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(04/14/11 4:23am)
While Middlebury puts a lot of time and energy into expanding cultural diversity at the College, members of the Institutional Diversity Committee (IDC) saw socioeconomic diversity on campus as a topic that often goes un-discussed or overlooked. As a result, last Wednesday afternoon, April 6, students and faculty alike piled into Hillcrest to participate in a panel discussion of the state of socioeconomic diversity at Middlebury.
This panel was a continuation of three years’ worth of conversations, lectures and workshops hosted by the IDC to raise awareness socioeconomic diversity issues on campus. Becky Harper ’11, chair of diversity for the
Student Government Association (SGA) and leader of IDC, and IDC member Hudson Cavanagh ’14 served as student moderators of the panel.
The panel was composed of two faculty members, Assistant Provost and Associate Professor of Religion James Davis and Assistant Professor of Sociology/Anthropology Chong-suk Han. Also on the panel were Dean of the College and Chief Diversity Officer Shirley Collado, Student Services Director Jacqueline Davies and Associate Director of Alumni Relations Ian McCray, who works on diversity recruiting in the admissions office.
A topic close to the heart of many students, the discussions focused on the sensitivity of the student population to frank discussions of class and the problems that ensue because of widespread discomfort with the issue. There seems to be “an utter fear to talk about class,” said Han. One obstacle to communication, Collado said, is the “the need to ‘pass’” among students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who work hard to blend in with peers who may have more disposable income.
“There are students who work very, very hard to hide their struggle,” said Davies.
At the same time, faculty and students acknowledged that a lack of faculty awareness contributes to restraining open and honest dialogue. Collado explained that although new faculty complete a winter term orientation during their first year in which they receive general information about the diversity of the student body, “there are things that are missing” regarding diversity education. For example, Davis addressed the common assumption among faculty that all students can purchase the numerous books assigned. While professors can put materials on e-reserve or reserve textbooks in the library, many do not choose to do so. The panel suggested that communication issues between professors and low-income students prevent professors from providing solutions for these students.
In addition to expenses, Davis noted that working students may have difficulty balancing their coursework with employment, but that their struggle is not always as obvious to professors.
“Faculty members may not be in tune with particular cues … about when a student might be struggling,” said Collado.
However, even for those not outwardly struggling, many students in the audience commented that the time commitment given to working is not acknowledged as a possible conflict with academics in the same way as sports or other extracurriculars.
Students and panelists presented suggestions as to how the College could help fix the difficulties in communication between students and faculty. One possible solution to aid communication between students and faculty is to have professors initiate open dialogue from the first day of class by expressing their openness to help students who might be having trouble in any way to succeed in the classroom.
The panelists also addressed the difficulties posed to students on financial aid and limitations on their ability to take part in “the full Middlebury experience,” particularly regarding study abroad. It is in study abroad that Davies “sees a lot of the inequality.”
“[There are] tons of programs that students on financial aid are shut out from,” said Davies.
Davies cited a study abroad program in Budapest that is often recommended for students studying mathematics, but that most students on financial aid cannot feasibly attend. Davies stressed her opinion that the study abroad system is “not socially just.”
Other topics discussed by the panel included the admissions process, the feeling of shame on both sides of the economic spectrum, a lack of representation from the middle of the economic spectrum and the sense of not belonging at Middlebury.
The panel appeared to achieve its goal of creating a space for a continuing conversation on the topic, since many students lingered after the conclusion of the discussion to further consider the issue of socioeconomic diversity at Middlebury.
To further address issues of socioeconomic diversity, Middlebury has just formed its chapter of the national organization United for Undergraduate Socioeconomic Diversity (U/Fused). According to Sam Koplinka-Loehr ’13, a member of this new group, the goal is to “continue the conversation that was started.” The committee also hopes to work with the administration to get more diversity training for professors to promote “awareness for the faculty,” said Koplinka-Loehr.
Overall, most students seemed very grateful that the IDC put on the panel discussion as a way to help encourage discussion of the difficult topic of socioeconomic diversity at Middlebury.
“It is important to have a formal discussion because people are hesitant to talk about [socioeconomic diversity],” said Addie Cuniff ’13. “It was an awesome chance for students to talk about what was on their mind.”
U/FUSED and the IDC will host conversations on a bi-weekly basis in Redfield to continue the discussion of socioeconomic diversity at Middlebury.
(04/14/11 4:20am)
Just moments after sitting down for an interview, it was immediately clear: the story of how Jeff and Diane Munroe first met would be a good one. Exchanging a glance and a good-natured chuckle, Diane, Middlebury’s coordinator for community-based environmental studies, and Jeff, associate professor of geology, agreed: “It’s kind of a funny story.”
Diane, who grew up in the Philadelphia area, and Jeff, of Beverly, Mass met at the University of Wisconsin — Madison. When Diane began her Master’s program in the geology department, Jeff was off campus, teaching in between his Masters and Ph.D. studies. At the department’s annual holiday party the following year, Diane, president of the Geology Club, mistook him for a newcomer.
“It’s part of the tradition that the newest faculty member had to play the role of a Santa to give out gifts, and the tallest and shortest of the new graduate students had to be elves to help Santa,” she said. Naturally, Jeff caught her eye, and she asked him to play the tall elf. He was quick to set her straight: “He definitely told me that he wasn’t a new grad student.”
“I did not want to dress up as an elf,” Jeff said flatly.
“So that was our first interaction,” Diane said. “And then, through mutual friends and gatherings, we slowly got together, and that was that.”
The couple lived in Madison until the last year and a half of Jeff’s PhD., when they moved to northern Wisconsin for Diane to work as a watershed basin educator at an extension of the university.
By the time Jeff was finishing his graduate work, the prospect of coming to Middlebury had become a real and exciting possibility.
“When I left Bowdoin,” he said, “I knew that I wanted to try to be a professor at a college that did a lot of research and also was really a great school with … students who were capable of doing research at the undergraduate level. That was my dream all the way through grad school.”
He applied for the newly opened position in the geology department at Middlebury, confident despite the competition that he would be a good fit. Sure enough, he was hired for what would soon become a tenure-track position, and he and Diane moved east.
“I was very fortunate that I could move into a teaching position right out of grad school without having to do a post-doctorate or being in a holding pattern for a couple of years, as is really common,” he said.
Meanwhile, having acquired both work experience and a second master’s degree in water resources management, Diane was in the process of finding work in Vermont. From Lake Champlain’s basin program to the state offices in Waterbury, she was considering commutes of up to an hour and a half when Middlebury presented a prime opportunity.
“The environmental studies program had just received a grant from the Mellon foundation to do a couple of things to enhance the curriculum,” she said, “and one of them was to develop this service-learning, community-connected approach for the senior seminar and other classes within the program.”
Much like her last position in Wisconsin, the job would allow her to help groups of students address environmental issues facing the local community. She was hired just a month after the move, “which was perfect just to unpack and set up our house and get used to being in a new place,” she said.
The pair appreciates the numerous advantages of working at the college, beginning with the opportunity to get to know the same students.
“Jeff sees a lot of [environmental studies] majors when they come through Environmental Geology as first-years, and I tend to see them as seniors in the senior seminar,” Diane said.
They enjoy enhancing these shared connections by meeting students for meals and attending their performances and sporting events.
Jeff pointed out that working in different departments has related benefits.
“What I think is really neat,” he said, “is that we certainly interact with overlapping groups of students and colleagues through geology and environmental studies, but also, there are groups that don’t overlap as much. It’s a real benefit that we’re able to talk about and with people from these different components of our time ... I think it’s great, the way that we’re able to get to know so much of the campus through the realms that we inhabit.”
As Diane works 10 months of the year, she is often able to join Jeff in the Western United States for his summer field research.
“I’m hiking all the time,” Jeff said. “I spend 70 to 100 nights a year camping in the mountains … It’s not uncommon to finish two or three months of field work and then meet up with Diane and go on a backpacking trip to cap off the summer. It kind of sounds ridiculous, but that’s what I love to do.”
These trips allow the couple to get to know students even better, as the groups live and work together for weeks at a time and often get together later on to catch up. In fact, the pair recently had dinner with a 2004 thesis student.
In addition to regular hiking trips, Diane particularly enjoys running; Jeff, cross-country skiing.
“Being in this place in general is just perfect for us,” Diane said. “We feel really fortunate for that, too, that not only are we working together in this incredible institution but we’re in such a fantastic state and beautiful place.”
(04/14/11 4:13am)
Historians have depended on our letters — the letters of heroes, friends, soldiers and kings — to rewrite the past. Battles, love stories, discoveries can be traced, all through intimate letters left behind. It has been said that the cultural shift from letter writing to an era of empty mailboxes and buzzing phones is growing to be so extreme that one day historians may not divide time just by B.C. and A.D., but between when people wrote letters and when they did not.
Yes — we text, we make YouTube videos, we update our Facebook statuses to record our own personal histories … but how will this document our time when it is deleted so quickly, or posted so shallowly? What is missing is what we truly think about our time, and how we tell about it — not to an impersonal viral community, but to a friend, a sister, a loved one.
Beyond documenting our time, letters truly document our “essential selves,” as one writer puts it. Thinking in a letter about what exactly we want to say to our correspondent and how exactly we want to say it catalogues our history of self, our ideas about who we really are, what truly matters. Texts can be deleted in an instant — if they aren’t automatically — and something about the always-disappearing-nature of this history we are scripting makes me sad, regretful and nostalgic for a time that didn’t even belong to me.
I want to write letters again.
I’ve been thinking about this for a variety of reasons.
Whenever it starts to turn into springtime, I think about letters. I work as the program director at a summer camp that I attended as a counselor and as a camper. In a place free from technology, letter writing is a special and frequently acted task. It is also a tradition that at the end of the summer, the boys’ and girls’ staff make each other gifts. Last summer, the girls’ and boys’ staff members decided the gifts would be letters: all 120 staff members sat up at nighttime writing letters to each of the other members. We filled little boxes with letters, and on the last day, we each received our own box full of letters.
I remember standing outside of my office, looking out at the main lawn that day, seeing everyone just reading letters. Some were smiling, some crying, some just sitting and looking out at the lake and remembering. I remember, in reading my own, how much I learned and saw beyond the words.
There is so much we can say in a letter; we can say I’m sorry, I love you, I forgive you, I wish that I had known you better.
The other day, I checked my mail (which I always forget to do), and I had received a letter from another senior — someone who I have always enjoyed talking to, but to whom I have never gotten as close as I wished. She had written me a letter about my last column, and also just expressed how she wished that we had become better friends. Upon receiving the letter, I was surprised and happy. I felt exactly the same way — I could have written the same things to her, but the difference is that she actually did: she said what she thought and made my day in the process. I am really grateful to her for what she said, but more than that, for who she is and for her ability to articulate what she really means — it is something I’ve too often forgotten to do, or just assumed was understood.
I want to write again, maybe before we leave here, to say what I have always assumed was known. Maybe after graduation, I will turn off Skype more frequently, and turn instead to a simple pen and paper. I want to write, not just for history’s sake, not for the sake of finding my essential self, but because there are few better feelings than saying what you really mean, or than hearing what someone really wants to say. There is no way to delete that feeling.
(04/14/11 4:11am)
The root of “passion,” etymologically speaking, is pain. Anyone who’s ever been in unrequited love can probably attest to this: love, when done badly, hurts in subtle, unimaginable ways. The corollary, however, does not hold true — loving done well, and with passion, is not always composed of tender, loving caresses. Thus, the subject of this column: the role of biting, scratching, hair-pulling and spanking in the bedroom.
It’s an especially relevant topic now, as spring approaches with the speed and resolve of a bipolar glacier — it’s the time of year where pants turn tentatively into shorts, and dresses start to come out with more frequency. The advent of skin means that some care should be taken not to leave marks in visible places for the next morning (unless, naturally, you’re into that sort of thing). Basic rule-of-thumb: unless otherwise specified, breaking the skin, whether with nails or teeth, is pretty much a no. If things are trending towards HBO, a simple confirmation, like “This might leave a mark. You alright with that?” is just polite.
What is peculiar about biting, hair-pulling, scratching and spanking, though, is that as sexual acts they inhabit this no-man’s-land of sexual acts, somewhere between the comforting familiarity of lovemaking and the scary realms of ball gags and gimp masks. Often, the reactions that people have to them vary incredibly, based on both past experience and present context. Take spanking: for some, a well-placed spank in the heat of the moment is an affirmation of enthusiasm, and blindingly hot in a nerve-kindling way. For others, it just brings up unpleasant memories of one too many trips to the Headmaster’s office. (For a select few, it brings up both.) So, whenever introducing savory ingredients to an otherwise sweet dish, do listen (verbally and non-verbally) extra-well — often, whether or not someone is enjoying a dash of light pain is easily seen.
That said, this isn’t to say that you should have sex like playing hopscotch in a minefield: there is a fine line between being sensitive to your partner’s responses, and being a mood-killing wet blanket. Interrogating your partner like Barney’s Gestapo (“Is this okay? How about this? Do you mind if I do I harder? Are you sure?) is thoroughly unnecessary, and pretty much the opposite of hot. This isn’t SM — prior discussion of acts performed and a “script” need not be established, just a healthy open mind and a solid foundation of respect.
Always remember, people are not porcelain plates: they are neither fragile nor flat. That your partner may find biting to be the hottest thing since True Blood doesn’t mean they’ll also be into scratching. Then again, just because you’re terribly into whomever you happen to be hooking up with doesn’t mean that your bedroom escapades need be as tender and soulful as Oprah — which is to say, never send lovemaking to do a f*cking’s job.
There is a deeper respect in knowing your partner so well that you can succumb to the violence of passion than there is in being afraid of hurting them — it’s understanding and respecting the breadth of their resiliency, while respecting their wishes at the same time.
What is at the heart of this is safety — the more you trust the person you’re with, and the more that they allow themselves to trust you — and the more you can experiment and play. To introduce anything new into the bedroom risks rejection, and the risks only increase the more unusual the suggestion becomes. Ideally in the realm of scratching, biting, pulling hair or spanking, there is a trust being communicated — that whatever you are doing, it is a space that is safe to play in without judgment. For receivers, that’s something to respect. For givers, listening well to the response is essential. Consider passion a kind of drug — while under the influence, please f*ck responsibly.
(04/14/11 4:10am)
Rumors often circulate during the mid-months of Spring regarding big events coming to the College. Last week, Old Chapel finally announced our 2011 Commencement speaker will be National Ski and Paralympic Hall of Famer Chris Waddell ’91. The jury is, however, still out on the identity of this term’s headlining concert.
We are enthusiastic about having both a Middlebury alum and such an accomplished athlete and humanitarian speaking at this year’s Commencement, but unfortunately for many, the utility of the speaker often depends on the familiarity of the name. The long wait for the Commencement speaker announcement and the lukewarm response from the student body beg the questions of how exactly our guests are chosen and whether or not students have a voice in the process. An April 8 email from Dean of Planning and Assessment Susan Campbell calling for nominations for the 2012
Commencement speaker and honorary degree recipients suggests that students can certainly contribute to the process; however, the selection of the honorary degree recipients and Commencement speaker ultimately boils down to the decisions of the selection committee and the simple fact of scheduling conflicts with many potential recipients.
In terms of musical guests, the students of MCAB manage the process, and they are very receptive to input from the wider student body. Similar to the process for choosing a Commencement speaker, however, finding an act for the spring concert is contingent on several variables, and so far this spring exogenous, unfortunate occurrences have stunted the process. More schedule conflicts and guests backing out unexpectedly further complicate an already precarious balance between budget limitations and student desires. Unlike the Commencement speaker selection process, we think attracting a performer for the spring concert has a little wiggle room for improvement.
College policy mandates that musical acts can only come on a weekend night. Our NESCAC neighbors often host concerts on weeknights, though, which may help draw in a more diverse array of performers. Although our school should be a great environment for a musical guest, our geographic location does not make us an ideal spot for a band on their biggest performance nights.
Additionally, the number of concerts greatly affects the musical milieu on campus. We appreciated MCAB’s efforts to gauge student preference for one large concert or several small concerts in their survey this fall, but we would also appreciate knowing which route MCAB plans to take at the beginning of any given semester. We absolutely recognize that the difficulties inherent to bringing a performer to campus have little to do with how well MCAB does its job, but keeping students in the loop throughout the process might garner helpful feedback as to other bands to invite or whether forgoing a big name concert for a series of unsigned artists might suit the campus climate better.
Even if MCAB does not solicit student opinion outright, they always seem to welcome it. We must sound the familiar call of the Campus editorial in urging students to speak up and voice their opinions regarding MCAB choices, and in the case of the Commencement speaker and honorary degree recipients, we encourage students to add their two cents where they can, whatever effect it may have.
People will always resurrect the perennial debate over big names versus quality speakers. Some will vehemently argue for famous acts while others will tout smaller acts that deliver a great performance. Whomever Old Chapel or MCAB successfully draw to campus, we could all stand to suspend our judgment until after they speak or perform, and certainly we can remember that the first step to a great event is just to show up.
(04/14/11 4:09am)
One nondescript afternoon, I was sitting in Axinn pretending to work on my thesis. As if I weren’t already busy enough listening to the sounds of liquid trickling down stones and considering the mental riddle of the in vitrine miniature TV display, a tour came by. The tour guide seemed very sure of the names and histories of various things about Axinn that few students know so well. I would wager, however, that she knew little more about that antennae’d appliance than I.
Her confidence in the rest of these things and her choice to marshal this wide-eyed herd without remuneration, I believe, demonstrate that she has really enjoyed her time at Middlebury. Why would she willingly lecture about the buildings within which she felt prisoner, unless for talking’s sake? But nobody at Middlebury talks just to hear himself talk, say, in class, or writes a column just to see it in print. Now, I also believe that she believes, in one way or another, that Middlebury provided the perfect alignment of professors, MCAB-sponsored hypnotists and tempeh à la carp meals that resulted in her having a great time. In the eyes of the tourists, she both announces the quality of Middlebury — its academics, architecture, etc. — while signifying the mark of quality (i.e. here’s a well-spoken student who is smart and happy because the College made her so). She is a powerful saleswoman, a trustworthy proponent of the product, both a cause and result of her honest, non-economic desire that they attend Middlebury.
We are all well aware that this education must be purchased. That’s why, like any vacillating potential purchaser, we like reassurance. Sometimes when I’m essentially decided that I will buy a pair of athletic socks but haven’t yet walked to check out, I like to look at the label and read about its moisture-wicking technology. It’s the exceptional sweat transfer apparatus that glosses over my rationality and assures me that the 11 bucks is worth more than just knit cotton, and, on a grander scale, that I’m not on the losing side of the economic system (how can someone make a dollar without taking it from someone else?).
What’s Middlebury but a collection of moisture wicking technologies: marks of quality, or rather, what are meant as marks of quality? Wood paneling, winning records, expensive-sounding entrées they are appealing signifiers of the worth of this place. I enjoy all these things greatly, and don’t intend to part with them. I recognize, however, that these value-adding extras affect my personal well-being more than my academic maturation, and are mostly superfluous.
Just as Socks Incorporated creates these desires and markets them, the College creates value both real and illusory. As can be asked of both, does the product’s functionality in later use justify its price at purchase (a price that, it is worth mentioning, incorporates the costs required to convince me to purchase it)? There is no positive solution, only normative ones with differing criteria of value. For example, one polarized answer is that the Middlebury degree is worth its cost insofar as it leads to a well-paying job, earning its worth back and then some. This answer presupposes financial return as a measure of value. Most proponents of this view often mistakenly conflate the worth of the Middlebury degree with the worth of the Middlebury education. An individual at the other end of the spectrum might contend that the student’s development alone (perhaps in mind, body and spirit), although not really quantifiable, is worth some amount.
In purely fiscal terms, the future value of the liberal arts degree is far more valuable than the four-year Middlebury education. The degree is itself a signifier of value, not necessarily proof of it: moisture-wicking technology hyped beyond its ability to wick moisture. Employment contacts and alleged certification of the possessor’s ability to work hard inflate the cost of the education.
Now, let’s return to that nondescript afternoon. As I was watching, a father reached his hand out and rapped his knuckles on some Starr library wood. He was testing the quality of wood and its construction, as if a creaky panel in the library were indicative of a college’s obsolescence. This parent is going to buy his son a higher education, though at which college is yet to be determined. So, he’s in this purchaser’s state of limbo, essentially sold, but reading the label as proof of his good decision. That’s three-quarter inch oak, you know, really nice stuff. Logically, the good lumber is proportional to the good education. But it kind of is. The College must balance out its qualities everywhere, or it risks having one detract from the rest. Likewise, Jostens has graciously offered its soon-to-be graduates with several choices of over-priced diploma frames that best project our intelligence to others. The Jostens people know that a college education this expensive needs a proportionally expensive frame. My point of all this discussion? It just seems unfortunate that education is perceived according to monetary, not academic, value.
(04/14/11 4:08am)
Our community has recently been embroiled in two debates regarding the Foundation for Individuals Rights in Education (FIRE) highlighting of the Aunt Des video series and a guest lecture on the “Culture of Despair.” Consequently, the Campus has published two op-eds and an editorial regarding these two controversies. Although these three articles touched upon the issue of free expression on this campus, they declined to provide a full account of the substantially important role that the First Amendment ought to play at Middlebury College. In fact, in an opinion column dated March 3, 2011, Ben Johnston’ 11casually dismissed the importance of constitutionally protected speech at Middlebury.
It is my position, and that of FIRE, that Middlebury College currently has rules in place that violate the spirit of the First Amendment and current First Amendment jurisprudence. Middlebury College is a private entity that possesses the right of freedom of association which enables the College to create its own rules and formulate standards for membership (admission in our college’s case). But as an institution of higher learning and a liberal arts college, it ought to encourage and promote the unfettered exercise of constitutionally protected speech in order to enhance every student’s educational experience and enable genuine dialogue and debate. Instead, the College currently selectively allows the most acceptable forms of protected speech and bans those which it has deemed as counter to the values of our community and fears may offend students.
Offensive Speech: Offending a person’s sensibilities is not sufficient legal grounds to restrict constitutionally protected speech on a public university campus, so why does the College deny its students their full First Amendment rights merely due to Middlebury’s status as a private educational entity? If a person or community is offended by the content of constitutionally protected free speech, then the correct remedy is for the offended community or individual to challenge such offensive speech with more speech; the remedy does not lie in restricting the ability of all parties to engage in the free exercise of constitutionally protected speech.
Ideas and speech that the majority might find offensive today may not be so tomorrow. As Supreme Court Justice John Harlan wrote in the decision of Cohen v. California, “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric … it is largely because governmental officials cannot make principled distinctions in this area that the Constitution leaves manners of taste and style so largely to the individual.” As a liberal arts college we must allow for constitutionally protected speech that we as a community may consider offensive, for as Justice William Douglas stated:
“[The] function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea.”
The free exchange of ideas and the ability to expose students to all forms of knowledge is imperiled by any restriction, no matter how small or well-intentioned, on constitutionally protected speech. Furthermore, the College could not possibly, and should not, restrict all speech that any student may find offensive. Restricting or banning certain categories of offensive speech while allowing others does violence to our nation’s conception of equality before the law and the First Amendment’s notion of the free marketplace of ideas. No idea, prejudice, value or theory ought to be sacrosanct.
Unprotected Speech and Harassment: Certain forms of speech are not constitutionally protected and harassment falls under this category. However, our college’s current anti-harassment policies are overbroad and go beyond standards established by Supreme Court jurisprudence. Harassment, according to a letter from Gerald A. Reynolds, the former assistant secretary of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, “must include something beyond the mere expression of views, words, symbols or thoughts that some person finds offensive … [and] the conduct must also be considered sufficiently serious to deny or limit a student’s ability to participate in or benefit from the educational program.” It is laudable for the College to attempt to protect students from harassment and personal injury, but not when such protection infringes upon constitutionally protected speech.
“Asians in the Library”: The recent University of California at Los Angeles “Asians in the Library” video controversy is a case in point. Although the content of Alexandra Wallace’s video was incredibly offensive, the entirety of the video fell under constitutionally protected speech. Certainly members of the UCLA community and others were indubitably offended, but none of this was sufficient reason to subject Wallace to UCLA discipline. Her video did not even target any student in particular and most certainly does not constitute action that is “so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive, and that so undermines and detracts from the victims’ educational experience, that the victim-students are effectively denied equal access to an institution’s resources and opportunities”, as stated in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education.
In fact, much good came out of the controversy, most notably a response video from Middlebury alum Jimmy Wong. However, Wong employs sexual innuendo in his video, albeit in an absolutely comical manner, clearly intended for Wallace. Would Middlebury College have come to the same conclusion as the UCLA administration had these two videos been created by current students of this community? One would hope so, but our current Handbook policies appear to allow for the prosecution of such videos.
Conversely, UCLA’s anti-harassment policy specifically emulates the same language issued by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and expressed in First Amendment jurisprudence. Essentially, the First Amendment operated exactly as it should have in the UCLA controversy. Wallace was roundly criticized by members of the UCLA community and numerous others in the public domain. Her prospects for employment are essentially non-existent and she is now a social pariah. This incident also provided an opportunity for all to learn that such offensive speech, while fully protected by the Constitution, is not socially acceptable.
A True Liberal Arts College: As our handbook states, “The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.” If we are to become a true liberal arts college, we must revise our college’s policies in order to allow for the free exposition of all constitutionally protected speech on this campus. As President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz has stated previously, “liberal education must be first and foremost about ensuring a broad range of views and opinions in the classroom and across campus so that our students can question routinely both their preconceived and newly developed positions on important matters.” I strongly encourage our college administration to work in conjunction with FIRE to ensure that our college’s policies conform to current First Amendment jurisprudence so as to allow for the free exercise of constitutionally protected speech on this campus.
(04/14/11 4:08am)
I am only here today because Middlebury College, at the time I applied to college, was one of a handful of colleges in the US with a need-blind admissions policy for international students. This is no longer the case.
In its first round of budget cuts, back in 2009, the administration decided it was essential to keep a need-blind policy for domestic applicants, but revoked it for incoming international students. “I don’t think you can put a price tag on being need-blind,” Liebowitz said at the time, without explaining why the principle did not apply to international applicants. One year later, the college announced it would maintain the policy, effectively making it much more difficult to qualified international applicants in need of financial aid, with the exception of UWCers, to gain admittance.
I find it surprising that a college that advertises its efforts to create “a diverse and inclusive community” and provide a “multitude of international opportunities” should, in its first cuts, differentiate between domestic and international applicants. Particularly surprising when Leibowitz calls need-blind admissions for domestic students key “if we seek socioeconomic and regional diversity.”
It is hard to take the college’s international focus seriously when it chooses to save money by discouraging international students unable to pay the Comprehensive Fee in full from applying. Its international vision excludes providing an educational opportunity to international students of modest means, but includes volleyball matches and pageant plays in foreign languages during summer school.
I fear that without a renewed commitment to international diversity, Middlebury in the future will be international in the way Epcot is international. We will have a bit of narrative journalism here and there on the website about where we are from and once every so often Indian food at Atwater, but there will be nothing beneath the surface.
(04/14/11 4:08am)
I recently drew inspiration to reply to Jay Saper’s crusade against free expression from my favorite movie, The Big Lebowski. In an early scene, Walter, The Dude’s best friend, counsels The Dude to pursue someone who has trampled on his rights. Walter, borrowing from then-President George H. W. Bush, shouts to The Dude, “We’re talking about unchecked aggression here … I’m talking about drawing a line in the sand, Dude.”
Well, I’m drawing a line in the sand. Mr. Saper’s widely-read email to Professor of Economics Peter Matthews and his later piece in the Campus are nothing short of patently offensive, especially for people who regard our First Amendment and liberal education worth fighting for.
Although some may see it otherwise, Saper’s arguments have no merit. The only merit to be found is in his right to make such an argument. When I read Saper’s words, I find solace in Voltaire, who said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Yet to acknowledge any merit in Saper’s claims beyond his right to make them would impose a chilling effect on free speech that American society — at a liberal arts school of all places — must do without.
Largely grounded in the thought of John Locke and J. S. Mill, our First Amendment has been subject to interpretation by the Supreme Court for many, many decades. Without plumbing the Court’s history at length, I’ll briefly provide a thought — found in a dissent, after all — for Saper, and those who sympathize with him, to consider. Dissenting in Abrams v. United States, Justice Holmes, the earlier architect of the “clear and present danger” test, describes the importance of free speech in this way: “time has upset many fighting faiths … the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas … the best of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.”
Unfortunately, Saper believes that taking a couple sociology courses qualifies him — the final, all-knowing arbiter — to muzzle a free exchange in ideas at Middlebury. If Saper really believes in the pursuit of truth, he should encourage ideas he disagrees with to be submitted to the marketplace of ideas. So, when Saper speaks of hoping for a “lively discourse,” don’t be fooled. He means nothing of the sort.
Saper’s arguments are at odds with American values. Our Court, in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, a case on libel, has announced the general principle that “debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” If we agree with Saper instead, we should create a new administrative department at the College, headed by Saper, of course, with a title along the lines of “The Department of Thought Police.” George Orwell called this Big Brother, but I’m open to suggestions. Either way, the ultimate goal would be to severely abridge the speech we disagree with, creating a comfortable, self-confirming echo chamber.
When Saper accuses Middlebury College of being committed to “patriarchy and white supremacy,” what he really means is that the College dares to allow space for controversial ideas — God forbid — that some may see as offensive. If Saper believes our Constitution is itself patently false, I then suggest he exhibit the humility of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote in the Great Gatsby, “It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment.” Perhaps — and I know this is a stretch — we can learn from others’ diverse opinions, whether they are offensive to us or not.
Before I finish, I would be remiss if I didn’t applaud Professor Matthews for the great tact he displayed in addressing Mr. Saper and standing up for the free exchange of ideas. Saper accused the Economics Department of endorsing the lecture he saw as offensive. There is a long list of Supreme Court cases that deal with the danger of an institution’s imprimatur being placed on ideas it disagrees with, but I’ll save you from that. In short, Professor Matthews was correct to tell Mr. Saper there was no such endorsement. Speakers are invited here to present their ideas, not the College’s, and a moment’s thought should make that clear. The College, by inviting speakers, is trying to produce a forum, a marketplace, where ideas can compete to discover truth.
Finally, we are not here, as Saper would have it, to listen to and read only that with which we agree. Rather, we come here to read good books, and we come here to be exposed to new ideas, whether in science, literature, economics, politics, sociology or any number of subjects. We did not come here to be told what to think but to think critically. That is what we call liberal education. If we can’t suffer to hear what we may disagree with, we are not fulfilling the duty that is our charge as intellectually inquiring students seeking a liberal education.
(04/14/11 4:08am)
I would like to go into a few events preceding Jay Saper’s ’13 March 24 Campus opinion, “Building a healthy academic community.” Let’s start with the email exchange that Saper forwarded to hundreds of fellow students, as well as to the faculty of the Sociology/Anthropology department (SOAN), the Center for Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, and the economics department. The exchange began on the morning of March 17 when Saper emailed Economics chair Peter Matthews that he was “deeply appalled and tremendously offended” that the department was endorsing a “hateful lecture” that afternoon. Before the lecture took place, Saper demanded that the Economics chair issue “an all-campus apology and clarification” for scheduling it.
Wellesley economist Phil Levine’s lecture was going to be hateful, in Saper’s view, because it associated low-income non-marital childbearing with a “culture of despair.” I should note that, before Saper spoke up, Levine was putting “culture of despair” in scare quotes because he was aware of the need to steer between liberal and conservative indignation on this subject. At the talk, which I’m sorry to have missed, Levine recognized Saper during the Q & A period and Saper had difficulty turning his remarks into a question, whereupon Levine cut him off and went to another questioner. Saper concludes that the economics department was trampling on free speech. Possibly Levine should have given him a third minute; possibly Saper could have done a better job of formulating a question.
In his Campus opinion a week later, Saper goes on to indict “the rich white man,” “the systemic oppression which he perpetuates,” “the privileged institution of marriage that is doused in patriarchy and inextricably conflated with capitalist profit,” “the idea of the nuclear family,” “marriage promotion activities,” “hate-filled white men,” “those who spew from a platform,” “absurd structural privileging of dominant white masculinity,” “tenured professors who are disproportionately white men … trampl[ing] on … our junior faculty members” and “the patriarchy and white supremacy to which Middlebury College is committed.”
This is a very broad indictment. Jay Saper has every right to challenge a speaker in the economics department. What wasn’t such a good idea was labeling the speaker as hateful and demanding that a department apologize for scheduling him. Since Saper is a SOAN major, and I am a SOAN professor, I am embarrassed that he appears to be using sociological and anthropological concepts to make an ad hominem argument against an invited speaker, the Economics department and all tenured white male faculty at Middlebury College.
I’m also trying to imagine how my teaching will be affected if Jay decides to apply his criteria to my teaching. In SOAN 103 I assign Carol Stack’s All Our Kin, a classic ethnography of black welfare mothers in the 1970s. I assign it because it explains a moral order that is very different from middle-class morality. It is also a salvo in a longstanding political debate over the “culture of poverty”— a concept in the history of sociology and anthropology which many of us view as patronizing but which, now and then, might still come in handy. In the case of Carol Stack, she argues that the fatherlessness of lower-class mother-headed families has been exaggerated and that non-marital childbearing is more functional than many observers assume. One of Stack’s merits is that she gives readers enough information to disagree with her if they wish. I tell my students that they are free to adjudicate this debate any way they wish — fatherlessness is a large and growing phenomenon in our society, not just among low-income black Americans, and it is worth our attention. But judging from Saper’s indictment, any such even-handedness on my part would be privileging dominant white masculinity. Instead, I should teach my students that any worries about non-marital childbearing should be avoided because such doubts could be construed as racist. Come to think of it, since Carol Stack describes unflattering behavior on the part of the mothers (they sometimes hit their kids), maybe I should drop All Our Kin from my reading list: it could be taken as a negative characterization of the mothers.
Saper believes that he is advocating diversity, but I wonder if he has thought through the implications of demanding that a contrary speaker should balance any guest speaker who might arouse controversy. Judging from Saper’s indictment of white men, marriage and the nuclear family, anyone who refers to race, gender or families will have to be considered controversial and will require the invitation of a contrary speaker. To be fair, this will have to include responding to anyone on his side of these issues, which means that we will need to invite conservatives to Middlebury College to defend traditional conceptions of race, gender and the family. If this isn’t what Saper means by diversity, then perhaps he is not advocating diversity in any conventional sense of the term. Instead, he would appear to be trying to impose his own position as the only ethical one. If this is what Saper has been picking up from his SOAN courses, I am fascinated by his progression from deploying critical theory (which can be used to deconstruct any category including SOAN courses, Jay Saper and myself) to issuing marching orders.
(04/14/11 4:08am)
We write to express our warmest thanks to the Middlebury College community. Thanks to you, this winter we have been able to house 12 homeless adults and seven children from Addison County. Over 50 Middlebury students volunteer as staff members at our Charter House facility and dozens more have assisted in one-time construction and fundraising events. In addition, Wonnacott and Atwater Commons provide volunteers to come cook and eat weekly meals with our residents.
We truly could not do our work without you. We owe particular thanks to the Charter House student leaders Veronica Muoio ’11 and Yuan Lim ’12 and to the Student Supper coordinators Beth Foster ’11 and Laura Williams ’11. We hope many of you will consider attending our final benefit dinner for the Charter House on Saturday, April 23 from 6:00 – 11:00 p.m. at 51 Main St.
With much gratitude,
The Middlebury Community
Care Coalition
(04/14/11 4:08am)
To the Middlebury community,
If we took weekly polls on approval ratings for the Campus, last week we would have posted our highest approval scores yet. An overwhelming majority of you who read our April Fools edition let us know how much you enjoyed our best efforts at hilarity, and we appreciate the positive feedback. Thank you for reading!
I did not feel the need to print a public apology, however, because of the things we got right in our April Fools edition. Several students expressed their concern over the use of fabricated “quotes” in many of our articles, and I am writing to apologize for a personal judgment error that I made. We did not seek prior approval from students before using their names, and though the articles were never meant to damage anyone’s reputation and the “quotes” were supposed to be so ridiculous as to be obviously false, some of our articles portrayed several students and some staff and faculty members particularly unflatteringly.
I wrote earlier this semester that the student newspaper should always seek to serve the best interests of the student body, and in failing to curb the bite in some of our April Fools articles, I clearly did not do that. Individual April Fools articles were never uploaded to the website in any searchable way, and we took every precaution to make sure that our April Fools edition would be received as we intended it: a lighthearted examination of the stereotypes we apply to others and ourselves. Despite our efforts, several students felt personally attacked, and for that I earnestly apologize. Please keep reading, and I hope we will make amends ere long ...
Sincerely,
Lea Calderon-Guthe
Editor-in-Chief
(04/14/11 4:06am)
Nine Vermont-based bands chosen from an applicant pool of 50 graced Middlebury from Thursday, March 31 through Saturday, April 2 for the town’s first annual Battle of the Bands competition. Each night three bands performed at one of three restaurant venues in the town, 51 Main, Two Brothers Tavern and American Flatbread. At the end of the each of the three evenings, one band was selected to move on to the final round of competition on Saturday, April 9. The final bands selected were Bearquarium, Prana and Split Tongue Crow. Bearquarium and Prana are both based out of the Burlington, while Split Tongue Crow, who claimed the Battle of the Bands title on Saturday, April 9. is based in Rutland, Vt. They won the privilege of opening for the College’s spring concert on Saturday, May 7.
Sarah Franco, the chair of the Battle of the Bands committee, who is also the special projects coordinator for the vice president for administration, has been working with Holmes Jacobs, owner of Two Brothers Tavern, and owner of the American Flatbread Danielle Boyce on the project. She said David Donahue, the special assistant to the president, suggested the idea early last fall after Franco sent a campus-wide email asking students and faculty to submit their ideas for future programming at 51 Main. Next, she contacted Jacobs to see if he felt there would be interest in the community to host the event.
“Holmes and I sent a letter to other restaurants and venues, like the Town Hall Theater, and American Flatbread was the only other one that wanted to participate,” she said.
Each night, a different group of three judges attended the performances at the venues. With help from audience votes, a winner was selected.
“It was fun to watch the crowds grow and grow with each passing evening as the battle intensified,” said Jacobs in an email. “We look forward to it ultimately becoming a state-wide celebration of Vermont music that draws residents to Middlebury from every corner of the state.”
Franco said she created a list of people in the community who were connected to music; she reached out to professors, music teachers and DJs, among others, and garnered enough judges for all four evenings of competition. Last Saturday, Tim Spears, vice president of administration and professor of American studies, Matt Jennings, editorial director, for communications, and Ben Silton ’11 comprised the crew of judges.
The judges rated the bands in four categories: preparation, interaction with audience, quality of performance and presentation.
Silton, who is president of the musicians guild at the College and also a member of the advisory committee of 51 Main, said of Bearquarium, the first band of the night that performed at 51 Main, “[They are] really tight. Their music is very smooth and thoughtful.”
A guitarist himself, Silton, looks forward to the event next year.
“Battle of the Bands was a way for people who have a great appreciation for music to come together,” said Franco, who was pleased with how the event turned out, especially considering the final night of competition was a sold-out event.
In an effort to encourage student bands to enter the competition, she hopes to schedule next year’s event so it does not coincide with the College’s spring break, as it did this year. She also plans to accept more bands.
Spears, who hosts a radio show with Jennigs for the College’s station, WRMC, agreed that the night was a success.
“Each space has its own distinct ambience,” he said. “All the venues were very well attended. The event was set up in such a way to guarantee that the crowd would follow the competition from one place to the next, but that was sort of the genius of the event.”
Indeed, many who attended Bearquarium’s performance at 51 Main continued to follow the music for the rest of the night, walking to Two Brothers Tavern to hear Prana and afterwards to American Flatbread for a performance from Split Tongue Crow.
Amy Billints, who attended all three performances, said the event was a “good way for the people to learn about the bands and the businesses.” A resident of Williston, Vt., Billints is a friend of the band Prana.
“The event was awesome,” said Carson Cornbrooks ’11 in an email. “Three bands, three different locations, three hours? Who thought of that? Excellent idea.”
Others also felt the event was an ideal way to bring together community members.
“It is just good for the community,” said Pat McCaffrey, a Middlebury resident who enjoyed dessert with her friend Jim Daly at 51 Main. “It brings people out.”
One of the event’s main goals was to draw attention to downtown.
“One of the things that happened along the way is that you got a tour of our bustling downtown on a Saturday night, and it turns out something was happening,” said Spears.
Cornbrooks felt the same, and said in an e-mail, “I think this is a great community event. It brings artists from all over the state to one place to perform and get their names out there. It also gives us at Middlebury a change to have a different kind of evening, and who doesn’t love live music?”
Tyler Mast, keyboardist for Bearaquarium, appreciated the large crowd at 51 Main and said, “it was nice to see people out here enjoying themselves.”
Large crowds at both Two Brothers and American Flatbread upheld the enthusiasm of the evening. Though each venue offered a different environment, both acoustically and socially, the bands energized all the restaurants.
Krystal Caruso, an employee at American Flatbread, noted the brevity of each 45-minute set, but enjoyed herself nonetheless.
“This whole event is a great way to get three different restaurants involved in one thing,” said Caruso. “It brings a lot of community members in that maybe have not been to these places before.”
(04/14/11 4:05am)
On Tuesday, Apr. 5, Middlebury Union High School hosted the second annual Stone Soup summit, which brought together Addison County’s thriving Farm to School (F2S) programs. The event was sponsored by the Addison County Relocalization Network (ACoRN).
Teachers, farmers, students and community members met in working groups to discuss the Farm to School curriculum, as well as school gardens and composting. The aim of the summit was to “unite education, food, farming and communities in Addison County” by bringing together groups with similar goals. In the different sessions, presenters from various schools in the county spoke about their experience and success with strengthening relationships between farms, gardens and schools.
Barbara Yerrick, a second grade teacher at Monkton Central School, spoke about her implementation of a school garden at the “F2S in the Elementary School Curriculum” working group discussion. Yerrick started the Monkton garden by herself, after applying for multiple grants. A teacher of colonial life and natural science, she said that the garden allowed for seamless integration into the classroom curriculum. This lent itself to lessons on colonists’ farming methods and diets, as well as the science behind plant life cycles. Her dream for next year is to create a true colonial garden.
Justin May, a second grade teacher at Lincoln Community School, focused on teaching three core values to his students: sustainability, interdependence and justice. By bringing his classes to farmer’s markets, orchards and local farms, he believes that the students learn “what it really means to be local” and to “develop their own understanding through creating and communicating with others.”
He especially stressed the importance of the relationship between the school and the local farmers, and many of the presenters agreed that this was an essential element for any successful F2S program.
“The only way to build a strong Farm-to-School program is to integrate the community,” said Diane Benware, the founder of the garden at Salisbury Community School.
At Salisbury, Benware created a coalition with 10 local farms and facilitated field trips with her classes to the farms. The farmers visited their garden in return. She also worked with the dining staff at the school to allow for students to “taste test” different foods, so they could compare the quality of local foods, help choose their lunch menus and reduce the amount of food waste.
This idea was shared by a number of schools in central Addison County. Each encouraged dining service employees to attend the discussion about school gardens. Many teachers also stressed that the primary goal of the school gardens was educational rather than a financially productive incentive.
A number of the College’s organic farm members attended the conference, as they hope to build a formal coalition between the College and several of the local elementary, middle and high schools. Many schools from Northern Addison County expressed interest in the idea, and the College students are currently working with Mt. Abraham High School’s garden.
(04/14/11 4:04am)
A native of Sydney, Australia, former resident of New York City, and current reverend at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Middlebury, Terence Gleeson is gearing up for his next big move: future Rector of All Saints in Palo Alto, Calif.
“Palo Alto is one of the most exciting and creative zip codes in the US and really in the world,” said Gleeson, who noted its connection to the high-tech industry of Silicon Valley, and to Stanford University, located within the parish.
Still, Gleeson finds it hard to leave Middlebury, as he has lived here since 2005 when he was elected rector of St. Stephen’s. For six years, he has worked hard to uphold the church’s outreach programs, “a very, very strong tradition here.” At the international level, the church works with an orphanage in Mexico, and with a group of parishioners also traveled on a mission trip three years ago to an orphanage in Honduras. Gleeson has kept in close contact with the organization and hopes the group will return next year to continue its charitable work. Last year, the church also donated clothing and diapers for 32 AIDS orphans in Zambia.
He also deeply values the St. Stephen’s local outreach programs. In 2010, the church provided nearly 3,400 pounds of food to local food shelves, prepared and served over 1,500 community lunches and volunteered at the Charter House shelter and HOPE food shelf, among numerous other endeavors. Every year, the church holds the Peasant Market, which takes place in July and is usually followed by the town’s Festival on the Green. It brings together parishioners and other community members who sell anything from clothing to books to household items in order to raise funds for charities in the state and abroad. Last year, the church raised $25,000.
Gleeson, who was ordained 30 years ago, can appreciate life in a small rural town particularly well, as he compares it to his experiences in New York City. Working as a priest in the city, Gleeson became involved with the not-for-profit agency PSCH (Professional Service Centers for the Handicapped), and he worked with developmentally disabled and mentally ill people. After being promoted numerous times, Gleeson found himself director of the agency, the fourth largest agency in the city. Throughout his years in various parishes in NY, Gleeson remained dedicated to charitable programs.
“The parish I was in had a major feeding program,” said Gleeson. “We do the same thing at St. Stephen’s, but obviously on a smaller scale.”
Gleeson said that another difference between working in New York City and in Middlebury was the relationship to the community.
“In a small town you are much more connected not only to your whole parish, but to your whole community,” he said. “There are just as many people from the community of Middlebury that are contacting us and wishing us well as [people from] our own parish.”
Still, Gleeson said that, “some things are always the same: you’re always preaching, you’re always celebrating sacraments, always visiting the sick.”
Another thing that has remained constant in Gleeson’s life has been his desire to become a priest.
“There was never really anything else I wanted to do,” he said. “It was easy. I did not have a huge drama, no great decision making.”
Gleeson spent a third of his priesthood in Australia, before he came to the U.S. about 20 years ago. He worked in parishes and served as University Chaplain for students at what is now called University of Wollongong. In addition to “celebrating liturgy on campus, leading bible study [and] being available for students for counseling,” Gleeson also received his graduate degree in education, “just for fun, to keep me busy.”
Having grown up in a Roman Catholic household, Gleeson was ordained a Catholic priest in Australia. He said that the switch to the Episcopal Church was relatively easy.
“They have almost identical liturgy and ceremonial aspects,” said Gleeson. “The faith is the same, but the role and use of authority is different.”
While undoubtedly excited for his new position in California, Gleeson and his partner, who got married in Vermont and adopted a daughter together, are finding it difficult to leave the Middlebury community.
“I will miss that human contact to people that I have grown to know and love, people that have been very encouraging and supportive and delightful,” he said.
The church’s connection to the College is clearly strong, as many parishioners are members of the faculty and staff, and John McCardell, president emeritus of the College, was a senior warden at St. Stephen’s before he became president of Sewanee, an Episcopal college in Tennessee. Similarly, Gleeson has fostered many valued relationships within the College community.
“For a small town it [Middlebury] has such a concentration of talent and creativity and intelligence. That is pretty amazing,” he said. “I had dinner with two New York Times best-selling authors last night, which is more unusual in N.Y.”
Not having grown up near mountains, Gleeson is also constantly amazed at “the sheer beauty of this state,” which he will miss dearly.
Still, Palo Alto offers an appealing next location.
“It has high energy, imagination and creativity,” said Gleeson. “And it doesn’t snow. For a boy from Sydney it does not get much better.”
(04/14/11 4:03am)
About 20 minutes south of the College campus, located on Route 7, sits the New England Maple Museum. The maple museum details the history of sugaring in America, beginning with Native Americans and ending today with the advent of modern technology to aid the process. It is one of the most comprehensive museums on maple syrup in the nation.
The New England Maple Museum website boasts “the most complete collection of sugaring artifacts in existence,” and it is not kidding. The entrance to the museum includes a well-stocked gift shop full of everything maple as well as everything Vermont. The museum itself flows chronologically, beginning with the Iroquois Native Americans, who first discovered maple sugar. Laura Goodrich, an employee of the museum, explained that the artifacts in the museum accumulated over the past 35 years.
“When people retire from sugaring they can’t bring themselves to throw their equipment away, so they give it to us,” she said.
Goodrich also noted that contributions to the museum help retired maple enthusiasts feel as if they are still able to make a difference and that the tools they have used their whole lives in their sugarbushes did not go to waste.
There are several key features that are unique to the museum. For example, at various stations guests can press a button that plays audio of real men and women who have sugared for their entire lives, divulging their expertise. There are also clips of songs and poems about maple syrup.
“[Our goal is to] get kids excited,” said Goodrich. “It’s hands on to stimulate them, get them interested in being involved.”
Along with the various displays, the audio also serves to show guests just how connected sugaring is with Vermont’s culture.
“It’s one of the few things we still make in the state,” said Goodrich, “We’re very proud of the fact that it’s our heritage.”
The museum includes a display of a modern evaporator, which runs water through the space to give a better visual of what the process was like. After making its way through the museum, the tour ends with a slide show accompanied by audio describing in detail what a regular sugaring season is like.
“Some people have not a clue in the world, but you’re pretty much an expert by the time you finish at the museum,” said Goodrich.
Although the extensive information provided by the displays of the museum are reason enough to visit, the owners have another motive as well. Goodrich explains that the museum serves not only to preserve the history of sugaring, but to inspire a new generation to take up the art.
“Most people don’t know a lot of the industry, and the museum helps to educate and make people more passionate,” said Goodrich.
The museum does its best to cater to all ages, but especially to the youngest.
“With all the modern technology now it’s hard to create new artisans,” said Goodrich. “Most sugarers are in their 90sby now. You have to get the youngest kids engaged.”
The new generation must be committed for the tradition to be maintained.
“We would hate to see something like that go,” said Goodrich. “We try to entice younger people to begin and make a life passion.”
With the interactive aspects as well as the vivid displays that show sugaring for all of its healthy hard work and adventure, the New England Maple Museum inspires younger generations to at least learn more extensively about sugaring every year.
“If a kid goes out and helps in a sugarbush, it will make all the difference in the world,” said Goodrich. “They get to see the end result and realize that it was something they produced.”
Although the museum cannot bring children out into sugarbushes to do work, it offers a close second. By seeing all of the equipment and having it explained in a fun and interesting way, Goodrich hopes a passion for sugaring is born. With that newfound interest, Goodrich thinks people will contact local farmers and go visit the sugarbushes themselves. In the gift shop, the museum has syrup from most local sugarbushes, and there are ways to contact those farms through the museum.
The industry is still very much family oriented, and there is hope that entire families will pick up the process with the help of education. Maple syrup in Vermont is a “mom and pop industry that is something to be proud of,” said Goodrich. The museum embodies that pride as well as the love of nature, as sugaring is one of the best ways to work with nature to get a product. The museum will continue to expand in the future. Goodrich explained that his work is based on the goal to spread a love for sugaring.
“We hope more younger people will take up the gauntlet.”
(04/14/11 4:00am)
“Forget the names — the names make you remember,” are the simple words of a father left in the underworld too long, remembering the love he has for his daughter. They are words reminding us that remembering can be the worst fate of all.
Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice was a play that, on the surface, revolved around a young woman, Eurydice, who finds herself brought down to the underworld in a raining elevator, after being seduced by the Lord of the Underworld. There, she meets her father, who has escaped the loss of memory and life skills that usually accompanies death. He teaches her to remember and reawakens the love she has for her husband, whom she left behind in the land of the living. Underneath this dreamlike façade, Eurydice is a play agonizing over the pain and utility of remembrance, the beauty in longing for a lost lover and silent pain of leaving that memory behind.
The chorus of Stones was perhaps the most creative design element. The members of the chorus were clad in gray abstractions of stone composed of the body parts of baby dolls — a stroke of genius executed flawlessly by costume designers Carlie Crawford ’11 and Artist-in-Residence Jule Emerson. The attention to movement — the stone waddle — and the aphasic delivery of the Stones’ often will-crushing lines was testament to the incredible acting discipline of the Stones (Alicia Evancho ’12, Christina Fox ’13 and Jenny Johnston ’14) and expert coaching by the director, Assistant Professor of Theater Alex Draper. The chorus of Stones was akin to a Greek choir in that they spoke simply the truths that we know to be true yet refuse to hear, in fear that acknowledging those truths will make our suffering and very existence obsolete. They reminded Eurydice why it is Underworld policy to forget: “To mourn twice is excessive.”
There were no weak links in the acting, in a script that demanded the actors to do much more than the real. As the Lord of the Underworld, Ben Orbison ’12.5 flaunted his impressive comic range when his character moved from Florence Nightingale, to Child-King of the Underworld, to a man who has come into his own — he struck chills of fear in the audience with a mere smile at an innocent Eurydice.
Willy McKay ’11, who played Orpheus, the husband of Eurydice and writer of the saddest music ever in order to gain access to the underworld and to reunite himself with his lover, also met the challenge of his character — a man whose music, like sonic waves, struck tremors in the Stones. Dustin Schwartz ’11, who played Eurydice’s father, captured the essence of age and played it clearly and tastefully. His agony was present but reserved, which proved an effective choice since the pain of memory, as Ruhl noted, requires “no emotion but the mere suggestion of a thought fed by the mere drop of words from the mouth, like water droplets falling from a tap, beautiful in flight but bursting on impact and getting us all wet.” Only Orpheus, a master of music, was able to peel at the skin of sorrow, but even he confessed, “The music sounds better in my head than it does in the world.”
The play rests, however, on the shoulders of Gillian Durkee ’12 in the title role of Eurydice. She, too, moved through an incredible range, starting as a lover and then forgetting all of her humanity, only to relearn it from her father. Her journey delighted the audience in that it did not come easy, but she played her confusion with such gravitas that we could not help but smile — her first attempts to read elicited sheer delight as she stood on the “Complete Works of Shakespeare” and swiveled her feet until she decided that the book had no purpose and she
hated it. Eurydice played, moreover, sweet love for both her father and husband that transported the audience into amorous throes that reminded us of the beauty of love and the grief in remembering it. Just as Ruhl created a more-than-real universe of music and distilled truths, Durkee breathed life into Eurydice.
The only weakness in the production lay in its cohesion as a single entity. Each individual design and theatrical aspect was impressive. The costumes were breathtaking, and Ryan Bates’ ’11 set was detailed and intricately crafted, from a raining elevator to a house of string built before our eyes. The lighting by Professor of Theatre Mark Evancho was supple with soft washes slashed through by harsh white specials including the angular light of the house of string and the aisles that transported the characters back and forth between the world of the living and the Underworld. The acting direction offered strong choices that essentialized and paid homage to Ruhl’s language. Other than the costumes, the production did not seem to give us a sense of a time period — the play is supposed to take place in the 1950s.
Eurydice is one of the most beautiful contemporary American plays, and in staging it, one takes on a huge mantle of responsibility. For those who had read the script, they came in with the highest expectations, expectations that were perhaps ultimately unreachable by any production; once grounded on the stage, words lose the power to inspire the imagination as they do on the page. There is not fault to place in that regard, and ultimately Eurydice was a beautifully executed piece of theatrical and emotional art.
(04/14/11 3:59am)
On Monday, April 4, the Middlebury College Choir performed in the CFA Concert Hall. The program included compositions by Brahms, Duruflé and Whitacre, as well as sacred liturgies, comical ditties and amorous traditional songs. With soaring vocals and a varied repertoire, the performance marked the end of the choir’s spring break California tour. While on tour, the group sang at a variety of locations, including a Korean church, three high schools and the Monterey Institute for International Studies.
Carla Cevasco ’11, who has been performing in the Middlebury Choir since her freshman year, noted that while the tour’s program was particularly demanding, the experience was rewarding in the end.
“Tour is an amazing opportunity to grow as a group,” Cevasco said. “It’s pretty high pressure to sing four concerts in six days … But the people aspect of tour is also really important. We’re stuck with each other day in, day out in a way that we aren’t during the regular school year, and that creates unique artistic and social chemistry. We’ve strengthened ourselves as a community of people and a community of musicians.”
There were many memorable moments during the trip, but an undeniable highlight of the tour was an impromptu performance on an airplane from San Francisco to Chicago.
“We got on the plane and the flight attendant asked us what kind of group we were. When we told her we were a choir, she insisted that we sing to the other passengers at 39,000 feet,” Cevasco said. “The acoustics weren’t great, but it’s an experience I won’t forget.”
Danielle Kruse ’11, who joined the choir this fall, shared similar sentiments about the sense of community within the choir.
“I feel so lucky to have been a part of this great tradition, even if just for a short time,” Kruse said. “After our concert [on April 4], I couldn’t keep a few tears from sneaking out, both because I was sad it was our last full performance and because I was so happy to have been a part of it.”
Cevasco also attributed the choir’s success to Assistant Professor of Music Jeffrey Buettner. Buettner conducts and directs the College’s choral program, and is a co-founder of the Middlebury Bach Festival, among numerous musical achievements. He joined the College faculty in 2007 and, in addition to conducting the choir, also teaches the “Everything A Cappella” course.
“He’s incredibly talented and pushes us to sing challenging music and sing it well, even though Middlebury isn’t a big choir school,” Cevasco said. “I feel bad for the audience because they can’t see him conduct — [they] miss about 75 percent of the show because Jeff makes the most amazing facial expressions and gestures and makes us laugh. Jeff and the seniors arrived on campus in the same year so we like to think that he’s a senior too, in a sense.”
Laurel Taylor ’11 noted that, in addition to his conducting technique, Buettner’s leadership brought the choir to a higher standing on campus despite other performing arts groups’ popularity.
“He started with a group that seemed neglected in the face of campus a capella and other music programs and managed to turn us into a touring choir in only two years and to establish a Bach festival in only four,” Taylor said. “I’m astounded at his work ethic and very grateful to have sung under his direction.”
Despite its challenges, the spring break tour was not the choir’s last performance set this semester. Before the end of the year, the choir will be singing in the Bach Festival, the Senior Week Concert (in which seniors pick their favorite songs and have the choir sing them) and Baccalaureate.
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I rarely see plays in which there are no weakly-presented characters and all actors fuse seamlessly with the spirit of their reproductions. In Vanya, written by Sam Holcroft and directed by Charles Giardina ’12, the exemplary performances from all sides made for a beautifully tight show. In thyis four-person piece, I expected the two seniors performing their 700 work — Cori Hundt ’11 and Michael Kessler ’11 — to be the only ones to have meticulously sculpted the minute idiosyncrasies of gesture and speech that both make their characters convincing and gracefully flaunt their insightful acting skills. To my surprise, the other two actors were just as perfectly cast; Noah Berman ’13 played the pain-riddled Vanya, and Molly O’Keefe ’12.5 walked the challenging line of protagonist and antagonist as the lovely, insecure but ultimately untrue Yelena.
O’Keefe managed both to drive back the audience with her unwaveringly stoic face and adulterous deeds and reel us in with her near-hysterical monologue about the universal desire to feel beautiful and significant to someone. She was able to switch between the distant, removed gaze of antagonistic eyes and the fiery, vulnerable eyes of a pleading human. Berman was spot-on for Uncle Vanya, and his psychological struggle easily stirred a great deal of emotion. With plausible pain, he played a man coming to terms with the missed connections in his life and realizing too late that his compliance with an unhappy life was his own fault.
Many moments of hilarity and some of the best acting came from Kessler, who played a doctor named Astrov. The true strengths of this play were very small, minute gestures and nuanced intonation; Kessler was responsible for many of these as he played the enthusiastically pretentious intellect, rattling on about social patterns and the increasing isolation and resulting self-destruction of man. He took those stretches of script and tailored them perfectly for the character of Doctor Astrov, his hands flying in familiar ways, shaping the words of the philosophy in front of him and alerting us to the character’s true nature. The style he conveyed for Astrov was curiously recognizable, perhaps because we encounter it every day in this college environment, where many of us, in the course of our studies, find some theory to be passionate about and describe it to a fellow classmate in exactly the same way — gesticulating restlessly to make our words seem valid. This is certainly an accomplishment on Kessler’s part, because his performance highlighted Giardina’s director note about “making these characters real people” and urged the audience to “judge the beings in these portraits as you would yourself in a mirror.”
As the one who brought this play to the College, Hundt’s role should certainly be commended as well. This story was a perfect challenge to tackle and truly wonderful to watch, and her vision to bring it to life here was well-realized. It had a comfortable time, clipped along at a nice pace and was performed in the extremely fitting space of the Hepburn Zoo. The elements came together so nicely that the audience could even maintain enough attention to start processing and reflecting upon the complex message of the play while it ran, a quality that doesn’t always occur if a performance is rife with distractions or design missteps. As for her acting, Hundt continually progressed with her character, Sonya, through the piece, from naïve, breezy girl to anguished keeper of hope amidst the spiraling lives of the jaded people around her. She was quite tireless, beginning with an easier portrayal and then carefully adding layers of intricacy to Sonya’s expressions. Her acting evolution was critical in building the tensions in a realistic manner so that the final scene maintained believability during the most extravagantly passionate moments. Hundt had a lanky, elastic, endearing quality onstage that reminded me of a young Katie Holmes on television in the 90s, and she was very strong in this role.
The set design was the product of the 700 credit work of Mindy Marquis ’11. The best feature was a gorgeous cris-crossing wall of lace fabric that served as an intriguing backdrop, and the lighting was equally well thought-out. Some of the set pieces, like scattered books and a coffee table, made for some awkward maneuvering on the actors’ part, but at least served a purpose. An herbal cigarette prop was one of the best set choices; as Kessler smoked it in the murky blue glow of the lights, the smoke hung defined in the air, wreathing his head and really enhancing the scene as well as the shadowy, seductive purposes of his character.
Vanya’s admirably strong acting and design assured that the participating students all have the potential to make great theatrical strides in the future. The play had a precise and flawless structure that gave the audience a thought-provoking yet entertaining show. Without a doubt, Vanya can be deemed a success.
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In late April, the Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB) will host Chief Washington Correspondent for the New York Times David Sanger and former Commander of the U.S. Central Command Admiral William Fallon. Both speakers will address the College community in Mead Memorial Chapel.
David Sanger will speak next Wednesday, April 20 at 8 p.m. and Admiral William Fallon will speak on Tuesday, April 26 at 4:30 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public, although priority seating will be given to students.
David Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times. Sanger was heavily involved in the Times’ release of Wikileaks documents and has most recently been covering White House policy towards the political instability in the Arab world. His first book, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power, was published in 2009.
Sanger joined the Times in 1982 after graduating magna cum laude from Harvard. He served as correspondent and
later bureau chief in Tokyo until 1994 and specialized in reporting on matters of international economics. Sanger was among the team of reporters awarded the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Challenger space shuttle disaster, and among a second Pulitzer Prize-winning team for coverage of the Clinton administration’s policies in controlling exports to China. He was appointed chief Washington correspondent in 2006.
Retired Admiral William Fallon is the former commander of the U.S. Central Command and led U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2007 until 2008. Fallon submitted a request to retire in March of 2008 due to media reports over disagreements between Fallon and the Bush administration over whether to go to war in Iran. An article titled “The Man Between War and Peace” appeared in Esquire magazine.
“Press reports suggesting a disconnect between my views and the president's policy objectives have become a distraction at a critical time and hamper efforts in the Centcom [Central Command] region,” said Fallon at the time of his resignation. "I have therefore concluded that it would be best to step aside and allow the secretary and our military leaders to move beyond this distraction and focus on the achievement of our strategic objectives in the region.”
Fallon currently serves as the CEO of NeuralIQ, which specializes in cybersecurity.
MCAB Speakers Committee co-chairs Colin Gibson ’11 and Caitlin Ludlow ’13 stressed the relevancy of this year’s speakers.
“The major things that were hitting the headlines when we were going through this process [of choosing speakers] were all … very centered in the realm of foreign politics, foreign affairs and international relations,” said Gibson.
“We looked for people that we thought had interesting and relevant things to say … but were still active in their fields,” said Ludlow. “There are certainly athletes and entertainers that were part of the discussion [of who to bring], but for this year, we really wanted to have an academic focus.”
Although the specifics of the committee’s budget are confidential, co-chairs stressed that this year’s choices were made to save money in preparation for future speakers.
"Traditionally the MCAB Speakers committee has brought a major speaker every two years. However, this year the committee decided to bring two medium-level speakers, with the aim of keeping costs low enough to bring another major speaker next year."
The Speakers Committee is currently accepting applications for funding for the Fall 2011 symposium. Both co-chairs hope that students will submit proposals before the end of the spring term.