 submissions, including students and alums from MIT, Harvard Business School – it was very intense competition and they won both awards,” said Director of Environmental Studies, Faculty Director of the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship and Professor of Economics Jonathan Isham. “Emily is just moving at this amazing pace and succeeding left, right and center.”
Isham also sits on the board of advisors for Sword & Plough.
Núñez said the idea for Sword & Plough was born last January while listening to the keynote speech by Jacqueline Novogratz during the first Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship Symposium, but was also influenced by her own experience growing up in a military family.
“A lot of the time military surplus material is burned or buried if no one does anything with it,” said Núñez. “So it was that night that I thought, ‘What if we were to take this material and turn it into something beautiful that someone would want to buy?’”
A central goal of Sword & Plough is to improve awareness of veterans’ issues.
“While I was at Middlebury, my friends were always so supportive of my efforts with Army ROTC and my future service in the military but sometimes it was really hard to relate [to] what I was doing or certain concepts just because they hadn’t met many people who were in the military before,” said Núñez. “So I thought, well, everyone uses a bag of some sort throughout their day; what if we could take this surplus material and turn it into something beautiful and desirable with a story behind it that could reach people like students at Middlebury or young urban professionals?”
Sword & Plough has since partnered with Green Vets LA, a nonprofit started by U.S. Army Reserve Major Jim Cragg where veterans, injured and non-injured, are employed to sew reusable bags.
“[Green Vets LA] started as a form of therapy for these wounded veterans to have conversations together but also make something,” said Núñez. “They started out by making first-aid bags for Special Forces units so it felt like they were still part of the fight and still part of the service in a way – I started talking to [Cragg] and he thought this could be a great partnership.”
Sword & Plough has designed and produced five prototype products, including a messenger bag and tote bag and is planning a fundraising campaign through the crowdfunding website Kickstarter, starting around March 15.
Núñez cited the support of the Middlebury community as essential to the company’s launch.
“Sword & Plough would be nowhere close to where it is today without the Center for Social Entrepreneurship, MiddChallenge, [Project on Innovation in the Liberal Arts Director] Liz Robinson and [Isham] and everyone who supports those opportunities at Middlebury,” said Núñez. “Two weeks after I thought of the idea after listening to [Novogratz] at the symposium last January, I competed in the MiddChallenge competition and we won first place there, and that was another huge opportunity through Middlebury that gave us additional confidence and funding to help us move forward.”
Núñez met Dr. Charles MacCormack, former president and CEO of Save the Children, and Susan Ross, former president and CEO of the Fairfield County Community Foundation, through the Center for Social Entrepreneurship – both now sit on the Sword & Plough Board of Advisors.
Isham emphasized that one of the most important roles faculty can play is encouraging students like Núñez to pursue innovative projects.
“You need to provide space for the students to pursue creative ideas and this is a great example of what happens when you do that,” said Isham.
When asked if she had any advice for current Middlebury students hoping to start social enterprise projects of their own, Núñez said having a strong team that works together is important.
“Having friends who are supportive of you is so important, especially in the beginning,” said Núñez. “You can’t do it alone, and I couldn’t do it alone.”
“The Sword & Plough team has grown quite a bit from last January and finding team members who are really skilled in areas where you’re not has made Sword & Plough progress so quickly,” said Núñez.
She also said that time management is key.
“I know Middlebury students are already incredibly busy...but being as organized as you can with your time is very helpful,” said Núñez. “But with that, also be sure to set time aside and dedicate it purely for friendship and the people that are close to you because Sword & Plough wouldn’t exist if I didn’t have the friends and family that I do.”
Despite being an active-duty military officer, Núñez said, “There’s never really a day where I feel like I’m too tired to work on Sword & Plough and I think that’s because I believe in its mission so much and I’m inspired by the progress we’ve already made.”
(01/23/13 7:09pm)
With the end of winter term approaching, the campus is preparing for the arrival of the class of 2016.5.
“There are a lot of things about [February orientation] that are really magical,” said Associate Dean of Students for Student Activities and Orientation JJ Boggs. “I think if I had to break it down I’d say it’s a smaller group, so 100 students is really pretty manageable. It’ll be two Feb leaders to eight Febs.”
All of the orientation leaders are sophomore Febs, with senior co-chairs Sam Peisch ’13.5 and Alexandra Kennedy ’13.5. Two of the sophomore Febs are sophomore co-chairs, who return their senior year to head up that year’s February orientation.
“It’s a very peer-led model, which is harder for us to achieve in September,” said Boggs.
Several new events and changes to the February orientation program have been implemented, including having the incoming Febs register for classes online instead of an arena-style registration.
“We’re hoping it will really benefit and change the experience for Febs but we’re also using it as an opportunity to discover the strengths and challenges for that model as it relates to September Orientation,” said Boggs.
Boggs explained there are pros and cons to arena-style registration but they are hoping to make the experience less stressful and more efficient by taking the process online.
“It’s a whole different story when you try to do arena-style registration with 600 people, and that’s what we’ve been doing for a long time, but we’re going to try piloting an online registration with Febs and see if we can actually replicate that model for the September students.”
According to Boggs, the Feb leaders’ contributions in organizing Feb orientation are also what makes the experience so special.
“While we have very traditional events -— there’s a talent show, there’s typically a trivia night, there are optional activities — the current batch of Feb leaders actually gets to decide what that looks like and how it operates,” said Boggs.
“It’s neat because small groups of Feb leaders take on the planning and orchestration of those activities, so I’m never quite sure, even at this moment in time, what exactly they will look like,” added Boggs.
This year, along with the Class of 2016.5, there are five transfer students and three exchange students arriving with the Febs.
The transfer and exchange students will have special sessions on topics such as transfer credits that that do not necessarily apply to the Febs.
One of the challenges to February orientation is allowing for the variety of experiences the incoming Febs have had during their “Febmester.”
“It’s probably hard for people because the expectation is to go abroad and do something exciting and kind of flashy because that is the Feb stereotype,” said Peish, “but a lot of Febs stay home, they work or volunteer. So one thing we try to instill in the Feb leaders is people come from a variety of experiences and none is more valuable than another.”
Boggs emphasized that the question the Feb leaders should be asking is not, “What did you do during your Febmester?” but “What did you learn about yourself?”
Peisch said of the Febmester, “It’s really what you make of it and what you got out of it, so we challenge Feb leaders not to glorify some experiences over another and to try to create an accepting and open environment for people to talk about what they did on their Febmester.”
(11/14/12 11:12pm)
The 2012 election may be over, but the College Democrats and College Republicans are already looking ahead. On Nov. 6 the two clubs hosted Election Night at the Grille to watch the results come in.
“It was packed – there were so many people, which was great. I think [Professor of Political Science and Department Chair] Matthew Dickinson and [Associate Professor of Political Science] Bert Johnson were on top of their game,” said Emily Wagman ’13, president of the College Democrats. “I think they called the election before CNN did.”
Dunja Jovicic ’13, co-president of the College Republicans also thought the event went well.
“Good outcome, good energy, so I think it went well in terms of an event put on by both groups,” she said.
Wagman said the atmosphere in the Grille was exciting.
“It was great to see so many people politically involved, right at the very end,” said Wagman. “A consistent group of people show up at meetings every week and phone bank and go canvassing but it was amazing to see the amount of people that showed up to watch the election results come in.”
When asked about the much-lauded “ground game” of the Obama campaign and their strength in getting people out to vote, Wagman said, “Looking back on this in the future, [the] ’08 and this campaign are both going to be looked at as very good get-out-the-vote strategies. The campaign really was on top of everything, especially in the swing states.”
Wagman also said the results contradicted the notion that Obama’s young supporters would not turn out to vote a second time around.
“Turnout among the youth was higher,” said Wagman, “Which, I think, shows that [an] enthusiasm gap wasn’t really there.”
Looking forward, Wagman said the Democrats are going to continue hosting events and talking policy.
“We’ll bring professors in to talk about different kinds of policy and what policy coming out of a second Obama term might look like. I think we are going to try to bring in some outside speakers as well. It’ll be mostly on campus, a little more quiet.”
Wagman said the Democrats will continue to do voter contact in the future as they did during this election cycle. After all, according to Wagman, “We have a House to take back in 2014.”
Jovicic said the Republicans will also work to promote political dialogue on campus.
“The main goal of both groups is to engage in discourse and promote that kind of discussion on campus and keep awareness up and have an outlet for students on campus who are politically active or would like to be,” said Jovicic.
The Republicans also are going to bring speakers to campus, including Middlebury alumni.
“We had both John MacGovern ‘80 and Randy Brock ’65 come in,” said Jovicic. “We’ll try to keep bringing conservative speakers to campus, so I encourage, whatever you believe in, to listen because it’s interesting to get another perspective.”
Like the College Democrats, Jovicic said the College Republican’s pace will slow drop that the election is over.
“It might slow down a little bit just because [the presidential election] was the big thing this year,” said Jovicic, “but we just keep having our weekly meetings [and] keep awareness up.”
The College Republicans also will be keeping on eye on future GOP presidential contenders.
“The GOP is already looking towards 2016, so we’ll probably be following up on what they’re doing, who could be the major players, who are we looking to to represent the Republican Party in 2016,” said Jovicic.
Overall, Jovicic said she hopes for political discourse on campus to be more open to learning both sides.
“The more you keep your eyes and ears open the more you realize that there are conservatives on campus who really do care about the subject matter.”
In regard to President Obama’s re-election, Jovicic said, “As a club and as individuals we’re obviously a little disappointed but I don’t think it’ll stifle our involvement on campus. It’s just a reason to keep looking towards who’s going to represent us in 2016. Obviously it’s not the outcome that we wanted but we’ll still be a club and still engage with the Democrats and bring speakers on both sides and keep that discourse up.”
(11/07/12 10:54pm)
Richard Cizik, president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, spoke last Friday, Nov. 2 in the Robert A. Jones ’59 Conference Room about a unique conversion experience, one he is hoping to bring to his fellow evangelicals.
“I was converted in 2002 at the Oxford Conference on climate change,” said Cizik. “Six years later I gave an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air and I gave too much ‘fresh air’ to my evangelicals and all of them rose up on the conservative religious right side and said ‘fire the guy.’”
Cizik, for 28 years of his career, worked for the National Association of Evangelicals and for 10 of those years was the vice-president for governmental affairs. Cizik resigned in 2008 after supporting civil unions, President of the United States Barack Obama and action on climate change in an interview with NPR’s Fresh Air, which led to criticism from his fellow evangelicals.
“I said a few other things, like I had voted for Barack Obama. I said I can support civil unions, like other evangelical youngsters,” said Cizik. “And I said I believe in climate change and the science and we’re going to have to change the way we live, and that was too much.”
In his lecture, “For God’s Sake, Let’s Focus on the Earth!” Cizik said evangelicals are facing a theological crisis.
“I am going to be a consultant for you to [evangelicalism] because that movement, you see, has said no to all that we, I hope, in this room believe about what is happening to the planet,” said Cizik. “What I want to talk about is the theological challenge of the 21st century: climate change and the environment and the future of the planet,” said Cizik. “We are going to have to see and think more clearly about this...I happen to think we are going to have to see what the scriptures say about this.”
Cizik said there are 1,000 verses in the “green Bible,” or verses that refer to a responsibility for humankind to care for and protect the environment. He believes evangelicals must “shift from thinking this way – that our purpose in life is to live in order to die in order to live in a disembodied spiritual existence with God forever in heaven – from that vision, which is theological heresy, to a vision that we were born, not to live and die with Him in a disembodied existence, but to be with Him, co-partners, in the renewal and redemption of all of creation.”
Cizik said the world needs a conversion experience to change our vision to where everyone, of all creeds, can see what is happening to the planet. Calling it the shift from ethnocentric to cosmocentric thinking, Cizik said the Bible gives Christians a mechanism to see the spiritual importance of taking steps to halt climate change.
“We have to employ a strategy unlike we have ever employed in the past,” said Cizik, “We need to be inspired to action.”
Cizik believes colleges have a role to play.
“The strategy is to care more deeply, and the ethics professors on every campus, including this one, have to ask themselves and their students, what makes people care?” Cizik said, “The younger generation isn’t more environmentally ‘green’ just because they are more educated.”
According to Cizik, motivating people does not require more information, but communicating why people ought to care, and to do so, diverse communities have to work together.
“The strategy has to be bringing people together, particularly the scientific community, the religious community, to do this.”
As a result of Hurricane Sandy, Cizik said climate change and the environment “will be back on the screen, but nothing will change if we don’t internalize it with the eyes of our hearts, this shift to a new way of living that is deeply ingrained in how we think and how we feel.”
Cizik, delivering his lecture mere days after Hurricane Sandy struck the east coast, said the event should send a message to evangelical Christians.
“All of those conservatives who believe science is evil and trust in a God and believe He will take care of them no matter what and resort to a fear-based politics had something happen this week that should shatter their ignorance.”
Nevertheless, Cizik said the responsibility is up to us.
“We have to present the information to them in ways they will accept and understand.”
Jordan Collins ’15 was impressed by Cizik’s message and strategy for making change happen.
“I thought that Cizik presented a very important perspective on the shift Evangelical Christians need to make, to a more ‘cosmocentric’ appreciation and care of the earth,” she said in an email. “It was a pretty radical position considering Christianity's ingrained traditions, but his points on using personal stories and bold action to inspire people and chip away at ignorance were definitely reasonable. It's reassuring to have such a provocative change agent to whom those of faith can relate, with a message Christians are more likely to take to heart.”
(10/13/12 11:35pm)
Many students are familiar with Middkid.com as the go-to site for course evaluations, but what they may not know is the 13-year-old site underwent a redesign in late September.
Middkid.com, founded by Ted Adler ’99.5, is a student-maintained site that provides course and professor evaluations and connects students with local Middlebury businesses.
Thomas Bryenton ’13 is the Middkid.com campus representative for the site this year.
“It’s a for-students-by-students thing, so it was started by a Midd kid in 1999 and it’s been going ever since,” said Bryenton. “We just celebrated our 13th birthday, which is cool — celebrating working with businesses in the area for a baker’s dozen years.”
Businesses can sign on to become a sponsor of Middkid.com.
“It’s grown to over 20 businesses … and we’re happy having those businesses supported that way,” said Bryenton.
The supporting business’s information is posted on Middkid.com, which ties into the Middkid card, a free card that lists supporting businesses and gives the holder discounts and deals. Bryenton said the traffic the site gets is high.
“We typically have about 500,000 page views per year, which is outrageous if you think about that. So we are able to give our businesses a lot of site traffic,” said Bryenton.
Bryenton spoke positively of the changes to the site.
“We basically wanted the site to look more modern and clean among other things. Visually, it’s a significant improvement, I think most would agree,” said Bryenton.
Middkid.com also has several new sections following the update.
“We wanted to add a lot of things that were missing before. We didn’t actually have an ‘About Us’ section, so we added that,” said Bryenton. “We added a ‘For Parents’ section — there is a letter to Middlebury parents now because we find that parents actually inquire with us about how we can help their kids. Is their kid going to be able to get a haircut in rural Vermont? Answer: yes. So since we have that demographic going as well, we wanted to cater to them a bit.”
The course evaluations will still function the same and the entire database of course evaluations has been moved over to the new site.
Bryenton explained that students use the site for multiple purposes.
“Students are generally drawn by the reviews and wander to the coupons, to the [business] profiles, to look up phone numbers, addresses, deals,” said Bryenton.
Bryenton said the response to the changes has been good so far.
“Everything we’ve heard has been overwhelmingly positive,” he said.
Bryenton said facilitating connections between students and local businesses is what the site is all about.
“My most memorable moments at Middlebury have been those dinners in town with my friends and I think Middkid is what guides people to those things. Having someone vouch for a place is what really gets people to go,” he said. “We provide those recommendations people can trust and businesses love it. We’re able to do that in a way that’s beneficial for everybody. We mean so much to this community in terms of business and otherwise.”
Josh Berlowitz ’16 first heard of Middkid.com when someone mentioned it on a prospective students’ day. He examined the redesigned website and gave feedback.
“It definitely looks better,” he said. The organization is nice. It’s definitely better-organized and easier to find things.”
Berlowitz said he has used the course reviews since arriving on campus.
“I was deciding between two classes to take and I went with the one that has better reviews.”
He also was impressed by several of the deals listed on the site.
Hasher Nisar ’16 also heard about it before this fall and has signed up for the Middkid card.
“I first heard about it on the Facebook group that we have for our class,” said Nisar. “Someone posted saying if we need to look up certain courses, what they’re like, what people have to say about different professors and different courses, you can search on Middkid.”
Nisar, a first-year senator in the Student Government Association (SGA), thinks many other students use the site.
“I feel like it’s a good tool for people to use to look up certain courses, how much time they have to put in per week or what to expect,” he said. “I think a lot of students in our class and a lot of people at Middlebury use Middkid.com as a resource. There’s no doubt about that.”